E-bikes entered the resistance yesterday. A group of protesters placed eight or so of them in the driveway of Seattle’s Federal Building. The e-bikes, owned by Lime, were eventually removed by federal officers who also ordered the protestors to disperse. By 9 p.m., federal officers had arrested two protestors and fired “at least one less-lethal round” on what, by all accounts, looked like a peaceful demonstration. Trump has made clear that he’s comfortable sending federal troops to blue cities. The e-bike episode, however, didn’t exactly cut it. He needs a little more than that to send boots onto our streets. Will that little more happen today?
Seattle’s police Chief Shon Barnes told the Seattle City Council that Trump will likely throw him behind bars because he happens to believe in the law, not MAGA (the two, the law and MAGA, have nothing in common). Chief Shon Barnes frank statement revealed that LA is very much on everyone’s mind.
Trump, who is preparing for a big ole military parade on his birthday, and threatens to direct great force at those who have anything to say about it, warned that the occupation of LA “is the first, perhaps, of many [occupations].” MAGA’s leader, and America’s first dictator, presently has 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines on streets of Los Angeles.
Do you want to be surprised? Well, sadly, you will have to find another story because this one doesn’t contain a single surprise: “Trump orders names restored to Army bases honoring Confederate leaders.” We get it. You are racist. You want to restore the dignity and domination of white men in a society that’s already dominated by white men. But how long will you sing this old song?
The Left Needs to Grasp This Fact: The conservative movement is actually dead. You can no longer reach across the aisle because it’s empty. All that exists at this point of American history is a movement, MAGA, which rejects anything that can be identified as human: living with others who do not live as you do, expanding your mind and experiences, reproductive rights, helping those in need. This anti-humanism has always been there, always been a part of our culture. And the mission of the left has, in its definition, worked to mitigate this anti-humanism. That’s what being socialist, or social democrat, or Democrat can only be about: the political promotion of the all that makes the human the most social mammal.
Musk Waves a White Flag at MAGA: He now regrets saying all of those mean things about Trump on X. He went overboard. He lost his cool. He is now ready to put his money where his mouth is.
Public transportation also hates hot weather, which, as everyone knows, is caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels. Seattle Times reports that Sound Transit blames Monday’s “light rail breakdown in Redmond” on temperatures that reached and easily passed the 80s. These extreme conditions overwhelmed and crashed the system. When will this endless summer end? I miss those long winters. I miss the world captured in this line: “And the river got frozen / And the home got snowed in.”
Apparently clouds will have something to say for the next few days. (“Stay a little while, child.”) And the clouds are bring with them a friend we all know and love: wind. Both promise to keep temperatures away from the public transportation-hating 80s.
People get ready. We’ve already entered the season of smoke. A fire near Leavenworth is going for broke. It’s closing down roads, it’s threatening to send thousands of trees around the Bavarian-looking tourist town all the way to heaven. Meanwhile, the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has deployed “more than 200 firefighters” to Alberta, a province in a country that will never become America’s 51st state, Canada, to combat fires that look exactly like the end of the world. And this is no exaggeration. As we fuss and fight over ICE, wildfires across “Canada are devouring land at a pace unseen in any year other than the historic 2023 season.”
We must connect ICE with these fires in Canada and Washington. Why? Because the former is, by authoritarian means, creating a fake crisis in the US (making the lives of immigrants a living hell) that effectively replaces the democratic action and overall humanism that’s needed to deal with a real crisis, climate catastrophe. This is the true source of MAGA’s anti-humanism. This is why they are kicking down your front door.
I wish I could end Slog AM with this line: “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air.” But I can’t close that way because our revels will certainly continue today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. So, instead, let’s leave with an old-school dancehall tune by a reggae master who, by the way, will be in town tomorrow, Barrington Levy.
It was not “by all accounts” peaceful at the federal building–there are plenty of videos of protesters fighting with officers, throwing things at them, etc. The police response was admirably restrained and measured.
Conservatism != MAGA, thank you Charles. But Conservatism is not dead as Liberalism is not dead, as philosophies and theories are immortal.
Picture reminding me of KRS One.
“THEY BOTH RIDE HORSES!”
Who is this toxic administration coming for next? RESIST at every level like your life depends upon it. Have a nice day.
I feel sorry for my sister who’s going Banff for the 1st time next week. Right into the teeth of that smoke.
“by all accounts, looked like a peaceful demonstration.”
It absolutely wasn’t peaceful, you Marxist moron, and it didn’t even “look like one”, these ANTIFA idiots were literally trying to break into the building and attempting to grab weapons from the cops. Holy shit you are dumb or willfully naive, it’s on video:
https://x.com/tparon/status/1932656167966421410/video/1
https://x.com/BrandiKruse/status/1932648430041772525
But all the people who self-identify as conservative are the base of the maga movement. Conservatism might have a technical meaning as a political philosophy but the majority of people who claimed it never believed in those principles because their stances on issues that applied those values belied their true beliefs. You can’t be in favor of small government and anti-choice, anti-marriage equality, pro-banning books, etc because those are the definition of big government policies. They just wanted lower taxes for rich people and a weak social safety net.
Any rail system unable to operate in 80 degree F temperatures has a serious design flaw.
80F is not an extreme temperature.
@1 and @6 a few black bloc wearing assholes doesn’t make an entire protest violent. You guys really need to learn the difference.
Nobody has ever said that a group of bandana wearing people grabbing at cops guns don’t deserve to be arrested. But that’s like 3 people out of hundreds or thousands at these events and it’s not the same group of people. Also… you guys still don’t understand what antifa means.
@9 – And yet the indisputable fact remains that Charles Mudede’s statement, “by all accounts, looked like a peaceful demonstration”, was idiotic and incorrect.
Speaking of endless summers, Brian Wilson has left us.
@6 Mudede meant the * protesters * were peaceful, so you sharing videos of the police using weapons on protesters doesn’t refute what he wrote. Not that you’re a serious person who’s above regularly claiming up is down.
@12 – tell me you didn’t watch the videos I posted without telling me
It’s so funny to be able to say “the protests were peaceful” and then in the face of “well a lot of these protesters were being violent” to just be like “those ones aren’t protesters. They don’t count”.
@13 no I watched the video. I saw a guy in black trying to enter a building, police yelling at him and others to stand back, then heard less lethal rounds being fired and saw pepper spray deployed. Is your argument that trying to enter a building without permission is “violence?”
Personally don’t think 2 videos of the same event where people are being denied entry to a building refutes the protest being peaceful but to each his own. Trumpers are such drama queens lol.
@15 – I posted TWO videos. If you didn’t watch both, then do so now. If you can’t easily observe the ANTIFA idiots attempting to grab weapons from the cops, then you need your eyes checked out by an ophthalmologist, and if your eyes actually do work fine, but you can’t admit that the ANTIFA idiots not only tried to break into the building but also attempted to grab weapons from the cops, you are disingenuous and a liar.
@16 – My comment at #17 applies to you as well.
@7: No, those are just your subjective views and contorted conflations. The role of government can be limited (not necessarily small) and be quite fertile for a prosperous society without “anti-choice, anti-marriage equality, pro-banning books, etc”. It’s orthogonal actually, it’s just a matter of proving services to all citizens fairly.
Identity politics and intersectionalism, however, love big oppressive government — just like Trump and MAGA do.
@17 Again… your use of the term Antifa to describe these people completely obliterates anything you say because not only do you know know they’re antifa, you clearly don’t know what antifa even means. I’d actually wage that you, yourself, are in fact, probably antifa… and so is WereBackBaby and nekrasova. Because if you aren’t… that makes you the “fa” part…
“The Left Needs to Grasp This Fact: The conservative movement is actually dead. You can no longer reach across the aisle because it’s empty. ….
That’s what being socialist, or social democrat, or Democrat can only be about: the political promotion of the all that makes the human the most social mammal.”
So Charles, how do Dems do that as a minority Party? How do they win the popular vote and EC in 2028?
Blue collar, working class voters don’t want income redistribution. They don’t want elitist progressives, indoctrinated and trained, at taxpayer expense, at America’s colleges, telling them what’s good for them, what they should think, how they must speak, etc.
They want the ability, through the sweat of their own brow, to continuously improve their own self-sufficiency and standard of living, so they are free to decide what they think for themselves.
Dems didn’t speak to that. They continue to speak in a progresive, Mudedesque, McCallesque, Strangeresque, elitist tongue, right past these voters.
The paradox is this: Dems did better, The Stranger did better, and The Stranger’s audience did better, when The Stranger’s brand of progressive ideology was a dismissed, contained, not to be taken too seriously, edge of the Democratic tent.
.
MAGA spoke to the disaffected, formerly reliable working class angst and concerns, even if they don’t have a program to back it up.
And no, 2024 was not a turnout problem for Dems.
https://goodauthority.org/news/voter-registration-turnout-democrats-republicans/
The best hope for winning back working-class voters, young voters, Hispanic, Black, and other key Democratic constituencies is Dems winning back the House in 2026, abandoning the court cases starting to stop Trump from being his own worst enemy, letting him drive the economy of the working class further into the ditch, so Dems can then be the only choice left to try and pick up the pieces. In so doing, perhaps they make Trump so toxic in many red states that the Dems can again impeach, and Republicans will have no choice but to abandon him in the Senate (e.g. Nixon) for their own self-preservation.
@20 “not know” that should say
@17 the two videos were of the same thing. I saw a guy who got shot by a rubber bullet (or maybe pepper ball) then grab at the weapon he had been shot with. You’re getting dangerously close to summoning NotMyopic for a lengthy discussion of self defense law here.
Even the guy who made the first tweet acknowledges it was the cops who got violent, this was his caption: “Shit is blowing up everywhere DHS and Seattle PD just lit up a bunch of militant antifa members with rubber bullets and pepper balls in downtown Seattle near Pike Street protests are getting out of hand in downtown Seattle.”
@5, That smoke must have very high concentrations of enamel in it.
19, no you categorically cannot be for small government when your primary political positions involve the government taking choices away from people. You can certainly claim it if you’re so inclined and you can even dress it up with a bunch of big words you barely understand but you can’t force other people to participate in your self-flattering delusions.
@8, FTW in today’s comments.
@20 – bullshit semantic handwaving to deny the obvious
18, I watched 2 videos of the same clash from different angles. I agree there is violence taking place but not that it represents the sum total of an event that involved hundreds of people and lasted for hours. Not trying to convince a mouth breathing cretin like you to change his views mind you, just explaining what you presented in fair terms. You should try it some time.
@9, There is a meme going around that says peaceful protesters need to sit down, go silent and stop protesting, when black bloc infiltrates their number and perpetrates property crime or assaults officers by throwing shit.
Most memes are shit, but like a stopped clock, they are correct twice a day.
That is the case here. It would deprive Trump of his ability to paint the 95% of protesters that are peaceful with an anarchist, black block brush.
@28 wait you think Trump’s claims are based in reality?
@24: Again, a government can be large in the sense of meeting the needs of the people, but limited in terms of its control and intrusion into our private lives. Sorry you can’t understand that, but instead you get flustered over my “big words” and think you made your case, but you didn’t.
@27 – “I agree there is violence taking place but not that it represents the sum total of an event that involved hundreds of people and lasted for hours.”
I never claimed the violence committed by ANTIFA was the “sum total” of the event. Charles Mudede, however, either outright lied or was simply naive of the violence at the event, when he wrote “”by all accounts, looked like a peaceful demonstration”.
People can either acknowledge that ANTIFA or the morons in “Black Bloc” (chose your favorite bullshit term) were violent, which you kinda did, or people can deny reality and make themselves look stupid.
While it is Trump’s birthday, the military parade is in celebration of the Army’s 250th year celebration. In other words, a totally appropriate time for a military parade.
I’m glad to hear Trump and Musk are patching things up, as I predicted. We need both of these men working together to Make America Great Again.
Hot weather is not caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels. And any engineer who designed a transit system limited by 80 degree temperatures should be fired immediately. The temperature has exceeded 80 degrees every year that I’ve been alive. Sorry Sound Transit, you’ll have to blame something other than climate change for your pathetic failures.
Alberta is actually the province MOST likely to join the US as our 51st state.
Correction: Trump is making the lives of ILLEGAL immigrants hell. That’s exactly what we elected him for. Keep up the good work Mr. President. 👏
@30, I mentioned 3 policy areas where self-identified “small government conservatives” support a big government controlling and intruding on people’s private lives and no amount of your weird ass double speak refutes that. They also don’t want a government that meets the needs of the people because they have been clamoring for those things to be taken away for as long as I’ve been alive and are set to follow through on it if trump’s bill gets passed. Conservative icon ronald reagan would be delighted to see poor people kicked off of government health care and welfare queens having their benefits taken away, not to mention abortion being criminalized. Meeting the needs of the people, lol please be serious.
You’re literally describing the opposite of what “conservatives” have stood for and claiming that’s what you people have always wanted. You keep proving my point every time you chime in.
31, reasonable people can agree to disagree that an isolated incident represents the entirety of a much larger event. If you think it’s by definition not a peaceful demonstration because a couple of idiots go off then that’s certainly a subjective opinion a person may have, but another one is “this was a peaceful demonstration with one or more violent outbursts that don’t sully the entire protest.”
@31 “People can either acknowledge that ANTIFA or the morons in “Black Bloc” (chose your favorite bullshit term) were violent, which you kinda did, or people can deny reality and make themselves look stupid.”
Again, the people in the video simply tried to enter a building then one, after being shot, tried to hold down/arguably wrest away the weapon that shot him. Which part of that do you consider the protesters being violent, and why are you such a snowflake?
The “peaceful” protesters know damn well by now that they are providing cover for the violence loving, America hating, antifa crew. If they want to be seen as peaceful they should eject these individuals from their protests. Otherwise the whole world correctly understand they support the violent activities perpetrated by antifa.
Also, a Deluxe and shake is over $10 now? Dick’s truly has fallen…
@33: Don’t bash Ronnie with “would be” quips, it’s embarrassing for you.
Adjectives are getting in the way. “Big” is fine, “Intrusive” is bad.
The Left’s protests must be perfectly non-violent, or they’re completely delegitimized. No property must be harmed.
MAGA protestors get to beat cops till they scream in pain and beg for mercy, and they get Presidential Pardons.
@38, Excuse me. Reagan coined welfare queen, opposed abortion, and made his entry into politics by objecting to government run healthcare. These are literally some of his most famous positions. If it’s embarrassing to describe them accurately then what does that say about his values?
I don’t disagree that intrusive is bad and big can be fine, but this means “conservatives” support bad policies and oppose good ones while outright lying about their principles.
The mistake many of you are making is assuming the 50-100 people at the courthouse last night (according to the Seattle Times) care one iota about the plight of undocumented immigrants. Most of them are there because they want to engage with law enforcement as clickbait or because that’s what they do. As I’ve mentioned before its the same group of aggrieved people who were fighting with the religious group a few weeks ago, spray painting the UW last year and shutting down the freeway and I’m sure more than a few of them were part of CHOP a few years ago. They don’t care what the cause is as long as it allows them to act out against “authority” and cause mayhem because they are losers who don’t have anything else in their life.
Wow, did you see BlueSky’s engagement has fallen off a cliff since the election?
Turns out, nobody really cares what the Progs have to say.
Will The Stranger be back on X soon? Sure looks like it.
@40: The Democratic party encompasses Catholics, for example, who are opposed to abortion. Lots of dems to this day are not in favor of government run heath care. Bill Clinton followed Reagan’s lead in some areas.
Conservative and Liberal values do form Venn diagrams here and there. Remember Blue Dog Democrats?
@43, Catholics can be in either party and either support or oppose abortion. We aren’t talking second-order associations but what people who self-identify as “conservative” consider conservative values. They don’t want their taxes supporting a social safety net but they want the government in your bedroom and your doctor’s office, literally the most private spaces in our lives.
There may be anti-choice democrats but if they self-identify as “blue dog” that means their chosen label aligns with their values. A better analogy would be someone identifying as a big government progressive while opposing welfare benefits or medicaid. That is, the philosophy they claim to ascribe to is in direct conflict with their positions. I don’t think such people exist but if they did they would be just as full of shit as most small government conservatives.
@44 – it doesn’t matter how small government is, we still oppose murder. So our position on abortion is completely compatible with small government.
We also oppose child abuse, so our position on gender affirming care for minors is also compatible with small government.
Some conservatives may care which consenting adult you sleep with, or oppose sex changes for adults. That is not my position and not currently the position of the Republican party. If you are an adult, you can do as you see fit, provided it doesn’t impact others negatively.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
Happy ole Big Boy Bday, El Presidente Taco, may the mayhem you’ve engendered be the dreamiest birthday present ever!!!
@29, I absolutely don’t believe Trump.
I believe the reporting of the LA Times and other outlets that show people committing property damage, video of projectiles being thrown at the cops, etc. I believe Karen Bass when she imposes a night time curfew because of violence and property damage.
I support peaceful protest. If peaceful protesters don’t want to get (falsely) painted as conspirators or willful cover of those that engage in property damage and violence, then when it occurs amongst them, they should all immediately sit down, so those unlawful are exposed and Trump’s lies that all protesters are law breakers is exposed.
How soon can Camp Pendleton be renamed Camp Caligula???
@47 if all the other protestors ran away from the handful causing problems while screaming “we condemn antifa!” Trump would still claim the protests were broadly lawless and violent, and idiots like Posob would swallow it up.
But beyond that, as Max Solomon pointed out @39, MAGAs stormed the Capitol to try to overthrow the elected government, and injured numerous cops in the process, but nobody on the right cares and Trump got reelected anyway. The “protests are violent” shit is pure concern trolling.
& thanks so much for the current majority here for the daily sound & fury signifying nothing!!!
@47 All of that is happening in a one block radius though. If you have any idea how big Los Angeles is, you know how insignificant that actually is. They literally had a huge Pixar movie red carpet premiere in Hollywood yesterday. Sounds like absolute chaos!
It’s the same as the CHOP. Reporters acted like Seattle was under siege and about to fall and it was literally 2 blocks of a park with some tents in it.
@45 “That is not my position and not currently the position of the Republican party. If you are an adult, you can do as you see fit, provided it doesn’t impact others negatively.”
Except for trans people getting their new gender identity put on their ID or using whichever bathroom fits their gender expression, you mean? How do either of those things impact others negatively exactly?
oh & Werewolf Baby, can’t wait to see the UTube of your Saturday rendition of Happy Birthday Mr President!!!
The only saving grace in any of this is that the Trump portion of this whole thing will end sooner than later thanks to nature taking it’s course. I’m sure some fresh hell awaits but the mentally ill, catheter wearing, diaper pissing, stair tripping taco isn’t going to be here on earth THAT much longer. It’s just a fact. THEN he’ll get his parade.
Perhaps the most problematic aspect of TS is its creation of a kind of mirage – that progressive legislative ambitions and radical direct action campaigns not only can harmlessly coexist, but complement each other.
Historically, however, this is rarely the case.
I recently had the opportunity to spend a day with three mates in a political simulation entitled “Weimar, fight for democracy.” Each player took the role of one of the major political parties following ww1 armistice – SPD, Zentrum, KDP, and DVSN. The game has a bot controlling the National Socialists.
Zentrum and SPD are ideologically opposed but together vested in the Bundestag. DVs share some Zentrum positions, but wouldn’t mind a return to monarchy. They are also violent, preferring street violence and demonstrations. Likewise, KDP share some SPD sentiments, but would actually prefer a Marxist revolution.
Players quickly appreciate that their ideological cousins are more often the bigger headache than their “foes.” KDP and DVs actually riff off each other – if either faction destabilized a region it creates fertile ground for the other. They both profit from delegitimizing the moderates. The street shenanigans of the radicals complicate the moderates task of actually governing.
Any player can win, dominating seats in Bundestag by capturing votes from public issues. But the game can also end with a communist revolution or a reactionary military putsch. Lastly, if all 4 players manage to have a fully destabilized Germany and the government consistently fails to solve pressing national issues – the bot delivers the National Socialists to power and all human players lose.
The simulation has much to say about democratic societies, but it’s central conceit is that they are fragile, and forces who prefer the street to deliberation pose a unique challenge in an era of mass politics. They may seem a useful occasional tool of the moderate, but then, that is how the radicals view the moderates. The question is then who is using who, and what are the stakes?
45 didn’t ask for your opinion but you’re just proving my point by admitting you want the government to micromanage people’s most intimate personal decisions
@39, I am saying that the peaceful protesters can show Trump’s lies by sitting down when violence or property damage is initiated from amongst them, so those initiating it stand out like a sore thumb.
The violent at the Capitol were prosecuted and convicted, as they should have been. The popular vote repealed that when they elected Trump to office and he pardoned them as he said he would.
To stop MAGA, Dems have to get elected to majorities. How did their messaging and issues work to keep the working-class on-side in 2024? It didn’t. If they can’t figure out how to take the House in 2026 and the WH in 2028, we are in deep shit. They keep doubling-down on what got us here. How is that working out?
@39
Yep pretty much.
Fair? No.
But accurate.
Them’s the ground rules whether you like it or not.
@56 – micromanage those two specific points I mentioned, yes. We aren’t going to stop opposing murder or child abuse, even if those are “intimate personal decisions”. Sorry buckaroo!
@52 – women are negatively impacted when men use the women’s restroom. And all of society is negatively impacted when one’s identifying documents do not reflect the truth.
@53 – I’m not much of a performer, but I will be watching the parade for sure.
@47, He can claim whatever he wants, but there would be evidence to refute it.
When the protesters don’t do that they look at best, like they are looking the other way, and at worst as co-conspirators. Those optics counter the protest message.
Also protesting ICE activity that conforms to the law, e.g. people actually unlawfully here, and providing legally mandated due-process when they do, doesn’t help them.
If they want to protest that our immigration laws need to be changed, go for it, but protesting them being enforced as they are, doesn’t win voters over to them.
If they want to protest violations of our immigration law by ICE, then for for that too.
But they aren’t protesting that, they are protesting all ICE activity. Both that which enforces existing immigration law and that which violates that law and due process.
@51 – “It’s the same as the CHOP. Reporters acted like Seattle was under siege and about to fall and it was literally 2 blocks of a park with some tents in it.”
I know yall like to try your hardest to forget about what an absolutely embarrassing failure CHOP was, let me refresh your memory:
June 20, 2020: Two people were shot, one fatally (19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson) and one critically injured (33-year-old man).
June 21, 2020: A 17-year-old was shot and wounded, arriving at a hospital in serious condition.
June 23, 2020: A man approximately 30 years old was shot and survived.
June 29, 2020: Two teenagers were shot, one fatally (16-year-old) and one critically injured (14-year-old).
Also, not at CHOP, but directly and ideologically related to the aftermath of it being shut down on July 1, 2020: On July 4, 2020, Dawit Kelete drove his car into two protesters on a closed section of Interstate 5 in Seattle, killing one and injuring another. The deceased protester was Summer Taylor, aged 24. The injured protester was Diaz Love, aged 32.
Summer of Love indeed.
The Stranger, under Noisy Creek, passes up another opportunity to engage in the war on cars:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/two-dead-in-yesler-terrace-crash/
The Stranger, under Noisy Creek, passes up another opportunity to declare that fact that two people died at the hands of the human driver, and no one was arrested for a crime, is an injustice.
So was The Stranger wrong to engage that way before? Or is Noisy Creek wrong now in not continuing The Stranger’s prior pattern and practice?
@59, You’re just redefining consensual, often life saving medical care for your own self-satisfaction. Murder and child abuse are legally codified and the ones in question don’t include abortion or respecting children’s preferred pronouns by even the most expansive definitions.
@44: “They don’t want their taxes supporting a social safety net”
They do, but also effectively. Paying taxes is not solely a liberal value.
“they want the government in your bedroom and your doctor’s office, literally the most private spaces in our lives.”
Yes, that is hypocritically true with MAGA and a lot of the current Republicans. But not all and isn’t a core principle of conservatism.
“A better analogy would be someone identifying as a big government progressive while opposing welfare benefits or medicaid.”
That is some contorted analogy. Can you name such a person?
@64, I know it’s not a core principle of conservatism but it is a core principle of people who self-identify as conservative. This is my whole point.
I don’t know such a person which is why i said i don’t think any actually exist. I just used it as an example to illustrate how nonsensical it is for people to claim to be for small government when their strongest positions are in favor of big government, by “contorting” this dynamic in the opposite direction, and in response to your analogies that don’t make any sense for reasons i already explained.
@57: yes, the Left should protest just the way you tell them to. I’ll have Soros issue the directive.
Love to see the seattle times engaging in the war on cars. Their publisher must be telling them to report on car-involved fatalities to boost their progressive bona fides.
@65: Stop looking for single umbrella definition of conservatism, as it’s quite malleable. Stop thinking that hypocrisy negates principles, they can exist as aberrations.
@61 if CHOP was an “embarrassing failure” because its organizers and security weren’t able, in the less-than-a-month it existed, to completely solve the problem of gun violence in or near the zone, what does that make the institution of policing which has failed to completely solve the problem of gun violence for almost two hundred years?
The murder of Lisa Vach by Travis Berge in Cal Anderson Park on September 16, 2020, which culminated in Berge dumbassedly dying in a tank filled with bleach and water pumping station, can logically be extrapolated as being part of the aftermath of CHOP “protest”, and also logically a result of Seattle’s stupid naive “progressivism”.
@69 – are you seriously trying to claim that CHOP was NOT an embarrassing failure?
I bet if I said that water is wet you’d try to argue that it is actually dry.
@71 I’m saying those shootings you cited were obviously evidence that CHOP security needed additional funding from the city to hire and retain more personnel as well as procure advanced military equipment and new surveillance tech.
To sum it up, Seattle’s naive “progressivism” gets people injured and killed. All those deaths I listed in previous comments were DIRECT RESULTS of Seattle’s naive “progressivism” and Seattle’s “protest culture”.
68, I’m not looking for anything, I am describing phenomena that you have yet to refute. For the most part everyone agrees on the “umbrella definition of conservatism” but if you believe in things that run counter to that definition while identifying as a conservative, you are by definition being a hypocrite.
I don’t know why this is so hard for you to accept but your beef should be with the people sullying the brand of conservatism, not the messenger.
@20 – the people assaulting Andrea Suarez at the Federal Building yesterday seem to think they are ANTIFA, they literally call themselves that on video, so you failed again:
https://x.com/weheartseattle/status/1932588927506170086
@75 why was Andrea being so “violent” trying to enter an area she was told not to?
@74: You’re the one the beef. You just couldn’t let “Conservatism is not dead as Liberalism is not dead” stand on its own in @2 without challenging it.
@76 there you go being a disingenuous liar. Andrea was on the public sidewalk. Holy shit you are bad at this. I feel sorry for you and for your parents.
@77 i was responding directly to the original post saying that conservatism has been replaced by maga, not anything you said. My whole point is that this lofty version of conservatism never existed at all. I don’t disagree that the ideas won’t die because that’s how ideas work, i just disagree that “conservatives” ever believed in conservatism.
@78 “Andrea was on the public sidewalk.”
As opposed to the federal building which is not open to the public?
@80 – do you have a “Failing Fetish”? Are you actively trying to be stupid now?
Andrea was not trying to break into the federal building, and she was not assaulting the cops. Wow you are dumb
@79: You can’t disagree that what people believe – that makes no sense. All you can do is state your opinion. You have no control over what defines conservatism, much less whether or not a person is sincere in saying they’re conservative.
Conversely, the same applies to liberals and liberalism.
@79 ????
I know what people believe because they tell me. You don’t have to look too hard to find someone who believes the government should ban certain medical procedures while also saying they believe the government has no business meddling in our personal lives, in fact you can find them right here in this thread. They can convince themselves that these beliefs are not in conflict but that doesn’t change the fact that they are.
@81 it seems like, after much debate, we’ve come to an agreement that “trying to enter a public space after being told not to” is not violence. That’s the opposite of failing!
“@81 it seems like, after much debate, we’ve come to an agreement that “trying to enter a public space after being told not to”
Jesus fuck you are stupid. Nobody “told” Andrea to “not enter a public space” except for those ANTIFA rturds.
My moral policy is to not argue with obvious idiots, and you’ve proved yourself to be one. Enjoy!
@85 “My moral policy is to not argue with obvious idiots”
I’m very confident you habitually agree with them
@86
WHOOOOOSH
insert “over_your_head.gif”
So anyone still want to argue there’s no difference between Harris and Trump?
lf it was about anything other than controlling “female bodies”, there would be significant and identifiable factions in the movement actually working towards other solutions, not just selling the false “bodily autonomy vs. killing” dichotomy.
@67, Seattle Times reports the facts.
SLOG used to pick it up, every chance they got, and then provide snarky commentary about the evil of a car dependent society and how unjust it was that the driver of said car wasn’t criminally charged for the death or injury of the pedestrians involved. They would make the latter point even though all murders and homicides, but only a specific subset of homicides are murder, according to a democratically elected legislature.
@80, @84: Why not just call Andrea Suarez a Nazi, and then declare she should consider herself lucky to get away without having her face beaten into that very public sidewalk?
At least that would agree with your prior statements on beating persons in public, and also make you look ever so slightly less like a moron.
@91 anyone who seriously claimed refusing to vacate a public space on command is “violence” would look like a moron, true. Also thanks for swooping in to prove my point @86
Aaaaaaaaand the events of tonight just prove me right yet again.
@92: Again, the black-clad ‘protestors’ threatened, then assaulted, an unarmed woman because she was walking on a public sidewalk and recording a video — two actions completely protected by the First Amendment. Compare to Charles’ statement in the headline post: “… by all accounts, looked like a peaceful demonstration.”
No, it did not. Charles and the Stranger are either ignorant or lying.
@83: Stances on medical procedure controversies define political philosophies? Actually they’re humane decisions that have nothing to do with politics because people from both sides of the aisle have the same common sense in protecting children, for example.
@61 I didnt say anything about CHOP being good or bad. All I was talking about is that it literally didn’t effect 99% of the city. It was 2 blocks. The same as Los Angeles. Nobody in Hollywood is scared for their lives right now despite the news making it seem like the entire city is a warzone. It’s all happening in front of one or two buildings.
There was more damage to Philadelphia when they WON the Superbowl than is actually happening in Los Angeles or Seattle right now.
@96 – I didn’t say anything about CHOP affecting the whole city (“effecting”, which you wrote, is the incorrect word to use). I wrote that it was an embarrassing failure, one that Seattle “progressives” (white ones especially) should be ashamed of, especially as a protest that specifically aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement.
I didn’t mention it earlier, because anyone who knows would already know, but everyone who got shot and/or killed at CHOP was black.
Ironically, Dawit Kelete, who killed Summer Taylor and Diaz Love (both white), is black.
SUMMER OF LOVE 2025 IN EFFECT! (that’s the correct way to use “effect”).
To correct/clarify my comment at #98, I know that Diaz Love was not killed by Dawit Kelete, just horribly injured.