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US Politics: Shutbound & Down


DMC

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14 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Please, those were not punks. Those were prim and proper Christian boys. Or are you suggesting they hid their mohawk under their MAGA hats? Anyway, any bets who of those will grow up to be the next Mike Pence?

Not directing my comment at you, just the topic.

I, like everyone else, was disgusted with that video, but I guess some people must have contacted CNN with more details about what happened before the video. Now I have mixed feelings.

The black group that had been protesting were a religious group called the Black Israelites. Mr. Phillips, in his interview, merely said, “They witnessed these (4) individuals on their soapbox saying what they had to say. They didn’t agree with it and got offended.”

What Phillips doesn’t say is that the black religious group members were condemning in pretty strong terms religions practiced by others, including shouting abuse at a Catholic priest who walked by, which sounds like what actually drew the students to them in the first place. Apparently at first there were only 4 or 5 students, then more and more of them joined the circle until there were many students. Phillips said a hundred. The abuse at the students continued (“you’ll burn in hell for being Catholics” kind of stuff, and stuff about what kind of people wear MAGA hats) and then a student took his jacket off. That’s when Phillips inserted himself. And witnesses said some of the kids chanted along with Phillips, which sounded like they were supportive of him (they did not say it was mocking).

Am I impressed with the kid who stood in his face? Nope, not at all. Am I shocked that teenagers got upset at abuse hurled at them by strangers? No, I’m not. As an adult I would have said ‘fucking assholes’ to myself if I had heard a group of guys standing on a street corner telling the world they’ll burn in hell if they don’t worship their version of God, and then I’d walk away. But they were male teenagers.

Like I said, I’m not impressed with their reaction, but the story has more shades of gray in it than what was originally reported.

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7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Not directing my comment at you, just the topic.

I, like everyone else, was disgusted with that video, but I guess some people must have contacted CNN with more details about what happened before the video. Now I have mixed feelings.

The black group that had been protesting were a religious group called the Black Israelites. Mr. Phillips, in his interview, merely said, “They witnessed these (4) individuals on their soapbox saying what they had to say. They didn’t agree with it and got offended.”

What Phillips doesn’t say is that the black religious group members were condemning in pretty strong terms religions practiced by others, including shouting abuse at a Catholic priest who walked by, which sounds like what actually drew the students to them in the first place. Apparently at first there were only 4 or 5 students, then more and more of them joined the circle until there were many students. Phillips said a hundred. The abuse at the students continued (“you’ll burn in hell for being Catholics” kind of stuff, and stuff about what kind of people wear MAGA hats) and then a student took his jacket off. That’s when Phillips inserted himself. And witnesses said some of the kids chanted along with Phillips, which sounded like they were supportive of him (they did not say it was mocking).

Am I impressed with the kid who stood in his face? Nope, not at all. Am I shocked that teenagers got upset at abuse hurled at them by strangers? No, I’m not. As an adult I would have said ‘fucking assholes’ to myself if I had heard a group of guys standing on a street corner telling the world they’ll burn in hell if they don’t worship their version of God, and then I’d walk away. But they were male teenagers.

Like I said, I’m not impressed with their reaction, but the story has more shades of gray in it than what was originally reported.

 

Here is the full video of the ENTIRE thing. the video is an hour and a half long. You get to see the Catholic kids standing in a group waiting for their bus to go home from the Right to Life march, and get to see the black guys calling them future school shooters, and future church shooters, the black guys call the Native Americans "Uncle Tomahawk", and when the kids start chanting school fight songs to drown out the hate being spewed by the black guys, the native Americans march into their group and the kids stand around and do nothing. When the Native Americans keep standing there beating their hand drum, the Catholic kids move to the side to keep waiting for their bus. 

The entire narrative that was making the Catholic kids look bad is all fake news. 

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The only thing I will say on this video is that the mother of the boy has come out defending her son blaming 'the black muslims'. They were not muslim, but hey, it's ok to blame them for everything, right? I'm not saying she should know exactly who these assholes were if she wasn't there, but assuming they are muslim and referring to them as such without verifying it is beyond shitty.

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It's a complicated situation, and I haven't (and won't, I don't care enough) watched the videos, so I'm not fully equipped to way in. However, I will say that anyone organizing a trip to DC should absolutely be aware of and warn people about the Black Israelites and to avoid them. They aren't violent, as far as I know, but they will absolutely make as big a scene as possible and likely say things people will find offensive; especially religious people. 

And even if the school organizers and chaperones didn't know about them, they should've been keeping a closer eye on the kids and led them off to somewhere else. I've never seen more than 6 or 7 Black Israelites in one place before, they aren't a mob.

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The media is definitely about to be "both-sidesing" the shit out of the shutdown.  Oh wait they already are.  Heard two congressional reps blathering on about how everyone needs to come together on the drive into work on our regional public radio (WAMC).  Ooh and Tulsi Gabbard is digging in deep too! 

Check out @atrupar’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1087053571542208512?s=09

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Fez, the only thing I’m saying is that it wasn’t as vile as that video made it out to be. It was a more complicated story.

I saw a lot of nasty comments on stories about the kind of vile kids who wear MAGA hats. I just don’t see a Catholic school sanctioning kids going to the march wearing MAGA hats. I would bet someone at the march was handing them out, and it isn’t only kids who can’t resist a freebie. I feel as if the kids were not wearing the hats there would have been more interest in hearing both sides of the story.

I also was not happy, after hearing more details, about Phillips’ comments about being afraid for the souls of these children and the awful state of affairs with American youth. Now I’m beginning to think it was more of a ‘get off my lawn’ Situation.

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4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Fez, the only thing I’m saying is that it wasn’t as vile as that video made it out to be. It was a more complicated story.

I saw a lot of nasty comments on stories about the kind of vile kids who wear MAGA hats. I just don’t see a Catholic school sanctioning kids going to the march wearing MAGA hats. I would bet someone at the march was handing them out, and it isn’t only kids who can’t resist a freebie. I feel as if the kids were not wearing the hats there would have been more interest in hearing both sides of the story.

I also was not happy, after hearing more details, about Phillips’ comments about being afraid for the souls of these children and the awful state of affairs with American youth. Now I’m beginning to think it was more of a ‘get off my lasn’ Situation.

 

If the kids weren't wearing those hats, it probably wouldn't even have been a story.  

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23 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I just don’t see a Catholic school sanctioning kids going to the march wearing MAGA hats.

https://www.covcath.org/campus-life/spiritual-life/march-for-life

https://www.change.org/p/rev-bishop-foys-immediate-change-at-covington-catholic

Quote

Unfortunately, what happened in D.C. should not be a surprise to anyone who has been associated with CovCath.  The above photo (from last year’s March for Life) was in the CovCath recruiting brochure my son received a few months ago:

Forgetting the fact that including "MAGA" propaganda in the school's recruitment material is likely illegal under the Johnson Amendment, it also shows a complete lack of judgement by CovCath administration. 

 

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I know, I wasn't single out/addressed with this discussion in particular, so just two cents to put that thing to bed.

First I originally only chipped in to have some fun about the the use of the word punk to describe them (obviously the fun was very one sided). I know, it has a somewhat more extensive meaning, than describing a member of the punk movement. So I just wanted to express my resentment to throw in punks into the same category as those prim and proper Christian schoolboys. No self-respecting punk would associate with that. But like I said, that was more me having fun with words than an intent to move the discussion forward.

And now with regards to those catholic schools. Don't all those Christian (be them catholic or protestant) schools have a political bent towards the right - at least the ones that are bothered to send their students to rallys in DC? I mean, I suspect there to be a very strong self-selecting process at work, as in what parents would send their kids there? Presumably not the liberal secular folks. All boys school would raise one or two additional red flags. As in, that prim and proper chritian VP who is afraid to be alone in a room with a woman, other than his wife.

 

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2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Speaking of Catholicism, why is it still a thing? Any other entity with that track record would have been shuttered by now…..

Because it both preserved and inherited the Roman Empire, so was able to just keep truckin'.  It's the reason France speaks a latin / Romance language, not a germanic or nordic derived language, and Spain and Portugal speak a latin / Romance language, not an arabic or germanic one, and Italy is the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, which speaks several latin / Romance dialects.  Like the Roman Church owned most of Europe until the protestant revolution -- hey! Holy Roman Empire!, it also owned almost all of Latin America too, in one form or another, and continues to do its best to do so still.  Latin was the language of administration, even during and after the many germanic and other invasions, and the Church owned it -- along with the administrative and tax gathering systems, and record keeping, all of which came out of the Roman Empire eras.  Even the rituals, vocabulary of the Church from architecture to vestments come out the Roman Empire, the first great European organizing force in European history. It had most of the money and most of the land. The Church literally owned in 6th-7th century most of Gaul (why the Norse's favorite targets were churches and monasteries -- go where the money is).

The Church started ahead as the heir, with power, money and education during the disintegration of the old Empire.  That's how money and power and privilege work -- those who start ahead, stay ahead, or at least on top.  It applies to religion as much as to anything else. -- which is why families of Europe's ruling class who were fortunate enough to have more than one son live to maturity, put one of them in the Church, one in the military, and the heir stayed home to administer the estates.  

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2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

After watching more of that footage Nathan Phillip's account is pretty much dead on. 

Which one of his accounts? He first said that he was swarmed by the MAGA hat wearing boys, which is false, and that they blocked his path, also false, he walked up to them as he later admitted, once that video surfaced; and then his next version was that the MAGA hatters were 'attacking' the black protestors, also false, they didn't attack anyone, and I believe his final version was that he was trying to stop any violence and play peacemaker between the MAGA hatters and the Black Israelite group.  Only in America would a person who walks up to a group of strangers, beats a drum loudly in their faces be construed as the passive victim of harassment and the high school student who does literally nothing, stands and smiles at the old guy, is the aggressor and victimizer.

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23 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Fez, the only thing I’m saying is that it wasn’t as vile as that video made it out to be. It was a more complicated story.

I saw a lot of nasty comments on stories about the kind of vile kids who wear MAGA hats. I just don’t see a Catholic school sanctioning kids going to the march wearing MAGA hats. I would bet someone at the march was handing them out, and it isn’t only kids who can’t resist a freebie. I feel as if the kids were not wearing the hats there would have been more interest in hearing both sides of the story.

I also was not happy, after hearing more details, about Phillips’ comments about being afraid for the souls of these children and the awful state of affairs with American youth. Now I’m beginning to think it was more of a ‘get off my lawn’ Situation.

Is it really? It looks like Black religious racists, harassed the Catholics and made some bigoted statements towards native Americans. Many media outlets only however overhyped the chatholic kids school chants that wasn’t PC as the real issue. Not really complicated. Not really gray. The Catholics(who I disagree with on the rights women have to their bodies and their idea of how to make America great again), were in this instance in the rightish. Their opponents were in the absolute wrong .  This is not anywhere close to the most egregious story of Trump supporters being harassed for their support of the man, but many media outlets made the mistake of trying to use this story  as an example on the right being bigots before all the facts were present. Now the right will have a field day, where many can pretend a major cause for bullying in schools is being Christian and conservative. While ignoring the LGBTQ teenagers who are bullied daily by conservative students who’ve been taught to see them as subhuman. Disappointing. 

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I think what happened was that video surfaced on social media, and people immediately attacked the kid because he was wearing the MAGA hat, as a racist anti-native, anti-war veterans, anti-old people punk. Then news organizations jumped in without interviewing anyone except Mr. Phillips. They certainly weren’t going to interview the Black Israelites, who, as Fez mentioned, are well known for condemning and insulting anyone who comes within range.

Mr. Phillips in the meantime said he got involved because he saw a boy take his shirt off and he knew there was going to be violence and he had to intervene by drumming his drum. The boy who took his shirt off was cheerleading the kids who started singing school songs (maybe football songs?). From the video there was absolutely no risk of any physical confrontations between the groups, just words. The shirtless boy was leading the songs, not leading an attack.

Phillips misinterpreted the scene, just like people misinterpreted the video. But people who saw the video at least had an excuse since they only saw a little piece.

57 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Is it really? It looks like Black religious racists, harassed the Catholics and made some bigoted statements towards native Americans. Many media outlets only however overhyped the chatholic kids school chants that wasn’t PC as the real issue, ironically while the Native Americans were on the side of the Catholics. Not really complicated. Not really gray. The Catholics(who I disagree with on the rights women have to their bodies and their idea of how to make America great again), were in this instance in the rightish. Their opponents were in the absolute wrong .  This is not anywhere close to the most egregious story of Trump supporters being harassed for their support of the man, but many media outlets made the mistake of trying to use this story  as an example on the right being bigots before all the facts were present. Now the right will have a field day, where many can pretend a major cause for bullying in schools is being Christian and conservative. While ignoring the LGBTQ teenagers who are bullied daily by conservative students who’ve been taught to see them as subhuman. Disappointing. 

The more details I read the less gray it becomes. The Black Israelites were calling the kids ‘incest babies’ (???) and ‘future school shooters’, and screaming how dare they show their faces and their MAGA hats where native people were, then cursing the native people and a black man who tried to speak up. And from their soapbox at the Lincoln Memorial I assume they damn well knew the Right to Life March was that day, and the area is one where buses pick up people.

The kids themselves were pretty well behaved for a big group. As the CNN report today showed both Phillips and the boy had lots of room to back up and neither would. Phillips claiming he was afraid for his life was a pretty sad statement to make.

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