Tag Archives: Twitter

10.30.22
by

Vote First

This week the spouse of the person third in line for the presidency got seriously attacked by a hammer-wielding, 2020 election-denying conspiracy theorist that regularly spouts racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ views via a blog not like, but not 100% unlike, this one.

Now, before you go jumping to conclusions —

We here at Notes do NOT believe, as the attacker does, that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is the power behind some cannibalistic, child abusing cabal. 

Step one

Nor do we traffic in the notion that non-white people, Jews or gays are evil incarnate.

And not only because the Chair is in the latter two of those three groups.

Rather it is due to the fact that we, like him, use the WordPress platform to regularly espouse our views for all the world to read, and perhaps rally behind, via our own personal BLOGs.

Tale as old as time

I was thinking about this a lot after hearing my fellow blogger broke into the Pelosi home after 2 a.m. bellowing, Where’s Nancy, struggling with 82-year-old Paul Pelosi before hitting him REALLY hard on the head.  (Note: Nancy was not at home, but hard at work rallying Democratic voters far away on the opposite coast).

Nevertheless, Mr. Pelosi suffered life threatening injuries from this attack – a fractured skull and serious injuries to his hand and arm that required surgery – but it is now reported he will be okay. 

This was not solely due to his doctors but also to the fact that an intuitive 9-1-1 operator dispatched the police to his home with a high alert warning.

Still, it momentarily left me wondering:

Exactly where do we stand with free speech in our presently advanced information age??

Quite a prickly situation

Oh, OF COURSE FREE SPEECH NEEDS TO CONTINUE! (He ranted). 

WHAT ARE WE, A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY OR…..RUSSIA? (He asked). 

OR A MAGA STRONGHOLD IN THE SOUTH OR MIDWEST? (He irrationally screamed).

OR THE HOUSE JUDICIARY GOP, which still has up the following three-week old tweet:

TRUMP.  ELON.  KANYE.

Yikes, indeed

Well, I guess that post is presumably in support of the free speech rights of people like Kanye West to go, as he just did, def-con 3 on THE JEWS.

Shoot (oops), even billionaires (Note: Up until this week) get to say anything they want, like the rest of us.

Or in solidarity with Elon Musk’s plan, after buying Twitter for $44 billion, to let back on the platform many of the hate spouting, fake conspiracy-promoting users whom former Twitter execs permanently banned for life.  Beginning with:

@realDonaldTrump.

Get ready America.

Fly, my pretties! Fly!

I don’t have answers as to where free speech ends and governmental intervention begins.

Nor do American politicians or its citizens if the last six plus years of the MAGA agenda to poison our social discourse with lies about the efficacy of the 2020 elections (and beyond), amid white power salutes and calls to lock up every elected official they don’t agree with, are any indication. 

Phew, that was a mouthful.

And we’re not done yet.

I have a headache

Because when there is no agreement on what is true, or what is even real, it’s hard to know where to even start. 

Or end.

When I was in graduate school in Chicago once upon a time in the seventies there was a big hoopla around the Nazis marching in the nearby suburb of Skokie, a primarily Jewish enclave. 

It was a provocative move to cause an encounter, we were all sure, so eventually it was decided that as heinous as Nazis were, it would be against freedom and even worse for democracy to not allow this monstrous group who supported the extermination of a race/my people, to be free to express themselves in a place where my people/that race most particularly presided.

Of course, this was in an era where almost everyone believed Nazis were heinous. 

A time very unlike today.

This could be the reason…

As I watched former President Obama campaigning this weekend in support of democracy and Democratic candidates in swing states like Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin he was incredibly inspiring.  But his words felt almost…

QUAINT.

Oh, he made the case and then some for the imperative to vote Blue in the 2022 election and beyond.

He proved without a doubt that to not elect these representatives could signal the end of democracy, not to mention extinguishing popular social programs like Social Security.  Not to mention more tax cuts for the rich and less affordable health insurance for the rest of us mere mortals.

Please don’t let this be you this November

But he was speaking to thousands of Democratic supporters who wanted to be inspired and be given numerous exciting, rational reasons to get off their phones and up off their asses to make a difference.

Still, it made me wonder if this was the only way to stop the MAGA movement for now.  Get every conceivable, rational, believer in facts and democracy that we all know to move up and out to the polls, even if we need to take them there ourselves.

And to worry about how free our free speech should be AFTER this election cycle.

To forget about the lies, and hate, and crazy right wing fan fiction on social media for right now.

Unless they try to stop us from voting.  And then we’ll…

Welp, see you later.

Well, we’ll cross that bridge in 10 days or less.  I guess.

A friend of mine sincerely asked me how I can be even slightly positive about the future of the country in light of where we are now. 

I immediately responded it’s because I spend a lot of my working life around young people in college, the vast majority of whom loathe the MAGA agenda.

Deniers aside, it is a fact that 65% of Gen Zers voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and that in 2024 they will be the most powerful block of voters.

Zoomers unite

So now is the time to TALK, not lecture to them, about their fears, their truths and the truth of what is going on in the country vs. what is passing for truth these days.

And ask them to vote for themselves, or as a favor to you, if you know them well enough.  (Note: Yes, guilt can work.  I’m living proof!).

And then get your butt and the butt of everyone else you know into a virtual/mail-in or literal voting booth.

Yes

We can then scream, rant, chat or even blog about the distorted views and/or rights of any crazy that comes to mind after that.

Because we will still have the freedom and luxury to do so.

George Michael – “Freedom! ’90”

08.30.20
by

A Hero Among Us

Here’s an interesting factoid in the midst of a global pandemic and what seems to be the second American Civil War.

Twitter this weekend announced the most liked and retweeted tweet in its history.

Relax, it’s not political and has nothing to do with COVID-19.

A change for Chairy?

But in less than a day this tweet received 5.6 million likes and 2.9 million retweets (and at the time of this posting has grown past 6.9 million likes and 3 million retweets).

To give you an idea of how much that is, the previous record holder received a mere 4.3 million likes and 1.7 million retweets.

And it was this Nelson Mandela quote from former Pres. Barack Obama:

That was back on Aug., 12, 2017 right after white supremacist neo-Nazis marched in the streets of Charlottesville, VA as one of their compatriots drove a car into a group of people peacefully protesting against them, killing an innocent young woman and injuring many more.

The nation was reeling from the sheer horror and gall of it, even more so when three days later our current POTUS famously weighed in, telling a spray of reporters, and in turn in the world, there were very fine people on both sides.

Seems like the right time to dig up this evergreen meme

Which just goes to show that a single tweet can only do so much, even with the imprimatur of Obama AND Mandela.

Still, limited and cesspool-y as Twitter can be, it is a temperature measure of something in the country and the world at any given point in time.  Much like an overtly popular song or movie or TV show, it is a touchstone to what society was feeling or thinking or needing (Note: Or NOT feeling or needing or even thinking) in that moment, particularly when it receives such an overwhelming response.

This definitely makes sense for 2020 #wap #imnoprude #evenifitmakesmeblush

In that sense, it tells us perhaps more than we want to know or care to remember about who we were and perhaps still are.

Yes this is still not political, despite what you might think I’m implying about our current Tweeter-in-Chief.

See if you don’t agree as we shine a light on our new, record-holding tweet, which I suspect will own that mantle for quite some time to come.

It went out early Friday night and was the last one from the account of the late actor and activist Chadwick Boseman.

There are many ways to look at this tweet, the most important being a much loved artist lost his life far too early and far too cruelly, and the sheer pain of it for both him, his family and his many loved ones, which clearly includes many millions of fans from all over the world.

Still, many famous people die far too young from hideous diseases and other hurtful circumstances.  Beautiful as life can be, we all eventually learn tragedy can be right around the corner, and often when we least expect it.

But here, at the end of August 2020 there was something about Mr. Boseman’s death that was an instant kick in the teeth to the world, particularly in the United States.

A King

In the midst of a global pandemic and the powerful, exponentially growing international Black Lives matter movement, how can it be that the man we best know as King T’Challa, the immortal and all powerful leader of the most advanced society in the Universe (Note: Who also happens to be Black), in one of the highest grossing and most popular films of all time, Black Panther, be….gone?????

What is the universe trying to tell us about OUR hopes and dreams, anyway?

Nothing good, you might preemptively decide to believe.

Tempting as it might be to go down that deep dark hole to hell (Note: Certainly I have more than once, twice, okay a dozen times in the last two weeks), it’s hard to not recognize that the very phrasing of this tweet from those who were the closest to Chadwick Boseman delivers the real message in the announcement and holds the true key as to its “popularity.”

A real-life superhero

In a world where death and hopelessness is now literally just around the corner for so many of us if we don’t play our cards right, here is an activist who happened to be an actor leaving us a true road map in how to continue on with the fight.

There is nothing easy about stage III and stage IV cancer.  It eats through your insides and spits them right out.  And sometimes the treatments do a lot worse.

And yet somehow this young actor found the wherewithal to keep starring in major movies (Note:  Also no easy feat and occasionally, if you don’t play your cards right, nearly as poisonous) on and off all…through it?

You can’t help but wonder, was it so much the power he learned from bringing life to such iconic heroes as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, music icon James Brown, and major league baseball trailblazer Jackie Robinson, or the power he managed to tap inside of himself that brought them to life for us?

He could do it all

And if he could tap all of that power in the darkest of times, what does that say about what is possible for any of us in our current, seemingly darkest hours, if we could even do, say, a fraction of that?

In short, what would/did the Black Panther do? #WWBPD

Sure, perhaps this is carrying the metaphor a bit far.  After all, I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Boseman.  To me he was just a really fine actor with triple threat star power – quiet strength, simple honesty and, well, sexy as hell.

Not to mention he got me to see a superhero film not one, not twice but THREE times!

Me emerging from Avengers: Endgame

Nevertheless record holders become record holders for a reason.

The sad yet powerful announcement of Mr. Boseman’s death ironically tore such a gigantic hole in our collective consciences at this particularly awful moment in American history for the way in which it managed to both celebrate his life and lay our humanity bare.

You will be missed #wakandaforever

It made many of us think there could be a universal kind of heroism residing in each and every one of us if circumstances force us to tap into it.

And just in the nick of time, too.

Chadwick Boseman as James Brown, in Get on Up  (“Welcome to America” scene)