Comment by lotsofpulp
4 years ago
> They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate backwater:
Electing Marjorie Greene Taylor and the coverup attempt around this killing might have contributed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery
Although, I would not say rural areas of GA are special in being unreformed Confederate backwaters.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in South Georgia, as a visibly non-white guy with a Muslim surname. Folks were nicer to me there than in NYC or DC.
Majorie Taylor Greene was elected in 2021. She’s a reaction to national media efforts that started with the governor’s race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia as “deplorables.” People are tribal. When attacked from outside, they’ll close ranks.
As to Ahmed Aubury, it’s an unfortunate fact that police fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn’t portraying the Uvalde police department’s efforts to cover things up as an indictment of the whole community? Do you think it has nothing to do with the community being 80% Hispanic in addition to the police chief? If the community and shooter had been white, we would have been treated to story after story about how “mass shootings are a manifestation of white supremacy.”
> As to Ahmed Aubury, it’s an unfortunate fact that police fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn’t portraying the Uvalde police department’s efforts to cover things up as an indictment of the whole community?
The difference is that in Ahmed Aubury’s case, there was clear evidence of corruption along racial lines amongst local leaders, and which there is a long history of in the area Aubury was murdered in.
Obviously, this was not the case in Uvalde and so it would not be portrayed as such.
> Obviously, this was not the case in Uvalde and so it would not be portrayed as such.
Jeffrey Epstein was obviously killed. What’s obvious to one group of people is not obvious to others. There are a great many people to whom it is obvious that the median journalist is more like Taylor Lorenz than them and hates people like them and has no compunction about lying if it makes hurting them easier.
As someone with family from the Dalton area, I would warn against trivializing the difference between Greene's district (NW corner of the state) and places where sane people tend to congregate in larger numbers. People I love have lived there, but it's exactly the kind of place where three out of four people would think voting for Marjorie Taylor Greene is a good idea.
Marietta is a cultural Mecca, comparatively, not to mention Atlanta.
> Marietta is a cultural Mecca,
Whose culture?
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>She’s a reaction to national media efforts...
This comment goes a long way to rationalize your initial assertion that "it's the media's fault".
You're essentially saying that MTG's constituents voted for her out of their resentment over the media believing they were ignorant enough to vote for her.
Could it be that they actually voted for her because they like her? How are you so sure that's not the case?
>an indictment of the whole community
Again, I actually live in GA and there was largely no such indictment of the overall community. That indictment was overwhelmingly reserved for the police department and the perpetrators. And, yes, there was some discussion around systems and conditions that produce such perpetrators and coverups.
You seem to be picking up these threads that just don't exist here and forcing them into a frame of media blame. Of course, you must be getting these ideas from...the media.
In other words, you're railing on about false media narratives and the entire basis for your claims seems to rest on false media narratives.
>story after story about how “mass shootings are a manifestation of white supremacy"
The only instances of this I've seen were in the cases that involved actual manifestos or other evidence directly espousing white supremacist beliefs.
Do you have evidence to the contrary?
I believe your explanation is more unlikely because the animosity of their political opponents is very transparent and also media reinforcing narratives that either increase condemnation or defensiveness depending on political party. Mostly a business incentive for media instead of rigid believes perhaps but the results are measurable.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great...
The developments are interesting especially for the different demographic of voters.
> Do you have evidence to the contrary?
The believe in white supremacy playing a significant role is dogmatism and religious. It is also disinformation spread by intelligence agencies for political purposes. If I would ask for evidence people fall back to systemic white supremacy and it further collapses from there. Because even that is based on very questionable metrics.
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> People are tribal. When attacked from outside, they’ll close ranks.
That is a piss-poor excuse for electing the worst representative instead of the best.
Folks are nicer to everyone anywhere than in NYC or DC. Your anecdote doesn’t tell us anything for or against South Georgia.
As for Uvalde, you’re straw-manning like mad. White communities have had school shootings and were not represented as w.s. stories.
Everyone who cast a vote for MTG should feel shame. Everyone who can vote for MTG should be getting involved in a way that results in a much more sane election result.
You're missing the whole picture. They banded together to elect the best representative in their eyes, not yours.
> I’ve spent quite a bit of time in South Georgia, as a visibly non-white guy with a Muslim surname. Folks were nicer to me there than in NYC or DC.
I won't dare to tell you your experience but I will say that the southerners I've known (about half of my extended family and their friends) are very friendly to your face while capable of hating your existence just under the surface. They say "Bless your heart" instead of the NYC or DC person simply saying "Fuck you!"
> When attacked from outside, they’ll close ranks.
"The Left got a little too PC so I changed all of my opinions about the economy, social issues, systemic racism, health care, and history."
If someone criticizing you for being racist makes you act out in a racist way, then you're not really proving to anyone how not racist you are.
You're instead proving that the criticisms were valid.
Replace racist with gun-obsessed, conspiracy-minded, uneducated, psychotic, or whatever other associations you want to build with "deplorable".
Also.
> Folks were nicer to me there than in NYC or DC.
Rural areas are more friendly and cordial than urban areas. They have more time to do so. This isn't news.
The real question is not whether they'll be nice to you at a checkout register, or let you borrow their car.
The real question is how would they feel if you were actually Muslim and started discussing your respective religions - or lack thereof if you were atheist.
Ask them how they would feel about you marrying their daughter, then tell me if they are still nice.
> She’s a reaction to national media efforts that started with the governor’s race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia as “deplorables.” People are tribal. When attacked from outside, they’ll close ranks.
Tribalism and reactions to attacks from outside might explain why she won the general election.
But before she got to the general election she had to win the primary. That was Republican only and there were 8 other candidates.
I haven't been able to find biographies on all of them, but the 7 I did find seemed to be normal Republicans, several of which had held state elected or appointed offices in the past, rather than promoters of QAnon and various antisemitic, white supremacist, and 9/11 (and many other) false conspiracy theories.
Getting to the runoff could be explained by all the reasonable candidates splitting the vote, but how to you explain her winning the runoff?
When a community is attacked from the outside, they will put aside their internal disagreements and coalesce around someone who promises to "fight," as opposed to reasonable folks who take a conciliatory approach.
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Maybe there is a Pied Piper strategy where influence is being used to promote the worst in ones enemies so they’re easy to beat later on. Sometimes it can backfire though.
This is the text version of this comic[1].
[1] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-Y...
> When you are recieving the pointy end of the stick, it doesn't matter to you whether the person on the other end believes in what they are doing or not.
Correct, but who is holding the pointy stick? Hint: it's not rural folks in Georgia. It's the folks that have Wall Street and Silicon Valley behind them.
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Georgia elected Marjorie Greene Taylor and Raphael Warnock. States aren't red or blue; it is a divisive over simplification. To paraphrase that parent comment, What would be unremarkable in San Francisco would raise eyebrows in much of the rest of California.
Georgia didn't elect Marjorie Taylor Greene. A tiny subset did. She received 230,000 votes in a rural district.
Raphael Warnock won a statewide election with 2,280,000 votes.
I've pointed this out before but after the 2016 election after the Democrats lost their dangerous gamble to put the wife of a previous president in the Whitehouse. I looked at the hyper local results.
Yeah there aren't red and blue states. There are states where either rural or city votes dominate. Both the tiny cities in Montana and the huge metro's in Texas vote blue.
To be more accurate, Georgia elected Warnock, and a particular congressional district within Georgia elected Magic The Gathering.
There wasn’t much of a coverup. The tastemakers happened to have some convenient video to work with and used the opportunity to fabricate a myth that a petty criminal was a hero. It’s a testament to the power of media and gullible minds in great numbers.
Ahmaud Arbery was the one who was murdered by three dudes while out jogging. "Petty criminal"?
> coverup attempt around this killing might have contributed. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery
Did a quick search through the article, can't find a mention of any attempt to cover up the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, can you elaborate? Is there an ongoing investigation into this and is there some way we can help? It is insane that in 2022 the authorities in America are still complicit in lynchings and that nobody does anything, it disgusts me. How long will this indiscriminate murder of BIPOC continue, why can't America do better? What is it about Americans that drive them to murder BIPOC?
The whole second paragraph describes how no arrests were made, and the only reason anyone was punished was because one of the murderers ordered his attorney to send the video of the murder to the news.
>Former Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson was indicted in September 2021 for "showing favor and affection" to Gregory (her former subordinate) during the investigation, and for obstructing law enforcement by directing that Travis not be arrested.[42][43] I
I see, forgive my English, I guess because I'm not a native speaker I miss the nuances of how what you quoted at all matches the definition of cover up, thanks for explaining. I will listen and learn, and I hope Americans can listen and learn to not murder BIPOC and that BIPOC lives matter, but I guess with the poor schooling system there is no funding for this, and likely even if there was funding to teach children that BIPOC lives mattered the US supreme court will ban it.
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Although, I would not say rural areas of GA are special in being unreformed Confederate backwaters.
Fucking true. People think hicks are unique to the South and are oblivious to the hordes of hicks living in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and northern California. In fact, they're even more extremist over in the west because they don't feel like they're represented at all.