Soooo … is a Civil War brewing in Minneapolis?

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 461
  • Views: 10K
  • Politics 
My main objection is that I like words too much. Falling back too easily on profanity to the point it's trite stunts figurative speech.
That is well and good but the issue at hand is whether it is cheap amidst extreme emotion. Like when confronting the murderous henchmen of an organization that recently executed two of your community members.
 
Honestly I have no idea why people get worked up about "cursing." Words are words. There's nothing specially virtuous about saying freaking instead of fucking.

Personally I think people also say it for the cadence. That's certainly its main function in Tarantino films. "English, motherfucker, do you speak it?" You can't write that as "English, do you speak it" nor with a short word like "fool." It simply doesn't work. "English, dummy, do you speak it?" Nope. The line needs a beat, to let the viewer catch up with the logic. It could be any long word, rhythmically, but motherfucker has the advantage of semantic transparency -- i.e. it rarely changes the meaning of what is said. "Fucking ingrate" is semantically equivalent to ingrate, so fucking is a good modifier when you are seeking rhythm only.

It's also why those words end up in music a lot. You especially need the cadence. The song "Fucking Hostile" just doesn't work as "Hostile." Could it "pounding hostile"? Yes, but then people would wonder what the hell pounding is referring to. Just go with the meaningless cadence modifier.
The combination of the fricative F and plosive K makes for a gratifying exclamation. I think it’s because Fuck requires more forceful exhalation than most single syllable words.
It’s also the Swiss Army knife of English. Almost never the best tool for a given job but multipurpose and readily deployed.
 


“… to game out scenarios and our response to those scenarios about what happens if there's direct, or even indirect, interference with the election this November…”
 

Rich McCormick was born in 1968. Yeah, he knows all about the Vietnam War. US soldiers would throw cans from C Rations just inside the concertina wire surrounding US military camps, just so they could--for sport--shoot children reaching through the wire to get the food. Hearts and Minds!
 
Last edited:

“… The response to the killings in Minneapolis by the Trump administration and its online supporters follows this authoritarian script to the letter.

Those seeking to contest the politically inconvenient evidence zoom in on minute details, dragging the conversation away from the big picture to microscopic discussions that only real “experts” can follow.

The reality that Israel is targeting hospitals becomes a conversation about the missile’s trajectory and from where it must have been launched. Similarly, the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection are terrorizing Minneapolis and using repressive violence against peaceful protesters morphs into an exegesis on the angle of Good’s tires and whether it shows that she was trying to hit the officer.

Those minute details then distract from the broader context and aggregate into a coherent narrative, shifting responsibility and offering an alternative story: Good and Pretti were domestic terrorists, not victims of repressive state power; the murderous agents were the real victims; real responsibility lies with the Democratic politicians and protesters resisting ICE, not with those who pulled the trigger.

Once arguments focus on that level of detail—was Pretti’s gun in his pocket or in his hand, were Good’s tires pointing straight ahead or turning—the larger narrative war has been won regardless of what turns out to be true.

Presenting a credible, truthful counternarrative is not necessarily the point—and, indeed, might actually be counterproductive. That’s because those engaged in this form of narrative warfare are not really trying to win the argument.

They have several other objectives. They seek to shift the debate away from truth/falsehood into a partisan disagreement with two sides, muddying the waters enough that the casual nonexpert observers will throw up their hands in confusion.

The counternarrative aimed at those semi-attentive publics doesn’t need to survive scrutiny for very long and is utterly unperturbed by the detailed, rigorous analysis that appears two weeks later in the New York Times or elsewhere proving that they were wrong. By then, they wager (usually correctly), the issue will have faded from the public consciousness as some new scandal erupts.

At the same time, they seek to offer their own supporters something they can use. Pro-Israel and pro-Trump communities don’t want to accept responsibility for obvious atrocities, but even more than that, they don’t want to abandon their tribe.

Supporting the counternarrative, no matter how implausible, then becomes a marker of in-group identity. (Lisa Wedeen, in her classic study of Hafez al-Assad’s Syria, called this act of publicly pretending to believe the outrageous as “acting as if.”) Those who cast doubt on it risk excommunication from their camp.

Ostentatiously believing that Israel did not commit war crimes or that ICE did not kill innocent civilians is how you signal membership in that community. That helps explain why these kinds of issues often continue to rage hot within those communities long after most people have moved on, evolving into esoteric arguments and shared assumptions that make little sense to anyone outside the epistemic bubble.…”
 


Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
By the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead
Their claim was self defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight

In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
 


Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
By the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead
Their claim was self defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight

In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Pretty cool watching the likes go up by at least 700 during the 4 minutes and 30 seconds I listened to the song. The little ticker kept spinning up.

Damn good song too.
 


“… to game out scenarios and our response to those scenarios about what happens if there's direct, or even indirect, interference with the election this November…”

Good for blue states to hammer home the ability of states to govern their own elections, not so good for purple or red.
So we can all guess what their "guidance" was prior to this regarding engagement with agitators.
 
Back
Top