Tra-la-la-la’ing on the Trashy Twitter Tramp Trail
A Rant by Chitown Kev
As some of you know, I have a Twitter account.
I look at the posts in my Twitter feed on a daily basis but I primariy use it for links to various news stories and breaking news and the occasional laugh or two; I rarely write a tweet or retweet someone else’s material.
Truthfully, I don’t like Twitter very much but if one is to keep up with the news nowadays, I do think that it’s a bit of a necessity.
I follow a few people (and a few people follow me) and it is through the few people that I follow that I was made aware of the ongoing Twitter wars that are liitle more than a reprisal of the 2016 Democratic primary; reprisals that say absolutely nothing new.
I pass over those tweets very quickly to, say, the latest tweet about a new Michigan football recruit.
The 2016 elections are over and done with.
Lately, though, the Twitter wars have gotten reheated with speculations about who the possible 2020 Democratic Party nominees are being courted, with a lot of the speculation centered around California’s newly-minted U.S. Senator Kamala Harris.
And the poo has been flingin’ all over the damn place.
Sure, it may seem too early to be discussing potential challengers to Donald Trump or, possibly, Mike Pence in 2020 but such early speculation on an election that’s 3 ½ years away isn’t unheard of (especially here at Daily Kos)
and then further down the rabbit hole, you find this
(Can some on the left please stop prattling on about ‘’neoliberalism?” For one, it seems to be used as a catch-all pejorative for everything that they don’t like; better instead to talk about specific neoliberal policy such as for-profit charter schools.
Now, of course, that might also mean that the (mostly white) left might have to have some uncomfortable talks about ‘’neoliberal’’ policies that they do seem to favor such as neighborhood gentrification...which touches on various issues ranging from housing policy and homelessness to policing.)
and this tweet is what lit the latest conflagration
Really, does The Left want these type of political optics out there?
I know, Bernie Sanders is the most popular politican with African Americans right now according to that one poll that gets beaten to death but remember...going into the summer of 2007, Hillary Clinton held the same status among African Americans...I find it utterly amazing how much the very same people on The Left who derided and criticized HRC and her 2016 campaign so much can’t help but to continue to make some of the very same mistakes that HRC made in her two candidacies for the presidency.
I did read Cooper’s two articles and,,,actually, there are some superficially decent insights in both of them (Mr. Cooper seems more favorably inclined to Kamala Harris than his tweet might indicate and he has sharp criticisms of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) so...I guess that Cooper is trying at some level but, frankly, there’’s not a whole lot of blood in those turnips...which is more than I can say for The Intercept’s Lee Fang.
Yeah, go deeper into that Twitter thread and Mr. Fang gets even more insulting.
I mean, is this any different from saying that African Americans are on the ‘’Democratic plantation?’’ Is Hillary/Obama/the DNC/Tom Perez/the donor class like The Raj and people like John Lewis and John Conyers are sort of provincial governors? (I would imagine that both Maxine Waters and her majority-Latino constiteuncy would be surprised by this.)
I mean, who talks about potential voters and party leaders in this way?
What type of know-nothings would be attracted to Twitter trash, such as this?
i mean, I simply posted examples from two authors, there is A LOT of stuff on Twitter like this; more than I realized.
Now that I’ve gotten this out, I guess that I can go back to ignoring it now...it’s duly noted.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Donald Trump, that paragon and parody of white-bro culture, was not expected to become president of this emergent America. Yet November happened. Now, the Johnnie Walker ad's dim lighting seems less a conduit for shared intimacy, more a darker shade of uncertainty.
So it was interesting to see the Procter & Gamble Co., the world's largest consumer-goods manufacturer, home to familiar all-American brands such as Tide, Mr. Clean and Old Spice, wade last month into what looked to be fraught waters.
The corporation launched a web video featuring black parents and children having "the talk." In P&G's conception, "the talk" isn't just about black kids avoiding police brutality; it's about dealing with racial bias as an inescapable, constantly evolving fact of American life.
In an email, Crystal Harrell, a P&G senior manager for communications, wrote:
“The Talk” highlights the impact of racial bias from the viewpoint of African American mothers across several decades. It depicts the inevitable conversations many black parents have had with their children to prepare them for challenges they may face in the world, and importantly to encourage them to achieve despite these obstacles. It shows that while society and times change, bias still exists.
Showing consumers that you understand them is basic marketing. "I think its existence tells us a great deal about what’s on the minds of black consumers (rising tides of racism and vulnerability in public)," emailed Lizabeth Cohen, author of "A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America."
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Paulette Richards has lived in Liberty City for almost 40 years. In that time, the 57-year-old community organizer has seen some things in the close-knit and vibrant historically black community, located in northwest Miami-Dade County.
She’s seen young mothers struggle to feed their babies despite working multiple jobs. She’s seen kids suffering because of a lack of resources. But recently, there are some people she hasn’t seen—some of her former neighbors and friends.
“I can get emotional even thinking about it. Where is such-and-such?” she told The Root recently.
Like many predominantly black communities across the country, Liberty City is experiencing a rise in gentrification. But in the case of Liberty City and some other black Miami neighborhoods, gentrification may include another interesting factor: climate change. The idea of climate gentrification expands upon traditional gentrification by focusing on environmental issues, such as rising sea levels, as key factors in driving out, and oftentimes pricing out, those situated in areas that were previously deemed less valuable.
In the first of a three-part series, The Root will be exploring the ways in which race, climate and gentrification intersect and impact black communities in Miami.
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Selina Thompson’s one-woman show, in which she draws upon her journey retracing the transatlantic slave triangle from Britain to Ghana to Jamaica and back, is theatre that does just that. And not just because she asks the first three rows of the audience to don safety goggles when she takes swings at pink salty rocks with a pickaxe.
This piece is about a personal journey that Thompson made but it is also about the journeys of millions of black men, women and children. They were sold in the slave trade on which the wealth of Europe was built, providing the foundations of its economic success today. On a cargo ship to Ghana, Thompson encounters contemporary racism: cruel, casual, completely normalised. At the former trading fort of Elmina castle, Ghana, she stands before the Gate of No Return that faces the Atlantic ocean.
Salt is a piece that is so haunted by absence – of the many who died in Elmina, during their voyages and on the plantations – that the traumas of the past become palpably present. How, asks Thompson, can this grief coexist in a world of post offices and perfume diffusers? This show is, as she says, her “act of remembrance and grief” but it is also our burden. Lest we forget, at the end she gives us all a small piece of rock. For the rest of the day, I feel its weight in my pocket, its rough edges a sharp reminder.
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frica’s past is the mildewed train station in central Addis Ababa, where locomotives sit gutted and rusted tracks vanish in the grass. The line was once the greatest in Africa; built by France in the 1910s, it ran more than 450 miles northeast to neighboring Djibouti, where the desert meets the sea.
Africa’s future is the new station a short drive away, a yellow-and-white edifice with grand pilasters, arched windows and a broad flagstone square. It’s connected to a $4-billion, 470-mile-long rail line, the first electrified cross-border rail system in Africa.
The new rail network was built by China’s state-owned rail and construction firms, which were eager to promote their investment in Africa’s future. Red banners running down the towering facade of the new train station declare, in bold Chinese characters, “Long live Sino-African friendship.”
China has described its railroad adventures in Africa as an exercise in altruism.
Yet for China, investing in Ethiopia — one of the world’s poorest countries — is more strategic than philanthropic. With U.S. engagement on the continent at a low ebb, economically and politically, China sees an opportunity to improve transportation through the Horn of Africa and make itself the dominant economic partner on a continent that is about to see an explosion of new cheap labor, cellphone users and urban consumers.
For several decades, China’s African investments were aimed primarily at creating political allies across the continent. Beijing invested heavily in hearts-and-minds projects such as soccer stadiums and hospitals. But a significant change is underway. China now sees Africa as an important economic opportunity. It has been pouring money into infrastructure across the continent, and this week it opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti.
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