Twitter Suspends My Account Over An Ass-Kicking Tweet
I've actually toned things down quite a bit, since Twitter's last suspension although I don't go looking for "progressive" Twitter users or tweets to bust. I've published over 16.3K Tweets, and I would say less than 1% are adversarial in nature.Now I'm not necessarily proud of the fact when I call someone a fool, an idiot, an SOB or a bastard (although if and when I use those terms, they're often used in reference to politicians), and I realize that a number of the language police never get past that. That in part reflects a past incident in academia. I was a young UWM professor talking to an older female professor in an adjacent office. I was in the middle of discussing something, when all of a sudden she kept interrupting me with the same word. It suddenly dawned on me that she was attempting to correct my speech, some word I had used. It also made clear that she hadn't been listening to a single word I had said since then, which to me was 100 rimes worse than her imagined grievance. Needless to say, the conversation ended then, and there were fewer subsequent ones.
A lot of the language police will say things like the use of profanity is a sign of lesser intelligence, but there have been studies that conclude the very opposite. Why do I use it? Mostly to snap people out of what I think is something incredibly stupid they've said or done, like Cher's infamous bitch slap in "Moonstruck". It's often all but impossible to rebut some stupid tweet in 140 or 280 characters. It is also often frustrating to live in a world where other people take longer to grasp onto ideas, don't seem to understand things you think are obvious or intuitive.
I've had at least one indignant leftist a few weeks ago snap back (paraphrased mockingly), "Um, I'm going to tell Mommy Twitter what you said; you're going to be in so much trouble." My response? 'Make my day.' I am well aware that other people could read my tweets; I wasn't trying to hide anything. What astounds me is how utterly clueless leftists are about their rank hypocrisy and incivility; I usually won't snap back unless I find the tweet particularly provocative. It's mostly a leftist phenomenon; I do get some right-wingers snapping back at me that I am a "liberal" (they mean in the modern social sense, not in the classical sense like i am) But it's mostly a leftist phenomenon. I think because the perspective is so pervasive in the culture and academia, there's a feeling of entitlement. And the leftists copy each other so often, it's repetitious or boring.
Twitter was more obnoxious this time. (They did pay lip service to an appeals process, but that's a joke.) They've sort of adopted the Communist Party's tactic for charging a family for the bullet used to kill their dead family member. Last time they just spoke in general terms so I wasn't sure of what tweet(s) they were speaking of. This time the Twitter police were far more direct; they locked my account, with a specific reference to one "hateful" tweet, which I would have to agree to delete before my 12-hour suspension would start, that my Twitter account would be publicly stigmatized for a period of time and that any future violations might result in a permanent suspension of my account. (There was still some confusion because another message indicated Twitter had already deleted the tweet and it wasn't available in my accessible tweet history (unaffected by the suspension).)
I do have the Twitter email notification for locking my account and reserve the right to republish it in a future post. I just didn't want the tweet to distract from the general message. But here's the general context: Chief Justice Roberts issued a rare rebuke of Trump for meddling with the independence of the judicial branch of government with his criticisms of "Obama judges" not supportive of his restrictive immigration policies (including travel bans, etc.)
What this Twitter user, among countless other "progressives", did was attack Roberts, not Trump, implicitly arguing that the SCOTUS conservative majority was far from independent, having "gutted" the Voting Rights Act, validated religious-based travel restrictions, taking away a mother's "right" to have her preborn child killed, etc., but what really grabbed my ire was his implied allegations that Thomas and Kavanaugh are rapists. Anyone who has read my blog on a regular basis knows that I have been particularly incensed by Democrat personal attacks on GOP judge nominees (I am unaware of any comparable personal attacks made on Democratic nominees).
Anyone knows that neither Anita Hill nor Christine Ford suggested sexual activity with the future justices, never mind involuntary sexual activity. Hill implied sexual harassment and Ford sexual assault, and there are a number of issues with those allegations, including inconsistencies and factual gaps.
So the rapist allegation really goes to slander or libel, and it's pretty nasty of and by itself. The Civil Rights Act criticism is a standard leftist talking point. This has to do with federal oversight over Southern states, initially specified for 5 years (as I recall); by every statistic I've seen, black voting (and participation in elective office), particularly at the local/county level, had fundamentally changed in the South, within 20 years, never mind 50 years. Southern states rightly noted federal oversight did not apply to other states and was not justified by current evidence--the fact that a majority of non-Southern states should impose a special burden on other states was de facto tyranny of a majority.
As for the travel ban, which I oppose, the fact is that many Muslim-majority nations are excluded from the ban. Even if somehow the wrongly-decided Roe v Wade were reversed, policy would revert to (in many cases permissive) state law, under constitutional police powers.
It's hard to put that all into one tweet. Did I also call him a retarded bastard in the process? Yes. I'm not sorry about it. Yes, I know it's easier to attract bees with honey, but sometimes you have to let progressives bluntly know when they've crossed the line, that blowback is inevitable.
As for Twitter, if they think I'm going to pay for promoting tweets or I'll be supporting Twitter advertisers, they're sadly mistaken.
What Did I Eat On Thanksgiving?
In my Thanksgiving post, I mentioned that I love turkey, so what did I eat? Even my Mom was curious, because she knows I've cooked whole turkeys before as a bachelor. I was sorely tempted by this year's very reasonable prices. But my refrigerator doesn't have room for the leftovers.Restaurants? Nope. I don't really know any that serve turkey with all the trimmings (if any do, it's news to me). Maybe Denny serves a couple of slices of turkey loaf with a ball of dressing. I can't forget that the Hilton in Sao Paulo back in 1995 laid out a Thanksgiving buffet for us American guests, but the turkey was bland, no longer hot, and dried out.
So what did I do? Simple. Turkey parts. I got a $5 pack of 3 small turkey legs from Wal-Mart and threw them in a crock pot. (You can also get wings, necks, and tails, depending on the supermarket.)
Christmas Programming Is Now On
I've mostly been on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, but my favorites, like "A Christmas Visitor", "Angels and Ornaments", and "Farewell, Mr. Kringle", haven't hit the heavy rotation. Interestingly, one of the newer movies have the music behind the key instrumental hit from "Angels and Ornaments" playing in the background. I have a licensed copy of the "Angels" movie on Youtube, bur for some reason, I couldn't run it on my TV via Chromecast. I need to check into that. So I played it on one PC while working on the blog on a backup one.Lifetime is now competing with its own new season of Christmas movies. But to be honest I haven't seen anything yet that I really like, although Hallmark's "Christmas Everlasting" is decent.
