Saving Democracy One Hashtag At A Time

By SJWNY, a Trail Mix Contributor

Listening to the radio, the report given was sourced from the President-Elect’s tweets. #SweetJesusHelpUsWhatHaveWeBecome

Tweets are the perfect answer to someone who wants to both control the message & the messenger. #MuteIfImPissed #BlockIfImAngry

This  seems petty to some but the media holds uber responsibility to this mentally ill unfit man’s success. #Access #FaceTime

hash-tagAt first this man was treated as a joke, horrible though he may be, a passing fancy, nothing to see here. #Lololol

As crowds grew, the Press got “penned” yet said man got time on this/that show, access open. #ThrowYourColleaguesUnderTheBus

Election night comes, predictions swirl down the commode. Uh-Oh. The worst scenario is reality. #IBetterMakeNicey #Access

Stream of media types beckoned to The Tower. Newsflash: if you were called, if you went, eff your integrity. #Enabler

Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring, Occupy, Wiunion. It was the tyrant’s foe, the people’s friend. #KissThatGoodbye

Our Government, Our Democracy reduced to 140 characters or less. The people’s foe, the tyrant’s friend. #Resist

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patd
8 years ago

sjwny, a masterpiece! brilliant! #couldnasaiditbetter

patd
8 years ago

happy december oneth!  and only 1511 days left of having to read/see/hear the TOTUS (twit of the u.s.)

 

last month, ny times mag: #InPraiseOfTheHashtag

…we’ve arrived at a strange moment for the hashtag. The people at Twitter are fond of saying that the hashtag is the new URL — and it’s true that you’re just as likely to see the former as the latter these days on-screen at the end of a movie trailer.
Yet the rise of the hashtag’s commercial possibilities shouldn’t lead us to overlook what is truly remarkable about it. This bit of utilitarian Web ephemera, invented with functionality squarely in mind, has blossomed into a marvelous and underappreciated literary device.
[….]
But the hashtag, for the dexterous user, is a versatile tool — one that can be deployed in a host of linguistically complex ways. In addition to serving as metadata (#whatthetweetisabout), the hashtag gives the writer the opportunity to comment on his own emotional state, to sarcastically undercut his own tweet, to construct an extra layer of irony, to offer a flash of evocative imagery or to deliver metaphors with striking economy. It’s a device that allows the best writers to operate in multiple registers at once, in a compressed space. It’s the Tuvan throat singing of the Internet.
[….]
These are the hashtags we must celebrate. The poets and wags of Twitter are still out there. The art form persists. We just have to venture forth and find it, exploit it and perfect it. #Letathousandhashtagsbloom.

Jamie44
8 years ago

SJWNY

Brilliant commentary and absolutely true.  Twitter is just one more piece of evidence in a culture that gives as much if not more value to opinion as it does to fact.  This has always been true within geographic and social groups with your crazy uncle spouting at Thanksgiving.  No harm done, we don’t need to see him for another year.  Talk radio was a hateful cesspool but even its reach was just repeated to the true believers.  Newspapers had circulations, but only a few went beyond the city limits.  Unfortunately Twitter has handed your crazy uncle a global 24/7 access to billions as the followers retweet ad nauseam while the facts actually require reading the linked articles which are often way to long for a steady Twitter users attention span.

If you like Twitter and I do, salvation of sanity is in the lists.  Mine are set up for Friends, The Arts, Politics, and News.  The general mess gets a passing perusal to see what the hashtags and trends have wrought, but the people I really want to read are in the lists or just in the long breaks where there are honest to goodness books to read ….

 

patd
8 years ago

  He ate and
drank the
precious Words –
His Spirit grew
robust –
  He knew no more
that he was poor;
Nor that his
frame was
Dust –
  He danced
along the dingy
Days
And this Bequest
of Wings
  Was but a Book –
What Liberty
A loosened Spirit
brings –

~ Emily Dickinson

Pogo
8 years ago

patd, that is so much more eloquent than what we’ve come to expect from TEOTUS. (Twit-Elect…)

patd
8 years ago

nytimes:
Clinton’s lead in popular vote passes 2.5 million.
To some it is just trivia: Hillary Clinton’s popularvote lead over Mr. Trump reached 2,526,184 — five times Al Gore’s lead over George W. Bush in 2000. At 1.9 percentage points, her lead is now larger than those of 10 presidents, and it is approaching Jimmy Carter’s margin over Gerald Ford in 1976.
So what?
Well, her lead is close to what the final polls before Election Day had shown, pointing to a geographic concentration of Democratic voters and a daunting disadvantage in the Electoral College. Do Democratic presidential candidates now need to build a four percentage-point lead to assure victory?

patd
8 years ago

if, as mccrory says, there were voting irregularities in nc then doesn’t that put in doubt the twit’s win there?

cnn: North Carolina governor’s race: Partial recount ordered

North Carolina voters cast ballots for their next governor three weeks ago. But still, somehow, a winner has yet to be declared and neither candidate has conceded.
Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic attorney general, has seen a narrow lead grow during that time. According to his campaign, he’s now 10,000 votes ahead.

Meanwhile, Gov. Pat McCrory, the embattled Republican incumbent who faced fallout this year for supporting the state’s controversial “bathroom bill,” has refused to concede the race because he wants a recount.
The reason, he’s said, is voting irregularities that could change the final outcome of the race.

patd
8 years ago

“The billionaire of the people ordered young garlic soup with thyme and sautéed frogs legs. I thought he said he was going to drain the swamp, not eat its contents.”

craigcrawford
8 years ago

Thanks for that, SJ. Fun read (if not so sad).

craigcrawford
8 years ago

re: Trump menu — I prefer my garlic soup old and wise

Jamie44
8 years ago

Talk about selling your soul cheap.  You would think Mitt would have held out for a plane ride to California and dinner at The French Laundry.

Jamie44
8 years ago

What are they doing now division?  Jeb Bush heading up ninth annual National Summit on Education Reform.  Speakers online pushing Charter Schools 

http://windrosemedia.com/windstream/ExcelinEd2016/index.php

 

patd
8 years ago

speaking of jeb! and given mitt as sos, maybe he’ll be the next ambassador to mexico and untrusTED ambassador to cuba… halfgov to Russia since she can see it right outside her house.

Jamie44
8 years ago

noun, plural kakistocracies.
Government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power

Word Origin and History for kakistocracyExpand

n.

1829, “government by the worst element of a society,” coined on analogy of its opposite, aristocracy, from Greek kakistos “worst,” superlative ofkakos “bad” (which perhaps is related to the general IE word for defecate” see caco- ) + -cracy.
At which point after the election and watching the forming incoming cabinet we get to say, “Oh S***”

RebelliousRenee
8 years ago

I don’t do twitter….   don’t spend half the time I used to on this machine.  Yup…  life is short and I ain’t spending hours staring at some screen.  But if it gives you jollies….  go for it!

RebelliousRenee
8 years ago

One of my fellow crafters and good friend has a daughter that is spending the first semester of her sophomore year in college in Rome.  She is writing on a blog about her experiences.  Here’s what she wrote about her perspective on the election and how it’s viewed from abroad.

https://bedgabroad.com/2016/11/30/election-2016-american-identity-abroad/

 

Flatus
8 years ago

Renee

One of the first things we learned in the military was that we were not ambassadors for our country’s politicians nor did we have any business commenting about our host country’s politics to residents of that country.

The young lady would have been better off had she taken her stint overseas in her junior year; not only would she be more mature, the elections would have been history.

patd
8 years ago

Jamie, neat word that kakistocracy … also known as a catastrophe-acy

patd
8 years ago

ap story Lawyers: Trump has to sell DC hotel before taking office 

It’s a glittering jewel in Donald Trump’s hotel empire. Securing the rights to use the government-owned building where it is housed took him more than a year of negotiating. The resulting lease itself runs hundreds of pages, complicated and dreadfully dull.

Dull save for clause 37.19 on top of page 103, which has suddenly become the subject of great discussion among experts on government contracting law, and not a few Trump critics.

If some of the experts are correct — a big if — the first 43 words of this clause could force Trump to relinquish his equity stake in the Trump International Hotel just down the street from the White House. The key part: No “elected official of the Government of the United States” shall be “admitted to any share or part of this Lease.”

“He’s going to have to divest himself of the hotel,” said John Sindelar, a former senior adviser to the head of the General Services Administration, the government agency that negotiated the lease three years ago. Sindelar left the agency in 2007.

Other contracting experts agreed, though not all of them. David Drabkin, once the GSA’s senior procurement officer, said he thinks the clause doesn’t apply to Trump because it only prohibits adding elected officials to the lease after it was signed, not banning original parties to it who subsequently get elected to office. He adds, though, that a president leasing the building is “absolutely untenable” because of other conflicts of interest issues.

The Trump Organization did not respond to emails asking for comment.

xrepublican
8 years ago

deadbeat trump, paul manafort, steve bannon, jeff sessions, and willard romney : the elite of the kakistocracy.

RebelliousRenee
8 years ago

Flatus…   she is a wonderful young lady who was offered a wonderful experience and she took it.  To live one’s life as seen through the lens of politics only isn’t the route I’d choose.

Jamie44
8 years ago

Today’s Popular Vote Count with Hillary more that 2.5 million more than Trump:

 

State
Clinton (D)
Trump (R)
Difference

U.S. Total
65,152,310
62,626,216
2,526,094

13 Swing States
21,388,355
22,217,174
828,819

Non-Swing States
43,763,955
40,409,042
3,354,913

Pogo
8 years ago

So I guess we can say drumpf could get to Pennsylvania Ave one way or the other – but not both?

Pogo
8 years ago

Renee, like you I’ve cut back.  I’m still looking at the screen all day but I’m able to bill for most of it.

And for those who give a crap, Tiger is back on the links and seems to be doing OK after being off the competitive golf scene for over a year.

Katherine Graham Cracker
8 years ago

Great post Granny.

We are all playing by Trump rules now

The choices we face public schools versus private for profit schools the public schools need a pr campaign

Someone needs to make the cartoon version of privatization and its failure in delivering essential public services

patd
8 years ago

kgc, private “for profit” should be a hint…

 

patd
8 years ago

and

Katherine Graham Cracker
8 years ago

Despite the overwhelming evidence that “for profit” should not be a factor in the delivery of public services – a lot of people seem to think it’s a good idea.

For profit in the delivery of public safety services leads to more deaths.  For the pro-life party their attitude about what is an acceptable level of death as a result of public institutions is pretty amazing.  Ambulance service –whoops — we were out on another call.  Your house burned down on Easter Sunday – we couldn’t afford triple time, your child died in jail waiting trial due to lack of proper medical attention

As for educatiion – the pro privates lie about their successes it’s just an excuse to bring back segregation

Jamie44
8 years ago

A list to hang on to.  The 282 promises Trump made while campaigning.

We can keep track as he breaks them.

patd
8 years ago

don’t miss keith o’s #7 on being hacked.  if short of time at least be sure to catch the part starting at 3:30 in.

xrepublican
8 years ago

Jamie, thanks for the vote tallies and the 282 promises. They fine weapons for The Resistance.

Pat, thanks for the Olbermann videos. America needs more brawling Truthers like him.

Pogo
8 years ago

#cheetojesus?

#whatadumbass?

#playedthemlikeafiddleindflat

Jamie44
8 years ago

Clinton and Trump Strategists Still Throwing Punches

Harvard University panel of both sides.

 

Jamie44
8 years ago

Need someone who knows how to do such things to put together clips of all the Presidents since FDR speaking.  Trump is so obviously defective, the comparison might wake up at least a few people.

 

xrepublican
8 years ago

Alas, Jamie, those presidents would include leslie king dba gerry ford, verbless bush, and usurper bush, not exactly the glaring comparison one would wish for.

Jamie44
8 years ago

XR still believe Trump off the cuff would look even more incompetent.

Jamie44
8 years ago

Ford & Carter

George H W Bush

https://youtu.be/p4Cx5n7EXgA

George W Bush

https://youtu.be/jsVBTwuopvQ