While everyone else was busy blaming Trump for the El Paso shooting, another tragedy was unfolding on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter feed.
Hey @senatemajldr – these young men look like they work for you.
Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?
Thanks. https://t.co/ysRJuwonUx
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 6, 2019
I’m not going to defend what these boys were doing.
It was totally inappropriate. Regardless of how you feel about another politician, posing making demeaning gestures with a cardboard cutout of that politician is wrong.
These boys need a dad to say:
“Guys, that is inappropriate behavior. You are acting as volunteer representatives of the Senate Majority Leader and the GOP as a whole, it is important that you conduct yourselves accordingly. Do not treat other politicians with such disrespect. You win people over when you are better. It’s good that you are enthusiastic, but it is important to behave with character and dignity. If you wouldn’t be proud if your mom or grandma saw what you are doing, don’t do it.”
In a civilized, Twitter free world, people would understand that.
No, we don’t live in that world. We live in a world run by social media.
In that world, a bunch of teenage boys doing a dumb teenage boy thing must be destroyed.
let’s get some facial recognition on these little turds and start emailing their future colleges
— rstevens 69 ?? (@rstevens) August 6, 2019
Keep in mind, nobody was hurt. It was an inappropriate photo taken with a cardboard cutout, yet rstevenes69 here thinks that these boys should have the rest of their lives ruined.
This call to go after these boys’ chance to ever go to college was not an isolated Tweet.
Names. College admission applications.
— ~.*kells*.~ (@girl_kells) August 6, 2019
I’m sure there’s people on Twitter who know the names of these BOZOS, REVEAL them!
Are they simulating groping, sexually abusing @AOC?
I’m sure if they’ve applied to a college or university the admissions board would want to think twice about admitting them
DISGRACEFUL BEHAVIOR pic.twitter.com/nNdaFqQ5Gf— Bruno Hugo (@BHPIII13) August 6, 2019
Are they simulating groping, sexually abusing @AOC?
I’m sure if they’ve applied to a college or university the admissions board would want to think twice about admitting them
DISGRACEFUL BEHAVIOR pic.twitter.com/nNdaFqQ5Gf— Bruno Hugo (@BHPIII13) August 6, 2019
Names and college application destinations, please. Looks like some young men need a lesson in consequence.
— Jonathan Kraus (@kraus_jonathan) August 6, 2019
I’m not including the Tweets, but there are already responses naming these kids and doxxing them.
If threatening their college futures wasn’t enough, some people thought the appropriate response was to saddle them with a criminal record.
Imagine the response if it was a group of Latinos posing like this with a Melania Trump cutout. They’d be rounded up and arrested. Those white boys should be arrested. I look at this act as threatening sexual and physical violence on a woman. One of the women that Trump attacked.
— Graham Selby (@GrahamSelby2) August 6, 2019
Then there were those who decided that political alignment is a factor of pathology
No, this is just the way Republicans are, true sociopaths from the moment they’re born. They are monsters who prey upon the populace with depraved lust.
— Dr. Secular Citizen (@secularcitizen2) August 6, 2019
If all that fails, some good old fashioned slander will do.
Repulsive. Probably either already are or soon to be rapists.
I stand by that opinion.
— Denae M (@DenaeEdgeEdge) August 6, 2019
This is a teachable moment. We have some boys who need a lesson in respect.
What the internet wants is life-destroying vengeance.
There is no more compassion left, just hate and a desire to hurt those on the other side.
In December 2008, the incoming Obama Administration director of speechwriting Jon Favreau and a friend were photographed in an almost identical pose with a cardboard cutout of soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Favreau currently serves on the Board of Advisors of Let America Vote, a 527 organization and progressive activist group. Would-Be Governor of Georgia Stacey Abrams is also on the board as are numerous other former Obama Administration higher ups.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/one-more-question.html
Yes a teachable moment. Yes, somebody should have told these young men “No, this is a bad idea.”
What I want to point out is that the FIRST thing that AOC attempts to do is to slime the Senate Majority Leader with the actions of some young men. (“…These men look like they work for you”)
This is standard attack method. Find some dog catcher in the hinterlands with (R) after their name. Get dog catcher to say or do something stupid. Immediately claim this is the opinion, thoughts of the entire Republican party. Demand that every important person with an (R) after their names denounce said dog catcher. Hold any Republican that hasn’t denounced dog catcher “fast enough” to blame for dog catches words.
That being said, the reason this particular article caught my eye is that there is a similar thread running at http://blog.joehuffman.org/2019/08/06/quote-of-the-day-reza-aslan-rezaaslan/
In this case, Reza Aslan plays the part of a bunch of kids doing something stupid. The response is pretty much “Report him to twitter, FBI and Secret Service for making death threats.” What I find so distributing is how close the two reply streams seem to be from the outside.
Internally there are huge differences, the Left wants to destroy these kids, ruin their ability to go to collage, ruin their ability to get hired, potentially have somebody show up at their homes and physically assault them or just to “throw milkshakes” on them. The right also wants to “destroy” Reza by getting him kicked off twitter or arrested by the Feds.
It is a thought experiment. (In my opinion, the replies of on Reza’s thread are more of the Right making a mountain of a mole hill in order to prove that there is a double standard)
When I win the lottery, my sole hobby will be to doxx the people that call for doxxing.
So let me get his straight. Idiot kids making dumb poses with a piece of cardboard (and doing nothing else) is a horrific atrocity that they should have their whole lives ruined for doing, but multiple mobs of liberals chanting ‘rape Melania (with signs calling for the same) is ‘protected free speech’?
Anyone still gonna claim that we’re getting out of this without a coast-to-coast lamppost decorating party?