Commentary

Don’t call it “Alligator Auschwitz” 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged history language liberty on by

The new ICE confinement facility in Florida, semi-officially called “Alligator Alcatraz,” is by all accounts brutal, unsanitary, and degrading. It’s a showpiece of the Trump administration, whose followers admire it for its sheer viciousness. Some people, including plenty on Bluesky, have taken to calling it “Alligator Auschwitz.” The term trivializes the Nazi extermination camp. Bad as the Florida facility is, it isn’t designed to kill people systematically. Equating the two implies that Jews in the Nazi camps merely had a very rough time of it.

Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp, a place where many civilians are involuntarily moved to and confined in without charges or due process. The Japanese-American internment camps of World War II were concentration camps in the same sense, and I’ve used the term repeatedly for them. But it isn’t a death camp. Trump is evil, but he hasn’t reached that level of evil yet.
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When bookstores refuse to sell books

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged books bookstores censorship Rowling on by

A San Francisco bookstore called the Booksmith (I think it’s unrelated to the old Paperback Booksmith chain) has stopped selling J. K. Rowling’s books because of the causes she supports. It’s unclear whether they’ll decline orders for the books or have just stopped stocking them. It won’t surprise anyone that the controversy has gotten ugly.
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Judicial Watch wails over ignored “census”

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Judicial Watch scams on by

In an earlier post, I wrote about a fake census from Judicial Watch, and I added a note about a second mailing where JW told me to return their mail if I wasn’t interested. Any mass mailing will be ignored by most people, but this one must have been a flop of colossal dimensions, one so monumental it left them grasping for explanations. This week I got two pieces of US mail from them on the same day. One of them (I tossed the other after a quick glance) said on the envelope: “As a commonsense conservative, you have an enormous stake in draining the Washington swamp and dismantling the Deep State. Yet you weren’t one of the tens of thousands who’ve answered my letters about our success exposing deep State corruption at the FBI, Justice and State Departments. I’m the president of Judicial Watch, and I think I know why…”
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Another code of conduct issue

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged DOGE ethics fandom writing on by

One more post on convention codes of conduct. The information here is based on an entry in File 770 (scroll down to item 7). The writers’ organization Codex has permanently revoked Savil Lavingia’s membership. Codex’s notice, according to the entry, consisted of the following:

The Codex Board has reviewed your case and permanently revoked your membership due to concerns raised by members about your activities at DOGE that violate our Code of Conduct and make our members feel unsafe. We strive to maintain a space where diversity is celebrated and all members feel safe and included around each other.

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Idiots on the left and right

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged fake news journalism news SanityProject on by

Sometimes there is so much idiocy in the news that you have to unpack it layer by layer. This is the case with a statement which Florida governor DeSantis made and the way some people have described it.

In an interview, DeSantis said: “We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. … You drive off and hit one of these people — that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and parade you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”
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