More #ActualFlatticus flatuence esp on #ConfederateStatues

The Lee statue in Dallas, a week or so before it was removed

Brains, as far as I can say short of a promise, this is the last. Smokey, sorry, but groupies are gonna group, even if I write more than this, having deified Actual Flatticus, IRL Chris Chopin.

But, we're close to the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville and at the one-year anniversary of the push to haul down statues of Civil War traitors.

I don’t want to become a total anti-groupie, but, I’ve kept an occasional eyeball on a couple of Twitter accounts that are curating the best, or maybe the worst, of Flatty’s tweets for occasional blogging.

And, among them (scroll down) are more than one where Flatty was anti-anti-statues to the point of seeming to give a tip of the hat to the Lost Cause.

Meanwhile, let's just dig in.

We have this, in which he least leaves himself open to the charge of “moral equivalence” in war, including at least related to the Civil War.

That's followed by this, in which he definitely leaves himself open to that charge, “Lost Cause” charges and similar on the Civil War

Beyond that, he trades on false dilemma about closing prisons vs. taking down statues. For example, I support ending much of the War on Drugs, and reducing other parts of it to skirmishes and containment. That of course would be accompanied by a lot of decarceration, and by getting rid of private prisons. I also support removing many Confederate statues, including all of Confederate general rank, from most public spaces.

It's the type of anti-Idries Shah two-siderism:

“To ‘see both sides’ of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.”

That is transparent as hell to anybody truly insightful. It's a fake dichotomy. It's the type of fake, head-faking, fake dichotomy that a "champion debater" would think of in place of substantive argument.

Then, this one: No, Flatty was not a hippy/freak. Other than his criminal record, he was a straight arrow whose dad was not only in the 1 percent, but in the 0.1 percent, probably. Flatty himself wasn't getting rich off family law, but he sure wasn't hurting.

Next, was Flatty hoping nobody would actually take his advice and research his own PAC contributions in Bernie amounts after he called Bernie a centrist? And related to that, was he also hoping that nobody like me would call out the debate champion for being uninformed, an idiot or both about Sanders when he did that? Was he hoping that nobody like me would say he’s “forever tainted,” just like he claimed Nina Turner is forever tainted for once working with David Brock?

Ahh, Flatty calling out the DSA for endorsing Dems when he refused to vote outside the duopoly box and hated Greens. High hypocrisy.

Smithee pretending to be Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” all while hating on the Green Party is likewise laughable and risible and hypocritical.

Flatty the hypocrite on SuperPACs, unless we say Act Blue is “just a PAC, not a Super PAC.” 

Flatty claiming to be a leftist. More hypocrisy. You're not a leftist if you bully women and minorities and support the Lost Cause.

And, beyond moral equivalence, Flatty does moral judo and claims Hillary was MORE corrupt than the Donald.

Not a chance, dude. We know the New York Mafia helped him get a start in early days of real estate empire expansion. We still don’t know the level of that grifting. We know about the HUD racism in housing suit. We know now about the Panama Papers.

Maybe Flatty should have asked his dad. Or, given that he didn’t pay attention, I guess, to local politics in Palm and West Palm, he should have looked at the palm-greasing for Mar-A-Lago.

We know further, from shit like this, where some of Flatty's groupies, like ShirtLost DumbShit Zack Haller, got his own ideas in this vein from, obviously.

Time to again question Flatty’s judgment. He thinks Neera Tanden acted in good faith in 2016 elections (and I presume before and after) but is dumb. No, I think she’s quite smart, but didn’t act in good faith at all. How somebody as smart as Flatty could be so naive, even gullible, I have no idea. But he was. Dem's dah facts, groupies. Flatty also comes close to sounding sexist.

A scholar lawyer should know constitutional law on corporate personhood enough to know that for progressive-to-leftist regulatory issues, having some type of corporate personhood has advantages as well as disadvantages, and arguably the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. But Flatty didn't. This comes just a week or two after (in terms of this blog post) me Tweeting how German civil law sucks for precisely this reason; Volkswagen as a corporation can't be sued for most of its diesel-related cheating in Europe.

This is NOT parody, but Smithee’s own admission about hating to lose arguments, even more than the average person:

Meanwhile, some of his groupies are even further from leftism than Flatty himself was. The #RIPMrSmithee2 account is doing its own Tweeting now, and playing with Pepelovers (the original Tweeter is on Gab, a clear ‘tell”) and said person is also a conspiracy theorist.

Speaking of nutters, if Smithee was that high on CaitlinJohnstone, it’s more evidence that his own critical thinking wasn’t so hot.

Also related? Flatty liked to challenge people on gun knowledge, and the use of terminology like "assault rifles." Whether he would have gone as far as Haller and Jared Beck and called the Parkland students "drama actors" or not, I don't know. But it is possible.

Anyway, there you go, folks. Zack with his own set of groupies, largely sub-groupies of Smithee, and the family and legacy accounts will do as they will. Unless the undead is resurrected this fall for elections, I move on.