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| Journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, was sent Tweets with flashing lights to induce seizures. People who can't stand to see Donald Trump criticized sent them, and now these assailants might face legal trouble. |
They are truly The Deplorables, badly attacking, sometimes physically, anyone who dares criticize Trump or anything he does.
I know this is familiar territory to anyone who reads this blog thingy here. I'm always complaining about the undemocratic, un-American Deplorables who make up the core of Trump's most base base.
However, they must constantly be exposed, called on the carpet and mocked into irrelevance to rid ourselves of this cancer.
And like cancer, it takes repeated treatments, repeated exposure to powerful medicines, to get rid of it. This is my small part. Everyone should partake in providing these "treatments." Mockery is good medicine.
That's becuse It really feels as if the Deplorables believe they have a license to be Trump's "enforcers" making sure any dissent is squelched. If violence is necessary so be it.
Unfortunately, it often works. People are afraid to speak up if they are going to get harassed, threatened, hurt, maybe even killed.
This isn't the M.O. of most Trump supporters, of course. Generally, they just prefer his politics and his way of doing things, and will pretty much leave everyone alone. Totally fine.
It's the still-too-many Deplorables that are and will cause all kinds of havoc during the Trump administration.
This week we have a report of Deplorables attacking a journalist who has epilepsy with messages designed to trigger grand mal seizures. All because the Deplorables don't like what the journalist says about Trump
THE JOURNALIST
One person brave enough to take the Deplorables on is journalist Kurt Eichenwald. He has a form of epilepsy in which grand mal seizures can be triggered by certain types of light patterns.
Some of the nation's Deplorables know this, so they sent Eichenwald tweets, emails and such that contain these light patterns, in addition to the usual death threats against him and his family, for having the temerity of calling out what he believes are the worst of Trump's excesses.
Like I said, though, Eichenwald is fighting back.
Eichenwald is working to find and press assault charges against the people who send him these seizure-inducing strobes, and also working to get them off social media platforms like Twitter, reducing the Deplorables ability to troll.
The only thing I can say that Eichenwald is doing wrong is trying to appeal to the Deplorables' humanity, or at least trying to get others to encourage the Deplorables to put a lid on it.
One of Eihenwald's tweets read, "Look at how many Trump followers seem to think it's funny or deserved that someone used my disability a weapon. What's wrong with them?"
A lot, but that's not going to stop them, unfortunately.
Eichenwald also tweeted, "How have so many ppl become such sociopaths that they think it's OK to assault someone if they write political stories they don't like?"
I'm not sure, but they certainly have their share of supporters and abetters.
Eichenwald is seeking out the people who sent him the seizure tweets and plans to press charges, which is good. It was an assault, so it should be treated as such.
Twitter, citing its user policies, said it would turn over data that would likely lead to the person who sent the seizure-causing tweet.
Of course, we're all free to criticize Eichenwald's reporting and writing. He's human and capable of being wrong. He's a big boy, he can handle criticism. It's part of the job.
But trying to induce seizures? Sounds to me some of his critics are too afraid to take Eichenwald on intellectually, so they resort to this.
The defense of the seizure tweets by obnoxious web sites like Twitchy, Breitbart the Daily Caller is the usual story: To them, Eichenwald is lying and being silly to boot. Because the Deplorables never do anything wrong, uh-uh!
The Daily Caller the other day seemed to suggest that Eichenwald was lying because a police report hadn't been filed yet.
Twitchy re-ran tweets from some of the worst of the Deplorables who pretty much all said that Eichenwald had a psychotic breakdown, not a seizure. But then, the Deplorables probably are too dumb tell the difference between the two.
I'll let "Ursulafaw," writing in Daily Kos, to say what's on my mind, since they do a great job of summarizing how I feel, and how the rest of us should feel:
"It is beyond deplorable that anybody would lash out at a reporter like the Trumpites have lashed out at Kurt Eichenwald, literally trying to destroy the man. Inducing a grand mal seizure is not something that responsible people choose as a viable tool to express their disagreement with something that someone has written. Not in a civilized society, where divergent opinion in the free marketplace of ideas is the order of the day.
Post 11/09 we no longer live in a civilized society that much is made manifestly clear by the headlines of each and every day. There are literally two countries now, the United States of America and the Trump States of America and I am not talking about Democratic or Republican. I am talking about civility vs. barbarism, about decency vs. degeneracy. The bottom feeders of Trump supporters defy description."
But the bottom feeders will continue bottom feeding. It's going to be a long four years, and we all need to call out the people who do this kind of thing. Even if it's exhausting.
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