(no subject)
Shit I Need To Do To Be A Writer:
1) Write.
***
In other news, Thom Tillis may or may not be a member of the KKK. If he really is, it... won't be surprising. Welcome to North Carolina, home of So Many Embarrassingly Awful Politicians. If he's not... well, he'll still be an asshole. Welcome to North Carolina. Did I mention home of So Many Embarrassingly Awful Politicians?
I'm still waiting on a moderately legitimate-seeming news source to report on this, so actual details are a little thin on the ground. Anonymous is busy talking about how they aren't going to release the info from their KKK hack until Thursday, and it will be rigorously fact-checked and verified and etc etc etc. So far, most of the accused officials have made denials of varying levels of vehemency.
Tillis hasn't. Make of that what you will. Here's my take:
As an elected official accused of being a member of the KKK, there is only a couple of good ("good" is a very relative term here, as you'll see) reasons not to issue a firm denial. In reason 1, you are a member of the KKK, and you're proud of it, and you don't care who knows, and you don't care that it should be political suicide. In the possibly even more depressing reason 2, it doesn't actually matter whether you're a member of the KKK or not, because you believe it will do more harm to your image with your electorate to deny membership than it will to be silent and thus tacitly affirm the accusation.
In other words, I think that Thom Tillis hasn't issued a denial because he thinks that the people who put him in office will like him less if he says he isn't in the KKK. Otherwise, issuing a denial is just good political sense. That says something pretty sad about the people of my state who put him in office.
I hope he's wrong.
I'm not sure he is.
This entry was originally posted at http://all-strange-wonders.dreamwidth.org/741695.html. Please comment there using OpenID. You can read
comments on this entry at http://all-strange-wonders.dreamwidth.org/741695.html#comments.
1) Write.
***
In other news, Thom Tillis may or may not be a member of the KKK. If he really is, it... won't be surprising. Welcome to North Carolina, home of So Many Embarrassingly Awful Politicians. If he's not... well, he'll still be an asshole. Welcome to North Carolina. Did I mention home of So Many Embarrassingly Awful Politicians?
I'm still waiting on a moderately legitimate-seeming news source to report on this, so actual details are a little thin on the ground. Anonymous is busy talking about how they aren't going to release the info from their KKK hack until Thursday, and it will be rigorously fact-checked and verified and etc etc etc. So far, most of the accused officials have made denials of varying levels of vehemency.
Tillis hasn't. Make of that what you will. Here's my take:
As an elected official accused of being a member of the KKK, there is only a couple of good ("good" is a very relative term here, as you'll see) reasons not to issue a firm denial. In reason 1, you are a member of the KKK, and you're proud of it, and you don't care who knows, and you don't care that it should be political suicide. In the possibly even more depressing reason 2, it doesn't actually matter whether you're a member of the KKK or not, because you believe it will do more harm to your image with your electorate to deny membership than it will to be silent and thus tacitly affirm the accusation.
In other words, I think that Thom Tillis hasn't issued a denial because he thinks that the people who put him in office will like him less if he says he isn't in the KKK. Otherwise, issuing a denial is just good political sense. That says something pretty sad about the people of my state who put him in office.
I hope he's wrong.
I'm not sure he is.
This entry was originally posted at http://all-strange-wonders.dreamwidth.org/741695.html. Please comment there using OpenID. You can read
comments on this entry at http://all-strange-wonders.dreamwidth.org/741695.html#comments.