Yves here. I had thought there was a tiny glimmer of hope for Team Dem digging itself out of its ditch, with the adoption of “die ins” in New York City (they’d been effective mobilizers of people and opinion in the Black Lives Matter day) and apparent fierce internal criticism over Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries playing dead in the face of the Trump onslaught. Mind you, this slight signs of life come as a NBC poll showed both that Democratic party garnered its worst approval ratings ever and it voters 2 to 1 wanted the party to contest Trump actions, and that does not mean the lame fundraiser “fighting for you” sort.
Via e-mail from IM Doc, evidence the party is probably beyond redemption. Keep in mind the action described below took money as well as organizational resources. Subject line Local Meeting with US Representative:
This was on Friday night. The paper reported it as highly contentious. I have now seen on a few national websites that she was owned by the Dems.
So, let me tell you what really happened. And any shred of respect I have for any media, local or national, is now completely gone. When you see things with your own eyes – and then read the completely bullshit reporting about it the next few days after the event.
The town itself is bright blue – the surrounding area – basically everything is bright red. Our family lives to [a bit out of town in the red area]. It is not only red – but everyone is clean cut, blue-eyed, athletic, farmers etc. This area is also very conservative from a religious perspective.
I wanted my kids to see a town hall. So we went.
I knew something was wrong the minute we hit the parking lot. There were 8 busses there – I saw CA, WA, OR, and CO license plates. None local. There were another 3 busses in the restaurant parking lot next door – again CA and WA.
We walked into the auditorium – literally SRO. There were all kinds of people NONE of us had ever seen before – purple hair nose rings etc. Clearly not locals. And when the first question was asked by an elder statesman kind of guy on the front row – and 2 of these nose rings got up and started F bombs and screaming and yelling – all the locals knew instantly that something was up. They kept being told there were children in the room, etc.
And the literal dozens/hundreds of these people just kept right on. No one could hear answers, every single question was met with name-calling screaming and yelling, they used the c-word and the f-word constantly, and there was no respect for anyone that was a local. It was a completely useless event – and I was ashamed for my kids.
The thing is there were people standing right next to us – that I know personally – they have legitimate issues about various issues that would have been against the Trump narrative – and would have been very important for her to answer and have accountability. They were not even interested in standing up and facing the onslaught. The man even told me – they were very much hesitating to be Trump voters going forward – but wow – we can’t let these wackos in charge.
Discussions over this weekend have indicated to me that really really pissed people off – any fence sitters are now squarely in the Trump camp. Local people do not take to hijacking like that very well – and constantly calling a woman a cunt in front of kids in a rural area is not a good look.
So, I cannot even take my kids to a town hall. After this debacle, I doubt there are any further town halls – and more importantly – I CANNOT BLAME THEM. It really is a societal collapse.
And I am so ashamed of what the Democratic Party now is. What a complete and total disgrace. But the media is reporting that she met “highly contentious” constituents. What a complete joke. What a bunch of liars. I cannot think of a better way for the Dems to cement Trump support all over the fruited plain.
I quizzed IM Doc. He lives in a very popular vacation destination. Could the influx have been in part due to the ease of persuading Dems to make a trek and then enjoy the sights? His response:
Similar reports, probably the same people, coming from multiple other places in this state. One can charitably refer to those locations as armpits so vacations are not in the cards.
Also, hearing very similar reports from Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas from family members. Similar reports of lots of pissed off people among the independent minded. As I said, the family next to me at our meeting had an issue that would have really raised eyebrows and I would have loved to hear the answer. But alas, f bombs were more important. I guess it is the new 50 state strategy. No wonder they are at the lowest approval rate in modern history.
Back in the stone ages of 1960s civil rights protests, black activists made a point of wearing their Sunday best when marching. The privileged Dems have gotten so accustomed to thinking that they are in charge that they continue to assume that they should be listened to as a matter of right and don’t need to stoop to showing respect for those on the other side, or are merely not entirely on board with the Team Dem agenda.
Needless to say, this does not bode well for effective opposition.
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I would applaud Trump and Musk taking a vacation on Mars, but is it possible that these agitators were Repub actors? Karl Rove would have thought of that, for sure.
Nixon’s hardhats were well organized, violent disrupters of peaceful protests. They appeared far and wide, taking time off work (allegedly paid) to beat people up. The not-so-silent majority.
One of TomDispatch’s writers from CA spent the fall in Reno canvassing for Harris. I assume there were more than a few.
I should’ve added this link about Chuckie:
Schumer Postpones Book Tour Amid Backlash to Voting With Republicans NYT archive
He writes a book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning.” A deliberate attempt conflating anti Zionism with Antisemitism. Trump and the bipartisan AIPAC hoardes in Congress are full force on new McCarthyism.
Were the planned demonstrations the same thing as IM Doc’s townhall experience? Should Schumer get a pass to pump his screed while innocents are bombed? Was the postponement due to his voting with Republicans or was it anti Zionism and anti genocide?
They were being paid, or at least we still on the clock at work: a friend of mine who was there and baely escaped without getting clubbed spoke of the local Business Agents for the construction trades unions rounding up workers to attack the demonstrators. As he described it, the BAs were leading the charge.
The following week, Peter Brennan,the head of the citywide Construction and Trades Council was at the White House, giving Nixon an honorary hard hat.
Honestly, that was my first reading, too. People who know only how to be disruptive tend to be paid operatives. I saw it a lot in NYC back when I lived there. “Grassroots organizers” from groups that no one had ever heard of, but who were ostensibly and outlandishly liberal, would just shut down everything with lots of profanity and sloganeering. In NYC, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an earnest (albeit misguided) group educated on bumper stickers. There are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands. However, it seems softheaded to squander an opportunity to have seemingly “normal” people from across America’s rural communities take their representatives to task. If it is the national Dems organizing these manufactured mobs, they need to seriously reconsider their tactics.
I agree my first take on the description was that they were paid agitators. Interestingly, I could also now see that as a DOGE tactic too. From what IM Doc described it shut down any real airing of grievances. Those early Townhalls that made the news showed real grievances being aired. Shutting down the townhall with paid outsiders almost guarantees the Dems to be fingered for it even if they didn’t do it. A win win for whomever wants the discussion shut down.
Purple-haired nose-ringers are definitely not the sort of people that DemLeaders like Pelosi, Schumer, etc. would want to be associated with.
A name suddenly came back into my memory from the Nixon years. Donald Segretti.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti
Given the long history of ratforking various political movements by Republicans, Intelligence, and others; it seems naiver than naive to think that these purple-haired nose-ringers were ” Democrats”. Or brought in by “Democrats”.
Given Musk/Thiel/Bezos/Zuckerberg/etc. etc. levels of wealth and power, it seems possible that they would have their own “Legions of Segretti” active in the field and ready to conduct ratforkings all over the country. Coming to a Town Hall near you, probably.
Indeed. Who was paying for those buses? Some of us had our doubts about how organic the BLM protests were. It’s funny how they simply ceased when Biden became president.
And my brother, fan of Rachel Maddow, might somewhat agree. Even he says that Trump is president because MSNBC spent the last four years talking about Trump instead of Biden. For those of us who prefer to stand aside from TV chat (and thanks again NC for being our corner of sanity) there’s the fear that the shallow and highly combative Trump will react to the charges of villainy by becoming that very thing (yesterday’s events in the ME quite ominous). Given his personality it may not take much encouragement.
Black Lives Matter was heavily funded by rich white capitalists, to the tune of at least $750 million. There are more details and citations in the book One Disease One Cure which covers it as one of a few examples where wealthy individuals fund synthetic social movements to prevent meaningful social change, among many other ways ruling classes keep people trapped in unhealthy, exploitative societies.
Sorry that is not correct. Lambert tracked the start of BLM, and it was many small local independent groups coordinating on Twitter. As they started to become effective, rich white capitalists found individuals they could co-opt and set up as “leaders” with NGO pay and visibility as incentives.
” As they started to become effective, rich white capitalists found individuals they could co-opt and set up as “leaders” with NGO pay and visibility as incentives”
There’s a certain amount of overlap then between your and Hickory’s models.
No, do not misrepresent what I wrote, which disputes Hickory’s claim. Hickory’s position is that BLM was a rich white person operation from the outet. That is false. Lambert documented this originally decentalized, grass roots operation’s subversion as it was happening in Water Cooler. Some local Black Lives Matter group maintained their autonomy even after the takeover.
my first thought also, too over the top
Whereas if it is the national Republicans organizing these manufactured false-flag mobs to discredit Democrats, then the tactics are working very well.
Also use of the C word points to them being paid agitators. That word is considered very misogynistic, especially in Dem circles.
Also I have seen footage of town halls where the unhappy people look like genuine vets. So counteracting that would be important if you were a republican operative
Hard to tell without more info. When I was in college, a very liberal classmate went to a pro-choice rally, or was protesting at a pro-life rally, I don’t remember exactly. I remember she came back in a very good mood after waving her sign that said “men who are against abortion can f— themselves”, which she thought was very clever. I remember remarking that if your goal was to convince people who weren’t on your side, maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about it. I also have a relative who keeps getting arrested in recent years at protests, mostly for being dumb. One was for defacing public property and assaulting a cop – basically he just started flailing wildly when the cops tried to get him to stop spray painting a statue. Kid couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag, so not really a threat to anybody. I tried to tell him how to make a valid political point without getting caught and needing a parental bailout, so we’ll see if that sticks.
I was also in Seattle during the WTO protests in 1999. There were cops everywhere, and protests started out peacefully, with a big labor march if I remember right. Then the ‘black bloc’ types showed up and started smashing windows. Somehow those people never seem to get arrested even at times when you can’t swing a cat without knocking over a half dozen cops. Because they are cops themselves, trying to discredit a legit protest. But I also knew people personally who were not cops, but joined the fray anyway after the tear gas has started.
Plenty of history showing conservative types using operatives to discredit protests, and also plenty of times when protestors just act stupid.
So it sounds like you view it the same way the right views J6.
Not speaking for LAB, but yeah.
Some of those ‘black bloc’ types were held by protestors themselves at the WTO protests and sharp-eyed people spotted how they were wearing police-issue boots. Of course the uniformed cops came and took them away.
I seriously doubt the shock troops were paid. I know enough TDS diehards who would love a bus trip with allies to be self rightious nut cases in a far away armpit to fill a bus myself. They feel like they are doing something.
Zero thought about winning others over. No long term strategy or willingness to spend years in meetings working with people they do not agree with to take over local government and create a pool of tested competent future leaders.
No educating themselves about MMT or US imperialism and war crimes.
Why bother when you can have a party bus weekend instead.
Of course the organizers are paid through cut outs by Wall st.
Hopefully townhalls will still happen with wide advertisement but very short notice.
Or maybe no advertisements at all. Deep and narrow word-of-mouth wordspreading strictly and only to legitimate inhabitants of the jurisdiction itself to which the Town Hall would relate.
It’s possible, but I’ve also met plenty that would behave that way unprompted. The self-righteousness and low self-awareness is intense and makes thoughtful conversation extremely difficult.
Wow, that account of the meeting does not bode well for the establishment Dems. It seems they really are just “waiting for Trump to make a mistake…”
My cousin is right, I need more ammo. A lot more ammo.
Trump is making plenty of mistakes, but Democrat responses are seriously underwhelming (to put it politely)
Yes. Assuming that the weirdly-behaving crew were paid disruptors, why did the Democrats in control of the hall not do anything about them, and why did they not subsequently complain?
The sooner the Democrat Party dies, the sooner something worthwhile may take its place.
This verbal goon squad tactic seems to be universal – I see it in Europe as well. Any legitimate questions and criticism towards purportedly liberal parties and politicians are quickly drowned by lots of obscenity and name-calling by groups of weird and aggressive people (mostly women, interestingly enough).
The end result is that screaming vulgarity and ad hominems has replaced public discourse.
It’s fine to see the Demos dying but we need to work on replacing it or else we’ll get more of the Neocons.
And also more of the Gilead National Christianists.
What if Marjorie Taylor Green becomes America’s first woman president? Will Hillary Clinton be alive to see that?
Hence “something worthwhile MAY take its place.” Whether it does or doesn’t is up to us.
That “something worthwhile” would have to be prepared in advance and ready-to-go.
I wonder if it is possible to organize a town hall with only locals. To enter, you have to flash your drivers license or your County rates or some other ID showing a local address. Have a forum where locals can discuss local political issues. Of course I would expect to see a legal challenge by Dems on the grounds of discrimination or some such but I can see workarounds. The Republicans would not be a problem as they have told their people to refuse to go to town hall meetings. Come a long way since this though-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)#/media/File:Freedom_of_Speech_-_Rockwell_alternate.jpg
The Dem smarties gaming town halls think it a brilliant strategy but all they are doing is aiding their party being sent into oblivion. And maybe that is where it belongs. But as for the media I will not share my thought here as NC has a language policy.
No, you can’t have a governmental meeting on that basis, and the Rep is operating in an official capacity. They have to be open to everyone. That is the law in pretty much every state. That is why I could go to and even speak at CalPERS board meetings, for instance.
CA has two laws, one that applies to state bodies (Bagley-Keene Act) and one to local (Brown Act).They are very similar and courts treat decisions made with respect to either one as a precedent for the other.
And so you don’t think these laws are artifacts of leftie states, see as an example, the Alabama Open Meetings Act: https://www.openmeetings.alabama.gov/generalpublic/publicdefault.aspx
But what you could do is to require out of town/whatever people to sit in a designated area so they can be easily recognized as such. Then their actions would represent their group. We also need reliable reporting on whether the groups (who could be seated separately for identification purposes) are “righties” or “lefties”. Seating, of course, must be convenient for everyone to the extent practical. There would be practical problems with implementation, but they could be addressed.
to be honest……people can easily tell who isn’t local, regardless of their political views.
Speech, slang, mannerisms, not being familiar w/local places or trivia….no one in their group is a friend of your cousin’s, buddy’s dog groomer.
But of course, you need roped-off sections to make it relatively scientific for replication purposes.
Interesting. Worth trying. BTW what Rev Kev suggested, I too thought of immediately when reading this. Will add – laws are laws, and many are being ignored and broken in favor of the rich and powerful. There must be a way to creatively ban this practice. There were a lot of busses in the parking lots So ban busses? Erect barriers that busses can’t navigate? There are possibilities which grow the you put your mind to it.
No, I doubt that would be permissible. The laws don’t allow for proof of residence to attend. “Interested parties” are typically allowed to testify in deliberative processes, and that does not mean just locals.
Here is a site with precedents state by state: https://www.rcfp.org/open-government-sections/a-is-there-a-right-to-participate-in-public-meetings/
Excuse the stupid question, but I am not from the USA. A town hall meeting is an officially sanctioned/sponsored event? Even funded by the Gov’t?
The government presumably uses a public building like a conference room at its City Hall. The only incremental costs would be extra power to have the lights, perhaps some extra toilet paper, and security (as in they would not normally be on duty and so would be owed overtime).
Calling these events “Town halls” is a fairly recent development. It’s just an event where an elected representative speaks directly with their constituents. It’s meant to give a small town, down home-y feel to the meeting, even if it’s held in a big city.
I believe the name is meant to invoke actual town meetings, which are still held in some small towns like the one where I grew up, and are a form of direct democracy – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_meeting
Town hall is just a gabfest. Town meeting is how the town conducts its official business, and participation is limited to residents of the town.
Need to evict the people talking over the designated speaker. Sad to say, need more police on the overtime gravy train. Couple of police buses outside and 20 or the 30 cops. Eventually the paid actors will get tired of sitting in a jail cell. People that want to participate normally will still be able to.
If you are being paid while sitting in that cell, then it all washes. Plus, add in the fake “street cred” that being “oppressed by The Man” gives to most socially marginal people.
I’m now waiting for some ‘legitimate’ Brownshirts to be organized and start breaking heads. That is the next step in this escalation ladder.
That’s what the Proud Boys are for. Standing back and standing buy and ready to come to a town near you when given the word.
Naw, the difficulty is in the first amendment – free speech. You can curse, insult, yell mean things and even yell “fire” in a crowded theater – that is all covered by free speech.
Free speech? Just accurately sex Mr. Sarah McBride and see how much the Dems support free speech.
Could online town halls be formulated that sidestep a number of these problems?
They’re a lot easier to attend (even asynchronously), you can moderate them, and they introduce the ability to use tools that add value to the process.
We will pry Identity Politics from the Democrats cold-dead hands, as there is no thought or desire to enact policies that provide concrete material benefits to average Americans
The party is well paid to avoid any discussion of such benefits. C and f bombs usefully prevent such discussions. I’ve thought for years that voting for dem candidates prevents change.
Let them have pronouns!
Yeah, the core Democratic constituency is so tone deaf and clueless about how they come across to anyone outside their bubble.
I’ve been tracking the various fed news subreddits. One smallish thread talking about what Feds are doing to cut spending in anticipation of being downsized had a sad comment on cutting a $2,000 trip to a family wedding (with people jumping to suggest getting the rest of the family to crowd fund the trip), multiple “I’m cutting everything but getting another tattoo”, and multiple “so sad to cut my meal plan subscription”.🤨
Trump’s plan is absolute chaos and will pauperize tens of millions of Americans, but the #opposition we have is absolutely hopeless.
After a few days of really thinking hard about what we witnessed, I would like to add a few comments. The email above was done before serious contemplation.
We arrived just on time, but almost late. So, I did not get to see how people were arranging themselves when coming in. What I can tell you is the outside protestors had placed themselves all through the room. They were very evenly dispersed through the whole crowd. It was these people who when questions were being asked or statements made that they did not like would begin to be disruptive in their little area. It was therefore very difficult at times to hear the questions and the comments and the answers. There were a few times of mostly quiet when questions did come up about Social Security, the Post office, and lay offs. The agitators did not like the answers, I guess, so we could hear the questions – just not the answers. It is highly likely that the Congress person did not answer the questions well – but most of the people in the audience would have never known this. And when anyone would try to get them to shut up, they just became more rowdy. And again profanity was common.
Is this now a common way for protesters/agitators to disrupt meetings? I have never seen this before and I am genuinely curious.
If you read the media accounts, one would get the idea that there was a lot of resistance to the Congressperson. I have no idea. And I certainly could not tell from what was going on. There were lots of supportive things said that were instantly screamed and yelled at by these same people. Most importantly, none of these people ever bothered to ask a question or make a statement. They were just all through the audience disrupting things. So we got to see a lot of that – making no impact but making everyone angry. Meanwhile, there were actual constituents with real issues who likely would have made a real impact among their neighbors who did not engage after the performative stuff started. Again, it was these fellow constituents who very likely would have opened eyes – but it was more important to have drama. And trust me, these folks have issues, I would have loved to hear from my Representative. But we were not allowed to.
So I am hearing on the media from all over the country – that the GOP house members are being “owned” in these meetings. I cannot speak for them all – I only attended one – and that reporting was most certainly not the case where I was. The neighbors around are still talking about the spectacle today. What was being owned was the outrageous behavior of these agitators or whatever you want to call them. Their behavior likely very much decreased any anti-Trump narrative discussion that could have happened. And the Congressperson could have been held to account for things that were never discussed because of all the chaos.
I am deeply disturbed. We have even turned our town halls into a twitter comment cluster. Ad hominem name calling and profanity. If this is the way it will be, I have no desire to attend one again. And I doubt they will happen much longer. And now I and so many others, non-GOP, know that the current meme that the GOP are afraid to face their people is really not true. And again, this one I attended was not constituent driven. So, if that is the case, what is the purpose? Again a sign of societal collapse. We cannot even seem to talk to one another – we are on a different wave length.
The one person in my life who usually does talk about things like this meeting is not saying much. That would be my wife. She who grew up as a little girl in The Cultural Revolution. She told me this AM when looking over this post – “I have already seen this show, and unfortunately, I know how it ends.”
>>>If you read the media accounts, one would get the idea that there was a lot of resistance to the Congressperson.
TIkTok/social media has been awash with videos of accusations by “political Normies” and right-of-center folks of out-of-town astro-turfing of hyper-local political events.
I doubt that the events of the town hall will surprise the staffers in that Congressperson’s office…..maybe might have shaken the Congressperson that afternoon, but once a 20-something aide explained “what TIkTok said” I doubt that the disruption made any difference. IMO. YMMV.
The pre-engineered disruptions are meant to discourage decent people and repel them from the entire process of Town Halls.
The proper response would be “Normie Squads” of decent people able to use swift extreme violence to eject all purple-haired nose-ringers from Town Hall events. And hurt them so badly that they would be afraid or unable to re-enter.
Anyone with money can disrupt any town hall meeting around the world. The costs to do that are barely a drip in the bucket.
And then the media gaslights people who did attend to present the preferred narrative. All highly disconcerting.
Was there any local media coverage? Is anyone tracking the bus caravan(s)?
How much time have you spent west of the Mississippi? Population density is low and the distances between meaningful sized cities are large. Just look at the driving distances from Portland, OR to Seattle, San Francisco and not very large Boise, ID, which is smaller than the very very much secondary SE Asian city I live in now.
Something tells me that with those agitators, that they did a training course for it. You report that they rocked up in buses from interstate but then they spread themselves out instead of clustering in the groups that they arrive with (I assume). And training implies instructors and financing and it would not surprise me if those activists were being paid as well. And somebody would have paid for those buses and the fuel that they used. And as they came from different States, then this is a standardized training program being used in different States. So who is picking up the tab for all this?
You just described a classic Psyop.
Arrest the usual suspects.
It would not surprise me if the US Chamber of Commerce is behind this.
Several years ago, when a group of citizens in my County were protesting the financing of the Braves stadium, we tried to show up at a local Board of Commissioners meeting where the issue of the bonds to finance the stadium (with public money) was going to be debated. When we got there, all the public speaking slots had been taken, even though it was only 5pm and the meeting wasn’t for another 2 hours.
It turned out that the Chamber of Commerce contacted employers and told them to give their employees the rest of the day off, and they got their early at 3p to take all the slots. Then they all showed up in Braves t-shirts to pack the audience and crowd out any organic “locals”. For all I know, many of the t-shirt brigade didn’t even live in the County.
One of my friends managed to grab a slot before the Chamber’s goons did, and he ended up getting arrested.
I strongly suspect the shock troops got only an overnight party bus trip and pizza.
The expenses and organizers were definitely paid by Wall St..
Our color revolution has 2 hues, both (like all color revolutions) serve Capital.
The Rev Kev at 8:52 am
As you wrote Rev, my 50 years of political activism tells me the disruption was organised which does not mean every participant was paid, only some of them. Since the provenance of the disruptors and their ultimate purpose seem murky a solution would be to follow their buses to whence they came and try to infiltrate the crowd, dressed as they were, listen to what they say and maybe engage in discussion if appropriate and safe.
Political organisation, strategising and some money would be required to do that. If no functioning political party exists at the local, state, or national level tracking down who the disruptors are and adopting counter-measures will be difficult.
Could do similar by noting the license plates of the buses and any logos and asking inline for info on them. There are always internet sleuths who would welcome the challenge and this sort of stuff always leaves a trail – always.
Well, yes and no. Yes, it is a sign of societal collapse.
But no, you still can talk to each others. That’s why outside agitators had been send to destroy communication.
Regards, Uwe
Agree. For them, the sooner societal collapse comes the better. Then they plan to take control of the masses. They tried to split us up by inciting racial, gender, and class divisions. But that’s fading, so now they’re bumping hatred up a notch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_agitator
“Outside agitator is a term that has been used to discount political unrest as being driven by outsiders, rather than by internal discontent. The term was popularized during the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, when Southern authorities discounted African-American protests as being driven by Northern white radicals, rather than being legitimate expressions of grievances.[1][2] “
thanks for writing. The democratic party abandoned my part of the state some time ago – I don’t know the timing, maybe it was that transition from Dean’s 50 state strategy to the Obama borg operation.
But specifically, one of the things I often encounter is encapsulated in this sentiment: “Discussions over this weekend have indicated to me that really really pissed people off – any fence sitters are now squarely in the Trump camp.”
which I am sympathetic to – as I said, we’ve been left behind many years ago. However, i try to counter by saying politics and democratic republics aren’t like shopping, it’s not a “if you don’t have what I want I’m going to the shop across the street” – or it shouldn’t be. We have no agency in that case. We have to find ways to claim some agency and change what needs to change. Here we have the (not taught in schools) coal wars history as examples of the efficacy of collective action.
And if it seems too large a task than that maybe offers some pathway to recognizing how difficult it is for our representatives to do their jobs. Or what their jobs are in theory.
If we are citizens we have responsibilities to participate in our governance. As immensely frustrating (and I often think ultimately futile) as it is, we have to keep at it. I think both parties have to change. And I think we should be involved in that change as much as possible. I hope that the frustrations from the event spur some sort of increased participation in the governance of your part of the country. I hope that discouragement doesn’t win.
I’m going to read more if I can about such incidents.
But I get psyop vibes.
The kinds of things that were done to disrupt civil rights groups in the past.
A methodology for authoritarians to further disrupt any opposition from organizing.
“We have even turned our town halls into a twitter comment cluster. Ad hominem name calling and profanity.”
Yes, this has sadly been the case for several years. Even before the pandemic, I went to a lot of hearings and community meetings while living in NYC. Smaller events were still civil and filled with locals who knew each other. Larger events, particularly those that dealt with rezoning, would attract the locals whom I knew and a different kind of person. They had all the trappings of young liberals (piercings, dyed hair, etc.), showed up in groups, were exceptionally disruptive, and had absolutely nothing substantive to say. Most of them knew next to nothing about the community. To me, they were clearly paid operatives. By whom? I could never really figure that part out, but they seemed so obdurate and self-defeating that I began to feel like they were put there to make their opponents’ position look more reasonable.
I know this implies that all obnoxious people are paid actors or operatives meant to make “liberals” seem nuts. I don’t think that way. However, I do feel like this is widespread enough to suggest a concerted effort by someone and I have to believe that the national Democratic party is not stupid enough to think this is a good strategy to pursue universally. Then again, I have been known to be wrong.
“So, I did not get to see how people were arranging themselves when coming in. What I can tell you is the outside protestors had placed themselves all through the room. They were very evenly dispersed through the whole crowd. It was these people who when questions were being asked or statements made that they did not like would begin to be disruptive in their little area.”
Sounds exactly like the agit-prop from the small group of Trotskysts during student meetings and assemblies, back then at university, 30 years ago. Disruptive idiots with nothing constructive to say, just wanting to disrupt stuff when we were trying to have civil discussion about our grievances and how we planned to act and to be heard by local authorities. They were all over the hall, never sitting close to one another, and after a handful of such meetings you knew every single one of them – and when one stood up or raised his voice, you immediately went into “Oh shh, here we go again” mode.
Looks like the modus operandi has been passed down the generations of useless tools.
hmmmm. That’s interesting. Maybe the Dem estab, having decided to offer no concrete material benefits to their (ever shrinking) voting base, has settled on theatrics. All circus, no bread. / ;)
There are ways to take on what the T admin is doing, like Garland Nixon’s Fisking of the T admin. Dem estab isn’t doing that.
“Garland Nixon’s Fisking of the T admin.”
Flora, could you please explain what you mean by this?
A slang term named after journalist Robert Fisk. Thus the upper case ‘F’, though more commonly spelled with a lower case ‘f’ today, (maybe I’ll start using the lower case ‘f’). See this Urban Dictionary entry.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fisking
Basically, I was saying Garland Nixon was taking apart the T admins lies, whoppers, and hypocricies piece by piece. (Unlike the shouters who only make noise, not arguments.) / ;)
Thank you, Flora. I need to circle back to Garland Nixon.
There’s not enough information in your account for me to go on. Who were the agitators? What, aside from ad hominems, were they yelling? I’ve been involved in organizing disruptions of Dem events before (the c-word would not have been tolerated), during the election, trying to publicly shame pro-israel or ‘moderate’ dems. I don’t think it’s often a very effective tactic, but it is not, in my experience, an insider one.
“Is this now a common way for protesters/agitators to disrupt meetings? I have never seen this before and I am genuinely curious.”
There has been a rash of this kind of thing in recent years. Most regular city council meetings in the area where I live allow for public comments on any topic whether it’s on that week’s agenda or not. Once meetings started being online a few years back, people started calling in and cursing up a storm – https://www.pressherald.com/2020/04/06/trolls-are-disrupting-online-public-meetings/ My better half had to deal with this when she was an elected official. A lot of the time the people calling in were just spewing curses for no apparent reason – anti-semitic rants that had no relation to anything being discussed at the meeting. At first nobody knew who any of these callers were, but I’ve heard that some did actually identify themselves as locals, and recently one showed up in person packing heat. I failed to see the point of any of this since most of the time they didn’t seem to be disrupting anything in particular – just showcasing their faux Tourette syndrome for the sake of it.
Thanks, IM Doc, for vivid reporting from the front lines.
One question: You write: ” I cannot think of a better way for the Dems to cement Trump support all over the fruited plain. ”
Was it clear to townspoeple that the disrupters were Dems? Since they never asked questions and the Govt Representative was a Dem, I assumed the disrupters were GOP when I read your report.
Then I wondered: Are they Dems? (because of where the buses came from) Are they Dems who are angry with Chuck Schumer? or are they GOP disrupters drowning out the Dem Rep?
They could’ve been either side. How did people know for sure? The purple hair? the buses?
But yes, if they were clearly identifiable as Dems, I can see where Trump would benefit.
Many thanks for your report.
Thank you, Sadie. My gnawing first thought: why Dems? Stereotype Much?
Descriptions to me sounded like Rainbow Tribespeople- very conceivable having fun for a buck, or
anarcho-syndicalists from Portland and Seattle, who would pop anyone on the nose if they were called a Dem!
When I think Dem, I think nicely dressed polite 40 years old plus neo-con professional middle class pearl-clutchers.
Probably my blinkered college town view from a gentrified chi-chified formerly rural ag community now overfull of million dollar multi-level condos. (Bozeangeles del Caleeforneeyah Norte)
>>>the Govt Representative was a Dem
I think IM Doc’s representative is a Republican based on his following statements:
“I have now seen on a few national websites that she was owned by the Dems.” He’s referring to his rep here.
“that the GOP house members are being “owned” in these meetings. I cannot speak for them all – I only attended one –” Implies he was attending meeting with GOP rep.
It makes more sense to me that the meeting would be disrupted by Dem operatives if his rep is Republican.
Why approach the situation from a binary point of view – at this time, neither the democrats nor republicans are homogeneous parties, but each composed of large aggregates of fractious groups whose agendas rarely align. Under the surface, run deep currents, guided by powerful sharks of varying heritage and power.
Thanks IM Doc for giving a well crafted summary of how transparency, opportunities for local questioning and sharing of information are being all too rapidly shredded in this country, while at the same time media creates a parallel reality “for the record.” Those who challenge are accused as conspiracy nutcases or outright schizo-affective disordered. One of the many ways to disarm those with outre questions or opposing views. Cui bono?
Holy Family Blog…..the tin-foil videos (from right of center, complete with footage of out-of-state buses and vans) about institutional astro-turfing support at Democratic events during the 2024 election was 100% right.
I make it a point to never initiate talk about politics to strangers….but have had many fun, interesting conversations with random people as we wait in line, etc.
From this barometer….what’s worse than love-hate? apathy! Normies have 100% given up on Democrats. They don’t necessarily support Trump, but they are done w/DC Dems. And IMO, that’s even worse long-term for DC Dems.
Once people drop out of political engagement, they are gone in the wilderness. Just like a business w/customers….it’s much easier to retain/rectify an existing customer than fishing for a new one.
For at least the last 15 years I’ve remained a registered Democrat only because NYS is a closed primary state. I had my most fun ever voting in 2014 when Zephyr Teachout ran in the Dem primary for governor. She got over 30% of the vote and must have scared the sh!t out of the establishment. I wish she’d run again as I’d suspect she might be able to pull off a win absent flying in small planes.
Thanks for this post and comments.
For some reason I think this 30-year-old bit from John Cleese fits in here.
“John Cleese nailed it 30 years ago. Amazing how little things change. ”
https://x.com/joeroganhq/status/1901358019096584484
One thing seems to have changed in 30 years: some people are granting themselves leave to act like tantrum throwing children in public. Did Zoom meetings break their brains? / ;)
my favorite bit, still applicable to anything left of center, is the Judean People’s Front vs. the People’s Front of Judea…..same as it every was, lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
This sounds like a psyop designed (and funded) to herd people into two separate sheep pens. The nose-rings feel like freedom riders, the locals feel alienated. The greatest mistake we make is thinking that the Democratic and Republicans are competing. They are not. They are sharing power.
I was seeing the same thing. It’s pretty texrbook.
Similar methids used to disrupt civil rights groups in the past.
It’s actually to keep any opposition to the current authoritarianism from organizing.
Agree with the keeping “any opposition to the current authoritarianism from organizing”, but between psy-op or own-goal, I’ll go with the latter. Team Blue is performative if/and nothing else.
Imagine the consternation having to devise a plan to protest authoritarianism, zionism, corporate domination, censorship, etc, when you softly support all those things yourself. Lol. Democracy is dead, and in retrospect, it appears to have passed some time ago.
The greatest mistake we make is thinking that the Democratic and Republicans are competing. They are not. They are sharing power.
No doubt, and the politics are simply sport to them– beneath the surface, friendly intramurals at most.
The Cluster-B hives nurtured by our ruling caste ensure that anyone who threatens real opposition to the status quo quickly gets swarmed and stung.
Meanwhile, ever more of the country’s wealth is funneled upward. See this most recent chart of wealth distribution in the US.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/
That a big change from 40 years ago. The 3rd Way neoliberal Dems have been a big part of the story. / ;)
It does have to be noted that “everyday people” are usually repping inadequate social paradigms. So are the blue hairs of course. But just because you can tell someone else is a moron doesn’t mean you aren’t a moron.
I have little respect for common people organizing because their whole ontology is usually completely worthless.
And how, pray tell, do those “ordinary people” learn such dysfunction? Are they born with it? Or are they taught it, and by whom, for whose benefit?
Blame the “victims.”
What an interesting and depressing post. Something similar is happening here in Germany. Today they discussed in our parliament a change of the constitution to enable an incredible amount of debt to be taken up to finance a coming war. It is the outgoing parliament , that has just been voted out – not the incoming parliament that is discussing that. A dirty trick by the establishment as there wouldn´t be enough votes in the new parliament.
This could have been prevented if the “Linke” (left party) had demanded the immediate convention of the new parliament. But then they would have been in the company of the AFD (right wing smeared as Nazis) who is also against the change of the constitution. Insanely they decided not to as that would meant being in cohorts with “Fascists”.
The best and smartest party in Germany the also leftist but sane party of Wagenknecht in vain urged the “Linke” to call for a convocation of the new parliament. One should add that Wagenknecht had left the “Linke” because she couldn´t take all the “woke” nonsense and pointless virtue signalling anymore. The establishment then engineered her defeat in the latest election. I can´t eat as much as I would like to puke.
It seems like the world has gone completely mad.
[putting on my tinfoil bonnet:]
Has the Davos crowd decided to use the Cloward-Piven strategy, not for the purpose of increasing the welfare safety net, but to crash the Euro by debt in order to usher in a new cashless digital currency system and digital ID?
[removing my foil bonnet.] / ;)
Someone long ago seems to have gaslit all of the left into assuming they can never have any kind of agreement with their supposed political enemies. What ever happen to understanding that “politics can make for strange bedfellows” and “my enemy’s, enemy is my best friend” (at least sometimes).
Why is it that so much of the left has to take the moral high ground instead of taking incremental wins? In America anything that even resembles a leftist group of any size or power is just married to the Liberal Democrats and always end up giving up everything they might want because god forbid they had anywhere else to go even if it was for a temporary truce.
I’ve said a dozen times or more… Bernie Sanders won almost every county in NYS that Hillary lost to Trump in 2016. If the left wanted to lead they’ve got an army just waiting, but for some reason they just can’t bring themselves to BEING LEADERS. They can’t seem to fathom they might have to get dirty, that’s what right-wing nut jobs do (or so they say).
Apparently, a large part of the so-called left can’t even agree on what it’s working toward or for. Example: a race essentialism focus vs a wages and jobs focus.
I think that they settled for supporting an Israeli genocide in Gaza while pushing for nuclear brinkmanship against Russia.
Nobody asked any of the profane shouters for their badge numbers?
Maybe that could be a Normie Chant at the next disrupted Town Hall. All the Normies could start chanting ” What’s your badge number?” hundreds and then thousands of times at the disrupters. Yell it and scream it over the disrupters. Use megaphones if necessary.
I don’t know what these nihilistic pierced, dyed peripatetic “outside agitators” have to do with the state of either legacy party. They are no more Democrats than the MAGA rabble are Republicans.
This is evidence that the political process is profoundly broken. Wikipedia tells us that Trump garnered votes from a mere 31.59% of the voting eligible population, Harris had 30.66% of eligible voters. The winning position among eligible voters was the 36.1% who stayed away from the polls.
When you have busloads of nihilists with nothing better to do than travel long distances to disrupt the political process you are looking at a failed society.
That’s nearly 68% of eligible voters who took their time and went a little out of their way to support the current system… depressing, isn’t it?
The eligible voters metric is made up to disenfranchise.
There are over 330 million people in the US. 75,019,230 voted for Harris. 77,303,568 for Trump. 152 million total.
Neither of them can claim even 25%. The majority can’t or don’t vote.
90 million eligible- to- vote sat out at least top of ticket in 2024.
Mandate my ass.
That only 1.65% voted for an alternative is far far far more depressing to me.
I recall that during the run-up to the ’24 Presidential election a good many USAians on this site wrote in to comment that they were so disgusted with the Democrates – either because of what Biden had/had not done or what Harris offered – that they were either going to vote Trump in protest, or not vote at all as 36.1% of you apparently didn’t.
Well, those of you who followed either path now have what you voted for, as choosing not to vote is a vote to accept the result whatever it is. Only those who ‘wasted’ their vote by voting third party have the right to complain at what you now have, and as I tried to point out at the time if more people were prepared to ‘waste’ their votes even if it meant not being on the winning side (horror of horrors to an American, it seems) perhaps a groundswell against your appalling entrenched system might have become a lot more apparent to the point of becoming an avalanche.
Commence firing the blame cannons. / ;)
I suppose that my point is that elites point to non-participation by eligible voters as “voter apathy” and non-voter consent to their self-serving policies.
To the contrary, I suspect that these foul-mouthed hecklers may be non-voters who are quite passionate about their politics but who find themselves without a constructive outlet in a totalitarian duopoly that only serves the 1-percent.
Maybe, but who is paying for the buses, and organizing these people to get on the buses? Are passionate non-voters independently wealthy? Some one is paying.
I wish I could say with confidence this was a Karl Rove/Roger Stone-type ratf#*’ operation you witnessed, but I know too well how cartoon-ish, repellent (as in literally repelling people) and counter-productive the #McResistance can be.
Case in point from personal experience, and why a story like this cuts so deep: in March of 2019, right after Bernie held his first 2020 campaign event in Brooklyn, I went to (just outside) Pittsburgh and Erie, Pa. to support striking UE workers who build locomotives at the Wabtec/former GE facility in Erie. Scott Slawson, the head of UE Local 506 – United Electrical Workers, the most radical union in the country – had endorsed Bernie at the Brooklyn event, and I went to Pennsylvania in solidarity and to interview UE strikers and their supporters. It’s hard to recall now, but that was a pretty hopeful moment.
With me came my oldest friend, a committed activist who I’m sorry to say also has the worst case of TDS I’ve encountered, and which had strained our relationship before and since. I naively hoped that him getting out of NYC #McResistance circles and amid an industrial worker’s struggle would be a good thing. Oy, big mistake.
The instructive part was that during a pro-strike rally just outside of Pittsburgh, my friend overheard a participant being interviewed by NPR: when asked who she’d voted for in 2016, said she’d voted for Trump and would never vote Democrat again (imagine, in Western Pennsylvania!). My friend immediately lost his s*^#, and started pacing and raving, not quite loud enough to be disruptive but loud enough that people in surrounding clusters were staring at him. He calmed down just as I was about to insist he cool his role (I’ve never spoken to him about this, because I know where it would end up, as we can no longer discuss politics).
This episode has stayed with me, as it’s so illustrative: you call yourself a liberal/Left person who supports Labor; you travel out of your way, ostensibly to support a worker’s struggle at a potentially important moment… but when you encounter someone you claim to support whose political beliefs differ from yours, instead of taking the opportunity to talk with them, perhaps reach some sort of understanding with them (“You know, I agree with almost evreything you say, but I just can’t get behind your conclusions,” or the like) , or at least perhaps learn something, no… instead, you run around with your hair on fire, as proof of your moral worth.
So, yeah, here we are.
I remember when O said he’d put on his marching shoes and walk with protestors and union workers. Yeah, didn’t happen. I’m starting to see the McResistance as a demoralization project run by the Dem estab on its own unhappy voter base.
I also remember the energy the Dem estab put into shutting down Occupy Wall St protests when they got traction; into fracturing the beginnings of the Democratic Socialists groups when they started to get traction.
https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-canceling-of-adolph-reed-2020-08-16
Ye olde divide and conquer.
Yes, reading the NYC DSA’s complaints about the efforts to not focus on race and identity, but instead to become or remain “class reductionists” of the members in other states was… illuminating.
Obama was at best a fraud, at worst a Petri-dish creation of the National Security State and the Pritzker family.
“I wish I could say with confidence this was a Karl Rove/Roger Stone-type ratf#”
That’s the catch these days. It hasn’t been determined who all wants to disrupt any developing opposition to the economic order.
I wasn’t automatically pinning it on “Republicans”.
Any Republican opposition to the current order would face the same dilemma.
For over 15? years, I’ve tried explaining / educating The t_rump / the Ray-Gun from the perspective of household income & … what a flop.
I’m 65, 3 serf careers, the last 44/47 yrs. living in Boston or Seattle, growed up welfare in an old industrial town in MA., by the skin of my butt have eked out college training for those serf careers from student loans and unemployment and … and wiping out a 401(c)asino with 25 grand in it.
I used Census & BLS data for training applications & student loan forbearance apps.
The life of the bottom 20 & 40 & 60% of American households have pretty f*k all to do with the top 20%. BTW – given that there are appx. 132 million households, that means many, many, and many of those 26.4 at the top get to live in ghettos of cluele$$ne$$.
Oh yeah – that top 20 provides what % of the senior policy peep$ in our housing, education, health, justice / political / cla$$?
I recall being totally with the Clinton Gore ‘reinventing government’ thing in 1993 – where is that photo of them with fork trucks & pallets of government forms?
WHAT did we get? In the private sector, we’ve had decades of destroying family wage jobs to senior execs can have mansions & yachts & helicopters. In the public sector, we’ve had decades of destroying family wage jobs to outsource charades so that senior execs …
Has anyone figured out in 2025 how to flow chart processes and make them Amazon easy?????
Riddle me this –
The bottom 60% are too uneducamated and too stupid to notice the boss cla$$ stealing everything, so they make the stupid choice of voting Ray-Gun / t_Rump?
OR, their lives are just an incessant kick in the teeth,
and after the $ell out$ of HOPE ’92 & HOPE ’08 & ChuckNancyRahmBarneyIvyDoubleSpeak …
IF they bother, they hit the IDGAF button to blow it up?
rmm.
Okay, wealthy liberal elites in a wealthy liberal elite microenclave are acting like freaks and lunatics. What else is new? Nothing about this anecdote is instructive or able to be extrapolated to the world of the 99%. Reminds me of the Trumpland Travel Diary articles from this time 8 years ago.
welp, it looks like “false flag” hypothesizing is a pan-partisan trait.
Assuming that this incident(s) are organized and funded, I highly doubt that the funders gave specific tactical instructions re. their desire for disruption and name-calling. Rather, someone in a boardroom approved $xxx.xx for general voter mobilization and political activism. Once that directive and funding trickled down to the mid-level executive/non-commissioned officers level did it devolve into chaos that aren’t even seen in high school elections.
IMO. YMMV.
The Seattle Times is reporting a similarly disrupted GOP town hall in Spokane (originally a Spokesman Review article).
The pictures shows a bunch of blue hairs (OLDS) and no piercings. The youngs and their piercings would make a much better spectacle.
I see maybe 4 people in the crowd shot that look less than 50.
That’s the DEM-o-graphic in my minds eye. I think there is some seriously mis-aimed stereotyping of assessing folks by their looks, tatts, and body piercings…
the fringe- Proud boys, antifa, hard core LBGTQ — nominal loud minorities that LOVE spectacle and dust up.
I can see the spectacle amping your loathing for Democrats to new heights, but why would that push you into the Trump camp? That part makes no sense. If you are turning out to raise issues with your rep in a deep blue area, the odds that you’ll be looking for reassurance about Trump are very low. So why would having a bunch of pseudo-woke disruptors make you suddenly change your spots? If anything it should make you say, “Goddamn it, we need a real left-wing party, not one that appeases these lame freaks!” I mean, let them bus these characters from out of state to shout obscenities at a union hall and see how that turns out.
Because they’ve offended you in what is an extension of your home, like throwing a drink in your face and then pulling out your penis and pissing on your shoes at a neighborhood party. IM Doc reported that many of the people there were religious conservatives, and the screaming of profanities would be deeply disturbing to them.
I’d want nothing to do with them either, and I come from NYC where swearing, purple hair, and body piercings are pretty normal.
OK as a Gen X UK/AUS gay man who considers himself progressive (MMT. Land Value Taxes, Voting reform etc), I’ll offer some insights. First of all, I am utterly dispirited at the (in)ability of younger progressives (at least, the ones who shout the most like you encountered) to engage in reasoned debate. I’ve had reasoned debates with “Trumpers” (some of whom are adjacent to here).
This kind of “town hall disruption” is completely counter-productive. It shows lack of respect for the institutions and, more importantly, an inability to to put forward a cogent argument as to why all those supposed people in 2016 who voted Trump but would have gone Sanders had he been the nominee should pay attention.
An inability here in the UK of “London Labour” to understand all of us outside the M25 motorway is sending us up a cul-de-sac. I cannot believe cutting of disability benefits and saying “all these young people in mental distress are malingerers” are topics entertained by a Labour govt. But they are. This morning my mum watched some trash on the latter on TV and asked me view. I replied “my view doesn’t matter.” in an attempt to escape. She pressed by saying “yes it does, do you think differently cause this TV doctor made a good case”. I politely exited.
Engaging with someone with cognitive impairment doesn’t go well. It’s like the “don’t wrestle a pig” thing. But she’s beginning to learn I simply don’t engage with her anymore. I could have said, how’s about watching my YouTube public lecture from 2010 showing how badly young people were doing then…..10 years before COVID? Maybe, JUST MAYBE, we’re seeing young people finally seeing medical professionals at an appropraite rate (part of which may well be COVID related). But why bother saying this? There are people on both sides who just want to talk past each other. The sad thing is that it is making me think I’m not engaging anymore. I’m trying to keep my heart from stopping and my brain from frying. Daytime TV shouting at each other is the UK equivalent. I’m not buying into it. I’ll care for her. But I won’t engage with her. Full stop. Just trying to postpone when Long COVID gets me.
Some of these stories remind me of Xtian fundies trying to convince agnostics/atheists (with the caveat that these people are real and not plants): they typically start by invoking explicitly religious references. But that’s usually exactly what the agnostics and atheists don’t like about religion. Many agnostics and atheists I know actually like the idea of religion and are more disposed than a lot of self-claimed Xtians towards Xtian ideals, like goodwill towards fellow humans, etc. So there is a lot that they could converge to if the conversation went in another direction, but that rarely happens.
As many people have commented, both here and in other venues, there is a certain religious quality to both “performative social justice” and Trump Derangement Syndrome. So if you don’t profess faith to the filioque clause or whatever (whether you know what that implies theologically or not), then nothing matters, or something like that.
Yep. There was major family fight when dad’s (Nun) aunt died and we were all invited to funeral 2 weeks ago. I said no from get-go. Why go to a ceremony where they think I should burn in hell?
Meanwhile many of my parents’s relatives are moving towards Reform UK. Dad won’t. He reads stuff like this site. Plus he knows his biz is family-blogged on so many govt trajectories.
I’d have loved to have been there at the nun’s funeral……final chance to hear stories about the OTHER Roberts Family in Grantham………Brit political pundits know EXACTLY what I’m referring to……but extra titbits are outweighed by Long COVID and knowledge that I’d MAJORLY lose my temper. TDS is very very common throughout my extended family. Add “guy we think is going to hell”? NOPE
I keep rereading this post to understand what exactly was on the agenda at this town hall meeting, apart from the visit of the congressperson. It would seem pertinent to why outsiders might show up. Were people worked up about DOGE, etc.? That could be bipartisan at this point.
Perhaps IM Doc will correct me, but my impression is Congresscritter town halls do not typically have agendas, unlike ones by local bodies where they are engaged in a deliberative process and the public is allowed to weigh in before a vote is taken. This one was presumably to meet with locals about their issues.
I too am discussed with the behavior of the MSN, and the spinless Democrats. Especially after the collaboration with the Repugs on last weeks CR. Giving the power of the purse to Trump is reprehensible. I am going to a town hall here in a blue bit of Georgia next Saturday. I noted that it is RSVP, so perhaps it will be courteous and respectful. I shall report back, I have been previously and have not experienced any of the behaviors detailed above. I will be on the lookout for ‘paid attendees”.
The thing is, the R’s rarely hold town halls (My Kevin never bothered once in 17 years of being my Congressman) and if the odd D town hall gets out of control thanks to outside agitators, it makes other D types think twice about doing it.
These town halls are effectively the only way to really connect with our leaders, and are fraught with uncertainty as far as what the public might say, and neither side wants to go there-as they have nothing to defend themselves with.
I prefer good old fashioned monkey wrenching of the prankster flavor when it comes to politics, and nobody was better at it than Dick Tuck…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck
These types of things did happen to the D team as well. The same types of protests happened at the start of the Obamacare debate. There was also the infamous incidents of “protesters” in Miami-Dade County during the recount of the 2000 election. It seems as if the D team decided to adopt this strategy. The problem is that the USA is in a different place, politically and socially. Far more people immediately saw through Schumer’s playacting and the pathetic excuse for opposition against Trump.
Yes, I saw the same @ Atlanta US Fed Court, when the 2000 vote was being litigated, as I passed daily on the way to work. Along with the rows of cameras and talking heads there was always a large loud contingent of Brooks Brother clad provocateurs throughout the day. As we say ’round here: Not from here by the accents. GOP apparatchiks.
The ones in Miami were pasty white, whereas all locals are either tanned or brown. The outsiders should out like sore thumbs.
Why are you assuming “the D team decided to adopt this strategy”? Especially if you believe, “Schumer’s playacting and the pathetic excuse for opposition against Trump”?
Sadly I think this was all intention distraction from any further discussion of grievances caused by unexpected Trump administration changes. The intent was to shut down the town hall so locals could not air their concerns and grievances. If Democrats got blamed that’s bonus points or collateral damage depending on which billionaire group you belong to.
Schumer is case in point… he’s technically a D, but he’s a wall street paid for and bought D.
I hear Wall Street bonus paid this winter were on average 37% high… just in time for our upcoming tax cuts… all supposedly paid for by DOGE efficiencies.
SO I suspect the person/group funding this shutting down of town halls just wants to stop people from talking about what’s going on. Right now, I’m 50:50 on whether it’s an R or a D BILLIONARE funder or enforcer.
The short answer as to why is that many of those people that were either a part of the GW Bush campaign or supported it have now become real or defacto Democrats. This was the core of the Never Trumpers and even the Cheneys quite publicly backed Harris in the 2024 election. I agree that some group doesn’t want to talk about what is really going on. But the “protests” are a very convenient way for the Dems and their media arm, MSNBC, to highlight public outrage while not doing anything about or even provide real opposition.
The idea that the dems could organize this is giving them way too much credit.
Which leads us back to Soros. Why would he bother when he has the Treasury Secretary?
I have a very hard time with any first hand reports from IM Doc. The last first hand tale I read from him was about the horde of BiPOC Astrophysicists who were preventing his friend’s son from getting a job.
Big piles of salt.
Agreed, and I’m having a bit of whiplash in contrasting this post with the many recent posts about ostensibly grassroots outrage presenting itself at these town halls forcing various Republican congresspeople to avoid holding them. The implicit assumption that these “agitators” are funded and organized by the Democratic party is also quite a jump – buses are not that expensive, and coordination in the age of social media is not terribly difficult.
Capital owns both sides of the color revolution and there is a huge, well practiced infrastructure (MSM being part) for channelling the (legitimate) grievances of pissed off people who don’t think too deeply.
IM Doc is by far the best and most informative commenter on the web and I thank him very much.
He’s straight up Country Club Republican. Woke, DEI and BiPOC’s are his most common topics of discussion. This is that.
I admit to not keeping a spreadsheet, but most of what I see from IMDoc has had to do with the atrocities of our medical system.
Oh and pointing out the stupidity of the Democratic PR machine, including their delusion that that is all they need.
Both positions are clearly reality and neither exclusive toCountry Club Republicans.
I am keeping a spreadsheet. My data is immaculate.
He’s not an outlier. I know lots of doctors. They may know something about medicine, but not much else. Their overestimation of their own intelligence makes them notorious marks for financial crimes. Their politics are awful.
Suggesting he is a Country Club Republican when he fires off a grievance list straight off of fox news is just acknowledging reality.
Yeah, nah! Nice drive-by denigration attempt though. Better luck next time, pal.
“Yeah, nah”….. sometimes you are SO Aussie ;-)
There were a couple town halls held by House reps last week. From the photos online, the one on Friday does not look like it was attended by “clean cut, blue-eyed, athletic, farmers” but rather, some plain old normal Americans (deplorables), in a crowded room, who look p.o.’d about what’s going on in their country.
In my circle of American friends, dyed hair and piercings are pretty much no big deal, and frankly, that’s what middle America looks like culturally now. Everywhere. The depressing fantasy of *flyover* is just untrue – and I wish our dear blog owner would stop using this pejorative term for the vast majority of the USA. Proud people who just want an even break.
I’ll bet most of those people had tattoos as well.
The people I see with the most visible tattoos now are cops. “Deus vult” is the new tramp stamp.
In October 2002, I marched in three days of protests to prevent the invasion of Iraq, which were part of protests worldwide that millions participated in. It was the first time I saw the Black Bloc in action, who seem to be still following the Trotsky playbook by attacking police and doing property damage to provoke a violent crackdown, which they (mistakenly, since no signs of it so far in six+ decades) think will win the support of the general public, leading to the ‘glorious revolution’. For example, I saw one hurl a cement cinder block at the head of a CHP officer, that thankfully missed.
The first day we ruled the streets of San Francisco. The second day mutual aid in the form of hundreds of police from the Central Valley showed up. The police targeted the Black Bloc– i.e. any young person wearing all black. Police also targeted the bicycle coalition that organized monthly bike protests called Critical Mass rides, where they expertly blocked the side streets during rush hour so the bike riders could take over the streets, which they also did on the first day of the antiwar march. I saw police pull the bicycles out from under anyone on a bike, and throw them to the ground and arrest them.
Police also ‘kettled’ large groups of marchers by forcing us onto the sidewalk by threat of immediate arrest, and then blocked us on all sides. This was more a decade before I heard that term from police tactics used against the Occupy Movement. There were dozens of school busses parked near City Hall, and Van Jones tried to negotiate with the police for more than an hour to prevent our mass arrest. I even saw a white unmarked van hovering near the march, that allegedly fired rubber bullets at marchers. Mass arrests ensued for the second and third days, with most protestors sent far away to notorious Santa Rita jail so they could not make it back to SF to continue the protest.
During the time of Occupy, I did some volunteer work with a support group for (then) Bradley Manning, and had some very interesting conversations around the table stuffing envelopes for fund-raising mailings. Some were grey haired folks from Vietnam War era, some young idealistic anarchists, and two radicalized ‘endless terror wars’ veterans. Later our very small group marched down Market Street from Powell to the Occupy SF encampment at the Embarcadero. We were met by a group of Vietnam War era elders that included Daniel Ellsberg (R.I.P).
As for maintaining order at public meetings, I also go to lots of public meetings, many at City Hall, where there is always a SF County Sheriff present. All attending must remain seated unless they are waiting in line to speak during public comment periods. You can also be removed for using your mobile phone, or shouting from the gallery.
But the biggest group of non-residents I’ve ever seen bussed into SF for a pubic meeting was in 2011 (?) when AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile, and there was a hearing at the California Public Utilities Commission, then Chaired by the ethically challenged Michael Peevey. It turned out that AT&T donated lots of internet assets to Black churches in the Central Valley, and they arranged for dozens of school busses to drive hundreds of grateful parishioners to speak in favor of the merger.
Meanwhile, beginning at 7am, several AT&T ‘suits’ signed the public comment binder with the names of all the parishioners so they would be able to speak. By the time the meeting started there was not a single empty seat in the gallery of the 400 seat auditorium, so I sat in the back row with a small army of AT&T suits and I waited three hours to make a two minute comment against the merger.
AT&T even had the Communication Workers of America union lined up to speak in favor of the merger, and had provided them with red T-shirts with a pro-merger slogan, that the merger would create jobs– lol.
Messy biz, democracy, and big money usually prevails, but sometimes small groups of ordinary people can stop some of the bad ideas from going forward. I can give examples from where I live, on Treasure Island, the site of a $10B real estate project boondoggle on a toxic former Navy base, led by Lennar, and including former SF Mayor Willie Brown as a partner, with help from then Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband Paul and son-in-law was/are Lennar V.P.s.
So yeah, I have three decades experience living in a SF ruled by corrupt establishment Dems and the Brown-Pelosi machine, and minions from what I like to call the Willie Brown School of Corruption, whose graduates include Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, former Mayors London Breed and Ed Lee, and former SF Supervisor, now State Senator Scott Weiner– champion of YIMBY big money RE developers– and many others, including several who are currently in federal prison (such as the former head of DPW Nuru, and the former head of the SFPUC Kelly), but would not dare to ‘spill the beans’ for a shorter sentence.
From my experience, and after four decades of most Dem leaders going along with neoliberal policies, I suspect that the Democrat Party may be beyond redemption. At this point, our best hope may be to reach out to disaffected Trump voters (yes, I’ve met a few in SF!), seek common ground, and act with solidarity– and don’t waste more time waiting for the ‘leaders’ to lead.
There is something paradoxical about this: it used to be that there was a lot of criticism directed at how concentrated local interests derailed diffuse public good (civil rights era issues, nimbyism, etc) but the converse has rarely received attention: it’s easy to mobilize a lot of people who have no stake on issue X so that they outvote, literally or otherwise, those to ahom X is the big deal. And this buttinskyism is often defended in the name of “democracy.”
Has anyone considered the possibility that these bussed-in out-of-staters were all false-flag Republican operatives in purple-hair and nose-ring disguise?
Back in the 60s and 70s, some of the worst violence-instigators were COINTELPRO and other false-flag government agents. Here is an example.
https://historicgeneva.org/organizations/student-unrest-in-geneva/
And I remember reading that some of the Capitol
Rioter instigators grew long hair and beards to disguise themselves as “antifa” to support the pre-engineered and ready-to-go Republican pre-emptive narrative that the leaders of the worst rioting were undercover antifas. But when they were found and arrested, they had gone back to their natural shaved short-haired selves.
Yes, false flag agitators and Intel gatherers are always there. But no, most of them were idiots on a selfrighteous party bus trip.
I would be curious who organized and paid for the party bus trip. Things like that don’t spontaneously happen. Especially when the people are coming from multiple other states (based on the license plates that were described). I would have to work to figure out when my US rep has meetings with the public somewhere nearby, but these out-of-staters somehow know when and where somebody else’s US rep is having such a meeting? That definitely takes organization by someone. If it’s a liberal (woke PMC) group, they should be given a ton of bad publicity. If it’s a real left-wing group (are there any of those still active?), they need to get a stern lecture from veterans of the pre-Reagan years about how not to undermine your own cause that way. If it’s right-wing provocateurs, they need to be outed.
I wouldn’t run too far with the idea that disturbances at political Town Halls are something recent or are confined to people on the left. Anyone who can remember (just to name a few) the 60s political meetings that were disrupted by the cops and by Hells Angels, or Occupy meetings that were disrupted by cops and other strange persona in black clothes will realize this is all fairly common. I recall after the Wall Street meltdown in 2008, Congress people were literally afraid to have Town Halls because they would just turn into shouting matches with furious constituents.
There have certainly been political Town Halls in history where everyone was nice and respectful to each other, and the question and answer format was respected. But I don’t know if I would go so far as to say this is normal.
IM Doc is certainly correct that being disruptive is no way to win over people you disagree with. But it can be a way to demonstrate your political power and strike fear in the hearts of your political opponents; these things are also legitimate tactics.
I guess this is an advantage of living in the Aloha state. You pretty much don’t see this sort of thing. Closest I can think of is native Hawaiians protesting the 30 meter telescope on Mauna Kea, but that’s organic.
Here the local R state reps have held “town hall” events on Oahu (all R districts are on this island) that are facilitated to get constituent feedback on what are considered the important issues. Seem to achieve the goals.
Currently the biggest activist thing I’ve seen was the committee hearings in the legislature on a bill to eliminate religious exemptions for childhood vaccination. Other than the Dems who run the committees seem disinterested in what anyone has to say and just hold the hearings because they have to.
There are rules for public meetings. All public meeting are essentially a open invitation.
The person who chairs the meeting is responsible for maintaining order. This is why the “Sargent of Arms” position exists. At anytime the chair can remove any attendee for disorderly conduct. Usually after one or two warnings. I’ve been in county commission meetings where people were removed by the county sheriff officers. If they refused they were charged with “Disorderly Conduct Or Trespassing”. A question, why didn’t the chair person ash the agitators to leave? And if they didn’t comply call local law enforcement to remove them? I’ve seen people physically removed charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest for what IMDoc has described. Also, why didn’t the chair just end the meeting? The chair has the right to call for adjournment.
This is an account of a dismaying incident, but I am not sure why it represents “self-destruction” by the “Democratic Party.” That the persons bussed in to behave in obnoxious ways would self-identify as Democrats is probably true, but the action most destructive of good order and the small-d democratic process is organizing and paying for the influx of outsiders.
Are the people doing this Democrats, with the intention of benefitting the Democrats? I really wonder, and find the idea of “false flag” operations very plausible. Are there facts about this, or just rumors and hypotheses? And if it is true that one or more Democratic millionaires are actually bankrolling this, does this mean this is an action by the party at large? As Will Rogers said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
I write as a leftist and progressive, with the Bernie Sanders donations to prove it, but refrained from voting for Kamala most recently, knowing that the result in my state was already a foregone conclusion.
Thanks Doc for seeding this subject. I always read your comments because they come from the heart. I know you value your anonymity so it took a couple reading to discern where this likely happened and what party the congress critter was from. It is too bad that this sort of thing happens but it seems to me these antics are from the color revolution strategy. The international funding for them has markedly decreased in the last month and perhaps the decision was made to take ‘care’ of the home front first.
I have not seen any news reports about these town halls so have little perspective about the motives for or the cause of these planned disruptions but find it amusing that so many commenters who weren’t there know exactly what happened. It makes me want to create an alias instead of using my name so I will fit in better. I could try Long Time Commenter, First Time Reader, but that is kind of long.
I said it earlier …
Dems. Don’t. Plan. To. Do. A. Damn. Thing. Differently.
They fully expect that after Trump shock and awe, all they will have to do in 2026 and 2028 is show up and say, “Look! See what he did?! Vote for us!”
They will be no other plan. There will be no articulation of tangible material benefits. There will be no working class/poor agenda or platform on ActBlue websites. There will only be the same old “we don’t need to earn your vote” because “we’re not Trump”, and if you don’t vote for us, it’s all your fault.
Whether a Democratic operation or a Republican false flag operation this reminds me of the deeply wrong headed climate change protestors who throw paint on the Mona Lisa or the Declaration.
It is all about distraction NOT the supposed goals of those throwing the paint or shutting down the destruction.
In this case, I am going to take a flyer and say that this is more about alienating people from democracy and representation by both parties, than cementing support for a particular party.
BTW totally understand the taboo re the c word. Interestingly, and people like Rev Kev will know this, it has none of that taboo down under. Funniest thing ever to happen to me in Sydney was being 1 millimetre over the central median at a junction and have a tradie call me a c.
For some reason, I always found swearing with an Aussie accent to be funny not insulting. Growing up in UK the c word was the only word my mother forbade utterly…… until my mid teens when I witnessed her use it….. then her rules kinda crumpled.