It took less than 24 hours after the Twitter storm struck United that the Louisville Courier-Journal came to the carrier\u2019s defense, with an article detailing the passenger who was physically beaten off the flight. Apparently his medical practice had been dodgy in the past, and he didn\u2019t go to med school in the US, and only resumed practicing a couple years ago, and blah blah blah whatever who cares NONE OF THAT MAKES ONE FUCKING BIT OF DIFFERENCE.<\/p>\n
This is 1000% on United, because any reasonable human being would assume that once you\u2019re on the bird and seated with your seat belt fastened low and tight across your hips, you\u2019re going to be taking a trip. If United needed to deny boarding to four passengers, the time to deny boarding was BEFORE THEY BOARDED. As soon as you let the people on the plane, that\u2019s on you. But that\u2019s not why we\u2019re here today. We\u2019re here today because of the avalanche of people, including a truly discomforting number of media, who jumped on the meme of \u201cwell he should have cooperated\u201d and \u201che shouldn\u2019t have fought back\u201d and the kind of \u201che had it coming\u201d normally associated with coverage of black people who had the temerity to be near a cop or reply to a cop or just look shady in the eyes of some fuck with a concealed carry permit.<\/p>\n
This<\/em> is what fascism means. Das innere Schewinehund<\/em>, the bastard within. Obey. Submit to authority. Produce your papers. Supply your passwords. Unlock your phone. Do as you\u2019re told. Never, ever, ever stand up for yourself. If you\u2019ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. What are you trying to hide? You know – the exact sort of big-government tyranny that conservatives supposedly stand foursquare against, the very menace of Obama and Hillary and the UN and the New World Order that all their MREs and stockpiled ammo and bottomless supply of borne arms are supposed to keep Free Men from enduring. And yet these selfsame dicks with their black helicopters and jackbooted thugs are always the very first off the mark screaming BLUE LIVES MATTER and defending the right of law enforcement – or anyone with bloused fatigue pants, jump boots and a Chinese-made MA-1 knockoff – to administer a summary beatdown to anyone who looked suspicious, because they wouldn\u2019t look suspicious unless they\u2019d done something wrong, right?<\/p>\n And people go for it. Not just Fox News commenters and Twitter eggs and AL.com commenters. Huge swaths of the population are prepared to make the case that United was legally in the right, and if you\u2019re in the right, then it\u2019s nothing at all to drag someone bloody and unconscious off an airplane because either you go along with what you\u2019re told or your life is automatically forfeit without trial. And that, boys and girls, is what is meant by fucking fascism.<\/p>\n This is why you can\u2019t pin it on Trump. This is the result of fifteen-plus years of a country that saw itself hit by the luckiest terrorists of all time, someone flopping the nuts on the river card, someone betting the whole stack on 00 at roulette – and instead of seeing where the fault was and remediating it, deciding as a nation to shit itself in fear and light its civil liberties and political culture on fire and run to Daddy for salvation. Airlines have to charge you $25 for checked bags and take away the free snacks, because A Terriss. Barney Fife and the rest of the local PD needs armored vehicles and automatic rifles and tear gas and 75 rounds of ammo each, because A Terriss. The police and the armed forces are above criticism and must never be questioned, because A Terriss.<\/p>\n America didn\u2019t used to be a country that shit its britches in panic. But then, we might not be America anymore.<\/p>\n Oh yeah – I’d rather\u00a0swim<\/em> to Ireland than set foot on a United bird again. But because we let airlines and cable companies divide the pie among themselves rather than compete, I might not be able to make that stand up. Just like I might not have a choice other than Comcast if I want to get to the federal definition of \u201cbroadband\u201d in my neighborhood. But that\u2019s for another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It took less than 24 hours after the Twitter storm struck United that the Louisville Courier-Journal came to the carrier\u2019s defense, with an article detailing the passenger who was physically beaten off the flight. Apparently his medical practice had been dodgy in the past, and he didn\u2019t go to med school in the US, and … <\/p>\n