So stuff is going on but what I wanted to talk about was how people are reacting to what is going on, because I have a very broad spectrum of friends and follows and Twitter mutuals, and I've been seeing some interesting changes.

One thing that struck me, looking at the Right, was that there was not a lot of argument on the actual case. There were a couple of MAGABoomers who went viral urging not to rush to judgment, but the conservatives, libertarians, ancaps I follow weren't contrarian this time.

Generally speaking, when there is disorder, you can count on Righties to get their jimmies rustled right off the jump. Lots of pugnacious talk about buying guns and shotgunning looters and stuff like that.

The first person I saw to go there this time? Was Donald Trump.

Atypically, this time around a lot of Righties were slow to jump up and urge suppression of disorder. There was a sense among them that yes, people were pissed off, and they were *legitimately* pissed off.

What changed that, I think, was the continuation & spread of the riots.

Now I'm seeing Righties calling for the National Guard, calling those in authority to suppress the riots by force.

I've seen a fervent Donald Trump supporter -- not a MagaBoomer, but a smart populist Republican who backs Trump for reasons of policy -- calling Trump out as weak.

On the Left, there's a different change happening, and this is where things get *really* interesting.

Early on, liberals and Hard Lefties were on the same page. They were either lauding the disorder as heroic or tolerating it as necessary.

That changed after last night.

Righties tend to lump liberals and Hard Lefties together, but they're different kinds of people with different kinds of instincts & different wants.

Liberals want the system to be better (for liberals' idea of better).

Hard Lefties want to smash the system & install a new one.

Last night was too much for liberals.

That's why this morning, liberals and journos -- but I repeat myself -- who spent previous days merrily tweeting the donation link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, suddenly started talking about white nationalist infiltrators at the riots.

Here's some pertinent information about white nationalists:

Their local chapters are typically two to eight people.

They have to do a lot of planning and coordinating to field a large crowd, which means about 125 people.

And they can't keep their fucking mouths shut.

As it happens, I know of one white nationalist who went out to a protest yesterday. He went to the one in Dallas. He had a rifle. He was kitted up in battle rattle.

He livestreamed and Telegrammed his whole way down there, and was geolocated, btfo'd, and doxed by antifascists.

White nationalist accelerationists can in fact be extraordinarily dangerous.

They are also constitutionally incapable of being subtle.

The people you see talking about white nationalists being the sekrit baddies? They're liberals.

They saw the protestors as heroes. They didn't like what the protests turned into. But they don't want to think badly of the protestors.

So someone ELSE must be responsible.

If you go read Hard Lefty Twitter, you see a very different set of reactions.

This is because they support burning shit down and actually know and respect people involved in burning shit down.

The liberals react with cognitive dissonance. This disgusts the radicals.

The next step (already starting) is liberals blaming the Hard Lefties... *white* Hard Lefties.

This is also cognitive dissonance. They don't want to think of any black protestors as unheroic.

This is also infantilizing, because they're looking down on people who are grown-ass adults. White radicals do write checks for black radicals to cash, absolutely. *But black radicals can do dumb shit liberals don't like, too,* and it's insulting them to pretend they can't.

tl;dr liberals are still sympathetic to the cause, but they really don't like what's happening and human brains don't handle that kind of contrast very well, so you're going to see them say weird stuff as they try to figure things out.

and here's the fun part:

absolutely all of us are going through the same thing as our attitudes evolve in response to events and life bumps up against our preconceptions

we're just gonna show it in different ways

Team Righty is getting back on the riot suppression bandwagon in a serious way

Team Hard Lefty is thinking "WAIT THIS MEANS ACTUAL REVOLUTION IS POSSIBLE"

I saw one gal followed by a major DSA committee fantasizing about infrastructure sabotage as a precursor to revolution.

ME. "wait, infrastructure sabotage as a precursor to revolution... wasn't that the Order's plan? They were a bunch fo white nationalists?"
ALSO ME. "Forget it, she's rolling"

Anyway, we're at the point where people on all sides are saying stupid shit and are gonna be saying stupider shit because face it we hate each other and this has been coming for a long time.

Which sucks for everybody, including George Floyd.

Somehow I don't think we'll see any of the policing changes that might have saved his life coming out of this.

RIP.