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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      TV news is bending over backwards, both Fox and rest, to distinguish and totally separate protesters and looters. It’s nice optics management, but I suspect the line between them is much fuzzier than they’re willing to admit. Same demographics, similar psychographics.

      8 replies 4 retweets 90 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      In some ways looting is a less clueless response to belief that a system is illegitimate. Skin-in-game subversion. If protests were 100% peaceful and law-abiding with zero slippage into violence or crime, we’d call them parades. Identity performance with zero political potency.

      3 replies 4 retweets 52 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      I don’t condone what’s going on now because I happen to believe the system is legitimate enough for me, not because I believe in some well-posed absolute moral distinction between protest and looting

      4 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      My good anticop/bad anticop emergence theory of protesters vs looters is not very popular it seems. Good anticops loudly disavowing bad anticops even though it’s clearly the combo that gets whatever results emerge.

      4 replies 2 retweets 21 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1267237586382159874?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1267237586382159874 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      The protester-looter distinction TV commentary is practically a surreal religious sermon now. Police chief at one point described the protocol for civil disobedience arrests, where they negotiate politely about who wants to get arrested etc. Protest theater is refined art.
      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      At this rate, I fully expect a tv commentator to suggest giving licenses and uniforms to protesters. Maybe even special “good” prisons for them where they have their own locks and keys to arrest themselves for self-serve civil disobedience. Maybe a system of ranks and badges too.

      2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      There’s something desperately silly about this effort to pretend that protest is really just some sort of well-governed due process like hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit. If it fits a protest theater pro forma, maybe it will go away quietly?

      2 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      I’ll say this though... if the police in very unequal societies is primarily a praetorian guard defending the core bastions of wealth and power, they’ve definitely learned quite a few tricks since the fall of the Roman Empire. They can stabilize far more complex situations now.

      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      Protest really is a weapon of the weak. You wouldn’t use it if almost any other tactic were available to you.

      3 replies 2 retweets 26 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      Also a desperate pretense that this is only about George Floyd or at best about policing in black communities. Studious avoidance of the thought that there is a powder keg created by how the costs and risks of Covid have ended up distributed in a 4-year-old Trumpist America.

      5:05 PM - 31 May 2020
      • 4 Retweets
      • 37 Likes
      • _ Brian Holdefehr Pete Taylor im only 5'3 Chris Boden Jessica Aimufua Alvin Leong Kat Straight Shawn Nirappil
      6 replies 4 retweets 37 likes
        1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Donald J. Trump

          Aww he’s so excited about delivering on the utopia he promised in 2016, it’s practically dank-cute. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1267227396341669889?s=21 …https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1267227396341669889 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump
          LAW & ORDER!
          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        1. Mike Wamungu‏ @MikeWamungu May 31
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          Replying to @vgr

          It’s so much deeper than all of this.

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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        1. Pasayten‏ @Oneevol May 31
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          Replying to @vgr

          Its been building for years. Inequality and disinfrachised youth. Why buy into a system that offers no opportunity.

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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        1. curmudgeon‏ @lowvariance May 31
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          Replying to @vgr

          I believe there are many who are out there as an excuse (in part, at the very least) to be out of the house and not 'socially distance' - "this is more important!"

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. David o'Bedlam‏ @David_o_Bedlam May 31
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          Replying to @vgr

          TV news isn't set up to handle hyperobjects.

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        1. ilija‏ @stagefright__ Jun 1
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          Replying to @vgr

          These need to be articulated as #InSolidarity protests. Any other framing deepens the division and exasperation

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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