The drama is stupid. Here's why.
I don't look at specific issues, I look at broad strokes. I was a political speech writer. I wrote policy. I know how narratives are pushed.
The very short version is that it takes a lot of insider knowledge to really understand any subject.
Example: Most people can barely do algebra. AI runs on, at bare minimum linear algebra (masters degree math beyond calc 3.) Therefore most people talking about AI don't understand it.
Therefore most people talking about Hasan abusing his dog don't understand it.
Political speeches and media manipulation was extremely sophisticated in the 1980s. It is now 10x as sophisticated with social media + bots + AI, where you now have social media AI bots. It's assumed that anywhere from 30-70% of internet comments and even viewers are bots.
What this means is that you can spin up a narrative, push it out with a lot of money by promoting it on real news stations and then creating social media bots that then create content around it and bot it.
Don't worry I'm getting to Hasan.
The above is specifically the reason why we have the court system. Even in the 1700s people knew you could just bullshit your way into getting a mob to believe you. They required a burden of proof before you were convicted. Otherwise, people yelling loudest wins every time.
I'm not even here to talk about who Hasan is as a person, or his dog, but I have to to get you to understand this.
He is the Joe Rogan of the left. He's the leftist dude bro who shows you that you can lift weights and not be a manosphere sexless dork. He dominates conversations, is very male, charismatic, attractive, and often has nuanced takes on political issues that run counter to mainstream narratives. Often they're political takes that fundamentally support human rights, equality, food and healthcare for everyone, anti-war etc.
Right now he's the largest, most popular voice that is anti-israel and anti-Trump. Both of those organizations are on their last legs, trying to bullrush the populations they dominate as they lose ground in the global stage every day.
These are the broad strokes. Every day freedom of speech in the US is being restricted.
Drama usually has a wind up period. Within a few days, something happens and there's commentary on it. A few days later, people start to have a solidified set of opinions on it. A few days later people know what kind of thinkpiece they can make on it and larger streamers who are afraid of alienating their audience can safely say something about it, still be current, and also not offend most of their audience.
Within 1 day, there were multiple custom meme images of hasan shocking his dog like mortal combat that were being spammed. Within 2 days streamers like asmongold were making hour long takedown videos on Hasan. There were already multiple clips of hasan explaining what happened and then in every comment section of every clip, the exact same memes being spammed.
There was absolutely no diversity of opinion. Not because that diversity didn't exist. There is ALWAYS a diversity of opinion. That's human nature. It gets harder to find when people generally agree. But you can usually find a few differing opinions that make people go wtf, you actually think that?
When it's IMPOSSIBLE to find diversity of opinion and drama unfolds with a really specific trajectory almost like everyone got marching orders, that's when I, as a political writer and lobbyist start to go hmm this is actually not normal at all.
You can never outright say "this is a targeted smear campaign" because that's the whole point. Seize on something real. Get a realistic narrative on it. Push it. It's very hard to say "well it's all fake bs." Because you have to prove it. You have to somehow, as an individual person have the power to go audit all of asmongolds emails and texts to make sure that someone wasn't guiding him on how to respond to this situation.
But you can look at the broad strokes and just say "the odds of this happening organically are less than lightning striking someone twice in a row." So technically it could happen organically, but if we look at probability, there's a really good chance it didn't.
Hasan is not the only person this has happened to. And we will talk about the dog don't worry.
Bill Clinton, Nixon, and Trump are the big 3 when it comes to impeachment. Impeachment by the way is not getting convicted. It is getting put on trial.
Nixon resigned to avoid getting impeached. He was going to be charged with interfering in elections which would have put him in prison.
Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction around Ukraine which is now in a full blown land war with Russia. He was impeached a second time for inciting insurrection. Treason is a capital crime in the US with the maximum penalty being death. I could go on here, but you watch the news.
Bill Clinton lied about getting a blowjob from an intern in court.
Bill Clinton's impeachment was more destructive to the left than both of Trumps.
There is a moral imbalance between both political factions in the US. The right will constantly forgive rape, child marriage, murder, race wars, blasphemy, and so much more. They will dogpile on their own people pretty much only if they are gay, anti-gun, or pro-choice. As long as you avoid those 3 you can do quite a lot.
The left will dogpile on their own people for not being vegan enough.
It's really important to hold people to high standards. But it's equally important to recognize that we are all human, imperfect, and capable of doing shitty things. That freedom for others to fail opens up a freedom for us, you, me to fail. You are allowed to fuck up and still be a good human. You don't need to be perfect, and our heroes shouldn't have to be either.
The drama around Hasan is that commenters are saying he uses a shock collar on his dog. I don't like shock collars or choke collars. I think they are inhumane.
The video people are circulating is enough to be suspicious, but it honestly would not hold up in court, because everything that everyone is saying is speculative. Hasan showed the collar later showing that it had no prongs and he put it on vibrate.
The specific moment people are pointing to Hasan reached off screen so no one could see what he was doing.
I could get deeper into the shock collar lore here, but the reality is that there is not enough information.
You as a viewer have to say "Is there enough information here for me to without a doubt decide that this person is shocking their dog?" If the answer is yes then you don't have to read any further. You have your mind made up and that is fine. If your answer is no, you then have to look at everything that everyone is saying.
Saying he did shock his dog is speculation. Saying he didn't is also speculation. No one knows. And that is the reality of your relationship with most public figures.
You don't know them. You have no idea what they actually think or do off camera. But we all want to treat them like people who are exactly like us and think what we think. That's a poisonous way to think. You become reactionary, and you start to respond to petty drama around stupid things these people do.
I don't like shock collars, but I know 1000s of Republicans who wouldn't bat an eye at buying one if their dog was too rowdy.
We, as a leftist group of people, who are "non-carceral", meaning we don't believe in sending people to prison for every little transgression, have to find ways to move through controversy and drama as a community in a restorative way so that if someone who is the bulwark of a movement gets targeted by a smear campaign to undermine the core message of our movement which is that genocide is bad, that we can turn to that person who maybe did or didn't do a bad thing and say, we feel this way about _____, if you did it we don't agree, and moving forward maybe you can look at doing XY or Z instead of what you're currently doing, and address why you got to where you are now and how you can change.
These same things happen to other movement leaders. The Black Panthers were targeted with drugs. Martin Luther King Jr was targeted with women (he was a married pastor.) The list goes on.
And look, they're targeted with real drama and controversy. They are human. Sometimes our heroes will fall prey to targeted disinformation or seduction campaigns.
If we want our movement to survive, we have to stop tearing down people who are not perfect and start building them, and more importantly each other, ourselves, our communities, up.
Build up. Build up. Build up.
Keep going. Don't get distracted.
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