Billionaire pop star Rihanna breaks with the narrative in public comments, then punctuates her rebellion with an anti-woke t-shirt that says “Think While It’s Still Legal.” Bill Whittle argues this is a big dang deal because of who Rihanna is and who she reaches.
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20 replies on “Why Rihanna’s T-Shirt is a Big Dang Deal: Billionaire Pop Star Breaks with the Narrative”
Thanks, Bill, Steve and Scott! Yes, we get it! I love you guys!
Coercion:
Threat or use of punitive measures against states, groups, or individuals in order to force them to undertake or desist from specified actions.
In addition to the threat of or limited use of force (or both).
Coercion may entail economic sanctions, psychological pressures, and social ostracism.
The concept of coercion is not the same as persuasion, which entails getting another party to follow a particular course of action or behavior by appealing to the party’s reason and interests, as opposed to threatening or implying punitive measures.
Fascism: (some identifying characteristics)
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; people who won’t be coerced.
Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, slander and defamation of opposing views is very common.
Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Everyone in here already knows all those things. Who is it you think you’re posting that to? This isn’t FaceBook or YouTube so …
What’s your point?
I don’t know, ACTS. Based upon some conversations in other threads, I think you might admit that not ALL in here know all those things. Some may “know” the words but not grok them.
That being said, I also don’t follow the point of Stan’s post. Perhaps he will enlighten us.
While what you say is probably, sadly true re: other conversations… I kind of doubt that the above post is much assistance in the direction of overcoming that minor tragedy. It looks like a copy and paste job for the sake of filling space rather than to say anything relevant at all.
I hadn’t heard of ol’ Stanny Baby here until today, he replied to one of my posts saying that he thought Donald Trump “offended me”. Both a stupid thing to say and the wrong person to say it to. So I’m looking at the other things he has to say, to see if that was a fluke or a habit. He’s not batting 1000, that I can tell you (channeling the Big D with that last phrase – 🙂 )
One thing that makes statistics like “number of watches” not accurately report influence is repeat views. I imagine youtube does discount multiple views on the same device, at least within a certain time period but I doubt that 1/8 of the world’s population has seen her videos.
On the other hand, she is enormously popular and all of the rest of their points hold true.
Yeah, can’t go by the specific number of views, that’s for sure. People put that sort of thing on “repeat” and leave it run. I’m fairly sure that’s how “Baby Shark” got so many views, parents just left it running on repeat to keep their little darlings calmed below an acceptable level of crib anarchy and auditory terror.
So while a specific number might not be accurate, still the popularity reflected by a huge number of views is, as you say, an indicator even so.
I’d love to talk to this person, quietly and personally, now that she has found and understood the value of using her own very capable mind to independently evaluate and come to her own conclusions. Because I’m certain that she’s certain of things that are just not so. Now that “thinking before it’s illegal” is in her worldview there are a lot of thoughts that she would not be able to deny or ignore. A lot of facts and a ton of information that would ring true to any thinking person.
The left wants to stifle minds, deny speech and control thought with emotional, financial and social weapons. WE want to expand minds with more not less information, allow speech so we can debate openly and meet objections head on, and encourage thought because more thinking and less emoting is better for our cause.
She’s not only swam against the current, she’s dodged the nets and I’d love to help her and others like her to dodge a lot more of them.
She’s giving permission to the people who think highly of her to dodge those nets and saying you can do it and still be “cool” or “with it” or whatever the equivalent jargon of her generation is.
This kind of thing is cracks in the cloud cover that’s threatening to deluge this land. It is rays of light shining through.
I LOVE that statement. Think while it’s still legal. THIS is the message that needs to be printed on our coinage.
Again, hate to be the skeptic but IMO people either think or not. Whoever starts or stops based on a t-shirt slogan is lost cause.
OTOH if she were posing with some more direct acting message like ‘Put lying fauci to jail” or “Biden is a major fuckup” or “Masks don’t protect anyone from covid”, that might do some impact.
Anyone thinks that is in the cards?
Again, hate to be the one who has to spell out the obvious to you because you refuse to think things through. You don’t really think that much yourself, you just go until you hit the wall you wanted to hit anyway.
It’s not what the words of the slogan on the t-shirt say, it’s the fact that the t-shirt is a message and an indicator above and beyond the slogan written on it.
It’s not that this pop-star is going to convert millions to conservatism by wearing words on her t-shirt. That’s a very, very dull and dimwitted understanding even for you.
The t-shirt slogan isn’t the message, it’s the symptom. You completely missed the point. It appears to have gone right over your head without so much as disturbing a single hair.
It’s not what the t-shirt says. It’s the fact that this person, this type of person, would wear such a thing in the first place. On her person. In a public display. For everyone to see. Try not to be such a whiffle ball.
Now that you know that much, see if you can take it from there and actually think about it a little bit more. Maybe you’ll get a faint inkling to shine through the dark shroud you keep over your brains and understand what this is about. Instead of sitting on your high horse looking for reasons why other people are stupid when it’s you that’s exhibiting less than stellar intellect.
Trump was a great President, policy-wise, mostly. But he’s a real dick as a person. I know what most are going to say and I agree, it’s the policy not the personality that matters.
Obviously enough people don’t agree with that attitude though.
It’s just our “luck” as conservatives to finally get someone in the White House who is anxious to implement many conservative policies and it turns out his personality isn’t suited to the job even though his intellect more than makes up for the fact that he’s a dick.
Don’t fool yourself, don’t be naïve. The Left will attack from any quarter they think will be successful. If it’s policy they’ll do their best to slag your policies. If it’s personality that’s even better. Being as the emotional aspect of personal popularity and charisma are so important to their side — Attacking Trump via that vector made their job easy.
What we need is someone with the policy orientation of Trump and Reagan with the pop culture appeal and charisma of Barry Obama.
That’s why pop culture celebs wearing t-shirts that say “Think while it’s still legal” are very, very important. That person would vote for someone like I just described and bring a lot of other votes with them.
This is why Bill Whittle has been harping for years that we need to get a handle on the pop culture TOO. It just isn’t enough to have the best ideology and policy orientation, some people are either blind to that or they just don’t care. They’re not going to listen as long as the people whose lives they admire are not on our side. Yes, that’s a numpty-headed stupid approach to policies but it also happens to be factual reality. Ignoring factual reality is also a numpty-headed stupid approach.
There are those of us that think his personality is exactly what is needed… enough mealy mouthed self important rock stars… a New York bare knuckles business man who doesn’t take crap from anyone… pity that offends you.
it didn’t offend me and I didn’t say it did. It takes a lot more than that to offend me. What an absurd thing to say.
You might like his personality and that’s fine, then I wasn’t talking about you, was I?
No, I wasn’t.
In fact there were things about his personality that I liked as much as you appear to. Your indignant BS does not impress me even a tiny bit.
There are others who shoot straight and speak plain truth too. They don’t do things like make fools of themselves with their cell phones. They didn’t have cell phones back then but I’m absolutely certain that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t have made himself look sophomoric on his if he had one.
I didn’t really care that Trump made a fool of himself with his phone, except the awkwardness of him embarrassing himself now and then. Which he absolutely did no matter how much you admire his “bare knuckles”. Knuckles I might add that have never seen contact at high velocity with a human face..
He also managed to do the opposite fairly often, like standing up to the media very firmly. I loved the way he treated CNN and how he made “fake news” a national label applied to them and other outlets like them.
Like I said, it was his policies that were important to me. Not his personality. It’s not at all that his personality “offended me”. I wasn’t talking about me, or you. It appears your reading comprehension is a trifle weak.
Maybe you should re-read what I wrote again and park your self-righteous outrage outside while you do that.
The way Trump acted often gave our enemies a weapon to use against him. Which they did. To great effect. Devastatingly. One aspect of which is, despite the vote cheating and election fraud, it drove one hell of a lot of people to the polls to vote against him.
In doing that, Donald J. Trump, whom I liked a lot as POTUS and very badly wanted to see re-elected CONTRIBUTED TO HIS OWN DEFEAT AND PUT THIS COUNTRY IN THE HANDS OF EVIL PEOPLE WHO DO OFFEND ME.
Which is a damnably stupid thing to do. Not all of the reason we have a puppet potato in the Oval Office today is due to election problems. Donald Trump owns a percentage of that because he just could not contain himself and ran his big freakin’ mouth in ways that hurt him. And us. He could have run his big freakin’ mouth in ways that didn’t hurt him or us but he couldn’t control himself. He should have given that damn phone to a witty writer on staff and said “I want to say ____, make it burn real good without giving the other side any ammunition”.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to see all that and … If you don’t realize that then you’re not terribly bright either.
Got any more absurdities you feel you need to get your cheeks all foamed up about, Sport? ‘Cause there’s some bare knuckled truths for you. Go ahead and be offended all you like..
Yeah, but was she wearing that T-Shirt in the song video.
Let’s see how viscously The Radical Left comes after Rihanna. Anyonr remember the sheer terror that Kanye put into them a few years back when he left The Democrat Plantation?
Personally I hope they tear into her like a school of piranha. Then I hope she fights back like a momma tiger and it all gets splashed all over the pop culture media.
Looking at that pic, she looks like she just might be the type to stick up for herself. I hope she is and if so, good for her.
I haven’t kept track, and don’t care enough to check, but this might be the same musician gal that had a friend of a friend with side effects and posting about them got her some flack. Whether it is or isn’t, I would bet with you and ACTS that she is the kind of person to fight back and fire from her hill will be more accurate and light up the night more than sharper shots from our bunkers.
That was Nikke Minaj, but both seem to have the fight in them
How could YouTube, FaceBook, and Twitter allow such a T-Shirt to slip to the masses?