Reading above about Greg Kelly and the people who want to believe (instead of dealing with facts and stuff), this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis? All that slippery slope stuff of believing lies and letting the bad act go till the next bad act then rinse/repeat.
As for all the fine people of the heartland, well, it's not just commuters clogging Grand Central but the despicable tourists.
Speaking of which, shortly after my back thing got fixed by two rounds of acupuncture and I was off the cane, I'm in GCT taking the child to their shrink. We see all the tourists and I say to the child that next time my back goes bad, instead of a cane, I'm going to use a baseball so I can use it on the tourists there. To which the child replied: "That's the smartest thing you ever said".
As for Fun City, born in Queens, moved to Manhattan in 77, when side streets weren't so safe after dark. (Speaking of 77: Was staying in the West 80s at the time of the blackout. Broadway in that area was super desolate, no riots and looting in the area. FWIW.) Yes, dangerous and fun, a goddam great place to be young.
Moved to a northern burb when pushing forty, continued to work in New York right up till the pandemic. Still consider myself a New Yorker because a) living there isn't per se a requirement and b) once a New Yorker always a New Yorker. Which is to say the conservatives that have beaten up on the city since eternity can go fuck themselves.
What! Standing in line at U-Haul -- people standing in line in NYC!!! When has THAT ever happened before?
Yeah, I suppose we could point out that the end of July and end of August have always been the peak moving-to-new-apartments periods in the city, but why bother? The only thing they didn’t add is This Is Joe Biden’s America, skipping over the part where he’s not, you know, actually the President.
"burned out hulks of cars along the Belt Parkway" which is not in Manhattan. Hmmm . . .
Yeah, it's looking like the coming civil strife in America will be conservatives trying to pit rural folks against city people. I have no idea how this plays out, and neither do they beyond "we'll show those city slickers what's what!"
I ventured into the Robert twitter thread and skipping by the thrilling Robertesque catastrophe responses are some comments (in addition to yours) that made me cheer.
"...next thing you know there'll be DELICIOUS TACOS everywhere, it's a slippery slope..."
"...Are you going to threaten me with universal health care next?"
Get the people in rural America fired up about the hellscape of "Democrat cities" - don't they have any new ones? Or do they think that still works? It's easy to scare white people about black ones they never actually meet (or even see).
So let's see. They hate L.A. and "Hollywood," because it's populated by people who understand what fantasy is, and how to create it (with skill, and for profit), as opposed to their imitation, cosplay lives of "militias," "re-enactments," "Rahowa," and etc. They hate San Francisco because it's a place where people really do exercise the kind of "freedom" they purport to revere but which, when they encounter it, makes them insecure, frightened, and resentful. They hate Boston because it's snooty and intellectual, onto which they project their own opinions of themselves as common and ignorant. And they hate NYC because it's liberal, glamorous, successful, thriving, and cool, as opposed to...well, you get the idea.
This summer's protests are hardly reaching the levels of destruction of the Rodney King riots, but I read what Rod Dreher wrote...
"You just get so sick of these people and their filthy mouths, and their berserk screaming at people. You get sick of the pornification of the public square, and the degeneration of civil standards. Sometimes you have to use violence to preserve order."
...and part of me wants to see someone break a bottle over his head and kick him once or twice in the gut.
By nature, I am a pessimist, but even with that general mentality, I've been particularly depressed looking forward to the future. I don't see how America comes out of this election with any kind of stability. Mail-in ballots aren't going to be counted and polling places will be closed, Trump will either win or sow doubt about the results (maybe both), and the Republican party that gave up any kind of platform except "Trump good, Non-Trump bad" will not participate in a functioning government or society. Throw in on-going historic unemployment levels and a lethal pandemic that a large chunk of the population is not willing to help alleviate, and we're just royally fucked.
A business in Long Island called Montauk Brewery had the audacity of offering the softest support for first responders *and* black lives. This is America, so I think you can guess what happened next. A cop and his real estate wife (I'm going to make an assumption that they were both assholes in high school) formed a Facebook group opposing the business (conservatives used to support small businesses back when they had any kind of platform that wasn't based on grievance and malice).
In any event, I had the misfortune of reading through the comments on one of Montauk's instagram posts. You get the garden variety stuff like "BLM is a hate group," but did you know that BLM also supports pedophilia? I don't know what happened in the past year or two, but these fucking nut jobs have become OBSESSED with pedophiles. Since these people notoriously project their own failures on others, it makes me wonder what is really going on with the right wing zealots these days.
Anyway, I know America has survived some awful stuff, but it just doesn't feel great right now.
Jack Kelly at Forbes seems to have a permanent gig doing articles about New Yorkers "fleeing the city in droves". Here he is from a year ago with the exact same bullshit:
Kelly was lying his ass off back then, too, claiming that "One million people have fled New York City and the tri-state area... in the last nine years." Besides this not even being about New York City, he was off by one million people -- the metro area actually gained population in that period.
I grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn. To us kids in the 60's and 70's, Canarsie was almost Long Island. A trip to Manhattan was indeed referred to as "going into 'the City,'" but there was nothing ominous, dark or menacing about it -- it was fucking thrilling, and something we did all the time. Needless to say, Kelly's list of "dystopian" neighborhoods were all predominantly minority areas. He's one of a breed of racist New York old-timer I still run into for whom the city was a paradise right up until they let you-know-who move into white neighborhoods.
Do these people wake up in the morning and ask themselves "What can I lie about today?"
Growing up in Brighton Beach in the '60s and '70s, just a bike ride away from Canarsie (which I often did as youngster, riding the great bike path that ran along, you guessed it, Belt Parkway), the only thing I remember worrying about was the polluted waters of Plum Beach (my brother claimed it was radioactive, but he may have been exaggerating a tad bit). I recall riding the subways late at night with my older sister, after seeing a Broadway (when the plebes could afford it) or Off-Broadway show and somehow managing to avoid being knifed, shot or mugged. I mean, sure, crime was bad then, overall, but it was never the hellscape that people remember, and it's gotten much better since. A pandemic will tend to make people desperate, though.
Slightly off-topic, but some kid from Portland was biking past the crowds leaving the RNC when he got sucker-punched by an asshole named Eric Metaxas. Of course, the kid was the one questioned by the cops afterwards. But the best thing about it was this: >>“Sometimes you have to use violence to preserve order,” Christian writer and Metaxas friend Rod Dreher wrote in a blog post.<< https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-ally-eric-metaxas-allegedly-punched-protester-after-white-house-speech?ref=wrap
These Republican reports from the front are great news—they’ve got me monitoring Zillow. The minute 7th Ave drops to early ‘90s pricing, I’m buying. (The joke here is, I’ll be waiting forever.)
This vaguely reminds me of a Maxine Hong Kingston character who notes how often 'Orientals' in Hollywood movies commit suicide may be taken for wishful thinking on the part of the white unconscious.
Reading above about Greg Kelly and the people who want to believe (instead of dealing with facts and stuff), this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis? All that slippery slope stuff of believing lies and letting the bad act go till the next bad act then rinse/repeat.
As for all the fine people of the heartland, well, it's not just commuters clogging Grand Central but the despicable tourists.
Speaking of which, shortly after my back thing got fixed by two rounds of acupuncture and I was off the cane, I'm in GCT taking the child to their shrink. We see all the tourists and I say to the child that next time my back goes bad, instead of a cane, I'm going to use a baseball so I can use it on the tourists there. To which the child replied: "That's the smartest thing you ever said".
As for Fun City, born in Queens, moved to Manhattan in 77, when side streets weren't so safe after dark. (Speaking of 77: Was staying in the West 80s at the time of the blackout. Broadway in that area was super desolate, no riots and looting in the area. FWIW.) Yes, dangerous and fun, a goddam great place to be young.
Moved to a northern burb when pushing forty, continued to work in New York right up till the pandemic. Still consider myself a New Yorker because a) living there isn't per se a requirement and b) once a New Yorker always a New Yorker. Which is to say the conservatives that have beaten up on the city since eternity can go fuck themselves.
What! Standing in line at U-Haul -- people standing in line in NYC!!! When has THAT ever happened before?
Yeah, I suppose we could point out that the end of July and end of August have always been the peak moving-to-new-apartments periods in the city, but why bother? The only thing they didn’t add is This Is Joe Biden’s America, skipping over the part where he’s not, you know, actually the President.
"burned out hulks of cars along the Belt Parkway" which is not in Manhattan. Hmmm . . .
Yeah, it's looking like the coming civil strife in America will be conservatives trying to pit rural folks against city people. I have no idea how this plays out, and neither do they beyond "we'll show those city slickers what's what!"
No matter how bad a mayor deBlasio may be, can you imagine him degenerating to Rudy Giuliani level batshittery?
'About the sad, sick country in which it’s embedded, I’m not so sure.'
That's the worry Roy.
I ventured into the Robert twitter thread and skipping by the thrilling Robertesque catastrophe responses are some comments (in addition to yours) that made me cheer.
"...next thing you know there'll be DELICIOUS TACOS everywhere, it's a slippery slope..."
"...Are you going to threaten me with universal health care next?"
Et cetera. Hang in there, allies.
Get the people in rural America fired up about the hellscape of "Democrat cities" - don't they have any new ones? Or do they think that still works? It's easy to scare white people about black ones they never actually meet (or even see).
I hear tell that people have recently moved from Arizona to California.
So let's see. They hate L.A. and "Hollywood," because it's populated by people who understand what fantasy is, and how to create it (with skill, and for profit), as opposed to their imitation, cosplay lives of "militias," "re-enactments," "Rahowa," and etc. They hate San Francisco because it's a place where people really do exercise the kind of "freedom" they purport to revere but which, when they encounter it, makes them insecure, frightened, and resentful. They hate Boston because it's snooty and intellectual, onto which they project their own opinions of themselves as common and ignorant. And they hate NYC because it's liberal, glamorous, successful, thriving, and cool, as opposed to...well, you get the idea.
That about right?
This summer's protests are hardly reaching the levels of destruction of the Rodney King riots, but I read what Rod Dreher wrote...
"You just get so sick of these people and their filthy mouths, and their berserk screaming at people. You get sick of the pornification of the public square, and the degeneration of civil standards. Sometimes you have to use violence to preserve order."
...and part of me wants to see someone break a bottle over his head and kick him once or twice in the gut.
By nature, I am a pessimist, but even with that general mentality, I've been particularly depressed looking forward to the future. I don't see how America comes out of this election with any kind of stability. Mail-in ballots aren't going to be counted and polling places will be closed, Trump will either win or sow doubt about the results (maybe both), and the Republican party that gave up any kind of platform except "Trump good, Non-Trump bad" will not participate in a functioning government or society. Throw in on-going historic unemployment levels and a lethal pandemic that a large chunk of the population is not willing to help alleviate, and we're just royally fucked.
A business in Long Island called Montauk Brewery had the audacity of offering the softest support for first responders *and* black lives. This is America, so I think you can guess what happened next. A cop and his real estate wife (I'm going to make an assumption that they were both assholes in high school) formed a Facebook group opposing the business (conservatives used to support small businesses back when they had any kind of platform that wasn't based on grievance and malice).
In any event, I had the misfortune of reading through the comments on one of Montauk's instagram posts. You get the garden variety stuff like "BLM is a hate group," but did you know that BLM also supports pedophilia? I don't know what happened in the past year or two, but these fucking nut jobs have become OBSESSED with pedophiles. Since these people notoriously project their own failures on others, it makes me wonder what is really going on with the right wing zealots these days.
Anyway, I know America has survived some awful stuff, but it just doesn't feel great right now.
Jack Kelly at Forbes seems to have a permanent gig doing articles about New Yorkers "fleeing the city in droves". Here he is from a year ago with the exact same bullshit:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/09/05/new-yorkers-are-leaving-the-city-in-droves-heres-why-theyre-moving-and-where-theyre-going/#63803a241ac5
And here's one Roy Edroso assassinating it at something called alicublog:
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2019/09/once-again-how-ya-gonna-keep-em-down-on.html
Kelly was lying his ass off back then, too, claiming that "One million people have fled New York City and the tri-state area... in the last nine years." Besides this not even being about New York City, he was off by one million people -- the metro area actually gained population in that period.
I grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn. To us kids in the 60's and 70's, Canarsie was almost Long Island. A trip to Manhattan was indeed referred to as "going into 'the City,'" but there was nothing ominous, dark or menacing about it -- it was fucking thrilling, and something we did all the time. Needless to say, Kelly's list of "dystopian" neighborhoods were all predominantly minority areas. He's one of a breed of racist New York old-timer I still run into for whom the city was a paradise right up until they let you-know-who move into white neighborhoods.
Do these people wake up in the morning and ask themselves "What can I lie about today?"
Growing up in Brighton Beach in the '60s and '70s, just a bike ride away from Canarsie (which I often did as youngster, riding the great bike path that ran along, you guessed it, Belt Parkway), the only thing I remember worrying about was the polluted waters of Plum Beach (my brother claimed it was radioactive, but he may have been exaggerating a tad bit). I recall riding the subways late at night with my older sister, after seeing a Broadway (when the plebes could afford it) or Off-Broadway show and somehow managing to avoid being knifed, shot or mugged. I mean, sure, crime was bad then, overall, but it was never the hellscape that people remember, and it's gotten much better since. A pandemic will tend to make people desperate, though.
Slightly off-topic, but some kid from Portland was biking past the crowds leaving the RNC when he got sucker-punched by an asshole named Eric Metaxas. Of course, the kid was the one questioned by the cops afterwards. But the best thing about it was this: >>“Sometimes you have to use violence to preserve order,” Christian writer and Metaxas friend Rod Dreher wrote in a blog post.<< https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-ally-eric-metaxas-allegedly-punched-protester-after-white-house-speech?ref=wrap
BTW I'm not getting email alerts since maybe a couple days before you went on vacation.
These Republican reports from the front are great news—they’ve got me monitoring Zillow. The minute 7th Ave drops to early ‘90s pricing, I’m buying. (The joke here is, I’ll be waiting forever.)
This vaguely reminds me of a Maxine Hong Kingston character who notes how often 'Orientals' in Hollywood movies commit suicide may be taken for wishful thinking on the part of the white unconscious.