Nancy Mace ( who I also heard was dick -addled) blamed Joe Biden's infrastructure act. Too much money was spent on green energy rather than infrastructure. I guess you never had to worry about that with Trump.
In no particular order nor any interest in being particularly coherent (which actually trackes with today's subject))
Tracking, maybe coincidentally, as BLOTUS grows even more unhinged in the way that no sane person should expect it to act otherwise, the insane wing of the GOP and its enablers, both politicians and media, they, too, grow yet more insane, detached from reality and sensibility and, if possible, even more empathy deprived. (Yes, irony; I have just, like four molecules for empathy for the motherfucking scu-- oh, shit, I just channelled Lee Papa.)
And other than the fact that many if not all vote, who gives a shit about them? Again, I don't, sorry.
And expecting any sympathy from today's chickenshit Republican is whatchacall a mug's game.
Similarly, expecting anything positive from a fascist party, which the GOP always been but now much more closer to the goal, is ditto a mug's game.
But two important point all media are missing:
But for the commies and POC invaders at the border from no nations speaking no language ever known to man as well as Soros, unshaven lesbians, Jews, and all the ones I can't remember, BLOTUS would have had that infrastructure week and barriers around the FSKB's supports would have ben built. And Covid and insufficient white Xian men, meanwhile, prevented necessary maintenance on the freighter. (Just to break the snark, freighters have gotten magnitudes bigger since the bridge went up.)
All that said, I pin everything here on deliberate sabotage by Baltimore's new resident (you know who), fueled by his hatred of everything good about this great nation as discussed above.
Did I say fuck those people (figuratively, of course).
Most of these people hear the word “city” and immediately think…well, we all know what they think. Since it’s Baltimore, they likely believe the entire city is populated by Stringer Bell clones slinging dope. And blaming the mayor is just the height of outlandishness – as if he was supposed to magically anticipate the crash and stand on the bridge like Gandalf, yelling “you shall not pass” at the cargo ship. But the mayor is the same color as Stringer Bell so, you know, obvious DEI involvement somehow.
As I said the other day, the complete lack of any rationality or logic is a feature not a bug of the modern day conservative movement. It’s a flex, it’s fascism 101. It’s saying we have harnessed the rage, resentment, and bigotry of a group of voters so completely, we can tell them the reason their roof leaks is because of Black people or immigrants and they’ll believe us.
The “drug-addled” part was particularly dumb, since I’m fairly certain crew members are drug tested, and not just pre-hire and post-incident like most places; random testing like airline pilots and crane operators.
Republican policy proposals used to ignore all the people who would be hurt if they were enacted. Now their proposals are all about the people they would hurt. Because hurting them is the point.
When I discussed the bridge with my Rightwing boss, the very first thing out of his mouth was "Do you think it was terrorists?" Even at that very early point, it was already known that the ship had suffered electrical failures, and its crew had sent out mayday calls to alert the bridge crew to shut the span to traffic before the ship hit it. So I pointed all that out, and noted that terrorists don't usually warn their potential victims to get out of the way. "Oh" was all he said.
But I'm sure he and the rest of the Right are all convinced that if it wasn't terrorists, it was Joe Biden's infrastructure or the Blacks who live in Baltimore or the Guatemalans who were filling in potholes on the bridge who are responsible for this. There was even a post on Xitter yesterday talking about how Biden made sure the bridge was built without structural safeguards--even though the bridge was built in 1977.
It should be probably go without saying that this sort of rhetoric from amongst the Trumpies is in the same mould as Nazi propaganda blaming the Other of their choice (often Jewish people but also socialists) for any disaster or crime or whatever that needed blaming.
Like Peter Venkeman regards science as a dodge, or a hustle, so too do modern conservatives regard empathy. They attack it viciously as weakness whenever anyone tries to use it in a socially positive manner, and then they turn around and weaponize it when it suits them, as with Kavenaugh sobbing about all the things he would never be able to do now while his pretty barracuda of a female law clerk smirked behind him through the cum on her lips, or like Kyle Rittenhouse having hysterics on the witness stand about how scared he was when protesters with placards walked right up to his AR-15 barrel. Empathy is a terrible thing when it might benefit The Other -- it's weak, it doesn't work any more, no matter what that hippie Jesus might have once said. But when some vestige of accountability looms for one of them, hear come the waterworks.
It's like John Turturro in MILLER'S CROSSING -- he's all "look into your heart" when the gun is pointed at him, but he's kicking you in the face and sneering "Tommy, what were you gonna do even if you caught me, I'd just squirt a few and you'd let me go" when he's back on his feet again. (This is an inapt comparison, as a bit later he's under the gun again and once more drops to his knees to 'squirt a few' and in response Tommy blows his head off. Would that the Democratic Party had the same capacity
I have to agree with the conclusion that the MAGA ethos is basically a death cult. Whether irrational fear of death or wishing death on innocent and undeserving people, that’s what motivates these sickos. It’s no accident that they are emotionally attached to the widespread version of Christianity that obsesses over the crucifixion of their central figure and the parts of the New Testament that promise eternal agony to those who are not favored by the spiritual figment of their fevered outlook. I mean, the symbol of their freakin’ faith is an instrument of torture unto death.
It used to take cranking this stuff out by mimeo. Social media makes it too easy, so now malevolent BS follows any event at the blink of an eye. The fire at Notre-Dame was in distant Paris, yet millions of US diner patrons promptly knew mooslim terrorists were responsible.
Baltimore's an instant signifier, easily fit into the DEI panic. The right's goal has long been killing off empathy, and everything's an opportunity for that. I haven't seen it so far, but there's sure to be abuse of the undocumented road workers beyond their deaths.
Soon after the collapse I heard from a friend in the area who experienced an initial panic about accounting for family members. Her daughter drove home from a late shift after news of the collision, but her son had used the bridge within an hour of the event. This is someone I grew up with, who I know to be as kind as can be. But there are times I have to get email about some FB crap she gets influenced by, and worse wing-nut stuff she hears via her husband. In this case it's not a hoax, but huge local news, and an event the family's in proximity to. A friend of the daughter's is a port employee who's filed for unemployment. There's concern about possible hazardous cargo recovery. There will be no shortage of opportunists using the disaster for the usual purposes, but I feel a bit encouraged that working class local normies are focusing on reality.
Damn woke bridge jumped in the way of that beautiful cargo ship hired exclusively by the BLOTUS* to ferry alla his own personal notsecretnotpublicmineMineMINE! papers to a safe place like Russia where the papers are all free and very good people are fighting the nazijewishisisterrorsatanists so his papers can stay protected and secure and sharable whenever free market capitalism requires it.
Feel free to share this demonstrably amazingly true post wherever fine bibles and basketball shoes are mongered.
"As I’ve said many times, American conservatism doesn’t have anything resembling principles or policies anymore. On social matters, for example, they tend to pick whatever seems the most male-white-supremacist option, and they don’t think hard about where that will take them..."
Well, say what you will about male-white supremacism, but at least it's a principle. A stupid principle, but a principle.
Seriously, though, this is a consequence of prizing ideological consistency and conformity over everything else. In the MAGA world, there are no accidents. To admit to the existence of accidents is an abdication of moral responsibility in favor of all the ideological trimmers and "pragmatists" who weaken the intellectual and moral rigor necessary for standing on principle, a requirement for the good life, in the interests of the Powers That Be. Everything has a reasonable explanation. Thus the popularity of conspiracy theories; they are the refuge of the powerless against the Powers That Be.
Also, in the MAGA world, weakness is cowardice, and cowardice is failure, and failure is the cardinal sin. One must remain strong when standing against the Powers That Be, as one has to all the time to lead a good life. One must never give in, or be seen as doing anything that might be interpreted as giving in.
That is why empathy is rejected. People outside your ideological group are to blame for whatever happened to them, even if it seems like an accident. Anything else is a violation of moral responsibility. Only people within your ideological group are worthy of empathy, because only they have the knowledge and gumption to know who else to blame. And to blame--to criticize--is the paradigmatic moral act.
So, how did they get so inhumane? I blame forty-odd years of unfiltered and exclusive consumption of Hollywood action movies, a technical situation that makes 24-7 immersion in one's favored forms of entertainment possible without any input from the outside world, and a critical discourse that regards them as the unique sources of contemporary moral and political insight. You have your hero with integrity to burn standing up against the conspiracies of the Powers That Be and invariably winning, and it's all set against the background of the (post)modern world so it can seem incredibly sociopolitically relevant in the way, say, Westerns are not. And they see themselves in such heroes, because they don't see any other way of being.
(Couldn't they lower themselves to at least watch a rom-com once in a while?)
It doesn't help that an awful lot of sociopolitical criticism, even of the most highbrow type (e.g. Christopher Lasch), adopts the same stance towards the current situation. You always have the social critic with integrity to burn who has staked his reputation on standing on some principle or other in the face of the depredations of the Powers That Be, and who never admits to any internal struggles with his principles or even any amusement with his situation. And you always have the same denunciations of "moral irresponsibility", of "radical evil", of "complicity", even if the ostensible subject is something so ultimately trivial as postwar American classical-music style. I grew up with that bullshit, and I tell you I'm sick and tired of professors at top American universites who probably haven't even handled a gun in their lives making like every little article they publish makes them into fucking Will Kane in High Noon.
(Couldn't they lower themselves to at least watch a screwball comedy once in a great while?)
So the MAGA folks have friends (or at least models) in high places. It's a very seductive way of being, and it's one that dominates American sociopolitical culture. You don't need to be smart, and you certainly don't need to be funny; either of those could make you realize that things don't have to be like this, and that's death to the current American sociopolitical culture. Better to stick to the macho conspiracy theories you grew up with.
On a blog I frequent, they put up an article about this only a few hours after the event itself. It quickly became a dark-but-fun challenge among the commenters to imagine and put forward the most ridiculous (hateful, racist, conspiracist, impossible - take your pick) wingnut fever-dream responses.
But, of course, the actual takes from the right are much worse. Light parody has a hard time reconciling with the sickness in these peoples’ souls.
Matt Schlapp called them “drug-addled”
I consider Matt Schlapp " dick-addled."
Nancy Mace ( who I also heard was dick -addled) blamed Joe Biden's infrastructure act. Too much money was spent on green energy rather than infrastructure. I guess you never had to worry about that with Trump.
their lives are shit, and they want everyone else's to be shit.
In no particular order nor any interest in being particularly coherent (which actually trackes with today's subject))
Tracking, maybe coincidentally, as BLOTUS grows even more unhinged in the way that no sane person should expect it to act otherwise, the insane wing of the GOP and its enablers, both politicians and media, they, too, grow yet more insane, detached from reality and sensibility and, if possible, even more empathy deprived. (Yes, irony; I have just, like four molecules for empathy for the motherfucking scu-- oh, shit, I just channelled Lee Papa.)
And other than the fact that many if not all vote, who gives a shit about them? Again, I don't, sorry.
And expecting any sympathy from today's chickenshit Republican is whatchacall a mug's game.
Similarly, expecting anything positive from a fascist party, which the GOP always been but now much more closer to the goal, is ditto a mug's game.
But two important point all media are missing:
But for the commies and POC invaders at the border from no nations speaking no language ever known to man as well as Soros, unshaven lesbians, Jews, and all the ones I can't remember, BLOTUS would have had that infrastructure week and barriers around the FSKB's supports would have ben built. And Covid and insufficient white Xian men, meanwhile, prevented necessary maintenance on the freighter. (Just to break the snark, freighters have gotten magnitudes bigger since the bridge went up.)
All that said, I pin everything here on deliberate sabotage by Baltimore's new resident (you know who), fueled by his hatred of everything good about this great nation as discussed above.
Did I say fuck those people (figuratively, of course).
Most of these people hear the word “city” and immediately think…well, we all know what they think. Since it’s Baltimore, they likely believe the entire city is populated by Stringer Bell clones slinging dope. And blaming the mayor is just the height of outlandishness – as if he was supposed to magically anticipate the crash and stand on the bridge like Gandalf, yelling “you shall not pass” at the cargo ship. But the mayor is the same color as Stringer Bell so, you know, obvious DEI involvement somehow.
As I said the other day, the complete lack of any rationality or logic is a feature not a bug of the modern day conservative movement. It’s a flex, it’s fascism 101. It’s saying we have harnessed the rage, resentment, and bigotry of a group of voters so completely, we can tell them the reason their roof leaks is because of Black people or immigrants and they’ll believe us.
The “drug-addled” part was particularly dumb, since I’m fairly certain crew members are drug tested, and not just pre-hire and post-incident like most places; random testing like airline pilots and crane operators.
Republican policy proposals used to ignore all the people who would be hurt if they were enacted. Now their proposals are all about the people they would hurt. Because hurting them is the point.
When I discussed the bridge with my Rightwing boss, the very first thing out of his mouth was "Do you think it was terrorists?" Even at that very early point, it was already known that the ship had suffered electrical failures, and its crew had sent out mayday calls to alert the bridge crew to shut the span to traffic before the ship hit it. So I pointed all that out, and noted that terrorists don't usually warn their potential victims to get out of the way. "Oh" was all he said.
But I'm sure he and the rest of the Right are all convinced that if it wasn't terrorists, it was Joe Biden's infrastructure or the Blacks who live in Baltimore or the Guatemalans who were filling in potholes on the bridge who are responsible for this. There was even a post on Xitter yesterday talking about how Biden made sure the bridge was built without structural safeguards--even though the bridge was built in 1977.
It should be probably go without saying that this sort of rhetoric from amongst the Trumpies is in the same mould as Nazi propaganda blaming the Other of their choice (often Jewish people but also socialists) for any disaster or crime or whatever that needed blaming.
Like Peter Venkeman regards science as a dodge, or a hustle, so too do modern conservatives regard empathy. They attack it viciously as weakness whenever anyone tries to use it in a socially positive manner, and then they turn around and weaponize it when it suits them, as with Kavenaugh sobbing about all the things he would never be able to do now while his pretty barracuda of a female law clerk smirked behind him through the cum on her lips, or like Kyle Rittenhouse having hysterics on the witness stand about how scared he was when protesters with placards walked right up to his AR-15 barrel. Empathy is a terrible thing when it might benefit The Other -- it's weak, it doesn't work any more, no matter what that hippie Jesus might have once said. But when some vestige of accountability looms for one of them, hear come the waterworks.
It's like John Turturro in MILLER'S CROSSING -- he's all "look into your heart" when the gun is pointed at him, but he's kicking you in the face and sneering "Tommy, what were you gonna do even if you caught me, I'd just squirt a few and you'd let me go" when he's back on his feet again. (This is an inapt comparison, as a bit later he's under the gun again and once more drops to his knees to 'squirt a few' and in response Tommy blows his head off. Would that the Democratic Party had the same capacity
to learn from its experience as Tom Regan.)
Xwitter was also serving up a heaping helping of homophobia. Let me escort you into the mushy brain pan of a MAGA.
planes, ships, bridges = transportation
Secretary of Transportation = Buttigieg
Buttigieg = the gay
I think you see what I'm getting at.
I have to agree with the conclusion that the MAGA ethos is basically a death cult. Whether irrational fear of death or wishing death on innocent and undeserving people, that’s what motivates these sickos. It’s no accident that they are emotionally attached to the widespread version of Christianity that obsesses over the crucifixion of their central figure and the parts of the New Testament that promise eternal agony to those who are not favored by the spiritual figment of their fevered outlook. I mean, the symbol of their freakin’ faith is an instrument of torture unto death.
It seems that their default autoimmune response to, well, everything, is batshit-crazy hate/rage. A sad and wasteful way to live one's life.
It used to take cranking this stuff out by mimeo. Social media makes it too easy, so now malevolent BS follows any event at the blink of an eye. The fire at Notre-Dame was in distant Paris, yet millions of US diner patrons promptly knew mooslim terrorists were responsible.
Baltimore's an instant signifier, easily fit into the DEI panic. The right's goal has long been killing off empathy, and everything's an opportunity for that. I haven't seen it so far, but there's sure to be abuse of the undocumented road workers beyond their deaths.
Soon after the collapse I heard from a friend in the area who experienced an initial panic about accounting for family members. Her daughter drove home from a late shift after news of the collision, but her son had used the bridge within an hour of the event. This is someone I grew up with, who I know to be as kind as can be. But there are times I have to get email about some FB crap she gets influenced by, and worse wing-nut stuff she hears via her husband. In this case it's not a hoax, but huge local news, and an event the family's in proximity to. A friend of the daughter's is a port employee who's filed for unemployment. There's concern about possible hazardous cargo recovery. There will be no shortage of opportunists using the disaster for the usual purposes, but I feel a bit encouraged that working class local normies are focusing on reality.
Damn woke bridge jumped in the way of that beautiful cargo ship hired exclusively by the BLOTUS* to ferry alla his own personal notsecretnotpublicmineMineMINE! papers to a safe place like Russia where the papers are all free and very good people are fighting the nazijewishisisterrorsatanists so his papers can stay protected and secure and sharable whenever free market capitalism requires it.
Feel free to share this demonstrably amazingly true post wherever fine bibles and basketball shoes are mongered.
"As I’ve said many times, American conservatism doesn’t have anything resembling principles or policies anymore. On social matters, for example, they tend to pick whatever seems the most male-white-supremacist option, and they don’t think hard about where that will take them..."
Well, say what you will about male-white supremacism, but at least it's a principle. A stupid principle, but a principle.
Seriously, though, this is a consequence of prizing ideological consistency and conformity over everything else. In the MAGA world, there are no accidents. To admit to the existence of accidents is an abdication of moral responsibility in favor of all the ideological trimmers and "pragmatists" who weaken the intellectual and moral rigor necessary for standing on principle, a requirement for the good life, in the interests of the Powers That Be. Everything has a reasonable explanation. Thus the popularity of conspiracy theories; they are the refuge of the powerless against the Powers That Be.
Also, in the MAGA world, weakness is cowardice, and cowardice is failure, and failure is the cardinal sin. One must remain strong when standing against the Powers That Be, as one has to all the time to lead a good life. One must never give in, or be seen as doing anything that might be interpreted as giving in.
That is why empathy is rejected. People outside your ideological group are to blame for whatever happened to them, even if it seems like an accident. Anything else is a violation of moral responsibility. Only people within your ideological group are worthy of empathy, because only they have the knowledge and gumption to know who else to blame. And to blame--to criticize--is the paradigmatic moral act.
So, how did they get so inhumane? I blame forty-odd years of unfiltered and exclusive consumption of Hollywood action movies, a technical situation that makes 24-7 immersion in one's favored forms of entertainment possible without any input from the outside world, and a critical discourse that regards them as the unique sources of contemporary moral and political insight. You have your hero with integrity to burn standing up against the conspiracies of the Powers That Be and invariably winning, and it's all set against the background of the (post)modern world so it can seem incredibly sociopolitically relevant in the way, say, Westerns are not. And they see themselves in such heroes, because they don't see any other way of being.
(Couldn't they lower themselves to at least watch a rom-com once in a while?)
It doesn't help that an awful lot of sociopolitical criticism, even of the most highbrow type (e.g. Christopher Lasch), adopts the same stance towards the current situation. You always have the social critic with integrity to burn who has staked his reputation on standing on some principle or other in the face of the depredations of the Powers That Be, and who never admits to any internal struggles with his principles or even any amusement with his situation. And you always have the same denunciations of "moral irresponsibility", of "radical evil", of "complicity", even if the ostensible subject is something so ultimately trivial as postwar American classical-music style. I grew up with that bullshit, and I tell you I'm sick and tired of professors at top American universites who probably haven't even handled a gun in their lives making like every little article they publish makes them into fucking Will Kane in High Noon.
(Couldn't they lower themselves to at least watch a screwball comedy once in a great while?)
So the MAGA folks have friends (or at least models) in high places. It's a very seductive way of being, and it's one that dominates American sociopolitical culture. You don't need to be smart, and you certainly don't need to be funny; either of those could make you realize that things don't have to be like this, and that's death to the current American sociopolitical culture. Better to stick to the macho conspiracy theories you grew up with.
Great analysis, Roy!
On a blog I frequent, they put up an article about this only a few hours after the event itself. It quickly became a dark-but-fun challenge among the commenters to imagine and put forward the most ridiculous (hateful, racist, conspiracist, impossible - take your pick) wingnut fever-dream responses.
But, of course, the actual takes from the right are much worse. Light parody has a hard time reconciling with the sickness in these peoples’ souls.