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.
The best-built and maintained bridge in America wouldn't stand up to a fully loaded container ship plowing into it. Christ, these yobs are so "I heard something about something in the past so I'll use it as an attack". And their drooling audience remembers something vague about infrastructure and BIDEN EVIL and nods along.
You Goddam right inertia. Freaking asteroid impact in comparison to 'well this barge hit this bridge and it was OK'. Nothing survives that. No. No sir.
Please tell me you were saying that just to stir him up. A ship as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall, weighing 200,000-ish tons, traveling ONLY 9 miles per hour......
On the video you see a car pass the pier about 4-5 seconds before it hits. I want to interview THAT GUY. Did you see it? I mean, come on, it is higher than the bridge. Any trivial glance to the left and HOLY SHIT! Did he blissfully drive by, or was he hauling ass saying 'must go faster, must go faster'. I know I'd have noticed, and I know I would be trying to put my foot through the damn gas pedal.
In the series of books by Bernard Cornwall about Richard Sharpe, an English soldier in the Napoleonic wars, the battle scenes are stand out amazing. One of the things he points out is how the round shot would just go skipping across the field and would keep on rolling. After a while it would slow down to not very fast at all and the new soldiers, The ones that wouldn't know any better would try and stop it with their foot or reach down and catch it and subsequently lose a leg or an arm.
And if, objectively, their lives are not shit (i.e. after riding a long life of white male privilege into a comfy retirement), well, Tubby will convince them to look harder.
Ah, but at the same time they're the Winners, who have cracked the code and know how the world REALLY works and their success at inheriting a mid-sized roofing business means they know that correct answer to ALL questions but nobody will listen to them, dammit, which makes them furious.
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).
"speaking no language ever known to man" just cracks me up, because it's a thing Trump really did say in an attempt to scare people. '
And just to show what a fucked-up liberal idiot I am, when I hear two people speaking a language I can't immediately identify, I think, "Cool! I wonder what that is?" What's wrong with my amygdala that my initial reaction is NOT pants-shitting fear? How have I survived this long with such a broken "fight or flight" response?
To me, its a goddamn wonder that there are still people alive today speaking a close approximation to the language of the Mayans, despite all efforts to exterminate their language and culture. And that they would go through such an enormous effort and risk to enrich our country with this wondrous thing, I just think we could show a little more gratitude for that, is all.
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.
Ration, reason, and logic require effort, and a cultivated ability to think analytically. We often see Galbraith cited regarding conservatism being an ages old search for lucid seeming rationalizations of selfishness, and that's true enough, but part and parcel with that is the similar ongoing attempt to persuasively justify laziness and the embrace of emotion over thought. From Luke Skywalker shutting down his high tech scanner so he can revert to his mystically super powered intuition, to Nike's "Just do it", to Fox News' "truthiness", our pop culture is riddled and rotten with voices and tropes urging us to go with our gut, to not over think, (which means, not think at all) to forget about intellectualism and analysis, to trust our instincts. The people this trope appeals to are the people who follow Trump, and Trump always leads people along the path of least resistance... and mental effort.
For today's Republican bloviator, there's nothing more important than havin' a snappy comeback RIGHT NOW. It's a race for eyeballs, the bridge goes down and if you snooze, you lose. Say we don't know yet, maybe we should wait for more info? LOSER. Nah, gotta get goin' right outta the gate with whatever's in your head at the moment. That's where the bigotry comes in handy, provides a ready-made cast of villains, a pull-down menu they can quickly select from so they're the firstest with the worstest.
I honestly half believe they have a dart board with sections labeled "Black/brown people," "immigrants," "LGBT people," "feminists," "indoctrinated college students" "Soros," "liberals not otherwise specified" and they just throw a dart. Sometimes the group they are blaming has so little relationship to the precipitating event it feels that random.
Darts are too analog, how would we digitize this? I know, let's ask ChatGPT, "Please write me a conspiracy theory for why the bridge fell down." Nah, Woke Software filters out all the good stuff.
On the other hand, you may have heard that if you ask AI to generate images of Nazis, it'll make sure they're ethnically diverse. (Maybe they fixed that.)
Nazis were/are white, you say? Not in Trump's world! And Putin says a Nazi nation has a Jew Nazi president.
(Note to self -- request "Wartime Ukrainian Jew Nazi Comedian President" images.)
This is why I have no fear of an upcoming AIpocalypse. "Oh shit! You did exactly what I told you to do!" is a poster we bit-pushers put on our walls. Garbage in, garbage out.
Now you're getting it. They literally throw ideas against the media wall to see what sticks. The ones that stick (woke, trans, illegals) they hammer as if their very paychecks depend on it. There was an illuminating Xit from Chris Rufo the other day, bemoaning the inability of Xitter to focus (on his message of the day) and just sling shit. When you've lost the Bullshitter-in-Chief, you're really through the looking glass.
It's probably linked to both the 24-hour news cycle and to social media where the quickest interaction is the best. The scoop, the exclusive, the freshest hottest take.
Don't forget a fine American tradition of anti-intellectualism as well, going right back to jokes about simple farmers outsmarting stuffy city folk.
And fascism is all about emotions! There's no need for "proof" when you can convince people that feelings ARE truth. No *actual* invasion at the border? But I keep getting told there's one and it FEELS like there's one! (And that's the problem for the Dems - they're convinced they can still show people figures and statistics.)
As far as intuition - well, it has its place, but there has to be a balance between intellect and emotion, and you have to know when to apply each. That's the thing - life is complicated, and these dopes don't WANT it to be.
It's almost as if they seek someone to take care of things and simplify life, like a father figure perhaps, that tells them what to do and what to think and takes care of all the bad people all around. Almost as if....
"... we can tell them the reason their roof leaks is because of Black people or immigrants and they’ll believe us."
And for a double dose of irony (because irony is havin' a two-for-one sale today!) when you finally get around to hiring someone to fix that roof, WHO does the work?
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.
The ship is registered in Singapore, but dollars to donuts her hull has never entered the port of Singapore nor her many of her crew from that country (if any). Mercantile shipping hasn't changed that much since the early days of shipping empires.
Maritime shipping, more than most industries, is driven by tax-avoidance. I'm not an expert, but a shipping lawyer told me that when I was covering how a Norwegian shipping billionaire was able to keep control of his empire while washing it through bankruptcy.
If you've ever flown into Singapore, you've heard the chipper female voice announce "dear passengers, please be aware that the punishment for trafficking drugs is death." It's very disconcerting.
If'n a sedatively oversubscribed prole happens to fall against the power switch at just the wrong time then that is further proof of the efficacy of the free market. Insurance conquers all. Do not argue with me, peon.
Egg prices goin' through da roof because of a bird flu pandemic, guess we need more research into vaccines and tighter public-health regulation of the poultry industry, right? Nah, chalk it up to Bidenflation and move on.
Over on Heather's stack she pointed out a record $leventy-somethin' billion went through that port last year (a new record) but did not point out that value is based considerably upon the corporate price gouging hiding inside the covidy nightmare...
For any port like that, there is a local pilot that takes the ship out, a guy that knows the river like the back of his hand. He probably drove over the bridge to work that day. Drug-addled hell, he hollered the instant the ship's engines died. I expect it is fluent Baltimoreese and look forward to hearing it. Drug-addled is piss poor even for these lying assholes.
Blame the help, everyone knows they're lazy and are probably stealing the silver, and they're surly besides. Not like the good old days when you could have them horsewhipped.
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.
The second thing after asking if it was terrorism was to proclaim it a "false flag", reflexively. Just what such a staged bridge collapse would do isn't quite spelled out. It speaks to the learned helplessness of the MAGAt mind...
I'm seeing that all the bridge workers, guys filling potholes ob the bridge overnight, were all migrants, and some sources say all Mexican nationals.
I've been over that bridge and I hated it: there was a point where I could take the bridge or a tunnel, and I went the way a bad driver in front of me didn't go...
It's the whack-a-doo combination of "never let a crisis/tragedy go to waste" and the firm conviction that shit never just happens, somebody somewhere is always to blame. Conspiracy theories are exciting and addictive, Occam's Razor is boring.
And the explanation can't be Giant Container Ship. Just like the explanation for the Moscow terror attack can't be the well-know terrorist group that took credit for it. Where's the fun in that? If things are as they seem, then we're all equal, but if there's some SECRET reason, I can raise myself above the hoi-polloi, me and a few hundred thousand of my close friends on the internet, we're SPECIAL.
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.
The "whatever that needed blaming" is the entire point. Sadly, their lack of introspection blinds them to the obvious source of their own blamefulness – the parents, of course.
I am wearing out the parental-blame, I know, but what I like about it is when I tell those folks straight to their face they get even angrier, 'cause ain't no one 'llowed to trash talk Mama!
Of all the awful things about bad parenting -- and there are many -- the most depressing is the tendency to pass it on to one's children. Harm begets harm, generation after generation. (A process not limited to one's children, of course.) It's most depressing because no matter how awful the particulars are, they need not end with the culprit's death.
Viral reproduction of pathologies. The victim-cum-perpetrator who breaks the chain typically does so with difficulty. An epidemic of such breakages would save us all, as nothing else could, but what forces would fuel the happy fire?
... So let's try to be nice, alright? And try to have a nice day, in spite of my making things a bit worse by musing like this, first thing in the morning, instead of cracking a joke.
OK, Markie impressed. I knew Daws did it for a while (noticed again a couple of weeks ago- hell that one's practically Yogi) but I did not associate that with Mel's accident. Aha!
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.
Hmmm. Yeah. I bailed outta the cult by age 7 or 8 when it came clear to me that the whole thing was propped up by the sort of logic reserved for someone considerably younger than myself. Mom was devastated but resigned, and hid it well.
You are precocious! It took until high school for me to admit that the reason I couldn’t see heaven in the clear blue sky above wasn’t because it was so far away or hidden, but that it didn’t exist. At least, not in that physical way. It may exist as an internal spiritual conscienceness, but imposing a physical mode on that is absurd.
Young, yes, but restive. Later on I probly wasted a year wandering around inside other versions of nirvana-quest, just to see what was on offer. I won't say here that it was all nonsense, but I will say that I duly gave it all a big Nope.
I read the book at age 12-13. It is very clear, as Albert freakin' Schwitzer noted, 'failed apocalyptic prophet of the first century'. Thought he could pull it off, failed. Then this bullshit Get Into Heaven Free card business kicked in. Free form bullshit ensues. They missed the point entirely, and yeah using a vicious Roman torture device as a symbol is nutso. All this simply because I read the thing.
I'm still surprised I don't get shocked when I touch church doors.
at Grace Cathedral, and interview with the director, followed immediately by live performance of the piece itself on the mondo gloiroso pipe organ. It was pretty close to bliss.
Ah, but you're never at a loss for words, are you? Never caught saying "Huh, looks bad, guess we'll have to wait and see what happened" like some kind of loser beta cuck. You're ready with your Mansplanation at a moment's notice!
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.
That will have to be part of the noise production vomited up for widespread wing-nut consumption. But I've looked at some local coverage, and have heard from an area resident who's expressed grief about the deaths and the skimping on safety measures. I know that can change when the subject of paying taxes overtakes the sense of infrastructure needing to be funded. But I think regular locals see the scale of the disaster and are having normal human reactions.
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.
Thankfully, in preparation for what laughably constitutes the "real world", I latched onto coincidence theory early on. Helps me thru the day.
"Huh - my bicycle is wobbling all weird right here right now at (looks at watch) 5:04pm, October 17, 1989. Wonder if it has something to do with riding along Loma Prieta Ridge. Maybe there's some coincidental reason..."
"And to blame--to criticize--is the paradigmatic moral act."
A thing I've noticed with conservatives is that, whatever the problem, once they've assigned blame for it, they lose all interest. Like sure, I can blame the oil companies for climate change, but in the end we still gotta DO something about it, whoever is to blame, right? And the doing is really much, much more important than the blaming. But not for conservatives, "Look, I already blamed someone WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
Boeing's having issues with planes because they've ignored maintenance in favor of profit. The container ship owners had a history of neglecting safety in the name of profit. The train derailment in East Palestine was likely due to skimping on safety in the name of profit. Companies who've cared more about the shareholders than their supposed business are why things are increasingly enshittified, when we've been told for decades that "the free market" would solve everything because it was SO efficient. And now we're seeing the consequences of letting rich people just get richer at everyone else's cost, and the reaction from the idiot Right who sold us this bullshit is to go fascist because they fucking KNOW there's a reckoning coming.
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.
No shit, I was going to point out Schlapp's ridiculous hypocrisy, drunken cock-grabber that he is.
In a well-ordered society, all the drug-addled would be working on Wall Street and at the Trump White House, where they can do no harm.
First, do a line
THEN do no harm.
The best-built and maintained bridge in America wouldn't stand up to a fully loaded container ship plowing into it. Christ, these yobs are so "I heard something about something in the past so I'll use it as an attack". And their drooling audience remembers something vague about infrastructure and BIDEN EVIL and nods along.
It wasn't going very fast...
That's called "inertia".
You Goddam right inertia. Freaking asteroid impact in comparison to 'well this barge hit this bridge and it was OK'. Nothing survives that. No. No sir.
It couldn't stop even if it wanted to. Power failed, backup power failed, 200,000 tons, 9 knots (11 miles) per hour, tide running out.
Please tell me you were saying that just to stir him up. A ship as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall, weighing 200,000-ish tons, traveling ONLY 9 miles per hour......
And at the same time a train leaves Cleveland, headed southeast at 70 miles per hour...
On the video you see a car pass the pier about 4-5 seconds before it hits. I want to interview THAT GUY. Did you see it? I mean, come on, it is higher than the bridge. Any trivial glance to the left and HOLY SHIT! Did he blissfully drive by, or was he hauling ass saying 'must go faster, must go faster'. I know I'd have noticed, and I know I would be trying to put my foot through the damn gas pedal.
Pretty sure I was joking.
In the series of books by Bernard Cornwall about Richard Sharpe, an English soldier in the Napoleonic wars, the battle scenes are stand out amazing. One of the things he points out is how the round shot would just go skipping across the field and would keep on rolling. After a while it would slow down to not very fast at all and the new soldiers, The ones that wouldn't know any better would try and stop it with their foot or reach down and catch it and subsequently lose a leg or an arm.
I bow to thee. Profound apologies, shouldn'a doubted ye.
That "pretty sure" is what makes it glow.
their lives are shit, and they want everyone else's to be shit.
And if, objectively, their lives are not shit (i.e. after riding a long life of white male privilege into a comfy retirement), well, Tubby will convince them to look harder.
They *perceive* their lives to be shit, which is what really matters.
But things are so GOOD in the Land of Never-Was, and that's where they want to go.
Damn shame seeing adults sucking their thumbs wishing they were kids again, with no responsibilities. Grown-up life is shit.
Ah, but at the same time they're the Winners, who have cracked the code and know how the world REALLY works and their success at inheriting a mid-sized roofing business means they know that correct answer to ALL questions but nobody will listen to them, dammit, which makes them furious.
Dunning-Kruger, hallowed be thy name.
you spelled 'hollowed' incorrectly
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).
" POC invaders at the border from no nations speaking no language ever known to man "
IOW Central American immigrants. Exactly the people who were working on the bridge.
"speaking no language ever known to man" just cracks me up, because it's a thing Trump really did say in an attempt to scare people. '
And just to show what a fucked-up liberal idiot I am, when I hear two people speaking a language I can't immediately identify, I think, "Cool! I wonder what that is?" What's wrong with my amygdala that my initial reaction is NOT pants-shitting fear? How have I survived this long with such a broken "fight or flight" response?
To me, its a goddamn wonder that there are still people alive today speaking a close approximation to the language of the Mayans, despite all efforts to exterminate their language and culture. And that they would go through such an enormous effort and risk to enrich our country with this wondrous thing, I just think we could show a little more gratitude for that, is all.
Yup. Imagine him saying that about Welsh, or Catalan.
Easily done.
Now make me imagine something difficult.
Wasn't his mom from Scotland? What the hell do you call this "Auld Lang Syne" shit, huh?
I was implicitly mocking BLOTUS. Like being *on* the bridge when the boat hit is in some, I dunno, magical way caused by the workers on the bridge.
Like everything referenced or alluded to in Roy’s post, it’s insane ravings or politicians inciting their supporters.
Sick doesn’t even begin to describe it accurately. I’m so old, I remember when people like were institutionalized or at least shunned.
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.
Ration, reason, and logic require effort, and a cultivated ability to think analytically. We often see Galbraith cited regarding conservatism being an ages old search for lucid seeming rationalizations of selfishness, and that's true enough, but part and parcel with that is the similar ongoing attempt to persuasively justify laziness and the embrace of emotion over thought. From Luke Skywalker shutting down his high tech scanner so he can revert to his mystically super powered intuition, to Nike's "Just do it", to Fox News' "truthiness", our pop culture is riddled and rotten with voices and tropes urging us to go with our gut, to not over think, (which means, not think at all) to forget about intellectualism and analysis, to trust our instincts. The people this trope appeals to are the people who follow Trump, and Trump always leads people along the path of least resistance... and mental effort.
For today's Republican bloviator, there's nothing more important than havin' a snappy comeback RIGHT NOW. It's a race for eyeballs, the bridge goes down and if you snooze, you lose. Say we don't know yet, maybe we should wait for more info? LOSER. Nah, gotta get goin' right outta the gate with whatever's in your head at the moment. That's where the bigotry comes in handy, provides a ready-made cast of villains, a pull-down menu they can quickly select from so they're the firstest with the worstest.
I honestly half believe they have a dart board with sections labeled "Black/brown people," "immigrants," "LGBT people," "feminists," "indoctrinated college students" "Soros," "liberals not otherwise specified" and they just throw a dart. Sometimes the group they are blaming has so little relationship to the precipitating event it feels that random.
Multiple darts. They never think it's just one thing.
Darts are too analog, how would we digitize this? I know, let's ask ChatGPT, "Please write me a conspiracy theory for why the bridge fell down." Nah, Woke Software filters out all the good stuff.
On the other hand, you may have heard that if you ask AI to generate images of Nazis, it'll make sure they're ethnically diverse. (Maybe they fixed that.)
Nazis were/are white, you say? Not in Trump's world! And Putin says a Nazi nation has a Jew Nazi president.
(Note to self -- request "Wartime Ukrainian Jew Nazi Comedian President" images.)
This is why I have no fear of an upcoming AIpocalypse. "Oh shit! You did exactly what I told you to do!" is a poster we bit-pushers put on our walls. Garbage in, garbage out.
Now you're getting it. They literally throw ideas against the media wall to see what sticks. The ones that stick (woke, trans, illegals) they hammer as if their very paychecks depend on it. There was an illuminating Xit from Chris Rufo the other day, bemoaning the inability of Xitter to focus (on his message of the day) and just sling shit. When you've lost the Bullshitter-in-Chief, you're really through the looking glass.
It's probably linked to both the 24-hour news cycle and to social media where the quickest interaction is the best. The scoop, the exclusive, the freshest hottest take.
Yes, it's a general phenomenon, I wish "desperately thirsty for attention" was a thing confined to the right wing but it's not.
If I go for MY gut, I usually just go put together another grilled cheese sandwich.
You're grilling to the choir
*rimshot*
Don't forget a fine American tradition of anti-intellectualism as well, going right back to jokes about simple farmers outsmarting stuffy city folk.
And fascism is all about emotions! There's no need for "proof" when you can convince people that feelings ARE truth. No *actual* invasion at the border? But I keep getting told there's one and it FEELS like there's one! (And that's the problem for the Dems - they're convinced they can still show people figures and statistics.)
As far as intuition - well, it has its place, but there has to be a balance between intellect and emotion, and you have to know when to apply each. That's the thing - life is complicated, and these dopes don't WANT it to be.
It's almost as if they seek someone to take care of things and simplify life, like a father figure perhaps, that tells them what to do and what to think and takes care of all the bad people all around. Almost as if....
Cue the ever-timely They Might Be Giants:
https://genius.com/They-might-be-giants-kiss-me-son-of-god-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqOSPm2UdRs
"... we can tell them the reason their roof leaks is because of Black people or immigrants and they’ll believe us."
And for a double dose of irony (because irony is havin' a two-for-one sale today!) when you finally get around to hiring someone to fix that roof, WHO does the work?
And then they never show up because the damn lazy bastards are too busy on all the other jobs they got.
Busy stealin' the job you wouldn't do in a million years AND collectin' the welfare while they do it.
Sneaky buggers.
Well, that's just the "natural order".
White Man's Burden
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.
The ship is Singaporean, and you know how THEY are about drugs. You get the death penalty in Singapore for drug offenses, which is just woke.
The ship is registered in Singapore, but dollars to donuts her hull has never entered the port of Singapore nor her many of her crew from that country (if any). Mercantile shipping hasn't changed that much since the early days of shipping empires.
Laskars for the crew?
I blame the guy beatin' on the big drum to keep the oarsmen synchronized.
You call THAT drumming?! That ain't no beat, man! Not cool. Git yo seff a METRONOME, FFS!
The trireme went seriously out of control when they brought in Clyde Stubblefield, but everybody had a funky time.
Maritime shipping, more than most industries, is driven by tax-avoidance. I'm not an expert, but a shipping lawyer told me that when I was covering how a Norwegian shipping billionaire was able to keep control of his empire while washing it through bankruptcy.
Treachery on the high seas!
Buggery on the high seas!
Lash Larue on the high seas!
Hoist the colors up the jib, Seamen Staines!
If you've ever flown into Singapore, you've heard the chipper female voice announce "dear passengers, please be aware that the punishment for trafficking drugs is death." It's very disconcerting.
Nice addition to “stow your laptops, raise your seatbacks and tray tables… and flush your drugs down the loo.”
That stuck out to me. For the sake of a good argument, let's assume the crew were out of their collective gourds on wacky t'backy.
Would not the correct solution be tighter oversight and regulation on the multi-billion dollar shipping industry?
Ball's in your court, my Libertarian friends. Whatcha' got?
If'n a sedatively oversubscribed prole happens to fall against the power switch at just the wrong time then that is further proof of the efficacy of the free market. Insurance conquers all. Do not argue with me, peon.
Egg prices goin' through da roof because of a bird flu pandemic, guess we need more research into vaccines and tighter public-health regulation of the poultry industry, right? Nah, chalk it up to Bidenflation and move on.
Over on Heather's stack she pointed out a record $leventy-somethin' billion went through that port last year (a new record) but did not point out that value is based considerably upon the corporate price gouging hiding inside the covidy nightmare...
There is no over fishing!
The breaded haddock simply swam somewhere else.
I blame those Portuguese in Massachusetts.
The Ill-bread Haddock!
Are they ill-tempered?
Yeah, except for their, well, clavicles.
"The breaded haddock simply swam" reminds me of Lewis Carroll for some reason.
It swam, swam right over the dam
Two breaded fishes in an itty bitty pool
For any port like that, there is a local pilot that takes the ship out, a guy that knows the river like the back of his hand. He probably drove over the bridge to work that day. Drug-addled hell, he hollered the instant the ship's engines died. I expect it is fluent Baltimoreese and look forward to hearing it. Drug-addled is piss poor even for these lying assholes.
Blame the help, everyone knows they're lazy and are probably stealing the silver, and they're surly besides. Not like the good old days when you could have them horsewhipped.
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.
Bug, meet feature. You two will become fast friends, I'm sure.
Bug, meet windshield.
Next!
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.
The second thing after asking if it was terrorism was to proclaim it a "false flag", reflexively. Just what such a staged bridge collapse would do isn't quite spelled out. It speaks to the learned helplessness of the MAGAt mind...
I'm seeing that all the bridge workers, guys filling potholes ob the bridge overnight, were all migrants, and some sources say all Mexican nationals.
I've been over that bridge and I hated it: there was a point where I could take the bridge or a tunnel, and I went the way a bad driver in front of me didn't go...
Look at it this way: this should keep them busy for at least two weeks.
It's the whack-a-doo combination of "never let a crisis/tragedy go to waste" and the firm conviction that shit never just happens, somebody somewhere is always to blame. Conspiracy theories are exciting and addictive, Occam's Razor is boring.
Sure, Sonny Bono's stupid, but have you met his brother Cui?
I everso much hope he pronounces it "chewy".
I don’t care if they are pro Bono, as long as they aren’t anti Cher…or Sinead…
2 marks! (but don't get all puffed up about it – thanks to Perfessor B I'm rollin' in marks now, and there inevitably will be a deflationary cycle...)
Goin' back to the YouTube comment yesterday that went right to "this might be sabotage". There's always An Explanation.
And the explanation can't be Giant Container Ship. Just like the explanation for the Moscow terror attack can't be the well-know terrorist group that took credit for it. Where's the fun in that? If things are as they seem, then we're all equal, but if there's some SECRET reason, I can raise myself above the hoi-polloi, me and a few hundred thousand of my close friends on the internet, we're SPECIAL.
Secret conspiracy knowledge = Gnosticism for Dummies
That's damn good. Mind. Blown. That works so well on so many levels.
Noice.
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.
The "whatever that needed blaming" is the entire point. Sadly, their lack of introspection blinds them to the obvious source of their own blamefulness – the parents, of course.
I am wearing out the parental-blame, I know, but what I like about it is when I tell those folks straight to their face they get even angrier, 'cause ain't no one 'llowed to trash talk Mama!
As always, I am easily amused.
"I am wearing out the parental-blame, I know..."
No worries, it's a renewable resource.
Of all the awful things about bad parenting -- and there are many -- the most depressing is the tendency to pass it on to one's children. Harm begets harm, generation after generation. (A process not limited to one's children, of course.) It's most depressing because no matter how awful the particulars are, they need not end with the culprit's death.
Viral reproduction of pathologies. The victim-cum-perpetrator who breaks the chain typically does so with difficulty. An epidemic of such breakages would save us all, as nothing else could, but what forces would fuel the happy fire?
... So let's try to be nice, alright? And try to have a nice day, in spite of my making things a bit worse by musing like this, first thing in the morning, instead of cracking a joke.
Remember to read me in a carefree Barney Rubble voice.
https://tinyurl.com/Barney-Voices
Always, in the mellifluous Mel Blanc version.
OK, Markie impressed. I knew Daws did it for a while (noticed again a couple of weeks ago- hell that one's practically Yogi) but I did not associate that with Mel's accident. Aha!
Yes, the Mel is the better, not surprisingly.
Shorter version = "Boomers, go to fucking therapy, fer Chrissakes!"
Yelling at the darkies at a Trump rally IS their therapy.
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.
Infrastructure is FABULOUS!?
I for one am looking forward to the Yaaassification of Port Authority with tremendous zeal.
"What's this at the bottom here about 'sissy hypno'?"
"Never mind, standard contract, go ahead and sign!"
The Coast Guard has much potential for fabulousity.
Ignore that lighthouse behind me!
Ring-a-ding-ding resuscitation.
Buttigieg time-travelled to 1977 and infected the bridge with gay cooties that caused it to collapse when hit by a huge container ship in 2024?
It happened ON HIS WATCH which is a phrase lazy people use to blame people for stuff.
Well, the bridge was built in 1977, when Buttigieg was -5 years old, and we all know negative numbers are the work of Satan. DO THE MATH SHEEPLE.
Satan was always so negative. Damn.
Well, Nick was dealt a bad hand, after all. Have some sympathy. And some taste.
I'm just puzzled by the nature of his game, is all...
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.
Hmmm. Yeah. I bailed outta the cult by age 7 or 8 when it came clear to me that the whole thing was propped up by the sort of logic reserved for someone considerably younger than myself. Mom was devastated but resigned, and hid it well.
You are precocious! It took until high school for me to admit that the reason I couldn’t see heaven in the clear blue sky above wasn’t because it was so far away or hidden, but that it didn’t exist. At least, not in that physical way. It may exist as an internal spiritual conscienceness, but imposing a physical mode on that is absurd.
Young, yes, but restive. Later on I probly wasted a year wandering around inside other versions of nirvana-quest, just to see what was on offer. I won't say here that it was all nonsense, but I will say that I duly gave it all a big Nope.
I read the book at age 12-13. It is very clear, as Albert freakin' Schwitzer noted, 'failed apocalyptic prophet of the first century'. Thought he could pull it off, failed. Then this bullshit Get Into Heaven Free card business kicked in. Free form bullshit ensues. They missed the point entirely, and yeah using a vicious Roman torture device as a symbol is nutso. All this simply because I read the thing.
I'm still surprised I don't get shocked when I touch church doors.
I occasionally feel that pang of oopstooclose, too. But there was that one time –
I had the great good luck and privilege of catching this film :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlYdfLm69dA
at Grace Cathedral, and interview with the director, followed immediately by live performance of the piece itself on the mondo gloiroso pipe organ. It was pretty close to bliss.
Here's a bit more about the flick:
http://www.apparitionfilm.com/index.htm
The site was massively updated not long ago, and much more enlightening.
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.
Ah, but you're never at a loss for words, are you? Never caught saying "Huh, looks bad, guess we'll have to wait and see what happened" like some kind of loser beta cuck. You're ready with your Mansplanation at a moment's notice!
Sure I look like a normie but I haz the secret information!!!
Huh. So you did some research. Respect.
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.
I'm waiting for the undocumented road workers to be blamed. Somehow.
That will have to be part of the noise production vomited up for widespread wing-nut consumption. But I've looked at some local coverage, and have heard from an area resident who's expressed grief about the deaths and the skimping on safety measures. I know that can change when the subject of paying taxes overtakes the sense of infrastructure needing to be funded. But I think regular locals see the scale of the disaster and are having normal human reactions.
Things we experience directly versus things we view from a distance through the motherfucking internet.
Wait...the internet has a mother?!
Down boy!
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.
*HT Man of the Manque
He dreams the impossible dream.
I heard it was full of GOLDEN basketball shoes and "God bless the USA" Bibles.
Nope, just NFT's of 'em. The precious (slightly musty) docs take up alla space.
"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.
Thankfully, in preparation for what laughably constitutes the "real world", I latched onto coincidence theory early on. Helps me thru the day.
"Huh - my bicycle is wobbling all weird right here right now at (looks at watch) 5:04pm, October 17, 1989. Wonder if it has something to do with riding along Loma Prieta Ridge. Maybe there's some coincidental reason..."
"And to blame--to criticize--is the paradigmatic moral act."
A thing I've noticed with conservatives is that, whatever the problem, once they've assigned blame for it, they lose all interest. Like sure, I can blame the oil companies for climate change, but in the end we still gotta DO something about it, whoever is to blame, right? And the doing is really much, much more important than the blaming. But not for conservatives, "Look, I already blamed someone WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
Well, they do have vicious bastards like Chris Rufo and Steven Miller trying to legislate and sue diversity out of corporate and government existence.
I've heard good things about kneecapping. I'd assume after a proper application they'd no longer have standing.
all good but especially the bit about sociopolitical criticism. Turns out having a gimmick wasn't only good for Madame Mazeppa.
Boeing's having issues with planes because they've ignored maintenance in favor of profit. The container ship owners had a history of neglecting safety in the name of profit. The train derailment in East Palestine was likely due to skimping on safety in the name of profit. Companies who've cared more about the shareholders than their supposed business are why things are increasingly enshittified, when we've been told for decades that "the free market" would solve everything because it was SO efficient. And now we're seeing the consequences of letting rich people just get richer at everyone else's cost, and the reaction from the idiot Right who sold us this bullshit is to go fascist because they fucking KNOW there's a reckoning coming.
DEI or MBA? You decide.
Two great tastes that taste great together!
"the reaction from the idiot Right who sold us this bullshit is to go fascist because they fucking KNOW there's a reckoning coming."
OOF.
2 reality-based marks.
Dunno, think we need about a thousand more examples before we're allowed to connect those dots.
"This part says "-apitalism" and the other dots are coming together to form a "C" but let's not jump to conclusions."
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.