Ask any conservative and they'll happily tell you: Democracy is for losers. The Founders never intended for the governed to have any say in how they're governed or what those doing the governing do with power. If they had, the word "vote" would have appeared somewhere in the Constitution. So, no vote for you!
Well, young people shouldn't vote, because they're too inexperienced, don't know how the world really works yet, and women shouldn't vote, because they get too emotional about things, can't see things all objective like the men can, and naturalized citizens shouldn't vote, because they weren't born here and probably we just bused in by Soros to vote for the Democrats and people who are too poor to pay taxes shouldn't vote because obviously.
Felons of course, even if they paid their dues, because they're a guaranteed vote for soft on crime stuff so they can get back to criming. And I did have a conservative once opine to me that citizens who spent too much abroad should not be allowed to vote in their first election back. Need time to flush out the euro-thought, immerse back into our culture, which is very different you see.
Thanks, I've taken all your suggestions and made up a complete list of who should not vote. Now, lessee, readjusting the 2020 Presidential results to reflect our new rules on voter eligibility, Biden won 3-2.
As the 'libert'arians who've drifted enthusiastically into monarchism will tell you, as long as the government can't do very much at all and The People are heavily armed, it doesn't matter much _how_ the government is staffed. The consent of the governed is fundamentally indicated by their not shooting the government, saying which last three words make them so happy their minds turn off, probably mostly while saying 'shooting'.
The argument that monarchs or groups of plutocrats will take better care of their countries than elected governments because they'll own them fails _only_ in that it ignores what has actually happened everywhere, all the time.
Physicists, at least, feel compelled to include in the work-product an estimation of the likely maximum and minimum errors induced by the approximations we use…yet another difference between scientism and science.
Part and parcel of what you’ve been saying for a while Roy, and I heartily agree: the GOP has given up appealing to new voters or really trying very hard to win elections. It is solely seeking to stoke the base, while jerry-rigging the electoral process to impose GOP policies on the majority of unwilling citizens.
I don’t think state governments voluntarily attempt to commit economic suicide, so the only explanation for turning Texas and Florida into No Man’s Lands where normal people will not want to live and work is because conservatives in those states believe they are the tip of the spear, and the rest of the country will eventually follow suit.
Good reminder to check in on how the originators of Apartheid are doin'. Turns out owning all the best land and having control of all the major corporations makes life for South African whites pretty sweet, even if they are a minority. Now try explaining that to your average white Republican, who imagines that on the day when the census announces that whites have dropped to 49% of the population THE INTERNMENT CAMPS BEGIN.
Despite their being mentioned a lot in the media, 'bubbles' are real.
A personal example: the most conservative person I know, someone very laissez-faire and who'll bitch every chance he can get about how all three big, local, science fiction conventions are now too 'woke'…is not a Republucan.
I was going to say that for all the talk, the Republicans are working hard to ensure that the majority of people will have absolutely no agency, influence, whatever.
Then I remember that the latest book banning in Meatballstan was in response to the ignorant whining of a single person albeit -- obviously -- the kind of person with whom Republicans would approve, even sanction.
As for such fine people as there may be in the Texas Peoples Republic, can't quite agree. Even having met a few comrades on that cross country trip in 21, those states' leaders are sociopaths with power and authority. So, you know, I feel their pain only up to a point albeit one too complicated to go into here and now.
Oops! Just realized that that comment can be a amen as insulting to blue people living in red states. Didn’t mean that way; it was a cry of frustration.
But to spread the whining: I’m living in a blue state with a DINO governor (who may well be the reason the state turns red) and DINO mayor of its largest city. So, you know, I should be more sensitive.
Texas was born in injustice (wanting to preserve slavery when Mexico abandoned it). If we tried to correct all the injustices in Western Hemisphere history, there would be so many reparations, the best we can do is not create further debts of injustice. Which means we need to treat Abbott and DeSatan and fTrump and the Republican Party like pariahs they are; publicly shaming them from every venue. That's not justice in itself, but at least a start.
Texas was born of white hillbillies who went to Mexico, made a deal with the government to defer their taxes while they worked the land, and then rioted when the bill came due.
Missouri baldknobber republicans have made it clear that the rubes-, er, I mean The Citizens, are not to be trusted. Missouri voters approved Medicare expansion a few years back. But the legislature sort of shrugged, Meh, and said, Naw. We ain't gonna do that. And that was it. And many of those legislators were relected.
Then there's the topic of control of police departments and their budgets in Kansas City and St. Louis. Civil War-era laws gave financial and administrative control of those local departments to the state. The baldknobbers in Jeff City voted to force Kansas City to dedicate 25% of revenues to the police department, up from 20%.
God knows, those Hummer Vees and surplus copters don't fix themselves, but it saddens me that the irony these fuckers create goes entirely unappreciated.
Florida voters approved by referendum expanding voting rights to the formerly incarcerated, the legislature looked at that and said, "Nah, not gonna." Seems like every state should have some kind of court, above all other courts, that could bring these legislators back in line because, you know, democracy and all that.
I must admit that hiding behind my very real annoyance at these 'folks'ʼ attack on Democratic Institutions is a wee but real resentment that _I_ can't determine who gets to vote, or even enjoy talking about it.
A good place to drop this in as an Upstate New Yorker:
I've seen at least one yard sign with the "Divide NY" logo. We shall cut ourselves off from the sodomites in NYC and two new states will thrive amidst the ruins. The Big Apple would presumably wither without the rest of us to subsidize it. The concept probably predates the Articles Of Confederation. Prior to 2016, I'd have laughed the whole thing off. In today's climate, it is worrisome.
I'll happily admit to being a country mouse who was overwhelmed during my few visits to NYC. At this point I don't expect to make another trip down there. Still, it is reassuring to have that great cultural cesspool as part of the Empire State. It acts as a counterbalance to the increasingly unified-theory MAGA attitudes up here. We have no shortage of politicians, and their enablers who want to turn Upstate into Pennsytucky. I dread the kind of local control that would follow a split from NYC.
You don't say where they'd split the state, but I'd be leery of living in a state where the economic powerhouse is Buffalo. I say that as a displaced native. I loved the old place but it's like an old dowager at this point, living in much reduced circumstances.
The old joke, "Everything north of Westchester is Buffalo" will apply. The largest section will be named New Amsterdam. But to further isolate NYC, there will be a surrounding region called Montauk. This will include Westchester and Rockland along with Long Island. (Remember how well East and West Pakistan worked out?)
There is a considerable slice of the populace here in Illinois that is convinced that jettisoning the Chicago metro would lead to paradise, when in truth south of I-80 is mostly Mississippi with corn.
That impulse seems to exist everywhere. Even in South Dakota, as rural a state as they come, some Repubs opposed redistricting the legislature to match changing population distribution. In their minds, places like Harding County, pop. 1,300, should continue to get roughly equal representation as Minnehaha County, pop. 200,000. Fortunately, even most other Repubs weren’t going for that.
Yep. The existing maps were laughably bad, over-representing depopulated areas, and the Repubs of burgeoning Lincoln County would not stand for such unfairness. But they drew the line at total de-gerrymandering, of course.
As a former resident of the State of Chicago (as my spouse puts it) I do not consider "Downstate" a compliment, and even less "Forgottonia": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgottonia
Not coincidentally, much of this region was and is sundown towns.
Fascinating, I was born and raised in northern Illinois and never heard of this. Seems their complaint is that they weren't getting enough attention and money from the government, and wanted more bridges and roads built. Very different from today's secesh movements who apparently think bridges and roads build themselves.
I always thought that guys like this, like the Alaska independence movement and the great State of Jefferson, aka Northern California, assume they can strip mine the natural resources and sell what's left to the local billionaires. Meanwhile, all the Freedom will be the ability to start a tire incineration business in your back yard and shoot anyone who looks like they are trespassing. And fuck building codes, too. Just staple this extension cord to the wall, done.
So right around the time the Tea Party gave us Ted Cruz and various other abominations? Appears conditions have deteriorated a mite since then, let alone since the Glory Days of Ann Richards.
Yeah the goppers here in Indiana have been doing this shit for years. This year we learned that the state gop is pro-puppy mills when they made it against the law for localities to ban the sale of dogs at pet stores. In other words, for those of you who have seen the latest installment, they are literally a Marvel villain.
I wonder if every state has its own unique form of Republican-sponsored animal cruelty. Here in Wisconsin, it's hunting bears with dogs, which involves much cruelty to the dogs (and doesn't do the bears much good either) facilitated by dumpin' a big ol' pile of stale donuts in the middle of a national forest to attract the bears, with the state paying these assholes thousands of dollars for each of their precious dogs killed, because they wuv their pups so much, which you can clearly see when you watch them cram a couple of dozen into a bunch of crates in the back of a pickup.
I remember when you lived in Texas. You didn't seem to care for it much. Lol.
Ben Wikler is an amazing guy and I'm thrilled to see a few of the northern tier of Midwestern states clawing their way out of the Republican wasteland but, alas, Iowa is circling the drain. I'm old and an abysmal organizer but I do give money.
Hey, ixnay on the iklerWay. We'd prefer his name not get out too much, or every struggling state Democratic party will want their own Wikler, but hands off he's OURS.
During the 2022 midterm election, Wikler (praise be!) said elections in Wisconsin are so close that five votes in every precinct would make the difference. After that, when my wife and I went out canvassing, we'd end by the day by running back through the conversations we had trying to guess if we'd met our Wikler Number.
OOPS! But I've heard him on the Majority Report many times so I'm not the only out-of-stater who is aware of him. Lol. He's an amazing guy and has easily convinced me to send money north.
Thanks to BookBub’s $1.99 offerings for Kindle, I am enjoying H.L. Mencken’s “Notes on Democracy” which dissects with brilliant bile the folies of a democracy constituted of rubes and demagogues. Too bad there is no wordsmith, right or left, today who can write a sentence like, “Democratic man thus began as an ideal being, full of ineffable virtues and romantic wrongs—in brief, as Rousseau’s noble savage in smock and jerkin, brought out of the tropical wilds to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands.” You might not agree with it, but the music of the English language is on full display on every page. I mean no disrespect to Roy, whom I enjoy very much, but no one did righteous indignation more elegantly than Mencken. Also, is it reassuring or not that a hundred years ago America was going to hell in a hand basket and yet here we are with the same rubes and demagogues, scarcely changed a whit?
In the 1990's and early 00's the righties wanted to claim Henry as one of their own. He hated F.D.R. and thought the wrong side won The Great War. What could be more delightfully contrarian? The fanboy attitude seems to have died with P.J. O'Rourke. Mencken carries a whiff of intellectualism that the current crop of book-banners despise. And if even H.L. was agin' the New Deal, his regular gutting of the Klan-Christian Axis of his era makes for awkward reading in today's Guns&Jesus age. The current crop of smart young things keep their admiration for the Sage Of Baltimore on the downlow.
It’s odd, my son-of-the-Depression dad hated FDR, the president who held the country and its citizens together and fought the Nazis (whom he also hated). His only Mencken book was The American Language, which I devoured as a preadolescent. Dad also had no use for Christianity or any other religion. It’s as if there were a segment of MAGAs who despise Biden but hate the Christian Right, including the Supreme Court. Socially liberal but congenitally anti-Democrats? I dunno.
"The fanboy attitude seems to have died with P.J. O'Rourke" A plus on both counts though as you point out, it's not the philosophy but intellectualism they hate. I don't think rightwing magazine grinds will ever give up their "Know who's conservative? Fill In The Blank" stories; these are just the kind of time-wasters they're fit to do in their wingnut welfare makework jobs.
I checked, and in the 2022 election for Governor, Abbot won by more than 10 points. So where's the need for these kind of shenanigans? Oh, wait, I forgot, they don't do this shit because they need to, they do it because they can.
They have to. They read the double top secret internal polling and election returns and know that the raw numbers are long-term fatal, and they chose long ago to game the system rather than adapt, so above all else they need to fire up the base constantly and supress where they can. Every time some galaxy brain like Karl Rove comes along and tries to tweak the model to build a coalition, any coalition, they get shot down. The base rules the Party, and any dilution is weakness. Sooner or later, there will be a state election with massive naked voter nullification like what's being built in Texas, and some mayors are going to have some hard choices to make, though they have virtually no power over the state that chartered their existence. Sooner or later, the cities become a threat to be neutralized, and a financial resource to be exploited.
Hmmm... not so sure about that. Can't they just convince a bunch of Hispanic folks that they're actually white and therefore Republican? That's how whiteness has always worked throughout our history, let the Irish and Italians into the club when WASPS alone no longer get you the majority. Seems like they've also had some success dividing Hispanic citizens from Hispanic not-yet-citizens, their powers of division are limitless.
Sure, that was Rove's plan, and it made sense. But any gesture that looks anywhere other than white megachurch Real America is taken as a beef, and this dis cannot stand, man. That insecurity is the life force of the Republican Party, and the only question left is whether it kills the Union in addition to the Party.
"Local control" is a long-time GOP scam on the order of "your household needs to have a balanced budget", pretending to have laws and policies that fit the community, but actually giving greater influence to church groups, assholes who yell at school board meetings, and groups like "Mom's for Liberty". Now we see it's a kind of incubator for awful policies that can later get rolled out on a nationwide scale. And if they insist on rejecting the conservative wisdom, well, to paraphrase a certain Birthday Boy, we can't let a locality go Communist through its own irresponsibility.
Never forget that they revolted against Mexico only when the Federales announced that their exemption of Texas from their anti-slavery law was going to lapse. That was the freedom whose abridgement they would not tolerate.
I wish I had such a relatively rosy view of Texas, my mother's home state. Unfortunately, I realized quite some time ago that the rest of her family basically thought of her as "the one who married the Jew," and I haven't had contact with any of them since she passed away, with the exception of one aunt by marriage (my uncle died some years back). There was a period when I was doing a little genealogical research and reached out to literally dozens of them with everything I'd discovered, and got zilch in reply, so fuck 'em. As for my aunt, I love her but I don't talk politics with her; at 94 she's unlikely to change what I know are fairly standard Republican ideas. Anyhow, I'll never go there again.
Ask any conservative and they'll happily tell you: Democracy is for losers. The Founders never intended for the governed to have any say in how they're governed or what those doing the governing do with power. If they had, the word "vote" would have appeared somewhere in the Constitution. So, no vote for you!
But you can have as many guns as you want.
Gunnin' fer votes is aligned with votin' fer guns.
1. The modern conservative lusts for fascism so of course they think democracy is for losers.
2. As for the Founding Fathers, they did want some democracy -- limited to white men of wealth.
3. As for guns, the dominant party tells me that more guns is the solution to every problem, even gun violence.
Well, young people shouldn't vote, because they're too inexperienced, don't know how the world really works yet, and women shouldn't vote, because they get too emotional about things, can't see things all objective like the men can, and naturalized citizens shouldn't vote, because they weren't born here and probably we just bused in by Soros to vote for the Democrats and people who are too poor to pay taxes shouldn't vote because obviously.
I leave anyone out?
Felons of course, even if they paid their dues, because they're a guaranteed vote for soft on crime stuff so they can get back to criming. And I did have a conservative once opine to me that citizens who spent too much abroad should not be allowed to vote in their first election back. Need time to flush out the euro-thought, immerse back into our culture, which is very different you see.
Crazy people. They should not vote either.
Thanks, I've taken all your suggestions and made up a complete list of who should not vote. Now, lessee, readjusting the 2020 Presidential results to reflect our new rules on voter eligibility, Biden won 3-2.
Speaking of not understanding the concept of consent. . . .
As the 'libert'arians who've drifted enthusiastically into monarchism will tell you, as long as the government can't do very much at all and The People are heavily armed, it doesn't matter much _how_ the government is staffed. The consent of the governed is fundamentally indicated by their not shooting the government, saying which last three words make them so happy their minds turn off, probably mostly while saying 'shooting'.
…and because _I_ love repeating _this_:
The argument that monarchs or groups of plutocrats will take better care of their countries than elected governments because they'll own them fails _only_ in that it ignores what has actually happened everywhere, all the time.
(That's only a _little_ hyperbolic.)
"Assume a spherical cow . . ."
Roll on, roll on...
Physicists, at least, feel compelled to include in the work-product an estimation of the likely maximum and minimum errors induced by the approximations we use…yet another difference between scientism and science.
I'd rather see than be one.
I'd rather troll than roll one.
Part and parcel of what you’ve been saying for a while Roy, and I heartily agree: the GOP has given up appealing to new voters or really trying very hard to win elections. It is solely seeking to stoke the base, while jerry-rigging the electoral process to impose GOP policies on the majority of unwilling citizens.
I don’t think state governments voluntarily attempt to commit economic suicide, so the only explanation for turning Texas and Florida into No Man’s Lands where normal people will not want to live and work is because conservatives in those states believe they are the tip of the spear, and the rest of the country will eventually follow suit.
Hope Roy feels better letting this out. You know, letting off a little steam every now and then so as to avoid an explosion.
Et cum spiritu tuo
We’re speaking in tongues now?
My tongue speaks in me.
Believe it or not, I’m now more confused and, yes, a little grossed out by the TMI 😬😵💫
Minority rule, AKA apartheid
Good reminder to check in on how the originators of Apartheid are doin'. Turns out owning all the best land and having control of all the major corporations makes life for South African whites pretty sweet, even if they are a minority. Now try explaining that to your average white Republican, who imagines that on the day when the census announces that whites have dropped to 49% of the population THE INTERNMENT CAMPS BEGIN.
Despite their being mentioned a lot in the media, 'bubbles' are real.
A personal example: the most conservative person I know, someone very laissez-faire and who'll bitch every chance he can get about how all three big, local, science fiction conventions are now too 'woke'…is not a Republucan.
We are indeed a fascinating species.
Yes! and wonderful to observe…from a safe distance, a parsec or two would be nice.
I was going to say that for all the talk, the Republicans are working hard to ensure that the majority of people will have absolutely no agency, influence, whatever.
Then I remember that the latest book banning in Meatballstan was in response to the ignorant whining of a single person albeit -- obviously -- the kind of person with whom Republicans would approve, even sanction.
As for such fine people as there may be in the Texas Peoples Republic, can't quite agree. Even having met a few comrades on that cross country trip in 21, those states' leaders are sociopaths with power and authority. So, you know, I feel their pain only up to a point albeit one too complicated to go into here and now.
Oops! Just realized that that comment can be a amen as insulting to blue people living in red states. Didn’t mean that way; it was a cry of frustration.
But to spread the whining: I’m living in a blue state with a DINO governor (who may well be the reason the state turns red) and DINO mayor of its largest city. So, you know, I should be more sensitive.
I understand the frustration.
Texas was born in injustice (wanting to preserve slavery when Mexico abandoned it). If we tried to correct all the injustices in Western Hemisphere history, there would be so many reparations, the best we can do is not create further debts of injustice. Which means we need to treat Abbott and DeSatan and fTrump and the Republican Party like pariahs they are; publicly shaming them from every venue. That's not justice in itself, but at least a start.
Texas was born of white hillbillies who went to Mexico, made a deal with the government to defer their taxes while they worked the land, and then rioted when the bill came due.
A primitive Debt Ceiling negotiation!
Ah, but the ravings of the 19th century equivalent of MTG looked so much cooler written out on that old-timey parchment!
A whole state of Ammon Bundys!
[ and slavery ] b-b-b-b-but they were DEMOCRATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only place to attempt secession from *two* different countries, both times for the sake of slavery.
Thought slavery was so nice they seceded twice!
Abbott is such a piece of shit. Hey, now that creepy Madison Cawthorn is gone we can give Abbott the "Heil on Wheels" moniker.
Missouri baldknobber republicans have made it clear that the rubes-, er, I mean The Citizens, are not to be trusted. Missouri voters approved Medicare expansion a few years back. But the legislature sort of shrugged, Meh, and said, Naw. We ain't gonna do that. And that was it. And many of those legislators were relected.
Then there's the topic of control of police departments and their budgets in Kansas City and St. Louis. Civil War-era laws gave financial and administrative control of those local departments to the state. The baldknobbers in Jeff City voted to force Kansas City to dedicate 25% of revenues to the police department, up from 20%.
God knows, those Hummer Vees and surplus copters don't fix themselves, but it saddens me that the irony these fuckers create goes entirely unappreciated.
Florida voters approved by referendum expanding voting rights to the formerly incarcerated, the legislature looked at that and said, "Nah, not gonna." Seems like every state should have some kind of court, above all other courts, that could bring these legislators back in line because, you know, democracy and all that.
More like the Snow Me State, amirite
Missouri Loves Company
HA!
Technically didn't the state lege approve the expansion but refused to fund it?
I suspect you are correct. I would have to research the nuts & bolts to be sure.
I must admit that hiding behind my very real annoyance at these 'folks'ʼ attack on Democratic Institutions is a wee but real resentment that _I_ can't determine who gets to vote, or even enjoy talking about it.
I'll start us off with "Billionaires who don't pay a dime in federal taxes." Because, you know, "skin in the game" or something like that.
A good place to drop this in as an Upstate New Yorker:
I've seen at least one yard sign with the "Divide NY" logo. We shall cut ourselves off from the sodomites in NYC and two new states will thrive amidst the ruins. The Big Apple would presumably wither without the rest of us to subsidize it. The concept probably predates the Articles Of Confederation. Prior to 2016, I'd have laughed the whole thing off. In today's climate, it is worrisome.
I'll happily admit to being a country mouse who was overwhelmed during my few visits to NYC. At this point I don't expect to make another trip down there. Still, it is reassuring to have that great cultural cesspool as part of the Empire State. It acts as a counterbalance to the increasingly unified-theory MAGA attitudes up here. We have no shortage of politicians, and their enablers who want to turn Upstate into Pennsytucky. I dread the kind of local control that would follow a split from NYC.
What, *they* want to split from *NYC*? I remember Mailer's and Breslin's "51st State" platform, the logic being Albany constantly fucked the City.
These effusions never come to anything, I have shown: https://edroso.substack.com/p/small-time-secessionists
You don't say where they'd split the state, but I'd be leery of living in a state where the economic powerhouse is Buffalo. I say that as a displaced native. I loved the old place but it's like an old dowager at this point, living in much reduced circumstances.
The old joke, "Everything north of Westchester is Buffalo" will apply. The largest section will be named New Amsterdam. But to further isolate NYC, there will be a surrounding region called Montauk. This will include Westchester and Rockland along with Long Island. (Remember how well East and West Pakistan worked out?)
There is a considerable slice of the populace here in Illinois that is convinced that jettisoning the Chicago metro would lead to paradise, when in truth south of I-80 is mostly Mississippi with corn.
That impulse seems to exist everywhere. Even in South Dakota, as rural a state as they come, some Repubs opposed redistricting the legislature to match changing population distribution. In their minds, places like Harding County, pop. 1,300, should continue to get roughly equal representation as Minnehaha County, pop. 200,000. Fortunately, even most other Repubs weren’t going for that.
A. We had a referendum on de-gerrymandering the state legislature, but that failed.
1. That's why we have 11 Dems out of 105 spots in the legislature
Yep. The existing maps were laughably bad, over-representing depopulated areas, and the Repubs of burgeoning Lincoln County would not stand for such unfairness. But they drew the line at total de-gerrymandering, of course.
As a former resident of the State of Chicago (as my spouse puts it) I do not consider "Downstate" a compliment, and even less "Forgottonia": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgottonia
Not coincidentally, much of this region was and is sundown towns.
Fascinating, I was born and raised in northern Illinois and never heard of this. Seems their complaint is that they weren't getting enough attention and money from the government, and wanted more bridges and roads built. Very different from today's secesh movements who apparently think bridges and roads build themselves.
I always thought that guys like this, like the Alaska independence movement and the great State of Jefferson, aka Northern California, assume they can strip mine the natural resources and sell what's left to the local billionaires. Meanwhile, all the Freedom will be the ability to start a tire incineration business in your back yard and shoot anyone who looks like they are trespassing. And fuck building codes, too. Just staple this extension cord to the wall, done.
https://www.kuow.org/stories/pnw-secession-movements-arent-new-but-lately-eastern-oregon-is-feeling-idaho-curious
How about _all_ the rural secessionists' joining Greater Idaho. I'm sure they'd like their two senators….
"like many Americans I’m sentimental about Texas"
A visit or two should clear that right up for you, Roy.
I put in the time. https://edroso.tumblr.com/post/831270866/roys-texas-posts-to-date-a-compendium-image
So right around the time the Tea Party gave us Ted Cruz and various other abominations? Appears conditions have deteriorated a mite since then, let alone since the Glory Days of Ann Richards.
Yeah the goppers here in Indiana have been doing this shit for years. This year we learned that the state gop is pro-puppy mills when they made it against the law for localities to ban the sale of dogs at pet stores. In other words, for those of you who have seen the latest installment, they are literally a Marvel villain.
I wonder if every state has its own unique form of Republican-sponsored animal cruelty. Here in Wisconsin, it's hunting bears with dogs, which involves much cruelty to the dogs (and doesn't do the bears much good either) facilitated by dumpin' a big ol' pile of stale donuts in the middle of a national forest to attract the bears, with the state paying these assholes thousands of dollars for each of their precious dogs killed, because they wuv their pups so much, which you can clearly see when you watch them cram a couple of dozen into a bunch of crates in the back of a pickup.
“For the ‘sportsman’ who also loves dogfighting in the woods.”
And also cashin' big checks from the state when one of the dogs you sent to fight the bear loses.
I remember when you lived in Texas. You didn't seem to care for it much. Lol.
Ben Wikler is an amazing guy and I'm thrilled to see a few of the northern tier of Midwestern states clawing their way out of the Republican wasteland but, alas, Iowa is circling the drain. I'm old and an abysmal organizer but I do give money.
Hey, ixnay on the iklerWay. We'd prefer his name not get out too much, or every struggling state Democratic party will want their own Wikler, but hands off he's OURS.
During the 2022 midterm election, Wikler (praise be!) said elections in Wisconsin are so close that five votes in every precinct would make the difference. After that, when my wife and I went out canvassing, we'd end by the day by running back through the conversations we had trying to guess if we'd met our Wikler Number.
OOPS! But I've heard him on the Majority Report many times so I'm not the only out-of-stater who is aware of him. Lol. He's an amazing guy and has easily convinced me to send money north.
Well thanks for the money!
I did leave. But there's a lot to like in Texas.
Thanks to BookBub’s $1.99 offerings for Kindle, I am enjoying H.L. Mencken’s “Notes on Democracy” which dissects with brilliant bile the folies of a democracy constituted of rubes and demagogues. Too bad there is no wordsmith, right or left, today who can write a sentence like, “Democratic man thus began as an ideal being, full of ineffable virtues and romantic wrongs—in brief, as Rousseau’s noble savage in smock and jerkin, brought out of the tropical wilds to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands.” You might not agree with it, but the music of the English language is on full display on every page. I mean no disrespect to Roy, whom I enjoy very much, but no one did righteous indignation more elegantly than Mencken. Also, is it reassuring or not that a hundred years ago America was going to hell in a hand basket and yet here we are with the same rubes and demagogues, scarcely changed a whit?
Oh sure, they PROMISE we're going to Hell in a handbasket, but then we never get there, but we also never get out of the damn basket.
Plus u have to provide ur own handbasket...
In the 1990's and early 00's the righties wanted to claim Henry as one of their own. He hated F.D.R. and thought the wrong side won The Great War. What could be more delightfully contrarian? The fanboy attitude seems to have died with P.J. O'Rourke. Mencken carries a whiff of intellectualism that the current crop of book-banners despise. And if even H.L. was agin' the New Deal, his regular gutting of the Klan-Christian Axis of his era makes for awkward reading in today's Guns&Jesus age. The current crop of smart young things keep their admiration for the Sage Of Baltimore on the downlow.
It’s odd, my son-of-the-Depression dad hated FDR, the president who held the country and its citizens together and fought the Nazis (whom he also hated). His only Mencken book was The American Language, which I devoured as a preadolescent. Dad also had no use for Christianity or any other religion. It’s as if there were a segment of MAGAs who despise Biden but hate the Christian Right, including the Supreme Court. Socially liberal but congenitally anti-Democrats? I dunno.
"The fanboy attitude seems to have died with P.J. O'Rourke" A plus on both counts though as you point out, it's not the philosophy but intellectualism they hate. I don't think rightwing magazine grinds will ever give up their "Know who's conservative? Fill In The Blank" stories; these are just the kind of time-wasters they're fit to do in their wingnut welfare makework jobs.
"You know who were conservative? Jim Henson." Yep, I'm ready for my sinecure at the New Republic!
Annual "MLK was a conservative" nonsense on MLK's birthday while disavowing him the other 364 days of the year.
Checked your level of Contrarianism, and it's well up to standard. How soon can you start?
I checked, and in the 2022 election for Governor, Abbot won by more than 10 points. So where's the need for these kind of shenanigans? Oh, wait, I forgot, they don't do this shit because they need to, they do it because they can.
They have to. They read the double top secret internal polling and election returns and know that the raw numbers are long-term fatal, and they chose long ago to game the system rather than adapt, so above all else they need to fire up the base constantly and supress where they can. Every time some galaxy brain like Karl Rove comes along and tries to tweak the model to build a coalition, any coalition, they get shot down. The base rules the Party, and any dilution is weakness. Sooner or later, there will be a state election with massive naked voter nullification like what's being built in Texas, and some mayors are going to have some hard choices to make, though they have virtually no power over the state that chartered their existence. Sooner or later, the cities become a threat to be neutralized, and a financial resource to be exploited.
Hmmm... not so sure about that. Can't they just convince a bunch of Hispanic folks that they're actually white and therefore Republican? That's how whiteness has always worked throughout our history, let the Irish and Italians into the club when WASPS alone no longer get you the majority. Seems like they've also had some success dividing Hispanic citizens from Hispanic not-yet-citizens, their powers of division are limitless.
Sure, that was Rove's plan, and it made sense. But any gesture that looks anywhere other than white megachurch Real America is taken as a beef, and this dis cannot stand, man. That insecurity is the life force of the Republican Party, and the only question left is whether it kills the Union in addition to the Party.
Um... speaking of Texas...
“If it is safe to get away, we should RUN like Rabbit instead of stay … If danger is near, do not fear, HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear.”
The “hide” page has a drawing of Pooh burying his head in a pot of honey.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/25/winnie-the-pooh-books-teaches-texas-kids-run-hide-fight-shooting
"Local control" is a long-time GOP scam on the order of "your household needs to have a balanced budget", pretending to have laws and policies that fit the community, but actually giving greater influence to church groups, assholes who yell at school board meetings, and groups like "Mom's for Liberty". Now we see it's a kind of incubator for awful policies that can later get rolled out on a nationwide scale. And if they insist on rejecting the conservative wisdom, well, to paraphrase a certain Birthday Boy, we can't let a locality go Communist through its own irresponsibility.
Never forget that they revolted against Mexico only when the Federales announced that their exemption of Texas from their anti-slavery law was going to lapse. That was the freedom whose abridgement they would not tolerate.
Only two rights they care about: 1) The right to bear arms, 2) The right to force a black woman to bear your children.
Oh!, do be fair: I think they do care about the right to force _any_ woman to bear their children.
Their misogyny contains multitudes.
I wish I had such a relatively rosy view of Texas, my mother's home state. Unfortunately, I realized quite some time ago that the rest of her family basically thought of her as "the one who married the Jew," and I haven't had contact with any of them since she passed away, with the exception of one aunt by marriage (my uncle died some years back). There was a period when I was doing a little genealogical research and reached out to literally dozens of them with everything I'd discovered, and got zilch in reply, so fuck 'em. As for my aunt, I love her but I don't talk politics with her; at 94 she's unlikely to change what I know are fairly standard Republican ideas. Anyhow, I'll never go there again.