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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"like many Americans I’m sentimental about Texas"
A visit or two should clear that right up for you, Roy.
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.