It’s really shocking to recall insurrectionists stormed the Capitol at the urging of Trump only a little over one month ago, but literally the only window when the GOP might have acknowledged the severity of what happened was *maybe* during the following week. After that, it’s been denialism and minimization the whole way.
Because I’m at bottom as heartsick as Roy about all this, and tend to take refuge in the darkest of humor, I find it both hilarious and intensely depressing that McConnell would refuse to hold an impeachment trial while Trump was still in office, and then blithely proclaim impeachment is unconstitutional now that Trump is gone. I mean, the sheer, naked shamelessness of it, it’s distilled “heads I win, tails you lose” quality is so pure it would almost be admirable if it weren’t so despicable and the stakes weren’t so high.
My 7 or 8 year old journal is about 3000 pages now. I write to process, too. The difference is that you are a *wonderful* writer, and once again your words offer me comfort, which I deeply appreciate. And need at least a little.
Permission to share with my <200 FB audience? I haven't decided if I want to stir that nest up yet, but just in case...it would be prefaced with something like "What Roy said" or "Roy can speak for me on this topic..."
Thanks for this. (Sheer anger means I can't properly put into words what the "Sturm und Verrat" on behalf of The Ultimate White Male Entitlement has done to our present and future.)
Due to my defects and limitations, I can barely begin to understand how no one ever really ever resisted him sufficiently.
I understand how he was a gift to the tabloid press, producing scads of material allegedly attracting an audience. So the local media had no incentive to call him out on anything -- even after the Central Park 5 obscenity in '89.
Too, there was the TV show. Granted, I had a sufficiently sized antipathy for Donnie since the mid-70s but I'd watch the show and just not get it. The intro was near-complete bullshit. The concept was disgusting -- the core, of course, was all about getting his dick sucked -- and he sounded like what he is: a fucking moron. (Of course, ignored is tat he has a genius for pandering albeit without any care for irresponsibly going too far.)
As I say, I just don't get it. Me, I find him a rank stinking turd yet a huge number of people either can't smell or ignore the stench.
"I guess that’s really what made my gorge rise: The thought that even this extraordinary ugliness is just a symptom of something so dishearteningly huge that my voice can’t possibly make a dent in it."
"....the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president." Hillary Clinton. - 1998 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right-wing_conspiracy
The Civil War didn’t end. It continued through the 1870’s and US Grant, who countenanced killing as many Confederate soldiers as necessary to end the hot war, could not order Federal troops to open fire on those same Southerners once they were citizens. That and the decision to reconcile with former traitors throughout the next 50 years left us primed for the Republican Southern Strategy that has solidified white supremacy as a dominant political movement in America. That so worthless a human being as Trump could seize control of that movement doesn’t diminish its power but does make normal, moral people wonder what could possibly turn its adherents away from its hatred and embrace those liberal virtues of compassion, empathy, and brotherhood.
Yes, indeed. If I still smoked I'd have one right now. "I find myself clogged with outrage." Yeah, there's not enough of that clogging. Imagine reading in a history book about when the plague came to visit the land of Moronia and how King Donald the Greatest declared any mention of it was criticism of his glorious self and therefore proceeded to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Moronians to it. Then, clogged with outraged, the Moronians rose up and stormed the palace and executed King Donald for treating their lives with such contempt. At least that would have been an insurrection that made sense. Outrage? I'm continually amazed that the people of this benighted country aren't even angry enough to put President Piece of Shit on trial for half a million dead Americans.
This, a thousand times over. I've been a lefty for more than 50 years, and with each day I get more lefty, but over the years I've cultivated a Buddhist-style detachment to keep me from going insane. Every once in a while something gets through and I find myself with anger that could swallow the world.
Jesus, Roy, amen. The singsongy voice thing was awful. I was not expecting it. It's the voice men use when they know (or at least assume, because they think of women as playthings to use and break) that they can easily overpower you, that you can't escape them, and that they're gonna have some fun making you suffer. It's a rape threat and a death threat and a notice that you are nothing, and there will be no mercy for you or consequences for them. That if you escape alive, it's because you weren't worth killing. It's the sound of someone who owns the world and is so used to getting their own way they can't even imagine not anymore. It's the voice of The Purge if you want to be less personal about it, but I've heard that voice in my life and my nightmares for years, I think a lot of women have.
Roy noted a while back that these guys were doing this out in the open, because they knew there would be no consequences. That they couldn't even imagine anyone stopping them or prosecuting them or finding them guilty, they thought it was perfectly aboveboard. They were *entitled* to do this.
The women in your life, and the men who were abused as children, are suffering today. Be kind to them. I'm watching seven women on MSNBC this morning function at a very high level, and I wonder how many of them are fighting through it.
What happened was extraordinary in some ways, but as Roy notes mostly not. These men are this way in their home lives and their communities too. I haven't been able to explain this before, and now I feel like maybe we can just point and say See? Don't make us have to explain it again. Don't let it happen again.
But of course, that would have left Nancy Pelosi alive and the point of the assault on the Capitol as to decapitate congress and leave the order of presidential succession in tatters.
Trump didn't plan that shit - his Republican friends did. The Republican Party should be declared a terrorist organization. It's leaders arrested, shipped out to Gitmo. But that would lead to civil war so I guess we get to put up with the ugly little fascist party in our midst and pretend that they aren't a bunch of Nazis just like the 11 or so my uncle Louis killed in a WWII action around Monte Cassino.
Thank you.
Thanks for this, Roy.
It’s really shocking to recall insurrectionists stormed the Capitol at the urging of Trump only a little over one month ago, but literally the only window when the GOP might have acknowledged the severity of what happened was *maybe* during the following week. After that, it’s been denialism and minimization the whole way.
Because I’m at bottom as heartsick as Roy about all this, and tend to take refuge in the darkest of humor, I find it both hilarious and intensely depressing that McConnell would refuse to hold an impeachment trial while Trump was still in office, and then blithely proclaim impeachment is unconstitutional now that Trump is gone. I mean, the sheer, naked shamelessness of it, it’s distilled “heads I win, tails you lose” quality is so pure it would almost be admirable if it weren’t so despicable and the stakes weren’t so high.
My 7 or 8 year old journal is about 3000 pages now. I write to process, too. The difference is that you are a *wonderful* writer, and once again your words offer me comfort, which I deeply appreciate. And need at least a little.
Permission to share with my <200 FB audience? I haven't decided if I want to stir that nest up yet, but just in case...it would be prefaced with something like "What Roy said" or "Roy can speak for me on this topic..."
Thanks again.
Thanks for this. (Sheer anger means I can't properly put into words what the "Sturm und Verrat" on behalf of The Ultimate White Male Entitlement has done to our present and future.)
I'm with E. Jean.
Due to my defects and limitations, I can barely begin to understand how no one ever really ever resisted him sufficiently.
I understand how he was a gift to the tabloid press, producing scads of material allegedly attracting an audience. So the local media had no incentive to call him out on anything -- even after the Central Park 5 obscenity in '89.
Too, there was the TV show. Granted, I had a sufficiently sized antipathy for Donnie since the mid-70s but I'd watch the show and just not get it. The intro was near-complete bullshit. The concept was disgusting -- the core, of course, was all about getting his dick sucked -- and he sounded like what he is: a fucking moron. (Of course, ignored is tat he has a genius for pandering albeit without any care for irresponsibly going too far.)
As I say, I just don't get it. Me, I find him a rank stinking turd yet a huge number of people either can't smell or ignore the stench.
"I guess that’s really what made my gorge rise: The thought that even this extraordinary ugliness is just a symptom of something so dishearteningly huge that my voice can’t possibly make a dent in it."
"....the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president." Hillary Clinton. - 1998 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right-wing_conspiracy
The Civil War didn’t end. It continued through the 1870’s and US Grant, who countenanced killing as many Confederate soldiers as necessary to end the hot war, could not order Federal troops to open fire on those same Southerners once they were citizens. That and the decision to reconcile with former traitors throughout the next 50 years left us primed for the Republican Southern Strategy that has solidified white supremacy as a dominant political movement in America. That so worthless a human being as Trump could seize control of that movement doesn’t diminish its power but does make normal, moral people wonder what could possibly turn its adherents away from its hatred and embrace those liberal virtues of compassion, empathy, and brotherhood.
Yes, indeed. If I still smoked I'd have one right now. "I find myself clogged with outrage." Yeah, there's not enough of that clogging. Imagine reading in a history book about when the plague came to visit the land of Moronia and how King Donald the Greatest declared any mention of it was criticism of his glorious self and therefore proceeded to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Moronians to it. Then, clogged with outraged, the Moronians rose up and stormed the palace and executed King Donald for treating their lives with such contempt. At least that would have been an insurrection that made sense. Outrage? I'm continually amazed that the people of this benighted country aren't even angry enough to put President Piece of Shit on trial for half a million dead Americans.
This, a thousand times over. I've been a lefty for more than 50 years, and with each day I get more lefty, but over the years I've cultivated a Buddhist-style detachment to keep me from going insane. Every once in a while something gets through and I find myself with anger that could swallow the world.
Believe me, Roy, your voice does indeed make a dent in it.
All of our gorges rise as one.
Roy, I love you, but . . . you're not wrong.
Jesus, Roy, amen. The singsongy voice thing was awful. I was not expecting it. It's the voice men use when they know (or at least assume, because they think of women as playthings to use and break) that they can easily overpower you, that you can't escape them, and that they're gonna have some fun making you suffer. It's a rape threat and a death threat and a notice that you are nothing, and there will be no mercy for you or consequences for them. That if you escape alive, it's because you weren't worth killing. It's the sound of someone who owns the world and is so used to getting their own way they can't even imagine not anymore. It's the voice of The Purge if you want to be less personal about it, but I've heard that voice in my life and my nightmares for years, I think a lot of women have.
Roy noted a while back that these guys were doing this out in the open, because they knew there would be no consequences. That they couldn't even imagine anyone stopping them or prosecuting them or finding them guilty, they thought it was perfectly aboveboard. They were *entitled* to do this.
The women in your life, and the men who were abused as children, are suffering today. Be kind to them. I'm watching seven women on MSNBC this morning function at a very high level, and I wonder how many of them are fighting through it.
What happened was extraordinary in some ways, but as Roy notes mostly not. These men are this way in their home lives and their communities too. I haven't been able to explain this before, and now I feel like maybe we can just point and say See? Don't make us have to explain it again. Don't let it happen again.
You aren’t wrong. Keep up the fight.
All I can add is that when I heard the asshole calling for Nancy, I was reminded of this. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeEbtiruH2Q
Trump shoulda shot Mike Pence on 5th Ave. That would have at least been entertaining.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-and-pence/
But of course, that would have left Nancy Pelosi alive and the point of the assault on the Capitol as to decapitate congress and leave the order of presidential succession in tatters.
Trump didn't plan that shit - his Republican friends did. The Republican Party should be declared a terrorist organization. It's leaders arrested, shipped out to Gitmo. But that would lead to civil war so I guess we get to put up with the ugly little fascist party in our midst and pretend that they aren't a bunch of Nazis just like the 11 or so my uncle Louis killed in a WWII action around Monte Cassino.
But the Nazi treatment is what they deserve.