Don't obey in advance is always good advice. I make no secret of the fact I've descended into nihilistic despondency since the election. I most definitely have no appetite for toothless performances of resistance this time around -- take your pussy hat and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. I assume in time a path or two forward will reveal itself or be discovered.
I think a lot of us are simply bone tired. You scream yourself hoarse warning about the impending car crash, and people don't or won't or can't listen. And you already anticipate those same drivers are going to stagger out of the wreckage, asking "huh? How come my car is totaled?" It's maddening.
What grinds my gears is the assertion that Harris ran a pretty much perfect campaign, she was just stuck with the anti-incumbent feeling that seems to be dominant all over. The fact is, she was ahead in the polls even after the post-convention bump wore off. The voters were ready to buy what she was selling, if she could sell it. She didn't. Why or how I'm not smart enough to know, although I have my totally biased suspicions.
Huh, possibly it could have to do somehow with the journalismic assertions that the economy was shit while sanewashing yammering about Arnold Palmer's hog and Hannibal Lecter. Maybe.
When I first read about the Arnold Palmer dong remark, my first thought was wondering whether Jack Nicklaus, an open supporter of Trump, would switch sides.
In 2018 JN III was at the DC bribe center dinner attended by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruhman. (Igor recorded the event with a phone on the table, pointing at the ceiling). It was both hypnotic and nauseating, listening to the populist in his real milieu with the paying supplicants.
Meh, all the "analysis" I saw insisted votes would break one way or the other, but no one could predict which way, and every person who said Trump might win added that he would probably sweep the trifecta. So everyone was the best kind of correct, technically, fat lot of good that did anyone. Other than that French hedge fund guy who went heavy in politics betting sites on Trump. I wonder what happened to him.
One of the things I ponder or ruminate about is how significantly worse will it be for how many. I mean, we can guess but I know don't have much an idea. Other than immigrants coming in illegally (or trying to), I don't know.
Prior to the coming shitstorm, we've had over forty years of flat wage growth while certain basic costs have net inflation -- housing primarily, apparently food prices now given that part of that's due to gouging and global warming, two problems that won't and can't be addressed by either party.
~25% of full time workers don't make a living wage (due in part to the ACA). Our peoples' party can barely fight for a $15/hr minimum wage when that's good for a living wage is about half the nation.
The power of the vote has been weakened for years: Republican gerrymandering, SCOTUS decisions and and a Democratic party regularly choosing *not* contest races.
And so on and so forth. I can go on. I can even say some relatively hopeful things about Trump 2.0. (Not many, not so important.) I could even say something nice re Ukraine given that 2022 was a direct enough consequence of the 2014 acts of the Obama administration. It's complicated.
So looking at the way things actually were and had been going, I don't know how much worse things can really get with the nation going full Nazi as opposed to simply fascist.
~35 years with an opposition party disinterested in stopping the other party from pulling shit... I'm kind of amazed...
My understanding is that the ACA has and had a huge loophole for small businesses. Employers had to cover full time workers defined as over 30/hours a week. Bust the workers to no more than 30 and it's then on the workers to pay for (mandatory) coverage on their now reduced earnings.
When some workers fail like the system's screwing them it's because the system's screwing them. I guess it's OK as long as private carriers got their windfall *and* protection from M4A.
Can't, shouldn't expect an alt-Republican party to be able to do progressive stuff competently.
I'm with Roy wondering about the ACA and living wage connection. Please explain. Which provides a teachable moment on both sides: Lacking facts, the imagination fills the void. We like to make sense of even nonsense. This is the nature of all things. Free energy principle. Lucretius, eat your heart out! Then start remaking sense!
Put like that, remaking sense sounds kind of trippy.
Now, I think maybe I'm going do an online search about the use of psychedelics to treat or otherwise address and deal with age-related cognitive decline.
What's really rough right now seems to me to be the knowledge that they're out there, anticipating their four-plus year orgy of corruption and revenge, and meanwhile the real world continues and the minutiae of everyday life calls. It's pointless to anticipate, but I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING, but what? How do you fight a threat that doesn't threaten, yet?
The national Dems (the DNC) are dead to me. Had my quota of empty promises without any intention of acting. A party once famous for delivering now barely able to provide crumbs or short term executive orders. Dems controlling the White House and Congress and can’t get the John Lewis bill passed. But can pass that disgraceful 2022 gun control bill — such a stinker that no talks about it. Feh.
All the action has to be on the state and local (and private) levels.
Honestly, if someone said "I know he's coming after the immigrants, so I'm just going to spend the next four years volunteering with Voces de la Frontera, just doing whatever they ask, while ignoring all the rest of it" I wouldn't fault them one bit. That person will be doing far more than the conscientious person who tries to follow it all.
I'm almost excited. I'd let her direct *my* intelligence...
Today's old fart theory pending being proven wrong: Donny's cabinet and cabinet level picks are for the show for the rubes; all are expects to stroke he ego; and distract our exceptional news media from watching what the lower level appointees are doing which the harm to the nation stuff. Entertainment, stroking, and distraction. (I expect the Secretary of Treasury to be the exception to the rule; and no, I don't assume for the better, just the exception.)
Great column! The tone is exactly right. How you supposed to feel when you get beat by dim-witted, evil clowns?
They are clowns and fuckups and they're going to be a lot busier stealing and fucking each other over to fuck the country too much. "Secretary of State Marco Rubio" is the punchline of a bad joke. The whole cabinet is the sort thing a focus group of drunken Amvets would come up with for a Sean Hannity Saturday evening special.
I say they tank the economy before the first year is up with some toxic brew of tariffs, bitcoins and catastrophic reduction of the migrant workforce. Orangey McFatfuck either dies or degrades to the point where he can't give a 10 minute speech without reaching down in his pants pulling his hand up and sniffing his fingers or drops his drawers and starts " Weaving" his pubic hair while telling everyone that's a sign of his genius. Like a racehorse. The power struggle will be epic.
Chuck Schumer jogs!? I'll be damn!
"hashmarks scrawled in blood on the shithouse wall"
Would I have to pay you royalties if I change the name of my sub stack to that?
HOLY SHIT I hadn't remembered about the Bozo Cult from the Books Of The SubGenius - "an army of lobotomized youth" serving the Anti-"Bob" in the End Times, dressing as evil CLOWNS and terrorizing people. SURE AS FUCK SOUNDS FAMILIAR.
I live around the corner from Chuckles Schumer and yes, he jogs... and used to go to the gym at the Y but I think that's no longer the case, since he has weekly pro- and anti-Israel protests outside his humble abode.
Now we check in, as we do every Wednesday when we forget to book something else, with our house economist Lester Izmoor, who always has something to say. Les, howz the price of eggs these days?"
Izmoor [soothing baritone voice] "Well, Mel, we see effects of the poultry strike already. Chickens have organized a lay-off, striking at egg plants all over the eastern seaboard and midwest. Any day now I expect the wholesale price to bust thru the 39¢ barrier."
[Melburne F Luent, host] "Wait now, what? 39¢ a dozen? Why are we hearing alla this hoo haw about elevated egg prices if a dozen eggs are only 39¢ wholesale? is it the fake bird flu like the dimmycrats keep lyin'?"
Izmoor: "Shee-itt, Mel! 'Course not! The middlemen and the retailers 'r just profiteering like always! Sheeesh!"
I try to be optimistic, which accounts for the many metaphoric black eyes I have sported over the years. It is an odd sort of optimism that I half believe that eggs at $10 a dozen (they’re $3.10 right now) and gas at $6 ($2.75 here yesterday), social disruption from the disappearance of immigrant workers (wasn’t there a movie or TV show about that?), pregnant women dying in red states and the horror of ethnic cleansing in Palestine will bring the economic anxiety and anti-genocide voters back to the Democratic Party so the House and maybe the Senate will flip in two years. In the meantime, I root for rank incompetence in Trump’s appointees which, although bad, will be better than cruel efficiency.
Rank incompetence, courtier rivalry and backstabbing, paranoia regarding who is in or out of Tubby's favor, Dems throwing what sand is available into the gears, the mad king's increasing decline, Vance's machiavellianism, PLUS some new natural disaster (covid, hurricanes, etc.). I keep saying, we don't have to defeat them. We just have to play defense and block them where possible. Anything can happen--and probably will!
For every complicated event there comes a slurry of perfectly simple explanations, all of which are more or less incorrect, in that they cause our minds to go off in misguided directions.
Mencken's quote is pithier and wittier but my statement is more on point.
Roy has done a better job here than all the it was this or that, including my simplistic focus on "low info" voters.
Democracy is what it is with the electorate as it is. At least one friend insists there should be a test for voting, aka voter suppression by any other means.
Thus, right, left, center, whatever, all have the same stupid ideas, given a chance to mouth off under the influence of fear.
Despair is useless. It goes away when one gets tired or hungry enough, unless one is truly depressed, and that's a cry for help and/or a call to action.
As long as we live, we must keep going, and working for justice and equity. Even the other side thinks that's what it is doing. Different dreams. Different dreams.
John C. Calhoun and Marx. Different visions. Note Marx is the rock star, single name recognition. The other side prefer to work anonymously.
Guy Fawks was not an anarchist. When did things turn inside out and the GOP become anti-establishment? Oh, when they started believing government should not help most people? Maybe.
Someone explain. No government here, lots of government intrusion here. How is any of it coherent?
Aside: I always thought 3M was pretty progressive when they invented the sticky piece of paper for use as a placeholder after breast surgery. You know, the...ah, never mind...
Harris ran a great campaign. The media's decade long sane-washing of Tubby's incoherent ramblings and the media's underplaying of his sycophants' vicious policies was an enormous factor here, but honestly? I think it's just the Zeitgeist (German used intentionally). We are in That Phase of Empire. The only foolish thing I believe Harris did was concentrate so much energy on the Liz Cheney types, but I don't believe it even mattered much in a negative way. Any GOP voter who was not going to vote for Tubby had already decided that long, long ago, and appealing to Liz and her tiny circle of vampires was only a small waste of time in the grand scheme of things.
We're pretty fucked. I feel especially bad for people with children and grandchildren. The common Millennial story of not being able to afford a house is going to sound like Old Timers boasting to future adults.
I do wonder about the campaigns choice to never use the word "tariffs." It was always "The Trump Tax" or "Trump sales tax", while Trump kept talking of tariffs. How many voters failed to make the connection?
Now I'm gonna do that teacher thing where I say, "What this campaign needed was more PEDAGOGY", but maybe some simple explainers, "This is what a tariff is, this is how it works, here's who pays" using simple examples (did I mention simple? Like REAL SIMPLE.)
And I have a sneaking suspicion that her campaign never used the word because they thought "people won't know what it means and we don't have time to teach them" which is a common thing that Democratic campaigns think. Use what's already in people's heads, don't try to put anything new there, there isn't time. Republicans, oddly, don't seem to feel the same constraint and were comfortable offering us all a yearlong mis-education on the details of sex change surgery.
From my back window what I see is a charleton who personally destroyed the functional value of legacy media (with everso much help from them) all for his immediate personal benefit & profit. The next phase was to command the antisocial media universe to convince a truly monumental portion of the voting public to go along with his lies in the face of thousands of alternate/opposite reality-based reports from the now-feckless* media.
So what he achieved was the generation of an alt. universe of which he is master, with no significant pushback in the mediasphere (they got what they deserved, and their only consolation is they'll continue to make cheap money by publishing every little thing he does because people still pay for that shit), the pundits who feed it nor the actual experts in the fields of endeavor that actually keep society from spinning out into the cruelest decadence.
Just clicked on the link and read the Snyder list. Now I’m REALLY worried. Glad I have a passport. Maybe Australia? But my new grandson is here. So maybe San Francisco, if Newsom can hold out.
Admittedly, I first read of this joke in "The Mote in G-d's Eye", by Larry Niven (who probably likes the election results, but knows enough to hate Trump himself) and Jerry Pournelle (who, if he were alive, would probably cream-in-his-khakis–to–death over it):
The King was angry with his Vizier over one trivium or another and ordered him put to death.
'O! Great King, your Wisdom is as unquestionable as is your Justness. But do hold back your hand for the span of but one year to give me the chance to redeem myself, for I have but recently learned of a secret technique by which I may call forth a new Wonder for your delectation: in but one year's time, but that you in your Grace allot it to me, I shall teach a pig to sing!'
'Whatever.' said the King, wiping grease on his track-suit, and waddled away.
A friend of the Vizier's came out of hiding to ask him 'Why have you sentenced yourself to a year of cringing, horrid, anticipation? Why not die now, your pride intact?'
The Vizier replied 'It is a year. I may die; the King may die, or change his mind. —or I might teach a pig to sing.'
They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some are concerned with the price of eggs.
Or to paraphrase another of their savants, You go to the election with the electorate you have. Add the media/information warfare environment, and you get this much of the vote being for something completely opposite of the real intentions of those they elect.
Roy has really hit on something: the connection between acceptance of the "now fairly dependable chaos of modern life" and public apathy. Like Roy's examples of the public not turning on the GOP, the horror that was Sandy Hook was a turning point only in school cop hiring, and creating trauma in generations of kids raised on active shooter drills.
Psychological reactions to dependable chaos breeds common wisdom, and thus, apathy. I think of reporting on food studies that find something carcinogenic or otherwise harmful. Even if we should be clamoring for more effective regulation, over the years the common reaction ends up being, "Oh, well, everything will kill you." In this way, the average person learns politics is a turnoff ("They're all crooks"; every other rationale for not bothering). Yeah, the big question is what becomes enough to break through apathy (I mean, other than becoming captivated by a grandiose con man).
OTOH, we can't have a whole country accepting the Darwin Award.
It's just massive cynicism. You're not supposed to like or admire the person you vote for as President, you're just hiring a guy to do a job, and a dirty job at that. Better to hire the asshole, because assholes get stuff done and nice guys finish last.
"The winner of this year's award for Outstanding Example of Extinction Of The Fitless is the entire population of the former United States of America. Sadly, America could not be with us this evening. Accepting the award for America is the nation of Canada, which now manages the vacant lands between its former southern border and Mexico."
For those of us alive because our parents fled fascism while it was still not in complete control this may be more fraught.
I am filled with both the fear that I will do something to resist atrocity that will leave me imprisoned or pauperised or beaten-to-death and the fear that I will not.
Don't obey in advance is always good advice. I make no secret of the fact I've descended into nihilistic despondency since the election. I most definitely have no appetite for toothless performances of resistance this time around -- take your pussy hat and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. I assume in time a path or two forward will reveal itself or be discovered.
I think a lot of us are simply bone tired. You scream yourself hoarse warning about the impending car crash, and people don't or won't or can't listen. And you already anticipate those same drivers are going to stagger out of the wreckage, asking "huh? How come my car is totaled?" It's maddening.
And then the driver attacks a non-white bystander, because it's OBVIOUSLY their fault.
What grinds my gears is the assertion that Harris ran a pretty much perfect campaign, she was just stuck with the anti-incumbent feeling that seems to be dominant all over. The fact is, she was ahead in the polls even after the post-convention bump wore off. The voters were ready to buy what she was selling, if she could sell it. She didn't. Why or how I'm not smart enough to know, although I have my totally biased suspicions.
Huh, possibly it could have to do somehow with the journalismic assertions that the economy was shit while sanewashing yammering about Arnold Palmer's hog and Hannibal Lecter. Maybe.
When I first read about the Arnold Palmer dong remark, my first thought was wondering whether Jack Nicklaus, an open supporter of Trump, would switch sides.
I have a (distant) connection to JN, he's an asshole top-to-bottom. So no.
In 2018 JN III was at the DC bribe center dinner attended by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruhman. (Igor recorded the event with a phone on the table, pointing at the ceiling). It was both hypnotic and nauseating, listening to the populist in his real milieu with the paying supplicants.
Or maybe the polls weren't worth the paper/pixels they were printed on.
Meh, all the "analysis" I saw insisted votes would break one way or the other, but no one could predict which way, and every person who said Trump might win added that he would probably sweep the trifecta. So everyone was the best kind of correct, technically, fat lot of good that did anyone. Other than that French hedge fund guy who went heavy in politics betting sites on Trump. I wonder what happened to him.
One of the things I ponder or ruminate about is how significantly worse will it be for how many. I mean, we can guess but I know don't have much an idea. Other than immigrants coming in illegally (or trying to), I don't know.
Prior to the coming shitstorm, we've had over forty years of flat wage growth while certain basic costs have net inflation -- housing primarily, apparently food prices now given that part of that's due to gouging and global warming, two problems that won't and can't be addressed by either party.
~25% of full time workers don't make a living wage (due in part to the ACA). Our peoples' party can barely fight for a $15/hr minimum wage when that's good for a living wage is about half the nation.
The power of the vote has been weakened for years: Republican gerrymandering, SCOTUS decisions and and a Democratic party regularly choosing *not* contest races.
And so on and so forth. I can go on. I can even say some relatively hopeful things about Trump 2.0. (Not many, not so important.) I could even say something nice re Ukraine given that 2022 was a direct enough consequence of the 2014 acts of the Obama administration. It's complicated.
So looking at the way things actually were and had been going, I don't know how much worse things can really get with the nation going full Nazi as opposed to simply fascist.
~35 years with an opposition party disinterested in stopping the other party from pulling shit... I'm kind of amazed...
Anyway.
May we live interesting times.
"~25% of full time workers don't make a living wage (due in part to the ACA)." ?
My understanding is that the ACA has and had a huge loophole for small businesses. Employers had to cover full time workers defined as over 30/hours a week. Bust the workers to no more than 30 and it's then on the workers to pay for (mandatory) coverage on their now reduced earnings.
When some workers fail like the system's screwing them it's because the system's screwing them. I guess it's OK as long as private carriers got their windfall *and* protection from M4A.
Can't, shouldn't expect an alt-Republican party to be able to do progressive stuff competently.
If they are working less than 30 hours then they aren't full time workers by definition.
The point is that if they got there hours reduced to dodge an ACA mandate, that’s what matters, not semantics.
I'm with Roy wondering about the ACA and living wage connection. Please explain. Which provides a teachable moment on both sides: Lacking facts, the imagination fills the void. We like to make sense of even nonsense. This is the nature of all things. Free energy principle. Lucretius, eat your heart out! Then start remaking sense!
"Start remaking sense" is the sequel to "Stop Remaking Sense" that no one really wanted to see...
Put like that, remaking sense sounds kind of trippy.
Now, I think maybe I'm going do an online search about the use of psychedelics to treat or otherwise address and deal with age-related cognitive decline.
Fuck, we've been LIVING IT for the last eight years.
Less lacking facts than there's decades of bullshit, dissembling and facts to keep straight.
Anyway, see my reply to Roy.
What's really rough right now seems to me to be the knowledge that they're out there, anticipating their four-plus year orgy of corruption and revenge, and meanwhile the real world continues and the minutiae of everyday life calls. It's pointless to anticipate, but I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING, but what? How do you fight a threat that doesn't threaten, yet?
(I suppose one advantage we have *is* the ability to imagine, something the other side seems to be bereft of.)
The national Dems (the DNC) are dead to me. Had my quota of empty promises without any intention of acting. A party once famous for delivering now barely able to provide crumbs or short term executive orders. Dems controlling the White House and Congress and can’t get the John Lewis bill passed. But can pass that disgraceful 2022 gun control bill — such a stinker that no talks about it. Feh.
All the action has to be on the state and local (and private) levels.
Honestly, if someone said "I know he's coming after the immigrants, so I'm just going to spend the next four years volunteering with Voces de la Frontera, just doing whatever they ask, while ignoring all the rest of it" I wouldn't fault them one bit. That person will be doing far more than the conscientious person who tries to follow it all.
https://vdlf.org/
your girl Tulsi is going to be NSA chief
I'm almost excited. I'd let her direct *my* intelligence...
Today's old fart theory pending being proven wrong: Donny's cabinet and cabinet level picks are for the show for the rubes; all are expects to stroke he ego; and distract our exceptional news media from watching what the lower level appointees are doing which the harm to the nation stuff. Entertainment, stroking, and distraction. (I expect the Secretary of Treasury to be the exception to the rule; and no, I don't assume for the better, just the exception.)
Great column! The tone is exactly right. How you supposed to feel when you get beat by dim-witted, evil clowns?
They are clowns and fuckups and they're going to be a lot busier stealing and fucking each other over to fuck the country too much. "Secretary of State Marco Rubio" is the punchline of a bad joke. The whole cabinet is the sort thing a focus group of drunken Amvets would come up with for a Sean Hannity Saturday evening special.
I say they tank the economy before the first year is up with some toxic brew of tariffs, bitcoins and catastrophic reduction of the migrant workforce. Orangey McFatfuck either dies or degrades to the point where he can't give a 10 minute speech without reaching down in his pants pulling his hand up and sniffing his fingers or drops his drawers and starts " Weaving" his pubic hair while telling everyone that's a sign of his genius. Like a racehorse. The power struggle will be epic.
Chuck Schumer jogs!? I'll be damn!
"hashmarks scrawled in blood on the shithouse wall"
Would I have to pay you royalties if I change the name of my sub stack to that?
HOLY SHIT I hadn't remembered about the Bozo Cult from the Books Of The SubGenius - "an army of lobotomized youth" serving the Anti-"Bob" in the End Times, dressing as evil CLOWNS and terrorizing people. SURE AS FUCK SOUNDS FAMILIAR.
The anti-Bob was Obo, which made it even better.
I live around the corner from Chuckles Schumer and yes, he jogs... and used to go to the gym at the Y but I think that's no longer the case, since he has weekly pro- and anti-Israel protests outside his humble abode.
Under the topic " Okay, which one of you guys..."
This turned up on a poetry page I was reading this morning looking for a lead in quote for my sub stack page.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DMSQXCCW
Um, wut?!?! What the actual fuck?
Hopefully a worthy successor to "Whose Boat Is This Boat?"
Sounds like Ellis.
So much for Keats' place in the canon.
William McGonagall waves an angry fist from the afterlife
Relax, y'all. Read the encomiums on the cover, such as
"Tremendous! Donald Trump's poetry changes lives!" – Donald Trump
What was the fake name again he used when he was pretending to be someone else?
John Barron
John Baron
John Miller
Carolin Gallego(!)
David Dennison
(from the wiki "Pseudonyms of Donald Trump")
Yas, obvs
"And some were concerned with the price of eggs..."
And some have investments in the egg resale market...
Coddled voters.
Good one!!
You spelled 'curdled' incorrectly.
Better living through chemistry, lower egg prices through tariffs.
Now we check in, as we do every Wednesday when we forget to book something else, with our house economist Lester Izmoor, who always has something to say. Les, howz the price of eggs these days?"
Izmoor [soothing baritone voice] "Well, Mel, we see effects of the poultry strike already. Chickens have organized a lay-off, striking at egg plants all over the eastern seaboard and midwest. Any day now I expect the wholesale price to bust thru the 39¢ barrier."
[Melburne F Luent, host] "Wait now, what? 39¢ a dozen? Why are we hearing alla this hoo haw about elevated egg prices if a dozen eggs are only 39¢ wholesale? is it the fake bird flu like the dimmycrats keep lyin'?"
Izmoor: "Shee-itt, Mel! 'Course not! The middlemen and the retailers 'r just profiteering like always! Sheeesh!"
Lower prices through raising prices.
I try to be optimistic, which accounts for the many metaphoric black eyes I have sported over the years. It is an odd sort of optimism that I half believe that eggs at $10 a dozen (they’re $3.10 right now) and gas at $6 ($2.75 here yesterday), social disruption from the disappearance of immigrant workers (wasn’t there a movie or TV show about that?), pregnant women dying in red states and the horror of ethnic cleansing in Palestine will bring the economic anxiety and anti-genocide voters back to the Democratic Party so the House and maybe the Senate will flip in two years. In the meantime, I root for rank incompetence in Trump’s appointees which, although bad, will be better than cruel efficiency.
Rank incompetence, courtier rivalry and backstabbing, paranoia regarding who is in or out of Tubby's favor, Dems throwing what sand is available into the gears, the mad king's increasing decline, Vance's machiavellianism, PLUS some new natural disaster (covid, hurricanes, etc.). I keep saying, we don't have to defeat them. We just have to play defense and block them where possible. Anything can happen--and probably will!
So... rooting for injuries?
For every complicated event there comes a slurry of perfectly simple explanations, all of which are more or less incorrect, in that they cause our minds to go off in misguided directions.
Mencken's quote is pithier and wittier but my statement is more on point.
Roy has done a better job here than all the it was this or that, including my simplistic focus on "low info" voters.
Democracy is what it is with the electorate as it is. At least one friend insists there should be a test for voting, aka voter suppression by any other means.
Thus, right, left, center, whatever, all have the same stupid ideas, given a chance to mouth off under the influence of fear.
Despair is useless. It goes away when one gets tired or hungry enough, unless one is truly depressed, and that's a cry for help and/or a call to action.
As long as we live, we must keep going, and working for justice and equity. Even the other side thinks that's what it is doing. Different dreams. Different dreams.
John C. Calhoun and Marx. Different visions. Note Marx is the rock star, single name recognition. The other side prefer to work anonymously.
Guy Fawks was not an anarchist. When did things turn inside out and the GOP become anti-establishment? Oh, when they started believing government should not help most people? Maybe.
Someone explain. No government here, lots of government intrusion here. How is any of it coherent?
"John C. Calhoun and Marx. Different visions. Note Marx is the rock star, single name recognition. The other side prefer to work anonymously."
The John C. Calhoun vision is that of the ones who have been trying to put my people "back in their place" since January 1, 1863.
they aren't anti-establishment, that's just words for the rubes
I really don't know about this whole titrating thing.
Finally, an explanation for what the consultants do.
Can I then be a consultant, I have performed titrations
In case you're wondering, it has nothing to do with tits.
Huh, I thought is was a "scale of 1-10" kind of thing.
Well, if you hafta put a name to it, maybe...
Aside: I always thought 3M was pretty progressive when they invented the sticky piece of paper for use as a placeholder after breast surgery. You know, the...ah, never mind...
Harris ran a great campaign. The media's decade long sane-washing of Tubby's incoherent ramblings and the media's underplaying of his sycophants' vicious policies was an enormous factor here, but honestly? I think it's just the Zeitgeist (German used intentionally). We are in That Phase of Empire. The only foolish thing I believe Harris did was concentrate so much energy on the Liz Cheney types, but I don't believe it even mattered much in a negative way. Any GOP voter who was not going to vote for Tubby had already decided that long, long ago, and appealing to Liz and her tiny circle of vampires was only a small waste of time in the grand scheme of things.
We're pretty fucked. I feel especially bad for people with children and grandchildren. The common Millennial story of not being able to afford a house is going to sound like Old Timers boasting to future adults.
"Lookshury. We used to DREAM about not affording a house."
I do wonder about the campaigns choice to never use the word "tariffs." It was always "The Trump Tax" or "Trump sales tax", while Trump kept talking of tariffs. How many voters failed to make the connection?
Now I'm gonna do that teacher thing where I say, "What this campaign needed was more PEDAGOGY", but maybe some simple explainers, "This is what a tariff is, this is how it works, here's who pays" using simple examples (did I mention simple? Like REAL SIMPLE.)
And I have a sneaking suspicion that her campaign never used the word because they thought "people won't know what it means and we don't have time to teach them" which is a common thing that Democratic campaigns think. Use what's already in people's heads, don't try to put anything new there, there isn't time. Republicans, oddly, don't seem to feel the same constraint and were comfortable offering us all a yearlong mis-education on the details of sex change surgery.
I think it is even less complicated than that.
From my back window what I see is a charleton who personally destroyed the functional value of legacy media (with everso much help from them) all for his immediate personal benefit & profit. The next phase was to command the antisocial media universe to convince a truly monumental portion of the voting public to go along with his lies in the face of thousands of alternate/opposite reality-based reports from the now-feckless* media.
So what he achieved was the generation of an alt. universe of which he is master, with no significant pushback in the mediasphere (they got what they deserved, and their only consolation is they'll continue to make cheap money by publishing every little thing he does because people still pay for that shit), the pundits who feed it nor the actual experts in the fields of endeavor that actually keep society from spinning out into the cruelest decadence.
*Note to self: practice feckfulness
I'd like to know why they stopped calling Trump & JD weird?
Just clicked on the link and read the Snyder list. Now I’m REALLY worried. Glad I have a passport. Maybe Australia? But my new grandson is here. So maybe San Francisco, if Newsom can hold out.
Sharing this with some downhearted folks i know.
Look at Little Mary Sunshine here.
Cheer up! Could be a major asteroid impact soon!
Admittedly, I first read of this joke in "The Mote in G-d's Eye", by Larry Niven (who probably likes the election results, but knows enough to hate Trump himself) and Jerry Pournelle (who, if he were alive, would probably cream-in-his-khakis–to–death over it):
The King was angry with his Vizier over one trivium or another and ordered him put to death.
'O! Great King, your Wisdom is as unquestionable as is your Justness. But do hold back your hand for the span of but one year to give me the chance to redeem myself, for I have but recently learned of a secret technique by which I may call forth a new Wonder for your delectation: in but one year's time, but that you in your Grace allot it to me, I shall teach a pig to sing!'
'Whatever.' said the King, wiping grease on his track-suit, and waddled away.
A friend of the Vizier's came out of hiding to ask him 'Why have you sentenced yourself to a year of cringing, horrid, anticipation? Why not die now, your pride intact?'
The Vizier replied 'It is a year. I may die; the King may die, or change his mind. —or I might teach a pig to sing.'
They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some are concerned with the price of eggs.
Or to paraphrase another of their savants, You go to the election with the electorate you have. Add the media/information warfare environment, and you get this much of the vote being for something completely opposite of the real intentions of those they elect.
Roy has really hit on something: the connection between acceptance of the "now fairly dependable chaos of modern life" and public apathy. Like Roy's examples of the public not turning on the GOP, the horror that was Sandy Hook was a turning point only in school cop hiring, and creating trauma in generations of kids raised on active shooter drills.
Psychological reactions to dependable chaos breeds common wisdom, and thus, apathy. I think of reporting on food studies that find something carcinogenic or otherwise harmful. Even if we should be clamoring for more effective regulation, over the years the common reaction ends up being, "Oh, well, everything will kill you." In this way, the average person learns politics is a turnoff ("They're all crooks"; every other rationale for not bothering). Yeah, the big question is what becomes enough to break through apathy (I mean, other than becoming captivated by a grandiose con man).
OTOH, we can't have a whole country accepting the Darwin Award.
"Common wisdom" sounds a lot like the "common sense" they're insisting will explain everything, and you know how I feel about "common sense".
And all manufactured (until they gather what you might call, *consent*).
Thomas Paine was right?
It's just massive cynicism. You're not supposed to like or admire the person you vote for as President, you're just hiring a guy to do a job, and a dirty job at that. Better to hire the asshole, because assholes get stuff done and nice guys finish last.
"The winner of this year's award for Outstanding Example of Extinction Of The Fitless is the entire population of the former United States of America. Sadly, America could not be with us this evening. Accepting the award for America is the nation of Canada, which now manages the vacant lands between its former southern border and Mexico."
For those of us alive because our parents fled fascism while it was still not in complete control this may be more fraught.
I am filled with both the fear that I will do something to resist atrocity that will leave me imprisoned or pauperised or beaten-to-death and the fear that I will not.