Yes, funny/not funny how un-Xian the Xian pro-theocracy party is. Then again, I'm on record that the religion is essentially anti-progress by its own terms -- I'm thinking (and I use the term loosely) of original sin; not being an asshole is pretty much to get one into heaven so doing good while alive isn't too important. Yes, I know; not all denominations, just the politically-controlling ones.
With that is the irony that their god was born as essentially an illegal immigrant. Turned away from where they wanted to stay, not shipped back to their home nation.
Should I note that a lot of DC's problems here would be much more easily addressable were it a state.
"a lot of DC's problems here would be much more easily addressable were it a state"
If DC was a state, would it have a state National Guard? Which, not having any natural disasters to respond to, might be available on special occasions?
Dunno 'bout that, but how cool would it be to reestablish the official musicians of the state, ready at a moment's notice to fanfare visitors thru the gates, not to mention sound the alarums when seditionistas appear on the shores of the river Potomac...? With enough buskers we coulda driven off the 1/6 rabble...
Yup. Reagan. A B-list actor and Big Business spokesmodel bringing wannabe fascists to Washington, who started the transition from "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" to, eventually, "suckers and losers".
Yeah, ReCons have a similar alternate history wrt Reagan as they do with TFG. St. Ronnie paid off the deficit; he didn’t raise taxes; middle-class income rose; he stopped Cuba from invading Grenada- all this is objectively and demonstrably false, of course. But they assume everyone, including Democrats, accepts them as true.
One of those Ustabee Republicans was on MSNBC, trying to explain what the Republican party stood for before Trump came along, and came up with "Clean and honest government, and personal virtue among its elected officials". Everyone on the panel nodded in agreement.
I think you’re being a little too morbid, Roy lmao. But the concept of things passing out of living memory is interesting. Americans in general don’t know history and what little they do know they don’t fully understand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that world-wide fascism is on the rise immediately following the passing of those who remember actual Nazism.
And I think it is clearly the conservative scheme to turn back the clock so as to normalize the loss of privacy rights and autonomy for a new generation. This plan can work on various levels: as more and more people pass away who remember what life was like before Reagan, a whole host of authoritarian policies become “just the way things are.” This is also true of the economics of late capitalism: my late father, a UAW union man, worked on the assembly line at the GM plant on the Hudson River just north of NYC, and his income supported us. Impossible today.
So "Ruth and Ronald" are refugees from Venezuela and in all probability they are coming here because their economy is a shambles. Their economy is an shambles because we have spent more than a decade trying to destroy it and fomenting coups and stealing their stuff. And in all probability the best place for them to come is here. The actual world is beyond surreal.
Nah. We like the White ones. Well, the White ones who come from places we recognize as White. Okay, so it's a narrow subset of White immigrants who come from the "right" places.
I am quite proud of my own little community here in Vermont. We have welcomed a bunch of Afghan refugees, Syrian refugees, Iraqi refugees, and now Ukrainian refugees. (Mrs. Derelict and I gave our disused bicycles to an Afghan family, and we've been donating cash and clothing to everyone else.) However, I will confess that I am disappointed that none of these refugees has opened a restaurant yet.
Whenever Tucker Carlson goes on one of his rants against the notion that "Diversity is our strength", I always want to ask, "Oh, and when you want to take your wife out to dinner, which Roast Beef and Mashed Potatoes restaurant do you take her to?"
I think we can all guess Tucker's attitude towards to poor schmucks who eat the glop that made his family fortune. He probably has more respect for the cows that went into the making of the Salisbury Steak.
The African slave trade was developed because it was decided that southeast European people were too much like the slave traders to be slaves. So I suppose Slavs must be white enough.
That's some powerful good writing boss. Edgy, flip yet heartfelt and compassionate. Thanks!
I admit the only way that I made it through catechism was the fact that I desperately wanted to spend time with a beautiful young lady named Linda in my class who made me just ache. Anyway though, I never missed classes and I think I got the gist of it. One thing I do remember is all the good guys were some kind of refugee and all the bad guys
were people who persecuted said refugees. It's not like encoded or anything.
Linda and I went to high school together. One night after band concert in the fall of my senior year I told her I was crazy about her. Always had been. Always would be. She kissed me( slow- that's always best) and said something to let me down easy. I don't remember what.
"I admit the only way that I made it through catechism was the fact that I desperately wanted to spend time with a beautiful young lady named Linda in my class who made me just ache."
This is a beautiful essay, sir — it breaks my heart to realize how small are the resources available to those who reach out to help, ease suffering, live according to their own codes of mercy & humanity... and how the war-chests & loot bags of those who lust for conquest & control spill over.
Fuck prosperity gospel & its evil political twin, neoliberalism.
Oh, and gattdamm son — thanks for the rec for "Heart of Glass." Do you think it's on Kanopy?
Are we at the Pelleas and Etarre stage of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King yet? Probably not; Pelleas was bitterly disillusioned with Camelot, not gleefully perverting it for profit.
Nice. That may have been the legit best performance in that movie. IIRC, Pelleas hisses it at Guinevere when she asks him why he’s so bitterly disillusioned (after having seen that none of Camelot comes close to its virtuous reputation).
Very well said. Another piquant irony, if that even does it justice, is that the most anti-American, hate-filled, selfish, hypocritical "christian" sunzabitches are the ones most likely to call themselves "patriots." Now there's a word we really shouldn't have allowed them to steal from us.
Owen was a patriot. He became deeply opposed to the distortion and exploitation of patriotism for the purposes of feeding the slaughter of the war machine. (The Ode of Horace he quoted is almost laughable in this respect, but no more so than some of the pro-war poems written in Owen's time.) Unfortunately, we've allowed right-wingers, who have no love of country but themselves, to equate "patriot" with "real American."
Sending the immigrants to D.C. is also the same tactic used by Belarus on the Polish border. Hateful fascists come to the same conclusions all over the world. They do not want to solve a problem or help people. Their actions under the pretense of helping others to understand the problem create more problems. They use resources to instigate reactions they believe are just natural. Everybody is a mean bastard and lacks compassion when confronted with having to do something to help people in need.
Try telling right-wingers in the US they behave like authoritarians and the old Communist Party. They somehow fail to see that locking kids up in cages at the US border has anything in common with historically similar events in other places.
'It’s a prime example of a key conservative strategy at work — aggressively fucking up government, then going 'see, government can’t do anything right.'''
Big* donation from me to any Democrat running for office who's willing to say this in public. Or any general critique of the Republican party, really. "The one Republican I'm running against is bad for this one weirdly specific reason" ain't cuttin' it, I think.
*everything is relative, I'm no George Soros, etc.
I've been thinking about Chavez: he tried to mount a coup against the government, was put in prison, but they let him out and let him run for President, and ruled as a sometimes beneficent thug for a decade.
Wow, that's a great reminder, I had forgotten all about that. I get tired of always going to Hitler when I'm warning that failed coup attempts often lead to successful coup attempts, it's nice to be able to mix it up a little.
The only problem with this example is that there are still some people around who think that because successive U.S. governments attacked him and he was good to the poor when it suited him, he was a great fellow. Anyone who's listened to no radio for the past twenty years except Pacifica stations—which I net-love—for example.
A few tiny points.
Yes, funny/not funny how un-Xian the Xian pro-theocracy party is. Then again, I'm on record that the religion is essentially anti-progress by its own terms -- I'm thinking (and I use the term loosely) of original sin; not being an asshole is pretty much to get one into heaven so doing good while alive isn't too important. Yes, I know; not all denominations, just the politically-controlling ones.
With that is the irony that their god was born as essentially an illegal immigrant. Turned away from where they wanted to stay, not shipped back to their home nation.
Should I note that a lot of DC's problems here would be much more easily addressable were it a state.
Anyway, now-typically great state of affairs now.
"I'm thinking (and I use the term loosely)"
2 marks.
Loose thoughts sink lots...or something...
Oh Bern.... the correct response is "2 marks... one to share with your brother in need"
MY brother gets the semolians I scrape off my hobnail bootheel. Sweet Charity has its limits, boyo!
Nice throwback to yesterday... I'll fax u a few BitGroans
"a lot of DC's problems here would be much more easily addressable were it a state"
If DC was a state, would it have a state National Guard? Which, not having any natural disasters to respond to, might be available on special occasions?
Dunno 'bout that, but how cool would it be to reestablish the official musicians of the state, ready at a moment's notice to fanfare visitors thru the gates, not to mention sound the alarums when seditionistas appear on the shores of the river Potomac...? With enough buskers we coulda driven off the 1/6 rabble...
See Ted Gioia for details...https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/why-did-medieval-cities-hire-street
Nah, you'd need to throw in some mimes if you want to repel a really large crowd.
Mimes the word.
(Mimes, mines, same difference)
From what I hear, the real trick was to have a tame bear on a leash. Blowing fire is good too..
With enough mimes, we coulda captured all the insurrectionists in onea those glass boxes...
We could reduce it to the Golden Rule and it still works
Now so sure anything’s working these days. Of course, the Golden Rule will really tested when we become an official theocracy…
Golden...? In this economy?
Yup. Reagan. A B-list actor and Big Business spokesmodel bringing wannabe fascists to Washington, who started the transition from "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" to, eventually, "suckers and losers".
Gil Scott-Heron had his number a whole long time ago...
https://youtu.be/XBu2Dz9NZMI
Yeah, ReCons have a similar alternate history wrt Reagan as they do with TFG. St. Ronnie paid off the deficit; he didn’t raise taxes; middle-class income rose; he stopped Cuba from invading Grenada- all this is objectively and demonstrably false, of course. But they assume everyone, including Democrats, accepts them as true.
Clinton & Obama certainly seemed to accept the basics as true....
ETA: See also Manchin, Joe.
One of those Ustabee Republicans was on MSNBC, trying to explain what the Republican party stood for before Trump came along, and came up with "Clean and honest government, and personal virtue among its elected officials". Everyone on the panel nodded in agreement.
I think you’re being a little too morbid, Roy lmao. But the concept of things passing out of living memory is interesting. Americans in general don’t know history and what little they do know they don’t fully understand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that world-wide fascism is on the rise immediately following the passing of those who remember actual Nazism.
And I think it is clearly the conservative scheme to turn back the clock so as to normalize the loss of privacy rights and autonomy for a new generation. This plan can work on various levels: as more and more people pass away who remember what life was like before Reagan, a whole host of authoritarian policies become “just the way things are.” This is also true of the economics of late capitalism: my late father, a UAW union man, worked on the assembly line at the GM plant on the Hudson River just north of NYC, and his income supported us. Impossible today.
The People, United, Will Never Be Deltaed.
So "Ruth and Ronald" are refugees from Venezuela and in all probability they are coming here because their economy is a shambles. Their economy is an shambles because we have spent more than a decade trying to destroy it and fomenting coups and stealing their stuff. And in all probability the best place for them to come is here. The actual world is beyond surreal.
(Nods) I'm old enough to remember when Hugo Chavez turned back that first coup attempt that was run almost entirely out of the US Embassy.
Hey, we only do good, properly organized coups. John Bolton said so!
A nation of immigrants who hate immigrants.
Nah. We like the White ones. Well, the White ones who come from places we recognize as White. Okay, so it's a narrow subset of White immigrants who come from the "right" places.
I'm not so sure any more. Are we actually accepting Ukrainians, or is that just talk?
We're letting the Ukes in on a temporary basis.
I am quite proud of my own little community here in Vermont. We have welcomed a bunch of Afghan refugees, Syrian refugees, Iraqi refugees, and now Ukrainian refugees. (Mrs. Derelict and I gave our disused bicycles to an Afghan family, and we've been donating cash and clothing to everyone else.) However, I will confess that I am disappointed that none of these refugees has opened a restaurant yet.
Whenever Tucker Carlson goes on one of his rants against the notion that "Diversity is our strength", I always want to ask, "Oh, and when you want to take your wife out to dinner, which Roast Beef and Mashed Potatoes restaurant do you take her to?"
I believe he only eats Swanson Hungry Man TV Dinners
I think we can all guess Tucker's attitude towards to poor schmucks who eat the glop that made his family fortune. He probably has more respect for the cows that went into the making of the Salisbury Steak.
I'd search far/wide for a genuine Caesar salad and some well-cheesed-and-gravied poutine, if I ever went out...
Heretically diverse.
Do Ukrainians count as white? I mean they are rather Slavic and aren't in NATO
As White folks become more and more fearful of becoming a minority of the population, we get less and less selective.
The African slave trade was developed because it was decided that southeast European people were too much like the slave traders to be slaves. So I suppose Slavs must be white enough.
"Slavs – We're White Enough!" is a helluva sales pitch...
The Ecru-American Community
That's some powerful good writing boss. Edgy, flip yet heartfelt and compassionate. Thanks!
I admit the only way that I made it through catechism was the fact that I desperately wanted to spend time with a beautiful young lady named Linda in my class who made me just ache. Anyway though, I never missed classes and I think I got the gist of it. One thing I do remember is all the good guys were some kind of refugee and all the bad guys
were people who persecuted said refugees. It's not like encoded or anything.
Linda and I went to high school together. One night after band concert in the fall of my senior year I told her I was crazy about her. Always had been. Always would be. She kissed me( slow- that's always best) and said something to let me down easy. I don't remember what.
Cue Cpt. Reynaud!
"I admit the only way that I made it through catechism was the fact that I desperately wanted to spend time with a beautiful young lady named Linda in my class who made me just ache."
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
"Benches? We ain't got no benches. We don't need no benches. I don't have to show you any stinkin' benches!"
This is a beautiful essay, sir — it breaks my heart to realize how small are the resources available to those who reach out to help, ease suffering, live according to their own codes of mercy & humanity... and how the war-chests & loot bags of those who lust for conquest & control spill over.
Fuck prosperity gospel & its evil political twin, neoliberalism.
Oh, and gattdamm son — thanks for the rec for "Heart of Glass." Do you think it's on Kanopy?
https://www.kanopy.com/en/dclibrary/video/10913069
Wow! Kanopy is so cool.
Are we at the Pelleas and Etarre stage of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King yet? Probably not; Pelleas was bitterly disillusioned with Camelot, not gleefully perverting it for profit.
[hisses] “I have no sword!”
I'm hearing that bit about the sword in Bela's voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFAUq9cqC9k
Nice. That may have been the legit best performance in that movie. IIRC, Pelleas hisses it at Guinevere when she asks him why he’s so bitterly disillusioned (after having seen that none of Camelot comes close to its virtuous reputation).
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJXwtnxdR0
which made me love Martin Landau.
Very well said. Another piquant irony, if that even does it justice, is that the most anti-American, hate-filled, selfish, hypocritical "christian" sunzabitches are the ones most likely to call themselves "patriots." Now there's a word we really shouldn't have allowed them to steal from us.
Yeah.
Thing is, they'll never cop to "matriots", even allowing for MTG and her ilk. Littlekidriots actually captures them a bit more accurately.
"Hat(e)riots".
Clever, but a misreading suggests they don't like riots, when the record clearly shows the opposite. For now, I'll just go with "Idiots."
"Zealriots?"
Fuck that -- we do remember Wilfred Owen, right?
"The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."
The Latin is from Horace -- the connection between "patriot" and that sentiment I hope is clear.
This'un had me craw-stuck this morning til I decided to respond to Owen via the only tools at hand:
Aft all the loves you’ve loved indeed, and sexed?
Would ye nor again by her be happily confused, perplexed
At another opportunity your heart renewed, reflexed –
Want ye nor again to know what happens next?
A life well lived, and long, beyond a young retreat
For any man can taste of salt, and tart, and sweet
So when at last life’s race is truly run, and done
What ye’ll NOT say is “Wish I’d died at twentyone”
As rebuttal:
https://youtu.be/t1TcDHrkQYg
Owen was a patriot. He became deeply opposed to the distortion and exploitation of patriotism for the purposes of feeding the slaughter of the war machine. (The Ode of Horace he quoted is almost laughable in this respect, but no more so than some of the pro-war poems written in Owen's time.) Unfortunately, we've allowed right-wingers, who have no love of country but themselves, to equate "patriot" with "real American."
Sending the immigrants to D.C. is also the same tactic used by Belarus on the Polish border. Hateful fascists come to the same conclusions all over the world. They do not want to solve a problem or help people. Their actions under the pretense of helping others to understand the problem create more problems. They use resources to instigate reactions they believe are just natural. Everybody is a mean bastard and lacks compassion when confronted with having to do something to help people in need.
Try telling right-wingers in the US they behave like authoritarians and the old Communist Party. They somehow fail to see that locking kids up in cages at the US border has anything in common with historically similar events in other places.
'It’s a prime example of a key conservative strategy at work — aggressively fucking up government, then going 'see, government can’t do anything right.'''
Big* donation from me to any Democrat running for office who's willing to say this in public. Or any general critique of the Republican party, really. "The one Republican I'm running against is bad for this one weirdly specific reason" ain't cuttin' it, I think.
*everything is relative, I'm no George Soros, etc.
Funny that they should reserve the same treatment for immigrants from _Venezuela_.
Maybe they're mad at Hugo Chavez for rigging the election for Biden FROM THE GRAVE.
Summoning Jackie Gleason from the beyond:
"Voting for the Senile Master of Evil while dead??!!
How SWEEEEET it is!!"
I've been thinking about Chavez: he tried to mount a coup against the government, was put in prison, but they let him out and let him run for President, and ruled as a sometimes beneficent thug for a decade.
There's a lesson there, not that we'll learn it.
Wow, that's a great reminder, I had forgotten all about that. I get tired of always going to Hitler when I'm warning that failed coup attempts often lead to successful coup attempts, it's nice to be able to mix it up a little.
The only problem with this example is that there are still some people around who think that because successive U.S. governments attacked him and he was good to the poor when it suited him, he was a great fellow. Anyone who's listened to no radio for the past twenty years except Pacifica stations—which I net-love—for example.
I think the proper term for these immigrants is "eyewitnesses"...
Glad you posted the link. These "Christians" are, um, not....