“ First of all, this scenario ignores the very real possibility — I would call it a probability — that Trump can win it fair and square.” In the nightmare described in this post, a) that’s the worst and b) the likeliest. Sorry, I know, I seem to be exceptionally negative this week. Dunno why, really. Gotta be advancing dotardism.
As for that not a democracy, but a republic riff: again, my preferred definition is a state responsive to the needs of the majority of its people and, well, it’s been a couple of decades since the US met that definition so no, not a republic.
And I believe the cool kids’ slur is neither socialism nor communism but Marxism. (H/t: Little Marco.)
Yes, "win it fair and square" is a real possibility, as long as we're willing to define "fair and square" as "Loses by more than 3 million votes, but then gets handed the job by the fucking Electoral College."
Whistling past a graveyard that contains 700,000 graves and a landfill crammed with shattered glass and wood from the US Capitol takes a superhuman level of denial. Now do Bret (“not the one who likes beer”) Stephens’ “Biden Not Ethical, Libtards, Neener-neener Where’s My Check, NYT?”
"Some readers may be inclined to dismiss this as merely an indictment of a troubled son. They might ask themselves what conclusions they would draw if this were about, say, Eric Trump."
OK, I'll play: Let's imagine Donald Trump had a lifetime of generally honest public service, but it's Eric, alone, who's a sleazy scam artist. Eh, I think I'd stick with "merely an indictment of a troubled son."
“And I hope all of you have read the I Am No Trump Fan boilerplate that appears in this and every other column I publish that mentions Trump, of whom I am not a fan” — so subtle, so elegant!
You can't imagine how happy I was not to have to read about Rod's uncircumcised boyhood reminisce first thing this morning. After a week where Mushroom Peener is back in the news along with Corey " Painless Pole" Lewandowski,Rod's revelations were just too much. Everywhere I read about it last night, somebody mentioned "Wait until Edroso gets a hold of this!" (Which didn't sound quite right to me...) So , you are the Anti-Rod. ( And we're your loyal followers. )
I'll be honest, I am a Democrat and I'd steal the fuck out of the
I'm sure you know that Sinclair Lewis quote about "his salary depends on his not understanding", Douthat's salary depends on him not understanding ANYTHING.
Well, sure. If "conservative" means "we really shouldn't do anything about this problem you've identified", whether the problem is children being raped by priests or a global pandemic that's killed 5 million people, you're going to be doing a whole lot of reality-denying to maintain that position. And then you can't stop with simple reality-denying, you need to construct whole alternate realities to replace the reality you've denied.
The problem for conservatives is that reality keeps puking up actual problems that cause normal non-conservative people to think, "Hey, maybe we should do something about this?" Once you take on no-let's-not-do-anything as an actual philosophy, you never have a moment of rest.
Well, there’s of course two kinds of conservatives, those who just are because that’s their lives and the ones you described, the unhinged and pathological.
I remember, a bunch of years back, when it seemed for a short while that we could count Ramesh Ponnuru as one of the proverbial reasonable conservatives. I see he's since learned how to disguise his wingnuttery as BothSiderism. Good catch, Roy.
Some people murder cops while attempting to overturn an election, some people follow a legislator into a bathroom while rudely asking questions. Potato, potahto...
I am not as doom laden as some . It may be because I'm a horticulturalist and, like horticulturalists everywhere , I have 3 or 4 bags of high grade Marijuana in the bottom drawer of my desk, each the size of my head. This can contribute to a sunny outlook.
I also spent the first 30-40 years of my life expecting to be vaporized by a Russian nuclear weapon or starving to death in an overcrowded ocean of humanity or alone in a parched dessert in a fight with mutants over the last can of peaches in the entire world.
I've been expecting the worse since before I could read. And here I am , 60 some years later.
Sure, I'm dodging a plague. But there's an effective vaccine that, along with some common sense sanitation will keep us safe. I'll admit- it seems to have driven a lot of our fellow citizens crazy, but, you know, the crazy ones are always going to find a way to go bugfuck about something. The "news" today is all pay by click and people click for crazy so
Bugfuck is a tad over represented I think.
Like any aware person of my persuasion I've been shitting my pants about the environment for years. It got really bad when I started working on a hort degree in my 40's. My environmental science classes were downright bleak.
(Good thing my how to grow weed classes coincided with my heat death of the world classes!) Twenty years ago we were aware of the problem but had no solutions. Today renewables work well enough that there is a way forward out of the mess. Half of of the German power is supplied by renewables. Ford is building a huge factory in Tennessee to build the electric F150 that has
As much torque as a 2500
Ram diesel. That's huge. Gomer will still hang his truck nuts off of it but at least he can't roll coal or destroy the environment. I hate free market solutions as much as the next good Union man, but I'll take a win when I can get it.
The politics is fucked. The ability to mind control the weak willed and stupid through the media is daunting. The Schoolboard Meeting Banshees are hard to turn away from but when it comes down to it most people won't want them anywhere near teaching their kids. The state legislatures in the confederacy are full of sloe -eyed thieves and rounders, sure, but, same as it ever was. White people seem to be dying out. That will certainly help. And young folks seem to be catching on about how maybe that voting thing is important if you want to keep the crazy olds from fucking things up worse.
LOL - I just finished harvesting. In Oregon we get 4 plants and mine were large. The biggest got 10 ft. tall. I have a bunch of bins full of dried weed that me and my son are trimming up and I expect we'll get 4 or 5 lbs of finished product.
Of course, we'll only keep the legal 8 ounces right? ;)
I am basically growing for my personal use. It's hard to grow just a little bit. I always have way more than I need. It makes great gifts.Put it in a Mason jar wrap some ribbon around it. I am very popular around the holidays!
Also, ignorance is bliss when it comes to this stuff. The press keeps flogging all these books, like we didn't already know all that stuff contained in the so-called "tell-all" gravy train.
About your drawer full of miracles, here in Floriduh the only stuff can I get makes me paranoid, so it's a choice between migraines or mental health. I'm terrified of broaching the subject to my Dr. to get a card, for fear of 1. saying no but "here's a script for some pills from a company I own stock in" or 2. ending up on a Gov. Deathsantis hit list. Paranoia is not a good look when it's takes one's full concentration to stay optimistic.
No, but everybody else I went to school with did. Legal weed hoovered up a lot of the growers in the country. So many of the kids I went to school with got their first taste of horticulture growing weed in a closet. (It can be very satisfying. ) Weed production is kind of boring. Monocropping. Same thing over and over.. It's a highly automated process too. The growing is - the processing is all manual. When it first was legalized for medical Marijuana, the security was insane. Piss tests twice a week.That kept all the people who got into it because they liked weed away and they couldn't find help.I heard from a friend that had evidently loosened up lately. Still boring if that's your job.
It's a cool hobby to have. Like growing tomatoes. Except tomatoes are harder to grow and they won't get you high. I like weed better.
Well, if you put like that, there’s many more than just the two the,pm. The entire GOP to start (although the base is doing a great job shooting themselves in their cloven hoo— I mean feet.
The people who own and run this country will not put up with the hoi polloi interfering with their plans to vacuum the of all extractive wealth. As manqueman likes to say - this ain't no democracy or a republic either. The country has been an oligarchic plutocracy for decades and when the fascist party finally gets done with all the pandering to "democracy" and goes straight up Pinochet on us no one should be surprised.
When they start tossing people from helicopters at least some of us will get to say "I told you so" before getting the toss.
I know this is satire, or I think so, but do we have the bandwidth for it in these trying times? On the other hand, Drumpf is likely to die of natural causes soon. His replacement might be competent evil instead of incompetent buffoonery mixed with dumbass syndrome. That terrifies me.
“ First of all, this scenario ignores the very real possibility — I would call it a probability — that Trump can win it fair and square.” In the nightmare described in this post, a) that’s the worst and b) the likeliest. Sorry, I know, I seem to be exceptionally negative this week. Dunno why, really. Gotta be advancing dotardism.
As for that not a democracy, but a republic riff: again, my preferred definition is a state responsive to the needs of the majority of its people and, well, it’s been a couple of decades since the US met that definition so no, not a republic.
And I believe the cool kids’ slur is neither socialism nor communism but Marxism. (H/t: Little Marco.)
Yes, "win it fair and square" is a real possibility, as long as we're willing to define "fair and square" as "Loses by more than 3 million votes, but then gets handed the job by the fucking Electoral College."
The number of votes that Biden got to put him over in the EC, IIRC, was very, very small, sorry.
Ross “Everyone-Pay-No-Attention-To-The-Man-Behind-The-Curtain-While-I-Do-My-Reasonable-Conservative-Schtick” fucking Douthat, man.
Douthat’s first column after the 2024 election is stolen: “Why Theocracy is Good, Actually.”
And his second column is "Please don't stand me up in front of the firing squad, I can be quite useful to you, actually."
Well, it's not as if anyone could disagree on who were the LORD's representatives, or if they did ever got vocal or violent about it
Jim Crow II--We're Gonna Bleach The Electorate Boogaloo
Whistling past a graveyard that contains 700,000 graves and a landfill crammed with shattered glass and wood from the US Capitol takes a superhuman level of denial. Now do Bret (“not the one who likes beer”) Stephens’ “Biden Not Ethical, Libtards, Neener-neener Where’s My Check, NYT?”
"Some readers may be inclined to dismiss this as merely an indictment of a troubled son. They might ask themselves what conclusions they would draw if this were about, say, Eric Trump."
OK, I'll play: Let's imagine Donald Trump had a lifetime of generally honest public service, but it's Eric, alone, who's a sleazy scam artist. Eh, I think I'd stick with "merely an indictment of a troubled son."
To paraphrase the saying about going bankrupt, this is how a nation falls apart. At first, little by little and then all at once.
And then everyone asks How did happen? While the media were ignoring it, of course.
Dateline: WeiMar a Lago?...
"Yet here we are." MMMWAAAH!
“And I hope all of you have read the I Am No Trump Fan boilerplate that appears in this and every other column I publish that mentions Trump, of whom I am not a fan” — so subtle, so elegant!
You can't imagine how happy I was not to have to read about Rod's uncircumcised boyhood reminisce first thing this morning. After a week where Mushroom Peener is back in the news along with Corey " Painless Pole" Lewandowski,Rod's revelations were just too much. Everywhere I read about it last night, somebody mentioned "Wait until Edroso gets a hold of this!" (Which didn't sound quite right to me...) So , you are the Anti-Rod. ( And we're your loyal followers. )
I'll be honest, I am a Democrat and I'd steal the fuck out of the
Election if I thought I could.
Wow, that Oct. 2020 Douthat column was really something:
"And there is no mass movement behind him: The threat of far-right violence is certainly real, but America’s streets belong to the anti-Trump left."
Being a conservative New York Times columnist means never having to say you're sorry.
Being a conservative New York Times columnist means never having to be constrained by actual reality.
Oops! I did that reply before reading yours. F***ing Substack comments :(
Being a conservative, pundits maybe more so, means never having to worry about handling facts.
I'm sure you know that Sinclair Lewis quote about "his salary depends on his not understanding", Douthat's salary depends on him not understanding ANYTHING.
Nah, it’s incidental to being a conservative where being a fabulist, a fiction-wrangler is the job.
Well, sure. If "conservative" means "we really shouldn't do anything about this problem you've identified", whether the problem is children being raped by priests or a global pandemic that's killed 5 million people, you're going to be doing a whole lot of reality-denying to maintain that position. And then you can't stop with simple reality-denying, you need to construct whole alternate realities to replace the reality you've denied.
The problem for conservatives is that reality keeps puking up actual problems that cause normal non-conservative people to think, "Hey, maybe we should do something about this?" Once you take on no-let's-not-do-anything as an actual philosophy, you never have a moment of rest.
Well, there’s of course two kinds of conservatives, those who just are because that’s their lives and the ones you described, the unhinged and pathological.
That is usually ascribed to Upton Sinclair, IIRC
We’re all old enough to spend much of our time confused.
I remember, a bunch of years back, when it seemed for a short while that we could count Ramesh Ponnuru as one of the proverbial reasonable conservatives. I see he's since learned how to disguise his wingnuttery as BothSiderism. Good catch, Roy.
Some people murder cops while attempting to overturn an election, some people follow a legislator into a bathroom while rudely asking questions. Potato, potahto...
If we no longer have manners then where are we as a society rapidly descending into Christian white nationalism? Tut tut...
YOU'RE NOT HELPING ROY!
Of course he is. He’s’a preaching to choir with much wit and amusement.
I am not as doom laden as some . It may be because I'm a horticulturalist and, like horticulturalists everywhere , I have 3 or 4 bags of high grade Marijuana in the bottom drawer of my desk, each the size of my head. This can contribute to a sunny outlook.
I also spent the first 30-40 years of my life expecting to be vaporized by a Russian nuclear weapon or starving to death in an overcrowded ocean of humanity or alone in a parched dessert in a fight with mutants over the last can of peaches in the entire world.
I've been expecting the worse since before I could read. And here I am , 60 some years later.
Sure, I'm dodging a plague. But there's an effective vaccine that, along with some common sense sanitation will keep us safe. I'll admit- it seems to have driven a lot of our fellow citizens crazy, but, you know, the crazy ones are always going to find a way to go bugfuck about something. The "news" today is all pay by click and people click for crazy so
Bugfuck is a tad over represented I think.
Like any aware person of my persuasion I've been shitting my pants about the environment for years. It got really bad when I started working on a hort degree in my 40's. My environmental science classes were downright bleak.
(Good thing my how to grow weed classes coincided with my heat death of the world classes!) Twenty years ago we were aware of the problem but had no solutions. Today renewables work well enough that there is a way forward out of the mess. Half of of the German power is supplied by renewables. Ford is building a huge factory in Tennessee to build the electric F150 that has
As much torque as a 2500
Ram diesel. That's huge. Gomer will still hang his truck nuts off of it but at least he can't roll coal or destroy the environment. I hate free market solutions as much as the next good Union man, but I'll take a win when I can get it.
The politics is fucked. The ability to mind control the weak willed and stupid through the media is daunting. The Schoolboard Meeting Banshees are hard to turn away from but when it comes down to it most people won't want them anywhere near teaching their kids. The state legislatures in the confederacy are full of sloe -eyed thieves and rounders, sure, but, same as it ever was. White people seem to be dying out. That will certainly help. And young folks seem to be catching on about how maybe that voting thing is important if you want to keep the crazy olds from fucking things up worse.
So, there's hope.
I'm going to go smoke some weed to celebrate.
LOL - I just finished harvesting. In Oregon we get 4 plants and mine were large. The biggest got 10 ft. tall. I have a bunch of bins full of dried weed that me and my son are trimming up and I expect we'll get 4 or 5 lbs of finished product.
Of course, we'll only keep the legal 8 ounces right? ;)
Good job!
I am basically growing for my personal use. It's hard to grow just a little bit. I always have way more than I need. It makes great gifts.Put it in a Mason jar wrap some ribbon around it. I am very popular around the holidays!
Also, ignorance is bliss when it comes to this stuff. The press keeps flogging all these books, like we didn't already know all that stuff contained in the so-called "tell-all" gravy train.
About your drawer full of miracles, here in Floriduh the only stuff can I get makes me paranoid, so it's a choice between migraines or mental health. I'm terrified of broaching the subject to my Dr. to get a card, for fear of 1. saying no but "here's a script for some pills from a company I own stock in" or 2. ending up on a Gov. Deathsantis hit list. Paranoia is not a good look when it's takes one's full concentration to stay optimistic.
So you became a horticulturist for the weed?
No, but everybody else I went to school with did. Legal weed hoovered up a lot of the growers in the country. So many of the kids I went to school with got their first taste of horticulture growing weed in a closet. (It can be very satisfying. ) Weed production is kind of boring. Monocropping. Same thing over and over.. It's a highly automated process too. The growing is - the processing is all manual. When it first was legalized for medical Marijuana, the security was insane. Piss tests twice a week.That kept all the people who got into it because they liked weed away and they couldn't find help.I heard from a friend that had evidently loosened up lately. Still boring if that's your job.
It's a cool hobby to have. Like growing tomatoes. Except tomatoes are harder to grow and they won't get you high. I like weed better.
I always mixup Douthat with Dreher. Always.
One’s obsessing in public about penises — might be in the name? - and the other’s Douthat.
I'd like to mix the two of them up inside an industrial-sized blender.
Well, if you put like that, there’s many more than just the two the,pm. The entire GOP to start (although the base is doing a great job shooting themselves in their cloven hoo— I mean feet.
I am the Walrus! Coup coup co coup!
The people who own and run this country will not put up with the hoi polloi interfering with their plans to vacuum the of all extractive wealth. As manqueman likes to say - this ain't no democracy or a republic either. The country has been an oligarchic plutocracy for decades and when the fascist party finally gets done with all the pandering to "democracy" and goes straight up Pinochet on us no one should be surprised.
When they start tossing people from helicopters at least some of us will get to say "I told you so" before getting the toss.
... vacuum up all of the extractive wealth. Oh for an editor.
“As manqueman likes to say - this ain't no democracy or a republic either.”
Too lazy to check but IIRC, I pulled that one out here this morning.
You did. You've made the point in the past quite often as well. Guess smoking weed every day for 45+ years hasn't done my memory in quite yet.
Off topic, but America’s Greatest Film Critic is BACK! Did you know The Sopranos was complete garbage? Deal with it, libtard! https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/movie-review-the-many-saints-of-newark-is-trash/
https://twitter.com/edroso/status/1445794225895837698
Man, I was so excited to see that movie, but then I heard it was FOR RINOS? FUCK THAT.
I know this is satire, or I think so, but do we have the bandwidth for it in these trying times? On the other hand, Drumpf is likely to die of natural causes soon. His replacement might be competent evil instead of incompetent buffoonery mixed with dumbass syndrome. That terrifies me.
There is no "competent" replacement for Donald Trump. In fact, there is no replacement for Donald Trump period, competent or otherwise. He's unique.