LOL. Romney et. al. fail to recognize they have no base, or at least none sizeable enough to matter. The Episcopalian golfers at the country club to whom they believe they will appeal have all gone MAGA or joined the Democratic party. Maybe they should ask Kyrsten Sinema how well the Centrist act plays.
Sorry, Mitt, but the car dealers and real estate agents never really did care what the Republican party was, as long as it wasn't the Democrats. I know it's a thing you've devoted your wasted life to, but from their point of view, "Oh, is it still called Republican? And voting for it means mebbe the Democrat won't be elected? I'm all good here, now I've got a golf game to get to, bye."
So I'm in Brazil in 74. Someone mentions that upon returning from a trip up the Amazon said that all of his wife's photos had huge black splotches. They then open the camera and find that a ~2" cockroach had moved in during the trip.
Anyway.
One of the things that burn my ass is the plethora of pieces about the GOP getting back to what it was. That there's little difference between the Party of Trump and the GOP theretofore should be a given. But what burns the butt isn't that but the storyline that the insanity is something fixable while ignoring that it's embraced by the people who actually matter, to wit, Republican voters, more so primary voters.
More important: what happened to Tim Miller? He used to be amusing. Now he's dull as wet cardboard.
There’s a piece by Rick Perlstein at the American Prospect about the whitewashing of William F Buckley that you might appreciate. The Republican Party is what it always was, just more so and more crudely.
Read the piece, no argument with what he said. Only criticism, and of course it's a small one, he could have made the role of the National Review in conservative and Republican efforts to make racism great again.
He hit the high points, including one I hadn't seen before, the one about cannibalism in Africa. Classy, as always. I think his main intent was showing how Buckley built the veneer of intellectualism required to make the Party palatable to the mainstream elite. He filled the gas tank that is now the fumes the never-Trump rump is still running on.
Buckley got his head handed to him by James Baldwin at Cambridge, and never got over it.
As to PBS whitewashing Buckley I'm so old I remember both Firing Line *and* The McLaughlin Group, and both ran until the original hosts were dead. People like Uri Berliner complaining that NPR and PBS don't have *enough* old White conservatives gets the horselaugh from me.
This is what I'm talking about. There are no goddam decent people in the Republican Party and haven't been since Eisenhower (and he was kind of an asshole too, to be honest). Modern Republicanism is based on the age old premise that compassion and empathy are just too gosh darned ANNOYING and DEMANDING to follow through on, selfishness is WAY more comfortable and immediately gratifying, but people get mad when you say that out loud so by God let's be selfish but we'll CALL it being compassionate and anyone who doesn't like that can fuck off.
Then MAGA came along and said "we don't understand all these big words, let's just kill people we don't like and take their shit".
Cheney, Amish, Romney, these guys... they're all just like 'for the love of baby Jebus can we please go back to pretending we care again? PLEASE? People were nice to us when we pretended to care but now they just spit on us in restaurants. Also, irate mobs of unwashed crackers make us do poopsies in our special garments and that's really uncomfortable. Can we PLEASE pretend to be noble selfless statesmen with principles again? PLEASE? PLEASE?"
Democrats have also been doing the pretending to care thing for a long, long time now, but we have seen steady social progress under Democratic leadership -- VERY slow, gotta give the megadonors a chance to reposition themselves in a changing world, shore up those secret bank accounts against the goddam four day work week, a revival of union power, and the necessity of grudgingly implementing some token profit sharing for a little while before snatching it all back, dontcha know -- so that's where we've got to put our votes until we can finally get ranked voting and start putting in some real reformers.
Hear, hear. I spent part of last week arguing on BlueSky – something I almost never do, arguing online is usually a waste of time and energy – with young people who say they aren’t voting or are voting third party because Biden has been such a disappointment. I didn’t even attempt to defend Biden’s heinous Bibi/Israel policy, but elaborated on my theory that voting is a chess move, not a love letter. It’s not only acceptable but recommended to vote for a guy you don’t much care for to stop a guy who will be far worse.
It was indeed a waste of my time and energy. Some of the younger folks blamed Biden for both Covid AND the loss of abortion rights. I don’t know what version of “history” is popular on TikTok, and certainly civics is a dead letter. I don’t think I’d have minded it so much if they weren’t voicing their incorrect facts with such confidence. Maybe all those “participation trophies” we handed out was a mistake, is what I’m saying.
Oh, but you can't say any of that anywhere. You either fully supplicate yourself on the altar of "EVERYTHING WRONG WITH MY LIFE IS THE BOOMERS' FAULT" or you just stay the fuck out of those conversations. "Say, babes, maybe, you know, it was a bad call to rise up, kidnap, torture, murder, and rape hundreds of members of the most oppressed and therefore lethally belligerent culture in the history of mankind and, hmmm, just possibly they shouldn't have taken all those hostages" -- OMIGOD NO SKREEEEE GENOCIDE GENOCIDE AUGGHHHHHHH ISRAEL PROVOKED SKRAWWWWWWWWW HISTORICALLY ANYONE CAN SEE GNNARRRRRRRRRR WAR MONGORS YRRRRGGGHHHHHH
Yes, Hamas, terrible people, really, shouldn't have murdered 1200 people and kidnapped hundreds more, also the rape. Do you find anyone arguing that point?
Every time I bring it up online all I get is 'argle bargle clearly you don't understand the history of the conflict between these cultures argle bargle THEY WERE PROVOKED argle bargle EVIL IMPERIALIST ISRAEL argle bargle MUSLIMS ARE PEOPLE TOO argle bargle BOOMERS JUST SUCK argle bargle argle bargle'. It's tiresome and tedious.
I'm not on Twitter, but if I was and I just posted the three words "Hamas started it" I expect a lot of people who don't know me would assume I'm arguing that Israel is justified in doing whatever they want with the Palestinians, and since they're already mad at Israel, they'd be mad at ME. Yes, that's a lot to read into just 3 words, but lots of people are justifiably angry about this and angry people do tend to jump to conclusions.
I'm not on Twittex either. And to me, 'Hamas started it' is absolutely self evident. What is more self evident is that when a group of people attacks, murders, tortures, and rapes your guys, and then takes more of your guys hostage and drags them back and uses them as human shields, and when that same group gloats in the media about how wonderful it is to hide among civilians and behind hostages and how they can't wait for the body count of 'martyrs' to start to pile up, you have to kill all those people. You have to. There is no reasoning with them, nothing else will stop them, you have to kill all of them. If you don't kill them all they are just going to do this shit again. This is self defense. Israel absolutely has to defend itself from Hamas, and we don't have defensive technology. We don't have force fields, or cool orbital lasers that can target one person, like in REAL GENIUS. We have artillery. Smart missiles. Drones. There will be collateral damage and that collateral damage is the moral responsibility of Hamas. You want to dance a little dance and sing a little song about how you can't wait for the martyrs to pile up, that's cool, as long as your body is in the pile.
When I do, foolishly, get into these debates, as I seem to have here, I generally at some point say 'if you are in charge of defending your people from attacks like this, what are you going to do? What decision are you going to make? In the real world, not STAR TREK, here are your options. Which of them will you choose?'
Usually I don't get an answer, the question kills the thread. When I do, it's nonsense like 'well you change the equation you negotiate you provide an incentive for peace you create a more socially just playing field'. Nah. Once you've charged in, murdered and tortured and raped hundreds, and taken hundreds more hostage, and then gloated about how you just love hiding among innocents, you have forfeited your right to be treated like human beings. You are too vile to live. You are a cancer and must be cut out. If the Palestinians really don't support Hamas, they should bring Israel their fucking heads.
Ah, but to quote the Yogi, "it all depends on what the meaning of 'it' is". The insane violence in Gaza is the latest bubble in the tarpit of the Middle East. Touch it and you're sucked into a dimension where time, space, cause and effect are fluid and have multiple meanings, and tidal waves of pure emotion randomly sweep you into distant corners, far from where you started. Good luck assigning blame, or anything else in The Twilight Zone.
Unfortunately they seem to be the ones who also shrug off the invasion of Ukraine as somehow NATO's fault, as if Putin doesn't think Ukraine has been Russian for hundreds of years and Ukraine has very good reasons for wanting Moscow to fuck off and let them be.
It's the 1-2 punch of the undying love of the underdog and a desperate need to assign blame to a bad person/place/thing as The Cause Of It All. "There's blood on everybody's hands" is super-unsatisfying, and adding the massive power imbalance makes it clear Whose Fault it is. Nobody wants nuance in the face of slaughter.
Yeah, back when I was still on social media I would get embroiled in an argument like that, and invariably it would reach a point where I’d start to type something like, fine, vote for Trump, dumbass. See if I care. I’m not the one who’s going to be hurt. I’m a straight fat white guy living in the Midwest. They aren’t coming after me, and all I have to do to pass is put on a red hat and mutter some crap about the border. But you, guess what, Trump isn’t going to do anything but make things you care about worse, while he and his cronies steal as much of the present and the future as they can. And bottom line, they can steal a lot more of that from you than they can from me.
And then I’d run out of steam and look at what I wrote and remember I too was young and stupid for far too long, and sigh, hit delete, log off and go touch grass. Can’t say I miss it now.
And this is the way I handle it most of the time, for the same reason. And I will try to handle it this way 100% of the time going forward. Voting is the only issue that sucks me into the fray because the stakes are so high as so much is on the line.
But I've got better things to do, touching grass among them, than bash my head repeatedly into a brick wall.
Being from Wisconsin, my first question would be, "What state do you live in?" and if it's not one of The Only Five States That Matter, I'd LOL my way into the sunset.
I mean, if we've got to live with the motherfucking Electoral College, we should at least get SOME benefit from it.
I saw the Aguirre still and said to myself, "Oh Shit, here we go!" Not 30 seconds later I was busting a gut at " Can it be true there is no food aboard? "
Thanks Roy - This was hilarious!
There are a lot of German language films on YouTube. A whole buttload of them are"Krimi" which were a popular genre of lurid German films of the '60s and early '70s. Few are subtitled - doesn't really matter. The films make no sense. They are kind of like the Italian Giallo films, accept in black and white. Like Giallo films ,they are an endless stream of violent death (That's entertainment!)Every single one of them has Klaus Kinski in a role. I wouldn't be surprised if I found out that every European film made in the '60s and '70s had Klaus Kinski in it. For a while he was truly the hardest working man in show business.
I saw Aguirre when it first came out on a big screen. I bet I've seen it five or six times since. I still don't know what to make of it.
Bill Barr: Donald Trump is a criminal who attempted to overthrow the government and is a direct threat to the very foundations of the United States.
Also Bill Barr: Yeah, I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump because the alternative is a Democrat.
(Also worth noting: Trump has threatened to have Barr arrested should Trump regain the White House. So I guess even going to jail is better for Bill Barr than suffering through one more minute of Sleepy Joe Biden's Reign of Normalcy.
The statements of guys like Barr and Sununnu are a marker of just how deep and strong is their hate of the Democratic Party. They don't care about democracy of course, but even they have to concerned about Trump's inane economic "policies" (tarrifs today, tarrifs tomorrow, tarrifs forever), and shakedown threats to NATO. These are threats to American power, which they very much care about, and still they support Trump. I don't think they're stupid enough to think they can manage around these problems, but their hate might make them blind enough. Otherwise, they're hoping Trump loses and they can (somehow) go back to business as usual. Lots of people are writing slash fic on what happens if Trump wins, and there are vague gestures toward the violence and suits over "rigged elections" if he loses, but I wonder what the Party, not the politicians, will do. I assume like everything else they've done since 2016, there is no plan, only hope.
I don't know if this is still true, but for a time it was considered a great puzzle within the field of economics why people vote at all, the marginal utility of one vote being essentially zero. That says a lot more about economists than voters.
Great take, Roy, although in my Wrath of God parody, Aguirre is Trump, drifting down the Amazon with “Speaker” Johnson, MTG, Ronnie Jackson, et al and Elise Stefanik as the daughter (Ivanka stayed behind in Spain). The natives with blow darts? Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Judges Engoron and Merchan. Aguirre’s final speech starts with, “Gettysburg, wow!” and goes down from there.
Glad to hear Twitter is still good for something! Let us know when you stop receiving inspiration from it, and then we'll burn the fucking thing to the ground.
If they were going to build a new party they should have done it with Leonard Leo's and Harlan Crow's money back about 2014 or so. Instead they let Donnie Hapsburg steal a march on them.
Naw, that's back when they were still talking about how the GOP was redeemable, forgetting how much red meat they'd been throwing for the previous eight years to the yahoos who'd become the MAGA base.
I honestly think they don't have it in them. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is a lot like the difference between Californians and Texans. People are proud and happy to be from and in California, but Texans are members of the cult of Texas. Republicans leaving the Republican Party would break their brains much like the entire state of Texas moving to Argentina. Plus, they basically let Trump take over the Party. He never had to fight anyone for it. These are not serious people, as Yogi Berra said of the Mets.
That Gettysburg thing cracks me up. OK, you're in Pennsylvania, and so is Gettysburg, and you decide you want to say... something... about Gettysburg. And let's grant that you actually do feel and think something about the subject. Would it be too much trouble to, in your mind, actually compose a couple of semi-coherent sentences meant to communicate identifiable ideas beyond "Wow", "terrible" and "beautiful"? Yes, that would be too much trouble. Just wing it, riffin' on a national cemetery, what could go wrong?
Math teacher here, struggling with "small but influential number." I know the integers, and the rational numbers, and even the irrational numbers, but the "small but influential" numbers? Never heard of 'em.
Like, shouldn't it be "small number of influential Republicans"? Small in number, yes, but oh so influential each one is! I'm also willing to accept "Influential number of small Republicans" as an alternative.
Thune of Pierre is a nice touch. He might as well be from there too. You know those interstate signs that say “Townname, Home of Politician”? Thune has one by his actual hometown of Murdo, and also others on the interstates around Sioux Falls (where I don’t think he spends much time, but he almost certainly spends more time there than in the sticks West River). It’s all just stupid, meaningless advertising for him—though it does give us more opportunities to flip off his name as we drive by.
Like most descriptions of what s happening among the Rs, it sounds more convincing in the original German, Der Zorn Gottes. But, yes, Klaus Kinski was born to play Romney, or vice versa, I'm a bit confused.
There's a Great American Novel of what happened in the bureaucracy of the Republican Party between 2016 and today that will never be written, because if you salvation rests on bringing the Great Wizard back to Oz, you're not pulling back the curtain. I mean, Trump,strolled in and took control of their voter base, but not by much. A lot of those nomination delegates were because of a winner-take-all scheme in a crowded race. Clearly the Old part of the GOP considered him a fool, but not a dangerous one. After all, he was rich, right? And he exited the base like no one since Reagan. They had so much in common, surely they could come to an understanding. The slow roll of condescension to contempt to disgust to horror culminating in the little extravaganza in the street on Jan 6 is an epic arc, and now they are powerless to stop him, and are in the position of praying he is defeated by a man they despise with every Republican bone in their bodies so they can sweep up the wreckage and go back to their original plan of killing democracy by a thousand paper cuts. It would make Game of Thrones look like Little Women.
Some useful work could be done in organizing a concerted "Leave it Blank" campaign for Republicans who despise Trump but just won't fill in the oval for Biden. But did I say "useful work"? Sorry, not a thing any of these guys have done since they their teen lawn-mowing days.
Somewhere (Twitter?) I suggested that the DEMS do that: mount a campaign saying, in one way or another, "Can't bring yourself to vote for a Democrat? Fine. Then just stay home. Or write-in someone. But you cannot vote for Trump, knowing what he is."
I had an idea for a whole ad campaign, "Here's what I'm doing when I'm not voting for Trump!" Stock footage of elders playing with the grandkids, fishing, etc. Wouldn't cost much because you could just steal all that footage from drug ads.
a 50-year old National Geographic book on the Mississippi that I read recently mentions KAY-ro as a sad case, unable to attract the economic development that was making boom towns all along the river. Nothing's changed since then, as far as I can tell.
LOL. Romney et. al. fail to recognize they have no base, or at least none sizeable enough to matter. The Episcopalian golfers at the country club to whom they believe they will appeal have all gone MAGA or joined the Democratic party. Maybe they should ask Kyrsten Sinema how well the Centrist act plays.
The Episcopalian golfers...have all gone MAGA or joined the Democratic party...or just plain died, as extinct as the good Republican cloth coat.
Sorry, Mitt, but the car dealers and real estate agents never really did care what the Republican party was, as long as it wasn't the Democrats. I know it's a thing you've devoted your wasted life to, but from their point of view, "Oh, is it still called Republican? And voting for it means mebbe the Democrat won't be elected? I'm all good here, now I've got a golf game to get to, bye."
“I know it's a thing you've devoted your wasted life to”
Hello operator? I need to report a drive-by verbal homicide. Brutal.
"Ha ha, still thinking in terms of 'elections', when our Glorious Leader will impose his infinite will on the people and take his rightful place!"
"Now watch this drive."
You outdid yourself today, Roy. Bonus: And now I know what I’m gonna watch this weekend.
So I'm in Brazil in 74. Someone mentions that upon returning from a trip up the Amazon said that all of his wife's photos had huge black splotches. They then open the camera and find that a ~2" cockroach had moved in during the trip.
Anyway.
One of the things that burn my ass is the plethora of pieces about the GOP getting back to what it was. That there's little difference between the Party of Trump and the GOP theretofore should be a given. But what burns the butt isn't that but the storyline that the insanity is something fixable while ignoring that it's embraced by the people who actually matter, to wit, Republican voters, more so primary voters.
More important: what happened to Tim Miller? He used to be amusing. Now he's dull as wet cardboard.
There’s a piece by Rick Perlstein at the American Prospect about the whitewashing of William F Buckley that you might appreciate. The Republican Party is what it always was, just more so and more crudely.
[edited to correct an autocorrect spelling error]
Perlstein is on my pantheon of gods.
Read the piece, no argument with what he said. Only criticism, and of course it's a small one, he could have made the role of the National Review in conservative and Republican efforts to make racism great again.
He hit the high points, including one I hadn't seen before, the one about cannibalism in Africa. Classy, as always. I think his main intent was showing how Buckley built the veneer of intellectualism required to make the Party palatable to the mainstream elite. He filled the gas tank that is now the fumes the never-Trump rump is still running on.
More than ever, memories of WFB Jr’s excessive umbrage at being accused to be a crypto-fascist by Gore Vidal amuses.
Maybe it was the crypto part he didn't like? "Why, sir, I am perfectly clear in my fascism!"
Now of course on can be offended being be associated with lawbreakers’ beloved currency substitute.
Back then, however, maybe your inference is correct and he wanted to be called a full fasc, no hedging.
Buckley got his head handed to him by James Baldwin at Cambridge, and never got over it.
As to PBS whitewashing Buckley I'm so old I remember both Firing Line *and* The McLaughlin Group, and both ran until the original hosts were dead. People like Uri Berliner complaining that NPR and PBS don't have *enough* old White conservatives gets the horselaugh from me.
Firing Line and The McLaughlin Group were both putrid. I guess Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer Tipped the balance on that. Kidding!
Dana Carvey's McLaughlin Group is a fair representation of the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOLF_D7JVZM
How can you whitewash someone who's that white to begin with?
Tom be sayin' "It ain't a'tall easy – not just anyone could do it. Now if one were ta really put their mind to it...but I dunno...I doubt it..."
Romney then picks up Joe Manchin, asking, "Who else is with me?"
Manchin was jetsam from the Democratic party, but he was flotsam when Romney picked him up.
Careful there, bo – don't be goin' overboard...
Ain't nobody gonna be claimin' salvage rights on that mess.
This is what I'm talking about. There are no goddam decent people in the Republican Party and haven't been since Eisenhower (and he was kind of an asshole too, to be honest). Modern Republicanism is based on the age old premise that compassion and empathy are just too gosh darned ANNOYING and DEMANDING to follow through on, selfishness is WAY more comfortable and immediately gratifying, but people get mad when you say that out loud so by God let's be selfish but we'll CALL it being compassionate and anyone who doesn't like that can fuck off.
Then MAGA came along and said "we don't understand all these big words, let's just kill people we don't like and take their shit".
Cheney, Amish, Romney, these guys... they're all just like 'for the love of baby Jebus can we please go back to pretending we care again? PLEASE? People were nice to us when we pretended to care but now they just spit on us in restaurants. Also, irate mobs of unwashed crackers make us do poopsies in our special garments and that's really uncomfortable. Can we PLEASE pretend to be noble selfless statesmen with principles again? PLEASE? PLEASE?"
Democrats have also been doing the pretending to care thing for a long, long time now, but we have seen steady social progress under Democratic leadership -- VERY slow, gotta give the megadonors a chance to reposition themselves in a changing world, shore up those secret bank accounts against the goddam four day work week, a revival of union power, and the necessity of grudgingly implementing some token profit sharing for a little while before snatching it all back, dontcha know -- so that's where we've got to put our votes until we can finally get ranked voting and start putting in some real reformers.
Hear, hear. I spent part of last week arguing on BlueSky – something I almost never do, arguing online is usually a waste of time and energy – with young people who say they aren’t voting or are voting third party because Biden has been such a disappointment. I didn’t even attempt to defend Biden’s heinous Bibi/Israel policy, but elaborated on my theory that voting is a chess move, not a love letter. It’s not only acceptable but recommended to vote for a guy you don’t much care for to stop a guy who will be far worse.
It was indeed a waste of my time and energy. Some of the younger folks blamed Biden for both Covid AND the loss of abortion rights. I don’t know what version of “history” is popular on TikTok, and certainly civics is a dead letter. I don’t think I’d have minded it so much if they weren’t voicing their incorrect facts with such confidence. Maybe all those “participation trophies” we handed out was a mistake, is what I’m saying.
Oh, but you can't say any of that anywhere. You either fully supplicate yourself on the altar of "EVERYTHING WRONG WITH MY LIFE IS THE BOOMERS' FAULT" or you just stay the fuck out of those conversations. "Say, babes, maybe, you know, it was a bad call to rise up, kidnap, torture, murder, and rape hundreds of members of the most oppressed and therefore lethally belligerent culture in the history of mankind and, hmmm, just possibly they shouldn't have taken all those hostages" -- OMIGOD NO SKREEEEE GENOCIDE GENOCIDE AUGGHHHHHHH ISRAEL PROVOKED SKRAWWWWWWWWW HISTORICALLY ANYONE CAN SEE GNNARRRRRRRRRR WAR MONGORS YRRRRGGGHHHHHH
It just tires me out, honestly.
Yes, Hamas, terrible people, really, shouldn't have murdered 1200 people and kidnapped hundreds more, also the rape. Do you find anyone arguing that point?
Every time I bring it up online all I get is 'argle bargle clearly you don't understand the history of the conflict between these cultures argle bargle THEY WERE PROVOKED argle bargle EVIL IMPERIALIST ISRAEL argle bargle MUSLIMS ARE PEOPLE TOO argle bargle BOOMERS JUST SUCK argle bargle argle bargle'. It's tiresome and tedious.
I'm not on Twitter, but if I was and I just posted the three words "Hamas started it" I expect a lot of people who don't know me would assume I'm arguing that Israel is justified in doing whatever they want with the Palestinians, and since they're already mad at Israel, they'd be mad at ME. Yes, that's a lot to read into just 3 words, but lots of people are justifiably angry about this and angry people do tend to jump to conclusions.
I'm not on Twittex either. And to me, 'Hamas started it' is absolutely self evident. What is more self evident is that when a group of people attacks, murders, tortures, and rapes your guys, and then takes more of your guys hostage and drags them back and uses them as human shields, and when that same group gloats in the media about how wonderful it is to hide among civilians and behind hostages and how they can't wait for the body count of 'martyrs' to start to pile up, you have to kill all those people. You have to. There is no reasoning with them, nothing else will stop them, you have to kill all of them. If you don't kill them all they are just going to do this shit again. This is self defense. Israel absolutely has to defend itself from Hamas, and we don't have defensive technology. We don't have force fields, or cool orbital lasers that can target one person, like in REAL GENIUS. We have artillery. Smart missiles. Drones. There will be collateral damage and that collateral damage is the moral responsibility of Hamas. You want to dance a little dance and sing a little song about how you can't wait for the martyrs to pile up, that's cool, as long as your body is in the pile.
When I do, foolishly, get into these debates, as I seem to have here, I generally at some point say 'if you are in charge of defending your people from attacks like this, what are you going to do? What decision are you going to make? In the real world, not STAR TREK, here are your options. Which of them will you choose?'
Usually I don't get an answer, the question kills the thread. When I do, it's nonsense like 'well you change the equation you negotiate you provide an incentive for peace you create a more socially just playing field'. Nah. Once you've charged in, murdered and tortured and raped hundreds, and taken hundreds more hostage, and then gloated about how you just love hiding among innocents, you have forfeited your right to be treated like human beings. You are too vile to live. You are a cancer and must be cut out. If the Palestinians really don't support Hamas, they should bring Israel their fucking heads.
Ah, but to quote the Yogi, "it all depends on what the meaning of 'it' is". The insane violence in Gaza is the latest bubble in the tarpit of the Middle East. Touch it and you're sucked into a dimension where time, space, cause and effect are fluid and have multiple meanings, and tidal waves of pure emotion randomly sweep you into distant corners, far from where you started. Good luck assigning blame, or anything else in The Twilight Zone.
Unfortunately they seem to be the ones who also shrug off the invasion of Ukraine as somehow NATO's fault, as if Putin doesn't think Ukraine has been Russian for hundreds of years and Ukraine has very good reasons for wanting Moscow to fuck off and let them be.
It's the 1-2 punch of the undying love of the underdog and a desperate need to assign blame to a bad person/place/thing as The Cause Of It All. "There's blood on everybody's hands" is super-unsatisfying, and adding the massive power imbalance makes it clear Whose Fault it is. Nobody wants nuance in the face of slaughter.
Yeah, back when I was still on social media I would get embroiled in an argument like that, and invariably it would reach a point where I’d start to type something like, fine, vote for Trump, dumbass. See if I care. I’m not the one who’s going to be hurt. I’m a straight fat white guy living in the Midwest. They aren’t coming after me, and all I have to do to pass is put on a red hat and mutter some crap about the border. But you, guess what, Trump isn’t going to do anything but make things you care about worse, while he and his cronies steal as much of the present and the future as they can. And bottom line, they can steal a lot more of that from you than they can from me.
And then I’d run out of steam and look at what I wrote and remember I too was young and stupid for far too long, and sigh, hit delete, log off and go touch grass. Can’t say I miss it now.
And this is the way I handle it most of the time, for the same reason. And I will try to handle it this way 100% of the time going forward. Voting is the only issue that sucks me into the fray because the stakes are so high as so much is on the line.
But I've got better things to do, touching grass among them, than bash my head repeatedly into a brick wall.
Being from Wisconsin, my first question would be, "What state do you live in?" and if it's not one of The Only Five States That Matter, I'd LOL my way into the sunset.
I mean, if we've got to live with the motherfucking Electoral College, we should at least get SOME benefit from it.
Not everyone is cut out to be a therapist.
I saw the Aguirre still and said to myself, "Oh Shit, here we go!" Not 30 seconds later I was busting a gut at " Can it be true there is no food aboard? "
Thanks Roy - This was hilarious!
There are a lot of German language films on YouTube. A whole buttload of them are"Krimi" which were a popular genre of lurid German films of the '60s and early '70s. Few are subtitled - doesn't really matter. The films make no sense. They are kind of like the Italian Giallo films, accept in black and white. Like Giallo films ,they are an endless stream of violent death (That's entertainment!)Every single one of them has Klaus Kinski in a role. I wouldn't be surprised if I found out that every European film made in the '60s and '70s had Klaus Kinski in it. For a while he was truly the hardest working man in show business.
I saw Aguirre when it first came out on a big screen. I bet I've seen it five or six times since. I still don't know what to make of it.
Pedant: it's spelled "giallo"
Thanks - I'm going to change it and then deny I ever spelled it wrong!
Make sure you use the classic Sharpie!
Bill Barr: Donald Trump is a criminal who attempted to overthrow the government and is a direct threat to the very foundations of the United States.
Also Bill Barr: Yeah, I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump because the alternative is a Democrat.
(Also worth noting: Trump has threatened to have Barr arrested should Trump regain the White House. So I guess even going to jail is better for Bill Barr than suffering through one more minute of Sleepy Joe Biden's Reign of Normalcy.
Ha ha, fuckin' loser lives in Virginia, nobody gives a shit who he votes for.
"But..,but, Trump is threatening to send you to PRISON if he gets back in office...."
Bill Barr: a small price to pay for a true Patriot! (I'm rich, I'll never see the inside of a jail cell)
And when the last law was down and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?
The statements of guys like Barr and Sununnu are a marker of just how deep and strong is their hate of the Democratic Party. They don't care about democracy of course, but even they have to concerned about Trump's inane economic "policies" (tarrifs today, tarrifs tomorrow, tarrifs forever), and shakedown threats to NATO. These are threats to American power, which they very much care about, and still they support Trump. I don't think they're stupid enough to think they can manage around these problems, but their hate might make them blind enough. Otherwise, they're hoping Trump loses and they can (somehow) go back to business as usual. Lots of people are writing slash fic on what happens if Trump wins, and there are vague gestures toward the violence and suits over "rigged elections" if he loses, but I wonder what the Party, not the politicians, will do. I assume like everything else they've done since 2016, there is no plan, only hope.
"their hate might make them blind enough"
The idea that humans are primarily motivated by rational self-interest may be the greatest Wrong Idea in all history.
Economists have much to be hated for, this maybe most of all
I don't know if this is still true, but for a time it was considered a great puzzle within the field of economics why people vote at all, the marginal utility of one vote being essentially zero. That says a lot more about economists than voters.
Or they could just be saying they'll vote for Trump, to placate their peers, and then secretly vote for Biden. "Don't look at ME! I tried!"
Perhaps, but posing as an elite leader and abused spouse at the same time is not a good look, but That's Our Republican!
Great take, Roy, although in my Wrath of God parody, Aguirre is Trump, drifting down the Amazon with “Speaker” Johnson, MTG, Ronnie Jackson, et al and Elise Stefanik as the daughter (Ivanka stayed behind in Spain). The natives with blow darts? Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Judges Engoron and Merchan. Aguirre’s final speech starts with, “Gettysburg, wow!” and goes down from there.
Perilously close to 2 marks...Ah what the heck, rounding up and all...
That's a good idea too! I would have liked to have Ivanka for the Aguirre "marry my own daughter" angle. Considered Dick and Liz Cheney but the former Veep just didn't work. This was my inspiration: https://x.com/edroso/status/1780646562546217161?s=46&t=LFoKWR1z2BVEIQEHJhZfpA
Glad to hear Twitter is still good for something! Let us know when you stop receiving inspiration from it, and then we'll burn the fucking thing to the ground.
Oh go ahead
Aggrieved Substack Thousandaire urges followers to violence.
2 marks!
If they were going to build a new party they should have done it with Leonard Leo's and Harlan Crow's money back about 2014 or so. Instead they let Donnie Hapsburg steal a march on them.
Naw, that's back when they were still talking about how the GOP was redeemable, forgetting how much red meat they'd been throwing for the previous eight years to the yahoos who'd become the MAGA base.
I honestly think they don't have it in them. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is a lot like the difference between Californians and Texans. People are proud and happy to be from and in California, but Texans are members of the cult of Texas. Republicans leaving the Republican Party would break their brains much like the entire state of Texas moving to Argentina. Plus, they basically let Trump take over the Party. He never had to fight anyone for it. These are not serious people, as Yogi Berra said of the Mets.
*eagerly awaiting the nailing of the 95 Theses on the door of Trump Tower*
Sorry, that's a foreclosure notice.
That Gettysburg thing cracks me up. OK, you're in Pennsylvania, and so is Gettysburg, and you decide you want to say... something... about Gettysburg. And let's grant that you actually do feel and think something about the subject. Would it be too much trouble to, in your mind, actually compose a couple of semi-coherent sentences meant to communicate identifiable ideas beyond "Wow", "terrible" and "beautiful"? Yes, that would be too much trouble. Just wing it, riffin' on a national cemetery, what could go wrong?
Trump? Compose semi-coherent sentences?
Well, I was already giving him a lot with "actually do feel and think something about the subject."
The First Minnesota: "suckers and losers".
Why Lee and not Grant? Or Lincoln? Hmmm….
Lincoln? Gettysburg? Sorry, not seeing the connection.
Lincoln gave a little remembered short speech at Gettysburg after the headliner went on for a couple of hours
"Keep your speeches short enough so they can be carved into the marble of your tomb" is good advice.
Lee wore sharper suits. That ALWAYS impresses Queensman.
Who are two racists who also founded universities?
Like Jesus Johnson and his merry band of fascists would go anywhere near a place filled with nieblankes.
"small but influential number of Republicans"
Peddling furiously!
Math teacher here, struggling with "small but influential number." I know the integers, and the rational numbers, and even the irrational numbers, but the "small but influential" numbers? Never heard of 'em.
Like, shouldn't it be "small number of influential Republicans"? Small in number, yes, but oh so influential each one is! I'm also willing to accept "Influential number of small Republicans" as an alternative.
The zero, Shirley?
Or the log of 'cabin'?
You Yankees are always bringin' Lincoln into the discussion.
Good point! Zero may be small, but multiply by zero and you'll see how influential it is!
pi is a pretty influential number. Maybe Napier's constant, Boltzmann's constant, Planck's Constant
Trumps' Whining: Constant.
Imanasshole's number
There are a small number of influential numbers.
3 marks for the whole thing.
My day is loaded with Tasks of the Outdoor Suasion (Hitoned Ladies Subset*), so I got nuthin' else to say fer whatever amounts to the duration.
*Don't pray for me – do something useful!!!
Methinks the author really has it in for this Hogan fellow, for some reason.
Bulk Hogan is the moderate Republican of David Brooks’ dreams.
The more I learn about him the more I hate him. Baltimore has many good qualities but Maryland really is shit.
The state that gifted us MICHAEL STEELE?
Thune of Pierre is a nice touch. He might as well be from there too. You know those interstate signs that say “Townname, Home of Politician”? Thune has one by his actual hometown of Murdo, and also others on the interstates around Sioux Falls (where I don’t think he spends much time, but he almost certainly spends more time there than in the sticks West River). It’s all just stupid, meaningless advertising for him—though it does give us more opportunities to flip off his name as we drive by.
I was getting ready to call him "Thane of Pierre" but couldn't come up with names for the others (Glamis and Cawdor)
Where's Birnam Wood when you really need it?
Probably gadding about.
The forests and saplings these days won’t stand still and work hard like we used to!
I've had it with all this quiet quitting from our ash trees, something about how being a tree is boring.
Barking mad!
In addition to thane and thegn, the judges will also accept villein and clown.
Personally, I'd like to see "knave" come back in fashion. Said with the proper degree of contempt and revulsion, it has real bite as an insult.
"You sir, are NO GENTLEMAN."
Queensman would pronounce it 'cuh-navy'
“Ultima Thune”
I have Thuned this far, and can Thune no farther.
Thuned right out then?
One needs a strobe Thuner for these porpoises.
OMG!
IKR?
Like most descriptions of what s happening among the Rs, it sounds more convincing in the original German, Der Zorn Gottes. But, yes, Klaus Kinski was born to play Romney, or vice versa, I'm a bit confused.
There's a Great American Novel of what happened in the bureaucracy of the Republican Party between 2016 and today that will never be written, because if you salvation rests on bringing the Great Wizard back to Oz, you're not pulling back the curtain. I mean, Trump,strolled in and took control of their voter base, but not by much. A lot of those nomination delegates were because of a winner-take-all scheme in a crowded race. Clearly the Old part of the GOP considered him a fool, but not a dangerous one. After all, he was rich, right? And he exited the base like no one since Reagan. They had so much in common, surely they could come to an understanding. The slow roll of condescension to contempt to disgust to horror culminating in the little extravaganza in the street on Jan 6 is an epic arc, and now they are powerless to stop him, and are in the position of praying he is defeated by a man they despise with every Republican bone in their bodies so they can sweep up the wreckage and go back to their original plan of killing democracy by a thousand paper cuts. It would make Game of Thrones look like Little Women.
Some useful work could be done in organizing a concerted "Leave it Blank" campaign for Republicans who despise Trump but just won't fill in the oval for Biden. But did I say "useful work"? Sorry, not a thing any of these guys have done since they their teen lawn-mowing days.
Somewhere (Twitter?) I suggested that the DEMS do that: mount a campaign saying, in one way or another, "Can't bring yourself to vote for a Democrat? Fine. Then just stay home. Or write-in someone. But you cannot vote for Trump, knowing what he is."
I had an idea for a whole ad campaign, "Here's what I'm doing when I'm not voting for Trump!" Stock footage of elders playing with the grandkids, fishing, etc. Wouldn't cost much because you could just steal all that footage from drug ads.
That reminds me of a show my partner has proposed: Mutual of Omaha's Just Leave the Fucking Thing Alone.
"Oh look, we see a hippo in the river over there. Here I am, getting a nice mani-pedi, and Just Leaving the Fucking Thing Alone."
Maybe David Foster Wallace could get on that…
John Thune is from Murdo, not Pierre. Also, just because Pierre is named after a French guy it is pronounced pier
of the realm...
Well, of course it is, the people of KAY-ro Illinois salute you.
Ah, KAY-ro. Little Egypt. In both distance and culture closer to Memphis than Chicago.
a 50-year old National Geographic book on the Mississippi that I read recently mentions KAY-ro as a sad case, unable to attract the economic development that was making boom towns all along the river. Nothing's changed since then, as far as I can tell.