Bad timing on my part. Read this *after* having today's meditation on how people are hardwired to be credulous dopes and then brainwashed from the crib.
Anyway, besides that I've been pondering what good these dumb fucks think Trump POTUS S2 will bring other than tax cuts. (Of course the odds of them getting tax cuts worth the bother are low.) The answers, of course, would just be, well, sort of today's post. Why, it's like there's a circle of life thing going on or something...
Under Trump's first reign of error, all the MAGAs in upstate New York were positively giddy that at long last their guy was going to DO SOMETHING about EVERYTHING!!! Trump delivered his promised tax cuts . . . except none of those cuts extended down to their income levels AND Trump eliminated the SALT deduction for them, thus RAISING their taxes. This was, of course, all the fault of the Democrats.
So now we're into Trump 2.0, and the upstate NY MAGAs are positively giddy that Trump is going to do something about everything. They're noticing that the price of eggs has tripled, but that's the fault of the Democrats and/or the Chinese bird flu. Their taxes won't go down, but that's still the fault of the Democrats. Because truth be told, Donald Trump could be personally feeding their children into a woodchipper while they watch him do it . . . and they'd still blame the Democrats.
For MAGAs, as long as Democrats exist they will be responsible for everything bad that ever happens to them. Including, should they ever realize how fucked up he is, Trump himself. “If Biden hadn’t been so old and that Black woman so Black and womany, none of this would’ve ever happened!”
This attitude is shared by a lot of business leaders, giddy about the God-Emperor’s repeal of “government overreach” and “regulatory tsunami” — not yet realizing that the Republican courts sowing chaos and making contract law random and unenforceable won’t be good for business.
They all think they'll be the New Robber Barons; that they'll be strong and powerful and survive. Until they get destroyed by someone stronger and more powerful. They'll be Malefactors But Without The Great Wealth.
Time to reread Ida Tarbell (whose father's small oil distribution business got rolled over by Standard Oil).
"They're noticing that the price of eggs has tripled, but that's the fault of the Democrats and/or the Chinese bird flu."
"Chinese bird flu", A+ for effort. I admire the strategy: To inject actual information into the brains of these morons let's wrap it in delicious racism, but several roadblocks present themselves:
Too bad Richard Attenborough has left us, he'd be perfect to accompany the NYT and provide the voiceover for these safaris. "We see the middle-aged MAGA alighting from his Ford F-150. He peacocks by adjusting his Make America Great cap and reaching under his ample belly to adjust his testicles before purposefully striding across the parking lot to enter the diner."
Nearby females, watching warily the male, display their potential interest via subtle gestures, such as rolling up their sleeves to reveal their Molon Labe tats, or, if not interested, gripping their Glocks firmly in both hands and pointing them directly at the tiny space between his eyes...
I believe you’re thinking of his brother David, narrator of scores of nature documentaries, who is still with us, although he’ll turn 99 this spring (flinches; hopes not to pull a Betty White).
I think he’d be more, “Earth holds many wonders, from the smallest flower to the highest mountain. She is in danger now but, if we act immediately, we can rescue her by killing off the MAGAs and billionaires who are ruining everything. Join me as I shop for high-powered weaponry in the arsenals of this Third World Country’s bazaars.”
“Look into the eyes of a [MAGA voter] and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.”
Phlegm Sphagnum, nattily haberdashed in a novelty Civil War cavalry hat knockoff, said with a glinty eye "I love the smell of nazis in the morning. Smells like...musk!"
I don't get why Roy and all these people from Big Media have to sanewash the Common Folk. I live amongst them. They are way worse than the news lets on.
thank you for the 'Derek guy' link. I think. I thought it was a spoof account, but hell no he's the real deal. I think. I got completely sucked in to reading about 200 posts before I came to my senses. here's I am in my goodwill shirt and very well used jeans, thinking I should upgrade a bit. but again, hell no.
who am I trying to impress? (sure hope bern gives me two marks!)
Yup. Back when he was on Twitter his comebacks would have CVS Pharmacy-style receipts. Plus you could do a lot worse than "cute little outfits in walkable neighborhoods".
Why, yes: we have heard this one. Yet it doesn't stop the FTNYT.
Roy's distillation is really all that's needed. Safari to where "A few even had tattered clippings of our earlier stories that we had gleaned from conversations with their habitués taped up by their register with rude and sometimes offensive comments attached, in much the same way that urban bodegas will post Polaroids of shoplifters." Among the retired windshield wiper wholesalers and supervisors of hog rendering plants, whose newfangled tech brings them the news, courtesy of Adolf Twizzler.
I'll assume the photo of José Jiménez is from the Opry. Since Google Lens found something about the face not qwhite recognizable.
I see you’ve found some of the regular letter writers to our local paper. The rest are in the state capitol, attempting to govern, with all the success of a group of monkeys trying to run a threshing machine.
Poor white people really are struggling, with little reason to believe that the systems can be reformed; and were this even possible, it would be incremental, and therefore too slow for the desperate. (I myself think that carefully-chosen reforms — humane ones! — could make a huge difference more or less immediately, but the politics are evidently insuperable.)
On the other hand, the loudest squawks are coming from across the middle class of assholes. They have fared less well over my lifetime, and seen their prospects decline; but these legitimate grievances are overshadowed by their bigotry, etc.
Then we have the middle- and upper-middle-class types who have little to complain about. They have benefited at the expense of the proles. These ones have the luxury of collectively cultivating a dark fantasy world. As it stands, their educations and perspectives are abysmal, and getting worse.
The Western elites' 20th-century project of inoculating the first-world populace against political extremes has failed. Its cornerstone was preventing, by state action, the acute economic and cultural crises that would again create the conditions for authoritarianism. That project has failed, largely due to the capture of institutions by the rich and corporations.
But do you need an economic crisis to get fascism? I guess that's the standard story for 1930's Germany: Hyperinflation followed by mass unemployment = Hitler. Because extreme leaders must come from extreme causes, right? But after Trump The Seconding, I'm beginning to wonder. Maybe people can make really bad choices even when they're not being pushed so hard by external circumstances. Maybe Germany's economy could have been doin' great, and then people would have picked Adolf just because they hate Jews and want to Make Germany Great Again.
My sense is some folks what ain't gotta licka sense feel the need to have a Righteous Cause to, well, not fight for, but at least scream about. As if that gives life meaning.
[insert sudden 'oh shit' realization]:
Let's all think a little bit about why WE are HERE...
I wish Mr Trump's supporters all seemed like this, not least because they'd then remind me of me as little as possible and also mostly don't seem like much of a threat…individually…but an awful (literally) number of them seem much more acceptable. Some are careful, moderately polite, reasonably intelligent, people who because they accept false data and bad notions about the world will politely, carefully, and seemingly reasonably endorse barbarism.
Let's not forget the inattentive and confused "Time For A Change" voters: "Oh, it's the Democrats in the White House now? Better vote Republican, that'll show 'em!"
What do they think of this? They don't, that's kind of their defining characteristic. But check back with 'em in late October, 2028: "Oh, it's the Republicans in the White House now?"
Mebbe, but I think we should focus our gaze not on the idea that actual voters only vote out of a sense of indignation at whoever's occupying the Casa Blanca. There's another cohort to ponder. Because no prez candidate's total vote count would beat the bulk of the 'can't be bothered to vote at all' citizenry.
Well, that's why we got the "Republican Revolution" and the dumbest pack of Congressfolk up until then back in 1995, with the calls for term limits (which never went anywhere because they would have applied to the GOP as well).
In my long list of "Read the headline without clicking on the story" was one about a Republican Congressman introducing a bill to allow Trump a third term, the sub-hed clarified that Obama would be prohibited from a 3rd term. Not clicked because at this point they're just trolling us.
And that blob of protoplasm will be primaried out in '26 by some more pathetic pile of pus because instead of racing around hoovering up campaign cash®* he's wasted precious time puking up that so-called legislation.
*The only universally understood function of elected officialdom at the national level
Our dumb system reduces elections to First Past The Post binaries, so naturally our dumb citizens—if they bother to vote at all—think, well, if things seem bad now, then voting for the other team is a magical toggle switch that will fix everything. (It’s almost as dumb an idea as enshrining slaveholder power in the constitution, and also creating a senate whose districts are “states” with fixed boundaries that never adjust for population.)
I'm having a hard time buying that "cavalcade" is the collective noun for slurs. Trying to put that one over on us marks the author as some kind of east-coast College Boy.
I always made a mental equivalent between "cavalcade" and "avalanche". It made for VERY odd ideas of the content of the old TV show "Cartoon Cavalcade".
Bad timing on my part. Read this *after* having today's meditation on how people are hardwired to be credulous dopes and then brainwashed from the crib.
Anyway, besides that I've been pondering what good these dumb fucks think Trump POTUS S2 will bring other than tax cuts. (Of course the odds of them getting tax cuts worth the bother are low.) The answers, of course, would just be, well, sort of today's post. Why, it's like there's a circle of life thing going on or something...
rolling, Shirley...
Under Trump's first reign of error, all the MAGAs in upstate New York were positively giddy that at long last their guy was going to DO SOMETHING about EVERYTHING!!! Trump delivered his promised tax cuts . . . except none of those cuts extended down to their income levels AND Trump eliminated the SALT deduction for them, thus RAISING their taxes. This was, of course, all the fault of the Democrats.
So now we're into Trump 2.0, and the upstate NY MAGAs are positively giddy that Trump is going to do something about everything. They're noticing that the price of eggs has tripled, but that's the fault of the Democrats and/or the Chinese bird flu. Their taxes won't go down, but that's still the fault of the Democrats. Because truth be told, Donald Trump could be personally feeding their children into a woodchipper while they watch him do it . . . and they'd still blame the Democrats.
For MAGAs, as long as Democrats exist they will be responsible for everything bad that ever happens to them. Including, should they ever realize how fucked up he is, Trump himself. “If Biden hadn’t been so old and that Black woman so Black and womany, none of this would’ve ever happened!”
This attitude is shared by a lot of business leaders, giddy about the God-Emperor’s repeal of “government overreach” and “regulatory tsunami” — not yet realizing that the Republican courts sowing chaos and making contract law random and unenforceable won’t be good for business.
They all think they'll be the New Robber Barons; that they'll be strong and powerful and survive. Until they get destroyed by someone stronger and more powerful. They'll be Malefactors But Without The Great Wealth.
Time to reread Ida Tarbell (whose father's small oil distribution business got rolled over by Standard Oil).
And it is a great injustice that, with a name like Tarbell, Daddy ain't in the oil-distributin' business no more.
Somewhere, Ida Oilbarrl smiles at her family's good fortune.
I heard she got married to a doctor and now she's Ida No.
Plus the fucking tariffs.
Just looked at the frozen egg patties I had and, wow, "Product of Canada". Who could have guessed?
Well, there's a clue in that they're frozen.
'frozen egg patty' will never dethrone the great and powerful Poutine.
But, band name...? I mean, I'll leave there on the table for any aspiring musician desperate enough...
Maybe Patty's just not ready to have children right now.
Speaking of band names, I was in a conversation recently where the phrase "fecal aerosols" came up, and I immediately thought...
The punchline to my question, as it were, is that of course the answers would be complete idiocy.
There is no good, justifiable answer and I’m not sure how many of them have any sort of clue. Or give a shit.
Fucking cretins…
"Donald Trump could be personally feeding their children into a woodchipper while they watch him do it . . . and they'd still blame the Democrats."
And lefty soreheads would also blame the Democrats, because they lost, giving Trump access to the national woodchipper.
Glad to see there's something all Americans can agree on.
I'm gettin' the band back together just so's we can do a hep update on Woody's Woodchopper's Ball. Evahbody be diggin' that jive, Jack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxyj432cpwI
All reet, Jackson! Solid!
Reet, petite and GONE!
"They're noticing that the price of eggs has tripled, but that's the fault of the Democrats and/or the Chinese bird flu."
"Chinese bird flu", A+ for effort. I admire the strategy: To inject actual information into the brains of these morons let's wrap it in delicious racism, but several roadblocks present themselves:
"What, eggs come from CHICKENS?"
"What, Chickens are BIRDS?"
"What, flu is BAD?"
"What, China comes from a CABINET?"
Too bad Richard Attenborough has left us, he'd be perfect to accompany the NYT and provide the voiceover for these safaris. "We see the middle-aged MAGA alighting from his Ford F-150. He peacocks by adjusting his Make America Great cap and reaching under his ample belly to adjust his testicles before purposefully striding across the parking lot to enter the diner."
Nearby females, watching warily the male, display their potential interest via subtle gestures, such as rolling up their sleeves to reveal their Molon Labe tats, or, if not interested, gripping their Glocks firmly in both hands and pointing them directly at the tiny space between his eyes...
I had to look up Molon Labe, and hoo boy.
I saw a" Moron Labia" t-shirt in a photograph.of an Iraq war demonstration.
"Look for the Moron Label. . ." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO7VUklDlQw
When you are buying
A hat two sizes too big
Sorry, Sunday.
And the example was sported by which Tubby appointee?
Excuse me, I think you meant to say "Our new Secretary of Defense."
Oh, those are more extra specially wink-wink coded.
I’m pretty sure it’s Latin for “moron lips.”
I believe you’re thinking of his brother David, narrator of scores of nature documentaries, who is still with us, although he’ll turn 99 this spring (flinches; hopes not to pull a Betty White).
Really, any guy with a mellifluous voice and an English accent would work, don't you think?
ALWAYS works for me!
English accent: add 20 IQ points, 5 more if it’s mellifluous.
I prefer young ladies with an Aussie accent, but that's me.
Truthfully, for me it's the BBC presentress who chats about emergencies, rescues and the like, and who always gives a shout out to the sniffah doags.
Crikey!
I think he’d be more, “Earth holds many wonders, from the smallest flower to the highest mountain. She is in danger now but, if we act immediately, we can rescue her by killing off the MAGAs and billionaires who are ruining everything. Join me as I shop for high-powered weaponry in the arsenals of this Third World Country’s bazaars.”
We can dream.
Oh, you made Sir David MAD.
(You may mean David Attenborough, who's still around. Richard was the actor-director.)
I say it's Attenborough, and I say the hell with it.
More of a job for Werner Herzog, I’d think.
“Look into the eyes of a [MAGA voter] and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.”
Phlegm Sphagnum, nattily haberdashed in a novelty Civil War cavalry hat knockoff, said with a glinty eye "I love the smell of nazis in the morning. Smells like...musk!"
Should add here that poor Phlegm catches a raft of shit from alla the good ol' boyz 'cause his name is spelt wiff a 'Ph' instead of a 'F'.
I don't get why Roy and all these people from Big Media have to sanewash the Common Folk. I live amongst them. They are way worse than the news lets on.
Yes, but where is Arnold the Pig in all this? He'd have had a lot to say. He watched Walter Cronkite. 😁
It’s like a lost episode of Green Acres. “This week in Hooterville, a very special episode…”
If they made it a mashup of that plus a Hallmark Christmas movie, it’d be TV gold.
Please tell me the high school mascot was the Hooters.
I’m totally here for the War on Breakfast. Dibs on the twin Bacon .50s!
thank you for the 'Derek guy' link. I think. I thought it was a spoof account, but hell no he's the real deal. I think. I got completely sucked in to reading about 200 posts before I came to my senses. here's I am in my goodwill shirt and very well used jeans, thinking I should upgrade a bit. but again, hell no.
who am I trying to impress? (sure hope bern gives me two marks!)
Not only is he the Real Deal, but he is the undisputed King of Comebacks. Do not take this guy on
A superpower always used for good.
Yup. Back when he was on Twitter his comebacks would have CVS Pharmacy-style receipts. Plus you could do a lot worse than "cute little outfits in walkable neighborhoods".
Same here, I was drawn in and 15 minutes went by like nothin'. Thank God I'm not on BlueSky.
Them what tries too hard...
1 mark for audacity, tho.
I think I can speak for all of us (and especially Dame Edna Everage) when I say “Save the Possums!”
“Musk - the cologne for the man who wants more than a whiff of fascism!”
Why, yes: we have heard this one. Yet it doesn't stop the FTNYT.
Roy's distillation is really all that's needed. Safari to where "A few even had tattered clippings of our earlier stories that we had gleaned from conversations with their habitués taped up by their register with rude and sometimes offensive comments attached, in much the same way that urban bodegas will post Polaroids of shoplifters." Among the retired windshield wiper wholesalers and supervisors of hog rendering plants, whose newfangled tech brings them the news, courtesy of Adolf Twizzler.
I'll assume the photo of José Jiménez is from the Opry. Since Google Lens found something about the face not qwhite recognizable.
That's Pepito from The Real McCoys.
Is the last guy Beanie from A Face in the Crowd?
I see you’ve found some of the regular letter writers to our local paper. The rest are in the state capitol, attempting to govern, with all the success of a group of monkeys trying to run a threshing machine.
("A bunch of monkeys trying to f*** a football" is the best version of this metaphor I've ever heard.)
Where's that from? Has a nice ring.
(Can't remember but as I'm in the American South that's probably where it originated.)
I like your version better, though my clumsy attempt involves more self-inflicted injuries.
Poor white people really are struggling, with little reason to believe that the systems can be reformed; and were this even possible, it would be incremental, and therefore too slow for the desperate. (I myself think that carefully-chosen reforms — humane ones! — could make a huge difference more or less immediately, but the politics are evidently insuperable.)
On the other hand, the loudest squawks are coming from across the middle class of assholes. They have fared less well over my lifetime, and seen their prospects decline; but these legitimate grievances are overshadowed by their bigotry, etc.
Then we have the middle- and upper-middle-class types who have little to complain about. They have benefited at the expense of the proles. These ones have the luxury of collectively cultivating a dark fantasy world. As it stands, their educations and perspectives are abysmal, and getting worse.
The Western elites' 20th-century project of inoculating the first-world populace against political extremes has failed. Its cornerstone was preventing, by state action, the acute economic and cultural crises that would again create the conditions for authoritarianism. That project has failed, largely due to the capture of institutions by the rich and corporations.
I...struggle...to find fault with anything in this post.
2 marks.
But do you need an economic crisis to get fascism? I guess that's the standard story for 1930's Germany: Hyperinflation followed by mass unemployment = Hitler. Because extreme leaders must come from extreme causes, right? But after Trump The Seconding, I'm beginning to wonder. Maybe people can make really bad choices even when they're not being pushed so hard by external circumstances. Maybe Germany's economy could have been doin' great, and then people would have picked Adolf just because they hate Jews and want to Make Germany Great Again.
My sense is some folks what ain't gotta licka sense feel the need to have a Righteous Cause to, well, not fight for, but at least scream about. As if that gives life meaning.
[insert sudden 'oh shit' realization]:
Let's all think a little bit about why WE are HERE...
[insert OOF]
Apparently a PERCEIVED (economic) crisis is enough as of late. Schickelgruber only WISHED he had social media.
"Well of course we hadda vote in Hitler, it was the VIBES."
This is an important topic!
Not credible. The fact that these citizens haven't been nominated for Cabinet posts means that the (so-called) writer made this whole thing up.
Or "consultant" guest spots on FAUX.
I wish Mr Trump's supporters all seemed like this, not least because they'd then remind me of me as little as possible and also mostly don't seem like much of a threat…individually…but an awful (literally) number of them seem much more acceptable. Some are careful, moderately polite, reasonably intelligent, people who because they accept false data and bad notions about the world will politely, carefully, and seemingly reasonably endorse barbarism.
Let's not forget the inattentive and confused "Time For A Change" voters: "Oh, it's the Democrats in the White House now? Better vote Republican, that'll show 'em!"
What do they think of this? They don't, that's kind of their defining characteristic. But check back with 'em in late October, 2028: "Oh, it's the Republicans in the White House now?"
Mebbe, but I think we should focus our gaze not on the idea that actual voters only vote out of a sense of indignation at whoever's occupying the Casa Blanca. There's another cohort to ponder. Because no prez candidate's total vote count would beat the bulk of the 'can't be bothered to vote at all' citizenry.
Ha ha! I don't vote, it only encourages them! Isn't that FUNNY? ARE YOU LAUGHING NOW?
Wake me when the guy who smashes watermelons comes on.
Well, that's why we got the "Republican Revolution" and the dumbest pack of Congressfolk up until then back in 1995, with the calls for term limits (which never went anywhere because they would have applied to the GOP as well).
"Term limits for thee, not for me." All courtesy of Newt Mother******g Gingrich, may his political soul rot in the hell he created in DC.
In my long list of "Read the headline without clicking on the story" was one about a Republican Congressman introducing a bill to allow Trump a third term, the sub-hed clarified that Obama would be prohibited from a 3rd term. Not clicked because at this point they're just trolling us.
And that blob of protoplasm will be primaried out in '26 by some more pathetic pile of pus because instead of racing around hoovering up campaign cash®* he's wasted precious time puking up that so-called legislation.
*The only universally understood function of elected officialdom at the national level
Our dumb system reduces elections to First Past The Post binaries, so naturally our dumb citizens—if they bother to vote at all—think, well, if things seem bad now, then voting for the other team is a magical toggle switch that will fix everything. (It’s almost as dumb an idea as enshrining slaveholder power in the constitution, and also creating a senate whose districts are “states” with fixed boundaries that never adjust for population.)
Yes! The Toggle Switch of Democracy! Customer service also advises me to try turning Democracy off and then back on again.
All politics is Binary! Don't like 1? Why not try 0?
Trying nothing is the default, I think...
It is for the Democrats. “We’ve tried nothing—and we’re all out of ideas!”
Just excellent. Salena Zito would be envious of your sheer invention.
("A Cavalcade of Slurs" sounds like the name of an album -- need an appropriate band name. "Hog Rendering"?)
I'm having a hard time buying that "cavalcade" is the collective noun for slurs. Trying to put that one over on us marks the author as some kind of east-coast College Boy.
I always made a mental equivalent between "cavalcade" and "avalanche". It made for VERY odd ideas of the content of the old TV show "Cartoon Cavalcade".
A lost libretto from Richard Wagner.
NY Times, Jan. 2021: "Eh, I guess some people voted for Biden, the less said about them the better."