But can you imagine today's conservatives coming up with something as chemistry-nerd as AuH20? My God, I bet the person who came up with that graduated from a UNIVERSITY.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite poll numbers: The percent of scientists who self-identify as Republican is now in the single digits. Pretty sure this is a relatively recent phenomenon, scientists tend to skew male, white, and upper-income. Alienating so many of them was a decades-long project that only the Republican party could pull off.
Screw that, I'll just go from city to city and neighbourhood to neighbourhood, pencils in hands in my trench-coat pockets , noting the frequencies of attractive and ugly women as determined using my accurate and purely objective critæria.
The ones who dig that shite are the 6%, and even they mostly loathe the Republicans but feel, like Bela Lugosi's Dr Vornoff in "Bride of the Monster", that that's the closest thing to Home left them.
Unfortunately, Martin Landau is too dead to play Trump in the eventual horror-biopic.
I’ll say it again, I did not have the Right coming out four square against football, Disney, beer, and Taylor Swift on my bingo card for 2023/24.
The GOP establishment must be tearing its hair out over the Swift/Kelce debacle, as they know it alienates about 80% of the country. I’m just imagining an average 30 year old woman who has had maybe a half dozen boyfriends, wants to marry and have children but hasn’t met the right guy yet, listening to these creeps say women like her are over-the-hill sluts who should be reviled. And the GOP wonders why it struggles with Millennial and Gen Z women.
As we know, Swift provokes rightwing men simply by being talented, wildly successful, incredibly rich, very attractive, all while having the gall to remain SINGLE AND CHILDLESS. So they can’t resist their primal urge to put her in her place even when doing so is clearly detrimental to the conservative cause. It's why all these same guys support Trump, another colossal misogynist and tantruming baby. They relate to him because they can’t tell the difference between bluster and strength. And they don’t have the wit to realize every gesture of their own they consider a flex is really an obvious display of inadequacy and fear.
Cleek's Law is ironclad, even when it means conservatives are taking a chainsaw to their own knees.
And I'm sure this whole thing will lead to even more great family holidays as folks bitch ever more loudly about their kids and grandkids having that woke mind virus which is why they never come for Thanksgiving any more.
The perverse irony here is that rightwing media personalities may be the only quasi-“journalists” who DON’T want Trump re-elected, because they get more hits and clicks based on the outrage level of their audience, and another Biden win is gold to them. Conversely, “liberal” media like NYT and WaPo will get more clicks from another Trump presidency.
“I’ll say it again, I did not have the Right coming out four square against football, Disney, beer, and Taylor Swift on my bingo card for 2023/24.”
Well said and excellent post. Think about what’s happening? The simplest and most insignificant things set these people off.
Boycotting Disney and Beer. These people are agents of chaos. They don’t care about all the jobs that could be lost by these asinine boycotts, or the economy at all, for the matter.
They simply want to do the same to our economy as they are doing to our political institutions: completely burn down the house. No rhyme or reason; just because it offends them, and they can.
The MAGA mob are the ultimate haters. They should all look in the mirror, because it’s all projection. They hate their lives, immigrants and anyone not like them; but mostly themselves because they never succeeded and blame everyone else who does.
This Politico profile was a depressing but illuminating read. We’ve all seen too many profiles of Trump voters in the breathless, “but whatever do they *SEE* in him?” mode, but this one was different. It really demonstrates the free-floating, incoherent anger in a certain type of person that seems to lead him inexorably to Trump.
This guy is 58 years old, lives in a $750,000 house, earns a six figure income, drives a $60,000-80,000 truck, and is mad about everything. He’s estranged from his brother because of Trump, he talks about wanting “accountability” but can’t even articulate what he means – who should be accountable, and for what? He isn’t sure, he just wants to burn it all down. And for a change, the reporter lets him show his entire ass without sugar-coating any of it.
Absolutely. The guy in the Politico profile is just a financially comfortable white guy who woke up one morning in middle-age and realized his life was never going to seem like he was starring in his own movie, his life was never going to be like he was Player One slaying dragons in his own video game. He was never going to have sex with the women he wanted to, he was never going to get the kind of laurels and hosannas he feels he deserves. He realized he has 25 or 30 more years of the same old same old to look forward to, and it fried his brain.
His thwarted entitlement is absolutely palpable. And of course the nascent racism and sexism were always right there under the surface just waiting to be given a clearer definition, that’s why his mid-life crisis led him to Trump and not elsewhere. The profile is worthwhile to bookmark and refer back to every time the question “who are the Trump supporters?” is asked.
Yeah, I wish I could turn that article into a stamp I could apply to the forehead of anyone who tells me we need to "understand" The Other Side. Reach out to these assclowns? I'd rather hug a rabid octopus.
He's on his second marriage, but he never mentions his wife. That's another thing with these guys, it's so obvious they see their spouses as bit players in their own grievance drama.
This is kinda the nature/nurture debate, so 'm gonna make the bold choice to say it's 50-50. Discontent can be manufactured, that's the whole basis of the advertising industry. In an alternate universe where Fox News never existed, I'd bet a lot of these guys would be living a happier life and be much less annoying/dangerous to those around them.
In a nonpolitical context, there's an ad for some credit-card-like thing that you touch with your fingers and it sends an EKG to your phone. Starts with some jackass standing on the street asking passers-by: "How's your heart?" When he gets the reply, "OK, I guess" he explodes: "YOU GUESS? Don't you want to KNOW?" Such a perfect example of the genre: Manufacture the anxiety and then manufacture the cure.
Amen, brother. The Guardian had another one of those "Why do people keep voting for Trump?" things, this one featuring REAL PSYCHOLOGISTS. Didn't read a word of it, which I'm counting as a significant step in my 12-step program.
And I went back and checked, the headline is "To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him." Um, dude, no we do NOT. We need to understand our OWN people and what might motivate them to send in a ballot, that would be quite enough if we do it well enough.
Yeah, my apologies. It's more "read it and weep" than enjoyable. But better to see your enemy with clear eyes than to shy away from an unpleasant reality.
“She’s weak on the border.” What does that even mean? Not enough electrified razor wire or snipers? My dude, you live in New Hampshire. Are you being “invaded” by the Quebecois? This guy reminds me of many angry people I have met in the time I’ve spent around the well-off parts of Houston, where they are being “invaded” by reasonably priced roofers, landscapers, and nannies.
One Republican member of Congress said about the "border deal" being negotiated: "If it allows even ONE illegal into the country, I'm against it." That's the new standard for toughness, let's get the North Koreans on the phone and see how they do it.
For our governor, Janice from the Muppet Show—I mean the botoxed Kristi Noem—“the border” is a chance to simper, drawl, and moue on Fox News, and rake in more of that sweet, sweet grifter cash.
THIS. So, so much THIS. It's the one policy position the GOP will actually take, and neither party will do shit about it in any real terms, because they survive on ultra-cheap, abuseable immigrant labor. THEY'RE the ones hiring undocumented folks, them and the petty booj landscapers and construction guys in their base, and nobody's going to risk derailing the gravy train.
(Also too - apparently Nancy Pelosi is all concerned that pro-Palestinian protesters might be financed by shady unnamed FURRINERS not saying Iran/Russia but who knows, and wants them investigated by the FBI. Whee. 😬)
I’ve been to SD, but that doesn’t make me an expert. However, if I had to guess, I would speculate that the nationwide labor shortages are probably worse in SD, and that the state’s economy needs undocumented workers to function.
Yeah, that one made the rounds a week ago or so. I read it, and agree it was unusually clear in showing the mindset of a basic Trump supporter. It confirmed by bias that these people are fundamentally afraid, and what they want most is acknowledgement that their fear is real. That's the root of their love and support for Trump, he tells them that everyone hates them and is out to get them, and they believe it to their soul. If you believed that, you'd want chaos too, to prove to the world that you're right, everything has gone to shit. See? There it is, just like I've been saying all along. They would be so happy to have been proved right all along.
Elsewhere on SubStack I got into it with a guy who insisted we were suffering under DOUBLE DIGIT Bidenflation. "Dude, the CPI is now at 3%" along with an appropriate link did not go over well, to put it mildly. Also, the peak inflation rate under Biden was 9%, so infuriatingly single-digit. I blame God for giving us 5 fingers on each hand. If we were using a base-8 system like people on the Simpsons do, you can bet we woulda had a CPI in the double-digits!
He wants accountability, so he goes for Trump--the least responsible, accountable person in US politics, if not the world. I know I keep bitching about how stupid these people are--and many of them are--but maybe the single most salient fact about all of them, across the entire socio-economic spectrum, is their complete lack of self-knowledge. As I've said before "in these pages," they're outright hostile to it. The only big beautiful wall in their lives is the one separating their consciousness from any kind of self-understanding.
OK, I finally got around to reading this, and it was like staring into the abyss. All I could get from it is that the dude is FURIOUS that his team didn't win. I mean, sure, if you interviewed me in early 2020 I woulda been pretty damn furious too, but I think I could give you some specific things Trump had done that are harmful, and specific things I hoped a Democratic president might do that would be helpful. But that's just the college-educated elitist in me speaking. Of course it's possible to do politics without policy, without ideas, even, just building off team loyalty, hatred of The Others, and pure rage. This guy is livin' proof.
Well, now it's gone from The Goldwaters singin' songs to annoy liberals, to destroying truth, beauty, decency, and most of physical reality to trigger the libtards, so, progress? 😬🤔
Also, tell me those four assholes on the album cover didn't get arrested later for sexual assault, I dare you.
"They simply want to do the same to our economy as they are doing to our political institutions: completely burn down the house. No rhyme or reason; just because it offends them, and they can."
They "love" America like the ultimate abusive spouse: "If I can't have them no one else will."
I really, really wish toxic masculinity would take a day off once in a fucking while. If they put the same energy into understanding women and making a couple of attitude adjustments in themselves that they put into their sexist scolding, they'd be happier men.
Ms. Swift is an easy target indeed, because a good number of men over the age of 60, whether Dem or GOP, who fancy themselves appreciators of "real music" are already inclined to loathe her on some level.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever heard a Taylor Swift song. Nothing against her, I'm not her target demo, don't listen to the radio anymore so unless she's sneakin' in through Ellis Regina Radio on my Pandora, I'm not hearing her. Wish her well, though, why wouldn't I?
It’s not for you. Nor me. That’s fine. I wonder how much of her popularity among young women owes to her “don’t take any shit from dudes” messaging, coinciding with a lot of loud angry dudes trying to tell them what Tod do.
I don’t listen to her music, though I’m sure I’d recognize some of it. However, our niece with severe disabilities, who is otherwise non-communicative, absolutely lights up and chair dances when she hears Taylor Swift.
Swift went up against Apple and Spotify. And she did it not on her own behalf--she demanded the music services pay ALL THE OTHER ARTISTS for their works. And Swift was ready and able to walk away from both services because, being the most popular music artist on the planet, she had all the leverage. The fact that she used that power on behalf of other powerless artists speaks volumes about what kind of person she is.
Very true. Remember that column a few months back written by Mollie Hemingway's husband, I forget his name but he's a 50-something bald dude, which was basically a prolonged harrumph about Why I Dislike Taylor Swift? It was like, my guy, an irrelevant snit is not the basis for an article, didn't they teach you that in journalism school?
He was right to try! Imagine the enormous impact on our culture if only one 50-something bald dude had found the guts in 1968 to stand up and announce he disliked The Beatles!
History's funny that way, how I just happen to be - out of the billions who have ever lived - positioned right at its most crucial moments. Like how more than 200 years of American democracy stopped functioning right at the moment when the candidates I vote for stopped winning. I'm like a fulcrum of history, or something.
The thing is that the right has always been against football, Disney, beer, popular music, etc., if by right you mean the evangelical right that’s completely taken over the GOP in the age of Trump. All this stuff has been the devil’s handiwork since forever. From Hollywood to Elvis’s hips, Satan is just everywhere. It’s just that this used to be in the background, hidden behind all the tax cut and deregulation blather of the old GOP. Now it’s front and center.
Suggests that god-thing is less omnipotent than advertized or alternately he's (it's always he) deliberately torturing his chillun. Why would any thinking persons hitch their wagons to THAT?
If you pay attention to football at all (and from what I gather many of you don’t), there is a hefty side of Jesus with every game. Lots of genuflecting and pointing to the sky after scoring, He gets name-checked in virtually every post-game interview. A lot of pro players come out of the big football schools, many of which are firmly in the Bible Belt. Lots of college coaches are evangelical, off the field and on. Yet it’s never enough. One of my religious nut ex-SILs (I am lucky to have 2!) was just posting this week her theory that the networks are cutting the mics on players who bring up Jesus on TV. I’ve seen enough to think whoever mans the sound isn’t getting to the off button quick enough. All this to say -- really? FOOTBALL is too woke?
The NFL employed Tim Tebow for three seasons, and only when it became obvious he couldn't throw a football with any accuracy or velocity did they "fire" him.
Dropping in here that probly 90% of professional soccer goals accompany an interpretive dance to the god-thingie of choice. It's my dream as a fan that eventually the players just start dancing to the deity BEFORE they score – would make the whole enterprise more meaningful if they celebrate the dude for an offside ruling, or a throw in...or an own goal...!
The QB dancing after he is sacked, in gratitude that God sent a defensive lineman to remind him to be humble. After the game in the press conference calling the defensive lineman an agent of God.
Great newsletter Roy. You quite the imagination for an adult...:)
I had to look up who this Heather Nauert person is. Apparently, she went from Fox and Friends to the State Department, and within two years, Trump nominated her for the UN Ambassador job. Of course, hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny did her in. Although, it didn’t seem to hurt Trump’s prospects.
Imagine nominating a person with no foreign policy experience, or brain to think of, to be the most powerful ambassador representing the in the US in world affairs. Oh wait, that award went to Nikki Haley.
At least Trump’s consistent; always choosing style over substance. Another reason why Kari Lake would be a shoo-in for the VP slot. She’s camera ready on day one; and even more delusional and nuttier than Trump.
She actually may make him look good in contrast....:)
This is one of the few places in the universe where I can interact with other people who have frequent Firesign asides as part of their inner dialogue. Makes me feel seen, I tells ya!
Still amazes me that Swifce® of all people/things is the face of the resistance but there you go.
And if the sick people are upset now wait til Tay-tay really encourages her fans (those who'll be above 18 in time to vote) to register and vote Blue).
IIRC, Tay-tay in some earlier cycle came out telling her fans-of-age to vote against Blackburn whim clearly failed. It was a matter of too little too late.
This time though the sick fucks are laying the groundwork making a huge stink about all things Swifce®️ and, by nature of the beast, the story will more or less be in play or provoking the sickos through the Super Bowl.
Gonna be a rough year (duh) but this is a great sideshow. Almost as good as watching fPOTUS lose his shit in public.
My husband saw an article about a poll in which 17% said they would vote for someone endorsed by Taylor Swift, while 18% said they would vote against a candidate because they were endorsed by TS. Naturally, the article had a title something like “Taylor Swift Could Change the Outcome of the Election.” Or, you know, not.
It's young people, you see, who don't have a single thing in their empty little heads except pop-singer-worship. Worries about climate change, the elimination of the right to an abortion and the rights of LGBTQ folk, crushing student loan debt - no, NONE of these things might steer them away from the Republican party, their natural home and obvious friend. It must all be the doing of that awful singer-lady.
Hey, that was REALITY TV. All that stuff REALLY happened, just the way they showed it. So hand the nuclear codes over to the guy who used his lightning-quick decision capabilities to choose Best Smoothie-Stand Operator.
The NFL, which, by all accounts, likes money, is no doubt delighted with the presence of Taylor Swift, who brings the eyeballs of a demographic underrepresented in its customer base. Or it’s a group of billionaires unusual for its devotion to communism and woke ideology. It’s one or the other.
I’m waiting for the actual deep state, not fPOTUS’ cretinous fantasy one, to act the real thing like, I dunno, what they did in the Congo or at least in Guatemala and Iran.
I must admit that I'm enjoying the way conservatives have built this amazing conspiracy edifice that has Taylor Swift in cahoots with the NFL, team owners, the players' association, and even the fans to rig all the football games. It is, after all, a well-established fact that all of the billionaire team owners are actually closet communists who, despite giving billions to Republicans, will do anything to re-elect Joe Biden.
Don't forget the Deep State, it's a PsyOp! I keep imagining the character played by JK Simmons in Burn After Reading saying "Give me an update on our recruitment of this Swift woman, Palmer."
While it's not the funny part, the entire Swift/Kelce/NFL/Deep State bullshit is, disturbingly, another example of the fascist tactic of saying and then repeating over and over something clearly preposterous, because facts don't matter, only vibes. They want us to eat up time and energy rebutting the ridiculous.
Oh, yeah, the CIA recruited her AFTER she was turned into a liberal brainwashing vector by George Soros. And she has a happy relationship with her boyfriend and they're NOT MARRIED! EHRMAGERD! 😱
You don't suppose they're having SEX, do you? I'm horrified at the thought of it! Wait, let me visualize this a little better... hmmmm... yes, HORRIFIED!
And after the 49ers win: "What did we learn, Palmer?" "I don't know, sir." "I don't fucking know, either. I guess we learned not to do it again." "Yes, sir." "I'm fucked if I know what we did."
Yeah, I do love Burn After Reading.
Regarding the "facts don't matter, only vibes", it's true, but it's pretty amazing how they square that with their "fuck your feelings" thing, right?
It’s weird, for people who think a woman is only of value if she’s with a man, that Taylor Swift hanging around Travis Kelsie’s football games, in the high-end bleachers, has them so riled up. They’re both great at what they do and the only reason to dislike them is the same reason these chubs hated their high school’s prom queen and football captain: rank, seething jealousy from the talentless no-names.
Speaking of seething jealousy, a few blocks from my house there's a 20's-era vintage gas station now converted to a repair shop, judging by the vehicles parked outside the proprietor seems to do a good business fixing/restoring air-cooled VW's, bug and buses. I can't drive by the place without thinking, "Hey, how come that guy's livin' MY dream?"
Too early for that, I'm not sure the effect they were trying for, but a lot of 20's gas stations have a similar look: Tiny, steeply pitched tile roof, Spanish Gothic Cottage? Why anyone would associate such architecture with the selling of gasoline is anybody's guess. But every one is just cute as a button.
Good one, Roy! Still blows my mind that Browne wrote These Days when he was 16... I know, a little off topic... Also, I can't help but read PINSY as Tattoo- Mar a Lago is really a seriously degraded Fantasy Island in some perverted universe which, unfortunately, is our own...
The whole Swift/NFL/psyops nonsense reminds me of the death of my personal 'Noble Savage' delusion when I heard an anthropologist recount an extreme punishment of a woman who had dared (or for that matter, accidentally had happened) to view the Sacred Flutes in the Men's House.
Note: All codings, rôle assignments, and value-judgements in the next ¶ are from the viewpoint of the Permanent Masculine Protest.
The intrusion of a FemaleLib-coded figure on the TradMasc-coded world, and one who is the obviously dominant partner in her relationship with a member of the TradMasc priesthood is intolerable, and so there is no bottom to the depths of depravity to which she will descend, e.g. trying to help someone defeat The LORD's Anointed from within His Own House (the Superbowl stadium), defiling it thereby.
I have my problems with some of Haidt's work, but his description of conservatism as standing largely on a purity/defilement pillar seems spot-on.
This is excellent!
You're doing that scary/funny thing you do so well.
I was expecting to find out Inga was in drag and Trump to do the Joe E Brown
"Nobody's perfect" thing.
Oh and about that album cover -
https://substack.com/@brawlatthepoetscafe/note/c-48511517?r=insr
Yoicks!
It's kinda funny to see how that sort of cultural ressentiment has been the GOP ethos since forever.
But can you imagine today's conservatives coming up with something as chemistry-nerd as AuH20? My God, I bet the person who came up with that graduated from a UNIVERSITY.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite poll numbers: The percent of scientists who self-identify as Republican is now in the single digits. Pretty sure this is a relatively recent phenomenon, scientists tend to skew male, white, and upper-income. Alienating so many of them was a decades-long project that only the Republican party could pull off.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/only-six-percent-of-scien_n_229382
Well, shit - who's going to measure the foreheads now?
Screw that, I'll just go from city to city and neighbourhood to neighbourhood, pencils in hands in my trench-coat pockets , noting the frequencies of attractive and ugly women as determined using my accurate and purely objective critæria.
Republicans retain a firm grip on the pseudoscientist demographic.
POPS! 2 marks!
Measuring's easy -- cramming the data is hard
The ones who dig that shite are the 6%, and even they mostly loathe the Republicans but feel, like Bela Lugosi's Dr Vornoff in "Bride of the Monster", that that's the closest thing to Home left them.
Unfortunately, Martin Landau is too dead to play Trump in the eventual horror-biopic.
The scientists are just doing whatever it is they do to make us look stupid.
Can confirm. It's right there in my math-teacher contract. Why else would I teach this stuff? Nobody uses it for anything.
Who needs STEM when you have football?
Safety, Tackle, End, Middle linebacker. All you need to know.
Wherever there’s a citizens having a good time, the Republicans will be there to end it.
Don't try to convince me that Mr Trump never brought a trans-woman home, or to a back-room.
I’ll say it again, I did not have the Right coming out four square against football, Disney, beer, and Taylor Swift on my bingo card for 2023/24.
The GOP establishment must be tearing its hair out over the Swift/Kelce debacle, as they know it alienates about 80% of the country. I’m just imagining an average 30 year old woman who has had maybe a half dozen boyfriends, wants to marry and have children but hasn’t met the right guy yet, listening to these creeps say women like her are over-the-hill sluts who should be reviled. And the GOP wonders why it struggles with Millennial and Gen Z women.
As we know, Swift provokes rightwing men simply by being talented, wildly successful, incredibly rich, very attractive, all while having the gall to remain SINGLE AND CHILDLESS. So they can’t resist their primal urge to put her in her place even when doing so is clearly detrimental to the conservative cause. It's why all these same guys support Trump, another colossal misogynist and tantruming baby. They relate to him because they can’t tell the difference between bluster and strength. And they don’t have the wit to realize every gesture of their own they consider a flex is really an obvious display of inadequacy and fear.
Cleek's Law is ironclad, even when it means conservatives are taking a chainsaw to their own knees.
And I'm sure this whole thing will lead to even more great family holidays as folks bitch ever more loudly about their kids and grandkids having that woke mind virus which is why they never come for Thanksgiving any more.
The perverse irony here is that rightwing media personalities may be the only quasi-“journalists” who DON’T want Trump re-elected, because they get more hits and clicks based on the outrage level of their audience, and another Biden win is gold to them. Conversely, “liberal” media like NYT and WaPo will get more clicks from another Trump presidency.
That's a good point.
Yup. Sunday Got Style.
❤️😊
Coming soon to TikTok (Republican division): The Chainsaw Challenge!
“I’ll say it again, I did not have the Right coming out four square against football, Disney, beer, and Taylor Swift on my bingo card for 2023/24.”
Well said and excellent post. Think about what’s happening? The simplest and most insignificant things set these people off.
Boycotting Disney and Beer. These people are agents of chaos. They don’t care about all the jobs that could be lost by these asinine boycotts, or the economy at all, for the matter.
They simply want to do the same to our economy as they are doing to our political institutions: completely burn down the house. No rhyme or reason; just because it offends them, and they can.
The MAGA mob are the ultimate haters. They should all look in the mirror, because it’s all projection. They hate their lives, immigrants and anyone not like them; but mostly themselves because they never succeeded and blame everyone else who does.
It’s truly pathetic!...:)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/22/new-hampshire-primary-voter-00136850
This Politico profile was a depressing but illuminating read. We’ve all seen too many profiles of Trump voters in the breathless, “but whatever do they *SEE* in him?” mode, but this one was different. It really demonstrates the free-floating, incoherent anger in a certain type of person that seems to lead him inexorably to Trump.
This guy is 58 years old, lives in a $750,000 house, earns a six figure income, drives a $60,000-80,000 truck, and is mad about everything. He’s estranged from his brother because of Trump, he talks about wanting “accountability” but can’t even articulate what he means – who should be accountable, and for what? He isn’t sure, he just wants to burn it all down. And for a change, the reporter lets him show his entire ass without sugar-coating any of it.
Absolutely. The guy in the Politico profile is just a financially comfortable white guy who woke up one morning in middle-age and realized his life was never going to seem like he was starring in his own movie, his life was never going to be like he was Player One slaying dragons in his own video game. He was never going to have sex with the women he wanted to, he was never going to get the kind of laurels and hosannas he feels he deserves. He realized he has 25 or 30 more years of the same old same old to look forward to, and it fried his brain.
His thwarted entitlement is absolutely palpable. And of course the nascent racism and sexism were always right there under the surface just waiting to be given a clearer definition, that’s why his mid-life crisis led him to Trump and not elsewhere. The profile is worthwhile to bookmark and refer back to every time the question “who are the Trump supporters?” is asked.
Yeah, I wish I could turn that article into a stamp I could apply to the forehead of anyone who tells me we need to "understand" The Other Side. Reach out to these assclowns? I'd rather hug a rabid octopus.
He never mentions his spouse (if he has one). Free-floating toxic masculinity.
He's on his second marriage, but he never mentions his wife. That's another thing with these guys, it's so obvious they see their spouses as bit players in their own grievance drama.
This is kinda the nature/nurture debate, so 'm gonna make the bold choice to say it's 50-50. Discontent can be manufactured, that's the whole basis of the advertising industry. In an alternate universe where Fox News never existed, I'd bet a lot of these guys would be living a happier life and be much less annoying/dangerous to those around them.
"Discontent can be manufactured." Bingo.
In a nonpolitical context, there's an ad for some credit-card-like thing that you touch with your fingers and it sends an EKG to your phone. Starts with some jackass standing on the street asking passers-by: "How's your heart?" When he gets the reply, "OK, I guess" he explodes: "YOU GUESS? Don't you want to KNOW?" Such a perfect example of the genre: Manufacture the anxiety and then manufacture the cure.
I don't care how they got this way. They ARE this way, and I say it is moldy radioactive spinach and I say the hell with it.
Amen, brother. The Guardian had another one of those "Why do people keep voting for Trump?" things, this one featuring REAL PSYCHOLOGISTS. Didn't read a word of it, which I'm counting as a significant step in my 12-step program.
And I went back and checked, the headline is "To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him." Um, dude, no we do NOT. We need to understand our OWN people and what might motivate them to send in a ballot, that would be quite enough if we do it well enough.
"the nature/nurture debate"
You mean I might not get to blame the parents? What am I good for if not to blame/shame/defame/enflame?
Thanks for the link, I think.
Yeah, my apologies. It's more "read it and weep" than enjoyable. But better to see your enemy with clear eyes than to shy away from an unpleasant reality.
“She’s weak on the border.” What does that even mean? Not enough electrified razor wire or snipers? My dude, you live in New Hampshire. Are you being “invaded” by the Quebecois? This guy reminds me of many angry people I have met in the time I’ve spent around the well-off parts of Houston, where they are being “invaded” by reasonably priced roofers, landscapers, and nannies.
One Republican member of Congress said about the "border deal" being negotiated: "If it allows even ONE illegal into the country, I'm against it." That's the new standard for toughness, let's get the North Koreans on the phone and see how they do it.
Didn’t Wussy Galore recently have some very nice things to say about Mr. Kim?
Upvote for "Wussy Galore"!
But the Congressperson thinks that Irish "illegal" immigrant down the pub is cute
Only because it's 2024 and not 1854.
Yeah, "The Border" is shorthand for the Great Replacement Theory.
For our governor, Janice from the Muppet Show—I mean the botoxed Kristi Noem—“the border” is a chance to simper, drawl, and moue on Fox News, and rake in more of that sweet, sweet grifter cash.
THIS. So, so much THIS. It's the one policy position the GOP will actually take, and neither party will do shit about it in any real terms, because they survive on ultra-cheap, abuseable immigrant labor. THEY'RE the ones hiring undocumented folks, them and the petty booj landscapers and construction guys in their base, and nobody's going to risk derailing the gravy train.
(Also too - apparently Nancy Pelosi is all concerned that pro-Palestinian protesters might be financed by shady unnamed FURRINERS not saying Iran/Russia but who knows, and wants them investigated by the FBI. Whee. 😬)
I’ve been to SD, but that doesn’t make me an expert. However, if I had to guess, I would speculate that the nationwide labor shortages are probably worse in SD, and that the state’s economy needs undocumented workers to function.
You say petty booj, I say petit booj, let's call the whole thing off.
Yeah, that one made the rounds a week ago or so. I read it, and agree it was unusually clear in showing the mindset of a basic Trump supporter. It confirmed by bias that these people are fundamentally afraid, and what they want most is acknowledgement that their fear is real. That's the root of their love and support for Trump, he tells them that everyone hates them and is out to get them, and they believe it to their soul. If you believed that, you'd want chaos too, to prove to the world that you're right, everything has gone to shit. See? There it is, just like I've been saying all along. They would be so happy to have been proved right all along.
And the goddamned economy stubbornly fails to collapse even though a Radical Marxist is in charge.
Now you're starting to understand just how angry they are. Reality refuses to cooperate, so reality has to go!
Elsewhere on SubStack I got into it with a guy who insisted we were suffering under DOUBLE DIGIT Bidenflation. "Dude, the CPI is now at 3%" along with an appropriate link did not go over well, to put it mildly. Also, the peak inflation rate under Biden was 9%, so infuriatingly single-digit. I blame God for giving us 5 fingers on each hand. If we were using a base-8 system like people on the Simpsons do, you can bet we woulda had a CPI in the double-digits!
He wants accountability, so he goes for Trump--the least responsible, accountable person in US politics, if not the world. I know I keep bitching about how stupid these people are--and many of them are--but maybe the single most salient fact about all of them, across the entire socio-economic spectrum, is their complete lack of self-knowledge. As I've said before "in these pages," they're outright hostile to it. The only big beautiful wall in their lives is the one separating their consciousness from any kind of self-understanding.
OK, I finally got around to reading this, and it was like staring into the abyss. All I could get from it is that the dude is FURIOUS that his team didn't win. I mean, sure, if you interviewed me in early 2020 I woulda been pretty damn furious too, but I think I could give you some specific things Trump had done that are harmful, and specific things I hoped a Democratic president might do that would be helpful. But that's just the college-educated elitist in me speaking. Of course it's possible to do politics without policy, without ideas, even, just building off team loyalty, hatred of The Others, and pure rage. This guy is livin' proof.
Well, now it's gone from The Goldwaters singin' songs to annoy liberals, to destroying truth, beauty, decency, and most of physical reality to trigger the libtards, so, progress? 😬🤔
Also, tell me those four assholes on the album cover didn't get arrested later for sexual assault, I dare you.
The Goldwaters Sing Songs To Annoy Liberals? I much prefer The Ronettes Sing Mediæval Agrarian History. https://youtu.be/16RZqXXfcjg?si=KmYC8L22Kzeez0OG
"They simply want to do the same to our economy as they are doing to our political institutions: completely burn down the house. No rhyme or reason; just because it offends them, and they can."
They "love" America like the ultimate abusive spouse: "If I can't have them no one else will."
But what do you expect from people for whom Liberty Valence is obviously some sort of role model? Toxic masculinity at work.
I really, really wish toxic masculinity would take a day off once in a fucking while. If they put the same energy into understanding women and making a couple of attitude adjustments in themselves that they put into their sexist scolding, they'd be happier men.
“Toxic masculinity” is just a fancy academic libtard term for Man Baby.
Ms. Swift is an easy target indeed, because a good number of men over the age of 60, whether Dem or GOP, who fancy themselves appreciators of "real music" are already inclined to loathe her on some level.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever heard a Taylor Swift song. Nothing against her, I'm not her target demo, don't listen to the radio anymore so unless she's sneakin' in through Ellis Regina Radio on my Pandora, I'm not hearing her. Wish her well, though, why wouldn't I?
It’s not for you. Nor me. That’s fine. I wonder how much of her popularity among young women owes to her “don’t take any shit from dudes” messaging, coinciding with a lot of loud angry dudes trying to tell them what Tod do.
To do. Let’s leave Tod out of this. (I have fat thumbs.)
Excuse me, but it's der Tod, and you better keep him away from your mädchens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Tod_und_das_M%C3%A4dchen
I don’t listen to her music, though I’m sure I’d recognize some of it. However, our niece with severe disabilities, who is otherwise non-communicative, absolutely lights up and chair dances when she hears Taylor Swift.
Swift went up against Apple and Spotify. And she did it not on her own behalf--she demanded the music services pay ALL THE OTHER ARTISTS for their works. And Swift was ready and able to walk away from both services because, being the most popular music artist on the planet, she had all the leverage. The fact that she used that power on behalf of other powerless artists speaks volumes about what kind of person she is.
Very true. Remember that column a few months back written by Mollie Hemingway's husband, I forget his name but he's a 50-something bald dude, which was basically a prolonged harrumph about Why I Dislike Taylor Swift? It was like, my guy, an irrelevant snit is not the basis for an article, didn't they teach you that in journalism school?
https://edroso.substack.com/p/lester-leaps-in
He was right to try! Imagine the enormous impact on our culture if only one 50-something bald dude had found the guts in 1968 to stand up and announce he disliked The Beatles!
Most 50 something guys couldn't stand up in 1968 because they had not yet learned to walk or been born
So so right. “There hasn’t been any good music since [insert the year they were 17 and froze all artistic and intellectual inquiry].”
Or pretense there of.
It's one of history's great coincidences that the production of good music happened to stop right at the moment when I stopped listening to new music.
Huh. Weird.
History's funny that way, how I just happen to be - out of the billions who have ever lived - positioned right at its most crucial moments. Like how more than 200 years of American democracy stopped functioning right at the moment when the candidates I vote for stopped winning. I'm like a fulcrum of history, or something.
I think I can put it more succinctly: it’s all about you.
I hope I never reach the level of crank-itude where I believe “good music” began and ended with either Bob Dylan or Pat Boone.
Remember when Huey Newton and the News owned the airwaves? Good times...
The thing is that the right has always been against football, Disney, beer, popular music, etc., if by right you mean the evangelical right that’s completely taken over the GOP in the age of Trump. All this stuff has been the devil’s handiwork since forever. From Hollywood to Elvis’s hips, Satan is just everywhere. It’s just that this used to be in the background, hidden behind all the tax cut and deregulation blather of the old GOP. Now it’s front and center.
Suggests that god-thing is less omnipotent than advertized or alternately he's (it's always he) deliberately torturing his chillun. Why would any thinking persons hitch their wagons to THAT?
Talk about perverse.
God's fallen pretty seriously behind on the smiting schedule.
Thing is, He is very busy during football season, micromanaging each and every game, pro and college. Must be exhausting.
Jesus Is My Bookie
Giving children leukemia and then soaking up all the praise when they're miraculously cured! It's a sweet gig, you've got to admit.
Dunno. His followers claim to be smitten.
If you pay attention to football at all (and from what I gather many of you don’t), there is a hefty side of Jesus with every game. Lots of genuflecting and pointing to the sky after scoring, He gets name-checked in virtually every post-game interview. A lot of pro players come out of the big football schools, many of which are firmly in the Bible Belt. Lots of college coaches are evangelical, off the field and on. Yet it’s never enough. One of my religious nut ex-SILs (I am lucky to have 2!) was just posting this week her theory that the networks are cutting the mics on players who bring up Jesus on TV. I’ve seen enough to think whoever mans the sound isn’t getting to the off button quick enough. All this to say -- really? FOOTBALL is too woke?
The NFL employed Tim Tebow for three seasons, and only when it became obvious he couldn't throw a football with any accuracy or velocity did they "fire" him.
But his Professional Virginity was good for the kids!
Dropping in here that probly 90% of professional soccer goals accompany an interpretive dance to the god-thingie of choice. It's my dream as a fan that eventually the players just start dancing to the deity BEFORE they score – would make the whole enterprise more meaningful if they celebrate the dude for an offside ruling, or a throw in...or an own goal...!
The QB dancing after he is sacked, in gratitude that God sent a defensive lineman to remind him to be humble. After the game in the press conference calling the defensive lineman an agent of God.
Great newsletter Roy. You quite the imagination for an adult...:)
I had to look up who this Heather Nauert person is. Apparently, she went from Fox and Friends to the State Department, and within two years, Trump nominated her for the UN Ambassador job. Of course, hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny did her in. Although, it didn’t seem to hurt Trump’s prospects.
Imagine nominating a person with no foreign policy experience, or brain to think of, to be the most powerful ambassador representing the in the US in world affairs. Oh wait, that award went to Nikki Haley.
At least Trump’s consistent; always choosing style over substance. Another reason why Kari Lake would be a shoo-in for the VP slot. She’s camera ready on day one; and even more delusional and nuttier than Trump.
She actually may make him look good in contrast....:)
Well, she did have nice tits.
Fair enough...:)
She's got a balcony you could do Shakespeare from!
Is that all you care about -- picking up things?
This is one of the few places in the universe where I can interact with other people who have frequent Firesign asides as part of their inner dialogue. Makes me feel seen, I tells ya!
This is the quality that tells me Kristi Noem is a lock for Veep.
Well she's got Alaska locked up.
Alaska will be locked up for probably the next month and a half.
Still amazes me that Swifce® of all people/things is the face of the resistance but there you go.
And if the sick people are upset now wait til Tay-tay really encourages her fans (those who'll be above 18 in time to vote) to register and vote Blue).
She did this in 2020 & it enraged them, so Act II's got to be even better!
IIRC, Tay-tay in some earlier cycle came out telling her fans-of-age to vote against Blackburn whim clearly failed. It was a matter of too little too late.
This time though the sick fucks are laying the groundwork making a huge stink about all things Swifce®️ and, by nature of the beast, the story will more or less be in play or provoking the sickos through the Super Bowl.
Gonna be a rough year (duh) but this is a great sideshow. Almost as good as watching fPOTUS lose his shit in public.
My husband saw an article about a poll in which 17% said they would vote for someone endorsed by Taylor Swift, while 18% said they would vote against a candidate because they were endorsed by TS. Naturally, the article had a title something like “Taylor Swift Could Change the Outcome of the Election.” Or, you know, not.
It's young people, you see, who don't have a single thing in their empty little heads except pop-singer-worship. Worries about climate change, the elimination of the right to an abortion and the rights of LGBTQ folk, crushing student loan debt - no, NONE of these things might steer them away from the Republican party, their natural home and obvious friend. It must all be the doing of that awful singer-lady.
Can you imagine that kind of cult-like devotion to an ENTERTAINER??? I mean, one that doesn’t host The Apprentice, of course.
Hey, that was REALITY TV. All that stuff REALLY happened, just the way they showed it. So hand the nuclear codes over to the guy who used his lightning-quick decision capabilities to choose Best Smoothie-Stand Operator.
Don't forget school being ever more merely training for low-end jobs, instead of actually learning.
Oh, the magic of Election Time, where the whole media is all "Something Might Happen! Or it Might Not! The Hell We Know, But We'll Cover It Anyway!"
Swifce©? You mean that pseudo-mop thing?
Sadly, "Swiffer not Swiftie" pretty accurately describes my stage in life.
Does this mean you've decided to clean up your act? Or are you just dusting off some of your skills?
Relevant.
https://youtu.be/mKG2kvoyeg8?si=dH0eWBKG8-CNEwm6
😂
The NFL, which, by all accounts, likes money, is no doubt delighted with the presence of Taylor Swift, who brings the eyeballs of a demographic underrepresented in its customer base. Or it’s a group of billionaires unusual for its devotion to communism and woke ideology. It’s one or the other.
I’m convinced that it is all a deep state psy-op.
I’m willing to concede you could be right.
I have new respect for the Deep State.
I’m waiting for the actual deep state, not fPOTUS’ cretinous fantasy one, to act the real thing like, I dunno, what they did in the Congo or at least in Guatemala and Iran.
Then I’ll respect them.
I must admit that I'm enjoying the way conservatives have built this amazing conspiracy edifice that has Taylor Swift in cahoots with the NFL, team owners, the players' association, and even the fans to rig all the football games. It is, after all, a well-established fact that all of the billionaire team owners are actually closet communists who, despite giving billions to Republicans, will do anything to re-elect Joe Biden.
Amazing.
Don't forget the Deep State, it's a PsyOp! I keep imagining the character played by JK Simmons in Burn After Reading saying "Give me an update on our recruitment of this Swift woman, Palmer."
While it's not the funny part, the entire Swift/Kelce/NFL/Deep State bullshit is, disturbingly, another example of the fascist tactic of saying and then repeating over and over something clearly preposterous, because facts don't matter, only vibes. They want us to eat up time and energy rebutting the ridiculous.
Oh, yeah, the CIA recruited her AFTER she was turned into a liberal brainwashing vector by George Soros. And she has a happy relationship with her boyfriend and they're NOT MARRIED! EHRMAGERD! 😱
You don't suppose they're having SEX, do you? I'm horrified at the thought of it! Wait, let me visualize this a little better... hmmmm... yes, HORRIFIED!
And after the 49ers win: "What did we learn, Palmer?" "I don't know, sir." "I don't fucking know, either. I guess we learned not to do it again." "Yes, sir." "I'm fucked if I know what we did."
Yeah, I do love Burn After Reading.
Regarding the "facts don't matter, only vibes", it's true, but it's pretty amazing how they square that with their "fuck your feelings" thing, right?
"JACKSON: I also did Sally Struthers.
TRUMP: Yeah, me too."
You dawg.
2 marks.
Not Sally's fault, she just has a weakness for meatheads.
Someone needs to ask Miley Cyrus what she thinks.
You mean “if she thinks”?
TRUMP: You weren’t Pat, that one that was a he-she? I hated that.
I find myself agreeing with Donald Trump about something, and man, is that an uncomfortable feeling.
Don't worry; there was a buffet of stuff to hate in late 90s SNL.
EDIT: I think I meant late 80s SNL. Whatever.
either way is probably correct although It's Pat was not that long lasting
At this point, I'm pretty sure that Taylor Swift would have less trouble scraping up $83 million in cash if she needed to.
The Gleason stuff is just so perfect it hurts.
It’s weird, for people who think a woman is only of value if she’s with a man, that Taylor Swift hanging around Travis Kelsie’s football games, in the high-end bleachers, has them so riled up. They’re both great at what they do and the only reason to dislike them is the same reason these chubs hated their high school’s prom queen and football captain: rank, seething jealousy from the talentless no-names.
Speaking of seething jealousy, a few blocks from my house there's a 20's-era vintage gas station now converted to a repair shop, judging by the vehicles parked outside the proprietor seems to do a good business fixing/restoring air-cooled VW's, bug and buses. I can't drive by the place without thinking, "Hey, how come that guy's livin' MY dream?"
I had the same reaction to a video of a woman who has the job of taking care of orphaned baby primates at an animal sanctuary.
Oooh! 20s era? Is it art deco, perchance?
Too early for that, I'm not sure the effect they were trying for, but a lot of 20's gas stations have a similar look: Tiny, steeply pitched tile roof, Spanish Gothic Cottage? Why anyone would associate such architecture with the selling of gasoline is anybody's guess. But every one is just cute as a button.
Shoot, I was hoping for glass blocks and curves and a steel winged lady on top with her girls hangin' out.
Sold for scrap during the war.
Good one, Roy! Still blows my mind that Browne wrote These Days when he was 16... I know, a little off topic... Also, I can't help but read PINSY as Tattoo- Mar a Lago is really a seriously degraded Fantasy Island in some perverted universe which, unfortunately, is our own...
The whole Swift/NFL/psyops nonsense reminds me of the death of my personal 'Noble Savage' delusion when I heard an anthropologist recount an extreme punishment of a woman who had dared (or for that matter, accidentally had happened) to view the Sacred Flutes in the Men's House.
Note: All codings, rôle assignments, and value-judgements in the next ¶ are from the viewpoint of the Permanent Masculine Protest.
The intrusion of a FemaleLib-coded figure on the TradMasc-coded world, and one who is the obviously dominant partner in her relationship with a member of the TradMasc priesthood is intolerable, and so there is no bottom to the depths of depravity to which she will descend, e.g. trying to help someone defeat The LORD's Anointed from within His Own House (the Superbowl stadium), defiling it thereby.
I have my problems with some of Haidt's work, but his description of conservatism as standing largely on a purity/defilement pillar seems spot-on.