“Let’s commission a study on this” is political double-talk for “let’s kick the can down the road until everyone forgets about it” and hopefully most people realize that.
I’m not quite as optimistic as Roy. In a different political climate, Cruz would have committed career suicide in the last 60 days, first supporting the insurrectionists and now with this Cancun adventure. But I think he’s banking he’ll survive due to conservative voters hating the libs more than they love themselves, and I’m not so sure that’s a losing bet for him to make.
“'Let’s commission a study on this' is political double-talk for 'let’s kick the can down the road until everyone forgets about it' and hopefully most people realize that."
Yes. Like when my wife asked how this could happen, I said, "Because they won't prepare for winter because it's summer, and they won't prepare for summer because it's winter."
Periodic reminder that Enron--"The Smartest Guys In The Room"--was based in Houston.
And Cruz will survive. Because of Freezing-To-Death-In-The-Dark-To-Own-The-Libs.
Avoiding spending on maintenance saves the big bucks, much, much more than they lose when there's no power to sell during outages. Takes a functional state to make energy providers to do what they should. But the functional state might as well be considered extinct. (I'll maybe circle back on this in about two months when I see what shape the Dems are in going into the 2022 election.
Because hating-the-other, and indignation, and feeling righteous, feels (as I've said before) a lot like self-respect. Absent those, what do they have? Their beefs are legitimate, but if the choice is between using half an ounce of brain power to understand the world, and joining a crowd to blame and hate the other, they'll take the latter, thanks. It's easier, it gets them off the hook, and it feels better.
Ellis is right, and the MAGAts will do anything to preserve white patriarchy. And a reasonable number of white women are onboard because they recognize, correctly, that their odds of having a secure life are better if they play their roles within white patriarchy.
And of course the LBJ quote about the lowest white man is always timeless.
I'm not a fan of Andrea Dworkin's, but her "Right-Wing Women" is filled with enough empathy for its subjects that she groks, correctly I think, how much hatred of porn, masturbation, abortion, homosexuality, and equal pay measures _makes_sense_ to women who believe that the world were a certain, immutable, way. (Basically: 'Men basically hate women, and only when one woman is a man's sole permitted sex-supplier can she expect decent treatment.')
They're snowflakes sensitive over let's say the disrespect we have for their electoral support of the nation being turned into a shithole. And ditto racism.
I've had to rub up against numbers of "privatize everything" maniacs, and they're all absolutely convinced that private enterprise can do ANYTHING for so much, much less money. The savings? Why, they're TREMENDOUS!!!
And when you ask them just how, exactly, Acme Street Cleaning is going to clean the streets for less than what it costs the non-profit government to do so--while Acme still makes a profit--you get a whole bunch of handwaving and/or "we'll just convert all those jobs to no-benefits minimum wage!" And maybe skip maintaining the trucks. Or, as one small city discovered, just skip the street cleaning altogether and cash the checks anyway.
Texans are reeling right now, but I'm sure that once they get over the death and destruction, most of them will come to their senses. They'll understand that the $15,000 electric bill for 5 days of service is really the fault of New York Democrats, not the Texas GOP lunatics who created the system. But most importantly, they'll consider what it might take to prevent the inevitable recurrence of this catastrophe--and they will decide they'd rather live through this every year for the rest of their lives than to perhaps pay 15-cents more on every utility bill.
The Republicans and Libertarian Party types—as opposed to true anarcho-capitalists—are incoherent, as they hold that the State should only do national defence and the enforcement of contract and of laws against theft and violent crime…that is to say, the fundamentals of the system they want can't be trusted to The Most Holy Market
This is the Texas and Republican Party that gave us George W Bush. Why would we expect anything other than self-owning incompetence wedded to heartless grifting? Their problem with Cruz’s Cancun Cancel is that it ruined any chance to divert attention to the Mexico of alien caravans.
"But this requires some deft management on the part of the privatizers. They can’t get too greedy and they can’t get too obvious. The rubes have to at least think there’s a potential benefit, even if they don’t see it in their tax bills and user fees."
Au contraire: The name of the game is no limits, overreaching and hope that they never go too far. If the Dem leadership was different, they'd be banging the drum on this Texas shit to make sure that instead of the GOP retaking Congress in 2022 -- likely given the events of past midterms.
"I doubt very many people really believe, deep down, that the privatization of any government function — schools, parks, civil administration, power, etc. — will do anything except enrich investors."
Au contraire again: The majority surely knows this is, as they say, some fucked up shit. But then again, it's been decades since our elected officials gave a rat's ass about what the majority of people want. Or need.
"Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I think normal people, of which we still (despite everything) have a preponderance in this country, will look at this and at least begin to think of Republicans the way you and I have been thinking about them for years..."
Au contraire yet again. The majority knows well enough -- they know bullshit when they smell it or see it. The part of the GOP base that's not in it for financial benefit has shown for over fifty years that they're happy with pols who given them bullshit and nothing good. The question is whether enough of true swing, undecided voters have had their fill and have been turned off to the GOP for many cycles to come -- whether the GOP brand is, despite the establishment press' best efforts, a toxic brand.
All a functional state has to do is provide for the people*; be a net positive, let's say. (*I think maybe Old Joe knows this.) The GOP, with complicit Dems starting with Slick Willy, have been pushing against that since Reagan and success has been achieved. Texas, 6 January, and the pandemic shit shows are all the proof you need.
Several years ago Ohio went from State Liquor Stores, to privately owned but licensed liquor stores. In my moderately small town there was a store and there was this old guy working in it who was obviously a state employee who was partially crippled up and bent over. And at the time I thought it will be a lot more convenient, but what will happened to this guy?
Well the new store was a lot more convenient, but the old guy is nowhere to be seen. I suspect that the folks who work there now do not get the benefits or protections that a state employee gets, but hey the hours are great.
“Those people” believe life is about suffering and it’s wrong for the state to alleve any of it. So they’re cool with an extractive economy, job insecurity, etc., etc., etc. so in your case, the convenience is the most important thing.
This all is horrifying. Yet predictable more or less. And so has every response, right, center, or left; red or blue.
My issue in this has been White Liberals has been the schaudenfreude & even death-lust expressed at this Foreseeable Outcome of Neoliberal ideas taken to their logical exteme. Texas instituted this awful scheme not by the vox populi, but its gerrymandered substitute that passes for democracy in many southern states. This was imposed on them in the flimiest charade of democracy.
I am angered by these Smug Northern Fuckers because the people dying here are mostly the homeless, mostly the poor -- a group of people many (center-to-right) Americans would agree need to die anyways, whether blue or red. This attitude led to the abandonment of the Reconstruction and encourages the current expression of pro-succession (or at least succession-tolerant) ideas about red states.
Liberals: focus on people, not on parties. All parties can fuck off.
So . . . reconstruction was abandoned in the South because Northerners had too little sympathy for "poor people" -- i.e black people. So Southerners had to spring to their defense, I guess. Uh-huh.
That's not what I said at all. And thank you for misunderstanding me in a glorious, manner. Let me begin:
Reconstruction failed because the North didn't feel it was worthwhile to keep fighting hordes of white supremacists who kept murdering & pillaging newly freed Black people. They didn't care enough to finish the job. So the Federal troops left, and the white supremacist ancestors of our GOP hordes took over. Hence, "The Grand Old Cause" as a national myth. Hence, the canonization of Confederate generals in US military bases. Hence, the Wilmington Massacre. Hence, the Northern Migration that led to the Black neighborhoods that all those Northern abolitionists were very happy to oppress & brutalize. Hence, Jim Crow laws. Hence, a plague of lynching that went like wildfire throughout the US, & has never really gone away. Hence, a supremacy of the KKK so pronounced they were able to take over several states outside the old Confederacy. That's what I'm talking about: history that refutes the asinine myths Northerners tell themselves about the aftermath of the war, especially about how good and virtuous they were.
Also, since I'm guessing you're not much of a scholar, I should clarify something else. There were poor people of all races in the Confederacy, and they were oppressed as well by the slave economies of the South. Not enslaved oppressed (let's be real clear, since you like to misunderstand things), but the nation was basically fascist, workers had no rights, and their wages were always threatened by enslaved labor. True, poor people were fighting in the war for the wealth of the aristocratic plantation class, but you could make the same argument about the USA right now.
I don't blame you at all. Most USian history books are bafflingly pro-Confederate in many ways, & most high school US history courses don't get past the Civil War. And the real scope of anti-black violence throughout the history of this country is staggering, pervasive, ubiquitous.
I'm always happy to chat about history or literature or philosophy. You're always invited, but please do bring a fact or two. Or at least be funny about it.
The key thing I forgot is to underscore that there are still very poor people in the South, of many races. I don't buy the "economic anxiety" trope, but I also know that people literally driving Biden's campaign bus off the road were not poor Texans.
What one of the above posters suggested is true: if the Democrats could act quickly to change the material conditions in red states, so that those marginalized voters could see benefit in having some kind of government & voting for their interests, something profound might happen...
But Democrats being Democrats, I'm not holding my breath.
Sorry but AOC raised millions of dollars for Texas and Biden declared an emergency. Do you imagine any result from that besides the Texas GOP calling it condescension and the voters going for it?
I hear you, Mr. Roso, & respect the cynicism you express.
These efforts are not nothing of course -- comparing this to GOP malfeasance & indifference, the bar is absolutely at ground level though. I respect these efforts -- they are what politicians are supposed to do. Again, low bar here.
And because the bar is so low, the GOP & their mouthpiezes can chatter up a storm (& as you show, already are) -- but this stems out of the logic of mercy & charity. William Blake, my favorite white dude, once said
"Pity would be no More,
If we did not Make Somebody Poor.
Mercy no more would be
If All were Happy as We.
("The Human Abstract" (1793))
Pity & mercy most people would say are good things, holy even. But they allow us to feel good about social inequity that we're too scared or lazy or complacent to address & change. AOC's relief is much needed, but the logic of charity will always read that as condescension.
So I mean big things to change material circumstances -- like health care, infrastructure updates, de-privatizing public resources & services, free education, guaranteed retirement, $25 minumum wage, easy paths to citizenship & prosecuting employers for exploiting undocumented labor. Y'know, things they started to breathe about supporting in the recent election. That shit would scare the pants off not only the GOP, but also the corporations that underwrite both parties.
And because we are good people—you & I, and all of us here—those blessings & changes & improvements need to be extended to the South & the crackers & rednecks & all the people us Northerners like to make fun of.
I'm pressed about this, & maybe being WAY TOO SERIOUS, but my roots are in the South, and I see & admire the resiliency & beauty of Black cultures in the face of a (barely-reformed) Jim Crow South. My anarchism cannot abide leaving suffering people behind, even when they vote to prolong their suffering. And as a teacher, I must teach, whoever needs it, in what humble ways I am able.
So much deflection dominates the way they're managing the story. When Abbott manages to reduce those insane electric bills, people will remember that instead of freezing while there was no power or drinking water. Everybody hates Ted (and it doesn't stop them from voting for him, because he owns the libs), so dragging Ted becomes the object rather than regulating the grid. They're going to bury the most important lessons and leave the system the way it is. Beto and the Castros and AOC are wonderful, but will voters register the difference between that and Ted's photo op? Enough to remember it in November 2022?
Only newsworthy in Minnesota, but the Texas power failure subjected much of SW Minnesota to rolling blackouts as well thanks to a lot of complicated predatory market driven capitalist bullshit. Fortunately I live in SE Minnesota where my town is served by quaint cooperatives, one for electricity and one for gas, both aided by outlandishly Old World style efforts to encourage everyone to weatherize their homes (not that anyone needs encouraging).
Yup. Here in South Dakota, one of the first places to get the rolling blackout spawned by Texas’s troubles was Fort Thompson, one of the poorest places in the country and a remote, rural Indian reservation. Fortunately when this came to light somebody made a drink about it and Fort Thompson got their power back—but another rural area got a random blackout in their place.
Timely clarification. I was thinking people were starting to name cocktails after infrastructure fails and that struck me as being potentially even more lethal than playing State of the Union speech bingo with Matt Taibbi.
Star-Tribune: "A stretch of rural southwest Minnesota and the city of Moorhead in the northwest — unlike most of Minnesota — are part of a regional electrical grid that travels through the Dakotas south to the edges of Texas." Federalism!
As I have noted many times, the GOP already knows that a clear majority of Americans does not embrace their destructive ideology so they have opted to restrict as much as possible who gets to vote in elections to conservative white voters knowing that pour anti-democratic Constitution was designed to facilitate just that. That's why the Democrats will always struggle to attain and keep a majority for anything more than a couple of years. It's also why HR1 and S1 are critically important bills to pass.
The bumper sticker in your lead image originated in Alberta, which is a lot like Texas culturally only everything is a little bit bigger. The slogan came from Ralph Klein, a guy who combined Limbaugh and Huey Long in one political animal; he won the mayoralty of the city of Calgary by something like 90% one year. The slogan was a response to attempts by the federal government during the 80s oil boom to distribute some of the proceeds to people in the rest of the country who'd been harmed by the spike in oil prices.
Alberta elected a socialist government a couple of years ago, after 100 years of conservative government, and then went right straight back to stupid culture-war kiss-oilpatch-ass conservative government ASAP b/c the NDP gov't wanted to diversify the economy off of oil & gas.
That's b/c the oil economy warps everyone's perspective. In AB and TX when oil is at $100/bbl the party starts and the money flows and you can afford an F-350 for work and another for the weekend. And people think *everyone* benefits from high gas prices, from East Austin and NE Calgary to Sugarland and Elbow Park, and from Accra to Tokyo. They don't know the rest of us curse high oil prices, and view it as a regressive tax on the entire economy. And when oil is at $20/bbl they believe the entire world is in a recession.
The only way to change TX is to make the oil & gas people work for a living, instead of letting lazy 18 year olds think they can quit high school and go get a job in the oilpatch idling their truck outside a wellhead for $90/hour.
This is interesting. You read the profiles of these MAGA nudniks on Twitter, and two-thirds of them mention "pride"--proud parent, proudly serving the people of the xxxth district, etc. It's a cartoonist's idea of emotional health.
In olden times, it was lying politicians who fed the press. Reagan and his team would huddle every morning to get their propaganda of the day in order. Each agency would then craft their own briefings around that message no matter what, and spew it to a willing (one might say, "On Bended Knee") press to publish to a country of rubes. Now it's completely the opposite. Texas had barely experienced the first blackout before the Wall St. Journal ("A Deep Green Freeze: Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal"), Fox 'News' (Carlson: "Unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas; the power grid in the state became totally reliant on windmills"), Breitbart et al were feeding the lies to Texas politicians like Dan Crenshaw and Greg Abbott. This has been going on for a few years, especially during the reign of avid Fox consumer Trump, but it's so extreme now, and patently ridiculous, that maybe it's going to finally bite these guys in the ass. So here's hoping you're right.
Long before Fox News, there was the establishment press going all in with support for the GOP. They started the Dems can do no right while the GOP can do no wrong during the Carter administration. Things never changed and here we are. For example: A murderer POTUS can't be called a mass murderer because he's a Republican.
That's a good point about the inversion. It also explains why GOP "policy" is so stupid now -- it's essentially made by people whose only skill is propaganda.
I really, really, REALLY hate this argument. I hate it when it's about Texas (where I live) or about Louisiana (where I was born and grew up) and when it's about Georgia (where I lived for a while).
Many people in those states and other red-to-purple places did most certainly NOT vote for this. You can argue whether we "deserve" it or not, I suppose, but all of us did not vote for it. Hell, Cruz only "beat" Beto O'Rourke by about 3 percentage points, and I suspect vote suppression in blue areas of the state had a lot to do with that.
In addition, "smug liberals looking down on us good American folk" plays really well here with people who, if they heard the real story about how government can actually do good things if allocated fair resources, might vote entirely differently. All a local GOP politician has to do is quote mine a comment like this to show what "they" think of their potential voters.
I am going to do everything I can to hold local and state politicians' feet to the fire about this. If enough of us do that, it will pay off in the next governor's and legislative election, and all those after that.
Sorry for the rant, but this just pisses me off after a week of uncertainty and struggle (not necessarily for me personally, though I did lose power for about a day), but for other, far less privileged people than I who really took it on the nose--a lot of them were poor, a lot of them were POC, and not all of them voted for Abbott.
I’ve been really set off by that this past year. Possibly since my parents are in an at-risk group for Covid, so I worry about them, and then a family friend — a nice older lady, as progressive as the day is long — caught Covid and died, and even though none of the people I just mentioned voted for Trump or our horrible state officials, I get to enjoy the taunts of clever people chortling “Haw, haw, haw! You inbred red state dummies sure did get what you deserve! Haw, haw, haw!” I get the yearning for schadenfreude, but this callous schtick is working my last fking nerve these days.
Every time I hear 'Let ʼem secede—good riddance!' I think 'You would abandon your brothers and sisters (and non-binary siblings) in Austin?' where that town's short-hand for all the people who deserve a better Texas than they get.
Ok, you’re a cockeyed Optimist...
Damn you beat me to it by 15 minutes.
:D
I happen to be a Cockney flopped by fist
“Let’s commission a study on this” is political double-talk for “let’s kick the can down the road until everyone forgets about it” and hopefully most people realize that.
I’m not quite as optimistic as Roy. In a different political climate, Cruz would have committed career suicide in the last 60 days, first supporting the insurrectionists and now with this Cancun adventure. But I think he’s banking he’ll survive due to conservative voters hating the libs more than they love themselves, and I’m not so sure that’s a losing bet for him to make.
“'Let’s commission a study on this' is political double-talk for 'let’s kick the can down the road until everyone forgets about it' and hopefully most people realize that."
Yes. Like when my wife asked how this could happen, I said, "Because they won't prepare for winter because it's summer, and they won't prepare for summer because it's winter."
Periodic reminder that Enron--"The Smartest Guys In The Room"--was based in Houston.
And Cruz will survive. Because of Freezing-To-Death-In-The-Dark-To-Own-The-Libs.
Avoiding spending on maintenance saves the big bucks, much, much more than they lose when there's no power to sell during outages. Takes a functional state to make energy providers to do what they should. But the functional state might as well be considered extinct. (I'll maybe circle back on this in about two months when I see what shape the Dems are in going into the 2022 election.
"conservative voters hating the libs more than they love themselves..."
I've often wondered: why is that? WHy do the MAGAts put hatred of The Other above their own survival and well-being?
Because hating-the-other, and indignation, and feeling righteous, feels (as I've said before) a lot like self-respect. Absent those, what do they have? Their beefs are legitimate, but if the choice is between using half an ounce of brain power to understand the world, and joining a crowd to blame and hate the other, they'll take the latter, thanks. It's easier, it gets them off the hook, and it feels better.
Ellis is right, and the MAGAts will do anything to preserve white patriarchy. And a reasonable number of white women are onboard because they recognize, correctly, that their odds of having a secure life are better if they play their roles within white patriarchy.
And of course the LBJ quote about the lowest white man is always timeless.
I'm not a fan of Andrea Dworkin's, but her "Right-Wing Women" is filled with enough empathy for its subjects that she groks, correctly I think, how much hatred of porn, masturbation, abortion, homosexuality, and equal pay measures _makes_sense_ to women who believe that the world were a certain, immutable, way. (Basically: 'Men basically hate women, and only when one woman is a man's sole permitted sex-supplier can she expect decent treatment.')
See also "Mothers of Massive Resistance".
They're snowflakes sensitive over let's say the disrespect we have for their electoral support of the nation being turned into a shithole. And ditto racism.
I can't see the Cancun fandango hurting him with the base at all. That lack of standards is part of their nation wrecking pathology.
I've had to rub up against numbers of "privatize everything" maniacs, and they're all absolutely convinced that private enterprise can do ANYTHING for so much, much less money. The savings? Why, they're TREMENDOUS!!!
And when you ask them just how, exactly, Acme Street Cleaning is going to clean the streets for less than what it costs the non-profit government to do so--while Acme still makes a profit--you get a whole bunch of handwaving and/or "we'll just convert all those jobs to no-benefits minimum wage!" And maybe skip maintaining the trucks. Or, as one small city discovered, just skip the street cleaning altogether and cash the checks anyway.
Texans are reeling right now, but I'm sure that once they get over the death and destruction, most of them will come to their senses. They'll understand that the $15,000 electric bill for 5 days of service is really the fault of New York Democrats, not the Texas GOP lunatics who created the system. But most importantly, they'll consider what it might take to prevent the inevitable recurrence of this catastrophe--and they will decide they'd rather live through this every year for the rest of their lives than to perhaps pay 15-cents more on every utility bill.
LOL
It’s all those benefits government workers get, eliminating those will produce ginormous savings!
Once the FEMA check helps them pay off that $15,000 bill, they'll be doubly convinced it was AOC's fault. Logic is not a strong suit with these folks.
The Republicans and Libertarian Party types—as opposed to true anarcho-capitalists—are incoherent, as they hold that the State should only do national defence and the enforcement of contract and of laws against theft and violent crime…that is to say, the fundamentals of the system they want can't be trusted to The Most Holy Market
OK, you are a cockeyed optimist.
This is the Texas and Republican Party that gave us George W Bush. Why would we expect anything other than self-owning incompetence wedded to heartless grifting? Their problem with Cruz’s Cancun Cancel is that it ruined any chance to divert attention to the Mexico of alien caravans.
"But this requires some deft management on the part of the privatizers. They can’t get too greedy and they can’t get too obvious. The rubes have to at least think there’s a potential benefit, even if they don’t see it in their tax bills and user fees."
Au contraire: The name of the game is no limits, overreaching and hope that they never go too far. If the Dem leadership was different, they'd be banging the drum on this Texas shit to make sure that instead of the GOP retaking Congress in 2022 -- likely given the events of past midterms.
"I doubt very many people really believe, deep down, that the privatization of any government function — schools, parks, civil administration, power, etc. — will do anything except enrich investors."
Au contraire again: The majority surely knows this is, as they say, some fucked up shit. But then again, it's been decades since our elected officials gave a rat's ass about what the majority of people want. Or need.
"Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I think normal people, of which we still (despite everything) have a preponderance in this country, will look at this and at least begin to think of Republicans the way you and I have been thinking about them for years..."
Au contraire yet again. The majority knows well enough -- they know bullshit when they smell it or see it. The part of the GOP base that's not in it for financial benefit has shown for over fifty years that they're happy with pols who given them bullshit and nothing good. The question is whether enough of true swing, undecided voters have had their fill and have been turned off to the GOP for many cycles to come -- whether the GOP brand is, despite the establishment press' best efforts, a toxic brand.
All a functional state has to do is provide for the people*; be a net positive, let's say. (*I think maybe Old Joe knows this.) The GOP, with complicit Dems starting with Slick Willy, have been pushing against that since Reagan and success has been achieved. Texas, 6 January, and the pandemic shit shows are all the proof you need.
So maybe, maybe we've reached a tipping point.
Several years ago Ohio went from State Liquor Stores, to privately owned but licensed liquor stores. In my moderately small town there was a store and there was this old guy working in it who was obviously a state employee who was partially crippled up and bent over. And at the time I thought it will be a lot more convenient, but what will happened to this guy?
Well the new store was a lot more convenient, but the old guy is nowhere to be seen. I suspect that the folks who work there now do not get the benefits or protections that a state employee gets, but hey the hours are great.
“Those people” believe life is about suffering and it’s wrong for the state to alleve any of it. So they’re cool with an extractive economy, job insecurity, etc., etc., etc. so in your case, the convenience is the most important thing.
This all is horrifying. Yet predictable more or less. And so has every response, right, center, or left; red or blue.
My issue in this has been White Liberals has been the schaudenfreude & even death-lust expressed at this Foreseeable Outcome of Neoliberal ideas taken to their logical exteme. Texas instituted this awful scheme not by the vox populi, but its gerrymandered substitute that passes for democracy in many southern states. This was imposed on them in the flimiest charade of democracy.
I am angered by these Smug Northern Fuckers because the people dying here are mostly the homeless, mostly the poor -- a group of people many (center-to-right) Americans would agree need to die anyways, whether blue or red. This attitude led to the abandonment of the Reconstruction and encourages the current expression of pro-succession (or at least succession-tolerant) ideas about red states.
Liberals: focus on people, not on parties. All parties can fuck off.
Except my coming out party. Everyone is invited.
So . . . reconstruction was abandoned in the South because Northerners had too little sympathy for "poor people" -- i.e black people. So Southerners had to spring to their defense, I guess. Uh-huh.
That's not what I said at all. And thank you for misunderstanding me in a glorious, manner. Let me begin:
Reconstruction failed because the North didn't feel it was worthwhile to keep fighting hordes of white supremacists who kept murdering & pillaging newly freed Black people. They didn't care enough to finish the job. So the Federal troops left, and the white supremacist ancestors of our GOP hordes took over. Hence, "The Grand Old Cause" as a national myth. Hence, the canonization of Confederate generals in US military bases. Hence, the Wilmington Massacre. Hence, the Northern Migration that led to the Black neighborhoods that all those Northern abolitionists were very happy to oppress & brutalize. Hence, Jim Crow laws. Hence, a plague of lynching that went like wildfire throughout the US, & has never really gone away. Hence, a supremacy of the KKK so pronounced they were able to take over several states outside the old Confederacy. That's what I'm talking about: history that refutes the asinine myths Northerners tell themselves about the aftermath of the war, especially about how good and virtuous they were.
Also, since I'm guessing you're not much of a scholar, I should clarify something else. There were poor people of all races in the Confederacy, and they were oppressed as well by the slave economies of the South. Not enslaved oppressed (let's be real clear, since you like to misunderstand things), but the nation was basically fascist, workers had no rights, and their wages were always threatened by enslaved labor. True, poor people were fighting in the war for the wealth of the aristocratic plantation class, but you could make the same argument about the USA right now.
I don't blame you at all. Most USian history books are bafflingly pro-Confederate in many ways, & most high school US history courses don't get past the Civil War. And the real scope of anti-black violence throughout the history of this country is staggering, pervasive, ubiquitous.
I'm always happy to chat about history or literature or philosophy. You're always invited, but please do bring a fact or two. Or at least be funny about it.
The key thing I forgot is to underscore that there are still very poor people in the South, of many races. I don't buy the "economic anxiety" trope, but I also know that people literally driving Biden's campaign bus off the road were not poor Texans.
What one of the above posters suggested is true: if the Democrats could act quickly to change the material conditions in red states, so that those marginalized voters could see benefit in having some kind of government & voting for their interests, something profound might happen...
But Democrats being Democrats, I'm not holding my breath.
Sorry but AOC raised millions of dollars for Texas and Biden declared an emergency. Do you imagine any result from that besides the Texas GOP calling it condescension and the voters going for it?
I hear you, Mr. Roso, & respect the cynicism you express.
These efforts are not nothing of course -- comparing this to GOP malfeasance & indifference, the bar is absolutely at ground level though. I respect these efforts -- they are what politicians are supposed to do. Again, low bar here.
And because the bar is so low, the GOP & their mouthpiezes can chatter up a storm (& as you show, already are) -- but this stems out of the logic of mercy & charity. William Blake, my favorite white dude, once said
"Pity would be no More,
If we did not Make Somebody Poor.
Mercy no more would be
If All were Happy as We.
("The Human Abstract" (1793))
Pity & mercy most people would say are good things, holy even. But they allow us to feel good about social inequity that we're too scared or lazy or complacent to address & change. AOC's relief is much needed, but the logic of charity will always read that as condescension.
So I mean big things to change material circumstances -- like health care, infrastructure updates, de-privatizing public resources & services, free education, guaranteed retirement, $25 minumum wage, easy paths to citizenship & prosecuting employers for exploiting undocumented labor. Y'know, things they started to breathe about supporting in the recent election. That shit would scare the pants off not only the GOP, but also the corporations that underwrite both parties.
And because we are good people—you & I, and all of us here—those blessings & changes & improvements need to be extended to the South & the crackers & rednecks & all the people us Northerners like to make fun of.
I'm pressed about this, & maybe being WAY TOO SERIOUS, but my roots are in the South, and I see & admire the resiliency & beauty of Black cultures in the face of a (barely-reformed) Jim Crow South. My anarchism cannot abide leaving suffering people behind, even when they vote to prolong their suffering. And as a teacher, I must teach, whoever needs it, in what humble ways I am able.
So much deflection dominates the way they're managing the story. When Abbott manages to reduce those insane electric bills, people will remember that instead of freezing while there was no power or drinking water. Everybody hates Ted (and it doesn't stop them from voting for him, because he owns the libs), so dragging Ted becomes the object rather than regulating the grid. They're going to bury the most important lessons and leave the system the way it is. Beto and the Castros and AOC are wonderful, but will voters register the difference between that and Ted's photo op? Enough to remember it in November 2022?
Only newsworthy in Minnesota, but the Texas power failure subjected much of SW Minnesota to rolling blackouts as well thanks to a lot of complicated predatory market driven capitalist bullshit. Fortunately I live in SE Minnesota where my town is served by quaint cooperatives, one for electricity and one for gas, both aided by outlandishly Old World style efforts to encourage everyone to weatherize their homes (not that anyone needs encouraging).
Yup. Here in South Dakota, one of the first places to get the rolling blackout spawned by Texas’s troubles was Fort Thompson, one of the poorest places in the country and a remote, rural Indian reservation. Fortunately when this came to light somebody made a drink about it and Fort Thompson got their power back—but another rural area got a random blackout in their place.
*made a “stink,” not a “drink.” Probably not worth clearing up, neither no edit button, yadda yadda.
Timely clarification. I was thinking people were starting to name cocktails after infrastructure fails and that struck me as being potentially even more lethal than playing State of the Union speech bingo with Matt Taibbi.
Star-Tribune: "A stretch of rural southwest Minnesota and the city of Moorhead in the northwest — unlike most of Minnesota — are part of a regional electrical grid that travels through the Dakotas south to the edges of Texas." Federalism!
As I have noted many times, the GOP already knows that a clear majority of Americans does not embrace their destructive ideology so they have opted to restrict as much as possible who gets to vote in elections to conservative white voters knowing that pour anti-democratic Constitution was designed to facilitate just that. That's why the Democrats will always struggle to attain and keep a majority for anything more than a couple of years. It's also why HR1 and S1 are critically important bills to pass.
The bumper sticker in your lead image originated in Alberta, which is a lot like Texas culturally only everything is a little bit bigger. The slogan came from Ralph Klein, a guy who combined Limbaugh and Huey Long in one political animal; he won the mayoralty of the city of Calgary by something like 90% one year. The slogan was a response to attempts by the federal government during the 80s oil boom to distribute some of the proceeds to people in the rest of the country who'd been harmed by the spike in oil prices.
Alberta elected a socialist government a couple of years ago, after 100 years of conservative government, and then went right straight back to stupid culture-war kiss-oilpatch-ass conservative government ASAP b/c the NDP gov't wanted to diversify the economy off of oil & gas.
That's b/c the oil economy warps everyone's perspective. In AB and TX when oil is at $100/bbl the party starts and the money flows and you can afford an F-350 for work and another for the weekend. And people think *everyone* benefits from high gas prices, from East Austin and NE Calgary to Sugarland and Elbow Park, and from Accra to Tokyo. They don't know the rest of us curse high oil prices, and view it as a regressive tax on the entire economy. And when oil is at $20/bbl they believe the entire world is in a recession.
The only way to change TX is to make the oil & gas people work for a living, instead of letting lazy 18 year olds think they can quit high school and go get a job in the oilpatch idling their truck outside a wellhead for $90/hour.
Nah. I lived there. They'll never learn. Too much pride.
This is interesting. You read the profiles of these MAGA nudniks on Twitter, and two-thirds of them mention "pride"--proud parent, proudly serving the people of the xxxth district, etc. It's a cartoonist's idea of emotional health.
In olden times, it was lying politicians who fed the press. Reagan and his team would huddle every morning to get their propaganda of the day in order. Each agency would then craft their own briefings around that message no matter what, and spew it to a willing (one might say, "On Bended Knee") press to publish to a country of rubes. Now it's completely the opposite. Texas had barely experienced the first blackout before the Wall St. Journal ("A Deep Green Freeze: Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal"), Fox 'News' (Carlson: "Unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas; the power grid in the state became totally reliant on windmills"), Breitbart et al were feeding the lies to Texas politicians like Dan Crenshaw and Greg Abbott. This has been going on for a few years, especially during the reign of avid Fox consumer Trump, but it's so extreme now, and patently ridiculous, that maybe it's going to finally bite these guys in the ass. So here's hoping you're right.
Long before Fox News, there was the establishment press going all in with support for the GOP. They started the Dems can do no right while the GOP can do no wrong during the Carter administration. Things never changed and here we are. For example: A murderer POTUS can't be called a mass murderer because he's a Republican.
That's a good point about the inversion. It also explains why GOP "policy" is so stupid now -- it's essentially made by people whose only skill is propaganda.
Hey, we've got one of those too! Our P.M. is a PR weasel - https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/01/where-the-legend-of-scotty-from-marketing-began/
The people in Texas are getting the government they voted for and deserve. Bully for them.
I really, really, REALLY hate this argument. I hate it when it's about Texas (where I live) or about Louisiana (where I was born and grew up) and when it's about Georgia (where I lived for a while).
Many people in those states and other red-to-purple places did most certainly NOT vote for this. You can argue whether we "deserve" it or not, I suppose, but all of us did not vote for it. Hell, Cruz only "beat" Beto O'Rourke by about 3 percentage points, and I suspect vote suppression in blue areas of the state had a lot to do with that.
In addition, "smug liberals looking down on us good American folk" plays really well here with people who, if they heard the real story about how government can actually do good things if allocated fair resources, might vote entirely differently. All a local GOP politician has to do is quote mine a comment like this to show what "they" think of their potential voters.
I am going to do everything I can to hold local and state politicians' feet to the fire about this. If enough of us do that, it will pay off in the next governor's and legislative election, and all those after that.
Sorry for the rant, but this just pisses me off after a week of uncertainty and struggle (not necessarily for me personally, though I did lose power for about a day), but for other, far less privileged people than I who really took it on the nose--a lot of them were poor, a lot of them were POC, and not all of them voted for Abbott.
"I really, really, REALLY hate this argument"
What argument? It was just an observation. If you think it not true then fine.
I lived in Texas for 7, long, stupid years. All of the rural whitefolk I met were RACIST AS GODDAMN FUCK.
Again, just an observation, not an argument.
I’ve been really set off by that this past year. Possibly since my parents are in an at-risk group for Covid, so I worry about them, and then a family friend — a nice older lady, as progressive as the day is long — caught Covid and died, and even though none of the people I just mentioned voted for Trump or our horrible state officials, I get to enjoy the taunts of clever people chortling “Haw, haw, haw! You inbred red state dummies sure did get what you deserve! Haw, haw, haw!” I get the yearning for schadenfreude, but this callous schtick is working my last fking nerve these days.
Sort of agreed, but I also believe in the guilty being held accountable. Electing GOP shit for over fifty years shouldn't be minimized.
Every time I hear 'Let ʼem secede—good riddance!' I think 'You would abandon your brothers and sisters (and non-binary siblings) in Austin?' where that town's short-hand for all the people who deserve a better Texas than they get.
Yeah Roy, AOC wiped them down when Cruz was pissing on them and Beto is so nice he's got to be a chance but the electorate is SO dumb....