73 Comments
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Another great one, Roy.

I’m generally non-violent, but the McCloskeys need to be marched to the guillotine if only because of their fashion choices. If I had that kind of cash I’d be living 24/7 in lewks that would make Anna Wintour weep with envy. But these assholes? The Devil Wears Schmatta.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Some people just shouldn’t wear horizontal stripes.

Expand full comment

With mustard stains yo. There couldn't be a better metaphor for white exceptionalism...

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Guarantee these were the same kind of people who had Words about President Obama's mustard choices. (You live in a gated community, in a remodeled Busch Family Mansion, and you're eating Yellow School Bus Mustard? *shakes head*)

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

They're only using that mustard as a change of pace from the usual mayo-on-white-bread sandwiches.

Expand full comment

Due to eating disruptions, I spent my first month in isolation eating nothing but mayonnaise sandwiches. Let me just say that their visible foopahs make it unlikely that they eat such penitential fare...

Expand full comment

I dunno...In this particular case, wouldn't eating mayo-on-white-bread sandwiches legally qualify as cannibalism?

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Also, their ridiculously pompous (if architecture can be pompous) house was about as warm and inviting a home as the Pennington County Courthouse. But then, the whole purpose of it is to impress people with its ostentation, like The Leader’s penchant for gaudy gilded things.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Don't forget the "Louis XIII homme-debout (“standing man”) armoire, so named because, during the Reign of Terror, a gentleman could hide inside one." They seem to have gotten the Louis number wrong, but the sentiment is there. https://www.stlmag.com/design/a-decades-long-renovation-returns-a-midwestern-palazzo-to-it/?fbclid=IwAR1iv_uBaJKKSgKJPDs0oS2b6zg3qw-_Fa0v5ZFeDf8dfZpzS0bnYT6nl8I#.Xvo4lAdfUQE.facebook

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

That place is nice as a museum or public building, a stupendously egotistical abomination as a private home.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I gotta say I sorta dig the old-world, castley living room and dining room. Would be fun to have friends over for an RPG there, or maybe a Halloween seance with lotsa absinthe. But the stairwell? LOL, that is like being 12 on a trip to Vegas and exclaiming "Wow, I wanna live HERE!" when you see the lobby of the Venetian Casino.

Expand full comment

Without "pompous" there is basically no architecture, right? I remember in Silko's "Almanac of the Dead" there was a character, a Latina committed socialist radical, studying architecture on top of that. She was described as having a serious identity crisis...

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I don’t think architecture or even art have to be pompous—unless it’s the type of “art” that can’t be understood without reading the thesis statement accompanying it, because otherwise it’s literally a gray wool suit hanging on a wall. (You know, Edwina Monsoon’s kind of art)

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Re: gray wool suit, we actually saw that at the Walker in Mpls once. I still don’t remember anything about it, and I read the thesis accompanying it

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Hey, I used to get song requests from the Pennington County Courthouse during my radio show. I always played those ASAP

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

White Power and Anti-White Power: If you get to talk to conservatives (as I, unfortunately, get to do all too regularly), what you hear is that White privilege does not exist. That in fact it is Black people who have all the advantages, get all the good breaks, exercise all the privileges.

And, most interestingly, they will explain to you that, really, all of American society is a zero-sum game. So allowing Black people to, say, go to college means that White people can't. Allowing Black people to vote means that White people can't.

These people are terrified. Constantly. About everything. Is it any wonder they demand the right to walk around armed to the teeth?

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm sticking with my AU hypothesis: they live in this imaginary world in which it is a known fact that the Blacks will seize on any opportunity to take unimaginable revenge on the Whites, especially White Christian Conservatives, if they win the Great Race War. Look at all the atrocities they've already committed in those documentaries about hunting down conservatives for sport!

No wonder, then, that any "anti-white power" propaganda amounts to literal treason: it gives aid and comfort to the Enemy.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm just so in love with that subhead.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"...every single day brings a deluge of opinion and news coverage advancing what you might call 'anti-white power'."

As is so often the case, Dreher writes from an alternate universe in which the Great Race War has been going on forever, with each side having compiled a long list of war crimes against the other. OK. I'd think that even in that universe, however, Dreher ought to be capable of heeding the words of the Republican president who was so tragically unable to fulfill his mission of ending this civil war:

"Yet, if God wills that this Great Race War continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'."

I don't think all that wealth has been sunk yet, has it?

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Periodic reminder that the man who shat out "The Camp Of The Saints" just died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Raspail. May his memory be a curse.

Expand full comment

Rest in piss, French racist asshole!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Suspicious that he would happen to die just now, isn't it? He was only 94! I'm thinking Soros put plutonium in his Aunt Jemima syrup.

Expand full comment

French racists prefer Bananie... no end in sight to that offense

Expand full comment

You joke, but some of the QAnon cultists think 98-year-old Carl Reiner didn't "die of old age," but either was executed or committed suicide to avoid Gitmo. Cabal, children, pizza, adrenochrome, yada yada.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Thanks for this.

"Stop Killing Us, Especially For No Reason" has broken the brains of some people. (Nice, Polite Racists are all aflutter. Because what are they going to do without "Live, Laugh, Love, Lynch"?)

Expand full comment

As a fellow writer and a lover of language, I got to give it up for Ed Royroso's Thackerayan prose. He often tosses out a thought that really make me jump: like this on libertarians here "who are basically white supremacists run through cheesecloth to make their supremacy whiter." You got yer figurative language, you got yer polished rhetorical shine (polyptoton, even), you got yer forward energy. We live in a world where words are almost meaningless -- yet you don't have to be a pedantic grammar Nazi to deal in well-crafted language. Thanks again, as always.

Expand full comment
author

Well thanks! That's the sort of thing that makes this worth doing. (That and the money.)

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Truth be told, the good writing is a huge attraction for me. I come to Roy's joints to try and soak up good grammar.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I continue to be gobsmacked and awestruck. The description of libertarians alone! (Grouchy beat me to it)

Expand full comment

Yet another column that needs to be made public.

Expand full comment

Conservarian commentators were wringing their hands yesterday because Rick Wilson suggested that there would be lines of people waiting to piss on the Occupant's grave: I agree this will be an issue. I suggest that Orange Trash be buried at sea like Osama bin Laden...

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

How about cremation? Burned on a pyre of National Enquirers, NY Posts, and Juggs Magazines, the ashes mixed with raw sewage, then fired into the sun.

Expand full comment

I was thinking that a scoop of his ashes should be placed in a lead canister and chained to the neck of every Trump enabler, and they would have to walk around until the end of their natural lives telling people what that ugly heavy jar is for...

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Sir, I like the cut of your jib. And so does Dante.

Expand full comment

What can I say? I learned restorative justice from the best...

Expand full comment
author

A favorite Army joke (though I was never in the military): Sergeant: I bet you can't wait for me to drop dead so you can piss on my grave, soldier. Private: No, sir. When I get out of the Army I'm never waiting in a line like that again!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

And then the Marine guard says 'Sir! Every day you ask me if Donald Trump‘s body is at the bottom of that giant pool of urine, fæces,blood, offal, and ordure resembling-but-legally-distinct-from that into which high-denomination paper money was cast in both the book and film versions of "The Magic Christian", and every day I tell you it is. Why do you keep asking, don't you understand by now?'

And then the old man says 'I know: I just like hearing it. Does saying it so often annoy you?'

The guard just smiles and says 'See you tomorrow, sir.'

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Why not both? If you buried him weighted in a large, depressed, area* and waited, he'd eventually be at the bottom of a small but notable (and nosable) sea, urinous and constantly-replenished by the realised opinion of a grateful nation.

*'Like…America! HEY-YOOOOOOOH!!!!'

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

“White Alert” — Aces.

Is White Alert more or less serious than DEFCON 1488?

Expand full comment
author

HA!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"...since society currently doesn’t have shit to offer as a bribe."

The plutocrats will see the necessity of offering bribes soon enough. They certainly have no moral qualms about it.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

And yet McConnell is blocking any kind of substantial economic relief to anyone other than those of his own class. You would think they'd have learned from 1929, but sadly, no.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Maybe they'll lean from 1932 and '36, 'cuz a repeat's coming.

Expand full comment

Fuckers haven't learned since 1381 or 1798 or 1917. Any year you you like

Expand full comment
author

I'm not sure! It would make sense, but they've become so accustomed to stealing from us that they probably can't even grasp that they'd better stop because it's getting dangerous.

I mean, some businesses got some money, and all their donors sure did, but to the rest of us they sent out a one-to-two-week's-pay stimulus months ago. Only a rich person who considers anyone poorer than themselves a slave could imagine it even remotely sufficient.

Maybe they just can't help themselves. It's like they're begging for a ride in a tumbrel.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

The economy is an ouroboros.

Expand full comment

Maybe I should take up knitting.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"All you, my fellow honkies, really have to do is not backslide like those shitty boomers did in the 60s when society offered them cushy jobs to give up this social consciousness stuff."

As an older millennial (born in '82), it was a shocking revelation to me growing up that the "anti-war, peace & love" generation of the 60s and the coked up Wall Street dickheads of the 80s and 90s were the same people. And if you ask them what their legacy is, they'll still talk about the summer of love (not withstanding the racial protests in cities everywhere) and Woodstock and all that jazz, when their real legacy is the corporate malfeasance, climate devastation and income inequality that ravages my generation and the next generation coming of age.

I don't hate all boomers, obviously (my parents (RIP) were boomers), but I'm so tired of that generation running things. It's so depressing that we're going to have another 4 years of that generation in the White House, but it is really cause for hope that Gen Z (and to a lesser extent, my people) are out on the streets demanding change.

I don't know what happened to Gen X, it seems like most of them disappeared into minivans in the late-90s and were never heard from again, but they're welcome to join the rest of us, too.

And this concludes my Ted Talk.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

[waves] Gen X here, about a dozen years older than you, and I feel the same way you do. I’m still shocked at how shitty too many of my fellow Gen-Xers are—I thought we’d be better than that after growing up in the Reagan era, but I guess not. But what’s frustrating is we haven’t even had a chance to lead, either well or poorly. The Silent Generation and Boomers have run the show for half a century and smothered any successor generations from entering leadership. I’m pinning my faint hopes on Gen Z getting us out of this, as they’re not buying the bullshit we were trained to accept.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Assuming Biden wins, the odds of his VP being from Gen X are pretty good (although I think Kamala Harris may actually technically be a boomer?), so that's something, I guess. You're right, though, Gen X has mostly been shut out of power.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Also Gen X--early cohort--and part of it is cultural. We got writers like Douglas Coupland, movies made by something called a "Brat Pack" and music to commit suicide by (on CDs).

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Speaking of music, I think Eric Clapton's song output is a great analogy of the Boomer generation, i.e. steady overall decline since the 1960s but with some interesting collaborations with black legends.

Expand full comment

I'm Gen X, I guess. I blame nostalgia as false consciousness: when I was in college in the early 90's, cable TV was filled with ads for the the (white painfully white) great songs of the Summer of Love. Boomers bought the smell of their own farts because it absolved them from the shame of selling out. White supremacy is its own sort of false consciousness, and there was probably a bit of that in there. I don't hate Boomers; I hate that Boomers must center themselves in every conversation and gaslight the youngers looking to finally fix things.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

As a boomer, I'd like to think that the generations that came after me will be better, if not best (thanks, Melanoma), but the old cynic in me sees all the yutes watching alt right videos on YouTube and flipping off the mask-wearing and wonders if they really didn't get fooled again...

Expand full comment

Your suggests the actuality of the sitch, EML. Based on how people act, it seems obvious that are far more white Boomers claiming to have been hippies, civil rights protesters, or some such, than actually were. Which means in thirty years all those alt-right pudknockers will gaslight subsequent generations by saying, "You know we marched for BLM in my day..."

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Like The Beatles, Biden is not a boomer. The problem is that for every person out protesting in a generation, there are several people staying home, playing it safe, waiting to crap on the ideals of all those jerks that were attracting the eye of their desired paramour back in the day.

Also generations are rather long. The coked up late 80s, early 90s people were mostly, like Obama and me, late boomers, the Vietnam protestors were early boomers. I was 6 and a half during the Summer of Love

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Friends, Romans and honkies, lend me your ears!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Aside from the obvious, which is our traitor president deliberately stoking chaos and hate since his inauguration like an orange version of The Joker, it is worth noting that the power of the now-ubiquitous mobile camera phones and police cameras to spotlight the grotesque abuse of power by cops (not to mention the bizarre "Karen" white privilege abuse) may be a growing game changer. (And can we stop using the the Karen meme? I know a number of really nice and definitely "woke" Karens. I suggest we substitute "Ivanka" for "Karen".

It could be as Gil Scott Heron wrote that "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" but, if we are lucky, it may be videoed.

Expand full comment

May be useful to know: An iPhone Shortcut that automatically starts recording video etc. if you get pulled over. Hopefully never to be needed, but...: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/iphone-police-shortcut-record-trnd/index.html

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

'All you, my fellow honkies, really have to do is not backslide like those shitty boomers did in the 60s when society offered them cushy jobs to give up this social consciousness stuff.'

Oi. A lot of those shitty boomers maintained the faith over five and a bit decades, never left and are still at the barricades, demanding change. Bernie isn't only a kids hero and most still celebrate Noam Chomsky day as well.

Still, some were co-opted, some were worn down, some passed, some just wanted some peace. And who could blame them.

Nah, don't just blame the boomers Roy. It's humanity that's weak, and fallible.

Expand full comment
author

I'm closer to a boomer than anything, and let me tell you, boomers suck, but not you of course, nor anyone else I like!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Actually, I start with the greatest generation, a bunch of conscripts who came home to lefty largesse and then raised a hedonistic, materialistic generation, the boomers. I then the boomer' kids for accepting that materialism is the highest calling without caring to see what's coming. (I think I'm referring to Gen X?) And I blame Gen Z and the millennials for, while royally fucked over, they haven't bothered to burn the shit down.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"You’re probably also aware that neither the white privilege thing nor the kill-the-hippies thing has gone away. In fact, recent events seem to have inflamed those people more than usual and made their gabble madder."

As I think I maybe noted here, the one thing I enjoy about Trump without the need for him to be channelled by Sarah Cooper is that he's recycling all of the GOP's shibboleths (or line of bullshit) from the last 60+ years, all turned up to 11 or higher. Nostalgia and audible; what a combo for a dotard!

Anti-White Power! I'll bite (but refuse give TAC the click): What in the name of any god of your choice does that even mean if not racism?

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Trump's passionate defense of the Confederate monuments, in spite of nearly universal and bi-partisan agreement that they all need to come down, pronto (and Mississippi, goddamn, took down their flag, too) just shows me he is only interested in inflaming his most rabid base supporters (which can't be more than 30% of the country, if that). I think he knows he's losing, and he just wants to make sure that at least a few of those people will burn shit to the ground after election day.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I guess his narcissism is subconsciously laying the groundwork to reinforce itself. So when he loses not only NY and CA by 45 points apiece, but also every other state except the very worst six, he can tell himself, "Ah, but my supporters rampaged! What other president ever was so beloved that they rampaged for him? I am truly the greatest of all time."

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Presume a huge loss is coming, the sweeter would be the shock of the loss killing him where he's sitting mainlining junk food.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Sadly I think my state is one of the worst six, or at least ideologically adjacent to them. We last voted for a Dem in 1964 and have been drifting rightward ever since. Isolation, cultural conservatism, and toxic rural nostalgia are a helluva cocktail. Stir/agitate with Fox News and voilá!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Dunno if Donnie can actually win, but as I've said, I think he is deliberately trying to lose. Just respectably -- more Mondale 1984 or Carter 1980 than Goldwater 1964.

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

He's probably as tired of being president as we are of him being president. Can't even get people to come out to rallies any more. Sad!

Expand full comment
author

Mondale won one state and DC.

Expand full comment