It is a cliche that misery loves company, but nearly every conservative I know is a deeply unhappy person. And they won't be happy until YOU are unhappy. Even the super-wealthy conservatives I know are like this, and it mystifies me. You have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and you spend your spare time trying to make life worse for someone working two min-wage jobs?
You're wrong in thinking they're a death cult. They're actually a mass torture cult. The inevitable deaths are just a happy side-effect of the misery they want to spread far and wide.
"And they won't be happy until YOU are unhappy." Yes. My take has always been that they'd (well, the followers, not the leaders) rather go without any of the positive things good government can create -- healthcare, infrastructure, education -- than know that THOSE people are getting it too.
Think about that first job you had when you were 16. Before you got that first paycheck, you had it all figured out in your head: "Lessee... 3 dollars an hour times 15 hours means I'm gettin' FORTY-FIVE BUCKS!" Then the check comes and its NOT forty-five bucks, because FICA, state and federal taxes, etc. And most people, normal people, shrug it off because that's just the way the world works. But some people don't, they get mad and STAY mad, and soon their madness is redirected at whoever is gettin' that $2.17 in taxes they took out of your check. And then, for the rest of their life, no matter how big the checks get, they just can't let go of that anger and resentment. No, they can't just enjoy the big part of the check that they get to keep, because "Lookit over here at what they're TAKIN' from me!" And that, children, is where Conservatives come from.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Don't forget Heinlein juveniles. One minute you're enjoying Podkayne Of Mars and the next thing you know you're ass-deep in Starship Troopers and thinking military service for voting is actually pretty reasonable. (It ends in the gutter clutching a dogeared copy of Number Of The Beast and ranting about "nipples going 'SPUNG!'")
Which is irony, because one of Limbaugh's favorite tropes was that conservatives are happy, comfortable, and well-adjusted, and it was the Left who was perpetually angry.
Of course, he also claimed conservatives never protest because they're responsible hard working people with jobs, and we've seen how well THAT applies.
Thanks for pointing that out, I'm old enough to remember when Conservatism was basically, "Everything is perfectly fine as-is, stop complaining." Which makes sense, Conservatism used to be about opposing change, and if people can't complain, they can't organize themselves to change anything.
So when exactly did it become what it is today? Trump certainly set the tone with "American carnage", and now they can outdo the most fervent 60's radical in the America-hatin'.
A specific media diet can whip the Rubes into a frothy Mass of hate and outrage. It's very easy to bilk money from frothing Rubes. The money is too good for the people who engineer all this to ever dream of giving it up. Fortunately, the only true believers in this dark scenario are the Rubes that are getting fucked by the people really making bank. The people in charge of this shit show are making too much money to ever want to see it end.
Trump is horrible . Trump is a whirling dark suck hole of evil shit. He's also a fuckup whose only real talent is ripping people off. We really did dodge a bullet( a hail of semiautomatic rifle bullets. )
And while we’ve been actively dodging bullets, for decades we’ve been more insidiously suffering the political equivalent of lead poisoning as Nixon and his successors perverted government and seized power. Heck, maybe not just since Nixon; maybe since the end of Reconstruction.
Over at The Guardian, Stephen Donziger has a piece about the impending Moore v. Harper case before the Supreme Court, in which he says this creepy but increasingly obvious thing about the US and democracy:
"....Recent US history shows how spectacularly effective rightwing funders, representing wealthy Americans and corporations, have been in essentially buying control over our political system. These forces correctly perceive that if democracy is allowed to exist in an unfettered and neutral way, then corporate profits will be diminished and the powerful fossil fuel industry will be phased out over time. So they are organizing to prevent that from happening...."
And it sounds fine to a lot of people, the ones who only seem to exhibit enthusiasm or joy when they can celebrate the right people getting hurt. Fuck our feelings.
Oh, it’s 100% about fear. They spend their days and nights in a constant search for new things to be afraid of. Yesterday it was fentanyl in Halloween candy, tomorrow it will be something else. And the GOP powers that be are only too happy to feed it to them, because a scared public is a public that’ll vote for a Big Strong Daddy to do all the stuff Roy talks about here. Not to make them feel safe, that would be counterproductive to the goal of keeping them scared!, but to turn that fear into hate.
As I keep ranting, if the GOP response to Covid and now some of the abortion laws spewed in response to Dobbs didn't make it clear that these people are, well, if not pro-death, they're at least opposed to delaying dying from nut jobs with guns or responding responsibly to a global pandemic.
As for conservatives' ammosexual desires, a lot of it is #freedumb and 💰💰💰 from th NRA.
Too, as I also rant, a nation gets the state its elite wants or at least allows and we have what they want. We're fortunate to have some agency but, in aggregate, we've pissed away and here we are: likely to be formally a one party state within a couple of years without radical action starting now.
I get the frustration, specially the sense that the federal government doesn't much care about the nation's people. Scary! Frustrating! But progress is not normal. Never lasts; could have here but our masters voted it it. We could have pushed back but... again, here we are with likely worse coming in 2024 when the GOP regains the White House (for reasons I've noted in the past and aren't again) and has SCOTUS with its criminal majority and maybe control of Congress.
But since Mark Lungo laid a guilt trip on me so bad that even I'm getting sick of my negativity, some hope again:
Yes, and especially appropriate today. Biden pardons thousands of people prosecuted under federal laws for marijuana possession, and thanks Joe, but alongside a dozen think-pieces on "How will this play in the midterms?" I'd like to see one that gives voice to the people who've been patiently working this issue for DECADES. Those are the real heroes, and when we don't pause to mark the progress we sometimes do make, we disrespect them.
The journos who are not working on their midterm pieces have been deployed to the nation's small town diners to listen to would-be farmers describe the candy-colored fentanyl that will be filling trick-or-treat bags this fall. Thanks Joe Biden.
All well said and sadly true. But let’s not adopt the error of thinking the Second Amendment was meant to arm citizens against their own government, if that’s what you were implying. Anyone who has worked through the odd syntax of 18th century American English can see it prohibits the Federal government from interfering with the states’ ability to raise, arm and regulate a militia, undoubtedly because back then a national standing army wasn’t a thing people wanted. Despite Scalia, it says nothing about government’s ability to pass laws restricting private gun ownership. Or swords or halberds or grenades or any other arms.
In particular, the fear underlying the language and intent of the 2A was that of slave rebellions. As historian Carol Anderson puts it, “. . . a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising.“ So that Amendment is racist to its core.
And this has changed how? That is the unexpressed intent of these anti-gun control rulings: white people can murder darker people. And even in states with gun control measures, those penalties tended only to be enforced against those darker people.
Any ruling (whichever way it goes) is only going to end up enforcing the DNA code baked into the structure, and a new Constitution will have an uphill struggle against that code.
What I find interesting is how the racist underpinnings of the 2nd Am aren’t much discussed, even by progressives. I read a law review article by a legal scholar about 10 years ago, documenting this. I thought it was going to make a lot of impact, but it’s not talked about much.
Not to mention fear of "the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." It's right there in the Declaration of Independence!
Article I Section 8 has quite a bit to say about Congress' ability to regulate the Militia. Turns out it's not just supposed to be a bunch of cosplay rednecks shooting at haystacks.
Militias also are exclusively defensive, in the way standing armies aren't. If I remember The Federalist Papers correct, the argument was a militia would keep the US from getting involved in the kind of perpetual wars the European states suffered. (And we see how well THAT worked out)
How can you say that when you can plainly see how torn up they are that Herschel Walker's baby Number Whatever wasn't even given a chance at this beautiful gift we call life?
Belief in "Limited Government" --> General distrust of all government --> Hatred of government --> Hatred of anyone who benefits from government or works in government.
And the Republican party absolutely HAD to follow this progression. Do you know how many voters you can turn out if you stay at the Belief in "Limited Government" stage? Not enough, that's for sure. Hate is the great motivator, especially when you're ideologically blocked from offering the voters anything else.
One day my mother, whose brain was confiscated by Fox News in the 90s, offered me some lessons she learned on the teevee with regard to government employees, who are all incompetent, lazy, overpaid, and on the take. At the time, my cousin was the comptroller for Grand Canyon NP and his wife a career military officer. "What about Cousin and Wife?" I asked. Oh, no, not them, of course. Just alllllllllllll the rest.
I got an earl inkling that the GOP was headed this way with their relative silence about Timothy McVey’s horrendous crime. It was like pornography to them — their moms told them it was bad, but it gave them some wood and made them curious. Their main concern, the one raised most vociferously by the Republican hacks, was to push back against suggestions that right-wing propaganda from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al., might have emboldened people like McVey.
When the constant hate they spew has inevitable consequences, it's never their fault. Over in the UK transphobic attacks have increased dramatically, and the TERFs are flailing and "whatabout"ing to blame it on anything BUT the transphobic media campaigns of late.
I'm workin' up a powerful hatred myself, but it's not required to vote for the candidates I vote for. I can vote for Bernie just because I'd like some health care or a $15 minimum wage or my student loans forgiven. And I actually know people like this, who don't focus their energies on hatin' Republicans because they're too busy working FOR things.
If you're a media both-sideser, "mutual hatred" is just too easy and available, because it's true. But what "mutual hatred" misses is that one party can actually do without the hate, while the other wouldn't stand a chance without it (you guess which is which).
The Party of Self-Hatred as I like to call it. I just don't have the words today. But it's been clear to me for a long time that when reason and any sense of humanity is devoid in someone regardless of their political affiliation it motivates outward aggression because of denial, the inability to confront the mirror when society reflects their own perceived shortcomings. So the Party has created a life preserver of sorts, where they can thrash about securely as a group in scary waters, united in feeling right about hating the 'others'.
Non-American here: Can't private businesses (Starbucks, supermarkets, etc.) still ban people from coming in with guns? Or are gun owners the only Americans with rights? Do people without guns have any "rights"? If I'm an American without a gun and I see one with a gun and feel threatened, can I bash his fucking skull in with my baseball bat under "stand your ground"? What if I'm just visiting the US? Does "stand your ground" apply to me? Or do non-citizens not enjoy the rights of the greatest, free-est nation in the history of the world? Can someone explain to me why anyone anywhere should continue to support a country that has clearly lapsed into general lawlessness? I'm Canadian and I love you guys and your art and your culture and your science and a bunch of other shit. But I have no plans to visit in the near future
Not sure, but I think private businesses still have the right to ban guns on their premises, but like with mask requirements, the question is, "Are we willing to get our own employees murdered enforcing this rule?"
As the gun enthusiasts like to say, "An armed society is a polite society", and they're right, in that private businesses will politely allow the gun-holder to do whatever he damn pleases.
And seriously, what else are you going to say but "welcome" to a social misfit (because that's what they are) carrying a gun? In any other country in the world, a non-police guy coming in the door with a gun is seen as a major threat
And hey, thanks for the arm on our Space Shuttle! Sorry about the whole "breaking up into a mess of fireballs on re-entry" thing, it was a really nice arm.
Well, if you like team sports, then hockey is the best. Only game with actual 60 minutes of action. Only game with unlimited/on-the-fly replacements. Only game with good refs and solid video replay in case of error.
I love other games (played plenty of baseball in summer when I was a kid, played some football and soccer, etc.), but hockey, everything else is a kid's game by comparison.
You can make fun of Canadians for... really not much. But we'll kick your fucking ass at hockey
They gave us Tim Hortons and Doug & Bob McKenzie and SCTV, and their paper currency is pretty, and you don't have to strain to sing their national anthem.
A better statement would be "An armed society is an intimidated society."We have a student group on campus that wants to get open carry everywhere on campus 24/7. As far as I know, there hasn't been an instance on campus that would have required a gun for over 40 years. Guns would be good for getting those few extra points on your Thermodynamics exam
"Why yes... now that you mention it... I can see that I graded this too harshly, and should have been more generous with the partial credit! Oh, did I say partial credit, I meant FULL credit, of course!"
I've been hearing all this stuff about "Snowflake students" who supposedly can't handle getting a C on an exam, just wait til they're all armed. WHO'S THE SNOWFLAKE NOW, HUH?
“It’s not the money but the burning desire to fuck people over just because they can that animates them. Without that ability, what’s even the point of being hyperrich?”
“What good is money if it can’t inspire terror in your fellow man?” —Montgomery Burns
A close analysis like this brings me to the limits of my world view, or at least my vocabulary. My knee-jerk reaction to them is, "They're so stupid." and "That's stupid." and "My god, how stupid can you be?"
It's true, but it's not enough, is it? Maybe I'm hung up on the intellectual/cognitive aspect of things, whereas their death-cult self-destructiveness barely touches on that. Rather, it's emotional. They're stupid--or crude, or unreflective--emotionally. The joke during Trump was, a MAGA would burn down his own house, if it made the liberal next door cough. And that's still the case. I feel like the everyday world of intelligent discourse hasn't fully addressed the potent self-destructiveness (and seductiveness) of resentment. If you prodded a MAGA crowd into admitting that they really wouldn't care what happened to them (or their kids), as long as it made liberals unhappy, you'd get Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup's explosion "YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID."
"the everyday world of intelligent discourse" works just fine if you meet some simple requirements:
1. We agree there's a problem
2. We agree we should do something about the problem
3. We may disagree about what, exactly we need to do but we're willing to talk about it
If, on the other hand, you've got one side saying, "There's a problem here" and the other side's response is "groomer pedo Satanist Freemason Antifa Black Lives Matter porno woodchuck nightstand tango delta Democrat Party", well, then, the everyday world of intelligent discourse just doesn't stand a chance.
The idiot Republican running for governor of my state has subscribed to the debunked rumors that schools are permitting “furries” to use litter boxes for excretion purposes. These dipshits really need to be put away somewhere they do no harm.
Whew. Glad Roy's Friday essay was about psychopaths and their need for suffering and death for everyone and the planet in general. Based on last night's twitter, I was afraid it would be about Rod Dreher exploring his teen sexuality.
What if they in fact recognize the implications of their idiot gun policy? After all, it'll make cities all the more dangerous, and we know how much the right HATES cities. What could be more useful to them than more urban violence? And guns in stadiums and bars, places well known for calm, reasoned discussion of views. (Libraries? Museums? Who goes THERE, except egghead libs who think they're SO superior, someone should show THEM, by god)
"an opportunity for any number of assholes legally carrying loaded guns to kill a whole lot of people"
And it's a certainty that when those people are killed thanks to Clarence's junta, as with all mass shootings, the last thing conservatives will ever blame or even talk about is the guns they freed from all restriction.
During WWII, the Soviet army introduced a particularly nasty and effective multiple-launch rocket system and because it consisted of a bank of launch tubes arranged as you might arrange the tubes on a church organ, it was known as "Stalin's Organ." I have no further comment.
It is a cliche that misery loves company, but nearly every conservative I know is a deeply unhappy person. And they won't be happy until YOU are unhappy. Even the super-wealthy conservatives I know are like this, and it mystifies me. You have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and you spend your spare time trying to make life worse for someone working two min-wage jobs?
You're wrong in thinking they're a death cult. They're actually a mass torture cult. The inevitable deaths are just a happy side-effect of the misery they want to spread far and wide.
"And they won't be happy until YOU are unhappy." Yes. My take has always been that they'd (well, the followers, not the leaders) rather go without any of the positive things good government can create -- healthcare, infrastructure, education -- than know that THOSE people are getting it too.
Like when they filled in the public pools rather than let black folks swim in them
Think about that first job you had when you were 16. Before you got that first paycheck, you had it all figured out in your head: "Lessee... 3 dollars an hour times 15 hours means I'm gettin' FORTY-FIVE BUCKS!" Then the check comes and its NOT forty-five bucks, because FICA, state and federal taxes, etc. And most people, normal people, shrug it off because that's just the way the world works. But some people don't, they get mad and STAY mad, and soon their madness is redirected at whoever is gettin' that $2.17 in taxes they took out of your check. And then, for the rest of their life, no matter how big the checks get, they just can't let go of that anger and resentment. No, they can't just enjoy the big part of the check that they get to keep, because "Lookit over here at what they're TAKIN' from me!" And that, children, is where Conservatives come from.
Odd, because, for most people, that first job happens at the point in life you're most susceptible to Libertarian dogma.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Don't forget Heinlein juveniles. One minute you're enjoying Podkayne Of Mars and the next thing you know you're ass-deep in Starship Troopers and thinking military service for voting is actually pretty reasonable. (It ends in the gutter clutching a dogeared copy of Number Of The Beast and ranting about "nipples going 'SPUNG!'")
Fair enough, but the Starship Troopers film was deliciously, perversely fascism-friendly in the darkest of humoric ways. An underappreciated gem.
Just So.
As it has been succinctly phrased, cruelty is the point.
Which is irony, because one of Limbaugh's favorite tropes was that conservatives are happy, comfortable, and well-adjusted, and it was the Left who was perpetually angry.
Of course, he also claimed conservatives never protest because they're responsible hard working people with jobs, and we've seen how well THAT applies.
Thanks for pointing that out, I'm old enough to remember when Conservatism was basically, "Everything is perfectly fine as-is, stop complaining." Which makes sense, Conservatism used to be about opposing change, and if people can't complain, they can't organize themselves to change anything.
So when exactly did it become what it is today? Trump certainly set the tone with "American carnage", and now they can outdo the most fervent 60's radical in the America-hatin'.
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” -- H.L. Mencken
A specific media diet can whip the Rubes into a frothy Mass of hate and outrage. It's very easy to bilk money from frothing Rubes. The money is too good for the people who engineer all this to ever dream of giving it up. Fortunately, the only true believers in this dark scenario are the Rubes that are getting fucked by the people really making bank. The people in charge of this shit show are making too much money to ever want to see it end.
Trump is horrible . Trump is a whirling dark suck hole of evil shit. He's also a fuckup whose only real talent is ripping people off. We really did dodge a bullet( a hail of semiautomatic rifle bullets. )
Well, we dodged a second round. But the first volley was pretty terrible.
And while we’ve been actively dodging bullets, for decades we’ve been more insidiously suffering the political equivalent of lead poisoning as Nixon and his successors perverted government and seized power. Heck, maybe not just since Nixon; maybe since the end of Reconstruction.
Over at The Guardian, Stephen Donziger has a piece about the impending Moore v. Harper case before the Supreme Court, in which he says this creepy but increasingly obvious thing about the US and democracy:
"....Recent US history shows how spectacularly effective rightwing funders, representing wealthy Americans and corporations, have been in essentially buying control over our political system. These forces correctly perceive that if democracy is allowed to exist in an unfettered and neutral way, then corporate profits will be diminished and the powerful fossil fuel industry will be phased out over time. So they are organizing to prevent that from happening...."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/06/the-most-terrifying-case-of-all-is-about-to-be-heard-by-the-us-supreme-court
And it sounds fine to a lot of people, the ones who only seem to exhibit enthusiasm or joy when they can celebrate the right people getting hurt. Fuck our feelings.
Yet another theory I'm working on - conservativism is all about fear, and anyone who wants to motivate you through fear is likely A Very Bad Person.
Oh, it’s 100% about fear. They spend their days and nights in a constant search for new things to be afraid of. Yesterday it was fentanyl in Halloween candy, tomorrow it will be something else. And the GOP powers that be are only too happy to feed it to them, because a scared public is a public that’ll vote for a Big Strong Daddy to do all the stuff Roy talks about here. Not to make them feel safe, that would be counterproductive to the goal of keeping them scared!, but to turn that fear into hate.
Trigger warning; word salad ahead.
As I keep ranting, if the GOP response to Covid and now some of the abortion laws spewed in response to Dobbs didn't make it clear that these people are, well, if not pro-death, they're at least opposed to delaying dying from nut jobs with guns or responding responsibly to a global pandemic.
As for conservatives' ammosexual desires, a lot of it is #freedumb and 💰💰💰 from th NRA.
Too, as I also rant, a nation gets the state its elite wants or at least allows and we have what they want. We're fortunate to have some agency but, in aggregate, we've pissed away and here we are: likely to be formally a one party state within a couple of years without radical action starting now.
I get the frustration, specially the sense that the federal government doesn't much care about the nation's people. Scary! Frustrating! But progress is not normal. Never lasts; could have here but our masters voted it it. We could have pushed back but... again, here we are with likely worse coming in 2024 when the GOP regains the White House (for reasons I've noted in the past and aren't again) and has SCOTUS with its criminal majority and maybe control of Congress.
But since Mark Lungo laid a guilt trip on me so bad that even I'm getting sick of my negativity, some hope again:
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2022%2Fsep%2F14%2Fwe-need-to-celebrate-incremental-change
Unlike me, Solnit is always correct.
The Solnit piece is seriously comforting.
Yes, and especially appropriate today. Biden pardons thousands of people prosecuted under federal laws for marijuana possession, and thanks Joe, but alongside a dozen think-pieces on "How will this play in the midterms?" I'd like to see one that gives voice to the people who've been patiently working this issue for DECADES. Those are the real heroes, and when we don't pause to mark the progress we sometimes do make, we disrespect them.
The journos who are not working on their midterm pieces have been deployed to the nation's small town diners to listen to would-be farmers describe the candy-colored fentanyl that will be filling trick-or-treat bags this fall. Thanks Joe Biden.
It's Fentanyl OF COLOR. Perfectly formulated to terrify the Fox News viewer.
She’s also correct enough — as in pretty much always.
Glad to be of service! 😉 And thanks for sharing that wonderful article.
I practically worship Solnit. She’s a treasure.
All well said and sadly true. But let’s not adopt the error of thinking the Second Amendment was meant to arm citizens against their own government, if that’s what you were implying. Anyone who has worked through the odd syntax of 18th century American English can see it prohibits the Federal government from interfering with the states’ ability to raise, arm and regulate a militia, undoubtedly because back then a national standing army wasn’t a thing people wanted. Despite Scalia, it says nothing about government’s ability to pass laws restricting private gun ownership. Or swords or halberds or grenades or any other arms.
In particular, the fear underlying the language and intent of the 2A was that of slave rebellions. As historian Carol Anderson puts it, “. . . a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising.“ So that Amendment is racist to its core.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment
And this has changed how? That is the unexpressed intent of these anti-gun control rulings: white people can murder darker people. And even in states with gun control measures, those penalties tended only to be enforced against those darker people.
Any ruling (whichever way it goes) is only going to end up enforcing the DNA code baked into the structure, and a new Constitution will have an uphill struggle against that code.
What I find interesting is how the racist underpinnings of the 2nd Am aren’t much discussed, even by progressives. I read a law review article by a legal scholar about 10 years ago, documenting this. I thought it was going to make a lot of impact, but it’s not talked about much.
I think the Majority Report interviewed a scholar about this a few months ago, but I can’t remember the person’s name.
Not to mention fear of "the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." It's right there in the Declaration of Independence!
"Patty-rollers" as they were known in slave communities. . .
Article I Section 8 has quite a bit to say about Congress' ability to regulate the Militia. Turns out it's not just supposed to be a bunch of cosplay rednecks shooting at haystacks.
Militias also are exclusively defensive, in the way standing armies aren't. If I remember The Federalist Papers correct, the argument was a militia would keep the US from getting involved in the kind of perpetual wars the European states suffered. (And we see how well THAT worked out)
How can you say that when you can plainly see how torn up they are that Herschel Walker's baby Number Whatever wasn't even given a chance at this beautiful gift we call life?
Thanks, my first LOL of the morning.
Belief in "Limited Government" --> General distrust of all government --> Hatred of government --> Hatred of anyone who benefits from government or works in government.
And the Republican party absolutely HAD to follow this progression. Do you know how many voters you can turn out if you stay at the Belief in "Limited Government" stage? Not enough, that's for sure. Hate is the great motivator, especially when you're ideologically blocked from offering the voters anything else.
One day my mother, whose brain was confiscated by Fox News in the 90s, offered me some lessons she learned on the teevee with regard to government employees, who are all incompetent, lazy, overpaid, and on the take. At the time, my cousin was the comptroller for Grand Canyon NP and his wife a career military officer. "What about Cousin and Wife?" I asked. Oh, no, not them, of course. Just alllllllllllll the rest.
I think they used to have a general carve-out for cops and military, although they're rethinking that, after the failed coup attempt.
Well, jeez! That was state power used against affluent white conservatives! Of course it wasn't valid!
"I'm here to enforce the law. WILHOIT'S LAW"
"Some of my best friends are public employees!"
"We have a few in the family, but we don't like to talk about them."
I got an earl inkling that the GOP was headed this way with their relative silence about Timothy McVey’s horrendous crime. It was like pornography to them — their moms told them it was bad, but it gave them some wood and made them curious. Their main concern, the one raised most vociferously by the Republican hacks, was to push back against suggestions that right-wing propaganda from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al., might have emboldened people like McVey.
And the media & Democratic pols were all too glad to keep on ignoring the rising threat...
They're just a fringe! And everyone knows fringe went out of style back in the 70's.
That was just for surrey's
Well, the fringe is definitely on top now.
Geese and ducks and ESPECIALLY chicks better scurry.
When the constant hate they spew has inevitable consequences, it's never their fault. Over in the UK transphobic attacks have increased dramatically, and the TERFs are flailing and "whatabout"ing to blame it on anything BUT the transphobic media campaigns of late.
Conservatives seem to feel that government is not a human creation but an evil force imposed on humanity by the Illuminati lizard people from Sirius.
"The scariest words in the English language are 'I'm a lizard person from Sirius and I'm here to help you'" - Ronald Reagan
“We have shut down immigration from Sirius until we figure out what the hell is going on!” — TFG.
Axis of Intergalactic Evil!
Which is sorta hilarious when you consider that conservatives ARE lizard people -- or at least, their lizard brains are dominant in their skulls.
I'm workin' up a powerful hatred myself, but it's not required to vote for the candidates I vote for. I can vote for Bernie just because I'd like some health care or a $15 minimum wage or my student loans forgiven. And I actually know people like this, who don't focus their energies on hatin' Republicans because they're too busy working FOR things.
If you're a media both-sideser, "mutual hatred" is just too easy and available, because it's true. But what "mutual hatred" misses is that one party can actually do without the hate, while the other wouldn't stand a chance without it (you guess which is which).
They want to kill me and mine, and have since 1865. If they can get people like Herschel to sign off on his own destruction so much the better.
Herschel isn't just signing off on his own destruction, and we have the receipts to prove it.
"He's Black, they'll follow him off the cliff."
The Party of Self-Hatred as I like to call it. I just don't have the words today. But it's been clear to me for a long time that when reason and any sense of humanity is devoid in someone regardless of their political affiliation it motivates outward aggression because of denial, the inability to confront the mirror when society reflects their own perceived shortcomings. So the Party has created a life preserver of sorts, where they can thrash about securely as a group in scary waters, united in feeling right about hating the 'others'.
Non-American here: Can't private businesses (Starbucks, supermarkets, etc.) still ban people from coming in with guns? Or are gun owners the only Americans with rights? Do people without guns have any "rights"? If I'm an American without a gun and I see one with a gun and feel threatened, can I bash his fucking skull in with my baseball bat under "stand your ground"? What if I'm just visiting the US? Does "stand your ground" apply to me? Or do non-citizens not enjoy the rights of the greatest, free-est nation in the history of the world? Can someone explain to me why anyone anywhere should continue to support a country that has clearly lapsed into general lawlessness? I'm Canadian and I love you guys and your art and your culture and your science and a bunch of other shit. But I have no plans to visit in the near future
Not sure, but I think private businesses still have the right to ban guns on their premises, but like with mask requirements, the question is, "Are we willing to get our own employees murdered enforcing this rule?"
As the gun enthusiasts like to say, "An armed society is a polite society", and they're right, in that private businesses will politely allow the gun-holder to do whatever he damn pleases.
And seriously, what else are you going to say but "welcome" to a social misfit (because that's what they are) carrying a gun? In any other country in the world, a non-police guy coming in the door with a gun is seen as a major threat
And hey, thanks for the arm on our Space Shuttle! Sorry about the whole "breaking up into a mess of fireballs on re-entry" thing, it was a really nice arm.
Umm... no worries, we had some spares, and I think they're still in use. Not sure about your point here
Just my general-purpose compliment when I meet someone from Canada. I don't know anything about hockey, so it's all I got.
Well, if you like team sports, then hockey is the best. Only game with actual 60 minutes of action. Only game with unlimited/on-the-fly replacements. Only game with good refs and solid video replay in case of error.
I love other games (played plenty of baseball in summer when I was a kid, played some football and soccer, etc.), but hockey, everything else is a kid's game by comparison.
You can make fun of Canadians for... really not much. But we'll kick your fucking ass at hockey
They gave us Tim Hortons and Doug & Bob McKenzie and SCTV, and their paper currency is pretty, and you don't have to strain to sing their national anthem.
A better statement would be "An armed society is an intimidated society."We have a student group on campus that wants to get open carry everywhere on campus 24/7. As far as I know, there hasn't been an instance on campus that would have required a gun for over 40 years. Guns would be good for getting those few extra points on your Thermodynamics exam
"Why yes... now that you mention it... I can see that I graded this too harshly, and should have been more generous with the partial credit! Oh, did I say partial credit, I meant FULL credit, of course!"
I've been hearing all this stuff about "Snowflake students" who supposedly can't handle getting a C on an exam, just wait til they're all armed. WHO'S THE SNOWFLAKE NOW, HUH?
To be fair, we don't visit great big swaths of us either, and for the same reason.
“It’s not the money but the burning desire to fuck people over just because they can that animates them. Without that ability, what’s even the point of being hyperrich?”
“What good is money if it can’t inspire terror in your fellow man?” —Montgomery Burns
A close analysis like this brings me to the limits of my world view, or at least my vocabulary. My knee-jerk reaction to them is, "They're so stupid." and "That's stupid." and "My god, how stupid can you be?"
It's true, but it's not enough, is it? Maybe I'm hung up on the intellectual/cognitive aspect of things, whereas their death-cult self-destructiveness barely touches on that. Rather, it's emotional. They're stupid--or crude, or unreflective--emotionally. The joke during Trump was, a MAGA would burn down his own house, if it made the liberal next door cough. And that's still the case. I feel like the everyday world of intelligent discourse hasn't fully addressed the potent self-destructiveness (and seductiveness) of resentment. If you prodded a MAGA crowd into admitting that they really wouldn't care what happened to them (or their kids), as long as it made liberals unhappy, you'd get Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup's explosion "YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID."
"the everyday world of intelligent discourse" works just fine if you meet some simple requirements:
1. We agree there's a problem
2. We agree we should do something about the problem
3. We may disagree about what, exactly we need to do but we're willing to talk about it
If, on the other hand, you've got one side saying, "There's a problem here" and the other side's response is "groomer pedo Satanist Freemason Antifa Black Lives Matter porno woodchuck nightstand tango delta Democrat Party", well, then, the everyday world of intelligent discourse just doesn't stand a chance.
Don’t forget the furries, Steve!
Not my list, but I'll pass your suggestion on to the author.
The idiot Republican running for governor of my state has subscribed to the debunked rumors that schools are permitting “furries” to use litter boxes for excretion purposes. These dipshits really need to be put away somewhere they do no harm.
But... but... THEY SAW IT ON FACEBOOK
Holy Crap! The Masons are in on it too??!!!
I know, I was needing some brickwork tuckpointed, but now? NO WAY.
Whew. Glad Roy's Friday essay was about psychopaths and their need for suffering and death for everyone and the planet in general. Based on last night's twitter, I was afraid it would be about Rod Dreher exploring his teen sexuality.
Rod and Ben and Matt Walsh and the whole lot of them need a good pegging.
Roy does try to end the week on a positive note.
What if they in fact recognize the implications of their idiot gun policy? After all, it'll make cities all the more dangerous, and we know how much the right HATES cities. What could be more useful to them than more urban violence? And guns in stadiums and bars, places well known for calm, reasoned discussion of views. (Libraries? Museums? Who goes THERE, except egghead libs who think they're SO superior, someone should show THEM, by god)
"an opportunity for any number of assholes legally carrying loaded guns to kill a whole lot of people"
And it's a certainty that when those people are killed thanks to Clarence's junta, as with all mass shootings, the last thing conservatives will ever blame or even talk about is the guns they freed from all restriction.
"Clarence's junta" reads slightly like an unspoken bodily function that we all ignore and wish vainly would go away...
During WWII, the Soviet army introduced a particularly nasty and effective multiple-launch rocket system and because it consisted of a bank of launch tubes arranged as you might arrange the tubes on a church organ, it was known as "Stalin's Organ." I have no further comment.
Did Stalin's organ have any stops?
In Russia, Stalin's Organ plays YOU.
Roy be splashin poetry all over the joint:
"Or take abortion.
We normally talk about that as
Conservatives’ pitch to the rampant misogyny
Of their followers who thirst to see
Women deprived of their agency
And returned to the status of chattel.
And that’s certainly true!"
It gets no better than this. Maybe just as good as – the boy has it in him – but not better.
2 marks.