When you don't think politics is for the solution of actual problems (like, for example, poverty or climate change) it leaves an ENORMOUS amount of time for absolute nonsense.
Somewhere they picked up the idea that politics is supposed to be about responding to people's needs and problems, but that collides with their belief that government should never, under any circumstances, help people. What results are "crises" that have to be communicated to you over YouTube because, oddly, you don't seem to experience any consequences from the supposed crisis yourself. And once politics moves from "problems I actually have" to "stuff people told me about on YouTube" the sky's the limit.
Possibly they worry politics IS about solving problems, and because they're fearful idiots, they think finding ways for the poor to have more means they themselves will get less. Like there is one pie and its size never changes -- cut a better slice for black people, that means cutting less for white people, etc. So they approach politics as an arena to introduce chaos, to ensure no solutions get done, because solutions can only hurt you.
What I think is that they think the US is perfect, established and guided by God, and they just need to winnow out a few bad apples for everything to be Great Again. Of course, to continue the grift means constantly finding new enemies, external ones and internal ones corrupted by external ideas.
I remember a video of Republican women complaining about how toys now have all these safety regulations and back in the day, they didn't have any and EVERYBODY TURNED OUT FINE. I suspect it was actually "Republican women who'd like to have fewer kids."
Part of the appeal of Conservatism is that you already know enough to have an opinion on every topic. Before you decide whether the Goddamn gummint shoulda banned lawn Jarts, do you need to know if they were injuring 1 kid a year or a hundred or a thousand? Nah, all that "read things and learn about stuff" is just liberal elitist nonsense. God made you perfect, and Jesus loves you just the way you are.
Reading myself (very slowly as it makes me want to throw things) an article on how "the elite" have abandoned Gendah Ideology™ and it was all (or mostly, anyway) Richard Dawkins' fault. A British guy going on about how Christians have always been the peaceful preservers of culture (unlike THOSE DIRTY MUSLIMS), thus ignoring pretty much the entire 20th Century, needs a good swift kick in the tuckus. The Telegraph also has a column by Nigel Farage about how Trump needs to pick Ramaswamy as his VP, so that's the mangoes we're dealing with.
A British guy going on about how Christians have always been the peaceful preservers of culture (unlike THOSE DIRTY MUSLIMS), thus ignoring pretty much the entire 20th Century
Saw this over the weekend, it's a review of videos produced by cults (like recruitment videos from Aum Shinrikyo) and it had a bit about the Sedevacantists, whose offering was a catchy banjo-pickin' country tune about how they still don't eat meat on Fridays, and I briefly thought, "Aw, these folks don't seem so bad!" and THEN THEY GOT TO THE JEWS.
Rod was just as shocked to learn about Hanania as he was to learn his own Dad was in the KKK or to learn the headmaster of his kids' school was a Nazi. Shocked, shocked I tell you.
Someone should really ask Dreher: as he is so easily duped and undiscerning, why should people pay attention to anything he says about any topic? (not that any sensible person does)
Well, anyone the left doesn't like is a NAZI, you know, hard to tell with all that going on! (I just cut to the chase & call 'em fascists, though Falangists is probably more apt but who'd get the reference?)
Weird, innit? Like how all the people Donald Trump hired as President turned out to be deep-state operatives who wanted to destroy America! What're the odds, huh?
It's just too bad for President Trump that he didn't have any previous experience evaluating a group of people and deciding which ones were good and which ones were losers. Could have come in handy when he was picking an Attorney General.
Generally tolerant of intellectuals who may hold some immoral views. Provided, of course, that those views are not "we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, heal the sick"--you know, any of those things that Jesus said we should be doing. Those things are a level of immorality that is simply unforgivable.
And provided those views are not "we probably shouldn't be beating homosexuals to death." And we can't accept "summary execution of Black people simply for being Black is not a good thing."
But "we should do the Holocaust right this time!" is definitely a view we need to be tolerant about because the intellectual promoting may have some other ideas.
I may be overstating things, but the "slavery taught skills" makes me think of the "they're learning how to have a job" bullshit of Workfare. Nowhere near equivalent but I get echoes.
Oh, absolutely. And let's remember these are lessons being directed at children. Because it's important to inspire children with the message that in America, absolutely anyone, if they work hard, can obtain employment as a manual laborer or perhaps even in a skilled trade where they might be able to earn enough to pay rent.
I was just reading a review of the movie From Here to Eternity which is enjoying a 70th anniversary and it mentions that in the original novel, Frank Sinatra's character, Maggio, performs oral sex on older men for money because he can't live on Army pay.
Because being intellectual, having intellectual-seeming thoughts, is such a rare thing that we basically have to accept anyone even willing to try. You know, like if you had some rare brain tumor and the only doctor capable of removing it was Josef Megele.
Myself, I feel like we're adequately supplied with public intellectuals and can afford to be a little choosy.
The Tulsa Massacre? Really? I hadn’t realized in condemning the mass murder of an entire community, we were voicing a “slanted perspective on American history.”
The only viewpoints the Right and Center-Right DON’T find interesting and compelling enough to engage with are any viewpoints that promote egalitarianism and acknowledge the full rights and humanity of everyone. They always regard those ideas as commie trash that is beyond the pale.
One of the things that mystifies me is when the braying asses known as the GOP claim that the liberal commie Marxist socialist Democrat Party has ruined the country. I’d go farther than your point above: the regressive reactionary fascist Nazi GOP believes that to promote egalitarianism and acknowledge the full rights and humanity of everyone is what is destroying America, i.e., the America that exists in right wing propaganda.
Yeah, we just gotta vote for whoever the Republicans nominate, even Trump, because four more years of Biden/Harris is just unthinkable! Just look at how much they've destroyed America in the three years they've had already!
Everyone knows the 13th Amendment fixed 75% of racism and the Civil Rights Act (of 1967 if you ask DeSantis) took care of the other 25%. Why must liberals keep rehashing the past as if history has any impact on today's world?
To continue to bring up the past is furthering racism. We must aspire to be colorblind. Except when it comes to judges and juries in the US District Court of the District of Columbia. Then we must fight for diversity!
A story I read this weekend about the DeSantis campaign contained the line "his controversial positions on abortion, immigration and slavery." And I have to admit it caught me off guard. Apparently, slavery is now a "controversy" that we're "debating."
“I’m sure there’ll be an article in the Times this week about how Chris Christie and Larry Hogan are the future of the party. They never seem to catch on.” -- my longtime pet theory has been that wunderkind conservative intellectual Paul Ryan excused himself to go lurk in the weeds while the GOP Trumpwar raged, only to step fit’n’ready on the bloodied battlefield. But now I think he made a bad bet, his Nazi bona fides are too mild and long forgotten, and we shall never see a President Ryan.
Maybe. He always struck me as one of those nerds who decided at the age of 13 he was destined to be POTUS. Then he impressed some dumb people with money who don’t want to pay taxes. The DeSantis model.
Thanks to The Majority Report I am now aware of Tim Pool’s blighted existence. The fact that the internet enables people like him to have legions of followers is proof that Man Is Evil. /Community
Did you know Republicans are moving away from anti-woke messaging and back to law and order while simultaneously attacking the FBI and DOJ? This is the type of cognitive dissonance you get when you let your party incise your corpus callosum so your right brain can hold a position contrary to your left brain. Toss in the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy and you have the perfect Republican voter: id-driven reactions to leaders who practice deceit and projection with the skill of a fencer wielding a broadsword.
"id-driven reactions to leaders who practice deceit and projection"
You probably already know about that constitutional amendment they're voting on tomorrow in Ohio, to raise the threshold to 60% for approval of amendments by public referendum. Naturally, all the ads on the pro-side are about children being given gender-reassignment surgery without their parent's consent.
My cousin sent me an ad from her local Gettysburg area newspaper for a new Christian school. They're still pushing the story that kids across America are being allowed to "identify" as cats, and are being provided with litter boxes.
There was a hoopla recently over girls identifying as cats, started by a misunderstood TikTok video of a classroom argument, and then boosted into orbit by The Telegraph, the NY Post, and Tucker. There were lurid references to kids identifying as holograms or dinosaurs. Naturally nobody could ever back up these stories with evidence.
"... as much as he’d like, for example, and that “historical tragedies should not be used in the service of a political agenda that has a slanted perspective on American history and the modern causes of urban blight” in reference to, get this, the Tulsa Massacre."
I have some notes for Hanania fils (taped, sans doute, across my fist): atrocities like the Tulsa Massacre were hardly terrible exceptions to the norm in the early 20th century. They actually were shamefully, horrifyingly common in the USA. Usually the scene of the crime has been concealed under a reservoir and there are an awful lot of those all over Appalachia & the South...
(The brilliant Tony Earley short story "The Prophet from Jupiter" seems to be about one of these massacre site/reservoirs.)
Look at the tight ring of interstate around downtown Kansas City and think, “Was this really necessary or efficient?”, and then look slightly to the south and east and see that it cuts off the Negro League Hall of Fame from downtown, as just one example.
"I’m old, and retain dim memories of the Young Republicans of the 20th Century"
Hey, I'm old too! And what I remember about young Republicans at that time (I mean the ones who weren't working for the Nixon campaign ratfucking his opponents) was "C'mon, America's not so bad, stop being such a Grumpy Gus, OK?" A tendency which reached its peak with the performance of Up With People at the Nixon White House. So yeah, they're... um... different now.
Right up to Romney, Republicans felt compelled to hold that rictus-smile attitude, "America is JUST FINE!" And then Trump came along, and it was like the uncorking of a bottle.
I have to admit, it must have been hard to hold that pose for 50 years. No wonder the dam burst when Trump came along. "Wait, we're allowed to say BAD stuff about America? This feels so liberating!"
I saw a band called "Down With People" in 1988 or thereabout. Loud angry punks having a grand time for themselves. Good enough for an encore. They played straight up versions of Pink Floyd's "Lucifer Sam" and Hank's "Cheatin' Heart". One of my better outlays of disposable income that year.
I think people like Hainana and Ben Shapiro are what happens when you take 20th Century Republican youth and marinate them in a "look what you Democrats made me do" sauce
BTW, I am sitting here in the airport terminal waiting to board the flight to Chicago where we have a FOUR FREAKING HOUR layover before continuing on to Fairbanks. Keep a good thought for me as I will the plane to stay in the air 😵💫
I am at O'Hare at the moment, having successfully kept the plane going, and it's about 2 hours to go. Had a decent, if expensive Reuben. Saw a Lego vending machine, an apatosaur skeleton, and LACTATION POD.
Only a four hour layover? Oh, you sweet summer child. Try flying from Sioux Falls to, say, London. Or better yet, have the nether lords of the airlines cancel your connecting flight on a lark, or whimsically reroute you through Atlanta or DFW.
I love it when they route us 1.5 hours out of our way to change planes at a hellgate hub we were trying to avoid. If I *wanted* to fly the wrong direction to a busier airport, I would’ve scheduled it that way!
Your choices are fly to a busy hub and wait or fly direct to one of a couple destinations on Allegiant. You better like it as that's what deregulation did
Or Rapid City to Budapest. I had 8 hours in Heathrow and around 4 hours in Denver. It turns out Heathrow did not have TVs except in the gate areas. I did some find some Lewis Chessman replicas at the National Museum store
But Rapid City, South Dakota is where James Mason & Co. depart on their trip to "the other side" in North by Northwest! Did they have to change planes in Atlanta too? When Mason says, "This is a problem best solved from a great height... over water" I didn't think he was talking about Lake Lanier.
He should’ve flown Allegiant, where passengers practically have to push the plane to get it started, and you drive all the way to your destination with the blinker on.
How do so many Dipshit Centrists (h/t Atrios) and garbage people like Matthew Yglesias not only get taken seriously, but keep failing upward? Maybe credulous, dewy-eyed Ezra Klein could do a think piece about it.
The linked Dreher piece is comedy gold. He calls Freddie de Boer a “brilliant maverick of the Left” and later plays school psychologist: “…it seems clear to me that [Hanania is on the autism spectrum], and that this has something to do with his intellectual style, and the substance of his writing. He lacks the inner sense that tells him, ‘You shouldn’t go there.’”
Wow, only RWNJs manage to be so ableist while attempting compassion for the neurodivergent. But as neurodivergent folx are often hyper-aware of social injustice, I'd guess Dreher is as far up his own ass as ever on the question...
Now I want an Explainer that ranks all the Republican presidential candidates on the Fascism Spectrum. Just a lil' fashy or full-on fash? As usual, Trump dials it up to 11.
I have no idea whether or not they agree. Rod had a piece in which he talked about looking over at a kid's penis while in the school bathroom. He called the black kids penis a primitive root wiener
Matthew Y., quite a guy. I read a few of his economic pieces on Substack and decided he was muddled in the mind.
Too many people can't follow their own motivations. They actually believe they are engaged in rational discourse, when they are, as you say, following their desire for attention and doping their brains on rage and reactions.
People who want to win arguments are usually silly.
When you don't think politics is for the solution of actual problems (like, for example, poverty or climate change) it leaves an ENORMOUS amount of time for absolute nonsense.
“Army of Incels” is the worst cover version of a Björk song.
I saw Army of Incels on their last tour, and it was not a very fun crowd…
Somewhere they picked up the idea that politics is supposed to be about responding to people's needs and problems, but that collides with their belief that government should never, under any circumstances, help people. What results are "crises" that have to be communicated to you over YouTube because, oddly, you don't seem to experience any consequences from the supposed crisis yourself. And once politics moves from "problems I actually have" to "stuff people told me about on YouTube" the sky's the limit.
Possibly they worry politics IS about solving problems, and because they're fearful idiots, they think finding ways for the poor to have more means they themselves will get less. Like there is one pie and its size never changes -- cut a better slice for black people, that means cutting less for white people, etc. So they approach politics as an arena to introduce chaos, to ensure no solutions get done, because solutions can only hurt you.
"politics as an arena to introduce chaos, to ensure no solutions get done"
And then the United States Senate steps up and says, "Is there any way I can be of help?"
Shoot, Mr B – I thought you were gonna 'splain zero-sum to us again.
NOBODY can explain the United States Senate.
What I think is that they think the US is perfect, established and guided by God, and they just need to winnow out a few bad apples for everything to be Great Again. Of course, to continue the grift means constantly finding new enemies, external ones and internal ones corrupted by external ideas.
Yeah, this jives. Conservatives think they love history, but in truth what they love is mythology.
I remember a video of Republican women complaining about how toys now have all these safety regulations and back in the day, they didn't have any and EVERYBODY TURNED OUT FINE. I suspect it was actually "Republican women who'd like to have fewer kids."
Part of the appeal of Conservatism is that you already know enough to have an opinion on every topic. Before you decide whether the Goddamn gummint shoulda banned lawn Jarts, do you need to know if they were injuring 1 kid a year or a hundred or a thousand? Nah, all that "read things and learn about stuff" is just liberal elitist nonsense. God made you perfect, and Jesus loves you just the way you are.
Reading myself (very slowly as it makes me want to throw things) an article on how "the elite" have abandoned Gendah Ideology™ and it was all (or mostly, anyway) Richard Dawkins' fault. A British guy going on about how Christians have always been the peaceful preservers of culture (unlike THOSE DIRTY MUSLIMS), thus ignoring pretty much the entire 20th Century, needs a good swift kick in the tuckus. The Telegraph also has a column by Nigel Farage about how Trump needs to pick Ramaswamy as his VP, so that's the mangoes we're dealing with.
Air travel isn't annoying enough for you?
2 marks!
The fact that those Republican women voted for a misogynistic fascist rather mitigates against them turning out OK
A British guy going on about how Christians have always been the peaceful preservers of culture (unlike THOSE DIRTY MUSLIMS), thus ignoring pretty much the entire 20th Century
and probably the 6th to 13th Centuries
Centuries were made to be forgotten. That's why they made so damn many of them.
I figured SOMEBODY would fold BAP into the comments.
Saw this over the weekend, it's a review of videos produced by cults (like recruitment videos from Aum Shinrikyo) and it had a bit about the Sedevacantists, whose offering was a catchy banjo-pickin' country tune about how they still don't eat meat on Fridays, and I briefly thought, "Aw, these folks don't seem so bad!" and THEN THEY GOT TO THE JEWS.
https://youtu.be/Vo-OlxINoJI
This seems to link to a video about hoodie pockets.
LOL, try this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq2_xcTdhI8&pp=ygUQd2lsbCBwYXBlciBjdWx0cw%3D%3D
Although now I'm expecting a lil' kickback from the hoody pockets people.
Turn around, bend over. I got a long line of volunteers here...
"pre-verbal ululations" or "Ian Killjew" one of those is the best thing ever. Maybe both! I can't decide. And am I lucky to have choices like this?
Of course I am.
Great column!
Glad I caught you in a good mood!
Well, dark humor is
nonetheless humor and like Art Linkletter used to say - Humor is the best medicine!
Maybe that was Bennet Cerf.*
Art Linkletter said, when questioned by the authorities,
" Kids say the darndest things!"
* I still don't know. Is it "surf"
at the beach or " kerf" like the width of a saw blade ? I guess if I really cared I could Google it.
I always pronounced it to rhyme with "surf"
Cerf’s up!
Definitely with a soft C. I didn't stay home sick from elementary school watching "What's My Line" for nothing.
Wait. You got PAID??!!
with knowledge
I know his son. It's "surf."
Ha - Thanks!
Died in 1971 when JK Rowling was only 6, so we were spared Cerf & TERF
On What's My Line, Jon Daly always pronounced it surf
"it’s important to be generally tolerant of intellectuals who may hold some immoral views"
But of course we can't be tolerant of the alphabet people, nosirree, that's going Too Far.
Fuck you, Rod.
Rod was just as shocked to learn about Hanania as he was to learn his own Dad was in the KKK or to learn the headmaster of his kids' school was a Nazi. Shocked, shocked I tell you.
Someone should really ask Dreher: as he is so easily duped and undiscerning, why should people pay attention to anything he says about any topic? (not that any sensible person does)
Well, anyone the left doesn't like is a NAZI, you know, hard to tell with all that going on! (I just cut to the chase & call 'em fascists, though Falangists is probably more apt but who'd get the reference?)
Urgent oo, ooing sounds from the back of the room, hand raised and waving..."pick me!"
Well, that's cheating, because I know everyone here will get it.
Well, I know you need a ga-gasket for that falange.
Although Webster seems to think they are the same thing.
The fascists never had a world class flamenco guitarist on their team. The Falange, on the other hand...
That was because of the falanges aka fingers
Weird, innit? Like how all the people Donald Trump hired as President turned out to be deep-state operatives who wanted to destroy America! What're the odds, huh?
If you can’t spot the Nazi at a Nazi rally, perhaps you too are a Nazi.
It's just too bad for President Trump that he didn't have any previous experience evaluating a group of people and deciding which ones were good and which ones were losers. Could have come in handy when he was picking an Attorney General.
So, discernment-challenged?
All the best people weren’t.
Cmon Roy, don’t leave us hanging! Which immoral view could he mean???
For a while Sully said nice things about the 5th Column left
[goose holding knife in its beak] Which views? Which views, motherfucker?
Knife-wielding Goose meets Milkshake Duck.
Generally tolerant of intellectuals who may hold some immoral views. Provided, of course, that those views are not "we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, heal the sick"--you know, any of those things that Jesus said we should be doing. Those things are a level of immorality that is simply unforgivable.
And provided those views are not "we probably shouldn't be beating homosexuals to death." And we can't accept "summary execution of Black people simply for being Black is not a good thing."
But "we should do the Holocaust right this time!" is definitely a view we need to be tolerant about because the intellectual promoting may have some other ideas.
"So much for the tolerant Left!!!"
I may be overstating things, but the "slavery taught skills" makes me think of the "they're learning how to have a job" bullshit of Workfare. Nowhere near equivalent but I get echoes.
Oh, absolutely. And let's remember these are lessons being directed at children. Because it's important to inspire children with the message that in America, absolutely anyone, if they work hard, can obtain employment as a manual laborer or perhaps even in a skilled trade where they might be able to earn enough to pay rent.
And maybe even before they get out of elementary school! 😖
Whoa, I don't know if I can handle that much inspiration.
Don't forget the ability to enlist in the military to have exotic adventures and create profit for our proud "defense" industry.
I was just reading a review of the movie From Here to Eternity which is enjoying a 70th anniversary and it mentions that in the original novel, Frank Sinatra's character, Maggio, performs oral sex on older men for money because he can't live on Army pay.
Time for a remake, m'thinks.
Reich-To-Work State
Because being intellectual, having intellectual-seeming thoughts, is such a rare thing that we basically have to accept anyone even willing to try. You know, like if you had some rare brain tumor and the only doctor capable of removing it was Josef Megele.
Myself, I feel like we're adequately supplied with public intellectuals and can afford to be a little choosy.
"it’s important to be generally tolerant of intellectuals who may hold some immoral views" as long as some of their views agree with mine
Maybe it should read "specifically tolerant" instead.
The Tulsa Massacre? Really? I hadn’t realized in condemning the mass murder of an entire community, we were voicing a “slanted perspective on American history.”
The only viewpoints the Right and Center-Right DON’T find interesting and compelling enough to engage with are any viewpoints that promote egalitarianism and acknowledge the full rights and humanity of everyone. They always regard those ideas as commie trash that is beyond the pale.
Well, you know, "urban blight" 🙄 funny though how the Bad Parts of Town always mirror where there was redlining for decades.
One of the things that mystifies me is when the braying asses known as the GOP claim that the liberal commie Marxist socialist Democrat Party has ruined the country. I’d go farther than your point above: the regressive reactionary fascist Nazi GOP believes that to promote egalitarianism and acknowledge the full rights and humanity of everyone is what is destroying America, i.e., the America that exists in right wing propaganda.
Stuff doesn't look like it used to! Things change! Waaah, we're gonna have to civil war if things don't change back!
There are miscegenating couples in advertisements
Have you noticed now that when you say "Thank you" people say "No problem" instead of "You're welcome"? I blame the Democrats.
No problemo
I agree.
Yeah, we just gotta vote for whoever the Republicans nominate, even Trump, because four more years of Biden/Harris is just unthinkable! Just look at how much they've destroyed America in the three years they've had already!
They let a million people die for nothing!
Oh, wait, that was the previous guy.
Why even bring up slavery? Such an ugly word.
Everyone knows the 13th Amendment fixed 75% of racism and the Civil Rights Act (of 1967 if you ask DeSantis) took care of the other 25%. Why must liberals keep rehashing the past as if history has any impact on today's world?
To continue to bring up the past is furthering racism. We must aspire to be colorblind. Except when it comes to judges and juries in the US District Court of the District of Columbia. Then we must fight for diversity!
Gotta love that WVa diversity.
A story I read this weekend about the DeSantis campaign contained the line "his controversial positions on abortion, immigration and slavery." And I have to admit it caught me off guard. Apparently, slavery is now a "controversy" that we're "debating."
Periodic reminder that state-sponsored action destroyed Tulsa's Black Wall Street not once, but twice: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/18/tulsa-highway-black-wall-street
“Let’s not bicker and argue about who bombed who.”
Those Black people took our bullets and never gave 'em back!
Just a whole lot of folks standing their ground.
Well, sometimes standing other people's ground, but whatever.
“I’m sure there’ll be an article in the Times this week about how Chris Christie and Larry Hogan are the future of the party. They never seem to catch on.” -- my longtime pet theory has been that wunderkind conservative intellectual Paul Ryan excused himself to go lurk in the weeds while the GOP Trumpwar raged, only to step fit’n’ready on the bloodied battlefield. But now I think he made a bad bet, his Nazi bona fides are too mild and long forgotten, and we shall never see a President Ryan.
I assumed he took the money and ran. Former speakers always look happy to be out of the game (except when they go to prison for molesting children).
Maybe. He always struck me as one of those nerds who decided at the age of 13 he was destined to be POTUS. Then he impressed some dumb people with money who don’t want to pay taxes. The DeSantis model.
"Kids say the darndest things!"
-Dennis Hastert
Oof
I thought this too. Although it looks like he will have a very, very long wait if that's the case.
We’ll always have the time he faked working at a soup kitchen and the time he lied about his marathon finish.
Ah yes. It was a more innocent time...
"lied about his marathon finish"
And that was the ONLY lie he told over a whole six-hour period! How did he restrain himself?
As SundayStyle says, it was a more innocent time.
Paul Ryan: "I told a half-dozen lies today, and boy am I beat!"
Donald Trump: "Hold my Diet Coke..."
"wunderkind conservative intellectual Paul Ryan"
It's true! He made a video where he stood in front of some charts, or graphs, or something! If that's not intellectual, what is?
Don’t forget his workout photo curling weights with his baseball cap on backwards! Peggy Noonan’s heart went pit-a-pat.
If he'd just remembered his "Music Band" t-shirt he'd be President now!
If he understood the lyrics of his favorite band, he would have become not a Republican
Like Tim Pool finding out what Machine was being Raged Against.
Thanks to The Majority Report I am now aware of Tim Pool’s blighted existence. The fact that the internet enables people like him to have legions of followers is proof that Man Is Evil. /Community
Did you know Republicans are moving away from anti-woke messaging and back to law and order while simultaneously attacking the FBI and DOJ? This is the type of cognitive dissonance you get when you let your party incise your corpus callosum so your right brain can hold a position contrary to your left brain. Toss in the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy and you have the perfect Republican voter: id-driven reactions to leaders who practice deceit and projection with the skill of a fencer wielding a broadsword.
"Reprogrammable meatbags", as driftglass puts it.
"id-driven reactions to leaders who practice deceit and projection"
You probably already know about that constitutional amendment they're voting on tomorrow in Ohio, to raise the threshold to 60% for approval of amendments by public referendum. Naturally, all the ads on the pro-side are about children being given gender-reassignment surgery without their parent's consent.
My cousin sent me an ad from her local Gettysburg area newspaper for a new Christian school. They're still pushing the story that kids across America are being allowed to "identify" as cats, and are being provided with litter boxes.
Notice how it's always a thing that you have to be told about through the internet because you (curiously) have never experienced the thing yourself?
Meanwhile climate change, which used to be a thing you might read scientific papers about, has become a thing people experience directly.
Sweet screaming Jesus.
There was a hoopla recently over girls identifying as cats, started by a misunderstood TikTok video of a classroom argument, and then boosted into orbit by The Telegraph, the NY Post, and Tucker. There were lurid references to kids identifying as holograms or dinosaurs. Naturally nobody could ever back up these stories with evidence.
Used to be little kids “identifying” as animals was called “pretending.”
"Litter Boxes"
Litter boxes in the schoolroom
Litter boxes made all urine-proof
Litter boxes in the schoolroom
Litter boxes all the same
There's a pink one and a green one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made completely urine-proof
And they all smell just the same
Over to you, Steve!
Litter boxes, litter boxes,
And they're all kinda Wokey-Wacky
But I saw it on my Ticky-Tocky and it's all lies just the same
There's my cousin, and her best friend,
And she heard it from her manicurist
And she told it to the Twitteratti but it's all lies just the same
There's my landlord, on the school board,
And he heard it from Mr. Trumpty-Dumpty
And it made him all croaky-cranky but it's all lies just the same
And the kittens go to cat school and then to the university
But it's down there in Florida so it's just not the same
But they all love Tony Tiger except for the really fashy ones
But you know they're always lion and they'll never be tamed
There's my uncle, and his best friend
They're gonna burn down the university
Cuz their minds went all breaky-brokey
From the lies stuck in their brains
Too dark?
There's DeSantis, he's a fascist
He's the guy who's all Woke-a-Dopey
And the voters all say Nopey-Nopey
And it all goes down the drain
(help me, I can't stop)
"... as much as he’d like, for example, and that “historical tragedies should not be used in the service of a political agenda that has a slanted perspective on American history and the modern causes of urban blight” in reference to, get this, the Tulsa Massacre."
I have some notes for Hanania fils (taped, sans doute, across my fist): atrocities like the Tulsa Massacre were hardly terrible exceptions to the norm in the early 20th century. They actually were shamefully, horrifyingly common in the USA. Usually the scene of the crime has been concealed under a reservoir and there are an awful lot of those all over Appalachia & the South...
(The brilliant Tony Earley short story "The Prophet from Jupiter" seems to be about one of these massacre site/reservoirs.)
Or the interstate highways in downtown Kansas City chopping up and demolishing Black neighborhoods.
The Cross-Bronx Expressway & that big lake in Central Park come to mind as well...
Or the interstate highways everywhere chopping up and demolishing Black neighborhoods.
Look at the tight ring of interstate around downtown Kansas City and think, “Was this really necessary or efficient?”, and then look slightly to the south and east and see that it cuts off the Negro League Hall of Fame from downtown, as just one example.
Also, the Jazz and Blues museum
Indeed.
One could, if one were inclined, attribute the Tulsa Massacre as leftover from Red Summer 1919: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/chicago-race-riot-of-1919
"Usually the scene of the crime has been concealed under a reservoir and there are an awful lot of those all over Appalachia & the South..."
Lake Lanier, for example, which has developed new and improved ways of killing people as revenge.
I could see a new, Woke version of Poltergeist coming out of this.
Except that many of the "race riots" happened prior or much prior to 1919. East St. Louis was 1917, Wilmington was 1898.
If Trump falters only Greg Abbott is hateful and cruel enough to step in. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/5/2185513/-If-Trump-falters-only-Greg-Abbott-is-cruel-and-hateful-enough-to-step-in. With Hanaia et al as his warped brain trust.
The Base grows ever bloodthirsty.
Let the hate flow through you! (future Republican Presidential contender Palpatine)
"I’m old, and retain dim memories of the Young Republicans of the 20th Century"
Hey, I'm old too! And what I remember about young Republicans at that time (I mean the ones who weren't working for the Nixon campaign ratfucking his opponents) was "C'mon, America's not so bad, stop being such a Grumpy Gus, OK?" A tendency which reached its peak with the performance of Up With People at the Nixon White House. So yeah, they're... um... different now.
Right up to Romney, Republicans felt compelled to hold that rictus-smile attitude, "America is JUST FINE!" And then Trump came along, and it was like the uncorking of a bottle.
America is already great!
I have to admit, it must have been hard to hold that pose for 50 years. No wonder the dam burst when Trump came along. "Wait, we're allowed to say BAD stuff about America? This feels so liberating!"
Today it would be Down With (Certain) People. I'd love to see their set list.
Once you get through "Proud to be an American" and "Try that in a small town" they got nothin'.
Late to the thread but....
I saw a band called "Down With People" in 1988 or thereabout. Loud angry punks having a grand time for themselves. Good enough for an encore. They played straight up versions of Pink Floyd's "Lucifer Sam" and Hank's "Cheatin' Heart". One of my better outlays of disposable income that year.
I think people like Hainana and Ben Shapiro are what happens when you take 20th Century Republican youth and marinate them in a "look what you Democrats made me do" sauce
I assumed they weren’t marinated, but rather incubated in vats.
Yes, "marinated" sounds suspiciously ethnic. Like they might actually come out tasty.
That's what Steve Bannon hopes
Hey they still need some fluid in those vats
"Hey, it's drier n' Mrs. Ben Shapiro in here!"
Fun fact: Glenn Close got her start as a member of Up With People.
Down with Sheeple!
BTW, I am sitting here in the airport terminal waiting to board the flight to Chicago where we have a FOUR FREAKING HOUR layover before continuing on to Fairbanks. Keep a good thought for me as I will the plane to stay in the air 😵💫
I have a friend who flew from L.A. to Paris. When we asked her if she slept, she said, "No. I had to help the pilot fly the plane."
“And boy were my arms tired!” /rimshot
I am at O'Hare at the moment, having successfully kept the plane going, and it's about 2 hours to go. Had a decent, if expensive Reuben. Saw a Lego vending machine, an apatosaur skeleton, and LACTATION POD.
How strong was your lactation?
I did not look inside the POD so the quality and quantity of LACTATION could not be established.
Lactation seems like could be a slightly awkward point of departure.
I was guessing they gave you a receipt for quantity
Ha ha, you folks think I kid
https://twitter.com/PereUbu7/status/1688657827043180544?t=3D0e1FH_pICsRYvDtnkYTA&s=19
Hey, the web address still says "Twitter". Oh, JBE Musk, you've done it again!
We kid WITH you, not UPON you. More to the point we kid the POD. Not that it's a bad thing, but POD? Really?
Sleeper promised us the Orgasmatron, and this is what we get.
Not near as much fun anymore, what with LEDs replacing all the incandescents.
Upvoted for a machine that dispenses LEGO Lactation Pods. The next Spinal Tap hit song.
Now, was this a vending machine made of Lego?
Only a four hour layover? Oh, you sweet summer child. Try flying from Sioux Falls to, say, London. Or better yet, have the nether lords of the airlines cancel your connecting flight on a lark, or whimsically reroute you through Atlanta or DFW.
Local joke about Hartsfield-Jackson International: "If you have to go from heaven to hell you have to change planes in Atlanta."
I love it when they route us 1.5 hours out of our way to change planes at a hellgate hub we were trying to avoid. If I *wanted* to fly the wrong direction to a busier airport, I would’ve scheduled it that way!
Your choices are fly to a busy hub and wait or fly direct to one of a couple destinations on Allegiant. You better like it as that's what deregulation did
Or Rapid City to Budapest. I had 8 hours in Heathrow and around 4 hours in Denver. It turns out Heathrow did not have TVs except in the gate areas. I did some find some Lewis Chessman replicas at the National Museum store
But Rapid City, South Dakota is where James Mason & Co. depart on their trip to "the other side" in North by Northwest! Did they have to change planes in Atlanta too? When Mason says, "This is a problem best solved from a great height... over water" I didn't think he was talking about Lake Lanier.
He should’ve flown Allegiant, where passengers practically have to push the plane to get it started, and you drive all the way to your destination with the blinker on.
Well, the driving all the way with your blinker is just SD State Law
Like perpetually driving in the left lane in Nebraska
Ah, so that's why Eva Marie Saint was so desperate to not get on the plane. Allegiant: You'll prefer a climb over Washington's head to flying with us!
“It’s the ONLY way to (not) fly!”
Ugh. Actually though I prefer no TVs to ubiquitous Airport TV shouting at me when I just want a brief respite from noise.
No TVs when you are by yourself in an airport for 8 hours kind of sucks
How do so many Dipshit Centrists (h/t Atrios) and garbage people like Matthew Yglesias not only get taken seriously, but keep failing upward? Maybe credulous, dewy-eyed Ezra Klein could do a think piece about it.
They literally don't have skin in the game.
They assume the torch-bearing and caliper-wielding set will never come for them.
"Great, I'm free to see every question as just an intoxicating intellectual exercise!"
The linked Dreher piece is comedy gold. He calls Freddie de Boer a “brilliant maverick of the Left” and later plays school psychologist: “…it seems clear to me that [Hanania is on the autism spectrum], and that this has something to do with his intellectual style, and the substance of his writing. He lacks the inner sense that tells him, ‘You shouldn’t go there.’”
Yeah, about that “inner sense.” Oh, Rod…
I'm sure he'll be applying that same generous spirit to the impulsive young activist who went so far as to suggest we should defund the police.
Wow, only RWNJs manage to be so ableist while attempting compassion for the neurodivergent. But as neurodivergent folx are often hyper-aware of social injustice, I'd guess Dreher is as far up his own ass as ever on the question...
C'mon, the poor guy has racist-Tourette's! Accommodate his disability, libs!
That "spectrum" isn't autism but fascism.
Now I want an Explainer that ranks all the Republican presidential candidates on the Fascism Spectrum. Just a lil' fashy or full-on fash? As usual, Trump dials it up to 11.
Spinal Tap has gone digital.
You know who ELSE lacked the inner sense that tells him "You shouldn't go there...."
Where "there" was "Moscow in the winter"?
or Moscow on July 4th
Caesar crossing the Rubicon?
Lamedar
Hey now, Rod and Sully agree about primitive root wieners
No way I'm googling
I have no idea whether or not they agree. Rod had a piece in which he talked about looking over at a kid's penis while in the school bathroom. He called the black kids penis a primitive root wiener
I went to college in the 60s and the Young Republicans were dicks.
That's a bumper sticker.
Matthew Y., quite a guy. I read a few of his economic pieces on Substack and decided he was muddled in the mind.
Too many people can't follow their own motivations. They actually believe they are engaged in rational discourse, when they are, as you say, following their desire for attention and doping their brains on rage and reactions.
People who want to win arguments are usually silly.
Oh yeah? Well sputter sputter
I heard the nutter mutter
In a voice oozing like butter
That descended into sputter
He devolved to be a rutter
Causing me to utter
"Quit pokin' me with that putter!"
Great column.
Thx!