Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

In after Baud. Damn.

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27Comments

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I’m a white male, and I have seething uncontrollable anger.

    At these wussy jackass racist pricks who display the fucking Confederate battle flag and have no fucking clue as to how fucking lucky they were to be born white in the first place.

  4. 4.

    scav

    Holy Free Market Sink Or BootStrap Auto-Levitation wasn’t sposed to apply to them the white male of heritage. Glub Glub Glub GluBubba! Ignore the waving, it’s feigned and we know a helping hand wouldn’t be correct (besides, it would be bitten).

  5. 5.

    Schlemizel

    I have a seething uncontrollable anger too, but instead of aiming it at the poor and disadvantaged mine is aimed directly at the masters of the universe and the mouth breathing troglodytes that have given them the sword with which they are destroying my once great country. I will gladly volunteer for guillotine duty when the time comes, line those fuckers up and I will whistle a happy tune while moving them along to their well earned reward as quickly as possible.

  6. 6.

    c u n d gulag

    That truck spells “M-A-J-O-R L-E-A-G-U-E S-T-U-P-I-D A-N-D I-G-N-O-R-A-N-T A-S-S-H-O-L-E!!!”

    What, the gas-mileage, Bubba, wasn’t bad enough before you jacked it up, and added extra tires, you epic f*cking douche-canoe?

  7. 7.

    Baud

    Lots of people have it tough. Seems like this one group are the only ones refusing to work with people who are trying make things better.

  9. 9.

    Keith G

    Great article that describes the large swath of the white male population which is seething uncontrollable anger.

    Great. Sweeping generalizations supported by anecdotal interactions.

    Look racism is real. Acting out due to compounded economic frustration is real. Michael Kimmel is a Professor of Sociology and he probably expects his students to show their work. Before attributing uncontrollable hate behavior (race-based anger) to a “large swath” of any population, I would like to know the foundational work.

  11. 11.

    Kent

    I actually read the article. Kind of a mess of a piece actually. Just a few random points.’

    1. There are basically no Vietnam vets under 60 anymore. Bo Gritz is nearly 75. This isn’t a Vietnam thing. I teach HS and see lots of these angry young white guys in training. For them Vietnam was grandpa’s war and deeper in the distant past than WW-II was for those of us who spent our childhoods in the 60s and 70s.

    2. Lots of mention of supposed right wing conspirators frequenting farm foreclosure auctions and the like…roping people into tax schemes and other nefarious stuff and not one single in the entire article of talk radio and FOX news. Seriously. Read the article. Not one mention of the role of the media…talk radio, FOX, Sara Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush, the tea party and other Koch funded groups, etc. etc. Reading the article one would think this is all the work of fringe militia groups, Christian Identity churches and the like. Really?

    3. After living in Texas for the past decade and having lived in other similar places (Alaska, rural Oregon etc.) I’ve come to conclude that most of this stuff is really just tribal. The racism, sexism, and hatred? Just tribal. Just like love for NASCAR or the Crimson Tide. Lots of these men are racist and sexist not because of some deep-seated ideological beliefs. Although some of the sexism does come from fundamentalist Christianity. In general though, I think it tends to be more of a convenient way to define tribal identities. The us vs them.

  12. 12.

    FlyingToaster

    @Kent:

    most of this stuff is really just tribal. The racism, sexism, and hatred? Just tribal.

    This.

    What I see up here in the People’s Republic is the Scott Livelys (et.al.) are of the “We hates fags” tribe, and most of the RC hierarchy is of the “We is Cathlick victims” tribe, and the old coot at the top of the hill in my town is the only member of his “I HATE EVERYONE WHO IS NOT WHITE AND ITALIAN AND MALE AND HETEROSEXUAL AND FUCK YOU ALL” tribe.

    What the article misses, as you’ve pointed out, is the role of right-wing-noise media; it provides the shibboleths to allow these fools to find people who claim to be “like-minded”. Such as David Koch, Dick Armey, and Sarah Palin.

  13. 13.

    RareSanity

    For those that are questioning the voracity of this article, I don’t think that you read the italicized text at the very end:

    Excerpted from “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era” by Michael Kimmel. Published by Nation Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2013 by Michael Kimmel. All rights reserved.

    This isn’t a stand-alone article, it is an excerpt from a book on the subject. That may explain the somewhat disconnected feeling you are experiencing after reading it.

  14. 14.

    Kent

    @FlyingToaster:

    Exactly. I’ve come to think that the only reason religion is so popular in this country is that it provides otherwise ungrounded and unrooted Americans with a tribe with which to identify. Europeans have ethnicity. One is Scottish, Swedish, Basque, Bavarian, English, Polish, Croat, Dutch, etc. You already have your tribe by birth so you don’t need church. Here in the US we are mostly rootless mongrels with a hodge podge of ethnicities and regional ties. Religion provides a convenient tribe, especially the more aggressive Evangelical religions and the Cathlick old men types as you put it.

  17. 17.

    Chris

    I’m surprised that the word “fascism” doesn’t appear once in this article, because that’s exactly what they’re describing. A rural, middle class movement saturated with ultranationalist values. Defined by opposition to the Undesirables and resentment for the memory of defeat. Guided by conservative politics but mad at the world those politics have built and the people running the movement whom they suspect of all being blood traitors. Thriving on economic downturn but ultimately more resentful of their fellow victims and anyone who’s trying to do anything about it than of the people who’re actually screwing them over.

    If fascism comes to America, this is where you’ll find the Brownshirt thugs who carry it to power with deafening cheers only to be given the Night Of The Long Knives treatment as soon as the regime’s safely in power.

  18. 18.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    If fascism comes to America, this is where you’ll find the Brownshirt thugs who carry it to power with deafening cheers only to be given the Night Of The Long Knives treatment as soon as the regime’s safely in power.

    It’s the double standard that slays me. Remember the 90s? There was one, one sorta-kinda-in-a-dim-light “left-wing” terrorist out there: Ted Kaczynski,* and that was all anybody could talk about. Meanwhile Black Hundreds like this were forming all over the country and nobody paid any attention.

    *Was the hoodie they put him in in that ridiculous artist’s conception how hoodies got to be so threatening?

  22. 22.

    Another Holocene Human

    @c u n d gulag: I swear, some people buy Silverdildoes just because of the horrible gas mileage.

    It’s like a bad financial decisions Olympics and they’re committed to #WINNING.

  23. 23.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Baud: It’s hilarious (not really) how they blame the j000000000000z for their economic woes rather than Nixon’s “get big or get out” farm policies and Reagan’s naked union busting.

    Goldbuggery plays into it too.

    Note that D’s don’t have clean hands–Volker arguably applied “discipline” to inflation both too late and too excessively, and Clinton signed NAFTA, which promotes ‘race to the bottom’ labor practices and does nothing to protect strategic industries, you know, assuming the US had such a thing as an industrial policy, which would be Communism, because American Exceptionalism #sarahpalinspeak

  24. 24.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Keith G: It’s nice to know that a fine mind like yours can glean everything you need to know from a gloss rather than RTFA. Anyway, your emotional reactions are so much finer and deeper than ours–we get strident and shrill and–ungrateful–we could never know what deep wounds you endured reading the gloss on the article which is an excerpt of a book based on a research project which Keith G knows is wrong, wrong! to its very corrupt core! without ever having to engage on the substance or the evidence on the matter.

  25. 25.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Kent: Agree. I thought the article was interesting but not particularly insightful. I mean, it’s just one academic and he’s defending his research and how he interprets it, but my mind kept screaming “psychology! you’re missing something here! psychology!”.

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