“White, Christian and male voters, the study suggests, turned to Mr. Trump because they felt their status was at risk.”https://t.co/ggbfodyMUX
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 26, 2018
It’s the latest euphemism for “racism, with a grounding in sexism”. From the Atlantic, “People Voted for Trump Because They Were Anxious, Not Poor”:
… After analyzing in-depth survey data from 2012 and 2016, the University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana C. Mutz argues that it’s the [former]. In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she added her conclusion to the growing body of evidence that the 2016 election was not about economic hardship.
“Instead,” she writes, “it was about dominant groups that felt threatened by change and a candidate who took advantage of that trend.”
“For the first time since Europeans arrived in this country,” Mutz notes, “white Americans are being told that they will soon be a minority race.” When members of a historically dominant group feel threatened, she explains, they go through some interesting psychological twists and turns to make themselves feel okay again. First, they get nostalgic and try to protect the status quo however they can. They defend their own group (“all lives matter”), they start behaving in more traditional ways, and they start to feel more negatively toward other groups…
Mutz examined voters whose incomes declined, or didn’t increase much, or who lost their jobs, or who were concerned about expenses, or who thought they had been personally hurt by trade. None of those things motivated people to switch from voting for Obama in 2012 to supporting Trump in 2016. Indeed, manufacturing employment in the United States has actually increased somewhat since 2010. And as my colleague Adam Serwer has pointed out, “Clinton defeated Trump handily among Americans making less than $50,000 a year.”
Meanwhile, a few things did correlate with support for Trump: a voter’s desire for their group to be dominant, as well as how much they disagreed with Clinton’s views on trade and China. Trump supporters were also more likely than Clinton voters to feel that “the American way of life is threatened,” and that high-status groups, like men, Christians, and whites, are discriminated against…
Study not only explains why white voters, especially men, supported Trump but why *media pundits* chose to focus on economics as the cause. https://t.co/mE62y75nqS
— Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) April 23, 2018
I don’t think that was ever a prevailing opinion except among some all-white groups. Plenty of white people—I think especial those of us from working class roots—& most people of color thought it was bs. https://t.co/JtfzzocI4k
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 24, 2018
Michael (no, not *that* guy) Cohen, at the Boston Globe, is more honest:
… Mutz found little to no evidence that a decline in income, loss of a job, or concerns over a worsening “personal financial situation” drove voter preference. Rising unemployment or a drop in manufacturing jobs in the area where someone lived wasn’t much of a factor either. In fact, “living in an area with a high median income” was a far more important predictor of a vote for Trump. This is precisely the opposite of what one might expect for an election allegedly decided by “economic anxiety.”…
Many pundits (myself included) came to believe that Trump’s racism would doom his chances. The opposite occurred. It spearheaded his victory. It’s small wonder that as president Trump has stuck to race-baiting and xenophobia on everything from immigration and terrorism to protests at NFL games. The man might not understand anything about policy or how to be president, but he does appear to grasp that his supporters share his cultural and racial resentments — and that the key to his continued political success is to keep fanning those flames.
The lesson for Democrats is that winning over Trump voters on economic issues may not be the most effective message in upcoming midterm election. The better strategy is to activate the multi-racial coalition of blacks, Hispanics, white liberals, and suburban women who supported Clinton in 2016 and who have become the engine of the so-called resistance. Of course, that also means that the racial resentments activated by Trump will not be dissipated — and if the attacks on Clinton are any indication, will be further magnified. It’s a depressing reminder that as much as we’d like to wish 2016 away, it will remain with us for some time to come.
If we can’t change their tiny minds — or, as the Media Village Idiots would prefer, pretend a more thoughtful, less prejudiced electorate into being — then we can at least be clear about who our “friends” really are.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
So….you mean that it wasn’t about
‘ Economic Anxiety’?
Really?
Uh huh
Uh huh ??
rikyrah
So….
They decided to cling to the Whiteness….
Uh huh
Uh huh??
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
On topic:
It took years of propaganda and the studied refusal of the media to call out the increasing lunacy of the right to get here, so it will take years to unravel, and until the idiot news media starts to acknowledge their role in creating this mess we won’t get much changed on that front. I think those of us in the resistance are pretty clear we need to overpower our opposition and drag them kicking and screaming into a better future for the rest of us.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: They didn’t like to have to press ‘1’ to hear the message in English, it makes them anxious.
Jay
“It started with Yates, she “betrayed” her position,
She raised flags about Flynn but Trump wouldn’t listen.
Speaking of Flynn, he was gone in three weeks,
A “very good person,” always lies when he speaks.
Next was James Comey, an apparent “nut job,”
Tickled the “Russia thing,” made it swell up and throb.
And bossy Sean Spicer, the poor guy said enough!
Afraid of the Mooch, he wasn’t so tough.
Then Priebus unhanded as the Chief of Staff,
His busy two hands pried off the Trump shaft .
Scaramucci, Bog love him, lasted all of ten days,
Drug-dialing a journo just never pays.
Then ruddy-faced Bannon was given the boot,
Couldn’t even hang on to the Breitbartian loot.
Next Gorka was ousted, he of large swollen head,
Now a feature on Fox, a fucking witless retread.
And then entitled Tom Price flew away on the breeze,
In charge of health, he was the doctor of sleaze.
And goodbye Omarosa! as she’s shown the door,
Back to pop culture like a herpetic sore.
Wife-beater Porter was then brought to light,
If canned by a woman he would have put up a fight.
Then lovely Hope Hicks cut her White House stay short,
Don’t cry for her folks, she’ll see her old friends in court.
Next some Trump tariffs proved too much for Cohn,
He’d put in his year to take his tax-free gains home.
Then Trump dropped the axe on his Secretary of State,
It seems that ol’ Rex talked a little too straight.
Clock-setter McEntee was then hustled out,
Presented the trough, he turned into all snout.
Then hours before he could calmly retire,
McCabe was a victim of the TrumpDumpster fire.
And McMaster, the general, was pulled out of battle,
Replaced by a moustache given sabres to rattle.
Gone too is Shulkin from Veterans Affairs,
As Captain Trumptanic rearranges the chairs.
And now his replacement Doctor Candyman,
Is dead on arrival, done before he began.
So…Hooray!
Trump’s draining the swamp! He’s removing the gators!
The grifters and crazies, the autofellators.
He knows what he’s doing, hires only the best,
So don’t be despondent! Don’t be depressed!
The Trumpster is on it! The best president ever!
Ask him, he’ll tell you, this is all him being clever.”
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/04/love-song-m-dean-cohen
satby
And on a happier personal note, my phone and tablet were recovered yesterday. That Android app “find my device” works really well. The cleaning guys at the farmers market heard the locate alarm sound… My stuff might just have been “borrowed” by a bored kid, it was in a nearby unoccupied booth. I hadn’t heard my phone ring because I had it set to vibrate while working. Small bit of faith in humanity restored…
Jay
@rikyrah:
From the Urban Dictionary,
“TOP DEFINITION
economic anxiety
a coded phrase used to exonerate racist whites for their support of political candidates, legislation, and other policy that would reinforce racial hierarchies in the U.S. that are the legacies of colonialism and slavery.
These Trump supporters are not racist, they just have a lot of economic anxiety.”
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3fterm=economic+anxiety&=true
Defined in 2016.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Good to hear, you won’t have to buy new stuff.
Balconesfault
Takes a deplorable to want to turn government over to a Trump than to see the black person living in the box next to them finally get a spit to roast their pigeon on …
Kristine
@satby: Yea!
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: unfortunately, already did, though I was already planning on replacing the phone anyway at a more convenient time. And I can just ship the new tablet back when it gets here. I had already blown away (factory reset) the tablet, so I had to restore it all, but that’s painless with a Kindle. The only sad thing is the recipes I had saved in my web page reading list, which are easily recovered by saving them again. I suspect I even know the miscreant, a 6yo who l had already let use the tablet earlier in the day to watch cartoons while his mom worked. The market kids often just go play in vacant booths.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Nice.
Balconesfault
@Jay: thanks for that .. haven’t been to LG&M for awhile…
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Jay: Language is dynamic, and the changes seem to be moving faster in a social media interwebs world. Unpacking all this shorthand will be quite a project for historians that look at this era in years to come.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby:
No doubt his/her name is “Not Me”.
Balconesfault
So it’s not a fear that a black or brown person will take their job … it’s that a black or brown person will get an opportunity to outperform them at their job…
Amir Khalid
It was never really economic anxiety, was it? The anxiety was white people believing that their race privilege was a zero-sum game: if Americans of colour were getting ahead, that must mean they, the white people, were falling behind. Or at least that people of colour were gaining on them. I see a similar dynamic in Malaysia’s own still very race-based politics.
@satby:
It must be a relief to get your stuff back, even if you’d already replaced it in the meantime. You can always sell the old stuff and recoup some of the replacement cost. :)
Jay
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
In the social media interwebs world, faux linguistic terms like “economic anxiety” are often truely defined for what they are, long before media pundits abandon the dogwhistle and concealer.
“Urban’s” tend to call out things for what they are.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: He had already left by the time I was frantically tearing my stall apart looking for my stuff. 6 year olds are bad at putting things back. I didn’t have a lock screen on the tablet because I seldom take it out of my house, so lesson learned. The phone was already encrypted anyway.
Happy ending though.
NotMax
Who’s up for some harp on harp action on a weekend morn?
satby
@Amir Khalid: yeah, it’s more my faith in general humanity that’s restored. Because in spite of what news will relentlessly tell us, most people are ok.
Now, if I could just figure out where the house sitters put my damn backup tablet!
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Media pundits crafted the term, “economic anxiety” as cover for “racism”, during their early coverage of Deplorables.
By June, 2016 the top definition on the Urban Dictionary had already been defined,
Just as with Brexit, pundit after pundit said it was about “taking back control of Britain”, when in fact, every interview with Brexiteer’s on the street, by the Guardian, The Independent et al, showed that again, it was racism.
The Daily Mail, the Torygraph, etc just edited out those parts of the interviews.
satby
@NotMax: ok, that’s good, but odd.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid:
I saw that 30 years ago when I was writing my Master’s thesis.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Jay: Which is what in turn requires blogger ethics panels. Pearl-clutching among professional pundits when folks left of David Brooks call bigotry or scorched-earth fascism what it is remains one of the most infuriating elements of current US political culture. There’s plenty of other stuff that’s more immediate and serious, but MAN…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay: As Amir noted these folk believe that life is a zero sum game, they don’t get that a rising tide lifts all boats.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: They are too dogdamned happy for 5:26 am.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
hellslittlestangel
There’s just no discrimination as cruel and unjust as discrimination against members of high-status groups. Walk a mile in my Gucci loafers.
Baud
@Jay: That there should be in Oxfords English.
Baud
@NotMax: Fascinating.
Jay
@Baud:
It will be in a few years. Webster’s too.
David Perlman
This is a great thread on this:
https://twitter.com/_EthanGrey/status/989375059121901568
Jay
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
It wasn’t bloggers sitting in the last diner in Dumbfuckistan or the 19th hole of a golf course, interviewing Deplorables, who crafted, seized on to, and clutched as if they were drowning to the term, “economic anxiety”,
It was the same Ususal Suspects who wrote all the “nice, normal, Nazi Next Door” normalization pieces after Charlottsville.
What kind of a dirtbag do you have to be, to have a lengthy interview with someone, in which the last half or quarter of the interview, they go Full Metal Racist, and you edit that part out, in part because your Editor want’s to keep the election a horse race, and in part, because you are interviewing the “simple clay of the American West”, and you can’t print that sort of “stuff” about “Real ‘Murkins”.
Baud
David Atkins is usually crap, so I was surprised about this.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/04/28/conservatives-will-never-get-the-respect-they-crave-they-dont-deserve-it/
Cermet
No surprise – this country was built on slavery, molded with racism and polished to a shine by Judeo-christian values of hatred (i.e. american christianity – greed for oneself and ‘to hell’ to all others; so, not just racism.)
Glad that ones valuables are found!
On a more positive note, at work but doing some fun stuff (or I’d never come in to work on the weekend!) However, as a white, privileged male with a upper income level, I can’t complain at all.
Baud
Too corrupt for the corrupt.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soccer-worldcup-trump/fifa-points-to-ethics-rules-after-trump-tweets-threat-to-world-cup-bid-opponents-idUSKBN1HY03C
Jay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Actually, they don’t care about “boat lifting”, even their own. They can just hire people for that.
All they want is everybody who’s not a “Real ‘Murkin” to die, and the white trash “Real Murkin’s” to be in the economic position that they have to scrape, bow and lick boots, back when Indentured servants were little better than slaves, but white(ish).
Welcome to the New Confederacy.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Jay: Jay, your tone, please… That’s what alienates voters in the Applebee’s salad bars, you know
Jay
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
Yup, in all the Applebee’s Salad Bars from coast to coast,
Well, that and calling toasted bread cubes cruton’s, and fancy mustards, and beige suits,
Isn’t that French?
Baud
The preacher firing scandal is awesome.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Jay: You may as well eat some cheese and surrender
Jay
@Baud:
Welcome back to the Wars of the Reformation.
The Rapture can’t come too soon.
OzarkHillbilly
On the lighter side:
And I thought I was a horrible child. I love this kid.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay: No, you’re wrong, they see life as zero sum. If someone else gains something, they necessarily lose. This is why they’re protectionist, they fail to understand that a trade deal can make both parries better off.
Kathleen
@rikyrah:
Interesting phrasing. “I didn’t attack xxx because he/she was Muslim, Mexican, or African American etc. I’m suffering from an interesting psychological twist”.
This will not stop Slanders or his media minions from yammering about “economic anxiety”.
Jake the antisoshul soshulistf
@Amir Khalid:
Status is zero-sum. Status is telative. See LBJ, “convince the lowest white man he is better than the best black man, he will empty his pockets for you.”
Jay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
No you are wrong, ( it is an internet rule),
It’s been proven time and time again when they vote for legislators and legislation that makes them worse off,
Because it hurts the people they hate, envy and resent, more than it hurts them.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Another tantrum from the spoiled little child. He doesn’t bother to make the case for the North American bid, not that he has any idea what it is; he just makes empty threats to countries whose national FAs support the other bid.
For what it’s worth, I think a North American bid is a terrible idea. I remember the complaints about the traveling distances (and the summer heat) during USA ’94. The Korea-Japan in 2002 was the first World Cup to require travel between two countries separated by the sea, and that was bad enough. Imagine the logistics issues with teams and fans and media spread across three countries, two of which are as geographically vast as the 48 states and Canada.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I find his closing para a little too optimistic.
To my cynical eyes, corporate power is fighting tooth and nail to hold on to the status quo.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay: No, it’s zero sum thinking at work. They vote for folk that will make others worse off, therefore they win since it’s zero sum.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: FIFA has ethics rules? Who knew!
Amir Khalid
@Jake the antisoshul soshulistf:
LBJ saw it the same way I do.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
What happened to the FBI investigation on FIFA? Is it concluded?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Don’t know.
Raven
@Jake the antisoshul soshulistf: fuck lbj
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
I loved his story, and as I posted elsewhere, he’s the hero this world needs – even though he’s probably being killed for the rest of his life.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: It is on hold pending the awarding of the 2026 World Cup. If FIFA knows what’s good for them, they’ll do the right thing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Just not gonna let anybody stop him. I do feel for his parents. I know the hell I put mine thru.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@OzarkHillbilly: Acknowledging customer feelings only matters insofar as it contributes to investor returns. The instant those two goals conflict in any sizeable way, everyone knows which direction events will turn. Plus, PR sops and “Martin Luther King would TOTALLY drive a Dodge Ram” don’t really count. “Corporate power shifting” in this instance seems to just be a shuffle in the marketing department.
debbie
@satby:
Nice! That app has worked for more than a few people.
OzarkHillbilly
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Yep. It’s always about the profit margin.
debbie
@Baud:
Yes, I heard a couple reports yesterday on the subject. They are angry about disrespect, but not a single reporter pointed out that they’d done the very same thing to Obama.
Wyliecoat
@OzarkHillbilly: Amazing story! But 12 and in the first year of high school? That’s pretty precocious anyway, isn’t it?
Kay
@Baud:
It is. “We fired him for his including his religious views in a prayer” or “we fired him because he’s Catholic and we favor Protestant fundamentalists when hiring” – just take your pick.
I just want you to imagine the screeching if Nancy Pelosi had fired the chaplain for obliquely referencing anti-abortion views. They’d have to do a special edition of the NYTimes to include all the outraged op eds that would be published, and a quarter of them would be written by Democrats.
WaterGirl
@satby: Such great news!!!
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
If Trump is really championing the World Cup bid, he’s doing it badly wrong. You don’t threaten the people who vote on the bids, you bribe them.
Geeno
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: I think you see the actual shift in things companies do to attract workers. Medical coverage for domestic partners was a thing long before gay marriage for example. Stuff like that I think is what Ozark was talking about.
debbie
@Kay:
I liked that Ryan said Pelosi was with him on the decision, and she slapped that down right away.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
I like to think that when he’s 45 and sitting down for Christmas dinner, his parents will still be glaring at him in stony silence.
One friend of mine tells a story about how he finally admitted to his father, at age 50 with kids in their 20s, that it was him that put a dent in the side of the car with his bike (he’d lied about it at the time – I think he was in his early teens). He did it at Thanksgiving dinner as they’d been reminiscing.
Said his dad put on a world class mad right there in front of the grandkids. All they could do was laugh as he stomped off to cool down.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Wyliecoat:
Straya uses different terms for its school levels than we do, I think.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
The feeble excuse for a Speaker who sacked Fr. Conroy is himself Catholic. If he yielded to this argument, then he is an abject coward.
Ella in New Mexico
I have found it amazing that almost all the Trump supporters I personally know have pretty damn good incomes, most well over 150k+ per year. Some actually came from working class family backgrounds, too, so by getting educations or running successful businesses they have totally busted through the class barriers to become very financially successful. You’d think they’d feel blessed, safe, happy, generous because they have a good life, better than their parents.
But the resounding theme in so many of their political laments is that “other people”, people who don’t “deserve” it, get stuff for free in this country. They’re so angry about this. From the “illegals”, who “sneak into” the US and “take our jobs” to “welfare cheaters” who get Food Stamps, Medicaid, SSI, public housing, they’re pissed off about someone else having what really amounts to a pathetic standard of living just getting by, totally ignoring how great their life is while they bitch about it. The memes they regularly pass around on social media are fixated on drug testing or work requirements for people getting safety net support, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people receiving these benefits are children, the disabled, the elderly or people who DO work.
And while I think they genuinely detest everybody who gets any government assistance, the truth is they assume pretty much everyone on the “dole” is a person of color. They just think they can mask their deeply racist beliefs with bullshit claims that they think its not the government’s job to take care of people.
And while it disappoints me, I’m not surprised. It’s what they’ve been being told on talk radio and right wing news for decades now. They’ve been convinced by Limbaugh and Hannity and Dobbs and all the rest that THEY’RE victims. And until this generation shrinks and the younger folks who live in the real world take over, these whiney ass miserable shits are gonna be the heart of the Republican party.
OzarkHillbilly
@Wyliecoat: When I was 12 I went to North Kirkwood Junior High School, 7th, 8th, 9th (Freshman) grades. KHS was Sophomore, Junior, Senior. I don’t know how Australian schools are structured. Either way, this is one amazing kid, I hope his drive isn’t beaten out of him by a society that tells him he is “bad” because he just won’t go with the flow. I also hope his parents survive.
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: a better example than customers would be the culture shift well underway within offices. It’s very different working amongst the white collar (now business casual) office than it was 20years ago at MNCs and F500 companies. A lot of these comfortably middle class trump supporters are proabably just as upset by diversity initiatives at work that they can’t do anything about as they are about kneeling football players and African Americans disrespecting police officers after killings.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t really agree with it either. I think it assumes “corporate power” is wholly and exclusively concerned with the views of Americans- the American market- and that just isn’t true. They’re global and the world is…multi-cultural. They want emerging markets and emerging markets aren’t white Americans. They won’t necessarily be “liberal” economically, either, nor do they have to be. We already know this. We’ve seen corporate actors happily grab Trump’s tax policy while passionately defending their commitment to diversity. They just can’t be racist or white supremacist if they want billions of customers who aren’t white people. Racial or ethnic bias is irrational and not alienating billions of customers is rational.
US Republican politicians can’t do what corporate actors do- drop the racial and ethnic bias and keep the tax cuts for exactly that reason, too. It has to be an irrational appeal, an appeal to emotion, to bias. If it wasn’t ordinary people wouldn’t vote for them because it harms them economically.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid:
Fr. Conroy is a Jesuit, which to a lot of Catholics, isn’t very Catholic.
Spanky
@?BillinGlendaleCA: BiG, seen today’s APOD? We’re latitudinally disadvantaged, sadly.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
He’s got the Australian National sport of rule evasion down to a science. You should follow the Sydney newspapers – the business corruption makes our assholes seem like choirboys.
Seriously – if you’re in finance or real estate or telecom in Sydney, you’re not performing if you don’t commit at least a felony a day. The series “Rake” isn’t that far off the mark.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geeno: I always see corporations as evil incarnate, that when they do good it is in service of the most vile ends imaginable.
Kay
@Ella in New Mexico:
I think they know they’re on the dole. It just makes them madder because they’re convinced that the reason they’re on the dole is because liberals ruined the country. If it wasn’t for that they’d be millionaires. It doesn’t work like you’d think it would work- they can be on the dole and also furious that they need it. It’s just a different kind of privilege. Basically they believe they are entitled to success in the private sector and if they aren’t successful it’s because someone else took their allotted slot. That’s how one can hate Nancy Pelosi while still being wholly dependent on Medicaid for one’s children’s health care.
If you believe in “markets” like a religion then you need some explanation for why you didn’t succeed in them. You need it MORE if you didn’t succeed in them. Someone or something is getting in the way of their natural and inevitable success. It isn’t the free market! Can’t be. Must be Nancy Pelosi.
WereBear
@satby: Yay!
Regarding the subject of the post: too bad they were so busy interviewing Trump voters they didn’t listen to US jackals, who knew all along what was going on.
hueyplong
So are we now supposed to stop scourging ourselves for our arrogant failure to heed the plaintiff cries of Hillbilly Elegy?
Let’s give them something to be anxious about this November.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Exactly, Some years back I was listening to an interview with the owner of a fish processing facility. He said, “I couldn’t be in business if I couldn’t hire illegal aliens.” as though it was his God given right to break the law in order to make a profit.
rikyrah
@satby:
Yeah , satby ?
Glad you found them.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
Remember this, from the campaign?
It was all bullshit of course. The emails were as boring as the rest of the haul. But they were promoted as a “new scandal” by media and the Trump campaign and it worked. If you didn’t read the (actual) emails you thought they were some smoking gun showing Hillary Clinton “viciously attacking Catholics”.
It’s oddly comforting to have a “Catholic scandal” that wasn’t engineered by Wikileaks and the Trump campaign, but instead was home grown and based on an actual event. USA! USA! :)
AnonPhenom
Ladies and Gentlemen…yes, yes come closer and you will see feats of intellectual dishonesty and false dichotomy that will amaze and surprise (not really) you! Observe as The Media takes the true and actual fact regarding their use of the phrase “economic anxiety” as a cover for the loss of white racial (mostly male) privileged status, adopt it as if it had always been the way the insiders in the know spoke of such matters, and proceed to construct a false equivalence between “economic anxiety” and economic inequality!
rikyrah
@Baud:
It really is pathetic, isn’t it?
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
I said the feeble excuse for a Speaker is Catholic.
p.a.
@Amir Khalid:
Trump isn’t used to being on that end of the plot.
rikyrah
@debbie:
That’s ok. Because, we on this side have the 8 years of disrespecting 44 receipts filed away and will bring them forth in a nanosecond.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
He is a Jesuit?
Ah…explains a lot.
eclare
@satby: Speaking of humanity, I hit a pothole and got a flat tire a few days ago. As I was on the phone with AAA, a guy pulled up and said he could put the spare on in 15 minutes. And he did. In pouring rain. I am still shocked.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: But is he a Jesuit? The Catholic Church has many different orders and some are viewed with great suspicion by conservatives within the Church. Some view Jesuits as being almost heretical. They are just as suspicious of Franciscans. It has been over 50 years since I’ve had anything to do with the Church and my knowledge of the current Machiavellian maneuvers between the various power centers is really thin, but the hatred of Francis by Church conservatives is in no small part due to fact that he is a Jesuit.
Baud
@Kay: That is spot on.
Frankensteinbeck
One hugely important issue in racism is control. Economics has little or nothing to do with this, even zero-sum. The concept is that everything is fine as long as white men get to choose what minorities get. Many of these racists will seemingly treat minorities as equals, as long as they get to decide if that’s true. Others need to feel they can hurt minorities whenever they feel like it, even if they never do. This control issue is central to why whites flipped their shit at Obama’s election, why a set of them lost it only after his re-election, and especially is why the idea that black lives matter infuriates them.
@Jay:
It is important for most of national journalism to promote that conservatism isn’t bigotry because they, themselves, are bigots.
@Kay:
Not a lot of Republicans believe in markets except as an outgrowth of bigotry. It’s a major reason why there are complaints Trumpism is leaving behind True Conservatism. Particularly ironic since Trumpism still shovels everything to the rich, it just makes it clear racism will win any conflicts.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: Oh no, trump has spent a lifetime buying favors from various govt people starting with building inspectors. It’s just the cost of doing business.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Initially read the title as, “People Voted for Trump Because They Were Assholes, Not Poor.” Finally some candor from The Atlantic, I thought.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
I was saying that Ryan is Catholic, and that if he yielded to anti-Catholic bigotry in sacking Fr.Conroy, then he was a coward. I saw no need to point out that Fr. Conroy is Catholic.
ETA: And if Conroy is indeed a Jesuit, so what?
Kay
@hueyplong:
Hillbilly Elegy was actually a lot less Right wing than it was portrayed. I’m convinced 90% of the Republicans pointing to it as proof of something or other didn’t read it.
A huge part of the book was about violence. Violent homes. Violent reactions to ordinary frustrations. An inability to “use your words” and how violence is glorified in poor white people circles. Don’t like what the pharmacy clerk says? Knock over a display. Show your kids that. Show them that feeling frustrated and disrespected entitles you to hit someone. The author was a gentle, smart kid who had the misfortune to be born into this. He suffered by it. It scared him and made him feel the world was chaotic and out of control. That’s a part of poor white people culture that interests me, and it’s a part that richer white conservatives don’t want to talk about.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Paul Ryan worships no other god but John Galt, and ‘Catholic’ is just a word in his personnel file. I’m not entirely sure he cares either way about racism, just has no problem with his caucus demanding it.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: When I was a teenager I was walking along a busy road one rainy night when I heard a racket approaching from behind me. I turned and saw an idiot driving a BMW on a shredded tire and rim with sparks flying out the ass end and grinding the pavement. I waved the older man over and when he looked at me like “What?” I just said I’d change it for him. So I did. When I was done he drove off without so much as a thank you.
Yes, he was white, why do you ask?
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Jesus. Yes. That permeated my growing up. These people hate, and they are looking for excuses to be violently cruel about it. It’s woven deeply and widely into Southern culture. I don’t know about other conservative cultures.
rikyrah
Dolt45 and his contempt towards the disabled??
https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/989990771494457344?s=20
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly: Wow. I profusely thanked this man, and I hated that I did not have any cash, although I suspect he would have turned it down. He said he would want someone to do the same for his wife. Fini.
J R in WV
@satby:
No way to ask them??? The house sitters, I mean…
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: You are just not getting it, Jesuits are the ni**ers of the Catholic Church. Franciscans are the Hispanics. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Paul Ryan is hating the right Catholics. That is what matters.
rikyrah
Teachers protesting admit they were voting for the people who put them in this situation.
Oh well??
https://twitter.com/greenhousenyt/status/990028056675971073?s=20
WereBear
@Kay: What I took away from it was his accurate perception that his culture taught him nothing useful; even table manners and what to wear to a job interview were baffling to him and held him back in myriad ways.
This is another advantage of the Internet; you can find these things out. I would comb through old books in the library and try to find some savvy adult to ask questions of; today, anyone can find a website devoted to their question, and plenty of people to ask.
It’s frankly amazing.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare:
Which is why I continue doing those kinds of things. As much as we all complain about people it is funny how often we come across these stories.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: I use “beer theory” in that 20% of the people cause 80% of the problems.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Voting, not boring, right? Still that tweet was depressing because it sounds like she’s not leaving the republicans for causing the problem, she is trying to get the republicans to get behind education. I’m not sure she’s smart enough to be a teacher.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear:
And find the answer they want. “It’s all because of those people.”
danielx
@p.a.:
One would think after all those years of bribing building inspectors and the like, he could follow the plot without a program.
Kay
@WereBear:
Some of them don’t know it, though. We do these fake job interviews for high school seniors. They bring in “employers” (I’m not really one since we only two employees and virtually no turnover) but I go if invited. The lower income kids who are on the ball and trying hard overdress. They wear party clothes. I felt so bad once because I commented that the girls wear high heeled sandals and it’s fucking freezing here. Looking at their feet pains me- it’s -10 and they’re wearing strappy sandles. A teacher told me they only have one pair of dress shoes and they choose sandals, which admittedly are more fun as far as crazy colors, etc. and I might do the same thing.
The higher income kids know what to wear. It’s almost a uniform. They wear slacks and a shirt with a collar – boys and girls-and the more ambitious (boys) wear a tie. This is what I tell my own son to wear, for everything, basically. So now I tell the lower income kids about the secret dress code :)
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
But if Ryan is Catholic only in name, as Frankensteinbeck says, would he care about Catholic-vs-Catholic division to the point of anti-Jesuit prejudice?
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: I got a flat as I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot just over a mile away from home. I had no idea it was a flat – there was a terrible sound and I was hoping my engine didn’t fall out before I made it home.
As I turned into my driveway, my new young (to me) neighbor across the street met me as I got out of my car. “You want me to fix that flat for you?” I had no idea! I was terribly grateful and I insisted on giving him some “thank you” money – he totally saved my butt because it wad a Sunday and I had a 9am work meeting I wouldn’t have been able to get to. He said no at first but i insisted – they have a toddler so I’m sure they can use the extra money.
Lots of good people out there, but it can be hard to remember when the awful people are so very loud and in your face.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
The only, and I do mean the only, good thing about this horror show we are living through is that these evil ass Republicans are being revealed for what they are. The Republicans benefitted from standing on the side, sabotaging every attempt by the Democrats to improve people’s lives while bragging about all the good things they could do. Guess what, they have all the power now and can no longer hide. Their policies are vicious and cruel. They despise the poor, the elderly, and children. They are racist, sexist, bigoted, and selfish. Every person with a bit of sense and empathy can see them for what they are. They are ruthless, greedy, evil, psychopaths.
We have to absolutely crush them in November. To do that we have to stay focused on voting rights, and do the hard work of voter registration, persuasion, and GOTV. And we have to resist all the active measures that will foment division and try to take down the strongest voices.
I’m going to make a fresh pot of coffee and watch Joy this morning.
Gelfling 545
@Balconesfault: That’s it in a nutshell. Anf it was the root of the Obama hatred: he WAS better and denying it took hideous mental contortions.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: We still can’t fix stupid.
Dev Null
I’ve been reading this blog since before the Venerable Blogmaster had his “road to Damascus” moment (l’affaire Schiavo) … occasionally commenting, but mostly lurking … and I gotta say, I get more out of the comments here than I get out of the front-pagers at most of the blogs I read. (Not that any of you need my approbation, of course; rather: “credit where credit is due”.)
Stay rabid, Jackals!
WereBear
@Kay: I’ve done that too. It breaks my heart to see some of them trying so hard and doing all the wrong things, but that’s what I am there for, and it’s a really good idea to have these one on one chats. They get less self-conscious that way.
I really appreciate how many of them realize they don’t want the struggle of their parents’ lives.
WaterGirl
@Kay: The non-profit I contracted with last year had a grant for young pups in chicago who would be looking for work soon. They got metra cards so they could go to interviews, they were taught how to interview and what to wear, they got gift cards to, say, burlington coat factory so they could buy interview clothes, they had employers come in and tell them about their professions, etc. The grant helped line up employers like Walgreens who were willing to have these kids work for them, but the grant actually paid the kids – employers had to provide time sheets every two weeks.
A bank came in and got them set up with bank account so they could get direct deposit paychecks. It was a really worthwhile thing. It’s so not fair that only people with money know the double secret rules.
chopper
@rikyrah:
“quick, get a jansenist in here instead!”
mai naem mobile
@OzarkHillbilly: what an asshole for nit only not thanking you but tipping you. I was driving with a friend and he noticed a purse on the sidewalk so I pulled over and he grabbed it. Anyhow, there were ID’S and credit cards. No cash. There was also lip balm or something similar all over the purse like somebody had rummaged through it. I called the wallet owner,met with her at a 7-11. Not only did she not thank me she treated me like I stole it. Oh,yeah she and her partner looked like typical white yuppies.
The Other Chuck
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
How about “lies”? A tsunami of lies. That works for me.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Ella in New Mexico: “It’s what they’ve been being told on talk radio and right wing news for decades now. They’ve been convinced by Limbaugh and Hannity and Dobbs and all the rest that THEY’RE victims.”
And Robert Novak, George Will, Buckley, John Birch, etc. This narrative goes all the way back to slavery. I’m reading accounts of it now in Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph. This line of thinking was commonly expressed by bitter former Masters/Mistresses the moment that Black people were given freedom (and even before.). Sadly there has always been someone spreading this fear and there probably always will :(
Elizabelle
@Kay: That’s just heartbreaking, about the dress to impress that goes wrong.
I am so glad some kids are lucky enough to have jackals who will spill the secrets living in their communities. Good on Kay, and werebear and everybody who’s taken an interest and the time to interact.
Good morning, jackals.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@The Other Chuck: Uncouth peasant.
CliosFanBoyNeeWoodrowfan
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Sadly, people actually do get made about that. Amazing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: I don’t agree with Frankensteinbeck on that. Just as there is the Prosperity theology in Evangelicalism, there is such a strain within the Catholic Church. The Church is very much a top down organization where for large segments of it fealty to power is more important than truth, whether the power is within the church or a govt. Jesuits are hated because they question Church doctrine, and when they find it wanting they are not afraid to ignore it. Hence the big hub bub when Francis said “Who am I to Judge?” He thinks homosexuals are human and they can’t allow for such heresy.
Neldob
The economic anxiety trop is perfwct! But I’m reading The Future is History by Masha Gessen and it makes me feel like we need to tread wisely this minefield of 30%. There is an ugly history brought to life by the breath of horrible halitosis.
Villago Delenda Est
Haven’t read the entire thread, but what this also means is Wilmer and his moron followers are totally full of shit.
Dev Null
@Kay: Hillbilly Elegy was actually a lot less Right wing than it was portrayed.
That was my reaction, too, so you must be correct. (er, joking)
I really don’t get the “Vance is far-right because his book is far-right” meme.
Maybe he is (far-right) and the book is – I dunno; but what I took away from his book was the social dysfunction of the culture he grew up in. That’s not far-right; it Just Is(tm).
I thought Elegy was a very gracefully written book.
What bothered me most about Elegy was the near total absence of PoC. I remember only one mention of a melatonin-rich individual, an anecote about a dude who got a white girl pregnant.
And while Appalachia is whiter than the rest of America (83% white vs. 77% white), it isn’t *that* much whiter. It seems implausible that Vance was so isolated in white-only communities that he never so much as noticed blacks. (Admittedly, those are circa 2010 stats; the proportion has changed somewhat in the past 40-odd years.)
(Appalachia stat from ARC.gov – which last I heard Trump still wants to defund; US stat from wiki)
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Sadly and forever true.
Chris Johnson
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s worth looking into Piketty to remember that rising tides don’t just happen by themselves. There’s nobody better positioned to restore the economy of this country than the Democratic Party, especially after the Republicans have blatantly fucked everything. But the party is the tide, not ‘economics’, anxious or otherwise.
Democrats are responsible for setting up the whole redistributive mechanism that got us out of every Gilded Age that’s ever been. Without that, Jeff Bezos simply keeps all the money (or Travis Kalanick, etc) because he can. This is not complicated and Republicans won’t do it.
Brachiator
RE the Boston Globe article, you would think this was obvious.
In addition, Democrats need to hammer home the manifest failures of Trump and the Republicans.
It should be easy to nail the Republicans on the crappiness of the tax reform law. And they should be held accountable for their stupidity and cowardice with respect to health insurance.
J R in WV
@WereBear:
“Regarding the subject of the post: too bad they were so busy interviewing Trump voters they didn’t listen to US jackals, who knew all along what was going on.”
My take was that most of the people they interviewed openly shared their hate and racism, but that all of that bile was edited out of every interview, even though it was obviously a major part of the voting shift.
The interesting point to me is how irresponsible it was to edit the nut of the information out of their stories. Immoral, irresponsible, unethical, and in the end, distorted their reporting in favor of Trump and racism and hate, and deliberately so!!
And the 64 million dollar question is how do we get these reporters and editors fired for this unethical slanted reporting???
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Hillbilly elegy person was blaming all his woes and the woes of people of his class on the “liberal elite” that’s the reason whatever he was saying was lapped up by the media. I saw more than one of his interviews, wasn’t he trying to run for senate as an R?
germy
@Dev Null: Vance cited “The Bell Curve” author Murray in one of his books.
When they appeared together on an American Enterprise panel, Vance joked about their “pretty clean Scots-Irish blood.”
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/04/j-d-vance-asshole
rikyrah
@MomSense:
?????
At all you wrote
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah. I am thinking of the Scalia Catholics; all the rightwingers who detest Pope Francis. I hope they are never ascendant in the Catholic Church again. Let those fuckers schism.
OzarkHillbilly
@mai naem mobile: I recently found a purse in a grocery cart at the local WalMart. It was with some reluctance that I turned it into the people at the service desk due to the fact that there was cash in it. (I did not count it, could have been $20-30 in small bills or a few hundred) I can only hope that the 3 or 4 people who witnessed my turning it in were sufficient to keep a single dishonest underpaid employee from pilfering it. It’s a little hard to trust that people who return a stolen cashless wallet/purse did not reward themselves already.
I had my wallet stolen once and the woman who found it called me looking for a reward. Pissed me off. I told her she could keep it that I’d rather go thru the time and expense of replacing everything than give money to someone trying to profit off another’s misfortune. 2 days later I found it between the doors on the front of my house. I wish I could have thanked her.
Dev Null
@WereBear: What I took away from it was his accurate perception that his culture taught him nothing useful; even table manners and what to wear to a job interview were baffling to him and held him back in myriad ways.
And bank accounts were alien to him (IIRC).
I infer that this is one (of several) reasons Vance has the reputation of being far-right … people read into this “I / Vance surmounted my dysfunctional culture; those who didn’t – who remain mired in dysfunction” are to blame for their condition.
But I didn’t have the sense that Vance feels that way. To me the book was a straightforward account of growing up. I didn’t get the sense that he was judging others or holding himself up as superior.
You want someone who feels himself superior (at least to libtards)? David Frum, who I gather is seen as Vance’s mentor.
bemused
Church membership and attendance in general has been dropping for a long time. The far right evangelical christians have been particularly alarmed, panicked, blaming the loss of their “status” on secularism and our growing “permissive” society instead of acknowledging that fewer and fewer Americans buy into their religious brand of authoritarianism, intolerance…all the isms, worship of money…greed is good…the poor are too rich and the rich are too poor, anti-science and education, etc, etc.
John Podhortez made a comment on Bill Maher show when topic was the religious divide between the devout and less devout. He made a comparison with tv shows getting dropped because not enough viewers are watching anymore. A little simplistic but if churches are worried about the decrease of members or attendees, too many of them just dig in their heels, double down, doing the same things expecting different results. Those churches have no interest in appealing to more people and their life experiences. They only want the power to force their will on everyone.
Frankensteinbeck
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
Then I suggest the problem is not that they were lied to, but that they went looking for someone to lie to them. Like you said, through all of history, it has never been hard to find a preacher of hate if you want one.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dev Null:
Not to me. I so rarely see black people here in this Lilly white area it is notable only because I want to ask “Do you know where you are?” Sullivan was a Sundowner town till the mid ’90s and it’s not much better now. I have STL friends who will never come for a visit.
Hell, sometimes it feels like I want to go to STL just so I can see a black face again.
germy
Vance has endorsed Mike DeWine.
DeWine is opposed to legal abortion. He opposes same sex marriage. He was in favor of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, saying her lack of experience would “add diversity” to the court. He opposes net neutrality. He brought a lawsuit against a part of the Affordable Care Act.
He has Vance’s full support. Fuck Vance and his hillbilly book.
Barry
And notice that FTFYT is kinda sorta admitting the truth well after the damage is done. ‘First rough draft of history’, my @ss.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
I used to joke that Jesuits were the only Catholics who were not required to believe in God.
I’m not religious and don’t know all the ends and outs of Catholic theology, but I recall reading that early on Jesuits were allowed to study all the literature and other material that were withheld from pious regular Catholics. And I had a co-worker who had gone to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who seemed to know a lot of Jesuits who partied and drank and gambled, and a number of former Jesuits who left the Church and got married.
JPL
Joy’s show is an awakening that one can evolve from hurtful and hateful speech. Her opening statement apologizing was good and the panel’s discussion is excellent. Thank you goes to Joy, because I was shocked by some of the language on her blog.
OzarkHillbilly
Speaking of racism:
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Some just can’t evolve. Maybe Kay Ivey will put up a plaque stating why the monument was erected.
Gelfling 545
@David Perlman: Thanks for the link. It led to some good studies.
Gelfling 545
@Baud: The link between getting respect and behaving respectably continues to elude them.
The Other Chuck
Speaking as a White Male, please destroy my privilege. I’m tired of assholes wielding it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: Heh, I’ve heard that joke too. Some friends of mine went to a Jesuit High School and had a very different kind of educational experience than my other Catholic friends or I. I was even jealous of them as they talked about the arguments they had with the teachers/priests. My public HS was so anodyne I was bored to death.
I forget what led up to it but one buddy asked during a religious class, “So, prayer is really just mental masturbation?”
germy
Kay
@germy:
Oh, he’s a Republican. But the book was quite critical of white poor people culture and actually gave credit for a lot of his grandparents financial security to Democratic policy choices.
They can stay violent. Far be it from me to take that way from them if it’s essential to the “culture”. I’m deliberately raising liberal elitists though- not out of loyalty to the Democratic Party or my ideology but because it’s a pretty nice life. It’s better not to be hitting people and raging all the time. Better for them. Just better. Superior, even.
The Other Chuck
@germy: Isn’t Maz going after Markos Moulitsas now? Guy probably does have a few skeletons, he used to be a republican himself after all. But he’s also pretty experienced at crushing shitmongers like Maz, so time to invest in popcorn futures…
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
I don’t know that you can. The publishers who are bigots are going to hire editors and reporters who reflect their values.
At least technology and changes to society are having some impact. Newspapers are dying, and fewer younger people read a physical newspaper or magazine. Even online news sites are struggling. The downside is that liberal reporters and editors, along with the bigots, are losing their jobs.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Kay: @Kay: Agreed, and so much of this ‘Real ‘Murcan business more or less comes down to the folks Vance profiles looking at everyone else and screaming “YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME???!!”
germy
@The Other Chuck: I didn’t know about that. Has Moulitsas been critical of Wilmer or GG in the past by any chance?
Gelfling 545
@Amir Khalid: “then he is an abject coward.”
I believe we already have significant evidence that this is the case.
I think Ryan’s Catholicism may be on the way out, being as how the Pope more or less rebuked his personal philosophy & all. Evangilicalism would be more accommodating of his granny starving ways.
Brachiator
@JPL:
I guess I have to look into this more. I had heard, and still hear, claims that some of the offensive quotes had been fabricated. Maybe that’s still the case.
But it makes a difference if a person has evolved from the worst parts of their past beliefs.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gelfling 545:
More likely that the Pope will be poisoned than the Church will change.
No Drought No More
“Transparent Trump”* has resignation on his rabid little mind.
“President Donald Trump continued his crusade against Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) Saturday, accusing him of slandering White House physician Ronny Jackson and calling for his resignation”.
Trump only wishes it was as easy for him to walk away from the consequences of his own treason.
Incidentally: were the tables turned and a democrat was consumed by the scandals that plague the Trump administration,occupied the White House, there isn’t a single congressional republican currently sitting that would not have already demanded that president’s resignation. And they would be right to do so.
JPL
@Brachiator: She hired someone to look into the blog, and they haven’t found proof that it was tampered with. Joy owned up to statements she remembered saying and apologized. She then let the panel discuss it. Capehart said that he was initially hurt but also recognizes the fact that isn’t the Joy he knows now.
Amir Khalid
I am recently self-diagnosed with full-blown Guitar Gear Acquisition Syndrome, and I am considering for later in the year (1) a Squier Stratocaster (I don’t love Sister or the Girl any less, I just want one more), and (2) a bigger and
loudermore capable amp. Strat candidates: the Bullet in Arctic White, the Affinity in Slick Silver, the Standard FMT in Transparent Ebony, the Vintage Modified in Vintage White, and the Deluxe in Metallic Pearl White. Amp candidates: Fender Champion 100 combo, Boss Katana 100 1×12, Fender Mustang III v2, Marshall Code 100 combo — all digital amps, all well-reviewed,and the latter two are modelling amps. I am open to opinions.Heidi Mom
@OzarkHillbilly: As a central Pennsylvanian, I understand. When my father was suffering from what turned out to be pancreatic cancer (our family curse) in 2001, I took him to the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, about 40 miles away from his home in Snyder County. Geisinger was, and is, a very well-regarded facility, and THE place to go with serious medical issues (“they took him straight to Geisinger” would be said to underscore the seriousness of a situation). It draws from a large, mostly rural area. As we sat in a crowded waiting room, it finally dawned on me that there were no dark faces among us. When a dark-skinned staff person (darker than the rest of us, not African-American) walked in, his appearance felt like a welcome return to reality. And what a relief it was to return to my home in the cosmopolitan-by-comparison town of Carlisle.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@OzarkHillbilly: Why does the House have a chaplain anyway? Don’t these people have houses of worship to go to?
Gelfling 545
@rikyrah: one of the mottos of the Jesuit order is “ to be men and women for others” . His mere presence must be a daily rebuke to soi-disant Catholic Ryan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Seek professional help.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: I think it’s even more primitive than that: “I have a God-given right to shit on dark people and nobody is going to take that away from me.” It’s not about relative status, it’s about the activity of keeping someone else down.
p.a.
@Gelfling 545: women?
ETA: Nazi coddler demands Tester resign.
schrodingers_cat
@WereBear: How is it that immigrants figure this out, yes even those from hard scrabble backgrounds in the so called shit hole countries but these salt of the earth so beloved by our media can’t. I think its because they don’t want to (many of them who want to, do and get out)
ETA: I used to know a guy who came from a village in India with no electricity. He was an agricultural researcher got a full scholarship to Cornell works for USDA now. He figured it out, what is Hillbilly Elegy guy’s problem?
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, that’s an opinion.
lollipopguild
@bemused: My experience with a lot of these “Right-Wing” churches is that they attract a lot of whites who want a church that will never tell them anything that they do not want to hear. The church want the bodies in the pews and their money. You come to our church and give us your money and we will always tell you what you want to hear and so on. These churches tend to be successful and the members can brag that they go to a big powerful church. People who actually want to hear the gospel of Jesus go to other churches and do not get interviewed by the Media.
different-church-lady
I am proud that so many of us jackals were ahead of the curve on seeing this clearly, and pushing back on the Bernie dead-enders when they tried to pedal their “pandering to WWC economic anxiety is the only path back” horseshit.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: You know they have group therapy for Guitar Gear Acquisition Syndrome and it is quite helpful for some people. You should look and see if there is a GGASA chapter near you.
Procopius
This is what I’ve been trying to get across for a year and a half. It was known within a few days after the election — more than half of Trump voters make more than $70,000 a year. They are not the humorous rubes and losers the MSM have been showing for a year and a half. They are exactly the well-to-do Republican suburban soccer moms the DNC is obsessed with catering to.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So Fing what? Hillary is a pretty awful politician and she won the vote anyway, the reactionaries had to cheat and collude with a foreign power to get their white savior Trump elected and all Spanky has succeeded in is making “stupid old white guy” a stereotype.
I think that “Hillary won, anyway” needs to be kept in mind in all this.
dopey-o
@OzarkHillbilly: i thought i saw you down in soulard! and you got drunk one night and wandered off into the heart of darkest missouri.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): It’s about the non separation of church and state.
Omnes Omnibus
@Procopius:
Citation needed.
Kay
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
I do think I’m better than Donald Trump, and I’m not even that good. I don’t admire him nor would I raise children to admire him. Sorry, but that’s just not happening.
My eldest son really suffered at the hands of these folks. He’s really smart and doesn’t have the ability to shape-change. He couldn’t crack the code like my daughter did and move among them- harder for boys because a lot of the culture is about how men “are” and he’s just not like that. He doesn’t want to hit you and he would much prefer you not hit him. In fact, mind the personal space and keep it arm’s length :)
He thinks people who aren’t in it romanticize it and I agree, although not the extent he goes on and on about it. He’s really happy as an transplanted urban elite. It’s a good life. The only downside for him is higher taxes and that’s a conscious trade he made. I feel like the author of that book could have gone in that direction, because what he really wanted as a kid was peace and some order and predictability and that’s not contradictory to liberalism. It’s (supposedly) the goal of liberalism as to individuals. Liberals fail at it all the fucking time- fall short- but that’s a good goal. It’s important to try.
Trump has such low standards. You see it so much with his hires. “The doctor is not a car-wrecking drunk!” That’s the DEFENSE of this hire. We never even get to attributes. “The senator is NOT a pedophile” Well, I would hope so! What is it that he’s good at, though?
geg6
Like Kay and WereBear, I’ve done these mock interviews with students at a local high school for the past twenty years or so. This school district is very rural and has the biggest economic divide of any of our local districts. Some of the students come from wealthy families with homes and properties that can only be characterized as vast estates, with a couple that have private runways and enormous stables of expensive horses. But most of these kids come from small family farms and trailer courts. And it’s as heart rending to see them the ambitious among them trying so hard to navigate a way out without having means or knowing the rules as Kay says so well. I, too, take great pleasure in giving them keys to the code.
As for Mr. Hillbilly Elegy, he’s not a real conservative, he’s an Ayn Rand/Peter Thiel libertarian. He has complete and utter contempt for the people he came from. He is totally IGMFY in relation to them and I find him a totally repugnant piece of human garbage.
Gelfling 545
@OzarkHillbilly: No, not really. Jesuits are prestigious owing to the attention they have paid to science and the intellect through their history. Franciscans are a more cuddly, fuzzy sort which is amusing if you’ve ever read a biography of Francis of Assisi Also, Jesuits are seen as kind of enforcers. When things get out of hand, call in a Jesuit. “They know all the rules and they know how to break them and they always know the name of the game.”
OzarkHillbilly
@dopey-o: Was that the night I beat up my own truck with a pipe?
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
I should clarify that I want only one more guitar and one amp. I don’t want to get five Strats and four amps, honest.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
Very droll.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: Hasn’t that ship already sailed. Don’t you already have two guitars?
Frankensteinbeck
@The Other Chuck:
So much this.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gelfling 545: You know different Catholics than the ones I grew up with.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid:
Deep down inside, you know you do.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: “I’ll have just one more beer.”
Heidi Mom
@Kay: I read Hillbilly Elegy, and in doing so was continually reminded of Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, a tremendously enlightening book by David Hackett Fischer (which, BTW, has always sounded to me like the perfect name for a historian of America). Fischer describes the folkways (naming traditions, gender relations, etc.) of four groups of settlers — New England Puritans, Pennsylvania Quakers, Southern Cavaliers, and the Scots-Irish of Appalachia. The latter, he thought, are more accurately described as North British Borderers, the fraught history of which helps to explain the Scots-Irish tendency to react quickly and violently to any real or perceived threat. In his book, for example, Vance cites as evidence of his hard-won triumph over Appalachian values the fact that he — by then an educated professional — was able to restrain himself from physically challenging a guy who cut him off in traffic! (It occurs to me that this hair-trigger response is very similar to, maybe the same as, an aspect of the “ghetto culture” that Appalachians and many others deride — the need to defend one’s name and dignity against any slight, because it’s all one has. As an aside, the most important of the folkways discussed by Fischer was a culture’s understanding of “liberty.” Three of the four cultures meant “liberty for me but not for thee”; only the Quakers of Pennsylvania meant liberty for all (and, with slavery, it took them a while to really put that into practice).
Brachiator
@Procopius: They are exactly the well-to-do Republican suburban soccer moms the DNC is obsessed with catering to.
Kay
@geg6:
Over spring break we went to visit this friend of mine (ours, now). He was my roommate in North Carolina. We were like each others biggest fans- “you’re GREAT- they suck!” It was a good thing to have at the time, in your early 20’s. Anyway, he was hysterical because he always had money’making schemes and he HAS made a lot of money now owning a series of restaurants. He hires a lot of “townie” kids. It’s “fine dining” as they say in the restaurant biz and he told me about how they don’t know about, like, eating meals at tables. He’s not judging them. He’s very practical. He’s like “we gotta go thru the shit with the forks and it’s exhausting and then they only stay 2 months”.
Heidi Mom
@schrodingers_cat: This was made abundantly clear in Khizr Khan’s book An American Family. What a long, winding, and just plain hard road he took to get here! But he had a grandfather who had inculcated in him a reverence for education, so he just kept going on to the next step. And he figured out the rules — including how long he could safely sleep on a park bench before the police would come around — along the way.
schrodingers_cat
@Heidi Mom: My friend I was telling you about in the last comment, was the first in his family to go to college. He didn’t keep constantly whining like the Hill Billy person does about his struggle.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: If your worst vice is wanting more equipment for the hobby that obviously gives you great joy and sense of purpose, I say buy anything you want that you can afford. I am happy for you, Amir!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
You forgot to add “not that there’s anything wrong with that”.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: You are just enabling him.
dopey-o
@Amir Khalid:
Do yourself a favor and buy the most expensive Fender you can afford. buy one that costs $200 more than you can afford.
If that’s not doable, buy a Squire and take it to a small guitar repair shop for a $100 dollar set-up. Save up some more money and replace the electronics. You can buy ‘loaded’ pickguards with really excellent pickups and switches. A good source of these are the stratosphere.
Youtube has a lot of videos about turning a cheap guitar into something better. Remember, keeping busy is the only way to keep GAS at bay.
For those with unlimited time, building a kit can really take you thru the looking glass. we won’t discuss this any further.
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
The Les Paul and the Telecaster are two quite different types of guitar, and the Stratocaster is a different type again. These are the three iconic electric-guitar types in rock and blues music. This guy makes the case for having one of each. One of each — that’s all, I promise — and I’m good. Really.
Washburn
@JPL:
Nope.
The lying sack of shit now says that she does not “believe” she wrote those things.
Her “I was hacked” story is clearly bullshit. And she has realized that it is not going to fly. So now she just doesn’t believe she wrote those things. Shades of fucking Ronald Raygun discussing the arms for hostage deal.
The stories were saved contemporaneously in the internet archive and even Joy’s lawyer admits that the Internet Archive was not hacked.
So she was a homophobic bigot then and now she is someone who lies about being a homophobic bigot.
Washburn
@Heidi Mom: Albians Seed is a fantastic book.
Amir Khalid
@dopey-o:
I have also been considering getting a really really cheap not-Squier Strat and dropping in a loaded pickguard with AlNiCo V pickups and a better wiring and pots, and roller saddles, and a Fender USA bridge, and locking tuners, and Schaller strap locks and a scalloped aftermarket neck with a real bone nut, and maybe even a new body … Oh, wait.
Chyron HR
@Washburn:
Do you think Bernie will ever apologize for dooming America with his disastrously bad “make the white race great again” campaign?
Spanky
@Amir Khalid: But what about …?
That would sound like this.
geg6
@Washburn:
So what? It was a decade ago and she has done much since then to cancel whatever it was she may or may not have written as a private person at the time. I, for one, accept her change of heart and respect her for sincerely apologizing for what she acknowledges she said and for giving a large part of her show to leaders among the LGBTQ community.
germy
WereBear
I tried to figure it out all through the book. He can see problems with his culture in how it affected him. He’s still a Christian White Male while never acknowledging the incredible advantages that gives him. He can learn table manners and tie picking. He’s not saddled with unsolvable issues like skin color.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Way back in the early 90s, a much whiter America, it was the only viable strategy. Occasionally someone in the party, even in the DNC, says something in that direction. This is proof to the Democrats Are The Real Enemies crowd that the party is merely Republican Lite. This is particularly ironic, considering they push much harder to get the WWC vote. The overall center opinion refuses to abandon civil rights as a major plank.
Kay
@Washburn:
I do think you have to grapple with the fact that “evolving” on that issue was really the mainstream position in 2006 so the question becomes (for me) why wouldn’t she be allowed to evolve on it? Plenty of other high profile people did and that was forgotten almost immediately. I think she can credibly say she is being held to a higher standard than plenty of other actual lawmakers people have backed.
lollipopguild
@Kay: Trump’s only standard is your loyalty to him, the good Doctor was loyal to trump so he is a good person. Trump sees everything thru the window of “How loyal is this person to me?”.
schrodingers_cat
@WereBear: I don’t get the fuss about the table manners either, I can eat with my fingers, and use the right fork at a fancy dinner or eat with chopsticks (not so elegantly).
ETA: I don’t expect a fucking aarti for doing that.
Heidi Mom
I @schrodingers_cat: I wonder if a sense of shame plays a role. The J.D. Vances are living in America, after all, watching successful Americans on TV and knowing that, according to the accepted criteria for success, they’re failures. Realizing that they can’t afford to eat in a “fancy” restaurant, for instance, and suspecting that even if they could afford to do so they wouldn’t know “how to act” (e.g., Vance wasn’t familiar with mineral water and thought there was something wrong with it when it was served to him). Rather than experience embarrassment, they find it easier to disclaim any desire for “fancy restaurants” and the prosperous middle-class life of which such restaurants are a part. Immigrants like your friend, on the other hand — and here I’m going way out on a limb and beyond my own personal knowledge, so please feel free to explain how I’m wrong — know they don’t yet know the rules and aren’t ashamed of that fact because they’re coming from a different society so how could they know them but by God they’re going to learn everything they need to know.
Amir Khalid
@Spanky:
Alas, a Gretsch is beyond the reach of my aspirations. Maybe, someday, an Epiphone Dot. That’s their ES-335, I believe.
Kay
@lollipopguild:
Right. For me it’s like “respect me!” and I think “no- be better”. This is really an expression of privilege- this let Trump be Trump bullshit.
No. I won’t. How about he try to be less of an asshole? Why do I have to lower my standards? Lying is bad. Making “lying constantly” into an adorable quirk of his personality is lowering standards. I can’t even believe it’s up for debate. Is “lying constantly” good or bad? Let’s just clear this up now. I’m picking a side. “Bad”.
WereBear
@schrodingers_cat: I went to school with kids like him. Being raised by wolves would be a step up.
They aren’t taught manners or self-care or getting somewhere on time or any of the little skills that help one live in civilization. What is worse, anyone who tries to help them out with this are resented because their self-image is so degraded, and reactions so oversensitive, that even acknowledging the lack makes them feel violent. They won’t cooperate and they refuse to learn because it feels like criticism. Which it is.
Essentially, joining the Marines and having no choice but to be trained broke the deadlock for him.
Heidi Mom
@Washburn: I would put it at the top of the list of “books that have expanded my understanding of the world in ways I never could have imagined,” along with Guns, Germs, and Steel.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
You also need a Flying V to channel your inner Albert King. Also too, an SG.
Suzanne
I had a bit of an epiphany this week, which means that something totally obvious to everyone else finally occurred to me. I was musing on the common refrain about Trump voters feeling “disrespected”, and I was kind of drilling down into that that means. To me, “respect” means that I acknowledge that someone has rights (legal and also just common rules of politeness) equal to mine. That is all it means to me to “respect” someone. But it doesn’t mean that I really admire them, or aspire to have a life like theirs, or that I think that person is my intellectual or cultural equal.
These people who have cultural anxiety are right to have anxiety, in a way. They used to have a lot of social power, and with that, they operated in the world in a way that made them feel like they commanded the admiration and aspirations of others—and they call that “respect”. But in every arena of public life, it is becoming clear to them that people who have more social power and influence (the rich, the admired in society, celebrities, academics and intellectuals, tastemakers, the trendy young people, etc.)….those people think their lives are small and sad and a little bit gross. They don’t really have less “respect”, in that no one wants to take their rights away, but that have less respect in that fewer people don’t admire them and don’t want to model their lives in a way similar to theirs. Economics, race, religion, guns, rural vs. urban, etc…..all of these are frames for realizing that people who used to feel like they had social power and that they commanded “respect”—by which they mean admiration—are now realizing that the people who now get that admiration ARE NOT THEM.
I think that this is deeply hurtful and that this psychodrama writ ginormous is proving very damaging.
schrodingers_cat
@Heidi Mom: When you are an immigrant, you have to swim or sink. You either adapt or go home.
lollipopguild
@Kay: I had a sister-in-law, now gone who would lie all of the time. She also was quite proud of her lying and would brag about it to her extended family. She would lie to her own family who would call her on her lying and she would get angry and change the subject. I think her lying gave her a sense of power. Trump’s lying has worked quite well for him.
Mary G
@Brachiator: @OzarkHillbilly: My dad was a Jesuit (not after he met my mom, obviously) and they are taught to question everything and treasure education, so they are considered wikd-eyed radicals by the authoritarian side of the church.
Dana Mild column in the WaPo today, “The poor don’t have a prayer in today’s Washington” shows Fr. Conroy had a habit of reciting the scriptures that Republicans prefer to ignore:
When told to be less political, he said he didn’t think the Gospel was political.
So he was flat-out trolling them all the time and they hated it.
Jeffro
@David Perlman: (from that very good tweet-thread you linked to)
Hmm…sounds like something BJ readers were onto, oh, about two years ago…why aren’t we getting paid for this stuff?
Mary G
@Brachiator: @OzarkHillbilly: My dad was a Jesuit (not after he met my mom, obviously) and they are taught to question everything and treasure education, so they are considered wikd-eyed radicals by the authoritarian side of the church.
Dana Milbank’s column in the WaPo today, “The poor don’t have a prayer in today’s Washington” shows Fr. Conroy had a habit of reciting the scriptures that Republicans prefer to ignore:
When told to be less political, he said he didn’t think the Gospel was political.
So he was flat-out trolling them all the time and they hated it. I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did. Ryan also hid the fact that he was fired, just telling everyone he had resigned in April 16, so the father leaked his resignation letter, which basically said “As you demanded, I’m quitting.”
Don’t fuck with a Jesuit if you’re a dim-witted libertarian. You will lose.
Jeffro
Also from that same twitter thread:
Cleek, I think your phone is ringing…
schrodingers_cat
@Mary G: Good for Father Conroy and fuck Ryan.
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: We knew this since T announced his candidacy.
Jeffro
@Ella in New Mexico:
Check out the data in that thread David Perlman linked to (back at #30 or so)…you’re spot-on.
Kelly
@Amir Khalid: Ha gear syndrome is more general than guitars. I have 7 different whitewater boats. A 6’7″ kayak for playing in waves on summer days, a 8’4″ kayak for comfortable whitewater cruising, a 10’6″ sit on top that I learned on that the grandkids use now, a 12′ 6″ inflatable double kayak to take the younger grandkids out on, a 9’10” single inflatable kayak that I take on shallow rocky runs and the grandkids paddle on summer days, plus 11′ and 16′ rafts. Oh and my wife has 2 kayaks. We’ll probably buy a couple flat water day tripping kayaks in the next year or two.
Kay
@Washburn:
We accept these “journey” stories all the time. This is Kucinich on his “journey”:
The Journeying is just very, very common on both The Left and in Democratic politics. I could do at least ten of these examples and I bet you could too. They’re a deal-breaker for some people but generally? Pretty much forgiven.
kindness
Back when I was growing up in the 60s/70s, all you had to do was point out nazi/fascist tendencies to get my parents peer of Republicans to revolt against even bringing up the possibility. Of course they were the generation that fought actual Nazis in WWII. Now days some of these people in the far right closest notion of Nazi is playing Castle Wolfstein.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I do kind of pride myself on being the
bad auntcool aunt, so it’s possible that I may resemble that remark.Jeffro
@Kelly: WOW. I had two sit-ins and one ocean kayak, and I sold one of the sit-ins (it had been used 5 times in 10 years) and I’m about to sell the ocean kayak. All I need is my Acadia and a nice slow-flowing river from here on out!
marv
@Mary G:
Loved that last sentence. My favorite Jesuit: Gerard Manley Hopkins
bemused
@JPL:
I would be absolutely ecstatic and relieved if the people we have to interact with in our lives, some friends, family, etc. who have been listening to Fox and Limbaugh for years, would evolve to reality and really “get it”. The thought that may never happen and for the rest of our lives, we will be profoundly sad and devastated to be around them and know their words showing empathy, sympathy and decency toward some do not extend to “others”.
Gelfling 545
@OzarkHillbilly: “The church” is less a monolith than many believe. It has changed in my lifetime and will change again though it will be under a cloak of “ as the Church has always and everywhere taught”.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
They don’t get this because their boat has holes in it. Those holes are called racism and thinking that the world revolves around the stick that’s up their butt.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
And a Fender Jaguar like Kurt Cobain! And a Rickenbacker or two, like The Beatles! And an Explorer! And a doubleneck EDS-1275 like Jimmy Page! (Epiphone actually has a 1275, but you gotta order it special. And who the hell wants a 16lb guitar hanging from their neck?) No, seriously, just one each of the Big Three will do me.
Heidi Mom
@Suzanne: I think that’s an excellent analysis.
WaterGirl
@Mary G:
I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization. I should say that trolling is seldom seen by me as a positive thing.
I believe it’s possible for him to truly believe that the gospel is not political and that he was continuing to do the job he was hired for, without trolling at all. I respect what he was doing – he clearly wasn’t going to play along with their hate for the poor and the powerless.
Gelfling 545
@p.a.: yep. Women. It’s a 20th century addition to reflect the fact that women now study and teach in Jesuit institutions.
bemused
@lollipopguild:
Yes, just as republicans who sporadically go to church only listen to and read rightwing media to hear what they want to hear.
Kelly
@Jeffro: I’ve been accumulating boats since the 1980’s. The 11′ raft is the oldest. Many wonderful camping trips it. I only use it for local day trips now because a cloud of blue edpm wafts off when I inflate these days. Still holds air all day.
Gelfling 545
@Kay: To me it is a sign of character intelligence that, when you are presented with e idence that you are wrong, you change your stand. A foolish consistency, etc.
Brachiator
@Mary G:
Ryan claims that he fired the chaplain because Congress folk claimed that he wasn’t serving their pastoral needs. Sounds like he was serving faithfully, but they just didn’t like his message.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Pray tell what are their pastoral needs? Are they cattle? Do they need grass?
Brachiator
@Mary G:
Ryan claims that he fired the chaplain because Congress folk claimed that he wasn’t serving their pastoral needs. Sounds like he was serving faithfully, but they just didn’t like his message.
@Gelfling 545:
Suzanne
@Heidi Mom: If I was being really Freudian, I would point out that the reason that many conservatives are so thirsty for “respect”, aka sense that they have the admiration of others around them, is because they are in fact deeply unfulfilled and miserable in their lives. Republican Jeebus and firearms and big trucks and a breeding vessel for a wife and the white picket fence haven’t delivered the expected happiness level.
Only mediocre white men seem to have been brought up in this country with the deeply ingrained notion that they would be successful. Everyone else expected to have to fucking COMPETE.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Actually, a little grass might mellow out some of these asswipes. I forget whether medical cannabis is legal in D.C.
Just One More Canuck
@Amir Khalid: @Omnes Omnibus: FYI – Keith Richards has over 3000 guitars
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
Deep down inside, I do too. And I don’t even play guitar.
different-church-lady
@Just One More Canuck: Yes, and Keith could probably use some professional help too.
debbie
@Suzanne:
What they want is respect (and I’ll accept your definition), but not to have to give respect in return. How long have people in SF, for instance, been made fun of in their circles or people who like arugula? This isn’t some new, out-of-the-blue thing.
different-church-lady
@Mary G: “Put Christ back in
ChristmasChristianity.”different-church-lady
@debbie: Their constitutional right to sneer shall not be infringed.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Jay:
I saw a report from last month that the Blue Wave would need to be double what it was in 2006 for the Dems to take the House. If we lose, even narrowly, the Repukes will act as if that’s completely normal and right and not, y’know, abnormal and corrupt. I can’t see this thing ending without unrest and violence.
trollhattan
@Just One More Canuck:
Keith was inspired by Nigel Tufnel. “Just listen to that sustain.”
Recently saw a “Spinal Tap” clip of Tufnel “bowing” his guitar with a violin. Still cracks me up.
MomSense
@Jeffro:
I’d settle for half of what Brooks gets.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Heh. For me it’s bicycles, cameras and backpacks. “Bet you can’t have just one.”
Ruckus
@Ella in New Mexico:
They are successful. But. They aren’t as successful (wealthy) as they think they should be for all that work. And that must be because someone is taking away that wealth. Stealing it in fact, what with all that government largess.
Bottom line, they don’t want equality, they want to be better, more successful, to have someone to hold their success over. Take that away and all that study/effort/work is a waste of time. They could be living the high life like all those people getting government handouts and here they worked/slaved even, to get ahead, and sitting on their asses would have done the same. When you tell them how much people get on welfare/SSI/low income housing/etc they don’t believe you and that’s because of the right wing bullshit, which is self sustaining.
It is economic anxiety, just not an anxiety in the way we think about it. The problem is who and what they blame for it and the fact that they aren’t doing bad at all. The problem is that they always want/need to be better than someone else, a way to measure that the work was worth it. It isn’t their absolute position it’s the comparative position. For someone to win, someone else has to lose. Of course they choose the racial path to have someone to win over because that’s what they have been told for their entire lives. It’s what white people were told when slavery was, they aren’t worthy, they have no value, that’s why they don’t get paid and get beaten and killed, they don’t know their place, compared to whites. It is of course all 100% bullshit but it is what was, many people will do anything for economic anxiety, that being that someone else is getting ahead, which means that they are losing. We elected a black president, he did very well and didn’t do this at the expense of white people, they got better as well. But this didn’t fit the narrative, that people of color can’t do as well as whites. And that narrative is what they have been told their entire lives so it must be true.
Kelly
@Heidi Mom:
I grew up in rural Oregon amongst proud redneck loggers and farmers. The first time I went overseas was a business trip to Jerusalem. City tap water in Oregon is always just fine. Tap water in Jerusalem was barely suitable for washing your hands. The first time I ordered a meal was just after the 32 hour trip to get there. When the waiter asked if I wanted bottle of mineral water. I thought mineral water would taste funny so I replied “oh no I’m really thirsty please bring me a whole pitcher of ice water.” He gave me a surprised look and complied. Didn’t make that mistake again.
Suzanne
@debbie: Agreed. In their view, they want to be respected, and what they really want is for people who they perceive as having “lesser” lives to want to aspire to their lives and to emulate their behaviors. They want to be treated as if they have moral authority.
But that’s not what I mean when I say that I “respect” someone and I think that most of the left means the same thing that I do: that I acknowledge the equal essential worth and rights of other people, including those of other political persuasions—but it doesn’t mean that I think of them positively. It means they get to exist on the same plane that I do and that is all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Washburn: I’m afraid your credibility has been shot to shit. Time to get a new nym.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
You could parse this all kinds of ways, Freudian, Marxist, modern psychology, Darwinian. All men believe that they should be successful, but racism and elitism has always tipped the scales in favor of white men. Trump is a deeply mediocre white man who might be nothing if not for his father’s wealth.
Just One More Canuck
@different-church-lady: yes but for different reasons. On the other hand, the fact that he’s still alive at 74 probably means that he doesn’t give a damn
debbie
@different-church-lady:
Also, their obliviousness to the fact that they do what they complain is done to them seems reminiscent of their hero and savior, no? (And I’m not talking Jesus here).
japa21
My son teaches at a Jesuit college prep HS in Chicago. He has great respect for the Jesuits involved in the running of the school, not as much for some of the lay administrative staff. Jesuits more than anything promote critical thinking and going with wherever things lead them. It was a Jesuit priest who was instrumental in the creation of the Big Bang theory.
As an aside, my son recently received a letter from a former student of his. That student is now a college grad and works for a company involved in financial services. Basically, the letter was a delayed thank you letter. He talked about how, when he started having my son as a teacher, he was all tangled up in tribal thinking (conservative). He appreciated the fact that my son never argued with him or tried to point out his errors. Rather my son taught how to step outside his comfort zone and examine his thinking. As the former student put it, “You didn’t try to tell my what to think, but rather how to think.” Although my son is not a Jesuit, this pretty much sums up the Jesuit approach.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Washburn:
Forgive me if I doubt your sincerity about this issue.
Joy Reid was an effective critic of Donald Trump and so now must be destroyed. That’s what this is. Whoever leaked this, assuming it’s true, has an agenda. Whatever she believed then, she doesn’t believe now. I’m not sure if the Internet Archive was hacked or not but I don’t think she should be destroyed for something she said 10 or more years ago and hasn’t said since.
I think what she has done and said since should matter more.
Suzanne
@debbie:
The thing is that people in SF and people who like arugula have lives that other people aspire to. They live in a trendy expensive city and they have more sophisticated tastes and, for arugula eaters at least, are usually thinner and are in greater conformance to beauty ideals than, say, people who eat fast food all the time. So now the urban dwellers and arugula eaters are seen as wealthier, cooler, smarter, more sophisticated, more modern, and more beautiful. And all of that percolates into this sense of grievance. For the average mediocre white dude who doesn’t live in a big city and who doesn’t like arugula, and who had this expectation that people would admire him, I bet that is a tough pill to swallow.
The Pale Scot
@Amir Khalid:
Jesuits teach that you need to deal with the world the way it is, not how you’d like it to be. Jesuits think that one should be able to use one’s intellect and critical thinking to prove (to yourself) that there is a God. They accept that a portion of their students are going to critically think themselves into disbelief or a non-papal approved view of life. In their view it’s better to be a clear thinking agnostic than a dogmatic believer.
Opus Dei types, emo Caths like what is going on in Poland right now, and especially nutty Prod biblical literalists are furious with these concepts. Explicitly they say it’s a major sin to promote this kind of thinking. The “TRUTH” is for the “Elect”, those recognized by Dog as real, trustworthy believers. The fundies say that one can recognize one of the elect because they are favored by Dog, mostly with wealth.
Baud
The absence of a new thread is giving me states anxiety.
Gelfling 545
@schrodingers_cat: They need a lot to keep producing that high quality bullshit.
Villago Delenda Est
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Pretty much the same thing that happened to Al Franken.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Wow. That’s an incredibly pessimistic view of things.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: Oh, he would have been a night manager at White Castle most of his life if not for his father’s wealth.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: The MAGAts have made it clear that they will go into full conniption mode if Donald is forced from office.
Villago Delenda Est
BTW, I’m going to see Infinity War in about two hours. Can we get a spoiler thread set up?
Ruckus
@Kay:
Richer white conservatives strike back in different ways. Ways that poor whites can’t. The poor whites do minor and not so minor destructive things, knocking over displays. The rich whites find ways to block/lessen/restrict help to POC. They support police when they shoot a black for no reason what so ever. In many ways the rich whites are far worse than the poor whites. The poor whites in many ways just make work for someone or make their lives worse. The rich whites have enough power to harm people, to make them live in fear, to make them angry while they can’t do much/anything about it.
Jay S
@Amir Khalid: While I agree with your general analysis but denying economic anxiety is a bit much. We did have stagnant wages and low growth rates. People who were advancing before and felt it was their right to more weren’t getting it. The trick was in weaponizing that by blaming “the other” and not the looting from above. The anti PC movement made blaming “the other” more acceptable in public. So racism and sexism became more normalized. But to deny that the economic environment was and is a problem denies reality. The summary of the study didn’t indicate they considered under employment or wage stagnation, they seemed to focus on people who were set back.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Brachiator:
Is that a dig at me or is it sincere?
Mandalay
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
TBF, a lot of it was less than 10 years ago, but I completely agree with your overall sentiment.
But I have a real problem with her saying “My site was hacked!”, when every expert who has looked into it calls that claim total bullshit. And now she is saying this:
She needs to OWN EVERYTHING SHE WROTE. She can’t continue to insist that the really ugly stuff was put there by a hacker when everyone who has researched the matter says that didn’t happen.
Brachiator
@Just One More Canuck:
And he knows how to play all of them.
Also, Richards is 1500 years old.
ETA. I had the pleasure of seeing Richards perform during his X-pensive Winos tour.
Even bought a t-shirt.
japa21
@Jay S: You are somewhat correct. Interestingly enough, among those people who considered the economy a major issue, Clinton was the winner.
Quinerly
Dylan going into the whisky biz! https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a20093109/bob-dylan-whiskey/?src=socialflowFBESQ
Ruckus
@danielx:
drumpf thinks he’s rich. But he’s so poor he can’t buy a clue. Of course he’s also such a moron he wouldn’t know he needs to buy about a billion fucking clues. Wait, maybe he’s been buying clues, it’s just he’s such a moron he’s been buying cut rate useless clues and that’s why he’s a moron.
Felanius Kootea
Just read the articles on the new lynching memorial in Alabama in the UK Guardian and the NYT . Over 4400 Black people lynched in 800 counties across the US between 1877 and 1950 (the ones they could document). I was stunned to read that some of the white people who attended these lynchings as children are still alive today. One was taken to watch as a 6 year old by his grandfather. WTF! Who does that to a 6 year old? Way to fuck up a person for life.
Yutsano
@Villago Delenda Est: Or just another thread in general.
guachi
@Mandalay: It isn’t that Joy Reid wrote those things that’s bothersome to me. I doubt it could really bother anyone who regularly reads this website considering the change of heart the blog host has had on things.. It’s that she claimed she was hacked and that claim has zero support. All provided evidence in support of the hacking theory have gone up on smoke. If there’s no evidence of hacking, and I doubt there ever will be, how will Reid explain completely forgetting ever having written any of those posts?
Aleta
There was that chill of watching T’s rallies, watching the cult-like frenzy and mirrored behavior. I think that cultish power comes from the leader harnessing someone’s drive to change who s/he is. Promising change will come if you get enlightened or happy. Modern version: you can get a lot of money AND be closer to god at the same time! Prosperity doctrine of some Rw christian groups, (esp evangelicals like those following Tr). Enlightenment+wealth seminars of Michael Roach and James Arthur Ray. That old 50s positive thinking book.
For paving the way for Tr,, besides the obvious criminals, I also blame the NYT and general media for a hyperfocus since the 80s on better trappings as the key to social status. Then telling us ‘if you’re smart you should be in the stock market or real estate’ to get rich quick.
And I think he was much helped by years of reality shows that urged us to confuse characters with real people. Then whipped up excitement about voting for them, as though the show’s outcome was run by democratic control.
Then came the T reality show in which pleasing his character was the pretend pathway to a pretend good job. People watched his character man the gate to desirable jobs, and of course believed it was him.
Preceded by what–35 years or more– of the NYC press and mages like People showing pictures of his (borrowed-money faked) lifestyle and telling us the real person was smart, ultra rich and high status and self-made.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I was married in the student chapel in Ann Arbor by a Jesuit priest who was economics professor. Not the stereotypical job for a priest, I’d say.
Aleta
Re: racists worried about their social status
Headline: Golf course that called the police on black women loses business, faces call for state investigation
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Kay:
Speaking of which, what do you think of Joe Schiavoni? My local Dem party has endorsed him (he’s from here).
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Perhaps a bit of both.
But the main thing is…
Right wing nut jobs pretended to promise violence if Trump didn’t win or wasn’t installed as president. You seem to be arguing for some restorative violence. Either way, wouldn’t this mean abandoning democracy?
lollipopguild
@The Pale Scot: Part of the problem for these people is that the “TRUTH” keeps changing in order to deal with changing times AKA “Reality”. It’s the same problem that the commies had when they kept rewriting History in order to make History conform to their will.
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: The deplorable like Trump because he is how they would behave if they had money: like rich trash.
Fucker doesn’t eat arugula, he eats Big Macs and two scoops of ice cream EVERY NIGHT.
I should note that having terrible taste is one of the things I hate most about conservatives.
Shell
So, whatsthe excuse of the White, Christian women voters?
Aleta
@Felanius Kootea:
(Inside the memorial there is also an area where rows of small jars are placed. Each labeled jar contains dirt taken from a county where a lynching took place.)
Mandalay
@guachi:
Exactly. Yet again, the cover up is worse than the crime.
She was way too quick to claim that ugly stuff had been planted when she knew she had no evidence for that. And where are we now that her claim has been skewered?…
– She still has no evidence that her site was hacked.
– Every expert who has looked at this issue has said there is no evidence that her site was hacked.
– Yet Reid is STILL CLAIMING that some of the stuff was not written by her.
She now needs to unambiguously state that she fully accepts that she wrote what was on her blog. She can claim she doesn’t remember doing it if that makes her feel better, but she needs to own it 100%.
Her latest desperate claim that she didn’t write some of the offensive material even though the site wasn’t hacked is both absurd and dishonest, and makes her look like a fucking idiot.
Ruckus
@Gelfling 545:
Which of course is a part of the reason that evangelicals exist in the first place. Religion as a way of showing superiority.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Ah, I remember the long-ago days when I said to myself, Why would anyone need more than one set of knitting needles? Now I probably couldn’t tell you how many sets I have.
Amir Khalid
@different-church-lady:
I would prefer to be more like Bruce Springsteen. He switched from a Les Paul to his famous patchwork Fender (even Fender can’t put a model name to it), bought used from a local guitar shop that he still goes to, and played the hell out of the Fender at nearly every show and recording session from 1973 to 2005. He had to retire it from touring after that because the wood had weakened from decades of him sweating on it. He still records with it. It is said to be valued at up to US$5 million, should anyone dare to insure it, and he once said he expects to be buried with it.
Mnemosyne
@Washburn:
Wait, ARGB hates a powerful Black woman?
Raise your hand if you didn’t see that one coming.
Redshift
@Ruckus:
This is perhaps the most toxic part of conservative economic ideology. They don’t believe in improvements that lift everyone up; if someone else is doing better, it can only be at my expense. So if their life is crappier than their father’s, it can’t be because unions were destroyed and the minimum wage is stagnant and they have an IRA (if they can afford it) and not a pension, it’s because those people are a little better off than when they “knew their place.”
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah. And as for JD Vances of America feeling like failures for not knowing how to eat at “fancy resturants” I say life is what you make of it.
At the end of Pleasantville, the main character’s mother is crying because she feels her life is a failure. Her son says it’s not, that there isn’t such a thing as the “perfect” life. They live in an upper class suburban neighborhood. The movie deconstructs the fantasy of the 50s being this idyllic time. It wasn’t, and makes the point that life has always been complicated. This is the exchange that I was alluding to above:
People should, generally speaking, live their lives the way they want and not sweat small shit like not knowing what mineral water tastes like. That’s not what really counts.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
It’s not that she was hacked. It’s that some of the screenshots mysteriously don’t match what’s at the Internet Archive, and the guy who provided the screenshots to HuffPo lied about that.
But it’s not like a screenshot is dead easy to alter or fake, amirite?
bemused
@Aleta:
I’ll never forget trump rallies no matter how I tried to avoid watching them. The hairs on the back of neck stood up every time the tv would air some clips. No other way to describe them than a bloodthirsty mob and trump deliberately riling them up.
Brachiator
@Felanius Kootea:
These people were fucked up long before they attended a lynching. But societies change. Public executions used to be festive occasions. People could eat snacks while watching someone be drawn and quartered.
Lynchings were similarly festive for some people. Photographic postcards “celebrating” the event used to be quite popular.
The Guardian story does a good job in noting the extraordinary work of Ida B. Wells in documenting these atrocities and in exploding the myth of “righteous” white people protecting the virtue of white women and other lies served up to defend their depravity.
Aleta
@Felanius Kootea: I think they were meant to be a community event, for whites to bond (and instruct their children by taking them or telling stories or showing pictures) in their agreement about the racist social structure. And at the same time to terrorize blacks and Native Americans to keep them from challenging whites who took their land, cheated them, raped them and beat them.
Suzanne
@Shell:
Lots of women are deeply invested in patriarchy, because they do relatively well under it. If you’re not going to ever have much of a career because you’re not that smart or hardworking or ambitious or curious, and if you do a pretty good job conforming to beauty standards, you’ll probably do better under white patriarchy than under a more fair system.
Having to fairly compete with more people is a shitty proposition for a lot of people.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
I think he was sending up Jimmy Page, who would sometimes play his Les Paul with a violin bow.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I’m going with the simple answer. Piety. Religion plays a big part of many segments of American life and not having one would possibly show that they aren’t religious. How many small towns have several churches? Same reason we have the pledge of allegiance that we do.
Suzanne
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Most people have no idea what they really want. They want what people around them tell them to want. Social pressure is a hell of a drug.
Jay S
@japa21: I am not sure if you are referring to Bill or Hillary and riffing off Bernie, but blaming economics for everything is as problematic as denying it as a factor. “It’s the economy, stupid” rang true enough at the time, but there were a lot of moving parts in that campaign.
lollipopguild
@Mnemosyne: Books-MUST have more books!
The Lodger
@Omnes Omnibus: No, he’s just quoting Led Zeppelin.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Brachiator:
Not necessarily. The EC could be argued to be a undemocratic institution that installed Trump against the will of the American people, with some help from a hostile foreign power. The GOP continues to carry water for Trump and are transforming into an authoritarian party. Their voter suppression efforts are another threat to our democracy. They are illegimate and don’t deserve to be in power. If elections are no longer free and fair then what’s the point?
I don’t feel like living my life like a slave under these fascists.
Understand that this isn’t a strategy I advocate. I just fear that it may happen whether we want it to or not.
I still hope that the rule of law
Aleta
An interview with Bryan Stevenson on Jonathan Capehart’s podcast
One thing Stevens and others have mentioned is how lynchings of African Americans have been described as a common form of frontier justice (therefore normal for the time). This is not true for the mob violence against African Americans, which took place in cities and towns where accusations (usually false) could be, or already were being, handled by an established judicial system.
I actually saw the ‘frontier justice’ excuse recently in a Texas state historical piece about the murder of Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916. I was trying to determine the nearby racist murders that LBJ would have been aware of when he was growing up. I’m pretty sure he would have heard about (and probably saw postcards of) Mr. Washington’s murder, which was in the same county I believe. BTW, Waco is still resisting efforts to set up a simple marker to remember Mr. Washinton’s sadistic murder.
.
Suzanne
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I would also point out that, if you don’t “know how to eat at a fancy restaurant”, you could A) not, or B) learn, rather than C) harbor resentment toward those that do for not realizing that Golden Corral is where Real ‘Muricans eat and wondering why those uppity liberals think you have shitty taste for loving the chocolate fountain.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Suzanne:
Oh I agree. I just think they shouldn’t give so much of a shit what other people think of their personal tastes. I’m speaking as a person who would probably like the chocolate fountain at Golden Corral and also enjoy eating arugula at a 5-star restaurant with Filet Mignon.
I’m not picky and I like experiencing new things.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
It was amazing being in boot camp and watching people who had no idea about norms or rules. And having those rules and norms rubbed in their faces, and by association all of our faces.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne: This is the problem:
She needs to own everything. Until she does her apology is a non-apology apology.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Damnit.
I still hope the rule of law and democracy will prevail.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
All true.
But the questions you need to ask is why and how. Why did they feel that this was respect. And how do we change that perception that success and respect is not about money but value as a part of the society that one lives in, their personhood, not the size of their wallet or their power over others.
Heidi Mom
@lollipopguild: Always! To quote something I saw on Facebook, “It’s not hoarding if it’s books.”
debbie
@Suzanne:
I wonder how many of the WWC were gleeful at the thought that arugula eaters would be harmed by this administration? And then it turns out that they’ll be the ones to suffer at the hands of Trump’s economic policies.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Trump is a deeply mediocre white man who would be nothing if not for his father’s wealth.
Fixed that for you. Of course without his fathers wealth he might also not be the spoiled asshole that he always has been. He might have been a normal white racist. He might have even been a normal human being. But that’s stretching it pretty far, probably beyond the breaking point.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
This is a tremendous non-sequitur. And of course, the Constitution provides for a republican form of government, not a direct democracy. There ain’t much point in railing against the EC. What if Russian efforts and voter suppression gave Trump a popular vote victory as well? Would you want to abolish voting?
Again, wouldn’t this be more likely to put an end to democracy rather than restore it?
In any case, right now, I don’t think that many of the people who talk about riots and fighting would actually put their own asses on the line if it came down to it. Nor do I think it a sure thing that the righteous would win. But would you suppress or exterminate conservatives to secure your victory over them?
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Suzanne wins the internets for the day.
Suzanne
@Ruckus:
They felt this entitlement to unearned respect because of white male privilege. This is really the nefarious part of privilege. Privilege is, more than anything else, the sense that one is or will be successful and will have social control, or that those who do have social control will protect your interests. People who were not raised with this expectation (minorities, women who expect to work either because of desire or financial need) planned to compete because we knew we would have to.
How do we change that perception? We are changing it. Conservatives are pissed because liberals are winning. Maybe not at the ballot box, but everywhere else. Every other mainstream cultural product, be it fashion, advertising, automobiles, religion, social media, higher education, etc etc etc……all of these things have either been abandoned by those who have social control or have been changed to suit the tastes of those who have social control—and those people are not white conservatives.
Citizen Alan
@Washburn:
The fact that garbage humans like you are all over this only makes me support her more. Pied.
Aleta
@Suzanne: Or one of the exceptional women, brains and ability to last in a male dominated environment, rw or libertarian, who oppose any idea that hiring practices aren’t already fair. My sister was one.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
Exactly.
It is a comparative outlook. That’s what zero sum is. There is only X of anything. Especially money. So you can only have X divided by number of people. But the population is growing so their share of X is getting even smaller. But that’s not the reason that their share is getting smaller. Their share is getting smaller because very few, the very wealthy, are taking far more than they were not long ago. Their share of an ever increasing X is getting smaller. But they blame the wrong reason. And that’s because they have been told, by the very wealthy, for decades that it’s the very poor who are stealing their share of X. It’s always fucking projection with conservatives. So, wrong on 2 counts. X isn’t getting smaller, it’s getting bigger, as it normally does, and while someone is stealing some of their share, the people doing the stealing are lying to them about who is doing this.
Suzanne
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I agree. But I also think those people are fucking insecure, shit-scared, and living lives of quiet desperation, and the only thing that makes any of that tolerable is the fantasy the other people think you’re doing pretty well at life and that you made good choices. If that fantasy is shattered—your kids don’t want to live where you live, your big truck isn’t fashionable, you can’t find a job making what you think you should be making, and the cultural products around you don’t reflect your lifestyle in an aspirational fashion—I can see how this sense of self can be eroded.
I remember my grandfather trying to persuade me to join the military. He was in the Army in WWII and it raised him out of poverty, and he used it to go to college and set up a great middle-class life for himself and his family after the war. I had, like, negative-zero interest and I wanted to go to art school. And honestly, I really didn’t like any of the people from my school who joined the military and I thought they were idiots (not for joining the military, they were just idiots and other life choices like college were probably foreclosed to them) and I didn’t want to spend any time around people like that. My grandfather was pretty fucking hurt that I didn’t want to enlist. I don’t think he made a bad life choice, and I certainly never thought he was an idiot—on the contrary, he’s still one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But my rejection of that life choice stung him personally. I think conservatives walk around feeling like that all the time.
lollipopguild
@Ruckus: It’s even tougher for the rest of us because many of these folks live in their own “Right-Wing” universe created for them by Faux Noise and the right wing radio army. The simply refuse to deal with life as it Actually exists.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Exactly.
And the reason that right above this comment that I said you won the internets for the day.
Aleta
@Kelly: I have 3 ocean ones and 1 river/ww (two were gifts) and my partner has 2 ocean; I have 2 motorcycles and my partner has 2 + what became a parts bike. The mcs need to be sold and several kayaks.
Jay
@bemused:
Studies show that if you can install parental controls on the TV, Car Radio and their Internet connections, to block the Hateraide, in as little 4 to 8 months, sanity returns.
Ruckus
@lollipopguild:
Life as it actually exists.
I think they are trying to hold onto a life that never actually existed. Which is of course what you are saying. The racists were never better and neither were the wealthy. They don’t want equality, they want to be “better” and have been told for decades that they are better. Being better is their life.
We all measure our lives, @Suzanne’s: comment really is about her grandfather measuring his life. He wasn’t comparing it to others but he was measuring it. We all do it, are we comfortable, are we smart, are we healthy, did we work hard enough, did we work too hard at the expense of something else……… I don’t think we will ever stop measuring our lives. It’s measuring them in relationship to others and measuring them to others using nonsensical measurements that is wrong. Skin color, wealth, nationality, etc. Measuring these things don’t make us better, they make us worse. Equality isn’t about being the same, it’s about opportunity. Conservatives don’t want equal opportunity because it will show up how shallow and unequal they are. And of course for them there is only X amount of opportunity and it someone else has it then they don’t. Someone who isn’t like them may get something that they can’t, a decent life.
Jay
@Mandalay:
Only if you want to make it one:
It was a decade ago, her views, like the majority of Americans, have evolved since then,
Internet ratfuckery has reached new levels, and the cites, used as “proof”, are less than “proof”, some have been manipulated despite the repeat denials, then finally an omission, that some of the cites were manipulated. Normally, “sexing up a dossier”, or say digitally overlaying a “classified” stamp over a couple of emails, would invalidate the accuser, but then, we don’t live in normal times.
Remembering what exactly one wrote a decade ago, ain’t normal, and when “the worst” of your (possible) writings from a decade ago are brought up in an internet fauxrage campaign, designed to splinterthe Black Community and the LBGT Community, attack a prominent Treason Tribble critic, lead by Nazi loving GG, Wikicommies, and piled on by Putin bot’s,
“It’s only logical, Jim”, to take the first position you’ve been hacked, because odds are, you were.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
My next door neighbor, just down the hollow from our farm, started out playing electric guitar and was a good blues player as a teenager.
Then he moved here, and heard old time string band music, non-electric old, old country folk music, usually a guitar and a fiddle, sometimes a banjo too.
So he got a banjo, and got good at that instrument and in that style of music. Then he got a fiddle, and secretly began playing it 5 hours a day, in a room, while his wife was at work. She works days and he works nights and an odd schedule, so he was able to work on the fiddle by himself, until he felt like he wouldn’t be ashamed of the playing.
Now he enters contests, and has a number of ribbons hanging from the neck of a stand-up bass in the corner.
But what really saved him from instrument acquisition syndrome was he got into repairing and rebuilding old instruments, with an xacto knife and glue, and a heat gun to melt the hide glue most old fiddles are assembled with. Mostly fiddles and guitars, sometimes a banjo with a neck problem.
So maybe a kit to assemble would be a good thing for you, Amir. Or buy a fine old instrument with some repairable flaws on eBay, something like that. It took my neighbor years to get handy at it, and now music shops in the next state send him instruments that need surgical care.
bemused
@Jay:
That just might be a tad illegal.
Jay
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: @Villago Delenda Est:
99% of the MAGAt’s are pussies and bullies, great at yelling online, throwing slurs, insults and racist crap anonamously on line,
But they ain’t gonna take a bullet for Trason Twitler.
They louder and posture more because they know they are cowards.
Citizen Alan
@Mandalay:
I hope she never apologizes. Just. To piss. You. Off.
Bonnie
I don’t care what the reasons were for Trump voters. I still hate them through and through. And, they will suffer for the wrong they did this country; but, probably not soon enough for me.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Amir Khalid: Hi Amir. I’ve been playing guitar professionally for over thirty years. You should be looking for a small 10-20 watt single ended class A tube amp, maybe based on el84s or 6v6s (these are tube types). If you really want to understand electric guitar, you have to use the amplifier technology that co-evolved with guitar pickups. Something like an Orange Tiny Terror, or a real Fender Champ, or something like that. Don’t go with those modelling amps, get yourself a real guitar amp with the 80 year old technology and learn how they actually work. You won’t regret it.