I know my default should always be evil, and I am not ruling it out, but the last few months have led me to believe that Susan Collins is just really fucking stupid:
As the president weighs his choice, moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was not comfortable with everyone he has considered.
“I would not support a nominee who would demonstrate hostility to Roe v. Wade,” she said.
They’re all hostile to Roe. All of them. YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
Yarrow
She doesn’t care if they’re actually hostile to Roe v. Wade. She cares if they demonstrate hostility to it. It’s all about tone.
mad citizen
You make a good case for stupid. This court should have staggered 18 year terms, with a new one every two years. The fact that it’s a huge fucking thing every time shows how ultra political these seats have become.
dmsilev
‘Yes’ is the traditional answer here.
Mary
What she means is that sheâs OK with completely hollowing out Roe until its precedential value is irrelevant, as long as they donât actually say âWeâre officially overturning Roe v. Wade.â
Derelict
She had a conversation with Gorsuch, and he never said anything about overturning Roe, so she was re-assured that Gorsuch was pro-choice.
She also had a conversation with Mitch McConnell in which he guaranteed her a vote on an Obamacare replacement bill in exchange for her vote on Obamacare repeal.
In other words, Susan Collins is dumb enough to be held up via voicemail.
cervantes
Actually the alternatives are not mutually exclusive.
Robert Sneddon
@mad citizen: the UK’s Supreme Court has an age limit for its members of 70 years old. The nominations to the Court are not in the hands of an elected official and are non-political to the point where I could not, as a British citizen, name any of the UKSC’s bench. I can, if pressed, name a large number of the US Supreme Court’s politically-selected members since they and the positions they hold have an inordinate influence on the world.
Tom Levenson
She’s not stupid. She’s with the party. She’s trying to give herself cover for 2020. Don’t think it’ll work — but that’s what she’s doing.
Doug R
She’s smart enough to know her role-I guess that means evil.
Tom Levenson
@Robert Sneddon: And, if I may bask in utterly unmerited glory, my great uncle was a member of the High Court of Appeal in Ordinary.
Roger Moore
Both. With today’s Republican party, that’s the safe assumption
John PM
@Yarrow: Exactly! “Demonstrating” hostility would not give Collins plausible deniability.
Shell
She’s still trying to be civil.
Dupe1970
Collins represent the pinnacle of how banal being evil can be.
smintheus
Speaking of evil (and stupid), this could very well take down Jim Jordan. If Dems have any sense, they should make an election issue of the Republicans’ Dennis Hastert problem.
lollipopguild
Its amazing how many senators we have who are utterly useless/worthless people. Too many to name here.
lollipopguild
@smintheus: This seems to be a common thread with Repthuglicans, I wonder why?
Kay
I just love how we’re hurtling blindly to outlawing abortion with absolutely no discussion of anything other than President Trump and the two remaining “moderate” Republicans in Congress.
Abortion is complicated because health care is complicated. When Trump and the Republican Party reach their goal and outlaw abortion what happens to this?
What about medically-induced births where the woman’s life is at risk? Women’s lives have so little value in this fake “debate”- so little value we’re not even going to ponder the consequences before hurtling back to the 19th century.
The ENTIRE discussion is around Donald Trump and the GOP base. The effects on tens of millions of people? Not important enough even to discuss.
SRW1
My, my, Mr Cole, can’t we just all play along?
Ridnik Chrome
Am I the only one who is disgusted by the way every single Supreme Court nomination hearing degenerates into a fight over Roe v. Wade? Are any of those senators or reporters going to bother asking about the nominee’s views on right to work laws? Or affirmative action? Or campaign financing? Or voting rights?
ETA: Not that I don’t think the right to abortion is important, but there have been a lot of other utterly terrible (and predictable) decisions by this court that might have been averted if people had paid a little more attention.
But her emails!!!
In most cases I would go with both, but I think Collins has been around long enough to demonstrate that stupid doesn’t actually apply so evil it is.
Kay
After Republicans outlaw abortion there will be 50 debates in 50 states about how to put the ban in. There will be new laws, and the ban will reach all kinds of medical intervention related to pregnancy. There will be debates over how to punish women for obtaining an illegal abortion, indeed, how to define what they’re banning.
They’ll be throwing out a huge body of law all of which is grounded in abortion being legal. All bets are off. I have no idea how it affects women and neither do any of them. They don’t care. You can tell they don’t care by the fact that they never discuss what happens when they reach their goal. That’s how little women and women’s health is valued. Not even discussed.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Rs and their courtier press (including NYT, PBS, NPR and the like) are actively making us all stupid. No matter how serious the issue, the discussion is steeped in stupid, be it abortion or trade policy or climate change or monetary policy.
à€”à€żà€šà€Ÿà€¶à€à€Ÿà€Čà„ à€”à€żà€Șà„à€°à€żà€€ à€Źà„à€Šà„à€§à€ż (on the eve of destruction one takes stupid (self destructive) decisions, or stupid decisions lead to destruction, it can read both ways)
Michael Bersin
@Ridnik Chrome:
If the nominee has the right wingnut stamp of approval on abortion they have the same stamp of approval on right to get paid less, affirmative action, denying voting rights, and unlimited campaign contributions from their wealthy donors. It’s all or nothing with them.
MattF
I guess it’s possible that Collins is living in a fantasy world, where Trump is not a pathological liar and McConnell is not a snake. But… that’s not the actual happening world. I don’t think it’s stupidity, though– she parses her statements too carefully. More like delusion and a desire to sound rational without actully knowing what that word means.
Cermet
Who is “But her emails!!!” and why do I have an option to edit someone else’s post – or so my system is showing?
Kay
@Ridnik Chrome:
Voting rights are really at risk. The far Right judges simply will not stop a state from putting any restrictions they want on voting.
Which makes state government really important. With the far Right dominating at the national level, it becomes more important than ever to elect pro-voting liberal lawmakers at the state level. It’s not a solution- we’ll have wildly different standards for voting in all 50 states and black, brown and poor people will be targeted in states conservatives run, but pro-voting state lawmakers can mitigate some of the damage the far Right court will do.
MomSense
Evil. She’s a master manipulator.
schrodingers_cat
I don’t trust Susan Collins, she is as big a liar as the current President. She is the Bobo of politicians. Her cred as a centrist is totally undeserved.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
I think there’s something in that story that I don’t understand. Why does the head coach, Jordan’s former boss, say that he was told about the allegations while Jordan claims he knew absolutely nothing? Why did the head coach have no power at all to get that doctor fired? (I guess wrestling coaches are too low on the hierarchy?)
Dev Null
@But her emails!!!: When people who made promises to you repeatedly break them …
… yet you go into the next negotiation still trusting their good faith…
I dunno.
That seems compatible with evil and/or stupid, but I don’t think “evil-stupid” suffices.
I mean, getting rolled repeatedly is not a good look. It is not a look an evil person would go for. And stupid? “You can’t cure stupid”, but even a stupid person should be able to learn to avoid driving one’s car into the same fire hydrant again and again and again.
Perhaps it’s delusional thinking, as MattF suggests.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I think they actually depress civic engagement. Normal people (non junkies) hate political campaigns and they hate the coverage of politiical campaigns. You hear it over and over and over canvassing voters.
People don’t want any part of it. They find it repellent. It’s become a kind of hobby for a small set of people who follow it constantly. Most people think it sucks and stay as far away from it as they can.
A Ghost To Most
Both. Always take the over with these bungholes.
Eta You can fix stupid. Wilful ignorance is the problem.
danielx
Will the GOP become the party of white backlash?
That train has left the station.
H.E.Wolf
@Ridnik Chrome:
Many people have spoken far more eloquently than I, for far more years than I’ve been alive, on the life-and-death implications of restricting and/or outlawing abortion.
Google “Gerri Santoro” [content warning: graphic and gruesome]. That is a lot more disgusting than a strong focus on the topic of reproductive choice for women.
MattF
@danielx: Like, anyone remember Ronald Reagan? But that was such a loooong long time ago.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
The forced birth crowd wants to pass “heartbeat bills” that ban abortion after the embryo/zygote has a heartbeat, but that’s how most ectopic pregnancies are detected. So I guess we’re just going to allow thousands of women to die a slow and painful death from a non-viable pregnancy every year because God forbid we should save their lives and their future fertility by ending the ectopic pregnancy before it ruptures?
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Yup. This will be her career legacy too. The Senator who outlawed abortion and led us into the shitstorm that will follow banning abortion.
Career highlights: giant tax cut for rich people that polls at 36% approval and banning abortion, which also comes in at 30 or thereabouts. That’s been her sole contribution the last 20 years.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I have heard the kind of rhetoric that is emanating from the highest office in the land. Its leads to bloodshed and violence of the most grotesque kind. Riots, pogroms and a bloody genocide.
Our so called prestige press is normalizing that kind of rhetoric. Shame on them.
hueyplong
Somewhere Hannah Arendt is wondering whether she dumbed things down enough to do any good.
Steve in the ATL
@Kay: slight bump in blue state GDPs as abortion tourism becomes necessary.
Ridnik Chrome
@H.E.Wolf: I agree, the right to abortion is a life-and-death issue. But so is health care. So is gun control. If we let this be turned into a single-issue fight we will lose every time.
Haroldo
@Mary: I agree. Roe v Wade as a punching bag is far too valuable for the reactionaries to let it disappear. I go with ‘evil.’
P.S. Thanks, Alain, for fixing the comment nym problem.
MattF
@Mnemosyne: Oh, facts, shmacts.
Mike in DC
@danielx: It’s a losing position, long term. Unless…they ramp up the mathematically precise gerrymanders, purge voter rolls, impose repressive voter id requirements, engage in covert suppression via social media and make voting harder for people of color…and we do nothing about all that. If we can successfully fight all that stuff, then white backlash politics will be a dead end, starting in…2020.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
They could at least discuss the medication abortions. They discuss this like it’s 1974 and nothing has happened since then.
Hundreds of state laws rest on Roe. Maybe one of them could get off the Trump analysis beat and do some fact based analysis and thinking? What happens to us after they get this ban? How does it affect millions of women? Which state laws change or have to be rewritten? What will the new state law bans look like? What are the sanctions for abortion? How intrusive will the state BE in monitoring pregnancies and childbirth?
They don’t care. These are the same people who spent a year on the “metoo” movement, tens of thousands of words on Harvey Weinstein, yet they can’t produce 500 words on the potential legal implications for women’s health- their SURVIVAL.
Mnemosyne
@Ridnik Chrome:
That boat has sailed. “Abortion” has become a catch-all identifier for the whole right-wing reactionary agenda. That’s why you never see a proposed judge who is pro-voting rights and anti-abortion. Being anti-abortion is the signal that a judge also believes in all the rest of the agenda.
gene108
1. Trump isn’t going to vet anybody.
2. He’ll do a cursory interview to make it look like he did some work.
3. He’ll pick the person he thinks looks best for the part.
I think Sen. Booker has the crux of one of the real issues here, Trump is nominating a person, who will have the power to decide if Trump can be forced to testify before a grand jury, if he can be prosecuted while President, etc. Basically, Trump is picking 2 of the 9 people, who have the ability to totally undercut all the work Mueller is doing.
@Kay:
The people in the media with a platform are well to do women, who have not been impacted by the Republican “War on Women”. When Planned Parenthood clinics get shut down in Texas, because of Republican crusade against abortion created some laws that make it impossible for the clinic to function, it doesn’t really impact Cokie Roberts or her kids or grandkids at all. But the loss of a PP clinic does impact the health of a lot of women, but those women don’t have much of a voice.
David Hunt
Evil. Collins is signaling that she needs the nominee to speak the correct code phrases in their confirmation hearings, so she has plausible deniability.
Mandalay
They will lie about absolutely anything…
How many times in the past has a White House Press Secretary been personally involved in the issue of lowering the flag?
Trump decided to deny the flag lowering for members of the press being slaughtered, and only when the media disgust level reached “toxic” did he crumple like a cheap suit. Sanders was ordered to clean up his shit.
Haroldo
@Dev Null: The truly stupid and delusional are Maine voters (though there is a strong nasty streak ‘mongst them, too). I write this as an ex-Mainer.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
These people are worthless. âModerateâ Republicans… Shit. All that means is that they go through their Hamlet act before voting however McConnell or the Republican president tells them to. If these people gave a shit about anything they tell us over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over that they care about, they wouldn’t be Republicans. Full stop. I only hope people in Maine someday see through this horseshit. But seeing as how they’ve sent her to the Senate four times now, I’m anything but hopeful.
Miss Bianca
@Ridnik Chrome: I’m going to guess that you’re a guy, since somehow it has escaped your notice that Roe v. Wade is what they call the “litmus test” for radical reactionary views on ALL the issues you’ve claimed are equally as important. If you’re “disgusted” by the fact that the bedrock test of “how willing are you to make rulings that will make the majority of Americans’ lives nastier, more brutish, and shorter” is “how do you feel about controlling women’s bodies”, well…I don’t know what to tell you. Except maybe, “check your privilege at the door”.
ETA: Or what Mnemosyne said.
Roger Moore
@lollipopguild:
It’s the authoritarianism. When you teach people reflexive deference to authority, you make positions of authority a perfect platform for whatever kind of abuse and perversion they can think of. That makes any kind of authority, including elected office, very attractive to would-be abusers.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Because Jordan is lying.
Kay
@Steve in the ATL:
That’s not the whole story though. They overturn Roe. It’s now up to the states. Now every blue state law allowing abortion goes to the same far Right court for review.
I hope people aren’t banking on “federalism”. That’s been exposed as utter and complete bullshit on the Right so many times I can’t count. They don’t even bother raising it anymore. They know it’s a joke.
rikyrah
Cole,
She’s phucking evil, who has been running her ‘ I’m a moderate’ Scam for so long, she thought that it was sustainable forever.
Uh uh, Little Susie.
You are getting exposed by the minute.
Jeffro
@Derelict:
I’ll just be borrowing that put-down for future usage…thank you verra much!
H.E.Wolf
@Ridnik Chrome:
I appreciate your ETA, and also your second comment. I know that we can – and do – work on more than one issue of importance at at time. That said, women are the demographic majority in the country and women’s health issues deserve focus. (It’a a radical viewpoint in some circles, as we all know.)
Thank you to a commenter who made the multi-focus point better than I can: @Michael Bersin:
Some of this will change, if we can change the composition of our state and national legislatures. I’m putting in time on that effort – and it’s going to make a difference, because there are hundreds of thousands of others doing the same thing. Have you started to volunteer yet in your area? I love cheering on my fellow jackals who are stepping up to GOTV in 2018!
Baud
This calls for a stroll down memory lane.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/mark-udall-has-been-dubbed-mark-uterus-on-the-campaign-trail-thats-a-problem/
Senator Uterus would of course still be in the Senate today if he had won in 2014.
Mandalay
Incivility is working!…
The best part is that it is on video, and Pruitt left immediately after the teacher served him a large portion of fuckyou.
A textbook example of how to be uncivil and win.
Kay
@Mandalay:
One of the main reasons we need a to break the GOP lock on Congress is so someone will follow up on these lies. They lie with impunity because they know no one will ask who said what to whom and where the discrepancy came in between what the public was told and what happened. Congress can insist they identify the liar. They’re communicating internally on these lies. There’s discussion. They should be held accountable for blatantly lying to the public again and again by at least naming the specific liar.
Anonymous At Work
My vote is evil. She’s trying to gaslight everyone by “appearing” to care but taking obvious grifters and bad-faith merchants at their word. She either knows better (evil) or should know better and isn’t educating herself on purpose (core of evil with a ‘chocolate’ coating of stupid).
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Don’t even get me started on the sandbagging of Mark Udall, and the sorry shitstain Cory Gardner who replaced him. Still furious about it even after all these years.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
Well, I know that Jordan is lying, but WTF was going on at that university? Why did the coach have zero control over who came into the locker room and who his personnel were? Who did the coach report the abuse to, and why did his reports go nowhere?
There’s something that I’m not understanding about the story. I feel like there are big pieces missing. It’s very odd to me that the former head coach is saying, “Yeah, it’s true, all of it.” Isn’t he liable to be sued for his part in letting the abuse continue?
Yarrow
@Kay: It’s going to be like Ireland. Pregnant women will be at great risk and when the prognosis isn’t good doctors and nurses will have to say to the families that they can’t terminate the pregnancy to save the woman, that the law prevents them from helping the woman because the fetus still has a heartbeat. Many women will die and non-political people will be horrified. How long it takes to change the law after that I couldn’t guess.
Kay
Losing the right to vote scares me a lot more than losing the right to an abortion. I cannot imagine how bad it will get if they can’t be held accountable in elections. Really bad.
There’s a kind of template we can look at- North Carolina. The hard Right is clinging to power there using just about any means. That will be the whole country. They are making it more and more difficult to dislodge them using peaceful process. It’s an authoritarian move, an incumbent protection racket. They don’t have the support of the majority now. What happens when they push thru all this far Right policy and their support slips further? They gracefully concede? Fat fucking chance. Look at North Carolina. Look at the lengths they go to stay in power there.
schrodingers_cat
@Mandalay: I used to love Teaism when I lived in the DC area (Maryland) is a nice little restaurant. Wonder what Pruitt was doing there.
patrick II
It’s not stupid. You have to match it up to what will be the nominee’s response will be at a hearing:
combined with
No you add on Collin’s:
and they never will be either generally or specifically hostile to Roe v. Wade and will get on the supreme court no sweat.
By the way, to me the most important question would be: have you read and understood the science and fact of climate change? If we get another 40 years of climate change denial from the court the other questions will be moot.
Ridnik Chrome
@Mnemosyne:
I know that and you know that. But how many people are there who aren’t really thinking about those things, because nobody is bothering to spell it out for them?
@Miss Bianca: The value of a “litmus test” is that the other side DOESN’T have to spell things out. The less they talk about all the other stuff, the better it is for them.
Joe Falco
When the Susan B Anthony List people is reported to have no objections to anyone on Trump’s list being possibly picked, Senator Collins, that should be the big shiny clue that all of them would put a dagger in the heart of Roe v Wade without hesitation.
Just One More Canuck
Don’t discount crazy
http://venndiagrams.tumblr.com/post/29133067535/justjohn-jj-this-is-from-a-blog-post-blasting
O. Felix Culpa
OT because I have to water the garden before it gets too hot, but here’s the really important question:
WHERE IS RUDY GIULIANI?
Miss Bianca
@Ridnik Chrome: So who is it you are “disgusted” with, precisely? The media?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: How do we stop them? Right now.
Kay
@Yarrow:
Exactly. It’s more than Ireland, though. It’s all the Catholic countries where abortion is banned.
“Abortion” is a medical procedure. It has a non-political definition in medicine. It applies to all pregnant women in all situations. The high profile case that tipped Ireland over the edge wasn’t “an abortion” as it is portrayed in US media. It was a woman who died because abortion was illegal and they refused to give her necessary medical treatment that would have saved her life. They made a choice. They sacrificed the mother to save the babies “heartbeat”. She died in agony, gravely ill and refused medical intervention in a modern hospital in the modern world.
That’s the scenario. Laws apply to everyone. This will intrude on PREGNANCY.
I don’t think women who vote for hard Right Republicans have done much thinking on this. Their notion that it will only apply to the women they disapprove of is just wrong. They’re going to have the far Right managing pregnancy, too.
Victor Matheson
@mad citizen:
18 year terms staggered every 2 years is an obvious solution to a major problem. Every president get two picks per administration. Picks not made based on luck of deaths and retirements. The timing of the hearings can be made to not interfere with election year politics. You wouldn’t have nominations of 40-year olds just to secure longer terms. You wouldn’t have 80+ year-olds dearly hanging on. Obviously a president could get extra picks if there is a death or retirement, but only for remainder of that justice’s term.
This is so obviously an improvement on American Democracy that I presume it would have no chance of passing.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I think the best way to stop them is at the state level. I just think it makes sense to go to the last line of defense now that they hold the whole federal apparatus. It’s not ideal. It’s a recognition that we’re going back as far as the Civil War – 50 state schemes with wildly varying civil rights in each- but in an emergency you stop the bleeding first.
It’s also a way around political media, which focus almost exclusively on national politics and focus overwhelmingly on one man- Donald Trump. They way to get around them is to go under them. A frontal push isn’t going to work. They have too much power to go that way.
Ridnik Chrome
@Miss Bianca:
Primarily, yes. Not so much the Democratic Party, though I do think they could be doing a lot more than they are to educate people about what’s at stake.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mnemosyne:
Yes. And it is THE litmus test among right-wing “Christians.” It all comes down to abortion for them. That’s how they justified and continue to justify their support for Dolt45. Because he’ll appoint anti-abortion justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. Curiously, he’s the only Republican president* who has followed through on that promise, to my knowledge.
Ella in New Mexico
A few decades ago I read M. Scott Peck’s “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil” where I found out, much to my surprise, that evil doesn’t just take the face of murder or genocide or torture or mass shootings.
It’s the nurturing of malignant narcissism. And it’s the actions people take to avoid facing the truth. It’s putting your own, selfish needs first at the expense of outright harming others.
It’s the everyday, benign, narcissistic, lazy and selfishness that allows you to believe lies that work to protect your own interests, even if doing so hurts millions of other people. It’s essentially putting your own safety before the needs of those with less power, especially those you’re supposed to be taking care of in some way. It’s turning off your guilt and your compassion and your inner moral compass so you can more comfortably do the things you need to do to maintain your selfish, status quo.
AKA, Susan Collins and pretty much every other supposed “moderate” Republican in Congress right now.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Didn’t the same thing happen at Penn State? University administration knew.
From this article:
Sounds like the university administrators were in on it.
Roger Moore
@Joe Falco:
Clues are the one thing Susan Collins is trying desperately to avoid. She’s sure everything will be fine as long as she can pretend it’s a complete surprise that Roe v Wade has been dismantled.
Mandalay
@patrick II:
Exactly. Collins is instructing them on how to handle the questioning to guarantee her vote.
And that’s putting aside the issue that everyone including Collins knows damn well that nobody made it to Trump’s list without being opposed to abortion in the first place. Fuck her posturing and fuck her duplicity.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: We need a national movement of non-cooperation. No civility for uncivilized boors. The blue states have huge financial clout and financial muscle. Its time to wield it. I am not exactly sure how at this moment. The way the Indian freedom struggle started hurting the British Empire was by boycotting British made goods.
ETA: I like your state level plan too. And this November is crucial.
ETA2: Most of the RWNJ billionaires live in blue states don’t they? Mercers, Koch like the occupant of the WH are from NYC?
O. Felix Culpa
@Ella in New Mexico: It’s a good and chilling book. Helped explain some of my family.
Kay
I love how all of political media are laser-focused on how Trump’s base will be energized by another far Right justice.
Apparently is unimaginable to consider the Democratic base. We simply don’t exist in that world.
This has nothing to do with the public. I know that because most voters didn’t even elect Trump, yet his BASE is the only discussion we’re permitted to have. Obama had a base. They were completely ignored and we spent 8 years focusing on the opposition to Obama in the GOP base. So you can;t win. If a Dem is in power we focus on the GOP base. If a GOP is in power? Same. 25% of voters are the only people who matter. The entire multi-billion dollar political media apparatus exists to serve them.
They have to be gotten around somehow. I don’t know how to do it but they’re an obstacle. As long as they dominate and drive coverage it will be hard as nails to even find out what most people want let alone get it for them.
Yarrow
@O. Felix Culpa: Rudy Giuliani is hiding because his involvement with the NY FBI field office came up. He’s being investigated and his lawyers told him to shut up. Some part of his lizard brain is still smart enough to know that’s his smartest move.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: It really infuriates me. The prestige media is an R adjunct. At the moment I patronize Canadian and British newspapers, Washington Post is the least bad among them.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Baud! You’re back! We missed you.
Miss Bianca
@Ridnik Chrome: See, this is where I start to bang my head against a wall. From my perspective, the Democratic Party has done a hell of a lot to educate people. But when you are dealing with a media system that frames Republican values as the “norm” (that Democrats necessarily deviate from, natch), and which refuses to routinely give liberals a seat at the Very Serious Pundit table, and an electorate that refuses to wake up until some issue affects them personally – and I am talking about Democratic voters as well as Republican voters – I think there’s a limit to what the Democratic Party can do.
Particularly when there is a not insubstantial portion of the population, on the right and the left, who allow themselves to be distracted by shiny objects such as “Wall Street speeches” and “emaiillllzzz!!11!!” and absolutely REFUSE, for whatever reason, to think strategically. How did my leftier-than-thou friends respond when I told them to think about what Republicans picking Supreme Court justices would mean for all the issues they held dear – whether it be abortion, the environment, gun legislation, climate change, what have you? That they weren’t going to be “blackmailed” into voting for the only candidate who could possibly hold the line against it. How do my idiot Trump-voting acquaintances justify their vote for him, despite their litany of complaints about his stand on their pet issues? They like the fact that he’s doing his bit to hold back the horrible menace of brown refugees and women seeking abortions. Against such a combination of willful ignorance and positive malice the gods themselves strive in vain – and you want *the Democratic Party* to do more? You think they *can* do more? Jesus wept.
NY Robbin
@danielx:
About 40 years ago. . .
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s funny because the incivility is really hard for me. I just don’t act like that. I admire it if it’s done well, but boy that is foreign to me. I am surrounded by Trump supporters- this county went 70% Trump. If I challenged all of them in restaurants I wouldn’t get anything else done.
During the 2012 campaign I was basically accosted by a birther at a political event at a senior center. I didn’t think about dressing him down. I was frantically trying to talk him down and determine if he had a gun. My whole role has been “bring them down”- lower the temperature. I;ve been doing it so long I don’t know how to do anything else.
It’s really different if you’re a political minority. You do all the reaching across the aisle. I’ve gotten good at it and I think I have come to some peace with it, where I don’t apologize or deny my views. I’m sort of proud of it, like I managed it in a confident way that doesn’t involve compromising what I value.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
YES! Trump and his people need to know that they are not welcome in society. They are actively hurting people and their choices have consequences. We can all stand up in big ways and small.
Somewhat related, I heard on the radio yesterday that there’s a movement in Canada to boycott American goods and Buy Canadian.
Mandalay
@Miss Bianca:
Oh FFS. This is a golden example of why discussions on BJ rapidly become impossible unless everyone is perfectly aligned.
Someone is always ready to drop a turd in the punch bowl to show that their point of view is the only valid one, and any other view must be dismissed with insults.
patrick II
That we are even discussing abortion as the deciding criterion for next judge is a win for republican racists and 1%, because that is what abortion is standing in for. Evangelicals (unlike Catholics) did not have abortion as a high priority until they had to start paying taxes on their segregated schools. Then the Evangelical leaders got together and decided they couldn’t say “We hate nggrs” (It was a time before Trump) so they convinced their congregations to say “save unborn babies” because it was more effective politically.
So, we are arguing about that rather than other issues that this conservative judge will go along with Roberts on, including suppression of voting rights, gerrymandering, pardons/not guilty findings for the members of the Trump crime family, continuing Citizens United (number 1 on their hit parade), religious and racial tests for immigration, and number 1 on my personal hit parade because it could possibly be the death of us all, the science of climate change by people who haven’t taken a science course since high school fifty years ago.
I am not saying Roe v Wade isn’t important. It is. But the republicans have distracted us from their real core values by convincing their racist religious followers of the righteousness of their cause against abortion, which by more than happy coincidence works against the same people proposing more democracy, fairness, respect for science and tolerance.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@danielx:
I stopped reading as soon as I saw this. Based on what? Horse race, as always and it’s an oped.
reid
@Yarrow: What Yarrow said. Just have to keep up appearances.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay
Well, we don’t all have to do the same thing and you are resisting in your own way in the way that makes sense in your particular case.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mandalay:
Check your privilege
Skepticat
Very stupid, self-serving, and of the opinion we’re stupid is my take. Collins is my (choke, gag) senator, and I’ll be handwriting a marginally civil screed, going in person to her nearest district office to make my displeasure known, and then giving as much money and support as possible to her next opponent. And just in case, I’ll reiterate all of the above to Sen. Angus King (though more civilly).
Ella in New Mexico
@O. Felix Culpa: Yes, mine too. The story he tells about the family who gives their living, younger son the gun that their dead, favored son used to kill himself as a gift was eye opening.
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay: Oh, hello, Yet Another Guy who will never have to face getting an abortion and can’t understand why it’s Such a Big Issue! Yes, I *know* how difficult it is for you to wrap your brain around the notion that some of us who have been involved with women’s health issues for many, many years get tired of trying to explain to people why it *is* Such A Big Issue! Poor baby. It’s so *uncivil* of me to say, in the best BJ tradition, fuck off!
Dev Null
@Ella in New Mexico: Interesting, thanks … will have to pick up a copy of the book.
I’ve seen similar analyses at pop-psych blogs … my take-away from those analyses is that extreme narcissism generally results from a firewall between the narcissist’s behaviors and cognitive function: the narcissist has an automatic pre-conscious reaction that prevents a threatening event from reaching the narcissist’s conscious awareness.
And for a narcissist, almost everything that could negatively affect self-image is a threat. The possibility that the narcissist’s behavior is hurting others, for example. They are unable to see that… they are utterly self-unaware.
(All that said, IANA Psych, so pay no attention to me. Just relaying pop-psych reading and thoughts about experiences with people I subsequently concluded are narcissists.)
Ridnik Chrome
@Miss Bianca: Even the way the media is covering the fight over RvW is stupid and shallow. As Kay pointed out, they act like nothing has changed since 1974. How many states are there where abortion has already been effectively outlawed, because of all the restrictions that have been placed on it since PP v. Casey?
lollipopguild
@Baud: You were gone on secret planning for Baud2020! or was it “Avengers Assemble”?
Mandalay
@Miss Bianca:
I didn’t remotely agree with what that poster wrote, never claimed I did, and my comment was specifically directed at your post, not theirs. You were unable to respond without needlessly lobbing bombs, and you’re still at it. Now you are trying to make it all about my supposed views on abortion instead of the specific issue I raised: you personally and needlessly attacking posters you disagree with.
That doesn’t show the importance of the issue, or that the the other poster is wrong; it just shows that you are insecure, self-important, and incapable of discussing the matter without vilifying the other person.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Tell it, Kay.
TELL IT!!
rikyrah
As you celebrate our Independence Day think about those GOP reps in Moscow. Staying in luxury hotel, downing caviar and vodka shots. All while children are in prison camps in sweltering heat.
Ask yourself who they represent, those GOP
Itâs not our country.
Itâs Trump pic.twitter.com/EYb9edgCNM
â Mom (@Mom0U812) July 3, 2018
gwangung
@Mandalay: Check your privilege.
Those who whine most about the term is in most need of self examination.
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay:
You know, that’s really rich coming from you. I guess there really is something to that whole “every accusation is a confession” thing.
satby
@Baud: you’re back! Yay!
Hope it was a good vacation or whatever.
patrick II
And one other thing. This isn’t just about abortion but women’s health generally. The right seems to have gone totally wait until your wedding night or god will punish you with disease and pregnancy. Women’s clinics will shit down and they don’t care. Combin3ed with less access to birth control there will be more pre-natal and post natal deaths, more physical and disease problems untreated.
They don’t care, the want to go back to the fifties when father knew best and the colored lived across the tracks.
Miss Bianca
@Ridnik Chrome: Oh, believe me, I know. Kay is absolutely right. There’s not only the issue of how many restrictions states can put on access to abortion, but there’s the whole issue of how abortion procedures themselves have changed. RU-486? The “morning-after pill”? There are pharmacists who won’t want to prescribe it, but you can buy it online, for God’s sake! I don’t know how you put that genie back in the bottle.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Mnemosyne: Iowa passed a heartbeat bill this year, though it’s tied up in the courts. There’s an exception for life of the mother, which would deal with ectopic pregnancies or any pregnancy outside the uterus. I’m guessing that’s how they’ll justify forcing birth on other women. (I almost typed on “everyone else” but…no)
sherparick
@Baud: Well, Lynn Bartels is no longer at the Denver Post and the Denver Post is pretty much a shadow of itself due to a private equity bust out. Basically Denver media decided Cory Gardner meant “change” and the end of “deadlock” in DC. The deadlock appears to have continued, except for Tax cuts for rich people and right wing appointments to the Federal bench and SCOTUS, which Gardner supports and votes as for regularly, but is as quiet as can be about his Trumpism well running the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. I again wonder why the media is so surprise when Trump and Senate put these right wingers on the SCOTUS and the rest of the Federal Bench. Its what they campaigned on and then allow these folks have been about all their lives. For a reporter to let Leonard Leo state that “Trump never asks a nominee how he will vote on Roe v. Wade” and let that answer pass as “straight” is bizarre. “Trump Supreme Court adviser Leonard Leo tells Chris Cuomo that President Donald J. Trump has never once asked a single potential court nominee or himself about about the monumental Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade https://cnn.it/2KvLIU0” Leonard Leo is that man who screens these nominees for Trump and he certainly expect them to repeal Roe v. Wade. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-conservative-pipeline-to-the-supreme-court
rikyrah
@Kay:
Keep on telling this truth, Kay.
The only way around them is to actually call them on it.
The numerous articles about Dolt45 voters has pushed folks to push back asking – why the phuck do you keep on writing these articles.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The refusals really have been civil, too. The restaurant owner was polite and so was the teacher who confronted Pruitt.
It’s a brave new world. We’ll all have to stretch and do new things, I guess. We’ll find out who is up to it and who is not- I’m not sure I am but I hope so.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ella in New Mexico: Yes, that story is horrific. Peck’s conclusion there was nothing in the psychiatric toolbox to deal with malignant narcissists confirmed my experience. They’re impervious to personal change. They’re too defended. Everyone and everything else needs to adjust for them, in their worldview.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Let’s name names, shall we?
I continue to be disproportionately furious about this little Fourth of July Moscow junket. And — God knows, not that I would want any Democrat to get close to this — but aren’t CoDels normally supposed to be bipartisan? (It might not be an actual rule, and I’m sure there have been exceptions, but it’s a long-standing tradition.) This entire thing just stinks to high heaven.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Hey Baud!!
Welcome back :)
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes, let’s name names.
sukabi
@lollipopguild: it’s a requirement that they belong to the same clubs… NRA, country, nambla…
No One You Know
@But her emails!!!: Yep. Arendt’s Axiom about the banality of evil struck me again the other day.
I was wondering, yet again, why Paul Ryan wants to end senior entitlements so badly, and decided that since he thinks he’s not going to have an old age–his father and grandfather died young–he sees no reason to assist anyone else’s old age. Spiteful narcissism. Nothing more.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
It was actually harder/more time-consuming to track down the list than I had anticipated. Every article or source named Shelby and most named Kennedy, but I had to open close to a dozen different links before I found the full list of participants.
Soprano2
@Kay: Kay, you know why that is – it’s because the Trump base is white men, and to the press the votes of white men are the only votes that really matter. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me earlier – it’s why the papers keep writing about his base over and over again – because the white man is considered the “important” voter, so what he wants is the most important thing. The votes of everyone else don’t matter that much to them. My husband & I have talked about this several times, because we certainly don’t remember the press ever talking about Obama’s base. If they did talk about it, the attitude was snarky and condescending, as if their attitude was “How DARE Obama’s base expect him to actually DO anything for them?” Since his base was non-white people and women, they weren’t supposed to actually get anything from him.
wuzzat
Porque no los dos?
TriassicSands
But I will support someone who pretends to respect stare decisis, doesn’t openly call for overturning Roe, and has a nice smile. Then, when he or she votes to gut Roe or overturn it, I will feign shock and proclaim that no one could have predicted…
schrodingers_cat
@TriassicSands: His wife can pretend to cry when D senators ask him questions.
Miss Bianca
@Soprano2: I think you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head, there.
TriassicSands
@schrodingers_cat:
Have you seen the photo of Judge Amy Coney Barrett (7th Circuit) — age 46? I’m sure Trump would have preferred a “babe” in her 20s or early 30s, but Barrett doesn’t look much like RBG, Kagan, or Sotomayor. I’d bet that Trump took one look at her photo and decided he had to “interview” her.
On the other hand, she’s Catholic and a religious zealot. Her vote against Roe would be obvious, but apparently she has written that Catholic judges should recuse themselves in death penalty cases. If that is true, and she really believes it, then I don’t see how she could not recuse herself in an abortion case. Would that put pressure on Alito to recuse himself? It might, but I don’t think he would step aside.
Of course, no matter how she looks, if she’s not going to vote to overturn Roe, then she’s of no use to Trump.
ETA: Barrett has been on the appeals court since November 2017 when Trump appointed her. Obviously, he’s going for maximum experience.
Bobby Thomson
Sheâs not stupid. Sheâs just a lying piece of shit who is fully on board with revealing Roe and pretends not to be.
Aleta
Not stupid but pure calculator, her decisions are based on survival in the party and DC and whatever she says is a paint job.
Aleta
It’s absurd, her statement âI would not support a nominee who would demonstrate hostility to Roe v. Wade.â Although truthful, since she knows none of them will “demonstrate hostility.” She’s been on the edge of Senate hearings or central for over 40 years. She helped Sessions get in. (She wasn’t stupid when she said McConnell’s “promise” was a guarantee, she was accepting cover.) She started in DC politics in 19fucking75; she’s spent her whole work life staying in power. She will never sacrifice herself. But she’s going down.
reid
@Dev Null: Interesting. I have someone in my life that seems to fit this. Seems completely unable to rationally self-reflect and admit any mistakes; instead, gets angry and attacks.
J R in WV
@Mandalay:
OK, long after the thread has probably died. But:
But judging from what you quote, there was nothing uncivil in what Ms Mink said. Nothing!
“Fuck you” is somewhat uncivil, dumping a plate of food on his head is definitely uncivil.
But speaking truth, urging a resignation before scandal sees him accused of criminal actions, there is nothing uncivil there, just plain and frank truth about Ms Mink’s and millions of other Americans’ opinion about Pruitt and his mis-management of the EPA and the nations environmental protection.
After all, Republicans put the lead in Flint’s water system!! That is uncivil!!!
J R in WV
@Yarrow:
I’ve always thought Penn State should have gotten permanently banished from “big time” NCAA sports for their terrible mis-handling of their criminal sexual perversion conspiracy.
Now OSU should face the same penalty, a permanent expulsion from the Division I NCAA programs. MSU should be criminally responsible, the president and the deans in court for their failure to protect their athletes. These “academic” management people are as despicable as the Republicans in congress and the cabinet. In some cases they are the same people as we see in this article.
J R in WV
Oh, yeh, the original topic:
Collins, Stupid or Evil?
Very much both, she isn’t generally stupid, but she is definitely stupid as far as political trends go, and the effect of her actions. And as evil as they come. Obviously.
Dev Null
@reid: Apologies for the late response. This browser window was hidden underneath a bunch of other windows. I’m doing cleanup and noticed your comment.
There’s an excellent article by a credentialed psych in the Jan-Feb issue of The Atlantic. The essay “explains” Lance Armstrong:
How Aggressive Narcissism Explains Lance Armstrong
Money quotes from the article:
and
When a (now ex-)friend told me, “My therapist got me to see that when someone questions my self-image, I want to fight back”, well, talk about lights going on…
Think how many ways “someone questions my self-image, I want to fight back” is barking madness.
Think what it says about a person when that person is dragged to an awareness that an attitude is dysfunctional, yet (as best I could tell) has no understanding why the attitude is dysfunctional, nor any idea how to remedy the dysfunction. I suspect that my (ex-)friend told me this in the expectation that I would be sympathetic and cut more slack, because narcissists are notoriously invested in self-pity. (Hooboy, do I have quotes …) But I don’t know.
Utter lack of self-awareness …
… nor was this the only time this individual evidenced a lack of self-awareness. Ditto a handful of other acquaintances. Not everyone, not by a long shot. And lack of self-awareness comes in varying degrees. But a (consistent) lack of self-awareness – an inability to get the point that the individual’s activities are in the long run hurting him’r’herself, even when the damage is laid out on the table – is a hint, or so it seems to me.
Narcissists don’t deal in reality, a point that “Lorenzo” makes at his blog. (No idea who Lorenzo is, or what his expertise is (he’s an “analyst” … aren’t we all?), but I found his posts insightful even though his writing, uh, could benefit from an editor.)
Extreme narcissists, by generally common agreement in the pop psych literature, have an emotional age of about 6 years. (Whether the clinical psych lit agrees is beyond my pay grade, so caveat emptor.)
Two other generic references I’ve found useful: the “narcissists sux” blog, and Joanne Ashmun’s “characteristics of narcissism”. Lots more information out there, just mentioning a few (not necessarily the most insightful) writers.
And again, IANAPsych, don’t do this at home, caveat emptor, blah blah blah … just saying that I’ve found these essays useful in getting my head around the odd behaviors of some of my (now mostly ex-)associates.