Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

T R E 4 5 O N

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

This fight is for everything.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Hello??

Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Hello??

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Sometimes Twitter does not suck.

If you have never been prank-called by a lizard, you probably don’t live in Hawaii.

Dr. Claire Simeone, the director of the Kei Kai Ola hospital for Hawaiian monk seals, definitely does. Earlier this week, Simeone had just left work for lunch when her phone started ringing. A lot.

“I thought maybe someone had a seal-related question,” Simeone wrote on Twitter earlier today (Oct. 5). “I picked up. Silence.”

Open thread

Reader Interactions

185Comments

  3. 3.

    HAL

    So do we know where Kavanaugh’s massive debt came from? I say gambling and I still think he’s a high functioning alcoholic. Also, I hope people aren’t falling for Mitch McConnell’s bullshit about how Republicans are galvanized by this nomination.

    But for the umpteenth time this monologue from Angels in America is running through my head:

    Belize: I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word ‘free’ to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on Earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, Louis, I’ll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, Louis. I don’t have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s gotta love somethin’.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    That’s a hoot. Gecko!

    Once thought the kitchen of my new apartment was haunted because intermittently I’d hear sharp metallic clanging that would stop when I’d go into the room.

    One day it didn’t stop and I was able to narrow it down to the range hood. Opened the filter to find myself eye-to-eye with a lizard. Poor little guy had been stuck there god knows how long, maybe since construction, given it was a new complex.

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    @HAL:
    What we do know is that he is massively unqualified to be a judge of any kind or level or be in any line of authority. So, perfect for conservatives because he won’t make any decisions based upon any actual law but only on his preconceived conservative bullshit notions.
    He’s a partisan hack, the perfect example of partisan hacks. Conservatives do not want or embrace equality, not even in the tiniest detail or form. This is why they are all for him because he is as close to a perfect conservative as we are likely to see.

  8. 8.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @HAL: America is mean. It really is. It punishes people for the crime of being poor. It punishes the middle class for the crime of simply trying to keep their heads above water. The only thing it rewards is the rich. With 3 million dollar New York apartments. It rewards people for being rich while punishing everyone else. And they like that. They think that is the way things are meant to be.

  12. 12.

    Sandia Blanca

    I used to live in Hawaii, but back then we didn’t have touchscreens yet. But we sure had plenty of geckos!

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    @Litlebritdifrnt:
    The love of money as it’s own reward, avarice, goes back thousands of years. It has been obvious many times in history, we are just at a point where it once again is obvious. A small difference this time is that many have so much greed that they have used a pittance of their money to buy the propaganda (faux news and their brethren) and a rather large number of politicians. They used to just buy guards to protect them, now they buy newspapers, lawyers and politicians to do the same by creating the atmosphere that their wealth is normal, the superior way of life and that all others must obey and worship them.

  16. 16.

    germy

    [Pelican family pay for meal with $100 notes]
    WAITER: Any of you guys have smaller bills?
    PA PELICAN: [Dignified] We're as God made us, Sir
    — Andy Ryan (@ItsAndyRyan) June 2, 2015

  18. 18.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @zhena gogolia: England is by no means perfect but it has a robust welfare system that at least gives people a living wage, a place to live, free healthcare, and a serious safety net when things go wrong. We have free childcare for the working mums who are trying to support themselves. Paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, and a robust legal system that supports workers who cannot be fired for the simple act of pissing off the boss. I;ll take it.

  21. 21.

    germy

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh in recent weeks but has chosen for the time being not to refer them to a judicial panel for investigation.

    A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — the court on which Kavanaugh serves — sent a string of complaints to Roberts starting three weeks ago, according to four people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dc-circuit-sent-complaints-about-kavanaughs-testimony-to-chief-justice-roberts/2018/10/06/c7e7b526-c8d0-11e8-b1ed-1d2d65b86d0c_story.html?utm_term=.30b8b439ce8b

  22. 22.

    John Revolta

    @Ruckus:

    They used to just buy guards to protect them, now they buy newspapers, lawyers and politicians to do the same by creating the atmosphere that their wealth is normal, the superior way of life and that all others must obey and worship them.

    Seems to me there’s a lot of stuff in the various religions about accepting your lot in life and the way things are, it’s all God’s will you know, all part of the plan.
    Probably just coincidence.

  23. 23.

    J R in WV

    So that story reminds me, unpleasantly, of phone banking! Of waiting for the Telephone Hub to connect me with the next person who answers their phone, of glancing at the name the Hub dialer provides, of asking for “Norma”, of asking for a couple of minutes to talk about the race for U S Congress.

    Of being told, “They’re all a bunch of crooks, I won’t vote for any of them.” Of being told “Democrats Suck!” and the slam of their phone.

    Of sometimes getting a solid straight democratic ticket voter, and telling them it’s important to get to the polls on election day, or of voting early if they prefer. But Vote!

    I woke up early this morning, and was still angry. So I contributed to three women Senatorial candidates, Rosen in Nevada, Sinema in Arizona and Heitkamp in ND. Just what the Judiciary Committee needs is a couple more Democratic Women on it!!!

  25. 25.

    HeleninEire

    When my best friend’s girls were 3 and 1 their mom found them playing around with the telephone. She yelled at them to put it down. Ten minutes later the NYC police department was knocking at her door. Yup the girls had called 911. Apparently it happens all the time because the 9 and the 1 are on the outside of the number pad.

    My friend was mortified and not only because the house was a mess and Devon (the one year old) was only in a diaper. But because the cops heard her screaming at her girls to put the goddamn phone down. And it was on tape. She made Megan (the 3 year old) apologize to the cops even though Devon was the nefarious dialer, because Devon could not talk yet.

    Anyway Megan, who had had it up to her eyeballs with this damn new sister who was taking all her moms attention away said to my friend “Oh mommy are the police gonna take Devon away?” “No”, said their mom. “Sorry.”

  26. 26.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    It looks like 3 out of four Nobel prizes were awarded to or in part to women, why isn’t that being played out in the media?

  28. 28.

    trollhattan

    @germy:
    If neither involves baseball then Roberts will continue to not do anything. Hmmm, baseball, tickets, balls, strikes….

  29. 29.

    Aleta

    @germy: A fair and impartial institution I see.

    Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, has for many years hired Kavanaugh clerks to work for him at the Supreme Court. Bush credits Kavanaugh in his book with helping him choose Roberts for the high court when Kavanaugh was a White House lawyer.

  30. 30.

    A Ghost To Most

    We saw pronghorn, a fox, a bunch of turkeys that refused to move off the road, burros, but no geckos on our trip. Pagosa Springs is very nice, as are the hot springs, but so many Texans.

  33. 33.

    Aleta

    @germy: From Robert Post, Yale law school professor and a former dean of YLS: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/06/kavanaugh-confirmation-temperament-yale-dean-221086
    October 06, 2018

    With calculation and skill, Kavanaugh stoked the fires of partisan rage and male entitlement. He had apparently concluded that the only way he could rally Republican support only by painting himself as the victim of a political hit job. He therefore offered a witches’ brew of vicious unfounded charges, alleging that Democratic members of the Senate Judicial Committee were pursuing a vendetta on behalf of the Clintons. If we expect judges to reach conclusions based solely on reliable evidence, Kavanaugh’s savage and bitter attack demonstrated exactly the opposite sensibility.

    I was shell-shocked. This was not the Brett Kavanaugh I thought I knew. Having come so close to confirmation, Kavanaugh apparently cared more about his promotion than about preserving the dignity of the Supreme Court to which he aspired to join. Even if he sought to defend his honor as a husband and father, his unbalanced rantings about political persecution were so utterly inconsistent with the dispassionate temperament we expect from judges that one had to conclude that he had chosen ambition over professionalism.

    His performance is indelibly etched in the public mind. For as long as Kavanaugh sits on the court, he will remain a symbol of partisan anger, a haunting reminder that behind the smiling face of judicial benevolence lies the force of an urgent will to power. No one who felt the force of that anger could possibly believe that Kavanaugh might actually be a detached and impartial judge. Each and every Republican who votes for Kavanaugh, therefore, effectively announces that they care more about controlling the Supreme Court than they do about the legitimacy of the court itself. There will be hell to pay.

  35. 35.

    LuciaMia

    Newly subscribed to Hulu so have been binge watching The Handmaids Tale. As has been remarked by others, similarities to these modern times is unsettling.

    P.S. But love the gecko story

  36. 36.

    Quinerly

    Vote happening now. Lots of disruption in the gallery when Collins and Manchin vote.

    I’m in tears.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    @germy:
    Merci.

    Yeah, don’t know how much longer I’m willing to subscribe to our only local paper–it keeps shrinking as the price rises and a lot of their former writing staff are either gone or rendered independent contractors, bylined “Special to…”

    But there’s no replacement. I’m supposed to follow Next Door?

  38. 38.

    Aleta

    The closing lines of June Jordan’s poem
    “Poem About My Rights”

    I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
    My name is my own my own my own
    and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
    but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
    my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
    may very well cost you your life

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48762/poem-about-my-rights

    (from the 1990s or earlier I think)

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    @Quinerly:
    Collins is my new face of the banality of evil. “If only those protesters were more civil and weren’t paid actors…”

  41. 41.

    Quinerly

    I really tried to miss this but a thunderstorm hit, I got drenched at the art fair and rushed home. Poco goes nuts over thunder and rain. He was in full panic mode.

  44. 44.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @germy:

    “If Justice Roberts sits on the complaints then they will reside in a kind of purgatory and will never be adjudicated,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School and an expert on Supreme Court ethics. “This is not how the rules anticipated the process would work.”

    Win at any cost, rules be damned…

  45. 45.

    HeleninEire

    Well. There it is. I want to make my old joke about who wants to move here and marry me and how much $ ya got? But I don’t really feel jokey.

    I just feel sad. And exhausted.

    BUT; heads up. I’ll be back for election day and will be doing get out the vote with my old friends.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    This sentence from Scott at LGM is priceless:

    The inevitable “the Democrats are to blame for Kavanaugh getting confirmed because they didn’t use the One Magic Trick they could have used to make 49 more than 51” takes are here, and they are terrible:

  52. 52.

    Dan B

    @germy: There’s been speculation about Justice Roberts’ reaction to Kavanaugh. Reminder, Roberts was involved in the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that intimidated the Florida recount to stop and resulted in Bush v. Gore. Kavanaugh was also there when they broke into the recount site. It was organized by Roger Stone.

    Inmates in charge…. If they’d only been inmates, sigh.

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: You will surely be able to answer this. What was the impact of Murkowski voting “present” rather than “no”. Distinction without a difference, or did it actually affect the outcome?

  54. 54.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Aleta:

    With calculation and skill

    Over and over, this is the mistake people make. You don’t need calculation and skill when what more than half of white people want is an angry asshole. You just have to be an angry asshole.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl: 2016 exposed these people just like it exposed the Russians. We can now deal with it if we have the courage and will to do so.

    @WaterGirl:

    I’m not sure. Maybe they made a deal with Manchin to assure that he wouldn’t be the deciding vote.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @germy: Let’s get the Senate and keep the presidency so we replace Thomas. That will help even the score if we can pull it off.

  61. 61.

    tobie

    @Dan B: Thanks for the background on Roberts’ and Kavanaugh’s participation in the Brooks Brothers riots. I didn’t know their shared history and it does explain why Roberts’ has chosen to swear in Kavanaugh no later than this evening. They need him there for the dual jeopardy case. They’re brownshirts, every last one of them.

  63. 63.

    Woodrow/Asim

    @Baud: Let’s get the Senate and keep the presidency so we replace Thomas.Right — We’ve got to start playing the Long Game, planning 2-3 cycles ahead.

  64. 64.

    Anonymous At Work

    South Florida has more geckos than people. Not sure about by weight. Could be close.

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    The tell that it must be fiction is relating that she managed to get through to someone at Hawaiian Telcom. The “helpful” is another giveaway.

    ;)

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @Woodrow/Asim: I do think we collectively need a longer term horizon. Part of that means not getting distracted but the controversy of the day, whether it be the public option or metadata collection.

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne

    @HAL:

    I say gambling and I still think he’s a high functioning alcoholic.

    I agree with you, and I think the people who know him who say they’re shocked by his demeanor haven’t seen him for a while and had not realized how far his alcoholism had progressed. He’s going to be showing up to work heavily hungover, if not still drunk. Hope Roberts and the rest of the conservatives on the court enjoy covering up for their new BFF’s addiction problems. They deserve it.

    And I still think that the genie is out of the bottle now when it comes to Kavanaugh’s drinking and assault issues. Jane Meyer and Ronan Farrow are probably having a hard time narrowing down all of the leads they’ve been given at this point. Kavanaugh is going to be the Weinstein of the federal judiciary.

  70. 70.

    Dan B

    @Sister Golden Bear: FYI A young researcher at the University if Washington won a MacArthur fenius grant for her transgender-youth study!
    So far it has demonstrated tha trans youth who are supported at an early age don’t suffer from higher rates of depression than other kids their age.
    Now if science could knock dogma on its keister….

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne

    @tobie:

    Man, I hope the people are DC are able to get organized and stage protests around the SC building that make it difficult for Kavanaugh to get inside. It’s the least we can make him deal with.

  72. 72.

    germy

    The people the FBI refused to talk to …. they’ll be talking to the press now. Hopefully Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, not Chuck Todd.

  73. 73.

    Mnemosyne

    @germy:

    Kavanaugh now has the power to reverse Garland’s decisions. I wouldn’t want to mess with him, either, given how petty and vindictive we know Kavanaugh is.

  75. 75.

    Woodrow/Asim

    @Baud: Yep. It’s why I’m been investing some of my money (and, sadly, too little time) in newer groups like Indivisible, and efforts like Rev. Barber’s Repairers of the Breach. Groups looking to the horizon, and not just to the chaos we’re underwater in, these days.

    I’ve been re-reading a lot of Dr. King, and just thinking how he laid one blueprint for breaking these cycles. And thinking that if people like he, and my Dad, can ensure I never had to live thru Jim Crow, dammit we can work to rouse this country to avoid sliding back into those times.

  76. 76.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I keep thinking of when we visited Leipzig in 2008. A plaque in the Bishop’s Palace mentioned that the city had been bombed to the ground in a massive air raid late in WW2, basically flattened (including the Palace) and 90% of the population wiped out. Yet here we were, tourists in what was to all appearances an intact city hundreds of years old.

    A lot of Europe was wrecked by that war, to say nothing of its government institutions.

    Yet they came back.

    Whatever country we inherit when we take the reins of power (FSM willing, in January 2019), it won’t be quite that bad. A lot is broken, but not quite that much. They rebuilt. We will too.

    @Baud: I do think we collectively need a longer term horizon.

    Agree, but also I want an exhaustive List of Broken Stuff That Needs To Be Fixed, and I want us to start working on it day one, hour one, minute one. As I often say about daunting tasks at home: left foot, right foot. One step at a time.

    Stay angry, my friends.

    I’m kind of encouraged by the number of people (myself included) for whom Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas are still a fresh, raw wound. That means that there’s a good chance the momentum and anger keep going to the 2020 congress and senate elections. Could we have a supermajority in the Senate in 2021?

  77. 77.

    HeleninEire

    Been feeling down. But Planned Parenthood just brought me up. When the Pulse massacre happened I went to the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village for a vigil. I posted on my FB page a picture of the NYCPD standing outside the Stonewall protecting the patrons. Let me say that again. The NYCPD was protecting the patrons. That day I posted the following, as did Planned Parenthood today.

    “The arc of the moral universe is long. But it bends toward justice.” /Martin Luther King, Jr.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @Woodrow/Asim: I find one of the hardest things for me is deciding what to choose to focus my efforts on.

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I think it’s important to have that list, but, again, I worry about people being overly obsessed with checking of boxes rather than seeing the bigger, longer term picture.

    I sometimes think that people think that with every atrocity, we’ll come back stronger. And we may! But that doesn’t mean every injustice we allow too happen will be rectified. Irreparable losses are inevitable.

  80. 80.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Party of Personal Responsibility pins their actions on other people again. Though it’s feeling more like the Party of Abusers these days — Look what you made me do! I wouldn’t have been forced to hit you if you hadn’t made me so angry! Etc.

    At the end of my writers’ group today, we were discussing people who had abusive parents and saying that those kids usually go one of two ways when they become parents: they either reject what their parents did to them and consciously try to do better, or they rationalize their parents’ abuse as normal behavior and recreate it with their own children. The Republicans feel like an entire party of people trying to normalize abusive behavior at this point.

  82. 82.

    tobie

    @Mnemosyne: That would be poetic justice. I’m trying to digest the symbolism of the police removing the people to install the SC Justice of the 1%. Canvassing today was a welcome respite from all of this. The people on my door knocking list were uniformly engaged, enraged, and eagerly waiting to vote.

  86. 86.

    debbie

    @Mnemosyne:

    I was just listening to an NPR interview with some guy who law clerked with Kavanaugh. He found Kavanaugh’s anger totally reasonable given the circumstances and thought it was wrong for anyone to hold that against him. Not a word from him about Blasey Ford. It’s become pathetically obvious that the people who are able to explain away Kavanaugh’s unjudicial behavior are the same people who will continue (and never stop) mocking Blasey Ford.

  88. 88.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @germy: He’s on the 2020 list
    https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_elections,_2020
    (hold your mouse over the map to see the incumbent in each of the open seats)

    McConnell is Kentucky.
    Susan Collins in Maine and Lindsay Graham in SC are also up in 2020.

    Edit (I love that we can edit!) to add: I see Inhofe is up in 2020 also. I don’t suppose there’s any chance we can dislodge him, is there?

  89. 89.

    CaseyL

    @HeleninEire: Ain’t got much $$. Do have two cats. Very willing to same-sex marry you and move to Ireland. If it weren’t for the kitties, I’d already be on a plane. :)

  91. 91.

    SenyorDave

    @debbie: Not a word from him about Blasey Ford.

    She doesn’t matter to them at all. If she had a videotape of the episode it might sway them but I wouldn’t bet on it. Besides this guy probably idolizes Kavanaugh. He is living the dream, and eff anyone who stands in the way.

    I think Kavanaugh’s rant was his way of saying why should it matter even if I did those things. You should confirm me anyway. And a large part of this country, especially white males, agrees.

  92. 92.

    Woodrow/Asim

    @debbie: @SenyorDave: People like Dr. Blasey Ford never really mattered to people like them.

    That she stood in the way was just, to them, an annoyance. She wasn’t ever on their level, so why are you even listening to her?

    So, we gotta get to the ballot box, to make ’em listen.

  95. 95.

    Aleta

    He got the vote but he didn’t get away with it. He got exposed right down to the cornered rat face underneath. More people than I ever imagined denounced him, in print. Said to the world that he’s a liar, a biased paranoid, a two-faced out of control bully. Funny how he turned out to be the evil doppelganger, as advertised. And to top it off, this shrunken ego without a conscience stripped every Senate Republican down another dirty layer. Ruined Collins’ life’s work of pretension. Recommended several Dem Senators to us as deserving of extra support. .

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    When I was in junior high school I got beaten up by bullies a lot. Occasionally I see threads in which people swap their bully stories, about the time they confronted “their bully” and took the bully down a peg or managed to drive them off.

    I have no such inspirational stories. The thing I learned about bullies in those days–whether it was the wrong lesson or not–is that you couldn’t actually beat them. There wasn’t a bully, there were crowds of them. The bullies ran in semi-organized gangs and basically controlled social interactions in places like PE class. They were bigger than you, they were stronger and had greater numbers, they were more skilled at fighting than you’d ever hope to become in the time available, and the authorities looked the other way or tacitly supported the bullying or at least objected to anything you might do to fight back. There was just no way. They could beat you any time they wanted, and there was nothing you could do. End of story.

    But. If you waited long enough, eventually they’d destroy themselves, or at least get out of your hair. The first bully who ever punched me in the gut, back when I was a little kid… when he was a teenager, he hanged himself. There were rumors that it wasn’t suicide, it was autoerotic asphyxiation. I don’t know if that was true. Either way, he was dead. The others… eventually most of them dropped out of school, moved along the school-to-prison pipeline or into some life of squalor and degradation.

    So: there’s a brutal but neat little message there. Evil always beats good in a face-to-face confrontation, but evil plants the seeds of its own destruction.

    Not an activist formula, though, because it conveniently implies you don’t have to do anything.

    And, you know, it’s not that simple. I got into college and I met a different, more genteel class of bully who didn’t punch me in the gut at all. They weren’t that interested in me; they hated gays, blacks, women who wouldn’t put out. If they had any real animosity toward me it was because I wouldn’t join in their games, or because they weren’t 100% sure I wasn’t gay. And some of these guys, they didn’t necessarily destroy themselves.

    The Kavanaugh episode has been bringing back a lot of that stuff.

    I don’t know if there is any arc of the universe that bends toward justice. I have a feeling it doesn’t happen without collective action. But my experiences haven’t been such that I really feel, emotionally, that acting does anything. I do think that evil has a self-destructive tendency that can be exploited, but waiting for that implies a lot of collateral damage.

  97. 97.

    West of the Rockies

    @Aleta:

    Didn’t you post something about dolphins getting high on puffer fish? And now this bit about feathers and fluid dynamics? What are ya, some kind of science believer?

    Burn the science witch!//

  98. 98.

    zhena gogolia

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Evil always beats good in a face-to-face confrontation, but evil plants the seeds of its own destruction.

    You sound like my husband. I hope you’re right.

  100. 100.

    gene108

    @germy:

    Every fucking Republican on every court is a partisan hack.

    The Republican Party has become a radical far right revolutionary party, and – as either Trotsky or Lenin said – the courts are the vanguard of the Revolution. Their job is not to decide, who is innocent or guilty, but rather how it can help further the Revolution.

  105. 105.

    Woodrow/Asim

    @Matt McIrvin: “I don’t know if there is any arc of the universe that bends toward justice. I have a feeling it doesn’t happen without collective action.”

    You are right. See: Dr. King said that, once. What he talked a LOT more about, was what I like to call “…and it bends much faster if you get out, and PUSH.”

    “my experiences haven’t been such that I really feel, emotionally, that acting does anything.”

    And my personal and familial experience is that Acting, and Acting Out, does make a change. Indeed, the 1st criticisms of MLK came from both the White and AA communities who though he was too abrasive, too much a rabble-rouser!

    If MLK hadn’t Acted Out, I’d likely still be living under Jim Crow. So yeah, it does work — and many times, it’s the only thing that does make change.

  106. 106.

    Shakti

    I finally received my mail in ballot. I was beginning to worry I had been purged from the rolls.
    Just in time to see Sniffledrunk Calendar as a SCOTUS judge.

  107. 107.

    Bill Arnold

    @Dan B:

    There’s been speculation about Justice Roberts’ reaction to Kavanaugh. Reminder, Roberts was involved in the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that intimidated the Florida recount to stop and resulted in Bush v. Gore.

    My hope for Roberts is/has been that he appears to have a significantly-greater-than-zero concern for the reputation of the Supreme Court. He seems to reject totally absurd arguments, for example. (Anyone who is more familiar with his opinions please correct.)

  108. 108.

    Mary G

    Ady Barkin’s “Be a Hero” crowdfund for Susan Collins’ 2020 opponent is up to $3,215,615 with a new goal of $4 million, which he thinks will hit by the end of the weekend. Republicans woke up the sleeping giant.

  111. 111.

    gene108

    @Kristine:

    I always picture them, not as the bully, who harasses smaller kids, but the ones who want to be on the bully’s good side and so will laugh as the smaller kid gets harassed and egg on the bully.

  114. 114.

    Emerald

    @Bill Arnold:

    That was kind of my thought–that he was worried about his court’s reputation in history, which is why he upheld the ACA.

    I was thinking that he might save Roe for the same reason, but I dunno. Roe is the holy grail of the wingers. If they don’t give them that, their base might just abandon them. I don’t think that just weakening it is going to be enough.

    And I didn’t know about Roberts being involved in the Brooks Brothers riot either. Does not bode well. If they cripple Mueller next week, we’ll know (although I strongly suspect that Mueller will have a plan up his sleeve.).

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @Woodrow/Asim:
    There has to be a cost for their crappy behavior.
    It’s rarely a cost they pay all at once, although that can and does happen. But that cost has to be there, otherwise they keep getting whatever reward they think they are getting for their crappy behavior. And they have to recognize that cost, realize that the cost is too high. And frequently that cost starts with something the bullies have done themselves.
    BK is an example. He’s been bullying through his entire life. Most of those around him had enough protection by their “stations” in life to not have to be a victim or a witness. But even some of them see him getting the golden ring as having gone way too far. And BK and the republicans, by their pathetic performance have just bullied the rest of us too far. That’s going to cost them and cost them big. Unfortunately it will take time and effort to get there but we will. It will take time and effort to fix the damage done, but we will. The trick is to realize that republican politicians are bullies, all of them. They are fucking with us, and none of us like it. Some of us will of course suffer more and longer.

  116. 116.

    Jeffro

    @Aleta:

    For as long as Kavanaugh sits on the court, he will remain a symbol of partisan anger, a haunting reminder that behind the smiling face of judicial benevolence lies the force of an urgent will to power. No one who felt the force of that anger could possibly believe that Kavanaugh might actually be a detached and impartial judge. Each and every Republican who votes for Kavanaugh, therefore, effectively announces that they care more about controlling the Supreme Court than they do about the legitimacy of the court itself. There will be hell to pay.

    There will most certainly be some Court-packing to be done, in order to render Rapey-K irrelevant, that’s for sure. Starting Nov 6th and again in 2020.

  117. 117.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: agreed…we have to win in November, and then we really HAVE to win in 2020. The presidency will be up for grabs, the Senate will be in our favor (finally!), we’ll need to keep the house, and we’ll be getting ready to reapportion based on the census, right?

    Everyone better gear up: these smash-and-grab republicans ain’t seen nothing yet!

  118. 118.

    debbie

    @Matt McIrvin:

    What there is, is the Law of the Universe: You get back what you put out. You may or may not be there to see it, but there will always be a reckoning.

  119. 119.

    Bill Arnold

    @Matt McIrvin:

    But. If you waited long enough, eventually they’d destroy themselves, or at least get out of your hair.

    A in-law relative comes from a family that has a 2-year rule for revenge (divulged after a few drinks). Wait 2 years, then exact revenge (if you still care) at a time when they never expect it. I expect that most of the time people cool down or move away from each other in those two years.

  120. 120.

    Mary G

    Also, I have not been reading comments as much as I usually do, because of breaking into bouts of rage, but has anyone posted Alexandra Petri’s column from yesterday in the voice of Mitch McConnell and his ilk?

    Well, sure, I am going to vote yes on Kavanaugh, sweetie. Don’t become hysterical. But I just feel so awful it had to happen like this. It’s such a shame, I think.

    I just think, dollface, if there is one thing that came out of all this, sugar, that was good, it is, pumpkin, that you got to have your say. Baby, you got to stand up in front of all these people and bear witness to what you felt like you had experienced, like a big girl! It was so important, and I absolutely believed you, sweetheart!

    Chickadee, baby doll, your voice was so important. Your movement matters, honey. It matters, darling. It matters, sweet cheeks.

    I think the people who should feel bad, though, honey pie (not you, of course, duckling!) are the people who told you that if you said something, it might matter. That was mean of them. What was so cruel was that you, baby girl, had to bear witness thinking that something would happen. I suppose you didn’t know, sugar tits, that nothing was going to happen, doll baby. But I was so inspired by you and what you did! It was so brave, pudding! It was so wonderful, toots!

    It was so important! It was so inspiring! I am going to work to be sure your voice is heard, chickadee — loud and clear, dumpling! I am going to be sure, of course, that your daughters never suffer an indignity, baby, like thinking that if they poured out their pain, people might do something other than wade through it and go about their business, buttercup. That must have been embarrassing.

    Oh, sugar, your movement is so important. But if you had a legitimate objection, I’m sure the legislative body would have ways of shutting the whole confirmation down, darling. The point is, we can all be inspired by the brave women and girls like you, baby doll, who said their piece, who poured their voices down a deep well from which no echo emerged, honey! I was certainly inspired. Girl power!

    I believe you, sweetie. Of course I do, jellybean. It mattered. It mattered so much. The future is female, toots! But speaking up is its own reward, isn’t it? Don’t you find that, dollface, sugar, sweet cheeks? I find that. You got to feel heard, didn’t you, toots? Not listened to, but heard. You got to say words out loud where people were able to hear them, and then you got to watch them continue about what they were doing, which must have been so empowering for you, duckling! You got to feel like you had a real voice, honey! It was adorable.

    Gumdrop, what matters is that it was good for you. I hope it was good for you. I just feel awful that it was all for nothing, pumpkin, sugar pie, peach! I just feel so sad watching you struggle like that while I did nothing, princess! It pained me to see you think you could change my mind, oh honey, oh precious, oh lamb.

    But don’t worry your head about it, darling, sweetheart, love bug. I have every reason to believe that Justice Kavanaugh will be fair and fine. He will bridge the partisan gap. The process isn’t broken, doll baby, darling. You can trust him, sweetie. What’s important, sugarplum, is that you tried!

    It was so important, what you said. Of course it was, sunshine! I am so glad we heard you, sweetheart, even if we did not listen to you, pumpkin!

    Sit down, now. Shut up, honey.

    Of course, I believe you, sweetie. I don’t believe that what you say happened happened, duckling, but I think it is so brave you said it! I’m just mad that those meanies, pookie, lied to you and gave you hope. Hope is always the cruelest thing to give people. Hope is what makes the monsters in the box unbearable.

    And yes, I’m in violation of her and the WaPo copyright because that’s the whole thing, so if any of you frontpagers want to pick what to take out, please feel free. I could not pick a selection.

  122. 122.

    gene108

    @Jeffro:

    we’ll be getting ready to reapportion based on the census, right?

    Do you think there is a way for Democrats in the House to be convinced to increase the number of seats, if we are in charge, in 2021.

    It hasn’t been done since 1911. I think Americans deserve more representation in their government.

  123. 123.

    Bill Arnold

    @Aleta:

    He got the vote but he didn’t get away with it. …

    Admiring this.
    And thanks for the dolphins/pufferfish story. Needed it.

  124. 124.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Woodrow/Asim: In the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King complained about white liberals who had “a mythic sense of time” and kept telling him to ease off and wait for some cosmic payback. So obviously that’s not what he meant by the arc-of-the-universe quote (which came from abolitionist minister Theodore Parker).

  125. 125.

    NotMax

    @gene108

    Frankly, no. There are bigger fish to fry.

    Trivia: House was temporarily increased to 437 from part of 1959 through the beginning of 1963 after Alaska and Hawaii became states, then back to 435 after the next election following reapportionment based on the 1960 census.

  127. 127.

    A Ghost To Most

    Put your faith in politics if you must. It is clear to some of us that politics has failed, and democracy is failing.

    These “people” only understand power.

  128. 128.

    Woodrow/Asim

    @Matt McIrvin: Yeah, I’ve already quoted LETTER twice at-length today, so wasn’t energetic to dig it out a third time over something I could discuss myself :)

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: I’d be for enlarging the House, but I would rather see Puerto Rico and other “territories”– it’s so fucking 19th century– should gain representation first. I don’t know which would be the heavier lift

    Brian Schatz @ brianschatz
    One of our highest medium term priorities must be to enfranchise – to empower, Americans in Puerto Rico, DC, Guam, American Samoa with full representation in Congress and to allow formerly incarcerated individuals to vote.

  132. 132.

    Dan B

    @HeleninEire: I’d be willing to opposite marry you and move to Ireland but… my boyfriend would be angry with being left to take care of three kittehs.

    And would it be a gay marriage since, you know, I’m gay. Aaargh! Too many pesky details. Guess I’ll just stay here and get arrested like I do on my 48 year recurring cycle.

  133. 133.

    Dan B

    @Aleta: You should see her picture. She looks like the idealized daughter of a small upper midwest family, not a researcher of trans kids that’s the nightmare of some small towns.

  137. 137.

    HeleninEire

    @Dan B: I am so in love with you. Gay wise but not really gay but Ireland was the first western country to say Oh hey all you gays let’s get married!!!! So bring your lover here and let’s have a wedding!

  138. 138.

    Dan B

    @Matt McIrvin: Your story echoed with me. I was beaten up by the big yown bully in eighth grade Sunday School. The teacher snd minister, nice young guys, did norhing. I was already quietly atheist so my parents let me stop going to church. The bully got a seventh grade girl pregnant and went on an arson spree. I think he went to prison but I always wonder what would have happened if he’d been stopped at just bullying.

    Enough of the GOP is at the bullying phase and “reasonable people” are condemning any pushback. It’s not a good sign in my book.

  140. 140.

    BellyCat

    @Matt McIrvin: Co-signed.

    Watched two school bullies that caused me to continually scan my environment for their presence self-destruct over time.

    However, the high-ranking/wealthy bullies are dismantling any system designed to protect lesser folk.

    Solutions? I haz got nuthin’… Seems we, as a nation, are going backwards in a system where money/rank equals power.

  142. 142.

    NotMax

    @BillinGlendaleCA

    Fire up that puppy. :)

    So long as it is not an obsolete, no longer supported model, the grand total cost of using it is $0 to access tons of free channels.

  143. 143.

    Dan B

    @Bill Arnold: I too believe he’s all about reputation. That’s good. What has happened is he’s got a right wing that seems to be covering up sketchy and criminal behavior. (Is covering up…)

    What does he do to rein it in? At this point his only option is to sound measured and reasonable. Unfortunately that’s useful to authoritarians who take small steps at first. So he becomes the Weimar Justice and the Chamberlain Judge and the Good German?

  144. 144.

    Chris Johnson

    @Ruckus: Boy, am I agreeing with Ruckus a lot.

    The message this gives the Republicans is that they should carry on faster and harder and yell more, and that will carry the day for ’em.

    Meanwhile I see both Democrats and dirtbag leftists talking a lot about how it’s time to go out to the ball game.

    You only get certain kinds of action when there’s no alternative and people are beyond desperate: when they’re already as good as dead.

    Republicans, claiming self defense, are going to go there. Forget elections, those are probably done. Them being fake was 2016 and we’re probably past that point.

    They now have to sustain their tyranny… when Russia does not, in fact, want them to be strong. They’re exposed and outnumbered and all those wingnuts with a thousand AK47s can only wield one at once. This is war, and if this must be war, then bring it. Everyone who is actually an American, watch for your chance and if you have to dispose of your life, sell it dearly. It’s time for Republicans to be very afraid. It’s time for traitors to be very afraid, and to learn that getting done for treason was in fact the soft option.

    As soon as they go full Nazi, their reich can be counted in months. Why wait for 2020 if all that is no longer operative?

  146. 146.

    Kathleen

    @Matt McIrvin:

    but evil plants the seeds of its own destruction.

    That’s what I took away from MacBeth. I had never realized that truth before I saw the play. I agree that they are destroying themselves. At times like this I wish I were a master in one of the martial arts where you have the patience and skill to wait for your opponent’s vulnerability. There’s much to apply here in that practice.

    Would you think ill of me if I rejoiced in the demise of those bullies?

  147. 147.

    Kathleen

    @Kristine: The Mainslime Media are just as evil as the Rethuglicans. They are willingly and knowingly complicit in the Fascist coup. (Note: referring mostly to broadcast outlets. There are still many outstanding print reporters.

  148. 148.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Dan B: That’s awesome.

    I’m familiar with that study and others – even small measures of support for trans kids make huge differences in reducing the shockingly high rates of suicide/attempted suicide among them. We’re losing too many of them.

    It was somewhat of a surprise to me that trans boys have the highest suicide/attempted suicide rates. I suspect it’s probably two main things: 1) they’ve internalize masculine attitudes that make it harder for them to seek help, 2) visibility matters. Trans women have become highly visible, with public figures – which is a double-edged sword – while trans men have historically been invisible, and mostly remain so today, with few public figures beyond Chaz Bono and Buck Angel. So there’s far fewer examples of “it gets better.” Same is true for non-binary kids, who have the second-highest suicide/attempted suicide rates – and speaking from experience from the years I identified as NB, in many ways that’s a far, far harder place to be.

  149. 149.

    Mnemosyne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    What’s interesting is that I actually had both experiences in high school. There was one bully who I ended up getting into a physical fight with who subsequently left me alone, and a different, more insidious bully who would harass me during algebra class by snapping my bra strap and making it impossible to tell him to stop without getting in trouble myself. That guy ended up dying in a drunk driving accident before graduation, so problem solved.

    So I would say that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You need to choose your strategy based on the situation. Right now, we seem to outnumber the bullies, so the right thing to do is stand and fight, even knowing they won’t fight fair.

  151. 151.

    oatler.

    Wait until Both Sides Chuck Todd has a go at it tomorrow. Never was such an orifice so perfectly contoured…

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    You know, I’m known as a big old pessimist around here, but I’d kindly recommend that my fellow apocalyptic pessimists hold off on directly discouraging voter participation when we’re exactly one month out from the midterm.

    Among other things: people act like control of the House of Representatives is all the marbles, but there are a bunch of state legislatures and governorships up for election. That shit is particularly important when there’s a reactionary Supreme Court. A lot of what they do is going to be enabling evil state governments to do evil things. Best not to have an evil state government.

  153. 153.

    Dan B

    @HeleninEire: Thanks so much for the offer. I’ll check with my Mikey when he’s back from his weekly visit to his mom in Bellingham.

    If not us we have good friends who are looking to get out of the US. He #1 is Latino mix rugby type guy. He #2 is anglo. Kids are 4 and 5 YO and anglo white. Dad #1 is terrified he’ll be grabbed off the street for kidnapping his kids. The fear is wearing the family out.

    Only problem is they’re married so there’s the bigamy thing. As I recall from a wonderful couple days in Ireland in the late 80s might not ho over as well as it would in 10s Dan Savage poly Seattle. At least the black flags on the power lines in Northern Ireland seemed an omen…

    Loved Mt Stewart Castle Gardens though…

  154. 154.

    ruemara

    That’s a great story. You can’t trust these amphibians! Also, in the interest of giving folks something fun, here’s the first of a motion comic I’m voicing. So far I’ve been a Jedi for a machinima and now I’m a space marine fighting xenomorphs. More importantly, this little boy is now a full year old. And, as you can see, he’s living his best life. Now, can someone give me the link to the postcards page? I want to do some that have the early voting dates and voters rights numbers available, plus Lyft & Uber contacts for rides.

  155. 155.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    while trans men have historically been invisible, and mostly remain so today, with few public figures beyond Chaz Bono and Buck Angel.

    The ones I can think of in creative endeavors I appreciate are so recent–Daniel Ortberg and Yoon Ha Lee, both of whom publicly identified as trans men just in the past few years.

  156. 156.

    Dan B

    @Kathleen: Trevor Noah had a great piece on the weaponization of male fear of being the victim of false accusations by MeToo. He pointed out how he has a tough time fighting the feeling that he’ll be caught in it – possible as a very good looking young black celebrity.

    He ties it to the powerful suddenly experiencing fear of losing power even if it’s only the tiniest possibility. It works like terrorism. You only have to harm a few to spread fear far and deep.

    We found Noah’s piece at YouTube. It seems to have gone viral, for a good reason.

  158. 158.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    You know, I’m known as a big old pessimist around here, but I’d kindly recommend that my fellow apocalyptic pessimists hold off on directly discouraging voter participation when we’re exactly one month out from the midterm.

    Why would anyone do this? Discourage voting? What possible reason would anyone have for doing this? To accomplish what?

    Also, as I keep reminding people, we are in a voting window. Some states have already begun accepting vote by mail ballots. California will begin mailing vote by mail ballots on October 9.

    Get out the vote has begun. Let’s get it done.

  159. 159.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jeffro: I would actually love to see some national Democrats openly saying that the Supreme Court has basically been ‘bought off’ by Republicans at this point and can’t be trusted as a legitimate institution without additional seats or the removal of highly-partisan judges like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

    I’m sure it would go over like a lead balloon, but we need to start heading off the inevitable “Well, the Supreme Court agrees with Republicans that Trump’s treason/theft/lawbreaking/assault/rape was legal and can’t be prosecuted, so therefore it’s basically okay. Because they’re non-partisan.”

  160. 160.

    debbie

    @ruemara:

    Yeah, that’s pretty much a given anymore. Though I have to wonder just how diverse the law clerking profession is.

  161. 161.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Ruckus: I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t condone this at ALL, but they’re pushing people so far that I think it’s entirely likely that someone’s going to go after McConnell/Collins/Kavanaugh and try to 2nd Amendment Recall them. This would be bad – very bad, for everyone.

    But they’re backing people into a corner where logic, law, passion, argumentation, empathy and voting is just… starting not to work anymore. They’ve circumvented all these things to some degree or another. So people are inevitably going to turn to something else, and I’m afraid that’s going to be violence.

  162. 162.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @gene108: IIRC that’s not quite true. The last change to the number of Representatives was in 1958-9 when Alaska & Hawaii were admitted to the Union. Again IIRC, each new State was allotted the standard 2 Senators (bringing the Senate from 96 to 100) and a single member of the House (neither had sufficient population to rate more), which brought the HoR to 437. In the process of redistribution after the 1960 Census the total number of Representatives was reduced to the former 435.

    And indeed!

    When Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states in 1959, the membership of the House temporarily increased to 437 (seating one member from each of those newly admitted states and leaving the apportionment of the other 435 seats unchanged); it would remain at 437 until reapportionment resulting from the 1960 census.

    (You could look it up.)

    It seems that Alaska was admitted on the very last day of the 85th Congress (3 Jan 1959) & that provision was made for seating its two Senators (at its opening the 86th Congress had 98 in the Senate) but it is unclear whether a Repesentative was also seated, which would have brought the House to 436 until Hawaii was also admitted the following August.

    It is also unclear how this change was made. Legislation, presumably, but we’d need to track the bill down.

    In any case, this happened within the lifetimes of many jackals – yerstruly included.

    ETA (yay!): And NotMax got there succinctly before me…dammit.

  163. 163.

    Dan B

    @Sister Golden Bear: I get lots of stories of trans men from Joe My God, Towleroad, and the Advocate but few of them make it to bigger media / social media. Our trans male friends are more interested in macro politics than in personal politics. And Seattle has had prominent and active trans women for decades. I’ve known Marsha Botzer for more than two decades.

    Glad you like the MacArthur award!

  164. 164.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    BK is an example. He’s been bullying through his entire life.

    Interesting. Trump may not have known this about Kavanaugh in the beginning, but it probably helped make Trump’s support for him more emphatic.

    And BK and the republicans, by their pathetic performance have just bullied the rest of us too far. That’s going to cost them and cost them big.

    We shall see. The differences between the Democrats and Republicans have never been more stark. Voters have a reason to come out and put a stop to this. There really are no excuses.

  165. 165.

    BellyCat

    @Kathleen: Adult Bullies like Power, and Power protects Power (see Republican Party). Voting can potentially upset this system if it can overcome electoral and gerrymandering handicaps.

    How is Bully Power in large institutions (corporate or academic) unseated?
    Aside from scandal, I’ve not seen much that is effective.

  166. 166.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Matt McIrvin: The both sound like really cool dudes. In my experience, most trans guys I’ve met tends either are amazing men who demonstrate masculinity without toxicity, or the worst asshole dudebros around.

    I’m sure there’s probably more well-known trans men in specific fields, especially those known to younger folks (to trans youth I’m definitely considered one of the Olds). Albeit there’s not too many trans women who are widely-known trans women current public figures beyond Lavern Cox, Janet Mock, and (sadly) Caitlyn Jenner. But on the whole there is far more overall visibility for trans women and trans girls that helps considerably.

  167. 167.

    Dan B

    @MisterForkbeard: The history of bloody revolutions where two or more sides fought each other is not promising. It’s nearly impossible to put the violence back in the bottle once it’s released. Non-violent revolutions have a better track record although there are examples like most of the Arab Spring. It seems to me that we will be called upon to be courageous, to put ourselves in front of the police, and to contril the Black Bloc types. Most of them seem crazy and a few seem like cointelpro plants.

    Messy it will be but minimizing bloodshed will be crucial. Let the forces of evil reveal themselves but do not be seen as a force of destruction.

    And in the midst find time to party and celebrate. Nothing demoralizes opposing ideas like having a good time and a good laugh!

  169. 169.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Republicans want to discourage voting, because that’s the only way they win. That’s why they created the fake #walkaway campaign to try and peel off Democratic voters.

    Here’s the thing about election meddling and other fuckery: it only works at the margins. If 50,000 people vote for the Democrat and 20,000 vote for the Republican, there’s no way to change that result without being detected quite easily. You need it to be more like 50,000 for the Democrat and 49,000 for the Republican to be able to switch votes without being caught.

    Our best hope in November is to flood the polls with as many Democrats as possible to make it difficult or impossible for Republicans or Russians to fiddle with the votes.

  171. 171.

    Bill Arnold

    @Bill Arnold:

    A in-law relative comes from a family that has a 2-year rule for revenge

    Since I’m in hyper-sensitive mood tonight, to be clear I am not at all personally into revenge.

    @Mnemosyne:

    and a different, more insidious bully who would harass me during algebra class by snapping my bra strap and making it impossible to tell him to stop without getting in trouble myself. That guy ended up dying in a drunk driving accident before graduation, so problem solved.

    The ideal outcome there would have been for him to have changed his ways and stop bullying. That does sometimes happen; wish we knew how to make it happen much more often; so often a bully (like BK) remains a bully well into middle age or beyond.

  172. 172.

    Kathleen

    @BellyCat: I agree that voting is one way of dealing with bullying in government. On a personal level, I’ve learned that when I’m bullied (which I have been in corporate situations) I internalize the bullying and blame myself for not “being stronger” or “letting it roll of my back” like others in my work group did. Also deep down I thought the bullies were right about me. So something each of us who experiences those same feelings can do is accept we have the fears but we do not have to internalize the bullies’ judgments.

  173. 173.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator:

    Why would anyone do this? Discourage voting? What possible reason would anyone have for doing this? To accomplish what?

    To accelerate the coming of the great head-busting revolution, of course.

    I have to admit, I understand the feelings. There are times, reading grim political stories, when it seems like all we’re doing is negotiating the terms of our eventual extermination. I sometimes think: let’s get it over with, give up on all this talking and voting we’re doomed to lose anyway, start the mass killing in earnest. The waiting is too much.

    I think, though, that this really just a form of toxic masculinity operating in my own head.

    I suspect there’s a reason that the activists actually getting things done are mostly women. They haven’t been trained by internalized images of manhood to believe in their heart of hearts that on some level, anything other than busting heads and shooting people is a worthless effete activity.

  174. 174.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Dan B: Oh, I agree – violence would be terrible for everyone. There might be some ameliorating effect on Republicans (“Oh, we pissed them off enough that they’re going to try and kill us.”) but more realistically they’d use it as an excuse to clamp down harder. The rank and file would probably start violence against the left, and we’d be stuck in this escalating cycle of violence. Terrible, terrible idea.

    I still think it might happen, if just because the Republicans are pushing people to action and then closing off most avenues of legitimate action. Some extremely angry person is going to lose it and start something awful.

  175. 175.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterForkbeard: Well, it happens already–there have been a few arguably “left” incidents like the guy who shot Steve Scalise, and the Dallas police killer. But they’re actually far outnumbered by incidents of right-wing violence, even though the right is firmly in control.

  176. 176.

    Mnemosyne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    IIRC, the Dallas Police killer was a really weird case, because he was a sovereign citizen, but also a Black separatist. I’m not even sure where you put that on the political scale — in that spot way at the top of the circle where anarchism and libertarianism start to mesh? ?

  177. 177.

    debbie

    @Mnemosyne:

    Very, very far to the right. A couple of them were living in a conservative area, not attracting attention until they blew up their house while making bombs.

  178. 178.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne: JJ MacNab has talked about that. There’s a whole small fringe of black “sovcits”. It seems to be the kind of delusion that has appeal beyond white-supremacist circles.

  179. 179.

    Chris Johnson

    @MisterForkbeard: One thing is, the wingnuts have been insisting the left are doing this regardless of whether they are doing it or not.

    It’s all about which people are backed into a corner such that they are not going to survive anyway. There are a lot of people up against that wall for a myriad of reasons: health, poverty, various sorts of othering. If you give people a chance they will tend to just make noisy threats and not take real action. The Republicans are not about giving their ‘enemies’ a chance these days, so they are creating their own ‘stochastic terrorism problem’. I think that is absolutely appropriate.

  183. 183.

    Ruckus

    @MisterForkbeard:
    My comment was not meant as a call to arms. We are not anywhere close to that type of behavior, not close at all.
    Beating bullies can take many forms. On the playground it’s often physical action but this is anything but a playground we occupy. We have to get out the vote and take back the country. The mood seems to be there, to win, at the local, state and national levels. We won’t win them all but if we can win the vast majority we will be in control. Not enough to take back the country yet, but enough to slow the slide and hold our own. The next step is the 2020 election. We need to win and win big there. If we do that we will have taken back the country. Then we will have to rebuild everything that the 4 yrs prior has broken. And convince enough people that participating is what protects our country. We will never be rid of bigots, it is part of human nature. We can show that bigotry is wrong and doesn’t work to make life better for all. We can possibly fix our tax structure and our political structure so that unnamed money does not control the political life. Possibly we can see the end of the current republican party, but I doubt it.
    We have a lot to fix in this country, let’s do it the correct way. At the voting box and with better people in charge of the government. We owe it to ourselves to give the correct way a try before we do anything else.

  184. 184.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris Johnson: I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Rioters are often people with no recourse who have been backed into a corner, but IIRC political terrorists are often middle-class or richer, people who really could just live comfortable lives if they wanted to. It’s strangely common for them to have engineering backgrounds.

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