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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2018 / Late Night Venal Clowns Open Thread: Are We Sure McSally Is Even A Republican?!?”

Late Night Venal Clowns Open Thread: Are We Sure McSally Is Even A Republican?!?”

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… We haven’t heard her scream DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM even once!

Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema expanded her lead to 20,203 votes over GOP Rep. Martha McSally Friday evening as Arizona election authorities continued to count ballots in the state’s uncalled Senate race…

Republicans and Democrats had been expecting the ballot releases Thursday and Friday to benefit Sinema and expand her lead, as they were mailed ballots from the final days of early voting, which favored the Democrat. Republicans believe the gap will narrow in the coming days, however, because as many as 200,000 of the remaining ballots were dropped off at polling places on Election Day, and those ballots are expected to benefit McSally.

Most of the remaining vote is from Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county that includes Phoenix. Arizona election authorities will continue to release a similar number of ballots every day over the weekend and into next week until the vote is fully counted. It’s unclear when the race will be called.

In a statement, Sinema’s campaign manager Andrew Piatt said: “Once again, today’s data confirmed our expectation that as the ballots are counted, Kyrsten will steadily build her advantage and be elected to the U.S. Senate.”

In a statement, McSally said: “Equal protection under the law is a fundamental constitutional right for American voters. As a combat veteran, I fought to protect it. And today, we won an important battle to preserve that right for rural voters in Arizona. I will continue fighting until every ballot is counted.”…

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  1. 1.

    Jerzy Russian

    I wish they would not overlap tweets like that. Makes it hard to read. On the other hand, one could say the same thing about the whole platform of Twitter, but that horse has sailed, so to speak.

  5. 5.

    opiejeanne

    So, Kyl’s argument is that people’s votes in rural areas should count more than votes from cities? Because it’s not fair that more people live in the cities? That city people are disenfranchising rural people just by voting?
    Have I got that right?

  6. 6.

    Bobby Thomson

    So is Kyl really saying thaqt couting all the votes from Phoenix “disenfranchises” voters in the sticks?

    That’s . . . special.

  7. 7.

    Platonailedit

    The thug: Europe should pay more for military.

    Macron: Europe should build its own military to protect it against us of a.

    Mission accomplished.

  10. 10.

    Darkrose

    The orange shitcorn just tweeted:

    There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

    Nine people are dead and an entire town has been burned down in the most destructive single fire in California’s history, and this is his response. I wish I believed in hell so he would be able to look forward to experiencing it firsthand.

  12. 12.

    raven

    I contacted my buddy in Paradise he and his wife and pets got out but they don’t know about their house.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    The fires in CA are devastating and I think the president would show true leadership if he left France and went to CA. He then could parachute into the fires and battle them himself.

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    Oh good. I can comment again.

    @Darkrose:
    Every day with Donald Trump is a day spent witnessing a total failure of common decency.

    I’m trying to set up my gmail account on a new data network. It wants to know if I I have IMAP or POP3. I have no idea what the frack whan that means. Is it safe to guess wrong?

  21. 21.

    TS (the original)

    I note that Ronna Romney McDaniel has found her birth name again – must relate to Uncle Mitt being in the Senate – doesn’t have to worry about upsetting trump any more.

  24. 24.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Platonailedit: The errors I’m getting (other than the database errors) all stem from Twitter not responding when loading Cole’s tweets.

    @Amir Khalid: When in doubt, choose IMAP. POP will try to download your mailbox to whatever device you’re using and usually defaults to removing downloaded messages from the server.; IMAP is a protocol for reading the mail directly from the server.

  25. 25.

    SFAW

    Complaining about the Dems “disenfranchising” those pore “rural” voters is straight out of the Rove playbook. “Kerry’s a war hero? Fuck that, he’ll be branded as a traitor when I’m done with him” and so forth.

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    @different-church-lady:

    Truly, at this point complaining about it is just shutting the barn door after the train has left the station.

    Was there a horse on that train, or a sailing ship? And was there spilt milk over the bridge, or under the damn dam? I’m confused

  29. 29.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @JPL: Here’s his presidential reaction to the CA fires:

    There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018

  31. 31.

    JPL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Since he has such great knowledge, he needs to be on the ground and take care of it. Trump is a cranky, mean old man.
    The winds are suppose to increase today and they expect the fires to spread. The situation is horrible.

  34. 34.

    Lapassionara

    Good morning everyone. Just FYI, there is another “protect Mueller” demonstration scheduled today in St Louis. It will be at 1:00 pm, where Brentwood and Eager intersect. There is a fountain there where the demo will take place.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘I did it for every single girl’: the first Afghan woman to scale Mount Noshaq

    In a quiet corner of Kabul, a dozen young women welcome their friend back from the summit of Afghanistan’s highest mountain. Like many Afghan women, Hanifa Yousoufi had always been made to believe, growing up, that she shouldn’t go to school or play sport. Yet the 24-year-old has become the first Afghan woman to climb Mount Noshaq.

    The young women gathered here are among the 70-strong cohort meeting six days a week to learn the art of climbing, something many never imagined they would have a chance to do.

    Yousoufi explains that because her family are illiterate, there was no encouragement for her to get an education. Instead, she worked as a cleaner to help support the family.

    “I used to watch other girls in their school uniforms going to school, and I wanted to go,” she says. “But I would just think: ‘No Hanifa, you are not clever like them. Even if you tried, you are not on their level.’ But also, I wanted to stay home and support my family and for my father to feel better about life – he was always working.”

    A friend introduced Yousoufi to Ascend Afghanistan, run by US organisation Ascend Athletics. When she joined the group in 2016, she had never heard of a crampon – or even attempted a sit-up. Yet in 2017 she ran a marathon, and after months of training she became part of a small team preparing to tackle Noshaq.

  40. 40.

    trnc

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    Year 2013: I’m a 22 year old queer who moves to Kansas to paint a rainbow house across from a notorious hate group.

    Ah, the good old days before hate groups were being given federal grants.

    (No, I don’t know of any such thing, but assume it’s being done in some shady way).

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

    “OK, and in return we won’t send you any federal tax payments.”

    Something tells me the fine people of Mississippi wouldn’t like that.

  42. 42.

    Platonailedit

    Do the recounts fucking first counts in AZ, FL & GA continue through the weekend or are resumed only next week?

  44. 44.

    TS (the original)

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It is hard to believe that he actually says such things about his own country – for all the world to see. I have run out of words to describe he insane horror of this excuse for a person.

  46. 46.

    Platonailedit

    Do the recounts fucking first counts in AZ, FL & GA continue through the weekend or are resumed only next week?

  48. 48.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @Platonailedit: It feels pedantic to correct people who say recounts, but it’s important to note that votes are being counted for the first time. The distinction matters. So thanks.

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    @JPL:

    His country bumpkin supporters keep cheering him on.

    I think you’re wrong. And I think we need one of the major newspapers or news magazines to run a major investigative article or 20 on that exact subject. After all, his supporters are all good people.

  50. 50.

    debbie

    The GOP is now saying that provisional, absentee, and overseas ballots should not be counted? Do I have this right? Has anyone told anyone in the military about this?

    (Gah. Another day of waking up angry.)

  51. 51.

    Schlemazel

    @Platonailedit:
    I saw something where numbers would be released from GA over the weekend so I assume they are still at it. Unsure about the other two.

    The picture I saw of the PDC in Miami of bins full of mail-in votes, votes that will not get counted if the GOP has their way, forces me again to ask why vote by mail is a good idea. Sure, if it is the only way you can vote but under the current system in place almost everywhere it is a risky proposition.

    The Fed needs to step in & set standards (Must be human readable ballot, must be an adequate number of ballots throughout the day, polling places must be reasonably close & sufficient so that wait times are not too long, machines must be tested & working, emergency supplies must be available). If it costs little us a money it would be more than worth it

  52. 52.

    OzarkHillbilly

    From Kevin Drum: 15 Reasons Why Democrats Crushed Republicans This Week

    That’s more than a dozen bits of truly bad news for Republican, and it’s only going to get worse as they stare down the long barrel toward 2020, where the Senate map is massively in favor of Democrats; the economy is likely to be on a downturn; and Donald Trump will probably have long-since worn out his welcome with his one-trick pony. In other words, they’re getting more and more desperate, knowing that a historic shellacking is probably headed their way in two years.

    And this desperation is showing. Over the next two years Republicans can nominate some more conservative judges to the lower courts, but that’s about it. With Democrats controlling the House; the filibuster controlling the Senate; and a man-child controlling the White House, they’re in for a very rough two years.

    So I’m curious: is there still anyone out there buying the Republican fable that this was sort of a 50-50 election? Believe me, it wasn’t. From the start it was a huge win for the Democrats, and three days later that win is looking even more remarkable when you account for the seats won, the economic headwinds they plowed through; the gerrymandering they overcame; and the obviously panicky reaction this has all gotten from Republican pols. Unless they change and change fast, Republicans might not win another election for a decade. That’s what they’ve always been afraid of—namely that racism couldn’t be a winning card forever as America steadily became less white—and 2018 might be the year that finally proves it. They held on longer than any party of old white men should have, and that’s a testament to their ruthlessness and political smarts. Eventually, though, the tide rolls in and Republicans are left sticking their fingers into the leaky old dikes of Fox News while Democrats are creating brand new barriers helmed by men and women of all races who are best suited to the job. Which party would you rather work for?

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel:

    The Fed needs to step in & set standards (Must be human readable ballot, must be an adequate number of ballots throughout the day, polling places must be reasonably close & sufficient so that wait times are not too long, machines must be tested & working, emergency supplies must be available). If it costs little money it would be more than worth it

    What are you, some kind of Commie????

  58. 58.

    Schlemazel

    The Thousand Oaks shooter used a high capacity magazine that California voters banned in a 2016 law.
    The NRA blocked the law from being implemented with a lawsuit.
    .
    .
    .
    ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

  59. 59.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Oh, goody, another op-ed telling us why the Rethugs will never-ever-ever win another election unless they change. Yes, I know that’s only a small part of Drum’s article, but I get so fucking tired of hearing it. We heard that in 2008, 2012, and (I think) early 2016. I still like Kevin Drum, but can we give that shit a rest until Dems actually control things for three consecutive election cycles? Please? [No, I don’t consider winning back the House to be “controlling things,” just the first step on that path.]

    It would have been better if he had stuck to his main thesis (that the Dems did a lot better than the MSM and Fox are giving them credit for), rather than trying to make sweeping pronouncements.

    No, I haven’t had my coffee, yet — why do you ask?

  63. 63.

    OzarkHillbilly

    No. It was not “working-class voters” who sent a message in 2016. It was white working-class voters.

    It was not the “educated class” that screwed up the labor market for the non-rich. It was the Reagan/Gingrich/GOP establishment.

    It was not “we” who decided that GDP was the only thing that mattered and low incomes at the bottom didn’t. It was right-wing Republicans.

    So, so tired. I get so very tired of conservatives or centrists or bobos—or whatever it is that David Brooks calls himself these days—refusing to acknowledge this stuff. Progressives have been fighting all along for the working class; for equitable labor markets; for higher wages; for labor unions; for taxing the rich; for job training; for workplace regulations; for universal medical care; for equal treatment regardless of race or sex; and a million other things. Have we accomplished much? Not nearly as much as we should. Brooks is sure right about that.

    But it’s not because of some amorphous “we.” It’s because Republicans have spent the past four decades fighting all these things hammer and tongs and then telling working class whites to vote for them because Democrats won’t let them tell ethnic jokes anymore.

    Fuck me.

    Stop beating around the bush Kevin, tell us how you really feel.

  64. 64.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I expect you’ve read Steve Gilliard’s “I’m a fighting liberal,” but in case you haven’t … here it is.

    [Triggered by Drum’s comment about what “progressives” have been fighting for. ]

    I can’t believe Gilliard’s been gone for 11 years. I still miss him.

    ETA: And fuck David Brooks

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    This is hysterical:

    However, this has been more than replaced by a huge increase in the influence of toxic sexism on the party vote. As the chart on the right show, sexist attitudes had barely any effect at all in 2016. In 2018 they had an enormous effect.
    But the effect was entirely negative. The most sexist voters voted about the same way they did in 2016. The least sexist voters abandoned Republicans in droves. They were about 30 percentage points less likely to vote for a Republican.

    Diminishing returns. They already had all the sexists!

  67. 67.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    AND they’ve gotten those voters to blame the wrong people for their anxieties. People sipping arugula lattés aren’t the people who are laying people off, repossessing their homes, freezing wages, etc. THOSE people are the ones raking in the WWC votes and money from the billionaires actually fucking the WWC over.

    I wish Kevin had gone a bit further, actually.

  68. 68.

    Immanentize

    And in very good news from near my home town in upstate NY, Democrat Anthony Brindisi just squeaked it out over reprehensible Trumper Claudia Tenney. Hoorah!

  72. 72.

    david

    “Oh, goody, another op-ed telling us why the Republicans will never-ever-ever win another election unless they change. Yes, I know that’s only a small part of Drum’s article, but I get so fucking tired of hearing it. We heard that in 2008, 2012, and (I think) early 2016.”

    You read it HERE, on this very website, You want links to those “Irrelevant!”, “Gone for a generation”, “Maybe until 2050” articles? Some of the current front-pagers were the authors of those articles that didn’t age very well…

  73. 73.

    Immanentize

    @Schlemazel:
    In that race — about 230k votes cast, Brindisi wins by about 1,300. I was a towny at SUNY Binghamton, undergrad. I like to think the college kids made the difference….

  77. 77.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah:
    Yes, thank you. Shaky sort of week, but the head cleared Tuesday. I slept and ate properly and voila! Now I have to wrangle little Imma on his next set of apps…. Also too, Monday holiday for me.

    Thanks for asking….

  79. 79.

    Platonailedit

    @Yarrow:

    Fuck the old peeps (yeah, that goes for the bristling bj oldies too), who has screwed up the world enough. It’s the yung’uns’ turn now.

  80. 80.

    Lapassionara

    I just saw where Trump declined to go to the WWI cemetery today. Plus he thought Latvia, etc. were in the Balkans, confusing the Baltic states in the northern part of Europe with the other “b” area.

    Is the site borked?

  83. 83.

    SFAW

    @david:

    Some of the current front-pagers were the authors of those articles that didn’t age very well…

    I understand your point, but I don’t really care about that. I’m more bothered by the people who get paid serious $$$ to come up with that shit. They are (in theory) much more attuned to and cognizant of political trends and so forth.

    Cole’s a great guy, but I don’t think AL, BC, Doug!, mistermix, et al. are drawing a big paycheck from JGC, and beside, this isn’t their primary job. [I hope.]

    [Not ignoring David, Adam, or Cheryl; I look to them for a different type of commentary.]

  84. 84.

    MazeDancer

    Seared on my memory is that moment in 2000, when James Baker stepped to the microphone and started roaring.

    I knew we were screwed.

    Baker just steamrolled the press. He declared victory and made it happen. Of course, he did have the Governor also making it happen.

    But the GOP are following that playbook. And certainly the press will do everything they can to elect the GOP.

    But there is some hope the Dems won’t just roll over this time.

    Also:

    Absentee ballots getting thrown out for “signature problems” is a license to steal an election.

  85. 85.

    Mary G

    Twitler cancelled a scheduled trip to the American cemetery at Aisne-Marne outside Paris, because it’s raining. Happy Veterans Day, troops! What a useless piece of shit our president is.

  86. 86.

    Spanky

    @SFAW:

    I can’t believe Gilliard’s been gone for 11 years. I still miss him.

    Shit! Are you kidding me?

    Sigh. The years are slip sliding away.

  87. 87.

    SFAW

    @Lapassionara:

    Plus he thought Latvia, etc. were in the Balkans, confusing the Baltic states in the northern part of Europe with the other “b” area.

    He thought it was next to Homoslavia. [H/t Bobcat Goldthwait.]

  89. 89.

    Platonailedit

    @rikyrah: 2010. The year the dems took their collective balls home and got kicked themselves in their ‘nads making them impotent forever.

  91. 91.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Bobby Thomson:
    Yes, Kyl is saying that. It is central to the Republican philosophy. It is central to racism. The Other getting a vote, getting any chance to compete, is cheating. If things were fair, they know they would win. It’s a first principle that all other facts must accommodate or be rejected. It’s the exact thought process that has Trump harps on constantly, and why Republicans eat it up. He didn’t invent it, either. He just doesn’t shut up about it.

  92. 92.

    Platonailedit

    Foxconn is now considering bringing in personnel from China to help staff its Wisconsin facility, WSJ reports.

    Scott Walker and the state gave billions of dollars of incentives to Foxconn to land the plant. https://t.co/jRVIQjsLvp— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 10, 2018

    Getting rolled by russians, chinese, north koreans. Well done, gopee and their ‘base’.

  93. 93.

    Ian G.

    @Lapassionara:

    I’m glad he’s not setting foot near a WWI cemetery. The only thing he could do is embarrass us colossally at such a sacred site, with the 100th anniversary of the end of that war tomorrow.

  94. 94.

    cain

    @Schlemazel:

    I saw something where numbers would be released from GA over the weekend so I assume they are still at it. Unsure about the other two.

    God I’m hoping for a Dem win. Kemp would be caught with his hand around his pants because he would have gone all in on the Governorship and had already relinquished his SoC position. In which case, a gov win by Stacey would mean that the fool would have lost both Governorship and the SoC. I don’t know if Georgia is one of those states that appoints a SoC in such a case… in which case, she would be free to appoint a democratic SoC and completely change how voting works. That should be her first thing order of business is to make free and fair elections for statewide races and consolidate her power.

  95. 95.

    Schlemazel

    @Ian G.:
    Very late in the game now but I have mentioned this several times over the past 4 years. There is a youtube channel, “The Great War” every week for the last 4 years they have released an 8-10 video on the events 100 years ago that week. there were also supplemental pieces on people, places and events from the war. I have not seen all of them but it has been moving, disturbing and most importantly, educational. The thing should be made into a classroom history program.

  97. 97.

    cain

    @Platonailedit:

    Fuck the old peeps (yeah, that goes for the bristling bj oldies too), who has screwed up the world enough. It’s the yung’uns’ turn now.

    Yung’un’s turn to fuck up? :-) Believe me, every generation is going to some stupid shit. That’s why historians are the most smug assholes other than Trump supporters because everytime you tell them “we’ve never seen this before” they go “hold my beer”.

  101. 101.

    Platonailedit

    @JPL:

    Rethugs are all cowards that (sic) need their ‘safe spaces’. The traitorous thug is no exception.

  103. 103.

    cain

    @JPL:
    One of the commentators got it right in the comments. He took that unnecessary trip to France to meet with Putin. Someone needs to plant a bug on Trump so our intelligence agencies can figure out what the fuck he’s talking to Putin about. I have no doubt every part of the WH is bugged anyways by foreign agents, our agents, and hopefullyl democratic lawmakers too.

  104. 104.

    Miss Bianca

    @Platonailedit:Here’s to hoping you die before you get old, then, if that’s how you feel about old people, you age-essentialist fuckwit. Meanwhile, in my blood-red neck of rhe woods, it’s olds leading the fight against the local teahadists. We are going to keep on with that and not retire to the ice floes just yet.

  107. 107.

    Yarrow

    @cain: I thought in Georgia they were hoping she’d get enough votes to force a runoff. There’s some third person on the ballot who got a small percentage of votes.

    Since Kemp has resigned as SOS then he wouldn’t be overseeing the runoff election, so at least that would be good.

  110. 110.

    JPL

    @cain: Trump would try to hide the meeting from the public, so it might be a few days before we know. It depends how quickly Putin publishes the pictures.

  111. 111.

    Schlemazel

    @germy:
    Wow! I am going to have to find the film he made.

    The other WWI film I would like to get my hands on is “Oh What a Lovely War” which should have had a re-release this year. Every dark, very subversive movie. I saw it once in theater in 1969 and it still sticks with me

  112. 112.

    Schlemazel

    @Platonailedit:
    60 years on earth and it still has not dawned on you that every generation has fucked up stuff and that there were no hoverrounds at Charlottesville, iust lots of young & middle aged guys. Perhaps you should consider extracting your head from its current location before the methane levels become fatal

  113. 113.

    smintheus

    Presentism is one of the things that has bedeviled the serious study of history in the US for the last few decades. Case in point is a current article in WaPo, Six novels that get to the truth of World War I. Turns out that in the author’s wisdom, 3 or those 6 novels were written in the last decade. Seriously, who tf would compile a list of “truthful” novels about a world war 100 years ago and ignore so many great novels written by actual participants in favor of current novelists? Barely mentions All Quiet on the Western Front or A Farewell to Arms; no mention of Good Soldier Švejk, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Journey to the End of Night, or Company K.

    Exasperating dealing with this generation’s historical blinders all the time.

  116. 116.

    Estelle Berger

    Halp. In moderation for autofill using the wrong email. Not that the world will be worse off without my post or anything.

  118. 118.

    germy

    “They Shall Not Grow Old” has sort of a double meaning.

    The film restoration means we won’t let them grow old and forgotten.

    The War meant they would never live to old age.

    I hope the Peter Jackson documentary gets a U.S. theatrical release, but I don’t know if that’s happening.

  120. 120.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @smintheus: German title of All Quiet on the Western Front–Im Westen Nichts Neues (in the West …. nothing new). When the Hollywood film came out in the 30s, the Nazis banned it from Germany.

  121. 121.

    Immanentize

    @smintheus: Very excellent point. Also too, the Great War was fought in a time of poetry and the WWI poets are, IMHO, among the best narrators of that horror show.

  122. 122.

    SFAW

    @Miss Bianca: @Schlemazel:

    You’re wasting your “breath.” He’s been an asshole since he first appeared here (under that nym/nom, don’t know if there were previous incarnations). He’s had episodes of not being an asshole, but generally returns to baseline.

  123. 123.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    I hope the Peter Jackson documentary gets a U.S. theatrical release, but I don’t know if that’s happening.

    I’d be worried that Jackson would turn it into a three-part series, with the War ending up being 20 years long. Having Martin Freeman in a lead role might mitigate things.

  125. 125.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    This is a documentary. All actual historical footage, no actors.

    Yeah, I know. It was a lame attempt at a joke, I was riffing on Peter Jackson’s propensity for doing things like turning The Hobbit into a movie version of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

  128. 128.

    Immanentize

    @SFAW: agreed. Tis a mystery of sorts. Sometimes coherent, sometimes unhinged ranting. Not unlikely that the rant will be the opposite of the cogent comment. Maybe two (or more!) People using the same nym? All about Eve?

  136. 136.

    Kilgore Trout

    @Schlemazel:
    We vote by mail (WA) and love it. Loved it when we lived in OR too. Bad people will try to prevent counting votes that they don’t want counted, regardless of the voting method.

  137. 137.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ladyraxterinok: IOW, nothing different going on in the West – same shitshow, different day week month year.

    As a casual student of the Great War, it never fails to astonish me how its character (specifically on the Western Front) was driven by the technology of the times – not only what was new in warfare since the last of the great European wars in the 1870s (Franco-Prussian, 1870-1; Russo-Turkish, 1876), but what had not yet been developed (reliable ICEs for transport, tanks, portable radios [vehicle-mounted down to walkie-talkies], aerial bombardment, etc.). The combination produced the most bizarre engagement in military history: a slash of ground ~30 miles wide, zigzagging for ~400 miles from the Franco-Swiss border to the far western corner of Belgium, within which unspeakable hell broke loose on a routine basis, outside of which…life went on seemingly untouched (so long as you didn’t look too closely & notice, e.g., the absence of young men working the fields)…

    Let us note that the Great War is the great divide between what one might call the Victorian-Edwardian-Biedermeyer era and modern times. The world of 28 June 1914 (the date of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo, whose repercussions eventually led most of the then-First World stumbling & bumbling into war) and the world exactly five years later (the date when the Versailles Treaty was signed) were so utterly different that they might as well have been dfferent planets orbiting different suns in different galaxies. For all its vastly greater scope, sweep and level of violence, World War II is largely Great War 2.0, when the rickety, teetering structures thrown up in the aftermath of the unexpectedly sudden end of the earlier conflict finally came crashing to the ground.

    There is a museum at the corner by the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo where the Archduke’s car took a wrong turn & as the chauffeur was shifting to back up, Gavrilo Princip stepped forward to the edge of the pavement & shot the couple at point-blank range. I was there in 1985 & stood in the shoeprints that had been pressed into the sidewalk where Princip supposedly stood.& I could almost feel the sphere of history turning around me. It reminded me of Stanley Kunitz’s poem “Geometry of Moods”:

    Concentrical, the universe and I
    Rotated on God’s crystal axletree,

    So perfectly adjusted in suspense
    I could not mark our split circumference.
    .
    .
    .
    Now cubical upon a fractured pole
    It creaks, scraping the circle of my soul.

    (It’s a love poem, but the sense of before-vs-after on the same axial tilt seemed very a propos.)

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