I wrote my post below and then took my life in my hands to go to the grocery store, so I didn’t get a chance to look at the comments until a few minutes ago. Adam and others pointed out that DeSantis probably kept WWE matches open because Lynda McMahon is making big donations to Republicans in Florida. That’s certainly part of the reason. But I just can’t let go of the fact that some component of every Republican decision is to own the libs, and the more I walk through this wicked world, the more I think it’s the reason they do most things.
Case in point: I took the picture above a few minutes ago in the grocery store parking lot. We have a mask order here, and I noticed that approximately 73% of the shoppers were wearing masks (including me). I’m going to take a shot in the dark and assume that the guy who put this sticker on his jeep was one of the benighted 27%.
Jerry
Cleek’s Law, right?
raven
I’ve probably told this before. I frequent a Georgia Football blog and, after much poo-flinging, the blogmaster decided to have one political post a week called “the playpen”. It gets pretty nasty and it’s mainly the same people all the time. There are several “identifiable ” veterans there so I asked how they could support a fucking draft dodging scumbag like Trump when many of them have spent the last 50 years bitching about hippies and draft dodgers. The singular answer, after agreeing that he’s a cowardly scumbag, is that he fucks with liberals. Sometimes I don’t think people here realize how deep this hatred is.
dr. luba
@Jerry: And the Rodgers constant (27%).
Synchronicity.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Right back at ’em.
Jinchi
Since Trump was elected, I think that a lot of us have found a depth of hatred to match theirs.
Mary G
Evidently Dr. Fauci is out of FLTG, because he told NBC that the daily clown show and its prep time are really draining. He wishes he could make a few comments and just get back to work.
p.a.
Trump. libs cry?… everyone dies
Mnemosyne
The sole remaining Trumpster on my Facebook timeline is insisting that Florida totally has Covid-19 handled because DeSantis did not shut the state down. I assume this is bullshit but it makes me too tired to try and refute her.
piratedan
well, I used to be disgusted and now I try to be amused……..
MattF
I tried to go to ‘shieldrepublic’ and my content blocker said ‘No, you won’t do that’. So, at best, there’s some combination of tracking and malware that rules it out.
Jinchi
He wants to stop talking and start working?!
He’s really a terrible match for the Trump administration isn’t he.
James E Powell
@raven:
Because I have right-wingers in my family, I never doubted that their hatred rules their political thought and actions. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of door to door and standing in parking lots politicking and that hatred is always right there. The whiter the neighborhood, the more up front and unrestrained the expression of it.
Donald Trump, more than any other Republican candidate, realized how deep and virulent it is. It’s how he won the nomination and it’s how he maintains his standing with his supporters. No matter what else he does, he expresses hatred and scorn for us every single day.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@p.a.:
Yes, making liberal cry seems like a poor plan for government to me. But whatever.
James E Powell
@Mary G:
FLTG?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Mnemosyne:
So which way was this person claiming the cause and effect went? The virus was under control and therefore DeSantis didn’t shut the state down? Or DeSantis didn’t shut state down which led to the virus being under control? On, it has to be the first one. OK then. Carry on
cain
@raven:
Huh.. you should point out that a lot of them liberals fought beside them and when it came to fight for their country they showed up.
Scuffletuffle
@James E Powell: f*cks left to give
WhatsMyNym
@MattF:
Seems to be another grifting site which sell you foreign made goods at high prices.
mrmoshpotato
Well, when you don’t want to be in power to actually, ya know, govern, what’s left over?
raven
@cain: Um, they know since I’ve made that pretty clear I’m a vet too.
Jinchi
That implies a level of empathy that I just don’t believe Trump has. My guess is basically the opposite. More than any other Republican candidate, Trump is incapable of realizing just how repulsive most Americans find his views.
Of course the end result is the same. He mobilized just enough white-nationalists, together with the majority of the Republican party, who may not be true-believers, but also don’t consider bigotry, sexual assault and graft to be deal killers.
C Stars
I’m listening to the CA governor’s press conference on the process of opening the state back up. The current MD speaking is a bit hard to follow.
https://www.kqed.org/science/1957877/1957877
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
She thinks that Florida is already at its peak and is going down. She’s wrong, but DeSantis is cooking the books, which makes it hard to refute.
Oh, and we should have just locked up all of the old people and let the younger people develop herd immunity. The fact that the countries that tried that are now overwhelmed doesn’t seem to have registered.
piratedan
@James E Powell:
I think there are intertwined reasons for that hated….
I’m sure people can add other compelling components as they see fit but it seems to me that the roots in owning the libs start here.
scav
The rabid local trumper I saw in the grocery parking (hard core as his MAGAtHat was in camo!) was going for the steely-eyed look over his camo bandana mask.
mrmoshpotato
@Jinchi:
Since Trump was elected? Ha Ha. :)
The Rethuglican party has been a goddamn fucking pile of shit for longer than I’ve been alive. Fuck you Ronnie, and your piss-on-the-poor-and-middle-class bullshitonomics.
Dump has just torn off the smiling-but-still-fucking-you-over mask to show everyone the monster the GOP has been for 40+ years.
C Stars
@C Stars: Gov. Newsom is calling it a “framework for a process to adopt a protocol”
…not gonna happen anytime soon, is my read on that….
8 man shell
@WhatsMyNym:
From their “about” page: “Through Shield Republic Charities we donate 100% of the profits to organizations like COPS, Law Enforcement United, Autism Society of America and many others.”
I am just going to take a wild guess here that their definition of “profits” is “whatever is left over after we pay ourselves whatever we want.”
JPL
Patriots don’t need to carry guns.
trollhattan
@C Stars:
That’s some MBA-speak right there. Did Gavin ever work at an engineering or marketing firm?
raven
@piratedan: ”
ir No Sir! tells for the first time on film the story of the 1960s GI movement against the war in Vietnam. The film explores the profound impact that the movement had on the war, and investigates the way in which the GI Movement has been erased from public memory.
C Stars
@trollhattan: I think he’s been a politician since he arrived in this world.
C Stars
Gov. Newsom: likely temperature checks before walking into restaurants and workplaces…
(I think, if I’m interpreting his words correctly)
ETA: possibly staggering school schedules to reduce physical contact
Mandalay
@mistermix:
I’ve seen some military leaders publicly wearing masks, and even the odd politician or two, but isn’t it time that every politician and leader started wearing a mask in public? How can there be any justification for not doing it now?
Punchy
Golf. Clap. That is some seriously awesome bullshit lexicon.
jeffreyw
Mrs J and I made a run to Rural King, she needed bird seed and I wanted to grab some peppers to plant in the patio garden. They are doing a good job, wiping carts, making sure folks keep their distance. Visited Kroger since they are next door. Kroger has improved their stance – plastic guards now at the checkout, sanitizer and wipes at the cart rack, PA cautioning shoppers to not get close. They have arrows marking directions on the floor at the aisles, trying to keep the flow one way. Good stocks of TP and paper towels, canned goods with some bare spots. I grabbed a can of kidney beans and left the last one. About 50% mask wear, not many gloved. Not many shoppers in the store. As we checked out a runner came by with bottles of sanitizer for the employees. They are using it between customers. Alas, not any for sale.
C Stars
Gov. Newsom: No reduction of SIP orders until sustained reduction in hospitalizations and the buildout of a tracing infrastructure to monitor virus location/spread (currently training via Americorps & Cal Volunteers, reprioritizing current state staff)
ETA: Newsom’s timeline: “Ask me in two weeks”
raven
@jeffreyw: Do they have pickup?
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
I have been saying it since I arrived on the blog, and you are right that everyone runs to some other explanation like greed. Top to bottom, the primary motivation of the Republican Party is a desire to cause pain, fear, misery, and death.
@James E Powell:
I think it’s mostly that he is what they’re looking for, the complete dumbshit “We’ll show that n-” asshole. He has noticed what stokes applause, but it’s what he wanted to say anyway.
prostratedragon
… and, it is snowing in Chicago (about a mile from the Lake, though the wind is westerly).
Hoodie
@raven: Dawg fan, too, grew up outside Gainesville, dad’s folks were hillbillies from central TN. It’s just part of the culture, man. A lot of southern white guys just grow up having to hate something. It’s pretty harmless when you’re talking something like Gator hate, but a lot of times it’s pretty toxic. I knew two types of white guys growing up there; guys like that and guys like you who figured out that being angry and wanting revenge all the time doesn’t fill the hole.
khead
@raven:
This. I am sure many people here would freak over the folks on my social media feeds. It took me a while to grasp it.
WhatsMyNym
More winning…
or was that whining?
Frankensteinbeck
@Hoodie:
It is. I grew up in it, too.
RobertB
I think for a lot of folks, politics is something separate from life in general. That pwning the libs isn’t any different than pwning Ravens fans. That Medicare, Social Security, and a lot of what we take for granted just happens, sort of like gravity. If something hits them home (ex: WV teachers strikes a couple of years ago) it’s some local problem and not a symptom of a larger problem.
raven
@Hoodie:Our tenant is a “typical Hall county redneck” as described by another friend from Gainesville. I’ve been here 35 years so I’m pretty familiar with it. We have a fairly large Vietnam Vets outfit called LZ Friendly that has a Memorial Day Campout in Madison County and they have really bought this shit hook, line and sinker.
piratedan
@raven: I know it existed raven (as seen in films like Forrest Gump, Born on the Fourth of July, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, etc) but the subsequent campaign raised in the media and in references to it outside of cinema are rarely seen. You know its there, I know its there but its very existence seems to be unrecognized by those who govern policy nowadays and those who set the narratives…
raven
@WhatsMyNym: That’s on 30a, my fishing beach. They really dislike his ass down there.
jeffreyw
@raven: They have a huge store in the next town over, about 25 miles away, that offers pickup. No delivery services to our twenty.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck: Cruelty is the point. It’s as O’Brien put it to Winston Smith.
WereBear
We watched Governor Cuomo’s press conference today. Every day he is asked when we will “open up” and every day he says it’s not up to him, it’s when they have more of what they need to put a plan in motion.
I hear an intelligent question soooo rarely.
Chief Oshkosh
@WhatsMyNym: How about some useful grifting. I’d pay good money for a bumper sticker that said: “Another Whiny Ass Titty Baby Republican. (Sorry for the redundancy)”
I’d buy a dozen and slap ’em over bumper stickers like the one shown in the OP.
trollhattan
@prostratedragon:
Oh lordy. Working at home with the doors and windows open–glorious spring (and just look at those weeds). Sorry, but it needed to be said. :-)
trollhattan
@WhatsMyNym:
“Emergency motion” the “emergency” being “Ah, kaint get to mah own beach!”
That Fuckabee has been raking in millions with his aw-shucks act for decades, attacking “elites.” Well you spawn of satan, how elite do you have to be before you get to own beachfront property?
schrodingers_cat
@raven: I do. I am aware, as is almost any minority. How do you think we survive in your world?
ETA: I also know the rabid hatred of RWNJs of my kind against Muslims and such in India. Human beings suck.
Kent
Never forget how close the racism is to the surface with all that hatred. Political hatred in 2020 is just the most recent veneer for longstanding racial hatred that has always just been right under the surface in this country.
I have P L E N T Y of MAGA relatives too, in PA, MI, IN, and even here in OR. They are without exception in small rural all-white communities and live in fear of immigrants and MS-13 and caravans and LGBT bathrooms and “diversity” and and other weird Fox-news tropes I can’t even keep up with
There should be some law like Goodwin’s law where when people tell you “It’s not about race” you automatically know that it’s about race.
Subsole
@raven:
Silly question from the dyed in the wool civilian: how many of these guys are combat vets?
donnah
I apologize if this has already been discussed, but I saw this and was gobsmacked. Trump and Mnuchin will not prevent banks from seizing the Covid-19 relief checks if the person receiving the money owes money.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/14/1937177/-Trump-and-Mnuchin-are-letting-the-banks-steal-your-COVID-19-1-200
Anyway, I just got home and saw this, so if it’s already been discussed, I’m sorry! But it blew me away!
mad citizen
Loving the Elvis quotes. In case any fans missed it, he did a video from isolation on March 27–a benefit for the NHS–and it’s really good and interesting. He does a song at the front and end, but mostly it’s him talking about all kinds of stuff, really endearing. Loved that he loves Louis Armstrong.
raven
@jeffreyw: The first 3 are free at Kroger and it usually takes a week to get a slot but you can add stuff up till the day before.
gsp
Atrios has been saying that for quite a few years. But yeah.
Subsole
@cain:
Dollar says that don’t count because “They’re wunna tha good ones”.
cain
@raven:
Interesting that still doesn’t matter. That’s a pretty base hatred.
How slick an operation the GOP has – associate themselves with nationalism, patriotism, and then insinuate that others are not as patriotic as them and blame everything on the others – liberals, minorities and voila! ready to turn against the very people who fought next to you, defended you, and part of a team..
Fucked up.
mrmoshpotato
@WhatsMyNym: What? Eighty-two degrees isn’t enough to kill off the virus? Some dumbshit said it would disappear when the weather was warmer.
Subsole
@Frankensteinbeck:
Definitely seen the hatred, but what always jumps out at me is the sheer eyes-rolled-back, pants-shitting FEAR that just seeps out of everything these folks do.
Jinchi
That’s a number I’d like to see. Is there public data on the level of hospitalizations?
Sab
@Mandalay: Ohio Gov Mike de Wine, his Lt Gov Husted and Dr Acton come to the daily press briefing wearing their cloth masks, which they then take off and stuff in their pockets. Gov deWine says his are made by his wife Fran.
Leadership.
Many Ohioans are culturally kind of obedient, so I am actually glad that we have a Republican governor giving us sensible guidance.
We’ve had some smallish protests at the capitol, but mostly when he issued orders to jump the Republican business community said “how high?” instead of “where’s my lawyer?”
raven
@Subsole: Which guys? The antiwar guys? Here’s what I’d say, they percentage of people actually in the bush was pretty small compared to the overall force. I was a remf and my experience was that grunts were too fucking busy trying to stay alive to screw around with politics. I’n trying to find the documentary that was done with a 1st Cav outfit in the early 70’s where there was plenty of resistance.
Frankensteinbeck
@cain:
I assure you that it is ground up. The haters have elected people like themselves. It is only becoming visible to so many liberals now because when a black man was elected – and then reelected! – president, they absolutely lost their shit and cannot restrain their hate, will punish America for that insult, and will allow no compromise because that might let anyone but a white man be president again. Friendly seeming good old boys like Bush and polite plutocrat bigots like Romney are no longer direct or extreme enough.
Subsole
@mrmoshpotato:
Driftglass? Is that you? /
Seriously, I don’t remember Ronnie – I was born one year into his reign. The only GOP I’ve ever known was 8 yrs of Limbaugh/Gingtich, followed by 8 yrs of Neighbor George, then 8 years of McConnell, and now this.
Suffice to say when people weep for the good old days of bipartisan kumbaya, I cannot fathom what they mean.
Frankensteinbeck
@Subsole:
It comes from that same brutal culture. They know intimately the cruelty, even physical violence, that will be unleashed on them for stepping out of line. That fear has spread out, and they are terrified of everything that might lower them even one level on the hierarchy of who abuses who.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: We like our 39 degrees with a 12-mph NW wind. :P
Suzanne
@raven:
Yes. This is all of it. Racism, misogyny, etc are all part and parcel of their hatred of Obama, Hillary, and others…. but that doesn’t explain why they love Trump so much. They love him because we hate him, and that’s really it.
raven
Here ya go
The Quiet Mutiny” in 1970 was the first of over 60 documentary films by Pilger. Filmed at Camp Snuffy the film presented a character study of the common US soldier during the Vietnam War revealing the shifting morale and open rebellion of Western troops. Pilger described the film as “something of a scoop” – it was the first documentary to show the open rebellion within the drafted ranks of the US military that led to the withdrawal of the land army in 1973. “When I flew to New York and showed it to Mike Wallace the star reporter of CBS 60 Minutes he agreed. “Real shame we cant show it here”” Pilger said in an interview with the New Statesman.
Jeffro
@raven:
@Frankensteinbeck:
hate and resentment of others, 24/7, is one helluva drug for trumpublicans. helps them soothe away all that self-loathing and fear of the world.
Subsole
@WhatsMyNym:
Seriously? Jesus, at the brass-plated entitlement on these folks…
Subsole
@Hoodie:
So these guys are all Johnny Ringo?
A Ghost to Most
@raven:
It’s easy to stay above it when you don’t have to get up close and personal. Spend some time with these people, and you realize this is a cold war.
raven
@Suzanne: Nah, it’s that up in your face, tough guy shit they love. These are people who feel spit on even if it never really happened and they have 50 years of pent up anger.
Soprano2
I’ve been living around these conservatives for years, so I’m not a bit surprised at their hatred for liberals and how much it drives them. They love that Trump “owns the libs” (at least that’s what they think), full stop. I don’t think they honestly care about much else he does. Some of them care about abortion a lot, that’s about it.
Suzanne
@cain: Liberals make them feel bad about things they like, like gas-guzzling vehicles, penis-substitute firearms, fast food, not finishing school, casual racism, and bleach-blonde-fake-boobed women. Among others.
raven
@A Ghost to Most: Who are you talking to? You have no idea who and where I spend my time.
MiLilvies
@raven: Yes, it drives ignorant illiterates crazy when you post obvious facts, reality to their myths and prejudices. It shows how wrong they are and that burns them no end and creates an intense hatred. ‘The nerve of you to clearly illustrate how stupid I am’.
Jinchi
There was a brief period when right-wing, mostly Southern, Democrats were unwilling to make the jump to the Republican party. They were still holding a grudge against a guy named Lincoln (R-Illinois) for some reason. So things were “bipartisan”, but not really kumbaya. Right wingers, like Bull Connor, still actively hated liberals. They just hadn’t sorted the parties yet.
delk
@raven: we have a pick-up at Mariano’s (Kroger’s) scheduled for Thursday. We ordered last Wednesday. BTW I’m really glad to see you posting again. I’m sure you had a lot of other ways planned to start your retirement.
prostratedragon
@trollhattan: Yeah, it was brief. The sun is partly out now, but I understand we’re not out of the woods for a couple more days. I like winter, but only in its time.
Suzanne
@raven: Yeah. They aren’t spit on, but I think they have definitely noticed that their lifestyle has fallen out of fashion. I think it’s telling how often I hear The Trumpy complain about being “disrespected”, for their religion or their careers or whatever. But they’re not really disrespected, they’re just not admired. But the fact that they somehow felt entitled to admiration is lost on them.
mrmoshpotato
@Subsole: I don’t remember Ronnie either. I wasn’t to double digits yet when Bush took over fucking the country. But there is recorded history and analysis. :)
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
Yes, it does. He’s a white supremacist, and a sadistic, dumbass, ignorant asshole. He is everything they want, the perfect expression of their hate.
Jeffro
Btw the hack’s hack, Marc Thiessen, has a new day-is-night, black-is-white magnum opus up at the Post:
The Pandemic is an Indictment of Socialized Medicine. Yes, really.
No need to post any excerpts (in fact, y’all could probably just make up your own and I can let you know if you were 95% or 100% right)
Please, Marc…when the time comes and Donald J(im Jones) trumpov tells you to drink the kool-aid…have an extra gulp, for me.
raven
@delk: Well in some ways it is what I planned for. Trying to figure out when I’ll be able to do those things I really love is a little strange but, overall, I had to figure out what to do with my time anyway.
sdhays
@mrmoshpotato: I can only assume he thinks Singapore is cold because he never went outside when he was making out with Kim Jong Un.
Mowgli
@raven: Are you near Gainesville? I am at the edge of Hall County between Buford and Flowery Branch.
Subsole
@raven: Thanks, would be interested to see it. The only ‘Nam guy I knew was a LRRP, and he did NOT talk about it.
Was referring more to the folks on that forum. I’ve known quite a few rear-echelon folks, from work, and one or three combat folks from my generation who went to Iraq. Was curious how attitudes stacked up, between anecdotal samples.
James E Powell
@piratedan:
It isn’t the actual Vietnam War but the American Dolchtosslegende – first promoted and exploited by Reagan and the Republicans – that formed the divide.
Republican Nixon was elected because he promised to end the war. Democrats Johnson & Humphrey didn’t run and lost because they were held responsible for it. Republican Nixon and Ford finally did end it.
But according to the American Dolchtosslegende it was the bleeding hearts and artists who betrayed Our Brave Troops who were always on the brink of victory despite being forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs by college students and folk singers.
When the war was going on, opposition was bi-partisan; the labels were hawks & doves instead of parties. But it is now almost universally believed that Republicans supported the Noble Cause while Democrats were partying, putting headbands on, doing drugs, and listening to goddam Beatles albums.
Things are now so twisted that Democrats who actually served in Vietnam – Gore & Kerry – are disparaged while Republican draft dodgers – Bush Jr, Cheney, Romney, Trump, a whole lot of senators and congresspersons – are lauded by the military & veterans.
This caustic mythology was created right in front of the people who were there and who knew better. They either didn’t or couldn’t do anything to stop it.
raven
@Mowgli: Athens, since 1984.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
Florida totally has Covid-19 handled
Time and grief will provide all the refutation possible.
Save your energy.
Jinchi
It helps that he’s rich, too. Republicans have always believed that power belongs in the hands of oligarchs. Trump is the perfect marriage of greed, fear and hatred.
delk
@prostratedragon: I napped through it. At least if you are stuck indoors all day, the snow is pretty to watch.
raven
@Subsole: Got ya. There aren’t many but I see one GWOT ranger, one Iraq grunt and one Nam Chopper pilot. He uses his call sign as his handle and he was surprised when I I’d his unit!
raven
@James E Powell: nice summary except Nixon didn’t really end it, we did.
Martin
@JPL: If they expect to win without Brady and Gronk, they will.
mrmoshpotato
@Soprano2:
Fixed.
prostratedragon
@donnah: Fits well in the sadism discussion, doesn’t it.
Sab
@James E Powell: Kerry probably shouldn’t have voted as he did when Bush wanted to go to war. I like and admire Kerry. I worked my butt off on his campaign. But that vote was hypocritical and lots of people couldn’t forgive it, and I couldn’t blame them.
PJ
@Suzanne: I think a good portion of the people who genuinely admire Trump do so not just because he owns the libs, but because he is an ignorant, petty, selfish bully, and proud of it, and they see themselves in him, or want to be like him. That he is a complete f*ck-up is either irrelevant, or another point in his favor (See, he’s just like me!), the main thing is that he validates their hatred and resentment and makes them feel good about themselves.
MattF
@Jeffro: I’ve given up completely on Thiessen, won’t read his stuff. He did a ‘Biden is senile’ column and followed it up with a column describing Dem doubts about McConnell’s endgame ploy with the stimulus package as the worst thing that has ever happened in American history. Not even worth mocking.
James E Powell
@raven:
I just mean Nixon and Ford were the presidents in office at the time.
Calouste
@mrmoshpotato: It’s spreading in Australia, a country so hot large parts of it were literally on fire a few months back.
Brachiator
I think that the conservatives who think this way, and a few liberals who react strongly to this, see politics as a game. But the important thing is that the conservatives (and a few of the liberals) deeply, fundamentally believe that they will not be hurt by what happens.
This sentiment reminds me of the Duke Brothers in the film “Trading Places.” They can play with or destroy the lives of the characters played by Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, but to them its all shits and giggles with no consequences.
Of course, one problem here is that these people need someone to hate. Because they need to feel superior to someone.
And the deeper problem is that people like this can never stop playing the game, not even when lives are at risk.
These people found their ultimate champion in Trump, an insecure man with deep smoldering resentments without a shred of understanding or empathy for anyone other than himself and his hateful spawn.
C Stars
@Jinchi:
https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19PublicDashboard/Covid-19Hospitals?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro: Fuck the what? It’s great when the headline tells you all you need to know.
Subsole
@raven: Awesome. Thanks!
A Ghost to Most
@raven: I know who I have to deal with. People who would scare the shit out of most here. Not that that’s hard.
Redshift
@PJ: He’s hurting the people they want to get hurt. The libs are part of that, but not all of it.
raven
@James E Powell: Roger
Subsole
@sdhays: eeeewwww.
Hoodie
@raven: Yeah, it’s more acculturated than conscious. A lot of the role models are guys getting back at someone for being done wrong, underdog/chip on the shoulder kind of stuff. Might have something to do with Scots-Irish heritage, chronic poverty in the south, mythology about the Civil War, etc. Doesn’t make much sense. The weirdest thing I’ve seen is it being taken up by dudes outside of the south. My kid had had a buddy in high school whole was all into Confederate horseshit — his family’s from upstate NY. Go figure. My ancestors actually were confederates, it’s romanticized nonsense.
CaseyL
Per Twitter, the Pennsylvania state lege just passed a bill to have businesses re-open in a week. The Lege is R; the Governor is D. He might veto the bill. Not sure if the Lege has the votes to override.
PA is part of the Eastern States Coalition that Cuomo et al put together. Sad to see it fall apart so fast.
bemused
@raven:
They have gigantic chips on their shoulders. I think they have a toxic stew of envy and resentment in their heads for people who they don’t want to admit are smarter than them.
raven
@A Ghost to Most: Yea well, it’s not that much different here. Athens is an island of blue in a sea of red but I’m well acquainted with both, like the guy next door.
delk
I know it’s a continuation of Brilliant Mistake from earlier, but does anybody else have Rockwell trying to ear worm?
sdhays
@Calouste: Oh, but hot and cold work the opposite down there, just like the toilets flush a different way. //
joel hanes
@WereBear:
I hear an intelligent question soooo rarely.
The last two lines of this Robert Frost poem are some of the most cutting literary snark in existence:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-considerable-speck/
raven
@Hoodie: Yea, even though I’m from Illinois I have and ancestor killed with the 11th Tennessee at the Battle of Atlanta.
sdhays
@Subsole: He’s the one who said they were in love…
mrmoshpotato
@sdhays: Ummmm…..82 in Pensacola, Florida, but your point stands. :)
Subsole
@James E Powell:
I knew a non-combat vet who recited that whole cant about getting shot at and not being cleared to fire back.
All I could think about at the time was a dude I knew who went to Iraq multiple times telling me how they carried AKs to drop next to people they lit up, just in case.
namekarB
@raven:
Very true. 1968 infantry in Central Highlands. The majority of the enlisted men were drafted and pissed off about the war. Our officers treaded lightly because the worst they could do to us was put us in the brig which would remove one from combat. We fought for survival and to protect each other so we could return home with all our parts. FTA.
leeleeFL
@Frankensteinbeck: For years, I said the best thing my Generation could do for this Nation is die off. I knew my Family, most of them, would miss me, but the Vietnam/Civil Rights/Women’s Rights Divide is toxic and non-resolvable, and I thought, if we left, things could improve. Since, obviously, it’s also genetically passed on, I decided it was better to stay and fight.
joel hanes
@raven:
Nixon didn’t really end it
Nixon lost the war in Viet Nam.
Not that it was ever winnable, in any sense, ever.
Subsole
@PJ: It’s like all those movies about a
ssholelpha bosses. Everybody loves watching them, nobody likes working for them. Same kind of wish-fulfilment.Ksmiami
@raven: Actually I do and I hate Republicans even more. they’ve certainly earned it and I hope many of them get sick and die. The world will be a better place without them
cain
@joel hanes:
Republicans are good at getting into wars they can’t win or basically they are good at not winning wars at all. (although, I don’t think it was republicans that got us into Vietnam)
Martin
@C Stars: Right. They’ve established the metrics. They don’t control the protocols, people like me need to do that in our relevant areas. How the protocols I develop get adopted into a process still needs to be worked out.
For instance, my group figures out how to maintain social distancing for students. We’ll collaborate with other universities but everyone is going to have their own protocols based on unique challenges and available resources. Those will need to be submitted somewhere – state Depts of Public Health, probably. And someone will need to review them and approve or reject them. Your local restaurant might submit to the county health dept, and they report upward, etc.
There’s some back and forth in there – what am I allowed to do at my institution? Can I mandate taking temps before entering a public space? Is there a standard for releasing quarantine? How are we allowed to track individuals? I know how to track students and staff, but what are their rights, what of guests that I don’t have a tracking framework? Can we prohibit public access to the campus? Can I do something like install a thermal camera with facial recognition, person tracking to help identify people with fevers – because that’s a service I can buy today.
Lots of places are fairly straightforward and could pull protocols together fairly quickly and get incorporated into the process. Others will take a lot longer. But the metrics still need to be met. My guess is 2nd half of May for the earliest areas. It could probably be sooner with good protocols, but we have a fuckton of essential services to fix first, and it sounds like we won’t be reopening the hair salon until the grocery stores and hospitals and nursing homes are fixed.
raven
@namekarB: My buddy from HS was 4th Divarty at Enari and I was able to get up there and see him right before I came home in August, 69. FTA indeed.
mrmoshpotato
@Calouste: But but (blubbers) some orange dumbfuck said the heat would kill the virus!
Subsole
@Redshift:
The really sad part is, even if he didn’t, if Fox said he was, it would be enough.
He doesn’t actually have to hurt us, he just has to make them believe he is hurting us.
He is, of course, going to hurt us regardless. The thieving little prick.
cain
@leeleeFL:
Yeah, that gets passed on generationally. Why do Hindus and Muslims still fight even though that stupid event happened generations ago? (what’s even more crazy is why do Hindus/Muslims not hate the British after stealing copiously, and never mind another Abrahamic religion) – or why we still have hate for Jews.
Or why GNOME always get rids of features on their dekstop? (sorry I couldn’t help myself)
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: Naaaah. Racism and misogyny doesn’t explain all of the Trump love. (A big portion, but not all.) There are lots of GOP racists and sexists, but they loooove this guy above all others. And a huge part of why they love him so much is because they hate what they think liberals stand for, and Trump is the embodiment of The Opposite. He’s not JUST racist and sexist, he’s also unintelligent, rich, and trashy.
Subsole
@sdhays: EEEEEWWWWW, I say!
Mnemosyne
@mad citizen:
True fact: when EC tours, he has an archivist on staff to keep track of everything that happens. A librarian friend of mine got to meet him backstage (because her husband has connections) and EC made a point of introducing them when he found out she was a librarian by trade.
mrmoshpotato
@Hoodie: You don’t remember the part of upstate NY that joined the Confederacy?
patroclus
@joel hanes: Sure it was winnable. When the Japanese took Vietnam over after the Fall of France, the U.S. implemented the oil embargo against Japan, which essentially was the proximate cause of Pearl Harbor. The OSS then made contact with the Vietnamese rebels against Japan, which continued after the end of WWII when the French re-took control. The U.S. then switched sides and took the side of the French. If we had not done that, and stayed on the side of the Vietnamese and Ho, we could have easily prevailed.
On bi-partisanship, it actually lasted for over a century as the Democratic and Republican parties gradually switched positions from being primarily Southern v. Northern and rural v. urban in a great realignment. Now that that’s finally finished, there is very little bi-partisanship.
Martin
@Martin: I’ll add, I would like to see the states divide and conquer developing sample protocols for things like public transit, etc. We run our own transit system – 2 of them, in fact. We don’t need to develop that independently of every other transit system. We can take a sample protocol and tweak it for our specific needs.
mrmoshpotato
@delk: I’ve been singing Basketball Jones. Though I have a bassaball (baseball) jones.
Soprano2
My husband told me once that whenever one group makes progress, some other group believes they have lost something. That idea really stuck with me, because I think that’s at the root of a lot of conservative hatred of liberals – they think anyone but straight white Christian men “making progress” takes away from them, and they’re right, it does, but their problem is that they never deserved to have things be like that in the first place. I had a white male co-worker complaining once about how now those “others” were ahead of him when he was looking for a job (that probably wasn’t true, especially here, but it was his perception). I asked him how it feels to stand in line like all the rest of us rather than automatically getting to be in the front of the line, and he gave me kind of a blank look and walked away. The way they think the world should be is straight white Christian men first, straight white Christian women second, and all those “others” behind them. They really believe that if any of the “others” get ahead of them it’s only because the liberals made the government put them there, because obviously they could never earn that place (there is more than one book that talks about this extensively, with a lot of interviews to back it up). I’ve told people before that the main reason people vote for Republicans is because they think it will keep their sons from “turning gay” and their daughters from getting abortions. They know that there was a time not so long ago when straight white Christian people basically ruled over everything in the U.S., and all those “others” only got things when they white people wanted them too, and they think Trump is going to make the world go back to being that way again. They want to rule the world again and let us exist only at their sufferance. I’ve taken to saying, in threads on FB where they talk about how gun stores are open as “essential” businesses, that the reason for this is because all the rural people want to have plenty of firearms and ammo for when the raving black hordes come out of the cities to try to steal their stuff; these days I don’t even get much pushback on that at all. That’s what they think, and if they think you’re sympathetic to them they’ll tell you that.
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
Sure, but something had to have started it.. and maybe that was Obama, but this operation has been going on since the 80s.
Martin
@CaseyL: Well, example one zillion why having the state capital out in the boonies and out of touch with the largest city in the state that is part of the Acela corridor where things are so bad.
Hoodie
@raven: Your people from Illinois wouldn’t happen to be from Carbondale area would they? My dad’s folks from TN moved to Illinois to work in the coal mines and then on to STL to work in the car plants.
Brachiator
@patroclus:
I have no idea what this means. Prevailed against who?
cain
They are going to hate tech.. we’ve been changing the male dominated white culture that is happening there. Especially unlike politics, it trully is an online world.
They should feel bad about all of that.
trollhattan
@joel hanes:
He successfully made it a metric fuckton bigger before losing it, so he’ll always have that legacy.
Kent
Hell, there is a confederate war memorial called “Jefferson Davis Park” just down the road from me here in Washington State: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis_Park,_Washington
Kent
The French, apparently. Who were trying to reassert their pre-war colonial empire. Of course the Vietnamese didn’t really need our help with that.
patroclus
@Brachiator: We would first have prevailed over the Japanese puppet government (styled as the Empire of Vietnam) and we would then have prevailed over the re-instituted French colonial regime and the later government in the South set up by the French after the First Indochina War and the Fall of Dienbienphu. The U.S. was on the wrong side in those later series of wars. Ho drafted the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence in 1945 by mostly copying our own Declaration. We should have supported him then and thereafter.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: (chef’s kiss) Idiots.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Oh, he was one of the Puyallup Davises so totally different. Good family, in the car-detailing business.
cain
@Kent:
It always amuses me when I see white boys driving around with confederate flags – like it was a sign of southern pride or something despite having grown up in the northwest. Of course, maybe it is solidarity with Oregon’s racist past.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
A very down to earth and I think very accurate way of putting it.
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: While COVID did and does spread in Singapore, they’re doing a lot better than the Northeastern US, and while that’s mostly down to public policy, I wouldn’t discount the heat having some effect on the reproduction rate.
Since God hates us, I suspect there is some small but significant heat effect and it’s protecting asinine Southern governors from the worst consequences of their actions while the North gets the full brunt. Notice how South Dakota is getting hammered while Florida sort of skates.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More like the other way around; he probably has a mask and gloves and is buying hand santizer. Fear is what is driving this guy and he doing this posturing to hide it.
Feathers
One of the real problems with anti-racism work as it is currently constructed is that there is some fantasy that white people can talk to their families and friends and make them stop being so racist. There never seems to be room to point out that they hate us too. You can call out an edge case, but 9 times out of 10 or more, it only makes things worse.
I took an educational design class and the professor pointed out that the absolute worst way to teach anything to a non-motivated learner is to tell them what you think they should know. Yet this is how we teach almost everything, largely because the teaching professions are made up of people who love to learn. One of the examples she gave was studies showing that standard diversity training increased racism in participants. When you point that out, the answer tends to be, but if that’s the case, they were already racists. But isn’t the point to make people less racist, not more?
It’s all terrible.
Miss Bianca
@raven:
I sure as fuck do. I live among these people. Between them and the Performatively Progressive, I am starting to get the idea that if some people had their way, there’d be an actual hunting season on us.
Mandalay
@Jeffro:
Heh. This is how healthcare rolls in South Florida:
Fuck the poor … unless they are washing my dishes and wiping my ass.
Another Scott
@MattF:
Firefox says they block social media trackers from the site:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Nicole
@patroclus:
The French (if I remember what I learned once), threatened to go to the Soviet Union for help if the USA didn’t come in and assist them. Then the French realized the situation wasn’t winnable and bailed, but by the the US was in pretty deep, and we’re really stupid when it comes to the sunk cost fallacy.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
Tyler Cowen makes this point repeatedly on his blog: all political fights are about relative social status. Not absolute social status, but relative. There has been a huge shift in this culture about Who We Admire, and who is widely seen to be living a life worth following, even who is considered beautiful. The douchey right wing is so firmly with Trump because he makes them feel seen, and he makes them feel okay that they feel badly about it. Remember how BHO got shit for liking good mustard and arugula? Those are foods liked by people who have social status. Everything is semiotically selected to piss off the liberals who made hem feel bad.
Eric S.
@Punchy: Accentue immediately ran out and filed a copywrite for “framework for a process to adopt a protocol.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I don’t know, put press conferences like yesterday and Trump is toast with this own base. They only love him because he upset the Libertards, except now the Libertards are upsetting Trump. The Base no want that. It sounds like the Press discovered they can troll Trump to his face their audience likes it, so Trump has a problem.
C Stars
@Martin: That was kind of my sense as well. In two weeks, we’ll have more information/infrastructure, and then two weeks after that maybe roll out some basic openings. But I’m guessing the first wave of “opening up” will be pretty rudimentary. The testing/tracing part just seems huge and based on recent history it’s hard to imagine that system being established statewide in a month’s time.
Edited to correct dumb spelling
Sab
Sometime this week we need a serious gardening post.
How do I compost last falls leaves?
Advice on bunny proof garden beds in the sunny side yard. I miight have to live on the veggies this year. Cedarwood okay for raised garden beds? I am thinking beans or polebeans.
What should I grow? Does chickenwire keep out rodents or do I need hardwarecloth ( we have chipmunks..) I have two watertanks from my roof. Both have stupid tops that collect 2 or 3 inches of water. I don’t know why. If scrubbed from last year, can I grow lettuce there this year (above the chipmunks.)
jl
Vote Trump, make all die again! MADA!
Subsole
@Nicole: Steinbeck once wrote that Americans are always fighting our way in and trying to buy our way out.
patroclus
@Nicole: It was a bizarre period of history. At roughly the same time, we were following up on our Jones Act commitment to grant independence to the Philippines, which was accomplished (1946). And only a year later, the Brits just up and quit India. Why the French were able to re-claim their former colonies is a weird anomaly. We probably could have accomplished Vietnamese independence diplomatically and called the French bluff. Or forced the Soviets into their own quagmire. Whatever – we switched sides and chose wrongly.
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: (there are a lot of counterexamples to that theory, it’s probably wrong)
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@cain: why not both? I see it as a good gauge of people to definitely avoid. My husband likes to call them out for sticking the treason flag on their vehicles. He’s from Tennessee…
Another Scott
@Mandalay:
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/pentagon-orders-troops-to-wear-masks-when-they-can-t-meet-social-distancing-standards-1.624989
That’s been DoD policy since Sunday April 5.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sab
This whole mask thing is an issue. I have been half-heartedly cranking out masks for relations and friends. Halfheartedly because it is both boring and annoying and my doctor nephew laughed at me. I have lots and lots of suitable fabric ( also coffee and vaccuum filters.)
Then this week everyone wanted a mask, so I made two for everyone who wanted one. Today I found out everyone I had given two masks to had given one away to a friend. We are so *ucked
Beats doing tax returns for rich guys who step off their overseas plane and then cough on the receptionist while remarking about how bad coronavirus was where they flew from.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: This is also why online geek culture has been the home of some of the biggest and most appalling fascist reactionary movements. The white boys who thought technology, science fiction, video games, comics, etc. were their private clubhouse are NOT HAPPY about anyone else coming in and rocking the boat. (“Cool girls” are allowed but only if they promise never to object to anything.)
Matt McIrvin
@Sab: Is that bad? It means more people have at least one mask.
Though there’s a problem with people not knowing how to use them. My mom is making them and trying to get her neighbors to wear them and notes that they often don’t wash them–she has to remind them to do it.
KSinMA
@mrmoshpotato: Well said!
Kent
I’m like 5th Generation Oregonian. I grew up in the blue collar suburban/rural fringe north of Eugene surrounded by these guys. We called them “goat ropers” back in the day (late 70s, early 80s) when I was in HS. Kids who would chew tobacco in HS and wear cowboy hats or Copenhagen baseball caps. These days their facebook feeds are full of pics of them wearing cammo and armed to the teeth out hunting mule deer or fishing for steelhead with their F250 trucks. If you take the Portland out of Oregon you are basically left with Arkansas.
The Confederate symbolism is mostly just right wing bullshit. It’s an attempt to be as politically incorrect as possible and offend the libs who are “taking over Oregon” Mostly they aren’t all caught up in the lost cause mythology that you get in the deep south. It’s more just a way of proving that you are truly a redneck asshole. Same as “rolling coal”. I honestly think I see more confederate flags here in the Pacific Northwest as I saw during the decade that we lived in Texas. In Texas they tend more to fly the Texas flag or the Gadsen Flag or the “Come and Take It” flag. Even the Texas racists are a little bit shy about flying the confederate flag. Not so up here.
Brachiator
@patroclus:
The Japanese were no longer in the picture and we were not in competition with the French. If anything, we got suckered into replacing the French as antagonists in the region. There is also a connection with the efforts of the Catholic Church to retain some authority.
Ultimately, the war had nothing to do with us. We had no fundamental interests there. But Ho was not some equivalent of George Washington. People would have suffered.
Kent
When I taught HS in Texas I called it the “Loser Flag” to the amusement of my black students. I told them “be happy they use it because it is a convenient way for losers to self-identify and let you know who to avoid”
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
Those kids were ubiquitous in Northern Virginia in the 70s and 80s, only many of them were the children of well-off three-letter-agency guys and defense contractor employees. They had shiny, shiny jacked-up pickups that never saw mud.
LuciaMia
Prince Trump will be broadcasting from the Rose Garden today. Someone suggested that it was easier to grab the mike from the reporters if they got too uppity. If I watch,t will be with the mute on, trusting to CNN’s chyrons for the gist of it.
Ten Bears
That red dot, that target, is right behind the gas tank.
Kent
The ones I grew up with were mostly the kids of loggers and lumber mill workers who lived out in the country on fake little farm acreages with maybe a cow or two and a double-wide. Or crappy suburban tract homes on the suburban fringe. During HS basketball games and football games the police actually had to keep a closer eye on the dads then the HS kids because drunk redneck log truck drivers were more likely to get into brawls than their 17 year old HS kids.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
It is weird, comical and exasperating to see a contingent of angry Star Trek “fans” insist that “Discovery” and “Picard” are not only a repudiation of Gene Rodenberry’s “vision of the future,” but also a conspiracy to knock white men off their perch of supremacy.
This crap is stupid and tiresome.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Sports parents. You know it.
Sab
@Matt McIrvin: They need one to wear and one for the laundry. Probably they need one for every stop that day. I fear that reusing a mask without washing exposes them to old germs. Nearly as bad or worse than nothing.
I am not a microbiologist. Just a housewife.
Don’t touch your face. Don’t fidget with your mask and then touch your face.
Wash your hands and your face everytime you go out and come home. Wash your hands everytime you move through your house. Front door to house. From wherever to fridge. Everytime the dog makes you let her out while cooking. Annoying yes, but it only takes 20 seconds. Wash your hands everytime you did something else and then touch food.
Once you get used to it it isn’t that hard. My mom taught me this, and I have had two cases of food poisoning in 37 years of marriage, and one of them he did.
All of a sudden we are discovering basic hygiene.
Kent
@trollhattan: Yep. And they aren’t a new thing. We had them at my little league games in the mid 1970s.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
Wow. I wonder what the ratio of workers to residents might be.
Nicole
Before I forget- one of the NYC Council members did a Q&A with Dr. Craig Spencer (immunologist and Director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at Columbia University) last night and it’s an informative hour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47oxE-LmXlc&feature=youtu.be
Some of it is specific to NYC, in terms of where we are in terms of the infection, but Dr. Spencer has good advice on going out for exercise, use of masks and what kinds, transmission risks, etc. It clarified a lot of things for me. Well worth the listen, and, if you’re like me, you can put it on while you go do something else you’ve rediscovered during this pandemic (counted cross stitch!).
ballerat
This was why I think Trump’s support holds fairly steady. They see themselves in Trump and they will always cut themselves the greatest amount of slack.
They can’t see Trump’s faults any more than they can their own ugly flaws. And a criticism of Trump is a personal criticism of themselves.
The disturbing thing is, Trump is an idealized image of how they see themselves. My god.
raven
@Sab: That is NOT basic hygiene.
debbie
@raven:
I know that kind of hate. I come from a family with that kind of hate. They had it for Obama, they still have it for Hillary. I don’t know why, because none of them have suffered a single fucking thing.
trollhattan
@Kent:
I kind of knew they exist from stories but that didn’t prepare me for them showing up when the kids are only ten. “Do you people have lives?”
Ladyraxterinok
@patroclus:
First learned much of this from the Republican Senate White Paper on Virtnzm publicized in 1968
Jinchi
@C Stars:
Thanks
geg6
@raven:
I live in Western PA, which might as well be West Virginia. I am surrounded by these people and have dealt with their hate all my life. I grew up with liberal parents, but most of the families around us were not. We were the only family in our subdivision that had black people to our house as guests. My parents offered to send my brothers to Canada if they drew a low draft lottery number (they didn’t but one brother enlisted in the Navy as a medic anyway). I’ve dealt these assholes all my life. No one needs to school me on how much they hate us.
Another Scott
@Jinchi: +1
Donnie was the personification of what they claimed for decades to believe in: 1) That the rich were better, smarter, more capable than actual experts or people who understood history and government. 2) That “political correctness” was something that needed to be broken. 3) That breaking norms (like breaking political coverage in the media) was a good thing.
Repudiating Trump would be repudiating everything they claimed to believe since Goldwater (and maybe earlier).
“Be careful what you wish for…”
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@CaseyL:
Wolf will veto it, I am sure.
Jeffro
@Mandalay: wow, seriously
Mary G
@James E Powell: F*CKS LEFT TO GIVE
Ilieitz
@raven: I know that this is probably a dead thread but what is 5heir definition of libs? People who help black people etc?
Kent
Blacks, Hispanics, LGBT folks, Environmentalists, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, Abortionists, Uppity Women, etc. and all the “misguided” white folk who support them.
Kent
I have 3 daughters and coached youth soccer for about 15 years. Always girls teams so it wasn’t quite so bad. But looking across the field at some of the boys games and hearing the parents would make your hair curl. There is a whole category of YouTube videos of parents acting badly at kids sports. Hundreds of videos.
I always rode a very tight herd on all my parents and wouldn’t tolerate any abusive shit towards anyone…other players, other coaches, and especially referees, which were often kids themselves. Some of the opposing coaches couldn’t help themselves and would go off on referees. I would chew them out for that. But the boys games are always much worse.
J R in WV
@cain:
Correct, it was Democratic Hawks, Cold Warriors afraid of the dreaded Commies, who ignored the democratic tendencies of the North Vietnam leadership in the 1940s and early ’50s, and got us into a war, at first on behalf of the French colonists and later on behalf of the conservative Catholics who took over South Vietnam.
The North Vietnam leaders asked us to help liberate them from the French, after spending their blood fighting the Japanese with us. The CIA-types rejected them and sent aid to the French. It wasn’t about democracy, it was about oppressing the colonized Asians.
Chris T.
We have few Trumpies here, and I’m too chicken to do this anyway, but I’ve been tempted to get some over-the-top stickers such as “trump 2020: because one pandemic isn’t enough” or “trump 2020: there’s still stuff to steal” and slap them over those kinds of bumper stickers…
Another Scott
@J R in WV:
Ike and Diem get their share of the blame, also too:
Everyone saw it was a quagmire that we shouldn’t be in, but US politicians were so afraid of the “Who Lost China” and the “Domino Theory” screaming GOP demagogues that they were easy to stampede the sensible ones into jumping in with both feet.
Kinda like the aftermath of 9/11.
So, that’s the reason why I think it’s most fair to blame Republican demagogues. They haven’t found a war anywhere that they don’t think other Americans should be off fighting and dying in.
One would think that we would learn… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Shawn in Showme
@Another Scott:
Sometimes I think American ignorance of math and history is by design.
Sally
@raven: I know, but what they ignore is that he really really aspires to be one of them (us). But they (we) closed ranks against him a long time ago. Having seen him for what he is. This is all payback.
namekarB
@raven: ETA’d out of Camp Enari March 1969.
Michael
@joel hanes: Somehow carpet bombing Cambodia didn’t really help I guess. Everyone has at least seen film of Vietnamese on the embassy roof trying to get into a helicopter and then the helicopters being dumped into the ocean off carrier decks. Not exactly a victory march.
Michael
@Soprano2: It goes back also to slavery and after that a century of Jim Crow. Under slavery non-white non-Christian (etc. their cultural peers) were totally guaranteed their position, or imagined position, in society. Then for a hundred more years (after they fixed that bullshit northerner Reconstruction heresy) it was a less explicit and ironclad version of the same thing.
Hypocrisy was an essential part of it (and it hasn’t gone away either): whip the slaves and buy and sell them during the week, go to church on Sunday and profess Jesus after a night of throwing a fairyland ball with hoopskirted white virgins.
It’s not just black people who are going to come and get their stuff that they need all those guns for, it’s all the big city libruls who are unable to live like proud independent pioneers off the game they shoot and stuff they grow by the honest sweat of their virtuous brows like they imagine they will.
The Pale Scot
@Nicole:
Do you have a source for this? I’d really like to read the thinking behind that ploy
Another Scott
In the least surprising news of the day, Reuters:
Everyone can get a test!!!1 Oh you want the results of the tests? Well, you can’t have that…
Only the best people…
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.