I imagine that during Memorial Day 1918 and 1919, in the midst of the swine flu pandemic that emerged from the training barracks at Fort Riley and somehow got blamed on Spain, people tried to make sense of the day and what it was supposed to symbolize and commemorate while the US was at war abroad and Americans were dying at home of communicable disease. As I wrote last year, Memorial Day has sort of evolved into a strange observance in America’s civic life and civil culture:
Memorial Day has assumed a strange place within American civic culture. It has become the Federal holiday that signals the start of summer, while at the same time, because of the changes to how Americans respond and relate to the US military, has become a de facto second Veteran’s Day. And, of course, for those that have served, or those related to them, or those who have known them as more than passing acquaintances, and those who have some civic self awareness, the holiday retains its original purpose: to commemorate America’s war dead.
All of this together is a strange civic cultural mashup.
Memorial Day 2020, and the long holiday weekend that comes with it, is even stranger than the holiday usually is. This year it has become part of the partisan, tribal attitudes and actions surrounding how Americans should be responding to SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19. We’ll know in two to three weeks just how bad the damage from this weekend’s activities is. How many who would not have become infected have become infected and how many who would not have died will have died. Further ripping at and tattering our civic culture and further poisoning the life blood of the Republic.
Eventually Americans will figure out how to recognize, commemorate, and collectively mourn those who have died as a result of COVID-19. Tens of thousands of whom would likely still be alive if the President, his senior advisors and staff, his surrogates, Senator McConnell and his Republican majority in the Senate, and Fox News, OANN, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart, and the rest of conservative news, social, and digital media didn’t approach the pandemic, and the challenges it presents to the US, as some sort of partisan game to be won.
It seems strange to focus on commemorating America’s war dead when we are approaching 100,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and significant portions of the US seem to think that reality is somewhere between fake news and not their problem. America’s soul has been sick for a long time. Some of this goes back to the original sins of America’s founding. Some of the poison has been more recently injected. But the strange reality of Memorial Day 2020 makes America’s civic soul sickness brutally clear.
Rest well Michael, Nicole, Paula, Gregg, and Terry.
Open thread.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I don’t understand these people; the ones who crowded beaches, restaurants, and boardwalks not wearing masks. Or the people visiting for cook-outs in my neighborhood. Do they really think the danger has passed? They can’t all be wingnuts
Any spikes in virus case counts now are being blamed on increased testing. Anti-lockdowners are saying that Texas, Georgia, Florida have been opened for over 3 weeks and have not seen any significant increases and that hospitalizations are a better metric (which has remained flat)
HumboldtBlue
The last time we honored Memorial Day without professional baseball was 1880.
An excellent article from 2018 about how the use of 911 maintains safe white spaces.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They just don’t care.
Watch the interviews with them, “if I get sick god meant that and I’ll deal from there” and it stretches to simple indifference about concern for others.
FelonyGovt
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It does me good to know that a young person like you gets it. Of course, you’re educated and you’re a health care worker and not a dumbass.
Jackie
Thank you, Adam. You’ve been missed.
FelonyGovt
@Jackie: What you said. Nice to see you, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@Jackie: @FelonyGovt: Thanks for the kind words, but I haven’t disappeared. I did a post last Tuesday.
FelonyGovt
@Adam L Silverman: That’s 10 years in the time of COVID. ?
Adam L Silverman
@FelonyGovt: Time is fleeting…
O. Felix Culpa
Yes, this is the saddest Memorial Day I can remember. Personally, I’m fine (mostly). But a lot of our fellow citizens are dead and many more will die due to the willful ignorance, cupidity, and stupidity of Trump, the GOP, and their cult followers. I’m fairly confident Biden will win in November, but I do not know the cure for America’s soul sickness.
zhena gogolia
@O. Felix Culpa:
Me either. The self-indulgence and lack of empathy are staggering. (Not that I see much of it in my own little town.)
Mary G
Best thing I’ve seen this year on Memorial Day:
TaMara (HFG)
@zhena gogolia: I’ve been thinking about doing a post addressing what I see as a disproportionate focus on the few people who are being assholes and everyone else. When you see the same photo of the same locales filled with people over and over again, it gives a false impression.
Even going out and seeing a bunch of people without masks, negates all those who are just plain staying home.
One restaurant that holds a mother’s day Jim Jones party vs. all the other restaurants working to make safety a priority and creating a safe environment for when they can reopen.
I hate to jump on the MSM bandwagon, but controversy does jack up ratings.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: He and I were deployed in Iraq at the same time. We’ve never met as far as I can remember. I was assigned outside of Baghdad and he was at the Baghdad Ops Center.
I had a couple of paragraphs about colleagues and friends who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were largely senseless, which doesn’t make them less tragic. But I removed those paragraphs from the post as I felt they were self indulgent.
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia: Ms. O and I were just discussing that yesterday. We find the hatefulness and lack of compassion baffling. I don’t know if ’twas ever thus and it’s just more visible thanks to the internet etc. or if a goodly chunk of the country has plunged into shared sociopathy.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: It’s always so enraging when people tell me being antiwar means I don’t love the country or support the troops. I support the troops by not wanting them killed for bullshit!
FelonyGovt
@Adam L Silverman: Nothing wrong with sharing your personal remembrances.
randy khan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Funny that at least Georgia and Florida have seen increases over the last week (using the 7-day averages to smooth out bumps), particularly considering the normal incubation period.
But probably more to the point, if we sustained the number of deaths from the best day in the last two weeks for the rest of the year, we’d have another 46,000 deaths. If we sustained the average over the last two weeks, it would be something like 200,000 additional deaths.
zhena gogolia
@TaMara (HFG):
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’d like to think TaMara is right. There certainly are a lot of people trying to be thoughtful and empathetic. They don’t seem to be getting much attention.
Dahlia
@Adam L Silverman: Madness takes its toll
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: War is my business and I’d prefer if I could spend more time working on how to prevent it then on how to successfully conduct it.
Adam L Silverman
@FelonyGovt: I was trying to avoid details and it just seemed sort of weird, so I deleted it.
Adam L Silverman
@Dahlia: Yes, yes it does!
Jeffro
The wingnuts are just so incredibly fatalistic, so dead-ender, it’s amazing. They are just about ready for their Kool-Aid.
I’ve heard the phrase (and variations on it) that “to those with privilege, equality/equity feels like a loss.” I would never have imagined that to these coddled souls, apparently it feels like a complete collapse of status, necessitating a complete withdrawal/abdication of any & all responsibility whatsoever. But that must be the case.
So…party on, privileged and terrified trumpublicans! We didn’t actually take anything away from you, but whew, you sure are about to exact a terrible toll on each other.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: When Biden is elected, I’m going to start a WH petition for him to hire you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dahlia: but listen closely…
Yutsano
@zhena gogolia: It’s beating the dead horse, especially here, but: it’s the racism. There is suddenly this “permission” to express views people we thought were civil and decent actually have. That racist underbelly has never been expunged from our country, and now that it’s in the open we can’t let it seep back into the woodwork. It needs confronted. And that’s not comfortable. But if we’re going to survive as a society we need to get uncomfortable here.
@Adam L Silverman: I do recall you mentioning you were going to be busy, so I wasn’t worried. Well okay maybe a little…
Dan B
In regards to honoring war dead as we approach 100,000 confirmed dead from coronavirus seem to remember that we will soon have exceeded all the American deaths in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The the point is that the US is on track for more deaths than all recent wars is disturbing.
The people who are not observing safe practices may not be that many but they will extend the time it takes to safely reopen to infinity, or at least another year, minimum, until a vaccine. This is tough since I’m at high risk of death and a year of lockdown reminds me of the AIDS years – years of crushing anxiety with no hope in sight.
zhena gogolia
@Dan B:
It’s since the end of WWII. I think we lost about 450,000 in WWII.
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G: Others, including Adam, have written about how most of America is completely isolated from the business of preparing for and fighting war – far better than I can. But when you have no experience of it, and nobody in your family does, “supporting the troops” is as empty a gesture as “supporting the Pittsburgh Steelers.” It’s performative. People who have seen the ugly, real, side of war tend to want less of it. I recall in my own case my father’s pacifism, largely formed in the crucible of eastern Europe in the early 1940’s.
Mary G
@TaMara (HFG):
@zhena gogolia:
I’ve thought a lot about this. There are more of us than there are of them, but not in one location where a news crew could get some good roll. Maybe I’ll try to start a Twitter thread with a picture of my house that I stayed in this weekend tomorrow morning. I don’t have that many followers, but I could tag some celebrities or something and maybe get it going.
Wag
@Adam L Silverman:
Madness… takes its toll…
Monala
@HumboldtBlue: speaking of which…
A black man was bird watching in Central Park today, and saw a white woman whose dog was off-leash in an area where that isn’t allowed. He asks her to leash her dog; she doesn’t, so he starts filming. She yells at him to stop filming, and gets in his face, threatening that she will call the cops and tell them, “That an African-American man is threatening my life!”
He backs up and tells her to stay away from him. She calls 911, and tells them a black man is threatening her. She lifts up her dog by the collar so the dog starts choking and yelping, and she cries out in a voice that sounds anguished and terrified, “Please come immediately! He’s threatening me and my dog!”
The man leaves, and his sister posts the video on Twitter. Twitter users then went to work. Her dog walker recognized her, and then people found her social media and identified her employer and the dog rescue organization from which she had adopted the dog. Messages were sent to both. Searching the dog rescue org’s social media, people find out that she’s been featured by the rescue group for saving the dog with doggy CPR when he ate a rock. Her social media has posts about her saving him when he almost drowned in a pond; saving him when he was attacked by pitbulls; saving him when he stepped on sharp objects, etc. (And she allows him to be off-leash!) This leads people to conclude that she is abusing the dog in a “Munchausen by proxy” situation, or at best, is very reckless with her dog. (All these posts have since been deleted, and the woman has shut down her social media pages, but people took screen shots).
So we have a woman who was trying to get a black man killed (one who never approached her, never raised his voice, and did nothing more than have the temerity to ask her to leash her dog and then film the encounter) and is probably abusing her dog.
In the hours that followed, the animal rescue group contacted her and she voluntarily surrendered the dog, and her employer has put her on administrative leave.
Mary G
Off topic, but encouraging. Amy Cooper, who called the cops on the black birdwatcher who politely asked her to keep her dog leashed in Central Park, has had the dog taken away by the rescue it came from and put on leave by her employer:
She probably won’t get the punishment she deserves, but not bad for a holiday.
Wag
@Monala: Holy mackerel. Unbelievable in ordinary times, but these are not those times.
of course, ordinary times is a figment of our imagination. This type of stuff has gone on for far too long in our country, we weren’t wise enough to recognize it.
smedley the uncertain
Good to have you back Adam.
Hope all is well.
prostratedragon
U.S. military deaths, Korean War: 36,574
U.S. military deaths, Vietnam: 58,318
U.S. COVID-19 deaths, as of the morning of 5/24/20 (JHU COVID tracker map, arcgis): 98, 220
Ms. Deranged in AZ
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
@randy khan: Not to mention the fact that both states have been purposely underreporting from the get go.
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G: I know people in that Twitter thread are upset that FTI isn’t acting more quickly or more forcefully, but even getting this in a matter of several hours on a Federal holiday is seriously impressive if you know anything about corporate HR.
WaterGirl
@Monala: Wow. Someone linked to that story on a previous post, but all that info about the dog, surrendering the dog and being put on administrative leave are definitely new developments.
Mike in NC
Re: the sickness of America’s soul, just Google the name Donald Trump along with terms like ‘toxin’ or ‘cancer’ or ‘poison’ and see how many hits you get. Dozens of articles all saying pretty much the same thing: that we won’t survive as a civil society with four more years of that Fat Evil Bastard.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: You told us a little more about them in a comment in 2016.
Condolences to you, and everyone who has lost loved ones in service to our country.
Best wishes,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: I stopped watching the local news(I’ve been a viewer for 30 years) due to their over coverage of the “open, open, open” folk here in SoCal.
prostratedragon
Just learned today that my favorite Beethoven symphony was written for, or at least debuted at, a benefit concert for wounded veterans of some war or other.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: 50 quatloos says she blames medication, she took too many whatever cause of Covid stress
Gvg
No reporters are taking pictures of us, staying home mostly. We are boring.
I went to the mall for curbside pickup. That’s how I do most shopping for months now except mail order. I order on line, drive there, they put stuff in my trunk. No one going in the mall had masks on….however the parking lot was really empty, so much so that curbside turned out to be drive up to the main entrance of a big department store and park at the front curb. That used to get you a ticket, it’s the main drive in the mall parking lot. I had trouble finding it because I couldn’t conceive of it being possibly ok to just park there! A big section of the mall parking lot is now a drive thru set up for chick fil a which is inside the food court. They have a guy directing and traffic cones to make 2 lanes with remote order speakers. It’s creative…and temporary but also not a couple of weeks temporary. It means they know it’s going to be awhile. I was upset at the maskless jerks, but after I thought it over….I realized that nearly empty parking lot and dark looking stores means it just a small number.
Traffic has increased, but it’s still light compared to before. A lot of people get it, but staying home makes them kind of disappear.
CatFacts
@Monala: I’m simultaneously saddened by the reasons that man needed to film this, and satisfied at the result. His quick thinking saved his own life and helped a pet, too.
Mary G
@Gin & Tonic: I know, right? Their social media watch team is good. If they fired her right away, they’d be liable to a lawsuit from her on wrongful termination, so it’s understandable. I still tweeted at them that they need to investigate all interactions she’s had with coworkers of color, if any, and do more than give her a slap on the wrist or wait for it to blow over.
Jinchi
I appreciate the effort made in the study cited, but let’s not lowball this. If the US had done as well as South Korea, we would have had about 2,000 dead, and that would have been a tragedy. If we had done as well as Germany we’d have had about 30,000. In either case, almost all of the casualties would be behind us and the country would be opening back up.
Trump is responsible for at least 60,000 dead so far, and even his own government predicts another 50,000 will die by the end of the summer. He’s responsible for all of them, and given his contempt for science, possibly much more in the end.
Duane
@Jeffro: Wars, recessions, corruption, even plagues, nothing seems to get through to the thick-skulled people in this country. Sometimes it takes being broken before people change. Hopefully that’s not the case for us as a nation.
Dahlia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not for very much longer
Steeplejack
Interesting thread:
Jeffro
@Duane: Here’s hoping it will be an object lesson, some years hence, about folks who can’t see the truth right in front of their eyes.
Tom Nichols had a nice piece up in the Atlantic today about how extremely un-manly – even by his own supporters’ standards – trumpov is. And it’s true, every point of it.
Folks primed into a 24/7 fear reaction just can’t process. They mistake blow-dried comb-overs for manliness, constant whining for strength. It’s really something.
Jinchi
Tell any anti-lockdowners you meet that in Florida and Georgia confirmed cases are up about 10-15% compared to 3 weeks ago. In Texas it’s up about 40%.
And the caseload is supposed to be going to zero, not staying flat.
Another Scott
It looks like NoVA is going to start the Phase 1 process of “opening up” at midnight on May 28.
Fairfax County Board Chair Jeff McKay:
The data they’re citing is here – vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/key-measures/#northern (note the tabs at the top of the graph).
Some of the averages look kinda flat to me… :-/, but some do look pretty good.
Birx was recently cited as saying the DC region has the highest positive testing rate in the country.
Fingers crossed, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this…
Cheers,
Scott.
Calouste
@Mary G: She’ll be our on her ass before the week is out. Investment banks don’t care what their employees do outside the office, as long as it doesn’t come out in public and reflect badly on “the firm”. Then they suddenly do care. Very much so.
Original Lee
@O. Felix Culpa: Yeah, this is a sad Memorial Day for me, too. The mother of a close friend passed away this morning from COVID-19, and the Trumpistas we both know were offering condolences on her wall while railing against the loss of their freedoms on their own. Plus, the father of one of my daughter’s closest friends, who had been released from the hospital last week after three weeks in for COVID-19, was readmitted this afternoon. And idiots are running around without masks.
One of my neighbors, who is an ICU nurse and is working this weekend, says that her new patients with COVID-19 are all, how can I be sick, isn’t the quarantine over?
Steeplejack
@Jeffro, @Yutsano:
From the thread I linked to above:
Another Scott
In other news, aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/russian-fighters-flown-western-libya-haftar-retreat-200524200905871.html
Vlad must be pissed. Unless he’s got some sort of behind the scenes deal with Erdogan to chop up Libya or something??
Wasn’t it just a few years ago that Europe decided that Libya was a critical country that they had to intervene in to overthrow Qaddafi because he was threatening Benghazi? And the US provided critical support? It’s kinda funny how we don’t hear much about it any more, isn’t it??1 ..
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
Yeah, BHL and all our European friends insisted we had to help ’em with that. Worked out soooo well. IIRC that was the point where Obama started seriously questioning the whole “we need to do something; bombing is something; let’s do that” consensus.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
Yeah, all of this piecemeal opening is problematic. I live in Fairfax County, at the eastern end, so a lot of my out-and-about-ing is in Arlington County.
Modern counties are not like walled medieval city-states.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
patrick II
This is the year the cicadas return — so 2020, the year of plague, flood, locusts. I hope we let the minorities free before this goes on much longer.
frosty
@Another Scott: Keep your fingers crossed, but according to the County’s letter it sounds pretty good. Maybe better than what we’re doing in South PA. I think there are businesses and retail that can open with care, even with the virus still out there. We have a lot more info now on transmission, what’s low risk, and what’s high risk. The key is “with care”. I have more faith in VA than PA and isn’t that an interesting switch!
Calouste
@patrick II: Pakistan and India currently have a locust plague that is the worst in decades.
frosty
@Steeplejack: I worked for Arlington for 14 years and for Fairfax as a consultant for ~10 (while living in Baltimore and South PA). I’ve got faith in you guys – I think NoVa will be able to handle relaxing restrictions (let’s not call it opening up) better than a lot of other places. Like this little area of Confederate sympathizers I live in.
patrick II
@Calouste:
I have been wondering about the people around her. An attitude like she displayed does not just pop-up out of nowhere.
And aside from the racism (and that’s a big aside), an investment firm does not want people to think someone that dumb has anything to do with investing their money.
NotMax
Just to share, from the site of a small local farm-to-table eatery which opened not all that long before this whole thing began:
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Belatedly and sleepily realized that this is a “regional” thing that probably includes both counties. D’oh.
Steeplejack
@frosty:
I hope so. Arlington and Fairfax are also two of the state’s hardest-hit counties, as far as number of cases.
opiejeanne
On Memorial Day I honor my great great grandfather, Levi Green. He was part of the Yazoo Expedition to take Vicksburg, which turned into a disaster when Grant’s army was cut off during their approach from the East, and Sherman decided to go ahead with the attempt from the Chickasaw Bayou below the Walnut Hills.
Levi was wounded on December 26 and was put on a boat and sent back to St Louis where he died either in early January or late February (conflicting reports); the most likely cause of death was infection, since he was wading in swamp water up to his chest.
He was a volunteer, a private, age 36, from the Missouri Ozarks. His father and father-in-law had both owned slaves. He was a farmer and had ten children, 4 of them stepsons, the rest from his two marriages.
He is buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, St Louis, Missouri.
Juju
@Dahlia: I’ve got to keep control.
HumboldtBlue
@prostratedragon:
Damn that’s good. Thanks for the reminder.
AnotherBruce
@zhena gogolia: Start with the governor of North Dakota.
West of the Rockies
It’s late, this thread is maybe growing thin, I’m going OT here, but has anyone read the essay Tom Nichols has in The Atlantic about how Trump is popular with men (and some women) for whom he should be seen as a disgrace? Nichols has his detractors, deservedly I suspect, the piece is very interesting and thought provoking. Trump cannot be explained merely by racism. There is so much wrong with him and his followers, an all-too-substantial segment of our country. Other countries to various degrees show similar dynamics.
I’d love to see this piece be discussed here.
cain
All of them are.. they don’t seem to care about anything but low taxes. There is nothing aspirational that they care about. I suspect the secondary thing is to continue to have white privilege (or maybe that is the first thing all along)
We don’t seem to strive for anything.. It’s just sad. i really feel for the millennials and gen zs who seem to be constantly struggling with stuff and didn’t have any kind of stability of govt that I did as a GenXer.
Steeplejack
@West of the Rockies:
You’ll get more play if you include a link: Tom Nichols, “Donald Trump, the Most Unmanly President.”
cain
@Gin & Tonic:
But that is everything.. even in religion – they only superficially care about Christianity. It’s all performative there too.
Hell they even do it to the supermarket people – ‘thank you for your service’. Sheesh.
HumboldtBlue
There’s a lot of ways to love in this world and there’s a lot of ways to be loved.
Love comes to Desus and Mero and they do what you should do, love right back.
James E Powell
@HumboldtBlue:
Why was there no baseball in 1880?
Chetan Murthy
@cain:
Feelin’ a J.K. Galbraith quote comin’ on …. “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
hitchhiker
The Central Park racist woman is named Amy Cooper; the story was trending worldwide on twitter an hour ago.
What’s striking if you watch that video is how quickly she jumps to bullying him, and how exactly she does that. “I’m going to call the police and tell them an African American man is threatening me!” This is how you scare a black person into submission, I guess. Everyone knows what can happen, and that it won’t matter how innocent the black person is.
She had a bunch of choices. She could have just moved off with her dog still off its leash. She could have put the leash on and moved off. The guy wasn’t chasing her, tho’ he did apparently try to get her dog to come to him for treats, which he said on facebook that he carries in his pocket routinely.
But her go-to move was to remind him that she could get him in big trouble, and what’s really creepy about that is that I think it was instinctual. She just blurted it right out, when obviously both of them knew that he wasn’t threatening her, and both of them knew that he was making a video of what was actually happening — namely, that she was threatening him.
And then, jesus christ, she does it! She’s many yards away from him, telling dispatch in a panicked voice that there’s a black man threatening her in Central Park, all while he calmly makes a film of her doing that. Somebody on twitter said that the hysteria in her voice at the end was real. She was hysterical because she knew on some level that she’d fucked herself, though, not because she believed herself in danger.
She hangs up on dispatch, clips the leash on, and then the guy says, “Thank you,” and the video stops.
It took less than 12 hours for the thing to blow up to the point that it’s in mainstream media, mostly thanks to black twitter.
Mary G
Central Park Karen, who had her dog removed and her company put her on leave for calling the PD on the black birder, has spoken to NBC and “apologized.” She has an unusual excuse – he offered her dog a treat and she didn’t know what was in it?nbcnewyork.com/news/local/central-park-confrontation-goes-viral-white-woman-calls-cop-on-black-birde…
Waiting for Twitler to weigh in with the “OMG our pure white wimmen aren’t safe in Central Park” tweet at 4 am and the MAGAts GoFundMe to award her thousands of dollars after she goes on Tucker tomorrow.
West of the Rockies
@Steeplejack:
Thanks! Did you read it?
HumboldtBlue
@James E Powell:
Lew Brown, catcher for the Boston Red Caps arrived intoxicated at an exhibition game and was then suspended for the season?
It was missed today.
West of the Rockies
@Jeffro:
Oh, you read it, too. I thought it was a thought-provoking essay.
Ed Marshall
My grandma’s house when I was growing up was a converted Camp Grant barrack. The kids would tell ghost stories about those places because the Spanish Flu killed a thousand men in week doing basic training for WWI in those barracks when the CO refused to evacuate the camp.
He said “It was just the flu”. He called everyone to attention in the main yard, went into his office, locked the door, took his .44 out of his desk and blew his brains out in remorse.
That was accountability.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not for very much longer
Villago Delenda Est
Too lazy to read the thread, and perhaps it’s just me, but one Veterans Day is enough. Memorial Day is about remembering the fallen, both those who fell in battle and those (like my dad and my uncles) who fought, survived, and eventually died of old age.
Then there are those who are cowardly draft dodging assholes like Donald. Fuck them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Golden Bear: I have to keep control?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chetan Murthy: Dead on target, J.K. was.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
It benefits someone to have a system of inequality. It benefits those whose goal is extreme wealth, to have a system that squeezes out the most money from the most people. A system that values currency over human beings. We live in that system. Someone once said that capitalism is the worst form of economics, except for all the others. But humans being humans requires limitations or some will have and many will not. Greed is not uncommon it is quite normal. It shouldn’t be but there we are. Over the last 50 yrs we have removed a lot of the controls over this country not becoming a very bad example of capitalism. And we have reached the point that a large percentage of the people can not ever earn their way out of, if not abject poverty, a level of poverty that is unproductive, destructive, and deadly. We have hung on coal for far too long, we are, at least structurally, hanging on to petroleum, and probably will for far too long. We almost refuse to build reasonable mass transit in many places. So what happens is that there is no movement towards any change but easier grift for the wealthy. That is the republican way and it’s killing the country. It can change and it has to, but I’m not holding my breath, other than shitforbrains may be the last grasp of a dying political movement. The worst capitalist seems to have been exactly the wrong medicine for extreme capitalists, who are being shown up for what they are, societal thieves.
frosty
@cain:
1968 says “hold my beer”. The (fuck) LBJ and Nixon years may have had some kind of stability of government, but that was it. Everything else was in turmoil. At least now we have a fighting chance of coming out better.
Gretchen
@Steeplejack: right. They’ve been able to wander around Target all along. It’s the loss of their cleaning ladies and manicurists that’s really chapping them. There was one twitter thread today where an Alabama woman posted a picture of her Asian manicurist, washing her feet, wearing a mask and a face shield, and complaining that she shouldn’t have to look at “that”. And that she’s been “using these people” (presumably meaning patronizing this shop) for years. She blames it on the owners wanting to avoid liability, rather than the manicurist, who has to spend her days with other people’s feet, wanting to stay safe.
Gretchen
@Steeplejack: Amanda Marcotte on twitter had an interesting take on the Nichols piece. She noted that Nichols, as a white guy, sees a different side of those manly, strong, silent type working class men than she, growing up female in south Texas, saw. She saw the bullying, misogynistic side that is so obvious in Trump.
TS (the original)
@Mary G:
Waiting for trump to come out and say there are two sides to this issue
rikyrah
@Jinchi:
When I look at South Korea,I get sad and angry.
If we had competent leadership, we would be in a different place.
So many people would BE ALIVE????
rikyrah
@Steeplejack:
Never forget the muthaphucka who was protesting because he missed getting free drink refills.???
I swear to God, he should have been made famous in an ad about the clowns who want to endanger our lives???
Dan B
@Gretchen: Glad to hear that Marcotte is onto Nichols. He has a similar blind spot on expertise, that it should be respected by the lessers. The experts on promoting the expertise of experts is to listen to, respect, and build trust in your audience. Assuming you should be blindly trusted destroys respect for the experts. Missing the misogyny and the all too common abusive nature of working class white guys fits Nichols blinders.
rikyrah
I got my Ninja Foodi Grill.
Did some chicken wings- delicious ?
So much so, Peanut finished them off.
Dan B
@rikyrah: And there are many people like me who are in a high risk category who wonder if we will be locked down for another year or two. I feel like the zombies are forcing us into solitary for a few months and then they keep coming back.
rikyrah
I am up this late, cause I can’t sleep- worrying about going back to work next Monday?
Past few weeks, I have been buying stuff that I think I will need going back.
Dan B
@rikyrah: I got duck breasts from a local butcher shop. I salted (dry brined) and pan fried. We ran out of propane so no more bbq ;<( Your ninja grill would be fantastic with those! And I strongly recommend them to Peanut.
rikyrah
@Dan B:
The reporter on infectious diseases from the NYT was on LarryO last night. They were talking about the scenes from this past weekend of those crazy folks.
Her comments?
” In the middle of an Ebola outbreak in Liberia, they would have NEVER done what we saw this weekend.?”
And then, she reminded folks that COVID-19 is far more contagious than EBOLA???
When I tell you that I am TERRIFIED about going back to work…
I am??
Dan B
@rikyrah: I saw some things that looked like lightweight plastic helmets. The filter area was all around the perifery so it would have been close to bio-lab quality level protection and easier breathing than a standard mask. They did have a touch of Coneheads vibe but not bad.
Best of luck!
rikyrah
@Dan B:
speaking of local butchers,
The two things about getting groceries delivered is:
Fresh produce
meat
So, I have decided to try delivery services for both.
both are places that used to deliver to restaurants. Now, they are doing home delivery.
I don’t get to pick the produce, but the box looks like it has variety.
Brachiator
@Mary G:
On leave? Why does this woman still have a job?
Xenos
@Yutsano: As a white guy, every so often one gets the racist come-on from colleagues trying to sniff out if you are a fellow traveler. It usually involves the daily bullshit from the wingnut fever swamps, eg., How Obama Is Being Arrogant, or I Love Tennis But Serena Williams Must Be on Steroids, or I Hate How Much Some People Just Do Not Respect The Police.
Like this is a normal conversational point that pops up when getting coffee from the machine, or discussing the latest circulars from our regulator. They identify one another and support one another in a clique. One learns very quickly avoid socializing with these people as they are often grifters and can bring their teams and associates down with them when they have a spectacular flameout.
opiejeanne
@rikyrah: I am so sorry. It’s a terrifying prospect, to go back to work while not feeling like it’s a safe move. I am a bit depressed because it feels like I will live the next 25 years here and not be able to leave the property. We do leave now, once in a blue moon, when we need to pick up meds or, inexcusably, think we have to go to the garden center.
I’m still awake because I did something to my left hand and the Tylenol hasn’t kicked in yet.
Brachiator
@Original Lee:
First of all, let me express my sympathies to those in your life who have been affected by the pandemic.
This really hit me. Some people seem to believe that Trump and right wing state officials have brushed the virus away with a sweep of their mighty hands. And then these people are confused when hard reality hits them back.
This is sad, and made worse by the fact that much of this misery was clearly avoidable.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
Yep. A very interesting article, worthy of discussion.
Trump appeals to the ignorant and the angry, but many of these people approve of Trump and strongly feel that he speaks for them.
They like that he is a bully. And racism is clearly a part of this, since Trump supporters most enjoy sticking it to nonwhite people.
One quick thing stood out.
Here I think the author is wildly off base. I would bet that a lot of Trump supporters would love to have sex with a porn star. They certainly envy the stars and athletes who have wives, mistresses and girlfriends.
OTOH, I am not sure that the author quite gets why Trump appeals to white women, even though Trump clearly has a problem with women. However, I am not sure that I fully understand this either. But Trump clearly has appeal to white men and women without college degrees. And yet, paradoxically, Trump despises these people even as he plays up to them. And these people either don’t see it, or don’t care.
gkoutnik
@Xenos: I know this is a dead thread, but I have to say: Yes. This. I’ve experienced it countless times in a long life. Fellow traveler, indeed. This is how I know that hardcore racism is alive and well and all around us. We don’t see it in all its glory unless we take the bait and are able to join the club.
debbie
This says it all. It is so very sad.
zhena gogolia
@Jeffro:
I thought Nichols REALLY downplayed the element of racism.
Chris T.
Please have exact change.
(This joke probably worked better back in the days when you had to flip quarters, dimes, and nickels into the basket on the Jersey Turnpike…)
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: All she had to fucking do was put a leash on the dog. But if she had that level of self-awareness, she wouldn’t have been walking the dog leashless in a bird sanctuary in the first place.
SMDH – I mean, yeah, I’ve let my dogs go leashless in some places where they weren’t supposed to be, but I made damn sure I popped a leash on them when I saw other people coming towards us or of I thought they were otherwise going to make nuisances of themselves. IT’S NOT THAT HARD, KAREN.
Or is Amy going to be the new Karen?
Another Scott
@Brachiator: I haven’t read the piece, but based on your questions and comments, I think it’s very simple.
It’s tribal.
Those people (heh) bought into the memes that Hillary and Barack were a horrible liars (“he wasn’t even born here!!”) – and worse. They didn’t believe their proposals (“death panels!!”, “pizzagate!!”). They didn’t know their place (“stay home and bake cookies!!”). Etc.
It doesn’t matter how objectively horrible Trump is, they won’t even think about supporting someone in the other tribe. It’s like a two year old and broccoli.
Arguing with them only strengthens their views.
They have to leave the cult on their own. Nobody outside can save them until they want to be saved.
“Well, sacrificing a dozen of our strongest and best people in the volcano hasn’t worked to end the pestilence. We must sacrifice 100!!”
:-/
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who hopes they are seeing the mask cracking right before their eyes…”)
Uncle Cosmo
I’ve posted this a few times but it bears repeating: per this Wiki page, US military deaths since the end of World War 2 total 102,684, which will probably be exceeded by the end of May.
The COVID-19 death toll blew past US military combat deaths over the same period (87,481) at least a week ago.
Next up, total US military deaths in World War I: 116, 516 – in which a majority of the fatalities (63,114) were non-combat, largely owing to that other pandemic, that the world did its best to forget once it had burned itself out in the human population…
Anyone want to set the over/under on that date? I’m thinking Flag Day (14 June).
Villago Delenda Est
@zhena gogolia: He’s a Rethuglican. Of course he did. It’s been the basis of their party for the past half century.
Uncle Cosmo
I was thinking (out loud, to a solid friend) about this just yesterday. As a nation-state. the USA was intimately involved in the two great wars of the 20th century – but what was the effect on the general population? They sent their young people off to fight in it, in theatres so far away that most of the homebodies had little idea where they were or what they were like (only partially remedied with cheap maps published by newspapers & magazines). The soldiers came home, alive or dead, or didn’t. (One of my mother’s earliest memories was of one of her neighbors walking up the street in his Army uniform after being demobilized – in 1919.) The biggest impact on the “home front” was the rationing imposed on war-essential goods – gasoline, rubber, copper, aluminum, feedstock for explosives, food – & restrictions on travel. (Civilian cars & trucks ceased production in February 1942. Tires were almost unobtainable. [It is rumored that one of my uncles parlayed access to tires into a black-market fortune during WW2.] Anyone else remember from the Looney Tunes cartoons you watched in childhood, those puzzling messages like IS THIS TRIP REALLY NECESSARY? and NEXT TIME TRY THE TRAIN? Voilà.)
Fun facts: (1) After the Great War the axis of the world economy shifted from London to New York City. At a human cost of ~100,000 deaths out of a population of ~100M, or 0.1% (almost none of whom were civilians if you don’t count the Spanish flu). The Twenties roared on until they didn’t, & the resulting Crash crashed the whole planet. (2) After World War 2 the USA was the only advanced economy left standing & outside of the Communist states, was top dog for nearly 30 years (1945-73). At a human cost of ~420,000 deaths out of a population of ~135M, or 0.3% – very few of whom were civilians (~12,000).
Particularly people who have seen their towns wrecked, their neighbors killed or marched off to camps or made homeless, and even their ability to find enough to eat called into question. In WW2, Poland and Ukraine lost 1/6 of their entire populations (as G&T well knows), Belarus over 1/4, Yugoslavia 8-10%.
Meanwhile the USA barely “got its hair mussed” (Turgidson) & for its troubles had a plurality of the world economy fall into its lap. As a result we’ve acquired a seriously warped cost-benefit view of modern warfare.
Uncle Cosmo
And why do you live there? To avoid paying MD taxes, amirite? Just like all of the Far Wrong cheap bastards who migrated up there to join the Pennsyltuckians already in place.
(signed),
A routine victim of fiscal abuse by the Comptroller of MD
planetjanet
@Another Scott: I love the mandatory mask requirement.
planetjanet
@Steeplejack: But Northern Virginia is working in lockstep among the local governments. The letter to Northam was signed by leaders in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, City of Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and City of Herndon. The City of Falls Church was conspicuously missing as were the Towns of Manassas and Manassas Park.
planetjanet
@frosty: Well we did have a little rally to reopen here in Prince William this weekend. About a hundred people with several former elected officials, including Corey Stewart. There is a stupid streak here that just won’t go away.