Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Petty moves from a petty man.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

He really is that stupid.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Hope for the Hopeless

Hope for the Hopeless

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This new ad Team Biden dropped today is pretty good:

I don’t even believe the last sentence — that “we’ll emerge stronger than before.” I think Michelle Goldberg got it right in her Times column when she said, “The country’s international humiliation is total; historians may argue about when the American century began, but I doubt they’ll disagree about when it ended.”

And yet the ad is pitch perfect and comforting. Mango Mussolini checked out and left us to our fates. He’ll pull down the temple on his way out. Worse, he’ll leave an army of permanently aggrieved, reality-denying and occasionally violent cranks in his wake who’ll spend the rest of their lives — and ours — trying to recreate the “magic” that is the horrifying shit-show we’re living through right now.

But they were always there waiting for a Trump to come along to fulfill their lurid fantasies in a way the less Trumpy Trumps couldn’t quite equal. Lots of people knew that all along, of course, but now more of us know the extent of the rot, having had our faces rubbed in it for four miserable years. That’s something.

Speaking of The Times: Bari Weiss is out. As Jessica Velenti foretold, “The venn diagram of people obsessed with “cancel culture” and people who are incapable of being criticized is a big whiny circle.”

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

282Comments

  3. 3.

    M31

    the butthurt is strong in this one

    HAHAHAHA bye felicia, thanks for self-canceling, and remember to stick the flounce!

  4. 4.

    SFAW

    I am deeply saddened to hear of the resignation of one of the tippity-tippy-top writers from the Even the Liberal (FTFTF) NYT. I’m sure it was for perfectly justified reasons, e.g., the FTFTFNYT refused to endorse the moderate Donald Trump over the ultra-left-wing-wacko-socialist-commie Joe Biden.

     

    I hope she did not let the door hit her in the ass on her way out.

  5. 5.

    lumpkin

    Started reading Weiss’ resignation letter but had to punch out well before the end. What a whiny, self-absorbed brat. And a shitty writer too.

  6. 6.

    Booger

    Two quick and unrelated thoughts–
    1. My family was dramatically shaped by the 1918 flu. My father’s father died from it when my dad was a baby; my dad and his sister and brothers were put into a catholic orphanage by my grandmother, to be raised by nuns. My dad basically went from there into the Army, and retired as a LTC….so he lived in institutions his whole life. Not having parents around…showed in his parenting style. He had no idea what to do, and he made it up as he went along.
    I can’t fucking believe a century later, WE KNEW WHAT TO DO and chose NOT TO. I just can’t believe it…the repercussions will echo through the next few generations, if we don’t snuff ourselves first.

    2. What effect does the hivemind think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has had on the rehabilitation/softening/popularizing of the myth of the confederacy? I heard it the other day and for the first time, Band or Baez or whoever, it really revolted me…like turn it off revolted me. It’s a beautifully crafted song, in the service of an insidious lie. Is it just me?

  8. 8.

    JPL

    @Booger: Amazing story of survival because Catholic orphanages were cesspools of abuse.   Thank you for sharing the story.   A friend’s father shared his memories and he remembers the constant stream of ambulances picking up the ill and dying from the street he lived on.   Now we have a president who doesn’t even know the date it started.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    @Booger: In 1918, there was an “Anti-Mask League”. So, we’re just continuing in a long tradition of American Idiocy.

  10. 10.

    frosty

    Since it’s a sort of Trumpy open thread, has anyone else noticed the Electoral College elected Tommy Flanagan (via WaPo)?

    Whereas he used to say it was the best economy in U.S. history, he now often recalls that he achieved “the best economy in the history of the world.”

    Yeah, the, uh, world. Yeah, world, that’s the ticket!!

  11. 11.

    rp

    My god…what a whiny snowflake. I bet she was an absolute nightmare to work with.

    Hopefully Stephens follows her out the door.

  13. 13.

    Kropacetic

    @OP: I don’t even believe the last sentence — that “we’ll emerge stronger than before.” I think Michelle Goldberg got it right in her Times column when she said, “The country’s international humiliation is total; historians may argue about when the American century began, but I doubt they’ll disagree about when it ended.”

    In fairness, a lot of countries are fucking up in their own unique ways and some of our fellow countries capable of projecting global power have long been fucked up.

    We’ve done wrong and those who made the relevant decisions should be held accountable.  But we’ll have myriad opportunities in the future, presumably, to do right.  As long as we start doing so, and more consistently than we have been, we’ll be able to be a respected nation in the world again.

  14. 14.

    download my app in the app store mistermix

    I thought it was a good ad, too, and it’s amazing the low bar that he has to cross:  not abandoning the country in a crisis.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    After five years of shouting it’s a pleasure to listen to somebody like Biden who not only doesn’t have yelling in his toolkit, speaks to me and others as adults. It’s shocking how acting like a decent human can be a contrast, rather than status quo.

  16. 16.

    Doug R

    Well, Germany and Japan recovered after hitting rock bottom. Britain can’t seem to find theirs.

  17. 17.

    Dmbeaster

    How many hours of writing and rewriting were expended to get just the right harmony of whiney flavors?

    Unreadable.  Proof of insufferability.

  19. 19.

    sublime33

    Why are the biggest whiners about “Cancel Culture” screaming “Boycott the NFL”?

  21. 21.

    bluefoot

    It’s weird how the news of Russian bounties on American soldiers and the administration’s knowledge of same has been completely memory holed.  Wtf?  Trump still hasn’t responded, to the military, to the American people, or to Russia.  And the news media just…..lets it slide?  Seriously, wtf?

    Granted, it seems like every day is just one big mass of WTF, from Fauci “oppo research” to cutting out the CDC from data gathering, to tens of thousands more COVID cases every week, etc etc.  But still.

    Also, RIP Grant Imahara.  This really hits hard and I only knew him from tv.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    Our Trump-loving county sheriff refuses to have his officers enforce lockdown orders, because Freedom. One county over….

    San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month, he announced Monday.

    In a Facebook video statement posted Monday evening, Withrow said he came down with “cold symptoms” on June 30 and took a test the next day. Eight days later he received a positive test result.

    “I’m fine, all my symptoms went away a week ago and I’m very fortunate thank God that it didn’t progress, because in some families it’s gotten very serious,” he said in the video.

    Withrow appears to be the first sheriff in the state to publicly announce having contracted the virus, though sheriff’s deputies and cadets across California have tested positive for the coronavirus in recent months.

    Withrow did not say how he believes he was infected with the virus. He added that while workers in the Sheriff’s Office wear masks and maintain social distancing, he has created a list of recent contacts he’s had to hand over to the public health department for further notification.

    “Let’s be vigilant, if you start not feeling well or anything like that please get yourself tested,” Withrow said.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article244213072.html#storylink=cpy

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    From Bari Weiss’s self-serving flouncing off letter:  second paragraph:

    I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists [!], conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

    Um …

  24. 24.

    kmeyerthelurker

    The true conservative base had been waiting decades for someone like Trump to come along.  As we’ve seen, they will never abandon him — I’m fairly certain he could rape a child on national TV and they’d shrug and say “He’s our guy.”  While the entire party needs to be dissolved or at least exiled to the wilderness for a generation, that base may never go away; we will always have to put up with their shit.  The best we can do is keep them as far away from the levers of power as possible.

  25. 25.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @JPL:

    I love Janis Joplin as well.  She did leave us too soon, but her music will live forever.

    As for Bari Weiss, queen of the crybabies, she’ll be lucky if she ends up a footnote.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    We’re all in this together. And together, we’ll emerge stronger than before

    It’s almost as if we’re Stronger Together.

    I don’t even believe the last sentence — that “we’ll emerge stronger than before.” I think Michelle Goldberg got it right in her Times column when she said, “The country’s international humiliation is total; historians may argue about when the American century began, but I doubt they’ll disagree about when it ended.”

    Don’t know.  I for one have lost interest in playing Nostradamus.  At times it’s an interesting mental exercise to speculate about the future, but I feel that we too often get too caught up in our predictions to disastrous effects. (“I don’t have to vote because Hillary is going to win anyway” being the prime example.)

  28. 28.

    Kropacetic

    @bluefoot: It’s weird how the news of Russian bounties on American soldiers and the administration’s knowledge of same has been completely memory holed.  Wtf?  Trump still hasn’t responded, to the military, to the American people, or to Russia.

    What? “Fake news” isn’t a response?

  29. 29.

    Roger Moore

    @Kropacetic: 

    As long as we start doing so, and more consistently than we have been, we’ll be able to be a respected nation in the world again.

    8 years of Obama weren’t enough to get us back to where we had been before W, and Bush mostly hurt us through incompetence. 4 years of malicious destruction by Trump is going to take a generation or two to heal, and that’s assuming we manage to keep electing people who are effective in rebuilding our international standing.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    I like the Biden ad.  It’s excellent, and soothing in a frightening time.

    Anyone who says they cannot stand Biden:  there is something wrong with them.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle:

    The fundamental problem is that, in 2020, you cannot have a diversity of opinions that accurately reflects current American politics unless you treat reality as optional.

  32. 32.

    Jerry

    @Booger:

    What effect does the hivemind think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has had on the rehabilitation/softening/popularizing of the myth of the confederacy? I heard it the other day and for the first time, Band or Baez or whoever, it really revolted me…like turn it off revolted me. It’s a beautifully crafted song, in the service of an insidious lie. Is it just me?

    I’m sure it played a bit part at least. I think that the idea of “the lost cause” would’ve been kept very alive without that song. I feel the same about Dwight’s I Sang Dixie. Well crafted song, but fuck that old dying man in the song.

  33. 33.

    Kropacetic

    @Roger Moore: and that’s assuming we manage to keep electing people who are effective in rebuilding our international standing.

    Well, then, let’s do that. No objections here.

  34. 34.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    A friend is getting remarried in a few weeks. Anti-masks, thinks there’ll be a microchip in the vaccine, probably got a double order of tinfoil to go in the MAGA hat. No doubt the wedding will be without masks, distancing, etc., but with the kids and grandkids. It’s hard to find a polite way of saying, “Well, that’s your funeral, which I will be unable to attend.

    A microchip in a vaccine? WTF? An instant stroke? What’s going on here?

  35. 35.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m black, and I agree in principal with @Kropacetic.

    I think it’s easy to just throw hands up. I know what we have ahead is hard — my Partner is literally just behind front lines, running the tests we need so crucially.

    And yet. As I keep saying to folx, my Dad came out of Jim Crow — a literal Apocalypse on American soil. He certainly knew folx who’d lived thru the prior Flu epidemic while Jim crow was being imposed, in horrific parallel actions. He’ll be first to tell you things have been, and still could be, a lot worse.

    That the few Trump supporters on my FB feed are screaming about “freedom” and feeling anxious via memes is a key sign. They know, in their bones, that the culture is turning against them, and their violent fantasies about people turning guns and violence on them. Thus, the begging for “civility” and “order” from “the Left” that they would never grant us.

    Could that change? Sure. Do we need to keep working on it? Yes. Is it beyond horrific that so many people have to suffer and die to get to this point? FUCK YES.

    Yet: To wring hands in hopelessness around the decline of America goes against not only the most obvious historical parallel (The Great Depression), but the very point that we do still have power and clout. Just look at how many people, around the world, cheered on the BLM protests — that shows how much the world looks to us, wants America to succeed.

    Leadership is what’s missing, more than anything. I can but hope that if we get Biden in, that will be restored — and in spades.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @bluefoot:

    Trump’s big trick has been having so many scandals people are constantly distracted from each one by the next.  The media has enabled it by being unwilling to look for the larger pattern in anything.  They treat each scandal as if it’s a unique event rather than example ∞+1 of Trump’s inability to do anything right.

  37. 37.

    WV Blondie

    I respectfully disagree with Michelle Goldberg and you, Betty.

    I’m by no means a foreign policy expert, but for 80 years the U.S. was the tentpole for Western democracies. I don’t think the institutional memories of other countries will simply disappear because of the four years they endured the orange shitstain, especially if Biden takes the election.

    And our role as the source of inspiration for human rights around the world still continues, even now; look at how many countries are experiencing their own George Floyd moments!

    Finally, we have an opportunity, with this election, to show how to resist authoritarian/fascist influences. How we rebuild will go a long way toward reinforcing that message.

  38. 38.

    Kropacetic

    @Elizabelle: The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers.

    So the NYT didn’t anticipate its own success in driving this outcome? Funny, the impression I got from circa 2016 NYT wasn’t “needs moar centrists reactionaries.”

  40. 40.

    Kropacetic

    @Woodrow/asim: Just look at how many people, around the world, cheered on the BLM protests — that shows how much the world looks to us, wants America to succeed.

    This. Perfect example.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @kmeyerthelurker:

    As we’ve seen, they will never abandon him — I’m fairly certain he could rape a child on national TV and they’d shrug and say “He’s our guy.”

    They’ll abandon him.  The moment he loses an election with big negative coattails, it will suddenly be discovered that he was never a True Conservative®.  Everyone who backed him in all he did will dig through everything they said for the past 4 years to discover the handful of times when they were less than enthusiastic for something he did as evidence they never believed in him.  He will eventually be rehabilitated, but the speed with which he will be rejected will be dizzying.

  42. 42.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Booger: What effect does the hivemind think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has had on the rehabilitation/softening/popularizing of the myth of the confederacy?

    Barely any. The Lost Cause was already deeply embedded in American culture (not just the South) by the time this song comes out (1969).

    Hell, I’d give OUTLAW JOSEY WALES more of an impact, in that regard. And I don’t think it has that much of one, either, given the decades of toxic cultural indoctrination that happened, prior.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:   I am optimistic, if we can assure free and fair elections.

    Too long to middle January though.  (And Biden will not get even the sparsely attended inaugural day that Trump did.  I doubt that he would care if he were sworn in in a Delaware Holiday Inn, though.)

    I wish we could have resignations of Trump and Pence the day after the election, and interim President Pelosi so that we can truly fight the ‘virus in time for the winter holidays; big family time.  I know we won’t get it, but Americans dying by the hundreds of thousands and a renunciation of the government in power should count for something.

    Some of our “institutions” turn out to be straitjackets for the just.

  48. 48.

    frosty

    @Woodrow/asim: 

    Just look at how many people, around the world, cheered on the BLM protests — that shows how much the world looks to us, wants America to succeed.

    This is a really good point, one that I had already forgotten in the tsunami of horrible news.

  50. 50.

    senyordave

    @kmeyerthelurker: The old saying was a politician can’t be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.  Trump could go on national tv and run over a bus full of nuns, leave them for dead, come back the next day and have sex with their corpses, while wearing a gestapo uniform, and his followers would just say that’s Trump being Trump.

  53. 53.

    Cacti

    I don’t even believe the last sentence — that “we’ll emerge stronger than before.” I think Michelle Goldberg got it right in her Times column when she said, “The country’s international humiliation is total; historians may argue about when the American century began, but I doubt they’ll disagree about when it ended.”

    I don’t think that’s possible at this point either. In the past 20 years, we the people have handed 12 of them to two of the most destructive idiots to ever hold the office of POTUS.

    Even our friends abroad don’t trust us anymore.

  56. 56.

    MisterForkbeard

    @JPL: Wow. That is a LOT of self-pitying that basically comes down to “I made a lot of really horrible and indefensible takes in order to get centrists and conservatives to read NYT (she actually says this was why she was brought on board) and twitter was mean, therefore you’re all terrible and you don’t deserve me”.

    Well, yeah. We really REALLY don’t deserve you.

    Though how she phrases it is the perennial “I tried to be tolerant and to consider all positions but you just weren’t happy with that and you’re policing thought!” Sigh.

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    @Woodrow/asim:

    Just look at how many people, around the world, cheered on the BLM protests — that shows how much the world looks to us, wants America to succeed.

    I think this is a misreading of what really happened with the international response to the BLM protests. BLM had great international resonance because minorities in other countries are fighting the same kinds of injustice.  For all out terrible history of racism, we are far from alone.  All of the big colonial powers still have problems with entrenched racism, and so do the settler nations they founded.  BLM has become an international movement because structural racism was already an international movement.

  58. 58.

    Elizabelle

    @Woodrow/asim:   I have never seen a book on Jim Crow’s effect upon the Influenza of 1918.  Needs to be written.

    Your dad was very wise.  And I love your optimism (steeled with determination).  Agree the tide is turning.  How could it not?  Americans have wanted a do-over since November 10, 2016.  It shows in the 2017 and 2018 and 2019 election turnout and results.

    And best to your partner, for fighting this virus within the healthcare system.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:

    McConnell’s taking the senate reins for six years of utter refusal to allow Obama to do his job spotlight how important it is to seize the senate back. Without that Biden will be in a vastly worse landscape than Obama was.

  60. 60.

    Kropacetic

    @trollhattan: McConnell’s taking the senate reins for six years of utter refusal to allow Obama to do his job spotlight how important it is to seize the senate back. Without that Biden will be in a vastly worse landscape than Obama was.

    Well, the good news is that is looking more and more possible this year with an unfavorable map.  And I’ve heard in 2022, the map looks better for D pickup opportunities.

  61. 61.

    JustRuss

    @Elizabelle:   I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists [!], conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home

    I realize Bill Kristol was before her time, but David Brooks and Ross Douthat were right there!

  62. 62.

    Jeffro

    I loved that Michelle Goldberg column when I read it this morning – people need to be reminded that things don’t have to be this way, we don’t have to settle, we don’t have to stay scared and shut in.

    I loved that Joe Biden ad when I watched it just now.  I have had a potential Biden ad in my head for a while now called, “There will come a day…”, full of images of Americans working together, and then finally able to take off their masks.  Too soon for that one, but it’s coming.  Anyway, this one is just great – way to go, Team Joe!

  63. 63.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Woodrow/asim:

    Trump finally gave full throat voice to people like my mother. She’s always been politically awful (supported George Wallace in ‘68 for the goddess’ sake), complained about the Civil War result (“we’re too big“ was her response over the Cold War and potential nuclear annihilation) and excused Nixon over Watergate. What she didn’t have was the seeming freedom to spew her bullshit.

    We’d really had it out over health care reform and my ability to access insurance – she was fine with me suffering high premiums and her youngest daughter being uninsurable due to precancerous tissue at 15 so long as the status quo was maintained, because somebody she deemed undeserving might also get access to healthcare (translation: black and/or poor).

    Now, she’s got dad so inundated with Fox News he’s randomly blurting about the need to re-elect Trump while spewing the N word – something that he never was before. Despite all the negative effects of Trump orders regarding her only grandchildren (mostly unemployed with nothing on the horizon, my collapsing revenue (my clientele is working class) and the loss of $100K of my wife’s annual commissions, she’s still devoted to the principles and causes of white nationalist conservatism.

    I’m an only child, they’re getting on in age, and frankly, I don’t feel like talking to either of them due to the stupid shit they’re apt to say. That’s fucking sad – it didn’t have to be this way.

  64. 64.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Elizabelle: And never Forget Gone with Wind.

    GWTW was another eye-opener for me. After decades of being told no-one cared about the racism in it when it opened, I recently came to find out that folx protested it’s opening, nationwide…

    …and that was after the Producer actually (per my sources) turned down the racism from the books, while still making it palatable for Southern US audiences.

    I sometimes wonder what Art we Americans missed making because of crap like the above, or the Hayes Code.

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    Moar from Bari Weiss.  Lizard illuminati??

    …. It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

    The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

    Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do.

    I think you could include owning Black human beings, and buying and selling their children, from the 16-19th centuries on U.S. soil, could be considered a kind of a bad caste system there, Bari.

    And Israel, India, and South Africa are not looking that swell either.  Numerous countries.  Bari brings up Nazis twice in her screed.  Her first reference:  poor her has been

    the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist

    I think a lot of people at the FTF NY Times are breathing a sigh of relief too.

    Besides, Tucker Carlson is off trout-fishing.  On his calendar for a long, long time.  Got to have some outrage to fluff over in rightwingland.

  68. 68.

    evodevo

    @Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): Well, yeah, microchips…that’s the latest right winger MAGAt crapola, at least judging by a friend’s Facebook page…they seem to be totally unaware that a microchip that your dog has won’t fit in a vaccine syringe needle lolol.  These people are paranoid snowflakes, and it would be funny if there weren’t devastating consequences of their ignorance for our country

  69. 69.

    Kent

    @Kropacetic:

    @bluefoot: It’s weird how the news of Russian bounties on American soldiers and the administration’s knowledge of same has been completely memory holed.  Wtf?  Trump still hasn’t responded, to the military, to the American people, or to Russia.

    What? “Fake news” isn’t a response?

    Malpractice on the part of House Democrats.   If the positions were reversed, we would be on day 47 of wall-to-wall House Hearings on the topic by 6 different House special committees.  The Benghazi hearings are what won them the election.  That is where they first dug out Clinton’s emails and then the NYT and Comey were off and running.

  70. 70.

    bluefoot

    @Kropacetic:

    True, it’s a response.  (Sometimes Trump reminds me of those old-school dolls where you would pull a string and the doll would say something.  He has a similar number and level of sophistication of responses.  “Fake news!”  “Law and order!” “Obama!”) I’m more mystified that the press hasn’t held his feet to the fire about it.  Then again, if they can’t bestir themselves to ask hard questions (or call for resignations) after 130K people in the US have died, what’s a foreign government paying people to murder American soldiers?

  71. 71.

    LuciaMia

    And Biden will not get even the sparsely attended inaugural day that Trump did.  I

    But I think the internet may crash with the weight of the number of people viewing it virtually.

  72. 72.

    JMG

    No normal person (that is, people less into politics and media than us jackals) would read Weiss’s resignation letter. Any who did out of curiosity would always draw the same conclusion, “What a pain in the ass she must be for everybody in her office. Bet they’re all glad she’s gone.”

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    He will eventually be rehabilitated, but the speed with which he will be rejected will be dizzying.

    Sorry, some people were yearning for someone like Trump. He fulfilled all their dreams. They will not give him up or disavow him.  And if defeated, they will look for the next Trump.

    We have to look at who hard core Trump supporters are, not filter them through our expectations of how we would like them to behave.

    But in any case, we shall see what happens.

  74. 74.

    Kropacetic

    @bluefoot:) I’m more mystified that the press hasn’t held his feet to the fire about it.

    They have to maintain “balanced coverage.” That is, match every story critical of a Republican with a story critical of a Democrat.  Lacking a balance in criticism worthy acts, they must inflate criticism of the more ethical party and play down criticism of the Russian mafia.

  75. 75.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Roger Moore: BLM had great international resonance because minorities in other countries are fighting the same kinds of injustice.

    I submit I wasn’t precise enough in what I said. What you say is certainly true in the UK — John Boyega of STAR WARS fame made more than one moving speech on this topic around the abuse he’s seen as a Black man in England, for example.

    Yet — I submit this is not simply people re-purposing BLM alone. It’s both, and if that wasn’t clear in my comments, I apologize.

    And I say that with some authority because, as a belly dancer and someone with a number of friends of Arabic extraction, I recall the many protests here in support of the Arab Spring. Those protests in the US also interacted with protests around Arab-American discrimination in the US, as I recall — echoing the BLM’s global movements.

    There’s a pretty good Newsweek article on all this that provides the nuance my comment did not provide, initially: https://www.newsweek.com/2020/07/17/blm-global-leaders-it-feels-like-there-actually-change-happening-now-1513548.html

    Hope that helps provide some context on why I said what I said.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    @Woodrow/asim:   1998 article about a UMass/Amherst professor, John Bracey, on GWTW’s reception:

    “When the movie was originally released in 1939, there were fights and protests by blacks in front of many theaters,” Bracey says. “It’s still an offensive story, replete with shameful examples of racism. But I can’t imagine anything like that happening now [with GWTW’s 59th anniversary release]. I don’t think anybody really cares about this film anymore.”

    Bracey says when “Gone With The Wind” premiered in Atlanta, city officials tried to get local black church members to perform in front of the theater. “The idea was for them to dress as slaves and sing spirituals,” Bracey says. “All of the churches turned them down except one – Ebenezer Baptist, where Martin Luther King Sr., the father of Martin Luther King Jr., preached. It’s one of those facts that civil rights historians like to gloss over, but at the premiere of ‘Gone With The Wind,’ the 10-year-old child Martin Luther King Jr., was posed on a cotton bale, dressed as a caricature of an old time ‘darky’ – he was a symbol of the Old South there to entertain the ruling white elite,” Bracey says.

    Of course, if the white power structure was looking at figures like Martin Luther King, the black population – not allowed in the premiere at all, and forced to enter the theater through a special “Colored” entrance at later dates – would probably have been looking elsewhere, Bracey says.

    “Though many black people have always hated most aspects of the film, there is one that they do like, and that’s the character of Rhett Butler,” says Bracey. “He’s got style and attitude and tells all of the stuck-up society people who support slavery and white supremacy that he doesn’t give a damn. It’s like Humphrey Bogart during the same period. Bogart was a big hero to many young people in the black community because of his anti-hero status, and his cool, easy, but tough style. There’s even a phrase in black vernacular that grew out of it – ‘to Bogart’ someone or something. That description for copping an attitude has lived on.”

    I love how Rhett tells Scarlett that Mammy is the one person (?) whose respect he would like to have.  He regarded her highly.  Teased her with that red petticoat.

  80. 80.

    randy khan

    I got as far as “Wrongthink” in Weiss’ resignation letter, and I really think that getting that far was kind of an achievement.  I would guess that Orwell would not have appreciated the shoutout.

  82. 82.

    patrick Il

    @Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):

    You might mention that there is no vaccine, and if there ever is one I’ll take the chip . It will save me the trouble of carrying my cell phone around so they can track me.

    Even through aluminum foil it seems – – so they can also forget the hat.

  83. 83.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    Sorry, some people were yearning for someone like Trump. He fulfilled all their dreams. They will not give him up or disavow him. And if defeated, they will look for the next Trump.

    The thing is, though, that the people whose dreams Trump fulfilled will only be happy with him so long as he is still fulfilling their dreams.  His loss would damage those dreams, since Biden is going to work hard to reverse everything Trump accomplished.  They will see that as failure and betrayal, so they will at least temporarily reject Trump as proven unworthy.  As I said, he will eventually be rehabilitated, but in the short term even his strong supporters will turn on him.

  84. 84.

    JustRuss

    @Brachiator: Yeah, some of Bush’s memory-holing was self-inflicted.  He sold the “ranch”, rode off into the sunset to paint.  He’d checked “President” off the bucket list, mom was happy, time to relax.

    That will not be Trump.  He craves attention, he’ll be doing whatever it takes to get on Fox and anyone else that will have him.  If you think the stupidity and racism are bad now, just wait.  And his damn base will love it.

  85. 85.

    different-church-lady

    Now if the WaPo can just see the inherent logic of getting rid of McArdle then my day will be… well, actually my day will still be just as completely shitty as every other day for the past two months, but at least McArdle will no longer have such a prestigious platform from which to be wrong about every blessed thing under the sun.

  86. 86.

    Jeffro

    @Kent: Agreed.  They should have met the next day and every day about it, until it was time to bring impeachment charges or trumpov resigned.

  87. 87.

    Another Scott

    .@DCCC’s second round of fall reservations, totaling $2.8M, is big on Texas:

    – El Paso: $424,500

    – Houston: $896,400, plus $247,520 on Spanish-language (first reported by @playbookplus)

    — Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) July 14, 2020

    Fight for every seat. Fight to throw the monsters out.

    (via NotLarry Sabato)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    @Dmbeaster: That’s the letter you write to get it out, and then never send, but you maybe show it to your best friend or family.

    Only after that do you write the real letter intended for wider consumption.  You know, the one where you don’t sound like a whiny little bitch.

  89. 89.

    different-church-lady

    @Roger Moore: Nah, I think you’re wrong about this — they will say he was a great man taken down by the librul hoards and deep state, and they’ll just go further and further into Conspiracyland. Then they’ll apply all that to The Next Trump™ without ever disavowing the first one.

  90. 90.

    scott (the other one)

    @Elizabelle:

    Biden will not get even the sparsely attended inaugural day that Trump did.

    Given the size of some of the protests, I would be very surprised if Biden’s inauguration isn’t at least thrice the size of Trump’s—at the very least—but with people properly masked and socially distancing, making it look more like six times the size of Trump’s.

  91. 91.

    jefft452

    @Booger:

    What effect does the hivemind think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has had on the rehabilitation/softening/popularizing of the myth of the confederacy?”

    None, confederate mythology had been dominant for about 80 years when it came out

     

    “it really revolted me…like turn it off revolted me. It’s a beautifully crafted song, in the service of an insidious lie.”

    Really?  I always looked at it as the only big pop culture piece that covered how brutal and oppressive the csa was to even white southerners until recently

    It is defiantly not a pro-confederate song

  94. 94.

    Raoul

    I clicked thru the Weiss link and scrolled, briefly. All I saw was, what, a thousand words of whining? If you can’t dazzle them with your ideas, stun then with massive volume.

  96. 96.

    different-church-lady

    @Elizabelle:

    WEISS: I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago.

    Well yes, you should forever be expressing a ton of gratitude towards a national news institution that allowed you to fall upward in such a spectacular fashion for so long.

  97. 97.

    The Moar You Know

    The thing is, though, that the people whose dreams Trump fulfilled will only be happy with him so long as he is still fulfilling their dreams.  His loss would damage those dreams, since Biden is going to work hard to reverse everything Trump accomplished.  They will see that as failure and betrayal, so they will at least temporarily reject Trump as proven unworthy. 

    @Roger Moore:  You could not be more wrong.  This is not “W” redux.  They will simply say the election was stolen.  Doesn’t matter if it’s 538 to 0, they’ll say it was stolen.  And they will not only believe it; they’re going to act on it.  With violence, if that part wasn’t clear.

  98. 98.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kropacetic: I don’t think it’s that. It’s that it’s not news anymore.

    Look, we all know Trump is an evil incompetent boob who doesn’t actually like Americans or even care about troops. This is example 257. But what else are Democrats going to say about it? They’re going to repeat the same things they said before, and Repubicans are going to lie and say that it “wasn’t clear” and “Trump wasn’t briefed” again. That’s it. And if they spend time on that they’re not spending time on the NEXT outrage that drives clicks.

    Now, a competent media would be able to followup and correct Republicans in realtime and show that this is part of a larger pattern. But that takes actual work, good reporters, and a willingness to piss off Republican officials that generally isn’t there. So when Democrats DO talk about this stuff on shows or make press releases, it doesn’t go anywhere. Because the media doesn’t care, and we don’t have a Fox News to push democratic concerns into the public media space.

  99. 99.

    The Moar You Know

    Biden will not get even the sparsely attended inaugural day that Trump did.

    @Elizabelle: One of the many reasons why Biden has been my first choice from day one, including the primaries, is that he’s the kind of guy who really won’t give a shit.  He will be far too busy.

  100. 100.

    kindness

    Bari sure spent a lot of time spit polishing her reputation in that resignation letter.  I will put that in the Unclear On Concept category.

  102. 102.

    different-church-lady

    @Booger: It was written by a Canadian, to be sung by a guy from Arkansas, so I just shrug at the craziness of it all.

    In the end George Floyd would still be dead if it had never existed. And no conclusion we draw about will have any impact on the life or death of the next George Floyd.

  103. 103.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Elizabelle: Hilariously, I went to nearby Hampshire College and took a class at UMass/Amherst, a few years before this article. Don’t recall Professor Bracey but I was a tech/psych person at the time :)

    Thanks for the link!

  106. 106.

    Raoul

    @Kropacetic: “we’ll have myriad opportunities in the future, presumably, to do right. As long as we start doing so, and more consistently than we have been, we’ll be able to be a respected nation in the world again.”

    I think this is right. But I think what has fundamentally changed, and was somewhat inevitable but now has an air-mail (or even email) speed to it is that, thanks to Trump and an utterly decrepit GOP, we will not for the foreseeable future be the sole hegemon. We’ve shown our ass to the world, been laughed at and pitied, and even having the nuclear won’t earn us back superpower status, any more than Pakistan’s nukes do.

    Yes, if we emerge from pandemic with workable vaccine(s) and solid treatments, our cultural production will still be desired by the world, but probably more at equal to that of other leading nations, not superior to it.

    Good.

  109. 109.

    Amir Khalid

    @WV Blondie:

    Alas, the US has so badly discredited itself under Trump, and particularly during this pandemic, that this non-American fears Betty Cracker and are right. Will the institutional memory of America’s post-WWii leadership of the free world prevail against its less-than-clean record in world affairs going back to the Eisenhower years? Or more recently, its wildly erratic form in picking national leaders? Now that we’ve seen you elect a glaringly unfit person like Trump, it is hard to go back to the old reflexive trust in America.

    Also too, remember that George Floyd was unlawfully killed in America by American policemen. The subsequent worldwide protests have not really been about following America’s shining example in human rights. They have been about recognising that racism against the darker-skinned among us is a blight on nations all over the world.

  110. 110.

    Patricia Kayden

    In her goodbye letter, Bari Weiss name checks Alice Walker as an anti-Semite but is otherwise completely cool with Neo Nazis and White Supremacists whom she sees as needing a voice. ?

  111. 111.

    Elizabelle

    @The Moar You Know:   Yup.  I can see Joe Biden forgoing all the pomp entirely.  Swearing in wherever, and no balls or parade.

    Fight the virus.  Protect the American people.

  112. 112.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @kmeyerthelurker:

    They will never abandon him — I’m fairly certain he could rape a child on national TV and they’d shrug and say “He’s our guy.”

    The Republican Party has devolved into a cult that’s indistinguishable from the Unification or Scientology churches , so I could easily envision Trump being the Republican nominee in 2024 should Biden win in November.  I don’t see any other Republican with the stomach to fight him for control of the party.

    If Trump loses he won’t be an ex-president, he’ll be an anti-president hurling wild accusations that Biden stole the election from him and is therefore illegitimate. As long as he has his Twitter account, he’ll have a huge megaphone to command attention and CNN and MSNBC will breathlessly analyze his bullshit tweets because it’s good for their ratings. I hope like Hell Trump loses, but I fully expect him to be a constant irritant every day of Biden’s administration and I expect the MSM will continue to treat him like the leader of the Rethuglican party.

  115. 115.

    Hungry Joe

    @Booger: I’ve always seen a lot of subtlety in “ The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The narrator, Virgil Cain, is a dirt-poor, uneducated young farmer; his whole life he has been exploited by the wealthy, elite, slave-owning class, which has convinced him that he doesn’t have it so bad: “You’re white, you’re superior to the n******s.” And he has bought into it — even to the point of fighting for the Confederacy. And he still believes, even after his beloved (and no doubt equally ignorant) older brother died fighting for the Cause that couldn’t possibly benefit them. The Southern elite were desperate, after the war, to keep poor whites from joining freed slaves in forming a progressive economic movement. They were successful. And Cain doesn’t have the education, or the vision, or (maybe) the brains to see what’s really happening.

    Either that, or I just love The Band too much.

  116. 116.

    JustRuss

    @jefft452:

    It is defiantly not a pro-confederate song

    I think it is, and that’s not how “definitely” is spelled.
    The first stanza refers to Union troops destroying his livelihood causing him to nearly starve to death. Seems pretty Lost-Cause-y.

  117. 117.

    Salty Sam

     

     

    @Woodrow/asim:

    @Booger: What effect does the hivemind think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has had on the rehabilitation/softening/popularizing of the myth of the confederacy?

    Barely any. The Lost Cause was already deeply embedded in American culture (not just the South) by the time this song comes out (1969).

    Agree w/ Woodrow.  I was seven yrs old when this (https://youtu.be/2MZb1e-6IWo) was THE Christmas present we all wanted (1961).  My best friend/next door neighbor GOT it, and we spent countless hours playing junior re-enactments of Civil War with it. Funny how the Confederate States of America always won OUR version.

    The propaganda ran deep and strong.  As I grew up and outgrew the propaganda, that song just seemed like a melancholy ode to a lost way of life to me.

  121. 121.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: I know I’ll never really trust us again, so I don’t expect folks from other countries to either. Also, empires rise and fall. It’s not really surprising. We were a declining power before Trump in many ways.

  122. 122.

    Elizabelle

    @Woodrow/asim:   I had not known that MLK Jr. story.  Now I am going to be curious if he brought GWTW or that experience up much in later years.

    Also glad to know of John Bracey.  Still with UMass/Amherst.

  123. 123.

    Kropacetic

    @Raoul: I think this is right. But I think what has fundamentally changed, and was somewhat inevitable but now has an air-mail (or even email) speed to it is that, thanks to Trump and an utterly decrepit GOP, we will not for the foreseeable future be the sole hegemon.

    I don’t see this as a problem as long as we’re a partner whose participation is valued by nations with a good sense for human rights.

    @MisterForkbeard: Look, we all know Trump is an evil incompetent boob who doesn’t actually like Americans or even care about troops. This is example 257.

    You mean 257*10^N where N is some incomprehensibly large number.  And getting the MSM to hold him to account is likely a lost cause.  I’d like to see a more organized effort to draw more eyes to people doing journalism that actually addresses important issues relevant to public policy.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    What I thought was interesting was how there was so little concern among the cancel culture folks about what could be characterized as Tom Cotton’s attempt to suppress political speech by the protestors.

    He said in his op ed he wanted to call in the military to attack “rioters”. The military were going to go in and around BLM protests and determine what was legitimate protest and what was “rioting”?

    What could have been actual state suppression of protected political speech – the protests-  that they didn’t care about.

  126. 126.

    PAM Dirac

    @The Moar You Know:

    They will simply say the election was stolen.

    Sure, but that just makes the orange shithead a victim, just like them. They already have plenty of victims, they want someone who will bash the liberals, right the wrongs, and do all the things they would do if they weren’t so oppressed. The flag of treason is being dumped, BLM is everywhere. The orange shithead is failing them and while they might not fully turn against him, I think there will be a significant downturn in drumf worship. I’m sure there will be talk of fighting back, but I suspect the main attitude will be that that is hard work and someone else should do that.

  127. 127.

    cain

    @kmeyerthelurker:

    The true conservative base had been waiting decades for someone like Trump to come along.  As we’ve seen, they will never abandon him — I’m fairly certain he could rape a child on national TV and they’d shrug and say “He’s our guy.”  While the entire party needs to be dissolved or at least exiled to the wilderness for a generation, that base may never go away; we will always have to put up with their shit.  The best we can do is keep them as far away from the levers of power as possible.

    No, that’s not what they’ll say – they’ll say “well, we don’t know what happened before and what that child did – it might have been warranted.”

    They’ll also blame the victim and various other things that women and PoC have had to put up with over the centuries.

  129. 129.

    Cacti

    @Raoul: Best description I’ve seen of Ms. Weiss’s latest aggrieved whine:

    “bari weiss just recently signed a letter condemning people getting fired from their jobs for expressing their views and then in her resignation letter complains that people who expressed their views about her weren’t sanctioned or fired.”

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Booger: That song was a tiny part of something much, much bigger. The push to reimagine what the Confederacy was about began the moment the shooting stopped.

  131. 131.

    Citizen Alan

    @Woodrow/asim:

    To wring hands in hopelessness around the decline of America goes against not only the most obvious historical parallel (The Great Depression), but the very point that we do still have power and clout.

    The Great Depression would have turned out very differently for this country if the President at the time had openly admired Adolph Hitler. Just sayin’.

  132. 132.

    MisterForkbeard

    @kindness: Was this voluntary or was she forced out?

    She certainly is trying to make it seem like she left voluntarily out of Deep Concern For Principle, but I don’t really buy that. She’s been a shitshow from day one.

  133. 133.

    JoyceH

    I’ve been feeling some short-term pessimism but long-range optimism lately, and here’s why.

    The short term pessimism is my low expectations of government response to the pandemic for the rest of the year. We’ve just got to mask up, hunker down, and survive it. But beyond that, I think I have reason to hope.

    Either right before or right after the 2016 election, I read a piece (can’t remember who by) that rather enraged me, but now I think it’s spot on. The premise was this – it’s better for the Dems to lose in 2016 and win in 2020 than to win in 2016 and lose in 2020. Reason? 2020 is a census year! Whoever controls the state legislatures in 2021 is going to draw the district maps. If we see the blue tsunami that some are predicting, we’ll not just keep the House and retake the Senate, we’ll take a lot of state legislatures that would have stayed red in a non-tsunami election. Which means we can undo the gerrymandering that is the only reason some states are still red. Which means a better chance that taking the Congress will be more secure in the future.

    How long into the future? Well, a lot of people here are talking about old scandals going into a ‘memory hole’. Maybe people are paying more attention to the more recent scandals, but that doesn’t mean the old scandals have been erased. Say ‘kids in cages’, say ‘Charlottesville’, and people know what you mean! They haven’t forgotten. They’ve just been busy with the more recent stuff.

    Right now we’re dealing with a raging pandemic, and the federal government has completely botched the response, resulting in tens of thousands of needless deaths. You think people will forget that? Well, consider this. From 1931 to 1995, the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for TWO terms. That’s four years out of sixty-four. Republicans weren’t trusted with control of the House until the people who lived through the Republican response to the Great Depression had DIED. I think it’s safe to say that no one alive today is going to forget the Republican response to the Great Pandemic for the rest of their lives.

    Oh, and Trump is going to be some sort of Power outside of government when he leaves office? REALLY? Um… what’s Sarah Palin doing these days?

  134. 134.

    patrick Il

    @Elizabelle:

    Clark Gable threatened to not  attend the Academy awards because Hattie McDaniel was not allowed to sit up front with the rest of the cast. Hattie persuaded him to attend. I’m going to guess that story is well known in the black community.  Gable was as gracious in real life as Rhett was in the movie.

  135. 135.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Salty Sam: The kids next door had one of those! And they were always playing “war”, which was a strange amalgamation of every war in US history that they sometimes vaguely referred to as “World War I”, but when the period was US Civil War they were definitely always the Confederates.

  136. 136.

    Ohio Mom

    I always took “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to be about a nobody dirt farmer, tossed about by circumstances he had nothing to do with and very little understanding of.

    If he had lived several hundred miles north, in the Union, he would have had just as miserable story to tell. The details would have been different but the general idea would have been the same: that little people get crapped on, that when cannon fodder is needed, that’s them.

    That said, Robbie Robertson hardly knew what he was writing about, he just wanted a southern story to go with Levon Helm’s voice. Later on, the two had a massive falling out, with Helm wanting nothing to do with Robertson because Robertson made off with all the Band’s royalties.

  137. 137.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Woodrow/asim: Believe me, I know things could be worse. My grandfather starved to death in Siberia. My father was imprisoned by the Nazis. Neither of those are likely to happen to my son or grandson.

  138. 138.

    Booger

    @Hungry Joe: What bothered me is that it’s truly a piece of art–a beautifully crafted story, set to a haunting tune, but which portrays an ‘unrepresentative’ slice of the war…yes, sympathetic characters, but only in the narrowest view. Victims, devoid of agency, abused at the hands of the North. Kind of a ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ thing going on. Art or propaganda?

  141. 141.

    Just Chuck

    @Wyatt Salamanca: I hope T keeps tweeting forever.  Every time he does, we can ask repubs if they support what he says.  It hasn’t worked out well for them so far.

    They’ll disown him on Nov 4.  Take it to the bank.

  145. 145.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    In other good news:  Andrew Sullivan sacked at NY Mag

     

    He was unreadable; posting lazy click bait

  146. 146.

    JoyceH

    @Baud:  What I hadn’t realized until the close up in this ad is that Trump’s mask had the presidential seal on it. Groan! I think we’ve finally topped W’s presidential seal socks worn with crocs.

  147. 147.

    Kelly

     

    @patrick Il: You might mention that there is no vaccine, and if there ever is one I’ll take the chip . It will save me the trouble of carrying my cell phone around so they can track me.

    The chip isn’t just for tracking it’s for compliance to. You’ll see! They will inject it next to your spinal cord and the Soros/Gates Social Justice Warrior Brigades will be equipped with controllers that will activate the  chips to inflict blinding pain to enforce compliance with the New World Order.

  149. 149.

    germy

    Thank you to the Biden-Sanders task force for putting together a shared path forward on how to defeat the climate crisis and create millions of jobs in an economy run on clean energy.

    Let’s unite to defeat this president and build our clean energy future. https://t.co/MQKkAF94Pi

    — Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) July 9, 2020

    NEW: in an interview, @JayInslee blesses new Biden climate plan:

    “This is not a status quo plan,” said Inslee, who’s spoken w/Biden. “This is not some sort of, ‘Let me just throw a bone to those who care about climate change.’” w/ @LFFriedman https://t.co/48VII8zIv5

    — Katie Glueck (@katieglueck) July 14, 2020

  151. 151.

    Amir Khalid

    @Booger:

    A couple of days ago, I got into a YouTube comments argument. The video was of a Johnny Cash song, God Bless Robert E. Lee, and the comments were full of people exchanging high-fives over their Scots-Irish heritage (including some actual Scots and Irish people) and dear old Dixie. I said that I found the Confederacy unworthy of either love or respect, and I was mystified that anyone would give it both. The guy who chose to take me on spent many keystrokes on the “Southerners fighting for their homes” thing.

  152. 152.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    @Patricia Kayden: Indeed. That seems…odd. I wonder what it is about Ms. Walker that upsets Weiss so much. Whatever could it be? Very curious!        /sarcasm

  153. 153.

    JoyceH

    @Baud: Oh, I dunno. When a president goes to a plant or construction site, they give him a hard hat with the seal on it, and in military situations, the tough looking flight jacket with the seal. That’s fine. But W kinda fetishized the seal, belt buckles and I think a pair of boots, even. With Trump, I think they slapped the seal on there to coax baby to wear the damn thing. Look at his EYES in that footage – he’s angry!

  157. 157.

    dopey-o

    @Booger:2. What effect does the hivemind think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has had on the rehabilitation/softening/popularizing of the myth of the confederacy? I heard it the other day and for the first time, Band or Baez or whoever, it really revolted me…

    I am going to give Robertson and The Band a pass on this one. At the dawning of Americana as a musical genre, I imagine they saw Lost Cause Laments as just another musical stream, like blues or shapenote or bluegrass.

    There are some clunkers in the verses ( “You cain’t raise a Caine back up when it’s in defeat,” and its obvious recalling ‘raising caine’.)

    But the chorus is the whole point of the song: it shifts into a major key with “The night they drove ole dixie down / All the bells were ringing”. Who rings the bells and sings in the streets to celebrate defeat?

    vague enough to be an anthem, thank dog the yokels were too stupid to make it their own.

  158. 158.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid:

    A couple of days ago, I got into a YouTube comments argument.

    Are you that bored? Should we ask the front pagers to post more frequently here?

  159. 159.

    Betty

    Biden just gave a good speech on climate change, including mocking Trump on the led lights making him look orange and saying that wind energy causes cancer.

  160. 160.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    They will see that as failure and betrayal, so they will at least temporarily reject Trump as proven unworthy.

    This is something you hope for. I don’t see any evidence to support it. But we shall see what happens

  161. 161.

    raven

    Whaddya’ll think of Canadian Driftwood?

     

    The war was over
    And the spirit was broken
    The hills were smokin’
    As the men withdrew
    We stood on the cliffs,
    Oh and watched the ships,
    Slowly sinking to their rendezvous

  163. 163.

    Elizabelle

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:   Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan ejected in two days.

    LOL.  Whoa.

    ETA: I kinda wish Sullivan had left The Dish archives up.  Some of it was good stuff.  Not his pretensions,  but “the view from your window” and readers’ experiences and links to good stuff — Balloon Juice! — and beagles.

  166. 166.

    joel hanes

    @Booger:

    IMHO, the elegiac and beautiful “Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is far less deplorable, and did far less damage, than the defiant and ugly “Sweet Home Alabama”.

    But neither is important at all.

    The quiet billionaire funding of, and the credulous media reporting about the “Tea Party” was important.

    The 1979 founding of The Moral Majority was seminal, critical.

    Go read the Wiki article about Paul Weyrich.  The man was responsible for or involved in an incredible number of the institutions and ideas that have poisoned America.

  167. 167.

    Anotherlurker

    @Woodrow/asim: For 48 years I have hated that horrible film.  This occurred when I first (and last) saw GWTW.  The racism oozed from the screen and I felt dirty viewing it.

    From that day on, I wondered wtf the attraction was to that ponderous, over produced piece of propaganda.

  168. 168.

    joel hanes

    @dopey-o:

    The singer’s name is Virgil Caine.   His brother was killed in the war, and Virgil is mired in a defeated Confederacy.    The line is a clever allusion, not a clunker.

  169. 169.

    Elizabelle

    @JoyceH:   I agree with you, Joyce.

    Always thought Hillary’s being denied her rightful win to the White House would end up damaging the Republicans more.

    The pandemic though.  All the excess deaths and pain and suffering, and the economic fallout, that any other nominee would have done a better job with.

    Steep price, but I hope we will see a longtime alignment with the Democrats.  The Mommy party.  Daddy is an insane sociopath.

  171. 171.

    HumboldtBlue

    And Mr. Bell Curve/Fifth columnist lefties himself has announced he’s leaving New York Mag.

  174. 174.

    jefft452

    @dopey-o:

    “Who rings the bells and sings in the streets to celebrate defeat?”

    People who are “hungry, just barely alive”, after the defeated “took the very best”

  175. 175.

    raven

    From this day on I own my father’s gun
    We dug his shallow grave beneath the sun
    I laid his broken body down below the Southern land
    It wouldn’t do to bury him where any Yankee stands. . .

     

    As soon as this is over we’ll go home
    To plant the seeds of justice in our bones
    To watch the children growing and see the women sewing
    There’ll be laughter when the bells of freedom ring

     

    Say what??? Elton John  and his great Tumbleweed Connection!

  176. 176.

    svendson

    @Brachiator:

    I have to side with @Roger Moore: on this one.

    Conservativism can never fail.  It can only be failed!

    The Conservative movement HATES their failures.  They turn on them viciously precisely because blaming their failures on the people allows them to avoid introspection about their ideas and own failings.

    They will not repudiate the underlying reasons why they liked Trump (racism, jingoism, general dickishness) at all, but they will turn on him.  I’m sure a small rump will continue to adore him, but the movement will not.  They will claim that they voted for him for all the right reasons, but he failed them and was (truthfully, in fact) never a “real conservative” at all.

    I, for one, will enjoy seeing him psychologically and emotionally broken by it. 

  177. 177.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I don’t even believe the last sentence — that “we’ll emerge stronger than before.” I think Michelle Goldberg got it right in her Times column when she said, “The country’s international humiliation is total; historians may argue about when the American century began, but I doubt they’ll disagree about when it ended.”

    Only if you think some BS virtual empire is great for us Americans and not just fantasy fodder for the likes of Bolton to pollute himself too. What ever happens afterwards we will still be the kids on the block that is hardest to hurt with the biggest stick.

  178. 178.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    Some other belligerent idiot just showed upon that YouTube comment thread. I think I’ll ignore this one. Once they’ve exhausted their few arguments, they’re no fun anymore.

  179. 179.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Roger Moore:

    He will eventually be rehabilitated, but the speed with which he will be rejected will be dizzying.

    By the political class, yes.  By the diehards in the general public, no.  He is their man, and they are just getting angrier.

  180. 180.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I have a hard time judging art that’s beautifully crafted but politically objectionable. I find that song moving, but where is it moving me to? I regrettably think it needs to be set aside.

  181. 181.

    germy

    @raven:

    Dixie Lily, chugging like a grand old lady
    Paddles hitting home in the noonday sun
    Plowing through the water with your whistles blowing
    Down from Louisiana on the Vicksburg run

    (Elton John/Bernie Taupin)

    Lots of British rockstars didn’t have a full grasp of American history. Or the implications of the songs they wrote.  And so you have Jeff Lynne with ELO singing “Night Rider”

  182. 182.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @dmsilev:  he got canned cuz his work was so awful it wasn’t being read and, more importantly, it wasn’t being linked on social media outlets.

  185. 185.

    Elizabelle

    Had you seen this Rolling Stone article from 2015 ?  Along the lines of “The Night they drove Old Dixie Down,” and why Petty used the Confederacy as an example in the first place. In 2015, the Confederate flag was just coming off the South Carolina statehouse after the murder of 9 at the Mother Emmanuel Church.

    Tom Petty on Past Confederate Flag Use: ‘It Was Downright Stupid’“
    [The flag] shouldn’t represent us in any way,” Petty says. “It’s like how a swastika looks to a Jewish person”

    … In 1985, I released an album called Southern Accents. It began as a concept record about the South, but the concept part slipped away probably 70 percent or so into the album. I just let it go, but the Confederate flag became part of the marketing for the tour. I wish I had given it more thought. It was a downright stupid thing to do.

    It happened because I had one song on the album called “Rebels.” It’s spoken from the point of view of the character, who talks about the traditions that have been handed down from family to family for so long that he almost feels guilty about the war. He still blames the North for the discomfort of his life, so my thought was the best way to illustrate this character was to use the Confederate flag.

    I used it onstage during that song, and I regretted it pretty quickly. When we toured two years later, I noticed people in the audience wearing Confederate flag bandanas and things like that. One night, someone threw one onstage. I stopped everything and gave a speech about it. I said, “Look, this was to illustrate a character. This is not who we are. Having gone through this, I would prefer it if no one would ever bring a Confederate flag to our shows again because this isn’t who we are.”

    It got a mixed reaction. There were some boos and some cheers. But honestly, it’s a little amazing to me because I never saw one again after that speech in that one town. Fortunately, that went away, but it left me feeling stupid.

    Petty had the Confederate imagery removed from artwork for his next live album; held up production schedule a bit. Last paragraph, so prescient:

    Beyond the flag issue, we’re living in a time that I never thought we’d see. The way we’re losing black men and citizens in general is horrific. What’s going on in society is unforgivable. As a country, we should be more concerned with why the police are getting away with targeting black men and killing them for no reason. That’s a bigger issue than the flag. Years from now, people will look back on today and say, “You mean we privatized the prisons so there’s no profit unless the prison is full?” You’d think someone in kindergarten could figure out how stupid that is. We’re creating so many of our own problems.

    Not a day I do not regret Tom Petty’s early demise. He was a good man.

  189. 189.

    catclub

    @HumboldtBlue: I saw this on Roy’s page:

    Cop who vowed to ‘shoot protesters through door of his home’ is charged with manslaughter after accidentally shooting dead fellow officer who came to his front door to pick up a patrol car”

     

    I suspect that if any person EXCEPT another cop had been killed, there would be no charges – feared for his life.

     

    accidentally ??  yeah, right

  191. 191.

    HumboldtBlue

    @catclub:

    I suspect that if any person EXCEPT another cop had been killed, there would be no charges – feared for his life.

    accidentally ??  yeah, right

    Spot on.

  192. 192.

    Anotherlurker

    Just a thought.

    I am cautiously optimistic of the coming housecleaning for Democrats. Should my fantasies come true and Dems prevail, I hope the DNC budget, going forward, is used to remind the American people of the crimes of republicans.  Make these corrupt bastards own their treason.

  194. 194.

    raven

    From some Athens boys

     
    Surrender Under Protest
    The Drive-By Truckers have released their powerful new music video to “Surrender Under Protest,” a track from their recent album American Band. The song, sung by co-frontman Mike Cooley, uses an old Confederate slogan to address ongoing racial violence and tension in the modern South.

    Directed by noted music video director Lance Bangs (Arcade Fire, the Shins), the video features the band performing the song below a highway overpass while footage of civil unrest in the United States is interspersed throughout.

    “The victims and aggressors / Just remain each other’s others,” Cooley sings during the clip, which juxtaposes peaceful scenes of recreation with tense moments of protest and arrest.

    “Surrender Under Protest” was inspired in part by the decision to remove the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina Statehouse in 2015.

    “It’s interesting to read about the Civil War, but to live your life still obsessed with the war, that’s just sad to me,” Patterson Hood told Rolling Stone before American Band was released. “It was a long time ago, and I hate how much some Southerners define themselves by it. It was fucked up then, so it’s even more fucked up to talk about it 150 years later in such reverent tones.”

  195. 195.

    Jay

    The epidemic has opened many peoples eyes to systemic racism, economic and social justice, corruption in our institutions, and that most of us reside in the precrariate.

    Globally.

    There will be massive change as a result. Some will try to entrech the evil, more will try to create change for the better.

    There is a reason to hope for, and work towards rapid change, after 4 decades of one step forward, two steps backwards.

    Bari Weiss’s One Neat Trick/Dumb Stichk, was accusing anyone, not sufficiently Likkudnick, of being anti-semetic and trying to get them fired/cancelled/banned/expelled and doxxed.

  196. 196.

    Martin

    I don’t even believe the last sentence — that “we’ll emerge stronger than before.” I think Michelle Goldberg got it right in her Times column when she said, “The country’s international humiliation is total; historians may argue about when the American century began, but I doubt they’ll disagree about when it ended.”

    I think that is very dependent on how we as a nation respond to this. The deeper the humiliation, the more sweeping the response to that needs to be. Just electing Biden is papering over the problem. But if we have meaningful structural reforms, possibly constitutional amendment-level reforms, then I think, like the civil war proved to be, a deep inflection point after which we emerged better.

    I don’t think we’ve fallen far enough for that to happen, though. i think it’s going to have to get worse before we get the reforms needed. On the upside, Trump seems to be working increasingly hard to deliver on that.

  197. 197.

    Barbara

    @Cacti: Above all, Bari Weiss is boring.  It’s the same damned talking points every time, with only the names and settings changed.

    But seriously, I knew her days were numbered when it turned out she was live tweeting an internal staff meeting.  By many accounts her statements were inaccurate, but how could you ever have a trusting work relationship with someone who does that?  No doubt she was frozen out before she resigned.

  198. 198.

    Uncle Cholmondeley

    @Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):

    The polite response is perfect here anyway.  You just write (in the third person) that you are unable to accept the invitation — no need to say why.  This is more or less how I recall Judith Martin’s suggestion:

    Mr. Boris Rasputin
    regrets he is unable to accept
    the very kind invitation of
    Ms. Natasha Awful and Mr. Ivan Dreadful
    for August 9th at 6:30 o’clock.

    Good luck!

  199. 199.

    Brachiator

    @svendson:

    Conservativism can never fail.  It can only be failed!

    The Conservative movement HATES their failures.  They turn on them viciously precisely because blaming their failures on the people allows them to avoid introspection about their ideas and own failings.

    The right constructs fantasies of who they think lefties are.  Some of us do much the same thing.

    Bottom line is that, if Trump is defeated, we will see what happens.  Not much point in arguing too hard about predictions.

    However, Trump supporters are standing firm, even in the face of people dying.  That’s some strong cult-like behavior.

  200. 200.

    pamelabrown53

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I find it easier to judge politically objectionable but beautifully crafted art if I can include the historical context.

    That said, I believe we need to provide forums such as museums to discuss how an artistic piece (regardless the medium) can be appreciated for its artistic merit while acknowledging its deleterious effects?

  201. 201.

    Martin

    @Jay: I was thinking about that last night. Why this moment.

    I’m trying to think of a better representative of white patriarchal protestant privilege in this country, and I don’t think you could craft one. Granted, Trump doesn’t get the protestant part of his own effort, that’s signaled by Pence and the willingness of evangelicals to blindly grant him that privilege, but here you have a white guy, inherited wealth, bought education, failing his way ever upward, retelling tales of his own ability to sexually abuse others, granted the highest position of power on earth with no relevant experience, and who proceeds to whine and proclaim the victim the whole way through.

    Those of us who are not marginalized, but have even the slightest degree of self-awareness cannot ignore that. His response to the pandemic only illustrates just how privileged he is because he knows he and his family won’t get sick.

  202. 202.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Amir Khalid: What you said. The US is big and influential, the rest of the world knows the President can put a cruise missile through anybody’s window in thirty minutes notice and never have to say they’re sorry. Every four years the citizens in the US throw the dice and elect an absolute military autocrat and then sit back and furrow their brow if said elected autocrat does things they don’t like. Like the kids in any abusive household the rest of the world has to put up with the maltreatment and cruelty rained down on them from a position of authority and overwhelming brute force.

  203. 203.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Anotherlurker:

    I wondered wtf the attraction was

    I love Rhett, but I can’t figure out why Scarlett gets treated as a noble heroine.  The point of the story is that she’s an unholy bitch who cares about no one but herself, not even her own child.  “I will never go hungry again” is not some declaration of bravery, it’s an admission that her pride will no longer stop her from sleeping with whoever it takes to stay rich.  Poor Rhett sees her ruthlessness, and is so desperately lonely he mistakes it for open-eyed awareness of how messed up the system is.  Thus do hormones make fools of us all.

  204. 204.

    trollhattan

    @Hungry Joe:

    Here’s one history of the song. New to me was an explanation of the odd lyric “There goes the Robert E. Lee”, which refers to a steamboat named for the general, and not calling the general “the.” Mystery solved.

    That it was written by a Canadian who went to the library to read up on it, and visited Helm’s family during the process, explains much.

    I always took it as a cautionary tale of “patriotic war” stealing from everybody involved, whether participant or bystander. The elder brother is mentioned in two lines only just long enough to note he signed up at eighteen and was killed for his troubles. “They should never have taken the very best.”

    Not a celebration of The Glorious Cause.

  206. 206.

    JoyceH

    @Martin: “His response to the pandemic only illustrates just how privileged he is because he knows he and his family won’t get sick.”

    How is it that he does NOT get sick, though? He’s been swanning around maskless among other maskless people, seemingly unscathed. He’s been going sans mask into so many COVID hotspots that I can’t help but wonder if he’s subconsciously trying to catch it. What’s the deal – does the devil look after his own?

  207. 207.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Brachiator:

    However, Trump supporters are standing firm, even in the face of people dying. That’s some strong cult-like behavior.

    Oh, yes.  The argument here is whether Trump is more than a figurehead for the cult.  As you say, it’s all speculation until the time comes.

  209. 209.

    trollhattan

    @germy:

    Inslee impressed me on the presidential stump, as hard as it was to get through the several dozen other candidates.

  210. 210.

    Roger Moore

    @Elizabelle:

    Not a day I do not regret Tom Petty’s early demise. He was a good man.

    For some reason, his death hit me really hard.  I like his music, but he was never at the top of my personal chart.  But when he died it hit me really hard; I just couldn’t believe he was gone.  I really don’t understand why one person’s death would affect me so much more than another’s.

  211. 211.

    PST

    @Salty Sam:

    As I grew up and outgrew the propaganda, that song just seemed like a melancholy ode to a lost way of life to me.

    I confess that I love that song, and it never seemed to me in any way an ode to a lost way of life. It is most certainly melancholy, but not nostalgic. Virgil epitomizes the saying that it was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. It just made the rough, hardscrabble existence of his class even more hardscrabble. I don’t think a word of the lyrics defends the Lost Cause or the slave system. Virgil is a tragic pawn victimized not by the North but by the Southern elite.

  212. 212.

    Dmbeaster

    @Elizabelle: Alice Walker’s praise of David Ickes merits the “lizard Illuminati” reference.  She said that Icke’s book Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More would be her choice if she could have only one book. The book promotes the theory that the Earth is ruled by shapeshifting reptilian humanoids and “Rothschild Zionists.”

  213. 213.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Elizabelle:

    Tom Petty was great and I regret that I never saw him in concert.

    @jeffreyw:

    Thanks, I’ve never read Michael Swanwick, but I’ve heard good things about him.

    Anyone with more than a passing interest in the Band should check out the great documentary Once Were Brothers.  There was a Hell of a lot more to these guys than that one goddamn song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”.

  215. 215.

    Jay

    @JoyceH:

    he “knows” that he and his family won’t get sick in the same way that he had the Biggest Inaugeration.

    he doesn’t get sick so far, because he has the best and most constant protection from Covid that any individual can get, along with all the Executive time alone, on the toilet.

  217. 217.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    His response to the pandemic only illustrates just how privileged he is because he knows he and his family won’t get sick.

    I was with you up to this point. Privilege is not magic.

  218. 218.

    Martin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: So, like with the statue thing, I’m fine with objectionable people/art/statues/etc. provided we have a good modern agreement about why its objectionable. There is a statue of Stalin in NYC, recovered from the Soviet collapse. People like it because the lack of context makes it quirky. Why is it there, what is it trying to tell us? Well, nothing. But nobody is looking at that statue and thinking ‘boy, those were the days’ or ‘I wish we could get that kind of leadership’. Nobody reveres the statue for who it depicts, instead it signals that NYC is the kind of place you can put up a statue of Stalin and everyone will get a good laugh off of it because NYC is confident in their role in the world, and Stalin definitely doesn’t represent it.

    The problem is the intervening spaces. In 1965 Georgia opened up Stone Mountain on the 100th anniversary of the death of Lincoln. That 100 years later they’re still pissed that slavery ended tells us that those objectionable elements are not safe for society to keep around because too much of society doesn’t see them as objectionable, but sees them as admirable.

  221. 221.

    Jay

    Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.
    Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

  223. 223.

    Martin

    @Brachiator: It’s not, but he has the entirety of the federal system protecting him. Secret service keeps people at bay and screens anyone who might come near. Everyone gets tested daily, temperature checks twice a day. Whisked off to Walter Reed at the slightest concern with a guaranteed isolated space, bed, ventilator, whatever. All of the things he says we don’t need, he has, and his family has. He doesn’t just have a private 747 to help him go about his business safely, he has two.

    It isn’t magic – it is a massive infrastructure which he and his family alone benefit from, and which he insists we don’t deserve.

  226. 226.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Jay:

    “Hope” is the thing with feathers –

    That perches in the soul –

    And sings the tune without the words –

    And never stops – at all –

     

    And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

    And sore must be the storm –

    That could abash the little Bird

    That kept so many warm –

     

    I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

    And on the strangest Sea –

    Yet – never – in Extremity,

    It asked a crumb – of me.

    – Emily Dickinson

    h/t https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

     

     

     

  227. 227.

    Kay

    Good news:

    The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru
    @Garrett_Archer
    · Jul 13
    The Navajo Nation reported 45 new cases and 5 new deaths from #COVID19. This is a .6% growth from yesterday. It has been 15 days since the tribe reported growth over 1%.
    Totals
    Cases: 8,187
    Deaths: 401
    Recoveries: 5,856

  229. 229.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    Maybe it would be better to say he believes all the precautions he’s taking will protect him from the virus.  He thinks he’s special, and he’s abusing his power to let him get away with stuff others wouldn’t.

    Also, too, the masks are primarily there to protect others, not the person wearing them.  So Trump’s refusal to wear one is more about his refusal to consider how his actions affect the people around him than they are about his lacking interest in his own safety.  His personal safety is provided for by requiring everyone around him to get tested daily.

  230. 230.

    Jay

    Yup. Hard to get covid when most of your day is spent alone, not working, hate watching and rage tweeting, with the occasional golf game with a carefully vetted entourage.

  232. 232.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JoyceH:

    What’s the deal – does the devil look after his own?

    wasn’t Kimberly Guilfoyle– Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend who is on the payroll of the campaign– diagnosed a week or so ago? Not that there’s much chance of The Beast getting close enough to Fredo to contract it, but… the WH valet, the Secret Service agents, even Herman Cain might well have had a photo op at the Tulsa rally

    (just turned on MSNBC: looks like the trump admin is dropping its efforts to kick-out foreign students taking on-line classes)

  233. 233.

    mad citizen

    @Roger Moore: Similar here–was never a favorite but I respected him–and listened to him more and more over time.  Loved his radio channel and Buried Treasure show on XM.  Saw him and the band once at a Neil Young Bridge Show all day event.  I never thought, for example, Petty would go before Dylan.

    Was listening to an Oysterhead show from Feb 15 2020, Broomfield Colorado, the last couple days, and yesterday I thought yes, I would like to see a Bob Dylan concert again.  And  the other few on my list that I go see.  It took the virus to stop Dylan’s Never Ending Tour.  1988-2020.

  234. 234.

    Fraud Guy

    @dopey-o:

     

    But the chorus is the whole point of the song: it shifts into a major key with “The night they drove ole dixie down / All the bells were ringing”. Who rings the bells and sings in the streets to celebrate defeat?

    The people who celebrate Juneteenth?

  235. 235.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Martin:

    I’ve seen a lot of the statuary and public art that people deem world renowned, the things done by master artists. Without exception, the pieces that moved me were figurative, allegorical, symbolic, mythical. I never did react much to the personal grandiosity of the literal depiction of people or events. I look for the vision, interpretation of the artist.

  236. 236.

    dmsilev

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    (just turned on MSNBC: looks like the trump admin is dropping its efforts to kick-out foreign students taking on-line classes)

    That’s excellent news. What a horrible, and completely unnecessary, move that was. I think there were at least a half a dozen lawsuits already filed as of yesterday, and someone must have explained to the anti-immigrant zealots that they were going to get badly slapped around by the courts. Again.

  237. 237.

    Citizen Alan

    @germy: I’m suddenly reminded of a clip I saw where Harry Connick Jr. was judging a talent show in Australia and basically lost his shit when one act consisted of white kids doing a Jackson 5 song in blackface. And no one involved other than him saw anything wrong with it.

  238. 238.

    Ruckus

    @JPL:

    Give shitforbrains a break, until someone tells him 5 or 6 times, he has no concept of what century this is…….

  239. 239.

    James E Powell

    @bluefoot:

    It’s weird how the news of Russian bounties on American soldiers and the administration’s knowledge of same has been completely memory holed.

    That’s been the press/media drill since 2015. Breaking news to old news in less than a week.

    Not sure why there’s not a house committee chair issuing subpoenas and screaming about it every day.

  241. 241.

    Elizabelle

    @Wyatt Salamanca: 
    Yeah. Re David Icke and the “Lizard Illuminati.” Yikes. Easy pickings for Bari Weiss.

    Vox: The Alice Walker anti-Semitism controversy, explained

    [In December 2018, Alice Walker] took some time in her New York Times Book Review “By the Book” interview to admiringly shout out David Icke. Icke is best known for arguing that the world is run by a secret cabal of alien lizard people, many of whom are Jewish.

    [Icke was a soccer player, then a sports commentator, and then took up with the Greens.] In 1991, Icke resigned from the Green Party (which would later ban him, calling him a fascist), and then set out on a press tour during which he discussed his claim that he was the son of a Godhead. In Britain, Icke became a much-mocked spectacle: In his most infamous appearance, he welcomed gales of laughter from the audience for one of his interviews, and the interviewer had to explain to him, “They’re laughing at you. They’re not laughing with you.”

    Icke’s ideas, per Vox:

    ** The world is run by a global elite of Illuminati, and the government, the British royal family, celebrities, and journalists are all in on it.

    ** The Illuminati are the descendants of a race of shape-shifting, blood-drinking, child-sacrificing alien lizard people. “In simple terms, there is a predator race which take a reptilian form,” Icke told Vice in 2012. ” …. They feed off human energy. They feed off the energy of children.”

    ** Many but not all of these evil lizard people are Jewish. Icke is fond of saying that the Rothschilds, a prominent wealthy Jewish family, are lizards. But he has also said that the British royal family the Windsors are too, and so is former President George W. Bush, neither of whom are Jewish.

    …. Icke’s theories are objectionable for many reasons, beginning with the fact that they are, objectively speaking, ridiculous. But particularly worrisome is the anti-Semitism of his worldview: The idea that the world is run by a secret cabal of Jews (it’s not) is a recurring theme, and the idea that these imaginary Jews drink blood and sacrifice Christian babies (they don’t) goes back centuries and has been used to justify horrific persecution of Jewish people since before the Crusades.

    …. Icke maintains that he is not an anti-Semite, and that he is criticizing not real Jews, but 12-foot-tall alien lizard people, many of whom just happen to be posing as Jews.

    Alice Walker! Do better!

  242. 242.

    germy

    @Citizen Alan:

    The song we delve into today is “The Battle of the Blue and Gray” which is unmistakably about the Civil War.  The American Civil War may seem like an odd topic for a band from across the pond but they capture the devastation and gore well in their lyrics singing “Many hearts were broken and a lot of tears were shed
    / The sky was black and the battlefield was red.”

     

    Something interesting about this song is that the Bee Gees sing from the perspective of a Confederate soldier. The Brits resound lyrics about taking orders from the famous Stonewall Jackson and how they “mowed…down” the Union soldiers in blue. The interesting thing happens to be that the three British brothers in this video perform this somber sounding song in lyrics alone in an upbeat tone.

  243. 243.

    James E Powell

    @Roger Moore:

    For some reason, his death hit me really hard.  I like his music, but he was never at the top of my personal chart.  But when he died it hit me really hard; I just couldn’t believe he was gone.

    He was always near the top for me, from the first time I heard American Girl. What I play on guitar, how I play, and how I think about guitars and songs are all the product of the influence of Keith Richards, Tom Petty, and Peter Buck. But I never felt more emotionally or musically connected with anyone like I did and still do with Tom Petty.

    I can recall the feelings of loss when Lennon was murdered, when George Harrison, Joe Strummer and David Bowie died. But Tom Petty, it hit me like he was a close friend.

  244. 244.

    Elizabelle

    The NYTimes “By the Book” interview with Alice Walker.  Almost all of which was fantastic and intelligent — lots of good books and authors, from all over the world.

    But Bari Weiss found the dross, appeared early on, and what was Ms. Walker thinking in including David Icke with this anodyne comment.  Yes, it’s got lizards.  Le sigh.  :

    “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” by David Icke. In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.

    And:  Alice Walker brings up Rhett Butler:

    Who’s your favorite fictional hero or heroine?
    If Rhett Butler, in “Gone With the Wind,” had not been a racist who killed a black man during Reconstruction for being “uppity,” he would be not a “favorite,” but at least someone, as a character of fiction, truly interesting. He is exceptionally understanding of women.

  245. 245.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    Maybe it would be better to say he believes all the precautions he’s taking will protect him from the virus. He thinks he’s special, and he’s abusing his power to let him get away with stuff others wouldn’t.

    Yep. Trump thinks he’s special. He is also an old ass man with terrible habits who does not take care of himself except on a superficial level.

    And yeah, he probably makes triple sure that people around him are tested.

    But the virus don’t care who he is or what privileges he thinks he has.

  246. 246.

    Elizabelle

    @James E Powell:   Agreed.  Tom Petty was so approachable, and remained so humble and happy to have the chance to write and play his music.  Heartbreaker.

  249. 249.

    Ruckus

    @Cacti:

    It depends on who comes after Biden. We’re pretty sure he’ll do good, especially if we can give him a full Congress. Can we keep the momentum is going to be the big issue.

  251. 251.

    Betty Cracker

    @James E Powell: Same. I’m not a musician, but Tom Petty was our scruffy old Florida boy who made good and didn’t forget where he came from. Irreplaceable.

  252. 252.

    trollhattan

    @Elizabelle:

    I loved that Petty was “adopted” into the Traveling Wilburys after touring as Dylan’s opening band. That he was able to blend so well with musical “gods” is another feather in his well-feathered cap.

  253. 253.

    Ruckus

    @evodevo:

    One of the problems is that it’s willful ignorance. Most of the people I’ve seen regurgitating crap like this are not /shouldn’t be this ignorant. They have an education of at least a minimal level, this isn’t that difficult.

  254. 254.

    jefft452

    @JustRuss:
    “Seems pretty Lost-Cause-y.”
     
    Disagree
    “take what you need and leave the rest” – he wasn’t saying that to Union troops, he was saying that to the csa
    “but they should never have taken the very best”
    The csa took everything, including his brother
     
    When Richmond fell “the bells were ringing and the people were singing” because the nightmare was finally over
     
    Ronnie Raygun used to play “Born in the USA” but if you listen to the words its not the Rah Rah patriotic anthem his supporters thought it was
     
    I always thought of “In Flanders Fields” to be a haunting anti-war song, but if you pay attention to the words it’s a jingoistic call to send more young lives into the meat grinder

  255. 255.

    Captain C

    @Elizabelle:

    I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists [!], conservatives and others

    Is she high*?  Completely Ignorant?  William Safire, David Brooks, Bed Bug Stevens, and more would like to have a word…

    Or maybe she’s just lost in narcissism…

    *My apologies to all the Heads I know, who would never say anything so blatantly and ridiculously false.

  256. 256.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Elizabelle:

    centrists [!], conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home.

    good god, David Brooks, Douthat, Stephens, and before them Rosenthal and Safire didn’t feel “at home”? Panchito Bruni and self-described (if memory serves) ‘radical centrist’, and Iraq War hawk, Tom Friedman? Obama and Clinton troll extraordinaire Maureen Dowd?

  258. 258.

    Another Scott

    @jefft452: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_They_Drove_Old_Dixie_Down

    In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel’s on Fire, Helm wrote, “Robbie and I worked on ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ up in Woodstock. I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era and make General Robert E. Lee come out with all due respect.”

    Lee was a monster, and a traitor.

    My $0.02.

    [eta:] It may not be a “pro-Confederate” song, but it certainly is an anti-Union song.  (Who is “they” that are doing all the bad things to Virgil, for no apparent reason??)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  259. 259.

    Elizabelle

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:   It’s all libtards and fantasists in BariWorld.  No one ever lets conservatives speak.  They have no outlets.

    If we are laughing at her letter, imagine how the NY Times staff is taking it.  Some can probably recite passages.  LOL.

  262. 262.

    Captain C

    @Elizabelle: The “serious centrist” (read: low-rent David Brooks conservative and tone policing) sinecure complex is alive and well, just like the Wingnut Welfare system.

  263. 263.

    Bnad

    Driving through PA, OH, MI, WI, IL, and IN over the past couple weeks, I saw a ton of Trump signs and maybe four Biden signs.  There really needs to be a Biden lawn sign drive.  I fear this is again a case of people being unwilling to stand behind their candidate.  What exactly are they afraid of?

  264. 264.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Cacti:

    “bari weiss just recently signed a letter condemning people getting fired from their jobs for expressing their views and then in her resignation letter complains that people who expressed their views about her weren’t sanctioned or fired.”

    I’m not a fan of Bari Weiss and I thought her resignation letter was whiny and over the top.  Nonetheless, that isn’t a fair characterisation.  She signed a letter condemning people getting fired for having unpopular opinions about issues.  She complains about people personally attacking her.  They aren’t the same thing.

  265. 265.

    Miss Bianca

    @Wyatt Salamanca: Well, we have to hope that Dear Ex-Leader Donald is so busy fighting off indictments and lawsuits and the prospect of real, hard prison time come 2021 that he won’t have time for his Once and Future King Gadfly routine.

    I like to think so, anyway. It gives me pleasure.

  266. 266.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @joel hanes: IMHO, the elegiac and beautiful “Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is far less deplorable, and did far less damage, than the defiant and ugly “Sweet Home Alabama”.

    Well, boy howdy, IMNSHO you have badly misread “Sweet Home Alabama”, specifically this one verse with any political content at all:

     In Birmingham they love the Guv’nah (boo hoo hoo).
    Now we all did what we could do.
    Now Watergate does not bother us –
    Does your conscience bother you? (Tell the truth!)

    I read “did what we could do” as opposing the Governor (one George Corley Wallace). And Watergate did not “bother” them because they didn’t support or vote for Nixon – but they wonder how many people out there who did are regretting it.

    At least that’s how I read it.

    (And that bit about Neil Young? “Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow”-? Well fuck, how would you react if a friggin’ foreigner gave you shit about your homeland? I’d guess about the same way I react to “Jay,” our resident Knucklehead Of The Frozen North, who likes to bring his shitty spelling & awful grammar onto this blog & tell us Yanks everything we’re doing wrong – which is to tell him to fuck the hell off.)

    Finally you might want to check the Wiki entry for the song, which kindasorta supports my take.

  268. 268.

    J R in WV

    @Elizabelle:

     

    July 14, 2020 at 12:56 pm

    @Woodrow/asim:   And never Forget Gone with Wind.

    Moonlight and Magnolias and  … those damn carpetbaggers.  Yes’um.

    Even before “Gone with the Wind” was D W Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” — it was a silent film I saw by wandering into a film class in my first pass at college… The brave men of the south founding the Ku Klux Klan in order to defend the ladies of the South from the base n… well you know what word goes there.

    1915,  and starred Lillian Gish. Over 3 hours, the first film shown at the White House for Woodrow Wilson.

    “The film presents the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a heroic force necessary to preserve American values and a white supremacist social order.” Lots of firsts in this film, still famous as groundbreaking cinema work, despicable in intention.

  269. 269.

    scott (the other one)

    @Wyatt Salamanca: there was so much fabulous material in that documentary, but at times it was rendered almost unwatchable by Robertsons continued quest for his own personal sainthood. At least this time we didn’t have to have the otherwise great Martin Scorsese fluffing him on camera.

  270. 270.

    J R in WV

    @JustRuss:

    I realize Bill Kristol was before her time, but David Brooks and Ross Douthat were right there!

    Just shows that she never read anything in her rag that she didn’t write!! Well, maybe recipes and film reviews…

  271. 271.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Robert Sneddon: …the rest of the world knows the President can put a cruise missile through anybody’s window in thirty minutes notice…

    No he can’t. Cruise missiles fly at something less than the speed of sound (760 mph at sea level, slower at altitude). So unless the launcher is within 380 miles of the intended recipient, that FedEx special delivery package ain’t getting lobbed through that window in the allotted interval. (Pro tip: Most of the guys a POTUS might want to whack are a lot more distant.)

    (Just FTR, Bob: For a purportedly intelligent person, you can be remarkably obtuse when it comes to anything involving physics, math, engineering, etc.)

  272. 272.

    J R in WV

    @patrick Il:

    It will save me the trouble of carrying my cell phone around so they can track me.

    Even through aluminum foil it seems – – so they can also forget the hat.

    There’s the problem — using aluminum foil. Everyone knows it must be Tinfoil!!!

  273. 273.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Bnad: Lawn signs are bullshit. Waste of money, time & effort. At best useful for unknown or marginal candidates to signal a minimal threshold of support so that voters would consider them serious contenders. Everyone knows Joe.

    IIUC the Twitler campaign uses them as just another grift, charging his admirers far more than they cost.

  274. 274.

    low-tech cyclist

    Biden keeps on impressing me.  (If you’d told me even six months ago that I’d be saying that, I would have laughed and told you you were freakin’ crazy.)  Today he’s dropped two Big Fucking Deals on us: his plan for carbon-free power by 2035, and at least expressing openness to ditching the filibuster if Republicans aren’t willing to work with him.

    And yes, I know that that’s up to the Senate.  But people, even U.S. Senators, take cues from leaders.

  275. 275.

    schrodingers_cat

    I am bullish on America. Its too soon to write its epitaph. Fuck Michelle Goldberg.

    Also too Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, they should call their new venture Crybabies are Us.

  276. 276.

    Raoul

    @Kropacetic: I will not miss our bigfooting around the globe. But I hope we can restore our ability to lead on human rights issues (even as we grapple with our own very serious past failings in that arena).

    We’ll see if we can emerge from Covid and the larger planetary trends towards authoritarianism with a shift towards cooperation and partnership. That seems best. But water scarcity and other climate disaster stresses make this urgently needed, but also very uncertain.

  277. 277.

    J R in WV

    @Roger Moore:

    But when he died it hit me really hard; I just couldn’t believe he was gone. I really don’t understand why one person’s death would affect me so much more than another’s.

    Me too. I only ever saw Tom once, in Ohio. He was touring with his band AND Bob Dylan. They met the Greatful Dead on the road, and played four big stadium gigs with them. And both Tom Petty and Bob Dylan sat in with the Dead for several tunes. Was a great show!

    He was pretty young too, and seemed healthy, and then one day was gone. So many great musicians seem to have vanished lately. Dr. John, Levon, Tom Petty, just a lot of gifted folks, gone

  278. 278.

    opiejeanne

    @MisterForkbeard: Lawrence O’Donnell has been talking about the bounty every time he’s on, and he did again last night with a guest, an ex-CIA agent who says he’s sure Trump knew. He gave rational  reasons why he was sure.

  279. 279.

    Jay

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    after a long career of trying to get people cancelled. Always punching down, for the most viles causes.

    as noted,elsewhere She quit, for better grifting opportunities else where and opportunities to lecture in a safe space.

    snowflakes all.

  280. 280.

    Suzanne

    @James E Powell: Petty’s death was and still is heartbreaking to me. He is more in my mom’s generation, but I have always loved his music. I still listen to it at least weekly. He had that gift for simple but not simplistic, almost elemental melodies and lyrics. Songs that almost feel that they had always been written.

  281. 281.

    Captain C

    @Martin:

    NYC is confident in their role in the world, and Stalin definitely doesn’t represent it.

    With the possible exception of a few tankies living in rent-controlled apartments in the East Village and Lower East Side.

  282. 282.

    dopey-o

    @Fraud Guy: who rings the bells and sings in the street to celebrate defeat?

    The people who celebrate Juneteenth.

    BINGO! You have won the internets! I tip my hat!

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