Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

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

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Everybody saw this coming.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

The revolution will be supervised.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Soothing

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Soothing

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Haven’t been able to track down the source of the enclosed quote, but my money’s on a NYTimes writer:

And since Preznit WATB is due to ‘break his silence‘ later this morning, a pleasant musical interlude:

Reader Interactions

169Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

    Haven’t been able to track down the source of the enclosed quote, but my money’s on a NYTimes writer:

    My money’s on a complete imbecile.

    “Sorry Doc!  You’re too qualified to cut me open and fix what’s wrong!”

  3. 3.

    Amir Khalid

    Why is having professional people on staff cause for worry? If anything, most people would find that reassuring. That’s who you need to devise policy. Forceful personalities are for promoting policy to stakeholders.

  5. 5.

    p.a.

    Rs: Biden is the real elitist??!

    You all must’ve seen the tRump family photo in the gilded penthouse, donnie, Melanoma and poor Baron (kid’s prolly never had a chance) astride a toy lion.  Did you notice the kid’s Hot Wheels?  Two limos and a, ¿Bugatti? racer.??

  7. 7.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Amir Khalid:

    Why is having professional people on staff cause for worry? 

    Because the FTFNYT is garbage that should’ve been drown in the Hudson River back in 2015.

    This garbage isn’t so much “controversial opinion” as it’s “asinine opinion.”

  11. 11.

    Baud

    In all seriousness, is anyone else worried that Biden’s too professional team will be over prepared?

  15. 15.

    Gin & Tonic

    Probably early for WaterGirl, but is anybody seeing the interstitial ads a lot more? Safari on iPhone now, but it’s like in between every third comment.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump sore losers are still showing up at the county courthouse in my town to yell “Stop the Steal” and screech about communism on a megaphone. They’re aggrieved and enraged enough to spend their weekends yelling about Joe Biden, leftist dictator. In a district that Trump won by 20 points and where no Democrat holds any power at all.

    The longer this drags on, the more convinced I am that our democratic experiment is doomed. It’s not Democrats’ fault. Our party has gamely cleared every hurdle unfairly set before us, including a rigged congressional structure and Electoral College that privileges the votes of conservative white people. Dems have to win decisively to win at all, and the miracle is, we do!

    But Trump’s efforts on behalf of the larger conservative project to destroy any sense of shared reality seems to have succeeded. So sorry, Joe, we cannot be “in this together,” not when a significant plurality of us can’t even agree on what “this” is.

  21. 21.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Betty Cracker:

    and screech about communism on a megaphone 

    Do they also want the Berlin Wall torn down, or are they cool with the Iron Curtain continuing to exist?

  24. 24.

    Steeplejack

    To be fair, the Times article is headed “Top Contenders for Biden’s Cabinet Draw Fire From All Sides,” and it is almost exclusively about who may or may not be in the running for specific cabinet positions. The “too professional” niblet, which has been nutpicked all over Twitter (not blaming Anne Laurie—she reports, we decide), is almost the last paragraph of the story, just ahead of a Biden quote.

    Some allies of Mr. Biden’s on Capitol Hill worry that Mr. Biden’s choices for the biggest jobs in government look too much like professional staff members, with no big personalities who may be better suited to helping drive policy. He could rectify that if he picked one of his Democratic primary rivals—Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts—to lead the Labor Department or the Commerce Department. Liberals would cheer such a nomination, but transition advisers have told Mr. Biden that confirmation of either would be difficult.

    In an interview with NBC News, Mr. Biden strongly hinted that he was likely to leave both senators where they are.

    “Taking someone out of the Senate, taking someone out of the House—particularly a person of consequence—is a really difficult decision that would have to be made,” Mr. Biden said. “I have a very ambitious, very progressive agenda. And it’s going to take really strong leaders in the House and Senate to get it done.”

    The articled didn’t strike me as anti-Biden, and it is not denigrating “having professional people on staff.”

  25. 25.

    TS (the original)

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    So typical nyt. And of course the czar.

    To coordinate the response to the pandemic, Jeffrey D. Zients, who was director of the National Economic Council under Mr. Obama, could become Mr. Biden’s “Covid czar.” That job could also go to Vivek H. Murthy, the former surgeon general who helps lead Mr. Biden’s transition panel on the virus.

    I don’t believe we ever heard about trump having czars – is that because such people didn’t exist – or just that only democrats get such a title?

  26. 26.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: “Trump trash, you all suck Kremlin ass, and tear down this stupid fucking wall!”

    Yes.  And he’d actually know how use a sledgehammer.

  35. 35.

    p.a.

    @Gin & Tonic: Chrome, Android phone, and there are times when the ads take up 2/3 of the screen.  I continue to notify Google by clicking the ‘ad covered content’ button, but shockingly nothing gets fixed!?. Really an issue at LG&M with sidebar ads covering content and the x won’t x-it.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I wish someone were paying them because that would make it an easier problem to solve. But the truth is, they believe this crazy shit. These people are standing around in the middle of airborne pandemic that is spiking in this area, no masks on, yelling insane crap at passing cars. 

    I’ve been treating it as a joke, and yesterday, my husband got on my case a little about taunting the assholes on my weekly grocery runs, and he’s right — it’s petty and pointless. But the discussion made me think about the reason they inspire such overwhelming contempt and an irresistible urge to rub their faces in their loss, and it’s fear.

    It’s analogous to winning a bitter, years-long legal contest against an insane relative who is suing for sole possession of a house that was willed to two people, not one, and the loser reacts by burning the house to the ground. Yay, we won! Now we get to live in the ashes with crazy people who will obstruct every effort to rebuild.

    Ah well, sorry to be Debbie Downer on this fine Sunday morning. Off to cook some home fries and eggs. It won’t address the larger issues, but it will make my own corner of the world a little better.

  41. 41.

    TS (the original)

    @Betty Cracker:

    Off to cook some home fries and eggs.

    Eggs are such a comfort food. I was wondering the other day, were they a breakfast food forever – or was it just good marketing by those who kept the chickens?

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    @TS (the original):

    Eggs are such a comfort food. I was wondering the other day, were they a breakfast food forever – or was it just good marketing by those who kept the chickens? 

    They’re incredible and edible.

  44. 44.

    Baud

    @Steeplejack:

    Thanks for the context.  Sounds like Biden’s “allies” are progressives who want Bernie and Warren in the cabinet, which can’t happen because the good people of Vermont and Massachusetts elected Republican governors.

  49. 49.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie:

    Not only those ads, but an ad crowding out Balloon Man at the top! 

    Those! Bastards!  The balloon man should slap them with a sandbag!

  51. 51.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    Warren is much more effective as a strong presence in the Senate, and Sanders will be a useless blowhard anywhere has no demonstrated management skills, so why waste a cabinet slot?

  53. 53.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Steeplejack: But Wilmer renamed post offices!  Post!  Offices!

    He can be Secretary of Everyone Gets A Unicorn Butler That Shits Rainbows Out Of Its Eyes.

  54. 54.

    randy khan

    Since this is an open thread, I thought I’d mention that an organization I work with is running an online craft sale – ceramics, textiles, glass, jewelry, wood, and other things – that started yesterday and runs through next Saturday.  There’s some nice stuff at a wide range of prices.  Profits from the sale benefit the James Renwick Alliance, which is a friends group for the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.

    Holiday shopping

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Gaaaawd damn:

    Chapman Rex [email protected]
    Just 14-years old!

    Quote Tweet
    Tyler Gordon
    @Official_tylerg
    · 20h
    I couldn’t have one without the other. I painted @JoeBiden because he stutters just like me. He showed me that speaking slowly kinda masks a stutter.
    @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden @ChelseaClinton

    The kid’s got talent to match his heart.

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I love Rex Chapman’s twitter feed.

    Rex Chapman
    Horse racing
    Retweeted
    [email protected]
    Confused baby see’s dad’s twin brother for the first time
    Smiling face with open mouth and tightly-closed eyes

    LMAO

  63. 63.

    artem1s

    @Steeplejack:

    it is not denigrating “having professional people on staff.”

    it aggrandizes ‘personalities’ over professionals. The unnamed allies are whinging about Bernie and Warren not getting cabinet seats because Biden won’t waste political capital and Senate seats.  Either they are stans or they are ginning up controversy just to entertain the media pundits. These are people who think candidates should be chosen by rally attendance, not by actual performance or policies.

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    True, but at this point I don’t want to see her efforts get narrowed down to a single cabinet portfolio and her “specific actions” blunted or thwarted by the GOP Senate majority. (Another reason I am hoping for a good outcome in the Georgia runoffs.)

    @Baud:

    I think a lot of the cabinet-level work in 2021 is going to be damage abatement and reconstruction.

  66. 66.

    Phylllis

    @NotMax: You convinced me. I snagged STARZ if only for the Seduced doc, which TV’s Frank says is worth it if only to compare/contrast with HBO’s The Vow. 

  72. 72.

    zhena gogolia

    File under “Are you fucking kidding me?” Front page of print NYT:
    “TEST OF ETHICS AWAITS BIDEN AND HIS TEAM. Aides have worked for undisclosed clients.”
    ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? AFTER WHAT YOU LET HIM GET AWAY WITH FOR FOUR LONG YEARS??

    ETA: Comments are not allowed on this article.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    I feel you, Betty. I think battle fatigue is catching up to all of us now that the crisis of the election is abating (somewhat). I’m not exposed to many Trumpers in my corner of deep blue NoVA, certainly not organized ones. My battle fatigue is focused more on COVID-19 and our wretched response to it. The holiday season is going to be dreadful, and all I can see is more months of my already fairly stringent lockdown.

    I have always been—not a loner, but someone comfortable being by myself, entertaining myself and very rarely getting bored. I didn’t think the pandemic was getting to me, but lately I have realized that it has led to an occasional feedback loop of negative rumination. I find myself thinking about random times or incidents from the past in a slightly negative way, with no rhyme or reason. Then the other night I found myself in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling like my whole life has been a series of random stuff happening to me while I struggled to tread water. There’s a small, sane voice that says, “C’mon, man,” and denies that, but at times it sounds a little shaky. Oof. Battle fatigue.

    Well, anyway. A friend and I were joking on the phone the other day that we’ll get the vaccine right after we see Fauci get his on TV (pay per view, if necessary).

  76. 76.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack:

    You sound like Pushkin:

    “And reading the scroll of my life with repulsion, I tremble and curse, and bitterly complain, and bitterly shed tears, but I don’t wash away the sad lines.”

  84. 84.

    Geminid

    @Steeplejack: If Sanders wants to help American labor, he should get cracking on consequential legislation. It may not get passed this session, like a lot of Democratic initiatives. But 2022 will be in part a referendum on what Republicans won’t pass, and that campaign starts this January.

  85. 85.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Geminid:

    If Sanders wants to help American labor, he should get cracking on consequential legislation. 

    Rename ALL the Post Offices!  (Even ones not built yet!)

  87. 87.

    Soprano2

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m on an Android phone,  and the ads got so bad on Chrome that I had to go back to Firefox with the ad blocker,  which means the tweets often don’t load. it’s a Hobson’s choice.

  88. 88.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Good company to be in—morose, literary Russians.

    There’s a passage in a Richard Brautigan book—maybe In Watermelon Sugar, one of my favorites—where he talks about reading the Russians during a bitterly cold winter in San Francisco. Very fitting.

    Brautigan is one of those authors I keep meaning to reread but am almost afraid to. I know there is a certain whiff of hippie patchouli, but my memory is that there was some great lyricism, too. And the paperbacks as objects were perfect little artifacts.

  89. 89.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack (phone): This is everything we need to know about that article:

    Aides to Mr. Biden who are managing the selection process are revealing little about whom he intends to choose.

    And yet, as is typical in Washington in the early days of a transition, the names of those the president-elect is said to be considering are a frequent source of discussion.

    Pure speculation.  And possible jockeying for the position.  They are working the refs, with the refs in this case being Biden.

  91. 91.

    debbie

    @Steeplejack:

    The few favorites I’ve reread haven’t had the same impact, so I’ve stopped rereading.  However, when I find myself teetering, I topple me over the edge by rereading this favorite:

    The Snow Man
    BY WALLACE STEVENS

    One must have a mind of winter
    To regard the frost and the boughs
    Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

    And have been cold a long time
    To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
    The spruces rough in the distant glitter

    Of the January sun; and not to think
    Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
    In the sound of a few leaves,

    Which is the sound of the land
    Full of the same wind
    That is blowing in the same bare place

    For the listener, who listens in the snow,
    And, nothing himself, beholds
    Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

    Never fails.

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @mrmoshpotato: Yeah, Sanders hasn’t been much of a legislator the 28 years he has been in Congress. But he does have an important job already, and can make the most of it if he wants to.          I suspect that Sanders really likes to hear himself talk, and just wants to confer that blessing on the rest of us from a Cabinet position.

  94. 94.

    Steeplejack

    @Soprano2:

    Depending on which phone you have . . . I use the built-in Samsung browser on my Galaxy S10e with “AdBlock Plus for Samsung Internet.” The browser is very robust, and Twitter stuff comes through okay.

    You might try AdBlock Plus, whatever your setup, if you haven’t already.

  95. 95.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    To be fair, those are my words. I think it’s the normal practice in NYT not to have comments on news stories, unlike WaPo.

  97. 97.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack:

    Pushkin is really one of the sunnier Russian writers — this poem isn’t typical for him.

    I used to love Brautigan. I hesitate to revisit him for fear of what I’ll find!

  100. 100.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I’m reading Tana French’s THE SEARCHER. It’s set in western Ireland and is a really compelling read. I think others on here have mentioned they’re reading it too. Anyone looking for something to read might consider it.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: I have forwarded all the screen captures to John.

    I’d like to amplify what satby said, and what I try to remind everyone of periodically.

    John pretty much feels that anyone can complain in the comments, but if it’s annoying  enough for you to use the site feedback, then he figures there’s a problem

    I still watch for ad issues in the comments and I collect them and let him know when there’s a problem, but site feedback is definitely your biggest bang for the buck.

  105. 105.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    “One of the sunnier Russian writers.” Good to know! ?

    The book from my college days that I am most afraid to reread is Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes. Borges holds up very well.

  107. 107.

    Steeplejack

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Thanks. Is it part of her series? I read the first two or three, then lost the thread.

    Right now I am reading Jean-Claude Izzo’s Total Chaos, the first volume of The Marseilles Trilogy. Recommended by BGinCHI. Very good so far.

  110. 110.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Steeplejack: It’s not part of the Dublin murder squad series. As far as I know, it’s stand alone. It’s about a Chicago cop who retires to remote western Ireland and finds a kid who needs help. The setting is wonderful, and a kid in need hits my soft spot.

  115. 115.

    catclub

    @Steeplejack: You might try AdBlock Plus, whatever your setup, if you haven’t already.

     

    uBlock Origin is my filter of choice. Improved something over AdBlock

  117. 117.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    I lack the technical expertise to accurately describe the types or behavior of the ads, so I stick to just whining. I doubt “They’re all over the fucking place” is of much assistance. ?

  119. 119.

    Barbara

    @sdhays: I believe that there is Trumpism without Trump, but I don’t know that its adherents will become reliable Republican voters.  To some extent, I think Trump’s success with a certain kind of voter — I will refer to them as alienated white working class voters — is the result of not being obviously tied to any party.  Oh yes, that party was quite happy to use his centrifugal force to promote its agenda, but I think everyone knows that those voters don’t really care about that agenda and that it would never motivate them by itself.  It’s probably going to be hard for a member of the professional political class like McDaniel to try to refocus people on electing two very mediocre Republican candidates for the Georgia Senate.  However, it is Georgia, so they still stand a better than even chance of winning.

    North of the Mason Dixon Line, I think that Trump’s very northern kind of racism was key to his win four years ago in MI, PA and WI.  As sad as that is, it’s kind of hard to conclude anything else.  Those people are not culturally southern, so I don’t know that they will ever vote for someone like Tom Cotton. Even GWB couldn’t win those states.

  121. 121.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Barbara:

    North of the Mason Dixon Line, I think that Trump’s very northern kind of racism was key to his win four years ago in MI, PA and WI. 

    Don’t forget the Russkie fuckery.

  122. 122.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: After reading your comment, I threw together a garden-ish thread from photos I had taken, intending to send into the Garden Chat, but I lost a lot of my get-up-and-go in October so I never sent them in.

    It’s up now, though perhaps the moment has passed.

  125. 125.

    Suzanne

    @Amir Khalid:

    Why is having professional people on staff cause for worry? If anything, most people would find that reassuring. 

    I am assured by the deplorable-adjacent that the deplorables hate professional people because they are a reminder that it was a good idea to be good at school.

  126. 126.

    debbie

    @geg6:

    My Trumpist brothers will stick to voting Republican, no matter how distasteful. Hard to think Trump is their Obama, that he is their hill to die on.

  127. 127.

    JML

    The one legitimate argument about not having strong enough personalities in the cabinet is that the administration does need to sell their (vastly improved & professional) policies to both Congress and the nation. This has been a consistent failure of Democrats and the left where we presume that simply doing the right thing is enough to gain acceptable and credit. We do need to make sure that we are selling these policies to the nation and taking a victory lap every time we pass a law or issue a rule/order that improves the nation.

    But I’m pretty sure that’s not what that quote was about; that sounds more like classic Inside Washington whining…

  128. 128.

    Miss Bianca

    @zhena gogolia: Wow. I’ve never tried to read The Castle of Otranto, but I did try last year – purely because of its mention in a Georgette Heyer novel – to read Glenarvon, by Lady Caroline Lamb, which is  a roman a clef of sorts featuring a thinly-disguised Byron and other assorted members of high and dissolute Regency society. Supposedly, it was all the rage back in 1816, but I don’t think I made it more than 1/3 of the way through before I bailed.

    I guess you just had to be there…

  130. 130.

    Suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I bought “The Searcher” and Forever POTUS Obama’s book. I am simultaneously excited to read them, but I have also had a really hard time reading books this year. I feel I can barely focus.

    The Trump presidency and the pandemic have really kept me in a slightly elevated posture, and I don’t think it’s good. Having a one-year-old is also not conducive to relaxation, either, to be fair.

  131. 131.

    laura

    @Geminid: every time the Secretary of Labor comes up, I am ready to climb atop my high horse and state that the position should go to Richard Griffen. He’s the real fucking deal in the labor movement. Richard Griffen people – say it with me RICHARD GRIFFEN.

  134. 134.

    L85NJGT

    @Barbara:

    Stanley Greenberg refers to them as “fuck-you boys” and “fuck-you old men”. Trump made them top rail in GOP politics rather than the money and foreign policy elites.

  136. 136.

    zhena gogolia

    @Miss Bianca:

    I know — I was like, wow, this Gothic tradition that Austen parodies in Northanger Abbey is a real hole in my education, so let me try . . . .THANKS BUT NO THANKS!

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Barbara: I don’t want to pooh-pooh racism as in PA, MI, and WI, but I think that is only a part of want drove Trump supporters.  It’s more that they responded to Trump’s seething resentment, his anger that the world was being unfair.  For these people, the “issue” with minorities is that they are getting a leg up from affirmative action and it makes it that much harder for a “regular Joe” to be successful.  But this feeling also includes rich people, who have it easier than they do.  It includes people who went to “fancy” colleges who think they are better than them and can easily get jobs based on their connections.  And even if they went to a fancy school, they go all “Hillbilly Elegy” and know that people still look down on them.  Trump knows in his heart that he is just a bridge and tunnel slumlord to the fancy people in Manhattan, and the Trump supporters (even financially successful ones) know in their hearts that whatever the equivalent of old money upper class plus the professional/artistic/educated upper middle class in their part of the world is looks down on them too.  Their very successful plumbing business or car dealership carry the same cachet as some jobs that make far less money.

    TL, DR:  Trumpies think that people look down on them (whether true or not) and they resent the fuck out of it.

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: If you believe that the “old normal” was irretrievably corrupt and needs to be burnt down and restarted from Year Zero, you’re not going to want people with any experience to be running things. That’s a sentiment that both the far right and the very far left share, which is part of why there have been rumblings of a sort of Strasserite fascist-socialist alliance. That and simple racism, of course.

  141. 141.

    Barbara

    @L85NJGT: Right, and a New York and New Jersey real estate developer probably honed a common language with the kind of people who work on construction projects.  Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz don’t have that.  Nor did Mitt Romney or John McCain (remember his clueless effort to lionize Joe the Plumber?).  Even Trump’s kids don’t have it.  I honestly don’t know where all of this will go in the future.  I am just noting that Trump is something of a black swan.  The question is, will they need a black swan to continue winning the presidency?

  145. 145.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TS (the original):

    I don’t believe we ever heard about trump having czars – is that because such people didn’t exist – or just that only democrats get such a title?

    Under the Obama adminstration the existence of these people was touted as a sign of liberal fascism, though the first I remember the term was applied to “drug czar” William Bennett under GHWBush.

    I don’t think Trump could stand for the existence of such a person because they would draw attention away from him. Anthony Fauci becoming the face of the COVID response pissed him off enough, and Fauci didn’t have that much actual authority.

  147. 147.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus:  +1

    The Trumpist in Ohio that I knew best (my best friend in high school, eventually got on the crazy train and became a strong Donnie fan) was very much in the ABC camp – Anyone But Clinton. He hated her. There was racist aspects of his world view, too, but it was much more about him hating her and the cartoon picture of her that he came to accept.

    He died almost 3 years ago now. I would like to think that he would have snapped out of it and voted for Uncle Joe, but … :-(

    tl;dr – People who discount misogyny and the “vast right wing conspiracy” in 2016 are missing the forest. 2020 was different.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  148. 148.

    Emma from FL

    @Miss Bianca: I don’t think most of the Victorian Gothic literature can pass the modernity test. The only books I like from that period/style are The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson, and Dracula. Some days I am actually intrigued by The Picture of Dorian Gray. And that’s it. A lot of the rest reads as the before-tv version of Mexican soap operas.

  149. 149.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:

    I can still remember word for word the email my youngest brother sent me the morning after the 2016 election: “I think Trump will be great. He’ll bring everyone together. If he’s smart, he’ll be magnanimous and pardon Hillary.”

    Not sure how to ever get past that. We had the same parents for chrissakes.

  151. 151.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You make some good points. I think more and more that the college/​non-college divide is not a good metric when talking about these people. Regardless of education, they seem to share an outlook that, for lack of a better word, used to be called “bourgeois.” “Normal” people doing normal things, no interest in (fine) art or intellectual junk. And feeling increasingly beset and criticized because our overheated, celebrity-driven pop culture is all about out-of-the-ordinary and “edgy” things of the moment. They don’t feel comfortably rooted in the center of things, and they hate that.

    (This is a little sketchy and glib, but I hate writing on my phone.)

  152. 152.

    J R in WV

    @catclub:

    uBlock Origin is my filter of choice. Improved something over AdBlock

    I actually run both of these tools most of the time… they do catch different stuff, block different trackers, etc. I see ads so rarely I’m always caught by surprise when I see other jackals complaining about them.

    I do see them on my Android tablet, esp LGM, but I mostly read fiction on that device, except when sitting on the edge of the bed at 4 am…

  153. 153.

    debbie

    @Emma from FL:

    As I recall, I angrily emailed back something like “Pardon her for what? She hasn’t done anything that your assholes haven’t done repeatedly.”

    Maybe in all caps?

  154. 154.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack (phone): I agree that a college/non-college divide isn’t really a valid take.  That was part of my reason for referencing “Hillbilly Elegy.” Vance was at Yale Law ffs.  Quite honestly, Jefferson with his honest yeoman farmers has a lot to answer for.

  155. 155.

    J R in WV

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Trumpies think that people look down on them (whether true or not) and they resent the fuck out of it.

     

    Damned straight I look down on those assholes, because they’re assholes. Whether Rich or Not, skilled or not, assholes should be looked down upon, unless they learn to outgrow their assholeishness.

  157. 157.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The yeoman farmer divide might have been valid 200 years ago, but not now. Hell, most of the demagogue “populist” GOP senators are themselves Ivy Leaguers.

  158. 158.

    There go two miscreants

    @Emma from FL: I have an annotated copy of Dracula (ann. by Leonard Wolf). I really like annotations for older books and I have a bunch (Holmes, Poe, the Alice books, etc.). Wolf has a section on the predecessor novels to Dracula, including Otranto, and it is pretty amusing.

  160. 160.

    zhena gogolia

    @There go two miscreants:

    My copy of Otranto is “annotated” too — by some dimwit who scribbled in blue ballpoint pen all over it, circling words and writing things like “Manfred stabs Matilda” in the margins. I must have bought it in a used-book store when I was a starving grad student.

    Oh, you mean REAL annotations! I love those too. Martin Gardner’s Alice annotations are so wonderful.

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