Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

We still have time to mess this up!

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

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

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

This blog will pay for itself.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Repub Stupidity Open Thread: JD Vance’d

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: JD Vance’d

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My read is that Vance is a wholly owned subsidiary of Peter Thiel, UnLtd, and when Thiel (for the lulz) said Dance, puppet , JD said Like this, master?

I’m not getting the impression Vance wants to be a politician — just a gadfly “pundit” with an easy platform. Maybe that’s the cynic in me…

like, by *any objective measure*, he could be far more influential and effective in getting his political preferences to become popular as a mega blockbuster author and commenter than he will be able to as a has-been, also-ran loser

for reasons that suck, he had normie, institutional legitimacy that he could’ve used to be influential in any way he wanted to be influential, *except* in getting people to vote for him

in his best possible scenario, he would win and become a junior senator in a mcconnell-held senate, and mcconnell’s senate was *defined* by it’s ability to get almost nothing done, from a legislative standpoint…

like, i don’t think he’s getting any big column offers from the atlantic or a newspaper now, and whenever he writes another book, he’ll probably have to publish it through some wingnut welfare outlet rather than a legitimate one

seems unlikely that netflix is going to pay to adapt another book of his into a movie, he’s burned all of these inroads that were bestowed upon him because he had the courage to call his family a bunch of junkie losers

i’m sure he and thiel saw this race (and the senate seat) as a stepping stone to the presidency or some other higher administrative office, but, like, that only works if you win, and he’s gone all-in on a cartoon campaign that eliminates most of his other options if he doesn’t…

and the absolute funniest part is that he kneeled to MAGA and confessed all of his sins as a heretic, and, magnanimous as he is, trump will probably still decline to endorse him and/or endorse mandel anyway.

Regnery dollars spend just like those from Simon & Shuster, and Regnery doesn’t ask its authors to rein back on their social-media bigotry during publicity tours.


*Is* Thiel just doing this for the lulz? Because he can’t think of a better way to throw away his money? Or does he have some theory-of-mind that he hopes to prove, maybe that even today’s grifter-poisoned GOP isn’t “worthy” of such Masters of the Universe as Peter Thiel?… Because the puppet performance is deep in Uncanny Valley territory already…

Well, okay, maybe (Thiel’s) money can’t buy Vance votes, but it can buy him followers! Which is WINNING, of a sort, right?…

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Is he losing cred with normies and the media?  Or will the accept him back after he loses the primary as if nothing has changed? In the last thread, we’re talking about legal accountability, but at some point we’re going to have to come to grips with the absence of social accountability for the right.

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    He was always a clown. As someone who always saw through his bullshyt, it’s quite amusing to watch him clown himself like this.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    OT news about better human beings.

    Biden Includes Historic LGBTQ Pick In Latest Judicial Nominees
    If confirmed, Beth Robinson would become the first openly LGBTQ woman to ever serve on any U.S. appeals court.

  6. 6.

    cope

    I share your opinion about Vance that he’s just looking to establish a brand for himself and settle into some long term, lucrative media position.

  7. 7.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    If you keep acting dumb your brain will get stuck like that.

    One can’t keep up a character 24/7 without it replacing one’s personality.

    J.D. Vance
    I can’t think of any disease or pandemic in American history that prompted this level of control.

    Look up St Louis during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

    You can tell just how much Vance wants to be a churched up version of Trump, but that’s exactly where he fails. They don’t care if he’s a little more polished form of cruelty. Trump fans want the vulgarity and the cruelty too. The total package.

    Indeed, it’s one thing to demand a mass layoff at a BOD meeting and another to beat and humiliate you own children for decades.

  10. 10.

    gene108

    @Baud:

    The people who read his book and found it credible because they are ,idle class and have no contact with rural America won’t care about what he says during this campaign

     

    Outside of Twitter and a few blogs he’s not making big enough headlines for people to notice the new look MAGA Vance.

    He is safe with those folks.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    They’ll keep him forever. Shunning him would mean they’re poor judges of character and that can’t be true. Once in, never out. To kick him out would mean they made a mistake.

  12. 12.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @schrodingers_cat: Are they really that stupid or do they agree with Vance.

    Going by the NYT Pitchbot they are just that lazy. With Vance they didn’t have to be bothered to do any research about life in Appalachia, Just read Hillbilly Elegy and no need to hang around any Road Side dinners.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m convinced that’s why so many college educated Republicans stuck with Trump here. They cannot, ever, admit a mistake. They have that in common with him.

  17. 17.

    Mike in NC

    Here is the MAGA/Republican talking point for the 2022 elections: caravans of illegal aliens sick with COVID and even worse diseases are heading for the southern border!!! They want to infect your precious white children even though you’re too stupid to vaccinate your kids because Tucker Carlson and J. D. Vance told you not to.

  21. 21.

    Jerzy Russian

    On the one hand, it would  be nice if Google Translate had Stupid as one of the input language options—this would let me understand many of the embedded tweets.  On the other hand, life is too short to be reading stupid tweets.

     

    Switching gears:  you can really make $15,000 a month tweeting out stupid shit?

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @gene108:

    Outside of Twitter and a few blogs he’s not making big enough headlines for people to notice the new look MAGA Vance.

    He is safe with those folks.

    FWIW, the Morning Joe crowd was ripping into his new look a few weeks ago.

  23. 23.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    Their first mistake was thinking that they could actually think but that led to their second mistake and that is never admitting that they could make a mistake. They would rather stay on the same road and go all the way around the world to get back to where they started rather than turn around. Of course they also still think the world is flat and if they do continue they will fall off. It’s not a valid thought process but air still goes in and out so all is good in their little world and they must be right. And BTW that’s why they are conservative, it’s the political right side. Never wrong, always right.

  24. 24.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Mike in NC:

     

    illegal aliens

    Based on one of the previous threads, these aliens are of the extraterrestrial variety. We need the Space Force more than ever!

  27. 27.

    Jay C

    @Amir Khalid:

    Two things stand out here for me:

    1. I hope Charlie Watts recovers quickly and painlessly from whatever it is he had done, and
    2.  The juxtaposition of “The Rolling Stones tour” and “for the first time in nearly sixty years” still seems a little odd to me….
  28. 28.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Baud:  I can never decide if the existence of $15,000/month jobs to post stupid shit on twitter are a success of our economic system or a failure of it.

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mike in NC: It’s not Illegal Aliens, the word they are using is “Immigrants” now.  Even the legal immigrants are the dangerous other to them now.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    You’re absolutely right. Unpossible to ever ever be wrong. This all boils down to just another sword fight in the locker room. //

  33. 33.

    Mike in NC

    Trowbridge had it exactly right: the MAGA crowd adored Trump because he “said what was on his mind” and didn’t hide the cruelty and vulgarity and bigotry that they loved about him. A noxious cross between Tony Soprano and Archie Bunker. Will DeathSantis or Abbot be able to appeal to that demographic?

  35. 35.

    kindness

    Peter Thiel is a perfect case of people shouldn’t be allowed to amass that much wealth.  It totally corrupts.  Vance is Thiel’s long term project I suspect rather than immediate fix.  And JD is all too happy to have a Sugar Daddie supporting him for the foreseeable future.  Who wouldn’t (aside from that whole selling your soul thing)?

  37. 37.

    Nicole

    @rikyrah: God,  I hear you.  A friend of mine sang the praises of Hillbilly Elegy to me a few years back and I was like, wut?  Then again, while she’s on the side of the angels now, she was once a Republican so she may be more susceptible to the pulled-up-by-the-bootstraps blah blah blah.

    Peter Thiel is one of the few people in this world I think are just irredeemably bad human beings.  Talk about someone who wants the white patriarchy. He once complained all this liberal nonsense started when the womens were given the vote.

    On the bright side, his backing of Vance indicates that Thiel is not very smart.  If we have to deal with evil right-wingers, I much prefer that they be dumb than smart.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @Jerzy Russian: Switching gears:  you can really make $15,000 a month tweeting out stupid shit?

    Yes, but hold out for an Upper East Side apartment and a mink coat.

  39. 39.

    L85NJGT

    Nina Turner played the same game. Raise profile on the CableTV, parachute into a district, run a national campaign. I suppose the next move is Vance claiming malfeasance when he gets his ass kicked, then back to DC/NY to cash in.

    The top of the trash heap political coverage in this country is horrible, for lots of reasons, one of which is they don’t give local political actors any agency. I knew Shontel Brown was going to win just by the list of her union endorsements. In a low turnout primary, support of the folks that hit the bricks and make the calls count for a lot.

  40. 40.

    Redshift

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Switching gears:  you can really make $15,000 a month tweeting out stupid shit? 

    As far as I can tell, the whole “influencer” genre is people being paid to market things by pretending they sincerely like them, to people willing to convince themselves to they’re not just paid promoters. The “gig economy” version of the Home Shopping Network.

  41. 41.

    trollhattan

    Suggested Vance world tour: one month in a TB sanitarium followed by one month in a leper colony followed by one month in Typhoid Mary’s prison cell.

  44. 44.

    Suzanne

    @cope:

    I share your opinion about Vance that he’s just looking to establish a brand for himself and settle into some long term, lucrative media position. 

    I also agree.
    He only had one story to tell, and now that’s over and he cashed in already. So he has to pivot, and it has to be something easier.

    We were discussing Dreher yesterday. Dreher loves the guy. It is almost to the point t that I will support anyone and anything Dreher doesn’t like because I want to see the guy spontaneously self-combust.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @Nicole: From what I saw of a campaign appearence of his, Vance is stiff and not very personable. I think he’ll be an also-ran in the Ohio primary. But maybe he and Thiel will make frontrunners Mandel and Timkin spend their money. Ohio’s is a winnable seat, and the more the Republican hopefuls cut each other up, the better for Tim Ryan. Ryan probably will cruise through his primary, and get some good practice for the main event.

  46. 46.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Did the MAGA choad not realize that the sacred Jedi texts weren’t actually in the fire? Because Rey yoinked them and took them with her? Bleah.

  47. 47.

    glory b

    @L85NJGT: I knew she was going to win when the assembled black clergy of Cleveland put together a press conference to call Nina Turner out as a fabricator.

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    @L85NJGT:

     I knew Shontel Brown was going to win just by the list of her union endorsements. In a low turnout primary, support of the folks that hit the bricks and make the calls count for a lot.

     

    I wanted her to win, but, I also noticed how many endorsements came from groups that would put boots on the ground and go out there for GOTV.

  50. 50.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Suzanne:

    Dreher is currently fapping to the idea of Hungarian-style authoritarian leadership. Jingoism, idolatry over white ethnostate totems, crushing dissent, mandatory outward Christianist behavioral displays.

  51. 51.

    Just One More Canuck

    So is Vance the Billy Ray Valentine to Thiel’s Mortimer and Randolph Duke, or Grima Wormtongue to Thiel’s Saruman?

    Or is he Grima Wormtongue to Thiel’s Mortimer and Randolph

  52. 52.

    Kristine

    @Jerzy Russian:

    I can never decide if the existence of $15,000/month jobs to post stupid shit on twitter are a success of our economic system or a failure of it.

    And they probably think they’re underpaid.

  53. 53.

    Redshift

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    It’s not Illegal Aliens, the word they are using is “Immigrants” now.  Even the legal immigrants are the dangerous other to them now. 

    It was always xenophobia; “we’re just against people breaking the law” was always a bad-faith argument that disappeared once you got past the context where it was useful.

  54. 54.

    Mike in NC

    The MAGA choad Gary Abernathy from Ohio has a piece in the Washington Post, noting that Governor DeWine is vulnerable from being attacked from the right, so he’s resisting masking and other behavior to mitigate the spread of more potent forms of the coronavirus. Once again, Gary sees this as a symbol of the GQP’s commitment to FREEDUMB.

  55. 55.

    L85NJGT

    @Nicole:

    I agree. Set up a dark money PAC and do your evil. Parachuting your buddy into a statewide primary race is dumb.

    Ohio GOP primary voters don’t care that Vance answers Thiel’s calls outside of the 9-5 hours and hangs with him on weekends.

  56. 56.

    Nicole

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    Did the MAGA choad not realize that the sacred Jedi texts weren’t actually in the fire? Because Rey yoinked them and took them with her? Bleah.

    I KNOW!  It was a delightful reveal and I loved Yoda’s line about there being nothing in the temple that Rey didn’t already have.

    I absolutely adored The Last Jedi and I suspect these RWs didn’t because the two big things I took away from the movie was that defense contractors are bad and that the world will be saved by middle-aged women.  No wonder they hated it.

  57. 57.

    raven

    Washington (CNN)AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the head of the most powerful labor organization in the country and a close ally of the Biden White House, has died. He was 72.

  59. 59.

    scav

    Vans crowded with diseased law-scoffers are being sighted?  Should be easy to pick out because of the LA, FL and AL plates.

  60. 60.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: Did the MAGA choad not realize that the sacred Jedi texts weren’t actually in the fire? Because Rey yoinked them and took them with her? Bleah.

    I think they saw that that as an allegory to burning The Bible.  I’ve haven’t seen the movie but I gather Yoda’s basic message is “Stop with book quotes and think for yourself” which would be worse than 911 times 11 to a Fundamentalist.

  63. 63.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Wasn’t one of the series overall themes that adherence to dogma and authority is a huge problem?

    Okay, maybe not in The Rise of Skywalker, which had no point and made no sense. But in the rest of the series, the rigidity of the Jedi Code, following “imperial law” despite the ethics of it, are all major drivers of terrible events. TLJ in particular indicates that history is important but also shouldn’t be followed without careful consideration.

  64. 64.

    schrodingers_cat

    @glory b: They had her number, alright. I think many white people (or any group that has been on the top of the social ladder for too long) lose their survival instincts and easily fall prey to charlatans.

    I see it happening among my cohort in India too with family and friends falling prey to the lies of charlatans like Modi who tells them what they want to hear.

  65. 65.

    Steeplejack

    @Jerzy Russian:

    You can really make $15,000 a month tweeting out stupid shit?

    That tweet from Brigitte Gabriel could be somewhat misleading. She is herself a flaming right-wing nut—posted one hour ago: “Donald Trump is America’s leader!”—and the two financial docs she posted don’t really support “$15,000 a month.” There is one payment of $500 and one payment of $15,000—to two different entities—and there is nothing to suggest the time frame covered or what the payments are for. I didn’t dive deep into the thread to check further, but I would take it with a grain of salt.

    That said, I don’t doubt that someone is paying someone something to hype J.D. Vance.

  66. 66.

    gene108

    @Nicole:

    The problem with the sequels are many. The biggest issue is the Rebellion failed. Han, Luke, and Leia all turned out be failures in their own way. The New Republic was a joke.

    The second biggest issue is apparently no one needs to be trained to use the Force. Rey needed no training to use Jedi mind tricks. The stable boy at the end of TLJ needed no training to Force pull a broom closer to him. In short, whatever internal rules of “magic” existed, i.e. Force powers Jedi/Sith have was shot to hell in a fit of lazy story telling.

    Theres more, but that’s my top two.

    Nothing about middle aged women leading stuff.

  68. 68.

    BC in Illinois

    @Amir Khalid:

    49 years ago, I saw the Rolling Stones.

    1972. 4th of July. RFK Stadium, Washington, DC.  Mick Jagger came out with a three-cornered hat and the kind of Revolution-era coat that you see on the set of Hamilton. He ditched it after the opening number. And I went away saying that MJagger was great and all, but the Stones behind him were the World’s Greatest Rock-And-Roll Band.™

    I paid $25 and thought that was kind of high. It could cost me $100 to $1000 to see them in St. Louis in September. I’ll stick with the memories. 

  69. 69.

    L85NJGT

    @WhatsMyNym: ​
    Richards’ hands are an arthritic mess – I doubt he plays in any meaningful sense, just strums along and plays the role of “Keef” on stage.

  73. 73.

    Peale

    @gene108: Yeah. I found the existence of the New Order to be a bit galling. Who would think that 20 years after total victory, they’d be so blind as to not take a threat of something that looked an awful lot like rebirth of the Empire seriously. So unbelievable. In the US, it wouldn’t take 20 years. We’d just lose our minds and vote them back in 2 years later while arguing over whether or not Obama was the worst Democratic President since Clinton or the Worst Republican President since Bush II. LOL. Still I was frustrated that 20 years later, everyone was rebelling again. Although I’ve never had to set a sureveillance system more complicated than a baby monitor, you’d think they wouldn’t be able to just build another planet destroying device.

    The pushback against the force is also kind of strange considering the most dominant form of pop christianity in the country holds that one doesn’t need no training…just read a few chapters of the good book and say you’re born again and nothing else needed. Its like a bunch of Babtist’s complaining that the Force Awakens doesn’t give enough deference to the role of priests and the Church to mediate access to spiritual gifts.

  74. 74.

    Just Chuck

    Like any geek I grew up with Star Wars as a cultural touchstone, saw ANH in the theaters when I was 5 years old.  Even if only once, I saw all the others in the theaters… Except Rise of Skywalker.  I still haven’t seen it, and FYVM George Lucas and Disney both, I just don’t fucking care anymore.

    I’ll torrent it sometime out of curiosity if I ever get that itch, but I don’t even care about getting closure now.  I’m just done with Star Wars.  And superhero movies too.

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    @Mike in NC:

    @rikyrah:

    …wait…not COVID CARAVANZZ!!!1!  Full of immigrants with that thing that was a ‘hoax’ and ‘is no worse than the flu’, right?  The thing that we don’t need to mask up for or vaccinate for, right?  Except we should be afraid, VERY afraid, of catching it from an immigrant???

    Iz our right-wing-nut-job media edging towards a narrative that… Covid’s only dangerous if you get it from an immigrant???

    614,000 dead Americans, most of them dead on trumpov’s watch, and this is what the GQP wants to go with?  It wasn’t harmful until Biden let the dirty Covid-infected immigrants in???

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    @Mike in NC: god I hate that guy

    “It seems there are those who would choose isolation for 50 years if it extended their lives by a week, versus those who would rather live a week without restrictions than exist for 50 additional years with them. No argument, no logic, no science will bridge that gap — a chasm created largely by our personal upbringing, politics and cultures.”

    So there’s nowhere, no one, in between those two examples, eh Gary?  I know that no argument, no logic, no science will bridge the gap between his ears, that’s for sure.

    And if he thinks the ‘chasm’ came from personal upbringing or cultures, he’s dumb or disingenuous beyond belief.  I’m thinking the latter, since he always tries to shield rural whites from having responsibility for their votes or other actions.

  77. 77.

    Jeffro

    @L85NJGT: we’ll find out sometime that they had a whole other band playing backstage or something, and everyone but Mick was just out there air-guitaring and what not.

  78. 78.

    Nicole

    @gene108: The rules on the Force have never been consistent. It permeates the universe and exists in everything! It’s midichlorians!  It’s BOTH!  Sometimes you just gotta let go of the icebox moment and go along on the ride.

    In TLJ, what I took from it was that some people have more natural ability than others, but the more they train, the better they can be.  Kind of like learning a musical instrument.  What I really loved was the theme that heroes can come from anywhere, rather than JJ Abrams’ obsessive focusing on lineage, which led to that absolutely bizarre decision to bring the Emperor back and make him a Grandpa.  WUT?  I’m sure, given enough time, JJ Abrams would have made Broom Boy Obi Wan’s great nephew or something.

  79. 79.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @MisterForkbeard:Wasn’t one of the series overall themes that adherence to dogma and authority is a huge problem?

    Yes. you’re right on all points. But consider the people were talking about. They’ve head cannoned out that Star Wars is really some pro-conservative movie were the Right are the Rebellion.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @Jeffro:

    Speak for yourself dude. It’s the “better to die on your feet than live on your knees” credo, only with a number added. Fifty years, eh? A lot can happen in fifty years and being a curious person, I’d like to watch, thanks.

  81. 81.

    L85NJGT

    @Jeffro:

    I’m surprised they haven’t run out the kids (or grandkids), that’s usually the end state when there is still money to be made off of the branding.

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Jeffro: “It seems there are those who would choose isolation for 50 years if it extended their lives by a week, versus those who would rather live a week without restrictions”

    My god, the hyperbole, this really needs to be dubbed over Mel Gibson’s “Freedom” speech in Braveheart. That and replace the English knight’s lances with vaccination needles.  Anyway Dumbass McDumfuck ever considered “and there are those who will accept 50 years of chronic health problems rather than suffer the oppression of  wearing a mask of a week”?

  83. 83.

    Anomalous Cowherd

    JD Vance is a kayfabe hillbilly. Middletown, OH? Definitely not Appalachian mountains. I bet he’s never run a still.  How many hogs has he raised? Did he play mumblypeg in grade school? He looks like some slick Philadelphia lawyer – needs a chaw of Redman pouched in his cheek.

  84. 84.

    Chris Johnson

    @Jeffro: Yes, that’s absolutely where they’re going with it. Retroactively, too. So, if you know anybody who died of COVID, an immigrant killed them, therefore kill all the browns. That is absolutely what they are going to try to do with their catastrophic inability to deal with a pandemic.

    I guess the thing to do is call bullshit on them.

  85. 85.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Just Chuck:

    And superhero movies too.

    I’ve given up on them too, but Into the Spiderverse is a fantastic movie and impressively different, i.e. orders of magnitude better, than the current crop of superhero flicks. I recommend it highly if you haven’t seen it already.

  86. 86.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Chris Johnson: That’s going to be quite the message from Florida for the tourists as they get off the jetway.

    “Welcome to Florida Tourists!”

    “Go back to Mexico”

    “Where are my double nachos, you lazy wetback?”

    That should have the hospitality industry up and running in no time at all.

  88. 88.

    Roger Moore

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    Did the MAGA choad not realize that the sacred Jedi texts weren’t actually in the fire?

    I think they genuinely did not.  There are a ton of people in that position; they don’t pay careful attention, so they miss anything that requires the least bit of subtlety to understand.  There’s even a whole YouTube channel (Cinema Sins) devoted to whining about stuff in movies that anyone who watched carefully would recognize is not true.

    And TBH, I think exactly what’s going on with Luke in TLJ is actually decently complex for pop culture.  On the one hand, he’s absolutely right about the Jedi’s arrogance leading to their downfall.  OTOH, he’s clearly overreacting to his own feelings of failure by falling into depression, and everything he says has to be seen through that lens.  Then Yoda is trolling him by pretending the texts are destroyed when Rey has actually taken them.  It’s a more complex situation than we’re used to encountering in pop culture, and people who think they’re sophisticated because they can recognize which team people are on by the color of their hat are going to have a hard time processing it.

  89. 89.

    Roger Moore

    @gene108: ​
     

    The problem with the sequels are many. The biggest issue is the Rebellion failed. Han, Luke, and Leia all turned out be failures in their own way. The New Republic was a joke.

    But that more or less has to be true for there to be a sequel. “Everyone lived happily ever after” is a fine ending, but it’s not a good starting point for a story using the same characters. If the New Republic had been a smashing success and Luke had trained a whole new Jedi order, where would they find a conflict that justified the new story? There had to be some kind of serious new threat, or a failure to eliminate the old threat completely, or there wouldn’t be a story!

  91. 91.

    J R in WV

    @raven: ​
     

    AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the head of the most powerful labor organization in the country and a close ally of the Biden White House, has died. He was 72.

    Wife has been asking “Where is Trumka?” for some time. So now I guess we know, he was ill…

  92. 92.

    James E Powell

    @BC in Illinois:

    My first Stones concert was a week after the one you saw. July 11th at the Akron Rubber Bowl. Stevie Wonder opened. Tickets were $5.50 ($35.75 in today’s money).

  93. 93.

    James E Powell

    @L85NJGT:

    I saw the Stones at the Rose Bowl a couple years ago. Richards was just as good as ever. Less running around on the stage than the old days, but his fingers were doing what they always do.

  94. 94.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Roger Moore: I think exactly what’s going on with Luke in TLJ is actually decently complex for pop culture.  On the one hand, he’s absolutely right about the Jedi’s arrogance leading to their downfall.  OTOH, he’s clearly overreacting to his own feelings of failure by falling into depression, and everything he says has to be seen through that lens.

    It was always obvious to me what ever happened, Luke was going to end up unhappy. The guy has an B&W world view that drove Yoda nuts in Empire Strikes Back and in Return of the Jedi, Luke can’t even bring himself to join the mass party at the end.

  95. 95.

    BC in Illinois

    @James E Powell:

    My first Stones concert was a week after the one you saw. July 11th at the Akron Rubber Bowl. Stevie Wonder opened. Tickets were $5.50 ($35.75 in today’s money).

    Okay, that’s the same price range. I think that someone bought  $5 or $10 tickets and sold them to me and my friend for $25. And the Board of Labor Statistics calculator says that that would be $162.11 today. Holy shit. No wonder I thought I was being ripped off.

    ETA: And we didn’t see Stevie Wonder. Memory says that we saw Tina Turner, but I don’t think that that was the case.

  96. 96.

    BC in Illinois

    @BC in Illinois:

    ETA: And we didn’t see Stevie Wonder. Memory says that we saw Tina Turner, but I don’t think that that was the case.

    Wrong.

    A look at Wikipedia, from which all knowledge flows, says that yes, indeed, Stevie Wonder was the opening act, and that Tina Turner was elsewhere. Wow. It was 49 years ago [ and there were 61 arrests at RFK Stadium that night (not me) ], but I can’t believe that I simply have no memory of Stevie Wonder at all.

    I probably bought an over-priced beer, but I was certainly at work as a hospital corpsman at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda the next morning. With memories only of the Rolling Stones. Amazing.

  97. 97.

    Anya

    I can’t believe someone like Thiel is an actual real life human. He seems like a dystopian novel villain.

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