Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Consistently wrong since 2002

The words do not have to be perfect.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

This blog will pay for itself.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

I really should read my own blog.

We still have time to mess this up!

People are complicated. Love is not.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I was promised a recession.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / Black Lives Matter / Maybe We *Should* ‘Wave the Bloody Shirt’: Racism ‘Works’ Because America Has Yet to Overcome Its History

Maybe We *Should* ‘Wave the Bloody Shirt’: Racism ‘Works’ Because America Has Yet to Overcome Its History

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Policy is rational. Politics are not. It takes a story to move voters, an emotional connection that tells them something about themselves and the world in which they live or, alternately, the world in which they would like to live.

Without a story to tell — without a way to make the issues of an election speak to the values of an electorate — even strong candidates with popular policies can fall flat. And the reverse is also true: A divisive figure with unpopular beliefs can go far if he or she can tell the right kind of story to the right number of people…

For the first two elections after Appomattox, Republicans held their majorities, winning comfortable margins in 1866 and 1868 (and also excluding former rebels from Congress). But Democrats would soon begin to catch up. Although still in the minority, the party ultimately gained 37 seats in the House of Representatives in the 1870 midterm elections (when the House was just over half the size it is today).

Anxious to retain power in Washington, Republicans took every opportunity to pin the late rebellion on their Democratic opponents, north and south. None of it was subtle…

Democrats, and conservative white Southerners in particular, would come to call this the “bloody shirt” strategy, after an apocryphal story in which Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts used the bloodied shirt of a wounded soldier in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. “The phrase was used over and over during the Reconstruction era,” writes Stephen Budiansky in “The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox”: “It was a staple of the furious and sarcastic editorials that filled Southern newspapers in those days, of the indignant orations by Southern white political leaders who protested that no people had suffered more, been humiliated more, been punished more than they had.”

If the “bloody shirt” enraged Democratic partisans — if the term itself became, as Budiansky writes, “a synonym for any rabble-rousing demagoguery” aimed at “stirring old enmities” — it was because it worked…

…[T]he Republican Party never took for granted that voters would blame the Democratic Party for its role in the rebellion and vote accordingly. Republican politicians had to make salient the public’s memory of, and anger over, the war. And, I should say, they were right to do so. It was right to “wave the bloody shirt” in the wake of a brutal, catastrophic war that according to recent estimates claimed close to a million lives. That we, as modern Americans, learn the phrase as a negative is an astounding coup of postwar Southern propaganda.

The lesson here, for the present, is straightforward. Democrats who want the Republican Party to pay for the events of Jan. 6 — to suffer at the ballot box for their allegiance to Donald Trump — have to tie those events to a language and a narrative that speaks to the fear, anger and anxiety of the public at large. They have to tell a story. And not just once, or twice — they have to do it constantly. It must become a fixture of the party’s rhetorical landscape…

The GOP Death Cult, of course, has plenty of stories to tell! And if those stories are a combination of wishful fairy tales & outright lies, well… do we expect Our Failed Mainstream Media to speak up about that, when it’s so much easier to just nod & wink?

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  1. 1.

    germy

    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – A juvenile son of Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin tried twice to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s election, election officials said Friday.

    The 17-year-old son presented an ID but was told he was ineligible to vote due to his age and turned away, according to a statement from Scott Konopasek, Fairfax County’s general registrar. The statement said the teen did not successfully vote, made no false statements, did not disrupt voting and appeared to have committed “no election offense.”

    The statement mentioned Youngkin’s son by name, saying the identification was based on contemporaneous notes by the chief election officer.

    Virginia law allows any person who is 17 and will be 18 by Election Day to register in advance and vote in any intervening primary or special election.

  2. 2.

    Chetan Murthy

    From an email I wrote to a friend:

    From my perspective as an individual, none of that (what the Dems did right or wrong) matters; I might as well shake my fist at the hurricane.  Instead, I remember what A.R. Moxon wrote:

    “Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

    That word is “Nazi.” Nobody cares about their motives anymore.”
    ― A.R. Moxon

     
    I might add: “or out of a feeling that the Biden administration isn’t ending the pandemic, isn’t making an economic recovery happen fast enough, yadda yadda yadda”.
     
    It’s not even 10 months since the bastards tried to destroy our Republic, and already the pendulum is swinging back.
     
    America is a far more racist nation than we’d hoped.  A far more Fascist nation than we’d hoped.

  6. 6.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I just listened to the most recent Pod Save America podcast. The last 20 minutes or so is a great interview with Danica Roehm, who won reelection in Virginia. The part before that is an analysis of the gubernatorial election which was also interesting, but Roehm really impressed me with her insight into what mattered to voters

  7. 7.

    AliceBlue

    @debbie: Yes.  And in a precinct where his family doesn’t even live.  No worries though–according to a Youngkin spokesbot, the poor kid just didn’t understand Virginia election laws.

  8. 8.

    VOR

    @germy: Well that would make sense IF we were talking about early voting. But this is Election Day voting so if he ain’t 18 on Election Day, then he’s not going to be 18 by Election Day. He can register for the next round of elections and IIRC they offered him a registration form.

  9. 9.

    mali muso

    @Chetan Murthy: Thanks for sourcing that quote.  I’ve used a version of it with friends, but didn’t have the exact words.  If anyone thinks that being a “good” Republican is going to matter in the grand scheme of things, I have news for them…

  10. 10.

    germy

    @debbie:

    You gotta admire his persistence!

    Maybe he was worried he’d have CRT crammed down his throat if his pappy didn’t win.

  16. 16.

    Citizen Alan

    As I just tweeted in response to both the CNN and NYT tweets above:

    At this point, we really need to start asking serious questions about the extent to which support for fascism and white supremacy have wormed their way into the WP, the NYT, and CNN. These people can’t be this credulous, so I assume it’s intentional.

  24. 24.

    Geminid

    Well, since we’re talking about the Virginia election, I will again recommend Politico’s interview with the strategists who guided the Youngkin campaign, titled “The Strategists who made the ‘Youngkin Republican’.” The strategists certainly are self-interested, but I thought they gave a fairly candid account of a well executed strategy. I believe it accorded with the campaign I saw. People who read this might learn useful information, and I don’t think they will catch any intellectual cooties,

  26. 26.

    John S.

    So I know we all love Nancy Smash here, but what’s her end game forcing the vote tonight on infrastructure bill?

    A mere 6 centrist Dems refuse to vote on BBB (their latest excuse is CBO scoring). Meanwhile, 20 progressive Dems refuse to vote on infrastructure without BBB.

    How does this play out any other way than the Dems looking like even worse?

  27. 27.

    Geminid

    @Urza: Young Youngkin was probably trying a stunt to demonstrate a lack of election integrity. A James O’Keefe wannabe.

  30. 30.

    different-church-lady

    Racism works on 60% of White people?

    Methinks that’s rather an underestimate….

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debbie: That’s why these things get investigated so that officials can see if there was any intent to violate the law.  Or if someone just a dumbass.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @Urza: Now I see you were talking about the three Ohio voters, and not Young Youngkin. Who probably will be grounded by Old Youngkin.

  40. 40.

    Starfish

    I want you to understand that racism is not just for Republicans, and there is a lot of polite liberal “Be Kind” racism that happens.

    There is a reason that New York schools are more segregated than schools in Mississippi.

    There is a reason why a lot of people trying to preserve their neighborhood character cannot see that everyone in their neighborhood is white.

  42. 42.

    prostratedragon

    Perhaps this was mentioned earlier today: Kurtz at TPM points readers to a doozy of a story in WP about the now-defunct Jack Daniels committee of the D.C. police lodge.

    While not about racism as such, it’s a good illustration of the good-ole-boyism that helps to maintain the structures of petty racism. Not to mention police corruption. And what everyone has been told at some point in life about “assuming.”

  43. 43.

    LiminalOwl

    In Braintree (two towns over), a teacher quit after being socially outed for his involvement in the insurrection.  He was just elected to the school board.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Citizen Alan:

    At this point, we really need to start asking serious questions about the extent to which support for fascism and white supremacy have wormed their way into the WP, the NYT, and CNN.

    I can’t speak for the WP, but FTFNYT has been impressed by fascists going back at least to Hitler.  They may have like Mussolini, too, but I haven’t seen the documentation.  So at least one of our papers of record has been onboard with the fascists since the early days.

  46. 46.

    japa21

    @debbie: ​
      In most areas, if a person was sent an absentee ballot it is noted in their registration. If the ballot was received back that is also noted. If there is no note in the file either way, they can cast a regular ballot. If the note shows a ballot sent, then they can vote provisionally.

  48. 48.

    Professor Bigfoot

    Another datapoint for my thesis:

    The real divide in this country is between those who believe Black people are legitimate citizens, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof; and those who do not.

    Racism works because most white people do not.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    @japa21:

    20 (or so) of their electronic poll books didn’t update with absentee ballots, so the voters weren’t in the poll book as having voted absentee. I think that initial exchange probably caused the confusion- voter appears, poll workers says “you’re not on the absentee list” (so eligible for ballot), voter thinks that means absentee wasn’t received, votes again.

    You’d have to get a real interview with the pollworkers and the voters to find out what happened but when I put it together that series of events seems likely- the newspaper reports are junk- clipped quotes, no background on how the electronic poll books work, too much missing info.

    I worked this election in Ohio with an electronic poll book and it has a lot of advantages but you have to supplement with a paper list if there’s a question. You don’t know if it’s updated. OTOH it gives you a kind of name/address history for the voter so you can figure out where they’re supposed to be voting or why their records are all screwed up.

  50. 50.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    A report from Cole

     

    Steve and I are home from his spa day and the groomer seemed quite pleased he did not cut him and only shit on him three times. Said every time he trims around his rear he gets stimulated and it "comes out like aerosolized toothpaste."Happy to give you the image of shitpaste.— John Cole (@Johngcole) November 5, 2021

  54. 54.

    JWR

    I just heard a brief clip of Aaron Rogers bitching about “woke culture”, and I thought gee, he sounds just like James Carville bemoaning the Dems loss in VA, when he said something like “Dems need to go to Woke rehab”. In any case, they’re both major league a-holes.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    How did everything these people do or don’t do end up as being attributed to “woke culture”?

    His not getting vaccinated is somehow “about” this? It’s nonsense. I don’t care what he does.

  59. 59.

    mrmoshpotato

    @LiminalOwl:

    In Braintree (two towns over), a teacher quit after being socially outed for his involvement in the insurrection.  He was just elected to the school board. 

    Has the FBI paid him a visit yet?

  60. 60.

    Kay

    They were all going to support paid family leave but then “woke culture” changed their minds. Now the woke mob will come after them for that!

  64. 64.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    When I voted in 2020, they were using both electronic and paper. At the time, I thought it was a bit redundant.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    Yes, that’s certainly been true over the decades- only the wokest among us are vaccinated.

    What a boring, selfish rebellion this is – “I will NOT go to CVS and get my shots. So there”. Like I give a shit. Ugh. Do we really have to hear about their fertility concerns? I don’t even know who these people are.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Ballot or poll book? I think the paper ballot with the scanner is the ideal voting system.

    The truth is voting process is about as exciting as deed recording. I always feel like conspiracy theorists will be wildly disappointed when they realize it’s a dull, nitpicky state recording process instead of an elaborate, mysterious fraud scheme.

    They make mistakes at the DMV too. There’s just no politically motivated and ambitious Republicans screaming about it. If the poll book wasn’t updated the correct action is to give the voter the ballot.

  72. 72.

    Feckless

    Just STFU about the media already.

    Nancy decided not to call it a coup.

    You don’t get take backside on that.

    The democratic “leadership” has failed at messaging for 20 yrs and can’t even conceive of a narrative.

    If Nancy Chuck and the rest aren’t gone soon we all will be.

  74. 74.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Feckless: Yes. If only Nancy had called it a coup instead of an insurrection, then Republicans never would have started making lies about CRT or ‘wokeness’ or ‘cancel culture’.

    This is clearly 100% her fault and has nothing to do with a terribly credulous media that refuses to hold Republicans accountable for anything.

  78. 78.

    Kent

    Listening to NPR this evening (yes I know…I gotta listen to something in the car driving home from work) they had on an analyst who claimed that had Virginia managed to open up public schools on schedule this fall instead of so many of them going back into zoom learning then the Dems would have won and it wouldn’t have been that close.   That having schools closed and kids at home was a major factor in firing up all the frenzy about schools.

    I have no idea if that is true.  Here in WA we opened schools on schedule and were mostly back in schools at least at a hybrid mode from April onwards.  Having the kids back in school and out of sight seems to have muted some of the fury about schools in this part of the country.

    Any thoughts or comments on that?

  79. 79.

    Mike in NC

    Our power was out for 90 minutes tonight, so I read a few chapters of “The Cruelty is the Point” by Adam Serwer on my iPad. Anyhoo, we would not have fared well living in the 18th century.

  80. 80.

    Kent

    @debbie: Well, we do have medical privacy and it appears that if you lie about shit you mostly get away with it in this country.  This is mostly in Rodgers in my book.  He is an adult and a professional.  And he lied to everyone.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    They’re preemptively offended by the woke mob now. My God, the woke mob hasn’t even formed for the football player and already he’s whining. Just the IDEA of the woke mob – he gets chills and has to run to another multimillionaire for solace. A safe space on Joe Rogan!

    We have to ban not just woke books or speech but also thoughts.

  83. 83.

    JWR

    @Kay: When I think of the phrase “woke culture”, I’m far more likely to think of Rodgers’ homeopathic treatments than I do a shot. It’s like this Gary Null charlatan I hear on late-night Pacifica radio, pushing the story that there’s a massive cover-up of the true number of deaths directly caused by these mRNA vaccines. Or the other “health gurus” they have on. (Hey, they bring in the $$$.) Did you know that you can spend a whole half-hour with a personal Health Guru for only $1200? What a bargain!

  85. 85.

    Mary G

    My pandemic coping strategy eating more and more like a 5-year-old -potato chips! Donuts! All the ice cream! has been the disaster I knew it was going to be and tests indicate I may be pre-diabetic. Just like that the party is over.

    I lost 90+ pounds and a separate 100+ pounds on Weight Watchers in the past and tried again, but their website and app don’t work for me so I am thinking of getting a Galaxy smart watch from Samsung that will count calories, measure exercise even swimming, monitor my vitals, and call for help if I fall. Does anybody have one of these things? Do they work?

  88. 88.

    Starfish

    @Kent: Here, we cancelled schools next Friday because we still do not have enough substitutes. Remember, the schools that were more likely to stay remote or have COVID guidelines were in blue states. Did some extraordinary number of blue states pick up some Republicans? Did the red states stay red or pick up some Democrats?

    Someone pointed out that the votes are all vibes, and these post hoc explanations are not really any good.

    The other day they were blaming white women. Why not white men? They were blaming black folks for the pro-LGBTQ stuff failing a few years ago. Why not white men or white women?

  90. 90.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Baud: I don’t think you understand. This guy is clearly the victim, because he felt like he had to lie or the woke mob would woke him to death, or something.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @Kent:

    I thought the school closings in general were way harder for kids and parents than what was acknowleged at the time, and I said so at the time, so I think there’s probably some truth to it. OTOH I read that Virginia has particulary decentralized school governance- all states are different but their state has less power over schools than in some others (it falls to the locals) so I’m not sure the governor would have made much difference.

  92. 92.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Mary G: I’m not sure about calling for help, but look at a fitness monitor called Whoop. It is fairly expensive, but I think it’s the most advanced such device currently available.

  93. 93.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Frank Wilhoit:

    After Reagan, how can any of that surprise you?

    Frank, maybe it shouldn’t.  But I was misled by Obama’s terms, and by 2018 and 2020 into thinking that our nation was a much more …. decent nation than it really is.  I was misled into thinking that 2016 happened because decent people were lazy, and they got shaken out of that laziness by The Apocalypse.  I was wrong.

    I was talking with my mom tonight, and I said to her: “Mom, I don’t think they want us here.”  And by “they”, I mean “the majority of Americans.”  We used to say (to MAGAts) “America, love it or leave it.”  And so, it’s time to leave.

  94. 94.

    Kent

    @Starfish: How much do subs get paid in your area?  Here in Vancouver WA it is $192/day for about 6 hours of work and we have no shortage at all.   If you sub full time you can pull down about $3500 per month give or take.

  95. 95.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay:

    They’re preemptively offended by the woke mob now. My God, the woke mob hasn’t even formed for the football player and already he’s whining.

    Are you kidding?  The woke mob has already formed.  Why, on Twitter people were pointing out that getting sick after failing to take advantage of freely available, highly effective vaccines was his own damn fault.  How much more oppressive can you get?

  96. 96.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    The advantage to the electronic poll book is that 95% of voters can be processed quickly, which leaves time to actually figure out what’s going on with the people with issues with name changes or IDs or address changes or just the people I think of as “generally confused”- they’re in the wrong place. I think it’s a net benefit and will probably allow more people to vote, with fewer errors.

    The address look up function is a god send.

  97. 97.

    Kent

    @Kay: Not saying the governor could necessarily have done anything.  But in VA Dems held the governorship and the legislature and the schools stayed closed.  It is reasonable to blame them.   Maybe not 100% fair, but reasonable.  VA was not any kind of covid hotspot this past fall compared to other states.

  98. 98.

    Starfish

    @Kent: In normal times, it was $100 a day. I think they bumped it to $150 a day this year and have it at $200 for Fridays.

  99. 99.

    patroclus

    @Kent: My comment and thought about Washington is that, while Aaron Rodgers is a huge anti-vax lying a-hole, he doesn’t hold a candle to the former Washington State football coach.

  100. 100.

    Ohio Mom

    @Mary G:
    Your PCP may be able to refer you to a diabetes educator who probably knows all sorts of things that will be helpful to you, including info on various gizmos.

    My BIL had success in exercising and dieting away his status as pre-diabetic, so it can be done.

  101. 101.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay: ​
     
    Another, huge advantage of the electronic poll book is that it can be big enough to cover a whole county, so people can vote at whatever polling place is convenient instead of having to go to one specific one. Here in LA County- which has more registered voters than the population of half the states- we’ve switched to voting centers, and they’re really nice. You can vote at any voting center in the county. Of course we now mail everyone a ballot, and it’s hard to beat the convenience of voting from home.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @Kent:

    Oh I agree. If I had been in charge I would moved heaven and earth to open schools. I knew it was harming kids. Mask em up, put in ventilation, hold school in a stadium, whatever, just get them back in there. It was a huge loss. I knew the huge role public schools play in communities – they are now and have always been much more than “school”. In places like where I live they are absolutely the center of the place. Everything else revolves around them.

    OTOH they were flying blind and so mistakes were made. Schools tend to err on the side of caution for student safety and they did here too.

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kent:

    VA was not any kind of covid hotspot this past fall compared to other states.

    Look: I don’t want to get into an argument with you about this, but:

    1. looking at 91-divoc, cases/100k/day, VA did a bit better than CA in the worst-period (e.g. last winter) but otherwise was about the same.  We also closed schools.
    2. a lot of people argue “we’re not doing so badly, so we can reopen” when in fact, the REASON they’re not doing badly, is that they’re shut.  People do not understand exponential growth, and they realy don’t understand exponential growth when you only see the results 3-4 weeks after the growth happened.  Americans and our elected officials consistently reopened too soon, sparking more outbreaks and more deaths.  That people can’t see this, is an indictment of those people, not of the policies.

    Maybe you’re saying that Virginians, like a lot of Americans (including Bay Area residents, to be fair) are spoilt little children, incapable of seeing why they need to brush their teeth every day, squalling that they can’t have cotton candy for every meal.  If so, I’ll agree with you.  But America’s policies on covid EVERYWHERE have been too lax, and that includes where I live, the Bay Area.  Everywhere.

  105. 105.

    Geminid

    @Kent: I am not very familiar with Virginia schooling. I would point at that this was a close election and there are many plausible explainations for the result.

    One that gets a lot of attention is McAuliffe’s statement in the second debate to the effect that parents should not have a say in what their kids are taught. The Youngkin campaign put up an internet ad about this by midnight, and a had TV ad out the next day, using tape of McAuliffe saying this. Of course the statement was taken out of context, but most observers thought it hurt McAuliffe.

    Generally, I thought Youngkin’s campaign was focused and shrewd, and McAuliffe’s was not. This was a winnable race for him.

    The article I reference at comment #24 is a view of the campaign from two people who engineered Youngkin’s win. They are a pretty candid. They don’t talk ideology so much as practical matters of messaging and vote getting. It’s worth a read if this election interests you.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s funny you say that because that adds the dreaded “splits”- all the different ballots. I was in a combined precinct polling center and we had 7 different ballots. The school districts.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Kent:

    I read a Youngkin op ed about education and “we will never close schools again” was second or third on his list so it’s likely they knew that was one of the issues. We have not had a lot of anger about schools here but parents are exhausted. It was just chaos for them. I also think they were genuinely concerned their kids were falling behind and looking at Ohio test scores they did, in fact, fall behind. Zoom school is not good for them. It may benefit 1 out of 100 – kids who prefer it for one reason or another but for the vast majority of them it was bad.

  108. 108.

    VFX Lurker

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:OT: I joined the House of Moderna about 2 hours ago with my booster shot.

    Double-Pfizer here; joined House of Moderna yesterday morning with a half-dose Moderna booster at Kaiser. Hoping the heftier overall dose size provides a little extra protection than Pfizer.

  109. 109.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay:

    Part of LA County’s move to voting centers was moving to our new voting machines*.  They’re really ballot marking devices, or maybe electronic ballot printers.  When they look you up in the electronic poll book, it prints a QR code on the otherwise blank ballot.  When you put the ballot in the machine, it reads the QR code and shows you the appropriate ballot questions.  If you ask, it will present the questions in any of the 12 other official ballot languages.  Visually impaired people can plug in earphones and hear the stuff read to them.  When you’re done, it prints your votes on the ballot and shows it to you.  When you’ve confirmed the votes are correct, it stores the ballots in a box in the machine until they’re ready to count them.  It’s a very nice system that can only work using modern technology.

    *And yes, they really are OUR new voting machines. The county paid to design them and we own the IP.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @Kent:

    Just looking at this country with it’s kind of nonexistant or threadbare safety net and not realizing what a huge role schools play is baffling to me, especially for low income kids. Of course kids were harmed with schools closed. It’s 3/4’s of their life.

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    Wow, that’s amazing. I know we can do ballot printing because the device for hearing and sight impaired prints a “custom” ballot.

    What ends up happening is the best and most experienced poll workers end up with the “hard cases” and the rest fly thru with the pollworkers who can just process. That’s better.

  112. 112.

    topclimber

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    You may be right the most white folks don’t want POC to have equal rights, but the problem is more that they think they have them already. Civil War, MLK, Obama and all that.

    My fellow blancitos can’t accept the idea of white privilege because that denigrates their own accomplishments. Liberal or conservative alike, they are so sure that the black folk have done it to themselves, what with so many single moms, so many dads in jail, so much celebration of athletic heroes and rap stars rather than of bankers, accountants and tech workers.

    If it is not clear, we are talking perceptions with just enough plausibility that whitey never has to change.

    Over a few beers and with Fox News turned off, you might get some grudging acceptance of how 150 years of Jim Crow explains why so few black folks have been able to amass  middle class levels of wealth. Sometimes I can make the case by reminding folks I grew up in Levittown, NY, where it was made clear from the outset that no black WWII vets would be able to use the GI Bill to buy a home. Or that Saint Ronnie lived in a neighborhood that had contractual covenants disallowing resale to the un-whited.

    My fellow Caucasians need to understand that it is OK to be prejudiced. Our society makes it damn near impossible not to be. Question is: Are you willing to work on it, or just object to the obvious?

    Yes, that’s a rhetorical question for way too many.

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    Rodgers’ homeopathic treatments

    Imagine how boring he is talking about that. “My homeopathic treatments…” Oh, goody. I’ll listen to this Joe Rogan episode for four hours. Woke mobs and their stupid home remedies. Will he tell us his blood pressure? I can’t wait.

  115. 115.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay:

    It’s great, but it’s really just an application of available technology.  LA County can afford to do a custom machine because we’re huge, but I think part of the goal is to be able to provide the technology to other places if they want it.  Honestly, I think more governments should do that kind of thing.  Instead of paying a company for their IP, we should own our own IP and just pay the company to build it.

    One area where I think we should definitely be doing this is textbooks.  The publishers are making big money on textbook sales.  Instead, we should write our own textbooks to meet our own curriculum.  We have state-owned universities full of professors who could write them.  Then we’ll own the text and we can print them as we choose.  Schools that want to can print them as cheaply as possible and just give every student their own copy of the textbook they’re free to keep at the end of the school year.  Or they can be provided as ebooks on an ebook reader.  Or whatever approach the district thinks makes sense rather than what the publisher decides will be most profitable.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    I wish you would. My youngest started college this year and he’s, ya know, WOKE so he was ranting about the book monopoly. Then I have to lecture him about how he can’t steal. They have some way to steal the books by copying them, or something. Anyway- he’s not allowed to :)

    He’ll have to wait until the book monopoly is lawfully busted up.

  118. 118.

    topclimber

    @Kay: I would love to hear  woke outrage from Rodgers at the cancelling of QB Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee. Five years without a job offer.

    Rogers: Colin who?

    Not to be petty–oh, hell yeah I will–there is this.

  119. 119.

    Mike in NC

    When we took our 6 year old Ragdoll cat to the vet today, he freaked out for the first time ever. The vet thought he might have a heart murmur, but the test just showed he was hyper at the time.

  120. 120.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Now I see that the Politico article I reference in comment 24 now just has excerpts from the interview I read this morning. I’m not sure why. Maybe the interview is now behind a paywall as premium content.

    McAuliffe’s statement in the second debate was, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.” The context was a discussion of books such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Asked about the statement last Sunday on “Meet the Press,” McAuliffe pointed out that “everyone clapped” when he said it.

  121. 121.

    James E Powell

    @Citizen Alan:

    At this point, we really need to start asking serious questions about the extent to which support for fascism and white supremacy have wormed their way into the WP, the NYT, and CNN. These people can’t be this credulous, so I assume it’s intentional.

    I am certain it’s intentional. Just note the hysterical over-reactions they all produce when they are called out on it.

    But I am pretty sure that they promote fascism & white supremacy in order to protect wealth.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    I would just like to remind everyone too, that the initial incident that fanned the anti-woke mob was not a CRT incident or a race-related incident at all. It was that they mischaracterized a sexual assault as being caused by trans kids. That’s why they mobbed.

    So, anti-wokeness, like the endlessly flexible and ever-expanding “CRT”, is VERY broad. I don’t know where it begins or ends, but I suspect no where good.

  123. 123.

    Soprano2

    @Mary G: I’ve been using the My Fitness Pal app on my Samsung smartphone  since 2012. It works well for me to keep track, but YMMV. I still track even though I lost the weight in 2012 & 2013.

  124. 124.

    James E Powell

    @Chetan Murthy:

    You speak the truth, here, Chetan Murthy.

    Consumer culture has overwhelmed everything. In politics or any kind of public communication, it is requires that the consumer be flattered & reassured. Never never never make them uncomfortable or they will walk out and buy their elected officials at the lot across the street.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @topclimber:

    I don’t care for sports but I do admire him. That was flat-out brave. I also thought it was a beautiful example of political speech- how powerful it can be. If I were a teacher I’d use it. Oh… no I wouldn’t. I’d be brought up on wokeness charges.

  127. 127.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Chetan Murthy: There’s that feeling that one’s citizenship is always questionable.

    Like they are the owners of this country and the rest of us could find our stuff on the sidewalk any day.

  129. 129.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    : “It was a staple of the furious and sarcastic editorials that filled Southern newspapers in those days, of the indignant orations by Southern white political leaders who protested that no people had suffered more, been humiliated more, been punished more than they had.”

    And it’s been Lost Cause Ground Hog Day ever sense. Jesus Christ are these people pathetic.

  130. 130.

    JWR

    One last thing about Aaron Rogers: It seems to me that boosting ones immune system is a good thing, whether done homeopathically or some other way, but simply boosting your immune system is like boring out and rebuilding your old car’s motor. Sure, it goes a lot faster, but that doesn’t mean it’ll corner like a Lamborghini.

  132. 132.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    They are not making the next logical step in the Bloody Shirt, this why the press is so nicey nicey to them. “Oh me must heal the nations wounds if the country is to move forward! The South lies prostrate and helpless, the North must have mercy!”

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    It’s a big night in the House of Repesentatives. There was a day long impasse in the Democratic Caucus over the BIF and BBB bills. It looks like the Congressional Black Caucus helped broker a deal, and the infrastructure  bill will get a vote soon.

    There was a little drama earlier this evening when Speaker Pelosi was speaking, and someone on the Republican side laughed out loud. Pelosi responded:

            “Did I hear a laugh over there? Did I hear a laugh from those who added a two trillion dollar tax cut for the richest people in America?”

    From @Sally Albright

  136. 136.

    Soprano2

    @Professor Bigfoot: It didn’t help when TFG’s people decided to go through citizenship applications looking for minor mistakes to use as an excuse to strip citizenship from people. It was disgusting. I think naturalized citizens appreciate this country more that those of us who were born here. You belong here as much as we do.

  137. 137.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Professor Bigfoot: Speaking as a product of generations of people worked with their hands, mechanics and so on, there is a lot of contempt in American culture for people who do things. Nothing like what is done to someone with the wrong skin color, but still.

  138. 138.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Geminid: Now I wish I had C-Span. The House is voting on the infrastructure bill. At one point five Democrats had voted against it, but six Republicans had crossed the aisle and voted for it.

  139. 139.

    James E Powell

    @Geminid:

    Can you catch me up? Did Biden’s BBB go down in flames? I thought that was going to get a vote or this one would not.

  140. 140.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Mary G: I have a Garmin Forerunner 235 which is fairly useful in terms of getting me moving around (I’ve had a few iterations of the vivosmart HR+ before that).  Last month, I actually started looking at and trying to complete some of the challenges/badges and I managed to get 300,000 steps in by October 31 (combination of walking, running, kayaking, and cycling).

    I had to download some apps onto the Forerunner in order to get it to measure walking activity (as opposed to the run, run indoors, bike, other activities that are loaded as standard activities) so if you are going to be walking more than running, make sure whatever you buy tracks your walking as a standard activity.

  141. 141.

    slybrarian

    @James E Powell: ​
     

    There was a lot of drama today because some of the centrists suddenly decided we needed to wait to pass BBB out of the House until it was CBO scored, which was ridiculous given that it was always going to be scored before getting through the Senate. A lot of the progressive caucus rightly saw this as an attempt to just kill it. It seems like Jayapal, with the help of the CBC, managed to extract some kind of written guarantee out of the leadership and centrists, although six progressives still voted no on BIF. I don’t blame them. AOC rightly called this last-minute change bullshit and Cori Bush seems to have been really furious as well. It passed anyways with 13 Republican votes, so this was a reasonable time for them to make it clear they’ll vote down bills if they get fucked over.

    Hopefully leadership is paying attention to that and can follow through on their promises, given that the BBB vote is now scheduled for no later than the week of the 15th, which is shortly before a lot of other major bills including the debt ceiling come due that will absolutely need all Democratic votes.

    I will say this, even with all the fire and fury going on, Pelosi still managed to get the votes once again. I hope we can get as good a caucus leader in whoever comes next. She’s not always great at public speaking but she can manage the party.

  144. 144.

    lowtechcyclist

    Dead thread, I know, but my thought about the ‘bloody shirt’ is this:

    It’s just negative partisanship. That’s not a criticism, but analysis. Negative partisanship is the best way to motivate voters: get them mad at the other side. That’s what gets them to vote if they’re not the sort that always votes.

    But each political moment is different. If you’re running a campaign, you have to ask: what are voters upset about now? What can I get them upset about now?

    McAuliffe’s campaign tried to wrap Trump around Youngkin’s neck. The problems were twofold: first, it really wasn’t a good fit. Youngkin doesn’t remind anyone of Trump. (It reminded me a lot of the way the Repubs tried to get everyone to believe Biden was a socialist. Nobody bought it, and it was really the same sort of bad fit.)

    But second, it’s been a long nine months since Trump was President. The anger at Trump has cooled now that his presence isn’t so immediate.

    What our likely voters were pissed about in October 2021 was all the fuckheads who wouldn’t get vaccinated, and wouldn’t wear masks. We were stuck in the Covid version of Groundhog Day because the aforementioned fuckheads kept the plague alive after it should have been all but wiped out in America. And this was a divide where 2/3 of the country was on our side, and only 1/3 was with them.

    A campaign that promised to enforce the Federal vaccination mandates, and fill in as many gaps in those mandates as the Commonwealth of Virginia could, was T-Mac’s best bet.

    Will this issue still have resonance in the fall of 2022? Probably not, unless it’s part of a connect-the-dots that helps people understand the continuity of Republican undermining. Same with making an issue of the insurrection.

    The Democrats need a story to tell about the Republicans, and IMHO the story is this: they’re Covid traitors, they’re climate traitors, they’re insurrection traitors, and they’re traitors to democracy. They’re a fifth column in America who consistently undermined our efforts to fight the Covid plague, right now they’re similarly undermining every effort we make to fight global warming, they tried to undermine the 2020 election, first by selling the notion that any Democratic win would be fraudulent, and finally by violence, in the mob that assaulted and overwhelmed the police protecting the U.S. Capitol and tried to capture and kill our elected officials.

    And also right now, they are changing the laws in states across the nation to make it harder to vote, and gerrymandering so that their votes count and ours don’t. And along with that, their mobs all over the country are threatening school boards, election officials, local health workers, and even the doctors and nurses in hospitals.

    This is what they are. That’s the story the Dems should tell about the Republicans. Covid traitors, climate traitors, insurrection traitors, and traitors to democracy.

    Here endeth the rant.

  145. 145.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Soprano2: Actually, like most Black Americans, I was born here, in the Jim Crow South.

    And wouldn’t you know it– Republicans are talking about repealing the 14th amendment to end birthright citizenship.  Jim Crow and Dred Scott, here we come!

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