“If the only possible engagement with any or every other person is to antagonize or dominate, you will wind up lonely.” -@david_j_roth https://t.co/oOeQiFl824
— Drew Magary (@drewmagary) August 8, 2024
GOP men, that is… Dave Roth, for Defector:
… Both greasy strivers like Rufo and also your more warped and willful elected officials on the right all understand their jobs this way and behave accordingly. If they seem somehow unlike actual people, if they are too big and too mad and too much, it is because they are now full-time content creators, and so actually not quite like actual people at all. They are all pinned into a deteriorating orbit around the dense collapsing star at the center of the conservative universe, but they have committed to at least make their turns around Donald Trump’s imperial bulk as loudly as possible. Again, this is the job.
The result of that work is a chunky slurry of gossip and fantasy and rank bigotry blasting from a thousand gilded hydrants at every hour of the day; it amounts to a grim sort of fan service catering to an even grimmer fanbase. This has limited public appeal, just in the sense of not being the sort of thing that most people are interested in hearing about, let alone to the exclusion of any other topic and in the most vexed n’ fervid keening imaginable, and that poses an obvious problem for a political party that has entirely given itself over to the making of this kind of noise. The bigger issue, though, is that these imperatives only run in one direction—louder, uglier, more confrontational, further out, more. If the obvious tactical challenge here is that this shit absolutely sucks and most people hate it, the more fundamental one is that the internal incentives are such that it can only ever get worse.The fantasy of a chastened or refined Trump is, and has long been, the dumbest dream of political media dorks; the followers that put this prissy old dunce at the center of their world, and the mediocrities and opportunists who identified his rancid charisma as their own tickets to ride, know that they can only ever and always do more. This is the nature of this type of content-creation gig, which can never turn off or calm down, but also this is the dead end that conservative politics was steering towards long before Trump took the wheel. A politics whose most fundamental idea is Make Progress Stop Happening would inevitably find itself fetishizing the torment of having to live in a world in which other people, who are not even you, are somehow supposed to matter just as much…
… If the current Democratic campaign gambit of painting contemporary American conservatism as the province of lonely fuming weirdos, sociopathic local gentry, and busybody billionaires is working—if it feels not just overdue but liberating to be able to call this goof troop of aggro freaks and slavering mediocrities by their rightful names—it is mostly because it is so obviously, manifestly correct. There are other, nicer names for whatever this is, but none quite so accurate.
But that contrast is important, too. Rufo’s jag of delirious nastiness looks weirder and uglier—or, maybe, just as weird and ugly as it is—because of the simple and humane assertion to which it is responding. The same goes for GOP Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s answer, on Wednesday, to a question from local media asking, “What makes you smile, what makes you happy?” Vance grimaced and huffed and answered, “Well, I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, man,” before delivering a spectacularly mirthless laugh and steering things back towards what he was angry about. It was a bad answer, badly delivered, but it was also a disciplined one. The idea was to get back to being upset, both in the broadest possible sense and more specifically about the litany of vibe-y cable-news fixations that define the Trump/Vance campaign, such as it exists.
Again, some of this is just how conservative politics works; in lieu of any solution to any problem, lavishing attention upon the problem and identifying it as what the other guys want becomes the move more or less by default. But the limitations of this approach are not just obvious but overbearing. If the only answer available to the vice presidential nominee when asked What stuff do you like is a tremulous Go fuck yourself, something has gone wrong; if the only possible engagement with any or every other person is to antagonize or dominate, you will wind up lonely. There’s no levity or recognizable human brightness to be found here, but there is also no air, nothing but grievance and its performance…
Such a movement would be unstable, of course, but all the more so because it can no longer speak or see beyond itself. This is the conflict that Trumpism can’t resolve, the thing that makes even the most gently lobbed of softball questions impossible to handle and what makes an assertion like Walz’s—other people are just as real as you, and they deserve respect—not just unanswerable, but incomprehensible. It’s not just the idea that Walz is expressing but the very idea of someone like Walz expressing it that is so fundamentally confounding to operators like Rufo; the concept of a normal, empathetic, passably happy heterosexual white man who is not constantly afraid and angry and arguing with everyone around him simply does not compute…
Craig
Roth is a good writer. He’s a sports/politics observer like Pierce.
I gotta get out of this place
They created their own bubble full of lies, wishes and bravado – it has become reality to them. The grifters know the difference and can pivot accordingly, but true believers have difficulty adjusting to new conflicting information. Sucks when the real world smacks you in the head with a two by four.
I noticed when the Great Orange Pumpkin appeared at the GOP convention, in the beginning, he seemed really uneasy to me. Like he was afraid someone else would attack him. I’m of the impression he’s scared. He doesn’t want to go out in public in front of crowds of gun humping maniacs. (a.k.a his fans) He only went to Montana because he hates Sen Jon Tester. Revenge overrides fear?
Sandia Blanca
“This prissy old dunce”–what a refreshing way to understand TCFFG!
piratedan
all of these imagined slights, all of societal transgressions, the lack of acknowledgement that they are worthy of respect, with the criteria apparently being that you be white and an aggrieved bastard. I’d love to be able to ignore these people but they sure seem intent on fucking with the rest of us.
VFX Lurker
Open thread: I tested positive for COVID-19 today. Symptoms started yesterday, but I tested negative yesterday. Symptoms persisted today, and I got a faint line on the rapid test today.
Thanks to Anne Laurie’s tireless COVID updates, I knew enough to seek Paxlovid right away. My doctor is not available on Sundays, so I used my hospital system’s telehealth to schedule a video visit with a doctor who wrote me a prescription.
This is not a COVID thread, but I can’t thank Anne Laurie enough for the information she posts here.
Thank you, Anne Laurie!
Chet Murthy
@VFX Lurker: I’m sorry you got COVID, but glad you got the Pax! I will hope and trust that you’ll recover well!
Chet Murthy
@VFX Lurker: I have a friend[1] who IMed me yesterday saying he might have COVID. His test-kits are all expired (and expired the extended expiration date too). So are mine. I offered to get him a kit and drop it by his house, but the declined. Hope he knows what he’s doing, sigh. I’m glad you were vigilant and acted to protect yourself.
[1] It was this friend’s urgings back in Jan-Feb 2020 that convinced me to go into isolation in late Feb/early Mar, and to urge my sister to take my mom into isolation too. It’s possible he saved my mom’s life. To see him not even want to -test– for COVID is ….. troubling.
Betty Cracker
I am so envious of Roth’s writerly chops. Damn, he’s good! Excellent read indeed!
@VFX Lurker: So glad you got the treatment quickly thru telehealth, and I hope you recover even faster. I want to second your praise of Anne Laurie’s tireless COVID updates. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say she’s saved lives through her efforts.
danielx
@piratedan:
intent on fucking with the rest of us is pretty much the program. And using the power of the state to impose the views of a minority upon the majority is the method, although the reasons behind the program range from grift to total and complete belief.
The obvious rejoinder of evangelicals is something along the lines of how morality is not dictated by the majority. At which point dialog is pretty much done. True believers gonna truly believe, and for them nonbelievers are not only wrong or misguided but evil and barely human, if that.
Chet Murthy
@Betty Cracker:
Amen, 100% agree. Reading her updates strengthened my resolve to remain in isolation and to help my family stay in isolation. when infection meant a decent chance of death. Reading her updates -since- the advent of vaccines has confirmed my resolution to continue masking whenever it’s not a clear win to unmask.
Maxim
@VFX Lurker: I hope the Paxlovid does the trick and you recover quickly!
@Chet Murthy: We can hope that a lack of testing doesn’t indicate a lack of care. A few weeks ago, AL’s weekly thread included the information that at-home tests give false negative results as often as 90% of the time if a person tests too soon (right after symptoms appear).
Since then, I’ve been telling people, “If it seems like it could be Covid it probably is, no matter what the test says.” So maybe your friend has similarly thought, “It’s probably Covid, so I’ll just assume it is and act accordingly.”
Chet Murthy
@Maxim: Sadly, he’s not going to try to get Paxlovid either. He’s just going to tough it out. Which …. sigh. He says “but it could just be the flu”. But without a test, he can’t know. I don’t push, b/c I’ve aleady tried an couple of times, and he’s vaxxed-to-the-max, so whatever it is, he’s -almost– as protected as he can be. But …. sigh.
danielx
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve tried to get latest Covid booster at both regular doc’s office and CVS and both say they are out and can’t obtain it, which is more than somewhat disconcerting.
Good to see you.
scav
Ah non, pas possible. These idiots can get caught in the inescapable gravity well of the Massive Orange Ego like dick-heavy lemmings chasing click-bait and dreams of personal corner-offices for life but they will not touch the merest fringe of the Mambo Taxi. They are unworthy. Point finale.
ETA. The gazpacho is not for them. Try the hemlock instead.
Chet Murthy
This is …. strange (I could say “weird”, but I don’t mean that). What pol doesn’t want to humanize themselves, show that they’re a full person with the full range of emotions? He could have gone for “let me tell you about my daughter’s music recital” or some other little family thing. He could have mentioned some music he heard recently. Or some food he really liked. But he went with anger and contempt instead. Does he not -read- his reviews? Does he not -read- the reviews of his opposition? That they’re beating him to a great extent b/c they’re happy, sunny, exuding hope and togetherness? Doesn’t he even want to -pretend- those things?
It’s so strange.
Chet Murthy
@danielx: I certainly don’t know why, but it could be b/c the new one should be coming out later this month. That’s what I read when I googled a week-ish ago: “late august, early September”. So …. unless you really need it, it might be worth waiting until it arrives (and taking extra precautions until then). I’ve read that it will be reformulated with inclusion of newer strains (but I could be wrong about that).
mr perfect
@VFX Lurker: Hopefully you are up on your vaccine shots. I’m 66 years old and have had 7 vaccines, later this upcoming autumn I will go for a combined COVID/Flu shot. So far I haven’t grown a 3rd arm out of my forehead. In the middle of June 2022 after 3 vaccinations I came down with COVID. Stuffed up and lost my sense of smell, muscle soreness, two bouts of the runs but never lost my appetite and ate like a horse. I was over it in 7 days and 3 weeks after contracting COVID I rode a 50 mile off trail bike ride in 5 hours with very little training up to that point. Flash forward to February this year and I caught a cold which plugged my sinuses but I still had a sense of smell. Five days after catching the cold, the person I caught it from called to tell my wife to test for COVID. Yes, I was positive. No runs, no lack of appetite, sense of smell, ate like a horse again and two days later I was over it and tested negative. The vaccines work. Relax, get lots of rest and good luck, you should be fine in one week.
Maxim
@Chet Murthy: Oh dear. Well, you tried. A lot of folks do have Covid fatigue (which I understand, but geez).
@danielx: That’s no bueno. Last summer, I tried to get my doctor to give me a booster, and they wouldn’t — they said to wait for the fall.
I got Covid a week later. I have not forgiven them.
Chet Murthy
@Maxim: I think it was Mar 2022 when I wanted an extra booster, but my doc wouldn’t give it to me. So I pretended I was undocumented, went to a community vaccination event, and got my shot there. Later when I saw my doctor again and told him, he said he was relieved. He couldn’t give it to me, b/c there were rules that forbade him. This spring (Apr) I asked my (new) doc for a booster, and he was “sure, let’s do it this visit”. Even though I’m 59, and ostensibly the extra booster is for those 65+. So it depends on the doc, I guess.
There -is- one reason a doc might not want to give you a booster in summer: if it’s late enough that it meant you couldn’t get the new booster rolling out in the fall. But really, that’s weak tea. If you’re due for a booster, you should be able to get it.
HumboldtBlue
Indeed.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chet Murthy:
Someone said that Vance has a trait of molding himself to his current patron. He has absolutely done this with Trump. He keeps parroting and trying to validate Trump’s absolutely stupidest brain farts, the stuff that gets Trump mocked. It would be no surprise that like Trump he has forgotten joy.
Chet Murthy
@Frankensteinbeck:
That is some fucked-up shit. Completely imaginable, but still fucked-up.
Jay
About two weeks before T left for Alberta, we got our boosters. We had to book via a phone call to the Province, who then set it up with the Pharmacy. Under past rules, we should have gotten a text notice in late spring, but we didn’t, because they adjusted the risk categories upwards.
We were told after booking, that the Pharmacist might still deny us a shot, but the magic words were “upcoming cancer surgery”.
Despite all that, and T masking, she still wound up bringing Covid back from Alberta, so because 1 bedroom apt, we both got it. Reasonably mild, and we both seem to be over it. T lost smell and taste, me, nope. Hacking for both of us was bad, pulse/oxy was fine. We both ran high temps, but only I had nausea.
7 days to testing clear.
wjca
In a word, no. He doesn’t want those things, or even to pretend to want them. All he wants is the approval of whoever he is currently toadying to. To get that, he will say or do pretty much anything. In fact, he will probably convince himself that whatever they want is what he wants also. Sad, really.
EDT Much like what Frankensteinbeck said.
Joey Maloney
@VFX Lurker: I, too, brought Covid home from a vacation last week. First time for me, I’ve managed to avoid infection up until now. (I caught it in the dumbest possible way, too: I spent most of the afternoon on my last vacation day sitting with a person who I noticed at some point had a persistent cough. He’s a singer so I asked if he had strained his voice and he said, no, I’ve had this for a few days, seems like a virus of some kind. 🤦🏼♂️ By the time I was home the next day, I had a persistent cough…)
For two days it was far worse than the worst flu I’ve ever had; for the next two it was a mild cold except for the coughing fits that would continue until I almost puked and that made everything hurt from my head down to my ribs; and yesterday and today I feel basically fine though I’m still showing a faint positive line on the rapid tests. If that’s what counts as a mild case, jesus cavaziel christ.
Kent
Now that is some writing.
VFX Lurker
Thank you for the kind words, everybody. ❤️
Yes! I got every vaccine I could (again, also thanks to Anne Laurie!)
I’m up-to-date on all vaccinations and boosters. I was too young to get the 2024 spring booster, but I made sure my parents got boosted.
I will get the 2024-2025 COVID/flu shots when I can. Not sure how long I will have to wait after COVID recovery before I can get the shot, but I will get it!
wjca
It’s a pity that, when he collapses into a black hole, he won’t take them with him. At least as far as the event horizon….
TS
@Chet Murthy:
I am just recovering from the flu (influenza A) – and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I ached from head to toe for 4 days. I took tamiflu as well which apparently reduces the time to recover. I tested negative after a week but am still suffering the head cold that comes with it.
4D*hiker
While Roth’s whole piece is an interesting read, his last sentence in the fifth paragraph pretty much distills down the essential understanding of the madness of Trumpian politics and psychosocial dynamics:
“A politics whose most fundamental idea is Make Progress Stop Happening would inevitably find itself fetishizing the torment of having to live in a world in which other people, who are not even you, are somehow supposed to matter just as much.”
Sister Golden Bear
@piratedan: @danielx:
Fucking with the rest of us — and especially the least of us — all comes back to:
It’s reminiscent of how Trump dealmaking style has been described. It’s not enough for him to win, someone else has to lose — and in fact he doesn’t view it as winning unless someone else loses.
For folks like Trump, Rufo, the godbotherers, etc. it’s simply inconceivable and incomprehensible not to fuck with us.
Betty Cracker
@4D*hiker: Yes! That sentence jumped out at me too. In the minds of these pathetic Trump-humping fuck-knuckles, they are life’s protagonists, so they simply cannot fathom why the bit-players and extras won’t surrender.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
For whatever reason, this campaign keeps putting me in mind of the times Bloom County would have election storylines, with inane political speechifying, counterproductive pandering to special interest groups, and of course dismal poll numbers (routinely below zero percent, and the one time in 1988 they were up forty points, a tell-all book about Bill the Cat caused them to lose a hundred and thirty-six points within a week).
4D*hiker
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, which is why Harris and Walz with their emphasis on inclusion and working toward a fairer society for everyone is so confounding to them.
Cheryl from Maryland
@danielx: I think they believe that non-believers taint their morality. That non-believers will infect them, so we must be either converts or eliminated.
Tony Jay
@Chet Murthy:
Doesn’t he even want to -pretend- those things?
Does not and actually can not, not if he wants to remain in post.
That’s why the weird appellation nails modern conservatism so precisely and why they’re squirming so furiously around the piercing description. To be a top GOP politician or content provider (and the difference is pretty minimum in their post-policy era) you have to appeal to the misery and resentment of your Base. You can only do that by displaying that you’re even more miserable and resentful than they are.
That’s not a job any reasonably happy or well adjusted person could do. So MAGAt have to tell themselves that those people are the weird ones, and that’s not going to fly at the Election booth.
You love to see it.
NotMax
@Cheryl from Maryland
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
– H. G. Wells
.
HumboldtBlue
bjacques
@HumboldtBlue: and it took the gold.
Sorry, low-hanging fruit.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Any progress with your desktop problem?
Rusty
“what makes an assertion like Walz’s—other people are just as real as you, and they deserve respect—not just unanswerable, but incomprehensible.”
This. The basic idea that other people deserve respect. When your whole world view is I’m on top, and better than people who are a minority, or gay, or a woman, this actually doesn’t compute. Let alone respect for the poor, the homeless, the addict, the criminal and more. They demand respect, but rarely give it but in the the most toady way.
I spent 22 years attending the same denomination that Walz does, the ELCA Lutherans. That message of respect for everyone is pervasive. If that is one of your foundational beliefs, then your politics are going to be very different from the current Republican platform.
Gloria DryGarden
Great writing.
This:
[We] …”live in a world in which other people, who are not even you, are somehow supposed to matter just as much…”
lowtechcyclist
“There are other words, but they just don’t work.” – Kim Stockwood, “Jerk“
the pollyanna from hell
@Gloria DryGarden:
It’s full of new ideas. I have to read it twice just to absorb it once.
Princess
These people are weird and unhappy and unfun. They don’t share our values, they don’t share our hopes and dreams, and they’re the kind of people you avoid at a party. I don’t want to have a beer with them. And they’re weird. Did I mention that?
Weird is an interesting word. Remember when online clickbait would hook you with “Try this weird trick…” Obviously for some reason, humans click on “weird”. We want to see it. The reason it’s working for Harris must have something to do with why it works in the internet in general.
WereBear
@Princess: Our brains are supposed to notice changes in the environment. “Weird” and “New” are intriguing. Might be good.
But also, maybe not-good.
Jobeth
It feels to me like the country was finally just ready for some joy after Trump and Covid. There was the Barbie movie, the whole Taylor Swift concert/romance saga and now the Olympics, which I felt were much more joyous than recent years. Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there but it seemed like much of the country was willing to collectively get swept up in the happiness/silliness of these events while a small group of weirdos just didn’t get it.
lowtechcyclist
@TS:
THANK YOU. I was going to say something like this, but you beat me to it.
I’ve had the flu twice that I’m sure of, once as a pre-teen and again in my 40s, and both times it knocked me on my ass for a solid week, and each time when I thought I was OK after that and could resume normal levels of activity, it knocked me back some more. It’s nothing to make light of, and in the quarter-century since that second attack of the flu, I’ve faithfully gotten my annual flu shot.
People used to talk about getting the 24-hour flu, but whatever bug they had, it wasn’t influenza, that’s for damn sure.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: There was a year in the 1990s when waves of flu or something like it went through my office TWICE, and it hit me both times. Agonizing.
After that, they started having yearly flu vaccine clinics at the office and that was what convinced me to start getting the shot every year. I haven’t been that sick with flu since then.
Princess
@WereBear: Makes sense. And maybe even more than newness per se, we need to spot anomaly, weirdness, both do we can grow and adapt (good!) and do we can avoid danger (bad!). I’m just saying what you said in more words.
hueyplong
The Roth piece is best thing I’ve seen so far during this whole campaign process. It explains to people starting to head toward the Democratic ticket just why they’re doing so instead of it merely being something like a “vibe.” And the more clearly people see and understand Trump and the grotesques who follow him for who and what they are, the more hardened they are against them.
As one of the group here who was horrified by the drip, drip, drip of our own side against Biden those last two weeks before he dropped out, it explains, more indirectly, to me why the change really needed to be made. Biden wasn’t the messenger for Roth’s message, despite his despising Trump and Trumpism for all the right reasons, and despite the fact that he had beaten Trump before. We needed the contrast of a younger, more vigorous ticket using the language and experiences of the generation that followed Biden’s path of service, community and tolerance, not Trump’s path of selfishness and bigotry. And we needed a pair of people on the ticket who had not been dragged, Hillary style, 24/7, for four years for such atrocities as successfully pulling out of Afghanistan and experiencing lower inflation than pretty much any nation you’d want to be compared to as Biden oversaw steady improvement of the world’s best economy.
It’s such a fuck you to the likes of the FTFNYT, which has from Day One attempted to gaslight objective success into perceived failure and which seemed at the doorstep of final triumph 3 weeks ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: The conservative identity, at least in the United States, is still a reaction to civil rights expansions and the 1960s counterculture, and its central insistence is that conservatives are the guardians of normalcy against intrusions by weirdos with foreign beliefs and abhorrent practices. They’re always the Silent Majority–Trump’s campaign in 2016 even used the phrase.
I know a lot of liberals and progressives who are a bit uncomfortable with the “weird” attack because they don’t think of weirdness as a negative and don’t like using it as an insult. But I have to explain that that’s the point. We don’t particularly mind being called weird. THEY DO. To a conservative, the idea that they’re weird means they lost the war. It shakes them to their core. It’s why all they can offer is these tepid comebacks like “nooo… we’re not weird… a man in a dress is weird? Right?” But that’s just the same reheated hate soup they’ve been serving up for 60 years. There’s no novelty in it.
ETtheLibrarian
He a good writer.
This. The GOP brand has been a diluted version of this for a few decades, it is the party that attracted Newt after all, what we see now is a distilled version.
TBone
@NotMax: excellent quote
TBone
Today’s Heather Cox Richardson is also a real barnburner. Inspiring!
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-11-2024
Our farm branch of the family has always been big on the Grange since its beginning, maybe part of why Walz feels like family…
Baud
@TBone:
Nice piece. Thanks for linking.
Chris Johnson
@Chet Murthy: What can he say, ‘the joy my son takes in his Pokemons’?
Maybe if he’s close enough to Thiel, ‘the satisfaction of feeling younger-than-mine blood transfused into my veins, perhaps giving me immortality if I can keep a supply going’.
Or, alternately, ‘when I peel my eyelids back and carefully apply the eyeliner and know that I’m going to have my eyes ‘pop’ just right on camera and that I’ll look pretty’?
The guy’s fucked. All the things that might give him joy are either twisted around to be torment, or scorned by him himself, up to and including being a vice Presidential candidate. He’s fucked. No, he’s not going to smile anytime soon. If he wanted to smile he ought to quit Trump, quit politics, leave Thiel’s orbit, and go be a regular human. He’d be a lot happier, because all this must SUUUUCK for him.
lowtechcyclist
@Tony Jay:
Back in the 1960s, Al Capp, in his L’il Abner comic strip, created a satirical student protest group, S.W.I.N.E., which stood for Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything. The name was a bit unfair but effective, because the list of left-wing causes, which had started with civil rights and then Vietnam, did shortly become quite long.
It’s been more than a few years since it first occurred to me that this has totally flipped, and now they’re the ones who are Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything. And of course, the nature of the indignation has flipped as well: back in the Sixties, we were indignant about fighting wars and supporting tinpot dictators all over the Third World in the name of anticommunism, and at home we were indignant about blacks and women being treated as lesser beings, and the way we were making a mess of our environment. While they are indignant about whites and males and Christianists no longer dominating, and no longer able to require that everyone either be like them, or at least be invisible in their differences.
As David Roth says in his insightful essay, this isn’t sustainable. But it can sure do a lot of harm in the meantime, which is why we oppose it.
Kay
@Jobeth:
Perfect example. I don’t like Taylor Swift’s music very much. I don’t follow sports at all. Yet I could see and feel how much fun millions of people were having with her music and his sports celebrity and the romance and how happy it made them and them having so much fun made me appreciate both Swift and her bf, to the extent I was watching clips of her fans being interviewed at her concerts to cheer myself up.
Republicans were furious.
TBone
@Baud: yours in service,
TBone
Marleedog
A very good column by Roth. But to me, his work is, at times–I do not want to say strained or overwrought–sometimes he is a bit too much. Again, a very good column today, and as BC notes, I surely wish I had his facility with words. But, (thanks @TBone), I would rather read HCR. Her comparisons to LaFollette are insightful.
Kay
This is Donald Trump’s and Republicans message to Americans this morning:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Are you better off now than you were when I was president? Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline.
Jesus Christ. No wonder their young men can’t manage to move out of their parents basement. To move at all. This belief system is just depressing as hell.
“Our economy is shattered”. That’s how you know Donald Trump reads only the NYTimes headlines.
brantl
@Chet Murthy: Pols that don’t strive to humanize themselves do so because they have forgotten what humanized is, or weren’t ever particularly human in the first place.
TBone
@Marleedog: I now want to say that I enjoyed both pieces, and did not intend to diminish the front page by posting additional reading. Sometimes I’ve been accused of that here, and it is truly not my intention. I just like to share excellent stuff with all the jackals.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: “Our economy is shattered”. is trump speak for “We have to pay more for a 1/4 Pounder because DEMs raised the minimum wage!”
TBone
@Kay: on that note, another excellent piece of work:
radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-coming-war-with-mexico
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Can’t remember the name, but a while back, some sports talk radio yapper (Cowherd maybe?) said he was done with Trump because he (the radio guy) didn’t recognize the apocalyptic hellscape Trump describes as an accurate picture of this country. It’s true.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Well, that explains why my republican farm family parents were so progressive. It never made sense, because progressive was not part of the republican party I knew.
I have listened to her whole history of the republican party, so I guess, I knew, this just reinforced why.
Baud
@TBone:
No, there can be only one.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Indeed! I mean, how many times in the past fifty years has the economy been this good? Once or twice, maybe.
It still boggles my mind, the job that the MSM have done to make people think it’s still crappy.
artem1s
Unfortunately each congregation can vary wildly in it’s culture. My home town church (small town, homogenous white, rural OH) was ELCA. Waining attendance at mainstream churches meant hiring ‘good’ preachers could be a challenge. Back in the 00’s – hard to remember exactly when – they got stuck with a trainee from the seminary who was full bore fundy wacko. I have no idea why he was attending a Lutheran seminary college. But there he was regurgitating all the same crap the 700 Club was spewing at the time. Homophobic, misogynistic etc… Everyone going to hell that wasn’t him. Some of the congregants ate it up, especially the ones who were still pissed about the changes in the ‘new’ liturgy (1970’s). The old culture was hellfire. New culture was what you describe as ‘accepting’. But it didn’t alway take. A lot of my cousins’ family moved to the more conservative Lutheran sects during this period. And even those weren’t strict enough for one of my aunts. She and a bunch of others split and formed their own unaffiliated congregation and held services in a strip mall for a while. It was weird. Even I could see it as a pre-teen. There was something that kept them from accepting the ‘Good News’ of the new liturgy. They just couldn’t let go of their hate.
So it doesn’t surprise me at all that Vance’s family attended an ELCA church. I’m sure a lot of my cousins think he’s the perfect avenging angel.
Baud
It’s the same great economy we had in June, except vibe futures are in a bull market.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: same phenom in my family! Progressive ideals in everything except voting. Truly why I am a walking contradiction.
Ken
There’s a vignette in “Fifteen Portraits of Despair”, one of the stories in Sandman: Endless Nights, that goes something like:
It would be terribly sad if Vance’s anger was from a mental speed-through of something like the above. But, as was said several times above, it’s more likely him remaining “on brand” for the deeply warped brand that is the modern GQP.
TBone
@Baud: diversification is the first rule of a good investor 😁
Baud
@TBone:
It’s why liberal referendums do better than Dems.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The delusion he has made reality to millions of people (including nearly all of political media) is just shocking. Do these people remember 2009 -2010? THAT was a bad economy.
Trump probably does think the economy is worse than it is for 99% of people because he still has some commercial real estate in overpriced urban markets like NYC. That probably influences the NYTimes too – that’s a certain kind of rich person. That property really has lost value. Oh well. Maybe he should have sold at peak.
ascap_scab
#SofaLoren is trending after a photo of Shady Pantz in drag emerges.
Guess we know what was hacked.
artem1s
kind of like when the Taliban mullahs became/become enraged at the sight of women, hearing them speak, or even the sound of their footsteps?
Kay
@ascap_scab:
I’m opposed to that photo as political opp because it actually makes him look more sympathetic and real. There was that one day where he wasn’t miserable and scolding people, in college.
PST
Loved the Roth piece, as I usually do. It made me reflect again on something that occurs to me often these days. I’m 70 now, and the quality of my life feels completely unaffected by my realization that these days fewer people who are richer and more influential than me fall into the same broad demographic categories that I do. Granted, a majority still seem to be straight white men, but no longer all, and what’s that to me? I will never understand those who feel otherwise.
Kay
@artem1s:
They couldn’t find anything to be outraged about w/Kelce – he’s a man, after all – so they went crazy because he is vaccinated. I mean. Just LOOKING for something to be offended and outraged about. Why not just ignore this fun thing people are following? Why do they have to shit all over it?
TBone
@Kay: Dominionism. Seven Mountain style.
For the uninitiated:
independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-white-house-election-christians-b2593298.htm…
Kay
@TBone:
Thank you, but I don’t read about fundamentalist religious anymore. They have been demanding I “understand” them since I was six years old and I have been complying – studying, reading up. I think they should study me for a while. I too demand to be understood. They make not the slightest effort to understand anyone else.
I saw that they went nuts about something in the Olympics and I made an effort to avoid it. I don’t care. I think they’ve been coddled and kowtowed to long enough.
Mousebumples
@danielx: the newest form is coming soon. I’m guessing they aren’t using much more and aren’t ordering more until the new variant is available.
TBone
@Kay: that’s why I used the words “for the uninitiated.” I was trying to illustrate, in response to your comment, why they try to shit all over absolutely everything.
stinger
@hueyplong: Thank you for this comment.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: @Kay: Also known as “carpet-pissers*.” Ruining nice things just because they’re nice.
( *The Dudes carpet)
Betty
Roth’s description of the Republican attitude puts me in mind of someone I know suffering from dementia. So angry, looking for some grievance to rant about.
Starfish
@Chet Murthy: Remind him that he absolutely can use the expired kits.
Soprano2
You’re not the only one seeing this. Think about the last Olympics for the athletes – no crowds, no family members were able to attend, just them in the venue doing their thing. I’m sure it wasn’t that joyful for them, so there’s all this pent-up longing for what they had before. Now they got it, thus the reaction. I think that’s part of what caused the explosion for Harris – people, many subconsciously, want to move on from the TCFG/Covid years, and both Biden and (obviously) TCFG are reminders of those times. They’re ready for someone who doesn’t have all that baggage. Even if they love Biden, I think some people are ready for something and someone new.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: 😆
Soprano2
@Kay: The whole message is “White people aren’t on top in all places and all circumstances anymore, so our economy is shattered and our country is in decline”. That’s what’s between the lines, anyway. I agree, it’s an extremely depressing message, if they hear that constantly no wonder they’re so unhappy.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL, the problem is not that we raised the minimum wage, it’s that Covid raised all the wages!!
Soprano2
Glad to see someone else feels this way. The Olympics thing was especially stupid because it wasn’t even what they thought it was, because they have a hard time imagining anything outside their small, insular world. I’m tired of the idea that only liberals should try to understand conservatives. Where are the hundreds of articles demanding that conservatives try to understand the liberal viewpoint? It’s once again the idea that whatever most white men want is “normal”, and the rest of us are “abnormal”. That’s one reason the “weird” thing makes them so crazy – the culture has told them they’re the “normal” ones for decades now.
Starfish
@artem1s: Walz’s family (not Vance’s) is Lutheran. It is a very midwestern thing to be. I also have friends who are gay and regularly attend their more liberal Lutheran churches that do not ostracize them. So you are right that it can vary a lot.
SFAW
@TBone:
No, the first rule is “Don’t invest in anything with the Trump name on it, nor anything he promotes.”
Starfish
@Kay: What he is being shamed about has been the norm of college Halloween behavior for a long time now.
There are a lot of men who dress as woman, and women who dress as prostitutes. It is why Yandy halloween costumes exist. Sure, you can be a sexy Sponge Bob Square Pants.
Lately, the lefties have pushed back on this behavior because trans women are pushing back on the men dressing as women for mocking their identity as trans-women.
Rusty
@artem1s: Within any denomination there can be a big spectrum of congregations. I didn’t know Vance’s family was also ELCA, what a comparison to Walz from the same denomination. Many of the conservative congregations left the ELCA when they recognized gay clergy in 2009. Our pastor’s comment at the time was, good riddance. They had been unhappy since women were ordained and a constant irritant of complaints. Roughly 10% of the congregations left. Would be interesting to know if Vance’s family’s was one of them. Walz’s obviously wasn’t.
brantl
@NotMax: Not always, but a lot more than it should be.
Barbara
@Kay: I came here late just to give you a virtual high five. Where is it written that I have to care more about them than they care about me? I am happy to adopt a live and let live attitude to evangelicals, as I do with almost everyone else. Why is it my duty to understand them when it’s they who have so much difficulty tolerating me and mine? I am not asking for anything other than what I happily give to them every day.
different-church-lady
I think Roth’s essay is full of insight. But I don’t think the “chunky slurry” he describes is any less appealing to a certain segment of the electorate than it was eight years ago. We understand it much better now, and we are getting better at neutralizing it, but those who do like it don’t like it any less: we just have a better chance of out-voting them now.
Ivan X
@TBone: this was excellent. It’s nice to not just have my existing views affirmed as with much of what I read, but to actually learn.
Ivan X
@Kay: I will come back to this comment when I need to remind myself that millions of happy normies is better than one person’s (i.e. my) arch feeling of superior taste.
Especially if we want to win elections.
AM in NC
@Sandia Blanca: That phrase really stood out for me as well.
Also, Roth’s description of “contemporary American conservatism as the province of lonely fuming weirdos, sociopathic local gentry, and busybody billionaires”. Just so.spot.on. it made me pause in admiration.
Gvg
@Matt McIrvin: I have worked for this University for 30years and it was the first job with really good insurance (state). Every year at the benefits fair they offer a free flu shot. You can get it other times of course, but for me, it was easy to remember and always the same time each year about the right time for best immunity. I got it every year. Covid year was virtual so I had to go elsewhere for an appointment and almost forgot.
Xavier
@hueyplong: Good explanation, thanks.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Jesus said, “be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” Apparently they didn’t believe him, because they feel the need to conquer it.
Central Planning
@danielx: I posted in a thread the other night that Wegmans wouldn’t give me a Covid shot and that the next gen booster should be out mid-September.
A few days later I had lunch with a friend who got covid symptoms that night and tested positive the next day. I feel fine so far, hopefully tomorrow I won’t have to wear a mask around the house.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I think what TBone’s link was more “know what your enemy is about” than anything else, so you’re not taken by surprise by the next stunt they pull.
But it can be hard to keep up – I was intermittently around these people for decades, and this “seven mountains” stuff is new to me.
But understand them for their benefit? From a Christian standpoint, the diagnosis is simple: they’ve lost their way. The remedy: they need to repent and be saved. The likelihood of that? For most of them, infinitesimal.
That’s all you really need to know, if you even want to know that much.
moonbat
If you want to talk about historical parallels, what followed the flu pandemic of 1917-18 was the Roaring 20s, a time when the country latched onto a “We’re happy to still be alive!” zeitgeist. But at the same time the 20s saw a boost in the moral scold, “Stop Having Fun!” crowd with temperance movements, a rise in the KKK, and brutal attacks on successful minority communities.
I think we are seeing an echo of that now. But this time, because we are a more secular nation now (Thank God!), I think joy has a much better chance of winning.
Lynn Dee
@Sandia Blanca: I love that! And it does remind me of the writing of Charlie Pierce, who once referred to “the prancing ego of Cardinal Timothy Dolan.”
Lynn Dee
@Betty Cracker: There’s hope! I don’t think I’ve heard or read that sentiment from any former Trumpers who’ve now left him. Maybe it’ll start something, especially now that the contrast with the Democratic campaign is so stark.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist: If Jesus were here now he’d have a lot to say to some folks…
different-church-lady
@Kay: Four years ago I was recovering from bi-lateral pneumonia and just finally starting to get expanded unemployment compensation, but yeah, ask me again.
Tony G
@Chet Murthy: Yup. I’ve met a variety of people throughout my life who seem to have no joy In life except for hurting other people. By sheer coincidence (I’m sure) those people have consistently been politically to the right. I think that politicians like Trump and Vance actually might exaggerate their natural joylessness and bitterness because that actually APPEALS to their base.
Origuy
JD Vance is Catholic, not Lutheran.