Our Boston-area turkeys have gotten lazy & incautious — kudos to the feline making his living in the freeway-girt exurbs!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING BIPEDS
MAY YOUR DINNER TASTE AS GOOD AS MINE— Natick Bobcat (@natickbobcat.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 9:54 AM
Our first responders show up in our darkest times to provide hope, light, and care — they’re the best of us.
Jill and I headed over to the Nantucket Fire Department this Thanksgiving to say hello and offer our thanks for all these men and women do for their community. pic.twitter.com/Kw3KY1X2eZ
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 28, 2024
With hearts full of gratitude: Happy Thanksgiving, America.
Jill and I are so grateful for the trust you’ve placed in us these past four years – serving you has been the honor of our lives. pic.twitter.com/D7MfdV3yKo
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 28, 2024
It's been two months since Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage to communities. Our department has sent the first $187 million to clear roads and begin repairs, and will continue our support for as long as it takes. pic.twitter.com/f5IfMHSTJO
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 27, 2024
Pres. Biden just secured the release of 3 more Americans detained in China. That brings the total to over 70 Americans he’s helped bring home from around the world—many of them taken during the Trump years.
No bragging. No drama. Just results.
We’re going to miss this kind of steady leadership.
— Chris D. Jackson (@chrisdjackson.bsky.social) November 27, 2024 at 9:44 PM
Wanna know how Dems win elections – it’s simple you have to show up every month, every week, every day, and do your job.
Thankful for Gov. One thing we know is he will be there for us and we appreciate him. https://t.co/MweWH5Yugw
— Candidly Tiff ???? (@tify330) November 28, 2024
Meanwhile…
They got mad about being called weird
— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 10:01 PM
On The Road – UncleEbeneezer – Eastern Sierra Fall Foliage 2024- Silver Lake, June Lakes, CA (Part 2/8)
different-church-lady
Depicting the country a a turkey about to be carved up: very on-brand there J.D.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
And, yes, I was waiting to get here before Baud!
;>) (just for John).
WaterGirl
If only it were that easy. Sherrod Brown showed up every month, every week, and every day to do his job, and he did it damn well.
Same with Bob Casey.
$100 million dollars of attacks and lies and disinformation worked.
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
And totally not weird, nosirree!
Nukular Biskits
@WaterGirl:
In a way, I don’t blame Republicans for lying.
If American voters are that damned stupid as to believe lies over facts REPEATEDLY then the GOP is giving them exactly what they demand.
gene108
The expressions on the faces of the kids at the table, in the last post, are scary as fuck. Feel like they’re thinking, “he thinks he’s serving us turkey, but when he reaches for the knife we grab it, stab him, and feast on his flesh!!!”
Spanky
It’s very clear that simply showing up and doing your job like Joe did is not enough to win elections. Hell, it’s not even enough to guarantee your party will let you run again.
different-church-lady
@Nukular Biskits: Lying used to be seen as a bad thing. Now it’s seen as a smart thing.
What could possibly go wrong?
Spanky
@Nukular Biskits: Well, than we have an eternal problem on our hands.
Another Scott
Speaking of MOM, … GovExec.com:
Imagine what could be done with adequate, sensible, funding.
Competence and a drive for service still matters. The guys and gals on the other team don’t have it.
I saw recently that Ben Wikler of WisDems was considering running for DNC chair as well. We have good people who are still stepping up.
Hang in there, everyone. We’re not done yet – not by a long shot.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
That got tossed in the trash bin like the claims “Character matters” and “I vote for the individual, not the party.”
Yeah, we always new those were lies but at least you don’t hear them much anymore.
Nukular Biskits
@Spanky:
If you mean foreign interference/influence, that only applies if it’s assisting anyone who isn’t a Republican.
Rememeber: IOKIYAR.
TBone
Seems like JV’s shitposting performative doodling is overcompensating for something. Hmmm, what could it be…
Mr. Bemused Senior
“Incompetence, malevolence, mendacity… and sheer disconnection from reality…”
I’m feeling shrill.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
It’s a “mandate”.
Soprano2
@Nukular Biskits: When I was tutoring adults, the hardest concept to get people to understand was that just because they agreed with something didn’t make it a fact. That’s what the political people take advantage of. I don’t know what can be done about that if Democrats aren’t willing to take advantage of it too.
AM in NC
That post from Chris Jackson is one of the problems we have as Democrats. Just getting the work done isn’t enough – clearly.
Too many Americans apparently need WWE-style bragging in order to recognize any kind of accomplishment. When Dems are in power anywhere, we need to be the ones putting up signs/cutting checks with THE DEMOCRAT WHO DID THIS FOR YOU clearly and proudly obvious.
Every policy accomplishment needs to be broadcast – by the person; by the Party; by all of us.
This is the first I’m hearing about releases from China. Why isn’t this touted EXPLICITLY as “Taken by China under Trump/MAGA. FREE and back home because of BIDEN/DEMOCRATS. Yes – that simple; that in your face.
I know we don’t have the media infrastructure the right has after 1/2 century+ of rightwing billionaire coordination, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ALL be doing this kind of bragging about what. Democrats. Accomplish. Day. In. And. Day. Out.
I’ll be making up stickers about every good thing my Democratic Governor does and the horrors he is able to block and contrasting to Trump and our rabid General Assembly. Real-world reminders of how the GOP is horrible nationally and locally and how the Democrats are better in concrete ways.
Dead pregnant women or not. Price increases from tariffs. Consumer protections enabled or stripped away. Increased monopoly and corporate corruption or fighting these predators. Foreign policy blunders or successes. ALL OF THEM shoved in MAGAs faces in the real world. Over and Over and Over again.
And if you have state-level democrats to contrast with – use the comparison. We have to peel away these people, or get them so down they stay home again.
Another Scott
Stuffing Waffles? Meh. This Breakfast Stuffing Strata sounds very tasty.:
:-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Best-case scenario: we ride out the next two years, fighting every step of the way, and then the 120th Congress repurposes Jack Smith’s work that “Judge” Cannon tried to bury … as an impeachment.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: it’s a boy date! Real men wear diapers™
Baud
@AM in NC:
Won’t happen. All the election post mortems are about what “Democrats” need to do. Ordinary people using their social media voices to promote outcomes they prefer aren’t any significant part of the picture.
That’s by design. The savvy are better off when Republican are in charge.
TBone
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I like it.
Nukular Biskits
@Soprano2:
Morally and ethically, I agree with Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high!”
Problem is that’s great for primary elections, perhaps, but it doesn’t work for general elections given the rampant ignorance of the electorate and its willngness to believe lies over facts. And it doesn’t help that elections are quite often viewed (more so by one side than the other, I submit) as the political equivalent of a WWE smackdown.
ETA: Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that way:
AM in NC
Chief Oshkosh
@Nukular Biskits:
It’s what about half the voters demand AND DESERVE. The rest of us certainly don’t deserve the impending shit-show.
Nukular Biskits
@Chief Oshkosh:
True. We do have to suffer for belligerent ignorance of others.
NotMax
With a nod to Black Friday, Mambo Negro.
;)
the pollyanna from hell
Frege’s Metaphor
And Frege said philosophy is like a city. A city that is like a way. A way which becomes a way to another city.
First of all, a city is like unto philosophy in being more than a simple topology, that is objects with their connective relations. It only takes one singularity of self-reference, one object or relation that is metaphoric, or some one dimension of spirit to gain inconvenient salience and alter a simple into a meta-analytic topology. Analysis gets harder when things are more complex.
If a city is an object, a way is an operator. There is a continuing story in mathematics of objects becoming operators and vice versa. For example, the plane of points can be used as a complete index of the plane of vectors. So it sometimes might be convenient to allow a point to become a vector, a transposition with distance and direction. Like a way.
Philosophy is like a way in being an operator. It alters what it touches. When it touches on itself it becomes a new philosophy. Old philosophy is the material that is reworked. Philosophy is the tool that reworks it. New philosophy is the product that results.
Frege left this narrative as an indirect implication because he was reaching for a dim and distant vision. How does what I would call a meta-analytic topology appear when considered as an object? How does it transform and rearrange objects and relations when it is required to act as an operator? I prefer to imagine Frege breaking through to some later time period briefly as if in a dream.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
I’ve never been a BF shopper. In fact, I hate shopping.
I was planning, however, running to the local bigbox garden center today to pick up material to help build up the back yard. Problem is it’s about 50 degrees, overcast, wind is blowing and it’s hard to get motivated.
prostratedragon
Hive mind strikes again: “Azucar negra” (From Celia Cruz ref a day ago).
TBone
@NotMax: thank you for that interlude. Once again, I was richly rewarded by the algorithm (my elementary school nickname, given by a very tall black girl, was Peppermint Patty, and my childhood household also had a lifelong love affair with all things Charles Schultz).
A detail unnoticed by all but the most ardent Peanuts fans:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6zys0KpEew
p.a.
I know some small businesspeople, a very few of whom hate tRump because of his well documented lifelong history of fucking over small business people. What is different in them from the others who just kiss his ass no matter what? IDK. Maybe they don’t want the next cardboard box be without sparrows and a curtain rod…
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Oblgatory?
:)
Spanky
@Baud: Agreed. What we need is a billionaire who will buy billboard companies across the US and put that kind of messaging on them.
Only way to put the message literally in the face of the electorate.
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: We’re also getting the weather change up here in Virginia. This has been a very mild November but that’s over with now. Time to break out the union suit!
zhena gogolia
@Spanky: Yep.
Suzanne
@Nukular Biskits:
I still think calling it “disinformation” is underlined by a lot of cope. Americans weren’t fooled. On some level, they know what they voted for. There are bad actors who exploit willful dumbassery, but I think we are swimming around in delulu if we think that people who voted for Trump would not have done so had they just been exposed to different media.
Americans are mean. The cruelty is the point.
Another Scott
The election was close again. CookPolitical’s latest numbers have Harris 2,393,418 short of winning the popular vote. DJT at 49.83%, Harris at 48.28%.
Yeah, yeah, the Electoral College. That was close as well (yeah, yeah, and close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades).
He didn’t win a majority of the vote. He didn’t pick up seats in the House. He didn’t do well in down-ballot races. He doesn’t have coat-tails. It wasn’t a blowout. The 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections had special circumstances that do not translate well for the GQP going forward. One could even plausibly argue that the GQP is in its death-rattle stage.
That doesn’t mean that we can sit back and wait for them to implode, of course. Demographics, by default, will not save us because people and groups aren’t static. Among other things, “whiteness” gets redefined over time. Groups (like new immigrants or Hispanics) aren’t uniform and aren’t static and cannot be taken for granted.
The GQP will learn that lesson too.
We have the advantage that we’re willing and able to talk to people and to learn. We don’t come up with grand ideas at think tanks and then push them out and down everywhere as daily talking points. We actually listen to people and take account of their concerns and wishes and problems. Sure, fighting against $100M lies makes it hard. But if it were easy for the other guys they wouldn’t have to spend $100M on lies – they would take that $100M and buy up a small country or try to corner the market on some essential mineral. They spend $100M on lies because they’re desperate.
It’s a slog. It will continue to be a slog. We will have successes. We will have setbacks. We have to keep doing the work.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Nukular Biskits
@Spanky:
Agreed. Having said that, however, what to do if those billboard companies refuse?
Lamar Outdoor Advertising has a history of refusing to place ads with progressive/liberal messages.
I’m not sure what the law dictates here if such advertising is not in the context of an election (i.e., candidate campaign ad or an “issue ad” that allegedly doesn’t support a specific candidate).
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
I limit myself to carefully budgeted online Black Friday shopping. Go forth into the maelstrom in person? Not no way, not no how.
Nukular Biskits
@Geminid:
I also need to do my MWF run but I don’t wanna!
TBone
@NotMax: classic. Sometimes, the old ways are best.
prostratedragon
In The Wiz, one of the modifications is that the story begins on Thanksgiving, where Dorothy is feeling alienated while at family dinner with all her confident relatives. This feeling sends her out into an evening that rapidly switches from cool to cold and snowy — hypothermia weather — whereon she meets her pals and they head for Emerald City.
Apparently, they arrive there on Black Friday.
Nukular Biskits
@Suzanne:
I agree and disagree. Quite frankly, a lot of our fellow Americans ARE that damned stupid and were fooled … witness the spike in searches for “What is a tariff?” right after the election or the buyer’s remorse by Hispanic supporters who voted for Trump.
And then there are those who voted for Trump KNOWING they were being lied to … but didn’t care or thought it wouldn’t negatively affect them.
Again, damned stupid.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
I have no patience on the best of days when I go into retail stores. Ms. Biskits takes me to <shudder> Walmart only under protest and knowing I’m a very unhappy camper the entire time.
Spanky
Well there it is, for the first time this year. Courtesy NWS:
But then comes the downer:
I shouldn’t get excited. I don’t really expect to see too much snow here in tropical Southern Maryland.
Spanky
@Nukular Biskits: I said that our mythical billionaire would own the billboards.
MazeDancer
Absurdly, I am shopping Black Friday deals. Feels somewhere between “oh, good” and “how can I spend this much”.
Reminding myself that if I stick to stuff I need or usually buy, it’s good. And be grateful I can shift expenses.
Chewy is offering a one-day only deal of buy $100 worth of Purina products – which is what my cats agree to eat – get a $40 gift card. Feels like I am getting 40 bucks to buy stuff I would buy anyway. But still a big outlay.
But, also, working on laying in stuff pre-Trump. Like pre-pandemic shopping.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Somewhat related, The Great Blue Norther. Temperatures gone wild.
prostratedragon
For PBS, Derek Guy on Jimi Hendrix and his influential sense of style. Jimi Hendrix’s birthday was yesterday.
Nukular Biskits
@Spanky:
Ref billboards: True.
Ref “snow”: What’s that?
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
Come
sitgripe by me.:)
Suzanne
@Nukular Biskits:
See, this is the kind of thing that makes me think that Americans’ stupidity is motivated by meanness.
Like, I went to shitty public schools. The kind where the teachers talk about “let’s hope some of these kids make it out” and free lunch and breakfast was provided so my classmates wouldn’t go hungry and there was violence on a regular/frequent basis. I still learned what a tariff was in probably sixth grade. I still learned basic civics and the Pythagorean theorem and read “A Modest Proposal” and 1984.
I guarantee you that everyone who wanted to make an enlightened, responsible, rational choice had the tools with which to do that. I think people’s emotional valence is really, really powerful. I think lots of people are angry and that is manifesting as hatefulness, and they are drawn to a politics that aligns with their emotional state.
When we talk about disinformation being an issue — and I agree that it is, I just think of it as a symptom and not a cause — we are not doing a good job putting ourselves in the headspace of others. We are not being cognitively empathetic. We are assuming that others make decisions the way we do, and would have done differently if they consumed the same media we do, or traveled in the same social environments.
Nukular Biskits
@Suzanne:
Make no mistake: I’m not exactly disagreeing with you.
Stupid people can be (and are) mean and mean people can be (and are) stupid.
I know a lot of y’all have seen me use this phrase frequently and are probably tired of me trotting it out but “belligerent ignorance” (or what someone else called “aggressive stupidity”) truly is a thing.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Yeah, Smoot-Hawley was covered in history class. And not in a passing reference.
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
Determined obliviousness.
;)
Another Scott
@Nukular Biskits:
My spidey sense tingles whenever I hear stories like that, stories that are just too [chef’s kiss].
How do we know that that spike in searches wasn’t school kids being given an assignment to look up what a tariff is? Or something similarly innocuous? We don’t.
I’ve still got a grudge about the story we were told that W won in 2004 because of nebulous “moral values” (when a whole 22% put that at the top of the #1 reason list). Grr…
Looking at the Google Trends numbers over the last 90 days, there are 2 spikes in the US – around the election, and around now. Looking worldwide, there are also 2 spikes. And the country at the top of the list? Rwanda. The USA is #11.
[ / get-off-my-lawn ]
We need to be smart about the lessons we learn from this election (and the previous 2 elections with DJT). I’m not convinced that we have a good picture of the lessons yet. It’s still early, IMHO.
My $0.02.
Best wishes,
Scott.
RevRick
@WaterGirl:
@Nukular Biskits:
@AM in NC:
Yesterday, I watched a Reels on Facebook where they were discussing the development of the A-bomb, and the one man said, “Einstein’s fact that E=mcsquared” was insufficient to mobilize the effort. You need a story. And those who have stories have more power than those who have facts.”
Those who have stories have more power than those who have facts.
Well, it also turns out that some stories are more powerful than others. Showing up and doing the work is a story, but it’s a tepid one, lacking emotional work.
The Democratic Party used to be the party of the working class. We’ve lost the white part and are bleeding the nonwhite part. Our tepid stories no longer resonate with them. And that’s because we don’t connect our policy goals with their values of a well-ordered home, a well-ordered family, and a well-ordered community.
The working class sees us, through the lens of GOP-storytelling, as bringers of disorder.
The social changes our Democratic Party has fostered with regards to rights for blacks, women and the LGBTQ+ community have created a lot of anxiety and stress amongst working class people, because they have blasted apart the carefully constructed order of the 1950s world.
What Democrats need to do is create a story that says two things:
1). GOP policies are the source of disorder;
2). Democrats aim to create a new and healthier order for homes, families and communities.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Makes one rub their hands in anticipation of the vandals wrecking NOAA.
Suzanne
@Nukular Biskits: I know you’re not. I think, in general, the people that post here are really good, kind people, and we have a hard time putting ourselves in the headspace of those who aren’t. It’s a cognitive failing, but it’s not a moral failing, you know?
I just think we are failing to understand how much of what is happening around us is driven by resentment-bordering-on-contempt. Like, all those working-class people (not all white, but lots of white) who voted for Trump? They don’t hate billionaires. They think being a billionaire is fucking cool. They don’t really know any billionaires, but they don’t feel an oppositional relationship. They feel an aspirational affinity.
But you know who they hate, or at least find deeply fucken irritating? Liberals. They largely don’t like us, they don’t aspire to the same things we aspire to, they resent that we might be a half-click more successful. They don’t share many of our values and we are not hearing it. We think they should direct their ire at rich capitalists, but that’s not how social status games work.
dm
@Suzanne: From age 8 to 13 my parents dragged me to Catechism class every Saturday. I absorbed absolutely nothing (though I did have flashbacks in college when I read the fire-and-brimstone priest in *Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*), despite being a good student. I was already an atheist since I was already a science nerd.
When I realized that, for lots of people, things like math, or civics, or history, or sceince were as relevant to them as religious doctrine was to me, with the consequent lack of attention and retention, I became a lot more forgiving of the academic failings of people in general.
brantl
@Nukular Biskits: If you hear something A MILLION TIMES it creeps into your subconscious.
danielx
@Nukular Biskits:
If I was told I had to either go to a shopping center today or have a root canal, I’d have to think it over.
prostratedragon
@Nukular Biskits: There’s this fucking guy who I know has been exposed to these discussions, who I’ve been calling militantly ignorant. It’s a weapn on offense, as well as offensive.
TBone
@prostratedragon: thank you for that. Was spending some Kohl’s cash coupon money recently and one of the Xmas hires had very, very wide bell bottoms on. Cartoonishly wide. So far, I’ve only been brave enough to wear my new, pink, bell bottom sweatpants with cargo pockets around the house.
Suzanne
@dm: Sure. Lots of us decide that some stuff isn’t relevant to us for whatever reason.
But that’s not the same as being fooled. That’s not the same as being lied to. The underlying emotional state of not giving a fuck is the reason you don’t remember stuff, not because an educational or media environment failed.
George
@Nukular Biskits: Yeah, well it is not the American voters who enjoy being lied to. At least not 74,441,442 of us.
It is maybe 10 million or so voters–including probably under a million total in the swing states–that are the problem. The task at hand is how to get them either to vote for Democratic candidates or to stay home and not vote at all.
TBone
@Another Scott: hard agree
prostratedragon
@TBone: Well then, it’s time to step out!
Suzanne
@RevRick:
And, to be fair, on some level this is true. We have been trying to tear down a social order that privileged some over others based on immutable characteristics.
TBone
@RevRick: always love the perspective you bring, a lot of us are storytellers at heart. Stories illustrate concepts like nothing else can. As opposed to lies.
dm
@Suzanne: (sorry, I don’t mean to be picking on you — it’s just that you’re touching on some things I’ve thought for a while)
When I hear people talk about liberals, I hear a mirror image of the same resentment I’ve felt when a Fundamentalist trots out some Biblical justification for their moral certainty on some topic (abortion, LGBTQ, sparing-the-rod-and-spoiling-the-child, etc.). They don’t have the right to impose their moral code on me, but from their point of view, liberalism is a moral code, too, with moral pronouncements on things like bigotry, yes, but also on things like excessive use of fossil fuels, pronouns, walkable cities.
Just as they rub me the wrong way, I realize I can rub them that way, too.
(As to Biblical justifications, I always reply, “The Bible is a big book. People find in it what they go looking for.”)
Baud
@Suzanne: Agree.
George
The rightwing does not spend a lot of time calling Americans stupid or idiots. The rightwing has its specific targets, which it attacks with great gusto. Were I a normie and I read a comment by someone who accused me of idiocy simply for being an American, I’d tune out that commenter’s otherwise legitimate argument.
NotMax
@TBone
Did someone say bell bottoms?
:)
Baud
@dm:
Agree. We don’t want to fight the culture war because we’re addicted to blaming “messaging” for our failures.
Baud
@George:
Agree.
ETA: you deleted it.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
Exactly. It’s why when I see a prominent Dem say “we just need to show up and get the work done”, I do a face palm cuz as said by others above, that alone doesn’t cut it by a looooong shot. It’s all still hot takes.
Our messaging is an issue and how to connect what we do with what’s important to the electorate (at least those that sat on their asses this time around) but also the fact we tend to walk away for too long after these elections when we need to be doing this 24/7/365 the way the GOP wurlitzer does.
George
@Baud: Thanks.
Yes, I apologize for deleting it. I didn’t want my point to sound too snarky.
I reposted something similar, the gist being that making blanket comments about the intelligence of Americans in general will not help further our causes.
Another Scott
@RevRick: +1
I think we have to keep in mind that we’re a big, complicated country. The H-W and Democratic messaging worked in lots of places. For some reason, a lot of Biden-Harris voters didn’t vote for Harris-Walz. The reasons probably vary (Black / woman / change / housing and food costs / support for Israel / DJT will end Russia’s war on Ukraine and keep all that money here at home / lack of memory of what DJT’s time was like / Biden fixed it so it’s time for the GQP to be in charge again / she’s too short and smiles and laughs too much / Taylor Swift was mean / etc., etc.) [ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ] And voter suppression is still a thing. Grr…
The next elections will be different than 2016, 2020, 2024 – we are guaranteed that. Thinking carefully about the path forward – and not learning the wrong lessons (or learning the right lessons but those lessons being wrong for the next election) is essential.
One constant is that the GQP wants to take us back while our problems and the needed solutions are very different now. It’s an easily predictable disaster that we can and must avoid – somehow…
If Wikler and MOM both run for DNC chair, I hope we’ll hear their debates on what they see as the path(s) forward.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
DougL
@Suzanne:
That is such an important point. Too many (most?) Americans absolutely worship money. It is the only true value they have. Two critical points imo: we have to adapt to the voters we have not the ones we wish we had; and we have to work like hell to build a culture and info ecosystem that will move the voters more toward being the voters we want. This latter point is the work now.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
They think we look down on them
Truth is , I don’t think enough about them to look down on them.
I am just going about my business, living my life and think others should to.
When I do think about them, I think that they are PHUCKING STUPID 😡 to think that the billionaires that they worship give two shyts about them.
And, don’t get me thinking too hard about me and my blue state compatriots are basically PAYING FOR THEIR PHUCKING LIVES IN THOSE LEECHING RED STATES, and they have the audacity to resent US 😡😡😡
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@George:
Markos said this in a piece back on the 19th and it bears repeating:
Chief Oshkosh
@Spanky: Well, we had that with Turner. But it would’ve been too icky to make use of it. Apparently.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
Which is why those bitten by their cruelty deserve nothing but a
“The Black Lady wouldn’t have done this to you”
When it happens to them.
And, whatever we have in terms of a information system needs to amplify everyone of those cases that we run into over the next 4 years.
UncleEbeneezer
I think this vastly overstates the amount of thought that goes into voting, for a large swath of voters. We found out that my wife’s niece voted for Trump and it’s really difficult to pinpoint a reason why. She’s just kind of a dumb-ass, low-info contrarian with no coherent political outlook whatsoever. To paraphrase a Chris Hayes quote from his days doing extensive work with Undecided voters: it’s not that they can’t tell you which issue is most important to them, it’s that many of them don’t even seem to understand the very concept of what an “issue” is. This sounds exactly like our niece (and several members of my side of the family too). And I think they make a bigger part of the Electorate than we often acknowledge. They have stunning ignorance of actual policy/facts, but think they are smart. They vote based on vibes. Those vibes often have no obvious logic/explanation. So I’m very hesitant to say they “know” what they voted for. Not because I want to give them a pass, but because I just don’t think they are as logical as that claim assumes.
TBone
@NotMax: oh I love that very much! She’s usually an acquired taste for me but that suits her to a T!
rikyrah
Dr. Carlotta Berry, PhD 🪷 NoireSTEMinist® 🤖 (@DrCABerry) posted at 6:49 PM on Wed, Nov 27, 2024:
A point of view is I like cheese pizza and you like pepperoni. A point of view is NOT supporting a bigoted, lying, racist, sexist lying criminal who can enact policies and put people in administration that can hurt the me and the people I love. This is not rocket science.
(https://x.com/DrCABerry/status/1861935453873532948?t=KRfSujzAzsuJJfoPHuXYUw&s=03)
rikyrah
Mr. Scott (@MrCBScott) posted at 4:18 PM on Fri, Nov 08, 2024:
Men – neither Black or white – have explained how the Dems left them out.
Why? Because they weren’t left out. Those men who say that are just too chicken shit to say they hate women and hate the LBGTQ community. They don’t like how Dems fight for the rights of everyone.
(https://x.com/MrCBScott/status/1855011940554490035?t=zU_GS4IMDTGTVdV5O2XYlQ&s=
03)
Suzanne
@rikyrah:
Agree.
I have noted before that one of the things I find most weird about conservatives is deep, abiding, unhealthy interest in the lives and opinions of others.
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
Justin is a Parody (@worthlessjus10) posted at 0:37 PM on Fri, Nov 08, 2024:
They were raised by bitter GenX fathers who realize that they have never contributed to progress in any way and have loudly blamed women and minorities for their lackluster lives…
Told their sons they the world was unfair…
(https://x.com/worthlessjus10/status/1854956481604628780?t=XGfl–nmvueubLQeGWl1AA&s
=03)
narya
THIS. I’d feel better about it if it was going to help poor and struggling folks and if the governments of red states weren’t trying so hard to maintain levels of poverty among their residents, especially black residents.
RevRick
@TBone:
@Another Scott:
@Suzanne:
Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. And you’re right, Suzanne, we have created disorder. What we need to say over and over and over again is that we aim to build a better, healthier order.
Liberalism, by definition, is disruptive. We are never satisfied with what is.
And so, to build on what I said, we need to articulate a simple message of our vision of where we want to go. And take our cues from the advertising industry which says that a message needs to be repeated six times before half the people half hear it.
rikyrah
Rachel Janfaza (@racheljanfaza) posted at 0:23 PM on Thu, Nov 07, 2024:
Young women backed Harris +18, while young men backed Trump +14, according to an updated estimate via @CivicYouth.
The stark gender gap confirms what young people had been telling me. Young women felt they were voting for their lives, young men felt ostracized by Democrats. https://t.co/WwL1zbYTmE
(https://x.com/racheljanfaza/status/1854590450205671485?t=TRV4zEk2nZePHvvSMGQF7Q&s=
03)
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
Casey Lewis 🪷 (@cynical_tutu) posted at 9:52 AM on Fri, Nov 08, 2024:
So basically young men can’t be counted on to do the right thing unless their delicate egos are stroked, coddled, and wrapped in soft fuzzy blankets is what you’re telling us.
(https://x.com/cynical_tutu/status/1854914803254382785?t=m0VQ-_h3GGKHF4fUWNS1LA&s=0
3)
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
That’s a good one!
TBone
@NotMax: I should have said “suits us to a T!” (Me and Betty.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@UncleEbeneezer: I look at what Trump voters thought were NOT deal breakers. Storming the capitol? Felony conviction? Women dying for lack of gyn care? OK. I see.
Nukular Biskits
@Another Scott:
That’s a good point and I have to admit I didn’t dig too deeply into those reports about a spike in election-related internet searches AFTER the election.
I’ll also admit that, for the moment, I’ll take any/all schadenfreude, real or imagined.
TBone
@Another Scott: glad that RevRick pointed me back upwards to read that.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
More better put than I could.
Suzanne
@RevRick:
I think one of the hardest things for me in the last few years was really internalizing that lots of people don’t want things to get better for everyone. Like, conceivably, economic growth is not zero-sum; we could improve absolute status for everyone. And I think that would be great and it’s a noble goal, and one that I think the Democratic Party has largely held.
But social status doesn’t work that way, cultural capital doesn’t work that way. It is a zero-sum game, it is the high school cafeteria of life. The swath of people who want things to get better for themselves but not others….. I cannot find common ground there.
Sparrows, curtain rods, etc.
gene108
@AM in NC:
How do Democrats get themselves heard over the right-wing noise machine?
That’s the biggest obstacle to Democrats having better “messaging”. The right-wing media noise machine was able to stand reality on its head this election in the minds of too many.
Nukular Biskits
@Suzanne:
which reminds me of this:
No Nym
@Suzanne: “I still think calling it “disinformation” is underlined by a lot of cope. Americans weren’t fooled. On some level, they know what they voted for.”
Wholeheartedly agree. My hot take the day after the election was “great Dem candidate, great campaign, shitty citizens.” Nothing I have read or heard has altered my point of view.
Baud
@gene108: I think the biggest obstacle to our messaging is that fact that our side spend 3 and 1/2 years complaining about our people for not being good enough and then expect the country to believe us when we spend the 6 months before an election telling them how awesome we are.
zhena gogolia
We mostly stayed away from politics last night, but we did spend a few minutes marveling at how all problems with unreliable voting machines, voter fraud, etc., were totally eliminated this year!
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I agree. And I have no idea how to solve it.
Soprano2
QFT because I think this is a key insight.
Nukular Biskits
@zhena gogolia:
I can’t speak for everyone who attended the Zoom last night but I think it was refreshing and a bit cathartic to discuss a wide-range of non-political issues.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: Like everything hard to solve. Start small and build up. You can’t expect the existing system to change by pleading with it. You have to create a replacement
tl;dr Be an Anne Laurie.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Is the battle over emojis considered political?
JoyceH
@Nukular Biskits: I’ve always said that Americans vote based on two assumptions: one is that someday they’ll be rich, and the other is that they will never grow old.
Suzanne
@Nukular Biskits: Agree.
But look at who they don’t see as a fellow traveler: normal-ass mediocre-state-school college grads like me and my husband, who have to work, and make a very middle-class income. If there was a class consciousness, there would be every reason in the world to look at people like us as having similar goals and class interests. We probably are at similar income levels.
The staggering educational polarization — that only exists among white people — is a big clue, IMO.
Sandia Blanca
Interesting paper on how a sense of moral outrage causes people to share misinformation without investigating it first:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl2829
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: thank you! I sometimes wonder if, when I post links or tell a story, the many-faceted point(s) I was trying to illustrate is heard or understood. Then someone here tells me that they did get it, and all is right with the world. Sometimes I need to make several comments in a thread before even I comprehend the full nature of what I’m trying to illustrate, so thanks all for your gracious patience.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
Which is why this is NOT a disagreement about politics.
This is about values.
When people say..
You should feel sorry for the guy who.voted.to.take.away.Obamacare
But wanted to keep his Affordable Care Act
I say Phuck Outta Here
When he voted to kill Obamacare…he thought someone was getting their healthcare through Obamacare,but didn’t think twice about TAKING AWAY THAT PERSON’S HEALTHCARE.
SO PHUCK HIM.
YES, I HOPE HE AND HIS CANCEROUS RIDDEN MAMA LOSE THEIR OBAMACARE. THEY VOTED FOR IT 😡😡😡
JoyceH
Notice how what used to be called “investment advice” is now called “wealth management”? Nice framing, convincing the modest middle class that their little retirement accounts puts them in the same interest group as our billionaire oligarchy.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: target: bullseye
Baud
@Sandia Blanca:
I saw and reposted that on Blue sky. Very interesting.
TBone
@JoyceH: bingo. What they actually manage is to get a larger portion of your “wealth” away from you than they deserve.
I will never not be angry about opaque fee schedules and the like.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud: Depends on whether Cole is around.
mali muso
@rikyrah: Come sit by me.
Sandia Blanca
@Baud: Thanks Baud. I didn’t remember who first posted it there. Describes a couple of my inlaws to a T.
Nukular Biskits
@JoyceH:
Now that you mention it, yes. Clever marketing indeed.
Nukular Biskits
Pecan pie and coffee for breakfast.
JoyceH
Personal topic. So far COVID is like a mild cold with always the underlying thought “this could turn so much worse”. Now add in a long holiday weekend and top it off with a dog who has either irritated eyes or an infection. I called my vet, thinking we could do a parking lot dog turn-over like they did during the pandemic. Turns out if you’re definitely infected, they won’t even do that. Both mobile vets are off for the weekend. I found a dog eye drop on Amazon that says it’s for eye irritation and eye infections. The vet tech I talked to on the phone who told me I couldn’t bring my dog in also tried to discourage me from trying it – the dog hasn’t been seen by them and they don’t know what the problem is, yada yada. But heck, it’ll be delivered tomorrow and surely it’s better than no treatment at all until I’m no longer infectious which could be a week or more.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Nukular Biskits:
The Steinbeck quote has been rattling around in my brain for the last week or so as the general, usually amorphously-explained concept of sohshulism is bandied about.
Andrew S said something back in March 2021 that still resonates with me and describes so much of what we just saw play out:
And since this is so baked in message wise, it helps explain why asshats like the Teamsters this time around didn’t endorse a Dem. And all the other examples we’ve discussed since the election.
Our part-time approach to messaging again bites us in the ass because we’re trying to make up lost ground in such a short amount of time.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Nukular Biskits: apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, sweet potato pie. A balanced breakfast.
Starfish
@narya: What do we do when state government is unhealthy? There was some investment in reducing gerrymanders. I would like to see some investment in reducing the number of disenfranchising crimes and so on. In states where it is incredibly hard to do ballot initiatives, I would like to see efforts to make it easier. We need regular investment instead of let’s dump more money than a single candidate can ever use on a candidate.
TBone
@JoyceH: a cautionary tale about a cat that had an infected eye. Vet prescribed an ointment that made it ten times worse (half her head swelled up to softball size) so we had to rush kitty back in for a different prescription that saved her eye, just barely.
Could your pet simply have a cold or a mild case of Covid? Runny eyes are frequently a symptom of “just a cold” in cats, but my experience with illness in dogs is very limited.
Nukular Biskits
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I’m following up the pecan pie with chocolate/caramel/something cheesecake.
I REGRET NOTHING!
JiveTurkin
A substantial number of young man seem to be fanboy types – Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, MMA, etc. Musk is a nutjob who clearly hates women (he acts like they are birthing receptacles), Rogan is a phony bothsideserist who ultimately bitches about wokeism, aka as treating all people with respect, not just white males, and Dana White epitomizes the MMF, as the owner he treats his employees like shit but will tolerate any behavior from the stars. What is the common threads of these types? Money, and the ability to get away with things that normally would get you into a shitload of trouble. Some of these young males see these types and think “boy, that is some cool shit. I’d love to get any woman I want, even if she says no. Besides, she probably means yes anyway.”
BlueGuitarist
@WaterGirl:
$115 million in negative ads against Sherrod Brown and $111 million against Casey seems a big part of the story. (In each case about 30 million more than outside spending against the R candidates.)
Next most in outside spending against US Senate candidates: Montana: 64 Million vs Tester, 64 million v Sheehy.
Starfish
@JoyceH: Bryan Johnson is taking advantage of that second group of folks by selling them expensive dietary supplements.
Sandia Blanca
Good post from Jess Piper about four types of white women who voted for t*rump:
https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/trumps-women?triedRedirect=true
narya
@Starfish: Yup. Marc Elias is doing a lot of work on the voter suppression front in these states (and just got a win in Mississippi, I think). It’s difficult, because SCOTUS has decided that the REAL racism is against white people (barf), and that gerrymandering by race is no big deal. I look to folks like Rev. Barber and Stacey Abrams for on the ground efforts, but fighting gerrymandering is going to continue to be difficult.
Starfish
@JoyceH: I wouldn’t trust things found on Amazon because there is so much unregulated stuff going on there. I would be concerned that the drops aren’t real or the drops are harmful.
I am sorry that you and the dog are going through all this, and I hope you feel better soon.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Sandia Blanca:
Jess is great. From that piece:
Having lived in her world of red, rurl Misery for 22+ years, it’s refreshing to have her voice still there and getting a broader audience.
Kristine
@JoyceH:
But over time you find your account being moved from the main advisor to an assistant, and it dawns on you where you really stand.
Starfish
@narya: Yes, fighting gerrymandering will be tough. That is where regular investment is needed
Suzanne
@JiveTurkin:
Also, success (financial, social) with low effort.
piratedan
apologies for the following crudeness in this observation.
Attention young men of America… we hear your laments that you are not getting enough pussy in these trying times. You hate that women have a desired resource and are denying you access to it. Why are they denying access to it? After all, they have the same wants and desires as yourself, but what has changed my young man is that with the people you support politically, denies them the safety to copulate relatively risk free of potential entanglements… after all, do you want to be a baby daddy right now? Do you? If she sleeps with you and while that was wonderful you would like to sample other items in the shop… ? Do you want to dread that phone call from that hookup two months ago when you were both drunk in that bar? Or that awkward 3rd date when you found out that she was a fan of your dreaded sportsball rival? Your vote for old white dudes who aren’t dipping their wicks these days makes the women nervous about putting out, plain and simple.
To be brief, if you want access to women to be open to doing the deed, you need to provide them the environment that allows them to do so. No bodily autonomy, no nookie. If you insist on voting with your dick, why are you voting for peeps who scare the everloving fuck out of women?
that message might reach the men of the younger generations. maybe.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Starfish:
https://democraticredistricting.com/
AM in NC
@RevRick: I love this framing. Because it is meaningful, compelling and true.
Baud
@narya:
Marc Elias is a goddamn hero.
kalakal
@Nukular Biskits:
It had that effect on me too
eclare
@Sandia Blanca:
Interesting article. Thanks.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Now, if only someone will do a cover of Foreigner’s Jukebox Hero with that in mind …
Damned good album, IMHO, BTW.
narya
@Baud: He really is. He’s one of those people that makes me wish I were 35 years younger so I could try to work for him. I also really appreciate his fact-based, level-headed approach; I was very happy when the Harris campaign brought him on board at one point.
The Audacity of Krope
Roughly half the voters think elected office is a job, half think it’s reality TV. The latter group seems to turn everything to shit in half the time they accomplished last time whenever they attain power.
So in two years, whatever elections we scrape together in what will undoubtedly be a smoldering crater of a country ought to be a sharp reprisal of Trump.
May history let the lesson stick this time.
Starfish
These Republicans sure love Jesus.
https://www.chron.com/culture/religion/article/ken-paxton-austin-church-lawsuit-19946766.php
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope:
A lot of them think elections are the best way to work through their feelings of anger and inadequacy, too.
The Audacity of Krope
@Starfish: Big lovers of religious freedom and churches being free to minister to their communities as they see fit, these Republicans.
zhena gogolia
@Nukular Biskits: I’m sorry I missed it (I was referring to our IRL dinner with friends).
The Audacity of Krope
Personally, I find a lot more validation and emotional healing in finding attractive people to tell me about my inadequacy using very particular methods.
HeleninEire
@rikyrah: To quote you: “NO LIE TOLD!”
I never think about those people, except when I’m pissed that they think NY is filled with Welfare Queens that they are paying for.
And to quote yet another, very much missed, BJ friend, efgoldman. “Fuck ’em”
Glidwrith
@RevRick: To me, order equals stagnation, rigidity, the death of societies.
The order my small town offered would have killed me, if I hadn’t left.
That same order was busy killing gay folks, minorities, women that didn’t “know their place”.
However much these assholes want to pretend, life has always been change, adapt or die.
I don’t have answers either, I’m still blisteringly furious.
The Audacity of Krope
This is how it’s generally perceived and certainly the notion the media pushes but, make no mistake, they’re the ones busy looking down on us.
I’m not sitting in my house plotting how to make America live according to my values and just my values. I want freedom and maybe for some of my tax money to promote opportunities for the community.
Citizen Alan
@Nukular Biskits: The lies work because they tell lies that their followers want to hear and wish to believe are true
And then I spent five minutes trying to think of an analogy for a Democratic liar who might be able to deceive liberal voters the same way and couldn’t do it. The closest I could come up with was the people in 2020 who kept insisting that medicare for all was doable. And even they weren’t lying so much as giving the answer to a math problem without showing their work.
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: Do people grow pecans where you live? I know they do in Georgia.
One neat thing about Roswell, New Mexico is the pecan orchards outside town. They’re irrigated from a big aquifer that underlies the area. The same aq3ifer feeds the Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge that’s also on the outskirts of town.
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope:
Hot.
Starfish
@Geminid: People grow pecans in Mississippi, but my recollection was that there were pecan trees that are just around, and we would collect them off the ground.
The Audacity of Krope
@Suzanne: Damn sure is. I’d link to the videos, but this is a family site. Purportedly.
AM in NC
@JoyceH: Same thing with how they substituted Death Tax for Estate Tax.
Everyone dies; less than 2% of Americans pay any estate taxes (and probably far less than that now that the limits have been raised and raised again).
But ask most voters, and they think the gubmint is coming for the $250,000 in home equity they have to leave to their kids (if they have even that much).
Constant repetition of lies and misleading information is a serious problem we have to grapple with.
rikyrah
@JoyceH:
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Glory b
@Nukular Biskits: Because if we do, the loud lefties immediately pivot to what DIDN’T GET DONE in the meantime. Help one part of the country? “What about the other parts!” Wages increase? “You’re ignoring all the people that are still in need!” Roads fixed? “Why nothing yet for people who use public transportation!” Everything here is great? “What about Gaza!”
When those who purport to be on our side are constantly minimizing what gets done, they are the ones constantly getting amplified.
According to an Axios poll, college students rated Gaza as #14 on their list of important issues. That has to be one of the most media-distorted issues of the modern era.
Republicans fall in line & win.
Give them this, it’s a long game & they know how to play it. Roe, for example, they patiently voted for DECADES, but they ultimately got it.
Meanwhile, young people who think they know more than they do said they weren’t voting for Biden because “Roe was overturned on his watch & he didn’t do anything!”
rikyrah
@Sandia Blanca:
I love Ms Piper 😍
Geminid
There is a big story coming out of northwest Syria. This week Syrian rebels launched an attack from the besieged city of Idlib that was intended to push Bashir Assad’s artillery back out of range of Idlib. But Assad’s forces ran, and now the rebels are in central Aleppo.
In 2016 it took the Syrian Army over four months to conquer Aleppo, with the help of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Over 33,000 people lost their lives in the battle.
Now the rebels have taken the city back in three days, and along with it extensive stockpiles of arms and ammunition abandoned by Assad’s panicked troops.
Baud
Glory b
@piratedan: There was actually a commercial like that. A young man & woman in a bed, she says something like “Oh, it broke. That’s okay, I have the morning after pill in the bathroom.
Next, we see him (bare chested) opening a medicine cabinet. When he closes it, there’s the jump-scare of an older white man in a suit & tie telling him she can’t have that.
Then a message about various forms of birth control in danger of being eliminated.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Our left flank keeps attacking us more than they do Rs. And they did that for 4 years straight. Biden enacted most of their priorities and got called Genocide Joe as a thankyou.
And our party grandees like Nancy Pelosi gave the NYT and elite media what they wanted Biden’s head on a platter. And as predicted it didn’t end well.
Blaming others is easy. Those ostensibly on our side also caused us harm
This result was brought to us by mostly white people and their adjacents from other demographics who think that in apartheid America they will be considered “special”.
Gvg
@NotMax: you are living in the past. Black Friday shopping on the actual day in person is now boring and anticlimactic. There are no crowds. BF shopping started online and in stores about 3 weeks ago and is stretched out with new sales each week so people have got it out of the system. Also its more online with no crowds.
I go. Look for cheap movies because browsing online is frustating and i prefer to own. Also fabric. I like to touch for texture before i buy new to me things made of cloth, if i can. There are more clerks on bf per customers than ordi ary days and checkout is pretty easy.
Another Scott
@Sandia Blanca: Thanks for the pointer. The 66 page PDF Supplementary Information is a free download.
(Emphasis added.)
Hmmm….
;-)
Still, an interesting study that’s well worth thinking carefully about.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
Then you drew the wrong lesson from that poll statistic. They had only called two states whenn wolf blitzer, to kill air time, read out that poll result. And I immediately turned off the TV, took a stiff drink, and went to bed early, certain that bush was going to be reelected, because the poll result told me that flat out demonizing gays and lesbians had been successful in motivating one voter in five to vote GOP. No one in 2004 or in 2024 who answered “morals and values” when asked “what was the most important factor in the election?” voted for a democrat. Because in that context, “morals and values” meant “who are you having sex with and under what circumstances.” For 22% of American voters, you can lie, cheat, steal and even kill with impunity, but do not have sex outside of a heterosexual marriage. If you do, every bad thing that happens to you is a punishment from god, from an unplanned pregnancy that ends a girl’s college aspirations at the age of sixteen to gay men dying in a gutter from aids. To the republican, that is the only former morality that exists.
piratedan
@Glory b: to be fair, I am really unsure about advocating that type of messaging, I’m much more of a proponent of a more altruistic message, but you have to find a way to reach the intended audience with a message that serves their own self-interest.
Citizen Alan
IIRC, Jesus had a few things to say about that. Mostly to the effect that people who feel that way are all going to burn in hell.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: Joe Stiglitz, an economist I normally respect, had a piece in the Guardian the other day lecturing Democrats on the need to abandon neoliberalism, without the slightest acknowledgement that Biden just spent 4 years implementing as much of a Keynesian policy agenda as he could, and much more than I would have thought possible. When we never give our own side credit for anything, we’re shooting ourselves in both feet.
Another Scott
@Citizen Alan: Yeahbut, my recollection is that the 22% was sold as “most”. Not that 78% said something else was their #1 most important thing.
E.g. PewTrusts.org from November 2004.
(Emphasis added.) And Pew actually added some qualifications.
22% is less than the The Crazification Factor.
And the analysis in the popular press was very sloppy – they were more than happy to be led around by the Christianists and the GQP monsters.
The previous cite says:
Too much of US politics is just so stories. I don’t know how to get around that, except to push back on simple “obvious” explanations for events – things that the popular press these days is designed to shovel down our throats…
My $0.02.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Steve LaBonne:
TBF those feet had it coming.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat:
Fixed that for you.
Melancholy Jaques
@Suzanne:
Agree with every word.
Our politics this entire century has been about white people’s anger. Angry about what varies, but every fucking election we have to deal with the same thing. When we lose, it’s because we made them angry or didn’t care about their anger. When we win, everyone says we have to reach out to them to mollify their anger.
So the question is, why are they always angry? And it’s not racism. It can’t be racism. Anyone who says it is, is the real racist.
narya
In completely good news: Goose Island 2024 Bourbon County Stout is available today, including a bunch of variants.
Melancholy Jaques
@Nukular Biskits:
I’ve used willful ignorance, but I like your phrase better. I think it’s more accurate.
Citizen Alan
Well, the fact that our media is mostly innumerate and thinks the word plurality is just another way of saying most is a completely different issue.
My point still remains that 22% responding to morals and values is still a disturbingly high figure if you assume, as I do, that morals and values are simply buzzwords for agrees with the evangelical position on sexual politics.
The Audacity of Krope
I vote on morals and values and I find the evangelical position on sexual politics to be degenerate, grotesque, and dangerous.
Nukular Biskits
@Geminid:
Yep. All over the place. And around the Grand Bay, AL, area as well.
Glory b
@Melancholy Jaques: Ha.
I’ve mentioned it before, read “Dying of Whitenss: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland” by Jonathan Metzl.
Melancholy Jaques
@George:
Neither do Democratic electeds or candidates. You won’t find anyone who speaks more highly of Americans than Joe Biden.
What the rightwing does do is spend all their time calling Americans evil. Every day they tell their followers that we are trying to destroy America, to destroy them.
Steve LaBonne
@The Audacity of Krope: I absolutely, positively, vote my UU morality and values.
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques:
It’s racism, yeah, but it isn’t just racism.
It is equally misogyny and the desire for a social order in which women exist at the sufferance of men, under their sexual and economic control. It is also a hatred of a capitalist order that rewards those with higher education ever-so-slightly more than those without.
A couple of years ago, on Cole’s Book of Faces page, I got into it with one of his non-blog contacts. A dude. Who expressed some degree of indignation that I, a woman who went to college and who moves a mouse around for much of the day, earn more money than a guy who hangs drywall. Ever since then, I see it everywhere: resentment-to-loathing that some people make more money than them, that some of those people are women, that some of those people were better than they were at school, that doing well at school shouldn’t make any difference in life outcomes.
Remember, when they say they believe in “hard work”, they only mean “physical labor performed by men”.
The Audacity of Krope
But they talk to their voters as though they were idiots and we talk to voters like they’re educated adults.
Somehow the end result of this is we make a lot of voters feel stupid.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: And then they vote against the party that WANTS them to make more money, and often against organizing under a union that wants to help them make more money.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
I’ll confess I didn’t know until just now that there was a Peanuts Thanksgiving special. A Charlie Brown Christmas? Of course! “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”? Definitely! But no idea that there’d been a Thanksgiving special.
So needless to say, I wasn’t familiar with this subtle moment in that special.
Steve LaBonne
@The Audacity of Krope: Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Hard to believe Snowmageddon was <15 years ago. It's been a few years now since we had nontrivial snow.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne:
But they don’t want to just make more money, if I also make more money. They want, very specifically, to make more money than me. They want me to have not gotten into graduate school so that a man could have had my place, and I would have been financially dependent on a man instead.
Shakti
@different-church-lady:
Why is shitposting = governing?
Why is shitposting on fka Twitter the main thing these turkeys got elected for? (It isn’t, but they definitely fulfil that promise and that Rumble isn’t going to take off JD)
@rikyrah: If only my financial situation hadn’t shit the bed in the great recession, and I didn’t need to be near my parents, I wouldn’t be in Florida. Surrounded by …idiots. I miss home. So it goes.
I’m at “I wish nothing good happens again for them.”
The Audacity of Krope
While true, I don’t really understand this phenomenon. Learning is empowering and often awe-inspiring. I don’t understand how people go through life not wanting to understand more and more of what is happening around them.
People would rather be “savvy,” with their knee jerk hot takes. Conventional wisdom is a hell of a drug, especially when these sheep convince themselves these “everybody knows” insights are the product of their own independent thought.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Plenty of plumbers make more than I ever did! But they still want more than I can give them, which is me acknowledging their superiority. I can’t do it, not because I lack respect for skilled tradespeople, but because I simply don’t classify human beings as superiors and inferiors.
Steve LaBonne
@The Audacity of Krope: Part of it is that our schools generally do treat kids whose strong suit is not desk/pen/paper skills as inferior. I can’t blame them for resenting that.
Steve LaBonne
@Shakti: Short answer is that’s what Republican primary voters want. The latter have been brainwashed into believing that the only thing government can do for them is harm the people they hate. They don’t even have a concept of competent governance but they sure hate it when they see it.
The Audacity of Krope
@Steve LaBonne: Yeah, we ought to change that. Not only treating less academic kids as inferior but instilling the value of technical skills in the more academic group.
I’m a long-since past A student who realized too late that knowing my way around a wrench would have been useful in my adult life.
StringOnAStick
I had a wingnut at a family gathering (not my family, and the ground rules were “no politics” ) say that “we need daycare provided by government just like public schools”. I agreed and said that is how most of Western Europe does it, while his wife at the same time was giving him shit for “you sound like a damned democrat!” . His response was yeah, I don’t ever want to be one of THOSE! I didn’t keep pushing in the GOP plans for public education, out of respect for the host, a close friend who tries to keep the family together and was immediately on scene reinforcing the no politics rule.
These are two blue collar workers who spend every evening hour in their local bar, with their 14 year old daughter who of course thinks this is totally normal. The bar even set up a special area for him when he was recovering from knee replacement surgery. These are MAGATs that will never be converted no matter how bad it gets for them. His job doing fabricating at a drone maker making bank supplying Ukraine is likely to be negatively impacted soon. I guess that’s what they voted for.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: She is great, isn’t she?
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne:
I have a slightly different perspective on this. I am an architect, and I have spent years of my career working on job sites, working with general and subcontractors, engineers, etc. Architecture is still majority men at the higher levels, but contracting and engineering is still overwhelmingly men. The amount of condescension and disregard and harassment I have experienced in those environments is…. not small.
I deeply enjoy — in a fucked-up way — when men who treat me like they thought I was going to bring them coffee find out that I know more than they do, or that they have to treat me with a level of respect or even deference.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: They let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It drives me crazy because they seem to have an outsized voice.
The Audacity of Krope
@Soprano2: This group you describe is essentially shut out of mainstream media outlets except when they pull a useful quote from some rando and abuse it, much like SC is in the habit of doing.
Outsized voice? The left has little to no voice and a wing of the mainstream party the wiser among them support is working to eliminate what little voice they have.
If you think the left has an outsized voice (not you personally, just anyone), get off Twitter and touch grass.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne:
Is that real or perceived?
What I have always seen is that schools want to prepare students for the reality of the labor market. Reality is that college graduates still make more money. By a lot, over a lifetime. So, are they being told that they’re “inferior”, or are they not excelling at things that may matter to their future earning prospects?
The condition for many girls at school is a lot of indulgence of boys. Lots of being patient, “because you’re more mature”, enduring harassment “because he likes you and doesn’t know how to show it”, reading war literature instead of Jane Austen.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
That women would dare to go to school.
Dare to get education. Dare to have their own money.😒😒😒
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: College nowadays guarantees little other than student loan debt.
Soprano2
QFT. I always point out that work relationships are symbiotic. How would the people in the factory get paid if there were no office people? What would they make if there were no sales people? I point it out to office people, too. The “office vs plant” or “office vs field workers” is dumb, but it’s a thing I’ve noticed all my life. People think they’re the hard workers and those others are lazy no goods who don’t do anything and are stupid.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Misogyny definitely complicates the picture in ways I should have acknowledged.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: I don’t hear any of these men who supposedly revere “hard work” paying any mind to the wages or working conditions of nurses, or of department store saleswomen, or hotel maids, or teacher’s aides, etc etc etc.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: They have an outsize voice on Balloon Juice as well. When you counter them you get called names, your intelligence is questioned as is your ability to understand English by more than one frontpager.
Shakti
@UncleEbeneezer:
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I wonder how much going completing college sorts for people who can pass basic critical thinking — but then again, why is a college education the difference for white people (women?) and no other demographic?
(Yes I know a bunch of college educated trump voters. Meh. And I have to remind myself that most Americans didn’t go to college, constantly. And that half of Americans read below a 6th grade which I got to when I was 10 — which I don’t think is that great since I grew up in an immigrant community overselected for academic achievement and I am the dumbest female adult member of my extended family, hands down.)
I know that tariffs are paid by the consumer, not the seller. Which I thought is super basic.
However, I learned what tariffs were in college. I maybe heard about it in a general way ish in a survey textbook when I learned about the Stamp Act pissing off Americans to revolt (in elementary or middle school? I mean that’s where I learned that maybe direct consumption taxes aren’t the most wonderful even if they’re not tariffs).
But that doesn’t explain some of the other things people seem to believe in direct contradiction to observable facts.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: The college earning premium is still significant. It’s an average, so no, it’s not a guarantee that college grads will make more money. But it’s a pretty good bet.
Melancholy Jaques
@The Audacity of Krope:
Murc’s Law. Somehow, even though none of us called them stupid, it’s on us that they feel stupid.
I am really tired of this kind of “It’s all the Democrats’ fault” analysis. It has been going on since the DLC days and it hasn’t kept white people from voting based on whiteness.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques: Lots of people call them stupid, but it’s mostly because of their political choices.
I can’t recall hearing any liberal call someone stupid because they work in a trade or didn’t get a college degree.
Shakti
@Steve LaBonne: …why are the most involved voters the dumbest?
I could understand if NCLB fucked up civics class but a lot of these people had civics class or social studies.
Suzanne
@Shakti:
The education gap is present for white men, too.
I have been pondering this same question, too. Like, why is the divide so big (upwards of 20 points for white people)? My best guess is that, because white people have been going to college in significant number for enough years, that white people have kind of sorted themselves out. Don’t live in the same places, don’t consume the same stuff, date and marry amongst one another, raise their kids differently. Other racial groups haven’t had as long to “sort”.
Steve LaBonne
@Shakti:
Many of them get lots of practice in that “skill” every Sunday.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Agree.
We encourage people to get those degrees if they want to. We celebrate graduations as accomplishments.
This attitude makes me think of Patrick Deneen, who is super-socially conservative, and he wants to return to that 50s-era patriarchy. I’ve listened to him interviewed, and there is no policy for him. None of what he wants society to be has any policy solution. He just….. wants us to be different people, wants women to be praised for mothering children and not for work, etc.
Like, at some point, if this is the life you want, you have to have the courage to be countercultural about it. Stop seeking praise or high opinions.
RevRick
@Glidwrith: Without a doubt order, when taken to ridiculous extreme, can lead to all those things. But no society can function with disorder run amok either.
Order and liberty are not antithetical, but more like yin-yang partners. Both too much order and too much disorder are destructive of liberty.
The reason why Bukele of El Salvador is so popular is because he ruthlessly cracked down on the gangs that were making life unlivable for the average citizen. And people love him despite his trampling on human rights and the law, because they now can walk their streets without fear.
The chemistry major in me knows that life is a triumph of order over disorder. We even have a name for disorder = entropy, which is death.
So, yes, the demand for order can lead to all those soul-crushing realities you rightly fear/hate. But without order there can be no liberty… or creativity… or life.
Shakti
@StringOnAStick: Point out the classic 9 to 5, the only Hollywood movie that kind of understands sexual harassment and has a reference to government funded daycares (~1:42:49)
Here: https://www.history.com/news/universal-childcare-world-war-ii
Shakti
@Steve LaBonne: Crystal Minton, median Republican voter.
[idk, will ride that until the end of time… woman living in the middle of hurricane wreckage who had a government job and was off b/c of one of the shut downs and says “he isn’t hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” I get spite as a motivator to live but you just illustrated why gofundmes and charity aren’t a substitute for government programs b/c there’s no fucking way I’d give her a dime. lmao.]
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I would enjoy that, too. 😂😂
Soprano2
@The Audacity of Krope: What I mean is the mainstream press amplifies them out of proportion to their numbers because they like the conflict.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I used to be hooked into the conflict, and I would magnify the Lefties because they irritated the crap out of me.
But I don’t worry about them as much I did back in 2019-2020. The turning point for me was in August of 2021, when Shontelle Brown beat Nina Turner in the primary to replace Martha Fudge in northern Ohio.
I haven’t really sweated out a primary since. I still have favorites I root for, but I don’t worry anymore about choices Democrats make in primaries.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: MSNBC hosts, members of the Squad. Tankie left podcasters like Cenk, Bernie Sanders, Pramila Jaypal etc are not randos on Twitter. They were out there using their huge platforms shitting on this administration for 4 years.