This cartoon got Luckovich banned from Twitter, so we know the taunts are working Elon’s last nerve.
Today is two days earlier than Rick Santelli's rant that helped kick off the Tea Party in 2009. If Trump & Musk keep fucking shit up, & Democratic donors & organizers get their shoulders behind this anger, we can shake the earth
— Chatham Harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 8:14 PM
This is the kind of action that keeps Social Security checks arriving on time. This is the kind of action that keeps us from making war on our closest & best neighbor. This is citizenship & every person who's out there will be able to look back with pride on having stood up when it counted.
— Chatham Harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 8:18 PM
So many spinning dishes, so few plate-adjusters…
Saying stuff like this backs you into a corner: they're either going to not do anything but claim anyway to have fixed all the fraudulent payments, or they're going to 𝗿 𝗲 𝗮 𝗹 𝗹 𝘆 𝗳 𝘂 𝗰 𝗸 𝘂 𝗽
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 9:48 PM
autocracy is a way of betting your life and the lives of your children on the ideal that the men with guns who guard you will not kill you in your sleep. in other news the president is taking aim at the men with guns who guard him.
— rev. howard arson (@theophite.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 11:49 PM
And, given recruiting rates among military families, the *parents* of the men with guns who guard him. I might be willing to endure hardships for Mr. Trump, but am I willing to help dispossess & abandon my parents to Make America Great Again?
— Chatham Harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 11:58 PM
I would send men drunk on poppy juice & hateful children into the aerarium to burn anything they deemed unimportant
— Chatham Harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Elsewhere, Trump’s so-called “allies” ready their tools for the smash & grab run…
Choosing to interpret this as "we don't expect this administration to last longer than 2-3 months"
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 2:56 AM
![On The Road - lashonharangue - Botswana - Boteti River [1 of 2] 6](https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Photo-1-Copy-of-DSC02938-edit2-80x80.jpg)
On The Road – lashonharangue – Botswana – Boteti River [1 of 2]
Baud
I wouldn’t take a bet on that, but it’s true they generally haven’t suffered real hardship thanks to Democratic efforts.
Jeffro
“did not seek to understand our concerns…about the country we invaded, the tens of thousands we killed, the war we escalated by bringing in North Korean troops to Europe…”
Russian
warshipSecretary, go fuck yourselfrikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
Video is wild.
Suzanne
I don’t get why this is a question. The answer is obviously yes. Look how many people endangered one another during Covid.
I wonder if there is any correlation between weak family ties and being a MAGA lunatic.
John S.
@Suzanne:
That’s a tough one. Out of 6 siblings, we had 1 hardcore Trumper, 2 single issue (Israel) Trump voters, 2 Trump friendly non-voters, and me the liberal Democrat.
Somehow, we all manage to get along, and are very family oriented. But I’m not sure I would characterize us as “typical”.
TBone
@Baud: bringing up from downstairs
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social
different-church-lady
Watching those two ghouls talk about how they’re going to carve up Ukraine makes my blood boil.
different-church-lady
@John S.: That’s brutal. I stopped talking to my wingnut brother decades before Trump.
TBone
Stalin says dark humor is like food. Not everyone gets it.
Baud
I remember stories of people telling their families how their children depended on Obamacare to save their lives, and their families didn’t care.
I guess those family members will say the risk paid off, since McCain saved Obamacare. But that’s quite a risk to take.
different-church-lady
Cult members are trained to believe their family is the enemy.
We’re going to have to deprogram half the country before we get out of this.
John S.
@different-church-lady:
It does get weird sometimes, but it only really affected my relationship with my one brother (hardcore MAGA). Thankfully, we reconciled years ago because he passed away unexpectedly last year. I am very glad our final time together was a happy memory.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
I’m not confident we can deprogram ourselves from our bad habits.
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: being a MAGA lunatic is more likely to cause weak family ties and no-contact decisions
Baud
@John S.:
I’m sorry for your loss, but I completely read that a different way from what I think you intended.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Holy crap.
It’s like all is well, all is well, touchdown HOLY CRAP!
Looks like maybe a main gear collapsed at touchdown.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: spitlaugh!
J.
Meanwhile, measles is spreading. (Anyone else read Paul Krugman’s Substack?)
John S.
@Baud:
Thanks. How did you take it? I admit to being a little fuzzy on account of not having been to sleep yet and it’s 4am here. I was up attending my father’s funeral service via Zoom. He lived overseas and the time zone difference is brutal.
JerseyBeard
@Suzanne: I’m pretty disconnected from most of my blood family. I’m pretty far left.
Baud
@John S.:
I read you to be saying that you were able to reconcile with him because he died.
ETA: I ignored the time periods you indicated.
Kay
Manufacturing and agriculture sectors to be hit hardest by Trump tariffs – GOP Senators start to get nervous about the “pain” Musk is promising.
This pain won’t be limited to the midwest. California and Texas have very large manufacturing sectors, along with California’s gigantic agriculture industry.
Republican Senators Try to Curb Influence of Trump Tariff Hawk https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-navarro-trump-administration-tariffs-c7242b2a
different-church-lady
@J.: It’s okay, we have vaccines for,,, oh. Shit…
Baud
@Kay:
“Why would trans women who use bathrooms do this to us?”
John S.
@Baud:
Ah! No, we were able to actually hash things out well before he passed. 😊
Mousebumples
Reupping from downstairs before I go off the grid for work today –
Professor Bigfoot
Folks here are proud to have good relationships with their MAGA relatives.
Which is why I say that white people will shake hands over the bodies of dead trans/Black/Jewish people and make nice, *just as they did in 1877.*
But then they get mad at me for saying it!
Professor Bigfoot
@JerseyBeard: One of the advantages(?) of being Black– there is only one person in my entire extended family, both sides, that’s even MAGA curious.
Baud
@Mousebumples:
Thanks for your comments keeping us informed of the next fight.
John S.
@Professor Bigfoot:
My MAGA relatives are Jewish.
Jeffg166
@Baud:
Imagine the farts and the number of people who shit their pants.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I don’t disagree. But it’s hard for any person to go against their tribe. It sucks when the tribe is the power center of a society and doing evil things. But that’s why we glorify heroes.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jeffg166: i did a LOT of travel in my career; haven’t been in an airport since I quit working.
But I’m also a bit of an airplane and flight nerd- I would watch and listen as we went through each flight regime (taxi, takeoff, cruise, approach and landing) and I can only imagine what it was like- it seems all was well until it wasn’t.
Plenty of brown underwear in that aeroplane!
Like I said earlier, it looks to me like a main gear collapsed at touchdown
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I get that, I do– I just wish those folks would fucking ACKNOWLEDGE this, rather than tell me I’m a “race baiting troll.”
Just admit that you don’t care about the rest of us in comparison to your relationships to your Nazi relatives. We’ll understand. But we’ll definitely know exactly where you stand.
Kay
@Baud:
According to that article, the Right considers tariffs “found money” – directly out of the pocket of anyone who buys anything = found.
Republicans lifelong quest for a free lunch continues. This one won’t be free either. Trump promised them this enormous tariff tax on the working and middle class would mean no rich people have to pay income taxes and that was so appealing they all bought into this nonsense shell game.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Thank you, GOP, for killing off U.S. high speed rail back in 2009-2010.
Professor Bigfoot
Thieves. Republicans are simply thieves who use white supremacy for their sleight of hand. “Hell, give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
They USE white male Christian supremacy, but their ultimate aim is always to line their own pockets.
Kay
@Professor Bigfoot:
When you zero out income tax for rich people you have to find some money. They found it. In our pockets.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I would also like libs to be more cognizant of the social and political implications of their personal relationships, especially given the propensity of libs to demand that other people think more broadly of systemic issues that hamper progress.
But I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as caring about X over Y. Social relationships are made up of infinitely many decision points about how to interact with others, and I think it’s difficult for people in those relationships to know in the moment what decisions are the most moral and efficacious ones to take to get people to a better place.
Baud
@Kay:
But the bill will come due after the thieves have left the restaurant.
Shalimar
Do they realize that you fix tens of millions of deceased people receiving social security by systematically looking for death records for everyone? Which takes a massive amount of manpower? You do not fix it by firing half of your employees.
Mousebumples
@Baud: I voted by mail last week. But it’s easy to lose track of off year primaries. Glad to bring awareness!
John S.
@Baud:
Gee, it’s almost as if people are complicated and life is full of nuances that cannot always be easily defined in advance. Or something.
Baud
@John S.:
Everything is complicated. Liberals still criticize and suggest solutions to complicated problems. This is no different.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I’ve been meaning to tell you. Tiktok recommendations talked me into reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. Some stuff you don’t care about happens and a guy winds up competing in a lethal televised D&D like game. Because he was dragged into this game at 2am, he is pantsless. Clearly it was written with you in mind.
John S.
@Baud:
Yes. That’s also what product managers do, which is why I gravitated towards that profession. I like solving complex problems.
The solution need not always be complicated, but it takes a lot of effort to keep it simple. As Goethe said:
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Like I said, I get that; I do.
I once had to confront my cousin/brother (we were raised together) about being a bigot towards gay people.
I still love the guy, but either he’s changed (I HOPE!) or he understand not to talk that shit in front of me.
But I’d still take a bullet for him, so I get it.
But as I said, it tells me exactly where they stand, and explains my own ongoing distrust of white people in general.
They’ll see us dead, shake their heads sadly, and move on.
Professor Bigfoot
@Shalimar: Ahhh, but you see, that begs the question of whether they actually want to fix it.
But it seems they really just want to tear it all down.
Betty
@Shalimar: My understanding is that SS is electronically connected to state death records as of a certain date. That would mean the research would be limited to the years before that was set up -assuming my understanding is correct. This would explain why only beneficiaries living overseas are required to report annually that they are still alive.
Kay
@Shalimar:
They can just say anything – no one fact checks them or pushes back.
All the numbers out of “DOGE” are invented and wildly inflated but it doesn’t matter – lying doesn’t matter. They can pull any number they want out of thin air and it will be repeated as fact.
The “fact checking” will come after they rob it all, because reality actually wins in the end. There’s a real number.
Ben Cisco
@Professor Bigfoot:
@Professor Bigfoot: Amen to that! I don’t have a one (that I am aware of)…
MomSense
Morning Joe was talking about how this firing of federal employees isn’t the way to tackle waste, fraud and abuse. I get that he is a corporate whore BUT it is clear to the reality based observers that they are not trying to fix the budget. They are trying to destroy our country. If someone were intentionally trying to destroy our country from within, what would they do differently?
I said this at a gathering recently and at first they looked shocked because they had been talking about the administration like they were just ignorant and didn’t understand what they were doing. I talked a bit about Musk’s family history (Canadian NAZIs who went to South Africa FOR the apartheid) and Trump’s history going back to the 80s when he came back from the USSR and took out a full page anti NATO ad. These are brilliant people and they really didn’t know the history of the people in this administration.
It was so interesting. They fact checked me on the spot and then had looks on their faces like WTF why didn’t we know any of this.
If I learned anything from narcissistic abuse it is this – do not believe anything they say. Look at what they do.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kayla Rudbek:
This and not the other way around.
Kay
It took almost 20 years before media stopped reciting GOP claims about voter fraud as fact.
Twenty YEARS.
By the time they start fact checking Musk we’ll be a fascist dictatorship owned by douchebag techbros.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Reposting from downstairs.
If we can’t know how we’ll act when things get real, how can we trust how other people will react, especially people who are part of a group that is different than ours?
OTOH, what choice do we have if we want to avoid becoming miserable, tribalistic, xenophobic MAGA easily fooled by charlatons who use distrust to pick our pockets and make us into serfs?
So we trust, cautiously, because we have to, not because we want to.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Distrust is now automatic… but trust can be earned.
Edited to add: we focus on the misogynistic aspects of Gilead, but we tend to ignore the genocide that came before (at least, in the book).
If Gilead is to come to existence, me and mine will have to die, and white men will shake hands over our bodies, shake their heads sadly, and move on.
Lapassionara
@MomSense: Thank you. They are trying to destroy our country. Ask what Putin would be doing differently if he were in charge.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
The question is what it takes to earn trust. I think there are people out there (not you) who feel a sense of power telling others they aren’t worthy. The entire right wing is based on that attitude, but it’s not limited to them.
p.a.
The times I’ve seen these big conservaturd pushes to uproot corruption, usually at state & local levels, the really very modest amounts found were dwarfed by the costs of finding it. And the heavy hitters that occasionally get caught are never the demons the conservaturds expect (the real poor, PoC, immigrants (of course)) but players; doctors, lawyers, private insurers.
But never let the facts get in the way of a good bigotry.
Baud
@p.a.:
In addition, the “solutions” are often meaningless bandaids that are marketed as fresh, revolutionary reforms.
MomSense
@Lapassionara:
Pretty sure Putin is advising them
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Many complicated problems have at least partial solutions, if not complete ones. As long as one doesn’t demand simple solutions to problems that don’t have them, there’s nothing wrong with proposing solutions to problems, regardless of their complexity.
trnc
Is that directed at the Russian born secretary or the US born one? Works for both, I guess.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The Teaturds were an astroturf group funded by billionaires.
When have “Democratic donors and organizers” ever done anything like was stated in the above Twitter link? By that I mean the big players and monied interests/persons funding/coordinating centrally because there’s tons of “donors and organizers” doing exactly that, but it’s fragmented with no real central funding stream.
bookworm1398
@57. Hear, hear.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yeah. We’ll never be as centrally organized or focused as they are.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Indeed, but trust starts with honesty with oneself.
No woman has any right— hell, no woman would be rational to trust me on sight; even though my every intent would be for her safety and her right to choose her own path; her right to be fully human.
But in this patriarchal society, she would be insane to trust any man that she hasn’t vetted to her own satisfaction; and I guess that’s where I’m going- each of us has to make that call about the people we run across in our daily lives, and there’s simply no getting around that.
But as men who have any awareness have learned, that distrust is both entirely merited, and in no way permanent, and white people need to sit with the fact that their very whiteness engenders distrust, because the majority of their demographic is hostile, either actively or passively, to everyone who isn’t white.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: One phrase I heard over and over and OVER again across my engineering career was, “how do you eat an elephant? (say it with me now,) ONE BITE AT A TIME!”
Deciding where to start biting is secondary to the decision to eat the elephant in the first place.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: We’re Democrats.
They’re Autocrats.
I’ll take our messy democrazy over their lockstep stupidity every single time.
“It’s a sign of intelligence that you question— idiots are dead sure about everything.”
J.
@different-church-lady: Exactly.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
That’s a good analogy. Another analogy is that the rest of the world really shouldn’t trust Americans, even though almost half of the voters are decent folks.
There’s always a struggle between combating stereotypes and generalizations and dealing with cultures and societies that have real flaws.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yeah, that’s familiar territory. It gets complicated, doesn’t it?
Luckily, my sisters and I are all liberal Democrats, even though we were raised by Goldwater Republicans. But her family, OTOH…they know where we stand because when they bring up politics, we let them know it. (I remember one Christmas dinner ~30 years ago when a couple of them were agreeing with each other that all the gays ought to be deported, and I gave them a rather strident earful in defense of gay rights.)
So now we don’t talk politics around them, and they know better than to bring up political shit around us.
Sounds like your situation with your family member, and I bet that’s the sort of accommodation many people here have reached with their RWNJ family members.
So I have to ask about this:
What’s the deal here? Seems like we’re dealing with similar situations in similar ways. Why the distrust, then?
zhena gogolia
@lowtechcyclist: I’ll take the liberty of answering — because it’s a matter of life and death.
As several white women on here have said, I’m a white woman but I now look upon every white person I meet as a potential nazi. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I were Black.
MomSense
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The unions funded the fight to pass the ACA.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: good morning, tall, dark, and handsome.
ETA almost forgot my Oxford comma, I’ma stickler.
Gloria DryGarden
@Professor Bigfoot: this was a clear and useful analogy for me to read. Thank you.
robtrim
@Baud: That the fuselage remained intact is a miracle. It was a very hard landing – pilot error or maybe a wind gust that effected air speed.
catclub
If you were black you would look on every white person as a potential nazi. SATSQ
Glory b
@Baud: Me too.
Kay
https://www.marketplace.org/2025/02/17/homebuyer-demand-down-listings-housing-market-confidence-uncertainty-inflation-interest-rates/
Housing market off to a rough start in 2025.
If there were anywhere to go other than stocks I would get out. I may get out anyway.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: Because 1) my cousin didn’t and wouldn’t vote for that marigold motherfucker but the majority of white people did, and 2) I would not LET my cousin do the kind of vile shit to gay and trans people that the SA and the KLAN did to Black people if I had to shoot him myself.
Would you take that step? I doubt it.
Quinerly
Leonard Pelitier on his way home today.
https://www.inforum.com/news/north-dakota/family-plans-homecoming-for-leonard-peltier-at-turtle-mountain-on-tuesday
Ohio Mom
@Betty: That makes sense — I figured that Social Security had already gamed out how to keep track of deaths among beneficiaries, hadn’t given any thought to the mechanism.
The things, every now and again, people do continue to collect for a dead relative. It’s so rare that it makes the news, that’s how we know about it. I assume this happens a lot less frequently since all the records are computerized.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
This is Tailgunner Joe McCarthy waving around the list of known Communist fellow travelers he had in his hand. You can’t formulate an argument against him because there are no receipts you can access.
Another Scott
Someone on the socials reminded us recently that the Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted over a year.
The protests in Georgia have been going on for almost 4 months, so far.
It’s going to be a slog. We have to be determined and relentless. Power does not cede power easily.
Hang in there.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
Exactly like “voter fraud”
This is how they do it.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
the lawsuits might help reveal reliable information. Right now we have absolutely nothing. Repeating their numbers is just pure conjecture. They’re lying.
Professor Bigfoot
@robtrim: Navy pilot? ;)
My first thought on seeing the video was that a main gear collapsed at touchdown due to a mechanical failure, but I think you might be onto something.
I look forward to seeing the Canadian report on the accident (‘cause we can’t trust our people anymore goddammit)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
They’re counting on people believing what they want to believe.
Baud
@Kay:
There are various legitimate government reports about improper payments in various programs based on inability to enforce conditions in funding. As with many right wing lies, they use things that are real as a jumping off point for doing what they want.
Glory b
@Kay: Unfortunate but true.
I remember when Reagan announced his candidacy at an event in Philadelphia Mississippi, the same place that Goodman, Cheney & Schwerner, civil rights activists doing a voter registration drive, were killed and buried in a shallow grave.
His topic was states’ rights.
As young as I was, I knew of this incident and patiently waited for the news media to point it out and some Sunday morning talking heads to mention it in their Reagan discussions.
My wait was in vain.
In the 4 part PBS documentary on Reagan, journalist Jonathan Alter pointed out that every adult in his audience was alive and old enough to know about the incident, and also knew exactly what he meant.
So, I remain not surprised about what the media misses.
Baud
@Another Scott:
I don’t think we do slogs anymore.
artem1s
the tea baggers was an astroturf movement fully funded and directed by the Koch brothers thru the Federalist Society (who ironically also funded the lobbying to get RMoneyCare passed in Massachusetts).
the funders of the Lincoln Project took most of the donors money and stuck it in their pockets and left the staff holding the short end of the stick.
I’m not sure we want these protets to be compared to the biggest political grift of the 21st century. after all, ACA aka Obamacare is still with us.
JML
The “there are millions of dead people receiving Social Security” is nothing but another Big Lie designed to keep the right wing base on-side while they work towards breaking Social Security permanently (which is what the GOP has wanted for decades). Social Security is incredibly efficient and works exceptionally well. Hells bells, they knew immediately after my mother had died (death certificate filed by the county), stopped her payments, then notified my sister and I as her heirs about the pending death benefit we’d receive, which we also each received via check in a timely manner.
Social Security is great, everyone loves it, except for the scumbag Republicans who just don’t think it should exist for philosophical reasons (but often still think their relatives should get it, most because of racism). It’s got far fewer instances of fraud, waste, and abuse than Fortune 500 companies or the DoD, despite being a massive operation. Its administrative overhead is tiny. But the right wing nutballs can’t stand having a government program that works so well, so they’re out to wreck it.
If they let The Fool in the door with his idiot minions…they’ll probably break something that can’t be fixed easily. I’m sure that will be followed by a lot of blaming of the career employees (“deep state!” “DEI hires!”) with promises to make it all better with some new system outsourced to the private sector which will be 10 times less efficient and 5 times more expensive.
Hands Off Our Social Security should be the mantra. If the retirees start freaking out about losing their social security checks…
piratedan
@Shalimar: that is supposing a “good faith” effort when none exists. These guys are just as likely to insert a search tool to find everyone whose last name ends with a vowel (or anyone who has a race box checked other than caucasian or whatever group you want to “punish”) and then remove them from the database and consider the “problem solved”. Minimal effort, maximum chaos, the system gets fucked and they move on to the next institution.
artem1s
and no CDC tracking the spread. great. things are gonna get really wild when universities stop requiring students to get meningitis vaccines. of course no one will notice until it takes out half the football team. Oh well.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Kay
Yosemite halted camping reservations – Musk has fired too many people to continue services.
National parks are WILDLY popular. People will notice this.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: After around four months of street protests in Ukraine in 2014, this day, February 18, is when then-President Yanukovych gave the orders to his police force to shoot protesters in order to clear the streets. Dozens were killed, and within four days the parliament voted 328-0 to remove Yanukovych from office. He fled to russia that night.
Unfortunately I am not sanguine about the protests in Georgia.
TBone
Awesome description of yesterday’s Rumble for Our Rights in DelCo (Media, PA Court House steps). Attended by several PA politicians, complete with rowdy DelCo crowd! Photo shows a big conflagration congregation!
https://www.delcotimes.com/2025/02/17/rumble-for-our-rights-democrats-rally-against-trump-moves-and-plans-in-media/
Not paywalled! At least it wasn’t for me the first time.
NOT paywalled:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/rumble-for-our-rights-in-media-democrats-rally-against-trump-moves-and-plans/ar-AA1zfHk4
Many pols spoke. Snippet:
Anyway
And then what? Serious q – what do you do with that classification? Doesn’t sound all that actionable to me.
different-church-lady
@JML: SS is going to be the big test of how strong the cult’s hold is on the members.
For years we’ve been saying rhetorically whites would rather die than be fair. We are rapidly approaching the point where it’s no longer rhetorical.
Spanky
@JML:
We’re already there, at least on this site, prompted by a couple of later than usual deposits.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Exactly right. “trump’s magic money”. He has led them to the Promised Land.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: It’s of a piece with the millions of voting illegal immigrants being disgorged by white mystery vans at polling places. The myth has been established and mere lack of evidence can’t dislodge it. I think Mike Johnson even acknowledged that–“we know this is true, only the evidence is missing”.
Anyway
Whereas real corruption like the public utilities fraud in Ohio is memory-holed.
Gin & Tonic
@artem1s: A very good high school buddy of my son’s was from a very right-wing religious family. Went to college, got bacterial meningitis, died. You’re right, we’ll be seeing more of this.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot:
Absolutely true. And also the very thing the Trumpist Fascists are trying to achieve. As Orwell told us, when you can’t trust each other you have no choice but to surrender to the power of the state.
They don’t just want us to hate; they want us to hate each other and love no one but them.
Jeffro
ha! originally – the Russian. now – both.
robtrim
@Professor Bigfoot: No. I spent 4 years in the Air Force working on fighter aircraft. Landing depends on several factors – altitude, air speed, angle of attack ( actual angle of the aircraft relative to the ground), and rate of descent. An abrupt change in wind speed – increase, decrease, direction left, right, updraft, downdraft – could make the landing difficult or impossible. Fortunately, the black boxes will capture all that information. It may have been simply an “act of god”.
Starfish (she/her)
@Suzanne:
A lot of folks whose families did not tolerate their stupid nonsense went into the loving arms of MAGA. I mean, part of the weak ties with family were due to COVID, people didn’t get to travel to see each other. But part of it was “Nana refuses to wear a mask so we are not going to visit her anymore.”
Quinerly
@Quinerly:
Peltier’s daughter just posted that family members are at Coleman (Florida) picking him up.
Matt McIrvin
I cannot tell which Georgia anyone is talking about without clicking through.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
Well, everyone sees the world through their own eyes.
Professor Bigfoot
That’s gonna be our motto for a while, isn’t it?
TBone
@Quinerly: 🎉😍💙✊✌️
Another Scott
@Baud: Thanks for that.
All the experts on
covid, supply chains, polls, presidential campaigns,commercial airliners are in the thread. It does indeed look like the plane came in too fast and too hard on the starboard (right) main gear and it failed.:-(
But we’ll have to see what the final results of the investigation are.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jeffro
If we had a purely ceremonial, air headed, run-around-the-country-smiling-and-waving President…someone who did nothing but show up and read pablum off of a teleprompter once a week like a tv anchor…
…we would still be VASTLY better off than under President Musk and his orange puppet.
Musk and trumpov are actively wrecking every possible operation of our government, our public health, and our national security…gleefully, maliciously.
Just think of it for a second: we’d be better off with *just* a complete moron. A happy one, but a moron.
Professor Bigfoot
@Anyway: Avoid them if at all possible. Assume ulterior motives to their actions, whatever they are. Cultivate a level of cynicism towards them.
AVOID THEM.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Inorite???
(The country, here.)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
There are large chunks of this country where NOT being a MAGA lunatic is the thing that will destroy your family ties. The pillars of the community and all of your kin and peers are all-in for Trump and the right in general, and the people who aren’t like that are probably loners by necessity.
This is, in fact, more like the area where I grew up during the Reagan era (though that’s blue territory now). My family were relatively liberal but being liberal definitely meant you were going to be regarded as weird at best, and possibly suspicious.
different-church-lady
@Starfish (she/her): I find this so weird: there’s very few people in my life, personal or professional, who surprised me during the pandemic. The ones who were heartless, careless, or obstinate in a way that endanger others I had already filtered out long before then.
We talk a lot about tolerating family that’s gone to the wrong side, and I think, “I got away from them long before any of it got to this point.” Because they were already intolerable in other ways. It’s of a piece.
TBone
@Kay: maybe I’ll be able to make my longed-for move back to civilization after all, sooner than expected (which was never).
Professor Bigfoot
@robtrim: I’m sorry, I was joking about the pilot of that aircraft possibly being ex-Navy, and we see how Navy pilots land their craft (hard, like they’re trying to hit a moving target in a big ocean).
I agree with everything you say, here.
TBone
@Baud: oh but I do
oldgold
This measles outbreak is going to be difficult to contain. It is highly contagious – much as 16 times more contagious than the flu. Worse, you can spread it up to 4 days before you are symptomatic.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: They know they can lie about anything and get away with it. The voters told them they could, and the Supreme Court told them they couldn’t be punished for any of it.
different-church-lady
@oldgold: Think of how many more dead people will be getting SS soon!
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks for the reminder.
I’m very sorry you and yours have suffered (and continued to suffer) so in this horrible, senseless, maddening war.
Slava Ukraini!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot: Well why not? It’s already the motto of nearly everyone who could do something about it.
JML
@Spanky: it’ll be interesting if this starts reaching any kind of critical mass. If I were running in FL, I would make this the pillar of my campaign: you can’t trust these people not to screw up your social security. they’re going to take away your social security. every single day it’d be “I will protect your social security. they want to end it.”
fucking hell, I’d make this my campaign pillar in every goddamn federal race in every state.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Few of us can be certain of what we would do when push comes to shove until we actually get there. We can have dreams in our heads of heroic stands, but that doesn’t mean much of anything until we’re tested.
All I can tell you is that whatever I do is unlikely to involve guns because I don’t own any. In nearly 71 years on the face of this planet, I’ve yet to be in a situation that would have turned out better if I’d had a gun handy, and I’ve been in a few that would have certainly turned out worse.
But it still sounds to me like you’re crapping on people here for dealing with family political differences in the same way you have, and in much more difficult circumstances – having to deal with a whole family full of MAGAts rather than just one MAGA-curious brother.
I can certainly understand why Black people mistrust white people until they’ve got solid reason to trust a particular white person. But it’s unreasonable for you to distrust us because we’re doing the same thing you do, in more challenging situations.
TBone
@Jeffro:
GRITTY FOR PRESIDENT
(Move over, Baud.)
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: And Joseph Welch isn’t walking through that door.
Quinerly
@Quinerly:
Released per NBC. TY Pres Biden!
Short article for the “youngs” here who maybe don’t know the background. I also highly recommend his extensive Wiki page. Very well written and curated with citations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/leonard-peltier-native-american-activist-released-prison-biden-commute-rcna192253
Another Scott
@JML: +1
Claude Pepper (“keep your foul hands off Social Security!!”) was on to something.
Best wishes,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@JML:
IDIOT ELECTORATE: “Right: Democrats want to take away my social security.” [Eric Idle nod]
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: “You can’t formulate an argument against him because there are no receipts you can access.”
You can react to it. “FBI and independent observers puzzled that no one is allowed to look at Senator McCarthy’s list” said no New York Times article that I’ve heard of.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: Most of the people close to me were pretty rational about COVID (embraced vaccines and masks and such) but, driven more by online discussions and general anxiety, I was way harder core about social isolation than most of them were inclined to be, and it actually did strain family ties with me being the weirdo.
And I feel guilty about that.
But then, at the same time, I also still feel guilty about not being hardcore enough. I know people online who rarely leave their homes to this day (sometimes for specific medical reasons–getting COVID will kill them!) and advocate a complete reorganization of society to minimize direct human contact. It’s not an easy sell, to say the least.
robtrim
@Professor Bigfoot: Yep. He did make sort of a “carrier landing.”
TBone
The reasoning behind my crappy morning mood disorder today becomes clearer by the moment.
Donald’s Admin Pressures Romania To Help Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate
Remember, that’s the fucking guy who picked on Greta Thunberg, who in turn handed him his own ass.
Starfish (she/her)
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t know about this. I think white people are more likely to disown their families than Black folks are.
But a lot of the MAGA stuff and a lot of the Black Lives Matter stuff is white folks fighting amongst themselves because a lot of other people are pretty clear which side of these issues they are on.
different-church-lady
@Layer8Problem: That’s because they weren’t puzzled by it.
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem: In this case, Musk’s missing evidence is stuff that I don’t want to be shown, because it’s records that neither he nor I have any business looking at, for grave privacy and security reasons. It’s not like a scientific dispute where nature is an open book and the data should be too.
(In that sense it’s more like Bush and Saddam’s WMD: they had the advantage of access to alleged secret information and were asking us to trust them on the basis of the little snippets they chose to reveal.)
Gin & Tonic
From Twitter, since people don’t read it anymore. The writer is a former Minister of the Economy in Ukraine and currently President of the Kyiv School of Economics.
AM in NC
@Professor Bigfoot: I keep in contact with my father for two reasons: One, because I don’t want MAGA to turn me into a hateful person across the board, and TWO, I am making inroads into his propaganda bubble, and slowly turning him away from the evil.
If I don’t engage with the people I might have the most chance with, I think I’m walking away from the fight. Hearts and minds – one old white Dad at a time.
zhena gogolia
@Anyway: Nothing. I do nothing but seethe inwardly. I do a lot of that these days.
TBone
@Gin & Tonic: mood disorder returneth
different-church-lady
OT (sort of): My favorite sign from the protests.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: We should call it Sakartvelo.
TBone
@AM in NC: good on ya, go with my blessing, my child!
Jobeth
@Ohio Mom: When my husband died on a Monday I received a letter from our bank on Friday telling me his password to our account had been deactivated. I hadn’t even contacted the bank yet – not sure how that happened but it must somehow key off the SSN on the death certificate.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: It’s because for the time being we still have plenty of food.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t know you.
If you’re willing to do to gay and Black people what the SA and the Klan did to Jews and Black people, well, you deserve my distrust.
I’m not speaking specifically of the white people in this group (though there are some here that I believe would, at the very least, stand by and watch as our rights are taken away, and ultimately our lives) but we are only rational to distrust white people, particularly white men, and to especially distrust those white men who try to tell us we have no reason to distrust them.
TBone
@different-church-lady: bwahahaha! Perfect for today’s mood.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, considering my MAGA relatives live in Pennsylvania and my immediate family lives in California, which is not an accident as my father explained to me, then yes we get along fine,…
Scout211
To add some good news this morning:
Leonard Peltier is on his way home to North Dakota.
TBone
@Quinerly: I watched a full length documentary. I’ll see if I can find it…
1992
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/warrior-the-life-of-leonard-peltier-1992/
There is a new one also in 2025, haven’t seen it
raven
@Professor Bigfoot: CNN has two videos that confirm your thesis.
lowtechcyclist
@different-church-lady:
And the media do such a good job of calling them out on their lies. /s
RevRick
@Suzanne: Just consider the typical child-rearing practices of a conservative home, which relies heavily upon punishment. Whenever I see Live, Love, Laugh decorations displayed in a home, I wonder whether they’re celebrating those things or bemoaning the lack thereof. And if families have primarily been based in fear and punishment, how loving can those ties possibly be?
Professor Bigfoot
@Starfish (she/her): I give you the “Redemption,” which ended Reconstruction.
I give you 80 years of Jim Crow. I give you the reactions of white conservatives to the passage of CRA64; I give you the Reagan administration that was the white backlash against it; who won a real landslide from it.
History tells me this is what will happen.
columbusqueen
@Professor Bigfoot: I’ve pretty much severed my relationship with my in-laws, thanks to FIL’s craziness & bigotry. I’m much happier & healthier as a result.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
Well, the solution is easy–just blow it wide open. Who needs services, or any protection for the park? When people start getting killed and there’s trash strewn everywhere, well, that’s your own lookout. Rugged individualism! Hope you like the place getting strip-mined or carved up into luxury condos in a few years.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Wait, this is how we should deal with viewing every white person as a potential Nazi?
I’d have to become a freakin’ recluse, given that I live in an exurb that’s probably about 90% white.
Starfish (she/her)
@different-church-lady: Republican Senators are complaining, but I have seen no “trying” on their part. “Trying” looks like putting off the confirmation of cabinet members. “Trying” looks like not voting “yes” for deeply unqualified cabinet appointees. “Trying” looks like real investigations into appointees. I have not seen anything that looks like “trying” from these clowns yet.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: 🎯
Avalune
I dunno if anyone has mentioned it yet but DOE just sent all institutions a nice three page, stop being racist against the poor white people, here is a snitch line, and you have 14 days to strip anything that might make white people sad, letter.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: explains my perpetual state of semi-recluse. I haven’t stayed home this much since I was in diapers.
zhena gogolia
@Avalune: Ugh, I haven’t heard about it yet.
TBone
@Avalune: they can
Eat. My. Shorts.
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: This is very OT: I’m thinking about your Patron block…would it be okay if I added some different design elements? Same Patron, but a bit different border.
Tell you what, I’ll put it together and if you don’t care for the changes, I’ll make the original block. Would that work?
ArchTeryx
@robtrim: And major airports are LOUSY with weather sensors. The NTSB will be able to pull records of the exact weather conditions immediately before and during the crash. One of many, many possibilities they have to investigate.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: “if at all possible.”
Certainly don’t trust that their motives are golden. Assume there’s a hidden bias and an unexpressed hostility in them.
UNTIL DEMONSTRATED OTHERWISE.
zhena gogolia
@Avalune: Oops, I take that back. We got an e-mail about it yesterday, but I didn’t have time to read it until just now. Fuck them all.
zhena gogolia
@Quiltingfool: Anything you do will be beautiful!
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Well of course you don’t. But it seems like we’re talking past each other at this point, so I’m gonna drop it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Avalune: Hadn’t heard about it yet, but my reaction is, “yeah, that’s about white.”
Their intent is to erase Black people and women from American public life, and this is one more step.
I honestly doubt it gets much real-world pushback, either.
BellyCat
Luckovich deserved to be banned from Twitter. He misspelled MU$K’s name on his jacket. //
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: Please be clear; and understand I’ve enjoyed and appreciated many of your comments— but are you saying I should extend trust to white people I don’t know because YOU are trustworthy?
prostratedragon
@J.: Oooh that second graph!
M31
ok so now that Musk has found all these dead people getting social security, everyone can expect a huge increase in their payments, as there is now more money to go around!!!!!!!
Lily
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/2025/01/27/grassroots-college-leader-group-resists-anti-dei#
more at the link
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: Yay! I’m going to enjoy working on a new Patron!
Honestly, my quilting hobby keeps me somewhat sane. When the news overwhelms me, I shut off the iPad and kitty and I go to work in the quilt cave. Well, I work, she insists I get out the grooming glove for “pets.” By insist, I mean she sits by the glove and mews at me.
My cat has trained me.
BellyCat
I could definitely use a few black relatives in my extended family — starting with my mother. Sigh…
Professor Bigfoot
@Professor Bigfoot:
@lowtechcyclist:
Dammit, I got distracted and the edit time window ran out!
I wanted to say, first, when I said “I don’t know you,” that came across wrong and I apologize— fact is, you, like most of the folk on this blog, have provided me ample evidence of your own “trustworthiness,” if you will; I have a LOT more reason to give the white people here the “benefit of the doubt,” and I do.
But I’m not around this crew in meatspace. What I see is a lot of white men in ballcaps with Civil War beards driving lifted pickups…
Apologies for not being clear.
zhena gogolia
@Quiltingfool: You are incredible!
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
NO.
As I said above:
And that would include me. Because you really don’t know me. While I hope that the words I put on a screen do a fairly good job of reflecting the underlying person, how sure can you be of that? And none of us can really know how we might respond as the shit really hits the fan here. There’s a limit to how well I can even know who I would prove to be.
Thank you, and the same is true in return. You’re very much worth getting into a dialogue with, and I appreciate that you are doing your best to speak uncomfortable truths here. The fact that they may be uncomfortable doesn’t make them any less true. Or necessary.
LAC
@lowtechcyclist: But it does not sound like some of you are dealing with the circumstances in any way other than silence (that can be seen as agreement) or some embarrassed grimace. For the most part, we are dealing with adults. Yeah, there maybe a blood tie, but at some point, enough is enough. We are constantly hearing stories here about some bigot relative/MAGA voter continuing to spew nonsense amid the sad shrugs and awkward silences. What not ask them what is the problem with DEI and keep drilling? Why not throw some facts their way about who invented the ranch dressing they are slathering on their salad when they maje some bigoted comment? Chalkenge them! Because to not do that but expect people to go out in the street and fight – well that requires trust. And right now, our community is not feeling it.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: Thank you, and I would give you SO MUCH benefit of the doubt because of what I’ve seen here.
Along with almost the entire Jackaltariat.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: I am not feeling any trust either. On Balloon Juice and other liberal spaces it has become quite acceptable to hate on Indian people the reason given is that we are all like Vivek Ramaswamy/ Kash Patel. Check out the posts on H1-B on this blog.
Most folks have little knowledge of how many long term visas actually work but that doesn’t get in the way of demonizing people on them as long as you invoke a populist but a leftist POV.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady:
This was absolutely true for me. But I realize that I am lucky in that regard.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: Neither is mine. We are all branded as RWNJs in liberal spaces because of there are some prominent Rs who are Indian American. Indian Americans have voted for Ds in 2:1 ratios for many cycles now.
People on student and work visas are caricatured as stupid, mindless idiots in service of capitalism by many a leftist in this space and others like it.
Quinerly
@Professor Bigfoot:
I am an only child, born of 2 only children. I have no blood family left. So, the good news is I have no MAGA relatives. My parents were very Liberal in their politics considering the era they came through in the South.
Also, the other good news is I have no MAGA friends. I have been very harsh and have cut any MAGA friends, Trump voters, or even Trump curious folks out of my life. I picked the confrontations and told them they were scum.
This is how I am. There are a lot of us. Please don’t lump all White people and families together. Everyone has their own reasons and has to choose his/her own path. I am lucky. For the most part, the path I have chosen has been easy for me. This path might not be easy for some.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Oh, *now* they’re trying to contain the damage? Fucking wankers. All of them at the Federal level. Just fucking wankers.
LAC
@schrodingers_cat: yeah, I think trust is shaky at best in our communities. It is a lot of work to speak up and be heard. And sometime we do not have the energy to soothe wounded feelings because we are fighting for our very existence. But I am always going to be grateful to Professor Bigfoot for trying.
Suzanne
@LAC:
I have observed a few more ways of dealing with the circumstances amongst my friends who are dealing with this:
1) Staying silent in a group situation for the sake of not ruining Christmas dinner for Grandma, but being more vocal at happy hour or one-on-one
2) Multiple rounds of argument and disagreement with no resolution before completely putting politics off-limits
3) Gritting one’s teeth and shouldering a considerable amount of personal distress in the hopes of remaining in the lives of nieces and nephews.
Each family is miserable in their own way, I have learned.
Phylllis
@Avalune: Is it not the most unhinged nonsense you’ve ever read?
narya
@Baud: @Professor Bigfoot: I’ve been thinking about that link from this morning (thanks, Baud . . . I think), and I don’t know what I would do. I don’t have the courage to organize a militia and I don’t want to kill anyone. I’m old and tired, and, currently, through my consulting, helping a 150-year-old organization dismantle itself in an orderly fashion that will nevertheless leave thousands of people without care, plus trying to keep my mom positive as we wait for my brother’s cancer surgery tomorrow. I have no spoons. All I have is my kindness, and my cooking, and whatever encouragement I can manage, and, yeah, that’s nice, but in the face of Gilead, it’s shit.
Avalune
@Phylllis: My financial aid team here just had a “meeting” about it because we were all like I can’t believe this is on official letterhead. Like this is a real thing from a government agency. We are simultaneously shocked and not shocked.
Avalune
Some passages from this document: In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low income families. These institutions embrace of pervasive and repugnant race based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia.
Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory practices.
“DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”
A bunch of laws and cases are peppered in to make it seem more legit. There is a snitch link. And a threat to your funding if you don’t comply.
My institution has not yet formulated a public response. I hear Leto’s is not planning to comply, so that will be interesting to watch.
Phylllis
@Avalune: I mentioned on here Friday after I saw it that it calls current practices of every K-12 federal program into question, until or unless they provide revised guidance. Title I, McKinney Vento, IDEA, all of them are predicated on equity and inclusion to ensure every student receives a free, appropriate public education. Of course, that’s what they are doing their utmost to get rid of.
Quite a few of our state department folks are headed to Austin tomorrow for the National ESEA (Elementary & Secondary Education Act) conference. I’ll be interested to hear what they report back from that.
frosty
@Professor Bigfoot:
Thanks, I appreciate your clarification here.
Jackie
The latest abrupt quitting:
Who’s going to be next?
TBone
Nothing does my heart so much good as a visual presentation!
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/see-americans-celebrate-no-kings
Quinerly
@TBone: very good documentary.
LAC
@Suzanne: i may have to do no 3 at my nephew’s wedding if they invite this cousin. His lovely bride is Indian and it will have traditional elements in it. I hope she will not feel the need to make comments. But I am going to leave that to my darling sis in law to handle. But i will have her back.
Kay
@Jackie:
I’m glad. They cannot go along with this. They will never ever regain credibility if they do. It is really time for government lawyers to make a decision – I know that’s hard and unfair, but its the truth. They cannot take direction from treasonous insurrectionists. It is wholly incompatible with their oath.
Quinerly
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s actually the plan. There is an entire section on public lands and NPs in Project 2025.
Kay
@Quinerly:
I went to Yosemite last year. Just loved it. I wanted to take my 3 granddaughters in ’26. I hope its still there.
TBone
Obligatory Airplane Music (can’t believe it took me this long, I must be slipping!):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU
Way cool inspiring video!
sab
@schrodingers_cat:I hear you.
My white step-daughter-in-law lost her mother to cancer when she was 16. Her father was a hopeless drunk. She raised herself and her brother by herself. She survived because an Indian family with a gas station convenience store hired her and has treated her like almost family ever since. Currently she is the store manager.
Their patriarch is a RWNJ misogynist. Everyone else in the family is just normal people. She defers to the patriarch because he is the patriarch. Just like his family does.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: I hope that all National Parks put up signs saying, “closed by decree of Elon Musk.”
Kay
@Jackie:
This is worse than protecting friends of the regime by dismissing their cases. This is the next step – now they’re being asked to go after the regimes opponents.
Corruption to imprison innocent people is worse than corruption to drop charges on guilty people. Its an escalation.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: I fully expect women, PoC, LGBTQ People to assume the worst about me based on collective reality, until proven otherwise. I’m also quite confident that it only takes about 5 minutes for them to see which side I’m on. Likewise, any MAGA jerks I run into will also see pretty quick that I’m not cool with their bullshit.
Suzanne
@LAC: I can only speak from experience and what I observe in my friend groups…. but no one I’m close with is totally silent on issues of politics with their family members. There’s some mix of coping strategies, and a lot of strained relationships.
I would imagine that the people who never argue politics with their families are those who simply don’t care enough about it to argue. So then, the real problem isn’t that they won’t speak up… the bigger problem is apathy.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: This is one of the relatively few spaces in the United States where you get extra ego credit for your tribal affiliation as black. That seems to me why you’re fairly incessant with this “white people need to admit white people are terrible” race essentialist schtick. Not that you’re a troll. More like a kid in a candy store. And the vindictive joy is earned and personally I kind of like it.
The only reason I push back is I think it obscures actual political dynamics operating now. Frankly the “it’s all about racism and white people” orthodoxy is causing us to lose elections. Not because we’re insulting white people, but because we’re failing to notice who we’re actually losing. It’s not the worst hyper-simplified revelation that gets repeated here- I’d say that goes to the distillation of Trump voters primary motivation as “the cruelty is the point.” Both are attempts to explain the phenomena of our recent radical changes and political collapse by implausible reduction to these supposed eternal realities.
Too many white people. Too many basically evil people. These things make zero explanatory sense. But we’re quite happy to run with them, I think because they function well socially.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: The descent into hell engineered by Musk with blessings from the Republican party can be countered iff (if and only if) enough white people push back.
I have no idea if that will happen.
geg6
@Kay:
I’m thinking the same thing. Also, so glad we sold our house last year. It might be very rough going this year. As an aside, I saw where it was remodeled a bit and resold just before the end of January. I’ll bet they’re relieved it sold so quickly, too. It looks like they put $40-50K into it and got a great price for it.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
The douchebag tech bros want our parks.
Professor Bigfoot
@Quinerly: dear, vallued commenter—
“Not all white people,” of course.
Everyone but everyone knows it’s not all white people.
The issue that needs confronted is that it’s so goddamned many of you that our distrust is only rational.
But again, that distrust only exists until otherwise is demonstrated, and I’m afraid that as a white person you’re just gonna have to live with that.
Like I’ve had to live with being profiled, pulled over for nothing, followed in stores…
TBone
@Phylllis: today I am especially glad my parents can’t see this. My 80 y.o. Aunt, also a lifelong teacher, lived vicariously through me yesterday when I sent some protest photos. She was a dyed in the wool hippie.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: This has been a revelation, at least, for me; and damn me if I see a way around it. <sigh>
Quinerly
@TBone:
I popped out of my hibernation and trip organization for Pinos Altos.
Met a fascinating man Sun at the bar while at the Cowgirl eating chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy and collards and listening to a great live bluegrass band.
Turns out my new friend studied under Carlos Montoya and lived in Spain for 10 years. (Yes, Franco is still dead. But wasn’t when he lived there). Great stories. I learned so much. I am still “processing” the encounter. We visited for a couple of hours after the band at the Cowgirl stopped.
New friend, Carlos Lomas, is originally Philly boy. I found that interesting. I put him probably mid 80’s. Started playing bluegrass as a youth and transitioned to flamenco guitar 60 years ago. Even toured with Gordon Lightfoot at one point.
Plenty of albums and videos on YouTube. I spent the day yesterday exploring all things flamenco and gypsy music. Hooked.
Getting out of self imposed hibernation is a very good thing.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
Yosemite was full of very nice, very well off tech workers from the bay area. You have to reserve well ahead – Americas hiking and outdoorsey upper middle class are about to get a wake up call.
TBone
@Avalune: jfc not enough facepalms in existence
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: NOW SEE THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!
It doesn’t take some kind of heroic shit to demonstrate trustworthiness; if you are, it will come through.
AWOL
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m Jewish.* I’m not mad. You’re 100 percent right. Anyone associated with neo-nazis, Jewish or not, are just garbage to me to be disposed of. First out my life; second to encourage them to leave the planet. With great pain for what they have caused.
I’m so sick of the internal bargaining so many here submit to.
It’s better to be alone and integral than to be surrounded and submissive to madmen.
*Atheist, obviously.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: They demand grace that they seldom extend.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: You and other black commenters are probably the biggest reason I treasure BJ. Conversations between black people and white people about race.
It is really hard to do in meatspace with people I love and value. I don’t want to make those relationships even more uncomfortable.
It is also hard to do online among not equals (Ta-nehisi Coates and his readers when he was with the Atlantic.)
There are so few spaces in America where whites and blacks can meet as equals and have the necessary discussions, and BJ is one of those spaces
ETA Also too whites and POC who are neither white nor black.
TBone
@Quinerly: you just made my whole entire WEEK better with that cool story. I wasn’t able to get to church Sunday, but (hopefully!) nothing can stop me this Sunday. Yesterday’s protest was the only outing I’ve had that wasn’t a necessity-related foraging mission or medical emergency.
We joined the local swim club and go each summer to be around people (ignoring the MAGATs who are outnumbered).
Your story shows what serendipity can do! Life changing possibilities.
It has inspired me to take my longed for overnight date night trip to Philly with hubby as soon as Noah can be left alone that long. Then, we’re going to Niagara Falls and will eat & sleep in Canada that night. We’ve had several honeymoons over this past decade, but he wants to see the Falls.
ETA my local social life, however, is non-existent. I can change that at church or the swim club and the library.
California here we come some day!
geg6
@Anyway:
I now operate the exact same way. Until I can suss out someone’s political affiliation and have an idea of their social melieu, I am very wary and distrustful. We will be just acquaintances until I am certain. If I suss out even a touch of MAGA, they are dead to me. They are my enemy and I treat them as such. I’m not playing the “be nice” shit I played the first term at all. They are like the SS to me. Evil and cruel and I will let them know if they press me in the slightest. I’m retired now, so I don’t have to pretend any more.
Gloria DryGarden
@Professor Bigfoot:
@Baud:
Ther was an interview w a guy from the plane, on YouTube. He said they landed hard, and began to slide sideways. He said it was windy. And that everyone got off the plane pretty quickly. Your video, holy moly!
Citizen Alan
@catclub: i think the point is that a black person would be justified in viewing every new white person they meet is a probable nazi, if not an actual demon from hell. In much the same way that I, as a liberal white guy, look upon everyone wearing a Maga hat or driving a cybertruck as someone who might pull out a gun and execute me in the street if they knew my politics or if I just looked at them funny.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: I saw some video that a passenger took inside the plane after it crashed. It showed people standing on the plane’s ceiling with the seats overhead.
zhena gogolia
@geg6: Yep.
Quinerly
@Kay:
I haven’t been since a month long cross country trip from NC to CA with my parents in a 1967 Pontiac Bonnevile around 1974. I tend to avoid the crowded, popular NPs in my travels now. Kinda lost my special opportunity re Yosemite when a dear friend retired from being second in command there 3 years ago. Never could find the time to go back there when he was there. Really missed out on something special.
Currently, my favorite NPs are Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Capitol Reef, and Canyonlands. Will be back at the latter two in October if they still exist. Just booked stays in Boulder and Torrey, Utah. Hope to camp at Canyonlands.
I avoid Zion at all costs. It’s a zoo. I can’t imagine what it will be like this season with services/employees cut. The Utah NPs fill up with Utah college kids on Spring break in March. My experience in Zion was pretty wild and unpleasant in 2017. I hit there when the kids were everywhere, trashing everything. Didn’t know the Spring break dates when I mapped out that 7 week trip.
It’s going to get really ugly this summer at these popular NPs. Yosemite, Arches, Zion, Grand Canyon, etc. Avoid at all costs
Professor Bigfoot
@AWOL: Funny how huge the percentages of Jews, Black folks, and LGBTQIA+ folk for Harris and Dems, eh?
Almost like these are the demographics who understand oppression, understand it down deep in our bones.
TBone
@Quinerly: UGH my Acadia N.P. addiction is raging.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: I was made to, taught to, feel it. The adults in my life made absolutely certain – parents, relatives, family friends, teachers…
Lest. We. Forget
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I had some success with this over the years with a few of the white dudes I’ve worked with— even got a few of them to go, “hmmm, never thought of it that way” on some things (like the difference between Irish pride and white pride)… but “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his privileges depend on him not understanding it,” to paraphrase Upton Sinclair.
sab
@Citizen Alan: I am white with ancestors who came to America in the 17th century. I have an ancestor who was president of the first continental congress (and wasn’t very good at that job.)
I am a personification of mediocre white entitlement.
I grew up in Florida under Jim Crow and watched the Civil Rights movement make headway with enthusiasm. Then we moved back North and I got on with my life.
As a lifelong sympathizer with Civil Rights movement, my perspective radically changed when I became the grandmother of actual black grandchildren and had to worry about their safety every time they leave the house.
One of my white stepsons for twenty years had drug problems. He got in fights. He tried to punch policemen. He was often out of control. The cops stopped him every time, and either called his dad or arrested him.
My black step-son-in-law in not similar or milder situations every time had guns pointed at him by cops when he was not at fault, often in front of his children.
It isn’t a theoretical concept of Justice to me anymore. Now it is family.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Professor Bigfoot: I couldn’t shoot anyone, but I hope I would put my body in the line of fire. You don’t know what you would do until it happens. Most people freeze.
TBone
@sab: hugs
TBone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I could mow ’em down if I had to. For certain. (I was taught to by my vets Dad & Great Uncle.)
Like Audie Murphy.
Hell, the name Mom gave me means bold warrior and we lived on War Trophy Lane.
sab
@TBone: Thanks but I don’t need hugs. I am perfectly safe. My grandchildren are not.
( that sounds rude to you. Not intended. The thanks are real.)
Bupalos
@Avalune: Flooding these snitch links is one of the few kinds of online activism that maybe actually counts.
AWOL
@Professor Bigfoot: I was very sympathetic to the Gaza cause until the utterly racist anti-Harris tankie and Palestinian-produced shit—with a large heaping shitspoon of blatant Jew hatred—swamped my Manhattan hood. Now I can loathe equally.
I use your line often when talking to folks: Only [educated, secular] Jews, Blacks, and LGBTI+are sane, despite the odds.
Likewise, any Jew who supports Trump because of Israel is not a Jew. They are beholden to a white supremacist nazi ideology and deserve nothing. They are anti-Jews.
And I’m so fucking tired of the apologia.
Citizen Alan
This, by the way, is literally the only reason we have women’s sports at the college level, despite the fact that they aare generally not the cash cows that the men’s sports are. A lot of dumb parents are about to find out that by voting to make sure there are no trans girls sharing a locker room with their daughters, they will instead find that their daughters have no opportunity to play sports in college.
Professor Bigfoot
I read this, and you’re absolutely correct… but the more of them that DO do the right thing and resign, the deeper the seditionists tentacles will go.
I’m coming to believe the 1798 Constitution is a dead letter, now, and it terrifies me.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: except our turnout was actually down. This kind of comment was more true for Carter v. Ford than Trump v. Harris.
Quinerly
@Kay:
I will be interested to see what happens with Death Valley. I planned a trip there Feb 2024. Cancelled. Then toyed with a trip there this February. Have done a lot of research since I travel alone, usually with doggie JoJo las Orejas. I actually tend to over research. Decided that even though, Winter trip and great temps….DV not a place for my JoJo.
Until I started planning, I didn’t realize the almost cult like following DV has. Joined some social media groups to ask questions and to read/learn for about a year before my planned Feb 2024 departure. Lots of hardcore DV hikers/lovers. I ran into a lot of folks in these tight little groups that do not want “outsiders” coming into “their” park. Almost militant. I would love to find a DV cultist and discuss in person. Another odd thing about sniffing around in these DV groups….most of the hardcore fans of DV seem to be Trumpers. Local CA and Nevada people.
I’m going to watch those groups and community bulletin boards and look for comments. The hardcore DV folks usually don’t visit much after May, though.
Right now, I’m set for a Rt 66 trip to Bakersfield and Tulare, CA for Kings Canyon and Sequoia NPs in April. Very Trumpy part of CA. I planned this trip before 1/20. Tulare is where Trump “sent in the military to free the water” and has now flooded the farmers. I’m in Tulare 4 nights.
Professor Bigfoot
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Mayhap.
I doubt it, though, because at my core I abhor that kind of shit. Nazis, Klansmen, *fuck ‘em.* You* ride with their violence, you get what you get, even if you’re family.
*not YOU you, of course!
sab
@AWOL: I thought a lot of that antisemitic stuff was Russian bots not actual Palestinian Americans. The actual PAs in Cleveland weren’t doing the antisemitic stuff at all. They were just trying to keep their cousins in Gaza from being murdered.
AWOL
@sab: Remember how the comments became so racist on ‘The Atlantic’ that Coates had to get a Canadian grandfather of a mixed-race child to weed out the nazis?
As Stanislav Lem observed, and understated: “The internet will only be another way for people to be mean to each other.”
WTFGhost
re: “we don’t expect this administration to last more than 2-3 months” – Russia wants the administration to last an entire four year! It’s just, in 2-3 months, they figure they’ll have Trump hog tied and hamstrung, and America forced to follow that fat, useless porcine toad for another 3 years, 10 months.
Dear god, why on earth would Russia want to *END* the Trump administration? *Especially* after totally pantsing, (marital act involving penetration and appropriately sized excretory orifice ), hamstringing, and drawing out the useless organs, like the shriveled (male testicular organs), spine, and brain, leaving plenty of room to… uh… place your hand where the sun don’t shine and use him as a meat puppet.
I’m just asking questions other people are asking.
Quinerly
@TBone:
Take a spin around YouTube for Carlos Lomas. Old albums.
Plus, the videos filmed in his home here in Santa Fe 10-15 years ago.
He’s on my summer party list. Hopefully he will play for us.
sab
@Kay: Everything has a tradeoff. They get good pay as certified actual lawyers. Part of the price of that pay is respecting the oath to they took to be officers of the Courts and the Constitution.
Same with me and mine ( CPAs) and the tax code and the IRS. We get good pay because people trust us to keep them inside the rules and out of trouble.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
I studied Spanish and Flamenco dance. Absolutely loved it. I can still do some of the bullfighter capes moves. So much fun.
There is a very old movie from the early 80s called Carmen. The flamenco dancers are incredible.
WTFGhost
@AWOL: An interesting note: the *early* internet very much grew up with a “come with a thick skin, no one wants to be nice to you.”
Self fulfilling prophecy.
It *can* be disrupted locally – just, be nice to a few people. And if enough people want to disrupt it locally, it can spread. You know, if some lazy postman arrived, forcing Republicans to realize Democrats don’t eat babies live and unbaptized, and forcing Democrats to realize “maybe they don’t hate me – maybe we can just talk, without me thinking they want to shoot me,” well, maybe someone would make an animated movie, Klaus….
(Goddamned *TOY STORY* has enough awards. I want to show Klaus to a bunch of India and Pakistani IT folks, and say “this is a *huge* part of the US Christmas legend – it’s what makes it so important to us, is, this *possibility* that if we’d all take a pause in the fighting, and cared about each other more than our grievances, we’d make earth a little slice of perfection… maybe just for one day a year.” Imagine sharing that cultural sort of icon! Shared joy increases… go figure.)
Quinerly
@MomSense:
Well, this is cool. Thanks for piping in. One area of music and dance that I really don’t know enough about. I felt rather ignorant when chatting with my new friend. I could talk a bit and contribute a bit about Franco’s Spain but was lost when he got to the part about polka dots being “gypsy.”
I came home all excited about meeting someone new and interesting. Getting out of my funk and learning something new. Called one of my best friends out here. She’s 86. I was babbling on about my new flamenco acquaintance…she laughed. Then told me her last husband who was about 15 years longer had also lived in Spain and studied flamenco. A story I had never heard. I’m still laughing about that. And, yes, she knew all about polka dots.
sab
OT : Solomon the basement rescue cat is in my upstairs bedroom on the nightstand, thinking about stepping on to the bed! He has never been here in this room before.
He wants canned cat food, but any show of affection is okay with me.
He is as big as an ocelot. He has short hair but he must be half maine coon.
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: agreed. MAGA ppl are racist filth
Ksmiami
@Quinerly: if you can, Shaver Lake is nearby and way more beautiful and interesting
TBone
@Quinerly: will do!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jeffro: Tariffs and crypto. Free money. Magic money.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Steelworkers are thrilled with tariffs. Every other manufacturing worker in Ohio now has their job at risk, and a lot of them know it. Wished they had realized it before the election.
AWOL
@sab: In my neighborhood, Russian bots are not physically hanging up anti-Harris, anti-Democratic, and anti-Jewish posters and stickers everywhere. Humans with legs and arms and tiny brains who supported a nazi victory are/were. Most likely Spartacists, GOP ops, and Biden-hating Arab merchants in my hood.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Absolutely true, which is why I mentally add a truckload of salt to “tough guy” declarations, and a double-truckload if I read that bullshit online.
Thanks to a workplace mass shooting many years ago, I do know what I’d do in that sort of situation. I ran away like a scared bunny.
Bupalos
@WTFGhost: I just read the 2-3 months thing as just the start of setting expectations, in order to drive everyone crazy as they interminably drag out fake talks.
The main thing they seem to be doing here is making the point – and having the U.S. sign off on it- that Zelenskyy’s legitimacy is questionable. That maneuver may actually even have some limited traction within Ukrainian politics.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I only push back somewhat on the assertion that people won’t argue political issues with their family because I see it happen, and it can be very painful for those people going through it.
One thing that I think it’s just very hard for all of us to accept is that real persuasion is incredibly rare, and that many people feel like their family members have almost been mentally abducted.
I have a distant cousin who has become a friend. She’s a liberal Dem. Her mom had decades of health problems that didn’t get diagnosed or treated, and she fell into the woo-woo rabbit hole. Worships FFOTUS. Loves Ivermectin and every stupid “health” trend, Absolutely refused to get the Covid vaccine, ended up on a ventilator. I know for a fact that my cousin tried — for years — to change her mom’s thinking…. around health and medicine, but also everything else. She told me, “I don’t recognize my mom anymore.”
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: Hm.
One day, I voluntarily got myself into a sexual situation that involved readily expected activity, that I was not prepared for, and my protests yielded no result. Although I was not-at-all apathetic, I could not summon the right combination of courage and anger to say “I don’t care how much this means to you – I must protect me, even if I hurt your feelings deeply.”
I went along with it, because it was *easier*. I was a man, with a woman, not that it matters, she thought “losing my virginity” would be so *gloriously* happy.
Take that, now, only modify it to fit “Joyful MAGA wants to share the joy.” It’s not *just* apathy. It’s a very difficult social minefield, *just* like sex is a difficult social minefield, for some of the same reasons – not wanting to hurt people, but otherwise willing to share happy things, etc..
Doc Sardonic
@sab: They knew what was going to happen from his first term, they didn’t give shit. There is the old saying that those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. My version is, those that don’t learn from history are dumb asses and deserve what they get good and hard, fuck ‘em.
Suzanne
@WTFGhost: Maybe that’s the case for some. It’s a big country.
sab
@Doc Sardonic: I would agree, but my two stepsons are solid Democrats and their jobs are now at risk.
But I want to agree with you.
sab
@AWOL: Curious: what state are you?
WTFGhost
I heard it said, during the Civil War (NEVER “The War Between The States”), there was a wide awareness that, once the shooting starts, anyone new might panic, freeze, flee, etc.. I heard it said that, second firefight, they’d “seen the elephant” (I *think* that was the expression), and could settle down and do right.
If you ran like a scared bunny, next time, you can try to maintain awareness (“it still sounds far – nope, running for that exit, it’s louder, so I’m running for the *other* one”).
If you *already* did that – you did *not* run like a scared bunny. (Bunnies run away from danger only by instinct – a bunny will run away from a door ten feet away because it’s ten feet closer to the gunman, who’s probably got two, three, walls between him and the bunny.)
Remember, in the Civil War, folks went out with a full kit in the North (the South thought their lost cause could be lost on bootlaces, for some reason), and they *still* would panic, with a gun by their side (and if they were well off, a Winchester or Henry rifle, “that damned Yankee rifle they load on Sunday and fire all week”).
FIRST: you survived, so you did it right. Congratulations. You’re braver than you think. (I know, I do understatement and irony as side gigs. They don’t pay much.)
You did the *smart* thing – even better. And you might not know it, but you’re that much readier for the *next* time, if and when, dear god I hope not, etc..
lynno
Food apartheid rationing.
AWOL
@WTFGhost: Neo-nazi Richard Spencer was having an orgasm when a worldwide printing press with no vetting was vomited out. The world he wanted now exists. He won.
Inevitably, there will be centuries of “Reality Wars.”
sab
@Suzanne: My brother made some snide comment about our “halfbreed” nephews on a phone call to me. Possibly made in jest. I didn’t challenge him on it. I didn’t tell his favorite sister (their mother.) But I decided I was done with him as family.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: I’ve been in some organizing spaces where Black People made light-hearted cracks about White People, Fragility, Privilege etc. Simply laughing, nodding and generally not making a fuss or getting defensive about it, goes a long way. Same thing in Feminist spaces where Men get bashed pretty regularly. And if you just roll with it, even when you think something maybe is crossing a line or being egregious, you establish a rapport eventually where you can raise slight objections and they will listen because you’ve already proven you’re not someone who freaks out over every little moment of discomfort. It’s a process, but the absolute first step, imo, is to resist any impulse to get upset/defensive etc.
Quinerly
@Ksmiami:
Thanks!
frosty
@TBone: Do you have your passports up to date to get into Canada? If not, do it now before everything Federal falls apart.
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: yeah, big country.
frosty
@Quinerly:
Black Canyon was our favorite (well, along with Rocky Mountain) until we got to Glacier last summer. Wow. I’ve seen 53 of the 63 now and I’m glad that I focused on them in our travels after I retired. God knows what’s going to happen now.
ETA We hit Zion in 2021 when there were COVID restrictions and shuttle bus reservations were impossible. We unpacked our eBikes and had the road pretty much to ourselves. Getting into Arches required a long wait in the morning though. The second day we went we arrived at 2:30 and sailed right through.
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: This, this, this.
Avoiding the temptation to go all “not all men” is pretty key, and that starts with glomming onto that principle: “Hey, I’M trying to be a good guy!” and thinking, “Oh, I know I’m not that guy. And he IS an asshole, ain’t he?” ;)
Quinerly
@frosty:
If Glacier is still around in Fall of 2026, that’s on my list.
My “Gay Son I Never Had” is a cargo plane pilot. He’s from near there. We will coordinate our plans. I met him when he was in college. Now he’s in his mid 30’s. So worried about him. He flies to and from China. Cargo.
frosty
@Quinerly: We reserved an afternoon half-day Red Bus excursion at Glacier. Definitely worth it, even on a foggy and occasionally rainy day. I hope these assholes don’t fire all the drivers and mechanics but I can’t see any reason they wouldn’t.
mr perfect
@different-church-lady: It’s going to be a Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact for the 21st Century.
Kay
@Quinerly:
I would love to go to Death Valley.
We’re going to Lake Superior this summer. We did a formal, planned group hike there about ten years ago and I think it might be my favorite place in the world.
Yosemite had this great ” back to the 1970s” camping vibe that I just loved. That’s why I want to take the little girls – and of course the mighty sequoias! I’m teaching the oldest granddaughter her trees. She can already spot a lot of them; redbud, maple, white oak. I showed her a photo of me beside a CA sequoia and she said “whoa – that’s big” :)
WTFGhost
@UncleEbeneezer: Also, too: it’s *hard*. Black people will say things that *hurt*. Women will say things that *hurt*.
We assume everyone knows how to deal with emotional pain, which is ridiculous. What’s the standard advice for emotional pain? “Man up”. Look: I’m pretty sure Medical Marijuana did *not* cause me to see Stallone figuratively-literally rip a guy’s heart out for revenge in the latest Ramhead, I mean, Dumbo, I mean, RAMBO.
*THAT* is what “man up” means today.
(Also: no, I didn’t throw up in my mouth a little, because that’s called GASTRIC REFLUX and it’s a dangerous medical condition – I take omeprazole so I never throw up in my mouth. If it happens *once*, no big, but if it happens “every so often”, talk to your doctor. Seriously. Your gastric juices, if aspirated, can eat the eff out of your lungs.)
Where was I? Right. IT IS OKAY TO BE HURT! And it’s okay to have to wander away and be hurt. And it’s important to realize, no one wanted to hurt you (unless someone started to berate you), but, here you are, hurt, and *why*?
You don’t have to hurt anyone back, just because you’re hurt. That’s not what being a man is about – being a man is *absorbing* the hurts, letting your 12-year-old son punch your shoulders and back while you hug it out.
Then, you find support for the pain of your son punching you. And sometimes, you realize the worst hurt is when someone else is hurting, and you want to help them, but can’t, and you want to say “it’s not my fault!” but, like with your son, everything is just a *little* your fault, because your kid is only 12, and Black people and Women have been dealing with shit for centuries, and face it, white man, you *have* been ignoring their pain, or we wouldn’t be talking about “how do you handle pain?” right now.
So: just like with your son, you learn to shut up, not forever, just for now, until you can get a better handle on *their* pain, and *your* pain, and decide how to deal with it.
AWOL
@sab: I live in Northern Manhattan.
UncleEbeneezer
@WTFGhost: It also gets easier the more you do it. After awhile, honestly, cracks about your group (White People, Men etc.) really don’t even bother you much. I just remind myself that the person saying it deals with fuck-tons of casual racism, misogyny, etc., every damn day and try to extend them some grace. My tiny discomfort is exponentially less than whatever bullshit they’ve had to deal with on a regular basis.
Ksmiami
@Quinerly: my cousins are all in that Delano, Tulare area. You’ll be happier there. And the Clovis foothills are gorgeous
TBone
@TBone: having been held at gunpoint more than once, I can honestly say I did not panic. Maybe I was too young & dumb, or too high, or both hahahaha!
Quinerly
@Ksmiami:
When I planned this trip to Sequoia/Kings Canyon it originally was April 2024. Made reservations for dog friendly cabin in the park. The stay in the park was 3 nights then hotels with points outside of the park for another 3-4 nights. I planned a much longer stay in the area. I ended up canceling and changing things to this year. When I called this year at the beginning of January about the dog friendly cabins, the price had gone up substantially. Things were already filling up. Long story short, I have enough hotel points to cop a squat in Tulare for free except for the additional JoJo fee. I have the trip mapped out pretty detailed for driving out (Flag, Oatman, Needles, Bakersfield….all hotel points) and for the stay in Tulare. Might hang out longer and hit some more stuff in the area. The route back is not planned at this point. Never been to this part of CA. Very open for any and all suggestions. Thanks!
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Shalimar:
there are not tens of millions of deceased people receiving social security.
How do I know? The social security inspector general did a report on it back in July of 2023. There are a large number of deceased people still active, but not drawing benefit checks on the NUMIDENT (social security’s listing for lack of a more accurate term). He found this occurred because of computer programming oddities, but no systemic fraud.
He did find 8.5 billion paid into the system using deceased numbers. Since this money will not be paid out in benefits, it actually benefits social security.
Here is the link to the summary of the audit
https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022summary.pdf
and the link to the report
https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022summary.pdf
Gvg
@Avalune: uh huh, not. I suppose it’s fortunate that Florida (the state)outlawed all race based preferences over a decade ago. So schools switched to income and situational disadvantage preferences which in fact sometimes meant white, but because society IS a systemically racially biased still enabled us to recruit minorities. We put a lot of emphasis on income and first generation to finish college, with mentors as well as money, and training classes on “how” to manage college.
I think we are already ok, but proving it to biased judges who want to find us guilty may be a problem.
Also there was never very much direct aid for specific minorities in my more than 30 years in financial aid. That was always an urban legend that just wouldn’t die. What there was, was a few small private clubs raised money and gave it to help a few of their own, and why shouldn’t they?
Kayla Rudbek
@Quiltingfool: I should probably clear out my office so that I can access the sewing machine. Knitting frequently involves reading the pattern off Knit Companion on my iPad so I flip back and forth between that app and my web browser and wind up doomscrolling.
Kayla Rudbek
@Professor Bigfoot: bearded white men driving lifted pickup trucks are generally dangerous to anyone, especially to cyclists in particular regardless of skin color. I will know that racism is over in America when a lone Black teenage girl can ride her bike anywhere she wants to without being harassed or attacked.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat:
Seriously? With a pronouncement like that, sure you can bring receipts.
Please link to the comments where “on Balloon Juice it has become quite acceptable to hate on Indian people”.
And where anyone said that all Indian people are like Vivek Ramaswamy/ Kash Patel.