I’ve been up since around 2 AM for some reason. I blame the dogs, but it’s not really their fault that sleep is so elusive these days. They aren’t eligible to vote, and even if they were, they would not have voted for Donald Trump.
Well, maybe Pete would have. I hate to say that about him — it’s a terrible accusation. But he can be a bully.
Pete doesn’t just want a toy, he wants all the damn stuffies and chewies, even when not actively using them. It’s not enough for him to have a lap to sit on. He wants all available laps reserved for his exclusive use. Yep, definitely a Republican, the fuzzy little gray bastid.
The mister and I made a rare excursion into the wider world yesterday. We met some friends at a horrid riverside dive bar that had a live band.
Behind the bar, there’s a shady backlot that slopes down to the river. There’s wooden stage for bands, and the lot is dotted with splintered picnic tables. Lots of grizzled biker dudes were milling about.
People had also set up folding chairs to watch the band. There was a little drunken dancing going on and much foot traffic from the bandstand area to the bar to replenish buckets of beer.
As we entered, we noticed a sign in the parking lot that said, “No Colors! No Attitude!” Presumably this was to discourage hostilities between rival biker gangs.
It’s kind of hard for me to get my mind around that. I am no spring chicken, and the biker dudes in attendance almost all looked older than I am — some considerably so. But I guess they’re not too old to get drunk and start throwing punches. People are dumb!
That parking lot was the scene of a late-night homicide a while back. A man who was notorious locally for being a belligerent ass threatened the wrong person and got shot for his trouble.
The shooter wasn’t charged due to the “stand your ground” law, and bystander consensus was that the deceased had it coming.
Anyway, judging from the demographic and location, it was an overwhelmingly Trumpy type of place, but I didn’t see any red hats. However, there was a weird moment, the meaning of which I’m still pondering.
The band covered a lot of old school rock, e.g., AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, some Stones, a little Hendrix, etc. But at one point, the lead singer mumbled something about these being challenging times and asked the crowd to remove their hats and join him in singing the national anthem.
After he concluded, the singer reminded us that God is in control. I turned to Bill and said let’s get the fuck outta here, so we did.
I can’t explain why, exactly, but it was disquieting. There was a “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” vibe to it. Or maybe I’m just a cynical person with a low tolerance for jingoism who should frequent more reputable establishments in the future.
Anyhoo. Open thread.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Krider’s Hawk
Baud
American or Russian?
Lapassionara
I wish God were in control. A few well-placed lightning bolts, and . . ..
I’d like to think a reigning deity would be anti-Trump.
Baud
Can’t help wonder why the singer would call these challenging times if he was a Trumper. Maybe telling people to stay the course given all the upheaval and destruction.
Jeffg166
Being a biker at 20 something I suppose is cool to a number of younger people. Being one at 40 something becomes sad. Being a geriatric biker is pathetic.
I live on a hillside with a street that goes from the bottom to the top of the hill. Bikers love this street to ride up and down on the first warm day in spring.
I don’t know what the fantasy is that goes through their heads. For me I see some fat middle aged to old blobs hanging over the bike.
Their biggest turn on is to make enough noise with the motor to set car alarms off.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: We speculated along the same lines, but I don’t know. It was kind of jarring in the moment.
One thing that’s giving me life these days: reading about and watching clips of Republican officials running away from town halls and other interactions with constituents. Josh Marshall at TPM is tracking them here.
So far, my shitty Republican rep hasn’t held any announced town halls/events in my area, but reading between the lines of his latest newsletter tells me I’m not the only one haranguing him about Musk dismantling the federal government.
The newsletter is full of lies about DOGE, which I plan to refute line by line via phone, in person and via constituent email. They are pissing on our heads and telling us it’s raining. What I can’t get a sense of yet is how many people believe the stinky yellow liquid is rain.
Baud
@Jeffg166:
Riding bikes is fine at any age. Being an old person in a biker gang that gets into bar fights is pretty sad.
TS
I would have left when asked to sing the national anthem. Nationalism, flags and anthems have much to answer for in the history of our world. Maybe they have a place in sport – nowhere else.
Ten Bears
These days my grizzled appearance is urban camo
I don’t wear it on my sleeve, tattooed beneath …
JoyceH
I don’t think a Trumper would call these challenging times – the ones I see on TV (well, not counting the ones who’ve lost their jobs) seem pretty dang triumphant. Elon is destroying the Deep State and the Golden Age has dawned.
WereBear
Most of what I know about bikers comes from Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. But who better, right?
He characterized them as overly captivated by symbols, like colors or biker solidarity of the “body hits the floor” variety. Like this:
Knowing this, of course you bailed when you got an ambiguous message. Was a meant as a way to come together as a nation? Not if you have just been informed that “god is in control.”
Those are very scary words to thinking people.
WereBear
We know it wasn’t Pete’s upbringing :) that made him a bully. He has a strong will to power. They crave leadership and proving themselves.
I had a malamute/collie mix and adored him but I had to be Pack Leader. So I must admit my equally adored spaniel mix, who rolled over to let the kittens dominate him because he only cared about love, was a much easier fella to have around… when my nerves have been worked over with an emery board.
Jackie
I read “No colors” as something different at first read. My heart plummeted, and I re-read again and got it right the second take. BUT, my first thought was “It’s happening – thanks to FFOTUS.” And, sadly, I wasn’t surprised.
I woke early thanks to a horrible nightmare, and then found a greasy mess in the kitchen sink -which I had to clean in order to make coffee – then read your post before coffee was finished brewing.
Not a good start to begin a new day.
raven
Thursday and Friday Athens had a REM tribute band with Michael Shannon and the REM took the stage and played “Pretty Persuasion”. We didn’t go but they were epic events!
WereBear
@Lapassionara: If the lightning bolts haven’t hit Trump yet, we might have proof of concept here.
Hitler wasn’t stopped, but he also did not declare himself King. I thought only gods crowned kings… so there you are.
TBone
The movie Cabaret was on TCM the other day or night and, although I didn’t watch it again, I have been thinking about that song performance a LOT lately, B.C. Are you psychic!? That misspelling is gonna stay there
Palate cleanser: IT IS TUBE REMOVAL DAY FOR NOAH! He has been eating on his own steadily and with gusto! every day since Thursday and we are all SO chuffed that he’s BACK! My chonky boy is slightly less chonky but he is KICKING ASS in the recovery department!
TO All things MAGA I say
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z9nkzaOPP6g
9:30AM can’t arrive soon enough!
(A bestie’s dad was named Bruce and he’d get serenaded all the time with that and could never stay mad!)
Princess
Maybe it’s starting to hit some of them that Memaw is going to be tossed from her nursing home and will be living with them once Medicaid is gone.
WereBear
@JoyceH: The shills are still happy. But actual people trying to live their lives are freaked out.
We could cut the movement in half this way. It was already eroding but kept the hardcore. Because they didn’t blame him for anything.
But not having enough money to live on is like being executed in the morning. It clarifies one’s thoughts.
Suzanne
I was listening to a podcast that annoyed me — maybe Ezra Klein? Anyway, Ezra-or-whomever made one observation that I need to think about, which is that we’re in kind of a mystical period in society. He contrasted it with the Obama era, which he described as somewhat technocratic. I would say more “evidence-based”.
But the idea of being in kind of a mystical time…. that is a thing I will have to ruminate on.
TBone
@Lapassionara: I like to pixture it raining frogs at Mar-A-Lardass in my mind’s eye. SPLAT.
TBone
@Baud: he heard that his Social Security and Medicare benefits are on the chopping block.
Baud
I knew he was responsible .
TBone
@Betty Cracker: points for Josey Wales reference, hahahaha!
Baud
@Suzanne:
That makes sense. Lots of secular fervor out there that looks a lot like religious fervor.
ETA: Including secular end times prophesies.
TBone
@Ten Bears: awe inspiring. Hubby does that too when we feel this rural shithole. Even I participate sometimes. Dress for the job!
Jackie
It’s an upside down day today. Saw this Axios headline:
RFK Jr. urges people to get vaccinated amid deadly Texas outbreak
TBone
How I wish I had the tech wherewithal to post a photo or three of Noah in his victorious stance. He is such a good boy, the most dog-like cat EVAH.
NotMax
A little motorcycle music.
Nowadays I got me two good wheels
And I seek refuge in aluminum and steel
I takes me out there for just a little while
And the years fall away with every mile
.
Suzanne
@Baud: There’s a lot of stuff that is immeasurable but absolutely real. This might be one of those things.
I wonder why we might be entering a time like this. I tend to think that the aesthetics of various religious traditions, rituals, etc…. are maybe an underrated aspect of why they mean a lot to people.
I also think the pandemic broke us in some ways we don’t fully appreciate.
TBone
@NotMax: I’ll see that perfection and raise you an additional video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzaaVXG8qI0
When I was in my late yute, local bikers both saved me and used me to avoid capture during drug runs up the Turnpike by kidnap (they knew Dad was a cop). I was an honorary member. No man messed with my physical safety after that time period for a very long time.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I know, that seemed strange to me. I thought they were happy as pigs in . . .
But then, I remember my normie friend’s trumpy client told her before the election to stock up on enough food for three months.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Well, at least during the Obama era, the evidence-based faction had political control at the level of the federal administration, with some support from pop culture and media. The mystical, anti-rationalist strains were boiling under the surface, and being exploited by the powerful.
Remember, the Tea Party movement sprung up almost immediately (it was astroturf, but it was feeding on real feelings, mostly racist ones hand in hand with greed) and the 2010 midterm was a conservative blowout at every level of government.
We’ve had times of mystification in the recent past. The first few years after 9/11 was one where I think the rule of feeling and symbol had broader control of the people than it does now. Even many liberals bought in. We were working through those 9/11 feelings really up to the COVID pandemic when we had a new trauma to supplant them.
zhena gogolia
I see Anora won best picture. I’m watching it now (I can only watch things in 20-minute segments). It is really good.
ETA: But then I worry — is this a symptom of US society becoming pro-Russian? (not that it gives a very positive portrait of Russians)
WereBear
@TBone: This is when it all feels worth it!
Good boy.
brendancalling
This wasn’t in Tallahassee was it? A place called “Warrior on the River”?
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve thought about the tea party movement a lot lately because I sometimes wonder if there’s a liberal analogue emerging now. You’re right — the tea party was an astroturf operation, but like you noted, it fed on a seething discontent that was very real. I feel like there’s seething discontent on our side now and wonder where it will lead.
Betty
@Suzanne: This sounds right to me. I have read before about the importance of rituals in people’s lives. It can be religious or just a regular family get-together, like my Mom’s Saturday pancakes. My sister is continuing the pancake one now that Mom is gone. Many people have abandoned rituals they grew up with, and that, combined with the disruption of Covid, has left a lot of people unmoored.
TS
@WereBear:
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in 1804, so that’s another option
Princess
@zhena gogolia: I feel like for some viewers it is. They want to be the Russian oligarch family. But America loves Good Prostitute movies.
TBone
@TBone: they never laid a finger on me!
Betty Cracker
@brendancalling: No, different place. This was a dive in the middle of nowhere.
TBone
@WereBear: thank you for celebrating with us! There is real French champagne in my immediate future.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Mikey Madison is in “Better Things” and it is hilarious.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: They know that Trumpism’s hold on the people is fragile and being enforced top-down. It’s not like the time just after 9/11 when George W. Bush had suddenly gotten legitimacy handed to him on a silver platter, was at 90% job approval and everyone was falling over themselves in the grip of trauma to embrace patriotic symbolism and support our troops.
Instead we have a government elected by a slim majority, which has not expanded its base of support, promising to inflict pain on its own people in the name of some nebulous Golden Age, with obvious widespread discontent. I suppose what they need is a massive foreign terrorist attack, which could explain why they’re setting up conditions where one can easily happen.
Jeffro
@raven: I saw that in the news here and there – awesome
I’m going to listen to ‘Dead Letter Office’ and ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’ today, I think!
TBone
@Betty Cracker: the best kind of dives, I want to tell too many stories today but you are all spared my ramblings. Focus, TBone, there is good work to be done!
Jeffro
@Suzanne:
@Baud:
Most folks can sense it, I think – big change is coming, one way or another.
raven
@Jeffro: A friend sold his tickets for $500 each! We had people in our AIRBNB who came from Florida for the show!
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Agree.
I am sure that there is some scholarship documenting people turning to religious observance, strict dietary habits, supernatural thinking, etc. after the death of someone close to them. I wonder how that works writ large.
One of the themes I have observed here in recent months, since we’ve endured all this shit and we’ve been fighting about it…. we’re all so frustrated by the utter lack of rationality of it. It is clearly observable that delivery of results, feasibility of campaign promises, etc….. just did not matter. And we have reached for all the explanations we understand — and which I absolutely believe play a part — like racism, sexism, anti-incumbency, price of eggs, etc.
The idea that people are thirsty for magical thinking (rather than trying to turn away from it) is a thing that I need to muse on. I tend to think that religious practice satisfies human needs for beauty and community and that the actual belief/supernatural aspects are less important.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: What there isn’t (yet) is any corporate elite that really wants to harness our side’s discontent. The big money is all in with Trump, because he’s big money’s guy. The power centers that embraced liberalism in the past just bent the knee.
But maybe they’re getting nervous.
Of course, our anti-capitalist left isn’t going to be comfortable with any sugar daddies who emerge, and that discomfort will be justified. But, you know, welcome to America.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Turning the ad campaign on its head.
“Take tea and seethe.”
//
WereBear
@TBone: Remake of Frogs in another Florida mansion with an obnoxious rich guy.
Imagine the crowd we could cast, being chased through the gaudy ballrooms…
We could do a cameo by Sam Elliott, who was the only reason to watch it then. And he’s still worth watching now.
Princess
@Suzanne: Ugh, you’re making me think David Brooks may have a point, which I hate to admit. He bangs on and on about community. Of course his vision is impossibly narrow, but the basic idea is probably correct.
TBone
@WereBear: oooh, great visuals! I doff my tinfoil hat to you!
TBone
@NotMax: my inner Morticia salutes you.
Jeffro
Maybe it was the combo of major events:
(almost makes it seem like nothing happened between 1946 and 2000, doesn’t it? =)
A Ghost to Most
Christian supremacists are definitely not my crowd, regardless of how good the music is.
TBone
@Princess: we are doing community right now.
Baud
@Princess:
You ignored Bobo at your peril!
TBone
@A Ghost to Most: good morning to you, my spirit animal.
Baud
@Jeffro:
You forgot female presidential nominees!
prostratedragon
@zhena gogolia: Is it Brooklyn-y? Russian and other ex-Soviet immigrants have been prominent in Brighton Beach for a while now , e.g. the “Little Odessa” area.
Currants
Betty…
I love reading your stories—and your writing is always pitch-perfect. Thank you!
Ohio Mom
@Jackie: Maybe you got the day’s worth of bad stuff out of the way early.
I also woke up to a nightmare although it was about a disorganized dinner party. I felt beleaguered.
Ramalama
@TBone: how long did he have the tube in? Seems like…a really long time. Good for youse. Good for Noah the wonder cat.
TBone
@prostratedragon: now I hear the Beastie Boys and had to see the visual
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=07Y0cy-nvAg
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I’ve also said before that I think if we get through all this with any kind of recognizable liberal-democratic society, it will not be entirely through technocratic arguments. The movement has to embrace symbolic patriotic strains in its own way. We need our way to wave the flag.
We’ve done it before.
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was a reworking of “John Brown’s Body” and it is a fucking terrifying song, if you listen to the lyrics.
I think about Frederick Douglass a lot. He was initially aligned with William Lloyd Garrison who urged the free states to secede from the Union and called the Constitution a deal with the devil. The hell of it is, Garrison was right on the merits. The US absolutely had been founded on a hypocritical bargain with slavers in the name of all men being created equal. It’s absurd on the face of it.
But Douglass ultimately decided that tossing it all out because of that wasn’t leading anywhere useful. He decided that the useful formula was to stress the ways that the promises in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution made them “freedom documents”. If that bore no connection to reality… well, it was up to us to make that connection happen.
And the other guy who embraced that formula was Abraham Lincoln. It’s in the Gettysburg Address.
A lot of blood got shed. Fifty years later, white Americans were saying it was all a tragic misunderstanding and trying their best to roll it back. We’ll never be entirely rid of that.
But if we can salvage anything of America I am betting it’s going to be with something like Douglass’s finesse.
Geminid
I often wake up early, and I usually check out Middle Eastern news sites because they get up really early over there.
So this morning I looked up Ragip Soylu, the Middle East Eye‘s Istanbul bureau chief. Soylu had a couple posts about the film No Other Land winning the Oscar for best Documentary; also, some video of archeologist unearthing a statue of Hermes at an excavation at the ancient Roman Imperial-era ity of Aspende.
Soylu also posted about the ongoing thaw in relations between the Turkish government and the nation’s Kurdish political party DEM:
Turkish President has been in Selahattin Demertis’s shoes; in the late1990s, Erdogan served six months of a two year prison sentence for reading a poem prosecutors deemed subversive.
“Turkish nationalist leader” Devlet Bahceli is head of the MHP party and has been Erdogan’s junior coalition partner since 2015. Bahceli has taken a lead role in negotiations with the Kurdish-based DEM party that Demirtas headed before his imprisonment in 2022.
David_C
I haven’t read my work email since Saturday AM, so I’m not sure what the “5 things” guidance is, but I’ll work up something vague and use AI to find statutes to support my lack of concrete information. At church I met someone from another agency who said he wrote that he spent his time keeping the lights on because he had to do the work of the people who were let go.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Russian enclave in Brighton Beach for at least 40 years, maybe 50.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
What other option is there that isn’t purely masturbatory?
lowtechcyclist
I would think a more mystical time would be a less angry time. But maybe that’s just me.
I woke up in the middle of the night, and for some reason my mind latched onto Stephen Miller, and all the child separations and kids in cages. And I was wondering how the hell is this guy walking around free, and why wasn’t he charged with and prosecuted for a few thousand instances of child abuse. Took me an hour or two to sidetrack my brain onto something more sleep-conducive.
TBone
@David_C: 🤘 go to town on their asses.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The other option is Garrison’s: break up the United States, which would probably be even more bloody, especially if you actually care about, say, Black people in Trumpy America. Which is exactly the same concern Douglass had: sure, New England could secede but it wasn’t going to do a damn thing for an enslaved person in Georgia.
geg6
@Suzanne:
As a very introverted person, I actually enjoyed the solitude and quiet of the pandemic. But I know it broke the vast majority of us. In ways we don’t even realize yet.
Meanwhile, if we are heading into some more “spiritual” time, I want out. I despise all woo, especially of the religious sort. I’m not made for that shit.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: I would say liminal — at the edge of something, and what’s over the threshold, beyond the mist, is not clear. In the sense we are entering uncharted territory.
Mystical means relating to spiritual matters, I only see nuts and bolts before me. There isn’t anything transcending human understanding or inspiring awe going on, unless we are saying we are awestruck and without complete understanding of the embodied evil of Trump/Musk/Vought and talking about evil, we have to include Miller.
TBone
@Ramalama: it’s been since January 24 or 25 or longer, I’d have to look at the Noah diary I carefully kept of every detail of his health and nutritional intake. Too fucking LONG.
The light at the end of this particular tunnel is NOT an oncoming train, thank you! TBone Challenge #1 is OVER.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Purely masturbatory. The only way the US breaks up today is if Dems win control of the federal government and set the blue states free. But if Dems are in control, what’s the incentive to do that?
ETA: Republicans aren’t going to let the cash cow that the blue states represent go.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: When I became aware of it in the late 70s it had been around at least a decade.
Lapassionara
@Suzanne: I think the pandemic’s effects are still playing out. We hear criticism of the way big cities are being governed (rampant crime, lots of trash, vacant buildings, etc.) People forget that police departments lost a lot of personnel during COVID. Plus, much of the work police did in preventing crime was based on working with community groups to focus on channeling young people into positive activities. The pandemic interrupted most of that work for a while, and I don’t know if this kind of crime prevention work has returned. Schools shutting down did not help this process either. I don’t know if police departments have recovered from the loss of personnel and experience. I know that the typical measure of success with respect to education have not recovered.
Geminid
@prostratedragon: Rep. Eugene Vindman, my new Congressman for the Virginia 7th District, lived in Brighton Beach after his family emigrated from Ukraine. I think he was around five years old at the time.
Eugene and his twin brother Alexander went to college at SUNY-Binghamton; they both were in the Reserve Officer Training Corps.
WereBear
@Suzanne:
People prefer magic. Which tells them if you believe in it, say the words and move your hands right, it will work. So that is where they put their effort and attention.
Not enough to get fired, until Fox and Limbaugh came along. They were snookered like Amway Reps and it was the exact same procedure.
When I think of it as cult brainwashing, it makes perfect sense to me.
Steve Graham
Had kind of the opposite experience a week ago. My band played out on a Friday here in Raleigh – we are definitely small potatoes and unfashionably rocking and gray, but our singer said something about wanting to give an exciting set, although maybe things were already exciting enough lately (alluding to the fascist dipshit onslaught), and everyone there got real quiet and it felt like they wanted him to say more, to just say something out loud, name it. We just went on to the next tune because we’re kind of a bashful bunch.
prostratedragon
@Geminid: Huh, one of those things I might have heard but somehow didn’t register.
Baud
Wrong thread.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Interesting thoughts. One promising thread to pull on in this enormous ball of tangled yarn: FREEDOM.
I think Gov. Walz was onto something when he said, “Mind your own damn business,” the point being that you may disagree with your neighbor’s choices, but they have the right to live their lives as they sit fit, as do you.
Gov. Whitmer took a similar approach, talking about civil rights in the vernacular of freedom. That sort of language does highlight the very real oppression so-called small government conservatives impose when they weigh in on what we can do, say, read and be.
Shalimar
@Suzanne: I agree Obama’s governing style was technocratic, especially on the economy where he chose standard Wall Street leaders when most of us wanted those assholes punished. I don’t think that is why he was successful as a politician. His public speaking allowed people to project their hope for a better world onto him. We were optimistic that life would get better even in a bad economy.
If I had to choose one word for our current national mood, it is anarchic, not mystical. Trump’s followers want to break everything they don’t like.
brendancalling
@Betty Cracker: I opened for David Alan Coe at a similar place in Tallahassee back in 2019. Seems like forever ago.
Matt McIrvin
@geg6:
So did I. Usually, my avoidant tendencies are bad politics but here was a situation where I could indulge them and it would help society!
But even there, there was the stress of constantly pushing against the impulses of most of the reasonable people I knew. I had to be the killjoy bad guy over and over and over.
Ohio Mom
@prostratedragon: For a while? Since the 1970s, when the Soviet Union started allowing Jews to emigrate. Brighton Beach was already a Jewish neighborhood when they arrived.
A college boyfriend who was a Brooklynite said the Russians pushed out “the gangs” by which I think he meant Black kids from Coney Island. But who knows, that was half a century ago.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
The Trump Village development of multiple high rises was built around the same time adjacent to Brighton Beach.
Betty Cracker
@brendancalling: No shit?
I don’t know Tallahassee well. I’ve been there a few times, but it’s a couple of hundred miles from where I am, and unlike most other Florida cities, I don’t know anyone who lives there.
Warrior on the River looks interesting — a much larger venue than the place I described above, which is truly a shithole.
leeleeFL
@Lapassionara: I don’t assume that anymore! It actually depresses me more than I’d have thought, being somewhat agnostic. I worry, seriously, that perhaps the deity has a red hat in their closet! If that turns out to be true, fucked, we are!
Don’t mind me, I just turned 74 on Sunday. Had a decent day, even tho I had to work. Maudlin musings in the night!
Baby Jeebus best be our Obi-wan Kenobi, our only hope! Let’s hope he has influence with his Dad!
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I think the thing in the COVID pandemic that broke us was that you could make a case that liberal technocratic governance then was anti-freedom, in the most direct way. We were telling people not to leave their homes! Don’t do what you want to do, it’ll kill people.
Trump instinctively saw he could divide people and get support by taking the anti-prevention side and hamstringing his own public health officials. Don’t let the pandemic rule your life–you can do anything you want!
But the results were bad enough that it got him booted from office, for a time. Just barely.
The Biden administration tried to square that circle by leaning hard on the vaccine, which initially seemed like a miracle. Get your shot, then you can go back to living your life. But the Omicron variant made it a lot less clear-cut, and that helped the antivaxxers who were saying it was all a lie and a conspiracy.
Now, that problem isn’t front and center any more and it sure seems like the conservatives are the enemies of freedom. They won’t let you live your life unless you’re the right kind of person.
But there are going to be other things like this. The fight to mitigate climate change is another one where liberal technocracy is telling you you can’t just do what you want to do, you have to engage in some pro-social thinking instead. To some extent it’s been a problem for a long time. The right’s caricature of liberals has always been that they’re control freaks who are coming up with excuses to run your life as an end in itself. Of course it’s always been clear to me that there’s a lot of projection in that. But it’s a problem to wrestle with.
Ramalama
@Steve Graham: so you don’t have a rooster-type lead singer? That’s kind of cool, the people responding like that.
leeleeFL
@TS: I have a hard time with the Pledge, when it comes up at work, which it does. Throwback to my HS Vietnam protest life. Stood in the hallway during the morning Pledge for several years. Usually avoid occasions where it comes up. But work is an old school Florida Yacht Club!
Ramona
@Matt McIrvin: Your insight is incisive i.e. the pandemic gave reactionary forces perfect propaganda amplifying their claim that liberals seek to curtail the liberty of all as an end in itself.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Good points.
leeleeFL
@TBone: LIFE AT MAR-AL-LARDASS should be a revolving tag! You might have just saved my sanity! I love that! Thank you for the Birthday present!
Geminid
@prostratedragon: I never knew about the Vindmans growing up in Brighton Beach until Eugene ran for Congress last year.
I was a Eugene Vindman sceptic at first, but he showed good retail political skills considering he was a newcomer to elective politics. I would have voted for Vindman regardless, but I ended up liking him.
brendancalling
@Betty Cracker: the drive down was almost more interesting than the show.
TBone
Of course, as is always to be expected in my world, my own health took a turn during Noah’s intensive home care. After hiking the Alps in the late 90s, I got this which was promptly misdiagnosed. It has now returned with a vengeance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrodermatitis_chronica_atrophicans
Must see doctor who will not gaslight me. Fuck.
The skin plaques are seriously vexatious!
mrmoshpotato
That’s nice and vague – and weird.
TBone
@leeleeFL: yours in service!
Birthday and every day love,
TBone
Raven
@leeleeFL: Here’s how they did the pledge until WW2
https://flic.kr/p/fb4S7J
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: Damn deer ticks.
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: in & around the Black Forest as well as many other Alpine locations back then, it was SHEEP! And cows! No one in the US medical establishment had ANY idea what the fuck was going on! The stories I could tell would light your hair on fire.
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear:
He just wants love – all of it, all of the time. :)
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: I don’t have much left, and I don’t look good completely bald. Oh, and the resulting burns, so please keep those to yourself.
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: I will keep the actual flame to a minimum for you! But the nerve damage I’m suffering now is apt to make me moodier than usual IRL and I might stay fiercely vocal about all of this here at BJ.
leeleeFL
@Suzanne: Yes, I think so, as well! And I’ve been of the opinion that this entire Country has had PTSD since 911.
Nixon and Reagan planted the ugliest seeds they could, and then stepped back to let them flourish. They knew the soil was going to produce well, so saturated with the blood of the Native Americans that were cleansed to make room for Manifest Destiny. Shining City on a Hill, my butt!
This place can’t handle adversity without becoming bloodthirsty assholes, it seems. Worked a treat for WW2, but some of the seeds of fascism were always here.
Reaping a whirlwind we are.
TBone
The local radio is attempting to placate and calm me for today’s medical visit for Noah! 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QwQudUx5p8
Betty Cracker
@brendancalling: You and my Bill could swap stories for hours, I’ll bet! He was a road musician for many years. Saw some things!
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie:
He probably means getting vaccinated against vaccines. I can’t see that moron coming to his senses.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: I’m sorry. Hope modern medicine can punt the sickness right out of your system.
TBone
And further forevermore
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pBHBuFqy6I8
TBone
Now This!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi86ZiOlIVo
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: thank you, I feel hugged.
It all started with a very painful small hole on a foot sole, like some kind of diabolical German Marching Powder or flesh-eating bacteria, then progressed over lo these many years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-IX
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. I was just talking with SuzMom about how I think we’re in a particularly “old” period right now. Not much emphasis on the new, on innovation, on building, on children. Most of our politics feels like it’s about maintenance (in word if not in deed), and risk avoidance, and backward-looking. Of course, backward-looking, nostalgia…. is ultimately about a different form of control.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: Oh no. Can we dance while on the highway to the danger zone?
(Why would they build a highway to such a place anyway?)
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: if there is no dancing, I’m not coming!
Ohio Mom
The more I think of it, the more I dislike the adjective “mystical” to describe the era we are living through.
There is nothing mystical about ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and dismantling the federal government, and encouraging hate and fear of minority groups. That is all pretty concrete and black and white. It’s all outlined in a document. As long as you can read English, there’s nothing unexpected happening.
There are no mysterious powers behind this, no inexplicable coincidences, there’s no peace that surpasses understanding, no beauty that leaves you awe struck, nothing that can’t be put into words (boy are there a lot of words being written about this).
I haven’t yet found the words for why I think using the word mystical dovetails a little too nicely with the vision of Christain nationalism, where we are all supposed to turn into church-going serfs, but I think there’s something there.
If I’m generous, I’d say that Ezra was trying to find a word for having the earth shift beneath your feet, of feeling powerless to stop what is bound to be something that has so far been unimaginable to most of us. We are at sea.
If I’m not feeling generous, Ah, old Ezra Klein, I’ve thought he was a conniving sack of hot air since I first discovered him in what was it, the very early 2000s?
Back then, another blogger I read, or tried to read, was Josh Marshall. He had a solo site where he posted long, rambling essays without enough paragraph breaks that were difficult to follow. Compare where he led himself to land vs. where Ezra (and his pal Matty Y) ended up.
Ohio Mom
@mrmoshpotato: As Obama pointed out, the truth has a way of catching up to you.
Matt McIrvin
@Lapassionara: Police also did a lot of “blue flu” soft strikes and malicious compliance in response to the movement against police brutality. It’s textbook labor action apart from it being in service of the right to kill Black people.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: I interpreted “mystical” in the way one would use it to describe the Nazis. A cultivated irrationalism in service ultimately of mass murder.
suzanne
@Ohio Mom: I think what Ezra was getting at is more like what I would call “magical thinking”. Every religion has its mystical traditions, most have this whole series of rituals meant to make one feel rather than think.
That’s my interpretation, anyway. Almost a turning away from the values of the Enlightenment, borne out of a need to feel something beyond oneself.
This, of course, can have all sorts of terrible effects on society and thus our politics.
Jeffro
OMG…I had completely blanked that double trauma from my mind… ;)
Matt McIrvin
@leeleeFL: I have a friend who argues persuasively that the superhero movie phenomenon was the last stage of Americans working through trauma over 9/11. So many of the movies have 9/11-derived imagery of a devastated city at the climax. And then you had some like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” that were also processing the bad things we did in response.
I think Marvel’s hit machine is struggling now in part because we’re into the next politicized trauma, which is different. Weirdly, the crisis in “Infinity War/Endgame” kind of accidentally worked as a COVID metaphor in advance, but that’s done now. Captain America had some comics stories in the 1970s that would definitely speak to our current situation, but Marvel may be too shy to go there now. But it doesn’t feel like the superhero moment any more.
Denali5
I
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks for your insight in regard to Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.
I think of the word mystical as being the opposite of or overriding fact based approaches. We are all vulnerable. We just need to be cautious about what we are endorsing behind the shadows. The most obvious example is the CF’s mantle of The Great White Saviour. There is no rational reason to support this myth, but it is unfortunately quite real.
YY_Sima Qian
Are Third Way Democrats still relevant?
It seems that they just want the Dems to become Repub Lite, which will be utterly ineffective even on its own terms.
Ohio Mom
@Matt McIrvin: Well then use irrational and inexplicable or find another word. “Mystical” is too soft and gauzy a word.
People have mystical experiences that awe them, no one says it was a mystical experience being tortured, even if it was a mind out of body experience. Horrific is not a synonym for mystical.
I just don’t want to inadvertently sugarcoat what’s happening.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: That’s what NYT does though and the rest of the so called liberal media. Gives the Rs cover by downplaying the damage they are doing. NYT is fully complicit. The true base of the Trump R party is the media
FWIW Ds need to lean into patriotism, flag and country. What is going on is a hostile takeover of the country by a foreign power. Think East India Company in Bengal in the late 1750s.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne: Well, the DOGE purge isn’t about maintenance or risk-avoidance, it’s about destruction–ripping things out and replacing them with nothing. (Eventually, the market will move in with a “superior” replacement and their friends will get a cut of the fees!) To movement “conservatives” this is exciting because they’ve been dreaming of it for 90 years. But it’s entirely subtractive, nihilistic.
TBone
@TBone: WQSU college radio playing my lovesong
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wccRif2DaGs
Couldn’t be any more on the nose!
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Right now, flag-waving ritual symbolism is all working for Trump and I have a rough time joining in. But the pitch for liberal values absolutely needs to be phrased in these terms. We are NOT a nation founded on Anglo ethnicity like Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance imagine. We are a nation founded on self-evident human rights, liberty and equality. It says that right in the documents the Founding Fathers wrote. That it was a load of bollocks in terms of their actual practice in 1776 or 1791 does not matter. Those Enlightenment ideas were great. And they totally do not mean what fascists say they mean. That was the idea of America, down on the page.
Liberals admire a lot about European social democracies but a lot of this is just going to sound alien to people in them (well, maybe not to the French). It’s very American exceptionalist. But it’s how we do things here.
Ohio Mom
@Matt McIrvin: You only have to look at privatized Medicare Advantage vs. traditional (government-administered) Medicare.
Advantage plans (quick Google) cost the government 22% more per participant and give worse care; they can also end up costing more out-of-pocket for the participant.
Logic tells you there’s no way to add profit to calculations and end up with a lower cost.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: We have centrists but I haven’t heard of Third Way having much pull in decades.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: It’s an article of faith that governments are shot through with shirkers, spongers and frauds who are wasting most of your tax money. Evidence has no power against the belief. I think a lot of it is just the racist stereotype of a lot of them being Black and therefore up to no good, hence the “DEI hire” emphasis.
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly…. but that’s why i added the caveat of maintenance “in word of not in deed”. FFOTUS and Elon talk about preserving Social Security and Medicare, and then lay waste to them. But looking for proof is not mystical!
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: That is certainly true of the Times, no argument here.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: The Democratic party stands for the American ideal, they should lean into that. Make that emotional appeal. Just saying that the Rs want to rob you is not enough.
Misswhatsis
I would have left when asked to sing the anthem — and I say that as a first soprano who lurves those high notes. Definitely a ‘Tomorrow belongs to Me’ scene.
I also have a republican dog — 8.5 pounds of fluffy privilege who believes everyone is here to serve his needs. He got into a scrap last night with the Lab because he wanted all the beds and all the squeaky toys. Sadly I can’t figure out how to add a photo of the little pig dog.
WereBear
@YY_Sima Qian: They never were. It’s a feint. Big money undermining unity.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Like I said, this sounds Martian and deceptive to a lot of people outside the US– they’re like, “You don’t own human rights! We all believe that stuff! If anything the US is an impediment to them! It has nothing to do with your nationalism!”
All true. And yet, it’s part of *our* republic’s founding myth, kind of like when French people go on about the Revolution. And it’s political malpractice not to use that.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: FWIW, Richard Rorty has a whole essay about embracing a leftist patriotism in Achieving Our Country, called “American National Pride: Whitman and Dewey”. Gave me a lot to think about.
Note that Rorty was an actual leftist, not a cosplaying asshole on Xhitter.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Delusional is more accurate.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Major media is always about MONEY. They aren’t owned by people that live in a single or one bedroom apartment. Major Media is owned by people with money. Money they make every day by selling something that gets recycled the day after you read it or who just waste electrons while you watch. Sure they might be telling you the truth – or not. We have power from communicating and discussing and numbers, they make money telling you what they want to say. And MONEY is often their most important product – to them.
BellaPea
We just returned from visiting my Mom in West Tennessee, where I grew up. Stayed in a hotel in Jackson and had dinner out. I felt totally out of place–all of the men had grey goatees and were wearing ball caps, women were tired looking with frizzy hair. They were all an advertisement for MAGA. I don’t remember people looking like this when I lived here. Jackson is a growing city, but super conservative and hyper religious. I’m sure they voted at high levels for the Orange Anus. I don’t really feel comfortable being there, just really strange to feel that way now after I’ve been gone for 46 years.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
It always takes finesse, because we are a lot of human mammals.
We all think, sometimes, but because we are a group of diverse mental capacities, intelligence, concept, history and learning we do not always come to the same conclusions. And some come to only selfish conclusions. Survival is after all one of our basic animal concepts. We have a country that is supposed to believe that we are all equal, but our humanity – and survival (as we each see surviving) can be worlds apart. Our goals for how to survive (and prosper!) can and often will be, well, worlds apart. Which in many ways is actually good. But in some ways a worlds apart concept of survival can be dangerous to survival of the whole. We have to recognize that but that requires we don’t be, what are those words, Oh Yeah, completely f’ing selfish.
Ruckus
@BellaPea:
An old saying, life goes on.
It changes, it grows, it stagnates. Humans are animals like all the rest of them, survival is a basic concept. But HOW we survive can be seen as a hell of a lot different, even among closely related beings. And many animals (us among them) often just follow the crowd, the basics, the easy way out – the rest of those like them. Or around them. Not everyone does or can survive well on their own. And unless we work together, we will often fight over scraps, so to speak. There is a balance to survival, go too far and often no one does. Don’t fit in? Often one doesn’t survive. It is easier today but it’s still humanity and survival of the fittest. Which may not always be what each one of us thinks survival for others is, because we no longer live in caves and survive by theft, and at the cost of others. At least we don’t have to…
Gloria DryGarden
i love this phrase, and the image it conjures!
TONYG
@Lapassionara: I decided to abandon all religion when I was 17 because I figured out that if “God is in control” then “He” is fucking up pretty badly. I’ve never regretted that decision.
Yutsano
@David_C: One of my co-workers developed a template & we’re just sending that in every single time. No human* is reading these stupid things anyway. It’s just one more microaggression to make us look at quitting.
*A co-worker thinks AI is reading them. It’s possible.
Colette South
@Baud:
@Baud: Betty, it sounds as if you were cutting a rug at the place called the Jug….then took your 3 steps! which is to say that I am always happy to read what you write.
Colette South
@Betty Cracker: Pete Buttigeig is good on this, too. Not having too worry about health care, your next pay check, and so on, is a big component of freedom.
Kayla Rudbek
@Yutsano: I think it’s very likely that an AI is using them as input/training data, and I think I’ve explained Habsburg AI here before…
Kayla Rudbek
@Colette South: exactly!