Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

People are weird.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

This fight is for everything.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Be a wild strawberry.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Comic Relief Open Thread: Anybody Remember the ‘People’s Convoy’?

Comic Relief Open Thread: Anybody Remember the ‘People’s Convoy’?

by | 152 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Now doing business as ‘The 1776 Restoration Movement‘!

(I’m writing this in the wee hours, so it may be outdated by the time you read it, but IMO still risible.)

So, they had a busy holiday…

F*cked around, finding out:



Reader Interactions

152Comments

  1. 1.

    The Moar You Know

    A “precipitating event” in the battle between good and evil?

    Truth is nobody gives a shit about them.

    People posting on the twitter is the most publicity they will ever get.

  2. 2.

    Parfigliano

    Seriously other then govt programs (they hate em) how do these unemployed scum survive?

  3. 3.

    Paul in KY

    Some people live such sad & aimless lives that they feel compelled to do stupid & antisocial shit just to tamp down the voice in their head that tells them the truth: That they are a worthless POS. Mr. Riddell is probably one such person.

    Glad he was arrested. Hope his very few deluded minions can do something productive with their sad lives.

  5. 5.

    Just One More Canuck

    On the other side of the pond, the Benny Hill theme is playing outside Parliament while some spokesman is rattling on. Apparently set up by Hugh Grant (or Tony Jay, but they could be the same)

  9. 9.

    Mike in NC

    “The People’s Convoy” name sounded a tad Communist, so it had to go.

    Most people probably forgot about the “1776 Project” in the dying days of the Trump maladministration, which was basically an attempt to throw together a white supremacist manifesto. Being another rancid Trump product (Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump University, etc.) meant it was destined to fail.

    This country seems to have a surplus of fat, hairy white men. They’d tell us what they’re angry about but even they don’t really know.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    The 1776 Restoration Movement deserves to have its own TV show. I’m thinking, maybe a Seinfeld-like sitcom.

  11. 11.

    Parfigliano

    @Paul in KY: Im not so charitable and have had it with all MAGA idiots.  After Judicial proceedings I want his rig civilly forfeited. They are not deluded they are true believers and far to gone to ever change.  I want nothing but misery for them all.

  14. 14.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    These people are idiots. Goes without saying, of course. I’m legitimately shocked there isn’t some trucker’s convoy who’d be harping on the cost of diesel fuel. Most people have moved on from COVID (for better or worse)

  18. 18.

    SFAW

    @Spanky:

    Well, I have a modest proposal…

    I wonder how swiftly quickly you came up with that proposal.

    But frankly, after you render them down, I expect there won’t be much left.

  21. 21.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: To be sincere for a second, it’s more like my brain has reached a state where I can only concentrate on work for five or ten minutes at a time before I have to go back to web dopamine hit just so I don’t curl into a fetal ball. It might seem like I’m here all the time, but I’m really playing frequent micro-hooky from my endless, depressing, soul-numbing quotidian obligations.

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    Well, I have a modest proposal…

    I wonder how swiftly quickly you came up with that proposal.

    You are brilliant!!

  25. 25.

    StringOnAStick

    I noticed that the reddish but turning bluer by in-migration town 20 miles North of us banned anything except the US flag for the 4th of July parade this year.  Last year the loudest local wing nut activist there had a confederate flag bedecked vehicle and that pissed off even some normies who felt it was “divisive and inappropriate” .  I figured they’d do it again anyway, but nope.  Apparently setting rules works

  27. 27.

    Old Man Shadow

    The 1776 Restoration Project: We’re scared of Black people, women, and progress.

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @StringOnAStick: sad to say but I think it’s true that it’s progress if Normies recognize the Confederate flag as “divisive and innappproriate”.

  30. 30.

    StringOnAStick

    And if Betty Cracker should read this comment, I read that Big Bad Bald Bastard passed away suddenly about a week ago.  I have no idea what happened; only 53 and a fine, caring man.

  31. 31.

    Cameron

    “People’s Convoy” makes me think of Bob Backlund, “The People’s Champion.”  Nothing about these bozos makes me think there’s anything more left about them than being left behind.

  33. 33.

    West of the Rockies

    Christ… it sounds like a regeneration of the Tea (Baggers) Party movement.   Are the 1776 trucker clown brigade protesters wearing Make America Great (White) Again tricorns?

  36. 36.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @StringOnAStick:

    Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Cool! That’s definitely progress! I’m going on vacation to Gatlinburg Tennessee in a few months and for years (since I was a child, so at the very least 20+ years ago), there has been a Dukes of Hazard museum, called Cooter’s Place and Museum in Pigeon Forge. It’s still there, apparently, and I just can’t for the life of me ever understand why anybody could’ve thought that the Dixie Diaper was something harmless enough to incorporate into a TV show

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Dukes of Hazard museum

     
    I would go for the Daisy Dukes.

    why anybody could’ve thought that the Dixie Diaper was something harmless enough to incorporate into a TV show

    No one gave it a second thought because the views of black people didn’t matter. Same with Granny’s “The South shall rise again” on the Beverly Hillbillies.

    All of which is before your time.

  43. 43.

    trollhattan

    @The Moar You Know:

    As a historical reminder, Charlie Manson thought the Tate murders would launch racial war. Big thinkers, these people are not and a small batch of lazy ideas seem persistent at the bottom of the pond in which they dwell.

  45. 45.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Too bad Riddell has a low melanin count.  If it was higher, the po-po would have been obligated not to be so gentle with him.

  49. 49.

    Paul in KY

    @Spanky: I have recently watched Sonic 2 more times than I care, as our 5 year old is enamoured with it.  Maybe we could use one of those ring thingys to send them to the mushroom planet?

  54. 54.

    StringOnAStick

    @West of the Rockies: BBBB was part of the very small crew of commenters at Rumproast, the blog Betty wrote at before coming  to BJ.  That’s how I ended up here after Rumproast basically shuttered.  B4 was a truly kind man, friend to semi feral cats at his workplace and volunteer teaching martial arts to kids.

  55. 55.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So I am voting snark of the day about Boris Johnson is “This what happens when you order a Winston Churchill from Wish.”

  59. 59.

    Paul in KY

    @Baud: Pigeon Forge is like Myrtle Beach without the beach, nice bars & seafood restaurants. Gatlinburg, however, is nice & so, so close to the majestic beauty of the Smokey Mountains. Have had some fine times in Gatlinburg.

  65. 65.

    Kent

    This is such a perfect geographic demonstration of the right wing echo chamber.  These dipshits do this sort of flag protest in their own shitty little right wing small towns and everyone cheers them or at least tolerate them and dips their hats.  So they start believing their own bullshit.

    But then show up in to a highly diverse city with a metro population of 6.5 million where people actually have shit to do and work for a living and suddenly no one has any use for their bullshit.

  68. 68.

    Captain C

    @Mike in NC:

    They’d tell us what they’re angry about but even they don’t really know.

    To the extent they do know, it’s that they can’t have all the money, status, and goodies and do whatever they want when they want to, while the [womenfolk] and [nonwhites] do what they’re told, for free.  Those who are self-aware to know this also know that it’s not a point of view that will gain them much traction with anyone outside their TFG*-idolizing affinity groups.

    *I think at this point it may be the idea of TFG; the actual TFG’s rallies seem listless at this point on the part of all parties concerned.

  69. 69.

    Kent

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You have my sympathies.

    I have a MAGA cousin who owns a timeshare in Gatlinburg TN with her husband so I get the treat of seeing her annual Gatlinburg vacation facebook photos and get to enjoy it vicariously.  The line dancing, the whisky tasting.  The riding rented ATVs.  The pics of lots of overweight white people in bars.  The view of trees from her room.  And every year like clockwork I get to live it all over again!

  71. 71.

    Gravenstone

    Was going to ask if “Give Send Go” was some dime store GoFundMe, but I see they’re actually a wingnut ripoff with added grifting overtones. Seems appropriate.

  72. 72.

    Barney

    Shouldn’t a “1776 Restoration Movement” be in favour of the British monarchy, soldiers billeted in households, and so on? If they’d called themselves the “1783 Restoration Movement” they’d have had a bit more of a point, even if a profoundly regressive, racist and misogynist one.

  73. 73.

    Feathers

    @trollhattan: I was utterly fascinated when I learned that Charles Manson and his Family were right wing racists. Sure, they were into drugs, but full on misogynist white supremacism was their driving force. I read Emma Cline’s book “The Girls,” a novel about the women in a Manson-type cult for a book group. I really disliked the fact that part of the reimagining of the Manson cult was that the group in the book was totally anti-racist. Racism was part of the reason why they were looking to overthrow the normies.  I mean, if you are looking to humanize the women who joined the Manson cult, you have to be honest about who they were. Pretending that they were anti-racist is to make readers (and the author) feel comfortable, not at all about finding the truth of these women. It was weird and creepy, but nobody else seemed to think so. I only lasted one more book. The Girls came out in 2016. It would have been nice to have a book about how the beautiful young white women you want to reclaim and imagine yourself being were, in fact, racist as hell.

  74. 74.

    Ohio Mom

    We stopped in Pigeon Forge about seven years ago, on the way to Asheville for my niece’s wedding. It was shockingly shabby, you could see its best days were far behind it. Beautiful countryside though. Dollywood is down the road and I bet that’s nice if you are into amusement parks.

    Now those truckers. They drive all that way to D.C. which is full of fabulous things to see and ignore all of it. Inspiring monuments and whatever you are interested in, there is bound to be an exhibit on it somewhere on the Mall, especially of course, American history. What a waste of gas.

  75. 75.

    Immanentize

    @trollhattan:

    It’s too late
    To fall in love with Sharon Tate
    But it’s too soon
    To ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb

    — Jim Carroll (Dead you know)

  81. 81.

    cope

    @raven: That’s what I was going to say about Gatlinburg having been there exactly one time in the ’70s as T.A. on a geology field trip over spring break.  That proved enough for me although it does sit amongst some wonderful geology.

    Also, thanks for suggesting “The Bear”.  Who would have ever guessed that a show about my most favorite sandwich ever would merit a series of its own?  My wife thought the first episode was a bit frantic and hard to follow but I really enjoyed it.

  83. 83.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Mostly 80s. It premiered in 1979, so it started out as a vaguely late 70s show. The Dead Kennedys did a funny song riffing on the Dukes about how people who like them who exist in real life are actually violent, redneck thugs and not nearly as noble as the Dukes

    @different-church-lady:

    Everything old is new again. I read this lengthy investing newsletter that was posted on the Bogleheads forum recently and it was an interesting analysis on this recent bout of inflation. The basic gist of it was this:

    This current high inflation resembles the 1940s moreso than the 1970s. However, the global population, particularly in the developed world, is far older than it was in the 1940s, which will likely slow down growth. Additionally, the Federal Reserve may squelch inflation by raising interest rates, perhaps by causing a recession, but as soon as the global economy recovers, high inflation will likely return unless and until more oil refining capacity is added because nations like India and China are driving a lot of demand.

    Here’s an excerpt that discusses the most important points the author is making. The whole piece is much longer than this:

    In response (my words: to the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns), the US Federal Reserve had an emergency meeting and stepped in to print money and buy $1 trillion worth of Treasuries in three weeks, to re-liquefy the frozen Treasury market. The US federal government and other national governments then performed massive fiscal stimulus in response to consumer and business lockdowns, sending stimulus checks to citizens and companies, so that a big debt liquidations and civil unrest wouldn’t occur. The US Federal Reserve and other central banks continued to buy government bonds in order to monetize that stimulus. It resulted in the biggest increase in US broad money supply and overall developed market broad money supply since the 1940s.

    Meanwhile, the US found out the hard way that it had trouble making masks, ventilators, medical dyes, and other things like that domestically, after having shipped such a large portion of its industrial capacity to China, which by this point it was embroiled in a trade war with. It turns out, there was a cost to some of that offshoring.

    This whole situation was a second “check” to the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks in 2020. Yet again, their answer to the check was to counter a big disinflationary impulse with even more debt monetization. This time, since their efforts were combined with huge fiscal stimulus from politicians, which Fed chairman Jerome Powell publicly said was needed, broad money expanded rapidly, in addition to just base money. People actually had more money in their bank accounts, unlike during the 2008 policymaker response.

    When a chess game gets to its later stages, the winning player often starts to get the losing player’s king into a series of checks. That losing player can move their king out of it, but their set of move options continues to dwindle, and if they’re not successful at forcing a draw, they eventually get caught in a checkmate.

    I think major central banks including the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank, and Bank of Japan are nearing the losing side of a checkmate scenario, where economic realities dwindle their set of possible choices to zero. The latter two have likely already been put in checkmate, while the former two are hanging on for the moment.

    This is primarily due to the long-term debt cycle described earlier in this issue, where their economies were stimulated to higher and higher debt as a share of GDP and lower and lower interest rates over decades, until they hit super high debt levels with zero or slightly negative rates. Then, they grind through that low-rate disinflationary period for a while, until they finally work through excess capacity, and reach a period of scarcity, stimulus, and inflation.

    “Checkmate” in this context happens when a central bank encounters inflation that is above its target level, but still can’t stop printing money, due to lack of buyers of their country’s government debt, or due to other critical liquidity problems in their financial markets. In other words, it’s what happens when a country with a super high debt ratio gets hit with acute commodity shortages, and thus has to keep doing quantitative easing on its government bonds even during high inflation.

    This historically only rarely happens to developed market central banks, and until recently hasn’t really happened to any of them since World War II (the prior inflationary part of a long-term debt cycle). When it happened back then, it occurred to several of regions at roughly the same time, and that seems to be the case today as well.

    All of this stimulus and broad money supply growth, combined with global economic re-opening, caused a surge in economic activity and a melt-up in asset prices.

    After years of commodity oversupply and relative lack of capex to bring new supplies to market, the world began to encounter commodity scarcity for the first time in a while. Inflation reached four-decade highs.

    Chinese demographics reached their peak level. The Chinese labor force began shrinking, rather than growing, which means their ability to serve as a big disinflationary capital sink for the rest of the world is likely nearing its end. In addition, with rising tensions between the US and China, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, globalization seemingly reached a local maximum, and is now waning.

    Now the world faces real inflation. We need a lot of capex in oil, gas, pipelines, export terminals, copper, nickel, lithium, platinum, uranium, and so forth over the next decade. We need more robust supply chains. And some of it needs to be duplicated because there are now basically two “halves” of the world that represent security risks to each other, rather than mostly one big world that existed for the past three decades.

    But with debt as high as it is, central banks have trouble raising interest rates. The Bank of Japan, with 250% government debt to GDP, is capping long-duration rates at 0.25%. With inflation currently above their 2% target, they are using a method known as yield curve control, meaning they have an unlimited bid in place to print yen and buy as many government bonds as are needed to prevent their bond yields from going over 0.25%, and it’s causing a rapid devaluation of the yen relative to the dollar. The market has tested the Bank of Japan’s commitment to that peg, and so far they have confirmed their commitment to it.

    The European Central Bank held an emergency meeting this week as Italian government bond spreads blew out, while they have 150% debt to GDP. The ECB is still printing euros to buy government debt even with official Eurozone inflation at 8.1%.

    The fact that both the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are forced to continue monetizing government debt even when inflation is above their target in order to keep government bond yields at serviceable levels, is basically checkmate on their policy. When countries have 150%-250% government debt to GDP and no clear path to dealing with that, the private market rate for buying that debt without central bank support is too high for them to afford. It would cause a fiscal spiral.

    So, the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank are in acute financial repression mode, as they print money coincident with a period of inflation, and thus are directly violating their price stability targets due to an acute lack of other options. Checkmate.

    Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Canada, and Bank of Australia are among the developed market central banks still trying to hold the line, having not quite been put in checkmate yet. They’re raising interest rates to try to rein in demand, but for the most part their interest rates are the furthest below their official inflation levels since World War II.

    The UK and the US both have sovereign debt over 100% of GDP, and total sovereign+private debt of between 300% and 400% of GDP. Both countries are encountering what look like recessionary conditions, and have inflation at multi-decade high levels.

    If the US Federal Reserve in particular, due to its size and due to its global reserve currency status, reaches a point where it is unable to continue raising interest rates and reducing its balance sheet due to liquidity problems in the Treasury market or credit market, while inflation is still a problem, then the quorum of central banks of the developed world will basically be in checkmate, and the global financial system will be in a different regime than it has been operating with during the entirety of the post-WWII period.

    What do you all think?

  84. 84.

    raven

    @cope: Yea it’s pretty nuts. My local beef joint in Villa Park was our hangout inn high school. When we didn’t have enough Doug for a beef we got a “gravy sandwich”, no meat just gravy and bread. When I was in  Nam they had my picture on the wall along with the other saps who were there. When I came home and grew  my hair the told me to “getta fuck out here, we don’t want your kind in here. “

  86. 86.

    cope

    I know the feeling.  In ’70-’71, I was working second shift, full time in a factory in Galesburg while also attending a full schedule of classes in college.  I was the only long haired male among hundreds of employees and had to deal with a lot of catcalls on the way to my station on the line.

  88. 88.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    Thanks lol. My folks own a timeshare there who bought it the late 80s/early 90s; fairly nice, recently rebuilt from the wildfires there a few years back. I’ve gone there on vacation since I was a kid and the last time I was there was 2010-2012 so I guess things have changed since then

    Gatlinburg itself is fairly nice, much nicer than Pigeon Forge. It’s a beautiful area for sure, being in the mountains. The amazing Biltmore Estate is also relatively nearby and that was I treat when I visited back in 2007

  91. 91.

    Paul in KY

    @Kent: There are alot of trees surrounding Gatlinburg. She does capture that element. Also fat white people. Lot of those there too.

  92. 92.

    Paul in KY

    @Feathers: Charlie Manson grew up in Bumfuck, Kentucky back in the 30s. Whole lot of racist attitudes there, even if hardly no black people (who had the sense to stay the hell away).

  93. 93.

    JustRuss

    Reminded of Brando’s iconic line:

    “What are you rebelling against?”

    “Whatta ya got?”

  94. 94.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @raven:

    I admit Pigeon Forge is the more tacky of the two between it and Gatlinburg. I’m just looking forward to getting away from work for awhile, eating out at some nice restaurants, going to Dollywood, etc.

  95. 95.

    trollhattan

    @Feathers: “The better Manson of our imagination” is simply a vile construction. To your point he was who he was and his followers, at least the non-Stockholm syndrome ones, all bought in.

    “Helter-Skelter” was his code for the coming race war and it’s little comfort the song is literally about a playground slide–it’s right there in the first verse.

    When I get to the bottom
    I go back to the top of the slide
    Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
    ‘Til I get to the bottom and I see you again
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, ha-ha-ha!

  96. 96.

    Feathers

    @Kent: Patrick Wyman, host of the wonderful The Tides of History and The Fall of Rome podcasts, has written about these awful people as the American Gentry. I’ve been doing an Agatha Christie re-read and it seems apt. The books are about a certain class of people. The servants are mentioned and may even be characters, but only in the dimension where they interact with their employers. That there is a larger population of people surrounding them who might as well not exist is a fascinating consideration that keeps popping into my head while reading. Note: Wyman has a PhD in History, with a dissertation on the Fall of Rome. He grew up in central Washington state and was a sports writer and wrestling announcer before going back to school. Has a fascinating perspective on all of this. Current season of Tides of History is on pre-history from the development of agriculture to the Bronze Age Collapse. THere’s a lot to catch up on, but it breaks down into histories of various areas of the world, which can be gone through fairly independently.

  97. 97.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @The Moar You Know:

    TBF, my folks bought the timeshare 30 years ago. The MAGA stuff wasn’t around yet, they used to live in North Carolina (born and grew up in Ohio) so it was nearby, and the veneer of the New South was still in place

  98. 98.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    So for what it’s worth, as some of you know, I picked up symptomatic COVID at the Kentucky Bar Association convention on 6/15. I know the day because I had a violent immune response that night (thought it was a reaction to a second cigar), was basically OK the following day and then felt like dogshit the day after that. After stopping for a nap for 40 minutes in the middle of my 2.5 hour drive home, I immediately grabbed a test because I knew what I had by then. Felt like shit ever since, passed it along to wife and doze off at work.

    I’d scheduled some sort of cardiac thing for 7/1 a couple of months ago, a CT scan looking for coronary plaque (something about calcium) at the insistence of the wife. Got the read back yesterday, and it appears that I took some lung damage – there are some areas of collapse and some other recent COVID associated abnormalities. I have appointments scheduled, and I don’t know when (if ever) I’ll be cleared to dive again to the specifications of PADI or the dive insurers.

    Even worse, I seem to have moderate plaque which will hand my beloved the excuse she’s been looking for over the years to completely ruin my reasons for living – she’s gonna throttle my access to salt, pork, red meat, butter, dairy, alcohol and cigars.

    I mean, I’ll live longer, but what’ll be the point?

    Anyway, if you’ve had symptomatic COVID, get your lungs checked.

  99. 99.

    trollhattan

    @Paul in KY:

    I always thought the Limehouse character was a great addition to “Justified” with the way “his people” lived in that holler, as they had since the Civil War ended. Everybody was wary of one another, with good reason.

  100. 100.

    Paul in KY

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There are a couple nice steak houses in Gatlinburg. One of them sorta looks like a lodge and is not too far from where the main road leaves Gatlinburg to go on into the national park.

  104. 104.

    Paul in KY

    @trollhattan: My dad is from a small town in Pike Co. that is about as ‘Eastern Kentucky’ as one could ever stand. For him, WW II was a great event, as it got him the hell away from that area. His mom had told him to leave ‘as there’s nothing for you here…’

    He ended up marrying an English lass, so it was fortunate for me too.

  105. 105.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @trollhattan:

    What was weird was that I never got it up until June. I assume it’s Omicron, but who knows.

  108. 108.

    trollhattan

    @Paul in KY: Good outcomes, both.

    Forever grateful to my folks for getting us the heck out of Iowa when I was a wee lad–growing up in Seattle made we kids vastly different people and opened windows to an entirely different world.

    NW Iowa is stifling and capable of smart moves like Congressman Steve King. Grandma lived the rest of her life there and everybody managed to play nice during many visits, but where the hell does a Steve King come from, if not their hearts?

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There is a lot of scenic beauty in that area. I bet there’s more than one easily accessable waterfall in the nearby National Forest. Sometimes these places are not at all crowded. The southern Appalachian forests are really special.

  110. 110.

    Feathers

    @raven: I saw the movie and thoroughly enjoyed it. Went looking for the publication date of The Girls and I saw that the novel no longer has a waitlist at the library. I’ve heard from several people that the novel is worth reading if you liked the film. Tarantino used to read the novelizations of movies and decided to write one. I’m of the age where I don’t remember the murders, but I do remember reading about the appeals and such in the 70s.

    There is also a biography of Manson that came out in 2013 that is supposed to be good.

  111. 111.

    debbie

    I didn’t think a stupider group than the Tea Party was possible. When will I ever learn?

  114. 114.

    Jager

    @raven:

    The woman who did the upholstery in my restored Jeep was Squeaky’s cellmate at the Federal Prison in Dublin, CA. They shared a cell for almost a year and seldom spoke, what blew her away was the amount of fan mail, Lynette got. (Squeaky preferred to be called Lynette)

  115. 115.

    Ken

    @Barney: After reading through the comments, it doesn’t seem anyone here is clear on what “1776 Restoration” wants to restore. Fair enough, since they’ve not been exactly clear on it since the first time they started driving in circles.

  120. 120.

    Paul in KY

    @trollhattan: A friend of mine grew up in small town Iowa. Summed it up with a saying she heard alot back then “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much”.

    She and her family were not Dutch.

  122. 122.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  What do you all think?

    Stop reading random newsletters. If you want to learn about investing, subscribe to the American Association of Individual Investors (www.aaii.com).

  123. 123.

    Raven

    @Feathers: Did you see The Maid on Netflix? Margaret Qualley was the hitching chick in Once Upon and she’s good in the series.

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud:

    No one gave it a second thought because the views of black people didn’t matter. Same with Granny’s “The South shall rise again” on the Beverly Hillbillies.

    I think there was still a lot of lingering “let bygones be bygones” sentiment left over from the period when the UDC was putting up all the Confederate monuments, and then during the world wars, tolerating unreconstructed Reb sentiment was (a bit paradoxically) a way of maintaining national unity. The baby historical literature I read as a kid was still very big on emphasizing the Civil War as a tragic fight of brother against brother with heroes on both sides, etc. People would sort of squint and interpret it as an innocuous symbol of regional pride.

    This is even AFTER the civil-rights movement, when the Confederate battle flag became a symbol of massive resistance… but as you say, whites generally didn’t give a damn what black people thought about all this.

  129. 129.

    Matt McIrvin

    (Like I’ve said before, we think of “increasing polarization” as a function of Republicans getting more and more insane, but I think that shortchanges the sheer amount of horrific bullshit on race/sex/gender stuff that white liberals used to put up with or actually promulgate without blinking. We really did get more extreme on the cultural material. But it’s not like we can easily go back. The “old normal” was BAD.)

  131. 131.

    Yutsano

    Oh good. The Manson Family came up. The only contribution I have to that discussion is that Sharon Tate, at one time, was my dad’s babysitter.

  137. 137.

    trollhattan

    @Paul in KY: :-)

    We were German vermin, I suppose.

    Farmers were kings of the roost, you either owned land or were beholden to those who did.

  140. 140.

    Soprano2

    @Paul in KY: We went there in October 2014. I agree, it was beautiful. I was still able to find the taffy logs my grandparents brought us every time they went there, which was a lot. We climbed to the top of Clingman’s Dome; it had already snowed up there!

  142. 142.

    Geminid

    @Liminal Owl: That’s great news!

    I hope you go easy on the packing for a while. Hire pros if you can afford it. They’re fun to see in action.

    I’d help if I wasn’t 500 miles away. Moving is tough!

  145. 145.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @trollhattan:

    I grew up in Tulsa Oklahoma but went to college in Houston and then the grad school on the peninsula South of San Francisco. I was there during the 60s

    Living in Iowa from 68 to 89 ( fairly liberal In central Iowa at the time) and then back to Oklahoma in 89—my Outlook on politics is quite different from my brothers and their wives and the people I still have contact with from my high school days in Tulsa

  149. 149.

    Denali

    ‘@Goku,

    If you can change your plans, go to Townsend – not far from Pigeon Forge but much quieter and very scenic. Take the Loop Drive around Cades Cove for some beautiful views and a sense of the life of the people who lived in the Smokies. You can still drive to Newfound Gap and hike to the top of Mt. LeConte if you are so inclined. There are also shorter hikes to waterfalls and vistas.

  151. 151.

    Paul in KY

    @Soprano2: Clingman’s Dome is something to visit! Took my parents up there one morn & didn’t think about fog. Got up to the ‘spaceship’ and you couldn’t see a thing! That is a good, tough walk from the parking lot.

Comments are closed.