Thursday, April 27, 2023

Theme For The Day

In his column for The Atlantic, Wehner wrote, "It is a lesson nearly as old as time itself: Those whose passions are inflamed—and Trump supporters are nothing if not perennially inflamed—are drawn to destruction.'“Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in a half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years,' the 18th-century conservative statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke warned."

Well, yeah; but Burke's prescription could as easily be turned against American democracy as against MAGA.  I don't think I'd reach that far back in order to disprove the "inflamed passions" of MAGA.  It's not their passions, after all, that are the problem.  It's their insistence on ignorance as strength, and war as peace, and lies as truth, that are the problem.  But this is a good, if rather lackluster, observation:

Adding that "Lack of restraint is the essence of the Trump movement," he notes self-restraint has never been in evidence when it comes to the former president and his followers who only desire is to "own the liberals" but now they are "owning one another."

It was an article of conservative faith in the '60's that, as the "radicals" moved on into the '70's they would, like the French in the Revolution, have their own "Reign of Terror" as they purified the movement by condemning all those in the People's Front of Judea because the true liberators were in the Judean People's Front.  Which, yeah, happened.  And now it's happening to MAGA.  The sun comes up, the sun goes down; and there's really nothing new under the sun.

"The extremism, aggression, and lack of restraint in MAGA world are spreading rather than receding. They are becoming more rather than less indiscriminate. Those who are part of that movement, and certainly those who lead it, act as if they’re invincible, as if the rules don’t apply to them, as if they can say anything and get away with anything," he wrote. "Now this movement, which has taken such delight in aiming its nihilistic arrows at the Democratic Party and the Republican establishment, at media outlets and scientists, is in the process of devouring itself."

Or, as the former Republicans who want to be the kewl kids say now:  Fuck around and find out.  We are clearly in the finding out stage.

Case in point, he notes, has been the lashing that Fox News has been taking from pro-Trump lawmakers after the unceremonious booting of Carlson, a MAGA favorite.

Yeah, about Tucker:

He, uh, doesn't have his platform any more. Yes, Rick Wilson says Tucker could be the GOP nominee in 2024, but that's nightmare fuel for the GOP, not for the rest of us.  Biden would hardly have to campaign.

Sen. J.D. Vance, who owes his Ohio Senate seat to a Trump endorsement, texted the New York Times and proclaimed, "Tucker is a giant, and the most powerful voice against idiotic wars and an economy that placed plutocrats over workers. This is a huge loss for a conservative movement that hopes to be worthy of its own voters.”

You're gonna have to remind the rest of the country who J.D. Vance is again.  And then explain why they should care about what J.D. Vance says.  Not unlike this guy:

I know who he is because, until redistricting, he was my U.S. Representative (my new one is so invisible even I can't remember his name). Crenshaw doesn't even have the "reasonable Republican" street cred of Nancy Mace, and he's easily as crazy as she is when the audience is right.

"The priority for those who love our country is to contain the wreckage and defeat the MAGA movement. We’re still in mid-drama, so that day is a ways off. But it will come. Because in the end, those who live without limits are destroyed by them," Wehner predicted. 

That last sentence I agree with.  As for defeating MAGA, it's coming: both from within MAGA, and from without.  Of that I have no doubt at all. 

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I'm Just Gonna Leave This Right Here

Fuck MTG.

(Ever notice how "the weak-minded," especially when the topic is eliminationism, never includes the speaker or his/her audience?)
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The Future Lies In The Past

 There's little debate Trump has been seen a figurehead to extremists, reporter and author Jeff Sharlet said. And, since he left the White House in 2021, that movement hasn't faltered. On the contrary, said Sharlet in the interview, it's only growing bolder and more determined to seize control.

"The struggle is long. Too many people want a happy ending," said Sharlet. "After Trump comes others. I think the Never Trumpers have a much clearer sense of this reality than a lot of liberals and even leftists. And for them, it's more obvious because they lost their whole social world."

Of course, what that means is that their "whole social world" was heading for destruction, and finally got there.  Rick Wilson and most of the Lincoln Project (whom I find useful, but not the deciding factor on all matters political) all benefitted from the conservative politics of George W. and George H.W. and Reagan and even Gingrich and the Tea Party.  Now that what was begun with Goldwater has finally reached fruition and we live in the GOP era of Trump and McCarthy and Gym Jordan and MTG, they wring their hands in despair over what has been wrought in their fair party, the worm that Blake saw in the heart of the rose.  Except they nurtured that worm, and now they despair that it has destroyed the bloom.

Which is just facts.  They rode the tiger that ate them.  Their lament is that they didn't get the happy ending they expected, and their mantra now is "Fuck Around and Find Out."  Because they did.

There is a just inevitability in that.

Locally two positions are up for election on the school board.  Incumbents are not running; they've had enough of the bickering and the name calling and especially the book banning reviews.  Even the "crazies," as I call them, are sick of the book banning.  They implemented a process to review, at Board level ab initio and without recourse to appeal, all book ban requests in the pipeline, and end the process (hopefully) for a while.  Books were percolating up through administrative reviews to the Board, because parents and "concerned citizens" were emulating Trump, taking everything to the Supreme Court.  Or, in this case, the school board; who lacked the power of the Supremes to reject appeals it deemed unworthy of its time.

In short, the "concerned citizens" and the "crazies" fucked around, and they found out.  There are more examples than this.

After the last election, two years ago, when four "crazies" took over the Board, parents from a wealthy, white area of the district began to complain about the design of the replacement school building for their elementary age children.  The building is under construction, and probably some of those children will be in it a year or two, at most.  But a small group of parents was insisting the building be built to satisfy their concerns:  smaller classrooms, with a lower ratio of student to teacher.  Could the district even afford the staff?  Who cares!  We pay taxes!  Serve us!

One of the new board members, green as grass and ignorant as a babe, took up their cause because:  representative government is a heady brew!  He had staff in charge of construction come to the Board to explain why these parents couldn't be accomodated in their quite reasonable demands!  (Staff that was not used to being hauled into a public meeting to explain the elementary facts of school building construction to chowderheads who treated them as the enemy.  It's a good way to run a school district into the ground, and run off the competent people who keep it a good district.) And it was quite reasonably pointed out that sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, and if this school got its demands met, every school in the district would face similar demands.  And besides, the building had to be built to last at least 50 years; not just to accomodate the ignorant desires of a few whose children would be gone, never to return to that building, in just a few years.    Of course, now there is the imminent risk the district will see such a cut in state funding, and such a rise in inflation, it will have to lay off teachers and staff, up to 50% of current employees; so those parents are not going to get the low student to teacher ratio they wanted, anyway.  It may be their school is one that will be closed, to consolidate with another, in order to control costs.  But at the time this greenhorn Board member insisted the district accomodate a handful of parents in an action that would affect students for the next 50 years.

He finally got the message.  FAFO, buddy.

More recently, another new Board member demanded the district consider withdrawing from a state association of school boards because it is "woke."  This association provides important benefits to members, including liability insurance for school busses; policy information so districts know what the state has recently, and long ago, required school districts to do (like DEI, which is now "woke" to white people afraid of losing their privilege they insist they don't have but want desperately to preserve); and orientation for new board members so they will understand what school boards do (that one particularly rankled, because the new members were told they were not all little Caesars in charge of their portion of Rome).  One school district in the state had withdrawn from this association, and now this member was anxious to prove to her supporters (remember that line about "representative government"?) that she could be crazy, too.

Except the withdrawal, as you can guess, would be very expensive.  You can't run school busses without insurance, and insurance on the open market would be like getting your own health insurance policy without a group or an employer, and also without Obamacare.  Good luck with that.  The lawyer for the district pointed out they'd need a team of expensive lawyers to replace the policy information they'd lose access to, both current and historical.  And so on.  And apparently no one pointed out that, as a member of the association, the district had standing to ask for changes to how the association operated, if they thought the association was off course.

But of course the aim is not to be cooperative, but to be in charge.  You're either with us, or you're against us!  Democracy is messy and complicated.  Fascism and dictatorship is much simpler and easier!  If the association won't do all we demand, junk the association!

That item was discussed at the last board meeting, but the wind had already left the sails in the wake of the looming school finance disaster.  Increasing costs to operate the district is suddenly not such a good idea, especially when the public is paying attention (however briefly) to the issue of school finance (and maybe, finally, learning their tax dollars paid locally don't stay local, or all go to the district, even).

FAFO.

Now there are four candidates for two positions on the board, and they are split again between "crazies" and "not crazies."  And the former are sending out fliers (to select areas of the district; mostly, it seems, to old people easily scared by this rapidly changing world.  Not to me; I'm still not old enough yet, or something.) warning their opponents want schools to teach that blacks hate whites (and should, because whites are so guilty) and teach racism in the name of DEI, and the other shibboleths of the national GOP (and pretty much the state GOP, too).  It's very ugly stuff, and it may win them places on the board.  Which will be when the new "crazies" find out they don't have their hands upon the reins, they've just got chains on their hands, and they're riding on a railroad.

FAFO.

I don't like it, because the school district as a whole, especially the people whose lives are bent on educating and improving the lives of their students (the only purpose a school district exists), will find life harder trying to answer the questions of idiots only slightly less belligerent and ignorant than MTG.  But if the district is going to fail, it will be the fault of people fully as ignorant and belligerent as MTG (Dan Patrick could give her Master classes in being a public asshole in public office). The death blow is going to come because Austin starved them of money in the name of still opposing Brown v. Board, nearly three-quarters of a century later.  Which was probably part of the impetus behind the support of Goldwater; it was certainly behind support of LBJ's "Great Society."  

The past is never over.  It's never even past.

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I Sorta Think …

...if there was tape of Bernie Sanders or AOC saying this about “the right,” there’d be a bit more of an objection to it.

(Which doesn’t mean we need make a cause celebre about this stupid statement, but it does point to the paucity of thought and ratiocination in the GOP. Vive la difference!)

Or this:
Although there is a distinct competition for “Objectively Stupidest GOP Congresscriier.”
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“Locker Room Talk”? 🐭

That seems to be a popular defense. Maybe Tucker will try it. Word was he’s hired lawyers. There’s still a lot of story to be told here.

Harlan Ellison told a story of working at Disney for less than a day. It seems at lunch he made some remarks regarding the, er…”adult” relationship between Mickey and Minnie (this is from memory; the anecdote is in one of his books on one of the shelves in the back room. I love you all, but I’m not going to look for it now.). He was, as I said, out an hour later. Ellison was always outspoken and “inflammatory” in his opinions. But he learned, as he said, that at Disney, “you don’t fuck with the mouse.”

Tucker’s job at Fox was to be racist and inflammatory. The Ellison anecdote doesn’t advance the narrative, but it does sharpen the focus. We don’t know (yet) what Carlson said: but clearly he fucked with the mouse.

Now we just have to find out what FoxNews’ Mickey Mouse is.
Although my suspicion is that we won’t find out it was statements even worse than the ones made public (or made in public). I expect it’s just going to be the further scrutiny and attention a trial would have brought, to those statements we know and some we may never know. That can be the mouse, too. Yeah, if only real life was like the movies.
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Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Abortion Is A Medical Procedure

And in related news:
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More Fucking Around And Finding Out

And we don’t have a ruling from the NY state judge on the motion to keep Trump from publishing evidence; the Georgia court hasn’t even started yet; and Jack Smith just keeps widening his net.

Safe to say Trump and his boys are going to go through some things.
It’s only going to get better; or worse, depending on your point of view. That’s what’s pissing off the judge.
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You Mean It’s NOT Like On TeeVee?

"You can’t use what I said against me! How is that fair?!” "I mean, it’s not like I did something wrong!” Legal geniuses, I tell ya!
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Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me

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How It’s Going In Court Today

I’m anxiously awaiting his next Truth Social post 

And I stand in awe of the courage of Ms. Carroll.
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🥜

The governor was accused of building a “smart city.”
So-called 'smart cities,' or '15-minute cities,' is the latest big-government boogeyman on the far-right," The Tribune's report stated. "The idea, developed by Carlos Moreno in 2010, is an urban design concept that aims to put everyday destinations for most people within 15 minutes of their homes," claiming that "the urban planning ideas are a Trojan horse developed by a shadowy cabal of global elites, including the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, who want to imprison people in a small area around their homes."

So convenience and the type of city most of humanity lived in before the 20th century automobiles-centric city, is now a conspiracy theory? (By the way, I’m fortunate to live where everything is about 15 minutes away. Yet I’m in the 4th largest city in the country. I spend most of my time in a small area around my home. It never occurred to me that was a conspiracy against my freedom of movement.)

These people are nuts 🥜.

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Explain Again Why Trump Won’t Attend The Trial This Week

Do you really need to know exactly what he said?

Tacopina can’t let him in the courtroom. Tacopina can’t put him on the stand. And he can’t afford not to do those things.

“Not being in court” doesn’t mean what Trump thinks it means:
I can see this is going to require frequent updates:
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Going Down Smooth

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🫢I Thought I’d Already Posted This

Except Art. III directs Congress (created in Art. I) to establish the Supreme Court and the federal court system. Which doesn’t mean the Supreme Court is a power independent from Congress in all things. Unless Roberts also thinks Congress can’t expand the Court either. 

This could be a test of the Court’s power established by Marbury, not Art. III, which the Court would ultimately lose.

We might be heading to that test.
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Biden REALLY Needs To Negotiate With McCarthy

And Durbin should be negotiating with Roberts: And we can all agree not locking women up is the ne plus ultra of the abortion debate. Also, the crucial issue is being “pro-life.” As I suggested yesterday, Art. I puts Congress in charge. History is cool. And important. And by the way, that whole abortion thing? Smooth as butter now:
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🐎

Yeah, it really is Biden’s fault. And why won’t Biden negotiate? Meanwhile, the horse race is on: News you can use! And then there are the credulous ones: I remember when this is what the anti-war /pro civil rights 18 year olds were gonna do with the vote 🗳️. And then Nixon won in ‘72, and Reagan in ‘80, because young voters weren’t all campus protesters or part of the “Woodstock generation.” 

Atkinson also thinks the hope of “structural change” is AOC, who has as much chance of taking the White House as McGovern did. Those who don’t learn from history, and all that. I’d love to see “structural change,” but the last person to effect it was LBJ. Like Nixon was the only one who could go to Mao’s China, LBJ was the only one who could pass Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, indeed establish much of our modern society. Structural change won’t come from AOC. Much as I admire her, she simply won’t be allowed. LBJ only got the chance because JFK the Yankee needed a Texan on the ticket; and then LBJ ran against Goldwater. (Texas was a Democratic stronghold, but, as I say, Kennedy was a Yankee.)
I’m not sure what “blowing the alarm bells” means, but it sounds disgusting. Does this mean we might finally get rid of Ted Cruz? I don’t think Jeebus loves me that much.
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Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Lock ‘Em Up! 🕳️

Doctors, however, remain fair game. So the difference is?

Watch the donut, not the hole. 🍩 
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Appendix to "The Jackpot"

All well and good. But notice how it’s subtly shifting. There is always some doom coming, isn't there?
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“Nobody Could Have Foreseen…”

A few days earlier: No, not exactly: And now, "particulate matter" as far away as Port Isabel. But Elmo is a genius, right? That was just yesterday. 4 days after the launch and disaster. But he's a genius. And "space is hard." Especially when you have so much of it between your ears.
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The Jackpot 🎰


In the future of “The Peripheral” (the Prime video version, not the novel. I haven’t read the novel), there has been “The Jackpot.”  It starts with a blackout of the North American grid, which lasts for months (why? No idea. Interesting, though, to start there.  I've been through an almost month-long blackout following a hurricane.  Didn't lead to anarchy and chaos and bloodletting, though that's always what's supposed to happen in these kinds of stories.). That’s followed by a pandemic (typical apocalyptic virus, involving lots of bleeding) and an environmental collapse(of course)  followed by a nuclear explosion (had to be one, didn’t there?), and somewhere in there, an economic collapse. The nuclear explosion is local, the rest is fairly global. Anyway: Jackpot.

The ultimate apocalyptic scenario: not one, but several. And you can thank the Boomers for it.

Boomers grew up expecting the apocalypse. We grew up with air raid sirens and CONELRAD presets on AM car radios. We learned duck ‘n’ cover and not to look at the flash and where the bomb shelters were in public buildings. A real apocalypse, IOW, that TV ("The Twilight Zone" had a story involving the post-war world, or the fear of a nuclear apocalypse, almost every season for 5 years) and books and movies told us was surely coming, as if it was inevitable.  In the end it's hard to say if we averted it, or just feared something no one was MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) enough to cause (not that Curtis LeMay didn't express some interest in it).

And generations after us heard our stories; and they were envious. It affected entertainment (we grew up watching movies about giant animals due to radiation, followed by heroes in Marvel comics due to the same.) Movies about nuclear war were made along side the giant creature movies. So we grew up with that, too. We took doom as a given, and were relieved when the USSR collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down.  It made us significant: the generation that was walked up to the brink of the abyss, and walked back away from it.

But the end of the world became an entertainment staple. “The Peripheral” needed a four pronged apocalypse just to keep up, because a single cause apocalypse is so simplistic and "unrealistic," isn't it?  It also needed a form of time travel to set it all going, because you've got to have a past shadowed by the dreadful future, or where's the drama? That’s how far along this meme has come. The “perfect storm” has to be a confluence of… apocalypti? Apocalypses?

And we expect it in reality. Trump will end us. Or fascism will. Or Tucker Carlson. Or QAnon. Wait; not them anymore. They’re off the table. But we live in significant times and global warming or overpopulation...no, wait, that's off the table, too; or agricultural collapse...no, we've pretty much stopped expecting that one, as well....well, surely global warming will...screw things up pretty decisively?  And if a revelation is not surely at hand, then an apocalypse must be. And we alone are escaped alive to tell thee. Because that makes you significant; like the Boomers were.

The Boomers changed the world, by supporting the civil rights movement and believing the world could be more meaningful than what you own and what you do. Of course, we abandoned the life of the hippie (who were really only possible because of first world privilege), and became yuppies and preppies. We sucked up resources even as we forced the creation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act. We championed greed even as we said it was for our children (as our parents had done, and taught us to do). We were so rapacious we...forced our children to buy bigger houses than we ever owned (my daughter is living in a house twice the size of anything I've ever lived in.  She says she needs it because she and her husband work from home, and need office space, as well as room for possible children one day.)  They have more entertainment and informational access than we ever dreamed of.  We had 3 broadcast networks and libraries or that staple of middle class houses, a full set of encylopedias bought on an installment plan and only slightly less read than the family Bible.  They have Google and Wikipedia.  We had two kinds of apples (red and yellow) and one kind of lettuce (iceberg) and one kind of tomato (big as softballs, and about as flavorful) and produce was rigidly seasonal.  Our food choices were Italian (Pizza and spaghetti; we didn't even know to call it "pasta.")  or casseroles, and "salad" was iceberg lettuce with tomato wedges, or a pear half (canned, in syrup) served with mayonnaise and shredded cheddar cheese (all cheese that wasn't American was cheddar).  Soup was Campbells; bread was white and mushy and preserved against the end of time itself; cake came from a box to which you usually added just water. And so on and so on and so on.  Yes, we sucked up all the resources and left them with nothing to look forward to.

But we are different from them in one significant respect, the respect that sets us apart even as our childrehn live in a better world that, frankly, Boomers helped make possible. We are children of apocalypse.  We are the children of the nightmare act that could end it all, the sword of Damocles hanging by a hair and ready to fall.  That sets us apart; and so does one other thing.  We are also creators and children of this modern world that still seeks equality and tolerance and acceptance of all who just want to love at least one other person as they see fit and as does no harm.

This modern world is the Boomers’ creation, as much as it is anyone’s ; for better or worse. It is a continuing project and yes, some Boomers, especially, want to stop it and turn it backwards; the ones who miss Tucker Carlson and think Trump is right. But they aren’t all the Boomers; and the Boomers are fading from the scene anyway.

But you still live in the world we made. Understand that and maybe it can be changed for the better. But see it clearly, or all the rest is merely frustration. Although we’ll probably never get the Jackpot. Civilization isn’t really going that way.  There is an unironic jackpot, and rather like the more significant one of the basiliea tou theou, we could live in it; if we would just accept its reality.

Half a loaf, after all, is better than none.

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