Tag: David Whamond
Quotes of the day
A few choice quotations from my Sunday reading before I head out to do more umpiring this afternoon/evening...
I know how Congress works. I know that a party in the minority cannot impose their will and that they can't stop what's happening right now. But I do want them to at least acknowledge it and communicate with Americans in a way that demonstrates that they understand why so many of us are being driven to madness and tears at the country being destroyed. I want them to engage in argument and persuasion which meets the moment and which makes it clear that, when the political situation does change, they will act in decisive ways.
This can happen in any number of ways, such as making sure to find the cameras and the microphones to make it clear where they stand when shit goes down. The articulation of a moral stance. It can also happen such as in simply not going along with the Trump Regime in any way whatsoever. Don't vote for things he wants and don't try to find common ground, because finding common ground with a criminal enterprise in a Constitutional crisis only serves to normalize the regime's anti-democratic behavior and to make one an accomplice to criminality.
If the American Experiment dies, it will be because we didn’t stop the immorality of a white supremacy that calls Somali refugees “garbage” and a patriarchy that mutters “fucking bitch” as it murders a woman in ice-cold blood. If it lives, it will be because we embraced the higher morality of empathy and compassion for our neighbors—and for people we don’t even know.
In my reading of that moment, through everything I know about abusive men and the way they move through the world, that quiet "I’m not mad at you" may have felt like a challenge to someone who needed to be in charge. Because some men don’t hear peace as peace. They hear it as a woman claiming ground that isn’t supposed to belong to her. They hear it as a refusal to be properly afraid. ...
... I keep thinking about how often women are asked to be the calm in a storm they didn’t create, how often we’re taught to soften danger with our voices and our bodies and our fear, and how often it doesn’t save us anyway.
Trump, until very recently a self-styled antiwar isolationist, now threatens to forcibly revert Greenland’s status to unreconstructed colonialism under a nation forged in high-minded opposition and bloody resistance to that very notion. Why? Probably, judging by his acknowledged fixation on Venezuelan oil and riches in general, for plunder, but also, by his own account, “for national protection.”
That’s funny, because the United States has enjoyed unfettered military access to the island since World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany and the United States took Greenland in defense. A 1951 agreement between Denmark and the United States allows the latter to expand its military presence there at will, and the postwar NATO alliance, of which both nations are founding members, obligates us to defend each other.
You have to love this line from the State Department’s warning [recommending U.S. citizens leave Venezuela immediately]:
“Venezuela has the highest Travel Advisory level—Level 4: Do Not Travel—due to severe risks to Americans, including wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.”
Did your irony detector just start shrieking? mine did—because you can replace "Venezuela" with "Minneapolis" and not have to change one word in the rest of that paragraph.
And finally, the cartoon that nails the essence of where we are as a nation in the 21st Century: under the yoke of misogynist thugs so insecure in their identities that they're driven to make other people suffer in order to feel better about themselves.
—David Whamond
Have a pleasant Sunday, everyone.
Tagged
Politics,
Craig Calcaterra,
Will Bunch,
Jeff Tiedrich,
David Whamond,
Jo Carducci,
Posted on January 11, 2026 at 2:57PM | Permalink | 
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