Tag: Politics
Freakout sets in
I had faith in humanity. I had faith in there being more sane American voters than rubes and dupes and fascist bigots. I believed in the ability of adult human beings to empathize with women stripped of their rights and dying in ER parking lots. I believed enough Americans were smart enough to know when they were being lied to and what propaganda was sheer bullshit.
Turns out I was wrong about all of it.
There was election interference and intimidation fuckery in several swing states, Russian interference again favoring the fascist candidate, yet turnout was impressively high. And the incompetent criminal Hitler-loving authoritarian bigoted idiot got more votes.
Even if things take a turn overnight and swing state totals narrow and perhaps even flip in a miracle of miracles, the reality still exists that this country isn't populated by good people. This country is full of stupid, disengaged, and/or evil people.
We're in for a very rude awakening indeed.
I've not processed this yet, really, so I'm just going to share what Ben Cohen wrote over at The Banter.
Enough Americans have been taken in by this extraordinary cult of personality and have voted in a madman to be their president. The mainstream press failed spectacularly, again, to focus on the danger Trump posed to America. They turned the presidential contest it into yet another horse race where the reds were fighting the blues in battle to the finish. Trump was sanitized, repackaged, and finally thrust back into the White House with barely a scratch on him.
The polls, having been basically wrong about everything since 2016, were far more accurate than I and almost everyone in the media anticipated. They did not overestimate the Democrats, and they appear to have correctly gaged Trump’s almost mythical ability to activate his base and bring low propensity voters out to the polls. And that really is the story of the race. Despite having run one of the most racist, deranged, insane campaigns in modern history, Trump pulled out the victory again.
He massively over performed with Hispanic men, and shockingly made the huge gender gap irrelevant. It is the comeback of all comebacks, only it isn’t the good guy who has won, but the convicted felon and sexual abuser who tried to overthrow the US government only four years ago.
Sane, well adjusted people know that Donald Trump should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. He should be in jail for the multiple crimes he committed while in office, including his attempted coup. Now he will grant himself immunity and no doubt commit more crimes during his second term in office.
We are headed to a very, very dark place right now, and those who enabled, funded and voted for this despicable charlatan will have to own what is about to happen.
. . .
This is a war that cannot be ceded. We cannot allow Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Fox News to destroy reality and decimate truth. He does not get a grace period, and he must not be respected. Donald Trump is a fascist, and fascists must be defeated. His lies will be countered with truths, and his disinformation will be fought with facts. This is war, again.
And here's the reaction from Craig Calceterra, which I don't think I could improve upon:
America just enthusiastically voted for a violent, lying, bigoted, misogynist, insurrectionist felon who promised it nothing but destruction and misery. It is a damning indictment of the country and its people.
Unlike in 2016, this was no fluke. This was no low-stakes leap of faith by some fed-up people hoping that an uncouth maverick might make their life better and might not cause much harm. This vote was made with eyes wide open. After all that’s been said and done over these past nine years, millions of Americans have decided they don’t care what Donald Trump is, what Donald Trump does, or who Donald Trump hurts. And make no mistake, he will hurt many. He has specifically and repeatedly promised to do so.
Donald Trump has harnessed a longstanding ugliness in this country. He has given voice to the desires of the tens of millions of people who want to round up, brutalize, and deport immigrants and they, in turn, have now given him the power to do so. He’s given voice to the tens of millions of people who want women to be, for all practical purposes, the property of men and, they in turn, have given him the power to do so. He’s given voice to the tens of millions of people who are just fine with abolishing democracy and instituting an authoritarian regime because they believe that regime will favor them and will punish those who they hate and they, in turn, have given him the power to do so. There is something very real, very large, and very ugly in the American body politic and there always has been. And America’s body politics has given Donald Trump power once again.
There is no coming back from this. America, the nation-state, will carry on in name as long as it has more bombs and missiles and money than anyone else and that may well be a very long time. But the ideas and values which all of us were brought up to believe in and that we have always called America is over. What is about to happen in America’s name will represent a perversion of every value I hold. The fact that it will be done with the country’s eager blessing means that the crimes will be committed with malice aforethought and that the damage will be permanent.
Tagged
Politics,
President VonClownstick,
Posted on November 5, 2024 at 11:28PM | Permalink | 
| 
Wrapping it up
The calendar has turned to November, which historically has been my least favorite month of the year but lately hasn't been any worse than others; whether that will hold true this year depends a hell of a lot on next Tuesday's results.
Down do just a few days in Schrödinger's Ballot Box, soon we'll know if Americans chose a live Constitutional democratic republic or a dead rule of law and a new despotism. It's tough not to obsess about the latter possibility and worry about what to do then, but I nevertheless really do think we won't have to face that because I really do think the forces of good will triumph and President-elect Harris will emerge from the fallout of this ugly election campaign.
In just the latest outrage, Donald Trump has insinuated that Liz Cheney should face a firing squad. Add that to the ever-growing list of things that guy has done that should have destroyed his candidacy and yet somehow barely registers at all. Last weekend's version of the latest thing that should have destroyed his candidacy was the hateful screed and grievance rally at Madison Square Garden. It's hard to imagine any other presidential candidate in the history of presidential candidates that could walk out of that and not take a politically-fatal hit, but here we are.
Here's the great satirist Andy Borowitz on that:
PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—With just four days until the election, Donald J. Trump is running out of time to alienate the few demographic groups he has not already offended, campaign sources revealed on Friday.
Though Trump has acknowledged that he did “an amazing job” of repelling Blacks, Latinos, Jews, and Arabs at his Madison Square Garden rally, he has groused that too many other cohorts remain unscathed.
In a heated meeting with aides on Friday morning, Trump banged on a table and shouted, “We need to go after the Inuit.”
“When did they become Inuit?” he demanded. “They were always Eskimos, and then, suddenly, they turned Inuit.”
Trump also expressed a desire to “do a number on the Amish” because “none of them watch me on TV.”
I also recommend spreading around Robert Reich's list of The 101 Worst Things About Trump's Shambolic Presidency. How people have memory-holed all of that heinous incompetence and treachery I will never understand. What makes it all the more remarkable is that one could probably argue an entirely different list of 101 things and still not reach the end of the list of Worst Things.
As the election campaign wraps up, so does my trip down to Southern California. I shall be heading home tomorrow, taking a different route that is more direct but still favoring non-Interstate roads (mostly). Meantime, Dad and Marty and I went to the weekly street fair thingy that happens in downtown Palm Springs last night, and as it was also Halloween there were lots of people in costume. Some of the outfits were pretty cool—in addition to the standard witches and ghosts and vampires, I also spotted a couple of Mandalorians, some stormtroopers, and a Princess Leia to represent the Star Wars crowd; several Dr. Seuss characters; two Velmas from Scooby Doo, but only one Daphne; plenty of Village People (it is Palm Springs); kids in store-bought Superman outfits; a giant Snoopy; one gender-bending Wonder Woman; and two guys in Next Generation-era Starfleet unis.
The stage lights were cool, the band wasn't bad, the volume was oppressive.
There was also an additional stage setup a block or so away that is part of a larger to-do being prepped for next weekend's Gay Pride Palm Springs event that Dad and Marty wanted to see, so we wandered over to that for a bit; it was basically a stage with a band, with the accompanying deafness-level speaker system blaring. I can't stand such things. I will never understand why it is standard practice for any rock show in a club or arena or even outdoor stage venue such as this one to amplify the volume to damaging degrees. If it is expected that one should bring ear plugs to an audio-focused event, then something is fucking wrong. I already have tinnitus, why in the world would I voluntarily exacerbate it for "enjoyment"? I once went to see one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne (RIP, Adam Schlesinger), at a club on Capitol Hill somewhere and found it to be a real drag that I couldn't enjoy hearing them play because of the pounding being inflicted on my eardrums. I don't get it. Anyway, I finally dragged Dad away and we returned to the street fair proper and then made our way back to the house. Aside from the aural assault (and the band wasn't bad, by the way, just fucking loud), it was a nice enough time, though on prior visits when going to the street fair there were more interesting things being displayed and offered for sale. Off week, I guess.
It's been a decent week-plus down here, always good to visit, but I'm missing my cats and, frankly, I'm not used to such arid weather anymore and I look forward to being back among the raindrops.
Tagged
Politics,
Traveling,
Posted on November 1, 2024 at 3:13PM | Permalink | |
Anxiety today
Hanging out here at my dad's house there's usually some news program or other on the TV, and so I'm absorbing a lot of the coverage of Former President VonClownstick's American Bund Hate Rally at Madison Square Garden yesterday. I'm glad to know that people started streaming out of the arena after all of his opening acts of racist asshats gave way to the main racist asshat, but it's still—even now, nine years after this putz entered the political fray—difficult to wrap my head around the concept that so many tens of millions of American citizens are eager to put this aspiring despot back in power, even after suffering through the multiple disasters of his 2017-2021 term.
I mean, Trump is a loathsome criminal idiot that leaves more destruction in his wake than a category-5 hurricane or 9.9-scale earthquake, but he's one guy; his immediate circle of enablers and cronies and puppet masters are a relatively small group.
The number of people that have voted for and will vote for him again? Not small. Some of them are true believer Nazi types, but most? Unlikely. It's a damning indictment of the manipulability of the American people and a troubling look at the real power of propagandists.
I would so like to believe that the results of next week's election will be a profound repudiation of the hate and ignorance Trump and his cult represent, but last time—in the midst of a pandemic he enabled, a crashing economy he orchestrated, a diminishment of this country's international reputation that runs counter to the very "We're Number One" attitude the Republican Party used to exude through its pores—seventy million people voted for him. In a country of 350,000,000 with 240,000,000 eligible voters that might not seem like too troubling a figure, but fewer than 160,000,000 people bothered to vote at all. So that 70,000,000 figure is scary as hell.
Those 70,000,000—and the 80,000,000+ that didn't think it worth their time to cast a ballot—need a reminder of what the Trump term was like.
Fortunately, JoJoFromJerz has posted a bit of a recap, a personalized "Last time, on The Trump Administration Horror Show..." that is free for all to see. I share a few bits from it here.
I remember waking up every single morning bracing for the new crazy. What had he done? What had he said? Who had he attacked, mocked, demeaned or made fun of? What new layer of awfulness was on display that day?
I remember what it felt like to watch Republican after Republican, bending the knee to a bully. Excusing an idiot. Watching them accommodate, embolden and excuse the worst behavior possible. Watching them abandon democracy for a wannabe despot. Genuflecting for a mind-numbingly stupid, autocrat-curious, reality tv star who painted himself orange.
He’s fucking orange.
...
I remember feeling perpetually trapped inside an insane asylum with a monster. I remember feeling like there was no escape.
I remember feeling as if half of the country had lost its damn mind. That people I loved had lost their damn minds. Like I was surrounded by racists and sexists, bigots and xenophobes.
...
I remember watching the country turning on itself. George Floyd’s murder. Kyle Rittenhouse’s murders. I remember it feeling like we were being ripped apart from the inside. All while a madman held court from a goddamn golf course.
I remember living in fear. What crazy person might call me to say they were coming to “Paul Pelosi” me next?
I remember watching him send our National Guard on horseback to tear gas protestors in Lafayette Square. Watching him shaking a fucking Bible that wasn’t his in front of a boarded up church. I remember feeling helpless and hopeless. All the fucking time.
JoJo's best description of the Trump years, though, was this: "I remember feeling like we were all trapped on the inside of a two-year-old’s tantrum and we didn’t have any fucking snacks."
We can't handle another tantrum.
Tagged
Politics,
Posted on October 28, 2024 at 11:38AM | Permalink | |
Election paralysis
It's T-minus 14 days. Two weeks until we start to get results from this, the latest in our series now of Most Critical Elections Ever. Will we retain our democratic republic, or will we slide headlong into fascist autocracy? Will the propagandists be successful in turning enough level-seven-susceptibles into enablers in their own downfall, or will the majority of sane Americans so dwarf the coalition of evil, dumb, corrupt, and easily-malleable?
The zeitgeist has it that it's down to basically a coin-flip's odds. So, you know, no pressure.
I want to believe the zeitgeist is giving us a picture skewed form reality, that the idea that this country's electorate is split 50-50 between competence and chaotic dictatorship is based on faulty data. The more rational parts of my mind think it's far more likely that this will not be as close as the prior two presidential elections and that Vice President Harris will carry the day with plenty of room to spare. The more emotional part of my psyche says, "never underestimate the misogyny and racism of the average American voter, to say nothing of the vast ignorance of so many US citizens."
I've alluded to how this has been producing enough anxiety to infiltrate other aspects of my daily life, but as we get closer to November 5th it's becoming more paralyzing. I can't even say "I can't wait until this thing is over with" because if it goes poorly the anxiousness will multiply a thousandfold. It's affecting me in a similar yet different manner to one of my clinical depression episodes, basically sapping me of energy and motivation to do much of anything.
Tomorrow I'm heading out on my annual trip to visit my dad and Marty for Dad's birthday, which always coincides with the World Series; it's thus become our ritual to hang out at Dad's Palm Springs-adjacent abode for a week to ten days or so, watch the Series, and take care of whatever odd jobs and repairs need doing at his house. Aside from watching the end of the baseball playoffs, all I've been trying to do the past few days is plan my route for the road trip and get things ready here for when I'm away, but I can't even seem to make headway on that. I've decided on and reconsidered and redecided on and reconsidered whether I take an extra day and hang out in San Francisco on the way; or use that extra time instead to go the back-road route, maybe along the coast; or just go direct and minimize drive time. The current decision is the back-road along the coast option, but of course, subject to change and subject to my actually being ready to leave tomorrow by the middle of the day.
Anyhow, my focus on that or anything else is transient as the anxiety kicks in again. Just gotta ride it out, I guess.
Meanwhile, I try to take some comfort in the guarded optimism of others. Here's Stephen Beschloss today:
If you’re measuring the election outcome by the current polling, you may count yourself among the worried Democrats. But I am increasingly convinced that the results will not be as close as many observers are expecting. The carnage-loving Trump may resonate with his cult followers, but that will never comprise a majority; the forward-looking Harris continues to have the ability to expand her voting population.
I still believe that most Americans yearn for a positive future characterized by humanity and decency, not one defined by grievance, degradation, and hate.
...But I also nod in agreement when reading things like this, from Craig Calcaterra today:
One candidate in this election has campaigned vigorously and competently, understands that basic civil rights and the rule of law is of critical importance to a functioning society, and has actual policy proposals. The other candidate has had multiple recent moments which strongly suggest that he is suffering from cognitive failure of some kind, has spent the entire campaign promising to usher in an unprecedented age of American authoritarianism, and is closing the campaign with hearsay about the size of a dead golfer’s dick.
The fact that this will be one of the closest elections in my lifetime says everything that needs to be said about the state of America.
My vote is already turned in. I'm going to attempt to enjoy a road trip and not worry about it. We'll see how that goes.
Tagged
The Black Hole,
Politics,
Posted on October 21, 2024 at 8:34PM | Permalink | |
Exercise your franchise
My ballot arrived in the mail today. Will be taken to a ballot drop box tomorrow.
My home state of Washington has an excellent voting system. Since 2012 it has been 100% vote-by-mail, and I'd presumed the participation rates had jumped a lot from the before-times to the current system, but it's not as much as I thought.
Going by voting-eligible population (everyone who legally could be registered to vote if they wanted to be), we used to be in the 55-60% neighborhood; since the switch we've been 66%, 66%, and 75% (national figures those years were 58%, 59%, and 66%). Better, to be sure, but still not great.
Measured by registered voters, it looks better, of course—81%, 79%, and 84% in 2012, 2016, and 2020 respectively—but all that really tells me is that around 15-20% of people interested enough to be registered don't bother, which is also frustrating. This is a state that makes it super easy to register, too. You can even do it online. Even if you wait until election day itself, you can still register in person.
So with very few impediments, even in high-participation 2020, almost 600,000 Washingtonians who could vote didn't. Bummer. We're not a swing state, which may account for some of the non-votes. Going by midterm turnout, which drops 10-20%, and off-year turnout, which tends to be about half, POTUS is what gets a lot of folks to bother and some people (I've known a few) think it's pointless because of the electoral college.
Yes, yes, the electoral college sucks; it exists because of slavery and the only times it could have justified its existence as some have described it—a bulwark against corrupt processes and a dangerous candidate achieving office—it failed. It gave us Trump, G.W. Bush, and the Rutherford B. Hayes mess. (Which, come to think of it, are only failures if your metric of success is the greater good for the country; given why the thing was created in the first place, as all three times the anti-equality/protect-the-monied candidate became President, it actually kinda worked as designed.) The sooner it gets consigned to the dustbin of history the better. But until then, we work with what we've got.
Even in less-critical times, I'd be encouraging everyone who can to vote. I have done, to the point of annoyance in a couple of cases. Last time around, I was a lot more emphatic because the stakes were so much higher than they'd ever been. And this year, the stakes are just as high if not higher than in 2020.
We have it easy here in Washington. We don't have to wait in line, or face "polling place monitors," or prove our citizenship if we have an accent or our last name is something like Fernández. Our legislature isn't actively trying to purge us from the registration rolls or eliminating polling locations or allowing armed thugs to guard ballot boxes. So it may sound hollow from me, here in the easy-peasy Pacific Northwest, but no matter what state you live in, please, for the sake of everyone you know, the country, and the planet itself, vote. And vote for Kamala Harris. Not a third-party, not a "protest vote," and certainly not for the fascist Republicans—this time the margin needs to be as large as possible, electoral college or not. We need to break records here. I want to see a spread in the popular vote that beats Nixon's and Lyndon Johnson's. I want to see better-than-Coolidge numbers, people!
I realize everyone who visits here is likely already on board with this, so maybe share the sentiment with your own circles and encourage them to share with their circles. (Kind of like a pyramid scheme, I guess, but for good instead of evil.) I don't fully understand the people that pay no attention to government and politics, but they're out there and there's a ton of them. We have 600,000 could-but-don't voters here, for crying out loud.
These people need to be told that the lifestyle they currently enjoy, where they can go about their lives without giving a damn about government and politics, will go away in a hurry if this election goes badly. Quoting "JojoFromJerz":
None of us will be safe under a second Trump term. Not his supporters. Not his minions. Not his family. No one. He doesn’t have the capacity to consider anyone else’s safety but his own, let alone the collective of the American people. Far worse than that though, is the fact that there isn’t a human being on the planet, other than Putin anyway, whose life he wouldn’t trade for his own benefit.
Again, none of this is stuff we have to guess at.
He wanted to shoot protesters in the legs. Wanted to shoot migrants.
He put kids in motherfucking cages.
What he could and likely would do while surrounded with yes men and handed a blank check to bludgeon would be worse than anything we’ve ever known.
I for one ain’t sticking around for any of that shit.
So, let’s make sure he loses shall we?
Let’s vote like our lives depend on it.
Because they very much fucking do.
This is my best estimate of where things stand tonight, electoral-college-wise. With enough work, I think we can get at least five of those tan states and maybe even one of the pink ones to turn blue. Let's make it happen.
Tagged
Politics,
Kamala Harris,
Posted on October 18, 2024 at 2:26AM | Permalink | |
More stuff other people said
Hot off last night's post, in which I both (a) complain about the corporate media coverage or lack thereof regarding the fascist idiot hatemonger that's running for president as a Republican, and (b) quote Craig Calcaterra on something entirely different, came today's edition of Craig's Cup of Coffee newsletter. Craig unconsciously rebuts some of my complaint while also supporting it, because Craig is a smart guy. I'll share the entire section for you here and also suggest that, if you are interested in baseball, politics, and/or relatively obscure indy musicians, Craig's newsletter is $7/month.
The problem with covering Donald Trump and J.D. Vance
Almost every day on social media you see a tweet in response to something Donald Trump has said or done to the effect of “why isn’t the [name a publication] covering this?!” I’m sure I’ve shared that sentiment myself at times. Usually when stuff happens like Trump telling people at a rally that he’ll suspend all laws as they apply to policing, round up 20 million brown people with a domestically-deployed military, and put them in concentration camps, the day after which the New York Times leads the front page with “How do Trump and Harris’ tax credit plans compare?”
This is galling, but it’s also the case that the news media is covering Donald Trump. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t know about his insane ideas. They do stories on his authoritarian proposals, his racist and sexist comments, and all of those things. Indeed, about 95% of the time you hear someone say “why isn’t the media talking about . . .” the media has, in fact, talked about it already, often extensively.
When people say stuff like that I think they’re saying one of two things.
The first thing they’re saying, at least implicitly, is “why hasn’t the entire country rejected Donald Trump out of hand based on this appalling information?! Why has this appalling information not created a Joseph N. Welch-style ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last’ moment in which the bad actor is effectively vanquished?” That, of course, is a very different question than one of coverage and a lot of it is tied up in the fact that a hell of a lot of Americans actually want the same horrible things Donald Trump wants. I don’t think our media has done a particularly great job of covering Trump and the Republican Party’s descent into abject fascism—let alone talked seriously about the practical implications and effect of those things Trump and his supporters say they want—but this dynamic is less of a media problem than an America problem.
A different thing people are saying when they talk about coverage—and it’s usually the more media-savvy people who are saying this one—is “while the media may have reported on this or that bad thing Trump has said or done, why hasn’t the media, en masse, made this a daily drip-drip-drip story the way it made Hillary Clinton’s emails or Joe Biden’s age? Why hasn’t the media given us the sort of coverage it has given all manner of other topics and figures for years—the sort of coverage that frames big ideas for weeks or even months at a time?”
I think that is a somewhat more valid criticism in many respects, and that at least part of it is a function of the American media being cowed by decades of bad faith conservative attacks on the press which, in the Trump era, have been weaponized in all manner of ways. Indeed, you can almost hear the meetings at major media outlets in which someone softens language or buries coverage in its entirety because of the fear of blowback from the cable and online conservative movement.
But I don’t think that accounts for it all. Rather, I think there’s a far more basic issue at play. One which I’ve been unable to really articulate before now but which Andrea Pitzer wrote about in a new piece over at her Degenerate Art newsletter on Monday.
Pitzer borrows a term from climate change studies—stationarity—which describes the human tendency to believe in a world that no longer exists. It gets at the idea of how even institutions, policymakers, an commentators who aren’t abject climate change deniers can nonetheless help exacerbate climate change by seeing the world through a prism of past circumstances which keeps them from adapting to present events. Sort of an institutional inertia that fails to properly clock the problem and thus fails to address it.
Pitzer argues that the media has done the same with Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and other Republicans. They have continued to approach stories and controversies as if Republicans and Democrats both want what’s best for most of America but simply disagree on the means. As if facts and integrity still matter to everyone involved and that merely shedding light on lies or general abhorrence will both cow the liar and/or abhorrent actors and inform those to whom they appealing.
Except, as Trump and Vance have shown, they do not want what’s best for most of America, facts and integrity do not matter to them, and they do not agree to the same set of basic assumptions of how the world works that almost all politicians did before they came onto the scene. The media, however, has not changed its approach to coverage to account for this sort of shamelessness and the result are stories which cast truth and lies as if they are merely competing policy positions to be weighed and cast inherently illiberal or authoritarian pronouncements as if they are equally as valid as whatever normal political actors are proposing. At times they go out of their way to normalize Trump’s and Vance’s radicalness specifically because they do not know how to properly process and report on such radicalness. Some say that’s because they are invested in the concept of “balance.” Some say it’s because the media favors Trump and wants him to win. I think Pitzer’s idea—that they are psychologically tied to a past world, even if they claim otherwise—explains a hell of a lot of this dynamic.
Another thing that is happening which support’s Pitzer’s notion is the way in which the media has continued to behave as if old markers of inherent legitimacy and integrity serve, in and of themselves, as guardrails against extremism. Stuff like a candidate coming from a putatively respectable profession like real estate or finance. Stuff like a candidate being a member of an established religion or political party. Stuff like the fact that they have wives and children and otherwise appear like normal people. There’s, in essence, an institutional bias in the press which equates signifiers of traditional normality with mainstream politics and when normality does not present itself, that normality bias seeks to shove the radicalness into a preexisting frame. Trump CAN’T be a dangerous chaos agent, because the Republican Party nominated him! Vance can’t be a misogynist who wants to make “The Handmaid’s Tale” a reality, because he has a wife with an advanced degree! This happens despite ample press coverage of their words and deeds and is way deeper than anything traditional media criticism can handle. It’s a root psychological problem that both the media and millions of non-MAGA hat-wearing voters who nonetheless vote for Trump because he’s the Republican are experiencing.
I don’t think that the press is the only reason we have Trump and that, if Trump wins, it will be the press’ fault. That’s a facile notion because, again, it ignores the fact that some 80 million voters and many more non-voters are just fine with a president who wants dictatorial powers to go after immigrants and minorities, wants to subjugate women, and wants to hardwire the American system to do even more than it already does to make sure the wealthy stay wealthy and that the non-wealthy know their place. It’s a more popular platform than any of us would like to admit because America is a way more dark and messed-up place than most of us would like to admit.
But yeah, it’s pretty clear that the press is not just fighting the last war. It’s fighting a war from three wars back. The biggest reason it’s doing it runs way deeper than simple editorial choices, but either way it’s doing the country a disservice.
Also, one more quote, this time from one of the links Craig included above (Andrea Pitzer):
The joke about Trump goes that dealing with him is like playing chess with a pigeon who knocks the pieces over, shits on the board, and struts around saying he won. But what’s happening now is that our political and legal institutions have let the pigeon sign up for another chess tournament, and too many news outlets are spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing him like any other contender.
I've never heard that one before, but I now can't think of the orange buffoon as anything but a strutting pigeon taking dumps on a chessboard.
Tagged
Politics,
Craig Calcaterra,
Posted on October 16, 2024 at 4:25PM | Permalink | |
Stuff other people said
I'm not feeling particularly eloquent tonight; I had something of a "lost day," which tends to happen during Black Hole episodes though in this case I think it's more due to the general stress alluded to in the previous post. But I have wanted to say stuff about the source of said general stress, just to vent if nothing else. But since I'm not terribly clearheaded right now I'll instead quote some other folks and see where this goes.
-
I've had (and continue to have) problems with Bob Woodward's choice to withhold critically important information for months in order to sell more books, but I am nevertheless intrigued enough to want to read his new one, War. I'm most intrigued with it for the coverage of the Biden Administration's tremendous handling of foreign affairs, but it's this bit from former Army General Mark Milley that should be Page One News with followups every day for the next three weeks. Said Milley to Woodward about Donald Trump, for whom Milley served as Charmain of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country. A fascist to the core.”
Excerpts from Woodward's book began to make the rounds starting around October 8th, and this quote was made public by the 12th. Nowhere is it mentioned in any way on the front page of the New York Times on any of those days, or in the days since. The Washington Post did publish an article about this on October 12th, but buried deep in the paper, with no mention at all on the front page (though they did feature "Campaign Seeks More Security for Trump" above the fold; the Times' October 12 front page had "Much of World Treating Trump as Power Broker" in similar position). In some alternate universe wherein the corporate press grew a spine and started recognizing the stakes of this election, that front page would have looked more like this:
But we don't live in that universe. We live in the one where mainstream media covers this catastrophic candidate like this.
- Rachel Maddow is also displeased with much of mainstream media, and the other night she took them to task for coverage of the economy vis-à-vis the presidential campaign. I am continually flabbergasted at the impression many voters claim to have that Republicans are better on the economy when that hasn't been true at least as far back as the Kennedy Administration. But part of why people think that is comes from reportage that reinforces the false belief in both subtle and unsubtle ways. Here's Rachel:
Regardless of what your priorities are for the election, the economy is generally seen as the most important issue for the most voters. And because of that, because of that preference among voters, that interest among voters and what you're seeing in the economic news, you're now seeing the political press, again, sort of begrudgingly, admit that, you know, yeah, well, it turns out the Biden administration is leaving in its wake a fantastic economy.
But, when I say begrudging, I mean that the sort of subtext for all of it—and sometimes the overt text of all of it in the political press—is yeah, yeah, yeah it's a great economy, a really great economy, a historically great economy, but surely that can't benefit Kamala Harris, can it? I mean, I know you've seen headlines like this. Here's a typical one from just a couple of days ago at Politico.com, quote, "Harris is riding a dream economy into the election. It may be too late for voters to notice."
It is a dream economy.
I mean, as it says in the piece, "the unemployment rate stands at 4.1%, the S&P 500 stock index is up more than 20% this year, [and] GDP has been growing at a robust 3% pace. Middle-class Americans are more optimistic about their financial future. Gas prices have been falling. The economy added over a quarter-million jobs in September alone—far higher than expectations."
It is a "dream economy" that is being left by the Biden-Harris administration. But Harris can't possibly benefit from that politically, can she?
- Chris Hayes, covering the insane Pennsylvania rally/alleged Town Hall at which Donald Trump spent about 40 minutes just bopping weirdly to his comfort songs, made this observation: "I think his ideal version of the presidency would be 350,000,000 Americans just watching him sway to Bocelli hits on stage."
- Craig Calcaterra has become my favorite baseball writer despite only having read his stuff on an email newsletter. In discussing the National League Championship Series (now tied one game apiece between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers), Craig indulges in one of my favorite things about the postseason: making fun of Fox color announcer John Smoltz. Craig writes: "During the sixth or seventh inning, Smoltz said that 'it’s been statistically proven' that one game means less in a best-of-seven series than in a best-of-five series. I still remember where I was when I read news of the mathematical breakthrough in which it was discovered that one is a lower percentage of seven than it is of five. A watershed moment to be sure."
I had more in mind when I started this post, but I'm foggy and in need of a meal. I probably spent too much time on that fake WaPo mockup. Bye for now.
Tagged
The Black Hole,
Politics,
Craig Calcaterra,
Posted on October 16, 2024 at 1:32AM | Permalink | |
Stress test
Little dude, what you ate wasn't food, OK?
I had to take one of my cats in to the vet late last week, as he'd fallen ill with ... something. He was doing sick cat things, like barfing bile, hiding out in secret places, not being active, and shunning food. When Zephyr shuns food, you know something is wrong.
Anyway, there was a snafu with scheduling at the vet's office and I ended up seeing a different doctor than the one I expected to see. Not a big deal in some senses but huge in others; as it turned out, not a problem in Zeph's treatment and recovery. He's back to his old self now, having expelled whatever it was he'd eaten that he wasn't supposed to and had subsequently gotten stuck in his colon. But the incident did cost me about a grand and it may not have been so expensive if we'd been able to see the doctor who knows him; I wonder if Dr. S, with her greater knowledge and experience and uncanny intuitive insights, would have offered an alternative that featured fewer expensive x-rays, for example, but then again, maybe not. We'll never know.
But the way the schedule mistake came to light wasn't good, I felt blindsided and like the front desk staff dismissed my complaint about it as unimportant. It wasn't, though; I have a history with a couple of quack veterinarians—OK, to be fair, one definite quack and one very inexperienced doc whose treatment may or may not have killed one of my felines prematurely—that makes me leery of entrusting my cats to vets I don't know, and I had to leave Zeph for the day for treatment. I had a little post-traumatic stress episode upon leaving the clinic, kind of reliving the last time I'd left a cat with a vet I didn't know (the aforementioned inexperienced doc) and unloading some raised-voice displeasure on the receptionists. I can't recall all the details of the mini-tirade; they deserved it, no doubt, but it wasn't my finest moment. After that was a very anxious eight hours or so until I could bring Zephyr home.
Anyway, perhaps pertinent to this experience was something I read in Mary Trump's Substack today. She wrote about some inconvenient nuisances that befell her recently and how she reacted to them in an outsized manner:
[It’s] actually been happening a lot lately: Things that I’d normally take in stride, even if I find them annoying, make me feel undone. So, I've been trying to piece together what’s happening. Not surprisingly, it's all related to the context in which we’re all living our lives.
Every day we’re inundated with bad news that is sometimes disheartening, sometimes infuriating, sometimes demoralizing, and, sometimes, all of those things at once. It’s hard not to feel out of control, knowing that in less than 30 days, win or lose, a significant number of Americans (literally tens of millions) are going to go to the polls and vote for fascism. It's hard to take, and it does make everything else that goes wrong, even if it’s something relatively minor, seem like a bigger deal than it would under other circumstances.
Did I blow up at receptionists because so very, very many Americans are dumbshits that will vote for Mary's deranged and despotic uncle? No. I had other reasons. But the degree to which I blew up may well have had something to do with it. This era of American political reality has anyone paying even moderate attention to it coiled up in some degree of anxiety. Any extra stress in our lives twists that coil even tighter.
In a few weeks we'll have passed the biggest milestone in this anxiety marathon, and we'll either be experiencing a profound relief or genuine panic. Until then, I guess the best we can do is take a deep breath and try to keep calm in the face of whatever comes our way.
Tagged
Politics,
Cats,
Posted on October 14, 2024 at 1:29AM | Permalink | |
Every accusation is a confession
The Republican nominee for President is losing his shit over the fact that he hasn't been able to kill the legal proceedings against him and that the public is learning more about what he did while criming. Here's one of his latest rants from "Troth-Senchal," his failing social media platform:
The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked [sic] Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power. “TRUMP” is dominating the Election cycle, leading in the Polls, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are totally “freaking out.” This entire case is a Partisan, Unconstitutional, Witch Hunt, that should be dismissed, entirely, just like the Florida case was dismissed!
There's one true nugget in that rant, though it is festooned with inappropriate capitalization: the upcoming election is, indeed, the most important presidential election in history (because if this clown wins it, America as we know it is over). Everything else is typical Trumpian horse excrement. But it does illustrate continuing patterns, including the projection of his own past and planned wrongdoings and criminality onto his opponents.
"Falsehood-ridden" is a kind term to describe nearly anything Donald Trump says in any context. Projection.
"Unconstitutional" is in some ways meaningless coming from him, as he had no idea what the Constitution says aside from a cherry-picked sentence here or there, but violating the Constitution is like breathing for Trump. He violated his oath to it countless times during his term in office. Projection.
I will agree that Governor Walz's debate performance was less than perfect, but he held his own, while VonClownstick's own debate performance was staggeringly awful. Projection.
The nearness to the election of the release of the legal brief he's talking about is his own fault, aided by the three Supreme Court Justices he installed. Trump and the super-majority of corrupt Justices caused the delays that brought things to basically a month from election day. Not quite projection, but certainly gaslighting.
Interfering in the 2024 election is and has always been his plan. Just listen to him tell people at his rallies that he doesn't need their votes, that he already has "plenty of votes." Why doesn't he need their votes? Because his plan is to ignore votes and cheat, and he has minions in swing states creating obstacles to voting and putting thumbs on the scales and introducing chaos to the proceedings for the purpose of making voting unreliable and suspect. Projection.
"Radical" Democrats? Please, this guy is an authoritarian fascist. Projection.
"Witch hunt" is a favorite term of his, used apparently without intended irony; investigations of his criminality are backed by mountains of evidence, but his own attempted takedowns of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Alvin Bragg, Anthony Fauci, and who knows how many others—even Mark Zuckerberg, of all people!—are based in nothing more than the whining grievances of a bully not permitted to bully with unchecked impunity. Projection.
Finally, weaponizing the Justice Department is one of Donald Trump's core policy planks. He's attempted it (both successfully and unsuccessfully) during his term in office and he promises to do it again, this time without pesky DOJ officials that tell him he can't do it. Massive projection.
On that last point, the New York Times—a publication that for some reason refuses to acknowledge the reality of Donald Trump's anti-American fascist dictator-worship—surveyed a number of former DOJ officials about Trump's plans for weaponization. I turn the analysis of that piece over to the great Craig Calcaterra:
The Times spoke with 50 former top officials from the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office to try to game out how Donald Trump would, as he promises he will, use the FBI and the DOJ to go after his political enemies should he be elected. The upshot of these people’s opinion:
Forty-two of the 50 former officials said it was very likely or likely that a second Trump term would pose a significant threat to the norm of keeping criminal enforcement free of White House influence, a policy that has been in place since the Watergate scandal.
Thirty-nine of 50 said it was likely or very likely that Trump, if elected, would order the Justice Department to investigate a political adversary. (Six more said it was possible.) This, too, is something presidents don’t do.
The respondents were more split on how the Justice Department would respond. Twenty-seven of the 50 said it was very likely or likely that career prosecutors at the DOJ would follow orders and pursue the case. Thirteen said it was possible. Nine said it was unlikely or very unlikely.
Some of the people the Times spoke to blithely assert that Trump wouldn’t do this or that, even if they cannot point to formal mechanisms barring him from doing so. Indeed, they believe that people in the FBI and Justice Department would somehow do the right thing and stop Trump from doing what he says he wants to do. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone who lived through Trump’s presidency can believe such nonsense but I suppose it’s pretty easy to be a Pollyanna about such things when you’re otherwise comfortable.
Personally, I prefer to believe what I see before my very eyes. And what I see is a man who has vowed to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his critics and enemies and has further vowed to use shock troops to round up minorities — including immigrants with legal status — and place them in concentration camps and subsequently deport them. A man who has promised to stretch the powers of the presidency in ways not seen in our lifetime. A man who, thanks to our corrupt Supreme Court, can now be confident that no one will be able to challenge his doing so. Again: this is not conjecture. He has openly and repeatedly promised this. He has promised to usher in what is, by any rational definition, authoritarianism and fascism.
This is not some conspiracy theory about a covert plot. It is not hidden. Donald Trump is saying it loud and clear. Most of the people who know how the system works believe he’ll do it. We had best listen.
I make it a point never to argue with Craig when he's right.
Tagged
Politics,
President VonClownstick,
Craig Calcaterra,
Posted on October 4, 2024 at 8:47PM | Permalink | |
The Veep Debate and Wild Card Playoffs
Left: Literal evil. Right: Metaphorical evil.
I really tried to watch the whole thing.
Well, "really tried?" I mean, I could have pushed through. I chose not to for the sake of my blood pressure and my downstairs neighbor, who was probably sick of my screaming "go to hell you lying son of a bitch/smarmy troll/piece of excrement" etc. every two minutes or so.
But I turned it off, "it" being the so-called debate between Vice-Presidential nominees Tim Walz and J.D. Vance. Had I kept on, I would have seen Walz be better; early on he was obviously nervous and appeared out of his depth, but I know from post-debate analysis and the slew of clips that made it around the Internet and cable news that he improved markedly in the second half. Had I kept on, I would also, however, continued to see Vance pour on the bullshit in such a slick, phony faith-healer way, with an abundance of the sort of charm you might find in a sociopathic used car dealer determined to have you drive this lemon off the lot and be happy you did it.
Vance is like a lot of modern-day Republicans in that he can seemingly get away with saying the vilest, most repugnant things so long as he says it in a calm, thoughtful-sounding tone. The film Vice captured this in its portrayal of Dick Cheney, but it's the same schtick you hear form Bill Barr, Kevin McCarthy, even Steve Bannon (though his weird triple-shirts get in the way of seeming sane). But there was Vance, claiming in a calm tone with as straight a face as he could muster that Donald Trump saved the Affordable Care Act (when he actually tried his damnedest to destroy it), peacefully left office (when he actually incited an insurrection to try to stay in power), and didn't crash the economy (when he in fact presided over a massive manufacturing recession, waged a trade war that cost taxpayers billions, and so botched a global health crisis that everything went into the tank not to mention cost hundreds of thousands of lives). The smarmy, lying, weasel. And there were the alleged journalists acting as "moderators," treating a 35-year-old misstatement on a matter of no importance by Governor Walz with the same heft and importance—greater heft, arguably—than the mountain of deceit, lies, gaslighting, and revisionist history being spouted by the opposing campaign on a daily, nay, hourly basis.
Fortunately, it seems the public saw through Vance's facade of crap and credit Walz with authenticity from the event. I admit to being a little surprised at that, given how easily manipulated 70+ million people were in the 2020 campaign. The stakes being what they are, it's no wonder Governor Walz was nervous stepping onto that stage and thank god/fate/whatever he was able to hold his own against Weasel McPantsonfire.
Anyway, I couldn't take it, so I switched over to baseball.
This is now the third year of the "Wild Card Series" in the Major League Baseball postseason and I remain against it. We did have, for the first time, one series go the distance of three games, with the New York Mets pulling out a come-from-behind win to move on earlier this evening; meaning in the 12 WC series to date, the team that did not advance has won one game and the team that lost the first game has advanced zero times. You might say the sample size is still too small, but I say that pretty much negates the argument some had been making about the previous one-and-done Wild Card game setup being somehow less fair than a best-of-three, like we have now. And, illustrating another glaring flaw in the system, the division winners forced to play on the same level as the Wild Card teams were both ousted, meaning that now a division winner has been eliminated before the Division Series 2/3 of the time. (Not that I'm sad to see Houston lose, though. That's a silver lining this year.)
I've gone on at length before about how this is a dumb system that Commissioner Manfred has saddled us with and how it could be better, so I'll go on here only briefly. But it stinks for the fans in Milwaukee to see their team, which dominated its division all year long, bounced out in consecutive years by teams that won nothing in the regular season. Finishing first needs to actually matter. Advancing as a Wild Card team needs to be harder. Again, briefly, if we must have these stupid expanded playoffs, I want to see (for practical reasons only) four WC teams per league instead of three; all division winners skip the WC series; and no offdays for WC teams. Play the day after the regular season to winnow four WC teams to two, survivors play the next day to determine who gets the single WC berth in the Division Series, then straight in to the DS without any rest, meaning any WC team to advance to an LCS needs a deep starting rotation and a capable bench. Also, as a side benefit, this shortens the arguably-disadvantageous layoff for the "bye teams" (division winners) by three days.
Too obvious?
Anyway, it is what it is this year, and we get an 8-team bracket of finalists with no obvious rooting interest for your's truly. Do I support Detroit as the upstart come-from-nowhere surprise club? The loaded lineup and battered pitching staff of the Dodgers? Cleveland's a possibility now that they've rebranded away from racism; rookie manager Steven Vogt and star power in José Ramírez and Steven Kwan are certainly appealing. KC has Bobby Witt Jr. and a lot of moxie. I don't know, I guess it'll take shape in my head as the series get underway. But I do agree 100% with Michael Schur of The Poscast: No matter how "appropriate" it may seem for the World Series to feature two megastars against each other in Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) and Aaron Judge (Yankees), there is no universe in which the Yankees deserve another pennant, not for decades to come.
Tagged
Politics,
Baseball,
Posted on October 4, 2024 at 2:25AM | Permalink | |
Demolition derby
I had umpiring to do last night, so it wasn't until the wee hours of this morning that I finished watching last night's debate between VP Kamala Harris and convicted felon F*%face VonClownstick. It wasn't perfect, there were things I was disappointed not to see, and of course I spent too much energy yelling at the TV when the man in the swirly combover was spewing bullshit at us. (So much so that about ten minutes in I got a text message from my neighbor downstairs asking, "catching up on the debate?" followed by a screaming emoji. I toned it down after that because she's one of these freakish morning people who goes to bed early.)
Although I don't think it started out strong for anyone, by maybe 20 minutes into it I was starting to feel like this was going to be a game-changer in a good way. The vice-president brought the goods and delivered some effective smackdowns while also elucidating sound policy on a number of topics, all the while getting so far under the convicted felon's skin that by the end he was almost screaming into his mic in a barely-contained rage.
I'm anxious to see new polling in a week or so to see how this will change the state of the campaign. But for now I'm pleased that the event generated quite a few potential video clips for use in ads, showed the viewership that Kamala Harris is a calm and collected person with plenty of smarts and savvy, and provided such a clear contrast between sane and small-d democratic vs. unhinged delusional nutjob.
These are my two favorite bits from the event. The first is VP Harris forcefully rebutting the absurd claim that "everybody wanted" Roe v. Wade overturned:
And this is Harris schooling her opponent on Ukraine and NATO:
What I wished for and didn't get—and for which there was a teed-up opportunity, a hanging "hit me" curve taken for a strike—was for someone, either a moderator or Harris, to either ask Trump how tariffs work or simply point out that even after being president for four years and enacting several, Trump has no understanding of what tariffs are. He seems to genuinely believe that imposing a 20% tariff on, say, Chinese goods means that China pays a fee equal to 20% of what they sell to American companies. Even though when he had his little "trade war" with China no such money was collected because THAT'S NOT HOW TARIFFS WORK. I want someone, somewhere, on camera, to corner this idiot into explaining how he thinks tariffs work. He's basing his entire economic policy, such as it is, on massive tariffs on imported goods and he doesn't understand what that means. The topic did come up, but it was the vice-president that raised it and called it a proposed "Trump sales tax," which is what it would effectively be; when Mango Mussolini responded it was just to spout his idiocy that "other countries will pay" and he wasn't challenged on it before things moved on.
Just for clarification to any who need it: A tariff is a fee imposed on AMERICAN BUSINESSES that import whatever product the tariff is targeting, and those businesses pass the fee along to the end consumer in the form of raised retail pricing. The intention is to discourage the purchase of foreign goods when the government would prefer similar American-made goods have greater market share, so American manufacturing is boosted and American labor is used for those specific goods Americans purchase. The foreign option is still available, it's just more expensive TO AMERICANS as a deterrent. (In practice, American manufacturers sometimes raise their own prices to match, thus defeating the purpose.) The foreign manufacturer may be hurt by decreased export sales—or not, if they make up the sales by exporting elsewhere—but they pay NOTHING to the United States. If a tariff is placed on a type of product that doesn't have a similar American-made analogue, or products that American manufacturing can't scale to, it amounts to nothing more than self-generated inflation.
Another thing I wanted to hear more about was Trump's call for deportation camps, but I get why that wasn't a focus; immigration was Trump's go-to whenever he felt like he needed to change the subject, which was often, so no need to give it more oxygen.
Anyway, it was a good night for the campaign and I eagerly await evidence in the coming weeks of how/if it moved the needle for the electorate. I mean, how this even remotely a close race I can't fathom.
Tagged
Politics,
President VonClownstick,
Kamala Harris,
Posted on September 11, 2024 at 6:27PM | Permalink | |
Gun culture
There was a school shooting yesterday. Again. Four dead.
There was a dude firing a gun along Interstate 5 and wounding six people, at least one critically.
Four people were shot dead on a Chicago El train.
Five people were shot at a parade in Brooklyn.
A guy broke into a Birmingham, Alabama, apartment and shot four people playing cards, killing one.
Someone opened fire in a parking lot outside a bar in Nashville and wounded several people.
Two mass shootings in Ohio on the same day, one in Cleveland and one in Dayton.
All this since September first. A span of four days.
And yet nothing will be done about it.
Oh, suspects will be arrested, victims will be treated or eulogized, families will grieve. That stuff will "be done" about it. But nothing will happen to address the causes of this uniquely American problem of gun violence.
I know nothing will be done because nothing has been done. We've been living with this situation for decades—correction, most of us have been living with it, some very much not—and all we get from the people empowered to take action are meaningless "thoughts and prayers" and completely nonsensical, idiotic comments like this one, from Georgia governor Brian Kemp after yesterday's murders: "Today is not the day for politics or policy." Screw you, BK, this is precisely the day for policy. That's, you know, your actual job.
Some people in leadership positions want to do something. Assault weapon bans, stricter background checks, restricting access to firearms in various ways, these have been proposed in legislation but never with any real chance of passage because (a) Republicans, and (b) ingrained gun culture.
We have a real chance at getting something passed in the nearish future if we elect enough Democrats in November and can then bypass (a). So those of us who survive the inevitable shootings to come in the next couple of years or so might see progress. But I'm concerned about (b) being an insurmountable problem, at least for the foreseeable future.
Gun culture is everywhere in this country. It's in our historical touchstones, it's in our entertainment, it's in our language. It's in so many idioms we don't even notice it. We're basically inured to the idea of guns whether we want to be or not.
Just last night, while I was umpiring, I used the phrase "bang-bang play," which is baseball-speak for a super-close safe/out situation or split-second call made by an umpire. I'd never really considered the origins of the phrase until that exchange, which went like this:
Me (umpire): OUT!
Player: I don't know, man, are you sure?
Me: It was bang-bang, they got him.
It was the joining of "got him" with "bang-bang" that clicked it for me, this is a gun metaphor. I know, should have been obvious, but having heard it so many times in the context of a play on the bases it wasn't.
When estimating a timeframe, we say we're "shooting for" a date. We "shoot from the hip" or "shoot our mouths off" or "shoot ourselves in the foot." The passenger seat in a car is for "riding shotgun." We use "bullet points" in memos. If we're confident about the outcome of something, it's a "surefire bet." Someone who's extra gregarious might be called "a real pistol." We implore recipients of bad news, "don't shoot the messenger." If someone is criticized, they've "come under fire." A quickly-fading fad is a "flash in the pan." If we're on a tight deadline we're "under the gun." If you put off a decision or act cautiously in a dilemma, you might be "keeping your powder dry." If you change your expectations or goals you might be "raising/lowering your sights."
And those are just off the top of my head (an idiom which, so far as I know, has no firearm connotations). Even when there are no guns around, there are guns everywhere. I don't know how we get past that.
Of course, making the real guns a whole hell of a lot harder to come by would be a great first step.
Regarding the latest school shooting in Georgia, I leave it to Jeff Tiedrich to lambast the political "leadership" from that state and their useless "thoughts and prayers."
Tagged
Politics,
Society,
Guns,
Posted on September 5, 2024 at 7:27PM | Permalink | |