A blog post I wrote on election night 2016. I’m likely preaching to the choir on some of this, but thought it worth sharing. Even better, however, is that it now looks prescient for 2020, so I’ve slightly re-purposed it for that, too.
* * * * * * * * *
While I was watching the election results come in last night – and I was as surprised as anyone – I couldn’t help but enjoy a laugh at the expense of, well, about 60 million people who have been crying, pissing their pants, and otherwise engaging in exactly the behavior that produced this election result. It’s not simply that I’m a fan of what the Germans gleefully have a name for – schadenfreude, that incomparable feeling of enjoying someone else’s misery, especially when they deserve it, good and hard – although that’s certainly part of it.
Let me set the stage for this. I voted in my first Presidential election this most recent Presidential election… and I was 47 at the time. It’s possible I voted in ’92 for Perot – I seem to recall wanting to – but I was also in naval flight training at the time, and it’s more likely I didn’t at all. While it might seem like an excuse, I was a bit busy at the time, as a new officer, a new flight student, a new husband, and a new father. (Kiss my ass, I was really busy, there was no internet, nor easy registration, nor electronic voting.)
Bubba Clinton was running. For those of us in the military, Bill looked like the AntiChrist. He was a philandering, dope-smoking hippie from the 60’s, who participated in a flag-burning when he was in London during the Vietnam war, and he was obviously the furthest thing from “military” one could have put forth in that election. In my defense, even if I didn’t vote Bush I, Perot had at least been a Navy surface warfare officer and a self-made man.
Bill didn’t seem to have any appreciation for our values and what the military represented… but the rest of the country elected him. I distinctly remember a good number of my friends: devout Christians, some from the south, some from the north, some black, some white – all were aghast. We couldn’t believe the United States citizenry picked him over either George H.W. Bush, who was the youngest naval aviator in US history, had been shot down in World War II in the Pacific, and otherwise, at least on the surface, seemed to be a decent man. What in the actual fuck just happened? We all wondered. Guys were talking about getting out, about how they wouldn’t take orders from some huckster from Arkansas, who had more than earned the sobriquet “Slick Willie…”
…and yet…
The Republic endured. The military didn’t get shut down. We still had missions to fly, troops to lead, challenges to the Nation’s security. I never even noticed he was the President really.
So, point number to democrats and Team Blue hacks would be: quit acting like a bunch of pussies. You’re publicly embarrassing yourselves…and your kids. No matter how you try to indoctrinate them, and convince yourself otherwise, they know when you’re acting like a hypocrite and a pussy. The rest of us do, too.
A valid question for me might be what finally got me to vote (after all of these years) for either of these two historically bad candidates, Trump and Clinton? And the answer is…. Nothing. I “threw away my vote” to support a third party candidate. (Psych!) Now before you start wailing about how I wasted my vote and – particularly if you were on the losing TEAM in this election – lecturing me in your own head about how I could have prohibited The TRUMPOCALYPSE “if only” I and all of my third-party heathen friends had voted for Herself, let me first ask you to go f*** yourself.
This is point #2.
My vote is MY vote. It is not YOUR SHITTY CANDIDATE’S VOTE IN A CLOSE ELECTION. Because if we’re being real with each other, if your candidate had won, you wouldn’t give two flying shits about my vote for Gary Johnson. You would be cackling and gloating over the people who voted for Trump and treating third party voters with only slightly less derision. By the way, Team Blue may be the best current example of this logically indefensible position, but Team Red voters were saying the same. exact. thing. just a few months ago with Trump down in the polls by less than the margin predicted to vote third-party. So, I’ve really had enough of both groups of assholes telling me about how my vote really isn’t my vote, but it’s yours if it’s “a close election ‘cuz third party candidate’s don’t win, so don’t throw your vote away, mmkay?” Please eat shit. Thank you.
That your preferred shitty candidate (of either party) failed to capture the necessary votes to win is not my problem. I voted my conscience; I hope you did the same. I respect if you didn’t vote at all, too. That’s an option I exercised for years because I was likely in the middle of moving from one place across the country to another (’96), overseas (’00), in a war zone (’04), or disinterested in the options being offered (’08, ’12). I’m one of those people who, if I’m hungry but the food options being offered are peas or collared greens, I’ll just go hungry for a little while. I’m not going to die of starvation – and believe it or not, the same is generally true for election consequences. If I don’t find an appealing candidate who is worthy of my vote, then I won’t vote. That’s a right I have, as well.
Now, let’s turn to all of the sturm and drang in the immediate aftermath by the Progressive Left, Hollywood elites, and Media, all of whom told us that Cankles was the ONLY, POSSIBLE, RESPONSIBLE, MORAL, GOODTHINK vote over the Orange Blowhard! Your virtue-signalling about how you were “with Her” does not make you morally superior to anyone. It makes you a “completely-unaware-of-the-irony” moron, of the worst kind – the idiot who actually thinks they know more than other people and doesn’t understand second and third order consequences. You have been lecturing everyone about the “proper” way to conduct one’s self – in voting, in what people can say, what they can wear, what’s “woke” and what isn’t, and how anyone who didn’t vote the way you said is a racist…
Which brings me to the most important point of this article: this is exactly why you lost.
Just let that sink in slowly for a moment. Yes, you – YOU – are the reason she lost. Now, do I mean “you” in the absolute sense? No. But if you are reading this and you have been calling every Trump voter a racist, deriding “Berniebros” as idiots, and otherwise being a douchebag to anyone who didn’t jump on board the Clinton, Inc. corruption bandwagon, you ARE the reason she lost. Yep. You deserved exactly what you got.
Let me explain.
Point-o Numero Tres –
I didn’t vote for Hillary; I am also not a racist. Now, I know that will be news to the Amy Schumers, Lebron Jameses, and other pustulant celebrities, talking heads, and flaming assholes who think it’s their God-given right to tell me how I should vote and what I am if I don’t vote the way you like, but again, why do you think the polls were so wrong for so long? Yes, there were a lot of people – millions, in fact – who didn’t talk to pollsters, or did but didn’t reveal their true preferences. I wonder why that could be… given how uncomfortable nearly everyone in popular culture made it to admit you weren’t “with her”?
This will continue happening so long as the Progs on the left continue to shriek at the top of their lungs to win the culture wars and dictate what is “racist” and not. Even one of the better known talking heads of the left (Bill Maher) had to admit he helped make this happen.
I was happy to see a few liberals, like Bill Maher, owning up to it. Maher admitted during a recent show that he was wrong to treat George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain like they were apocalyptic threats to the nation: it robbed him of the ability to treat Trump more seriously. The left said McCain was a racist supported by racists, it said Romney was a racist supported by racists, but when an actually racist Republican came along—and racists cheered him—it had lost its ability to credibly make that accusation.
Robby Soave, in this meh article from Reason.com’s blog, while adding to the lie about Trump being a racist, at least had enough self-awareness to acknowledge that perhaps the standard democrat tactic of calling every (R) a racist had finally bitten them in the ass. I don’t agree that Trump or his supporters are racists, but the “boy who cried wolf” point is well made. Moreover, where were all of you Team Blue hacks when Hillary was kissing Robert Byrd’s ass – a no-kidding, hood-wearing fucking Klansman who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964?!
Point Four – there are LOTS of non-racist reasons to be unwilling to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton.
I do not believe I am alone in being the only non-racist who didn’t vote for Mrs. Clinton. Additionally, I know Amy Schumer and Samantha Bee (and others) have assured us that they “read all of those emails” and there’s “nothing to see here!” I can only take this as proof those people either can’t read or are lying because they didn’t understand a word of of them.
- Some of us take national security rather seriously. Some of us have had TS/SCI clearances. Some of us have actually had to defend people charged with significantly less than Mrs. Clinton did – good people, people who were simply dumb and whose “crimes” included de minimus violations of Classified handling protocols. I was required for many years, every time I answered a telephone in squadron spaces, to start my answer with: “Good morning. HML/A-269 Ready Room, sir or ma’am, please be advised this is an unsecured line.” Every. Fucking. Time. Some of us also have a law degree, just like the one James Comey has on his wall, bar certified and everything, and we might arrive at very different conclusions than he did about whether or not she should have been prosecuted. I’ve been a criminal defense attorney and a prosecutor, my opinion on her actions being criminal is not a “racist” decision. She got away with more than any client I’ve ever defended. Period.
- To add to the list of non-racist reasons to NOT have voted for your preferred candidate, the trail of corruption around the Clinton Foundation is so significant that it veritably begs for a RICO prosecution. Some of us also take public service very seriously and believe that being on the taxpayers’ dime is a sacred trust… and personally enriching one’s self while on the public dime is generally considered a pretty big fucking no-no. So, Hillary and Bill’s little “you speak over here” and “I’ll approve the Russians’ getting 1/5th of the United States’ uranium over there” deal was – and is – in and of itself a sufficiently non-racist-y reason to never, ever allow either of those self-aggrandizing pieces of shit to ever hold so much as a job in a post office – but you’re mileage may vary.
- Some of us think that Hillary’s “I landed under sniper fire,” stolen-valor LIE that she trotted out to burnish her foreign policy creds while running for Senate in NY is – all alone, in and of itself – more than enough justification to not vote for her. This doesn’t even begin to address the whole slew of other lies that are too numerous to detail, including the lies about how she set up her server, her blatant lies to the American public about it, her lawyers dragging their feet over FOIA production, the Wikileaks emails where her Chief of Staff and campaign essentially ran the DNC and rigged it against another candidate… do I need to go on here? See, perfectly non-racists reasons why my vote might go elsewhere – and not even for Trump, either!
- Then there’s the personal. A lot of US servicemen and women are dead because of Hillary Clinton’s complete shitshow of a foreign policy and seeming war-hawk mentality, in which she never sees a place where she wouldn’t use the lives of me and my friends to enforce some boneheaded decision to intervene. I realize for all of the really smahhht people who attend the really cool parties on either coast that we’re all viewed in that same basket of deplorables because we’re willing to use violence on behalf of this Nation, but maybe, just maybe… some of us know a thing or two and have some ideas about what sound foreign policy looks like and… with all due respect to Amy Schumer’s analysis, we don’t think the former SecState measures up? Maybe?
See? Lots of non-racist, non-sexist, rather easily defensible reasons why I would not have cast a vote for Her – at gunpoint. Now, it may be that there is no single other person in all of the electorate who fits that profile, but my existence is enough to falsify all of the current nonsense and whining and crying by folks who really wanted her to win. Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourselves and sending exactly the wrong message to those kids you’re supposedly so concerned about. If you really were, you’d show your kids how to handle adversity with grace and aplomb, vice sniveling and pissing and moaning on social media about how everyone who didn’t vote your way is a racist or misogynist.
Now, rather than simply bitch and moan in a blog post, in an effort to help you understand what really happened and maybe even “why” in more detail, I think this graphic tells a very interesting – and important – story about this election. (Link to the source for the map).
One of the first things I noticed as I was watching election coverage – (after the really important stuff, like watching the Bruins-Canadiens game) – is that just how much of that map is red. I know, I know, “but muh democracy!” but I’ve got a law degree and I understand “one person, one vote” (and unlike you, I’ve actually read that case). We don’t vote based upon acreage, sort of… but it’s hard to escape the obvious conclusion that we are a nation split between big cities and… well, everywhere-the-fuck else. Even where Hillary carried a state – like Colorado, for example – she basically carried a population center or two, and that not by much, and got slaughtered everywhere else. The same is true almost everywhere on this map. If you drill down county by county, it makes the point even more forcefully. As soon as you get outside of the city limits, they start going red.
It also proves the lie of the “racist voters helped put Trump over the top.” Because Trump carried about the same electoral map as Mitt Romney did against Obama… except that districts that just four and eight years ago went to Obama by 22 points (in one case), went to Trump over Hillary by 7 points. Let me let that little factoid sink in… the same exact counties in places like Michigan and Wisconsin, that voted to elect the first black President in US history – and then DID IT A SECOND TIME! – suddenly “went racist” and voted against Hillary, in favor of Trump… by almost a 30 percent swing. To believe the “racist voter” narrative, you have to believe that somehow Wisconsin and Michigan voters, who have voted lockstep democrat for most of my lifetime and who also elected a black man for President not once, but twice, all of the sudden couldn’t resist the clarion call – or should I say the Klan Kall? – and then voted against Hillary for Trump. If you can’t explain or account for that, you probably should shut up about the racist thing.
Back to the map – I grew up on the east coast and I must admit for most of my life I was simply blinded to what impact that had on my view of the world. I used to think guns were icky and unnecessary – after all, wasn’t there always a cop around when I was a kid to seemingly catch me doing something I wasn’t supposed to at exactly the wrong moment? Don’t we have 911 operators? And aren’t all of the really smart people living in these massive population centers, as illustrated by all of our exceedingly wonderful east and west coast universities, teeming with our Nation’s best and brightest, as well as their literati instructors, all unified in agreement that DA TRUMPKIN IS YUUUUGELY BAAADD?!! And didn’t our centers of culture, in liberal leaning metropolises like LA/Hollywood, come out in droves to tell Americans how they just couldn’t possibly be for such a misogynist creep like Trump? And didn’t our political betters in Washington, DC, and our media outlets – all in large metropolitan centers – lecture unceasingly about how Trump’s election would presage a doom so great that the U.S. and its people would instantly crumble, be diminished in the eyes of the world, and viewed as backward, racist, sexist, badthink people for all eternity? Wouldn’t our children and our very way of life be threatened?
Yes. You assholes said all of that and worse. Still are, in fact. I can’t even do the pants-shitting that is going on justice, no matter how much derision and contempt I heap upon it.
Now look at that map again.
You know what I see? For All of those People in Blue who are heaping all of this derision on those People in Red… what I see is that those people in Red counties feed those people in Blue. Look again.
You want to excoriate those “racist” farmers in Kansas who put food on your table, from beef to grains and all of the other things they produce from Iowa to Florida? How about all of that fruit that gets picked in those Red areas? Yes, even in California. You really want to prove how committed you are and how you don’t like racism? If you really believe those people are racists, and you really want to show your solidarity with Her (!) and your devotion to Your Principles (!!), then stop eating the food in your supermarket. Grow your own, you ungrateful, unprincipled piece-of-shit. Go hunt your own food – oh, wait, never mind, you won’t touch a gun, so you’re going to have to sharpen some sticks or learn how to make a deadfall or some kind of lure or trap.
Mike Rowe recently noted (and I can’t recall where he got the data from) that 1.5% of the country is involved in agriculture and farming/food production…for the other 98.5%. We feed almost 350,000,000 people – with a LOT LEFT OVER for exports – for you to throw away that last piece of pie that you don’t want, and for you to have extra whip cream on your frappa-whappa-look-at-me-I’m-so-Wokeaccino. But by “we” I mean the people who were in the Red Counties because Ag and Dairy farming aren’t happening in Queens or the woke neighborhoods where Nancy Pelosi lives, I assure you.
I have had the fortunate experience, being in the military, of going without. Regularly, in fact. It’s a part of training, because it’s frequently a part of War. I’ve also had to live “off the land” in places where the next resupply isn’t coming, or is likely to be interfered with by shitty weather, or the enemy, and where we STILL ship metric tons of food to our troops at war, because basic sanitation hasn’t even been invented in a lot of those places yet. You, Mister and Missus Average U.S. Citizen, however, live in a land of plenty, of milk and honey, and it comes as a result of a process you don’t understand, as a result of rights that you give no thought to, because of economics that your shitty progressive education programs in secondary school and elite liberal universities don’t even teach anymore. You might want to tamp down your “I’m going to Canada” routine because I’ve been to Canada – it’s where my paternal family all hails from – and you aren’t cut out for it. Trust me: the colder it gets, the tougher it gets. Spend a winter or two in Montreal and then come talk bout how horrible it is that those “deplorables” in Arkansas didn’t vote the way you wanted. Those deplorables put chicken on your plate (Tyson Foods is centered in Arkansas).
I could go on and on and on with examples like this, but those of you on Team Blue in metropolitan centers need to understand something: you have been living off the hard work of people in those places you think are”racist” just by geography… and those people heard you. They heard your contempt and your derision. And this is their way of telling you to go fuck yourself.
It’s not racism… It’s you. That should be the lesson here, but unfortunately, it hasn’t yet been learned.
You continue this kind of divisiveness at your own peril because if the proverbial poop hits the rotating blades and that supply chain is at all interrupted, guess what? The people on the farms will still eat. You? You there in all of those metropolitan centers, where you know so much more about what’s cool and what isn’t? Big swaths of you will fucking starve to death in a scenario in which you feel you have to “do something” about those “racists.”
Now, that’s not a threat on my part. I used to live in and grew up in one of those True Blue metropolitan areas, too. The difference is that my happy ass can fish, hunt, kill, clean, skin, and dress out my dinner if I have to. I don’t do it very often because there are others who do it for me through the wonder of capitalism, free exchange, and specialization. In return, I can offer up some of what I’m specifically good at and exchange value for value. I also know better than to insult people who provide my food because my mother always taught me it was terrible manners. And you? Well, you get to be a painter, artist, engineer, liberal professor, NBA player, or even an asshole actress, or whatever it is that you do to make money that allows you to trade that currency for the same food that comes from those Trump supporters in the rust belt and elsewhere whom you decry as “racists.” Funny how those racists are more than willing to make sure your fat ass is fed, isn’t it?
I would suggest that maybe what’s necessary is for some of you elites on the coasts and in the big cities get in your cars one weekend and start driving. Take a trip to a red state. I’ve had the good fortune – and disposition – to like travel. I have driven across this country more than 10 times from end to end and top to bottom dozens, on both coasts. There is only one state I haven’t been in – and I’m not counting layovers in airports, I’m talking about on the ground, driven through, and made a purchase. I’ve missed only South Dakota, and I’ll get that one eventually. You know what? We do have actual racists (still) in this country…but they’re damn few or they’re in hiding because everywhere I go in this country – when I’m not getting fired up over politics – I meet great people of all races, ethnicities, religions, and beliefs, who have been more than willing to extend their hospitality and good will to me through mutual exchange – and in a pinch, even for free! – simply because I’m an American, just like they are, and we believe in some common precepts, including the right to be free, to be left alone, to vote our conscience, and none of us takes kindly to being called racists simply because we didn’t vote the way people in cities think we should.
Let me close this out by adding a prognostication for 2020: everything I’ve said above has not only been ignored by Team Blue, but magnified! The level of smug, of condescension, of disdain for fellow Americans has gotten orders or magnitude worse in the intervening three years. The Media has been even worse in its treatment of anyone not on board the Progressive train and, in the campaign of the leading (D) contender, even talked about using trains to send opponents to gulags. This has actually happened from a member of a major candidate in the democrat primaries. If someone thinks this is how to “turn out the vote,” they may be right – just not in the way they think. My prediction for this election? An absolute landslide for the incumbent. You can scream “NOT MY PRESIDENT” all you want, but you’d better get some throat lozenges because you’re going to be doing it for another four years. My analysis? When you’ve made even someone like me vote for Trump, you’re in real trouble.
Next to last paragraph: the line that begins “and top to bottom dozens, on both coasts” should be “and top to bottom dozens of times”
Otherwise, some minor edits, but nothing horrible. (That probably lit the Ted’S apostrophe signal). Jes’ kiddin’, Ted!
It’s nice to see I live rent-free in the heads of all the commenters here.
Who are you again?
Thank you. I want to say this to everyone who ever tells me that voting third party is a wasted vote.
Most of the people that know me well simply try to avoid the subject, lest they get the swear-laden, spittle-inflected version of this in person.
I’d very much like to hear that.
I must have watched the CNN and some of the other networks, 2016 election night coverage, dozens of times over and over again, and it just never got old. Best lulz I’ve had in a long time. I can’t forget the CNN monkeys skittering about and pointing at spots on the maps ‘there still could be some votes for HER up here!. There could still be some for HER down there!’, lol, epic stuff.
#MeToo – I couldn’t believe it watching. I was depressed – and fighting it – trying to get my mouth used to the words “President Hillary Clinton” (Gah! It’s still awful to look at, even now). I’ll tell you honestly, the Country may be doomed, but Hillary losing gave me back some Hope that I desperately needed at the time.
I remember telling my wife at one point hat night, it was after they projected Trump to have won both FL and OH, ‘hey, Trump is president, lol!’ I was laughing my ass off. I think I consumed about 3/4 bottle of bourbon and was still up at 5am.
I was boarding a plane at SEATAC and I was talking with a friend on the phone, I’d just seen how close the race was before I boarded; I’ll never forget how quiet the plane got when I said, quite loudly account of all of the noise around me “Holy shit, the Don is going to pull it off!”
Loading . . .
Stop that!
Sounds like Hitler in the bunker moving ghost divisions around.
Yeah, I just called the CNN monkeys Hitler.
My lasting memory was watching Sargon’s stream and every once in a while I he would go to The Young Turks stream. Seeing Cenk’s and Anna’s faces progress smug to horror was some of the best entertainment in history.
GET OFF MY LAWN
(seriously, I enjoy your rants, they’re fun and informative)
This was an indulgence on my part, really. I wrote it that night and then it sat on my blog untouched for a long time.
SP ported it over here for me and I dusted it off; TPTB humored me (I think) by publishing it. It’s really…meh. But fun in the way that watching your friends lose their shit can be.
I won $100 in 2016 when I found 10 to 1 odds on Trump. I didn’t vote for him. At my time my reasoning was that a vote for any of the candidates was a vote to give any of them the power of the gun and I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.
I still think he’s got too much of an authoritarian streak, but I plan to vote for him this year. the vote will be swallowed up in Oregon, but I want to be able to gleefully respond when asked that yes, I did, in fact, vote for him. He ain’t my ideal candidate, but he’s blowing away the right folks for the most part.
“…a vote for any of the candidates was a vote to give any of them the power of the gun…”
He can even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he runs mine
Sunshine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScfUfsUlGro
can’t
Great link, Nick! I never knew the lyrics, though I’ve probably listened to that song a hundred times or more. Awesome.
Thank you.
Perfection.
New libertarian theme song? New Denverj theme song? Anywhoos, good song.
This is where I am, $100 less and with a sliver of a chance that my state flips to red…
The dem establishment have the entire line up, except for Bloomberg, all lined up in support of old Joe, to take Bernie out. Just as expected. Bloomberg if their only fallback in case Joe get to where he can’t even remember his own name any longer.
Like some here have predicted, if Bernie wins enough votes to secure the nomination, they’re going to take it away from him at the convention and the Bernie Bros are going to go full on apeshit. It’s going to be great.
Also, look for White Squaw to get out her tomahawk and go for Beta’s scalp soon for trying to steal her VP spot.
What has happened to the democratic party in my lifetime denies explanation. I really wonder what the view of it will be in 50 years, or 100, or 200? Truly, that has me as curious as anything.
Well, in the Future, Nixon’s head on Spiro’s body is elected world president… so…
Is the Democratic Party the most ironically named organization in history?
– Jimmy Dore
Nods slowly.
Peoples Republic of Anything.
“Even where Hillary carried a state – like Colorado, for example – she basically carried a population center or two, and that not by much, and got slaughtered everywhere else”
Denver and Boulder are hopelessly lost. If a Pachyderm wants to win statewide here, he has to run up the score in El Paso and Mesa counties, but the real untapped resource is Pueblo county. High Hispanic population that traditionally leans Team Blue, but it’s working class/blue collar and very culturally rural/yokel. A saavy pol should be able to capitalize on that. Trump really should have held his rally there instead of in the Springs.
It doesn’t help that the state Republican party seems to be incapable of finding its ass with both hands.
^^ This. The Colorado GOP has been in a circular firing squad since Bill Owens left office.
The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
Or idiots.
Not the only state R party like that.
Great point. It’s pretty amazing to see the difference between Trump – the quintessential New Yorker in all of its bombastic glory – vs. Bloomberg with respect to the divide I’m discussing. Trump doesn’t disdain the little guy; that’s it. That’s the big difference.
People can say whatever they want about him, but Trump does not disdain the little guy. And it isn’t an act and the people know it. It shows up in small ways that never get reported, but I get emails and texts and shit from people all over and Trump is really nothing more than a Kennedy democrat, now dressed as a republican. Bloomberg is a dictator-wanna-be with a ton of money.
I predict that Trump’s going to surprise everyone this election with his results among minority voters. Watch.
I agree. The Dems will try hard over the summer to pander to blacks and latinos, but it won’t work nearly as well as it has in the past, particularly among the men.
Yeah. I think Trump will get zero more votes from those fine Black Women, but I’ll put my money on double digit votes from black males. IIRC, the last time a Republican presidential candidate got that level of support from the black community was when Kemp was the VP candidate. The African American community absolutely adored Jack Kemp. Unfortunately, Bob Dole was the candidate. Here’s a cut from the Simpson’s episode..
Wow. I actually didn’t SugarFree on the first attempt!
Yes. The Ds in the statehouse from Pueblo are usually pro-gun.
Also, last night, amidst a flurry of D primary ads, my teevee showed a Trump ad that ran probably 90 seconds to two minutes long. It just kept going. I wonder if Trump pollsters think Colorado is in play in the general.
it comes as a result of a process you don’t understand
Everyone knows you just put the seed in the ground, water it and voila, food. It’s not like agriculture is a science that has been developed for centuries/millennia and is still being developed and taught at universities all over the country.
The arrogance of people in cities is astounding; truly, mind-bending-ly arrogant – in a way that would make Caesar ashamed. Mike Bloomberg is a complete piece of shit and in a just world his security would simply turn on him and put a bullet in his fucking head and then look at everyone else and just shrug. And nothing would happen. The End.
I’m surprised none of the Secret Service agents stuck on Hillary’s detail have lost it and shot her – if the way she reportedly treats them is true.
*speaking of assassination by security detail/praetorian guard
I think not murdering your charge is the bare minimum level of professionalism for security guards…
And? I’m still surprised none of the Secret Service agents have shot her.
Last I heard it was the detail used to punish agents, and this is in an agency where competence has not been widely demonstrated in their behaviours.
That was a last of a line of thinking i had in my head. I was gonna say that it demonstrated the professionalism of the Secret Service, but then remembered all the shit they did, and then thought aobut it some more and thought that You know killing your charge is like failing the bare minimum, not reaching some super levels of professionalism.
So yeah, given what we know about the Secret service, it is actually surprising that they haven’t.
“I think not murdering your charge is the bare minimum level of professionalism for security guards…”
Well, there was that one guy.
It is true. I have multiple friends from different walks of life who have some epic stories about Herself and Bubba. (Think about how many Marines wind up in the Secret Service, or in National Security positions, or that the President’s Helo Squadron is “Marine One.” (HMX-1). I used to (quietly) joke to one of my old buddies from flying about him “taking one for the team” when Bill was President. Guys would look around to see if anyone heard us, and then grin, and just shake their heads.
Friend of mine was Governor’s Detail for Kentucky, and they had a Governor’s conference with Arkansas.
Same fucking stories. Bill’s a pretty good ol’ Boy, but he’d fuck anything with a pulse, but Hillary was a “Rollin’ Bitch”.
Cracked Bill’s head with an ashtray.
Correction – attempted head-cracking. The person who intervened lost their job the next day.
I’ve got a similar story – firsthand – from someone I flew with. He went up to DC for his B-billet tour to fly for HMX-1. He was back well short of his end of tour. When pressed (at the club and with mucho alcohol) he told us that he landed on the south lawn about 100 yards away from a big event – because the rotor wash would have blown everything all over the place. We al nodded “of course, of course.” Voice came up on the radio and told him Herself wasn’t walking that far and that he would land where directed – much, much too close to big event with ladies in sundresses and catered food. He protested repeatedly but eventually followed orders and laughed as he described the detritus and debris, the dresses over heads, the food-filled plates on people’s clothing, etc. Next day he was gone.
Herself – A True Story
Mikes comments come from a place of arrogance that is bred from sheer ignorance and (i think) false confidence. He tries to make what he did seem super dificult, because i don’t think he feels honest about it. Also He seems to be a sociopath obsessed with controlling everyone.
I agree with you. He knows deep-down he made a fortune like a lottery-ticket winner, but his ego needs to tell him he earned by dint of his genius and hard work. And that justifies him telling those Others how to live their life. He’s been fed that bullshit so long it’s become his default persona, but yes, he’s completely ignorant. Look at how he reacts when people call him out: he’s got a bad case of Yes-Menitis. It inflicts a lot of rich people, unfortunately.
He’s been particularly generous with his alma mater, Johns Hopkins (somewhere north of $2B now). They stroke his ego at every opportunity. When an Ivy League research institution sucks up to you like that, it tends to inflate your feeling of self-worth.
Growing up, my grandparents had a “garden” (in reality a small, family-feeding farm), and I learned a bit of it there. Now I work for a company that sells hybrid rice seed, and the number of PhDs we have working on improving one crop is…pretty intense.
Great rant. *thumbs up*
Thank you, but I was raised to believe that preaching to the saved is a luxury that one should only seldom engage in. This was my indulgence.
I would suggest that maybe what’s necessary is for some of you elites on the coasts and in the big cities get in your cars one weekend and start driving.
it’s a sad statement on the level of smugness that this comment makes me cringe. I live on the interface between blue megalopolis and red rural, and the difference is stark. Even the progressive democrats in the rural area are more likeable than many of the conservative Republicans in the city.
The root cause isn’t ideological… It’s cultural.
I didn’t connect one of the dots… I cringe because I don’t like being inundated by DC assholes on the weekends and holidays. They ruin my enjoyment of the rural parts of this area.
It is cultural and that’s probably the TL;DR version of this. People no longer understand how affected we are by our environments, how much we still are, notwithstanding that we’re the apex species. That hard-fought battle has bred an entire style of living that shits on the essential values that made it possible in the first place.
I don’t even hate the cities or the city slickers. Beyond the cultural rot I perceive, there’s no reason for them to change. It’s the lording over mentality that exists in the cities and the suburbs that feels so stifling. If we could draw a happy little line around the cities demarcing freedom from planned existence, it’s be a much less contentious divide, but we simply can’t.
I’d be willing to (move and then) try.
I drove from my urban/suburban church out to my near-rural gun club this weekend, and it struck me just how stark, and QUICK, the difference between “Twin Cities” and “Basically Wisconsin” is. One minute you are in the land of hot-rock-massage and lap-dogs, and three minutes later you are surrounded with Meat Raffle signs and proper duck-fetchin doggos.
The drive from my wife’s old home – and where her brother lives (not far from Mojeaux!) – around KC to where they were raised (Stockton, MO; pop. 1854) and where her parents still live is pretty amazing. And KC isn’t anywhere like the Progtopias you find on the coasts. But it has some parts…
My neck of the woods is like this. I’m smack dab in the middle of suburbia, a mostly wealthy patch of suburbia at that. Not my neighborhood, which is by a good bit the oldest in the area, but most of the surrounding neighborhoods are full of $350K and up houses built in the past 10-15 years.
Drive maybe two miles north on Route 33 and you come to I-295. Past that, it’s rural as can be.
but we simply can’t
You can’t live in harmony with those that mean to rule you. Similar to how you don’t get the only say as to whether or not you are at war. You’re enemy gets a say as well.
As a city mouse, I would really prefer to see more freedom around me than some sort of “line” dividing Americans from each other. That is after all the root of the problem.
I don’t disagree that there are plenty of blind spots on the redneck side of the line and that such a line would be inherently imperfect. However, I’m an avowed (voluntary) tribalist. Tribalism and division are how people avoid what we have now, which is a naked grab for unilateral power. Sure, it comes with its own excesses, but most of those excesses are wrongthink as long as the tribes (communities) are kept voluntary.
You can have localism along with the sense of a larger cultural identity.
Fair, but I think that there’s a historical pattern of such “quilting” separating at the seams over time. It seems that authoritarian overlords are the only thing that sew the quilt back together.
Huh. Maybe what we need is a powerful federal government restricted to using those powers only on things truly national, coupled with State and local governments empowered to handle more local concerns.
Maybe somebody could write a treatise or something.
Sorry… the point I was inelegantly trying to express is that it is the lack of freedom in cities which is the root of the problem.
Though I guess it sort of works the other way, too.
It’s kind of like epidemiology. Eradicate, contain, mitigate.
We’re well past the eradication phase. Nannyism isn’t going anywhere.
Containment a pipe dream in most places. If we could draw those magic lines of containment, though, it’s an attractive compromise because it strikes the balance of giving people a choice, even if it’s a quite loaded choice.
Mitigation is the only realistic option. Widespread authoritarianism is coming, and you’d better be ready for it.
Great. Goose and ganders, bro.
Just acknowledge two can play at that game. You want to excoriate anyone who doesn’t hail from East Bumfuck, OK as a godless, effete, degenerate un-American foreign sodomite? Wonderful. Next time you’re hungry at the airport, I will fucking slap you if you step foot in a Starbucks. What are you doing at the airport anyway? Boeing is based in the hippy-dippy “green” Pacific Northwest. And you don’t fucking get on Facebook or Twitter to post your stupid Boomer QAnon conspiracy shit memes to complain about the brown guy who screened you at the TSA checkpoint. I hope you didn’t order your luggage from Amazon, either. Even if you begrudgingly admit that you can afford a carry-on because globalization was able to allow the seller to produce it at a low enough price-point to be affordable for the working class, you don’t get to exploit the labor of Silicon Valley ‘soy-boys’ and Asian tech workers. I hope you weren’t planning on taking your kid to see the next Marvel movie either. In fact, you don’t get to watch anything that doesn’t have Kirk Cameron in it. Even if it has Kirk Cameron in it, you can’t stream that shit. You have to buy the DVD at Walmart, as Jesus intended. Just make sure that your DVD player was entirely produced in the US with good, honest union worker hands. Oh, such an animal doesn’t exist? Well, it looks like you’re shit out of luck. Maybe you can listen to music instead. Well, your music may be recorded in Branson or Nashville, but it’s performed and produced on technology designed and built in Shenzhen, so no ‘Contemporary Christian’ audio pablum for you. I also better not see your ass at the range with a SIG. Your kid wants to be an engineer? Great. Despite his or her GPA, don’t think about sending him or her to MIT, Stanford, Caltech, or even Colorado School of Mines. I mean, when was the last time you saw one of them thar academic getting their hands calloused working a hoe or darning their own socks or spitting tabaccy in a spitoon. You don’t want to expose your child to degeneracy like pad thai for takeout or owning a pair of Allen Edmonds, do you? No. They’re going to own an IROC-Z and wear a polo shirt with a “Remington” logo and khaki shorts held up with a belt-buckle the size of a salad plate engraved with the slogan “Liquor in the front, poker in the back” to the TGIF Fridays for your 50th wedding anniversary, like normal people.
One of these things is not like the other… can you tell which one it is?
I can live without the TSA, Facebook, Boeing, Starbucks, and all the rest. I’ll be fine.
I’ll tell you what, HM, you want to have an honest-to-god contest? You give up food and I’ll give up all the wonders you’ve mentioned, and let’s see who cracks first. We’ll come back here in… I don’t know… six weeks? Too short, you say? Okay, 6 months.
OH, wait, you’ll be dead. And I’ll just be irritated.
It’s almost as if you’re intentionally avoiding the entire point of the difference between “essential” and “non-essential” things.
Do you think before highways and supermarkets that people in cities just sat like mewling cats waiting for farmers to arrive on market day? Or is the current situation a reflection of the growing specialization and professionalization that has been a gradual development of civilization since the founding of Ur? That before technology made non-labor intensive large scale farming possible there was no such thing as urban agriculture? That my great-grandmother didn’t raise carp in a cement pond behind her tenement in the Bronx? Come on, man, give me a break!
Before highways? No.
After philosophers decided to implement their highly-educated-and-everyone-agrees-is-superior-and-scientifically-modern agricultural policy in Ukraine and China?
Yes. And they starved.
Are you sure you want to go there? Those “philosophers”, like Mao and Pol Pot devised those policies to teach the bougie, effete city slickers what true honest proletarian life was like by sending them “back to the country” to work as farmers.
But as you pointed out, producing enough food to feed a country is hard when no one is managing factories to produce farming equipment, all the veterinarians are either killed or forced to break their backs removing stones from rice paddies, etc..
I knew you were going to say that. It also misses the point by leagues. The point is stereotypes work both ways. It is hypocritical to pen a Jeremiad on how the urban class holds disdainful false stereotypes about the good, salt-of-the-earth types who are all self-reliant and totally don’t have a huge demographic of opioid junkies living on government assistance, while not acknowledging that the other side also holds equally disdainful false stereotypes. Unless you are stating that you truly believe that “anyone who doesn’t hail from East Bumfuck, OK as a godless, effete, degenerate un-American foreign sodomite,” at which I’ll slowly back away while not breaking eye contact and leave you to stay in Internet Bedlam.
But while we’re at it, I’ll bet you that my garden, not to mention my preps, are larger than yours. (We can deal with penises at the next Glibs meetup). I’ll also remind you that there are even some folks up here in New England who know how to revet and understand what bounding overwatch is. That an ethic of self-reliance belongs to a particular demographic, be it regional or cultural, is silly. I’ll also add that everyone is gangsta when saying their happy to live like the Amish if it means they don’t have to acknowledge the contributions of “New York and Hollywood Jews” and other weird fasting-talkin’ folk on their everyday, but when it comes down to doing it, well, enjoy your 3 months by candlelight, problems with inbreeding, and early death.
I guess I touched a nerve, eh? But if you read what I wrote, rather than what offended you, you’d see I’m speaking of a very particular type, not ALL city people. I think I was quite clear about this in the piece, as well as admitting that I grew up in the city. I’m exactly the case in point you’re talking about, so I can do without the moral superiority, HM. I’m not talking about stereotypes, I’m talking about the actual people who have been screaming racist!!!! at everything since the election, tearing down statues, threatening to take away people’s rights (of various kinds), etc.
But somehow you find it important to attack me by claiming I’m operating on stereotypes because I made one point about people in cities starving if the rednecks stop farming.
Maybe, just maybe, my point isn’t what you’re offended by. I don’t know what it is, but you’re obviously sensitive over the city-slicker stereotype. I used to be, too, but then I realized I wasn’t the stereotype and so it didn’t really apply to me. (Maybe try re-reading with that in mind and see if it reads differently this time.) Or maybe you really like Herself – in that case, tough shit.
No. A spirited conversation is not a sign someone is butt-hurt, it’s a sign that someone is intellectually engaged with what you wrote.
I’m not trying to be supercilious. I still maintain that you’re focusing on the mote and acknowledging, not a beam, but another mote.
Dude, we’re all friends here. By having a conversation where we both present arguments in good faith is not an “attack”. By pointing out that you’re presenting only one side as blameworthy while ignoring the that the other side is equally blameworthy is not an “attack” on your person. It is an “attack” on your argumentation. But you are not your argument. I’m not sensitive over a city-slicker stereotype or a yokel stereotype (FYI, it’s only a 5 minute drive to the nearest horse stable where I live and 10 minutes to a dairy farm. How about for you?). What I am sensitive about is flawed argumentation and biased narrative building. That’s all. And that’s not an attack on you – we all have cognitive biases. I’m trained as a scholar, and the purpose of the scholarly method is to engage in argumentation with peers to see if our arguments can withstand the scrutiny of others and in doing so identify where the weaknesses of our reasoning are and from what biases they arise. I really enjoy engaging in that, maybe you don’t. I am concerned, however, that you are interpreting my responses to you in a much more hostile tone than I intend. I’m talking to you the same way I hope we’d talk over a beer one day. That’s all. People don’t have to belong to a hive mind in order to be friends, no? I blame the internet for all this polarization shit, which is kinda the point behind this whole discussion, isn’t it?
Everybody sucks, and everybody is a saint.
The point is stereotypes work both ways.
Sure. No argument.
means they don’t have to acknowledge the contributions of “New York and Hollywood Jews”
Hey, speaking of equally disdainful false stereotypes. . . .
As someone who grew up with rednecks, and still hangs out with them from time to time, I never encountered anti-Semitism, and still don’t, from rednecks. I actually had to have some anti-Semitic attitudes explained to me (by the East Coast suburbanites who had them) when I went to college on the East Coast.
I would not normally insert myself into a spirited discussion amongst you guys, but I have to agree with R C Dean.
I never heard an anti-semitic word from anyone IRL until my mid-twenties when I got on the internet and that was rare. It wasn’t until 2008 when I got on Twitter and found ZeroHedge that I saw anything like that and I was shocked.
I always knew the left didn’t like Israel, but I never really knew why.
We must indeed live in alternate dimensions. I didn’t encounter real, honest-to-goodness anti-Semitism until I met my first Texan.
As for Mo, well, of course. LDS consider themselves basically Jews anyway, no? If I remember correctly, one of the reasons y’all are officially philo-Semitic doctrinally, is that one of Smith’s farms in the Midwest abutted land owned by a Jewish farmer, and they got along famously.
I didn’t encounter real, honest-to-goodness anti-Semitism until I met my first Texan.
There’s a lesson there about small sample sizes.
…or even Colorado School of Mines.
‘Scuse me?
Location, not academic standing.
What the actual fuck? I must be missing something. Colorado School of Mines has been one of the best engineering schools on the planet for decades, and still is. I’m sure I’m buzzed and missing something.
Everybody is willing to buy what everyone else sells, HM. The deplorables buy from the proggy-dominated companies, as you note, and the progs still buy food and use electricity and gasoline.
Where I see a difference is in the level of contempt and hatred, and the desire to put the jackboot down, on Tribe Not-Us. As someone who grew up in rural Texas, I totally get the disdain of rednecks for soft-handed city folk, but that’s really about it. Disdain. Not contempt, hatred, and a burning desire to squash them flat.
Many Team Blue urban proggies may not get to the top level of contempt/hatred/squashing, but too many do, and way too many are on board with it. To put it in your terms, I see the rednecks as having both a larger sense of cultural identity (albeit “patriotism”) as well as localism. I see the proggies as having localism, and a sense of cultural identity that is much more constrained, really (call it “global elitism”).
But I grew up with rednecks, and the proggies pretty much stand for everything I oppose, so there’s that.
I just don’t see this as a potayto-potahto thing, not here and now.
I think a lot of this is dictated by the direction of cultural drift. The cultural power is firmly seated in Blue urban areas, and it creates a false sense of evolution away from an agrarian past.
If the tables were turned, I wouldnt be shocked if the rednecks were the overbearing assholes. You can see glimpses of that even today in some of the ag subsidies and the hero farmer rhetoric.
Culture will almost always be centered in Urban areas.
If the tables were turned, I wouldnt be shocked if the rednecks were the overbearing assholes.
Sure. And if that day comes, I’ll be opposed to them for letting their idiot flag fly. But that day is not here, and not even on the horizon.
The thing that is disturbing about the current Team Prog, which I think is pretty unprecedented in our politics and culture, is the level of outright hostility to anyone who isn’t parrotting the Team Prog line, and the willingness to visit dire consequences on them. This isn’t “You ignorant rednecks shouldn’t oppose gay marriage, and we are going pass it over your stupid bigoted objections”, this is “You ignorant rednecks will sing the praises of gay marriage and transgender tweens. Or. Fucking. Else.”
Culture will almost always be centered in Urban areas.
I think I disagree, but it probably comes down to what meaning you attach to “culture”.
Rural areas have culture, too. It may be centered on churches, or local high school sports, or regional historical attachment to, say, cowboying and rodeos. I wouldn’t deny such cultures as being every bit as valid as swells and dandies sashaying off to the opera or inked-up trust-funders staggering to hear the latest band nobody has heard of.
Rural areas have culture, too. It may be centered on churches, or local high school sports, or regional historical attachment to, say, cowboying and rodeos.
I’m not saying rural areas don’t have culture, but their culture does not drive “direction of cultural drift” as talked about by trsh. So a better way to say what i wrote would be “cultural drift/change” will almost always be centered in urban areas.
We’ll have to agree to disagree about that. I mean, shit, some of the stuff that gets said here on a daily basis, not even including the monthly ‘fantasizing about Civil War 2 in the links comments’ tradition that we seem to have.
Seriously, HM? Wow. I don’t get that at all.
The proggy/commie types that have taken over the Left and gutted liberalism and are wearing it as a skinsuit, who engage in violence in the streets right now, who openly fantasize about shipping their enemies to the gulags, and who perch pretty much unopposed on the “cultural heights” of academia, the media, and entertainment, cause you less concern than rednecks and hillbillies?
The stuff that gets said here about the Boogaloo is not said, as far as I can tell, with any yearning for it and certainly not by people who are actively trying to bring it about. More dread and resigned/defensive amusement. Maybe I’m misreading it, though.
leon:
So a better way to say what i wrote would be “cultural drift/change” will almost always be centered in urban areas.
Can’t argue with that.
Listen you geographically-challenged semieducated pseudoacademic, East Bumfuck is in TEXAS, not Oklahoma.
Like raping children and hikers?
I’m thinking about writing an article on the flavors of Yokels, because you obviously know different ones than I do.
I was raised Cosmo in Yokelville, by a father who was the first in his family to complete college — and had a PhD in PChem.
None, literally none of the farmers, ranchers, oilmen or mechanics that I grew up with scorned education or “fancy book learnin.'” Not one of them. They DID scorn people who acted as if they somehow knew their business better than they did by virtue of having a degree.
Hell, most of them read religiously — everyone had the bible and Shakespeare pretty much memorized, and almost everyone could play a musical instrument, and outside of an actual school of music, I’ve met almost nobody who knew classical music as much as they did.
I never could be my undegreed grandfather at chess.
LOL
My sports fanatic uncle (who was from Appalachia along with the rest of my father’s family) referred to me as a queer because I was into tech and learnin’ and not football.
He wasn’t being funny about it either.
Of course, his three sons paid the price for his disdain of learnin’
My rednecks weren’t as studious as yours, NA.
I don’t know that many of them were as eager for book-learning as they might have been. They didn’t look down on it, that I recall, so much as value their more, err, earthy knowledge and abilities more.
Where a real divide in regard for formal education was apparent was in the difference between the white community and the Latino community. Where the rednecks more or less tolerated and put up with it, the Latinos tended to exit the school system as fast as they could. The standard attitude seemed to be that they needed to start earning as early as possible, so its not that they were lazy, just that they didn’t see education as a route out of a lifetime of manual labor. And this wasn’t first and second generation only, either.
No. But I also don’t feel that I need to include a boilerplate condemnation of Antifa LARPers, Marxist academics and newsmen, and loony Hollywood types anytime I criticize the “It’s MERRY CHRISTMAS!” flag-burning and kneeling should be illegal crowd.
We’re dealing with the realm of stereotypes, not reality. I went to an Ag school. I entered as a Geology major and many of my classes were shared with the Forestry, Marine Bio, Land/Sea Use Management, and Equine Sciences/Agriculture types. These guys were getting their degree so they could help their family run their tree farms up state or their fruit orchards or lobstering on the seacoast. I know those folks well.
And, again, in reality, some of them were going YAF meetings with me and some were wearing Che t-shirts and playing hacky-sack (It was the 90s). Which is why I pushback when folks try to simplify the more nuanced reality into a Manichean Producerist narrative.
It’s not just me. Most of TPTB kinda pick up on it too.
Except Sloopy. He actually does want to engage in a libertarian people’s war to surround the cities and burn them all down to the ground.
My theory is that all of those things were what people did who had no TV and had to make their own entertainment. If you have to spend days at a time snowed in and aren’t a drunkard, reading and playing music is what you do.
It’s not just me. Most of TPTB kinda pick up on it too.
Not the first time for me to frequent a site where the opinions expressed in the articles differ from the ones in the comments.
@grrizzly
We’ve noticed the parallels too. And if we weren’t all sociopaths, and drunkards, might feel a certain sympathy towards certain poorly dressed editors and writers.
But fuck them. While we expect a certain level of mutual respect and decorum that is lacking in other fora, we also encourage spirited debate. And as far as the Inner Party, while we agree on the basic ethos of liberty, we definitely disagree about many, many things. But when SHTF, I will muster and stand ranks with any of them. (Except Fd’A, he smells of garlic and ranch flavor Doritos rank). As such, beyond that basic ethos of liberty, there is no editorial line. I’m free to contribute an article advocating for what some call “open borders” from an Voluntaryist, AnCap perspective, and you (collective) are free to, and have, contribute an article advocating for highly restricted immigration from a cultural communtarian perspective.
That’s what makes us better than them.
Some of TPTB have the gain cranked up really high on their various detectors.
Not contempt, hatred, and a burning desire to squash them flat.
It’s not just me. Most of TPTB kinda pick up on it too.
Fair point, thinking about the vitriol heaped on proggies and commies by the commentariat here. Including moi.
In my case, at least, I like to think its more defensive. If they were somehow just positing their blood-soaked utopia in a vacuum, I wouldn’t pay them much mind (i have decades under my belt of disregarding the ravings of academics and entertainers, after all). They are totalitarians, though, so there is no hope whatsoever that they are going to try to impose their bizarre mental dysfunctions on me, and (in their own words) By Any Means Necessary.
I don’t react so much to their crap ideo/theology, as I do to their unmasked Will to Power.
there is no hope whatsoever that they
are going towon’t try to imposeBoeing? Both Dayton, OH, and Kill Devil’s Hill are red.
Does Beechcraft still exist? I seem to remember a lot of airplanes being built in Wichita.
Yup. Went BK some time back. Now owned by Textron.
Not sure where they build them, though.
This isn’t directed at anyone…but to both sides of the discussion.
This is the “it’s okay to discriminate against all Muslims because some Muslims are terrorists” discussion.
Yes…cities tend blue and rural areas tend red. That is a fact. HOWEVER, many red folks reside in cities and many blue folk reside in rural areas. They just don’t have any political clout where they reside because…thanks democracy.
To break down the “war” between left and right as a war between urban and rural folks is a slap in the face to the minorities of both locations and I’d urge against couching it that way. Yes, blue ideas tend to originate in cities and vice versa. BUT you can’t say everyone who lives in a city is bad because of it.
We are individuals, not voting blocks.
^^ as you alluded to, this is why democracy sucks
The fact that the majoritarian impulses of some (almost all?) to rule over others drives cultural wedges between different groups is a nasty side effect of putting everything up to the 50% 1 test rather than living within the little-r republican structures of the founding. Fuck Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and others for laying the foundation for today’s divisions.
Trust me: the colder it gets, the tougher it gets. Spend a winter or two in Montreal and then come talk bout how horrible it is that those “deplorables” in Arkansas didn’t vote the way you wanted.
Heh. Try anywhere in Western Canada (Edmonton’s always the go-to for discussions like this) or the Upper Midwest in the U.S. Makes Montreal in the winter look like the Florida Keys.
Yeah, that wind come straight down from the Pole through western Canada with nothing to block it. Fuck, it is savage cold. I’ve seen some temps where F and C meet (-44, thankyouverymuch) and it’s just… hard to explain unless one has experienced it.
-40, actually, but what’s a few razor-wind face-ripping degrees between fellow sufferers? ;-)
The coldest temp I ever experienced was my first year in college (winter of ’76-’77), when a buddy who worked for a tech company had a (for that time) really-high-tech digital readout thermometer that we took into the bottom of a ravine near Whitemud in Edmonton. The readout was -55 Celsius (-67 Fahrenheit). Yikes. It was 12 degrees Celsius warmer at the top of the ravine.
I spent a couple of Februarys ago on the border between Russia and China – the northernmost point in China – and it was brutal cold. North of Mohe, in a tiny place called “North Pole Village.” It’s subarctic and the temps were routinely at -40 (without the wind chill) – and it was windy. You could take your hands out of your gloves for perhaps 30-45 seconds before they started to “burn.”
Yeah, you know you live in a place that can get really cold when the weather forecast routinely contains alerts that “exposed skin will experience frostbite within one minute.” This winter, we only had warnings like that for about two weeks.
Our dog stayed inside 99.99% of the time.
-40 is a great temperature. No need to worry whether it’s C or F.
False. When your booze freezes, it is too damn cold.
Worst I’ve heard of (and I *don’t* want to experience it!) was my brother-in-law’s tales of his time on the North Slope. Where they jacked up the rear wheels on the tractors and kept the axles spinning all night, because if they didn’t, they’d get so brittle the torque would snap them when they tried to drive off with a trailer attached.
Yeah, Quebec City in February wasn’t that bad at all.
Great rant!
My favorite part:
And South Dakota is a fantastic place. I hope you get there soon.
Oh, no doubt I will. Just to see the monument, if nothing else. I’d like to do it a la “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” – on a motorcycle trip during good weather (fingers crossed). It may take a few years, but I’ll git ‘er done.
I love the Black Hills. I’ve seen bigger mountains, certainly, but it’s still a special place. The Badlands are also a must see.
*scribbles notes*
Custer State Park. This was the placed that kicked off the Tundra family’s love of fabulous outdoor adventures. As a matter of fact, the following year the kids made us stop for a night as we were driving to Rocky Mountain NP!
Features the State Game Lodge, aka Silent Cal’s Summer White House.
There is a fun little trout stream, too.
Bison and other wildlife everywhere. Just an awesome place.
Reminds me of Whitefish Lake in western Montana. About 1.5 hours from Glacier National Park, an absolute treasure.
https://lodgeatwhitefishlake.com/
I second Custer…a great visit.
Rapid City would be a good choice for me. Looked like MN but 20 degrees warmer.
Agreed. I love it there.
I love the Black Hills.
Not even trying to hide the racism?
I like the NoDak badlands better. The Teddy Roosevelt Grasslands is like the Black Hills but without the tourists.
The oil boom has added a lot of people to the area, but still is pretty sparse people wise.
Just avoid the East half of the state where Mike lives (just kidding! Devil’s Lake area is cool too).
When I make that trip, I will do so with the intention of stopping for some Glib-ups along the way.
Ozy: Hey Mike, I’d love to stop by and visit
MikeS: Sure, we’ll have a NoDak BBQ!
Ozy: What’s a NoDak BBQ?
Mike: Well, its like a regular BBQ. There is some eating, some drinking, some singing, some dancing, some fighting and some loving.
Ozy: Sounds great, how fancy is it? Should I wear anything special?
Mike: Don’t matter, it’s just gonna be me and you.
It’s still funny… even if drugs fell out of your ass telling it.
And you can dust off the Hart for Draisaitl this year. Barring catastrophe, that race is now over.
I know your opinions about Alberta, Tundra, and I feel similarly about most of the places I’ve been in the U.S. — though I have noticed that I’ve unconsciously shied away from large population centres (with the exception of the DFW metroplex). The only Americans I’ve met that I haven’t really enjoyed the company of have been a few times in Europe. To be fair, I can say the same about Canadians, particularly some I’ve met “over there” who came from Central Canada and were almost caricatures of The Ugly Canuck.
Great summary, OZY.
The last election reminded me of when we were kids playing ‘horse’ with a basketball. Loser always wanted to play again, Best 2 out of 3, 3 out of 5, 4 out of 7. A gambler doesn’t quit when he’s behind, only when he can’t borrow any more money.
Thanks, OZY.
I am glad however for the metro areas and the coasts, let’s us live in Deplorablestan a little more enjoyable.
The other term we had for those people was “sore losers.” I’m sure you remember that bit of language (and saltier!), 4×20. That guy who just. won’t. stop. until it goes his way.Remember the sadistic joy of deciding that you would never going to let that guy win? Because he didn’t deserve to and didn’t understand that fact?
OT: Interesting Coronavirus article I found in my inbox
Pretty interesting, Trashy. I wonder if some . of these billionaires who are going to cure cancer would consider something like this instead.
(Nahhhh, this is too good an opportunity to blame on Trump.)
Some probably. Gates Foundation has already committed to $30M and up to $120M so far just for Coronavirus, aside from the work they’ve already been funding for other diseases.
Coronavirus is here to stay. We’ll all get it some day. Our modern flu bugs are remnants of the Spanish Flu from 1918.
Great Rant Ozy. I’m often surprised by the amount of people who are super shitty to people “below” them on the socio-economic spectrum, or just who live in “backwards backwaters”. Especially coming from the progressive liberal class, who give all the lip service to how “money” shouldn’t define a persons value.
“Drag a $100 bill through the trailer park”
To crib from a post I’m currently writing, it is Freud’s ‘narcissism of minor differences’ (der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen). I don’t want to say much more about it because it would ruin what I’m currently writing, but Hitchens talked about it for a post on Slate in 2010.
“the hostility which in every human relation we see fighting successfully against feelings of fellowship and overpowering the commandment that all men should love one another” (“The Taboo of Virginity,” 1918, p. 199).
Almost all of it is directly related to social signaling and positioning oneself within a desired group.
People are inherently tribal.
It’s fanatical, religious thinking. Not my tribe, doesn’t say the right things, doesn’t read the right things, doesn’t have the right hobbies; they are scum. Cognitive dissonance is part and parcel; like how a jihadi can go blow himself up in a crowded market for “peace”.
Add in a heaping dose of projection and you’ve got Coastal Elite progressive/Marxist psychology.
I was going to link to the brilliant bit by Jonathon Pie on why Trump won. But it’s only on Facebook. So go find it on your own.
FB now returns “page not there” but he has something else on youtube. I’m trying to track it down now.
Is it this one? It’s pretty good.
Yes. It is that one.
Too much explaining.
The straight video on FB is brilliant.
Here is the FB link
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1044777035645189
Unintentionally hilarious, and spot-on
Unintentionally hilarious
Totally deliberate.
Pie is a performance artist who spends a lot of time ridiculing the left for not acting in accordance with their own principles.
Yeah, what he may be missing (I’m not sure) is that the reason they (the Left) don’t make “winning” arguments because they can’t. And they know they can’t; they don’t win arguments because they’re fucking wrong – almost uniformly. They’re wrong about guns, economics, race, the environment, etc. I mean, pick a topic – they’re just fucking wrong. History and economics have laid bare the Left’s complete error on public policy. Period. THAT’S why the won’t argue. It’s all they have now.
Last “it” referring to Pie’s point about “name-calling.” That’s all they do because that’s all they have. And it’s been laid bare now for All (with eyes willing to see).
These are the fruits of postmodernism and critical theory. Everything boils down to one metric and one metric only, power.
How you obtain power is relatively unimportant (as you would expect in a morally relativistic framework), just that you do.
Well, the actor is a British leftist. And I would agree that he is wrong about everything.
But he is right to call out the left for being dickheads and not actually following their own doctrines.
And he can be hilarious at times.
I agree wholeheartedly; And appreciate the link. But what strikes me as funny is that he’s still a few years removed from figuring out that it’s not that the Left just gave up on making cogent arguments. He’s an honest and heartfelt Lefty and he just thinks if the Left spoke more clearly and kindly to the rubes that the rubes would come to see the light of day. He still has a few more steps to go. This is the point where Lefties either 1 – begin to realize that maybe their Lefty friends with the “Coexist” bumper stickers are actually authoritarian asshats; OR 2 – believe that it’s time to “stop being polite” and shriek louder. Which path he takes will probably depend upon how willing he is to challenge his own assumptions about why the rubes won’t ever agree. Which brings me back to my point above: they’re wrong – he just doesn’t (likely) understand that yet.
I still love him for saying Lefties should engage in dialogue and not violence, but… meh. Depends upon my mood.
Here is another great bit.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1509852115804343
That’s funny as hell.
“Tim – I thought i was supposed to be interviewing a feminist.”
kinnath – that link (the Pie FB video on the ‘gender pay gap’) was fucking brilliant. That single issue is one of the lies that most infuriates me – because it also reveals the massive innumeracy that is a result of the education system. Only where the education is as awful as ours is could you have that lie be what it is today – the platform of a major political party – and God help you should you try to point out how fucking WRONG it is on every level. Fuck me, that one drives me nuts.
Unfortunately, Ozy, they have made a winning argument in the suburban areas surrounding the Blue cities. There’s a whole new crop of voters infected with the “Freestuffvirus.”
I did share this on facebook as soon as it popped up after the election. I had half a dozen people unfriend me in less than half an hour.
A few of my real friends note that it was clearly going over the heads of many people.
“had half a dozen people unfriend me”
Sometimes you get lucky
I voted for Perot in ’92. HW Bush’s backstab on taxes was unforgivable. He opened my eyes to the charade the is the mainstream GOP.
That’s weird–because it was Bush’s ‘backstab’ on taxes that was the final nail in the coffin on the mainstream media for me.
Bush held out on the tax issue. He was getting hammered in the press, in the media, and even by not a few in the GOP. Finally at the last, he grudgingly gave in. He was getting no support from anyone–at least anyone that he could see.
He was saying he didn’t want to do it right up to the last moment.
And the second he did it–did what the Dems, the media and the squishier side of the GOP was demanding the headlines rolled out–BETRAYED!!!.
And I watched as everyone acted as if he’d done it with glee–as if he’d made the promise insincerely. It was as if all the media of the previous months just evaporated. It was creepy.
It reminded me of something Heinlein wrote, about when he and his wife were visiting the USSR. In the morning, everyone was boasting that the USSR had put the first man in space….but by the evening it had never happened. People who had boasted to hi in the morning actually sought him out to ‘correct’ what they’d been boasting about. The manned flight became unmanned over the course of a day. He ended the piece wondering who had been ‘unpersoned’ because the USSR couldn’t get him back.
I too think Trump wins big because “Fuck You Again”.
Target Tori on vacation.
Nice. I’m glad she took a vacation, cause fuck that asshole.
I hope none of those twatters go stalking her now that she has broadcast her location to the world.
Someone call Magnum. He’ll protect her.
I have just recently been made aware of the remake/reboot, and I sorely dislike whoever made that happen. Magnum. There can be only one.
Gah, weird underboob tattoo.
Republican running to challenge Rep. Ilhan Omar has Twitter account permanently suspended
The article is on CNN so of course the only person interviewed in Omar.
That was stupid. Still not a fair decision, but that was a stupid thing to do.
Yeah, dumb. But what was the “baseless claim?”
was the claim that she married her brother to get him into the country? cause she totally did
capital punishment probably isn’t appropriate there though.
You mean the Rep. Omar who, as a young girl, bravely escaped the terror of being STEVE SMITH’d by racist helicopters in Mogadishu?
Thanks! I’m stealing that when someone tries to tell me a vote for Trump is the only thing that is going to save us from Red November in 2020.
SHUT UP, TANKIE!!11
PS – kudos for totally bizarre spanner in the works of my Amazon product suggestions.
If you’re going to follow an HM link, I would recommend Right Click -> Open in New Private Window.
It isn’t perfect, but it does reduce the degree to wich it gets associated with your browsing habits.
I like to live dangerously sometimes.
I would think that link would be right up your alley, UCS, as a fellow grognard.
I didn’t follow it, I’ve actually had work to do today.
Or you could just hover over the link and look at the slug. Doesn’t work for YouTube vids, though.
A vote not for Trump is a Vote for Bernie Stalin!
Bernie Stalin? I thought it was V.I. Sanders?
Sorry to go OT Ozy, but I found this interesting:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Neat
Very interesting. Thank you.
I meant to specify this isn’t an HM link. it’s a John Hopkins real-time (sorta) map/dashboard of Corona-Chan’s spread. Where I got it from on the other hand is definitely NSFW.
No apologies necessary, CA! Comments free-for-all, especially on a piece like this.
Very neat!
Shared on my FB page. Thanks!
Huh. Good to know that the one guy in Madison has recovered.
*moves to Kazahstan*
Singapore runs a similar dashboard with a level of patient detail that would be privacy violations here most likely, but much more useful to the general public than the fear news stories.
5 minutes ago, as I was wrestling an old dryer up from the basement and struggling to keep it on the hand truck while going up a step:
“Excuse me” squeaks a young female voice, “Is [Mrs. trshmnstr] here?”
“Yeah” I grunt between exertions, dryer rolling off of the truck onto my foot.
“I’m from the Elizabeth Warren campaign, can I speak to her?” she rehearsedly starts.
Me, after emphatically setting everything down and turning dramatically to face her, “Not interested…”
I originally thought she was coming down my driveway to help me get the dryer up over the step. That’s what most people walking the street in my neighborhood would do, including the little Mormon girls.
Nope, she wanted me to stop mid-step, drop everything and go get my wife to vote for Zombie Presidential Candidate.
All you managed was “Not interested”?
I am disappointed, though underthe circumstances, I guess I can’t blame you.
The toddler came moseying out to help daddy (she was watching from the window) and I didn’t want to scare her by yelling at this idiot.
Twenty-something single females are particularly oblivious when it comes to politics.
Hindsight reveals the opportunity cost of not leveraging her to help with the dryer if she wanted to keep talking at you.
ps – she’s only interested in talking to the Mrs? Sexist much! That reminds me of the Green Party canvassers going door to door on my old street. They took one look at me and skipped right on to next door.
She got one look at the toxic masculinity oozing from Trashy lifting the washer by himself, and knew he was hopeless.
That, and he pooped himself a little when he set the dryer on his foot.
He’s not wrong
Just voted in Democratic primary (in Texas) for the first time in my life.
Man was that ever creepy. Half the ballot is just affirming woke-sounding negative rights. “Do you believe everyone has a right to free healthcare? Do you believe everyone has a right to free education? Do you believe everyone has a right to clean air?”
holy shit. this party is so far gone.
I’m skipping today, and gonna go through the Quixote-esque effort of going to the LP conventions next week. Probably likely to have the same effect as your action, but why the hell not?
Let me guess. You want people dying in the streets, are against knowledge, and want humanity to choke on the air we breathe.
Or in the words of Bastiat.
It is that when we reject subsidies we are rejecting the very thing that is to be subsidized and are the enemies of all these types of activity since we want these activities to be free and at the same time pay their own way. Thus, if we demand that the State not intervene in religious matters through taxation, we are atheists; if we demand that the State not intervene in education through taxation, we are against enlightenment. If we say that that State ought not to give an artificial value to land or a particular sector of the economy through taxation, we are enemies of property and labor. If we think that the State ought not to subsidize artists, we are barbarians who think that art is of no use.
The funny thing is they were all worded in such a touchy-feely way you could tell they REALLY WANTED you to agree with it.
I bet they can look at all the “no” answers and determine who the phony Democrats were.
Yes!
So Ozzy, thanks for the rant.
A lot of great stuff in there.
Thank you! And thanks for the Jonathon Pie links. He’s funny as shit. I like him. I commented above on the gender pay gap piece. Hysterical, on an issue that makes my blood seethe whenever it comes up. (Has caused some strain with my mom previously, God love her.)
Jonathon Pie is a real unicorn — a leftist that is funny.
My prediction for this election? An absolute landslide for the incumbent.
A remote possibility. Would depend on Repubs being so jazzed about Trump they turn out very heavily (unlikely, as a good contingent of potential Trump voters are quite clear on their disdain for him because mean tweets or something) and the Dems being so demoralized they can’t even get out of bed (more likely, but still probably not enough for a landslide, as the DemOp Media will throw everything at working them into a frothing, insensate hatred of . . . everything).
Barring developments, I think Trump should win, and the Repubs pick up the House and hold the Senate. But, that may be wishful thinking – I want the Dems kneecapped from any more impeachment bullshit and forwarding godawful bills to the Senate that the weak sisters in the Senate may actually drag over the finish line, and I want the Repubs in the Senate to fill every judicial vacancy with somebody who isn’t a drooling leftist apparatchik.
I think you’re going to get what you wish, RC, but then Team Red will do everything in their power to make people vote for Team Blue in the follow on election. They just can’t help but step on their own dicks.
The silly cuntes had the entire government and yet O’care still exists.
I’m not gonna get too excited until some Fed agencies are just disappeared.
You gotta lower your expectations. Note how low mine are – fewer idiotic bills out of the House, no more brain-crushingly stupid impeachment investigations, and fewer drooling apparatchiks in the judiciary. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
That’s gonna take SMOD, dreamer 😉
Does O’care really still exist though?
The most unpopular parts are all gone, and I don’t think Republicans really give a shit about the rest of it.
1) Penaltax -> gone
2) Federal subsidies to insurance providers -> gone
3) Federal government board that makes health decisions (so-called “death panels”) -> gone
4) Ability to force health care providers to cover birth control -> gone
5) Ability to strongarm states into expanding medicaid -> gone
What exactly is left in Obamacare that Republicans even object to any more? Republicans are not libertarians. They are not purists. They are fine with the rest of it now and will completely forget about it.
Team Red will do everything in their power to make people vote for Team Blue in the follow on election
Of course. The Circle of Derp. Nothing lowers a person’s IQ more than being in a position of authority.
“The Trumpslide cometh, and that right soon.”
? LOL. That’s nice.
Nader had some quote (that I can’t find) back in 2000 that said “Don’t blame me if Gore can’t beat a moron like George Bush on his own”
I have a good friend who’s largely a cosmotarian, pretty close to calling Trump “fascist”. And this past Sunday before church, he said something like “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the D candidate’s going to end up being somebody that makes even me vote for Trump.”
Ok…. I don’t get that mindeset. How can you be close to calling someone a fascist, and then be willing to vote for them anyway? Your vote is almost entirely symbolic. why bother casting it for someone who you don’t actually want to be president?
I think it’s basically “’cause the Donks openly hate me and my way of life, and are actively trying to destroy what freedoms we actually enjoy.”
Mussolini was an actual Fascist and won numerous elections. At this point, most Americans have no idea what the word means beyond “big meanie”.
On the other hand rednecks and hillbillies can be irritating and tiresome, a little disdain is understandable.
I was going to mention that I think the roles are kinda flip flopped. The Farmers in Kansas would be kinda screwed if all of the sudden the City folk started to stop buying their produce.
“Screwed” is a relative term. Yes, their businesses would be ruined. And that’s tough – but it ain’t nearly as tough as starving to death!
I was reminded of this point during my time in China – people here have short memories and it’s easy to forget that only one or two generations ago a HUGE chunk of the Chinese population starved to death – openly – right in the streets. I’ve seen the numbers range from ~25M to as high as ~45M. A buddy of mine had a slip of the tongue and said something unintentionally insensitive and I could see our guide tense up and I knew why: it’s easy to forget that a big chunk of the population knows someone who lost family members to starvation.
And a large amount of farmers would go bankrupt without futures markets in New York and other urban centers. My main point being that in the Market their is rarely a situation where either party holds all the cards and the other is at their mercy. Rural and Urban are symbiotic.
Lookit leon, being all reasonable and shit. GIT ‘IM!
Again, let me respond to your point and HM’s and maybe we’re just missing each other because… I don’t know.
Of course it would be bad for everyone. Of course. That’s not my point. The point is that you have one particular group of city-dwelling Americans who demonize those outside of cities, treats them as morons, rubes, cousin-fuckers, etc. while this group of Americans who lives outside of cities grows the food that feeds ALL of the people in the cities – and the country, too. Indiscriminately, as it were, almost as if they don’t care what their politics are.
Now, all of you want to talk about the glories of civilization and talk about stereotypes, but the point is made best by RC Dean above: how many of the rubes are proselytizing about the need to stick people in cities in gulags? How many people out in the country are agitating for political power so they can lord it over the city-dwellers? Seriously. Be honest.
The answer is so self-evident and obvious the point seemed (to me, at least) rhetorical top a bunch of smart people like yourselves, but I’m amazed at how offended some of you are by that notion… but then I read the offended replies and I realize you’re really offended about the “stereotype” about city folks. Which is funny to me, really. Because I thought I was clear in several places that I was talking a out a very particular kind of person in the article (the “you” I used in a few places) and it wouldn’t apply to anyone who loves liberty.
Yet some of you couldn’t help but see this is a personal attack on your lives.
The issue becomes which group is agitating for the government to take action against the other.
It tends to switch from side to side as time goes on, but right now it’s the authoritarian leftists who are most loudly calling for it.
I already said that i thought it was a good article. I only wanted to make a technical rhetorical quibble, about what i perceived to be a rhetorical point, that the City folk would be hoplessly lost without the Farmers. I just wanted to point out that the same is true in the reverse. Maybe i was reading too much into the argument, which is why i really only mentioned it in passing.
Now, all of you want to talk about the glories of civilization and talk about stereotypes, but the point is made best by RC Dean above: how many of the rubes are proselytizing about the need to stick people in cities in gulags? How many people out in the country are agitating for political power so they can lord it over the city-dwellers?
Honestly? I’ve had lots of conversations with folk saying we ought to kick out liberals from America, and what not. Their anger is not so much focused on the Urban folk for being Urban, but against Liberals. Would i say that is the norm? No. But it’s not like it doesn’t exist.
Yet some of you couldn’t help but see this is a personal attack on your lives.
I live in bumfuck middle of the desert, so no, i didn’t feel like it was an attack on me, and i’m not offended
How can you go bankrupt when the people holding the note have starved to death?
I concede that point.
CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG!??!!
*surveys all of human history*
Nope.
*punches R C Dean just for the hell of it*
Sounds dull.
25 kg of dry ice in a pool… what could go wrong?
and like a bee article, it has the kill shot at the end.
Not very qualified if she didn’t see that coming.
Dry Ice: What could possibly go wrong?
Drugs fell out of their arses?
Nono, you’re supposed to put potatoes in the pool and dry ice up your ass to cure hemorrhoids.
Could that help with coronavirus?
Derp
Would.
And she now available since her husband died in the incident.
What a coinkydink…
And people poo poo elevated CO2 levels. This is why we need to go back to the Stone Age.
78 is not the new 60. I don’t care if your name is Bernie, Biden or Bloomberg. I have a lot of experience in that area. Wishing and doing are different, even with 2 naps a day.
A stroll through Walmart should be proof enough.
I haven’t read all the comments, as I have been WORKING, RUFUS!!!
1. Michael Moore was saying all of this all along and got unpersoned by the left very quickly.
2. On the innert00bs, I found a concise list of all of Herself’s transgressions. I post now for your viewing pleasure. I can vouch for none of this. It hurts too much to know.
So all of that aside, my deepest contempt for her stems from this:
She got where she got on the coattails of a man and everything she touches turns to shit.
Wait, you didn’t include this gem: “- started the entire ‘Obama isn’t American’ bit during her primary fight with him”
Not my list!
Honestly, trying to keep her sins straight and logged while she never sees justice is demoralizing. It’s that she doesn’t get punished. Nothing ever happens to her.
I don’t mind wealthy people. I don’t envy what they have for the most part (I just want to be able to get that for myself). I don’t need gilded wallpaper on my ceilings (like one of my clients). I know that sometimes, graft is involved somewhere. Old Joe Kennedy was running rum, which I do not mind because Prohibition was evil.
But Hillary’s entire life is a graft and she has never been successfully called to account for it.
And here Martha Stewart went to prison for something stupid. She’s a bad-ass. I like her.
laughed on tape after her legal client got off scot free for raping a 12-year-old girl knowing he was 100% guilty
10 years later she chuckled while discussing certain aspects of the case, and her client plead down and did some time, a few years, not enough but that’s a defense attorneys job.
Since you got one thing wrong all the rest of your points are also invalid, at least that’s how it works on twitter.
You never disappoint.
Oh! You gave me a disclaimer! I knew you loved me.
so you’re saying she sucked at her job? Checkmate!
Gee, how could you want these people to lose?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/denver-democrat-faces-backlash-after-tweeting-solidarity-for-spreading-coronavirus-at-trump-rallies
She’s a piece of work:
Oh, honey, we’re all whores.
by any means necessary
There it is.
The jackboots, the door-kickers, the mobs administering beatings in the street, the trains and the camps. She loves it and wants so much more of it.
And both historically and philosophically illiterate:
” I love the way there’s not that rampant consumerism like we have here.”
Fuck her. Because everyone is dirt poor.
Wow. These people never change.
But of course:
It was a meme, and an alright one at that.
You can’t joke about killing those you disagree with! Now excuse me, I have to go lube my wood chipper.
“I have to go lube my wood chipper”
Preet wants to investigate your euphemism.
(which, as I’m writing it, is itself a euphemism)
like a snake eating it’s own tail
How much Preet would a wood chipper chip, if a wood chipper could chip Preet?
Reminds me of what Larry Correia said. Violence for the left is a spectrum – to be turned up or down as fits their needs. To us old-fashioned types it’s an on/off switch – be polite to everyone, or kill everyone on the other side – nothing in between. One day the left is going to miscalculate with their violence dial and flip some switches.
Time for a musical interlude.
[psa] Cheese and onion enchiladas do not pair well with lemonade. [/psa]
*gurk*
I woulda gone with a pale ale, or even a decently balanced IPA.* Not a hoppy beer guy, but the one place I like them is paired with
spicyhot food.*I know its not an option for you. For which you have my sincerest condolences.
I’ve been told everything pairs well with cheese. This makes onions the culprit.
Quite likely.
Onions are the Devil’s Weed. They contain brimstone. QED.
*Stands and applauds*
Right on the money, Oz. Not sure I’ll vote for Trump, but more likely than last time.
The real question is…how did you go from the most honorable profession of being a pilot to becoming a slimy lawyer? (Kidding but interested)
Not so different, they’re both control-freak asshole professions that are concerned with minutiae.
*ducks*
Some people just get lucky, I guess.
I wish I had some great revelation, FdA, but it was the eternal reason for all men: my (first) wife. She couldn’t take the deployments any more and said that I needed to “do something else” or our marriage would be over. I heard about the funded law program (FLEP) when I was taking a legal course to be the squadron LegalO and went and looked at the order. I was fortunate to get through flight school quickly, so I still met the requirements even after my first Med Float. I figured, “WTF? Why not?” and applied, even though the monitor (career counselor) told me there was a ‘critical shortage’ of Cobra pilots. There! I had done something. Then I got one of the slots and I was like, “Whoa. Holy shit.” By then she was pregnant with number three, I had survived one helo crash in ’94 and some close calls on deployment, and I was sitting on a mishap board for a crash that killed two of our neighbors and another 12 people – this one, to be precise. That made the decision to give up flying and get a law degree a lot easier. I had also seen so many guys – pilots, really experienced guys – get fucked in the drawdown after the Gulf War and I knew I didn’t want that to be me.
I remember one guy in particular, one of my favorite mentors in the squadron, and he was trying to get a job in mid-level management at a GM plant running the paint booth, IIRC, and it just felt… tragic to me. The guy was brilliant, a great pilot, a good guy… a true mensch – which fits, because he was one of the two Jewish guys we had in my squadron – and I swore that I wouldn’t let that be me. I should look him up but I was always afraid to in case it didn’t work out for him.
Do it. Seriously.
Don’t miss out on the good friendships because you’re afraid of unpleasant or sad moments.
Thank you. After I wrote it I realized I should. Although it’s 20+ years later and I’m not even sure what we’d have in common, but I will. I’ll let you know what I find.
First they came for the pilots but I didn’t say anything ’cause I wasn’t a pilot.
About 15 years ago, when I got my first computer and was playing, trying to learn how to email, etc., I started looking for friends from my first VN tour, 1967. I was able to find about 7-8, I knew all of them, some knew some of the others. We had a great group but after the initial few months of learning what each other had done in the intermediate 35 years things began to unravel a little.
Two have died, 1 unfriended me and I had to unfriend one. We’re down to 4 now but don’t communicate too much anymore, jokes, etc a little politics. In VN we were a family, had a common goal, do the mission.
I hardly knew anyone from my second vacation, we all went to work in different directions, saw each other at meal time and evening volleyball but that was about it.
Interesting. I’ve seen a lot of pilots who want to be doctors and a lot of doctors that want to be pilots. The two professions seem to be complimentary. (Yes, Scruffy, probably because both are asshole control freaks)
But I’ve only met one pilot who became a lawyer. And come to think of it, he was a rotorhead too. Maybe something there…
Respect, man! Takes a lot to completely switch professions like that.
I blame smartphones.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/millennials-early-onset-dementia-alzheimers/
Either that or public education.
“millennials-early-onset-dementia-alzheimers/”
It’s most definitely ALL public education. Smartphones are only responsible for early death due to walking out into traffic while texting.
Speaking of TDS, my coworker has been ranting all day about how Trump is responsible for the coronavirus. I’m just about ready to snap and tell her to shut up and get to work.
He created himself it in the secret lab under the Oval Office donchaknow.
“Say, that is fascinating! How DID he manage to get that to China without detection!!!”
“I know! Yesterday, Trump caused that car crash on I-95 that made half the office late for work! Isn’t he the worst?”
Relevant
https://youtu.be/b5wfPlgKFh8
He had to do something to get the focus off his evul bad orange man doings.
James Comey and John Brennan have endorsed Joe Biden for President.
All signs are pointing to Senile Joe getting the nod now. He still won’t have enough to win outright though, so it’s still a brokered convention. The Berniebots will not be happy.
It was decided months ago.
In a just world Joe Biden would be asked about this like Trump was asked about David Duke’s support.
They’re just good ol boys! Just like Corn Pop, you horse face pony soldier!
Of course, the entire establishment are on the wagon for old Joe, because he’s the most corrupt piece of shit in existence who might have a chance.
I’m holding out until Clapper tells me who to vote for.
Who needs Clapper?, you have CNN for free. Just wait, they’ll be telling you.
I don’t hang around at Airports, so I’m not subjected to CNN.
I read that as “I’m holding out for the clap…”
Joe’s an easily controllable known commodity so no surprise there.
Joe is blatantly corrupt and completely compromised – makes him easy to control during his lucid moments.
HM – I don’t know why I’m even bothering, but okay, I’ll pretend, (just like you are).
I would love to see you, or any man, try to slap me. Truly. I kind of do it as a hobby, in fact, but I’ll assume you were using the rhetorical “you” because I was.
Good thing you didn’t take it personally, eh?
Totes not personal, however.
I live in the middle of the Arizona/Sonoran desert. Basically the west valley equivalent of where SP and OMWC live, but less civilization here because we’re further out into the desert – where we can smell the cattle and cows from the farms when the wind shifts. So, less than 10 minutes to stand in cow shit.
And now – the scholar card!
Well, I only have a JD, and a BA, and (like AOC!) I was a Westinghouse STS winner in ’87. My project wasn’t on free radicals, however, it was astronomy. And I was largely continuing the work of the guy who ran the Physics and Astronomy department at UGA. So maybe I just don’t have the scholar gene like some others do that allows me to be totally objective and fee of all those biases that the un-scholarly have.
Weirdly, however, in all of this, you’ve never addressed any of the points in my argument about why Hillary lost and all of counties that flipped, nor the media screaming racist, nor what are now obvious points about why she lost. Instead, in your deity-like unbiasedness, you got hung up on the above and devoted an awful lot of ink to that, which was only one point in my “Jeremiad.”
HM, I don’t mind arguing (anywhere, including the internet) at all. Tone does get lost, however, and something they taught us luddites in flyin’ school is that a big chunk of human communications are nonverbal. That’s your area of scholarly expertise, however, so I won’t go beyond what I’ve already written and say that notwithstanding your replies, I hope it provided you something to think about and I also love cities and the culture that inevitably comes with them. HOWEVER, Hillary didn’t lose by accident and my prediction is that what’s happened since – in the Media and on the Left, which is a city-driven phenomenon – will only help re-elect the Big Cheeto.
Cheers.
“I would love to see you, or any man, try to slap me. Truly. I kind of do it as a hobby, in fact,”
LOL. OK Boomer.
It’s a standing invitation; you can try, too, RBS!
It’s gonna be a riot if there’s ever a Great Glib Meetup™, what with everyone trying to count coup on Ozy.
I’m really confused as to why you are choosing to interpret my responses in the worst possible way. You seem extremely committed to conducting this conversation in an overtly aggressive and hostile manner that is not justified at all. Listen, you don’t have to like me; (though, I’m confused as to why you accepted my LinkedIn invitation if you don’t) however, I repudiate without condition every single charge you levy against me. I will not allow you to get away with claiming that responded to you in a haughty and disdainful manner, nor that I did so because I’m taking any thing you said personally, nor than I am avoiding engaging with the thrust of your argument. That’s simply not true.
A.) You are absolutely correct that I was using the impersonal “you”. Any native speaker of English would be able to determine that from the context of the utterance. It would be sophistry to claim otherwise.
B.) Citing examples from one’s own experience is not evidence of taking anything “personally,” it is supporting a counter-argument through empirical experience. Are you truly claiming that dispassionate argument requires never citing personal experience or knowledge?
C.) You elected to take my statement and interpret it in the worst possible connotation just to be tendentious. It is a simple fact that I am trained as a scholar and my job is scholarship, which requires me to look at data in a particular way and construct argumentation in a particular way. Nothing in that statement implies that you are not intelligent or highly educated. The statement of my perspective is as much a simple fact as the fact that I am not trained as an attorney and I am not particularly skilled in legal argumentation, however you are. It is also fact, (and may I have permission to cite my scholarly expertise on this?) that scholarly argumentation and legal argumentation, while similar in some respects, have different goals, different discourse structures, and different standards of how to evaluate fact from opinion, truth from falsehood.
D.) Before I can address your conclusion, I have to address your premises. I was making an argument that one of your premises was faulty and you fucking flipped out.
Finally, if your “honor” and “principles” really mean so much to you, you’d apologize for intentionally twisting my words in the most mendacious manner after I told you several times that you are misinterpreting (willfully or not) what I wrote. That’s what a gentleman would do. Quite frankly, I am disappointed that you chose to continue your moral grandstanding as opposed to expressing some humility and acknowledging that disagreeing with your claim is not some sort of personal offense. But you decided not only to poison that well, but drop trou and take a big stinking shit it in.
HM, I would respectfully suggest that I can’t believe we’re arguing about this at all – because it is entirely of your creation. This entire discussion about stereotypes is something you brought up. You levelled the charge at me: “It is hypocritical to pen a Jeremiad on how the urban class holds disdainful false stereotypes about the good, salt-of-the-earth types who are all self-reliant and totally don’t have a huge demographic of opioid junkies living on government assistance, while not acknowledging that the other side also holds equally disdainful false stereotypes. Unless you are stating that you truly believe that “anyone who doesn’t hail from East Bumfuck, OK as a godless, effete, degenerate un-American foreign sodomite,” at which I’ll slowly back away while not breaking eye contact and leave you to stay in Internet Bedlam.
But while we’re at it, I’ll bet you that my garden, not to mention my preps, are larger than yours. (We can deal with penises at the next Glibs meetup). I’ll also remind you that there are even some folks up here in New England who know how to revet and understand what bounding overwatch is.”
I responded to that charge because, it seems to me, that it couldn’t be a worse reading of what I wrote. So I went back to find where someone could possibly justify claiming that I had said such things about “the urban class” and, even if I had, that it would justify demanding that I was obligated “to acknowledg[e]… that the other side also holds equally disdainful false stereotypes.” WTF? Uhhh, okay. Hey, all bullshit aside – I would have reacted the same way had you sent that exact same paragraph to me in edits before publishing. I don’t think I’m “reading into” anything here, but a public call of “hypopcrite” seems a strong charge against someone’s writing, but maybe that’s just me? Because I didn’t “acknowledge the other side’s stereotypes??” That seems weird to me.
I mean this sincerely – if it’s all really just a matter of tone, then that’s on me and I will gladly buy you a bottle of your favorite snobby liquor and have it delivered to you. But I find it hard to read what you wrote – and not merely the quoted parts, but quite a bit more – “charitably.” I don’t think I’m imputing anything as I’ve noted in just this one small, but crucial, I think, few sentences.
HM – you called me hypocritical for not mentioning some “other side” stereotypes. Just think about that. Why would I be obligated to even delve into any of that? Why does that matter to my point that the constant screaming of racists!!!! may well have cost Hillary the election? It’s completely adjacent to the entire thesis. That it is a byproduct of a movement that is primarily (but not exclusively) comprised of people from the cities is not my problem. I adequately framed the “you” in the first paragraph – that “you” was bounded, but not entirely defined by, that – and what I might (and did) subsequently write to modify or further define. But it could not possibly be clearer:
I can find no charitable reading of that as “the urban class.” I’m sorry, HM. I just can’t. I’m crystal clear, so fucking clear it’s practically written out as a logical syllogism. I just didn’t use an equals sign. I further pointed to districts that flipped from one “side” to the “other” (your choice, not mine, but for the record, it would be backwards of the stereotype, which was kinda my point in bringing that up, too. Whether or not these voters also have people on govt assistance seems to me to fit nowhere even close to my point.)
I’m sorry. I only mention “cities” a couple of times and I can find no good reason to justify the public cry of hypocrite. It strikes me as something that someone would say if they were a little emotionally invested in a particular issue, namely being a member of said class. Ahem. And yet feeling compelled to loudly talk about all of the people in said urban class who are eminently as earthy as the
rednecksfarmers (who get govt money with those unacknowledged stereotypes about the urban class, see above).C’mon, HM. You’re really going to say I’m just wildly jumping to crazy-ass conclusions?! If I am, then you have my apology. I would also submit that given your choice of words, your claims of hypocrisy against me, the justification for why, and the overall tone and tenor, as evidence in mitigation in asking for your forgiveness. (LOL. Sorry, I had to yank your chain. C’mon. Lighten the fuck up. Maybe tone just doesn’t come through well on the internet, Your Scholarliness.)
I’m not kidding about this phenomenon; it nearly destroyed CrossFit in the early days because we were a truly virtual company. We noticed in short order that people ho loved each other, had known each other for decades, since childhood in some cases, would savage each other on email/chat in a way they just wouldn’t in any other setting. It this isn’t merely the “keyboard warrior” thing because we had a fuck-ton of “actual warrior” guys. When we saw each other, though, it would just melt away as the stupidest fucking thing. As a company we had to start having mandatory get-togethers, at least quarterly, to keep the employees (our dear friends, all of them brilliant, too!) from savaging each other, even unintentionally. We concluded from our own empirical research that we needed to see each other for the sake of our relationships.
There is something crucial lost in comms this way; that is how I’m going to treat the whole thing. I hope you will as well and I would humbly ask you to do so in a spirit of honest misunderstanding. Now I gotta get some shit done. Thank you for your contributions here (except the last one). ☝️? (I kill myself).
This happened, courtesy Mr. Mojeaux.
You mentioned he ordered it. Was shipping a protracted process?