I have no idea what to say after yesterday. Confronted between the
choice of a bland corporate technocrat who would put in place the sort
of commonsense public health measures that have tamped down a pandemic
disease in places as far apart as Germany and South Korea, and a raging,
thieving, lying dumpster fire of a bloated orange protohominid whose insane incompetence
has helped kill a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens, nearly
half of the U.S. public screamed "FUCK YES!!! I WANT MORE PLAGUE!!!"
I don't care how much you love your guns, or your God, or your tax cuts.
It's the fucking Plague!
Half the goddamn US public can't vote to escape the fucking 14th Century.
"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”
~ Hunter Thompson, 1972
Hunter Thompson, who grew up not far from us here in Louisville. And who was in Chicago in 1968.
ReplyDeleteNixon for all his flaws, would be a hellluva improvement over the current grifter.
I went to bed late last night, more depressed than I was four years ago. Tonight, I'm looking at the projections that Biden might still win. Yet I'm still pissed off because it should not even be close. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if the grifter won, so that all the gomers would lose their health care.
Sorry for the rant.
Olin
It is doubly depressing that the alternative to the plague could not make a more persuasive argument. I mean, how hard could it be? Alas Trump increased his vote share in all demographics except white men.
ReplyDeleteLook again. Germany lost control of the plague. Some of the 16 what you would call "governors" spent months pushing for minimum countermeasures only and as soon as the weather got cool the plague spiralled out of control.
ReplyDeleteI don't expect a single of those idiots to become unelected due to this. Most of them are conservatives, and conservatives get away with incompetence, no ideas, no solutions decade after decade in Germany for no visible reason whatsoever. Voting decisions appear to be overwhelmingly driven by feelings, not driven by conclusions about policy quality.
True. But you did better than we did initially, and that was all I was referring to. That your "conservatives" couldn't continue to act like adults is, well, "conservative". The entire ethos of modern "conservatism" is "more for me, fuck you".
DeleteThe saddest part of that is that it (and the collapse of any hard-left alternatives) has so frightened "liberals" that they are afraid to act decisively in the public interest. So we're trapped in a Gilded Age mineshaft, where the only ones getting ahead are the same malefactors of great wealth that benefited from the last Gilded Age.
No, Germany has actual conservatives, not Fascists disguised as conservatives. We don't fall for such a disguise.
DeleteOur conservatives (CDU) are the embodiment of reform aversion. Their best campaign slogan is still a 1950's sloga, "Keine Experimente!" ("No experiments!").
The only reforms they like are giving candy to corporate special interests (copyrights) or senior voters (higher retirement pay) and giving the police and intelligence services more rights to snoop on people.
Other than that all they (CDU) do is administration by inaction. Merkel averages one major policy decision per three years. Everything else with her is just inconsequential talk.
Well, your AfD is kinda fashy, but I get your point.
DeleteThe thing is, for a long time US "conserviatives" were happy to do exactly what you're describing - hand out the lollies to fatcats, cater to the old and the white (Medicare Part D, anyone..?) and fluff the spies and the defense contractors. The rise of the wingnut right that begins with Gingrich and has come to full poison flower with Trumpism, though? Yes. That's pretty explicitly full-on fascist, the thing that Sinclair Lewis didn't warn would be "wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross..." only we've fucked it up; at least the original Nazis had the cool outfits - we've wrapped it in the too-long tie and badly-cut suits of a bloated orange real-estate grifter.
It's pretty sad when my country has fallen so far that we can't do fascism right.
The AfD is not being considered a "conservative" party. Their attempts to claim it have been ignored. They warped from an anti-common currency party that also liked to have some old CDU ideas implemented into a Neonazi and conspiracy theorists' party, and the public is well aware of it.
DeleteThe U.S. was lucky that the lying moron was epically lazy and hilariously incompetent. I didn't know either and in 2016 I expected him to go full Mussolini within two years at most. Instead, he only got as far as his fat body got washed by the dangerous idiot faction.
The problem I see, Sven, is that his idiot horde IS full fascist; they want a herrnvolk state more than they want all that shit in that "Constitution" thingie (or, to be more brutal, they want the 1789 version where the darkies were still 3/5ths of a Real American...). The next time we'll get Tom Cotton or someone more smooth and plausible but who still wants all the military rule in favor of White Is Right that they want but is less of a dick about it.
DeleteNext four years Uncle Joe is going to have his hands tied by Moscow Mitch in the Senate and by Bozo Trump's packed supreme court. The Senate cannot stop him from alleviating the worst of the plague, although they will do their damndest to try. On day one he'll should revoke the Bozo's 56 Executive Orders. And maybe issue a few of his own. Hopefully he will put us back in the Paris Accords and JCPOA. With Moscow Mitch in charge the Senate will again not ratify them. But at least it buys some time.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Fox and the radio & podcast hate spielers will accelerate their toxic hash of lies about Biden and Harris. Cheered on by Xi and Putin in order to change our motto 'e pluribus unum' to 'dog eat dog'.
Will Trump run again in 2024? God help us if he does.
There's no "We the People". There's a mish-mash of everything else, and there's the Hard Right; the plutocrats, the theocrats, the gunhumpers, and the rednecks. The "suck it, lib!" propaganda has worked; the Right will burn it down rather than see an immigrant kid get a school lunch.
DeleteI honestly don't see how this country can work like that. We're setting ourselves up for a Sarajevo.
A little comedy:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/i/status/1324078979775684608
But what is not so funny - Trumpo is trying to reprise the Florida2000 Brooks Brothers Riot in Detroit and Phoenix to disrupt the vote counts. But the crew bumrushing those polling places is a bit shabbier than the originals. O-Ree-Gun Proud Boys maybe?
ReplyDeleteI apologize in advance for this ... "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
ReplyDeleteThe bride always has CNN on. I'm not partial to Anderson Cooper myself, so tune him out when she's watching, But you gotta like Cooper's comparison of Trump as an obese turtle on his back flailing around in the hot sun.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/i/status/1324505049377198082
Even better was PA LtGov John Fetterman telling MSNBC: "we just had the largest election in our state's history, rolled out vote by mail for the first time in our history, and the only irregularity we had was the President's team rolling up to Philadelphia in a clown car."
ReplyDeleteI note with sadness that the American media has dramatically changed its descriptions of Trump and his entourage, only *after* it was obvious that they didn't need to be in his good graces to maintain their "access". And then they bemoan it when people don't believe a word they say.
DeleteAEL -
DeleteFetterman is not a media journalist, nor a news anchor, nor a media exec. Just a former small town mayor, a veteran of AmeriCorps, and now a Lt Gov. Biden should snatch him up for HHS.
Cooper? He was never a good journo or anchor. More of a stenographer. Never liked him before, but he is now on my A-list for finally calling out Trump as an incompetent boob. About time.
The whole "press conference in the landscaping company parking lot" is rapidly becoming a sort of "wrap-it-up-and-file-it" metaphor for this shitshow of a presidency.
DeleteThat and the Gritty memes - for some reason the hockey mascot has become an election thing in PA. A Philadelphia friend posted a thing that was just the Gritty face with the words "There's only room for one orange asshole in Philadelphia".
The problem I see is that regardless of the news organizations or the formal party hierarchy, the deplorables aren't going to let this go. If they're not already, over the next four years the Red parts of this country are going to be the North American version of Central Asia's "ungovernable tribal regions".
Mike: I was commenting on the media in general, but even in this case I see an example of kicking a man when he is down where they would never do that before. A showcase of media "smallness".
DeleteChief: Are you suggesting that almost half the electorate have grievances that won't be addressed by the orange-man's departure from center stage? If so, get ready for TNN (Trump News Network). 24/7 365 days a year!
AEL - They ain't kicking him when he is down. They are fighting back against his calling them the "enemies of the people". A big difference. Looks like the media execs are finally growing a set of balls. Previously they were afraid of ratings.
DeleteAel: No. I'm suggesting that almost half the electorate are weapons-grade moronic reprogrammable meatbags who are too fucking stupid and shortsighted to distinguish their own asses from holes in the ground.
DeleteAnd their slobbering analingus will have nothing to do with the coming "Trump White Power Hour" on OANN; this was always the trajectory the wannabe Fuhrer was on. He IS the GOP now, and he's going to continue his Nuremburg rallies and his TV grifting. So long as the GOP "base" is a bunch of slavering marks for Trump, Trump will mulct them.
Presidential transition 2020.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/TonyAtamanuik/status/1324933101269741568
Sorry for all the humor. Only way I can keep sane with all the whackos out there with stars in their eyes (and AR-15s in their SUV) when they look at and listen to the grifter-in-chief.
More gallows humor, this from a Kenyan journo using the sort of terms we Yanks are used to reading about those darn "troubled" African countries: https://twitter.com/gathara/status/1324530587294728193
ReplyDeleteNov 2
#BREAKING Interviews with African expatriates show how Americans are suffering with many fearing to leave their homes due to covid-19 and election-related political violence. "It is heartbreaking to see and sad that the international community is doing nothing to help" said one.
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING An African aid worker was overwhelmed by the number of Americans in desperate need following the collapse of the economy as investors flee the disease-ravaged country and the covid-19 pandemic lays waste to small businesses. "We need to hire more volunteers," she said.
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING Monica Juma, who brokered the Brexit peace agreement in the UK and mediated the American Spring uprising in May, is appointed AU High Representative to the US with the mandate to negotiate a power-sharing deal should tomorrow's presidential elections prove inconclusive.
gathara
@gathara
Nov 2
BREAKING AU High Representative Monica Juma calls for calm as she jets into Washington DC, the tension-wracked, barricaded, US capital, on the eve of what many fear will be the most violent elections in recent memory in the troubled oil-rich nation of 330 million people.
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING AU envoy Monica Juma is to meet with aging US strongman Donald Trump in the basement of the presidential palace - or White House - where he has barricaded himself surrounded by elite Presidential Guard troops from the country's fearsome Secret Service.
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING Report by independent Lusaka-based democracy support center, Kanegi Foundation, warns of "significant increase" in risk of election-related violence when incumbents seek reelection within severely underdeveloped electoral systems, notes the US "fits the bill perfectly".
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING Speaking to reporters outside the Green Zone - a walled off, militarized area around the presidential palace in the US capital - AU peace envoy Monica Juma urges Americans to remain calm, says strongman Donald Trump's predictions of street violence are "unhelpful".
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING As the first Election Day votes are cast in the US, Sir Milton Allimadi, who heads the AU election observer mission, says security concerns may make it impossible to monitor voting in tribal districts in the interior of the country which is a hotbed of armed militancy.
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 2
#BREAKING Analysts warn that the fear and desperation created by the deepening US humanitarian crisis, coupled with one of the most tribalized election campaigns in its history, may lift the lid off dangerous ancient ethnic hatreds and grievances that have festered for centuries.
gathara
@gathara
·
Nov 3
#BREAKING Sources say AU peace envoy Monica Juma will meet with US autocrat, Donald Trump, in a bomb-proof bunker under the presidential palace within the fortified Green Zone area of the capital to discuss the peaceful conduct of elections in the volatile, debt-ridden country.
gathara
@gathara
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ9__8UJSc4
ReplyDelete