A Thought

I'm exceedingly grateful

that as I've grown older,

I've grown fatter,

and not more conservative.

Deeper Into The Woods

"We ain't outa the woods yet" is pretty much the hallmark of understatement for 2020.

I think we may be only about halfway to the darkest shittiest parts of the woods right now, and without some pretty great leadership and extremely adept maneuvering, no amount of bread crumbs will get us safely out of this mess.

Observing Joe Biden these last few weeks, I've been thinking about how his usual "happy warrior" demeanor just isn't there in the same way it's always been. I've found myself wondering if it's because he's lost a step or two, but then I figured (and had partially confirmed) that as the presumptive nominee, he's been getting security briefings.

We all imagine how fucked up things are - can you imagine what it must be like to get your worst fears confirmed, but then hear there's a shit load more that's even worse than your worse fucking fears?

I can only guess, of course, but it seems obvious to me that Joe's got the weight of the whole world on him right now.

So anyway, here we are, not quite two thirds of the way through 2020, and we've got a pandemic killing one of us every 55 seconds, we have a battalion of Daddy State monsters loose in the corridors of power, we've got Murder Hornets, Derechos and now Fire Tornadoes.

But the really bad news is...

...Wade Davis, Rolling Stone:

Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity. There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon. The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months. There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found. And it must be safe. If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.

Pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors. In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed close to half of Europe’s population. A scarcity of labor led to increased wages. Rising expectations culminated in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that marked the beginning of the end of the feudal order that had dominated medieval Europe for a thousand years.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

COVID’s historic significance lies not in what it implies for our daily lives. Change, after all, is the one constant when it comes to culture. All peoples in all places at all times are always dancing with new possibilities for life. As companies eliminate or downsize central offices, employees work from home, restaurants close, shopping malls shutter, streaming brings entertainment and sporting events into the home, and airline travel becomes ever more problematic and miserable, people will adapt, as we’ve always done. Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.

To be sure, financial uncertainty will cast a long shadow. Hovering over the global economy for some time will be the sober realization that all the money in the hands of all the nations on Earth will never be enough to offset the losses sustained when an entire world ceases to function, with workers and businesses everywhere facing a choice between economic and biological survival.

Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history. But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington. For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.” As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

Davis goes on to lay out just how fucked he thinks we are.

And while I can't say he's wrong to think what he thinks, I will say that we've been down before.

The one thing 45* has been right about - the only thing, and he's warped and perverted it almost totally beyond recognition - but the one thing is that we just go on. We fuck up. We fall on our face. We get back up. And we keep going.

Of course, it'd be nice if we could recognize the need for some fundamental change once in a while, and it'd be really nice if we could see the need and make the changes before all the shit hits the fuckin' fan.

Anyway, we have to make some real adjustments. Trump just pretends he's some fuckin' cat that jumped up on the table and landed with all four paws in 4 different bowls of steaming hot soup, and then tries to make like he meant to do exactly that, and what are you guys laughing at - you're the idiots, not me - oooh look, a mouse.

And that's kinda what we've allowed fuckups like Trump to pull. We have to try harder not to let them off the hook this time. If we want government to be held to account, then we have to dig in and insist that some of these big fish get fried.

On Henry Wallace

"The American Fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information."

--Henry Wallace

Henry Wallace was a rarity in politics - he actually changed his mind on a couple of occasions; when evidence and circumstance required it.

The Amazing Charlie Pierce

Copied in it's entirety from Esquire - picture and all:

Jesus god, Ed fking Meese?

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama's health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

I didn't know that there was an Old Timer's Game for Authoritarian Yahoos.

Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again. Nobody listens to Gary Hart, but Edwin Meese III still has a place in public life. Wingnut welfare is forever.

At least part of the blame has to be shared by those nominal Democrats who, either through their silence on the crimes of that era, or in their admiration for Reagan's "style" and toothy obliviousness. (The latest of these, alas, is Chris Matthews, who has written a book about how Tip O'Neill and Ronnie made politics "work," and who, between 1980 and 1982, probably sold out truly progressive politics for at least two decades.) A number of truly horrible things were set in motion in our political life in the 1980's. The people responsible never have really been called to account for it. Now, one of the worst of them is back, doing further damage. I am, frankly, stunned.

Hillary

I'm not committing on this either way yet, but I'll say this:  I don't like dynasties, so I'll be hard pressed to support Hillary for president in 2016.  I'm not saying there's no way - I think she's done a pretty great job at State - but I really really don't like the idea of electing people from the same family as any previous office-holder.

I tho't it was a little weird, starting with Benigno Aquino in the Philippines in the 80s - he was assassinated, and so his wife Cory Aquino was elected.  I didn't like it then and I've grown less fond of it since - up to and including Clair McCaskill, and anybody else out there I'm not aware of.

No more Bushes
No more Rockefellers
No more Roosevelts
No more Kennedys
No more Clintons

If it wasn't for her daddy's name and her mommy's money, would Meghan McCain be any kind of 'leading light' in the GOP?

Does Luke Russert really deserve a national slot at NBC News?

What about Chris Wallace?

What - exactly - do Paris Hilton's credentials look like?

What makes Caroline Kennedy worthy of any consideration to be named Ambassador to Japan?

No legacies.  No inherited entitlements.

If we have to tax the fuck outa certain people's estates to kill off the Aristocracy, then that's what we should do - cuz the alternative is what's been the main tool of prevention of Aristocracy for about 40 centuries; and that is simply to fucking kill the aristocrats.

Questions?

What Reagan Said

The Platitude

If you're not a socialist at 18 then you have no heart.
If you're still a socialist at 35, then you have no brain.
And if you're not a progressive at 60, then you have no soul.