infallible being cannot create fallible beings unless it wants to
and if it wants to create fallible beings and then punish them for being fallible, then it cannot itself be infallible in the first place, because abject masturbatory sadism is a failing indeed.
— Saint Brian The Godless (@AWorldOutOfMind) January 7, 2020
OK, the hair-on-fire brigade got all up in arms for good reason, but it turns out that 45* is just a fucking dolt and it seems the world understands this to the point that while they take this shit very seriously, they know now that they have to be the grownups and not go too nuts when he does something that's unbelievably stoopid - even for him.
I have to think there's a strong probability that Iran is just biding their time, and they'll kick us in the nuts when they're good-n-ready. 45* gave a brief statement this morning, and somehow, for now, things are relatively calm again. WaPo, Paul Waldman: Five Takeaways From Trump's Deranged Speech On Iran Having prepared carefully to deliver inspiring words that would bring all Americans together as they worry about the possibility of another war in the Middle East, President Trump stepped to the podium Wednesday morning and instead gave a brief speech that was vintage Trump: lacking in even the barest eloquence, replete with lies, delivered with garbled pronunciation and weirdly somnolent affect, and unintentionally revealing.
Trump’s Iran policy has been a catastrophic failure.
Trump desperately wanted to find a way to declare victory and back off.
Trump is still obsessed with Barack Obama.
Trump is comically insecure about his manhood.
Trump still has no idea what he wants to accomplish with regard to Iran or how to do it.
Some fallout - so, Cynical Mike says that maybe Iran isn't in a big hurry to retaliate in kind partly because 45*'s dumbfuck move serves the purpose of "unity" and "rally 'round the Ayatollah", which makes the social oppression a little easier because it pushes down on certain protests - most notably (as usual) the movement to free middle eastern women from the repressive bullshit imposed on them by religious control freaks. I'm thinking we'll prob'ly see less of this in Iran - young women resisting the forced hijab.
So, if someone magically appeared before me - having materialized from the 1950s or something - I'd have to explain to them that I have a device in my pocket which allows me access to nearly the sum total of humankind's knowledge, and what I use it for is to watch cat videos and get into heated arguments with strangers.
It's been going around for a while now. And as always, it's a good idea to take it all with a grain of salt. That said, one of the main goals of the Daddy State is to get us thinking there's nothing that can be trusted to be truly true and really real.
A little critical thinking is in order at all times. And remembering the basic techniques is a good place to start - as well as this relatively new shit coming from Cult45.
It's not about persuasion - it's about power.
I tell an obvious lie.
While you're engaging it...
...I'm off to my next lie.
And the power thing - that can explain a lot about why the rubes stay with 45* no matter what. He has the power, and they get to feel powerful by proxy - without having to invest time or effort at gaining or applying any actual knowledge.
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Many Americans are terrified of what would happen if Donald Trump won a second term in office. But perhaps we should be nearly as scared of what will happen if he loses in November.
More specifically, a victory by Democrats at the federal and state level could produce a backlash in which Trump’s fervent supporters, not to mention those on the far-right fringe, conclude that the ordinary avenues to political influence are hopelessly corrupted and therefore other, more radical means must be employed.
We may be getting a small window into how things could devolve in that direction in Virginia, a perfect place to witness how frustration at the loss of power can manifest itself in disturbing and even dangerous ways.
- and -
The Oath Keepers are just one of a number of far-right extremist groups taking an interest in Virginia’s gun laws and this protest in particular, so much so that traditional gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association seem to be growing unsettled about the image being presented by a bunch of camo-wearing cosplay warriors toting AR-15s around the capitol grounds.
For now, those extremists are only trying to intimidate people with the threat of murderous violence, not actually engaging in it (and yes, when you show up at a protest with your AR, you are most definitely threatening violence). But what will happen if 2020 sees Trump turned out of office and Democrats gain more victories on the state level?
There will certainly be a conservative backlash, a new tea party of people angered by the failure of the political system to produce the results they favor. But it will be different this time, because the president has spent years telling them that any outcome they don’t like — in particular, any victory by Democrats — is itself proof that the system is corrupt, perhaps irredeemably so.
I'm a boomer, and I have to acknowledge that I helped get us into this mess.
So if the time comes and it's all on the line, I'll have to stand up and say, "Fuck you guys - here I am - shoot me."
I think it's prob'ly a real thing, which makes it really hard for me to unravel the circularity of parody and self-parody and the un-self-awareness of it all.
Empty podia for the Dems.
And the GOP queen? Why, it's Mike Pence, of course.
Here’s a question: Does anybody have any idea what the Republican Party stands for in 2020?
One way to find out: As you are out and about marking the new year, it is likely you will come across a Republican to whom you can pose the question, preferably after a drink or two, as that tends to work as truth serum: “Look, I was just wondering: What’s the Republican Party all about these days? What does it, well, stand for?”
I’m betting the answer is going to involve a noun, a verb and either “socialism” or “Democrats.” Republicans now partly define their party simply as an alternative to that other party, as in, “I’m a Republican because I’m not a Democrat.”
In a long-forgotten era — say, four years ago — such a question would have elicited a very different answer. Though there was disagreement over specific issues, most Republicans would have said the party stood for some basic principles: fiscal sanity, free trade, strong on Russia, and that character and personal responsibility count. Today it’s not that the Republican Party has forgotten these issues and values; instead, it actively opposes all of them.
Republicans are now officially the character doesn’t count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame the other guy party, the deficit doesn’t matter party, the Russia is our ally party, and the I’m-right-and-you-are-human-scum party. Yes, it’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.
A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized, coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power.
This is a sad fall. In Ronald Reagan’s America, being born an American was to win life’s lottery; in Donald Trump’s America, it makes you a victim, a patsy, a chump.
Trump didn’t hijack the GOP and bend it to his will. He did something far easier: He looked at the party, saw its fault lines and then offered himself as a pure distillation of accumulated white grievance and anger. He bet that Republican voters didn’t really care about free trade or mutual security, or about the environment or Europe, much less deficits. He rebranded kindness and compassion as “PC” and elevated division and bigotry as the admirable goals of just being politically incorrect. Trump didn’t make Americans more racist; he just normalized the resentments that were simmering in many households. In short, he let a lot of long-suppressed demons out of the box.
This paranoid element in the party has existed for decades, since the Joe McCarthy era, when some Republicans who saw dark forces threatening the country argued that only radical action by “true” Americans — white, Christian, conservative — could safeguard the nation. Barry Goldwater revived the theme in 1964, and George Wallace won five states with it as a third-party candidate in 1968. I worked in every Republican presidential campaign from 1996 through 2012 and assumed that those guys had long been vanquished and that optimism and inclusion had prevailed. I was wrong.
This impeachment moment and all that has led to it should signal a day of reckoning. A party that has as its sole purpose the protection and promotion of its leader, whatever he thinks, is not on a sustainable path. Can anyone force a change? I’m not optimistic. Trump won with 46.1 percent of the vote in 2016, while Mitt Romney lost with 47.2 percent in 2012; no wonder Republicans have convinced themselves that the path to victory and power lies with angry division. Having ignored the warning signs for years myself, I know the seductive lure of believing what you prefer while ignoring the obvious truth.
Which is this: We are a long way — more than a half-century — from 1968, much less 1952. The United States is now a diverse, chaotic collection of 330 million people, a country of immigrants and multiculturalism that is growing less white every day. It is not some gauzy Shangri-La of suburban bliss that never existed.
I’d like to say that I believe the party I spent so many years fighting for could rise to the challenge of this moment. But there have been too many lies for too long.
Trump has not remade the GOP in his own image.
He is the near-perfect reflection of what that party has become.
