eVille Times

Nov 16, 2016

Knife Fight

I don't much like the way Rachel tells her stories, but dang, this one's pretty worth it.

And if I may be indulged for a brief momentito - what was all that about draining the swamp? That Trump Bunch is a fucking swamp.

A New Era Dawns

BBC News

Oxford Dictionaries has declared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months.

It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Its selection follows June's Brexit vote and the US presidential election.

Oxford Dictionaries' Casper Grathwohl said post-truth could become "one of the defining words of our time".

Post-truth, which has become associated with the phrase "post-truth politics", was chosen ahead of other political terms, including "Brexiteer" and "alt-right" from a shortlist selected to reflect the social, cultural, political, economic and technological trends and events of the year.

Spotting the false thingie

Remember all the stuff we learned in US History way back in high school? Stuff like Yellow Journalism?

Some of y'all are too young to have had that chance because we stopped teaching the good "liberal" stuff quite a while ago, and of course, some of us are too old, and I guess we forgot too much and now here we are again.

Nov 1888

New Keith

Season 2 - The Resistance

Watch this video on The Scene.

Today's Quote

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly, and focused on happier things than 'politics'. They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren't nice people? Resistors."

--Noami Shulman

Stop Making It Normal

On the Know-Nothing language: "What's with this I've-Never-Met-The-Guy defense? I never met John Wilkes Booth, but I let his past work inform my opinion of him."

Today's Tweet

Having no sense of irony (and having abandoned all regard for the perspectives of history), the Trumpkinites see this as a perfectly accurate representation of recent events.

Wrong. pic.twitter.com/KcTTLjrsfN
— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) November 16, 2016

Upside down and backwards as usual.

Nov 15, 2016

A Man For All Seasons

Sir Thomas More was not quite the cool guy Robert Bolt wrote him up to be, but the point Paul Schofield's character makes is absolutely the essence of what we're supposed to be about here in USAmerica Inc.

We'll see what we see, but I'm not holding out any great hope for Donald Trump to be any kind of statesman.

Dueling Narratives

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:

Trump made idiots of us all. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party's failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

But the party's willful blindness symbolized a similar arrogance across the American intellectual elite. Trump's election was a true rebellion, directed at anyone perceived to be part of "the establishment." The target group included political leaders, bankers, industrialists, academics, Hollywood actors, and, of course, the media. And we all closed our eyes to what we didn't want to see.

Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek:

On Friday, I almost assaulted a fan of my work. I was in the Philadelphia International Airport, and a man who recognized me from one of my appearances on a television news show approached. He thanked me for the investigative reporting I had done about Donald Trump before the election, expressed his outrage that the Republican nominee had won and then told me quite gruffly, “Get back to work.” Something about his arrogance struck me, so I asked, “Who did you vote for?”

He replied, “Well, Stein, but—” I interrupted him and said, “You’re lucky it’s illegal for me to punch you in the face.” Then, after telling him to have sex with himself—but with a much cruder term—I turned and walked away.

A certain kind of liberal makes me sick. These people traffic in false equivalencies, always pretending that both nominees are the same, justifying their apathy and not voting or preening about their narcissistic purity as they cast their ballot for a person they know cannot win. I have no problem with anyone who voted for Trump, because they wanted a Trump presidency. I have an enormous problem with anyone who voted for Trump or Stein or Johnson—or who didn’t vote at all—and who now expresses horror about the outcome of this election. If you don’t like the consequences of your own actions, shut the hell up.

And now, South Park explains the Liberal Elite:

Knowledge, and the ability to demonstrate that knowledge, is considered snobbish. A willingness to take an active (or activist) position on any issue requiring others to change their thinking and/or their behavior is "Elitist" and will not be tolerated by ~~the rubes~~ Real Americans.

"We demand you make it better - at the expense of people who aren't us"

Ah Ha

Charlie Pierce always refers to Reince Priebus as "Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus", and all I could ever got was "Rubes Epic Rein". That's pretty close, but not quite as satisfying as the one Samantha Bee came up with.

BTW - If you haven't already, start listening for the standard "Know Nothing" signals. There's a really good one from Paul Ryan in this clip at about 2:10 when Sam goes to the CNN bit. And it continues with Newt saying he's never even heard of The Alt-Right.