A Few Civil Remarks for Our Friends on the Other Side of the Great Divide

You know, we tried to help.

We tried to provide access to healthcare. We tried to preserve inexpensive access to higher education. We tried to keep unions strong. We tried to keep you in your house.

We tried to help you survive.

We tried. We really tried.

But you didn’t listen. You voted for liars who wanted to line the pockets of their wealthy masters. You voted for warmongers who stuff your kids in tanks with cheap armor. You voted for hustlers who praise Jesus from the Cadillacs you paid for.

We tried to help. But you were really, really stupid.

And now you have the nerve to blame us for the mess you created. You whine with resentment about our attitude when you have done nothing but drag us down with you. You are pandered to like no other group in the country, and you complain that you don’t get enough attention. You vote for whores and child molesters, and you have the nerve to say we’re undermining America’s values.

Yeah, sorry. It’s on you. It’s all on you.

We’re told we’re not supposed to say that. We’re told you might throw a tantrum if we dare suggest, with extensive documentation, that you have been fucking idiots for the entirety of our adult life. We’re told we must respect you and all the poor decisions you’ve made, decisions that have brought our country to the brink of predictable ruin. We’re told you’ll get all upset if we pay any mind to folks who have, and continue to be, screwed by the people you put in office.

You know what? Fuck that. We’re going to be 60 next year. Look what being polite has gotten us. You’re the same idiots you were forty years ago, when we screamed our head off about that charming liar you thought would fix everything. Well, he didn’t. He made everything a lot worse, especially for you. So what did you do? You voted for an asshole liar instead, who’s doing his incompetent best to finish the job. Congratulations! Your failure in life is complete.

We really did try to help. God, how we tried to help. But hey, no hard feelings. At least we tried. Which is a shitload more than we can say about you.

32 Comments

Why did things go so sideways?

@JNOV: Back in the 80s, we groused that the idiots were voting against their economic interests, and Smart People told us it was really about social issues, so shut the fuck up.

Well, guess what? They were voting against their economic interests, repeatedly, for decades, and now they’re whining that the world has left them behind and nobody cares about them.

And those Social Issues were just ginned-up tricks to distract the idiots from the charlatans reaching into their pockets. Abortion? Gun control? Welfare? All cynically plotted out by cynical people to attain and preserve power.

Why did things go sideways? Someone yanked the wheel.

@nojo: Yeah.

In other news, a lost kid walking to school was shot at when he knocked on someone’s door seeking directions (kid: black male; shooter: white middle-age man).

Five or six cops showed up at a Philly Starbucks to arrest two men who were seated at a table waiting on a friend. They asked to use the restroom, didn’t purchase anything, and employee called the police. They were arrested and held for nine hours.

IOW: That’s not news at all, and I’m going to call my kid.

I can’t adequately express how distressed I am about the arrest of the two black men in Philadelphia.

I called my son to see how he is. He’s 28 years old, he lives in NJ, and he’s a coder. I shouldn’t have to worry about his safety because we did “all the right things.”

But he’s always in danger because he was born black and male. I’ll never stop worrying about him.

My son is out in the world, a wonderful, kind, intuitive, empathetic, intelligent man, and a man who could be arrested sitting in a Starbucks.

I think the reason this situation is so startling is that, I don’t know, maybe I’ve bought into the Starbucks brand as this kind cool relaxed thing, and there’s some sort of cognitive dissonance going on.

These men were taken out in handcuffs and sat in jail for nine hours. Have any of you been sitting in a relaxed atmosphere, requested to use the restroom, and been arrested and jailed for nine hours?

When my son was in middle school, it broke my heart – it still breaks my heart – that I had to tell him that no matter what he does, thinks, or feels, there will ALWAYS be people who see him and think they know him because he’s a black male, but they will never WANT to know him because they think they already do based on perversive and persistent racism. This isn’t his entire life, but it is an outsized part of his life, and if that doesn’t break your heart…

At this time, with this man in the White House (a structure too aptly named), racism is stronger than ever.

Please do better.

@JNOV: It may be Starbucks, but it’s also Philly.

And, well, it’s been a long time since Starbucks had any laid-back cachet. It’s a predatory retailer, long known for buying and disposing locations. My own taste runs to local ownership, mainly because I find such joints a lot more comfy.

@nojo: Philly doesn’t have the market cornered on racism.

@JNOV:
All I can say is that:
1) There are tons of good things happening in the country, but it all gets drowned out by a media system that lasers-in on bad news as a revenue generating model. If you want good news, you really have to dig for it, but it is happening.
2) The fact that this country’s revolting, everyday racism now creates national scandals from the top down is actually good news, because previously it would have been tolerated and/or ignored. It’s all out in the open now.
3) Mark my words, the backlash against the malicious, evil Republinazi party is gonna be epic and historic. We’re about to see an entire generation of hate-KKKrazed, racist, fascists unceremoniously tossed onto the garbage pile of history, starting with Presinazi AntiChrist. They’ll become as irrelevant on the national stage as they are now on the Left Coast. Look to the incredible sea-change in attitudes towards the LGBT community over the last 15 years and have hope that a better future is not just possible, but inevitable.
4) A new day is coming soon, we just have to hang in there. Hugz : )

@JNOV: Of course not, but Starbucks is irrelevant to the event. “Boston Starbucks” may have made the point more clearly.

@¡Andrew!: Someone just ginned up a prediction of many more electoral/popular mismatches in the years ahead. And the broad range of voter-suppression laws remain in force, except for Pennsylvania being in gerrymandered. Meanwhile the Senate will always disproportionately represent smaller, conservative populations.

Also, that enduring historical detail of one-third of Americans being complete fucking idiots. Plus a Supreme Court that’s stacked for a generation.

It’s said that given this thoroughly rigged system, Dems need to win by 10 points overall to win anything — in other words, landslide or bust. That’s the underlying problem here, not Americans suddenly coming to their senses (or dying off). Hillary won by three million votes, and here we are.

@nojo: If that’s the case, then the current legitimacy crisis caused by people voting for incompetent, destructive, kleptocratic Republinazis due to their racism and white supremacy will go mainstream, and the current trend of states forming regional power blocks to thwart the federal government will accelerate.

They’ve reached the limit of what they can gain from gerrymandering, voter suppression, and other cheating tactics. They’re also extremely stupid about everything except stealing elections, and they can only propagandize their way out of their own insanity, incompetence, and self-induced crises for so long. There’ll be hell to pay eventually.

@¡Andrew!: This stuff takes forever to develop, but yes: There’s a legitimacy crisis brewing. I was 41 when Shrub stole the election; for more than a century earlier, the electoral college had been a quaint but meaningless appendix.

Now that’s happened twice, with more predicted soon. At some point, God knows when, folks are gonna take to heart that they’re being screwed, that their government isn’t representative, and demand change. Other folks — the ones the system benefits — will make lofty arguments about the Genius of the Founders, and we’ll see a lot more blood-red maps of geography equalling representation. They’re not giving up power without a fight.

Maybe we’ll get lucky, everything will go down quickly, and we can all get to work on actual problems. But there’s a shitload of civic inertia behind all this — including the traditions of political journalism — so just seeing the problem for what it is remains a huge challenge in itself.

Robert Caro’s epic biography of LBJ is illuminating about this, particularly the volumes about the Senate years and the vice presidency. Nobody saw LBJ coming — just the opposite — nobody saw the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts as remotely possible. The issues were deep, historical, and intractable. Then, out of nowhere, boom!

So, maybe something like that. Obama wasn’t wrong — he emphasized that politicians need wind in their sails to get shit done. For practical purposes, that means a wave election plus a few more national Women’s Marches to make the point.

Democrats are congenitally craven, forever fearing another McGovern. They need to see evidence to the contrary. Shit won’t change unless people keep taking to the streets, and shit needs to be pretty bad for that to happen.

Now this is what I’m talkin’ about:

Thousands Attend First Gay Pride in Mike Pence’s Hometown(!)

@ManchuCandidate: If this takes down InSannity along with the rest of the dumFux Nooz propagandist-rapist machine, it’ll be Christmas in the spring!

The FBI should start with the folder labeled Really Big Crimes.

Oh, wow. This sweet obituary made me smile. (Spoiler alert! It’s not Barbara Bush’s.)

Babs was a vindictive, hateful, heinous biznatch–more like a mafia matron than America’s grandma–who’ll always be remembered for her Pandora’s Womb unleashing three of the worst criminally insane grifters this nation has ever endured.

The greedy, hell-bound CaliguBushes paved the way for Twitler, even though they sure weren’t happy with the result.

@¡Andrew!: You know those Katrina people stuck in the Superdome? They were already poor, so, meh.

@¡Andrew!: Hey! Your Girl, Janelle Monáe is dropping an album. Good stuff.. The android persona is being kicked to the curb.

@¡Andrew!: Damn! Just. DAMN! Guess my Queer Hating Mother won’t be dancing to Tightrope anymore.

Maternal Unit: See how sexy she is without baring all her skin?

Me: Mom, I think she’s going for androgynous.

Maternal Unit: …

Me: David Bowie?

Maternal Unit: That fag?

Me: I’m leaving now.

Maternal Unit: Are you telling me you’re gay?

Me: Ponder that.

I think I might have just come out to myself.

I’m going to ask if he considered calling his book The Comey Sutra, because he got twisted into so many positions he ended up fucking himself.
–TheGrandWazoo2

@¡Andrew!: Right?!

@¡Andrew!: Yeah. That book is like Maddow getting scooped on a whopping two pages of Trump’s tax return.

/WTF political news/

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in my neighborhood today dining at local waterfront seafood institution Salty’s.

Bet it beat that rat feces-filled chocolate cake he got at Mar-a-Lardass.

/and now for something completely different/

Mom Makes Sure Everyone Has Masturbated Before Long Car Ride

“It’s going to be three hours—maybe more with traffic—so even if you don’t have to jerk off right this second, you should at least try,” said Curran, hoping to avoid a repeat of their last trip when they barely managed to pull off I-39 in time for her youngest to blow his load into a ditch. “I know you say you just cranked one out, but you say that every time.”

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