MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2022
But also, reflexive disdain: The front page of today's Washington Post seems like the front page of a traditional American newspaper.
Six reports are featured on that front page. A person could argue that the topic selection may tilt a bit in the blue tribe's direction, but each topic seems like a real news topic. That starts with the report which appears in the upper right-hand corner bearing this triple headline:
Russia fights to hold the line
LAUNCHES NEW STRIKES IN UKRAINE
More protests erupt over war effort, mobilization
That's the featured report on today's front page. To our eye, it has the look of a real front page.
We refer, of course, to the front page of the Washington Post's print edition. That same newspaper's online front page seems a bit different to us.
Here are the headlines on the three reports featured at the top of that page:
He came out as trans. Then Texas had him investigate parents of trans kids.
Seniors are stuck home alone as health aides flee for higher-paying jobs
Let’s talk about the big reveal in ‘Don’t Worry Darling’
Online, we encounter that "big reveal" amazingly fast! Only the report about home health aides appears on the print edition's front page—and it's the "softest" of the six topics found there.
Continuing down the online front page, we meet the next three topics. The report on Russia is now included, but then again, so is this:
5 money-saving tips for grocery shopping
Soon, we're deluged with links to various ADVICE columns, and with such WELL + BEING reports as these:
Struggling with mental health, I began to shoplift
Ask a Doctor: Why do I get sleepy in the afternoon after eating lunch?
Normal marital hatred is real. Here’s what to do about it.
Boredom is a warning sign. Here’s what it’s telling you.
Not that there's anything wrong with it! Later, we reach the news sections for the WORLD, and also for the NATION.
We're struck by the dumbnification of the Post's web site pretty much every day now. For ourselves, we continue to find ourselves in the grasp of the new Ken Burns film, The U.S. and the Holocaust.
Watching the film's six hours over the weekend, we were struck by its portrait of anti-Semitism in America during the 20th century. This portrait returned us to the Boston suburb of our youth, and to our escape to suburban San Francisco in 1960, as we entered eighth grade.
We may remark on the differences observed in the Golden State as the week proceeds. For today, we'll note our surprise at the general lack of discussion occasioned by the Burns film—and we'll note our concern at the polling numbers featured on today's Morning Joe.
The numbers struck us as quite poor. Numbers from the New York Times/Siena College poll were reported in the Times under this gloomy headline:
Trump Support Remains Unmoved by Investigations, Poll Finds
Even as a treasured array of legal cases proceed, Trump's support shall not be moved! Granted, 53% of respondents said they view the former president unfavorably. But that is little more than half, and it compares to 51% who said, in that same poll, that they think he has committed serious federal crimes!
Even worse, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Republicans running four points ahead of Democrats in "generic question" polling about who voters want to control Congress. Joe put the best face on the numbers, but the numbers struck us as quite bad.
(Full disclosure: We don't know how these elections will turn out. This recent assessment by Ed Kilgore offered a gloomy though sensible view.)
Increasingly, our nation is really a pair of nations. As President Lincoln said long ago ("Each side prayed to the same God") these nations agree on a basic point:
They agree that our nation stands divided between Ourselves and The Others.
Tens of millions of our fellow citizens don't share our blue tribe's view of the current state of affairs. On many mornings, we listen to people calling C-Span and we're struck by the depth of the differences—differences which extend to dueling tribal conceptions of basic, elementary facts.
We've also been struck by the lack of discussion about the Ken Burns film. Casting about, we found a review in The New Yorker which ran beneath these headlines:
Ken Burns Turns His Lens on the American Response to the Holocaust
Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.
The review was written by James McAuley, who's ten years out of Harvard. Inevitably, he closed his piece with a familiar bit of snark about the American masses:
MCAULEY (9/18/22): This latest project is both a departure from and a continuation of the Burns œuvre—a departure because he focusses, for the first time, on an atrocity that occurred far from the nation whose myths he regularly interrogates and advances; a continuation because he seeks to show that the Holocaust, too, forms part of a decidedly American history. If the film has a thesis, it is delivered in a line from an interview with the historian Peter Hayes: “exclusion of people, and shutting them out, has been as American as apple pie.”
[...]
The persecution and mass murder of European Jews between 1933 and 1945 loom so large in our culture that even our own homegrown brownshirts now have the Holocaust on the tips of their tongues. In recent years, a sitting member of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has styled her enemies as “Nazis” and posted a video of a fake-looking President Biden with a Hitler mustache. Beyond the arena of electoral politics, a number of ordinary people wore yellow stars on their lapels to protest coronavirus-vaccine requirements. Given its interest in the contemporary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust” might have confronted, or at least acknowledged, these fixations and distortions. They, too, turn out to be as American as apple pie.
The highly educated youngster closes his piece was a familiar, snarky dismissal of Amerikan attitudes. He complains that Burns wasn't hard enough on "our own [American] brownshirts."
Of course, such attitudes are common around the world, even in places like present-day Italy and Sweden. For better or worse, "exclusion of people" has always been one of our species' apparent general tendencies.
Also for better or worse, snarky dismissal of Others has long been "as American as apple pie" within our own blue tribe's preserves. McAuley closed with a bit of snark. It's amazingly easy to do so. Our tribe has been at it for years, or possibly even forever.
We recall how much better California was in the summer of 1960. We're specifically thinking about anti-Semitism in its tragic American forms.
It was better in California at that point in time! Can lessons be learned from that fact?
As the week proceeds, we'll give it a try, though we'll guess that the die has been cast.
Tomorrow: We may be delayed tomorrow
"Later, we reach the news sections for the WORLD, and also for the NATION."
ReplyDeleteBecause Somerby doesn't read his comments, he repeats his fatuous criticism of the digital version of the Washington Post, which includes what he calls "soft" news. As was pointed out in comments, he could use the menu choices to immediately go to the nation and world sections and find hard news. Instead he complains about all the topics other people may like to read, suggesting that these do not belong where the Post has chosen to place them.
One could argue that the problems that concern individuals in their daily lives, or the ones that appeal to social interests, may lead people into reading more "hard" news, be a gateway to developing broader interests, as reading the softer subjects might broaden Somerby and teach him what other people care about. That would be educational for other readers. But that doesn't seem to occur to him.
Teachers tend to know that a "hook" that engages student interest will lead them into a topic they might otherwise tune out, so they work to provide such lead-ins to their discussions. I again have to wonder what Somerby's classes were like, given that he considers topics that attract more readers to be undesirable in this other context.
And it does seem like Somerby is behaving like an elitist when he makes these criticisms, insisting that the only news that matters is what interests him, and defining only that political, economic, and foreign affairs content as "news" to the exclusion of items helpful to readers in their daily lives.
“For better or worse?”
ReplyDelete"Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible"
ReplyDeleteItaly's victorious Meloni quoting Chesterton, and also the reason for Trump's support that hasn't budged and the GOP's generic ballot advantage.
"For better or worse, "exclusion of people" has always been one of our species' apparent general tendencies."
ReplyDeleteIt is facile to write off nativism as part of human nature, when there is plenty of historical and other evidence that this is untrue. Somerby apparently rejects the understanding of the 1619 Project, which shows how racism was invented as a concept to justify the slave trade. There has not always been race-based prejudice and exclusion, nor has there always been equation of dark skin with negative qualities. That came with the Darwinian concept of race, theories of evolution, and their application to stigmatized groups in the form of social Darwinism.
In America, there were not exclusionary immigration policies until the late 1800s and early 1900s, with the implementation of eugenicist ideas in immigration screening. The same ideas were applied to native Americans in the form of mental testing, beliefs about heritability of undesirable social behavior, mental illness, and alcoholism (a serious social problem). Prior to that, Americans were more socially accepting of diversity, and less restrictive of behavior, especially in the West and outside of higher social strata.
Somerby's assertion that American has always been as it was in the early 20th century is historically incorrect, just as our country has not always been as it is now under the Trump GOP. He should see that from his own life experience.
And no, this is not human nature. Ancient Rome was not like this. The Middle Ages were not like this, nor the Renaissance. Racial thinking is an idea that emerged more recently as a misapplication of early science used to justify power-seeking. Nor is war part of human nature. That emerged with agricultural societies and has taken different forms at different times in our history. The idea of nations instead of city-states emerged at a specific point in time and was responsible for warfare in the 20th century. The idea of colonies had its specific time period. Communication and transportation have given us a more global focus recently. These things change and affect human behavior and are NOT part of human nature whatever Somerby means by that.
Somerby's ideas here are an example of how people think when they are less educated. So are the ideas on the right, especially including Trump and his followers. If Somerby wants to improve our world, he needs to stop denigrating learning and encourage people to know more about themselves (mind and body) and our history, culture, and society.
A step in that direction would be for Somerby to read the other sections of his paper and not just rush to the nation and world sections without pausing anywhere else.
Somerby is surprised that there is little comment about the Burns series, but he himself mocks the education that provides the background to find interest in Burns documentaries, even when they are about baseball and country music. That's why they appear on PBS, a network explicitly for those who value higher culture and learning.
ReplyDeleteToday, Somerby mocks the reviewer of the Burns series, by referring to him as 10 years out of Harvard, as if that makes him wrong in some way in his reactions. I agree that Burns could have linked the historical attitudes that produced the Holocaust with the current behavior on the right, but it is understandable why he wished to avoid provoking political controversy that might interfere with distribution and viewing of his show.
Somerby could have seen the parallels himself, instead of snarking about the reviewer's criticism of Burns' safe choices.
This is not true. Burns actually did directly link this documentary with current events. I saw him interviewed recently and he actually said he accelerated the release of this precisely because of the rise of fascism in this country.
DeleteIt may be Burns’s most didactic film yet as it ends provocatively with images of Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine African American congregants at a church in South Carolina; white supremacists marching with flaming torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us!”; the killing of 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; and the storming of the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters on 6 January 2021.
“We were obligated to do that because the way we mount this series is we begin with antisemitism in America and racism and the pernicious slave trade and xenophobia and nativism and eugenics,” he explains. “We’re obligated then to not close our eyes and pretend this is some comfortable thing in the past that doesn’t rhyme with the present.”
Burns has been sounding the alarm about the threat to American democracy since a commencement address at Stanford University in California in June 2016. Six years and one Trump presidency later, he is more worried than ever.
“After three previous great crises, I think we’re in the fourth and perhaps the most difficult crisis in the history of America. The three being the civil war, the great depression and the second world war, the institutions were not under assault as they are today and that makes the fragility of Benjamin Franklin’s statement, ‘A republic, if you can keep it,’ all the more relevant.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/19/ken-burns-interview-holocaust-docuseries
"The best time to save a democracy, is before it's lost." Ken Burns
Ken Burns didn't say that. A woman who was interviewed in his series said it. I believe she was a historian, but I could be wrong. Far fewer people will see interviews with him than will see the series. Like the 1/6 Committee hearings, he is preaching largely to those who already understand the problems, not those who need to see this series.
DeleteI have watched 3 episodes and don't see any parallels in any of them, being explicitly drawn. Everything is safely in the past, so far.
Ken Burns did say that. The woman in the series said "The Time to Stop the Holocaust is Before it Happens". He took that and updated it to the current crisis facing America.
DeleteDid you see where the narrator actually quoted the Americans protesting immigration saying, "the Jews will not replace us"? Not parallel enough for you?
You are absolutely correct that the people who need to watch this documentary are not the ones who will watch it. I stated on a previous thread that this documentary should be required viewing for every high school student, but I expect republican governors like Desantis who are pushing a sanitized version of American history will ban it from public schools.
The 1/6 Committee is knocking people over the head with its evidence, underscoring what it means and leaving no wiggle room. Beside that effort, Burns is being very subtle. Even so, the hearings are not changing Republican minds. You must be a fair-minded person to benefit from a presentation of evidence.
DeleteThe people who leave messages here about George Soros are not going to be moved by Burns's documentary. Only those with a conscience will be moved by how little was done to help the Jews, and only those with a sense of history will understand why. Republicans do not fit into either category. Neither does Somerby, apparently, when he can only work up crocodile tears over Anne Frank and has no feeling about the huge loss, the magnitude of Hitler's atrocity, and the shame of all who went along with what he did.
I have visited the holocaust memorial in Berlin. I heard the tour guide excuse the German people and I watched the fight over how obtrustive to make the memorial before the people would complain that they have suffered enough for Hitler's wrongdoing. When you tiptoe around history, the people who need to understand will not get it. Those who do get it will nod their heads and feel sympathy, secure in the knowledge that it wasn't them who did anything wrong. Meanwhile, similar acts are happening right now in our country, but it may seem "politically motivated" to say anything about it -- so Burns hints and Joe Biden, who had the courage to talk about what is going on, was ignored by the all major networks (for being political) and then attacked for being divisive.
If you admire Burns, you must admire Biden more. But where are the voices that should be making these comparisons without Burns's prompting? And why is Somerby blaming the left for sending us into the sea while Republicans are recreating Hitler's Germany here in the US?
Peopel should be mad as hell, not scholarly and temperate or analytical about the parallels. Aufwachen.
Delete"Meanwhile, similar acts are happening right now in our country,"
DeleteEvery day, thousands of killings of little humans. A million a year. All at Planned Parenthood clinics, and sanctioned by Democrats who dispense of any concern by assuring each other they're "not really human," just like Hitler did. Not sure if he or fellow Nazis had the audacity to lecture about conscience while they did it.
You again, pimping your religion? Did you ever answer the question: if you were forced between saving the life of a 10 year old daughter or the life of a fetus, which would you choose? Oh that's right, no need to answer because, if such a scenario ever actually arose -- in the real world, not in the religious ivory tower of your brainwashed mind -- we already know which one you (and your wife if you have one) would choose.
Delete
DeleteMore children have been harmed by Matt Gaetz, then have been harmed by all abortions put together.
@12:20 I am sure you are aware that the Nazis killed disabled children and adults in the hospitals, as one of their first acts. Such defective people were a burden on society, which had to care for them, the Nazis asserted. The churches objected but the populace went along with it.
DeleteEquating abortions with heinous acts like this should be unthinkable to you, but I doubt you think of the Holocaust as real. Your extreme lack of empathy for other people is obvious in every comment you make here. That makes your claim to care about fetuses suspect. Men like you are concerned primarily with controlling and coercing women, not with any unborn children.
The hypothetical is not useful because I'd likely choose my 10 year old over five other 10 year olds if ever faced with such a choice. As a matter of policy I understand the exceptions already in the law for morally complicated situations like rape and incest and life of the mother. For the other 99.5% involving a voluntary accepted risk I favor prohibition of killing.
Delete"killed disabled children and adults in the hospitals, as one of their first acts. Such defective people were a burden on society, which had to care for them, the Nazis asserted."
DeleteThat's identical to the view of those legally killed before birth by those who advocate for the legality of killing them. It's not limited to the disabled but they are especially enthusiastic about killing those.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThe hypothetical is perfectly useful. It demonstrates that the fetus is not equivalent to a child. It's obvious from your answer that you would choose to end the life of the fetus. And every honest person understands why: no matter what your religion says, the fetus is simply not the equivalent of an actual child. And btw, no one is "enthusiastic" about abortions. We simply acknowledge the fact you implicitly conceded to: a fetus is not a child and therefore a pregnant woman (not the government) should be the one to decide what happens with the fetus.
Delete
Delete"no matter what your religion says, the fetus is simply not the equivalent of an actual child"
This, we're sorry to say, sounds extremely dumb, dear dembot.
You sound like you're asserting superiority of your religion over everyone else's religions.
Dear Dimbot, since you apparently didn't catch on, the conclusion that a fetus isn't a child was based on a simple line of reasoning, having nothing to do with religion. Go watch 2000 Mules again, dear Dimbot.
DeleteWhat simple line of reasoning?
DeleteAsk your fellow Dimbot.
DeleteSo, no simple line of reasoning, just the usual brain-dead liberal dembottery, nicht wahr?
Delete"brain-dead" -- this from someone who apparently thinks the elections was stolen. if anyone is swallowing any kind of "bottery" around here, it's you
DeleteWhat, because thinking that "the elections [sic] was stolen" is against your religion?
Delete...would this be an example of your "simple line of reasoning", dear dembot?
anyone who thinks the election was stolen is way more religious than i, dear Dimbot
DeleteIs this what the Infallible Pope of Liberalism declared, dear dembot?
Deleteno, it's just what the overwhelming evidence and common sense indicates . . . . . . . . . . dear, dimbot
DeleteA child is a young human being. So is a baby. So is a fetus. Baby and fetus are used interchangeably. So are child and fetus. So are child and baby. So let's just recognize what the youngest human beings are known to be, which is human beings. A young human being is of equal (or higher) value than an older one. A human being who is not yet born is a young human being. An unborn, newborn, or older child are of equal value, and their value in terms of entitlement to protection and extraordinary care and sacrifice on the part of others is equal to or higher than the value of their adult parents.
DeleteWhat a bunch of mumbo jumbo. For starters, this is semantics: "fetus and baby are used interchangeably." So? How terms are used linguistically doesn't prove anything about the underlying reality being debated. As for who is of "higher value" than who, this is a subjective judgment. As for whether a fetus is a human being, on par with any other human being, we already went through this above. If in real life (as opposed to a debate), you were forced to choose between saving the life of an actual child and a fetus, we know which you would choose.
DeleteOh, wow, you believe you have the overwhelming evidence that the election wasn't stolen, dear dembot?
DeleteYou actually sound more Catholic than the Pope, dear. Good for you.
...as for your "common sense" assertion:
"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. voters believe cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, including 39% who think it’s Very Likely."
When 55% disagree with you, your sense is certainly less than common...
“Don’t, stop, beleeeeving; hold on to your dreeeeeems.” …….. Dear Dimbot
Delete"We recall how much better California was in the summer of 1960. We're specifically thinking about anti-Semitism in its tragic American forms.
ReplyDeleteIt was better in California at that point in time! Can lessons be learned from that fact? "
I believe Somerby has said he lived in Palo Alto. It doesn't have a large Jewish presence, nor any dominant religious group, being a small town. It is quite a distance from San Francisco, and is the home of Stanford University and location of Silicon Valley and many tech start-ups emerging from the university environment.
A shrink would be able to tell Somerby why his rebellion against his mother and his education are so strong.
It sounds like Somerby is planning to tell us about Jewish presence in California, but he cannot really do that without talking about the Fairfax district in Los Angeles (home to Kantor's deli), the Jewish west side around UCLA, the influx of Russian Jewish immigrants that revitalized that area after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the strong Jewish presence in the film industry and other businesses in Los Angeles. I doubt he can speak to any of that.
Even so, the liberalism and relative lack of racial discrimination in California were an attraction to diverse people, including gays in San Francisco and West Hollywood (Los Angeles) and the entertainment industry. Los Angeles has a strong Hispanic community, more languages spoken in its public schools than anywhere else, and a welcoming attitude toward diversity. It has had riots but it also has inclusion and a strong effort to improve conditions for the poor and struggling.
California would be a good model for the rest of the country. Los Angeles (and many entertainers) rejected the HUAC and stood up to attacks on the entertainment industry. It was very different than the American Bund and Nazi sympathizers who resisted Roosevelt's efforts to help the Jews during WWII. California has defeated the worst elements of Republican and conservatism nonsense, except in rural areas, where people elect assholes like Nunes and McCarty, and even Orange County (home to John Birchers) is demographically blue now.
It seems difficult for Somerby to argue that discrimination is human nature when examples of tolerance exist within our own nation, in places such as Los Angeles and New York. It seems to me that these examples show the impact that education can have on reactionary impulses -- which is why conservatives (and dictators worldwide) always target universities first when consolidating power. Somerby should be ashamed to participate in that, as he does here constantly, including with today's snark against the criticism of Burns.
11:07,
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mao.
11:07,
ReplyDeleteDid you meet them all at the January 6t temper tantrum?
Before Hitler, Germany was the world center for scientific (experimental) psychology. Wundt established the first psychology lab there and the most famous Americans traveled to spend time in his lab learning scientific methods in order to go back and establish their own labs in the USA, including William James. It was the center of the Gestalt movement which studied perception and cognition. Ebbinghaus developed methods for studying memory in Germany. Hitler destroyed that when he attacked the University early in his reich. Jewish psychologists were the first target and non-Jewish psychologists who defend them and the freedom of the university were also persecuted.
ReplyDeletePsychology, like most sciences, is international. Colleagues in America saw what was happening to German Jewish psychologists and created places for them at American universities, urging and helping them to emigrate. There were insufficient positions at the top universities, but positions were found in places such as the historically black universities (HBCUs), the elite women's colleges, and the New School for Social Research, founded in 1919 as a college for working class men.
This influx of top German scientists enriched the psychology curriculum for students who would not normally have exposure to their methods. This created a generation of talented black, female, and working class psychologists who made the profession more diverse than in other fields in the US. Today, psychology is 50% women and women have held top positions in its professional associations. The black doctoral level scientists trained in black universities did the foundational research that was presented in Brown vs Board of Education, showing the impact of separate but equal education on black kids self esteem and identity. Without that empirical research, it seems unlikely the court would have had justification to combat the excuses offered by segregated school districts. Black psychologists have continued to work to improve understanding of how discrimination affects black students. See Claude Steele's work on stereotype threat for an example.
The Burns documentary (as much as I have watched) has talked about the rescue of accomplished German musicians and artists. I'm sure others can speak to the impact of the influx of German scientists into our space program and defense work (esp the Manhattan Project), the impact of German mathematicians and other academics on our own scientific progress in other fields.
Somerby's attack on knowledge and learning is Hitleresque, but he doesn't seem to appreciate the legacy of Hitler's persecution of Jews, intellectuals and those who defended them, to our benefit. Today, Melania has made a mockery of immigration visas intended for such people, not models seeking wealthy benefactors. Even at the most unskilled levels of work, our society has benefitted, such as from the influx of unskilled Irish men who worked on our transcontinental railway (the Chinese did the actual blasting).
The only sense in which Hitler's actions may be part of human nature is his incredible stupidity in underming his own nation's strength by tossing out talented people because they were Jewish. (Yes, a talented Jewish person contradicts the myths of Aryan superiority.) Somerby's failure to connect the dots, as Burns should have done, and call out today's stupidity on the right, shows Somerby's own stupidity. But he has been displaying that for a long time now.
..as Bur0ns should have done,
DeleteHe did. You'd have to be an idiot not to see the connections.
Happy Rosh Hashanah.
DeleteDon't get too excited, that vaunted female profession has half the female population on drugs with severe side effects that are only 15% effective compared to placebo and they're signing off on cutting little girls' breasts off.
DeleteAdditionally those trained doctoral scientists that brought us Brown vs Board ushered in decades of a small minority of black children sitting among a significant majority of whites for their entire childhood, underperforming compared to the white children. They are subjected to that abusive condition day in and day out which had only one benefit namely helping white adult liberals feel good about themselves.
@12:20 People on the right are such idiots. They would not see the connections you do. That is part of the problem. You have to state them explicitly, as Biden did in his speech.
DeleteThey would watch Burns series and draw entirely different conclusions about most of it. If you think they are going to say "Hey, those American Nazis in 1938 are just like us," you are wrong. They will complain about the way Roosevelt didn't listen to them and how Lindburgh should have been elected president and we could have avoided the whole war.
@12:20, look at the response by @2:21. This is what we are dealing with.
Delete@12:01 says that Somerby is not connecting any dots.
Delete@ 5:58,
DeleteI don't disagree. I cannot argue with you, no, Magats are not going to see the light. But I am not blaming Ken Burns for that. He produced a remarkable documentary which every high school student should be required to watch.
We are not going to stop the rising tide of fascism in this country by changing their minds, just as Lincoln could not avoid the civil war by persuading the slave states to compromise. We are going to stem by educating the country and defeating them.
The left will never succeed in "educating" the country on the weird, dehumanizing slop it's tried to forcefeed it for the last decades.
DeleteAre you implying your Mom let’s you leave the basement?
ReplyDeleteBob probably doesn’t realize how no program is going to garner the attention that, say, “Roots” did in its time.
ReplyDeleteWe are too well targeted into our demographic groups for much in the way
of National Media Events. Has this
Contributed to our improbably close
elections? Probably. Nothing Bob
would give a thought to.
Pretty vapid speculation.
DeleteOr, you can't give credence to an idea, even a logical one, that hasn't been spoon fed to you as comfort food?
DeleteI tire of fighting the GOP fanatics. It could take a while to shake out the GOP poison. Do it today!
ReplyDeleteI believe in the idea of forming a new country. Being ruled by a reactionary Supreme Court must be ended.
talk about vapid.....
DeleteYeah, me too, FDR.
DeleteSCOTUS should not be doing the job of state legislatures.
Anonymous8:20am is me.
DeleteAnd state legislatures should be doing the job of representing the peoples will, instead of gerrymandering their representation.
DeleteTemper tantrum is at least a reasonably accurate and complete description of the event.
ReplyDelete"Racist temper tantrum" is even more complete.
ReplyDeleteLet's keep it going...
They aren't a bunch of white grievance bigots trying to overthrow the presidential election because black people's votes were counted.
ReplyDeleteThey are merely a bunch of whining, bitchy, two-year olds who should be given pacifiers and told to sleep it off while the adults run the country.
ReplyDelete"Increasingly, our nation is really a pair of nations."
That's called 'politics', dear Bob.
Politics is back, following the "post-political" period, also known as the "end of history", declared by one of your tribe's High Priests 30 years ago.
...it appears now that the reports of the demise of history have been greatly exaggerated...
There is a pretty good essay in the NY Times this morning about Republican responses to Biden's tightening of asylum procedures:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/opinion/ron-desantis-asylum-border.html