September 25, 2021

Did Danforth fucking Quayle save the nation in January?

Dan Quayle. Fuck.

shut up

Okay, technically the answer is no. But still... in reading the Esquire article on John Eastman's memo of January 4, 2021, drawn up under Trump's supervision, to convince Mike Pence (who Eastman & Trump seem to have considered a team player and a coward) to gum up the works of the Electoral college enough to throw the country into chaos.

This is why Trump's team assembled the maga mob on the 6th. They were to be there to create enough street pressure to support an EC coup geared at throwing the election into the House, where Republicans held a 26 state majority. The mob would ensure that no delegations got weak and supported the actual winner of the election.

It gets worse. Pence didn't reject the insane, unconstitutional, Rube Goldbergesque coup mechanism out of hand. He actually called up Dan Quayle to get His Eminence's input.

As writer Charles Pierce puts it:

And before we all start blessing the name of Michael Richard Pence, we should remember that he actually agonized over what to do, going so far as to consult with Dan Quayle, who had to remind Pence what Pence’s duty to the republic actually was. We now have the game plan, in writing.

When Pence got back to Trump with his No, that's when Trump started tantruming his personal insults, via Twitter, at the Veep. Of course the 1/6 protestors were already on their way to DC. Without Pence playing his key role in the coup's game plan, Trump, Rudy, and all the other rally speakers improvised a Plan C: fire up the mob and send them down to the Capitol to beat up some cops and smear their feces on the walls.

No one spoke up to warn Congress, especially not Pence, who dutifully kept Trump's machinations secret.

You out have to read the whole thing. This was their plan

September 24, 2021

America's heroic job creators need another tax cut to save us from those Socialism elitists!!

Bookmark this post. A year from now, it won't be satire anymore.

September 11, 2021

I think we make too big a deal about 9/11

I think commemorating it like it's a defining event in American history is a willful distortion of what's important in the American story and a poor choice of how we choose to see the world.

Culturally we celebrate the things that define us. The gratitude that goes to those who served the nation (Veterans Day, Memorial Day), the gathering together of family (Christmas, Thanksgiving), the hope of the new year, our freedom and independence as a people (4th of July, Juneteenth). Even the non holidays say something about us, about who we choose to be as a people: Constitution Day (September 17th), Flag Day (June 14th), Mother's Day, Father's Day.

So 20 years after the fact, as we continue to to impress upon children, who have no recollection of the terror attacks, the unique defining characteristic of 9/11 in American identity, what are we telling them? We're telling them that along with gratitude, family, freedom, democracy, and hope... another core American value is being attacked, being victimized, being "hated for our freedoms."

This seems to feed into the culture of resentment that, frankly, has taken far too big a space in American culture in the past few years.

And I mean no disrespect to the lives that were lost. They should be remembered. I'm not saying forget history; I'm saying don't disproportionately wallow in the pain of a loss. All the other big days on our calendar are about "wins." MLK Day is about commemorating the triumph and advancement of the cause of civil rights; about a man's contributions, not a man's murder. Veterans Day began as the marker for the end of a war we won. Now it's about honoring all who ever wore the nation's uniform.

A generation after Pearl Harbor there weren't displays and flourishes about December 7th. The days we marked and remembered were VJ Day and VE Day. There were wreath layings in Honolulu, but the speeches were always about the positive values of strength and preparedness and gratitude for America's unique place and mission in the world. A generation ago there was little controversy about marking Columbus Day. We saw the European discovery of America as a win for us. But as our national sensibilities have shifted, as our awareness of the full story of what the Columbian Exchange meant in human history, we have naturally moved away from celebrating Columbus Day. And we don't concentrate our celebrations now on the near genocide of native peoples and indigenous American cultures. We feel it's more natural to "take the win" and instead focus on honoring the critical contributions of indigenous people and cultures to the American story.

When we came to see the connection of the hemispheres as a "loss," we shifted our focus to what was positive and hopeful. And that's how it should be. That's what we should strive to be as a nation and its people. We don't forget the past, we don't forget the history. On Earth Day, we do make note of pollution and climate change, but the theme of the day is recycling. On Veterans Day, we do give tribute to the sacrifices, but the theme of the day is the freedom and rights those sacrifices secured.

But where is the transformation of September 11th? As Armistice Day was converted to Veterans Day, we could transmogrify to celebrate "First Responders Day". Instead what I see is efforts to permanently make 9/11 about the death and destruction of that terrible day, an American Remembrance Day. I don't think that's psychologically healthy; I don't think that's sociologically healthy. Defining our culture by our losses (as we specifically do not when we rebrand tragedies into celebrations as with Indigenous Peoples' Day or Easter), leads us down a rabbit hole towards seeing ourselves as victims.

This distorts history. The last 20 years of American, no global, history are already defined by America's unhealthy overreaction to 9/11. A significant event that cost thousands of lives quickly escalated into an unnecessary war, an orgy of torture and official acts of criminality, a ineffective foreign policy, and literally millions of more unnecessary deaths. Our obsession with 9/11 doesn't create, but it feeds into a racist view of an already overly violent corner of the world. It's not good for us and yet it's what we're choosing to be as a people when we treat those 3,000 deaths as different and as more defining than all the other deaths that have occurred since.

For the sake of understanding of the past and for the sake of working towards a more positive future, I think we need to quit reveling in the pain and loss of September 11, 2001.

September 11, 2021

Eventually they're going to run out of "C" names

And someone at the national weather bureau
is gonna have to call it Hurricane Cthulhu...

I eagerly await the day

September 6, 2021

Reviewing Ben Shapiro's Garbage Novel

hilarious!!