Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

If you threaten political violence you get a meaningless non-punishment.

If you commit political violence (against the proper side), there are no consequences.

Seems to me that YMP has the accurate read.

Sorry aimless I don't really even have a coherent point to make, I'm just... tired and frazzled.

Like, could just ONE fucking thing move in the direction of kindness or fairness or even (gasp) justice?

Anyone going to protests after this decision has all my admiration.

Like, could just ONE fucking thing move in the direction of kindness or fairness or even (gasp) justice?

― popcornoscenti (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, November 19, 2021 1:52 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you do know where we live, right?

Post from my friend who has been covering this:

Heartbreaking conversation with Susan Hughes, the great-aunt of Anthony Huber who was a quasi mother to him and who testified on his behalf at the trial. She left the courtroom after the verdict and drove to a quiet park along Lake Michigan. We talked about the last three weeks, but this jumped out at me. This is soul and grace:

"Maybe it’s my naivete. I’m 74, I’ve seen a lot of things in my lifetime and a lot of unfair things in the justice system, I just never thought it would happen to me. I thought we had a chance. But there was a lot of money, and a lot of advance support and publicity tainting the public perception of who he is.

"I think he can develop remorse. I won’t be conflicted until he makes some atonement and some acknowledgment of what he did. And his decision to fire eight bullets in a short period of time that seriously disfigured Gaige and killed Anthony and Joseph Rosenbaum. He could make a grand gesture. Whatever he makes of the millions of dollars he raised, give it to an organization that supports victims of gunshot violence or trains people in de-escalation or conflict resolution. Something positive. But I don’t think that’ll be the case. You’ll see him in ads promoting AR-15s.

"(Kyle's) been used. He’ll continue to be used by people and I hope that if I was speaking to him directly, I’d say you gotta man up, quickly, because you need to get better at understanding who you have around you and who has an agenda. And right now, everyone has an agenda and if they think that child belongs in the hall of the Capital as an intern for Matt Gaetz, that is going to destroy him. Ten years down the road, MG and people will have deserted him when he is no longer good for their fundraising efforts."

Forgot the 'MAGA Asshole Kid' was Sandman.

Thanks to this bill, we scored a big round against the Moocher States and cut taxes for families across New Jersey's Fifth District.

Months ago, I said “No SALT, No Dice.” Today, New Jersey’s middle class families won big!

— Rep Josh Gottheimer (@RepJoshG) November 19, 2021

the SALT repeal mostly affected democratic progressive states with high state taxes, unlike backwards retrograde states like fucking Texas. why should we pay federal taxes on our already garnered state taxes to subsidize you?

https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/12-10-19taxf1_0.png

(The top quintile there starts at ~2X the median household income of CA.)

"A larger SALT deduction would provide the least benefit to people who live in states like Florida, Texas and Nevada without state income taxes" sounds good to me

Tax the rich (unless they’re me)

^^Sinema's Met Dress

I think you mean AOC?

I know it’s objectively bad but it is one of my vestigial epic blue-brain lib takes. Every time I see some comfortable MAGA fuck I’m connected to on Facebook popping off about “makers and takers” it’s extremely difficult for me not to just swoop in and remind them that the only reason they have roads or their precious troops or their shitty incorporated exurb’s PD has tanks or peepaw’s government subsidized scooter he rides to the Blue Lives Matter rally is thanks to “blue” coastal states (and blue metros in red states). That if they were able to divorce themselves from their woke vaxxed liberal oppressors— aka this country’s economic engines that collectively pay much more in federal income taxes than they get back—this cobbled together neo-Confederacy would mostly look like the “shithole countries” they deride inside of 10 years, just with bloated red-faced honkies

XP The Parenthetical makes it more of a Sinema thing, as in AOC would presumably be up for paying taxes on newfound wealth, but Sinema wouldn't.

it’s extremely difficult for me not to just swoop in and remind them that the only reason they have roads or their precious troops or their shitty incorporated exurb’s PD has tanks or peepaw’s government subsidized scooter he rides to the Blue Lives Matter rally is thanks to “blue” coastal states (and blue metros in red states).

not angled as some kind of insult, this is very insightful into how all of this works imo.

I mean, spreading broadband to where it doesn't reach is the modern equivalent of rural electrification! Anyway, the part of "government" these assholes really hate is "handouts," and by "handouts" it's stuff they presume goes to minorities, whose unemployment and poverty is of course totally different from that of all the poor, unemployed white people that benefit from the same so-called "handouts."

This is an impression the capitalists have ruthlessly worked to promote in rural America. It’s how they split the American working class—it’s why something like the Republican Party, which works for no one but the wealthy—is even possible in a putative democracy.

Democrats play into it too. The only hope for the country is class consciousness. Things like the antiwork subreddit are a glimmer of hope but I won’t hold my breath.

sadly I think the Democratic Party is as committed as the GOP to culture war in lieu of any kind of class consciousness

Post from my friend who has been covering this:

Heartbreaking conversation with Susan Hughes, the great-aunt of Anthony Huber who was a quasi mother to him and who testified on his behalf at the trial. She left the courtroom after the verdict and drove to a quiet park along Lake Michigan. We talked about the last three weeks, but this jumped out at me. This is soul and grace:
"Maybe it’s my naivete. I’m 74, I’ve seen a lot of things in my lifetime and a lot of unfair things in the justice system, I just never thought it would happen to me. I thought we had a chance. But there was a lot of money, and a lot of advance support and publicity tainting the public perception of who he is.

"I think he can develop remorse. I won’t be conflicted until he makes some atonement and some acknowledgment of what he did. And his decision to fire eight bullets in a short period of time that seriously disfigured Gaige and killed Anthony and Joseph Rosenbaum. He could make a grand gesture. Whatever he makes of the millions of dollars he raised, give it to an organization that supports victims of gunshot violence or trains people in de-escalation or conflict resolution. Something positive. But I don’t think that’ll be the case. You’ll see him in ads promoting AR-15s.

"(Kyle's) been used. He’ll continue to be used by people and I hope that if I was speaking to him directly, I’d say you gotta man up, quickly, because you need to get better at understanding who you have around you and who has an agenda. And right now, everyone has an agenda and if they think that child belongs in the hall of the Capital as an intern for Matt Gaetz, that is going to destroy him. Ten years down the road, MG and people will have deserted him when he is no longer good for their fundraising efforts."

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 19 November 2021 22:58 (yesterday) link

Josh, do you know if there's an article somewhere with these quotes?

“Democrats play into it too. The only hope for the country is class consciousness. Things like the antiwork subreddit are a glimmer of hope but I won’t hold my breath.”

Reddit is like a case study in manufacturing consent, or more like manufactured dissent, ensuring that any dissent is effectively stifled through endless sectarian infighting. Although due respect but the need for the incessant false equivalence is a prime example of exactly what I mean.

And once again, if we really must fight the Civil War once again, the real geographic division in our county is urban vs rural, not some arbitrary imagined cultural barrier that exists on the Mason-Dixon Line. Unless you want to make Wisconsin part of the Confederacy now and carve out special Union enclaves for Atlanta, central NC, New Orleans, Austin etc etc.

The number of times I’ve seen mods of “progressive” subreddits siding with Glen Greenwald…

Sorry, GleNNNN

i try to never, ever, go on reddit

Reddit is like a case study in manufacturing consent, or more like manufactured dissent, ensuring that any dissent is effectively stifled through endless sectarian infighting.

i'm not sure if this is right, but it seems like it's in the right ballpark.

reddit is just a bunch of dudes going "well, ACTUALLY" at everything and everyone 24/7
-4

Good morning!

Where’s the civil suit filings?

well actually alfred it was afternoon when you posted that!!!!!!!!
(+4)

if we really must fight the Civil War once again

Been tinkering with a short essay I'll probably never get around to finishing, trying to make the point (which has really only come into sharp focus for me in recent years) that we have never, ever stopped fighting the Civil War. This is all the same fight. Not that that's some great insight, but I think framing our history that way helps clarify what's actually going on. It's not just the obvious symbolic stuff, like modern-day Republicans venerating Confederate monuments, it's that the animating issues about the distribution of political and economic power have never been dormant. It's all been the same fight.

otm, tipsy

that seems right. but still, how do you refer to 1861-1865, then, as opposed to what happened since (and going the other direction, the conflict was there since 1619, right? or before, to the first indigenous person here who got screwed)? a few weeks ago i made the bad decision to start a mopey doom thread (for the 200th time) (since 2015) with a reference to "the second civil war", and i remember this point being made, that the civil war, in many respects, never ended, and generally agreeing, of course. but from the perspective of a relapsing dooommmongerer, another "civil war" connotes something dramatically different from what we've known during our lifetimes, something that is an abrupt break - like the 1861-1865 civil war, for example

basically, i guess i'm just asking if what you're asking is that any mention of the civil war be amended to 'the 1861-1865 civil war'

because that would be a really funny edit to the ken burns documentary :D

they'd have to add in additional seconds/minutes of Ken Burns Effect in order to accommodate the addition of "the 1861-1865" before every use of "the civil war" in the 8 hour (now 8 hours and 18 minutes) doc

cold war / hot war is the traditional distinction iirc

I think the Bikini Kill ticket I bought was $40 with fees.

Average Americans are paying as much as $100 to $200 for a single concert ticket, $90 for a bottle of wine, and $5 a gallon for gas. https://t.co/rTciIVOEfn

— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) November 20, 2021

"as much as"

average americans love $90 wine

well you know, if you don't know much about wine, you almost reach for the $70 bottle, but then you step it up just a little to get a mid-range $90 bottle. but really you can't tell the difference

who on earth buys 90 dollar bottles of wine

like, at my hoity-toity well-managed liquor stores you have to WORK to find something over 50 bux that's not champagne

https://i.imgur.com/naDoiLZ.gif

also the average american goes to, what, 1-2 concerts per year?

hence why I let my bro pick the wine:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRqCfglX0AEadL8.jpg

this is quite good https://www.gawker.com/news/kyle-rittenhouse-is-american

Josh, do you know if there's an article somewhere with these quotes?

I don't know, tbh. He posted in on Facebook, but he's been reporting on it for the WaPo. Mark Guarino. Maybe it's made its way into an article?

The phrase ‘cold civil war’ was coined by me and the concept was discussed in 2010, when it was just GOP attrition and resistance to Obama.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FEpjGinXMAUSPqb.jpg

Christ, what an asshole.

Josh, thanks. I found the post on FB and am one of many people who shared it.