Excellent essay, Sparkly. -- I worked almost all year for Gene McCarthy the year I turned 21...

… and only missed out voting for Humphrey because I moved out of state to another college. It’s discouraging sometimes, being a Democrat — but I always had great hope for the future until Trump Twice.

This SCOTUS is dismantling “my” century, which I never thought of that way until they started in on all our progress and finally got to Dobbs. The first couple of actions along that line, like gutting the Voting Rights Act, were simply deeply shocking — but since Dobbs it’s just felt like one gut punch after another.

. MAGAGOP and SCOTUS want to erase the 20th century, and in doing so erase us: all women, people of color, LGBTQ+ community, non-Christians, and as DUers know, white men of any description who simply have no intention of bowing to MAGAGOP.

Where I am it’s 8:50 in the evening, the last night of 2024. All day I’ve felt like I was in mourning, and that the death of Jimmy Carter just allowed it tears, tears and a voice. What a splendid and admirable life he lived, and shall we not see his like again? We don’t know... But what I seem to be mourning, really, is my country. In the bleak midwinter.

Probably not tomorrow, but certainly the day after, I will take up my tasks, and will join those of our friends here who insist we Dems need to buck up and never give up hope.

We shall live to see better days, Sparkly.

Thanks for all these. I seem to be tearing up again...

Very much, or I wouldn't recommend it. It took me awhile to "get" Pratchett back in the '90s...

Then at a certain point I realized that while I’d been chuckling along at some bit of humor, the bottom would drop out and there would be tears. The bit between Death and Susan gets me every damn time.

The first time I read it was a bust. A friend handed it to me one Christmas and said that I would enjoy it because I was in a grad school Myth program. I never could figure out this supercilious friend, and I ended up reading the surface, mentally checking off boxes. By the time I came back to it several years and several books later, it was a different experience entirely.

Pratchett had a reputation as a humorist from his first 2 Discworld novels, which were light fare, and at some public function (probably a book signing) a bit later in his career a woman said to him that he must be such a jolly soul, and so happy. To that he said later that no, he was a very angry man.

You can see the anger underneath in a scene from Small Gods, where the torturers of the Inquisition are taking a tea break — the kettle is heating up on the rack next to the instruments of torture and the tea mugs have, variously, a teddy bear decoration or an inscription to World’s Best Daddy. It’s just a fricking job, right?

It can be kind of breathtaking to know that he sees humanity without any rose-colored glasses whatsoever, but it never gets in the way of the stories — and it never gets in the way of his belief in self-determination. His very best characters, like Sam Vimes of the City Watch, are angry to the bone at the injustice of the world, and have to decide every day to not become what they despise. How the unlikely pair Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil fall in love at 40-ish has always struck me as the best love story I’ve ever read.

A flat world with dragons and wizards is not to everyone’s taste — but my gods, did Pratchett ever see humanity in the whole.

Voter suppression tactics throughout Red states had a strong influence on the outcome

We are experiencing a New Jim Crow era, and I wish like hell that DUers and Democrats in the Party would acknowledge that.

The ACLU knows it. SPLC knows it. Mark Elias totally knows it.

Just say it, people. It’s a fact.

NATO will ditch us, and rightly so. A couple of weeks ago the Sec. Gen. of NATO spoke out...

We caught part of a speech Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte gave. It was sobering, to say the least. He noted the escalating behavior of Russia, and said it put all of Europe at risk. He said that it was time for NATO to put itself on a war footing. As far as I could tell, the plans of the US did not figure into the discussion — it’s too damn late.

We stand on the brink of WW III, in my opinion. Too many entities are licking their chops over the prospect — China and Russia are only part of the mix, and Trump/Bannon/ and the rest of that bunch are beyond bloodthirsty. The MAGA lust for a civil war within the US — but a world war will sweep them up and won’t they be surprised when the draft is reinstated.

NATO’s Mark Rutte was speaking very soberly about what he sees, and the clear implication was that wishful thinking was not going to save Europe.

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Thank you for this, Dennis Donovan:

"I have been an admirer of the US and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them."

Charlie Angus
‪@charlieangus104.bsky.social‬
"We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event....All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.” - Conservative journalist Andrew Coyne

December 29, 2024 at 11:52 AM



https://bsky.app/profile/charlieangus104.bsky.social/post/3lehi4ojunk26

Every year in December I re-read a book by Terry Pratchett called Hogfather...

Sir Terry wrote fantasy — and he was a deeply wise observer of humanity and its condition. Please bear with me. I’m sorry for the long intro, but without it the quote from the book wouldn’t make as much sense.

On the Discworld, Death is an anthropomorphic personification. He speaks in all caps. He’s been around at least as long as humans have, and as humans have imagined him into being (skeleton, black robes, scythe) he has taken to wondering what we humans really are. He bears us no ill-will — he just has a job to do.

The Hogfather, rather like Santa in that he was once a midwinter solar god whose job description gradually changed into a bringer of gifts for children, drives a sleigh powered by 4 boars: Tusker, Snouter, Gouger, and Rooter. Children leave him pork pies, sherry, and turnips for the pigs. He disappears — he’s dead — the balance of belief is badly out of whack. Death takes up the job for the long Solstice night, and forbids his granddaughter Susan from interfering, knowing that she will. Part of the job can only be done by humans, and she is, mostly.

At the end of the book, the Hogfather has been saved. Susan, exhausted and furious, verbally savages her granddad — and here we come in, you and me and your Mom who loved you even when you were a heartbroken teenager who yelled at her.

🌜🌜🌜
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."



REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.



"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"



YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.



"So we can believe the big ones?"



YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.



“They're not the same at all!"



YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.



“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"



MY POINT EXACTLY.
🌛🌛🌛

Justice and Mercy and all the things our hearts are breaking for here at the end of December 2024 — we have to imagine them into being, we have to create them ourselves, we have to believe in them before they can become.

And to all a good night.

Hildegard of Bingen: medieval music to sooth the soul

My younger sis had her tonsils out in 5th grade. Prior to that she had one strep throat after another

Interestingly enough, I never caught strep even tho we shared a bedroom all thru childhood. I first caught it when I was in my 30s because it was going around the office and my damn sick boss used the phone on my desk.

But back to my sis. She was born when I was 6 y.o. and our brother was 5 y.o. — so primary school in the 1950s. We brought home every childhood disease going around, which meant that in the first year of her life she got measles and mumps and chickenpox and rubella. She was one sick little baby. She was so tiny that at the age of two my parents took her to a pediatrician for a couple of visits, which was a big deal because our family doc was a GP who took care of the whole family for everything. The pediatrician said she was just going to be “a little hummingbird.” She was 3 when we moved away.

What she was was a really skinny little girl who was sick a lot with strep and whatever else went around. Our dad did not believe in tonsillectomies — but we moved again, and a new doc took one look at her throat and said the surgery absolutely had to be done, and so at the age of 10 it was.

She started to grow. She grew about 12 inches in a year. She was hungry all the time from growing so fast, and mom just kept feeding her probably 6 times a day, and she was still skinny.

“A little hummingbird” my butt — by the time my sis quit growing she was nearly 6 feet tall, which is 8 inches taller than I turned out to be.

I honestly don’t know what to say about the study correlating anxiety disorders and PTSD with having one’s tonsils out. Our dad didn’t approve of the procedure because he and his sibs were of a generation born just after WWI when it was commonly done as a preventative measure — so dad and his two sibs were sent to the hospital as a group to just get it over with. Anxiety disorders — don’t really know that it runs in that side of the family, though I suspect PTSD was probably present because of the time they spent in an orphanage.

Where the anxiety disorders run deep is on my mom’s side of the family, but truly they (and we in my generation) also had experiences that could account for that — and I suspect a genetic component. My sis got the whammy. But from a tonsillectomy that cleared her system of a serious, continuous infection? Pardon my skepticism, when she was so desperately sick as an infant, and repeated illnesses dragged on for years. My health has always been better than hers, starting with greater resistance to infectious diseases after childhood.

Still, compared to a study with a million people in it, I expect my family’s experiences can easily be chalked up as anecdotal.

They don't mention side effects, which I'd like to hear more about. I think I know someone who's using Mounjaro...

…which I think the article mentioned as having the same active ingredient. (I had a bit of trouble reading it at source because of all the blinky-blinky ads but will try again)

We are a nation of lab rats in an experiment designed to see if a constant bombardment of ads for things to eat and drink that are high in calories, fat, salt, sugar, bright colors etc. will result in brain changes that make it impossible to resist.

The weight loss drugs that actually help work on the brain. Other drugs that notoriously cause weight gain, such as those for depression and anxiety — also work on the brain.

Cost is a real issue, of course, our for-profit system being what it is and our insurance companies not interested in using their considerable leverage to bring down costs across the board. In June my doc said he’d see how my blood work was in December before trying something — but it turned into a good news/bad news joke because my results this month were unexpectedly good, with all my ailments under control. Except weight and severe sleep apnea.

Now lo and behold scientists took one ingredient from the weight loss drugs, ran a study with 4,000 sleep apnea patients, and voila, they slapped a new label on it and I qualify. Pardon me while the lab rat laughs its ass off.

I read it when it came out, and I admit I haven't re-read it. But some of my most enduring memories

…of that foul document were the ways Alito and Roberts resurrected shaming language I grew up with, and at the same time made it clear that the job of women was to produce an adequate supply of babies, including adoptable babies. Now in the bad old days, the “production” of adoptable babies was very largely up to teenage high school girls, who were induced by the threat of a lifetime of shame and poverty to give up their babies.

Contraception was not readily available to young unmarried women, much less underage teenagers. Griswold vs Connecticut — guaranteeing married couples in their homes the right to obtain and use contraception was not decided until 1965, the year I graduated from high school.

In Dobbs, Clarence Thomas (I think it was he) opined that all the SCOTUS decisions based on a notion of “privacy” needed to be re-examined — and the bastard enumerated them: everything from Griswold to Obergefell (gay marriage)

So in answer to your original question: yes, women and girls are duty bound to provide the patriarchy with babies, regardless of our personal desires or circumstances, including health and poverty and education. Seems like Elon Musk’s mama agrees.

I hate the Skeezy Six.