TygrBright
TygrBright's JournalThings I did today that were harder than voting:
Today my esteemed spouse and I voted at the local library. It took a grand total of ten minutes and probably would have been only 6 or 7 except for all the bond issues and state Constitutional Amendments and judge retention items.
I did other stuff today too, that was a lot harder:
Bought a replacement sink faucet at a big box retailer. Nightmare, no assistance, not even any cash registers, WTF. Never going back there, Big Jo's Hardware has real people working there. Worth the extra drive. Sheeesh.
Scheduled maintenance for our heating system. Comedy of call-backs and unintelligible voicemails and unavailable time slots and wrong address transcriptions, but eventually we got something for (we hope) next Friday.
Tried to drop off a jacket at the Costurera Alteraciones to get a zipper replaced. Traffic was bad, parking was bad, and in spite of two (2) large neon "OPEN" signs in the window, when I went to the door the guy inside shook his head and pointed to a placard saying they'd be open tomorrow.
Also it was a step-up day for my working out, which was a bit challenging, but also rewarding.
Still, voting is just about the easiest thing I did today.
GIVE IT A TRY!
encouragingly,
Bright
Some Realities that Chill Me (warning: long)
America's Constitution was an (admittedly flawed) attempt to wrest political power from traditional privilege hierarchies and create a government from and for "we the people." Possibly the most revolutionary concept ever committed to a legal document.
I believe the only reason it worked as long as it did was the contemporary unspoken assumption that "the people" were, (and would forever remain) white, male property owners. Well-intentioned ones, certainly. They perceived the elements of hereditary privilege vested in family, education, economic advantage, and adherence to a state religion as the barriers to the liberty and equality they hoped to propagate and maintain in this new representative government.
A few of them did reject that unspoken assumption, and attempted to incorporate tools that would allow a gradual expansion of the definition of "the people". First, beyond the property ownership requirement. Then, perhaps someday, beyond "white". Maybe even (eventually) beyond "male".
They faced the challenge of welding together a disparate group of independent polities with very different understandings of the desirability and speed of that progress. Compromise was necessary to reassure the existing "the people" (those white male property owners) in control of various states. Their political and economic control would remain fundamentally secure, even as the new nation welcomed immigrants, claimed additional territory, and scrabbled for a secure place among nations finding America's structure threatening to their older order.
This timeline of voting rights is an illuminating look at how the definition of "the people" expanded over time.
People describe the United States as a two-party representative democracy, but to me America's history looks more like a semi-oligarchy comprised of three groups of white males:
One group is genuinely interested in realizing the most radical interpretation of "the people" and fully expanding political and economic opportunity and to those people. It's not the largest group of white men but it has the broadest support from others, which expands with each success.
One group accepts the premise of a need to expand the definition of "the people" but favors a gradual and limited expansion that will allow opportunity but preserve much of their own power and control. This is the largest group of white men and has historically held the balance between the other two.
One group has never, ever accepted even the slightest expansion of "the people" and has historically opposed, overtly or covertly, the agendas of the other two groups. It is actually the smallest group of white men but it controls the most resources.
That last group includes Christian Nationalists. I think most readers have heard of some of the more extreme forms of this ideology. They are not new. Just the ongoing and current iterations of a highly exclusionary and absolutist ideology supercharged by "Divine" sanction. In today's America they are also extremely well-funded and widespread.
The last group also includes genuine, serious believers in one or another version of the "mudsill theory". The several versions of this highly toxic antebellum holdover devolve to a sincere conviction that for any polity's economic, social, and cultural well-being to prosper, a large 'underclass' of people defined by some specific demographic characteristic MUST exist - and be maintained.
I actually found it difficult to believe that anyone - certainly not anyone in 21st-Century America - could believe, much less provide cover for, such a loathsome argument. But it never really died out, and many of the "thought leaders" of today's GOP, channeling the warped burblings of Russell Kirk, have made it the underpinning of their economic and social agenda, culminating in Project 2025.
Thanks for sticking with me thus far. Now the realities of today's America that chill me:
That third group of semi-oligarchic white males has morphed, by virtue of systematic deregulation of the economy, destruction of public education, and deployment of toxic disinformation, into full-blown would-be oligarchs. They have amassed massive amounts of wealth, influence and resources in support of their agenda. They are determined to reverse 230 years of expansion of the definition of "the people" and return all control and power to white male property owners. They are not shy about this. They are saying the quiet part out loud, now.
By deploying their stupendous wealth in service of their ideological goals with a strategy of "flooding the zone" with disinformation, scare-mongering and conspiracy theories, they have co-opted a large part of the middle group of semi-oligarchic white males. This has decisively shifted the balance of the power, influence and resources controlled by a now-substantial majority of white males, to the service of their agenda.
Many decades of maneuvering by these groups have resulted in the infiltration and vitiation of many of America's Constitutional "checks and balances" (see John Oliver's September 30th, 2024 segment on the Federal Courts) that backstop democratic power.
More recently, concerted efforts to corrupt, subvert and/or destroy the mechanism of American electoral democracy have gained effectiveness. Well-funded dark propaganda aimed at destroying faith in the integrity of the electoral process is both depressing turnout and setting the stage for "soft coup" efforts strategically deployed to overturn or subvert electoral results.
This is a lot like climate change: The further it progresses, the more difficult it becomes to mitigate, much less reverse.
If they can, fairly or unfairly, install their helots in the Executive Branch, they will have effected an event horizon. There will be no going back short of horrendous violence and destruction lasting many years and, as always, destroying the most vulnerable in the largest numbers.
If they fail to capture the Executive Branch, they will not quietly go away. They have contingency plans. We can see them already deploying those plans. They are laying the groundwork for stochastic terrorism aimed at producing sufficient civil disorder to achieve consensus that only the abandonment of constitutional rights can save the polity. The Federal Judiciary is prepped to deny and subvert attempts to restore checks and balances. The Noise Machine has an abundance of scripts ready to sow confusion, division and dissent to derail any consensus on restoring the structural elements of equity and opportunity.
These things wake me in the night.
But, like climate change, we must not abandon hope or give up on returning to the path laid out by our nation's founders. I believe we still have a majority. We have human ingenuity on our side. We understand and believe in the power and promise of science, creativity, and respect for one another's humanity. Younger generations are reaching for this torch. We cannot let them down.
I am not optimistic about what this means for me, personally, for my generation or my daughter's generation. We may have to put everything into the struggle, up to and including the last, full measure of devotion. If we do, perhaps my grandchild's children will live in an America that will again be a beacon of equity, justice, and peace.
I hope I have what it takes. Being a believer, I pray for this every day. When the moment of great demand arrives, I want to be ready to do whatever it takes, without hesitation and without counting the cost.
May it be, may it be so, may it be most assuredly and abidingly so.
somberly,
Bright
In 2022, approximately 21,000 Americans were murdered.
That was down from approximately 22,000 in 2021 and 2020.
In 2018 and 2019, there were almost 17,000 homicides each year.
In fact, since 1990 (we can reasonably assume a substantial majority of those 16 and older who committed homicides in 1990 are still alive unless killed by the government, and thus, "living in America" ), there have been more than 600,000 homicides in the U.S. While some of those may be repeaters, there are still likely more than half a million good ol', native born, 100% real Amurrican murderers living in America.
A couple of interesting facts: Statistics on how many homicide CONVICTIONS (numbers) were adjudicated between 1990 and 2022 are, to say the least, difficult to find, in spite of the many assertions by DoJ and state statistics bureaus that "rates of conviction" (percentages) are increasing.
Also, during the period 1990 - 2022, numbers of murders in America peaked in 1993 at 24,530, then dropped sharply over the subsequent seven years of a Democratic Presidential Administration, to a low of 15,586 in 2000.
Murder rates went up again overall between 2001 and 2008, during a GOP Presidential Administration although they did not return to the pre-1993 levels.
And during the Democratic Presidential Administration between 2009 and 2016, murders went generally down, reaching their lowest number for the whole period in 2014 with 14,220, when they started trending upward again, reaching (during a GOP Presidential Administration again) about 18,000 in 2017, and nearly 17,000 each year in 2018 and 2019, and then spiking to over 22,000 in 2020.
The pandemic numbers were high, but since 2022 the numbers have been dropping.
I sincerely doubt that the 13,000 skeery immigrants can even begin to compete with our own home-grown slaughter maniacs, frankly.
And I definitely feel safer during Democratic Presidential Administrations... the numbers reflect that safety.
Of course, none of America's brilliant Fourth Estate will do any kind of actual coverage of these realities. Look for the xenophobia screamfests to begin in 3..2.. oh, wait, they're already rolling.
wearily,
Bright
It seems too widespread to be a "kink"...
Although honestly, I think it is one. And if you have it, you should probably find other consenting adults to roleplay and enjoy it with.
But as far as I can tell, a fixation on underage sex partners (usually reported as men preying on very young women) is maybe just a notch removed from a really aberrant and creepy condition: pedophilia. A kind of "pedophilia borderline?" When a 37-year old man "dates" a fifteen-year old, it's creepy AF. And there seems to be an awful lot of it about.
The thing is, I just don't see the attraction.
I mean, 15-year-olds are at a very different stage of maturity than someone in their late 30s.
I'm not saying we all have to stick to partners within 5 years of our own age - circumstances definitely change. Even so, a 20 year old "dating" a 15-year-old, while maybe not as squicky as a 37 YO doing so, is still iffy and, in most places, potentially criminal.
I do get the appeal of the hot younger woman to the successful-but-woefully-insecure middle-aged (or elderly) misogynist. If you regard women as (essentially) an advanced form of livestock, not fully human like you, then you'd naturally want to "own" the one that would make all your successful-but-woefully-insecure middle-aged (or elderly) peers green with envy. Like having the hottest car, or the biggest... boat. Or something.
But can anyone tell me what the appeal is in having sex with someone who's not only immature and at a stage in life when they are developmentally focused on themselves and their peer group, likely with a great deal less breadth of experiences and interests than yourself, and, well... not necessarily able to enter into your own life experiences and developmental concerns?
It seems... weird.
WHY?
Unless, of course, they're just garden-variety creepy misogynist assholes who seek inexperienced young women because they're likely to be a) less threatening to your pitifully fragile ego and insecure manhood, and b) potentially easier to control, exploit, and abuse.
It that it, Representative Gaetz, you pathetic schmuck?
curiously,
Bright
It's Taken a Long Time to Get Here
By now, even many of the more delusional legacy media organizations are starting to realize that a tipping point has been passed. You can argue about where and when, but the nature of that tipping point is becoming increasingly clear:
A majority of American voters (possibly a majority of Americans?) are now officially tired of being made to watch horrible people doing awful things.
We're tired of it as entertainment. (Do we really need another Gordon Gecko-type antihero film about a sleazebag grifting the system? Seems people are now looking for happy endings and everyday heroes.)
Sleazy billionaires are still insulated in their bubbles of sycophantic employees and hangers-on who tell them 'everybody wants to be you' but the truth is outside that bubble, more and more of us just want them to shut the fuck up and/or go the hell away.
And, sadly for the GOP, the number of voters who are really attracted to corrupt, creepy misogynistic racist xenophobes is rapidly shrinking.
Even worse for the GOP, Americans who've never been attracted to those same vile hatefilled wannabe authoritarians are NOTICING that the GOP has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Greedy Motherfuckers Unlimited, Inc., and are starting to look askance their beloved "Party of Personal Responsibility/Family Values/Fiscal Conservatism/Patriotic Ideals/Etc." and say "WTAF?!?!"
The GOP has always been an unsavory bastion of retrograde mastodons who want to make rules for thee and me, but not themselves, and who cherished the ideal that Being Rich Makes You Smart and Should Make You Powerful Too. But in the past, they had to at least pay lip service to the notions that corruption was bad, judges should be impartial, the Constitution is the basis of American success, and people who blather on about family values probably shouldn't have large stashes of weird porn in their basements, much less their desk drawers.
They always had a few 'respectable' loss-leader type high-profile Party solons who generally acted like thoughtful public servants even if their notions of policy essentially devolved to "a place for everyone and everyone in their place", with them on top, of course.
But in their demographic panic, they threw any and all semblance of responsible leadership overboard in a hail mary pass to lock up the "We Admire Horrible People Getting Away With Awful Things" demographic in the hopes they could implement the End of Democracy before the demographic tide made them an unpleasant memory.
And now they're being confronted not only with the reality that they are failing, but that their sole base of loyal support is shrinking rapidly and the rest of us are starting to long for fresh air, nice people taking responsibility, kindness and empathy, joyful celebration of beauty and humanity, and a rest from the "OMG, NOW WHAT" news cycle.
The dustbin of history awaits them.
certainly,
Bright
AND. A. GUN.
Today the Fourth Estate is conducting post-mortems on the report of some guy who caught the attention of the Secret Service at [Redacted]'s Florida golf course.
There's a lot to the story, because apparently the guy in question had a substantial online and social media presence and no inhibitions about telling everyone what's wrong and demanding it be fixed.
So far I've read post-mortems from several media outlets, and they're generally of a muchness, with varying attention to some of the stranger details of the guy's online communications, travels, political donations, and self-reported activities.
A representative sample from the Associated Press summarized the guy thusly:
Among the approximately three dozen articles that pop up on a DuckDuck search, here's a representative set of headlines:
What we know about Ryan Wesley Routh, the man detained in ... - CNN
Who is Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in the Trump golf course ... - NPR
What's known about Ryan Wesley Routh, suspect in possible Trump ... - CBS News
Ryan Routh: Who is the alleged suspect in the Trump assassination ... - Fox5 Atlanta
Who is Ryan Wesley Routh? The suspect in Trump Florida ... - Vox
Who is Ryan Wesley Routh? Man held for 'apparent assassination attempt ... - Times of India
Just half a dozen of many, many attempts by the press to fathom why a guy on the edge of a golf course was a lethal threat to the Presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party.
Here's what no one, so far, in any of these press organs, is apparently noticing:
HE.
HAD.
A.
FUCKING.
GUN.
You morons.
Not a really good gun for the purpose, frankly. But a gun. Capable of doing lethal damage, not just to a target, but to anyone nearby and/or between the guy and the target.
HE HAD A GUN.
Get it?
Yanno what? There are lots - hundreds of thousands, I'd bet - maybe even a million or more - people who have criminal pasts, lots of outrage, and political beliefs that change.
They might even want to eliminate some person they perceive as a threat from the political landscape.
But WITHOUT A GUN, they're unlikely to succeed.
Apparently, the "Fourth Estate" is either unaware of this, or thinks we don't give a shit about it.
Probably a few of them do get it but are just sick and tired of having to point out the FUCKING OBVIOUS in the face of relentless denialism from... drumroll, please:
PEOPLE WITH GUNS
Tough shit, media.
It's your FUCKING JOB.
DO IT, or what the hell are you worth, anyway?
outragedly,
Bright
(Who does NOT HAVE A FUCKING GUN.)
P.S. Sorry about all the swears. Apparently I do still have a few fucks to give.
This Johnson/Goldwater election slogan needs reviving, NOW:
"In your guts, you know he's nuts."
EVERY time some dumbass media burbling head starts sanewashing [Redacted] they need to get inundated with that slogan.
It could not be clearer, and it resonates today even more powerfully than in 1964.
certainly,
Bright
"Prairie Progressives" TOON - Perfect!
Source: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/4/2267612/-Cartoon-Prairie-progressives
I especially love the third panel, having grown up in the state that differenced it's Democratic Party with the official name "Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL)". I thought ALL Democratic Parties were about "Farmers" and "Labor"!
I hope every half-assed media shill gets this shoved under their noses...
appreciatively,
Bright
I had a dream.... I think this is why [Redacted]'s gonna bail on the debate:
In my dream, I saw a typical major-network debate stage, with the Vice President standing at a podium, giving a measured, intelligent answer that parsed a complex issue in a way that most audiences could easily understand and relate to (no, the dream didn't include WHAT issue. You know how dreams are...)
As she was talking, looking into the cameras, a big, fugly, shambling creature in a baggy suit and long red tie appeared behind her, padding slowly around seemingly at random, but getting closer and closer to her.
The Vice President caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye, cast an exasperated look at the moderator, said, "one moment..." into the mic, and turned around.
She confronted the creature and pointed to the other podium on the stage. "What do you think you're doing? Get back behind that podium!"
At which point the creature shriveled, she turned back to pick up giving her answer with aplomb and coherence, and my dream-mind knew the debate had been won.
I suspect [Redacted] may have had this dream, too.
speculatively,
Bright
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