2020-01-20 Australia: bush fires and how civilizations collapse

What is going on right now in Australia is horrible. It will, no doubt, make far future history books (if there is a civilization left) as an example of how we were staring obvious Collapse in the face, and said, “Whatever! I’d like more of that.”

This inspired Jay to mix his love of boardgaming and his bleeding heart to make this video on the game Hotshots and raise money for the bush fire release.

Continue reading about a socio-political irony after the jump

The “conversation”

Read this today:

…that conversation is never going to be had. I’m already running into Trump-voting motherfuckers – people who said so, frequently online, the receipts are there – who now deny ever having done so. If that fucker loses in 2020, you’re gonna see so many people forget who Trump is that it’ll scare you, you’ll think all us white folks got some kind of new brain disease.

So true.

Voting in America redux

I wrote about voting in a historic election eight years ago. Since then, California has become more blue, there are even more political fliers, and the only thing the left wing can seem to agree with the CAGOP on is what this state needs is even more propositions on the ballot.

Even though, back then, I strongly suspected I’d be casting this vote eight years later for Hillary Clinton, I didn’t realize how this day would hit me.

Marie got dressed in a pantsuit and we walked across the street to the community center to vote. Unlike me, she was homeschooled as a Christian conservative and voted for George W. Bush in 2004—her vote is more meaningful than mine.

Marie voted in her pantsuit

But my vote wasn’t mine, it was Mom’s—not to celebrate or affirm women’s right to vote or anything like that, but because I love her, she always admired Hillary Rodham, and, most importantly, because she only would go to the polls to cancel out Dad’s vote. ?

Not this time! I called Dad yesterday and he said he’s with her—quite possibly his first vote for a Democratic candidate for President of the United States, definitely his first vote for a woman for that position.

I started blogging with the purpose to “write to create context for another to think” just after argument with my father about politics in 2004. He said:

“Nobody said democracy is perfect. It’s just the best thing we’ve got. Terry, maybe you’re right, and I’m wrong. But if you are, then have some faith in our system that the truths will come out. Have some faith that people can change. They just don’t have to change on your timetable.”

I honestly never thought Dad would change. But my father, with his vote with mom now, and a lifetime of past votes against, finally won an argument with “mom’s lawyer”: I have faith, and people can change.

No matter the outcome, this election reaffirms that faith in the conversation that is our democracy.

One Bad Hombre and one Nasty Woman (in a pantsuit) went to the polls and voted!
San Francisco, California, United States

So lucky she and I can split the workload of sifting through all those ballot propositions. Now that’s love. ??

I don’t care who you support, if you can vote, Vote!

@Tay.AI predicts the next Pulitzer

I love articles like this. After all, I’ve been saying for the better part of a year that Donald Trump is Microsoft Tay made flesh and stuffed into an ill-fitting suit:

Note to self: Add Sanjiv Rai to this tool and this one to list of people that we won’t have to hear anything about ever on November 9.

I seriously wonder how these reporters find these whack-a-loons, because they deserve whatever the Ig Nobel-equivalent there is for a Pulitzer. Who knew there is such a large market for liberal bed-wetting? 😀

Political courage

Last week, no less than eleven people on my facebook shared this “confession” from Mike Rowe, with positive comments.

I can’t believe people think this deserves anything other that derision.

He’s more “Hollywood” than the people he denigrates. It takes real political courage to potentially alienate half your viewers, it takes none to opt-out with the tired “I won’t say, other than our politics sucks”-cop-out. It is pure pandering to use ill-thought-out platitudes like “voting is a right, not a (civic) duty” and “most people are too stupid or uninformed to vote” in a manner crafted so that **all** sides can retweet, repost, and feel self-righteous about it.

Pathetic.

If you take his philosophy to its natural and logical conclusion, we as a country should reinstitute literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise minorities and other such undemocratic measures. After all, what better way to ensure a enlightened democracy than to allow only those with the requisite amount of education and capital to make the “right” decision? Plato agrees, fuck this thing called democracy.

Here is the truth: The United States has been an experiment in whether a democratic republic can ensure liberty. Yes, even if that means risking its failure under a Trump presidency because more people voted for him. Taking that risk is courage; abdicating it, like Mike Rowe, is cowardice.

Ignore the cowards, if you have the right, even if you believe Hitlery will destroy America and needs to be stopped (heck, because you believe she will destroy America), go vote on November 8 this election. That’s an act of political courage and another test of this two hundred and thirty year experiment.

Who they are, who we are

I understand Trump appeal, he is a man who speaks for the “people”. The question for me is not Trump because there is away going to be some asshole who comes along, what bothers me is the alt-right movement altogether. It’s like why is there so much hate that is being taken as logic among this group?

The “alt-right” almost ended our revolution before it was declared. They tore at our republic before it was founded. We fought the bloodiest war in our history with them. When it was finally over, they found a way to void it within a decade so their sin would forever be our sin. Even as recently as 1968, George Wallace carried five states solely on their message. After that, the Republican Party rebuilt their entire party around them. Heck, the anti-abortion movement is their proxy contrived for polite company.

They had many guises and went by many names: slavery, “fit vs. unfit”, “separate-but-equal” “states rights”, movement conservatism, “cognitive elite”, “religious freedom”, and, most recently, yes, the alt-right.

Even before they became “Redeemers” at the first hint of threat to their power, they embedded a nomination rule to ensure they had veto power within the Democratic Party. When that was finally excised to elect FDR, they migrated to the Republican Party and they are only now just discovering that their tiny plurality in their former party comprises the majority of the motivated base of their new one (hence Trumpism).

No, the “alt-right” under some name has always been with us and will always be with us. It is our original sin and a part of the American identity. When they rear their ugly head, they need to be fought and “roundly defeated by the abiding decency and good sense” of the rest of us. And yet, at the same time, sadly, we must admit, they are us: We, the People.

Nobody said democracy was easy.

Comfort yourself with the knowledge that they have always been the losers in our history. They were the losers when they said a black man is three-fifth of a person, they were (are?) losers when they said that a woman couldn’t vote, they were losers when they sent blacks to the back of the bus, forced birth on women, and kept gays from marrying. And, yes, they will be the losers again—they that say build this wall, deport that Muslim, and show your birth certificate at the bathroom door.