GoodbyeBlueMonday

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

• Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Let's not throw in the towel, as dire as things look. It's not over yet. Organize.

When folks claimed, in 2015, that no one hated trump before he ran for president (also forgetting he ran a sweaty napkin of a campaign years prior) I always loved playing a couple songs by the Coup.

They had someone pretending to be him rap in one from 1994 (the joke being that he's hated even by other rich assholes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrSk8Um2Sso (lyrics here: https://genius.com/The-coup-pimps-free-stylin-at-the-fortune-500-club-lyrics)

And in a powerful line in a track of their 2001 album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84bJG5qj96w (lyrics here: https://genius.com/The-coup-ghetto-manifesto-lyrics)

I practice this like a sport, met Donald Trump and he froze up

Standing on his Bentley yelling, "Pimps down, hoes up"

Reminds me of a great pair of line from a Warren Zevon song: "I can saw a woman in two, but you won't want to look in the box when I'm through."

Good guess, but doesn't look like it: July is when the Earth is at its furthest point from the sun.

Is there a Republican who is better than McCarthy?

IMHO the bar has to at least be someone who is not on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Caucus

Also, just about any of the Republicans on this list would be better than McCarthy. The ones who haven't been ousted since, at least. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/house-republicans-january-6-commission/index.html

A quote I think about a lot is one by Susan Sontag, and I think it maps pretty well to what you've laid out (just obviously not in that same order!). "10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”

It’s like when King Solomon had 2 women fighting over a baby. So he offers to cut the baby in half. And one woman says “no, she can have the baby!” and he knows she’s the real mother. The Democrats are usually like her.

I think the Democrats have finally learned that there is no wise Solomon that will reward wisdom and responsibility, so the "fake mom" always gets the baby.*

The thing is....in a lot of ways, I agree with you. I do generally want people to take the high road whenever possible. I think short-term losses can be long-term wins, because I think moral behavior is a good thing to model in the world. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing for everyone. The GOP though...as long as I've been alive, haven't been good faith participants in our democracy. There's a danger in letting bullies get away with their behavior, if there's no evidence they're willing to reform.

So I respect this as a surprisingly tough play from the Democrats. The Republicans could have initially put forth a better Speaker candidate that got bipartisan support, but instead they kowtowed to the extreme right, and the Speaker they put in reneged on a budget deal, so he got shitcanned. The moderate Republicans could still, now, reach out to the Democrats for help. But like McCarthy on Sunday, most of them are terrified of their base, and see bipartisanship as a poison pill to their reelection changes (which is true).

*I think in this metaphor Solomon is "the voters", and the "fake momma" is the GOP?

“True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.

While we were being bombed in Dresden sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

There's a great They Might Be Giants song about exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSbEOZY7k20

Cool, the nuance here I can get on board with. Thanks for expanding.

Do you have me confused with someone who has wronged you?

My only response so far was a (admittedly cheeky) reply to your comment about how your reasoning for something being a 'hard truth' is simply because it's the way is...a complete circle, your logic on that one.

You're getting dragged by others because you opened with an objective claim that milk tastes better, which is a subjective opinion. You're now pivoting to argue that cow milk is objectively better because it's more popular? Taylor Swift isn't the best musician because she's popular. Because "best" is incredibly complex. Best guitarist? Composer? Singer? What's best of any of those categories, anyway? We gotta ask Phaedrus, I suppose.

If you're trying to argue that cow milk is the "best": Cow milk is really good at getting protein and other minerals/vitamins to folks. Really good. It's got a lot of properties that make it really useful in some recipes I love. Also I eat a lot of dairy ice cream, and yogurt. I'm not some anti-milk crusader.

Dairy production, however, is really energy- and space-intensive compared to some alternatives. There's a tradeoff to be thought carefully about, and it deserves more than "cow milk is popular therefore it's the best". Unless you're just trying to say that cow milk is popular because cow milk is popular (which no one was arguing?). If that's the case, see my first reply. Circularity complete.

Are you familiar with the term 'tautology'?