It seems not only extremely possible to never hire Rahm Emanuel for anything, but easy.
So many seem to think that Biden winning means the job is done, when the truth is "the job" isn't a return to the old normal, but radically reimagining government from what it is now to something that actually works for people.
We clearly have a lot of work to do.
There are also many who seem incapable of realizing that even the worst version of Biden is better than an unsurvivable 4 more years of Trump, but never mind; the worse versions of Biden are pretty damn bad and we must demand much much much better. We don't have time for bad.
Julius clears his throat. “How long has he been going?”—gesturing toward the confessional, where Tennessee is still prattling (Julius tries not to overhear) about the boxes, and the generations of love, and bird and spade, and his lost boy gone forever….
“Hours. Never have I been so glad for Monseigneur Ex. He was getting on Pretty’s nerves, and Biscuit’s, too. They were trying not to show it, but … well. They weren’t trying hard. I sent him into the box to work it out there.”
“Well then, thank Christ for Monseigneur Ex,” Julius mutters.
“Yes, Jules,” Nettles says—indulgently, but he can hear telltales of concern. “But you were just about to tell about whatever happened to you today—weren’t you.”
You don't need to actively want genocide to create genocide, you know. You just need to believe a series of propositions that that will lead there; that make such an end first possible, then likely, and finally inevitable, even normal.
Which they do.
Which is *why* they do.
Incidentally, this is a big part of why listening to Trump voters is a terrible way to understand what drives Trump voters.
Trump voters are, observably, people who purposefully have chosen lies.
People who choose lies also choose to lie to themselves about their motives.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING is, in my opinion, very good. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Another one (after Shawshank) where I went in sure I would enjoy it, but not sure I would enjoy it as much as I had decades earlier (and also with trepidations brought on by more recently experiencing the unfortunate Hobbit movies)—but I liked it, I really really liked it!
Very clearly a labor of love on the part of everyone who had a hand in it, and with almost* every decision well-judged. Impeccable casting. Those miniatures, those costumes, that music ... man. Magic.
Nettles has her curtain pinned back on the choir side; an open invitation to visitors. Julius wanders over to her elegant cell and sits in the chair appointed near the opening. She nods hello without looking up.
Short, sunburnt, hair in a kerchief, wearing a blue brocaded caftan, perched on a stool, knitting. Julius watches her. She’s the eldest of their number, as the gray of her hair and the crease of her face will attest, but she holds a vitality that puts the rest of them to shame.
It’s something beyond physical prowess, it’s … presence, Julius supposes. An undefeatable consistency, a diamond sharpness to her particular way of being, which is direct but cheerful, pragmatic, almost hard-nosed, but optimistic.
“Great,” said Julius a long pause, perhaps less enthused about the notion of bad trouble on the way than Tennessee had hoped.
“So. What do I have to do?” Tennessee asks.
“Do?”
“To join up. Stay here with your gang. Huddle up under your roof.”
“The same thing everybody else who’s joined had to do,” Julius says. “Which is to want to join, and then to do it.”
“I don’t follow.”
Julius smiles. “Few do.”
“I have to do *something,* Captain. I have to show my value. I know how I’m perceived.”
This is a pretty common thing for people to say, in response to a total refusal to engage with abusive political ideas.
Saying it requires: first, a willingness to overlook intention, action, and effect; and, second, an acceptance of the lie that there are two "sides."
There are hundreds of "sides" — thousands. A wide diversity of lived experience and understandings of how to exist as a human, all trying to figure out how to live with one another in a way that honors the essential humanity and basic needs of everybody.
That's not one "side."
Then there are people who want only certain ways of being human to be recognized, and they want to define those terms, and they intend to punish any infractions against that order, and they want those who don't measure up to change or be punished.