America is the land where the bully is king. We watch "Wall Street" and think Gordon Gecko is the hero. The most popular scene in "Pushing Tin" was that asshole threatening everyone with firing. "Fall Down" is another where viewers completely missed the point. He was the bad guy.
In foreign policy, we have bullied for years, threatening invasion and actually invading. We have supported an initiated coups across the world. We have invaded countries based on lies and weenie-wagging.
Trump's popularity is rooted in his being the unrepentant, unshamable bully.
People thing being a bully shows courage, but there is no one more cowardly than a bully. Just compare Trump and Hillary reacting to someone rushing the stage. He is a physical coward.
Biden has the kind of courage people who worship bullies cannot conceive. There is more courage in doing the right thing and taking the hit than in kicking the can down the road. The Afghan can has been kicked down the road too long.
I discovered I have another Anti-Vax niece. She never posts about politics, doesn't forward any shit. She talks about her kids and her horses. She rescues horses. She is not anti-mask as her pics show her and her son in masks. But she just posted she's afraid they won't waive
the requirement so she may need to find another job. The thing is, she knows COVID is real. She's had it. But this is how this shit spread. Her son's wife has always been anti-vax. Both of her siblings have Down's Syndrome. She wants a reason for it
She wants to be sure she has neurotypical kids (and she does, my great-nephew and her have three kids) but she bet on avoiding vaccines to protect her kids from cognitive disabilities long before COVID.
I cannot find the NYTimes piece. One of their folks interviewed a bunch of people, including Democrats, all expressing relief that Bush was president - because the GOP would not unite with Gore the way Dems did with Bush. Gore gave a speech saying Bush was his president..
Please do not buy the "we were so united" story about 9/11. That unity went only one way. Democrats chose country over party. Meanwhile, Republicans and the media said repeatedly it was a good thing Bush was president instead of Gore because Republicans would never support Gore
They said it as though they thought it was commendable that they were incapable of putting partisanship aside if their guy were not in the White House on 9/11. The media seemed to think the same thing. It was when I realized they were never the loyal opposition.
They used the national tragedy to purge people in the media. Donahue was fired even though he still had better ratings than others on the network. Reporters were fired if they weren't on the pro-war beat. WIRED did a story about how the people who were wrong about Iraq War
Yesterday was amplify women day on Twitter & I was too tired. I could name so many. I want to say, though, that I miss CriticalThotCop & wish she had not been driven out of Twitter. But let me list a few people I admire for a quality I lack, patience with yahoos:
If you want an illustration of why the NYPost is shit and the New York Daily News is better compare their stories on the death of Michael K. Williams. In the NYPost they say he likely died of an overdose while the NYDN says the ME will determine cause of death.
My nephew died in his 20s of a heart defect that no one knew about. There was a lot of local speculation about him dying of a drug overdose. This was hurtful to my sister. My nephew did use drugs, but drug use does not mean someone dies of an overdose. Flawed assumptions at work
Here is a reminder that J. D. Vance is nothing more than a fraud.
J. D. Vance created a nonprofit called Our Ohio Renewal. It is as phony as he is. It spends its money on management fees, not on renewing Ohio. vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/j…
I recognized what he was when he was on his Hillbilly Elegy publicity tour. His intellectual ancestor is Phineas Quimby, who originated New Thought, the source of prosperity gospel, the idea that wealth equals moral rectitude and poverty is the result of character failure.