Senator Saltine on Diversity

 

JD Vance laments the diversity of New York City ahead of Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally:

“London doesn’t feel fully English to me anymore. Right? New York of course is the classic American city. Over time, I think New York will start to feel less American.” pic.twitter.com/W8p4yXcZQS

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 27, 2024

Poor Jimmy Donuts. The swarthy children of the Empire came home to roost in London Town and assorted Caribbeans are trotting through New Amsterdam! It's a multicultural chaos I tell you!

Reminder:

 He knows better. But out loud and in public he's doing a whole different thing:

While They Were in the Nursery

 

Things had come to such a petty pass when last I blogged that I took a small break in the hopes that the revelation of so much smallness would not, actually, shrink my spirit like cotton trousers in a warm soak. The American Rescue Act passed, and not a single Republican wanted dick to do with it. Dr. Seuss they have time for. (I hear there there are more important things.) Mr. Potato Head they have time for. They will make time for lecherous cartoon skunks--before they bother with the needs of the American working class, who have been battered by the COVID-19 recession, and have been alternately told they are "essential" and treated like they are expendable if not disposable, and small businesses that need a helping hand. 

But when I saw Thursday night what we'd been missing for so long, I found myself back on my blogular bullshit. We have an adult in the White House now and the Republicans don't know how to act. Our dad kicked their dad's ass on the electoral playground and now he's kicking him in the nuts every chance he gets and they're big mad, you guys. I mean, sure, Biden is more popular than Trump ever was, but like, Trump was president, um, too? And did a job of it, right? Very productive!

And while we're at it, where's Trump's participation trophy for throwing money at pharmaceutical companies to get a vaccine going and only getting like, half a million people killed? 

Okay. Here:

Let's call it the Donald J. Trump "What Have You Got to Lose?" trophy and let him stick it wherever he puts his newspaper clippings about getting nominated for the Nobel Prize, right by the portraits of himself he bought with his fake-charity slush fund money and his also fake Time Magazine covers, because the real ones aren't always that flattering. 

But I've already spent too much breath on Trump, haven't I? (Hasn't everyone?) The real story is how the GOP had no after-Trump plan, and now they have nothing at all but "not whatever Democrats want". And since Democrats just mostly want good government and our people not dying, broke, or sick, um, what they want looks bad, actually. 

Also they want to suppress people voting because of course they do. They've given up on expanding their map and have definitely reached the "quiet parts out loud" part of their desperation--but it's okay, because they kind of think the Supreme Court is with them on this. I mean, compare what the representative from AZ said with Buckley and Bozell from another era. (The sins of the fathers, etc.) They can't win on the kitchen table talk, so they want a culture war. 

But what does that even mean, anymore? When Marco Rubio sides with an Amazon union bid because of culture war--it means less than nothing. When alt-right gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos declares himself an ex-gay for attention, we get a little nearer to whatever minute we're in now on the conservative clock (or check with Andrew Sullivan, still gay but basically a phrenologist).  

The conservative case seems to be a whole battle with the entire arc of history. (For everyone bending the arc of history towards justice, there's these pricks, riding athwart with dragging spurs yelling "stop".) The concept of time, even. The idea of getting out of the nursery. It's meatheads who practically swallow their tongues in the face of men who aren't their kind of manly and women who aren't their kind of feminine, families that don't look like the dolls that came with their dollhouse playset and human beings that aren't easily labeled. Who might be from somewhere else or even have a different idea of God.

So here's my take--I don't want unity with toddlers who break their toys and have tantrums when they don't get things their way, and who don't see others, for example, atheist, feminist and queer, or in any other way multicultural or diverse, or divergent in perspective, as deserving of respect or recognition. The GOP lost me when I was in the nursery, and so were they--when the Silent Majority of Nixon gave way to Reaganism, trickle down, and the culture war I always kind of thought was a little bit personal--against me. 

They are still in the nursery, and have opinions about, I guess, reefer madness. But we need to move on, even if Republicans aren't coming. So I just don't give a shit about unity or bipartisanship. I care about doing what works and protecting real people, not cartoon characters and plastic spuds. I hope Republicans get over their Trump-Daddy issues eventually, but they can't hold up fucking progress.

Which Side are You on? (Trump?)

I could spend time breaking down President Trump's bizarre press nightmare, but I don't really fucking care what he said today. He was saying it all along, but some people just weren't paying attention. Hillary Clinton gave an entire speech about Trump and the so-called "alt-right" almost a year ago, and I thought the case she made was solid and apparent--my bad. It turns out, someone like Donald Trump can be a lifelong racist surrounding himself with other racists, and people will actually pretend they don't notice. That shocked me more than it should have, I will admit.

But then again, I am a funny old thing--I believe Americans should kill fascists. 

Look at the header of my blog--"This blog kills fascists. Eventually. It's a process I'm working on. Be patient with me." That header is a call-back to Woody Guthrie, who just forthrightly put "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar. My blogging isn't up to Woody Guthrie's songwriting, but I aspirationally hope I'm doing my bit. I'm not going to kick fascist ass all at once, but I will attempt it. Like I thought it was my job. 

And what do you know--Guthrie had his dealings and complaints about Old Man Trump (Donald's daddy).  Donald Trump started the hell off in this life Team Racist and fascist-associated. (No really, I'm not linking The Nation and I don't want to say Roy Cohn was such a fascist, but am I pretending Roy Cohn was not a fascist? Go--read Politico. McCarthyism is fascism. It doesn't matter that Cohn was a gay Jew. Demonizing and destroying and doubling-down and publically lying about everything? Shit's fascist. )

This blog is rooted in the mid-20th century ideas that Keynes rocked, that civil rights for all were a positive good, and that we all are supposed to stand against fascists. It's what the good people do. It's what Churchill and FDR did. (Stalin--I don't know him.)

It's what heroes are supposed to do. 

In the United States of America, where I thought I was living, Nazis are stupid and bad at best and are history's worst monsters because of course they are.  I mean, who demonizes and singles out ethnic minorities and gay and trans people and religious minorities  and disabled people and tries to codify into law ways to make the oppression of these people permanent? 

Oh, right. Trump. Because he is what he is. (And let's not actually "go there" and pretend his honesty is refreshing-it's shit. I don't expect people to eat shit and smile. You like this? You like eating shit, and there's something fundamentally wrong with you.) 

We are supposed to see Dictators as bad and even clowns in this society.

Hitler and those who are Hitler-adjacent are supposed to be targets of our scorn, not our admiration. People waving Swastika flags are not okay--ever.  You should expect better. The people who would easily accept standing right by them--are not okay either. And this Confederate thing--kind of fascist, also too, with the added problem of being treason against the US in the defense of bondage-slavery, because read the actual articles of secession of the states in question. Yes, it was always about slavery, not states' rights. Because it was about states' having the right to endorse slavery. Because the South was like, "Screw it" with respects to Northern States' feels about the Fugitive Slave Acts, which made catching free human (black) bodies and delivering them back into a pernicious bondage incumbent upon people who didn't want any part of it. Which was obviously fuckery. Northern states had to comply with making black people slaves, and the South at first simply didn't give a shit if the Federal law was about determining what states were free--but then when GOP President Lincoln happened, they had a total freak-out and got scared he'd take away their bondage humans. 

Wow. Fucking snowflakes. Makes you wonder why the Party of Lincoln is being all about Confederate statues now, doesn't it?

I Swear Barack Obama Gave one of His Best Speeches

All I know is that in this second term, a lot of what President Obama has been saying plays on the themes of Stonewall, Selma and Seneca Falls. He returns to the essential idea that freedom and justice alike are woven into the multicolored tapestry of our history as a nation, forged in the steely ink of our founding documents, tested again and again whenever Americans have faced trials and struggles. He weaves once again this great notion of a strong nation, made more perfect by the work of many hands, in offering support to someone who can take up the banner and go forward with it.

It was an encouragement that the successes (which are very real) of his administration have a chance to continue under great, Democratic leadership. It's an exhortation to participate in our democracy to keep it strong. It was a paean to our diversity and the many ways it gives us strength, and should not be feared. It was uplifting, and a rebuke to people who don't grasp what the essential greatness of our country is--its potential, and the portability and timeless nature of our values and dreams, that are transmissible and easily the greatest export, the finest product we can ever peddle and which are free to any man, woman, being that wants to become a part.

It was about patriotism, and more--it transcended ideas about "left" and "right" labeling, explicitly revealing how individual freedom and progress was up to everyone as a part of our civic heritage.

I know I am going to miss the hell out of President Obama--although I am looking forward to seeing what a still-young man might do in his post-presidency. But he also made me look forward to what Hillary Clinton might accomplish in office. It was the highlight of the evening. A jewel.

(I know I skipped over mentioning VP Joe Biden and VP-to-be Tim Kaine's speeches--and it's a shame, because I think these are actually two of the most compassionate, sincerely nice and decent people in politics today and they both did excellent--it's just, seriously? Barack Obama's speech took my damn breath away.)

Discrimination Hits my Hometown

Monday morning, apparently, some jerk in a red pick-up truck bowled a pig's head onto the steps of the Al-Aqsa Academy mosque in my very own hometown. It's pretty clearly symbolic--pork is not halal but haram. So this act was using a little bit of knowledge about Islamic tradition to try to defile a mosque. It was pretty disgusting, but it is only mildly intimidating--still, I think this is a bad sign regarding what utter irresponsible bullshit is going around in the presidential race.

Mayor Nutter, who is about as mild-mannered and cool a cat as you can find, referred to Donald Trump just recently as an asshole. He isn't wrong--in fact I admire his restraint in not referring to him with Charles Pierce's winning sobriquet of "ambulatory pilonidal cyst". (I think one of them kept Rush Limbaugh out of 'Nam. Thus, good for exactly nothing, ever.) My man for the PA Senate race, John Fetterman, called Trump a jagoff. Yup. This, too, sounds about right.

See, leadership is a funny old thing. You can lead bigoted asshats to support your mouthy hide by yapping it up, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for the permission slips you went and wrote to all the delinquent-ass SOB's who took the perfectly generic insinuations you made and then decided to hit up actual people and threaten them, personally. And if you do not understand or accept that responsibility--you are not any kind of real leader, because in the real world, words mean things and policies have consequences.