TrumpWorld is Riding Until the Wheels Come Off

 

Just so we are clear, when the GOP hit the TrumpWorld Trifecta--they motioned to keep riding the 2025/47 Agenda until the wheels came off. Apparently, though, the vehicle they have chosen is a Cybertruck, so the wheels will come off sooner rather than later.  (Panels, also, too!)  

Best of luck to the State Department on that Tesla contract. Ride in the best of health and luck, which you will need. 

Yes, I am comparing TrumpWorld right now to the Swasticar, 

Musk has fouled the brand of the companies he acquired because of being a wealthy dumbass, not founded because he's not actually what he represents himself as. I don't know why his Frankendick still gets ridden like it is. But it's clearly made up of dead to the game actual founders, who took Elon's money and decided they were good with him doing his thing to their brands.

History is Looking at Us

 

Vice President Harris: The patriots at Normandy, Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall… They did not sacrifice only to see us cede our freedoms and submit to the will of another petty tyrant. The United States is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. In 7 days, let us turn the… pic.twitter.com/oCrGbk4EAg

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 30, 2024

This isn't about crowd-size or partisanship: do we believe in the arc of history bending towards justice? Do we believe in justice flowing like a river?  Do we believe in this nation, conceived in liberty, shining like a city on a hill? Do we believe in the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Do we believe in the faith of our pilgrim fathers there was a promised land for them? Do we believe that women matter? Are we here for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? And one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? 

Are we the last great hope of the world? 

Or do we think this country is a garbage can? 

Can we have a better movement than what Trump gave us on 1/6/2021?  Like the movement we always did have? 

Portrait of a MAGA Patriot

 

Someone's angry MAGA mee-maw became profanely enraged when advised that she can't come in to vote with her Trump shirt so she goes ahead and votes in her foundational garment. 

Hallelujah. Be a suffragette, Ms. MAGA. Don't let them mothers tell you how to be.  Vote for that serial sexual abuser, you dusty old sister-shafter. 

Anyway, Trump's lil mini-me JD Vance rolled his eyes so hard his eyeliner flaked and responded:

"What a patriot."

A lot of people took this to mean he supported being abusive to poll workers, and wow! That truly seems to be the MAGA vibe. 

A Republic--If You Can Keep It

 

This is what the New York Times chose to publish on Independence Day just one week after the Supreme Court ruled that Republican presidents are above the law. pic.twitter.com/URoJg6ohru

— @StephenWolf.bsky.social (@PoliticsWolf) July 4, 2024

The New York Times, which has been going out of their way to promote "Biden is too old and must drop out" editorials this week, decided the way to follow up on that terrible trend was to platform some mook who wants to pretend voting is a bit of hogwash. Well...not just some mook. Matthew Walther is a Catholic conservative (although it's hard to say if he just sort of is a hater in general--he calls the Constitution a "231-year old piece of toilet paper" in this screed against the Tea Party libertarians) --just like Leonard Leo and Steve Bannon and the derpsticks who ruled Trump is kind of/sort of a monarch.

Encouraging people not to vote (especially if one does, in fact, vote--possibly for Tulsi Gabbard which feels like fuckery) is a kind of voter suppression. Which is weirdly in line with Russian active measures to undermine confidence in voting. 

Democracy depends upon an engaged, informed population. The press can be a valuable part of that process of informing and engaging citizens--or it can do whatever this is. The chattering classes who write about politics are, when not encouraging apathy, so stuck on horserace politics that in the discussion of possibly replacing President Biden on the ticket have invented a fantasy horserace to write about. 

Is there nothing else to write about? Maybe how often Trump was mentioned in Epstein court documents? His new Saudi project? What Ivanka and Jared are up to in Albania and with whom? Anything to do about Project 2025--but especially how it would permit foreign nasties to interfere in our elections? (I remember when Trump wanted to cooperate with Russia on "the cyber"--do you?)

Biden's State of the Union: Earning Four More Years

 

President Biden gave one of the most dynamic State of the Union speeches I think I've ever seen. It was part pep rally and part revival meeting for Democrats. It was an expression of the good done by his administration, and a repudiation of the man known as "my predecessor". There was give and take with the crowd, flashes of humor, great sincerity, and most importantly, hope and faith in what this country stands for and can accomplish.

Biden addressed with seriousness our investment in the future of Ukraine, the need to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, he addressed immigration and crime explaining what has been done and what can and should be built on. He drew a sharp contrast between his work and his predecessor's talk. He highlight the success of his record--Republican's might not have like looking at those facts, but he got those fact out there, at one point saying he knew they could read. 

Can't they? They could learn what was successful for themselves. They could even look at legislation before passing on it. 

This speech was about effective government versus stagnation, steady improvement versus just constant useless bitching. It showed President Biden as a man fully aware of the concerns Americans face, and willing to engage with them, and to engage with people across the aisle who might not agree with him. 

What he did not seem was either "sleepy" or "senile". He responded to his hecklers in the audience of supposed grown people with jobs like a comedian who has worked this kind of crowd many a time before.

And of course, there were the chants of "Four more years!" 

A Sacred Cause

The significant thing to keep in mind about President Biden's speech yesterday is that he referred to the commitment to democracy of our founders as the sacred cause that we share to this day. He reminded us that the violent, unlawful events of January 6, 2021, were the result of selfishness. 

It wasn't about patriotism, but the cult of personality that surrounds one man: Donald Trump. The United States of America, the great experiment of democracy, the rejection of rule by kings and tyrants could all just be casually tossed aside by people who did not care about the Constitution, our institutions, our history.

They cared about Trump, and he only cares about himself.

The founding mission to form a more perfect union is our "sacred cause".

And on that same day, yesterday, the adjudicated rapist and fraud posted an ad on his failing Truth Social telling us he was basically God's gift to America. Because in Trump's mind, the sacred cause is himself. 

This tracks the messaging that comes from his rally stages from pastors - that God has chosen Trump to battle the Deep State. This is also a ripoff of the ad Casey Desantis made for Ron’s reelection campaign. This also says Trump goes to church on Sundays when he never goes. pic.twitter.com/OFcBsk5w3W

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 5, 2024

 I've written so much about Trump's appeal to evangelicals as God's chosen, and the blasphemy of it still shocks even little old agnostic me. 

The choice could not have been made more clear.

This TrumpWorld Grab Bag Doesn't Want to Be Friends With You Anymore

 

This quote from Woodward and Costa's book, "Peril" came up in the 1/6 hearing today; Trump told Mike Pence "I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this." This is what a child says in the midst of a temper tantrum. "We won't play GI Joes together and watch He-Man on the basement tv." It isn't what a grown man says. A grown man can accept he lost a fair fight. A toddler cries "Unfair!" when things don't go his way. Trump wanted Pence to violate the law, and he Tweeted to his angry followers in a way that suggested they should treat his VP like a traitor. He wanted them to hang Mike Pence.

Little kids don't have power like Trump did--we wouldn't give that power to an actual small child. But Trump is the baby-brained amoral asshole who delighted in his tantrum spilling over to thousands of other people, just because he didn't get his way. Mike Pence isn't a hero necessarily for going against Trump, although it did take some amount of physical courage--he was simply being a grown person who could see that the fantasy world where you just get new electors because you don't like how people voted was not reality. 

People voted for this immature jackass, and there are people who would vote for him again. He will not mature. He will not suddenly gain some new appreciation and respect for the law that he did not have on 1/6. He will still be the guy who extorted Zelenskyy, who denied his 2016 campaign had anything at all to do with Russia, that had several cabinet members whose exit he greeted with scorn and insults because they were "losers" (except--didn't he hire them in the first place?) and he will be the same dim bulb who pretended to believe insane conspiracy theories might keep his toddler ass in the White House even after 81 million people and the actual Constitution said they wanted him gone. 

Like Mom & Apple Pie

Just to get this off my chest--how did CNN find these ladies? Because Twitter figured out that they were activists of various shades. It shouldn't even be news to an outlet like CNN that when you see supposed "grassroots" movements spring up all over the country in the way school boards were hit by anti-mask, anti-shutdown, anti-CRT activism, like Tea Party activists swarming townhalls just about ten years ago over the ACA--maybe question what you're looking at?

Because while parents have great reasons to be frustrated lately, their anger is being deliberately shaped with outside help. 

Now, I feel extremely cynical writing about this. I'm the goddamn mirror image of the blonde ladies right there, except I'm more red-headed, and have no kids, and am atheist, and queer. But leaving all that aside, I'm culturally Catholic and damn-near white as nurses' shoes. So maybe I almost understand what kind of mistruths move these folks--but I don't. I can't. Lies are lies, no matter who tells them, and when they further marginalize people, I am not there for it. 

So anyway, back to the mom thing: remember this mom? Yeah, she was probably connected to Republicans too, and stuff, but you know what? McAuliffe could have blunted his "parents shouldn't determine what books" etc. soundbite with an ad with another white mom talking about freedom of speech. We don't have to assume all white moms are one way.

See Who The GOP is Siding With

 

Sgt. Gonell, who is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a naturalized U.S. citizen, says that one of the Capitol rioters "saw my skin color and said you’re not even an American." pic.twitter.com/NpI2L8N1fP

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 27, 2021

Sgt. Gonell was a professional law enforcement officer doing his job against a criminal, domestic terrorist mob that day, and Trump's little violent fan club did not see him as a fellow American. They also called him a "traitor" and a disgrace" for doing his job that day, because they apparently had no idea that they, that day, were the barbarians at the gate. They called his fellow officer Harry Dunn racial slurs, looking past his uniform and only seeing him as a man of color and a Biden supporter. Michael Fanone was also called a "traitor", and had to plead that he had a family for fear that these people might kill him with his own firearm. Officer Daniel Hodges recounts being asked if he was their "brother" by the domestic terrorists, because they didn't understand why a white police officer wasn't on their side.

The picture these officers relate is certainly not one of a patriotic love-in that seems to exist only in the delusional mind of the loser of the 2020 presidential election. It was a largely white/Christian supremacist violent insurrection, which certainly did include people who were armed that day, or who made weapons of whatever object fell to hand. 

Republicans (other than Cheney and Kinzinger) wanted to distract from all of this. They wanted to blame Nancy Pelosi for things that had nothing to do with her, like Rep. Elise Stefanik claiming that somehow she was responsible for the security situation that day. For one thing, the Speaker of the House doesn't control the DC National Guard, the President does. (From the website: "This authority to activate the D.C. National Guard has been delegated, by the President, to the Secretary of Defense and further delegated to the Secretary of the Army.  The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President. " )

What Stefanik is doing is basically the Benghazi "stand down" ruse--claiming something must have happened that almost certainly under the circumstances makes no sense within the timing or for any plausible motivation, but might sound plausible to people who really fucking hate liberal politicians. Why in the world would Nancy Pelosi, certainly a target of the mob, not want her workplace and her very own ass defended? That's just stupid, and while Stefanik is probably not an actual idiot, she should be very definitely upbraided for promoting such a stupid easily debunked lie for no other reason than cynical politics. 

But she is not alone in being a signifying distraction. 

One Nation Under a Threat

 

Nothing like taking your kids to Philadelphia for the 4th & running into literal Nazis. These scumbags belong to the group Patriot Front. That may or may not be my kids & I joining a growing crowd yelling at the spineless dickholes & chasing them away from City Hall. #fucknazis pic.twitter.com/bqYviUq1Bd

— Not Today (@SunnyDelight888) July 4, 2021

Sometimes people talk shit about what the price of freedom is, with some people (and I'm not casting judgment on them, only their home-training) saying that it's the blood of patriots. Fuck no. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. If Jefferson didn't actually say it, it's still gospel to me. You have to be on the look-out for signs that freedom could be slipping. 

Like bully-boys thinking they can parade down the streets of a not especially white city demonstrating I don't even know what. That they exist, I guess. They weren't there to recruit. Well, it wasn't appreciated here, I can tell you that much. But why did they come to get rousted? (Did they think anything else would happen?) Were citizens in the birthplace of the US gonna look at these suburban mall-ass wannabees as something to get scared of? 

 Here's the thing, Philadelphians will fight anything. If you're a hitchhiking robot or Santa Claus, we've pretty much kicked your ass. We've even tried to excommunicate Columbus and Frank Rizzo--and they were both very much our kind of shit at one time. Maybe they came to get their asses kicked in to report that some cities in heathen America really needed to get fucked over, eventually. Because fascists love martyrs. Love them. Why else would "Who shot Ashli Babbitt?" be something Trump even echoed Saturday night?\

To Discourage the Others

CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: "Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike." How is this acceptable? pic.twitter.com/19TKOn4kSq

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 24, 2020

I think we can imagine a competent White House swooping in with a plausible denial that anything like "Vote against this president, and your head will be on a pike" was never uttered except in hyperbole or jest. And of course, a literal beheading, the likely tarring of the severed head (to preserve it), and the affixing of said head to a pike is not the type of revenge that the president, resplendent in all the powers we are supposed to believe by Republican arguments that he wouldn't, nope, not ever abuse, would engage in.

But I think we could imagine some form of vengeance, and it would be no surprise at all. Revenge is his politics.

This is your White House.

‘I can’t wait for revenge’: White House aide vows payback over Trump impeachment trial#ImpeachmentTrial https://t.co/ZuJHHwy3jR

— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 23, 2020

Revenge against just who in that Tweet? The opposition party? Renegade GOP Senators thinking of making a bid for a little independence? The journalists who are reporting on Trump's political fortunes? All of the above?

What does it say, then, about the Republican senators who keep faith with the president, after the evidence we already do have, and who seem dead-set against getting anything more? Are they so placid and incurious--or are they scared, and why this scared, and why not more concerned for their country than their offices? If removed, what then could the big bad man even do? Tweet mean things? Why allow him the latitude to do anything more?

If speeches heard during the trial, made by Schiff and others seem as if they were intended to rub Republican noses in their complicity, and shame them in how they are responding to Trump's bullying and threats...well, maybe they are. Maybe they need to be shocked from learned apathy. I do not know.

I also do not sympathize with them, much.

Scoundreltown

There is a saying to the effect that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and I guess it looks a little bit to me like some folks want to set up a flag-draped resort community and throw stones from their little red white and blue glass bungalows. Of course, it's the Squad, alleged Ayatollah sympathizers, who can't be patriotic enough, or even deserving of PTSD if they came up in a war zone. According to the new hymnal,  Democrats are supposedly "in love with terrorists" now, as Rep. Doug Collins wants to put it, prompting veteran and Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth to respond explicitly:

"I left parts of my body in Iraq fighting terrorists." Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs serving in the Iraq War, ripped into the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who has accused Democrats of being "in love with terrorists." https://t.co/2NpcDSyWdk

— CNN (@CNN) January 10, 2020

I don't expect Republicans to feel the sting of that one. I remember Max Cleland, who also left body parts behind, having his patriotism questioned, too.  I remember how scurrilous lies against John Kerry (who was later integral to the Iran nuclear deal and speaks about it eloquently) led to propaganda against his presidential campaign that also had some confused partisans practically mocking all purple heart recipients.

I know Trump had no problem mocking John McCain's service, or feuding with Gold Star families (plural--more than once). All the more reason for Collins to rethink his sycophancy for Trump if he really cared about who supports Gold Star families. (Trump, by the way, penalized Gold Star families with his tax plan, habitually lies about who achieved the veteran's CHOICE bill (it was a McCain-Sanders bill, signed by Obama)  and has given lip service to reducing troop levels in our wars abroad while raising troop levels.

Not How We Usually Roll

Tanks for President Trump’s “Salute to America” Fourth of July celebration were seen arriving in Washington on Tuesday morning, just days before the event is scheduled to take place. https://t.co/kgWBK6FGUw

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 3, 2019

Concern for the streets of our nation's capitol will keep the brand-new shiny tanks (but not, likely, any new "Sherman" tanks) from parading but Trump insisted he get to show off some military toys and stand with the heads of our different military branches in what is starting to feel a bit like a stealth Trump rally. After all, what would you call it when the RNC is giving out tickets to big donors to a VIP area for Trump's speech? It doesn't sound nonpolitical. And all of this is being staged with taxpayer dollars!

Even protesting the excessive display (we don't have a final tab, but this won't be cheap, folks) isn't nonpolitical, or entirely "not about Trump". The slightly goofy big baby Trump balloon will make an appearance, and the crowd will include a sea of people wearing shirts honoring the USS John S. McCain, a vessel named for three generations of men who fought for this country, which also, alas, is calculated in part to annoy Trump.

It seems to me one thing that's easy enough for folks to do is be patriotic elsewhere and tune out Mr. Center-of-Attention. The day isn't about him, and we have other things in this country to be proud about. The thing of it is though, we are always reminded of his horrible influence in this country and the damage it is doing. Some of us might not really be feeling in the mood to celebrate our country, right now, in view of how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. That is reasonable, too. We have and do struggle to create a "more-perfect union" and our greatness is, in some ways, aspirational rather than immediately felt.

Do You Know What Today is, Kids?

Apparently it's National Symbol Groping Day!

Should This Stand?

This is going to be a pretty short post because it's already the wee hours and I am certain there will be great shades of fuckery to confront on the morrow, but there is something especially weird about the tendency that President Trump has to undermine the various intelligence agencies who actually do the work of gathering information and analyzing it to provide context that should inform Trump's decision-making process. This relationship should not be either adversarial, nor should it be a top-down thing where Trump dictates what "reality" is.

The IC has provided credible information that ISIS is still active, that North Korea has not stepped down its nuclear program, that Iran is still largely abiding by its nuclear agreement, and that while border security is important, the overland threat is sort of not that big a priority. And Trump rubbishes it all, and then posts the above Tweet that tells us not to believe our eyes and ears about what IC professionals who have sworn an oath to protect and defend this country are saying, believe Trump! Trump might trash treaties and hate NATO and not even understand what defending allies is about, and for that matter, believes climate change is a hoax even though the Pentagon takes it seriously now, and has been doing so for years.

Any person with an open and rational mind, being confronted with information from people who have made it their lives' work to provide high-quality information in the service of their country, would try to incorporate at least some of it into their own frame of reference to try and do their own job better.

Not Donald Trump. He seems to find expertise suspect and is intensely uncomfortable with the very idea that he might not be the smartest person in the room. And it seems like he prefers to take his cues from actually stupid people, like the cast (I cannot call them "journalists") of his favorite shows on the Fox News channel.  Could anyone think for an instant that Lou Dobbs knows more than the FBI about law enforcement or counter-terrorism? (Dobbs has the distinction of being an original "birther" and having been dropped by CNN for his especially anti-immigrant views. His only distinguishing quality seems to be his bigotry.) Let alone weighing in on the rare genius of other Fox personalities like Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters, who do not understand that the sun and wind still can generate electricity even when it is very cold, because they are functionally science illiterate, and who promote racist propaganda because they are...

Well, by any stretch, not persons who should be trusted over the actual people doing national security work, anyhow, regardless of whatever low esteem they should actually be held in. But it nonetheless remains that Trump, despite having qualified professionals that could provide him with good information, prefers his entertainment to inform his world.  Quite possibly because he lacks the attention span for anything other than "the shows".

But there are fewer professionals available to try and amend Trump's odd mental topiary,  owing in part to the thanklessness of the job and Trump's own limited arsedness to replace the brain-drain in his administration with good quality people, if he could even get them. In fact, his recent shut down was explained somewhat anonymously as an opportunity to purge careerists--quite baldly admitting that expertise wasn't really the Trump Administration's thing.  

Long story short, Trump harps on the Deep State because competent people see through his bullshit, and this gives him a lot of discomfort. So how long will anyone want to stay on when words will be put in their mouths, and their genuine assessments will be supplanted with Trump's casual falsehoods? Especially when he prefers, when his lie is called out, to continue not listening. 

The Rocket's Red Glare

In honor of the July 4th holiday, I decided to avoid discussing any other disturbing Tweets in favor of the couple that let us know what our Commander-in-Chief is like as a strategic thinker. The above screen-capped sample notes that North Korea has launched another missile (a thing they have been doing of late with Trump in charge--this one qualifies as an intercontinental ballistic missile, which is something of a big deal).

North Korea has been specifically signaling the US regarding its missile-related objectives. But Trump specifically calls out South Korea and Japan and also China as being the nations who need to keep North Korea in line. I don't think it is the US president's place to direct what should be done with the JSDF or South Korean military--although a joint South Korean/US operation is also making missile splashies to show NoKo what's up.  I seriously doubt China will decide now is the time to invade and occupy North Korea because NK just doesn't have their shit together. North Korea has not had its shit together for awhile, and China just has had that be the status quo. Don't know why now would be different.

In other words, Trump is dropping names before he's even got a plan. This bothers me. It bothers me because one of the issues many of us 2016 voters had with Trump was competency, and whether Trump had adequate quantities thereof. The news orgs sort of implied he didn't. People who were more inclined to ignore news orgs voted for Trump.

In a test where some basic knowledge would help, quantities of us don't know whether our chief executive is ready for this. Understanding the world matters. Knowing the rules of dealing with other countries matters. It is true that US firepower is such that we could annihilate NK. It is also true that an anti-proliferation scheme and diplomatic alternatives should have been a consideration, well before Trump took office, amongst his foreign policy advisors (if he listens to any).

Many of us just don't trust a President Trump with stuff like this. We are informed by the media regarding his positions, and what we have heard appalls us. Our republic depends upon an informed populace. I worry about our republic, on this anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, because this president had eschewed learning and assaults the media who try to deliver facts.

Memorial Day 2017

Some gave all they had for an imperfect nation, for their love of their countrymen, for the ideals and values this nation stood for in their eyes, for a sense of profound duty, for the fellow service members fighting alongside of them. There are many reasons--but they are rooted in a sense of meaning greater than oneself. They performed an act of selfless honor. In their memory, it is fitting and correct to show honor not just to their sacrificed lives, but to acknowledge the greater civic community for which their sacrifice was made. We also can find our services to render to the greater good.

Let's Not Make the Super Bowl Weird, OK?

I don't follow sports because for the most part, nothing is actually ever going to be as good IMHO as WWE/WCW/ECW through the mid-to-late 1990's. That was just an incredible era for wrestling, and the fact is, I never bothered to learn all the plays or teams or could follow who was part of what team anyway. I really did super great at fantasy baseball for a couple of years because even if I suck as a sports fan, I am really great at understanding how statistics work and managed to get players like Wade Boggs and Lenny Dykstra in my batting rota to maximize hitting for on-base which routinely led to higher scoring, while keeping stiffs like Canseco off because who needs the errors? He totally gave up more bases than he hit for (homers are a misleading stat).

Anyhow, I don't know much about football even if I once wore one of the world's homeliest Eagles starter jackets back in the day (I think it was like this) when I was dating a total sportshead. (I looked so boss, though, with my mall-bangs, door knocker earrings, and skintight acid wash jeans. I am so glad pictures do not still exist of this late '80's/early 90's incarnation of yours truly, even if I was quite the Generation X East Coast artifact.)

But anyhow, the Super Bowl is like some kind of weird national holiday even for people who don't really follow sports. Even if you don't like football, there's something just right about the everybody eating snacks and judging commercials that feels so uniquely American. We're watching millionaires give each other brain damage, but we're also coming together as a nation to absorb something to say to our co-workers the next day in the break room.

Then along comes this weird post-2016 election season where people are still all politicized and being weird. Tom Brady and Bill Belichik are Trump supporters, apparently. Anyhow, the graphic above represents some alt-right guy making it weird.

Um. I don't really think it's cool to make the fandom of people in the US northeast about white supremacy without their signing off on it, and from what I gather--not all of them really would based on things like the electoral scoreboard. I'm not sure it's really a great thing for Trump that some of his followers automatically assume his support is also an endorsement of white supremacy, but I am damn sure it is not a great reflection on the New England Patriots organization that the alt-right wants to co-opt their talent and sports prowess to try and make some bullshit point--but I don't think the team invited this at all. And I know of so many NE sports fans who manage to be gung-ho about their sports teams while not being actual RW assholes at all! They are cool people who are homers! They just represent with the jerseys and the ticket buys. They aren't like, goose stepping and what not.

I'm just saying--let's not make the Super Bowl weird, where odd political signifying nonsense takes up our bandwidth, instead of factual sportshead stuff like whether the Atlanta defense collapsed and Brady et als capitalized. Let's just enjoy nachos and rewatch commercials like they were shorts put up for Sundance. C'mon. This should be entertainment. Not another "But I want to punch Nazis" day.

FWIW--I kind of always want to punch Nazis. But that has nothing to do with football. And also doesn't always mean "with a fist".

If We Have Forgotten

If there was a thing I thought growing up, it was that the US was great. The great melting pot. The leader of the free world.  A nation of laws, not men. A free country. One nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. And I continued to believe it as an adult, for old time's sake, even when the sins of a nation were uncovered through greater study--mostly good. Aspiring to be great. Freer than most.

Our unique position, historically, has been called "American Exceptionalism". The American cradle story we ought to know is that our country exists on paper--it is not any particular religion or ethnicity that informs our uniqueness,  but the documents that inform our law and our values. We have made sacred texts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution because they represent the formation of the American viewpoint. The expansion of the US meant that over time, our borders changed, and the influx of immigrants over the years meant our ethnic and religious composition also changed, but what was not called into doubt was that we made Americans of our immigrants and they became ours. This happened imperfectly. But it's been going on for years.

Later on, American Exceptionalism meant something about our strength as a nation and our military power--post-WW2 and through the Cold War and beyond. This in part can be viewed as a product of the denouement of WW2--the fall of the Nazis and the liberation of the camps, and the shock and awe of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Divorced from the aspirational view of an arc of history bending towards justice, there was always the more pessimistic view of our collective trajectory--voiced by H.L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis, that fascism could happen here--and I, steeped in liberal altruism, concurred.  It could happen here, wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross. Popular sentiment, that accepted slavery, segregation, know-nothings, bigotry against Catholics and Jews, Jim Crow, lynching, and so on, would betray our American ideals, because we aren't just aspirational about our exceptionalism, but are also always fucking it up.

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.)