A few thoughts while waiting for the coming storm, any damage from which and any failure on the part of FEMA to respond appropriately will obviously be the fault of Joe BIden, for according to members of a certain political party everything that goes wrong is Biden’s fault.
I’ve been doing this blog now for over 20 years, as if I recall correctly, I started it sometime in January of either 2004 or 2005. I originally posted on a MAC platform which no longer exists, so the oldest posts are no longer available, but this site goes back to 2007. Of course back in those olden days I posted almost every day. Back then, even when writing about the worst things that happened, you could take a somewhat optimistic view of things, and it wasn’t hard to find something to write about where you could persuade yourself that what you were saying had some element of originality. Why, back then, even Republicans were not open and proud Nazis and they felt at least some obligation to pretend they weren’t racists. Of course, even until just recently they kept up the pretense, and they even had to abandon the anti-gay stuff and start picking on trans folks. Those days are gone now, of course. Open racism is making a comeback,so the trans folk may catch a break pretty soon.
It’s getting harder to think of things to write about because everything is so obvious that one feels there’s no need to point stuff out. For instance, does anyone really need to be told that there’s no distinction between Stephen Miller’s ICE and Hitler’s Gestapo? Okay, Miller hasn’t opened up gas chambers yet, but Hitler hadn’t either in the early days and there’s still time. Does anyone need to be told that Trump is rapidly slipping into severe dementia or that despite that obvious fact the major media, with precious few exceptions, pretends it isn’t happening? Does anyone need to be told that the anti-immigrant talk is, for most of the GOP, simply a way to distract Americans from the fact that their government, while totally controlled by said Republicans, is doing nothing for them, unless they are in the top .0001%. After all, that’s been the whole point of anti-immigrant rhetoric since the days of the Know Nothings. Does anyone need to be told that the current “Supreme” court is the worst in American history, with the possible exception of John Taney’s court and that the constitution no longer means what it says, but it means whatever John Roberts and his fellow Nazi enablers want it to mean. Does anyone even need to be told that any word coming out of the mouth of the current president, vice president, cabinet members, Trump appointed bureaucrats, Republican elected officials, or media enablers is presumptively a lie, and it’s only news when one of them accidentally lets slip the truth. Does anyone need to be told that the Democratic establishment (looking at you, Chuck Schumer) fails to understand that it’s not 1980 anymore, when there were still a few principled Republicans in elected positions.
Okay, some people do have to be told these things, but doing so will do no good, since those are the very people who believe everything they hear on Fox News, or, to be more honest about it, pretend to believe everything they hear on Fox News, as it all reinforces their bigotry and their entrenched belief that all their financial troubles, such as lack of health care, low pay, high housing costs, etc., are somehow caused not by the billionaires and their Republican enablers but by people who are worse off than they are. To bring Dylan’s lyrics up to date, they totally respond to the argument that they have “More than the [insert favorite hate target here], don’t complain”. Anyway, those people wouldn’t be reading this blog.
Back in olden times I posted a YouTube music video every week. It occurred to me that this song speaks to what’s going on today. I chose this version because I think Rhiannon Giddens is a great singer. You’ll need to sit through Paul Simon’s long introduction, but it’s worth it.