Eagles are headed back to the big show. I started out this season blogging little post game updates, but the team was so good; so business like and predictable that I got bored with it. Go Birds! Keep being boring.
Thinking about the Eagles in those terms reminds me of an America that was similarly business like and predictable. Some of you are too young to recall it, but prior to NAFTA, de-unionization and the gutting of the industrial middle-class, prior to the rise of Fox News, prior to the ascendency of outright frauds in politics America was business like, predictable and delightfully boring.
Granted, the soviets had nukes, the CIA was fighting “communism” by installing history’s worst despots around the globe, and civil rights at home were not universally recognized or applied but things seemed to be trending in the right direction. There was a broad consensus that the country should endeavor to be more good and just, and less unjust and bad. Who ever thought we’d look back at the 1970’s and think “That might have been America’s high water mark.”
While Republicans who are active in the party are angry idiots and/or greedy assholes, some regular civilian Republicans are not those things. Ultimately we are all being jerked around by and Australian billionaire committed to leveraging the first amendment (and human misery) to ascend to zillionaire.
People dislike their political opponents for views that most don’t actually hold.
(Over)estimation of political opponents’ agreement with extreme issues predicted cross-partisan dislike, which in turn predicted unwillingness to engage with opponents, foreclosing opportunities to correct misperceptions.
Obviously “both sides” are not equally complicit, but point taken.
Usually some of my nonsense sneaks into the top ten of all DL posts during a given year. (Who can ever forget “Bryan Shupe Calls Himself Educated and Yet He Knows Literally Nothing About William Tyndale’s ‘The Obedience of a Christian Man’ “)?
But not last year. 2022 was the year of El Som. And CHEERS to many more!
The smart money remains on angry idiots.
GOP’s Civil War – Angry Idiots vs the Greedy Assholes
DANA POINT, Calif. (AP) — Ronna McDaniel has become the longest serving leader of the Republican National Committee since the Civil War. But now, she must confront a modern-day civil war within the GOP.
Frustrated Republicans from state capitals to Capitol Hill to the luxury Southern California hotel where RNC members gathered this week are at odds over how to reverse six years of election disappointments. And while there are many strong feelings, there is no consensus even among the fighting factions about the people, policies or political tactics they should embrace.
On one side: a growing number of elected officials eager to move beyond the divisive politics and personality of former President Donald Trump despite having no clear alternative. And on the other: the GOP’s vocal “Make America Great Again” wing, which has no cohesive agenda yet is quick to attack the status quo in both parties.
Far-Right shitheads, be they American or Swedes, are always eager to carry water for Putin.
Putin Organized a Quran Burning to Sabotage Sweden’s NATO Bid
Swedish journalist Chang Frick, affiliated with Russian propagandist channel RT, paid for Danish far-right activist Rasmus Paludan to publicly burn the Quran near the Turkish embassy in Sweden.
The protest that took place on Saturday caused backlash in Turkey and led to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying that Sweden shouldn’t expect Ankara’s support for its NATO membership bid. Swedish media suggest that Moscow was behind the Quran burning, using Frick, who has worked as a freelancer for RT and its subsidiary Ruptly.
