DL Open Thread Monday November 21 2022

35 Comments

The Low Background Hum of American Anti-GOPism

For many Americans it is too taxing to get outraged anew each week, so a low background hum of outrage has settled on the country. And the Secret Blue Wave (or the Red Wave That Wasn't) was in part due to the fact that voters - even the non-political weirdos - understand the fact that one party is in favor of weekly gun mayhem and mass shootings and one party basically isn't. Even people who have never touched a protest sign understand the fact that one party is in favor of burning the planet to a cinder and one party basically isn't. And even people who don't like using "they and them" understand the fact that one party is in favor of making non-whites, women, gays and transpeople second class citizens and one party basically isn't.
That's an attractive gun nut philosophy because it makes gun mayhem un-fixable by laying the blame for mass shootings where they think it belongs - at the feet of James Madison.  I don't happen to believe this Madisonian spin.  Targeting the patrons of LGBTQ nightclubs, and children in schools for mass murder is not the work "lone wolf" nut jobs exploiting an anachronistic quirk in the bill of rights.

stochastic terrorism

the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted
I have no opinion on the appointment of a special counsel to specially counsel Trump's myriad of crimes, other than to say that this take from a 2017 issue of the New Yorker somehow still rings true:
MAR-A-LAGO BATHROOM, Fla.—According to current and former and probably also future U.S. officials, President Trump is guilty of yet another Very Illegal Thing. It is similar to all the previous Very Illegal Things, but somehow Even Worse. No former President has committed anything like this, let alone within the first term of the Presidency.

This Illegal Action threatens our national security, as well as our relationships with our allies, and will most likely result in nuclear warfare. According to the Constitution, which Trump has “totally read, of course, obviously,” the Commander-in-Chief is not allowed to perform the act that Trump actually performed just now, in the fifteen minutes before his next round of golf. It has been five months since President Trump, who at one point wanted to impress Billy Bush on a bus, took office.