That last tweet typifies my problem with "conservatives". They absolutely cannot give up worrying about what other people do for fun. I am not libertarian, but I am fairly libertarian in this regard: If someone enjoys doing something that causes no direct or indirect harm to someone else, I don't care if they do it. I hate the smell of marijuana and worry about my daughter being exposed to the smoke from it. However, I am fine with people smoking it as long as they are doing it without driving or causing some kind of public nuisance.
There is a gay couple that lives next door to us. Do I think about what they do in there in the dark? NO! I never think about them unless I pass them in the hallway.
Do I care what anyone is reading in their home? NO!
"Are we not supposed to talk about the US Army Major taking his family down to the local drag club for a night out?"
What a POS indeed. Yes, let's talk! About how LGBTQ+ people are not a threat to straight people. Let's talk about how many people have a LGBTQ+ person in their families or circle of friends, and love them. Let's talk about how Fierro loved his family and their friends enough to attend someone's first drag show. About how he demonstrated acceptance and support. How he defended people's lives - straight, LGBTQ+, unknown - at great peril to himself. I will talk about that all day long.
Taking a break from politics and MAGA for the moment, in advance of tomorrow's activities, to express my thankfulness to everyone at The Bulwark and, just as much, to all of you, for the many articulate and insightful thoughts and ideas that we have exchanged in our time here.
Because of you all I am much better informed and much more aware than I was before coming here, and I appreciate each of you for what you have contributed to our community. Thank you for your constructive comments, thoughtful replies, and endurance of my ramblings and occasional rants as we try to come to terms with the many significant changes and happenings around us.
Wishing one and all a safe and healthy Thanksgiving holiday, and the gift of time, to spend with loved family and friends as you see fit and on yourselves as well, to keep the stress down and your morale up. Our work continues as we seek to make the world around us a better place.
Free speech is so damn misunderstood by so many ignorant people.....
I have never seen the left as as big a threat as the right, they simply aren't organized enough. The far left couldn't organize a two car funeral procession. The far right on the other hand.....
There should be some limits on speech, no question, but extreme cases really need to be adjudicated on a case by case basis. That said, school boards being taken over by Christian Nationalists is going to do far more damage to free speech that Drag Queen Story Hour could even dream of. Lately it seems that Americans never disappoint when it comes to magnifying the stupid.
With the holiday season upon us, Elon Musk at the helm of Twitter, and fresh off yet another gun massacre in Chesapeake, VA that killed six (excluding the gunman), and critically injured several others, I must say I eagerly await Lauren Boebert's and Thomas Massie's tweeted Christmas cards. Owning the libs is evergreen classy. But as we just saw earlier this month, being a vicious scumbag to bathe in liberal tears may not be the electorally savvy strategy they once thought it was. And if they choose to eschew performative vileness with their Christmas tweets this year, they won't be able to hide from last year's tweets.
“In any event, there Kari Lake was at Mar-a-Lago, popping up like the head of an Arizona desert prairie dog rising for a lookabout.”
I appreciate this image from Dennis Aftergut. I want to bring up that Elise Stefanik did not endorse Trump before the smoke cleared from the midterms just to be put in the corner. I’m looking forward to the battle royale between these two and whoever else decides to enter the Veepstakes. That seems like a much better path to power than taking Trump on directly for the top spot.
Just wanted to bring up the hilarity of the two AZ counties that are threatening to not certify their results and thereby cost Republicans election victories. Stand firm!
In 1910, my grandfather, a college graduate from Birmingham AL, could no longer remain in that city.
His ancestors had been one of the first families of Jones Valley. Woodlawn, a section of Birmingham, was carved out of Wood acreage, where the scion grew up.
The reason Burda Harrison Wood (now there is a Southern name!) moved to NYC was becuase he could no longer live among residents with parochial ignorance and outright racism legalized as "separate, but equal."
Perhaps he was most brokenhearted by his Southern Baptist church that was instrumental in the latter.
The violence of the KKK was accepted as an "unofficial miltia"
to ensure "the coloreds" were kept in their place during his early lifetime there.
I offer this as a perspective that not much has changed in parts of the South and elsewhere in 110 years.
The notion (and optimism) that Trumpism will die off after the Sessionist-in-Chief slips his mortal coil is a fantasy.
Paranoia and guns will be with our culture for decades to come.
As H. Rap Brown (a student civil rights leader in the 1960s and 1970s) offered at a press conference 50+ years ago...
I seem to recall that notorious groomer Bugs Bunny might have donned drag a few times as well...IN A CHILDREN'S CARTOON!! -- and you can still stream those old Looney Tunes on HBO MAX. Clearly the apocalypse is nigh.
I am an atheist and while what Buechner wrote may touch the heartstrings of both believers and some non-believers, I find it somewhat pernicious in effect (like much of that type of thing).
Why do I find it pernicious? Because it (and other things like it and the beliefs that surround and inform it) dismiss/devalue agency.
Without agency (and the existence of choice that creates agency) there is no morality.
We have the capacity to recognize wrong from right (even if the definition of those things may be contextual or the source of them may be unclear). We have the capacity to understand our fellows and to put ourselves in their place.
We can choose to do or not do. We can choose to listen to our feelings or not listen. We are surrounded by the outcomes of choices, even if those choices are constrained by the larger nature of reality. Even if the choices are the imperfect results of imperfect methods.
It is our agency that makes us human (for good or ill). We must own both the good and the bad--because if we do not, things will not get better.
Neither God nor the Devil (if they exist) MADE you do anything. They merely provided the opportunity for you to CHOOSE. To choose to forgive or not forgive. To hate or love... all the myriad things that humans do.
You have agency... and if you are thankful for anything tomorrow, remember to be thankful for THAT.
This is a great newsletter today. Thanks so much for pointing out the difference between book banning and the Stop WOKE Act. These are not particularly easy issues, and nuance is not something seen on most news sites these days. Your free speech roundup was great. I wouldn't mind seeing more free speech roundups in the future, even on a regular basis.
I also enjoyed Kim Wehle's article. It's been hard to find news about the E. Jean Carroll case, which I've been following since Barr's DOJ decided that the whole force of the US government should be deployed against a woman with a valid rape accusation in order to defend a crooked lecher. I was highly offended by this, and I know I'm not alone. High office shouldn't be a free pass to assault women. And yes, I know it's a defamation case, not a rape case. One day, my dreams will come true and the people will decide that a man who abuses women is not presidential material. But that probably won't happen for a while. Right now, things are in an awful state. Everyone in my life wants me to know that Biden is a pedophile.
Does anyone imagine/believe that Trump was the only corporate/plutocrat type that got away with a ton of crap because he had the money/influence to get the court system to (not) work for him?
Anyone? Bueller?
This ties in, tangentially, with all the dirt about legislators trading in stocks?
WHY are these people allowed to own stocks or trade in them ITFP, in anything other than a blind trust? It's like saying, go ahead and be corrupt.
But we know who writes the laws, eh?
The people that write and enforce laws should not be allowed to write the laws that govern their own behavior in office or to be the agents that enforce those laws. Just like the police should not be policing themselves, nor lawyers or judges policing themselves.
So where has this guy been for the last 20 years, that he thinks going to a drag show with your family is over the top scandalous? I guess he has never heard of Hamburger Mary's.
What the tweet really shows is just how isolated and out of the mainstream these folks are.
That last tweet typifies my problem with "conservatives". They absolutely cannot give up worrying about what other people do for fun. I am not libertarian, but I am fairly libertarian in this regard: If someone enjoys doing something that causes no direct or indirect harm to someone else, I don't care if they do it. I hate the smell of marijuana and worry about my daughter being exposed to the smoke from it. However, I am fine with people smoking it as long as they are doing it without driving or causing some kind of public nuisance.
There is a gay couple that lives next door to us. Do I think about what they do in there in the dark? NO! I never think about them unless I pass them in the hallway.
Do I care what anyone is reading in their home? NO!
Quit.worrying.about.what.other.people.do. (That's not a link. Substack just thinks that it is.)
"Are we not supposed to talk about the US Army Major taking his family down to the local drag club for a night out?"
What a POS indeed. Yes, let's talk! About how LGBTQ+ people are not a threat to straight people. Let's talk about how many people have a LGBTQ+ person in their families or circle of friends, and love them. Let's talk about how Fierro loved his family and their friends enough to attend someone's first drag show. About how he demonstrated acceptance and support. How he defended people's lives - straight, LGBTQ+, unknown - at great peril to himself. I will talk about that all day long.
Taking a break from politics and MAGA for the moment, in advance of tomorrow's activities, to express my thankfulness to everyone at The Bulwark and, just as much, to all of you, for the many articulate and insightful thoughts and ideas that we have exchanged in our time here.
Because of you all I am much better informed and much more aware than I was before coming here, and I appreciate each of you for what you have contributed to our community. Thank you for your constructive comments, thoughtful replies, and endurance of my ramblings and occasional rants as we try to come to terms with the many significant changes and happenings around us.
Wishing one and all a safe and healthy Thanksgiving holiday, and the gift of time, to spend with loved family and friends as you see fit and on yourselves as well, to keep the stress down and your morale up. Our work continues as we seek to make the world around us a better place.
Moms for Liberty might be the single most pernicious, dangerous, fascistic group of conservative grifters in years.
Free speech is so damn misunderstood by so many ignorant people.....
I have never seen the left as as big a threat as the right, they simply aren't organized enough. The far left couldn't organize a two car funeral procession. The far right on the other hand.....
There should be some limits on speech, no question, but extreme cases really need to be adjudicated on a case by case basis. That said, school boards being taken over by Christian Nationalists is going to do far more damage to free speech that Drag Queen Story Hour could even dream of. Lately it seems that Americans never disappoint when it comes to magnifying the stupid.
With the holiday season upon us, Elon Musk at the helm of Twitter, and fresh off yet another gun massacre in Chesapeake, VA that killed six (excluding the gunman), and critically injured several others, I must say I eagerly await Lauren Boebert's and Thomas Massie's tweeted Christmas cards. Owning the libs is evergreen classy. But as we just saw earlier this month, being a vicious scumbag to bathe in liberal tears may not be the electorally savvy strategy they once thought it was. And if they choose to eschew performative vileness with their Christmas tweets this year, they won't be able to hide from last year's tweets.
“In any event, there Kari Lake was at Mar-a-Lago, popping up like the head of an Arizona desert prairie dog rising for a lookabout.”
I appreciate this image from Dennis Aftergut. I want to bring up that Elise Stefanik did not endorse Trump before the smoke cleared from the midterms just to be put in the corner. I’m looking forward to the battle royale between these two and whoever else decides to enter the Veepstakes. That seems like a much better path to power than taking Trump on directly for the top spot.
Just wanted to bring up the hilarity of the two AZ counties that are threatening to not certify their results and thereby cost Republicans election victories. Stand firm!
In 1910, my grandfather, a college graduate from Birmingham AL, could no longer remain in that city.
His ancestors had been one of the first families of Jones Valley. Woodlawn, a section of Birmingham, was carved out of Wood acreage, where the scion grew up.
The reason Burda Harrison Wood (now there is a Southern name!) moved to NYC was becuase he could no longer live among residents with parochial ignorance and outright racism legalized as "separate, but equal."
Perhaps he was most brokenhearted by his Southern Baptist church that was instrumental in the latter.
The violence of the KKK was accepted as an "unofficial miltia"
to ensure "the coloreds" were kept in their place during his early lifetime there.
I offer this as a perspective that not much has changed in parts of the South and elsewhere in 110 years.
The notion (and optimism) that Trumpism will die off after the Sessionist-in-Chief slips his mortal coil is a fantasy.
Paranoia and guns will be with our culture for decades to come.
As H. Rap Brown (a student civil rights leader in the 1960s and 1970s) offered at a press conference 50+ years ago...
"Violence is as American as cherry pie."
I seem to recall that notorious groomer Bugs Bunny might have donned drag a few times as well...IN A CHILDREN'S CARTOON!! -- and you can still stream those old Looney Tunes on HBO MAX. Clearly the apocalypse is nigh.
WRT the Buechner bit:
I am an atheist and while what Buechner wrote may touch the heartstrings of both believers and some non-believers, I find it somewhat pernicious in effect (like much of that type of thing).
Why do I find it pernicious? Because it (and other things like it and the beliefs that surround and inform it) dismiss/devalue agency.
Without agency (and the existence of choice that creates agency) there is no morality.
We have the capacity to recognize wrong from right (even if the definition of those things may be contextual or the source of them may be unclear). We have the capacity to understand our fellows and to put ourselves in their place.
We can choose to do or not do. We can choose to listen to our feelings or not listen. We are surrounded by the outcomes of choices, even if those choices are constrained by the larger nature of reality. Even if the choices are the imperfect results of imperfect methods.
It is our agency that makes us human (for good or ill). We must own both the good and the bad--because if we do not, things will not get better.
Neither God nor the Devil (if they exist) MADE you do anything. They merely provided the opportunity for you to CHOOSE. To choose to forgive or not forgive. To hate or love... all the myriad things that humans do.
You have agency... and if you are thankful for anything tomorrow, remember to be thankful for THAT.
And use it as wisely and as best you can.
This is a great newsletter today. Thanks so much for pointing out the difference between book banning and the Stop WOKE Act. These are not particularly easy issues, and nuance is not something seen on most news sites these days. Your free speech roundup was great. I wouldn't mind seeing more free speech roundups in the future, even on a regular basis.
I also enjoyed Kim Wehle's article. It's been hard to find news about the E. Jean Carroll case, which I've been following since Barr's DOJ decided that the whole force of the US government should be deployed against a woman with a valid rape accusation in order to defend a crooked lecher. I was highly offended by this, and I know I'm not alone. High office shouldn't be a free pass to assault women. And yes, I know it's a defamation case, not a rape case. One day, my dreams will come true and the people will decide that a man who abuses women is not presidential material. But that probably won't happen for a while. Right now, things are in an awful state. Everyone in my life wants me to know that Biden is a pedophile.
Charlie,
I'm a Bulwark subscriber, and I read all your newsletters. BUT: could you try to avoid sending me to Twitter?
WRT Wehle's article:
Does anyone imagine/believe that Trump was the only corporate/plutocrat type that got away with a ton of crap because he had the money/influence to get the court system to (not) work for him?
Anyone? Bueller?
This ties in, tangentially, with all the dirt about legislators trading in stocks?
WHY are these people allowed to own stocks or trade in them ITFP, in anything other than a blind trust? It's like saying, go ahead and be corrupt.
But we know who writes the laws, eh?
The people that write and enforce laws should not be allowed to write the laws that govern their own behavior in office or to be the agents that enforce those laws. Just like the police should not be policing themselves, nor lawyers or judges policing themselves.
This POS [Posobeic] is MAGA. He is what the GOP conceited to be. And their dreams were fulfilled. The cesspool is now theirs alone.
Rare is the person who actually supports freedom of expression for those he or she strongly, militantly disagrees with.
FIRE, often dismissed as a "conservative" group, is very good on this. There are signs that the ACLU is wavering.
So where has this guy been for the last 20 years, that he thinks going to a drag show with your family is over the top scandalous? I guess he has never heard of Hamburger Mary's.
What the tweet really shows is just how isolated and out of the mainstream these folks are.