Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Thank you. I'm also very sorry for your losses. It's awful to go through.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I am also so sorry for this.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

A comment on the Forsetti piece posted by Thurgreed.

There is far, far more truth in the article than most people realize. I qualify as a coastal elitist. I am the poster boy for coastal elites. Born in NYC suburbs, Ivy education, career in Washington.

Oddly, my closest lifelong friends are the thirty or so people who passed through my combat platoon lo these 45 years ago. They are, by and large, flyover state people who are utterly incapable of realizing that the government is the only reason they have even a semblance of middle class life. They scapegoat. They blame the government for their failure to move up the economic ladder, notwithstanding that virtually every one of them that did get a college education got it at a state university for a pittance. They cannot understand the enormous changes of globalization. They only know that they are worse off than their parents, they don't come home to an Ozzie and Harriet marriage, and their kids have even fewer prospect than they did.


Generalizations are always flawed, but even those in this group who aren't fundamentalist know nothings have a willful blindness to the causes of their situation. In the run-up to this year's reunion, these men who I love were vehement Trumpeteers on social media. My closest friend in the group, a Californian, decided it was best if he didn't attend. I agreed, and stayed away.

There is one point in the Forsetti article I would personally disagree with. I WOULD come for their god damn guns, in the sense that civilians should not have AR 15s. I would tighten penalties on gun owners who don't secure their weapons. I know, first hand, what these machines can do. If your unemployed, bullied, meth addled son gets your semiautomatic rifle and sprays his high school it, you have committed murder. But that's just a coastal elitist view.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This. And also thank you for sharing. Somehow (:rolleyes:) in inherent difficulty in these choices doesn't seem to get much focus.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Yeah, that's making the rounds, but no, she shouldn't be challenging the results. How would that even work?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm also very sorry you guys had to go through that.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Here's the things (aside from robots that are going to make us all destitute while awash in cheap robot-produced goods): they don't have to be. Move to a city. Teach those kids languages. See if they can do STEM stuff. Those kids can/will have lots of chances.

I was thinking this morning about what would have happened at gun control been premised on an individual right to bear arms, but expressly predicated on the need for a well-regulated militia. Like, aim for the court reading the 2nd amendment as prohibiting regulation of guns that places an undue burden on organizing a militia for the defense of the nation.

A militia might need an AR 15, but it likely also would need the person bearing it to be registered and trained and the weapon and ammunition for it closely tracked and it's storage secured. I could live with a broader range of civilian weapons being available if they have to maintained similar to how I imagine (with little basis or experience) they are in the military.

Probably wouldn't have changed the outcome or appeased the gun nuts in any way, but likely is closer to the spirit of the founder's intent (if one cares about such things which one probably shouldn't).

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Understanding them is a worthwhile endeavor, I guess. But isn't it more productive to find ways to properly message them? Trump just manipulated them without a hell of a lot complex marketing. One would think the Democratic Party, with far more resources, could similarly do so.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Take their guns all you want, but don't take my drones. They'll defend my home and castle against all those neanderthals with AR 15s.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm so sorry for what you went through. When I was 19 I had a D&C to remove an embryo whose heart had stopped and I was so wracked with grief I literally didn't move from the couch for 2 weeks after. My sister finally got me up to rejoin the world. I was grief-stricken, and even though there was a huge part of me that didn't even want the baby in the first place, I didn't feel any relief.

I can't imagine what it would be like if you were actually happy to be pregnant. Big hugs to you, RT. That is heartbreaking.

[Abortion was not legal in Canada at the time -- would become legal later that year]

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This is a follow up: https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to...0ba#.jghzkl2y3

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Yeah, but why should we discuss this when we can argue about about the "war on women," the "war on Xmas," who should use what bathrooms, whose "religious liberty (whatever the fuck that is) is being violated, who needs trigger warnings and safe spaces, who's a sexist, who violated email protocol, who had ties to Putin, what constitutes "cultural appropriation," or what the cast of Hamilton thinks about a VP who believes gays can be "cured" of their genetically wired sexual persuasion.

See a trend? We'll do almost anything - divert ourselves with every form of decadent and frivolous debate possible - to avoid looking at the graph you posted.

What elephant? I see no elephant. Let us stop talking of this elephant. It's getting in the way of me asserting all of my grievances!

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

"Should" is like "deserve." You've seen the end of Unforgiven.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'd rather the Democratic Party focused on concrete ways to make their lives better, and then communicated that.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Donald Trump, speaking Sebby's language:

“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”

Bannon too:

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

I hope this person is wrong.