Charles, the thing that puzzles me at least, is that if that is what you think of Trump, how is it possible for you to lament the protests outside the ICE place in “war-ravaged” Portland...
Two wrongs don't make a right. The protesters are unlikely to have any positive influence on anyone who counts, especially the Trump administration. The protests are more likely to be counterproductive, especially with the locals who are sick of the months and years of chaos in their lives.
And, as a side note, how come you are just accepting the “evidence” of people like honeybadgermom?
I've seen videos from several sources showing protestors engaging in bad behavior. Assaulting individuals. Throwing objects and fireworks at ICE personnel. Damaging property. People have the right to protest. They don't have the right to break the law.
...why are you prepared to so staunchly defend some of the consequences of his actions, even when they conflict with principles you have always said you support?
I'm at a loss as to which consequences I have staunchly defended.
russell 5:02 pm: First, “antifa” and the related term “radical left” have become so vague as to be almost meaningless. [...]
Here's another breakdown of the protestors.
"Members of the anti-ICE crowd in Portland can be divided into one of four main categories. There is some overlap – rioters fitting into more than one group – but these categories encompass nearly everyone there." Brandi Kruse
nous, the "GOP and their core voters" and their base, and MAGAs, are clearly not available for civil discussion, and maybe they never will be. But some soi-disant conservatives, and not just outliers like wj, are, and maybe eventually the public discourse, Overton Window etc will shift back somewhat (when healthcare disappears from millions perhaps?), and the habits of civility will be useful among larger populations. One can hope, and try to keep the home fires burning....
Charles, as someone who has been (understandably) piled on, you certainly have my sympathy. But I pay you the compliment of hoping and believing you don't mind an ongoing conversation, question and answer etc, and I hope you take it that way. I find your ongoing explanations and glosses valuable too.
lj, my reading of that Leslie piece was that he was in not implying that Vance is in any way at all "practising civility". He seems to make this pretty clear when he says:
So – cancel culture is bad, but if you see someone posting a dumb tweet about Kirk, it’s your patriotic duty to get them fired. This is before we get to the absurdity of claiming to believe in civility while acting as head boy to a president who glories in insulting opponents and using the f-word. You might suspect Vance of self-parody if he weren’t so joyless.
Sorry if the formatting made any of it unclear, I'm finding the inability to proofread before posting, and uncertainty about the new rules etc, inhibiting when copying and pasting. Hopefully, some of that will get better.
By the way I was fascinated by your concept of people arguing a position which they do not have a stake in. Who would make the decision about what commenters' stakes in their various arguments were, and therefore which were permissible? I was thinking for example of myself: a white, upper-middle class British woman from a reasonably privileged background. Someone who did not know my background (parents who left a successful and privileged life in South Africa in the 50s with very little money because of their opposition to apartheid) might wonder why I am so concerned with racial inequality, what my "stake" in it is. (In fact, in DC in the 70s, I was much more interested in racial discrimination than some of the black Republicans I met.) How on earth would one know unless told, and why would there need to be an background check? Surely people are allowed principles which do not have an easily explicable origin story?
Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
Charles, the thing that puzzles me at least, is that if that is what you think of Trump, how is it possible for you to lament the protests outside the ICE place in "war-ravaged" Portland without putting them in the context of what Trump has empowered ICE to do nationwide, which they are enthusiastically and in many cases illegally doing, in defiance of the states' wishes? And, as a side note, how come you are just accepting the "evidence" of people like honeybadgermom? If Trump is what you say we all agree he is (I myself would add several adjectives, particularly "corrupt"), why are you prepared to so staunchly defend some of the consequences of his actions, even when they conflict with principles you have always said you support?
Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay's essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I'm curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing 'civility' by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book 'Bad Feminist'. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn’t a humorous extension of “plowing” into the ground.
I seem to recall it referencing the 6' by 3' patch out ground for a grave. Ground which wouldn't be built on, and so was forever rural.
I believe this comes from accounts (probably even a film, most likely 8 mm) of chimpanzees (or maybe gorillas?). This behavior seems to occur where humans would shout insults, without reaching the point of physical altercation. But naturally American viewers would see anything but stuff being thrown and hitting others -- i.e. a physical altercation, and with weapons.
I haven't commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement that he is a self-absorbed, narcissistic, immoral, unethical boofun running roughshod over the law, the Constitution, and people's lives.
OED says "bought the farm" is recent (1950s) USAF slang originally for a fatal plane crash. They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn't a humorous extension of "plowing" into the ground.
The berserkers were apparently Norse or Germanic warriors:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker
Going ape-shit
I have no idea regarding the etymology...
On a more positive note, Farsi can be quite dramatic and poetic even when it cones to everyday expressions.
So you might hear "ghorbunet beram" 10 times a day, especially when there are children around. It literally means "I would sacrifice myself/die for you" but translates as "I love you (so much" or "you are so lovely / sweet" :)
The minor property damage and a bit of unwelcome noise that constitutes the alleged "unlawful behavior" on the part of the demonstrators does not come within a billion parsecs of the lawless violence being unleashed by our government upon its own citizens. A dyed in the wool glibertarian should be up in arms about this (ya' know, small government, FREEDUMB, yadda' yadda')....but all we get is the sanewashing of fascism.
One can't profitably debate anything with Trumpists - they don't believe in facts, or reason. But one be civil when explaining that.
I welcome CharlesWT's presence here. It's helpful to have someone to show us the evidence of unlawful behaviour by protesters in Portland. Before his comments, I had a slight concern that there might be facts I was unaware of which could shift my view: now I am sure there are not. Still, I'd welcome it if he were to acknowledge that what he's reported is a long, long way away from Trump's "the radical left's reign of terror" in a "war-ravaged" city.
"Bought the farm" is certainly American. A British equivalent would be "gone for a Burton". It makes good sense for 'a Burton' there to be a beer, but other derivations have been suggested.
"buying the farm" sound more American to me. Although 'farmer' as a term already existed in the Middle Ages (yeoman farmer), one is more accustomed to 'peasant', and 'farm' sounds more USian. I guess 'farm(er)' has the connotation of 'free' while peasant implies 'tenant'. Iirc* the yeomanry was 'agriculturalists' actually owning their land but not being noble while a peasant was dependent on (of?) a landlord.
I don't agree with Gay (or at least Gay's point of view as presented here) and generally do agree with Leslie.
Yes, civility is absolutely "inauthentic", as Gay states, in the sense she calls out - it absolutely is a performance. As are many of the basic daily protocols we engage in to avoid pissing each other off and generally making each other's lives unnecessarily difficult.
Don't cut in line. Let folks get off the bus before you try to get on. Make sure everyone at the table has had at least something to eat before you go for second helpings. Say "please" and "thank you".
All of these things require us to consider other folks before, or at least in addition to, asserting our own wishes and interests.
And all of these things make it possible for us to co-exist large and complex societies. Or even small and complex societies, where "complex" is just way of saying different people want and value different things.
So there is tremendous value in civility.
The statement I've been making about civility in current-day social and political discourse in this country is not that it's a fantasy or of no value.
My statement is that it's not *available*. It's not on offer.
If I decline to engage in discussion about where things are at right now with Trumper friends and family members, it's not because I have no interest in their perspective or their experience. It's because my experience has been that the conversation will not be particularly fruitful.
To be perfectly candid, the mindset of most conservatives, and especially of Trump supporters, most reminds me of people I knew (and know) from my days among the Christian fundamentalists. They have a set of beliefs that lets them interpret the world in a way that makes sense of their sense of threat or unease. That provide them with an identity. And to challenge those ideas is to challenge that sense of identity, which changes the conversation from a thoughtful exchange of ideas into something more existential.
It is possible to get through all of that, but it's a huge amount of work, and there really aren't any contexts for doing it.
I first started hanging out on political blogs somewhere around 2001 - just after 9/11, when the whole USA Patriot Act debate was going on and Bush II was ginning up support for invading Iraq. I wanted to understand what people were thinking so I went to conservative blogs. I forget all of them, but the place I spent the most time was RedState, back in the early days before they purged anybody who wasn't on board with the conservative agenda. And I do mean purge, it was explicit and intentional. I used to post there as "amos".
Before I left I spent probably hundreds of hours having what were, to me, some of the strangest conversations I've ever had. The things a lot of folks there believed seemed outlandish to me, almost to the point of parody. But there they were, and for a while at least, they were open to discussing all of it with the likes of me.
That *is no longer available*. I would no longer be welcome there, at all.
I found my way here when there were still a lot of conversative voices here. And over time this place has sorted itself into a by-far-majority liberal to left-ish place.
Which I find congenial, but it doesn't afford conversation across the "great divide".
And to be honest, the actions of the current administration pretty much demand that folks pick a side. What is the reasonable conversation to have about the utter denial of due process to people who happen to speak Spanish?
The conversation I would really like to have would begin with "why are you afraid of Hispanic people?". Or black people, or trans people, or gays. It really seems like folks don't just disapprove or dislike those folks, but instead feel threatened by them.
"It's the end of Western civilization!". Right?
Where the hell does that come from? I'd like to know that. But I don't see an available path to getting to that conversation.
And so here we are.
Long comment, thanks as always for your indulgence.
A couple of (practically off topic) thoughts occurred to me while reading this:
First, how many here (who weren't already familiar with her) read Sanae Takaichi's name and immediately thought "female". I'm aware that anyone with a Japanese first name ending with a vowel followed by e (or, especially, ending in ko) will be female. But then, I have friends and family who are ethnic Japanese, so I'm hardly typical.
Second, the whole definition of "immigrant" varies. Even though it consistently carries the connotation of "not from here." For example (sorry, Hartmut!) someone of Turkish ancestry in Germany will tend to be viewed as not-German, even if the family has been there for several generations. Then there's California.
Growing up (perhaps still today), you were a real Californian if you were born here, or even moved here with you family when young. Everybody who moved here as an adult was, not exactly "foreign", but close. Definitely "not from here." Even if they came here from elsewhere in the US. If you were Hispanic? Hispanics were here a couple of centuries before the first Anglos showed up. So it still depended on whether you were born in California. East Asian? There were still Issei (immigrants from Japan) around, but most ethnic Japanese, and pretty much all ethnic Chinese, were born here -- so, all real Californians.
One quick test: there is a city just north of San Diego-- La Jolla. Any real Californians will unthinkingly read that as La Hoy-ya. Wereas recent arrivals tend to say La Jol-la. And that applies even to those of us who don't speak Spanish. We learn to pronounce Spanish words at least approximately correctly just from constant exposure growing up.
Perhaps that has something to do with climate. In Germany, untended ground tends to sprout grass pretty quickly. In the US, especially the western US, untended ground tends to be dust. For quite a while across the Great Plains; pretty much permanently in the Southwest.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Charles, the thing that puzzles me at least, is that if that is what you think of Trump, how is it possible for you to lament the protests outside the ICE place in “war-ravaged” Portland...
Two wrongs don't make a right. The protesters are unlikely to have any positive influence on anyone who counts, especially the Trump administration. The protests are more likely to be counterproductive, especially with the locals who are sick of the months and years of chaos in their lives.
And, as a side note, how come you are just accepting the “evidence” of people like honeybadgermom?
I've seen videos from several sources showing protestors engaging in bad behavior. Assaulting individuals. Throwing objects and fireworks at ICE personnel. Damaging property. People have the right to protest. They don't have the right to break the law.
...why are you prepared to so staunchly defend some of the consequences of his actions, even when they conflict with principles you have always said you support?
I'm at a loss as to which consequences I have staunchly defended.
russell 5:02 pm: First, “antifa” and the related term “radical left” have become so vague as to be almost meaningless. [...]
Here's another breakdown of the protestors.
"Members of the anti-ICE crowd in Portland can be divided into one of four main categories. There is some overlap – rioters fitting into more than one group – but these categories encompass nearly everyone there."
Brandi Kruse
"
nous, the "GOP and their core voters" and their base, and MAGAs, are clearly not available for civil discussion, and maybe they never will be. But some soi-disant conservatives, and not just outliers like wj, are, and maybe eventually the public discourse, Overton Window etc will shift back somewhat (when healthcare disappears from millions perhaps?), and the habits of civility will be useful among larger populations. One can hope, and try to keep the home fires burning....
"
Charles, as someone who has been (understandably) piled on, you certainly have my sympathy. But I pay you the compliment of hoping and believing you don't mind an ongoing conversation, question and answer etc, and I hope you take it that way. I find your ongoing explanations and glosses valuable too.
lj, my reading of that Leslie piece was that he was in not implying that Vance is in any way at all "practising civility". He seems to make this pretty clear when he says:
So – cancel culture is bad, but if you see someone posting a dumb tweet about Kirk, it’s your patriotic duty to get them fired. This is before we get to the absurdity of claiming to believe in civility while acting as head boy to a president who glories in insulting opponents and using the f-word. You might suspect Vance of self-parody if he weren’t so joyless.
Sorry if the formatting made any of it unclear, I'm finding the inability to proofread before posting, and uncertainty about the new rules etc, inhibiting when copying and pasting. Hopefully, some of that will get better.
By the way I was fascinated by your concept of people arguing a position which they do not have a stake in. Who would make the decision about what commenters' stakes in their various arguments were, and therefore which were permissible? I was thinking for example of myself: a white, upper-middle class British woman from a reasonably privileged background. Someone who did not know my background (parents who left a successful and privileged life in South Africa in the 50s with very little money because of their opposition to apartheid) might wonder why I am so concerned with racial inequality, what my "stake" in it is. (In fact, in DC in the 70s, I was much more interested in racial discrimination than some of the black Republicans I met.) How on earth would one know unless told, and why would there need to be an background check? Surely people are allowed principles which do not have an easily explicable origin story?
"
Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
WTF are we supposed to do with that?
"
Charles, the thing that puzzles me at least, is that if that is what you think of Trump, how is it possible for you to lament the protests outside the ICE place in "war-ravaged" Portland without putting them in the context of what Trump has empowered ICE to do nationwide, which they are enthusiastically and in many cases illegally doing, in defiance of the states' wishes? And, as a side note, how come you are just accepting the "evidence" of people like honeybadgermom? If Trump is what you say we all agree he is (I myself would add several adjectives, particularly "corrupt"), why are you prepared to so staunchly defend some of the consequences of his actions, even when they conflict with principles you have always said you support?
"
Thanks russell.
"
Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay's essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I'm curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing 'civility' by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs
And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two
Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book 'Bad Feminist'. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
"
I haven’t commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement...
Pretty much sums it up. I appreciate your comments about what a sane immigration policy would look like as well.
Common ground, y'all!
And I appreciate your grace in receiving the occasional pile on. It ain't always fun being the minority voice.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
"
They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn’t a humorous extension of “plowing” into the ground.
I seem to recall it referencing the 6' by 3' patch out ground for a grave. Ground which wouldn't be built on, and so was forever rural.
"
Going ape-shit
I have no idea regarding the etymology…
I believe this comes from accounts (probably even a film, most likely 8 mm) of chimpanzees (or maybe gorillas?). This behavior seems to occur where humans would shout insults, without reaching the point of physical altercation. But naturally American viewers would see anything but stuff being thrown and hitting others -- i.e. a physical altercation, and with weapons.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
I haven't commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement that he is a self-absorbed, narcissistic, immoral, unethical boofun running roughshod over the law, the Constitution, and people's lives.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
OED says "bought the farm" is recent (1950s) USAF slang originally for a fatal plane crash. They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn't a humorous extension of "plowing" into the ground.
"
Going berserk
The berserkers were apparently Norse or Germanic warriors:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker
Going ape-shit
I have no idea regarding the etymology...
On a more positive note, Farsi can be quite dramatic and poetic even when it cones to everyday expressions.
So you might hear "ghorbunet beram" 10 times a day, especially when there are children around. It literally means "I would sacrifice myself/die for you" but translates as "I love you (so much" or "you are so lovely / sweet" :)
On “Where are the 5 words?”
The minor property damage and a bit of unwelcome noise that constitutes the alleged "unlawful behavior" on the part of the demonstrators does not come within a billion parsecs of the lawless violence being unleashed by our government upon its own citizens. A dyed in the wool glibertarian should be up in arms about this (ya' know, small government, FREEDUMB, yadda' yadda')....but all we get is the sanewashing of fascism.
Come on folks....perspective, please.
What does Portland think of this?
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/02/nx-s1-5558406/oregon-officials-and-residents-say-portland-isnt-war-ravaged
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
Or perhaps to commit suicide by hanging by standing on a bucket and kicking it out from under the feet.
"
"Kick the bucket" is an 18th-century phrase where bucket is another name for a beam. Perhaps kicking while hanging from a beam.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
One can't profitably debate anything with Trumpists - they don't believe in facts, or reason. But one be civil when explaining that.
I welcome CharlesWT's presence here. It's helpful to have someone to show us the evidence of unlawful behaviour by protesters in Portland. Before his comments, I had a slight concern that there might be facts I was unaware of which could shift my view: now I am sure there are not. Still, I'd welcome it if he were to acknowledge that what he's reported is a long, long way away from Trump's "the radical left's reign of terror" in a "war-ravaged" city.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
"gotta go see a man about a horse"
"
"Bought the farm" is certainly American. A British equivalent would be "gone for a Burton". It makes good sense for 'a Burton' there to be a beer, but other derivations have been suggested.
"
"buying the farm" sound more American to me. Although 'farmer' as a term already existed in the Middle Ages (yeoman farmer), one is more accustomed to 'peasant', and 'farm' sounds more USian. I guess 'farm(er)' has the connotation of 'free' while peasant implies 'tenant'. Iirc* the yeomanry was 'agriculturalists' actually owning their land but not being noble while a peasant was dependent on (of?) a landlord.
*too lazy to look it up
"
Is the phrase American in origin?
On “Where are the 5 words?”
I don't agree with Gay (or at least Gay's point of view as presented here) and generally do agree with Leslie.
Yes, civility is absolutely "inauthentic", as Gay states, in the sense she calls out - it absolutely is a performance. As are many of the basic daily protocols we engage in to avoid pissing each other off and generally making each other's lives unnecessarily difficult.
Don't cut in line. Let folks get off the bus before you try to get on. Make sure everyone at the table has had at least something to eat before you go for second helpings. Say "please" and "thank you".
All of these things require us to consider other folks before, or at least in addition to, asserting our own wishes and interests.
And all of these things make it possible for us to co-exist large and complex societies. Or even small and complex societies, where "complex" is just way of saying different people want and value different things.
So there is tremendous value in civility.
The statement I've been making about civility in current-day social and political discourse in this country is not that it's a fantasy or of no value.
My statement is that it's not *available*. It's not on offer.
If I decline to engage in discussion about where things are at right now with Trumper friends and family members, it's not because I have no interest in their perspective or their experience. It's because my experience has been that the conversation will not be particularly fruitful.
To be perfectly candid, the mindset of most conservatives, and especially of Trump supporters, most reminds me of people I knew (and know) from my days among the Christian fundamentalists. They have a set of beliefs that lets them interpret the world in a way that makes sense of their sense of threat or unease. That provide them with an identity. And to challenge those ideas is to challenge that sense of identity, which changes the conversation from a thoughtful exchange of ideas into something more existential.
It is possible to get through all of that, but it's a huge amount of work, and there really aren't any contexts for doing it.
I first started hanging out on political blogs somewhere around 2001 - just after 9/11, when the whole USA Patriot Act debate was going on and Bush II was ginning up support for invading Iraq. I wanted to understand what people were thinking so I went to conservative blogs. I forget all of them, but the place I spent the most time was RedState, back in the early days before they purged anybody who wasn't on board with the conservative agenda. And I do mean purge, it was explicit and intentional. I used to post there as "amos".
Before I left I spent probably hundreds of hours having what were, to me, some of the strangest conversations I've ever had. The things a lot of folks there believed seemed outlandish to me, almost to the point of parody. But there they were, and for a while at least, they were open to discussing all of it with the likes of me.
That *is no longer available*. I would no longer be welcome there, at all.
I found my way here when there were still a lot of conversative voices here. And over time this place has sorted itself into a by-far-majority liberal to left-ish place.
Which I find congenial, but it doesn't afford conversation across the "great divide".
And to be honest, the actions of the current administration pretty much demand that folks pick a side. What is the reasonable conversation to have about the utter denial of due process to people who happen to speak Spanish?
The conversation I would really like to have would begin with "why are you afraid of Hispanic people?". Or black people, or trans people, or gays. It really seems like folks don't just disapprove or dislike those folks, but instead feel threatened by them.
"It's the end of Western civilization!". Right?
Where the hell does that come from? I'd like to know that. But I don't see an available path to getting to that conversation.
And so here we are.
Long comment, thanks as always for your indulgence.
On “The DIY party”
A couple of (practically off topic) thoughts occurred to me while reading this:
First, how many here (who weren't already familiar with her) read Sanae Takaichi's name and immediately thought "female". I'm aware that anyone with a Japanese first name ending with a vowel followed by e (or, especially, ending in ko) will be female. But then, I have friends and family who are ethnic Japanese, so I'm hardly typical.
Second, the whole definition of "immigrant" varies. Even though it consistently carries the connotation of "not from here." For example (sorry, Hartmut!) someone of Turkish ancestry in Germany will tend to be viewed as not-German, even if the family has been there for several generations. Then there's California.
Growing up (perhaps still today), you were a real Californian if you were born here, or even moved here with you family when young. Everybody who moved here as an adult was, not exactly "foreign", but close. Definitely "not from here." Even if they came here from elsewhere in the US. If you were Hispanic? Hispanics were here a couple of centuries before the first Anglos showed up. So it still depended on whether you were born in California. East Asian? There were still Issei (immigrants from Japan) around, but most ethnic Japanese, and pretty much all ethnic Chinese, were born here -- so, all real Californians.
One quick test: there is a city just north of San Diego-- La Jolla. Any real Californians will unthinkingly read that as La Hoy-ya. Wereas recent arrivals tend to say La Jol-la. And that applies even to those of us who don't speak Spanish. We learn to pronounce Spanish words at least approximately correctly just from constant exposure growing up.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
Perhaps that has something to do with climate. In Germany, untended ground tends to sprout grass pretty quickly. In the US, especially the western US, untended ground tends to be dust. For quite a while across the Great Plains; pretty much permanently in the Southwest.
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