there are simply no "good" Republicans today, and they need to be politically neutralized root and branch, even the one's who wj avers are "good ones".
If they were "good" they would not be Republicans.
I'd agree with you that there are no good Republicans on the national level, I think the situation is a bit different on the local level. Not that there aren't a lot of terrible local Republican office holders. Just that there are also some good ones.
You suggest that, if they were good, they wouldn't be Republicans. But that's simplistic. In some areas, the Republican primary essentially is the general election. If you want to hold office and do some good, you run as a Republican. (If tilting at windmills is your thing, you run as a Democrat.) Gerrymandering has made that worse. But it would be true in a lot of places even without that.
The other thing is, most people find it hard to change parties. Call it psychological momentum or something. But even if their voting habits in the general election shift, they resist changing their party registration.
It's even harder if you are already an elected official. It can be done; my Congressman was originally elected to the state legislature as a Republican. But it's hard. And you probably need some years in office to build a personal brand to get you through.
I might accept that good young people, in a lot of places, would find it hard to look at the current Republican Party (especially as the national party is so high profile) and register with them. Twenty years down the line, that will make your observation more true. But there will still be places where you can't get elected and do good, especially the first few times, without the label.
2025-07-11 12:07:17
But we're still a prosperous country. People aren't pushing wheelbarrows full of cash to the grocery store because of hyperinflation. Unemployment remains low.
We're still a prosperous country for now. Whether we remain one rather depends on how Trump's trade wars play out. But individual areas are going to get hit hard, and sooner rather than later.
To take just one example, without USAid, the prairie states are going to get hammered starting next year. The silos are still pretty full from last year's harvest. This fall, they're not going to be able to buy what the farmers produce. Of course some of the grain might be diverted to cattle feed. Except that, with ICE rounding up all the workers from the slaughter houses, the market for cattle will be tanking also. Those states are going to be hurting big-time -- and while Trump might talk about "family farms" on the campaign trail, he's basically a city boy who just doesn't really relate.
Between that and the damage to the vegetable farming here and tariffs on imports from (mostly) Mexico, food prices will be going up. Probably not to hyperinflation levels, but enough that discretionary spending will drop, which will hurt industries far beyond the farm.
That, in turn, will join with the other side of the trade wars (why should they, or can they, buy our stuff if we won't buy theirs?) to kick unemployment up. Some of those unemployed might try some of the agriculture jobs that ICE is opening up. "Try" being the operative word. Farm work is nothing like office work -- I've done it, and I know. Some of the unemployed might eventually get in shape to do it. But even if you spend a lot of time in the gym, that's nothing like doing hard work 40+ hours a week.
Short story shorter, it's going to get ugly. Republican Congress critters may not feel the impact next year. But by 2028, they're going to join the ranks of the unemployed. (And their usual post-Congress positions as lobbyists aren't going to be interested -- few members to the next Congress are going to go anywhere near them.)
So, there's your summary predictions from the resident optimist.
2025-07-11 00:22:35
I sincerely appreciate, as always, your unflagging optimism, wj
I truly wish I was optimistic at this point. But, while I have hopes, I don't really have expectations. (At least, not positive ones. :-)
I suspect that the question is just how bad it will get, and how long it will take us to repair the damage.
2025-07-10 21:22:32
The US doesn't really have a single, common, consensus culture or history. New Englanders are not the same as folks in the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwest, or the Southeast, or the Plains. And none of those folks are the same as each other.
I think we actually do have a common culture. Or did. Certainly we have different subcultures, both regional and otherwise. But there is, or was, far less difference from one region to another than there is from anywhere in the US to, for example, Australia.
Even now, I don't think the biggest cultural divide is geographic. As a first approximation, the difference is between those who get their information primarily from Fox News and those who don't. (There are newer, more disconnected from reality, news sources. As I said, a first approximation.). That's why I don't see partition as a viable future; the two groups are just too intertwined geographically.
I'm not sure how we restore some kind of national unity. What I hope is (and I know it's a faint hope) is that the Fox News aficionados get burned enough, personally, by this administration that they recoil back to reality. Many are all in unto death, as we saw during covid. But if anywhere near half come to their senses, we're back to a single culture with variations.
2025-07-10 14:20:14
From the article bobbyp links to:
Mr. Fuentes, 26, is a white supremacist, Hitler fan and vocal antisemite. A far-right influencer who hosts a weeknight streaming show called “America First,”
Fuentes?!?!? Somebody alert Stephen Miller that there's a Hispanic in our midst! Get him on the next flight to South Sudan!
For all I know, the guy's family has been in the US a couple of centuries. Does anyone think Miller cares?
2025-07-09 01:00:22
I don't think it is realistic to expect nations to simply stay with cash money.
These days the vast majority of currency transactions are electronic. I doubt anyone (outside the looney far right, and not most even there) expect or want that to change. Cash (paper) can be handy for small transactions. But nobody uses it much for legal transactions over $100.
But crypto is a whole different deal. It's great for illegal transactions, or for evading taxes. And, if you get in early, it's an effective "bigger idiot" vehicle. But legitimate uses? No so much.
It may be possible to regulate it to the point that it's useful. But I haven't seen any even halfway plausible ideas for doing so.
2025-07-08 13:30:05
The headline leaves out the even more scandalous part: ONLY churches, not other tax exempt entities. Those still have to obey the rule of either partisan or tax exempt but not both at the same time.
In the other hand, getting yourself officially designated as a church is pretty straightforward. And the requirements are far less than you might imagine. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if most PACs could pull it off -- given some of the organizations I've seen do so in the past. And any kind of charitable organization would be a shoo-in. For sure you don't need to express believe in any kind of diety(s).
2025-07-08 11:21:02
I like GftNC's idea of checking that someone is connected to the real world. Just two details:
-- while most of us are in the US, and therefore closely attuned to events here, not everyone is. In addition to the several folks in the UK (and lj domiciled in Japan) I seem to recall that Lurker is in Finland. There might well be others, either currently or in the future. Do we need a question or two for reality checks of those elsewhere?
-- Just for equity, we probably ought to have a question or two that would reality check those on the left. (Maybe acknowledgement that such a category exists...? ;-)
2025-07-07 01:47:00
I've long since resigned myself to the reality that anything and everything that I have ever written on the Internet is available to someone willing to expend the effort to track it down. Including stuff I have long since forgotten, which I wrote when the Internet was new, and the preserve of a very small number of geeks. I don't like it, but that's the way it is.
I figure I'm still better off than those today who (apparently compulsively) write every detail of pretty much every they do. I expect it will come back to haunt a significant number of them.
In 50 years or so our culture may have adapted to the Internet. We'll make use of its strengths where appropriate. And kids will be taught, about the time they learn to read and write, how to use it safely and responsibly. Until then, about the best we can do is damage limitation.
2025-07-06 18:04:39
It's also possible that I hallucinated the whole thing.
Nah. More likely the alien space bats purged it.
2025-07-06 14:42:07
conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
Thus my discussion of what constitutes an "authority". I, too, would not be optimistic about a useful conversation with someone whose approach starts and ends with "the Bible [or other scriptures of their choice] says". In the other hand, someone who starts with "I believe that" or "My faith holds that", but then goes on to discuss how that particular tenet has positive impacts for those outside their faith community, or for society at large?** That could be fine.
To take one example, suppose someone starts from"Thou shalt not steal.". Not a whole lot of arguments from people here. But there might be a useful discussion of what, beyond the obvious, constitutes "stealing." Is open pit mining necessarily stealing? How about various stock/bond trading strategies? How about various tax regimes? And, in each case, what's the evidence for how it works out in the real world? In short, it's possible to take a fundamentalist precept and look at it, or at least its impact, objectively.
** And, tiny reality check, I have personal experience of a few such people. No idea how common that view is, but we're not looking at a null set.
2025-07-06 12:54:48
For those who would like to see a greater diversity of views here (diversity! What a concept!), it might be useful to ask a couple of questions:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate? Full on MAGA cultists? (I'm guessing generally not, but I suppose that could be projection.) Religious fundamentalists, of whichever religion? (Not, I think, those demanding that society generally conform to their views, but perhaps those who think the world would be a better place if more people embraced some of their views. Again, that could be projection.) Straight up conservatives: "I don't much care for change, but can be convinced that it's necessary in specific instances"? Moderate conservatives: "There are things that need changing, but I'd generally prefer gradual changes, small changes that can be reality checked as we go, to sweeping changes"? Centerists-- those who see merits in both liberal and conservative views, and want to create compromises between them? New voices even further left than what we have now?
What ideas do you have for reality checking, both of new and existing commenters? Which mostly comes down to What is an authorative sourse? Does it have to be reliable across the board, or just in some areas? How much agreement do we need for something to be accepted as authorative?
Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.
2025-07-05 14:55:43
Donald: we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really.
I'd go with moderate conservative on most issues. I think that the "centerist" perception is mostly because the label "conservative" has been (successfully, to the point that liberals believe it) hijacked by the radical right and reactionaries. I am old enough to actually remember the 1950s and early 60s. For me, it was a wonderful, idyllic time. But then, I was a white kid in a small town California setting. There are some bits of that culture that I wish we hadn't lost, but I have no desire to go back to the 1950s culture overall, even that one.
Not that, here in the real world, it's possible to do anything like that. Hmmmm, an argument for rapidly developing virtually reality systems -- so the Steven Millers can sit in their parents' basement, muck up their private world, and leave the rest of us in peace.
russell: I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
I think the challenges are twofold. The first is: how do we find those centerist/conservative voices? Does anyone here know how to do recruiting? Second is: if someone like that stumbles across us, can we refrain from assuming that someone who says she's a conservative is some sort of rabid reactionary? I note that a new chum arriving could read some comments here** and feel unwelcome before she ever moved from lurker to commenter. As you say, feelings run high on a variety of issues. I've certainly been moved to rant occasionally. ;-)
So I'd say that increasing our diversity of views is definitely a "nice to have." But I'm not sure how we might get from here to there.
**Donald leaps to mind. Not because he's wrong about how outrageous some things are. It's possible to be pretty damn conservative and agree completely on that. It's more a matter, as far as I can explain it, of tone. And an assumption (again as I perceive it) that anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.
2025-07-05 02:15:40
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a great 4th of July. Especially, I hope everyone who loves them got to see a great fireworks show. Because, going forward you can expect fewer shows and smaller ones.
The thing is, virtually all of the fireworks used in the US are made in China. Which means they will be much more expensive in the future as Trump's follies tariffs kick in. Of course, drone shows are supposed to be the latest big thing. Color me underwhelmed.
2025-07-04 22:44:37
I'm spending the day hanging out with folks who are doing the grunt work required to put on the local fireworks show. (Not the "damned amateurs" you hear making loud bangs in your neighborhood. This is a professional operation, led by a licensed pyrotechnician.)
The sort of apolitical patriotism that has been drowned out by the fanatics. But it still lives on in the real world. My sense is that these are the folks who will rise up and crush the fanatics. Rise up slowly and reluctantly, not least because fanatics are so rare in their immediate environment that they struggle to get their heads around the idea that anybody could be like that. But once the reality breaks thru? Fanatic, meet junk heap of history -- at least for a generation or two, until the memory fades again.
there are simply no "good" Republicans today, and they need to be politically neutralized root and branch, even the one's who wj avers are "good ones".
If they were "good" they would not be Republicans.
I'd agree with you that there are no good Republicans on the national level, I think the situation is a bit different on the local level. Not that there aren't a lot of terrible local Republican office holders. Just that there are also some good ones.
You suggest that, if they were good, they wouldn't be Republicans. But that's simplistic. In some areas, the Republican primary essentially is the general election. If you want to hold office and do some good, you run as a Republican. (If tilting at windmills is your thing, you run as a Democrat.) Gerrymandering has made that worse. But it would be true in a lot of places even without that.
The other thing is, most people find it hard to change parties. Call it psychological momentum or something. But even if their voting habits in the general election shift, they resist changing their party registration.
It's even harder if you are already an elected official. It can be done; my Congressman was originally elected to the state legislature as a Republican. But it's hard. And you probably need some years in office to build a personal brand to get you through.
I might accept that good young people, in a lot of places, would find it hard to look at the current Republican Party (especially as the national party is so high profile) and register with them. Twenty years down the line, that will make your observation more true. But there will still be places where you can't get elected and do good, especially the first few times, without the label.
But we're still a prosperous country. People aren't pushing wheelbarrows full of cash to the grocery store because of hyperinflation. Unemployment remains low.
We're still a prosperous country for now. Whether we remain one rather depends on how Trump's trade wars play out. But individual areas are going to get hit hard, and sooner rather than later.
To take just one example, without USAid, the prairie states are going to get hammered starting next year. The silos are still pretty full from last year's harvest. This fall, they're not going to be able to buy what the farmers produce. Of course some of the grain might be diverted to cattle feed. Except that, with ICE rounding up all the workers from the slaughter houses, the market for cattle will be tanking also. Those states are going to be hurting big-time -- and while Trump might talk about "family farms" on the campaign trail, he's basically a city boy who just doesn't really relate.
Between that and the damage to the vegetable farming here and tariffs on imports from (mostly) Mexico, food prices will be going up. Probably not to hyperinflation levels, but enough that discretionary spending will drop, which will hurt industries far beyond the farm.
That, in turn, will join with the other side of the trade wars (why should they, or can they, buy our stuff if we won't buy theirs?) to kick unemployment up. Some of those unemployed might try some of the agriculture jobs that ICE is opening up. "Try" being the operative word. Farm work is nothing like office work -- I've done it, and I know. Some of the unemployed might eventually get in shape to do it. But even if you spend a lot of time in the gym, that's nothing like doing hard work 40+ hours a week.
Short story shorter, it's going to get ugly. Republican Congress critters may not feel the impact next year. But by 2028, they're going to join the ranks of the unemployed. (And their usual post-Congress positions as lobbyists aren't going to be interested -- few members to the next Congress are going to go anywhere near them.)
So, there's your summary predictions from the resident optimist.
I sincerely appreciate, as always, your unflagging optimism, wj
I truly wish I was optimistic at this point. But, while I have hopes, I don't really have expectations. (At least, not positive ones. :-)
I suspect that the question is just how bad it will get, and how long it will take us to repair the damage.
The US doesn't really have a single, common, consensus culture or history. New Englanders are not the same as folks in the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwest, or the Southeast, or the Plains. And none of those folks are the same as each other.
I think we actually do have a common culture. Or did. Certainly we have different subcultures, both regional and otherwise. But there is, or was, far less difference from one region to another than there is from anywhere in the US to, for example, Australia.
Even now, I don't think the biggest cultural divide is geographic. As a first approximation, the difference is between those who get their information primarily from Fox News and those who don't. (There are newer, more disconnected from reality, news sources. As I said, a first approximation.). That's why I don't see partition as a viable future; the two groups are just too intertwined geographically.
I'm not sure how we restore some kind of national unity. What I hope is (and I know it's a faint hope) is that the Fox News aficionados get burned enough, personally, by this administration that they recoil back to reality. Many are all in unto death, as we saw during covid. But if anywhere near half come to their senses, we're back to a single culture with variations.
From the article bobbyp links to:
Fuentes?!?!? Somebody alert Stephen Miller that there's a Hispanic in our midst! Get him on the next flight to South Sudan!
For all I know, the guy's family has been in the US a couple of centuries. Does anyone think Miller cares?
I don't think it is realistic to expect nations to simply stay with cash money.
These days the vast majority of currency transactions are electronic. I doubt anyone (outside the looney far right, and not most even there) expect or want that to change. Cash (paper) can be handy for small transactions. But nobody uses it much for legal transactions over $100.
But crypto is a whole different deal. It's great for illegal transactions, or for evading taxes. And, if you get in early, it's an effective "bigger idiot" vehicle. But legitimate uses? No so much.
It may be possible to regulate it to the point that it's useful. But I haven't seen any even halfway plausible ideas for doing so.
The headline leaves out the even more scandalous part: ONLY churches, not other tax exempt entities. Those still have to obey the rule of either partisan or tax exempt but not both at the same time.
In the other hand, getting yourself officially designated as a church is pretty straightforward. And the requirements are far less than you might imagine. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if most PACs could pull it off -- given some of the organizations I've seen do so in the past. And any kind of charitable organization would be a shoo-in. For sure you don't need to express believe in any kind of diety(s).
I like GftNC's idea of checking that someone is connected to the real world. Just two details:
-- while most of us are in the US, and therefore closely attuned to events here, not everyone is. In addition to the several folks in the UK (and lj domiciled in Japan) I seem to recall that Lurker is in Finland. There might well be others, either currently or in the future. Do we need a question or two for reality checks of those elsewhere?
-- Just for equity, we probably ought to have a question or two that would reality check those on the left. (Maybe acknowledgement that such a category exists...? ;-)
I've long since resigned myself to the reality that anything and everything that I have ever written on the Internet is available to someone willing to expend the effort to track it down. Including stuff I have long since forgotten, which I wrote when the Internet was new, and the preserve of a very small number of geeks. I don't like it, but that's the way it is.
I figure I'm still better off than those today who (apparently compulsively) write every detail of pretty much every they do. I expect it will come back to haunt a significant number of them.
In 50 years or so our culture may have adapted to the Internet. We'll make use of its strengths where appropriate. And kids will be taught, about the time they learn to read and write, how to use it safely and responsibly. Until then, about the best we can do is damage limitation.
It's also possible that I hallucinated the whole thing.
Nah. More likely the alien space bats purged it.
conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
Thus my discussion of what constitutes an "authority". I, too, would not be optimistic about a useful conversation with someone whose approach starts and ends with "the Bible [or other scriptures of their choice] says". In the other hand, someone who starts with "I believe that" or "My faith holds that", but then goes on to discuss how that particular tenet has positive impacts for those outside their faith community, or for society at large?** That could be fine.
To take one example, suppose someone starts from"Thou shalt not steal.". Not a whole lot of arguments from people here. But there might be a useful discussion of what, beyond the obvious, constitutes "stealing." Is open pit mining necessarily stealing? How about various stock/bond trading strategies? How about various tax regimes? And, in each case, what's the evidence for how it works out in the real world? In short, it's possible to take a fundamentalist precept and look at it, or at least its impact, objectively.
** And, tiny reality check, I have personal experience of a few such people. No idea how common that view is, but we're not looking at a null set.
For those who would like to see a greater diversity of views here (diversity! What a concept!), it might be useful to ask a couple of questions:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate? Full on MAGA cultists? (I'm guessing generally not, but I suppose that could be projection.) Religious fundamentalists, of whichever religion? (Not, I think, those demanding that society generally conform to their views, but perhaps those who think the world would be a better place if more people embraced some of their views. Again, that could be projection.) Straight up conservatives: "I don't much care for change, but can be convinced that it's necessary in specific instances"? Moderate conservatives: "There are things that need changing, but I'd generally prefer gradual changes, small changes that can be reality checked as we go, to sweeping changes"? Centerists-- those who see merits in both liberal and conservative views, and want to create compromises between them? New voices even further left than what we have now?
What ideas do you have for reality checking, both of new and existing commenters? Which mostly comes down to What is an authorative sourse? Does it have to be reliable across the board, or just in some areas? How much agreement do we need for something to be accepted as authorative?
Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.
Donald: we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really.
I'd go with moderate conservative on most issues. I think that the "centerist" perception is mostly because the label "conservative" has been (successfully, to the point that liberals believe it) hijacked by the radical right and reactionaries. I am old enough to actually remember the 1950s and early 60s. For me, it was a wonderful, idyllic time. But then, I was a white kid in a small town California setting. There are some bits of that culture that I wish we hadn't lost, but I have no desire to go back to the 1950s culture overall, even that one.
Not that, here in the real world, it's possible to do anything like that. Hmmmm, an argument for rapidly developing virtually reality systems -- so the Steven Millers can sit in their parents' basement, muck up their private world, and leave the rest of us in peace.
russell: I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
I think the challenges are twofold. The first is: how do we find those centerist/conservative voices? Does anyone here know how to do recruiting? Second is: if someone like that stumbles across us, can we refrain from assuming that someone who says she's a conservative is some sort of rabid reactionary? I note that a new chum arriving could read some comments here** and feel unwelcome before she ever moved from lurker to commenter. As you say, feelings run high on a variety of issues. I've certainly been moved to rant occasionally. ;-)
So I'd say that increasing our diversity of views is definitely a "nice to have." But I'm not sure how we might get from here to there.
**Donald leaps to mind. Not because he's wrong about how outrageous some things are. It's possible to be pretty damn conservative and agree completely on that. It's more a matter, as far as I can explain it, of tone. And an assumption (again as I perceive it) that anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a great 4th of July. Especially, I hope everyone who loves them got to see a great fireworks show. Because, going forward you can expect fewer shows and smaller ones.
The thing is, virtually all of the fireworks used in the US are made in China. Which means they will be much more expensive in the future as Trump's
folliestariffs kick in. Of course, drone shows are supposed to be the latest big thing. Color me underwhelmed.I'm spending the day hanging out with folks who are doing the grunt work required to put on the local fireworks show. (Not the "damned amateurs" you hear making loud bangs in your neighborhood. This is a professional operation, led by a licensed pyrotechnician.)
The sort of apolitical patriotism that has been drowned out by the fanatics. But it still lives on in the real world. My sense is that these are the folks who will rise up and crush the fanatics. Rise up slowly and reluctantly, not least because fanatics are so rare in their immediate environment that they struggle to get their heads around the idea that anybody could be like that. But once the reality breaks thru? Fanatic, meet junk heap of history -- at least for a generation or two, until the memory fades again.