State of the Discussion

hairshirthedonist: I would love to be wrong, but I think not. The blood-and-bone MAGAs are not (IMO) sentient in a traditional sense: they are outrage-tropists, who respond automatically to the Outrage du Jour. Doesn't matter if it directly contradicts yesterday's Outrage du Jour.
No object permanence, no problem!

Just for the benefit of anyone coming to this in the future, the last three entries in the Plus ça change... thread are also on this topic.
Apologies to those here for not making it a thread initially. Unfortunately, I was on my phone and didn't have easy access to create a new thread. (Probably ought to fix that....)

I wonder, do they really have NOTHING? Otherwise I would have expected a highly redacted version giving the impression that only Dems and some GOPsters fallen from grace were on the list. Or something like the 'total exoneration' stuff as with the reports about the scandals of His Orangeness during his first term totally misrepresented by his henchcritters.
The current
a) nothing incriminating to see in those files and
b) it's all fabricated by Biden and Obama to incriminate His Orangeness
does not make sense even in the MAGAverse.
If the files were really as toxic as they made it look until recently, they should have known it and been prepared to distort it to their advantage and, if there was nothing, what would have stopped them to go on with insinuations and fakes:'The previous administrations tampered with the evidence, so no original files, but here is what we found out...'?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrats-put-previous-misgivings-hit-trump-jeffrey-epstein-files-rcna218608

Last week, the DNC launched a new account on X that posts messages each day reminding its followers that Trump has “not released the Epstein files.” The account has also reposted Trump-focused, Epstein-related criticism from key social media influencers. It also includes a header image of comments billionaire Elon Musk made after a spat with the White House — and without offering any evidence — in which Musk charged that Trump “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” (Trump has described having had a warm social relationship with Epstein, but he long ago distanced himself from Epstein. There has never been any evidence connecting Trump to Epstein’s criminal behavior.)

This makes me a little queasy, but maybe it's the sort of thing Democrats need to do right now.

I have a t-shirt from Live 8, bought from a dude on the street, now usually worn while mowing my lawn. I only attended on the periphery in Philadelphia. It was a hot day.
Being in the middle of however-many-thousands of people wasn't appealing. But it was still a lot of fun hanging out in nearby establishments and cooling off in the AC. That whole part of town was jumping.
One thing that made me apoplectic was watching coverage from London of the Pink Floyd reunion in a slacker bar, when MTV decided to break in midsong during Comfortably Numb so some 20-year-old nitwit could yammer on about nothing.
I wanted to throw my glass at the TV, but it wasn't the bar's fault.

I've just finished watching the CNN/BBC three part documentary about the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, whose two concerts (London and Philadelphia) took place 40 years ago today and were watched by something like 1.5/2 billion people. The first part (all of which was very familiar to me) was mainly about how it all began, and the single Band Aid brought out, which also led to We Are The World. The second part was about the Live Aid concerts, and how they were organised and what happened, which again I knew a lot about (and had watched the whole thing).
The third part was about Live8, which led to the cancellation by the G8 of African debt payments, and vastly increased international aid budgets. I knew comparatively little about it, and it was completely fascinating, particularly politically, seeing the interviews with George W Bush, Blair, Condoleeza Rice et al, as well as hearing some of the criticisms. For anyone not interested enough in watching the first two parts, I nevertheless strongly recommend the third. Here is a guest link to a piece in today's NYT about the anniversary, and the documentary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/arts/music/live-aid-bob-geldof-anniversary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WE8.c0_h.2CwG2nKJUmpQ&smid=url-share

Further to russell's comments about Ringo, he (and others) might like this, by T Bone Burnett:
"Ringo was the fire, totally the fire underneath that band. I think of what McCartney said, that the first song they played with Ringo, they all just looked at each other. Because he was the soul of rock ‘n’ roll, man. That cat, his energy was so beautiful and so exciting and wild — just his whole, his spirit is the thing he had. He played with Sister Rosetta Tharp, you know? He played with all of this ecstatic music that would come through Liverpool. And he is an ecstatic musician. The Beatles were all ecstatic musicians, you know, but Ringo was the fire under it.
"To me, he has as good a claim as anybody to the greatest rock ‘n’ roll drummer of all times, with his tones, the way he hit the drums, the type of beats he played, the way he would construct drum parts where nothing would be playing straight through . . . Ringo was an extraordinary musician."

Most western metro areas are constrained by "they're not making any more attractive land" for a long time. Boulder, CO began fencing itself in with permanent open space purchases back in the 1940s, I believe. Lots of empty land east of Denver, but (a) the climate degrades quickly as you go that way and (b) there are no meaningful water rights that come with the land. Many of the neighborhoods burned in the LA fires had been built right up to the foothills by the 1950s and 1960s.
There are a lot of pictures around of those neighborhoods with isolated houses still standing. Invariably, those houses are on lots where someone scraped off the old house and build new to contemporary codes. We know (and require) so much more in the way of fire resistance and energy efficiency than we used to.
We see similar pictures every time a hurricane goes through a piece of the Gulf Coast that hasn't been hit directly for 25-30 years. Everything flattened except where the old house was scraped off and replaced.

And that's just the regional aspect.
My friend the anthropologist says that the suburbs of any two metro areas from Denver west are more alike than they are like anywhere else in the country. One way could be demonstrated once the Census Bureau made it possible to measure density based on "built area" rather than county area. Suburbs in the major metro areas in the West are just about twice as dense, on average, as suburbs in the rest of the country.
I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but when we were moving from New Jersey to the west Denver suburbs, my first observation was, "they really cram the houses close together here".

I can't wait for the ocean to swallow Mar-A-Lago like a bad case of reflux.
Personally, I'd like to see the site become a sewage treatment plant. (A real one, not a metaphor.) Give the cult a focus for pilgrimages.
But your alternative does have merit. Not to mention a high probability.

Well, I'm up to just under 1500 miles on the electric mountain bike. No problems with it so far (Trek Fuel EXe), and just about to change tires for the first time. Had it in the bike shop once so far to get the suspension serviced - not an inexpensive prospect, but far less expensive than replacing a shock or a fork.
Just did my favorite ride again this week - 18 miles with a bit over 2000 feet of climbing. Went in the morning as soon as the trails open and passed a Great Horned Owl sitting beside the trail and staring at me.
Just ordered a 529 Garage shield to put on my bike to protect it from theft. Have it registered at project529.com in case it goes missing.
Been doing a bit of research for gravel/ bikepacking bikes or a dropbar MTB that I might want to pick up if we are forced to retire and move someplace more flat. If there is anything good to be said for getting a full suspension emtb, it's that once you shell out for that, the price of a fancy modern gravel bike seems completely reasonable and the mechanicals seem dead simple.
Thinking of getting some bike mechanic training for retirement. Might volunteer at a community bike shop.

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.

I suspect that the question is just how bad it will get, and how long it will take us to repair the damage.
The task now is triage. The trend to start reversing extreme concentration of wealth (HSH abv.) is first on the list. Both of our main political parties (aka "elites") have pushed for policies enabling this, but only one of them actively promotes this as a positive political and social goal.
https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/why-they-did-it
That is your Republican Party.
I appreciate wj's standing in for his ideosyncratic concept of "conservatism", but 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.
As we seem to be approaching the event horizon in our politics, those of us who care are required to take sides.
Gentle reader, I say unto you, "Pick one".

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.

We're building gulags and far too many people think it's just great because immigrants are ruining the country. 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.
What is happening more insidiously is the continued acceleration of the concentration of wealth. Too few people care about that ... because too many people want to blame immigrants for their perceived problems. (I could go on again about the $80K pickup trucks and nice, large fishing boats with tRump flags flying from them, obviously owned by people who have been ruined by immigrants, the woke agenda, and all the socialism happening everywhere.)
It hurts my head.

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.

To put something of a point on my previous:
What I'm feeling lately is just a kind of crushing disappointment in my own country. It's just unbelievable to me that, after all the work that generations of people put into overcoming the horrible legacies of the worst of our history, we're back fighting the same damned fights.
Again.
Which makes me feel like we never really got past them. They've just been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to re-emerge.
Predatory capitalism, misogyny, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, xenophobia. Open hostility to gays and anybody who is in any way unusual or atypical. I'm sure you can add your own items to the list. All front and center, once again. And the freaking cruelty of it, the appeal that has for way too many people, just shocks me.
We have to fight this reeking pile of crap once again? Still? I'm just so freaking tired of it all.
Some of it is just human nature, for sure. But other places seem capable of at least maintaining a stance that it's wrong. We appear to be inviting it all in to have a seat at the table. As if it's all just another "point of view".
I thought we were past a lot of this. Turns out it's apparently bred in the bone. It turns my stomach.