This is my dream

We must destroy the Republican party. Fairly, but utterly.

Then in 2020, Trump must be crushed at the ballot box. His corrupt administration must be thoroughly investigated, and any criminal acts punished. More importantly, the economic base of Republican plutocracy — Wall Street, monopolist corporations, and idle rich heirs and heiresses — must also be crushed. Monopolies must be broken up, taxes on the rich and corporations dramatically increased, and the size, profitability, and power of Wall Street sharply reduced with cricket bat regulations.

Meanwhile, Democrats must strengthen their own political base by strengthening democratic freedoms. They should make D.C. and Puerto Rico states, establish an inalienable right to vote, make Election Day a holiday, and strengthen and update labor law to spark a new wave of union organizing. Then they must overhaul the economy to cut the middle and working class in on the fruits of the last 40 years of economic growth, actually provide health care for all, and perhaps strengthen the welfare state for parents and children. Only by establishing a new political economy that functions for the great majority of the citizenry — as FDR and the New Deal Democrats did in the 1930s — can Republicans be firmly exiled from political power. For a political party as diseased as the GOP, a generation in the political wilderness is just what the doctor ordered.

You’ve mistaken “head exploding” for “laughing at your expense”

I despise internet hyperbole, no matter who does it. It’s one of the things I like least about the left-leaning news site Raw Story — they periodically erupt with click-baity inane headlines on the order of “Internet Decides Donald Trump is a Moron”. No, the internet decides nothing, and all you’ve got is a collection of tweets from people who don’t like Republicans. Of course, the right wing does it too, perhaps even more, and here’s an example: Trump Makes “Merry Christmas” Great Again; Leftist Heads Explode. How are your heads feeling today, fellow lefties?

We may not all have stopped saying it, but we did feel the weight of it outside of conservative regions like the South. We understood that “Happy Holidays” was preferred and that we risked offending and insulting others—or losing our jobs, i.e. mine in academia—by uttering the words “Merry Christmas.”

I felt it when I lived in Massachusetts, as I’ve attested in a post about my experience with this socio-cultural and economic pressure. No one said, “if you say ‘Merry Christmas,’ you’re out of here.” They didn’t have to. The left uses the fact that conservatives and others on the right don’t want to offend or upset others. They know we don’t like to make a fuss and that we are likely to turn the other cheek or remain silent when we are attacked or in the face of controversy . . . particularly when our jobs are on the line.

Unbelievable. The whole point of that post is the claim that Donald Trump successfully annoyed the Left and was pushing leftist buttons — that he was trolling and doing this specifically to rile up others.

You know, that’s kind of the opposite of not wanting to offend or upset others. This twit is openly chortling about offending and upsetting leftists! That was the whole point of Trump’s tweet!

In case you’re wondering about the referenced post about their experience, it’s more of the same — imagined offenses against kind, gentle, well-meaning conservatives.

In Massachusetts, I worked in Boston but lived in a smallish, mostly blue collar town. In Boston, it was “Happy Holidays” . . . if one dared recognize that there even was a December holiday (or reason to be happy). Out in my town, it was the general sense that “Merry Christmas” was preferred, but I had to say it first, and the person to whom I said it would look around nervously, blush, and then finally, with a sense of strong defiance or of quiet camaraderie, say “Merry Christmas” back.

Look, this is just plain stupid, and the reverse of the facts. If you are working in academia or living in a large city, you know that some of the people you meet are going to be Jewish, or Muslim, or atheist, and wishing them a merry Christmas is rude and insensitive (although I’ve also noticed that those people are usually willing to take the greeting in the spirit it is given, and not sweat the implications). We’re actually aware of the context and the environment, and being able to wish someone well in a non-sectarian way is a good thing. The only people nervous about saying “Merry Christmas” are conservatives who are vaguely aware that they’re being exclusive.

The reason people were laughing at Trump is not that they were angry, but that 1) it’s another Trumpian lie, and 2) it was clearly aimed at the kind of narrow, hypocritical, conservative white Christian dumbass who wrote that post. If you want to know how we really feel, ask the Rude Pundit.

One of the fun parts of being a total atheist is that you don’t give a damn what religion someone believes. Seriously, someone can tell me they think that God is a toilet and shitting is the way to give thanks to Him for His blessings of indoor plumbing. It doesn’t fucking matter. In fact, unless you are making laws according to your religion and imposing them on me or you’re harming others based on your faith, why should I care? You’re just a harmless person who believes that fairy tales are real and, c’mon, who gives a fuck? You think Cinderella really went to a ball so you wear glass slippers around your neck? Groovy, man. Enjoy.

So when President Donald Trump made a big fuckin’ deal about being “allowed” to say, “Merry Christmas” again, I wondered who the fuck was stopping him. I mean, you wanna say, “Merry Christmas” or “Hail Satan” or “I fuck unicorns,” I’m not gonna care (ok, I’ll be a little judgmental about the unicorn fucking – or at least curious as to what that fucking is like). Who said you couldn’t say, “Merry Christmas”? Everyone I’ve known ever has always said, “Merry Christmas.” I say, “Merry Christmas” and I think that Jesus is a fictional character in an overlong, poorly-plotted book.

Ahed Tamimi: now that’s bravery

Tamimi is a Palestinian teenager who was protesting the occupation of her home by Israeli soldiers — and she is not shy about kicking and slapping these heavily armed men who tower over her.

If you’re wondering why Tamimi is so furious, you haven’t been paying attention. The government of Israel has been following a pattern of brutal oppression for decades.

Two Fridays ago, one week before Ahed chased the soldiers from her yard, it was her cousin Mohammad, one of her little brother’s closest friends. A soldier shot him in the face. The bullet—rubber-coated but a bullet nonetheless—lodged in his skull. A week later, he was still in a medically-induced coma.

If you’ve seen the video that led to her arrest, you might have wondered why Ahed was so angry at the soldiers who entered her yard, why she yelled at them to leave, why she slapped them. That’s why. That and a thousand other reasons. Her uncle and her cousin killed. Her mother shot in the leg and on crutches for most of a year. Her parents and her brother taken from her for months at a time. And never a night’s rest without the possibility that she might wake, as she did early Tuesday morning, as she had so many times before, to soldiers at the door, in her house, in her room, there to take someone away.

Tamimi has now been arrested. Apparently trying to throw soldiers who are occupying your front yard out is a crime so heinous it warrants threats of life imprisonment.

The gulf between the two opposing fantasies that define Israel’s self-image has only grown with the years: a country that still imagines itself to be David to the Arab Goliath—noble, outnumbered, and brave—while taking pride in the unrivaled lethality and sophistication of its military. Ahed made both those convictions crumble. Before the world, she had again revealed Israel to be the bully. And watching that video, they knew that their guns are worthless, their strength a sham. For revealing those secrets, for showing the world how weak and fearful they know themselves to be, Ahed had to be punished. And so the Defense Minister of the country with the most technologically advanced military in the world stooped from his throne to personally promise that not just Ahed and her parents but “everyone around them” would get “what they deserve.” The Minister of Education was more specific: Ahed should be locked up for life, he said, so serious was her crime.

That’s not all. Some Israelis think the appropriate response would be to torture or rape her.

Prominent Israeli journalist Ben Caspit caused international furor last week, when he wrote in his Maariv article that “in the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras”.

Israel is our ally, as is Saudi Arabia. When will we wake up and realize that our friends are horrible and abusive, and maybe shouldn’t be our friends?

(Maybe when we wake up and realize the US has been horrible and abusive to its own citizens.)

How to confound a flat-earther

Use the principle of Kook Neutralization. Confront them with a hollow-earther.

Cluff is against the claim made by the flat-Earthers. I don’t know how the flat-Earthers can be so confused. They are obviously wrong. The world is not flat – it’s hollow. They reject all the evidence, he said. Unlike, the flat-Earthers, the hollow-Earthers believe that our Earth is spherical but with a hollow body. Their conspiracy theories also suggest that the moon, the stars, the Sun, and other planets are all hollow bodies.

A repugnant and short-sighted “what if?” scenario

Have you ever wondered how long the US military would last in a war against the rest of the world? Let’s ask a a delusional military fantasist!

What would happen if the U.S. found itself facing off against the rest of the world? Not just its traditional rivals, but what if it had to fight off its allies like the United Kingdom, France, and South Korea as well?

In short, America would stomp them. Especially if it pulled back to the continental U.S. and made its stand there.

I guess we’re going to pretend Vietnam never happened by imagining that we bunker down behind our borders with a wall of steel facing outwards. The author then laughs triumphantly about all our aircraft carriers, our F-22s (What? Not the F-35?), our Patriot missiles that will shoot down their missiles, our wonderful tanks and our superior infantry. It’s kind of disgusting. What he’s proposing is the North Korea strategy: us against the world! Close our borders! Everyone is our enemy, we must destroy them, and we can!

He imagines our forces as they are, except all conveniently concentrated right here at home, and the rest of the world as it is, only generaled by idiots who decide to throw everything they’ve now got right at us, all at once. That’s not how it would happen.

I can believe the first part happening, now that our government has wrecked itself. I can picture an increasingly paranoid, isolationist America bottling itself up and wallowing in propaganda, treating the rest of the world as useless and unimportant. Yeah, we could get that far. Of course, our triumphalist author who is busy counting tanks isn’t bothering to consider economics and the importance of world-wide communication to advancements in science and technology. He doesn’t care that we don’t have the industry to support his military machine without external cooperation and trade.

He also doesn’t consider a realistic response by the rest of the world. They would treat the US like we now treat North Korea, a pariah nation that is going to be confined and allowed to rot within the ruins of its own economy, while keeping a wary eye out for outburst of externally directed violence. If we are a real military threat rather than a bunch of mad-eyed fanatics hunkered down behind our Border Walls™, they’re not going to just throw their currently smaller forces at us. They’re going to build with the resources of a world economy. They’re going to wait for ingrown, decaying nation to spend itself on corruption and waste and stupid decision-making, like the kind that would have put us into this situation in the first place.

Like the kind that allows military day dreamers like that author to play victorious war games in their head. Our security does not rest in more and bigger guns, it resides in greater cooperation and trust. We can’t stand alone, and what I find scary is that there are people who think a bunch of M1 Abrams tanks is all we need to be safe and happy, and that military porn is reassuring.

Bah, humbug

It’s cold and dark. My wife has appropriated my robe and my slippers, so I’ve been shuffling about the house in bare feet. I got up at 5am despite having no kids running about. I’m coming down with a sore throat. Donald Trump is tweeting about his major accomplishment of removing the world-wide prohibition against saying Merry Christmas.

The only good Christmas greeting is

Bah, humbug.

The world is run by fools and venal idiots, and I don’t want to hear about no fucking joy.