Well, it certainly started off with a bang … or, strike that, a number of spectacular public tantrums on the part of people that ordinary humans might have expected to have cultivated a more mature approach when it came to coping with others in the public sphere. I speak of the Gamestop shop customer of indeterminate sex who went off on the cashier for addressing … ummm, the customer as a man, when on the thin basis of some eye makeup, the customer apparently hoped to pass as a woman and not a member of a 1980s tribute rock band. Let me break it to you gently, guy – as a woman myself, you’re doing the woman-thing all wrong. A little more care with the coiffure, a skirt and some nice stockings and low heels, and a soft-spoken Southern lady demeanor – even adorning a six-foot-something frame with shoulders like a football quarterback – would make it easier for those you encounter in public to go along with a pretense of you being a delicate little flower of womanhood.
Of the vape-store clerk (now a former vape-store clerk) feeling all righteous and entitled to go off on an abusive rant against a customer wearing items of clothing identifying him as a Trump fan … seriously, when did it become OK to be an abusive butthead in public? Or is it just that incidents like this are more likely to be documented in this age of practically everyone having a telephone capable of recording short video? Cannot we all agree on a new year resolution – to act like mature, well-adjusted adults in public?
Sigh – obviously, this resolution is a road not taken by new reps in the Dem Chamber and Senate, nor among certain state Dem lawmakers, who have basically outdone themselves in exposing their ignorance, bigotry and lack of collegial good manners in the last few days. Yes, of course – their various remarks were aimed at their own constituents – or perhaps at a lick-spittle press, eager to carry the next Golden Political Child to yet higher levels…
Ah yes, the new Golden Political Child – or as some in the right-leaning side of the blogosphere are calling her – Alexandra Occasional-Cortex, the It Girl on the current political scene. I think of her as a sort of political Lucy Ricardo; essaying adorable pratfalls, mugging elaborately for an indulgent audience, who think she is just so gosh-darned cute … she has yet to burst into tears over having mucked up one grand plan or another and beg Ricky to fix it all for her. That’s just about the way that every episode of I Love Lucy ended; in time I’m certain that Occasional-Cortex comedy appearances will start ending that way as well.
The big fight at the beginning of 2019? I don’t think it will be the impeachment of Trump, although the usual suspects are breathing heavily and talking big along those lines. Because, seriously, what have they got in the way of offenses against the laws of God and man to charge him with, other than winning an election and being as blunt and outspoken as most establishment GOPers have long forgotten how to do in the interests of being ‘collegial’ and fitting in with the Beltway cool kids? No, the big fight will be about “the wall”; staunching the flood of illegal immigrants across our national boarder. Too many regular American citizens are dead at the hands of repeat illegals, through criminality or mischance on the roads and byways; too many regular, law-abiding citizens have been affected by the burden that the sub-class of illegality places on the rest of us: identity theft, increased auto insurance rates, wrecked neighborhoods, wrecked schools, wrecked entry-level jobs, jammed emergency rooms – all of that which hits the middle- and working class, the working poor most of all. The ruling class, to include the intellectual sort and the national media – don’t see all of this as a problem at all. Just that the rest of us do, and at this point, our votes and dollars still count for something. Discuss as you wish and can bear it.
(Added 18 hours later – from the Sgt. Stryker archives from 2006 – an explanation of why I did not love Lucy…)
No.
I’m not being polite to the bastards any more. Any of them. Anywhere. In any medium.
An uncivilized response from Republicans whenever a 2020 Democratic POTUS candidate is mentioned could be, for instance:
Kamala Harris is a motherf***er and should be impeached.
I wish we could get back to some sort of civility but I don’t see how that could happen anymore. The people being elected into public office’s are some of the least civil people nowadays.
you’re doing the woman-thing all wrong
In the last 60 years I’ve seen a number of trans, and very few of them looked like women; nearly all looked like men dressed as women. Sorry. :-|
So… Given this is politics….
NANCYYYYYY, You got some essplainin’to doooooo!!!
Pst – I might also have seen a number of trans, but if they were doing it right, one couldn’t really tell. And if they weren’t doing it well, I might charitably just assume they were just unfortunately homely.
And the lack of ordinary civility is worrisome, and has been for some time, to my way of thinking. Violence in words pretty soon turns to violence in the real world, and eventually non-extremists have no common ground upon which to stand.
I’ve seen some pretty good imitations in San Francisco. I have to take my daughter, who’s learned in such matters, along just to keep score.
I was mostly thinking of the ones that I personally knew at least casually, so that the “sample set” was not restricted to those I noticed. But I wouldn’t be surprised San Francisco had better imitations than the Midwest. :-)
And I agree about the decline in civility. I have increasingly gotten the impression that the left wants the most horrible things to happen to anyone to their right. The similar attitudes I have seen on the right have been to a great extent a reaction to the left’s incivility and intolerance, but not entirely.
I don’t think the point of impeaching Trump is to succeed at it, given what would have to happen in the Senate to remove him. It’s an effort to take the stage continuously for months, posing for the cameras.
I think the impeachment is to satisfy their illiterate voters who never had Civics in school.
It’s also revenge for Clinton. At the time, I thought censure would be enough.
It is interesting to see the rage directed at anyone associated with him. Robespierre would understand.
Robespierre? Bingo, Mike. Certainly a connection currently absent from (sigh) public school civics education.
I read the impeachment thread as possibly firmly believed by many as appropriate because: 1) keeping up (factual history + mechanics of law) takes a bit of both work and skill; 2) they’ve already made up their minds. As Occasional Cortex aka Occasionally Conscious said, facts don’t have any connection with morality. (It does not bother me so much that some person believes what she does. It bothers me that she got elected. The first is a fluke. The latter is a litmus test, a trend that does not bode well in application to Sgt Mom’s point about our votes counting as something.)
But, bottom line, the Donks gonna pursue impeachment not because it is appropriate, or because they have any chance of getting it done. They will pursue it because they believe that path will enable controlling civil discussion to the extent they can avoid any responsibility for their hoped for non action over the next couple of years. And that said inactivity will translate into Phant defeat in 2020.
Meanwhile, The Reason I voted for Trump (despite a multitude of serious objections to his person and platform) will happen: SCOTUS appointments. The House belonging to the Donks cannot stop this.
I am not unhappy that the Dims will spend the next two years on hysteria. There is very little that the government does that I approve of.
I understand the TSA workers are running a “sick-in.” OK. They do nothing useful. The entire TSA was part of the price Democrats extorted from Bush to pass The Patriot Act, much of which is useless and some is dangerous.
The federal workers that are not going to be paid (They have all been paid so far) are Democrat voters.
They grossly overestimate the sympathy of American taxpayers and voters.
I have wondered for years what happened to the fence authorized in the 2006 law. Now I have an explanation.
When people talk about 700 miles of fence already on the border, it’s not what you think. According to the DHS along with the 36.3 miles of double-fencing they’ve built 300 miles of Vehicle Fence and 353 miles of primary Pedestrian Fence.
The “Vehicle Fence” is no barrier to humans on foot.
AVI “I…think the point of impeaching Trump is…an effort to take the stage continuously for months, posing for the cameras.”
I think it is also part of an ongoing effort to move the Overtown Windows ever farther to the left. Maybe they cannot impeach Trump today, but they home to someday be able to impeach anyone for the crime of not being them.
Oops. Overton Window was me.
they home to someday be able to impeach anyone for the crime of not being them.
What we are seeing is a replay of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson who was impeached, and almost removed from office, because he fired Edward Stanton as Secretary of War.
The pretext was a clearly unconstitutional law passed by the Congress, that said the President cannot fire a member of his cabinet.
The parallel with Mueller is interesting.
The culmination of a lengthy political battle between Johnson, a lifelong Democrat and the Republican majority in Congress over how best to deal with the defeated Southern states following the conclusion of the American Civil War, the impeachment, and the subsequent trial (and acquittal) of Johnson were among the most dramatic events in the political life of the nation during the Reconstruction Era. Together, they have gained a historical reputation as an act of political expedience, rather than necessity, which was based on Johnson’s defiance of an unconstitutional piece of legislation, and which was conducted with little regard for the will of a general public which, despite the unpopularity of Johnson, opposed the impeachment.
Johnson was a drunk and inept but he had been chosen by Lincoln as VP because he was a “War Democrat” and supported the Union although he had been governor of Tennessee, and which had stayed with the Union.
“a replay of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson”
Thanks. I didn’t remember that at all.
I can highly recommend Bruce Catton’s Civil War series.
They are out of print but copies are available for low prices and they are very readable and a pleasure.
I believe the impeachment talk and perhaps actual by the house is primarily to cripple Trump’s re-election. Good political drama. After all, if you repeat a Big Lie enough, it becomes at least partially accepted as implicitly true by low cortex voters.
Death6