HereAndGone
11mo ago
If TPTB had the chutzpah to just kill Biden, Kamala would have had a chance: she would have been the first female president, she would have had the advantage of being in power.
The problem is, that is a double-edged sword: give the masses the chance to see President Kamala (as she takes over from Biden and finishes out his term) and maybe we all see how badly she does when given power. See Ford versus Carter for how being the VP who took over as President wasn't any advantage.
But maybe she does okay, or at least can shuffle off any blame onto the first half of the term when Biden was still in power. Faced with Trump, maybe the Democrats rally behind her as "well, no point changing horses in midstream".
Or maybe there is enough of a run-in to let them have an open primary and choose a different candidate. How gruntled will Kamala be then? Will she get behind the new choice for the sake of the party, or will there be splits and rival camps?
HereAndGone
11mo ago
I think it would make sense for Buttigieg to respond that she's right, the handicap was for anyone running with her. And let the implication be "not because she's a black woman, because she's Kamala Harris and couldn't govern her way out of a wet paper bag".
I don't think Mayor Pete is a possible president, but if we have to pick a gay guy, he's about as inoffensive as you can get (remember the criticism for him being the wrong kind of gay? not gay enough in the queerest possible sense for representation? too white picket fence?). So Kamala is definitely slipping the knife in, and I do have to wonder just what exactly went on that he offended her in some way.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
From all the excerpts I'm seeing of the book and the Rachel Maddow interview, the only sense I can make of this is that Harris is angry about being dumped with all the blame for giving Trump a second term, so she's bound and determined to get her revenge on the Democratic party. She says she's not going for Governor of California, and she's being very coy about 2028, so maybe she is trying to burn Newsom in return for what she feels is his lukewarm and lacking endorsement of her in the 2024 campaign?
How else to explain things like "I thought the titans of industry would protect democracy"? That is as good as making the slogan "A vote for the Democratic party candidate is a vote for the oligarchs! The Democratic Party - the party of real billionaires!"
Everybody knew she picked Walz over Shapiro because she felt Shapiro was too ambitious while Walz knew his place as second fiddle to her. I have no idea what she is trying to do, dragging Buttigieg into this - I couldn't pick him because he was too much of a liability, but that wasn't because he was gay, it was because he was gay and I'm black and female - what? that comes across as "don't anybody pick Buttigieg except maybe as VP for a straight white guy, because otherwise he's unelectable" and again, only sense it makes to me is that she is trying to torpedo as many Democratic picks as possible because, as per her book, she thinks she was deliberately undermined by the Biden White House both while in office as VP and when running her campaign, and the party never stepped up sufficiently to have her back, and Certain People who she expected to endorse her and support her didn't do it sufficiently or at all.
Whoo, is all I can say.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Yeah, I never watched Sons of Anarchy when this was the big new hit TV show, but didn't the motorcycle club in that start off that very way? Vets back from the war (Vietnam in this case) found a motorcycle club, and gradually over the years it becomes a criminal outfit.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
I've seen a few of her recent videos and found myself agreeing with her, so either I've become more liberal (doubtful) or she's moved more towards the centre (probable).
I think her reaction here is "Wait. I thought we were the good side. The compassionate side, the tolerant side, the side that tried to understand and accept despite differences? Not like the fanatics and crazies and bad people on the other side? And here are my people cheering a murder and calling for more murders, and the people they want murdered are 'fascists' and hey, that's me! I've been called a fascist!"
It's always a shock to find people you admire, or are on the same broad lines of identifying with, turning out to say and do and admire horrible shit.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Oh, girlbosses annoy me as well! I dislike the attitude that women (in popular culture representation) only become vital and interesting characters when they are copying the boys, showing they are as good as the boys at doing boy stuff like riding around on horses waving swords.
I understand why early versions of this happened, in order to adjust from the "men and boys are the main characters while the women and girls are just in the background somewhere", but it still casts the entire question in terms of "what men do and what the male world is about", rather than the mysteries of the Bona Dea. Girlboss is important because she too rides around and waves a sword, not because she engages in weaving magic or keeps the household governed in the absence of the men.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
I disagree with (1) his huffing and puffing over me regarding his Tidus as a fantasy novel rather than Real Science (2) warmed-over 19th century anthropology - others in the comments have pointed out disagreement with his Just So story of How It All Happened.
He seems very put out that I'm not treating his Giant Work Of Staggering Genius (it's going to be a book, you know!) with a seemly and proper level of reverence, but rather that I'm mocking it (you know, being petulant and sarcastic and all the limitations of my viewpoint, due to the womanly faults of not having a brain but big tiddies instead).
Me and Belloc are over here laughing about "oh really, the Nordic Man myth again?"
HereAndGone
11mo ago
The romanticization of biker gangs traveled far thanks to the interwoven cross-section of 1960s counterculture that helped popularize it. Groups of American ruffian drug traffickers on two-wheeled transport, sexual revolutionaries, and psychedelic entrepreneurs found commonality in their love of drugs and rebellion to the Man.
Even before the 60s, see the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One from 1953, based on a story allegedly based on a true incident. See the famous quote from the movie.
The film's screenplay was based on Frank Rooney's short story "Cyclists' Raid", published in the January 1951 Harper's Magazine and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 1952. Rooney's story was inspired by sensationalistic media coverage of an American Motorcyclist Association motorcycle rally that got out of hand on the Fourth of July weekend in 1947 in Hollister, California. The overcrowding, drinking and street stunting were given national attention in the July 21, 1947, issue of Life, with a possibly staged photograph of a wild drunken man on a motorcycle. The events, conflated with the newspaper and magazine reports, Rooney's short story, and the film The Wild One are part of the legend of the Hollister riot.
So post-Second World War veterans returned home, more disposable income and better conditions in the 50s, a rise in interest in all kinds of communal activities, leading to a lot of guys getting interested in motorbikes as a hobby and club activity, along with a bunch of guys who would always be the type to be rule-breakers involved in motorbiking, and the tension between 'back to normie society and its rules after living in a different environment during wartime' and 'sliding into involvement with criminality' leading to, as you say, the romantic view of the guys living outside strict rules of conventional society in their own replacement culture as modern-day pioneers.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Were we in the forum I'd ask for a word with your husband
Eek! I am so terrified by the invocation of authority! Fortunately for me, I abide contentedly in blessed singleness, nor have ever had a husband, nor ever felt in the need of one.
And this kind of attitude makes me very glad that God made me as I am, freed from the desire for the desire of others. Are you seriously telling me you are going to go running to your daddy that some mean girl was rude to you on the Internet?
HereAndGone
11mo ago
HereAndGone
11mo ago
What better evidence could there be than him and his defense literally saying it?
He also said he was going to dress up as a unicorn. I think "not playing with a full deck" is the best approach to take here.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
eat the Paul Pelosi attack as a right wing thing
I've seen this with the Minnesota shooter and now the Charlie Kirk assassination. Some online types VERY VEHEMENT about "No! This person was not left/trans/on my side at all! He was a radicalised far-right nutjob!"
Re: the Minnesota shooter, funny how "you're trans if you say you're trans" and any critique of self-identification is violence and transphobia, up until the point the trans person does something that would reflect badly on the rah-rah LGBTQIA++ left side, then they're right-wingers and No True Scotsman all along.
Ditto with the Kirk shooter: no, he's not a lefty at all! He's pure white nationalist right-wing! Uh, he's ex-Mormon, living with a boyfriend, said boyfriend is trans and in the process of transitioning? Nope, up-and-down right-wing!
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Sadly, We May Never Know His True Motives. Insert galaxy brain meme here.
The suspect is alive, but not talking. So unless he decides to explain why he did it (and probably right now the optimum strategy is to lawyer up and say nothing), everything else is just speculation. He's a gamer? He's right-wing? He's left-wing? Speculation.
We're reading the tealeaves with what is alleged to have been on the bullets etc. but still just speculation.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
We could all write fantasy worlds where it just so happens very conveniently that evolution works exactly the way we want it to bring Our Guys out on top.
Maybe if Europe and North America are indeed being over-run by brown-skinned people (citation needed), this is also evolution in action. Nature cares nothing for whatever fancy culture we create, it is what survives is the winner. In a hundred years if every 'white' land is echoing to the call of the muezzin, that will be the 'winning' race. We may not like it, but just-so stories about "a harsh northern island" on a made-up world won't cut it.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Yes, the conception of Servius Tullius. But again, note it is the female servant of the house who is tending with the proper rites to the fire, not the male head of the house.
Another tradition of sacred fire associated with a goddess or saint:
In the late 12th century, Gerald of Wales wrote that nineteen nuns took turns keeping a perpetual fire burning at Kildare in honour of Brigid, and that this fire had been burning since Brigid's time. He said it was ringed by a hedge that no man was allowed to cross. According to Gerald, each of the nineteen nuns took their turns guarding the fire overnight, but every twentieth night Brigid was said to return to keep the fire burning: "the nineteenth nun puts the logs beside the fire and says 'Brigid, guard your fire, this is your night'. And in this way the fire is left there, and in the morning the wood, as usual, has been burnt and the fire is still alight". It has been suggested that this perpetual fire was originally part of a temple of Brigit the goddess.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Yes, yes, we're all snowy white big-brained men on here (except those of us who aren't).
Swear to God, I never thought I'd be fighting for the conservative viewpoint of not being a total pain in the behind, yet here I am.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Men - do all stuff, invent thing, conquer thing, get big brain bigger and bigger
Women - sit on ass, do nothing, grow bigger tits to entice and trap men
This is pretty much what I'm taking away from the Parable of Tidus right now. Wake me up when you have women contributing to the survival of your Viking overlords.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Each family has a 'sacred fire' in its hearth, an ancestral flame passed on from father to eldest son, tended carefully lest it go out. When it does there are special rituals by which it might be reïgnited, which call upon one's forefathers to participate. Maintaining the flame is but one part of a man's duty to perpetuate the spirit of his male ancestors, as is having a son who might one day take up the mantle in turn. Women in this society leave off worshiping the fire of their father and are instead inducted into worship of the fire of their husband. In a symbolic sense the fire is the family, is the male line itself. (And when you read about ancient peoples' obsession with 'the hearth', you'll see now that it was much more to them than the place where they happened to cook their food.)
Except that it's the DAUGHTERS who are responsible for maintaining the hearth fire and rituals around it. The hearth is more than just "where we cook our food" but it is in the domestic sphere, the woman's sphere. It is Hestia, not Hephaestus, who is the god here.
Men may have rituals around wildfire/need-fires (see bonfire traditions) but that's separate and parallel. Even kindling the Easter Fire comes under this heading, not hearth fires.
If you're at the point where your sexism is rewriting history, I think this entire project works better as a draft for a fantasy novel. Or brush up on what rituals you are writing about so you know what they were, not what you want them to be.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
I saw this before the Kirk assassination and thought it would be great fodder for discussion about the problems the Democratic party have right now with both their potential candidate choice, and are they pinning too much of their hopes on a blue wave in the mid-term elections.
Now, it's something that is so trivial by comparison that it's entertainment. Coconut Queen or Gruesome for Newsom? Who cares when blood is literally flowing?
HereAndGone
11mo ago
I think it is the gayness in part, but mostly that Pete is so white. Whitebread. I mean, I'm white, and looking at Pete and his husband I go "Damn, those boys are white".
He got dragged for not being gay enough/the right sort of gay, so yeah. Dorky white guy with unfortunate name that leads itself to sixth grader jokes.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
Far in the cold, arid north of Tidus, in an island chain where the climate makes agriculture difficult, a tribe of men arises along the usual pastoralist lines. Countless generations of development in this setting, in constant competition with others like them, has forged them into something special. They are consummate warriors, prizing honor and courage above all else. They call themselves, in their own language, the 'Kings' or the 'Nobles'. They're tall and strong and beautiful, of course. They're also, to be blunt, simply more mentally-acute; more prone to the trait we now call 'openness to experience.' Rather than sort of passively existing, they notice new patterns and start to put all sorts of pieces together.
These are the first to tame and ride horses, including into battle. They are the first to invent the wheel. They invent chariots for combat and wagons for hauling goods and families with them as they roam. And, perhaps most importantly for our purposes, they also invent the first boats capable of more than minor inter-island hops. Instead of sending a few warriors in canoes, these people can travel long distances and show up overnight with huge warbands, horses, chariots, stores of weapons, food, supplies, and their women and children too, practically without warning.
This wonderful chapter of the genuine true history of the evolution of our race (indeed, might not one say, our Race?) has moved me to the depths. So moved am I, in fact, that I have to share an earlier, cruder version of this great truth as presented here. Oh, would that I could claim to be of The Race! But alas, I am one of the lesser breeds, the natural inferiors of the noble barbarians of the true North!
From 1926, an obscure essayist named Hilaire Belloc and his paean to The Nordic Man (see page 104 onwards of this essay collection). I can only excerpt certain plums here, but I urge you - all you seekers after truth, after hard scientific fact! - to read the whole thing, inferior though it be to the stellar work showered upon us here.
Behold, my child, the Nordic man,
And be as like him, as you can;
His legs are long, his mind is slow,
His hair is lank and made of tow.And here we have the Alpine Race:
Oh! What a broad and foolish face!
His skin is of a dirty yellow.
He is a most unpleasant fellow.The most degraded of them all
Mediterranean we call.
His hair is crisp, and even curls,
And he is saucy with the girls.The translation is my own. I offer it with diffidence, for I recognize that it does not reproduce the deep organ tones of the original. But it gives the substance of that fine poem, and it is only with the substance — I mean that description of The Race which it conveys — that I have here to deal.
I heard so much about the Nordic Man in these last few months that I was moved to collect recently a great mass of information upon him and to co-ordinate it. Upon the Alpine Man and the Mediterranian Man I am not so erudite: nor is it indeed to any great purpose that I should be — for they are clearly inferior. But the Nordic Man is worth anybody’s trouble; and here is what I have found out about him.
He is the Conqueror and the Adventurer. He is the Lawgiver and the essentially Moral Man. He arranges the world as it should be arranged. He does everything for his own good and for the good of others. He is a natural Leader. Even those who hate him, fear him: all respect him. The Alpine Man sits sullenly at his feet awaiting his orders; the Mediterranean Man flies in terror from his face.
But it is not enough to learn these general characteristics in the Nordic Man, pleasing though they are. No sound biologist could be content until he knew something intimate of his origin and habits; where he may be found, what he does, and how to tell him at sight.
HereAndGone
11mo ago
I don't think it could be that fine-tuned, was he even able to hear what Kirk was saying from where he was on the roof? I think it was more "get in position, get ready, take the shot, get out". I don't think what Kirk was saying at that precise second mattered. Did it matter what Trump was saying when his assassination attempt happened?
HereAndGone
11mo ago
It also is absolutely going to give encouragement to those who are convinced witches are doing genuine harm (I don't believe spells work, but I also think mucking around with the occult like that is not a good idea either).
So congrats, Jezebel, you have now restoked the Satanic Panic.
I think Kamala's problem wasn't in the realms of kindness and wisdom, but rather lack of any stable policy. She seemed to go with any wind that blew - see the disastrous 2019 attempt where she over-corrected for being 'Copmala' by going too far in the opposite direction, and gave plenty of hostages to fortune to be dragged out again in 2024 ("she's for they/them" being one).
To correct for 2019, she then tried tacking back to the centre, but the campaign mostly was a reprise of Biden's in 2020: "vote for me because I'm not Trump". What did she stand for, exactly? What were her policies? Balloon popping and brat summer coconut memes weren't enough.
Kamala's problem is that there does not seem to be a 'there' there. I think that based on her record, she's a local politician and becoming Attorney-General of California was as high as she could reasonably go. Yes, she became a senator, and with what result? Her name is linked with Jussie Smollett and that anti-lynching bill which ultimately failed, can anyone tell me of something substantial she achieved in her term? The fact that she's rejected running for Governor of California would indicate to me that she realises her limitations. Otherwise, that would seem like the logical next step on the career ladder - go for that, win that (it is hoped), get a term under her belt, position herself for a run for the presidency in 2032.
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