Also I added a photo to the flickr group of a crazy fucking flyer that was put up in the bathroom of my friend's business.
It it wasn't in the toilet, at least they were close!
The explosion of racism this past week was going to be exactly the same, regardless of who won the election.
I agree there would have been an explosion of racism either way, but it wouldn't have been the same -- angry, defiant racism, as opposed to smug triumphant racism. It would have been very bad, but still so much better.
I agree with peep. In the two incidents that happened to people I know, the attackers taunted that they could do this sort of thing now, because Trump had won. I'm sure that wasn't the worst part of the attacks, but it adds a particular horror to be told that America has ratified violence against you.
but it adds a particular horror to be credibly told that America has ratified violence against you.
The explosion of racism would likely have happened, but been much smaller than it was. Trump actually winning emboldened many who would otherwise have been too timid to do anything but sit at home and drink.
At least he didn't have to move in order to be in Canada.
I exist in a Canada of the mind.
WHEN THIS OLD ELECTORAL COLLEGE GETS ME DOWN
AND THERE'S NO SANE GOVERNMENT TO BE FOUND
I CLOSE MY EYES AND SOON I FIND
I'M IN A CANADA IN MY MIND
Hi everyone! Actually we've renamed Canada "Austria 2.0."
The Bay Area seems to be handling the explosion appropriately.
The local mechanic who proudly wouldn't work on the car with Clinton stickers, spouting some vulgar words about her, got fired today. Even in Trump's America!
The guy who attacked a Native over at the U, telling him to "go back to Mexico!" seems to have melted into the crowd.
Interior cancelled a bunch of gas leases in the Badger-Two Medicine -- we can hope for a lot of decent executive ction in the lame duck period, I think.
According to the SPLC the explosion is already starting to slow. No doubt some of the redcap brigade are realizing they don't want to interfere with the normalization of the Tangerine Duce.
Tangerine Duce
My favorite Trump name -- which I think I've only seen from one friend of mine, though I'm sure it's gotten wider circulation -- is "Cheeto Benito."
I really don't see any reason to abandon the classic "short-fingered vulgarian."
19 is your problem, LB. You need snappy, not sophisticated.
The Tangerine Deuce is the rarest of all the stool samples.
Except, on reflection, with babies. It was pretty common there.
Let's not forgot that classic, Fuckface von Clownstick.
"Cheeto Benito" is excellent and I'll have to use it, but I got too much cognitive interference from the original, original Benito and thought it was meant ironically.
It is entirely possible he'll cheat his voters out of the disastrous autarkic chauvinism they were promised.
From 16: Blackfeet elder Earl Old Person
Does that count as an aptonym?
There was a brief period when it seemed like maybe starting a relationship with his daughter Debbie Old Person (younger than me, and I was like 20) would have been a really good idea. OK, I was drunk and admired her across a bonfire. Her friends took her to some other party and the moment passed before I had a chance at complete humiliation.
I wasn't expecting a personal connection! Did some googling since I wanted to be sure that Old Person was a surname in the sense I'm used to, something to be grown into as opposed to earned. Interesting guy. Aspirational name.
I wasn't expecting a personal connection!
The Native American world is small. Not that I have any connection to this family myself, but I don't have many connections in that area.
You know, maybe she was his niece. It was a long time ago.
I knew EOP was a big deal, but this story is beyond what I'd've guessed:
In 1971 the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, arranged and hosted the 2,500 year Anniversary Celebration of Cyrus the Great's establishing the Persian Empire. Old Person was invited to attend through President Richard Nixon. Old Person reported that after arriving in Tehran he was invited to high tea, dressed in his Blackfeet Regalia. Through an interpreter Old Person was asked to give a small talk. So he stood up and asked the Shah to join him. The Shah promptly got to his feet and stood beside Old Person. When Old Person started to speak he noted that nearly the entire audience was smiling so he began to worry and cut his speech short. Later Old Person asked the interpreter if he said or did something wrong. The interpreter assured him he hadn't really done anything wrong, but that as far as he knew no one in the previous 2,500 years had asked the Shah to stand up.
Well, 12 made me laugh.
But I'm still so shocked and dismayed, and still so full of anger (f*ck bargaining, depression, and acceptance: I'm still stuck at stage 2 in the Kübler-Ross model of grief) that I can barely string together a coherent sentence. I have anger. So, so much anger. As a mother cradles her nursing infant: that's how I cling to my anger.
the original, original Benito
Juarez? (After whom Mussolini was named.)
Fucking airport breakfast places. I paid $4 extra to get one piece of bacon. That's a racket is what that is.
Expropriate the expropriators. By which I mean steal all the jelly and sugar packets.
|| In the interest of general sanity, can I suggest a reading group for something enjoyable and non-political? How about "Gaudy Night"?
|>
If we're going to just assume that spinster women taking jobs that men could use to support families is "non-political", sure.
Well, it's less political than "The Code of the Woosters".
Protest idea: attend anti-Trump rally with large sign reading simply "EULALIE".
I'm in, ajay! I am, as usual, drowning my sorrows in I Capture the Castle at the moment, but I'll be ready for more any time.
something enjoyable and non-political
I suppose that would disqualify Borowski's "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen".
But, I'm in if we do a Wimsey book.
Has anyone seen ARRIVAL yet, and is it any good? I read the story quite a while ago and was dubious about a movie adaptation, but the reviews seem positive.
OT: I'm not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but LGM is advertising a GoFundMe for SEK's considerable medical expenses (latest status: he's recovering but has a long difficult way to go). I figure the enjoyment I've gotten from his writing over the last 12 years or so is easily worth whatever I can afford. Which, granted, isn't so much, but still.
I am, as usual, drowning my sorrows in I Capture the Castle at the moment....
Should I read this? It's on the shelf at our local bookstore. The last novel I read was The Dark Forest (SF).
OT: I'm not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but LGM is advertising a GoFundMe for SEK's considerable medical expenses (latest status: he's recovering but has a long difficult way to go).
Thank you for the update, I'd been curious and don't follow LGM (or facebook). For anyone else who's curious here are the links: GoFundMe page and LGM post.
It's the most amazing voice, bill, and manages to be comforting but also sharp. It's my favorite book and I read it all the time, especially when I'm upset or uneasy. This will probably be the fourth or fifth time this year. (That should maybe make me feel better about not having read as many books as I'd like to this year, but it doesn't.) I did like The Dark Forest!
I find myself in the mood for fiction (preferably scifi or fantasy) about life under incipient fascism. What's the opposite of escapism? Any recommendations?
A friend of mine posted on FB after the election something like "Ugh. I guess I need to read the Hunger Games now."
49: Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest should count. I haven't read the third yet and I don't think anyone else here has either.
I can relate to the decision-making of the main Chinese woman character in Three-Body Problem better now, after this election.
I sometimes wonder which way the causation runs between reality and the prevalence of dystopic fiction. Did Idiocracy merely predict or did it create a compelling enough vision that left people less resistant to or even enthusiastic for bringing it to life?
Not about life under facism as such (though there is a fair amount of benign imperialism and not-so-benign robber-baron capitalism), but the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold is just about perfect for now. I'm kicking myself for having devoured them all after Nworb introduced me to them this summer, and not keeping one or two in reserve as emergency escapism. (Instead I'm re-reading The Third Policeman, which is blackly absurd enough to fit my mood.)
I pretty much always reread Dhalgren this time of year and I'm sure I will when I figure out what box my copy is in, but I suspect it will feel different now.
51.The Dark Forest: Stop after the first?
56: Read both! The first is more directly in response to what you're asking, but the second has more of the same but juts an insidious version and they're completely different. I'm going to read the third, just haven't gotten around to it. It was only released this fall, I think.
I do movies & tv instead of novels
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Heimat
Cabaret
The Conformist
Garden of Fitzi-Continis
1900
Istvan Szabo's Klaus Maria Brandauer trilogy
various Carlos Saura films, The Hunt, Cria Cuervos
Michel Haneke (I think so, subtly)
Speaking of Idiocracy, I've never seen it and now for the obvious reason I am getting frequent and passionate recommendations to do so.
Which I may, but I'm kind of afraid it will be too painful. Anybody want to make a case for/against watching it at this particular moment?
If you read _The Marching Morons_, which it was based on, instead, you can reassure yourself by knowing that the eugenic argument is nonsense. And it's a good, creepy story, albeit evil.
The Japanese directors like to explore authoritarianism subtly in allegory and metaphor (samurai), or embodied in individuals and personal relationships. Lord of the Flies is the kind of thing, or in a boys reformatory or elite girl's school. Or background to a love story. Or fantasy and SF and anime.
Punishment Room
Punishment Island
Yoshida, Coup d'etat is about Ikki and 1936
Kobayashi's Human Condition is my favorite; 9+ hours
In the Realm of the Senses?
There are lots
In the 30s they could get killed, the second golden age wanted to forget, and the New Wave were negotiating the aftermath and post-fascism. I can't think of much Oshima that is crudely anti-authoritarian.
But Marxists don't think about the far right much. It's about developing the preventive and resisting forces, which are not liberal.
Idiocracy is the most prescient movie ever made, which says something sad about our species, because it's pretty crude satire. I have to think it won't be as funny, because Terry Crews' President will only seem like a slight exaggeration of reality, rather than the completely bizarre cartoon character he seemed when the movie was released.
I remember rolling my eyes at Babylon-5 when they showed ridiculously crude war propaganda reels to demonstrate how things were going to hell back on Planet Earth.
Punishment Room
Punishment Island
Yoshida, Coup d'etat is about Ikki and 1936
Kobayashi's Human Condition is my favorite; 9+ hours
In the Realm of the Senses?
There are lots
So are the first 2 S&M porn, or do they just sound like it?
35: yeah. Which then led me to consider it a luchador name, which is inappropriate yet appropriate on many levels.
Second Thorn's rec to read Liu's books. They're both very good but quite different. I haven't read the third either.
Thorn, I just finished Too Like the Lightning and it was astounding. (My favorite for books released in 2016, n=4) I don't have a great sense for your tastes yet but I think you'd like it.
I keep hearing that's good, dalriata. I'll look for it! I sort of felt like I'd stalled out on reading entirely but I've finished two for-the-kids books this week and I am feeling much more human now.
It was helpful for me to escape into, even though a lot of it focuses on a scarily broken political system.
I enjoyed Idiocracy. I took it as a light farce about a normal guy literally trapped in a world full of idiots, and left it at that. To the extent that there's any argument in it about eugenics or "cultural" degradation or something similar, it's easy to show that it's completely counterfactual, so I think less of people who take that message from it. But as a farce, it's as good as or better than a lot of Luke Wilson's or Mike Judge's work.
You're a master at the backhanded compliment.
I second Too Like the Lightning. Really good stuff, but a little frustrating as it ends in what seems to be the middle.
The classic fascist SF is, of course, The Man in the High Castle.
Skimming their filmographies, Idiocracy is my favorite thing Luke Wilson has done. Ahead of The Royal Tenenbaums, which I'm pretty sure is the most critically acclaimed thing he's done, but it didn't do much for me. Among Mike Judge's work I'd say it's tied with Office Space. Hard to put one ahead of the other but they're very different. Apples and oranges. I'd rate both of them much, much higher than everything else he's written/directed/produced.
If I was less effusive in the previous comment, all I can say is, I lean towards understatement in general.
I keep meaning to see Office Space and Idiocracy.
Hank Hill annoys me so much that I've been avoiding Judge.
King of the Hill is one of the most serious documentaries ever made about white Texans.
38. In for a light book group. I have never read Gaudy Night, would like to. If a mystery, I would vote for Chandler or Hammett over Sayers.
72: this is the bane of serials. The sequel comes out in February; I'm sure I'll have forgotten be details by then.
I don't remember much about The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch but what I do remember gave me the nightmare that on Halloween everyone would be coming to our door in Trump masks.
This at least I was spared -- not a single person dressed as Trump.
54 I would love to read the series but once again I am daunted by the order in which I should read them. I note there are short stories that occur early in the series. Is there one volume that collects them? Which one should I read first? And second? I need some good old fashioned sci-fi/fantasy escapism.
And with that in mind I'm going to binge watch me some of this year's season of The Walking Dead because I need to some cheering up.
83 And I should probably re-read the Third Policeman too. Love that book.
83: there are various omnibus editions (COrdelia's Honour, Young Miles, Miles Errant, Miles in Love) that collect the novels and short stories in chronological order. That's probably the way to go. You can start either with "Shards of Honour" (the first in the series) or "The Warrior's Apprentice" (the first one with Miles as the main character). But they stand alone pretty much; I read "Brothers in Arms" first and very much enjoyed it.
Another good one: Redmond O'Hanlon, in particular "Trawler". BEst described as a sort of hyperactive gonzo natural historian.
83: I started with Shards of Honor and Barrayar and am glad I did; the Elena-Bothari subplot in The Warrior's Apprentice makes a lot more sense when you know the back story.
And yes, The Third Policeman was even better on re-reading than I'd remembered it to be.
Arrival was excellent, though I have not yet read the short story.