I don't think it's less dangerous so much as everyone is hardening up to dangers because there isn't really another choice.
As an election worker, the most aggressive verbal abuse I experienced was most definitely during the 2021 primary.
In general I am not sanguine about the country avoiding more political violence based on a variety of factors.
Someone tried to break the window of the kitchen remodeling store by me and it made the national news. I guess those giant plate glass windows are hard to break or maybe anti-zionists have no arm.
and just couldn't shake that first impression
As the wisest words of American wisdom go, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."
And for Trump the first impression was the NY Post headline, "THE BEST SEX I EVER HAD" and so the American people are still excited to get screwed by him.
Anyway, AIPAC is once again spending bunches of money to try to unseat Rep. Lee. The last time they tried this, in the primary they found a guy named "Steve Irwin", which was at least funny. In the general, they found a Republican with the same name as the Democrat who held the seat before Lee, which would have been funny if Eddie Murphy had made it a better movie.
The kitchen place was probably more than we can afford anyway, but we do need a new kitchen. And the bathroom remodeling is done.
I am debating spending frivolous money on the bathroom floor tile that I desperately want, after already spending frivolous money on the wall tile that I desperately wanted. I'm comforting myself by comparing it to the cost of flying six people on trips that we don't take.
I'm also comforting myself by observing that we thought we were going to renovate the bathroom a year ago, and now we can think of the costs as being defrayed over two years instead of one.
Our tub had a rust hole and the floor was pink marble from the 80s.
Our kitchen has yet to take a firm stand against Hamas, so right there that's a bad sign.
Don't talk to me about how you got rid of your pink marble. I'm not okay with it yet.
Maybe it's too early to say this, but I'm hopeful that Trump isn't quite as able to harness literal violence like he was in 2020. The white supremacists don't feel quite as mobilized and visible as they did in 2020.
The flip response is "well, he hasn't lost yet"!
But more seriously this is an interesting observation - was there much violence in the 2020 campaign? I remember reading about Trump Trains but they were mostly just driving like idiots, weren't they? Or were there actual violent incidents?
It's true that the violence kicked up after the election as opposed to during the campaign. But the threats to do exactly what they did were out there during the campaign. I don't think you can separate them because the threats were part of the violence (i.e. "do what I want or I'll attack" means the attack is going to come only after you haven't done what they want.)
There hasn't been a politically motivated mass murder in my neighborhood since 2018. But they won't put up a sign with the flip-numbers like job sites do for work accidents.
Re: 1 and 2 in the OP, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" is certainly a funny question this election year for at least two reasons.
Re: 3 in the OP, agreed, but I'm part of the problem. I barely read local news when I literally worked for it. Today my news intake is mostly Reddit comments and the news Cassandane feels outraged enough about to vent to me.
Re: renovation, we're still planning big renovations to our house at some point in the future. It's sort of contingent on the elections in that if Project 2025 would probably cost Cassandane her job, in addition to all the other obvious problems, so we aren't starting until after Biden wins. I'm not sure I can wait that long, though. We keep noticing problem after problem that gets put off until after the renovation. For the past couple days I've been hearing a dripping noise I can't place. It feels like a "yellow wallpaper" situation.
was there much violence in the 2020 campaign?
No actual murders until Jan. 6 as far as I know. As for violence that doesn't rise to the level of murder, it's hard to quantify "mere" death threats, assaults, and arson. This report is the best I can find in 10 minutes of Googling.
It's true that the violence kicked up after the election as opposed to during the campaign.
The violence felt much more real to me before the election than after, even given Jan 6th. There were white supremacist flyers showing up all over town, Trump Trains with confederate flags driving slowly through towns, etc. It felt like some sort of vigilante mob that was looking for a fight. (Trump Trains were more than people driving like idiots. They were going slowly through the streets, dominating traffic, and it generally felt like they thought they were on patrol.)
After Jan 6th, there was a refractory period when Trump got kicked off twitter, and Republicans still acknowledged that they remembered their own palpable fear, and it definitely felt less violent.
My memory is that all the Trump Trains and Nazi flyers stopped at the election. So even though Trump himself was still galvanizing violence, he pulled the focus towards DC and the local nuts weren't really expressing it around town in the same way.
(As in, the local nuts picked up and headed to DC, and stopped organizing locally.)
I remember reading about Trump Trains but they were mostly just driving like idiots, weren't they?
I think the driving did include enough closeness and swiping to rise collectively to the level of violent threat - at at least one point they drove close enough to collide, though not crash.
Plus in Texas you need to drive with the baseline expectation that any driver, not just the visibly bad/aggressive ones, might have a gun and be open to using it, which has a multiplicative effect in this context.
In my driving school in the 90's I got the anecdote, from the teacher, of someone being shot in the face just for passing another on an interstate. No notion of anything they could have done better, besides not to pass them; mostly just a cautionary tale.
Don't forget the boat parades, wasn't there a notorious one at Lake Travis (or some other nearby lake)?
There are about half a dozen or so folks in my immediate who are noticeably aggressive about Trump to various degrees. Several during 2020 campaign, would take the occasional big decorated flagged pickup truck slow drive around the local park sometimes with music blaring. The one guy let off a lot of fireworks about 5:30 in the morning in 2016, which although not particularly aggressive, certainly did nothing for my mood.
School boards, election officials, and Fauci's family have all had their lives disrupted by waves of threats, and there were incidents of directed property damage; not a cross burnt on a lawn, but lines cut and windows broken. Nancy Pelosi's husband got attacked with a hammer. There's a bunch of organized violence that's got a political component-- Tree of life, Buffalo, and Allen, TX mass murders all qualify IMO. Ignoring these while asking whether the election administrator who resigned early citing harrasment was actually attacked in her workplace is IMO not the way to think about this.
As in any autocratic regime, understanding what drives the security services is most important. What are the Giuliani appointees in the NY FBI office (the ones that opened the but her emails investagition) doing now? There are signs that at least some are taking this seriously: https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-may-24-2023
Don't forget the boat parades, wasn't there a notorious one at Lake Travis (or some other nearby lake)?
Those were a weird display, but weren't they just menacing themselves?
A bunch of them got swamped in wakes from other boats and sunk. Hilarious stuff.
22: Thanks - I'd forgotten that those were all during the election campaign.
Constant fighting in Portland is the thing I remember, with a couple of fatalities. "Stand back and stand by" was before the election, and the prompt for Trump's answer mentioned the shootings in Kenosha. A deranged right-winger out here killed a federal police officer during the BLM protests. Both lourdes and I felt obligated to travel to our home states as election observers despite the Covid risk, and the uneasiness around voter intimidation was a constant subject of conversation. Perhaps not unrelatedly, firearm sales during the pandemic spiked in 2020, and that was a bit unnerving too.
23,24:Yeah, those were not threatening, rather the opposite, but just some heebie-adjacent election-related follies the discussion brought to mind.
Pelosi's husband wasn't attacked until 2022, though, so it doesn't contribute to the climate of violence in 2020.
I don't know that Fauci would have gotten significant threats during 2020 either. He and Trump were mostly making nice with each other. The country was squabbling about masks in 2020, but there was much more unity than there was after the vaccine rolled out in 2021.
Evidence seems to be that Trump is a lot more conciliatory face-to-face (because he's a chickenshit).
17: We didn't really have that stuff around here. I live in a liberal bubble neighborhood and when I did canvassing in 2020, I was always in the city and usually in an area with a substantial black population.
I think if Trump had won, there would have been no big disunity on the vaccines. It would have looked bad if the death rates from covid dropped just as Biden was coming office, so they attacked the vaccines.
On my last trip through rural PA, I did notice very few Trump signs and many of them were legacy signs (Trump-Pence) that show either disinterest or laziness.
Yeah, I think it's way to early to guess what'll be going on in October.
On OP.3, it is surprising just how little there is left in the printed newspaper. It's pretty narrow, they discontinued the printed Saturday paper, and on Monday it's 12 pages long.
I still subscribe to an electronic version of the newspaper, but it feels like a stance instead of "good value" these days.
My wife spends a lot of time being afraid of a Trumper-led uprising of some kind* -- our city is going to go 65/35 for Biden, but the surrounding countryside will go for Trump, and the Trumpers like noisily driving through town. The have a thing on our local big-box-store street on Friday evenings, where they drive noisily back and forth, while folks are basically tailgating it for about a block, watching the spectacle. My guess is that the spectators are mostly also from out of town, but 35% isn't nothing.
* She smarts-off to these people a lot more than I would. E.g., telling some asshole he might want to take his car in because something seems to be wrong with his muffler.
I don't subscribe to any local newspapers. The one is owned by the Mellons and the other is union busting.
37: Does the non-union-busting paper have page 3 girls?
No. We Americans had no breasts to look at before Sydney Sweeney appeared on SNL.
"The memory made me recall how much more dangerous the atmosphere felt in 2020."
I recently read the part of the Evans trilogy about the Nazis that covers their rise to power. He described the Beer Hall Putsch and its aftermath. How Hitler openly vowed that the next time he tried to take power, it would be by entirely legal means, so that it could not be wrested away from him. And that's what he did. I think about 2020 as the Beer Hall Putsch version, and this time ..... well, they're trying as hard as they can to do it legally -- obeying all the forms. That said, I know someone (a person of color) in D/FW who cannot walk the sidewalks of their town (where they've lived for >30yr) alone, b/c some asshole regularly comes out and gets in their face about "why are you still here"/"you're not wanted"/"go back to where you came from"/etc. So in that sense, it's gotten worse.
"I know he talks about seizing absolute power, but he'll be hemmed in by the system. It's not like he'll be able to just arrest people."
"I want both the Chancellorship and the Interior Ministry [police]!"
"Ah, well, nevertheless."
Two decisions from the Supreme Court today. The one on public officials using Facebook and banning trolls is pretty interesting. Clever people should be looking at consulting gigs with county and municipal governments. And for God's sake, don't enable comments!
On the sentencing issue, it was Kagan for the majority, dissent by Gorsuch, joined by Jackson and Sotomayor. Inasmuch as my presumption is always that Jackson or Sotomayor are right, I guess I'm in with Gorsuch. Now to read it.
Oh, it's a grammar issue! With huge consequences for a lot of people.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-340_3e04.pdf
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-340_3e04.pdf
To simplify, the statute says you get a better result 'if you don't have A, B, "and" C.' Does this mean you have to not have all three, or does it mean that missing one of the elements is sufficient?
My favorite grammar issue is the Oxford comma.
Seriously, though, Gorsuch really has this one right. Too bad it's the wrong end of 6-3.
No parentheses so you get a better sentence if you have not A and B and C.
I'm never going to not be mad at Mitch McConnell. but Gorsuch is a trade up from Scalia. This obviously can't be said for Kav or ACB.
50: Trade up from Internet Troll Anton Scalia is a low bar. In my usual intemperate way he lost me before he was even confirmed, but he really validated that when he referred to "Democrat judges" several times in in his confirmation*. Maybe a thoughtful Republican but still base and unserious.
*Schoolyard insult tick that is now so common among all Rs that it is was barely even noted by any one in the press. GW used it in the debate against Kerry and it was barely commented on then, but for an SC Justice it really should be quite notable.
Yeah, not even having the curtsy to not be an asshole, just for a little bit.
46: I can't quite recall the details, but a similar ambiguity in a state insurance law (or in the terms of the insurance) was one hinge point in a family member's lawsuit re long term disability. Very material benefits (or lack thereof) by the family member's standards were riding on it In the event the judge categorically and almost mockingly rejected the argument without actually entertaining that part of it. It was very discouraging, but upon appeal the insurance company almost immediately offered an OK (not great) settlement when at the initial conference the appellate judge showed some receptivity to the idea. My utterly non-lawyer based thought was that they had a ruling already that worked great for them so why risk any muddying of the water plus more effort. Or would that not be the way it would ever work?
Don't think the mailed bombs guy was mentioned. Not clear any of them would have worked, but he sent to a good number to various Ds. Not right in the campaign, but a clear MAGA. And then there are vaguer things like the LAs Vegas Shooter (not "political" but espoused sovereign citizenry stuff), and the guy who blew up a chunk of downtown Nashville. It all just adds up to a climate of political menace even if not all focused or directly connected.
But to me the most ominous threat thing going is the fact that every judge, prosecutor, court employee who is involved in any adversarial way with DJT (not named Cannon--who to be fair has apparently gotten some threats from the other side) is pretty much under constant threat. (Also many Rs who have crossed him like Mitt Romney). Just an ongoing beyond outrageous thing that gets relatively minimal press coverage given its nature. No, we need endless ruminations on Biden's age, credulous reporting of R lunacy, and explorations of the depths of Kathleen Parker's misogyny and racism (link left as an exercise for the reader).
Let me give you two instances from he Georgia case. Apparently Judge McAfee had the order he released today ready a few days ago but he held off releasing it until he could arrange adequate security for his family. And during the questioning of Willis's father, Trump's attorney (a savvy, well-known defense attorney* from Atlanta according to our various legal eagle commentators) insinuated there was something unusual/sinister in the father not knowing Wade as his daughter's BF despite knowing previous BFs. And of course, she previously lived in her home with her father while now she has fled due to the avalanche of threats she has faced. (All the fucking knowing commentary on the Willis thing suffers greatly from this lack of context.)
*And here's where I really go off the ranch of respectable thinking about DJT legal stuff. Fuck every one of these DJY attorneys to hell and back. Fuckers participating in the attempted destruction of the legal system and principle of the rule of law. In general I agree that a lawyer should not be dinged for his client, but in this case their choice damn them forever. Also people like Don McGahn , probably comfortably drinking wine with Christine Blasey Ford's asshole** father at some club in Potomac MD tonight. Fuck him hard and forever.
**He basically apologized to club members for the scene his daughter had caused.
I am a very stable commentator.
I thought he apologized directly to Kav, sorry for the trouble my daughter caused by mentioning you raped her.
58: Ah, turns out it was allegedly Kav's father. Though consider the source (and it does not in anyway call her testimony into question).
A new book by Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway and former Clarence Thomas Clerk Carrie Severino attempts to call Ford's testimony into question by revealing that several golfers at the Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Maryland witnessed Ralph Ford apologizing to Ed Kavanaugh and being offered forgiveness by way of a manly handshake.
Ok Stormcrow, stabilize your ardor and explain this thing.
I'm pretty sure I've seen that used in a movie.
Am I your geomorphology monkey?
In the meantime guess who this is:
The Dunes here are amazing, and they're how I learned about geomorphology which is the study of movement landforms. We've had a great trip.
Hint: It was a tweet.
But inspired guess.
So on the lake thingy in the Faeroes:
Pretty amazing, but I'm sort of bemused by a lot of emphasis I see from search results on the "illusion" that is hanging hundreds of feet above the ocean when actually it is "only" 30 meters above it-- you know -100 feet. It does have the surreal uncanniness of water perched high--like those skyscraper-top infinity pools.
Ignoring the proximity of the ocean below, it has an aspect you might often find in glaciated alpine terrain in an igneous rock setting. The Faeroes are mainly basalt and are the above sea level part of extensive lava flows from -50M years ago when it was a spreading center (now over at Iceland). Basalt (solidified lava) is very resistant to erosion and there are some interspersed tuffs (softer and more "ashy") as well as some sedimentary stuff from previously eroded/scoured volcanic rocks. So, differential erosion between soft and hard giving you rugged topography and cliffs.
The lake itself (best to think of it geologically as a wide, slow river) is in a U-shaped valley--classic glaciated landform. And if you look at a map of the Faeroes you see its aspect is quite similar to many of the narrow fjords and sea channels that separate the islands. And at some distant future point it will most likely have eroded down to where it will actually be yet another sea channel. But in this geologic moment some undulation or harder part of the basalt has created a lip at the outlet that has damned a lake and is drained by a waterfall--a not uncommon configuration (Erie /Niagara is sort of an example on a bigger scale). But in this case there happens to be an ocean right below.
62 DJT, it's probably the most human he's ever been
And finally, interesting to note that the deepest part of the lake is below sea level. (That is hard for me to wrap my head around given the shallow slope of the land at the edges).
67: Yes. At his sScottish golf course site.
And ardor back inflamed, another little nugget from the Georgia thing re:threats and political violence, the first person Willis asked before Wade declined in part to concerns about that.
Deserves a bit more reporting as part of this ongoing deliberate perversion of the justice system.
On OP pt 2, I think you're mismeasuring what Trumpers think is good/bad. 4+ years ago their champion was fighting every day against the people trying to destroy him, and by extension, America. Dr. Fauci, the MSM, Nancy Pelosi, the deep state, the goddam libruls, the uppity Blacks, the woke mafia (who've corrupted their grandchildren). The forces of evil only beat him by cheating, but he, and they, haven't given up: they're coming back for revenge.
"Economic anxiety" was always bullshit, and acting as if circumstances that might seem to lessen anxiety ought to be relevant is missing that.
OT: I was not expecting Charlotte Rampling to shoot the big guy.
4 last: Reminds me of the unintentionally comic news coverage of the first days of the first intafada, This consisted of Palestinian teenage boys throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. They were brave, and maybe their cause was just, but they came of age in a culture without baseball, so their throwing technique was deficient, and the Israeli soldiers were safe even within pitching distance. "You throw like a Palestinian" would have been a great Little League taunt.
The few teens who had slingshots were impressive, though.
Who is the Sandy Koufax of the Palestinians?
My TV watching has gotten so bad that McMillan & Wife is being recommended for me.
The Hank Greenberg of the Palestinians is Tarik El-Abour .
My grandmother dated the Tarik El-Abour of Jews.
Or 'is'. He's currently alive if Florida isn't the functional equivalent of being dead.
My geomorphology professional.
Then it's probably just a generational thing.
OT: Last night I had a dream that there was a dead mouse I had to pick up. I can't decide if that's symbolic and I'm failing at interpreting it or if it's just because I haven't looked for the dead mouse in my basement.
Having Sandy Koufax pitching for your team in the Villages 75+ league would be pretty sweet.
If you could find a team without antisemites.
Some places in Florida are anti-Jewish and anti-Arab. They have utility antisemites.
In better news.
https://www.barrons.com/news/pacific-leaders-welcome-signing-of-us-security-deal-071d1535
89 is terrific news. Micronesia has never been defeated in war.
The Economist goes full Doug J Balloon:
America's growth keeps defying the pessimists. Can that last? Its biggest threat stems from this year's presidential election. Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump seems likely to nurture economic expansion
Not a great weekend for the notion of how this year feels less dangerous than 2020. Unfortunately, the "bloodbath" thing with all of its ambiguities is far from the best thing to breakthrough. A questionable thing muddying the waters on an actual big serious thing, like the pee tape becoming the metonym for campaign collusion with Russia.
The Hank Greenberg of the Palestinians is Tarik El-Abour .
How about their Hank Green?
Micronesia has never been defeated in war.
Japan would like a word.
Japan would like a word.
They conquered German New Guinea. Completely different.
They conquered German Micronesia too.
The League of Nations awarded it to them as a mandate after the war, but they had already occupied it.
The League didn't let Germany keep the parts of Belgium it had occupied.
I was just thinking that, you know, the thing about Wilsonian self-determinism is that it was devised in the context of expecting there to also be a strong League of Nations that would balance out the nationalism with internationalism. Nation-states would exist but would be subordinate to a global democracy of states that would maintain collective international security, which had previously been the role of regional empires playing balance of power politics.
We got the nationalism, but the internationalism never really gelled. The cake ended up half-baked.
No spoilers. I'm still reading history and I'm only up to 1928.
Good place to put down the book
The Kellogg-Briand Pact basically settled things.
the thing about Wilsonian self-determinism is that it was devised in the context of
Wasn't it also sort of straight out of Wilson's head, carried on by US postwar influence but never quite the Spirit of the Age, if there was such?
I think it (the nationalism* part) kind of was the spirit of the age in eastern Europe. And maybe the internationalist bit could have gelled there, too, if the French interwar security architecture had als0 been joined by the British. NATO in 1919.
*With assocaited genocides etc.
Wasn't it also sort of straight out of Wilson's head
It was, but so was the League, and it seems to have been a key part of the plan.
Right, and then his problems with follow-through (some personal, some out of his control) hurt the League a lot.
Also Republicans saw an opportunity to demagogue and that was that.
In worse news.
https://apnews.com/article/south-sudan-schools-closed-heat-wave-b52d535e3ee7284b2832c0cfd14b1167
108 Anyone in the mood for a deep rabbit hole, here's the wikipedia entry for Sen Borah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Borah
Quite a life.
Cute that he thought he could talk Hitler down.
Borah. Hitler too, but less metaphorically.