Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Reagan to Nixon to Trump


As this points out, there's a direct line from Nixon through Reagan to Trump. Same tactics, different faces.

Here in Arkansas, so many of my students have been taught that Reagan was a great president, and a hero who saved America. When I point out he was -- like Trump -- a grifter who was bent on filling the pockets of the 1%, a president who destroyed the American middle-class, they can't think what I mean.

Often we hear that the Southern Strategy was just a tactic, a way for Nixon and then Reagan to get votes from (racist) Southern white men. And I'll agree that was a tactic they used. But it wasn't just a tactic. Just as Trump is racist to the core, so were they.

then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.

Anyone who is surprised by this revelation hasn't been paying attention.


See also this, bc it ain't just Trump.


Tuesday, July 30, 2019

What to Do about Mosquito Bites?


I asked this question on FB out of desperation, since I have (currently) sixteen mosquito bites, all of which are swollen and mad itchy.

What I learned: Everyone has a home-cure for mosquito bites.

These include, so far:

  • Wash with lye soap
  • Wash with Epsom salts
  • Wash with oatmeal
  • Wash with bleach
  • Wash with baking soda
  • Daub with baking soda
  • Daub with Cortizone salve
  • Daub with Vicks Vapor rub
  • Daub with apple cider vineagar
  • Daub with peppermint oil
  • Daub with peppermint salve
  • Daub with Eagle Brand Medicated Oil 
  • Daub with chewed-up tobacco
  • Wash with a Clorox wipe
  • Wash with witch hazel
  • Take Benadryl
  • Try quaaludes, or heroin

I've tried several of these so far. Taking Benadryl is the only one that really works, but the box says not to take more than six in any 24 hour period, which leaves me itching for like 10 hours.

What's your cure?


Image result for mosquito bites

Links


As I've noted before, the GOP is in this for the graft.

Becoming a professor while black

What the Mueller Report says (it's not what Fox News claims, big shock)

Get those politics outta my fiction

But of course MAGA Americans don't care -- his racism convinces them that their racism is justified

Which is, of course, the problem

Ignorant people's idea of smart writing always looks like this

More of this, please

The MAGA American code of ethics

Image result for cartoon Trump racism






Monday, July 29, 2019

Why I Love the English Language


...demonstrated in one Tweet:

Trump Screams

Apropos yesterday's post:

No photo description available. 




Sunday, July 28, 2019

By the Way...


..if you want to know why Trump has been having screaming tantrums on Twitter for the past two days, yeah, it's this.

“... the president lied repeatedly to the American people and to investigators and conducted a corrupt cover-up with at least five criminally indictable acts of obstruction of justice.”


Dr. Skull at Mount Nebo State Park


Dr. Skull has been off teaching at the Arkansas Governor's School for the past several weeks. (He's coming home soon!) Today he and his BFF, our kid's Uncle Charger, went to hike in Mount Nebo State Park.

Image may contain: cloud, sky, tree, ocean, outdoor, nature and water


Still hot here, but that view makes Arkansas look good.



Saturday, July 27, 2019

Speaking of Sources....




You can tell pretty reliably how well a point is argued/ sourced by seeing who is promoting it. For instance, if anyone in the current crop of conservatives is exclaiming with delighted joy about what a GREAT article X is, I can pretty reliably promise you that the article in question is reactionary bullshit.

Just saying.


Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Cat Pictures, Please


Here's my OTHER cat, Junti:


Which One is the Puppet?



(It's a trick question! They're all puppets, including Trump. Now figure out who is pulling their strings.)

Monday, July 22, 2019

Crabs in a Bucket


Apropos my previous post, here's a (retired) academic who thinks we should turn professors into Amazon pickers.

His post is filled with lies, exaggerations, and bullshit. But I've seen too many people who believe just what he does to dismiss this article out of hand.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Book Review: On the Clock

Image result for On the Clock Guendelsberger

Emily Guendelsberger, On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane

Ironically, Amazon* recommended this book to me. Ironic, because one of the jobs Guendelsberger works, and deconstructs, in this book is a job at an Amazon warehouse. I am now amused by the idea that Amazon warehouse workers are shipping her book out to people.

(I seldom buy books from Amazon. What I do is go over there and read their New Books page. Then I see if our library has whatever books look good, which it often does. But apparently I have bought enough books that Amazon now knows what sort of thing I like.)

Guendelsberger, who was laid off from her position as a journalist after her newspaper went out of business, spent what looks like a year or so working minimum or low-wage jobs around the country. The three jobs she examines in this book are


  • picker at Amazon
  • phone bank in a call center
  • counter at McDonalds
I worked several minimum wage jobs in high school and while I was getting my BA; but as Guendelsberger notes, that was then. Low-wage work in the 1980s and low-wage work in the second decade of the 21st century are two different propositions.

What changed low-wage work -- which was never pleasant, but is now destructive? A few things:

(1) The use of computers to analyze and set work schedules. This leads to people's work schedules being shifted constantly -- you never know when you're going to work, and you lose all ability to schedule your life outside of work.

(2) The idea of running a "lean" business. This -- the "lean" model -- means that managers will deliberately under-staff their places of business, so that everyone must work full-out every minute that they are on the job.

(3) "Taylorism," which is the efficiency model created by Frederick Taylor. Taylor is why so many jobs are so miserable today -- his model assumes that workers are morons, and also lazy thieves. So every workplace starts from that assumption, and managers end up treating workers as if they were lazy, stupid, and dishonest. 

(4) No benefits, including no sick days. Not just no paid sick days -- no sick days at all. If a worker calls in sick, they can count on being punished for it. (Because they're lying, right? Remember Taylorism.) There are some horrific examples of what this lack of benefits does to both workers and to the workplace. I won't give spoilers, but one word: MRSA.

This is an excellent book, both for the close look it takes at these three jobs, and for Guendelsberger's analysis of just why these jobs are so bad for people and for the country. 

For instance, she connects the crisis of opioid addiction to the fact that life as a low-wage worker (and something like half the country works low-wage jobs now) is so awful and so badly paid. When you are this stressed and this miserable, you will self-medicate. Some people do that by eating carbs; some do it by smoking; some do it with narcotics.

There's also a nice section on the economic benefits of this system -- the cui bono section.

Every few years, I teach a section on Working Class Literature at our university. Next time I do, this book is going on my list.

Highly recommended.


The Cat is in the Box



So Cheer up!


Saturday, July 20, 2019

Weather


Y'all, it is so hot here.

I know, I know it's hot everywhere. And it's Arkansas in July, of course it's hot.

But wow. I have to water my sad little garden (three tomato plants, some basil, and some oregano) twice a day, and I can't take the dog out for his walk until after sunset.

Eight more weeks until fall. And that's if fall comes on time.


Atrocity Propaganda


I've been talking about how people use atrocity propaganda to push their agenda -- to get people to believe hateful things and act on those things.

Here's an example.

Whenever you hear someone telling stories like this -- designed to horrify, designed to arouse hatred, so appalling you believe only a monster would do such a thing -- yeah, that's a sign that you're probably dealing with atrocity propaganda.

Do monstrous things never happen then? Of course they do. But when we get told stories like this, we should verify, verify, verify.


Friday, July 19, 2019

From TYKKIWDBI


This conversation would end differently if it was in the Oval Office

Thursday, July 18, 2019

What I'm Reading Now


Ted Chiang, Exhalation

I'd never heard of Ted Chiang before his short story, "The Story of Your Life," was made into that movie, Arrival. I liked the movie, and so I got the story collection that story was in, and liked it very much. This is his new story collection, and I like it even better.

His story are out-of-the-box in the best way, the best sort of science fiction. My favorite in this collection is probably "The Life Cycle of Software Objects," which is about raising AI babies, sort of, and also the ethical implications of owned intelligences. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," which is (kind of) about time travel, is also excellent.

Highly recommended.


Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

Not science fiction! This is the story of two families. The fathers are NYPD officers, who move their families out to the suburbs in the late 70s, and live next door to each other. The women have jobs, but also raise their kids, who go to Catholic school. That makes it sound like it's a nostalgic novel about life in the suburbs in the 80s and 90s, and honestly I probably would have liked it better if it had been that book.

Instead, one of the women has some sort of untreated mental illness -- it sounds like it's supposed to be schizophrenia -- and acts out violently, causing great harm to both families. Given these are police officers with guns in the house, you probably can guess what sort of harm.

This is a well-written book, which I read straight through. But I can't say I exactly like it.



Katherine Howe, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs

I love stories about academics, so I liked this one. Apparently it's a kind of sequel to another book Howe wrote? Anyway, we have an historian writing a book about a text she found, one owned by one of her ancestors who was executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. The big twist is that both the professor and her mom are actually witches. Also there is a curse on the men they love.

This one is also well written. I liked it better than Keane's book. The witchcraft stuff is pretty well handled, also, and the academic details are legit.



Conrad Richter, The Awakening Land

I found this one on the shelves of our local library. It's a trilogy, and apparently Richter won the Pulitzer for the last volume. The three volumes are The Trees, The Fields, and The Town, and it follows a woman, Sayward Luckett (later Wheeler) from the age of 15 until her death. Her father traipses the family out to Ohio, in the days when the state was solid with old-growth forest. Her mother dies almost at once, her little sister is captured by the Indians, her father runs off and leaves them. That's just the first half of the first book.

This is a Brave-Little-Tailor story, a kind of a soap opera. Richter does a really good job of creating characters and a community. It was written in the 1940s, and there's some depressing racism, involving the Indians, mostly. Richter got his material from listening to family stories, apparently, and he was probably just a little too gullible about believing those stories, not to mention a little too willing to forgive bigotry.

The white characters are pretty good. The Indians, not so much. It's a nice big fat book, though, so if you're always desperate for something to read, as I am, this will keep you happy for a day or two.


Nancy E. Turner, These is My Words

Another American-settlers soap opera. I think I like this one better than Richter's, though the two main characters are a lot alike, and the narrative is basically the same. Young woman moves to the frontier, starts from poverty, ends up (through hard work and gumption) very wealthy. Again, the community here is well done, and the story rockets along.

The main character, Sarah Prine, has a nicely done romance with a captain in the Army. There's a minor sexual-assault-as-hotness, and of course Captain Elliot fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side, because of course he did. But other than that, this was a lot of fun, if a little unbelievable in spots.

Also much less racism and much less erasure of American Indians / Latino people.




Republican Leaders Decline...


...to criticize Trump.

Why would they? Trump and his regime are doing exactly what the GOP wants done: they are looting the country to fill the pockets of the hyper-wealthy.

Meanwhile, Trump's demagoguery works to keep the gullible and the ignorant convinced that the real problem is immigrants and "socialism."

None of this is new. This sort of vile racism in pursuit of wealth is as old as the Roman Empire*, and probably older. An old trick, but an effective one, as we see here.




*The Romans wanted to colonize Carthage. So they went around saying that people in Carthage burned babies alive. Likewise, the British empire claimed their enemies raped nuns. And reading American literature is awash with just this sort of atrocity claims -- usually aimed at American Indians, but also at Jews, Asians, and Africans.

How to Destroy the Academy


This is from a Dutch source, but much of the same shit is happening here:

Image may contain: text

Who benefits when we turn universities into diploma mills? Not the country. Not the working class. And certainly not the Academy.

The 1% benefit. Not only do they no longer have to support the liberal arts -- the education that makes free people out of serfs -- they get a whole country filled with people far too ignorant and gullible to fight back.

That's the game plan.

Just Repeat the Lies Long Enough


This seems to be the tactic on the Right these days: deny the truth, ignore evidence, repeat whatever lie justifies your bigotry and hate, and when people point out that what you are saying is not actually true, repeat the lies louder.




Obviously, this isn't a new problem. I remember the same tactics being used when the Bill Clinton was governor here. I remember when Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were brand-new. I remember the birth of Breitbart.

The difference is, in those days, only truly ignorant people repeated such vile nonsense. Now it's mainstream.

And now it's pointless to try to reason with such people. They will just lie louder and more viciously. Facts don't matter.

So it's hard to know what to do.



Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Not a Brain Drain...


But a brain rot.

I was listening to NPR after driving Dr. Skull back to the governor's school this morning, and some MAGA American was pushing back against calling Trump racist.

"What about what he said about immigrants being rapists and murderers?" the host asked*.

"Well, 2 out of 3 refugee women get raped** on their way to the border," the MAGA American said, "so...."

"That's not actually true," the host said. "Amnesty International has investigated, and found that claim is untrue."

"Amnesty International," the MAGA American said, "Pff!"

This is why we can't hold civil discussions with Trump supporters. The only "evidence" they accept is the vile lies put forth by Fox News and other propaganda outlets. Any reliable source they dismiss as "liberal bias."

How do you discuss anything with people who deny reality?



*I can't find the transcript of this, so I'm working from memory.

** "Those evil barbarians are raping*** children and killing babies!!" is typical propaganda, used whenever one group wants to whip up hatred against another group

***And, of course this sudden concern for people being raped is touching, coming as it does from conservatives, who only care about rape when they can use it for propaganda purposes.

Direct Action

...is the best action





See also this:



Sunday, July 14, 2019

Links


Late Capitalism in one headline

No one who knows anyone about Tucker Carlson was surprised by this

Here's why children are in cages 


Who knew the horse could do that?




Why we build the Wall



This is very cool:



Friday, July 12, 2019

Review of Green Jay and Crow


My review of Green Jay and Crow, a SF novel by DJ Daniels, is live at Strange Horizons today.


Thursday, July 11, 2019

What I'm Reading Now


Toby Barlow, Sharp Teeth

This is a book about werewolves. After I opened it to look at the first paragraph, I almost put it right back on the shelf. It's written in poetry. I suppose I should call that "poetry," since it's really a narrative written in "free verse," except it's not really verse at all. Just a very nice line now and then.

But it's a pretty good book, about relationships and trauma and refugees (among werewolves). I read it all the way through in about four hours, and it kept my attention the entire way. It's extremely heteronormative, and if you want accurate wolf behavior among your werewolves, yeah, no.

Recommended for those who like ripping yarns and nice writing.


K.J.Parker, The Folding Knife

Yes, I am still reading K.J. Parker. This is what my old writing teacher would call a "little tailor" story. That's a story in which the main character starts out as nothing special (a little tailor, though in this case a middle-class kid) and rises up to great heights. The book is the story of how that happens.

K.J. Parker writes a dense but extremely readable prose, and his characters, major and minor alike, are wonderful. They're all about war and politics, as well as the nuts and bolts of how things work. If that's the sort of thing you like (it's the sort of thing I love), you'll like Parker. This is a good one to start with, by the way -- a stand-alone, rather than the trilogies he usually writes. (Trilogies of three 900 page books.)


Kate Atkinson, Big Sky

This is the latest of Atkinson's "mystery" series about Jackson Brodie. "Mystery" in scare quotes, because while there are in fact several mysteries in each book that work as a plot, the books are really about Jackson and the lives of the other people caught up in the plot/s.

Atkinson is one of my favorite writers, and this was the series that started me reading her. It's very much worth reading. I don't think I'd start with this novel, though, which probably the weakest of the lot. Start with either Case Histories or Started Early, Took My Dog.

On the other hand, this is a pretty good book. I like very much (among other things) how Atkinson handles adolescents. And I'd read about Jackson Brodie if he was just buying groceries and doing laundry.



C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen, Regenesis

I'd read these before, but like K.J. Parker, Cherryh writes these wonderful dense books filled with great characters and the nuts and bolts of how politics and empires work. These are also about cloning and genetics, two of my sweet spots. We follow Ariane Emory, the chief officer of Reseune, a company that manufactures Azi (slaves, but happy slaves, psychologically engineered to like being slaves) to provide the workforce for expanding humanity, as we spread out through the stars. In Reseune, people live for about 150 years -- they have something called rejuv, discovered on Cyteen -- but Ariane is murdered at 120. Her family and her company rebuild her. They don't just clone her; they use "psychogenesis" to recreate the actual Ariane.

This is a duology that weaves together many strains -- the ethics of engineering a society to this degree; the murder mystery of who killed Ariane; the social, sexual, and psychological abuse of Justin Warrick; and the coming to power of the young Ari, as she learns who she is and why she exists, and the corruption that is at the heart of the corporation she owns (if she can take it).

Not as heteronormative as Parker -- several of the main characters are gay men or bisexual men. No trans or Lesbian people though.


Michelle Sacks, You Were Made for This

I did finish this one, but I skimmed the last half.  Extremely heteronormative, and filled with uniformly awful people. It's very well written, but I can't recommend it, unless you like books about terrible people doing terrible things. Content Warning: abuse and murder of an infant.


Joanna Ramos, The Farm

This is what we call in the trade a "high-concept" book. That means the log-line, the plot in a sentence or less, sells the book on its own. The log-line here is something like "Rich woman creates a 'farm' where poor women act as surrogates for the hyper-wealthy, with all the attendant abuses you might expect."

It's about that, and it's about how late-stage capitalism is destroying society along with the planet; but it's also about how the wealthy (the obscenely wealthy) treat the working class, including working class immigrants, as objects, as not quite human. The main point of view character, Jane, is a young woman from the Philippines, with a newborn daughter of her own. She ends up acting as a surrogate (a "host") even though this means she is separated from her infant for the months of her pregnancy.

One abuse perpetuated on the "hosts" is the curtailing of their relationships with family and friends. In Jane's case, the owner of the Farm uses a promised visit with Jane's infant daughter as a way to manipulate Jane into "behaving."

This is disturbing book, despite it's more-or-less happy ending. Worth reading, though I don't think I'd read it again.






Wednesday, July 10, 2019

So What's Wrong With Trump?

Quora asked the question.

This guy answered it:


Originally Answered: Why do people hate Donald Trump as President?I’ll take a stab at this. Before you pass my answer off as “Another Liberal Snowflake” consider that 1.) I'm an independent centrist who has voted Republican way more often in my life than Democrat, and 2.) if you want to call someone who spent the entire decade of his 20’s serving in the Marine Corps a snowflake, I’d be ready to answer the question what did you do with your 20’s?
Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.
A.) He lies. A LOT. Politifact rates 69% of the words he speaks as “Mostly False or worse” Only 17% of the things he says get a “Mostly True” or better rating. That is an absolutely unbelievable number. How he doesn’t speak more truth by mistake is beyond me. To put it in context, Obama’s rating was 26% mostly false or worse, and I had a problem with that. Many of Trump’s former business associates report that he has always been a compulsive liar, but now he’s the President of the United States, and that’s a problem. And this is a man who expects you to believe him when he points at other people and says “They’re lying” 
B.) He’s an authoritarian populist, not a conservative. He advances regressive social policy while proposing to expand federal spending and federalist authority over states, both of which conservatives are supposed to hate. 
C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life. 
D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community. 
E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.
F.) He couldn’t pass a 3rd-grade civics exam. He doesn't’ know what he’s doing. He doesn't understand how international relations work, he doesn’t understand how federal state or local governments work, and every time someone tries to “Run it like a business” it’s a spectacular failure. See Colorado Springs’ recent history as an example. The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise And that was a businessman with a MUCH better business track record than Trump. We are talking about a man who lost money owning a freaking gambling casino.
 
There's a lot more at the actual post -- he goes all the way through Z, and they're all legitimate.

Sunday, July 07, 2019

It's just a commercial...


...but I really like this:


Saturday, July 06, 2019

Kids Today


...don't make lists to take to the grocery store with them. Instead, they just take a photograph of the recipe they're planning to make.

We're living in the future.

Image result for cell phone comic

Dr. Skull Leaves Home


Dr. Skull is working at the Arkansas Governor's School this summer -- I'm driving him across the state today, to start the job.

He's psyched. He's also had yet another interview for a faculty position, this one an actual tenure-track job. (That's four interviews over the past two months.) This school is bringing him on campus for an on-campus interview.

If you have any spare mojo, please send it his way.

Friday, July 05, 2019

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (The graphic version)


This is very cool.  (H/t TYWKIWDBI)


prufrock2

New Chapter up on my Patreon


I've posted a new chapter of Triple Junction on my Patreon!

Here's a bit:
The evening before Parliament opened its Spring Session, Lord Oxford held a party at his guesthouse, which was just across Liberty Park from Harper’s house. Harper took both Jossa and Martin along with him.
Martin was one thing – he had a chip, so even if they ran into trouble, the most that would happen to him was he might get tanked. But Jossa was delinquent on her contract. Jossa, they would shoot.
“No one’s going to arrest me,” Jossa soothed, when Martin pointed this out to her. “It’s Oxford’s House. I’m as safe there as I am at the Academy when Efram is in residence.”
“Except the Academy ain’t hip-deep in Port City. Or filled with holders from Kadir’s side of the aisle.”
“Lord Holders from Kadir’s side of the aisle don’t even see contract labor, not unless they want something. We’ll be fine.”
Martin spread his hands at Dallas, lying on the bunk he and Jossa shared with Luc asleep beside him, but Dallas just shrugged. “I’m not the leader of the network,” he said. “Don’t ask me what she should do.”
Martin bared his teeth. “Maybe this is Harper’s way of dealing with the leader of the network.”
Jossa laughed. “Harper doesn’t want me dead.”
“I’d like to see him run the network without Jossa,” Dallas said, patting Luc’s back gently. “Tell Sen what to do?”
“Or Will, for that matter,” Jossa agreed. “Are you going to comb your hair before we leave?”
“I already did,” Martin said, and both of them laughed at him then.
For only $3.00 a month, you can have access to this chapter and 25 others, and read my critical essays on SF books and media.  What a deal!



Thursday, July 04, 2019

Happy 4th of July


Prisoner in Texas dies while being used as "prey" for dog hunt

More concentration camps for children

Jews and others being arrested for protesting, on the 4th of July

The planet is boiling

Conservatives whine because 'mermaids can't be black!'

Meanwhile, these same conservatives foment about the REAL problem in the USA

Trump celebrates himself with a military parade

ICE shows their true colors 



Happy 4th of July, all y'all! This can still be a good country -- vote the GOP out in 2020!



Wednesday, July 03, 2019

Books, Books, Books


Is there any feeling more satisfying than having a fat stack of books waiting to be read?

It is bliss.

Vox Writes about Ngo, Antifa, and the Milkshakes


This article is pretty good if you want to know the details about what happened with Andy Ngo, in Portland and elsewhere.

Tuesday, July 02, 2019

About Those Milkshakes...


So "Conservatives" have been playing this milkshake lie for all it's worth.




(See more here:

https://twitter.com/Tennessee_Pete/status/1146028991121375232)

In case you aren't in the loop, what happened was Andy Ngo. that font of propaganda, pretended he'd been hit with a milkshake -- which as we know is the worst thing that can happen to a fascist these days -- and then someone else, probably another MAGA American, claimed Antifa members (you can't actually be a "member" of antifa, but never mind) were mixing cement into the milkshakes.

Then it became "quick-drying" cement.

Now it's quick-drying cement and battery acid.

None of this is true (see this article, but you have to go waaay down to find the paragraph where they admit it never happened), but as we are learning, if you're a "conservative" these days, you don't care what's true. You don't care if what you're telling people is not just a lie, but a silly lie.

You only care whether or not what you're saying justifies your bigotry, your hatred, and your ignorance.

See this thread for more: Thread starts here

(Scare quotes around conservative throughout because -- of course -- these aren't actually conservatives. They're reactionary fascists. Not to mention vile heaps of trash.)

Why Rod Posts about Scary Trans People


Apparently Ezra Klein interviewed Rod Dreher, which first off, why? Do we really need to give a bigger platform to heaps of ignorant, bigoted nonsense?

But Ezra asked Rod why his blog was so obsessed with LGBT people, especially T people, and Rod wrote yet another lengthy screed "explaining" why.

Because LGBT people (and especially T people) have destroyed America.

I'm providing a link, but I don't encourage clicking on it. Rod's blog-site, The American Conservative, is 90% ads now, many of them pop-up, all of them annoying. So, you know, click at your own risk.

Rod's main point is that by divorcing sexuality away from its "real" purpose, which as his religion tells us is Making Babies, those Evil Liberals opened the door to Transform* America into a place where people can be whatever they want and do whatever they want with their own bodies.

I mean, the horror. As we all know, God meant only rich white cismen to have that sort of privilege.

So now we have kids growing up with two daddies, or with a trans daddy. What will become of us all, et cetera.

I'd spend some time rebutting this, but it is nonsense on its face (if sex was just for making babies, for instance, we'd only have sex, or want to have sex, when we wanted a baby -- which, come on) and I have better ways to spend my time.

The real question is why Rod spends 80% of his time screeching about trans people when there are 900 more important issues he could be spending his time on -- the wealth gap, children in concentration camps, white nationalists in our government, the increasing inability of too many Americans to tell a decent source from utter propaganda, student debt -- but of course we know the answer to that one.


*Pun not intended, but I like it

Monday, July 01, 2019

Dog Pictures Please


Heywood thought he ought to be on the blog too.