FAux News

Having listened to Fox News in more than one waiting room over the past month, this is indeed exactly what it is like:

Transcript: Three people in an airport with luggage watching a giant TV screen. The newscaster is saying, "It's also the Democrat's fault that your flight is delayed by three hours and you'll be seated behind a screaming baby."

Medicare: A Review

Dr Skull and I are now on Medicare and for the most part it is great.

We have Part A, Part B, Part D and Part G. This last is a supplemental insurance that covers the Medicare "gap." Part B and Part G cost us $$ every month, as does Part D, though the part D is like $4/month, so that's not a big deal.

Part B and Part G cost us, together, a total of about $600/month. That's about what I paid for my insurance through the university, and it is indeed more than I really want to pay. 

On the other hand, with my university insurance, I paid that much, the university *also* paid that much, and when we saw a doctor, or bought medication, or spent a few days in the hospital, there was always a co-pay and there was always a deductible before insurance started paying anything (deductible of $7000/year in my last years on the job). 

Then once insurance *did* start paying, they only paid 80%, and only 80% of some things, not everything. Some things they would not pay for at all. This included my kid's top surgery, for example, and for a very long time, Dr Skull's CPAP or sleep studies. (They did start paying for those after Obamacare passed.)

Medicare costs us that $600/month every month, or $7200/year, but then everything is covered. No deductible. No co-pay. He spent four days in the hospital with cellulitis and now we have a home health nurse coming three times a week to deal with his wound and he's on three different antibiotics and yesterday we had to go to urgent care and the cost to us has been nothing. Not a penny.

In a sane society, this would be how health care would work. There would be a cost, yes, which ideally would be paid through taxes but whatever, let there be a cost. And then the medical system would cover everything. 

How does this change our medical experience? We're not afraid to go to the ER, for example. Usually I would have agreeded with Dr Skull that we should "wait and see" with his cellulitus. That's what we did when he had osteomyelitis in his foot. That resulted in a week-long stay and amputation of his toe. This time we had a four day stay, IV antibiotics, and he's healing well, whereas if we had waited, amputation or death by sepsis were possible outcomes.

In the long run, there is less cost to the end user and less cost to the system as well, not to mention a healthier population. This matters for everyone's health and pursuit of happiness, but it also matters for national defense, for example. And for our education system, and for our national prosperity. Sick and frightened people aren't able to be educated, aren't innovative, aren't good soldiers or good scientists or good artists.

Why don't we have this sort of medical system? Well, because the GOP has convinced bigots and the ignorant that if health care is available to everyone at a no cost at point of service, then black people and poor people and "those" people will get medical care, which currently is restricted to people "like us." You know, the way it should be.

That's why conservatives share those horror stories of people having to wait for medical care in Canada or England. Months! Months people have to wait for medical care! Or about doctors being rude to patients in places with nationalized health care. 

People shouldn't have to wait for the health care they need or want, that's the moral to all their fables. What they mean, of course, is people like us shouldn't have to wait.  Doctors shouldn't speak sharply to people like us. People like us shouldn't have to sit in waiting rooms as if we were people like that.

Those poor people or those brown people or those immigrants, well, that's different. If they have to wait for health care, or do without health care because they can't afford it, they should have been born rich. Or married rich. Whichever.

The reason our medicare experience is so good, by the way, is because we can afford that $600/month. If we could not, if we weren't people like us, if we had only Medicare Part A (the part that is free) things would be very different. After Part B is taken out of our Social Security, we're getting $2771/month, both of us, together.  There would be no way we could afford Medicare Part G at $278/month, which covers the gap, on $2771/month, if we didn't have our TIAA pension and my father's money to keep us middle-class.

So great health care system, for people who can afford it. 

It's True

Conservatives aren't opposed to immigration. They're opposed to certain kinds of people immigrating. Namely, brown people, black people, poor people. Thus, white "refugees" from South Africa? Perfectly fine. White guys who can bribe Trump sufficiently? Fast-track that citizenship!

Conservatives aren't opposed to education. They're opposed to certain people getting an education. Poor kids. Middle-class kids. Brown kids. Public schools are evil not because they teach kids that trans people exist. They've evil because they teach kids whose parents can't send them to private schools.

Conservatives aren't against abortions. Conservatives get (and pay for) abortions all the time. They're opposed to those people getting abortions. You know. Poor people. Young people. Working people. Brown people. Those people should be raising a raft of future low-wage workers, or future prison fodder who can be used as slave labor. Also those parents should be working two or three jobs to feed those children they didn't want and can't afford. If they really can't afford them, why, their children should be seized and given to deserving (white, Christian, wealthy) parents. Or else funneled into the prison pipeline, see above re slave labor.

Conservatives aren't against government-funded healthcare. For example, in our grate state of Arkansas, Sarah Huckster Sanders is having her Ozempic paid for by our tax payers. And when Conservatives retire, they're entitled to their Medicare and social security checks. No, what they're opposed to is those people getting "free" healthcare. (Poor people, brown people, disabled people.)

And so on. Conservatives believe the law exists to control and punish other people. Not them. 

It's why they get so upset when other conservatives define them as part of the class of "those people." Wait, they cry. Our law was supposed to hurt those people. Not me!

From here, where the comments are great.

Apparently, Conservatives Were Always Against the Iraq War

I was called a terrorist and treasonous to my face because I didn't think we should attack some country that had nothing to do with 9/11 just so Bush could be doing something. I remember "conservatives" screaming at those on the Left. I remember Freedom Fries. I remember the Dixie Chicks being cancelled because they spoke out against the war.

I remember this:

Child covered in her parents' blood

And now this: apparently conservatives never supported the war on Iraq. It was all Biden's fault!

We've never been at war with Eastasia.

Oh, and apparently they've all taken to wearing big white bandages on their ears, just like the one their idol Trump wore. It reminds me of the convention where conservatives wore Purple Heart band-aids to make fun of the Purple Hearts John Kerry got for being wounded in Vietnam. 

Goldwater to Reagan to Trump

 I've been reading William Patterson's biography of Heinlein, which I'll talk about in an upcoming "What am I reading" post; but I've just gotten to the section where Heinlein campaigns for Barry Goldwater, apparently because Lyndon Johnson was an anathema to Heinlien's new political views.

I'm not precisely a fan of Johnson, though I'll note he did sign the Civil Rights Act in 1964, at great political cost to him due to angering the Southern Republicans (formerly the Dixiecrat Democrats, these legislators had switched parties in outrage over the support of the Democratic party for civil rights). 

Goldwater himself was pro-civil rights, but he was also very much a Republican. The Southern Republicans backed him, despite his pro-civil-rights record, mainly due to his opposition to FDR's New Deal, and his outspoken determination to do whatever necessary to take down the USSR -- and whatever necessary included nuclear attacks. Famously, he said in his speech accepting the nomination, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

I can see why Heinlein supported him, in other words: like many in those days, he was terrified that the USSR would attack the US with nuclear weapons. Many, many people then believed such a war would be survivable (spoilers: it would not), but Heinlien was convinced that the Russians would then invade and occupy the country. (What country? The nuclear slag that had been a country?) He was making plans, in fact, to become a guerilla fighter in this struggle against the Russian invaders. 

Goldwater's stated willingness to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union seemed, to Heinlein and some others, precisely the sort of saber-rattling the US needed to keep the USSR in check. To most of the US at that point in history, it seemed unhinged. We'd just come close to nuclear war in the Cuban Missle Crisis; no one wanted a repeat.

I have a personal memory of the Goldwater/Johnson campaign, just a short snippet. I would have been three years old, but I remember riding in the backseat of our car (a Dodge Lancer) listening to my father tease my mother, insisting he was going to vote for Goldwater, and her scoffing that he wasn't going to do any such thing.

Goldwater -- and this is another reason Heinlein probably supported him -- called for massive cuts in social spending, as well as shifting government programs to the private sector. The TVA, for instance, he wanted taken over by a private business.

But in most respects, he was what we would call a center-right liberal today: he opposed the war in Vietnam, for instance; he repudiated the KKK when they came out in support of him; he insisted on desegregating the Senate cafeteria, bringing his African American assistant in to dine with him.

But he also endorsing using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, opposed legeslatin to outlaw poll taxes, and argued for cutting government spending to the bone. He voted against the Civil Rights Act, because he didn't believe the Federal government should intervene in how states governed themselves (the "states rights"today's Republicans believe in, so long as the states are doing things they agree with); and he argued that government intervention in things like poverty were creating a "moral decay" which would destroy the country.

Goldwater was defeated in a landslide: in 1964, the American public repudiated and were revulsed by his center-right platform.

Sadly, his more extreme views lived on, and both infected and created the current American conservative movement.

Our nation has indeed changed since 1964 -- not to its benefit. In 1964, the American people rejected Goldwater as too extreme, and far too removed from factual reality. In 2016, the American people elected Donald Trump, whose entire unhinged brand was an extremism entirely removed from factual reality.

That's not a change for the better, to put it mildly.

(The famous anti-Goldwater commercial:

(

 

The Rhetoric of Atrocity

 So this happened:

It's not anything new. In Europe, starting about 300 AD, everyone "knew" that Jews killed Christian babies and small children and ate their bodies, or used the blood to make matzos.

In the 17th century, when Oliver Cromwell was invading Ireland, everyone in England "knew" that the Irish rebels were cutting open pregnant women, pulling out their unborn babies, and beating the fetuses to death on rocks.

In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin made up stories about the American Indians slaughtering women and children which are still believed today.

During WWI, stories circulated in England and America about German soldiers crucifying people and cutting the hands off babies and the breasts off nuns.

And of course, during the run-up to our attack on Iraq, stories were invented about Iraqi soldiers pulling babies from incubators and committing other hideous acts (torturing children, cutting off people's ears, and so on).

None of this was true. Often -- as with the Iraqi solders -- it was propaganda deliberately created to appall and anger people, in order to increase support for violent and genuinely atrocity-ridden attacks on the "enemy." (See the behavior of Cromwell's forces in Ireland, or of US soldiers against American Indian communities.)

So when "Pro-life" people circulate stories about how "liberals" murder babies, or kidnap children and rape them, or even eat them (stories that have been circulating among MAGA Americans for some time now), that's probably something that should worry us.

When the president of our country repeats this atrocity propaganda, that's definitely something that should concern us.

This isn't just whackiness from those loons on the Right. This is an attempt to demonize their enemy. You demonize the enemy so that you can justify your own vicious and violent attacks on that enemy.

That's what conservatives are doing now. That's what they've been doing for the past decade. 

Don't be confused about where this is leading.

See also: Constant propaganda about how trans people are "recruiting" children, or "corrupting" the morals of the country, or destroying the universities, or "chopping the penises" off of "babies" or

Shared on the FB Timeline

God help us

See also this

this is absolutely deranged pic.twitter.com/Hl3x7xDi0J

— queen of bitch island (@kittynouveau) July 20, 2020

I thought the child-trafficking conspiracy theory was peak silliness. But yeah, hold my beer, says America 2020.

Incompetence at the Top

Right-Wing Screeching

This story was very hot on the reactionary Right-Wing blogs about two weeks ago -- I assume it got big play on Fox News, that's usually why the entire Conservative Blogosphere goes apeshit at once.

Here's what happened: a young woman who had been sexually assaulted asked to be euthanized. (Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, as well it should be. But it is reserved for hopeless cases -- for instance, people dying of liver cancer, which is a horribly painful way to die.) The young woman's request was denied, because her case wasn't hopeless, and she was far too young, and because treatment options existed which she hadn't exhausted yet.

The young woman subsequently starved herself to death. No euthanasia was involved, although her parents did make the decision to stop force-feeding her, after several months. (If you know anything about force-feeding, you know it's a form of torture.)

Fox News reported that the girl had been euthanized, because of course they did. And then everyone who watches Fox News began screeching about the case. Rod Dreher wept big hot crocodile tears over it. Those GODLESS SECULAR people over there in the SOCIALIST Netherlands are SO EEEVIL, our world is DOOMEd and so on, for about 15 paragraphs.

Worse, the Conservative Attack Squad, besides screaming about this on Twitter and elsewhere nonstop, then went after the poor child's parents.

Did any of them bother to check the sources and see what actually happened? You know they didn't. If they were capable of checking sources and evaluating evidence, they wouldn't be watching Fox News.

Pride 2019 and Local Xtians

The kid says there were no "Christians" haranguing the people at Pride this year (though there are always churches who march in the parade itself), but this made me smile anyway:

Last year there was a "Christian" dragging a cross on little wheels, you know, like Jesus did, and screeching at all the people and families there about how they would burn in hell and so on.

People surrounded him and chanted LGBT slogans until he fled in a sulk.

Free speech in action.

Also, one of the kid's friends is featured in this article.

Scary bc True

I've seen about sixty essays from freshman students earnestly arguing that video games are bad for kids -- so many that I know adults are still telling them this, despite all the research which shows the opposite.

It's funny (and by funny I mean really sad) that the real danger is people getting sucked into the propaganda machine that is Fox News.

FOX has done to our parents what our parents thought video games would do to us.

— Allen Marshall (@AllenCMarshall) June 10, 2019

I've seen so many otherwise reasonable people have their ability to think critically and evaluate evidence destroyed by that hate machine.

Crabs in a Bucket

This is an idiom that I've had to explain to people more than once. It's like we have a collective insistence on forgetting what it means.

Or maybe you just have to have done some fishing and crabbing at some point in your life, in order to understand it to your bones.

See, you put crabs in a bucket as you trap them. The crabs try to climb out, but you don't  have to worry about that -- the other crabs, the ones still in the bucket, will pull those trying to escape back down into the bucket.

This is America.

You would think those of us who are less well off would try to help each other. We'd celebrate workers who held a successful strike and increased their pay. We'd be pleased at people getting their healthcare and their education paid for by the state -- which is how it ought to be done, obviously.

Nope. Instead, here in America, we want to yank our fellow workers back down in the bucket. How dare you make $15/hour? When I'm only making $20/hour myself?

How dare you get healthcare? How dare you demand to be free from drug testing? How dare you expect to be educated without going into crippling debt?

Here in America, we won't even allow retail workers to sit down during their shifts, even when it makes perfect sense for them to be sitting (those running registers, for instance). How dare they ask to be treated humanely?

I'd say this stems from ignorance, but in fact it stems from the American worship of capitalism. Here in the USA, poverty is not just a crime, it's a sin.

What is the University?

Or, I guess, why is the university? That's what I'm really thinking about here.

Is it to provide a ticket to a job? That's how it's often sold, as if the university is some sort of elaborate vending machine. Get this degree, get a well-paying job.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to people getting good jobs with decent pay. And certainly one reason I've encouraged my kid to get a degree is that he'll be more employable with one than without one.

But is that why we educate people? So that they can have jobs? Is that why universities exist?

Because if that is what a university is for, then the MAGA Americans and Evangelical parents who send their kids to my school are right. They don't need to study silly subjects like literature and humanities and Spanish. We shouldn't even be a university. We should be a trade school. You should send your kid to school to learn nursing, or welding, or automotive repair, or how to repair motherboards, or accounting -- whatever skillset their future job will require -- stamp their certificate, and put them in the workplace.

Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with schools like that.

My father went to a school like that. He got an excellent job as a chemical engineer, worked for NASA on the moon landings and the shuttle program, and then later became a vice president for an oil company. He did very well financially.

Are schools like that universities?

They really aren't. Do we want all of our schools to be those schools?

That's something we need to decide. And I'm not talking about losing skillsets. If we just need, for instance, to teach people geology, or how to speak Spanish, there are much better ways to teach that than in a university.

I'm talking about the liberal arts education, which is why we built the university, back in 1100 AD (a bit earlier in some places, a bit later in others). Liberal was the key word then, and in order to make someone liberal -- able to be a free man -- we taught him the seven arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, math, geometry, music, and astronomy.

Over the time, we've changed the arts part of the liberal arts; but we still have this idea. We still have a notion that there is a certain curriculum (a course, a route) people need to take if they are to be able to think and reason like free human beings.

What is that curriculum, that route?

(1) You've got to learn to reason -- that is, you've got to know how to build an argument based on logic, without fallacies; you've got to know the difference between a good source and a bad source, and how to select evidence to support your argument accordingly. You've got to be willing to make decisions based on what this evidence shows you.

(2) You've got to learn how science works -- what constitutes proof, what a theory is, how we "know" something as opposed to how we simply think we know something, what the scientific method is, what data is and isn't, how science reacts when the evidence changes. You've got to be able to read and understand scientific papers. You've got to be able to make decisions based on what scientific evidence says.

(3) You've got to know how to read literature and how to look at art and how to listen to music. You have to know what literature, art, and music are. You have to understand why this matter.

(4) You must know math, enough to be scientifically and economically literate.

(5) You must be able to communicate, both in speech and in writing, lucidly and effectively, about all of these things. You must be able to persuade, with logic and evidence, but also with pathos.

(6) You must know history -- what has happened, why it happened. Also, you must know philosophy, psychology, and economics. Without these, history cannot possibly be understood.

(7) You must know at least two languages other than your own well enough to read and speak fluently.

That's a liberal arts education, and that's the basics. 

And that's what is being steadily stripped away from our universities, in a quest to make them "competitive."

Competitive with what? Well, with the trade-school type universities, for one; but mostly here 'competitive' means 'affordable.'

It's no secret that a university education has become unaffordable for all but the obscenely wealthy. My kid's education is costing, with room and board, just under $20,000 a year. He has a small scholarship, and because he went to an in-state school, we get a tuition rebate. He doesn't have a car, he lives on grits and apples, and he has a roommate. That is simply how much it costs.

In our case, the kid's grandparents started a college fund, which is paying most of the cost. (I buy groceries sometimes, and I bought the kid's laptop.) But many, many students end up working full-time, as well as taking out massive loans.

So you can see why there's a big push to pare down the curriculum -- to make it easier for students to complete it more quickly and more easily.

More quickly, so as to need fewer semesters in college and thus fewer loans.

More easily, because someone working full-time has no time to study.

This is all understandable.

What do we lose, though, when we turn the university into a trade school? When we pare away three hours of required history here, six hours of required humanities there, the political science requirement, the upper-level science requirement...

We graduate engineers who can build a bridge -- which is good! We need bridges! -- but who can't tell a good source from a bad source when they click on an internet link.

We graduate dental hygienists who are lovely people and wonderful at cleaning teeth, which again is a skill we need, but who will vote against a bill to put fluoride in our drinking water because they can't reading a scientific paper and evaluate its claims, so they listen to what their friends on FB say about it.

We graduate marketing majors who never took a history or a political science class, much less a philosophy class, so when a politician tells them immigrants are 'animals,' why, they see nothing alarming in such speech.

We create a country filled with people watching Fox News and reading absolutely nonsense (see Rod Dreher) who honestly can't tell that what they're reading is propaganda -- who can't tell facts from bullshit, and don't even want to try.

When my kid was little, his teachers asked him what church we went to. (This is a standard question in the South, as all y'all from the South know.) He came home and asked me. Amusing myself, I told him to tell his teacher we go to the church of books.

"Oh," the teacher said when the kid repeated this. "Are y'all Mormons?"

Oh my God.

But my point was, I do go to the church of books. My faith is this: I believe that education is our only hope. It's the only thing that has ever done any good, the only thing made this world any better. 

Not always. Not every time.

But it's the one thing that does work.

Only if we do it right, though. And here in the USA, especially lately, we're doing every damn thing we can to make sure we do it exactly wrong.

Reading Glenn Beck's The Overton Window Ch 1-3

MAGA Americans love to talk about "the Overton Window" nearly as much as they like to talk about Saul Alinsky, so when I saw this book by the infamous Glenn Beck available for free via my Kindle, I snapped it up.

Time for another read-through of a silly book by a silly writer. Though from what I understand, Beck didn't actually write this one -- he paid a ghost writer to write it for him. Which is just sad. Because this book is terrible.

It starts with an introduction, in which Beck assures you this this book is not fiction, it is (dum dum) faction.

Beck defines faction as fiction based on facts. (1) That's pretty much all fiction, you potato, and (B) yeah, no, not this one.

The rest of the introduction is Beck lecturing us on how he's not an ideologue and this book isn't about being Right or Left wing, and it has nothing to do with who is President now, this is just about the Truth. (Who was President then, by the way, was Obama.) This could really happen, he asserts, and it could happen any time, not just when that radical...um, no matter WHO has seized control.

Beck know critics will try to silence him, by saying his book is silly or terrible, because that's always what happens when people try to Speak the Truth. He doesn't care, though. He's going to Speak the Truth anyway.

Then we cut to a prologue (yes, this book has both an introduction and a prologue) in which an obvious lunatic named Eli Churchill is talking to what I guess is a reporter, via a payphone.

(Me: Oh My God.)

I mean, seriously, when was the last time you even saw a payphone? I had to explain to my students what one was when it showed up in a 1985 movie I was showing in class.

Anyway, this guy is reading from an enormous sheaf of papers, trying to tell the reporter what he has learned.

"Could you just tell me?" the reporter begs. This is a faction, obviously, since in reality the reporter would have hung about about 20 minutes earlier, when this raving conspiracy theorist first began to rave.

Churchill says all that money that got lost in the budget (this was a scandal Conservatives were pretending to be outraged over in the early years of the Obama administration) wasn't lost. It was being used to build something.

“I’ve seen the place, one of the places where they’re getting ready for something—something big—planning it out, you know? I got a job inside in maintenance, as a cleanup man. They thought I was just a janitor, but I had the run of the place overnights."

So...it's like a building?

But no, because in the very next breath, Churchill says it's not a building.

“They’re building a structure…Not like a building, but like a political and economic and social structure.” 

Okay. So how do "they" hire you to scrub floors in a political and social and economic structure? And how exactly do you have the "run" of a structure like that, overnights?

Never mind, it doesn't matter, because right then someone shoots Churchill.

Eli Churchill had enough time left to begin a quiet prayer but not enough to end it. His final appeal was interrupted by a silenced gunshot, and a .357 semi- jacketed hollow point was the last thing to go through his mind. 

That's what passes for clever writing when you're Glenn Beck's ghostwriter.

Chapter One

Here we meet the main character of the novel, Noah Gardner, who were's supposed to think is adorable. He's so sexy and "puckish" that he sleeps with a different woman every weekend. Though only because he lowers his standards. He'll even sleep with a six, apparently. What a man!

But now that he has reached the advanced age of 28, he wants to give up his slutty lifestyle and settle down with a real woman.

Luckily one shows up. She's working at a temp at his ad agency, and despite that she's a temp, she's dressed....well, I don't know exactly how she's dressed. Glenn's ghostwriter says she's not following the dress code. Also that she's a "free spirit."

Is she wearing overalls? Jeans? a mini-skirt? Thigh boots and mesh stockings?

No idea. Also we don't know what she looks like except that she's really hot. But it's an "aloof and effortless hotness" which "dares" men to bring it up. You know. That "effortless hotness" real women have.

Also she has a perfect "line," something Noah's artist friend talks about.

Noah falls in love in 5 seconds. Literally. This is true love, he knows, just from looking at her "effortless hotness," and that perfect "line."

Chapter Two

So he hits on her. Guess how.

"Need some help?" he says. She's pinning something to a bulletin board, so obviously she needs his help to do that. I mean, she's just a girl. She shoots him a contemptuous look and continues to try to pin whatever it is up all by herself.

And now we get a description!

You won't be surprised to find that "effortless hotness" means not much makeup. Also her "abundant" hair is pinned up in a loose bun with two crossed pencils. And she has -- I know this will shock you -- green eyes.

He goes over to help despite her dismissal and finds she is posting an "amateur" looking notice about a political meeting to the bulletin board. The header lets us know this meeting will be held by a political group called We The People.

If you love your country but fear for its future, join us for an evening of TRUTH that will open your eyes! 

Oh my God. It's a TEA PARTY novel.

There are about fifteen "guest speakers" listed, all associated with groups like "The Guardians of Liberty" and "Founders Keepers." One is a YouTube start with 300,000 followers!

The "Effortlessly hot" woman is Molly Ross, as Noah discovers after looking at her name tag (after a long lingering look at her cleavage, where he spots a tattoo of what might be an angel). Molly says she doesn't expect anyone from this place to come to the meeting, since PR firms aren't interested in The Truth.

Also she knows who Noah is.

“Noah Gardner. Twenty-first floor, northwest corner office. Vice president as of last Thursday. And a son of a … big shot.” 

“Wow. For a second I wasn’t sure where you were going with that last one.” 

Oh look. More Humor!

Noah turns out to be the son of the owner of the PR firm, which I guess is why he's sitting around in the break room eating Tootsie Rolls (I kid you not, that's what he's eating). You'd think the son of the owner would have his own office and his own staff and better taste, but not in this Factional Universe.

Anyway, Noah says he plans to go to her meeting. Why? Because he's patriotic. Very patriotic, in fact. Not because he's stalking Molly or anything.

Molly makes what is supposed to be a sparkling joke about Noah and the Ark, and we're out of there.

Chapter Three 

Oh, here's some plot, finally. 

Chapter starts with a faux document from Homeland Security, all about how the collapse of the economy is causing "radicals" to rise up, and how a "contingency plan" needs to be formed to deal with them.

A list of radicals includes one or two radical liberal groups, like "Earth First," but mainly it is groups like The Tea Party and homeschoolers and "anti-abortionists," as well as gun-rights activists, Anti-Immigration groups, Christian Dominionists, and White Nationalists.

You may not remember this, but during the early years of Obama's time in office, a report did leak saying that the FBI and Homeland Security judged that White Nationalists and other conservative activists were a danger to the country. Conservatives had a screaming tantrum, because obviously white nationalists and anti-abortion groups weren't a threat.

The document goes on to talk vaguely about "enhanced interrogation" and "extralegal detention" of members of this group, before being abruptly cut off as we switch to a meeting in a boardroom, being led by Noah's daddy, Arthur Gardner, who is 78 years old even though his son is only 28, and who has -- I think, the writing is hard to follow here -- been hired by Homeland Security to run a PR program which will convinced "the public" that this leaked report isn't true.

No problem, Arthur says. In fact, it's already done. (How? Well, he just told the Washington Post to say it was fake. Problem solved.)

Then we have a 15-page long speech from Arthur, in which he snarls and screams at everyone in the room, including the people from Homeland Security, telling them that the truth is whatever he says it is, that he's rich, that they are cowards and fools*, and that the world is about to be destroyed by a financial tsunami.

Here he tells a story of an actual tsunami which he watched, standing on the roof of his big hotel in Sri Lanka. Lots of people died under the giant wave. He found this very interesting.

We're supposed to think Arthur is a monster -- I know, because a few pages later he name-checked Saul Alinsky along with some other evil people, like the founder of the Washington Post -- so I guess him watching hundreds of thousands of people die just for fun is supposed to reveal the depths of his villainy.

Apparently Arthur is also the one Churchhill was talking about, back in the prologue, since we also learn here that he is building a "structure," a "new framework," which will last after the USA has been washed away in the coming tsunami.

There's tons more. But my God is the writing terrible. Glenn Beck's ghostwriter apparently thinks that people stand around spouting speeches is good writing. It's not. Also, why would a super villain like Arthur Gardner reveal his plans in a boardroom filled with sixty or seventy people? Including some from Homeland Security?

I mean, is he an idiot?

Noah leaves halfway through this rant speech, and who can blame him.

So far this book is both badly written and very slow. Also, it's clear neither Glenn Beck nor his ghost writer know how actual big corporations work.

That's as much as I can take today. More later!

* ETA It occurs to me that Noah's dad is a pretty good picture of Donald Trump, right down to the world salad and the bullying. I wonder if this is intentional? I know Trump wasn't running for president in 2010, when this book was published, but he was already pretty well-known.

More Trigger Warning

Help me, I'm still reading this terrible book.

Also, I still can't decide if it's a parody. I would say yes, except I've read some of the bizarre scenarios J.A. Johnstone gives us in the book on MAGA blogs. Also, the 5-Star the reviews of the book, over on Amazon, certainly seem to believe this is all real -- that this is what life is like on university campuses.

Here's a thought: J.A. knows none of what she's writing is even close to reality. But she also knows there are enough saps and dupes on the Far-Right that writing this silly book will get earn her a tidy sum.

This assumes J.A. is not a dupe, of course. Since she's fairly literate, I want to believe she can't also be an idiot. But I guess that's not necessarily so. Dennis Prager is literate, after all.

Oh, here's something I just noticed: there's no cussing in this book. Jake never says bullshit, he just says bull. He doesn't say asshole; he says jackwagon. And so on.

See, because beating people up, killing people, lying about people, that's fine. But cussing is wrong.

Chapters 11-14

I'mma speed up a little, because wow is this book overwritten. J.A. isn't getting paid by the word, so I'm going to assume she just didn't revise at all.

In Chapter 11, Jake's granddaddy comes to his dorm room to stand at the door and explain how he made the lawsuits go away (by threatening people or buying them off). Then he leaves.

Why didn't he just call Jake? I don't think Jake has a phone. Because he's not a pajama boy, remember? Only liberals and snowflakes own phones.

In Chapter 12, Jake goes out on a date with Dr. Burke. They bond over Jake's dark past and their contempt for everyone around them, especially LGBTQ people. If he violates the Code of Conduct, Jake says, he'll be branded with the scarlet letters -- no, not A for Adultery! He means R, B, S, and H.

Dr. Burke is confused for a moment, but she catches on.

“Ah. Racist, bigot, sexist, homophobe. You left out C for cishet. You are cishet, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they used to call straight?” 

“That’s right.” 

“Then yeah, you can add the C in there.” 

Yeah, no. That's not what cishet means. Not that J.A. or her dupes audience actually care. Also, cishet isn't an insult. (I'm cishet, for instance, and you can feel free to call me that all you like.) But you know the saying -- when you've had privilege all your life, losing it feels like a punishment.

Oh, wait. I forgot the best part. Before Jake leaves to go on this date with Dr. Burke, he has to decide on which of the many weapons he keeps in his dorm room he will take along. He decides against one of his guns, and instead chooses a combat knife -- he keeps several of those in his room. As one does.

I know a veteran who keeps several guns and other weapons in his apartment, by the way. So this part is real. But it's not as charming as J.A. seems to think it is. When someone needs this much firepower to feel safe, it's not cute. It's a symptom of PTSD.

Also, bonus climate change denial in this chapter.

Jake and Dr. Burke spend another entire chapter whining about how terrible everyone around them is: "professionally outraged" "LGBT Activists" "snowflakes" "Safe spaces" "rainbows" "black people are the real bigots" -- okay, that last one isn't a direct quotation, but it's what the little story Burke tells about the Union of African-American Students won't let an actual African into their club means.

After they get done hating on everyone who doesn't think like they do (wait, I thought that was what those progressive snowflakes did?), they walk back to campus, stopping to make out on the way.

While they are deep in the clenches, the Bad Guys show up once again to attack Jake. Why? Well, that's just what Bad Guys do: beat up Patriotic American Heroes.

Or try to. Jake has no trouble beating up all six of them. Which we have to hear about. In detail.

Pages and pages of detail.

Meanwhile, Burke has run away (her shoes 'rataplanning' on the sidewalk) and called the campus police. They show up just as the Bad Guys are running away, and the Chief of Campus Police stops his underling from Tasing Jake.

After the Chief sends his underlings away, he warns Jake that if he's caught with a weapon on campus, or "messing around with a professor" he could get in big trouble.

Oh my God.

No. No, if Burke is caught "messing around" with a student, then Burke gets in trouble. The professor. Not the student.

HOLD ON. Jake is walking back to his dorm room, worrying about Burke, when the phone in his pocket buzzes. Burke is texting him. He does have a phone!

He's just never used it or looked at it or mentioned it before this moment. Yeah, J.A. didn't revise this even a little. I bet she didn't even re-read it.

More on Johnstone's Trigger Warning

Over the past few days, I've found out that almost everyone except me knows about this book -- it's famous among 20-30 year olds on social media, apparently. Nearly everyone is mocking it, which makes me wonder again whether this bizarre novel is meant to be parody.

At the moment, I don't think so. J.A. isn't throwing the shade I'd expect someone writing parody to throw. It's a painfully earnest book, in fact, in which all the Good Guys are Straight-arrow Republicans, and all the Bad Guys are shrieking progressives.

But maybe the parody gets revealed later? We'll see.

Chapter 5 through 10:

These chapters are heavily padded. The only plot-related events that occur are that Jake gets hit on by a Criminal Justice professor, Dr. Natalie Burke, who apparently has no problem dating a student, and one -- furthermore -- that she is trying to recruit for her department.

(A) Professors don't date students, not if they want to keep their jobs, for obvious reasons -- there's a power differential, and if this student ends up in your class, as Burke is apparently hoping Jake will, how fair will your grading practices be?

(B) Any professor who isn't a creep doesn't want to date a student. They're students! We're in a specific kind of relationship with them, and that relationship is damaged if we start thinking about them as potential sex partners.

But of course J.A. isn't seeing Burke as an actual person, with a profession, and ethics, and a job. She's just there to be the Endangered Sexy Bit that Jake can protect when danger arrives.

There is also yet another extensive, heavily detailed fight scene. For reasons that are never explained, the bad guys who are planning to pull off a big heist keep coming around and starting fights with Jake. This makes no plot-related sense, but it does allow J.A. to include such incisive bits of social commentary as these:

The hooded men hadn’t been lurking here in the shadows, waiting for him, just so they could beat him up. They meant to kill him. Just because he hadn’t eagerly swallowed and regurgitated their line of political bull. “Wrongthink” was a capital offense in their minds.  

“Are you really that stupid?" [Jake demands of one of the Bad Guys he has just beaten up] "You think a real fascist, a real Nazi, would let you live right now? I’ve been listening to you idiots for years now, yammering about how any politician you don’t like is literally Hitler. 

When all along it’s been your side that’s been acting like the brownshirts and going after anybody who doesn’t agree with you!

"....Punching Nazis feels great," [Jake continues -- seriously, this rant goes on for like six pages -- I'm cutting 99% of it] "only you’re the Nazis....

"...if the other side was as bad as you believe it is, if we wanted death camps, then by God, we’d have death camps by now!" 

At that point, Jake concludes and strides away, leaving the Bad Guy sobbing on the ground behind him.

That's one problem (one of many) in this book. The Bad Guys are sometimes a Scary Evil (actual NAZIS!!) and sometimes ineffectual losers, "Pajama Boys," who are just lucky the Conservatives don't round them up and put them in death camps. (Remind me again -- which side is the Nazi side in this story?)

Oh, and at the end of Chapter 7, after Jake admires his bruises in the mirror (what a man!) we find out about the book he was reading in Chapter One -- that socialist drivel he wanted to throw across the room in disgust. It's his economic textbook.

Now I'm not saying economists can't be liberals. But despite what MAGA Americans seem to think, there are a lot of conservatives on campuses in America, and a sizable chunk of them are economics professors. Also, no matter what department you're in, 'drivel' is not your usual choice for textbooks.

But we've already noticed that J.A. ain't ever been to college, so.

Chapter 8 is more of Burke hitting on Jake -- some of the most painful flirting I've ever read, by the way, though I'm sure J.A. thinks this is very sexy.

Also, we're told that Burke is wearing a dress today, because she's on her way to a departmental faculty meeting. Oh my God.

(I can't even tell you how many times I said, out loud, while I was reading this, "OH MY GOD." But the notion that faculty meetings are something professors dress up for? OH MY GOD.)

Anyway, Jake is on his way to a meeting with the university president, to discuss how he keeps beating people up. Kidding. Just the one time he beat people up. The president doesn't know about the other times.

I'm dubious about this as well. It would be the Dean of Students he met with, probably. But okay, let's assume Jake takes special handling, because of his rich granddaddy. (Except we're told EVERYONE here is rich, so why is Jake a special case? Everyone keeps saying he is, and then right after that we get told how rich and spoiled all the other students are, like that makes them different from Jake, somehow.)

ANYWAY. The college professor has photographs of Democratic politicians all over his wall, but no white men. Just people of color and women. (Me: "OH MY GOD.")

College President says this:

“I find your attitude and actions repellent and reprehensible, young man. Kelton College is sup- posed to be a haven of learning for all students, regardless of ethnicity, national origin, gender, lifestyle, or philosophy. We value diversity and a welcoming inclusivity. This entire campus is a safe space, if you will. And then you . . .” Pelletier looked like he wanted to spit. “You come in here with your far-right, nationalist, patriarchal, sexist, bigoted, supremacist leanings and make our entire student body and faculty extremely uncomfortable.” 

("OH MY GOD.")

I could say a lot of things here, but I'll just keep it simple: College presidents don't talk like that. Not to students, not to anyone, and certainly not to the grandsons of men who have donated literal millions to their college.

Oh, also there are something like 30 lawsuits being filed against the college and against Jake. Why? Yeah, that's not clear. I guess because rich people and their lawyers are eeevil?

Don't worry about these lawsuits. Jake's grandfather bribes and threatens (physically threatens, if I'm understanding J.A.) everyone into dropping the lawsuits. So, you know, some rich men and their lawyers aren't evil. Because bribes and threats are cool if you're using them against liberals.

Pelletier also castigates Jake for speaking up in praise of Ronald Reagan in his history class, disparaging Keynesian economics in his economics class, and saying that "all lives matter" in a conversation with another student. All of these, according to Pelletier, are violations of the Code of Conduct, so he could expel Jake for them. ("OH MY GOD.")

Pelletier wants Jake to drop out. Jake says no. More gratuitous bullshit, and we're on to Chapter Ten, where the Main Villain finally shows up.

He's shooting guns, which is interesting. I thought only manly conservatives liked guns. I thought these progressive snowflakes were too soft and whiny to own guns. I guess we need an exception, so Jake can be justified in all the guns HE has.

The Bad Guy is named Matthais Foster. In this chapter he uncovers an FBI spy in his conspiracy, and executes him, in front of like six witnesses. I mean, they're also all in the conspiracy, but even so, that seems kind of weak-headed for a Big Bad Villain.

So we're like a quarter of the way into this book and nothing much has happened except J.A. spouting MAGA propaganda.

It's getting a bit tedious, to be truthful.

Maybe something will happen in the next few chapters.

These Hard Times

Did we feel worse when Trump was elected, or do we feel worse now? Tough call.

There are things we can do. First, GOTV. And get your friends and neighbors out to vote, too.

Second, continue to resist. See Camestros Felapton on this point here.

Third, donate if you can -- the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Emily's List, to Democratic candidates running in contested seats. And if you can't donate (or even if you can) volunteer, speak out, make some noise.

Fourth, if you're a writer, or a musician, or a poet, or any sort of artist: keep doing your art. Poets, as Shelley told us, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Trump and his snarling rabble seem important; but artists change the world in ways those filthy greedy assfaced motherfuckers never will.

Finally, don't despair, though despair seems a natural reaction. Trump isn't winning, no matter what his supporters believe. He's destroying, and that shit never lasts.

Rise up. Resist. Persevere.

Endless Burning Anger

So, like many of you, I've been dealing with the GOP and their fawning worship of Kavanaugh.

A black man who gets angry when he is accused and shouts or screams? And so the police shoot him down? Why, what else did he expect?

A woman who dares -- ever -- to shout and scream and cry when accused? Or, hey, when she's being examined as a witness? Hysterical bitch who can't be trusted in power.

Children who cry or scream? They need a beating, obviously. They need to be put in their place.

But a white privileged straight guy who screams and threatens and cries in rage? Hey, that guy is amazing. That guy deserves a seat on the court that will decide the fate of every woman and child in the nation. That guy is a hero.

Why are conservatives -- especially religious conservatives -- reacting this way? It seems pretty clear to me. They love angry daddys who will punish bad children and keep those bad children in their place. They worship hierarchy, that Great Chain of Being, and they want Angry Daddy to keep everyone -- especially those brown and LGBT and girly people -- in their places.

This mystifies those of us who are interested in equality and justice. We don't want a country where one set of people (rich white straight men and their near kin) are treated with respect and given rights, while everyone else is abused and mistreated. We want what we were promised -- a more equal country, liberty and justice for all.

And so when we see the conservatives fawning and squeeing over someone who opposes all of that, especially when they're doing so because he pitched a tantrum, well, yes, we find those conservatives pretty deplorable.

What can you do? Nicole & Maggie have some suggestions.

Conservative Art

Once upon a time, conservatives could create art. I mean, look at Milton. There was also Anthony Trollope.

But today, this is what we get:

Not to mention Dennis Miller, Roseanne Barr, and Ted Nugent.

Why can't Conservatives create art these days? What's gone wrong with their culture?


ETA: LGM posts about it as well