The older I get, the more disillusioned I get, and the more I adopt the mindset that no politician is your friend.
But I don’t think the actions of the left in 2020-21 will ever be topped in my lifetime. I would never believe it actually happened if I didn’t live through it.
Our current president is selling hats on his website indicating he wants a third term. He's a rapist with a pay to pay crypto scheme that is the one of the most corrupt schemes in modern American history. The list of his grifts is long and depressing, yet you are saying "the left" being annoying is the worst political moment of your life? Get a grip.
If the goal is a "gotcha, Trump supporter", you've come to the wrong place. Despite Trump standing out as uniquely egomaniacal in a sea of egomaniacs, 2020-21 was the only time that my life was very negatively and directly affected by the actions of politicians and the the top-down political discourse that followed.
"Back in the Twitter Era, it was one cause after another, Current Thing replaced by Current Thing. In 2020-2021, we reached a crescendo of constant memetic madness unlike anything I’d ever seen. The intensity of those pandemic era moments can’t be conveyed unless you lived through them. Increasingly, I suspect a lot of us who lived through such events have, as a self protective measure, forgotten."
There is an interesting, if flawed, literary novel by Kazuo Ishiguro about this phenomenon called "The Buried Giant" (2015). It gets at this aspect of human social nature by setting the novel in a post-Arthurian Britain in which a sleeping dragon enchanted by Merlin emits a smokey haze that makes the native Britons and the conquering Saxons forget about their recent warring and atrocities. The novel opens as the dragon is beginning to die and the forgetfulness is wearing off across the land.
I believe I read that Ishiguro had in mind the example of the Balkans in 90s-00s, and it was obviously written and published pre-COVID, pre-#MeToo, pre-George Floyd, but I have often thought about it in the past few years. How actually common it is for societies to want to ignore and forget in the immediate years after a great upheaval. But the novel also suggests that there is a period of reawakened remembering which will inevitably come.
In this way, I agree with Ethan that this masked reporter did a great service in forcing us to remember what was said and done in seeming earnest. Whatever her silliness, she is being honest and sincere.
“MLB has been accused on several occasions of acquiescing to President Donald Trump and right-wing agendas recently.”
If Ramos was left alone in a magic room, one by one, with each of the 750 or so MLBers, and started questioning each one about stuff characterized as part of the right wing agenda in the tone and manner she generally seems to adopt….and if we stipulate that (because this is a magic room) nothing that happens in the room would create any consequences once the parties leave the room, how many players would beat the hell out of her?
Framing the “Jim Crow on steroids” line as hyperbole, then using it to dismiss the entire critique of the law is a straw man. The actual objections to Georgia SB 202 included:
-Reducing ballot drop boxes in urban areas
-Criminalizing giving food and water to people in long voting lines
-Shortening runoff election periods
-Adding layers of voter ID requirements for absentee ballots
If you think that doesn’t disproportionately burden voters of color or working-class voters, you either didn’t read the bill or you’re pretending voting access only matters if it literally stops people from voting.
A law doesn't have to lower turnout to be anti-voter.
Also, Atlanta, err, Cobb County, is about the blandest, least interesting place in America. Long, drawn-out yawn from me.
True, but to be fair national IDs are also common in Europe and they would solve a lot of problems all at once, including voter ID, but neither the Left or Right seem to want them.
I think the big thing is "Why is MLB being pressured to not have its all star game in a city because of voter laws?", not necessarily if the laws are good or not.
Should CNN go all in and threaten to move headquarters to a state with lax voter ID requirements? Should the Arthur Blank threaten to move the Falcons to St. Louis if Georgia doesn't eliminate the clause about punishing people for handing water bottles to people who didn't think to bring their own water bottle to the voting booth? And if they don't, are they the bad guy too? To what extent should others be held to someone elses standard for what is right or wrong?
I think that Walmart and Amazon should stop operating in states where the government allows quack doctors to mutilate kids based on gender woo nonsense.
"A law doesn't have to lower turnout to be anti-voter."
Yes it does - That list you made does not contain actual objections .
Not allowing electioneering near a polling place ("criminalizing?" common get real, I'm not sure anyone would even get a ticket let alone experience jail time) is not an objection.
The objection was that the intent behind this restriction was to literally STARVE PEOPLE OUT OF LINE (Strauss was being nice, hyperbole is honestly too weak) to reduce the Dem vote count.
If this measure didn't keep anyone from voting - what's your objection worth?
Sounds like you have a pretty dim view of “voters of color and working-class voters” if you assume they’re too dumb or incompetent to get a proper ID to vote or figure out where the ballot drop boxes are.
Not sure it's a "straw man" when his point was that people were using those words to describe the situation and the guy who was President of the United States used those words...
People even failed to mention that there were some that noted that Colorado's (where they relocated the 2021 ASG) voting rules were even more stringent than Georgia's. Bomani Jones on The Right Time even said something to the effect of "We can debate about the actual details of the changes in Georgia's voting laws, but let me ask you this: When was the last time Republicans voted against voter suppression?" Really? Stereotype arguments? If we're doing that, we seem to forget that it was the Democrats who were historically pro-slavery and pro-segregation
Ethan, I think you pretty well know, that MLB does not wish to bring attention to what transpired over the 2021 season. Besides, that was the winning bet then, it isn't now. I think what you are really touching on is how quickly American culture and politics shifts on a dime. We have serious whiplash in this country with regards to how our federal politics and polices are conducted. Just look at Cuba now. I have no idea if I can travel their now or not, as that has been quite the hot potato depending on whether it's Trump in office or Obama/Biden.
The older I get, the more disillusioned I get, and the more I adopt the mindset that no politician is your friend.
But I don’t think the actions of the left in 2020-21 will ever be topped in my lifetime. I would never believe it actually happened if I didn’t live through it.
Our current president is selling hats on his website indicating he wants a third term. He's a rapist with a pay to pay crypto scheme that is the one of the most corrupt schemes in modern American history. The list of his grifts is long and depressing, yet you are saying "the left" being annoying is the worst political moment of your life? Get a grip.
Kinda underscores just how nuts the left went, where that guy was seen as preferable to a plurality of Americans.
Exactly. The left is like "OMG Trump is the most unfit monstrous being in the world how can he have won?"
And it is like.... "um dudes/dudettes your ideas and behavior are that unappealing".
If the goal is a "gotcha, Trump supporter", you've come to the wrong place. Despite Trump standing out as uniquely egomaniacal in a sea of egomaniacs, 2020-21 was the only time that my life was very negatively and directly affected by the actions of politicians and the the top-down political discourse that followed.
He hasn’t been convicted of rape.
Ethan writes:
"Back in the Twitter Era, it was one cause after another, Current Thing replaced by Current Thing. In 2020-2021, we reached a crescendo of constant memetic madness unlike anything I’d ever seen. The intensity of those pandemic era moments can’t be conveyed unless you lived through them. Increasingly, I suspect a lot of us who lived through such events have, as a self protective measure, forgotten."
There is an interesting, if flawed, literary novel by Kazuo Ishiguro about this phenomenon called "The Buried Giant" (2015). It gets at this aspect of human social nature by setting the novel in a post-Arthurian Britain in which a sleeping dragon enchanted by Merlin emits a smokey haze that makes the native Britons and the conquering Saxons forget about their recent warring and atrocities. The novel opens as the dragon is beginning to die and the forgetfulness is wearing off across the land.
I believe I read that Ishiguro had in mind the example of the Balkans in 90s-00s, and it was obviously written and published pre-COVID, pre-#MeToo, pre-George Floyd, but I have often thought about it in the past few years. How actually common it is for societies to want to ignore and forget in the immediate years after a great upheaval. But the novel also suggests that there is a period of reawakened remembering which will inevitably come.
In this way, I agree with Ethan that this masked reporter did a great service in forcing us to remember what was said and done in seeming earnest. Whatever her silliness, she is being honest and sincere.
“MLB has been accused on several occasions of acquiescing to President Donald Trump and right-wing agendas recently.”
If Ramos was left alone in a magic room, one by one, with each of the 750 or so MLBers, and started questioning each one about stuff characterized as part of the right wing agenda in the tone and manner she generally seems to adopt….and if we stipulate that (because this is a magic room) nothing that happens in the room would create any consequences once the parties leave the room, how many players would beat the hell out of her?
Framing the “Jim Crow on steroids” line as hyperbole, then using it to dismiss the entire critique of the law is a straw man. The actual objections to Georgia SB 202 included:
-Reducing ballot drop boxes in urban areas
-Criminalizing giving food and water to people in long voting lines
-Shortening runoff election periods
-Adding layers of voter ID requirements for absentee ballots
If you think that doesn’t disproportionately burden voters of color or working-class voters, you either didn’t read the bill or you’re pretending voting access only matters if it literally stops people from voting.
A law doesn't have to lower turnout to be anti-voter.
Also, Atlanta, err, Cobb County, is about the blandest, least interesting place in America. Long, drawn-out yawn from me.
As someone who doesn't particularly care about partisan politics, but does like logic, I have to ask:
What's the proper number of ballot drop boxes in urban areas?
Why is giving food and water to people in lines a partisan issue?
Why is shortening runoff election periods bad? How do you determine the "correct" length?
And Voter ID requirements sound good and not particularly partisan to me given the shape of the electorate in 2025.
Also voter ID is very common pretty much everywhere but the US...something the Europhile left always seems to gloss over.
True, but to be fair national IDs are also common in Europe and they would solve a lot of problems all at once, including voter ID, but neither the Left or Right seem to want them.
I think the big thing is "Why is MLB being pressured to not have its all star game in a city because of voter laws?", not necessarily if the laws are good or not.
Should CNN go all in and threaten to move headquarters to a state with lax voter ID requirements? Should the Arthur Blank threaten to move the Falcons to St. Louis if Georgia doesn't eliminate the clause about punishing people for handing water bottles to people who didn't think to bring their own water bottle to the voting booth? And if they don't, are they the bad guy too? To what extent should others be held to someone elses standard for what is right or wrong?
I think that Walmart and Amazon should stop operating in states where the government allows quack doctors to mutilate kids based on gender woo nonsense.
How about that?
"A law doesn't have to lower turnout to be anti-voter."
Yes it does - That list you made does not contain actual objections .
Not allowing electioneering near a polling place ("criminalizing?" common get real, I'm not sure anyone would even get a ticket let alone experience jail time) is not an objection.
The objection was that the intent behind this restriction was to literally STARVE PEOPLE OUT OF LINE (Strauss was being nice, hyperbole is honestly too weak) to reduce the Dem vote count.
If this measure didn't keep anyone from voting - what's your objection worth?
Sounds like you have a pretty dim view of “voters of color and working-class voters” if you assume they’re too dumb or incompetent to get a proper ID to vote or figure out where the ballot drop boxes are.
Not sure it's a "straw man" when his point was that people were using those words to describe the situation and the guy who was President of the United States used those words...
I live in Cobb County and your comment is about the blandest, least interesting comment in HOS…
I was thinking the same thing! I live close to Cobb County and love it! Beautiful area!
I don’t think the law disproportionally burdens voters of color because empirical evidence shows more people of color voted after the law was passed.
Biden actually called it “Jim Eagle”. What an absolute joke.
Do voters in wealthier areas have shorter and cooler lines?
Despite all empirical evidence proving you wrong, here you are, relitigating a losing issue. This article is about you, and you don't even realize it.
There was a whole season of Curb about this!! How quickly they forget
None of that is Jim Crow.
Now we just need Larry David to apologize to Georgia and all will be right with the world.
People even failed to mention that there were some that noted that Colorado's (where they relocated the 2021 ASG) voting rules were even more stringent than Georgia's. Bomani Jones on The Right Time even said something to the effect of "We can debate about the actual details of the changes in Georgia's voting laws, but let me ask you this: When was the last time Republicans voted against voter suppression?" Really? Stereotype arguments? If we're doing that, we seem to forget that it was the Democrats who were historically pro-slavery and pro-segregation
They're still doing this? Good for them!
Ethan, I think you pretty well know, that MLB does not wish to bring attention to what transpired over the 2021 season. Besides, that was the winning bet then, it isn't now. I think what you are really touching on is how quickly American culture and politics shifts on a dime. We have serious whiplash in this country with regards to how our federal politics and polices are conducted. Just look at Cuba now. I have no idea if I can travel their now or not, as that has been quite the hot potato depending on whether it's Trump in office or Obama/Biden.
This article was hard to read bc I had no idea of the controversy you were referring to (GA voting law) until like 5 paragraphs in
But which restroom do i use?