Just reading this and wanted to put another hole in your "foreigners and fat people" description - sadly, because I agree it sounds so good! In my reading of the lyrics, it's not all fat people he's complaining about - it's specifically POOR fat people, who use food stamps to pay for their junk food. Don't get me started about food deserts and how vegetables are more expensive than mac&cheese - none of the policy discussions matter at all when the underlying belief of the Rich Men is that poor people are undeserving and just looking for handouts, etc. I've spent my career in public sector human services supporting the providers who support people with intellectual/developmental disabilities and mental illness - I see this shit every day and I'm chronically angry. Looking forward to more ideas about what to do with that anger and how to channel it more effectively.
Thank you thank you thank you for another awesome essay. In particular, for even mentioning the ludicrousness that is our society still policing college kids as if they are the power center of the left, ignoring any and all adults in the process. What makes it particularly infuriating is that there is a group of children and young adults that should be policed and a political movement of adults should be held to and subjected to endless questioning and think pieces about their culpability in it: young men who crawl out of the far right sludge to go mass murder people. It’s quite obvious and has been for some time that we need to have a national discussion about these terrorists/young men, but oh no, some kid at Harvard said something and now the entire left needs to answer for it and that is infinitely more important than mass shootings.
Ah, these fucking people. Again and again I ask, in complete bafflement, what the hell have we ever done to them to make them hate us so? I've felt this way since 2010 when Scott Walker was elected Governor and I suddenly found out that half my state hated me and everyone like me. Something about how me having health care and a pension was stealing food from the mouths of their children. Now they turn the hate elsewhere, but it's always gotta be turned somewhere, doesn't it? Couldn't just learn to go through life not hating people, where's the fun in that?
Funny. I thought the rich men north of Richmond he was referring to were the school-board-threateners is Loudoun Co., or the generals in the Pentagon. Silly me.
A quick correction: in the absence of Lia Thomas, Gaines would have still gotten fifth place. The only difference is she wouldn't have had to wait for her fifth place trophy to be mailed to her, as they only had one on hand. She didn't even need to lose out on gains to a trans woman to devote herself to our eradication; merely sharing them was motivation enough.
After living through childhood with a narcissist sibling, and having recently dealt with a narcissist coworker, I can never stop seeing the parallels between (or perhaps near eclipse Venn diagram visualization of) narcissists and MAGA supporters/white supremacists.
All the same psychological problems and terrible coping mechanisms are on display. It’s as if a behavior disorder became a political movement.
The common thread through Gaines, Anthony and Musk is ignorance and racism. These are traits that are taught, not hardwired in. Tiny children are color-blind, open minds that become what they are fed. Our failure as a species and likely doom from climate change is a behavioral problem and failure of education to overcome our basest, most primitive instincts. It appears brawn wins over brains in the end. As the end approaches, it's remarkable how many are oblivious. The controllers have managed to create conditions where the truth can hide in plain sight.
Channels of Rage
Just reading this and wanted to put another hole in your "foreigners and fat people" description - sadly, because I agree it sounds so good! In my reading of the lyrics, it's not all fat people he's complaining about - it's specifically POOR fat people, who use food stamps to pay for their junk food. Don't get me started about food deserts and how vegetables are more expensive than mac&cheese - none of the policy discussions matter at all when the underlying belief of the Rich Men is that poor people are undeserving and just looking for handouts, etc. I've spent my career in public sector human services supporting the providers who support people with intellectual/developmental disabilities and mental illness - I see this shit every day and I'm chronically angry. Looking forward to more ideas about what to do with that anger and how to channel it more effectively.
Please listen if you may to this snipet of Maya Angelou and Studs Terkel in conversation almost 50 years ago:
https://youtu.be/l1bgJ5sNgPU?t=150
Broadcast today so much more relevant and informative than any hyper-compressed breathless commentary offered up by ___
Full interview available at the bountiful Studs Terkel Radio Archive that I've had the good fortune to contribute to:
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/maya-angelou-discusses-her-book-gather-together-my-name
Mark
☮️💜🎼✊
Brilliant as usual. I think your style could get through to the rage driven.
Thank you thank you thank you for another awesome essay. In particular, for even mentioning the ludicrousness that is our society still policing college kids as if they are the power center of the left, ignoring any and all adults in the process. What makes it particularly infuriating is that there is a group of children and young adults that should be policed and a political movement of adults should be held to and subjected to endless questioning and think pieces about their culpability in it: young men who crawl out of the far right sludge to go mass murder people. It’s quite obvious and has been for some time that we need to have a national discussion about these terrorists/young men, but oh no, some kid at Harvard said something and now the entire left needs to answer for it and that is infinitely more important than mass shootings.
Ah, these fucking people. Again and again I ask, in complete bafflement, what the hell have we ever done to them to make them hate us so? I've felt this way since 2010 when Scott Walker was elected Governor and I suddenly found out that half my state hated me and everyone like me. Something about how me having health care and a pension was stealing food from the mouths of their children. Now they turn the hate elsewhere, but it's always gotta be turned somewhere, doesn't it? Couldn't just learn to go through life not hating people, where's the fun in that?
Funny. I thought the rich men north of Richmond he was referring to were the school-board-threateners is Loudoun Co., or the generals in the Pentagon. Silly me.
I wrote a brief comment on Trump’s use of “vermin” last week: https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/11/donald-trump-adolf-hitler-vermin.html
A quick correction: in the absence of Lia Thomas, Gaines would have still gotten fifth place. The only difference is she wouldn't have had to wait for her fifth place trophy to be mailed to her, as they only had one on hand. She didn't even need to lose out on gains to a trans woman to devote herself to our eradication; merely sharing them was motivation enough.
After living through childhood with a narcissist sibling, and having recently dealt with a narcissist coworker, I can never stop seeing the parallels between (or perhaps near eclipse Venn diagram visualization of) narcissists and MAGA supporters/white supremacists.
All the same psychological problems and terrible coping mechanisms are on display. It’s as if a behavior disorder became a political movement.
I think those “minors on an Island” may be a Jeffrey Epstein reference.
The common thread through Gaines, Anthony and Musk is ignorance and racism. These are traits that are taught, not hardwired in. Tiny children are color-blind, open minds that become what they are fed. Our failure as a species and likely doom from climate change is a behavioral problem and failure of education to overcome our basest, most primitive instincts. It appears brawn wins over brains in the end. As the end approaches, it's remarkable how many are oblivious. The controllers have managed to create conditions where the truth can hide in plain sight.