Author: Mark Alexander

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Why We Can’t Build

Ezra Klein, writing at Vox, on Marc Andreeson’s “It’s Time to Build” call to arms:

Which goes to a problem that afflicts governance at all levels of America: If you live in a vetocracy and one of your two political parties actively wants the government to work poorly, the government will work poorly. And so it does.

I don’t think that’ll be enough. So let me end with my answer to Andreessen’s question: What should we build? We should build institutions biased toward action and ambition, rather than inaction and incrementalism. […] At the federal level, I’d get rid of the filibuster, simplify the committee system, democratize elections, and make sure majorities could implement their agendas once elected. As I’ve argued for years, we should prefer the problems of a system where elected majorities can fulfill the promises that got them elected to one where elected majorities cannot deliver on the promises that the American people voted for. The latter system, which is the one Americans live in now, drives frustration and dysfunction.

Full-throttled endorsement for this basic notion from me—knowing full well that political tides ebb and flow. Let the party in power try new things. If they turn out to be unpopular, the tide will change and so too will the laws and policies. Conduct politics more like we do science: try new ideas and see what happens.

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The Summer Mix, 2008

Twelve years ago, just a scant few months before Ben entered my life, I created this two-disk playlist.

Admittedly this is an odd collection, but listening to it this afternoon sent me back to providing tech support at the hospital where I made friends that grace my life to this day, learned technical skills that propelled my career, and celebrated my 5-year cancer free anniversary. Both my folks were still alive, Mom hadn’t yet begun the precipitous decline into Alzheimers, I was indulging myself in short, yet extensive road trips, and making more money than I would see again for the next decade. And yet, as I’ve told Ben, while my life prior to meeting him was okay, something was missing. I was happy, but I wasn’t happy. Of course, unbeknownst to me at time, all that was about to change for the better.

Sequestered in my private office in the bowels of the hospital (Why is I.T. always in the basement?) I had the luxury (yet to be repeated) of a locking door and—since the rest of the floor consisted of rarely-used conference rooms and two other unoccupied offices—of cranking tunes when the mood struck me, and these were but a few items on my playlist from that period in my life.

Do the tunes say anything about my mental and emotional state at the time? Probably, but its still quite invisible from this side of the mirror.

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Fuckwits



Fuckwits with firearms

Fuckwits with flags

Fuckwits in pickups with Confederate  flags

Gov. Whitmer’s order for Michigan citizens to stay home, they said, was tyranny (SPOILER: if you can gather in public and accuse the government of tyranny without fear of arrest, it’s not tyranny). 

They repeated Ben Franklin’s claim that ‘security without liberty is called prison’ (SPOILER: if you can drive your pickup to Lansing, Michigan, you’re not in prison and you have liberty). 

They chanted “Lock her up!” and “Keep America Great!” (SPOILER: if your nation was warned a pandemic was coming and didn’t bother to prepare for it, your country isn’t all that great, and a populace that wants to lock up a governor for trying to mitigate that pandemic isn’t particularly great either).

They also gathered to block traffic in front of a hospital. Seriously, during a goddamn pandemic, these fuckwits thought it was cute to block the emergency entrance to a hospital. 

Jesus suffering fuck. —gregfallis.com

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Malignant Normality

A recent profile in the New Yorker of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quoted a staffer as claiming that behind closed doors McConnell has described Trump as “nuts.” Democrats should demand to know if the Republican Senate mastermind truly believes that the president is impaired, and force McConnell to choose between yet more lies and the future of his country.

Democrats should also get over their concerns about angering Trump supporters. Anyone who continues to applaud Trump’s weird and reckless disregard for humanity at this point is beyond the limit of rational persuasion. Trump supporters live in a hallucinatory dreamscape under the authority of a maniac. Let them have their anti-social distancing rallies, and allow them to believe that Barack Obama invented COVID-19 shortly after he was born in Kenya.

Rational Americans need to stop enabling this abusive and deranged presidency. Declare Donald Trump insane and, at long last, bring an end to our era of malignant normality.

Trump’s lies are so brazen that it is now common for politicians and the media to talk about him lying, a word that would not have been used in days gone by but replaced by euphemisms. Is it only a matter of time before they start openly questioning his sanity instead of just whispering it behind closed doors? – Mano Singham/Freethought Blogs