Category: Decline and Fall of the United States

Posted on

Look At This, America. Look At THIS.

This is US. We have lost all traces of our humanity.

Bring on the asteroid. Bring on the alien overlords. Bring on the AI singularity that wipes us all out. Let's hope the cockroaches make a better go of this thing called civilization than we have.

Except for the daily UNFs that are already queued up) I'm going to hold off posting any more pictures of pretty men until I can process this. It seems…I don't even have a word for it. I have no words for anything I'm feeling right now.

And since Ben is a school administrator, don't think for a moment I don't worry about him when he leaves for work every. damn. day.

As I told him this morning, if something happens to him at least I know he will have died protecting his kiddos…

Posted on

Bravery, Defined

Going back into an active battlezone for a kitty & fish…meanwhile back home big strong men are whining over wearing a piece of cloth over their faces and getting a couple pokes in their arms.

Ukraine is showing the world why the United States is rapidly becoming the laughingstock of the world.

Ours is an empire in collapse.

Posted on

Toxic Shock

From Darwinfish2:

The notion of toxic masculinity has been resurfacing in the news of late. Last week it was the ammosexual family of Rep Thomas Masse, posing for a traditional Christmas card picture in front of the tree, along with enough military hardware to annex Ukraine.

"Everyone say, Compensating!"

This is one family where I bet no one ever wanted to bring home a bad report card* or spill their muscle milk. "Jeff, you didn't finish your meat. Go out there and give me 20 headshots from 250 yards."

*Bad report card meaning a grade the parents can't argue or bully into a passing mark.

Back in October, before he was calling women "earthen vessels" meant for child delivery, he gave a speech where he called for women to "raise their boys as monsters," while decrying the loss of masculinity. This coming from a guy in a wheelchair, it seems like an especially blatant attempt to compensate for his own limitations.

"They are trying to de-masculate the young men in our country because they don't want people who are going to stand up," says the man who is permanently seated.

It's no wonder this guy seems to be in a race with Louis Gohmert for "Dumbest Man in Congress."

Whether it's political or social, I see toxic masculinity as the source of a plethora of problems that plague our society. Its footprints are everywhere there's evil and it all has to do with the male ego, with the notion that a man is entitled to anything he wants and if denied, is within his rights to take it by force. Hence the familiar examples:

    • Men who beat or kill a woman who tries to leave them. Or stalk them, threaten them, interfere in their work or career, post revenge porn, and generally make their life miserable. It's a shot to the ego, so man must make her pay.
    • Woman won't date/sleep with him, she gets the same treatment as one who tries to leave. Must be a lesbian.
    • Same with road rage, feeling the need to make someone pay for the effrontery of trying to merge in front of him. "No one gets in front of me, they must be taught a lesson."
    • Men who are answerable to no one because they know everything. "If I don't already know it, it's not worth knowing." This comes along with the dismissal of any experts of their field. We've just had a president with this trait. It would be unmanly and therefore forbidden, to acknowledge that someone else knows more than him about anything.
    • That includes the aversion to doctors and medicine in general because it would be a threat to their masculinity to be sick or ailing in any way. "I have no need for doctors because I'm too strong and fit to be sick. Nothing is wrong with me, ever." The last president thought this as well.

"No one can tell me what to do. No doctors, no lawyers, no wimmen, that's for damned sure."

    • Hence the Vax aversions, which by accepting a shot would mean that their own immune system is in some way inadequate or flawed. Or they have to appear to obey some pencil-neck in authority. Neither perception can be allowed to happen. That's all this "Liberty" crap is about… It's a 5-year old yelling at his mother, "You can't tell me what to do."

    • Excessive love of high-powered weaponry, as demonstrated in the pic above. It's not a matter of having a gun or two around the house for protection, it's having to strap on an AR-15 just to go down to Costco. "Gotta let people know I can't be trifled* with!" These guys have to have the biggest guns and the biggest trucks, just to make up for the rampant dick fear. If they can even see it anymore over their bellies.

*I apologize, none of these guys would ever use a word like "trifled," unless it meant shooting someone with three rifles.

Obsession with the military and especially law enforcement. They love to laud the police department. You'd think that would be taboo, to recognize outside authority, but this is different because the police are loaded with the same kind of guys and they recognize their own. Rednecks with guns are basically immune to the police unless they go and do something in public that can't be covered up. (And even then, it's iffy.)

    • They never apologize or admit it when wrong. These go hand in hand. "I'm never wrong, so what's there to apologize for?" Along with that is the absolute refusal to compromise. "It's my way or the highway." Then when nothing gets done, it's the other party's fault. "Why should I give ground when I'm right?"
    • Persecution of gays in any way possible. They hate gay men for being "sissies" and gay women for turning their backs on men. The whole idea makes them crazy so they'll back anything from beating the crap out of them, to denying them basic human rights, to not serving them in establishments, to being unable to enjoy a simple TV show, if "one of those people" is on it.
    • A complete lack of empathy toward anyone else. "You got problems? Tough shit. Man up and shut up."

While this kind of behavior is not limited to one political party, it still reads like the official Republican Platform. Or at least their operations handbook. It's the kind of behavior that's appealing to people with limited intelligence and reasoning skills, because it's completely without nuance, along with being highly satisfying. I mean, who doesn't want to be right all the time, or be the toughest, manliest, proudest mug on the block? Maybe it's just "fake it till you make it" gone horribly awry.

Maybe someone can describe for me how any of these symptoms make the world a better place? Granted, that's a moot question because these people aren't interested in a better world for anyone else, just themselves and their destructive clones.

Posted on

We Were Wrong About America

Once again, John Pavlovitz nails it:

The delayed results of the presidential election will be revealed soon, but in many ways, those results will be secondary to what we already know now: we were wrong about America.

The fact that it was even close, the fact that more people voted for him a second time, the fact that a higher number of white women inexplicably affirmed him—it is all confirmation that whether we remove the very visible, unsightly symptom or not, the pervasive disease is still horribly afflicting us.

Numbed by a cocktail of optimism and ignorance, many of us imagined this was a sick, momentary aberration; a temporary glitch in the system that would surely be remedied: after so much ugliness, such open disregard for people of color, such inhumanity toward migrant children, such a sickening failure in the face of this pandemic—sanity would surely come to the rescue.

We were certain that we would collectively course-correct; that the pendulum that had so wildly swung toward inhumanity would come roaring back to decency in these days; that we would presently be basking in the glory of a radiant dawn referendum on all this bloated bigotry.

We thought we would be dancing on the grave of fascism.

We thought, of course the good people of this nation would come to their collective senses, leaving behind political affiliations and superficial preferences and ceremonial ties, to rescue us from a malevolence that had proven itself unworthy of its position and toxic to its people.

We were certain there would be a mass repudiation of the racism that this man has revealed and the violence he's nurtured, because for all its flaws we really believed America was better than this.

We were wrong.

We were wrong to believe that white people weaned for decades on supremacy, would suddenly embrace disparate humanity and make more space at the table.

We were wrong to believe that white Christians would finally have the scales fall from their eyes and abandon their blind adoration of this vile false prophet of enmity, and once again embrace the expansive, compassionate heart of Jesus.

We were wrong to believe that kindness and science and facts and truth and goodness would be found more valuable than the fool's good of sneering, star-spangled, American greatness.

We were wrong to hope that more Republicans would cross party lines in order to defend their country from the greatest terrorist threat in our lifetime.
We were wrong to believe that hope would rise up to cast out fear.

And most of all, we were wrong about people we know and love and live alongside and work with and study beside; about our parents, spouses, siblings, uncles, best friends, and neighbors: they are not the people we thought they were and we do not live in the country we thought we lived in.

We believed the best about this nation and we were mistaken.

To many oppressed and vulnerable communities, to people who have long known the depth of America's sickness because they have experienced it in traffic stops and workplace mistreatment and opportunity inequity and the bitter words of strangers—this may be less shocking news than it is to those of us with greater privilege and more buffers to adversity and the luxury of naiveté.

But this is the sober spot in which we stand now: realizing that our optimism about the whole of this nation was misplaced,
our prayers for the better angels of so many white Christians were unanswered, our childish illusions that people were indeed basically good and decent, seared away in their reaffirmation of something that the rest of the watching world finds reprehensible.

And now, we're left with two terribly unfortunate choices: leave the America we have, because it is so very different than the America we hoped for—or stay, realizing that we are surrounded by so many people for whom racism is not only not a deal breaker but a selling point; in a place we know is less safe and less decent and less kind than we wanted—not because of any politician but because of those who embraced him a second time, people who share our kitchen tables and churches and break rooms and cul-de-sacs.

I don't know what the right decision is.

Right now, the only thing I know is that I expected something beautiful and life-affirming was going to mark this day and it isn't.

I was certain we were better than him, but we are not.

I was so sure that even though I know hatred dies hard, that America was going to let love have the last, loudest word.

I was wrong

Posted on

Selfish, ignorant people are going to make this worse. Don't be one of them.

From Wil Wheaton:

A gentle reminder: when we are out in the world, it's incredibly important to maintain a six foot distance from each other. This virus doesn't go away and stop being dangerous, because we walked into a building.

Most of us who are able to quarantine have been doing that, and it's working to flatten the infection curve, to give our doctors and researchers time to find a vaccine and a treatment to reduce the mortality rate of this virus. Most of us aren't sick, and we aren't carriers. That doesn't mean we should act like it when we are in public.

When we're in public, it's our responsibility to behave as if we are infected and we don't want to spread Covid-19 to anyone else.

This means that we keep our distance from each other, even though it feels weird. This means we wear a cloth mask in public, even if it's uncomfortable or whatever bullshit reason selfish people are using right now to justify their choice to ignore a simple and effective way to keep us safe. It means we respect one-way aisles in grocery stores, and we wait in those aisles, six feet apart, instead of pushing past our fellow humans who are shopping.

If the worst thing we have to deal with in a given day is the inconvenience of actively maintaining six feet from our fellow humans, to protect them and ourselves, there's just no real excuse to ignore that, other than laziness and selfishness.

Let's remember that we are in this together, and let's make an effort to care for ourselves and for each other by making the deliberate choice to stay six feet away from each other, wash our hands frequently, wear our cloth masks in public, and never forget that all of us are going through this at the same time, together.

I know you aren't lazy or selfish, but I know there are people in our lives who need a gentle reminder.

This is for them.

This whole thing we are living through is a lot, and it's really understandable to want to get back to normal. The thing is, science and virology don't care about your timetable, and until science and virology have a vaccine for Covid19, this is our reality. Wishing it would go away, and acting accordingly, is only going to make this worse. Refusing to follow medical guidelines, because you're pissed off and frustrated is only going to make this worse. Ignoring medical advice because you're bored and want to go to the beach is only going to make this worse.

Selfish, ignorant people are going to make this worse. Don't be one of them.

Please, please, please be mindful and self-aware. I get that you're stressed and frustrated and low-key scared all the time, and not just about getting sick. So am I. You're worried about our terrible leadership, you're worried about our cratering economy that our terrible leadership is making worse. So am I. You're worried about this pandemic that we can't control at all. Me too. You just want to get in and out of the store or wherever, the faster, the better.

So do I. So do all of us. But let's remember that we are in this together, and let's make an effort to care for ourselves and for each other by making the deliberate choice to stay six feet away from each other, wash our hands frequently, wear our cloth masks in public, and never forget that all of us are going through this at the same time, together. We can choose to be patient and make the best of a terrible situation, or we can selfishly make it worse for everyone, including ourselves.

Please choose to be kind. Please choose to be patient. Please do not be selfish.

Thanks for listening.