Month: July 2022

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The Real Threat to Democracy Is Not The Big Lie

From Wil Wheaton:

The real threat to democracy is not the Big Lie. It's something worse.

This is not to suggest that election denialism or conspiracy theories are not dangerous; they are, of course. But the House January 6th Committee has reminded us of something important: The whole Big Lie thing is ludicrous, risible, inane bullshit. It is an entire political belief system based on demented theories about Italian satellites, Venezuelan voting machines, and the hallucinations of Mike Lindell.

But that's not the point.

You may have noticed how the various claims from Rudy/Dinesh/[Insert name of insane Republican] are ever-shifting. A bogus charge is made, it is debunked, and it is quickly replaced with the next fabrication, and so on. It's an endless morphing chain of guano-soaked nonsense. But despite the parade of absurdities, no factual refutation ever seems to stick.

Why? Because the lies don't matter. Only the outcome counts.

In other words, millions of Americans don't necessarily believe something crazy and bogus. They believe something much worse.

The Big Lie is the pretext for the refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power to political opponents who are seen as evil and dangerous.

Forget about the dropboxes, mules, and rigged voting machines; nobody really cares about the votes or the counting of votes. It's not about that; it's about winning — or to be more precise, defeating the enemy.

A subtext of right-wing politics now is that the other side simply cannot be allowed to win. They hate America, they hate God, and they will destroy everything you hold dear.

It's the Flight 93 election forever. It's Jan. 6th … forever.

The Big Lie Is Just the Pretext – by Charlie Sykes

You may have noticed how the various claims from Rudy/Dinesh/[Insert name of insane Republican] are ever-shifting. A bogus charge is made, it is debunked, and it is quickly replaced with the next fabrication, and so on. It's an endless morphing chain of guano-soaked nonsense. But despite the parade of absurdities, no factual refutation ever seems to stick.

Why? Because the lies don't matter. Only the outcome counts.

In other words, millions of Americans don't necessarily believe something crazy and bogus. They believe something much worse.

The Big Lie is the pretext for the refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power to political opponents who are seen as evil and dangerous

(Source: morningshots.thebulwark.com)

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"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars."

~ Peter H. Diamandis

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And The Drama Continues…

It's not much, but it's mine.

When I arrived at work last Tuesday, instead of going directly to our temporary area, I decided to walk past our usual work area to check up on what had been done with the cube reconfiguration. To my surprise, everything was put back together, and I discovered that my supervisor had already set up house in the cube that was in the general location of his previous one. I asked him if everything was working, and he said he wasn't sure, but he was on wireless so it didn't matter.

I told him I would go ahead and lay claim to the cube directly north of his (where we'd all previously decided I'd be moving to—in direct contradiction to where Ms. Elphaba Thorpe had placed me on the "agreed upon" seating chart.

I ran upstairs to get some ice water and when I came back down, Elphaba was standing in the middle of the space, lecturing my supervisor on how no one should be sitting in the area yet because Goodman's wasn't finished with the construction and blah, blah, blah. I looked at her and said I'd move when Goodman's showed up. As she rode off on her proverbial bicycle, she quipped, "Why not move now?"

I found a vacant cube (not the one she had intended to put us into) and set up shop. This was vacant, but had all the accoutrements already in place (a 32-inch monitor, docking station, keyboard, mouse, phone) so I plugged in there and got to work.

I did the same on Thursday, but for shits and grins right before I left that day, I swung by our reconfigured area one more time to see if anything had been done since Tuesday, and to my surprise a major reconfiguration had occurred in the interim.

When the original planning for our new space was being discussed, I had resolved to giving up my previous location completely because of the way the new layout had been designed, so imagine my surprise when I saw that instead of my old area being cut in half and designated as the work area for an as-yet-unnamed and unhired "temp" employee as it had been that previous Tuesday, it was now a full-sized cube that doubled my original "tucked behind the column" work area.

Needless to say, I claimed it as my own.

Elphaba sent out an email Friday while I was working from home telling everyone we were free to move back in Tuesday next week after the July 4th holiday.

I'm on vacation (praise the gods!) all. next. week, so not wanting to risk losing the claim to my old/new workspace, I went into the office this morning and moved all my stuff in. (This wasn't done in a vacuum; I'd told one of my colleagues of my plans yesterday and he said he had already moved his shit back in.)