. . . on the error of institutional generalization

We don’t need a new political party in the US. Not now. The reason so many think we need A Party is that we (1) generalize about political parties in ways that reduces them to comical over-generalizations, and (2) we invest the idea of a party — our party — with enormous power — far more than is possible under the circumstances. A leftist party would be “a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

But let me begin further toward the beginning.

I’m often asked (1) how can you be a Catholic when…

Establishment Democrats wasted no time in blowing up their own credibility. Barack Obama ordered strikes that killed children with less than two days in office. Joe Biden didn’t even wait that long to undermine his own credibility and give the Republicans their first 2022 talking point. Biden went full-Lucy on his constituents before he even took office by reneging on the $2000 checks that he’d lied about for the Georgia runoff.

While we dined on schadenfreude and syrupy nationalism yesterday, another inauguration had happened last Sunday in the Bronx. Local 202 Teamsters voted to strike for more pay and better health care.

On Tuesday’s Inauguration Day, we were all basking in the glow left behind as Donald Trump’s shit was being washed off everything, and all the old lies that had been replaced by the new lies were back again as the new new lies.

As we know from the Cold Bernie memes that have exploded on the net, it was brisk in the Northeast that day, and strikers were freezing…

Anyone who has a gun, ever had a gun, ever been around other people with guns, or even ever thought about a gun, knows from visceral first hand experience that the mere presence of a gun changes the spirit of any social gathering. Anyone with a shred of honesty will admit that when one holds a gun, a real gun that is loaded, it does things to your mind. Not healthy things.

Firearms — not meaning Grandad’s squirrel rifle — the kind that are designed for the express purpose of killing other human beings: handguns, tactical shotguns and rifles, and…

You are experiencing the cartoon law of gravity. Remember when ole Wily Coyote would run over that cliff, hang suspended for a moment of rude awakening, then drop like a rock into an abyss?

Congratulations, you have succeeded in discrediting yourselves and your party forever — you will become the icons of opportunistic ass-licking, your performance of which culminated yesterday when Trump secured his legacy in snapshots of a loon-riot.

No one will forget. But we’ll be entertained by the backpedaling and tap-dancing performances in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. …

Trump’s putsch attempt

I’ll start with self-criticism, so I’m burying the lede.

When Sherry came downstairs yesterday and told me that armed Trump-cult rioters were on the Senate floor in DC, I switched on the television. Within ten minutes of watching the same video-loop of the same people smashing the same window, I was ready to call in air strikes. The incident awakened a little soldier in me, and I rediscovered in that moment of reaction why the little soldier can never, ever be let out of his cell. My mind was swamped with fantasies, and my fantasies are underwritten…

This is a peeve.

Please, those of you who have no experience of the military, and this includes my political allies on the leftish end of things — especially you — stop and think before you pop off with stereotypical nonsense about the military. Because you really don’t know what the hell you are talking about.

I recently posted on facebook that “veteran veneration is militarism.” Not the first time I’ve said that, as a review of my earlier screeds will show. …

Liberal feminist perspectives on prostitution have focused the policy and scholarly debates on the need to protect the rights of women to choose prostitution. (emphasis added]

— Cheryl Nelson Butler

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich as well as poor from begging in the streets, stealing bread, and sleeping under bridges.

— Anatole France

The gnostic, Scientology-like cult of neo-Nietzschean gender-warriors would have you believe that prostitution is exactly like taking a job at Lowe’s or Burger King. The have an approved vocabulary, which they have partially succeeded in forcing onto the metropolitan petit bourgeois left, a question-begging…