Verities and Vagaries

@veritiesandvagaries.com

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One of those old web logs but still around for some reason. This feed also shares posts from other blogs we like. www.veritiesandvagaries.com

But why the fuck is anybody sane still using that service? What good does it do? Are you trying to reach @1488WhiteManPowerLust with your little post about how Trump did something bad today? Going to convince @WomenShouldBeKilled88 that they should respect their fellow humans? Share your stupid blog post about French bread pizza with @StabKamala2001? Because of my job! you yell back at me. Okay, sure, but I still don’t get it. What’s your job? Marketing to idiots? (Don’t answer that.) Is your company paying for advertisements on X (the Everything App)? Do you like your ads appearing next to CSAM and nazi memes? Do you like looking at CSAM and nazi memes?
Soldiers don’t go to war because they want to. They go to war because the president told them to (congress never tells them to anymore, which is a shame, considering the whole constitution thing). And they don’t die because they want to, they die because they were sent to sacrifice their lives for “the good of the country.” They die because the people on the other side of the globe who are more impacted by these wars than we will ever be, decided they didn’t want to go out without a fight. They die due to tactical and strategic mistakes because the only people who want to start wars are too stupid to think out the rest of it.
But why the fuck is anybody sane still using that service? What good does it do? Are you trying to reach @1488WhiteManPowerLust with your little post about how Trump did something bad today? Going to convince @WomenShouldBeKilled88 that they should respect their fellow humans? Share your stupid blog post about French bread pizza with @StabKamala2001? Because of my job! you yell back at me. Okay, sure, but I still don’t get it. What’s your job? Marketing to idiots? (Don’t answer that.) Is your company paying for advertisements on X (the Everything App)? Do you like your ads appearing next to CSAM and nazi memes? Do you like looking at CSAM and nazi memes?
Back during the recovery from the Great Recession, I used to opine that I thought it would be a good thing for the government to goose a little inflation if it would mean the economy grew faster. I wasn’t sure if I actually wrote that on this blog, so I combed through a bunch of old posts, but I couldn’t find anything. Maybe it got lost in the many, many posts that got lost during the transitions (so many posts). But, since I probably said it more than I ever wrote it (if I ever wrote it), I have to take a mea culpa on that opinion. Maybe the economy would have recovered faster (it almost certainly would have), but it would also have probably meant that Mitt Romney would have won in the 2012 election. Because people really fucking hate inflation more than I had thought, but now thinking about it more, I mostly understand why.
Back during the recovery from the Great Recession, I used to opine that I thought it would be a good thing for the government to goose a little inflation if it would mean the economy grew faster. I wasn’t sure if I actually wrote that on this blog, so I combed through a bunch of old posts, but I couldn’t find anything. Maybe it got lost in the many, many posts that got lost during the transitions (so many posts). But, since I probably said it more than I ever wrote it (if I ever wrote it), I have to take a mea culpa on that opinion. Maybe the economy would have recovered faster (it almost certainly would have), but it would also have probably meant that Mitt Romney would have won in the 2012 election. Because people really fucking hate inflation more than I had thought, but now thinking about it more, I mostly understand why.
Of course, Joe Biden wasn’t even president the first year of the pandemic when most of these disruptions and price increases happened. But, thanks to extreme Terminal Civic Amnesia, people forget who was actually president. And Joe Biden wasn’t the first president to send out checks—Trump did it first, making sure his signature was on them even. What Biden was responsible for was a large-scale effort to rebuild the economy, and the conservative media hated that so much that they blamed all the inflation on it. Well, not the wage gains that were concomitant with it. No, the price increases were the fault of the Inflation Reduction Act. No worries if you notice that on a pure temporal level it makes no sense. Because it stuck: Joe Biden did the inflation.
Memory is a fickle thing. People who study memory suggest that we tend to over-remember good things in our past and over-forget the bad. It’s why the best SNL cast is the one that was on when you were in high school. It’s why you keep getting back together with your toxic ex. I suspect it’s also why people seem to think the economy is worse than it used to be.
One interesting thing of note: Because of a mistake of history, this particular Senate class (Senate Class II, to be pedantic) by far represents the lowest number Americans of the three. Class I includes states that represent 75% of Americans and Class III includes states that represent 73% of Americans. Class II? 52%. That’s right: Only 52% of Americans got to vote for a senator yesterday. What’s more is that Class II is absurdly conservative as well. Every Deep South state has a Class II senator with the exception of Florida.
For those who are still on X, are you also on Gab? Truth Social? Any of the other countless white supremacist water cooler sites? Because say what you will about Gab, but at least it isn’t poisoning a Black neighborhood to cook up 1,000s of pictures of children in bikinis for nazis. But Gab doesn’t have “the reach” that X has, you yell back at me. Are you sure? Does X have any reach? Has anybody clicked on a link on X since 2020?
Because of my job! you yell back at me. Okay, sure, but I still don’t get it. What’s your job? Marketing to idiots? (Don’t answer that.) Is your company paying for advertisements on X (the Everything App)? Do you like your ads appearing next to CSAM and nazi memes? Do you like looking at CSAM and nazi memes?
A president who loved what he saw and refused to make any effort to stop it. A president who started it. A president who was openly okay with that crowd hanging his vice president unless that vice president still had the courage. As if breaking the law required courage for these folks.
Did he order and manage the assault and kidnapping from fucking Mar-A-Lago? Not the White House? Did they do it while on camera and reading fucking Twitter? What did Grok have to say about it? That it was a great idea or that they needed to add some more AI slop CSAM?
A salary cap sounds good. It promotes parity and prevents rich teams from spending their way to a championship. But it is also, at its heart, anti-worker, preventing players from being paid what they are worth on the market. It is also a constant downward pressure for the salaries of all the players on any team. As we all know from neoliberal economics, price controls (and salaries are prices) are anticompetitive and insert bad economics word thingy (fuck it, I’m keeping this).
It’s also one of two pieces of currency Abraham Lincoln is on. The other is the five dollar bill, I had to remind myself because I can’t remember the last time I touched cash. Guess the current president, and his followers, just need one less reminder what a decent president looks like. Did you ever look super closely at the back of the penny, where you can see Abe sitting in the memorial? Of course you have. But if not, do it. It’s pretty cool.
Some say you can’t have a country that isn’t protected by a wall. No. Walls are built for control, not protection. Walls are things built by regimes, while countries are generally comfortable with lines on a map and maybe some friction at borders. And the very idea that somebody should be shot and killed for merely existing in the wrong patch of territory is anathema to liberty and the very idea of liberal democracy. Fuck Maggie Thatcher, but a good line is a good line: “Every stone bears witness to the moral bankruptcy of the society it encloses.”
Some say you can’t have a country that isn’t protected by a wall. No. Walls are built for control, not protection. Walls are things built by regimes, while countries are generally comfortable with lines on a map and maybe some friction at borders. And the very idea that somebody should be shot and killed for merely existing in the wrong patch of territory is anathema to liberty and the very idea of liberal democracy. Fuck Maggie Thatcher, but a good line is a good line: “Every stone bears witness to the moral bankruptcy of the society it encloses.”
I wake up, in what amounts to some kind of haze. I’ve never been much of a morning person, so usually it takes an hour or so to just get back to cogent thought. If I have nothing urgent to do (work, or commuting to work, or the sporadic brunch appointment), I’ll shuffle downstairs, plop onto the couch, and throw on the television. What do I watch? Who cares. It doesn’t matter. So I fire up Hulu with Live TV, the modern equivalent of cable, and see what is airing live. Turns out, these days, it’s nothing. Like they said, lots of channels but nothing’s on. But it’s becoming more and more true every day. USA is just Law and Order. TNT is, well, I don’t know because it doesn’t have anything but basketball but now it doesn’t even have basketball anymore. TBS probably has a bad sitcom—it usually does. The broadcast networks are just airing morning shows or commercials. Comedy Central just has a ninth-season Office episode. No, there’s nothing on here.
Maybe I’m biased here because I truly don’t give a shit what kids see. I mean, you can try and keep a teen from looking at pictures of naked people online, but you will never succeed. It’s like trying to grasp water in your hand. And did 30 years of teens finding pictures of naked people on the internet take down society? Well, I guess in a way it did. But not in a way that will be changed whatsoever by mandating an age identification moat.
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Barely a day goes by without some story popping around where either a Trump voter says why they voted for Trump (you know, to educate the libs), or somebody who is very hurt by Trump’s policies feeling either regret or ignorance (you know, to make the libs feel better). But it’s fucking worthless. There’s no point this these stories—there is nothing to learn here that is worth learning. What some random voter thinks simply does not matter in the least. They have no power. They have no say-so. They have no ability to change anybody’s lives. It’s fucking boring. (That’s why I am not linking to any of them.)
Of course it’s not a fait accompli that this thing is actually going to pass, by July 4 or ever. As it stands, the bill that passed the House couldn’t pass the Senate, and the Senate bill looks as though it can’t pass the House. Maybe it can; I’m not a psychic — that’s an illusion caused by extreme preparedness. And I never hope — hope is pouting in advance. But with so many groups with so many conflicting desires fighting over pretty big issues with the bill, it could go either way. Would be a relief if it fails, even if we can’t count on it. But it would be funny.
So why the hell are these people trying so hard to pass a bill that sucks ass and will basically mean their eviction from office? You’d probably answer with something like “fealty to Trump” or “afraid of losing the primary” and I guess there’s a certain way you would be correct. But, that’s not the primary reason. The primary reason is: Because this is what they have always wanted to do, what they have always run on, and what they have always promised. Their whole energizing impulse is cutting taxes for the rich and cutting services (healthcare and food assistance) for the poor! Oh and we also hate solar power for some reason! For them, this is possibly the one time in their shitty careers that they will finally get to do what they came to do: rob the poor to feed the rich. It’s the entirety of the party’s political platform (that and racism and sexism, but they’re not unrelated).
He then goes on to confuse the rights of the parents and children (citing cases about childrens’ rights) for awhile so we’ll just ignore that. But we’ll get back to the argument at one of my favorite sentences: Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. See, Spot, run? Run, Spot, run! I’m not sure if I got that right but I don’t care. It makes as much sense as this decision. See, most books targeted at young children are unmistakably normative. See Spot? He should be running. Running is good. Dogs should run. Did you learn that, children? I’m not sure he has ever read a children’s book. Most of them are about big red dogs or men in yellow hats.
So anyways what does the presence of LGBT+ characters or concepts in childrens’ books have to do with religious practice? Guess what everybody: Many Americans “advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.” Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 679 (2015). You might be wondering: Did this motherfucker just cite Obergefell? Yes, this motherfucker just cited Obergefell. The gay marriage is legal case. In the anti-gay case. This motherfucker.