April, 2021 archive
Stray Thought 0
Some would have you believe that intolerance of intolerance is intolerance.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
As we all know, politeness takes practice.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
Phoning It In 0
Vaccine Nation, Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’ Dept. 0
Florida Man sues the CDC to allow him to unleash a fleet of floating petri dishes.
Courting Religion 0
At Above the Law, Tyler Broker argues that, even as the popularity of religion has been broadly declining across the United States, attempts to favor religion and discriminate against nonbelievers (his term) have escalated. Here’s a snippet:
Favoring religion in the law and disfavoring nonbelievers can only be explained by bigotry. Only a bigot would claim religious citizens and religious expression is worth more to this country than nonreligious citizens and nonreligious expression. Only a bigot would claim this country is “only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.”
The Vice of the Turtle 0
At the Idaho State Journal, Chris Huston writes of Republicans’, and particularly Mitch McConnell’s, reactions to Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, and other organizations who were uppity* enough to take exception Georgia’s new voter suppression law.
Just read it.
(Syntax error fixed.)
______________________
*I use that word advisedly. I am certain it is one that Republicans use behind their closed doors.
(Rotten to the) Core Values 0
At the Washington Monthly, David Atkins uses Tucker Carlson’s recent endorsement of “replacement theory” as a springboard to dive into what passes for (as?) “conservatism” in America’s current discourse. Here’s the crux; follow the link for the rest.
Because it is a fact that white men have held and continue to hold the vast majority of wealth and power in America, you must believe one of two things must be true: either you believe that white men are intrinsically more deserving, or you believe that institutional patriarchy and racism have combined to suppress and oppress women and people of color from gaining access to wealth and power on a level playing field. If you believe the latter, you meet the minimum standard for adherence to modern social liberalism and make yourself a pariah among conservatives. If you believe the former, you are by definition a chauvinist and white supremacist. If you claim not to be a chauvinist or white supremacist, but you believe that no actions should be taken to even protest–much less regulate or redistribute resources–to mitigate structural racism and patriarchy, you are inseparable from chauvinists and white supremacists at a social or policy level. One cannot simply declare the problem solved and assume everyone now has the same opportunities to succeed, because the problem is so obviously not solved at either a social or a policy level, and everyone so obviously does not have the same opportunities.
This is yet another reminder that Richard Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy has come full circle and turned the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Secesh.
Geeking Out 0
Updating a VirtualBox virtual machine of Fedora v. 33 on Ubuntu MATE v. 20.04 LTS with the Fluxbox window manager.
Bonsai 0
Yesterday, we visited Norfolk’s Gardens by the Sea for the first time this season. Here’s a few of the bonsai trees in their Japanese Garden.
