it’s tuesday in america (ii)
thailand doesn’t suck. it’s sunny all the time and i eat big meals of curry for anywhere from 3–7 dollars. can’t complain about that. however, it’s getting to the point where this coronavirus might be a southeast asia powderkeg and i have little to no faith in the health systems of developing nations.
so i bought a ticket to greece for this coming wednesday instead of staying here in thailand until march. figured bail now in case it gets worse. i started a deep dive into ancient greece / roots of athenian democracy by listening to a yale lecture series by professor donald kagan and thought this quote by him was fitting to the questions of our current political issues:
“if both religion and reason are removed all that remain are will and power. where the only law is the law of tooth and claw. there is no protection for the freedom of weaker individuals.”
certainly i don’t advocate for more religion in politics. but i have to admit it would be nice if there were some sort of shared moral base in our politics. without it we are banking on the power of reason. which would also be nice to have a shared base in. but we don’t. if we did, nobody would allow lev parnas close enough to sensitive information to become a factor.
a number of things i’m seeing about the challenges of ancient greece lead me to wonder if the human race actually learns things or if we just repeat mistakes until the earth burns up (literally). aristotle wrote about the pervasive issue of serfdom leading to the working class feeling helpless in the face of an uninterested and distant ruling class. it’s hard to not see the same thing playing out in the states with wealth continuing to collect in the highest of the high percentiles of our population.
our own congress is proving to be an essentially flaccid member — “a republic if you can keep it” now sounding more like an ominous prediction than a hopeful challenge. how disheartening is it that they didn’t even want to hear bolton testify? what a collection of painfully cowardly cunts. i would’ve never guessed 10 years ago that some day i would be saying “god bless mitt romney” or “god damnit i wish mccain was still in there”.
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questions:
why do republicans keep saying an impeachment is the tearing up of a ballot? can’t they vote republican again in the next election? who becomes president if trump is removed? wouldn’t it be another republican?
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did toby keith know that 29 countries have red,white, and blue flags when he recorded that one song “brought to you courtesy of the red white and blue”?
not that i expect toby keith to have a great handle on math but i have to wonder if he knew that roughly 15% of all nations used the colors he would have thought it such a great rallying cry for one specific nation. it’s such a low-hanging fruit appeal to tribalism — “hey that guy has the same shirt as me!” comes as no surprise that the same people who love that shit now identify very strongly with each other by wearing the same fucking hat.
another line in that song has something to do with the statue of liberty shaking her fist and it calls to question whether or not the songwriter has any feelings about the statue of liberty tempting towards fisticuffs when the nation slides heavily away from wanting anything to do with anyone else’s tired or poor or huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
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literally nobody needs to hear this but what the fuck is hillary clinton trying to prove by top-wroping bernie sanders?
pardon my french but you bitch. you fucking lost to trump. you are the least electable person ever. we know that because you lost to the second least electable person ever. you are as responsible for this mess as anyone and now you want to bash someone who’s trying to make it better? go to fiji and enjoy the extreme wealth your career has awarded you.
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how fun is it when wealthy, powerful people are proven vulnerable to some of the same mechanisms as the proletariat?
some things are truly stranger than fiction. i’m currently reading the sci-fi classic “dune”. needless to say all sorts of crazy, out of this world stuff happens in that book. but i can’t imagine anywhere in the story the author coming up with the idea that a billionaire online shopping mogul gets ashley madison’d or something like it by a billionaire middle eastern prince! that’s fucking fantastic! and i don’t even dislike beszos. it’s just fucking funny!
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do the swedes hear about us in school?
most of the time i tell someone from sweden that i’m from minnesota they know already that there is a lot of swedish ancestry there. impressive. or i just have low standards. nearly nobody in the states knows anything about any state in any other country.
