My family are from former Soviet republics and my grandparents always said Russians have been ruled for so long they don’t think to resist or demand rights. When the wall came down, granddad said democracy couldn’t hold there. Everyone laughed, but he was right.
Many (not all!) on the left are into politics for the dopamine rush of their own perceived moral and ideological superiority. They prioritize feeling superior to others over decency or helping people. And you get crap like this.
My dude. Sympathies. I’ve had similar scenarios with my daughter’s Hunter/Jumper shows. Not ever life flight, but enough to make me want to turn my head when my kiddo’s turn comes. And obv pray no major damage for the rider who got life flighted.
I’m not loving it either but it is the process. Give it a week or two and it will feel normal. I’m struggling with the same.
While it was hard not to be disappointed after that last (ridiculous) touchdown in the 4th, I refuse to be upset. It was an incredibly entertaining season, and we don’t get a lot of those in Chicago. Much better year than ANYONE predicted. Bear Down!
Chicago:
We won’t feel different right away, but long term it looks like it will lead to economic damage, pointless wars that cost countless lives, and the continued erosion of freedoms as it all becomes even more unpopular and the admin tries to quell dissent.
No an expert but IMO it’ll put us at odds with NATO, force allies to finally cut ties, result in sanctions that damage our economy and, I fear, lead to escalated talk of nuclear exchange when all this bullying doesn’t produce the respect and deference DJT thinks he deserves.
I revere the man and am forever grateful for the movement he helped found - it’s saved my life. So is it wrong that my first thought
is that he shares a more than passing resemblance Anderson Cooper in this picture?
it is your DUTY as a parent to be basic and cringe. if your child says "6-7" and you do not say, loud enough for their friends to hear, "8-9?", causing profound silence and intense discomfort, you are neglecting your responsibilities. being cool is for kids. your days of being laughed WITH are over
His supporters don’t believe any of what’s said and could care less about logical inconsistency. The rhetoric makes decent people apoplectic and that’s what they’re after. They just want people they don’t like to be unhappy and scared. That’s the whole game. And they’re getting it.
At what point does the democratic western world (which we apparently have recused ourselves from) start to sanction us the way we’ve sanctioned other belligerent bully states?
People are going to try and lure you into debates about whether Maduro was a good guy or not and the thing is, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of discussing whether violent kidnappings and extrajudicial murders by the US government are ok. No, they aren’t! End of convo.
The Big Book (among such people who are familiar with it)?
I sense the actual changes he ends up making will be unsatisfactory to many of his loudest supporters b/c they hear “tax the rich” and think “take half or more of their net worth” when what Mamdani is planning/could achieve is WAY more modest than that.
We will see. I hear you, but the rich are richer than ever yet have lower tax rates than ever. A modest increase could yield a lot of revenue, yet not be enough to drive the rich to the expense and bother of leaving.
I love this. May start this with my kiddo next year, and wish I knew about it years ago. Happy new years!
“You need to make more of an effort”
“Just be positive”
“Stop worrying”
“Why can’t you just snap out of it?”
“You just need to get over it”
Mental illness is a disease NOT a decision. If someone you know is struggling, don’t tell them to get over it.
Help them through it.
In my case, I needed 20 years of mayhem followed by regimented program work to be able to do this kind of thing. But normal, non-recovering people in my life (not all, but many) seem to do this naturally. Blows my damn mind lol.
Love this. I really feel like it’s the same tools for everyone tho. Admit powerlessness. Control what one can. Ground oneself in big but simple stuff (health, kids, partner, family, etc.) at day’s end. Remember emotions change and perceptions aren’t always reality. Seek gratitude, and so on.
Feels like they sense the power vacuum coming and are all scrambling to preemptively kneecap peers and grow their chunk of the grift pie. They’re gonna eat one another alive and I am suddenly craving popcorn.
The kind of sick fuck who wants to find a superficially deniable way to communicate to his followers that violence against people who say mean things about him is encouraged.
Only saw bits of the show but Trombone Shorty’s version of O Holy Night for the Christmas episode is my favorite version of any Christmas song, ever. So haunting and powerful coming right after Hurricane Katrina, and 20 years later I still get goosebumps listening to it.
Thing is, kind of amazing that the system has held together based on good faith and handshakes this long. Now that he’s shattered that, it’s challenging to think of independent guardrails in a poisonously partisan, self-obsessed political culture.
I’m thinking broader: an independent mechanism for investigating, enforcing, and prosecuting crimes committed by the executive. He’s proven those checks need more teeth. I’m struggling with exactly how it would work tho.
Imagine how you’d view these photos if you didn’t yet know anything about the horrors that today make proximity to Epstein so scandalous. I expect I’d just think “this guy is plugged in with all the people who run the world. Wow.”
Not blackmail. It was a sense of invincibility IMO. If you’re chumming with the world’s richest and most powerful men and think you’re immune to consequences, he’d probably see these pics as proof of us his access to wealth, power, and influence.
That sucks. You have my sympathies. It’s so hard to watch other people get consumed by their -ism, but it’s unavoidable in recovery communities. My heart goes out to him and everyone who cares about him.
Gonna check this out.
As an album, I’d struggle to think of one. IMO Guaraldi doesn’t get nearly enough credit a terrific jazz pianist b/c he’s inextricably linked with the Charlie Brown franchise.
