Now, I'm reading the text.
I’ve been interviewing for what I figure is at least an hour — the clock on the wall is broken — and everyone I speak to still supports the president just as much as they did the day he was elected....Who relies on a wall clock to know what time it is? That's your first clue.
The old man at the end of the counter shakes his head when I tell him the president is beleaguered by scandal. He’s not tied to his phone, like some of you coastal types. He’s not bound even to the latest fashion. I notice he’s wearing an old wide-brimmed hat and rimless spectacles, the kind I haven’t seen outside of movies. He says he’s still with the president, and that he doesn’t pay attention to the daily buzz of news. He has priorities like many real Americans have. I want to go out to my car, but it’s raining too hard. Coffee here is only a nickel. I order another cup.I think that's another clue. Coffee can't be only a nickel anywhere, can it? I look it up, and find this at Eater:
A latte may cost $5—but America’s cheapest cup of coffee is a mere 5 cents.... Yet, one kitschy old place in Wall, South Dakota is garnering attention for the opposite reason. Their cup of joe only costs a nickel. And owners haven’t raised the price since the 1960s. Wall Drug Store, also known as Wall Drug, is a Western-themed diner on the edge of the Badlands that sells the bargain brew using an honor system, with serve-yourself coffee urns and piggy bank-style boxes where customers drop their change.Well, hell. I feel like I've dropped into my own surreal scenario. I look up the clue — 5¢ coffee — and I get an answer about what "truck stop" we're talking about and there it is: "South Dakota is garnering attention"... garnering! That word I've been railing against since 2015 (click the tag for more). Sometimes it seems the universe is winking at me.
Back to Petri:
I try to say something about the impeachment, but no one can hear me over the noise of the soybeans, growing healthy and strong. I have never heard a soybean so loud before....Okay. Ha ha. So funny. Laughing at the farmers.
When I look at my watch, the hands don’t seem to move, but when I look at it again after my next sip of coffee, it says hours have passed. How long have I been here?So she's not relying on the wall clock.
Someone tries to mention the phone call to the president of Ukraine, and out of nowhere, pigs in all the neighboring fields begin to screech, horribly, an almost human sound, and they only stop when he gives up mentioning it....Oh, no. She's laughing at the idea of people living in farm country. It makes them so stupid. The screeching of the plants and animals fills up their useful-for-nothing-but-farming brains. What tags should I give this? Besides "garner (the word!)," I mean. I'm thinking "class politics."
The corn and soybeans don’t care about what the president has been doing on his phone calls to Ukraine. Whenever I try to ask, something rustles against the window, and it’s corn. I think it must be higher than an elephant’s eye now. The corn is pressed right up to the glass. I think the corn wants to get inside.This is the figure of speech called "metonymy" — the things associated with people stand in for the people. She's talking about corn and soybeans as a way to talk about the people. You can only do this with white people, by the way. Talk about black people as animals and your career is over, but talk about white people as plants and you'll do fine.
There’s a Norman Rockwell painting hung on the wall, and it says it doesn’t think the president has done anything bad. There’s a scarecrow in a pair of dungarees with a big pitchfork. He and his pitchfork both voted for Trump. They will vote for him in the next hundred elections. When I turn around from talking to them, I don’t see the windows anymore. Is it day or night? I thought there used to be windows. Has it always been so dark? Are we underground?...Here's the reveal that it's all a bad dream, presumably. Ha ha ha. Not fake news, not class snobbery, just something hilarious cooked up in the Washington Post for the comfortable amusement of its readers.
The walls are packed earth and so is the clock and it still hasn’t moved and now there is something crawling in the wall. The wall bursts! There’s an enormous worm here, and I pledge allegiance to it, willingly. I burn my notebook for King Worm!...Just in case you were slow picking up that this is satire, you're beaten over the head with a giant phallic symbol (and soon enough "The walls squeeze in and out, like the clenching of an enormous fist!").
Good satire? A commenter over there says: "Wow. A bravura performance. Perfectly captures the dystopic and Kafka-esque reactions of the right wing to this clear cut (and clearly impeachable) scandal. Kudos, Ms. Petri."
पोस्ट्स
१५३ टिप्पण्या:
And this is the divide we now have in this country. 1/2 of us despise, ridicule, and defame the other. Nobody tries to cross over and understand any longer. I think we've long past a hope for a reconciliation between Red and Blue. I only hope that the eventual divorce is less bloody than the last one.
Let’s flip it. Exactly what has Trump done wrong? How has he “shredded the Constitution” as Pelosi said today?
The Dems have nothing specific. No bill of particulars. Just conclusory statements.
And I see where Ann has been in some bars at closing time. “Who relies on a wall clock to know what time it is? That's your first clue.”
Said shorter: We hate you, we really hate you.
I'm so old, I remember that when people had psychotic episodes, no one else thought they should be published.
Good work, Alexandria! Come back and write another article when this blows up in the Democrats' faces. Who cares what a whistle blower said when you can read the while transcript of the conversation and it is all perfectly legal--within any President's duties. Go ahead and rub it on one of your dishes and you'll see.
That's not Funny, It's Parody.
That makes so much sense to start thinking of the Washington Post is Just a Dream Journal
Not fake news, not class snobbery, just something hilarious cooked up in the Washington Post for the comfortable amusement of its readers.
"Cooked up" or was it cultured in a Petri Dish?
And which of the characters of the story are grounded?
I mean, when an English major solves world problems by writing a creative piece in the Washington Post - that's a day in which to marvel at where we've arrived from all our "progress".
The left so loves to have their biases confirmed that they will even cheer as perfectly encapsulating reality something that was completely made up. Without ever noticing the irony that if it did capture reality, they wouldn't need to make it up--they'd have actual examples.
This is my almost daily confirmation that there is no hope for the left. They will never learn.
Petri is the evil spawn of a Wisconsin Republican Congressman. Her perspective, however, is more Georgetown and Harvard.
One question is why did Trump and his team release the memo and the whistle blower report with so little fight. A few possibilities:
1. They have become so inured to Trump's behavior that they didn't realize how poorly this would play out in public.
2. They know there is a lot worse in the vaults and hope this will distract from more damaging documents.
3. They are committed to open government.
4. They are idiots.
5. They actually want the president to be impeached.
6. They realized that release was inevitable, particularly of the whistle blower report, and that controlling the order of release was the best of several bad options.
what the president has been doing on his phone calls to Ukraine...this impeachable scandal.
How quickly lefties went from trying to provide proof of an impeachable offense to the word cloud that pretends to be proof of an impeachable offense. Was it even 48 hours? When you can articulate what it is Trump has done that qualifies as an impeachable offense and have the proof to back it up, I'll look up from my 5 cent cup of coffee and stop listening to the soybeans.
In the meantime, fuck you, assholes...
I thought our host didn't care for the Babylon Bee.
This "satirical thinking" by these elitist asshats is precisely what led to Trump's victory in 2016. Seemingly (luckily?) they have learned nothing. One more reason to hate the WaPo.
I think it must be higher than an elephant’s eye now.
So she's in "Oklahoma!"
What a dish she is.
The author sounds like a real dish.
Wow. A bravura performance.
So admitting the whole thing's a fantasy garners enough votes to earn top rated commenter status. It was better than Schiff's bit, I suppose...
They NEED to pretend since the facts aren't on their side.
I think I'm agreeing with you, prof, in saying that this kerfuffle is an admission that the Democrats know they cannot beat Trump in 2020.
So, they're hoping to cancel the election.
For the sake of democracy.
drmanbot said...1/2 of us despise, ridicule, and defame the other. Nobody tries to cross over and understand any longer. I think we've long past a hope for a reconciliation between Red and Blue.
I don't think that's true. I think the number of people who despite, ridicule, and defame people on the other side of the aisle is quite small. They only seem dominant because the internet has given them a giant megaphone out of all proportion to their real influence and we are too new at social media to recognize just how marginal they are.
Give us a few election cycles, watch their hysterics fail to translate into success at the ballot box. They will fade.
Petri is a humor columnist.
Whenever somebody says anything like “clear cut,” or my favorite, “clearly,” it means that they don’t have a solid argument that they think can stand up to the first gentle pushback of a simple question.
They really try too hard.
Was her gas cheaper? Was her food less expensive overall?
She should ask the plants for forgiveness, as taught at Union Seminary
Us rubes in flyover country just ain't fit to look after ourselves. Come save us enlightened ones!
If she can hear that many pigs, she should be able to smell them. And no diner is gonna work that is closely downwind to a pig farm.
WaPo has lost it. Do they really hate the midwest that much. And are their reporters such wimps that they can't get a little wet?
SMH.
Coffee here is only a nickel. I order another cup.
Refills are FREE, so another lie
and out of nowhere, pigs in all the neighboring fields begin to screech
pigs in ALL the neighboring fields? Why would pigs be in fields? Pigs live in comfortable housing units, with their food delivered to them
One question is why did Trump and his team release the memo and the whistle blower report with so little fight.
Because they knew it was going to blow up in the Democrats' faces?
This is still pretty true after all of these years, liberals should read it. It was written by a self described liberal Democrat, but in a classic response for them, they rejected it first, and asked rhetorical questions later.
https://stage.edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-what-makes-people-vote-republican
Maybe if they could own up to the fact that their outrage is all fake because there own politicians have been proven to have done what Trump purportedly has done, or drum Biden, Hillary, Obama, Kerry, the CIA, etc, all of the grifters who now treat the Ukraine the way the CIA and the United Fruit Company used to treat South and Central America.
They can’t. Their entire identity is wrapped up in the idea that they are the good guys. They can’t let it go, it would be psychological trauma. But independents aren’t part of that....
I think we've long past a hope for a reconciliation between Red and Blue. I only hope that the eventual divorce is less bloody than the last one.
But, the last one was a contested divorce; which is why IT was so bloody
This next one seems like it will be less of a divorce, and more of a murder suicide
This seems likely to garner (heh!) votes for the Democratics in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and of course Texas.
She's probably 27 and literally knows nothing.
Party on, WaPo, party on. Reminds me of The Masque of the Red Death.
In this post Althouse is primarily focused on ginning up hatred of liberals, the mirror image of those she is complaining about.
How quickly lefties went from trying to provide proof of an impeachable offense to the word cloud that pretends to be proof of an impeachable offense.
They have been doing that since the Mueller report fizzled out. It's what they do.
Keep repeating the word salad (sans evidence) over and over again and people who barely pat attention will start to believe it.
Via Lucianne:
The House of Representatives is set to take a two-week “recess” vacation after announcing its so-called “impeachment inquiry” against President Donald Trump in response to him having a routine conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Congress is about to leave for a two-week recess,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Thursday. The representative added that he believes Congress “should not do that” and should remain in Washington, DC, “to do the work to hold this president accountable.”“The stakes are so high,” said Khanna. “We have just announced an impeachment inquiry against the president.” Watch below:
Lolololol
Dixie Truck Stop, Interstate 55, McLean Illinois. Exit here for Macomb Illinois home of the Western Illinois University Devil Dogs.
https://www.illinoisroute66.org/What-to-See/Details/ArticleID/3926/Dixie-Truck-Stop
First off, thank you for reading and analyzing it, so I don't have to. What you've described, and excerpted, is some of the most tedious and too-clever-by-half political analysis I've read in a long time. Schiff's parody summary of the Trump Ukraine phone call is now in second place.
I've got news for the author: people in my area of the country, true blue Massachusetts, also aren't buying this latest impeachment kabuki. These are democrats and leftists, but regular folks just like me. They are focused on living their lives, going to work, and spending time with their family. They didn't vote for Trump and won't in 2020 but they are, at best, dismayed by the behavior of the Democrats in Washington (and the state).
Wall Drug isn't a truck-stop, it's a rubber tomahawk store for tourists.
Poor womans maureen dowd,
One question is why did Trump and his team release the memo and the whistle blower report with so little fight. A few possibilities:
7. There was nothing in the memo a reasonable person would find objectionable.
8. The complaint is hearsay.
There. Fixed it.
I wonder if Petri posts at Althouse under the name "ARM"....
Truckers and farmers, who work hard for a living and don't mind a place that still sales black coffee at a reasonable price, just don't get how bad Trump is for reporters. Don't they know Trump makes them stand (actually most are sitting) outside while he talks to them for 30 to 40 minutes in 90 degree heat while he walks in his suit towards a helicopter. Trump is evil and these deplorables need to figure it out and replace the battery in that clock.
The thinly-disguised the elites have for flyover country/deplorables isn't even thinly disguised any more. Parody or not, they are reveling in it...like pigs in mud. Or is that too deplorable of a comparison?
Just as real as any other story in the Post.
Ron Winkleheimer: "Us rubes in flyover country just ain't fit to look after ourselves. Come save us enlightened ones!"
We are not alone in that. The "elites" are also telling everyone the British are incapable of surviving untethered from Brussels.
This is a global phenomenon.
Is it day or night? I thought there used to be windows. Has it always been so dark? Are we underground?
Democracy Dies in Darkness!
I don't think she's ever been to an actual truck stop in her life. You don't "order" coffee at a truck stop, you get it yourself just like at a convenience store and it costs more than a nickel. Then you have to yell at one of the employees to bring more sugar or creamer (or sometimes just to make more coffee). They don't have clocks and art on the walls. They don't have corn or soybeans pressed up against the windows, they are large islands of concrete and gravel to allow room for very large trucks to come and go.
Also if she actually did visit a real truck stop, she would probably be shocked at the number of non-white drivers going in and out, there are tons of Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners driving these days.
Also no one there would care about "fashion" LOL. Most drivers are wearing worn out jeans and athletic shoes, or shorts & flip-flops. Truck driving is a dirty business what with the diesel fuel and having to sweep out the trailer or move the trailer wheels.
If I'm reading articles like this, and the comment thread too, then...
Scott Adams’ two movies is a useful concept
BCARM, you forgot
7. They knew this was all a big nothingburger, but they pretended to fight the release for a day or two to give the Democrats time to beclown themselves. Again.
She’s almost as good as that Schiff feller from yesterday. Almost.
I've been to Wall Drug. It's a huge complex full of food, souvenirs, stuffed animals and stuff. I've had the coffee for 5 cents - it's awful. But the pies are great!
Alexandria Petri is a humorist. Reading what she just wrote, I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair onto the dirt floor.
The thing is, everybody actually out in flyover country doesn't care because they figure Washington business as usual, performed by Trump, is still just Washington business as usual. The case the coast-dwellers have to make is that Trump did something that wasn't utterly routine in politics.
And, well. Everyone who supported Hillary for President, by that action, went on the record that pressuring investigators to undertake an investigation for your own political gain doesn't disqualify you from the Presidency. Otherwise her actions in the 1994 White House Travel Office matter would have disqualified her.
Does that mean there should be a higher standard? Well, okay. But fair is fair. When and if Democrats purge every single Democratic member of Congress who supported Hillary's 2008 primary campaign (which is to say, we're only going after people who supported her despite there being viable alternative Democratic candidates), then that purged Congress we can go ahead with the impeachment of Trump.
Your move, standard-raisers.
"Good satire?"
I thought it might be a sophisticated piece that subverted the information cocoon that urban Dems live in. Then I read the whole clumsy thing.
Sad!
I've been absent from this blog all week. Been at Disney World with my family. I've been to Disneyland many times before but never seen Great Moments with President Lincoln. We went to the Hall of Presidents here in Florida. It was moving. Most regular people still have faith in the office of the President, even with Trump. Even with Obama. Those same truck drivers she's parodying probably didn't think Barack Obama was a Marxist radical either. Most people are not partisans and want to think the best of their Presidents. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Craig Howard said...
7. There was nothing in the memo a reasonable person would find objectionable.
This is just option 1., from the Trumpist perspective. More than half the country appears to find it objectionable.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
In this post Althouse is primarily focused on ginning up hatred of liberals, the mirror image of those she is complaining about.
Seriously? If anything, AA leans left.
Are you using "Reasonable" ironically?
Do people really say "cup of joe"? Besides these lame journ-o-lists?
Many ideas which held disparate and different thinking people together, also held some people under and apart. Many new ideas which claim to hold all disparate and different thinking people together, also hold some people under and apart.
I’m often told this is progress. Also that it’s global and humane.
It's the Great American Novel, trying to get out of her.
Since she was a small girl in school, she always knew she would grow up to be a writer. There were so many thoughts and words in her head, all rushing to get out! Her teachers in school always responded warmly to her writings, and she could see that they saw her as someone special, that she had that certain something that would make her stand out from the rest.
She would always take time to notice her surroundings: the people, the places, the details -- she knew that was what a real writer did: they noticed things. And she noticed a lot: she made sure to pay attention, to notice, to remember -- it would all come in handy one day, when she sat down to write the novel that she knew was in her.
Oh, she had tried starting work on a novel before: ten pages here, six pages there. But she always could tell: it wasn't the right time, yet. She needed to think about her craft more, to inhale more life, to be ready to create the work that people would know her for, the work that would have her rub shoulders with the names of the authors she read in college.
Perhaps she needed a trip to France, first: a lot of famous writers went to Europe, and when they came back, they would write Great Things. She could walk in the footsteps of those that came before her, until she was ready to leave footsteps of her own.
Sometimes the idea tickled her: of some young girl, somewhere -- a young girl just like she had been -- reading her work and wanting to become a writer, to follow in HER footsteps. It was a heavy responsibility, she realized, so she would have to make it perfect. So she would write another five pages here, eight pages there, waiting until she could see the perfection on the page, the perfection that she would recognize instantly, the perfection that would be hers -- would be uniquely hers, because no one would have written what she would write, there was something special about the novel she would write that would be hers and hers alone.
For now, though, she had a job as a writer -- a real writer, for an important newspaper. Her words put a roof over her head and put the food on her table, and even bought an occasional pair of expensive shoes that she would really didn't need, but was reward for her hard work -- her hard work with words.
She knew that she could not work at the newspaper forever: it was to be a short stay, a brief moment on her way to the work she knew was to be her REAL destination. She had first thought six months, maybe a year -- but then she would find there was so much more to experience, experience that could only add more depth and nuance to her writing. And, anyway, she was meeting important people, important people who could surely see her real talent, and would be able to help her when she wrote her masterpiece.
Hah! Masterpiece, she would smile to herself. Maybe that was a bit too grand for her first novel: perhaps her first novel would be known for its quirky voice and insights, and people would then be waiting on her next work -- THAT would be the one where she would really show them what she was capable of.
She would think of these things as she put together her column -- it was rewarding, but she knew she had to keep her eye on the real prize. Another three or four years, tops, before she made her move; perhaps five, if that is what it happened to be. She knew she couldn't push for greatness: it had to come to her, and when it did, she would be ready...
I am Laslo.
tim maguire said...
"...the number of people who despite, ridicule, and defame people on the other side of the aisle is quite small. They only seem dominant because the internet has given them a giant megaphone out of all proportion to their real influence and we are too new at social media to recognize just how marginal they are."
I'm moving toward this idea.
As for this dream it's quite offensive but note that at its base this dream is based on rage that the Deplorables don't believe the Dems. That's sort of pleasing to see. Story after story have the Dems proposed, stories by the best Dems: by WaPo, NYT, CIA Brennan, FBI Comey, by disturbed teen-agers, by anonymous, by highly placed, by multiple anonymous, by she-who-must-not-be-named though she names names. Time after time the Dems have pointed out that the Deplorables are racists, misogynists, Christians, men and others who should just stand at attention, listen respectfully and agree. But still the Despicables tote their guns and vote Trump and act as if they were people. They plainly think the Dems are gullible except for the liars. And the Dems are feeling it - oh, how they are feeling it, judging by this Petri dish sample.
"Said shorter: We hate you, we really hate you."
And not only do we want you to know it, we want to rub your face in it.
Obviously, if you want to make fun of people in the center of the country, you have to go there. But if you just wanted people who don't take the impeachment threat or any of the current political sturm und drung very seriously, you could find plenty of them in New York City. Have you noticed how the stock market hasn't moved? And let me note, those bankers and traders went to schools just as fancy as Alexandra Petri's.
In this post Althouse is primarily focused on ginning up hatred of liberals, the mirror image of those she is complaining about.
I'll try to translate...liberals are, the mirror image, of, the people our host is complaining about.
I can't identify any people our host is complaining about.
Okay, I give up. Can someone please help me? I truly do try to understand people.
Corn as high as an elephant’s eye is from Oklahoma.
Der Farmer Süss.
Good satire? A commenter over there says: "Wow. A bravura performance. Perfectly captures the dystopic and Kafka-esque reactions of the right wing to this clear cut (and clearly impeachable) scandal. Kudos, Ms. Petri."
That is satire, right there, when using correct inflection.
Wow. A bravura performance. Perfectly captures the dystopic and Kafka-esque reactions of the lefties to this delusional nothingburger of a nonscandal. Ms. Petri lives in a petri dish of hatred, ignorance, and paranoia. Kudos, Ms. Petri. You are going to help Make America Great Again with this nonsense.
ARM believes writing true things about Democratics is likely to move people toward hatred.
That seems correct.
Good job, ARM.
"Sometimes it seems the universe is winking at me."
Either that, or shaking its head in weary exasperation. (Just kidding!)
Donald J. Trump
32 mins ·
Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist. He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, and me sound guilty. HE WAS DESPERATE AND HE GOT CAUGHT. Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud!
Change the name to ARM and update the number of year and this would still be true.
I've done that drive on I-90 from Sioux Falls to Rapid City. I think they let you speed because you will pay closer attention. If you're only doing 70 you will doze off.
More than half the country appears to find it objectionable.
No, they don't.
One question is why did Trump and his team release the memo and the whistle blower report with so little fight. A few possibilities:
Or, most likely, they know the transcript works to Trump's advantage and shows that Trump wasn't going after a "political rival" and just trying to get to the bottom of corruption. Note the Ukrainian president mentions Biden first.
Why is what Biden bragged about any different than this? Because it didn't involve a "political rival?" Certainly threatening to cancel foreign aid to cover for your corrupt scumbag son is disturbing to say the least.
Wall Drug Store, also known as Wall Drug, is a Western-themed diner on the edge of the Badlands that sells the bargain brew using an honor system, with serve-yourself coffee urns and piggy bank-style boxes where customers drop their change. [Emphasis mine]
You can sure tell they don’t get a lot of people from the big city out there. And absolutely no liberals!
Alexandria Petri ain't no Laslo.
More than half the country appears to find it objectionable.
Luckily you need 2/3's. God Bless the founders!
No satire here. Petri is Pauline Kael reborn with a dark soul.
@@@@Writes Alexandria Petri,..@@@@
I favor to think Petri is trolling both sides ?
If a #Deplorable# could satire what would be different?
This is just option 1., from the Trumpist perspective. More than half the leftist writers appears to find it objectionable.
Laslo, at 9/27/19, 9:02 AM, is perfect. Thank you, again!
ARM: "This is just option 1., from the Trumpist perspective. More than half the country appears to find it objectionable."
Keep running with that.
In fact, double and triple down on it.
You've got him now!
Dixie Truck Plaza, MacLean IL, includes a large convenience store, restrooms and showers, and a nice restaurant. Coffee costs way more than $.05. Huge parking area to accommodate trucks, and huge filling station area (McLean is right off I55). Fields of corn and soybeans all around, but the town is big in the construction business.
Next time I'm stopping off there, I'll take a poll about impeaching President Trump. Unless by that time Ukraine has blown over and we're on the next hoax.
She's probably 27 and literally knows nothing.
More importantly, how much does she weight? Is she braless?
Birkel said...
This seems likely to garner (heh!) votes for the Democratics in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and of course Texas.
She's probably 27 and literally knows nothing.
31 and knows 4 years worth.
"Okay, I give up. Can someone please help me? I truly do try to understand people."
If you abandon all objective morality, and rule out belief in a universe that rewards adherence to objective morality, then you end up with constant measures for determining your worth - no way to determine "how you are doing". It used to be that you compared yourself to a virtue. How honest am I? How vain am I? How jealous am I? You see yourself grow by comparing yourself to your former self.
Without those independent self-measures, you have no measures at all except to compare yourself to the next person over.
And when your method of measure of "how good am I doing", is to compare yourself to the next person over, you have then adopted a structure that will only eventually sow enmity and divide you from everyone else, because you can't love someone with whom you are comparing yourself to determine how you are doing. You will inevitably want them to go down and you to go up, and that is not love.
That comparison muscle builds and builds until you want everyone to be below you and you don't care how it happens, and you want to be above everyone else, and you don't care how THAT happens.
In the most advanced state of this malady, your struggles with others become scorched earth - you are willing to sacrifice almost everything to keep "winning" in the comparison struggle. It starts to feel existential, because it is existential to your self-image as a good person, a winner, or even just a person of value. Your brain can't work in any other way. It becomes a fight to the death to assure that in whatever way possible you come out on top and the other person comes out on the bottom.
This is the great irony of secularism and Darwinian world view. Darwinism was always about the strong killing the weak (if that is what you believe), so it is wholly ironic that Darwinist would ever complain about oppression and unfairness, but at the same time it also shouldn't be surprising if they act in ways to kill the weak around them.
Unknown said...
Also if she actually did visit a real truck stop, she would probably be shocked...
Damn right she'd be shocked! Especially after the first couple of truckers asked her how much for a blow job. There are plenty of women who hang around truck stops and provide this service, they are know as Lot Lizards.
If you wink at the universe, the universe winks back at you.
The "news" out of @arishapiro and the Grrlz at @NPR -- which spends most of its time interviewing their partner in treason, the @NyTimes -- is just as prefabricated from thin air as this, & we are past due bringing out our pitchforks against the Leftie Liars.
Rhetorically speaking: Heads. Should. Roll. We are past due:
* lois lerner, and the top 10,000 managers at IRS;
*Samantha Power, and everyone under Obama who furthered the illegal surveillance of opponents;
* etc, you get my drift, the list is long and startling.
my Secret Sauce: Obama should be immediately pardoned in advance, that would cool the panic of most of this wacky hysteria of the dems, but for everyone else under him: stripped to underwear, hair chopped off, lead out of town, thrown into the dirtiest ditch, all future govt funding rescinded.
Petri dishes?
Narr
Skipped the line
Petri dishes?
Narr
Skipped the line
This is all Hillary. All of it.
Remember when "Farm Aid" was a cause celebre of the left? Bet they hate that decision now.
In this post Althouse is primarily focused on ginning up hatred of liberals, the mirror image of those she is complaining about.
How dare you quote us in our own words! The article itself is the one not directly reflecting any kind of objective reality. It’s minstrel show stuff, aimed that the same kinds of people who want to be made to feel better by imagining, with the generous help of the minstrel show actors, that they are superior to these benighted souls who will never understand the higher level of being that Democrats inhabit!
"More than half the country appears to find it objectionable.”
Because they are bing lied to, or told only part of the truth. It can’t hold forever.
Laslo has it about right: women are too writerly, far more so than men. Maureen Dowd is too writerly but she’s clever and mean and that masks the odor. Kathleen Parker is too writerly but not near as clever nor near as aware of her own internal meanness as Dowd so her writing just stinks. Peggy Noonan is so self-conscious and self-satisfied that she’s become a self-parody. This woman writing here ... oh yeah, she’s got the disease.
So really wrote this? Adam Schiff?
Overeducation. It's a thing.
@Meade, next time you and the missus travel some distance, like to southern Indiana or Colorado or whatnot, please make a point of stopping at truck stops so your beloved doesn’t have to do research to understand that Petri made the story up based on zero point zero experience with real places.
A few points. These days most truck stops do not have their own diner but affiliate themselves with a restaurant chain like Shoney’s or Perkins or a fast food eatery like Arby’s or Burger King or McDonald’s. And none of them serve coffee for a nickel.
No one locates an eatery downwind of a farm. Cows are less odiferous than hogs, but manure is manure. Even corn farms smell in spring when they use manure to fertilize the fields.
People who work for a living care much more for the utility of their clothing than whether it is fashionable. Broad brimmed hats keep the sun out of your eyes and off the back of your neck — important if you work outdoors. And why change glasses if the old prescription still works?
As long as liberals like Washington Post writers prefer to deal with caricatures instead of engaging with real voters, they are going to get their butts kicked in elections.
Interesting, it seems releasing the transcript of calls by the President is highly unusual.
Pence was against it due to the precedent.
Dni also mentioned it may impact the willingness of foreign leaders to be frank on calls.
Schiff faked the dialogue in his hearing, of the Ukraine call.
Adam Schiff has been hinting about this issue for two months.
The call happened right after the public Mueller testimony, that was the final nail into the Russia conspiracy.
The Democrats need another impeachment investigation to hobble Trump, since the Steele dossier / mueller report is no longer useful.
Adam Schiff was able to have a 9 am Televised Hearing right after this issue came up.
Hypothesis:
1. Adam Schiff knew in advance about the whistleblower complaint, hence could schedule his prime time hearing,
2. Adam Schiff has been practicing his presentation for a few days.
3. Adam Schiff did not expect the transcripts to be released of the call.
Sure, she's a humorist. Like Samantha Bee is a comedian. Kids today.
The only thing missing from her dream is Justice Thomas. He spends a lot of time at truck stops when he and his wife hit the road in their motor home every summer on their "See America" trips. In fact, more than once he has helped a trucker fix his diesel rig. (Thomas worked as a diesel mechanic in a heavy truck repair garage over the summers while he was in college.)
One question is why did Trump and his team release the memo and the whistle blower report with so little fight. A few possibilities:
1. They have become so inured to Trump's behavior that they didn't realize how poorly this would play out in public.
But has it actually played poorly in public? From where I sit it has indeed played poorly — for the Dumbocrats.
3. They are committed to open government.
True that.
5. They actually want the president to be impeached.
And why would that be, unless impeachment is actually worse for Democrats than for Trump?
Like Petri, ARM needs to get out of his bubble. It is not “more than half” who believe that Trump should be impeached. The real number is closer to 40%. Outside of the rabid Trump haters I suspect the percentage is in the single digits.
That Petri can sure dish the Deplorables.
The only thing missing from her dream is Justice Thomas. He spends a lot of time at truck stops when he and his wife hit the road in their motor home every summer on their "See America" trips. In fact, more than once he has helped a trucker fix his diesel rig. (Thomas worked as a diesel mechanic in a heavy truck repair garage over the summers while he was in college.)
Roy Jacobson asks of ARM: Are you using "Reasonable" ironically?
Of course he is. In the same way he uses 'Beloved Commenter'.
Yes...those farmers are hilarious. Wonder what the good folks on K Street in Washington are eating tonight?
The great experiment would be to shuttle busloads of Americans, from all over the country- South Dakota to Arizona to Maine to Nebraska, Wisconsin. Everywhere. Shuttle them to Washington DC in staggered stages. I'm not interested in storming the Bastille. But I would love for every American to see where their dollars are going. Come rain or shine, good economy or bad, in Washington DC (and surrounding environs) there is never a bad economy. There is only free money pouring into Washington, millions of people working in millions of offices, sucking on the teat of America, and reaching in to take their handful of the money flowing in. People arrive as hungry congressmen and women. And step down decades later multi-millionaires. And then they don't leave. They simply take on a new role in a new office calling on their former colleagues.
All of this is overseen with approval by the staff at the Washington Post. Our guardians of truth. And first in line to get invitations to the most important cocktail parties in town.
I say, bring all Americans to Washington. After they get a load of the shiny memorials, have them take a good hard look around.
Let the people see what's going on there. Then turn them loose.
Bit I digress.
One question is why did Trump and his team release the memo and the whistle blower report with so little fight.
When typical politician zigs, Trump zags.
Laslo: En fuego!
No one locates an eatery downwind of a farm.
Well ... yes they do. In my experience, anyway. And I'm frequently in farm/truckstop country, herding sheep with my border collies.
That satire is a grand display of toxic jealousy of the Master Leadership Performance that has been given by Trump for many years, for which he will never be forgiven.
Trump won. Trump's ideas won. Trump's loyalty to and love of the USA has won a loyal following among Deplorables back.. And the corrupt snobs of Global Marxism are suddenly pathetic losers who still own News Media and many of the Deep State of the DC Swamp creatures by blackmail.
The recent depths of depravity to which the NYT, WaPo, CNN, and the House dems have sunk convinces me that the 2020 election is going to be a shocker few (pat myself on the back) could conceive or predict.
dem voters not members of the above groups will SWEAR to their neighbors, friends, and co-workers that they are going to vote for Fauxcahontas or Shrillary! or whoever gets the nomination. But a large number of them will not. A few will vote for Trump, but the rest will stay home, turning their backs on the madness of the chattering class and their own worthless elected representatives.
This lack of dem turnout is going to put even safe house seats, Senate and gubernatorial seats, in play for the Republicans. Witness the wailing, rending of garments, and gnashing of teeth on November 4.
I look forward to her joining the Stephen Colbert or SNL writing team. She's funny enough.
The fact is the gap between rural America and Big City America in terms of culture and education has never been smaller. We all got Cable TV, Amazon Prime, the Internet, and Cars. Someone living in nowhere Nebraska can drive to KC or Denver or Omaha, hop on a jet plane and be in Paris in 8 hours. People still living in my childhood small Western town, now go to Hawaii every winter, and Europe every summer.
But i guess the city slickers need to imagine everyone else is a country bumpkin - otherwise how can they feel superior? Of course, its not to satirize the satire. What do you call a snob who has no reason to be a snob?
Nice fisk, AA.
In my alternate universe, leftwing land, yesterday I got into a little conversation with the checker at TJ's about salsa, chili receipes, etc. Since we were being friendly I asked about her future plans and she told me she was hoping to go to law school some day. So I asked how she felt about CIA agent(s) working in the White House? Her response was that she felt it was OK and necessary considering the threat Trump poses to national security. I asked what was the exact threat posed by Trump and she answered as if obviously his collusion with Russia had been proven.
It was troubling to me that the CIA has spies/agents in the White House. Trump has been surveilled since the campaign, I guess he realized that wasn't going to stop just because he won the election.
Our Progressives appear ready and eager to accept totalitarian rule. They think other people (Trump supporters) are stupid.
Big Mike: "But has it actually played poorly in public? From where I sit it has indeed played poorly — for the Dumbocrats."
ARM likes to play the role of Perpetually Wrong Hot-Take Guy of Althouse Blog.
"ventured out of the elite cocoon to talk to some deplorables"
Next time, she can save herself the trouble of venturing or satirizing and visit the Althouse blog where she can find us deplorables in our natural state.
But, having read Kafka a deplorably long time ago, I do mind having our reactions labeled Kafka-esque. For Kafka's sake, you understand, not ours. Even condescending progs ought to have some standards.
"I’ve been interviewing for what I figure is at least an hour — the clock on the wall is broken — and everyone I speak to still viscerally hates the president just as much as they did the day he was elected...."
The walls are packed with human excrement, used condoms, used needles and vomit and so is the clock and it still hasn’t moved and now there is something crawling in the wall. The wall bursts! There’s an enormous Norway rat here, and I pledge allegiance to it, willingly. I burn my notebook for King Norway Rat!..."
The really funny thing is this- she could have visited a truckstop on the I-495 beltway and gotten something that wasn't satire. "That is how close the deplorables are, honeybuns!"
Damn right she'd be shocked! Especially after the first couple of truckers asked her how much for a blow job.
Of course she was. "Wait, I can get paid for that?"
"What do you call a snob who has no reason to be a snob?"
A progressive? A WaPooter? A petriculture?
And come on, Dixie Truckstop?
Narr
That's GOT to be a dogwhistle.
P.S. Hey Rusty! And where's Farmer?
Nothing like being in sync with Schiff--who had his own "bravura" fantasy performance at the hearing yesterday morning.
mockturtle said...
Of course he is. In the same way he uses 'Beloved Commenter'.
You mean (with small quivering voice), I'm not beloved?
Presumably that big old clock on the wall is stopped at 8:00 PM EST, Nov 9, 2016.
This fantasy story reveals once again the left doesn't hate just Trump.
They hate everybody who supports him, too.
This will not end well. It never does.
Bring it.
Wall Drug's signature attraction is Free Ice Water. After bicycling through the Badlands on a hot August afternoon 40 years ago, I was able to look past the kitsch.
https://www.walldrug.com/about-us
"drmanbot said...1/2 of us despise, ridicule, and defame the other."
If you rely on MSM, half of us are, apparently, transsexual.
But the bull horns are nuclear powered.
"Damn right she'd be shocked! Especially after the first couple of truckers asked her how much for a blow job. "
Agree to support Roe v. Wade.
“Reasonable” is like pro choice or pro life: self bestowed spin unconnected to the actual meaning of the word.
Haven't been to any truck stops lately, but I was at the Kansas City intercity Home Depot at Linwood and Main last Wednesday. I was waiting to meet my contractor brother to barrow a Pasload. I was shocked how many Blacks, Latins and Whites thumbs upped my large "Trump 2020" decal in the back window of my Jeep.
"Sometimes it seems the universe is winking at me."
Would that be microaggression? Or macro?
"What do you call a snob who has no reason to be a snob?"
David Brooks.
You mean (with small quivering voice), I'm not beloved?
Well, ARM, you at least have a sense of humor so...maybe not beloved but warmly tolerated.
This is just the WaPoo WaPooping.
Ms Petri is no dish.
Judging by what she wrote about the “cursed truck stop” I’d she’s a word I won’t say.
ARM: "You mean (with small quivering voice), I'm not beloved?"
To be truly beloved on the left it would help if you were a child raping illegal alien like the 2 just released by dems in NY and New Jersey and who have, shockingly, disappeared.
If you want to really make sure though I recommend joining MS13. The dems label those machete wielding child murderers "spark of Divinity" types.
Thats some serious "beloving" right there...
Be careful what you garner, lest it get garnished.
Manure is stinky, but it's organic stinky.
I've been wrong so many times, but I think Nov 4 2020 is going to consist of a nearly Biblical lefty communal meltdown.
Laslo hits it out of the park again
"Just in case you were slow picking up that this is satire..."
Amazing that a leftist writer not only recognizes satire but can execute it, if poorly. I suppose it fits the "That's not funny" trope, since it wasn't.
Good satire would expose the foibles of the target rather than those of the author.
"Sometimes it seems the universe is winking at me."
That's not the universe. It's a phony Match.com account.
As I write, Professor Althouse has not written a single post offering her own thoughts or analysis on (a) the content of the memorandum; (b) the content or plausibility of the whistleblower's complaint; (c) the Trump-driven decision to put a hold on military aid to the Ukraine not long before the call; (d) the other known/admitted facts about Giulani's dealings with the Ukraine as Trump's personal lawyer; (e) whether there is any way that Congress could appropriately have not made this set of facts/allegations a subject of full on impeachment inquiry, say, on the basis of Graham's argument that the conversation with Zelensky is a "nothing burger."
This is not an accident. Althouse knows that her own honest/cruelly neutral analysis of these issues would likely lead her to the conclusion that an investigation is appropriate, if only to ensure that the electorate has all the relevant facts before the 2020 elections. But stating that conclusion would spoil her relationship with her audience, which anyone who has spent time in the comments section of this blog knows is pretty far to the right and very sympathetic to the argument that the idea of Trump as corrupt, lawless and dangerous is a fake news creation of the MSM. And it would destroy the role that she has adopted to preserve her relationship with them, which is to limit her writing on Trump's worst failings to selective counter punching against chosen liberal targets whose arguments are vulnerable on grounds of weak analysis or bias.
Althouse's Petri commentary is a classic example of this strategy. Rather than discuss the core facts, Althouse chooses a piece that is nominally not about the evidence. (Petri actually had a good satiric piece on Graham's nothing burger argument, but Althouse bypasses it.) Instead, she focuses on Petri an MSM columnist whom she believes she can pillory as an elitist attacker of Trump supporters--a play on the deplorables argument that energizes her commentariat. But to get any momentum she has to pretend to miss the satiric intent of the article until the very end, something that is not consistent with her normal sensitivity to humor. In fact, it is clear from the very beginning, not least because satire is what Petri does, day in a day out. Moreover, she has to misread what Petri is satirizing. She paints Petri as disrespecting farmers, and in particular, white farmers. But it seems pretty clear that what Petri is satirizing is the claim that supporting Trump--and not evaluating the evidence against him--is a product of unique heartland values (Norman Rockwell, Oklahoma, farming, the natural order) rather than a set of political calculations (like those that drive Lindsay Graham) which appear increasingly sinister and dangerous. In short, what Petri is asking is how it can be consistent with American values not to investigate the Ukraine situation--the very question that Professor Althouse is ducking.
The Organs of State Security (i.e CIA,FBI,MSNBC) have been exposed, in the last few years, as "corrupt, lawless, and dangerous."
This preceded Trump, is bigger than Trump, and will likely survive Trump. But let's complain that some retired law prof is unfair to some bimbo scribbler's juvenile screed ("satire" seems like an elevated description but then I'm not a regular WaPoo or SNYT reader).
Narr
Thanks for the phraseology
Petri is asking is how it can be consistent with American values not to investigate the Ukraine situation--the very question that Professor Althouse is ducking.
There is a lot coming out day by day about the Ukraine story and most is helpful to Trump. It does no harm to wait for the facts. What we have is "Fusion GPS 2.0" You may not like it, and it seems you do not, but it will become apparent soon.
Shorter Stephen: I'm an arrogant prick who uses a lot of words to say nothing.
Start your own blog, boy. I'm sure we'd love to read it.
Narr, My point was that the Professor is ducking the central question, and that her misconceived post shows that she is doing so. You are also ducking that question--should Trump and his personal lawyer's words and actions in connection with the Ukraine be the subject of thorough Congressional investigation? In my view, there is no plausible argument that the House of Representatives is the deep state. In fact it's our most democratic/populist institution. Every member who has called for the investigation can be voted out in only 13 months, so Trump supporters can take them down, if they can persuade the electorate. And the Congress knows it. Not exactly an out of control bureaucracy.
Michael K., If the investigation actually demonstrates that nothing untoward occurred, then I would not favor articles of impeachment. Despite what's already in the public record, I don't rule that out. I am content to let the facts come out and follow them where they lead. I gather that you are too. Am I right in that?
Jim, I don't respond to name calling. If you have an argument, make it.
Because we're just making shit up now: " . . . when I tell him the president is beleaguered by scandal," he tells me the president is beleaguered by harridans that are acting out because they are getting an unaccustomed-to romping ass-kicking by a person that is not a "conservative" interested only in losing with aplomb and continuing to get invites to the best cocktail parties or perhaps earlier compromised by the departed Jeff Epstein's organization.
The unfortunately named Ms. Petri is skilled at presenting a kind of ooze that is nurturing a culture of undifferentiated ideas hoping to form a coherent political position.
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