"We" also know who "We" aren't "The People"

Yes, it's a shithole.

But I have friends I stay in touch with on what I usually refer to as "The Goddamn Facebook" and I'm too lazy to use old-school snail mail.

One of them - a former GI who worked for me - posted this picture yesterday.

I lit up.

"Seriously? I'm supposed to be all cool and polite about how we're "one nation" when millions of people voted to come after my Social Security and Medicare, come for my gay and lesbian friends, come after my daughter and her OB/GYN if her pregnancy goes wrong, come after me - since I despise Tubby I'm "the enemy within" - and my liberal pals, come for my investments (fucking "Tariff Man? Fuck right off with that Gilded Age horseshit!) and probably my Army retirement, too? Because we're "We The People"? As the old joke goes, what you mean "we", kimosabe?"

Once I'd cooled off, though, that got me thinking. 

Who, by our new Leader's own words, a no longer going to be part of "We The People"?

Well, me, the enemy within, that's for sure, and my dirty hippie liberal commie pals.
Anyone not straight.
Anyone Muslim, and probably anyone not the "right kind of Christian", if they're troublesome enough.
Anyone poor, especially anyone who needs "entitlements" like Social Security and Medicare to get by (that's me, too, BTW...).
Anyone darkish-looking; Tubby wanted to shoot at the BLM marchers, so Black Lives Don't Fucking Matter anymore, if they ever did.
Anyone who criticizes The Leader or any of his goons. Hi there, Bezos? You think sucking up is gonna save you if your paper reports the gross corruption we're gonna see from Tubby again? Hahahahahah..!
Anyone who runs crosswise with the no-longer-standing-back Proud Boys.
Anyone with a pre-existing medical problem.
Anyone whose pregnancy goes dangerously wrong.
Anyone who tries to save the pregnant woman and in the process has to take a risk that it will kill the kid inside.
Anyone protesting anything Tubby does; the BLM thing again, he wanted to shoot "rioters" and you know fucking well that the slightest violent act will be enough to make any street protest a "riot".
Anyone else Tubby hates and, as I've probably mentioned, he's a real good hater.
Anyone...

Should I stop? I can go on. There's LOTS more people the MAGAts hate.

That doesn't even take in the people outside this country who need its help; Taiwanese and South Koreans and Ukrainians. 

Anyone on Tubby's pal Vlad's hit list. 

I'm sure I can think up more if you want.

Oh, and while I'm here...

I know this is like bitching about the boring TV programming in the middle of a typhoon, but...

81 million of you turned out to vote against Tubby in 2020.

Only 67 million - so far - bothered to vote against him yesterday, when it was obvious that he's crazier and more vicious than a shithouse rat than he was four years ago.

 

Where the fuck did 14 million of y'all go? Disneyland?

 

Tubby got 2 million FEWER votes than he got in 2020. If y'all had showed up...

Well..?

Well, at least we know who "We the People" are...

In a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity the American public has chosen to elect a gibbering idiot who pines for the Gilded Age and dreams of Hitlerian policies towards everyone he hates - and he's a good hater - and his clutch of little Nazis who will take an axe to the 20th Century to ensure that no drag queen ever reads "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to second graders again.

To the extent they can, the GOP will root out workplace and environmental regulations and undo the already too-threadbare social "safety net". They will increase the already too-high economic inequality to ensure we become ever more an oligarchy.

Their open lunatic anti-vaxxer, anti-"Obamacare" crowd will undo public health and make us sicker and weaker.

In 1933 the German public had endured war and starvation, hyperinflation, militias fighting in the street, the punitive effects of Versailles...and STILL did not vote in the Nazis.

What's our excuse? That the cutie in the corner booth might be a transwoman in a cocktail frock?

That the roofers next door might be here illegally?

At this point all I can do is echo this comment from the election thread over at Lawyers, Guns & Money:

"The bottom line is that there are more fucking assholes in America than anyone wants to acknowledge.

More immature, misogynist, racist, greedy, myopic fucking assholes than anyone is comfortable admitting to; more really rotten, selfish human beings who choose hate over love, exclusion over inclusion and "fuck you, I got mine" over any sense of humanity.

It's time to face the facts. The fucking rot is wider and deeper than any of us want to admit, and it's growing.

It all makes me want to puke, and the worst of it is that I honestly don't know how to combat it all. All I DO know is that we must all keep fighting, because to capitulate is to descend into madness."

The madness is upon us.

We're in a Project 2025 World now.

Updated 11/6 p.m.: I know this is like bitching about the boring TV programming in the middle of a typhoon, but...
81 million of you turned out to vote against Tubby in 2020. 
Only 67 million bothered to vote against him yesterday, when it was obvious that he's crazier and more vicious than a shithouse rat than he was four years ago.
Where the fuck did 14 million of y'all go? Disneyland?

 Tubby got 2 million FEWER votes than he got in 2020. If everyone who voted for Biden turned out yesterday...

Well..?

Weave Eve

On top of everything else - the threat to my income (Army pension, Social Security), my healthcare (Medicare, Tricare), my investment portfolio - that that orange lunatic proposes to take a hammer to, the idea that tomorrow millions of my supposed fellow-Americans want to force me to listen to the unhinged sonofabitch's goddamn addled "weave" for FOUR FUCKING YEARS makes me furious that you never seem to have a rocket-propelled grenade when you REALLY need one.

Snapshot from a vacation

My kid sister came out to visit last week.

We did Portland then drove out to the coast, so we had a long car ride just to talk. During a conversation about politics sis mentioned unnamed “friends” who were Republicans but were “nice people”; not overtly racist, sexist, etc. She lives in a piece of rural New York state, so I find that entirely believable that she knows these kind of people.

“They’re Nazis.” I replied. “Nazis are never “nice people”; they’re Nazis. We fought a whole war and incinerated whole cities full of them.”

“But…these aren’t bad people.” she insisted.

“Yes. They are. Just like there were sweet old grannies and kind men and cute kiddies in Dresden, they’re Nazis. You can’t excuse them because they’re “nice”. They have to be fought, and, if need be, killed.”

She was silent. But couldn’t agree. Just didn’t want to face that.

And that’s why we’re here.

“And when their Orange Fuhrer wins, and he sends his soldiers out here to Portland, and they shoot me down in the street because I’ll fight rather than surrender to Nazis, your “nice” Republicans will be happy about that, now, won’t they?”

And she had nothing to say.

Update 10/28: Bret Devereaux says the same things better and more completely.

"And while right now you may have many reasons and many concerns, if you sign your name to this fascist and a fascist government takes power as a result…your many reasons will no longer matter. No one really cares what Franz von Papen or Victor Emmanuel III or NSDAP or Blocco Nazionale voters were concerned about or their pet issues. It no longer mattered. Once a fascist government took power…they were fascists.

And that was all that ever mattered."

As Tubby himself said; this may be the last time you get to vote.

Last vacation snaps

 On our last day we visited "Pittock Mansion", the West Hills digs of a former Portland newspaper baron:

I'll say this for the old plutocrat; he had style.

Showing off wealth in an almost Trumpian way except with less gold leaf:

Mind you, here's where I'd have come in back in the day; the servant's entrance:

Last random snaps, kiddo:

Patinopectin (middle Miocene) Astoria Formation, Beverly Beach

Stone lion, Japanese Garden:

You at the Zen Garden:

Izakaya Kinchito:

The Inn from Otter Crest:

Sunset:

Moonrise:

Lighthouse Keeper:

Thanks for coming, sis. It was fun.

More vacation snaps

 Posting pictures from my kid sister's visit.

We stayed at a quiet little place called the Inn at Otter Crest. Sorry, no otters.

I'd done work there before, so I knew the good sights to see, like the little pocket beach below the landslide;

I took a ton of pretty pictures there that evening:

The actual "Otter Crest" is the point of land in the above photo, tho.

The swell was up that afternoon and made so pretty pictures:

Oh, almost forgot; on the way there we stopped off at a winery I'd also done some work at. Decent work, apparently, since they'd added this ginormous showplace out front:

The view was pretty spectacular:

As was the gigantic glacial erratic rafted from Coeur d'Alene to outside McMinnville on an iceberg:

Let's see. What else. Oregon Aquarium was fun...

Rockfish, though? BO-ring.

THE MEG!!!

Birbs.

Starfish

Anemones

Lighthouses (Yaquina Head)...

More lighthouse...

Pelicans:

More beaches:

Still more beaches:

And then back to Portland...

Vacation snaps

 My little sister came to visit this past week.

(Though at 65/67 the whole "little" thing is kinda passe'...)

Anyway, we did Portlandy stuff for a while, then traveled to the central coast and did "Oregon Coast" things, then returned here. I promised her I'd post some of the better photos - she follows this blog, so it's easier than attaching massive jpgs to an email.

So.

Here they are, beginning with...well, us.

This is up in the Gorge. We did the closer waterfalls on the Oregon side, like this one (Shepperd's Dell).

This is Latourell Falls, a bit further west.

The bigleaf maples were trying, but we just don't get real "fall color"...

This outcrop along the old Highway 30 looks really familiar...

...to the point where I think it's a popular tourist photo.

The next day we went to the Japanese Garden.

The vinemaple was in a bit better color.

Here's the iconic view of the zen garden...

The exhibit was on "kintsugi", the art of decorative mending.

I missed this, an urchin shell mended with resin and gold:

Fascinating concept. Beautiful objects.

Let's see...

We went to the Oregon Zoo. Because, well, zoo.

I had to show off the core down at the MAX Zoo Station because I had a tiny piece of the installation.

Oh, and the Rose Test Garden...

Plus the view; can't forget the view of the city...

Then we went to the Coast, and that's the next bit.