Howdy Y’all!
There had a really really big week at Ye Olde Blogge this week! In no uncertain order:
- The Angkor Wat Half Marathon is Sunday 19 December, and yours truly is training up to run the 10 km. It is disappointing, but I found out about it way too late to train up for a half. It takes ten weeks to train for a half. Still, part of me wants to go for it. I’m at six kilometers now, if I add two per week, I could do it, but that’s a big increase from week to week and really risks injury. I ran it about ten years ago. It is a glorious run through the Angkor Wat complex of temples. It also has heats for the wheelchaired and amputees, honoring, and acknowledging those who have lost limbs to landmines and UXO’s.
- The font color changed from white to red when I post links to past posts using their featured image. I usually copy and paste the title of the post from the frontpage of the blog into the text block on the cover block. The red rarely contrasts well with the image, so now I have to use a color filter. What a pain! I swear I’m going to start a consultancy called, Ask Me First! so people can stop making such asinine decisions.
- Mike’s Blog Round Up gave us a shout out on Wednesday 3 November for How the GQP Divisive Politics is Destroying the American Way of Life leading to a delightful spike in visits. Thank you very much Mike and all of the good folks over at Crooks and Liars.
- I’m outta time! When you’re already stretched thin, anything can push you over the edge and cause you to just not have enough hours in the day. Between adding running to my schedule, the extra tasks added at work to end the semester, and Ma Belle Femme getting very sick this week — she’s much better due to the miracle of SCIENCE, i.e. antibiotics. Still something had to give, and that something was Ye Olde Blogge. Next week, we should be able to find our old groove again.
Calendar Time
There is more on the calendar this week, so I guess that’s good. I keep finding worthwhile dates to add. Please, if you have a date you think could go on the calendar, let me know in the comments.
Last Week on the Calendar and Ye Olde Blogge
Last week was kinda light for both. The blog articles have been pursuing a theme of how we should be responding to the authoritarian power grab by the GQP. Both of last week’s blog posts were on this topic. Spoiler: We’re fucked! Pack your bags and get to a liberal blue state, but not California because climate change.
- We Made Nice with Racists, Now We are #ZombieNation was posted on Friday 6 November and reviewed our history of trying to make a nation with cruel inhumane slavers. Every time we’ve defeated them, they’ve hid under rocks only to reemerge to fuck us over again. Maybe it’s time we quit repeating history, cut our losses, and actually end the United part of the United States.
- How Big Business Got Woke and Dumped Trump — But Maybe It’s Not True Anymore? was posted on Saturday 7 November — see my timings were way off this week. I found a Time article outlining the response of corporate America to the GQP authoritarian grab. As usual, it doesn’t go far enough. Essentially, corporate CEOs are where the white voters of Virginie are: Meh, whatcha gonna do?
- Daylight Savings Time ended on Sunday 7 November, so remember to fall back one hour and get up one hour earlier for work on Monday!
- Abraham Lincoln won his first presidential election on 6 November to become the 16th president. He won with 40% of the vote in a four-way race, so that’s actually pretty damn good. His A Divided House Cannot Stand speech is well worth rereading… maybe Ye Olde Blogge will.
Next Week on the Calendar and Ye Olde Blogge
There are some interesting days coming up that we should all be aware of and there are some blog post ideas percolating but not started. If you’ve got any bright ideas for either the calendar or a blog post, please let me know.
- Black voters won’t save our democracy but white voters will give it away is one idea for a post continuing the theme of how divisive politics and the sportsification of our politics has already destroyed us, turned us into #ZombieNation. As long as white people refuse to confront their inner racist, they’ll continue voting for racist dog whistles: CRT, defund the police, build the wall, immigrant caravans, Ebola-carrying ISISers gonna behead us all! I’m sick to death of these people.
- Normandie versus Dunkirk is a metaphor that I heard on the podcast, Hidden Brain, about the climate crisis. His point was that we are less at a Normandie moment where bold aggressive action will win the day and prevent climate change from destroying our way of life, but we are at a Dunkirk moment where we need to save what we can and adapt to the changes that are here and coming while mitigating future damage. Same applies to our democracy. It’s dead as long as the GQP refuses to cooperate and govern and the rank and vile refuses to follow laws and social norms. The remaining question is how to salvage something worthwhile out of it? How do we survive in this world?
- Timothy Snyder’s 20 Lessons is a good place to start looking. He’s got a YouTube series out discussing each of the lessons from his book. I’d like to apply select lessons to the above quandaries.
- The Fall of the Berlin Wall occurred on 9 November 1989. Something we should all commemorate. The suffering of millions ended when the USSR fell apart. Also, there could be lessons in that for our political future.
- Veterans Day is 11 November. Hug a veteran and do what you can to ease their suffering that they experienced on behalf of us all no matter how ill considered the conflicts they fought in were. Give thanks that Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, too.
- Kindness Day is Saturday 13 November. What will you do to help promote kindness in our world? Let us know in the comments. I’d like to know.
Things I’ve Managed to Read
Even though I’ve been stretched pretty thin, I’ve still managed to read a thing or two worth sharing:
- I love this title, WWTD (What Would Thoreau Do?). I know you do, too. It’s going to become my new retort. Who doesn’t love imagining what had to be one of the crankiest but nicest(?) old curmudgeons ever to hole up in a cabin in the woods somewhere and write. Certainly beats Ted Kaczynski. Thank you, Krista!
- Doom and gloom counterpoint: Annie talks up the infrastructure bill success, and it is a success and talks persuasively about all the other great things Biden has done in his first year as president. Sometimes we just need to look on the brighter side of things, right? WWTD? Thank you, Annie!
Friends of Ye Olde Blogge
- Robert of Cabbages and Kings reminds us that autumn has fallin’ and that there are things to write because of it. He links us to a fall writing challenge!
- One thing I appreciate about Tengrain over at Mock Paper Scissors is his consistent take down of the failed MSM and political press. Biden has the most productive first year of any presidency and all we hear about is what didn’t happen. At least there’s Tengrain to explain it all to us.
- Infidel gives us quite an economics lesson as well as a lesson on the conflicts of interest that our for-profit press has.
- Over at Fair and Unbalanced, Burr has his weekly annotated rundown of the things he’s read along with a few choice words of his own!
- Apparently, Roger Stone is thinking about running for Florida governor just to spite Ron De Santis. Scottie over in his toy box gives us the rage edition run down of Stone’s threats.
- TenBears treats us to an article that basically explains how the Supreme Court could declare the entire federal governing apparatus as we know it unconstitutional. Wouldn’t that be something? The conservatives really are determined to burn the whole thing down, aren’t they?
Huzzah!
Jack
Massive Clearance Sale!
All blog posts must go!
Join the email list and you’ll get a FREE blog post in your inbox just as soon as we post it! But you gotta hurry, those blog posts are going fast!
Image Attribution
“Angkor Wat Half Marathon, Cambodia, 5/12/2010” by ronancrowley is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
My Comment
When a post is scheduled, WordPress won’t let you post a comment. So, here’s the comment that I would post would it have let me post one:
Howdy y’all!
I’m celebrating Kindness Day (Saturday 13 November) by encouraging my advisory students to post sticky notes on lockers at school with encouraging messages on them. What are you doing to make the world a kinder place this coming Saturday?
Huzzah!
Jack
The Psy of Life 
I need to get some more rocks painted to drop around when Corky and I go walking about. I like to color them brightly, then put stars on, with something like, “Yay, you!” or “Keep it up!” or “You’re awesome,” and so forth. It’s fun later to think about who might find them, and if they’ll smile. But I’ve gotten behind on the painting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bless you, Ali! Just knowing that someone does that makes my day.
What a wonderful idea. I convinced the sixth graders to write personal notes to the other students with similar affirmations. We’ll distribute them on Friday.
I wish I had more time to devote to the day on the blog. Kindness is something the US needs more of.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Awww! I started doing it when the pandemic shutdown began. My students had always said I ought to do more art, and it seemed like a cool thing to do. I feel like it’s a kindness, but never thought just telling about it would bring happiness. I’m humbly glad it helped you! I appreciate whatever work you get done here whenever you get it done; I don’t always get here when I get an email, but I get here eventually. You’re always such a positive person, and that helps me (I live in Southern Kansas, if that helps explain.) 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Ali!
Southern Kansas. Lordy gal, you need a LOT of positivity. I thought Brownback was reaching bottom, but there’s still a lot more crazy to go out there in the wheat fields. Luckily, y’all did pull back from the brink, though. We’ll see what the next election brings.
I had my sixth graders writing positive notes to another sixth grader for World Kindness Day. They blew me away with just how nice they could be to one another. If you’ve ever spent much time in middle school, you know how savage they can be. It sized a few crystals of salt out in this old curmudgeon’s heart.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Woot! Way to go-great work, you!! ✨🥇✨
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Ali!
It was fun. I added some pictures — non-identifying — to the Whaz Up!?! post scheduled for Monday. It was great fun.
I think we come through the mishegas of MAGA Nation one person at a time, person-to-person. I’m hoping to be able to post more about how to reach out to those in our lives. It is difficult to do as a part-time blogger and full-time citizen, but we do our part.
Happy World Kindness Day!
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
To be fair, I found it elsewhere …
LikeLiked by 2 people
But that’s the beauty of reblogging and posting about articles published elsewhere, right? You can add your two cents in and hope that someone notices. Like, I always think that if the powers that be just read Ye Olde Blogge, the world would be a much better place… or at least Ye Olde Blogge would be more popular.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Democrats really, really, really need to change the narrative from What They Couldn’t Or Didn’t, to What They Could and Did. So, here’s the brain teaser: How to get the horse race, anxiety booster, who’s-fighting-with -who obsessed news media to report it that way?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Howdy Bob!
That is a good question, and I wonder if behavioral economics has an answer. That’s worth thinking on. It feels like one of their findings should point us in the right direction there.
I was thinking of the basic rule of behavioral economics, everyone abhors risk unless it is to avoid a sure loss, and how it does or doesn’t apply to the off-year elections, the mid-terms, climate change, and racist dog whistles, which all seem to go together. That’s a post for later this week.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think that’s the right track. And there is a catch in that rule, well expressed in this quote from Cormac McCarthy
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
Getting the potential losses, rewards, and risks wrong, especially when the feared losses and hoped for rewards are symbolic and imaginary (as in identity related) prevents dealing with real risks and rewards.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
Great observation. But, I think that maybe symbolic and imaginary things are the most powerful in terms of losses, rewards, and risks. If our identity is our single greatest possession or attribute, then protecting it would the thing you’d die for. LBJ hit upon it when he declared, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
When did white identity become so fragile for the racists and white supremacists among us that it was worth fighting and dying in a Civil War and willing to die of #COVID19 for it, so destroying our democracy for it, seems a small thing.
Huzzah!
Jack
PS I’m writing a blog post on this topic. We’ll see if I can finish it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
True, identity is just an idea, and this is true of ideas:
“Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic .” – Kim Stanley Robinson
And this, from Don Juan In Hell by George Bernard Shaw:
DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church will survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even that vulgar pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which you call the Army.
THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for this.
DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will die will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, for universal liberty and equality.
THE STATUE. Bosh!
DON JUAN. What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for. Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for human perfection, to which they will sacrifice all their liberty gladly.
THE DEVIL. Ay: they will never be at a loss for an excuse for killing one another.
DON JUAN. What of that? It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation. Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master. Men shall yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing slavery.
THE DEVIL. Yes, when the Liberty and Equality of which you prate shall have made free white Christians cheaper in the labor market than by auction at the block.
DON JUAN. Never fear! the white laborer shall have his turn too. But I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take. I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls God’s work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Howdy Bob!
I fear we are living at a time that make Shaw seem prescient and insightful. As long as we’re fighting for something larger than ourselves, we will fight no matter the form the fight takes and no matter who we have to sacrifice in the fight.
We have not stamped out the culture of the white supremacist as we once believed we were doing. When we gave up the godless communist hordes to fight, we gave up our common enemy that helped bind us together as a nation and spurred us to greater achievements. Contrary to Putin’s thinking, the fall of the Soviet Union may have been the fatal blow to US democracy.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 2 people
Those who need an enemy will find one, even if they have to invent it out of whole cloth. Maybe if China gets to kicking our butt a bit harder?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
If the goal was to unite the nation, we would find a common national enemy. I don’t think that is the GQP goal. They want the enemies list to focused squarely on the domestic side. Soft on terror is just trotted out after terror attacks. Soft on China trade is used as an attack line; it isn’t followed up very closely. One of the problems with war with China is that their military pales in comparison to ours. They are trying to even things out using technology, but they have never used any of it under live fire. In fact most of their soldiers and officers have never been in live fire. We have twenty years of experience in our military.
The GQP really does want civil war. The more chaotic and traumatic the better for them.
They may not need it if they can keep the base churning and turning out like they did in Virginia and NJ. They may just “win” the 2022 elections and shut everyone out of the 2024 elections.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
China is unlikely to push a situation with the US to the point of shooting, unless they come up with a technological development that would give them a decisive advantage to quickly de-fang the tiger. They will continue to compete at the sphere of influence level and keeping the US and other first world consumers dependent on their factories.
Some of the purveyors of the Big Lie are having a bit of trouble explaining the victory in VA, and why the midnight magical votes didn’t show up for the Democrat. So, some have decided that the Dems must have sacrificed their candidate to try to discredit the Lie, or even that Youngkin is a false flag.
There’s nothing that justifies a permanent State Of Emergency and Rule By Decree better than blood in the streets.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
I’m convinced that that was the real 6 January Insurrection plan: provoke bloodshed and violence with Antifa or the Capitol Police. When neither accommodated, they were left with, “Hey, we’re here, now what we do?” “I dunno, what do you wanna do?” “I don’t know, what do you wanna do?” “I don’t know. I guess we go home now.” Some of it was just ridiculous when you watched them in the chambers. Once the security apparatus got the members out of harm’s way, they had no idea what to do in spite of MTG’s desperate texting of their location. Maybe the shooting of Ashli Babbitt sobered some of them up.
Now the twisting of the narrative to fit the facts begins. Cognitive dissonance is an amazing thing watching it in real time is like watching a headless snake writhe around.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s what happens when you send a bunch of amateurs to do a special forces team’s job. And, when your co-conspirators on the inside hold back from starting the shooting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Amateurs is about the only way to describe the Sedition Caucus. Christ, just send in the clowns already and lets be done with it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Alas, the lyrics of the song don’t fit better to the situation. In general, it seems that successful coup attempts are almost always led by a military officer of rank at least colonel or above. There is a reason for that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think we were saved in the 6 January Insurrection by the rank amateurism of Trump and his allies. They are working hard to ensure that they don’t miss the next time.
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe the best example is trying to get Pence to say there were alternative slates of electors put forward by states when there were none and they and he knew it. They won’t make that mistake again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
It drives me nuts to hear people fretting about 2024. It’s 2022 that the future of our democracy will be decided in. Even if the Dems hold on to one or both Houses of Congress, if we can’t take back state houses and governorships, it is over. The sheer number of elections we’d have to win with the Republican voter suppression and nullification efforts in full force backed by the courts means probable failure.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sadly so
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s the thing. Dems haven’t been concerned about off year elections for generations. It’s one of the things that has allowed the Republicans to get into the position that they are in to control so many states.
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just as they weren’t concerned about creating think tanks and training a generation or two of really smart liberal lawyers who want to be judges. Back when there was still such a thing as Big Labor and it was on their side, the ground game in local and off year elections was largely run by union people. The party apparatus got lazy and almost totally focused on the White House. Then came the neo-libs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
That was step one, break the unions. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Step two, sell trickle down as gospel. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Step three, mobilize the religious conservatives, the moral majority. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Step four, insulate the base against counter-messaging. And, step five, create mass psychosis.
It’s an interesting plank of Biden’s to rescue the unions. We’ll see how successful it is for him.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
The three legged stool – Big Government, Big Labor, and Big Money – was broken and the Democrats fell right on their ass. I haven’t heard a sound clip of Biden on his domestic agenda that does not have the words “UNION JOBS” somewhere in it (Damn, I bet Joe Manchin hates that.)
Ronnie could only do all that because Tricky Dick gave us the Southern Strategy and didn’t go to jail.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
While slavery and race may have been the nation’s cardinal sin, not prosecuting Nixon and Reagan is probably the cardinal sin of the Democrats. It should be a lesson for Garland et al. now. DoJ does seem to be moving, however slowly, towards prosecution. We’ll see.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
The sense of immunity that the GOP got from those non-prosecutions is at the root of the present problem. Garland does not bring cases he doesn’t think he can win on the evidence. There will be more contempt of Congress referrals (Mark Meadows appears to be next.). I’m guessing one a week or every two weeks for a while. All the defendants will be claiming Trump’s executive privilege and his direction not to comply with subpoenas. If that claim is shot down. there may be grounds for conspiracy and definitely evidence of Conscious Pattern And Practice, which includes his encouragement of staff while in office to violate the Hatch Act. I think that a lot of lawyers are going to be talking to clients about the Fifth Amendment.
On the subject of Mass Psychosis, in this interview the separation of the physical/emotional feeling of threat from rational cognitive process in PTSD is discussed. The terror and relief cycle of fomenting mass psychosis is a PTSD inducing process. Think of the response of some to being asked to wear a mask. Now think of the war vet who dives for cover when a truck backfires. The “alligator brain” takes the action. The ideological rationalizations come later. https://onbeing.org/programs/bessel-van-der-kolk-trauma-the-body-and-2021/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
The PTSD-mass psychosis connection certainly makes sense. The constant exposure to stress and anger triggers the flight or fight response and never gets fully processed. It probably will be just about as difficult to resolve as PTSD is, too. That doesn’t bode well for the future of the Republic.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, not well at all. For one thing, both PTSD and Mass Psychosis shift the cognitive balance toward Fast Thinking and away from Slow Thinking.
I had probably my most important lesson about PTSD from a guy I knew in Santa Cruz, CA. He was a veteran of the Vietnam era, Green Beret (had operated, not in Nam, but in “Need To Know Only” places). He was working in the roasting room of a local coffee place, an unreinforced brick building, when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. Later, he said all he remembered was seeing daylight when part of the back wall went down, and the next thing he remembered was being 100 yards out in the parking lot. His PTSD and his training muscle memory took him over a pile of rubble and on a 100 yard sprint on moving ground without enough conscious thought to for a memory of doing it. By the time he stopped running, that building was all in its basement and nobody else made it out alive. That’s what PTSD is for, the situations when survival depends on, “Don’t think, just move”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
That sounds like the purpose of PTSD right there. When you need your muscle memory to direct your actions to save your life… again.
The Bassel van der Kolk material on treating trauma was interesting. I really enjoyed listening to him and reading up on some of his work. There’s a lot there including the role that shame plays in both the trauma and MAGA Nation. Arlie Hochschild in her sociological study of conservative white voters in Lake Charles, Louisiana noted the role that shame plays in their decision making and the reasons they stick with the GQP.
It was his discussion of limbic system treatments and the symptomatology of trauma that got me going the most, though. The irritability and driving people away really resonated with me because it seems to describe behaviors of people with pathological demand avoidance. They seem to have many of the trauma symptoms without many of the trauma experiences. Really interesting stuff. I’m glad to have been introduced to it.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have lost more to learn about this stuff. One finding that needs followup is the apparent role of inflammation in specific brain regions in psychotic episodes. It used to be believed that the immune system did not operate in the brain due to the blood-brain barrier. Now, it seems the brain has its own immune system (why wouldn’t it?) which may play some part in several diagnostic categories, including response to trauma.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
I’ve been reading more about inflammation, also, especially in the brain. There is the gut-brain connection and the inflammation-immune system connection. I’m not saying that our highly processed foods are to blame, but highly processed foods are exposing us to the basest forms of our food elements: the simplest carbs, the most salt, fats, and simple sugars. They all get metabolized much more quickly than their more complex naturally occurring cousins from which they are derived. And food companies — you know the ever growing giant corporations — that make our processed foods create deceptive labeling and advertising to convince us that they are actually healthy.
I remember the raw food craze at the first part of the century and thinking that they’ve gotten it completely wrong. They’ve gone after a spurious variable. The real problem isn’t the cooking of the food, which has demonstrable benefits that allowed us to evolve in the ways that have. The real problem is the processing of food for preservation, preparation, and marketing. Eating raw foods just ensured that you were eating whole foods.
And, who eats the most processed food? Poor people who live in food deserts.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think there should be little doubt that what we eat does make a difference in all our functions, including emotional and cognitive. The separation of Mind from Body is a mistake that goes back to the rise of schools of medicine in European universities and a deal made with the schools of religion. The doctors would deal only with the physical body and the priests with the soul (mind).
Some raw food is nice and healthy (mostly fruit and nuts), but raw grains and most beans take a lot of chewing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Turns out raw meats aren’t so good for you, either. There’s a reason we kept cooking our food.
Our over reliance on “medicine” to solve our physical and now mental problems is concerning, too. It’s nice to see that van der Kolk is using yoga and psychedelics to treat trauma. He talked about EMDR a few years ago, but I’ve seen studies reporting that the eye movement part of it is pretty useless and without it, it is basically CBT. Otherwise, he seems to be pretty solid in his approach and use of evidence.
We are definitely living through the best of times and worst of times.
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Does seem so.
LikeLiked by 1 person
To be fairer, I suppose, where I found it … she found it elsewhere! That’s true, I think, though I’ve never really done this for the attention. I used to tell my kids if they’d read my blog they’d know what was going on, but that’s no longer true. If it ever was. I repost stuff that I think others ~ my paltry hundred or so hits a day~ should see (it’s an opinion, and you know what they say about opinions); I always put a link in there but may not be as attentive to attribution as I (or others) could (or should) be.
I never really gave a shit, not sure I do … I started blogging assigning it as a class exercise for some low-level CC CS (90, 100, 120) classes I was teaching, but when all that fell apart in what was a harbinger of what we see around us all-day everyday today it became my wailing wall, my whipping post, and for many years I just didn’t didn’t give a shit what I wrote (or how) or who (or how many) read it.
To give you an idea of how the religiously racist, misogynous, homophobic, old testament authoritarian, dominionist no doubt Trump voting sure as hell looks, sounds and smells like it bigot with half my education and half my experience but none-the-less in a position to get away with harassing and ultimately forcing me to quit the career I had worked fifteen years and invested tens of thousands of dollars in educational expenses to have so soiled what I had to date done: I hadn’t finished my Masters before it all fell apart. I was teaching and doing tech-support while finishing grad-school online, and I can’t even today tell you what I was working on before I trashed it, (basically overnight) wrote and then successfully defended a thesis connecting Robert A Heinlein’s “cascading memories” and druidic tattoos to dBase technology ~ the operating system that really runs the world. I don’t fix computers, or computer networks, haven’t since March 2006; don’t help people with computer, computer network or Internet problems, don’t advise, consult or otherwise do anything with my advanced degrees than to my own personal satisfaction, and all that money I borrowed just isn’t gonna’ get repaid …
I still can’t find the words: that person was/is a Trumper before there were Trumpers, was/is a tea-bagger before there were tea-baggers. What was done to me twenty years ago was done to the country four …
LikeLiked by 2 people
Howdy Ten!
Sounds like an all too familiar story out of academia: an academic with an axe to grind wrecking someone else’s career just because they can. Fuck me, and fuck that SOB! I’m sorry to hear it.
I too switched careers and destroyed it all at the end, but it was more due to my own mental health issues than anyone else. I still use my social work and psychology background when and where I see fit. It actually is much more gratifying than I imagined it would be.
I, for one, am grateful to have found your blog. I don’t always agree with your opinions, but it is always enjoyable and enlightening, so it is a good read.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLike
We old curmudgeons have to stick together or else those kids will surely destroy our lawns!
Jack
LikeLike
And thank you for the thank you, Jack.
As my new blogging friend says, Huzzah!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Annie!
You are entirely welcome. What the world needs now is more dialogue and honest exchange of ideas. We don’t need just more empty rhetoric and castigation. It’s been a pleasure reading your blog. Keep it up.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLike