Here’s a conversation between my daughter Valerie and me that I thought some readers might appreciate.
She recently gave birth to my wife’s and my first grandchild, and she’s trying to take off a bit of weight. She knows that I normally don’t eat higher on the food-chain than fish, but she wanted to tell me what she was having for dinner:
Val: It’s boneless and skinless chicken.
Me: But is it chickenless?
Val: LOL!!!
Are these machines “popping up around the U.S.?”
No.
Indeed, they are appearing in Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma, but how well do you think they would fare in blue or even purple states?
Imagine a grocery store selling munitions for AR-15s in the most populated part of California, New York, or Massachusetts. They’d be out of business within a few days, as patrons would refuse to step through the door of such establishments.
In a call I had last night with my mom, a lifelong Republican, she repeated the talking point we hear so often in today’s ferocious political climate: “dial down the rhetoric.” In this case, she was referring specifically to me and my oft-used description of the former president: “criminal sociopath.”
Obviously, Trump stands to gain if Democrats would cease pointing out that he is under indictments at both the federal and state levels for trying to overthrow the U.S. government, that he is an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon. Yet I’m not sure these are examples of “rhetoric” per se; they seem more like simple news items, like the Dodgers beat the Braves 3 – 1 or the Dow was down 100 points in today’s close on Wall Street.
Now, is he a “criminal sociopath” as I and many other Americans believe? Indeed, that’s an opinion and not a scientific finding, as it’s not up to environmental writers or car salesmen to make that call, but rather to neurologists and psychiatrists. On the other hand, it’s an opinion that’s held by a great number of American voters, as we’re all going to learn in November. Whatever his precise clinical condition, his re-election, at least indicted by his own statements, represents the end to U.S. democracy.
Most of us stand adamantly in opposition.
Apparently, the content of the meme here is true, but the rationale remains unclear. Reports have cited that the measure was taken to protect Italy’s live (soon-to-be-slaughtered) beef industry.
I wonder why it’s the province of government to tell us what we can and cannot eat. The plant-based meat industry in the United States is not strong, but our constitution will not support a ban on the sale and consumption of Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, or even demonstrably useless dietary supplements.
Here’s a reader who agrees: People are amazing to me. Why on Earth does anyone care what others want to eat? I don’t think I would eat lab grown meat, but why do I care if someone else does? It seems like a decent idea to alleviate some issues with the raising of livestock. I just wish people could mind their own business more when it comes to things that won’t affect them. Alas, wanting to control others, a true sign of weakness.
I’m with what Bernie Sanders said here 100%; Biden’s done a fantastic job in many different respects.
I would only add the proviso that I’ll go with whatever choice Democratic leadership makes in order to assure that Trump is defeated.
We’ll have other chances to achieve this significant environmental and social progress; we will not have another chance to retain American democracy in the face of an extremely powerful and evil man.
I completely sympathize with this young person; I wouldn’t like my fellow drivers to think I’m a hard-core, anti-union Trumper.
The meme here is spot on, but let’s be honest:
Do you think the typical Republican evangelical is likely to come across this?
Even if he did, would he care?
Here’s a discussion between two people from my boyhood, whom I won’t identify by name, and whose comments I did not edit.
This from right-wing TV anchor Candace Owens:
‘Listen. I’m not a flat-earther. I’m not a round-earther.’ Actually, what I am is, I am somebody who has left the cult of science. I have left the megachurch of science because what I have now realized is that science—what it is actually, if you think about it—is a pagan faith.”
Fortunately, very few people perceive science in this way, but I guess if you’re going to hold yourself out as one of the most prominent members of the U.S. right-wing political spokespeople, you’re essentially forced to go in this direction. Accepting science as the best way of gaining an understanding of the world around us is not an option; it’s for woke liberals. Moreover, calling science a “pagan faith” is not going to cost you one red cent in terms of your following of American idiots.
A few hundred years ago, some poor guy suggested that the stars in the sky might be other suns around which planets like ours orbited; he was promptly burned at the stake. And going to that level of stupidity and cruelty may very well lie in our collective futures.
Whether or not this becomes a reality lies in precisely one thing: how seriously we as a civilization accept the viewpoints of morons like Candace Owens. Our future lies exactly here.
The reason that I’m happy that Trump survived the assassination attempt is that America cannot and will not survive this period of darkness and shame if Trump is for whatever reason buried and, by a huge number of hateful and ignorant voters, martyred.
As a country, we either inspect and come to understand what has happened over the last decade or will be stuck in this stupidity in perpetuity.
“In perpetuity” more actually means “until we’ve become irrelevant on the world stage.” When and if it becomes clear that the U.S. has permanently lost whatever moral character it once possessed, when we’ve become an admitted ally of Russia, when we’ve become inextricably linked to the other most murderous regimes of the world, we will have no more authority on this planet than Chad or Paraguay.
This is precisely where we deserve to be.
