Observations of the right wing

[pcf]

If there was a Venn Diagram of Dylan Roof and white male right wingers, the overlap of gun loving, paranoid, and white resentment is far too common. I wonder how many of them contemplate that? I am rooting for lower levels of narcissism in society, but it seems to be celebrated and enjoyed at the top of the GOP. Think Trump and Kanye.

Texas is allowing the first prison transgender surgery. I'm sure this will create a lot of right wing anger, but I think only because of the way it is labeled. If the Department of Corrections said "We're chopping off a prisoners dick!" they'd be fine with it. About time for some real punishment!

Mostly, I think about the cost of doing the right or moral thing. All of us like the right thing to have a benefit rather than a cost, but it simply isn't always so. Mostly, it is not. Turning the other cheek has a cost. Sharing with the needy has a cost. Bringing more unwanted people into the world has a cost. The right for nearly everybody to bear arms without any infringement has a cost.

Nobody likes the costs and the cost cutting solutions are likely to make things worse. Instead of a money pit, we have a morals pit that starts because some parties seek purity and absolutes and they can sound awfully inspiring.

The cost from prohibition of abortion is government interference in health care, in families, and more unwanted people. The responses to those costs will not make a better society in which to live. It will include more prisons and more ruined lives.

The cost of guns is already obvious and the methods of cost cutting will actually be more expense making every public place into a fortress. The freedom of gun ownership is countered by the oppression of security measures.

The worst part of it all is that QAnon and other obsessions can always come up with another bogeyman and diversion. Just call the problem a hoax and it seems to disappear.

[Friskyfrog]

Did you see the right wing crowing about the new Top Gun movie success at the box office? IT’S A VICTORY FOR PATRIOTISM OVER WOKEISM! WE WIN!

Counterpoint: it’s a great summer flick that actually has nothing to do with you.

[MercenaryLibrarian]

I think the right-wing mentality is a big reason I have no interest in the Top Gun franchise. Well, that and Tom Cruise generally annoys me.

[pcf]

Hold my beer Republicans. THE FLIGHT CREW WAS DIVERSE. You just ate a big spoonful of woke.

Why can't we use emojis in comments?

[Duquesne Frog]

The thing that strikes me about the current state of right-wing mania is how utterly dominated by fear it is. These are some scared, terrified people. At my previous job, I had a coworker that was pretty right wing, a generally nice guy, would help you at the drop of a hat. Not totally in the thrall of every right-wing idea, but DEFINITELY a gun guy. Not because he hunted. A single white middle-aged male with no kids, so no family to protect. But because he lived in total fear of the "bad guy with a gun." Despite living out in the boonies, in a rural part of an adjacent county on a big plot of land. Probably as isolated from any possible bad guy with a gun as one could be and still be in commuting distance of a major metropolitan area.

I have managed to go through 47 years of life without having a single gun pointed in my direction and without owning one. Maybe I've been lucky. And maybe I am naive. But I just don't find myself in situations where I really ever feel all that threatened.

But that is the twisted self-fulfilling logic of the NRA perspective. I'm probably as worried about it now as I have ever been in my life. Because EVERYONE else seems to have a fucking gun.

[MercenaryLibrarian]

Yes. Absolutely this.

[pcf]

Forget guns. I want a fleet of drones. They should be designed to drop a load of excrement. Diverse excrement.

[SFAFrog]

[NFFrog]

Sadly, what I see a lot of is the monetization--one might even say commodification--of propaganda as well as the drumbeat of constant disrespect of and downright suppression of factual and reality-based knowledge emanating primarily from the right these days. All one need look to for evidence is to examine the ads on even Fox let alone more extreme sites. These sites are absolutely filled with money-raising scams.

Over a period of decades with the trend ever more negative as the propaganda feedbacks have taken hold (can you say, like the Supremes, "money IS speech"?), this leads to a downwards trajectory of a society. Selling a few elixirs at odd intervals before being run out of town is as American as apple pie, but that was fairly innocuous and sustainable parasitism for the most part. Destroying the creative, reality-based foundations of a society through concentrated, conscious propaganda-based attack strategies is when moderate and sustainable-enough parasitism turns into a terminal disease state--or in now common parlance--turns the society into a shithole state.

[pcf]

What do Texas Republicans and Canadians have in common other than Ted Cruz?

A problem with loonie inflation.

Why is there not a decal showing Greg Abbott pissing on the US flag? How can these Texas Republicans fly US flags and cry about the National Anthem and simultaneously want to leave?

[MercenaryLibrarian]

RvW expected to be struck down because the Constitution doesn't specifically mention the Federal government as having that power and thus it's a power that is possessed by the states. And yet, there are some elements in the Constitution that support Maine's stance and at the same time, I don't recall anything that directly forbids states from withholding funds from private organizations.

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[RSK]

Sorry, but on this one the ACLU has it wrong. There's a difference between funding religious education and allowing vouchers to be used at a religious school. Its levelling the playing field so any private school can accept vouchers. It's only funding a parochial school if the parents choose to send their kids to one. Nobody forced me or Duq to send our kids to parochial school (except maybe Duq's wife), but those vouchers would have come in handy. And in many if not most cases the voucher represents what the parents paid to fund public education anyways, so its the parents taxes doing the funding.

[MercenaryLibrarian]

I don't think the ACLU is completely off base here. The Maine law under fire is one that works with families in rural areas where secondary schools are not available. These funds are then provided for the families to be able to go to a school as a replacement. This is not a free-for-all program where just anybody gets to decide they want to go to private school and then get tax dollars to help pay for it. This is more like WIC, where the government provides assistance to those that need it but those in need basically get as close to the generic equivalent of a basic service as possible. Thus, a school that aligns more with the state-mandated education curriculum.
A couple of families decided they wanted to pick schools that aligned with their religion and included religious instruction and presumably a worldview through a religious lens. This, using WIC again, would be like someone getting into the program and then demanding that they be allowed to use WIC for organic chocolate milk because their beliefs are that this is the best nutrition. It's not discriminatory toward anyone's religion or beliefs, it's putting everyone that claims to need the service on the same level.

[NFFrog]

I'm fine enough with this decision so long as schools accepting taxpayer money follow government rules on such things as discrimination, etc. That is, the more churches demand govt assistance from all, the more they need to, well, to ***act*** like all. Of course this isn't even remotely what many churches want.

As decisions like this pile up, my view is also that the religious tax exemption needs review. What's happening now is yet another attempt to get the benefits of government monies but avoiding any and all responsibilities.

[frogtwang]

[Duquesne Frog]

The woman on the right is wearing a hijab. That makes it totally different ...

[Poison Arrow Frog]

rino hunting? Jeez, Louise.

[Poison Arrow Frog]

re: the gun debate. It seems to me that now the focus has become offensive rather than defensive. I honestly worry about my nephew—he is kind of the gun-obsessed loner that one worries about. He actually got a 30.06 tattoo on the VERY DAY OF THE UVALDE MASSACRE.

[Poison Arrow Frog]

The whole family is scared—EXCEPT THE BOYS PARENTS. We are committed to being around as much as we can, and letting him know that if he needs to talk that we’re here for him.

[Poison Arrow Frog]

I’d appreciate more ideas than I have, because short of seeing a dead hooker in his trunk, it would take a lot for us to call the cops. We don’t want to put him over the edge, instead of pulling him back from the ledge.

[NFFrog]

Therein lies the serious issue I was talking about.