GoodbyeBlueMonday

It’s like when King Solomon had 2 women fighting over a baby. So he offers to cut the baby in half. And one woman says “no, she can have the baby!” and he knows she’s the real mother. The Democrats are usually like her.

I think the Democrats have finally learned that there is no wise Solomon that will reward wisdom and responsibility, so the "fake mom" always gets the baby.*

The thing is....in a lot of ways, I agree with you. I do generally want people to take the high road whenever possible. I think short-term losses can be long-term wins, because I think moral behavior is a good thing to model in the world. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing for everyone. The GOP though...as long as I've been alive, haven't been good faith participants in our democracy. There's a danger in letting bullies get away with their behavior, if there's no evidence they're willing to reform.

So I respect this as a surprisingly tough play from the Democrats. The Republicans could have initially put forth a better Speaker candidate that got bipartisan support, but instead they kowtowed to the extreme right, and the Speaker they put in reneged on a budget deal, so he got shitcanned. The moderate Republicans could still, now, reach out to the Democrats for help. But like McCarthy on Sunday, most of them are terrified of their base, and see bipartisanship as a poison pill to their reelection changes (which is true).

*I think in this metaphor Solomon is "the voters", and the "fake momma" is the GOP?

“True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.

While we were being bombed in Dresden sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

There's a great They Might Be Giants song about exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSbEOZY7k20

Cool, the nuance here I can get on board with. Thanks for expanding.

Do you have me confused with someone who has wronged you?

My only response so far was a (admittedly cheeky) reply to your comment about how your reasoning for something being a 'hard truth' is simply because it's the way is...a complete circle, your logic on that one.

You're getting dragged by others because you opened with an objective claim that milk tastes better, which is a subjective opinion. You're now pivoting to argue that cow milk is objectively better because it's more popular? Taylor Swift isn't the best musician because she's popular. Because "best" is incredibly complex. Best guitarist? Composer? Singer? What's best of any of those categories, anyway? We gotta ask Phaedrus, I suppose.

If you're trying to argue that cow milk is the "best": Cow milk is really good at getting protein and other minerals/vitamins to folks. Really good. It's got a lot of properties that make it really useful in some recipes I love. Also I eat a lot of dairy ice cream, and yogurt. I'm not some anti-milk crusader.

Dairy production, however, is really energy- and space-intensive compared to some alternatives. There's a tradeoff to be thought carefully about, and it deserves more than "cow milk is popular therefore it's the best". Unless you're just trying to say that cow milk is popular because cow milk is popular (which no one was arguing?). If that's the case, see my first reply. Circularity complete.

Are you familiar with the term 'tautology'?

This is one of the reasons I love the Once and Future King so much. It's still eighty years old at this point, so it's certainly problematic in some ways...but one of the central themes of the book is grappling with the idea that Might Makes Right, and Arthur is desperately trying to figure out how Power should, or if it can, be wielded justly. Definitely an attempt at deconstructing the Arthurian fantasy, written during (and kind of after) WW2.

Don't you think Chileans would disagree with you?

Personal favorite from the era: X-Wing! There were plenty of better Star Wars flights sims in the years after it, but the original on floppy disks holds a special place in my heart.

Please don't let the far-right get away with distorting reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Fox News is right-wing, it's just that we have extremely far right members essentially in control of the GOP.

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt