Category: Politics

In Which I Endorse: 2023 edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

This post really is an exercise in ego; not only is virtually no one anywhere in the world especially concerned with who I’m voting for in my local city elections this year, but anyone who looks at said elections would quickly realize that they already knew who I was going to vote for without me saying a single word about it. I had a whole conversation with my wife after leaving the polling place about voting straight-ticket; we both may as well have and neither of us did, both of us feeling like the literal least we could do would be to specifically touch the place on the screen next to our chosen candidates.

It abruptly occurs to me that this is a pretty good “use this to hunt me down” post; please don’t hunt me down.

Anyway, James Mueller for mayor. He’s the incumbent and is Pete Buttigieg’s chosen successor; he will probably hold the job for as long as he wants it. I do not, to be honest, have particularly strong feelings about him; he has not done anything to offend me in his, what … four years in office? Right? I think that’s right– and his opponent in in the primary was a scumbag and his opponent in the general is a Republican, so we’re done there. Desmont Upchurch is doing that thing that local Republicans like to do where instead of running against the mayor he’s running against the city of South Bend, and I’m sorry, asshole, but I hate this, put me in charge of it is never going to be a winning fucking argument. Plus he’s a domestic abuser. That’s not an allegation; he brought it up himself to keep it from being used against him. This type of questionable logic is another reason not to vote for him. Lose the whole candidate.

Sherry Bolden-Simpson for District 5 City Council representative. Our district is the only one in the city represented by a Republican; I will admit that Mr. Wax has not done anything to personally offend me and his various mailings all emphasize his willingness to work across the aisle, but I know Sherry personally through her years with South Bend schools and I trust her judgment.

Oliver Davis, Karen White and Rachel Tomas Morgan for at-large City Council. I worked with Mr. Davis for a couple of years; he has sweated through my Santa suit and is a good guy. I’ve met White and Tomas Morgan and they pass muster as well. That said, those are the three Democrats running so it’s not like my endorsement is a surprise. Then again, this is a “choose up to three” election so if I didn’t want to vote for someone it’s not like I’d have to pick one of the Republicans. Two of the three are incumbents and Davis is seeking to return to the council after leaving his seat to run for Mayor four years ago.

Bianca Tirado for City Clerk. Tirado is not the incumbent, having successfully primaried the current City Clerk back in May; to be honest I don’t remember the details, but I voted for her. I don’t even recall her opponent’s name off the top of my head; she’ll win by 40 points.

So yeah. No surprises. Vote for Democrats. I’ll never vote for a Republican again as long as I live.

The election is Nov. 7.

Look goddammit

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Never vote for any Republican for any office ever again under any circumstances. The party has to be killed stone cold fucking dead for the health of the country. Enough of these fucking assholes.

In which I get an answer

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I think it’s official, after a week of Gym Jordan trying desperately to become The Establishment and failing ignominiously, that there has never been a picture taken of him where he doesn’t look like a derpy little creep. It’s too bad; as an enabler of sex abuse he would have fit right in with the gaggle of criminals, buffoons and miscreants that the Republicans have elevated to Speaker for basically my entire adult life, and he wouldn’t even be the first (or even the second!) sex pest elevated to the position. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Republicans have no ability to govern whatsoever; we’ll see how long it takes before a few of them at least suggest breaking away from the rest of the pack to find someone who might get a Democratic vote or two. Until then, we’re all fucked.

Which is, of course, the explicit goal of the party for, again, my entire adult life.

A random little anecdote just for the hell of it, because I forgot to tell my wife and she’s downstairs: I drove past one of the local elementary schools on my way home, and I saw the largest flock (flock? I feel like it should be “herd” but that doesn’t make any Goddamn sense) of Canadian geese I’ve ever seen milling about in the field behind the school. I’m shitty at estimating numbers and distances but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple hundred of them. I considered doing the world a favor and doing donuts in the field but my Kia isn’t exactly an off-roader and the filthy bastards would probably have followed me home afterwards anyway. Man, I hate geese.

Weekend now. No plans. Just how I like it.

Is this a real picture?

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You can never tell nowadays, what with deepfakes and such, but if this is a real picture I insist that somebody ask this creepy motherfucker what he did with Déagol.

Not that anyone asked

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I don’t have any idea what the hell can be done about the current iteration of the war between Israel and Hamas. Americans like to pick sides during a war, and assign “good guys” and “bad guys,” and as near as I can tell this is a situation where both sides gave up any pretense to the moral high ground quite a while ago. It’s bad guys all the way down. I have said in the past, both in this space and others, that any time I see an unarmed person throwing a rock at a tank, my general inclination is to support the person throwing the rock. And Israel has operated as a de facto apartheid state for most of its existence, and particularly so since fucking Netanyahu came into power. I believe all of that is true, and I believe that both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist. But the Palestinians are controlled by fucking lunatics too, and I refuse to hold people who murder and kidnap civilians at a fucking music festival up as someone who should be supported. I have said before, and I think I still believe this, that Palestine’s only chance at ever actually achieving a two-state solution is to bring forth a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King. The problem is that the hardliners would kill him before the world found out he existed. The closest Israel can claim is Yitzhak Rabin, and he was assassinated by an Israeli.

Neither side wants peace. I’m entirely willing to believe that the people of both Israel and Palestine want peace, and the Palestinian people have absolutely and undeniably gotten the short end of the stick here; I probably can’t honestly say that I understand their rage, having never had to live under apartheid, but I’m at least willing to try. But none of their leaders want peace right now, and there isn’t going to be peace until that changes. Neither side really believes in the other’s right to exist. That’s not something you can really find a compromise on. Palestine will continue to have a steady supply of hopeless, angry young men for as long as Israel denies their right to live freely, and the Israeli government will accept nothing short of full second-class, boot-on-their-necks subjugation for the Palestinians, which guarantees that supply of hopeless, angry young men will never end.

This will end in genocide, eventually. It’s close enough as it is, but that’s where it’s headed. Again.

On expertise, again

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, PoliticsLeave a comment

I wrote the other day– I’m not going to link to it, it was literally two or three days ago; I have faith in your ability to find it– that I was generally pro-expertise in all areas but that I didn’t feel it was strictly necessary to be an “expert” in anything beyond basic biology and physics to have a decent idea of what happened to the Titan submersible, and as it turns out more or less everything I thought had happened in that situation had, in fact, happened.

Over the course of the last 48 hours there has been what appears to be an attempted coup in Russia, and I am staying so far away from commenting on that that you can’t even see it from here. I know nothing relevant to Russian politics other than a tenuous grasp on the geography and the names of a few of the major players, which is to say I know nothing at all, I have no comment, and I really don’t even know who to recommend that might count as authoritative. So if you were wondering where my line was, apparently “international politics” is it.

In which things are happening

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

I just want to talk about the news tonight, which you should understand to mean “I want to say things I already said on Twitter earlier today, but I want to use more words.” There were two big stories today; the missing Titanic submersible, and Hunter Biden pleading guilty to a couple of minor tax violations and a gun charge of some sort.

Let’s start with the easier story. I don’t care about Hunter Biden. If Hunter Biden is a criminal of some sort, convict and punish him for his crimes. I’m fine with that, and it doesn’t affect my opinion of Joe Biden, particularly since Dad appears to be going to great pains to get the hell out of the way. There is an argument being made out there that Hunter is actually being treated more harshly than, just for example, someone who hadn’t been targeted endlessly by the entire Republican Party for the last five years, might have been. I, myself, have turned my taxes in late before, although I think in Biden’s case the issue was he didn’t pay taxes at all for two years. I’m unclear on what the deal is with the gun charge although apparently it’s just going to be dealt with somehow. Whatever.

You might think, knowing the– ahem– basic outlines of my politics, that I might be pissed about Hunter Biden being held to a higher standard than most Americans while, oh, I dunno, some other president’s son-in-law can accept two billion dollars from the Saudis the minute his father-in-law leaves office and nobody does anything about it. I am, and this is probably obvious, still pissed about the other thing, but honestly? I’m a teacher and I’m well and Goddamned used to the idea that ethically and legally I get held to a higher standard than most people because of my job. I really don’t have a problem with the idea that the progeny of public officials need to keep their noses cleaner than most. One way or another it doesn’t appear that dude is going to jail. He’ll be fine. I’m not pressed about it.

I genuinely hope that the five men aboard the Titan are dead. That probably sounds mean, but the simple fact is that I don’t think there is any chance of them being rescued and it is therefore better for them to have died in some sort of explosive decompression incident, where they likely would have gotten little to no warning of what was about to happen and they didn’t have time for any of it to hurt. Because the alternatives are all terrifying. There is literally nothing they can do inside that thing to save themselves, and while there is a slight chance that the vehicle has managed to make it to the surface and will be found, it seems like there’s a really good chance that the process of heading for the surface would have killed them anyway, and dying from the bends, from what I understand, is fucking awful.

The other option, of course, is that four men who have gone their entire lives not being told “no” very much and the pilot of the vessel are trapped in pitch black, with little to no food and no bathroom facilities, slowly getting colder and colder– the ocean is fucking cold, and it seems reasonable to think that dying of hypothermia at that depth is a genuine danger, and could happen before asphyxiation, depending on a bunch of variables I have no access to– sitting in what amounts to a tin can with no seats and unable to get away from each other. The part of my brain that writes and reads horror stories is pretty certain that there has already been some unimaginable violence inside that tin can, if it’s the case that the submersible lost power or got stuck somehow. I would be shocked if they were rescued. I would be even more shocked if they were rescued and at least one of the five hadn’t been murdered.

There has been some other discourse on Twitter about how everyone on the internet has suddenly become an expert in deep-sea diving, which, on one hand, isn’t entirely without merit, and on the other hand, as someone with no relevant expertise of any kind, I don’t feel like anything that I’ve said really constitutes any kind of leap that an actual expert wouldn’t make, and the places where I could be wrong– maybe however far down it traveled before losing contact with the surface isn’t deep enough for the pressure to crush the ship, or maybe carbon nanotubes insulate really well and hypothermia isn’t a realistic problem. I could be wrong about those things.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter all that much, does it? The only way they’re getting rescued is if they’re bobbing around on the surface right now and they are found before they run out of air, and the prospect of running out of air while floating on the surface is a breathtaking bit of irony.

I didn’t mean to put that pun there, by the way, but now that I’ve noticed it I’m leaving it in.

One way or another, though, the basic variables don’t seem to be all that complicated. I am, in general, pro expertise of all kinds, and I wish I knew more about literally everything than I do. And maybe I know so little about this that I don’t even recognize the degree to which I’m wrong; if you don’t quite understand what I mean by that, argue with someone about evolution sometime. So, yeah, I am no kind of expert at all, and I could theoretically be wrong about a whole lot of shit, but as near as I can tell most of the shit I could be wrong about just makes it suck more, and I’m absolutely certain that I know enough about human nature to be deeply worried about what’s happening inside that submersible if they’re still alive.

Anyway, I’m off to play Subnautica, a game about deep-sea exploration, and a game I had planned to start playing this week before I knew any of this was happening. It’s a coincidence, I swear.

Woohoo!

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Pat Robertson was alive this morning, which I didn’t realize, and he’s dead now, which is awesome. The Supreme Court declined to further shred the Voting Rights act, and it looks like enough states might have to redraw maps now to shift the House back our way. The shitgibbon hasn’t been federally indicted just yet, but it looks like that’s coming. Maybe tomorrow? And I swear I’m forgetting at least one other nice piece of news.

EDIT: Ha! Seven counts! Fuck yeah!

All in all, not a bad day to be a leftie.

What good news have you gotten lately?