chasfh

You hoped they’d be better? You might be all alone on that one …

It's not about your puny truth. It's about how they feel.

How can you not believe a guy in a country beard wearing a snapback truckers cap backwards?

From the Department of Hey Man, I Gotta Live In This Town: TBF, literally everybody here is also predicting a Lions win.

Sure it makes sense. The more connected we are in one way (digitally), the less connected we seem in others (IRL). I am lucky in that a few of the people I’ve met over the past few years, I’ve stayed connected with IRL. I’m seeing a buddy I played softball with for years in the 15-20-year-ago range for lunch on Thursday. There’s another guy who was the captain of a hardball team I was on, we get together once a quarter for dinner and a play, and we double date with our wives occasionally. But it has been since college since I’ve had a group of people I’d hang around with most every day. Of course, at my age, a lot of people don’t even want to see their spouse every day, so … 😏

I remember my checkmate line in the 80s being, “Jesus founded my religion—who founded yours?” That was back when I actually cared about such minor points of difference.

I think what’s potentially more alarming is the “let’s see how this plays out” part. What the hell could he mean by that??

And as such cannot be relied upon to adhere to the well-established ethics of journalism, such as avoiding slander and libel; attempting to identify mis- an disinformation; maintaining standards of good taste and decency; maintaining respect for accountability; and elevating truthfulness, accuracy, and facts—specifically because they are not journalists.

I’m gonna go with “more an admission”. Otherwise, they would be defending his actual qualifications and record, and that’s what pointedly is not happening here.

The “social on our terms” part has occurred to me before, and I have contemplated my own a situation in terms of that. Social media has been a huge boon for me because it has allowed me to connect, and reconnect, with people who probably would have permanently receded into my dim and distant past. People I went to school with, I used to work with, I used to play ball with, I belong to the same clubs as—it’s so easy now to connect online just to connect. Drop a line, they (probably) drop one back, you’ve caught up. On the other hand, it’s so easy to do so online that doing more seems like a huge pain. It’s easy to write a couple texts saying hey how ya doin’ for a couple minutes—it’s much harder to get together someplace for an hour, or hour and a half, and have deep conversations with people about every topic on your mind. Plus, working at conversing for 60 or 90 minutes running just sounds daunting, and borderline exhausting. You almost relish bathroom breaks so you can catch your breath for a couple minutes before going back to the table or bar and diving back into it. So on the one hand, I’m connected to, and on friendly terms with, more people than I have ever been, which astounds me because I was such a reclusive loner as a kid and young adult. On the other hand, I wouldn’t count any of the people I’ve met online as actual friends, people I could reliably call at an odd hour of the morning to help me through a big problem. I do have a beautiful wife and a good brother close-by I could rely on, but beyond that, if they were gone and something were to go upside down, despite my dozens and dozens of “friends”, I’d really be all alone. I’m in an online community, but I don’t live within an actual community. That’s sad because we have this ideal of a community that I don’t have in my own life. But then, it’s also great because even though I can fulfill my social itch by connecting with people online, I don’t have a whole community of people close by hovering over my business and then gossiping about it all the time. In the end, I’m not sure whether I’d change anything about it. It’s not perfect, but I’m happy with it, I guess.

Also, I’d never heard Tork referred to as Spenser, or even as Spencer, which his why it didn’t land with me right away.

Who's Spenser? EDIT: NM, I now see you meant Tork.

I think I might have learned that once but forgot it. Totally not surprised. Evangelicalism has long been wrapped up in American exceptionalism, such that something invented by an American evangelical preacher would of course given at least the same weight as scripture itself.

My reply would be of course not. This is not a seat-of-the-pants operation. That was the previous regime. Some will disagree.

I love Ken Rosenthal’s work, but this sounds to me like he is concluding the Tigers will never ever spend ever because (1) Harris has had two whole years on the job and never once threw a big big contract at a prime free agent, and (2) Chris is not Mike, so he will never spend, and in fact, Harris is the perfect PBO to help Chris keep his money in his pocket, which is all he really wants Forget that Baby Doc committed a quarter billion dollars to just two guys a mere three years ago. Never once does Ken contemplate the idea that this simply might not be the right time for the Tigers to sign some big free agent any big free agent. Nope, Ken’s seen enough. I think that’s a lazy take for a guy who promotes himself as being the most plugged in writer in the game.

That’s fine, you can believe it can never happen. You’ll probably be happier that way. I’m not guaranteeing it will happen, so don’t hang that on me. Just remember that present and past results is no indication of future performance, and we can have our peaceful civil society, if we can keep it.

I think that’s because in a way, Trump checkmated the Democrats by putting them on the defensive about 2020, so if/when the Projecters were to cheat in the exact same way they baselessly accused the Democrats of four years ago, any complaints about it would look like just so many sour grapes. It is how MAGA is actively starving democracy of the legitimacy and trust it needs to flourish, and then they’ll already be in power to pick up the pieces once it collapses and move the whole country all forward on their and only their terms. I’m pretty sure that’s an explicit goal on the inside.

Others may not be.

I hope they offer an earthbound rapture option, because I’m afraid of heights.

I don’t think they’re confused. I think they know exactly what they’re doing, at least as it relates to this.

I think they subconsciously notice it.

The one thing I legitimately fear is some cataclysmic event that suddenly shifts the veneer of social interaction from one of restrained politeness masking odious online behavior, to one of open and violent hostility where everyone wears their politics on their sleeve and act out in public against their “enemies”. I don’t know how close we are to something like that, but we are not immune to it just because we are America, and a climate of fear and loathing is being openly espoused by the people coming into almost total power. So the possibility is not as close to zero as some would want us to believe.

I don’t disgaree that Cheney and the others are in danger and should be protected from such political persecution if possible, but granting her and others a pardon might be a bit of a sticky wicket, because doing so gives the Republicans rhetorical cover that at its core, the J6 Committee was a criminal enterprise, and that by participating, anyone who was not pardoned would be subject to arrest, prosecution, and more.

I think this is because their dirty little open secret is they want to remake American education in a way that makes it far more difficult for people of modest or less means to go to college, and instead, want to track the best lower-middle, working-, and poverty-class minds into apprenticeships and entry-level middle management at best, with the rest of them being tracked into manual labor, preferably after a stint in the military for the boys. Someone here posted a splendid meme of Kristin Bell sharing that secret with us: that the MAGA elite openly disparage the idea of university education because they want to convince you to prevent your kids from going—but not their own kids. These ideas are related.