Talks between the moderates and McConnell continue. But if McConnell won’t do a deal now, in the midst of a clear crisis and under a Republican president, there certainly won’t be one with more controversial issues under a Democratic president in 2021. If we don’t see a Covid-19 relief measure pass in the next week or two, then our democracy is existentially broken.

If that happens, McConnell should spend Christmas with people thrown out of work and witness the suffering he has caused.

-David Brooks

 Before we bid 2020 a fond farewell, Santa having come and gone, returned to the North Pole (unless he got sidetracked in Detroit on the way back for some reason) let us pause to look at ourselves in the mirror and take stock.

Are you a better person today than you were a year ago? Probably not, but did you at least try your best to clean up all of your bad habits and forgive those who have trespassed against you?

Have you tried to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes even if they don't fit?

Is your conscious clean from 2020? If not, take some time today and clean it up before you venture into 2021.

Are you brave and courageous heading into 2021? If not, it's okay that you are scared like the rest of us. I just thought someone I know might set an example and be a role model.

Finally, remember that there are meds for acid reflux and panic attacks as you try to forget 2020. And if all else fails, act like you're crazy. At least you'll blend in with your surroundings.

 

If Donald Trump could be a military dictator, he would eagerly assume that role. For me, the best way of explaining Trump is that he does not share common reference points for what life is really about. Love is not one of his reference points. Service to others is not one of his reference points. Joy, as you understand it, is not understood by him. All he knows is the pursuit of power through dominance over others. Trump will achieve that dominance through whatever means are necessary. If it is violence, then Trump will use it. If it's the law, he'll use it. If it's mere persuasion, that's fine too.

And because Trump wants to conserve his energy, he will use the least powerful means first and hope that serves his goals. But again, Donald Trump is not the kind of human being most people are used to dealing with. The individuals who do know how to deal with and control people like Donald Trump are in law enforcement, perhaps in the national security establishment and in the mental health field, because Donald Trump is closer to a psychopathic mob boss than anything else.

-Michael D'Antonio in Salon.com

 

For a country and world struggling to understand the power of Trumpism and its enduring hold over the "white working class," "Hillbilly Elegy" was embraced, in part, as a Rosetta Stone for decoding the incomprehensible ascent of Donald Trump. Despite Trump's 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, the proto-fascist Trumpian movement continues to grow in power and influence. As such, "Hillbilly Elegy", both the film and the book, will continue to cast a long shadow over America's understanding of Appalachia, white rural poverty and the famed white working class. Deserved or not, J.D. Vance will continue to be a singular figure among the country's opinion leaders.

But "Hillbilly Elegy" has a foundational problem: It may be one man's story, but that does not make it valid sociology or revealing of greater truths about Appalachia as a whole. In many ways, "Hillbilly Elegy" is an example of poverty porn designed to appeal to the same type of (white) viewer who may believe they understand "urban poverty" because they watched HBO's "The Wire."

As sociologist C. Wright Mills observed in "The Promise of the Sociological Imagination," a distinction must be made between "personal troubles and public issues" if one is to possess a sophisticated understanding of society, power and politics. Applying Mills' wisdom, "Hillbilly Elegy" is a personal story that does not sufficiently account for the ways institutions and broader social structures impact life outcomes.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

The book is not good sociology.

 Biden hasn't even taken the oath of office, and the centrist crew, including Obama and Biden himself, are blaming the left for Democratic losses in the Senate, House and state legislatures, citing the activist call to "defund the police" as the primary reason for the party's poor down-ballot performance. There is no data to support this conclusion. If anything, the available evidence actually suggests that candidates with progressive positions outperformed the so-called moderates.   From Salon.com

 

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.

Think of what you can do with that there is”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

 

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Here's a Christmas memory. Once there was a high end jewelry store in Vestavia called Jewels By Rose. (Rose was the owner of course) There was an employee named Georgia. She was great! Women would go there and tell Georgia what they wanted their husbands to buy them for Christmas. So when the husband showed up, Georgia was ready for them. I was there once when my son's pediatrician showed up. Georgia said to him, "She likes this, this, and this." The Doctor said, "OK. Box it up." Done! Moyna set me up there a few times. Jewels By Rose had a system. We men were grateful.

 noun

DATED•INFORMAL

1. a dishonorable man.

   "he is nothing but a fortune-seeking bounder"

 Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor did I know anything about the time nor think where I was nor order anymore rum St. James. I was tired of rum St. James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she's gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

-Ernest Hemingway from "A Good Cafe on the Place St.-Michel"

 

Kenneth Hudson

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I laud David Brooks for attempting to explain why Donald Trump has so many supporters, but I do not find his theory that it is driven by the precarious lives of working-class voters convincing. Trump supporters are the ideological descendants of the people who trashed welfare mothers in the 1980s, opposed integration in the 1960s, who lynched people in the 1920s, wore white hoods during Reconstruction, and stood beside my great-great-grandfather as he marched off to war to defend slavery. The 19th century English writer Thomas Hardy wrote, "Successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape." 70 + million people voted for Donald Trump because he sang the song they wanted to hear.

 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said that using colons meant that the writer had been to college. Heck, I think a father should teach his son how to use a colon: it's a father's job not the job of college to teach sons about the effective use of colons. Of course, the college graduate can, like me, overuse the colon because he likes them so much: in which case such person might need a colonoscopy.

 

doyen    noun | DOY-un   Definition   1 a : the senior member of a body or group    b : a person considered to be knowledgeable or uniquely skilled as a result of long experience in some field of endeavor    2 : the oldest example of a category

 "The TV children (and now the computer/ video game children)* a whole generation of Americans. . . they are the new tribesmen. They have tribal sensory balances. They respond emotionally to the spoken word. They want to be touched, to participate, to be involved. On the one hand they can more easily be swayed by things like demagoguery, The visual print man is an individualist with built-in safeguards. He has always has the feeling that no matter what anyone says, he can always check it out. The necessary information is somewhere, filed away, categorized. He can look it up. Even if the print man is dealing with something he cannot look up, he has built-in safeguards. His habit of mind is established. The aural man is not so much of an individualist; he is more part of the collective consciousness. He BELIEVES. Or if he is an individualist, he is an individualist in a different way.

To the literate print man this seems like a negative, but to the aural, tribal man, this seems natural and good."

I am a classic print person, an individualist as outlined above, aloof, with inner defenses that cannot be bridged. Believing only comes with fact and evidence which have to be checked out best as possible.

-Tom Wolfe from "McCluhan: Hot and Cool" (1967)

*added

 

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A jetliner took Mr. Gordon to Las Vegas the same night. He felt very giddy traveling without luggage, without preparation. In Las Vegas he checked the rosters of the big hotels for Merz' name and couldn't find it. Then he went to the smaller hotels that weren't on The Strip and found a listing for a couple named Mercedes. Taking the stairs two at a time, he pounded on the door of the room until Merz opened it, wearing a pair of BVDs. He had grown a goatee in the beatnik style and his hair was unruly. The room was sultry and had no air-conditioning. Inside, Mr. Gordon could see his wife in a pair of panties he recognized and a monogrammed blouse.

"Look, Merz," said Mr. Gordon, "my foot is in your door. The whole thing's off. I have got to have her back. I don't care whether she wants to come or not. She'll get used to me again and forget you, even if it takes fifty-two years. But she's my wife and I've got to have her back and there's no power on earth that can stop me. I don't care who's behind this."

"I can't do it," said Merz.

"Why not," said Mr. Gordon with his fists clinched.

" Because I took asthma, a bleeding ulcer, and let a Long Island train wreck have six of my grandchildren for your wife, that's why. It was under a special incentive plan for us employees."

Mr. Gordon understood perfectly and went away.

-Bruce Jay Friedman from his story "A Foot in the Door," black humor at its finest, or what happens when you deal with the Devil

 

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Trump is also transparent as a self-centered crybaby. As a country we have to figure out: Do we believe in facts? We can have ideological differences. We can have different preferences and different views on public policy. But we should be able to look at facts and then have an opinion based on roughly the same reality. Of course, there will be some differences of opinion. But are we going to have wild deviations from the truth? If we do, I believe that the United States is going to be very vulnerable to a dictatorship or a successful coup.

-Richard Painter in Salon.com

 Electors voted on Monday.  Biden is now officially President-Elect.

 

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I wish I had a prehensile mind, but unfortunately I am only blessed with a one track mind, very limited in what it can grasp.

 

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I'm catching the 8:30 bus to Jackson. I'll see ya'll when I get back maybe in January

I'm going down to Jackson even if I wreck my health

I'll play my hand big talkin' man that I am even if I make a big fool of myself

Yeah yeah go to Jackson and I just shaved & combed my hair

I'm gonna snowball Jackson whether you care or not

When I breeze into that city the people gonna stoop and bow

All them women gonna make me teach 'em what they don't know how

I'm goin' to Jackson you turn loose my coat

Cause I'm goin' to Jackson goodbye Pelham town

 "So his mother prayed for him and then they stood up and Krebs kissed his mother and went out of the house. He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel all right about it. There would be one more scene maybe before he got away. He would not go down to his father's office. He would miss that one. He wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that way. Well, that was all over now, anyway. He would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball."

-Ernest Hemingway from "Soldiers Home

Biden narrows attorney general list 

The search for the next attorney general has become more focused on Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and former deputy attorney general Sally Q. Yates, according to people familiar with the discussions, who said that appeals court Judge Merrick B. Garland remains a serious contender.

By Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky and Matt Viser in the Washington Post

• Who Joe Biden is picking to fill his White House and Cabinet

 

 The Supreme Court has rejected as it should have a suit filed by the AG of Texas to overturn the election in four states won by President-Elect Biden.  Case closed.  Trump has reached the end of the line to subvert our country system of democracy.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit led by Texas and 17 other states that sought to invalidate the election results in 4 key states where Joe Biden had been certified the winner.

Washington Post

 

33m  · 

Breaking news: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a long-shot bid by President Trump and the state of Texas to overturn the results in four states won by Democrat Joe Biden, blocking the president’s legal path to reverse his reelection loss.

The New York Times

 

34m  · 

Breaking News: The Supreme Court rejected a Texas lawsuit to nullify President-elect

Joe Biden

's victory in four states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — effectively ending President Trump’s hope of reversing the election in court.