There’s your problem - this was not true. Once you accept that, your current troubles will make much more sense.
This.
The DEI firings of generals. Jeff Tiedrich:
"for fuck’s sake, can Republicans please stop drooling over the idea that Donny is America’s daddy, and here comes everyone’s well-deserved spanking?
"fuck every Republican who voted to confirm this unhinged zealot. when shit goes sideways, and human rights end up on the wrong end of a firing squad, these fuckface Senators are never going to be able to wash the bloodstains off their hands.
now here’s Utah Senator John Curtis to explain that the fired generals got what was coming to them, because — what the fuck, [is daddy home again]
Senator John Curtis: “I think we have to stop and look what happened really last November. one of my colleagues described it this way: it was a ‘stop the car moment.’ those of us who have had young kids and been on family vacations know what a ‘stop the car moment’ is, it’s a ‘kids, you’re so disruptive we’re stopping the car.’ and I think in many ways, the American people said ‘stop the car.’”*
holy shit, now there’s an entry in the Bad Analogy Hall of Fame. four-star generals are not misbehaving children who needed punishment meted out. what an insult to the men and women who have devoted their lives to defending our country.
(link in next post)
Just for the record I want to state that my father drove many thousand kilometers with me and my brother, sometimes with my mother, sometimes with only one or both of us, for day trips, for vacations, up the mountains for skiing, several days in a row when we drove from Madrid to Germany and back, in all kind of weather, moods and circumstances. Never ever, not once, did my father stop and tell us we were disruptive and we should stop.
I think Sen. John Curtis has no clue about how to rise children. And this also shows in his political views and in his policies. I am sure the kids will one day inherit a lot of money, but I am sorry for them.
OTOH: No, not sorry. Curse those people. They are only getting what they desire.
ETA: All this just to make it clear that I don’t know what a stop the car moment is.
For the record, I think Tiedrich is wrong in his interpretation of what Senator Curtis was saying with the “stop the car” analogy. It’s still stupid, so bear with me, but Curtis wasn’t saying (I don’t believe) that the military leaders are children needing discipline.
No, the analogy Curtis was clumsily expressing, I think, is more broad and abstract. The car is the country. The children are the unruly liberals who have been running around fucking things up with their woke politics. And the parents stopping the car are the conservatives, the responsible adults who are usually content to live their responsible adult lives, because they have responsible adult jobs and other responsible adult… responsibilities. That is, until the unruly children/liberals make too much noise, and the adults/conservatives sigh in resignation and stop the car/country to apply some discipline.
In this analogy, the military leaders are not the children, they’re the toys the children were loudly and disruptively playing with. Trump has taken them away and is now in the process of smacking the children’s hands.
It’s a bit more general than implied. It just means that the kids need to get out and run aroound a bit. I have had four kids in my car a few times when the kids were about 12-14. Two boys in the back seat blew out the fuse for the back seat power. They had too many games plugged into the power there. We no longer have an SUV, but yes, those Americans driving aroung with many kids know that. The political analogy I am not going to try to explain. Just a wild guess that it is the misogynist end or Trumpism: daddy is home.
Well, it is because Americans by and large are a bunch of idiots. Most of us are uneducated, we don’t know what history has tried to teach us. We don’t seek out to understand dictatorships like China or North Korea. And, apparently, we are racist, sexist, and one of the most religious countries on the planet (even beating places like Egypt, if you can imagine). It appears that we VOTED for this complete ass-hat with FULL knowledge of Project 2025, the supplication of the Republican Party to this dictator, and the statements made by MANY tech-leaders of how Democracy is dead. All this was accepted to keep a black woman out of the White House. I’m disgusted with my fellow Americans. I will continue to do whatever I can, it is easy to get overwhelmed and worn out/down by the constant idiocy and hatred put forth by our “leaders” every day, but we must not go down without a fight.
We did get stupid really fast. I did not notice it till 2015. maybe I spent too much time in the lab. (Till I retired)
My, my, my, aren’t you heroic.? Paint with a broad brush much? It must hurt to pat yourself on the back so hard. I feel that I am most of the things that you said Americans are not, but I’m not bragging about it. I voted for Harris.
I started in earnest to see the stupid with the rise of the Tea Party. When was that?
ETA: Looks like 2007.
The problem is, is that stupid got ahold of the reins. They should have been kicked off the stage coach immediately.
There was still a chance. For a while. But those that could do it where too worried about themselves being kicked off as well.
And now, what do we have? All of us stuck in the stage coach while it runs completely out of control. Strike that… The person/s that have the reins don’t care if it goes over the cliff. They have “theirs” and have nothing to worry about.
Perfect @Johnny_L.A
I would have said 1980 myself. When Reagan beat Carter, the Republican Party lost it’s last chance to save itself. It’s been down hill ever since.
Yeah, Reagan was the point of no return and just when you thought maybe we’d get on the right path with Gore, we chose George W Bush, twice. I still confused when Americans were the good guys.
Correct.
The United States is a nation that was built on stolen land by people stolen from their land. I don’t associate thieving land and people with anything particularly good.
“American Exceptionalism” has come to mean a fundamental belief that we’re better than every other nation, in every other way.
But we’re not. We’re not, and no end of objective, quantitative information bears out that fact.
Some people’s insecurities won’t allow them to see when there’s a better way of doing something. Those people tend to revel in pointing to worst practices – who does something worse than the US. And why not? It allows those people to be complacent and smug.
But those same people won’t ever look at best practices – who’s doing something better than we are – and then try to emulate it?
For the “American Exceptionalism” crowd who think America is great, to whatever degree it is great, it got that way in spite of them, not because of them.
“American Exceptionalism” is a clear impediment to genuine and meaningful progress.
I’m also reminded of a great quote from Al Franken:
“We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow.”
My favorite quote about America:
American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what’s worse, I think, is that they’ll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.- Frankie Boyle
Americans, particularly American conservatives, value power. On both a conscious and subconscious level, that is how they evaluate their own value and the value of others around them. They judge people by how much wealth they have or don’t have, more so than how well-read or even how benevolent they are.
There’s a reason they are fans of ostensibly sociopathic and psychopathic people such as Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Stephen Miller. To them and their ilk, the world is a jungle. There is a hierarchy, and it is better to be the apex predator than the prey. They also assume that if someone doesn’t align with their values, these ‘apostates’ must be from a rival pride and that they naturally intend to maim or kill them. Hence accusing the civil service of being a deep state without evidence to that effect when the real deep state is the one they’re busy creating before our eyes.
As it relates to America’s self-image of their place in the world, American exceptionalism is also rooted in our valuing power. We’re great because we emerged from two world wars as a global superpower, which validated our naive belief in the superiority of our political and economic systems. When our economy - and perhaps the state itself - collapses in a few years due to incompetence and civil unrest, it’s going to be a reckoning the likes of which we’ve never experienced, beyond the trauma of such an event.