tough but fair

You can just ask directly who of your followers watched Doctor Who back in 2005, you don’t have to be sneaky!

“Standing up to Trump didn’t work. It actually gave him more power,” again, is the quote. ‘It actually gave him more power’ is the sentiment that is capitulatory, is cowardly. Again, this whole thread is, there is a legitimate frame for ending the shutdown! But ‘resistance is bad’ is, itself, bad!

I’m not suggesting that Senate Democrats have an endless supply of good tools, let alone magic wands, for exercising power. They have almost nothing! But that’s different from having nothing, and given the filibuster (which is bad!), going on MTP to say ‘resistance makes Trump stronger’ is cowardly.

Again, I think there’s a totally legitimate frame for ending the shutdown, some version of ‘the human cost is too high’. King’s, though, is that resistance is futile. He’s not communicating solidarity, he’s communicating impotence, and *that* is cowardice, *especially* if it’s his honest assessment.

I think, like Molly is saying, there’s a totally legitimate frame for voting to reopen the government, but “standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work” is as far from that frame as an elected official can possibly be.

“Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work. It actually gave him more power,” is the sort of thing bullies dream of hearing.

Right. They didn’t make the case. The caucus tried, and is still trying, to have their cake and eat it, too. Individual Senators will occasionally communicate some version of a real defense for their votes, but it’s fully enmeshed with coward stuff like from King.

Totally! It’s so firmly a ‘the medium is the message’ thing that the same characters have had their continuities torn apart and stitched back together a million-million times elsewhere.

The Red Wing ‘Irish Setter’ boot (style 877) cost around ~0.6% of the typical family’s annual income when it was introduced in 1952, and the same boot costs about ~0.5% today.

It only took me a second because I hadn’t seen your post on Arc Digital first, which was very good now that I have!

The momentary confusion only highlights how obtuse Barro is determined to be, because as you’ve written, the answer to ‘what could anyone possibly have wanted here’ is right at-hand!

The Marvel Cinematic Universe and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

I didn’t realize that the final screenshot wasn’t from Barro’s article at first, and I was so confused because I was like “these are all obviously better outcomes than where we landed, how can he not understand this?”

It’s important to not get into the habit of lying to yourself!

It has long been true that being a hardcore Fox News watcher left you worse-informed than those who didn’t watch anything. Being a twitter addict—as almost all Congresspeople are—has more-or-less the same effect now.

This is a weird definition of weird! Ms. Rachel isn’t even in the top five of ‘nursery rhymes for children’ channels on YouTube by views! It would-and-should be extremely easy for the Times to not mention her at all, let alone to not mention her *because* the Post printed an obvious lie about her!

Am I too American to understand this?

Probably on the bad side of the catharsis / outcome curve! But, you know, things kind of suck!