An Alien Presence

Ned Resnikoff, senior editor of the leftwing publication ThinkProgress, encounters a tradesman:

I had a plumber over to my apartment to fix a clogged drain. He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by [the election] news. And while I had him in the apartment, I couldn’t stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump.

Then things get a little odd. 

Comments

[sH2]

"I have no real reason to believe he was a Trump supporter or an anti-Semite, but in my uncertainty I couldn't shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left... Even if Trump is gone in four years, I don't expect to ever reclaim that feeling of security. That's just one more thing you voted for, if you voted for him."

⊙_ʘ

[David]

He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by [the election] news.

I can’t help thinking the ‘but’ is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence.

[David]

⊙_ʘ

Yes, Mr Resnikoff seems to be shifting blame for his own comical paranoia and unworldliness.

[PiperPaul]

I kinda those days back when all the village idiots weren't connected to each other via the series of lightspeed internet communication tubes.

[ACTOldFart]

Well, at least "Donald Trump and supporters" seems to have replaced "global warming" as the primary source of the neurotic left's self-absorbed fretting. It makes a nice change.

[MC]

That's just one more thing you voted for, if you voted for him

I wish I was a Yank so I could have voted for that too...

[Hippogryph]

Mr. Resnikoff reminds me of a quote by Theodor Adorno, directed, I think, at Weimar Germany:

“A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.”

And mostly likely, also, many a denizen of ThinkProgress.

No Trump (nor Hillary) fan I, but I don't view a stranger in a MAGA hat as some sort of demon, much less a good natured plumber who is helping me with my pipes. ThinkProgress is swallowing its own propaganda, and once consumed it is a sort of paranoiac poison.

[R. Sherman]

Is it just me, or are we seeing more of these breathless, my-eyes-glaze-over "Gorillas in Mist" articles in which some left-wing loon tries to explain blue collar America to the rest of the world? Good grief it's getting wearisome.

[Hopp Singg]

And then this same guy will, without the slightest sense of irony, unfailingly condemn others for "profiling."

[WTP]

I think The Unperturbed sounds even cooler than being a Deplorable.

[Spiny Norman]

Is it just me, or are we seeing more of these breathless, my-eyes-glaze-over "Gorillas in Mist" articles in which...

Probably, but it's hardly new. It's already been the subject of satire.

[Quint&Jessel, Sea of Azof, Bly, UK]

Good Lord. Well, this guy had better set up a screening process for plumbers, so that only a plumber who voted the RIGHT way will ever tend to his pipes. Better vet all the service personnel in his life, and that means interviewing the waitresses at that adorable retro diner he goes to, too.

[Spiny Norman]

Quint&Jessel,

How on Earth he got inside the cozy left-liberal bubble is a complete mystery.

Great merciful Zeus! What if there are more??? {o.O}

[juliaeryn]

I had a removalist over to my house to help me with my new fridge. He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was a young, Arab man with a beard who spoke limited English and who seemed unperturbed by news regarding terrorist attacks. And while I had him in my house I couldn't stop thinking about whether he was a terrorist and women hater, whether he knew I was a woman, and how that knowledge might change the interaction we were having inside my own home.

Yep, that's real normal.

[Kevin Riches]

He ought to be relieved, it could have been a lot worse. This quietly simmering maniac could have been installing vinyl flooring - a well known racist trigger substance. Only recently 'The Guardian' published a searing study on the link between faux-marble laminates and fascist psychopathy.

[Sporkatus]

It's like an odd distaff version of Dorothy Parker's Who Goes Nazi, only the work of a moron and paranoiac.

[Hopp Singg]

How on Earth he got inside the cozy left-liberal bubble is a complete mystery.

Tells us how comprehensive the bubble normally is. Yes, this guy is a melodramatic fool, but even the mere possibility of a single person breaching the bubble a single time was at least notable to him. He normally goes all day, every day, meeting only like minds.

And as we all know, like-minded groups can so easily turn into pissing matches that make them a little more extreme each day....

[Ray]

This is what happens when you convince yourself that you are part of the majority and then find out that actually you are just a nastly minority.

[David]

I think The Unperturbed sounds even cooler than being a Deplorable.

One of the things that’s grimly funny is that Mr Resnikoff doubtless imagines himself as the one who’s enlightened, sophisticated and not at all prejudiced. And yet he veers towards hysteria based on nothing whatsoever except the race and presumed social class of a visiting plumber. And note that the plumber’s reticence on political matters – i.e., his professionalism and good manners – is viewed by Resnikoff as suspect.

[Daniel Ream]

I'm having trouble with the "anti-Semite" label. Aren't we all supposed to be Zionist neocons? It would be nice if they could at least keep the slanders straight.

Wait, expecting them to stay straight is probably homophobic.

I know, I know, the correction booth...

[David]

And remember, this is the kind of effete meltdown that Ms Resnikoff felt important to share publicly with his peers, if only to establish his ‘progressive’ credentials.

Of course, now I’m itching to hear the plumber’s account of his visit.

[Min]

I thought Frasier was a sitcom.

[Matthew McConnagay]

In case anybody else is wondering the same thing: the communist that Elaine dates on Seinfeld is Ned Isakoff.

So it would appear this isn't satire.

[Hal]

Of course, now I’m itching to hear the plumber’s account of his visit.

Not a chance.

I had a plumber over to my apartment to fix a clogged drain. He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional.

Ask any plumber about a memorable clogged drain, and then wait for the stare into infinity, followed by Well, if the check didn't bounce, howinthehell 'm I gonna remember one clogged drain from another?

[David]

ThinkProgress is swallowing its own propaganda, and once consumed it is a sort of paranoiac poison.

It’s hard to tell where role-play ends and conviction begins, but yes, the ‘progressive’ narrative does appear to leave one unmoored from reality.

[John D]

in my uncertainty I couldn't shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left... Even if Trump is gone in four years, I don't expect to ever reclaim that feeling of security. That's just one more thing you voted for, if you voted for him.

Translation: It's your fault I'm a basket case.

[David]

Translation: It’s your fault I’m a basket case.

Certainly, there’s an odd undertone, not entirely unlike the theatrical paranoia of many feminists. In this case, the dynamic is sort of, “I feared that, despite his civility and professionalism, this broad-shouldered prole might at any moment sense my disdain for his kind, rise up in a rage, and then strangle me with his big, unmoisturised hands.”

Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much.

[david morris]

This just has to be satire. Beautifully presented & all, but still satire. Doesn't it ?

[Jonathan]

I've always found people in the Southern States to be extremely polite and welcoming, but leftists have spent so many decades demonising them as rednecked, sister shagging, inbred, bigoted, hate-fuelled morons that they actually believe their own propaganda.

[Lisboeta]

Some of the comments above (not to mention the article itself) had me laughing out loud. My only concerns, when I call someone to fix something, are that (a) s/he arrives more or less on time, (b) the problem gets solved, and (c) the charge is reasonable. I couldn't care less about their sex/ethnicity/religion/politics -- I'm not viewing them as a potential life-partner. In turn, I'm sure their sole concern about me is that I pay promptly. Please, let's keep life simple!

[David]

Lisboeta’s being calm and rational. We must chase her from the village.

[David]

A footnote from Instapundit:

This reminds me of law professor Wendy Brown’s backwoods encounter with a man in an NRA hat who helpfully fixed her car, only to be the star of a Yale Law Journal article in which she speculated that he might have been a rapist. That produced Doug Laycock’s memorable piece, Vicious Stereotypes In Polite Society. Things haven’t gotten any better in the 25 years since. (And I remember Laycock telling me at the time that he was disturbed to have some of his colleagues tell him — quietly, when no one was around — that he was “brave” to have published that piece. Moreso today!)

The Doug Laycock article can be found here.

[Spiny Norman]

Speaking of ideological bubbles, Berkeley, California has had its first murder of the year. It's a famously leftist college town, so things are never "normal", but here, even the reporting is a bit weird.

They?

[David]

From the Doug Laycock article, linked above:

Professor Brown’s description of her benefactor emphasizes their political disagreements, but there are also important elements of class bias in the story, especially in its comparison of his beer and television to her trail mix and Nietzsche. However heroic the working class may be in the abstract, its members are a perpetual disappointment to many academics. They do not believe what academics believe, read what academics read, or choose the recreation that academics choose. They are also widely thought to be intolerant. But as far as I can tell, no class and no political faction dominates the market in intolerance. […]

It is useful to consider how the story would have been told if Professor Brown’s car had broken down in Harlem instead of in the mountains. Suppose her benefactor had been a young black male with a radical political button, and suppose he carried a gun, a beer, a porn magazine, and a boombox. I am confident that her report of the encounter would have been very different.

As he says, the encounter could have been “a wonderful story about the best of America: two strangers who disagree on practically everything, ignoring differences of politics, sex, and social and economic class, cooperating in the wilderness to solve a serious problem faced by only one of them.” Instead, in the mind of Professor Brown, it became something very different.

[Jonathan]

In other news a real world sighting of the legendary Ouroboros:

Many thousands of women are expected to converge on the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. Jennifer Willis no longer plans to be one of them.

Why could this be?

Ms. Willis, a 50-year-old wedding minister from South Carolina, had looked forward to taking her daughters to the march. Then she read a post on the Facebook page for the march that made her feel unwelcome because she is white.

The post, written by a black activist from Brooklyn who is a march volunteer, advised “white allies” to listen more and talk less. It also chided those who, it said, were only now waking up to racism because of the election.

“You don’t just get to join because now you’re scared, too,” read the post. “I was born scared.”

Oh.

In response, a New Jersey woman wrote: “I’m starting to feel not very welcome in this endeavor.”

[Stuck-Record]

Interesting, but revealing, that the original writer felt strongly enough to write a post about how terrified he was, but not strongly enough to insist that the 'potentially dangerous' man left.

Obviously his plumbing is more important than his morals.

[Burnsie]

What possesses liberals to share so many of their own unfortunate pathologies?

To me, Little Ned's post should be titled "I'm 30 and I Still Wet My Pants." Or "Mommy, Did That Scary Person Leave Yet?"

I'd be embarrassed for this twerp weakling, except I know, as a true leftist apparatchik, he'd be at our throats in an instant if he thought he had the upper hand. So in fact, I'm kinda happy hearing him whine and cower like a five-year-old.

Carry on, Little Ned, carry on!

[David]

Interesting, but revealing, that the original writer felt strongly enough to write a post about how terrified he was, but not strongly enough to insist that the ‘potentially dangerous’ man left.

Ah, but the pantomime of being distressed is what grants Mr Resnikoff his all-important victim status, and is what, in the eyes of his peers, makes him virtuous by default. At what point the hyperbolical role-play becomes actual paranoia, I couldn’t say. But even the role-play, the chronic dishonesty, is halfway to madness.

[sk60]

However heroic the working class may be in the abstract, its members are a perpetual disappointment to many academics. They do not believe what academics believe,

'The University of Maryland is hosting a lecture series in which professors will claim that Donald Trump's victory is a direct result of "spiritual depravity" and "a commitment to white supremacy" among the working class.'

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8614

[David]

Heh. I was just about to highlight that.

[Sort-of-Mad Max]

Good lord.

Growing up, my favorite 'uncle' wasn't actually a relation, but he was vastly preferred to the actual brothers of my father. His being Jewish was just another different religion, like the Catholic family across the street. People went to different churches, that's all.

Nice, avuncular guy, children (like me) just liked him from the start.

And, it turned out, he carried a rifle in the US Army from D-day +2 all the way to Berlin. And never said a word about it.

Uncle Norm was what you called an 'all-round great guy'. Or a 'mensch', if you were Jewish.

What Uncle Norm would have to say about Ned Resnikoff I can only imagine.

[[+]]

10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Black Trump Voter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZPapHk0kjk

[Mags]

He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by [the election] news.

"Othering" doesn't count when lefties do it.

[David]

“Othering” doesn’t count when lefties do it.

Again, it’s those conveniently non-reciprocal principles.

[JerryC]

Plumbers who show up for jobs visibly perturbed by political events probably don't stay in business very long, so...

[Dr Cromarty]

More Clown Quarter completely impartial events:

Dear all,

With apologies for cross-posting, please find below details of our Screen Seminars at Glasgow events for the coming semester. These will all take place in Gilmorehill Halls at the University of Glasgow

5.30pm Monday 23 January: Public Symposium: Trump and Television

Speakers

Dr Zoe Colley (Dundee): 'From Nixon to Trump: Historical Trends in Presidential Campaigns'

Dr Michael Higgins (Strathclyde): 'The Donald: a guide to Pseudo-politics in America'

Dr Lisa W. Kelly (Glasgow): 'CEO of Me, Inc.': Trump, Reality TV and Entrepreneurs of the Self'

James Nixon (Glasgow): 'Comedy's Trump Problem'

I think we can all guess the tone of the evening.

[neal]

Plumbers. Well, I used to be one. All worn out these days. Probably not so much the physical end. More like attempting to explain the mechanics to the betters.

Probably should write a book. Cowboy poetry. Illustrated, for the wayward.

It would involve installing custom closets for forlorn housewives with a small fortune in shoes. And clogged pipes.

And glaring at the children. Those damned kids are the future, no?

Cheaper, faster, better. Best to veer off and pay no more attention than should be reaquired.

Of course, that is a hell of a deal. If stuff stayed fixed, that would upset managed markets.

[Sporkatus]

Posted by: Dr Cromarty
Their psychic powers are strong indeed, to understand all of American politics and the support base of Trump so deeply, never having been outside lefty bubbles in another country. Or they've just made a long string of witless assumptions based on fetid US media coverage, either or.

Couldn't possibly be a rejection of the change from above model of "benevolent oppression", oh no. What those rubes need, gosh darn it, is still more control because they're just so fuckin' stupid, too stupid to take correction.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

And glaring at the children. Those damned kids are the future, no?

Our children are our future.

[Turk Turkleton]

In his book Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz shared an anecdote about his plumber, which originally appeared in this article:

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

Deresiewicz, to be fair, isn't a fainting-couch leftist, and as evidenced here, is well aware of the bubble a Yale professor inhabits. But this genre -- white-collar professionals struggling to comprehend these strange blue-collar creatures in their midst -- has great comedic potential. (See also: the surge of elite media attention paid to J.D. Vance's memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Nothing at all against Vance, but it's clear that a significant amount of the attention is due to the elite amazement that one of "those" people has learned to enter their culture and communicate with them in their language.)

[Randy]

Those bastards were probably packing, too. Both the NRA guy and the plumber. Their kind frequently does.

[Rich Rostrom]

Kevin Riches: This quietly simmering maniac could have been installing vinyl flooring - a well known racist trigger substance.

Ya never know... Michael Totten was astonished to discover that the tradesman who refinished his wood floors was a former terrorist. (Scroll down to "Thursday, February 20, 2003".)

[Matthew McConnagay]

By the way, can we briefly address the elephant in the room?

Which is that the plumber probably charged him north of $100 to either (a) pour $5 worth of draino down the sink or (b) apply half-a-minute's elbow-grease with a $10 plunger. Or, worst-case scenario, (c), popped out his plumber's snake - get your mind out of the gutter - and, inserting it deep into the hole, moved it about with some vigour for a few short minutes at best until he was satisfied - I said get your mind out of the gutter!

By all means correct me if I'm wrong, but unblocking a drain is not some strange voodoo that only the poor and desperate know of. You might as well call an electrician to change a lightbulb.

In and out in five or ten minutes, getting paid a hefty clip to perform an elementary task - who's the real simpleton here?

[Karen M]

In this case, the dynamic is sort of, “I feared that, despite his civility and professionalism, this broad-shouldered prole might at any moment sense my disdain for his kind, rise up in a rage, and then strangle me with his big, unmoisturised hands.”

That.

[David]

That.

Well, it’s not unreasonable to wonder to what extent Mr Resnikoff’s display of paranoia betrays his own hostility and disdain. If his professed feelings are even remotely sincere, maybe it’s because he assumes his own sentiments must be mutual.

[David]

Not entirely unrelated.

[R. Sherman]

Similar Sentiments

[David]

Similar Sentiments

I wonder when we’ll reach maximum saturation. If “white male” were to become the go-to pejorative among enough of the broader population, would this be considered an achievement? Would it be progress...?

[David]

Something tells me presidential press conferences are going to be unusually entertaining for the next few years.

[Lisboeta]

We must chase her from the village

David, I accept that I transgressed. But it's cold out here. Please can I come back inside?

[David]

Please can I come back inside?

Is that booze? Yes, of course.

[Lisboeta]

presidential press conferences are going to be unusually entertaining for the next few years

That much is already clear. But will these (sporadic?) press conferences ever be informative, or just the verbal equivalent of a 140-character tweet? The world must now learn to live with Trump as US president. More pertinently, will Trump learn to live with the responsibilities of his office?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Similar Sentiments

We especially don’t want to live in states where the majority of residents are still voting for things that are against their own interests just because they don’t want brown people to thrive.

The midwestern towns that fix this first, will attract investment in droves. It’s not just tax breaks and fiber. Corporations have to deal with the fact that the best and brightest would rather scrape by in SF than life in a huge house somewhere if it meant dealing with bigots and backwards ideologies every day.

Miss Byerley seems to have missed the efflux from California to Texas and South Flyoverlandia of businesses of late, and that the likes of Mercedes, BMW, VW, Airbus, nigh every Japanese and Korean auto manufacturer, Boeing all have all chosen to locate in the sticks rather than San Fransisco, which boasts more needles and human feces on the streets than any other US city.

Of course we miss out on the wonders of data and call centers, but the benefits of those would just be lost on us gap-toothed rubes.

[WTP]

By the way, can we briefly address the elephant in the room?

By introducing another elephant? If the plumber charged him north of $100 to either (a) pour $5 worth of draino down the sink or (b) apply half-a-minute's elbow-grease with a $10 plunger. Or, worst-case scenario, (c), popped out his plumber's snake, you are forgetting the costs of:

1) Fuel/oil/wear and tear on the truck the plumber showed up in.
2) Depreciation on said truck independent of #1
3) Salary/expenses for the dispatcher
4) Health insurance, etc. as may be mandated by the gov't (this likely being in a blue state) for dispatcher and plumber
5 through x-1) things I'm anyone here who is or at one time was a real plumber would know that I don't
x) (Probability that the customer is a PITA and will require another trip out to resolve a different problem which the plumber, wanting to ensure his reputation, will address at no cost) * (average cost of a second trip)

Not included but may be added on at discretion of plumber, dumb-ass charge specially allocated for servicing dilettante men who can't do such simple things for themselves that their equally dumb-ass Richie Rich daddies should have taught them.

[Ramspace]

Neddykins is a bigot and a snob. Would he be more comfortable with Mark-1 Plumbing?
http://i.imgur.com/nJok3BB.jpg

[R. Sherman]

We especially don’t want to live in states where the majority of residents are still voting for things that are against their own interests just because they don’t want brown people to thrive.

That sentence was truly a marvel. At once, she praises her own wisdom in presuming to know what the best interests are for the millions of people between the Sierra Nevada and Appalachians, while implying those people don't. Or, if the proles do know then they are evil incarnate. Naturally, no examples or evidence are adduced for this proposition.

[Fred the Fourth]

wtp is right. to pretax net just 1000 / week, the plumber has to gross something close to 4000. you price tools, trucks, work clothes lately? 4000/5 = 800 / day.
on the rare occasions i need pro plumbing help, i expect to pay 200-300 / hour with a 150 minimum. (although i do live in a high cost-of-living area.)

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...presuming to know what the best interests are for the millions of people between the Sierra Nevada and Appalachians...

More like between US101 and I-95.

[David]

still voting for things that are against their own interests

Says the woman who presumes to know what those interests are, in detail, in tens of millions of cases, while displaying her own economic ignorance, and her cultural parochialism, and while sneering at those same people, the ones who dare to disagree, as “backwards” Untermenschen.

[R. Sherman]

If you'll excuse me, I need to completely recorder my life as I begin my quest for the coveted "Melinda Byerly Tweet of Condescending Approval."

[David]

In other news, I just glanced up at the TV, which was muted, being ignored and on some random channel, and saw four words I didn’t expect to see. “Screenplay by Chuck Norris.”

[David]

Apparently, it’s the 1985 Cannon Films classic, Invasion USA.

[dearieme]

Racism and anti-gentilism.

[Spiny Norman]

More like between US101 and I-95.

As a resident of California east of US101, your precision is appreciated. Thanks, Farnsworth.

[Spiny Norman]

Fred,

on the rare occasions i need pro plumbing help, i expect to pay 200-300 / hour with a 150 minimum. (although i do live in a high cost-of-living area.)

Why having some rudimentary plumbing skills (like unclogging a drain or repairing a dripping faucet - and having them stay fixed) comes in very handy.

[R. Sherman]

More like between US101 and I-95.

Perhaps we should add "North of the Potomac River," as well.

[Richard Cranium]

"More pertinently, will Trump learn to live with the responsibilities of his office?"

Jesus Christ on rollerblades. How about waiting to find out? I should think that a person who has run multiple businesses would have a better grasp of such than a former community organizer, but I'm funny that way.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

Perhaps we should add "North of the Potomac River," as well.

I-95 goes from the Canada-Maine border to Miami, everything east of it north of Norfolk and south of Jupiter FL is Byerelyland.

Spiny Norman:

My pleasure, I've spent enough time there to realize there are two Californias. What always annoys me are the county level election maps that show seas of blue, but fail to take into account things like San Bernardino County being bigger than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined, but outside of San Bernardino, there are more lizards than people.

[Fred the Fourth]

Spiny,
Yes. For the cost of one pro plumber visit, one could buy tools and parts to fix 80% of household plumbing problems. Assuming one has been taught or otherwise learned how to use them...
- and can tolerate the risk of breaking something
- and can cope with the occasional mess
- and the smell

The biggest barrier, I've found, to blokes doing their own repairs, is the fear of breaking something. Overcome that, and the rest is easy.

[Fred the Fourth]

Farnsworth & Spiny:
Back when I was at UC Berkeley, it was easy to think the Berkeley ideology was universal. Unless one took the occasional trip a mere 10 miles east into the Livermore valley, where one started to see roadside signs like "Get US out of the UN". the ultraliberal fringe is much fringier than it seems from the emanations of Hollywood and the MSM.

[Mr Andrew D Rowe]

I can change a washer and replace a faucet. But, when it comes to sticking my snake into a shit encrusted hole. I'd rather pay someone else to do it. Conversation with said someone else is entirely optional.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

...and the hits just keep coming. I love America. It's Americans I hate.

A vote cast for Trump is kind of like a murder; there may be context to consider — a disadvantaged background, extenuating circumstances, understandable motives — but the choice itself is binary and final, irrevocable. There's a case to be made that it's indefensible; that his supporters have forfeited any right to be respected or taken seriously. The conservatives of the heartland have lashed back against the coastal elites' condescending, classist prejudices by defiantly confirming them: that they're pathetically dumb and gullible, uncritical consumers of any disinformation that confirms their biases, easy dupes for any demagogue who promises to bring back the factories and keep the brown people down.

The author of this mess is one Tim Kreider who is, "...an essayist and cartoonist. He divides his time between New York City and an Undisclosed Location on Maryland's Chesapeake Bay.[one cannot imagine my surprise] His latest collection of essays is We Learn Nothing."

At least he got that title right.

[MC]

From Kreider: Others wonder whether it isn't a misguided strategy to extend the benefit of the doubt and give fair hearing to people who have never once done the same for us.

I sincerely hope Trump bears this in mind when he takes office.

[Hal]

What always annoys me are the county level election maps that show seas of blue, but fail to take into account things like San Bernardino County being bigger than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined, . . . .

. . . . Back when I was at UC Berkeley, . . .

Oh, yes, quite as previously discussed . . .

[TomJ]

I first saw the attitude neatly summed up by Sir Pterry:

There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called 'the people'. Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People.

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.