Month: February 2023

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Chincoteague, Virgina scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now completed the sky and added paint to the trees and reflection. So far, so good.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.00

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In Afghanistan, the Taliban-led government is banning contraception for women, claiming it is part of a Western conspiracy to limit the growth of the Muslim population. In America, the Christian Right, also known as the Republican Party, is attacking sex in general.

A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.

Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.

The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills.

In the old saying about the dog catching the car, I’m not sure what is supposed to happen. Does the dog come out on the losing side of a collision or does he succeed in taking possession of the car and simply not know what to do with it?

The Republicans assembled an army of anti-choice activists and became reliant on them for political victory. But now that they’ve succeeded in overturning Roe v. Wade, they increasingly do not want to discuss abortion because it has become a political liability for them. But that doesn’t mean the activist army will simply dissolve. They need to new issues to occupy their time, and the GOP can’t afford to lose their organizing prowess.

Of course, there are still many venues open for anti-choice activism, whether it’s pushing for a federal ban or its enacting restrictive laws on the state level. But the party strategists want little to do with these efforts. They want to redirect the energy to areas that might still prove popular. In other words, they caught the car and suffered a collision with political reality, and now they’re searching for the next thing to do.

If that’s banning nipples in advertising, it probably doesn’t have much promise. I’m not sure banning sex toys and romance novels will be a winner either. Maybe they’ll do better creating a new crew of martyrs like Lenny Bruce by policing the sexy talk at comedy clubs.

With or without a car, a dog is still a dog and does what a dog does.

There’s still some mileage in attacking educators for talking frankly about race and human sexuality, and that’s where the strategists would prefer the Christian Right maintain their focus. If they can keep them on task going after the least popular groups to the straight white majority, then they can still hope to win legislative majorities. But the Christian Right is too much like the Taliban to take disciplined instruction.

They will maintain their strange mix of anti-sex, pro-reproduction politics, and they aren’t going to change for political advantage.

 

I generally like to keep religion out of politics but sometimes I can’t help myself. I see that the House Republicans are now targeting food stamps as a way to make huge budget savings. What we’re talking about is food insecurity. We’re talking about hunger.

It makes me think about the parable of the Good Samaritan, so let me explain that a little bit. The story goes that a lawyer was questioning Jesus of Nazareth about the requirements for everlasting life. Jesus first asked what he believed to be the answer, and the lawyer replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus was satisfied with this answer, but the lawyer wanted to know, “Who is my neighbor?”

At the time, Jews and Samaritans did not have a good relationship, so Jesus gave the following example:

“A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain [Jewish] priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he travelled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?”

He said, “He who showed mercy on him.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The point being, obviously, that you don’t have to like or trust someone to show them basic human compassion. In the ethics of Jesus, it’s better to show mercy to your enemies than to simply be pious, especially if your devoutness allows you to walk by a person in need.

In the parable, the “certain man” made sure to leave some money for food, lodging and whatever medical needs might be required for the victim. He didn’t do the bare minimum, but saw what the situation required.  At no point did he inquire about the injured man’s work habits or job status, or his ability to repay.

This is the basic idea behind the food stamps program. There are people who don’t have enough money to feed themselves or their children. We feed them.

Naturally, we ask that people demonstrate an actual need. We want to save our food for the hungry, not for scammers who are trying the game the system. Here in Pennsylvania, you have to show your income under penalty of perjury. No one is in favor of fraud or waste. At the same time, we want to make sure we’re providing an adequate amount of food.

Anti-poverty experts have long described the money as critical, yet insufficient at times, in subsidizing families’ food needs over the course of a month. But Democrats’ efforts to expand SNAP aid have been met with steep and intensifying Republican opposition, as GOP lawmakers argue that food stamps and other government benefit programs cost too much and deter millions of Americans from entering the workforce.

Since winning control of the House, some GOP leaders have started to explore ways to translate their criticisms into federal policy. They have attacked the Biden administration for its recent benefit increases. They have called for limiting aid to entire categories of recipients, including poor adults without children. And they have raised the potential they could seek even tougher work requirements.

A pandemic-era boost in monthly food allotments expires in March, and we’ve all noticed how inflation has raised the cost of basic food staples. Food insecurity is a growing problem. The basic idea behind the Republicans’ proposed reforms is that people who receive food subsidies are disincentivized to work. They’re willing to tolerate giving a food handout to an adult who has children to feed since the child is not to blame and can’t go get a job. But they want to let adults without children go hungry so they’ll be forced to find work. They also want to make people prove they’re looking for work before they will feed them.

To be clear, these rules are already in place, it’s just that the Republicans want to make them more stringent.

In general, SNAP beneficiaries between ages 16 and 59 must register for work, participate in any required state-based training programs and take a job if offered, with exceptions for some categories of Americans, including those who are disabled and parents of kids under age 6. Federal law grants vast latitude to local officials to make training programs voluntary or mandatory.

SNAP beneficiaries who have no children and other dependents, meanwhile, may only collect aid for three months in a three-year period unless they obtain employment. But states may also waive some of these rules temporarily to enroll people in high-unemployment areas.

Republicans have faulted that approach as insufficient, seizing on, in particular, the waivers.

The conservative mindset is curious. They are far more worried that someone might be undeserving of their help than that someone might be starving. When someone says they’re hungry, they want them to prove it. When someone asks for food, they ask first if they’ve recently applied for a job. If the locals say that jobs are currently scarce, they don’t want to hear that excuse.

Now I get there’s a difference between giving a hungry man a sandwich and agreeing to bring him three sandwiches a day until the end of time. But the food stamp program already accounts for that. The problem right now is that sandwiches cost more than they used to and the people who we’re supposed to be helping aren’t getting enough. At the same time, unemployment rates are historically low, meaning that the need for waivers is also low.

Here’s how a typical Republican talks about this issue:

“I grew up very poor, I’ve seen the impact of just continually giving out food stamps without any requirement to ever get off them,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the leader of the Republican Study Committee, the largest bloc of House GOP lawmakers.

But, of course, there have always been requirements. So, Rep. Hern has not seen the impact he describes. What he has witnessed is people who used food stamps over a sustained period of time, and this annoys him. He thinks they should provide for themselves. If they were hungrier, maybe they’d get off their duff and go find honest work. But, remember, people “who have no children and other dependents…may only collect aid for three months in a three-year period unless they obtain employment.

We’re feeding children and dependents. Sometimes the head of their households are deadbeats happy to live off government assistance. We feed the people they’re supposed to care for anyway, and see no need to make a big production over it.

As I see it, Jesus asked us to take care of those in need without even asking if they are deserving or can pay us back later, but it makes sense to put some limits on governmental food handouts. The limits we have in place are designed to prevent genuine hunger and avoid disincentivizing work. Finding the right balance will always be a work in progress, but the bigger issue is making sure the help we provide is adequate, and right now it’s not.

I don’t look to Holy Scriptures to determine what kind of public policy I will support, but conservatives seem to never tire of promoting Christian values. In this case, the obvious Christian value is to not walk past the hungry on the assumption they’re undeserving.

Greetings! It’s that time again. I’ll stick to retro music again this week. This time I am sharing with you some work that members of Cluster and Brian Eno created together in the late 1970s. German progressive rock was very experimental throughout the 1970s. Cluster was one of several bands who sounded at least a bit ahead of their time. I may be biased, but I think their work holds up quite well today. This particular piece isn’t quite ambient (which was Eno’s main focus at the time) but it’s not your typical rock track either. It’s quite melancholy – the sort of music to play during a cold, rainy day.

This space is open. The jukebox has endless possibilities. It comes down to where your imagination begins and ends. The bar is open. I’ll keep checking in to see who shows up.

Cheers!

Ruminating on blogger Infidel753’s piece on the “Exhausted Majority,” I find myself feeling a new level of fatigue. It’s not really that I object strongly to the argument he’s making, but more that his argument is basically myopic in the same way as most “both sides” takes on political disagreements. And, yet, it shouldn’t be. It should be straightforward common sense.

Infidel’s launching point is a study called “The hidden tribes of America.” It’s an effort to classify the American electorate into distinct groups, with a focus on extremists. But most people don’t belong on the wings, whether far left or far right.

…the largest group that we uncovered in our research has so far been largely overlooked. It is a group of Americans we call the Exhausted Majority — our collective term for the four tribes, representing a two-thirds majority of Americans, who aren’t part of the Wings. Although they appear in the middle of our charts and graphs, most members of the Exhausted Majority aren’t political centrists or moderates. On specific issues, their views range across the spectrum. But while they hold a variety of views, the members of the Exhausted Majority are also united in important ways:

They are fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society….. [they] are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely….. they aren’t ideologues who dismiss as evil or ignorant the people who don’t share their exact political views. They want to talk and to find a path forward.

Infidel sees the size of this group as “a profoundly positive development,” but I don’t think it’s a development at all. If anything, it’s merely a response. The more bitter and dysfunctional our politics become, the more people feel as a sense of despair. They pine for civility or some way out. You don’t have to be unaligned ideologically with either major party to have this sense of exasperation. I’m fucking spent, and I’ve been spent since the day Donald Trump won the presidency. The people described in the category of “Exhausted Majority” aren’t different in this respect. They’re not even different in that “many have checked out completely,” because that’s true of plenty of ideologues on both sides who have given up on the prospect of progress. It’s true of soft partisans, too.

What’s positive here isn’t new. For most people, politics isn’t the be-all-end-all of their lives. They’d prefer if the governing business took care of itself and they can abide most compromises without as much as a notice. But that’s frankly a luxury not afforded to say, a gay couple seeking legal status for their relationship or a women who has an unexpected pregnancy. If you can walk away from politics when it frustrates you, then you’re one of the lucky majority without too much skin in the game.

One thing I’d say about this group is that they enjoy this condition until they don’t. How many parents have been shocked to learn their child has become addicted to opioids? How many people had good health insurance until they were laid off? Who sent their daughter to college in the South only to learn that she no longer has any reproductive rights?

Throwing your hands up in frustration and walking away doesn’t eliminate the vicissitudes of life. But that doesn’t describe everyone in the Exhausted Majority. Some still believe in progress and think it’s possible if people will just tone it down and negotiate.

For Infidel, this faith is key.

…what I share with other “exhausted majority” people of all viewpoints is the desire for the end of the scorched-earth, dead-end polarization and demonization that dominates politics.  Part of what I look for in politicians, activist groups, and bloggers is a willingness to at least read viewpoints different from their own, to give credit where due when someone on the “other side” shows moderation, to recognize where common interests can exist, to refrain from tarring everyone on the “other side” with the brush of that side’s worst extremists.

The real radical crazies are irredeemable, but they’re a minority, even if they’re making most of the noise.  Ultimately the sane people on both “sides” have to find a way to take the country back from them, instead of allowing ourselves to be herded into the existing opposing camps that view each other with hatred and incomprehension.

Speaking personally, my exhaustion stems from the realization that sane people are not going to find a way to take the country back, but I don’t really think insanity is much of a problem on the left. For evidence, consider the Philip Bump piece in the Washington Post that looks at how the voting behavior of Congress members has changed over time. Here he is discussing noncompetitive districts where incumbents have nothing to fear from the other side.

Since 1976, Democrats who won by wider margins have gotten more liberal while those who won more narrowly stayed in about the same place ideologically. Among Republicans, though, every group got more conservative to about the same extent, regardless of the margin of victory they enjoyed.

When you look at the numbers, what you see is a disparity. Democrats in safe seats have become more liberal, reflecting a leftward drift of the party overall. But there’s a drag in the middle where Democrats in competitive seats haven’t drifted much at all. Not so for the Republicans, where there’s really not much distinction between members representing safe or unsafe districts. They’re all been careening to the right as a group.

We can see this playing out in Congress now, which is split between a Democratic-led Senate and a Republican-led House. The House is threatening to default on nation’s debt in an effort to essentially extort concessions on government spending and priorities. This isn’t a negotiation, and it’s not in any way a mirror image of how the Democrats behave when they’re in the minority. But it is exactly what the Republicans did before in 2011 and 2013 when they had control of Congress during the Democratic presidency.

Infidel complains that he sees progressives arguing that “there is no such thing as a moderate Republican,” and I get that there are, in fact, still some moderate Republicans. But the truth is that Republicans serving in competitive districts are by-and-large voting the same way as the safest Republican in the most blood red seat in Oklahoma. And the idea that the Democrats can convince these folks to make good faith negotiations on the budget or immigration or guns or most of the other contentious issues in our country is a fantasy.

And we can’t just turn this around and say that the Democrats are just the same when a Republican president is in office. When Trump was in office, our bills got paid and there were no government shutdowns or efforts to threaten a global economic crisis if the Democrats didn’t get to set the spending priorities.

If you want to argue that the Democrats used scorched earth tactics against Trump, it was in response to his unprecedented criminality and norm-breaking behavior. He should have been convicted in both impeachment trials. On policy, however, the Democrats hashed out the best deals they could muster, won where they could, and took their losses with a normal sense of despair and bitterness.

I don’t have to call every Republican a Nazi or a fascist, and I don’t have to tar every Republican with the behavior of their most extreme members. But it’s not my side of the aisle that’s making this country’s government fail.

I cannot get a coalition of sane people together to fix this problem because the Republicans have a vested interest in insanity. The reasons they’ve become reliant on crazy is the subject for another piece (I recommend Driftglass’s latest), but it’s not something that can or will be corrected by a simple act of will or any savvy opposition strategy.

Overall, I share Infidel’s aspiration for a better brand of politics. It should be possible. But if it comes it will only come out of the other end of a likely cataclysmic series of events. A people, a nation, and a culture cannot thrive or function when one half of it is in throes of a psychotic episode.

And this relates to Infidel’s explanation for why he doesn’t consider himself a centrist: “[my] views stem more from my anti-religion stance and respect for science than from anything political.”

My views are likewise informed by a respect for science, but I’m not anti-religious. However, certain brands of religion have so much to say about the GOP’s current psychotic break that it’s not possible to say you can respect science and remain apolitical. That should have been clear since at least the point where Karl Rove corralled the GOP outside of “the Reality-Based Community.”

[Rove] said that guys like me [Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Since then we’ve seen the Republican response to climate change, their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, their response to rampant mass-shootings, including of elementary school children, and their response to losing the 2020 presidential election. Our inability to talk to Republicans about these issues in any kind of evidence-based way is part of why we tend to dehumanize them. It’s why we find them incomprehensible.

Now maybe there are some areas, like gender politics, where it’s possible to see how they find the left incomprehensible, too, but tricky issues don’t balance the scales, nor do exceptions that prove the rule. We’re not talking about obvious things like you live in a gun and hunting culture and I don’t. We’re talking about whether Biden or Trump won the 2020 election. We’re talking about how viruses spread and mutate. We’re talking about whether or not America’s elite is made up of pedophiles and cannibals.

And, ultimately, we’re talking about representative government and fascism, too, because when the former fails, the latter often follows.

So, yeah, the majority of people are fucking exhausted, but that doesn’t mean it is in any way “a profoundly positive development.”

Nate Cohn says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not like former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and is in a much stronger position to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination than Walker ever was in the 2015-2016 cycle. People like to compare the two because they’re both known for “owning the libs” rather for soaring oratory or personal charisma. But Cohn argues that DeSantis has already established a much stronger base of support, and compares him more to Ronald Reagan in 1976 or Barack Obama in 2008 than to Walker.

The polling data backs this up as DeSantis is currently backed by almost a third of Republican voters while Walker couldn’t break out of single digits. If I had to guess what’s really different, it really comes down to two factors. The first is that Walker’s biggest moment came when he defeated a 2012 effort to recall him. It was a giant thumb in the eye of the Democrats, but it also indicated that Walker was divisive and somewhat weak. Overall, the sentiment in Wisconsin was not favorable to Walker, but the voters didn’t think he’d done anything so egregious to merit overturning his reelection to a second term. They objected to the process just enough to let him survive, but that didn’t mean they supported his policies or performance. The bottom line is that he wasn’t a popular governor at home when he launched his presidential campaign.

By contrast, DeSantis was just reelected in an historic landslide in Florida that signaled that the Sunshine State may no longer be competitive at all for the Democrats. And this happened in what was otherwise a deeply disappointing midterm election cycle of the GOP. The Republicans also had a big night in New York State, but they still lost the gubernatorial race and their victories were restricted to House races (including the notorious George Santos) and other state and local elections. As a result, no personality emerged from New York to rival DeSantis as the face of Republican success.

It’s reasonable for Republican voters to look at DeSantis and think he must have something figured out. Who else has demonstrated recently that they can outperform expectations and deliver a huge beatdown to the Democrats? Walker never left that impression.

The second factor is that post-Trump Republican politics are just different. Walker’s combativeness warmed the hearts of activists and hard core conservatives, but that was true of many other post-Reagan candidates, starting with Pat Buchanan in 1992. In the end, candidates like Poppy Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney who seemed to have more crossover appeal always won the primaries in the end. The problem was that the appeal didn’t translate to victory (even Poppy lost reelection), and Trump was successful in large part because many Republican voters lost their belief in that strategy. Trump demonstrated that you could be completely dismissive of “the middle” and still win, so now the voters feel like they don’t need to compromise. They’re willing to even go in the other direction and support a candidate who they personally feel is too combative or personally flawed because they think it will drive up turnout and bring success.

So, when they looked at Walker, they worried he might not be a viable general election candidate. When they look at DeSantis, they think he’s the best option. Another way of putting it is that if Walker were running in today’s environment, he’d probably be doing a lot better. But he’d still lack the credential of being an outlier of political success.

If there’s a flaw in this thinking, it’s probably in overestimating the viability or meaning of Trump’s approach in 2016. Trump lost the popular vote and barely won the Electoral College, so even someone who could replicate his strategy would still need a lot of things to break their way. It’s still a lot easier to win by convincing the middle than to wage a turnout battle, and hugely partisan primary candidates will struggle to do that in a general election. Hillary Clinton was also a polarizing candidate (even within her own party), she was trying to break the “glass ceiling,” and she wasn’t an incumbent president. I believe she was easier to defeat than Biden will be in 2024.

If the analysis is that DeSantis is in a good position to win the nomination, then I agree. But if the analysis is that he’s the best choice for the Republicans if they want to win, I am not convinced of that.

As an American, I feel a bit hamstrung talking about potential regime change in Iran, especially when an opposition group includes Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the Shah who was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. There are good reasons for the Iranian people to overthrow their government, but that doesn’t mean they want Americans directing things behind the scenes or some restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty. To be legitimate and successful, a political movement in Iran must be homegrown and appropriate for the times. That means the movement probably doesn’t need or want rhetorical help from the likes of me.

Having said that, one thing this opposition has right is that it seeks to put ideology, ethnicity and sectarianism aside. It’s made up of Arabs, Kurds and Baluchis, most of whom are Sunni, as well as Persians who are mostly Shiite. It has monarchists, yes, but also Republicans and leftists. If Pahlavi is part of such a group, then he’s ostensibly renouncing any claim to a crown. They don’t have a program nailed down yet, but on Friday as the regime marked the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, the opposition said that they’re working on it.

“The Islamic Republic has survived because of our differences and we should put our differences aside until we come to the polling booth,” Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi said in a video message to the prominent opposition figures’ gathering at Georgetown University in Washington.

U.S.-based women’s rights advocate Masih Alinejad said: “We must agree on principles based on the declaration of human rights, on eliminating discrimination, and principles that every Iranian can see themselves in, and that depict the end of oppression.”

Alinejad expressed hope that an agreement on the opposition’s principles could be reached by the end of 2023.

Still, the real leadership shouldn’t be made up exclusively of exiles, nor should they be broadcasting from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. There are far too many echoes here of the Iraqi exile groups that lobbied for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Iran is a great country with a great people. It has so much more to offer than the kamikaze drones they’re exporting to Russia and China. It has more to offer than the narrow-minded and sectarian ideology of the regime which requires repression and cruelty to maintain. I want political freedom for the Iranians because they deserve it, and I want a different government in Teheran because the current one has a nasty habit of exacerbating other problems the world is facing. I wish them the Iranians the best of luck, but Americans should not try to direct the dissidents. That’s how we got here in the first place.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Chincoteague, Virgina scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now filled all the areas delineate by my jumble of lines. There is my roadmap for the future updates.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.00

I’m curious why Joe Biden isn’t going to be doing the traditional presidential interview during the Super Bowl. According the the White House, executives at Fox Corp flat-out canceled the event.

“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted Friday. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”

This contrasts with what Fox News was saying as recently as Tuesday.

“The president is going to be out on the road, taking his message to the road. Every year, traditionally, the network covering the Super Bowl gets an interview with the president of the United States,” said Bret Baier, a top anchor at the network, during its coverage of Biden’s State of the Union address. “We have formally asked for that interview, but we have not received an answer yet, whether they are going to officially do it or not … we’re running out of days.”

Based on press secretary Jean-Pierre’s comment, it sounds like something was lined up with Fox Soul, a Fox Corp enterprise that focuses on “Black culture-fuelled programming.” Its sounds like this was unacceptable to Fox News which probably wanted Bret Baier to get the honor.

Biden did the Super Bowl in 2021 and 2022 when it was aired by NBC and CBS. Donald Trump did the Super Bowl during his presidency, too, but refused to sit down with NBC’s Lester Holt in 2018. It sounds like Biden was looking for a compromise and Fox Corp wasn’t willing to grant it.

It’s probably a dumb tradition, but it’s a sign of the times that we can’t even have the president sit down for a couple of minutes to make small-talk during the Super Bowl without fear of being ambushed. I don’t really blame Trump and Biden for being wary of that outcome, nor do I blame Fox Corp for asking for the same treatment that other networks have traditionally enjoyed.

It’s probably best to just keep politics out of the Super Bowl from here on out. Our country is too pissed off to allow for safe spaces and an effort to unite around a common experience for a couple minutes is just going to prove fruitless.

In April 2001, Sean Illing of Vox called James Carville to get his take on Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, but Carville wanted to talk about something else: “Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it.” He then explained that despite winning the presidency the Democrats had done poorly in the 2020 election, in large part because the Democrats talk like a faculty lounge and use words and phrases like “Latinx” and “communities of color” that no ordinary person uses in normal conversation. He went on to explain that “large parts of the country view us as an urban, coastal, arrogant party.”

I certainly had some sympathy with Carville’s argument. Since the beginning of my writing career I have deliberately opted to use plain language rather than attempt to show off my vocabulary precisely because I believe communication is my aim, not making a good impression on my peers. Political messaging should be accessible and it definitely should not alienate or exclude people. I’ve also spent years arguing that the Democrats are contributing to their own weakness by adopting an urban/suburban strategy that isn’t stable and that leaves too many working people at the mercy of right-wing populism. But I wound never describe my critiques as “anti-woke” or echo Carville’s simplistic analysis.

Overall, I found Carville’s argument unhelpful, but he didn’t stop. He’s been making many of the same points on cable television over the last two years, often as a recurring guest on Ari Melber’s show on MSNBC. On Wednesday, he appeared on Melber’s show to talk about the State of the Union address, and he seemed to violate his own advice.

Democratic political consultant James Carville on Wednesday described Republican lawmakers who heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union speech as “white trash.”

“I tell people I have the equivalent of a PhD in white trashology, and we saw real white trash on display,” Carville told MSNBC anchor Ari Melber.

Carville singled out far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), saying she “dresses like white trash” and should take fashion advice from serial liar Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), in a video shared by Mediaite.

“The level of white trashdom in the Republican Party is staggering,” Carville added. “I mean, for somebody that has observed it for a long time like I have, I’ve never seen it manifest itself on a level that it’s manifesting itself.”