#roy edroso

[rbatt014]

Walking Spanish

People don’t know who I am. But more than enough people know who Roy Edroso is. I sorta came to him by way of his blog (how could you forget a band name like his?), and now he is a Substacker, which I am happy to pay for even if I don’t have the time to read him every day. He’s kind of like I am, wandering into musings about culture and politics, but he’s also a master satirist and deep thinker.…

[scottslemmons]

In which Roy Edroso points out that it's absolutely great to call Trump and Vance fascists and Nazis, 'cause that's sure as hell what they are. We're at the point where the people who still object to this are either fascists and Nazis, or hope to make big profits on the fascists and Nazis.

(Also too: Facebook got real, real mad at me for posting that link. Speaking of people hoping to get rich by working with Nazis...)

[ourquietman]

Conservatives have been freaks about culture war for decades, but the Trump metastasis has upped the ante; once they were content to snarl every once in a while about Tinky Winky or some shit, but now they’re rampaging through reading lists and erasing anything that might give their kids a different way of looking at the world than what they try to beat into them. And heads up, because they never stop at schoolbooks.

Roy Edroso in alicublog

[edroso]

JUNE 19th (One in a series of front pagers from edroso.com that I'm preserving here.)

Happy Juneteenth! Today I got a very eloquent cancellation notice from a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down subscriber. He said, basically (I am flattening his meaning a great deal but guys like him write at length because their full meaning takes a long time to convey, and you and I don’t have all day) he’d gotten older and now saw that the sort of pushback he and I were giving to the madness of our leaders was not doing a whole hell of a lot of good and he was turning his attention in other directions.

A defensible position! I responded at length and, like all lazy writers, figured I’d repurpose the less personal parts of what I’d written for another audience, namely you. So:

…I can relate. I’m no spring chicken myself. I’ve seen some dispiriting changes in the polity too. I remember especially clearly when Reagan swept all before him, bringing a reordering not only of government policy but also of American culture (that thing that, conservatives are always complaining, has been “captured” by the “left” — which may be their least noticed and most effective lie). I remember the “poverty sucks” posters and “poverty pimp” editorials and movies and TV shows that ascribed the basest motives to do-gooders and the highest authority to capitalism. And I remember how everyone seemed to roll with it — as if the moral crusades of the preceding decades (and, for that matter, centuries of basic morality as well) had been a waste of time that distracted from money-making opportunities (which, for most of us, came to nothing anyway).

I ducked out of politics for the most part then, and frankly there followed for me some happy and productive days. Politics is a drag and, as you perceive, whatever flea-bites we may inflict seem not to even get the dog to scratch, so why be troubled by it when you can choose not to be?

I only really got back at politics in this horrible new century because an outlet presented itself (that “blog” thing that was sweeping the country back in those crazy Oughts) and, I began to notice, the subject had never really stopped bugging me, no matter what I was doing, and it felt good to talk about, especially when I found people who’d listen. I’ve been at that for close to twenty years. Yeah, it’s dispiriting to see how absolutely crazy the terms of debate have become — I mean, try to imagine even the 1980s Republican Party justifying an attempted coup by its members! But it’s also good to know that some people, maybe a lot of people, also see how crazy it is. Hell, I even see people saying stuff like, “you know when the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush as President and we acted like it was the will of the Founders? What was that about?” Back in 2000 who knew anyone besides commie soreheads thought such things?…

Etc. Anyway here’s another shot of a pretty DC alley.

[dendroica]

But what the Times story really reminded me of was how similar Trump and Reagan are. The Iran story is shocking because we’re accustomed to think of Saint Ronnie as a nice guy. But he wasn’t — he was a prick, surrounded by crooks who were smoother than the goons and bagmen of the Trump gang but no less corrupt. The only difference is Reagan, being a movie star, acted the good guy to sway voters who got their moral sense from old Hollywood, while Trump, being a reality-show star, acts the bully to sway voters who got their moral sense from wrestling. Both Trump and Reagan made huge tax policy transfers to the rich and put their boots on the necks of everyone less rich, each putting it over with his own version of patriotic rah-rah — Reagan’s sunny, Trump’s vicious. When in need of butch points, Reagan invaded Grenada, Trump blows up Suleimani, and both sluiced fortunes to the military. And they both blew up the deficit while crying for welfare cuts. We’ve seen the effect of Reagan’s malfeasance on our economy; Trump’s is just now eating at its foundations, and who knows what and how much will collapse because of it when the damage reaches critical mass.

The Two Ronnies - Roy Edroso Breaks It Down

[mitchipedia]

https://twitter.com/edroso/status/1355989627652419587?s=20

[thesepeopleproject]

Man these people are such shit pic.twitter.com/meKVavzpkw

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) September 27, 2018

[dearyallfrommatt]

Roy Edroso is always worth reading, and this is the final word on why there's no tears for the rich bad man.

[theamericanbear]

One is tempted to ask: If everyone who isn't an Occupy protestor, unionized public employee, or President Obama loves you rich fucks, why you cryin'? Because you've run out of other inventive ways to use your dollar bills besides wiping your ass and lighting your cigars with them, and now you want to see how they work as Kleenex?

COME ON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BANKER

[ourquietman]

The latest NRA charmless offensive shows how bad the situation is. When the NRA found its normal post-massacre duck-and-cover routine -- that is, waiting until our attention was drawn away from the latest multiple-casualty Second-Amendment demonstration -- had left it vulnerable to the protests of telegenic survivors, they immediately went on offense, with Wayne LaPierre babbling about socialists and Dana Loesch lying at top speed at the Parkland town hall. If you want to know why LaPierre and Loesch chose not to take a more reasonable and conciliatory approach with the kids in the wake of a mass gun murder, dismiss from your mind the absurd idea that it's the natural product of principled advocacy; ideas that are right don't need to be defended with bullying and bullshit. The NRA's PR makes clear that they are not peddling an Amendment or a specific interpretation thereof so much as the fear of violation and the thrill of violence.

That's why they came hard -- not because they're tough, and certainly not because they're right, but because they're full of shit. And they count on their belligerence to convince Americans they're fighting for them, rather than fighting to keep up the nice livelihood gun manufacturers have bestowed upon them, and against "socialists" and other ooga-booga rather than against the young citizens who have seen the effect of their depravity up close and want it stopped.

Too many liberals seem to think shame or conscience is going to stop these guys. No. They have to be repudiated decisively at the ballot box and throughout public life. If they aren't, things will only get worse.

Roy Edroso, via his alicublog.

[edroso]

June 12, 2021

[Archiving front pages from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, cont.]

Not much to tell since last week: Another week of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, of the God Damn Job, and of a slowly reopening Washington. I got my teeth cleaned. The dentist, filling in for the hygienist, put a flat plastic device in my mouth that he referred to as “the fish.” This appears to be the VacuLUX mouthpiece, which reduces the spread of aerosolized particles from the patient’s mouth by 90%, the company claims. As the dentist worked I still saw aerosol clouds and fragments rising from my mouth, though; it’s not impossible that a particle or two got at least close to my dentist’s mask.

It’s amazing how much of everyday life has been a high-wire act because of this thing. When we talk about the long-term effects our pandemic behaviors might have on our psyches and society, we don’t much take into account the fact that we were all made aware of the danger of small, ordinary acts that we could not easily avoid doing, and then did them anyway. Even if the skeptics were right and the real danger was thin, that’s an interesting sort of training, and not necessarily a negative one, either, in facing and overcoming fears. I get trauma, but not all exercise is injurious.

I walked the missus through Union Market yesterday for the first time in over a year. We’re so used to masks that it didn’t reduce the experience or make it strange. It was strangely exciting to point out the changes to one another, shop the fancy dishes, and take a couple home for lunch. I know, it’s high capitalism, a mere simulacrum of an agora, etc. Nonetheless.

Last weekend I went to Black Lives Matter Plaza and they had an actual event: A “No Slide Zone” protest against gun violence, with a band and high-minded exhortations to love and consciousness from the temporary stage. It wasn’t huge, just a few hundred people, and most of the Plaza had the same eerie, depopulated feel it’s had since last summer. But here was some joy, some call and response, some life. And that’s a damn sight better than those fucking high-volume Jesus preachers who’d colonized the entrance to Lafayette Park, and were this day nowhere in sight.

Oh, speaking of Lafayette Park, it’s fully open now — except for the charred bathroom, which remains enclosed. It was the one serious piece of vandalism from the local George Floyd protests (which were characterized as CITIES AFLAME by the usual bad-faith wingnuts) and seems to have been preserved in this state for unknown reasons. (If it’s meant to show how destructive the protests were, I hope its preservationists are prepared to be laughed at.)

[dendroica]

"Ryan is a master salesman -- he could sell a drowning man a bowling ball" was Christian Schneider's unfortunate analogy at National Review. Even worse: "If any elected official in America can sugarcoat the need to slow government's growth, it is the man from Wisconsin whose wedding announcement noted he 'does his own skinning and butchering and makes his own Polish sausage and bratwurst.'"

Rightbloggers Rejoice as Ryan Revives Romney, Reaganesquely - New York - News - Runnin' Scared

[war-pervert-blog]

When you're reduced to demanding respect from people you consider perverts, it's probably time to throw in the towel.

Roy Edroso (via)

[edroso]

Cherry blossom parade 2019. (c) Roy Edroso

[edroso]

Today dozens of protestors were taken into police custody for breaching areas of the U.S. Capitol from which the police had declared them restricted. They were protesting the imminent Senate confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court. As the detainees were removed from a holding facility to police vehicles, the remaining protestors, who were kept well back from the detainees by police lines, called out "We love you!" and "Sheroes!" photos (c) 2018 Roy Edroso

[edroso]

From DC Art All Night, (c) 2018 Roy Edroso