13 Comments
User's avatar
Bill Campbell's avatar

Joel, doe Chris Christie (former NJ Governor) know you took that picture of him on the diving board? Asking for a friend.

Expand full comment
Worm Farmer extraordinaire's avatar

😂😂

Expand full comment
Steve L's avatar

Yes Joel, if anyone would have told me a quarter century ago that I would be fully supporting a New York Liberal, I would have laughed in their face. But we live in unprecedented times, or so they say, and given that choice between a New York Liberal and a certified mentally deranged communist, well….let’s enjoy this reality show together 😊

Expand full comment
Doug Hornig's avatar

Joel, if I may amend your list: politics is the "domain of murky ambiguity, deceptive nuance, and slippery slopes"--and gaslighting. We have a phrase up here that we've all seen many, many times with regard to a murder: "execution style, a double tap to the head." Criminals do it, usually in secret, and to make a statement. Now government does it, in broad daylight and on camera. Statement made. But an execution is not acceptable to the perps, and so the gaslighting begins. You didn't see what you just saw. A double tap to the head of a peaceful, unarmed citizen somehow morphs into "self-defense." And such is the power of persuasion that millions of people will placidly agree to be gaslit....

Expand full comment
Kenny Ellison's avatar

Are you referring to the cold blooded murder of Ashli Babbit?

Expand full comment
Taylor S.'s avatar

A quote I do not know whom to attribute to: "A person can be smart, but people will always be dumb..."

Expand full comment
Nancy Meiners's avatar

For a long time I've yearned to be part of "the majority" in my political opinions...just for a change, since I'm not part of the majority ever! Over the years I've seen that someone has to have ideas that are counter to the madness that is politics among the masses if for no other reason than maintaining a functional bullshit detector! So, now I think: That misfit might as well be me if I want to stay loyal to what is true and good.

Expand full comment
Steve L's avatar

Yes sweet Nancy, it’s what we perceive to be true and good that places us on either side. In a world where true is false and good is bad, I guess the majority will continue to be wrong 🤔

Expand full comment
Napacfo's avatar

Uva, uvam vivendo, varia fit! Larry McMurtry had a lot of fun with that one, writing about Call and McRae and their friends, driven by that Latin phrase: A grape, seeing other grapes, makes changes. When people join groups, they lose their minds. Jake Spoon was one of the more obvious ones from LM's tales.

School groups, employers, sports teams, social groups, political parties, personal friends and online subscriptions... You are who you hang out with. In this case, we seem to be in good company. This group doesn't want to drive their SUVs over DHS or ICE agents, yet.

Then we have the wolves in sheep's clothing, the Lawless Left, wrapping themselves in the robes of the outdated dem party, and the uninformed of the dem's ranks keep voting by party label instead of making more careful selections. That bunch of grapes has turned out rotten. Whether by accident or design, the result is the same. The NYers got themselves a Mamdani. Another Jake Spoon?

Expand full comment
Richard Smith's avatar

Joel, Dogs should be heroes to men, not the other way around.Men in rare intances should be heroes, and only if they don't wish to be a hero.

Expand full comment
Sluggo's avatar

God’s word is the absolute truth. But sadly, mortal man can’t even agree on that. All of the ‘false prophets’ (shilling for your money from their multi-million dollar churches) bear witness to this.

Expand full comment
Sluggo's avatar

Ah yes…you’re describing the proverbial “herd mentality”. If nothing else, a great way to lose money in the market.

Expand full comment
andy's avatar

It’s AI. You could have had Jumbo preparing to dip in a thong.

So many nakedly corpulent emperors, so many “peoples’” platforms for them to dance their jigs upon, & even when HAL’s pod doors open, it’s pot-bellied Slim Pickens riding it, all the way down, again & again, & again.

Strangelove, this warm-fuzzy dopaminefield congregant-wo/man just can’t not traipse.

In Man On Fire Creasy abuses Pita with the authority to impose the kissing of the emperors’ one true ring: “There’s no such thing as tough. There’s trained & there’s untrained. Now, which are you?”

And so does little Pita’s trailing vinedness begin: “Trained,” she says.

Prior to this scene was Creasy’s guilt-ridden & PTSD-wracked & alcohol-fueled attempted suicide.

But, bad primer, & “bullets never lie,” & Creasy was not yet scripted to die.

“Might makes right,” intone the “bullets never lie” peoples perp/endicular to the local beloved Jumbos dancing upon their trained-in human scaffoldingness.

Eight years later, that flick’s director, Ridley’s brother Tony Scott, jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro.

He took that gravity-that-trainers-said-was-gravy-trained all the way down into some hard soup.

“No soup for youse …”

Expand full comment