The Blog of Nothing

Evolution’s crowning achievement, in this respect, was the emergence of spoken language. It was a dangerous adaptation that involved crossing the airway with the foodway, making us vulnerable to choking. But it also gave us the ability to modify the sounds that came from our vocal folds and make the variety of mouth noises required for language. While language may have been driven by the need for larger, more complicated social structures, think of the immense collaborative act that developing a language required from its speakers. That multigenerational exercise alone would change the fabric of society and its faith in a cooperative enterprise.

Only in white conservative Evangelical America can a white man rape a woman and the woman (and doctor) risk being imprisoned longer for aborting the fetus than the white man for committing the rape, while another white man can sexually assault a woman and brag about “grabbing her pussy,” and become elected President of the United States.

Poverty is “the worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it; all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities, spreads horrible pestilences, strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound, or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then. What do they matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life; there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill-fed, ill-clothed people. They poison us morally and physically; they kill the happiness of society; they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime; we all fear poverty.”

I am really looking forward to local Republicans here in the heart of corn and soybean country explaining that they have to elect Trump in 2020 even though his trade war with China has led them to need government subsidies for the crops that they can't sell to China anymore  -- e.g., to accept government support for products they can't sell -- because electing Democrats means socialism.

This is how corporate lobbying works: Lobbyists ID bills they need to kill to keep profits high (no matter the human cost), come up w/ “sensible” talking points to mask intent + say policy is “misguided,” then schmooze policymakers in secret into accepting said talking points.