political science

No Butterflies For You, Kid!

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

The Q people have developed a fantasy that children are being sex trafficked by the hundreds of thousands, and they must find ways to save them. This fits tactically with Republican goals of fear and disruption. I’ll leave most of the psychological side to others, but there’s an outcome to this alleged concern for children that I haven’t seen noted before.

The loonies have focused on the National Butterfly Center in their zeal to end their imagined evil, and it has had to close down because of their threats of violence.

One of the great joys a child can learn is the close observation of nature. It’s one of my great joys to find a new tiny cactus in my yard, the kind of observation I learned from my mother from the time I was a toddler. The Butterfly Center was a destination for school trips, where kids could see butterflies up close and personal.

In the name of protection, Q and their Republican allies deprive kids of growing up with joy. Teaching them that the world is a horrible place with no relief, just as they believe for themselves.

It’s not just the National Butterfly Center. The Comet Ping Pong attacked by a Q gunman in Washington, DC, was one of those silly places where kids can eat pizza and be entertained. Schools, of course, have become places of terror with regular physically enacted reminders that kids can be gunned down at any moment, now compounded with the fear of deadly disease. Some want to introduce constant surveillance in schools.

In the name of protecting children, they are destroying the joy and freedom of childhood so that children will grow up as twisted as they are.

Cross-posted to Lawyers, Guns & Money

President Biden Restores Strategy To Politics

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

President Joe Biden was a senator for 36 years. He has seen horse-trading. He has seen comity with segregationists. He has seen deadlock and filibusters. He has seen bipartisanship. He has seen Newt Gingrich’s power grab. He has seen Mitch McConnell’s obstructionism.

He knows how the Senate and the House work.

One of the things he learned is that nothing happens quickly in the Senate, particularly when the margin is as close as it is now. But there are ways. Those ways are not played out in the public eye. They involve quiet talks and promises, agreement and respect. Some of these things may even be feigned. But feigning respect, for example, is itself a way of showing respect.

None of these tactics was useful in an administration devoted to one man’s whims. The old ways decayed even before that, under Gingrich’s and his successors’ scorched-earth politics. Reporters who grew up since Gingrich do not recognize that other tactics exist. They do not recognize that relationships are built and doubts sowed behind the scenes. They are accustomed to tantrums and sudden shows of power. They do not have the tools to describe the wide array of tactics Biden brings with him.

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