Our beloved democracy, that is. Good going. NBC calls it.
Goodbye, cruel world.
In a little while, we’ll start parsing the sickest of them, the lies that degraded us just by our having to be in the same room with them. Soon we’ll marvel at four years stuck in a surround sound of the absolutely rankest bullshit, as if the president this blog calls The Genius of the Carpathians were indeed Nicolae Ceaușescu, and we his hopelessly entrapped auditors.
For me the sickest and most degrading lie of all was uttered in Trumpism’s late decadent stage – just a month before his downfall, when his brightest and slickest enabler, Lara Trump, assured an interviewer that Trump telling a rally to scream lock her up at an American governor who had just narrowly avoided being violently kidnapped, and whose only offense against Trump’s crowd lay in her responsible approach to a pandemic, was all in fun. A Trump rally is a “fun, light atmosphere.” Everyone was just “having fun at a Trump rally.”
Violent, repeatedly stoked, crowd hatred is frightening. Two-Minute Hates are a horror. Got that? It’s not light, and it’s not fun, and the country will be safer when perky all-American shitmongers like Lara Trump go away.
[T]he results are not really close.
With many ballots still left to count in heavily Democratic cities, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was leading President Trump on Friday by more than 4.1 million votes… Mr. Biden’s current vote margin is larger than the populations of more than 20 states…
Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese WW2 soldier found hiding out in the jungle thirty years after the “end” of the conflict (Hiroo didn’t acknowledge that it had ended), wrote a memoir titled No Surrender: My Thirty-year War. At 74, the current American president is unlikely to enjoy Hiroo’s longevity, so let’s anticipate that his memoir will be titled something like No Surrender: My Ten-year War. And though he’ll be hiding out in the comfortable Greenbrier Bunker (after de-de-commissioning it and throwing the tourists out), and will even sneak upstairs for occasional rounds of golf, the president will be no less a hero than Onoda, both men icons of fidelity to a cause.
“Trump will not concede; he will continue to deny the legitimacy of this result. His performance on Thursday night was perhaps his lowest and darkest yet, groundlessly telling Americans they could have no faith in their most solemn democratic rite: the election of a president. As he leaves, he will scorch the earth and poison the soil.
But all of that is to remind us why it was so essential, for America and the world, that he be defeated. And why, even though it may have arrived slowly and without the fanfare so many of us wanted, this will be a moment to savour. A dark force is being expelled from the most powerful office in the world – and at long last, we can glimpse the light.”
‘Don Jr Urges his Dad to “Fight to the Death”‘
*******************
Will Melania be as obliging as Eva? Color me skeptical.
Georgia, Georgia, the whole night through
Just an old sweet hope kept Georgia on my mind
Georgia, Georgia, love you so
We’re movin’ up to 2-7-0
***************************
Certain voters frighten me
Certain eyes look violently
And in dreadful dreams I see
The road lead back to Trump
Georgia, Georgia, some peace I find
Just a late-night count keeps Georgia on my mind
Its loyalty to Trump knows no bounds – or knew no bounds, until his surrogate/son tweeted that his father should “go to total war over this election.” Apparently a naked call to civil war falls just a tad over the line for the Post.
************
A preview of the Trump clan preparing for war.
************
And lookee here. The Post seems to be… er… adjusting to a shift in the winds.
[B]y picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved, and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong… The politics of cultural resentment, the obsessions of white anxiety, are so intense that his voters are determined not only to preserve minority rule but to leave a dangerous sociopath in the Oval Office. Even the candidacy of a man who was both a political centrist and a decent human being could not overcome this sullen commitment to authoritarianism.
… at vote-counting locations, and they are singing their song for their man!
Violate me, in the violet time,
In the vilest way that you know.
Desecrate, savage me
Utterly ravage me
On me no mercy bestow.
To the best things in life I am cold and oblivious
Give me a man who is lewd and lascivious, to
Violate me, in the violet time,
In the vilest way that you know.
**************
[Kimberly Guilfoyle pushes forward; sings:]
What you would have him say
But now and then he’ll say
Something wonderful!
*****************
[Lara Trump sings:]
The thoughtless things he’ll do
Will hurt and worry you
But now and then he’ll do
Something wonderful!
*****************
[They sing together:]
A thousand QAnons
Will not come true
You know that he believes in them
And that’s enough for you!
Boris Badenov scripts the next few weeks of Trumpian complaints about the whole political franchise thing.
Hey, pull away, the ship of state is holding.
Hey, pull away, you’ve pulled away, Joe!
Hey, pull away, the vote is now unfolding,
Hey, pull away, you’ve pulled away, Joe!
King Donald was a bully boy
Before the revolution
(Hey, pull away; you’ve pulled away, Joe!)
He tried to crown himself today
And kill the Constitution
Hey, pull away, you’ve pulled away, Joe
Hey, pull away, we’re bound for better weather
Hey, pull away, you’ve pulled away, Joe
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte