The Friday Politics Thread Does Stop Believin’

♫ I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a fail-safe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us ♫

One step forward on employment protections for LGBTQ+ individuals followed by two steps back to reinstate a poll tax in Florida and authorize the execution of a severely demented man moves the United States inexorably down the highway to Hell. Or, if not perdition, certainly toward the truck stop of failed states.1Insert Stuckey’s jpg here.

Reigning as the indispensable (though flawed and hypocritical) nation for going on 75 years, the United States now garners only pity from the handful of world leaders who have until now resisted the temptation to feed on the still-living corpse. All treaties broken; bedrock laws aimed at keeping water and soil covering rocks eviscerated; the political party in control of the U.S. Senate, the Executive Branch, and the federal judiciary, as well as too many state legislatures deciding that literal cans of beans deserve more respect than constituents’ dignity and well-being … .

Uvular could scroll out a list of atrocities and affront to law, order and plain good manners longer than the most-iron-constituted Politicado could stomach or Disqus would accommodate. What he really wanted to try your patience over this fine2No contract implied or given. Friday boils down to cancel culture and why that right-wing bugbear proves putting the Humpty Dumpty of the Republic together again may prove impossible.

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• Philadelphia’s Mummer’s Parade: Cancelled
• Pasadena’s Rose Parade: Cancelled
• The 2021 National Jamboree: Cancelled

Six to 12 months out, realists have begun pulling major cultural event off the schedule. Cancellations issued on the assumption that COVID-19 will not abate stand testify to what America as a society and polity cannot reasonably accomplish in its 245th or 246th year. Forget Bari Weiss3Please. and whomever next declares themselves the latest martyr to the ravening mob of people with (checks notes) morals, taste and appreciation for truth.

A culture that cannot produce cultural events has cancelled itself.

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Forget, too, Uvular’s overshared problems with the Institution Formerly Known as Boy Scouts of America. Scouting represented an ideal, The organization delivered on that promise often enough to produce good-to-great Eagle Scouts such as astronaut Neil Armstrong, television inventor Philo Farnsworth, and PBS/NPR stalwart Ray Suarez.4But also reprehensible rogues such as Ralph Reed and William Westmoreland.

Training grade-schoolers and teens to solve problems, giving them chances to develop practical skills, and inculcating them with a credo to live well and do good earned Scouting enough leeway to continue existing despite suffering from the problems that afflict all large, money-making organizations that bring together ill-intentioned adults and vulnerable children.

But Scouting’s marquee event will not occur. The society that supported it precisely so it could support society imploded. Blame a criminal Donald Trump. Blame abetting and mean-spirited Republicans. Blame lackadaisical and negligent Democrats. Heck, blame Canada and Uvular, too,

Just do some damn thing about it. March. Donate. Organize. Volunteer, Vote. Post below. Give up hope, but act regardless. Save what deserves saving and ensure the cancellation of the dross.

 

♫ I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me ♫