Unpacking the amgdala-manipulation

Posted on by Dale

My goodness, isn’t Sarah Huckabee Sanders just the boldest little thing ever, just standing astride those Ozarks and repelling the Sharian hordes and shouting, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS, KENNETH!”

Honey please.

So, class, let’s unpack this ridiculous post from Xitter™, shall we?

First let’s review what we mean by amygdala-based lifeforms. Your amygdala is part of your brain, most often described as the center for your fight-or-flight responses. It’s reflexive, in that you will get that flush of whatever chemical (cortisol? I chose not to read the Wikipedia article closely) and your body will react to that fear or anger before you get to decide rationally whether that weird noise is actually a sabre-toothed tiger or just a brown thrasher doing its thing.

This is very useful for surviving and prevailing in the evolutionary sense, in that any humanoid without that reflexive amygdala would be eaten by the sabre-toothed tiger and not pass along its genes.

It turns out that in the evolutionary game, the amygdalas of some humanoids play a bigger role in their consciousness, i.e., they are more sensitive to those chemical messages of fear and anger than other humanoids. More than one study has shown that those humanoids who align more closely with the current [[[Republican Party]]] have more “fearful brains,” which again is not a judgment value of those brains at all, just an observation of the way conservative brains work.

Except… Some of those brains get addicted to the fear and anger. Like the artists over on Lichtenbergianism.com, who get a little flush of excitement whenever their brains invent a shinyperfect, they enjoy that chemical rush, and like human brains everywhere, they seek more of it.

Enter Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the rest of her tribe. You have probably noticed that the [[[Republican Party]]] does a lot of this, this ooga-booga maneuver of shoveling Things To Be Scared About into the brains of the amygdala-based lifeforms.

You and I can look at Sanders’s Xit™ and know immediately that it’s bullXit: There are no Sharian hordes threatening Arkansas (or any state) with sHaRiA LaW KENNETH. It’s just not happening. It’s not going to happen. Where are they even hiding? The Muslim population in Arkansas is approximately 6,765, which is about 0.2% of the state’s total population. That’s two-tenths of one percent.

But the unfortunate amygdala-based lifeforms don’t know that and don’t care to know that. All they know is that there is DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, and they need to be alarmed and wary, and they look for a strongman to protect them.

Here’s the deal: Sarah Huckabee Sanders knows the truth as well. She no more thinks that Sharia law is a threat to Arkansas and its laws than I do. She is, literally, stampeding the amygdalas for her own political power purposes. No more, no less.

Sharia law, trans people, CRT, DEI, and lately, their oldest shibboleth, cOmMuNiSm KENNETH! — all of these are simply code words, buttons that unscrupulous, dare I say immoral, people push to stampede the amygdalas.

Once you see it, you will see that this is practically the only tool in the [[[Republican Party]]]’s toolbox these days. It’s not as if they can campaign on specific policies and programs, so they rely almost completely on glittering generalities (“raise living standards”), tribalism (“America is a Christian nation”), and simple fear-mongering (“sHaRiA LaW KENNETH!!!!!”).

I offer no solution. So innate is this inborn fear and anger that it is next to imAllpossible to convince that kind of humanoid that while it might be exciting to be afraid of sHaRiA LaW KENNETH as a treat, that’s not going to lower the price of gas or restore our nation’s standing in the world. Mostly they would regard any effort to defuse their panic with truth as another ATTACK ON AMERICAN PRINCIPLES KENNETH.

All we can do is guide them gently whenever we can, and outvote them. (We can mock them as well, but I know that that is not a good strategy for changing their minds. Sucks to be them.)

They’re doing it again…

Posted on by Dale

…and by “them” I mean the [[[Republican Party]]], of course.

Here’s the headline:

And here’s the story.

You may wonder, if you are of sound mind if not body, why would the [[[Republican Administration]]] want to stop the National Park Service from going public with safety issues? As one park ranger said, “These reports alert others in the park of such things as rockslides, flash flood, and other, as well as reminding them about common sense safety.”

So, class, let’s review the steps in [[[Republicans]]] governance:

  1. Kneecap a government service (but never the military).
  2. Complain loudly about the degradation of said service as an example of how gOvErNmEnT nEvEr WoRkS KENNETH.
  3. Privatize it. Sell it off to your rich buddies so they can make you pay for what used to be a public service.

Got it?

  1. Kneecap the service: The [[[Republican Administration]]] has already cut National Park Service budget by over $700 million, necessitating layoffs, closures, etc.
  2. Complain loudly: This current move to keep the NPS from reporting deaths is sly. Those deaths will then be trumpeted — without context — by the Dept. of the Interior as evidence that NPS employees are not up to the task of keeping the public safe.
  3. Privatize it: Keep you eyes open and your ears peeled. It’s coming. They’re already sniffing around a lot of public land for mining, etc.

Another day, another [[[Republicans]]] scam.

update: It’s worse than you think.

 

Growth, you say?

Posted on by Dale
Downtown Newnan, GA. (If you knew where to look, you could squint and see my house.)

 

I live in my hometown of Newnan, GA, in Coweta County. (Yes, that Coweta County.) In fact, I live two blocks from the historic Court Square in a beautiful historic neighborhood filled with lovely homes and lovely neighbors. It’s a great place to live, with vibrant social and cultural communities.  Like most cities in the past, it was laid out in a grid that rapidly dissolved at the edges. Hold that thought.

The explosive growth of Newnan and Coweta County has become a topic of concern, mostly because of the increased traffic. It can get gnarly out there multiple times a day, so I thought I would provide some hippie-woo perspective on the problem and at least one solution, even it’s not an easy one.

First of all, City of Newnan, if that is your real name even, I think y’all should have a retreat and read through A Pattern Language together. You might even consider someone who is familiar with the concepts in that tome to help you figure out What It All Means and how it might help you in keeping our fair city a fabulous place to live.

tl;dr: A Pattern Language is structured through 253 “patterns” that the authors derived from their examination of land, cities, streets, homes, public spaces, all the way down to individual rooms, that seemed to work for the people who live there, all around the world. As it says in the Wikipedia article linked above, “Patterns describe a problem and then offer a solution. In doing so the authors intend to give ordinary people, not only professionals, a way to work with their neighbors to improve a town or neighborhood, design a house for themselves, or work with colleagues to design an office, workshop, or public building such as a school.” (The “walkable city” movement springs from the concepts in this book.)

What does this have to do with traffic congestion in Newnan, GA? A lot.

A couple of decades ago I suggested to the city manager at the time — based on my experiences with Pattern Language — that we should build a main road between and parallel to two existing main roads, Bullsboro Drive/Hwy 34 and Lower Fayetteville Rd, as well as connecting roads. In other words, lay out another grid.

Eventually, the light went on in someone’s brain, and we now have the Macintosh Parkway extending from downtown out to City of Hope, our regional cancer treatment center.

You know what we don’t have? Any new cross roads connecting the parkway directly to the other two main arteries. (There is sort of one there in the lower left, but it’s all twisty roads, not a straight grid. In fact, I drive both Macintosh Parkway and Lower Fayetteville Road multiple times a week, and I was completely unaware of that cross road until now.

You know what we do have? Multiple (and an increasing number of) subdivisions with at most two exits onto the main artery.

And here’s what brought this blog post into being: This morning I needed to run a couple of items to the dry cleaner, which is a four-minute drive from my house.

Usually.

Today, I decided that rather than drive to the end of my street and have to deal with turning right onto a main artery and then facing an immediate left turn — I was in a mood — I would simply drive over to one of the two main downtown streets , crossing over Jackson Street over to Jefferson Street and just zip up past the Dairy Queen, etc., a route didn’t require me to deal with oncoming traffic.

However, when I made the first right turn to head over to Jefferson, there was a cop car, blue lights going, blocking Jackson St. Hm, I thought, no problem. I made a right turn, then a left, but there was another cop car blocking Jackson St.

Of course: Today was the Juneteenth parade, and they were blocking cross traffic from the parade route.

Again, not a problem. I simply went back to my neighborhood and went through the grid and circled back to the cleaners. And to get home, I circled back in an even bigger loop, mostly because I had nothing pressing waiting on me at home and I wanted to see what my childhood neighborhood looked like these days. (Nearly 50 years after I moved out of my parents’ house, the trees are gorgeously bigger.)

Now imagine having a parade on Lower Fayetteville Road. How many subdivisions would have to stay put at home until the parade was over and Lower Fayetteville was clear before they could run an errand/go to the doctor/etc.? Some have twisty-turny paths they could take, but some don’t even connect through to the next subdivision for an escape route.

And now you understand why traffic can get so bad on those three main arteries: There are no capillaries connecting them. All those cars must pour on to those three main arteries — and onto the main arteries that do cross those three — whereas unless my street is shut down — I’m looking at you, PorchFest, Halloween, etc — I can get almost anywhere in town multiple ways.

Is this pattern an easy solution to our traffic issues? No, but the usual practice of adding lanes to existing arteries is not a long-term solution. There’s a reason our bodies need capillaries, and our cities have that same need for the exact same reason.

You can read/download a copy of A Pattern Language here.

Radical Liberals Attack the Kickwrassling Show!! KENNETH!

Posted on by Dale

Note: This post is meant to mock the amygdala-based lifeforms among us. Details of the plot and the plotters may emerge that obviate any true facts I might have used at this time. We regret the [future] error.

As soon as Ka$h Patel, unfortunate director of the FBI, announced that they had ThWaRtEd A pLoT KENNETH to obliterate the bouncy-house kickwrassling shindig on the lawn of the White House with drones, the rightwing Wurlitzer[1]  cranked up and immediately began feeding the amygdala-based lifeforms their daily ration of fear and anger: Only the evil liberals in our nation would want to murder the thousands of people at the bouncy-house kickwrassling shindig on the lawn of the White House KENNETH.

Only not.

It soon emerged that the actual terrorists were five (so far) of the saddest MAGAts you have ever heard of. They lived in widely distanced states, communicated online, and in general gave the sense that they were middle school boys playing some war-based RPG. In fact, the FBI “caught” them when the youngest dweeb’s mother overheard him talking to his fellow conspirators and called the local cops.

Their first problem was that they had no drones and apparently had no plans to obtain any. They seemed oblivious that drones are banned from the airspace over D.C. or that entire systems are in place to destroy any drone that strays.

It gets better. Their plan included a daring Jack Reacher escape along the Potomac, but it lacked some crucial details. What details, you ask?

Details like how to a) hang around and shoot important people as they fled the drone massacre; b) what to do about the entire Secret Service, DC police, etc, who probably would be loitering about; c) how to get to the river undetected more than three miles away; and d) how to escape to the abandoned church they designated as their safe house. (We will omit the problem of how they thought they were going to get close enough to carry out a) in the first place.)

It was magnificent. It rivals the best efforts of the Current Administration.[2]

So, I hear you ask, why would such diehard MAGAts want to snuff out the Current Administration?

As it says in the image, it was pretty simple, at least in MAGAt terms: They believed [[[Turmp]]] when he said he would root out all those baby-eating Demonrats™ and expose them as the Epsteiniest of the Epsteiners. They voted for him so he could finally, finally expose these demonic libtards for who they really were. (There was also some pretty virulent antisemitism.)

Oops, as pundits are increasingly saying. Once these boys realized that [[[Turmp]]] never intended any such thing for the very basic reason that he is all over those Epstein files, their sense of betrayal led them to each other and to come up with a plan to eradicate the evil from our nation once and for all.

Oops.

It depends on Shonda Rhimes‘s writers room, of course, but I can see their indictment and trial being a bit of a PR problem for more than one Individual. It will be delectable.

Or, in an unsurprising plot twist, they’re offered jobs in the Current Administration.

—————
[1] See here.

[2]See the Reflecting Pool, Iran “war,” flu outbreaks, ad infinitum

Fun in spam comments

Posted on by Dale

My website is hosted out in California by prxy.com, owned by an old AOL friend (and actual Apple designer back in the day). His spam filter is excellent, sending a daily report of what it’s trapped. I scan it to make sure there’s nothing I should have received, and then hit the “Delete All” button.

However, there are times when the spam header is so gonzo that I have to go look to see what the actual email says. (The filter allows you to peek at the email contents without actually opening a dangerous email.)

Mostly, though, I just laugh at the preposterousness of the scams they’re trying to pull. Almost all of them are some variety of Costco is giving you a $100 gift card, stuff like that, and there is nothing legitimate looking about them.

However, as a public service, let me give you a pro tip. If you get an email that looks legitimate, say from your bank or Social Security or Costco, the first thing you do is check under the hood:

  1. Click and hold on the From: field and see if the domain it’s coming from is actually your bank, etc.
    1. This info is sometimes right there in the Reply-To: field.
  2. If it’s not, then shift-ctrl-J (or your email/computer’s shortcut for Send to Junk is, is your friend.

As an example, allow me to share today’s haul.

First, a few examples of the clickbait headers, followed by the actual email each is from:

  • A $100,000 credit is now on your Netflix account, netflix [netflix@streamingeurope.homes]
  • Strange Black Elixir increases d*ck [sic] size by 3.6 inches, Men’s Health [support@livlfe.shop] (This one seemed oddly specific…)
  • That gaunt, haggard look…, Appearance Warning [help@garagewarrior.com]

You get the idea. Now here are the actual email addresses for the rest of today’s haul:

  • representativesbattery.lat
  • centurysteam.garden
  • understandprison.living
  • publicationsdangerous.living
  • everywherebid.living
  • holylegacy.blog
  • meatfamoous.garden
  • fbicard.garden
  • grore-images.com
  • gamercum. com
  • angular-engenharia. com.br
  • manuallift.living
  • whomnick.homes
  • chinesemusic.skin
  • surpriseltd.homes
  • emmaopinions.garden
  • jontglide.shop
  • underrapidly.property
  • startedlandscape.property
  • cabinetdevice.living
  • votedburied.homes
  • frauenvernaschen. com
  • shoppingtreated.garden
  • penwin.property
  • franckprovot. com
  • alonginvestements.property
  • cableplan.fit
  • alexanderrealized.garden
  • findingcares.lat

I mean to say, wot? I’m aware that the domains have multiplied beyond .com/.edu/.org/.gov, but most of those seem not credible in the least, not to mention the account names. In a quick check of two or three of them, none connected to a website, so you might wonder how they expect to scam you.

The answer is that each email gives you a simple way to claim your $100,000 credit from Netflix (??) — they give you a button to click.

And if you uncover the link in that button: http://www.claimxngoing.living/me/dl3nyxovwzn. There is no telling what that links to, but I suspect it installs malware on your computer.  (I have modified the text so that it’s not a link to anything.)

Anyway, I hope this entertained you as much as it did me, and I hope it was at least a little informative. Protect yourself!

—————

I recently tried a link to a domain that just seemed odd, but with a great name: look.feel.be — there was nothing there, so I suppose it’s available for your business or personal use. What would you put there? Feel free to speculate in comments.

Courage!

Posted on by Dale

I’m the coach of the Backstreet Writers Group at Backstreet Community Arts here in Newnan, GA, and as it happened, this morning the writers were late showing up. This is not a problem, except I didn’t really have anything of my own to work on.

When this happens, I require myself to draw a card from a deck called Empowering Questions that sits on our table and write an answer to said question. Today, that question was:

What is the most courageous thing I’ve ever done? How did it make me feel?

Oh dear.

I’ve been racking my brain and I really cannot think of anything I’ve ever done as courageous. I’ve taken risks, certainly, but nothing that would require what I think of as courage.

Except… it occurs to me that deciding to go for my first kiss with Ginny Henninger at the University of Georgia fifty years ago was like jumping off a cliff — and fortunately, she kissed me back.

So I assume I don’t have to tell you how that made me feel.

Pity the poor rich.

Posted on by Dale

Pity the poor rich.

The MAGAt crowd wants you to be as outraged as they are about taxing rich people’s New York pied-à-terres or private jets, so let’s take a look at their outrage.

If you ask them why the very very rich shouldn’t contribute to the well-being of the entire society by being taxed on their excess — and yes, dears, it is excess wealth — then their argument goes something like:

Rich people earned that wealth.

Ergo, they deserve that wealth. (And deserve to keep every penny of it.)

And then the trap:

Conversely, poor people haven’t earned that private jet.

Ergo, they do not deserve it.

Whatever they don’t have, they do not deserve it because they have not earned it.

Without meaning to, the MAGAts have admitted that they view their fellow humans as sorted into deserving and undeserving of… whatever it is that money can provide.

Food.

Shelter.

Clothing.

Family.

Education.

Healthcare.

Simple pleasures.

Life.

The same people who buy the store-brand mac-n-cheese and watch the checkout lady like a hawk do not think that people who are worse off than they are deserve anything they haven’t earned.

The same people who are, by chance, conservative Christianists, will gladly ring your doorbell and bore you to tears with how none of us deserve divine grace. But you — you over there on food stamps? Sucks to be you.

This mindset is poisonous. It guarantees that whoever believes this has agreed that some human life is not worth as much as others. They believe at some level that some people — other people — are tainted, are contaminated, are less than… than whom, MAGAts?

Less.

Than.

Them.

The disgusting irony of their position is that they are currently whining that aMeRiCa iS tOo A ChRiStiAn NaTiOn KENNETH, and yet they will tear the house down if anyone suggests that the government of a Christian Nation might want to think about feeding the hungry, comforting the oppressed, etc., etc., as someone once said. You would think they’d care.

But they don’t.

Odd, that.

see also: Bes

In the new Good Omens season 3, Heaven is gearing up for the Second Coming, the End of All Things, and they’ve engineered the reincarnation of Jesus. This beautiful boy is completely guileless and after two millennia away from reality is guided by his innate goodness. The scene where he begins feeding people from a pizza box — that we can clearly see has only one piece of pizza when he starts — brought me to tears. Yet MAGAts will say, “Nope, nope, none of that. When does he start smiting the unbelievers and throwing them into Hell for eternal torment? That’s what they deserve.”

Also, script team, I have a thrillingly better idea for the climactic event scene in the bookshop. Call me. (Why are you panicking? It only requires a reshoot of about three minutes of script. It will be totally worth it.) (Interested parties may email me if they’d like to hear about it. It’s a major spoiler, though not really if you see how things are going.)

Obama does the SNL cold open

Posted on by Dale

SCENE: THE OVAL OFFICE, OCTOBER 2015

[OBAMA sits behind the desk. It is squeaky clean. He is wearing a tan suit, obviously. Various members of his administration — THE GANG — stand/sit around the room.]

[There is a very long silence. Very long. THE GANG fidgets slightly. OBAMA looks around, clearly bored. Finally, he sighs…]

OBAMA:

Guys, this is boring.

[THE GANG mumbles in agreement.]

Shouldn’t we be doing something?

XXX:

Sir, the election is in a couple of weeks. There’s not really any time to do anything. I mean, what did you have in mind?

OBAMA:

Well, I’m kind of worried about my legacy. I’ve had some pretty big stumbles in the last eight years.

XXX:

Yes sir, but look at all you did accomplish — the Affordable Care Act…

THE GANG:

[air quotes, gang signs, etc]

O-BA-MA-CAAAARE!

XXX:

<more accomplishments, shared by various members of THE GANG, ending with…>

XXX:

… and no one will ever forget the Iran Deal!

[THE GANG agrees, maybe a couple of high-fives.]

OBAMA:

Still… [gestures…]

[THE GANG mulls it over, a bit uncomfortably. Then:]

XXX:

Sure, sir, there have been some blunders, but at least you didn’t botch the swine flu pandemic!

XXX:

<more catastrophic blunders/scandals/etc, shared by various members of THE GANG, ending with…>

XXX:

…or start a war with Iran and end up with the Strait of Hormuz blocked!

[EVERYONE laughs uproariously.]

OBAMA:

Man, that really would have been stupid.

[THE GANG agrees.]

OBAMA:

I guess there’s only one thing left to say. [turns to camera] America…

ALL:

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!

SNL Writers Room, I leave it to you to fill in the gaps. Have fun!

UDPATE: ANOTHER GENIUS IDEA: When Obama hosts SNL, other guest artists should be all the late night hosts targeted by [[[Turmp]]], with at least one faux-Fox interview.

Take Me Back to Manhattan — this time with SHARKNADOES!

Posted on by Dale

A while back, I blogged about the wonderfully terrible movie Sharknado and how I actually admired the craftsmanship that went into making a movie that absolutely farted in the general direction of what a movie is supposed to be.

Shortly after that, as we watched Sharknado 2: The Second One, I made more notes about how deliberately wrong the whole thing was, and that word processing document has remained open and unsaved on my laptop for over five years. Until now.

After saving Los Angeles in the first movie, our heroes Fin (yes really) and April have to save New York City. That’s all you need to know.

Like the first movie, this one simply ignores physics:

  • Standing atop some vehicle, Fin (Ian Ziering) slices through a one-ton shark as it flies overhead; he registers not even the trace of an impact.
  • Skye (Vivica Fox) slices through a giant shark (they’re all giant sharks) with a sword, again with little to no effort.
  • the Statue of Liberty’s head is struck by lightning and somehow gets from Ellis Island to … somewhere in Manhattan, where it rolls unimpeded and without apparent friction or damage on and on down the street (up the hill!).
  • How these sharknadoes, awesome as they may be, are able to (selectively) flood Manhattan is never examined.

Shitty camera work (deliberate, of course):

  • Our cast flees on CitiBikes, and the  camera keeps giving us shots of the tires, not of the actual (unflooded and dry) streets they’re fleeing through.
  • There’s a scene where our intrepid gang is fleeing up a flooded street, in which
    • Fin flings the rope, but there is no shot of it being secured
    • There are closeups of characters swinging over, and then low-angle, waist-up shots of them landed and reaching out for the next swinger, but no establishing shot to show where they’re swinging to — and the aerial of the cab in the water indicates that directly ahead of the cab is… the rest of the flooded street…

Situational danger:

  • Our heroes are in a flooding staircase (with sharks), but once they break into THE FIRE ESCAPE KENNETH (because a fireproof stairwell in a 65-story hotel is… what exactly?) and get to street level, it’s dry.
  • The location, direction, and speed of the various sharknadoes changes constantly.
  • Fin and his gang have their own personal cab that can do a Bullitt through the streets of Manhattan, but April and her crew have to hoof it from Battery Park to somewhere around 26th Street/5th Ave. This is after we’ve been shown scenes of a tidal bore (?) sweeping up the island.
  • Hurry, Fin, you only have eight minutes—who then takes another five minutes to have heartfelt discussions with his gang and make a St. Crispin’s Day speech atop a fire engine before somehow making it another dozen blocks to the Empire State Building and all the way up to the observation deck.

Again, no official governmental response:

  • We finally see a canopy tent some first responders have set up, and the Mayor OF NEW YORK CITY delivers a heartfelt statement of support for Fin, the ONLY PERSON who can jury rig the “freon tanks” on top of the ESB to explode and “freeze” the sharknadoes. Which of course he does.

This is merely a drop in the bucket ocean of hysterically wrong moments in this movie. I wholeheartedly urge you to start with the first one and then watch the entire series with guilty, oh-so-guilty pleasure. I may have to have a rewatch myself. I could use the laughs.

They’re doing it again

Posted on by Dale

And by “they” I mean [[[Republicans]]].

In January, the National Park Service announced that they were doing away with timed entry at those parks that have successfully used it to control traffic during peak times.  The [[[Republicans]]] in Congress all humphed and snorted that the lifting of the rule was so that Amerkins’ personal liberties KENNETH would not be infringed when they pulled up at Arches NP with a carload of kids after driving for days and be turned away because they didn’t plan. Quelle horreur!

So now Bubba and Sissy and their whiny kids are going to sit in a line of cars for hours just to get in, and then they’re going to sit in a line of traffic for the rest of the day since there will be no parking and there is no place to turn around.

How do I know? Because in 2023, we planned ahead and got our timed entry to Arches NP that fit our plans. We still sat in line for quite a while before we got in, but at least we didn’t crawl through the park with 10,000 Bubbas.

Without timed entry, places like Arches — and the nearby communities — suffer from the flood of humans. But [[[Republicans]]] keep framing it as freedom KENNETH despite objections from nearly everyone. (In fact, the administration has backed off the plan for most parks, creating the usual [[[Republican]]] chaos and even more economic stress for locals.)

So what’s going on? Easy. It’s the go-to strategy for [[[Republicans]]]: screw around with a public good, wreck it, then tell us that it needs to be privatized for efficiency, i.e., profit! (They are in this regard one step above the Underpants Gnomes.)

Exhibit A: The United States Post Office, established in the Constitution as a public service, was ordered by Congress to prefund pensions for 70 years into the future, something required of no private company in the country, thus ensuring its current struggles. [[[Republican]]] response? Privatize it.  The free market always does it better and cheaper, right?

Exhibit B: Public schools, or as [[[Republicans]]] call them, failing public schools. How do they know our schools are failing? They did it on purpose. Privatize: Take our tax dollars and give them to private/religious schools instead.

Exhibit C: The entire federal government since Turmp’s election. See: DOGE, et al. Have government support systems become more efficient KENNETH since?

In every case, [[[Republicans]]] take a public good, impose restrictions deliberately designed to cripple the public good, then bray about how gOvErNmEnT dOeSn’T wOrK KENNETH. Next step: Sell it off to their rich friends.

Don’t believe me? Here’s Turmp’s nominee to lead the NPS: Scott Socha, “a president for parks and resorts at Delaware North, which describes itself as one of the world’s largest privately owned hospitality and entertainment companies, with more than $4 billion in revenue in 2022.” At least his company has experience with national parks, but here’s the tell from the White House: “Scott looks forward to implementing America First initiatives, such as increasing park access for American families, reducing permitting burdens, and raising money for conservation projects.”

In case your [[[Republican]]] translation device can’t handle the load, here:

  • ‘America First’ = whitewashing any history that offends [[[Republicans]]]
  • ‘increasing park access’ = letting the public run wild and degrading the parks to the point where it only makes sense to sell them off KENNETH
  • ‘reducing permitting burdens’ = mining
  • ‘raising money for conservation projects’ = because we cut the NPS’s $2.9 billion operating budget by more than $900 million.

Not convinced? The [[[Republican]]] onslaught against public lands is a) not new; and b) ongoing.

And how does Fox News feel about this?

3 national parks slash red tape for Americans by boldly transforming visitor entry

Good luck, Bubba. Hope y’all brought snacks and a pee bottle.