mallorys_camera | Flying to Iceland In a Dog Crate Plus Privilege

Achieved a significant personal milestone yesterday: Got my first credit card since the 2008 recession erupted over my Little Store and turned my life into a frieze-adorned ash pit.

The credit limit is enough to cover an impulse trip to California or even Iceland if I manage to convince airline officials I’m a dog and fly in a crate in baggage. More likely, however, it will go toward snow tires. All the weather prognosticators are predicting a very severe winter hereabouts with lots and lots of snow.

The plan is to spend to the limit every month and then to pay it off every month. ‘Cause that’s how you get the limit increased.

Once the limit is in the land of four digits, I won’t use the card at all. Except for emergencies.

It’s been a very rocky and terrifying eight years, and I would not have been able to pull it off without the multiple kindnesses shown to me by friends – some of whom may even be reading these words. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Because I’m a bitter bitch, I will note that no one in my blood family lifted a single finger to help me. I’ve always occupied a kind of Jane Eyre among the Reeds position in my blood family. They have never liked me. My earliest memories – maybe age three? – are of being thrown repeatedly down the flight of steps in front of 79 Lefforts Avenue by one of my mother’s sisters and of being beaten with a wire hanger by my mother while another one of her sisters watched.

Dysfunctional families are very odd that way.

There is generally one member whom all the other members take it out on.

But I survived, and here I am with a credit card!

###

My social media feed has turned into a wailing mob of Hillary agonists. I try to keep my mouth shut and offer those few scintillating nuggets of political analysis that I think are relevant to the situation: Donald Trump is not the one they should be afraid of; Mike Pence is the one they should be afraid of. Hence, the impeachment of Donald Trump – which many seem to be actively rooting for – would be a very, very bad thing indeed.

I am a bit impatient with the wailing, though.

They’re acting as though it’s a personal loss, and I’m thinking, Really? Gee, ya think when Hillary Clinton was collecting those big checks from Goldman Sachs, she was wondering, “How am I going to subdivide this with all my fans on Facebook?”

These are people who prattled a lot about “privilege,” without quite understanding, at least on a visceral level, that they were the most officious embodiment of privilege, that even the fact that they talked about privilege was a type of privilege.

I wish I had saved my posting to this one guy. ENT doc from Davis, California, self-styled Buddhist, leftie, very clever, very smug and dismissive of the “Bernie Bros,” whom he was constantly ridiculing. One day, he posted something to the effect that we had given those Rust Belt complainers a recovery, found most of them exactly the kind of low level employment they were qualified to do, so what was their problem? His smug tone just infuriated me.

This was shortly after HRC’s “deplorables” remark – and in hindsight, I think that remark may have cost her more votes than the reopening of the FBI investigation into her emails because let’s face it, when somebody in power disses you like that, it’s a slap in the face whereas email shenanigans are business as usual.

Get real: They are deplorables, said the ENT doc from Davis. Or at least words to that effect.

And I just lashed out at him. Told that privileged California motherfucker that he didn’t have a clue what life was like outside the La-La land bubble and that it was attitudes like his that were fueling the Trump momentum and that he just better pray it didn’t snowball –

Well. Of course, I said it much more eloquently at the time!

He promptly unfriended me and blocked me.

ENT doc from Davis was just infused in the preternaturally glowing mantle of one for whom “victory” was a foregone conclusion! Because in his entire 50 some odd years on the planet, he’d never lost in any significant sense of the word.

faeriefiles summed it up rather nicely: All I can say is that I am sorry we never allowed you to lose.

###

Anyway, I am now on the steering committee of the Dutchess County Progressive Action Alliance. This is the pro-Bernie Sanders activist group I helped set up a whole year ago when Sanders first announced he was challenging HRC’s “inevitable” candidacy.

The group has a relatively large constituency but (obviously!) no mission. So I think it should be fairly easy to suborn!

Ah! But to what purpose?

Well. Obviously to the purpose of winning the local 2018 elections. Which means a concrete plan for becoming involved in Dutchess County politics. Also need to work on a funding mechanism – Dutchess County’s Department of Planning and Development does give some $$$ to groups that do community organization. This might involve doing all the busywork involved in getting nonprofit status, though. And then, of course, there’s nuts and bolts stuff like setting up procedures and communication lines so that members don’t end up working at cross-purposes with one another.

Wringing one’s hands and competing to make your voice the loudest in the collective wailing fest accomplishes absolutely nothing so far as I can see. Call me hard-hearted, unfeeling, bitchy, but it’s not a process I respect.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

idunn.livejournal.com

Scapegoats in dysfunctional families also have this weird tendency of finding success and doing better than their entire fucked up family of origin.

My dad was completely neglected in his family. Started a business at 15, bought a house at 25, now owns multiple properties and has his own radio show.

Kid I mentor escaped from a family of violent sociopaths that thought raising your kids meant kicking them out when they hit 14 so they could fend for themselves. She's now in college and has her head on straight. Her whole family are crazy addicts.

I could go on. I think because scapegoats tend to escape early because of the abuse, and they can't rely on anyone, they tend to blossom. I call it the Harry Potter Rule.

From:

robby.livejournal.com

A few months ago, I commented on LJ that Hillary should step down in favor of a better candidate. Her shills got shrill and abusive.
I also challenged the idea that the LA Times poll was laughable. More bullshit. I hope the Democratic primary is never again hijacked by corrupt insiders.

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Flying to Iceland In a Dog Crate Plus Privilege

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