@xwanyex Love STL but I’m from Chicagoland and was astounded when I moved to STL to live in a place with more racial dysfunction than my beloved home region.
@Dualist85204213@bigmikemikemel@atrupar By dumb I mean “loyal enough”. I give the man enormous credit both for personal loyalty and for true respect for the office (he was incensed at Caro’s book despite loathing LBJ, for example). But that loyalty was also misplaced, naive and one-sided in the end.
@Dualist85204213@bigmikemikemel@atrupar Wire fraud and money laundering were slam dunks after the “I know where we can get an million dollars” statement. Iran-Contra (and the October Surprise more so) was orders of magnitude worse as a crime but Nixon was dumb enough to double down once those fools got caught.
@wojakh0rseman@joserloser Now that the Daleys are gone. Richard II was like our local Emmanuel Goldstein. Outsides wonder why we all talk about politics but hating the machine was the one thing that united the races and classes.
@mcmansionhell I’ve said this about 12 steps too. People think I’m nuts because the religiosity makes it right-coded but it’s a giant pocket of functional anarchism in our midst.
@mcmansionhell It’s hard to describe being a PK because your parents never had any money but they also didn’t have to pay rent or utilities. Plus being the most educated person in a community (if one of the least well off) is a strange privilege unto itself.
@HardcoreHistory LBJ and FDR were corrupt as hell. Anti-corruption unto itself is not necessarily a virtue, and neither is corruption unto itself an intolerable vice.
@btrmasaladosa@corbin_braun Much much much bigger shift back then imo. You went from having to consort with the yahoos in your immediate vicinity to being able to talk to anyone anywhere in the world overnight. Having a toy that can do first-order legal research or code for you is nothing comparatively.
@PeterDiamandis Is nobody genuinely curious about death anymore? Not in a suicidal way or a yearning for it but…seems like after four score or more years you’d be ready for whatever the next step of this adventure is.
@JuanIsidro@baltic_dan That’s the thing. When you’re a W-2, you get your $400/week (or whatever) in unemployment until worst case you debase yourself doing fast food or washing dishes. If you own your own business you pay to work until you’re forced to quit with mid-six figure debt and a divorce decree