Two Parties, Both Alike in Dignity*

Posted on by hollyfrostgoldportpress


In fair America, where we lay our scene . . .

By Holly the Assistant

We’ve long known that the image of reality has diverged in the two parties. Not the actual reality–whatever your party affiliation it’s still possible to talk to you about the doe with the twinsies by the old egg farm, you can see her same as I can–but the image, the view projected by others and accepted by those not personally present at the scene of, of the reality.

This got exhibited just now on a perfectly innocuous State Patrol social media post about checking trucks for safety at the border (northern). The trucks are entering a state that goes from 900 ft above sea level to over 10,000 ft above sea level (though I sincerely hope none are scaling the peaks, and are staying to the more paved roads that top out about 8,000). A little double check of the brakes and tires seems appropriate. One group is praising the State Patrol–by far the majority. Two small groups think either that State Patrol should be checking for illegal alien drivers or that they are there only to harass poor innocent brown drivers. Somehow, I suspect that the legality of the drivers entering the USA is really the department of the border crossing guards just north of the State Patrol stop, and the State Patrol is probably about as brown as the drivers anyway.

But I’ve seen it everywhere. One group condemning President Trump for not sending firefighting help to Canada, the other group condemning President Trump for sending firefighting help to Canada so it’s not available to local fires.

One group condemning Congress for grilling that poor old hero Fauci, the other group condemning Congress for not jailing that old crook Fauci.

One group condemning parents for not getting their kids vaccinated thus causing the spread of measles, the other group pointing out that the current cases are vaccinated adults.

One claiming that Russia or Iran has won and the Ukraine or the USA are done for, the other claiming that the Ukraine or the USA has won and Russia or Iran is on the brink of total collapse.

One claiming that ICE is arresting and deporting Native American Tribal Members, the other pointing out that the photo is too blurry to make out if it’s ICE, there’s no evidence that the arrestee was deported, there’s no evidence of the legal status or tribal membership of the arrestee, there’s not even a name attached . . .

The award winning children’s book is banned! The smut is removed from the school library, go buy it online you nasty person.

A rational person would think these are fairly . . . reality checkable things? As checkable as the doe with the twins is? But they aren’t . . . that is, we ourselves cannot go there personally and look. Well, some of us have looked at the lack of aerial support in the timeline we would prefer to local fires, but it’s a bit harder to tell if that’s because the planes are stateside elsewhere, out of country elsewhere, getting repairs, or some other reason why reality simply couldn’t conform to our expectations.

We rely on reports from others, and those others have their own agendas. We trust that others have fact-checked or ask people we trust to fact-check if we don’t have the knowledge. Or we accept the reports based on our own biases and previous knowledge.

I don’t think my leftist acquaintances are going to be born out in the midterms in their belief that President Trump’s supporters are abandoning him over “starting a war in Iran”. I don’t see that in my right acquaintances at all. Maybe a little pissed off he hasn’t ended it yet, but no one thinks he started it. Far more likely that the right rejects some senators for not passing the SAVE Act, (or shenanigans at the ballot boxes cost some re-elections) and the left interprets that as Trump’s supporters abandoning him.

I’m pretty sure the Huns are the most political fact-checking prone community out there on the internet, but keep in mind your neighbors have different fandoms, and the folks who are most engaged in the fandom of which breed of sheep has the lowest parasite load in your local conditions, what the best drought condition supplemental feed is, and which herd dog breeding pairing would be best, might could use a heads-up on what that ballot proposition actually will do, or even a reminder of when the various elections are. Just try to keep your geeking out short enough they don’t zone out, please!

*Alike in dignity? Well, yes. Exactly. I didn’t claim either had any amount of dignity at all, did I now? And neither did Shakespeare, did he? Also, recollect the next two lines of the prologue, if you would please, and let’s try to skip that, thank you very much, in so far as it is in our power to.

49 thoughts on “Two Parties, Both Alike in Dignity*”

      2. Well, with the exception that there is, on occasion, a Republican that has some vague sense of reality. (Rarely do they make it by the primary, but that is the only reason that I keep my party registration.)

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  2. Worth noting Chinese lave literally 10 million “burner accounts” on social media to share extreme ideas simply to divide us and make us easier to conquer.

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  3. I freely admit, I’m less than thrilled by people who declare (at least to the pundits and pollsters) “Because I disagree with [president/party candidate] based on what I’ve read in the media, I’m going to support the other side.” Especially when the individual then can’t say what about the Other Side they agree with.

    Yes, there are “hold my nose” elections when choices are “Not Great” and “Really Not Great.” This is going to be one of those years in some local and state races. If people have done the homework and still back “The Other Team,” then I’m more OK with that, even if I disagree.

    I look forward to the day when I can go back to spending less time following polit-icks. Never get away completely, because governments refuse to just work quietly in the background and leave me alone, but less attention. It makes me feel grubby to see so many so-called adults behaving like brats, or determined to spoil everything they can’t control (and mess up in the process).

    *Kicks away soap box, trots off to do work*

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  4. Iran had an official, declared war against the United States for 48 years. All our people were enemy combatants and historically were treated as such (but without the benefit of international rules regarding the treatment of war prisoners.).

    That no previous POTUS took the declaration  of war seriously is on them.

    Trump took it seriously.

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    1. We’re still at war with Korea. Well, North Korea, anyway. There’s an armistice, but the conflict was never officially ended.

      The Seminole War hung fire for over a century after the last recognized battle, when they agreed to formally end it as part of their deal with the State of Florida wrt casino gambling. It was sad that tradition lost out to feelthy lucre, but they moved on with the times.

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      1. The NORKs also have one of our ships which was seized long after the end of hostilities. And I’ve heard that we once had to use a helicopter gun to “remove” a tree in the DMZ because the NORKs kept using it to screen their guys when they would attempt to kidnap soldiers watching the southern side of the DMZ.

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  6. Just because I support your right to vote for the candidate of your choice, doesn’t mean you are not an idiot for voting for the democrat, socialist, communist. Whether you are a traitor or not depends on your actions, not your vote. I can still call you an idiot and refuse to listen to your ramblings and encourage others to ignore you as well. That is the price for being an idiot, want people to stop treating you like an idiot, stop acting like one, and stop voting like one.

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  7. Dignity requires integrity. Too many in the Democratic Party threw integrity in the garbage, and vote in lockstep on any position regardless of how bizarre it may be. Too many in the Republican party will portray their actions as those of people with integrity, but climb into the back pocket of those with enough money to influence. Dignity of both is similar to the dignity of the well dressed drunk laying in the gutter; sullied by their actions, wondering why they can’t get respect, and wasting what they should never waste.

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  8. When the entire edumacational system has spent decades changing the definitions, so “striping the roads” is socialism, then the real socialists show up again using the real grave-filling definitions, it is no wonder there are a bunch of people who are making choices absolutely incomprehensible to folks who learned the words back before the definition-changing.

    When the common language is corrupted, communication becomes very difficult.

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    1. Funny how a road, a simple flat surface with no moving parts, which can be fully understood even by young children, can only be built by the government, while the incredibly complex and often hazardous vehicles that use the road are built by numerous private companies.

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      1. There are plenty of private roads. They just tend to not be very long because maintenance and upkeep is expensive.

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    1. If you were vaccinated between 1957 and 1976, the immunity could have waned – there was a change in the vaccine in 1976.

      Back when I was being put on Humira for psoriatic arthritis, a bit over ten years ago, I had an antibody titer test done, along with a multitude of others, because it suppresses the immune system response. Came out as being just fine. (Also learned that I did NOT have latent tuberculosis – something that had been in my records since I was a teenager.)

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        1. Wife had to get several jabs when she went to become a teacher.

          Of course, she also had to get the CoViD jab, even though they were entirely on-line at the time.

          (I got the entire family vaccinated – but with the J&J while it was still available. That at least was a semi-proven technology, they had one based on adenovirus out for several years by then. I still very much suspect that they were decertified because Fauci and company did not get royalties from that technology. The adverse reactions were no more than any other vaccine, and not as much as the Pfizer/Moderna.)

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      2. Also learned that I did NOT have latent tuberculosis – something that had been in my records since I was a teenager.)

        Uh-yeah. Ten years ago an offhand comment by my doctor led to a “WTF?” moment. It turned out an outside consult had returned a report that was wrong about so many things, we’re reasonably sure it had my name on it, but was actually someone else’s record. He said that, unfortunately, he sees that a lot. And more unfortunately, the consult report went into EPIC, the dominent “Electronic Medical Record” system, and for all practical purposes, the bad data is there forever.

        I have my own, personal, clean medical record now, built with spreadsheets and hardcopies of reports and labs, which are acceptable documents in court, if it comes down to that. But almost no doctor will even look at my record; it’s not “official”, like EPIC’s bad data.

        If I’m ever unconscious in an emergency room somewhere and they pull up EPIC, bad could turn to worse.

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  11. I note Spain, having gone commie-lite as an FA, has reached the FO stage. I also note Portugal is not having nearly the issues at their border.

    I also note the various loons calling this the start of the el Andalus counterrequonquista. As I noted over in a comment on Insty, if we’re going to play reductio ad annos antiquos the Romans had it all before the Vandals, and absent current Carthaginians to state their prior claim with war elephants, it would all belong to Giorgia Meloni. Ave, Augusta!!

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  12. Just FYI, most aerial tankers fighting fires are private operators, flying on contract. The ones going to the Great Northern Speed Bump are generally contracted well before fire season, sometimes on multi-year agreements.

    There are a limited number of tankers available in any given year, and a limited number of pilots and ground crews. These, too are generally hired well before fire season — they sit on their okoles until getting called out, then pack months’ worth of work into a few weeks, but the rule is that whoever signs first has first call on their services.

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    1. There used to be more, when the industry was a lot more wild west and the planes were the absolute cheapest things the contractor outfits could barely keep flying, often the last remaining flying WWII bombers and such well into the 1980s. Then there were enough fatal crashes, and the fleet was forced to move up to ex-mil cargo planes. Then a wing folded up during a pull-up after a drop on a quite old, very high hour and high-flight-cycle C-130, and the regs on inspections and allowable age got even tighter.

      Now the contract stuff is ex-civilian airliners converted to drop the red stuff. There are a couple 747s, a lot of slightly smaller airliners, and a very few purpose-built firefighting aircraft like the DeHavilland amphibs that skim bodies of water to load up that LA County leased.

      The contract helo firefighting side is similar – there are still some Hueys doing the job, but mostly they are the civil twin engine version, I have seen some of the last few Skycranes out here doing firefighting, and more and more of whatever they call the civilian Blackhawk doing bucket drops.

      Here in the formerly golden state CalFire has its own firefighting fleet, spotter planes are now ex-USMC OV-10s, and in addition to the converted-to-turboprop ex-USN S-2T there are a bunch of C-130s now in CalFire red and white. But in a bad year that’s not enough so they exclusive-contract with outfits that own and fly the heavy iron 747s and DC-10s and such as well as the smaller ex-airliners to have them sitting alert alkyl fire season as well.

      Here’s a pic of a CalFire S-2T:

      https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50297070037_1a7c11cbca_b.jpg

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          1. CalFire got seven ex-USCG HC-130H airframes with extensive rework, including new reinforced wing structure, all the tanks and such in the back to drop 4,000lbs of retardant in a couple seconds, as well as the cool paint job.

            That the bureaucracy in California actually accomplishing getting these acquired, refurbished and put in service after the deal was approved in 2018 stands out from the stuff you see for thinks like the stupid high speed rail graft-o-thon that’s normal in Sacramento.

            Though to be fair both the ground and air sides of CalFire are at the pointy end dealing with wildfires stemming from all the forest mismanagement over the past fifty years, so they kinda need to get things right. I have relatives retired from the ground side in northern California, and I’ve met and chatted with air attack pilots that fly the OV-10, which replaced the O-2A doing the direction and spotting, tanker pilots flying the S-2T, and the helo pilots based in Los Gatos that used to fly the Hueys but just transitioned to a new-to-CalFire Blackhawk variant, brand new S-10i FireHawk (image below), and they are all a professional bunch. It’s nice to see the acquisition and support is up to their standard.

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            2. I have a current extended-family CalFire relative on the ground side out of SLO. Don’t talk to him much, since I’m in Oregon.

              He used to be very popular at the stations – he can cook!

              I was interested to see CalFire had a location at McClellan near Sacramento; my dad retired from USAF out of McClellan in 1971; I enlisted in CA ANG the next day!

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    2. In Texas, the state has a few full-time fire-fighting planes and crews (single-engine), and contracts every year for more that are then prepositioned based on the drought monitor and historic patterns. Up here we also have a group of ranchers who pooled their money, sent one of the guys who already had a helo license to learn how to water drop, and bought a fire-fighting helo. It showed up unannounced a few years ago and led to all sorts of interesting stories and theories before they ‘fessed up. Now they cover one part of the region as first response, with fixed-wing back up and support from the state when needed.

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  13. None of the aerial firefighting comments mentioned something critical.

    The equipment may be deployed for various fires. Deployed does not mean flying. Dropping retardant, and water buckets is dangerous enough. Wrong wind conditions, major front moving in, or even lack of wind (visibility gone due to smoke) will ground air drops. Regardless of what kind.

    Helicopter Bucket Drop Crews might be visible in a fire camp, because helicopters can land anywhere. But the airplane water drop tankers (regardless of which ones), will be physically staged out of an airport, not the fire camp.

    In addition I know fire crews cannot be just deployed anywhere. Every environment is different. A permafrost forest takes different handling than a manzanita laden undergrowth. Different dangerous wildland fire of a prairie sage grassland fire from a steep high mountain scree forest wildland fire. All are different very dangerous fire situations. Wrong crew in untrained for conditions, a fire manager can end up with a dead crew.

    Could be there are no properly trained wildland firefighters available to deploy into the Canadian wildfire environment. The ones who are properly trained for the conditions are already deployed and fighting wildland fires elsewhere.

    In addition Oregon is having a different problem. Their wildland fire crews are deployed to Colorado, and other state wildland fires. Then Oregon got hit with lightening. Did not take long before the wildland fire fighters and equipment well hit empty.

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  15. Not exactly meme related, but culturally, the Broadway Musicals of. 50’s and 60’s provided a rich pastiche of gags and paradoxical themes that helped form my love of satire and comedy to this day. Why mention this today? Well, in the middle of a heat wave here, and its well over 110 degrees in the shade. Which got me thinking of that musical, which I did see on Broadway with my parents and listen to on 33 ⅓ rpm vinyl I have inherited. But for some reason all I could think of was the song “It’s Too Darn Hot.” Well, that’s a Cole Porter song from Kiss Me Kate, a raucous comedy mixing gangsters, race and Shakespeare, and since I hear its National Orgasm Day, but its too darn hot…

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