Brisketexan

Yeah.....my daughter and her friends are pretty boldly responding "your cock, my Glock." Misogynist men are emboldened as fuck (and why wouldn't they be? We just elected a sexual predator president (I mean....he actually brags about it), and the mouthpieces around him are often as bad or worse). They are openly threatening and taunting women in public and online -- emboldened by the election of DJT. But emboldened shitheels, acting purposefully to terrorize half the population, well....that will SURELY end well.

If you can't hate the fucking Walloons, who CAN you hate? And don't get cocky, you Flemish fucks -- you're not far behind 'em.

This. No culture is 100% "me," 0% "we," or vice-versa. But one of the things -- maybe THE thing -- that ultimately made this country and culture broadly succeed was finding a balance between the two. On the one hand, we have long had robust protection of basic individual rights against the possible overreach of the state. The degree to which we have had that is truly incredible. Seriously, compare it with even other "enlightened" nations. On the other hand, we have had a community-oriented perspective since our founding. Read De Tocqueville. It carried forward for a long-ass time. We had notions of the common good, and they were woven into our social and thus political fabric. All the way down to how we do business with each other (generally, sellers offer a fair good/service, and a buyer pays the agreed fair price. And we had a robust and all-in-all, remarkably fair legal system to adjudicate any disputes. The Rule of Law matters there, a lot. Everyone is held to the terms of their deal.). We had something approaching a 50/50 "me" vs. "we" balance. Sure, it moved back and forth from time to time. And yeah....we had to deal with the embedded poison of slavery and institutionalized dehumanizing racism (which...spoiler...we never really dealt with), but we had some balance. Now....we're careening headlong towards the Turkish approach. And it's not unique to Turkey. A lot of cultures are like that: each side in any transaction, business or social, trying to get one over on the other guy, treating everything like a zero-sum game instead of a mutually beneficial process that helps everyone. What do those cultures have in common? Well, they generally aren't as wealthy as ours, or advancing as quickly as ours has been. Turns out, a robust social contract and culture of mutuality yields incredible COLLECTIVE dividends. Whereas a "fuck you, I got mine" culture with minimal social contract lowers the shit out of the overall dividends, providing inordinately high dividends only to those people best able to act completely outside any rules. And - this is important - we've decided that's the country and culture we want. The model that goes fucking backwards, and creates a shitload more "losers" with only a handful of "winners." It's dumb as fuck, but then....so are we.

Go down the path? See it. Own it. It's done.

Fuck yes it's monstrous. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” It's all going to happen, it was going to happen anyway. Except now, we have the added layer of the people who most DIDN'T want it to happen....having voted for the choice who is most likely to make the thing happen. And no worries, the timeline just dictated that the pro-Palestinians got called up first. Everyone is going to get their turn on the FAFO tour. It is a time of monsters....and the people who should be most worried about the monsters (pro-Palestinian, hispanics, women, poor white people).....voted Team Monster. "Higher moral standards" are not a thing. The path of history has chosen to bend in this particular direction, and bend hard. Turns out, we never could. We never even had a chance.

Oh, you're forgetting the third option. The important one, which we should probably engage in: how to profit from the suffering. We've chosen to make "bring suffering to others" a leading global commodity again - nothing we can do to stop it, nothing we can do to even slow it down. Well, there's always money to be made in commodities.

Yet the highest rating should still be two Yutes.

Sure. It's probably a large part of it. See, the world only ended for some folks. Quite a few of the COVID dead. Women who have died because they couldn't get life-saving care. And, you know, there was an actual violent insurrection that attempted to overthrow the government. But, hey, it failed, so it might as well have never happened. The castle doesn't fall from its perfect state into a pile of rubble. It happens stone by stone....until it reaches the point where it can no longer stand, and then the collapse can't be stopped. By all means, let's keep removing stones. What could go wrong? Whatever the case, we've chosen our path. Pull up a chair. The fire is just starting to warm up.

Accuweather. Read up on it. It's 100% a move to privatize the function....to someone who has ingratiated themselves with MAGA. But no worries, the next forecast of "Your climate is fine, 105 degrees on Xmas day is both delightful and biblical, brought to you by Accuweather and Exxon" is going to have BITCHIN' graphics.

If it makes you feel any better, I'll also be cheering on the deportation of my family members who voted for Trump. Dumbasses think "we're okay, we're some of the good ones." Nope. Leopards gonna eat their faces too. And the country white trash in our family, who will see their lives get even more miserable as support and infrastructure decline, and costs go up. I'll cheer for that, too. Oh, and to be clear.....precisely nobody "catered to Brisketexan." Not a single word of caution or alarm I've uttered has mattered at all. None of the money, none of the effort. Any private good we've done? It will be torn down in an executive order or two. Nobody has catered to anything I've wanted at all. We've decided to burn it all down. The whole fucking thing. Across the globe. The only rational response is to warm your hands by the fire and watch the flames dance. This is what we've chosen. Quit fighting against it, and just watch it burn.

Sorry dipshit. When you vote to hurt people, don't be shocked when the people you voted to hurt hate you. 0% sympathy. 100% schadenfreude. This is the way.

Brick, why you mad? This is 100% what "team Palestine" in this country wanted. They cried out for it, they said they were going to do it, and they followed through and did it. Reaping the EXACT consequence that we all said would follow. Why should we care at all when people get EXACTLY what they asked for?

Oh, I'm cheering it on. See, when arsonists get burned, that's the essence of this thread. I'm sick and fucking tired of telling various factions of arsonists "DON'T LIGHT THAT FIRE!" only to watch them defiantly toss gasoline everywhere and light a match.....and promptly get fucking consumed by the fire they helped stoke/start. Fuck 'em. I am DONE having sympathy for groups that bring the worst on themselves. 0% sympathy. 100% schadenfreude. That is the correct ratio now.

Oh, I recognize it. The gloves are off for Palestinians everywhere. This is the war of extermination that all the Israel fans have wanted, and now Israel has complete license to engage in it. Excellent electoral strategy, pro-Gaza voters. Well-done, perfectly executed.

Nope. But a shitload of Arab-Americans and other parties supposedly deeply sympathetic to Gaza 1) do vote, and 2) either voted for Trump, or registered a protest vote for Stein or somesuch. In spite of all common sense telling them that they were voting for the leopard that would fully and finally consume the face of Gaza (or more accurately, would give Israel full license and blessing to do so). This outcome is EXACTLY what those people voted for. Sorry. I'm all out of sympathy. For everyone.

Dude.....my kingdom for the wisdom and leadership of Kuato. Or....as it all burns, at lease give us gals with three boobs. I DEMAND TO BE ENTERTAINED.

I mean....gosh. Who on EARTH could have seen that coming. Just outta the blue, no possible way anyone could have predicted that approach happening.

Here's the problem: you could legit say the same thing about....fucking TORCHY'S. All the gotdamned tourists who land and are like "ZOMG, I get in my Uber and IMMEDIATELY head to Torchy's, BEST TACOS ON THE PLANET!" And no, Franklin and Torchy's are not peers at all. Franklin is legit fucking amazing, brilliantly executed bbq. Torchy's is....mediocre tacos on store-bought tortillas. There are literally 100+ trailers in this town that serve better tacos. But....hype, man. Hype.

Seriously. Brisketexan's book of Michelin star restaurants in Texas would be....a much, much different book. Any tex-mex joint that serves good chili gravy cheese enchiladas, preferably with a menu designation by number ("the #3 plate"). Luby's, as a cultural classic and Texas treasure, utterly typifying our broad state culture (fried chicken and CFS? Yep. Pie? Yep. Great cheese enchiladas? Yep.) At least 5 BBQ restaurants. Some new. Some old. A taco truck/trailer in at least 15 different towns. At least one no-name mexican diner in the RGV. At least 4 different country cafes that serve fried goodness (CFS, catfish, etc.) as their specialty. Allsup's burritos would get a cultural significance mention/nod. A gas station in the golden triangle area that serves top quality boudin balls. That there is Brisket's book. Maybe not fancy tires like Michelin-worthy. Maybe Cooper, or Falken.

Torchy's got 3 stars. Some diner in Seminole that once served some snooty french tourist driving through a piece of "transcendent" pecan pie got 2 stars. Everything else got fucked.

Just watched both seasons, and I really liked it. Loved the casting. Zahn McClarnon is always great. Yeah, the cheapness of the production shows -- they just don't have the budget to fully "go back in time" to capture all the architecture and such of the early 70s in the southwest. They filmed most of it around Santa Fe and Tesuque, and I'm pretty sure I even recognized some of the structures. That said, I've spent time in that area for a long time, including the 70s, and truly the architecture and look hasn't changed much at all. So, that's not a big knock on things. The use of a Suburban as a police vehicle isn't really authentic, although I kinda want an old Suburban now. Frankly, the cheapness of the production kind of reminds me of older shows (TV shows just didn't have big production budgets back in the 70s and 80s). It's more actor and character driven, and I like that. I dig it, am looking forward to season 3.

This. This is the fascinating thing. They SIMULTANEOUSLY don't believe he'll do what he says he'll do.....yet they love him because "no more bullshit" and "promises made, promises kept!" The fucking cognitive dissonance is as 180 degree perfect as I've ever seen. Truly, I couldn't write a fictional scenario with such perfect dissonance.