A few days back I turned on NPR, to yet another — yet! another! — earnest, NPR-like discussion on how to reach out to people you disagree with. How to build bridges, join hands across the chasm of our differences, all that.
And I…didn’t snap, exactly, but I reached my limit. I switched to the AM band, set push-button tuning for a couple of right-wing, all-talk stations. Enough of my NPR bubble; let’s see what the other side is talking about, vis-a-vis their political opponents.
I regret to inform you, although not surprised by it either, that they are not talking about joining hands, reaching out, or making nice. The only time liberals, or even moderates, are mentioned, it’s in discussions like, “How many New Yorkers will flee the city if Zohran Mamdani is elected? Tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands?” “The problem with that party is, they’re not proud to be American.”
And that’s not all. Talk about closed systems: In this world, Fox News at the top and bottom of the hour is nearly as lib’rul as NPR. One of the stations carries a network whose anchors and reporters say “the Democrat party” and “the government remains shut down, as Democrats refuse to budge from their insistence on free health care for illegal aliens.”
So no, I’m not particularly interested in hearing about how to talk to these folks. Really, really not interested.
But the blog today has been, as we say, overtaken by events, with the death of Dick Cheney. His black heart, mechanical though it was, finally couldn’t keep up with his deteriorating body, and he went the way of all flesh. I guess his statement in 2024, that he’d be voting for Kamala Harris, is supposed to redeem him somehow. Huh. Well, strange bedfellows and all that. We’ve talked here before about how Trump has managed to make even ghastly people look good, just because they oppose him. Dan Quayle and Mike Pence as the saviors of democracy – at least temporarily – is only one example.
But to me, Dick Cheney will always be this guy:
Thanks to Jeff G. for the image.
I remember learning about Abu Ghraib. I was finishing up my fellowship in Ann Arbor, driving back from a job tryout in Minnesota. I didn’t get the job, and Wisconsin was under my wheels on the way home, and I checked email during a gas stop. A friend in Fort Wayne wrote about the Lynndie England photos, the one where she’s holding the prisoner on a leash. He wrote something like, “But we haven’t accidentally dropped a nuke out of a Blackhawk helicopter, so I guess the war is going great!”
Very droll, my friends.
And who suffered for America’s foray into torture? Lynndie England, certainly, and a few other soldiers. Not Cheney.
So that’s my near-midweek catch-up. I would save this and post it tomorrow, but it’s time to discuss our late vice-president, so here you go.
susan said on November 4, 2025 at 12:37 pm
As I closed out the last comment thread:
Dick Cheney, war criminal
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Sherri said on November 4, 2025 at 1:28 pm
Dick Cheney voting for Kamala Harris does not redeem him, because redemption requires acknowledging responsibility for wrong, and I doubt that Dick Cheney thinks he did anything wrong around 9/11.
Instead, Dick Cheney voting for Kamala Harris is a sign of how irredeemable the GOP has become, that they are too awful even for Dick Cheney.
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Dexter Friend said on November 4, 2025 at 1:43 pm
The last time I heaved a cinder block through my TV screen was when watching Cheney honoring Rumsfeld as the greatest Secretary of Defense in history. Those two lying Republican flag wavers….
Trump pardoning some crypto king and not even knowing who he is? And over 3 more years of this ? People in general say deaths/tragedies/horrible events in general happen in 3s. In my life, it is always 2s. So soon another famous leader will croak. My pick….
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Sherri said on November 4, 2025 at 6:33 pm
I’m past my limit on discussions about how we can all get along, how to bring everyone together, etc. I don’t have to agree with everyone on everything, but there are some non-negotiables. Everybody is bound by the law, and everyone is protected by the law. Nobody gets thrown under the bus to benefit someone else. Everyone is worthy of being treated with dignity and respect, even the person you disagree with the most. I don’t like Clarence Thomas, don’t think he should be a Supreme Court Justice, but I don’t think he should be denied the right to vote, treated the way ICE treats people, or denied food, shelter, or health care because of poverty.
If you don’t share those values, then I don’t really see how we’re going to get along.
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FDChief said on November 4, 2025 at 7:11 pm
Fucking Darth Cheney and all the other Dubya sonsofbitches should have been tried and convicted in The Hague for the same crimes of “making aggressive war” the Allies hanged dozens of OG Nazis and Japanese leaders for. That none of those bastards so much as missed a meal for lying this country into war and killing a quarter million people will be an eternal stain on our generation.
And the other nontrivial consequence of We the People’s willingness to let the miserable swine escape the punishment they so richly earned is that instead of heaping the shame and loathing of the banana Republicans for said fuckery the pass ensured the rise of MAGA. Without the big hammer of trials and imprisonment (or, better still, executions) of these people the GOP brand just rolled on, picking up every loathsome scumbag who chafed at being scolded for being a worthless racist, ignorant, gullible, nativist, Christopsthic piece of shit.
Now?
As the old Finnish wartime joke had it; so many of them, and so few of us.
How will we ever bury them all?
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Deborah said on November 4, 2025 at 8:09 pm
Just read about the UPS plane crash in Nashville. Wondering what our Nashville resident commenter, Basset, has to say about it?
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Dave said on November 4, 2025 at 8:20 pm
The crash happened in Louisville, a UPS plane taking off full of fuel for the long flight to Hawaii. I did not know the airport in Louisville is named for Muhammad Ali.
I can’t help but wonder what the farthest distance is that a UPS flight crew flies.
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Colleen said on November 4, 2025 at 9:49 pm
I’m with Sherri on the whole topic of reaching out. There’s having a difference of opinion over policy issues, and there’s one side denying the actual humanity of the other side. I don’t want to come together with these monsters. I’ve been involved in online discussions with people who are arguing against emergency health care for undocumented people, and those who are gleeful that people are losing their SNAP benefits. Because apparently not all children deserve to eat.
I have no desire to reach out and understand these people. Besides, it’s most often presented as what the left needs to do to understand the right. Reminds me of the meme about introverts….people tell introverts they need to try harder to be social, but no one ever tells the extroverts to shut up.
I think the right needs to shut up.
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Heather said on November 4, 2025 at 10:35 pm
Election-wise, what a great day! Mamdani wins, Dems win big in NJ and Virginia, JD Vance’s half-brother lost the mayoral race in Cincinnati–and lots of other victories. This is truly a referendum on the president. There’s lots of work to do, but I feel so much more optimistic.
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Candlepick said on November 4, 2025 at 11:02 pm
Highly recommend the memoir Sounds Like Titantic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman, which has an unforgettable anecdote relevant to today’s discussion.
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tajalli said on November 4, 2025 at 11:25 pm
I’m watching the Proposition 50 redistricting initiative live results with map updating. The predictions are that it will pass.
https://www.kcra.com/article/prop-50-california-results-redistricting/69169999
My current reading is Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis, historical fiction starting in ’70s Uruguay and onwards for 35 yrs, how The Process (actions by the military dictatorship) repressed society and how it was resisted. Pretty grim reading since it basically describes what’s happening here now.
My county is mobilizing to provide debit cards for SNAP recipients.
I don’t care one whit about Cheney’s death. Attrition by death is not going to solve anything.
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Sherri said on November 4, 2025 at 11:40 pm
I wonder if the overwhelmingly negative returns tonight for the GOP will have any impact on the shutdown.
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David C said on November 5, 2025 at 6:05 am
Probably not, Sherri. Moses Mike will say “Election? There was an election? I hadn’t heard about it”. Then keep the House on vacation. I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t over by Christmas. Trump loves this shit and they’re so scared of him so they’re not going to do anything.
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alex said on November 5, 2025 at 9:27 am
Despite the massive amounts of money thrown at this election by the GOP, not to mention the smear campaigns amplified by a complicit mainstream press, the polling predictions of a big blowout have been spot-on all along. I see a lot of wasted ink today on whether the party is going radical left or squishy moderate when clearly it’s going anti-MAGA with whatever it takes.
Krugman says it well: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/which-party-is-in-trouble-again
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Julie Robinson said on November 5, 2025 at 10:00 am
It was a strong blue wave across the country, and here in Orlando there will be zero Republicans on the city council. Our district had five strong candidates, and ours came in second by an eyelash, so moves into a runoff in December.
I personally believe this will only make Trump meaner. Hard to think it’s possible, but I think he’s going to dig in deeper.
A great-nephew’s job brought him to town last night and what a joy that he’s well-paid, has good friends, and a seemingly bright future. He’s been accepted at Columbia for his master’s, but is deferring two years to save up for living expenses in NYC.
And our DIL has a new job, after her rodent-adjacent company eliminated her entire department. It’s fully remote, so they don’t have to relocate and our send our son on the job hunt. She’s earning more than the last job, and he just got a promotion, so we are crossing our fingers on financial stability for them.
And aside from all that, it’s a beautiful sunny day so I’m gonna enjoy one of the few remaining reasons to be in Florida!
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Icarus said on November 5, 2025 at 10:01 am
Not only did we vote, but we were part of a movement to elect a democratic state senator in very gerrymandered Mississippi. No small task.
In my county, it was the only race on the ballot, but a very important one. Every election counts.
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Icarus said on November 5, 2025 at 10:12 am
On the topic of reaching out, I’m also with Sherri on this one, but with an additional angle.
As an Old White Dude, other Old White Dudes down here assume the Venn Diagram of our Political Belief System is an overlapping circle. It ain’t.
Recently, I’ve had to hire a couple of what I call Quiet MAGAs to do some work for me. They wait until the job is done to start their rants about politics.
I’m not going to change their minds and they certainly aren’t gonna change mine, but I’m content that I was able to stand my ground and point out a few things about Troops in Chicago being wasteful and how not everything wrong with HVAC parts is the fault of the Chinese.
I try not to beat myself up by not going further. I have to walk a line because I might need these guys in the future and trying to find other handymen who are like-minded would be like trying to find the one GOP senator without a Grindr account.
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alex said on November 5, 2025 at 10:14 am
Icarus, I had to look it up and I have to say congrats, mad props and kudos: https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-mississippi-vote-gop-supermajority-10994762
The California redistricting vote is likely to throw some fuel on the fire here in Indiana, where legislators have been ambivalent despite pressure from our MAGA governor and Tubby and Vancebilly. So far they’ve been resistant to the argument that if other states are doing it then we should too, no doubt because they know how gerrymandered we already are and it’s not a good look.
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Jeff Borden said on November 5, 2025 at 11:52 am
I’m going to bask in the good news today and worry about the next steps tomorrow. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’ve taken steps to escape it. I’ll take it.
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tajalli said on November 5, 2025 at 12:17 pm
Mamdani’s acceptance speech is wonderful. Got it from today’s scalzi.whatever.com, which has additional thoughts if you care to read. The direct YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOQT_4A1eb8&t=1414s
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tajalli said on November 5, 2025 at 12:37 pm
Um, whatever.scalzi.com
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Dexter Friend said on November 5, 2025 at 1:29 pm
I was elated to hear Mamdani praise Eugene V. Debs , first comment last night. My WWI veteran Bert from Bellevue, Ohio worked on the railroad the year Debs ran for President from a prison cell. Bert met him shortly before that and shook Debs’s hand. Over the years I have read everything about Debs I could find, and if Bert’s theory of disembodied memories of the dead maintaining the happenings on earth are true, Bert’s memory lit-up like a lightbulb last night. Bert, 1892–1981.
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Cheez Whiz said on November 5, 2025 at 2:25 pm
A friend of mine, Theresa Tudury (check her out, she’s great) has a song “Where Did All These Terrible People Come From?” which is about what you think it is. It end with the line “we’re gonna have to find a way to live with them”, because we are. The current plan of “destroying” them (with votes) and then ignoring them is not a good plan because the Republican party remains willing to serve them, and its REALLY not going away. Its only a matter of time before they find another Celebrity willing to fling red meat at them, and here we go again.
The way to talk to any Trump supporter is as a therapist. They did not reason their way in, you’re not going to reason their way out for them. You need to get them looking at their feelings and explaining why they feel that way. They will either get confused and change the subject or go into a spittle-flecked rage. Like therapy its a long chipping away. At least you can entertain yourself if you do give it a try.
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