I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s a shame they didn’t have a leakier boat.
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Yep - as evidenced, right now, by the state Republican legislatures passing anti-abortion laws, knowing full well they’ll now go through. They just don’t think any of it through, any of them (including those just using the issue to rile up the base), in terms of the consequences to anyone, including themselves. Just look at how sloppily the laws are written, and the few honest Republicans who are passing these laws and then actually admitting, a matter of weeks later, “Hey, these laws risk the lives of women having miscarriages! I had no idea! How could I possibly know that - I was totally ignoring everyone who told me this would be the case!” Almost 50 years they’ve been trying to overturn Roe, and they literally hadn’t thought beyond eliminating the right, much less did they have a plan for the consequences.
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I believe that the Pilgrim name came much later, and at the time they called themselves Saints, and everyone else Strangers.
They sound like fun neighbors.
They tried everything else. Landing in December! Apparently no seed stock for planting crops in the spring! One good New England snowstorm would have stopped them from finding local grave mounds and vacant villages to “borrow” from, and that would have been that.
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And that might actually mean something if the Democrats decided to make preventing Republicans from rigging elections a priority. If gerrymandering and voter suppression continue and hardcore Trumpers keep being put in positions of power when it comes to certifying election results, it will hardly matter how badly the GOP is disliked, they’ll still “win”.
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Agreed. The Reverend Kings “I have a dream” speech was not particularly likely to come true but it was so helpful.
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
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Absolutely the pilgrims specifically and puritans in general were the Taliban of their day.
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As a light-hearted aside: my Australian wife tells the kids to get ready for swimming by joyfully bellowing through the house “Once more unto the beach, dear friends!”
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I worked with an American expat who told me “My country’s history makes a lot more sense when you remember the first European settlers were a mix of religious nuts and mercenaries.”
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I hope to see it in my lifetime. A reliably blue Texas would put the presidency out of Republican reach for generations.
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Not my field, but IIRC this bunch believed in a god who dished out collective punishments for the transgression of the few. To them, anyone not following the rules was a material threat to everyone. So “not every single person following their practices” = “persecution”.
If that silliness had remained stuck in the centuries-old past, it’d be a silly thing people used to do, and we could have a laugh / cold shudder about it all. But that fucking mindset persisted.
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They fled Europe because they weren’t allowed to persecute others there.
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Yeah, I wouldn’t wanna live next door to the sort of people who’d name a child O Be Joyful, then beat it when it was.
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You do realize that 50 years of continuous representation means winning 25 consecutive elections. That’s not just an “edge”.
Have fun with that in Lake Superior.
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A while back there was a This American Life episode discussing the British civil war of the 1600’s. The British journalist Jon Ronson put it like this when explaining it:
He also pointed out that they killed the king, which isn’t easily forgotten.
(In fairness, the guys in America were having their Thanksgiving dinner a good 20 years before the Puritans in England executed King Charles I, so those individuals weren’t necessarily directly responsible for that specific offense)
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A late, online friend of mine once pointed out that this is what made New Orleans so special, that it was the only U.S. city that was that old* and was not founded by Puritans.
*In hindsight his idea omits most or all of the cities west of the Mississippi – so, perhaps, we’d also extend this to “cities not founded as missions.”
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Okaaay, but now he’s dead, and a Democrat just won his seat. Hard to believe with other things going on that are showing MAGAts for the fascists they are that that’s not significant, i.e., promising.
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He’s dead now, but having half a century alive and in the House, we should probably consider that a fluke. I’m afraid chances are he’ll be back in his seat in no time.
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I just don’t get why some people continue to insist that it’s hopelessly naive to imagine that Democrats might have a meaningful chance to win elected office in Alaska given that ONE. JUST. DID.
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It’s similar for the UK. When America sneezes, the UK catches cold. We’ve got our own problems here, but they can be summed up by the government since Thatcher/Reagan adopting a libertarian postion. If the US batshittery can be reined in, it might give our batshitheads pause for thought.
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