Cats often do not kill/eat the mouse right away

[SoCalDem]

They like to play with it for a while until they get bored and then they kill it.

Trump is a big ole fat-cat, and we are all just his mice..

Why he gets away with it is beyond me, but he does


the FBI thing is just a game to provide cover and to appease a few righties who are pretending to waver.

sad time in the usa.

[eleny]

1. Sure feels that way

When he sneered at the reporter the other day while putting her down it cheapened the whole country.

[FreepFryer]

2. Subtext: "They win if they can make you believe you are powerless." We're not powerless.

Each of us has a choice - "Get busy living, or get busy dying."

I choose not to believe BS discouragement posts like the OP.

[SoCalDem]

3. .

[byronius]

4. You checked me on my OP the other day, and so let me emphatically state --

I agree with you.

Despair and fatalism serve the Darkhearts.

Salient factual observation is one thing -- surrender and/or expressions of feelings of hopelessness are a wholly different animal.

We all have to brave up and tame our defeatist demons, and reclaim our power.

[FreepFryer]

5. Agreed - thx ! We are not mice, and Trump is not a cat toying with us.

Perpetuating such vile frames incautiously does us absolutely no good.

Art Spiegelman: “I began to read what I could about the Nazi genocide, which really was very easy because there was actually rather little available in English. The most shockingly relevant anti-Semitic work I found was The Eternal Jew, a 1940 German “documentary” that portrayed Jews in a ghetto swarming in tight quarters, bearded caftaned creatures, and then a cut to Jews as mice—or rather rats—swarming in a sewer, with a title card that said “Jews are the rats” or the “vermin of mankind.” This made it clear to me that this dehumanization was at the very heart of the killing project.



In fact, Zyklon B, the gas used in Auschwitz and elsewhere as the killing agent, was a pesticide manufactured to kill vermin—like fleas and roaches.

As I began to do more detailed and more finely grained research for the longer Maus project, I found how regularly Jews were represented literally as rats. Caricatures by Fips (the pen name of Philippe Rupprecht) filled the pages of Der Stürmer; grubby, swarthy, Jewish apelike creatures in one drawing, ratlike creatures in the next. Posters of killing the vermin and making them flee were part of the overarching metaphor. It’s amazing how often the image still comes up in anti-Semitic cartoons in Arab countries today.”

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/10/20/why-mice/

[byronius]

7. What a powerful reference.

I stuck my head inside an oven at Dachau when I was ten; it scarred me in such a way that to this day anti-Semitism gives me deeply violent feelings, difficult to control. Watching the footage of Nazis marching in Charlottesville had a truly galvanizing effect on me.

Nazism depends on winning the staredown. If you punch them in the face you find out that they're far less powerful than they pretend to be.

It's not going to happen here. The percentage of Really Stupid Or Evil People is just too small, and this nation has a long history of democratic activism that forbids what happened in Germany or Russia from taking root here.

Closest we've come, though. I prefer to see this as an inoculation that should last another fifty years. Facism is inherently non-Darwinian as a belief system, and adherents will fail more and more as we progress into the future.

The Russians smacked us hard, and they're still doing damage. But when the tide turns I wouldn't count on the Oligarchs surviving this.

[FreepFryer]

9. So, so much this. Glad to know you. (n/t)

[RockCreek]

6. Please don't insult cats! ;) n/t

[dawg]

8. Some animals aren't afraid of cats.

[Blue_true]

12. Yeah, like coyotes.

To a coyote, a cat is dinner. View ourselves as coyotes and not mice.

[Fla_Democrat]

10. I know, right...

When the republicans started pushing so hard for the FBI to investigate, I just knew they were up to something. Now, I get it, Trump, and his FBI lackeys were playing us all for fools.

[Blue_true]

11. Man, I hate the defeatism.

We have 35 days before WE start kicking HIS ass. We just have to be strategic and cut out the purity and defeatism bullshit.

[nolabear]

13. The only way to guarantee defeat is to give up.

I’m sorry this is so frightening for you. And I get it. But we are far from powerless. We do still have the vote, we have allies, time is on our side and we are fierce as fuck. Don’t let that con man con you. When he’s gone it all falls apart. And he will be gone.

[SoCalDem]

14. You misunderstand me

I am not afraid.. I am nearing 70 and have seen this movie many times.

While I am not necessarily a defeatist, I am a realist and see that sometimes the bad guys do win, and it's important to realize that.

There have been MANY times in our history when a pivot point is at hand, and as a society we have not noticed until it's too late.

"Conservative talk radio", followed by Fox News, followed by rapacious lobbyists, and so many others that it's hard to remember them all, have set upon our society and gradually over time have changed our DNA..

Propaganda works...

It's not instantaneous, but it's effective.

I wish I could share your belief that when DJT is gone, things will be normal again...but it likely will not be..

Remember "our national nightmare is over?" We did have Ford for a while but it wasn't long until we got Reagan who was a more acceptable/friendlier Nixon...and was way more dangerous..

The ones who will be stuck with this ugly legacy are young now, and they may figure it out, but as long as SCOTUS is bought and congress is bought things are going to bad for a while..

Perhaps when women are 70% and men 30% of congress there might be hope, but who knows..

The angry white men are wounded and mad as hell ..

[nolabear]

15. I'm nearly 64. So I've seen a lot too. My idealism is battered.

But I have a fair amount of faith in the fragility of Spanky’s cult. The Supreme Court might be a real struggle for some time but even it’s not unassailable. I think we’ll take the Housecand at least plug the dam somewhat, and once the horrors he’s cooked up bear fruit we’ll struggle our way back. I plan to be here for it. Hope we both are!

[mythology]

16. Only in the short term

Trump won't last, just like Hitler, Stalin, etc. Slavery was ended, women got the right to vote, gays got the right to marry. Every dark time seems like the end, but the moral arc of the universe really does bend toward justice.