It happened innocently enough. I was chaperoning my daughter’s choir trip to Disney World. We were there in the Magic Kingdom and her director had allowed the children to disperse on their own. So, we could also disperse on our own. It was mostly a fantastic day. Waiting times were shorter for one person and I was able to ride almost everything. Unfortunately, shorter wait times did not mean no wait times. I had to wait 40 minutes at the Haunted House and it was the worst 40 minutes of the day.

A little boy and his family walked by. No one knew them. He and his sister were wearing princess dresses. He and his attire dominated the conversation for the next ten to 15 minutes. Was he trans? Was he gay? Was he a bisexual? Was he a metrosexual? Or, was he simply a four year old buy wearing a dress. Moreover, why should I, these people, or anyone else really care all that much? Out of thousands of kids in the park that day, he was one little boy wearing a dress.

Of course, they went on to extoll Ron DeSantis and his culture wars with Disney. One of them was diabetic like me. She was testing her blood sugar using the old-fashioned prick method and complained about it. I thought about telling her about my Freestyle Libre. I decided not to get involved. The Freestyle Libre can be expensive without good insurance. Yet. here was a perfect microcosm of what the outrage machine has wrought. People back a party that explicitly aims to keep them subservient with inferior care and torches them economically at every turn. Yet, they hate the LGTBQ+ community. They hate the trans kids. They hate woke.

Somehow we have succumbed to the politics of scale. The outrage machine draws us in too. They want us to react. They need us to react. So, they can use that reaction to further rile up the base. Listen, do you hear these libtards defending drag queens and transkids? The ultimate answer is that we have to care less. That statement is very intentional. We should continue to care, but we have to focus our energies on things that directly impact us. There are people here that are directly impacted by these things. We have to be an ally for them, but we also cannot forget the politics of scale.

I explain this by drawing three circles. The inside circle is about us and us alone. Does the particular issue at hand have an effect on me personally? If the answer is no then I move to the second circle. Does it impact someone I love and care about (be it family or friends)? In some cases this will literally be true. Obviously, we should continue to fight in that circumstance. What I imagine though is that most people (at least the ones rabidly for or against something) may have someone they know that this particular issue impacts. Worse, some people may not know anyone personally impacted.

We cannot allow the outrage machine to draw us into unnecessary conflict. If I casually know someone impacted or know no one impacted then why I am fighting on this issue? Shouldn’t my time be better spent on issues that directly impact me or my family? It doesn’t mean we stop fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised. It doesn’t mean we give up hope on a more inclusive society. What it does mean that if we focus on meat and potato issues where we have near universal agreement across political spectrums then the so-called bigots and homophobes will lose. Outrage and bigotry is all they have. If you take that away from them by ignoring the incendiary rhetoric then you can get them out of office and ultimately out of our lives.

Dominion has agreed to drop its suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for a $787.5 million payoff.

Well, what did you expect?

Fox will pay up but it doesn’t have to do anything else. No mea culpae, no rolling heads (yet), no ashes, and not one damned sackcloth.

Did you expect a comeuppance? A courtroom drama?

I’m a Half Empty kind of guy and was not vexed or surprised at today’s news.

Disappointed? Well, yes. Surprised? No. Forget popcorn. The 7- course meal we were all promised by the MSM will never happen.

So, OK. For everyone who was sharpening knives for the feast, here is what you get:

“…the network acknowledged the determination of the judge in the case, Eric M. Davis, that the 20 statements at issue were false. ‘We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false’, the network said.”

Now, about that Smartmatic suit…

Okay, okay, so it’s kinda expected that the extreme right is filled to the brim with pedophiles. Mainly because – thank God – they keep getting caught at it, but it also explains the reason behind their obsession with pedophiles.

Ali Alexander, one of the head honchos of Stop the Steal, got caught. The good thing is that it appears he’s bringing a brood of other famous name Trump-supporters with him because they knew about it and did nothing.

Alexander with Roger Stone

It turns out that the far rightwing racist Trump-loving club are all at each other’s throats over this over who is at fault.  From where it stands right now, it appears that all of them are. You know the saying that the best defense is a good offense? Well, they are all on the attack.

Even Majorie Taylor Green is calling for an FBI investigation. You gotta wonder how many FBI agents she thinks we have?

Ron DeSantis makes my knees creek. If he was one tenth as good looking and smart as he thinks he is, he’d still be a 3. Even at closing time.

Get a load of this – a man who cannot win a fight against a mouse or a fairy princess thinks he can intimidate people to death.

In addition to saying that he will send state inspectors in to inspect rides, Desantis today threatens to build a state prison next to Disney’s theme parks. pic.twitter.com/C51Zo07P26

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 17, 2023

Give it up, Dude. All this over LGBTQ people?

Look, Honey, DeSantis had his wedding at Disneyland and that’s about the gayest thing you can do.

Okay, so here’s the deal.  Especially in the midwest, conservative heaven, right-wingers got punched in the nose at school board races.

Democrats and teachers’ unions boasted candidates they backed in Midwestern suburbs trounced their opponents in the once-sleepy races. The winning record, they said, was particularly noticeable in elections where conservative candidates emphasized agendas packed with race, gender identity and parental involvement in classrooms.

The bad news about that is it will take at decade to recover from the damage they did to public education, but we’re starting. The albatross around their necks was, of course, the culture wars.

You know, every time there is social change in America – giving women the right to both vote and be in charge of their healthcare, freedom from slavery, civil rights, the death of poll tax, – you name it – there are bloody claw marks from the rightwing left behind.

Okay, I get it. Majorie Taylor Greene needs lots of protection, but mainly from herself.

You’d think her arsenal of guns of war would be all she needs to feel safe but you’d think wrong.

No sireee, she is a woman of security needs and apparently safe landscaping is one of them.

Lookie right here:

And to save you the headache of a Google search, here’s who she hired.  Best I can figure they are going to install vicious plants at her house, maybe like venus flytraps of something.

Go have a look at the first link. Most of her spending is for Digital Consulting. You’d think she’d was flirting with Elon Musk.