Ode to the Sub-GED Class - part the second

This is one of those days when I get the creepy feeling that Krugman reads here. Yeah, I wish. But the fact remains, his topic for today (dead trees division) reflects, almost entirely, the thesis that the rural, enraged, white men that make up MARF^™(party like it's 1829) are self-victims. What he doesn't come out and say, and it bears repeating, is that their predicament is, yes self-inflicted. What makes rural Red states so loathsome is that these sub-GED chuckleheads are in their uneducated, poor, unhealthy situation just because they keep electing politicians who protect the guy who owns the town. And the county. And the state, and just once, the country. Gummint for the 1%. It's that simple.

In the crudest sense, rural and small-town America is supposed to be filled with hard-working people who adhere to traditional values, not like those degenerate urbanites on welfare, but the economic and social reality doesn't match this self-image.

The Farm Bill alone pours billions of Bongo Bucks into fly-over country every year. Some goes to the sub-GED residents, I suppose. Not much of it, I'd wager.

Speaking of Traditional Values, aka Antebellum envy, there's more in the paper on Tradition (full-throated Tevye in the background) today.

A Right Wing judge takes on the Supreme's Right Wing folks.

Scores of decisions, including ones from every avowed originalist justice, have relied on post-ratification traditions, as Sherif Girgis, a law professor at Notre Dame, demonstrated in a comprehensive exploration of the topic published last year in The New York University Law Review.

"Though increasingly dominant in this originalist court's opinions," he wrote, "the method has no obvious justification in originalist terms."

If you don't, or can't (too many free looks or no subscription), read the piece, it's about the difference between what "originalist" means and what "traditionalist" means and why using the former to cover up doing the latter is naughty. We read and hear the former offered as justification for all sorts of nonsense, but, it turns out, the real thrust of an argument is that progressive/woke/Blue/Democratic policies destroy "traditional values". And what might they be? Almost entirely the desire of the rural, poor, unhealthy, uneducated sub-GED chuckleheads to force the other 80% (yes, those rural Yahoos are no more than 20% of the USofA) of us to live like they do. Among those were the quotes from a 13th century judge and 17th century 'law'. As if anyone at those times knew anything about medicinal chemistry (yes, there is such a thing).

And, for good measure, the report goes on to quote Justice Breyer from a forthcoming book:

"The public's methods for managing their affairs will need to change with the circumstances," Justice Breyer wrote. "The judge's job is not to read literally those constitutional provisions written 250 years ago without regard to such changes."

Well, let's party like it's 1829!!!

You vote for autocrats, well OK. But don't come bitching at those of us who know better, when you find you've not got a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of thanks to the pols you keep voting for, keeping the 1% fat and happy.