fulcrummed
Lisa it’s your birthday, happy birthday Lisa! “I wish you love and goodwill. I wish you peace and joy” “I wish you better than your heart desires” “And your first kiss from a boy”
And…
We put the spring in Springfield. “Our only major quarrel’s with your total lack of morals” “Our skimpy outfits ain’t so bad, they seem to entertain your Dad”
Wow man, that’s a hot take. I’m not complaining at all. The crowd is upset that the Dutch team have chosen to select a man convicted of a heinous act. I absolutely abhor what that criminal did and in my mind there is absolutely no excusing or trivialising or equivocating on that. It’s unthinkable. I am not putting judgment on the crowd at all. I completely understand why they are doing it.
I don’t believe he was complaining in the interview. A journo asked him the world’s most obvious question and he has nowhere to go. He can’t defend his partner (not should he, not that he wanted to). He can only speak for himself and say it’s hard to get booed when personally you didn’t do the thing and you’ve worked so hard to get here.
I don’t know why you think I have anything but sincere empathy for the poor victim. I’m recognising that having a truly horrific life experience become fodder for the media, years after you last had that chapter of your life made public and the subject of speculation and judgment, must be a terrible ordeal - she will never forget his name or what happened, but there’s a difference between that and having this asshole on the front page of every news outlet for a month. It must be a genuinely traumatic experience to have it be made acute again.
You’re passionate and assertive in your feelings about this. I respect that and I don’t disagree with your sentiments. I don’t think your read meshes with what I was trying to say. I actually think we’re morally pretty well aligned. In the context of your comment, I don’t know many genuine heroes, they do what most people can’t - that’s why they’re so revered. We all know the way, only few actually walk it.
I guess that’s my point - no he wouldn’t. If his partner was out, that’s it. Min 4+ years gone. The nature of the sport and what it takes to qualify - no he wouldn’t.
If he has known for years and continued playing in the partnership then he’s made his bed and it’s time to lie in it. In the absence of info saying just that, I’m leaving room for the possibility that he’s found this out at the same time the news reading public has.
I’m not endorsing his choice. I’m saying he was faced with a shitty one. There may be a moral black and white here, I’m not trying to argue the right thing to do. I’m suggesting that likely through no fault of his own he had (and has) a choice to make. Obviously he’s made it. I think it’s reductive to declare it is a simple decision when you’ve dedicated years of your life, made daily sacrifice, put off having a family, a career, bank savings, preparing for the future to chase the chance of something fleeting. When it is all culminating in a moment- it takes a unique person to have given up so much for that dream to then willingly let it go at the last hurdle. He may for the rest of his life wish that he did.
Again, I’m not arguing the morals of the situation, I’m recognising the complexity of it.
It’s been said that all it takes in this world for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. I sincerely want to be the kind of person who would abandon my whole life’s drive and focus to do what I believe is right. There is a hell of a lot of evil in this world - perhaps that’s because it’s a lot harder to do when facing it in the moment.
I think it is important to distinguish the innocent partner here. Beach volleyball is incredibly demanding, and at the elite level, a very low population sport. It takes athletes their whole careers to just to make the world tour hoping to one day reach the olympics. For Immers he has busted his ass for years and at some point his national body probably paired him up with the other guy. It’s possible he may not have even known about it until they were partners and had established their dynamic and working relationship. Finding and building a team with a partner you click with on the court is hard-earned. I can imagine that Immers is absolutely distraught at the situation he’s been put in. He has a crappy choice here no matter what. Abandon what he’s spent his whole career building up to, now that he’s made it - because of something he had nothing to do with, knowing he may never get this chance again, even if he were to find another available partner… it takes years to learn how to play as a team; or he sucks it up, focuses on his own journey, cops the reflected criticism and hostility and tries to keep his emotions out of it…
It’s shitty either way. He abandons his dream because of someone else’s actions; or he chases them and becomes collateral damage.
Don’t get me started on the poor kid whose life was never the same again, having all this trauma dredged up and shoved back in her face. There’s nothing about this that doesn’t suck.
Hahah what does the “rest” of the tattoo say…
Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy Mr. Bushhhhhh!
I don’t know if that as a theory works out in practice. You never primary a sitting first term President. It would arguably have looked worse if he walked away after one. It would look like the Dems don’t take the office seriously. This way he’s been forced out, which shows how seriously he and the party have wanted to win this one.
This pivot has caught the GOP on the hop, their strategy in its entirety is ad-hominem attacks on Biden. They’ve lost the one play they had as evidenced by Stephen Miller’s melting down on tv on behalf of Dem primary voters (of all people) I’m not certain if Dems had opened the floor to candidates, or even if they’d straight up put Harris at the top of the ticket at the outset, that we’d be feeling as positive and hopeful as the donor base clearly is today. Is America ready to elect its first woman of color President? I’d say we’re closer today than any day in history. 10-12 months of media and bigots doing their thing to angry up the blood and sell airtime to advertisers would have made Hillary’s run look like a picnic at the park. Not to mention the anuswrinkle’s circus and his flying monkeys throwing their own faeces about wherever they go. The primary voters in ‘16 were so pissy about not getting their pick (feel the Bern and co.) there was never united support behind Hillary and in doing so that lack of unity handed anuswrinkle his throne for 4 years.
Sadly I think VP Harris is in for a particularly nasty barrage of that vitriolic, insecure, and ignorant shitshow, but it’s going to be an abridged version. There are only so many minutes and so many column inches between now and November, I think time is on her side.
This happening at such a late date has forced party unity out of necessity. There is no time to complain about the what ifs. The whole party machine has to pivot and consolidate in a sprint for the next 3 months - they’re too busy to do anything but rally. The party operatives are all “in the trenches” together now and this may very well turn out to be the best of all possible timelines for 2024.