Jump to content

BevoAbyss

Full Members
  • Posts

    416
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by BevoAbyss

  1. Correction. They are fascists and theocrats. The believe a mythic God has their backs, they believe in a mythic America ruled under the sacred scrolls of the Bible, they believe they should have total state power to implement that vision. They are nowhere near nihilists. As for their plan, I summarized it upthread: "They have American women living in The Handmaid's Tale, they are coming for all reproductive rights and contraception, they are still working on the border wall, they are humiliating migrants by busing them to cities, they are coming after the rights of LGBTQIA communities and people of color, they are banning books (the burning of books is coming), they are planning on overturning elections, they are in denial of climate disruption (we are way beyond merely "changing" the climate), they are attacking science with complete idiocy, from evolution to Covid. The list of targets will keep expanding. Eventually, they'll be coming after the non-believers in religion. It's only a matter of time."
  2. With all due respect, this is inaccurate on many levels. This is part of the problem in America, for you can't stop or fight what you don't see. The GQP has a plan and platform. It is called fascism and theocracy. They have an aim. They've already stacked the Supreme Court. They are getting election deniers in place at the local level. They have policy positions. They have American women living in The Handmaid's Tale, they are coming for all reproductive rights and contraception, they are still working on the border wall, they are humiliating migrants by busing them to cities, they are coming after the rights of LGBTQIA communities and people of color, they are banning books (the burning of books is coming), they are planning on overturning elections, they are in denial of climate disruption (we are way beyond merely "changing" the climate), they are attacking science with complete idiocy, from evolution to Covid. The list of targets will keep expanding. Eventually, they'll be coming after the non-believers in religion. It's only a matter of time. Yes, the GQP has clearly has a plan: taking America backward into a fascist theocracy.
  3. Agree. Texas is one of those blue blood, iconic teams that fires up the opponents/fans like almost no other. Same with Southern Cal, Notre Dame, Bama, and a few others. Plus, like California, Texas is a giant mythic state and the Longhorns symbolize that no matter what. Add on iconic helmet and burnt orange, iconic Bevo, and a general winning tradition/legacy with titles (despite the current desert). When UT heads to SEC and shows up on Saturday in the Deep South, every stadium will be packed, jacked, and rocking. The city/campus will be rocking for a few days before. Opposing coaches/players will be fired up massively. It will not be just another game. Big, bad, arrogant Texas is in town and the locals will be in a frenzy to break off Bevo's horns and mount them on their goal posts.
  4. You're welcome. Here's a quick prototype for ya! Good project for the off season.
  5. Sad fact is: TCU has had the better overall football program in Texas since 2010. Accept it. In 1970, when I was a boy, my dad took me to see Texas v. TCU at a chilly Amon Carter Stadium. Eddie Phillips ran the wishbone all over TCU to the tune of 58-0. It was one in a streak of 25+ wins in a row over the Frogs, until John Mackovic's first year, when he lost to TCU because .... you guessed it ... he did not have the players for his system. Lulz. It's the exact same excuse we hear for Sark. Lulz again.
  6. Now wait a second, troph. I dig my weirdo status. I worked hard for it. The PhD at UT wasn't for nothing!
  7. Nicole is 100% spot on. Sark ain't winning the SEC or the CFP ... or getting to 10 wins too often (if ever) ... and certainly not 10 years in a row. Lulz. However, Sark will be here another 3-5 years, barring a meltdown season or two. The Big 12 will be sending teams to the 12-team playoff long before Texas ever gets in, buried in the SEC with 3-4 losses per year. No need to argue about Strong v. Herman v. Sark v. Mack. The Texas big cigars have made three bad FB coaching hires in a row. That's all there is to it. Accept that and realize we are likely headed for a 15-20 year desert stroll, outside an outlier like Herman's Sugar Bowl year. We have already tied the 13-year desert between Akers and Mack. We are repeating the McWilliams-Mackovic era, during which I was at UT. All this sucks, but it is what it is.
  8. Like I said, HOPE always has various extenuating circumstances to keep Sark: "stability" is one of them. I am on the FATE side and I agree 100%. I would not be surprised at 5-6-7 years for Sark (barring a meltdown 3-9 season or two). Wins enough to inspire HOPE. A few big wins (like over OU), perhaps a big upset, all countered by inexplicable losses and dismal big game performances (like TCU) and no titles. We are somewhere between McWilliams and Mackovic, minus the conference titles.
  9. As i mentioned earlier, the battle continues between those with HOPE for Sark vs. those accepting our FATE with Sark. HOPE for Sark: saviors to come, excuses and extenuating circumstances, etc. Failsafe: attack Mack Brown or Tom Herman. FATE: saviors won't matter, evidence of Sark's lousy record, list possible new coaches--all while knowing Sark is here for 2-4 more years at least (barring a 3-9 meltdown season) and will win nothing of significance. And Meyer ain't coming. Is there any doubt, CDC and the big money boosters are on the HOPE side?
  10. In general, there are two types of Surly posters here regarding the tenure of Sark. Those who find HOPE and those who accept FATE. (These patterns were true with Strong and Herman and are likely true for all fan bases.) HOPE These posters always find something to give them hope, no matter how much the counter evidence. The future will be brighter and Sark will take the Longhorns to the promised land and win titles. -- Usually, the hope involves a savior of some type. A five star QB, Ewers and now Manning. A new stud RB. A new coordinator to transform the offense or defense. If not a single savior, then it is collective savior of recruiting boatloads of 4-5 stars and “getting his players” with time to “learn the system.” -- In addition, there must also be a handful of bad players/evil dudes (quitters, lazy, bad attitude, etc.) preventing Sark and Texas from winning more games. -- Finally, to counter the FATE posters below, there is a list of excuses and extenuating circumstances for why the team is 13-12 after two seasons, only two wins more than Strong. FATE These posters look to the empirical evidence of Sark’s record and realize the future is doomed to repeat the past, with no promised land and zero titles in sight. -- The fate involves accepting that Sark is no offensive guru, no savior (Manning, etc.) will overcome the problems. No recruiting influx or portaling of the “bad/evil” players will change anything long-term. -- They can only hope that CDC and boosters (or whatever primo “search committee”) will find the next great coach. But, they look forward to the next coaching search with trepidation. They know we have the freedom to find a great coach, but fear the pattern will be repeated for a fourth time and we will be fated to “wander the desert” for almost 20 years. It’s 13 years and counting. Of course, some posters fluctuate between HOPE and FATE, depending on recent games. There is not much that can resolve the differences between HOPE and FATE except a massive amount of evidence either way: a 3-9 season or making the CFP and winning conference/national title. Bottom line: It’s HOPE vs. FATE, the faithful vs. the existentialists (or believers vs. atheists, no CR).
  11. Can we please dispense with notion that Christianity (or perhaps any other brand of religion, but that is another topic) is all about peace, love, and charity? That’s a huge, counterfactual myth perpetrated by propagandists, from the Pope to local preachers. Christianity might be about peace and love, but only after they have colonized, conquered, and converted everyone in sight, usually after a bloodbath. Just look at the factual, empirical, historical record of North, Central, and South America since 1492: genocides and ethnic cleansing were perpetrated on the Indigenous peoples by the Christian (and capitalist) conquerors to get total control of all the lands and surviving people who converted to stay alive. Peace, love, and charity comes only after the Other has been been conquered, only after the bloodbath, not before. After its founding, God-fearing Texas was the site of a massive ethnic cleansing program to steal the lands from Native Americans. So, in the long-term view, Abbott's hateful behavior is the norm, not the exception.
  12. Agree. For 2005 title, add on the Bush lateral and Carroll leaving Bush on sideline for 4th and 2. I was just lamenting that the ratio of titles was not higher than 4 of 9 (very close possibilities). No one wins them all, but 6 or 7 out of 9 would be sweeter!
  13. My dad said Royal's teams were one play away in 1961 (TCU, missed TD pass) and 1964 (Arky, failed 2-point). Add on the 1963 MNC and Royal would have had 3 in 4 years when his teams went 40-3-1. Plus, the two wishbone titles in 1969-70, Royal would have 5 MNCs. With the one Fred missed and two Mack missed, Texas easily could have had 8-9 titles. Fact is, we let several titles slip away. That's a bummer.
  14. For the Cotton Bowl, if Fred had come out of halftime with Morschell as QB the entire 2nd half, we would have won the game scoring at least one TD and one FG or two FGs. Wouldn't have been pretty, but Georgia was 100% jacked up to stop Rick. 15 to 10 or 16 to 10 final would have given us another NC. Y'all are both correct. Dredging up some bad Longhorn memories. Man, that was a massively bungled game: 2 missed FGs, 2 INTs, 4 fumbles (2 lost), muffed punt, and Fred's overall offensive conservativism and indecisiveness. McIvor lit up the Aggies (45-13), but was wildly inaccurate in the Cotton Bowl (8 for 26). If Moerschell plays QB in the second half, UT wins. Moerschell was clutch. Watched that game on a small portable TV at the furniture store (long out of business) where I worked part-time that year. Since my UT girlfriend was in California visiting her parents, after work I think I wandered into to Chuy's on Barton Springs and drowned my sorrows in margaritas and fajitas. Haven't lived in Austin 30 years, anyone know if that Chuy's is still there?
  15. As I have said elsewhere: the goal for Abbott, MAGA, and the GQP is a violent, fascist, evangelical theocracy. This has been the goal since Reagan and Falwell laid the foundations in the 1980s. Everything else is a smoke screen, always has been. The aim is overturn godless secularism: to create an America ruled by the sacred scrolls. It's happening right before our eyes in the Lone State State and America, experiencing a massive, long-term intellectual collapse among 40-45% (or more) of the citizens/voters. We see the outright celebration of lies, idiocy, conspiracy, and anti-science on epic scales, a culture going backward by decades and centuries. Hell, we are still watching these no-mask, no vaxx idiots enable a medieval-style mass death via Covid. Just look at Abbott, Paxton, Cruz, and their legions of hateful, ignorant fans/voters. Apparently, most Texas voters are okay with fascism and mass death (92,000 Texans dead from Covid). Their votes show that. Beto never had a chance against Abbott. The elephant in the room is not mere "extremism," it is fascism and theocracy, at least according to any dictionary not tossed out of the library of a Texas high school.
  16. Don't forget this book from around the turn of the millennium. Not exactly Sovereign Citizen, more like Sovereign Capitalist. -- The book has had a couple of different subtitles, the latest with "Information Age" promises of technological sovereignty beyond the nation-state (note: the new intro by Peter Thiel). Sovereign Citizen and Sovereign Capitalist (and Sovereign Crypto) are all from the same general utopian dream born of 1960s libertarian philosophy, cyber-utopians of the 1980s-1990s, and the rise of the internet.
  17. Saw these bands many times in Austin and Dallas, too (if my memory is correct). Club Foot was great for new wave/electronic music, many groovy new wave women wearing 80s-style ankle boots. Hole in the Wall for drinks and shooting pool on week nights when you blew off going to the library.
  18. For MAGA-GQP, isn't a violent society their real goal? Of course, they will deny it. Yet, it's no less true. I'll be even more precise—ultraviolence is their ultimate social and existential goal. A terrorized and militarized society, armed to the teeth, living in fear and existential dread. That's the Fox News playbook. Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick saw the ultraviolence coming in A Clockwork Orange. What else are these random mass shootings other than extreme ultraviolence? Schools, grocery stores, night clubs, movie theaters, college campuses, military bases, fast food restaurants, and many other locations — all subject to random, senseless, mass shootings. Hell, the American mass shootings far exceed the ultraviolence in Burgess’s novel and Kubrick's film As described by Burgess, “ultraviolence” is the random, senseless, excessive, and unjustified violence that terrorizes a neighborhood, a city, a society, a nation. Teen gang leader Alex and the “droogs” unleash ultraviolence (fights, beatings, rapes, murders, mayhem, and general chaos) at random times upon random people — passersby, shop owners, people at home, couples in remote cottages, and so on. Ultraviolence is all kinds of acts of violence (large and small) to instill fear and terror. Though some droogs are quick-witted and fast with the insults, they are little more than deranged brutes and angry bullies who enjoy deploying random violence to terrorize those they outnumber or those who are weaker victims. In the novel, droogs also become police officers and ascend to other positions of authority in a violent future with failed education and mental health systems, all powered by collapsed systems of meaning and morality. America is like A Clockwork Orange on steroids. Uvalde, El Paso, and mass shootings galore. Blowing up power stations, burning donut shops, the attempted violent coup d’etat on January 6, overturning Roe, and even anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers unleashing microscopic Covid pathogens in public spaces to violently invade others lungs. These are some of the many obvious and subtle forms of ultraviolence being unleashed in a dystopian America, apparently collapsing into a fascist future. What else are all those AR-15s for? Protection? Or to impose the fascist theocracy once valid elections are no longer obeyed? A society living in existential fear is a society that turns to sacred scrolls for answers, turns to QAnon to connect the dots, turns to Inquisitions to defend their "truth" and "morality," turns to killing machines to feel strong and impose their will—and turns to authoritarian leaders to worship amid the madness. There is no end in sight for ultraviolence or the overall madness. The Texas government's response to Uvalde showed that.
  19. Let’s momentarily interrupt football philosophers with some philosophy on football. The following explains Jones and the Cowboys being worth $5 billion and hugely popular, despite not winning anything important for over 25 years. Jones and the Cowboys are the champs of “hyperreality,” the term coined in the 1980s by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard to describe key features of our 24/7 mediated world. — If you have seen The Matrix, then you have seen a copy of Baudrillard’s most famous book, Simulacra and Simulation. Early in the film, Neo has it on a bookshelf and opens it to retrieve a some computer disks for the dude and hot chick who knocked on his door. “Knock, knock, knock…” “Hyperreality” is where the signs and symbols of the real have replaced the real, thus creating an artificial reality that consumers, users, fans, and followers consider superior to the real empirical reality. Hyperreality is filled with "simulacra," copies that have replaced the originals, now no longer present, needed, or perhaps even desired. In hyperreality, Jones can swagger around, preening and pretending to be a “winner” and still make bank. Of course, he is a winner at the bank, not on the field. Keep in mind, hyperreality is not merely a “fake reality,” for it exists in many forms in our world: theme parks, hotels in Las Vegas, football stadia, virtual reality, and video games; even much of social media and conspiracy theory can be understood in terms of hyperreality. To paraphrase Baudrillard, hyperreality is more real than real, more true than true, more beautiful than beautiful. Why else gaze at screens all day? In effect, the NFL is one giant hyperreality. Of course, the Cowboys are simulacra for the real cowboys—who once existed and became part of American mythology—no longer present in industrialized cities like Dallas. Of course, there are still many dudes wearing big cowboy hats, big belt buckles, and big boots and driving big trucks in the big cities of the big state of Texas (and America), but they are not real cowboys. The cowboy is one of the biggest myths in American pop culture. (And "Old Gringo" is the coolest brand of Cowboy boot.) Similarly, Jones and the Cowboys are also simulacra of winners, with all the mythic signs and symbols of winning, without winning any titles for over 25 years. Famed lone star on the helmet, swank futuristic stadium, fawning media—and loyal fans watching games on TV and dropping big bucks at the games and for caps/jerseys. For the Cowboys, winning the Super Bowl is well in the past, a feat no longer present or even possible with Jones at the helm. Nevertheless, the Cowboys are now worth over $5 billion, making it the most valuable sports franchise in the world. In 1989, Jones purchased the Cowboys for $140 million, which is the equivalent of about $330 million in 2022. As we all know, the Cowboys won three more Super Bowls by 1996, primarily because Jimmy Johnson built a powerhouse team. Jones and Switzer got lucky. Since then, the Cowboys have won two playoff games and have not sniffed a Super Bowl. Of course, Jones has been the owner and general manager the entire time. Yet, despite such a colossal failure, the Cowboys franchise has skyrocketed in value all the way to the top of the sports world. The mere fact that all this has happened with a dressed up Arkansas hillbilly billionaire running the show in Big D pretty much proves the accuracy of Baudrillard's insights. TL/DR: Jerry Jones is one of the kings of The Matrix. As Morpheus said: "Welcome to the desert of the real."
  20. The GOP and Religious Right have been attacking science on ever-more fronts over the past 40-50 years, perhaps since the Apollo moon landing. Since the Reagan-Falwell marriage of Republicans and religion, the long-term goal has always been a fascist theocracy to rule America. Always. Everything else is a smoke screen. That's why, as troph made clear, the GOP and theocrats want (evidence-free) creationism on equal intellectual standing with evolution and the 13.75 billion year evolution of the observable universe, for which there exists massive, overwhelming evidence. (Don't forget the "intelligent design" nonsense of the 1990s.) To equate any creationist claims and beliefs with the empirical evidence of evolution and the expansion of the universe is laughable ... and dangerous. To achieve the theocracy, American intellectual standards must crater and collapse, which is happening right before our eyes. Doublethink is running amok across America (But what about ...). This leaves the field open for creationism and conspiracy theory, which are essentially two sides of the same coin that pretend to make sense of the world. There is no way to satisfy a MAGA, creationist, or conspiracy theorist with logic or evidence. They both believe all-knowing unseen hidden forces control the world (God, the Devil, Communists, the Trilateral Commission, etc.). All that matter are the sacred scrolls, from Bible passages to QAnon drops. All that's left are myths, lies, and violence, such as Bible-thumping patriots armed to the teeth, election conspiracies, and the attempted coup on January 6. The list goes on: the attacks on people of color, women's reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ community are straight out of the fascist theocrat playbook. I'll say it again, the GOP goal is a fascist theocracy. To deny and not confront that fact is dangerous. That's why American democracy is in deep deep trouble.
  21. Since Reagan and Falwell merged religion (fundamentalist, evangelical) with the Republican Party in the 1980s, the long-term goal of the GOP and Religious Right has always been a fascist theocracy. Always. Just look at the makeup of the Supreme Court. Look at the theocratic ideology that the GOP uses to rule Texas. (Of course, the GOP apologists and true believers will remain in denial.)
×
×
  • Create New...