Wood paneling, crushed velvet chairs and a water bed? Yes please.
It’s not often that I come across a postcard from the 1980s. Most motel postcards usually to date anywhere from the 1950s through the 1970s but the postcard-sending craze seemed almost outdated by the 80s. This interior shot is postmarked 1983, though the sender (named Ginny) notes that this is an old postcard and she’s not actually staying at this motel.
So it could have been from the 1970s afterall. Who knows.
The motel that this room was located in was called Ye Olde Colonial Motor Inn and was located in Yakima, Washington. It still exists and from the 1990s until 2022, it operated as a Budget Inn (pictured in the 2nd photo). Today, it’s a Red Lion Inn. In the Budget Inn photo, you can still see remnants of how it looked in the 70s/80s - the wood paneling had been painted over, but was still there.
Today, the paneling is gone, the carpet is gone and it has been fully modernized.
Trump’s lifelong strategy has been to race across a succession of rivers on the backs of alligators without losing a leg. He is the undisputed all-time historical champion of this bizarre sport, but no one can win that race forever, and your first loss is a career-ender.
It’s been a year since Project 2025 became national news. At the time, I cited the great Rick Perlstein, an expert on the history of the conservative movement, who said that the most important thing about the P2025 document wasn’t its extreme plans, but rather, it’s total incoherence:
You see, Project 2025 isn’t just one roadmap for turning America into a doomed, corporate/christofascist hellscape: it is several such roadmaps, with many policy prescriptions that directly and violently contradict each other.
For Perlstein, this was both revealing and important. Like all successful political campaigns, Trumpism is a coalition. Coalitions form when groups of people set aside their disagreements and join together. Virtually every important political change is downstream of a coalition.
The easiest kind of coalition to form is an oppositional one, where groups agree on what they don’t want, without agreeing on what they do want. Think, for example, of the Andrea Dworkin wing of the feminist movement making common cause with Jerry Falwell to oppose pornography. Obviously, these people have a completely irreconcilable goals for what they want, but when it comes to porn, it’s easy for them to agree on what they don’t want.
That’s fine when you’re waging the campaign against something, but if you happen to win that campaign, you’re in trouble. That’s when the fight starts over who will get their way. That’s the moment when winning coalitions become bitterly divided:
Now, some of these conflicts matter more than others. The least politically connected, least sophisticated (and most numerous) members of the conservative coalition have long been mollified by performative acts of cruel racism and gender discrimination. These could be enacted without any real impact on the power-players in the coalition, since they were insulated from discriminatory lending and hiring, immune to police violence, and could skip to another state or country to get abortion care, hire sex workers, etc. No one is ever going to deny Peter Thiel a mortgage, no matter how many twinks he bangs. Ted Cruz’s daughter will always be able to get an abortion, no matter what Texas or federal law states. Clarence Thomas doesn’t have to worry about getting pulled over because he “fits the description.” As Wilhoit’s Law says:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Trump’s lifelong strategy has been to race across a succession of rivers on the backs of alligators without losing a leg. He is the undisputed all-time historical champion of this bizarre sport, but no one can win that race forever, and your first loss is a career-ender.
It’s been a year since Project 2025 became national news. At the time, I cited the great Rick Perlstein, an expert on the history of the conservative movement, who said that the most important thing about the P2025 document wasn’t its extreme plans, but rather, it’s total incoherence:
You see, Project 2025 isn’t just one roadmap for turning America into a doomed, corporate/christofascist hellscape: it is several such roadmaps, with many policy prescriptions that directly and violently contradict each other.
For Perlstein, this was both revealing and important. Like all successful political campaigns, Trumpism is a coalition. Coalitions form when groups of people set aside their disagreements and join together. Virtually every important political change is downstream of a coalition.
The easiest kind of coalition to form is an oppositional one, where groups agree on what they don’t want, without agreeing on what they do want. Think, for example, of the Andrea Dworkin wing of the feminist movement making common cause with Jerry Falwell to oppose pornography. Obviously, these people have a completely irreconcilable goals for what they want, but when it comes to porn, it’s easy for them to agree on what they don’t want.
That’s fine when you’re waging the campaign against something, but if you happen to win that campaign, you’re in trouble. That’s when the fight starts over who will get their way. That’s the moment when winning coalitions become bitterly divided:
Now, some of these conflicts matter more than others. The least politically connected, least sophisticated (and most numerous) members of the conservative coalition have long been mollified by performative acts of cruel racism and gender discrimination. These could be enacted without any real impact on the power-players in the coalition, since they were insulated from discriminatory lending and hiring, immune to police violence, and could skip to another state or country to get abortion care, hire sex workers, etc. No one is ever going to deny Peter Thiel a mortgage, no matter how many twinks he bangs. Ted Cruz’s daughter will always be able to get an abortion, no matter what Texas or federal law states. Clarence Thomas doesn’t have to worry about getting pulled over because he “fits the description.” As Wilhoit’s Law says:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Trump’s lifelong strategy has been to race across a succession of rivers on the backs of alligators without losing a leg. He is the undisputed all-time historical champion of this bizarre sport, but no one can win that race forever, and your first loss is a career-ender.
It’s been a year since Project 2025 became national news. At the time, I cited the great Rick Perlstein, an expert on the history of the conservative movement, who said that the most important thing about the P2025 document wasn’t its extreme plans, but rather, it’s total incoherence:
You see, Project 2025 isn’t just one roadmap for turning America into a doomed, corporate/christofascist hellscape: it is several such roadmaps, with many policy prescriptions that directly and violently contradict each other.
For Perlstein, this was both revealing and important. Like all successful political campaigns, Trumpism is a coalition. Coalitions form when groups of people set aside their disagreements and join together. Virtually every important political change is downstream of a coalition.
The easiest kind of coalition to form is an oppositional one, where groups agree on what they don’t want, without agreeing on what they do want. Think, for example, of the Andrea Dworkin wing of the feminist movement making common cause with Jerry Falwell to oppose pornography. Obviously, these people have a completely irreconcilable goals for what they want, but when it comes to porn, it’s easy for them to agree on what they don’t want.
That’s fine when you’re waging the campaign against something, but if you happen to win that campaign, you’re in trouble. That’s when the fight starts over who will get their way. That’s the moment when winning coalitions become bitterly divided:
Now, some of these conflicts matter more than others. The least politically connected, least sophisticated (and most numerous) members of the conservative coalition have long been mollified by performative acts of cruel racism and gender discrimination. These could be enacted without any real impact on the power-players in the coalition, since they were insulated from discriminatory lending and hiring, immune to police violence, and could skip to another state or country to get abortion care, hire sex workers, etc. No one is ever going to deny Peter Thiel a mortgage, no matter how many twinks he bangs. Ted Cruz’s daughter will always be able to get an abortion, no matter what Texas or federal law states. Clarence Thomas doesn’t have to worry about getting pulled over because he “fits the description.” As Wilhoit’s Law says:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
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