The government just took a 10% ownership stake in Intel. Do you think they WON'T take ownership stakes in the AI Data Centers coming online? Where does that end?
We've seen all manner of bailouts in the past 20 years, where the government comes in and essentially takes over. That, combined with the Orwellian information age we're now plunging headlong into (heralded by increasingly homogenous, bubble-gum, propagandistic media), makes me wonder:
Are both sides of this country's increasingly fake political duopoly taking us into socialism/communism/totalitarianism/serfdom/slavery?
Our liberties/freedoms/powers are being vacuumed up, and we can't really run or hide very easily, much less fight it effectively.
Like, if the Snowden revelations happened today, would the media even care? Or would it be spun away and buried?
This is NOT the freedom the Founder fought for. They are probably looking down, wondering how our people got so WEAK!
Not trying to be overly profound, here, but this is just fucked up.
But the media covered it. It was a very big deal in the media.
Today? I really don't know if the media would do actual journalism around it. It might never even bcome publicly known.
Even contemporaneously Snowden, the Maryland State legislature immediately introduced a bill that would have literally cut off the utilities (water, power) , to the NSA!! But over the ensuing months, the (Republican) cosponsors of that bill quietly took their names off the bill, and it died quietly. That's the American Spirit being suffocated out of existence, right there....SMH
'Where does that end?' As the flood of investor capital swells the A.I. bubble all those who hitched their fortunes and foundations to it are going to watch them wash out when it pops. Caveat emptor. It's not a matter of IF, it's when.
Yeah I agree. AI will never cause people to buy significantly more stuff...no new money is going to be injected into the economy because of it...the only real "benefit" is a massive ending of jobs, which will really f this country (and the world-) up.
Hopefully it will crash sooner than later.
But we'll still be left with the technology, doing what it does.
Well Alan, I did wonder that myself over the Qatar friendship and the announcement of the AI centres some months ago. And Elon Musk was always considered a technocrat Controligarch. Why did Trump back WEF-man Carney in the last Canadian election?
Right. It seems like a hybrid, Oligarch/Government/Globalist thing to me. Whatever it is, it's a major threat to normal people. I'd say we are only just beginning to understand just how bad this could get.
I have been recommending that people who want to educate themselves a bit more read the various recent books on CCP China infiltrating Canada.
Let me put it this way.....not every Buddhist Monastery or "cultural centre" is what you think it is. Some of them are fronts for CCP Communism and money-laundering. Just as the 1970s Jim Jones People's Temple was not about religion, but about Communism.
The latest is: "Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party" by Garry Clement, Michel Juneau Katsuya
Thanks for this! I will check it out. Just my travels to Vancouver in 1980 vs. 2004 really opened my eyes about how quickly a region can change...It was a totally different city after only 25 years of mass migration....and I have no doubt there are placements there like what you describe...Seattle and Western Washington State saw similar trends, btw, but nothing like what I saw in Canada!!
Vancouver is not really a Canadian city any longer. It has been hyper-infiltrated. Which is one reason the real estate prices there are over- the- moon ....only for the wealthy CCP types now, laundering Fentanyl proceeds.
All the colleges on the West Coast are similar. I knew a guy from Hong Kong whose parents bought him a house on Malibu beach just so he could go to UCLA! Paid cash. Outrageous the kind of money certain classes in China/satellites have!
The problem is that a figure like Obama or Trump pops up and a third to half of the country turns their brains off and thinks they found their savior instead of the next conman selling them the same shit they were just protesting under the last guy.
I would argue the bailouts of the past 20 years have been about government ownership on the downside and privatization on the upside. That was the lesson of the 2007 financial crisis. We bail them out with tax payer money when things go bad so they can get enormous bonuses a few years later when things go well. At least with the first government bail out of Chrysler the government got back exactly the amount of money it put in.
Now we are increasingly involved in the profit upside as well, but the companies can easily avoid all this and keep all their profits. which requires them to assume the full risk. Don't take government money, which is not required.
I don't think the founders would have been at all surprised by what we have become. They had a tragic view of mankind, which is why the Constitution they wrote lasted 130 years, which is far longer than most.
What we have become is exactly what they would expect of human nature.
Isn’t better than just giving them free bailouts? It’s would be nice to 100% all bailouts but having liquidity lock up is bad. Can’t they treat those ownership shares as a sovereign wealth fund with no board seats? They could also restrict how much they can hold. 10% is far too much in my opinion.
What is best is to let the free market do what it does.
Any number of US owned companies would be thrilled to acquire their infrastructure. We could legislate that it stays in country under US ownership if national security is a concern.
Bailouts like this are definitionally what communism is.
While I of course cringe at this 10% Intel stake, it is very possible Intel would literally go away without this explicit backing. And from a national security standpoint that would be a complete disaster. I am not defending Intel which has clearly been mismanaged for almost two decades now - but this investment has restored some confidence in the credit worthiness and longevity of Intel. They run on 10 year investment cycles - massive capital costs only made up for in the long run on huge volume. We need more Fabs here, obviously.
I'm sure any number of US Companies would be very happy to acquire that fab infrastructure without the federal government worming its way in there, artificially inflating the stock price (and bailing out wealthy shareholders, incidentally)..
Calling Bari Weiss and her "Free Press" MAGA curious is hilarious. I stopped my subscription about 18 months ago because I found her and the operation to be NY Times-lite. I see no possible way forward in this country. The division is just way too great if Democrats are calling Bari Weiss pro-Trump.
To add, using the journalism umbrella for launching your vitriolic attacks on others because they're "simping for talking points" you're against is the lowest of the low. Gimme something to think about. I doubt I align with Glenn Greenwald in terms of his socially polittitiy but I can't stop listening and that is a level or f respect I have for few others whether that's personally or from a far distance.
Bari seems slippery & corrupted by her years at the NYT and fails to approach issues with the strength and credibility that the podcast free thinking through the fourth estate . Sasha penetrated the intellectually hollowness of the modern left
It doesn't. However, he's managed to become a brainworm who has infected almost 330M Americans. It's baffling to me. What makes matters worse is those who worship him seem to be under less control by him than those who yearn for his demise.
Just saying....Sasha Stone banned me a while back, after I had contributed significantly to her Substack for quite some time, unpaid. I was asking about the Substack venue itself, and pointing out a few discrepancies, when WHAM! She banned me. Ms. Freedom-fighter -- Ahem.
Needless to say, I lost respect for her work. I always found Sasha a bit too light for my tastes, but I was there to hear her out, since she seemed to be popular.
And you know what....since we are on this topic? Michael Shellenberger of the PUBLIC Substack banned me just this week, supposedly because I asked why he had posted only two articles (rerun material at that) in three weeks. And why was he writing material that 90% of us have known for a decade or more, as if it was big news? THEN... Mr. Freedom-fighter/Mr. No-Censorship....censored me! Hilarious! And he still has my annual payment.
Too many Substack authors (not Matt, as far as I have seen) consider the Substack page that they rent from the digital platform to be a mirror for them. Nothing more. They expect at least groupie fandom. And gushing compliments. Or full agreement to their narrative and ideas. If you actually write comments as a free individual with a mind of your own, many of them will ban you. They demand complimentary groupthink, like cult leaders. The Freedom-fighter schtick is just the product they sell. For many of them at least. They do not actually believe in no-censorship.
Yup...Shellenberger indeed banned me. I messaged him for the refund of my annual fees, which I had paid just a few weeks before, but no reply.
He blew his whole reputation with that move as far as I am concerned. Does he think I am not going to discuss the experience anywhere? Stupid, arrogant move.
He has only a BA in "Peace Studies" and an MA in Anthropology, so he needs to watch out o that score, because he is not employable in any serious academic sense. Though I know he does some kind of basic lecturing in a Texas university. And he has written a couple of popularizing type of books. Nothing deep. Just building a media image. He's a popularizer, rather than a deep thinker. And he does his best to get rid of any deep thinkers who might appear on his comment forum. Because it's really about running a lucrative Substack business.
As far as I am concerned, neither Shellenberger nor Sasha Stone have even a small bit of understanding of the principles behind WOKE and Democrats' behaviour in the crises of the modern age. They can describe what happens, as most people can. But they have no idea what causes this or what is actually going on. They got miffed when I added a few explanations, as if the Substack is THEIR show, and they want zero competition. Which tells you that it is not really about informing the public, but about building their own media careers and bank accounts. How is that any better than MSM?
It seems I have inadvertently pulled back the curtain and exposed the little man at the controls. He/She is not the Wizard after all.....
Orwell was not a capitalist. He was a socialist who fought with the communists against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and fascism is - as Mussolini essentially said - corporate capitalism on steroids. Yes, Orwell despised Stalin, but it was because he thought Stalin had perverted Marxism by becoming a dictator. Marx believed in democracy, especially democracy in the workplace. Now, Stalin did, to protect his country from endless invaders including the United States, put political opponents in the gulags, but what Solzhenitsyn wrote about regarding the gulags is greatly exaggerated and has served as useful CIA propaganda. The overwhelming majority of gulag prisoners were hardened and dangerous criminals. After Stalin’s death he was remembered by most Russians as a hero. Matt's current cheerleading for corporate capitalism is really odd, especially since his book, Griftopia is one of the most stinging repudiations of corporate capitalism I have ever read.
Because Matt was unfairly treated like shit by Democrats, he has declared war on the left. But Democrats are not the real left. They haven't been since the early 1970s.
True. But consider this: Here are a few Americans who were sent to prison for criticizing our government: Eugene Debs, John Kiriaku, Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, Daniel Hale, Jack Teixeira. The government also tried to imprison Edward Snowden. Obama assassinated two Americans (one a teenager) for criticizing American foreign policy.
Bob's didn't claim America does not have political prisoners. He was responding to your claim that the overwhelming majority of gulag prisoners were hardened and dangerous criminals.
That's not an excuse to incarcerate Zeks like Solzhenitsyn. If a prosecutor told me he incarcerated 10 people and two were innocent, but it's all good because 8 were dangerous criminals I would call that a fail.
Out of curiosity, is there documentation to support the view that the majority of criminals in the Gulag were dangerous criminals? I am open to the idea if you have some documentation to support it beyond the word of Uncle Joe.
It's hard to make any reaction to a movie I haven't seen, but it makes total sense to try to re-imagine the "threat of true authoritarian boots" as capitalistic ones, since in 2025 there is no real threat of Marxism/Communism, but very much is from our corrupt version of capitalism.
Capitalism in this country doesn't resemble any kind of free-market system. We have welfare/subsidy for corporations, unlimited bailouts and lobbying for corporations, and corporations completely control and do unlimited-funding of our elected representatives. They have destroyed the "free" market and write the laws that govern them. It's why no matter what team you vote for on cultural issues, everything stays the same (MIC spending, lack of healthcare/colleges) and the rich keep getting richer, while our government takes your tax dollars to give to other countries/weapons, to make said corps/billionaires richer...
That said, I don't see how this could possibly work, since you can't simply have a revolution/overthrow and "become" a billionaire or a Halliburton/Amazon CEO. Between this and the trash heap that is One Battle After Another, it seems like this may just be a part of a trend for more anti-revolutionary propaganda.
Other terms for what we have here is Kleptocracy or Crony Capitalism which is similar to communism in that they are just other ways of stealing stuff from others to give to others. Thomas Sowell is my guiding light now and not Orwell or Chomsky. "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs". It does help to have a moral underpinning and that is where Christianity comes in. A free market with local oligarchs or "big mules" who live in the community and contribute to it. When I moved to Montana, we had several wealthy important neighbors like Tom Brokaw and Michael Keaton. They helped make sure the local mine did the right thing as we all used the local river for cows and fly fishing. I used to say, "I'm glad that my feudal lords are nicer than yours. We got lucky."
It is a joy to be in your audience. I want to share there is another harvest of like values here, paired with ascendant revelations of Mr. Orwell's moaning ghost. Bari Weiss and I independently concluded, without apparent knowledge of the other one, the path to an increase of sanity is to swap out social media/A.I. use for reading books. If you see a withering, hopeless young man give him a Ryan Holiday book or a copy of Orwell. The reading exchange can be part of 'No Social Media November' detox, especially, if you are under 30.
You can also trade out social media time with volunteer service at local Food Pantries/Food Banks/Meals on Wheels because, 'OH,SNAP! People be honngry'. The federals had been footing the public burden for SNAP service. However, we all know the government is not coming to work. So we need to serve Americans now.
Jan 6 was an attempted soft-coup, self-coup, dumb coup, what will you. Trump dog whistled the whole thing, armed hooligans responded. It was desperate attempt to hold onto power in an election he lost. In Brazil, Trump's disciple imitated Trump to a T and now sits in jail. Of course you investigate it. This is what propagandist Matt Taibbi is not telling you:
That data covered calls made between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, and included information on the time, duration, and general location of the calls. THE RECORDS DID NOT INCLUDE CALL CONTENTS.
They are literally incapable if seeing their own ideological hypocrisy. And utterly convinced that they are possessed with the moral rectitude from which to judge all others.
To me, The Life of Pi reminds me of Animal Farm in a way, because the horrors of the boy living on this boat and this animal of a man were unbearable for the child to repeat, so he chose animal characters.
Please please please rip and skewer Harper's cover story 'Why don't we trust the media?' Featuring an answer-seeking 'forum' with the likes of Taylor Lorenz...
Hopefully you get a chance to go thru some of the other books you were leaning towards. Especially Heart of a Dog. Or better yet, Master & Margarita one of these days would be amazing.
Have fun watching the rest of the World Series tonight and possibly tomorrow too!
Re Arctic Frost and how wide a 'trawler net', to used Mr. Kirn's term was used, does the 'two-hop' rule apply, whereby the subject and anyone in their contact list and anyone in the contact's list could also have their electronic communications sucked up? Points to ponder...I notice I'm hearing more about the mobile phone that won't allow this-Unplugged's UP mobile
The government just took a 10% ownership stake in Intel. Do you think they WON'T take ownership stakes in the AI Data Centers coming online? Where does that end?
We've seen all manner of bailouts in the past 20 years, where the government comes in and essentially takes over. That, combined with the Orwellian information age we're now plunging headlong into (heralded by increasingly homogenous, bubble-gum, propagandistic media), makes me wonder:
Are both sides of this country's increasingly fake political duopoly taking us into socialism/communism/totalitarianism/serfdom/slavery?
Our liberties/freedoms/powers are being vacuumed up, and we can't really run or hide very easily, much less fight it effectively.
Like, if the Snowden revelations happened today, would the media even care? Or would it be spun away and buried?
This is NOT the freedom the Founder fought for. They are probably looking down, wondering how our people got so WEAK!
Not trying to be overly profound, here, but this is just fucked up.
When the Snowden revelations happened nobody cared at the time and nothing happened
Oh I disagree....a LOT of people cared...
But the media covered it. It was a very big deal in the media.
Today? I really don't know if the media would do actual journalism around it. It might never even bcome publicly known.
Even contemporaneously Snowden, the Maryland State legislature immediately introduced a bill that would have literally cut off the utilities (water, power) , to the NSA!! But over the ensuing months, the (Republican) cosponsors of that bill quietly took their names off the bill, and it died quietly. That's the American Spirit being suffocated out of existence, right there....SMH
'Where does that end?' As the flood of investor capital swells the A.I. bubble all those who hitched their fortunes and foundations to it are going to watch them wash out when it pops. Caveat emptor. It's not a matter of IF, it's when.
Yeah I agree. AI will never cause people to buy significantly more stuff...no new money is going to be injected into the economy because of it...the only real "benefit" is a massive ending of jobs, which will really f this country (and the world-) up.
Hopefully it will crash sooner than later.
But we'll still be left with the technology, doing what it does.
Ech. We're being strangled either way.
Well Alan, I did wonder that myself over the Qatar friendship and the announcement of the AI centres some months ago. And Elon Musk was always considered a technocrat Controligarch. Why did Trump back WEF-man Carney in the last Canadian election?
Is it The Truman Show?
Right. It seems like a hybrid, Oligarch/Government/Globalist thing to me. Whatever it is, it's a major threat to normal people. I'd say we are only just beginning to understand just how bad this could get.
I have been recommending that people who want to educate themselves a bit more read the various recent books on CCP China infiltrating Canada.
Let me put it this way.....not every Buddhist Monastery or "cultural centre" is what you think it is. Some of them are fronts for CCP Communism and money-laundering. Just as the 1970s Jim Jones People's Temple was not about religion, but about Communism.
The latest is: "Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party" by Garry Clement, Michel Juneau Katsuya
I'm guessing the mainstream media in Canada won't touch it....Hope I'm wrong...
Thanks for this! I will check it out. Just my travels to Vancouver in 1980 vs. 2004 really opened my eyes about how quickly a region can change...It was a totally different city after only 25 years of mass migration....and I have no doubt there are placements there like what you describe...Seattle and Western Washington State saw similar trends, btw, but nothing like what I saw in Canada!!
Vancouver is not really a Canadian city any longer. It has been hyper-infiltrated. Which is one reason the real estate prices there are over- the- moon ....only for the wealthy CCP types now, laundering Fentanyl proceeds.
All the colleges on the West Coast are similar. I knew a guy from Hong Kong whose parents bought him a house on Malibu beach just so he could go to UCLA! Paid cash. Outrageous the kind of money certain classes in China/satellites have!
The problem is that a figure like Obama or Trump pops up and a third to half of the country turns their brains off and thinks they found their savior instead of the next conman selling them the same shit they were just protesting under the last guy.
Yep. And the people who drank the koolaid are usually/mostly too proud to admit they got hustled.
I would argue the bailouts of the past 20 years have been about government ownership on the downside and privatization on the upside. That was the lesson of the 2007 financial crisis. We bail them out with tax payer money when things go bad so they can get enormous bonuses a few years later when things go well. At least with the first government bail out of Chrysler the government got back exactly the amount of money it put in.
Now we are increasingly involved in the profit upside as well, but the companies can easily avoid all this and keep all their profits. which requires them to assume the full risk. Don't take government money, which is not required.
I don't think the founders would have been at all surprised by what we have become. They had a tragic view of mankind, which is why the Constitution they wrote lasted 130 years, which is far longer than most.
What we have become is exactly what they would expect of human nature.
Isn’t better than just giving them free bailouts? It’s would be nice to 100% all bailouts but having liquidity lock up is bad. Can’t they treat those ownership shares as a sovereign wealth fund with no board seats? They could also restrict how much they can hold. 10% is far too much in my opinion.
What is best is to let the free market do what it does.
Any number of US owned companies would be thrilled to acquire their infrastructure. We could legislate that it stays in country under US ownership if national security is a concern.
Bailouts like this are definitionally what communism is.
While I of course cringe at this 10% Intel stake, it is very possible Intel would literally go away without this explicit backing. And from a national security standpoint that would be a complete disaster. I am not defending Intel which has clearly been mismanaged for almost two decades now - but this investment has restored some confidence in the credit worthiness and longevity of Intel. They run on 10 year investment cycles - massive capital costs only made up for in the long run on huge volume. We need more Fabs here, obviously.
Pretty interesting how the Government creeps into just about everything in the name of "National Security".
yes, not good. but semi's are the oil of the 21st century, like it or not
I'm sure any number of US Companies would be very happy to acquire that fab infrastructure without the federal government worming its way in there, artificially inflating the stock price (and bailing out wealthy shareholders, incidentally)..
Calling Bari Weiss and her "Free Press" MAGA curious is hilarious. I stopped my subscription about 18 months ago because I found her and the operation to be NY Times-lite. I see no possible way forward in this country. The division is just way too great if Democrats are calling Bari Weiss pro-Trump.
To add, using the journalism umbrella for launching your vitriolic attacks on others because they're "simping for talking points" you're against is the lowest of the low. Gimme something to think about. I doubt I align with Glenn Greenwald in terms of his socially polittitiy but I can't stop listening and that is a level or f respect I have for few others whether that's personally or from a far distance.
Bari seems slippery & corrupted by her years at the NYT and fails to approach issues with the strength and credibility that the podcast free thinking through the fourth estate . Sasha penetrated the intellectually hollowness of the modern left
I prefer Michael Shellenberger's arrival but point taken.
Why does
everything,
everywhere
hinge on
D-F'n-T?
It doesn't. However, he's managed to become a brainworm who has infected almost 330M Americans. It's baffling to me. What makes matters worse is those who worship him seem to be under less control by him than those who yearn for his demise.
MAGA curious or a MAGA analyst? Sasha Stone is the intellectual philosopher of the two and has my complete attention.
Bari doesn’t help me think at all.
Sasha Stone....an intellectual philosopher? Are we talking about the same Sasha Stone?
Just saying....Sasha Stone banned me a while back, after I had contributed significantly to her Substack for quite some time, unpaid. I was asking about the Substack venue itself, and pointing out a few discrepancies, when WHAM! She banned me. Ms. Freedom-fighter -- Ahem.
Needless to say, I lost respect for her work. I always found Sasha a bit too light for my tastes, but I was there to hear her out, since she seemed to be popular.
And you know what....since we are on this topic? Michael Shellenberger of the PUBLIC Substack banned me just this week, supposedly because I asked why he had posted only two articles (rerun material at that) in three weeks. And why was he writing material that 90% of us have known for a decade or more, as if it was big news? THEN... Mr. Freedom-fighter/Mr. No-Censorship....censored me! Hilarious! And he still has my annual payment.
Too many Substack authors (not Matt, as far as I have seen) consider the Substack page that they rent from the digital platform to be a mirror for them. Nothing more. They expect at least groupie fandom. And gushing compliments. Or full agreement to their narrative and ideas. If you actually write comments as a free individual with a mind of your own, many of them will ban you. They demand complimentary groupthink, like cult leaders. The Freedom-fighter schtick is just the product they sell. For many of them at least. They do not actually believe in no-censorship.
Damn. Shellenberger got you? That is really disappointing. I jumped from TFP when they started doing that shit.
Yup...Shellenberger indeed banned me. I messaged him for the refund of my annual fees, which I had paid just a few weeks before, but no reply.
He blew his whole reputation with that move as far as I am concerned. Does he think I am not going to discuss the experience anywhere? Stupid, arrogant move.
He has only a BA in "Peace Studies" and an MA in Anthropology, so he needs to watch out o that score, because he is not employable in any serious academic sense. Though I know he does some kind of basic lecturing in a Texas university. And he has written a couple of popularizing type of books. Nothing deep. Just building a media image. He's a popularizer, rather than a deep thinker. And he does his best to get rid of any deep thinkers who might appear on his comment forum. Because it's really about running a lucrative Substack business.
As far as I am concerned, neither Shellenberger nor Sasha Stone have even a small bit of understanding of the principles behind WOKE and Democrats' behaviour in the crises of the modern age. They can describe what happens, as most people can. But they have no idea what causes this or what is actually going on. They got miffed when I added a few explanations, as if the Substack is THEIR show, and they want zero competition. Which tells you that it is not really about informing the public, but about building their own media careers and bank accounts. How is that any better than MSM?
It seems I have inadvertently pulled back the curtain and exposed the little man at the controls. He/She is not the Wizard after all.....
Orwell was not a capitalist. He was a socialist who fought with the communists against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and fascism is - as Mussolini essentially said - corporate capitalism on steroids. Yes, Orwell despised Stalin, but it was because he thought Stalin had perverted Marxism by becoming a dictator. Marx believed in democracy, especially democracy in the workplace. Now, Stalin did, to protect his country from endless invaders including the United States, put political opponents in the gulags, but what Solzhenitsyn wrote about regarding the gulags is greatly exaggerated and has served as useful CIA propaganda. The overwhelming majority of gulag prisoners were hardened and dangerous criminals. After Stalin’s death he was remembered by most Russians as a hero. Matt's current cheerleading for corporate capitalism is really odd, especially since his book, Griftopia is one of the most stinging repudiations of corporate capitalism I have ever read.
Because Matt was unfairly treated like shit by Democrats, he has declared war on the left. But Democrats are not the real left. They haven't been since the early 1970s.
This is perhaps the best comment on a ATW post I’ve ever seen. Nailed it in every front
Solzhenitsyn was sent to the GULAG because the powers that be discovered a personal letter he had written to a friend criticizing Stalin.
Exaggeration?
True. But consider this: Here are a few Americans who were sent to prison for criticizing our government: Eugene Debs, John Kiriaku, Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, Daniel Hale, Jack Teixeira. The government also tried to imprison Edward Snowden. Obama assassinated two Americans (one a teenager) for criticizing American foreign policy.
This seems like what-about-ism.
Bob's didn't claim America does not have political prisoners. He was responding to your claim that the overwhelming majority of gulag prisoners were hardened and dangerous criminals.
That's not an excuse to incarcerate Zeks like Solzhenitsyn. If a prosecutor told me he incarcerated 10 people and two were innocent, but it's all good because 8 were dangerous criminals I would call that a fail.
Out of curiosity, is there documentation to support the view that the majority of criminals in the Gulag were dangerous criminals? I am open to the idea if you have some documentation to support it beyond the word of Uncle Joe.
It's hard to make any reaction to a movie I haven't seen, but it makes total sense to try to re-imagine the "threat of true authoritarian boots" as capitalistic ones, since in 2025 there is no real threat of Marxism/Communism, but very much is from our corrupt version of capitalism.
Capitalism in this country doesn't resemble any kind of free-market system. We have welfare/subsidy for corporations, unlimited bailouts and lobbying for corporations, and corporations completely control and do unlimited-funding of our elected representatives. They have destroyed the "free" market and write the laws that govern them. It's why no matter what team you vote for on cultural issues, everything stays the same (MIC spending, lack of healthcare/colleges) and the rich keep getting richer, while our government takes your tax dollars to give to other countries/weapons, to make said corps/billionaires richer...
That said, I don't see how this could possibly work, since you can't simply have a revolution/overthrow and "become" a billionaire or a Halliburton/Amazon CEO. Between this and the trash heap that is One Battle After Another, it seems like this may just be a part of a trend for more anti-revolutionary propaganda.
Other terms for what we have here is Kleptocracy or Crony Capitalism which is similar to communism in that they are just other ways of stealing stuff from others to give to others. Thomas Sowell is my guiding light now and not Orwell or Chomsky. "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs". It does help to have a moral underpinning and that is where Christianity comes in. A free market with local oligarchs or "big mules" who live in the community and contribute to it. When I moved to Montana, we had several wealthy important neighbors like Tom Brokaw and Michael Keaton. They helped make sure the local mine did the right thing as we all used the local river for cows and fly fishing. I used to say, "I'm glad that my feudal lords are nicer than yours. We got lucky."
It is a joy to be in your audience. I want to share there is another harvest of like values here, paired with ascendant revelations of Mr. Orwell's moaning ghost. Bari Weiss and I independently concluded, without apparent knowledge of the other one, the path to an increase of sanity is to swap out social media/A.I. use for reading books. If you see a withering, hopeless young man give him a Ryan Holiday book or a copy of Orwell. The reading exchange can be part of 'No Social Media November' detox, especially, if you are under 30.
You can also trade out social media time with volunteer service at local Food Pantries/Food Banks/Meals on Wheels because, 'OH,SNAP! People be honngry'. The federals had been footing the public burden for SNAP service. However, we all know the government is not coming to work. So we need to serve Americans now.
Here's a link to find a food bank. https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank
I see your press secretary and raise you an ex CIA director.
Ah, some sane repartee amidst the incessant clamor. Friday’s signal all is well, we made it thru another week.
Let’s have us an All Hallow’s Eve with the weekend that follows.
Jan 6 was an attempted soft-coup, self-coup, dumb coup, what will you. Trump dog whistled the whole thing, armed hooligans responded. It was desperate attempt to hold onto power in an election he lost. In Brazil, Trump's disciple imitated Trump to a T and now sits in jail. Of course you investigate it. This is what propagandist Matt Taibbi is not telling you:
That data covered calls made between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, and included information on the time, duration, and general location of the calls. THE RECORDS DID NOT INCLUDE CALL CONTENTS.
Speaking of guest essayists: two BIG thumbs up on Eric Salzman.
He's doing some really good stuff!
Gooooood morning Walter “In Other Words” Kirn 😃
They are literally incapable if seeing their own ideological hypocrisy. And utterly convinced that they are possessed with the moral rectitude from which to judge all others.
To me, The Life of Pi reminds me of Animal Farm in a way, because the horrors of the boy living on this boat and this animal of a man were unbearable for the child to repeat, so he chose animal characters.
Please please please rip and skewer Harper's cover story 'Why don't we trust the media?' Featuring an answer-seeking 'forum' with the likes of Taylor Lorenz...
The market for social justice writing is heavily oversupplied, driving the marginal value of social justice writing to zero.
Hopefully you get a chance to go thru some of the other books you were leaning towards. Especially Heart of a Dog. Or better yet, Master & Margarita one of these days would be amazing.
Have fun watching the rest of the World Series tonight and possibly tomorrow too!
Re Arctic Frost and how wide a 'trawler net', to used Mr. Kirn's term was used, does the 'two-hop' rule apply, whereby the subject and anyone in their contact list and anyone in the contact's list could also have their electronic communications sucked up? Points to ponder...I notice I'm hearing more about the mobile phone that won't allow this-Unplugged's UP mobile