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
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!
'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.
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.
Nobody is buying Intel. It’s completely broken. TSMC has destroyed them, and all the US chip companies worth anything are fabless and frankly don’t need em. Global foundries, the AMD fab spinoff is a disaster. If this didn’t happen it would slowly die. Now they at least have a shot. the stock has gone nowhere for 10 years.
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
Sasha Stone is a lightweight. She just skims the surface. Sasha tells her readers what is obvious anyway. And makes out as if she is a visionary prophet. Then they all tell her they are in love with her and that she is the Messiah!
For the most part, Sasha's readers are the people who never thought about these issues any more than she did. So they believe these are magnificent insights of hers. Cough, cough.
I have to laugh over Sasha. She does not know how much she does not know. And when someone points out a few salient bits of real knowledge to her, she bans them. So as to keep her goddess status with her fans. Wouldn't want them to know that she really doesn't understand all that much at all. Her stuff is Beginner Awakening 101.
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.....
Your opinion of her is up to you. Your choice entirely.
I have a different opinion. When she banned me for asking reasonable questions, I wondered whose side she is really on. She doesn't deserve to be considered a goddess just because she eventually awakened after a lifetime of leftwing allegiance.
Many of us were never taken in by the lefties. I think we were always ahead of Sasha in that way. She is very late in coming to her senses. She can get in line behind those of us who were always awake.
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.
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 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.
"Should all gulag inmates be considered innocent victims of Red repression? Contrary to what we have been led to believe, those arrested for political crimes ('counterrevolutionary offenses') numbered from 12 to 33 percent of the prison population, varying from year to year."
I'm not sure what people consider normal for the Gulag, but a prison population that is 12-33% political prisoners is not outside what I would expect.
67% - 87% does not meet my definition of "an overwhelming majority" within a prison system, but I suppose it's for each to judge. I would say arresting that number of political dissidents (combined with the number that were simply murdered) would be enough to end all political conversation.
It's also worth remembering just how mild Solzhenitsy's criticism of Stalin was. This is a man who was risking his life to fight for The Soviet Union and was given the standard 5 year term for a Zek for a criticism of Stalin that was so mild I didn't even realize it was a criticism when I read it. He doesn't even refer to Stalin my name and the criticism was extremely mild.
As for the conditions, of the 3 million Germans who were captured primarily near the end of the war, about 1,094,250 died in captivity, I suspect it was not Club Med.
No, Manning and Snowden knowingly violated the Espionage Act by stealing and releasing classified material and suffered those consequences, but not because they criticized our government.
Manning and Snowden were whistleblowers revealing government crimes. No one was killed or injured because of their "crimes." It was just embarrassing to the CIA, an organization that lies, steals, cheats, and murders with no regard for American or international law. The Espionage Act did exactly what Stalin is accused of doing. And with less justification. American prisons are gulags. Manning was tortured.
Not only is the Espionage and Sedition Act so vague and unconstitutional that you could arrest almost anyone under it (to include Eugene Debbs who served 5 years for handing out peace literature during WW1), but Assange was not a US citizen so was not legally accountable under the Espionage act anyway.
Snowden spent time in the Army and when you join, you take an oath not to defend the CIA or NSA, but the Constitution of the United States. The CIA and NSA violated the Constitution as a court later determined.
When our loyalty to police state agencies is greater than our loyalty to the Constitution, we are lost.
I have read the Espionage Act, and I find it to be disgusting. Eugene Debs was imprisoned for simply speaking out against America's entry into World War 1. Turns out our entry into WW1 was a terrible mistake that set the groundwork for WW2. The law is unconstitutional and should be repealed.
I don't believe that Mussolini ever said fascism is corporate capitalism on steroids, essentially or explicitly. Fascism is the conscription of private enterprise into the service of government, the opposite of corporatism.
Quite the opposite. Fascism is the hijacking of government by private enterprise. And by that definition America is a fascist country. What do our poliicians do all day? They solicit campaign donations from their corporate sponsors. Corporate lawyers and lobbyists write all our laws. Corporations pick our candidates and finance our elections. As well demonstrated by a famous Princeton University study, what ordinary people want has zero correlation whith what laws actualy get passed. That's fascism.
My formal background is a PhD in psychology. My informal background is a long history of antiwar activity and advocacy for the working class and the poor. Are you even remotely aware that the United States has a long history of supporting totalitarian dictators all over the world in order to steal resources, put third world countries in debt, get cheap labor, and increase corporate profits by parasitizing human beings? We overthrow democratically elected world leaders who insist that the profits from their country's oil etc. is for their own people, an not for American corporations. Consider Iran, Guatamala, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and dozens of other countries. In the phony name of spreading democracy we coddle dictators.
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."
Crony capitalism is the exact opposite of communism. Evey word Marx ever wrote is a repudiation of crony capitalism. The theft Marx wrote about is the theft of wealth from the workers who created that wealth. For Marx the theives were the moneyed elete who exploit workers, pay them starvation wages, force them to work long hour under unsafe working conditions with no security, and use forced child labor. Nothing could be more unChristian than today's monopoly capitalism in which wealth flows upward through economic rent - fees, compound interest, penalties. Capitalism is exploitation. Capitalism is parasitism. Billionaires make money while they sleep while exhausted workers struggle to survive to the end of the month. If you think that is just, you are a moral cretin.
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.
You are the one who needs to read. You seem totally aware that Orwell was a socialist. An you obviously haven't read a word of Marx. If workers got paid adequate wages, there would be little need for food banks. That said, I do support, contribute, and volunteer for food banks. Can any family survive on minimum wages, which haven't, in spite of inflation, increased since the 1970s?
Socialists have a problem speaking for the wages of people they don’t pay. Bread lines are loathed by most of the free world as socialist failure. The other chronic fail is starvation and compulsory labor camps. So you work for free for a government that doesn’t provide for you = Animal Farm. As a neighborhood character they usually sink into some form of functional mediocrity, like peak retail management, if they don’t go into State bureaucracy pushing paper at the DMV or something. As usual, the policy and individual thinking comes from withhout and orders are barked from the mothership. So moral tongue wagging doesn’t quite hit the same when you know who they are.
So really now, what socialists have your actually read? None, as far as as I can tell. Just anti-socialist propaganda. The economy of socialist China is booming. They have ended poverty and have built a vibrant middle class. Our own middle class is vanishing, being head over heels in debt, and their jobs are being sent overseas. China leads the world in manuacturing and technology. Their economy has pushed ahead of ours. China has no bread lines, no compulsory labor camps. They have magnificent high-speed rails, the finest infrastructure in the world, awesome public works, safe cities. In terms of people power, they have more democracy than us. We vote for candidates pre-selected for us by oligarchs, and our politicians serve the oligarchs that fund them - not me, not you. The Chinese can't pick their leaders but they have almost pure democracy at the local level, and they CAN change govenment policy with referendums and petitions. We can't. By the way, George Orwell, though he didn't like Stalin, was a deeply commited socialist.
To wit, I read Orwell. You deny the Uighur camps, the civil repression of Falun Gong, and the repression Tibet on China’s behalf. Their tofu construction is subject of multiplicities of international lawsuits for collapse and degradation over Belt & Road. Who is “our” middle class? Venezuela? What is this 'we' stuff? If you live in an ironically labelled 'Democrat' run State bordering Canada in the U.S., you have one-party rule.
The United States is a Constitutional Republic. If you want to be Chinese - try to emmigrate. Let's see how that goes.
Orwell knew socialism. It's a trap for free people vs. automated LLMs who do the thinking for you.
China’s failing economy is arching today towards capitalism by popular demand, by international reporting. That is what eventually happened to the GDR. It happens to every socialist regime who runs out of The People’s cannibal money.
Yes, I absolutely deny any abuse of the Uyghurs. Many American journalists and tourists have visited Uyghur areas, and all say they are doing just fine. I once fell for the Tibet nonsense but have come to realize it was all CIA propaganda. I once admired the Dali Lama but have come to realize that he, too, has been a CIA asset. Venezuelans suffer for one reason only - American blockades and sanctions. Venezuela has even more oil than Saudi Arabia, but the US blocks them from selling it or refining it. If we left them alone, they would thrive. I live in a very Republican state, so wherever you are trying to go with that just doesn't work. China is a socialist country that allows a certain amount of capitalism. The government owns the banks, the land, the natural resources, major industries, and everything that would be a natural monopoly. International polls consistently show the Chinese to be more satisfied with their government than America. They also believe they have more democracy than Americans do. All over the world, China is building free shipping ports, airports, eletric grids, and other infrastructure in order to make friends and trading partners, The United States - on the other hand - is an international bully. The US has killed more than 20 million people in 37 victim nations since World War II. Since 1945, the U.S. Government has perpetrated 297 invasions of foreign countries and at least 60 coups. China doesn't invade other countries. Their constitution forbids it.
Orwell, BTW, hated Stalin but never abandoned socialism.
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...
Guys, 50% of America believes that J6 was a violent coup attempt led by Trump, and any measures are justified to root out and punish all persons involved.
Nothing will change this belief. To them, the problem with Arctic Frost is that trump "illegally" ended it and is now planning a night of the long knives at the heroic FBI who stood up to him.
I dunno. When J6 happened, It was pretty shocking and stuff, but by the end of the day, I chalked it up as a demonstration (maybe a capitol walking tour) gone horribly (and but for the deaths, kind of hilariously) awry. I was over it by the end of the next day, and most friends, etc I talked to felt largely the same way.
I think because it happened in Washington, all the Washington people (and Washington press) lost their minds over it, and blew it hugely out of proportion.
People forget that as recently as 1983, people were literally exploding bombs in the halls of Congress. Google it.
I totally feel for the protestors who were locked up for WAY WAY TOO LONG.
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.
Read the record, firearms, knives, stun guns, flagpoles, axes, baseball bats, bear spray, etc., etc. Republicans were cowering under their desks pleading desperately for Trump to tell them to stand down while he munched on cheeseburgers and fries.
Firearms and axes? No. There were a few with baseball bats and some had pepper spray. It's not unusual for people to carry pocket knives, but no cops were stabbed with them. It's true that there were many flags on handheld poles. None were brought to use as a means of wresting control of the federal government by physical force.
You started your bloviation by saying it was a "soft coup". An armed coup is not a soft coup.
The Obama example is not the race card- it’s a simple and highly effective hypocrisy test. Unless you can answer you’d react the same, you’re being a hypocrite.
The images speak for themselves. You never responded to the charges of Trump’s unconscionable behavior— to which I’d add that Reps were willing to impeach until they started receiving threats from Trump and his brown shirts. And answer this, why pardon violent J6 offenders?
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
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!
London is Vancouver on steroids.
'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.
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.
Nobody is buying Intel. It’s completely broken. TSMC has destroyed them, and all the US chip companies worth anything are fabless and frankly don’t need em. Global foundries, the AMD fab spinoff is a disaster. If this didn’t happen it would slowly die. Now they at least have a shot. the stock has gone nowhere for 10 years.
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.
Sasha Stone is a lightweight. She just skims the surface. Sasha tells her readers what is obvious anyway. And makes out as if she is a visionary prophet. Then they all tell her they are in love with her and that she is the Messiah!
For the most part, Sasha's readers are the people who never thought about these issues any more than she did. So they believe these are magnificent insights of hers. Cough, cough.
I have to laugh over Sasha. She does not know how much she does not know. And when someone points out a few salient bits of real knowledge to her, she bans them. So as to keep her goddess status with her fans. Wouldn't want them to know that she really doesn't understand all that much at all. Her stuff is Beginner Awakening 101.
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.
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.....
Sasha Stone....an intellectual philosopher? Are we talking about the same Sasha Stone?
Well Ms Stone is my nomination for most intellectual and philosophically honest of a whole bunch of influencers out there
I appreciate her as a rational refugee from the mind control camps of the splintered America left wing poltical scenes scenes
Your opinion of her is up to you. Your choice entirely.
I have a different opinion. When she banned me for asking reasonable questions, I wondered whose side she is really on. She doesn't deserve to be considered a goddess just because she eventually awakened after a lifetime of leftwing allegiance.
Many of us were never taken in by the lefties. I think we were always ahead of Sasha in that way. She is very late in coming to her senses. She can get in line behind those of us who were always awake.
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.
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.
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 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.
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/
Thanks for the link.
"Should all gulag inmates be considered innocent victims of Red repression? Contrary to what we have been led to believe, those arrested for political crimes ('counterrevolutionary offenses') numbered from 12 to 33 percent of the prison population, varying from year to year."
I'm not sure what people consider normal for the Gulag, but a prison population that is 12-33% political prisoners is not outside what I would expect.
67% - 87% does not meet my definition of "an overwhelming majority" within a prison system, but I suppose it's for each to judge. I would say arresting that number of political dissidents (combined with the number that were simply murdered) would be enough to end all political conversation.
It's also worth remembering just how mild Solzhenitsy's criticism of Stalin was. This is a man who was risking his life to fight for The Soviet Union and was given the standard 5 year term for a Zek for a criticism of Stalin that was so mild I didn't even realize it was a criticism when I read it. He doesn't even refer to Stalin my name and the criticism was extremely mild.
As for the conditions, of the 3 million Germans who were captured primarily near the end of the war, about 1,094,250 died in captivity, I suspect it was not Club Med.
No, Manning and Snowden knowingly violated the Espionage Act by stealing and releasing classified material and suffered those consequences, but not because they criticized our government.
Manning and Snowden were whistleblowers revealing government crimes. No one was killed or injured because of their "crimes." It was just embarrassing to the CIA, an organization that lies, steals, cheats, and murders with no regard for American or international law. The Espionage Act did exactly what Stalin is accused of doing. And with less justification. American prisons are gulags. Manning was tortured.
Maybe, but both still knowingly violated the Espionage Act. You should read it first before making uninformed comments about it.
Not only is the Espionage and Sedition Act so vague and unconstitutional that you could arrest almost anyone under it (to include Eugene Debbs who served 5 years for handing out peace literature during WW1), but Assange was not a US citizen so was not legally accountable under the Espionage act anyway.
Snowden spent time in the Army and when you join, you take an oath not to defend the CIA or NSA, but the Constitution of the United States. The CIA and NSA violated the Constitution as a court later determined.
When our loyalty to police state agencies is greater than our loyalty to the Constitution, we are lost.
I have read the Espionage Act, and I find it to be disgusting. Eugene Debs was imprisoned for simply speaking out against America's entry into World War 1. Turns out our entry into WW1 was a terrible mistake that set the groundwork for WW2. The law is unconstitutional and should be repealed.
This is perhaps the best comment on a ATW post I’ve ever seen. Nailed it in every front
I don't believe that Mussolini ever said fascism is corporate capitalism on steroids, essentially or explicitly. Fascism is the conscription of private enterprise into the service of government, the opposite of corporatism.
A direct quote from Mussolini:
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power."
In practice, fascism is the hijacking of private enterprise by government whereas corporatism is the hijacking of government by a few corporations.
"Corporate capitalism" is a nearly meaningless phrase as it pertains to national government and has little to do with corporatism.
Quite the opposite. Fascism is the hijacking of government by private enterprise. And by that definition America is a fascist country. What do our poliicians do all day? They solicit campaign donations from their corporate sponsors. Corporate lawyers and lobbyists write all our laws. Corporations pick our candidates and finance our elections. As well demonstrated by a famous Princeton University study, what ordinary people want has zero correlation whith what laws actualy get passed. That's fascism.
Your definition of fascism is totally false.
I find your lack of curiosity odd. I find your unquestioning acceptance of propaganda odd.
My formal background is a PhD in psychology. My informal background is a long history of antiwar activity and advocacy for the working class and the poor. Are you even remotely aware that the United States has a long history of supporting totalitarian dictators all over the world in order to steal resources, put third world countries in debt, get cheap labor, and increase corporate profits by parasitizing human beings? We overthrow democratically elected world leaders who insist that the profits from their country's oil etc. is for their own people, an not for American corporations. Consider Iran, Guatamala, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and dozens of other countries. In the phony name of spreading democracy we coddle dictators.
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."
Crony capitalism is the exact opposite of communism. Evey word Marx ever wrote is a repudiation of crony capitalism. The theft Marx wrote about is the theft of wealth from the workers who created that wealth. For Marx the theives were the moneyed elete who exploit workers, pay them starvation wages, force them to work long hour under unsafe working conditions with no security, and use forced child labor. Nothing could be more unChristian than today's monopoly capitalism in which wealth flows upward through economic rent - fees, compound interest, penalties. Capitalism is exploitation. Capitalism is parasitism. Billionaires make money while they sleep while exhausted workers struggle to survive to the end of the month. If you think that is just, you are a moral cretin.
I see your press secretary and raise you an ex CIA director.
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
You are the one who needs to read. You seem totally aware that Orwell was a socialist. An you obviously haven't read a word of Marx. If workers got paid adequate wages, there would be little need for food banks. That said, I do support, contribute, and volunteer for food banks. Can any family survive on minimum wages, which haven't, in spite of inflation, increased since the 1970s?
Oh, I already read socialism.
Socialists have a problem speaking for the wages of people they don’t pay. Bread lines are loathed by most of the free world as socialist failure. The other chronic fail is starvation and compulsory labor camps. So you work for free for a government that doesn’t provide for you = Animal Farm. As a neighborhood character they usually sink into some form of functional mediocrity, like peak retail management, if they don’t go into State bureaucracy pushing paper at the DMV or something. As usual, the policy and individual thinking comes from withhout and orders are barked from the mothership. So moral tongue wagging doesn’t quite hit the same when you know who they are.
So really now, what socialists have your actually read? None, as far as as I can tell. Just anti-socialist propaganda. The economy of socialist China is booming. They have ended poverty and have built a vibrant middle class. Our own middle class is vanishing, being head over heels in debt, and their jobs are being sent overseas. China leads the world in manuacturing and technology. Their economy has pushed ahead of ours. China has no bread lines, no compulsory labor camps. They have magnificent high-speed rails, the finest infrastructure in the world, awesome public works, safe cities. In terms of people power, they have more democracy than us. We vote for candidates pre-selected for us by oligarchs, and our politicians serve the oligarchs that fund them - not me, not you. The Chinese can't pick their leaders but they have almost pure democracy at the local level, and they CAN change govenment policy with referendums and petitions. We can't. By the way, George Orwell, though he didn't like Stalin, was a deeply commited socialist.
To wit, I read Orwell. You deny the Uighur camps, the civil repression of Falun Gong, and the repression Tibet on China’s behalf. Their tofu construction is subject of multiplicities of international lawsuits for collapse and degradation over Belt & Road. Who is “our” middle class? Venezuela? What is this 'we' stuff? If you live in an ironically labelled 'Democrat' run State bordering Canada in the U.S., you have one-party rule.
The United States is a Constitutional Republic. If you want to be Chinese - try to emmigrate. Let's see how that goes.
Orwell knew socialism. It's a trap for free people vs. automated LLMs who do the thinking for you.
China’s failing economy is arching today towards capitalism by popular demand, by international reporting. That is what eventually happened to the GDR. It happens to every socialist regime who runs out of The People’s cannibal money.
Then they need trade partners.
Yes, I absolutely deny any abuse of the Uyghurs. Many American journalists and tourists have visited Uyghur areas, and all say they are doing just fine. I once fell for the Tibet nonsense but have come to realize it was all CIA propaganda. I once admired the Dali Lama but have come to realize that he, too, has been a CIA asset. Venezuelans suffer for one reason only - American blockades and sanctions. Venezuela has even more oil than Saudi Arabia, but the US blocks them from selling it or refining it. If we left them alone, they would thrive. I live in a very Republican state, so wherever you are trying to go with that just doesn't work. China is a socialist country that allows a certain amount of capitalism. The government owns the banks, the land, the natural resources, major industries, and everything that would be a natural monopoly. International polls consistently show the Chinese to be more satisfied with their government than America. They also believe they have more democracy than Americans do. All over the world, China is building free shipping ports, airports, eletric grids, and other infrastructure in order to make friends and trading partners, The United States - on the other hand - is an international bully. The US has killed more than 20 million people in 37 victim nations since World War II. Since 1945, the U.S. Government has perpetrated 297 invasions of foreign countries and at least 60 coups. China doesn't invade other countries. Their constitution forbids it.
Orwell, BTW, hated Stalin but never abandoned socialism.
I don't know who you are, but you sound so close to a Chinese Tencent bot operative I am no longer in this conversation.
Stay the hell away from American med data. No one owes you a living.
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.
Really looking forward to Andrew Clement Serkis' modern take on Animal Farm.
I hear he is working on a revisionist version of MLK too, titled:
Martin Luther King: the white clan member who dedicated his life to fighting desegregation.
I would say Arctic Frost was the "six ways from Sunday" the intelligence community has of getting back at you.
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...
Guys, 50% of America believes that J6 was a violent coup attempt led by Trump, and any measures are justified to root out and punish all persons involved.
Nothing will change this belief. To them, the problem with Arctic Frost is that trump "illegally" ended it and is now planning a night of the long knives at the heroic FBI who stood up to him.
I dunno. When J6 happened, It was pretty shocking and stuff, but by the end of the day, I chalked it up as a demonstration (maybe a capitol walking tour) gone horribly (and but for the deaths, kind of hilariously) awry. I was over it by the end of the next day, and most friends, etc I talked to felt largely the same way.
I think because it happened in Washington, all the Washington people (and Washington press) lost their minds over it, and blew it hugely out of proportion.
People forget that as recently as 1983, people were literally exploding bombs in the halls of Congress. Google it.
I totally feel for the protestors who were locked up for WAY WAY TOO LONG.
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.
What were those hooligans armed with?
Read the record, firearms, knives, stun guns, flagpoles, axes, baseball bats, bear spray, etc., etc. Republicans were cowering under their desks pleading desperately for Trump to tell them to stand down while he munched on cheeseburgers and fries.
Firearms and axes? No. There were a few with baseball bats and some had pepper spray. It's not unusual for people to carry pocket knives, but no cops were stabbed with them. It's true that there were many flags on handheld poles. None were brought to use as a means of wresting control of the federal government by physical force.
You started your bloviation by saying it was a "soft coup". An armed coup is not a soft coup.
Stop with the dumb rationalizations. If Obama had pulled this stunt with a black mob you’d be calling for his head, as would every member of the GOP.
Ha! When challenged and you cannot refute, you throw down the race card. That, neighbor, is the dumb rationalization.
The Obama example is not the race card- it’s a simple and highly effective hypocrisy test. Unless you can answer you’d react the same, you’re being a hypocrite.
The images speak for themselves. You never responded to the charges of Trump’s unconscionable behavior— to which I’d add that Reps were willing to impeach until they started receiving threats from Trump and his brown shirts. And answer this, why pardon violent J6 offenders?
Lawrence doesn't have an audience- except for the 100 or so boomers who still cling to mainstream as a source for "news."
Speaking of guest essayists: two BIG thumbs up on Eric Salzman.
He's doing some really good stuff!
The market for social justice writing is heavily oversupplied, driving the marginal value of social justice writing to zero.
Gooooood morning Walter “In Other Words” Kirn 😃