I have said it before, but it bears repeating; Dems have no feedback mechanism. They have completely removed any and all dissenting voices, labeling them racist or white surpremisist or deplorable. This might make them feel better about their live choices, but it doesn't tell them how the rest of the country feels, votes, thinks.
And if they think calling anyone who dissagress with them a racist is a winning strategy, that this actually helps deal with real racisim, then they are fools who do not deserve to run a country. Indeed, with all the other idiocy we are seeing from this admin they are showing that they don't know how to run a country, let alone deal with the things that worry them.
It has nothing to do with a feedback mechanism. Do you really think you have knowledge and insight not available to the DNC? A calculated and deliberate decision was made some time ago on the premise that more votes can be won building a coalition around race and identity than by other means.
Building a coalition around race and identity lets them ignore class, which allows them continue to ignore the working class that has gotten the short end of the stick since the 1970s. From the FDR era through the 80s, the Dems were the working class party. During Clinton’s presidency that was abandoned for the most part. Unlike most Republicans, they will let a few crumbs fall from the table, but not enough.
I was raised by democrats and considered myself one most of my life. I kept voting for them thinking eventually they would do better. But they continue with their divisive race and identity coalition building, when appealing to working people of all races and identities would create a bigger coalition.
Sanders was doing this in 2016, and that platform got him close to winning the nomination. In 2020, he started focusing more on the party approved race and identity approach. It never felt like that campaign had the same energy as 2016.
And why do you think mainstream democrats focus on "race and identity coalition building" and Sanders somewhat casually segued from his 2016 campaign messaging of the "shafting of the 90% (there is no American "working class" any more, properly defined) by the PMC/Billionaire club," to the 2020 campaign to the more tepid and lachrymose "race and identity" nonsense?
In point of fact, Sanders didn't really shift gears or dramatically alter his messaging all that much in 2020, he was more or less told to beat it after getting blown out in South Carolina, a victim of---and party to---a highly dysfunctional campaign. The embarrassing showing in the primary---in which he was a longshot anyway---led to a "all-hands-on-deck" order from the party potentates, with hatchet-man obama drawing the long straw for delivering the fatal whispering-in-the ear "advice" to Sanders. Maybe he would have been steamrolled on super tuesday also---but we'll never know.
South Carolina voters are uniformly considered by political operatives to be the most catalogued bloc of low information voters in the country. And although South Carolina voters caught a glimpse of Sanders four years previous, that's plenty long enough for a low information southern voter to lose track of a Yankee socialist.
And IdPol had very little to do with the blowout. Sanders always kept the Idpol to a minimum on the campaign trail, primarily because he didn't subscribe to the gibberish himself, and the only reason he engaged the stuff at all was to placate the idiots on the left who kept after him with the fallacious "Bernie Bro" bullshit, a gaslit meme created and promoted to....gaslight, made all the more irritating in light of the fact that a majority of his supporters were women and the entire cohort reasonably balanced demographically.
But the chief factor in Bernie getting steamrolled was the miserable performance his organization turned in. The entire campaign, from top staff to the grunts on the ground, was dysfunctional, inept and plagued by acute organizational and logistical incompetence from top to bottom.
Black, white, green or red, Bernie Sanders was never going to be a favorite son in South Carolina. Meaning Sanders' own error, if you want to call it an "error," was showing up looking like Bernie Sanders, that's to say an old, earnest (why does he talk that way?), rumpled honky from Vermont by way of Brooklyn, who most voters probably mistook for a Unitarian elder who took a wrong turn on I-90 on his way to Cleveland.
Right. The elderly south carolina african-american baptists shovin' on Bernie preachin' CRT hermeneutics and homilies. Then Bernie and Crenshaw in a call-and-response rockabilly rendition of "softly fades the twilight ray."
I agree - but it such an obvious miscalculation. I do think that they have all been drinking their own bath water for so long that they really believe normal people agree with this. I think that is one of the risks of having a party run solely by university graduates.
Sure, they planned it. Is it something to admire? Lack of a feedback mechanism means they have no respect for their constituency.
The fact that it has worked in the past for the DNC (and the GOP and all other modern political groups) to merely psychoanalyze the constituency as objects for immediate payoffs, rather than communicate with them as peers for the long run, does nothing to alleviate the massive and dangerous social debt they are accumulating. The same debt has been accumulating in American industry. Hence the Great Resignation.
So, finally, it is starting to bite these and other "playas" in a big way. So right now, they are flailing ever more wildly with increasingly ridiculous counterattacks, especially since 2016. As it snowballs into deep and intractable distrust, it will take decades for both to recover.
Lying and manipulating by the *leaders*, not the rebels, of a society against its enemy only makes sense when that society is trapped in some kind of existential danger, with no exit. Conversely, it is completely toxic when used to run that society's *constituents* forever. Did this describe America society c. 2000? We must ask why it happened, and why it continues.
It's called "neo-liberalism." And it's been happening since the mid-1960's. Money. And then more money. It's a one word answer, anti-hip. The political and business elites of this country don't give a shit about CRT, who's woke and who ain't woke, environmental degradation, balanced budgets, primary, secondary, post secondary education, jesus christ, santa claus, the easter bunny, or even if the fucking F-35 can make it off the Ford-class aircraft carrier or not. Money. That's...their interest. Exclusively and solely. So the rest of us should act and think accordingly.
But money has always existed. Meanwhile, it takes a sea change in public ethics to move from the *mass* idealism of the 1960s to where we are today. So, I must persist in asking, how did that happen?
The democrats get plenty of feedback from their constituency and have the utmost respect for their constituency, which for all practical purposes is the same constituency as the republicans---the check writers. The democrats got rid of labor when they made it possible for corporate industry and Wall St to get rid of American labor and replace them with cheap Asian and Latin American knockoffs. The democrats are still able to win elections because as of yet the republicans are obviously still a bigger collection of dirtbags and grifters than the democrats. American politics may be execrable at this point but not that complicated to decipher.
I hate to have to quote RR, but, well ..."There, you go again!"
*Why* did "the democrats [get] rid of labor [and] made it possible for corporate industry and Wall St to get rid of American labor and replace them with cheap Asian and Latin American knockoffs"?
What changed in America?
"The democrats are still able to win elections because as of yet the republicans are obviously still a bigger collection of dirtbags and grifters than the democrats."
*That* is extremely debatable. They rammed the worst D national ticket in my life down our throats last year with non-stop hysteria and chicanery, one that has now proved so bad that the *average* American is now asking "Who's really running the show here?"
Amen to worst D national ticket in our lifetimes. The worst two candidates end up on the ticket. I keep telling myself there is no where to go now but up, but the DNC will surely find a way to fine even worse.
It wasn't a party decision. The GOP as the former party of business was just as interested in getting cheap labor as the Democrats. The term you want is "the establishment." It's not a party issue.
What is true though is that Bill Clinton turning the Democrats into Republican-lite neutered the economic left of the party, and that spelled the end of the Liberal Class as a positive force in the U.S.
The liberal class used to include talk about social justice, but that wasn't the whole thing, as it is today. The liberal class's former function was to "save capitalism" by preventing socialism and fascism. It did this by providing incremental improvements in quality of life for most people.
That safety valve is gone now. In its place are endless conversations about minority issues. As far as electoral politics, does it even matter anymore? I assume we will see dirty tricks that would have made Nixon blush. But a casual observer like me would have to assume that Democrats will get wiped for the foreseeable future.
"The term you want is 'the establishment.' It's not a party issue."
Oh, I'm in full agreement with that. I'm a Leftist. As Christopher Lasch put it, we had a "Revolt of the Elites".
So what I'm having trouble understanding is how did the *entire* elite *decide* to abandon noblesse oblige? What sociopath virus infected them to destroy the country? These people are *not* stupid -- the genius of their decades-long, pan-society, enormously successful psy-op to bring us to the brink of totalitarianism is proof of that. ("Democracy will die by 2024!!" No shit Sherlock, you killed it. Intentionally. See e.g. Greenwald's new article on FBI infiltration.)
First paragraph: Money. Second paragraph: more money. Last paragraph: Too much money + corruption = Trump & Biden in 2020. Who's really running the show? Whoever has the money. I won't argue Republican vs. Democrat with you---I have no allegiance to either party, but I do have my estimations of what they're both about, with few illusions about their separate political aims.
Yes. A feedback mechanism assumes the possibility that one can be wrong, and that someone will thus call it out (preferably with diplomacy). So feedback is part of the mechanism for correction and improvement. This is basic to the process of democracy.
Yes I think that's right. It all goes back to not examining why they lost in 2016. Instead they invented Russiagate. Once you decide on a fantasy narrative, things tend to get out of hand. Eventually you are worshiping Ra and claiming that aliens control your underwear.
This is operative amongst the Republicans and the right, as well. We basically have a political culture where dissenting voices are squelched by the dynamics of media echo chambers, whatever their persuasion. It is a function less of any particular ideology than of the economic model and incentive structure of the major social media platforms. This is a technology-driven phenomenon, as fun as it is to lay the blame at the feet of one’s least favorite political faction.
No, it's not. As the left has made it mad dash through the institutions, the right has been able to see and hear every thing that the left does; there is no movie, university, publishing house or any other media that hasn't been taken over by the left. There is only one source of rightward televised news, and any information that comes from this is automatically discounted as propaganda by the left. Watch Twatter, and you will see how many voices of the right have been "trust and safetied" off the platform vs. the left.
Yes, both sides have bubbles, but there is no way to avoid what the left is animated by, as opposed to the rights voices being constantly blocked out by facile claims of racism,
Which Left are you talking about? The word's become meaningless. Since Reagan became president, conservatives have gone from win to win. So I don't know who is misinforming you.
Regan was the last gasp of the traditional right, and Bush I was a failure. Clinton was the new left personified, with Bush II and Obama following in that tradition. No, it isn't the left of labor and Marxism, it is Neo-liberalism. Open borders, NAFTA, soft socialism.
This is hard to condense into a soundbite, so unfortunately this post will be of some length:
Televised news on both the left and right has seen its ratings, usage and influence decline precipitously in the last decade or so, precisely because people don't get their news from television anymore--they get it from social media, which directs them towards news outlets that cater to their political preferences and engage in yellow journalism, reinforcing a 'paranoid style' in politics.
Your claims here about Twitter illustrate that you don't actually understand how these platforms work. On the PR side they may appear to have some political bias, but internally the companies that own them are motivated solely by what all businesses are motivated by--maximization of market share. The functioning of these companies' platforms is not run by a cabal of leftists or rightists, but are run by algorithms, and they are funded by the social media model, which roughly consists of "provide services for free-->acquire data about users-->sell data about users to advertisers-->tweak algorithm to better get users attention and direct them towards advertisers".
These algorithms work by measuring 'engagement' and feeding users content that maximizes 'engagement'. Unfortunately, they are blunt instruments, and to them 'engagement' is measured by metrics like 'did the user click on this?' or 'did the user pause and look at this?' rather than 'did this make the user feel good?' Therefore, the algorithms end up feeding social media users content that is biased towards stoking the 'fight or flight' instincts--fear, paranoia, anger, etc.--that favor these metrics.
Because people now get their information from these platforms, they have facilitated the current paranoid and angry political culture that is unraveling Western society, and augmented it by the creation of these 'echo chambers'. More 'engagement' is generated when a liberal is exposed to content that leads them to believe conservatives are trying to overthrow the government, or when a conservative is exposed to content that gets them to believe liberals are staging fake riots at the capitol to defame them, than when they are exposed to content that informs them about the messy, less dramatic, shades-of-grey reality of the world.
Until this incentive structure and the social media business model is changed so that users are paid for the data they create--so they can generate *better* data--we will continue to see both sides of the political aisle become continually more paranoid, angry and deranged.
Yeah, that's right. Everyone thinks it's the other guy who's brainwashed. But every political truther of any stripe who has his ear jammed up against a social media bullhorn looks the same now, whether it's Go Brandon or Vote Blu No Matter Who. The instruments available to propagandists now are like nukes compared to the newspapers, radio, and television they used to have to rely on.
I am mistrustful of the “social media made me do it” hypothesis.
Correlation is easy but causation is complicated.
There have always been outbreaks of political and social manias throughout history. From Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE on Justinian’s circa 500 AD Constantinople, which divided itself in “color factions”:
“Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues, of ancient Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the circus, raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the reign of Anastasius, this popular frenzy was inflamed by religious zeal; and the greens, who had treacherously concealed stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries. 44 From this capital, the pestilence was diffused into the provinces and cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colors produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the foundations of a feeble government. 45 The popular dissensions, founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this wanton discord, which invaded the peace of families, divided friends and brothers, and tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to espouse the inclinations of their lovers, or to contradict the wishes of their husbands. Every law, either human or divine, was trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public calamity“
The most maddening thing is that these assertions can be easily evidenced with collected data, and that data can be denied and ignored with impunity and there’s no fucking consequence for it- except at the ballot box. And even when they’re voted out like in Va- these fucking grifting troglodytes still double down on the goddamned race mongering. See what a difference a year of unpunished lawlessness and sociopolitical puritanical cultural power does? It’s kind of terrifying. And I’m sorry to say, that even though I abhor a LOT of the right’s platform, I’ll probably vote red until this shit is extricated from the political landscape.
A well deserved, horrendously embarrassing Dem shellacking in the 2022 mid-terms is our best hope to break this cultural psychosis. And it is a psychosis. It really is an illness in group consciousness. It’s a form of demonic possession and it’s going to destroy the nation if it doesn’t get exorcised.
Some force needs to stand up to it and shout it down with the full light of consciousness until the demon crawls away like a dying cockroach — and I suspect the American Voter is the only force that really can deliver a powerful and painful blow. Maybe the American Mom (and Dad) to some degree too, but that’s diffused across time and place. It’s not a blow.
The very wealthy and liberal circle in which I travel makes Q Anon seem tame. Lack of evidence for their racist paranoia is in itself evidence. They are constantly inventing and reinventing concepts from whole cloth. Acronyms come and go and it is hard to keep up. They "know it's true because they know it's true" in regards to the most insane race based thinking. Strangely the Proud Boys are never far from their thoughts.
Yeah the progressive wing of the Democratic party won't be chastened, they will bury themselves even further into paranoia and dogma. The moderate wing, yeah, they'll get the message, but not the progressives.
The religious right never left, but the center didn't hold. And by that I mean the normies, those who voted R for the tax brackets, moved on. At that point they moved to the left, but now, what with the craziness of the left they will move right.
The paranoia and dogma -- Idpol in general -- is necessary to avoid the looming specter of class war. Thus it is essentially conservative -- "nothing fundamental will change." (The specter looms because things are getting worse; things are getting worse because the US ruling class seems to be losing its competence and its morale.) Voting Republican isn't going to clean up the Democratic Party, it will reinforce its conservatism and thus its investment in Idpol. If you want something different from what you have you have to do and support something different. The alternative, as the Bible says, is a dog returning to his vomit. (Proverbs 26:11).
Voting Republican is a dreadful alternative given they lack the essential competence just as much as the Democrats. It isn't like Congressional Republicans could produce a budget and appropriations on time when they were in charge. The next Republican Speaker won't have any more ability to efficiently run the House than Pelosi, because there is no discipline in either party.
I agree it is dreadful because the default tendency is authoritarian for most republicans. The two party system by design basically ensures a kind of two-sides-of-the-same-coin dilemma, but unfortunately no other entity has demonstrated any effectiveness or willingness to fight back. So, as shitty as it is, I choose the lesser of two evils- which is why I went left when Bush was in office.
Expanding the concept, idpol (both right wing and left wing versions) are the outer face of the current divide and (continue to)conquer strategy, but "democracy" and electoral politics are the inner head of the beast. Elections massively divert energy from creating reality into lobbying individuals corrupted by the system itself to hopefully pass some scrap in an omnibus bill for the constituency as close enough. It can never solve "our" problems as long as our= people who can't afford to buy politicians.
Seems that most of our formulation of problems is itself problematic. The first aspect being that govt is assumed to be the appropriate entity to effect a solution.
A psychoanalytical portrait of Ionecu’s Rhinocerus:
“It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.”
-Carl Jung -“On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35
“No, the demons are not banished; that is a difficult task that still lies ahead. Now that the angel of history has abandoned the Germans, the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey…. We should not forget that exactly the same fatal tendency to collectivization is present in the victorious nations as in the Germans, that they can just as suddenly become a victim of the demonic powers.”
Carl Jung - “The Postwar Psychic Problems of the Germans” (1945)
“Modern science has subtilized its projections to an almost unrecognizable degree, but our ordinary life still swarms with them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, rumours, and ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled out with projections. We are still so sure we know what other people think or what their true character is.”
Carl Jung - “Psychology and Religion” (1938) In CW II: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P. 140
“A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.”
-Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
I don’t think Democrats are receiving the feedback the ballot box provides. This can be evidenced by them doubling down on the race cult mantras of “white (insert derogatory here)”- which is the same thing that lost them the gubernatorial election in the first place.
As I've noted elsewhere in this discussions, the Democrats don't have anything else. They can't offend their rich donors or the PMC, they can't go against the war-imperialism-surveillance machine because they belong to it, they can't increase Welfare outgoes, they can't do anything about climate change because it steps on too many toes, the response to COVID has been about as lame as Trump's, and unless the Republicans put their foot on the third rail of abortion rights, there is no territory to be gained there either. Idpol seems to be it, and the Republicans know how to practice that in their own way.
Even more than that, they eat their own if they happen to produce any studies that conflict with the established ideological narrative. Prime example: Roland Fryer. Roland Fryer is a liberal, African American economist at Harvard- and for publishing this study, his name was smeared and character besmirched by people at his own university, not to mention political and media pundits: https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force
TLDR version: Fryer’s intensive and granular CONTROLLED research shows no bias regarding race in officer-involved shootings of suspects. This obviously directly contradicts the narrative “police are racist and hunt black men for kicks” that progressives use to prop up the claim that the US is systemically racist concerning police use of deadly force. If anything, the study shows that whites may actually be slightly more likely to be shot and killed by police vs. their black counterpart citizens.
One thing progressives suck at (aside from the obvious things like making sense) is finding viable, unassailable data that supports claims of racism. Furthermore, studies are often done to refute claims that progressives make. Wilfred Reilly, another black scholar is particularly adept in this field. To address the claim of systemic racism in hiring practices which was first brought to prominence and public knowledge in 2003, Reilly conducted his own study: https://www.commentary.org/articles/wilfred-reilly/race-in-america-good-news/ TLDR version, the study found that there was bias in typically lower class or clearly ethnic sounding names of black applicants, but no bias in black applicants with more conventional names. To further bolster the claim, he conducted the same experiment with white names. Names like “Bubba” (white) and names like “Jamal” (black) received the same level of no call back bias. This means that the bias leans much more toward being class-based rather than race-based.
Both Reilly and Fryer for this type of in-depth, social science data analysis were denounced across the board as supporting white supremacy and written off as “Uncle Toms”. Clearly ad hominem attacks meant to distract from the very compelling study findings.
What does this mean for the average person? It means you plan on combatting the race cult brain poison, you have to do your homework, stand your ground, reinforce the data and ignore everything except merit-based arguments that specifically address the data and evidence. That’s the only way this shit will ever abate, and the only way it can be fought.
I think it has already been pointed out that the largest determining factor in getting shot by the police or not is class. However, in the US at least 'Black' codes for 'lower class' which isn't a whole lot different from getting shot because Black. An approach to solving the problem, if it is a problem, might be to see if police methods for suppressing certain undesirable behaviors might be modified in the direction of being less violent; but that would be rational.
In this case, I was assuming that 'nothing fundamental will change.' This is what America's voters seem to have chosen in regard to the police and many other matters. The subculture of which you speak (I assume) is not a simple thing, and most cultures are difficult to change top-down, especially because those who carry them are deeply attached to particulars of their content. However, if we just want the police to be less lethal, and recognizing that we are not omniscient and omnipotent, and conscious of our limitations, there are ways of going about lethality reduction which will not much affect anyone's culture very deeply -- not even that of the police.
I am glad you put 'Left' in quotation marks. There is no effective Left, and the ineffective Left has no public policies worthy of the name.
Roland Fryer was not "smeared and character besmirched by people at his own university [or] political and media pundits" for his ultimately very flawed and dubious piece of scholarship.
Rather, his research and analysis were found to be highly flawed and subsequently debunked by two subsequent studies, one of which was conducted by fellow Harvard scholars. Fryer was also guilty of mischaracterizing the analysis in his study to the media:
"Fryer’s analysis is highly flawed, however. It suffers from major theoretical and methodological errors, and he has communicated the results to news media in a way that is misleading. While there have long been problems with the quality of police shootings data, there is still plenty of evidence to support a pattern of systematic, racially discriminatory use of force against black people in the United States."
And then you cite one obscure "Commentary" opinion piece by an obscure academic, Wilfred Reilly, of Kentucky State University, which is NOT a study and consists of no formal scholarly research, and disingenuously (stupidly, more likely) pass it off as "in-depth, social science data analysis."
Here is your summary of Reilly's "study:"
"To further bolster the claim, he [Reilly] conducted the same experiment with white names. Names like “Bubba” (white) and names like “Jamal” (black) received the same level of no call back bias. This means that the bias leans much more toward being class-based rather than race-based." Groundbreaking stuff there.
And then go on to claim that both Reilly and Fryer were "denounced across the board as supporting white supremacy and written off as “Uncle Toms”.
Now, I've searched the web high and far for these scurrilous attacks you speak of (and curiously do not bother to cite here) and found...nothing.
"Clearly ad hominem attacks meant to distract from the very compelling study findings," you chin-rubbingly assert, no doubt simultaneously hitching up your pants with thumbs and forefingers, accompanied by furrowed brows and a nodding head. If you're able to locate these "ad hominem attacks," as I could not, I'd surely be interested in reviewing them.
"What does this mean for the average person" you then ask? Not a goddamn thing, I'd say.
Your idea and my idea of "average person" must be different. For future reference, let's just say by "average person" I mean someone that hasn't made a career out of racializing everything under the sun, and believes that "objective truth" is a thing.
First, can you link me those studies that you refer to? I'm more than happy to read them and amend my statement if it's warranted. This may be putting the cart before the horse, but whether or not you like Fryer's conclusions, he does an awful lot of controls for his studies and has what one might refer to as a shit ton of samples, and so many varying sample sizes as to make the root sources of his data seem almost unquestionable.
For the sake of argument, let's say his study is flawed. In what way is it flawed? In what ways do the other studies you reference directly contradict with his findings? Do you even know? I somehow doubt it.
Second, not only was Fryer denounced, but I find it a little more than suspect that his police bias study was published in June of 2019 and in July of 2019 he was suspended for two years because he was accused of sexual harassment- accusations of which go all the way back to 2006. Now, I too have scoured the internet for what Fryer was actually accused of, and why it took 13 years for women to come forward, and why only a month after him publishing his study was the right time for these victims to come forward.
Third, I don't have the time, patience or inclination to carry your fucking water for you. You search. You find them. I can find plenty of Harvard faculty denouncing Fryer for his "white supremacist" study starting in roughly August '19 until about the fall of '20- the same time that his study was being scrutinized by both progressives and used by the right to bolster the notion that the police aren't the only problem. If you're saying my claims aren't true, then the burden of proof rests on the denier.
Otherwise you're just some woke moron just saying things, denying "objective truth" because that's the only way you can get your point across . Evidence matters. Data matters. Produce some if you want to be taken seriously. Just because you have a vocabulary doesn't mean that everything you type can or should be taken seriously. Settle down "Aunt Martha". Do you not know these things are being said and have been published in numerous articles like these below (note that "Uncle Tom" is even in the title of the article- how many of these would I need to provide to change your mind?). Also notice that like you, the person writing this article doesn't bother going into specifics of why she's drawing the conclusions she is- she just expects (just like you) that people are going to assume that something nefarious is going on because it simply disagrees the the established sociopolitical narrative.
Here's the one where he was suspended "mysteriously" a month after his report was published at various sources online and began being consumed by and used by right leaning organizations to battle the "defund the police" movement:
But I guess the timing can just be written off as a coincidence, right? It's hilarious how the first two searches I did I was able to find these things easily that you proclaim didn't happen and don't exist. Quite frankly, I'm embarrassed that I even felt compelled to respond to your drivel-laden, nonsensical *shits pants in rage* reply that's utterly devoid of merit or anything evidential to back up your claims. He was denounced heavily and for months. Reilly was as well. If you'd ever read Reilly, you'd know that he often writes about the responses that he gets from his work from people in his own university and widely outside- social media, political pundits, other writers that write on the other side of the political divide about the same topics, you name it.
Are you unaware- strike that. Nevermind. You clearly are. Thanks for inspiring me waste fifteen minutes of my day though. Do you have anything to share like the studies that were done- I mean like the actual studies so that I can peruse the data, or is just proclaiming something with indignation and disgust that an opinion with evidence that's counter to your own woke ideology dare be uttered for public reading?
That question is rhetorical. I don't care. If you'd like another response, give me a link to the two studies that you say exist so I can see the methodology used and the number of sources and how the data was parsed so I can see if they pass the smell test. Either than or you can continue to shit your pants in rage at strangers on the internet. So much for no evidence of "scurrilous attacks". A cursory web search was all it took to find that. I could do a deep dive and make it beyond reproach, but people like you aren't satisfied with any amount of data, so it isn't incumbent upon me to try.
Gee, I wonder why dear Aunt Martha has no witty retort to any of your responses. She/he (who knows? Brave new world out there) seems to be rather well written for being completely wrong and not really wanting to engage in anything other than bad faith assertions that can easily be stricken lame with quick web searches.
What has Chris Rufo or James Lindsay said that is factually, academically or empirically incorrect? Or do you just say it is and won't bother to offer any substantial evidence because you don't like what they say?
No, I don't like what they say. At all. And in the world where I come from, sentient humans form opinions and marshall judgments based on what others "say," believing that what people "say" is communicating to whomever is listening that it's also what they "think" and what they "believe," and consequently serves as an accurate barometer of how they "act" in the process of going about their business in the world, whatever that business may be.
And I don't know what kind of community you call home, but in my extended milieu if you went around challenging the opinions and statements expressed by others that you found disagreeable or otherwise objectionable, by demanding from them receipts of statements that are "factually, academically or empirically incorrect," you'd be laughed out of the room or unhesitatingly told to go fuck yourself. And rightfully so.
From what I've recorded and compiled of the annotated Rufo and Lindsay catalogue to date, I not only feel emboldened to dismiss them both as low-grade, back alley grifters devoid of any measurable character traits of note, in all probability possessing a package of morals that rivaling that of a carnival barker shod in two-tone shoes, wholly indifferent to the concept of ethics, the both of them fully attuned to and comfortably at home in a world where shameless self-aggrandizement is not only rewarded, but perpetually encouraged. Low and mean, if Rufo and Lindsay were junk yard dogs you'd be inclined, more than anything when in their company, to beat them with very large sticks.
On the other hand, it can't be denied that they both reflect a somewhat charming---if shameless--- insouciance, a carelessness of character that is the hallmark of a long celebrated and thoroughly American archetype---that of the freelance charlatan for hire, ever attuned to the next main chance: unapologetic, unconcerned, and unrepentant when confronted with his rapacious desires. Both of them fully at home and content...on the right.
"Victim Narrative?" So we're talking about the whiny right, is that right---right now? Hearing an American righty accusing any other cohort or constituency in the explored and mapped galaxy of trafficing in "victim narratives" is an invitation to simultaneously check your wallet and ward off the impending vertigo.
Recent research has shown that a few hours a day of focused origami work therapeutically ameliorates almost all forms of political "projection." Recommended.
The children in beautiful Loudon County have parents that are proficient in fighting for what they believe is in the best interest of their family. This is not unique to "privileged" folks...come to Chicago where the Mayor and school officials have alienated many working, loving families. This modern Democratic Party has lost its foothold in historically loyal demographics.
You know what historical loyalty buys you in the modern Democratic Party? You get ignored. You get taken for granted. And if you dare stray, you get condemned for all manner of sin you have never committed.
Honest to god, how can the Democrats be that stupid?
I saw this and thought, wow Matt is the literally the last reporter who still thinks it's necessary to back up accusations that someone is a "white supremacist." Everyone else just took it and ran with it. When I pointed out that he should sue for defamation people on Twitter not only dunked on me but threatened my employment. But I think he should if he can. There was never any proof of any kind that he was there that day based on race or racism.
Yeah it's even worse than that. He actually goes out into the field and then reports what people tell him. That has become too dangerous for the opinion-mongers who just comment on the selected news items that they know their audience is going to like.
"How is it “economic reductionism” to campaign on a program that seeks to unite the broad working class around concerns shared throughout the class across race, gender, and other lines? Ironically, in American politics now we have a Left for which any reference to political economy can be castigated as “economic reductionism.”
"This sort of politics is also, as we’ve seen at least since Black Power, a hustler’s paradise. And all the millennial versions of New Age-y bullshit about leaderlessness and structurelessness obscure the fact that absence of organizational mechanisms of accountability enable anyone to say anything, or deny anything said, in the name of the “movement....”
"....Overestimation of the political significance of protest and a related, all too familiar problem of confusing militancy and radicalism contribute to exaggerating the significance of eruptions like those associated with BLM. Militancy is a posture; radicalism is linked to program for social transformation, and protests do not necessarily challenge power relations at all.
He’s right, but as long as race huckstering gets politicians the power they crave it will continue. The only solution is to vote it into oblivion. And that has to start with the African American vote: they need to get so disgusted with the dems they bolt the party, and that means there needs to be an alternative that gives them some confidence it’s worth a try.
Political economy has two solutions: 1) give us more money and 2) show us how to make our own money. Neither are easy. #1 doesn’t work if the cultural conditions aren’t favorable and #2 doesn’t work if anything you do can be undercut by lower-cost alternatives from someplace else. These are really challenging problems that the traditional capitalist-Marxist continuum doesn’t capture well, if at all.
We can think about what radicalism means but it always boils down to either 1 or 2 above. The devil is always in the details, for every age and time, including ours,
It's my belief that the "race huckstering" emanating from the "right" is a far more serious threat to democracy than the "race huckstering" emanating from the "left."
Team BlueAnon — woke mobsters: Summer 2020/George Floyd riots: Loot & burn 200 cities and $ billions in economic and physical damages, 14,000 arrests and 25 deaths (per wikipedia); cancel culture mania, etc.
Team QAnon — Right wing racist/fascists: A fortunately embarrassing zero, plus a few Jan 6 capitol LARPERs perhaps fomented by undercover operatives. Let’s call that a 34-yard field goal.
If this were a football game it would be 63-3 at halftime.
It frankly isn’t much of a contest. But there’s always the 2nd half I suppose . . . If we let our imaginations go wild.
Last time I checked we were discussing race grifters. Having vacated the field without responding to that topic, per the rules of war I will declare victory before I, too, leave the field. I must say not very chivalrous of you.
Hey, Matt…wtf is your skin care routine? Are you drinking 2 gallons of water a day and eating Keto? You look like you’re in your early 30’s. Spill the beans.
Not many people know this, but..... Matt is actually Matt Headroom, aka Max Headroom 4.3.5a1, now a much kinder, gentler, and above all, convincing version, with 2020s graphics instead of 1980s. And crashes are simply a thing of the past.
The highest priority of DNC leadership and corporate media is white-wash any connection between Waukesha parade massacre and Rittenhouse as white supremacist relentless fabrication and propaganda
That is - Vote DEMOCRAT for more sensitive IMPERIALISM...
While we're Sleepwalking into Nuclear War - by Caitlin Johnstone - Caitlin’s Newsletter (substack.com)
Just watched. Unfortunately when you have Chuck Todd trotting out HNJ to lie about what happened in VA your message will get drowned out. It’s depressing sometimes.
I don't have the numbers but I am confident, based in part on things Glenn has written and in part on ratings numbers, MSNBC and NYT don't have as much reach as you seem to think. I wouldn't be surprised if Matt's numbers were larger than theirs (I imagine a lot of NYT subscribers watch MSNBC or CNN).
That is a good question... I don't watch any of the "big" networks on the tube so I don't know. I especially don't watch them for "news". They lost me when they were cheerleading the invasion of Iraq.
I’d rather watch a test pattern than any network news. They used to come on about 1 am after the national anthem and be there all night with a strange circular geometry and a steady beep tone that didn’t fade until the tele evangelists came on at 6 am. It must have been hard in those days to have insomnia. You’d have books and booze and maybe a pill. But no internet. No TV. No VCR even. Maybe the record player. Just you and your mind and memories. Your demons and angels. And if you won the battle, maybe with angelic help, you came out a little more human. If you lost, well the test pattern lit your way . . . Ecce Homo. Now there’s more nonsense to distract you than ever existed over 50,000 years of human history. Even your angels look down and can’t believe it. That’s where well all are, dead but still dreaming. LOL
A Tip O' the Hat to both Taibbi and The Hill for their thorough coverage on the issue. Too often today's message is delivered with a slanted view designed to tell us how to think. There's a certain refreshing air when the common narrative is exposed to sunlight.
Keep it up in '22. We're counting on your straight talk and countering of the purulent messaging that so many "commentators" seem intent on spewing ("Commentators are not to be confused with the now rare breed of actual "reporters," the likes of Taibbi, Greenwald, The Hill, et al).
Concise engaging synopsis. Taibbi is just about the only journalist working today who I can trust. There must be a few more, but I can't think of any offhand.
Hi, to whom it may concern, I paid $50 to be here for a year and I can't read the fucking comments for all the repetitious, idiotic trolling. Kiwi Farms is more interesting and the trolls have more class. They also don't spam the board with the same thing repeated over and over, at least without being smacked on their snouts with rolled up newspapers. Love ya Matt, but I will not be resubscribing, I suggest some moderation is in order.
National policies implemented locally - means local elections without big money campaigns. School agendas and teaching methods changed over times - mine, my children's, my grandchildren's. Teachers (educated in teaching) could send parents a synopsis of what their class plan is, so everyone is on the same page as to what and how learning is imparted. No two minds react the same to information, so teaching 30 children is pretty hard, and could benefit from parental help. (Also, The Democrats and Republicans definitely spend too much effort on identity crises and politics, too little on the public well-being.)
Politics are downwind of culture. Anyone who thinks that a political party should spend less time on something such as this while doing "more for the public" missunderstands how politics works.
Why? Because you like what is happening? Dislike what is happening?
Culture informs what politics are about. Would you be happy if a group of evangelists took control of a schoolboard and required the teaching of the bible each morning? Would you fight that? Or simply acquiesce to the demands of that group? How about the KKK? Is their teaching OK in your book? After all, we cannot have politics determining an elected position, according to your position.
Why should politics be informed by culture? Politicians should represent the Constitution and ensure our basic safety. That's it. Politicians were never meant to live off the American taxpayer. Too many have decided their job is to make sure they have a job. How is it that politcians who enter office broke, leave millionaires? (Cory Bush is on her way!) The political system is totally bloated and infiltrating every other system from schools to the military. They make an insane number of laws, spend an insane amount of our money, and involve themselves in every aspect of our lives from seatbelts to (now) vaccine mandates. Every year they make themselves more "valuable' and less dispensable, and we actually allow it. How absurd to suggest that "a group of evangelists might take control and require teaching of the Bible each morning" after almost 60 years of taking God out of the schools. On other hand, I'd be for more God in schools if that would mean no more teen boys shooting up schools. Here again, no law Congress can enact will change the behavior of a culture of death.
But, you keep reinforcing my point outside of that. All of the things you talk about as desires (god in school, seatbelts, vax mandates, etc.) are all points of contention in society. Not everyone wants the things that you, or I, want. Too many people want the mandates, vax seatbelt or what not. Too many people don't want those things. And that is a cultural thing, how much control to give the gov't. And so on.
Matt's theory is interesting, but I'm not 100% sold on it. Despite everything that happened, Loudoun county still went 55-45 for McAuliffe. This is exactly what Hillary won by, and better than the 52% Obama received in 2012. That's hardly a stinging repudiation of the idiocy he reported on. If you look at historical numbers then Biden's 2020 results look more like the outlier than the 2021 governor's race. I guess we'll see in the midterms if his theory plays out. I'm still skeptical.
So, following your train of thought, the suburbs might embrace "low IQ ghetto politics," including CRT and the rest of the race-grifter playbook," if someone like, say, Trump were in the White House? After all, "low IQ ghetto politics" can't be much different than "low-IQ trailer park politics"---can it? And if CRT is really a part of "low IQ ghetto politics" (which we all know it isn't, just a little prank our jester Rufo pulled, but it's a cute meme nonetheless), wouldn't the inclusion of graduate level study of a difficult cultural theory automatically elevate "low IQ ghetto politics" to the status of "high IQ ghetto politics?" And did you just characterize Loudoun County as "ghetto?"
I have said it before, but it bears repeating; Dems have no feedback mechanism. They have completely removed any and all dissenting voices, labeling them racist or white surpremisist or deplorable. This might make them feel better about their live choices, but it doesn't tell them how the rest of the country feels, votes, thinks.
And if they think calling anyone who dissagress with them a racist is a winning strategy, that this actually helps deal with real racisim, then they are fools who do not deserve to run a country. Indeed, with all the other idiocy we are seeing from this admin they are showing that they don't know how to run a country, let alone deal with the things that worry them.
As Talleyrand said of the Bourbon kings whose misrule provoked the French Revolution, “They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.”
It has nothing to do with a feedback mechanism. Do you really think you have knowledge and insight not available to the DNC? A calculated and deliberate decision was made some time ago on the premise that more votes can be won building a coalition around race and identity than by other means.
Building a coalition around race and identity lets them ignore class, which allows them continue to ignore the working class that has gotten the short end of the stick since the 1970s. From the FDR era through the 80s, the Dems were the working class party. During Clinton’s presidency that was abandoned for the most part. Unlike most Republicans, they will let a few crumbs fall from the table, but not enough.
I was raised by democrats and considered myself one most of my life. I kept voting for them thinking eventually they would do better. But they continue with their divisive race and identity coalition building, when appealing to working people of all races and identities would create a bigger coalition.
Sanders was doing this in 2016, and that platform got him close to winning the nomination. In 2020, he started focusing more on the party approved race and identity approach. It never felt like that campaign had the same energy as 2016.
And why do you think mainstream democrats focus on "race and identity coalition building" and Sanders somewhat casually segued from his 2016 campaign messaging of the "shafting of the 90% (there is no American "working class" any more, properly defined) by the PMC/Billionaire club," to the 2020 campaign to the more tepid and lachrymose "race and identity" nonsense?
In point of fact, Sanders didn't really shift gears or dramatically alter his messaging all that much in 2020, he was more or less told to beat it after getting blown out in South Carolina, a victim of---and party to---a highly dysfunctional campaign. The embarrassing showing in the primary---in which he was a longshot anyway---led to a "all-hands-on-deck" order from the party potentates, with hatchet-man obama drawing the long straw for delivering the fatal whispering-in-the ear "advice" to Sanders. Maybe he would have been steamrolled on super tuesday also---but we'll never know.
Well said, Malo! My thoughts almost exactly.
South Carolina voters are uniformly considered by political operatives to be the most catalogued bloc of low information voters in the country. And although South Carolina voters caught a glimpse of Sanders four years previous, that's plenty long enough for a low information southern voter to lose track of a Yankee socialist.
And IdPol had very little to do with the blowout. Sanders always kept the Idpol to a minimum on the campaign trail, primarily because he didn't subscribe to the gibberish himself, and the only reason he engaged the stuff at all was to placate the idiots on the left who kept after him with the fallacious "Bernie Bro" bullshit, a gaslit meme created and promoted to....gaslight, made all the more irritating in light of the fact that a majority of his supporters were women and the entire cohort reasonably balanced demographically.
But the chief factor in Bernie getting steamrolled was the miserable performance his organization turned in. The entire campaign, from top staff to the grunts on the ground, was dysfunctional, inept and plagued by acute organizational and logistical incompetence from top to bottom.
Black, white, green or red, Bernie Sanders was never going to be a favorite son in South Carolina. Meaning Sanders' own error, if you want to call it an "error," was showing up looking like Bernie Sanders, that's to say an old, earnest (why does he talk that way?), rumpled honky from Vermont by way of Brooklyn, who most voters probably mistook for a Unitarian elder who took a wrong turn on I-90 on his way to Cleveland.
Right. The elderly south carolina african-american baptists shovin' on Bernie preachin' CRT hermeneutics and homilies. Then Bernie and Crenshaw in a call-and-response rockabilly rendition of "softly fades the twilight ray."
This is a great article in Quilette.
I agree - but it such an obvious miscalculation. I do think that they have all been drinking their own bath water for so long that they really believe normal people agree with this. I think that is one of the risks of having a party run solely by university graduates.
"C" students at best.
Indeed. See how many votes it brought them in VA.
Sure, they planned it. Is it something to admire? Lack of a feedback mechanism means they have no respect for their constituency.
The fact that it has worked in the past for the DNC (and the GOP and all other modern political groups) to merely psychoanalyze the constituency as objects for immediate payoffs, rather than communicate with them as peers for the long run, does nothing to alleviate the massive and dangerous social debt they are accumulating. The same debt has been accumulating in American industry. Hence the Great Resignation.
So, finally, it is starting to bite these and other "playas" in a big way. So right now, they are flailing ever more wildly with increasingly ridiculous counterattacks, especially since 2016. As it snowballs into deep and intractable distrust, it will take decades for both to recover.
Lying and manipulating by the *leaders*, not the rebels, of a society against its enemy only makes sense when that society is trapped in some kind of existential danger, with no exit. Conversely, it is completely toxic when used to run that society's *constituents* forever. Did this describe America society c. 2000? We must ask why it happened, and why it continues.
It's called "neo-liberalism." And it's been happening since the mid-1960's. Money. And then more money. It's a one word answer, anti-hip. The political and business elites of this country don't give a shit about CRT, who's woke and who ain't woke, environmental degradation, balanced budgets, primary, secondary, post secondary education, jesus christ, santa claus, the easter bunny, or even if the fucking F-35 can make it off the Ford-class aircraft carrier or not. Money. That's...their interest. Exclusively and solely. So the rest of us should act and think accordingly.
But money has always existed. Meanwhile, it takes a sea change in public ethics to move from the *mass* idealism of the 1960s to where we are today. So, I must persist in asking, how did that happen?
Money has always existed, but not like it exists today.
The democrats get plenty of feedback from their constituency and have the utmost respect for their constituency, which for all practical purposes is the same constituency as the republicans---the check writers. The democrats got rid of labor when they made it possible for corporate industry and Wall St to get rid of American labor and replace them with cheap Asian and Latin American knockoffs. The democrats are still able to win elections because as of yet the republicans are obviously still a bigger collection of dirtbags and grifters than the democrats. American politics may be execrable at this point but not that complicated to decipher.
I hate to have to quote RR, but, well ..."There, you go again!"
*Why* did "the democrats [get] rid of labor [and] made it possible for corporate industry and Wall St to get rid of American labor and replace them with cheap Asian and Latin American knockoffs"?
What changed in America?
"The democrats are still able to win elections because as of yet the republicans are obviously still a bigger collection of dirtbags and grifters than the democrats."
*That* is extremely debatable. They rammed the worst D national ticket in my life down our throats last year with non-stop hysteria and chicanery, one that has now proved so bad that the *average* American is now asking "Who's really running the show here?"
Amen to worst D national ticket in our lifetimes. The worst two candidates end up on the ticket. I keep telling myself there is no where to go now but up, but the DNC will surely find a way to fine even worse.
It wasn't a party decision. The GOP as the former party of business was just as interested in getting cheap labor as the Democrats. The term you want is "the establishment." It's not a party issue.
What is true though is that Bill Clinton turning the Democrats into Republican-lite neutered the economic left of the party, and that spelled the end of the Liberal Class as a positive force in the U.S.
The liberal class used to include talk about social justice, but that wasn't the whole thing, as it is today. The liberal class's former function was to "save capitalism" by preventing socialism and fascism. It did this by providing incremental improvements in quality of life for most people.
That safety valve is gone now. In its place are endless conversations about minority issues. As far as electoral politics, does it even matter anymore? I assume we will see dirty tricks that would have made Nixon blush. But a casual observer like me would have to assume that Democrats will get wiped for the foreseeable future.
"The term you want is 'the establishment.' It's not a party issue."
Oh, I'm in full agreement with that. I'm a Leftist. As Christopher Lasch put it, we had a "Revolt of the Elites".
So what I'm having trouble understanding is how did the *entire* elite *decide* to abandon noblesse oblige? What sociopath virus infected them to destroy the country? These people are *not* stupid -- the genius of their decades-long, pan-society, enormously successful psy-op to bring us to the brink of totalitarianism is proof of that. ("Democracy will die by 2024!!" No shit Sherlock, you killed it. Intentionally. See e.g. Greenwald's new article on FBI infiltration.)
First paragraph: Money. Second paragraph: more money. Last paragraph: Too much money + corruption = Trump & Biden in 2020. Who's really running the show? Whoever has the money. I won't argue Republican vs. Democrat with you---I have no allegiance to either party, but I do have my estimations of what they're both about, with few illusions about their separate political aims.
Money doesn't change morals. The wrong morals would have to have taken their place already.
Again, what changed in America?
You seem to think this is a bug when it has always been a feature.
Yes. A feedback mechanism assumes the possibility that one can be wrong, and that someone will thus call it out (preferably with diplomacy). So feedback is part of the mechanism for correction and improvement. This is basic to the process of democracy.
This is spot on
Yes I think that's right. It all goes back to not examining why they lost in 2016. Instead they invented Russiagate. Once you decide on a fantasy narrative, things tend to get out of hand. Eventually you are worshiping Ra and claiming that aliens control your underwear.
This is operative amongst the Republicans and the right, as well. We basically have a political culture where dissenting voices are squelched by the dynamics of media echo chambers, whatever their persuasion. It is a function less of any particular ideology than of the economic model and incentive structure of the major social media platforms. This is a technology-driven phenomenon, as fun as it is to lay the blame at the feet of one’s least favorite political faction.
No, it's not. As the left has made it mad dash through the institutions, the right has been able to see and hear every thing that the left does; there is no movie, university, publishing house or any other media that hasn't been taken over by the left. There is only one source of rightward televised news, and any information that comes from this is automatically discounted as propaganda by the left. Watch Twatter, and you will see how many voices of the right have been "trust and safetied" off the platform vs. the left.
Yes, both sides have bubbles, but there is no way to avoid what the left is animated by, as opposed to the rights voices being constantly blocked out by facile claims of racism,
Which Left are you talking about? The word's become meaningless. Since Reagan became president, conservatives have gone from win to win. So I don't know who is misinforming you.
Regan was the last gasp of the traditional right, and Bush I was a failure. Clinton was the new left personified, with Bush II and Obama following in that tradition. No, it isn't the left of labor and Marxism, it is Neo-liberalism. Open borders, NAFTA, soft socialism.
Yep. We are a long way from red-diaper babies.
This is hard to condense into a soundbite, so unfortunately this post will be of some length:
Televised news on both the left and right has seen its ratings, usage and influence decline precipitously in the last decade or so, precisely because people don't get their news from television anymore--they get it from social media, which directs them towards news outlets that cater to their political preferences and engage in yellow journalism, reinforcing a 'paranoid style' in politics.
Your claims here about Twitter illustrate that you don't actually understand how these platforms work. On the PR side they may appear to have some political bias, but internally the companies that own them are motivated solely by what all businesses are motivated by--maximization of market share. The functioning of these companies' platforms is not run by a cabal of leftists or rightists, but are run by algorithms, and they are funded by the social media model, which roughly consists of "provide services for free-->acquire data about users-->sell data about users to advertisers-->tweak algorithm to better get users attention and direct them towards advertisers".
These algorithms work by measuring 'engagement' and feeding users content that maximizes 'engagement'. Unfortunately, they are blunt instruments, and to them 'engagement' is measured by metrics like 'did the user click on this?' or 'did the user pause and look at this?' rather than 'did this make the user feel good?' Therefore, the algorithms end up feeding social media users content that is biased towards stoking the 'fight or flight' instincts--fear, paranoia, anger, etc.--that favor these metrics.
Because people now get their information from these platforms, they have facilitated the current paranoid and angry political culture that is unraveling Western society, and augmented it by the creation of these 'echo chambers'. More 'engagement' is generated when a liberal is exposed to content that leads them to believe conservatives are trying to overthrow the government, or when a conservative is exposed to content that gets them to believe liberals are staging fake riots at the capitol to defame them, than when they are exposed to content that informs them about the messy, less dramatic, shades-of-grey reality of the world.
Until this incentive structure and the social media business model is changed so that users are paid for the data they create--so they can generate *better* data--we will continue to see both sides of the political aisle become continually more paranoid, angry and deranged.
Yeah, that's right. Everyone thinks it's the other guy who's brainwashed. But every political truther of any stripe who has his ear jammed up against a social media bullhorn looks the same now, whether it's Go Brandon or Vote Blu No Matter Who. The instruments available to propagandists now are like nukes compared to the newspapers, radio, and television they used to have to rely on.
I am mistrustful of the “social media made me do it” hypothesis.
Correlation is easy but causation is complicated.
There have always been outbreaks of political and social manias throughout history. From Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE on Justinian’s circa 500 AD Constantinople, which divided itself in “color factions”:
“Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues, of ancient Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the circus, raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the reign of Anastasius, this popular frenzy was inflamed by religious zeal; and the greens, who had treacherously concealed stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries. 44 From this capital, the pestilence was diffused into the provinces and cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colors produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the foundations of a feeble government. 45 The popular dissensions, founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this wanton discord, which invaded the peace of families, divided friends and brothers, and tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to espouse the inclinations of their lovers, or to contradict the wishes of their husbands. Every law, either human or divine, was trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public calamity“
The most maddening thing is that these assertions can be easily evidenced with collected data, and that data can be denied and ignored with impunity and there’s no fucking consequence for it- except at the ballot box. And even when they’re voted out like in Va- these fucking grifting troglodytes still double down on the goddamned race mongering. See what a difference a year of unpunished lawlessness and sociopolitical puritanical cultural power does? It’s kind of terrifying. And I’m sorry to say, that even though I abhor a LOT of the right’s platform, I’ll probably vote red until this shit is extricated from the political landscape.
A well deserved, horrendously embarrassing Dem shellacking in the 2022 mid-terms is our best hope to break this cultural psychosis. And it is a psychosis. It really is an illness in group consciousness. It’s a form of demonic possession and it’s going to destroy the nation if it doesn’t get exorcised.
Some force needs to stand up to it and shout it down with the full light of consciousness until the demon crawls away like a dying cockroach — and I suspect the American Voter is the only force that really can deliver a powerful and painful blow. Maybe the American Mom (and Dad) to some degree too, but that’s diffused across time and place. It’s not a blow.
"And it is a psychosis."
The very wealthy and liberal circle in which I travel makes Q Anon seem tame. Lack of evidence for their racist paranoia is in itself evidence. They are constantly inventing and reinventing concepts from whole cloth. Acronyms come and go and it is hard to keep up. They "know it's true because they know it's true" in regards to the most insane race based thinking. Strangely the Proud Boys are never far from their thoughts.
Yeah the progressive wing of the Democratic party won't be chastened, they will bury themselves even further into paranoia and dogma. The moderate wing, yeah, they'll get the message, but not the progressives.
The religious right never left, but the center didn't hold. And by that I mean the normies, those who voted R for the tax brackets, moved on. At that point they moved to the left, but now, what with the craziness of the left they will move right.
And thus it ever was.
The paranoia and dogma -- Idpol in general -- is necessary to avoid the looming specter of class war. Thus it is essentially conservative -- "nothing fundamental will change." (The specter looms because things are getting worse; things are getting worse because the US ruling class seems to be losing its competence and its morale.) Voting Republican isn't going to clean up the Democratic Party, it will reinforce its conservatism and thus its investment in Idpol. If you want something different from what you have you have to do and support something different. The alternative, as the Bible says, is a dog returning to his vomit. (Proverbs 26:11).
Voting Republican is a dreadful alternative given they lack the essential competence just as much as the Democrats. It isn't like Congressional Republicans could produce a budget and appropriations on time when they were in charge. The next Republican Speaker won't have any more ability to efficiently run the House than Pelosi, because there is no discipline in either party.
I agree it is dreadful because the default tendency is authoritarian for most republicans. The two party system by design basically ensures a kind of two-sides-of-the-same-coin dilemma, but unfortunately no other entity has demonstrated any effectiveness or willingness to fight back. So, as shitty as it is, I choose the lesser of two evils- which is why I went left when Bush was in office.
Expanding the concept, idpol (both right wing and left wing versions) are the outer face of the current divide and (continue to)conquer strategy, but "democracy" and electoral politics are the inner head of the beast. Elections massively divert energy from creating reality into lobbying individuals corrupted by the system itself to hopefully pass some scrap in an omnibus bill for the constituency as close enough. It can never solve "our" problems as long as our= people who can't afford to buy politicians.
'"our" problems'?
Seems that most of our formulation of problems is itself problematic. The first aspect being that govt is assumed to be the appropriate entity to effect a solution.
A psychoanalytical portrait of Ionecu’s Rhinocerus:
“It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.”
-Carl Jung -“On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35
“No, the demons are not banished; that is a difficult task that still lies ahead. Now that the angel of history has abandoned the Germans, the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey…. We should not forget that exactly the same fatal tendency to collectivization is present in the victorious nations as in the Germans, that they can just as suddenly become a victim of the demonic powers.”
Carl Jung - “The Postwar Psychic Problems of the Germans” (1945)
“Modern science has subtilized its projections to an almost unrecognizable degree, but our ordinary life still swarms with them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, rumours, and ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled out with projections. We are still so sure we know what other people think or what their true character is.”
Carl Jung - “Psychology and Religion” (1938) In CW II: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P. 140
“A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.”
-Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
Me too
The ballot box is the feedback mechanism.
I don’t think Democrats are receiving the feedback the ballot box provides. This can be evidenced by them doubling down on the race cult mantras of “white (insert derogatory here)”- which is the same thing that lost them the gubernatorial election in the first place.
As I've noted elsewhere in this discussions, the Democrats don't have anything else. They can't offend their rich donors or the PMC, they can't go against the war-imperialism-surveillance machine because they belong to it, they can't increase Welfare outgoes, they can't do anything about climate change because it steps on too many toes, the response to COVID has been about as lame as Trump's, and unless the Republicans put their foot on the third rail of abortion rights, there is no territory to be gained there either. Idpol seems to be it, and the Republicans know how to practice that in their own way.
Even more than that, they eat their own if they happen to produce any studies that conflict with the established ideological narrative. Prime example: Roland Fryer. Roland Fryer is a liberal, African American economist at Harvard- and for publishing this study, his name was smeared and character besmirched by people at his own university, not to mention political and media pundits: https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force
TLDR version: Fryer’s intensive and granular CONTROLLED research shows no bias regarding race in officer-involved shootings of suspects. This obviously directly contradicts the narrative “police are racist and hunt black men for kicks” that progressives use to prop up the claim that the US is systemically racist concerning police use of deadly force. If anything, the study shows that whites may actually be slightly more likely to be shot and killed by police vs. their black counterpart citizens.
One thing progressives suck at (aside from the obvious things like making sense) is finding viable, unassailable data that supports claims of racism. Furthermore, studies are often done to refute claims that progressives make. Wilfred Reilly, another black scholar is particularly adept in this field. To address the claim of systemic racism in hiring practices which was first brought to prominence and public knowledge in 2003, Reilly conducted his own study: https://www.commentary.org/articles/wilfred-reilly/race-in-america-good-news/ TLDR version, the study found that there was bias in typically lower class or clearly ethnic sounding names of black applicants, but no bias in black applicants with more conventional names. To further bolster the claim, he conducted the same experiment with white names. Names like “Bubba” (white) and names like “Jamal” (black) received the same level of no call back bias. This means that the bias leans much more toward being class-based rather than race-based.
Both Reilly and Fryer for this type of in-depth, social science data analysis were denounced across the board as supporting white supremacy and written off as “Uncle Toms”. Clearly ad hominem attacks meant to distract from the very compelling study findings.
What does this mean for the average person? It means you plan on combatting the race cult brain poison, you have to do your homework, stand your ground, reinforce the data and ignore everything except merit-based arguments that specifically address the data and evidence. That’s the only way this shit will ever abate, and the only way it can be fought.
I think it has already been pointed out that the largest determining factor in getting shot by the police or not is class. However, in the US at least 'Black' codes for 'lower class' which isn't a whole lot different from getting shot because Black. An approach to solving the problem, if it is a problem, might be to see if police methods for suppressing certain undesirable behaviors might be modified in the direction of being less violent; but that would be rational.
In this case, I was assuming that 'nothing fundamental will change.' This is what America's voters seem to have chosen in regard to the police and many other matters. The subculture of which you speak (I assume) is not a simple thing, and most cultures are difficult to change top-down, especially because those who carry them are deeply attached to particulars of their content. However, if we just want the police to be less lethal, and recognizing that we are not omniscient and omnipotent, and conscious of our limitations, there are ways of going about lethality reduction which will not much affect anyone's culture very deeply -- not even that of the police.
I am glad you put 'Left' in quotation marks. There is no effective Left, and the ineffective Left has no public policies worthy of the name.
Roland Fryer was not "smeared and character besmirched by people at his own university [or] political and media pundits" for his ultimately very flawed and dubious piece of scholarship.
Rather, his research and analysis were found to be highly flawed and subsequently debunked by two subsequent studies, one of which was conducted by fellow Harvard scholars. Fryer was also guilty of mischaracterizing the analysis in his study to the media:
"Fryer’s analysis is highly flawed, however. It suffers from major theoretical and methodological errors, and he has communicated the results to news media in a way that is misleading. While there have long been problems with the quality of police shootings data, there is still plenty of evidence to support a pattern of systematic, racially discriminatory use of force against black people in the United States."
https://scholar.harvard.edu/jfeldman/blog/roland-fryer-wrong-there-racial-bias-shootings-police
And then you cite one obscure "Commentary" opinion piece by an obscure academic, Wilfred Reilly, of Kentucky State University, which is NOT a study and consists of no formal scholarly research, and disingenuously (stupidly, more likely) pass it off as "in-depth, social science data analysis."
Here is your summary of Reilly's "study:"
"To further bolster the claim, he [Reilly] conducted the same experiment with white names. Names like “Bubba” (white) and names like “Jamal” (black) received the same level of no call back bias. This means that the bias leans much more toward being class-based rather than race-based." Groundbreaking stuff there.
And then go on to claim that both Reilly and Fryer were "denounced across the board as supporting white supremacy and written off as “Uncle Toms”.
Now, I've searched the web high and far for these scurrilous attacks you speak of (and curiously do not bother to cite here) and found...nothing.
"Clearly ad hominem attacks meant to distract from the very compelling study findings," you chin-rubbingly assert, no doubt simultaneously hitching up your pants with thumbs and forefingers, accompanied by furrowed brows and a nodding head. If you're able to locate these "ad hominem attacks," as I could not, I'd surely be interested in reviewing them.
"What does this mean for the average person" you then ask? Not a goddamn thing, I'd say.
Your idea and my idea of "average person" must be different. For future reference, let's just say by "average person" I mean someone that hasn't made a career out of racializing everything under the sun, and believes that "objective truth" is a thing.
First, can you link me those studies that you refer to? I'm more than happy to read them and amend my statement if it's warranted. This may be putting the cart before the horse, but whether or not you like Fryer's conclusions, he does an awful lot of controls for his studies and has what one might refer to as a shit ton of samples, and so many varying sample sizes as to make the root sources of his data seem almost unquestionable.
For the sake of argument, let's say his study is flawed. In what way is it flawed? In what ways do the other studies you reference directly contradict with his findings? Do you even know? I somehow doubt it.
Second, not only was Fryer denounced, but I find it a little more than suspect that his police bias study was published in June of 2019 and in July of 2019 he was suspended for two years because he was accused of sexual harassment- accusations of which go all the way back to 2006. Now, I too have scoured the internet for what Fryer was actually accused of, and why it took 13 years for women to come forward, and why only a month after him publishing his study was the right time for these victims to come forward.
Third, I don't have the time, patience or inclination to carry your fucking water for you. You search. You find them. I can find plenty of Harvard faculty denouncing Fryer for his "white supremacist" study starting in roughly August '19 until about the fall of '20- the same time that his study was being scrutinized by both progressives and used by the right to bolster the notion that the police aren't the only problem. If you're saying my claims aren't true, then the burden of proof rests on the denier.
Otherwise you're just some woke moron just saying things, denying "objective truth" because that's the only way you can get your point across . Evidence matters. Data matters. Produce some if you want to be taken seriously. Just because you have a vocabulary doesn't mean that everything you type can or should be taken seriously. Settle down "Aunt Martha". Do you not know these things are being said and have been published in numerous articles like these below (note that "Uncle Tom" is even in the title of the article- how many of these would I need to provide to change your mind?). Also notice that like you, the person writing this article doesn't bother going into specifics of why she's drawing the conclusions she is- she just expects (just like you) that people are going to assume that something nefarious is going on because it simply disagrees the the established sociopolitical narrative.
https://blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-when-uncle-tom-falls
Here's the one where he was suspended "mysteriously" a month after his report was published at various sources online and began being consumed by and used by right leaning organizations to battle the "defund the police" movement:
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/07/harvard-sanctions-economist-roland-fryer
But I guess the timing can just be written off as a coincidence, right? It's hilarious how the first two searches I did I was able to find these things easily that you proclaim didn't happen and don't exist. Quite frankly, I'm embarrassed that I even felt compelled to respond to your drivel-laden, nonsensical *shits pants in rage* reply that's utterly devoid of merit or anything evidential to back up your claims. He was denounced heavily and for months. Reilly was as well. If you'd ever read Reilly, you'd know that he often writes about the responses that he gets from his work from people in his own university and widely outside- social media, political pundits, other writers that write on the other side of the political divide about the same topics, you name it.
Are you unaware- strike that. Nevermind. You clearly are. Thanks for inspiring me waste fifteen minutes of my day though. Do you have anything to share like the studies that were done- I mean like the actual studies so that I can peruse the data, or is just proclaiming something with indignation and disgust that an opinion with evidence that's counter to your own woke ideology dare be uttered for public reading?
That question is rhetorical. I don't care. If you'd like another response, give me a link to the two studies that you say exist so I can see the methodology used and the number of sources and how the data was parsed so I can see if they pass the smell test. Either than or you can continue to shit your pants in rage at strangers on the internet. So much for no evidence of "scurrilous attacks". A cursory web search was all it took to find that. I could do a deep dive and make it beyond reproach, but people like you aren't satisfied with any amount of data, so it isn't incumbent upon me to try.
Gee, I wonder why dear Aunt Martha has no witty retort to any of your responses. She/he (who knows? Brave new world out there) seems to be rather well written for being completely wrong and not really wanting to engage in anything other than bad faith assertions that can easily be stricken lame with quick web searches.
Correction: "grievance-grifter-industrial complex: see Rufo, Christopher; Lindsay, James.
What has Chris Rufo or James Lindsay said that is factually, academically or empirically incorrect? Or do you just say it is and won't bother to offer any substantial evidence because you don't like what they say?
No, I don't like what they say. At all. And in the world where I come from, sentient humans form opinions and marshall judgments based on what others "say," believing that what people "say" is communicating to whomever is listening that it's also what they "think" and what they "believe," and consequently serves as an accurate barometer of how they "act" in the process of going about their business in the world, whatever that business may be.
And I don't know what kind of community you call home, but in my extended milieu if you went around challenging the opinions and statements expressed by others that you found disagreeable or otherwise objectionable, by demanding from them receipts of statements that are "factually, academically or empirically incorrect," you'd be laughed out of the room or unhesitatingly told to go fuck yourself. And rightfully so.
From what I've recorded and compiled of the annotated Rufo and Lindsay catalogue to date, I not only feel emboldened to dismiss them both as low-grade, back alley grifters devoid of any measurable character traits of note, in all probability possessing a package of morals that rivaling that of a carnival barker shod in two-tone shoes, wholly indifferent to the concept of ethics, the both of them fully attuned to and comfortably at home in a world where shameless self-aggrandizement is not only rewarded, but perpetually encouraged. Low and mean, if Rufo and Lindsay were junk yard dogs you'd be inclined, more than anything when in their company, to beat them with very large sticks.
On the other hand, it can't be denied that they both reflect a somewhat charming---if shameless--- insouciance, a carelessness of character that is the hallmark of a long celebrated and thoroughly American archetype---that of the freelance charlatan for hire, ever attuned to the next main chance: unapologetic, unconcerned, and unrepentant when confronted with his rapacious desires. Both of them fully at home and content...on the right.
Ahahahaha
"Victim Narrative?" So we're talking about the whiny right, is that right---right now? Hearing an American righty accusing any other cohort or constituency in the explored and mapped galaxy of trafficing in "victim narratives" is an invitation to simultaneously check your wallet and ward off the impending vertigo.
Recent research has shown that a few hours a day of focused origami work therapeutically ameliorates almost all forms of political "projection." Recommended.
People are waking up, at long last, to the fact that these are not their father's Democrats.
The children in beautiful Loudon County have parents that are proficient in fighting for what they believe is in the best interest of their family. This is not unique to "privileged" folks...come to Chicago where the Mayor and school officials have alienated many working, loving families. This modern Democratic Party has lost its foothold in historically loyal demographics.
You know what historical loyalty buys you in the modern Democratic Party? You get ignored. You get taken for granted. And if you dare stray, you get condemned for all manner of sin you have never committed.
Honest to god, how can the Democrats be that stupid?
I saw this and thought, wow Matt is the literally the last reporter who still thinks it's necessary to back up accusations that someone is a "white supremacist." Everyone else just took it and ran with it. When I pointed out that he should sue for defamation people on Twitter not only dunked on me but threatened my employment. But I think he should if he can. There was never any proof of any kind that he was there that day based on race or racism.
Yeah it's even worse than that. He actually goes out into the field and then reports what people tell him. That has become too dangerous for the opinion-mongers who just comment on the selected news items that they know their audience is going to like.
No, but he did say this:
Adolph Reed:
"How is it “economic reductionism” to campaign on a program that seeks to unite the broad working class around concerns shared throughout the class across race, gender, and other lines? Ironically, in American politics now we have a Left for which any reference to political economy can be castigated as “economic reductionism.”
"This sort of politics is also, as we’ve seen at least since Black Power, a hustler’s paradise. And all the millennial versions of New Age-y bullshit about leaderlessness and structurelessness obscure the fact that absence of organizational mechanisms of accountability enable anyone to say anything, or deny anything said, in the name of the “movement....”
"....Overestimation of the political significance of protest and a related, all too familiar problem of confusing militancy and radicalism contribute to exaggerating the significance of eruptions like those associated with BLM. Militancy is a posture; radicalism is linked to program for social transformation, and protests do not necessarily challenge power relations at all.
He’s right, but as long as race huckstering gets politicians the power they crave it will continue. The only solution is to vote it into oblivion. And that has to start with the African American vote: they need to get so disgusted with the dems they bolt the party, and that means there needs to be an alternative that gives them some confidence it’s worth a try.
Political economy has two solutions: 1) give us more money and 2) show us how to make our own money. Neither are easy. #1 doesn’t work if the cultural conditions aren’t favorable and #2 doesn’t work if anything you do can be undercut by lower-cost alternatives from someplace else. These are really challenging problems that the traditional capitalist-Marxist continuum doesn’t capture well, if at all.
We can think about what radicalism means but it always boils down to either 1 or 2 above. The devil is always in the details, for every age and time, including ours,
It's my belief that the "race huckstering" emanating from the "right" is a far more serious threat to democracy than the "race huckstering" emanating from the "left."
I think we all know you feel that way.
If you look at the score board it’s:
Team BlueAnon — woke mobsters: Summer 2020/George Floyd riots: Loot & burn 200 cities and $ billions in economic and physical damages, 14,000 arrests and 25 deaths (per wikipedia); cancel culture mania, etc.
Team QAnon — Right wing racist/fascists: A fortunately embarrassing zero, plus a few Jan 6 capitol LARPERs perhaps fomented by undercover operatives. Let’s call that a 34-yard field goal.
If this were a football game it would be 63-3 at halftime.
It frankly isn’t much of a contest. But there’s always the 2nd half I suppose . . . If we let our imaginations go wild.
Last time I checked we were discussing race grifters. Having vacated the field without responding to that topic, per the rules of war I will declare victory before I, too, leave the field. I must say not very chivalrous of you.
Hey, Matt…wtf is your skin care routine? Are you drinking 2 gallons of water a day and eating Keto? You look like you’re in your early 30’s. Spill the beans.
Not many people know this, but..... Matt is actually Matt Headroom, aka Max Headroom 4.3.5a1, now a much kinder, gentler, and above all, convincing version, with 2020s graphics instead of 1980s. And crashes are simply a thing of the past.
The highest priority of DNC leadership and corporate media is white-wash any connection between Waukesha parade massacre and Rittenhouse as white supremacist relentless fabrication and propaganda
That is - Vote DEMOCRAT for more sensitive IMPERIALISM...
While we're Sleepwalking into Nuclear War - by Caitlin Johnstone - Caitlin’s Newsletter (substack.com)
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/were-sleepwalking-into-nuclear-war
Worth reading/listening !!
I don't care about any of that. Maybe if I had a nice job with more time on my hands I would.
Recommended: Take and follow your own advice here.
Just watched. Unfortunately when you have Chuck Todd trotting out HNJ to lie about what happened in VA your message will get drowned out. It’s depressing sometimes.
I don't have the numbers but I am confident, based in part on things Glenn has written and in part on ratings numbers, MSNBC and NYT don't have as much reach as you seem to think. I wouldn't be surprised if Matt's numbers were larger than theirs (I imagine a lot of NYT subscribers watch MSNBC or CNN).
That is true but aren’t they putting this out on NBC proper?
That is a good question... I don't watch any of the "big" networks on the tube so I don't know. I especially don't watch them for "news". They lost me when they were cheerleading the invasion of Iraq.
You can put a test pattern on network television and it will still get a couple mm viewers. Meet the Press gets >3mm viewers a week.
I’d rather watch a test pattern than any network news. They used to come on about 1 am after the national anthem and be there all night with a strange circular geometry and a steady beep tone that didn’t fade until the tele evangelists came on at 6 am. It must have been hard in those days to have insomnia. You’d have books and booze and maybe a pill. But no internet. No TV. No VCR even. Maybe the record player. Just you and your mind and memories. Your demons and angels. And if you won the battle, maybe with angelic help, you came out a little more human. If you lost, well the test pattern lit your way . . . Ecce Homo. Now there’s more nonsense to distract you than ever existed over 50,000 years of human history. Even your angels look down and can’t believe it. That’s where well all are, dead but still dreaming. LOL
Glad the Hill is still having interesting people on despite losing Krystal and Saagar.
A Tip O' the Hat to both Taibbi and The Hill for their thorough coverage on the issue. Too often today's message is delivered with a slanted view designed to tell us how to think. There's a certain refreshing air when the common narrative is exposed to sunlight.
Keep it up in '22. We're counting on your straight talk and countering of the purulent messaging that so many "commentators" seem intent on spewing ("Commentators are not to be confused with the now rare breed of actual "reporters," the likes of Taibbi, Greenwald, The Hill, et al).
HNY
couldn't agree more, thank you Matt and the Hill, I also appreciated John Solomon.
The truth shouldn't be so fragile.
Off topic, but if you are interested in the Covid saga, Dr Malone’s recent chat with Rogan (on Rogan’s podcast) is highly recommended. Dropped today.
Concise engaging synopsis. Taibbi is just about the only journalist working today who I can trust. There must be a few more, but I can't think of any offhand.
Matt, almost everyone in the southern parts of India has darker skin. The main line of discrimination is caste, not skin color.
Hi, to whom it may concern, I paid $50 to be here for a year and I can't read the fucking comments for all the repetitious, idiotic trolling. Kiwi Farms is more interesting and the trolls have more class. They also don't spam the board with the same thing repeated over and over, at least without being smacked on their snouts with rolled up newspapers. Love ya Matt, but I will not be resubscribing, I suggest some moderation is in order.
National policies implemented locally - means local elections without big money campaigns. School agendas and teaching methods changed over times - mine, my children's, my grandchildren's. Teachers (educated in teaching) could send parents a synopsis of what their class plan is, so everyone is on the same page as to what and how learning is imparted. No two minds react the same to information, so teaching 30 children is pretty hard, and could benefit from parental help. (Also, The Democrats and Republicans definitely spend too much effort on identity crises and politics, too little on the public well-being.)
Politics are downwind of culture. Anyone who thinks that a political party should spend less time on something such as this while doing "more for the public" missunderstands how politics works.
This is the public's well being, ground zero.
"Politics" should be upwind of culture, especially in local schools. That's the trouble with Politics as we know it.
Why? Because you like what is happening? Dislike what is happening?
Culture informs what politics are about. Would you be happy if a group of evangelists took control of a schoolboard and required the teaching of the bible each morning? Would you fight that? Or simply acquiesce to the demands of that group? How about the KKK? Is their teaching OK in your book? After all, we cannot have politics determining an elected position, according to your position.
Why should politics be informed by culture? Politicians should represent the Constitution and ensure our basic safety. That's it. Politicians were never meant to live off the American taxpayer. Too many have decided their job is to make sure they have a job. How is it that politcians who enter office broke, leave millionaires? (Cory Bush is on her way!) The political system is totally bloated and infiltrating every other system from schools to the military. They make an insane number of laws, spend an insane amount of our money, and involve themselves in every aspect of our lives from seatbelts to (now) vaccine mandates. Every year they make themselves more "valuable' and less dispensable, and we actually allow it. How absurd to suggest that "a group of evangelists might take control and require teaching of the Bible each morning" after almost 60 years of taking God out of the schools. On other hand, I'd be for more God in schools if that would mean no more teen boys shooting up schools. Here again, no law Congress can enact will change the behavior of a culture of death.
You are conflating politicians with politics.
But, you keep reinforcing my point outside of that. All of the things you talk about as desires (god in school, seatbelts, vax mandates, etc.) are all points of contention in society. Not everyone wants the things that you, or I, want. Too many people want the mandates, vax seatbelt or what not. Too many people don't want those things. And that is a cultural thing, how much control to give the gov't. And so on.
Matt's theory is interesting, but I'm not 100% sold on it. Despite everything that happened, Loudoun county still went 55-45 for McAuliffe. This is exactly what Hillary won by, and better than the 52% Obama received in 2012. That's hardly a stinging repudiation of the idiocy he reported on. If you look at historical numbers then Biden's 2020 results look more like the outlier than the 2021 governor's race. I guess we'll see in the midterms if his theory plays out. I'm still skeptical.
So, following your train of thought, the suburbs might embrace "low IQ ghetto politics," including CRT and the rest of the race-grifter playbook," if someone like, say, Trump were in the White House? After all, "low IQ ghetto politics" can't be much different than "low-IQ trailer park politics"---can it? And if CRT is really a part of "low IQ ghetto politics" (which we all know it isn't, just a little prank our jester Rufo pulled, but it's a cute meme nonetheless), wouldn't the inclusion of graduate level study of a difficult cultural theory automatically elevate "low IQ ghetto politics" to the status of "high IQ ghetto politics?" And did you just characterize Loudoun County as "ghetto?"