I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it. Then I wondered "does this person actually think people want this?" What kind of person do you have to be to write something like "to be a woman online is an inherently dangerous act"? Maybe there's a secret portal, somewhere between the 7th or 8th floor of the building of say, Tik-Tok or Twitter headquarters, where I can enter her consciousness to get an understanding of that mindset because I really don't get Being Nina Jankowicz.
Have you not learned? It doesn't really matter who is elected, as the president is but a figurehead, the cat's paw for those who really run things from behind the scenes.
I am 74 and I really get being Nina Jankowitz. I am autistic other than being born a talented psychologist I am not really that good at being sophisticated. I am autistic and in order to fit in, you must learn who is Big Brother and who is Emmanuel Goldstein.
The funny thing about 1984 is that I argued we were in 1984 in 1964.
1964 was when the average American had reached his pinnacle of share of wealth and power. 1964 Barry Goldwater was nominated by the GOP. It was the year Ronald Reagan made his Time For Choosing speech where he said 1933-1964 were the worst nightmare to ever befall America.
This is what America chose in 1980. I know who George Orwell was and is. He was Bernie Sanders the other side of the Reagan coin. Reagan sold his soul for thirty pieces of Roman silver. Before Bernie I knew Vermont as Mississippi North. Today Vermont does politics not culture and does it better than any state in your fractious union.
Popular wisdom is indeed popular but wisdom is subjective especially for we children being cut in half. Forgetting about Solomon's wisdom do we cut the baby in half?
Is America educating its children to be citizen king's. The roots of democracy is with philosopher kings. How did that work out? How Socratic is the USA where truth is whatever it is made out to be?
It is time for two secessionist parties and a unionist party. Maybe you can call the Unionists some more appropriate name like Utopians: A place that does not exist.
I would agree but I think That is not More's Utopia. It sounds more like Dante's lowest level of Hell. I remember Twain's Hell was listening to Angels lifting their voices on high for eternity. I cannot imagine wanting to be Trump for a picosecond. What an ugly environment for someone with wisdom and compassion but right now he is on the right side of history for nihilists like Putin, MBS, Duterte, Modi, Kim and Bolsonaro.
Yep. Everytime they push an extreme policy it's always to be on the right side of history. If the people reject it, it's never because it sucks. It's always because they didn't explain it to us correctly.
Thank you Deb. It took me 70 years to learn how to write. I still use a kindergarten keyboard and can only type on the middle finger of my right hand.
I learned qwerty in a typing class 45 years ago. I type 2 characters a second and still can't find qwerty on the keyboard.
That is why the fascist racist public intellectual Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information. He was more than Princeton . He was the Ivy League, Rockefeller U and Europe's leading Big Brained Elite.
Have you read Samuel Longhorn Clemens the Gilded Age? That Clemens guy was one great journalist. I think he played middle linebacker in Austin. Maybe that was Langhorne. Bad things happen after being hit on the head and banging your head against the wall for 74 years.
I hate to sound completely and totally mad but I never could do school but I think I was about 4.5 when I read Dante's Inferno it was one of the books in the library along with Tales of the Decameron and 1001 nights. Franklin was a journalist and a philosopher and public intellectual and polymath and he wrote an entire library just like Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Rich people had time to read and write it was a privilege God had granted them.
Oliver Cromwell was a Republican and he believed in Divine Right. More was pre-Elizabethan.
Milton , Newton and Locke weren't even born.
Thomas More 1478-1535
See Ignatius of Loyola 1491-1556
More was a Franciscan before there were Jesuits.
I am a member of the Thomas More Institute.
I don't know what to say about the the USA. Benjamin Franklin was a radical liberal public intellectual, scientist, journalist who believed in Darwin's evolution before Darwin developed his theory of the mechanism. Benjamin Franklin rejected all religion. He was a Deist.
Newton said: "We are standing on the shoulders of giants" and without Franklin there would have never been Marx and without Locke, Milton and Newton there would have been no Franklin. Franklin and Voltaire were contemporaries and Franklin was bilingual and spent many days in Montreal where he organized a giant tea party.
Gaslighting is nothing Shakespeare didn't understand.
Shakespeare truly understood gaslighting he was Elizabethan, More was a Franciscan serving Elizabeth's father.
More was Pope Francis not an American Catholic he was a Franciscan like in Francis of Assisi and Greta Thunberg.
Milton was a liberal Puritan, Ben was slightly less agnostic than Milton. Milton was a Unitarian. Unitarians are like the polar opposite of Southern Baptists or Calvinists. They are secular humanists and therein lies America's divide.
Franklin or John Adams. John Adams was a Federalist Westphalian Europhile and Franklin was a secular humanist.
The GOP is nothing new. Oliver Cromwell was a war criminal. He committed Genocide in Ireland and Scotland and brought misery and sorrow to England.
Not to mention, the Goldwater Girl, Hillery. Not a libertarian exactly but a major player in the Ukraine mess and a lot of the messes we face today. How come these creepy politicians from decades ago are still around and wielding power. Sick!
I never know the right words to explain. Chomsky is a Libertarian and Goldwater was a conservative and Karl Hess III was a libertarian writer and philosopher whose friendship with Goldwater was considered treason by committed Libertarians. Libertarianism is a fundamental change in the way we organize human society. It is the opposite of conservative. Libertarianism is extreme liberalism.
Goldwater's speech writer Karl Hess III was a LIbertarian, Goldwater was a shopkeeper. Most Libertarians disowned Hess and considered him a conservative which is fundamentally authoritarian. The idea of a social democracy was part of the enlightenment but in 1776 the founders were divided on the efficacy of social democracy. Adams was a Federalist and we are still waiting for his concession speech from 1800 when Jefferson became president.
True and this is what happens when a biased MSM covers up Biden’s cognitive decline during the campaign ( as well as cover up the obvious Biden family corruption)
THANK YOU!! One truly has to pause to consider why the msm were willing acolytes in that carefully choreographed charade… Biden is good at one thing and one thing only… denouncing “politics” and then being the most political hate fueling President ever … fortunately, I think the number of people who realize they’re being manipulated is growing.
Humor is the one thing propaganda cannot do. SNL and Minister of Truth Jankowicz prove that. I am reminded of Robert Anton Wilson's quote “It’s not true unless it makes you laugh….” I alway thought that was a cute idea, but now I’m beginning to understand what he meant.
That clip isn’t her worst. Check YT for her warbling “A Simple Christmas Wish” (Rich, Famous and Powerful.) There is a line “what do I have to fake” she sings as “who do I have to f@#k”.
It is clear that certain groups in our country want to control the narrative to their benefit by limiting the amount of information we receive. This is corporate fascism.
Yep. It's exactly like government hiring a private security company to break into your house and search without a warrant, then claiming there was no Fourth Amendment violation because the government didn't actually do the searching.
BINGO! Read Mussolini's definition of fascism and see if was defining the empire. At least he did get the train's to run on time; that's more than the perfidious mendacious empire can do. Hello, the German's couldn't get mag lev train's to work. China bought the patent's and now they're running them while the empire train's run on wooden ties and millions of kids go to bed hungry at night and you don't wanna Walk the streets a couple of hundred meters from the capitol building at night.
If Paypal did this on the basis of suppressing dissent about the official US narrative on the Ukrainian crisis, the term "Fascist" is entirely appropriate.
I've been aware of that quote for 40 years...I've often seen it applied inappropriately, in my opinion, because I don't view every "public-private partnership" as an example of fascism. If governments didn't hire private contractors to carry out some of their ordained functions, those projects would have to be taken in-house. I'm glad that the EPA hires out...a workman for the private firm Environmental Restorations Inc. might have been responsible for the Animas River mine waste leak, but the firm has an excellent track record of competently handling many other EPA contracts. (Incidentally, I studied the Animas case in detail; talk about overhyping an event for partisan gain.) Hooray for the private sector, in that regard.
But when we being speaking of the collaboration of Google and Facebook with forces within government on matters of public policy, that's a whole different thing- and that thing begins to resemble Fascism. If this Paypal thing is what it currently looks like, the role of private collusion with governmental efforts takes on the character of explicit coercion, not merely attempts at obstruction.
PPP is a giant scam; simply a way to transfer public money to private profiteers. Of course, the government should call tenders on many projects that start and finish. It's like GM calling in contractor's on shutdowns and line changes. No bid and defacto no bid contracts are always a rip off and most military industrial complex contract's are structured that way.
fascism is merely socialism with the illusion of a free market. its smarter than socialism because in socialism, the government takes all the responsibilty and blame.
I like to say that fascists are socialists who are smart enough to realize they would completely destroy private industry if they tried to run the day-to-day, so they just boss corporations around instead.
I've seen this definition of fascism repeated about a thousand times over the last year and now I'm starting to wonder if it truly applies to the US. I mean, as long the government doesn't totally control that MyPillow guy, can we really say state and corporate power have merged?
Government is telling people who to ban off social media. They are closing bank accounts of the deplorables. They destroyed an entire industry (online poker) because one idiot wanted to make a name for himself with the moral majority. And they're just getting ramped up.
If you want to wait until you're on the cattle car to see what's going on, that's up to you. But the fascism has been real and it's been growing the last couple decades.
I think I'd call them "sheeple "& I'm afraid that you're right except being going on for a couple of generations. First, they came for the working classes and threw them under the bus but I was not working classes so I didn't care. Then they came for the countries that defied the neo liberal agenda but they were brown and far away and now they're coming for the middle classes but they've done such a great job indoctrinating us, dumbing us down and making us effete that we welcome it and we've learned to love big brother!
Fascism is like the N word; it's used to degrade and delegitimise someone rather than rational arguments. I didn't come up with the term but I think "inverted totalitarianism " fits the bill. That's where the ruling classes an,d large corporations are at the top; the government’s are in the middle pretending to represent the majority/working classes and actually being the courtiers of the ruling classes and, of course, the working classes at the bottom and accepting our lot through the use of indoctrination from every institution in society including friends and family. What they have in Russia and China and some other western world enemies is the government’s on top, the ruling classes below and us, the working classes at the bottom. Again, the system is maintained by indoctrination. The US and by extension, the rest of the west will never forgive Vladimir Putin for giving the Supreme power back to the state even though he let the oligarchy keep its money. China, of course is the same but supremely practical, doing what works best for the country. That's why they're eating our breakfast and will continue to defeat our doctrinal neo liberalism.
The inverted totalitarianism model seems ok. But, still, I can't figure out who's really in control. Corporations lobby for causes and buy politicians. We all see this. The control over government by Wall Street banks, Big Pharma and Defense contractors is obvious.
But, as Glenn Greenwald keeps pointing out, even huge cash making machines like Google and Facebook are pushed around by politicians demanding they suppress the speech of their users. And look what happened to Disney in Florida. That's not supposed to happen under a system of corporate control. And California shut Disneyland down for a couple of years straight during the pandemic (unlike Disneyworld, which somehow opened sooner.)
And, even more confusing, Democrats like Hillary Clinton are genuinely fearful/angry at Trump supporters for voting the wrong way. Clinton apparently thought she owned the presidency. But why should voters matter? They don't have control! And of course Trump continues to say his election was stolen -- because he thought HE owned the presidency. And the 3 letter agencies pushed Trump around seven ways to Sunday.
I mean, what the hell is going on? Is anyone really in control? The system is an unholy feedback loop with a big list of forces pushing in different directions. Is it predictable? Is it stable?
I dunno, I wasn't there. I do know that European high speed trains do run on time now and China made the MagLev train that the German's couldn't make work... work and now they're on a whole New level. Meanwhile back in the USA the train's are mostly diesel and running on wooden ties. China build's a destroyer for 1/7 the of the US cost and I predict they will have caught up and passed the west in transport aircraft and high end electronics in ~ 10 years. Of course that presumes no nuclear war. We need to get with the program and do it yesterday.
I wonder-- who is actually running the country? It's obviously not Biden (and his friend Bunny) so who is it? Who is hiring people like this TikTok clown to run a government agency? Someone is making these decisions and it's no one who was elected.
The country more or less runs itself. I hate to revert back to my PolySci 101 lectures on how the bureaucracy works, but those of you - and I know there are a God damned bunch of you on this blog - who were polysci majors know what I'm talking about. The contemporary and contemptuous name for the the federal (and states) bureaucracies are "deep state". Why are they "deep"? Because like a tick on a dog's ass they are very hard to remove and they are at best benign and at worse extremely anti-democratic in a manner of speaking. They burrow in deep and they suck a lot of blood out of the dog - the dog of course is the USA and it's people. But, they DO control the dog for better or worse, regardless of who "owns" the dog.
Since I hate the dog/tick analogy let's move on. Trump was elected and for once in forever a crazy president tried to reform or at least tame the bureaucracy in a way that would make it slightly more democratic. In other words, Trump was elected, so as the representative of the people, he should be able to re-shape and realign the bureaucracy to implement his policies, right? Well, yes, but no. 98% of the bureaucracy doesn't need to listen to Trump, Biden or anyone else. They have their jobs for life and they are the drones that actually implement gov't policies. If they don't agree with a Trump or Biden policy they just don't enforce it. And sometimes, like in the case of the EPA, they will even enforce policies that are not even on the books - but that they just like a lot. BTW, it's not a conspiracy in the usual sense. Everyone in Washington and everyone who's follows Gov't and politics for any length of time knows this is going on. It was going on back when Kennedy told Kruschev there were no missiles in Turkey only to be told by his Pentagon bureaucracy that, uh, sorry Mr President, we actually left those missiles in Turkey aimed at Moscow even though you told us to move them. We, the MIC, JCOS and Pentagon decided on our own to, you know do our own thing and fuck you - what are you going to do about it? There's a reason that presidents now use EO's as a primary method of governing and implementing policies. The bureaucracy, left or right, has one thing in common - they are running the show and they know it. If you really want to influence gov't policy there's something you can do that is way more important than voting or protesting - join the HR dept of your favorite bureaucracy and make sure you're on the panel that hires new ticks. Each new tick is like their own little president and that panel is the electorate. To paraphrase Charlotte's Web, "Some democracy" huh?
I find it interesting how you tell this story without mentioning corporate power. Is that what they teach in PolySci 101?
For a case study on corporate power, one can look at why the DOJ Antitrust Division for decades has allowed mergers detrimental to the economy. Matt Stoller's blog on substack has plenty of background reading on this topic.
What I learned from Matt Stoller's analysis is that government and lawmakers, by and large, do what they are told by corporate power.
Religious groups tried to ban Charlotte’s Web when I was in high school, because talking animals go against God and the Bible. That is based on their whack interpretation. I find the Bible a wholly inappropriate book to base modern civilization, any civilization really, upon, however, I don’t even see from a reading of the Bible, how it would consider talking animals as anathema or against God. There are many talking animals in it.
As a follower of Jesus, it’s disappointing to hear narrow minded people wanted to ban Charlotte’s Web because they considered it unbiblical. I can’t imagine why they thought that talking animals are unbiblical (I suppose they never read about Balaam and his donkey in the Book of Numbers, chapter 22).
It breaks my heart to see “Christians” push people away from God. Honestly, I’ve been one of those people from time to time and I’m ashamed of it.
But I believe the Word of God is as relevant now as ever before. God has taught me so much about human nature through the Bible. Thousands of years have passed…yet human nature hasn’t changed. Human beings still struggle with the same baggage they faced thousands of years ago (fear, anger, lust, grief, bitterness, greed, shame, etc.) The Bible shows how much God loved flawed human beings like me.
Me, with all my flaws and shortcomings and failures. And they are many. But He still loves me. And you too!
I don't doubt your story, but I never heard of any such effort, and I lived in several of the reddest states. There may have been some fundie group that had that belief, and the media may have played it up as being larger and more threatening than it might have been, but it never happened.
It's like, when ONE school district tried to remove ONE book from the curricum of ONE course, it became "THEYRE TRYING TO BURN THE BOOKS! REEEE!!" Don't fall for it.
Bureaucracy -- large and small -- does seem to take on a life of its own and just keep running on and on. But what I was asking is this: who made the decision to use PayPal as a political enforcer? Refuse to negotiate the boundaries of NATO with Russia? Push for people to lose their jobs if they refused to vaccinate? Turn a blind eye to the crisis on the border (including the Haitians coming across and news media not allowed to interview any of them)? These decisions will have an impact on everyone's life at some point and they're all laid at Biden's feet and he's obviously not the person making any of them.
You make a great point and wouldn't it be great if some big media journalist thought it was worth trying to uncover? My guess is it's not one person or even a small group of people. It's a confluence of like minded bureaucrats, lefty media execs, politicians and corporate heads who on one or another of the issues you mentioned just passes along their beliefs to the networks, cable shows, individual reporters etc and what looks like a conspiracy of sorts, is actually just a bunch of people who think exactly alike. It's the same reason we have traffic jams, we all want to be somewhere else at the same time.
People who control the media all just want the same political outcomes and they don't ever feel they are doing anything nefarious, in fact most of them think they are highly patriotic and people like you and me are the bad guys for questioning their motives.
It's weird how that gets turned on its head?? Remember that scene from Falling Down? "You mean I'm the bad guy?" I feel like our media is always shocked when they find out that 80% of America thinks they're the bad guy. It shows you how completely out of touch they are with mainstream thought.
I would say that at least in the US senior heads of bureaucracies are political appointments. So there is at least some policy sway. OTOH, most political types don’t seem to have deep knowledge of the bureau they head, much less a fine grasp of the challenges, history, and realities of a given problem. Check out Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk for another view on bureaucracies
I don't think we disagree. The President's cabinet is supposed to take control of the largest bureaucracies and try to get them to bend. As you mentioned they rarely have the knowledge to circumvent the protocols and SOPs that "resist" change at all cost. I do think the DS went into overdrive when Trump was in office, much like the more conservative deep state that did it's level best to undermine Kennedy every change they got. The main difference being that our current bureaucracy is much more blatant and in the case of the IC more public in their contempt for a president who tries to implement policies they disagree with.
The really terrifying thing is the many millions of people in America and around the world who seem to believe that old Joe 'biden', who pees himself most days, is, "in charge, here at the White House".
The media adhere to that nonsense even though most of them know better.
Actually, the textbook definition of fascism is industry working happily with an authoritarian government to ensure unions are abolished and production is maximized.
Meh. Other than being controlled by different interests than Big Money or Big Tech or Big Pharma or the MIC, unions are as easily captured and utilized for oppression as any other power structure. I shouldn't have to give examples here.
That is definitely what some people were taught, not really true though.
Government ordering around private businesses happens under all sorts of political systems, and is actually not really a big feature of the actual two exemplar fascist countries we had (Italy and Germany in the interwar period). The west liked to claim that (probably as a way to lump them in closer to the USSR), but the Germans and Italians actually did not meddle particularly extensively in their economies even during the early war, and were not on total war footing for quite along time given the circumstances.
Fascism I think much more has as its core ultra-nationalism (and accompanying racism), which this article is not at all about. And the dictatorial and violent oppression of political opposition, which this also isn't about. It was also predominantly a violent reaction against communism and liberalism, which only the latter applies in the current moment.
Fascists certainly wanted a fully mobilized state and economy, but they weren't very effective in making that happen in Italy or Germany.
Using Venezuela as an example of a failure of socialism is to pretend that it wasn´t sabotaged by the good ole USA, the most powerful country in the world. exactly for the reason that they would become an argument against socialism! Shame on you.
That sounds pretty knee-jerk. Maduro as a crude caudillo, incapable of top-down management of a 20th century economy? I don't think there's much sabotage required to believe that, buddy. But I think we see you can be persuaded to believe things by mere assertion, if it agrees with your preconceptions.
Yes, yes, yes, it's all our fault they nationalized their industries and put people in charge who didn't know what they were doing. We're very sneaky that way.
Using prison labor, imprisoned by the state based upon certain ethnic groups claimed to be undesirable, to make a profit, is not a defining factor of ww2 era German and Italian governments? Do please illuminate us on how they differed from that scenario.
Prisoners in America, most of them black, are literally enslaved and forced to labour. Some of them in the very same cotton fields that their ancestors worked. (Angola) Many others labour in UNICOR where they make war materiel.
Someone got enraged with me one day for saying this, but it is literally true.
Simplest answer is "What the powers that be want you to think is reality." They do this primarily thru the media - TeeVee, commercials, the internet, movies, magazines, etc. They set up a construct, especially I think, thru TeeVee commercials that teach us what the good life is, or should be. For instance I noticed that almost immediately following the George Floyd tragedy, is if they had them all cued up, there rapidly appeared ads with lots of interracial couples, lots of rich or middle class black folk or indeterminate people of color. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but the ratios are way skewed. Like suddenly blacks make up 40% of the US population. It's probably just virtue-signaling on the part of "Madison Avenue" but I can't help but notice it whenever I watch. It is subtle until you notice it. Then, it's like they are hitting you over the head with propaganda on the "reality of America".
"Racism" and "violent oppression of political opposition" are in no way exclusively associated with Fascism. Matter of fact, a LOT of societies throughout history have exhibited those traits.
Of course, back in the day "political opposition" was synonymous with violence anyway.
Corporate Fascism is the only kind, the symbiosis of the state and "private" corporations which allows non-governmental agencies to enforce the will of the current regime and their overseers, the permanent bureaucrats of the Alphabet Agencies.
The omnipotence and omnipresence of the current Ukrainian war agenda, by far exceeds anything I've seen in my long life. I'm guessing but the only comparison I'd make would be religion in the middle ages before the enlightenment and the scientific method or Mao's cultural revolution. Of course, we're softened up from birth and the absurdities of the last few years and the mind controlling social media and the attention destroying smartphone have weakened our pre frontal cortexes and opened us up to whatever fantastical stories the ruling classes come up with. This is so far past 1984 levels of mind control it's on another plane. I just hope it doesn't get us all dead; it's escalating at an exponential rate and I'm not hearing any voices of reason or moderation from the ruling classes.
1. Finance. Starve heterodox voices of money, crippling them financially.
2. Culture. Slant as much of media and entertainment in favor of specific narratives, marginalizing heterodox voices.
3. Education. Indoctrinate children (ages 0 to 23) as quickly and thoroughly as possible, silencing through intimidation all heterodox voices.
4. Law. Subvert law schools and courts through the proliferation of regressive, illiberal exercise of the law, persecuting heterodox voices.
5. Science and Medicine. Deny hundreds of years of verifiable fact and viciously attack dissenting dissenting heterodox voices.
6. Government. Weaponize Federal agencies to extralegally target and persecute all dissenting heterodox voices, often in partnership with commercial interests, to shore up narratives and enact regressive, illiberal policy.
7. Corporations. Partner with governmental and non-governmental organizations to subvert heterodox voices, stifling and restricting their reach.
Once you succeed in supplanting reason and personal agency with partisan piety amplified by a regressive, illiberal, and fundamentalist ideology (an ideology predicated on unfalsifiable and malignant premises that justify any act of depravity as morally acceptable), there are no other outcome besides the ones to which we are bearing witness.
Given the aggressiveness of these bad actors, and their willingness to subordinate reason in favor of ideology, it is hard to see how those still possessed of reason and love of country can gracefully and elegantly turn the tide.
Yet perhaps there is a coalition of the willing ready to stand in the breach and reclaim our institutions. Matt has made it abundantly clear that he is, I am grateful for his bravery, and I take comfort and strength from his example. Thank you, Matt, for standing in the breach and continuing to shine a bright light on this lunacy, and inspiring others to take a stand with you.
I don’t think there be any retaking of institutions. This has been 50 years in the making and the left are masters of institutions, they are true believers in this illiberal ideology. There will be no reasonable debate of ideas in which they concede. Old institutions must be invalidated and ignored. Gigantic movements of “opt out”. New institutions have to be built. This is going to be a long slog.
The events of the last several days make the relentlessness crystal clear. Obama emerges at Stanford to christen "Disinformation" as the threat. Days later, the Disinformation police bureau is launched at DHS. Days later, Supreme Court insider/new media hero delivers two-month old opinion draft to Politico. Hours after publication, protesters arrive at the Court. Immediately, elected leaders Biden, Schumer, etc. denounce the Court and promise action to rescue democracy.
Things are accelerating. Did we mention there is an election in November?
yes, all these institutions are infested with termites and are beyond saving. academia, hollywood, media, publishing, anything to do with culture down to your local theater group and anything with an HR dept, whether public or private or nonprofit.
after a successful 50-yr campaign the New Left has seized the means of cultural production and you don't achieve your goals after 50 yrs in order to compromise or cede ground to your opponents--you do it to install your program, to get jobs and money for your backers, to see how many of your own true believers you can plant anywhere and everywhere, and, perhaps most importantly of all, you do it to destroy your opponents or at least take their jobs and banish them from the public square.
so, as u said, anything fresh or real or at least not infested with a sterile orthodoxy will have to be created elsewhere, which i think explains why we're all here on substack.
Yes, exactly. They have completed their “Long march through the institutions” and this is the result. It will take many years and many tears before this is reversed. Most of us won’t be around to see it.
We did not realize what we were getting into when we were getting out of our traditional institutions, like religion. The lack of values bigger than ourselves is ultimately what this is about.
That is an interesting perspective. The decline of religious belief takes away a community and identity, so perhaps people are swapping in new identity. Only these ones don’t have clearly defined rules
"Then [Steve R.] got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing."
Steve R. on government:
“Here’s what the law does. The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up-ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a hog. They call that govment!”
Steve R. on the PMC:
“Looky here – mind how you talk to me; I’m a-standing about all I can stand now – so don’t gimme no sass. I’ve been in town two days, and I hain’t heard nothing but about you bein’ rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That’s why I come. You git me that money to-morrow – I want it.”
Steve R. on public education:
“It’s so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won’t have it. I’ll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I’ll tan you good. First you know you’ll get religion, too. I never see such a son.”
Steve R. prepping and putting in stores after the last "heterodox voice" has been silenced:
"Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me…The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow."
Can't engage with the substance, put the respondent in the role of Pap from Huckleberry Finn, in effect calling him a drunken redneck idiot.
You either approve of the process Steve R outlines or are too smug and lazy to explain why these things are not actually taking place or are just tearing the wings off flies for amusement. It's a typical leftist rhetorical move: ridicule your opponent and avoid any specific refutation.
If I recall correctly, Pap at least owned his drunkenness.
It is funny that HUCKLEBERRY FINN continues to be banned for its alleged racism when it is one of the most aggressively anti-racist novels ever published by an American author.
That demonstrates the totally asinine taboo surrounding the word "nigger," since this usage is the only reason illiterates call for H.F.'s banishment, despite context and despite its 1885 release. More paternalistic policing of language in the name of sparing the feelings of ostensible adults.
If I was a black person in America I would be enraged by the "anti-racism" of Kendi and his ilk, which is being used as a wedge between black people and everyone else, and I'd be very insulted by the more than 100 years of abuse from the American left/Democratic Party, which has always treated black people like backward children incapable of agency.
As a 20th-century lefty like Matt, we were always told that "when fascism came to America it would come wrapped in the flag and cross" or something like that. It was an understandable sentiment at the time, as people looked back at history and saw so much bloodshed and oppression based on King or God or Church or State (or some combo), and simply extrapolated that the future would play out much in the same way as it had in the past.
But not even the spawn of Nostradamus and Orwell could have predicted our era of totalitarian safetyism, the dictatorship not of kings or priests or soldiers but of authoritarian kindergarten teachers who will denounce, gag and banish all dissent because "we value a safer community".
Instead of Big Brother we seem to have arrived at Big Mother, who supervises all our thoughts and activities and will punish anyone who doesn't play nice and share, who refuses to follow all her rules, or who commits the horrific and unforgivable crime of hurting someone's feelings.
Who could have guessed that the epitaph to the American experiment would read: "SAFETY FIRST!" History always has a good sense of humor.
"Cultural Marxism" is the stale faux "grievance mat" under which the knee-jerk righty squad continues to sweep all its invented cultural and political bugaboos that frightens them and makes them jump. At night. While on the keyboard. Boo!
Look, a not-so-useful idiot. e.pierce is rude, but right.
Call it cultural Marxism, neo-Marxism, Gramscian Marxism or Marcusian Marxism, whatever; it's the same thing with different labels, and people who think, live, and work according to its principles, whether they are aware of it or not, infest bureaucracies everywhere, implementing DIE principles and championing the new Proletariat, "oppressed" minorities, trying to drive out straight white males and replace them with "the marginalized." An ill-defined dictatorship of the marginalized is the utopian goal. But what happens when the oppressed become the oppressors? Purges? Concentration camps? Killing fields?
Anyone expressing public opinions critical of any of the new Proletariat, especially the black, feminist, gay, and trans-sexual lobbies, are subject to silencing and retaliation by the corporate arm of the Fascist USG.
Beware of the growing acceptance of "hate speech" as an actual phenomenon that needs to be silenced for the protection of these "vulnerable" proletarians. We gave up far too much ground conceding the reality of "hate crime" and have opened ourselves up to full-bore thought control in the name of "stopping hate." It is idiotic, but what else can you expect from a growing mob of asshats who think their inner lives, such as they are, deserve the special protection of the state against bad words and insults?
Well, fuck you. I hate you personally, lucrezia, or at least I hate the representation of some humanoid simulacrum I'm talking at on my computer. What are you gonna do about it? Write your congressman?
More (Bull) shit from another aggrieved white boy. Man-up, motherfucker. Hubbard, once the barricades go up, there's nothing anybody can do for you---they're coming for all the candyasses first. Or so I was told while being interrogated by one of their "cells."
Fascinating. Who are "they"? And why will they be erecting barricades? If the "candyasses" will be the first up against the wall (or barricade), I reckon you'd best arm yourself or get lost. BTW, I'm Puerto Rican. Does this count as "white"? I can't tell with the definition being all over the place these days.
Lucrezia interviewing at a start-up troll farm after being let go by big George himself due to some unspecified "hygiene" issue.
You're a supertroll, yes?
Yes. One of the finest in the field.
Well, lucrezia, we're looking for a supertroll who is either a completely brainwashed meatspace lunatic (or a cynical imitation of one), or a memespace deep fake sock puppet AI bot.
Brilliantly stated. We know exactly what masculine totalitarianism looks like; there are endless examples. But what we're witnessing now seems to be an emerging feminine totalitarianism. When you look at who's enrolled in the universities, who shapes the narratives, who comprises the ranks of DEI / ESG leadership... that's increasingly what it looks like.
True, most of the leaders at the top of the pyramid are still men, but to whom are those men catering?
Now that we have a Nanny State totalitarianism system in place, power hungry men will compete with women for dominance within that system. When neoconservativism was ascendant, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice and many others successfully competed on the world stage to demonstrate that their dicks were far bigger than any of their male colleagues.
There will be no shortage of men desperate to prove to the masses that their level of outrage and indignation has been so violated that they have no choice but to A) lock up more of their own citizens on the domestic front, or B) bomb the shit out of everyone else on the international stage.
It’s a game of power that they’re busy reshuffling, and the game is to continuously increase the defense budget, as money provides the base for accumulating power.
The rest of us are supposed to think that it’s really male vs. female vs. Black vs. white, etc…
Victor Frankl wrote that he only recognized two races: the race of the decent man, and the race of the indecent man.
The race of the indecent man is clearly winning, but Victor Frankl, having survived Auschwitz, already knew that. That’s why he devoted his life to encouraging people to work towards becoming a member of the decent race.
yes, the concept of toxic masculinity has been chewed over for quite awhile now, what's more interesting would be exploring toxic femininity (if there's one, there has to be the other)...my general feeling is that whereas the masculine version is out-of-control or misdirected aggression, the female version is a sort of a hypertrophied maternal instinct, along the lines of: everyone gets a cookie and everyone gets to feel safe and special--OR ELSE!
I would do the exploration myself except my wife might divorce me! ;)
Having passed out and reawakened, I ponder the fact that the 1990s really were a different time culturally. There is no way in hell a major network would run a sitcom like MARRIED... WITH CHILDREN now.
Observing that we have a feminine version of totalitarianism is not at all sexist. As I first stated, we've already seen many iterations of masculine totalitarianism.
Is ad hom all you got, or could you add some cogent thoughts to the discussion?
Nah if fascism came to the US it was always first and foremost goin to be wrapped in dolla bills. That has always been the real god here.
Someone literally said to me the other day "I don't want to live in a world where X's are mean to Y's" and used that as an argument for boycotting and social mob punishment of speech. Like literally "I disapprove of this speech, we should make it stop". The power of the internet!
Serious deep offense on behalf of how you assume someone else felt.
Hey, I will never deny that America is, was and shall always be a dictatorship of capital, but there are always other factors and other incentives (we are multifaceted beasts), and i guess most importantly the question becomes what are the goals, ideas, tactics (and how vehemently are they held) of the controllers of capital.
Like, do they just wanna take their loot and scram behind mansion walls, or do they wanna use their loot and power to sculpt that great utopian phantasm, the New Man, while making us all the clay to be twisted and pounded?
This CS Lewis quote is pretty played out by now (and I'm sure you've seen it), but it best captures my point:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
Yeah, I’d say he nailed it. The hopeful part is society has seen this before it’s just the tools at their disposal are new. To steal a phrase from them “ it’s not sustainable”.
The dollar is just the vehicle it’s not the cause or motive. We are such a decadent society that corporate greed isn’t about amusing wealth to buy boats or land but buying “change”. They think they are correcting the mistakes of the past and are currently creating a “more perfect” society. It only shows their ignorance for they know not what they are deconstructing.
I would suggest that their ignorance is not the problem, but rathe their arrogance, which does does not allow them to see their ignorance.
Not for nothing, but when we look for solutions to problems, one must first find the source of the problem, lest he/she/they be treating symptom ad infinitum.
They re-wrote that history to cover their crimes. It wasn't King or God or Church that brought us totalitarianism, it was State. And now, it is them again, and they are wrapping it up in safetyism.
How many will die from the State in the 21st century?
What a lonely, drunken and mean troll you are. Look at the filth you've left behind you in your comment rage.
Maybe you could take up a different hobby, something more suited to your obvious superior intellect. Something a little more solitary, where your vileness isn't so public.
To think that you could have chosen to use your powers for good... what a waste.
Absolutely. Better to let vileness reveal whatever about the speaker and deal with it like adults. And crudity in the service of getting at the truth is fine by me, as long as we do something to get in that neighborhood (See Hunter S. Thompson for one example). I am sick and tired of wiseguys policing online comments for insults and profanity. It's paternalistic, and now it's going way too far since most of NPC America has just laid down in the face of relentless "deplatforming" (itself a vile term) and policing of "hate" (edit: and now an actual Ministry of Truth!) Hate is a human emotion last time I checked, and it has its uses. Unless you're Jesus. And even he hated hypocritical swine and Pharisees and money changers in the temple and brought a sword and all that. The more you try to silence public vitriol the more angry the silenced get.
I think MLK once wrote something about lancing a boil and letting sunlight disinfect it. Covered up, it festers and poisons the system.
He's not a troll. He has a good boilerplate reply to comments he considers trolls, like Lucrezia Borgia's. He's rude, but anonymous commenting encourages that.
Besides, he's right. The Church was, if not the first, then one of the first totalitarian control systems. In fact, it still rules the minds and actions of a large number of people who will look to the Pope before thinking or doing anything independently.
I mean, he could be more polite when disagreeing or refuting, but again that's the nature of the beast, and all you can do is take the rhetorical high road, if you want.
Yes, you're probably wise to say so, but I think I'm going to disagree a little bit on 2 points.
Yes, he is trolling; one need only look thru the comments and see his droppings everywhere. It took me by surprise, actually. I hadn't been on Substack in a long time (I gave it up for Lent) so I didn't recognize him at first. Then I remembered he often would comment previously, and he was usually quite informed, and I couldn't really understand the change. I'm pretty sure he's off his meds, literally speaking, and his behavior manifests in the bi-polar comments he leaves. His "good boilerplate reply" is really quite vile, all 3 or more of his templates.
I'll concede the systems of the kings, empires and church were quite authoritarian throughout history, but even Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, HRE, Britain and yes, the Pope did not reach the totalitarian levels of the state in the 20th century, and the goals of the state in this century and beyond. Re: the Pope; looking to our leaders, church or state for guidance is not in and of itself a sign of totalitarianism, but of a good society. Of course, you're right, that can go south, too.
Still, it's hardly worth debating--and you're certainly right about that, too. There's no shortage of examples of mans' inhumanity. King, church and state, all.
Yet, for such a minor point, to elicit such vehement and foul backlash of the troll is unwarranted. So, I push back, such as it is, so that all can see what a Aqualung-character he is, and hopefully dissuade them from entertaining his comments in the future. Maybe he can change and come to the light side. At a minimum, he could interject something humorous. Funny trolls are better than mean ones.
"For such a minor point, to elicit such vehement and foul backlash of the troll is unwarranted. So, I push back, such as it is, so that all can see what a Aqualung-character he is, and hopefully dissuade them from entertaining his comments in the future. Maybe he can change and come to the light side. At a minimum, he could interject something humorous. Funny trolls are better than mean ones."
I agree but I am more sympathetic to an insulting troll when his basic point of view more or less converges with my own and when he can support his points and appeals with literate and interesting sources. If he was a leftist I wouldn't be able to tolerate the provocations. I will grant that when debating anything with him I'd be pretty tempted to go tit-for-tat, which never gets me anywhere.
Dear Mr. e.: Your grammar is horrible! For a "superior intellect" type of troll, that special kind that postures as smarter than the rest, you've failed. Probably because of your drunkenness.
Nevertheless, you troll on, so I suppose your commitment to being a vile human being, one endlessly entertained by his own cleverness, is somewhat admirable. If only for its consistency.
Until, that is, until one realizes that you're merely mentally masturbating, which, honestly, is no surprise.
This shit is ahistorical nonsense--another cheesy, concocted third-rate academic premise to sell books and lend succor (if you ignore the grift) to those suffering from acute WGS (white grievance syndrome).
The two constitutions, blah, blah, blah, the civil war did this, blah, blah, blah, the civil rights movement caused this, blah, blah, blah, the country is polarized 'cause libral judges, blah, blah, blah, we ain't got that old civility no more...because (turn down the house lights) negroes, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. I don’t often join in on stuff but this is just scary. I will have to drop them too. It won’t stop with them though. The left is obviously all for this and while the right might have a lot of push back from their voters, I wouldn’t put much trust in the gop. We need more options, and the people currently in power will do all they can to stop this as long as these companies work on their behalf.
Keep in mind that Paypal owns a number of payment processing companies/apps. Including, as far as I can tell, Braintree, Venmo, iZettle, Xoom. Probably others.
Like everything else, it's a consolidating mass of corporatism.
As was I. Although haven't used it in so long, it is demanding a phone number before I can log in enough to cancel it. Now I'm torn - offer up more info only to cancel, or just continue to not use it?
When the agent asked why I wanted to close my account, I wrote back, "PayPal's corporate censorship of alternative media is despicable." That was 25 minutes ago - not a peep on how to close out ...
Yeah I don’t think it works very well for one-off online purchases, unfortunately. Maybe crypto for that but I’m bearish on crypto managing to operate without continuing to centralize further and recreate the same problems.
As I've mentioned before, attacking the finances of people They don't like is nothing new. The Obama Administration's Operation Choke Point resulted in the denial of financial services for thousands of perfectly legal (and in most cases Federally licensed) American businesses. In my own case, I lost my merchant services account after ten chargeback-free years.
Superficially, you might suggest that it's somehow worse now because firms are being attacked for their reporting and other utterances, and it is worse. But no one behind Operation Choke Point seriously believed they were improving public safety or reducing crime: they came after us simply because they didn't like us. They didn't like what we did, they didn't like what we said, and they definitely didn't like how we (most of us) voted.
But it was okay to go after gun nuts in that way, because no one likes them. And it's okay to go after Canadian truckers, because they are maybe white supremacists. And it's okay to go after independent media because, um, reasons.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” ~ H. L. Mencken
I personally enjoy living in The Sahara of the Bozart. Let's look at the elephant in the tusks, though; opera is an obsolete artistic medium (Herzog's FITZCARRALDO is, shall we say, an ode to the deceased).
What is the difference? No snark... these labels keep getting redefined with each upsurge of stupidity emanating mostly from the left. I can't keep up with what they mean anymore.
My thoughts exactly. This is what happens when everything is relative and each person is allowed their own reality. Everyone gets to drown in a stew of neurotic, solipsistic bullshit.
There's nothing progressive about them. And Marx never said anything about the need for an authoritarian or totalitarian overlord. This is more of a Leninist thing, who had the same disdain for commoners that the elites do today.
That's because Marx was prescient and anticipated the necessary formation of an institution such as the Fed to keep the fires of capitalism stoked. He also anticipated authoritarian state sponsored capitalism in China, and from there began to fantasize on Maoist strippers modeling lingerie on alibaba.
There is an alternative to PayPal whose business model is to NEVER censor their services for any partisan reasons. It's called AlignPay. The first Amendment is a great business model.
For disclosure (NOT disparagement) - AlignPay is a project of Dan Bongino.
That doesn't bother me, since I think it has a good founding vision. But, like all such, it is subject to ideological capture by its creator or the attending business structures created. For the record, I don't think Jack Dorsey foresaw the current state of Twitter - but bears responsibility for how it was structured in its business approach and management.
a bunch of people are screaming about how Elon Musk will ideologically capture Twitter. Musk was also a PayPal cofounder. maybe if he was still active in PayPal MintPress wouldn't have been banned.
I beg to differ. Although founder & a major shareholder of Twitter at one point, Jack Dorsey is a pathetic, weak & easily influenced individual. And over time he fell entirely under the thrall of the execrable Vijaya Gadde. The current state of Twitter is exactly what you get when someone with the intellect of a retarded flea has control of a platform which controls much of the public discourse.
How is this legal? Like, how is this functionally different from a bank cutting off your account because of your views, or the credit card scanner machine company refusing to sell to a deli because its owners are Muslim?
Exactly, I ask myself all the time, how is this legal? I hate to say it but i think Americans just don't seem to care anymore. Either that or they just write it all off as "conspiracy" and stop listening. Off topic but I tried to talk to my husband about Bill Gates and his nefarious ways but I might as well have been talking to a tree.
Yeah I agree. How is this legal? PayPal collected over $9,000 from various people with the understanding that it was to be donated to Consortium News, but now they're just pocketing it.
I know there are a lot of lawyers who read Glenn Greenwald and there's a substantial overlap between his readership and Taibbi's. Can any of them explain why this isn't fraud?
A bit of web searching turns up many definitions of embezzlement, most of which involve an abuse of trust by a servant or agent. That fits PayPal’s actions, but to me embezzlement connotes something secretive, which isn’t the case here. But, yeah: they stole the money. The goofy claim of “damages” makes me wonder if this isn’t the act of some rogue zealot deep in the PayPal bureaucracy.
PayPal probably qualifies as an "agent", in that you are giving them money to give to a third party, less PayPal's contractually mandated cut and no more.
The longer we pretend that the people doing this aren't trying to crush the rest of us, the longer we suffer. Freedom should never be a partisan issue. For all the warnings of how dire the Trump years would be, he was more victim than villain in all of this.
it has always been risky to color outside the lines and then show the work to others. we are now learning just how risky it has been to put all that power in the hands of a few tech giants. this is no different than if, in the 60s, the ny times had controlled all the printing presses in the US. All those alternative magazines would never have been printed.
It's like we share a brain, Matt! I just wrote about this yesterday! My general rule is that if I'm on the same page as Taibbi, I'm on the right track. 😄
......although the DGB has stated it won’t target Americans, we’re talking about a government agency here — and one tasked with election disinformation. (Remember when the USA PATRIOT Act wasn’t supposed to target Americans either?)
How long will it be before the DGB is telling Paypal who to ban, or telling DHS who is a ‘domestic terrorist’? After the success of Canada shutting down protestors and the increase in vaccine uptake after the mandates, government has decided that threatening your ability to feed your family is a viable (and efficient!) compliance tool. This is the logical next step of the fascist takeover of the country. Agencies with the guns will simply point to the DGB ‘proof’ as they steal your stuff and deplatform you, or worse.
"How long will it be before the DGB is telling Paypal who to ban"
I give it a month on the outside. Ever since Operation Chokepoint got ramped up, the feds have been dying to expand the program to all wrongthinkers.
We're treading very close to civil breakdown now. You can do a lot of things, but when you weaponize the financial system, you're playing with fire. The trickle of people moving outside the system is going to become a stampede and the government will crack down harder as a result. The spiral has begun.
Great post! And as I mentioned in the linked article, government now thinks threatening your livelihood is a proper (and efficient) compliance tool. If you didn't wake up after the Canadian protests, and you STILL didn't wake up after Biden started stealing from Russians, you NEED to wake up to what Paypal and the DGB are cooking up here. When it comes to banks, my rule is the same as the golden rule of crypto:
Paypal maintains a hostile set of policies toward small business by overcharging for fees and not refunding fees to sellers when a product return occurs. As a result, I've eliminated Paypal from all transactions including from my ebay account.
The service became superfluous once browsers were able to securely store credit card numbers for online purchases. It is no longer needed.
That video encapsulates everything about neoliberal elites: arrogance, cluelessness, and the belief that the world will find everything they do cute and clever. Even Gandhi would want to slap that smug look off her face.
"Even Gandhi would want to slap that smug look off her face."
Gandhi was in touch with his dark side, man. "In the process of finding his own status, the beast in him is bound now and again to put up his ugly appearance."
There needs to be an alternative payment system set up, with all the alternative media outlets, whatever their differences, working together and coordinating.
Despite this crackdown, it shows how fragile the powers that be are.
They just can’t allow any dissent. All the more people should just drop all the mainstream outlets, stop using them, and pick some independent people to support.
The on-line payment platforms that are censoring and suspending companies and individuals because of their political positions or postings that they don't like is becoming a real issue. Since they are service based sites that utilize fees for their bottom line it would be best for EVERY citizen to abandon these pernicious sites and just move to service oriented (not enforcement surrogates) sites asap. Why pay some site like Pay Pal that considers you suspect and monitors your activity. Go Woke Go Broke must become a daily reality.. Just get rid of these judgmental political hit sites. Dealing with these anti-American companies only makes they stronger and bolder in their terrible and immoral business practices. If a publicly traded company SELL their shares NOW!
Every time that fucking Nina Jankowicz clip is played, a unicorn dies.
More like a little bit of our freedom dies.
I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it. Then I wondered "does this person actually think people want this?" What kind of person do you have to be to write something like "to be a woman online is an inherently dangerous act"? Maybe there's a secret portal, somewhere between the 7th or 8th floor of the building of say, Tik-Tok or Twitter headquarters, where I can enter her consciousness to get an understanding of that mindset because I really don't get Being Nina Jankowicz.
Careful, don’t go too high, I’m pretty certain her elevator doesn’t go to the top floor.....
I wonder, what kind of President of the United States appoints this whacko as a “Truth Minister “ ??
Have you not learned? It doesn't really matter who is elected, as the president is but a figurehead, the cat's paw for those who really run things from behind the scenes.
The 44th one.
I am 74 and I really get being Nina Jankowitz. I am autistic other than being born a talented psychologist I am not really that good at being sophisticated. I am autistic and in order to fit in, you must learn who is Big Brother and who is Emmanuel Goldstein.
The funny thing about 1984 is that I argued we were in 1984 in 1964.
1964 was when the average American had reached his pinnacle of share of wealth and power. 1964 Barry Goldwater was nominated by the GOP. It was the year Ronald Reagan made his Time For Choosing speech where he said 1933-1964 were the worst nightmare to ever befall America.
This is what America chose in 1980. I know who George Orwell was and is. He was Bernie Sanders the other side of the Reagan coin. Reagan sold his soul for thirty pieces of Roman silver. Before Bernie I knew Vermont as Mississippi North. Today Vermont does politics not culture and does it better than any state in your fractious union.
Popular wisdom is indeed popular but wisdom is subjective especially for we children being cut in half. Forgetting about Solomon's wisdom do we cut the baby in half?
Is America educating its children to be citizen king's. The roots of democracy is with philosopher kings. How did that work out? How Socratic is the USA where truth is whatever it is made out to be?
It is time for two secessionist parties and a unionist party. Maybe you can call the Unionists some more appropriate name like Utopians: A place that does not exist.
Utopia does exist. It's were all the people on the right side of history reside.
I would agree but I think That is not More's Utopia. It sounds more like Dante's lowest level of Hell. I remember Twain's Hell was listening to Angels lifting their voices on high for eternity. I cannot imagine wanting to be Trump for a picosecond. What an ugly environment for someone with wisdom and compassion but right now he is on the right side of history for nihilists like Putin, MBS, Duterte, Modi, Kim and Bolsonaro.
Yep. Everytime they push an extreme policy it's always to be on the right side of history. If the people reject it, it's never because it sucks. It's always because they didn't explain it to us correctly.
Thank you Deb. It took me 70 years to learn how to write. I still use a kindergarten keyboard and can only type on the middle finger of my right hand.
I learned qwerty in a typing class 45 years ago. I type 2 characters a second and still can't find qwerty on the keyboard.
That is why the fascist racist public intellectual Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information. He was more than Princeton . He was the Ivy League, Rockefeller U and Europe's leading Big Brained Elite.
Have you read Samuel Longhorn Clemens the Gilded Age? That Clemens guy was one great journalist. I think he played middle linebacker in Austin. Maybe that was Langhorne. Bad things happen after being hit on the head and banging your head against the wall for 74 years.
I hate to sound completely and totally mad but I never could do school but I think I was about 4.5 when I read Dante's Inferno it was one of the books in the library along with Tales of the Decameron and 1001 nights. Franklin was a journalist and a philosopher and public intellectual and polymath and he wrote an entire library just like Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Rich people had time to read and write it was a privilege God had granted them.
Thank you for understanding.
Oliver Cromwell was a Republican and he believed in Divine Right. More was pre-Elizabethan.
Milton , Newton and Locke weren't even born.
Thomas More 1478-1535
See Ignatius of Loyola 1491-1556
More was a Franciscan before there were Jesuits.
I am a member of the Thomas More Institute.
I don't know what to say about the the USA. Benjamin Franklin was a radical liberal public intellectual, scientist, journalist who believed in Darwin's evolution before Darwin developed his theory of the mechanism. Benjamin Franklin rejected all religion. He was a Deist.
Newton said: "We are standing on the shoulders of giants" and without Franklin there would have never been Marx and without Locke, Milton and Newton there would have been no Franklin. Franklin and Voltaire were contemporaries and Franklin was bilingual and spent many days in Montreal where he organized a giant tea party.
Gaslighting is nothing Shakespeare didn't understand.
Shakespeare truly understood gaslighting he was Elizabethan, More was a Franciscan serving Elizabeth's father.
More was Pope Francis not an American Catholic he was a Franciscan like in Francis of Assisi and Greta Thunberg.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-More-English-humanist-and-statesman
Milton was a liberal Puritan, Ben was slightly less agnostic than Milton. Milton was a Unitarian. Unitarians are like the polar opposite of Southern Baptists or Calvinists. They are secular humanists and therein lies America's divide.
Franklin or John Adams. John Adams was a Federalist Westphalian Europhile and Franklin was a secular humanist.
The GOP is nothing new. Oliver Cromwell was a war criminal. He committed Genocide in Ireland and Scotland and brought misery and sorrow to England.
I love it when people fact check.
Barry Goldwater as President was the unicorn dream of libertarians…..
Not to mention, the Goldwater Girl, Hillery. Not a libertarian exactly but a major player in the Ukraine mess and a lot of the messes we face today. How come these creepy politicians from decades ago are still around and wielding power. Sick!
I saw an interview between Goldwater and Chomsky. Chomsky ran intellectual circles around Goldwater. Just google it.
but, Barry could ride his horse in circles around Naom...Populists have friends, too.
I never know the right words to explain. Chomsky is a Libertarian and Goldwater was a conservative and Karl Hess III was a libertarian writer and philosopher whose friendship with Goldwater was considered treason by committed Libertarians. Libertarianism is a fundamental change in the way we organize human society. It is the opposite of conservative. Libertarianism is extreme liberalism.
Goldwater's speech writer Karl Hess III was a LIbertarian, Goldwater was a shopkeeper. Most Libertarians disowned Hess and considered him a conservative which is fundamentally authoritarian. The idea of a social democracy was part of the enlightenment but in 1776 the founders were divided on the efficacy of social democracy. Adams was a Federalist and we are still waiting for his concession speech from 1800 when Jefferson became president.
Incoherent you are
This is what happens when you hire people with severely crippling mental health issues.
True and this is what happens when a biased MSM covers up Biden’s cognitive decline during the campaign ( as well as cover up the obvious Biden family corruption)
THANK YOU!! One truly has to pause to consider why the msm were willing acolytes in that carefully choreographed charade… Biden is good at one thing and one thing only… denouncing “politics” and then being the most political hate fueling President ever … fortunately, I think the number of people who realize they’re being manipulated is growing.
"It's the Monster Mash--it is a grave yard smash it caught on in a flash..."
Even her name sounds like an insult....
Who will play her in the movie?)))
Alyssa Milano.
perfect. Or any of the women in "Heathers."
+1 Kathy
Perfect.
I would've spilled the coffee on the keyboard had I had any at the moment.
WMPL!!!
Shitlibby Fascista
Great Movie. Haven't watched it in many years. Time to watch it again.
She might have ruined that song for me for life! Damn it.
And her parody lyrics are neither clever, nor funny. Can we censor her?
Yeah, that's the thing. They're convinced they are sooo clever...
Which explains why SNL hasn't been funny in 30 years....
Humor is the one thing propaganda cannot do. SNL and Minister of Truth Jankowicz prove that. I am reminded of Robert Anton Wilson's quote “It’s not true unless it makes you laugh….” I alway thought that was a cute idea, but now I’m beginning to understand what he meant.
Colbert, Noah, Marr, Stewart, propagandists all.
Hey, don't knock "The Californians." That bit was gold. Hader rules.
Daughter of nurse Ratched
Illegitimate daughter. Post-op.
I’m reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the first time right now………beautiful story….
When you get to the end it is utterly depressing.
No, it really isn't. Chief escapes, life goes on. (It is depressing, just not utterly)
I saw the movie first. Not sure what is better :)
totally hilarious
Wow. First time I actually played that clip. This wackjob is their arbiter of 'truth' ?
We live in very interesting times.
no, we live in wacko times...
There aren't that many unicorns in the whole world.
That's what I'm saying, dude. It's not like they grow on trees. A little less profligacy might be warranted.
That clip isn’t her worst. Check YT for her warbling “A Simple Christmas Wish” (Rich, Famous and Powerful.) There is a line “what do I have to fake” she sings as “who do I have to f@#k”.
Appears Nina definitely effed the right people.
Yikes!
Thanks for the heads up. I heard something about that but not the detail.
Fuck the unicorn, every time that clip is played a piece of me dies.
oh, that's funny
...by suicide.
A HERD of unicorns, a whole freaking herd.
lol
Dude, hate the message, love the messenger - as a Supercalifragulous meme, she nails it.
Sure the lyrics are nails across blackboard. But the performance is S tier
I thought the performance aspect was fine. People were insulting it and I thought "Nah. That's kinda knee-jerk."
It is clear that certain groups in our country want to control the narrative to their benefit by limiting the amount of information we receive. This is corporate fascism.
Yep. It's exactly like government hiring a private security company to break into your house and search without a warrant, then claiming there was no Fourth Amendment violation because the government didn't actually do the searching.
BINGO! Read Mussolini's definition of fascism and see if was defining the empire. At least he did get the train's to run on time; that's more than the perfidious mendacious empire can do. Hello, the German's couldn't get mag lev train's to work. China bought the patent's and now they're running them while the empire train's run on wooden ties and millions of kids go to bed hungry at night and you don't wanna Walk the streets a couple of hundred meters from the capitol building at night.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
Yep!
If Paypal did this on the basis of suppressing dissent about the official US narrative on the Ukrainian crisis, the term "Fascist" is entirely appropriate.
I've been aware of that quote for 40 years...I've often seen it applied inappropriately, in my opinion, because I don't view every "public-private partnership" as an example of fascism. If governments didn't hire private contractors to carry out some of their ordained functions, those projects would have to be taken in-house. I'm glad that the EPA hires out...a workman for the private firm Environmental Restorations Inc. might have been responsible for the Animas River mine waste leak, but the firm has an excellent track record of competently handling many other EPA contracts. (Incidentally, I studied the Animas case in detail; talk about overhyping an event for partisan gain.) Hooray for the private sector, in that regard.
But when we being speaking of the collaboration of Google and Facebook with forces within government on matters of public policy, that's a whole different thing- and that thing begins to resemble Fascism. If this Paypal thing is what it currently looks like, the role of private collusion with governmental efforts takes on the character of explicit coercion, not merely attempts at obstruction.
PPP is a giant scam; simply a way to transfer public money to private profiteers. Of course, the government should call tenders on many projects that start and finish. It's like GM calling in contractor's on shutdowns and line changes. No bid and defacto no bid contracts are always a rip off and most military industrial complex contract's are structured that way.
Yes and no. Consider the case of the EPA example above, where the other options are
2) staff a permanent government department to do massive environmental remediation projects
or
3) just forget about doing any of them
I'll take option one.
fascism is merely socialism with the illusion of a free market. its smarter than socialism because in socialism, the government takes all the responsibilty and blame.
I like to say that fascists are socialists who are smart enough to realize they would completely destroy private industry if they tried to run the day-to-day, so they just boss corporations around instead.
I've seen this definition of fascism repeated about a thousand times over the last year and now I'm starting to wonder if it truly applies to the US. I mean, as long the government doesn't totally control that MyPillow guy, can we really say state and corporate power have merged?
Government is telling people who to ban off social media. They are closing bank accounts of the deplorables. They destroyed an entire industry (online poker) because one idiot wanted to make a name for himself with the moral majority. And they're just getting ramped up.
If you want to wait until you're on the cattle car to see what's going on, that's up to you. But the fascism has been real and it's been growing the last couple decades.
I think I'd call them "sheeple "& I'm afraid that you're right except being going on for a couple of generations. First, they came for the working classes and threw them under the bus but I was not working classes so I didn't care. Then they came for the countries that defied the neo liberal agenda but they were brown and far away and now they're coming for the middle classes but they've done such a great job indoctrinating us, dumbing us down and making us effete that we welcome it and we've learned to love big brother!
Fascism is like the N word; it's used to degrade and delegitimise someone rather than rational arguments. I didn't come up with the term but I think "inverted totalitarianism " fits the bill. That's where the ruling classes an,d large corporations are at the top; the government’s are in the middle pretending to represent the majority/working classes and actually being the courtiers of the ruling classes and, of course, the working classes at the bottom and accepting our lot through the use of indoctrination from every institution in society including friends and family. What they have in Russia and China and some other western world enemies is the government’s on top, the ruling classes below and us, the working classes at the bottom. Again, the system is maintained by indoctrination. The US and by extension, the rest of the west will never forgive Vladimir Putin for giving the Supreme power back to the state even though he let the oligarchy keep its money. China, of course is the same but supremely practical, doing what works best for the country. That's why they're eating our breakfast and will continue to defeat our doctrinal neo liberalism.
The inverted totalitarianism model seems ok. But, still, I can't figure out who's really in control. Corporations lobby for causes and buy politicians. We all see this. The control over government by Wall Street banks, Big Pharma and Defense contractors is obvious.
But, as Glenn Greenwald keeps pointing out, even huge cash making machines like Google and Facebook are pushed around by politicians demanding they suppress the speech of their users. And look what happened to Disney in Florida. That's not supposed to happen under a system of corporate control. And California shut Disneyland down for a couple of years straight during the pandemic (unlike Disneyworld, which somehow opened sooner.)
And, even more confusing, Democrats like Hillary Clinton are genuinely fearful/angry at Trump supporters for voting the wrong way. Clinton apparently thought she owned the presidency. But why should voters matter? They don't have control! And of course Trump continues to say his election was stolen -- because he thought HE owned the presidency. And the 3 letter agencies pushed Trump around seven ways to Sunday.
I mean, what the hell is going on? Is anyone really in control? The system is an unholy feedback loop with a big list of forces pushing in different directions. Is it predictable? Is it stable?
The MyPillow guy is but a bit player in the world of who has real political power.
That happened.
I'm told that his ability to make the trains run on time is greatly exaggerated.
I dunno, I wasn't there. I do know that European high speed trains do run on time now and China made the MagLev train that the German's couldn't make work... work and now they're on a whole New level. Meanwhile back in the USA the train's are mostly diesel and running on wooden ties. China build's a destroyer for 1/7 the of the US cost and I predict they will have caught up and passed the west in transport aircraft and high end electronics in ~ 10 years. Of course that presumes no nuclear war. We need to get with the program and do it yesterday.
I wonder-- who is actually running the country? It's obviously not Biden (and his friend Bunny) so who is it? Who is hiring people like this TikTok clown to run a government agency? Someone is making these decisions and it's no one who was elected.
Careful, citizen. You're dangerously close to asking unapproved questions that Undermine Democracy.
HA! You're not really in the oppressor class. The tell is that if you were, you'd know the phrase is "Undermine Our Precious Democracy".
No! Wait! I'm loyal to the party! There's been some mistake! If only Comrade Biden knew of this!
*BANG*
The country more or less runs itself. I hate to revert back to my PolySci 101 lectures on how the bureaucracy works, but those of you - and I know there are a God damned bunch of you on this blog - who were polysci majors know what I'm talking about. The contemporary and contemptuous name for the the federal (and states) bureaucracies are "deep state". Why are they "deep"? Because like a tick on a dog's ass they are very hard to remove and they are at best benign and at worse extremely anti-democratic in a manner of speaking. They burrow in deep and they suck a lot of blood out of the dog - the dog of course is the USA and it's people. But, they DO control the dog for better or worse, regardless of who "owns" the dog.
Since I hate the dog/tick analogy let's move on. Trump was elected and for once in forever a crazy president tried to reform or at least tame the bureaucracy in a way that would make it slightly more democratic. In other words, Trump was elected, so as the representative of the people, he should be able to re-shape and realign the bureaucracy to implement his policies, right? Well, yes, but no. 98% of the bureaucracy doesn't need to listen to Trump, Biden or anyone else. They have their jobs for life and they are the drones that actually implement gov't policies. If they don't agree with a Trump or Biden policy they just don't enforce it. And sometimes, like in the case of the EPA, they will even enforce policies that are not even on the books - but that they just like a lot. BTW, it's not a conspiracy in the usual sense. Everyone in Washington and everyone who's follows Gov't and politics for any length of time knows this is going on. It was going on back when Kennedy told Kruschev there were no missiles in Turkey only to be told by his Pentagon bureaucracy that, uh, sorry Mr President, we actually left those missiles in Turkey aimed at Moscow even though you told us to move them. We, the MIC, JCOS and Pentagon decided on our own to, you know do our own thing and fuck you - what are you going to do about it? There's a reason that presidents now use EO's as a primary method of governing and implementing policies. The bureaucracy, left or right, has one thing in common - they are running the show and they know it. If you really want to influence gov't policy there's something you can do that is way more important than voting or protesting - join the HR dept of your favorite bureaucracy and make sure you're on the panel that hires new ticks. Each new tick is like their own little president and that panel is the electorate. To paraphrase Charlotte's Web, "Some democracy" huh?
I find it interesting how you tell this story without mentioning corporate power. Is that what they teach in PolySci 101?
For a case study on corporate power, one can look at why the DOJ Antitrust Division for decades has allowed mergers detrimental to the economy. Matt Stoller's blog on substack has plenty of background reading on this topic.
What I learned from Matt Stoller's analysis is that government and lawmakers, by and large, do what they are told by corporate power.
"Money makes the vorld go round."
https://youtu.be/PIAXG_QcQNU
And politicians come cheap!
I only think in terms of power centres these days as the official power flowchart is not operative. It probably never was.
Religious groups tried to ban Charlotte’s Web when I was in high school, because talking animals go against God and the Bible. That is based on their whack interpretation. I find the Bible a wholly inappropriate book to base modern civilization, any civilization really, upon, however, I don’t even see from a reading of the Bible, how it would consider talking animals as anathema or against God. There are many talking animals in it.
As a follower of Jesus, it’s disappointing to hear narrow minded people wanted to ban Charlotte’s Web because they considered it unbiblical. I can’t imagine why they thought that talking animals are unbiblical (I suppose they never read about Balaam and his donkey in the Book of Numbers, chapter 22).
It breaks my heart to see “Christians” push people away from God. Honestly, I’ve been one of those people from time to time and I’m ashamed of it.
But I believe the Word of God is as relevant now as ever before. God has taught me so much about human nature through the Bible. Thousands of years have passed…yet human nature hasn’t changed. Human beings still struggle with the same baggage they faced thousands of years ago (fear, anger, lust, grief, bitterness, greed, shame, etc.) The Bible shows how much God loved flawed human beings like me.
Me, with all my flaws and shortcomings and failures. And they are many. But He still loves me. And you too!
I think there's even a talking plant on fire in that thing.
I don't doubt your story, but I never heard of any such effort, and I lived in several of the reddest states. There may have been some fundie group that had that belief, and the media may have played it up as being larger and more threatening than it might have been, but it never happened.
It's like, when ONE school district tried to remove ONE book from the curricum of ONE course, it became "THEYRE TRYING TO BURN THE BOOKS! REEEE!!" Don't fall for it.
What about the serpent in the Garden of Eden!?!?! There are also various beasts in Revelation.
Wait! How did they get around the talking serpent?
Because the book with that in it was already removed from the schools, maybe?
Bureaucracy -- large and small -- does seem to take on a life of its own and just keep running on and on. But what I was asking is this: who made the decision to use PayPal as a political enforcer? Refuse to negotiate the boundaries of NATO with Russia? Push for people to lose their jobs if they refused to vaccinate? Turn a blind eye to the crisis on the border (including the Haitians coming across and news media not allowed to interview any of them)? These decisions will have an impact on everyone's life at some point and they're all laid at Biden's feet and he's obviously not the person making any of them.
You make a great point and wouldn't it be great if some big media journalist thought it was worth trying to uncover? My guess is it's not one person or even a small group of people. It's a confluence of like minded bureaucrats, lefty media execs, politicians and corporate heads who on one or another of the issues you mentioned just passes along their beliefs to the networks, cable shows, individual reporters etc and what looks like a conspiracy of sorts, is actually just a bunch of people who think exactly alike. It's the same reason we have traffic jams, we all want to be somewhere else at the same time.
People who control the media all just want the same political outcomes and they don't ever feel they are doing anything nefarious, in fact most of them think they are highly patriotic and people like you and me are the bad guys for questioning their motives.
It's weird how that gets turned on its head?? Remember that scene from Falling Down? "You mean I'm the bad guy?" I feel like our media is always shocked when they find out that 80% of America thinks they're the bad guy. It shows you how completely out of touch they are with mainstream thought.
I would say that at least in the US senior heads of bureaucracies are political appointments. So there is at least some policy sway. OTOH, most political types don’t seem to have deep knowledge of the bureau they head, much less a fine grasp of the challenges, history, and realities of a given problem. Check out Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk for another view on bureaucracies
I don't think we disagree. The President's cabinet is supposed to take control of the largest bureaucracies and try to get them to bend. As you mentioned they rarely have the knowledge to circumvent the protocols and SOPs that "resist" change at all cost. I do think the DS went into overdrive when Trump was in office, much like the more conservative deep state that did it's level best to undermine Kennedy every change they got. The main difference being that our current bureaucracy is much more blatant and in the case of the IC more public in their contempt for a president who tries to implement policies they disagree with.
"I wonder-- who is actually running the country?"
Corporate power?
The really terrifying thing is the many millions of people in America and around the world who seem to believe that old Joe 'biden', who pees himself most days, is, "in charge, here at the White House".
The media adhere to that nonsense even though most of them know better.
"This is ------ fascism."
Fixed it for you.
Yes redundant but too many don't know that
True
A government powerful enough to pick the winners is one that will inevitably be captured by the winners.
Can we please stop using fascism to describe every behavior we don't like? It is not helping here at all, other than as a synonym for "bad".
Government ordering around private business is the textbook definition of fascism, and it's exactly what's happening here.
Actually, the textbook definition of fascism is industry working happily with an authoritarian government to ensure unions are abolished and production is maximized.
"happily"? maybe "colluding with bought congress members to insure maximum profits at the expense of the proletariat " is more correct.
And that’s different than what SimulationCommander said in what way?
Meh. Other than being controlled by different interests than Big Money or Big Tech or Big Pharma or the MIC, unions are as easily captured and utilized for oppression as any other power structure. I shouldn't have to give examples here.
That is definitely what some people were taught, not really true though.
Government ordering around private businesses happens under all sorts of political systems, and is actually not really a big feature of the actual two exemplar fascist countries we had (Italy and Germany in the interwar period). The west liked to claim that (probably as a way to lump them in closer to the USSR), but the Germans and Italians actually did not meddle particularly extensively in their economies even during the early war, and were not on total war footing for quite along time given the circumstances.
Fascism I think much more has as its core ultra-nationalism (and accompanying racism), which this article is not at all about. And the dictatorial and violent oppression of political opposition, which this also isn't about. It was also predominantly a violent reaction against communism and liberalism, which only the latter applies in the current moment.
Fascists certainly wanted a fully mobilized state and economy, but they weren't very effective in making that happen in Italy or Germany.
Fascists are socialists who are smart enough to understand that if THEY tried running private industry, they would destroy it. (See Venezuela)
Using Venezuela as an example of a failure of socialism is to pretend that it wasn´t sabotaged by the good ole USA, the most powerful country in the world. exactly for the reason that they would become an argument against socialism! Shame on you.
That sounds pretty knee-jerk. Maduro as a crude caudillo, incapable of top-down management of a 20th century economy? I don't think there's much sabotage required to believe that, buddy. But I think we see you can be persuaded to believe things by mere assertion, if it agrees with your preconceptions.
Yes, yes, yes, it's all our fault they nationalized their industries and put people in charge who didn't know what they were doing. We're very sneaky that way.
Actually they’re republicans clever enough to cede all control to democrats.
Team Stupid cedes control to Team Evil. Film at 11.
Using prison labor, imprisoned by the state based upon certain ethnic groups claimed to be undesirable, to make a profit, is not a defining factor of ww2 era German and Italian governments? Do please illuminate us on how they differed from that scenario.
Prisoners in America, most of them black, are literally enslaved and forced to labour. Some of them in the very same cotton fields that their ancestors worked. (Angola) Many others labour in UNICOR where they make war materiel.
Someone got enraged with me one day for saying this, but it is literally true.
See: 13th Amendment
What we have is Fascism with American characteristics. They won't go to the jackboot unless their Narrative Matrix unravels before too many eyes.
What is a "narrative matrix?"
Simplest answer is "What the powers that be want you to think is reality." They do this primarily thru the media - TeeVee, commercials, the internet, movies, magazines, etc. They set up a construct, especially I think, thru TeeVee commercials that teach us what the good life is, or should be. For instance I noticed that almost immediately following the George Floyd tragedy, is if they had them all cued up, there rapidly appeared ads with lots of interracial couples, lots of rich or middle class black folk or indeterminate people of color. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but the ratios are way skewed. Like suddenly blacks make up 40% of the US population. It's probably just virtue-signaling on the part of "Madison Avenue" but I can't help but notice it whenever I watch. It is subtle until you notice it. Then, it's like they are hitting you over the head with propaganda on the "reality of America".
"Racism" and "violent oppression of political opposition" are in no way exclusively associated with Fascism. Matter of fact, a LOT of societies throughout history have exhibited those traits.
Of course, back in the day "political opposition" was synonymous with violence anyway.
Linguistic precision? You racist!
Corporate Fascism is the only kind, the symbiosis of the state and "private" corporations which allows non-governmental agencies to enforce the will of the current regime and their overseers, the permanent bureaucrats of the Alphabet Agencies.
Ya think?
True, but the groups are not confined to corporations.
The omnipotence and omnipresence of the current Ukrainian war agenda, by far exceeds anything I've seen in my long life. I'm guessing but the only comparison I'd make would be religion in the middle ages before the enlightenment and the scientific method or Mao's cultural revolution. Of course, we're softened up from birth and the absurdities of the last few years and the mind controlling social media and the attention destroying smartphone have weakened our pre frontal cortexes and opened us up to whatever fantastical stories the ruling classes come up with. This is so far past 1984 levels of mind control it's on another plane. I just hope it doesn't get us all dead; it's escalating at an exponential rate and I'm not hearing any voices of reason or moderation from the ruling classes.
And so the capture accelerates:
1. Finance. Starve heterodox voices of money, crippling them financially.
2. Culture. Slant as much of media and entertainment in favor of specific narratives, marginalizing heterodox voices.
3. Education. Indoctrinate children (ages 0 to 23) as quickly and thoroughly as possible, silencing through intimidation all heterodox voices.
4. Law. Subvert law schools and courts through the proliferation of regressive, illiberal exercise of the law, persecuting heterodox voices.
5. Science and Medicine. Deny hundreds of years of verifiable fact and viciously attack dissenting dissenting heterodox voices.
6. Government. Weaponize Federal agencies to extralegally target and persecute all dissenting heterodox voices, often in partnership with commercial interests, to shore up narratives and enact regressive, illiberal policy.
7. Corporations. Partner with governmental and non-governmental organizations to subvert heterodox voices, stifling and restricting their reach.
Once you succeed in supplanting reason and personal agency with partisan piety amplified by a regressive, illiberal, and fundamentalist ideology (an ideology predicated on unfalsifiable and malignant premises that justify any act of depravity as morally acceptable), there are no other outcome besides the ones to which we are bearing witness.
Given the aggressiveness of these bad actors, and their willingness to subordinate reason in favor of ideology, it is hard to see how those still possessed of reason and love of country can gracefully and elegantly turn the tide.
Yet perhaps there is a coalition of the willing ready to stand in the breach and reclaim our institutions. Matt has made it abundantly clear that he is, I am grateful for his bravery, and I take comfort and strength from his example. Thank you, Matt, for standing in the breach and continuing to shine a bright light on this lunacy, and inspiring others to take a stand with you.
I don’t think there be any retaking of institutions. This has been 50 years in the making and the left are masters of institutions, they are true believers in this illiberal ideology. There will be no reasonable debate of ideas in which they concede. Old institutions must be invalidated and ignored. Gigantic movements of “opt out”. New institutions have to be built. This is going to be a long slog.
The events of the last several days make the relentlessness crystal clear. Obama emerges at Stanford to christen "Disinformation" as the threat. Days later, the Disinformation police bureau is launched at DHS. Days later, Supreme Court insider/new media hero delivers two-month old opinion draft to Politico. Hours after publication, protesters arrive at the Court. Immediately, elected leaders Biden, Schumer, etc. denounce the Court and promise action to rescue democracy.
Things are accelerating. Did we mention there is an election in November?
Leading from behind. He was laughed at at the time. This is what leading from behind looks like.
yes, all these institutions are infested with termites and are beyond saving. academia, hollywood, media, publishing, anything to do with culture down to your local theater group and anything with an HR dept, whether public or private or nonprofit.
after a successful 50-yr campaign the New Left has seized the means of cultural production and you don't achieve your goals after 50 yrs in order to compromise or cede ground to your opponents--you do it to install your program, to get jobs and money for your backers, to see how many of your own true believers you can plant anywhere and everywhere, and, perhaps most importantly of all, you do it to destroy your opponents or at least take their jobs and banish them from the public square.
so, as u said, anything fresh or real or at least not infested with a sterile orthodoxy will have to be created elsewhere, which i think explains why we're all here on substack.
I agree on all points and particularly appreciated your concluding one!
Well said and I agree that, whether it is a reclamation or construction project, we certainly have our work cut out for us!
Yes, exactly. They have completed their “Long march through the institutions” and this is the result. It will take many years and many tears before this is reversed. Most of us won’t be around to see it.
Well written, very comprehensive and concise!
Thank you very much!
Outstanding post Steve R! Keep writing.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!
We did not realize what we were getting into when we were getting out of our traditional institutions, like religion. The lack of values bigger than ourselves is ultimately what this is about.
That is an interesting perspective. The decline of religious belief takes away a community and identity, so perhaps people are swapping in new identity. Only these ones don’t have clearly defined rules
Many Thanks Matt
Reads almost like Marx's 10 planks. http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/TenPlanks.html
"Then [Steve R.] got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing."
Steve R. on government:
“Here’s what the law does. The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up-ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a hog. They call that govment!”
Steve R. on the PMC:
“Looky here – mind how you talk to me; I’m a-standing about all I can stand now – so don’t gimme no sass. I’ve been in town two days, and I hain’t heard nothing but about you bein’ rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That’s why I come. You git me that money to-morrow – I want it.”
Steve R. on public education:
“It’s so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won’t have it. I’ll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I’ll tan you good. First you know you’ll get religion, too. I never see such a son.”
Steve R. prepping and putting in stores after the last "heterodox voice" has been silenced:
"Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me…The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow."
Can't engage with the substance, put the respondent in the role of Pap from Huckleberry Finn, in effect calling him a drunken redneck idiot.
You either approve of the process Steve R outlines or are too smug and lazy to explain why these things are not actually taking place or are just tearing the wings off flies for amusement. It's a typical leftist rhetorical move: ridicule your opponent and avoid any specific refutation.
If I recall correctly, Pap at least owned his drunkenness.
It is funny that HUCKLEBERRY FINN continues to be banned for its alleged racism when it is one of the most aggressively anti-racist novels ever published by an American author.
That demonstrates the totally asinine taboo surrounding the word "nigger," since this usage is the only reason illiterates call for H.F.'s banishment, despite context and despite its 1885 release. More paternalistic policing of language in the name of sparing the feelings of ostensible adults.
If I was a black person in America I would be enraged by the "anti-racism" of Kendi and his ilk, which is being used as a wedge between black people and everyone else, and I'd be very insulted by the more than 100 years of abuse from the American left/Democratic Party, which has always treated black people like backward children incapable of agency.
PSYCHOTIC ASSHOLE TROLL!!!!!!!
I'm using this as a blurb for my next book.
As a 20th-century lefty like Matt, we were always told that "when fascism came to America it would come wrapped in the flag and cross" or something like that. It was an understandable sentiment at the time, as people looked back at history and saw so much bloodshed and oppression based on King or God or Church or State (or some combo), and simply extrapolated that the future would play out much in the same way as it had in the past.
But not even the spawn of Nostradamus and Orwell could have predicted our era of totalitarian safetyism, the dictatorship not of kings or priests or soldiers but of authoritarian kindergarten teachers who will denounce, gag and banish all dissent because "we value a safer community".
Instead of Big Brother we seem to have arrived at Big Mother, who supervises all our thoughts and activities and will punish anyone who doesn't play nice and share, who refuses to follow all her rules, or who commits the horrific and unforgivable crime of hurting someone's feelings.
Who could have guessed that the epitaph to the American experiment would read: "SAFETY FIRST!" History always has a good sense of humor.
We are witnessing a religious movement of sorts. They've just replaced God with "SCIENCE (tm)" and "DEMOCRACY (tm)."
"Cultural Marxism" is the stale faux "grievance mat" under which the knee-jerk righty squad continues to sweep all its invented cultural and political bugaboos that frightens them and makes them jump. At night. While on the keyboard. Boo!
Look, a not-so-useful idiot. e.pierce is rude, but right.
Call it cultural Marxism, neo-Marxism, Gramscian Marxism or Marcusian Marxism, whatever; it's the same thing with different labels, and people who think, live, and work according to its principles, whether they are aware of it or not, infest bureaucracies everywhere, implementing DIE principles and championing the new Proletariat, "oppressed" minorities, trying to drive out straight white males and replace them with "the marginalized." An ill-defined dictatorship of the marginalized is the utopian goal. But what happens when the oppressed become the oppressors? Purges? Concentration camps? Killing fields?
Anyone expressing public opinions critical of any of the new Proletariat, especially the black, feminist, gay, and trans-sexual lobbies, are subject to silencing and retaliation by the corporate arm of the Fascist USG.
Beware of the growing acceptance of "hate speech" as an actual phenomenon that needs to be silenced for the protection of these "vulnerable" proletarians. We gave up far too much ground conceding the reality of "hate crime" and have opened ourselves up to full-bore thought control in the name of "stopping hate." It is idiotic, but what else can you expect from a growing mob of asshats who think their inner lives, such as they are, deserve the special protection of the state against bad words and insults?
Well, fuck you. I hate you personally, lucrezia, or at least I hate the representation of some humanoid simulacrum I'm talking at on my computer. What are you gonna do about it? Write your congressman?
More (Bull) shit from another aggrieved white boy. Man-up, motherfucker. Hubbard, once the barricades go up, there's nothing anybody can do for you---they're coming for all the candyasses first. Or so I was told while being interrogated by one of their "cells."
Fascinating. Who are "they"? And why will they be erecting barricades? If the "candyasses" will be the first up against the wall (or barricade), I reckon you'd best arm yourself or get lost. BTW, I'm Puerto Rican. Does this count as "white"? I can't tell with the definition being all over the place these days.
Lucrezia interviewing at a start-up troll farm after being let go by big George himself due to some unspecified "hygiene" issue.
You're a supertroll, yes?
Yes. One of the finest in the field.
Well, lucrezia, we're looking for a supertroll who is either a completely brainwashed meatspace lunatic (or a cynical imitation of one), or a memespace deep fake sock puppet AI bot.
Paydirt, Reverend.
...."Probably" clinically narcissistic and a sociopathic manipulator?
What, are you awaiting test results from the lab?
My previous comment is not, of course, in any way at cross purposes with your assessment of "lee" as a complete idiot. Just to be clear.
You're being obtuse again. You're not being smart. Being obtuse is the opposite of being smart. Be smart, not obtuse.
Brilliantly stated. We know exactly what masculine totalitarianism looks like; there are endless examples. But what we're witnessing now seems to be an emerging feminine totalitarianism. When you look at who's enrolled in the universities, who shapes the narratives, who comprises the ranks of DEI / ESG leadership... that's increasingly what it looks like.
True, most of the leaders at the top of the pyramid are still men, but to whom are those men catering?
Now that we have a Nanny State totalitarianism system in place, power hungry men will compete with women for dominance within that system. When neoconservativism was ascendant, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice and many others successfully competed on the world stage to demonstrate that their dicks were far bigger than any of their male colleagues.
There will be no shortage of men desperate to prove to the masses that their level of outrage and indignation has been so violated that they have no choice but to A) lock up more of their own citizens on the domestic front, or B) bomb the shit out of everyone else on the international stage.
It’s a game of power that they’re busy reshuffling, and the game is to continuously increase the defense budget, as money provides the base for accumulating power.
The rest of us are supposed to think that it’s really male vs. female vs. Black vs. white, etc…
Victor Frankl wrote that he only recognized two races: the race of the decent man, and the race of the indecent man.
The race of the indecent man is clearly winning, but Victor Frankl, having survived Auschwitz, already knew that. That’s why he devoted his life to encouraging people to work towards becoming a member of the decent race.
He feared that things could get much, much worse.
And here we are, beginning our initial descent.
Annie, you are on point and I fear that I debase the discussion by pointing out that Qadhafi just wanted to make fuel-efficient cars for his people and hump Condoleezza Rice. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/10/more-horrendously-creepy-details-about-qaddafis-condoleezza-rice
yes, the concept of toxic masculinity has been chewed over for quite awhile now, what's more interesting would be exploring toxic femininity (if there's one, there has to be the other)...my general feeling is that whereas the masculine version is out-of-control or misdirected aggression, the female version is a sort of a hypertrophied maternal instinct, along the lines of: everyone gets a cookie and everyone gets to feel safe and special--OR ELSE!
I would do the exploration myself except my wife might divorce me! ;)
Karen Straughan gave a good talk on toxic femininity. Worth listening multiple times, although I don't think her definition is complete.
https://youtu.be/O0zQf5NMG8E
Karen used to show up in the comments for Matt's and Glenn's Substacks. A razor sharp wit. Haven't seen her in awhile.
Toxic femininity-where’s Al Bundy when you need him?!?!
Having passed out and reawakened, I ponder the fact that the 1990s really were a different time culturally. There is no way in hell a major network would run a sitcom like MARRIED... WITH CHILDREN now.
Selling shoes?
Amber Heard seems to be held up as an example of it.
Yet another weighing-in from a 40-year-old incel confined to inflatables.
Happily married and raising a family actually.
Observing that we have a feminine version of totalitarianism is not at all sexist. As I first stated, we've already seen many iterations of masculine totalitarianism.
Is ad hom all you got, or could you add some cogent thoughts to the discussion?
Is this making anyone else think of Alex Jones' "gay fucking frogs" rant?
It didn't for me, but it did make me look it up. Props.
https://knowyourmeme.com/videos/286049-alex-jones-gay-frogs-rant
The musical version is the best: https://youtu.be/dvf6gz58xnI
I think Eugene Debs said this... in slightly different phrasing: https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/debs-speech-canton
Debs papers at Newberry Library:
https://archives.newberry.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/133835
Nah if fascism came to the US it was always first and foremost goin to be wrapped in dolla bills. That has always been the real god here.
Someone literally said to me the other day "I don't want to live in a world where X's are mean to Y's" and used that as an argument for boycotting and social mob punishment of speech. Like literally "I disapprove of this speech, we should make it stop". The power of the internet!
Serious deep offense on behalf of how you assume someone else felt.
Hey, I will never deny that America is, was and shall always be a dictatorship of capital, but there are always other factors and other incentives (we are multifaceted beasts), and i guess most importantly the question becomes what are the goals, ideas, tactics (and how vehemently are they held) of the controllers of capital.
Like, do they just wanna take their loot and scram behind mansion walls, or do they wanna use their loot and power to sculpt that great utopian phantasm, the New Man, while making us all the clay to be twisted and pounded?
This CS Lewis quote is pretty played out by now (and I'm sure you've seen it), but it best captures my point:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
Yeah, I’d say he nailed it. The hopeful part is society has seen this before it’s just the tools at their disposal are new. To steal a phrase from them “ it’s not sustainable”.
The dollar is just the vehicle it’s not the cause or motive. We are such a decadent society that corporate greed isn’t about amusing wealth to buy boats or land but buying “change”. They think they are correcting the mistakes of the past and are currently creating a “more perfect” society. It only shows their ignorance for they know not what they are deconstructing.
I would suggest that their ignorance is not the problem, but rathe their arrogance, which does does not allow them to see their ignorance.
Not for nothing, but when we look for solutions to problems, one must first find the source of the problem, lest he/she/they be treating symptom ad infinitum.
Brilliant! And big Mother Earth is pissed. All beings are suffering from all sides.
They re-wrote that history to cover their crimes. It wasn't King or God or Church that brought us totalitarianism, it was State. And now, it is them again, and they are wrapping it up in safetyism.
How many will die from the State in the 21st century?
What a lonely, drunken and mean troll you are. Look at the filth you've left behind you in your comment rage.
Maybe you could take up a different hobby, something more suited to your obvious superior intellect. Something a little more solitary, where your vileness isn't so public.
To think that you could have chosen to use your powers for good... what a waste.
"where your vileness isn't so public"
I personally appreciate xe's vileness and think we could use a little more of it in the public sphere. Diff'rent Strokes.
Absolutely. Better to let vileness reveal whatever about the speaker and deal with it like adults. And crudity in the service of getting at the truth is fine by me, as long as we do something to get in that neighborhood (See Hunter S. Thompson for one example). I am sick and tired of wiseguys policing online comments for insults and profanity. It's paternalistic, and now it's going way too far since most of NPC America has just laid down in the face of relentless "deplatforming" (itself a vile term) and policing of "hate" (edit: and now an actual Ministry of Truth!) Hate is a human emotion last time I checked, and it has its uses. Unless you're Jesus. And even he hated hypocritical swine and Pharisees and money changers in the temple and brought a sword and all that. The more you try to silence public vitriol the more angry the silenced get.
I think MLK once wrote something about lancing a boil and letting sunlight disinfect it. Covered up, it festers and poisons the system.
He's not a troll. He has a good boilerplate reply to comments he considers trolls, like Lucrezia Borgia's. He's rude, but anonymous commenting encourages that.
Besides, he's right. The Church was, if not the first, then one of the first totalitarian control systems. In fact, it still rules the minds and actions of a large number of people who will look to the Pope before thinking or doing anything independently.
I mean, he could be more polite when disagreeing or refuting, but again that's the nature of the beast, and all you can do is take the rhetorical high road, if you want.
Yes, you're probably wise to say so, but I think I'm going to disagree a little bit on 2 points.
Yes, he is trolling; one need only look thru the comments and see his droppings everywhere. It took me by surprise, actually. I hadn't been on Substack in a long time (I gave it up for Lent) so I didn't recognize him at first. Then I remembered he often would comment previously, and he was usually quite informed, and I couldn't really understand the change. I'm pretty sure he's off his meds, literally speaking, and his behavior manifests in the bi-polar comments he leaves. His "good boilerplate reply" is really quite vile, all 3 or more of his templates.
I'll concede the systems of the kings, empires and church were quite authoritarian throughout history, but even Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, HRE, Britain and yes, the Pope did not reach the totalitarian levels of the state in the 20th century, and the goals of the state in this century and beyond. Re: the Pope; looking to our leaders, church or state for guidance is not in and of itself a sign of totalitarianism, but of a good society. Of course, you're right, that can go south, too.
Still, it's hardly worth debating--and you're certainly right about that, too. There's no shortage of examples of mans' inhumanity. King, church and state, all.
Yet, for such a minor point, to elicit such vehement and foul backlash of the troll is unwarranted. So, I push back, such as it is, so that all can see what a Aqualung-character he is, and hopefully dissuade them from entertaining his comments in the future. Maybe he can change and come to the light side. At a minimum, he could interject something humorous. Funny trolls are better than mean ones.
"For such a minor point, to elicit such vehement and foul backlash of the troll is unwarranted. So, I push back, such as it is, so that all can see what a Aqualung-character he is, and hopefully dissuade them from entertaining his comments in the future. Maybe he can change and come to the light side. At a minimum, he could interject something humorous. Funny trolls are better than mean ones."
I agree but I am more sympathetic to an insulting troll when his basic point of view more or less converges with my own and when he can support his points and appeals with literate and interesting sources. If he was a leftist I wouldn't be able to tolerate the provocations. I will grant that when debating anything with him I'd be pretty tempted to go tit-for-tat, which never gets me anywhere.
Dear Mr. e.: Your grammar is horrible! For a "superior intellect" type of troll, that special kind that postures as smarter than the rest, you've failed. Probably because of your drunkenness.
Nevertheless, you troll on, so I suppose your commitment to being a vile human being, one endlessly entertained by his own cleverness, is somewhat admirable. If only for its consistency.
Until, that is, until one realizes that you're merely mentally masturbating, which, honestly, is no surprise.
Jerk on, e.pierce, jerk on.
Those kindergarten teachers are just pawns of the elites. They serve as great distractions.
Today’s topic: the 19th amendment. A force for good ? Discuss.
This shit is ahistorical nonsense--another cheesy, concocted third-rate academic premise to sell books and lend succor (if you ignore the grift) to those suffering from acute WGS (white grievance syndrome).
The two constitutions, blah, blah, blah, the civil war did this, blah, blah, blah, the civil rights movement caused this, blah, blah, blah, the country is polarized 'cause libral judges, blah, blah, blah, we ain't got that old civility no more...because (turn down the house lights) negroes, blah, blah, blah.
Lucrezia/Aunt Martha going after e.pierce like a USN sub-hunter drone is really a thing to behold.
I'm here for the ride.
I actually have that book. I then became consumed with Covid reading and kind of forgot about it. Will need to dig it out.
I'll be shutting my PayPal acct this evening - was an early adopter, too.
Yeah. I don’t often join in on stuff but this is just scary. I will have to drop them too. It won’t stop with them though. The left is obviously all for this and while the right might have a lot of push back from their voters, I wouldn’t put much trust in the gop. We need more options, and the people currently in power will do all they can to stop this as long as these companies work on their behalf.
Keep in mind that Paypal owns a number of payment processing companies/apps. Including, as far as I can tell, Braintree, Venmo, iZettle, Xoom. Probably others.
Like everything else, it's a consolidating mass of corporatism.
Thanks for that, I'll be deleting Venmo.
Zelle is one that's not owned by Paypal.
But it IS owned by the big banks. I use Zelle, but it's still precarious in this context.
Just shut it down myself. I sincerely hope every reader does. Evit beyong imagining.
Me too, only they have a few hoops to jump through before I can.
Got $2.15 sitting there and they won't even let me donate it until it goes back to my bank acct.
Oh, but they offered to set up fingerprint and facial recognition though.
Ha fuck off.
never do the fingerprint thing
As was I. Although haven't used it in so long, it is demanding a phone number before I can log in enough to cancel it. Now I'm torn - offer up more info only to cancel, or just continue to not use it?
Trudeau tried to mess with BTC (Bitcoin) accounts during the 'trucker' occupation but was not very successful.
Yeah... I've been with PP for 21 years. But to heck with their current attitudes.
It's a real pity b/c PP is actually pretty handy at times.
I know I once upon a time had a PayPal account, but I'm pretty sure I closed it down.
We closed ours when they cut off Wikileaks.
So now PayPal isn't letting me close it out - says I have a pending transaction. Opened a help desk ticket.
When the agent asked why I wanted to close my account, I wrote back, "PayPal's corporate censorship of alternative media is despicable." That was 25 minutes ago - not a peep on how to close out ...
And what are your options? Cash?
Zelle.
I use Z for personal transfer's, will have to check how to use for payment. I only use PP when I don't trust the merchant.
Yeah I don’t think it works very well for one-off online purchases, unfortunately. Maybe crypto for that but I’m bearish on crypto managing to operate without continuing to centralize further and recreate the same problems.
Visa.
Venmo?
Venmo is owned by PayPal.
Learn something new every day. I did not want to learn that today!
Shut mine down years ago.
As I've mentioned before, attacking the finances of people They don't like is nothing new. The Obama Administration's Operation Choke Point resulted in the denial of financial services for thousands of perfectly legal (and in most cases Federally licensed) American businesses. In my own case, I lost my merchant services account after ten chargeback-free years.
Superficially, you might suggest that it's somehow worse now because firms are being attacked for their reporting and other utterances, and it is worse. But no one behind Operation Choke Point seriously believed they were improving public safety or reducing crime: they came after us simply because they didn't like us. They didn't like what we did, they didn't like what we said, and they definitely didn't like how we (most of us) voted.
But it was okay to go after gun nuts in that way, because no one likes them. And it's okay to go after Canadian truckers, because they are maybe white supremacists. And it's okay to go after independent media because, um, reasons.
When does this stop being okay?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” ~ H. L. Mencken
Will almost always stop to fave a Mencken quote.
As usual, he got it way before anyone else.
I personally enjoy living in The Sahara of the Bozart. Let's look at the elephant in the tusks, though; opera is an obsolete artistic medium (Herzog's FITZCARRALDO is, shall we say, an ode to the deceased).
It already has stopped being ok. Now, we wait for the fight to intensify.
Progressives have gone full Monty with their hostility towards property rights and due process.
Progressivism is just rebranded Marxism.
They are either desperate, or bad at acting. They have completely lost the veil that they aren't, and have gone full-blown commie in the last 4 years.
Who said that? Mussolini?
"Bad Heredity." I saw them play a gig at the Macedonia Skull & Crossbones Heavy Metal Festival just outside Veles. '95, '96 I think it was.
They're not progressives. Get your vocabulary correct. These are neo-liberals that Matt is writing about.
What is the difference? No snark... these labels keep getting redefined with each upsurge of stupidity emanating mostly from the left. I can't keep up with what they mean anymore.
My thoughts exactly. This is what happens when everything is relative and each person is allowed their own reality. Everyone gets to drown in a stew of neurotic, solipsistic bullshit.
That's a nice truth bomb I've not heard articulated quite that way. I like it!
That’s the point , chaos , confusion definitions , until the masses just say fuck it, I give up.
There is nothing "liberal" about anything they do other than to selectively invoke "free markets" in the limited situations where it suits them.
Might as well just call them "Team Blue". No sense quibbling over distinctions without a difference.
Meh, not according to the classic definition of Progressive: technocratic, authoritarian, socialist.
punk they narrative bishop!
There's nothing progressive about them. And Marx never said anything about the need for an authoritarian or totalitarian overlord. This is more of a Leninist thing, who had the same disdain for commoners that the elites do today.
Except when Marx said...
http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/TenPlanks.html
...Every single one of these requires state supremacy.
so? they are now dicks?
They've unabashedly exposed a part of themselves that is ugly and red.
Ha ha that's pretty clever.
PayPal is "progressives"?
Perhaps "bourgeois socialists" would be more accurate.
I'd stop at bourgeois. They're bankers.
Being a banker and being a socialist is not mutually exclusive. Controlling money and credit was Marx's fantasy.
Like Jamie Dimon, then.
That's because Marx was prescient and anticipated the necessary formation of an institution such as the Fed to keep the fires of capitalism stoked. He also anticipated authoritarian state sponsored capitalism in China, and from there began to fantasize on Maoist strippers modeling lingerie on alibaba.
There is an alternative to PayPal whose business model is to NEVER censor their services for any partisan reasons. It's called AlignPay. The first Amendment is a great business model.
ah, thanks for this, I did not know of them.
One wonders how long they'll be around though----they're being investigated for tolerance.
as in "you tolerant asshole!" Dehumanizing vitriol of the worst sort. (thanks, funny comment)
For disclosure (NOT disparagement) - AlignPay is a project of Dan Bongino.
That doesn't bother me, since I think it has a good founding vision. But, like all such, it is subject to ideological capture by its creator or the attending business structures created. For the record, I don't think Jack Dorsey foresaw the current state of Twitter - but bears responsibility for how it was structured in its business approach and management.
a bunch of people are screaming about how Elon Musk will ideologically capture Twitter. Musk was also a PayPal cofounder. maybe if he was still active in PayPal MintPress wouldn't have been banned.
we should probably get the friends of children everywhere to run the site then. (who did it? "not me" and "I don't know")
I beg to differ. Although founder & a major shareholder of Twitter at one point, Jack Dorsey is a pathetic, weak & easily influenced individual. And over time he fell entirely under the thrall of the execrable Vijaya Gadde. The current state of Twitter is exactly what you get when someone with the intellect of a retarded flea has control of a platform which controls much of the public discourse.
How is this legal? Like, how is this functionally different from a bank cutting off your account because of your views, or the credit card scanner machine company refusing to sell to a deli because its owners are Muslim?
Exactly, I ask myself all the time, how is this legal? I hate to say it but i think Americans just don't seem to care anymore. Either that or they just write it all off as "conspiracy" and stop listening. Off topic but I tried to talk to my husband about Bill Gates and his nefarious ways but I might as well have been talking to a tree.
"but I might as well have been talking to a tree."
I get that a lot from my wife. At least, I think I do. I'm not actually listening.
LOL, my point exactly
Trees actually listen, you know. It takes a while and you have to be patient.
"I tried to talk to my husband about Bill Gates and his nefarious ways but I might as well have been talking to a tree."
I would suggest getting a divorce, but there might be negative externalities involved.
It's a private company, bro. Just make your own financial system, bro.
Yeah I agree. How is this legal? PayPal collected over $9,000 from various people with the understanding that it was to be donated to Consortium News, but now they're just pocketing it.
I know there are a lot of lawyers who read Glenn Greenwald and there's a substantial overlap between his readership and Taibbi's. Can any of them explain why this isn't fraud?
I am a lawyer, but I cannot explain why that isn't fraud. Although, theft is more precise.
Conversion or embezzlement might be even more precise: PayPal did legally come into possession of the money.
Conversion is more specific (and correct), but still a subset of theft. Not sure if embezzlement fits, but in any event, they stole the money.
A bit of web searching turns up many definitions of embezzlement, most of which involve an abuse of trust by a servant or agent. That fits PayPal’s actions, but to me embezzlement connotes something secretive, which isn’t the case here. But, yeah: they stole the money. The goofy claim of “damages” makes me wonder if this isn’t the act of some rogue zealot deep in the PayPal bureaucracy.
PayPal probably qualifies as an "agent", in that you are giving them money to give to a third party, less PayPal's contractually mandated cut and no more.
I need a criminal lawyer. Emphasis on "criminal."
The longer we pretend that the people doing this aren't trying to crush the rest of us, the longer we suffer. Freedom should never be a partisan issue. For all the warnings of how dire the Trump years would be, he was more victim than villain in all of this.
Yes. He even said something along the lines of - They aren't after me. They're after you; I'm just in the way.
oh, that is hilarious.
it has always been risky to color outside the lines and then show the work to others. we are now learning just how risky it has been to put all that power in the hands of a few tech giants. this is no different than if, in the 60s, the ny times had controlled all the printing presses in the US. All those alternative magazines would never have been printed.
It's like we share a brain, Matt! I just wrote about this yesterday! My general rule is that if I'm on the same page as Taibbi, I'm on the right track. 😄
------------------
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/free-speech-under-attack-from-all
......although the DGB has stated it won’t target Americans, we’re talking about a government agency here — and one tasked with election disinformation. (Remember when the USA PATRIOT Act wasn’t supposed to target Americans either?)
How long will it be before the DGB is telling Paypal who to ban, or telling DHS who is a ‘domestic terrorist’? After the success of Canada shutting down protestors and the increase in vaccine uptake after the mandates, government has decided that threatening your ability to feed your family is a viable (and efficient!) compliance tool. This is the logical next step of the fascist takeover of the country. Agencies with the guns will simply point to the DGB ‘proof’ as they steal your stuff and deplatform you, or worse.
"How long will it be before the DGB is telling Paypal who to ban"
I give it a month on the outside. Ever since Operation Chokepoint got ramped up, the feds have been dying to expand the program to all wrongthinkers.
We're treading very close to civil breakdown now. You can do a lot of things, but when you weaponize the financial system, you're playing with fire. The trickle of people moving outside the system is going to become a stampede and the government will crack down harder as a result. The spiral has begun.
Great post! And as I mentioned in the linked article, government now thinks threatening your livelihood is a proper (and efficient) compliance tool. If you didn't wake up after the Canadian protests, and you STILL didn't wake up after Biden started stealing from Russians, you NEED to wake up to what Paypal and the DGB are cooking up here. When it comes to banks, my rule is the same as the golden rule of crypto:
ONLY PUT IN WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE
Operation Choke Point was disbanded in 2017 by the evil fascists of the Trump Administration.
DGB, won’t have to tell them who to ban. They will just intuit who is to be banned.
Paypal maintains a hostile set of policies toward small business by overcharging for fees and not refunding fees to sellers when a product return occurs. As a result, I've eliminated Paypal from all transactions including from my ebay account.
The service became superfluous once browsers were able to securely store credit card numbers for online purchases. It is no longer needed.
That video encapsulates everything about neoliberal elites: arrogance, cluelessness, and the belief that the world will find everything they do cute and clever. Even Gandhi would want to slap that smug look off her face.
Comment of the day!
As Saggar and Krystal said-theater kid who never grew up!!!! People like her are why bands like Lamb of God or Discharge exist!!
I don't think about this woman's discharge.))))))
I have no knowledge of these bands, but yes! This woman is frighteningly vapid
so, she does not understand that we find her performance embarrassing as hell??? 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
"Even Gandhi would want to slap that smug look off her face."
Gandhi was in touch with his dark side, man. "In the process of finding his own status, the beast in him is bound now and again to put up his ugly appearance."
https://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm
I’ll be deleting my PayPal account.
I haven't used PayPal in so long I wasn't even sure if I had an account. Checked and I do! Or, should say, DID.
There needs to be an alternative payment system set up, with all the alternative media outlets, whatever their differences, working together and coordinating.
Despite this crackdown, it shows how fragile the powers that be are.
They just can’t allow any dissent. All the more people should just drop all the mainstream outlets, stop using them, and pick some independent people to support.
The Narrative Matrix delenda est.
I spoke with someone about precisely this thing.
That someone quickly realized that setting up such a system would be a guaranteed way to attract all kinds of government and quasi-governmental heat.
Elsewhere in this thread someone mentioned AlignPay, which is a Dan Bongino project.
I don't know anything about it personally, just passing it along in case you're interested.
The on-line payment platforms that are censoring and suspending companies and individuals because of their political positions or postings that they don't like is becoming a real issue. Since they are service based sites that utilize fees for their bottom line it would be best for EVERY citizen to abandon these pernicious sites and just move to service oriented (not enforcement surrogates) sites asap. Why pay some site like Pay Pal that considers you suspect and monitors your activity. Go Woke Go Broke must become a daily reality.. Just get rid of these judgmental political hit sites. Dealing with these anti-American companies only makes they stronger and bolder in their terrible and immoral business practices. If a publicly traded company SELL their shares NOW!
Maybe you can persuade Elon to buy back and fix his old company?