Another great piece from you Matt. And the problem is, as you well know, today Dr. Seuss gets placed next to Mein Kampf while legitimate critics are silenced, but where does all of this end? I’m sure you recall exactly how odd it was for people like you & me to converse with highly intelligent, very cool Soviet citizens. I was constantly aware that you could cut their self-censorship with a knife, which I found chilling & profoundly sad. I reiterate, Americans have no concept of what an awful place we are stumbling towards.
That's a great point. I remember thinking how the whole Soviet society would be cured in one second if people stopped lying to themselves for like ten minutes. People told me that when it all collapsed it was like waking up from a weird dream.
I work in manufacturing - over the years have set up factories in Mexico (mostly), but also in the Ukraine. The difference in the attitude of the workers between the two countries was staggering. In Mexico, especially over the last twenty years or so, the people wanted not just the "how", but also the "why"...to the point that many improvements to processes were made as people brought their own thinking into the process.
In the Ukraine, especially once we moved outside of Kiev into more rural areas, the "why" was never questioned.
But they dang sure got the "how" mastered, with no discussion as to efficiency loading, etc
Rural Ukraine and Russia is like the burned out wasteland after the zombie apocalypse. The Holodomor, WWII, and Soviet industrialization completely destroyed an entire culture and way of life. When my Ukrainian grandfather and family came to the USA after WWII, his first job was as a cowboy in South Dakota. Now, Ukraine has to recruit cowboys from Texas to run cattle and international conglomerates from Belgium to grow crops.
<<Rural Ukraine and Russia is like the burned out wasteland after the zombie apocalypse. The Holodomor, WWII, and Soviet industrialization completely destroyed an entire culture and way of life>>
I'd make an analogy to the USA here, and I might be an incorrigible optimist, but I think in the US the countryside is latently strong and the cities are incipiently fragile. We're almost to the point of a reversal of the shift from 100 years ago when agricultural workers moved to the cities for industrial jobs.
Note that many of them come from areas where corruption, graft, etc. is a way of life and in their bones and blood. That's not we need. We need people with integrity, honesty, wisdom and I could go on.....
Having the poor come poring in from the south across our border and not having our border secure as was voted on and agreed to back 40 YEARS AGO and having our welfare state to take care of those who come (to various degrees), is one reason why our country is about to fall!
Ayn Rand’s first book, “We the People” is a great tale of the horror of a country succumbing to communism. Critics didn’t like it so you know it is a good book.
The correlations that strike me are the college and state recommendations to spy and report on fellow citizen’s alleged actions, be they bias reporting groups on college campuses or public health edicts to report non mask wearers, etc. All these types of things were common in communist takeovers and once it starts it metastasizes to where no one trusts anyone, not even family members.
I don’t recall the book going deeply into politics. It was more about the results of communist politics and how they affected the people in the story.
Scary. We are already there. Months ago, I resolved, in private and professionally, to speak my mind on all of these things. If someone says something patently racist about white people as if everyone agrees, I'll stop the conversation and challenge the statement. My advantage is that no one is going to fire me, I don't need the money, I'm working at something I love. Family-wise, say cousins- speaking up, or talking back, brings on a distinct chill-- so be it.
+1 on Dr. Seuss. Maybe 1000 years from now people will be looking at the "Seuss Testament" of the Bible because it's so much easier to understand and so altruistic. But what bothers me is, what is wrong with a depiction of a man eating out of a bowl with chopsticks? Should he be using a fork?
You can still buy Mein Kampf on Amazon and EBay buy you can’t the six Dr. Seuss books that were banned for the crime of showing Chinese eyes correctly and they fact they eat with chop sticks.
I don't think Dr. Seuss has been "placed next to Mein Kampf". After all, you can still buy Mein Kampf on Amazon or eBay, which is more than you can say for "If I Ran the Zoo."
Okay, but the Dr. Seuss story was blown way out of proportion. It wasn't as if the government, or even the publisher decided not to print those books. It was the family and estate of Dr Seuss himself. Also, the animations were truly racist depictions of black and Asian people. I agree that cancel culture has gone too far many times, but this was not one of those times in my opinion. Maybe it's because I'm a millennial, but I don't see the slippery slope here, which is a fallacy anyway. It's not self=censorship if the decision was made based on their own morals, and not pressure from above, or below.
The decision was based on meeting with self-annointed CRT "experts" who see racism in everything. The other MO is the ubiquitous "staff" letter or uprising. That racket, the Southern Poverty Law Center, objected to Seuss precisely because he inculcated togetherness and tolerance when the young should instead fight against oppression. (SPLC called animal protection groups "terrorists" because they opposed vivisection on chimpanzees).
Children's books are now flagrantly racist, depicting white privilege, stereotypes and oppression to first graders, causing far more negativity and discord than the gentle Seuss ever imagined. The latter, actual racist nonsense is lauded. Seuss isn't in a vacuum: the entire Western classic canon, Cicero, Seneca, Plato, Plutarch, Shakespeare, the whole lot,, are on the chopping block. We need organization; if we tsk tsk each new outrage without responding with equal pressure, we're simply bearing witness to the arrival a new Dark Age. One can't even watch TCM without indoctrination. If I want Ben Mankiewicz political opinion on Woman of the Year, I' I'll let him know. Years ago I worked with an ad hoc coalition of historians and environmentalists working to prevent Disney from turning Manassas Battlefield into a theme park/edge city. We won. Don Henley contributed $200,00. I started Boycott Disney. In a matter of months, a volunteer battalion of vastly different people who care about history and this country mobilized to save a chunk of both. Completely spontaneous. We had a fundraiser at Ford's Theatre. Matt and others are using the power of the pen. But we need that spontaneous organization now, we need historians, musicians, classicists, and actors to speak up. What's that sound you hear? Nothing.
I worked a Disney many moons ago. At one point we were out looking for places to build second theme park in Asia (after Tokyo). One of the places we visited as in China was Guilin, famous for its limestone mountains. The city of Guilin, who were our hosts, offered to build an airport that could take jumbo jets, and offered us a huge piece of property that had featured the pristine view as a backdrop. We walked away from it, for a number of reasons.
Yes. I participated in this for many reasons including owning land in the Bull Run Mountains that would have become a raft of t-shirt shops. Don’t remember who started it but there were a lot of locals including well-known horse farm owners and the Piedmont Environmental Council. I think what killed it though was a proposal to have “slave markets “ - historically correct of course.
I've only seen the chopsticks image, but can you describe why you believe it's a "truly racist depiction". I'm asking completely genuinely, because I think this is a very hyperbolic statement. I'm very happy to be corrected, but by the same token I also expect you to be willing to walk that statement back if you can't reasonably justify it.
“ Maybe it's because I'm a millennial, but I don't see the slippery slope here, which is a fallacy anyway.”
The “slippery slope” is an informal fallacy. It has to be shown that an argument is a slippery slope - just because someone presents a sequence does not indicate a slippery slope.
Your statement is basically saying, “... but I don't see the fallacy
here, which is a fallacy anyway.”
I agree with you that the estate of Dr. Seuss stopping the publication of the books is different than if an external source dictated that publication should stop.
I’m on the fence about eBay banning the books’ sales - mostly because eBay is so big that it ties in with big tech making more and more decisions about what is allowable or not allowable in society.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with this. Libraries have to cull their collections all the time. I’ve never heard of these Seuss books before - does a library need to have a complete collection of Seuss books? I’ve often wished libraries did not cater so much to the big commercial giant publishers. (If we are talking about a university library this would be a different issue. I have read before, but never seen confirmation, that Disney, years ago, “made contributions” to university libraries to remove early Disney work that was either racist or propaganda.)
your "Sovietization" piece dovetails with the feeling i had when I saw a recent New York Times Special Edition cover of Biden and Harris in a Mt. Rushmore pose with the caption "the history they've made, the future they will inherit." https://www.amazon.com/York-Times-Biden-Kamala-Harris/dp/1547854448 ....my immediate thought was: "propaganda Soviet style"..."the history they've made"? they just got elected! aside from Harris being the first "woman of color to be elected vice-president" they haven't made any history at all yet. "The future they'll inherit"? high-sounding, portentous words that, try as I might, I cannot make any sensible meaning out of. How do you "inherit" the future? This on the heels of Time magazine's similarly monumental "Persons of the Year" cover...with a similar historic "changing America's story" blurb really disheartening that it has come to this (and i voted for Biden/Harris)
I've been thinking I'd like to start an online Museum of Covid Propaganda, as so much government communication around the topic looks so similar to Soviet propaganda. The posters in the NYC subway are a particularly obvious example.
The posters showing right and wrong ways to wear a mask are absolutely wild. They're more infantilizing than the pain charts you'd see in a pediatrician's office.
The cult of personality surrounding the presidency only changes in terms of those devoted to the current version and those longing for a past one. None of them will dare to give up believing in a glorious leader. That would be a true American heresy.
Here's a quote from about two months ago, uttered by a friend of mine who apparently has no sense of irony: "Trump supporters are a cult. I'm so glad we elected Joe!"
Estevez could have been the John Wayne of his time -- he always just plays Emilio Estevez --and he somehow blew it. Maybe he just made enough money and was like "I'm out."
I love the satirical corporate cinema of the 1980s and am sad that it went away. I blame mysterious market forces, but an informed Hollywood insider could probably enlighten me.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
"Sovietization" is the perfect description. While watching the gushing TV coverage of the first day of COVID vaccinations, I felt like I was watching a parody of the Soviet News Agency TASS from 1981. The frightening part is that while most Russians knew it was all bullshit, most Americans I speak to actually believe this crap. It genuinely seems like the Twilight Zone.
The good news is that not everyone in my orbit eats this up either, though many do. All my husband's co-workers, spread throughout the country, are appalled by this crap. Many of my co-workers lap this up. The difference is not so much our geographic spread, but our profession and "economic power." The working and middle class aren't buying it. The professional elite are. Isn't that ironic?
«The working and middle class aren't buying it. The professional elite are. Isn't that ironic?»
The working and middle income classes are getting shafted and this makes them skeptical of the propaganda. The upper-middle classes are living the dream and are not inclined to question it, plus they know that they are the "trusties" of their masters, and if they step out line their affluence can disappear.
This is true. The irony is that the professional elite consider themselves objectively smarter and better educated, and yet they support a mass propaganda system. They are self-deluded. They don't admit even to themselves that they must support the thoroughly corrupted media because it benefits their own status. They lie to themselves that the media is in fact not corrupted and delivering the "news" straight up. I find that ironic. Not the part about taking a position to benefit your own status, but the self-delusion. Because these are also people who consider themselves to be *the* humanity and world-huggers.
Thank you, yes. You and Blissex are right. A lot of why the professional elite believes this msm propaganda is because they desperately need to. Inside they feel worthless. I live in one of the world's nicest cities that I grew up in. Back when I grew up the people who could retire here had actually run businesses that made things. They believed in their businesses. They pursued their hopes and American dreams and were grateful it paid off. They wanted to give back. Even the trophy wives who managed to hook these wealthy retirees wanted to give to the community. The people who now move here are almost all investment people, or celebrity victims, which means they all feel empty inside. They never really cared about anything because they're - like narcissists are - afraid to look in the mirror and see who they really are. So they love msm because it tells them what moral, wonderful people they are for regurgitating NYT or WaPo or NPR talking points.
Thanks for this, Polly. Yes, you can spot the NPR listeners in a matter of a few sentences. Today's elite needs constant reassurance that they are "good people," and the MSM gives it to them.
Well said. The elites are also prone to taking a shallow dive with their media consumption for time management reasons. I too have extremely successful friends who either don't know what's going on or refuse to look.
“journalists/columnists of a certain age (meaning ones not much older than me and younger) are coming around to the realization that the economy is screwing them, too. There was a moment when a lot of them (we’re talking ones at elite outlets, not your random small town paper) thought they’d done everything right, would become celebrities, and get Tom Friedman’s speaking fees. The economy sure was working for them, and screw everybody else.”
Working and middle class either had to keep working so the "upper class" could stay home and order from Amazon and/or legislate from the safety of their little bubble while playing mask theatre.
Not ironic to me. The elites were the war Hawks in Vietnam also. He's a lefty but I refer you to Loewen's "Lies my teacher told me", his thesis is well supported there. His later works are more questionable. I believe colleges create good bureaucrats who toe the government line. The less well indoctrinated people are, the less they believe the government and mass media bills it.
Yup-I live in Hillbilly Elegy territory and your point about colleges creating bureaucratic/obedient mindsets is well taken, considering the views of the local populace.
SW Ohio/I-75 Corridor between Cincinnati and Dayton. Probably 50% of the population in this area was either born in Kentucky or has family roots there, hence the name of the book. Back 40 or 50 years ago a candidate for sheriff in some county in Kentucky lost the local vote by a large margin, but won b/c he did such a good job of garnering ex-pat absentee votes in Dayton!
Sci-fi isn't everyone's bag. That said, my favorite JRL story is "Trains Not Taken," set in an alternate future in which the US is a colony of the Japanese Empire and Bill Cody and Bill Hickok are sitting around in a train station with bullshit jobs and they are both like, "Did you ever have the feeling that your life was supposed to be different from this?"
I adore science fiction. One of my favorite stories is The Chief Designer. After watching astronauts with The Right Stuff on the news, Russian cosmonauts comment that Americans will be the first to put a dentist on the moon.
In the good old times before the editorship of Micklethwait "The London Economist" wrote that the definition of "soviet" is "run for the benefit of management". In 2008-2009 we saw that the USA is run for the benefit of Wall Street management.
That guy is interesting and a sign of the times. He wrote a very good book "The right nation" about the shift rightwards in the USA since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and reaganism in 1980, and he is currently Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg.
The vaccinations were a worthy news story. But the elaborate performances, staged for television with enthusiastic testimonials were synthetic events created for political persuasion.
And then the follow-up of "Vice President Harris and I took the vaccine on camera so you know its safe..." in the "greatest speech in the history of speechification" the other night.
This whole overmessaging of crisis and underpromising of relief is only being done to be able to create a narrative of how much better than expected the "new" administration did.
What people should note is that Govs. DeSantis and Newsom took completely opposite tactics in managing the situation.... with nearly identical results.
Yeah, I didn't watch any of that stuff. Still, as a scientist I can't vouch for safety, but I'm impressed by the development of the vaccine. That's some serious biotech.
Th human immune system is a big deal which th media seems to think does not exist. Science! Th covid vaccination process we are now witnessing just a giant cash grab. And maybe a culling
True, from Day 1 it was always about fear-mongering, and invasive methods, like quarantine, allopathy, and vaccine. No diet, no exercise, no supplements or herbs, no WALKING, no AIR, no SUN...
All the while pumping people full of hatred while selling them junk-shit foods, pharmacopeia to remedy the illness caused by said shit foods and then insurance.
It's a scam being run to cow the unruly masses back from the unrest resulting from a relatively free exchange of ideas: the antithesis to proper authoritarian rule.
Back in 2007, I was working for a political campaign, and some Russian American citizens came to the office. We chatted, and they told me that one of the most draw-dropping aspects (for them) of American culture was how few Americans realized that the news was almost entirely fake.
Your descriptive moniker says more than a mouthfull. What's the best use of the helicopter money from mana?...since the only real vote that doesn't involve putting one's self in the crosshairs of the National Guard / power enforcement paradigm is where you spend that 💰.
Every so slightly off topic, but not, I've been pondering with interest the approaches of both Matt and Glenn Greenwald and thinking about the history of progressivism in this country. Of course, in the 60's, liberals were civil rights activists and fighting for the first amendment and the free expression of ideas most notably in Berkley. All long overdue and necessary. And I've concluded that people like Matt and Glenn were so used to feeling like fighting for those issues aligned more with the Democrat party than the Republican. Which made sense at the time. I occasionally get attacked on here for being in an echo chamber and for this binary thinking, which is really not true. Though it may sound like that at times. AS a libertarian I used to think liberals (not far leftists) contributed things to the balance of our existence. I was reluctantly for abortion (I'd be happier if it was before a heartbeat unless the life of the mother was at risk and appalled at the brutality, nauseated at these people CELEBRATING such a thing up until the moment of birth?), for gay marriage (before we started having biological men beat little girls in high school), and I was certainly for free speech and civil rights. I was a fiscal conservative so thought of myself as a libertarian. ISH. (Since I was fine with national parks and a few things.)
But I feel sorry for people like Matt because I think they were so used to thinking of the Democrat party as the one for free speech, they really didn't see that leftists were headed here all along. As both a student and adjunct professor, it was clear pretty early (or admittedly, as a conservative, I was paranoid about it) that they were headed right where they are now. I think they (Matt and Glenn) see the threat is presently from the left, but they don't see that the ideology of big government almost necessitated loss of freedom and it was so clear they had become the thought police as early as the 80's--and that they were pushing and shaming squishy Republicans down that road, and by the time I was teaching at university, they were literally brainwashing our youth and shutting down the free expression of ideas.
This is probably why I now sound more binary than I once did. Ronald Reagan said if totalitarianism took hold here, it would come from the left. And that seems so obvious to me just because they always believe they have the moral high ground, they believe in big government and controlling people -- something they love. And now they believe anyone who doesn't think like them are haters, supremacists, or Nazis. Seeing this happen, moved many of us farther right -- or that is not accurate -- farther ANTI-left, which is not the same thing. If I saw the right behaving like this as they once had, I'd be just as opposed to them.
I have an annoying friend who always believes the religious right is the same threat to America as the far left has become. As someone who is anti-organized religion (though spiritual), that always seemed ridiculous. Our constitution and the very nature of our country prohibits state sponsored religion--socialist fascism? Not so much. The danger was clearly from the left as Reagan had said.
And another side note -- leftists claim that churches are discriminating against gays. That is really a ludicrous position. They are discriminating against that behavior, just like some churches ban dancing or drinking -- both legal as are gay relationships. You don't see people suing them for not allowing people to dance! For years, people just found churches that represented their beliefs. Gay people can attend any church; their behavior will not be supported in some of them. But people should have freedom to believe as they choose as long as they don't force someone else to. BTW, if I ever do go to a church, it's the Unitarian church that Jefferson, Thoreau, Emerson, and whole host of people believed would one day be the religion of the land -- and who of course, welcome gay people.
So the threat is not from the right, even though I've never agreed with most of organized religion; it's from the left. At least right now. And they are contributing less and less in terms of what we need to be a successful civilization. And the biggest reason is they are shutting down debate and ideas. Glenn Greenwald admits that right now they are the threat. Matt avoids doing that and sticks to journalism as if it isn't the left doing this. Or the progressivism itself that is the very cause of it. The platforms of each and all parties can be debated, but not if they won't allow it! So until that is dealt with, the rest is irrelevant.
But I am still grateful that Matt is writing this and I particularly think Glenn is doing great work.
In large part I agree with you. I'm sure that this is causing great cognitive dissonance for the relatively small percentage of liberals who are actually liberal. After decades of assuming their fellow travelers shared similar beliefs, they are forced to the shocking realization that they are in fact more illiberal than even the horrible Republicans.
I would imagine that's difficult to accept. And I think both Glenn and Matt still have a bit too much of both sideism in their writing in light of current circumstance. But, like you, I appreciate the work.
I'm a life long liberal - I ran on the Liberal party line in NY back in the 1970s. But I'm a classical liberal, not a progressive.
My cognitive dissonance occurred about 10 years ago when I realized that the Democrat party had was no longer liberal, but was morphing into what we now call progressive with its increasingly anti-liberal and totalitarianism tendencies. I found myself a man without a political party. After much thought, I realized that the Republican party represented the only current realistic alternative to the fundamentally illiberal program of the Democrats. Therefore, I did the unthinkable and registered as a Republican.
«But I'm a classical liberal, not a progressive. My cognitive dissonance occurred about 10 years ago when I realized that the Democrat party had was no longer liberal»
Take heart, everyone. I followed my curiosity on the Spanish Civil War when Matt mentioned it above and it led me to read a bit about Orwell just now. Orwell published Animal Farm as an anti-Soviet piece with a foreword (often omitted today) that specifically called out British self-censorship, especially on the topic of anti-Soviet sentiment. It was simply being blocked, and it took him a long time to get Animal Farm published, but of course it was and its popularity is so far unabated. There is hope for powerful voices to break through and find wide support no matter where we head from here.
Read it in full and it's very on point to this thread - it discusses how Liberal thought in Britain at the time required fealty to shutting out certain ideas fully as not aligned with the common cause.
Yes. I obviously think Matt is a great writer which is why I forward his work everywhere. And am sure Matt knows that. I don't agree with everything he says, but I certainly do not insult him or anyone else on here personally. Some people don't understand the difference between arguing over issues --and Matt is sticking up for my right to do just that --and personal name calling and insults..
Also, off topic some, and the biggest problem with the gay community. WHY is their sexual preference WHO THEY ARE. I guess it makes sense that society's attitudes forced them to go there to a degree--they should be allowed all the legal rights of someone else. But nobody's sexual preference should define them. Which is why they would get farther to just find a church that accepts that behavior like people do with dancing and drinking, etc. They are not "gays." They are people who practice that sexuality. All fine. But churches who say that's a sin, just like other behaviors, are not discriminating against them as people, but against that behavior. While they think having parades and all is helping their cause, it really isn't. It isn't enough for them to have the legal right to practice homosexuality, dance or drink, they have to insist we all say it's normal--that no place like a church should exist where they believe it is not normal -- it was part of the beginning of the thought police. They don't have that right. Or to force people to use pronouns-- though if they asked people to, they'd likely oblige. So those are my thoughts this Friday as I wait for my refrigerator to be delivered. Happy Friday.
Especially, as I have to keep pointing this out even though it pains me to do so, since those holier than thou types that won’t pork the altar boy would suck their own dick every morning before breakfast if they could, and upon discovering they can’t overwhemingly flog their righteous log to faux lezzie porn.
Such is the moral landscape upon which the stone throwers gather.
I am sure if you showed up without your “God hates fags” sign and weren’t handing out repent tracts you were welcomed.
Well. Unless you are Bari Weiss and you brought your Gay Jewish flag. Actually I am thinking of parades decades ago. I keep forgetting wiut uptight, judgemental assholes homos in general have become.
Linda Sarsour finds jewish homos triggering and they are verboten.
My friend Cliffy (he was the best man at my wedding, gay) was against gay marriage. He had a justification, I don't remember what it was now, this is 10 years ago. Just railing against some kind of gay unified group opinion. Real people, real minds, real opinions.
A certain outspoken conservative gay provocateur once made an interesting point: Being gay used to be *exciting* because it was considered transgressive. Legalizing gay marriage and normalizing the gay lifestyle has made it rather boring.
I know many gays who just want a normal life, with a single partner. That gay provocateur didn't pretend to speak for all gays, so I saw nothing wrong with him expressing his personal distaste for gay marriage. But my gay (and now married) friends detest the whole free-for-all, anti-monogamy section of the gay community.
Interestingly, this provocateur is also staunchly pro-life.
Hah! I just looked up Milo to see what he's been up to, and he's still at the provocation. He's now denouncing his gayness and making a go at conversion therapy. His husband (yes, the anti-gay-marriage guy is married) is demoted to a "housemate." Seems a bit desperate. I know he claims to be very Catholic, but this reeks of a hoax or attention ploy.
A lot of people have forgotten that some of the earliest support for a legal status for homosexual couples came from conservatives in the 1980s with the objective of encouraging monogamy among gays during the early AIDS crisis, and that it was roundly condemned until liberals figured out that proposing to include non-straights in existing marriage law got under conservative's skin. Then it became a liberal sacrament to make that happen.
I never heard them. I do remember the Defense of Marriage Act and all the predictions of Mary wanting to marry her lamb as a direct result of slipping down that slope
Like anyone needs the state to justify the relationships people choose with each other. Sure, the perks are nice and I'll take them, but I'll decide all the same without 'em too.
So... sibling marriage? 34 year olds and 13 year olds? Sometimes the "state" or the "people" may have a compelling reason to say "whoa, there, big fella."
<<The only thing I have a compelling reason to see the state do is eat shit.>>
<3 +1000
It's funny that there's a lot of discussion right now on the ability of the state to regulate violence and comparatively little on the ability of the state to regulate human sexuality.
It's entirely possible I'm looking in the wrong places.
Sibling (or incestuous in general) marriage is an interesting case, because I'm yet to hear a solid argument that supports gay marriage without also supporting incestuous marriage (usually children related arguments are raised, but of course people can have children without being married, and people can get married without having children).
It meets all of the requirements of consenting adults, and so in the end people generally fall back to some kind of "ewww" argument from disgust. And it's true, most of us tend to feel some sense of disgust at the idea. But is that really good enough? You can find plenty of people who feel disgust at the idea of gay marriage (or gay relationships in general), but we don't consider that a valid reason to make it illegal.
«because I'm yet to hear a solid argument that supports gay marriage without also supporting incestuous marriage [...] It meets all of the requirements of consenting adults»
Same for group marriage and multiple marriages. Also civil unions were available, and frankly they were good enough.
But the main difference was a bigger political demand for same-sex marriage, but not much of one for other types of marriage, and I think that is largely because many homosexual couples (of either sex) want to cosplay "hubby" and "wifey" as if they were not homosexual, that is they are fundamentally socially conservative, big wedding included (and many heterosexuals also marry to cosplay "hubby" and "wifey" and want a big wedding too).
«It meets all of the requirements of consenting adult»
As to that, there is an addition consideration: there are two views of things like "marriage", that they are market transactions, or social institutions.
In the view that they are market transactions (e.g. like abortion and gender reassignment) what matter are absolute property rights and freedom of contract, typical concepts of the "whig"/radical right, and since they are private market transactions the state simply has no business interfering other than enforcing them. The impact of private market transactions on "society" does not matter, "fiat libertas, ruat caelum".
In the social institution view marriage is not a market transactions, but a relationship not just between the spouses but with society, therefore the state can and does regulate it, so that some marriages are recognized by the state and others are not. It is transparent that in past erase in villages fertility was an extremely important value for society, especially older women, and the state would only institutionalize and support relationships that at least in principle would be fruitful.
Now the campaign for homosexual marriage is particularly politically strong because it is based amazingly on both views: that homosexual relationships are market transactions under absolute property rights and freedom of contract, but also must be institutionalized, that is supported by society and state, instead of being purely private.
This means that homosexual marriage has both the utility to "whig"/radical right wingers of normalizing the ideology of absolute property rights and freedom of contract (the ultimate prize of this campaign is the restoration of debt indenture), and can be sold to "tory"/tradcon right wingers as a conservative absorption of homosexual relationships as traditional binary marriages. Bigger complications do not quite have the same popularity or double appeal.
I don’t know who claims Churches discriminate against homos, most of the Neanderthal fundamentalist Churches are too stupid for many to take seriously, but I do agree that the cake baker has been harassed by homos.
I don’t see them going through Muslim Michigan demanding cakes
I agree with this post on all levels. When it comes to worrying about gay rights-a good thing, or fretting about fundamentalist Christian cultural influence, the woke left is too stupid to realize that they won, and leave people in peace now.
And Muslims have a heaping ongoing helping of lynching homos. In some cases relentlessly stalking their homo relatives through asylum countries in order to restore the family honor by lynching their homo.
In other words, they don’t play. Sooooo the cowards playing activists pretend they’re fighting Nazis. Cus Muslims would make them crap themselves.
:::::shrugs::::::
And extorting cis het Christian corps is too profitable
Which is also why the ACLU under its little tranny leadership - is pretending trannies in America have got it bad if any naturally born male can’t proclaim himself a women and gain instant advantage in sports, prisons and shelters but are mysteriously silent about Muslims and homos.
I wouldn’t get too excited about the Unitarians (my adopted faith.) They are all in on battling white supremacy. It is the only issue the leadership has dealt with for several years.
Yup, as Greenwald and others have remarked: “kids in cages” has practically overnight become “migrant minors in overflow immigration facilities”, “censorship” has become (necessary/laudable) “content moderation”, etc etc. Complete insanity. How is ANYBODY swallowing this?
“I’m worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon,” he says, but “income inequality, widespread child poverty, and economic precarity are the problems of our time.”
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It never occurs to these people that the more money we give to government, who passes it out to their buddies, the higher income inequality goes. The fake economy of being close to those who run the literal money-making machine is taking over the real economy of beneficial transactions.
I'm sure David Brooks will be BAFFLED at why this extra $1,900,000,000,000 showered mostly on the well-off didn't fix income inequality. I'm sure he'll think the NEXT $2,000,000,000 will do it!
<<the more money we give to government, who passes it out to their buddies, the higher income inequality goes>>
Kill shot. The best thing in life under this system is to be a "buddy."
There's actual capitalism, which is practiced effectively mostly at the local level, and then there's bigshot crony "capitalism," which isn't really. Just my opinion.
And ... by what method does China decide who gets the penthouse suite?
To me that’s like white privilege. White privilege is simply the privilege that any majority population confers upon itself and cronyism is the perks of having the power to reward and award. Who doesn’t network their supporters and throw gigs to their friends?
Time for a new system. The only reason we keep the current crooked one is due to those in power of that economic system owning the political system that was designed to have the power to limit or change the economy.
They've indoctrinated almost everyone into thinking it's impossible to EVER come up with a better system.
People still to this day would rather be exploited and ripped off regularly than change from the system that has absolutely no ties to morality or constructive behavior.
No. It’s the dialectic. It’s not working right now but it does require two opposing or contrasting opinions trying to find a truth that incorporates the truth of both. We have grifters seeking power and the ability to impose everything from school lunch menus to the size of a fountain drink one may purchase to permitted discourse and political views.
There are plenty of undeveloped places to experiment with new systems.
Usually when working with an existing system the changes propose are tested in a test environment before loading to the operating system. One avoids crashing the system with unknown and unexpected consequences.
Show us your ideas successfully in operation in America on a small scale.
Why start with the most successful at lifting the most out of poverty?
Having interacted with dem socialists of the rank and file, I can’t take lefty proposals seriously regardless of the fact I would like to do so.
This is mostly because questions are met with circular logic that denies the sincerity of the questioner or a condescending dude I am not going to do your homework for you or outright lies.
There are a couple of other advantages the biggest to me being the introduction of other viable parties reduces the percentage required to ascend to power.... hallo Hitler. You could do runoffs but it is a danger.
The current spectacle of a mentally addled old geezer allowing those we didn’t elect to run our govt in his cognitive absence is a powerful argument to dismiss the two party system as protecting against that though
There's nothing current about that spectacle. The billionaire funded think tanks took over shortly after the Powell memo.
Neither party had the moral fiber needed to stop the coup because the rewards and consequences we too much to ignore.
Biden is merely our elites showing their counterparts that the US citizenry will not be able to change the policy goals set down by the oligarchs who own the entire system.
If this weren't true, Trump would have been able to stop the wars in the middle east.
There's no better sign to the other elites that the US is under total control than to put Biden in front of a camera and a mic.
Creating $1.9 trillion out of thin air without producing more goods and services just inflates the currency, making everyone poorer in real terms. It has a short term impact on the direct recipients, but that's it.
It's just competition with other currencies. That's why they want a global currency so other countries can't manipulate the reserve currency. It's the vicious circle of the elites fighting for control over who will have the power going forward.
“I’m worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon,” he says, but “income inequality, widespread child poverty, and economic precarity are the problems of our time.”
I think David Brooks is arguing the Jamie Dimond's shouldn't be excluded from this largess because they put on their 2 million dollars pants one leg at a time just like you and I do.
Dry your crying eyes Elon Musk, help is on the way!
You seem to be confusing the current $1.9 trillion care package with the previous one. This one actually does funnel the bulk of the funding down—at least until the 1% can figure out how to lay hands on it. I know my city plans on spending $25 million providing past-due rent assistance to prevent any more evictions. They're already taking applications.
So, it appears the tunnel vision for which the Professional Class is being slaughtered here is just as prevalent among those who are still so deeply imbued with the pep-squad mindset they automatically reject anything and everything solely based on what it doesn't have instead of what it does. Park your privilege, people. As someone who once worked for $89/week, I assure you my kids and I would have kissed the ground for that monthly credit.
"Until the 1% can figure out how to lay hands on it."
Who do you think is doling out the money, Liz?
If they wanted to they could just divide the $1.9T and send out $5,700 for everybody in the country. But there's no grift in that, so they send it to the politically connected and order THEM to divvy it up.
This is like when a place like Seattle spends $30M to "fight homelessness." Only a fraction of the money actually goes to the people they are trying to help, and most of it just evaporates in "administration."
And wouldn't you know it? The problem didn't improve so they need more money next year too.
SFO spends like $50k/year per homeless person on homeless services. For kind of money every single homeless person should have a personal social worker handing them needles on a silver tray.
Indeed, for that kind of money, that pays for rent and food for the year even in SF. Let's face it, the "help the xxxxxx" campaigns are really gambits to create more sinecures for the govt class of parasite.
And even if it did get down to the masses... why do you think Blue states now have legal weed, prostitution "reform", and sports gambling by smartphone? To filter the money back up where it "belongs."
Actually, they do. I live in NYC. Many homeless are here because they got a 1-way bus ticket to Port Authority from their home state. And DeBlasio welcomes them with open streets.
Rich people fund college scholarships which actually go to people who need the money to attend school. Rich people contribute to build hospitals which cure the sick. If you really think that the NY city-run Metropolitan Hospital is run as efficiently as NYU Langone... well, there's a bridge across the East River you may want to kick the tires on...
I hope NYC continues along the paths that San Francisco, Seattle and Portland went down and that NYC festers in it's own filth for a couple of decades.
Nobody is doling out extra money. The fed's printer goes brrr and the bill is left for our children and grandchildren to pay. The billionaires aren't paying an extra cent.
Right on, we have record wealth gap and it is all caused by government spending. That is the secret to becoming elite is not figuring how to get the government handout, but figuring out how to vacuum up all the government handout.
It always strikes me as so perverse that the people always clamoring for a raise in minimum wage will turn around and clamor for more government spending which is the reason we need to keep increasing the minimum wage.
9% is to be spent this year in virus mitigation. The rest is hundreds of billions of payoffs to blue cities and states that stole the election.
Of course, the most destructive parts of this law, which literally NO ONE is taking about, is the codifying of every single election fraud tactic used in the last election. This law literally makes it illegal to charge an illegal alien foreigner that intentionally votes illegally with a crime.
I highly recommend reading the entire bill. Just make sure you have a box of tissues since you will be wailing at the destruction of our country.
Here in presidential blue Illinois we will probably get a nice chunk of covid rescue. We have an unfunded public pension obligation of $300 billion. We have had "motor/voter" --- illegal aliens get a driver license for public safety reasons; a request for ballot application is mailed to everybody with a drivers license. The 2/22 headline in the state capital newspaper read, "Study: Illinois second most corrupt state," the story quoting a local college professor, "We're making progress . . ."
Fellow Illinoisan here. After years of being disgusted by the snakes that run this state into the ground year after year, I'm finally on my way out of this cesspool. This place is so corrupt that a lawyer friend dropped out of volunteering at a forest preserve because the corruption was so bad. At a forest preserve...and now it's coming to the entire country. I feel sick all the time just thinking about where this is all going.
Mathematics is neither left- nor right-wing. Calling out corrupt payoffs to voting blocs that supported you is not a bumper sticker slogan. Globalism is real and valuable; crony globalism and white-guilt globalism are real and worthless.
«This law literally makes it illegal to charge an illegal alien foreigner that intentionally votes illegally with a crime.»
My impression, from social media posts of dem activistis that boast of how they got out the immigrant vote, is that happened a lot, but as a rule it does not much practically matter, because it happens mostly in dem areas that are going to vote dem anyhow, see California.
e., there is more than temporary relief in the Stimulus package. Just two weeks ago, Vermont's state treasurer was recommending cuts to public employee pensions moving forward because our state has a massive unfunded liability in this area. She publicly prayed for a bundle of cash from the feds. From her lips to Biden's (and Dems in Congress) ears. Prayers answered.
VT is poorly managed in many aspects. The pile of money the state is receiving from this package only serves to coverup poor management decisions from the past and encourage the same poor management in the future.
In fact - there are many prohibitions, including one against lowering taxes in response to the federal windfall. So much so, that this bill may be unconstitutional via the 10th amendment.
But the bigger deal is - WHY DIDNT THIS ARTICLE GET WRITTEN BEFORE THE BILL WAS DEBATED AND PASSED?
What is wrong with journalism in this country when the idiots at the NY Times think that it is acceptable for congressmen and women to have to "pass the bill to see what's in it."
Keep in mind, journalists were upset when a senator wanted to have the bill read in full before voting took place (not that anyone listened at all). But wouldn't a true fourth estate, committed to afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted want to raise questions of politicians prior to the passage of laws?
"Not so fast! There is an amendment in the package that doesn't allow states to put the COVID money into pension funds "
Please tell me your day job is writing jokes for wretched stand-up comics. This provision is meaningless. I have a series on my own Substack column (BillHeath.Substack.com) that examines what happens to the money. I'm less than a quarter way through it.
Money is fungible. There is no way to identify the actual use to which a dollar has been put. If I nod my head and agree not to put one dollar into pensions, I spend the dollar on paperclips for the Department of Irrelevancy. Then, I take a dollar away from the budget for paperclips and put THAT dollar into pensions. See, I complied. It's a totally different dollar. Look into my eyes, I am getting very sleepy.
The bill reveals a lot about COVID we never knew. COVID relief goes to people who suffered losses from straight-line winds or derechos. So, COVID causes climate change. People cannot fly into the US without a COVID vaccine, but they are allowed to walk across the Southwest Border at will, might be tested for COVID (at a state or city's expense), and whether positive or not are put on a bus to somewhere (your neighborhood). Walking across the Southwest Border causes the virus to be non-transmissible to humans. Honest. Living farther than average from one's neighbors makes one suffer more from COVID than others. Being a federal employee eligible for union membership is so injurious to health that every one of them, who has drawn a paycheck throughout the pandemic, is gifted 15 weeks of extra vacation at a total cost of $66 billion, to compensate them for such unique hardships as keeping children entertained while out of school, teaching children instead of teachers doing it, taking care of sick members of their households and perhaps even becoming ill themselves. You know, the kinds of hardships no one else in the country went through. An extra $30K-plus for federal employees who are eligible for union membership.
This list is almost endless. The payoffs to teachers' unions are shameful. I need to stop before I have another stroke.
Of course it's all voter-buying/payoff pork. All spending bills are. Nobody thinks otherwise. And yes, while money is fungible - the idea that pension funds will be the first place the money goes is silly.
Governors and Mayors are often term limited. By the time the civil servants retire, and there is nothing but IOUs in their pension funds, the ex-Governors and Mayors and County Commissioners responsible for the gap will be long gone - or will have joined Covington & Burling or some such Legal/Lobbying org.
The money will always go to current-use funding for sinecures (think Chirlane McRae) and vote-buying.
The Democrats over-reached. I believe there is language in the bill telling states that if they accept "COVID relief" they may not reduce their taxes through 2024. That is blatantly unconstitutional (Tenth Amendment) and punishes states that have managed their finances well - nearly all of which are red. That prevents companies held hostage in high-tax states (strangely, all solid Democrat) from finding a refuge for the next three years.
That provision has to have been in the works for a while. We live in Nashville, a blue island in a red state. Nearly all state capitals are blue. We were hit with a massive property tax increase last summer, thirty-odd percent. Now I understand. If the governor turns down the aid, he'll be crucified. If he doesn't, the blue government of Nashville gets to extract extra blood from us turnips.
My only point is that the article written by the Times seems to suggest that the bill suffers from unconstitutional language, which could actually hold up the pork, especially if the 6-3 conservative SCOTUS started flexing its muscles and says that there is nothing severable about the entire package. Now that Roberts can be overruled from the right....
Great pick up! I hate to cynical, but it's all just Three Card Monti and they'll find a way to bail out the mismanaged system.
God, I hate thinking this way.
I couldn't agree more than an unbiased and responsible media should have delved deeper into this instead of choosing sides and creating a narrative for Biden.
Well, I think they can contemplate drastic reforms but I'm pretty sure they would not get much beyond just contemplation; that's how our system is set up. The best they can hope for now is to see how these temporary reforms are seen by the electorate in 2022.
This Sovietization really took off after George Floyd. The Washington Post went to extreme lengths to make readers didn’t see or readily understand their own Police shooting database. Lest readers actually see that, no, actually thousands of innocent unarmed Blacks are not murdered annually by Police.
Exactly. I remember a recent poll showing that for people who identified as very liberal, 15% believed that 10,000 unarmed black men were killed in 2019 alone. 30% of the same group believed 1,000 were.
The media had no interest in debunking that because they’re the one who created the conditions which led to the ignorance in the first place. How else to get millions to go out and protest? And then justify riots and call anyone racist who actually tried to debunk the myth.
Basically Tucker and Sam Harris were they only ones that I saw trying to debunk the lies. If I’m wrong on that please let me know. And it’s understandable in a way if you think about the enormous risks. During the summer, reporters probably thought they would be subject to immediate termination if they were caught debunking the lies about police killings.
Agree on the timing, but would also include Tonkin and Pentagon Papers, much of which was the result of the capture of the mechanisms of government by interests such as weapons manufacturers. It's weird how one can almost trace the distrust by the movies that were popular.
Haha. Says the guy going through this thread just to comment on my posts.
You know what? You're just one of those stupid cunts that gets off telling people how brainwashed they are when in fact you're among the handful of people on this godforsaken planet that hasn't realized The Matrix didn't age very well.
It's interesting that someone like him, obviously off their meds and incapable of in person meaningful social interaction, hurls constant insults toward everyone. Encouraging them to get the same kind of psychiatric treatment he so badly needs. E.pierce is why we need block lists on Substack.
I'm currently reading Manufacturing Consent after reading Hate Inc. Now that I can see news for what it is, it's very difficult to "unsee" it, and furthermore, its unbelievable that so many people don't see it for what it is. I can't even believe people fall for the framing of arguments on FOX, CNN, MSNB, etc...
Read 1984 and Brave New World simultaneously. Who would have guessed that both authors work would be prescient and relevant today? They took what I feel at the time were opposing views of future dystopia . . . and yet much of the future has the features of both.
Love Orwell and Huxley, but I wonder why Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is never included on this list.
While Huxley and Orwell imagined top down dystopias by totalitarian governments who wanted to keep their citizens in the dark for political reasons, Bradbury alone understood that the censorship of the future would be lateral, grass-roots efforts pushed by ignorant citizens who wanted to remain ignorant and unchallenged by ideas which unsettled them.
"You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator. – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451"
The big difference between 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 is that the ending of the former offers only despair ("He loved Big Brother") and the ending of the latter offers hope ("You'll stink like a bobcat for a few days, but it'll be all right.")
That's a great line, but I think Bradbury understood the mechanism of totalitarianism in a democracy better than Orwell, who had a better grasp of the tools.
Bradbury also realized from the early 1950's that technology would become ubiquitous and not make us smarter, but dumber. This is at a time when it was universally believed that technology was leading us to a world of greater freedom and enlightenment.
It's a very underestimated book for reasons I don't entirely understand.
I just watched the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" a few days ago written by Bradbury. Highly recommended viewing...should be mandatory viewing before signing up for Nextdoor...
Many of Orwell's essays are still mind-bogglingly relevant. "Looking Back on the Spanish War" is particularly good one in relation to the last 10 years of cultural and political turmoil.
Nice call, Ziggy! Tell it like it is brother Orwell!!
"We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don’t take the sword perish by smelly diseases. The fact that such a platitude is worth writing down shows what the years of rentier capitalism have done to us."
Oddly enough, I did that recently as well. It's like Orwell had a time machine, especially when he describes the perpetual War stuff on the edges of the region.
Here's a question for you - and a big reason why I'm reading Catalonia - the anarchists took control of the region after the government fell apart. But, thanks to Soviet undermining they eventually lost it. I get the sense they were stabbed in the back.
What interests me is the idea of people finding space to take control because the government has failed in that area. With Catalonia, it was geographical. With the internet and technology, those borders seem to matter a lot less.
Do we have similar opportunities now? And will reading experiences like Orwell's better prepare us?
Good question, and yes. Orwell is always good for business. Slightly off topic, I just read his 1935 review of Tropic of Cancer, which I thought was off the mark. Orwell seems to me to dismiss Miller as just a dirty mind, while overlooking his impassioned call to responding to the world’s misery by laughing in the face of it and choosing to live life to the fullest.
I’ve read Matt say that we make too many references to Orwell, and I appreciate Matt’s effort to keep discourse civil, but I believe any effort to assess, “Where Is This All Headed” we should use Orwell & the Stalinist period as guides. (MUCH to my chagrin, I’m poorly versed in Mao/China)
There is an amazing piece of recursively illogical gymnastics that Frank Luntz performs redefining the term "Orwellian" during an interview with Terry Gross of Fresh Air many years back now. Luntz of course trying to reframe the term to mean "honest and truthful". It is classic Luntz.
To exemplify of all the negative connotations of "clever", Frank Luntz is worth a thousand pictures.
Another book to read! Fantastic. Laughing in spite of it all is one of my favorite things. It's a good way to resist.
I know a little bit about China. From what I understand, they developed along collectivist lines naturally (thanks to the dangerous rivers that dominated their early history). Then you have ideas like the Mandate of Heaven (if bad things happen the government is no longer in heaven's favor) and the cyclical nature of their dynastic periods (always advancing upwards but in a corkscrew pattern of collapse and restoration, if that makes sense?).
Homage to Catalonia is amazing-and showcases Orwell’s ability to see through media perpetuated bs and convey it to the public-on all sides of an issue.
I would also recommend (while cringing) Industrial Society and Its Future--the Unabomber's Manifesto. While he was and presumably is a terrorist and is going to spend life in prison, as he should, when it comes to his luddite critiques of technology . . . he makes a lot of good point and turns out to be weirdly prescient.
Which is very strange for someone who thought bombing people would be a good way to get attention for his manifesto, given that it could have been the best selling book in history and everyone could have read it and it would have ultimately changed nothing, even if he hadn't been a terrorist. Warnings are not implementable solutions.
Meaning, I'm taking it, that what he really wanted was attention, not to actually warn people or effect change? Because he is, like I said, weirdly prescient but there's no way I could ever imagine any of his warnings being heeded, even if he'd gotten global attention, and without any terrorism.
BTW, quick clarification: while that is the popular understanding of Luddite, it is not all that historically accurate. For Luddites, it was never about the machines per se but the sudden loss of any means to support their families. While that may be splitting hairs to some, it is a huge difference, IMO.
I would also like to throw in a pitch for The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, who wrote an introduction to an anniversary edition of 1984. Pynchon captured the inability to figure out the truth in a way that I think is very relevant.
I've never read it but picked up a copy recently. I think I'm avoiding starting it because I'm afraid it will be like super-food for my depression. I just finished Fahrenheit 451, so I think I need something a little lighter in-between the two.
1984 will depress the hell out of you. It is much darker than Fahrenheit 451. But you absolutely need to read it. I would prescribe a heavy dose of Calvin & Hobbes both before and afterward.
Thanks for the warning. Ironically, I just recently read the entire Calvin & Hobbes collection in an effort to lift my spirits. Maybe I'll have to buy the omnibus of the Far Side to prepare for 1984.
I often watch movies and shows where nothing "makes sense" in a real-life way, but enjoy the obvious fantasy stories (even though motivations are not realistic, physics is treated haphazardly, things that should kill people do not, etc). I think a lot of people absorb news and opinion the same way, on a strictly visceral and emotional level that doesn't engage critical thinking.
Arcanaut: Social Psych literature is filled with examples of what you speak, but not just for news. It is pretty clear that emotions sweep over our bodies in microseconds. Our conscious brains are left in the dust trying to scour the environment for the cause(s) of the emotions.
The accuracy of that conscious process appears to be a function of time x training. Obviously the more time and training, the higher the chances of accuracy identifying the the cause(s).
Good point, it would be logical they turn on their suspension of disbelief; however instead of as in a sci-fi movie you clearly know you aren't seeing reality, in the case of MSM "news" you suspend your critical faculties based on your emotionally held prior beliefs.
What does all of this look like in four years? Biden won't make it that long. We moved from Trumpism to Weekend at Bernie'sism. The press is doing all it can to make Biden look like the man behind the curtain, but he's a walking corpse.
Biden was a babbling idiot a year and a half ago. Watch him bragging about getting the Ukrainian judicial official removed in 2018. Biden was full of fire, very lucid and smooth; a completely different man than whomyou see before the teleprompter today. It’s sad that those around him would put us and him through this.
Have posted this multiple times but Biden = Chernenko. It's not like there aren't any other walking corpses. Feinstein? Pelosi? This country is a gerontocracy. Tulsi Gabbard, in her early 40s, quit the House in disgust.
If Trump would have pretended to be more serious about COVID, stopped tweeting and shut his GD mouth just a little bit he would have won. Don't be mad at Biden because Trump was such a terrible candidate. Reminds me of the smug righties in 2016 saying ad nauseum, "and that's why you lost."
No, it wouldn't have made any difference. Trump was of the wrong class, nothing more and nothing less. And the idea that someone from the wrong class was in that position was more than they could bear. Not mean tweeting, better on COVID, they don't matter, nor does the fact that he was better for African-Americans, had a positive view of the economy and how to fire it up. No, he ate steak with ketchup. Well done.
I'm not defending Trump. That doesn't mean I can't scoff at the left who believe they elected some revolutionary. The guy is a hack, and far more dangerous than Trump as a result. Biden is frail enough to give the wokeists their opening. I can't be mad at someone I don't believe has general cognitive abilities, he's helpless.
It will look like Russia. Russia is what the cowardly US populace deserves. They are happy to swallow any smarmy remark about Trump and any exaggerated nonsense about Biden’s sainthood. Where is our revolutionary spirit? Where is our sense of outrage? When the NY Post story of Biden family corruption was completely stifled by mainstream media, we swallowed it. When courts refused to give fair hearing to evidence of election fraud, we swallowed it. When Biden told lies about vaccine availability, we swallowed it. When CNN made up a completely false story about a private school kid facing up to a native American, we swallowed it and didn’t care that there was no correction, much less an apology. Now we watch as the Sneeches and Dumbo are censored, and we swallow it. Russia is what we deserve.
I had a church group of Jan 6 protesters staying at my house just outside the DC area. Not religious myself but they are friends of the family from MN. They weren't rioters. The vast majority of us decided to play it peacefully this time around. I had to work on the 6th and didn't see the point of going to that hateful city.
The alternative was starting a _real_ insurrection, not the fake one fed to us in the press. Next time, I doubt we'll be so peaceful, and I will go.
Never an advocate of war, I've seen it up close and personal and wish this wasn't happening during my lifetime. I am a realist, however. That frog boiling story is incorrect, the frog eventually jumps when you turn the heat up enough.
This government/media has had several warnings about this. Trump's election was one. You think somehow we are too dumb to understand he was inappropriate by prior presidential standards? To get rid of him, unconstitutional election law changes were made and victory laps are being taken in the mass media for stealing the election, just like every year, but still. Do you think a wall around the people's house and 30k troops around it screams "legitimate government"? But the media and govt keep doubling down on oppression. I would expect the breaking point to be a gun grab. There is a reason ammo is unobtainium for many people. They are preparing.
They're not informed, paying too little attention, don't know the extent of it, read or hear the news selectively - that seems to happen a lot - or don't care. I hadn't known the extent of it. I'd read Bloom, knew what was going on in our institutions, but had no idea of the scale of it., and assumed anyone rational would reject the lunacy. Don't assume. Three years ago that changed when our company was targeted. We stood our ground, but I started paying close attention, and was appalled. Someone I know recently referred to the Democrats as "our side." He was an English major in college, had even wanted to be a writer, so I assumed he'd be up on at least the censorship front. I asked him what he thought about the move to shelve the classics. What move? he asked. Are you sure? How about CRT, wasn't it obnoxious? What's that? When I sent him Matt's take on censorship - the media had lost its mind, and White Fragility, he responded: So what are you saying? That still stumps me. Either they are getting their news in a vacuum or they are too lazy, content, self-absorbed, or too involved in work, family life, weekend football, to know. Or too thick. Without constant paying attention, there was always a chance that America's very liberality could be used by its enemies, enemies within, to destroy it. Recent, successive generations too soft, They let others do their fighting for them, some demeaning those who do it. As other parts of the world explode in brutality, this brave crowd, in an act of orgasmic nobility, is bent on destroying the West.
How hard is it to write good humor about Joe Biden, anyway? The Onion ran a series on the antics of 'Uncle Joe" when he was VP, and it was hilarious. He was 'The President of Vice"! The prevailing attitude today is that if you poke fun at Biden in any way, you're actively promoting Trump, or something like that.
PS: An Onion writer who was involved in creating the Uncle Joe series apologized for it last year. You can't make this stuff up.
"An Onion writer who was involved in creating the Uncle Joe series apologized for it last year." you gotta be kidding me. There are dozens of those Diamond Joe Biden articles and they're hilarious..
"Biden Loses Control Of Butterfly Knife During Commencement Speech"
The Onion hasn't been as funny lately. I imagine a couple woke children could ruin the dynamic of their notorious "is it funny or not" writers room. I find myself laughing harder at the Babylon Bee
"Chick-Fil-A Now Open On Sunday But Only For Black People"
I wish it was a joke. I found out about The Onion apology when I was searching for the Uncle Joe series. And I agree that The Onion seems to have lost their fastball, and Babylon Bee is picking up the slack.
«The prevailing attitude today is that if you poke fun at Biden in any way, you're actively promoting Trump, or something like that.»
It is the word of the decade: "objectively". Usual quote from George Orwell, 1945, in a preface to "Animal Farm" that remained unpublished at the time:
“One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ʻbourgeois libertyʼ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ʻobjectivelyʼ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. [...] These people don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. [...] But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ʻanti-Fascismʼ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?”
All Vietnam Vets, and even Vietnam Era Vets will remember the Fascist logic behind "We have to *destroy the Village in order to *save the Village". In modern times, the words have changed, but the "song" remains the same.
Outstanding and timely -- unique Matt's talents. I see many of commenters are labeling Biden administration as "left", "socialist", etc. A big error of confusing corrupt DNC oligarchs with -- "left". Why such persistent blindness? Such readers will never realize how are we being played, like a violin, by two equally repulsive oligarch groups competing for power.
Trump supporters are, of course, rightfully incensed by DNC scam of the century -- the Russia-gate hoax. But Trump was also a disaster and incompetent -- he didn't give pardon to his biggest ally - Julian Assange who unmasked decades of neo-liberal crimes, for example.
There is nothing left in Biden's administration -- just a desperate actions to survive after eking a margin thin "victory". Biden is all for $2K and immediately (3 months later it is $1.4K to some), he is all for $15/hr min (by now it should be $30+/hr) but the time (in pandemic catastrophe) is not yet now, of course, health care for all - "never"...
But the War party, on that oligarchs of both DNC and GOP fully agree, is proceeding full speed. Brutal medieval sanctions on "disobedient" countries, US military marched into Syria's oil fields the very second day of victory, Israel damages Iran oil tankers (obviously by US approval)
The recent letter by two California House "lifer" Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney to CEO's of cable companies are truly unparalleled and represents the rise of fascism in the US -- under a guise of "fighting fascism." All these multiple attacks are clearly carefully choreographed and coordinated -- easily predicted since we should always keep in mind that there is one huge elephant in the room:
The scam of the century - the now 5-year long Russia-gate hoax initiated by Obama/Biden administration
The Russia-gate hoax and two-impeachment “entertainments” were concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Maxine Waters, Jamie Ruskin, etc., etc. -- and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military and security industry donors, i.e., the War party
By far the absolutely highest need of Biden government and its DNC oligarch cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax – the scam of the century -- will NOT / will NEVER be exposed.
This represents a new phase of US domestic politics -- nothing "left" or "socialist" there...
<<A big error of confusing corrupt DNC oligarchs with -- "left". Why such persistent blindness?>>
Why indeed?
<<represents the rise of fascism in the US -- under a guise of "fighting fascism.">>
"Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations." Old intelligence agency technique. You try to publicly smear the opposing party for doing the thing that you yourself are doing in private.
The right started out as classic liberals and civil libertarians who later fought a civil war with the Confederate States of America to abolish slavery. Referring to the right as neoconfederates is laughable.
Fact check: Woke morons did not topple the statue of the esteemed abolitionist, Frederick Douglas. An IDEA toppled that statue. You do not want to go off script. Taylor Lorenz is probably monitoring this thread.
Nice to see your thoughtful scribblings again -- from a man who normally focuses/obsessing on attempting to badmouth the publisher of a century being, Julian Assange, who is persecuted and tortured by corrupt leadership of both DNC and GOP wings of the US War party
Assange is not very smart. I was restricted from reading his messaging for many years. That said, what I saw before that convinced me that his life was going to be made a misery. It was and it is. So what makes him a great publisher? The relatively low level sigint he had wasn that, I hope.
I see that HBI considers himself "smarter" than Julian Assange... Poor HBI pretend not to understand that the greatness of Assange is in his unimpeachable integrity and courage...
The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny
The real measure of how free is a society is not how its mainstream, well-behaved ruling class servants are treated, but the fate of its actual dissidents.
Glenn – Dec 31
The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
Ok, he managed to via "unimpeachable integrity" get himself locked in the Ecuadorian embassy for what, 8 years? And now he's in a Brit jail. So his life sucks and has sucked for almost 10 years. For what?
For what? He exposed decades-long US neo-liberal/fascist crimes. Since you pretend not to understand this -- you are just another, possibly paid, bloodsucking troll.
-- On persecution and torture of publisher of the century Julian Assange and
-- On unmasking of OPCW fabrications about all chemical poison attacks in Syria by war-mongers
are but two examples of a complete failure of corporate media in reporting, that is, of their censorship on behalf of their main advertisers and owners.
The situation for a free press in the United States is truly alarming -- as alarming as during the height of Cold War and McCarthy censorship eras.
Stupid arguments about labels? Pot, meet kettle. No one can define fascism adequately, anyway. Totalitarian is about all I can agree on. A totalized society offers only the solution to tune out. Everything in my life is local local local except this.
Love it, Matt. My husband sees Biden as a tired old used car salesman. I agree. Would you really buy something you needed to drive you and your loved ones safely from Joe Biden? I think not. “I know you're here to buy an SUV you can afford - and my fellow American, I feel your pain. You lost your small business, your kids gained thirty pounds and fell back two years during the school lockdown, but this SUV will transport you to another world when you take it for a spin and the tires blow out and you roll over a cliff. Hey, all your pain will be gone. I say that as a good Catholic.” But the mainstream media is now made up of used car salesmen - or salespeople, too. Would I buy a used car from any of these journalists? No. And maybe I'm overly optimistic but I think a lot of people will wake up to the lemons they bought from the mainstream press.
I tend to agree with you and your *husband ! In addition to the propaganda push to avoid "buyer's remorse" on the Biden victory among his voters, everyone is now willing to "adore" Biden, warts and all, simply for *being exactly what he was placed in *office to be, i.e., the UN-Trump ! So, for now, if Biden successfully ties his own *shoelaces in the morning, he will be treated like Lincoln in that latter man's prime ! ;-D The Dems are "selling" Biden to the world. It is a clearly damaged product, but it's *most attractive feature is that it is NOT Trump. Perhaps a "low bar", but an admitted improvement over four years of NO BAR !
I will also say that, in general, Biden is too *old for the job. Before I am nabbed by the P.C. Police, I myself am 72 yrs. old. Biden is *far too prone to "Senior Moments", and this is not a *new facet of his profile. I know what "Senior Moments" are *like ! Let's just say that I welcome and celebrate the fact that Biden has a more "youthful" V.P. to back his play ! ;-D
I do not say that age = inability for the place of POTUS, I am saying that in *this case age is a problem in the position of POTUS. The philosopher Grace Lee Boggs who used to feature on Bill Moyers' show was still one of the most *breathtaking intellects in the Nation just before we lost her at age 96.
This can't be surprising, Matt. In every one of these articles, there's always the disclaimer of "I'm not a Republican, but..." or "I'm not a right-winger, but...", as if being Republican or right-wing would automatically disqualify someone from having a cogent opinion on various happenings in this country.
Naturally I have to add my own disclaimer: this isn't an endorsement of right-wing or Republican politicians and policies. Clearly the right has supported some bad people and policies in recent years, but they certainly don't have a monopoly on bad ideas, politicians, and policies. And I'm not sure why it's divisive to say that.
All right wingers are white nationalists or white adjacent fascists with internalized racism. If you are a right wing sympathizer, you might as well line up to take selfies at the next capitol riot. That requires a disclaimer in this day and age.
The only way to get what they want is to create a one-party state. They're trying to do it via stealth. That doesn't work. You have to do it openly. They've basically taken the Nazi 1933 playbook and run it about one-third of the way through. The Soviets in 1917 didn't understand how to pacify the country and had to fight a many year civil war vs the Whites as a result.
«The only way to get what they want is to create a one-party state. They're trying to do it via stealth»
Here we have a time traveller from a century ago trying to warn the future about what has already happened... :-)
Gore Vidal: “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
George Mikes: “In England you know for instance that the Labour Party is for the nationalization of various industries and the Conservatives are against it. In America such ideological clashes hardly ever occur. A practical issue may be whether the U.S. should give a large loan to Britain or not. In Siloam Springs (Ala) the loyal Democratic leader, with an eye on the Jewish inhabitants, may take up an anti-British attitude because of Palestine. In the next village, however, the bank manager's daughter may have an English fiancé, a former R.A.F. pilot, who is personally very popular and the Democratic Party leader will be inclined to say: 'Let the poor boy have the dough.' All this may seem very confusing but, in fact, it is quite simple. The difference between the two main American parties is very sharp and well defined; it is more marked than the difference between Communists and right-wing Democrats in any European coalition government:
(a) one party is in, the other is out;
(b) one party wants to stay in and the other tries to get it out.”
Love the Gore Vidal quote because it reminds me of an allegory favored by my Poly Sci instructor when I came back from SE Asia and went to school on the G.I. Bill. Vidal calls it the "Property Party", my Instructor would have concurred.
"Imagine", my instructor would encourage, "that you own a HUGE sandbox, and all of the sand therein. You don't *really care if those living in your sandbox decide from time to time to shove all of the sand over to the Left and they call *your sandbox a 'Democratic State'.
Conversely, they will also shove *all of the sand over to the Right, and call *your sandbox a "Republican State". You care not one whit, so long as the sand stays IN the sandbox, and so long as you continue to *own the sandbox.
This allegory explains and illustrates the *fact of Corporate Control in America. In this particular view, Noam Chomsky would agree with Vidal. The Two Party system, along with the ability for the masses to push the sand either right or left, creates the *illusion for the masses that REAL and *lasting change is possible.
So, all of the pushing keeps the masses "worn out", waiting for all the wealth to "trickle down", and it also keeps them nicely compartmentalized, first into imaginary "States" (chunks of real estate with imaginary boundaries) creating the sense that we are *not together at all). And now into even more artificial "Red" and "Blue" States which create even *more polarization.
Thus is maintained one of the oldest military strategies possible for political application - Divide and Conquer. However, note that *NOTHING is really happening so long as you *continue to own the sandbox, and all of the sand within.
Matt has to add this disclaimer to everything. These days, if you say anything that isn't a direct quote from the New York Times, everybody on the "left" will assume that you're a card-carrying Trump supporter.
As a descendent of Russians who escaped the pogroms in the late 19th century on one side and Nazi Austria and Germany on the other side, to find America, the land of the free (and the free press), in four years this looks very bad. Conceptually it's very disheartening to see so many immigrant's descendants from these eras of incredible censorship and propaganda embrace an America turning its collective back on the personal freedoms that made this country a beacon of light for their ancestors. Collective amnesia is one of our favorite past times but, to quote a great line from the recent classic film Death of Stalin, "I’ve had nightmares that made more sense than this."
Another great piece from you Matt. And the problem is, as you well know, today Dr. Seuss gets placed next to Mein Kampf while legitimate critics are silenced, but where does all of this end? I’m sure you recall exactly how odd it was for people like you & me to converse with highly intelligent, very cool Soviet citizens. I was constantly aware that you could cut their self-censorship with a knife, which I found chilling & profoundly sad. I reiterate, Americans have no concept of what an awful place we are stumbling towards.
That's a great point. I remember thinking how the whole Soviet society would be cured in one second if people stopped lying to themselves for like ten minutes. People told me that when it all collapsed it was like waking up from a weird dream.
I work in manufacturing - over the years have set up factories in Mexico (mostly), but also in the Ukraine. The difference in the attitude of the workers between the two countries was staggering. In Mexico, especially over the last twenty years or so, the people wanted not just the "how", but also the "why"...to the point that many improvements to processes were made as people brought their own thinking into the process.
In the Ukraine, especially once we moved outside of Kiev into more rural areas, the "why" was never questioned.
But they dang sure got the "how" mastered, with no discussion as to efficiency loading, etc
Rural Ukraine and Russia is like the burned out wasteland after the zombie apocalypse. The Holodomor, WWII, and Soviet industrialization completely destroyed an entire culture and way of life. When my Ukrainian grandfather and family came to the USA after WWII, his first job was as a cowboy in South Dakota. Now, Ukraine has to recruit cowboys from Texas to run cattle and international conglomerates from Belgium to grow crops.
This is reductionist, but:
Cowboys = Cossacks, Cossacks = Cowboys
<<Rural Ukraine and Russia is like the burned out wasteland after the zombie apocalypse. The Holodomor, WWII, and Soviet industrialization completely destroyed an entire culture and way of life>>
I'd make an analogy to the USA here, and I might be an incorrigible optimist, but I think in the US the countryside is latently strong and the cities are incipiently fragile. We're almost to the point of a reversal of the shift from 100 years ago when agricultural workers moved to the cities for industrial jobs.
I definitely agree about the incipient fragility of cities, I just fear the inner burbs will become like their French equivalents.
The countryside in America will always be there for those who wish to take advantage of it.
If Covid didn't prove that cities are incipiently fragile, nothing will.
I hope that when the USA collapses the EUM can step in and preserve at least some of it.
workin' on mi espanol
Note that many of them come from areas where corruption, graft, etc. is a way of life and in their bones and blood. That's not we need. We need people with integrity, honesty, wisdom and I could go on.....
Having the poor come poring in from the south across our border and not having our border secure as was voted on and agreed to back 40 YEARS AGO and having our welfare state to take care of those who come (to various degrees), is one reason why our country is about to fall!
Immersion
Ayn Rand’s first book, “We the People” is a great tale of the horror of a country succumbing to communism. Critics didn’t like it so you know it is a good book.
I'm curious how you think it correlates with how things are now.
The correlations that strike me are the college and state recommendations to spy and report on fellow citizen’s alleged actions, be they bias reporting groups on college campuses or public health edicts to report non mask wearers, etc. All these types of things were common in communist takeovers and once it starts it metastasizes to where no one trusts anyone, not even family members.
I don’t recall the book going deeply into politics. It was more about the results of communist politics and how they affected the people in the story.
Scary. We are already there. Months ago, I resolved, in private and professionally, to speak my mind on all of these things. If someone says something patently racist about white people as if everyone agrees, I'll stop the conversation and challenge the statement. My advantage is that no one is going to fire me, I don't need the money, I'm working at something I love. Family-wise, say cousins- speaking up, or talking back, brings on a distinct chill-- so be it.
+1 on Dr. Seuss. Maybe 1000 years from now people will be looking at the "Seuss Testament" of the Bible because it's so much easier to understand and so altruistic. But what bothers me is, what is wrong with a depiction of a man eating out of a bowl with chopsticks? Should he be using a fork?
I don't get this one either. If you depicted a North American teen twiddling a cell phone with his/her thumbs, would that be a harmful stereotype too?
Umm, I don't think you should be using the word "North American" :)
Especially North. Kim and Ye (divorced) own the trademark. Cultural Appropriation.
Did you just assume their gender!?!?
Apparently I did. I should have said "Should they be using a fork?"
Wouldn’t that be cultural appropriation if the Chinese man used a fork?
*cutlery appropriation
We must resist. Bravery. Stand up to the totalitarian mob.
You can still buy Mein Kampf on Amazon and EBay buy you can’t the six Dr. Seuss books that were banned for the crime of showing Chinese eyes correctly and they fact they eat with chop sticks.
I don't think Dr. Seuss has been "placed next to Mein Kampf". After all, you can still buy Mein Kampf on Amazon or eBay, which is more than you can say for "If I Ran the Zoo."
Okay, but the Dr. Seuss story was blown way out of proportion. It wasn't as if the government, or even the publisher decided not to print those books. It was the family and estate of Dr Seuss himself. Also, the animations were truly racist depictions of black and Asian people. I agree that cancel culture has gone too far many times, but this was not one of those times in my opinion. Maybe it's because I'm a millennial, but I don't see the slippery slope here, which is a fallacy anyway. It's not self=censorship if the decision was made based on their own morals, and not pressure from above, or below.
Susan Russell57 min ago
The decision was based on meeting with self-annointed CRT "experts" who see racism in everything. The other MO is the ubiquitous "staff" letter or uprising. That racket, the Southern Poverty Law Center, objected to Seuss precisely because he inculcated togetherness and tolerance when the young should instead fight against oppression. (SPLC called animal protection groups "terrorists" because they opposed vivisection on chimpanzees).
Children's books are now flagrantly racist, depicting white privilege, stereotypes and oppression to first graders, causing far more negativity and discord than the gentle Seuss ever imagined. The latter, actual racist nonsense is lauded. Seuss isn't in a vacuum: the entire Western classic canon, Cicero, Seneca, Plato, Plutarch, Shakespeare, the whole lot,, are on the chopping block. We need organization; if we tsk tsk each new outrage without responding with equal pressure, we're simply bearing witness to the arrival a new Dark Age. One can't even watch TCM without indoctrination. If I want Ben Mankiewicz political opinion on Woman of the Year, I' I'll let him know. Years ago I worked with an ad hoc coalition of historians and environmentalists working to prevent Disney from turning Manassas Battlefield into a theme park/edge city. We won. Don Henley contributed $200,00. I started Boycott Disney. In a matter of months, a volunteer battalion of vastly different people who care about history and this country mobilized to save a chunk of both. Completely spontaneous. We had a fundraiser at Ford's Theatre. Matt and others are using the power of the pen. But we need that spontaneous organization now, we need historians, musicians, classicists, and actors to speak up. What's that sound you hear? Nothing.
Great post, Susan. Kudos to you for defeating Disney at Third Manassas.
I worked a Disney many moons ago. At one point we were out looking for places to build second theme park in Asia (after Tokyo). One of the places we visited as in China was Guilin, famous for its limestone mountains. The city of Guilin, who were our hosts, offered to build an airport that could take jumbo jets, and offered us a huge piece of property that had featured the pristine view as a backdrop. We walked away from it, for a number of reasons.
Interesting. Eisner got out when we had Boycott Disney in Newsweek, and when Henley got in. He made a splash.
I am leaving out the late, shot- gungun-toting Annie Snyder, Piedmont enviros. Historians like McPherson, McCullough. And so on.
Yes. I participated in this for many reasons including owning land in the Bull Run Mountains that would have become a raft of t-shirt shops. Don’t remember who started it but there were a lot of locals including well-known horse farm owners and the Piedmont Environmental Council. I think what killed it though was a proposal to have “slave markets “ - historically correct of course.
I've only seen the chopsticks image, but can you describe why you believe it's a "truly racist depiction". I'm asking completely genuinely, because I think this is a very hyperbolic statement. I'm very happy to be corrected, but by the same token I also expect you to be willing to walk that statement back if you can't reasonably justify it.
“ Maybe it's because I'm a millennial, but I don't see the slippery slope here, which is a fallacy anyway.”
The “slippery slope” is an informal fallacy. It has to be shown that an argument is a slippery slope - just because someone presents a sequence does not indicate a slippery slope.
Your statement is basically saying, “... but I don't see the fallacy
here, which is a fallacy anyway.”
I agree with you that the estate of Dr. Seuss stopping the publication of the books is different than if an external source dictated that publication should stop.
I’m on the fence about eBay banning the books’ sales - mostly because eBay is so big that it ties in with big tech making more and more decisions about what is allowable or not allowable in society.
Libraries are removing the books.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with this. Libraries have to cull their collections all the time. I’ve never heard of these Seuss books before - does a library need to have a complete collection of Seuss books? I’ve often wished libraries did not cater so much to the big commercial giant publishers. (If we are talking about a university library this would be a different issue. I have read before, but never seen confirmation, that Disney, years ago, “made contributions” to university libraries to remove early Disney work that was either racist or propaganda.)
*self-censorship
I don't think Mein Kampf is censored (nor do I think it should)
your "Sovietization" piece dovetails with the feeling i had when I saw a recent New York Times Special Edition cover of Biden and Harris in a Mt. Rushmore pose with the caption "the history they've made, the future they will inherit." https://www.amazon.com/York-Times-Biden-Kamala-Harris/dp/1547854448 ....my immediate thought was: "propaganda Soviet style"..."the history they've made"? they just got elected! aside from Harris being the first "woman of color to be elected vice-president" they haven't made any history at all yet. "The future they'll inherit"? high-sounding, portentous words that, try as I might, I cannot make any sensible meaning out of. How do you "inherit" the future? This on the heels of Time magazine's similarly monumental "Persons of the Year" cover...with a similar historic "changing America's story" blurb really disheartening that it has come to this (and i voted for Biden/Harris)
I didn’t see that. Wow.
Do you mind if I write something in about that?
not at all....please do
I've been thinking I'd like to start an online Museum of Covid Propaganda, as so much government communication around the topic looks so similar to Soviet propaganda. The posters in the NYC subway are a particularly obvious example.
The posters showing right and wrong ways to wear a mask are absolutely wild. They're more infantilizing than the pain charts you'd see in a pediatrician's office.
Pain charts...I always thought 10 should just be someone screaming in agony.
That's 9. 10 is unconscious. Pain makes you pass out.
The scary part is that even with these dopey reminders, 90% of people still can't figure it out.
Your presumption they are trying to do it correctly may be mistaken.
Just put Fauci on the cover.
Among other iconography, that reminds me of the portraits of the Kims that are hung everywhere throughout North Korea.
The cult of personality surrounding the presidency only changes in terms of those devoted to the current version and those longing for a past one. None of them will dare to give up believing in a glorious leader. That would be a true American heresy.
Here's a quote from about two months ago, uttered by a friend of mine who apparently has no sense of irony: "Trump supporters are a cult. I'm so glad we elected Joe!"
But I'm SURE they're on a first name basis.
If only they knew how good heresy can feel.
To paraphrase the Judd Nelson character in THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985), "heresy really pumps my 'nads."
https://youtu.be/s1EeSRKdgVc
Fun thing to do: Breakfast Club/Maximum Overdrive double feature.
Think of them as a sequel. We find out what happens to Estevez's character.
Repo Man/Breakfast Club/Maximum Overdrive triple feature.
Estevez could have been the John Wayne of his time -- he always just plays Emilio Estevez --and he somehow blew it. Maybe he just made enough money and was like "I'm out."
I love the satirical corporate cinema of the 1980s and am sad that it went away. I blame mysterious market forces, but an informed Hollywood insider could probably enlighten me.
ahhh. Any Breakfast Club reference pumps my nads.
Is there any other film that really encapsulates Generation X so well?
lmao
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
Those who control the past control the future/Those who control the present control the past.
"{Besides Kamala] they haven't made any history at all yet. " Yes, they have. Biden oldest president ever.
Don't forget who else Time made "person" of the year way back before WW2....
I have a copy of that issue of Time with the first "Uncle Joe" on it. But I think it was during the war. Hmmm... wonder where it is....
Well, it wasn't published until 9 days after the inauguration so there's that...
"Sovietization" is the perfect description. While watching the gushing TV coverage of the first day of COVID vaccinations, I felt like I was watching a parody of the Soviet News Agency TASS from 1981. The frightening part is that while most Russians knew it was all bullshit, most Americans I speak to actually believe this crap. It genuinely seems like the Twilight Zone.
Sounds like you are talking to the wrong people. People out where I am know it's all bullshit.
The good news is that not everyone in my orbit eats this up either, though many do. All my husband's co-workers, spread throughout the country, are appalled by this crap. Many of my co-workers lap this up. The difference is not so much our geographic spread, but our profession and "economic power." The working and middle class aren't buying it. The professional elite are. Isn't that ironic?
«The working and middle class aren't buying it. The professional elite are. Isn't that ironic?»
The working and middle income classes are getting shafted and this makes them skeptical of the propaganda. The upper-middle classes are living the dream and are not inclined to question it, plus they know that they are the "trusties" of their masters, and if they step out line their affluence can disappear.
This is true. The irony is that the professional elite consider themselves objectively smarter and better educated, and yet they support a mass propaganda system. They are self-deluded. They don't admit even to themselves that they must support the thoroughly corrupted media because it benefits their own status. They lie to themselves that the media is in fact not corrupted and delivering the "news" straight up. I find that ironic. Not the part about taking a position to benefit your own status, but the self-delusion. Because these are also people who consider themselves to be *the* humanity and world-huggers.
Thank you, yes. You and Blissex are right. A lot of why the professional elite believes this msm propaganda is because they desperately need to. Inside they feel worthless. I live in one of the world's nicest cities that I grew up in. Back when I grew up the people who could retire here had actually run businesses that made things. They believed in their businesses. They pursued their hopes and American dreams and were grateful it paid off. They wanted to give back. Even the trophy wives who managed to hook these wealthy retirees wanted to give to the community. The people who now move here are almost all investment people, or celebrity victims, which means they all feel empty inside. They never really cared about anything because they're - like narcissists are - afraid to look in the mirror and see who they really are. So they love msm because it tells them what moral, wonderful people they are for regurgitating NYT or WaPo or NPR talking points.
"So they love msm because it tells them what moral, wonderful people they are for regurgitating NYT or WaPo or NPR talking points."
This is so true.
Great points-which Rodney Dangerfield emphasized in Caddyshack and Back to School......
Thanks for this, Polly. Yes, you can spot the NPR listeners in a matter of a few sentences. Today's elite needs constant reassurance that they are "good people," and the MSM gives it to them.
Well said. The elites are also prone to taking a shallow dive with their media consumption for time management reasons. I too have extremely successful friends who either don't know what's going on or refuse to look.
The "hall of mirrors" is far kinder to the narcissist than reality. This is definitely a kind of psychosis. Same as it ever was, apparently.
The self-delusion reduces the cognitive dissonance. It's mandatory in modern society.
«They don't admit even to themselves that they must support the thoroughly corrupted media because it benefits their own status.»
Ohhh some do, for example I have just remembered this very, very interesting quote for this blog:
www.eschatonblog.com/2015/04/why-didnt-i-get-rich.html
“journalists/columnists of a certain age (meaning ones not much older than me and younger) are coming around to the realization that the economy is screwing them, too. There was a moment when a lot of them (we’re talking ones at elite outlets, not your random small town paper) thought they’d done everything right, would become celebrities, and get Tom Friedman’s speaking fees. The economy sure was working for them, and screw everybody else.”
Members of the Outer Party love Big Brother. The Proles' opinions don't matter.
Working and middle class either had to keep working so the "upper class" could stay home and order from Amazon and/or legislate from the safety of their little bubble while playing mask theatre.
Not ironic to me. The elites were the war Hawks in Vietnam also. He's a lefty but I refer you to Loewen's "Lies my teacher told me", his thesis is well supported there. His later works are more questionable. I believe colleges create good bureaucrats who toe the government line. The less well indoctrinated people are, the less they believe the government and mass media bills it.
Yup-I live in Hillbilly Elegy territory and your point about colleges creating bureaucratic/obedient mindsets is well taken, considering the views of the local populace.
Where is Hillbilly Elegy territory?
Greenwich Village. More precisely, Greenwich village about Appalachia.
SW Ohio/I-75 Corridor between Cincinnati and Dayton. Probably 50% of the population in this area was either born in Kentucky or has family roots there, hence the name of the book. Back 40 or 50 years ago a candidate for sheriff in some county in Kentucky lost the local vote by a large margin, but won b/c he did such a good job of garnering ex-pat absentee votes in Dayton!
I'm in NYC. The BS runs thick here.
Used to work there, but mostly in finance. You get more of a variety of opinion there.
ha! Are you a fan of Joe R. Lansdale by any chance? I'm not an East Texan but his stuff is what I think of when I think of East Texas.
Sci-fi isn't everyone's bag. That said, my favorite JRL story is "Trains Not Taken," set in an alternate future in which the US is a colony of the Japanese Empire and Bill Cody and Bill Hickok are sitting around in a train station with bullshit jobs and they are both like, "Did you ever have the feeling that your life was supposed to be different from this?"
https://b-ok.cc/book/1086859/8a9c19
I adore science fiction. One of my favorite stories is The Chief Designer. After watching astronauts with The Right Stuff on the news, Russian cosmonauts comment that Americans will be the first to put a dentist on the moon.
«"Sovietization" is the perfect description»
In the good old times before the editorship of Micklethwait "The London Economist" wrote that the definition of "soviet" is "run for the benefit of management". In 2008-2009 we saw that the USA is run for the benefit of Wall Street management.
«before the editorship of Micklethwait»
That guy is interesting and a sign of the times. He wrote a very good book "The right nation" about the shift rightwards in the USA since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and reaganism in 1980, and he is currently Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg.
COVID vaccinations do seem like a big deal. Some events (e.g. early space flight) actually deserve attention and are not just propaganda.
The vaccinations were a worthy news story. But the elaborate performances, staged for television with enthusiastic testimonials were synthetic events created for political persuasion.
And then the follow-up of "Vice President Harris and I took the vaccine on camera so you know its safe..." in the "greatest speech in the history of speechification" the other night.
This whole overmessaging of crisis and underpromising of relief is only being done to be able to create a narrative of how much better than expected the "new" administration did.
What people should note is that Govs. DeSantis and Newsom took completely opposite tactics in managing the situation.... with nearly identical results.
Virus gonna' virus.
Nearly identical results medically, not so economically
With the House and Senate bailing out blue state fiscs... it's a wash
Yeah, I didn't watch any of that stuff. Still, as a scientist I can't vouch for safety, but I'm impressed by the development of the vaccine. That's some serious biotech.
That's true, it was a near-miracle to have effective vaccines available so quickly.
Th human immune system is a big deal which th media seems to think does not exist. Science! Th covid vaccination process we are now witnessing just a giant cash grab. And maybe a culling
True, from Day 1 it was always about fear-mongering, and invasive methods, like quarantine, allopathy, and vaccine. No diet, no exercise, no supplements or herbs, no WALKING, no AIR, no SUN...
All the while pumping people full of hatred while selling them junk-shit foods, pharmacopeia to remedy the illness caused by said shit foods and then insurance.
It's a scam being run to cow the unruly masses back from the unrest resulting from a relatively free exchange of ideas: the antithesis to proper authoritarian rule.
We no want you picking our foods
Back in 2007, I was working for a political campaign, and some Russian American citizens came to the office. We chatted, and they told me that one of the most draw-dropping aspects (for them) of American culture was how few Americans realized that the news was almost entirely fake.
Your descriptive moniker says more than a mouthfull. What's the best use of the helicopter money from mana?...since the only real vote that doesn't involve putting one's self in the crosshairs of the National Guard / power enforcement paradigm is where you spend that 💰.
I honestly hadn't thought of that, but what you say is true.
One of the uses of our I'll gotten gain is to buy our friends and family subscriptions to Matt's and others' independent journalism...shine the light!
Every so slightly off topic, but not, I've been pondering with interest the approaches of both Matt and Glenn Greenwald and thinking about the history of progressivism in this country. Of course, in the 60's, liberals were civil rights activists and fighting for the first amendment and the free expression of ideas most notably in Berkley. All long overdue and necessary. And I've concluded that people like Matt and Glenn were so used to feeling like fighting for those issues aligned more with the Democrat party than the Republican. Which made sense at the time. I occasionally get attacked on here for being in an echo chamber and for this binary thinking, which is really not true. Though it may sound like that at times. AS a libertarian I used to think liberals (not far leftists) contributed things to the balance of our existence. I was reluctantly for abortion (I'd be happier if it was before a heartbeat unless the life of the mother was at risk and appalled at the brutality, nauseated at these people CELEBRATING such a thing up until the moment of birth?), for gay marriage (before we started having biological men beat little girls in high school), and I was certainly for free speech and civil rights. I was a fiscal conservative so thought of myself as a libertarian. ISH. (Since I was fine with national parks and a few things.)
But I feel sorry for people like Matt because I think they were so used to thinking of the Democrat party as the one for free speech, they really didn't see that leftists were headed here all along. As both a student and adjunct professor, it was clear pretty early (or admittedly, as a conservative, I was paranoid about it) that they were headed right where they are now. I think they (Matt and Glenn) see the threat is presently from the left, but they don't see that the ideology of big government almost necessitated loss of freedom and it was so clear they had become the thought police as early as the 80's--and that they were pushing and shaming squishy Republicans down that road, and by the time I was teaching at university, they were literally brainwashing our youth and shutting down the free expression of ideas.
This is probably why I now sound more binary than I once did. Ronald Reagan said if totalitarianism took hold here, it would come from the left. And that seems so obvious to me just because they always believe they have the moral high ground, they believe in big government and controlling people -- something they love. And now they believe anyone who doesn't think like them are haters, supremacists, or Nazis. Seeing this happen, moved many of us farther right -- or that is not accurate -- farther ANTI-left, which is not the same thing. If I saw the right behaving like this as they once had, I'd be just as opposed to them.
I have an annoying friend who always believes the religious right is the same threat to America as the far left has become. As someone who is anti-organized religion (though spiritual), that always seemed ridiculous. Our constitution and the very nature of our country prohibits state sponsored religion--socialist fascism? Not so much. The danger was clearly from the left as Reagan had said.
And another side note -- leftists claim that churches are discriminating against gays. That is really a ludicrous position. They are discriminating against that behavior, just like some churches ban dancing or drinking -- both legal as are gay relationships. You don't see people suing them for not allowing people to dance! For years, people just found churches that represented their beliefs. Gay people can attend any church; their behavior will not be supported in some of them. But people should have freedom to believe as they choose as long as they don't force someone else to. BTW, if I ever do go to a church, it's the Unitarian church that Jefferson, Thoreau, Emerson, and whole host of people believed would one day be the religion of the land -- and who of course, welcome gay people.
So the threat is not from the right, even though I've never agreed with most of organized religion; it's from the left. At least right now. And they are contributing less and less in terms of what we need to be a successful civilization. And the biggest reason is they are shutting down debate and ideas. Glenn Greenwald admits that right now they are the threat. Matt avoids doing that and sticks to journalism as if it isn't the left doing this. Or the progressivism itself that is the very cause of it. The platforms of each and all parties can be debated, but not if they won't allow it! So until that is dealt with, the rest is irrelevant.
But I am still grateful that Matt is writing this and I particularly think Glenn is doing great work.
In large part I agree with you. I'm sure that this is causing great cognitive dissonance for the relatively small percentage of liberals who are actually liberal. After decades of assuming their fellow travelers shared similar beliefs, they are forced to the shocking realization that they are in fact more illiberal than even the horrible Republicans.
I would imagine that's difficult to accept. And I think both Glenn and Matt still have a bit too much of both sideism in their writing in light of current circumstance. But, like you, I appreciate the work.
I'm a life long liberal - I ran on the Liberal party line in NY back in the 1970s. But I'm a classical liberal, not a progressive.
My cognitive dissonance occurred about 10 years ago when I realized that the Democrat party had was no longer liberal, but was morphing into what we now call progressive with its increasingly anti-liberal and totalitarianism tendencies. I found myself a man without a political party. After much thought, I realized that the Republican party represented the only current realistic alternative to the fundamentally illiberal program of the Democrats. Therefore, I did the unthinkable and registered as a Republican.
«But I'm a classical liberal, not a progressive. My cognitive dissonance occurred about 10 years ago when I realized that the Democrat party had was no longer liberal»
A "Doonesbury" cartoon from 25 years ago had gotten there already: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1996/11/23
Take heart, everyone. I followed my curiosity on the Spanish Civil War when Matt mentioned it above and it led me to read a bit about Orwell just now. Orwell published Animal Farm as an anti-Soviet piece with a foreword (often omitted today) that specifically called out British self-censorship, especially on the topic of anti-Soviet sentiment. It was simply being blocked, and it took him a long time to get Animal Farm published, but of course it was and its popularity is so far unabated. There is hope for powerful voices to break through and find wide support no matter where we head from here.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1945/preface.htm
Read it in full and it's very on point to this thread - it discusses how Liberal thought in Britain at the time required fealty to shutting out certain ideas fully as not aligned with the common cause.
Yes. I obviously think Matt is a great writer which is why I forward his work everywhere. And am sure Matt knows that. I don't agree with everything he says, but I certainly do not insult him or anyone else on here personally. Some people don't understand the difference between arguing over issues --and Matt is sticking up for my right to do just that --and personal name calling and insults..
Poor dear. Maybe you could make a comprehensible argument versus hurling insults like a petulant child.
Nothing petulant about e.Pierce’s piercing insights and whimsical expressions
Also, off topic some, and the biggest problem with the gay community. WHY is their sexual preference WHO THEY ARE. I guess it makes sense that society's attitudes forced them to go there to a degree--they should be allowed all the legal rights of someone else. But nobody's sexual preference should define them. Which is why they would get farther to just find a church that accepts that behavior like people do with dancing and drinking, etc. They are not "gays." They are people who practice that sexuality. All fine. But churches who say that's a sin, just like other behaviors, are not discriminating against them as people, but against that behavior. While they think having parades and all is helping their cause, it really isn't. It isn't enough for them to have the legal right to practice homosexuality, dance or drink, they have to insist we all say it's normal--that no place like a church should exist where they believe it is not normal -- it was part of the beginning of the thought police. They don't have that right. Or to force people to use pronouns-- though if they asked people to, they'd likely oblige. So those are my thoughts this Friday as I wait for my refrigerator to be delivered. Happy Friday.
That's pretty rich to say with the Church's history of getting all up in people's bedrooms.
Frankly, the Church can fuck off. I'll take all the gay pride parades in all the world over your child raping asses.
For real.
Especially, as I have to keep pointing this out even though it pains me to do so, since those holier than thou types that won’t pork the altar boy would suck their own dick every morning before breakfast if they could, and upon discovering they can’t overwhemingly flog their righteous log to faux lezzie porn.
Such is the moral landscape upon which the stone throwers gather.
As if the parades are for straight people’s benefit.
Everything revolves around you first amendment geniuses wit a stiffy for Jehovah
I just like a good parade! :D
I am sure if you showed up without your “God hates fags” sign and weren’t handing out repent tracts you were welcomed.
Well. Unless you are Bari Weiss and you brought your Gay Jewish flag. Actually I am thinking of parades decades ago. I keep forgetting wiut uptight, judgemental assholes homos in general have become.
Linda Sarsour finds jewish homos triggering and they are verboten.
Surely you have some spicier insults than that.
Or do you think CAPS lock is all you need?
At least I don't repeat myself.
By the way, I did the math. The cost to live in your headspace is about two posts, give or take.
Gay people need to be identified as gay mostly so you don't try to fix them up with female friends. Makes for an uncomfortable evening otherwise.
Many of my best friends are lesbians. They know I'm not trying to fuck them, so we can just hang out and chill. It's nice.
C'mon, yes you are.
Oh yeah. Homos persecute the Christians hahahaha
We wuz so scawy you all had to work with serial rapist perv Prez to defend the sanctity of marriage.
Any day now we will all hear the crashing sound of the destroyed sacred marriages like the Clintons cuz of da homos.
Please don’t blame homos for bio males with no self respect invading female turf.
My friend Cliffy (he was the best man at my wedding, gay) was against gay marriage. He had a justification, I don't remember what it was now, this is 10 years ago. Just railing against some kind of gay unified group opinion. Real people, real minds, real opinions.
A certain outspoken conservative gay provocateur once made an interesting point: Being gay used to be *exciting* because it was considered transgressive. Legalizing gay marriage and normalizing the gay lifestyle has made it rather boring.
I know many gays who just want a normal life, with a single partner. That gay provocateur didn't pretend to speak for all gays, so I saw nothing wrong with him expressing his personal distaste for gay marriage. But my gay (and now married) friends detest the whole free-for-all, anti-monogamy section of the gay community.
Interestingly, this provocateur is also staunchly pro-life.
Hah! I just looked up Milo to see what he's been up to, and he's still at the provocation. He's now denouncing his gayness and making a go at conversion therapy. His husband (yes, the anti-gay-marriage guy is married) is demoted to a "housemate." Seems a bit desperate. I know he claims to be very Catholic, but this reeks of a hoax or attention ploy.
Milo is channeling The Cat in the Hat. He cracks me up, I like him.
I reread Peter Pan a few years ago. I said to an old lefty, a red diaper baby, Peter Pan is a psychopath. He said, Tinkerbell is worse. Which is true.
I thought definitely a prank
Kevin Williamson said kind of the same thing last year in NR.
Sounds like Milo.
Perhaps marriage itself is not the best of ideas.
A lot of people have forgotten that some of the earliest support for a legal status for homosexual couples came from conservatives in the 1980s with the objective of encouraging monogamy among gays during the early AIDS crisis, and that it was roundly condemned until liberals figured out that proposing to include non-straights in existing marriage law got under conservative's skin. Then it became a liberal sacrament to make that happen.
I never heard them. I do remember the Defense of Marriage Act and all the predictions of Mary wanting to marry her lamb as a direct result of slipping down that slope
Like anyone needs the state to justify the relationships people choose with each other. Sure, the perks are nice and I'll take them, but I'll decide all the same without 'em too.
So... sibling marriage? 34 year olds and 13 year olds? Sometimes the "state" or the "people" may have a compelling reason to say "whoa, there, big fella."
The only thing I have a compelling reason to see the state do is eat shit.
Considering your specific situation, the community around those people better sort that shit out, otherwise it's on us to take care of it.
Or does that scare you? Rather have some jackboot do your violence?
<<The only thing I have a compelling reason to see the state do is eat shit.>>
<3 +1000
It's funny that there's a lot of discussion right now on the ability of the state to regulate violence and comparatively little on the ability of the state to regulate human sexuality.
It's entirely possible I'm looking in the wrong places.
Sibling (or incestuous in general) marriage is an interesting case, because I'm yet to hear a solid argument that supports gay marriage without also supporting incestuous marriage (usually children related arguments are raised, but of course people can have children without being married, and people can get married without having children).
It meets all of the requirements of consenting adults, and so in the end people generally fall back to some kind of "ewww" argument from disgust. And it's true, most of us tend to feel some sense of disgust at the idea. But is that really good enough? You can find plenty of people who feel disgust at the idea of gay marriage (or gay relationships in general), but we don't consider that a valid reason to make it illegal.
«because I'm yet to hear a solid argument that supports gay marriage without also supporting incestuous marriage [...] It meets all of the requirements of consenting adults»
Same for group marriage and multiple marriages. Also civil unions were available, and frankly they were good enough.
But the main difference was a bigger political demand for same-sex marriage, but not much of one for other types of marriage, and I think that is largely because many homosexual couples (of either sex) want to cosplay "hubby" and "wifey" as if they were not homosexual, that is they are fundamentally socially conservative, big wedding included (and many heterosexuals also marry to cosplay "hubby" and "wifey" and want a big wedding too).
«It meets all of the requirements of consenting adult»
As to that, there is an addition consideration: there are two views of things like "marriage", that they are market transactions, or social institutions.
In the view that they are market transactions (e.g. like abortion and gender reassignment) what matter are absolute property rights and freedom of contract, typical concepts of the "whig"/radical right, and since they are private market transactions the state simply has no business interfering other than enforcing them. The impact of private market transactions on "society" does not matter, "fiat libertas, ruat caelum".
In the social institution view marriage is not a market transactions, but a relationship not just between the spouses but with society, therefore the state can and does regulate it, so that some marriages are recognized by the state and others are not. It is transparent that in past erase in villages fertility was an extremely important value for society, especially older women, and the state would only institutionalize and support relationships that at least in principle would be fruitful.
Now the campaign for homosexual marriage is particularly politically strong because it is based amazingly on both views: that homosexual relationships are market transactions under absolute property rights and freedom of contract, but also must be institutionalized, that is supported by society and state, instead of being purely private.
This means that homosexual marriage has both the utility to "whig"/radical right wingers of normalizing the ideology of absolute property rights and freedom of contract (the ultimate prize of this campaign is the restoration of debt indenture), and can be sold to "tory"/tradcon right wingers as a conservative absorption of homosexual relationships as traditional binary marriages. Bigger complications do not quite have the same popularity or double appeal.
Here's a solid argument:
Nothing good comes from fucking your sister.
You're welcome.
I recall reading genderqueer takes that were against “marriage equality.” I think Matthilda B Sycamore was against same-sex marriage, for example.
You mean you’re both homos and held differing opinions.
Mind blown man. That’s totally pertinent to 2nd rate male athletes dominating women’s sports.
No, straight on my part. He had been best friends with my wife all the way through school. Surprisingly rocking gay community in icy parts of MN.
Sorry if that didn't meet your standards of applicability, but I'm sure somewhere there is a gay dude who thinks trans males in sports are just ducky.
Owen wuts his face. Any that are slurping at the political trough and paid to spout the party line.
As a libertarian with a glaring reservation about not policing the inside of other people’s bodies.
I don’t know who claims Churches discriminate against homos, most of the Neanderthal fundamentalist Churches are too stupid for many to take seriously, but I do agree that the cake baker has been harassed by homos.
I don’t see them going through Muslim Michigan demanding cakes
They also aren't doing that in Little Italy or Williamsburg or Borough Park, ha.
I agree with this post on all levels. When it comes to worrying about gay rights-a good thing, or fretting about fundamentalist Christian cultural influence, the woke left is too stupid to realize that they won, and leave people in peace now.
Don’t argue wit me you first amendment warrior geniuses wit a stiffy for Jehovah, you know attendance is down
I would like to see them going through Muslim Michigan demanding cakes. It’s just, they are actual cowards
I'm imagining a cake of a big penis with "Allahu Akbar" written on the shaft.
Hahaha
And Muslims have a heaping ongoing helping of lynching homos. In some cases relentlessly stalking their homo relatives through asylum countries in order to restore the family honor by lynching their homo.
In other words, they don’t play. Sooooo the cowards playing activists pretend they’re fighting Nazis. Cus Muslims would make them crap themselves.
:::::shrugs::::::
And extorting cis het Christian corps is too profitable
Which is also why the ACLU under its little tranny leadership - is pretending trannies in America have got it bad if any naturally born male can’t proclaim himself a women and gain instant advantage in sports, prisons and shelters but are mysteriously silent about Muslims and homos.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all in on tranny rights until the insane demand we pretend being female is all in a man’s mind.
I wouldn’t get too excited about the Unitarians (my adopted faith.) They are all in on battling white supremacy. It is the only issue the leadership has dealt with for several years.
Huh. I haven't been in a long time. That's disappointing.
Spot on comment.
Oh look..petulant, childish insults.
Limp dick... limp dick.... wut ya gonna do when they laugh at you
And...? What’s it to ya?
Yup, as Greenwald and others have remarked: “kids in cages” has practically overnight become “migrant minors in overflow immigration facilities”, “censorship” has become (necessary/laudable) “content moderation”, etc etc. Complete insanity. How is ANYBODY swallowing this?
The ends justify the means...as it always was.
How?
We never cared about kids in cages in the first place.
“I’m worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon,” he says, but “income inequality, widespread child poverty, and economic precarity are the problems of our time.”
----------
It never occurs to these people that the more money we give to government, who passes it out to their buddies, the higher income inequality goes. The fake economy of being close to those who run the literal money-making machine is taking over the real economy of beneficial transactions.
I'm sure David Brooks will be BAFFLED at why this extra $1,900,000,000,000 showered mostly on the well-off didn't fix income inequality. I'm sure he'll think the NEXT $2,000,000,000 will do it!
<<the more money we give to government, who passes it out to their buddies, the higher income inequality goes>>
Kill shot. The best thing in life under this system is to be a "buddy."
There's actual capitalism, which is practiced effectively mostly at the local level, and then there's bigshot crony "capitalism," which isn't really. Just my opinion.
Capitalism has always been cronyism. Name a time when it wasn't.
And ... by what method does China decide who gets the penthouse suite?
To me that’s like white privilege. White privilege is simply the privilege that any majority population confers upon itself and cronyism is the perks of having the power to reward and award. Who doesn’t network their supporters and throw gigs to their friends?
Time for a new system. The only reason we keep the current crooked one is due to those in power of that economic system owning the political system that was designed to have the power to limit or change the economy.
They've indoctrinated almost everyone into thinking it's impossible to EVER come up with a better system.
People still to this day would rather be exploited and ripped off regularly than change from the system that has absolutely no ties to morality or constructive behavior.
People are blinded by the intoxicating, manipulated passions of the culture wars to vote for and keep the duopoly in power.
No. It’s the dialectic. It’s not working right now but it does require two opposing or contrasting opinions trying to find a truth that incorporates the truth of both. We have grifters seeking power and the ability to impose everything from school lunch menus to the size of a fountain drink one may purchase to permitted discourse and political views.
Very true. Divide and conquer via fear mongering and intimidation has served the con artist class for centuries now.
They're certainly beginning to step and fetch as of late though.
At least we get to watch them squirm every now and again, despite having to pay for it eventually.
There are plenty of undeveloped places to experiment with new systems.
Usually when working with an existing system the changes propose are tested in a test environment before loading to the operating system. One avoids crashing the system with unknown and unexpected consequences.
Show us your ideas successfully in operation in America on a small scale.
Why start with the most successful at lifting the most out of poverty?
Having interacted with dem socialists of the rank and file, I can’t take lefty proposals seriously regardless of the fact I would like to do so.
This is mostly because questions are met with circular logic that denies the sincerity of the questioner or a condescending dude I am not going to do your homework for you or outright lies.
"There are plenty of undeveloped places to experiment with new systems."
Wrong, they are all currently being exploited by capitalists.
HOW DARE YOU
The republican party also has a long history of corruption going back to it's very beginning. That's why we are only allowed two parties.
The elite have always been corrupt going back to the very start of there being an elite.
There are a couple of other advantages the biggest to me being the introduction of other viable parties reduces the percentage required to ascend to power.... hallo Hitler. You could do runoffs but it is a danger.
The current spectacle of a mentally addled old geezer allowing those we didn’t elect to run our govt in his cognitive absence is a powerful argument to dismiss the two party system as protecting against that though
There's nothing current about that spectacle. The billionaire funded think tanks took over shortly after the Powell memo.
Neither party had the moral fiber needed to stop the coup because the rewards and consequences we too much to ignore.
Biden is merely our elites showing their counterparts that the US citizenry will not be able to change the policy goals set down by the oligarchs who own the entire system.
If this weren't true, Trump would have been able to stop the wars in the middle east.
There's no better sign to the other elites that the US is under total control than to put Biden in front of a camera and a mic.
*were
Creating $1.9 trillion out of thin air without producing more goods and services just inflates the currency, making everyone poorer in real terms. It has a short term impact on the direct recipients, but that's it.
It's just competition with other currencies. That's why they want a global currency so other countries can't manipulate the reserve currency. It's the vicious circle of the elites fighting for control over who will have the power going forward.
“I’m worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon,” he says, but “income inequality, widespread child poverty, and economic precarity are the problems of our time.”
I think David Brooks is arguing the Jamie Dimond's shouldn't be excluded from this largess because they put on their 2 million dollars pants one leg at a time just like you and I do.
Dry your crying eyes Elon Musk, help is on the way!
https://reason.com/podcast/2021/03/10/peter-suderman-the-1-9-trillion-american-rescue-plan-has-almost-nothing-to-do-with-covid/
Oh make no mistake. It occurs to them. They ARE the “buddies”.
You seem to be confusing the current $1.9 trillion care package with the previous one. This one actually does funnel the bulk of the funding down—at least until the 1% can figure out how to lay hands on it. I know my city plans on spending $25 million providing past-due rent assistance to prevent any more evictions. They're already taking applications.
So, it appears the tunnel vision for which the Professional Class is being slaughtered here is just as prevalent among those who are still so deeply imbued with the pep-squad mindset they automatically reject anything and everything solely based on what it doesn't have instead of what it does. Park your privilege, people. As someone who once worked for $89/week, I assure you my kids and I would have kissed the ground for that monthly credit.
"Until the 1% can figure out how to lay hands on it."
Who do you think is doling out the money, Liz?
If they wanted to they could just divide the $1.9T and send out $5,700 for everybody in the country. But there's no grift in that, so they send it to the politically connected and order THEM to divvy it up.
This is like when a place like Seattle spends $30M to "fight homelessness." Only a fraction of the money actually goes to the people they are trying to help, and most of it just evaporates in "administration."
And wouldn't you know it? The problem didn't improve so they need more money next year too.
SFO spends like $50k/year per homeless person on homeless services. For kind of money every single homeless person should have a personal social worker handing them needles on a silver tray.
Indeed, for that kind of money, that pays for rent and food for the year even in SF. Let's face it, the "help the xxxxxx" campaigns are really gambits to create more sinecures for the govt class of parasite.
Also in general the bigger the charity the more of a scam it is. I look at nonprofits very differently than I did when I was younger.
And even if it did get down to the masses... why do you think Blue states now have legal weed, prostitution "reform", and sports gambling by smartphone? To filter the money back up where it "belongs."
And yet the red state reps still have no answer........ Funny how that works now ain't it ??
Actually, they do. I live in NYC. Many homeless are here because they got a 1-way bus ticket to Port Authority from their home state. And DeBlasio welcomes them with open streets.
." Only a fraction of the money actually goes to the people they are trying to help,"
Sounds like "philanthropy" by the elite now doesn't it ?
Actually, no.
Rich people fund college scholarships which actually go to people who need the money to attend school. Rich people contribute to build hospitals which cure the sick. If you really think that the NY city-run Metropolitan Hospital is run as efficiently as NYU Langone... well, there's a bridge across the East River you may want to kick the tires on...
And lets be clear - rich people do it for tax reduction, egotism, and many other less than egalitarian reasons...
Except the elites are (presumably) spending their own money.
Government is spending OUR money.
Be careful, comrade. In the eyes of the collective, all money is OUR money.
They need DeBlasio's wife to run it, that will fix it
I hope NYC continues along the paths that San Francisco, Seattle and Portland went down and that NYC festers in it's own filth for a couple of decades.
Here here, let's ship them back to Kansas.
Nobody is doling out extra money. The fed's printer goes brrr and the bill is left for our children and grandchildren to pay. The billionaires aren't paying an extra cent.
I mean after the money is brrrrrred into existence. Somebody has to pass it out, and government knows JUST the people.
They're taking $5,700 from you, giving you $1,400 back and patting themselves on the back for how caring they are.
That's how all currencies come into existence. How is this any different than any of the others ?
It's really not, and the same thing is happening to all of them. It's a coordinated race to the bottom.
Buy bitcoin.
Our currency is printed by the Federal Reserve, not the Fed Gov. And it's borrowed into existence through private loans, not through public borrowing.
Right on, we have record wealth gap and it is all caused by government spending. That is the secret to becoming elite is not figuring how to get the government handout, but figuring out how to vacuum up all the government handout.
It always strikes me as so perverse that the people always clamoring for a raise in minimum wage will turn around and clamor for more government spending which is the reason we need to keep increasing the minimum wage.
By literal money-making machine you mean asset inflation from serial bubble blowing by the Federal Reserve, right?
Exactly I do. $5 inflatobux to you!
9% is to be spent this year in virus mitigation. The rest is hundreds of billions of payoffs to blue cities and states that stole the election.
Of course, the most destructive parts of this law, which literally NO ONE is taking about, is the codifying of every single election fraud tactic used in the last election. This law literally makes it illegal to charge an illegal alien foreigner that intentionally votes illegally with a crime.
I highly recommend reading the entire bill. Just make sure you have a box of tissues since you will be wailing at the destruction of our country.
Here in presidential blue Illinois we will probably get a nice chunk of covid rescue. We have an unfunded public pension obligation of $300 billion. We have had "motor/voter" --- illegal aliens get a driver license for public safety reasons; a request for ballot application is mailed to everybody with a drivers license. The 2/22 headline in the state capital newspaper read, "Study: Illinois second most corrupt state," the story quoting a local college professor, "We're making progress . . ."
Do I have to be more sad?
Fellow Illinoisan here. After years of being disgusted by the snakes that run this state into the ground year after year, I'm finally on my way out of this cesspool. This place is so corrupt that a lawyer friend dropped out of volunteering at a forest preserve because the corruption was so bad. At a forest preserve...and now it's coming to the entire country. I feel sick all the time just thinking about where this is all going.
Unfortunately,"the Chicago way" made it to the White House a few elections ago.
Godspeed. I continue to dream . . .
More like the British way made it to America upon it's creation.
The country was destroyed long before this bill.
Good gawd, buck up, it can’t be as bad as all that.
More right wing bumper sticker slogans ? I guess globalism isn't a thing after all......
Mathematics is neither left- nor right-wing. Calling out corrupt payoffs to voting blocs that supported you is not a bumper sticker slogan. Globalism is real and valuable; crony globalism and white-guilt globalism are real and worthless.
As long as we remain naive enough to believe there is an "elite' class of people among us I'd say humanity is doomed.
You're allowed to check out anytime. Nobody stopping you.
«This law literally makes it illegal to charge an illegal alien foreigner that intentionally votes illegally with a crime.»
My impression, from social media posts of dem activistis that boast of how they got out the immigrant vote, is that happened a lot, but as a rule it does not much practically matter, because it happens mostly in dem areas that are going to vote dem anyhow, see California.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57037
e., there is more than temporary relief in the Stimulus package. Just two weeks ago, Vermont's state treasurer was recommending cuts to public employee pensions moving forward because our state has a massive unfunded liability in this area. She publicly prayed for a bundle of cash from the feds. From her lips to Biden's (and Dems in Congress) ears. Prayers answered.
VT is poorly managed in many aspects. The pile of money the state is receiving from this package only serves to coverup poor management decisions from the past and encourage the same poor management in the future.
Temporary relief- not so much.
Not so fast! There is an amendment in the package that doesn't allow states to put the COVID money into pension funds
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/us/politics/biden-stimulus-state-tax-cuts.html
In fact - there are many prohibitions, including one against lowering taxes in response to the federal windfall. So much so, that this bill may be unconstitutional via the 10th amendment.
But the bigger deal is - WHY DIDNT THIS ARTICLE GET WRITTEN BEFORE THE BILL WAS DEBATED AND PASSED?
What is wrong with journalism in this country when the idiots at the NY Times think that it is acceptable for congressmen and women to have to "pass the bill to see what's in it."
Keep in mind, journalists were upset when a senator wanted to have the bill read in full before voting took place (not that anyone listened at all). But wouldn't a true fourth estate, committed to afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted want to raise questions of politicians prior to the passage of laws?
"Not so fast! There is an amendment in the package that doesn't allow states to put the COVID money into pension funds "
Please tell me your day job is writing jokes for wretched stand-up comics. This provision is meaningless. I have a series on my own Substack column (BillHeath.Substack.com) that examines what happens to the money. I'm less than a quarter way through it.
Money is fungible. There is no way to identify the actual use to which a dollar has been put. If I nod my head and agree not to put one dollar into pensions, I spend the dollar on paperclips for the Department of Irrelevancy. Then, I take a dollar away from the budget for paperclips and put THAT dollar into pensions. See, I complied. It's a totally different dollar. Look into my eyes, I am getting very sleepy.
The bill reveals a lot about COVID we never knew. COVID relief goes to people who suffered losses from straight-line winds or derechos. So, COVID causes climate change. People cannot fly into the US without a COVID vaccine, but they are allowed to walk across the Southwest Border at will, might be tested for COVID (at a state or city's expense), and whether positive or not are put on a bus to somewhere (your neighborhood). Walking across the Southwest Border causes the virus to be non-transmissible to humans. Honest. Living farther than average from one's neighbors makes one suffer more from COVID than others. Being a federal employee eligible for union membership is so injurious to health that every one of them, who has drawn a paycheck throughout the pandemic, is gifted 15 weeks of extra vacation at a total cost of $66 billion, to compensate them for such unique hardships as keeping children entertained while out of school, teaching children instead of teachers doing it, taking care of sick members of their households and perhaps even becoming ill themselves. You know, the kinds of hardships no one else in the country went through. An extra $30K-plus for federal employees who are eligible for union membership.
This list is almost endless. The payoffs to teachers' unions are shameful. I need to stop before I have another stroke.
Of course it's all voter-buying/payoff pork. All spending bills are. Nobody thinks otherwise. And yes, while money is fungible - the idea that pension funds will be the first place the money goes is silly.
Governors and Mayors are often term limited. By the time the civil servants retire, and there is nothing but IOUs in their pension funds, the ex-Governors and Mayors and County Commissioners responsible for the gap will be long gone - or will have joined Covington & Burling or some such Legal/Lobbying org.
The money will always go to current-use funding for sinecures (think Chirlane McRae) and vote-buying.
The Democrats over-reached. I believe there is language in the bill telling states that if they accept "COVID relief" they may not reduce their taxes through 2024. That is blatantly unconstitutional (Tenth Amendment) and punishes states that have managed their finances well - nearly all of which are red. That prevents companies held hostage in high-tax states (strangely, all solid Democrat) from finding a refuge for the next three years.
That provision has to have been in the works for a while. We live in Nashville, a blue island in a red state. Nearly all state capitals are blue. We were hit with a massive property tax increase last summer, thirty-odd percent. Now I understand. If the governor turns down the aid, he'll be crucified. If he doesn't, the blue government of Nashville gets to extract extra blood from us turnips.
My only point is that the article written by the Times seems to suggest that the bill suffers from unconstitutional language, which could actually hold up the pork, especially if the 6-3 conservative SCOTUS started flexing its muscles and says that there is nothing severable about the entire package. Now that Roberts can be overruled from the right....
Great pick up! I hate to cynical, but it's all just Three Card Monti and they'll find a way to bail out the mismanaged system.
God, I hate thinking this way.
I couldn't agree more than an unbiased and responsible media should have delved deeper into this instead of choosing sides and creating a narrative for Biden.
so... SSDD?
Well, I think they can contemplate drastic reforms but I'm pretty sure they would not get much beyond just contemplation; that's how our system is set up. The best they can hope for now is to see how these temporary reforms are seen by the electorate in 2022.
This Sovietization really took off after George Floyd. The Washington Post went to extreme lengths to make readers didn’t see or readily understand their own Police shooting database. Lest readers actually see that, no, actually thousands of innocent unarmed Blacks are not murdered annually by Police.
Exactly. I remember a recent poll showing that for people who identified as very liberal, 15% believed that 10,000 unarmed black men were killed in 2019 alone. 30% of the same group believed 1,000 were.
https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf
There's the poll...very enlightening...
The media had no interest in debunking that because they’re the one who created the conditions which led to the ignorance in the first place. How else to get millions to go out and protest? And then justify riots and call anyone racist who actually tried to debunk the myth.
Basically Tucker and Sam Harris were they only ones that I saw trying to debunk the lies. If I’m wrong on that please let me know. And it’s understandable in a way if you think about the enormous risks. During the summer, reporters probably thought they would be subject to immediate termination if they were caught debunking the lies about police killings.
Brett Weinstein and Heather Haying also debunked.
Sweetie are you like 12? Our Socialization is 100 yrs in the making.
Shit is gonna hit the fan if Chauvin only gets convicted of 3rd degree murder/manslaughter-which is likely the correct outcome, imo.
THIS is the e.pierce I like to read!
Agree on the timing, but would also include Tonkin and Pentagon Papers, much of which was the result of the capture of the mechanisms of government by interests such as weapons manufacturers. It's weird how one can almost trace the distrust by the movies that were popular.
Sooo chilling....
I'd trade Tricky Dick for any of the recent assholes in office.
Beware of prosecutors with political aspirations!!!
Like "Mamala" Harris
And Sen Klobuchar
100+ years is old as dirt?
It blows my mind how little people go back into history to identify the problems and issues that lead to our current climate.
Reminds me of Eddie Izzard talking about Americans talking about history.
"And this was build OVER FIFTY YEARS AGOOOO!"
Pfft.
Haha. Says the guy going through this thread just to comment on my posts.
You know what? You're just one of those stupid cunts that gets off telling people how brainwashed they are when in fact you're among the handful of people on this godforsaken planet that hasn't realized The Matrix didn't age very well.
Do us all a favor and fuck off. :P
It's interesting that someone like him, obviously off their meds and incapable of in person meaningful social interaction, hurls constant insults toward everyone. Encouraging them to get the same kind of psychiatric treatment he so badly needs. E.pierce is why we need block lists on Substack.
Block? And miss an opportunity to laugh?
Perish the thought. :P
I'll gently point out you only need one hand to click a mouse. What's your other one doing? I think we all know.
As far as "us," I specifically mean everyone on this board. But I suspect the rest of the planet would benefit as well.
I'm currently reading Manufacturing Consent after reading Hate Inc. Now that I can see news for what it is, it's very difficult to "unsee" it, and furthermore, its unbelievable that so many people don't see it for what it is. I can't even believe people fall for the framing of arguments on FOX, CNN, MSNB, etc...
Do yourself a solid and read or reread 1984. It’s steadily becoming more relevant to our circumstances than those two fine offerings.
Read 1984 and Brave New World simultaneously. Who would have guessed that both authors work would be prescient and relevant today? They took what I feel at the time were opposing views of future dystopia . . . and yet much of the future has the features of both.
Love Orwell and Huxley, but I wonder why Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is never included on this list.
While Huxley and Orwell imagined top down dystopias by totalitarian governments who wanted to keep their citizens in the dark for political reasons, Bradbury alone understood that the censorship of the future would be lateral, grass-roots efforts pushed by ignorant citizens who wanted to remain ignorant and unchallenged by ideas which unsettled them.
https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/moral-climate/
"You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator. – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451"
The big difference between 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 is that the ending of the former offers only despair ("He loved Big Brother") and the ending of the latter offers hope ("You'll stink like a bobcat for a few days, but it'll be all right.")
I stink like a bobcat.
That's a great line, but I think Bradbury understood the mechanism of totalitarianism in a democracy better than Orwell, who had a better grasp of the tools.
Bradbury also realized from the early 1950's that technology would become ubiquitous and not make us smarter, but dumber. This is at a time when it was universally believed that technology was leading us to a world of greater freedom and enlightenment.
It's a very underestimated book for reasons I don't entirely understand.
"Bradbury understood the mechanism of totalitarianism in a democracy better than Orwell, who had a better grasp of the tools."
It's about keeping your job as a fireman.
Bradbury had a small-town, blue-collar heart.
ROTFL, Grisha.
I just watched the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" a few days ago written by Bradbury. Highly recommended viewing...should be mandatory viewing before signing up for Nextdoor...
I've thought about that episode frequently as of late. It seems the monsters are no longer due. They have arrived.
"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" has always been my favorite TWZ episode. Had no idea it was written by Bradbury, thanks.
And Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization".
Bradbury was on point!
Many of Orwell's essays are still mind-bogglingly relevant. "Looking Back on the Spanish War" is particularly good one in relation to the last 10 years of cultural and political turmoil.
Nice call, Ziggy! Tell it like it is brother Orwell!!
"We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don’t take the sword perish by smelly diseases. The fact that such a platitude is worth writing down shows what the years of rentier capitalism have done to us."
For anyone interested in reading "Looking Back on the Spanish War" .... https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/
Thank you for that. I've seen pieces and parts of that, so it was nice to sit and read the entire thing.
We are in the right, and we will win, because our spirits are crystal.
Shooting an Elephant pretty much sums up what bureaucracy, power, and...just plain stupidity can do to a person. It was brutal
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/
Thank you for the recommendation, TN Jed.
"My dog, he turned to me and he said..."
Bb F G C and...chorus!
Ain't no place I'd rather be . . .
Anyhoo, while we're riffing on Georgie's essays, ya' kinda have to start and finish with "Politics and the English language," right?
Oddly enough, I did that recently as well. It's like Orwell had a time machine, especially when he describes the perpetual War stuff on the edges of the region.
Orwell didn't need a time machine. He was just an extremely astute observer of human nature.
Yes! Goldstein’s book within the book is fabulous. Orwell packs in so much into so few pages. I find 1984 insanely dense, in the best possible sense.
Here's a question for you - and a big reason why I'm reading Catalonia - the anarchists took control of the region after the government fell apart. But, thanks to Soviet undermining they eventually lost it. I get the sense they were stabbed in the back.
What interests me is the idea of people finding space to take control because the government has failed in that area. With Catalonia, it was geographical. With the internet and technology, those borders seem to matter a lot less.
Do we have similar opportunities now? And will reading experiences like Orwell's better prepare us?
Good question, and yes. Orwell is always good for business. Slightly off topic, I just read his 1935 review of Tropic of Cancer, which I thought was off the mark. Orwell seems to me to dismiss Miller as just a dirty mind, while overlooking his impassioned call to responding to the world’s misery by laughing in the face of it and choosing to live life to the fullest.
I’ve read Matt say that we make too many references to Orwell, and I appreciate Matt’s effort to keep discourse civil, but I believe any effort to assess, “Where Is This All Headed” we should use Orwell & the Stalinist period as guides. (MUCH to my chagrin, I’m poorly versed in Mao/China)
There is an amazing piece of recursively illogical gymnastics that Frank Luntz performs redefining the term "Orwellian" during an interview with Terry Gross of Fresh Air many years back now. Luntz of course trying to reframe the term to mean "honest and truthful". It is classic Luntz.
To exemplify of all the negative connotations of "clever", Frank Luntz is worth a thousand pictures.
Another book to read! Fantastic. Laughing in spite of it all is one of my favorite things. It's a good way to resist.
I know a little bit about China. From what I understand, they developed along collectivist lines naturally (thanks to the dangerous rivers that dominated their early history). Then you have ideas like the Mandate of Heaven (if bad things happen the government is no longer in heaven's favor) and the cyclical nature of their dynastic periods (always advancing upwards but in a corkscrew pattern of collapse and restoration, if that makes sense?).
Anywho. Yay history!
I've been getting back into Orwell as well. Making my way through Homage to Catalonia - the first page had me tearing up!
Homage to Catalonia is amazing-and showcases Orwell’s ability to see through media perpetuated bs and convey it to the public-on all sides of an issue.
I would also recommend (while cringing) Industrial Society and Its Future--the Unabomber's Manifesto. While he was and presumably is a terrorist and is going to spend life in prison, as he should, when it comes to his luddite critiques of technology . . . he makes a lot of good point and turns out to be weirdly prescient.
Which is very strange for someone who thought bombing people would be a good way to get attention for his manifesto, given that it could have been the best selling book in history and everyone could have read it and it would have ultimately changed nothing, even if he hadn't been a terrorist. Warnings are not implementable solutions.
Ted Kaczynsk was a genius despite having some very poor judgement
Terrorism gets attention. That's the whole point of it.
Meaning, I'm taking it, that what he really wanted was attention, not to actually warn people or effect change? Because he is, like I said, weirdly prescient but there's no way I could ever imagine any of his warnings being heeded, even if he'd gotten global attention, and without any terrorism.
Just ask Cassandra!
BTW, quick clarification: while that is the popular understanding of Luddite, it is not all that historically accurate. For Luddites, it was never about the machines per se but the sudden loss of any means to support their families. While that may be splitting hairs to some, it is a huge difference, IMO.
I would also like to throw in a pitch for The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, who wrote an introduction to an anniversary edition of 1984. Pynchon captured the inability to figure out the truth in a way that I think is very relevant.
I've never read it but picked up a copy recently. I think I'm avoiding starting it because I'm afraid it will be like super-food for my depression. I just finished Fahrenheit 451, so I think I need something a little lighter in-between the two.
1984 will depress the hell out of you. It is much darker than Fahrenheit 451. But you absolutely need to read it. I would prescribe a heavy dose of Calvin & Hobbes both before and afterward.
Thanks for the warning. Ironically, I just recently read the entire Calvin & Hobbes collection in an effort to lift my spirits. Maybe I'll have to buy the omnibus of the Far Side to prepare for 1984.
I often watch movies and shows where nothing "makes sense" in a real-life way, but enjoy the obvious fantasy stories (even though motivations are not realistic, physics is treated haphazardly, things that should kill people do not, etc). I think a lot of people absorb news and opinion the same way, on a strictly visceral and emotional level that doesn't engage critical thinking.
Arcanaut: Social Psych literature is filled with examples of what you speak, but not just for news. It is pretty clear that emotions sweep over our bodies in microseconds. Our conscious brains are left in the dust trying to scour the environment for the cause(s) of the emotions.
The accuracy of that conscious process appears to be a function of time x training. Obviously the more time and training, the higher the chances of accuracy identifying the the cause(s).
Good point, it would be logical they turn on their suspension of disbelief; however instead of as in a sci-fi movie you clearly know you aren't seeing reality, in the case of MSM "news" you suspend your critical faculties based on your emotionally held prior beliefs.
This is why I subscribe.
I subscribe because Matt is a great writer who, unlike Jerry Seinfeld occasionally makes me laugh out loud.
Just think where that boy would be if he had himself an Uncle Morty
What does all of this look like in four years? Biden won't make it that long. We moved from Trumpism to Weekend at Bernie'sism. The press is doing all it can to make Biden look like the man behind the curtain, but he's a walking corpse.
Right, Biden won’t last four years. He’s almost a babbling idiot already.
...almost?
Biden was a babbling idiot a year and a half ago. Watch him bragging about getting the Ukrainian judicial official removed in 2018. Biden was full of fire, very lucid and smooth; a completely different man than whomyou see before the teleprompter today. It’s sad that those around him would put us and him through this.
I can't really feel compassion for a man who played fiddle to the rigged system his whole life, changing like a chameleon upon request.
He's a cracked old egg... but no a pitiable one.
Take a look at the parade of walking corpses the Soviets sent out before Gorbachev was too little, too late. There are clues there, for sure.
Have posted this multiple times but Biden = Chernenko. It's not like there aren't any other walking corpses. Feinstein? Pelosi? This country is a gerontocracy. Tulsi Gabbard, in her early 40s, quit the House in disgust.
If Trump would have pretended to be more serious about COVID, stopped tweeting and shut his GD mouth just a little bit he would have won. Don't be mad at Biden because Trump was such a terrible candidate. Reminds me of the smug righties in 2016 saying ad nauseum, "and that's why you lost."
No, it wouldn't have made any difference. Trump was of the wrong class, nothing more and nothing less. And the idea that someone from the wrong class was in that position was more than they could bear. Not mean tweeting, better on COVID, they don't matter, nor does the fact that he was better for African-Americans, had a positive view of the economy and how to fire it up. No, he ate steak with ketchup. Well done.
I'm not defending Trump. That doesn't mean I can't scoff at the left who believe they elected some revolutionary. The guy is a hack, and far more dangerous than Trump as a result. Biden is frail enough to give the wokeists their opening. I can't be mad at someone I don't believe has general cognitive abilities, he's helpless.
Odds only slightly favor Banjo Boy making it through 4
https://www.betonline.ag/sportsbook/futures-and-props/politics-futures
It will look like Russia. Russia is what the cowardly US populace deserves. They are happy to swallow any smarmy remark about Trump and any exaggerated nonsense about Biden’s sainthood. Where is our revolutionary spirit? Where is our sense of outrage? When the NY Post story of Biden family corruption was completely stifled by mainstream media, we swallowed it. When courts refused to give fair hearing to evidence of election fraud, we swallowed it. When Biden told lies about vaccine availability, we swallowed it. When CNN made up a completely false story about a private school kid facing up to a native American, we swallowed it and didn’t care that there was no correction, much less an apology. Now we watch as the Sneeches and Dumbo are censored, and we swallow it. Russia is what we deserve.
I had a church group of Jan 6 protesters staying at my house just outside the DC area. Not religious myself but they are friends of the family from MN. They weren't rioters. The vast majority of us decided to play it peacefully this time around. I had to work on the 6th and didn't see the point of going to that hateful city.
The alternative was starting a _real_ insurrection, not the fake one fed to us in the press. Next time, I doubt we'll be so peaceful, and I will go.
I love your honesty and your integrity. We need more like you.
If I understand you correctly, you are advocating the violent overthrow of the United States of America. Is that correct?
Never an advocate of war, I've seen it up close and personal and wish this wasn't happening during my lifetime. I am a realist, however. That frog boiling story is incorrect, the frog eventually jumps when you turn the heat up enough.
This government/media has had several warnings about this. Trump's election was one. You think somehow we are too dumb to understand he was inappropriate by prior presidential standards? To get rid of him, unconstitutional election law changes were made and victory laps are being taken in the mass media for stealing the election, just like every year, but still. Do you think a wall around the people's house and 30k troops around it screams "legitimate government"? But the media and govt keep doubling down on oppression. I would expect the breaking point to be a gun grab. There is a reason ammo is unobtainium for many people. They are preparing.
So no, not an advocate, just a realist.
I'm not going to be satisfied until I have a rotating stock of 2000 rounds of 45 ACP.
If you can't explain it yourself, why the fuck should I waste time with a 30 minute random ass YouTube video?
"delusional right wing" is just a slur at the point almost half the population falls into that description. Despite what you think of their mindset.
I have embraced my delusions while I stock up on ammo.
Or what?
They're not informed, paying too little attention, don't know the extent of it, read or hear the news selectively - that seems to happen a lot - or don't care. I hadn't known the extent of it. I'd read Bloom, knew what was going on in our institutions, but had no idea of the scale of it., and assumed anyone rational would reject the lunacy. Don't assume. Three years ago that changed when our company was targeted. We stood our ground, but I started paying close attention, and was appalled. Someone I know recently referred to the Democrats as "our side." He was an English major in college, had even wanted to be a writer, so I assumed he'd be up on at least the censorship front. I asked him what he thought about the move to shelve the classics. What move? he asked. Are you sure? How about CRT, wasn't it obnoxious? What's that? When I sent him Matt's take on censorship - the media had lost its mind, and White Fragility, he responded: So what are you saying? That still stumps me. Either they are getting their news in a vacuum or they are too lazy, content, self-absorbed, or too involved in work, family life, weekend football, to know. Or too thick. Without constant paying attention, there was always a chance that America's very liberality could be used by its enemies, enemies within, to destroy it. Recent, successive generations too soft, They let others do their fighting for them, some demeaning those who do it. As other parts of the world explode in brutality, this brave crowd, in an act of orgasmic nobility, is bent on destroying the West.
Where's our "beautiful health care plan"? Is it "infrastructure week"? You swallowed that, and more. GTFO
How hard is it to write good humor about Joe Biden, anyway? The Onion ran a series on the antics of 'Uncle Joe" when he was VP, and it was hilarious. He was 'The President of Vice"! The prevailing attitude today is that if you poke fun at Biden in any way, you're actively promoting Trump, or something like that.
PS: An Onion writer who was involved in creating the Uncle Joe series apologized for it last year. You can't make this stuff up.
"An Onion writer who was involved in creating the Uncle Joe series apologized for it last year." you gotta be kidding me. There are dozens of those Diamond Joe Biden articles and they're hilarious..
"Biden Loses Control Of Butterfly Knife During Commencement Speech"
The Onion hasn't been as funny lately. I imagine a couple woke children could ruin the dynamic of their notorious "is it funny or not" writers room. I find myself laughing harder at the Babylon Bee
"Chick-Fil-A Now Open On Sunday But Only For Black People"
I wish it was a joke. I found out about The Onion apology when I was searching for the Uncle Joe series. And I agree that The Onion seems to have lost their fastball, and Babylon Bee is picking up the slack.
«The prevailing attitude today is that if you poke fun at Biden in any way, you're actively promoting Trump, or something like that.»
It is the word of the decade: "objectively". Usual quote from George Orwell, 1945, in a preface to "Animal Farm" that remained unpublished at the time:
“One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ʻbourgeois libertyʼ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ʻobjectivelyʼ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. [...] These people don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. [...] But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ʻanti-Fascismʼ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?”
All Vietnam Vets, and even Vietnam Era Vets will remember the Fascist logic behind "We have to *destroy the Village in order to *save the Village". In modern times, the words have changed, but the "song" remains the same.
Lots of Iraq and Afghanistan vets too.
Outstanding and timely -- unique Matt's talents. I see many of commenters are labeling Biden administration as "left", "socialist", etc. A big error of confusing corrupt DNC oligarchs with -- "left". Why such persistent blindness? Such readers will never realize how are we being played, like a violin, by two equally repulsive oligarch groups competing for power.
Trump supporters are, of course, rightfully incensed by DNC scam of the century -- the Russia-gate hoax. But Trump was also a disaster and incompetent -- he didn't give pardon to his biggest ally - Julian Assange who unmasked decades of neo-liberal crimes, for example.
There is nothing left in Biden's administration -- just a desperate actions to survive after eking a margin thin "victory". Biden is all for $2K and immediately (3 months later it is $1.4K to some), he is all for $15/hr min (by now it should be $30+/hr) but the time (in pandemic catastrophe) is not yet now, of course, health care for all - "never"...
But the War party, on that oligarchs of both DNC and GOP fully agree, is proceeding full speed. Brutal medieval sanctions on "disobedient" countries, US military marched into Syria's oil fields the very second day of victory, Israel damages Iran oil tankers (obviously by US approval)
The recent letter by two California House "lifer" Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney to CEO's of cable companies are truly unparalleled and represents the rise of fascism in the US -- under a guise of "fighting fascism." All these multiple attacks are clearly carefully choreographed and coordinated -- easily predicted since we should always keep in mind that there is one huge elephant in the room:
The scam of the century - the now 5-year long Russia-gate hoax initiated by Obama/Biden administration
The Russia-gate hoax and two-impeachment “entertainments” were concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Maxine Waters, Jamie Ruskin, etc., etc. -- and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military and security industry donors, i.e., the War party
By far the absolutely highest need of Biden government and its DNC oligarch cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax – the scam of the century -- will NOT / will NEVER be exposed.
This represents a new phase of US domestic politics -- nothing "left" or "socialist" there...
Kill shot, Boris.
<<A big error of confusing corrupt DNC oligarchs with -- "left". Why such persistent blindness?>>
Why indeed?
<<represents the rise of fascism in the US -- under a guise of "fighting fascism.">>
"Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations." Old intelligence agency technique. You try to publicly smear the opposing party for doing the thing that you yourself are doing in private.
Good ol' flick with Sean Connery, little seen today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong_Is_Right
<<This represents a new phase of US domestic politics -- nothing "left" or "socialist" there...>>
Yup.
This is historical truth at it’s finest.
The right started out as classic liberals and civil libertarians who later fought a civil war with the Confederate States of America to abolish slavery. Referring to the right as neoconfederates is laughable.
Frederick Douglas was a strong free market advocate. Maybe that’s why the woke morons toppled his statue this summer........
Fact check: Woke morons did not topple the statue of the esteemed abolitionist, Frederick Douglas. An IDEA toppled that statue. You do not want to go off script. Taylor Lorenz is probably monitoring this thread.
We didn't get President Frederick Douglass for the same reasons we didn't get President Lysander Spooner.
Nice to see your thoughtful scribblings again -- from a man who normally focuses/obsessing on attempting to badmouth the publisher of a century being, Julian Assange, who is persecuted and tortured by corrupt leadership of both DNC and GOP wings of the US War party
Assange is not very smart. I was restricted from reading his messaging for many years. That said, what I saw before that convinced me that his life was going to be made a misery. It was and it is. So what makes him a great publisher? The relatively low level sigint he had wasn that, I hope.
I see that HBI considers himself "smarter" than Julian Assange... Poor HBI pretend not to understand that the greatness of Assange is in his unimpeachable integrity and courage...
The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny
The real measure of how free is a society is not how its mainstream, well-behaved ruling class servants are treated, but the fate of its actual dissidents.
Glenn – Dec 31
The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
Ok, he managed to via "unimpeachable integrity" get himself locked in the Ecuadorian embassy for what, 8 years? And now he's in a Brit jail. So his life sucks and has sucked for almost 10 years. For what?
For what? He exposed decades-long US neo-liberal/fascist crimes. Since you pretend not to understand this -- you are just another, possibly paid, bloodsucking troll.
Still, have a nice day ... ;-))
Assange's immense contribution to society are completely irrelevant to you, my miserable bloodsucking troll.
Your predicament, that you are walking around with your little head deep inside of your ass is also irrelevant to readers in this group.
The total silence
-- On persecution and torture of publisher of the century Julian Assange and
-- On unmasking of OPCW fabrications about all chemical poison attacks in Syria by war-mongers
are but two examples of a complete failure of corporate media in reporting, that is, of their censorship on behalf of their main advertisers and owners.
The situation for a free press in the United States is truly alarming -- as alarming as during the height of Cold War and McCarthy censorship eras.
Stupid arguments about labels? Pot, meet kettle. No one can define fascism adequately, anyway. Totalitarian is about all I can agree on. A totalized society offers only the solution to tune out. Everything in my life is local local local except this.
Fascism is very precisely formulated - a synonym is corporatism -- ruling unification/merger of large corporations and government.
United States is not a democracy -- it has been a fascistic country for decades
Love it, Matt. My husband sees Biden as a tired old used car salesman. I agree. Would you really buy something you needed to drive you and your loved ones safely from Joe Biden? I think not. “I know you're here to buy an SUV you can afford - and my fellow American, I feel your pain. You lost your small business, your kids gained thirty pounds and fell back two years during the school lockdown, but this SUV will transport you to another world when you take it for a spin and the tires blow out and you roll over a cliff. Hey, all your pain will be gone. I say that as a good Catholic.” But the mainstream media is now made up of used car salesmen - or salespeople, too. Would I buy a used car from any of these journalists? No. And maybe I'm overly optimistic but I think a lot of people will wake up to the lemons they bought from the mainstream press.
I tend to agree with you and your *husband ! In addition to the propaganda push to avoid "buyer's remorse" on the Biden victory among his voters, everyone is now willing to "adore" Biden, warts and all, simply for *being exactly what he was placed in *office to be, i.e., the UN-Trump ! So, for now, if Biden successfully ties his own *shoelaces in the morning, he will be treated like Lincoln in that latter man's prime ! ;-D The Dems are "selling" Biden to the world. It is a clearly damaged product, but it's *most attractive feature is that it is NOT Trump. Perhaps a "low bar", but an admitted improvement over four years of NO BAR !
I will also say that, in general, Biden is too *old for the job. Before I am nabbed by the P.C. Police, I myself am 72 yrs. old. Biden is *far too prone to "Senior Moments", and this is not a *new facet of his profile. I know what "Senior Moments" are *like ! Let's just say that I welcome and celebrate the fact that Biden has a more "youthful" V.P. to back his play ! ;-D
I do not say that age = inability for the place of POTUS, I am saying that in *this case age is a problem in the position of POTUS. The philosopher Grace Lee Boggs who used to feature on Bill Moyers' show was still one of the most *breathtaking intellects in the Nation just before we lost her at age 96.
Biden is *far too prone to "Senior Moments"
I'm afraid that Biden's "Senior Moments" have morphed into "Senior Minutes"
Hey, I *love that, specifically because it seems to be just "Too True" ! ;-D
This can't be surprising, Matt. In every one of these articles, there's always the disclaimer of "I'm not a Republican, but..." or "I'm not a right-winger, but...", as if being Republican or right-wing would automatically disqualify someone from having a cogent opinion on various happenings in this country.
Naturally I have to add my own disclaimer: this isn't an endorsement of right-wing or Republican politicians and policies. Clearly the right has supported some bad people and policies in recent years, but they certainly don't have a monopoly on bad ideas, politicians, and policies. And I'm not sure why it's divisive to say that.
All right wingers are white nationalists or white adjacent fascists with internalized racism. If you are a right wing sympathizer, you might as well line up to take selfies at the next capitol riot. That requires a disclaimer in this day and age.
lol at the selfies.
The only way to get what they want is to create a one-party state. They're trying to do it via stealth. That doesn't work. You have to do it openly. They've basically taken the Nazi 1933 playbook and run it about one-third of the way through. The Soviets in 1917 didn't understand how to pacify the country and had to fight a many year civil war vs the Whites as a result.
«The only way to get what they want is to create a one-party state. They're trying to do it via stealth»
Here we have a time traveller from a century ago trying to warn the future about what has already happened... :-)
Gore Vidal: “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
George Mikes: “In England you know for instance that the Labour Party is for the nationalization of various industries and the Conservatives are against it. In America such ideological clashes hardly ever occur. A practical issue may be whether the U.S. should give a large loan to Britain or not. In Siloam Springs (Ala) the loyal Democratic leader, with an eye on the Jewish inhabitants, may take up an anti-British attitude because of Palestine. In the next village, however, the bank manager's daughter may have an English fiancé, a former R.A.F. pilot, who is personally very popular and the Democratic Party leader will be inclined to say: 'Let the poor boy have the dough.' All this may seem very confusing but, in fact, it is quite simple. The difference between the two main American parties is very sharp and well defined; it is more marked than the difference between Communists and right-wing Democrats in any European coalition government:
(a) one party is in, the other is out;
(b) one party wants to stay in and the other tries to get it out.”
Love the Gore Vidal quote because it reminds me of an allegory favored by my Poly Sci instructor when I came back from SE Asia and went to school on the G.I. Bill. Vidal calls it the "Property Party", my Instructor would have concurred.
"Imagine", my instructor would encourage, "that you own a HUGE sandbox, and all of the sand therein. You don't *really care if those living in your sandbox decide from time to time to shove all of the sand over to the Left and they call *your sandbox a 'Democratic State'.
Conversely, they will also shove *all of the sand over to the Right, and call *your sandbox a "Republican State". You care not one whit, so long as the sand stays IN the sandbox, and so long as you continue to *own the sandbox.
This allegory explains and illustrates the *fact of Corporate Control in America. In this particular view, Noam Chomsky would agree with Vidal. The Two Party system, along with the ability for the masses to push the sand either right or left, creates the *illusion for the masses that REAL and *lasting change is possible.
So, all of the pushing keeps the masses "worn out", waiting for all the wealth to "trickle down", and it also keeps them nicely compartmentalized, first into imaginary "States" (chunks of real estate with imaginary boundaries) creating the sense that we are *not together at all). And now into even more artificial "Red" and "Blue" States which create even *more polarization.
Thus is maintained one of the oldest military strategies possible for political application - Divide and Conquer. However, note that *NOTHING is really happening so long as you *continue to own the sandbox, and all of the sand within.
The lack of clear distinction between the parties was a strength, not a weakness of the system.
Matt has to add this disclaimer to everything. These days, if you say anything that isn't a direct quote from the New York Times, everybody on the "left" will assume that you're a card-carrying Trump supporter.
It’s always been like that in right wing spaces; it’s as if the not-really left democrats finally caught onto the power of McCarthyism.
As a descendent of Russians who escaped the pogroms in the late 19th century on one side and Nazi Austria and Germany on the other side, to find America, the land of the free (and the free press), in four years this looks very bad. Conceptually it's very disheartening to see so many immigrant's descendants from these eras of incredible censorship and propaganda embrace an America turning its collective back on the personal freedoms that made this country a beacon of light for their ancestors. Collective amnesia is one of our favorite past times but, to quote a great line from the recent classic film Death of Stalin, "I’ve had nightmares that made more sense than this."
Fabulous movie.
I find myself often screaming, "PLAY BETTER, YOU CLATTERING FANNIES."
Do you think I should see a doctor? ;)