It's fitting that you refer to Airplane because every time I here someone run through the newest list of approved pronouns I keep waiting for the jive subtitles to pop up on screen.
And seriously Matt, our entire culture is filled with yoohoos who spout cliches & buzz phrases like they were actually saying shit. Every time I hear some wanker blather on about "taking it to the next level" I always assume that they're discussing how they've managed to shove their head deeper into their own asshole.
Commercials are filled with "you got this" or "you can do this" because there's nothing more inspiring than a pep talk delivered by an actor in a commercial.
Hundreds of women take to the internet with bikini selfies & topless selfies under the auspices of promoting some cause or other when what they're really doing is feeding that narcissistic attention monkey that's riding on their little self obsessed & emotionally needy backs.
Geez, we even have "smart" people literally telling us that finding the right answer to a math problem is racist.
So I think it's pretty safe to say that the dumbing down has worked splendidly. Americans have taken to brain damaged idiocy like a duck takes to a fish filled lake or Hunter Biden takes to a crack pipe.
I think we both know that won't be changing any time soon.
I don't think that you could faithfully remake anything if it aired before 2018.
Let's see;
The Wolfman- Oh just a typical cishetero toxic masculinity infected man who doesn't know that no means no.
The Longest Day - US imperialism spreading anti-German xenophobia
Death Wish - gun toting right winger infected with toxic masculinity, racism & class hatred.
Fantasia - black people weren't even allowed in theaters to see this typical white privilege promoting racist screed disguised as a cartoon.
Frankenstein - The Dr. symbolizes white hubris & privilege while the "monster" (I've never liked that term) symbolizes the specter of the shunned & misunderstood black man, hounded & harried until he reacts violently to his oppression.
War Of The Worlds - Humans give Trump-like violent response to Martian immigrants just seeking a better life for their tentacled kids.
They'd have to change at least one bit from Dr. No. Bond is on No's island with Ursula Andress & a black agent. At one point Bond sends the black guy to fetch his shoes. Woke heads would pop like big zits if you streamed that to their smartphones.
The Jerk, Animal House, the Mash movie, 16 Candles, Blues Brothers, Vacation, pretty much every Mel Brooks movie (History of the World, Space Balls) Recently I’ve wondered about Ernie Hudson in ghostbusters telling the mayor that they’d “seen shit that would turn you white” 😎
So you're saying they can't be friends? What are you, a fishist? I suppose you think all animals should be segregated? I think it's high time that you were introduced to CCT or Critical Critter Theory.
Love you and your work, Matt—twenty years running. But now of all times, you don’t get to pull the whole “bemused and somewhat concerned observer above the fray,” another of those “cringy” op-ed tropes you cataloged.
Sure, when it comes to the Maté-Dore-The Young F*cks matter, there are personal beefs at play. But Dore’s doing something long overdue when it comes to the whole left-liberal “progressive movement” that’s been ascendant over the last decade or so. Now that it’s pretty much run its course and self-liquidated, both unwittingly and wittingly bolstering neoliberal and Democratic Party power, there are some (from left libertarians to social democrats to orthodox Marxists) who think it’s important to at least call out the opportunists and fight The New New Left (DNC-sanctioned/subservient) from the left.
That’s what Dore’s doing—been doing since he saw the writing on the wall at least as far back as 2016 and certainly during the BlueAnon Russiagate conspiracy. And you’ve indicated elsewhere that this thing between Maté, Dore, and The Young F*cks isn’t just some internecine “spat.” It’s a symptom of something much bigger, more significant. The people who frame it as a mere “spat” are the same sort who come at you with “what happened to you man” on Twitwit.
This is definitely a time to take sides and duke it out—making it clear who’s got whose backs, making it clear who’s cashing in by running interference for the ultra-powerful few by selling out the majority of everyday people. Dore’s one of the few high-profile lefties doing it.
Recently one of the best Dore's best lines was this nugget: "Joe Biden, whenever he goes off script, he immediately goes to being a pedophile or a racist."
It’s a different battle, but there’s a similar dynamic to the TYT vs. Mate/Dore fight; principled journalists are attacked for, well, being principled journalists.
A long time ago I patiently explained to a friend that when they scream "hypocrisy" the real point of attack is not that a principle or standard was breached, but that someone has the temerity to have principles and standards.
Thanks for citing the Jonathon Cook piece, and I concur with Ben's succinct comment. I was particularly impressed with Cook's cogent take in saying:
"Robinson implies that Greenwald has been embittered by these experiences, and is petulantly hitting back against the “liberal” establishment without regard to the consequences. But a fairer reading would be that Greenwald is fighting against knee-jerk, authoritarian instincts wherever they are found in our societies – on the right, the centre and the left."
Thank you both for contributing some calm and thoughtful reasoning to what hopefully continues to be a "cautiously optimistic" weekend.
I don't think that one has to look farther than the crumbling case against Julian Assange to understand exactly how depraved our government has become and how actual whistleblowers, not the fake intelligence anti-Trump whistleblowers the Democrats spent 4 years blowing, are demonized, vilified, hounded & smeared.
If you're unaware, the key witness against Assange was a sociopath, a convicted child molester & financial fraudster who not only admitted he was lying about Assange but he has also admitted that he continued his crime spree while working with the Justice Dept. & the FBI who promised him complete immunity from prosecution.
"When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals."
Remember that phrase, "red-blooded American?" It bothered me that Snowden let loose all this information. But, as time goes on, I am willing to learn more. I am willing to say, I was wrong.
Whether it was 9/11 or the advancement of the machines, or of course, their horrid marriage, I never thought in my country I should be wary of what I type or say.
Am I the only "target reader" that wants all references to Dore/Kasparian etc to end? It makes me want to think about it and that adds zero value to my life. No one needs to spend any brain energy considering anything about TYT, past or future. I think about the last interesting thing they did was their live reactions in Nov 2016.
You don't feel like you're missing out? I mean, it did begin w/ a pretty substantial dispute (Glenn Greenwald's discussion is pertinent at this point- the ease of reputation destruction that happens today). Dore's defense of Matte made for good TV IMHO. My wife & I tuned in daily to see what was going to happen next.
And the topper was TYT's Chenk doing a 32 minute total psych out over the whole thing on Wed (Thur?). As a member of the Dore cult, hate watching was never so good, LOL
To your point, it has become tiresome; right now I feel like I spent a week at an amusement park. I'm just going to kick back, sip my coffee and maybe watch Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and I Dream Of Jeanie reruns now.
It's "Inside Baseball" in the pejorative sense that it doesn't matter to real people and won't affect us. However, the Elect versus populism matters a lot.
It is synonymous to Jim Jones and L Ron Hubbard mud wrestling. The winner gets to brainwash the minds of the other’s followers. Although, Dore does seem to have his bleeding heart in the right place.
Could you expand on what you're saying here? I don't understand; for 'reals'. (lol kinda?) Do you mean that the Elect is threatened by a populist uprising? If so I agree. Furthermore, 'real people' have jobs to go to and kids to raise and have only so much bandwidth to devote? Is that right? B/c if that's the case I agree...
I'm 62 and semi retired. 30 years ago, w/ my 3 daughters I could give a shit about Clinton/Bush (tho' I voted for Bill). Aaand I thot I was 'informed' b/c I watched 60 minutes as well as the highlights from the RNC and DNC conventions at night. Aaaand... I had the NYT delivered daily....
I didn't realize how blind/mis-informed I was 'till '15.
Yes you are understanding me. Slight edit I would suggest is thet the elect got a populist uprising but are pushing a revolution of their own now. So now it's more of an existential struggle for the soul of society. Read Taibbi's piece with Wesley Yang, Andrew Sullivan's latest piece that you can get to from front page of realclearpolitics from Saturday's articles. I use McWhorter's Elect term to mean the leftist elite (formerly liberal, still progressive).
So that I'm not just criticizing and so I can point to where value is added, the interview with Wesley Yang was excellent and did add great value and perspective on new concepts!
I find your description of the TYT scandal cautiously bland. You present it like a both sided affair although the details go in one direction. When Maté was smeared as being paid by the Russians, what was he supposed to do? And were the people who care about journalism supposed to let that go by as if it was nothing?
Come Matt, come. Come to the Dark Side. Seriously, we on the "right" have been getting the shit all our lives -- or at least since we started questioning the "narrative." Our words are distorted and false motives are assigned. It goes off us now like water from a duck's back. As they say, whatever doesn't kill you . . .
Right now, I think the word means someone who disagrees with a New York Times editorial or does not trust CNN.
But the question deserves a more thoughtful answer.
I started off as a centrist D-leaner. My first vote for a congressman was for very liberal Bob Edgar.
What started me voting R consistently was abortion. Life starts somewhere and there is an obligation to protect the weak & helpless, and that how best to handle the thorny questions should be up to legislators, not courts. Democracy and protecting the weak are pretty liberal positions if you think about it.
Did you know that either Sweden or Norway ban most abortions at 18 weeks? The other bans it at 20 weeks.
I started a business. Was successful but never big. I saw first hand how rules like minimum wage & protected categories claimed to help the little guy & gal actually hurt them bad. I remember how circa Y2K concerns about OSHA being applied to telecommuters.
I saw twisted corruption and indifference in public schools.
I believe in God and think Christian values are necessary. it puzzles me why some think replacing a spiritual authority that demands we be merciful, compassionate and loving with a technocratic state is somehow a good thing. Especially when it dawns on one that in a technocratic state there is no such thing as unalienable rights.
I was always a big supporter of the 1st Amendment. I remember that TV movie when I was a kids where the Jews defended the rights of some Nazis to march through Skokie and thought that those Jews were really cool.
I, however, then became a big supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Why let bullies have the power? A gun equalizes things between a woman and a rapist, or an old man and the sadistic thug that enters his home. I now think we should consider arming the citizenry and disarming the police. Let their power be just their badge. When Britain did it, it might been the safest it ever was: https://billlawrenceonline.com/carlisle-moody-handguns-stop-murders/
And then there is global warming. I don't like pollution. I think minimizing greenhouse gases is a noble task. OTOH, I think the working class should have access to refrigerators and air conditioning and vacations in Florida. The policies pushed by the D.C. class means these end. Note that would be just for the working & middle class, not for the crowd in which Al Gore and Difi and Schumer hang with.
So what brought me back to the "left"? Trump did. I saw that the military industrial complex is real and evil. I saw that our military actions overseas were unnecessary and founded on lies. I questioned the need for NATO since 1990, but I just shrugged and trusted government when it remained.
I finally fully saw that big business was run by greedy liars who actually wanted to destroy the free market, and thought slave labor was just peachy. I never like the big guys but I never thought they were anything close to this bad.
I've become more nuanced on gay marriage. I still don't think marriage is a right -- and neither do you, if you think about it -- but guys like Grenell & Greenwald have led me to conclude that kids being raised by them and their partners are infinitely better off than being in foster care.
So there you go. The blueprint on how to get my vote.
Marriage is not a “right”, but it is the vehicle through which various legal rights are filtered by the courts and society-inheritance, end of life/critical care issues. Therefore, from a libertarian POV, gays cannot be cut out from access to said rights by dint of their sexuality.
Calling it “marriage” vs. “civil unions for all” from a legal government perspective-who cares. Also, no religion should be forced by the government to alter their theology/sacramental practices on marriage. A couple has to get a marriage license even if they then have a religious ceremony. Separate entities.
Should a father/adult daughter be cut from these rights by dint of their sexuality?
Civil marriage is the attempt to make sure babies aren't dumped on the rest of us, mothers aren't abandoned and fathers aren't cucked to indifference.
It really isn't about love or religion. Those things are nice but if love conquered all and all were perfect Christians, civil marriage (and family courts) would not be necessary.
Two responsible gays raising kids nobody else wants deserve the benefits (and obligations) of marriage.
Otherwise, I'd say it wasn't necessary -- and with regard to inheritance -- rather unfair. Should a father be allowed to "marry" his son to beat the tax man?
But to return to the first paragraph, here is some nuance: If dad was in his 70s & daughter was a 40-something single mom and the family unit was surviving on dad's SS & daughter's low-wage job & dad was a de facto dad to the grandkids, yes they should be allowed to get married with daughter inheriting the pension & SS & anything else tax free.
>> The main difference is that the quasi-religion of postmodern cultural-leftists is hypertoxic and deeply dysfunctional, incapable of generating authentic meaning, and in fact generating a crisis of meaning to undermine both traditional religion and modern rationalism.
Well put. The only meaning I can see in living the extreme postmodern ideal is the camaraderie you have when belonging to a cult.
I'm inclined to agree. But to return to abortion, when you say "politicizing it is almost as appalling as abortion itself" do you mean legislatures should be prevented from addressing it?
Bad and unwise policy is bad and unwise. If you got rid of Roe and let legislatures deal with it the issue would eventually get resolved much as it is in Europe.
Funny about Brooks and Friedman. They both bring you news and views from the lobby of a 5 star hotel somewhere in the region of what appears to be a war or starving people or something we need to be more "Thoughtful" about. These are the people who would starve to death without credit cards and cell phones.
I kind of want a reality show: "David Brooks Doing Things," a cross between his tedious columns and the lately esteemed JACKASS. David Brooks cigarette boat racing, David Brooks wrestling alligators, David Brooks participating in gunfights in small, dismal towns on the Mexico-U.S. border.
Thank you. The inside baseball spats between various media players is getting beyond tedious. And petulant af is really not a good look (looking at you, GG). The alt media is starting to become the same circle jerk bubble they became independent to get away from. Work it out amongst yourselves, while those of us uninterested will find other pastures. That talk about things that actually, you know, effect our actual lives.
Interesting to me personally as of late - financial stuff mostly. And art-related, as it happens to be my lane. Money laundering via Hunter Biden, Tony Podesta art voodoo. Crypto currency and nft tokens and everything involved with that. Environmental issues, Elizabeth Warren eyeballing a regulatory framework.
Also looking for a comb-through of Biden's latest slate of exec orders. One that stands out, and as a Good Thing - scrapping non-compete agreements, especially for low wage jobs. Dunno if Marty Walsh had anything to do with that, but it was a big problem here in Mass. For low - wage jobs, as well as for tech workers.
Decades ago, as a waiter, I had experience with employers who required "tip pooling" so the owner/management would apportion some of the tips earned to the kitchen staff. It was a way to get the waitstaff to pay a portion of the kitchen wages. Kitchen staff got more hours and higher wages already. Outback Steakhouse had lost a lawsuit over the issue. But when I went to a state office they simply told me it's a civil matter and I'd need to hire a lawyer. It was too much. For someone making $18k/year, it's just a hill not worth dying on. Owners rely on the workers not knowing to keep them in line.
Same thing happened when i was a waiter too, but the part of the tip pool went to the manager / maitre'd. Staff eventually sued and actually got some of it back. (Not me though, i was long gone.)
My stepdaughter just had to deal with this, and ended up quitting her job. The salaried manager, who was never on site, took 90% of the tips. Not joking.
Employers definitely do this. For wage claims, my state has a very pro-employee statute. Entitles the employee to treble damages and attorneys fees if they win. It's a way to make it a bit easier for the employee to enforce their rights. But this too is something most employees don't know about, and end up relinquishing their rights. Even if they win big in court, collecting is a whole other story.
100% thankfully, my server days are decades back. But to your point, collecting is something else! Like "cute little lawsuit you got there, good luck colleting your settlement" - lol
Every lawyer knows that they're almost always unenforceable, at least in my state, but employers assume employees won't know it. So they're a tool for bullying that skirts on the edge ethics. I hate instinctively solving problems by passing laws, but I'd be OK if they were banned outright.
I'm in a red state with low consumer protection, so I assume folks are still using them.
It's really a question of legal ethics. Making your employees sign a contract that is plainly not enforceable is akin to filing a frivolous lawsuit.
The arguments against them are in the "restraint of trade" category, and yes, if you quit at BK and go over to McDonald's that very day, BK lawyers know better than to bring suit because it could backfire if the employee can afford a lawyer.
Work for whomever they want. You think BK is going to look around to sue a minimum wage worker? These "agreements" are not designed to be executed against such workers; they are intended to provide additional "stickiness." They are unethical in the extreme. The only place I see for a non-compete is in a highly specialized area where your employer grants you some kind of golden parachute in exchange for a non-compete.
"Employers who continue to enter or enforce non-compete agreements against low-wage employees may find themselves in court. The new law permits low-wage employees to bring a civil action against their former employer or any “other person” that attempts to enforce a non-compete agreement on or after July 1, 2020."
So a low wage employee has recourse through the courts. I'm sure they can afford that.
If it actually happens frequently, I'm sure some smart lawyers will start making a cottage industry of suing the BKs of the world for a 50% cut of the reward. It could be the new ambulance chaser or social security disability practice, assuming the the lawsuit is as simple as that article makes it sound: if you fall under the guidelines, you win, as they cannot have a non-compete.
This is the best summary of the issue. It lies just outside of professional ethics, but making your employees sign a contract that is plainly unenforceable is akin to filing a frivolous lawsuit.
I suspect with low wage jobs, fast food for example (which i believe Joe metioned specifically), those non-competes were to prevent wars between franchisees. So many have different policies and wages within the same brand - tipping vs no tipping, etc.
FWIW, MA is also a "right-to-work" state, un-ironically.
One can be fired for any or NO reason at all. I just signed a non-compete to start a job, but here it's being applied because there are some serious trade secrets at stake -the actual intention of these non-competes.
Also... there was a clause saying I was not "allowed" to work anywhere else unless it was approved by the company. I'm sure THAT'S not enforceable, because... they don't fucking OWN me and if I want to have a second, third or fourth job I can do what I like with any time that's not being paid for by "this" company.
Please.. try to take me to court over a second job... I double DOG dare you!
I was just reading something like if you have a time limit before you take a new job, the company you're leaving has to pay you throughout that time period. Can't remember if that was Mass.
Well, it's not going anywhere. I've read so much lately i can't keep it straight, but did hear of consideration of it as government sanctioned legal tender. Just still the wild wild west at this point. I have a photography NFT minting workshop later this month, looking forward to learning more about it.
Except that a lot of very big money has skin in the crypto game. Look at who the investors and donors are. And if as Madjack said, VISA is getting involved, it's not much longer until other banksters do. And Joe has always danced for the banksters.
Madjack: “if crypto gets too big the fiat currencies will crush it.” It’s not a question of whether fiat will “crush it,” whatever that means. Money is basically an IOU. All sorts of instruments are accepted in payment of obligations (e.g., bank notes and deposits). As Minsky pointed out, the problem is getting someone to accept your IOU. The US federal government has one overriding advantage over all other money issuers to assure its IOUs will always be at the top of the money-acceptance pyramid: its credible threat of violence. The US imposes tax obligations, in dollars, on millions of people, uses dollars it creates out of thin air to purchase goods and services to provision itself, accepts only dollars in payment of taxes, and most importantly enforces tax obligations with an efficient and punitive tax-collection system employing prisons and confiscation of property. Result: lots of people want to acquire dollars. For more, see L. Randall Wray, https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/modern-money-theory-basics.html.
"[The US federal government's] IOUs will always be at the top of the money-acceptance pyramid" is obvioulsy not true, because nothing lasts forever.
In these modern times, "credible threat[s] of violence" are falling out of favor and may even be counterproductive. Remember "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"? As well, Biden's talk of F-15s and nuclear weapons didn't do him any favors when the US is getting pushed out of Afghanistan with rifles and IEDs. Soft power and perceived legitimacy are ascendant, and the US government is not winning on that front.
Ahhhhh, the soothing flow of informed reason. Thank you good sir, for throwing the switch.
Might I inquire what you believe may be the reasoning (sic), of our fiat currency overlords, in their continuous devaluing of our Federal Reserve Notes over the past several decades?
China has already begun this project. More importantly, crypto has become the medium of exchange between parties in ransomware attacks. Bigger worry? Might our national security state use the crypto/ransomware "problem" as yet another means to interfere with, spy on, snoop over, monitor closely, the many who don't to catch the few who do? Another fire drill in the name of "national security."
Let’s be clear, the media isn’t the one crafting the narratives, they’re not that clever. From “Stay Home. Save Lives” (the only alternative being leave your house and murder people) to “Russiagate,” to the 2003 Iraq war, these are carefully crafted campaigns created by the intel agencies and then fed to the media. The Five Eyes establishment is essentially what creates the narratives based on actual subversion operations.
The Russiagate narrative was literally created by a British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was mentored and backed by none other than Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 during the lead up to the Iraq war. That circle put out the WMD “dodgy dossier” back then in 2003.
The media does not shape the narrative, they are simply parroting stories fed to them by something much more sophisticated. That more sophisticated operation should be the real subject, not the silly left right hangouts that are still considered acceptable talking points.
People have to see who’s actually manipulating them. This is no different from how Venice manipulated countries to kill each other and destroy themselves hundreds of years ago. This is how ideological warfare works.
Rather than a colonial system of control, it’s largely through finance, the shaping of perception, subversion, and covert ideological warfare. The media is simply the modern instrument of that. The whole Venetian empire was literally based on this kind of stuff, profiling everyone, knowing their weaknesses, using that to destroy them, all without the targets ever knowing that they were being targeted. The media is just a more advanced and modern mechanism, but the strategic goals and approaches are the same.
So let’s stop all the left right bullshit narratives. If someone still thinks it’s a left and right not getting a long thing, or just a few bad apples spoiling the batch, or “regulatory capture”, then you really don’t get it, you don’t understand how intel operations work, how brainwashing works, and who’s doing it.
Much of the left has been brainwashed by a very coordinated media and messaging campaign, but this wasn’t organized by the media, they themselves have been brainwashed in the process.
The right was brainwashed a long time ago, it’s just been a long process of deconstructing and depatterning both sides. Then there is the increasingly aware and independently thinking grouping emerging from both sides. That grouping has to understand how these brainwashing operations were run and are still run because they’ll never stop until you can actually point them out and blow the cover of those running such operations.
The real solution is for both sides to come together, swallow their pride, realize they’ve been subjected to very sophisticated behaviour modification and brainwashing operations (real brainwashing, not the cartoonish stuff you see on television). Not wanting to believe such things have happened means they will be allowed to keep happening unnoticed.
Since the post-war period, it was known that the suggestions introduced within the group only stuck if the individual targets or “patients” were not aware that such suggestions were being made.
To unbrainwash oneself, we’d need to first start with the assumption that were we to have been brainwashed, we wouldn’t even see it or be aware. The whole thing depends on subtlety, on things appearing “normal” and that everything is just as it appears.
The way to break out of that is to actually ask yourself where your ideas come from. Most of the idea we have come from somewhere else. So the only question is do we know where they actually came from? Whether they are real ideas, or just artificial beliefs intentionally spread? How can you tell if an idea is a real idea or a subversive opinion? It may sound like an abstract question, but unless yo can tell the difference, chances are you probably hold some of these artificial subversive ideas and beliefs…
How can we tell real authentic ideas apart from fake subversive bullshit intentionally peddled and inserted into the public discourse? Unless one can make that distinction, they’re doomed.
The real solution is beyond reach. Thought isn’t the driving force, emotion is. Emotion causes many of the “intelligent” few to run amuck, along with the mindless masses.
I agree with the assessment of left/right being little more than the motion required to keep the water muddied. And the media is nothing more than “Dolt-Central”.
I believe God gave us Lemmings so we could see how people appear, as they tend to follow losers, to their own destruction.
Haa, yeah, I get compared to Tolstoy almost every day. 🍺
Complication is the perfect tool to engage for distraction. So many moving pieces it’s virtually impossible for humans, and their AI, to keep up. It’s a trip to watch.
Now, are Branson and Bezo leaving the atmosphere because they expect something to happen while they are away? If not, is Bezo, a seemingly gutless twit to many, really sending an AI robot in his place or has he hired a body double? Much like the staged moon-landings in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s? 💰💰💰
One could argue that you are right, emotion is a driving force for many thoughts, but generally people tend to think about the negative emotions and negative responses, but what about the positive? If we look at most of history, the odds have always been against the few organized forces for progress, and yet the forces of progress have succeeded against the odds time and time again. Europe did not emerge from a dark age and have a renaissance simply because of some evolutionary trait, there were sovereign thinking individuals who actually organized themselves based on a conceptual outlook. The Renaissance was first and foremost a conceptual leap in the image of man, a transcendence from the fixed feudalistic idea of society where nothing changes, nation states did not exist and Europe was simply a collection of petty fiefdoms, a society run by a small very stupid and bestial hereditary ruling class. And yet, the Renaissance undid all that. In many ways, we can understand much of the last 500 years as an attempt by oligarchical forces to bring society back under that system of feudal rule. They call it a ''reset.''
What we need is a Renaissance, not a reset. To have a renaissance, people need to actually know certain things. In this respect, they have to go beyond their familiar emotions and familiar narratives about what they think they should be doing with their lives and situate themselves within these greater arcs of history.
If people have a sense of a historical identity, they can act very differently than if they were just trying to survive in the present and offer descriptive knowledge of the world. Their thinking changes, and so do their emotions.
Nicely put. But if people, including many of those pulling the strings, are addicted to the behaviors that both induce and result from wholesale manipulation (think anger, ideological tribalism, moral superiority, fervent believing, etc.), then maybe this is the natural state of human societies.
As I wrote above, I think reflecting on the nature of the Renaissance that emerged from the European dark ages is a good example of how to think in times of crisis. Despite all the negative assessments and descriptive approach to knowledge today, there have always been forces for progress, and they have succeeded against all odds. I don't think understanding that is a question of ''game theory'' or some formulaic statistical interpretation that explains everything away.
Europe did not emerge from a dark age and have a renaissance simply because of some evolutionary trait or statistical process, there were sovereign thinking individuals who actually organized themselves based on a conceptual outlook. The Renaissance was first and foremost a conceptual leap in the image of man, a transcendence from the fixed feudalistic idea of society where nothing changed, where nation states did not exist and Europe was simply a collection of petty fiefdoms run by a small very stupid and bestial hereditary ruling class. And yet, the Renaissance undid all that. It's possible to study those individuals who organized this change. In many ways, we can understand much of the last 500 years as an attempt by oligarchical forces to bring society back under that backward system of feudal rule which the Renaissance destroyed. Today they call it a ''reset.''
Instead of a ''reset'' I think we need a Renaissance, but to have a renaissance, people need to know certain things, which means going beyond familiar emotions and familiar narratives about what we think we should be doing with our lives and situating ourselves within these greater arcs of history.
If people have a sense of a historical identity, they can act very differently than if they're just trying to survive in the present and offer descriptive knowledge of the world. Their thinking changes, and so do their emotions.
Today's brave new world culture is really all about discouraging any of the nobler emotions and encouraging the perversion of natural desires and inclinations instead. We might consider the difference between the emotions of Agape and Eros. From an imperial standpoint, you want people to behave like beasts, you want to promote those forms of art, culture and entertainment which encourage Eros and discourage Agape, which is associated with the higher faculties and forms of creative expression, whether in Bach's fugues, Shakespeare's dramas, or even the Song dynasty landscape paintings.
A while back, I was a regular consumer of TYT's main show. I dabbled in some of their other stuff, but tended to like Cenk's read on politics. Then, as one should, I was taking in other points of view and became aware of what seemed like dishonest presentation of some topic too long ago to remember. And I saw the interview with Sam Harris and the unreal depiction of it afterward. TYT isn't really something I can listen to much now.
Krystal & Saagar at Breaking Points seem to be trending that way. At The Hill, their content was focused on politics/economics/social issues (and the occasional UFO story - TY, Saagar). But since launching the Breaking Points venture, they're full-tilt-boogie on stories about how bad the MSM is and, implicitly, how much better they are. It's tedious. It's preaching to the choir.
That's what I like about TK coverage. It covers some media problems. But the stories are about the subjects, not promos for TK. Your analysis on why the MSM missed the Trump phenomenon - it was something I just never heard before. It was like being shown something I didn't know I already knew.
Matt, as much as I admire you, I can't give you a pass on this. I had this nailed in 1981. I was living in Bogota, Colombia, in 1980, and subscribed to Time magazine. I read about ABSCAM, and how eight congressmen were arrested in a bribery sting. The only one whose party affiliation was indicated was a Republican. I thus stupidly deduced that all were Republicans. That was the point.
I returned to the US at the end of 1980 and eventually looked into ABSCAM. The other seven members of congress were Democrats. As were the thirty-plus others sent to jail. Which sent me on further investigation. You're an investigator, you know how it works. With a few interruptions, I had been a WaPo subscriber for two decades. I picked up on something so consistent it had to be part of their Style Book. Every story with something good to say about a Democrat had his party affiliation in the first two paragraphs; if it reflected poorly on the individual, his party affiliation was buried deep in the article. The reverse was done for Republicans.
I finally figured out that there was no liberal bias in the press, there was partisan bias. I found this in NYT, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Boston Globe as well. There was no corresponding lock-step favoring Republicans; public employee unions were actually two steps ahead of the press. This isn't recent at all. I formally left the Democratic Party in 2009, although it had left me nearly three decades earlier.
I had to stop my subscription to the Sunday LA Times because it was totally Democrat one-sided. Hated to give up the cartoon section with my granddaughter, but financially supporting the paper made it feel like a DNC campaign contribution.
i am having a problem, and i mean this seriously, that there is not one single news source that i trust anymore. There are some individual writers but no website or network. i don't feel good about that.
Just wait it out and read good historians’ take. News in the short term(several years) is all propaganda any way. I recommend Victor Davis Hanson. It takes a while to determine which historians are ethical as well. In 2016 most said with a straight face that Obama was the greatest president in American history.
My last refuge, The New York Review of Books drank the Kool-Aid deeply.
We are all journalistic orphans now and those who don't grasp that are the same people who don't know that the people tucking them into bed at night are Zombies.
I'm glad Russell Baker isn't around to see what his newspaper has become.
Now, with no (living) journalists to distract you, you have more time for these authors:
William Shakespeare, C. Wright Mills, John Ralston Saul, René Girard, John W. Aldridge, Victor Klemperer, Neil Postman, Karl Popper, Konrad Lorenz, Janine Wedel, Anna Politkovskaya, Antonio Damasio, Philip Roth, Malcolm Cowley, Eva Turner Clark, Sven Hedin, Johan Huizinga, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel L. Everett, James Thurber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benoit Mandelbrot, Lewis Mumford, Molly M. Mahood, Noemi Magri, Somerset Maugham, Charlton Ogburn Jr., Titus Lucretius Carus, Frank McCourt, Tanya Reinhart, Roger Scruton, Israël Shahak, Lee Smolin, Matthew Josephson, Madeleine L'Engle, Daphne Du Maurier and others.
I haven't had the heart to log into NYRB for a while. Last I checked LARB (just as the LA Times is surprisingly the least worst of the coastal US newspapers) and LRB they were still pretty decent.
I always recommend reading lots of things from realclearpolitics and seeing where you fall out. It's got a net right of center bias but pulls pretty well from both sides and mostly not junk from either side. Sometimes easily dismissable stuff from one side or the other, but still useful to know about the argument being made.
I used to read Reuters as overall fair but they just went behind a paywall so I don't have a substitute for that yet. Paywalls lead directly to moving to the extremes because you seek subscribers and that's where they sit.
In fairness, I buy Hunter's argument here. I can believe that he owns multiple laptops in various states of dilapidation that have all kinds of porn on them and he knows where few, if any, of them are presently located.
i used to trust the Hill but no more. Like the rest of the mainstream media, when it came to Covid theyabandoned any pretense of investigative journalism and were content to promulgate the party line. i'm sure you saw Matt's Ivermectin article.
For every decent article at RCP I find two or three which I consider junk. Still, I look there but less and less since I got access to a _very_ good lending library.
Five Corporate commercials- We are all the core demographic when we drink Pepsi, sequence of pod people asks their doctor for the drug that might kill them, Dumb man can’t take care of himself without reliable woman, witty and relatable guys really don’t care if you buy insurance, We swear to god this Hyundai is a luxury sports car
"witty and relatable guys really don’t care if you buy insurance"
The "buy insurance or don't, we don't care, we make money either way, here's our CGI animal mascot" genre of insurance advertisement is one of the most dazzling displays of not-give-a-shit postmodernism ever forced into Alex DeLarge's eyes.
"Our target reader used to be the person sipping coffee at a moment like the present, a cool Saturday morning, lazily turning pages as birds chirped outside the window." Well . . . I read that on a Saturday morning, sipping coffee, listening to the birds chirping outside the window! Ahhh . . . the good life!
It's fitting that you refer to Airplane because every time I here someone run through the newest list of approved pronouns I keep waiting for the jive subtitles to pop up on screen.
And seriously Matt, our entire culture is filled with yoohoos who spout cliches & buzz phrases like they were actually saying shit. Every time I hear some wanker blather on about "taking it to the next level" I always assume that they're discussing how they've managed to shove their head deeper into their own asshole.
Commercials are filled with "you got this" or "you can do this" because there's nothing more inspiring than a pep talk delivered by an actor in a commercial.
Hundreds of women take to the internet with bikini selfies & topless selfies under the auspices of promoting some cause or other when what they're really doing is feeding that narcissistic attention monkey that's riding on their little self obsessed & emotionally needy backs.
Geez, we even have "smart" people literally telling us that finding the right answer to a math problem is racist.
So I think it's pretty safe to say that the dumbing down has worked splendidly. Americans have taken to brain damaged idiocy like a duck takes to a fish filled lake or Hunter Biden takes to a crack pipe.
I think we both know that won't be changing any time soon.
Next stop: President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho
Have a beer scro!!!!
You could never make Airplane now. The I speak jive, but also Ever seen a grown man naked?
I don't think that you could faithfully remake anything if it aired before 2018.
Let's see;
The Wolfman- Oh just a typical cishetero toxic masculinity infected man who doesn't know that no means no.
The Longest Day - US imperialism spreading anti-German xenophobia
Death Wish - gun toting right winger infected with toxic masculinity, racism & class hatred.
Fantasia - black people weren't even allowed in theaters to see this typical white privilege promoting racist screed disguised as a cartoon.
Frankenstein - The Dr. symbolizes white hubris & privilege while the "monster" (I've never liked that term) symbolizes the specter of the shunned & misunderstood black man, hounded & harried until he reacts violently to his oppression.
War Of The Worlds - Humans give Trump-like violent response to Martian immigrants just seeking a better life for their tentacled kids.
Etc., etc., etc.
And Sean Connery wouldn't have been Bond.
OMG. Goldfinger? So great, but not very, ahem, sensitive. The Best Soundtrack.
Now he could be a gay female bond. They could re-release all his movies without changing anything and they’d be completely new.
They'd have to change at least one bit from Dr. No. Bond is on No's island with Ursula Andress & a black agent. At one point Bond sends the black guy to fetch his shoes. Woke heads would pop like big zits if you streamed that to their smartphones.
Re: Spiderbaby
I see you're still on a roll. (:-})
That earlier list, in my opinion, was the comment of the day. Have a great weekend! And thanks for the satire.
As Usual,
EA
Eli Roth’s remake of Death Wish w/ Bruce Willis was surprisingly good....but in general I concur completely
Blazing Saddles-Cleavon Little is required to actually pull the trigger and make a snuff film to atone for his racist comments about himself.....
Michael Douglas in Falling Down would just be so damn “problematic for focusing on cis -hetero white rage”
You could never make anything now. Blazing Saddles, Caddyshack, Naked Gun. "Nevermore."
The Jerk, Animal House, the Mash movie, 16 Candles, Blues Brothers, Vacation, pretty much every Mel Brooks movie (History of the World, Space Balls) Recently I’ve wondered about Ernie Hudson in ghostbusters telling the mayor that they’d “seen shit that would turn you white” 😎
Add Revenge of the Nerds to that list. I bet the first place it would be banned is on every college campus.
And Porky’s-back when you had to work for your voyeurism!!!!
"Hear" someone not "here" someone. Geez you have nerve talking about "dumbing down" ya freaking halfwit. You can't even spell.
ducks don't eat fish, it's on bro lets have it
So you're saying they can't be friends? What are you, a fishist? I suppose you think all animals should be segregated? I think it's high time that you were introduced to CCT or Critical Critter Theory.
Love you and your work, Matt—twenty years running. But now of all times, you don’t get to pull the whole “bemused and somewhat concerned observer above the fray,” another of those “cringy” op-ed tropes you cataloged.
Sure, when it comes to the Maté-Dore-The Young F*cks matter, there are personal beefs at play. But Dore’s doing something long overdue when it comes to the whole left-liberal “progressive movement” that’s been ascendant over the last decade or so. Now that it’s pretty much run its course and self-liquidated, both unwittingly and wittingly bolstering neoliberal and Democratic Party power, there are some (from left libertarians to social democrats to orthodox Marxists) who think it’s important to at least call out the opportunists and fight The New New Left (DNC-sanctioned/subservient) from the left.
That’s what Dore’s doing—been doing since he saw the writing on the wall at least as far back as 2016 and certainly during the BlueAnon Russiagate conspiracy. And you’ve indicated elsewhere that this thing between Maté, Dore, and The Young F*cks isn’t just some internecine “spat.” It’s a symptom of something much bigger, more significant. The people who frame it as a mere “spat” are the same sort who come at you with “what happened to you man” on Twitwit.
This is definitely a time to take sides and duke it out—making it clear who’s got whose backs, making it clear who’s cashing in by running interference for the ultra-powerful few by selling out the majority of everyday people. Dore’s one of the few high-profile lefties doing it.
You have been, too.
Recently one of the best Dore's best lines was this nugget: "Joe Biden, whenever he goes off script, he immediately goes to being a pedophile or a racist."
Geez I really have to start proofing before I hit "post." I type like my fingers are having a seizure. Bad fingers. Very bad fingers.
I am on Jimmy’s side.
So really, who gives a shit about some hacks who make a living ranting like cunts on YouTube or something>?
I think this piece lays it out pretty well. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-06-22/greenwald-trump-happened/
It’s a different battle, but there’s a similar dynamic to the TYT vs. Mate/Dore fight; principled journalists are attacked for, well, being principled journalists.
A long time ago I patiently explained to a friend that when they scream "hypocrisy" the real point of attack is not that a principle or standard was breached, but that someone has the temerity to have principles and standards.
Re: NatteringNabob9
Thanks for citing the Jonathon Cook piece, and I concur with Ben's succinct comment. I was particularly impressed with Cook's cogent take in saying:
"Robinson implies that Greenwald has been embittered by these experiences, and is petulantly hitting back against the “liberal” establishment without regard to the consequences. But a fairer reading would be that Greenwald is fighting against knee-jerk, authoritarian instincts wherever they are found in our societies – on the right, the centre and the left."
Thank you both for contributing some calm and thoughtful reasoning to what hopefully continues to be a "cautiously optimistic" weekend.
As Usual,
EA
Great piece by a writer I admire. I agree with you about it being applicable to a whole bunch of what’s going on these days.
We are coming full circle and real life is turning into Jerry Springer TV. It's ok to not want to participate.
Who rarely pulls the “objective, disinterested observer paring his fingernails” maneuver. Who’s usually suspicious of those who do, in fact.
Thanks for that, i hadn't seen it before. I grew up a few towns away from Camden, my dad actually worked at that RCA.
I don't think that one has to look farther than the crumbling case against Julian Assange to understand exactly how depraved our government has become and how actual whistleblowers, not the fake intelligence anti-Trump whistleblowers the Democrats spent 4 years blowing, are demonized, vilified, hounded & smeared.
If you're unaware, the key witness against Assange was a sociopath, a convicted child molester & financial fraudster who not only admitted he was lying about Assange but he has also admitted that he continued his crime spree while working with the Justice Dept. & the FBI who promised him complete immunity from prosecution.
"When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals."
-Edward Snowden
Snowden was right. On. The. Money.
Remember that phrase, "red-blooded American?" It bothered me that Snowden let loose all this information. But, as time goes on, I am willing to learn more. I am willing to say, I was wrong.
Whether it was 9/11 or the advancement of the machines, or of course, their horrid marriage, I never thought in my country I should be wary of what I type or say.
That's all. Have a nice evening.
Am I the only "target reader" that wants all references to Dore/Kasparian etc to end? It makes me want to think about it and that adds zero value to my life. No one needs to spend any brain energy considering anything about TYT, past or future. I think about the last interesting thing they did was their live reactions in Nov 2016.
You don't feel like you're missing out? I mean, it did begin w/ a pretty substantial dispute (Glenn Greenwald's discussion is pertinent at this point- the ease of reputation destruction that happens today). Dore's defense of Matte made for good TV IMHO. My wife & I tuned in daily to see what was going to happen next.
And the topper was TYT's Chenk doing a 32 minute total psych out over the whole thing on Wed (Thur?). As a member of the Dore cult, hate watching was never so good, LOL
To your point, it has become tiresome; right now I feel like I spent a week at an amusement park. I'm just going to kick back, sip my coffee and maybe watch Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and I Dream Of Jeanie reruns now.
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is based on a true story. I think.
Not in the slightest
Watching Chunk meltdowns is entertaining I have to admit but only in very short snippets.
It's "Inside Baseball" in the pejorative sense that it doesn't matter to real people and won't affect us. However, the Elect versus populism matters a lot.
It is synonymous to Jim Jones and L Ron Hubbard mud wrestling. The winner gets to brainwash the minds of the other’s followers. Although, Dore does seem to have his bleeding heart in the right place.
Could you expand on what you're saying here? I don't understand; for 'reals'. (lol kinda?) Do you mean that the Elect is threatened by a populist uprising? If so I agree. Furthermore, 'real people' have jobs to go to and kids to raise and have only so much bandwidth to devote? Is that right? B/c if that's the case I agree...
I'm 62 and semi retired. 30 years ago, w/ my 3 daughters I could give a shit about Clinton/Bush (tho' I voted for Bill). Aaand I thot I was 'informed' b/c I watched 60 minutes as well as the highlights from the RNC and DNC conventions at night. Aaaand... I had the NYT delivered daily....
I didn't realize how blind/mis-informed I was 'till '15.
Yes you are understanding me. Slight edit I would suggest is thet the elect got a populist uprising but are pushing a revolution of their own now. So now it's more of an existential struggle for the soul of society. Read Taibbi's piece with Wesley Yang, Andrew Sullivan's latest piece that you can get to from front page of realclearpolitics from Saturday's articles. I use McWhorter's Elect term to mean the leftist elite (formerly liberal, still progressive).
Here is the Sullivan piece https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/what-happened-to-you-e5f
That's a healthy perspective.
No idea who Dore/Kasparian are. :)
Count it as a blessing.
I'm like you. Only watch sanctioned network pundits.
As in those that have received sanctions... ;)
So that I'm not just criticizing and so I can point to where value is added, the interview with Wesley Yang was excellent and did add great value and perspective on new concepts!
I saw that Sullivan also referred to Taibbi's Yang interview as important.
I find your description of the TYT scandal cautiously bland. You present it like a both sided affair although the details go in one direction. When Maté was smeared as being paid by the Russians, what was he supposed to do? And were the people who care about journalism supposed to let that go by as if it was nothing?
Come Matt, come. Come to the Dark Side. Seriously, we on the "right" have been getting the shit all our lives -- or at least since we started questioning the "narrative." Our words are distorted and false motives are assigned. It goes off us now like water from a duck's back. As they say, whatever doesn't kill you . . .
...Makes you a total asshole?
Nah. You only gonna think that cuz I don't give a fuck about what you think. But I'm OK with you projecting.
That's a good question.
Right now, I think the word means someone who disagrees with a New York Times editorial or does not trust CNN.
But the question deserves a more thoughtful answer.
I started off as a centrist D-leaner. My first vote for a congressman was for very liberal Bob Edgar.
What started me voting R consistently was abortion. Life starts somewhere and there is an obligation to protect the weak & helpless, and that how best to handle the thorny questions should be up to legislators, not courts. Democracy and protecting the weak are pretty liberal positions if you think about it.
Did you know that either Sweden or Norway ban most abortions at 18 weeks? The other bans it at 20 weeks.
I started a business. Was successful but never big. I saw first hand how rules like minimum wage & protected categories claimed to help the little guy & gal actually hurt them bad. I remember how circa Y2K concerns about OSHA being applied to telecommuters.
I saw twisted corruption and indifference in public schools.
I believe in God and think Christian values are necessary. it puzzles me why some think replacing a spiritual authority that demands we be merciful, compassionate and loving with a technocratic state is somehow a good thing. Especially when it dawns on one that in a technocratic state there is no such thing as unalienable rights.
I was always a big supporter of the 1st Amendment. I remember that TV movie when I was a kids where the Jews defended the rights of some Nazis to march through Skokie and thought that those Jews were really cool.
I, however, then became a big supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Why let bullies have the power? A gun equalizes things between a woman and a rapist, or an old man and the sadistic thug that enters his home. I now think we should consider arming the citizenry and disarming the police. Let their power be just their badge. When Britain did it, it might been the safest it ever was: https://billlawrenceonline.com/carlisle-moody-handguns-stop-murders/
And then there is global warming. I don't like pollution. I think minimizing greenhouse gases is a noble task. OTOH, I think the working class should have access to refrigerators and air conditioning and vacations in Florida. The policies pushed by the D.C. class means these end. Note that would be just for the working & middle class, not for the crowd in which Al Gore and Difi and Schumer hang with.
So what brought me back to the "left"? Trump did. I saw that the military industrial complex is real and evil. I saw that our military actions overseas were unnecessary and founded on lies. I questioned the need for NATO since 1990, but I just shrugged and trusted government when it remained.
I finally fully saw that big business was run by greedy liars who actually wanted to destroy the free market, and thought slave labor was just peachy. I never like the big guys but I never thought they were anything close to this bad.
I've become more nuanced on gay marriage. I still don't think marriage is a right -- and neither do you, if you think about it -- but guys like Grenell & Greenwald have led me to conclude that kids being raised by them and their partners are infinitely better off than being in foster care.
So there you go. The blueprint on how to get my vote.
Marriage is not a “right”, but it is the vehicle through which various legal rights are filtered by the courts and society-inheritance, end of life/critical care issues. Therefore, from a libertarian POV, gays cannot be cut out from access to said rights by dint of their sexuality.
Calling it “marriage” vs. “civil unions for all” from a legal government perspective-who cares. Also, no religion should be forced by the government to alter their theology/sacramental practices on marriage. A couple has to get a marriage license even if they then have a religious ceremony. Separate entities.
Should a father/adult daughter be cut from these rights by dint of their sexuality?
Civil marriage is the attempt to make sure babies aren't dumped on the rest of us, mothers aren't abandoned and fathers aren't cucked to indifference.
It really isn't about love or religion. Those things are nice but if love conquered all and all were perfect Christians, civil marriage (and family courts) would not be necessary.
Two responsible gays raising kids nobody else wants deserve the benefits (and obligations) of marriage.
Otherwise, I'd say it wasn't necessary -- and with regard to inheritance -- rather unfair. Should a father be allowed to "marry" his son to beat the tax man?
But to return to the first paragraph, here is some nuance: If dad was in his 70s & daughter was a 40-something single mom and the family unit was surviving on dad's SS & daughter's low-wage job & dad was a de facto dad to the grandkids, yes they should be allowed to get married with daughter inheriting the pension & SS & anything else tax free.
Rich guy uses abortion as moral pretext to vote Republican.
Yeah, me and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Oh. Wait. They vote Democrat.
>> The main difference is that the quasi-religion of postmodern cultural-leftists is hypertoxic and deeply dysfunctional, incapable of generating authentic meaning, and in fact generating a crisis of meaning to undermine both traditional religion and modern rationalism.
Well put. The only meaning I can see in living the extreme postmodern ideal is the camaraderie you have when belonging to a cult.
I'm inclined to agree. But to return to abortion, when you say "politicizing it is almost as appalling as abortion itself" do you mean legislatures should be prevented from addressing it?
Bad and unwise policy is bad and unwise. If you got rid of Roe and let legislatures deal with it the issue would eventually get resolved much as it is in Europe.
Funny about Brooks and Friedman. They both bring you news and views from the lobby of a 5 star hotel somewhere in the region of what appears to be a war or starving people or something we need to be more "Thoughtful" about. These are the people who would starve to death without credit cards and cell phones.
Can't stand either of them, but i'll take them over Kristof or Krugman. The virtue signallers who want us to support sweatshops.
kristof and krugman are easily ignored. brooks and friedman, however, are too dangerously stupid to be ignored.
I generally ignore them. Brooks especially, beams his columns in from the surface of Mars, i totally gave up.
Brooks wouldn't make it on Mars. Ask Edgar Rice Burroughs and Michael Whelan.
https://www.catspawdynamics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/michael-whelan-9-synthetic-men-of-mars-cover.jpg
Metal AF.
Lotta rock vids i could post, but it really does have to be this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKcl4-tcuo
I kind of want a reality show: "David Brooks Doing Things," a cross between his tedious columns and the lately esteemed JACKASS. David Brooks cigarette boat racing, David Brooks wrestling alligators, David Brooks participating in gunfights in small, dismal towns on the Mexico-U.S. border.
Is there any country other than the US that taxes it’s citizens to give their money to foreign governments?
Did you catch the one about the sandwich shop?
We’re into the purity spiral phase, when everybody is outbidding each other for moral position. It never ends well.
Thank you. The inside baseball spats between various media players is getting beyond tedious. And petulant af is really not a good look (looking at you, GG). The alt media is starting to become the same circle jerk bubble they became independent to get away from. Work it out amongst yourselves, while those of us uninterested will find other pastures. That talk about things that actually, you know, effect our actual lives.
Interesting to me personally as of late - financial stuff mostly. And art-related, as it happens to be my lane. Money laundering via Hunter Biden, Tony Podesta art voodoo. Crypto currency and nft tokens and everything involved with that. Environmental issues, Elizabeth Warren eyeballing a regulatory framework.
Also looking for a comb-through of Biden's latest slate of exec orders. One that stands out, and as a Good Thing - scrapping non-compete agreements, especially for low wage jobs. Dunno if Marty Walsh had anything to do with that, but it was a big problem here in Mass. For low - wage jobs, as well as for tech workers.
Have a great weekend.
In many states non competes are illegal outright, unless they fall under specifically enumerated exceptions, which never include low wage workers.
Decades ago, as a waiter, I had experience with employers who required "tip pooling" so the owner/management would apportion some of the tips earned to the kitchen staff. It was a way to get the waitstaff to pay a portion of the kitchen wages. Kitchen staff got more hours and higher wages already. Outback Steakhouse had lost a lawsuit over the issue. But when I went to a state office they simply told me it's a civil matter and I'd need to hire a lawyer. It was too much. For someone making $18k/year, it's just a hill not worth dying on. Owners rely on the workers not knowing to keep them in line.
Same thing happened when i was a waiter too, but the part of the tip pool went to the manager / maitre'd. Staff eventually sued and actually got some of it back. (Not me though, i was long gone.)
My stepdaughter just had to deal with this, and ended up quitting her job. The salaried manager, who was never on site, took 90% of the tips. Not joking.
The place where i worked that got sued, the employees did it as a group. I think it would be near impossible to be worth it to do it as an individual.
Employers definitely do this. For wage claims, my state has a very pro-employee statute. Entitles the employee to treble damages and attorneys fees if they win. It's a way to make it a bit easier for the employee to enforce their rights. But this too is something most employees don't know about, and end up relinquishing their rights. Even if they win big in court, collecting is a whole other story.
100% thankfully, my server days are decades back. But to your point, collecting is something else! Like "cute little lawsuit you got there, good luck colleting your settlement" - lol
Every lawyer knows that they're almost always unenforceable, at least in my state, but employers assume employees won't know it. So they're a tool for bullying that skirts on the edge ethics. I hate instinctively solving problems by passing laws, but I'd be OK if they were banned outright.
They’re not banned in your state?
They were legal 15 years ago, the last time I was practicing law. I haven't paid any attention since then.
I'm in a red state with low consumer protection, so I assume folks are still using them.
It's really a question of legal ethics. Making your employees sign a contract that is plainly not enforceable is akin to filing a frivolous lawsuit.
The arguments against them are in the "restraint of trade" category, and yes, if you quit at BK and go over to McDonald's that very day, BK lawyers know better than to bring suit because it could backfire if the employee can afford a lawyer.
But what's a non-union, minimum wage Burger King worker going to do about it.
Work for whomever they want. You think BK is going to look around to sue a minimum wage worker? These "agreements" are not designed to be executed against such workers; they are intended to provide additional "stickiness." They are unethical in the extreme. The only place I see for a non-compete is in a highly specialized area where your employer grants you some kind of golden parachute in exchange for a non-compete.
I absolutely agree that it's unethical in the extreme. I almost sort of get it for some tech re: transfer of trade secrets.
A quick google search shows different laws by states, here's one for Virginia.
https://www.tradesecretsandemployeemobility.com/2020/06/articles/non-compete-agreements/virginia-prohibits-non-compete-agreements-with-low-wage-workers/
"Employers who continue to enter or enforce non-compete agreements against low-wage employees may find themselves in court. The new law permits low-wage employees to bring a civil action against their former employer or any “other person” that attempts to enforce a non-compete agreement on or after July 1, 2020."
So a low wage employee has recourse through the courts. I'm sure they can afford that.
If it actually happens frequently, I'm sure some smart lawyers will start making a cottage industry of suing the BKs of the world for a 50% cut of the reward. It could be the new ambulance chaser or social security disability practice, assuming the the lawsuit is as simple as that article makes it sound: if you fall under the guidelines, you win, as they cannot have a non-compete.
This is the best summary of the issue. It lies just outside of professional ethics, but making your employees sign a contract that is plainly unenforceable is akin to filing a frivolous lawsuit.
They should be. Just a quick google on our updated law -
https://www.laboremploymentlawblog.com/2018/08/articles/non-competition-covenants/new-massachusetts-law-limits-non-compete/
I suspect with low wage jobs, fast food for example (which i believe Joe metioned specifically), those non-competes were to prevent wars between franchisees. So many have different policies and wages within the same brand - tipping vs no tipping, etc.
FWIW, MA is also a "right-to-work" state, un-ironically.
One can be fired for any or NO reason at all. I just signed a non-compete to start a job, but here it's being applied because there are some serious trade secrets at stake -the actual intention of these non-competes.
Also... there was a clause saying I was not "allowed" to work anywhere else unless it was approved by the company. I'm sure THAT'S not enforceable, because... they don't fucking OWN me and if I want to have a second, third or fourth job I can do what I like with any time that's not being paid for by "this" company.
Please.. try to take me to court over a second job... I double DOG dare you!
I was just reading something like if you have a time limit before you take a new job, the company you're leaving has to pay you throughout that time period. Can't remember if that was Mass.
Interesting to me that VISA just got involved with cryptocurrency.
Well, it's not going anywhere. I've read so much lately i can't keep it straight, but did hear of consideration of it as government sanctioned legal tender. Just still the wild wild west at this point. I have a photography NFT minting workshop later this month, looking forward to learning more about it.
Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Plain and simple.
Ride your dollars all the way to zero. But don't say we didn't warn you what's coming.
Too cryptic. Explain.
If so, certainly a very erratic one.
Agreed. But a new kind of ponzi. And a publicly displayed one at that. That's what makes if fun. Fintech Ponzi AND spectator sport.
I share Diehl's take on bitcoin/crypto---interesting take from software engineer.
https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/ponzi.html
I believe that if crypto gets too big the fiat currencies will crush it
More precisely, governments will crush it. The value of money rests, at bottom, on the strength of the army controlled by the issuer.
True. Reminds me of Stalin’s famous quote: “How many divisions does the Pope have”?
Or Andrew Jackson “Mr. Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!”
If that's true (and it may be), the government won't have to crush it. It has no military backing, and thus, the markets will treat it inferior.
Except that a lot of very big money has skin in the crypto game. Look at who the investors and donors are. And if as Madjack said, VISA is getting involved, it's not much longer until other banksters do. And Joe has always danced for the banksters.
Madjack: “if crypto gets too big the fiat currencies will crush it.” It’s not a question of whether fiat will “crush it,” whatever that means. Money is basically an IOU. All sorts of instruments are accepted in payment of obligations (e.g., bank notes and deposits). As Minsky pointed out, the problem is getting someone to accept your IOU. The US federal government has one overriding advantage over all other money issuers to assure its IOUs will always be at the top of the money-acceptance pyramid: its credible threat of violence. The US imposes tax obligations, in dollars, on millions of people, uses dollars it creates out of thin air to purchase goods and services to provision itself, accepts only dollars in payment of taxes, and most importantly enforces tax obligations with an efficient and punitive tax-collection system employing prisons and confiscation of property. Result: lots of people want to acquire dollars. For more, see L. Randall Wray, https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/modern-money-theory-basics.html.
"[The US federal government's] IOUs will always be at the top of the money-acceptance pyramid" is obvioulsy not true, because nothing lasts forever.
In these modern times, "credible threat[s] of violence" are falling out of favor and may even be counterproductive. Remember "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"? As well, Biden's talk of F-15s and nuclear weapons didn't do him any favors when the US is getting pushed out of Afghanistan with rifles and IEDs. Soft power and perceived legitimacy are ascendant, and the US government is not winning on that front.
Re: Gary Orton
Ahhhhh, the soothing flow of informed reason. Thank you good sir, for throwing the switch.
Might I inquire what you believe may be the reasoning (sic), of our fiat currency overlords, in their continuous devaluing of our Federal Reserve Notes over the past several decades?
As Usual,
EA
So you see the backing of money as force not “faith”. The yuan, then, is becoming rapidly more “reliable”.
China has already begun this project. More importantly, crypto has become the medium of exchange between parties in ransomware attacks. Bigger worry? Might our national security state use the crypto/ransomware "problem" as yet another means to interfere with, spy on, snoop over, monitor closely, the many who don't to catch the few who do? Another fire drill in the name of "national security."
Didn't. Will read and get back to you. In general don't do Reddit, but perhaps I should occasionally just to see what they are up to.
Maybe the fiat currencies with serve for crypto as gold did for fiat.
Now that i think about it, surprised if Hunter Biden isn't looking to get into nfts. Now there's a way to launder some serious bank.
Let’s be clear, the media isn’t the one crafting the narratives, they’re not that clever. From “Stay Home. Save Lives” (the only alternative being leave your house and murder people) to “Russiagate,” to the 2003 Iraq war, these are carefully crafted campaigns created by the intel agencies and then fed to the media. The Five Eyes establishment is essentially what creates the narratives based on actual subversion operations.
The Russiagate narrative was literally created by a British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was mentored and backed by none other than Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 during the lead up to the Iraq war. That circle put out the WMD “dodgy dossier” back then in 2003.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/28/american-shadow-creatures-exposed-but-will-empire-still-win-day/
The media does not shape the narrative, they are simply parroting stories fed to them by something much more sophisticated. That more sophisticated operation should be the real subject, not the silly left right hangouts that are still considered acceptable talking points.
People have to see who’s actually manipulating them. This is no different from how Venice manipulated countries to kill each other and destroy themselves hundreds of years ago. This is how ideological warfare works.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ss7ztvPtY
Rather than a colonial system of control, it’s largely through finance, the shaping of perception, subversion, and covert ideological warfare. The media is simply the modern instrument of that. The whole Venetian empire was literally based on this kind of stuff, profiling everyone, knowing their weaknesses, using that to destroy them, all without the targets ever knowing that they were being targeted. The media is just a more advanced and modern mechanism, but the strategic goals and approaches are the same.
So let’s stop all the left right bullshit narratives. If someone still thinks it’s a left and right not getting a long thing, or just a few bad apples spoiling the batch, or “regulatory capture”, then you really don’t get it, you don’t understand how intel operations work, how brainwashing works, and who’s doing it.
Much of the left has been brainwashed by a very coordinated media and messaging campaign, but this wasn’t organized by the media, they themselves have been brainwashed in the process.
The right was brainwashed a long time ago, it’s just been a long process of deconstructing and depatterning both sides. Then there is the increasingly aware and independently thinking grouping emerging from both sides. That grouping has to understand how these brainwashing operations were run and are still run because they’ll never stop until you can actually point them out and blow the cover of those running such operations.
The real solution is for both sides to come together, swallow their pride, realize they’ve been subjected to very sophisticated behaviour modification and brainwashing operations (real brainwashing, not the cartoonish stuff you see on television). Not wanting to believe such things have happened means they will be allowed to keep happening unnoticed.
Since the post-war period, it was known that the suggestions introduced within the group only stuck if the individual targets or “patients” were not aware that such suggestions were being made.
To unbrainwash oneself, we’d need to first start with the assumption that were we to have been brainwashed, we wouldn’t even see it or be aware. The whole thing depends on subtlety, on things appearing “normal” and that everything is just as it appears.
The way to break out of that is to actually ask yourself where your ideas come from. Most of the idea we have come from somewhere else. So the only question is do we know where they actually came from? Whether they are real ideas, or just artificial beliefs intentionally spread? How can you tell if an idea is a real idea or a subversive opinion? It may sound like an abstract question, but unless yo can tell the difference, chances are you probably hold some of these artificial subversive ideas and beliefs…
How can we tell real authentic ideas apart from fake subversive bullshit intentionally peddled and inserted into the public discourse? Unless one can make that distinction, they’re doomed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dbSzuxAxJ4w
The real solution is beyond reach. Thought isn’t the driving force, emotion is. Emotion causes many of the “intelligent” few to run amuck, along with the mindless masses.
I agree with the assessment of left/right being little more than the motion required to keep the water muddied. And the media is nothing more than “Dolt-Central”.
I believe God gave us Lemmings so we could see how people appear, as they tend to follow losers, to their own destruction.
You sound like Tolstoy at the end of War and Peace getting at the *why*.
He basically but eloquently said "it's too complicated to understand"
He was one step away from his religious conversion, which is just the leap from "it's too complicated" to "it's God's will."
Haa, yeah, I get compared to Tolstoy almost every day. 🍺
Complication is the perfect tool to engage for distraction. So many moving pieces it’s virtually impossible for humans, and their AI, to keep up. It’s a trip to watch.
Now, are Branson and Bezo leaving the atmosphere because they expect something to happen while they are away? If not, is Bezo, a seemingly gutless twit to many, really sending an AI robot in his place or has he hired a body double? Much like the staged moon-landings in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s? 💰💰💰
One could argue that you are right, emotion is a driving force for many thoughts, but generally people tend to think about the negative emotions and negative responses, but what about the positive? If we look at most of history, the odds have always been against the few organized forces for progress, and yet the forces of progress have succeeded against the odds time and time again. Europe did not emerge from a dark age and have a renaissance simply because of some evolutionary trait, there were sovereign thinking individuals who actually organized themselves based on a conceptual outlook. The Renaissance was first and foremost a conceptual leap in the image of man, a transcendence from the fixed feudalistic idea of society where nothing changes, nation states did not exist and Europe was simply a collection of petty fiefdoms, a society run by a small very stupid and bestial hereditary ruling class. And yet, the Renaissance undid all that. In many ways, we can understand much of the last 500 years as an attempt by oligarchical forces to bring society back under that system of feudal rule. They call it a ''reset.''
What we need is a Renaissance, not a reset. To have a renaissance, people need to actually know certain things. In this respect, they have to go beyond their familiar emotions and familiar narratives about what they think they should be doing with their lives and situate themselves within these greater arcs of history.
If people have a sense of a historical identity, they can act very differently than if they were just trying to survive in the present and offer descriptive knowledge of the world. Their thinking changes, and so do their emotions.
Nicely put. But if people, including many of those pulling the strings, are addicted to the behaviors that both induce and result from wholesale manipulation (think anger, ideological tribalism, moral superiority, fervent believing, etc.), then maybe this is the natural state of human societies.
As I wrote above, I think reflecting on the nature of the Renaissance that emerged from the European dark ages is a good example of how to think in times of crisis. Despite all the negative assessments and descriptive approach to knowledge today, there have always been forces for progress, and they have succeeded against all odds. I don't think understanding that is a question of ''game theory'' or some formulaic statistical interpretation that explains everything away.
Europe did not emerge from a dark age and have a renaissance simply because of some evolutionary trait or statistical process, there were sovereign thinking individuals who actually organized themselves based on a conceptual outlook. The Renaissance was first and foremost a conceptual leap in the image of man, a transcendence from the fixed feudalistic idea of society where nothing changed, where nation states did not exist and Europe was simply a collection of petty fiefdoms run by a small very stupid and bestial hereditary ruling class. And yet, the Renaissance undid all that. It's possible to study those individuals who organized this change. In many ways, we can understand much of the last 500 years as an attempt by oligarchical forces to bring society back under that backward system of feudal rule which the Renaissance destroyed. Today they call it a ''reset.''
Instead of a ''reset'' I think we need a Renaissance, but to have a renaissance, people need to know certain things, which means going beyond familiar emotions and familiar narratives about what we think we should be doing with our lives and situating ourselves within these greater arcs of history.
If people have a sense of a historical identity, they can act very differently than if they're just trying to survive in the present and offer descriptive knowledge of the world. Their thinking changes, and so do their emotions.
Today's brave new world culture is really all about discouraging any of the nobler emotions and encouraging the perversion of natural desires and inclinations instead. We might consider the difference between the emotions of Agape and Eros. From an imperial standpoint, you want people to behave like beasts, you want to promote those forms of art, culture and entertainment which encourage Eros and discourage Agape, which is associated with the higher faculties and forms of creative expression, whether in Bach's fugues, Shakespeare's dramas, or even the Song dynasty landscape paintings.
Let's all meet up next Wednesday at the gazebo in front of the library. Bring pitchforks.
A while back, I was a regular consumer of TYT's main show. I dabbled in some of their other stuff, but tended to like Cenk's read on politics. Then, as one should, I was taking in other points of view and became aware of what seemed like dishonest presentation of some topic too long ago to remember. And I saw the interview with Sam Harris and the unreal depiction of it afterward. TYT isn't really something I can listen to much now.
Krystal & Saagar at Breaking Points seem to be trending that way. At The Hill, their content was focused on politics/economics/social issues (and the occasional UFO story - TY, Saagar). But since launching the Breaking Points venture, they're full-tilt-boogie on stories about how bad the MSM is and, implicitly, how much better they are. It's tedious. It's preaching to the choir.
That's what I like about TK coverage. It covers some media problems. But the stories are about the subjects, not promos for TK. Your analysis on why the MSM missed the Trump phenomenon - it was something I just never heard before. It was like being shown something I didn't know I already knew.
Thank you!
Matt, as much as I admire you, I can't give you a pass on this. I had this nailed in 1981. I was living in Bogota, Colombia, in 1980, and subscribed to Time magazine. I read about ABSCAM, and how eight congressmen were arrested in a bribery sting. The only one whose party affiliation was indicated was a Republican. I thus stupidly deduced that all were Republicans. That was the point.
I returned to the US at the end of 1980 and eventually looked into ABSCAM. The other seven members of congress were Democrats. As were the thirty-plus others sent to jail. Which sent me on further investigation. You're an investigator, you know how it works. With a few interruptions, I had been a WaPo subscriber for two decades. I picked up on something so consistent it had to be part of their Style Book. Every story with something good to say about a Democrat had his party affiliation in the first two paragraphs; if it reflected poorly on the individual, his party affiliation was buried deep in the article. The reverse was done for Republicans.
I finally figured out that there was no liberal bias in the press, there was partisan bias. I found this in NYT, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Boston Globe as well. There was no corresponding lock-step favoring Republicans; public employee unions were actually two steps ahead of the press. This isn't recent at all. I formally left the Democratic Party in 2009, although it had left me nearly three decades earlier.
I had to stop my subscription to the Sunday LA Times because it was totally Democrat one-sided. Hated to give up the cartoon section with my granddaughter, but financially supporting the paper made it feel like a DNC campaign contribution.
i am having a problem, and i mean this seriously, that there is not one single news source that i trust anymore. There are some individual writers but no website or network. i don't feel good about that.
Just wait it out and read good historians’ take. News in the short term(several years) is all propaganda any way. I recommend Victor Davis Hanson. It takes a while to determine which historians are ethical as well. In 2016 most said with a straight face that Obama was the greatest president in American history.
ten years and counting....
My last refuge, The New York Review of Books drank the Kool-Aid deeply.
We are all journalistic orphans now and those who don't grasp that are the same people who don't know that the people tucking them into bed at night are Zombies.
I'm glad Russell Baker isn't around to see what his newspaper has become.
Now, with no (living) journalists to distract you, you have more time for these authors:
William Shakespeare, C. Wright Mills, John Ralston Saul, René Girard, John W. Aldridge, Victor Klemperer, Neil Postman, Karl Popper, Konrad Lorenz, Janine Wedel, Anna Politkovskaya, Antonio Damasio, Philip Roth, Malcolm Cowley, Eva Turner Clark, Sven Hedin, Johan Huizinga, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel L. Everett, James Thurber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benoit Mandelbrot, Lewis Mumford, Molly M. Mahood, Noemi Magri, Somerset Maugham, Charlton Ogburn Jr., Titus Lucretius Carus, Frank McCourt, Tanya Reinhart, Roger Scruton, Israël Shahak, Lee Smolin, Matthew Josephson, Madeleine L'Engle, Daphne Du Maurier and others.
The Claremont Review of Books has some good writers and, besides reporting on books, it explains current events.
I haven't had the heart to log into NYRB for a while. Last I checked LARB (just as the LA Times is surprisingly the least worst of the coastal US newspapers) and LRB they were still pretty decent.
I always recommend reading lots of things from realclearpolitics and seeing where you fall out. It's got a net right of center bias but pulls pretty well from both sides and mostly not junk from either side. Sometimes easily dismissable stuff from one side or the other, but still useful to know about the argument being made.
I used to read Reuters as overall fair but they just went behind a paywall so I don't have a substitute for that yet. Paywalls lead directly to moving to the extremes because you seek subscribers and that's where they sit.
thehill is not too bad, too. Sometimes they have bias of omission but overall quite good.
Here's an example of a fair and balanced story on a topic where few were fair and balanced: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/546148-hunter-biden-doesnt-know-if-delaware-laptop-was-his
In fairness, I buy Hunter's argument here. I can believe that he owns multiple laptops in various states of dilapidation that have all kinds of porn on them and he knows where few, if any, of them are presently located.
i used to trust the Hill but no more. Like the rest of the mainstream media, when it came to Covid theyabandoned any pretense of investigative journalism and were content to promulgate the party line. i'm sure you saw Matt's Ivermectin article.
For every decent article at RCP I find two or three which I consider junk. Still, I look there but less and less since I got access to a _very_ good lending library.
Five Corporate commercials- We are all the core demographic when we drink Pepsi, sequence of pod people asks their doctor for the drug that might kill them, Dumb man can’t take care of himself without reliable woman, witty and relatable guys really don’t care if you buy insurance, We swear to god this Hyundai is a luxury sports car
"witty and relatable guys really don’t care if you buy insurance"
The "buy insurance or don't, we don't care, we make money either way, here's our CGI animal mascot" genre of insurance advertisement is one of the most dazzling displays of not-give-a-shit postmodernism ever forced into Alex DeLarge's eyes.
Insurance is random, there is no deeper meaning than what we imbue in it
"Our target reader used to be the person sipping coffee at a moment like the present, a cool Saturday morning, lazily turning pages as birds chirped outside the window." Well . . . I read that on a Saturday morning, sipping coffee, listening to the birds chirping outside the window! Ahhh . . . the good life!
Nice! I laughed at Liam Neeson’s Revenge!
I would have added Young People Fucking