For me, one of the worst Newspeak words is “justice”. It used to be a pleasant word; it now raises my hackles.
It USED to mean “fighting against oppression (and ideally winning) for the betterment of the whole society”.
But now it means “one group (who fancies themselves as oppressed) ACTIVELY oppressing everyone who isn’t part of their group, for the sole betterment of only themselves, society be damned”.
Actually justice meant to apply a certain set of mostly agreed upon standards for behavior, which were ideally set into law. Even persons who were nominally oppressed could do unjust things.
But yes, now it means "what is consistent with the resistance's aims in the approved power struggle narrative".
Which goes to show that "justice" is a useless abstract term, much like "fascism." Generally speaking, the more numbered definitional entries in a dictionary for a noun, the less useful the term.
Orwell once again gets it right in his "Politics and the English Language."
Never read that one. I need to as Orwell is prophetic with “newspeak”, “doublethink”, and “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Personally enjoyed “Animal Farm” more than “1984” but those are his only two books I’ve read.
He wrote some great essays, plus his book on being a hobo in France and England. Also about Spanish Civil War, also about what it was like to be a coal miner. And other things. His essay "Why I Write" is a classic. Some of his reflections on leftists in the '30s and '40s could have been written today--and he was a committed socialist!
Its like the soldier who went to court martial and was trembling. The general said "don't be scared, you will get justice here." The soldier responded. "that's what I am afraid of."
Yes, definitely the sibling of “justice” in this respect!
The Oxford English Dictionary originally defined it as “The quality of being equal or fair; fairness, impartiality; even-handed dealing.” [https://www.oed.com/dictionary/equity_n?tab=factsheet#5382223]. If you were looking for the perfect example of Newspeak, where a word has come to mean its own opposite, “equity” and “justice” are surely two of the most perfect illustrations.
Considering that the majority of Americans do not understand the difference between the modern usage of “equity” as opposed to ”equality”, it is extremely problematic for society.
I am Canadian. In Canada Justice rules and the law is always on trial. Our Supreme Court determines Justice not law. Our Supreme Court are legal ethical philosophers not lawyers. They represent what we perceive as Justice not what parliaments make into law.
The rule of law was never meant to be the rule of justice.
Samuel Johnson wrote the Dictionary of the English language. John Adams' law library was written in Greek and Latin. Adams was a Federalist and Samuel Johnson was an ENGLISH conservative linguistic philosopher. He wrote Taxation No Tyranny in response to the American Congress in 1775. He was a white Supremist's supremacist. Nobody talked about liberal democracy in 1775 it wasn't even anybody's wish list. The Revolution was about whether Roman Catholicism was a real religion. Oliver Cromwell's expertise was slaying Catholics. He was the Republican leader 1653-1658. The English Civil WAr was England's bloodiest war even in 2023.
Ambroise Bierce, Dr Samuel Johnson and John Ralston Saul wrote my three go to dictionaries. I am partial to The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense.
Of course I always rely on George Orwell and Mark Twain to send me in the right direction. Stephen Fry is of course 2023. Zizek is brilliant but his Yiddish is not my Yiddish but sometimes I must do my own translation. They say I am autistic. I don't have a clue what that means. I am me enjoying the moment.
I love The American Bible: The Life and Moral of Jesus of Nazareth. It is short and belongs on every nightstand it can be read in an hour instead watching TV. I watch very little television except for baseball. I watch a lot of baseball.
Mark Twain covered baseball in Hartford. He was a great baseball writer. He said "Baseball is America."
I don't gamble but they said I am genius at analytics almost 70 years ago. Baseball defies analytics it is played by children . I wish I could have played ball but I am very very slow.
Mark Twain Wrote The Gilded Age and Joan of Arc.
I love British philosophers; Eugenia Cheng and Stephen Fry are my current living favourites. Steven Pinker is wonderful but he shares my Montreal Jewish perspective so ; "What's not to like?"
I almost went upstairs to get my copy of Bierce but our regular guest is in the process of reading it. It is old and yellow with time. Should I get another copy? He gets out of Montreal for visit every month or so.
I would take your statements a tad less jadedly if not for the recent decisions handed down by your version of our SCOTUS on the recent response to the pandemic.
My Canadian Supreme Court and Quebec Superior Court said Covid was a Concern of Health Canada and My Quebec Department of Health and Quebec did it correctly even as Covid arrived in Montreal the same day it arrived in New York.
A nurse comes to our door and gives my wife and I the vaccines as warranted. We are fully vaccinated and at 160 we are not as mobile as we were once upon a time.
In Quebec healthcare, education and welfare are RIGHTS not privileges. We are the government. We are ownership not management. Health, education and welfare are our responsibility and the Province is in charge of management not Ottawa but politics is about reaching consensus and we use ballots not bullets. We are not the Evil empire or the Ministry of Truth.
I lost one friend to Covid . He lived in the Texas colony of Alberta. If he lived in Quebec chances are he would still be alive to play with his grandchildren.
It is not mandated. It was voluntary. We could live in isolation or be vaccinated that seems a reasonable request in the Time of Cholera.
No one was forced to be vaccinated it was a choice we were offered. We chose not to hide under the bed we are too old to get out from under our bed.
My wife is an American and thought how civilized liberal democracy is and how barbaric are American plutocrats.
Donald Trump sent us money. My wife is a philosopher she spends more money on books than we do on food and rent and we could get groceries after the vaccinations and I like to cook. Of course our cannabis commission made sure I had the proper medication and cannabis is cheaper than tobacco. Tobacco costs us billions cannabis is another viable complimentary economy.
I was born under the Padlock Laws of the Roman Catholic Church in 1948. People with names like Cohen were not fully human and my father loved his Jewish public library which was most objectionable to our Catholic prelates before the revolution. Now race, gender and religion are considered human fantasy. Leonard Cohen went to the same Protestant High School as Kamala Harris. Justin Trudeau grew up in the same neighbourhood but was forced to attend the school without the Cohens or Harrises and 85 % of Quebec is Catholic and they were mostly poor and illiterate . Westmount high was very privileged and very elite but very public and it did not serve Catholics. Today Westmount High serves everybody but it does so in English not French and it is still an elite High School.
Do you wonder why they don't show you Kamala's High School in 2023?
"Everyone would want Westmount High for their children.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Kris Kristofferson Me and Bobby McGee
I listen to Janis Joplin in my dotage along with Mozart, Satie, Bach and Leonard ha Cohen. I still listen to Leonard's Warsaw Concert and it closes with The Tennessee Waltz. My wife was born in Nashville but it is difficult to dance in a walker but we pretend that "Nobody's watching." Guy Clark Come from the Heart
Is the ability to hold a bank account considered a right or a privilege in Quebec? Making healthcare, education and welfare into RIGHTS gives the state the prerogative to take over those areas of life. That inevitably leads to corruption, incompetence, and coercion.
We have three bank accounts one in Michigan one in Vermont and we use our local Credit Union and its 70,000 employees for all our transactions. We closed our Bank of Montreal account we used the Bank of Montreal in Chicago and our local CO-OP which Senator Obama in his neoliberal philosophy saw fit to destroy.. The Bank of Montreal owns Harris Bank they are trustworthy but the nearest branch is a thirty minute drive and in summer parking next to the door is not easy. We don't have any secret to hide from our government. They are management we are shareholders. We have a free and independent press I subscribe to our local daily and contribute to the co-operative of independent journalists the governing body that assures us of Press Freedom. Covid did not disrupt our daily lives because The Quebec Ministry of Health works for all of us and it works along side Health Canada. All we demand is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.. We change governments (management) regularly. Our current government is a relatively new political party and is beginning to smell of corruption. We don't look lightly at corruption I suspect in eight years Quebec will have a new party more understanding of liberal democracy. We teach truth in our schools. No Noah no Jesus just the truth, the whole truth and the nothing but the truth.
We believe in evolution. It is God's design for the universe. We believe in a better future not a mythical past. I was born in a Quebec theocracy. I will die in a Quebec where race, gender and religion are history not reality. We went from from poverty and illiteracy to prosperity and optimism in forty years. America went from prosperity and optimism to despair and hopelessness in forty years. In 2030 the burning of fossil fuel will be against our laws climate change is a HUMAN responsibility not an economic problem. Economics is religion not a problem for a liberal democracy that teaches truth to its children.
Jefferson believed in evolution. He said the constitution was an abomination after Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin made slavery a relic of the past and slavery is simply no longer a economic necessity.
Who shall serve and who shall rule is water under the bridge. Everyone is connected via the internet. All you need is an education on what is truth.
Philosophy is the study of evolution. John Adams was a Federalist. Conservatism is the rejection of evolution. Adams never recognized the election of Jefferson. That is history in their own words. Ben Franklin became an extreme abolitionist and was banished to Europe where he was the wisest of the wise. In America they said he suffered from syphilis.
I recommend his speech to the Royal Academy of Denmark titled Fart Proudly.
As Orwell suggested Slavery is not Freedom.
John Ralston Saul in his Doubter's Companion : A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense 1994 said . Cynicism is liberal democracy's greatest threat.
Cynicism is America's religion of choice.
In 1964 Ronald Wilson Reagan said Liberal democracy is America's worst nightmare. You can still watch a Time for Choosing on youtube. It was the time of the Civil rights and Voting Rights acts.
Sir John Ralston Saul still says "Neoliberalism is neither new nor liberal. He lives in Toronto and informed us of Covid but was educated in European history at Oxford.
I lived in aboriginal communities everyone should The Comeback.
Canada is not a unitary state. It is a collection of Sovereign jurisdictions. Quebec can leave Canada without firing a shot. We have elections. Quebec laws are not Ontario laws and Quebec is in charge of health education and welfare. Quebec controls its highways Canada the borders. We are Canada we don't believe the same shit you believe. Our shit doesn't smell different but in Canada a Civil War would only cost us our dignity.
If Quebecers voted to leave Canada when you arrived at the border they would fly the Fleur de Lys not the Maple Leaf. There would be a decade of intense negotiations. An agreement would be reached and nothing would change.
That is a loss dignity for sure. 🤣
First they would have to decide if Quebecers like Justin Trudeau could sit on both sides of the negotiating table. I don't know how you make the member of Parliament from Papineau a non Quebecer. It is what we call treason.
Canada is NOT the United States of America. It is more the European Union in governance.
Kamala Harris was at Westmount High when Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque negotiated Canada's future less than a block away. Things have worked out well. I grew up in Pierre Trudeau's Mont Royal so did Vice President Harris we're talking UPPER UPPER middle class morality. Like you might find in Takoma Park or Palm Springs.
I live in Quebec. I am the government along with eight and half million other citizens.
We are a secular humanist liberal democracy. The government serves the people.
America is an oligarchy where the government serves the economy.
Bernie Sanders is to the right of our conservative government.
Healthcare, education and welfare are rights not privileges.
Corporations and other institutions like churches and even government are pieces of paper and haven't got the rights we give trees and insects they are pieces of ass wipe.
I don't love the government never did I am a libertarian like Noam Chomsky. I love freedom, prosperity and the optimism of a better tomorrow.
I trust Health Canada and our Health department not spokesmen for Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Tech. Eighty five per cent of our truck drivers supported their government over their anarchist fringe. Our truckers love freedom and democracy not fascist dictators and billionaire grifters. My Amazon driver is middle class as are all our Amazon workers. When healthcare education and welfare are rights middle class becomes memories of early and middle 20th century realities. WE are citizens and everyone is equal before our Supreme Court. We are a nation of justice not a nation of law.
In Canada the law is always on trial before we consider the defendant's behaviour
My wife and I retired to Quebec.
We could have retired in Florida or California or Tennessee where she was born where we have lots of family but Florida and Tennessee hate freedom and democracy.
I hate the stupidity but love the stupid but I am just a crazy old man.
I love Chicago and Nashville; Tallahassee not so much but instead of spouting your ignorance why don't you visit. You will know you are in Quebec not Maine or New Hampshire or New York when the second world poverty ends and everyone looks healthy. Tim Horton's is not The Waffle House.
I apologize for no Chik Fil As or Cracker Barrels sometimes ethics get in the way of economics.
Quebec is a SOVEREIGN Nation inside Canada's Federation we can leave Canada without firing a shot. That is REAL Democracy.
I believe Justice Abella is spending the year at Harvard explaining Canadian Judicial Philosophy to morons.😢
We can watch our Supreme Court deliberate and let the viewer decide on whether justice is served. Clarence Thomas would be an abomination John Roberts acceptability is questionable Lena Kagan, thumbs up perhaps too conservative but totally qualified..
"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects" Albert Einstein
None, almost none of these American flag waving commentators / readers will understand you. They will just mock. They can't think outside their fixed box of infantile beliefs, learned from infancy, more from parents and relatives and fellow church goers than from schools.
In Judaism, ie Deuteronomy, the word is "Justice, Justice Shalt Thou Pursue". In the Biblical context, it makes perfectly good sense. If you are secular, you could nevertheless understand it when read as literature - which is what the Bible is, in one true sense of the word. Evangelical Christians can understand those words in context for obvious reasons.
I would challenge that statement to a degree. The left is needed to bring the right back to the center so we don't all become cyborgs living in rigidly run institutions. The left brings color to the world but goes too far in the direction of "self" and "individualism" and "feeling". This all ebbs and flows with time. I say this as a Libertarian leaning Conservative.
MLKJr in his "Where do we go from here?" speech which I think is the better speech than "I Have a Dream" one, said that Communism forgets the "me" and Capitalism forgets the "we". King was looking for a synergy between the two that would birth something completely new; a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the two. I too now identify as a left libertarian rather than a liberal. I had been a Democrat all my adult life having fallen for the fable that the left was about the working class and the "we". Ha. Ha. The Blue Dogs and the Rockefeller Republicans took over the Democratic Party in the late 70s. Fiscally conservative but concerned about the environment and some social programs. But I had also been hoodwinked about who was the real "war" party. Mostly Democrats took us to war. That's that old time "Onward Christian Soldiers" crap that is called now "humanitarian intervention". Meanwhile the conservatives except for the occasional John McCain were mostly isolationist and anti-war. But their patriotism and love of country had them also serve in the wars in huge numbers. They are localists not globalists. They are the majority of citizens but still the 'silent majority". So, yes, I now lean "conservative" for want of a better word. We need that Phoenix that MLK envisioned.
Obviously humans have important individualistic and collectivistic characteristics, many of which seem to be genetically determined. These would have evolved long before humans were even human and would be exclusively fetishized or exclusively demonized at our peril; we need both.
I thought the left was all about collectivism? In the past I’d always attributed “rugged individualism” to the right, but who knows now that everything has been flipped on its head.
In the ancient world, military formations depended largely on the muscular strength of the participants, and the most humans are right-handed; so the person at the right side of a formation (like a line of battle or a phalanx) was very important since he would be the focus of both attack and defense. That importance would translate into honor or repute, both of the person and of the position. Subsequently the _right_ side became the position of military honor and thus of the military virtues (power, strength, loyalty, fortitude, bravery, obedience, aggression, and so forth. Hence when people gathered into groups for political purposes they would place the most honored people on the right and the right would refer to those of high rank. Of course, there were people who did not particularly love the military virtues or fighting in general, but preferred peace, freedom, equality, and autonomy. They became the Left. The seating arrangements of the French _parlement_ reflected these preferences, and the symbolism of the Right and Left descended almost to this day.
Not in this day and age. The left is more about accepting the individual, as long as no one gets hurt and justice for all people. The Right seems more about authoritarianism and keeping to a rigid line of behavior, you can't read this, you can't say that, you can't do xyz, or you will be in trouble.
The "Our" includes dead voters (and pets who vote), those who are fine with their mentality disturbed children wanting to change the sex they were born with, the brain dead Pennsylvania voters who elected a brain damaged moron to the US Senate and every pantywaist white ethnomasochist in this country. There are many more "ours."
SJWs want to force equity between collectives, regardless of the injury this causes to individuals in the process, because they regard the individual as irrelevant and the group as primary. By the same token a collective can be labeled as evil, and individuals deemed to belong to that collective deemed to be intrinsically guilty regardless of whether they have individually ever done any wrong. In this, Critical Race Theorists are following exactly the same reasoning as the National Socialists.
The term 'Social Justice' was first used by the Roman Catholic Church, but they were clear that it meant individual justice within the context of society. One could argue that the right to a living wage, equal treatment, or an education is not a matter of justice or injustice, and that such thinking involves a category error, but it is clearly not full-on collectivism.
A state might be interested in what we are calling social justice or equity for the moment because they (the ruling class) might see it as in their interest to reduce intrastate tensions and hostilities between internal tribes and groups. It is not at all unknown for such hostilities to result in violence and even civil war. Sometimes ruling classes have exploited the hostilities, but I think for the most part they have been regarded as nuisances if not worse. Painting the social equity effort in virtuous colors would be part of the program.
I thought we were going to note words whose meanings had been radically changed overnight, like _transparency_, not complain about words whose concepts some of us don't like. You may not like the concept of social justice, but its meaning has not changed much since it was invented.
The meaning of 'Social Justice' has changed fundamentally since it was first introduced. The Roman Catholic Church coined the term to mean justice for individuals within the context of society. The modern usage of 'Social Justice' means equity between collective groups.
That's very interesting. As far as I can recall I had seen only the second meaning used, and I do a lot of reading. I am conscious of the related use of _social_ in such terms as "social gospel" so I"m not completely unfamiliar with that (generic) usage, but not of the first term, which is why I said I thought it had not changed. Do you know of any writers who have taken notice of the change? I would think among those who were familiar with the first meaning that the appearance and popularity of the second would have elicited some commentary.
I read an article detailing the evolution of the term 'social justice' about a decade ago. It was well researched and provided quotations and citations to make its case, so I found it convincing. I ought to have bookmarked it. As far as I know, very few people were aware of the seismic shift in meaning the expression 'social justice' had undergone.
I agree but would add that “ justice “ itself has been perverted by the judicial branch of government from the local probate and family courts all the way up to and including the Supreme Court of the country. There is no justice in the USA anymore( if there ever was)
its becausee everything that the us government now does is inherently unjust - from counterfeiting trillions to infringing on your natural rights of property, contract and free association. the evil empire's tentacles reach everywhere to commit injustice.
You'd have to define "sound moral balance" and possibly "reason" any of which can be contested. There is also "giving each man his due", where the question is begged by the meaning of "due". Note that justice derives from Latin _ius_ "that which is binding, an oath" which has a religious connotation.
They want people's heads filled with shibboleths, not opinions. Opinions can lead to thinking, and people who start thinking can wander off the plantation. Shibboleths, on the other hand, have about as much semantic content as ant-pheromones, and a similar function. They signal which faction you belong to so that anyone outside that bubble is a total enemy to be destroyed. Best of all, they actively prevent any semblance of thought from ever germinating.
“In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers were doing in an imperfect way.”
- General Education Board, Occasional Letter No.1, (1906), sponsored by John D. Rockefeller.
More frightening quotes about educational theory and pedagogy from presidents, university deans, and philanthropists across the last century or more at (many of these documented by the eminent historian of education Lawrence Cremin, too):
Those quotes describe the Prussian model of education, designed to break the student's will and form a pliant collective entity, though the idea of total indoctrination for the sake of complete subordination to the state goes back to Plato. Modern education has abandoned even the lowest common denominators regarding literacy and numeracy in favor of the apocalyptic Marxist ideology of Paolo Freire. James Lindsay of New Discourses has written extensively on the Marxification of Education.
My wife's father was Eugene V Debs godson. We still have a two ton paperweight with Deb's image.
My wife's doctorate is about educating students in their own cultures. I am labelled autistic. I been called a genius in logic and linguistics for over 65 years but academics are way to difficult for my limited abilities. My father in law was genius and a recluse. One son in law won a Nobel prize. I couldn't graduate from DeVry.
I talked a lot to my father in law and we listened to his music. My father in Law was a genius. He attended Michigan and shared Arthur Miller's residence. My Father in law was awarded a Masters in Conservation Science .
His favourite song was King of the Road. My father law was too brilliant to hit the road. He understood science and was too busy making everybody millions.
I was the King of the road before I met my wife. I knew all of Roger Miller's songs.
We lived an hour out of Yellowknife where he had dreamed of moving before he even finished college. He had travelled the North before he finished college.
It’s striking that while Mencken may not have been quite fair to our Puritans - he still had this country nailed. We must endlessly suffer now so some glorious future which will never come will come into being.
"Government has now gone far beyond anything ever dreamed of in Jefferson's day. It has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations with the high dignity and impeccability of a state religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste."
H.L. Mencken (1926) quoted in The Gist of Mencken: Quotations from America's Critic edited by, Mayo Dubasky
What was that Alice In Wonderland quote? Something about "words mean what I want them to mean, and nothing else"?
If you don't think Taibbi is a progressive, then you are wrong.
The Democrats do not exist to govern; they exist to make sure that progressives don't.
That is why they are willing to lose easy elections to people like Trump - Trump's policies make the Dem Leadership richer than they are already. And he provides an easy boogyman to drive out the vote.
You think Pelosi isn't making the most of those Republican tax cuts? Did you miss it when the same people who said Trump was an existential threat to the very fabric of spacetime votes to increase his military budget four out of four years?
In these definitions, notice how "progressive" is a generic term while "conservative" is specifically cultural or political.
The results of what many consider to be political progress have been suspect, to speak with restraint. The Roe v. Wade decision is one recent example. Same with the men-in-women's-sports controversy.
I also find it interesting that the entire concept of progress--technological and social--has been subjected to the law of unintended consequences. There's nothing quite so annoyingly evil than someone trying to change you for your own good.
Interesting. I'm not saying you're wrong. I do believe, and always have that the center left and center right are nearly the same. Most Democrats are firm believers in capitalism. To accuse them of socialism is ridiculous because it doesn't hurt mainstream Dems or Republicans to let the real Left encourage social diversity. It just makes life more interesting. The right wing is currently hanging itself by allianating, blacks, immigrants, sexually devergant people because, whether the Right likes it or not, they exist AND they spend money. So the right has to decide if it wants a flourishing capitalist country or a poor stratified fascist country. They haven't realized you can't kill everyone you don't like. That's already been tried and failed. See wwII fascism and the rise of the Soviet Union.
You might want to take another look at minority voting - in NYC, at least, I have read that Democrats are (deservedly) hemorrhaging black and Asian voters.
Whichever party pulls their face out of the donor class' lap first and actually does something that materially helps anyone making less than $250k a year will be able to clean up.
And the Democrats keep going deeper into that lap. But as I have said a hundred times, the Democratic Party doesn't exist to govern; they exist to prevent any actual progressive from talking office. No one must make the ruling class pay their taxes, ever. Taxes are for the middle class.
And when many (indeed most) of those 'billionaire grifters' happily include themselves as dues-paying members of the 'progressive' clan, do you believe them when they tell you what they intend to bring about will bring about what they promise?
Do I believe it when people are pretending to be something that they are obviously not when they make promises they obviously don't mean?
Uh, no. I don't.
Did you think that was some kind of sick burn?
Pro tip: when categorizing people on the "left vs right" spectrum, the "left" is a full democratization of the means of production (ie, communism) and the right is where both the government and the means of production are controlled by one person (ie, fascism).
And before the legion of nitwits starts screaming "Soviet! China! Argh!" ask yourself this: were the means of production controlled by the people?No?
Government controlled by the people that control the economy? Yes?
The USSR and China were/are fascist. By definition. Because words need to have meaning beyond "anything I don't like is left/right wing.
Yes, yes it is. I was born in a Communist 💩hole, stopped voting straight ticket Democrat when "Progressive" Barack Obama ran for POTUS - in December 2014 the warnings about him came true - he embraced the murderous Communist regime of Cuba and suddenly, attacks against Cubans on the island became more vicious. Obama provided cash to the sinking Communist regime and emboldened them to mame, kill Cubans. Thanks Obama and Progressives who still idolize this monster - worst POTUS in modern history.
"Do I believe it when people are pretending to be something that they are obviously not when they make promises they obviously don't mean? Uh, no. I don't."
So why are you sticking to the now done to death term "progressive" then, when all kinds of scum are pretending and identifying as such, and they have all the power too?
You're not going to restore it to its proper meaning by doing that. You're just shine it and promote it, only for the fakers and imposters to get to use it as their brand name.
"Why do I keep pointing out that the people who pretend to be progressive are not actually progressive?"
Because you stuck to a tainted term like "progressive" who has been contaminated. So you always need to add the clarification that you mean "the real progressives". Meanwhile, everybody else is free to understand your advocation for "progressivism" as an advertisment for the fake ones - after all those are the ones that dominate the use of the term.
The traditional spectrum at either pole is Left = Communism; Right = Anarchy.
Fascism doesn't need a Dear Leader, just a total state/private merger, with the state having the power to seize private property at will. At least this is how the Mises Institute defines it.
This discussion once again illustrates the uselessness of the term "fascism."
Pray do tell which Progressives have given us healthcare, raised our wages & raised taxes on "billionaire grifters"?
Until Communist parasite Bernie Sanders became a multimillionaire, "Progressives" attacked millionaires. Bernie & his grifter wife changed the focus to billionaires- and the sheep followed. If it weren't for enormous taxes paid by billionaires, the illegal aliens wouldn't be able to grift off the government teet😂😂 yes, they’re on welfare the second they break into the US.
I gather you've never had financial success or you wouldn't be regurgitating the lie that billionaires don't pay their fare share. Stop punishing financial success, you come across as a Commie.
You have obviously never had financial sucess or you'd know that the few billionaires we have in the US pay outrageous amounts of taxes.
You didn't answer my question - which Progressives have given us healthcare & increased our wages? Private industry dictates wages, not the government. Tell me you've never owned a business without telling me you've never owned a business 🤣🤣
"You have obviously never had financial sucess or you'd know that the few billionaires we have in the US pay outrageous amounts of taxes."
Only in the totally irrelevant relative scale. And for whatever money they deem OK to pretend to have, not to the billions they control under several layers of indirection, store abroad, funnel through proxy companies - not to mention the tax deductibles and subsidies they get from state money, and other such BS
Who is to blame for billionaires using legal avenues to reduce the amount of cash they gift to the grifters at the SLED & Fed Department of Revenue?
Why do grifters feel entitled to other people's money? Most billionaires are risk takers, as are business owners. If they've created wealth, it should be theirs to keep. People who regurgitate that billionaires don't pay taxes, are clueless about the enormous amount of taxes they have to pay. I've worked on their financials, I don't believe in punishing financial success, regardless of who the individual is- they don't owe us anything.
The people who are making you pay the highest prices in the world for insulin, for starters. But tell me again how Americans paying higher prices for the same drugs is something anyone but the dumbest dipshit would cheer for.
You have no examples of the Progressives who have given us free healthcare and raised our salaries, because they don't exist😉. The market decides wages, not government. You'd know that if you were a business owner.
give me healthcare? where are you obtaining this magically free healthcare? or do you really mean, tax Americans to pay for bloated, government-provided substandard healthcare that we ration whenever there's a flu.
People who understand the issue know that Americans pay the most for their healthcare in the industrialized world, while receiving the worst care in the industrialized world.
You obviously don't know what you are talking about, but keep licking those boots, bootlicker.
Why look at the outside world and pay attention to observed, measured reality? We pay the most, we get the least.
It would not bother me to pay $X in taxes so that I don't have to pay $2X in fees, because I am not a crazy person. And that's not taking into consideration the fact that private insurance is vastly inferior to the care provided in other, more civilized parts of the globe. This isn't up for debate. It's a fact.
And no one said it was free, pal.
Not sure why you dimwits pretend anyone ever said that, any time, ever, but I would love it if you could explain that to me - other than it was poured into your ear by some talking head millionaire on TV, who gets paid by billionaires to convince the middle class (or what's left of it) that the working class is the problem.
And every year most Americans get poorer, sicker, and more miserable.
No, I want to demonize people who demand authoritarian power in order to "give" me stuff. And the certainty that in exchange for these gifts they will eagerly take away things that are more important to me and most other people.
supporting a populist tyranny isn't too smart, chief.
BTW, you have probably offended many modern progressives by using "chief".
So, are you also opposed to highways? Sewers? Or are you fighting the "authoritarian power" that allows interstate travel and prevents our streets from being filled with poop?
People who are opposed to "populism" are opposed to democracy. Just so you know.
You do know that private enterprises have and still do operate highways and sewers, right? And that government does not "allow" interstate travel (or at least we used to think like that).
Sounds like you, like many other modern authoritarians, have a simple-minded infatuation with democracy, and are eager to seek and impose a tyranny of the like-minded majority.
Pop quiz: how many times does "democracy" appear in the Constitution? And what is a constitutional republic?
Exactly, we have a federal republic, whose government officials are expected to represent the people, because they are chosen by democratic means that vary from state to state in the manner of their legislatures' choosing.
The word "leaders" doesn't appear in the Constitution either.
The horror the European people are experiencing aside. Because of the leap in tech, Consciousness has outstripped "ism's" and the American narrative no longer matches its reality. That's part of the fight here. Creation of a human truth/fact based American dialogue to counter the manufactured hyperreality being foisted by would be totalitarians world wide. No matter how shiny the perp placed object in the jungle path is, the mal force giving us nightmares, and fueling the disintegration and chaos to which we currently bear witness, is, as has always been, about a totalitarian elite and their access to uneducated throw away labor and the unaccountable exploitation of natural resources for their personal gain. It's not something else.
Again. In simple mythological terms. A good king loves his subjects and the kingdom prospers. A corrupt tyrant king fears the people exploits them and makes them suffer. Why, oh why, oh why, oh why, do you suppose "we the people" need a surveillance apparatus of the magnitude (object lessons Assange and Snowden) now monitoring our lives.
"We the people" have survived wars, depressions, government backed citizen murder, assassination, riots, civil war and "transparent" political corruption on both the local and national scale. ONE obvious push today is the creation of a national amnesia. "Gee, I can't remember who I am." Here's how I deal with my forgetfulness: "We hold these truth's to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...." ----Read it lately?
The Republic and the Constitution stand--we stand. The rest is time, circumstance and the daydreams of tyrants.
_Progress_, though, no longer seems like an uncomplicated concept, as it did in the 19th century, not only after the fascists, Nazis, and Bolsheviks got to work on it, but even before that with the dark Satanic mills of William Blake, and of course modern real estate development and other capitalist fetishes. It seems clear to me that when people start talking about "progress" we had better find out in which direction they want to progress. I"m not just speaking about the Left here, by the way.
Seems like a lot of people are trying to shoehorn what I am saying into their already existing world view.
I never used the word "progress".
I used the word "progressive" as an antonym of "conservative".
Progressive means you embrace change. Conservative means you are wary of change.
There is no value judgement in either term.
I invest conservatively, for instance. I say, "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it".
Some of the people most fond of calling themselves conservative favor radical change.
You can even argue that people like me are reactionary (meaning wanting to move backwards, though there is generally a negative connotation) because we want to move backwards to a previous time - a time when the rich paid their taxes, unions guaranteed a strong middle class, and social mobility still existed.
I'm not advocating for anything we didn't have already at some point. So 'reactionary' fits.
But when 'master' can mean 'Pass the potatoes,' we're living in Bob Dylan's satirical world: "You'll find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom." The essence of meaning is limitation--'2' only means what it does because it doesn't mean '1,' '3,' or some other number--and frustrating though such limitations might be there's a fundamental incoherence in thinking you can win the game through brute force of will, in blithe disregard of the rules. Games are defined by their rules, and if you break them, then whatever it is you've 'won' it isn't the game.
Of course. But is anybody persuaded by the tactic? Rules that are inconsistently applied, or can be arbitrarily reinterpreted to thwart their own intent, aren't rules at all. Even children are pretty good at recognizing when they're victims of this transparent fraud. They aren't yet old enough to articulate a reasoned argument to protest the unfair treatment, but they sense it and cry.
I dont if persuaded is the right word, but there are definately a very large contingent of voters that enjoy making people miserable so they have more company.
“Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” asks a member of the totalitarian party. “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is IngSoc and IngSoc is Newspeak.”
One of the great disappointments of my young adulthood (I was a teen during the Bush years) has been watching people who were politically informed, skeptical, putatively anti-establishment progressives in the early aughts becoming by the late teens everything they previously stood against. They have become what they once claimed to hate: hawkish, mainstream media/IC-trusting, anti-populist, and classist. It's right in line with Matt's "what happened to the Democratic voters?" question of a month or so ago.
Our best asset as small-d democratic citizens is integrity and commitment to principle. This involves constant critical thinking and a refusal to follow any party or figure therein blindly. I think that's where the mid-aughts progressives went wrong: they hitched their wagons to Obama and never stopped their starry-eyed attitude long enough to question where he was taking them.
The propaganda to get them to conform and reform their thinking was merciless. Ever since the repeal of the Smith-Mundt act DARPA and Washing DC have been running nonstop PSYOPs on Americans for a decade. And they've gotten exceedingly good at it:
---
New Normal ● Alone Together ● Build Back Better ● Flatten the Curve
Stay Home Save Lives ● Protect/Save the NHS ● We’re all in this together
Test, Trace, Treat ● Stay smart, Stay Safe, Stay Open ● We Stay Home!
Don’t Panic, Don’t Rush, Don’t Overstock ● Only You Can Prevent the Spread
Stay Home, Your Home is Your Lifeline ● Stay Home, Save Lives, Avoid Stage 5
NHS: We Stay At Work for You – You Stay At Home For Us ● COVID Ends With You
Follow The Science ● Trust The Science ● Believe In The Science
Be Informed, Be Prepared, Be Smart, Be Safe: Be Ready to Fight COVID-19
The vaccine will save us ● The booster will save us ● The 4th dose is the answer
Your freedom ends where your contagion begins ● Self Isolate!
I wear my mask to protect you and you wear your mask to protect me
There is no evidence of harm ● This is a pandemic of the un-vaccinated
Out of an abundance of caution ● No one is safe until everyone is safe
This is for the greater good ● It is Safe and Effective ● The science is settled
THE SCIENCE IS YOUR NEW GOD AND IT IS WHAT WE SAY IT IS
These are not science terms and phrases. They are hypnotic chants meant to induce an audience into a suggestive state of mind – this is why they are repeated over and over and over again.
Furthermore, masking has historically been an integral part of an initiation ritual: in our case the initiation into the “new normal” the globalists have planned for us.
Put another way—all of this was one giant world-wide psychological operation.
They were doing that even before Covid. During the financial crime spree of 2008:
they rolled out "homeowner deadbeats" "get a job" "bought too much house" "responsible homeowners" "living in your Mom's basement." All those phrases to cover up the banks were stealing us blind and Obama was allowing that theft!
Not entirely Obama, although he introduced Keynesian economics, it had been the introduction of housing policy by Barney Frank + company. There was no policy 20 years prior that everyone needed a house to live the American Dream. That and subprime loans began in the early aughts, perhaps even the term. It was flourishing in the 2nd W term.
I understand. But it was totally Obama who stood protecting the bankers. He said, "I stand between you and the pitchforks." And he did protect the bankers well. And every homeowner, fighting the banker crimes, lost everything. I fucking hate that Uncle Tom.
Obama/ Biden bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $29,000,000,000,000 (Levy Economics Institute) while allowing 5 million Americans to lose their homes. The banks would still have gotten all the money if the Americans briefly, in some cases relatively permanently, were helped to keep their homes.
The amazing thing is that it didn't really hurt Obama/ Biden politically.
Yes I clearly remember the housing bubble beginning under Clinton’s administration.
It imploded at the end of Bush. Obama did what he did.
They ,being bankers , supported by our government gave out unsustainable loans. As the prices continued to be greedily inflated.
So many loans given to folks who could not afford them. What a scam. The banks ended up owning all the foreclosed houses. Then we take payers bailed them out.
Clinton destroyed Glass Steagall at the behest of Citibank and Travelers Group so they could merge the commercial speculation with retail banking. making your deposits a part of the casino. Then GWB told everyone to go "Buy Buy Buy, everyone gets a house!" and Obama was the third shyster in the line-up. Obama said there was no crime spree (when he had specific knowledge that the banks had created a forgery scheme, which included crossing state lines, which elevated those forgery crimes to mail fraud/wire fraud, which ultimately stole trillions in real estate by unlawfully foreclosing on millions of Americans). Obama also said that he would protect the bankers. He said "I stand between you and the pitchforks." No top banker lost his position, all bankers were paid their bonuses and no one but the lowly mortgage brokers/realtors/appraisers went to jail. So, it was bipartisan, but Obama was the ultimate shyster and he gained the most post-Presidency. Obama now owns a mansion in DC, and two waterfront compounds......one in Hawaii and one in Martha's Vineyard. Obama has been paid handsomely for heading up the foreclosure RICO network, god bless his rotten soul.
Good point. Since 2014 when the Smith Mundt Act was abolished ("modernized") the State Department (actually the CIA which has been doing this since WWII all over the globe) LEGALLY propagandizes the domestic MSM, now State Media. The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 means such government propaganda is critical for National Security, the band-aid that covers all totalitarian actions, and we ARE in perpetual war. Probably why "Deep State" fell out of use; our controllers don't like being fingered.
To be fair, State and others had been propagandizing Americans for decades, sometimes by using foreign cutouts, and otherwise by simply ignoring the law.
All the 2014 "modernization" did was to legalize what the State and the CIA already were doing.
Yes indeed the "Modernization" of the Smith Mundt Act is one of many horrible actions against Americans that took place under Barack Obama, our Communist POTUS.
We failed the test - families were broken up and the parasites won.
The crazy thing is I thought they were going to get to be the smug ones. Lording it over us Republicans that were deceived by the neocon bullshit. Now there is this strange feeling watching them literally forget everything they knew and embrace everything they hated. Seriously, how do you go from being able to list every Constitutional abuse of the Bush Administration off the top of your head to fawning over the guy and saying his abuses did not go far enough a few years later? I have come to hate "resistance" liberals. Being unable to shut up about fascism while acting like fascists does that I guess. At the same time, I feel a strange kinship now with the old left who never changed who they were. Most of the time it starts with, "wait, you noticed that too?"
I think the “us” is referred to in this article in that Marxism began as a class divide, but that didn’t fly in the USA. Recently, the conversion is to race where it works in Critical Theory in colleges, CRT in elementary schools. Working Class ,White Working Class, apparently to create bourgeois/proletarian conflict. The new abominable “elite” needs erasure, sine it means wealthy. If there’s additional meaning to the descriptive noun, it’s not clear.
Yes--neo Marxism replaces bourgeoisie vs. proletariat with white people vs. "people of color." The class war was converted to a race/culture war, of which Herbert Marcuse was the main architect. This fact makes those who dismiss the culture war as trivial part of the problem.
C. Rufo's book on America's Cultural Revolution is an excellent primer on this bit of American history.
Bernie got derailed with a threat from the Clintons. His politics weren't rejected, it was HER TURN. So, she used what the Clinton's always employ which was threats.
Pinochet’s Chile, the Brazilian Army, Try this one: Nazi Germany and every Central American govt. propped by United Fruit. Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Mussolini’s Italy. You are just insanely incorrect.
I think it makes sense if you frame it as the old progressive is now a conservative. They are trying to conserve the liberal values they were fighting for before. And the new progressive is trying to progress to the new illiberal authoritarianism the think will encourage equity.
Yes I’ve been thinking the same thing. I used to consider myself firmly on the Left, but now my beliefs apparently make me “far right”. Labels are bullshit.
It is weird ....for as long as you navigate using a one-dimensional left/center/right spectrum. When you switch to positions placed on a two-dimensional circle, the machinations of centralized power make more sense.
"What happened to the Democratic voters" dovetails neatly with the question Matt and Walter brought up in this past week's show; "exactly who are the voters this new batch of Republican candidates are trying to appeal to?" It seems like the whole discourse has gone off its customary rails. The Democrats are "hawks", the "working class" is MAGA, and the "Republicans" are fighting over 3 delegates.
There is money going to Maui, but it is a natural disaster and therefore, a one time event. The Russian invasion of a Democratic country is ongoing. If Russia would just stop, we would not need to send money and weapons. You are comparing apples to refrigerators.
Russia is not going to stop, especially since the U.S. has nuclear weapons and is basically at their border on Ukraine in this proxy war. We need to come to a peaceful compromise. What the Russians did was wrong, but that doesn't mean we should start WW3 over it. More Ukranians will continue to die needlessly as long we we fund this war. Also, I stick to my point that I'd rather see money go directly to Americans in need such as the people in Maui. The pandemic was also (hopefully) a one time thing, but the money sent directly to Americans was one of the best uses of government funds in history.
The premise upon which progressives who remain Democrats hang their hat on is that Obama and the Democrats tried their best, but the evil Republicans stopped them. Pelosi, Schumer, and even now, AOC, are given the same pass. The problem with allowing careerist politicians in our society is that they will always betray their principles and their constituents for the benefit of their career.
Yup, Obama entered office in 2008 with control of both houses of Congress and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, along with a friendly Supreme Court, Wall Street begging for rescue on any terms, the biggest popular appetite for reform since 1933, and a MSM that was unironically likening him to Jesus Christ and also Neo from The Matrix. Hell, he even got a Nobel Peace Prize, basically just for showing up.
The closest to one-party rule outside of an actual banana republic and what did Obama do with it? Free money to his rich friends and a giant gimme to the insurance industry, along with a bunch more wars.
Boy, those Mean Republicans must have superpowers bordering on psychic mind control.
The change in “working class” really is the one I see as most insidious because it demonizes so many efforts to promote workers. For instance, you can not be pro-illegal immigration and pro worker; illegal immigration is a major factor in working wage suppression (the model should be if someone won’t do a job, you raise the wage until someone will; now the model is you hire an illegal to do the work). That’s why even labor organizers such as Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration. Now, by using, “white working class” even labor supporters can be demonized as racist and the establishment wins again. There are other examples but to me this is the most insidious for working people, in particular the working poor. Keep it up Matt!
This has been my argument all along! Who supports illegal immigration, it’s the big corporations of course! They don’t have to increase wages when they bring in more workers
Murdoch has WSJ going through a similar transition as Fox. Older neocons gradually replaced by a younger generation of neolibs. New boss same as the old boss when it comes to issues like open borders and war.
I have seen the entire occupation of carpentry wiped out in Monmouth County, NJ due to day workers. But I did see plenty of paychecks with SSNs on them. I learned from an Immigration Paralegal who served the community that they are purchased from those who will sell them.
You have to have a valid SS for your I-9, but it doesn't have to be yours.
They used to publish the amount of Payroll Taxes collected annually with non-matching SS# and Taxpayer Name, I think it was called Funds in Suspense (?) and it was in the billions of dollars.
Not uncommon in service and construction for DHS audits to find a sizeable portion of illegal workers (enough to close down a restaurant where I worked) but as long as the Employer has a completed I-9 they are in the clear.
Free money for the IRS as that taxpayer can never collect their SS benefits.
That said you can also buy a valid SS# and matching Name, but of course that is typically stolen from somebody else so again, good luck getting your SS back (join the club amirite?).
If I were the Q type I would be running around saying the Dems are running a trafficking scheme for payroll tax benefits.
The fault is the employers who refuse to pay a decent wage. And those owners vote solidly Republican. They love the unrest between the working and middle class. They laugh all the way to the bank because instead of blaming them working class Americans blame other working class Americans. ( FYI working class is anyone who works for a paycheck, which is most of us)
Perhaps we should go back a little farther for a more descriptive label. Instead of variations on “working class”, we should use the more flexible term - serf.
I didn't even mention this term in my comment. While I use the concept of "class" in my writing, I haven't really followed its use over the years. It's an odd term, as - after all - who contributes to society without working? I've always seen it as a bit of a Marxist construction. Some use "blue collar" which is more to the point, but seriously vague. Taken literally, it covers a LOT of ground. The only people who don't "work" are - who? - people who can somehow afford to "play" instead? What about people who love their work or love working? My teacher somewhat frowned on the whole idea that a capitalist should be considered a contributing member of society, but on the other hand, certain among us - such as small children, senior citizens, and the seriously disables are not expected to work.
The problem that many people - especially hands-on workers for large companies - have is their lack of power unless organized compared to the power of their employers to hire, fire, and dictate wages. This is a huge power asymmetry that has haunted us for generations, but particularly since we industrialized. I remember reading a book written in 1888 specifically addressing this problem (with an idealized form of socialism).
Regardless of what the politicians say, both parties' donors demand exploitable, slave labor. Those ceaseless caravans from Latin America are generated by narco states and death squads:
Upper management cannot receive their outsized compensation by sharing the profits. Offshoring manufacturing and high tech jobs, and illegal aliens for low end jobs "which Americans won't do" for low pay, is now our established model.
Most Democrats are not pro illegal workers. It's the Corp farmers and meat packing and food production industries (and by extension food serving industries) that are pro illegal immigrants. They desperately need that dirt cheap labor because Americans scream bloody murder when the price of food goes up. Food inflation comes when the meat packers get paid minimum wage as opposed to $5 an hour and no benefits. Read the The Jungle by Lewis. It hasn't much since then.
My big problem with illegal immigrants is why those countries are so horrible that people flee in droves.. Can't something be done about that?. I understand why illegal immigrants are here, but it would be better in the long run if they stayed in their own countries.
Most of them go back; and they come back when they need more money. While here most are also sending their earnings home. That takes money out of our economy…but it also puts money into their home country’s which gives the home country little incentive to prevent people leaving.
What stopped illegal immigration from Mexico was NAFTA; it provided good jobs for Mexicans to the point where Mexico now has to worry about losing jobs to SE Asia. Migrants now are coming from Central and South America and only traveling through Mexico.
Some interesting statistics from an 8/26/27 WSJ front page article, "Group Identity Eclipses Policy As Driver of Partisan Divides.
For the past fifty years, Americans have identified as Conservatives or Liberals at roughly 30% each, with the Conservatives sometimes (not now) exceeding Liberals by about 10%.
In 1975 50% of Republicans identified as conservative; 75% now. In 1975 25% of Democrats identified as conservative; 10% now. About 62% of Democrats now identify as liberal.
In 1990, white Americans without a four-year college degree split equally between Democratic and Republican parties -- about 40% with each. Now about 40% still identify as Republicans, but Democrats have dropped below 30%.
In 1990 about 55% of white Americans with four-year college degrees identified as Republican; about 35% now. In 1990 only about 35% identified as Democrats; about 50% now.
In the spirit of black Americans recapturing the n-word and making it their own, my natural inclination is to lean hard into the term "conspiracy theorist": "Of course I'm a conspiracy theorist! Open your eyes, jackass!" Unfortunately I think the stain of Qanon (especially when applied over a base of TDS) has tainted the label irredeemably.
A friend of mine will respond to its application as a slur by reflexively replying: "they're not theories." To that end, I've been trying out new terms like "conspiracy patternist." But I think it would be funny to try to make "conspiracy expert" or "conspiracy scientist" happen.
If the conspiracy just happens to further the interest of the hegemonic class at the time, it probably can be safely dismissed. The russiagate conspiracy theory is a prime example. The NYT and WaPo, to name but two, were pushing a wackadoodle conspiracy theory that would have gotten laughed out of The John Birch Society, ca. 1962.
If the conspiracy theory does not further those interests, e.g. the JFK murder, then it may be worth further investigation.
The term "white working class" gives the politicians a reason to ignore or vilify them. You know, those poor WHITE people aren't worth listening to (the implication being that they are racist because they are white). This is likely because the poor white people remember how the Democrats have completely failed them after supposedly looking out for them for the last generation or two.
that's what got him elected the first time - the promise of a difference. same for Obama, just a different type.
Trump was certainly different, and surely entertaining from some perspectives. But he, like Obama, never quite managed with the "change" thing. the pressure to maintain the status quo and only make tweaks around the edges must be so strong...
Respectfully, it is not fair to compare the levers of power available to Obama to those available to Trump. Chris Matthews famously said he got a thrill running up his leg whenever Obama spoke. Obama had all the power and did nothing with it except to elevate his celebrity. Before he was sworn in, all of the alleged Forces For Good were organizing against Trump's success. (How about that: Organizing For America v. organizing against Trump. What a coincidence.)
President Trump did get the major tax reform law passed, which provided significant relief for the lower middle to upper middle classes, but raised taxes on the wealthy through the $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction.
He also successfully targeted the worst offenders against human rights with strong actions: Russia, Iran and China. Etc.
Trump supported the Saudi war in Yemen. The sanctions on Iran hurt the poor.
He did nothing for human rights. In fairness, that’s typical for American Presidents. Obama gave the Saudis the green light to start the war in Yemen. Foreign policy in the US tends to be bipartisan in the worst sense of that word.
It's funny how corporate media criticized Trump for cutting taxes on the wealthiest, while at the same time HOWLED about the $10,000 state tax deduction.
Are you kidding me. His biggest supporters were Putin and Xi. His son-in-law got a 2 billion dollar check from his friends in Saudi Arabia. His daughter got millions of dollars in patents from China. The deficit ballooned under Trump and he could care less because gets filed bankruptcy in order to no pay his own bills. Please the guy is a grifter thru and thru.
Obama did use the government’s levers of power against a candidate, the President. Big time. Once he was gone, the Deep State FBI used those same levers against the President, whom all the powers of the Executive Branch were vested in. Not especially wise moves. Ask Comey and Vindman.
He widen the breath and depth of the deep state those 8 years. It was still in action the entire Trump term failing to respond to directives. Case in point - held the 2020 census release until Biden was pres then released a false census that distributed more house members to blue states and then said oops we've redone the census sorry the red states will have to wait until the next census in 2030 to get correct the number of seats in the House.
Case in point - Trump pulled troops off the Syrian border and yet after Biden was in office the commander said he never removed those troops.
i appreciate your perspective. I suppose I am looking more at a long term view looking back (50-80 years in the future) The odds were certainly different!
Yet so many promises were left unfilled I can't but notice and sometimes wonder at those who remain such loyalists. Politicians will be politicians though...
Obama rode the wave for eight years while accomplishing little of any value. Trump fought a tsunami during his term, may still go under water (for the last time) before long.
Maybe so but what gives you faith that if that same 12% vote for whomever ends up on the Republican ticket come 11/24 their votes won't get 'lost' somehow in the 'overnight' counting?
Trump is biggest con artist of them all. He hates working people except that he knows they can be conned and give him money. He learned it from his slum land lord father.
Because the political class of both parties work to make sure the working class does not realize that. The big doaners of both political parties make sure we are divided.
You can always find exceptions. And statistics are funny things. Haiti may have had many deaths from Covid, but if your government is too incompetent to make sure people are vaccinated, it will probably report that the deaths were from something else. I believe Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world.
All of the runners up for fewest deaths were other unvaccinated nations. The higher the vaccination rate, the higher the death rate. There's dozens of studies out there about this. Good luck to you.
No, the problem is that working people white, black or green regardless of where they work and long as it's for a paycheck are being divided by the people in power. If all working people actually realized they have more in common then they are lead to believe, by the "owning class and the politicians (of both parties). The politicians would be scared shtless.
>>The term "white working class" gives the politicians a reason to ignore or vilify them. You know, those poor WHITE people aren't worth listening to (the implication being that they are racist because they are white)<<
This illustrates perfectly why "racist" has been such a clear example of Orwellian word change. Ignoring and vilifying people based on their race used the be the definition of "racist." Now "racist" is the word that gets used to justify ignoring and vilifying people based on their race, while the practitioners of this racial bias congratulate themselves for being "anti-racist."
Never considered it that way. When I was young there was one working class, a middle class, the upper middle, the wealthy and the poor. And it wasn’t talked about, except to give to the poor.
4. Somebody who may have ordered the immolation of hundreds of Russian mercenaries but has decidedly orange skin, and used a weird tone of voice talking about Putin that one time.
Oh.my.god you thank you Matt! You just answered a question I’ve been sitting here thinking and wondering about since Oliver Anthony’s song came out. Why were typically liberal news outlets so condescending to a working class guy singing a working class song? I’ve read articles about him in the New York Times and by NPR and I just couldn’t understand the general disdainful attitude. As well as the need to foist political views upon him, when he has been clear that he is literally middle of the road. He even says that he thinks it’s funny they played his song at the republican debate because they are the target of his song! Your whole article is so spot on. Thank you for clearing this up for me.
Also can we can get an updated definition of “expert” and “science” as in “listen to the experts” and “trust the science”? Oh how the words have been twisted for the sake of political gain in just a few short years!
Sincerely,
Someone who left California’s heinous bs behind only to find out it’s pervasive!
Some parts of the song demonize people on welfare might be one reason - that used to be a Republican move. Other parts of the song I agree with, especially the opening lines. Krystal and Saagar did a good analysis on Breaking Points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEFpyxm86VY&t=478s
That perspective strikes me as lacking compassion. It's also not how my "working class" family would see people on welfare. Attitudes will differ by age, gender, region...again I think this makes Matt's question about defining "working class" so relevant.
Also why begin with a great critique of power and then demonize the most vulnerable? It undermines the argument. Let's all unite against those in power rather than against each other.
Great topic! Truly is maddening how the past 8 years has been a non-stop temper tantrum by the uniparty over whatever is perceived as a “populist” position or issue. Whether it’s the nobility of big pharma, the patriotic honesty of the CIA, or the principled leadership of Mitt Romney, we’re all expected to have the memory of a goldfish and embrace whatever our anointed leaders happen to find convenient at the moment for their agenda.
The term "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorist" has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years, as it became weaponized in the culture/information war between elites and the unwashed masses.
The classic definition of conspiracy theorist is a person who persistently believes, without any evidence, that a secret cabal is working behind the scenes for some malicious purpose. This is the old picture of the weird guy in his basement wearing a tin foil hat.
The modern definition of conspiracy theorist, on the other hand, has expanded to include anyone who simply doubts or expresses mistrust about any official narratives of the "proper" authorities. It is a gaslighting attack against skeptics, to make them think they are crazy for questioning authority.
There’s a great tradition of serious scholarship on the left concerning the ‘deep state’. Pretty sure it was Peter Dale Scott that coined the term. Aaron Good’s recent book American Empire and the Deep State, is the most recent in that lineage. There’s also a body of scholarship going under the name of Parapolitics and State Crimes Against Democracy. I think the major thing to understand about the Deep State is the relationship between agents and agencies of political violence and economic power, perhaps especially Wall Street. It’s not a term meant for civil servants but to capture the nexus of a criminogenic nexus of extreme wealth with covert political violence.
Agreed. There are also many more dots to connect, for example the work by Whitney Webb on the marriage of organized crime and state security/intelligence. She and others have drilled deep into particular facets, however, the big picture is still somewhat fuzzy. The history of the Dulles brothers, and the broader efforts of Wall St to capture the power of US empire to pursue their own agendas, it has to be interconnected in more detail than we know publicly. And the degree of uncertainty still permits the possibility that it is all happenstance and driven by a convergence of motives and opportunities, rather than by master-planning of a secret cabal…although instruments were certainly developed to protect their enterprise, which extends to mass media control, propaganda, election rigging, and plausibly including assassinations…both inside and outside the US.
Yes good points... Whitney Webb’s work appears to be very good and an evolution in the best tradition of muckraking journalism. And your right to note the links to organised crime.
The fundamental violence of the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is that a system of opaque, unaccountable, concentrated and imperial power develops and expands over time. Then when people point to it, give it a name and outline it’s contours, they are stigmatised and pathologised. It’s complete gaslighting.
To me, the stable and real meaning of "Deep State" refers to the unelected D.C bureaucrats who actually run our Country on a day-to day basis. It makes little difference which political party is claiming to be 'in power' at any one point in time. These federal agencies have been permitted to undertake a life of their own, without true accountability to the so-called 'electorate' which pays the taxes to support their employment. How to deal with this? A few suggestions: i) de-unionize federal employees; ii) drastically cut funding to the bloated bureaucracies in D.C; iii) downsize these bureaucracies and thereby move government back closer to the States and the taxpayers who live there; and, iv) mercilessly cut back on the number of D.C. government agencies, many of which are outdated, repetitive, step on each other's toes, and continue only to try and justify their bloated budgets.
Agreed. To which I would very much add the CIA, DOJ, and FBI, all of whom have truly become powerful shadow governments which act largely in their own interests.
I use to think that but it became apparent that's not so. When Bush43 was Pres the EPA was throttled, then Obama unleashed it to even regulate puddles in your back yard, then Trump was like oh no, only one new regulation for every ten we get rid of.
Those selected to cabinet positions dictate what happens underneath them. Also, Clinton and Obama fired every lawyer in the DOJ day one. Trump advisors sure failed on that obvious point and Trump didn't have a clue as an outsider.
Agree, and disagree, Shelley. The cabinet level positions are largely window dressing. The underlying bureaucracy, however, goes on. In truth, very few of the politicians and/or their appointees 'has a clue' if they are truly an 'outsider' to the system. On the other hand, if they are an 'insider', then they have in all likelihood been captured by that underling bureaucracy and, again, it goes on. It is a complex, and dangerous, conundrum of the first order. I would surmise that Congress is really the only entity able to deal with the situation on an effective, and continuing basis; but it has totally failed to do so. Thus, the only solution is a vastly smaller and leaner federal government as a whole. Again . . . the concept of getting governmental structures back closer to the people governed.
Not only has congress failed to deal with the situation, they themselves created the problem by delegating legislative authority to executive branch regulatory agencies.
The EPA doesn't pass laws, they implement rules, totally unhindered by any sort of democratic review mechanism, because Congress didn't want to be bothered with the responsibility. So Congress wrote a bill saying "EPA should make rules about xyz", and the agency has full power and authority to do basically whatever it wants.
The American citizen is ruled by a totally unaccountable and permanent bureaucracy. This is the "deep state".
I think this varies a great deal by agency. I’ve been involved in agency vs. agency disputes and ... there are good people and important things the feds need to do.. but no one can effectively look deeper in the interests of good government, if the R’s do it they are maligned and D’s don’t seem to care, which makes sense since many of the true believers within the career ranks are D’s. That is true believers in terms of policies, not true believers in terms of what it means to serve an elected Executive.
I hope we can agree to disagree. When an outsider gets suggestions for leadership positions and installs a person like Pompeo to CIA director then moves him to State, the two positions that have caused most of the world’s woes for over a hundred years, the carnage continues. It is a failure of leadership. Yes, the zealots and ideologies at the lower rungs can and do mire up necessary changes but a smart and determine upper crust can and should weed those people out. Again, failure of leadership. It is the Pres who sets policy and someone like Clinton and Obama made sure their policies were carried out because they put in the right leadership. And that leadership is still their today under Biden.
I will agree to disagree then. You may want to pick up a copy of "Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA" by NYT Pulitzer prize winner Tim Weiner. Mr. Weiner's quotes, comments and observations can be usefully contrasted/compared with similar quotes, comments and observations appearing in "The Man Without A Face", as written by the former head of the East German Stasi, Wolf. I have no feelings about Pompeo one way or the other. These spy agencies, you will find, really do little but screw up the world and they purposefully inculcate their staffs with the attitude that they are outside, and above, the law of the countries they purportedly work for. Their very first loyalty is themselves and their cohorts. Both books contain unfiltered statements from those at the highest levels in these agencies to this very effect.
You are talking right past my point Rex. State has been undermining the entire world for a hundred years (all CFR cronies) and they became much more efficient at it when Truman bequeathed it the CIA, its most successful arm in its operations. I don't need to read more books about the CIA and its culpability. Every D president since and including Wilson has moved the progress of the progressive Left forward toward the NWO. The globalist, Bush 41 and 43, aided and abetted this effort. Constant disabling wars was a means to an end. It is not the little guys underneath that make the decisions but those above who were specifically chosen for the task. Applicants for the CIA, as with the FBI, are given specific tests to determine their reliability and propensity to fall in line. Once employed, regardless of service length, if you don’t comply you are found dead on a beach, or in a dumpster behind a building or hung from a tree. The same is happening in the military and FBI - end of life primarily because of suicide say the authorities.
Lois Lerner harassed conservative 501-c3s because two Dems in Congress asked the IRS to do this. That's on record. 90% of the fed agencies are run and operated by progressive since O second term.
If a next time - shut his ears to those around him that moved his adversaries into high places and fire everyone. Gut the DOJ, military and State like C and O did and never hire fake GOP pussies like the guy the headed the election integrity group and to Congress that 2020 was the safest and securest election ever.
“Top doctor says Covid won’t end until we’re all vaccinated”
Interestingly, I’m now seeing it applied to studies and institutions. A recent Politico headline reads “Top review says Covid lockdowns and masks worked. Period.”
Please do fascism and extremism. It’s still jarring to me to hear parents asking schools not to show their kids porn described as “extremists.” Also, for several years, when I first started hearing “fascist” being thrown around, I kept thinking, do people know what that actually means? I feel like they don’t...
Orwell himself noted that in his day fascism already meant "any authoritarian regime that I don't like." This has not changed. In many conflicts, by use of this definition both sides can quite reasonably denounce one another as fascist. Since "communism" is used in the same way, it is not unusual to see the same policy or person denounced both as fascist and also as communist.
Fascism would be a good one. It has gone through several morphings as far as the official definition. It is no longer (officially) defined as the merger of state and private industry. And the way it is defined now only refers to the political right.
Fascism: A philosophy or system of governance that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merger of state and business leadership, with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.
Coined by the Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator prior to and during WWII, that employed the fasces (a bundle of rods with a projecting axe blade, carried by a lictor in ancient Rome as a symbol of a magistrate's power) as its symbol.
Of course, when Mussolini founded the Fascist movement, he was famously a leading figure on the Left, not the Right. Prior to his marriage of convenience with Hitler, he was admired by American progressives like FDR.
I think people get hung up on left and right. I am a natural conservative, but I have more in common with the libertarian left than the authoritarian left and right.
When Matt came to London I waited in the queue with a Bernie Bro. He was a bit shocked at how much we agreed.
They don't, and I think its outlived its usefulness. I think its just a fancy word for a bold, outload authoritarian. An Authoritarian will grab what ever is useful to further their interests/power or oppress/attack their opposition. I feel like it was a college professor somewhere along the way that attached the right to fascism. but that's just conjecture.
My contribution: "Wealth Inequality",/"Income Inequality" has transformed to simply "Inequality".
Academics have mostly dropped the "wealth/income" part from, so that today, many if not most writers (at nauseating places like The Atlantic, The Economist , etc) simply say "Inequality".
The implicit, self-aggrandizing assumptions that undergird this change- whether unconscious or not on the part of the speaker- are obvious...and hilarious!!
Animal Farm's 7th Commandment: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”
Inequity is a more appropriate term, But we went from "Income inequality" to simply "Inequality", which in my view shows the elite at their worst, like they actually believe themselves to be innately superior to poor people.
It's a hilarious commentary on whoever uses the term without the qualifiers!
In honor of Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism, "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," I'd like to submit this one pls:
Progressivism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may have an unapproved opinion.
For me, one of the worst Newspeak words is “justice”. It used to be a pleasant word; it now raises my hackles.
It USED to mean “fighting against oppression (and ideally winning) for the betterment of the whole society”.
But now it means “one group (who fancies themselves as oppressed) ACTIVELY oppressing everyone who isn’t part of their group, for the sole betterment of only themselves, society be damned”.
Yes, "Just-us."
Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way, but that was back in the days before color Television.
You mean when TV was in black and white and so was everything else.
Actually justice meant to apply a certain set of mostly agreed upon standards for behavior, which were ideally set into law. Even persons who were nominally oppressed could do unjust things.
But yes, now it means "what is consistent with the resistance's aims in the approved power struggle narrative".
Which goes to show that "justice" is a useless abstract term, much like "fascism." Generally speaking, the more numbered definitional entries in a dictionary for a noun, the less useful the term.
Orwell once again gets it right in his "Politics and the English Language."
Never read that one. I need to as Orwell is prophetic with “newspeak”, “doublethink”, and “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Personally enjoyed “Animal Farm” more than “1984” but those are his only two books I’ve read.
He wrote some great essays, plus his book on being a hobo in France and England. Also about Spanish Civil War, also about what it was like to be a coal miner. And other things. His essay "Why I Write" is a classic. Some of his reflections on leftists in the '30s and '40s could have been written today--and he was a committed socialist!
In Seattle it means you can do drugs in public, steal from law abiding citizens and deal dope in the open.
Here in Portland it is the same.
Its like the soldier who went to court martial and was trembling. The general said "don't be scared, you will get justice here." The soldier responded. "that's what I am afraid of."
Or as the defense attorney asked, "How much justice can you afford?"
Or the one attributed to Lincoln: "When going before the Court ask for mercy not justice because you might get it."
Justice for each and every individual vs. Justice for the group.
Old (French?) saying (but I haven't been able to pin down the source):
"We begin by seeking justice, and we end up with the police."
It's roughly equivalent to "fairness", but more formalized. Obviously, what's "fair" is subject to, ahem, controversy.
Way more ideas expressed by the word than that. Often the word "justice" is used s a synonym of "retribution" as one example.
Yes. I’ll see your “justice” and raise you “social justice”. Insert exploding head meme of your choice.
Hayek described the word 'social' as a 'weasel word' which silently sucked all meaning from the succeeding term.
I submit "Equity" as the worst.
Yes, definitely the sibling of “justice” in this respect!
The Oxford English Dictionary originally defined it as “The quality of being equal or fair; fairness, impartiality; even-handed dealing.” [https://www.oed.com/dictionary/equity_n?tab=factsheet#5382223]. If you were looking for the perfect example of Newspeak, where a word has come to mean its own opposite, “equity” and “justice” are surely two of the most perfect illustrations.
Considering that the majority of Americans do not understand the difference between the modern usage of “equity” as opposed to ”equality”, it is extremely problematic for society.
I am Canadian. In Canada Justice rules and the law is always on trial. Our Supreme Court determines Justice not law. Our Supreme Court are legal ethical philosophers not lawyers. They represent what we perceive as Justice not what parliaments make into law.
The rule of law was never meant to be the rule of justice.
Samuel Johnson wrote the Dictionary of the English language. John Adams' law library was written in Greek and Latin. Adams was a Federalist and Samuel Johnson was an ENGLISH conservative linguistic philosopher. He wrote Taxation No Tyranny in response to the American Congress in 1775. He was a white Supremist's supremacist. Nobody talked about liberal democracy in 1775 it wasn't even anybody's wish list. The Revolution was about whether Roman Catholicism was a real religion. Oliver Cromwell's expertise was slaying Catholics. He was the Republican leader 1653-1658. The English Civil WAr was England's bloodiest war even in 2023.
https://www.samueljohnson.com/tnt.html
"The rule of law was never meant to be the rule of justice."
Devil's Dictionary Translation: if we never write down what we think is fair and just, no one can hold us accountable.
Thanks Dave,
I needed that,
Ambroise Bierce, Dr Samuel Johnson and John Ralston Saul wrote my three go to dictionaries. I am partial to The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense.
Of course I always rely on George Orwell and Mark Twain to send me in the right direction. Stephen Fry is of course 2023. Zizek is brilliant but his Yiddish is not my Yiddish but sometimes I must do my own translation. They say I am autistic. I don't have a clue what that means. I am me enjoying the moment.
I love The American Bible: The Life and Moral of Jesus of Nazareth. It is short and belongs on every nightstand it can be read in an hour instead watching TV. I watch very little television except for baseball. I watch a lot of baseball.
Mark Twain covered baseball in Hartford. He was a great baseball writer. He said "Baseball is America."
I don't gamble but they said I am genius at analytics almost 70 years ago. Baseball defies analytics it is played by children . I wish I could have played ball but I am very very slow.
Mark Twain Wrote The Gilded Age and Joan of Arc.
I love British philosophers; Eugenia Cheng and Stephen Fry are my current living favourites. Steven Pinker is wonderful but he shares my Montreal Jewish perspective so ; "What's not to like?"
I almost went upstairs to get my copy of Bierce but our regular guest is in the process of reading it. It is old and yellow with time. Should I get another copy? He gets out of Montreal for visit every month or so.
We discuss the Hungary he grew up in.
What's the matter with Kansas?
Bierce hit the nail on the head.
Truth is painful but America and world need Truth even here in secular humanist liberal democratic Quebec. We at least own our government.
Truth is a cure all but the treatment is painful.
I would take your statements a tad less jadedly if not for the recent decisions handed down by your version of our SCOTUS on the recent response to the pandemic.
My Canadian Supreme Court and Quebec Superior Court said Covid was a Concern of Health Canada and My Quebec Department of Health and Quebec did it correctly even as Covid arrived in Montreal the same day it arrived in New York.
A nurse comes to our door and gives my wife and I the vaccines as warranted. We are fully vaccinated and at 160 we are not as mobile as we were once upon a time.
In Quebec healthcare, education and welfare are RIGHTS not privileges. We are the government. We are ownership not management. Health, education and welfare are our responsibility and the Province is in charge of management not Ottawa but politics is about reaching consensus and we use ballots not bullets. We are not the Evil empire or the Ministry of Truth.
I lost one friend to Covid . He lived in the Texas colony of Alberta. If he lived in Quebec chances are he would still be alive to play with his grandchildren.
“We are the government.” is the hallmark of the brainwashed individual submissive to the collective.
The image of a nurse coming to my door to give me mandated vaccines is frightening
well he is 160
It is not mandated. It was voluntary. We could live in isolation or be vaccinated that seems a reasonable request in the Time of Cholera.
No one was forced to be vaccinated it was a choice we were offered. We chose not to hide under the bed we are too old to get out from under our bed.
My wife is an American and thought how civilized liberal democracy is and how barbaric are American plutocrats.
Donald Trump sent us money. My wife is a philosopher she spends more money on books than we do on food and rent and we could get groceries after the vaccinations and I like to cook. Of course our cannabis commission made sure I had the proper medication and cannabis is cheaper than tobacco. Tobacco costs us billions cannabis is another viable complimentary economy.
I was born under the Padlock Laws of the Roman Catholic Church in 1948. People with names like Cohen were not fully human and my father loved his Jewish public library which was most objectionable to our Catholic prelates before the revolution. Now race, gender and religion are considered human fantasy. Leonard Cohen went to the same Protestant High School as Kamala Harris. Justin Trudeau grew up in the same neighbourhood but was forced to attend the school without the Cohens or Harrises and 85 % of Quebec is Catholic and they were mostly poor and illiterate . Westmount high was very privileged and very elite but very public and it did not serve Catholics. Today Westmount High serves everybody but it does so in English not French and it is still an elite High School.
Do you wonder why they don't show you Kamala's High School in 2023?
"Everyone would want Westmount High for their children.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Kris Kristofferson Me and Bobby McGee
I listen to Janis Joplin in my dotage along with Mozart, Satie, Bach and Leonard ha Cohen. I still listen to Leonard's Warsaw Concert and it closes with The Tennessee Waltz. My wife was born in Nashville but it is difficult to dance in a walker but we pretend that "Nobody's watching." Guy Clark Come from the Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrlJY_FpJow&list=PLtzrUNaW362rcyBYGLH48N5Q5tOadlVIy&index=5
Is the ability to hold a bank account considered a right or a privilege in Quebec? Making healthcare, education and welfare into RIGHTS gives the state the prerogative to take over those areas of life. That inevitably leads to corruption, incompetence, and coercion.
We have three bank accounts one in Michigan one in Vermont and we use our local Credit Union and its 70,000 employees for all our transactions. We closed our Bank of Montreal account we used the Bank of Montreal in Chicago and our local CO-OP which Senator Obama in his neoliberal philosophy saw fit to destroy.. The Bank of Montreal owns Harris Bank they are trustworthy but the nearest branch is a thirty minute drive and in summer parking next to the door is not easy. We don't have any secret to hide from our government. They are management we are shareholders. We have a free and independent press I subscribe to our local daily and contribute to the co-operative of independent journalists the governing body that assures us of Press Freedom. Covid did not disrupt our daily lives because The Quebec Ministry of Health works for all of us and it works along side Health Canada. All we demand is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.. We change governments (management) regularly. Our current government is a relatively new political party and is beginning to smell of corruption. We don't look lightly at corruption I suspect in eight years Quebec will have a new party more understanding of liberal democracy. We teach truth in our schools. No Noah no Jesus just the truth, the whole truth and the nothing but the truth.
We believe in evolution. It is God's design for the universe. We believe in a better future not a mythical past. I was born in a Quebec theocracy. I will die in a Quebec where race, gender and religion are history not reality. We went from from poverty and illiteracy to prosperity and optimism in forty years. America went from prosperity and optimism to despair and hopelessness in forty years. In 2030 the burning of fossil fuel will be against our laws climate change is a HUMAN responsibility not an economic problem. Economics is religion not a problem for a liberal democracy that teaches truth to its children.
Jefferson believed in evolution. He said the constitution was an abomination after Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin made slavery a relic of the past and slavery is simply no longer a economic necessity.
Who shall serve and who shall rule is water under the bridge. Everyone is connected via the internet. All you need is an education on what is truth.
Philosophy is the study of evolution. John Adams was a Federalist. Conservatism is the rejection of evolution. Adams never recognized the election of Jefferson. That is history in their own words. Ben Franklin became an extreme abolitionist and was banished to Europe where he was the wisest of the wise. In America they said he suffered from syphilis.
I recommend his speech to the Royal Academy of Denmark titled Fart Proudly.
As Orwell suggested Slavery is not Freedom.
John Ralston Saul in his Doubter's Companion : A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense 1994 said . Cynicism is liberal democracy's greatest threat.
Cynicism is America's religion of choice.
In 1964 Ronald Wilson Reagan said Liberal democracy is America's worst nightmare. You can still watch a Time for Choosing on youtube. It was the time of the Civil rights and Voting Rights acts.
Sir John Ralston Saul still says "Neoliberalism is neither new nor liberal. He lives in Toronto and informed us of Covid but was educated in European history at Oxford.
I lived in aboriginal communities everyone should The Comeback.
https://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Aboriginals-Reclaiming-Power-Influence/dp/0143192728
It is available in French as well as English.
Spoken like a true Canadian government worshiper, submissive to government and hostile to anyone less submissive
Canada is not a unitary state. It is a collection of Sovereign jurisdictions. Quebec can leave Canada without firing a shot. We have elections. Quebec laws are not Ontario laws and Quebec is in charge of health education and welfare. Quebec controls its highways Canada the borders. We are Canada we don't believe the same shit you believe. Our shit doesn't smell different but in Canada a Civil War would only cost us our dignity.
If Quebecers voted to leave Canada when you arrived at the border they would fly the Fleur de Lys not the Maple Leaf. There would be a decade of intense negotiations. An agreement would be reached and nothing would change.
That is a loss dignity for sure. 🤣
First they would have to decide if Quebecers like Justin Trudeau could sit on both sides of the negotiating table. I don't know how you make the member of Parliament from Papineau a non Quebecer. It is what we call treason.
Canada is NOT the United States of America. It is more the European Union in governance.
Kamala Harris was at Westmount High when Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque negotiated Canada's future less than a block away. Things have worked out well. I grew up in Pierre Trudeau's Mont Royal so did Vice President Harris we're talking UPPER UPPER middle class morality. Like you might find in Takoma Park or Palm Springs.
Brother Andre come visit.
I live in Quebec. I am the government along with eight and half million other citizens.
We are a secular humanist liberal democracy. The government serves the people.
America is an oligarchy where the government serves the economy.
Bernie Sanders is to the right of our conservative government.
Healthcare, education and welfare are rights not privileges.
Corporations and other institutions like churches and even government are pieces of paper and haven't got the rights we give trees and insects they are pieces of ass wipe.
I don't love the government never did I am a libertarian like Noam Chomsky. I love freedom, prosperity and the optimism of a better tomorrow.
I trust Health Canada and our Health department not spokesmen for Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Tech. Eighty five per cent of our truck drivers supported their government over their anarchist fringe. Our truckers love freedom and democracy not fascist dictators and billionaire grifters. My Amazon driver is middle class as are all our Amazon workers. When healthcare education and welfare are rights middle class becomes memories of early and middle 20th century realities. WE are citizens and everyone is equal before our Supreme Court. We are a nation of justice not a nation of law.
In Canada the law is always on trial before we consider the defendant's behaviour
My wife and I retired to Quebec.
We could have retired in Florida or California or Tennessee where she was born where we have lots of family but Florida and Tennessee hate freedom and democracy.
I hate the stupidity but love the stupid but I am just a crazy old man.
I love Chicago and Nashville; Tallahassee not so much but instead of spouting your ignorance why don't you visit. You will know you are in Quebec not Maine or New Hampshire or New York when the second world poverty ends and everyone looks healthy. Tim Horton's is not The Waffle House.
I apologize for no Chik Fil As or Cracker Barrels sometimes ethics get in the way of economics.
Quebec is a SOVEREIGN Nation inside Canada's Federation we can leave Canada without firing a shot. That is REAL Democracy.
So in Canada, Lady Justice removes her blindfold, and may wield the sword based on appearance and outside influences. Cringe.
No . In Canada justice never removes her blindfold.
Better than I can ever explain it.
Here are two great legal philosophers discussing judicial philosophy.
Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella (ret) and Justice Lena Kagan US Supreme Court associate justice.
Well worth watching a second and third time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyAF4Zq9m2o
I believe Justice Abella is spending the year at Harvard explaining Canadian Judicial Philosophy to morons.😢
We can watch our Supreme Court deliberate and let the viewer decide on whether justice is served. Clarence Thomas would be an abomination John Roberts acceptability is questionable Lena Kagan, thumbs up perhaps too conservative but totally qualified..
"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects" Albert Einstein
Illustrating my point.
That you Bill for understanding my point.
I returned to Montreal after 35 years. We left Woodlawn Chicago home of the Obama Center after over a decade of wonderful living.
It is nice to die in a secular humanist liberal democracy instead of a corrupt decaying nation of oligarchs..
A nation of law has become a nation of lawyers.
Canada has its own problems with Adolph Trudeau as PM.
None, almost none of these American flag waving commentators / readers will understand you. They will just mock. They can't think outside their fixed box of infantile beliefs, learned from infancy, more from parents and relatives and fellow church goers than from schools.
In Judaism, ie Deuteronomy, the word is "Justice, Justice Shalt Thou Pursue". In the Biblical context, it makes perfectly good sense. If you are secular, you could nevertheless understand it when read as literature - which is what the Bible is, in one true sense of the word. Evangelical Christians can understand those words in context for obvious reasons.
The left ruins everything.
I would challenge that statement to a degree. The left is needed to bring the right back to the center so we don't all become cyborgs living in rigidly run institutions. The left brings color to the world but goes too far in the direction of "self" and "individualism" and "feeling". This all ebbs and flows with time. I say this as a Libertarian leaning Conservative.
MLKJr in his "Where do we go from here?" speech which I think is the better speech than "I Have a Dream" one, said that Communism forgets the "me" and Capitalism forgets the "we". King was looking for a synergy between the two that would birth something completely new; a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the two. I too now identify as a left libertarian rather than a liberal. I had been a Democrat all my adult life having fallen for the fable that the left was about the working class and the "we". Ha. Ha. The Blue Dogs and the Rockefeller Republicans took over the Democratic Party in the late 70s. Fiscally conservative but concerned about the environment and some social programs. But I had also been hoodwinked about who was the real "war" party. Mostly Democrats took us to war. That's that old time "Onward Christian Soldiers" crap that is called now "humanitarian intervention". Meanwhile the conservatives except for the occasional John McCain were mostly isolationist and anti-war. But their patriotism and love of country had them also serve in the wars in huge numbers. They are localists not globalists. They are the majority of citizens but still the 'silent majority". So, yes, I now lean "conservative" for want of a better word. We need that Phoenix that MLK envisioned.
Obviously humans have important individualistic and collectivistic characteristics, many of which seem to be genetically determined. These would have evolved long before humans were even human and would be exclusively fetishized or exclusively demonized at our peril; we need both.
There are people who believe the Left is exactly the opposite of what you describe.
I thought the left was all about collectivism? In the past I’d always attributed “rugged individualism” to the right, but who knows now that everything has been flipped on its head.
In the ancient world, military formations depended largely on the muscular strength of the participants, and the most humans are right-handed; so the person at the right side of a formation (like a line of battle or a phalanx) was very important since he would be the focus of both attack and defense. That importance would translate into honor or repute, both of the person and of the position. Subsequently the _right_ side became the position of military honor and thus of the military virtues (power, strength, loyalty, fortitude, bravery, obedience, aggression, and so forth. Hence when people gathered into groups for political purposes they would place the most honored people on the right and the right would refer to those of high rank. Of course, there were people who did not particularly love the military virtues or fighting in general, but preferred peace, freedom, equality, and autonomy. They became the Left. The seating arrangements of the French _parlement_ reflected these preferences, and the symbolism of the Right and Left descended almost to this day.
Not in this day and age. The left is more about accepting the individual, as long as no one gets hurt and justice for all people. The Right seems more about authoritarianism and keeping to a rigid line of behavior, you can't read this, you can't say that, you can't do xyz, or you will be in trouble.
The dead giveaway that the word "justice" was now a shibboleth was the non-ironic introduction of the term "food justice".
For me the worst Newspeak is "Saving democracy."
And the CONSTANT fear and panic that expression is meant to inspire in people. (OTOH, it seems to be working for them very well!)
They always say "Our Democracy!" This invites the question as to who, precisely, they include in the word 'Our.'
The "Our" includes dead voters (and pets who vote), those who are fine with their mentality disturbed children wanting to change the sex they were born with, the brain dead Pennsylvania voters who elected a brain damaged moron to the US Senate and every pantywaist white ethnomasochist in this country. There are many more "ours."
Yeah. What democracy? Drives me mad.
And, “a threat to our democracy” sounds to me like “a threat to our grift.”
One of the worst abuses of the word is its use in the phrase "social justice". I'd like to see the etymology of that phrase.
Social = Collective.
SJWs want to force equity between collectives, regardless of the injury this causes to individuals in the process, because they regard the individual as irrelevant and the group as primary. By the same token a collective can be labeled as evil, and individuals deemed to belong to that collective deemed to be intrinsically guilty regardless of whether they have individually ever done any wrong. In this, Critical Race Theorists are following exactly the same reasoning as the National Socialists.
The term 'Social Justice' was first used by the Roman Catholic Church, but they were clear that it meant individual justice within the context of society. One could argue that the right to a living wage, equal treatment, or an education is not a matter of justice or injustice, and that such thinking involves a category error, but it is clearly not full-on collectivism.
A state might be interested in what we are calling social justice or equity for the moment because they (the ruling class) might see it as in their interest to reduce intrastate tensions and hostilities between internal tribes and groups. It is not at all unknown for such hostilities to result in violence and even civil war. Sometimes ruling classes have exploited the hostilities, but I think for the most part they have been regarded as nuisances if not worse. Painting the social equity effort in virtuous colors would be part of the program.
I thought we were going to note words whose meanings had been radically changed overnight, like _transparency_, not complain about words whose concepts some of us don't like. You may not like the concept of social justice, but its meaning has not changed much since it was invented.
The meaning of 'Social Justice' has changed fundamentally since it was first introduced. The Roman Catholic Church coined the term to mean justice for individuals within the context of society. The modern usage of 'Social Justice' means equity between collective groups.
That's very interesting. As far as I can recall I had seen only the second meaning used, and I do a lot of reading. I am conscious of the related use of _social_ in such terms as "social gospel" so I"m not completely unfamiliar with that (generic) usage, but not of the first term, which is why I said I thought it had not changed. Do you know of any writers who have taken notice of the change? I would think among those who were familiar with the first meaning that the appearance and popularity of the second would have elicited some commentary.
I read an article detailing the evolution of the term 'social justice' about a decade ago. It was well researched and provided quotations and citations to make its case, so I found it convincing. I ought to have bookmarked it. As far as I know, very few people were aware of the seismic shift in meaning the expression 'social justice' had undergone.
How about "Social Justice Warrior".
You might enjoy the old Spanish observation: "An inch of Judge is worth a yard of Justice."
I agree but would add that “ justice “ itself has been perverted by the judicial branch of government from the local probate and family courts all the way up to and including the Supreme Court of the country. There is no justice in the USA anymore( if there ever was)
its becausee everything that the us government now does is inherently unjust - from counterfeiting trillions to infringing on your natural rights of property, contract and free association. the evil empire's tentacles reach everywhere to commit injustice.
Justice means "achieving a result well-founded in reason and facts that achieves a sound moral balance"
You'd have to define "sound moral balance" and possibly "reason" any of which can be contested. There is also "giving each man his due", where the question is begged by the meaning of "due". Note that justice derives from Latin _ius_ "that which is binding, an oath" which has a religious connotation.
Progressive Justice?
I suggest a minor edit: delete “unapproved.”
They don’t want us to have opinions at all, just fealty to the Party.
They want people's heads filled with shibboleths, not opinions. Opinions can lead to thinking, and people who start thinking can wander off the plantation. Shibboleths, on the other hand, have about as much semantic content as ant-pheromones, and a similar function. They signal which faction you belong to so that anyone outside that bubble is a total enemy to be destroyed. Best of all, they actively prevent any semblance of thought from ever germinating.
There is no way this is planned!
Oh, wait!
“In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers were doing in an imperfect way.”
- General Education Board, Occasional Letter No.1, (1906), sponsored by John D. Rockefeller.
More frightening quotes about educational theory and pedagogy from presidents, university deans, and philanthropists across the last century or more at (many of these documented by the eminent historian of education Lawrence Cremin, too):
https://www.zhibit.org/diemythographer/die-mythographer-die/occasional-letter-number-one-2006
Those quotes describe the Prussian model of education, designed to break the student's will and form a pliant collective entity, though the idea of total indoctrination for the sake of complete subordination to the state goes back to Plato. Modern education has abandoned even the lowest common denominators regarding literacy and numeracy in favor of the apocalyptic Marxist ideology of Paolo Freire. James Lindsay of New Discourses has written extensively on the Marxification of Education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNgfs5a4vNQ&t=1215s
I am halfway through Lindsay’s latest book now.
Interesting, too, how Plato’s Republic is interpreted by Plotinus (200’s AD) and that in turn by Muslims in Reliance of the Traveller.
My wife's father was Eugene V Debs godson. We still have a two ton paperweight with Deb's image.
My wife's doctorate is about educating students in their own cultures. I am labelled autistic. I been called a genius in logic and linguistics for over 65 years but academics are way to difficult for my limited abilities. My father in law was genius and a recluse. One son in law won a Nobel prize. I couldn't graduate from DeVry.
I talked a lot to my father in law and we listened to his music. My father in Law was a genius. He attended Michigan and shared Arthur Miller's residence. My Father in law was awarded a Masters in Conservation Science .
His favourite song was King of the Road. My father law was too brilliant to hit the road. He understood science and was too busy making everybody millions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c7D0YsgnrE
Roger Miller 1964
I was the King of the road before I met my wife. I knew all of Roger Miller's songs.
We lived an hour out of Yellowknife where he had dreamed of moving before he even finished college. He had travelled the North before he finished college.
🎯
It’s striking that while Mencken may not have been quite fair to our Puritans - he still had this country nailed. We must endlessly suffer now so some glorious future which will never come will come into being.
mencken loved a good insult, sometimes accuracy was less of a priority
Mencken himself would have told you that 'accuracy' and 'truth' are unrelated.
Utopianism runs deep in this country
"Government has now gone far beyond anything ever dreamed of in Jefferson's day. It has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations with the high dignity and impeccability of a state religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste."
H.L. Mencken (1926) quoted in The Gist of Mencken: Quotations from America's Critic edited by, Mayo Dubasky
We really deserve another Mencken in the Roaring Twenties 2.0
So long as we can skip Hitler/Stalin 2.0 and go straight to Nuremberg 2.0.
Especially now that Hunter Thompson is dead.
Well, I guess you should probably learn what "progressive" actually means.
Demonizing the people that want to give you healthcare, raise your wages, and raise taxes on the billionaire grifters isn't too smart, chief.
Maybe you shouldn't be so eager to be divided and conquered.
The rich ate the left a long time ago. 'Progressive' is just code for 'useful idiot.'
What was that Alice In Wonderland quote? Something about "words mean what I want them to mean, and nothing else"?
If you don't think Taibbi is a progressive, then you are wrong.
The Democrats do not exist to govern; they exist to make sure that progressives don't.
That is why they are willing to lose easy elections to people like Trump - Trump's policies make the Dem Leadership richer than they are already. And he provides an easy boogyman to drive out the vote.
You think Pelosi isn't making the most of those Republican tax cuts? Did you miss it when the same people who said Trump was an existential threat to the very fabric of spacetime votes to increase his military budget four out of four years?
Policy matters; rhetoric doesn't.
Stop fighting your allies.
It would help if you stipulated a definition of "progressive."
progressive
prə-grĕs′ĭv
adjective
Moving forward; advancing.
conservative
kən-sûr′və-tĭv
adjective
Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
In these definitions, notice how "progressive" is a generic term while "conservative" is specifically cultural or political.
The results of what many consider to be political progress have been suspect, to speak with restraint. The Roe v. Wade decision is one recent example. Same with the men-in-women's-sports controversy.
I also find it interesting that the entire concept of progress--technological and social--has been subjected to the law of unintended consequences. There's nothing quite so annoyingly evil than someone trying to change you for your own good.
Interesting. I'm not saying you're wrong. I do believe, and always have that the center left and center right are nearly the same. Most Democrats are firm believers in capitalism. To accuse them of socialism is ridiculous because it doesn't hurt mainstream Dems or Republicans to let the real Left encourage social diversity. It just makes life more interesting. The right wing is currently hanging itself by allianating, blacks, immigrants, sexually devergant people because, whether the Right likes it or not, they exist AND they spend money. So the right has to decide if it wants a flourishing capitalist country or a poor stratified fascist country. They haven't realized you can't kill everyone you don't like. That's already been tried and failed. See wwII fascism and the rise of the Soviet Union.
You might want to take another look at minority voting - in NYC, at least, I have read that Democrats are (deservedly) hemorrhaging black and Asian voters.
Whichever party pulls their face out of the donor class' lap first and actually does something that materially helps anyone making less than $250k a year will be able to clean up.
And the Democrats keep going deeper into that lap. But as I have said a hundred times, the Democratic Party doesn't exist to govern; they exist to prevent any actual progressive from talking office. No one must make the ruling class pay their taxes, ever. Taxes are for the middle class.
The repeated election of Bloomberg hardly looks like a rejection of the donor class.
In what way? Give me some examples.
And when many (indeed most) of those 'billionaire grifters' happily include themselves as dues-paying members of the 'progressive' clan, do you believe them when they tell you what they intend to bring about will bring about what they promise?
Best not to look behind the curtain....
Do I believe it when people are pretending to be something that they are obviously not when they make promises they obviously don't mean?
Uh, no. I don't.
Did you think that was some kind of sick burn?
Pro tip: when categorizing people on the "left vs right" spectrum, the "left" is a full democratization of the means of production (ie, communism) and the right is where both the government and the means of production are controlled by one person (ie, fascism).
And before the legion of nitwits starts screaming "Soviet! China! Argh!" ask yourself this: were the means of production controlled by the people?No?
Government controlled by the people that control the economy? Yes?
The USSR and China were/are fascist. By definition. Because words need to have meaning beyond "anything I don't like is left/right wing.
"Full democratization" is code for "rule by one person." Communism is Fascism with a morally superior attitude.
Yes, yes it is. I was born in a Communist 💩hole, stopped voting straight ticket Democrat when "Progressive" Barack Obama ran for POTUS - in December 2014 the warnings about him came true - he embraced the murderous Communist regime of Cuba and suddenly, attacks against Cubans on the island became more vicious. Obama provided cash to the sinking Communist regime and emboldened them to mame, kill Cubans. Thanks Obama and Progressives who still idolize this monster - worst POTUS in modern history.
Jesus, I thought I blocked you. Substack needs a better way to filter out the insane.
Up means down!
Left mean right!
Dry means wet!
Words mean whatever I want them to mean, and not what they actually mean!
"Do I believe it when people are pretending to be something that they are obviously not when they make promises they obviously don't mean? Uh, no. I don't."
So why are you sticking to the now done to death term "progressive" then, when all kinds of scum are pretending and identifying as such, and they have all the power too?
You're not going to restore it to its proper meaning by doing that. You're just shine it and promote it, only for the fakers and imposters to get to use it as their brand name.
Why do I keep pointing out that the people who pretend to be progressive are not actually progressive?
Sigh.
Progress gave us the internal combustion engine and plastic straws. Progressives hate those things.
"Why do I keep pointing out that the people who pretend to be progressive are not actually progressive?"
Because you stuck to a tainted term like "progressive" who has been contaminated. So you always need to add the clarification that you mean "the real progressives". Meanwhile, everybody else is free to understand your advocation for "progressivism" as an advertisment for the fake ones - after all those are the ones that dominate the use of the term.
The traditional spectrum at either pole is Left = Communism; Right = Anarchy.
Fascism doesn't need a Dear Leader, just a total state/private merger, with the state having the power to seize private property at will. At least this is how the Mises Institute defines it.
This discussion once again illustrates the uselessness of the term "fascism."
No, you are mistaken.
Feel free to correct my error.
Pray do tell which Progressives have given us healthcare, raised our wages & raised taxes on "billionaire grifters"?
Until Communist parasite Bernie Sanders became a multimillionaire, "Progressives" attacked millionaires. Bernie & his grifter wife changed the focus to billionaires- and the sheep followed. If it weren't for enormous taxes paid by billionaires, the illegal aliens wouldn't be able to grift off the government teet😂😂 yes, they’re on welfare the second they break into the US.
I gather you've never had financial success or you wouldn't be regurgitating the lie that billionaires don't pay their fare share. Stop punishing financial success, you come across as a Commie.
Keep licking those boots!
Whose boots am I licking?
You have obviously never had financial sucess or you'd know that the few billionaires we have in the US pay outrageous amounts of taxes.
You didn't answer my question - which Progressives have given us healthcare & increased our wages? Private industry dictates wages, not the government. Tell me you've never owned a business without telling me you've never owned a business 🤣🤣
"You have obviously never had financial sucess or you'd know that the few billionaires we have in the US pay outrageous amounts of taxes."
Only in the totally irrelevant relative scale. And for whatever money they deem OK to pretend to have, not to the billions they control under several layers of indirection, store abroad, funnel through proxy companies - not to mention the tax deductibles and subsidies they get from state money, and other such BS
Who is to blame for billionaires using legal avenues to reduce the amount of cash they gift to the grifters at the SLED & Fed Department of Revenue?
Why do grifters feel entitled to other people's money? Most billionaires are risk takers, as are business owners. If they've created wealth, it should be theirs to keep. People who regurgitate that billionaires don't pay taxes, are clueless about the enormous amount of taxes they have to pay. I've worked on their financials, I don't believe in punishing financial success, regardless of who the individual is- they don't owe us anything.
The people who are making you pay the highest prices in the world for insulin, for starters. But tell me again how Americans paying higher prices for the same drugs is something anyone but the dumbest dipshit would cheer for.
Keep licking those boots.
You have no examples of the Progressives who have given us free healthcare and raised our salaries, because they don't exist😉. The market decides wages, not government. You'd know that if you were a business owner.
You mean the boots of the people who build great businesses that employ millions of people to enable them to live a decent life?
Your immaturity is plain for all to see kiddo.
Now THAT'S how you lick a boot.
Tell me again how awesome it is to live $400 from financial catastrophe, or to die of diabetes because some pharma creep tripled the price of insulin.
give me healthcare? where are you obtaining this magically free healthcare? or do you really mean, tax Americans to pay for bloated, government-provided substandard healthcare that we ration whenever there's a flu.
People who understand the issue know that Americans pay the most for their healthcare in the industrialized world, while receiving the worst care in the industrialized world.
You obviously don't know what you are talking about, but keep licking those boots, bootlicker.
Calling someone a bootlicker while arguing for expanded governmental control is peak 2023 irony.
Why look at the outside world and pay attention to observed, measured reality? We pay the most, we get the least.
It would not bother me to pay $X in taxes so that I don't have to pay $2X in fees, because I am not a crazy person. And that's not taking into consideration the fact that private insurance is vastly inferior to the care provided in other, more civilized parts of the globe. This isn't up for debate. It's a fact.
And no one said it was free, pal.
Not sure why you dimwits pretend anyone ever said that, any time, ever, but I would love it if you could explain that to me - other than it was poured into your ear by some talking head millionaire on TV, who gets paid by billionaires to convince the middle class (or what's left of it) that the working class is the problem.
And every year most Americans get poorer, sicker, and more miserable.
No, I want to demonize people who demand authoritarian power in order to "give" me stuff. And the certainty that in exchange for these gifts they will eagerly take away things that are more important to me and most other people.
supporting a populist tyranny isn't too smart, chief.
BTW, you have probably offended many modern progressives by using "chief".
So, are you also opposed to highways? Sewers? Or are you fighting the "authoritarian power" that allows interstate travel and prevents our streets from being filled with poop?
People who are opposed to "populism" are opposed to democracy. Just so you know.
You do know that private enterprises have and still do operate highways and sewers, right? And that government does not "allow" interstate travel (or at least we used to think like that).
Sounds like you, like many other modern authoritarians, have a simple-minded infatuation with democracy, and are eager to seek and impose a tyranny of the like-minded majority.
Pop quiz: how many times does "democracy" appear in the Constitution? And what is a constitutional republic?
I have read a lot of dumb things online, but "you authoritarians just LOOOOOVE democracy!" is a new low.
Exactly, we have a federal republic, whose government officials are expected to represent the people, because they are chosen by democratic means that vary from state to state in the manner of their legislatures' choosing.
The word "leaders" doesn't appear in the Constitution either.
Now tell us about the original limits on government power, even as servants of the people.
Once again, obtaining a simple majority does not provide a mandate to impose policies and rules.
The horror the European people are experiencing aside. Because of the leap in tech, Consciousness has outstripped "ism's" and the American narrative no longer matches its reality. That's part of the fight here. Creation of a human truth/fact based American dialogue to counter the manufactured hyperreality being foisted by would be totalitarians world wide. No matter how shiny the perp placed object in the jungle path is, the mal force giving us nightmares, and fueling the disintegration and chaos to which we currently bear witness, is, as has always been, about a totalitarian elite and their access to uneducated throw away labor and the unaccountable exploitation of natural resources for their personal gain. It's not something else.
Again. In simple mythological terms. A good king loves his subjects and the kingdom prospers. A corrupt tyrant king fears the people exploits them and makes them suffer. Why, oh why, oh why, oh why, do you suppose "we the people" need a surveillance apparatus of the magnitude (object lessons Assange and Snowden) now monitoring our lives.
"We the people" have survived wars, depressions, government backed citizen murder, assassination, riots, civil war and "transparent" political corruption on both the local and national scale. ONE obvious push today is the creation of a national amnesia. "Gee, I can't remember who I am." Here's how I deal with my forgetfulness: "We hold these truth's to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...." ----Read it lately?
The Republic and the Constitution stand--we stand. The rest is time, circumstance and the daydreams of tyrants.
_Progress_, though, no longer seems like an uncomplicated concept, as it did in the 19th century, not only after the fascists, Nazis, and Bolsheviks got to work on it, but even before that with the dark Satanic mills of William Blake, and of course modern real estate development and other capitalist fetishes. It seems clear to me that when people start talking about "progress" we had better find out in which direction they want to progress. I"m not just speaking about the Left here, by the way.
Seems like a lot of people are trying to shoehorn what I am saying into their already existing world view.
I never used the word "progress".
I used the word "progressive" as an antonym of "conservative".
Progressive means you embrace change. Conservative means you are wary of change.
There is no value judgement in either term.
I invest conservatively, for instance. I say, "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it".
Some of the people most fond of calling themselves conservative favor radical change.
You can even argue that people like me are reactionary (meaning wanting to move backwards, though there is generally a negative connotation) because we want to move backwards to a previous time - a time when the rich paid their taxes, unions guaranteed a strong middle class, and social mobility still existed.
I'm not advocating for anything we didn't have already at some point. So 'reactionary' fits.
I'll submit this one.
Democracy: The ruling class decides the elections, sets the rules and all you are to do is accept it and keep quiet.
+1
just an observation but reading below i see the free posts bring out the crazies
You have bought into the ruling class's reframing of Progressive as a negative thing. How ironic, in the context of this forum.
Progressive idealogy never stops no matter how ludicrous it keeps getting.
Your confusing progress with Progressive idealogy.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
-- Alice in Wonderland
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where--' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.' -Alice in Wonderland
But when 'master' can mean 'Pass the potatoes,' we're living in Bob Dylan's satirical world: "You'll find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom." The essence of meaning is limitation--'2' only means what it does because it doesn't mean '1,' '3,' or some other number--and frustrating though such limitations might be there's a fundamental incoherence in thinking you can win the game through brute force of will, in blithe disregard of the rules. Games are defined by their rules, and if you break them, then whatever it is you've 'won' it isn't the game.
The game is to make up arbitrary rules, and make everyone else obey the rules while you don't.
Of course. But is anybody persuaded by the tactic? Rules that are inconsistently applied, or can be arbitrarily reinterpreted to thwart their own intent, aren't rules at all. Even children are pretty good at recognizing when they're victims of this transparent fraud. They aren't yet old enough to articulate a reasoned argument to protest the unfair treatment, but they sense it and cry.
I dont if persuaded is the right word, but there are definately a very large contingent of voters that enjoy making people miserable so they have more company.
I believe that new game is called Klauss Says....executed by Obama and his crowd as the spineless republicans dont have the guts to take him down."
🎯
Exactly
And "The Police," Da do do do, Da da da da, that's all I want to say to you..."
"The Fix, Do what you say, say what you mean, one thing leads to another..."
Nice!
“Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” asks a member of the totalitarian party. “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is IngSoc and IngSoc is Newspeak.”
One of the great disappointments of my young adulthood (I was a teen during the Bush years) has been watching people who were politically informed, skeptical, putatively anti-establishment progressives in the early aughts becoming by the late teens everything they previously stood against. They have become what they once claimed to hate: hawkish, mainstream media/IC-trusting, anti-populist, and classist. It's right in line with Matt's "what happened to the Democratic voters?" question of a month or so ago.
Our best asset as small-d democratic citizens is integrity and commitment to principle. This involves constant critical thinking and a refusal to follow any party or figure therein blindly. I think that's where the mid-aughts progressives went wrong: they hitched their wagons to Obama and never stopped their starry-eyed attitude long enough to question where he was taking them.
The propaganda to get them to conform and reform their thinking was merciless. Ever since the repeal of the Smith-Mundt act DARPA and Washing DC have been running nonstop PSYOPs on Americans for a decade. And they've gotten exceedingly good at it:
---
New Normal ● Alone Together ● Build Back Better ● Flatten the Curve
Stay Home Save Lives ● Protect/Save the NHS ● We’re all in this together
Test, Trace, Treat ● Stay smart, Stay Safe, Stay Open ● We Stay Home!
Don’t Panic, Don’t Rush, Don’t Overstock ● Only You Can Prevent the Spread
Stay Home, Your Home is Your Lifeline ● Stay Home, Save Lives, Avoid Stage 5
NHS: We Stay At Work for You – You Stay At Home For Us ● COVID Ends With You
Follow The Science ● Trust The Science ● Believe In The Science
Be Informed, Be Prepared, Be Smart, Be Safe: Be Ready to Fight COVID-19
The vaccine will save us ● The booster will save us ● The 4th dose is the answer
Your freedom ends where your contagion begins ● Self Isolate!
I wear my mask to protect you and you wear your mask to protect me
There is no evidence of harm ● This is a pandemic of the un-vaccinated
Out of an abundance of caution ● No one is safe until everyone is safe
This is for the greater good ● It is Safe and Effective ● The science is settled
THE SCIENCE IS YOUR NEW GOD AND IT IS WHAT WE SAY IT IS
These are not science terms and phrases. They are hypnotic chants meant to induce an audience into a suggestive state of mind – this is why they are repeated over and over and over again.
Furthermore, masking has historically been an integral part of an initiation ritual: in our case the initiation into the “new normal” the globalists have planned for us.
Put another way—all of this was one giant world-wide psychological operation.
Excerpt from https://tritorch.com/covidhypnosis
They were doing that even before Covid. During the financial crime spree of 2008:
they rolled out "homeowner deadbeats" "get a job" "bought too much house" "responsible homeowners" "living in your Mom's basement." All those phrases to cover up the banks were stealing us blind and Obama was allowing that theft!
Not entirely Obama, although he introduced Keynesian economics, it had been the introduction of housing policy by Barney Frank + company. There was no policy 20 years prior that everyone needed a house to live the American Dream. That and subprime loans began in the early aughts, perhaps even the term. It was flourishing in the 2nd W term.
I understand. But it was totally Obama who stood protecting the bankers. He said, "I stand between you and the pitchforks." And he did protect the bankers well. And every homeowner, fighting the banker crimes, lost everything. I fucking hate that Uncle Tom.
Obama/ Biden bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $29,000,000,000,000 (Levy Economics Institute) while allowing 5 million Americans to lose their homes. The banks would still have gotten all the money if the Americans briefly, in some cases relatively permanently, were helped to keep their homes.
The amazing thing is that it didn't really hurt Obama/ Biden politically.
Obama/Biden destroyed Black generational wealth and yet the two demons are idolized. It's hard to believe that Americans are so easily bamboozled.
"...while allowing 5 million Americans to lose their homes."
And another 20+ million to lose much, sometimes all, of their retirement savings. It wasn't just about losing your home after all.
Actually, there was 18 million foreclosures, not 5 million.
Yes I clearly remember the housing bubble beginning under Clinton’s administration.
It imploded at the end of Bush. Obama did what he did.
They ,being bankers , supported by our government gave out unsustainable loans. As the prices continued to be greedily inflated.
So many loans given to folks who could not afford them. What a scam. The banks ended up owning all the foreclosed houses. Then we take payers bailed them out.
Clinton destroyed Glass Steagall at the behest of Citibank and Travelers Group so they could merge the commercial speculation with retail banking. making your deposits a part of the casino. Then GWB told everyone to go "Buy Buy Buy, everyone gets a house!" and Obama was the third shyster in the line-up. Obama said there was no crime spree (when he had specific knowledge that the banks had created a forgery scheme, which included crossing state lines, which elevated those forgery crimes to mail fraud/wire fraud, which ultimately stole trillions in real estate by unlawfully foreclosing on millions of Americans). Obama also said that he would protect the bankers. He said "I stand between you and the pitchforks." No top banker lost his position, all bankers were paid their bonuses and no one but the lowly mortgage brokers/realtors/appraisers went to jail. So, it was bipartisan, but Obama was the ultimate shyster and he gained the most post-Presidency. Obama now owns a mansion in DC, and two waterfront compounds......one in Hawaii and one in Martha's Vineyard. Obama has been paid handsomely for heading up the foreclosure RICO network, god bless his rotten soul.
They don't want to look at History. It's more pleasurable for them to curse individual presidents. History is too challenging.
Good point. Since 2014 when the Smith Mundt Act was abolished ("modernized") the State Department (actually the CIA which has been doing this since WWII all over the globe) LEGALLY propagandizes the domestic MSM, now State Media. The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 means such government propaganda is critical for National Security, the band-aid that covers all totalitarian actions, and we ARE in perpetual war. Probably why "Deep State" fell out of use; our controllers don't like being fingered.
To be fair, State and others had been propagandizing Americans for decades, sometimes by using foreign cutouts, and otherwise by simply ignoring the law.
All the 2014 "modernization" did was to legalize what the State and the CIA already were doing.
This is a red herring.
The state has been feeding the media for as long as time itself.
Or do you think everything the media were telling you pre 2014 was true.
You honestly think the people who lied about WMD in Iraq and spread it through the media were concerned about the Smith Mundt Act?
Yes indeed the "Modernization" of the Smith Mundt Act is one of many horrible actions against Americans that took place under Barack Obama, our Communist POTUS.
We failed the test - families were broken up and the parasites won.
Add
Reimagining policing from Obama era
The crazy thing is I thought they were going to get to be the smug ones. Lording it over us Republicans that were deceived by the neocon bullshit. Now there is this strange feeling watching them literally forget everything they knew and embrace everything they hated. Seriously, how do you go from being able to list every Constitutional abuse of the Bush Administration off the top of your head to fawning over the guy and saying his abuses did not go far enough a few years later? I have come to hate "resistance" liberals. Being unable to shut up about fascism while acting like fascists does that I guess. At the same time, I feel a strange kinship now with the old left who never changed who they were. Most of the time it starts with, "wait, you noticed that too?"
Basically, the Left only liked free speech till they had the power to shut us up. The Left is not liberal, it's totalitarian.
Two kinds of people:
1. Those who want to be left alone, and leave you alone.
2. Those who want to be ruled, and to rule you.
I think the “us” is referred to in this article in that Marxism began as a class divide, but that didn’t fly in the USA. Recently, the conversion is to race where it works in Critical Theory in colleges, CRT in elementary schools. Working Class ,White Working Class, apparently to create bourgeois/proletarian conflict. The new abominable “elite” needs erasure, sine it means wealthy. If there’s additional meaning to the descriptive noun, it’s not clear.
Yes--neo Marxism replaces bourgeoisie vs. proletariat with white people vs. "people of color." The class war was converted to a race/culture war, of which Herbert Marcuse was the main architect. This fact makes those who dismiss the culture war as trivial part of the problem.
C. Rufo's book on America's Cultural Revolution is an excellent primer on this bit of American history.
The politics of envy, "Eat the Rich" was dieing in the 1980s and 1990s. It had to be replaced. Bernie tried to revive it and got derailed.
Bernie got derailed with a threat from the Clintons. His politics weren't rejected, it was HER TURN. So, she used what the Clinton's always employ which was threats.
The Clintons knew Eat the Rich had hit its Sell By date.
I can’t think of a genocide or totalitarian regime in the 20th century that wasn’t leftist.
Pinochet’s Chile, the Brazilian Army, Try this one: Nazi Germany and every Central American govt. propped by United Fruit. Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Mussolini’s Italy. You are just insanely incorrect.
The old left is now the far right. It's weird.
I think it makes sense if you frame it as the old progressive is now a conservative. They are trying to conserve the liberal values they were fighting for before. And the new progressive is trying to progress to the new illiberal authoritarianism the think will encourage equity.
Yes I’ve been thinking the same thing. I used to consider myself firmly on the Left, but now my beliefs apparently make me “far right”. Labels are bullshit.
Well, if you believe in Freedom of Speech and Women's Rights, you are now considered "fringe" right. Ummm, when did that 180 happen???
It is weird ....for as long as you navigate using a one-dimensional left/center/right spectrum. When you switch to positions placed on a two-dimensional circle, the machinations of centralized power make more sense.
Thomas Jefferson put the divide between small "d" democrats and aristocrats.
Obama: “Yes, we didn’t.”
I think Matt's question about a new definition of "working class" gets at this question: who are "we"?
Yes, I was one of those Obama Progressives, until I saw he was more of an overlord than even Bush W. After he hired Geithner, I knew I'd been had.
"What happened to the Democratic voters" dovetails neatly with the question Matt and Walter brought up in this past week's show; "exactly who are the voters this new batch of Republican candidates are trying to appeal to?" It seems like the whole discourse has gone off its customary rails. The Democrats are "hawks", the "working class" is MAGA, and the "Republicans" are fighting over 3 delegates.
True. Though I think the Dems and Republicans agree on one thing: military spending. Hardly any money to people in Maui but a blank check for Ukraine.
There is money going to Maui, but it is a natural disaster and therefore, a one time event. The Russian invasion of a Democratic country is ongoing. If Russia would just stop, we would not need to send money and weapons. You are comparing apples to refrigerators.
Russia is not going to stop, especially since the U.S. has nuclear weapons and is basically at their border on Ukraine in this proxy war. We need to come to a peaceful compromise. What the Russians did was wrong, but that doesn't mean we should start WW3 over it. More Ukranians will continue to die needlessly as long we we fund this war. Also, I stick to my point that I'd rather see money go directly to Americans in need such as the people in Maui. The pandemic was also (hopefully) a one time thing, but the money sent directly to Americans was one of the best uses of government funds in history.
A great disappointment for many of us.
The premise upon which progressives who remain Democrats hang their hat on is that Obama and the Democrats tried their best, but the evil Republicans stopped them. Pelosi, Schumer, and even now, AOC, are given the same pass. The problem with allowing careerist politicians in our society is that they will always betray their principles and their constituents for the benefit of their career.
Yup, Obama entered office in 2008 with control of both houses of Congress and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, along with a friendly Supreme Court, Wall Street begging for rescue on any terms, the biggest popular appetite for reform since 1933, and a MSM that was unironically likening him to Jesus Christ and also Neo from The Matrix. Hell, he even got a Nobel Peace Prize, basically just for showing up.
The closest to one-party rule outside of an actual banana republic and what did Obama do with it? Free money to his rich friends and a giant gimme to the insurance industry, along with a bunch more wars.
Boy, those Mean Republicans must have superpowers bordering on psychic mind control.
What happened was those liberals got the whip hand.
And if support of the Empire was the price they had to pay to get their mitts on power, then that was a price that they were too glad to pay.
The change in “working class” really is the one I see as most insidious because it demonizes so many efforts to promote workers. For instance, you can not be pro-illegal immigration and pro worker; illegal immigration is a major factor in working wage suppression (the model should be if someone won’t do a job, you raise the wage until someone will; now the model is you hire an illegal to do the work). That’s why even labor organizers such as Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration. Now, by using, “white working class” even labor supporters can be demonized as racist and the establishment wins again. There are other examples but to me this is the most insidious for working people, in particular the working poor. Keep it up Matt!
This has been my argument all along! Who supports illegal immigration, it’s the big corporations of course! They don’t have to increase wages when they bring in more workers
Open borders advocates love Slavery
Importing that slave class
Yes, illegal immigrant labor long ago moved from farm work, construction, and landscaping to hotels, restaurants and factory floors.
They still make the major labor in agriculture and meat packing.
Correct ; I should have said “moved beyond farm work..” etc since the use of illegal immigrant labor has broadened in scope.
WSJ loves that illegal immigration
Murdoch has WSJ going through a similar transition as Fox. Older neocons gradually replaced by a younger generation of neolibs. New boss same as the old boss when it comes to issues like open borders and war.
Exactly! And who destabilizes the poor countries where they come from? It's our support of their dictatorships.
I have seen the entire occupation of carpentry wiped out in Monmouth County, NJ due to day workers. But I did see plenty of paychecks with SSNs on them. I learned from an Immigration Paralegal who served the community that they are purchased from those who will sell them.
You have to have a valid SS for your I-9, but it doesn't have to be yours.
They used to publish the amount of Payroll Taxes collected annually with non-matching SS# and Taxpayer Name, I think it was called Funds in Suspense (?) and it was in the billions of dollars.
Not uncommon in service and construction for DHS audits to find a sizeable portion of illegal workers (enough to close down a restaurant where I worked) but as long as the Employer has a completed I-9 they are in the clear.
Free money for the IRS as that taxpayer can never collect their SS benefits.
That said you can also buy a valid SS# and matching Name, but of course that is typically stolen from somebody else so again, good luck getting your SS back (join the club amirite?).
If I were the Q type I would be running around saying the Dems are running a trafficking scheme for payroll tax benefits.
The fault is the employers who refuse to pay a decent wage. And those owners vote solidly Republican. They love the unrest between the working and middle class. They laugh all the way to the bank because instead of blaming them working class Americans blame other working class Americans. ( FYI working class is anyone who works for a paycheck, which is most of us)
Perhaps we should go back a little farther for a more descriptive label. Instead of variations on “working class”, we should use the more flexible term - serf.
And lo, here we are, serfing the Internet!
🤣
We’re not quite there yet…but the “you will own nothing” class is pushing us in that direction…
I didn't even mention this term in my comment. While I use the concept of "class" in my writing, I haven't really followed its use over the years. It's an odd term, as - after all - who contributes to society without working? I've always seen it as a bit of a Marxist construction. Some use "blue collar" which is more to the point, but seriously vague. Taken literally, it covers a LOT of ground. The only people who don't "work" are - who? - people who can somehow afford to "play" instead? What about people who love their work or love working? My teacher somewhat frowned on the whole idea that a capitalist should be considered a contributing member of society, but on the other hand, certain among us - such as small children, senior citizens, and the seriously disables are not expected to work.
The problem that many people - especially hands-on workers for large companies - have is their lack of power unless organized compared to the power of their employers to hire, fire, and dictate wages. This is a huge power asymmetry that has haunted us for generations, but particularly since we industrialized. I remember reading a book written in 1888 specifically addressing this problem (with an idealized form of socialism).
Check out David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs". The working class is people who don't have bullshit jobs.
Was just going to recommend that book. A must read.
Regardless of what the politicians say, both parties' donors demand exploitable, slave labor. Those ceaseless caravans from Latin America are generated by narco states and death squads:
thegrayzone.com/2019/07/28/biden-privatization-plan-colombia-honduras-migration/
Upper management cannot receive their outsized compensation by sharing the profits. Offshoring manufacturing and high tech jobs, and illegal aliens for low end jobs "which Americans won't do" for low pay, is now our established model.
Most Democrats are not pro illegal workers. It's the Corp farmers and meat packing and food production industries (and by extension food serving industries) that are pro illegal immigrants. They desperately need that dirt cheap labor because Americans scream bloody murder when the price of food goes up. Food inflation comes when the meat packers get paid minimum wage as opposed to $5 an hour and no benefits. Read the The Jungle by Lewis. It hasn't much since then.
My big problem with illegal immigrants is why those countries are so horrible that people flee in droves.. Can't something be done about that?. I understand why illegal immigrants are here, but it would be better in the long run if they stayed in their own countries.
Most of them go back; and they come back when they need more money. While here most are also sending their earnings home. That takes money out of our economy…but it also puts money into their home country’s which gives the home country little incentive to prevent people leaving.
What stopped illegal immigration from Mexico was NAFTA; it provided good jobs for Mexicans to the point where Mexico now has to worry about losing jobs to SE Asia. Migrants now are coming from Central and South America and only traveling through Mexico.
Some interesting statistics from an 8/26/27 WSJ front page article, "Group Identity Eclipses Policy As Driver of Partisan Divides.
For the past fifty years, Americans have identified as Conservatives or Liberals at roughly 30% each, with the Conservatives sometimes (not now) exceeding Liberals by about 10%.
In 1975 50% of Republicans identified as conservative; 75% now. In 1975 25% of Democrats identified as conservative; 10% now. About 62% of Democrats now identify as liberal.
In 1990, white Americans without a four-year college degree split equally between Democratic and Republican parties -- about 40% with each. Now about 40% still identify as Republicans, but Democrats have dropped below 30%.
In 1990 about 55% of white Americans with four-year college degrees identified as Republican; about 35% now. In 1990 only about 35% identified as Democrats; about 50% now.
Yes, demonizing the term "working class" is another way the media seeks to divide and distract us.
John Judge investigated the Kennedy assassination as a private citizen.
He said "You can call me a conspiracy theorist if I can call you a coincidence theorist."
The phrase "conspiracy theorist" is used as a catch all term to silence anyone who questions the official story about anything.
In the spirit of black Americans recapturing the n-word and making it their own, my natural inclination is to lean hard into the term "conspiracy theorist": "Of course I'm a conspiracy theorist! Open your eyes, jackass!" Unfortunately I think the stain of Qanon (especially when applied over a base of TDS) has tainted the label irredeemably.
A friend of mine will respond to its application as a slur by reflexively replying: "they're not theories." To that end, I've been trying out new terms like "conspiracy patternist." But I think it would be funny to try to make "conspiracy expert" or "conspiracy scientist" happen.
Conspiracy-noticer
If the conspiracy just happens to further the interest of the hegemonic class at the time, it probably can be safely dismissed. The russiagate conspiracy theory is a prime example. The NYT and WaPo, to name but two, were pushing a wackadoodle conspiracy theory that would have gotten laughed out of The John Birch Society, ca. 1962.
If the conspiracy theory does not further those interests, e.g. the JFK murder, then it may be worth further investigation.
Yes, it’s meaningless since we are born putting 2 + 2 together.
Good term to study. Haunts us to this day.
The term "white working class" gives the politicians a reason to ignore or vilify them. You know, those poor WHITE people aren't worth listening to (the implication being that they are racist because they are white). This is likely because the poor white people remember how the Democrats have completely failed them after supposedly looking out for them for the last generation or two.
so why don't all the other-race working classes recall who has failed them with their promises? It seems hopium is strong regardless of race.
I just saw a poll saying that Trump is now polling 20% among the black population -- as opposed to 8% during 2020.
That's a lot of people who want a change of course.
that's what got him elected the first time - the promise of a difference. same for Obama, just a different type.
Trump was certainly different, and surely entertaining from some perspectives. But he, like Obama, never quite managed with the "change" thing. the pressure to maintain the status quo and only make tweaks around the edges must be so strong...
Respectfully, it is not fair to compare the levers of power available to Obama to those available to Trump. Chris Matthews famously said he got a thrill running up his leg whenever Obama spoke. Obama had all the power and did nothing with it except to elevate his celebrity. Before he was sworn in, all of the alleged Forces For Good were organizing against Trump's success. (How about that: Organizing For America v. organizing against Trump. What a coincidence.)
President Trump did get the major tax reform law passed, which provided significant relief for the lower middle to upper middle classes, but raised taxes on the wealthy through the $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction.
He also successfully targeted the worst offenders against human rights with strong actions: Russia, Iran and China. Etc.
Trump supported the Saudi war in Yemen. The sanctions on Iran hurt the poor.
He did nothing for human rights. In fairness, that’s typical for American Presidents. Obama gave the Saudis the green light to start the war in Yemen. Foreign policy in the US tends to be bipartisan in the worst sense of that word.
It's funny how corporate media criticized Trump for cutting taxes on the wealthiest, while at the same time HOWLED about the $10,000 state tax deduction.
Are you kidding me. His biggest supporters were Putin and Xi. His son-in-law got a 2 billion dollar check from his friends in Saudi Arabia. His daughter got millions of dollars in patents from China. The deficit ballooned under Trump and he could care less because gets filed bankruptcy in order to no pay his own bills. Please the guy is a grifter thru and thru.
Obama ABSOLUTELY did something with his power. He protected Wall Street, Big Pharma and Big Insurance.
Obama did use the government’s levers of power against a candidate, the President. Big time. Once he was gone, the Deep State FBI used those same levers against the President, whom all the powers of the Executive Branch were vested in. Not especially wise moves. Ask Comey and Vindman.
Obama may have wielded more power than Trump while Trump was President.
He widen the breath and depth of the deep state those 8 years. It was still in action the entire Trump term failing to respond to directives. Case in point - held the 2020 census release until Biden was pres then released a false census that distributed more house members to blue states and then said oops we've redone the census sorry the red states will have to wait until the next census in 2030 to get correct the number of seats in the House.
Case in point - Trump pulled troops off the Syrian border and yet after Biden was in office the commander said he never removed those troops.
i appreciate your perspective. I suppose I am looking more at a long term view looking back (50-80 years in the future) The odds were certainly different!
Yet so many promises were left unfilled I can't but notice and sometimes wonder at those who remain such loyalists. Politicians will be politicians though...
It's called blockage from the Uniparty in Congress and the Deep State (which really runs things).
yes, 2
sides of the same coin...
Obama rode the wave for eight years while accomplishing little of any value. Trump fought a tsunami during his term, may still go under water (for the last time) before long.
Maybe so but what gives you faith that if that same 12% vote for whomever ends up on the Republican ticket come 11/24 their votes won't get 'lost' somehow in the 'overnight' counting?
I completely agree, but it sure makes it harder to cheat the totals.
Trump is biggest con artist of them all. He hates working people except that he knows they can be conned and give him money. He learned it from his slum land lord father.
Let's assume this is 100% true.
This makes him exactly like the people who have been ruining cities across the country for my entire lifetime.
And that's okay with you?
He got 8% in 2016 and 12% in 2020.
He won't get 20% in 2024.
Because the political class of both parties work to make sure the working class does not realize that. The big doaners of both political parties make sure we are divided.
"hopium" - ha!
Our PM said it all...... Trudeau calls the unvaccinated racist and misogynistic extremists https://www.westernstandard.news/news/trudeau-calls-the-unvaccinated-racist-and-misogynistic-extremists/article_a3bacece-2e14-5b8c-bf37-eddd672205f3.html
..honk, honk.....
you gotta wonder what he thinks about Haiti having both the lowest death rate and lowest unvaccinated rate in the world. must be racism
Racist just thinking about it..... 😜
You can always find exceptions. And statistics are funny things. Haiti may have had many deaths from Covid, but if your government is too incompetent to make sure people are vaccinated, it will probably report that the deaths were from something else. I believe Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Haiti was only the best.
All of the runners up for fewest deaths were other unvaccinated nations. The higher the vaccination rate, the higher the death rate. There's dozens of studies out there about this. Good luck to you.
Ugh
No, the problem is that working people white, black or green regardless of where they work and long as it's for a paycheck are being divided by the people in power. If all working people actually realized they have more in common then they are lead to believe, by the "owning class and the politicians (of both parties). The politicians would be scared shtless.
>>The term "white working class" gives the politicians a reason to ignore or vilify them. You know, those poor WHITE people aren't worth listening to (the implication being that they are racist because they are white)<<
This illustrates perfectly why "racist" has been such a clear example of Orwellian word change. Ignoring and vilifying people based on their race used the be the definition of "racist." Now "racist" is the word that gets used to justify ignoring and vilifying people based on their race, while the practitioners of this racial bias congratulate themselves for being "anti-racist."
Never considered it that way. When I was young there was one working class, a middle class, the upper middle, the wealthy and the poor. And it wasn’t talked about, except to give to the poor.
Putin Puppet, n.
1. Anyone who'd rather see granny get her insulin than fully fund the Pentagon.
2. A person who doesn't believe Victoria Nuland is God's gift to American foreign policy.
3. Someone who thinks a civilization-ending exchange of nuclear unpleasantries with Russia is a bad idea.
4. Somebody who may have ordered the immolation of hundreds of Russian mercenaries but has decidedly orange skin, and used a weird tone of voice talking about Putin that one time.
Plus the Peeing Russian Hookers.
Oh.my.god you thank you Matt! You just answered a question I’ve been sitting here thinking and wondering about since Oliver Anthony’s song came out. Why were typically liberal news outlets so condescending to a working class guy singing a working class song? I’ve read articles about him in the New York Times and by NPR and I just couldn’t understand the general disdainful attitude. As well as the need to foist political views upon him, when he has been clear that he is literally middle of the road. He even says that he thinks it’s funny they played his song at the republican debate because they are the target of his song! Your whole article is so spot on. Thank you for clearing this up for me.
Also can we can get an updated definition of “expert” and “science” as in “listen to the experts” and “trust the science”? Oh how the words have been twisted for the sake of political gain in just a few short years!
Sincerely,
Someone who left California’s heinous bs behind only to find out it’s pervasive!
Scientists don't ever say "trust the science". They say, "please tell us if you find something wrong in what we said"
Trust the funding
The scientists who found prestige and funding from compliance with party politics will happily line up for "Trust the Science" photo ops.
...at which point, they lose a lot of their scientific "street cred" -- if there is such a thing.
"please tell us if you find something wrong in what we said"
I notice that RFK Junior says this all the time. It makes me much more inclined to pay attention to him.
"I’ve read articles about him in the New York Times and by NPR and I just couldn’t understand the general disdainful attitude."
Then I suggest you have not fully appreciated the elitism that defines the current Democratic Party, and their pet media.
Look! We just found the one person reading the NYT...
Some parts of the song demonize people on welfare might be one reason - that used to be a Republican move. Other parts of the song I agree with, especially the opening lines. Krystal and Saagar did a good analysis on Breaking Points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEFpyxm86VY&t=478s
He demonises people who see living on welfare as a career choice.
And he demonise people who abuse their bodies to the point they become obese and 'can't' work and then live off everyone else's taxes.
That perspective strikes me as lacking compassion. It's also not how my "working class" family would see people on welfare. Attitudes will differ by age, gender, region...again I think this makes Matt's question about defining "working class" so relevant.
Also why begin with a great critique of power and then demonize the most vulnerable? It undermines the argument. Let's all unite against those in power rather than against each other.
Great topic! Truly is maddening how the past 8 years has been a non-stop temper tantrum by the uniparty over whatever is perceived as a “populist” position or issue. Whether it’s the nobility of big pharma, the patriotic honesty of the CIA, or the principled leadership of Mitt Romney, we’re all expected to have the memory of a goldfish and embrace whatever our anointed leaders happen to find convenient at the moment for their agenda.
God bless you, Matt, for slogging through these videos and stories. I hear 30 seconds of Anderson Cooper and I’m ready to go postal.
The term "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorist" has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years, as it became weaponized in the culture/information war between elites and the unwashed masses.
The classic definition of conspiracy theorist is a person who persistently believes, without any evidence, that a secret cabal is working behind the scenes for some malicious purpose. This is the old picture of the weird guy in his basement wearing a tin foil hat.
The modern definition of conspiracy theorist, on the other hand, has expanded to include anyone who simply doubts or expresses mistrust about any official narratives of the "proper" authorities. It is a gaslighting attack against skeptics, to make them think they are crazy for questioning authority.
I believe that classic definition was promoted by the intelligence agencies to cast doubt on anyone skeptical of the official JFK assassination story.
And the modern definition of conspiracy must include the notion that most of them will turn out to be true in about 6 months.
There’s a great tradition of serious scholarship on the left concerning the ‘deep state’. Pretty sure it was Peter Dale Scott that coined the term. Aaron Good’s recent book American Empire and the Deep State, is the most recent in that lineage. There’s also a body of scholarship going under the name of Parapolitics and State Crimes Against Democracy. I think the major thing to understand about the Deep State is the relationship between agents and agencies of political violence and economic power, perhaps especially Wall Street. It’s not a term meant for civil servants but to capture the nexus of a criminogenic nexus of extreme wealth with covert political violence.
Agreed. There are also many more dots to connect, for example the work by Whitney Webb on the marriage of organized crime and state security/intelligence. She and others have drilled deep into particular facets, however, the big picture is still somewhat fuzzy. The history of the Dulles brothers, and the broader efforts of Wall St to capture the power of US empire to pursue their own agendas, it has to be interconnected in more detail than we know publicly. And the degree of uncertainty still permits the possibility that it is all happenstance and driven by a convergence of motives and opportunities, rather than by master-planning of a secret cabal…although instruments were certainly developed to protect their enterprise, which extends to mass media control, propaganda, election rigging, and plausibly including assassinations…both inside and outside the US.
Yes good points... Whitney Webb’s work appears to be very good and an evolution in the best tradition of muckraking journalism. And your right to note the links to organised crime.
The fundamental violence of the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is that a system of opaque, unaccountable, concentrated and imperial power develops and expands over time. Then when people point to it, give it a name and outline it’s contours, they are stigmatised and pathologised. It’s complete gaslighting.
Well put.
To me, the stable and real meaning of "Deep State" refers to the unelected D.C bureaucrats who actually run our Country on a day-to day basis. It makes little difference which political party is claiming to be 'in power' at any one point in time. These federal agencies have been permitted to undertake a life of their own, without true accountability to the so-called 'electorate' which pays the taxes to support their employment. How to deal with this? A few suggestions: i) de-unionize federal employees; ii) drastically cut funding to the bloated bureaucracies in D.C; iii) downsize these bureaucracies and thereby move government back closer to the States and the taxpayers who live there; and, iv) mercilessly cut back on the number of D.C. government agencies, many of which are outdated, repetitive, step on each other's toes, and continue only to try and justify their bloated budgets.
Especially the Senior Executive Service (SES), of which Fauci was the highest paid member.
Agreed. To which I would very much add the CIA, DOJ, and FBI, all of whom have truly become powerful shadow governments which act largely in their own interests.
I use to think that but it became apparent that's not so. When Bush43 was Pres the EPA was throttled, then Obama unleashed it to even regulate puddles in your back yard, then Trump was like oh no, only one new regulation for every ten we get rid of.
Those selected to cabinet positions dictate what happens underneath them. Also, Clinton and Obama fired every lawyer in the DOJ day one. Trump advisors sure failed on that obvious point and Trump didn't have a clue as an outsider.
Agree, and disagree, Shelley. The cabinet level positions are largely window dressing. The underlying bureaucracy, however, goes on. In truth, very few of the politicians and/or their appointees 'has a clue' if they are truly an 'outsider' to the system. On the other hand, if they are an 'insider', then they have in all likelihood been captured by that underling bureaucracy and, again, it goes on. It is a complex, and dangerous, conundrum of the first order. I would surmise that Congress is really the only entity able to deal with the situation on an effective, and continuing basis; but it has totally failed to do so. Thus, the only solution is a vastly smaller and leaner federal government as a whole. Again . . . the concept of getting governmental structures back closer to the people governed.
Not only has congress failed to deal with the situation, they themselves created the problem by delegating legislative authority to executive branch regulatory agencies.
The EPA doesn't pass laws, they implement rules, totally unhindered by any sort of democratic review mechanism, because Congress didn't want to be bothered with the responsibility. So Congress wrote a bill saying "EPA should make rules about xyz", and the agency has full power and authority to do basically whatever it wants.
The American citizen is ruled by a totally unaccountable and permanent bureaucracy. This is the "deep state".
I think this varies a great deal by agency. I’ve been involved in agency vs. agency disputes and ... there are good people and important things the feds need to do.. but no one can effectively look deeper in the interests of good government, if the R’s do it they are maligned and D’s don’t seem to care, which makes sense since many of the true believers within the career ranks are D’s. That is true believers in terms of policies, not true believers in terms of what it means to serve an elected Executive.
Well, and succinctly, said Sharon F.!
I hope we can agree to disagree. When an outsider gets suggestions for leadership positions and installs a person like Pompeo to CIA director then moves him to State, the two positions that have caused most of the world’s woes for over a hundred years, the carnage continues. It is a failure of leadership. Yes, the zealots and ideologies at the lower rungs can and do mire up necessary changes but a smart and determine upper crust can and should weed those people out. Again, failure of leadership. It is the Pres who sets policy and someone like Clinton and Obama made sure their policies were carried out because they put in the right leadership. And that leadership is still their today under Biden.
I will agree to disagree then. You may want to pick up a copy of "Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA" by NYT Pulitzer prize winner Tim Weiner. Mr. Weiner's quotes, comments and observations can be usefully contrasted/compared with similar quotes, comments and observations appearing in "The Man Without A Face", as written by the former head of the East German Stasi, Wolf. I have no feelings about Pompeo one way or the other. These spy agencies, you will find, really do little but screw up the world and they purposefully inculcate their staffs with the attitude that they are outside, and above, the law of the countries they purportedly work for. Their very first loyalty is themselves and their cohorts. Both books contain unfiltered statements from those at the highest levels in these agencies to this very effect.
You are talking right past my point Rex. State has been undermining the entire world for a hundred years (all CFR cronies) and they became much more efficient at it when Truman bequeathed it the CIA, its most successful arm in its operations. I don't need to read more books about the CIA and its culpability. Every D president since and including Wilson has moved the progress of the progressive Left forward toward the NWO. The globalist, Bush 41 and 43, aided and abetted this effort. Constant disabling wars was a means to an end. It is not the little guys underneath that make the decisions but those above who were specifically chosen for the task. Applicants for the CIA, as with the FBI, are given specific tests to determine their reliability and propensity to fall in line. Once employed, regardless of service length, if you don’t comply you are found dead on a beach, or in a dumpster behind a building or hung from a tree. The same is happening in the military and FBI - end of life primarily because of suicide say the authorities.
Lois Lerner harassed conservative 501-c3s because two Dems in Congress asked the IRS to do this. That's on record. 90% of the fed agencies are run and operated by progressive since O second term.
Lots wrong, north of Richmond, that is for sure.
Exactly
His most famous talent, before making heretofore sane moderates lose their minds, is for firing people, and he squandered that.
If there's a next time he should fucking fire everybody. Twice.
If a next time - shut his ears to those around him that moved his adversaries into high places and fire everyone. Gut the DOJ, military and State like C and O did and never hire fake GOP pussies like the guy the headed the election integrity group and to Congress that 2020 was the safest and securest election ever.
Here's a real provocative idea: federal employees have to relinquish the right to vote in federal elections.
Not sure I would go down that rabbit hole Science. :-)
Yeah, baby!
My favourite NewSpeak word is “Top”.
During Covid it was applied mostly to doctors.
“Top doctor recommends extending lockdowns”
“Top doctor says Covid won’t end until we’re all vaccinated”
Interestingly, I’m now seeing it applied to studies and institutions. A recent Politico headline reads “Top review says Covid lockdowns and masks worked. Period.”
I ask, what makes it the “Top”?
And now we have 'top' surgery for transitioning by top surgeons for top prices.
English is fun!
It's even funnier when you consider the meaning of "top" on, say, Grindr
"I ask, what makes it the “Top”?"
An algorithm of course!
Because Ella (via. Cole Porter) says so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0oKUpIqwek
Nailed it
Thanks for compiling the Devil’s Dictionary. Reminds me of a great book about the deep state’s foreign interventions - Devil’s Chessboard.
President Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex and scientific technological elite in his 1961 farewell address. Modern media would consider him a conspiracy theorist: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-deliver-a-farewell-address-eisenhower
I love Yuri!
By the way, that article really did turn out great. I had even forgotten all the layers of that speech when I suggested it.
Please do fascism and extremism. It’s still jarring to me to hear parents asking schools not to show their kids porn described as “extremists.” Also, for several years, when I first started hearing “fascist” being thrown around, I kept thinking, do people know what that actually means? I feel like they don’t...
Orwell himself noted that in his day fascism already meant "any authoritarian regime that I don't like." This has not changed. In many conflicts, by use of this definition both sides can quite reasonably denounce one another as fascist. Since "communism" is used in the same way, it is not unusual to see the same policy or person denounced both as fascist and also as communist.
Fascism would be a good one. It has gone through several morphings as far as the official definition. It is no longer (officially) defined as the merger of state and private industry. And the way it is defined now only refers to the political right.
I love the fact that I went to scrub a statue of Churchill in Parliament Square with Fascist and racist scrawled on it.
Had the vandal known against whom he had led the war?
Fascism: A philosophy or system of governance that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merger of state and business leadership, with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.
Coined by the Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator prior to and during WWII, that employed the fasces (a bundle of rods with a projecting axe blade, carried by a lictor in ancient Rome as a symbol of a magistrate's power) as its symbol.
Of course, when Mussolini founded the Fascist movement, he was famously a leading figure on the Left, not the Right. Prior to his marriage of convenience with Hitler, he was admired by American progressives like FDR.
But then, at a critical juncture, he quickly turned to the right and the result is what the Fascist Party ultimately became famous for.
I think people get hung up on left and right. I am a natural conservative, but I have more in common with the libertarian left than the authoritarian left and right.
When Matt came to London I waited in the queue with a Bernie Bro. He was a bit shocked at how much we agreed.
Are you saying the parties switched sides?
They don't, and I think its outlived its usefulness. I think its just a fancy word for a bold, outload authoritarian. An Authoritarian will grab what ever is useful to further their interests/power or oppress/attack their opposition. I feel like it was a college professor somewhere along the way that attached the right to fascism. but that's just conjecture.
Appreciate this.
My contribution: "Wealth Inequality",/"Income Inequality" has transformed to simply "Inequality".
Academics have mostly dropped the "wealth/income" part from, so that today, many if not most writers (at nauseating places like The Atlantic, The Economist , etc) simply say "Inequality".
The implicit, self-aggrandizing assumptions that undergird this change- whether unconscious or not on the part of the speaker- are obvious...and hilarious!!
Animal Farm's 7th Commandment: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”
Calling anyone "unequal" is insulting, and completely wrong-headed.
Inequity is a more appropriate term, But we went from "Income inequality" to simply "Inequality", which in my view shows the elite at their worst, like they actually believe themselves to be innately superior to poor people.
It's a hilarious commentary on whoever uses the term without the qualifiers!
You are poor (as am I), but you are not "unequal"!