Far too few westerners, especially those who suckle from Fox, have any idea how fiercely the current Moscow oligarchic clique hates the West and democracy and America. This article offers several dozen quotations from high Kremlin muckities and ‘intellectuals’ raving for - among other things - a preemptive nuclear spasm war.
Repeated relentlessly is the magical incantation that has been a touchstone of zero-sum despots for a quarter of a millennium, that the Western democratic enlightenment is decadent. Americans, in particular, must have traded away something vital… courage, endurance, virility and ‘manhood’… in order to wallow in our dissolute pleasures and so-called ‘science.’ A counter-factual rationalization that we have had to disprove at great cost, roughly once per generation, smacking back hallucinating Royalist, then Confederate, then imperialist, then Nazi, and now world-mafia fantasies that we've gone soft.
Alas, psychopaths - including many within our own nations - must cling to that notion, in order to spurn the humanity of people in cities, universities or fact professions, or any notion of democratic self determination.
Here’s just a sample from the linked article…
"In November 2018, addressing the Valdai Forum, the Russian president pronounced the following sentence, revealing the eschatological substratum of his thought: in case of a nuclear war “we, as victims of aggression, we, as martyrs, will go to heaven, and they [Russia’s enemies] will simply die. Because they won’t even have time to repent.”
This from a fellow who spent the first half of his life devoutly reciting Leninist catachisms, morning and night, then swore oaths to democracy, and now raises statues of czars all over Russia - man if principle.
Alas, I can tell you that up to half of all Russian sci fi published in recent years has consisted of Spetznatz fantasies about mowing down legions of US and NATO soldiers and their neo-nazi overlords (which is stunning irony, of course) and/or the rendering of North America uninhabitable, under the assumption that Russian endurance will make them the last ones standing. Moreover the shrillness of these yammerings, including those of 'chessmaster Putin' is what I fear most. These fellows sound desperate, frenetic... and that's dangerous.
I urge you to read the whole article. (It does have a French perspective.) But even more apropos and chilling - and vastly better written - get Vladimir Sorokin’s short novel The Day of the Oprichnik, in order to see where Putin blatantly wants all this to go.
Related addendum: "The US Army's "pan-coronavirus" vaccine could protect against any COVID variant."A universal vaccine to end COVID pandemics? It's in the Army's sights.
== The best things the Union-side politicians could do ==
Yes, I've delayed for more than a year offering my usual long list of 'suggestions' for a new Democratic administration. Perhaps because there never seemed to be the slightest interest by the goodguys in this phase of civil war, in anything not invented here. And because many of them can be found in Polemical Judo.
Still, I toss items out here, from time to time. Here are a couple.
Among many long overdue reforms, near the top would be to restrict NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) to cover only near-term enterprise or consultation matters, or at least to exclude any matter of criminality or moral turpitude... and a sunset clause of maximum 5 years.
Likewise the insanely biased practice of contracts that require binding arbitration should be dumped (not just for sexual predation matters, as in the recent bill)... or at least altered to create corps of truly and measurably neutral professional arbitrators, with randomly chosen cases then tried before real judges, to validate a sampling set of outcomes and eliminate bad arbitrators.
Pernicious incentives are everywhere, like rating agencies (for bonds, credit etc.) who depend on deep-pocketed clients to choose them. And banks who long ago broke their promises to offer Basic Banking services to the poor. And supermarket chains who promised to build in underserved areas.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a leader (with Senators Sanders and Warren) in attempting to remedy those and other problems - against uniform and disciplined opposition by the GOP, for no other reason than blatant service to oligarchy.
The resulting wash of light could shred what I have long held is likely to be the greatest disease afflicting the U.S. and empowering our enemies, a swamp of blackmail that could get drained once even a few channels are blasted thorough, to truth. (I have a whole chapter about this in Polemical Judo.)
See also my article: Political Blackmail: The hidden danger to political servants.
Would some Democratic icons fall? Sure, In fact, the fraction of women in high places would likely skyrocket! So? Given what we already know... e.g. that republican officials are ten times more likely to be associated with sexual predatory perversion or child predation than democrats (oh, please BET ME on that!) ... I think we know which side in this civil war will scream the loudest, if Biden does this one thing to heal us with light.
Yeah, yeah, you've all seen that proposal from me for a decade, at least. And still no one out there seems willing to admit that blackmail is both the standard snare-and-control method used by mafias and Kremlin skulks for centuries... and that it is the only conceivable way to explain top Republicans' kowtowing to a blatantly obvious monster.
But now a proposal you might NOT have seen before.
== A nation of villages? ==
"Mark Cuban bought Mustang, a small town in Navarro County, located 55 miles south of Dallas. “The 77-acre town has a current population of 23 people and is the home of an abandoned strip club with a frightening back story.”
Among my many proposals for 'positive-sum' or win-win approaches to modern problem solving is that state and federal governments might find pairs of dying rural towns and then subsidize a rebirth in Town A by encouraging move-in by residents from Town B. Then convert the almost-empty Town B into... well...
...there are so many potential uses! So many kinds of groups who could make specialized use of such places. Ponder this: most such towns have failed very slowly, because no one - not farmers or small business owners - could just barely break even, but never make a profit. Only, with just a bit of government investment and subsidy, new residents could farm or do business or upgrade homes and almost break-even... which for specialized communities would be spectacular!
In return, the government (or a foundation or zillionaire) would get a specialized residence zone with clean air, housing and fresh food, at very low cost for:
- big city homeless folks who just want someplace decent to retire - (totally voluntary!) - or dry out, or whatever. No force and not a substitute for urban housing efforts! But a brochure offering a warm house and garden, in exchange for work upgrading the place, might be persuasive to many.
- refugee/asylum seekers as a safe place to live and work with families while lawyers work their cases. (You object? Do you prefer cages?)
- minimum security jails where almost all the labor is done by residents, who get the dignity of their own homes and jobs and clothes.
- and yes, this is one solution to the vexing paradox of sex-offenders, who must now tell neighbors and then often get chased out, to try the next one, then the next. Offering this option would let at least some of them find a place in the world where everything is not lose-lose for everyone.
There are more potential groups who might leap at an opportunity to get one of these subsidized 'diversity-option towns.' I'm sure some of you can think of candidates...
...just as some of you are now boiling with fury over such an incipient Orwellian system of internal exile gulags!
Indeed, *I* would worry about that, as a potential trend, if it weren't for the reliable phenomenon of you screaming about it! In fact, there could be many safeguards, guarded by vigilant NGOs. (Would you volunteer to be one of the watchdogs against abuse?)
For example, an absolute ban on barbed wire.
Try pausing in your outrage to imagine what the client communities I just listed would say, if offered a completely voluntary option of subsidized farms, gardens, homes and businesses amid clean air and sunshine. Or the residents of Town A, who suddenly have a vibrant community, once again, with steady commerce from Town B.
Indeed, the fact that some of you cannot see the win-win possibilities while ensuring safeguards, is an example of why we seem to have lost our skill at innovative problem solving.
116 comments:
The tragedy is that MAGAts & their ilk define "Freedom" as, "I can do whatever I want whenever I want, and, BTW, f#ck you!"
I guess this is what comes of not teaching civics in HS. I had 0 civics, 1964-1968. It should be a course every year in HS.
Topics: Citizenship: entailing freedom, rights, duties, responsibilities. Not just "freedumb".
I didn't want to buzz-kill the zeitgeist of the space thread, so...
Dr Brin two comments back:
Larry illustrates my dilemma. I KNOW with almost complete certainty that the 'mule power' corralling Graham, Cruz and Christie is one used by ALL generations of spies but especially all Russian secret services. Ye I am the only one in the entire nation who is willing to say the B-word aloud. Even though it is absolutely necessary and overwhelmingly sufficient.
I seriously do not know what to do. A guy in my position should consider the possibility that - all alone in this, I might be mad.
But... but no one EVER offers an alternative that is even remotely plausible! Visi-Sonar.... riiiiight. ;-)
No, in reality, it's perfectly obvious that Lindsey Graham in particular is the subject of blackmail. For the sake of his own soul, I dearly hope that what they have on him is more than just the fact that he's gay. 'Cause if he's selling out all integrity just to protect that secret, well as a protagonist of the Saga comic once screamed, "Do I really have to explain what a secret is?"
More generally, though, you're not the only one mentioning the prospect. As far back as 2016, I've heard over and over that, "Russia also hacked the RNC, and I wonder what they've got that they're not revealing publicly." I think the reason you feel like you're shouting in the wilderness is not because no one else credits the blackmail idea, but because it's so obviously true that it hardly seems worth mentioning.
One thing that brings Mule powers to mind, though, is not just that anti-Trumpers have become joined the Trump team, but how much they've changed their tune in the process without any recognition or explanation that their opinion has changed from before. It's like they've always been at war with Eastasia--their previous criticisms of Trump having disappeared into the memory hole.
I feel that if 'twere me being blackmailed, I might be convinced to support the candidate against my better judgement, but I'd be giving the minimum necessary to keep my handlers off my back. Lindsey seems to go beyond that--to take initiative to embarrass himself with a lack of integrity beyond that which would keep a blackmailer satisfied with his performance. Whether or not he really has changed his allegiance that much or is just doing a really good job of playing the part, his words give the semblance of Captain Han Pritcher or the Warlord of Kalgan after their conversion by the Mule.
Of course Mule powers is a ridiculous theory, but the fact that nothing ever happens which would disprove it is a scary place to find oneself after starting down that rabbit hole.
Ah yes, the old centrally managed technocratic society, where the Smart People get to engineer society according to their abstract ideas of how the world should be, and everyone else just has to shut up and go along. Because let’s face it, allowing commoners to decide how their lives, communities and nations are run is not really something we can afford any more. Democracy is not the thing going forward, in a world of epidemics, climate change, pesky populists, cyber-threats, fake news and God knows what else. Neither is Capitalism, being too difficult to centrally control. Technocracy is our only hope now, preferably on a global scale. If cultures or constitutions stand in the way, I’m sure we can creatively re-engineer them so they’re not a problem, being the Smart People that we are. All power must be centralized with the Technocrats, so we can Save the World.
Not a gulag, no - a town, complete with the promise implied by its name that residents are free to move in there, or move elsewhere if they are so inclined (and have the resources to do so). Nor need they take certain mandated jobs - not all of us are cut out for farming, nor manufacture, nor even customer service, and assigning people to jobs seldom works out well in the long run.
There would, of course, likely be some sort of government subsidy for people to move there, depending on the idea behind the village itself (if you're providing housing for immigrants/refugees, for example, you'd want to subsidize them, and let any other people move there on their own dime). I'm sure that tax breaks would be sufficient motivation to get various retailers into the region...
Trebeard you are committing one of the top sins... being utterly boring. Seriously, you repeat the same bleat over and over, accusing us of what YOU are doing for restoration of insipidly stoopid inheritance oligarchy, the failed model across 6000 years.
Alas you never address our response... that meritocracy is COMPETITIVE. And not just from generation to generation - the sons and daughters must prove themselves afresh - but year to year. And laterally with constant competitive fights. The c-word you traitors to the west now hate above all other things.
Do meritocratic systems do all that perfectly? Hell no! There are stodgy farts who USED TO earn their high positions but now throw unearned weight around. But the very fact that we deem that behavior to be WRONG is part of the solution. Plus the impudence of competitive new rascals. But above all the pure fact that the best scientists, when they get old, like to become shit disturbers and paradigm questioners! Because that was the most fun they ever had, before.
I have seen the latter effect time and again and have been privileged to know the type... Alfven, Feynman, Dyson, Penrose....
And you don't have the remotest idea what the f*ck I'm talking about, do you? I mean it. You are far, far too stoopid to argue this point well.
In fact I am tempted to set up a persona and argue your point FOR you! So it would at least be represented in another way than... than.... zzzzzzzzzzzz
" I think the reason you feel like you're shouting in the wilderness is not because no one else credits the blackmail idea, but because it's so obviously true that it hardly seems worth mentioning."
Oy, seriously Larry? What stunning malarkey. If Blackmail! were shouted from rooftops it would get people THINKING about it and doing correlations! There'd be amnesty offers on the table. There's nothing of the sort. And almost every time I raise the topic, folks ALWAYS say: "A better explanation is political fanaticism or corruption!" without ever, ever, ealizing that those are limited and simply could never explain what we see.
" I might be convinced to support the candidate against my better judgement, but I'd be giving the minimum necessary to keep my handlers off my back."
Sorry that's wrong. You do what the blackmailers TELL you to do! Graham has tried to publicly declare "Enough! I am done!" and every time he gets reeled back in. And Cruz? Christie? OMG so many. And we should look at the sons of Murkowski and Collins.
Well I respond to the contents of your posts, and half the time you respond with the same canned rant about some cult that I’m not a member of, 6000 years, feudalism, science, meritocracy, etc.—talk about boring. Then there are the insults—I’m stupid, inferior, etc. Is anyone besides you impressed with this kind of rhetoric?
Anyway your rant is beside the point; a class of people can be meritocratic, competitive, scientific, technocratic, and still be authoritarian control freak assholes. Case in point: the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. I honestly thing you’d fit right in. Imagine: the smartest, most meritocratic, technocratic people, after debating among themselves, get to dictate to over a billion people how society is going to be run, with no opposing party of traitors and no need to bother with the objections of inferiors and deplorables. What’s not to like?
Jesus, when the challenge is right in front of him, as I predicted, he cannot parse the very logic that he made the topic. A member of a cult dedicated to destroying all susytems of competitive quality determiniation, he completes that cult's 180 degree veer from past pretenses to belive in competitive quality determination.
Oh and I don't give a damn whether you are impressed with my rhetoric, sir. You have openly declared yourself to be the enemy of everything you swore allegiance to Only one thing has your loyalty, now. "Hate all nerds." Gosh, the playground has turned rough on the bullies. I weep for you guys.
On the role of blackmail in the US: spare a thought for poor old J Edgar Hoover, who ran the American Secret Police for about 50 years and owed it all to his blackmail files. It was a tragedy that those files never came to light after he died. It would have had a salutary effect on US culture to air out that dirty laundry; instead the festering continues.
What I wonder about is the fate of the Epstein blackmail files. Did he destroy them before he got busted? Did someone else do it? Or were they inherited by some other criminal or syndicate? Epstein may have simply been the front man for a more organized gang. A resource like that is very valuable.
Think of all the Republican politicians who have tried to put some distance between themselves and Trump, people like Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney or Graham. Usually they resign from politics after registering a mild sort of disagreement with Trump; Romney and Graham are exceptions because they're still in the Senate. We don't hear from Romney too much these days however. I have to wonder if his obedience is due to blackmail; threat-based extortion might be more likely.
And as for Lady Lindsey - maybe being outed to his redneck constituency is enough to keep him in line, I don't think that would go over well in S. Carolina.
But again, this fetid laundry needs to be aired even if some feelings are hurt.
Re - The Chinese
The Chinese people get to SELECT which people represent them
AND the Chinese Government is actually (by tradition) much much more conscious of the "will of the people"
In the old Imperial days a Dynasty could (and did) lose the "Mandate of Heaven"
So today the Chinese people have a 90% "trust in their government" and the Chinese Government will try to make sure that remains high
https://www.statista.com/chart/12634/where-trust-in-government-is-highest-and-lowest/
The findings come from Edelman Research's latest Trust Barometer
which polled 36,000 people in 28 countries about their trust in various institutions in November 2021.
The U.S. figure is far lower than many other countries, with trust in government in Canada and Australia standing at 53 percent and 52 percent, respectively. It is also slightly lower than the UK where the government's Brexit strategy has proven highly controversial with public approval of the institution 42 percent in late 2021.
Some of the highest levels of trust in government were seen in Asia where 91 percent of Chinese respondents said they had trust, along with 82 percent of people polled in Saudi Arabia and 74 percent in India. The lowest rating was found in Argentina, where just 22 percent of respondents said they trusted their government there.
As far as democracy is concerned the USA struggles
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
AND that report was using data from BEFORE "Citizen's United"
I used to think that Parliamentarian Democracy was the best system - now I'm still quite sure that its better than the American system - and less sure that its better than the Chinese
The key indicator (IMHO) will be the appearance of political dynasties
If the Chinees can operate their system long term without producing political dynasties....
Treebeard’s first mistake above is writing that the smart people get to engineer society according to their abstract ideas...
But they’re not abstract ideas, they’re real—otherwise he wouldn’t be able to term them ‘technocratic’ in the first instance.
"WHO DEY!!!"
Ahem, I just wanted to remind everyone here about what is truly important in life: the Bengals winning the Super Bowl.
Ye I am the only one in the entire nation who is willing to say the B-word aloud.
What about bribery and party donations? The Kremlin supports right-wing politicians all over the globe. (Oddly, he could support the extreme left in the same manner, but he does not.) Mc Connell got an aluminium plant for his state.
The NRA got "dark" donations. And so on. (Though this all might lead to blackmail, or anticipatory obedience.)
I won't rule it out, though ... but proving it is the difficult job. And even if it is proven: If politicians get away with fostering sedition, does being blackmailed really matter anymore?
Dr Brin:
If Blackmail! were shouted from rooftops it would get people THINKING about it and doing correlations! There'd be amnesty offers on the table. There's nothing of the sort.
Unfortunately, I think the notion that Republicans are the rightful ruling class has become way too ingrained in the American consciousness. When obvious malfeasance by that party is made obvious, the strongest pushback seems to be, "Well, I wish they behaved more honorably than that, but since they're not, well what can ya do?" Cheating in any way by Republicans is treated as a perhaps-distasteful but nevertheless acceptable means of winning. And blackmail is just one example of such.
For my own part, "Mule powers" seems like a good metaphor for calling attention to just how ridiculous Graham and Cruz and Collins make themselves look. 'Cause when I say something like "Donald Trump has Mule powers," people's natural response is to criticize me for saying something so stupid. It makes them try to come up with evidence that I'm full of crap. And on some level, they have to notice that they can't come up with such evidence.
If it gets them to come out with, "No, you fool. They're not being mind controlled. They're being blackmailed!" then you win.
Treebeard pretending to paraphrase us:
"Democracy is not the thing going forward, in a world of epidemics, climate change, pesky populists, ..."
Except the populists are the ones essentially saying "Democracy is not the thing going forward". And you're fine with that.
Case in point: the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. I honestly thing you’d fit right in. Imagine: the smartest, most meritocratic, technocratic people, after debating among themselves, get to dictate to over a billion people how society is going to be run, with no opposing party of traitors and no need to bother with the objections of inferiors and deplorables. What’s not to like?
Except for "technocratic", you've just described Putin. And again, you're fine with that.
Dr. Brin:
Just to make it official:
You diagnose blackmail? I second the opinion! Say it loud, say it proud: where it's at is Compromat!
Dramatic loyalty reversals aside, there are 'subtle' hints like McConnell and friends visiting Moscow on July 4th, 2018. My oh my, what does Putin have on them? Live boys? Dead girls? Recall how Corleone turned the Senator in Godfather 2! Putin does go on and on about decadence... though for _him_ to call _others_ decadent is projection worthy of an IMAX.
But then the question is: now what? A truth and reconciliation commission? Not bad, but it's like the joke: how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change.
Amnesty for testimony? Fine, but be prepared to forgive some stinkers.
gerold:
And as for Lady Lindsey - maybe being outed to his redneck constituency is enough to keep him in line, I don't think that would go over well in S. Carolina.
At the risk of repeating myself, "Do I really have to explain what a secret is?"
Amnesty for testimony?
That might work assuming that those being blackmailed believe that you can and will protect them from retribution. If they believe that they (or those they care for) will be killed (or worse) then the problem is not just blackmail…
And if you believe Russia is behind it, remember the number of fairly prominent assassinations we've seen, with no consequences? Surely that demonstrates that you would need a very high level of protection indeed to survive turning.
LH,
re Republicans cheating is considered distateful-but-necessary. That is definitely a big part of it. Lesser-known is Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment: ‘thou shalt not criticize a fellow Republican’. There’s a unity in such, albeit a negative unity—Republicans simply ignore the negative, as they do with the negatives involving their religious beliefs.
There’s a GOP notion of “Trump is a non-conservative working for conservative ends.”
—-
It all fits in the over-arching framework of negative unity and validation; validation in the sense of:
how many in the GOP do think they made a mistake in voting for Trump. However, having voted for (and the prospects of 2024) Trump is rationalized by them as both personal validation and also necessary for [negative] GOP unity.
‘America is about the rights of individuals’ and ‘my party, right or wrong‘ is thus combined into one.
Dr. Brin,
Re: small towns...
What's being described here is about two steps from "company towns". We have a history of those in the US and Britain. Some started as model towns, built or rebuilt far above the local standards, but there are disquieting examples of entire communities having to live by the moral standards* of their unelected monarchs/CEOs, AND shop at the company store, using company scrip.
* Or, rather, the moral standards espoused by the CEO. Who knows what went on the owner's mansion.
You emphasized the "completely voluntary" part, but anyone with a job and a family is not entirely free to choose. It's like the "why do people support evil empires?" side note I read in the old GURPS Space handbook - it's the devil you know, and the devil decides what goes into the newsletter.
Re: trusting the government - it's coming on tax time, and one immense headache a government could remove from the average American is to offer a standard "we know what your tax numbers are, here are your totals and your refund (if due), if you need to engage a specialist to dispute this, let us know." Intense lobbying from the tax consultant firms (i.e. Turbotax, etc) has prevented this, but if you are looking for a popular presidential directive, that might work.
Pappenheimer
Dr. Brin hates cheaters, bullies, blackmailers, psychopaths, criminals and 'self-helpers' of all sorts, and he values sociability, consensus, order and external social controls.
This creates something of 'circular argument' or 'logic loop' for the less circumspect who must ignore Self-Control & Social Control human behavioral theory in order to deny that the exercise of coercion is synonymous with (and indistinguishable from) the enforcement of compliance.
To quote Donald Black, Harvard Law School, author of 'Crime as Social Control':
There is a sense in which conduct regarded as criminal is often quite the opposite. Far from being an intentional violation of a prohibition, much crime is moralistic and involves the pursuit of justice. It is a mode of moral conflict management.
In this sense, many of the 'pernicious incentives' to which Dr. Brin objects follow logically, as banks which intend to make money must naturally cater to people who have money to invest, supermarkets which intend to sell groceries must necessarily sell groceries to paying customers, and sex offenders who intend to re-offend must surround themselves with potential victims.
Terms like 'blackmail' do not mean what you think they mean, as we define blackmail as 'a crime' because our culture supposedly values truthful revelations & transparency, even as we predicate the criminality (coercive nature) of blackmail upon the potentiality of truthful revelations & transparency.
Human language is recursive and, when we forget this, the resulting linguistic imprecision leads to incredible (and hypocritical) logical fallacies, as we draw erroneous artificial Good & Bad distinctions between billionaires, falsehoods, truths, riots, protests, labour actions, election shenanigans and emergent authoritarianism.
It's a recurrent theme in tales like Babel-17, Hell's Pavement, Queen of Angels, Drunkard's Walk:
We are all prisoners of our LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING, so much so that most will never even notice their chains, let alone escape them.
@Treebeard:
It's not that others 'refuse to understand' your arguments, but rather that many are simply INCAPABLE of understanding what you have to say.
To paraphrase Morpheus: As long as the [Language] Matrix exists, the human race will never be free.
Best
______
And, btw, the term 'Amnesty' (defined as 'a general pardon for past offences') does not mean what you appear to think it means, as it does not require the correction of past actions, an apology or any type of social reform by the recipient.
Amnesty is a reward. It means zero consequences (forgiveness; a license to sin) for bad actors like bullies, criminals, traitors, murderers & child molesters. And, like any rewarded behaviour, you get more of the behaviours that you choose to validate.
Paradoctor at least addresses real, practical issues, if we were to begin a true attempt as housecleaning a mountain of blackmail... or else eliminating that fell possibility by proving it to be exaggerated.
There are reasons I said that forgiveness cred should go - foremost - to those who heroically step up first and those whose revelations help topple the mountain. Real incentives, there.
Forgiveness is two leveled. First LEGAL pardoning for being both early and effective in revelations... plus some public praise with 'hero points' for those things, to ease the public shame attatched. But yeah, it would still take persuasion that some might thus get revenge on their tormentors.
I very much doubt Graham is 'merely' gay. Epecially after just being re-elected for 6 years. See the DA in "LA Confidential."
===
"Case in point: the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. I honestly thing you’d fit right in. Imagine: the smartest, most meritocratic, technocratic people, after debating among themselves, get to dictate to over a billion people how society is going to be run, with no opposing party of traitors and no need to bother with the objections of inferiors and deplorables. What’s not to like?"
Jibber-jabber. They repress competition, ent, just like your own lords. You are simply incapable of even conceiving WHAT it is we are talking about when we describe the adam-smithian benefits of flat-fair-open-creative and ongoing competition. Like positive sum it is simply a concept you cannot apply neurons to. And hence my apologies for earlier unkind words to a cripple.
Robert yes. Witness protection must be part of it.
Pappenheimer you are doing guilt-by-association. Many company towns were bad, and others good, depending on transparency and accountability and other factors. Same with utopian communities, which are another parallel. What you ignore is the fact that the new denizens of these towns would be encouraged to open their OWN stores and businesses, in the shells of previous ones that had ALMOST made a profit… but these folks won’t have to. A store that had failed because of steady 5% red ink would be a huge boon to taxpayers, if we ONLY had to subsidize that 5%, for previously unproductives to be productive and raise their families with pride.
As for tax season, a top GOP need is to underfund the IRS.
---
After paragraph #2 I shrugged off locum. Another of his patented screeches at a strawman that he created to be screeched at. Not a single thing he posed about “order” or “social controls” had anything to do with me or anything I ever said. Go enjoy jacking at your man of straw. I am waaaaay over here.
Alan Brooks:
Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment: ‘thou shalt not criticize a fellow Republican’.
I think that one is pretty well known. It's been superseded by the Trump Corollary, though. With apologies to Monty Python:
"...Excepting that thou proceedeth on to Liz Cheney and Alan Kinsinger."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/13/world/canada-protests-trudeau-news
Earlier in the day, hundreds of uniformed police officers approached the protesters, some of whom had left their vehicles parked at intersections leading to the bridge. A phalanx of police officers warned the protesters they would be charged with criminal mischief, before closing in the small crowd and making arrests. A tow truck was used to removed a pair of parked pickup trucks blocking the approach to the bridge.
“There will be zero tolerance for illegal activity,” the Windsor Police warned in a statement.
Funny, that statement from police sounds exactly like the Republican mayor of Aurora, IL running for governor on a platform of how he "took back his city" from BLM protests. Somehow, I suspect the same people who admire the Republican mayor's intolerance of illegal activity don't feel the same about the Canadian police doing the same.
Same NY Times story about Canadian protests:
Many Canadians say they are exhausted by the constant disruption caused by the government protests, and they have started gathering across the country. Twitter hashtags like #convoygohome, #GoHomeFluTruxKlan and #GoHomeDipshits make clear the frustration of many Canadians.
Glad to see the silent majority pushing back.
I like "Flu Trux Klan", but I'm surprised that third hashtag got past the newspaper's censors.
On the topic of Putin, it’s fascinating to observe the info-war in Anglo media to try to gin up another conflict. I’m getting Vietnam/Iraq War vibes with this chorus of predictions of an imminent Russian invasion, despite no evidence being provided. Are we supposed to trust them? Weren’t we also told that the North Vietnamese attacked US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, Saddam had WMD’s, Trump was a Russian agent and it would take two weeks to flatten the covid curve? Why should anyone believe these people? Is anyone here at least a little suspicious of what is obviously another Deep State info-war campaign? If a Russian attack in the Ukraine is reported by this media, how will you know it’s real and not a Tonkin-style lie or an Operation Ajax-style false flag? Has anything about the American intelligence/media/war complex changed to prevent history from repeating? Or is America so exceptional and its adversaries so deplorable by definition that it doesn’t really matter?
Dr. Brin, your “Truth and Reconcilation” commission might not work in today’s angry, polarized environment. Look up Brett Kimberlin. He claimed that he sold drugs to Dan Quayle. Lots of people wanted to believe him, even though his claims were unprovable (and he could not even show he had ever been in proximity of Quayle at the time in question). Look at the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. People picked who they wanted to believe based on what tribe they were in.
In a heated, partisan environment like this, someone could come out and make outrageous charges and do it in a way that they can’t be disproven. Dr. Ford could not prove anything. Dr. Ford gave no details. How can you disprove a charge when there is no evidence to disprove? And when a large percentage of the population really wants to believe you, and if the media loves all the hype and fury (and resulting ratings) who cares about evidence?
I care about evidence. I care about what can be proven. I fear a system where the popular people always win…because popular people are sometimes horrible people. Laws and procedures exit to protect the weak from the strong and from the popular.
I like the model of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that helped South Africa heal from Apartheid. What you are offering is something else.
The answer to the question of can we find the political will to save democracy is Yes.
January 6th had the effect of being a one day seminar on how bad it can get. Russia v Ukraine is an ongoing mini-education—things are coming out into the open.
Now, we can’t communicate much with the GOP and their fellow-travelers: we talk at cross-purposes with them. But some far leftists can be reached if it is explained to them very carefully. Not the hard-line Marxists, naturally—they’re located in ideological La La Land, along with fascists. To communicate with other far-leftists, though, we will have to wait until the situation becomes dire enough for them to listen.
The year 2024 comes to mind, when a negatively unified right might very well oppose a splintered left—which is an outcome Putin prays for.
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When the situation becomes dire enough, Treebeard and Locumranch might be more receptive. Why do they visit Contrary Brin? Obviously, they don’t want to be in an intellectual echo chamber. However, another question is: Why this particular blog? If you could figure such out, it might offer a clue as to how to communicate more readily with Antipathies. (A word from ‘Alice In Wonderland’.)
GNT you are confusing teo entirely separate things... credibility of un-evidenced accusers vs. credibility of CONFESSIONS. Those who step up and confess to blackmailable sins will have huge credibility, as do most public me culpas. What? You don't think such men would posess evidence of their OWN sins?
Moreover, a first step could be to secrety cooperate with the FBI in luring the blackmailers into exposing themselves.
Blah blah, Ivan... Ive-ent. What a yammer fest revealing how on your knees sucking on the Kremlin your cult has become.
Russia surrounds a neighbor with ALL of its moble forces on three sides, but WE are ginning up conflict. The Kremlin inundates Ukrained with cyber attacks and bomb threats. But we are ginning.
YOUR people are the ones who lied on WMDs. Twit.
There are a quarter MILLION dedicate men and women in your so-called 'deep state'... every single one of them a better American than you. And hell yes, I have not had ONE of your cult offer to meet me with large, escrowed wager stakes over whether there is any evidence for that DS BS, whatsoever.
It is exactly what enemies would want. Hatred at the 250,000 Americans most positioned to defend us from them.
Your cult is treason top to bottom.
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PS... how about a deal. Recruit 100,000 of the world's most reputably honest people and get them to supervise truly free and contested elections in Russia, Ukraine, the US (in November) and China.
Lesse who would refuse and deem it an existential threat. Putin would howl, but nowhere near as loud as the Foxite GOP.
Okay, with rumors and alarums of war (did you do your Costco run, as I recommended?)...
Okay, sometimes you need a bit of cheering up:https://1funny.com/dancing-on-the-ceiling-an-old-school-mash-up/
And this one’s even better:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1F0lBnsnkE
And for those of a certain age try googling “cake peel (emma)”
locumranch,
I get the linguistic programming issue you point out. I've seen it often. When I'm most cynical I'll point out that it is the purpose of church involvement in marriage to ensure the children ARE programmed the 'right' way. When I'm feeling more cheery, I note that it is also how we propagate ideas and manage to get along with each other well enough not to commit mass murder.
Language is many, many things, but in the science sense it is THE thing that makes civilizations cohere.
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Not only is it recursive, it is built on analogies all the way down and across.
1. 'Coffee' is a type of bean, but also a drink made using that bean.
2. 'Cupboard' was likely two words not long ago, but now describes the cabinet containing the boards for cups.
Some of our terms are lost in the misty fog of our growing minds as we accumulate language leaving us stuck using dictionaries that barely touch the meanings we actually assign.
3. What does 'much' mean? Chances are you learn a basic sense of it before you can speak and then accumulate meanings to it as you grow older.
4. Do we 'peel' a banana in the same sense we 'peel' off wet clothes after being caught outdoors in the rain?
Recursion is just part of the picture. Look carefully at any one element of a language net and you'll find strands that go across instead of 'in'. Meanings have to do with how a net is connected more than how each node recurses.
5. 'Coffee' is actually a variety of drinks that may have very little 'extract of the bean' in them. Consider the after-dinner coffee serving where some people prefer tea. Ask how much coffee is needed in an Irish Coffee.
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I get all this, but you are trying to use it to play a game of semantics with our host. I think that's plain stupid. He gets it too.
Where you two diverge isn't so much in the meanings of terms. It's in the beliefs you do NOT share about how things work. Casting that difference as a matter of language is ingenuine and a waste of our time.
Sure. Some of the terms we all use have different net connections, but we can talk around that by paraphrasing each other. Throw enough words into the salad and we'll figure out what you mean. We'll see the connections you are making in your head even if we don't make them ourselves. Even famous examples like Babel-17's missing pronouns can be worked around with enough words and some finger pointing.
Linguistic programming isn't rigid. The earliest constructs we learn as children are VERY difficult to change or dislodge, but we can go around them in our thought experiments where we try to imagine being someone else. It IS possible to cope.
What's nearly impossible to handle, though, is the fool who thinks they get all this and no one else does. The term for this that connects strongest in my personal language net is 'divine insight' though it need not involve God any more than coffee need involve a particular kind of bean. If you think you've got that and we don't, you are are in error. Worse, you show you think we are too stupid to function as viable humans in our communities.
Maybe you don't think that of us, though? I'd prefer to think you weren't so foolish. If you are, however, I'll just go make more popcorn.
Treebeard:
Weren’t we also told that the North Vietnamese attacked US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, Saddam had WMD’s, Trump was a Russian agent and it would take two weeks to flatten the covid curve? Why should anyone believe these people?
Who are "these people" you refer to? The three lies were spread by Republicans. The fact that Trump was and is a Russian agent--or at very least a Russian asset--is supported by 17 intelligence agencies, believed by liberals, and seems self-evident based on his actions before and during his regime.
If a Russian attack in the Ukraine is reported by this media, how will you know it’s real
See if FOX News or OAN mentions it. If it's the liberal plot you suspect, they'll be running puff pieces instead.
Has anything about the American intelligence/media/war complex changed to prevent history from repeating?
There's social media and right-wing media now. Walter Cronkite no longer has a monopoly on information.
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GMT-5:
Look at the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. People picked who they wanted to believe based on what tribe they were in.
I think people believed Kavanaugh did what he was accused of because the story seemed sadly plausible. If he did engage in such hi-jinx, he wouldn't have been unusual for his time and his gender.
I also don't think opposing tribes disagreed on whether he was guilty or not. Liberals already thought he was unqualified for the position, and saw the accusation as evidence backing that belief up. Republicans and their ilk argued that it shouldn't matter whether he was guilty or not. The disagreement wasn't over what he did or didn't do* , but how it should affect his nomination.
* I wanted to say "what he done done or didn't done done," but only someone of my dad's age would recognize the Li'l Abner reference.
Spoilers alert.
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The obscene novel by Sorokin is telling. There is a propaganda cartoon based on Russia symbolically shutting off the gas valve to Europe. Meanwhile there is a wide fast highway linking Russia to China, the latter apparently being the source of their various implanted phallic enhancements. The politics seems based on what the jackwagons call "cuckery;" the oprichniki, who serve at the pleasure of His Majesty, get off on pleasuring Her Majesty.
This is what some Communists are propagandizing. They have contacts in Russia left over from Soviet days, and perhaps they get a few dollars slipped to them ‘for expenses’. https://www.workers.org/2022/01/60942/?fbclid=IwAR0bUJ-QAJQ1si0dh4fsFhqkclCMNEbVkTyBNKThm15GXYcodvTQA8cnSdM
Larry Hart: only someone of my dad's age would recognize the Li'l Abner reference
Heh. I once read the story of how "Skonk Works" became "Skunkworks". Language is indeed the key to psychology (I liked Alfred Differ's riff above). That was the main conclusion of my computational psychohistory article years ago.
I suspect the same people who admire the Republican mayor's intolerance of illegal activity don't feel the same about the Canadian police doing the same.
The people (media and politicians) up here who condemned BLM protests and called for more police crackdowns are saying that the current protesters have a point and should be listened to and negotiated with.
I'm going to ignore the Senator from Cancun, because he's almost as bad as Trump for consistency and sense.
Conservatives did not believe Kavanaugh was capable of the horrible acts he was accused of. If they thought he was. they would have abandoned him the way they abandoned Harriet Meiers when George W Bush nominated her to the High Court.
I don't think liberals really believed Kavanaugh was unqualified - unless you mean that liberals think that anyone who is not a liberal Democrat is unqualified. He met every test for being part of the judicial elite. Top schools, top clerkships, top government positions. They only thing they held against him was that he was a member of the wrong team.
A semi-serious blackmail theory: the Very Stable Genius has threatened to give extremely sensitive top secret material to the Russians if he is indicted.
DG I doubt DT ever saw potentially damaging material. The IC was wary of him from the start. Though there may be poison pills.
GMT The issue with Kavanaugh was never college (nasty) hijinks. It was and remains controllability and those hijinks suggest it is VERY likely he was at some point lured into far more blackmail-able stuff. Jeez you can even deem that anything but PROBABLE?
We need a period when we put in power only women who have male relatives who are thoroughly vetted.... and ex-senior military officers who have rectitude like a ramrod up their spines.
@Larry re: Graham's secret closet
We've seen the extent of self-delusion among Republicans. They will swallow any lie if it comes down the chain of command no matter how absurd or patently preposterous. It seems to come with the territory. Theirs is not to reason why. They do as they're told and no amount of contrary evidence will sway them.
There is an exception to this rule however; video evidence of Lindsey being serviced (or servicing) a pretty boy gets around the firewall. Americans are familiar with the sex tape. They can't look away.
Every televangelist is in agreement on this fundamental doctrine: fags burn in hell. By extension if your senator is gay then so will you.
David, we are all subject to blackmail and it does not have to be based on fact. Many blackmail schemes involve threats of harmful disclosures of false or even forged information...information that can't be disproven.
Let me give a less partisan example. Captain Alfred Dreyfus. At the time of his first trial, everyone "knew" that Dreyfus was guilty so there was no harm in embellishing the evidence against him. Except that there was no real evidence against him...ever. The only bad mark against the man was the fact that he was Jewish and of Alsatian origin.
Another example (and one where I have a little bit of a conflict of interest since a family member worked on this case), the OJ Simpson investigation and murder trial. The LAPD appears to have tampered with the evidence. In doing so, they damaged their own credibility. Because of this credibility, Simpson's attorneys were able to convince a jury that there was a reasonable doubt as to Simpson's culpability. And an example of how tribal this can get...after Simpson was acquitted, people in the US Virgin Islands (where I was living at the time) were openly celebrating. "The black man is free!" could be heard around town. And to summarize what one woman interviewed by the Virgin Islands Daily News said: she felt that he had committed the crime but that the cops were wrong for trying to stack the evidence...and she hoped to meet him some day.
Wait, what? She believes the man committed a horrible crime killing his ex-wife and an innocent bystander...yet she still wants to meet him?
So I fear that the type of commission you propose would encourage (or would not sufficiently discourage) people (like Michael Avenatti and his clients) from coming out with scandalous, impossible to disprove stories about people to present to the commission. And if the commission has a political agenda, it could choose which stories get heard and which ones are ignored.
A Truth and Reconciliation actually may be a good idea, but it will take wiser people than you and I to work out the details so that it accomplishes good, not evil.
We need a period when we put in power only women who have male relatives who are thoroughly vetted.... and ex-senior military officers who have rectitude like a ramrod up their spines.
That would be science-fiction, Sir. :-)
They only thing they held against him was that he was a member of the wrong team.
The problem is, Kavanaugh (and his "conservative" colleagues) are part of "Team Fascism".
@GMT-5,
Jeez, I know we're not exactly on the same page politically, but I don't usually outright disagree with every point you make in a single post.
Conservatives did not believe Kavanaugh was capable of the horrible acts he was accused of.
No, they simply didn't believe the acts were all that horrible. Boys being boys and all. And no one, not even Dr. Ford, said he actually raped her.
If they thought he was. they would have abandoned him the way they abandoned Harriet Meiers when George W Bush nominated her to the High Court.
Conservatives abandoned Harriet Meiers because she was a ridiculous choice. And because she wasn't a Federalist Society-vetted ideologue. Back then, they had spent decades setting things up for a Republican president to really nail down a solid right-wing majority on the court, and then Bush went and made an idiotic nomination which fulfilled none of their goals? Of course they wanted someone else.
I don't think liberals really believed Kavanaugh was unqualified - unless you mean that liberals think that anyone who is not a liberal Democrat is unqualified. He met every test for being part of the judicial elite. Top schools, top clerkships, top government positions. They only thing they held against him was that he was a member of the wrong team.
Conservatives are the ones who object to candidates purely on the basis of "a member of the wrong team". If Republicans vote against Biden's upcoming nomination, it will be for that reason alone. If McConnell had brought Merrick Garland's nomination to the floor, he would have passed,because they had no objection to Garland on his merits. Instead, they pulled a Constitutional coup just to hold the seat open.
Democrats have more justification in objecting to Republican nominees, as Republican nominees are all selected by the Federalist Society for their commitment to particular right-wing causes. But even so, Democrats don't simply say "This judge is unqualified because Trump nominated him." There is usually more specific evidence in their disfavor. IIRC, Kavanaugh gave the impression that he was still at a college frat party.
Finally to the more general point, when you say "member of the wrong team", you imply that both sides have the same narrow, partisan objection to any nominee from across the aisle. Whereas in my opinion, Democrats have more cause to be suspicious of Republican nominees than vice versa. I'm talking in the present time, not necessarily historically. In the present time, cheating to win is a Republican core value. A nominee firmly committed to the idea of impartially "calling balls and strikes" would have a hard time making the short list of a Republican president.
@Truth & Recounciliation Commitee:
Some ideas on this matter:
- Apartheid was ended in South Africa because the economy leaders lobbied for it, because the sanctions, restrictions and bad reputation hurt their economic interest. Plus, the white minority was not a monolithic block. In the same vein, it would be the majority of corporate leaders who would have to stop supporting the GOP and racist policies because it hurts their business; I don't see that coming. Also, as long as the GOP is as powerful as it is today, and their leaders are in comfortable positions,I doubt they see the necessity of allowing such a commission to exist.
-Don't appoint members, select them at random. Choose a group of 100 or so random citizens (at least one from each state, then additional ones for size of population), presided and moderated by a SC justice and/or member of Congress on rotating duty. Let them discuss and vote on a proposal for new legislature and constitutional admendments. It worked for Ireland. Drawing them at random has the benefit that they cannot be bribed or blackmailed until the selection process starts, and that common allegation - that the powerful are an elite distantly removed from their constituents - is nullified.
-The idea reminded me of the denazification commissions ... and the Persilscheins they produced.
Der Oger, the President can appoint a commission that has no powers without needing Congress or any GOP buy-in, to advise him on suggesting clemency.
I do agree that our civilization is under-using the Grand Jury approach, which is much as you describe.
Der Oger, the President can appoint a commission that has no powers without needing Congress or any GOP buy-in, to advise him on suggesting clemency.
Depending on how respected those "citizen councils" are, and how they are sold to the public, there might be soft, symbolic power. Their proposals might not be binding, but if you would have a clear majority for something - what would it mean to speak out and vote against the results of these consultations and deliberatons?
Alternative Putin hypothesis:
The commentary I've seen regarding the motives for Putin's threats have fallen into two main categories, but they might both be wrong. Most of the speculation centers around questions of Russian domestic politics or else a literal acceptance of the geopolitical justifications offered by Putin; stuff like fending off the NATO "threat" for instance. Or a combination of the two. But maybe the real reason is something very different.
Think back on the Bush/Cheney Iraq war. Most people would call it a dismal failure. But it was very successful in one way: it drove the price of oil sky high. Oil companies made immense profits as a result.
Oil had been stuck in the doldrums around $25/barrel for years, but uncertainty and risk caused by middle east conflict drove the price up to $150 right before the meltdown of 2008. Bad for the world but good for oil companies.
The Russian economy is much more oil-dependent than the US and renewable energy will put fossil fuels in the shade. NATO isn't an actual threat to Russia, but solar and wind power sure are. Maybe Putin is taking a page from Dick Cheney: threaten war with Ukraine to bump oil and gas prices. It's working. Oil company profits are way up and gas prices have doubled since mid-2020.
Starting an actual war would be disastrous for Russia. But threatening war is a cheap way to make money.
gerold such a war might benefit the Saudis and US oil guys, but not Putin's petro boyars, since no oil at all would then flow.
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There are factors you and I don't know.
First, Putin's saber rattling, instead of cowing NATO, has united it as at no time since 1991. He further must know the Ukrainians don't want him and will resist tenaciously. Moreover, if Ukrainian forces have any sense, they are preparing the traditional steppe recourse against blitzkrieg... trade land for time and then hit their supply lines.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who deeply believed - like Putin - in pan slavism and deep, historic, Russo-Ukrainian ties, also warned that those ties had been frayed to near breaking point by czarist and then Stalinist depradations. Solzhenitsyn called for a very gentle love-campaign across generations. But a Putinist invasion would surely be the very last straw.
Further unknowns (by you and me) include the reliability of fielded Russian advanced weaponry, like smart missiles and air defenses. At best they are moderately impressive, assuming all manufactured and deployed units actually function. Historically, these ratios were not very good, but quality control may now be much better. Only a few in Moscow probably know for sure and that may be a major factor deciding whether it's all been a bluff.
Above all, I am amazed by how few have commented on the spectacular, frothing frenzy of Putin's behavior. This is no "strong man" or "chessmaster." His every calculation of Western reactions proved wrong, (As did another rising power's assumptions about threatening Australia.). Putin's histrionics seem to reflect either deep confidence... or else a diametrically opposite complete lack thereof. Indeed, my top theory suggests that he is desperate, having long relied upon Donald Trump to prevent retaliation by our secret services for years of blatant acts of war against the U.S. and West. I will not be a whit surprised if - 20 years from now - we learn from some retired operative's memoir that waves of surreptitious retaliatory hits fell upon the Moscow oligarchy across 2021, from almost the instant the Kremlin clique no longer had a Quisling agent in the White House.
And so one question rises to the top. Is Putin so desperate that, like Samson, eyeless in Gaza, he aims to bring the temple down upon friend and foe, alike? Starting with demolition of the communications and surveillance satellites overhead and fiber cables undersea, but also sabotage of western infrastructure... all the way to acts that are just short of spasm, like an EMP burst over North America? (I have shouted for twenty years about faults in western Resilience: http://denninginstitute.com/pjd/PUBS/CACMcols/cacmJun19.pdf. Failures for which we may pay dearly.)
But okay, that last bit is perhaps only an imagined glimmer in the mind of a sci fi thriller author! I base it upon a clear impression - from all I've seen - that Vladimir Putin is in a lean, hungry and desperate mood. Yes, such men are dangerous.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/13/putin-invasion-ukraine-cost-russia-long-run/
@gerold
It could also be a way to fracture NATO and demonstrate its impotence. Here’s an analysis by ex-marine Scott Ritter (who was right about Iraq back in the day when everyone was believing the fake news about WMD’s and the imminent liberation of Iraq) that is at least another informed perspective to consider: The Ultimate End of NATO. Here’s the money quote:
The individual members of NATO are beginning to awaken to the reality that their organization is little more than an impotent tool of American global hegemony. Hungary has cut its own gas deal with Russia, in defiance of U.S. directives to pull back. Croatia and Bulgaria have made it clear that they will not be deploying troops in support of NATO posturing on Ukraine.
Turkey has stated that it views the Ukraine crisis as little more than a thinly disguised effort by NATO and the U.S. to weaken Turkey by forcing it to fight Russia in the Black Sea. But perhaps the most telling moments came when the two European powerhouses of NATO, Germany, and France, were compelled to come face to face with the reality of their subservient role vis-à-vis the U.S.
When French President Emmanual Macron flew to Russia to try and negotiate a settlement to the Ukraine crisis, he was confronted with the reality that Russia won’t negotiate with France without the U.S. first expressing support for the positions being put forward by the French President. The U.S. matters; France does not.
Likewise, the German chancellor was forced to stand mutely during his visit to the White House while U.S. President Joe Biden “promised” that he would unilaterally shut down the NordStream 2 pipeline project, even though the U.S. had no role to play in the construction and administration of the pipeline. Germany, Biden was saying, is little more than a colony of the United States.
I guess Putin hopes that Europeans will at some point develop the spine and dignity to demand sovereignty over their own affairs rather than continuing to be vassals of Pax Americana. And also realize that their economic future is to the East, with the Eurasian integration project that will make Eurasia the center of world wealth and power like it was for most of history, rendering alliances like NATO obsolete relics of a bygone era of Anglo hegemony.
G'lawd what a pile of yammerings offered by the ent. As if only this dude doubted Bushite ravings about WMDs. As if it weren't the right wing cult that yowled support for the Bushites. As if it weren't GOP house infrastructure corporations and Blackwater who were the only net winners from Bushite wars.
Nutters who screeched at Kremlin machinations in the USSR now ignore the fact that the Kremlin is now run by the SAME GUYS with the same goals, using the same methods.
Only after 70 years of failure trying to lure and suborn the US Left, it took them no time at all to completely sucker and blackmail and control the US right.
That quoted yammer only tells us all we need to know about the mad, Kremlin run cult that now propels the MAGA movement's frenzy that N95 masks are dire threats to freedom, worthy of revolutionary acts of sabotage that only benefit... you know who.
Erdogan, like Putin, sees an end to his days of power and will yell anything. As for NATO, in your dreams, twit. America's top asset is our popularity. Beneath a surface layer of will to tweak the empire's nose, there rolls ocean-deep happiness with the world's greatest and most productive and happiest 80 years of progress ever seen by our species. They know what Putin or others would have done with such power. And you know it, too.
YOU are a traitor, at all levels and in all ways. And however many such raving imbecile memes you masturbate-to, that fact does not change,
Things are getting surreal out there in medialand. Apparently everyone in the Western media knows exactly when Russia will invade Ukraine. The president of the Ukraine knows too. Are they all colluding with Putin? Is Russia nice enough to provide the targets of their attack the precise date of invasion? What is the source of this information? Does it come from the same sources that assured us Saddam had WMDs poised to kill thousands of Americans? If no invasion comes (anyone want to bet on it? I’ll give you good odds it doesn’t happen), will an “event” be manufactured, or will Biden claim he made Putin back down?
We are living in a strange world when stories like this appear all over the media and we are expected to believe them. We are living in even stranger times when large numbers of people actually do.
Hey...they Dreyfus post was mine. I don't hide my identity...oh wait...I do.
Treeb should talk about surreal? A mafia state with imperial traditions going back millennias and run by "ex" commissars using the same tools and mentality as in the USSR, almost completely surrounds a neighbor with ALL of its mobile forces, supplying them with vastly more supplies than needed for an 'exercise..." but WE are the paranoid ones.
"They know exactly when...." Like most MAGAs you know nothing about military logistical matters. You cannot leave such a force in the field, in the snow, unused for more than a week or two. What a dope!
Again, the WMD scam was done by YOUR cult! Yours. By yours and only by yours. YOU did that. You and YOUR Oligarchy front.
Oh and Saddam desperately offered to let inspectors in tpo verify he had no WMDs. An average news outlet today can count Putin's tanks and Fox doesn't deny ANY of the facts on the ground.
But OMG OMG OMG the irony of: "We are living in a strange world when stories like this appear all over the media and we are expected to believe them. We are living in even stranger times when large numbers of people actually do."
One side IS such a pack of lemming slaves. It is the side waging all out war on all fact professions and refusing (blowhard cowards) to wager actual cash on any of it.
Well Larry Hart, I guess maybe Chuck Schumer should have thought about that back in 2001 when he held hearings on the proposal that judicial nominees be openly opposed for political reasons and that judicial nominees be subject to filibuster. I attended those hearings.
Before 2001, Senators did not admit that they opposed nominees for political reasons. Even Clarence Thomas got Senate approval with a bare majority (under 60 votes).
Schumer's version of sharp elbow politics has hurt the Democrats more than the GOP.
One could even make the case that Putin is more of a threat than Hitler was, as Hitler did not have WMDs in his arsenal.
Hitler dealt in half-truths: a few hours before his suicide, Hitler dictated in his testament that he had not wanted war in 1939. But in his testament he didn’t reveal that he’d intended war a few years after ‘39, when Germany and the Axis would have been better prepared.
Putin propagandizes of how he merely wants NATO to stay out of Eastern Europe; when his goal is the resurrection of the Russian Empire of old with the Leninist method of,
“if your bayonet meets mush, press forward;
if your bayonet meets steel, pull back.”
Thinking of it, providing an exact date for the invasion is a clever move, no matter if it is true or not.
If it is not true, and Putin invades later, then at least there are a few additional days and perhaps weeks to fly in support.
If it is not true, and Putin never intended to invade, the bluff is called.
Selensky can perform his "Day of Unity" without any risks on that day in both cases.
If it is or was true, now the search of the mole or info leak goes on. What does paranoia and distrust and the possibility of a traitor in his ranks makes with someone like Putin? How many additional secrets have been exposed? That also would be very humiliating to the FSB and GRU, the pillars of Putins rule, to become so openly embarrassed in the eyes of the international IC ...
Also, the stock markets. If the government names this date, a day later or so, the sanctions are implemented. Russia is cut off the markets. How many will liberate their capital from both countries involved in the meantime? What will the oligarchs try to save and bring back to the motherland before the curtain falls? And so on.
GMT-5:
Before 2001, Senators did not admit that they opposed nominees for political reasons. Even Clarence Thomas got Senate approval with a bare majority (under 60 votes).
Schumer's version of sharp elbow politics has hurt the Democrats more than the GOP.
Well, d'ya think something might have happened just shortly before 2001 to underscore the importance of the political make-up of the supreme court?
My suspicion (and money) are on the notion that Putin wants certain people to look weak before the mid-term election this year. He wants confidence in their strength eroded enough that they loose the Senate.
Whether he gets pieces of Ukraine is supposed to be the apparent goal, but the real risk he faces is a united US response to his actions.
From a strong man's position, influencing US political balance is a big deal.
Heh. Skonk Works.
I recall Li'l Abner, but wasn't much of a reader. The text was difficult for me to follow as a kid, so it was more like work than funny. Back then my sense of humor wasn't up to it.
What Americans (USian's mostly) have done to the English language since the end of WWII will be remembered by history as stunning in its swiftness and scope. We expanded it in both size and spread. The barbarians who rarely knew a second language blew up the one they shared.
———
On my desk right now is a copy of "Screenwriter's Bible". Heh. Not long ago that title would have brought pitchforks and torches to the author's door. Nowadays there are bibles for everything. In doing that we've turned the term into an adjective and improper noun.
This isn't a new thing, though. It's an old skill. Galileo turned "Moon" into "moon" and "moons" when he pointed his telescope at Jupiter. Poof! His language HAD to change to communicate his discovery. Today, we don't think about this change because we've absorbed it.
Who is the Pope? Who is the pope of rock-n-roll? Church schism isn't necessary for multiple popes to exist.
We've even made a certain evil man's last name into fascist cult descriptor while many of us avoid naming our boys using his common first name. I wonder what Adolf would have thought of the dwindling number of adolfs.
———
BOOM went the language after the war. Nowadays it is the new Latin… or should I say latin. English has multiple dialects, so maybe "latins". I'm not sure and don't really care. This barbarian is highly amused by the chaos.
My understanding with most arbitration contracts (tho not all...eg the thrown out attempt by scientologists to force arbitration before a scientologist panel) is that it's less that the arbiters are biased or unprofessional (a large fraction are former judges) but, rather, that the procedural rules make things hard on the small guy (no class certification, you have to pay arbiter for their time so the big corp can just bleed you dry in litigation) and lack the presumption of openness we have in the courts.
So I think we really need to outright ban it
GWB getting elected. I was active in the heart of right-wing politics in DC during the end of the Clinton administration and the beginning of the Bush administration. Bush was a moderate who had more in common with the Schumer/Pelosi/Reid/Romney/McConnell establishment party leaders than he had with the movement conservatives. But when the Dems decided that Bush should not be allowed to be a legitimate president and attacked him every which way they could, he had no place left to turn but to the right-wingers. Even then, the GOP leadership hated the right wingers; I remember when Duncan Hunter Senior stuck a shiv in the back of the religious right when it looked like the Johnson Amendment (that treated religious charities different from all other charities regarding political activities) was going to be eliminated and Hunter used his power to save the provision.
If the Democrats had been less hateful towards Bush, he would have gladly worked with them. Instead, he had his political back up against a wall and the religious right and other right-wingers were his only supports.
One of Schumer’s goals was to keep Miguel Estrada off of the US Court of Appeals; the Democrats feared that if Estrada got on that court, he would probably become the first Hispanic person nominated to the US Supreme Court. Dems just could not let that happen. I remember drinking a beer with a very sad looking Estrada at the Federalist Society’s Lawyer’s Convention back in 2002.
Schumer changed the rules to create a short term advantage for his party…then complained when the opposition party got to use that same rule. If they had not changed the rule, the GOP as minority party for most of this time, could not have played the nuclear option.
So what’s coming? On the House side, redistricting has not been as harmful to the Dems as they might have feared (the Dem judges in Dem majority states are approving their redistricting plans…including some pretty shameless ones; the GOP judges in GOP majority states seem to be less willing to let the less noxious GOP redistricting plans to go into effect. But, this could actually be a bad thing for the Dems. The redistricting game works when you pack the opposition party into a few districts where they win 90% to 10%; meanwhile your party’s candidates win in 55% to 45% districts. If it works…great; you pick up seats. But if there is a wave election, then a lot of those near-win districts go over to the opposition. I saw this happen in Ohio in 1994.
GMT-5 are you still being hacked/hijacked? Something doesn't seem right.
And "scientology"?
Not long ago that title would have brought pitchforks and torches to the author's door. Nowadays there are bibles for everything.
For definitions of "not long" that are a couple of generations, at least. The Rubber Bible was venerable when I studied engineering (my professors called it by that name) and I'm retired now…
https://archive.org/details/HandbookOfChemistryAndPhysics8thEd.1920
Belgorod is just 15 mi from the Ukrainian border and another 15 from Kharkiv. Tell us how these division strength blitzkrieg units are there for 'exercises."
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/europe/russia-ukraine-troops-social-media-video-intl/index.html
You keep confusing me with some partisan GOP hack. I take a dim view of most Republicans; they showed under W. Bush just how awful they can be. What America needs is a third party that isn’t in the pocket of War Inc., Wall Street, globalist oligarchs, Big Everything, Deep State bureaucrats and activist busybodies alike. Something that can break the stranglehold of the dysfunctional Blue Team/Red Team circle jerk. Unfortunately, this would probably entail razing our entire political system to the ground. Ah hell with it, let’s go ahead and abolish all parties and put the Anarchist Non-Party in charge. Then let’s expand the Anarchist revolution worldwide. Why settle for the semi-servitude of democracy? Global Anarchy now; every man a king. Now who could possibly be against that?
I only saw the L'il Abner comics that were in bubble gum wrappers.
The strangest thing about being a barbarian is being frequently asked grammar/pronounciation/entymology questions by highly cultured ESL people. It's flattering at first, but increasingly worrisome as one realizes how arbitrary and capricious are the rivers and eddies of time that stratify global society. I always liked the way Asimov took the time to describe local parlance and accents on different worlds. He put a lot of meat on those bones. Le Guin had that talent too. (I'm not comfortable critiquing living authors)
that's etymology, but typos are generally ignored in CB :)
On Russian saber-rattling as fossil fuel price booster:
David: of course war would be disastrous for Russia, but that's not what I was suggesting. I'm saying Putin can use the threat of war to boost oil and gas prices. It's working too; Gazprom and Rosneft are posting record earnings right now:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/13/gazprom-hits-record-income-as-russia-prospers-from-europes-gas-crisis
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/11/12/russias-rosneft-reports-profits-boost-amid-surging-energy-prices-a75545
Of course it's also good for US fossil fuel companies, but Putin can't help that.
And about him pulling a Samson and pulling the temple down; I don't think it's likely. He's one of the richest men in the world. He's dictator for life. Why mess with a good thing?
@treebeard:
The analysis by Scott Ritter is wrong in so many ways that it can't be taken seriously. Putin's threats haven't shown that NATO is useless - just the opposite in fact. Ukraine can be threatened because it isn't part of NATO. We don't see Putin threatening the Baltic States, even though they have NATO troops and weapons right on the border. NATO is not a threat to Russia. All those paranoid histrionics are just a fig leaf.
Maybe there were NATO members who wondered whether old alliance was still relevant; they aren't wondering now. NATO has drawn together. Maybe Putin actually believed his crappola about the weak and decadent West but if so, his judgement is seriously flawed, to the point where he's putting the safety and welfare of the Russian people at risk.
NATO is not a threat to Russia, but the switch to renewable energy certainly is. The Russian economy is obscenely exposed to market fluctuation in oil and gas prices. Whether or not Ukraine joins NATO or the EU is irrelevant to actual Russian welfare, but a drop in fossil fuel prices will be devastating.
The EU is certainly aware of the potential of the Chinese market, but Russia is is just flyover country. The EU will not compromise their freedom for a Chinese partnership.
View from Russia
Retired Russian General Leonid Ivashov is just as disturbed about the possibility of Putin pulling an Adolf as the rest of us:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/02/ukraine-crisis-putin-military-opposition.html
He gets it: invasion would be an act of criminal stupidity.
We've even made a certain evil man's last name into fascist cult descriptor while many of us avoid naming our boys using his common first name. I wonder what Adolf would have thought of the dwindling number of adolfs.
I wonder what he would think of this fellow.
I guess Putin hopes that Europeans will at some point develop the spine and dignity to demand sovereignty over their own affairs rather than continuing to be vassals of Pax Americana.
... only to become spineless and undignified vassals and colonies of the Pax Russiana or Sinica? I doubt that will happen in the foreseeable future (though some of us, like Hungary and Greece, head that route). Besides that, half of Europe has rejected that authority in 2003 when the US formed the "Coalition of the willing" to invade Iraq. Even now, we are using different methods, though within the same general direction.
Though I'd not be against reforming or replacing NATO with something better - for example, including countries like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, others; accepting and supporting the International Criminal Court; broadening the scope to better deal with refugees, environmental challenges and future pandemics.
I assure Dr. Brin, still me. It's busy season doing taxes and we are moving into the new house.
The fact that I challenged your idea of the commission is a sign that I see some merit in it. But lots of long days has made me a little crispy. On the plus side, I got a promotion.
Maybe I should just hold off on comments until mid April when busy season ends and the move is complete.
GMT-5:
GWB getting elected. I was active in the heart of right-wing politics in DC during the end of the Clinton administration and the beginning of the Bush administration.
Sounds like you still are.
Bush was a moderate who had more in common with the Schumer/Pelosi/Reid/Romney/McConnell establishment party leaders than he had with the movement conservatives.
I'll give you that during the 2000 election, I though of Bush as a not-so-bad Republican. I voted for Gore, but I wasn't as upset at the prospect of a Bush win as I had been, for example, with Reagan.
Karl Rove, though was courting the extremists in a way that prefigured Trump. And the real president was Dick Cheney, who had been selected as candidate to that position long before any Democratic reaction to the November election itself. A
But when the Dems decided that Bush should not be allowed to be a legitimate president and attacked him every which way they could, ...
Because the Republican secretary of state in Florida--a member of the Bush campaign--refused to allow the ballot counting to continue after Roger Stone's Brooks Brothers Riot? And then the supreme court put the nail in the coffin, issuing a 5-4 partisan ruling which had the chutzpah to state within its own text that it can't be applied as precedent to any other situation? And relying on the vote of Clarence Thomas, who along with his wife was also--as you say--active in right wing politics at the time?
Sorry, I was and still am with the Dems on that "not legitimate president" thing. And it had less to do with Bush's own policies as to how he ascended the throne.
Even then, the GOP leadership hated the right wingers
So? A lot of them still do. But they're willing to court those votes anyway in order to get tax cuts and conservative judges.
If the Democrats had been less hateful towards Bush, he would have gladly worked with them. Instead, he had his political back up against a wall and the religious right and other right-wingers were his only supports
I thought at the time that Bush could have won over moderate Democrats with displays of self-awareness that he had squeezed by as president by the grace of God. Instead, he acted as if his 537-vote "win" in one state and Cheney's tie-breaking vote in the 50/50 Senate gave him a mandate to do whatever he wanted, while Cheney and Ashcroft pushed the notion of the "unitary executive" having the rights of a king.
Recently, I saw a documentary about the musical Hamilton which included interviews with both former presidents W and Obama. I could not believe how intelligent and articulate Bush sounded when he wasn't acting as he did during his presidency. Where was that George W Bush when we needed him?
* * *
Dr Brin:
GMT-5 are you still being hacked/hijacked? Something doesn't seem right.
No, he's always been Republican-friendly, though not in the deranged manner that most are these days. Remember what his original moniker was. :)
Alfred Differ:
I recall Li'l Abner, but wasn't much of a reader. The text was difficult for me to follow as a kid, so it was more like work than funny. Back then my sense of humor wasn't up to it.
It was one of my dad's favorite newspaper comics, so I cut my teeth on it. I was even aware of old arcs which had run long before I was born, like the schmoos. I actually learned about Dick Tracy by way of the Li'L Abner parody of that strip--Fearless Fosdick.
And there's a 1950s (early 60s?) Li'l Abner movie with an appearance by Julie Newmar which alone is worth the price of admission.
Paul Krugman tells us what we already know...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/opinion/canada-protests-black-lives-matter.html
...
As you might expect, the U.S. right is loving it. People who portrayed peaceful protests against police killings as an existential threat are delighted by the spectacle of right-wing activists breaking the law and destroying wealth. Fox News has devoted many hours to fawning coverage of the blockades and occupations. Senator Rand Paul, who called B.L.M. activists a “crazed mob,” called for Canada-style protests to “clog up cities” in the United States, specifically saying that he hoped to see truckers disrupt the Super Bowl (they didn’t).
I assume that the reopening of the Ambassador Bridge is the beginning of a broader crackdown on destructive protests. But I hope we won’t forget this moment — and in particular that we remember it the next time a politician or media figure talks about “law and order.”
Recent events have confirmed what many suspected: The right is perfectly fine, indeed enthusiastic, about illegal actions and disorder as long as they serve right-wing ends.
Alfred Differ:
The fylfot used to be a good-luck sign. Then it had bad luck! Now it denotes hatred, insanity, tyranny, mass murder, and failure. A sign's meaning is determined by use.
It's like something out of Watchmen. "Oiled musclemen juxtaposed with cartoon animals."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/arts/television/super-bowl-nostalgia.html
The big game, its spectacles, its ads and its trappings all shared a sense of looking backward — a nostalgia-saturated attitude that we were living in the aftermath of the best times, and that it was more comforting to look to the past than to the future.
Fifteen(!) new comments I just approved.
GMT congrats on both the new house and the promotion! Take mini-aspirins! Because too much good news at once has a statistical correlation with heart throbs. Stay safe & happy.
Treebeard Bet NOW. Let’s add to our list of wager demands whether a deep trawl of your past would not find you a Bush supporter in the past, esp. during the WMD era. Sure, you have moved on: from loyalty to a cult of oligarchy led by US and Saudi oil elites to a cult of oligarchy run by Moscow. It is a now-standard dance by you cretins.
“Those I supported before were proved to be liars, thieves and traitors… and then the Trump Era monsters proved to be liars, thieves and traitors… but I can never admit that I am an on-my-knees servicer of proved liars, thieves and traitors… so…. I’ll rationalize… It’s EVERYBODY!”
Of course the effect is to keep wavering Republicans barely inside the tent, holding their noses. “I know my side is monstrous… but… but DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE! That’s the ticket!”
No. You’re an i***t.
Dr Brin paraphrasing an "I hate both sides" rant:
“Those I supported before were proved to be liars, thieves and traitors… and then the Trump Era monsters proved to be liars, thieves and traitors… but I can never admit that I am an on-my-knees servicer of proved liars, thieves and traitors… so…. I’ll rationalize… It’s EVERYBODY!”
It's a subcategory of Republicans I've noticed as far back as the W years when I regularly listened to WGN talk radio in Chicago--one of the few such stations with a more local perspective rather than a blatant ideological one.
I soon learned to predict--with 100% accuracy--that when a caller began with, "I listen to both sides," he was about to follow up with a right-wing talking point. This continued through my patronage of the Norman Goldman radio show which ran through 2019. 100% accuracy.
More to the point, there is a subset of radio callers and internet posters who, as Treebeard just did, complain about how corrupt and elitist and beholden to Wall St both sides are, but they only make those complaints when Democrats are in power. A criticism of President Obama, for example, will be softened with, "I didn't like it when Bush did it either." But they never said anything when Bush was actually doing it.
Heart throbs? Heck David, I get those every time I look at my wife. Why such a beauty fell for me is beyond my imagination.
I once saw a health blurb that it was good for elder men to look at womens’s bosoms because it raised their pulse rate almost as if they were exercising. Well, that’s what I get for marrying the most beautiful woman I ever met.
Dr Brin:
... both the new house and the promotion! Take mini-aspirins! Because too much good news at once has a statistical correlation with heart throbs.
Speaking as a male of my age, a new house doesn't fall into the category of "too much good news". In fact, it should be enough to offset the negative biological effects of the promotion. :)
GMT -- awwwww
LH Joys of home ownership -- the home owns you,
GMT -5:
Why such a beauty fell for me is beyond my imagination.
I ask myself the same question every day.
I finally stopped asking her the question out loud because I realized I was insulting her judgement by indirectly suggesting that she married an inferior specimen.
Dr Brin:
the home owns you,
It's like a cat that way.
Mel Brooks, waking up each day next to Anne Bancroft. That's how I feel!
Two things:
First, something I found today on Youtube. It is a satirical song about Peter Thiel, by Jan Böhmermann (that guy that reminded us that we had still a lèse majesty paragraph in our penal code). It is named "Right Time to Thiel"
Second: Somehow, your "Ghost Town Idea" could inspire a couple of stories or gaming scenarios.
The Benefactor could be a cult or sect preying on the new settlers for recruits and cheap labor. See the Colonia Dignidad, the New Path from A Scanner Darkly. Or he targets military veterans and the like, and tries to build a shadow private army, somewhat in the style of the Old Man of the Mountain. Maybe he waits for a Day X or uses them as his assassins to remove obstacles.
Or there is indeed a benefactor without ulterior motives, but the surrounding communities and law enforcement take a dim view on the new neighbours, and start harrassing/bullying them. Or, if you want a mystery/ghost story, there was a very good reason why the previous owners left ... and now, the new inhabitants are unaware of the problem, maybe afflicted by their backstory, and isolated in the wilderness.
overall I think it is a romantic charming idea. Yet, personally, I think it is more important to stop the costs for housing from rising and/or offer/create/stimulate affordable and dignified living space than exiling those who fall through the web. But that are just my radical liberal leftist thoughts.
My wife makes Anne Bancroft look like Mel Brooks. ;-)
As for the joys of home ownership, I’ve been down that path before. I miss the 3 car, 2 story garage I had built in 2011. Our new house is half the size of the last one, but a bit better in many respects.
One reason why I stay here is that my lovely (and very loved) wife is also politically very liberal. One thing that forces you to moderate your views is to realize that your relationships with people are more important than political arguments. It is a wonderful thing to have strong disagreements over politics with someone you love very much.
Sometimes I think David goes too far. But then I remember listening to a pod cast where he was interviewed. The tone of his voice added a lot of context to what he is saying. The problem with written comments is that we don’t get any of that extra meaning. I’ve had a couple of lovely times with David. That’s probably not saying anything good about me; David is lovely with everyone I’ve seen him with.
Hey, I even had a lovely time with Harlan Ellison. He even gave me a steak dinner off his plate. That was back at a tiny, one-day con at the Ohio State University Student Union (now of blessed memory). The next time I saw Ellison at a convention I tried to rekindle that kind moment…big mistake. But I have my happy memory with him. Harlan died the same day my mother did. Sigh. I hope he wasn’t hitting on her at the Pearly Gates (not that we Jews believe in the Pearly Gates).
The right is perfectly fine, indeed enthusiastic, about illegal actions and disorder as long as they serve right-wing ends.
Alberta's Premier Kenney, who spent millions chasing foreign funding of environmental groups (and not finding much) is noticeably silent on the huge amounts coming from outside Canada for the Tantrum. He's also been considerably more retained than he was when Indigenous protesters blocked logging roads.
The fylfot used to be a good-luck sign. Then it had bad luck! Now it denotes hatred, insanity, tyranny, mass murder, and failure.
Depends on where you are. It's still a Buddhist symbol of good luck in Asia. I've got pictures of swastikas carved into stonework in the Forbidden City — predating the Nazis by generations. Context is important.
Because too much good news at once has a statistical correlation with heart throbs.
As do cases of Covid — something like 30-50% chances of cardiovascular effects even for mild cases. :-(
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3
I confess I can be brusque with those who utterly ignore cogent challenges in order to repeat slanderous/treasonous incantation lies.
I have found that a way to find common ground between sincere liberals & conservatives is over regulated/stimulated comptition. Liberals have a tendency to frown at the latter word because it's been an incantation touchstones for conservatives, who despise the first two words.
But it's regulated comptition that gave us everything. And when most (not all) liberal programs to help the poor boil down to "Don't waste competitive talent!" and most conservative efforts in this century have been about protecting oligarchic efforts to cheat and evade fair competition, I feel comfortable choosing a side, despite being an acolyte of Adam Smith.
Or because of it.
Robert:
That like how Western dragons are evil beasts and Eastern dragons are wise guardians. Both could have fylfots on their foreheads, and be consistent.
I wonder: could similar reversals of meaning befall other good-luck symbols? Rabbit's feet, four-leaf clovers, the number seven? Imagine a SF story in which our futurian heroes see those symbols displayed and recoil in horror and revulsion.
What I worry about (and this is something to worry about) is moles in America, and the assets that enemies own here.
What do Russian operatives own here? What fronts do they use? What will Russian agents do if there’s war?
Imagine a SF story in which our futurian heroes see those symbols displayed and recoil in horror and revulsion.
What does a loyal, faithful Iranian or Russian citizen feel if he sees the Star-Spangled Banner?
Also, certain groups have used the Yellow Star, the White Rose and the memory of the Operation Valkyrie resistance fighters for their cause in the last years.
He wasn't as far gone as other conservatives:
www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080941812/satirist-p-j-orourke-panelist-on-nprs-wait-wait-dont-tell-me-dies-at-74
These days, one might define "Progressive" as "Conservative who fails to adhere to fashion changes".
War is bad for business, but the threat of it can be very good for some.
Paradoctor:
I wonder: could similar reversals of meaning befall other good-luck symbols? Rabbit's feet, four-leaf clovers, the number seven? Imagine a SF story in which our futurian heroes see those symbols displayed and recoil in horror and revulsion.
Breaking a mirror for seven years of good luck?
Hotels where every floor is numbered "13"?
Black cats granted sacred cow status?
The possibilities are endless.
"I've got pictures of swastikas carved into stonework in the Forbidden City — predating the Nazis by generations. Context is important."
The context is that the symbol was hijacked in fairly recent history. It's not like somebody's going to go chisel off bits of stonework that are hundreds of years old just because the symbols therein have taken on a new meaning since. But it does mean that going forward, people don't use it as a good-luck symbol any more. (For another example, see the meanings assigned to such symbols as the Cross of St. Peter, or the Horned Hand gesture.)
could similar reversals of meaning befall other good-luck symbols?
In Turtledove's 'Southern Victory' series the word "Freedom" becomes a slogan for genocide. Looking at the Tantrum, I'm having flashbacks to the series. Freedom to ignore laws you don't like, freedom to depose an elected government, freedom to bully and oppress those you don't like…
I note that the Tantrum has appropriated Orange Shirt Day and is using orange shirts as an anti-vaxx symbol. Because your child having to wear a mask in school is totally the same as killing off 30% of the children in residential boarding school.
(Yes, I know they know it's not a serious equivalence; they are doing it deliberately just to piss off their opponents.)
It's not like somebody's going to go chisel off bits of stonework that are hundreds of years old just because the symbols therein have taken on a new meaning since.
I've talked to people who believe that that's exactly what should happen. I've talked to people who apparently believe that swastikas on Qing-dynasty stonework proves that the Chinese Communist Party are a bunch of Nazis.
But it does mean that going forward, people don't use it as a good-luck symbol any more.
They do in South-East Asia, from what I've heard. And in China, from what I've seen.
Christians aren't about to give up the cross because it is also used to support slavery, 'gay reprogramming', genocide, etc. Why should Buddhists give up a symbol because some foreigners who weren't even Buddhist used it to mean something else?
I'm not going to openly compare my wife to a bombshell actress. It's enough for me to remember a conversation I had with my late-brother a few years ago over a beer. He wondered how the hell I got her and I just chuckled.
As for home's owning their owner… yah. I'm currently dealing with hidden water damage from an upstairs shower that finally showed itself as a water stain on the sheet rock ceiling in the living room below. It's been going on for a few years apparently because it's all opened up now and I can see the damage. What a mess, but at least we saw it before too much of the subfloor rotted.
For anyone tempted to build their own homes (some still do though I didn't), think very carefully about where the water goes and how you'll access when things go awry. Plan on it going awry. Water is damn sneaky and dissolves damn near anything given enough time.
GMT-5,
Well... it WAS a contested election. Those undermine belief in the legitimacy of the results.
I'm of the opinion that GWB wasn't TOO bad. He struck me as a little thick-headed. My issue was with the people around him. I despised Rove. Still do. I also learned a deep, deep mistrust of Cheney and consider him to be un-american.
Robert:
Christians aren't about to give up the cross because it is also used to support slavery, 'gay reprogramming', genocide, etc.
Well, to be fair, those who use the cross in that manner are appropriating Christianity itself. They're not using the cross symbol as something entirely different. They're implying that Christianity itself means those things.
Why should Buddhists give up a symbol because some foreigners who weren't even Buddhist used it to mean something else?
Depends on where and among whom. Continuing to use their own symbol in southeast Asia probably isn't a problem. I would not recommend prominently decorating their temple in Skokie across the street from a Jewish synagogue with a blazing swastika, though. In the best of circumstances, it would be misconstrued. In the worst, it would be correctly understood as an insult and a threat hiding behind a technicality.
I think, when you say GWB wasn't too bad, that you're comparing him to what came after.
Certainly true of conservative Australian politics: Howard -> Abbott -> Morrison (-> Joyce?).
True, those arrows represent Turnbull, who the eminence grises found was not malleable enough, but who else made a good figurehead?
There is an interesting factor to watch in the upcoming election: a growing number of independents targeting the 'moderate' liberal voter concerned about climate action.
They also happen to be predominantly female.
Robert:
Freedom to ignore laws you don't like, freedom to depose an elected government, freedom to bully and oppress those you don't like…
It's painfully obvious that the right-wing idea of "freedom" necessarily requires that it cannot be anything close to universal. It means that a select few have the freedom to trample on the freedoms of anyone else--Colin Kaepernick's freedom of speech, for example.
They don't even feel cognitive dissonance at the blatant inconsistency of decrying BLM protests for threatening safety and property while openly cheering your Tantrum or the January 6 terrorists which do exactly what they complain about. Or of insisting that George Floyd deserved death at the hands of police, while making a martyr of Ashli Babbit.
Because their idea of freedom isn't meant to be consistent. It can't be. By definition, their freedom requires that no one else is entitled to it.
Alfred Differ:
As for home's owning their owner… yah. I'm currently dealing with hidden water damage
So, the house owns you in the sense of "pwned!"
:)
Tony Fisk:
I think, when you say GWB wasn't too bad, that you're comparing him to what came after.
I'm not sure who you're addressing this to, but I was comparing him to what came before. Reagan presided over a sea change in the American political zeitgeist in which patriotism and conservatism were inexorably linked, and church became linked to state. This with a Democratic controlled congress who seemed to have bought into right-wing framing.
Compared to all that, a mere corporatist Republican didn't seem all that threatening.
Revisionist history: W "wasn't so bad."
Funny how presidential crimes become normalized. W committed a war crime of monumental proportions, killing thousands directly and huge numbers (millions?) more indirectly by destabilizing the middle east. And for what? To bump oil company profits? To get revenge for 9/11?
Those are not not reasons, especially considering that the knock-on effects of his war still echo more than 20 years later.
Never forget.
W was an utter monster, who brought a parasitic vampire (Dick Cheney) in to cheat and steal and suck at our carotids. But there was one difference. That gang did not seek to kill the goose that laid their golden eggs. The were cadet members of the Saudi Royal House, who wanted to weaken us, but not so much we'd stop being a bulwark vs Iran and Russia.
That clade at first hired and put up with NEOCONS like Nitze, Adelman, Perle and the lot, who supplied patriotic/imperialist incantations... then were dumped without so much as a thank you because they were nerds who sometimes said "that's not true" to the new swarm of know nothings who would become MAGA world.
The neocons would hve been uncomfortable with Nazis and confederates. Their foxite replacements dived eagerly down that hole and were less Saudis than Kremlinites. And the aim became (at the top) utter demolition of the American enlightenment experiment.
Having said that, of course W is only the 2nd worst president of this century. BY FAR the worst of the 20th Century was his uttery despicable dad.
gerold:
Revisionist history: W "wasn't so bad."
Funny how presidential crimes become normalized.
Again, I'm not sure you're addressing me, but in case you are, all I said was that I didn't feel so bad about the possibility that he'd win in 2000. All the actual bad stuff he did came later.
If asked at the time, I would have said W was bad because he was dumber than a box of rocks. That's the analogy I actually used. The monsters were lined up behind the box of rocks who failed to understand the damage they'd do. I'm no longer sure he was as dumb as I thought, but my opinion of the monsters behind him has only gotten worse.
If asked at the time, I would have said Reagan was going to get us all killed or turned into a theocracy. More likely both. I no longer think that regarding the religious angle, but only because of what I've seen since.
Often through US history, one group of elites or another had sucked at the carotids. I strongly dislike it, but don't see it as the end of the world if another group manages to do it again. For a while. We have to make a few of them disappear in the desert now and then when they go too far, but they aren't TOO bad.
(Did I use enough O's so my tone of voice is clear? Not TOOOOO bad.)
I'm MUCH more perturbed by theocrats. We are barbarians willing to risk death knowing our righteousness, but even more willing to kill for it. Down that path we go when we reject truths patently obvious to any other fool but them.
Larry,
I am consoling myself with investment advice self-give ex post facto.
Some investments require a maintenance cost. Funds, ETF's, and other managed vehicles pay for the money managers by raking some of the money off to them.
So far my water repair bill is under 1% of the value of the home (not by much) and it's the first one I've suffered in 3 years of living here. As a maintenance fee, that's unpleasant but not unheard of for managed money.
The problem is I'M the manager and the money is LEAVING my pocket. Fortunately I'm insured for part of this, but they'll extract it from me somehow later. 8)
Der Oger,
That fellow? Heh. My late-brother would have suggested (when still a teenager*) a generation of jewish parents name a son like that just so they'd pwn the undead ideas lingering in the minds of some very sick people.
My brother and I shared the same US history teachers in high school. (He was in their class the year after me.) These teachers liked to role play bits of our history and combined two classes to get a group large enough to cover factions of the US Congress through various periods of the 19th century.
My brother got assigned to a southern state along with a few other kids. One task was to defend the institution of slavery in the period before our Civil War. He loved the ruckus he created when he got one of the black girls on his team to defend it by talking about owning a white man.
He delighted in that kind of sharp stab meant to pierce one's preconceptions. He used to do small stage magic later and used many of the same skills with fewer barbs. 8)
* In later years he wouldn't have said it aloud, but he would have thought it along with many barbarian thoughts about what we should do with the sickos.
onward
onward
DB: your talk about harnessing conflict and competition with the internet to uplift society got me to thinking about Taiwanese digital democracy. In this article the Digital Minister of Taiwan Audrey Tang makes an interesting observation:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/How-Taiwan-s-digital-democracy-can-help-Asia-thrive
Taiwanese democracy first emerged in 1996, at the same time the web was emerging from the internet. Consequently Taiwanese democracy coevolved with the web in its formative years, and has developed some uniquely individual feedback systems connecting citizens and government, systems that were never possible before.
Many have expressed hopes that something similar would appear in our own countries as a consequence of the internet, and in many ways they have - but not in government. The US government still operates in horse-and-buggy fashion. I remember calling Duncan Hunter's office back when he was my congressman, trying to provide some constituent feedback, and the first thing they asked was "who are you with?" They seemed surprised when I said I was a constituent.
The first requirement of a successful representative government is a critical mass of citizens who pay attention to the issues facing the country and have some kind of informed opinion on it. Then we need a feedback loop between our representatives and those citizens so coherent policy choices can align them. Maybe something like a usenet group with an internal selection mechanism where discussion and argument can converge onto something like agreement. Right now it seems like Taiwan might be farthest along toward implementing such a system.
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