"Last August, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and (not coincidentally) the senior White House official in charge of the Middle East, received over a billion dollars from a firm seeking to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Then, the House Judiciary Committee got confirmation Jared uses WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders (in violation of US law), including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS known for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi).
"The Trump administration has kept secret seven authorizations for sharing of sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the kingdom hasn't agreed to the anti-proliferation requirements of US law. (Oh, and Trump intervened to get his daughter Jared and Ivanka and 23 others high-level security clearances when they were denied them through normal national security channels.)
“Let's go through this step-by-step (links below). In 2007, just before the collapse of the real estate bubble, Jared had the family company buy 666 Fifth Avenue in New York for $1.8 billion, financed by a $1.4 billion loan - the highest price ever paid for a building in New York, and is not among even the top 100 tallest buildings in the city. It was a disastrously overpriced acquisition, about 30% vacant, with its largest tenant saying it planned to leave. The loan was due in February. Jared had been scouring the planet - while serving in the White House - for possible investors to save his family from financial collapse. No rational investor would touch the thing.
‘But then, last August, a savior was found - Brookfield Asset Management - which took a 99-year lease on the building, paying the entire $1.1 billion in lease payments upfront (!) and allowing Kushner to retain ownership of the underlying land (the one thing of real value). Turns out, Brookfield also owns the nuclear services company Westinghouse (purchased out of bankruptcy last year), which is seeking to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. (Trump's first National Security Advisor (and convicted felon) Michael Flynn, and Trump's buddy, campaign advisor, and the chairman of his Inaugural Committee, Tom Barrack, were also part of these efforts to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. It gets complicated - among other things, Barrack was the guy who brought Paul Manafort in as Trump's campaign manager. This appears to be among the matters spun off from the Mueller investigation. But I digress.)
‘It was reported last October that Jared has been communicating with MBS, using his personal mobile phone, through the free encrypted messaging service WhatsApp, which conveniently does not store messages on its servers after they are delivered, leaving no record of the communications. (If only Hillary had used WhatsApp.) That appears to have been confirmed recently by the House Oversight Committee. Jared has also been bypassing the State Department and the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia in his direct dealings with MBS, excluding them from communications and meetings (much like Trump's direct dealings with Putin).'
(DB note: Then there's the stunning Qatari angle: they used US foreign policy to shake down the Qataris to help bail out 666 Fifth Avenue. Crum! They didn't even try to hide it behind a series of shell companies! It's almost in the open!)
‘We know Trump ordered John Kelly, to grant Jared and Ivanka security clearances, despite objections from the CIA and the White House counsel, among others. Trump and Ivanka had both previously stated publicly that Trump did not intervene in the granting of those security clearances after they had been held up for over a year. (What exactly is it that Ivanka does that requires a top security clearance? Getting personal trademarks from China?) Who knows what the hold up was. Maybe it was the 40 times Jared had to amend the paperwork for his security clearance, to disclose foreign government contacts he had previously omitted (in possible violation of law). Maybe it was his efforts during the transition to set up a secret back channel to the Kremlin through the Russian Embassy to evade US intelligence services (just one of those details omitted from his paperwork). Or maybe it was his global hunt for money.
‘Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: The National Enquirer, which Trump has used for decades to kill scandals, and (apparently) Saudi intelligence services may have teamed up for a hit on Washington Post owner (and Trump target) Jeff Bezos. No way the Saudis and the Enquirer would be doing that except at the direction (or at least, with the knowledge) of Trump. Saudis aren’t going to be going rogue on something like that. My take is that Trump seems to be using the Saudi intelligence services to do dirty work for him that the professional US intelligence services never would (just as he sought a back channel to the Kremlin through the Russian Embassy to evade US intelligence services).’
Thanks Russ. If even just one of you can wrestle a RASR to the ground and pin him long enough to hear you recite-aloud the above, and get him to WAGER whether ALL of the “Clinton Scandals” he clings to – if all of them together were proved (and none ever were) -- would amount to 1% of just this one aspect of the Confederate-GOP-Putinist treason....
Cornered by your demand that he put actual money on it, some RASRs have been known to declare that they now realize we’re ruled by a mafia gang. If you – yes you – can haul just one sinner back to the American Enlightenment, then this will be a good day for us all.
Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/nyregion/kushners-building-fifth-avenue-brookfield-lease.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/politics/kushner-talked-to-russian-envoy-about-creating-secret-channel-with-kremlin.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/saudi-arabia-jared-kushner-nuclear.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-westinghouse-m-a-brookfieldbusinesspa/brookfield-business-partners-to-buy-westinghouse-for-4-6-billion-idUSKBN1ET1MQ
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-authorized-nuclear-energy-companies-to-share-technological-information-with-saudi-arabia/2019/03/28/1b5f0816-5180-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner-security-clearance.html
There is more blatant proof here - just lying in the open - than all of the "Clinton-Obama Scandals" that the mad right spent 25 years and half a billion of our dollars "investigating," finding zilch.
A picture is worth…
Show it again to your aunt and uncle, and ask them if they ever saw James Bond characters who didn't scream more villainy.
== It’s mobs. Everywhere mobs ==
This article offers (duh!) comparisons between the Trump Organization and organized crime. But I take it much further. There are no other models that better map what we're up against. Putin, Kim, MBS (the Saudi leader), Erdogan, Duterte, Assad and the PRC all order assassin hits on opponents around the world with impunity while Trump defends all of them and blocks our institutions from taking counter measures. Some are 'communist' or ex-KGB or Sunni or Shiite or Catholic or casino moguls or U.S. Nazis -- but all those surface rationalizations and incantations are distraction BS.
Fundamental: some human males will be insatiably rapacious, absent of accountability. After 6000 years of feudalism, mafia tactics come naturally, wherever the Western Enlightenment cannot shine its new inventions of light and accountability. And the top shared goal of all these mobs - loosely led by Putin - is utter demolition of those tools and this enlightenment.
There are no other applicable models. (Well, the Chinese are a bit more complex, but the Kremlin has been the same, from the Czarist Okrhana to the Stalinist KGB to the post-communist-but-still-Stalinist oligarchy-mafia. And that one point should be shoved up your mad uncle's MAGA nose.)
My father infiltrated the 1930s Nazi-Bund. As a gangland reporter he covered Capone. The Greatest Generation came to recognize this perennial threat to our flickering freedom, that strives above all to divide us and staunch our faith in facts and negotiation and a hope for reasonableness.
And if you haven't yet, at my urging, watched the Costa-Gravas film "Z" then please do so ASAP.
what's a RASR?
ReplyDelete@nebris Fair question.
ReplyDeleteRASR = "Residually Adult-Sane Republican". Anyone whose attention might get drawn away from Fox channel. Also referred to as "your crazy uncle".
Sarah Kendzior, who fully gets the international crime syndication of governments, considered it a litmus test for the Mueller investigation as to whether or not Kushner would get subpoenaed.
ReplyDeleteFor a bit of contrariness, here is a summary of her views on impeachment:
"Impeachment sends a message about who we are as a country and what we will accept and abide. The rule of law demands action. Refusing to take action is normalizing atrocity. Lawlessness must be confronted regardless of the outcome, as a matter of principle and conscience."
"Every scholar of authoritarian states I know* -- that is, people who've studied dictatorship for decades -- recommends impeachment hearings. Most of the Dems don't grasp the actual dynamics, in terms of both duty and spectacle, and seem to have no interest in learning."
Kendzior is fully aware that impeachment is unlikely to succeed. She is more interested in what the process will yield. Which includes a public non-Fox forum that may well grab the corner of some RASR's eyes.
*Of course, Kendzior is a scholar of authoritarian states herself, and it *may* be she's the only one she knows (she clearly doesn't know David!)
666 Fifth Avenue? Nukes? Glowing orbs? It's even worse than you think. We aren't dealing with mundane mafiosi here, we're dealing with the global forces of ad-Dajjal (the Antichrist). But who is the One? Kushner? Bin Salman? Or someone yet to reveal himself?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletePutting aside the Uranium One conspiracy for the moment -- you know, the one which implicates the Clintons for accepting an $145 Million USD bribe to allow the Russian Federation to get their hands on thousands of tonnes of fissionable uranium -- our fine host should think twice about implicating the Kushners in yet another global Rothschild Conspiracy which could result in unsavory blow-back.
That, and I'm just amazed by the mental gymnastics that allow the self-deluding prog to argue that fraudulent foreign national participation in the US Census -- a process that directly affects both the allocation of US resources & the representational nature of the US democratic process -- in no way affects the representational nature of the representational US democratic process.
It's like listening to a morbidly obese person argue that their excessive caloric intake has absolutely nothing to do with their completely unrelated morbid obesity.
Best
I saw the "Z" movie. The Examining Magistrate showed courage in indicting the military who were involved in the assassination of a controversial politician. I do not want to spoil the movie, but it does not give me hope for the current American political situation.
ReplyDeleteRe: SETI (off topic, but I couldn't help myself)
ReplyDeleteAn interesting piece by Seth Shostak suggesting that detecting signals is far less probable than detecting Alien Megastructures might be. It comes down to the 'synchronicity' problem (catching one bullet with another). Not all new stuff, but collected nicely into one place.
On politics, 100 Trillion in bonds, with central banks holding 20 Trillion (way more than usual). Negative interest rates in Europe. Many US corps having a BBB credit rating (just one notch above being un-buyable). I'd be worried if I had any money :)
I do not oppose impeachment. I oppose frontal assaults in lieu of judo.
ReplyDeleteMolly... agh! You came away from "Z" with... hope?? Though yes, right now I feel safe from that scenario because of the loyalty and dedication and professionalism of the intel/law/military officer corps.
What I do NOT have is confidence that the Foxite-putinites are fully aware how doomed any such putsch would be, and hence they might try.
treebeard and locum relentlessly look in the mirror and cannot imagine their opponents are different than the looniness they see.
The uranium thing is a hilarious mess that they never actually spell out, because it winds up - like every other Clinton "conspiracy" to be dumber than rocks. Every Clinton financial pore has been probed. Every one and those of everyone withing 3 degrees of separation. Prove something, goombah. Everything is made up.
No uranium got shipped. It was US commerce department approval of the sale of a Canadian mining company to a Russian one that had hypothetical govt connections. (And yes, all russian stuff is suspect!) But again, this is uraniun ORE, not refined fissionables and NONE HAS SHIPPED. and show us the $245million you raving jibbering capering loony.
BTW, under Bill Clinton WE got most of the Russian Federation's ready-fissionable spare plutonium from dismantled weapons.
ReplyDeleteThis Brookfield Asset Management?
ReplyDeleteWhere's the RCMP? Where's the Ontario Provincial Police? Where's FINTRAC?
As for that "glowing orb" moment...Alex Ross could not have done a better job at painting a cover for one of his comic book projects.
ReplyDeleteMinor correction needed:
ReplyDeleteMolly actually said "... it[Z] does not give me hope for the current American political situation"
A.F. Rey in the previous post:
ReplyDeleteBut until the Constitution specifies that only citizens get counted, then it doesn't matter if they are citizens or not. So what are you talking about?
I don't know what locumranch is talking about since I've been ignoring his posts. But there is a court case in progress by which so-called "literalist" conservatives are attempting to get a ruling that the words "actual number of persons" means something more like "registered voters", or maybe "eligible voters"--they haven't quite decided yet. But in any case, something that will give more representation to rural areas and less to cities.
And of course, that's not what the Constitution says. Why do you think they've been packing the courts?
And, seriously, do you actually expect people who are here illegally not to lie on the form about their status (assuming they fill it out)? Or are you expecting them not to fill it out, and thus undermine the Census itself?
The latter is the plan.
It's silliness like this that has made conservatives the laughingstock of our country, if not the world.
But they wear the world's disdain as a badge of honor and cry all the way to the bank.
The glowing orb had a prequel: former Australian Immigration Minister and wannabe Sith Lord, Peter Dutton, caught in unfortunate lighting conditions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/opinion/midwest-economy.html
ReplyDelete“If you live in the Midwest, where else do you want to live besides Chicago? You don’t want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or, you know, these armpits of America.” So declared Stephen Moore, the man Donald Trump wants to install on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, during a 2014 event held at a think tank called, yes, the Heartland Institute.
Ok, I don't know how common the expression "armpits of America" is, so I might be reading too much into this, but to me, this indicates that Trumps Fed nominee, Stephen Moore, is a fan of late, lamented 1970s "Howard The Duck" Marvel comic. Cleveland specifically was referred to as the armpit of the country in that series.
I'm not sure yet about a Biden candidacy. He wasn't my first choice, but seeing how scared the Trump campaign seems to be about running against him, I might be persuaded.
ReplyDeleteIf the democratic party nominates Biden for presidency in 2020, this swing state voter will leave the democratic party. If democratic party chooses a status quo, Iraq war supporting, corporate dem like Biden it will show me that there will not be any effective political or governmental response to our very serious collective problems.
ReplyDeleteAnd I will just work on personal and small scale strategies to respond to and cope with the coming economic and ecological shit storm .
...this indicates that Trumps Fed nominee, Stephen Moore, is a fan of late, lamented 1970s "Howard The Duck" Marvel comic.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe he's a huge fan of Lucas' "Howard the Duck" movie? (Now there's an insult! :D )
A.F. Rey:
ReplyDeleteOr maybe he's a huge fan of Lucas' "Howard the Duck" movie?
That seems more likely, but was the "armpit of the country" phrased used in the movie? I didn't see it, so I wouldn't know.
And to answer my own question from the previous thread, of what would happen if I forgot to fill-in the citizenship question on the Census, electoral-vote.com provides an answer:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Apr26.html#item-7
o People are legally required to respond to the census.
o Not responding to the census is an infraction, and 18 US 3571 sets a $5,000 maximum fine for infractions.
o It is illegal to give false answers; that is an additional infraction.
o However, the law specifically makes clear that certain kinds of information (specifically, religious affiliation) can be withheld by respondents.
If you add this all up, the Census Bureau probably can't punish people for skipping one question, since those folks would still have responded to the census, and since there is clearly some level of allowance for skipping questions. If the Bureau does try to punish people for that one question, then the maximum penalty would be a $5,000 fine, but they haven't actually prosecuted anyone in nearly 50 years.
Now, of course, I would never advocate for anyone to break the law, even in a civil-disobedience kinda way. And missing the question would not prevent the expected outcome of people not responding to the census (although one could point out to them that they could also miss that question, and if enough people also missed it, it would be impractical to track many of them down). So it probably wouldn't have much of an effect.
But my memory is getting worse, now that I'm getting on in years... :(
That seems more likely, but was the "armpit of the country" phrased used in the movie? I didn't see it, so I wouldn't know.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't know, either, since I've only seen bits and pieces of it while cruising channels on T.V. myself (about as much as I could stomach). But it didn't come up in an internet quote search for the movie, so it probably wasn't used.
Still, the comic (I've heard--only read one issue) was much, much, MUCH better than the movie. So it would be a bigger burn if he'd taken it from the movie than the comic.
Thanks jim, for offering us only a howl, no justification for your splitter bullshit based on policy or strategy or tactics. Tell me, what do you want that wouldn't be advanced by a Biden Presidency? Especially if his VP and Chief of Legislation and heir were Elizabeth Warren? And if it seemed likely he'd give way to her, in four?
ReplyDeleteYou've seen my list of consensus priorities that ALL democrats want. Tell us which of those don't advance your causes and make the more ambitious of your goals more likely? You'l respond the list is TEPID!! Bullshit.
Here's the list again. Kindly tear at it! Put down the goddam splitter sanctimony and tell us how getting all this across two years WON'T position you and AOC to do more, after 2022?
Will the DP then split into wings: socialist vs. enterprise-purple? Hell yeah! But only AFTER we get –
Electoral reform ending gerrymander and other travesties,
Election money transparency,
End voodoo "supply side" vampirism by the aristocracy we rebelled against in 1776,
Infrastructure, boosting money velocity, paid for by ending supply side voodoo,
Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies,
DACA,
Medicare for all Children (a start that the GOP can’t dare refuse),
Climate action & restoration of science,
Consumer protection,
Emoluments supervision,
At least allow student debt refinancing. Start discussing more.
Restore some of the social contract set up by the FDR-loving "Greatest Generation" (GG),
Restore postal savings bank for the un-banked,
Basic, efficient background checks,
Restored rebuttal rules on "news" channels,
A revised-throttled War Powers Act and presidential emergency powers, plus
Restored respect for the existence of things called facts and support for professions that use them. (And yes, a few lefty nostrums will get drained along with almost every single thing said by the Putin-Fox treason cabal; live with it.)
And dozens more overlaps and shared wants .
And dozens more overlaps and shared wants
ReplyDeleteSuch as restoration of historical alliances
LH, thanks, I'll post that about Moore. Okay, Herman Cain withdrew. Moore is toast. Thank you, Next?
ReplyDeleteI despair that dems and pundits never use judo polemics. The key meme in all this is NOT that Trump appoints awful people, Fox can shrug that off with "So YOU say!"
No, the UNDENIABLE is that Two Scoops has been "betrayed" by more appointees than all other presidents combined.
By his own words. He praises and appoints "best" people whom he later denounces. Period.
Whatever policy or political or ideological excuses you make, he values loyalty above all.
And so one fact stands out.
Donald Trump is a horrifically lousy judge of character.
Thanks Mike Will. I've added two items to the list and included the before/after stuff, this time:
ReplyDeleteThe crux: There is only one path to true victory... and that is Big Tent. Huge Tent. Welcome in more of the retired military folks who tipped the balance for Congress last year. Run tons of them in every purple and red district! While we let safely deep blue districts go full AOC, great! Run a Pres. ticket that will crush it with RASRs (Residually Adult-Sane Republicans) destroying the Fox-Putin confederate coalition so that the GOP party of treason gets smashed into pulp.
Will the DP then split into wings: socialist vs. enterprise-purple? Hell yeah! But only AFTER we get –
Electoral reform ending gerrymander and other travesties,
Election money transparency,
Restore our alliances and deter acts of war against our nation & institutions,
End voodoo "supply side" vampirism by the aristocracy we rebelled against in 1776,
Infrastructure, boosting money velocity, paid for by ending supply side voodoo,
Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies,
DACA,
Medicare for all Children (a start that the GOP can’t dare refuse),
Climate action.
Restore science, R&D and technological leadership as national strengths.
Consumer protection,
Emoluments supervision,
At least allow student debt refinancing. Start discussing more.
Restore some of the social contract set up by the FDR-loving "Greatest Generation" (GG),
Restore postal savings bank for the un-banked,
Basic, efficient background checks,
Restored rebuttal rules on "news" channels,
A revised-throttled War Powers Act and presidential emergency powers, plus
Restored respect for the existence of things called facts and support for professions that use them. (And yes, a few lefty nostrums will get drained along with almost every single thing said by the Putin-Fox treason cabal; live with it.)
And dozens more overlaps and shared wants . (Do you have a favorite consensus-intermediate reform?)
Is that a long list? Well dig this fact about it – a fact that is the absolute core fact of our resistance. All democrats, almost all independents and a whole lot of RASRS want all of those things! So why not do them first? Anyone who screams "socialism!" at that list is screaming at our parents, the GGs who crushed Hitler, contained Stalinism, took us to the moon, loved science and built the world's greatest middle class.
Are there things you want that are "more socialist" than those 19 huge steps? Fine! Push for those politically!
Only first Do The Things That All Democrats -- and By-Far Most Americans -- Agree Upon!
It's a long list, and if we managed to get all that, won't you then be better placed to push further? Or at least make a fair case, based on facts?
Final proof. Most of that happened in California years ago. Did the dems in the legislature then stop their manic meddling? No! The built on it. And the top job of Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom has been to yank on the reins a bit, to prevent crazy.
Dr. Brin,
ReplyDeleteTake this as you want but where I grew up in the Midwest, one never brags about what our father did in the War. It's considered bad form because just about all our fathers were in it and they all have a story and they never bragged about what they did. It's what you do that is important now, not what your father did.
Ha David
ReplyDeleteThat is funny that you think Corporate Joe will be a champion of progressive values.
I also don't think he is as electable as some people think.
And if he actually wins and pursues his timid, incremental pro corporate policies that will not actually help the American people what makes you think the Democrats have a chance at the elections in 2022 and 2024?
Can you say President Sean Hannity?
A leader in gay and womens' rights and protecting labor and the environment, Biden accomplished more in any week than most of your heroes have in all their lives, jim. But never mind that. Again, LOOK AT THE DAMNED LIST!
ReplyDeleteEvery single one of those items is on the do right-away urgent list for ALL the dems and their allies. Every. Single. One. Give them a Congress and President and they'll all happen.
I asked you to discuss that list, and all you can do is come back with another splitter whine?
==
Deuxglass you think I was bragging with a colorful anecdote about my father? Thanks to a stupid segeant who pushed my father from an icy training tower, he wasn't with his unit when it was wiped out at Buna. You call an interesting story a "brag"? Feh!
However you were raised (and "don't talk about the war" was dumb, even then), NOW it definitely is time to raise the Greatest Generation against the redder monsters who think MAGA happens by betraying everything the GGs stood for.
Dr Brin, I'm with you in the big tent, but jim does have a point. The following from your list would not happen under a Biden presidency:
ReplyDeleteAnti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies,
Consumer protection*
At least allow student debt refinancing. Start discussing more.*
Restore postal savings bank for the un-banked,
I like Joe, but he has been in the pocket of the financial industry for decades. He would support some reforms, but not strong reforms in that area. Still I would support him (or a dead body) over Trump or any GOP candidate.
*If Warren was his VP, these could see real action. Maybe.
Smurphs, let's narrow that down:
ReplyDelete* Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies,
One can argue this. He'd be less radical and would likely choose some industries to sacrifice... e.g. demanding three internet provider choices per home. But yes, the financial services industry? He might be a problem re major breakup.
*Consumer protection*
Come on. He's on record angry over cuts to CFPB
*At least allow student debt refinancing. Start discussing more.*
He's on record and opposing at least refinancing would be suicide forr any democrat, where the middle ground is total forgiveness for poor graduates.
*Restore postal savings bank for the un-banked,
I have no idea. He IS from Delaware. OTOH the finance industry makes very little $ off these poor people and the predatory payday lenders are NOT Delaware corporations. I think he'll want this feather in his cap.
But yes. E. Warren as VP is the sweet spot. She has zero executive experience. After 4 years she'd be an expert and the real power in town. If she's set, I'd foresee Joe serving one term and tus giving her two.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that you pulled that wish list out of your behind.
ReplyDeleteIf the corporate wing of the democratic party wins the nomination they will ensure that nothing of substance will get done. OH they will talk the talk but when it comes time to walk the walk, they will have very good sounding reasons why now is the wrong time.
Dr. Brin,
ReplyDeleteYou are bragging. Your father wasn't at Buna. Was he at Normandy, Iwa Jima, in a bomber over Germany, a fighter in the Pacific or a Marine at Chosin reservoir? They did their duty and didn't brag as you are doing. A bit of humility please. They had lots of stories but they are very painful. Keep it for your family reunions as everyone else does.
"It seems to me..." Yes! The road to recovery starts with admitting your psychotic delusions.
ReplyDeletejim get bent. You won't even discuss the list or my assertion that ALL of those items are wanted by ALL democrats. You refuse to debate based on an actual topic -- that list came from things that polls show to be consensus wants across the board - but instead cling like an addict to your sanctimony drug high.
Your snarl against half the party, despite 70 years of recorded action, is exactly what a kremlin basement provocateur would do. You may not be one. But it is exactly what they did, are doing, and will do in order to weaken the Union side in this civil war.
Just stop. Either discuss the list, as Smurphs just did, or add to it, as Mike Will just did, or demand subtractions. As is, you're just a whiner.
Deuxglass your basic position... that is was ALL our fathers... is a good one...
ReplyDelete...ruined by a sanctimonious stance that has no moral or practical merit, whatsoever. Stunningly indefensible. So much so that I blink, rendered wordless. I cannot even remotely believe that anyone would offer such a ban of silence as moral, let alone aggressively denounce those who choose not to live by such a silly code of silence.
Dr. Brin,
ReplyDeleteWhat code of silence? They were and are an example. The didn't need high slick words to act. They saw the danger and acted most of the time scared shitless. When they came back they didn't talk about it. They didn't need to. They just wanted to forget. It's great that you are proud of your father. I am proud of mine and my uncles but the last thing they would want me to do is brag about what they did but they would expect me to do as they did if it became necessary. Your father is an example for you. Do not make him an example for others because the fathers of others maybe have do things much more dangerous. He is your example. He is not mine.
jim:
ReplyDeleteIf the democratic party nominates Biden for presidency in 2020, this swing state voter will leave the democratic party.
Even if he seems to be the only candidate who can beat Trump in November?
If so, then you are part of the problem. Or do you really think that four years under "a status quo, Iraq war supporting, corporate dem like Biden" would be no worse than Trump?
Frankly, I see no reason for the dems to court your vote, as there would follow an endless stream of deal-breaker conditions, any one of which could induce you to take your ball and go home. I mean, if they could convince you to vote for them and not lose anyone else in the process, then they should go for it, but otherwise, I'd say fuhgettabatit.
" that list came from things that polls show'
ReplyDeleteSo you agree that your list doesn't come from Joe Biden, and that he has not even signed on to those things on the list.
And for the last 30 years the democrats have been dominated by the corporate wing of the party. Good on some social issues but they have helped the screw over the American working men and women and the environment.
Smurphs:
ReplyDeleteI like Joe, but he has been in the pocket of the financial industry for decades. He would support some reforms, but not strong reforms in that area.
Even if that is the case, he'd still be better than Trump in so many areas that we could live with a few setbacks.
At the moment, I have no problem with liberals preferring one Democrat over another and trying their damndest to get that one nominated. However, the ultimate goal has to be to unseat Donald Trump. No single issue--not even Anita Hill--matters more than that. The policy differences between Democrats are trivial compared to the policy differences between any Dem and Trump.
And one thing a Democrat has to do to win is to win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, or else North Carolina and Florida. Without losing Minnesota or Virginia. Biden looks to have more of a chance of doing that than any of the others do, no matter how loved those others are in California, Illinois, and New York.
Still I would support him (or a dead body) over Trump or any GOP candidate.
That's all I'm asking. My argument with jim was that he'd be willing to punish the Democratic Party for a candidate he didn't like by allowing Trump to win. Like the "suicide squad" in Life of Brian stabbing themselves to death while saying, "That'll show them!"
Deuxglass:
ReplyDeleteYour father is an example for you. Do not make him an example for others
Dr Brin is a writer. You might as well admonish him to stop breathing.
Larry Hart,
ReplyDeleteA writer got to write. A reader got to read and sometimes a reader gets pissed off a what the writer writes and tells the writer why. That is the way of the world.
Larry,
ReplyDeleteI am only one person and my vote almost certainly will not make the difference.
As I have stated many times, the surplus energy that is the source of our prosperity is declining at the same time that climate change is shifting into a higher gear and species extinctions are starting to cascade and the American hegemony is ending. We are in some deep fucking shit.
Trump is horrible but a corporate status quo democratic candidate would be useless.
I am not going to vote for someone who just wants to rearrange the deck chairs and talk abut the danger of icebergs when we should be getting people to the life boats.
Deuxglass,
ReplyDeleteThat 'code of silence' is real enough for our father's generation when manly men were strong in a quiet way but forceful way. Talkers were suspect. You can see this in most westerns. Look at the character that talks too much and you'll find they either wear the black hat or are indifferent between good and evil.
Many of us object to this code as it does harm to us. Sure they didn't want to brag, but they got to suffer in that silence as a consequence. Many did.
I get what you were suggesting, but our host and his father were writers. Wordy guys. The westerns don't portray them well, so you unintentionally lit a firecracker. 8)
jim,
ReplyDeleteIf you are faced with a Biden / Trump choice in November 2020 (among the two major parties), which do you think will wake up faster to the need to get people to those life boats?
Did I correctly notice up-thread (maybe previous thread) that Tim Wolter was relatively warm with respect to Senator Klobuchar?
ReplyDeleteIf so, that's worth noting. How much overlap does she have with what Dem progressives want from an AOC like candidate?
jim:
ReplyDeleteTrump is horrible but a corporate status quo democratic candidate would be useless.
How so? At the very least, Biden would leave the country functionally intact for the next president. But more than that, you're talking about the president, not congress. As I believe it was Mitch McConnell observed about a possible Romney presidency, all he cared about was that Romney had four fingers and a thumb with which he would sign Republican legislation. Do you think Biden would be different on the Democratic side.
I'd say concentrate your efforts at electing reformers to congress, and all you need in the White House is someone with a -D after his name.
I am not going to vote for someone who just wants to rearrange the deck chairs and talk abut the danger of icebergs when we should be getting people to the life boats.
The other candidate would set the lifeboats on fire and punch more holes in the ship's hull. Given that choice, I'd prefer the lecturer.
Deuxglass:
ReplyDeleteA writer got to write. A reader got to read and sometimes a reader gets pissed off...
It's not just that he's got to write. A good example just has to be made into a story. It's not even the writer's doing--those things write themselves. So what you are asking of our host just isn't possible.
I can't object to your being personally uncomfortable with the breaking of what you perceive as an iron law. What I (and apparently Alfred) are trying to convey is that the law isn't as set in stone as you might feel. You've called Dr Brin's attention to it, just in case he wasn't thinking. Fine. But if he's making the conscious decision that that "law" isn't really an issue, then he has as much right to that opinion as you do to yours.
Your insistence on there being only one way of doing things is reminding me of John Byrne. And though you probably don't know or care (or need to care) who that is, he's very annoying in that way.
Alfred
ReplyDeleteIf it is a choice between Biden and Trump, then I will be working on improvising some life jackets for me and the people near me. And move to the final stage of grief ... acceptance.
@jim,
ReplyDeleteYou're still ultimately saying that "There is no difference between Biden and Trump". After 2000 and 2016, I'm amazed (in a bad way) that anyone can still think that way. There was "no difference" between Gore and Bush, and to Bernie Bros, there was "no difference" between Hillary and Trump. And yet, had the Democrats been elected in either or both cases, we'd be living in some Shangri-La, not here, sir.
Alfred and Larry,
ReplyDeleteI really do appreciate that you take the time to explain things to me. I am not joking here. You do touch me.
They wouldn't talk much to us about it but when they got together with other veterans they talked a lot because they understood. That was their therapy. Talking to others that hadn't experienced it had no sense. I remember asking one uncle why he had only one foot and another why he had a twelve-inch slash across his face. It's not a Western thing. My wife's relations acted the same way. One was a sailor on a French battleship that got sunk by the British. Another fought with the Free French in North Africa in Monty's army. One was killed in the Resistance and another was captured, tortured and sent to Dachau. They never talked about it. They didn't want to.
@Deuxglass,
ReplyDeleteNo one is making them talk about it.
The did talk about it with those who could understand. They probably secretly wished others could understand, though. That's what Dr Brin is doing. Or attempting, anyway.
This won't mean anything to you unless you're a fan of Neil Gaiman's 1602, but there's a scene which climaxes with the exchange of dialogue:
ReplyDelete"You were listening after all!"
"I told you I was."
Which is one of the most touching scenes in all of comics ever.
Just because you can't know doesn't mean they don't fervently wish that you could.
Doc, I agree Biden is on record about the CFPB and refinancing. I just doubt the strength of his support when he is the man in the hot seat. Pushing behind the scenes, doing the day to day political work to get the job done, not just talking the talk. He could have done all that as VP. It's a doubt of mine, I hope he would prove me wrong.
ReplyDeleteRe: Banks and poor people, I gotta argue with you. It was those same banks who convinced the State and Federal movements to issue virtually all public assistance via debit cards, Oh so convenient for everybody, and helps prevent fraud too, just watch out for those pesky fees. Hey, it's only $5. Means a hell of a lot when you are only getting $100 in assistance. And, by the way, can't get one of those no-fee bank accounts.
" the finance industry makes very little $ off these poor people,
It may be small in relative terms compared to other consumer products, say, credit card profits, but it is not small in absolute terms. Easily hundreds of millions per year. I don't expect the banks to support things that would reduce this income stream, like postal accounts. Again, I doubt Biden's commitment to these issues, given his track record as Senator and VP, but all we have is rhetoric at this point.
LH, I'm doing my part for Pennsylvania. I was aghast in 2016 when PA went for Trump. I am working even harder towards 2020.
RE: The silence of our fathers.
ReplyDeleteMy father was in the 82nd Airborne and would never talk about the war. It wasn't until he had died that I figured out he was embarrassed because he never saw combat, but some of his friends never cam home. I still wish I had tried harder.
I used to tend bar at a VFW decades ago. Many of the guys would talk to each other, some would get up and leave when the reminiscing started, some would actually cry in their beer. All would shut the f**k up if anyone else walked in the room. (as bartender, I was invisible. And I actually tried to respect their privacy and not eavesdrop.)
Deuxglass, the effect you see is real, but beware of confirmation bias.
um, governments, not movements. Damn auto-correct!
ReplyDeleteDeuxglass: Key is the word “brag”… OMG you use a slur to dismiss all storytelling? You can’t TRUST US TO KNOW when stories are innocent? Or inspiring? Or cautionary? Nor to be able to tell those things from bragging? What a terrified and ultimately insulting purism.
ReplyDelete“Your father is an example for you. Do not make him an example for others”
Fuck off! Any finger wagging was entirely in your imagination. And by the way, I’d love to hear about your uncles. Seriously, you badly need to re-examine your “brag” meme. It is nuts.
jim: “So you agree that your list doesn't come from Joe Biden, and that he has not even signed on to those things on the list.”
No I don’t because it’d be a goddam lie. You don’t know shit about him or his stances. All you know is a reflexive hate. And even NOW you won’t actually discuss anything on the list.
And you lie about the dems, top to bottom. They have had actual power - both Congress and the presidency - for FOUR out of the last 26 years. And in that time they were frenetic passing bills, including Obamacare. In states where they have had time, they have passed reform legislation lists so long that Jerry Brown had to shout “WHOA!” every one of the last 8 years. You… don’t… know… shit…. except some magical “corporatist” incantations.
(In actual fact, I’d fret a little — little — about old Joe if it were just him alone. He does represent Delaware, hence a little “corporatist wariness may be apropos. Which is why I want Warren as VP in 2020 and for 8 terms as president in 2024. and TELL ME “jim” how that makes me a corporatist shill.)
LarryHart makes a crucial point: “At the very least, Biden would leave the country functionally intact for the next president.”
ALas, across the last 26 years in the face of utter purity of confederate treason and destruction of all chance of negotiation, the dems had 4 years to do stuff (effectively just TWO!) but 16 years in which at least a skilled moderate intelligent person was in the White House, appointing people who wanted to do their jobs well. We got few new environmental laws, but the EPA was vigorous. CFPB squeaked in during one of those two miracle years and Obama made sure it was vigorous. I had complaints! But Executive departments functioned very well.
Clinton and Obama were superb administrators, and if that’s ALL we got back, then dayenu it would save us. Though you bet I want it all! I want (figuratively) the GOP crushed, incinerated and the ashes stripped to ionized gas that’s injected down a fracking well to join the dinosaurs they are. I want 2021-2023 to be when UNITED dems and indies and some libertarians (the sane ones) pass the full list of Consensus Priorities…
…and THEN sane socialists can run in 2022 from that vastly better platform to persuade us to do more.
And yes, anyone who opposes that plan — in favor of sabotaging our Union with splitter nonsense — bears a burden of proof that they aren’t Kremlin shills.
Smurphs nails it: "My father was in the 82nd Airborne and would never talk about the war. It wasn't until he had died that I figured out he was embarrassed because he never saw combat, but some of his friends never cam home. I still wish I had tried harder."
ReplyDeleteMany of our fathers refused to talk about combat... because that's... what... warriors... do. And the "bragging" thing was one of many excuses they gave, to avoid talking about it.
I, too, wish I had asked more questions of those guys. One who flew p51s and would only say about his dunk in the English Channel: "It was cold."
At least I gave my father a tape recorder and we got an autobiography out of it. But the WWII parts were slim.
Congratulations jim, it sounds like you are ready to join my camp: the people who realize this system is an unsustainable fraud and headed for the lifeboats years ago. Trust me, you won't feel anything missing from your life if you stop voting or watching TV talking heads debate the latest political scandals. Plant a garden, dig a well, build a house, and all that crap will fade into irrelevance where it belongs. The only question is why I still visit blogs where arrogant people bloviate endlessly on the same topics and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being splitters, Kremlin shills, Confederates and other demons of their imagination, yet still imagine themselves to be moderate, rational adults. Perverse curiosity, I guess.
ReplyDeleteDeuxglass, did your father ever talk about what his father did during WWI? Was that "bragging?"
ReplyDeleteRemember that WWII is no longer memories; it's pretty much history by now. Most fathers of living people never fought in WWII. They were too young. Many grandfathers didn't fight, either. It was a long time ago.
And, as such, people are forgetting. We have no one to tell the stories anymore. Just us sons and daughters, who can tell what our parents did.
It's no longer bragging. It's remembering. There is no shame in remembering your parents and what they had to endure.
Between the wars, the British exported skilled aircraft machinists to Canada as insurance in case of invasion. One of them was my grandfather. His trusty precision tools probably helped to down many nazi aircraft. He gave me his slide-rule when I was little, and I've long-since replaced it with modern computational wonders. Some of them today crunch numbers in service of the Max Planck Institutes in Germany.
ReplyDeleteWe should be thankful to the GG not only for what was prevented but also for what came to be instead.
My grandfather was in the War. France, Greece, Palestine… he told us stories when I was a little boy. Nothing violent, but enough to realize that officers could be more dangerous than the enemy. :-) Sharing Christmas pudding with a Greek shepherd, who contributed fresh milk (milked right onto the pudding) to the small feast. Being ordered to strip naked and bath in a stream in sub-zero weather. ("Sir, if you did that to a dog in England you'd be up on charges.") Running from the Turks in Palestine and having a cavalry trooper slow down and tell him to hold on to the stirrup, taking great strides at a trot until the trooper's officer ordered him to leave the Tommy and save himself, but being close enough to the lines by then that he escaped the Turks…
ReplyDeleteHe didn't talk about Ireland. When dementia hit and he was lost in the past we learned his section had been under fire and talking casualties and couldn't fire back, because the gunmen were in a crowd with women and children in it — so all they could do was retreat with as many wounded and dead as they could carry or drag…
A great-aunt joined the Dutch Resistance to help Jews escape, knowing it was only a matter of time until she was caught and doing it anyway. Survived years in Ravensbruk. Survived being a medical experimental subject. Holidayed in Germany after the war, because if you succumbed to hate the Nazis had won after all.
I think it's important to remember their stories and tell them publicly, because otherwise those who know nothing of war but movies and TV won't realize that true heroism is doing the right thing even when you're shit-scared and likely to die; is refusing to commit evil even to save your life.
Deuxglass,
ReplyDeleteAh. That makes more sense. Be aware then, that American attitudes regarding that war are probably a little different. Hmm. Probably a lot different. We didn’t get directly bombed like the British, we didn’t wind up with people on both sides like the French, and we didn’t lose 20 million like the Russians. We lost a lot of people, but I think our own Civil War still holds the record for us. By our standards, it was the last war where things were pretty simple. Bad guys had to be killed. After that we became more of an empire than a republic and we had to learn some of the messy lessons former empires already knew. Conflict isn’t simple at all.
It is true that it makes little sense to talk of war experiences with people who weren’t experienced, but our fathers went further with that. We fought two more wars after WWII that were related essentially WWII aftermath wars, so we weren’t short of veterans who understood what our war fighters had to do earlier. America is often at war with someone somewhere, but our cultural attitude changed after our loss in Vietnam. It wasn’t a clean change either and tempers still flare up.
Some of our western genre movies show the old expectations that changed during the 1970’s. I point them out because I think it helps to understand our host. Remember that he was born on one side of that change and then lived through it. In articulating what his father did, he could very well be fighting that cultural fight many of us feel was and is still necessary. America goes to war A LOT, so we need our war fighters reminding us of the consequences A LOT.
ReplyDeleteGo easy on the David's list, Jim. I like his list, even though it's a little verbose, so I'l paraphrase it down for your convenience:
(1) "Electoral reform, ending gerrymander and other travesties, election money transparency" equals a demand for the elimination of the human capability for dishonesty;
(2) "Restore our alliances and deter acts of war against our nation & institutions" equals unconditional support for Jared Kushner's Middle East negotiations and a domestic ban on those of non-European extraction;
(3) "End voodoo "supply side" vampirism by the aristocracy", "Infrastructure (repair), boosting money velocity" and "Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies" merely reiterates the demands of 19th Century Free Silver nativist populism;
(4) "DACA, Medicare for all Children", Climate action", "student debt refinancing" equals the complete & utter destruction of the US federal financial system;
(5) "Restore science, R&D and technological leadership as national strengths" calls for the establishment of an unquestionable enlightenment-style scientific state religion; and
(6) Restoring "the social contract set up by the FDR-loving Greatest Generation" equals a return to patriarchy, institutional racism, open anti-semiticism, strict gender roles and closed US borders.
That's a good solid political platform -- one the any member of the Alt-Right can get behind -- except for possibly (1) the abolition of human nature (which seems a little unrealistic) and (5) the establishment of a state scientific religion (which some christian fundies may object to), but even these items are probably not deal breakers for certain neo-Nazi splinter groups if it allows the banning those johnny-come-lately identity groups who have always been reluctant participants in the European Enlightenment (sic).
The future looks so bright, I gotta wear shades.
Best
treebeard,
ReplyDeleteThe only question is why I still visit blogs where arrogant people bloviate endlessly on the same topics...
Schadenfreude
Now you know.
You don't have to thank me.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/gop-staffer-advocates-trumps-impeachment/587785/
ReplyDeleteThought our host would appreciate this.
Dr. Brin said: "Thanks to a stupid segeant who pushed my father from an icy training tower, he wasn't with his unit when it was wiped out at Buna."
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, I must have missed that. But my jaw dropped at the word Buna. I've seen THAT photo.
"What is ultimately so notable about Strock's picture, however—beyond its sheer technical excellence, and its quiet power—is that when it was published in LIFE magazine in September 1943, it was the first time that any photograph depicting dead American troops had appeared in any American publication during World War II. The story behind how the photograph came to be published, meanwhile, speaks volumes about LIFE magazine's national stature during the war, and the strained relationship that always exists (and, in an elemental way, should always exist) between journalists and government officials."
ReplyDelete“(1) "Electoral reform, ending gerrymander and other travesties, election money transparency" equals a demand for the elimination of the human capability for dishonesty;”
No, your answer shows you haven’t a clue how our civilization set up laws above men and systems of accountability so that cheating - for the first time in human history - can be reduced.
You who whine over NOT getting the justice you thought fair in family court, decide to rave that it’s useless demanding fairness of any kind. Can you even dimly perceive the hypocrisy?
The rest isn’t worth answering. Opposite to anything drivel, except:
“(6) Restoring "the social contract set up by the FDR-loving Greatest Generation" equals a return to patriarchy, institutional racism, open anti-semiticism, strict gender roles and closed US borders.
That one’s pretty good! Still loony tunes, since the road ahead was opened by those heroes. But yes, restoring the social contract re CLASS doesn’t mean w must go backwards re race or gender.
And oops. I'm answering him again.
ReplyDeleteDr Brin:
ReplyDeleteThanks to a stupid segeant who pushed my father from an icy training tower, he wasn't with his unit when it was wiped out at Buna
There's a joke/folk tale along those lines. Probably too long to tell in full, but the Cliff's Notes version is as such: The king's best friend, who accompanies His Majesty everywhere, is a complete optimist who always sees the best side of everything. The king accidentally gets his finger chopped off, and the friend remarks "Wonderful!" The king is so enraged at that that he has his friend thrown into the dungeon.
Later, on a diplomatic excursion, the king and his party are taken prisoner by savages. They kill everyone except the king, because the savage tribe has a religiously fanatical fascination with deformities. Because of the missing finger, they let the king go home. Realizing that his friend had been absolutely right about the accident being "Wonderful!", he rushes to let his friend out of the dungeon. He agonizes that imprisoning the friend was a terrible thing to do.
"No, it was wonderful!" says the friend.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because otherwise, I would have been there with you."
Larry Hart: the old Buddhist story -- "Good luck? Bad luck?"
ReplyDeleteMany things that happened to me I might call unfortunate, but I wouldn't be where I am now without them. I remember being on a backpacking trek through Australia with a friend in college. We were running to catch a bus with far too much luggage for two backpackers, and he looked at me and said, "We don't know it yet, but we're having fun." That saying has informed a lot of my perspective.
Hmmm, my Disqus login has disappeared again.
LH: you told that very well!
ReplyDeleteTML: Good one too!
ReplyDeleteTheMadLibrarian:
ReplyDeleteMany things that happened to me I might call unfortunate, but I wouldn't be where I am now without them.
There are many obvious applications in real life. If not for the two girlfriends who rejected me, I wouldn't have been in a position to meet the one I married. Without being fired from my last job, I wouldn't have found the one I'm so happy with today.
Maybe less obvious--without George W Bush, we probably wouldn't have had President Obama. Instead, President Gore might have been followed by his Veep, Joe Liebermann.
"Maybe less obvious--without George W Bush, we probably wouldn't have had President Obama. Instead, President Gore might have been followed by his Veep, Joe Liebermann."
ReplyDeleteA lot less obvious! Obama was a rising star. Gore would likely have been one term but we'd be done with Bushes. And Lieberman? Surely you jest. Obama woulda ate him alive.
I'm sorta kidding on the square, but it seems to me as if Obama was elected as a rebuke to W (just as unfortunately, Trump was a reaction to Obama). Without Bush to react against, would a black man with a terrorist-sounding name have even made it to the national stage? Could he have broken through to the public consciousness with a 2004 keynote speech in the middle of a Democratic presidency? Run against a sitting Democratic Veep and Hillary?
ReplyDeleteWe'll never know, but history is replete with equal-and-opposite reactions.
ReplyDeleteDavid Brin thought:
"divide us and staunch our faith"
Maybe meant "stanch" unless that was irony far over my head. Excuse the pedantry, that's just my latest linguistic crusade, stanch and staunch. Fully expect that proper English will die off in 15 years, just a few years after the first important netglot novel is written. But until then, feel English should go down with grace, a wholesale titanic obsolescence all at once, at the top of its game when it passed.
The rest of your post, it reads like conspiracy porn. It's a good harangue, for a noble goal, your supporting docs are pearls. But it doesn't matter politically. Every far-righter expected that the 2017-2021 administration would be run by crooks, of the blue stripe. Just because they're red instead, does not shock the far-right, "hey it's corruption, but it's OUR corruption!"
I'm gonna puke if i hear one more candidate say "soul of America." Whups there, just puked, that didn't take long. Don't forget, that in early Summer 2020, the Supreme Court will ammend Roe v. Wade.
The question the US zeit wants to ask itself in Autumn 2020 is "are we a conservative nation or a Christian nation?" Increasingly, the two are at odds. At the very basic, there's "turn the other cheek," and "to the least of my brothers." Take 26 seconds and come up with 14 ways modern conservative ideals crush the core beliefs of christianity.
Since the marriage of Reagan and Falwell, it is clear who is the junior partner. Conservatism can wax and wane with cycles of excess and contrition, but the religions change much slower. Press a christian as hard as you can, and at the base of their best self they'll extoll charity, tolerance, and faith. If you swap that last one for "hope" then they're all core liberal values.
If any Dem wants to win in 2020, they'll have to drive that wedge, make random Americans ask themselves deep down, "do I want to be a conservative or a Christian?"
The mantra of the US right (and even a few on the left):
ReplyDelete"I'd like to be a good person, but I must obey scripture, a Christian has no choice."
Whups there, just puked.
Would be good to see a campaign along the lines of the old milk commercials:
"Spine. Get some."
yana:
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna puke if i hear one more candidate say "soul of America." Whups there, just puked, that didn't take long.
So you're running now? I suppose everyone is. :)
Don't forget, that in early Summer 2020, the Supreme Court will ammend Roe v. Wade.
Young voters could have made that an issue over several election cycles now, and just haven't done so. My sense is that abortion just isn't the cause celebre that it used to be, even with its imminent demise by a thousand cuts. A few weeks back, Bill Maher noted what I've already suspected--kids today just aren't having sex as often as my generation did (or wanted to).
The question the US zeit wants to ask itself in Autumn 2020 is "are we a conservative nation or a Christian nation?" Increasingly, the two are at odds....Take 26 seconds and come up with 14 ways modern conservative ideals crush the core beliefs of christianity.
Within my lifetime, the hippie left was quoting Jesus, while the conservative right opposed everything they stood for. "Christian right" has always been an oxymoron. What western right-wingers are is more like "Christian supremacists". And that first word really should have its own separate quote marks around it.
Since the marriage of Reagan and Falwell, it is clear who is the junior partner.
For a quite recent example, one need only recall Pat Robertson's defense of Saudi Arabia after the brutal torture-murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Something along the lines of "We can't give up a hundred-billion dollar arms deal because of one person." Translated: "This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not quibble over who killed who." This is what passes for the message of Jesus on the right.
If any Dem wants to win in 2020, they'll have to drive that wedge, make random Americans ask themselves deep down, "do I want to be a conservative or a Christian?"
Conservatives have willfully overlooked the actual words of Jesus for so long, I doubt they really know how disciples are supposed to live. What they seem to internalize is, "We win because God is on our side." In order to make self-identifying Christians question their values, we're going to have to make them perceive the right-wing to be losing.
Or as Toby Ziegler put it on The West Wing, "They'll like us when we win."
BTW, Representative Adam Schiff was on Bill Maher's show last night. He's like the only prominent Democrat not running for president, and maybe because of that, he seemed very presidential--the way Barack Obama did at his 2004 keynote speech.
ReplyDeleteOn the brighter side, This American Life did a piece last week about the first town where Trump's ICE rounded up all the illegal immigrants working at a meat packing plant. Over 90 workers (as I recall); fathers and mothers, their children at school not knowing what was happening.
ReplyDeleteIt was a town of 30,000 people, who voted 72% for Trump. At first, at least some of them were happy. These people weren't supposed to be here anyway. But then they started seeing how it affected their neighbors. Children devastated. Mothers panicking. Lives they knew being destroyed.
A town of 30,000 people raised over $90,000 in a few days to help these immigrants.
One woman who they talked to told how, at first, she was happy. But when she had to cover the rally for those who were arrested, and the misery it was causing, she felt guilty. She knew that this was not what Christians were supposed to do. She felt it was her Christian duty to help these people.
Pressing Christians to return to their "love thy neighbor" values will work on many of them. The trick is to get them to see for themselves some of the rotten fruits of their conservative labors.
Biden's very first fundraising stop was at the home of Comcast lobbyist David Cohen. The next day, former NBC Communications Director TJ Ducklo became press secretary for the Biden campaign. (Recall that NBCUniversal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Comcast.) This does not bode well. He's got more than a few other questionable positions as well.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, if he gets the nomination somehow, I'll vote for him. I won't be happy about it, but even Joe (or for that matter, even Bernie!) would be, in my not-so-damn-humble opinion, better for our country than Donnie. He might contribute to the slow infiltration of business into the highest echelons of government, but at least he won't be gleefully tearing down all societal norms in the interest of turning this nation into an autocracy.
As for quiet soldiers, I can't speak as to my father (he was drafted after Korea wound down, but got out before Vietnam), but there's my roommate Jason. He served in Iraq, where his MOS was "cook" - but since food services had been sublet to a subsidiary of the company VP Cheney had an interest in, he was assigned as first a gunner, then a driver, on HMMWVs in convoys. He doesn't talk much about what he saw unless he's drunk, because the memories he carries aren't glorious, they're memories of things like children dying because they found IEDs, or listening to the screams of his squadmates on the two occasions the convoy was blown up. There's the feeling of watching as the "bulletproof" glass of the windshield begins to crack under the impact of full-auto fire from an insurgent's AK, and the feeling of having to train his MG on a car filled with an Iraqi family, awaiting the order to open fire, because the car got too close to the back of their Humvee in traffic. And when he cries, it's usually either because of those kids, some of whom looked just like his son Iain, or because of all the guys he went there with who didn't come home. (He was shipped home halfway through his second deployment, because his PTSD was getting so bad he couldn't be sent into the field any more. That was probably exacerbated by the TBI that the Army to this day doesn't want to acknowledge... So he's also saddled with tremendous guilt because he's safe at home and they aren't, and never will be.)
He won't discuss these matters when he's sober not because it's nobler to suffer in silence, but because he doesn't believe that anyone who wasn't there could possibly understand. And from some of the WWII stories I've heard, that's more likely to be the reason for their silence as well - they don't think they were heroes, they didn't do glamorous things like the heroes in the movies, and if we weren't there, how can we know? How can we know that what they did, they did just to survive in the middle of a horrific nightmare? How can we possibly understand what it's like to have a choice between shoving a bayonet into another human being, or dying at that other human being's hands? To construct a device with no other purpose than to make people die, so that they and their buddies might escape fate? To roll into a village and feel not relief, but contempt for the people there who seemed willing to cheer anyone with enough power? So they don't talk about it, and as their numbers dwindle we forget the lessons they might have taught us, and the cycle of war continues.
JonS thanks. That's a moving - if typical - story. Good and decent men feel pain from time in combat zones, even if they did not kill. Short term, at least PTSD is recognized and soldiers are told "You WILL get at least some and you WILL want some free therapy." Also, Marijuana. Damn those who denied this to our warriors. But there are other factors we can discuss another time; some coming trends.
ReplyDeletePoint is "Don't brag" is complex. At one level, it is an honorable thing to say. At another, it was just a way to rationalize: "Don't ask me. I don't want to talk about it."
==
Hey jim: I asked you to tell us how the Dems were sellouts, when they only had power to legislate for 4 out of 26 years. Effectively two, because of setup delays. But Russ Daggatt shows it's even worse:
"During President Obama’s first two years, when Democrats controlled both house of Congress, they only had a filibuster-proof 60 votes for about four months. Before that, Republicans engaged in machinations to delay seating Senator Franken in Minnesota. After that delay, they had 60 votes ... until Kennedy died and was replaced by Republican Scott Brown.
"Democrats actually only had 60 votes for about four months. McConnell held his caucus together to oppose any and all major legislative achievements by President Obama (getting rid of the extra-constitutional legislative filibuster is a must). Despite that, Democrats passed the Recovery Act (which, in addition to boosting aggregate demand during an epic financial collapse, provided rocket fuel for renewable energy and other priorities), the Affordable Care Act (which extended health care coverage to over 20 million Americans, and freed all Americans from the fear of losing coverage due to preexisting conditions, among other things), restructuring the student loan program (to cut out redundant banks), the Dodd-Frank financial reforms (the most significant set of financial reforms since FDR), and the Public Lands Act of 2009 (which designated over 2 million acres of wilderness and 1000 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers), among other significant legislative accomplishments."
In other words, I am right that you can expect a large fraction of my CONSENSUS LIST to pass, if a wave of democrats gets in, that includes a wide coalition, from blue dogs who take purple districts away from red-traitors, all the way to AOC rebels who take blue city seats away from blue dogs.
ALL of them will unite behind the first priority list. And your cynical assertion otherwise isn't just wrong, it is utterly evidence-free and valueless repetition of outright Kremlin propaganda.
ReplyDeleteYana wins most quotable quip by asking Are we a conservative nation or a Christian nation?, the ramifications of which should chill each & every one of us to the bone.
If you answer with the former, then it would behoove you to recall that it was a much vilified Christianity that made the West the multi-ethnic polyglot it is today by favouring the weak & the last over the first & the strong.
If you answer with the latter, then it would behoove you to realise that western church attendance has never been lower, dropping by almost 20% for most Christian denominations in the last twenty years, which means that the civilising hold Christianity has over western Conservatism is tenuous at best.
This is especially true in the Christian predominant fly-over states where I reside ... where the anger is palpable, and it is quite likely -- highly probable even -- that those who identify as atheists & anti-Christian progressives will someday rue that despicable smear campaign that they ran against those Christians who have sheltered & protected them, because those who offer neither fairness nor mercy unto others can expect neither fairness nor mercy in return.
For it was the Nazis, I do declare, who were both the first & the last great western culture who adopted a practical form of anti-Christian Conservatism.
Best
_____
Does the last phrase in bold answer your question, David, when you asked why the victims of unfairness would choose to visit that unfairness unto others?
Some call it the Golden Rule, but I call it the reciprocating Rule of Gold & Lead.
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ReplyDeleteYes locum, we can see how you view things. It is terrifying and one reason I keep you around, to remind us what is at stake. You repeatedly hallucinate reasons to believe we are out to get you and oppress you, despite absolute lack of any evidence whatsoever and a vast history of the Union practicing malice toward none and charity for all.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot -- and I mean literally cannot -- conceive of anyone thinking that way, and hence you evision a plot... Because that's what you'd do. And just this last hour there was evidence of your cult's violent intent, nearby in Poway.
If you ever get power, you will rush to kill us, justifying it as a pre-emptive strike to prevent plots you utterly hallucinate. Nothing I do or say will matter, then. Nor now.
So thanks for showing us the minefield. Without losing our hearts or souls, and absolutely determined not to be like you, we must win to save all our lives. Including yours, you delusional and deeply negative-sum sap.
onward
ReplyDeleteonward
Deuxglass said...
ReplyDeleteDr. Brin,
A bit of humility please.
Yes Deuxglass, yes. When they talked indecently about Ukrainians, you was not against it... more then that -- supported it,
because you are not Ukrainian.
That is how it working.