All right the US midterms weren't so bad... unless you count the distressingly large number of places across America where 48% of our neighbors are frantically imbibing Kremlin agitprop and pro-oligarchy koolaid...
...or the desperate dumbness of our friends and allies on the left, for refusing even to talk to Hispanics (especially males) to find out why that essential part of the coalition is drifting away.
Gosh, even amid guardedly good news, the topic always has so many under-examined angles. Perspectives that you never see in the pathetically unimaginative, 2-D punditry, even on the Union side of this phase 8 of the American Civil War.
So let's just let our hair down this time, while I take you through some off-axis ruminations... much of it about looming class war.
== Better late than never… ==
In The Atlantic, Francis Fukuyama defends the basic premise of his “End of History” notion that liberal democracies, science-based fact-checking, fair argument and reciprocal tolerance will win, in the end.
“Over the years, we have seen huge setbacks to the progress of liberal and democratic institutions, with the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s, or the military coups and oil crises of the 1960s and ’70s. And yet, liberal democracy has endured and come back repeatedly, because the alternatives are so bad. People across varied cultures do not like living under dictatorship, and they value their individual freedom. No authoritarian government presents a society that is, in the long term, more attractive than liberal democracy, and could therefore be considered the goal or endpoint of historical progress. The millions of people voting with their feet—leaving poor, corrupt, or violent countries for life not in Russia, China, or Iran but in the liberal, democratic West—amply demonstrate this.”
Fukuyama used to be a Republican Party court intellectual. But he is also brilliant and in regular contact with all of the fact-using professions who have become the bêtes noirs of the Foxite risen-confederacy. And hence, like nearly all of the US military officer corps, he has severed those ties.
Francis Fukuyama writes, “Liberal democracy will not make a comeback unless people are willing to struggle on its behalf. The problem is that many who grow up living in peaceful, prosperous liberal democracies begin to take their form of government for granted.”
Well, well. I would add that the non-confederate Union side of this civil war has another problem. So many of its 'generals' are so emotionally wedded to their favorite sanctimony-drug TACTICS that they cannot allow them to be questioned, even when it harms our shared, longterm, strategic goals.
== The ongoing Great Cheat ==
Re the recent midterm election and the influence of gerrymandering, Republicans really have been far more aggressive than Democrats. As the political analyst David Wasserman recently wrote for NBC News:
"Thanks to reforms passed by voters, many heavily blue states employed bipartisan redistricting commissions that produced neutral or only marginally Democratic-leaning political maps — including in California, Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington. And state courts in Maryland and New York struck down Democratic legislatures’ attempted gerrymanders.
“By contrast, Republicans were able to manipulate congressional maps in their favor in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas, among others, and the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court blocked lower court orders to draw new Black majority districts in Alabama and Louisiana. In Florida alone, Gov. Ron DeSantis overpowered his own Legislature to pass a map that adds an additional four G.O.P. seats.”
And much in the news (but not discussed here today) is the name given by the Mad Right for the Roberts Doctrine, using the illicitly ratified majority of the Supreme Court to support the 'Independent State Legislature' theory. That State Assemblies are the fundamental and final arbiters of electoral sovereignty, even when assembly GOP majorities are won and maintained through outright and flagrant cheating. I've discussed it elsewhere, along with ways to possibly corner John Roberts. Ways that I've seen no one even try.
Another example of political cheating....Under Bush and then under Trump, the U.S. helium reserve was given away - at steep discount - to Republican Party donors… and now we don’t have enough to run medical equipment.
In contrast, Biden (and Clinton) sold oil from the strategic reserve when prices were at maximum and used those profits to buy and refill the reserve, when prices plummeted. It’s called ‘buy low and sell high” and supposed market enthusiasts should approve! That and deficits that always go DOWN under democrats. Care to wager on that?
== The ??? who would be king? ==
"Arise! You are born of noble blood!" From SMBC, the fantasy of every neo-feudalist, neo-monarchist twit.
I'm sure you've heard about this pathetic "Prince Heinrich XIII" who preened at the center of Germany's equally pathetic, QAnon-inspired, January-6th-wannabe, abortive beer hall putsch to restore both feudalism and Nazism.
1. The "prince's" supposed line of male succession is pretty minor stuff. The nutter neo-Nazis weren't able to recruit a Prussian-Hohenzollern heir, or Habsburg, or Saxon or even Bavarian. Unlike Vladimir Putin, who has been kissing the ring of the Romanov heir to the very same vile czars whom Vlad ritualistically chanted curses at, across the first half of his life. Now, as an "ex"-commissar who is using Soviet methods to rebuild Olde Russia, Putin waves czarist imperial escutcheons and erects statues to Nicholas II, the imbecile who first crushed all reformers and workers and then - with his equally idiotic cousin the Kaiser - plunged the hopeful beginnings of the 20th Century into hell and nightmare.
(Fascists seem to quite love royal figureheads. Mussolini, Franco, Tojo... and Hitler's on-off flirtation with the Prussian noble castes who had conspired to raise him from nothing.)
2. Thuringia is the minor 'principality' of that doofus, Heinrich XIII. The region is of interest to some sci fi fans because it is the setting of the Ring of Fire Series of the late (and lamented!) Eric Flint, that Eric gorgeously expanded with many co-authors into fun alternate universe wherein a West Virginia coal town from the year 2000 gets plopped into Thuringia in the year 1632. In that series, the Wettin ancestors of poor Heinrich are portrayed as having some brains. Alas, a balrog must've got into the wood pile.
3. And yes, this neo-monarchist crap is reviving all over, subsidized by petro-boyars, oil-sheiks, preppers and all sorts of inheritance brats, who bribe 'journalists' to publish articles about jibbering-loco court apologists. I describe this 'movement' of nasty, microcephalic poseurs here. And here's more on this Mencius Moldbug monster I have eviscerated several times, whose incel-hatred of the entire Enlightenment Experiment is totally bald-faced. See my article: Neo-Reactionaries drop all pretense - in their efforts to bring back rule by lords.
The good news is that the oligarchs pushing this nonsense truly do seem to have crap-for-brains and they hire dopes and flatterers, while the enlightenment can call upon modernity's finest. The bad news is that these would-be putschists are getting desperate, especially as one of the ring-leaders - Old Vlad - is shown to be no super-KGB chessmaster, after all. And any day now he may lose it, and spasm the world down paths that the preppers, despite all their fantasies, are nowhere near ready for. And that won't be anywhere near as fun as they imagine.
== More evidence of pico-cephalic 'lords' ==
It was Ronald S. Lauder, the Estee Lauder cosmetics billionaire who tried talking Trump into buying Greenland. The moronically narcissistic reasons are obvious. But could they really have been so stoopid about execution?
Even given the goal of adding to the U.S. the world's biggest island (massively inflated on the most-used flat map projections), anyone even remotely sane in this century would have started with a cash and charm campaign at the native Greenlander indigenous community, instead of a coterie of Danish lords.
Not all billionaires are morons. But I’m realizing they DO constitute - clearly - a majority.
And while we're on the topic… “Climate activists block private jet take-offs at Schiphol Airport…”
If there's any type of radicalism that must spread round the globe, it is this one! Not just because under-taxed private jets are polluting parasites, symbolic of wealth disparities skyrocketing near French Revolution levels. But also because all forms of transport deteriorate when the rich abandon them.
And so, the radicalism I want to see is mobs descending on those private jet terminals with pitchforks shouting:
"All you lords and rich folk and celebrities, get BACK into 1st Class!
"Sip mimosas in seats only 2x as big as ours!
"Share our airport pain and flight delays and the rest! And if that upsets you... FIX it!"
That level of 'radicalism' might waken some of the insipid proto-feudalists to look up words like 'tumbrel' and decide NOT to tempt a revival of that kind of ride.
== Where are today's Joe Kennedys? ==
See "Class War and the Lessons of History." And yeah, I didn't even once (till now) in a discussion of Class Conflict, invoke the name Karl Marx. Oh, there's plenty to discuss! Like how old Karl never imagined that a scion of wealth - FDR - would be smart enough to buy off the workers by leveling the field and inviting them to share in a strong Middle Class. Big mistake. Glaring error! And for a while, Marx seemed consigned to the dustbin...
Only now his tomes are flying off the shelves on almost every university on the planet. Why?
Because our insipid world aristocracy is largely made up of buffoons and 'preppers' and inheritance brats unable to read and argue over the historical lessons of class taught by 6000 years of history. Show me one with the brains of that smart crook Joseph Kennedy, who supported FDR for one reason:
"I'd rather be taxed half my wealth so the poor and workers are calm and happy than lose it all to revolution."
Any aristo who actually, actually thinks the R word is not on the table, amid his caste's all out war agains increasingly fed-up nerd professions, is truly too smug, dumb and incurious to ever care what 'tumbrel' means, until he is riding in one. But it's a cart that can find you, even deep in your Patagonian prepper fortress.
Though for a good fee, I'll tell you how to avoid that conveyance!
21 comments:
Some update and commentary on the coup attempt and crackdown:
1) Conservative politicians and pundits have waged an anti-climate activist campaign in the weeks prior to the arrests, conjuring the image of a new "Red Army Faction" which operated in the seventies. They remain eerily silent on both matters now or try to deflect the coup attempt as an action of demented seniors.
2) A large number of persons was informed of the operation, and there is evidence that some putschists have been warned.
3) While the official leader of this terrorist gang was a delusional noble, many others were active service or retired army officers and cops. Their plan included entering the Reichstag and executing certain persons. One report indicates that they intended to strike before Christmas.
4) High Treason is in play as a possible accusation (ten to life), but they might get away with a minor case of it (one to ten years), plus Formation of a terroristic organisation (one to ten).
Der Oger:
While the official leader of this terrorist gang was a delusional noble, many others were active service or retired army officers and cops. Their plan included entering the Reichstag and executing certain persons.
Sounds like a re-enactment of the January 6 insurrection attempt over here. Did others around the world really look at that and think, "There's a good plan."?
On whether math is invented or discovered...
This complete amateur's take on the question is: the art of mathematics--the collection of symbols and axioms and methods of proof--is an invented method whereby properties which exist and relationships which are true irrespective of how they're expressed can be discovered.
Keep your eye on this ball:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/09/us-power-grid-pacific-northwest-attacks
Someone is attacking and sabotaging power grid stations in the pacific northwest. I've been following this series of events closely since I'm a large-scale consumer of power in the region.
Best guess of the authorities is that this is the work of white nationalist accellerationists, hoping to touch off a race and class war. https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/federal-law-enforcement-warned-of-attacks-on-power-plants/
Here's hoping that the FBI are busy infiltrating these terror cells. Our local "protector caste" is much more likely to be active participants in the plotting than to be sleuths that solve the crime.
When the capitalist class takes seriously Marx's predictions of mass immiseration and political unrest, then they enact mixed-economy reforms to ensure the stability of the middle class, as insurance. The reforms work, and Marx's predictions are falsified.
This is an instance of Seldon's Paradox: that accurate psychohistorical predictions, once made known, set into effect psychohistorical forces that falsify the prediction.
But the Paradox has more work to do. When Marx's predictions fail, then the capitalist class stops taking those predictions seriously. Therefore they stop supporting semi-socialism, the reforms unravel, resulting in mass immiseration and political unrest, as Marx predicted.
So to the capitalist class, Marx is as true a prophet as he is a false prophet. Likewise for the Seldonian psychohistorian: when first stated, the prediction sets into motion forces that deny it; yet when the prediction is denied, the forces against it abate, and it comes true. Therefore to the society, the psychohistorical prediction is as confirmed as it is denied.
Paradoctor gets post of the day. Cogently said! In fact I just moved it as a blovk into a daft of a future blog.
Two comments to matthew @9:56,
Firstly, I can't help being intrigued about what you do to make you a large-scale consumer of power in the region
Secondly, I have read reports indicated this sabotage is not limited to the PNW.
Regarding paradoctor @11:48, it suddenly occurs to me that this logic about Marx's predictions probably is also applicable to the area of Climate Change.
That's very bad, given the inherent lag times. I in fact predict we will see insufficiently thought through geoengineering "solutions" adopted, perhaps unilaterally, when things like sea-level rise reach the point where G20 countries are significantly affected.
Fascinating.
Btw, to change gears for a moment, what do you make of this?:
https://spectator.org/the-american-who-gave-us-pearl-harbor/
Paradoctor's - "Seldon's Paradox" is the core of Kingsley's "Psychohistorical Crisis"
The "keep it secret" solution cannot be a long term "fix"
mmm...
That paradox is in the class of ideas that are inherently unprovable.
1. If it ain't happening it's because we are paying sufficient attention to causes and preventing them.
2. If it is happening it's because we aren't paying sufficient attention....
But... how would we ever know if it ain't happening because of some other reason?
Meh. Could be true, but too circular for me to like it.
matthew:
Someone is attacking and sabotaging power grid stations in the pacific northwest.
The south too, particularly in both Carolinas. The North Carolina incident was the first one I heard about.
Here's hoping that the FBI are busy infiltrating these terror cells. Our local "protector caste" is much more likely to be active participants in the plotting than to be sleuths that solve the crime.
Hmmm, probably the case in the south as well.
Best guess of the authorities is that this is the work of white nationalist accellerationists, hoping to touch off a race and class war.
Ok, on this one, I seriously wonder about their perception of cause and effect. White people don't mind going without power, but Blacks and Hispanics will be mad? The same people who insist the left wants people to shiver in the dark now insists that we all shiver in the dark?
I'm cynically reminded of a British tv cartoon that a roommate put us onto in the 80s called "Danger Mouse". Typical James Bond spoof with anthropomorphic animals. The villain, a talking frog named Baron Greenback, had a new plot every show which would allow him to "rule the world!" And in some shows, the idea that the plot would lead to that outcome was absurdly ridiculous, such as the one in which he would cause all traffic stoplights to malfunction, "...and then I will rule the world!". Even in the spirit of the thing, I thought they were phoning it in.
These white supremacists who think that any sort of harm that they cause will spark a race war seem to be cut from the same cloth.
Alfred Differ:
But... how would we ever know if it ain't happening because of some other reason?
Aren't we talking about an error function that doesn't converge with time?
I'm thinking back to high school math (mid 70s), but I remember there were classes of functions that could be described as an approximation plus or minus an "error" or divergence. In some instances, that error function converged to 0 as the predicted time approached, which meant that the approximation became more and more accurate with time. In other cases, the error did not converge, which meant that there was an inherent uncertainty in the prediction right up until the moment of truth.
I know I'm rambling with the terminology, but it seems to me that something of that type is at work with psychohistory. Public knowledge of a prediction in itself helps define the error function. If the public is in favor of the prediction coming true, that error function might converge to 0. If the public works against the prediction, then it does not.
Re: The "keep it secret" solution cannot be a long term "fix"
I'm always mulling over either open- or crowd-sourcing my SELDON I processor. Probably not crowd-funding though, too many obligations and even masters. I've never been about getting rich anyway. Watching TSMC-Arizona closely. Do you Americans realize what a hero Joe Biden is? I hope so. Sinema talks while Biden walks the walk.
ozajh, I am a metallurgist. I run a facility that spends a very large amount on electrical power. I work closely with my local power utility. My facility's usage is comparable to a small/medium-sized town.
There's a punch line to be had somewhere in here...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/opinion/donald-trump-constitution-kanye-georgia.html
Two nights before Thanksgiving, he [Trump] ate dinner with a white supremacist and Kanye West,...
From the article:
If there's any type of radicalism that must spread round the globe, it is this one! Not just because under-taxed private jets are polluting parasites, symbolic of wealth disparities skyrocketing near French Revolution levels. But also because all forms of transport deteriorate when the rich abandon them.
Friedrich "Black Rock" Merz, who inherited the CDU chairmanship and chancellor candidacy from Merkel, and owns at least two private jets, and the Springer Press (Politico!) would have called you a "danger to the constitution and faciliator of eco-terror."
Up to the arrests ... Now, only the sound of crickets. And bothsideisms and reframings.
Der Oger, that is why the humor element of my anti-private jet radicalism is essential. "Chese em back into First Class where they belong!" Let them put me on trial.
onward
onward
Dr Brin in the main post:
using the illicitly ratified majority of the Supreme Court to support the 'Independent State Legislature' theory. That State Assemblies are the fundamental and final arbiters of electoral sovereignty,
This one boggles my mind, on mere semantic grounds. What the heck is it supposed to mean that a state legislature "declares" anything except by the way the legislature is defined by the state constitution.
Is the Roberts opinion that whatever 51% of both chambers of the legislature votes for constitutes an assertion of policy by that legislature? What if the two chambers don't agree? The idea that both chambers of a legislation have to agree to the same words a rule established by the state constitution? What if the speaker of the state lower chamber insists that his chamber is the one "closest to the people", so he actually speaks for the entire legislature? What if he says he does so even if his own chamber didn't vote to agree with him? And how about Nebraska's legislature with only one chamber? Isn't that a function of the state constitution which established it?
Without the constitution describing exactly how the legislature works, what does it mean for the legislature to do anything? And who but the state courts are arbiters of what the state constitution actually says?
While I understand that the current US supreme court thinks it can decide whatever it feels like, regardless of custom, precedent, or even the law itself, I don't see how this "theory" makes even syntactical sense.
sorry, missed the "onward"
onward
matthew @10:12,
Noted.
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