First a few culture notes: Like will someone please report back here about the sci fi time travel satire "Command-Z"?
And here's a fun web page running through 25 great tropes in science fiction.
And maybe I'll see some of you next week at Comicon! At the Thursday evening tribute to Greg Bear and then Friday night's "mental powers of superheroes!" Suggestions about both are welcome, down in comments.
== Do we choose progress? ==
Now a much more serious quandary for those on the activist wing of the Union side in this pivotal phase of the ongoing, 250 year American Civil War. Want to both win and prevent this phase from going-hot?
Then I'm afraid you are gonna have to choose - as did Martin Luther King and almost every accomplished reformer - whether you seek a broad coalition to achieve pragmatic progress - or instead insist on ‘performative allyship,’ which almost always means bullying allies over matters of sanctimony and symbolism.
The former path - chosen by MLK and so many others - requires that the reformer accept a bitter truth, that progress will be faster and better if it is insistent... but also incremental. Frustrating, perhaps. But each new plateau becomes the assumed base for a still-intact coalition to stand upon, while fighting-for the next next.
We are seeing the calamitive effects of the other approach - utter dogmatic purity-bullying, in the continued strength of a Mad Right that should have collapsed a decade ago, or more.
The cost of intransigence is most visible across Europe, as voters turn toward 'populist-right' parties, exactly as Putin, Edogan and others intended when they deliberately sent floods of refugees into Greece, Poland, Hungary and even liberal Sweden. Those who demand across-the-board generosity-purity are not helpful to the world's poor... not if liberal governments are thereupon replaced by quasi-fascist ones.
Often, in this real world, you must choose tactics that prioritize. And the priority that makes the biggest long term difference is called ... power.
Choose your fights in order to maintain a coalition that has the power to keep progress happening.
== And maybe even READ a little? To know what you are talking about? ==
Alas, we think we moderns are educated. And in many ways we are. While ignoring basics. For example...
...my parents' generation - who actually actually read both Adam Smith and Karl Marx - were able to come up with innovations that canceled ol' Karl's beloved, violently simplistic but seductive teleological scenarios. (I deem KM to be among the greatest authors of all dire-warning, self-preventing science fiction novels.) As well as demolishing the insipid, crypto-marxist screeds of Ayn Rand.
They achieved this by doing something that no Marxist thought possible... actually thinking it through. And then by reforming class in America in rapid increments, without class revolution, under FDR/Truman/Eisenhower.
A deeply-flawed and partial achievement that we then built-upon with subsequent reforms that (admittedly WAY too slowly!) broke (or at least diminished) one bad habit after another. Addictive human habits (e.g. racism/sexism) that all previous cultures (not just Europeans) clutched to their bosoms as basic assumptions.
Livid over that assertion? That paragraph? Well, control yourself. No we haven't cured those things, compared to what we oughta be.
But we've come quite some way compared to ALL the rest of human history. And you are invited to refute that, in comments. (Hint, you can't.)
In fact, we've been growing a bit wiser and more tolerant, grinding step-by-step till the job almost seems halfway done and the planet might (perhaps barely) be saved! If the momentum can be kept up. Built up.
== WE are not guilt-free ==
While the Mad Right - waging open war against all fact-using professions - is clearly the main existential threat to our planet and children, that doesn't make our side's loudest voices automatically right about all things! Especially their most sanctimoniously-shouted prescriptions.
If they did show the guts to hold argumentative conferences to thrash out alternatives, before issuing grand proclamations - then we might have (for example) discussed far better innovative 'pronouns' - like those that were developed across 50 years of sci fi thought experiments about expanded human sexuality - e.g. by far-thinking pioneers like Varley, LeGuin, Farmer, Zelazny, Cherryh - maybe picking a much better set. Far better than today's spectacularly silly effort to bully everyone into using "they" in ways that only confuse and rankle the folks you need, badly, as allies in this struggle.
Now show me anyone who had the patience to parse the sentences above! If any of you did, great. Now graduate to Marx and Adam Smith. To Eleanor Roosevelt and Paine and Popper and Hrdy and Morgan and Konner.
"It's easy to be right about what's wrong, while being wrong about what would be right." – loosely attributed to Karl Popper.
== GOP Goals ==
CORRECTION: A member of this community ("Tacitus") pointed out that the following attempted idiocy was merely ruminated by some WI republican state legislators and never made it to the floor: Okay, this is getting crazy, e.g. the desperation of Wisconsin cheater-assembly members to preserve gerrymandering by impeaching a landslide-elected justice before she enters office - because an end to gerrymandering will cost half of them their jobs and all of them their power.
(See some much-better, never-discussed fixes for gerrymandering.)
Likewise TN lunatics expelling three Democrat members for shouting, no more than MTG did at the nation's President.
Or Yang/Lieberman with their blatant-shill, so-called "no-labels" scam - trying the Nader-Stein gambit to once again weaken the Union side in this heating-up phase of civil war. Or Lindsay Graham and McCarthy, blatantly puppetted by blackmail, though each tries to maintain a sliver of credibility by backing Ukraine, unlike many of their KGB-run GOP comrades
And now anti-vaccine nutter-activist Robert Kennedy Jr announces his run for president - a former liberal eco activist and suddenly great-pal of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone - and acorn blown WAY far from his parental tree. Boy, Putin is throwing in all of his assets. Well... almost all...
Next come the McVeighs, as an ever more frantic Putin-Murdoch cabal decides they have nothing more to lose and throw harsh dice.
== Okay, breathe... and focus... ==
Changes at the IRS: "IRS cuts phone waits, promises better service and crackdown on big corporations and hyper-rich tax evaders and no increase in middle class audits.”
The flat out top priority of today’s GOP is to reverse Nancy Pelosi’s greatest accomplishment.
Was that the push for clean energy to save our children?
And genuine shifts in favor of an overheating planet.
The fantastically successful drive to bring manufacturing back to U.S. soil?
Moves back toward fiscal balance?
Finally action (not just talk) about repairing infrastructure?
Greater equity in drug laws and redressing injustices in incarceration?
All great stuff and more… (HAMMER would-be splitters who call Biden-Pelosi-Harris 'milquetoast'!)... Still, none of those nation-saving measures went to the guts of what the Oligarchy most cares about. What enrages them.
I am talking about the 2022 dems finally reversing three decades of Republican sabotage of the IRS. Sabotage with the specific aim of helping 400,000 uber-overly-rich, tax-avoiding oligarchs to cheat the nation and the future and the middle class.
== And finally... ==
Finally: A newly released book, Arguments over Genocide by Steven Schwartzberg takes a revisionist view of the notion that specifically the Cherokee Nation almost prevailed in its case against expulsion at the bloody hands of Andy Jackson. I’ve argued with the author. But its assertions and evidence do rock such notions. They suggest that religious fundamentalism played a major role in the legal gloss that was laid over such crimes. Visit the publisher’s webpage where you can read more of these reviews.
I've seen bunches of sci fi alternate universe tales imagining what-if Native Americans (or Amerinds) ever got it together (with some allies) enough to fight off white colonialist-settlement invasion? Eric Flint, Harry Turtledove, Pamela Sargent and others have woven such tales and they can be stirring. (Too few ponder the even-far-worse calamities imposed on native folks and cultures in Spanish and Portugese occupied areas, to the south.) I wrote, as a major character in EXISTENCE, a fellow who named himself after Tentskwatawa, the charismatic bother of Tecumseh.
And yet...
The closest that a native people ever came to such success was not achieved by the obstinately macho warriors promoted endlessly by Hollywood, but by lawyers. When the Cherokee Nation took the racist/brutal government of Georgia to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1830s and won their case. If anyone but Andrew Jackson had been president, then, it might have set a great precedent, instead of bringing on the Trail of Tears. (I have a partial screenplay about that almost might-have-been.)
Which makes me wonder. Did anyone try to establish a law firm in DC and other cities that specialized in representing native tribes? It could have been hugely profitable, if they operated on a contingency 10% basis when they permanently saved some vast swathe of native-own lands. At minimum they could have established which councils had signatory rights, ending the practice of putting 'treaties' in front of a randomly collected cluster of sodden 'chiefs.' (A practice that was more common than outright treaty-breaking.)
Sure, it would have been a palliative, not a solution. But I still throw it out there as a scifi alternate history premise that's far more plausible than, say, Crazy Horse burning his way to Washington.
And that's it for the weekend dance through forbidden thoughts. Go thou forth and persevere through the heat. We got a world to save.
211 comments:
1 – 200 of 211 Newer› Newest»In the previous thread: Arguing about the hypothetical historical implications of choosing not to drop the atom bomb is a fitting segue to Apple's Foundation, season 2, episode 1.
Here's my synopsis. If you actually made it through the entire episode it might be semi-lucid.
Hari Seldon is trapped in a Morrissey Video. "The more you ignore me, the closer I get" will suffice. Shaky steel jungle gym from the ‘60s. A guy with spectacular man cakes is demonstrating the missionary position. By the sound of it, he's been doing his kegels. Ninjas appear to remind us his partner is actually a robot. Traumatic. Reminds me of the time I mixed up clockwise and anti-clockwise at the router table. Still fighting. Music! String samples might be from Sonokinetic's Modal Runs library. Ninjas, sex robot and naked man still dancing about lustily splattering blood/cyborg sauce with various weapons. Are those real or pectoral implants? No idea about the fighting. Maybe for practice like Cato and Inspector Clouseau?
Now we’re on Water World with two Lululemon gladiators who have psychic power. They’re also Mother and daughter but the daughter is older. Very clever
Hari Seldon is still trapped in a Morrissey Video. Skip for a few seconds and flash some scenes from Dune and 2001 a space odyssey.
Back to Water world. Not sure it’s fair to say the acting is bad. Allegidly in 1948 filming the Bicycle Thief, Vittorio De Sica put out his cigarette on nine year old Enzo Staiola's thigh to get him to cry before shooting his scene. The not sisters play with the prime radiant. Remember how after every kid had a Rubic's cube they tried to sell all the platonic solids? My older brother got frustrated and peeled the stickers off the faces. He tried to re-position them so they were matching, but the adhesive didn't tack. So he just broke it. Just like what they are doing to Asimov’s story gender switching aside.
Still on Water world. Urgently trying not to think about seeing "Waiting for Godot" next to my mother when I was 12. If I was a woman, and I was alone with my mother on a raft and she was younger than me, I think we'd break the ice with some skincare products before getting into the metaphysics. The graphic visualization of Psychohistory looks like it’s off the set of "Who wants to be a Millionaire." What if the prime radiant was just a miniaturized slide rule and nobody could figure out how to use it until someone found an old person? Wait, what wee need is an overhead projector. Still on a raft on water world, and we’re going to save the Empire playing Marco Polo in the Lululemon active-wear. Fish out of water? Yes, and thank god they didn't jump on one. Fish tells mom big hurricane is coming because the screen writing books say to put a timer on everything. “Tension.”
Mad Max. Dune. Water world. Star Gate. John Carter. Cliff notes. Morrissey Video. Now we’re on the set of Ben Hur. What this? A princess! Facing her is an open shirt. Man Cakes basted in coconut oil. Why all the hoods? Man Cakes gives princess trophy. Does he mistake a sphere for a platonic solid? Maybe. She doesn't throw it at him. None of this matters except he’ll be her bitch before this season is over.
Morrissey video. Skip to the 2nd ghost lady. Is the ponderously shitty dialogue somehow un-shitty because it’s purposefully shitty? With CC on it literally says it is coded (bad dialogue) that stresses Pythagorean triples if you stroke the syllables in ternary. So it's not the fault of the actors. Fuck Asimov. I want to fall asleep like my wife. Morrissey is in this platonic escape room because after the Smiths he died and he's not supposed to be on water world with the psychic Lululemon Gladiators until he figure out how to use his slide rule.
Every time I see Lee Pace, all I can think of is HALT AND CATCH FIRE. An inside joke from the days when everyone used FORTH and/or bare metal assembler. This Charming Man who ruined Demerzel forever for me.
Traumatized in Toronto.
The closest that a native people ever came to such success was not achieved by the obstinately macho warriors promoted endlessly by Hollywood, but by lawyers.
Best SF scenario I've seen that takes this tack is Lloyd Biggle Jr's 'Monument'.
Despite Avatar2 almost looking to be more of the same (note that 'almost'), I hold out some hope for the Seed Bearer.
In real life, we have NZ's Waitangi Treaty while, in Australia, the ball was set rolling when the Mabo case dropped a bombshell two centuries after the event. 'Terra Nullis' was a terrible principle by which to colonise a continent with the longest record of habitation outside Africa. (It also led to the rise of the rabid right reactionary One Nation movement)
The current 'Voice' proposal seeks to recognise indigenous people in the Constitution, and allow them an advisory group that can't be dismissed, the way Abbott did with the Climate Commission.
(Here's an excellent explainer to those interested, even if the visuals are oriented more to nature than society)
the charismatic bother of Tecumseh.
Love dem eggcorns!
How can you go to Comicon? I thought the writers were on strike? ;)
And (since I also live near San Diego), how did you ever get tickets??
AFR they give me tickets every year. I have to sing for them. But....
Even Brin's Corollary can be used as an arguably sanctimonious talking point.
Interesting assertion re trillions of photos per year. Yeah it's called Brin's Corollary to Moore's Law -the number of CAMERAS on Earth increases faster than Moore. I observed that in The Transparent Society (1997). Now it accelerates, with vast implications. Just cloud storing trillions of never-viewed pics has ecological effects that begin to rival bitcoin mining! It makes things very hard on UFO nuts, shifting emphasis from "They're here!" to "They WERE here!!" (Roswell and crashed ships and all that BS.) And the proliferation of cameras in drones has been affecting the practice of law enforcement and war.
Ever more, the absurd notion of HIDING from an increasingly transparent world is exposed as idiocy. The thing that gave us some freedom and safety is the opposite. Sousveillance answering surveillance. Looking BACK at power. Catching the voyeurs and peeping toms will stop them better than drawing soon-to-be useless curtains. And (as portrayed in EARTH) ripping away from elites - especially the world plutocracy - the shrouds and shadows from which they plot against us.
On July 18, the UN Security Council will meet to discuss the A.I. threat. Problem solved.
Just cloud storing trillions of never-viewed pics has ecological effects that begin to rival bitcoin mining!
I don't buy it. Bitcoin mining is intentionally wasteful of energy because its use is the proof of work. Cloud storage of pictures is a goal to be approached by ever-improving compression algorithms.
Algorithms in use today squeeze individual files as best they can, but when the files are in the cloud there is no reason to stick to 'per file' results. As long as a person's pictures can be recovered on demand, there is no reason not to merge files in giant data blobs and compress those.
Yes... we are building giant information storage systems, but we'll need those for things besides pictures. Even if we didn't, imagine what a treasure trove those images will be to a future generation of AI's that have to be trained on what is relative to what was. Think about those captchas we all faced in order to train the early generation. Those images of traffic lights and fire hydrants didn't generate themselves.
David
Your assertion that Wisconsin Republicans are going to impeach the newly elected (WI) Supreme Court judge does not reflect reality. You quote a partisan article from way back in April that takes - and I believe partially out of context - the musings of a couple of politicians and weaves a vile plot out of them. I live in Wisconsin. I keep up with politics here. There is no effort afoot to impeach this justice.
What I believe to be the longer quote from which this article derives spoke to the possibility of impeaching the Milwaukee DA, a fellow named Chisholm. In my opinion that would have some merit. Until you seem him impeached you can be assured that there is no sinister effort to ditch the new justice.
It is an effort to keep up on things. I try to peruse media from multiple ideological viewpoints. But I'd sure steer clear of commenting on the doings of politicians in southern California.
If Matthew still visits here he'd have a perspective worth considering.
Tacitus
Tacitus, good to know you're still this side of the grass.
Thank you for the correction, Tacitus and point taken, Alfred.
It's so sad to read such a never ending litany of tenuous excuses, blaming every modern social problem on an ideological supervillain like Putin, the mad oligarchic right or some 'rando' Emmanuel Goldstein, but never upon your own self-contradictory belief systems.
You deliberately cultivate division & diversity and you are shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- about the resulting increase in disorder & disunity.
You seek to eliminate racial divisions by emphasizing & magnifying the very racial divisions that you seek to eliminate.
You encourage immigration & declare yourselves sanctuary cities, only to find yourselves overwhelmingly harmed by the very policies that you sanctify.
You promote the adoption of AI (a policy on course to replace over 300 million jobs) while you protest against the millions of job losses that you promote.
This was the plot of a very bad 1981 SciFi film, starring Albert Finney. It was called 'Looker', and it predicted the AI & CGI-mediated elimination of human actors, the solution being that all those newly unemployed striking SAG and Writer's Guild members must LEARN TO CODE.
You destroy yourselves with the very ironic policies that you pursue.
Best
_____
We can prove Shakespeare wrong by FIRST adopting AI, insomuch as the subsequent murder-death-kill elimination of all our lawyers, intellectuals, writers, actors, politicians & white collar professionals will then follow much more organically.
An actual question. I know what I'd like to be the answer, but I don't know how defensible that is.
In the same manner that the right to free speech is most necessary when protecting unwanted or disliked speech, is the right to bear arms most necessary when protecting the right of gun ownership for those we'd most wish not to be armed?
While reading the article linked below concerning Tommy Tuberville and his remark about "white nationalists" simply being "Americans", I think I figured out what he and his ilk are attempting to say.
He's separating the term "white nationalist" into two distinct parts, defining it as any nationalist who happens to be white. Thus, he can claim that a nationalist is just someone who loves his country, and that the race of that nationalist is immaterial. That paints us as the racists for pointing out that Trump and Tuberville are white while Vivek Ramaswamy is not. They're all just one big America-loving family irrespective of race.
Whereas, the way most people understand the term, including those who would privately apply it to themselves, a "white nationalist" is someone who believes the nation belongs specifically to white people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/opinion/tommy-tuberville-white-nationalism.html
...
n 2018, Donald Trump proudly proclaimed: “You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist. And I say, ‘Really? We’re not supposed to use that word?’ You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”
...
In June, Vivek Ramaswamy, who is Indian American and, like Trump, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, put his own spin on that kind of language assault, declaring himself a “nonwhite nationalist.”
...
The fact that Trump and his ilk caterwaul about building a wall along the Mexican border while inviting Norwegian immigration suggests that they doth protest too much.
Please note re: Ramaswamy that considerable color-based prejudice exists within India, too. This may be a leftover from the colonial British but I suspect it has deeper roots. And, of course, he's from the Brahmin caste, which I guessed before checking.
Now, this guy, also named Ramaswamy, I would vote for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar
Pappenheimer
Larry,
Tuberville's (and the Grope's) redefining of nationalism to rid it of its bigoted associations (wink wink) is just part of the new conservatism that denies its bigotries publicly while doing bigoted things. Weasel word spin, but spin that many people will fall for. That and the default Republican argument whenever they get called out about any of their vileness is the old third-grade standby, "I know you are, but what am I?" That just adds to my contention that standards for adult behavior in America have plummeted.
Paul SB
I just read over the Cathy Young/Cato Institute article, and it's useful, but it gets a few things wrong where presenting the "liberal" side. I my view, the most important thing it does is fuel the idea that ideologies are worse than useless. Logic is infinitely twistable, so no ideology can ever be free from being twisted and distorted into things it was never intended to be. As soon a shoot write something down, the lawyers and manipulators find ways to spin the words in their own favor. I'm okay with pointillism, or surrealism, or even serialism, though I wouldn't call it my cup of tea. Isms in art are relatively trivial. But when people make dogmatic statements that are intended to impose a view on everyone else, then we have a problem. I would happily reject all those isms, even AdamSmithism. Look at how many twisted sick shits have used his words to justify crimes against humanity. Just listen to the news. Every day they announce another crime or several committed by the corporate world in the name of the "invisible hand" and sanctified greed.
"Whatever the flaws of Enlightenment liberalism, we should not forget that what it rebelled against was not just tradition steeped in warm human bonds but an oppressive order based on political, religious, and social tyranny—and that attempts to replace it with something better have repeatedly led to new forms of tyranny. When we get past the caricatures, the Enlightenment is complex enough to contain multitudes. Before we declare it a failed experiment or an instrument of oppression, we should understand its legacy and how inseparable it is from vast leaps of moral progress.
Efforts to erode those foundations have produced evils that pale in comparison to complaints about secularization, individualism, and free markets. Attempts to produce a new and improved anti‐Enlightenment political philosophy have so far failed to show that they aren’t just repeating the same mistakes—with the same potential for catastrophic consequences."
- Maybe if we embraced things like basic human decency and a robust exploration of the social sciences instead of ideology and isms, we might be able to find workarounds for disastrous consequences.
Paul SB
Pappenheimer,
When I was majoring in history, I took all the Asian Civ classes they offered - which admittedly wasn't a whole lot - and when I switched to anthropology so I could go for an archaeology option, I did some research into the Harappan Civilization that preceded Hinduism and the presumed Aryan Invasions. It was fascinating stuff, but you are absolutely right that melanin discrimination proceeded the British Raj by millennia. Ironically, though, after 3000 years the lighter brown "Aryans" have so interbred with the darker brown Dravidians that even in the highest castes you can find plenty of melanin today. As Raymond Firth once put it, wherever two populations meet, they may or may not bleed, but they will most certainly breed.
Paul SB
Lena,
" they may or may not bleed, but they will most certainly breed."
So James T(omcat) Kirk's ACTUAL mission was to unite the Federation through...
Yeeah, that tracks.
Pappenheimer
Shoot, that should have been to "PSB".
Must mind my manners.
Pappenheimer
LH the Free Speech Absolutists are cult fanatics who happen to be mostly-right in practice, but their rationalization is mystical and pseudo-religious. By extolling Free Speech as a glorious and paramount moral absolute, they both serve our vital enlightenment experiment ... and walk it into a trap. Let me explain:
The trap: by basing Free Speech on a moral absolute, they can be confronted and easily counteres by tyrants and supporters of tyrannical regimes (99% of the human past and a majority of present day cultural traditions) by using our own values against us! Answering with: "That's YOUR moral absolute! We non-westerners have OUR OWN CULTURAL NORMS! Like reverence toward traditional authorities and rituals. They are equal to any others in value! How dare you try to impose yours upon us!"
Thus cornered by their own standards, liberals have no effective response. Enemies of enlightenment values can use one of our values (tolerance of diversity) to cancel another (free speech). And I've seen it work.
My own defense of Free Speech is entirely different! It is pragmatic. Humans are delusional. The sole antidote to delusion that's ever been discovered has been reciprocal criticism, followed by recourse to evidence. 6000 years of history shows that leaders try to repress criticism and cling to their delusions, resulting in extremely and unambiguously negative outcomes, including the horrific litany of errors and calamities called 'history.' ONLY after creating arenas where criticism can flow about vigorously - even at elites - did a civilization arise that's capable of more than feudal lobotomy.
And reciprocal criticism can only be got flowing if Free Speech IS defended passionately, AS IF it were an absolute moral fundamental. Only such passionate defense can protect the flow of reciprocal criticism from mighty forces reflexively grunting to repress it.
SO do I come full circle to Free Speech Absolutism? Almost but then... not. Because my aim is for us to be empowered to DISPROVE falsehoods and delusions! An asshole of a fool should be free to speak, sure, but ideally in arenas where their assholery and foolishness can be competitively revealed, so that free people can decide to ignore the yapping yammerers and move on. Free Speech Defenders who ignore that vital aspect... who help spread the idiotic notion of EQAL VALUE of speech... are little more than cult fanatics touting an absolute value that will destroy the only culture that ever engendered free speech.
And don't for a moment think the oligarchs waging war against us don't know this...
---
which bring us to today's four-second skim-scan I gave poor locum, who comes here to throw-up (both meanings) his masturbatory delusions onto our wall. I might have taken the time to answer... were even one of his strawmen even remotely related to anything that any of us here has ever said or believed.
Hey goombah. You WISH your opponents were like that. If they were, I'd oppose some of that shit, too!
Alas, all you do is rave. And worse, frantically incurious as to what your opponents ACTUALLY believe. Which - as I;ve said - is simply and demonstrably insane.
PSB most attempts at social 'science' are - alas - tendentious, aimed at supporting a sanctimonious pre-position. The Mad Right hurls at ALL universities and education and educated castes an accusation that is largely true in many sofr-studies departments...
... that they have been suborned by post-modernist sanctimony cults and circle-jerks of hostility toward the one culture that engendered them and will never put them up against a wall.
Okay then. Yes, the FAR left CONTAINS fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.
But today’s mad ENTIRE right CONSISTS of fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.
There is all the world’s difference between FAR and ENTIRE. As there is between CONTAINS and CONSISTS.
AFR they give me tickets every year. I have to sing for them. But....
Fair enough. They'd only give me tickets to keep me from singing... :)
In 1980s Sudan, I heard the claim that Northern Sudanese used the n-word for Southern Sudanese.
Dr. Brin,
Tendentiousness is the stereotype that people in the "hard" sciences have of "soft" sciences, and the phallic imagery is appropriate. Certainly some individuals within any given field are guided by their presuppositions, but this is basically true of all humans everywhere. Yes, even in the erect sciences. With physics and chemistry it might appear to be easier to maintain some emotional detachment from the subject matter, but even there we have seen how the science can become a battleground between ideologies and pre-supposed notions (Fred Hoyle vs Al Einstein, for instance). Actual objectivity is simply not something you humans can do. Responsible scientists in all fields try their best. One of the points of the peer review process is to subject scientific works to scrutiny by a plurality of people who understand your methods and basis in theory. It's not a perfect system, but it's far better than non-sciences, where biases are never even examined or acknowledged. When I was a student, way back at the beginning of the Holocene, it was made clear that especially tendentious people were unlikely to last for very long, though I'm getting the impression that this has been changing at least since Newt's famous 1990 memo to House Republicans open the floodgates of witless extremism.
That said, you would be justified in projecting that claim back a century or more with some of the flaccid sciences. I had a roommate who was a psychology student when I was an undergrad, and he explained to me that in actual practice, psychological treatments are no more successful than chance. Go out a standard deviation in one direction, you get better, the other direction you get worse, while between there's no measurable effect. I would hope now that we have better technology for studying brains that this situation will have improved, but I can't say I have any up-to-date knowledge there.
When I took Psych 101, it was pretty clear where the problem lay. While they followed scientific procedures, their interpretations of their resulting data mostly came from analogical rather than strictly logical reasoning. Since the human mind operates off of schema, this should be no surprise, but if we're engaged in science, we should be making some efforts to control for these issues. I have read more than enough recent books that address such things to know that economics and poly sci are no better. Like stock brokers, economists' and political scientists' predictions are no better than the null hypothesis, too. From what I have read, sociology is a place where you're likely to find a lot of unexamined assumptions (lefty assumptions especially), but not being trained in that field, I can only suspect. Others, like criminology, comparative law, or comparative religion? It's easy to imagine how any individual researcher's cultural and social background will lead them to draw conclusions that make sense given their assumptions but fall apart if their assumptions are wrong.
I am trained in anthropology, and have seen some tendentiousness in the field, especially in fights between old-school infrastructural determinists and postmodern deconstructionists. That said, anthropology is a field in which examining your own biases isn considered not only a goal but a standard. Schematic thinking and the channeling caused by culture makes it a sort of sisyphian standard, but it's better to make an honest effort than to shrug our collective shoulders and pretend it isn't an issue, the standard procedure in the erect sciences, where the McNamara Fallacy rules the roost.
As to the relative proportions of insanity among America's left and right: you're preaching to a member of the choir. I don't get into nearly as many arguments with loony lefties as I do with right-wing Nazis, not even close.
Paul SB
I’ve watched several videos on nonwhite nationalist Vivek: he’s a certifiable nut that Perot would’ve been proud of.
Paul it's not JUST that the hard sciences teach "I might be wrong" and the productive power of reciprocal criticism and rivalry.
It's also how you gain POWER in these fields. In science, you publish but more important, you visibly stand and take firehoses of criticism. Until it becomes a joy, a habit. ALL the elderly scientists I've known become shit disturbers in old age, instead of the carricature paradigm defenders. ALL of them.
In soft studies, you gain power by taking over the hiring process in your department, blackballing anyone with deviant positions or ideas, and citing each other endlessly while attacking strawman exaggerations of vile euro-westernism.
I exaggerate... not an iota. I have seen it happen is so many places. Monstrously dumb and uncreative jerks mutually conspire in exactly that way, while concocting and mimicking each others' polysyllabic incantations to 'publish.'
In a sense I just decribed also the 'intelligencia' of the right, as well. And faux polysyllabic delusionals like poor locum. The difference is that while roughly equal in size, and both are devoted to attaking standard liberalism, the incantation masturbators of the left are cauterized and self-neutered. They rave and rave and think they are heroes and righteousness... and only hurt the causes they claim to espouse. They are ignored by almost everyone else on campus and beyond.
The 'intelligencia' of the right is replaced, often, by the oligarch masters, as the neo-cons who helped Bush-Cheney were flushed awa without thanks when they became inconvenient. Leaving toadies like GF Will to writhe and suck desperately to stay positioned.
Dr. Brin: citing each other endlessly ... and mimicking each others' polysyllabic incantations to 'publish.'
I choke back similar words whenever I'm told to stay the hell out of the(ir) kitchen. The anthropologist I knew best was my uncle (George F. MacDonald not Will). He was expert at three things: listening, writing, and laughing. He was always happiest doing field work, only briefly returning home to collect awards and honours, then out he'd go again. The family's penultimate black sheep. Tolstoy was right; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
PSB,
"Actual objectivity is simply not something you humans can do."
I agree, but should we infer something about your own species membership from this sentence? I've been assuming you are at least among the hominids...
Re: sociology - I remember an SF writer pointing out how assiduously most sociologists don't mention Marx. The author in question wrote a novel or two about a secret society with a bit of a superhuman edge, allowing them to influence human events slightly - and riven by faction over what methods to use and what aims to promote.
When I hear the words "direct action", I flash to the methods used by ultranationalists in Japan to seize and expand power - intimidation, murder, disobeying direct orders in order to spark outside conflict. "They" are better at this than "we" are, because "we" tend to think about the consequences, and perhaps the ethics. If you fight fire with fire, doesn't everything just end up on fire?
Pappenheimer
If loc were to say “I’m somewhat religious/spiritual, and wish to retain certain traditions”, I’d find such acceptable.
But instead he, for starters, won’t even reveal his name (as is the case with ‘dirtnapninja’), which is a red flag.
Because right off the bat you know they’re hiding something. But I almost grasp what it is loc is saying.
In countless discussions in churches,
a theme always emerged: the old times were better; when people knew their Place and didn’t become uppity. When prayer was allowed in schools.
You knew who you were then
girls were girls and men were men
Mister we could use a man like
Herbert Hoover again...
@Alan Brooks,
When I was younger, my parents had a record album of snippets from All in the Family. The album opened with the theme song, played and sung by Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton, but it wasn't just the short version used on the show. It was the whole song.
Worth the price of the album was the sneer in the voice that O'Connor put into the the line towards the end:
Freaks (dramatic pause) were in a circus tent.
Those were the days.
Alan Brooks:
...the old times were better; when people knew their Place and didn’t become uppity
Also, I've mentioned this before, but since I'm rereading some C.S. Lewis it seems appropriate here. It's worth noting that as far back as 1946 (That Hideous Strength), Lewis was essentially complaining that old ladies like Mother Dimble knew how men and women were supposed to conduct their lives, but the young generation--these would have been people a little older than my parents--were losing their way with their newfangled ideas about irreligiosity and women in the workplace and pre-marital sex. Dave Sim used to complain about much the same thing, but in his telling, it wasn't until 1970 that society went off the rails.
It seems to me that not only does the older generation always complain about the next one, but it continues to be the same complaints.
Dr. Brin,
Well, I'm going to have to defer to your greater experience in the world of publish-or-perish academia. What I saw personally were anthro departments where the professors had wildly differing paradigm orientations. Somehow it was one of the PoMo professors who got to choose my essays for the Comps, and I had to sweat through that one in terror. Fortunately that one didn't end up on my thesis committee, but the people who were could hardly have been said to have been of a single mind on much of anything. And the couple conferences I've been to never went to the insanities I heard about, but people didn't pull punches. It was commonly joked that academic debates get so heated because the consequences are so low.
Paul SB
Larry,
"It seems to me that not only does the older generation always complain about the next one, but it continues to be the same complaints."
- Your observation is well supported by the ethnographic record. The same goes for other arena of stereotyping. In one of my lower div cultural classes, the professor read a page out of a travel guide that described an isolated village in a forest. The author described the people as lazy and not very bright, but friendly, good musicians, and enthusiastic athletes, among others. The professor asked the students to guess who the villagers were, and most concluded that it was an African American village somewhere in the Deep South. It turned out that the travel guide was for Quebec, and the author was an English-speaking Canadian, who obviously harbored the same stereotypes about French Canadians that American conservatives have for African Americans. We saw this same pattern, both between generations and ethnic groups, in nation after nation, and even in accounts of the very multi-ethnic Aztec Triple Alliance.
Paul SB
Pappenheimer,
"I agree, but should we infer something about your own species membership from this sentence? I've been assuming you are at least among the hominids... "
- Uh-oh, my secret's out!
In my classes, Marx certainly came up, and with loads of qualifiers. Marx had a lot of influential ideas, especially regarding the strength of structure vs. superstructure in social analysis. My professors were quite willing to acknowledge his contributions to theory, but derided his predictions for the future and his failure to account for demographics.
Regarding the fighting of fire with fire, I would agree with you for the most part, but I also knew a firefighter, who reminded us about the importance of back blazes.
Paul SB
PSB - anthro departments where the professors had wildly differing paradigm orientations.
I can believe that anthropology & archaeology are not wholly suborned. E.g. UCSD's Center for research in ANTHROPOGENY (HUMAN ORIGINS)
When I talkbout 'soft' I speak more of English, Lit, ethnic studies and increasingly history depts.
As for Marx, everything revolves around control over the tiny or large Means of Production. When everyone is poor and unproductive except food and a few tools, you get feudalism. When commerce flows between cities filled with merchants & producers, you get monarchy to keep trade going. When those cities create industries, you get bourgeoise revolutions. When those industries fill with ‘advanced’ educated proletariates, you get final stages. His descriptions were convincingly on target about his past and present. He got every aspect of the future wrong…
,,, till our current idiot oligarchs seem bent on reviving his scenarios.
Dr. Brin,
Even some of Marx's ideas about the past were a bit off. What he called "primitive communism"can be forgiven, though, because in his day there was no systematic practice of ethnography. The closest the world got to that was colonial agents who would ride with the navy, pull into port in places controlled by the Raj, set up a table on the pier, and pay the "natives" to tell them stuff about their "culture" - all for the purpose of better understanding said natives so they can govern them better. Maybe if Marx had lived in the 20th Century, after Boaz got the ball rolling, he might have drawn more useful conclusions.
I finished reading that book called "The End of Gender" a while back, and it paints a pretty grim picture of the state of our universities today. Judging by her experience, America's universities are beginning to approach what conservatives and every fascist regime have always claimed them to be.
Paul SB
Do I have to root for Mike Pence now?
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Jul17-4.html
Since being dumped by Fox News, Tucker Carlson has been looking around for something to do. He doesn't need the money since he is an heir to the Swanson frozen TV dinner fortune, but he misses the attention and power. One gig he found was going to Iowa, where the Family Leadership Summit was being held. He got the job of interviewing the six presidential candidates who dropped by.
The organizers were kind of hoping Carlson would say Jesus was his hero, but it was more "Vladimir Putin in my hero," despite the latter being a Godless Communist, which Republicans nominally hate. That came up when it was Mike Pence's turn in the barrel. Pence talked about his support for Ukraine, which Carlson opposes. Carlson tried to shut him up by saying the Volodomyr Zelenskyy (who is Jewish) was suppressing Christianity in Ukraine. Pence retorted that he has just come back from Ukraine and had spoken with the Christian leader there. According to Pence: "I asked the Christian leader in Kyiv if that was happening, and he assured me it was not. People were not being persecuted for their religious beliefs." Carlson tried to interrupt Pence but Pence fought back, saying: "The problem is you don't accept my answer. I just told you that I asked the religious leader in Kyiv if it was happening. You asked me if I raised the issue, and I did." It got worse from there, especially when Carlson said that the folks at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were just a bunch of tourists. Pence said: "Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way."
...
he misses the attention and power
And that's the money quote, right there.
Almost everyone on the planet now has a cell phone, and there are billions more mobile connections than people. That dooms the traditional form of fascism borne out of ignorance. Perhaps it gets us through the Great Filter too. If I could, I'd write a book called "The Transistorized Society".
scidata said...
"Almost everyone on the planet now has a cell phone, and there are billions more mobile connections than people. That dooms the traditional form of fascism borne out of ignorance."
I'm not so sure about that. Good information is orders of magnitude easier to access for the average person, very true and wonderful, but Bad information is also orders of magnitude easier to access too. Worse, every content provider uses software to identify what gets the most clicks out of a user and biases the information it returns to them based on that. It's like bias feedback loops run amok, leaving people stuck in a little bubble of ignorance even though they have the whole world at their fingertips. Teaching people how to critically evaluate information they find on the internet, to find multiple sources including from the "other side" (Predator 2 ohmage) and rooting out primary sources, is difficult. For too many people it simply takes too much time to do that and it goes against their ideological commitments.
We, the human race, have yet to adjust to the effects that the quantum leap in availability of information the internet affords has enabled. So far it seems to have merely amplified all the standard human behavioral habits, good and bad. Now you can rile up a fascist susceptible demographic in half the time with a fraction of the real world underlying hardships as initial motivation. Hopefully we get a better handle on it before too long.
Completely off topic - quote from Gen William Slim, commander in Burma 1942-1945:
(note - things were looking bad in 1942 in Burma for the British)
"So, I put the best face I could on it. I tried to look cheerful, and said, “Well, gentlemen, it might be worse.” And one of those unspeakable fellows said, “How?” The only thing I could think of saying was, “Well, it might be raining,” and in two hours it was."
I am somehow reminded of Gene Wilder...
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer:
I am somehow reminded of Gene Wilder...
I was gonna say. :)
(Though the line was Marty Feldman's)
Teaching people how to critically evaluate information they find on the internet, to find multiple sources including from the "other side" (Predator 2 ohmage) and rooting out primary sources, is difficult.
Ayup. If I had a dollar for every school report I've received with "Google" listed as a source…
Worse, I've been at professional development sessions mandated by school administration where the presenter's reference was "Twitter". When someone who is supposed to be teaching teachers how to teach does that level of research… ("It was correct, so [she] didn't see the need to check it further.")
Paul Simon knew where it was at when he wrote: "A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest."
We've been here before.
We've faced great amplifications of available information both good and bad. More than once.
It's always traumatic, but we've muddled through.
Alfred Differ: great amplifications of available information both good and bad
Long term, only the good (factual) survives. Positive sum.
Yeah, it's happened before, and we'll muddle through. More generally periods of rapid change of some sort have been as regular as a metronome throughout human history. And they always result in turmoil, opportunities for both great failure and great advancement. The faster and more widespread the change, the more tumultuous the turmoil, the greater the possible failures and the greater the possible advancements.
scidata:
Long term, only the good (factual) survives.
Must often, on a battlefield.
Gifted link. No paywall.
https://www.nytimes.com/.../rfk-jr-remarks-covid.html...
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2023%2F07%2F15%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Frfk-jr-remarks-covid.html%3Funlocked_article_code%3D6VKJRdQS7hwaRux_B9QeWDVb9pTl-E_Bb1bIWF2dTUCbdvo9fUVfvWY9iFx4AYijoRwtz5zYeq8OPVsxTMMJXxRY-vaROfCSMCMGJlQxDsqCEw9KXK8iqGYwkIm02DyO2kPgKWbC5Z9-tVJXc7AtLdgSv01t6B9aPm0ZkoS55beWr_0KlQY_A5JDIzKVFAcHMFHOAHhFB7T09XwJo11SSDFlby0lNuxjkng2xux3qUiIh6cZ2p3Kgd0hQaSRYCalRQazArQXJyjWH4NICxykH_QiWpxRNU0KOzHE77vdO1Fk4yS8WpDfulnQmxigmUOQGC54yhL5LjfI7I79m_xJ61Ah%26smid%3Durl-share%26fbclid%3DIwAR2yer28QH0Mr3oZvsvj_M78qGeZmXz8DgoWJZDvfpn8UFu089xev2Icfbs&h=AT2jYs3Jse1gPwC3w9ywQFRklEOHYzgT-QXc3wbNmOU0kSTWc9EBP43KXFIkZ8wQCpqZ-JNY51zlPY7QmGbZ_orQpfz-bFH-2BlM61DV0PXKwwymWySl7C-5JoQrU2mJTGeY2w&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT35LBwnzbMaR8qCYJnmNh8KZK6vZJEfeauxeyyKc3LEvDz4nwww33nmrJhaDSnevqDA3LlOaME0R_iXWTF5qTZIAVwvGWw1vTAvuFXN6Nc9i0vTNGIHNEUqL_2ppLO1Vbo_oiZB97Bdz0iZkwFK0GUwGmVHIk2MijlRfKKR8m9m_Qqz4NM
RFK Junior's suggestion that the coronavirus pandemic "deliberately spared Chinese people and Jews of European descent strayed into new and bigoted territory." Ah but it may not be what it seems. Sure, he's a raving loony. He also knows he'll never get either party's nomination, nor affect any policies. So what's the goal? First assume RFKJ is just a chaos agent, one of scores who are blackmail-controlled by the oligarchy, getting desperate now that the IRS is funded and the GOP is in demographic collapse. They failed to wreck the economy and with climate 'change' turning into Roasting, they really need to shatter the Democratic/Union coalition, lest 2024 become our Gettysburg in Phase 8 of the US Civil War.
There'll be many maneuvers and shocks. And we already see standard methods in play, like the 'No-Labels' effort to repeat the splitter magic of Nader and Stein (may they rot in heck.) Clearly, RFKJ is a minor side effort to draw off conspiracy nuts... but in this case also to rouse black-jew suspicions. An alliance that's powerful, when it holds.
This will get worse, when the Oligarchs arrange for Trump to fail (likely in a Howard Beale scenario; God bless the Secret Service.) And then (you heard it here) when the GOP ticket becomes Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
Dr Brin:
and then (you heard it here) when the GOP ticket becomes Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
I can't imagine a state those two would carry in the general election.
And, did RFK Jr forget he was speaking in New York, for gosh sakes?
Republicans are dead to me, as I don't see us getting their votes. The ones I detest at the moment are the Democrats and liberals who just can't wrap their heads around another Biden term, and are looking for any off-ramp to vote for someone else.
Derision from the left toward the Biden presidency sounds an awful lot like this:
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public 'ealth, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Larry,
It IS still 2023. Let them ask about Biden options. There is plenty of time.
Darrell E,
I don't know about 'metronome'. Most of the rapid changes have come in the last three centuries. Most of them have to do with the fact that we all wield a great deal more capital than our ancestors could have dreamed would be in our reach. Such power was the stuff of gods.
A few phase changes occurred in the deeper past like our move toward agriculture and away from nomadic hunter-gathering. Everything after 1700(ish), however, is a direct result of the common people seeing huge improvements on their real incomes. Doubling and tripling at first, but now up world wide by at least 16X.
A failed bit of poetic license trying to evoke the truism that the only constant in life is change.
Things will change a year from now, at the national conventions. But prepare yourselves for the outcome not being what you want—when have things ever been the way we wanted?
Long term, only the good (factual) survives.
Yes, good info survives.
But bad info multiplies and mutates. :(
Alan Brooks:
when have things ever been the way we wanted?
Well, there was the time I stopped being an incel. :)
And the whole Obama election.
But yeah, exceptions, meet rules.
Biden's just this guy who's good at his job and doesn't cause messes. So there's nothing to cheer about, I guess, and he's an old. He's got my vote, but I'm a blue stater.
Hoping that chrysophobia will be enough.
Pappenheimer
Yesterday's high temp in Death Valley = 128F (53C!!!)
Daily avg CO2 at Mauna Loa = 421.99PPM
Avg ocean pH = 8.1
We liberal/Chinese hoaxers are certainly cunning
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer:
Biden's just this guy who's good at his job and doesn't cause messes. So there's nothing to cheer about, I guess, and he's an old.
The lunatics on my side seem to think that he's useless because he hasn't solved every problem all at once. Sure he keeps doing good work, but in series, not parallel!
They seem to forget that every other potential Democratic candidate in 2020 would have lost to Trump. And what good does that do anyone. Biden was able to get enough conservative-but-not-Trumpist voters precisely because he was the only Democratic candidate who the didn't fear and loathe.
That hasn't changed.
In the meantime, every element they try to use against him--the supply chain, Hunter's laptop, lumber prices, gas prices, eggs, inflation--fizzles out and gets better. Candidate Biden didn't excite me in 2020 either, but you know what? He won me over. I mean, what hasn't the man accomplished?
He's got my vote, but I'm a blue stater.
It'll help beat Trump in the popular vote.
Heh. In 2008, my dad was still alive, albeit a crotchety old man in a nursing home. My mom, bless her, had to help him vote, and she apologized to my brother and me for my dad voting McCain/Palin. It was probably the only political opinion I've ever heard her express.
Anyway, I assume everyone remembers that Obama rose to political prominence here in Illinois. I told Mom not to worry, that Dad's vote wasn't going to flip the state.
I was pessimistic enough to not believe Obama really pulled off a win. Not until they called Pennsylvania (after already calling Virginia and North-effing-Carolina). There was magic in the air that night.
Pappenheimer, Biden+Pelosi passed more and better legislation in 2 years than Obama achieved in eight.
“He's got my vote, but I'm a blue stater.” -- Then get involved nationally.
Huh. Can't have a Tim Scott + Nikki Haley ticket. Both from S. Carolina. But either one would let the oligarchy try for a clean slate after they HowardBeale you-know-who...
Dr Brin:
Tim Scott + Nikki Haley ticket...
You really see that as a winning ticket for Republicans? I think too many Republican voters would refuse to vote for a black man against a white one. And a veep who besides being female is not an evangelical Christianist?
I don't see the threat.
Both from S. Carolina.
That's only worth 9 electoral votes. If the ticket was really such a winner for them, they could afford to lose the one state. Plus, IIRC, the electors from South Carolina would only be required to vote for an out-of-stater for one of the two offices (president and vice-president). It wouldn't stop them for voting Republican for the top of the ticket.
Or they could pull a Cheney and have Haley move to a different state. Their voters probably already think she's an immigrant from Indiana, or at least would believe that. :)
Dr. Brin,
The mass of Republican political consultants would commit seppuku with corn dogs before they put a black man and an Asian woman on the ballot together. They know their target audience is all in on fear of replacement, and that shoves replacement right in the MAGA face.
Pappenheimer
Re: getting involved...haven't ever done so before, but at the least I plan to write postcards to OH voters, which is like showing up at four alarm fire with a squirt gun. I have a few roots left in that rust belt train wreck I knew and loved, but it's likely gone red for at least 10 years.
Some good news. Last year was Canada's 3rd best ever for grain production - not bad coming out of the pandemic. We should also be good for smoked ham [bah-dum-tish].
Darrell E,
That's a wonderful phrase in so many ways... one of them being that it is a NEW truism and few know it.
On top of that, change isn't a constant. It is changing. The second derivative is positive. So is the third and fourth.
------
Heh. I get what you are implying, though. These are fantastic times.
Pappenheimer you are wrong about the emotional drives of most (not all) Republicans. Most do not believe they are racists. Wrongly, but their self-image matters. They leap to pour love on black and others who have 'come over to the light.'
It's nerds they are being trained to hate.
Dr. Brin,
I won't argue about who gets hated most, but from what I understand presidential races are won at the margins. Even if fewer GQPers are racist than I think (and most would, I agree, deny being racist), Republicans won't be able to win without the openly, proudly racist subset, and I have a hard time imagining many figureheads enthusiastically campaigning for a black/asian female GQP candidate list.
Re: nerds, I've lived in TX and was better accepted as a white nerd than a black anything would be - because I never met any black people in those sets. The one black USAF member who tried to join our local SCA group dropped out quickly, and I found out later that local members had been openly bigoted in his face. But maybe times have changed.
Pappenheimer
Dr. Brin,
While it may be true that Republicans no longer find it politically convenient to talk like Archie Bunker in public anymore, they are still scapegoating the same people they have always scapegoated. They won't come out and say, "I hate _________!" They say, "Look at that ________ over there! That one's a ________, a _________, and a __________. All __________s are EXACTLY like that one! We're not bigots, they are bad people!"
Scapegoating the nerds is nothing new. They've been doing that forever, too. It's all part of the Mussolini/Hitler playbook. Fascists always ridicule smart people because smart people can figure out what they're up to.
Have you ever experienced the pleasure of reading Hitler's prison rant? I found it quite fascinating that, in his efforts to scapegoat Jewish people, one of his claims was that they were all Marxists. Every fascist regime from Mussolini has always declared that all their opponents were commies. But what's even better was his claim that the Aryan people were all good, hard-working agricultural people, while the Jews were all lazy, city-dwelling parasites who wanted the government to give them money. Does that sound familiar? I was young when St. Ronald went around making up stories about welfare queens in every campaign speech, but I remember it quite well. Of course, every conservative out there screams about blacks and "Mexicans" being lazy welfare queens. Given the generation St. Reagan grew up in, it's not hard to see where he got the idea. Hitler beta tested it for him, with spectacular results.
PSB
Given the generation St. Reagan grew up in, it's not hard to see where he got the idea. Hitler beta tested it for him, with spectacular results.
A lot of Hitler's ideas were 'in the wind' over here as well, before he came to power. He wasn't much of an original thinker.
As a counter-factual speculation, I wonder if eugenics would have fallen from favour if the Nazis hadn't pushed it to extremes? I'm certain Harry Turtledove could write a decent novel set in a world where the Nazis aren't as extreme, so things like eugenics weren't rejected.
David said "This will get worse, when the Oligarchs arrange for Trump to fail (likely in a Howard Beale scenario; God bless the Secret Service.) And then (you heard it here) when the GOP ticket becomes Tim Scott and Nikki Haley."
While I'm in general agreement with David regarding the oligarchy and what it is trying to accomplish, I don't think this is correct. Yes, the next 18 months are going to be awful (in the US) with democracy up for grabs, but Trump is the best chaos agent imaginable. No one else comes close.
A more likely scenario: It's Biden versus Trump in 2024 and we stare down the barrel of Trump winning the electoral college with 43% of the popular vote due to third party factors.
"No Labels" is the Lord Dorwin of American politics. Emphasis mine.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Jul18-1.html
Yesterday, as expected, No Labels unveiled its "platform." When we wrote about the planned platform on Monday, we were skeptical that the document would be meaningful, since it's rather hard to say what your candidate(s) stand(s) for before you have actually, you know, chosen your candidate(s). And indeed, the platform is an exercise in empty verbiage that may sound impressive but that means nothing.
Thanks to the fact that pages 1 and 2 are pictures/chapter headings, the No Labels folks manage to make it all the way to the top of page 3 before making clear that you cannot take them seriously. Here's what the first actual words of the document are:
+ Most Americans are decent, caring, reasonable, and patriotic people.
+ But we do not see those traits reflected in our politics today.
+ Instead, we see our two major political parties dominated by angry and extremist voices driven by ideology and identity politics rather than what's best for our country.
...
No Labels will certainly be able to marshal free A.I. mimicry to write most of their Dorwin-speak. On the weekend, Christie warned the GQP that sneaky 3rd party campaigns often backfire. As their Great Savior gets frog-marched around while JB does his sweet old grandpa shuffle, he may be right.
I might prefer a "Roosevelt MK 3" over Biden, but I have relatives who might be in peril if "Death's Anus" or "Drumph!" wins. Bear in mind that what Biden does is constrained by Congress, given large enough Congressional majorities, we all might be pleasantly surprised.
scidata:
On the weekend, Christie warned the GQP that sneaky 3rd party campaigns often backfire.
Say no more.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/07/17/marjorie-taylor-greene-biden-speech-highlights-medicare-medicaid/70418859007/
Far-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene might have accidentally realized Joe Biden is a good president.
The predominantly ludicrous lawmaker from Georgia did Biden an unexpected – and surely unplanned – solid this weekend in a speech at the conservative Turning Point Action conference in Florida, telling Republicans the Democratic president is fiendishly attempting to make people’s lives better.
She compared Biden’s "Build Back Better" plan to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s "Great Society," an array of programs from the mid-1960s aimed at combating poverty in America. Those programs included Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Now, I’m just a humble newspaper columnist, but it strikes me as a curious political strategy to compare the legislation of a president you despise and want to impeach with some of the most broadly popular legislation in American history.
Greetings Brinians, I come in Peace.
I feel obligated to lead with that because most of my infrequent sorties here begin with "great to see you around, Tacitus" and devolve rapidly when I dare to introduce...contrary ideas.
But what the heck. Most of you seem very ideologically dug in but I know there are thoughtful people here.
A recurring theme of late has been that conservatives lack confidence in the elements of government that Enforce. FBI, IRS, Justice Department. I can't argue that trust has been lost. You can find plenty of stats, here's a tidbit:
"According to a new poll by Harvard CAPS-Harris, 70% of respondents (note, ALL respondents) said that they were either very or somewhat concerned about interference by the FBI and other intelligence agencies in elections."
Ironically Democrats now trust "the Man" at higher levels than Republicans.
Is this lack of trust warranted?
Let's take a snapshot view of one small matter. I actually would like your opinions on it.
A bag of coke is found in the White House. I suspect it was left by a staffer not a member of the First Family. We are being asked to believe that somebody careless enough to leave drugs in a secure area was savvy enough to wipe any fingerprints off a bag that is darn near the ideal substance for latent prints. Alternatively that there were no cameras showing somebody wearing gloves for no damn reason.
Closing the inquiry without conducting any interviews, wafting palms heavenward and saying "We'll just never know"....
Do you buy this?
Do you/should you trust a system that appears either grossly incompetent or shamelessly compromised?
Couldn't they anybody to take the rap, resign in tears from their staff job in order to work out their personal problems......
Perhaps you see things differently.
Tacitus
@Tacitus,
My understanding is that the cocaine was found in an area where visitors typically wait, and that the coke might not have even been left by a staffer, let alone Joe or Hunter Biden.
And that the Bidens weren't even in residence on the day in question.
You seem to me to be engaging in a FOX specialty--noting that a big nothingburger is in fact not being treated as a newsworthy story, and concluding that it is therefore the target of a massive cover-up.
The left has been historically suspicious of the FBI and DOJ because those institutions were often used to target and harass political opponents of the status quo. Think J. Edgar Hoover or Nixon. The right now claims the same sort of persecution against them, but what they really seem to be upset about is something like, "The cops are biased against criminals." The right wants to break laws with impunity, and while they love to use law-enforcement as a club against blacks and immigrants and social justice advocates, they are outraged that their own crimes can be noticed, let alone prosecuted.
Larry
The changing story of exactly where the drugs were found does not inspire confidence. And confidence is what this discussion is actually about.
Relying entirely on Approved Media (NBC, Reuters, etc) the baggie was found in an area of the West Wing where cell phones were checked. This is not where standard White House tours amble through, that's the East Wing. If you are in the West Wing you have hopefully been cleared to be there.
But to my main point....do you consider it believable that a plastic bag would not have fingerprints on it? Seriously, it seems ridiculous that anybody so careless (and I still say staffer, but whatevs) would be dumb enough to lose career ending/scandal causing stuff...but careful enough to wipe it clean. We've seen other hard drives, cell phones etc that have similarly defied analysis in times recent. Does this inspire confidence?
Tacitus
Tacitus, what you see in the (Formerly) GOP mystifies me. Recently the party has had a knack for telling us what they're against, can they also explain what they're for? The support of "The Former Guy" reminds me of another organization that had the misfortune of his presence, the USFL, you should worry.
Tim H
How are you inferring support for the GOP from my post? Ye gads not everything is a Red v Blue cage match.
I'm commenting on a broad based, cross ideology lack of confidence in the system, pointing to one small news item and asking, so far without answer, if you think this was a competent bit of work by people we should implicitly trust?
Tacitus
Tacitus:
But to my main point....do you consider it believable that a plastic bag would not have fingerprints on it? Seriously, it seems ridiculous that anybody so careless (and I still say staffer, but whatevs) would be dumb enough to lose career ending/scandal causing stuff...but careful enough to wipe it clean. We've seen other hard drives, cell phones etc that have similarly defied analysis in times recent.
Does this inspire confidence?
That suggests to me that it was planted to embarrass the White House.
I'm guessing that you infer that the bag wasn't wiped clean, but that the investigators are covering that up. Fair enough. I will only point to the fact that, despite FOXite rhetoric, the FBI has historically favored the party of Law and Order, not the dirty hippies, feminists, and socialists.
Larry
Also fair enough. I consider that a possible but low probability explanation.
Whether the FBI in its current iteration is as of old is indeed a matter for discussion.
Tacitus
Tacitus:
How are you inferring support for the GOP from my post?
...
so far without answer,...
Maybe because the gist of your accusation is colored by the expectations of the reader. For example, I did not immediately divine that your implication was that there were indeed fingerprints which the FBI might be covering up. On my initial reading of your post, my thought was, "If they were clever enough not to leave fingerprints, the whole thing is probably a set-up."
It's like the Tommy Tuberville thing. I could not figure out what he was trying to get at, even from his POV, when he insisted that "white nationalists" were simply "Americans". It took another article mentioning that Vivik Ramaswami called himself a "non-white nationalist" when I realized they were reducing the term to simply "nationalist who happens to be white", stripping it of all connotation of special privileges for white people. Once I realized that, then their sentences made sense (from a certain point of view), but because I don't share their presumptions, I did not get there immediately.
Tacitus:
Whether the FBI in its current iteration is as of old is indeed a matter for discussion.
Same with Chicago being a hotbed of election fraud. :)
But seriously, the New York bureau was anti-Clinton in 2016. You think the culture has really changed that much since then, even with a Trump appointee still in charge?
My thoughts are that implicitly trusting organizations, particularly law enforcement ones but really even in general, is not a good thing. I don't think it is smart pragmatically and I think it is detrimental for the organization. Particularly if you approve of the organization you should not implicitly trust it.
Similar for trusting in the competence of individuals within an organization. We should expect competence in the sense that it should be the standard, but we should not expect competence in the sense of uncritically accepting that all work is always done competently. Particularly in organizations like the Secret Service, evaluations should be routine.
In this particular case, I think it's probably too early to try and come to a conclusion. The only thing we know for sure is that we don't know much. Certainly not enough to warrant confidence in staking out a position on how competently the issue has been investigated. Also, I don't by any means automatically trust anything the Secret Service has said or done uncritically. Given what has been publicly available regarding the behavior of some SS personnel relating to the January 6 insurrection it would be particularly foolish.
Larry
Yes, red and blue don't always read the same words and come to the same conclusions. That's why I strongly advocate a varied diet of news. Has the world changed since 2016? I'd say the last 7 years have seen major changes. But that would be another and a longer discussion.
Darrell
Wrapping the investigation up so quickly seems like trying to reach a conclusion...and an early one at that. You seem undecided on the "Looks Competent" question I've posed. So far my unofficial tally is one vote for probable Republican trickery and one for unsure.
By the way I can see possibly valid reasons for a cover up that are non partisan. "Man, that foreign minister from Dogdungistan was a piece of work......."
T
Next year Trump might be the GOP’s vice presidential candidate.
Tacitus,
I agree. I can think of all sorts of "hush" or "coverup" scenarios ranging from rather benign to troubling.
Full disclosure, I just do not think that a bag of cocaine found in the White House is something for me to worry about, or even care about. Unless it happens to be Joe Biden snorting lines while on the job or an attempt at a frame job I don't think it's important.
Alan Brooks:
Next year Trump might be the GOP’s vice presidential candidate.
So he can be the one with the courage to reject electoral votes on Jan 6, 2029?
I doubt the FBI has changed significantly in 7 years, but its perception among the RW may well have.
To apply the words of a Trump voter complaining about Trump, they are hurting the wrong people, or in this instance there is suspicion they are protecting the wrong people? Or NOT protecting the right people?
The FBI carefully did not investigate the sexual assault allegations against now SC justice Kavanaugh, either. I don't think many people here were surprised to find that out. I personally did not trust them before; in Malay, I would say "sama-sama". The agency hasn't fallen far from the Hoover. They've always been far more political than their press releases claim.
Pappenheimer
Tacitus:
Has the world changed since 2016? I'd say the last 7 years have seen major changes.
Yes, the time since 2016 has degraded the word "unprecedented". But pretty much in the right wing authoritarian direction. The presidency (until 2021), the Senate (until 2019) and the supreme court (ongoing) have all shifted the Overton window in that same direction. In the area of law-enforcement, social justice has been marginalized and assaults on minorities have been normalized.
In that environment, it's a bit of a stretch to say that because the world has changed, it's likely that the FBI has become a tool of the liberals/Democrats.
Consider that the fact that it was Mike Pence who refused to illegally reject electoral votes which made the issue clear. If it had somehow been a Democratic VP in that situation (improbable as that scenario is), that VP would have been accused of acting in partisan self-interest, but since it was Pence, the assumption had to be that he was acting according to the law.
While you may well ask, "You liberals don't like anything else Mike Pence does, why do you trust him on this one thing?" But it's the fact that he's our ideological opponent which gives his action the street cred it would lack from someone we aligned with. That's likewise the sense in which we trust the FBI when they find fault with Trump or don't find it with Biden. Because their natural inclination, if they didn't feel constrained by reality, would be to do the opposite.
Larry
That's not actually the kind of change I was thinking of. How our society is different after seven years of immersion in the virtual world - with Covid lockdown being gas on the fire - is what I was pondering. To give one or two examples as referencing the FBI it must be both easier to pull a cloak over things and harder to know that people are not peeking under it from different angles. I'm also thinking the spectre of genuine deepfake material must worry them considerably.
But keep in mind I was only putting forward a simple question that spoke to how much we should be deferential to Authority based on their demonstrated transparency and competence.
T
Tacitus:
But keep in mind I was only putting forward a simple question that spoke to how much we should be deferential to Authority based on their demonstrated transparency and competence.
In regard to the supreme court, I'm right there with you.
If what little I've read of the issue is correct it is the Secret Service that investigated the cocaine affair, not the FBI.
Tacitus: A recurring theme of late has been that conservatives lack confidence in the elements of government that Enforce. FBI, IRS, Justice Department. I can't argue that trust has been lost.
If you were Indigenous, or poor, or Black, or non-heterosexual, or… there probably wasn't a lot of trust to lose.
If the January 6th 'tourists' had been black, protesting a Trump win, would the official response have been so slow and weak? I know that up here the protesters who occupied our capital were treated with more consideration by the police than counter-protesters. Indeed, Indigenous protesters were hauled off for setting up a single tent (no hot tub or bouncy castle in sight) only a few months previously.
I have a couple of friends who are former cops, and their opinion is that police forces have moved in an authoritarian direction — and it worries them.
Has the justice system really changed that much, or are formerly privileged groups now being subject to the same justice that many people are used to?
Darrell E. Noted. I chose a small, one off event rather than an expansive survey of FBI/Justice Dept activities.
Larry. Noted also. Although not the question I asked.
Robert....must everything be predicated on Critical Theory and relative power between groups?
But lets play fair. Do you feel the investigation - or some would say "investigation" - reached a well reasoned and plausible conclusion of "Heck, we have no idea!"?
If that's the best security you can provide in the West Wing of the White House I'd like somebody's letter of resignation on my desk.
I do agree that policing has become dysfunctional. The society they are charged with policing has become more so as well. Where do we determine causes and effects?
Trying to stick to my narrow and still largely unaddressed question...
Tacitus
Tacitus:
Trying to stick to my narrow and still largely unaddressed question...
I assume you mean this one?
But keep in mind I was only putting forward a simple question that spoke to how much we should be deferential to Authority based on their demonstrated transparency and competence.
Which you have to admit sounds like a rhetorical question, where the answer is "No, of course not, why would we trust anyone in a position of power?"
Ignoring that aspect, though, the meaning is still ambiguous. Do I take the word of any authority figure, especially if I perceive he's got an agenda other than telling the truth?" That's what your question sounds like to my ear, whether you meant that or not. And my answer is above.
But if the question instead is whether I give deference to experts on a subject (say vaccines) and take what they say as being good advice until I have cause to doubt, then I would also say "yes". Doing my own research from scratch on everything would be more costly than it's worth. I have to have some faith in people who know how things work honestly conveying expert advice. That faith isn't blind--it can easily be shattered once evidence to doubt presents itself.
As I'm not a reporter, I will take my mother's word that she loves me without checking it out.
Tacitus leads off with a ‘very concerned’ public opinion leading question poll?
Um, sir, How about we ask random Americans: “Do you think authority should be questioned?”
Given that most DEMOCRATS and liberals used to feel (and many still do) FBI was against THEM, what tf did you expect?
What a 'have you stopped beating your wife?" question
Ooh. The very moment Biden was elected, suddenly all the FBI g-men - like hyp-mo-tized zombies -got ‘weaponized’ and reversed course and became anti-decent-conservatives!
“A bag of coke is found in the White House.”
Wholly mother of … Are you also frenzied over the Hunter Laptop? HALF of the Trump and Bush White House staffs have published tell-alls about monstrous activities there. Barr and Kelly and even Bolton are saying that the Trump years were a morass of insanity, lies and treason. And THIS - a baggie in a visitor's lobby - is all you got, in response? Have you looked at Don T Jr’s eyes and sniffles every time he issues his latest rants?
Here is why the campaign against not just the FBI but the entire mass of civil servants, intel agencies and the US military officer corps– the heroes who won the Cold War AND the war on Terror -- is volcanic. Because not a single fac-using profession in the USA is NOT hated-on by the mad cult your party has become.
Go ahead. Science, teaching, journalism, medicine, law, defense… the meme is that getting an education IN ITSELF turns the thirty millions most-skilled Americans into demonic… what? Are you even able to parse it? “High IQ Stupid-people?”
Are YOU in the know?
How about the randomly-chosen hundreds of average citizens (most of them white retirees) who sit on grand juries across the nation? THEY take the time see the ACTUAL evidence, not Jesse Watters rants, asking detailed questions. And those citizens across the nation have indicted almost ONE HUNDRED TIMES as many high republicans as democrats, with commensurate convictions for everything from treason for Russia to mob activity to child predation and rape. To bribery and embezzlement.
YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE! Yet, you come to us with…. Anecdotes???
Dig it my friend. What would Putin, MBS, the casino mafiosi, inheritance brats, hedge cheats, drug lords and every other oligarch in the worldwide putsch WANT FROM YOU? They want us to weaken the IRS and FBI and CIA and above-all the professional classes. Sure, maybe there are bad ‘uns. Question authority! But have you ever asked :
“WHY is the oligarchy funding this campaign that of memes that I desperately suckle? A campaign that happens to cripple all the men and women who won the Cold War and the War on Terror?”
What you will never, ever do is the same thing that not one of the borderline-sane apologists for the were-elephant undead treason party will ever do…
…step up with wager stakes over anything. Any of the mountain of swill. Any of it, ever.
Let's make it simple. Name a turpitude from sexual predation, child abuse, domestic violence and murder to gambling, divorce, addiction... to net tax parasitism on the rest of the country. Now exclude Utah and Illinois.
Let's wager NOW whether red-run states score worse in almost every category. WHILE finger wagging and howling the diametric opposite.
Let's bet whether Republican administractions are EVER fiscally responsible or Democratic one ever AREN'T.
My friend, there are no levels and no ways in which you are not on the wrong side. And I bet you suspect it. It is why you clutch at such straws.
Can’t never tell with Trump.
I don’t think he’s going to run for the presidency again, or the vice presidency. But did any of us predict in 2015 that he would be elected potus the next year?
Dr. Brin: were-elephant undead treason party
A well-tuned word/phrase/sentence is worth a thousand pictures.
Dr Brin:
...Now exclude Utah and Illinois.
Let's wager NOW whether red-run states score worse in almost every category. WHILE finger wagging and howling the diametric opposite.
Exclude Illinois, why? Because of gerrymandering? Other than that, we've been run pretty well through the COVID years, a blue island in a Red Sea.
Alan Brooks:
But did any of us predict in 2015 that he would be elected potus the next year?
matthew did.
As did Michael Moore and Bill Maher.
A bag of coke was found in the White House.
And in related news, Texas has a whorehouse in it. Lord ha' mercy on our souls!
Robert....must everything be predicated on Critical Theory and relative power between groups?
What is Critical Theory?
In terms of relative power, I'm just pointing out that many groups have, for good reason, not trusted the justice system for quite some time. That conservatives have trusted it to me indicates that they have either been willfully blind to its shortcomings, or are OK with them as long as they personally are not affected. I mean, it's not like there haven't been well-publicized examples (and statistics) showing that justice is neither class nor colour blind.
Robert:
I call it "CJP", meaning Completely Justified Paranoia. Many groups do indeed suffer from CJP. To name three: African-Americans, Jews, and Russians. The CJ part of CJP makes treatment difficult.
RE: The bag of cocaine in the White House - the fact that it was in a heavily trafficked location makes it likely that it was brought in by someone unconnected to the White House. When there are slimy bastards like Project Veritas who will lie about anything to make the Democrats look bad, and the fanaticism that characterizes so many of the right-wing fascists in this country, it seems that we should be looking outside the White House. It sounds like a smear job to me.
PSB
Closing the inquiry without conducting any interviews, wafting palms heavenward and saying "We'll just never know"....
Do you buy this?
Yes. That's what you are supposed to do when you don't have the evidence to charge a crime that would pass a sniff test with a jury.
Sometimes you can know exactly who did what and still have a hard time convincing a jury. Sometimes prosecutors even know that before starting... especially when it looks like a set-up.
On top of that, I'm still libertarian enough not to care much about whose coke it was. I find it really hard to care about drug possession charges.
Pappenheimer,
The FBI carefully did not investigate the sexual assault allegations against now SC justice Kavanaugh, either.
They didn't because they weren't asked to do it.
They investigate nominees when the WH requests it. The scope of that investigation depends on the WH. The POINT of a requested investigation is to assist the WH from embarrassing itself with a flawed nominee.
Obviously that WH wasn't going to be embarrassed.
Robert said...
"What is Critical Theory?"
I'm thinking it's likely that you understood that comment, but just in case, it was an intentional insult.
Also a perfect example of how the "loonies on the left," as Dr. Brin likes to call them, give ammunition to those on the blinkered right. Probably doesn't matter though. The right also routinely makes up ammunition out of not a damn thing, so they don't really need anyone to give it to them.
Darrell, could you please unpack for me? I have no idea what Tacitus meant — that's why I asked. I'm not an American, so all I know of American politics comes from what I read in the news, hear from friends, and get sent to me by Republicans*.
I trust what I hear from friends, but it's only local and not representative of the country as a whole. And I assume that the Republican emails accurately represent what they think their supporters want to hear, so reflect the desires of 40-ish% of Americans.
*Because there are at least two Republican supporters who've signed up to their local politicians' mailing list, who don't realize that their email is not just their name (which is also mine) at gmail. One is an NRA supporter too. So I get regular emails, as well as communications from car dealers and a dental supplier. There's also a Democrat with my name, as I get emails from a Democratic politician. Those read remarkably like the ones from my local Conservative politician up here, while the Republican ones read like screeds from our crazy right-wing People's Party. Which is one reason I think the left (as the rest of the world knows it) doesn't exist in American politics — it's just right and further right.
From my (Working class) perspective much of what drives authoritarianism is a desire to not accept criticism from people they don't respect*, to me, this implies willful ignorance, with a splash of tolerating sociopathy. Not that I expect sociopathy in the service of economic advantage to entirely go away, but its practitioners need to own it. Not be like omnivores who refuse to acknowledge that they've consumed parts of creatures who once saw small slices of this world.
*Or it might also be devotees of Mammon not wishing to criticize fellow travelers.
This amused me:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/07/19/gosh-i-sure-hope-marjorie-taylor-greene-keeps-working-for-the-biden-campaign/
To borrow from JRRT, "Oft evil will doth evil mar".
"it's just right and further right."
That is not the correct conclusion from your set-up, Robert.
left-right is a lobotomizing metaphor. But if you mean wanting to tax oligarchy in order to pay for things that need doing for the nation, including incrementally expanding the safety net, then the USA DP of a moderate+some left coalition vs ever-crazier feudalist right.
But that's not it. Union vs Confederate is far more dangerous than that. See http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/03/looking-back-at-heinleins-future.html
@Tacitus,
I mean this as a friend. Your challenges often seem to be responded to with cautious suspicion, and I'm trying to explain why. As Dr Brin's power is contrarianism, mine is "translator droid". Obviously, I can't tell you what to do, but I can attempt to explain why the reaction differs from what you're attempting.
First of all, I don't get why you think that (with obvious exceptional outliers), we here agree with each other and you are the sole voice of opposition. I suppose it might feel that way, but it does no good to frame your appearances with the equivalent of, "I know you're all going to shout me down, but...". And then going "See, I knew it!" when anyone voices a difference of opinion. That hardly facilitates conversation.
As to the challenges itself, maybe this is just me remembering the outrage over Kathy Griffin's blood-dripping Trump head, but I see you continually offering challenges of this sort:
"There are plenty of nakedly partisan issues, but can we agree that this one thing (always something that casts liberals in a bad light) is so over the top that we should all condemn is regardless of politics?"
Then, when anyone disagrees that the particular example is not particularly more egregious than any other partisan squabble, you are made to feel that no, after all we can't ever transcend politics to agree on anything.
If I were in your place, I would reverse the process. Pick a particularly egregious incident that casts your side in a bad light and offer the admission that we should all agree to condemn it. Then find an equivalent infraction on the other side and see if the listeners can return the favor.
And if you can't come up with an equivalent infraction on the other side, isn't that a revelation in itself?
@Tim H,
The only issue I have with the Marjorie Taylor Green article you linked is this bit:
Biden is not a socialist, not even a Democrat Socialist.
When MTG says "Democrat Socialist", she doesn't mean "Social Democrat". She means to say that Biden is a Democrat, which (she says) is the same thing as a Socialist.
The writer of the article may have known that and was just busting balls, but I notice that sort of thing.
@Larry Hart, yes, pretty much. Biden may be the lesser of two evils, but less evil can be a good thing of its own. With MTG, I suspect there's also an element of tolerating injury to working class people to avoid unintentional good to the wrong people, thus turning small government principals on their head. Simplify! Don't worry if nice things happen to those you consider inferior, we're all part of the same economy.
@Tim H,
Biden is the "lesser of two evils" to non-Trump Republicans and to liberals who want every problem solved at once.
To me, and (I hope) to other reasonable Americans with a liberal bent, the Biden presidency has been nothing short of a godsend. I don't mean to deify the particular man--that's what the other side does--but in terms of direction and accomplishment. Well, I'll let Jesus say it for me:
Listen, surely I've exceeded
Expectations. Tried for three years.
Seems like thirty. Could you ask
As much from any other man?
Biden and Co did us a great service in saving us from another four yrs of Trump. What worried me most is that Trump might have started a war with Iran. Not saying he would have—but if anyone Could have, it would’ve been Trump.
At the bottom of this, Will reveals his wife is working for Tim Scott:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/14/trump-desantis-not-inevitable/
Robert said...
"Darrell, could you please unpack for me? I have no idea what Tacitus meant — that's why I asked. I'm not an American, so all I know of American politics comes from what I read in the news, hear from friends, and get sent to me by Republicans*."
Sure. The biggest hot button issue among Republican's these days, both the political machine and its supporters, is The Woke. The Woke are a "movement" on the far left of the US political spectrum. The term Woke used to be fairly benign, meaning something like "aware of injustices, particularly those stemming from racial, cultural and class differences." These days it has come to be a derogative label. As usual there is some good reason for that.
The more extreme among the woke readily forsake facts as necessary to support their ideological commitments, just like us liberals accuse (accurately) the Right in the US of doing. They also routinely resort to bully tactics, again, much like the Right in the US. Sort of a so "woke" that their brains have fallen out. Their behavior is great ammunition for folks on the Right. The more extreme among the Woke have become exactly the caricatures that the Right used to have to invent out of nothing.
Trying to keep this short, major issues among the Woke are transgender activism, antiracism and removing competency based metrics from evaluations of any kind, particularly in education. Though most of their stated primary goals are good things, as often happens within movements the Woke includes extremists that make the most noise and influence their moderates to support stupid and damaging positions. This both gives ammunition to the Republicans and causes discordance between them and liberals like me that fully support their primary stated goals, because they insist on denying reality in favor of ideology. Another trait they share with the Right is that they dismiss anyone that doesn't with very closely with their ideology as scum. The more extreme among the Woke would, no doubt at all, label me a transphobe, or perhaps a Nazi, for having written this.
What does all that have to do with Tacitus's comment to you? The ideology of The Woke is based on, has evolved from, Critical Theory (A Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School), which is a derivative of Post Modernism and a progenitor of Critical Race Theory, which is central to the Woke movement.
Tacitus was cleverly dismissing your perfectly decent, not in the least extreme, views as Woke ideology. He was dismissing you as either an extremist or a dupe towing the current far left party line without thought.
Darrell E:
<<
The term Woke used to be fairly benign, meaning something like "aware of injustices, particularly those stemming from racial, cultural and class differences."
>>
By that Woke 101 definition, MAGA is highly Woke. They merely disagree with the left-woke about the identity of the victim class.
To such splittism, I retort that Woke 102 teaches that the rich and privileged are aware that the system is rigged in their favor, so they defend their unjust privileges by encouraging their many victim classes to fight each other over crumbs.
Therefore identity politics is reactionary and oppressive, though it presents itself as progressive and liberatory. Actual progress towards actual liberation requires, instead, solidarity politics.
For the color that rules the world is not white, nor black, nor tan, nor blue, nor red. The color that rules the world is the Long Green, a.k.a. the Five-Letter-Word: M-O-N-E-Y.
99% to 1%: I like those odds.
(Larry explaining something to Tacitus)...
I don't get why you think that (with obvious exceptional outliers), we here agree with each other and you are the sole voice of opposition.
Ha! I snorted when I read that part. I can see why he might think it, but that would occur to anyone just skimming this place. Read deeper into any of the regular responders, though, and one sees that our general agreement is an old quilt with a lot of patches making the original design difficult to discern.
Tacitus,
You aren't the sole voice of opposition.
You aren't even the opposition.
Paradoctor,
I think your Woke 102 is fully included in my Woke 101. And it has been a common understanding among liberals since long before the term Woke came about.
I agree that the color that rules the world is the "Long Green."
Sorry for being dense but, I can't figure out what you mean with that last line. Odds of being wealthy VS not?
Actually, I'm not really sure I understand most of your comment. I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, though I suspect it. Your 3rd paragraph in particular could read either way. In more ways than one too.
Larry Hart 9:50 AM:
I like that Jesus quote, but it's new to me. Citation, please.
Paradoctor:
Citation, please.
Just in case you're not kidding, it's from Jesus's Soliloquy in Jesus Christ, Superstar.
(Which also became a lullaby I sang to my daughter when she was too young to understand the lyrics)
Woke 102 can legitimately be read as part of Woke 101, but they are distinct points, and 102 is often skipped.
I picked up the "99 to 1, I like those odds" line from a photo from the Occupy Wall Street days. Remember those? It was on a sign held by a smiling construction worker. The 99% and the 1% are indeed money classes, but nowadays I prefer to refer to the 99.99% and the 0.01%. 1% of 1% is called, by the 1% of 1%, a "basis point". The One Percent is made of mere dukes and earls; the Basis Point is made of kings and emperors.
I mean it about identity politics being reactionary and oppressive, and its moral and political inferiority to solidarity politics. Note, for instance, that the loudest identity-politicians are the white nationalists.
Part of the trouble with identity politics is that identity is an illusion, and attachment to illusion causes suffering.
Larry Hart:
I wasn't kidding, and I thank you.
Actually, I rarely kid when I kid. My sarcasm is a chasm almost as deep as the chasm between the Republicans and the Republic.
Paradoctor:
Note, for instance, that the loudest identity-politicians are the white nationalists.
White conservatives used to belittle identity politics, but they've gone to "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Their justification seems to be along the lines of, "We get to fight for our interests just like all those other groups do."
Which I would agree with except for one thing. Asserting one group's right to be treated equitably with others is not the same thing as asserting one group's right to maintain its special privilege. It's a different thing, in fact the opposite thing.
* Haven't used that one for a while!
Also self-abnegation: the fact that Confederate statues still exist, as well as schools and other buildings named after Confederates.
The South was hurt most during and after the Civil War; celebrating the Confederacy is also celebrating the war and Southern suffering involved. I submit that regional self-abnegation is part of it.
Paradoctor:
I wasn't kidding, and I thank you.
Because I was raised Jewish, I had very little concept of Christianity as a young child. I knew Christians believed that Jesus was the Son of God, but that was about it. At 10 years old, "Superstar" was my introduction to a more in-depth understanding of the religion.
That musical portrays a pretty secular version of Jesus. Unlike other works of fiction around that story, there are no miracles or supernatural powers presented. The play's Jesus is a pious man who believes in and talks to God, but it's not necessary to the plot that He believes the mythology. It's enough that he understands what God is requiring of Him and is (if grudgingly) determined to see it through.
As an outsider not raised in the mythology, that interpretation colors much of my take on Christianity to this day. It seems much more correct to me than does the vision presented by Evangelicals.
I said:
I knew Christians believed that Jesus was the Son of God,
Before I heard "Superstar", I actually would have said that Christians believed Jesus was the Son of their God. I had no idea that they believed in the same God that Jews do, or that the Old Testament was part of their Bible. I just took it for granted that every religion considered its own god to be God, and their own people to be the chosen.
Paradoctor,
Thanks.
Thanks for the explanation. I've never encountered Critical Theory before (but then I haven't studied poli-sci or much philosophy. Still trying to work my way through Marcus Aurelius.) I'm getting a 404 error for that link, though wikipedia has an explanation.
He was dismissing you as either an extremist or a dupe towing the current far left party line without thought.
Which is amusing, as I've been voting Liberal for years. (Canada's centre-right party, by our political spectrum. A bit left of your Democratic party according to the political compass website, although there is considerable overlap.)
I would like to vote NDP, but that would split the non-Conservative vote and help a Conservative get elected, so I vote Liberal.
Asserting one group's right to be treated equitably with others is not the same thing as asserting one group's right to maintain its special privilege. It's a different thing, in fact the opposite thing.
I am reminded of the Orthodox in de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, convinced they are being oppressed because the government won't let them oppress other sects…
Of all the parts that are hard to follow, many of them concocted later by the Greek-o-phile Paul, the one that's most puzzling to a modern mind is JC's refusal to perform miracles for the Sanhendrin in the Temple.
Dig it... the whole of the 4 gospels is about TESTIMONY ("testaments") to MIRACLES, bunches of them thus proving his divinity. That testimony was by biased witnesses, yet is supposed to be taken as sufficient proof. Proof, not just faith alone.
But... at a time of Life-of-Brian style frantic religo-millennialism, with messiah pretenders popping up everywhere, wasn't it the Sanhendrin's JOB to vett the claimants and determine which might be the real deal, before handing over keys to the Temple? Wasn't a demand for proof exactly and precisely what they were supposed to do?
I am puzzled not only by that question, but the followup question of why do we never seem to see that question (that I just posed) asked by theologians?
Robert:
I am reminded of the Orthodox in de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, convinced they are being oppressed because the government won't let them oppress other sects…
The more moderate of today's Christian Nationalists are like that.
The more extreme ones feel oppressed unless the government does the oppressing of other sects for them.
Dr Brin:
I am puzzled not only by that question, but the followup question of why do we never seem to see that question (that I just posed) asked by theologians?
My guess is they don't ask the question because they don't want to acknowledge the inevitable answer.
Dr. Brin:
You ask why Jesus did not perform miracles for the Sanhedrin, and also why theologians don't ask why. The explanation for the second is simple: namely, the question slips through the cracks. Unbelievers don't accept the terms of the question, and believers don't see the need for the question. You are an exception, because you are a writer.
I see a similar loophole in the response to mass shootings in churches. Why doesn't anyone blame them on the Devil? That sounds like the sort of thing that the Devil would do, right? The answer is that the secular left doesn't believe in the Devil, and the religious right doesn't believe in anything else.
Corrections to my preceding posts:
"My sarcasm is a chasm as abysmal as the chasm between the Republicans and the Republic." The Republicans and I aren't that deep, but we are that abysmal.
"The secular left doesn't believe in the Devil, and the religious right is in league with him." As for me, the Devil is just a metaphor, but I am an amateur poet, so I know that metaphors have power over the human mind.
Listen to Alfred when he (correctly) argues that Tacitus is not the opposition. Tacitus is literally your ally and he's trying to show you the way out of a vicious cycle of retaliation & retribution.
As an ascendent left embraces what it once despised & a disenfranchised right now distrusts what it once embraced, Tacitus offers up some hard-won wisdom about the authoritarian tendencies of big bureaucratic government, only to have his cautions fall on deaf ears.
It's an old parable, written large:
Bureaucracies seek to enforce their will with the only instrument in their possession (a metaphorical hammer) which then appears to transform every problem into a potential nail (wherein only the hammer matters and the intent & identity of the hammer swinger does not).
Of course, there are those who believe that the intent & identity of the hammer swinger are the ONLY THINGS that matters, but they are horribly misinformed because the putative nail will never forgive.
The only way out of this vicious cycle is to break the hammer.
Best
Dr. Brin:
It occurs to me that, to be fair, there is another reason for Jesus to refuse to do any miracles for the Sanhedrin. Namely: it was the Sanhedrin's job to test for Messiahs, but with the Romans breathing down their necks, it was not in their interest to find any.
Locumranch:
The left doesn't look all that ascendant to me, and the right doesn't look all that disenfranchised to me, in political terms. On the contrary, the right looks artificially strong, in terms of the hammer.
You ask why Jesus did not perform miracles for the Sanhedrin, and also why theologians don't ask why. The explanation for the second is simple: namely, the question slips through the cracks.
I recall asking that question when I was a child. The answers (from a parish priest) were that god doesn't do miracles on command, and providing proof interferes with faith.
I was too young to tell him that sounded like a load of dingo's kidneys, and I have no idea if that was actual theology or something he thought would sound plausible to make the child stop asking annoying questions.
Re: religion
How did this not start a new religion in LA county?
(cross-posting from a guest post on Scalzi:)
"Aleister Crowley’s Thelema religion also had a foothold. It attracted the likes of Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist before there was rocket science and one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who enjoyed its heavy emphasis on orgies and sex magic. Parsons hosted the Great Beast himself for a while in his home in Pasadena where Crowley made him a high priest.
In 1945 Parsons and a friend performed a ritual to summon the Thelemic goddess Babalon resulting in a book called Liber 49, an occult text he transcribed onto a series of slate tablets using… " SERIOUS NSF warning if you go further.
Please note that the "friend" in Paragraph 2 had the initials L R...
And I have just learned where one of the plot points in Anthony Boucher's "The Compleat Werewolf" came from...
Pappenheimer
P.S. To a general skeptic such as I try to be, there's an obvious reason Jesus did not raise a dead pigeon, multiply a fish sandwich, or step up onto a tub of water for the Sanhedrin....Low mana level. And no handy mana potions.
Re: Theologians
Christopher Hitchens used to address this a lot, with his usual kind ridicule. The vexation of true believers was quite poignant at times. Like the archbishop (IIRC) who was tormented by the fact that both good and evil folk seemed to die from the plague in equal numbers. Or the many parents who had to imagine their dead children (all too frequent in the 'good old days') alone and frightened in pergatory or eternal limbo. Quite heart-wrenching actually.
Robert:
I recall asking that question when I was a child. The answers (from a parish priest) were that god doesn't do miracles on command, and providing proof interferes with faith.
That is such a canard. It may be a virtue to keep faith with a proposition that you don't or can't have absolute proof of. But it's not the lack of proof that makes the faith significant. Jesus might not have turned loaves into fishes on command, but He did perform that miracle in front of the people who then spread the tale. Is the tellers' faith any less virtuous because they did see a demonstration of His power?
Or perhaps they were the ones who made the story up out of whole cloth, and it's their telling that we are supposed to have faith in without proof.
I have faith my wife loves me, even though I can't scientifically prove it. But if I caught her slipping a vial of polonium into my tea or constructing a guillotine on my side of the bed, I would understand that my previous faith had been misguided. I would not insist on maintaining the faith despite evidence of my lying eyes.
In the case Dr Brin mentions, it's not simply "I never saw Him do anything miraculous" that leads to doubt. It's the active refusal.
* * *
Y'know, the Christian backstory makes more sense (to this non-Christian) if instead of actually being the Son of God, the real-life Jesus was essentially an actor playing the part. Suppose that he and maybe a small cabal had decided that what the people really need to boost their morale at that time in history was to believe that God was on earth walking among them (disguised as Clark Kent, as it were). So the Nazarene plays the part in the part. Not actually being a supernatural being with powers, he can't truly perform miracles, but others can spread the story and, as we've discussed here, play up the virtue of having faith in the veracity of those stories. Meanwhile, Jesus's actual role is to say and do the things that a human man would be expected to say and do if he also happened to be God incarnate.
To make it work, he could never break character, even to the point of death. And if the effect of creating this belief in his countrymen was a worthwhile endeavor, then he is to be admired for having the fortitude to go through with it.
The text of the Soliloquy in Jesus Christ Superstar makes even more sense in this scenario, with the man knowing that he was not going to only be dead for a long weekend.
Paradoctor who are you, and what have you done with the Paradoctor who does NOT have brilliant insights like your first one this round?
Your second raises a point, but not a very solid one: ‘Not in the Sanhendrin’s interests’ to find… God?… Jesus, man. We’re talking about a chance to be direct priests of a living and actively intervening god. Sorry, they’d be REALLY interested.
LH I know for a fact that locumranch has read classics like Lest Darkness Fall. I doubt that’s his favorite scene.
Ironically, he must have got to the medicine cabinet. For his latest would actually be pretty good! Solidly argued! If (alas,) any of us here ascribed to the beliefs that he attributes to us. If we HAD, it would have been… urk… a cogent posting! Alas tho, he is still tendentiously delusional.
providing proof interferes with faith.” AIeeee. The four ‘testaments’ offer endless litanies of ‘proof,’ if you accept the standard that biased hearsay is proof.
‘Low mana level. And no handy mana potions.’
The previous night’s Passover seder should have supplied.
Dr. Brin:
I'm the same me. Your mileage may vary, that's all.
What was my brilliant first insight? Or was that one non-brilliant? I'm confused.
As for the Sanhedrin being reluctant to find God: as you said, they'd already seen plenty of prestidigitators. So how could they be completely sure? One thing they were completely sure of: if they gave the keys to the Temple to Jesus, then the very next day they'd be hanging on crosses. The Empire didn't mess around. The Sanhedrin's dilemma was: maybe God would forgive, but Rome would not.
This is an example of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracies: that bureaucracies are inevitably run by those who put the bureaucracy's interests ahead of its stated function.
Darrell E said...
What does all that have to do with Tacitus's comment to you? The ideology of The Woke is based on, has evolved from, Critical Theory (A Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School), which is a derivative of Post Modernism and a progenitor of Critical Race Theory, which is central to the Woke movement.
One correction: Critical Theory is not "a derivative of Post Modernism", but the other way around. Critical Theory as it started prior to WWII was very much rooted in the material world, as would be expected from its roots in Marxist thought. It was, like modernism, universalist, but also focused (in its being 'critical') on the ways that supposedly universal ideals failed to be realized.
Some derivatives of Critical Theory, such as Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory, follow this line. These focus on the way that supposedly "objective" or "universal" structures are malformed by power relations (such as those due to class and race).
Postmodernism could be considered a "derivative" of Critical Theory - although with a certain admixture of phenomenology and other things that largely foreign - and could be considered an alternate version of "the linguistic turn" in philosophy. Postmodernist thought retains the focus on 'criticism', but tends to be skeptical - if not hostile - to any universalist ideals. It also (as suggested by the 'linguistic turn') tends to focus much more an language (or 'text' - in the broadest sense) and less so on the material.
gregory byshenk,
Thanks for the correction and explanation, I appreciate it.
I don't know whether or not this counts as jiu-jitsu, but it's amusing.
(Will probably require a twitter account to access, these days. Durn Sanhedrin.)
Some derivatives of Critical Theory, such as Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory, follow this line. These focus on the way that supposedly "objective" or "universal" structures are malformed by power relations (such as those due to class and race).
Do you know of a good overview, more detailed than the wikipedia article but suitable for a Bear of Very Little Brain? Is Bronner's Very Short Introduction decent for an engineer who hasn't studied philosophy? I like the Oxford series, but sometimes they assume more base knowledge than I have and are heavy going.
https://www.amazon.ca/Critical-Theory-Very-Short-Introduction-dp-0190692677/dp/0190692677/
Something of interest, with likely relevance to the unusual interest in Critical Race Theory:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/07/20/trumps-attack-on-black-votes-was-there-the-whole-time-we-just-didnt-call-it-a-crime/
July 20, 1969. A day that dramatically shortened the darkness.
The left doesn't look all that ascendant to me, and the right doesn't look all that disenfranchised to me, in political terms. On the contrary, the right looks artificially strong, in terms of the hammer.
Paradoctor begins to understand the meaning of 'What goes up must come down'.
After being ascendent for 50+ years, the progressive left seeks to remove the political impediments to their bureaucratic powers by engaging in lawfare, perpetuating 'good' racism, criminalizing the political opposition, seizing control of the military, weaponizing the DOJ & intelligence agencies, undermining SCOTUS and maybe even eliminating the electoral college.
They remove these bureaucratic checks & balances to power in a desperate attempt to perpetuate their control for a tiny bit longer, when they should be weakening & undermining the bureaucratic machineries of power that will soon be used against them.
They are hubristic fools who confuse the bureaucratic hammer with their temporary control of said hammer, at the very moment that they will hand this hammer to the opposition.
Best
the progressive left seeks to remove the political impediments to their bureaucratic powers ...criminalizing the political opposition,
The Republicans are the ones who did that by...whatayacall...committing crimes.
Lcoumranch has it exactly backwards. 'Tis the raging Red party that has the hubris, that seeks unbalanced power, and has gone way up to inevitably come crashing down. Demographics have tended leftward for decades; polls show strong majorities for Blue legislative priorities; the Red party's dominance of House and Court is a result of gerrymandering and cheating.
The Red party is indeed giant, but it's giant like how a star turns red and giant soon after it runs out of fuel, and soon before it collapses. Will the Reds collapse to a white dwarf? That would be fitting; but it may instead become a black hole, at whose core all known laws are violated.
... at whose infinitely dense core all known laws are violated. That too would be fitting.
Paradoctor:
Will the Reds collapse to a white dwarf? That would be fitting;
Heh.
but it may instead become a black hole, ... at whose infinitely dense core all known laws are violated. That too would be fitting.
Ironically fitting, as being anything black would be like Hell to them.
To complete the stellar metaphor: when the Red party collapses, then if the stellar remnant is a black hole, then that of course would be Trump; if it's a white dwarf, then that would be DeSantis; and if it's a neutron star, then the highly-dense neutered one would be Pence.
Aw, geeze, I step away to do things in the Real World and everyone gets riled up.
David, you in particular seem agitated. I'll send you something via antiquated email to brighten your day. I'd post it generally but it is in my "uncloaked guise" and in these charged up times I manifest in that form with caution.
Per a comment way, way up the thread the possibility that the Secret Service is being snookered has to be considered. And not necessarily by those evil and evidently ubiquitous Republicans. No, Joe Biden has his enemies inside the party, and I could see one of them dropping a carefully wiped plastic bag. Hey, it reads like fiction but OGH writes same..
Tacitus
Tacitus:
No, Joe Biden has his enemies inside the party, and I could see one of them dropping a carefully wiped plastic bag.
RFK Jr?
I could see that.
Yes, Tacitus, I get that I 'seem' agitated. And well, I am - a bit - with the planet that my children need roasting in part because of a mad cult...
... a cult of cowards who preen macho then refuse to bet $$ over any of their assertions. Any at all.
Your scenario of someone trying to sabotage JoBee is a plausible movie plot. THough what 'enemies'? The political 'left'... those on the inside like Bernie, Liz and AOC (excluding nutters like Ilhan Oma) are all chastened by past splitter disasters and doing everything they can to help Biden... while speaking up for more. They were astonished and pleased by the 50% accomplishments of the Pelosi congress and know the only way to save America is to defeat the mad Confederacy, totally.
Are there way-left nutters? Are there JFK Jr imbeciles? Sure. And your desperate need to fantasize about them is just weird.
Dig it again. --- PASTE ---
Yes, the FAR left CONTAINS fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.
But today’s mad ENTIRE right CONSISTS of fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.
There is all the world’s difference between FAR and ENTIRE. As there is between CONTAINS and CONSISTS.
“ So how could they be completely sure?” Um by upping the ante? Water to wine under very controlled circumstances would be just a start. Raising the dead is a pretty big one. So’s lightning on command. It’s precisely BECAUSE of controlled conditions that he refused.
“ Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracies: that bureaucracies are inevitably run by those who put the bureaucracy's interests ahead of its stated function.”
I knew Jerry P. This one – like all cynical ‘iron laws’ is an observation of a drift bias and no law at all. George Marshall and Ernest King reamed out the useless bureaucrats during WWII and promoted vigorous achievers who established a tradition of critical review. Yes, by the time of Vietnam, many “Pournelle-style’ tendencies had drifted back… and the massive trauma of Vietnam caused the adults to reclaim control and they have, ever since.
Dr Brin:
It’s precisely BECAUSE of controlled conditions that he refused.
Of course he's refuse if he's a charlatan like Uri Geller.
In my more charitable scenario, he was an actor playing a role meant to give his people hope. In that case, the Sanhedrin is like the guy in the theater shouting, "Hey, I can see the wires!" Of course you can, but what's the benefit of spoiling the illusion for everyone?
The importance of faith makes a lot of sense in this scenario. The audience must be a willing participant in the drama, not a cynical critic.
The most interesting "Jesus Scenario" I have seen is that he was actually "created" by the Roman equivalent of the CIA
They used stories from a number of different Jewish "messiahs" (like the Life of Brian) to construct a Jewish "leader" that would defang the Jews - who at the time were about the most militant and active people inside the empire
The Jews before that were always rebelling and causing problems - after that they calmed right down
The activists became "Christians"
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
- C.S. Lewis
Illustrating a point I made earlier, the passage below is from C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, published in 1946 and taking place at about the same time (Lewis in the Preface puts it "roughly after the war"). The marriage being mentioned would have taken place about ten years prior to my parents' own marriage. Yet the narrator's implicit complaint that "these young'uns today" have no respect for traditional values that the period's older generation understands could be torn from today's headlines.
"Mutual society, benefit, and comfort," said Jane bitterly. In reality, marriage had proved to be the door out of a world of work and comradeship and laughter and innumerable things to do into something like solitary confinement. For some years before their marriage she had never seen so little of Mark as she had done in the last six months. Even when he was at home, he hardly ever talked. He was always either sleepy or intellectually preoccupied.
...
She had always intended to continue her own career as a scholar after she was married; that was one of the reasons why they were to have no children, at any rate for a long time yet.
...
scidata:
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher."
So the actor who plays Jesus in Superstar has nothing of value to impart to the audience unless he, the actor, is actually the messiah in real life?
BTW, for some reason, my brain always casts the actor Michael York as Mark Studdock, the male protagonist from Lewis's That Hideous Strength. I also mentally cast the same actor as Gordon from our host's The Postman.
For whatever that says about me.
...JC's refusal to perform miracles for the Sanhendrin in the Temple.
Although I am no theologian, I suspect one of the answers is that it wouldn't have mattered if he did, and he knew it. :)
Jesus repeated said, "He who has ears, let him hear," and that he spoke in parables to confuse those who wouldn't understand him. There is the idea that those who do not want to know The Truth will not be swayed by facts and reason. And so it would have been a waste of time to demonstrate his divinity to the Sanhedrin, since, if they did not want to believe (and being sinful, of course they wouldn't) they would find some excuse to ignore what they saw.
After all, when he was put before Pilate, Jesus didn't believe performing miracles could save him then, either.
It is the reason some Christians give when they testify to someone and they don't believe them. "Well, you just don't want to believe..."
This idea always seemed to be a cop-out to me, but after seeing how politics has evolved over the last decade, it suddenly doesn't seem so outlandish anymore. :( (The irony, of course, it that it is often those who use that reasoning that are the ones who diligently practice it themselves. :D )
Dr. Brin:
For fun, I tried to make devil's advocate arguments for even a real Messiah refusing to prove himself to a biased and dominated panel; but your counterarguments are strong. There are tales in the Tanakh where the prophet passed a scientific test for, say, lighting a fire. (Though a skeptic might question those, too. Science is doubt.)
As for C.S.Lewis: there is a fourth option after Liar, Lunatic, and Lord: namely, Legend. Tales about one or more itinerant preachers are told and retold; they mutate and merge to form a legend, around which a religion coalesces.
Note that in this scenario, religion forms and evolves by the Darwinian process of inheritance, variation, and natural selection. It need not be the product of intelligent design; for it doesn't optimize, it satisfices.
Paradoctor:
for it doesn't optimize, it satisfices.
Did you just make up a word? Because I think I might use it.
@Larry Hart
Thomas Jefferson probably would have liked Superstar too.
I like soldering. Transistors never (so far at least) try to form cults or take over the world. Pericles talked of men's clay. I think putty is more apt.
Satisfice is an existing term, even though spellcheck apparently doesn't know it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
Larry Hart: I have read ‘satisficing’ used by some evolutionary biologists. It means ‘good enough for biology’.
Re: Sanhedrin
IIRC the Emperor Tiberius, a contemporary of Jesus, proved to himself that most magic was hogwash by inviting all the wizards and prognosticators in the Empire to perform for him for riches if they gave a convincing demo. I don't think he even had any fakers executed, though Thrasyllus gets an honorable mention. "I...predict I am in grave danger of being thrown from this wall!" Tiberius really wanted there to be magic.
This suggests that the Empire was rife with charlatans of all flavors...Appolonius of Tyana seems to have been about 18 at the traditional date of the Crucifixion, so not yet started on his own miraculous career. if Jesus was the real deal, he would have had to step up to the plate if he wanted to convince the authorities he was signal rather than noise.
Modern accounts of the life of Jesus diminish lose this aspect of him being just one of many hundreds or thousands of performance artists, with no way for a contemp to distinguish him from the crowd except faith. Well, you can't have faith in ALL of them. Or rather, you shouldn't. You'll wind up like John Dee, stuck in Bohemia with some 'prophet' sleeping with your wife.
Pappenheimer
Robert:
At 5:35 AM you asked for an explanation of postmodernism, suitable for a Bear Of Very Little Brain. Here is something from my own cubhood that might help:
When I was a very young lad, my eldest brother Marc liked to tell his younger brothers (Dan, Seth, and me, the youngest) fantastic fables about the adventures of Little Fat Guy and his friends: Big Strong Guy, Pegasus's Assistant, and Dubahoy. They went to the Moon, and Mars, and the jungle, and the bottom of the sea, and back to the dinosaur days, and so on. I do not remember much of these whirling tales, for Marc made them up as he went along.
But I do remember one of Marc's tropes. Every so often Little Fat Guy and his friends got into some trouble that they couldn't figure themselves out of. Every single time, without fail, they would then seek the advice of Intelligent-Stupid.
Intelligent-Stupid's advice was always delivered in meandering polysyllables, delivered in a posh fake-British accent that Marc mangled while Dan, Seth, and I giggled. This advice would always be wrong. The gang would always try Intelligent-Stupid's advice; and it would invariably fail disastrously. Then, and only then, the gang sought the advice of Intelligent-Stupid's brother, Stupid-Intelligent.
Stupid-Intelligent's advice was always delivered in inarticulate grunts, and this advice would always make sense. Little Fat Guy and friends try the advice, and it works! Thus Marc amused us.
So what is postmodernism? It's philosophy according to Intelligent-Stupid. Or even worse: for Intelligent-Stupid was always wrong, and postmodernism is not even wrong. But both speak in posh polysyllables.
Well the latest episode of FOUNDATION did introduce several of the original cast of characters, but only Bel Riose was accurately represented. It did deftly run through the nature of psychohistory as it applies to the 1st and 2nd Foundation, which is a horse that Asimov repeatedly beat to death and resuscitated, so there's that.
Paradoc I love that family story!
===Mixed answer blips
“after that they calmed right downThe activists became "Christians"
Sorry not even on the same planet with true.
James and the Jewish Christians likely all died defending their section of the Jerusalem wall in the Great Revolt of 70 CE. They were never heard from again, leaving Paul to concoct his mostly-Greek… um… ‘version.’
“Although I am no theologian, I suspect one of the answers is that it wouldn't have mattered if he did, and he knew it. :)
Depends on the scale to the miracles! I mean carumba, we’re talking the Big Kahuna floodmastet of flaming swords. Jesus.
“As for C.S.Lewis: there is a fourth option after Liar, Lunatic, and Lord: namely, Legend.”
Hence Paul.
Tiberius sounds a lot like Houdini.
you asked for an explanation of postmodernism, suitable for a Bear Of Very Little Brain
Actually, I asked for an explanation of Critical Theory, which seems to have been first written before there was postmodernism. I suspect it may be like Marxism, correctly describing its milieu but not extrapolating well, but that's based on the wikipedia article so just a suspicion.
They were never heard from again, leaving Paul to concoct his mostly-Greek… um… ‘version.’
We know Saul never met the carpenter himself. We know he was a fanatic who had a (literal) road-to-Damascus conversion. We know from modern experience that it is not uncommon for fanatics to convert, but when this happens they keep many of their underlying beliefs and values, placing them in service of their new ideal. So it's not surprising that Saul's christianity had little to do with the original version, and everything to do with himself.
It's like MTG having a sudden epiphany and becoming a Democrat. She'd still be an unhinged nutjob, except she'd be showing Trump's dick-pics instead.
(And speaking of that, doesn't what she did break all kinds of laws? Is there likely to be any action/consequences?)
Robert:
And speaking of that [MTG showing Hunter Biden's dick pics] , doesn't what she did break all kinds of laws? Is there likely to be any action/consequences?
That's one of those things that someone here coined a phrase for. "It's OK when a Republican does it."
Revisiting "What I should have said scenarios...
Tacitus:
No, Joe Biden has his enemies inside the party, and I could see one of them dropping a carefully wiped plastic bag.
And if that is the case, then really my reaction--ignore it and deprive it of oxygen--is the correct one. Yours--keep pressing the issue in public to cast dispersion on the president--is useful idiocy for the perpetrators.
* * *
scidata quoting C.S. Lewis:
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell."
If so, then that would also be true of any monarch who ever claimed to be the anointed of God. I'd be surprised if in her 70 year reign, Queen Elizabeth never had to refer to herself in that manner, or at the very least refrain from correcting someone else who does.
That does not make Her Majesty a liar, a lunatic, or the true recipient of supernatural blessing. She plays a role which her job demands--one that of necessity requires never breaking character.
I have heard of C.S. Lewis (though I might be confusing him with someone else) that he originally set out to disprove the Christian mythos, and instead was led to embrace it. I feel like I'm having a similar revelation in a different direction. I threw out a theory that Jesus of Nazareth might have been playing a role that he or his backers may have honestly felt would have a beneficial effect on the audience. I didn't mean that I truly believed that theory to be correct, but now I'm starting to come around to that belief.
The C.S. Lewis quote was what Hitchens was using to give a backhanded compliment of honesty to Lewis. He then proceeded to tear Lewis a new one because of the obvious false dichotomy leading to an even crazier Lord conclusion. Even the smartest of us are deeply susceptible to cultism, delusion, and pathologies like attractors of all kinds (behold the former head of the NIH).
Critters of medium size, modest tooth & claw, modest speed, and limited lifespan (early on) must socialize to flourish. That's the real Pandora. My putty quip wasn't meant as an insult (I'm a sapiens myself). It was meant as warning about 'becoming what we pretend to be', but mainly as an homage to the nobility of the transistor.
Larry
I think the possibility of an inside job by somebody say, wanting a post in the Newsom administration is possible but a long shot.
I picked one small incident to look at. I'm not addressing wider concerns about the role of the FBI, Justice Dept., IRS in the public sphere. Too big a topic for an occasional visitor. But damnably important and in a non partisan way.
What actually happened? And what would I liked to have seen done?
Probabilities from most to least likely:
1. Staffer or high level visitor thought "Damn, I've got dope in my pocket!" Maybe has the presence of mind to try and wipe it clean but that's hard to do.
Ideal outcome: Staffer identified. Put on administrative leave to deal with their issues. Foreign dignitary identified: Find a staffer willing to take the rap in exchange for later considerations. Nobody willing to fall on this grenade? Agents in charge of security resign or are fired. This could have been anthrax. Or a listening device. Or a pellet of polonium. If you can't provide security, find someone who can do the job.
2. Political Dirty Trick. Give a better and more plausible explanation. "Yes there were no finger prints. We had three labs independently study it. The fact that this was wiped clean is very surprising and a bit suspicious. This will prompt us to continue the investigation. We will have a report for you in 90 days.
3. Member of the First Family left it behind. I doubt this one, but it would be in the same category as if it were the unloved but necessary to tolerate Foreign Minister of Dogdungistan. Let's see some consequences for somebody.
It is the lack of consequences that troubles me in this and in other instances.
Does this reflect badly on individuals or on our political system? Yes. Yes it does. Am I willing to look at it anyway? Yes. Are you? And if not, why?
Tacitus
scidata:
the obvious false dichotomy leading to an even crazier Lord conclusion.
I've read a few of Lesis's nonfiction essays, and I believe his point was not so much to prove Jesus was in fact God, but to forego the possibility that he was a moral teacher whose philosophy was worth following, but not God. He was saying that you either must dismiss Jesus as a liar or lunatic, or else you must accept that Jesus is God incarnate. That there was no viable partial position.
And that's what I was arguing against. His argument would mean that the actor in The Ten Commandments whose voice portrays God giving the tablets to Moses (and who positively asserts that he is God) is a liar or a lunatic, so Moses should not pay attention to that dialogue.
"Lewis's"
can't type.
BTW, we're almost at 200 responses here, so remember to look for a second page if we go over.
Tacitus:
Am I willing to look at it anyway? Yes. Are you? And if not, why?
If more details come out that makes it seem important, my attention will be revived. So far, this incident sounds to me like typical Rudy Giuliana sh**-slinging. I'm not willing to commit attention span to disproving every ridiculous allegation against the president.
This could have been anthrax. Or a listening device. Or a pellet of polonium.
If it was one of those things, I'd feel more that the perpetrator needs to be identified. For drugs, it's sufficient (to me) that the bag was found and removed. Drug usage just doesn't elicit the visceral response in me that it is apparently supposed to.
Tacitus,
Your question and the ensuing discussion, and to be honest a few minutes with nothing better to do, prompted me to spend a few minutes searching for information on this issue. Based on what I've found I still don't share any of the concerns you've raised. The following information is from about a half dozen news articles. All most all of the information is the same across many articles I scanned.
A white powdery substance was found on a Sunday (July 2) by Secret Service agents during a routine security sweep. It was found in "a cubby near the West Executive entrance where visitors typically drop off their cell phones and other belongings" a ". . . a heavily trafficked West Wing lobby where staff go in and out, and tour groups gather to drop their phones and other belongings." There were tours on the Sunday the cocaine was found. Also note that POTUS and family members were not there. They had left on Friday to go to Camp David and had not yet returned.
The White House was temporarily shut down and the fire department was called in to test the substance on the spot for dangerous chemical of biological content. They identified it as cocaine. The amount was less than a gram."
The SS opened an investigation.
"Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center analyzed the item for any biothreats. Tests conducted at the facility came back negative."
"The cocaine and packaging underwent further forensics testing, including advanced fingerprint and DNA work at the FBI’s crime laboratory, according to the summary. The FBI also did chemical testing. "From an SS statement about their investigation, "The investigation included a methodical review of security systems and protocols," the agency statement said. "This review included a backwards examination that spanned several days prior to the discovery of the substance and developed an index of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the substance was found. The focal point of these actions developed a pool of known persons for comparison of forensic evidence gleaned from the FBI's analysis of the substance's packaging.
On July 12, the Secret Service received the FBI's laboratory results, which did not develop latent fingerprints and insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons."
The SS gave a secret (sensitive information) briefing to the House Oversight Committee about the investigation. The following are statements from members relating what they were told.
"Members told reporters the Secret Service informed them they narrowed down the list of suspects to 500 people during the weekend that cocaine was found and said that group included a mix of staffers and visitors who were on a tour. West Wing tours are invitation only.
Members said they were told there are 182 lockers on the wall where visitors are typically told to store their electronics and cell phones. They said they were told the cocaine was found in locker 50."
Again from the SS statement, "There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area," the agency said in a lengthy statement. "Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered. At this time, the Secret Service's investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence."
. . . continued
Based on what I've seen, of which the above is a brief synopsis, this seems like a relative nothing-burger to me. I didn't see anything that made me think that the SS, or any other agency, made a significant mistake or that security in general was poor. They found it. It didn't get past them. They dealt with it quickly.
Concerns about it being a plant? Political dirty work? Of course it's possible. But it's relatively minor compared to most of the political dirty work we've seen in recent years. If it is, we all know where you should place your bet, right? We do know that, right? If for no other reason than who would profit the most. But of course there are many more reasons than just that to place your money on the RP.
It also needs to be pointed out how fucking retarded the public comments by members of the RP about this issue have been. Seriously. They, the people who have said them, are either retarded or they know that their base is sufficiently retarded, or both.
Tacitus, I know you are just asking about one issue, politics aside, and asking if there is anything to be concerned about. You have some concerns. You feel that WH security is problematically poor, that the investigation was bungled or perhaps there is some funny business going on, like covering something up. You certainly imply that this reflects poorly on Biden (or more than one) in some way. If it's foul play your money is on someone in the DP trying to advance themselves by discrediting the Biden's.
Anything's possible. But, with respect, none of the information available about this issue would lead an unbiased analysis to put your concerns and implications anywhere near the top of the probability list. Except for the statements intended for public consumption made by RP politicians. Retarded, hilariously contradictory, obviously not in good faith statements that anyone with your substantial intelligence would dismiss, if it weren't for a prior ideological commitment. Not just dismiss, but realize what they demonstrate. That the political party that you are biased towards is thoroughly corrupt and has been for a long time.
In short, the issue you decided to use as an example and your concerns and conclusions about it are superficially reasonable, but they reveal a serious bias.
We use similar security lockers where I work. They aren't much bigger than cell phones, but are deep enough for the phones to be pushed back a bit so other small things can slide in there too.
No one keeps track of who uses which locker. If only one person did recently, their fingerprint might be on the key, but in a high traffic area the list of users is likely to be long.
WE happen to have security cameras pointing at the lockers, but only because we point them down the hall from the secured door. If pressed, we'd have a hard time saying exactly which locker a person used because the lockers aren't close enough to the camera.
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I suspect (though they won't want to talk about it) the Secret Service will be considering different camera placements right now. Maybe the addition of another to help connect people to the exact locker they use and when. That might not be enough in a high traffic area, though. It's still possible to slide things into lockers that a camera won't catch. I could probably do it because my brother was a close-up magician. Others might not be as good at it.
Robert said...
Do you know of a good overview, more detailed than the wikipedia article but suitable for a Bear of Very Little Brain? Is Bronner's Very Short Introduction decent for an engineer who hasn't studied philosophy? I like the Oxford series, but sometimes they assume more base knowledge than I have and are heavy going.
My time studying this was in grad school something about thirty years ago, so I don't have a good view of what is currently available.
I am aware of a couple of introductory books, but they are not meant for a general reader. I have been impressed with the "Very short introduction" series (though I haven't read the CT one) and I suspect that you could do a lot worse.
gregory byshenk,
I am aware of a couple of introductory books, but they are not meant for a general reader.
I think I run into those kinds of books occasionally at one of our local bookstores. They are all priced as if students were buying them for classes... meaning triple digits. No flashy covers.
Postmodernist thought retains the focus on 'criticism', but tends to be skeptical - if not hostile - to any universalist ideals.
In my experience 'hostile' is the correct description, but I'm not sure I have distinguished between people who have studied philosophy and those who simply put an argument to use for personal purposes. If someone told me hostility mostly came from non-academics I'd have to consider the possibility.
Dr. Brin: citing each other endlessly ... and mimicking each others' polysyllabic incantations to 'publish.'
Alfred Differ: priced as if students were buying them for classes... meaning triple digits
Ivory Towers are sometimes used only to self-promote and print money. It's why I find such nobility in transistors.
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Once again, I'd like to thank Americans, and others, for helping us fight these scary forest fires. An underpopulated sea of wood is lovely until it isn't.
Tacitus I am UTTERLY willing to ‘look at’ the micro-picayune ‘whatabout’ of the cocaine baggie left in a tourist cell phone locker. Indeed, your careful parsing of possibilities - while a yawner -seems good enough and I’d be fine with assigning as many forensic specialists and prosecutors as you like. Grill everyone! happy?
But what’s at issue here is hypocrisy.
1, Let’s demand a non-partisan wave of transparency! ALL Bidens and ALL Trumps reveal ALL of their business and financial transactions! ALL of them submit to blood tests and drug and IQ tests RIGHT NOW! Call all Secret service Agents to report everything they saw to an Inspector General!
And why not? Don’t we deserve full disclosure from those proclaiming a right to guide our nation and posterity? Do you actually, actually believe that Hunter Biden’s entire (fairly stained and pathetic) life would even compare in turpitude - IN ITS ENTIRETY - to ANY WEEK of the Trump boys? Now throw in Beau Biden, a genuine hero and brilliant American whose shining example no doubt drove some of Hunter’s overcompensations.
2. Let’s go farther, as Bernie and Liz have proposed, and pass a bipartisan bill CANCELLING NDAs that have anything to do with blackmail-able turpitudes. And all NDAs having to do with political figures and their close relatives? Would you join in a major push for that?
3. How about a major commission to investigate whether the THOUSANDS of randomly chosen (vetted for non-partisan maturity) Americans serving on Grand Juries across the nation were somehow corruptly suborned into indicting almost a hundred times… a hundred times…. as many high goppers as demmies. I offer to help investigate the imbecilic Fox-ravings that those Grand Jurors and prosecutors and FBI agents and judges (half appointed by Republicans) are somehow in a majestically perfect and massive plot that leaves no traces.
Is there any chance you’d put $$ on it? Or else... um... consider thae OTHER hypothesis? That today's GOP political caste is a sewer of monsters?
Oh, again, that’s almost a hundred times as many Republicans. Indicted by GJs consisting of mostly white retirees. With convictions. And that ratio includes sexual predators like Dennis Hastert. Look… him… up.
You said:
“Does this reflect badly on individuals or on our political system? Yes. Yes it does. Am I willing to look at it anyway? Yes. Are you? And if not, why?”
Seriously? I mean you can actually, actually say that to us, when you’d ignore all of the above? And vastly higher turpitude rates in every red-run state except Utah?
Okay, my friend. Keep coming back here with reports on the. baggie. I’ll read em with interest.
I didn't see anything that made me think that the SS, or any other agency, made a significant mistake or that security in general was poor.
Darrell, you should call PenceNews and NewsMax, as well as Congressman Jim Banks, because all of that is apparently news to them based on the emails I got today calling for an investigation (and hinting that a certain president's son was involved). Maybe you could get a side gig researching this for Banks, whose staff was clearly unable to discover what you found on their own. (Yes, sarcasm.)
I am aware of a couple of introductory books, but they are not meant for a general reader. I have been impressed with the "Very short introduction" series (though I haven't read the CT one) and I suspect that you could do a lot worse.
I just got Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction from my library. I want to finish Naoíse Mac Sweeney's The West first, because I'm a third in and it's interesting. Ben Aaronovitch's latest novella Winter's Gift is also tempting me…
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/713458/the-west-by-naoise-mac-sweeney/9780593472170
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