They're alive!
(1) I'm posting my SF comedy THE ANCIENT ONES!
Samples were available at davidbrin.com. Only now I'll go all the way through, one chapter per week (or so) on Wordpress. Come by for laughs + painful puns! And some sci fi concepts taken to extremes. Oh and there'll be freebies for best groaner comments to adjust the final version. (Full novel soon at Histria Press!)
== Rich prepper ingrates using my ideas ==
Almost exactly as depicted in Existence -- and after conversation with some of the innovative schemers -- it seems that an island nation -- one that is threatened by rising seas -- is collaborating with world zillionaires to erect a lagoon-sheltered arcology-city One that can float above changing sea levels… providing both those zillionaires and the island nation’s elites with refuge from both angry Nature and the western tax man. Again, exactly as in EXISTENCE. Moreover, as a bonus, those zillionaire preppers will get a legacy-sovereign UN seat, like a heritable seat on a stock exchange or law firm. Well-schemed!
And no need to pay the fellow who gave you the idea, in the first place? That, too, was predicted.
Speaking of predictive success, here’s an extremely minor forecast I'll now offer. Minor, but still, one for the registry. I foresee that folks will feel a small but real sense of relief when we reach the year 2032! Why? Because we will suddenly be able to use just 6 digits for the date, instead of 8. Can you envision why? Speak up, in comments.
Alas though, right about the same year religious zealotry will spread rapture ravings, like nothing we have ever seen before. Can you envision why? I explained here. Hopefully, by then we'll still have a civilization then that awards predictive points. And that has resumed confidence in science and reason.
Meanwhile... In Nautilus, Namir Khaliq interviews me, Doctorow, Bujold, Stross, Jemison and Weir about how science influences science fiction, especially in a time of looming AI. Come for insights.
== Are hidden or ‘shy’ aliens or AIs watching us right now? ==
The "After On" podcast posting by Rob Reid (author of the SF novels After On and Year Zero) about "Shy or Hidden AI" was fun and well-spoken... though incomplete and hence not fully persuasive. "Might we unwittingly start sharing our world with a super AI?" A monologue and (mostly) playful thought experiment. Listen on Apple Podcasts.
Interesting? Well... let me shine light on one under-explored aspect. For about two decades, I've pretty often been interviewed about either aliens or Artificial Intelligence. Sometimes I trot out a particular riff, when it seems likely to be fun. Here goes:
"I can now reveal that I've been 'channeling' for hidden (aliens/AIs) who use me as their human 'front,' to publish odd thoughts, or their attempts at sci fi (some better than others!), or else in order to float ideas out there...
"...like this idea that I'm floating right now, that a particular human might collaborate in this way, fronting for cryptic (aliens/AIs) who are shy about being publicly revealed. An idea that nearly all human audiences have deemed benignly amusing, because they assume that I am joking!
"But then, isn't that what I'd be hired to do? Getting folks pondering the possibility, so that the hidden aliens or AIs might get a measure of the reactions? Perhaps to see if it's safe to come out?
"Or else... isn't this exactly what a rascal like me would say, in order to tease about weird ideas? Just like you idea-rascals out there pay me to do?"
In fact, most of the last fourth of my novel Existence ponders cryptic or 'shy" interstellar probes who (conjecturally) have been lurking in the asteroid belt for millions of years, and might recently have been probing our internet. In that novel I riff-contemplate a wide array of motives they might have for maintaining secrecy a while longer. And yes, using humans as intermediaries is one of a dozen (actually 13) possible scenarios.
Still, this is an interesting and fun... if incomplete ... podcast speculation about the possibility. Including the notion that instead of lurker alien probes, it might be 'Shy AIs' reading these words right now as I type them... or else from stored files, five years from now.
I do say other things to such aliens or AI lurkers, that I won't get into here. Suffice it that I give them grandfatherly advice! ;-)
== The deep context of sci fi ==
Possibly the greatest living epic poet – certainly of epic-length poems about the future or sci fi themes – is Frederick Turner. He’s done me the honor of reading Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood – And while agreeing with some of my points, he also demurs on others.
"Yes, many of the great epics - works like the Mahabharata, the Heike and the Aeneid – do emphasize demigods in a context of assumed rule by kingship. But that may not have been in preferred-contrast to then-unknown innovations like democracy."
Rather -- Fred argues -- many of them do contain their own profound critiques of power abuse by hereditary kings. Further, many of those epics may have been viewed as liberal in their age and context, contrasting instead vs: “…the only prior alternative, bloody tribalism and what Marx called rural idiocy. The city was a huge achievement, and it needed walls and authority, and was the origin of law and advanced technology.”
Certainly it has been pointed out that the story of Cain vs Abel has a context of the resentment by hunters and herders against the encroachment of agriculturalists, who appear (from genetic evidence) to have been far more expansionist and violent.
Indeed, a major new element has been added by genetic research which now says there was likely a huge Y Chromosome bottleneck around 10,000 years ago. Weirdly and inexplicably, it may have happened roughly simultaneously across much of the world -- a few centuries when only 17% or so of males got to breed. The implications are immense!
For one thing, this was the disruptive time when we invented both beer and kings. It's known that humans had less resistance to alcohol back then - more like other mammals, who are still very susceptible. So drunken boors musta been much more common. And this coincided with the new kings of minor agricultural realms, who abruptly possessed a power that tribal chiefs never had - to order killed anyone they didn't like, including drunken boors. (This was actually observed by Captain Cook etc., in Polynesia.) Hence, just one effect could have been a major quick-evolution toward more self control re alcohol. (Still incomplete, alas.)
It seems that this phase only lasted a few centuries, until kingdoms grew larger. At which point the top king's harems were as big as he could handle and he gained nothing further by allowing the lords under him to keep rampage-murdering other males. In fact, the local top king would lose soldiers that he needed against other mid-sized kings. Hence, there arrived rule of law against capricious murder... even by local lords... and the Y Chromosome bottleneck stabilized.
Sure, that is a speculative take on recent discoveries. But if all that is true, then there may be real implications for the vast oeuvre of oral mythology, coming to us from that era. The roots of all our heritage might be re-examined in new light.
== Pertinent Prescience? ==
Octavia Butler's terrific 1998 novel, Parable of the Talents, depicts a dystopian US ruled by fundamentalists. President Jarret seeks to rid the country of non-Christian beliefs, using the slogan.... "Make America Great Again." Sigh and alack.
And I miss her.
And her memory reminds me that we need to Make America smart and good and wise (and thus actually Great) someday yet again.
145 comments:
For the record, the previous comments went to a second page just before Dr Brin posted "onward", so there might be some posts there that you missed, or you might have posted something that you thought disappeared into the ether.
Carry on.
I'm glad I read The Ancient Ones before the promotional material started giving away who those various entities are. Maybe it's inevitable in the ways of promotion, and maybe the images do get people more interested than they would be otherwise. Just sayin' that I'm glad I was able to come to the realizations of what those creatures were during the actual course of reading the book.
Implicit agreement with some of Brin's political theory:
"for you Robocop fans out there, the Great Wad (as my friend, the late Harlan Ellison used to call them) does not admire the bespectacled kid working a night shift at a filling station while studying plane geometry.
They (sic) Great Wad hates that guy. Instead, they admire the asshole on the motorcycle who mocks the idea of being a "college boy" and takes what he wants by force.
Those are the ones we need to somehow bamboozle into the Big Tent. And believe me, I understand how uncomfortable this might make some of you. "
https://driftglass.blogspot.com/
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer, you have to get them to realize that they are being taken for suckers. That machismo is a bribe to make them accept being expendable and exploited.
REVISED to include announcing After 44 years, at last (today!) a lovely hardcover of my first novel SUNDIVER with gorgeous cover + interiors by Jim Burns. From Phantasia Press. Murder... on the Sun! (Beat that, Poirot.)
WWW.TINYURL.COM/HARDSUNDIVER
Congratulations
It is most telling that our fine host chooses to describe the hugely historical Y Chromosome Bottleneck of 10,000 years ago as 'weird & inexplicable', as human mating inequality was indubitably the historic norm and his preferred 'modern' one-to-one human mating strategy is most likely the waning aberrant artifact of subsistence agriculture, as shown by the unforced reoccurrence of human mating inequality wherein (1) western women prefer the top 20% of men while rating 80% of men as unattractive & undesirable, (2) 30% of western men characterize themselves as sexless 'incels' for at least 12 months, (3) western fertility has plummeted to historic lows and (4) 45% of western women will be single & childless by 2030.
(1) https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/women-more-selective-80-men-unattractive-on-dating-apps-recent-research
(2) https://news.iu.edu/live/news/26924-nearly-1-in-3-young-men-in-the-us-report-having-no
(3) https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1163341684/south-korea-fertility-rate
(4) https://www.msn.com/en-in/lifestyle/women/45-of-women-to-be-single-childless-by-2030-morgan-stanley-study/ar-AA1qfbU4
Unfortunately, it is this very type of statistical illiteracy that I've come to expect here, as currently demonstrated by Dr. Brin's moral preference for a fair (anti-evolutive) one-to-one mating strategy & previously demonstrated by our young Flack's apparent inability to separate the statistical fact from moral nicety.
"That a condition is unusual" is exactly my point as that which is unusual (rare, abnormal) cannot be considered either common or normal; this, I assert, is a completely different & separate issue from one's preference for morally decent falsehoods; and, likewise, I assert that one can be 'morally decent' to statistical outliers without promoting falsehoods & lying thru one's teeth.
And, finally, a word on 'Darwinism':
Darwinism (noun)
A theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through selective breeding (aka 'the natural, unequal & inequitable selection of small, inherited genetic variations') that hopefully increases the individual's ability to compete, survive & reproduce, while conferring cumulative selective advantage upon surviving offspring.
But who, pray tell, would object to stronger, healthier, brainier & more competitive human offspring, I wonder?
Only those zealots who prefer voluntary human extinction over reproduction, and those expendable rejects & losers who fail miserably at either breeding or reproduction, and those egotistic narcissists who resent their own obsolescence & believe that 'history has ended' with them.
And, while the category we each choose is our own, just know that the human future belongs only to those biological units who succeed at reproduction but, most emphatically, the future does NOT belong to those bespectacled childless nerds who only excel at plane geometry.
Best
Just finished Naomi Kritzker's "Liberty's Daughter" - an interesting/fun take on sea-steading with a few pokes at libertarians.
William G wrote:
Just finished Naomi Kritzker's "Liberty's Daughter" - an interesting/fun take on sea-steading with a few pokes at libertarians.
I read that not too long ago and I also quite enjoyed it. Would recommend.
Rather than reject the embrace of Locum’s cyber manna, I’m going to practice the core principal of improv, which is the Yes-And.
1) western women prefer the top 20% of men while rating 80% of men as unattractive & undesirable
Yes! And “Compared with non-gamers, men playing videogames for more than 1 hour/day were less likely to have premature ejaculation but more likely to have decreased sexual desire.”
And “Results from a study conducted by researchers at the University of New Hampshire suggest that college men who play video games tend to exercise less and have poorer eating habits compared to non-gamers.”
And seriously. Duh.
(2) 30% of western men characterize themselves as sexless 'incels' for at least 12 months,
Yes! And “A Dentist Tesla Cybertruck Owner Says Loneliness Drove Him to Buy a Truck That Turns Heads: “They Can’t Ignore You Now” — Close to 50 Cybertruck Owners Share Similar Feelings”
(3) western fertility has plummeted to historic lows and (4) 45% of western women will be single & childless by 2030.
Yes! And “Despite their emphasis on the rewards of staying home and raising children, Republicans continue to delegate more of the responsibility of child-rearing to their wives than Democratic fathers.”
“And, while the category we each choose is our own, just know that the human future belongs only to those biological units who succeed at reproduction but, most emphatically, the future does NOT belong to those bespectacled childless nerds who only excel at plane geometry.”
Yes! Locum supports our host’s argument (class war with oligarchs targeting the fact using professions.)
And here’s something else to chew on!
“The New Must-Have for Overwhelmed Kids: An Executive Function Coach
As students struggle with paying attention and managing stress, demand is soaring for a new—and often pricy—kind of support.”
Go forth my children and multiply!
2) 30% of western men characterize themselves as sexless 'incels' for at least 12 months
Only 12 months? I'd have been ecstatic in high school and college to have been without sex for only 12 months. These kids today...
3) western fertility has plummeted to historic lows and (4) 45% of western women will be single & childless by 2030.
So overpopulation isn't a concern any more? Eight billion humans isn't enough?
"...but, most emphatically, the future does NOT belong to those bespectacled childless nerds who only excel at plane geometry.”
It's a natalist fallacy that a legacy only pertains to one's own biological offspring. It presumes that, for example, if your goal is to emigrate to Mars, that goal will be advanced by your genetic descendants and not by anyone who isn't your genetic descendant. As if George Washington and Alexander Hamilton haven't achieved a kind of immortality in other ways. Or Hitler, for that matter.
Has locum apologized for his breathless support of Gaetz?
machismo has been a good method for getting guys to make themselves expendable since before the Trojan War. I'd have thought that the invention of the water-cooled machine gun would have started to make men say "Hold up, now", but to steal from Stephenson:
Shaftoe, US Marine: "Banzai charges don't work!"
Goto Dengo, IJA: "All the that know that were killed in Banzai charges!"
Pappenheimer
Exactly. The failures of feminism have come from its attempts to shame men into changing for the sake of women. What is needed is for it to change into a broader movement. And for that to happen men need to loose their taste for the ego bribes of machismo and to see it as the con that it is,
But changes have to be based on what the difference between the sexes actually are. Feminists try to attribute too much to nurture and reactionaries attribute too little.
Did someone say Darwinism? Here's my prediction:
Far-future Humanity will be athletes, acrobats, singers, artists, poets, and lightning calculators, from childhood. Their immune systems will easily defeat all parasites, cancers, bacteria, viruses, prions, and toxins. Their livers will break down dioxin and nanomachines. They will resist gamma rays, sales pressure, and candy. They'll have accurate intuitions for physics, statistics, business, and politics. They'll have super-Human compassion, super-Human emotional resilience, super-Human bullshit detection, a super-Human sense of humor, and many other gifts.
That’s the _good_ news. The _bad_ news is that they'll *need* all of those super-Human gifts to survive long enough to reproduce.
Larry Hart 6:12:
The problem is the rate of population decline. If it's too fast, then we'll get an inverted population pyramid, with plenty of geezer pensioners supported by not enough young workers and innovators. I guess that Japan will try to solve the problem with robots, America with immigrants (reluctantly), and China with elder poverty.
Lloyd,
There is the 'Gate to Women's Country' method, also known as 'why male reindeer don't fight'. Needs a serious does of Lysistrata, though, which will increase the incel count dramatically. For a few generations.
Pappenheimer
A (literally) grimmer solution is the one given in the story 'Gerontius Dancing'.
It's known that humans had less resistance to alcohol back then
Does this offer an explanation for the oft-stated derogatory meme that native Americans and Australian Aborigines (but, perhaps significantly, NOT native Africans except for isolated tribes) are 'natural alcoholics'? I would have thought there would be at least one Doctorate in researching that possibility.
Based on my recent experience of watching my mother fade away, a lot of people wouldn't regard the Dancing Gerontius scenario as grim at all, compared to the alternative.
Quick survey suggests that alcohol tolerance isn't definitively genetic, but alcohol intolerance is. Europeans don't have as much incidence of alcohol intolerance as some other populations - on AVERAGE.
The other thing I gleaned is that it's not wise to try to drink a Luxembourger under the table. (Again, on average). Funny, I thought the Finns would be champs at alcohol imbibement....just my stereotyping showing up, I suppose.
Pappenheimer
Re: bespectacled nerds, childless or not, who excel at plane geometry, I'll try to reclaim my meme here (from Loc, I guess?) by pointing out that there are definitely women and men who are turned on by academic accomplishment. Also, of the nerd and the thug in the Robocop movie's gas station scene, which one got a Darwin award?
Pappenheimer
Re the Demographic problem
It's a molehill not a mountain!
YES there will be more pensioners per "worker" - but that is balanced out by less kids
The two "costs" are very similar
Fertility rates
When this all started to be obvious we expected the Catholics in southern Europe to outbreed the rest
Didn't happen
The Northern countries had lower drops in fertility
It would appear that countries where the menfolk HELP the ladies with the kids end up with more kids
Countries where the "that's women's work" attitude rules have less kids
So the "nerds" will probably outbreed the "jocks"
As for Europe, I'd rather say alcoholism is a cultural thing. Beer was a necessity until the modern days because of spoiled water sources, and drinking is - all too often - a part of our coming of age rites.
Another very big thing affecting family size is the cost of accommodation. Many people put off marriage and having children because accommodation costs. And one factor affecting accommodation costs is demand caused by overpopulation.
Cost of accommodation
The cost of having kids
Children are a treasure!
But a bloody expensive one!
I see studies saying $200,000 each!
None of that will do any good without dinosaur-hide resistance to bullets.
So the "nerds" will probably outbreed the "jocks"
"Are all nerds this good?"
"Yes. Because all they think about is sports. All we think about is sex."
Yes, and I suppose that the cost of living is a big issue for people with large numbers of kids.
If anybody is asked to rate attractiveness from a picture, the results will be massively biased (and narrowly based).
I just figured that my ancestors who weren't at least somewhat tolerant of alcohol died off before they could be my direct ancestors. I descend from the part of the lineage that could tolerate it because they HAD TO tolerate it... or starve.
Other cultures less reliant on fermentation to generate a calorie source wouldn't have been culled like mine.
sapiosexual
Lots of us are.
"It's a natalist fallacy that a legacy only pertains to one's own biological offspring".
Even though there will always be randomly occurring exceptions like Tesla (who's childlessness is thought to disprove the so-called 'natalist fallacy'), these exceptions remain so exceedingly rare because it's genetics 'all the way down', as in Kornbluth's "Marching Morons".
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm
This is especially true in the case of alcohol & lactose tolerance, as it took generations of genetic selection to induce this ability in those of Northern European extraction, which is why Southern Asiatics remain exceptionally intolerant to both.
Rationalize away, my friends, but know the following:
(1) The glorious future belongs only to those who bother to show up for it; and
(2) The 'Revenge of the Nerds' scenario is pure unadulterated cope.
Best
______
Cope (noun)
A ego defence mechanism or self-delusion that an individual clings to in order to survive a situation that seems insurmountable.
-- Slim, answering YOU rather than bothering to read anything by locum:
“western women prefer the top 20% of men while rating 80% of men as unattractive & undesirable”
And men don’t do the same thing to women?
Only women, when they ‘settle’ for a man in the range of 20% to 80%, try hard to bond with genuine loyalty. Many men offer no loyalty at all. And THAT should be a major choice criterion taught to girls and young women, who (alas) tend to draw toward bay boys.
“30% of western men characterize themselves as sexless 'incels' for at least 12 months, “
So? Then innovate! Join with three other guys, find a generously broadminded and needful single mom and offer to SHARE her on alternating weeks. A majority will say no thank you. But some will say “Sure. Provide for me and my kids and each of you will get to be husband of the week. And 3 will pounce on #4 if he ever abuses us.”
Is that a prescription? No. But it IS a way – one of many -- that 4 incels could actually use their noggins, instead of sitting around whining.
“western fertility has plummeted to historic lows and (4) 45% of western women will be single & childless by 2030.”
Yes? What incredible jabbering silliness. Wanting just 1 or 2 kids is not the same thing as wanting none. But even so? The 55% who have kids are the only ones who will have descendants. And those descendants will tend to want kids for reasons of both nature and nurture.
Jibbering capering lunacy. The fact that human females can choose to limit reproduction
- 1 is causing pop plummets above all in response to sexist oppressive societies. It is much lower in the US, whose population is NOT falling! Sure, immigration. So? Concentrate on ensuring the new kids are CULTURALLY and PSYCHOLOGIALLY AMERICAN. I don’t give a crap what color they are, if they are impudent, good-natured, tolerant, inventive rascals who respect women.
- 2 RIGHT NOW the whole planet may actually survive if we limit population. In fact, we may be the first in the galaxy to escape the trap.
“the future does NOT belong to those bespectacled childless nerds who only excel at plane geometry.””
Ah, Idiocracy scenario. Won’t happen. Elon will pour his sperm into the water supply.
LF: “ The failures of feminism have come from its attempts to shame men into changing for the sake of women. What is needed is for it to change into a broader movement.”
Well, 5th wave feminism should be about providing girls and young women with TOOLS to do what they already want to do. Choose better.
“plenty of geezer pensioners” it’s why Asians are pouring $$ into developing care robots.
Summarize 'Gerontius Dancing'. Someone?
Aztecs had alcohol.
Aztecs had alcohol.
And maybe Coca leaves.
Since I first raised it, 'Dancing Gerontius' (1969) is a short SF tale detailing how the ever increasing burden of an ageing population is handled through a ceremonially culling at an annual festival of exhaustion.
As I said, a grim prospect!
Not a particularly realistic one either, since a society's survivors are the ones who will ultimately grow old. (Although... it's not so different to how the death camps operated prior to the gas chambers. Happy thought!)
Born in an era when overpopulation was seen as one of the biggest threats to civilisation (after nukes), and perhaps best viewed as a satire on the capitalist industrial process: young resource -> aged inventory -> dead product.
... is Elon's sperm fluoridated?
Here's a link to 'Dancing Gerontius' @ Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/Vision_of_Tomorrow_v01n02_1969-12_EXciter-SLiV/page/n49/mode/2up?view=theater
It's a cute enough tale, but not very original, as it's highly derivative of De Maupassant's "The Mask" which deals with the same subject manner in a superior fashion, imo, linked below.
https://www.online-literature.com/maupassant/4272/
Also, 'Gerontius' is not very dystopian, especially when compared to Canada's very real yet amateurish MAID program, soon to be replaced by China's rather more ambitious 'Free Fentanyl for Every Westerner' policy.
Best
"Join with three other guys, find a generously broadminded and needful single mom and offer to SHARE her on alternating weeks."
um - there are a couple of societies that have marriages like that, but in both of the ones I'm aware of the guys are almost always brothers. I'm sure you've spotted the genetic reasons why this might mitigate jealousy and increase care for children that might not be one's direct get. Four unrelated guys sharing one woman sounds like a murder or three waiting to happen.
I am reminded of Al the Great arranging for his male lover* and himself to marry royal Persian sisters, that being the closest they could get to having children together. Humans are weird. Trust me, I'm a human** and I know.
* same guy he killed with a javelin at a drunken revel, and then was very sorry later, IIRC.
**pretty sure.
Pappenheimer
P.S. spending my last few years in full dive VR might not be that bad...just saw a Netflix movie (Reminiscence) about a guy, lot like Zelazny's Render, who got caught in a mindloop, but deliberately, so he could spend the rest of his life with his deceased love.
China can utilize deportees from America to work in their Latin American businesses. Also perhaps on military based.
American tariffs might well benefit the Chinese in their quest for economic hegemony Down South.
Don’t know, yet btw I asked a policewoman if crime is diminishing; she replied “no, it just moves somewhere else.”
—-
Maybe we merely move problemoids Somewhere Else.
It's going to move into the Whitehouse shortly.
If it was based based on a one hour filmed probing interview the results might be completely different. The method of the survey invites shallowness.
That last bit is not unlike my plan to escape Trump's America by using the technique from Somewhere In Time. If it were anything other than fantasy, I would do it.
Or the TOS episode "All Our Yesterdays". Zarabeth and grilled snow beast. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.
Naturally, meant in a general sense our buddyroos the Chinese can probably employ all the deportees.. possibly on bases.
Ukrainian refugees can arrive in the the US by the boatload; wouldn’t Trump approve of more (the merrier) immigrants?
Math class is hard.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Nov26-2.html
We admit to being some what mystified by Trump's thinking [on tariffs] . But before we start speculating, let's run through some facts. The first fact is that, in addition to being (apparently) a True Believer in tariffs himself, Trump appears to have converted his devoted followers to the Gospel of Protectionism. That much is clear from the latest poll from CBS News/YouGov. To start, 83% of Trump supporters and 52% of all respondents want tariffs. At the same time, 79% of all respondents think the #1 priority of the Trump administration should be lowering prices, while 59% of all respondents think tariffs will make prices higher. That means there is a not insignificant portion of the voting public that: (1) supports Trump, (2) wants tariffs, (3) wants lower prices, and yet (4) believes tariffs will lead to higher prices. What on Earth is a non-crazypants politician supposed to do with that kind of dissonance?
Those people will just have to learn the hard way. It’s just too bad that there’s no way to spare those who didn’t vote for that. All we can do for now is prepare to live very frugally.
So they want tariffs on things they will never buy?
Not only did the Aztecs have booze as Dr. Brin pointed out, our guide in Lamanai told us the Mayans not only used mushrooms for ceremonies, but also balche (a fermented drink).
New Stonekettle column.
https://www.stonekettle.com/2024/11/the-war-on-tomatoes.html
Trump tariffs aren't about lowering prices or creating jobs. They're about punishing other countries for not solving our drug problem.
...
Remember, that was the original promise.
Tariffs will bring back production to America.
So, you massively jack up the prices of imported produce and American farmers will ramp up production and reap the reward while creating millions of new jobs.
Right?
Except, Trump plans to use the army to round up millions of produce workers and put them in concentration camps for deportation. And farmers have no idea who will pick their crops as they are, let alone any increase in acreage. I mean, Americans sure aren't going to pick produce in the boiling San Joaquin Valley sun for less than minimum wage -- and what's that going to do to former [sic] heroin addict RFK Jr's plan to make us eat more healthy? But I digress.
Tell me, what do you think that's going to do to the prices in your grocery stores? In in your local pizza place? Etc?
Eggs? You were mad about the price of eggs, and that's why you had to vote for Trump? The US imports $44 million worth of eggs from Canada every year. And about $7 million from China. What do you think the price of eggs will be on January 21st?
Of course, isn't really just about tomatoes. Or eggs.
It's about everything.
You, you personally, you're going to pay out of your pocket to finance Trump's childishly petulant plan to punish foreign governments for a drug problem caused by an American pharmaceutical company that will ultimately not affect the drug addicts in any fashion.
...
Time to bring back the victory gardens.
Time to start eating the dogs and the cats.
If they really planned to wage war on drug cartels, they would tightly regulate banks and prohibit crypto.
Obviously they won't, so they just wage war on poor people. At home and abroad.
“If they really planned to wage war on drug cartels, they would tightly regulate banks and prohibit crypto.”
And some of the Sacklers would be in prison, along with total confiscation of their blood $. Although Trump getting charges dropped is the newest rankle, 2-tiered justice is nothing new.
The "something new" is that it is painfully obvious now that "No man is above the law" is false. I know that the rich and powerful have always been able to buy their way out of trouble, but at least they had to buy their way out. A trivial (to them) fine or restitution of some sort maybe didn't punish them, but at least society got something out of it.
Trump isn't buying his way out of a conviction. It's being generally accepted that he can't be prosecuted because prosecuting him in particular is just unthinkable.
The "War on Drugs"
https://qz.com/645990/nixon-advisor-we-created-the-war-on-drugs-to-criminalize-black-people-and-the-anti-war-left
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The way to "win" the "War on drugs" is simple
Decriminalise and control
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-decriminalised-drugs-14-years-ago-and-now-hardly-anyone-dies-from-overdosing-10301780.html
Both true and irrelevant. Trump's tariffs aren't intended to put a stop to drug smuggling. Rather drug smuggling is an excuse to inflict tariffs on us.
Who gets exempted from the tariffs will be quite telling. And no surprise.
"If they really planned to wage war on drug cartels, they would tightly regulate banks and prohibit crypto. ...Obviously they won't, so they just wage war on poor people. At home and abroad...."
Again and again and again! The masters do not seek to 'wage war on poor people." !!! That leads to revolution. And there's no need! The poweful are not worried about the powerless.
They are waging war agains the those who DO have enough power to thwarts them. You. Me. The civil servants. Jumping flaming jujubes! WHAT will it take to get folks like you to see that their enemy is folks like you?
It is a mental block so utterly profound that I find it mind boggling.
Those who pay the appropriate fee will be exempted.
Drugs are just a veneer for the next scam.
...so we spell out how tariffs attack us smartypants...
1. Less money in my pocket? (probably not by a lot because I'll shift spending habits)
2. Getting my attention shifted to the poorest who are most impacted? If I support them in a way they deem to be patronizing (!) then their dislike for me will grow. What are the odds of that happening when lots of us harp on this. Say it over and over and over. He's harming POOR PEOPLE. You there! Yes you! You are a poor person who will be impacted!
Well... if the danger is #2, we have to figure out a way to help defend poor people without patronizing them. Hmm. Some judo-like move... 8)
When Trump's economic insanity bites down, it may become in the interest of big business to successfully accuse and convict him of election theft, whether or not it is true, to save national face.
The masters do not seek to 'wage war on poor people." !!! That leads to revolution. And there's no need! The poweful are not worried about the powerless.
First of all, I did not write that theywant to do that, it is what they do.
Second, I am not sure that you won't have civil unrest in the next four years.
It is a mental block so utterly profound that I find it mind boggling.
One battlefield of many.
Nationalism.
Emphasis on military prowess.
Sexism.
Racism.
Corrupt elections.
Cronyism.
Protection of Corporations.
Curtailing workers rights.
Lack of separation between states and religion.
Mass Media Control.
Obsession with Law &Order.
Disdain for science and and the arts..
Living in a mythic past.
Disdain for human rights.
Questioning Reality.
Sacrifice one, loose all.
AFAICT, "Fred's burst prophylactic" is discussing trade policy by right wing shock jock, which might've been not entirely disastrous 40 years ago. Today, there's not as much that needs protecting, it would take decades to replace capacity lost due to policies held by a previous version of conservatives*. Any new capacity will require lots of automation, because it costs a lot more to feed and house working class people these days**.
*You can tell it's "Contemporareyconservative" because of the whiplash inducing rapid change.
**The finance bros have had decades of a very specific sort of deregulation to limit competition in every market they touched, prices increased, it,s how they worship their god.
BTW, the previous comment should not be read as a criticism of the concerns of OGH, all parts of the "Poly crisis", or Compound Failure" There is a limit on how many issues an individual can reasonably be expected to deal with.
Alfred Differ:
,,,to help defend poor people without patronizing them
Trump has somehow positioned himself as their defender. Against us.
I'm thinking the only path to your suggestion is tough love. Let them see what eggs and gas cost under Trump. Let them watch their relatives rounded up in camps and deported. Let them see the results of abandoning Biden for Palestinians.
I mean, it would have been nice to spare them that, but "There's no cure for willful stupidity."
Hmm. Some judo-like move... 8)
Well, since the right-wing has conditioned most of the former Democratic coalition to despise us, why not make use of that? Pretend that we're on board with Trump. Praise his elimination of competition for our high-priced goods. Talk up how we hate competing with Indians and Filipinos for our tech jobs. "But I'm itching for that upper-class tax cut!"
Maybe if they see us as part of the Trump team, they'll be against it.
That's so stupid it might work.
Whenever anyone claims to be your defender or savior, RUN.
Oh, Canada!
For those of us bitterly disappointed with the evil stupidity of the American electorate and their re-election of Trump, the old idea of fleeing to Canada is actually making a lot of sense.
Not only will global warming make Canada a temperate climate winner - while simultaneously turning much of the lower 48 into a drought ravaged, flood and hurricane devastated hell hole - Canada is actually encouraging immigration:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/02/canadas-population-passing-42-million-in-2024-and-50-million-by-2031.html
Canada’s Population Passing 42 Million in 2024 and 50 Million by 2031
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2021/12/canadas-100-million-person-plan-for-2100.html
Plan for Canada to Triple Population to 100 Million by 2100
Canada’ century Initiative calls for a bigger, bolder Canada with over 100 million people by 2100.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney supports the new national policy that would commit to tripling Canada’s population by 2100.
By 2026, Century Initiative says Canada should pin the annual immigration target to 1.25 percent of its population per year. This could add up to 500,000 new immigrants in 2026.
Canada had 401,000 new immigrants in 2021 and up to 421,000 in 2023. The Century Initiative calls for 450,000 in 2024, and 475,000 in 2025.
Business as usual with current immigration policies and demographics would see Canada with a population of about 50 million in 2100.
The 100 million person target would reduce the impact of an aging population and increase annual GDP growth by 1 percent.
The plan also calls for more financial support for families with new children. This would promote increased fertility and larger families. A national childcare strategy (like the Quebec provincial plan) could get Canadian families closer to the ideal family size they desire in surveys. Surveys indicate Canadian families would want 2.4 children but actually are ending up with about 1.5 children.
The Century plan calls for megaregions. If the plan is followed there would be 33 million people in the Toronto region, 15.5 million in a Calgary-Edmonton Region, 12.5 million in the Montreal region and 12 million in the Vancouver region.
Not everything about Canada is a liberal dream. They really aren't super polite or tolerant. And you'll find more ring wing a-holes in Alberta than you do in Texas. But on balance, leaving the dying, racist, not very intelligent USA for Canada makes a lot of sense.
Now if only Canada can keep future hordes of poorly educated, bigoted, poverty stricken Americans from crossing that long border illegally. It's just a line on a map. Maybe they can get America to pay for a wall.
But I see this as an excellent opportunity for Dr. Brin to write a near future sci-fi novel about Canada emerging as a world leader as America goes down the tubes.
For those of you interested in Canada's Century Initiative (Initiative de Siecle for those of you ending up in Quebec):
https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/
Maybe a few American states can secede and join Canada (WA, OR, CA, MN, MI, NY NJ New England) like those Jesusland Maps:
https://www.google.com/search?q=jesusland+maps&sca_esv=2ba1e0c14cc8627a&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=945&ei=rSdHZ6SMDpTO0PEPzdWy0Qw&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZ0c1vYB6UGg6EOQVSmSLBiGX6ZchoXNQ&ved=0ahUKEwjklqzp1_yJAxUUJzQIHc2qLMoQ4dUDCAc&uact=5&oq=jesusland+maps&gs_lp=EgNpbWciDmplc3VzbGFuZCBtYXBzMgUQABiABEiuIFDYCFipHnABeACQAQCYAWmgAZQKqgEEMTIuMrgBA8gBAPgBAYoCC2d3cy13aXotaW1nmAIOoALFCqgCAMICDhAAGIAEGLEDGIMBGIoFwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYgwHCAggQABiABBixA8ICBBAAGAPCAgcQABiABBgKwgIGEAAYBRgewgIGEAAYCBgemAMBkgcEMTAuNKAHvTg&sclient=img&udm=2
Speaking of "Jesusland", if MAGA spawn were taught from LaVey's attempt of scripture, how many would notice a difference?
Maybe, like in the Third Man, about a post-collapse smuggler of vakzines.
DP:
The 100 million person target would reduce the impact of an aging population
Unfortunately, some of us who might need to escape are already old.
Der Oger, some items on your list need to be lumped in categories.
Those that directly benefit US aristos by enhancing their own wealth - e.g. continue supply side taxes and augment them + rentier opportunities.
Those that benefit the Kremlin and Riyadh.
Those that actually benefit MAGA land.
Those that dog whistle MAGAs into ignoring self-interest while pounding those below them.
Those aimed at crushing the Civil Service and all other fact-professions.
The last one is central, it enables all others.
Tim H.:
Consider this checklist:
Pride. Wrath. Envy. Avarice. Gluttony. Lust. Sloth.
Trump checks off every box. The fundamentalists back him anyhow, and wonder why their children are leaving their churches.
Der Oger:
And contraceptives, and abortion pills.
But we know how poorly wars-on-drugs go.
Dr. Brin: They all enable each other.
The war on fact is central in this sense: Trump knows what a low opinion truth and fact have for him, so he reciprocates the sentiment.
As for elitism: I recommend ignoring the temptation to say "we warned you about his lies, you fools" and instead focus on "you deserve better than his lies".
He came into the world June 6th, ‘46.
Midterms will be in ‘26. The number of the Beast is 666.
Seven yrs after ‘26 will be the 2000th anniversary of the Crucifixion—even if it’s self-fulfilling prophecy, we’d be just as deceased. Or worse.
—
Plus we have the far-left exacerbating things, as dogmatic as the other side of the horseshoe’s end:
“No one can be free unless everyone is free”
Think globally, act locally
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem
A stitch in time saves nine...
Hellerstein:
As for elitism: I recommend ignoring the temptation to say "we warned you about his lies, you fools"
My wife and I have been trying for years to convince her elderly parents to move permanently up here to Chicago instead of spending most of the year in Austin, TX. This is not for political reasons, but because they need increasing amounts of help, and they have no relatives down there.
After several years of this, the in-laws have finally decided to to it. They weren't going to make that decision because we were telling them to do so. It had to become their idea.
I've seen a similar dynamic in my professional life. Managers don't change their plans because we tell them what will go wrong. But if they can be made to feel that it is their idea to avoid catastrophe, then it will happen.
Point being, MAGAs aren't going to sour on Trump because we list reasons to do so. In fact, arguing with us makes them just dig in on their support. It's going to have to be their idea that Trump's policies aren't working for them. There might be ways we can subtly guide this realization, but it can't feel (to them) like we're the agent of change. They have to feel they came to the realization on their own.
Up the ante by writing how things will have to become very bad before they would change their minds.
Even then, they might merely hunker in their bunker.
I'm thinking of the ones who say they voted for Trump because of grocery prices. They're going to notice when tariffs and deportations drive prices at the store way up. I'd say we shouldn't even talk about prices at that point. Let them notice from their own experience.
P.S., My wife's sister is the Alex P Keaton of her family. A conservative in a family of liberals. I think it was the second George W Bush election where she voted against him, which was hard of her to do. Her parents rubbed it in, but I thought that was a bad idea and never did so. Why make sure she'd never do anything like that again?
If we do any of the talking at all, it should be to commiserate. Not "You should have known all along that prices would rise," but rather, "Y'know, I was looking forward to those low grocery prices Trump promised. I wonder what happened?"
Dunno. But looking back at postwar outcomes, we waited until the Vietnam War got really bad before the Paris Accords. We waited two yrs until Nixon was pushed out.
Now we are waiting until Ukraine is toast and the Baltics are threatened, before we wake up.
The tenuousness of foresight is coming into the foreground.
Between 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada (lumber, cement, fertilizer, other building materials, etc.), Mexico (fruits, vegetables, cars and car parts, etc.) and China (consumer electronics, appliances, cheap Wal Mart house goods, toys, etc.)...
and mass deportations of our agricultural, meat packing, food processing restaurant and construction work forces...
we are looking at Weimar Germany style hyperinflation starting next year, construction projects and housing developments being abandoned, and crops left rotting in the fields.
So how are you preparing?
P.S. And you thought the price of eggs was bad. You ain't seen nuthin yet.
Big questions are, putting aside Trump and his people,
What is Putin preparing?
What is Xi preparing?
Hellerstein:
Consider this checklist:
Pride. Wrath. Envy. Avarice. Gluttony. Lust. Sloth.
Trump checks off every box. The fundamentalists back him anyhow, ...
It's a feature, not a bug.
They revel in vicarious enjoyment of the things he does that they'd be afraid to do in peril of their immortal souls.
DP:
So how are you preparing?
I wonder if the Harkonnens and the Padishah Emperor are hoarding spice.
Remember that The Shadow President wants to kill the US dollar as the reserve currency for the rest of the world. He and the rest of the oligarchy are pushing for cryptocurrencies to be the reserve currencies. This is part of what he means when he says that the transition will cause hardship. He intends to kill the dollar.
Also, in the least surprising thing ever, this morning the Shadow President said that the Consumer Financial Protection Board will be one of the first parts of government he deletes.
Musk-fluffers, I am sure that you will rush to tell us all how this is part of his brilliant plan and not just an oligarch killing government protections for the masses. I look forward to your fabulations.
The answer to both questions is Trump and his people.
It wasn't even my list. It's Lawrence Britts 14 points of fascism plus Ecos mythic past.
But you demonstrate the main weakness of the democratic opposition: instead of working together, everyone screams for attention that his/her way is the path to salvation.
Instead of working together and building alliances.
(Not that you are alone with this. Sadly, many "centrists" fear the taint of progressivity more than that of authoritarianism.)
Larry Hart:
Right-wing deadly sin is not a bug. Nor it is a feature. It is the operating system.
I am bemused to see that I am reduced to using the word 'sin', or even acknowledge the concept. I thought that was conservative people's job. But now 'conservative' is a misnomer on the Right (another misnomer, for they are not right), so they have abandoned the concept of moral error, and with it, morality. But somebody has to affirm that there is such a thing moral error, so it falls to us. We have to be 'conservative', in the non-Orwellian sense of that term. The Conservative Left is the only conservatism left.
Half a century ago, my father warned me that I'll become a conservative in my old age; stung, I replied that if so then it will be on my own terms. And so it came to be. I'm for conserving things such as democracy, the rule of law, the environment, the middle class, fairness, justice, reason, and human decency. How bourgeois of me.
I suspect that the fundamentalists are practicing what I call "proselytizing by counter-example": meaning, being such openly wicked wretches that they attract even skeptics like myself to the virtues that they violate.
being such openly wicked wretches that they attract even skeptics like myself to the virtues that they violate.
Hmmmmm. I'm thinking the past election was something like that in reverse. By the way we modeled what we consider virtues, our side made vice appealing to everyone else.
"Again and again and again! The masters do not seek to 'wage war on poor people." !!! That leads to revolution. And there's no need! The powerful are not worried about the powerless.
They are waging war agains the those who DO have enough power to thwarts them. You. Me. The civil servants. Jumping flaming jujubes! WHAT will it take to get folks like you to see that their enemy is folks like you?"
The above statement is incredibly problematic for at least three reasons, the first reason being that it meets criteria for a Messiah Complex wherein 'a person or persons fancies themselves to be our current or future saviour', the second reason being that the professional 'civil servant' managerial class is neither elected, nor representative, nor answerable to the same public that it claims to represent & serve, and the third reason being that the professional managerial class only cares as much about the powerless lower classes (in an abstract sense) as do the aristos & oligarchs.
Consider this checklist: Pride. Wrath. Envy. Avarice. Gluttony. Lust. Sloth.
Trump checks off every box.
As does the managerial class, as does ALL OF HUMANITY: Pride in their abilities; Wrath against their enemies; Envy of the wealth & power of others; Greed & Gluttony in the pursuit of power & control; and Lust & Sloth in the pursuit of comfort & pleasure.
It appears that progressives everywhere have abandoned the democratic pretense as they now try to FORCE their will on an increasingly restive & rebellious general population 'for their own good', especially when it comes to trendy topics like diversity, inclusion, migration, climate change, fossil fuels, vaccine mandates & vegetarianism.
Here's a better idea:
Hows about the professional managerial class obey the WILL OF THE VOTING POPULACE for a change, lest they suffer the horrifying consequences of their incredible arrogance?
Best
Both Trump and Musk have said they want to 'crash the economy'.
It's what pillagers do.
Loc,
Seriously, what you write makes complete sense from a religious perspective. An “increasingly restive & rebellious populace” is rebelling against what exactly? You’re being too vague as to what it is that causes people to be increasingly restive and rebellious.
Are some rebelling against modernity?
Can’t you provide more detail on this?
—
You owe me no explanation whatsoever; however the host has provided you with this forum—would you please deign to expand your explanations to him somewhat?
A corollary to my 'RUN from saviors' rule above.
If anyone tells you what a voting populace believes in the aggregate, laugh.
(because they'll sometimes believe in lower prices AND tariffs).
When I log in from my upstairs laptop, this website calls me Paradoctor. When I log in from my downstairs desktop, this website calls me Hellerstein. So now you know where I am.
Larry Hart: virtue advocated ineptly is advocacy for vice. "When they go low, we go high" is a noble failure. The correct game-theory strategy is "when they go low, we go lower". Also, law unenforced is crime encouraged. Thus our felon President.
About tariffs, consider this election:
Moe: for tariffs, tariffs increase prices, against lower prices
Larry: tariffs increase prices, for lower prices, against tariffs
Curly: for lower prices, for tariffs, tariffs don't increase prices
2/3 are for tariffs, 2/3 say tariffs increase prices, 2/3 are for lower prices.
It's a voter's paradox. Each of the Stooges is consistent, but majorities contradict. The problem is mathematical and systemic.
Trilemmas such as these can be manipulated, by voting-sequence control, to attain a desired outcome.
Loc makes a generalized everyone-does-all-seven-deadly-sins accusation; but if everyone is to blame then no-one is to blame.
It's true that everyone is, say, lustful to some extent, but there are degrees. Jimmy Carter, at his most lustful, might look at a woman funny; but Trump grabbed. In that and in the other six moral errors, Trump achieved competitive excellence. He's much better than you or I at being bad.
Fortunately for us all, his excellence in Sloth prevents him from achieving his full potential for evil in the other six sins. We are also protected by his incompetence and dementia. Unfortunately for us all, sloth, incompetence, and dementia in high office have other bad effects.
Try to defend them all, wind up losing them all.
Wasn't it Churchill who pointed out Americans do the right thing... after trying everything else?
matthew,
I see no brilliant plan.
I see what a minarchist believes about how governments and economies work.
The Shadow President will run up against the Real Congress.
Guess which one wields actual power?
(Don't tell me Congress will go along with a minarchist's wet dream. They won't. Maybe the parts that piss off the libs, though. They might go for that.)
(The eschatology above is to be considered as SF.)
What Locum seems to be doing and what MAGA is definitely doing is ignoring when an occupation requires skills and knowledge that no one can acquire on their own in a lifetime. The knowledge based occupations require willingness to learn from others and valuing the knowledge base of institutions.
They also require habits of checking things out. They require willingness for one's investigations to lead somewhere one would prefer not to be.
And the necessity to check things out means that you cannot rely on intuition as much as many would like to. Intuition cannot check itself and it is harder to disentangle from one's wishes than is reasoning. Intuition is not a substitute for knowledge. I believe it is more dependent on how much you know than reasoning.
There are a lot of people - not always MAGA - who become very knowledgeable in one field - medicine, say, or meteorology - and assume they are then infallible in completely unrelated fields like economics or sociology. I think I've mentioned my weather captain, USAF, B.Sc., M. Sc., who tried to convince me that the second law of thermodynamics disproved evolution. Granted, that was primarily his born-again religion talking. Compartmentalization is a stone bitch.
Pappenheimer
Know that phenomenon. What from outside looks like a phenomenon more common in the US than in most other Western countries is the fetishization of personal experience and over valuing of intuition. I can think of several possible reasons for this. Some of them are the flip sides of virtues.
I was sure that Trump had no chance of election
So sure that when the BBC did not agree about how bad Trump was I thought the BBC was being corrupted
Then the election happened and Trump won
Looking back I think I have been living in a sort of echo chamber - if the situation WAS as I thought then even the US electorate would not have jumped that way
So when I read about how BAD Trump and his minions are I need to understand that they are probably not THAT bad (I hope)
On that page I keep seeing stories about how Musk will be sacking tens of thousands of people soon
On the other hand I hear that he will be preparing some proposals by July 2025
We do need to be careful in not going overboard
Every time in his previous term that he did the right thing when I feared that he might not my first reaction was relief. And every time that he did the wrong thing when I hoped that he would not my first reaction was disappointment. I don't like seeing people morally fail. When it came to his actions I was more focused on them than upon him.
I had a low opinion of him but seeing his corruption is unpleasant. There is no need to look for evil in him. It is in your face.
But no one does the wrong thing all the time and I was glad to be able to give him credit for when he did the right thing.
But he is an utterly vicious man and I am suspicious about nearly everything that he does. It is predictable, unfortunately, that he will do immense harm in this term. I hope it will be less than I fear.
Now the part of him that is up himself is something that we can lampoon with joy and relish. But that is usually tangential to his evil.
Hellerstein:
When I log in from my upstairs laptop, ,...
Doesn't it depend on how the machine is logged into Google at the time?
2/3 are for tariffs, 2/3 say tariffs increase prices, 2/3 are for lower prices.
It's a voter's paradox. Each of the Stooges is consistent, but majorities contradict.
Maybe, but in real life, I don't think 1/3 of voters were against low prices.
Hellerstein:
Moe: for tariffs, tariffs increase prices, against lower prices
Larry: tariffs increase prices, for lower prices, against tariffs
Curly: for lower prices, for tariffs, tariffs don't increase prices
So, how do they vote?
Even accepting the right-wing framing that Democrats cause inflation,
Moe: Trump on tariffs, or Harris to prevent low prices?
Larry: Harris on tariffs or Trump on low prices?
Curly: Trump on both
Only Curly has a consistent reason to vote for a particular candidate based on both liking/disliking tariffs and liking/disliking low prices.
Every year, I mention that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, uncorrupted as it is by religion or politics.
Gotta admit that I'm having a hard time feeling the spirit this year. Maybe best to recall this fable I don't remember where it's from.
(Paraphrasing and the short version)
The king has a best friend who accompanies him on his adventures, and who has an annoying habit of seeing the best in every situation. "That's wonderful!" might as well be his catch phrase.
On a hunt, the prey turns and surprises the king, wounding him by chewing off a thumb. The friend says, "That's wonderful!" The king is so incensed that he has his friend thrown into the dungeon.
While traveling, the king and his entourage encounter a tribe of cannibals. They slaughter the king's party, but stop short when they notice his missing thumb. The tribe worships deformities, and so they fete the king and let him go.
The king returns to his kingdom and tearfully realizes that his friend had made a correct assessment all along. He lets his friend out of the dungeon and apologies profusely about how wrong he (the king) had been to be angry.
"No, that was wonderful!", the friend replies. The king asks why?
"Because if you hadn't imprisoned me, I'd have been there with you."
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, fellow Americans.
Looking back I think I have been living in a sort of echo chamber -
I understand, and feel somewhat the same way. But it's not, as the right-wingers would have it, a media echo chamber of MSNBC and NPR. I live in a relatively well-off suburb of a major metropolitan area in a blue state. The normal people that I work with and shop alongside and see at block parties aren't obsessed with grievance, even the ones with Trump yard signs.
It's difficult to see that one's community is in the minority when it feels so right.
Maybe it's like those trilemmas that Paradoctor/Hellerstein refers to above:
Larry: For democracy, for liberal values, democracy disdains liberal values
What to do about that?
Michael Jordan was the best basketball player of his time, maybe ever, but he couldn't make it in another sport (baseball), let along a completely different field.
Even the hotshots in the officer corps won't be immune. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/27/trump-drones-00191950
Alfred, I wish I had your confidence in Congress. Even with 218-216 in the House (Bog bless Oregon and California for flipping House districts! I donated in the OR race.), I think that SCOTUS has stripped enough power away from Congress that it will not matter.
Tom Cruise won't be happy (neither will Charlie Sheen).
Alan_B wonders about the "what it is that causes people to be increasingly restive and rebellious", but it's less of a 'what' and more of a 'who', as the common man is in active rebellion against those who act & would act in loco parentis, while the 'why' should be obvious to all those who have experienced an overbearing parent.
Do you like being treated like a retarded child by those who fancy themselves to be your betters ?
Do you enjoy the incessant polemics about everything you should & shouldn't value, believe in & be doing for your own & everyone else's own good ?
Now, Lloyd_F & Dr Brin make an elegant argument for Expert Rule by noting that certain occupations require complex "skills and knowledge that no one can acquire on their own in a lifetime" if humanity is to make good decisions 'going forward' & avoid making a mess of things, and the trained professional in me agrees ...
Except that this is exactly the WRONG WAY to treat other autonomous adults if (1) we accept an adult individual's 'right to choose' and (2) we wish to make friends, acquire allies, ensure compliance & avoid rebellion.
NO ONE OWES YOU THEIR OBEDIENCE BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU'RE SMARTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE.
Although I've tried & tried, I've failed to make this point here for years, mostly because of the impermeable 'nerd-safe' progressive bubble that normally surrounds you all, so now I can & will stop for a while.
I therefore wish you all the best of American Thanksgiving, the happy time when Heritage Americans everywhere celebrate Eurocentrism, White Supremacy & the Native American Genocide -- plus every other Deadly Sin -- while consuming enough turkey meat to cause loss-of-consciousness.
Adios
Not only did we flip CA-27... we filled it with a space advocate.
While I'm pretty sure he will vote for sanity, I'm also pretty sure he won't be a NASA rubberstamp.
My confidence in Congress comes from the egos involved. Some are Trump bootlickers, but many have ambitions of their own. That will impact the GOP coalition much like their issues in the last session with the maggot faction. "Give me what I want for my vote" will be on full display.
Three co-equal branches. By design. It's almost like the Framers expected would-be monarchs.
Anyway... we shall see. 8)
Pappenheimer,
I encountered that refutation of evolution a long time ago from someone who wasn't actually trying to convince me. They wanted to know why the rest of us thought the argument didn't work, but didn't intend to give up their belief in a Designer.
Most popular explanations for the second law are about as good as the special relativity argument for why we can't go faster than light that depends on the infinite mass calculation. Entropy isn't what most believe it is AND they imagine a closed system that really isn't.
It took me a while to come up with a good lecture on what entropy is... and I'm a physicist who is supposed to know that stuff. It is NOT obvious how to teach the concept. 8)
What neither the good camp doctor who only will follow orders and certainly hide many jews nor OGH are willing to see: That America (and possibly the rest of the Western Still-Democracies in a few years, with the possible exception of Switzerland) are prone to fall to fascism (again, in some cases) because the cultural and institutional conditions foster it..
Alfred Differ:
It took me a while to come up with a good lecture on what entropy is... and I'm a physicist who is supposed to know that stuff. It is NOT obvious how to teach the concept. 8)
"How much longer can I go on being an atheist?" I just in the past week came across this video which does a very good job of teaching just that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSGkJ_vsuUg&list=LL
BTW, the same guy does another video on why you can't accelerate past the speed of light. That's the one I actually watched first, and which led me to the Entropy one linked above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitf8YaVXhc
While that video above did a good job of explaining why "time's arrow" moves from past to future in the direction of increasing entropy, I'm still at a loss to understand why that is also the direction that we humans perceive the flow of time. That is, why--if physical laws don't depend on a specific direction for time--we have memory of the past but not of the future. I'm not clear at all how entropy explains that.
His all-caps yowl screeched out from being ignored.
No, sir. You psychotically imagine hate because you are a hater and thus assume the transactional nature of things is hate. We have far better things to do. And among those has been professional delivery of every fact-based thing that Made America Great.
YOU are in a cult aimed at enforcing obedience and hence you delusionally imagine that interests us. We are children of Adam Smith and we love nothing better than fair competition. Well, that plus getting on PBS and eagerly sharing everything we know... unlike every other Priesthood that ever existed. (And hence, we aren't bossy priests.)
YOU are writhing in jealousy toward those who are smarter and know more than you do, and hence you fantasize that 'being smarter' is our obsession. Yet I will bet my house that you cannot find 1% as many howls of contempt - by experts toward non-experts - as the tsunami of screeches AT expertise issued just by Fox/Kremlin media, alone. Bets? Step up? At long long last find your manly balls and back up your raving assertions the way that an actual man would?
None of that bears any even remote relationship with anything rational or true.
What IS true is that your cult now wages war on every part of American life who Vladimir Putin openly cited and listed as directly responsible for the fall of the USSR. "History's Greatest Tragedy" which he and other lenin-raised "ex" commissars are now remaking by nationalizing (stealing) every Russian business and restoring hammer-sickle emblems next to czarist ones and screeching hates that Trump echoes instantly - at NATO and western science and (again) every single element of American life that ever Thwarted the Stalinists... your masters and heroes.
Hate sessions exactly like those depicted by Orwell.
Not any of your claimed grievances - even if any were true (and they are all 100% delusions) - would justify lockstep obedience to the Evil Empire. Reagan would spit in your treasonous eye.
Sigh...
"Hows about the professional managerial class obey the WILL OF THE VOTING POPULACE for a change, lest they suffer the horrifying consequences of their incredible arrogance?"
Just a reminder for anyone suffering the horrifying consequences of their incredible arrogance , Harris lost the popular vote (at current count) by 1.55%. Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary in 2016 by 2.1%
Mull that over.
For those interested in the current state of Canadian thinking on tariffs, this short interview with David Frum (a very American Canadian) is a good summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IRJc7sXL8M
Americans might be surprised at our knowledge of your history. Happy Thanksgiving.
The current government (Liberal), has basically run out its welcome with those immigration numbers - they actually exceeded 500k immigrants in 2003, without any plan to deliver a similar increase in housing stock, schools, medical system, etc.
They're currently polling 18 points behind the Conservatives (dropped 16 points behind Conservatives in last 16 months). And unfortunately, they chose to blow themselves up while the nastiest Conservative leader in a few decades is leading the opposition.
He's not Trump or anything ... but he's still a piece of work :-(
Sometimes you write valid-but-obvious statements.
‘We see our own flaws reflected in others’.
I heard that in Sunday School ages ago:
“take the mote out of your eyes”
Could be that increasing unrest & rebellion are based on rebellion against their own historical God?
Vengeance is Mine!,
sayeth their new, ersatz, god,
Trump. That is his weak spot; Trump’s desire for revenge.
Musk said Vindman “will pay”—Musk is barely concealing his interest in physically harming Vindman.
—
Vance is the weakest link in the administration, he will end his career in a manner similar to Agnew.
Something clicked about what is behind the antipathy to expertise. And Locum’s comments supported what I realized. This comment is my thinking aloud and putting ideas up for discussion.
It’s not the whole story, of course. But I think much of it comes from overemphasizing a virtue, namely self-reliance. They want their knowledge to come from their own experience. So, they put down learning from others. ‘Book learning’ is sneered at.
Unfortunately, they don’t put the required effort into understanding things. They try to use intuition as the source of their beliefs. But intuition is usually better used as a starting point than as a source of conclusions. It has no means of checking itself and it is harder to disentangle your emotions from it than it is with logical arguments.
Are your intuitions ever right when your reasoning is wrong? Yes. When your intuitions have information that you are not consciously aware of.
I can think of three situations when reasoning can lead you astray. One is when you have the wrong information. Another is when you have framed things the wrong way. And another is when to make a problem tractable you have over-simplified it. Intuition can warn you that there is a risk of these happening.
As far as I can tell intuition is the information processing that the brain does that the conscious mind does not have direct access to. I think it is even more dependent than reasoning on the depth of your knowledge. Reasoning can fill in gaps in your knowledge. Intuition can’t. The intuitions of an expert are more likely to be right than those of a non-expert because they have more knowledge and experience to draw on. Intuition is not a substitute for knowledge.
I think we have a problem with people who see themselves as the pure and virtuous. And they think that gives them greater understanding than others. But these people have not put the effort into understanding. And they want more certainty than is reasonable. So, they seek to believe that there are short cuts to understanding. And they seek to undercut those who have more credibility than them. So, they attack critical thinking and those who engage in it.
For some of them religion is involved. For others it is ego. For many it is wanting to believe things that let them think they have more control over their fate than they actually do. And I have seen plenty of attempts to engage in group bonding against what they want to see as evil.
And of course we resent all this. We resent the attacks on the integrity of those seek the truth and on the whole enterprise of truth seeking. We resent those who show disdain for the effort that people have put into understanding the World and want their wishful thinking to be regarded as superior to others’ diligence.
We are justified in this anger and want to shake them and bring them to their senses. And we can’t do that. So, the question is how to get through to them, at least on a large scale. With patience you can often do so with an individual on a particular issue.
Lloyd Flack,
I think you are headed in the right direction, but your use of a 'modern' virtue deserves some reconsideration. Aristotle's list doesn't include the one you mention. However, any set of 'virtues' provides measures for what we mean by 'a person of good character', and this is where I think you are on sound footing. It is quite obvious our Rancher does not consider us to be persons of good character… while the reverse is also true.
Look at little closer to the present than Aristotle and you'll find how the Christians interpreted and translated things. They also simplified a bit, but you can recover many on Aristotle's list by mixtures. The core four are Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Prudence. To avoid certain theological debates, Aquinas added three more but called them 'graces'. Faith, Hope, and Love. Europe in the early Christian era taught the four core ones while Aquinas' expansion helped cover some gaps later.
One of the gaps involved merchants. Look to Shakespeare and even Dickens and you'll see them portrayed by antagonists. Men of poor character usually. Members of the lowest class were virtuous if they stuck primarily to expressions of Prudence. Aristocrats and other nobles were expected to exemplify Courage and Justice. All through the Christian era in Europe, courage literally meant courage in battle, so don't mistake it for how we use it today. Pick a random Arthurian knight's story and you'll find a moral lesson being told.
Move closer to the modern era and in the US you'll find the nobleman lessons being told in cowboy movies. Strong, silent men acted rightly (justice) in the face of conflict (courage). THIS is were us smartypants fail the test. We TALK. A LOT. Shakespeare would have cast us as villains. Screenplay writers for cowboy movies would have done the same. We talk to damn much, thus must be suspect.
Your attention to self-reliance comes back into view here. We talk a lot… about what we learned from books. That is not prudence (the peasant virtue) or any of the nobleman ones either. That is the kind of trickery merchants use to jack up prices and gouge the unsuspecting. That is IMmoral behavior. We are obviously attempting to swindle them of their savings, moral foundations, and their children's futures… when we TALK and TALK and…
————
The truth is simpler. We aren't using the same set of virtues they are. To us, it is the noblemen and priests who were the swindlers. They used swords and scripture to sell a classist vision of culture. Stay in your swim lane and SHUT YOUR MOUTH or they'll come shut it for you.
This is a clash of what it means to be a person of good character.
A book that you would find interesting is Occidentalism by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. It is a short book about ideas common among enemies of Western civilization. Some of these originated in the West and spread.
The ideas that they discuss are seeing the city as sinful, looking down on commerce as unheroic, looking at the West's intellectual and economic accomplishments as spiritually barren and those who see the West as unholy and evil.
Some of these ideas are found in the modern form of fascism. And reluctantly I have to call MAGA fascist. It has the same core, something called palingenetic ultranationalism.
And I recognize their virtues. I just see virtues ungoverned by a sense of proportion as potential engines of evil. I see evil as a failure rather than as a taint.
Slim Moldie quoting:
"Hows about the professional managerial class obey the WILL OF THE VOTING POPULACE for a change,...
So the professionals should implement tariffs and deport millions? Or the professionals should act to keep consumer prices low?
Because it can't be both, no matter what the WILL OF THE VOTING POPULACE demands.
We report; you decide.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Nov29-2.html
...
Of course, just as vultures are drawn to carrion, a**holes tend to attract other a**holes like a magnet. And so it is that the two men who are arguable the biggest a**holes in America are now in orbit around one another. We speak, naturally, of Trump's new sidekick, Elon Musk, who has also been showing the world who he is this week. For example, now that he apparently has access to... everything, Musk doxxed four federal government employees he deems to be extraneous.
The four doxxed staffers have a few things in common. First, they are not public-facing, and so interact only with other federal employees. Second, they are all in jobs related to climate control. Third, and we seriously doubt this is a coincidence, they are all women. One suspects that Musk is learning that it's not going to be terribly easy to terminate people's employment, so he's going to try to make things so unpleasant that people quit. All four women have already been the targets of much online harassment since Musk used his personal social media flamethrower to villainize them.
That said, it's not only women. On Wednesday, Musk set his sights on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (ret.), who was a key figure in the hearings held by the 1/6 Committee, and whose brother was just elected to Congress, tweeting: "Vindman is on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty." Needless to say, Musk offered no evidence in support of any of these defamatory claims. One has to assume that the reason he "bravely" went after Alexander, as opposed to Eugene, is that it is a felony to threaten a government official.
...
I keep trying to tell OGH that there are solid reasons why there is a lot of skepticism about the knowledge based professions. Take a look at the graphs here https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/politicization-of-the-american-university
All of the knowledge based professions shouldn't be lumped together. Elon Musk and Space X are certainly almost universally admired.
The distinction in Revenge of the Nerds wasn't really nerds and jocks. It was nerds and assholes. It's just that all of the jocks were portrayed as assholes, and vice versa. In the movie, the two categories were synonymous.
Musk apparently gets a pass on being a nerd because he's also an asshole.
Orwell understood "...they just want Republicans to do them."
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part28
...
Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage—torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians—which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side.
...
Amazingly well-stated, Alfred. In Hollywood, the LECTURE is given by the villain - e.g. Hans Gruber or the Matrix Architect. The hero goes "Oh, yeah? F.U!" So Hollywood libs spread the meme! As I describe in VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood - http://www.davidbrin.com/vividtomorrows.html
“Musk apparently gets a pass on being a nerd because he's also an asshole.”
Sorry. While both diagnoses may be correct, the connection is flawed. As you know, I believe that screeches and howls BY the left, spewing extremely stupid hate-masturbations at him, accomplishing nothing but their own sanctimony jizz, while the Putinists gleefully understand the power of flattery.
Swiveling the other way, MCS what utter bullcrap! I demand right now that you have your atty verify $$$ escrowed wager stakes for a test by a panel of randomly chosen Republicans – plus you and me – to visit 20 random labs or offices at a nearby research university and I will pay if more than two reveal any of the maniacal indoctrination these bullshit artists rave about. Got any guts? Any at all?
Sure, the remaining 18 will be found to have a very low opinion of the current US right. So? That will be directly and verifiably caused by the confederate cult’s hate spews toward science itself.
JESUS ! Seriously? You would swallow the crap that 50,000 FBI agents, 50,000 CIA people, 200,000 military officers, a million scientific workers, half a million journalists, two million teachers, half a million civil servants and all the other fact professions are ALL in some kind of lockstep, rigidly obedient cult…
… but morons drooling while staring and nodding at Fox aren’t? Oh, yeah, they all did their ‘own research.”
onward
onward
Post a Comment