At the end I'll cite some book and SF news, including some fun! Like part two of my comedy, The Ancient Ones.
Only now we'll return to the topic on everyone’s mind… WTF just happened? And what should we do now?
We'll start with Nathan Gardels – editor & publisher of the excellent Noēma Magazine - who always offers interesting observations. Though, he often triggers my infamously ornery “Yes… but…” reflex and a too-long response. (Several posts here originated in rémise to Nathan.)
In a recent missive - "How to Soul-Search as a Losing Party" - appraising What Democrats did wrong, Gardels points out many valid things… while reaching a conclusion that I deem spectacularly mistaken. Taking note of how so many Black and Hispanic males abandoned the old, Rooseveltean Coalition, he joins with so many others out there, urging a campaign of gentle conciliation.
“(O)nce informed and empathetically exposed to the concerns of others, participants move from previously held dispositions toward a consensus.“
Indeed, that participation can be widespread! As in the Truth and Reconciliation process led by Nelson Mandela, in South Africa, and similar endeavors in Argentina and Chile, wherein vast swathes of the public – on all sides – realized they must do this… or risk losing everything.
As for it happening in today’s USA? Well, I can think of one actual, real world example.
All across the nation, grand juries are selected from randomly-chosen voters and vetted for general reasonableness. In a majority of American counties, the resulting panels consist largely of fairly typical white retirees. And yet, it has been exactly those red county white retirees who – after exposure to arguments and copious evidence – have indicted so many Republican politicians and associates of a vast range of crimes.
I’d argue that is a kind of fact-based consensus-building, even if it leads to some well-deserved pain by the fomenters of one side.
That is the first of many reasons why the masters of that side will have no interest in allowing wider versions of consensus building.
I do not see any hope of such a thing happening in today’s America, at any kind of scale.
…with one barely plausible exception.
== Get the kompromat-compromised to trade 'Truth' for 'Reconciliation' ==
I am on record proposing an American version of a Truth & Reconciliation process. It’s kind of aggressive, like those grand juries, but it could begin a tsunami of revelation and light, leading to millions seeking common ground.
It might begin with one brave act. One so shocking and disruptive that it could rattle the echo chambers and draw millions of ostrich heads out of media holes. It might happen even right now, at the tail end of 2024, if Joe Biden were to offer the incentive of pardons/clemency, in order to draw forward any politicians in DC to admit that they are snared by blackmail.
As I say elsewhere, the pervasiveness of widespread blackmail in Washington is widely known in counter-intelligence circles. Honeypot entrapment of western elites has long been a specialty of Russian intel services – Okhrana, Checka, NKVD, KGB and FSB – all the way back to czarist times. Moreover, three Republican Congress members have recently attested to it likely being widespread among their GOP colleagues.
And hence, perhaps the incentive of presidential clemency just might be enough to draw some heroic – or simply fed-up – blackmail victims into cleansing light. And once a few have done so, others might follow, from all parties.
And yes, I do believe it’s one path that could lead to a Truth & Reconciliation process in America.
On the other hand, could T&R be achieved by preaching for a nationwide flow of commensal consensus, based upon building touchy-feely ‘mutual respect’ and listening?
Now?
That is fantasy.
Especially at this moment.
Because we have nothing to offer to those who are getting exactly what they want, right now.
You know perfectly well what that is, if you ask around, or follow social media at all. There is one voluptuous satisfaction that tens of millions of core MAGA folks seek – and are getting – that fills them with giddy joy, above all. To drink our tears.
If you do not know this, then you really, really need to get out more.
Anyone who thinks they can placate that with ‘can we all just get along?’ has no memory of the middle school playground, where we learned one of the deepest expressions of human nature -- from bullies, whose greatest joy came from hearing nerdy victims cry out - “Can we talk this out?”
== Twin prescriptions that are guaranteed to fail ==
Today’s Chasm of Political Recriminations within Blue America appears to be similarly unbridgeable.
First there’s a left wing that wants only to double down exactly upon a raft of combative identity stances that didn’t work…
(Abortion! Racism! Pronouns! Shun Bill Maher! Forget the economy; it’s all about abortion! And did I mention abortion? And abortion!)…
… vs. those murmuring “we need to reach out for consensus!” Consensus with those who have openly declared hatred of every single fact-using profession in America, along with universities, science, the civil service, the FBI and even the U.S. military officer corps.
To be clear, I am not rejecting consensus building! There have been times when rational politics used to be about negotiation, and those days may come again.
Please. If you read and grasp nothing else here, understand the following history lesson.
In olden times, Republican and Democratic legislators would socialize and get to know, rather than demonize, each other. Their kids went to the same schools! That is, until Dennis “friend to boys” Hastert established a rule (look it up) that GOP representatives must stash their families in the Home District and spend as little time as possible in Washington. And - above all - demonize those on the other side of the aisle.
During some previous eras, a president was able to negotiate – even horse-trade – for a few votes needed by this or that nominee. And each appointment was considered separately.
This was true even as late as the Speakership of Newt Gingrich who, for all of his fiery, right wingism, was there to negotiate and to pass legislation needed by the country. Hence we got Welfare Reform and the Budget Act and Clinton Surpluses.
Alas, at that point Karl Rove’s program to expand gerrymandering shifted the locus of power in hundreds of districts, away from the General Election over to district primaries. Primaries in which radical partisans gained outsized sway. It happened in both parties, but especially in the GOP. Threats of ‘being primaried’ became fierce tools to enforce uniformity.
(There are ways to defeat this! Decisively, in fact. Methods that don’t even require legislation. One simple, nationwide information campaign could destroy the effectiveness of Primary Radicalization… and no party politician will discuss it.)
== The roots of our present political impasse ==
This transformation reached fruition with the 1996 Congressional putsch, when Newt was jettisoned without so much as a thank you and replaced by a later-convicted child predator, whose “Hastert Rule” has ever since declared a political death sentence for any Republican who – ever again – actually negotiates with Democrats.
This resulted in the most tightly disciplined party and politburo America ever saw. (And some of the laziest, worst Congresses in U.S. history. Only once in the last 28 years has there been a session that passed needed legislation that directly resulted in major benefits for the nation.)
How effective is Hastert-Discipline? No hypocrisy is too great. As when GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused even to meet with Obama nominees more than 13 months before the next election… but hurried to confirm Trump’s final appointments one month before Biden took office. Even “deeply concerned” Senators Collins and Murkowski get back in line at the slightest warning look from Trump or from Trump’s Potemkin puppeteer.
And all of that leaves out speculative supplements, like my well-based conjecture that blackmail is rife in D.C.
And so… amid all those highly refined tools of fanaticism, radicalization and discipline-enforcement… are we somehow supposed to seek consensus, when every single incentive is designed to thwart it?
== Bitter partisanship is a recurring American norm ==
Again and again, I am appalled by an unwillingness by our brainy, punditry castes ever to look at history.
- Like the 6000 years when 99% of human societies fell into drearily similar patterns of feudalism, dominated by male bullies who enforced power based on an inherited ruling class.
- Or how the American Experiment - in escaping feudalism - has experienced rhythmic pulses of cultural strife, with pretty much similar casts of characters, across 240-years.
- Or how Franklin Delano Roosevelt forged an alliance of rich, middle and poor that rendered Marxist notions of class war obsolete for a while… until Old Karl has lately been revived to fresh pertinence, by those who forget.
This latest phase of the recurring U.S. Civil War goes far beyond simply snaring the GOP political caste, as we saw in the previous section. It has been vital to re-create the 1860s alliance of poor whites with their rich overlords, in shared hatred of modernists. This required perfection of masturbatory media, offering in-group solidarity based on a Cultural Schism that has divided America since its inception.
(Look up how in 1850s plantation-lords arranged to burn every southern newspaper that did not hew to the slavocracy line.)
Want a keen insight about all this from a brilliant science fiction author? No, I mean the revered (if somewhat libertarian) Robert A. Heinlein, who describes a recurring American illness. In projecting a future America dominated by religious fundamentalism, he adds:
"Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington."
And he wrote that in the 1950s.
== So how to fix what went wrong in 2024? ==
I speak elsewhere about this recurring American psychic and political chasm. Biliously-addictive Culture War explains Red America’s rage, far better than self-flagellatory riffs like: “We blues are at fault for refusing to listen to legitimate rural concerns.”
Excuse me. From FDR to LBJ to Clinton and Obama, rural America has received generous largesse that transformed ‘hick’ Southern and Appalachia states into modern hubs, surrounded by comfortable towns that – under Biden – just received huge waves of infrastructure repair and high-speed Internet. Unemployment is super-low and inflation has fallen.
Did the Harris campaign fail to make all that clear? Of course they did. And that failure was godawful.
But nothing we try, no statistical proofs… and certainly no ‘outreach and listen’ campaign… ever stood a chance against the drug-like power of sanctimony. The volcanic flows of ingrate-hate pouring from Trumpian America, toward…
… toward whom?
Leftists claim that the hated groups are races/genders etc. And while there is some of that, their obsession is - in its own right - poorly based sanctimony-delusion. In its own right, it is delusionally insane.
Test it! Just watch Fox some evening and count the number of minutes spent spewing outright racism or repression of gender variety, or attacking the poor.
All of that is as a droplet next to tsunamis of bile aimed at … nerds. At fact professions. At civil servants. At the FBI and intel agencies. At the U.S. military officer corps. At exactly those who are targeted by Project 2025.
Elsewhere I go into the WHY of this open and insatiable hatred of every single fact-wielding profession. It's exactly the same cultural phenomenon as when Southern white males supported King George against city merchants… and supported slavocrat plantation lords, their actual class enemies, against urban northern sophisticates. And supported Gilded Age plutocrats against the original Progressives…
…and who now support today’s lucre-oligarchy against ‘smug university-smartypants know-it-alls’. The professionals who stand in the way of feudalism’s return.
(Just watch who Trump goes after… and how the red folk who you want us to ‘reach out to and understand’ will cry out gleefully, with every shout of nerdy pain.)
== Defend what they most avidly seek to destroy ==
Can such masturbatory joy at defeating all fact people be assuaged with ‘reaching out’ sessions seeking ‘consensus’?
Okay, sure. Give it a try. It seems worthwhile! I might be wrong!
But if I'm right about this being phase 9 of America’s recurring cultural Civil War, then shall we look at how the previous phases were resolved?
It doesn’t always have to involve violence! In fact, only one of those earlier phases was truly violent. And a couple were resolved by genius politicians like FDR!
But in this recurring madness, what never worked was supplication. Or looking weak.
What's worked is the same thing that caused bullies on the playground to step up from the dust, stare at the blood they just wiped from their noses, and go “Huh! I guess you aren’t meat, after all. Wanna come over and play X-Box?”
But sure. Read Nathan G's editorial in Noema! As usual, it is articulate and knowledgable and persuasive. So let's by all means assign some folks to give 'consensus-building' a try! Go with the carrots that have never worked. But maybe this time.
Meanwhile, I plan to constinue offering sticks.
Tools for fact-folks to use.
Tools that establishment politicians have never-ever-ever actually tried. At least none since FDR and LBJ.
Sticks that worked.
27 comments:
Here’s a Mark Felton run-down of some of the ‘secrets from World War II’ that are still held classified and that may never see the light of day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN8FUqmI_aw
Dr. Brin, reading your point about losing the ability for effective governance struck home for an unusual reason.
By isolating politicians from one another, they lost the ability to work together. I have an unusual example in my own life how this works.
I used to play poker and was a moderately winning player (tracked on a spreadsheet, not a gestalt sense). I've given it up because, to be good these days, you need to play online.
The reason is when you play online, you can use extensive tracking tools to analyze your play and spot weaknesses in your game. It's absolutely critical to have this internal data.
The problem is that when you play online you end up playing in huge volume (which is good for data, but bad for your mental health). Hands play faster at the table b/c online accelerate the mechanics of dealing a hand. On top of that, players typically multi-table (play more tables at once).
Play 8 tables at once where the hands come about 2x as fast, and you're playing ALOT of poker. That's great for data purposes, but rather terrible for maintaining an even keel.
In short, I had a rage problem. When things didn't go my way (especially when an oppoentant got rewarded for doing something stupid due to luck), i'd get really angry. One big reason this happened online rather than live, is...live I get to know these people.
It's very easy to "blow up" at a disembodied name on a computer screen. Live play is entirely different. So I have no trouble accepting swings of outrageous fortune sitting at an actual table with real people, but start raving in rage while isolated in front of my computer.
THat's pretty much what we're doing when we isolate politicians into their districts.
Add that the supposed benefit of this change was to force politicians to remain connected to the populace doesn't actually happen. Politicians are usually removed from average concerns by their position (read affluent incomes).
Politiicans who cry poverty are full of it. Almost any imbecile can get rich in congress due to investment opportunities. When businesses TELL YOU WHAT THEY"RE GOING TO DO in congressional committees....well...investing becomes a snap.
Politicians are usually removed from average concerns by their position (read affluent incomes).
Not only that, but when they are forced by their leadership or their donors to take positions unpopular with their constituents, they tend to stop doing town halls and avoid taking questions from their public.
Dr Brin in the main post:
Even “deeply concerned” Senators Collins...
I've come to cast Susan Collins as the Synthian ambassador who leaves Garth toward the beginning of your Uplift War novel.
The Harris campaign pointed out the economic good that Biden and the Dems had done in every damn statement they made. It was the press that refused to corroborate the message. The oligarchs that run our media *wanted* Trump back in power and were not willing to even talk about the things that the Harris campaign wanted to talk about.
Media were the hostile force that Harris had to run against because media is owned by billionaires. Some media are even owned by the "good" billionaires our host imagines.
Even those "good" billionaires' media refused to tout the Democratic Party wins.
Even all the nerds at large media outlets refused to pass on the Harris campaign messages. Does that make the folks at MSNBC class traitors? How about when they went to Mar-a-lago to kiss Trump's ring after he won?
Matthew bah. Anyone, including liberal media, could tell that KH's good economy narratives weren't working because they were done crappily, sounding elitist. "We upper middle class folks are doing great! Why are you working stiffs complaining?"
There were ways to do it far better. But the Professional Dem political caste - while on the right side - are also utterly incestuous, and convinced they have nothing to learn from anything Not Invented Here.
because they were done crappily, sounding elitist. "We upper middle class folks are doing great! Why are you working stiffs complaining?"
matthew is partly right. Some of why the working stiffs were complaining was because their media was telling them over and over how badly they were doing.
Yes, it hurts when your grocery bill is high, but they did seem to have the spare cash to buy gold-plated Trump sneakers. And to travel in record numbers for Thanksgiving. Many actually told pollsters that they were personally doing fine, but that the overall economy was bad.
"under Biden – just received huge waves of infrastructure repair and high-speed Internet. "
Yet another example of why the Civil Servants are distrusted - with $42 billion in our tax money, not a single connection has actually been made https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-has-joe-biden-s-42-billion-broadband-program-not-connected-one-single-household/ar-BB1p1k0i .
Unlike my service provider, who has point to point microwave at 60 GHz to connect us at more than 100 megabit speeds https://www.xbar7.com with no government grants.
Larry, a lot of people ARE doing bad, which u can see in the high levels of food insecurity the last two holiday seasons ( I don't know about this yr).
You're never going to convince a hungry person the economy "is on the right track."
"There were ways to do it far better"
And chief among them is promoting scientific literacy, numeracy, and citizen science. Saviors are losers at best, vampires at worst. Hard work, takes years, but creates a Jeffersonian citizenry.
A typically interesting post :). I read it after reading a piece from The Atlantic back in 2022 which talked about the babelization of America (worth reading, check it out). Turns out wiring the world has both enormous benefits and significant costs...and, as per usual, we aren't doing a good job of "taxing" the benefits to mitigate the costs.
I won't pretend to understand why the Democratic pitch in 2024 failed. Granted, it didn't fail by much...but it did fail. I suspect there are lots of things that could have/should have been done differently.
FWIW, I tend to see political problems (at all levels of politics) as a result of a fundamental conflict in human nature.
We are social primates. The primate part makes us highly intelligent, master manipulators of our environment, and very good at defining and defending our self-interest. The social part enables us to work together at scales that few other animals can.
American culture is steeped in the ethos of individualism, which is reflective of the primate part of our nature. But the reality is we are all, as individuals, far more successful when we live in a high-functioning community, one whose members don't spend "too much" time looking out only for #1 (and our immediate relatives). Put another way, for the vast majority of us, we really succeed by working together.
But you can't get past the primate part of our make-up by appealing to the angels of our better natures. You have to structure a successful political pitch so it at least arguably answers the question "what's in it for me?"
Many Democrats, particularly ones in better off areas (I live smack dab between Biotech Gulch and Silicon Valley), are well-enough off that they don't really need to spend too much time thinking about protecting their self interests. They've got that covered.
That's not the case for most of the population, particularly the relatively less politically engaged middle. Consequently, pitches which heavily emphasize solving "distant" real problems (e.g., climate change) or protecting one (objectively discriminated against) group don't play well. It's why one of the biggest recent climate initiatives was called the Inflation Reduction Act.
I don't have a magic bullet to offer progressive forces. But I suspect what will work best is ensuring we always talk about "pocketbook issues" -- which aren't all financial -- more than we talk about existential crises (even though we face a number of those).
We need to amass enough political power to address the existential problems before they kill us all. But we can only get that power by appealing to a good portion of the self-interests of those who may not share our view of the crises, or at least the level of danger they present. Because as Josh Stein famously said on West Wing, if you don't win, you can't govern.
I get that. But the right-wing media is telling them who to blame for not being on the right track. "It's all Biden's doing, with Harris in complicity," is not really why they're hungry. Much has to do with Republican obstruction in congress and with Republican policies that have favored corporations over workers for decades.
Much of the Democrats' failed messaging has to do with not placing the blame where it belongs. And some of that is less the fault of the Democrats than of the media messengers.
Some are already starting to notice that tariffs will make the cost of living worse, not better.
Mark Olbert:
But I suspect what will work best is ensuring we always talk about "pocketbook issues" -- which aren't all financial -- more than we talk about existential crises (even though we face a number of those).
Interesting take. Republicans are able to pretend not to be in favor of things like national abortion bans or Project 2025 or white nationalism in order to appeal to the middle, confident that their wingnut supporters know full well they'll do those things anyway. Maybe we should be doing the same? Campaign on lowering the cost of living and trust our supporters to know what else we'll do after we're in office.
There's a real life example of that working. Obama didn't run on legalizing gay marriage. But once in power, Democrats got the job done.
Mark Olbert: the solution is a valuable but artificial construct called 'enlightened self-interest'. It has to be enlightened to deserve to exist, but it also has to be self-interested to be able to exist. Putting the two together requires artifice.
Point being, to mangle Ronald Reagan:
Republicans are not the solution to the problem [of being on the wrong track]. Republicans are the problem.
That's a one-sided exaggeration, of course. But I believe it to be more accurate than the solution being "Throw out the Democrats."
Many of you probably heard this already, but here at about minute 0:50 is Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko calling out Joe Rogan's b.s. about Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbCFPwMrh6k
We are children of Adam Smith and we love nothing better than fair competition (and) I will bet my house...[DB]
It is quite obvious our Rancher does not consider us to be persons of good character...
All of that is as a droplet next to tsunamis of bile aimed at … nerds. At fact professions. At civil servants. At the FBI and intel agencies. At the U.S. military officer corps...
Yet again, I have failed to communicate effectively, as evidenced by (1) our good host's ongoing reliance on Competitive Wagering methodologies, (2) the false assertion that I do not respect the 'good character' of those with whom I argue and (3) the half-truth that the general public hates 'smart people' & 'fact-users' for their intelligence.
I fully concede that Dr. Brin is more intelligent than I am -- that he is the clear winner in any 'battle of wits' in which we may engage -- but these victories do not have the zero sum hierarchical significance that he appears to invest in them, as they neither confer upon the victor any command or leadership rights, nor do they reduce the status of the loser to that of subservient child.
Adults (in general) want find out for themselves, using trial & error in order to learn from direct personal life experience, because this is what adults do, even when we deny this freedom to young children in an attempt to protect them from undesirable outcomes, as the difference between conferred knowledge & direct experience is as stark as the difference between a textbook on human reproduction & actual fucking.
Ergo, it is not so much the 'smart people, nerds & fact-users' that most adults resent when we are being lectured to, but the infantilization that results when these smart people, nerds & fact-users try to protect and dominate other adults as if those others were retarded children rather than legal adults.
To quote Captain Archer from Star_Trek Enterprise:
"We’re going to stumble, make mistakes – I’m sure more than a few, before we find our footing. But we’re going to learn from those mistakes. That’s what being human is all about."
So, please stop denying the humanity of other adults, even if they did it to you first (you claim), because if you don't stop the dehumanizing cycle then you're not an adult, either.
Best
Dr Brin in the previous comments:
“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, ...
That's an explanation for why Musk himself has swung rightward, not for why those who hate "elite smartypants who know stuff" don't consider billionaire engineer Elon Musk to be in that category.
You have just verified my argument that one of the main differences between you and others here is how much value should be placed on direct personal experience. You want to rely on it and think that you can most of the time. The rest of us see it as inadequate much of the time whether we like it or not. And we want our information to from sources that check what they report.
Maybe we should be doing the same? Campaign on lowering the cost of living and trust our supporters to know what else we'll do after we're in office.
(Sorry if that didn't italicize -- I'm not used to formatting in blogger)
Yep. It's a matter of prioritizing the pitch elements...which doesn't have to necessarily match the prioritization of action, as long as "enough" action for the highest priority pitch element gets made.
I agree, enlightened self-interest would work...if it could be achieved at scale in practice, which I doubt.
It's sort of like the philosopher kings that Plato offered as a way to create a desirable government: nice idea, but essentially a deus ex machina move. Which may work in novels, but not so often in the real world.
But I encourage you to keep up the appeals because, who knows? They might work, and it's hard to see how they'd hurt.
Enlightened self-interest can, and has, been done at scale in practice when it addresses common problems and aims for common wealth.
Therefore I advise against identity politics of any sort, for it is divisive and based mostly upon illusion. Unity politics is far better.
If you must resort to us-versus-them primate politics, then target the most artificial and illusory divide of all: class. There is a photo, from the Occupy Wall Street time, of a construction worker holding a sign saying "99 to 1. I like those odds."
"If God didn't want them to be sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep"
That's how Trump treats his own supporters and they love it! Democrats keep trying to educate sheep - Republicans herd them. Time to set moral compunctions aside ( "sooner or later, you must answer for every good deed" ) and try new tactics.
Glad I made an exception and glanced at this by locum: "Ergo, it is not so much the 'smart people, nerds & fact-users' that most adults resent when we are being lectured to, but the infantilization that results when these smart people, nerds & fact-users try to protect and dominate other adults as if those others were retarded children rather than legal adults."
Vitamins? That whine was actually aimed in a direction that (if you squint reeal hard) has a kind of validity. If you remove 'dominate' (since we do all in our power to defend the only human system that ever tried to extend opportunity to all children and all who try hard to compete fairly...
...if you remove that word, then the paragraph is kind of valid. As an expression of how HE and other MAGAs feel the fact professions treat them. Often embarrassed when they say something ignorant to a doctor or teacher -- or their own children who went to university - it's easy to interpret even an innocent response as patronizing. And yes, I have OFTEN said that's gotta hurt.
Still, as a representation of actual reality among the 50 million fact professionals who every day keep America functioning and moving ahead and solving problems... and who were entirely responsible for defeating Stalinism>. No. It's a fucking delusional lie.
Do you hate and resent us? Sure, and maybe we do 1% of the patronizing shit you inflate or imagine. And we are your sons and daughters who stood on the shoulders of a working class who strove with FDR to truly make America great. And have we succeeded beyond your ability to squint and grasp? Well... maybe.
But decent people and loyal Americans would not resent that. They would not pour ingrate hate upon those who are verything the Greatest Generation fought and aspired to become.
---------------
"That's an explanation for why Musk himself has swung rightward, not for why those who hate "elite smartypants who know stuff" don't consider billionaire engineer Elon Musk to be in that category."
You're kidding, right? He is their excuse to shout "See? I don't JUST bow before "ex" commisars and inheritance brats! Some nerds -- like some negroes -- are the GOOD ones!"
Dr. Brin said:
"...if you remove that word, then the paragraph is kind of valid. As an expression of how HE and other MAGAs feel the fact professions treat them. Often embarrassed when they say something ignorant to a doctor or teacher -- or their own children who went to university - it's easy to interpret even an innocent response as patronizing. And yes, I have OFTEN said that's gotta hurt."
I think this is really close - I think a huge part of his appeal is he has been successful without appearing - even to his own supporters - very bright in the conventional sense.
Oh I noticed - akimming - one other thing... another lame squirm to evade Brin's wager demand gambit. Pah! If you believed you had provable facts on your side, you would step up with stakes in order to TAKE... MY... MONEY. Pure self-interest... plus the brains to gather real evidence plus the balls to act like a man would, in any other generation before ours.
Not one MAGA ever, ever, ever has gathered those three things, guts, brains and eagerness for cash, and had their atty contact me to arrange things. They always always squirm and writhe and weasel ... and then run.
And the fact that no one on the other side - those who DO have the facts on their side - refuse ever to notice how this works and try it themselves... is proof that our side ain't so smart either. How we ever got science is a mystery. And dang we sure need machines of loving grace.
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