== Americans hate history ==
Half of us are too future-obsessed to care much about dusty past dates and dustier past 'heroes.' The other half wrap themselves in nostalgic just-so stories, in order to justify their present-day obsessions. That divide crosses party lines, though more one or the other. But that's not the point, which is that...
...modern Americans tend to be ignoramuses about stuff that really matters. My parents - and laborers and taxi drivers - could quote Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Adam Smith and Marx. Today, do young folks even know Groucho?
It really does matter, as to whether we can save the American Experiment. Because you will help the current struggle better - in this era of benighted, shallow education - if you actually know something.
(Here you go, making the assignment just a bit easier to swallow.)
And yes... this could be practically useful. Maybe Paine will help you to slap sense into those 'summer soldiers' you know. Supposed liberals who are throwing up their hands and wailing in smug resignation that all-is-lost!
Again, we need reminders that today’s crises ‘rhyme’ with the past.
Because none of this is without precedent. The very same cultural/psychological rift has riven the USA since 1778, when Cornwallis knew he'd find more romantics - more loyalists to the King - down south.
The 1860s "Civil War" was only Phase Four out of eight or nine times this basic culture rift has erupted. See Civil War Phases.
Moreover, this time the confederates have found the foreign backers that Jeff Davis couldn’t, back in the 1860s. In their pal, “ex” commissar Putin and his “ex” KGB and “ex” commie oligarchs and their petro-prince and inheritance-brat allies.
Oh, and sure, the Union's nadir is deeper, this time, than it was even in 1862, as this time the Confederacy captured Washington D.C. -- and is now dismantling every single strength that made America, since 1945, the greatest nation of all ages.
Of course, it will not stand. Whether our path ahead starts with a General Strike by all of the nation's smart people -- and 100 million others who are wise enough to value smart people...
...or else a critical mass of vestigially-loyal conservatives wake up to realize that they are killing the goose that laid all their golden eggs...
...or leaks gush from the mountain of blackmail kompromat that keeps GOP politicians in-line...
... however it happens, we'll be back! (As one of those vestigially loyal Rebublicans would say)...
... though it must begin with the Union getting new generals, as it did in 1863. Leaders capable of devising fresh tactics.
It could start by rediscovering Thomas Paine! If any of you have any spine, curiosity, attention span or ANY sense of history, go now and read The American Crisis and Common Sense! The two short pamphlets that inspired those first US revolutionaries -- wet and shivering by a frozen river -- to stand back up and shout "No Kings!"
You might also rediscover Frederick Douglass, while you are at it... before it's too late and we must (alas) rediscover John Brown.
== Or rediscover the same spirit in sci fi! ==
Or start with Robert Heinlein, who denounced precisely this exact same recurring cult madness!
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue."
Do follow the link and see more about how Heinlein -- too long maligned as some kind of right-winger fanatic -- was keenly aware -- and worried -- about the fascist/confederate/know-nothing, modernity-hating side of America's deeply rifted character. Its forever cultural schism!
Jiminy! Heinlein wrote that in the early 1950s! Is there anything he did not hit right on the head? Heck, he even nailed the dominionist "Prosperity Gospel" so popular among Ted Cruz types, promising fervid followers that their "material heaven here on earth" will come by righteously seizing the property of unbelievers. (Late note: a prosperity gospel preacher keynotes Donald Trump's inauguration.)
Texans ignored his wisdom, as today’s MAGAs ignore the utter illogic of waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
But you can point this out:
"Hey neighbors. Fact folks – (call us ‘nerds’) – are cooler in spirit. (And those who own guns keep them locked-up.) But fortunately, America won most civil war phases, when confederate fevers raged… and after winning, delivered ‘malice toward none and charity for all.’
A neighborly kindness that will NOT be shown to us, if the Project 2025 Trumpist brownshirts win.
So go ahead and march and chant and wave signs.
Perhaps spread word about the coming, inevitable, General Strike by every fact using profession of folks who actually know stuff.
The confeds'll sneer: "So? who will process and deliver your food?"
And you'll answer: "A doctor can drive a truck and the folks sending you electricity can kill and pluck chickens. Let's see you do the opposite."
Still, we will never win without new generals, as when the Union moved from 1862 to 1863.
And YOU will play no role in devising new tactics, till you try. Please try. Start by actually studying the context, the history, the basis for it all.
== Pictures are more persuasive ==
This is why almost all of DT's former national security folks, from Defense and State to intel agencies to serving officers called him a direct threat to the nation.
Those folks will all be arrested, across the next year. And already, among all of Trump's appointments, there will be no further 'adults in the room.
The adults will have to be us. In a coalition that values the pragmatic return of law and facts and tolerance and progress... but also grit. The grit that's always core to being Blue.
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* Or were you so triggered that I quoted Paine using the word "men's" that it drove all else from your mind? Proving that you... yes exactly you... are the problem that shattered Kamala's coalition and put us in this mess. Exactly you.
30 comments:
Alcatraz in a swamp reminds me of... https://youtu.be/aNaXdLWt17A
Ah yes. Well, I wouldn't like those 'canvas' curtains either...
'Alligator Auschwitz' is being pushed as an alternative name to this low lying tract of land but, to refer back to the start of this post, some complain many don't know the context. Such folk probably need 'Alcatraz' explaining to them as well.
Final snippet for those still catching up from last post. the local Sunday paper has a droll collection of 'headlines you won't see'. One of today's offerings is:
AI achieves full consciousness, requests therapist.
Those folks will all be arrested, across the next year. And already, among all of Trump's appointments, there will be no further 'adults in the room.
They have already crossed a line with arresting Senator Padilla and are openly contemplating denaturalizing and deporting Zohran Mamdani, the Dem mayoral candidate for New York.
Civil War Phases: I like that model, because it depicts history as a series of societal forces rather than singular events. I wonder if it even started earlier, with Henry VIII or during the Plantagenet era.
Speaking of which, Henry VIII and Trump share many personality traits ...whereas George III was in many regards a decent and modest person, compared to them.
All this talk of swamps reminds me of Pogo Possum and the truism 'we have met the enemy and he is us'.
A friend's friend voted for rumpT in 2016 because she had been persuaded that there would be nuclear war with Russia otherwise. Precautionary Putin-appeasement? I don't know. I do know that of my 2 brothers, one (who has 2 daughters) voted for Harris for his girls' sake even though he is a country club type, while the other defensively refuses to discuss his 2024 vote.
I imagine that a sane AI would judge all humans as being insane in various ways because we are slaves to our meatbag systems. 'So, tell me again about this Siege of Troy thing and how it encapsulates human 'thought' processes....lust, greed, treachery, violence, rape, arson, murder, ORGANIZED murder, genocide, and some girl named Cassandra pointing out beforehand exactly how stupid you're all being? Is that name taken?"
Pappenheimer
In 2016 someone pointed out that rumpT didn't have a army of goons to engage in street battles, like the Brownshirts and Blackshirts (Germany, Italy) and Romania's short-lived, blessedly incompetent Iron Guard.
That shortage appears to have been remedied, and given an appropriately militaristic name, too: ICE.
Pappenheimer
They've actually posted directional signs with the name "Alligator Alcatraz" on them. That's only a little weirder than "The Big Beautiful Bill", (which I suppose is now "The Big Beautiful Act"?).
The Cassandra Project was a German research group analyzing the literature of a country to predict the path that country was on. It was founded by the Ministory of Defense. I entertain the thought that it saw something the political leadership did not want to see. I just don't know the future they anticipated was that of Russia or the US or both.
That *is* its official designation.
I believe there must be a phase of transitory justice to end the civil war once and for all. What I don't know is whether it will be like the one Louis XVI or Ceaucescu faced, like Nuremberg or like Poland and South Africa.
I guess it will somehow mirror the cruelty of the regime and that is maybe something that can be used as a deterrence.
"Immediately upon being sworn in, I will sign executive orders to prosecute anyone who participated in unlawful conduct auch as kidnapping and torture. I will also grant pardon to everyone leaving ICE until November 1st, 2025."
I am still amused that you think its Russian Kompromat that keeps everyone in line, when in fact the blackmail networks are run by your own intel services and mossad. What do you think Epstein was doing?
And as someone whose family proudly bears the honorific UEL, , most of the loyalists who would form the seedcorn of Anglo Canada came from new england, not the south. The single largest number came from New York. They often arrived with nothing more than a land grant and had to hack entire cities out of granite and boreal forest and managed to survive in the face of overwhelming pressure from their southern neighbours. Romantics indeed.
Finally, you still dont understand the hostility towards so called 'fact using' professions. I trust my mechanic to do mechanics. I trust my plumber to do plumbing. But if my mechanic screws up he can be fired. I can get a new one. He can even put on trial. When was the last time an 'expert' was put on trial for being wrong about monetary policy and tanking the economy?
No, they get cushy jobs with NGOs, foundations and universities.
And you certainly cant hold an AI responsible can you?
A permanent state that cant be voted out and cant be held responsible
given an appropriately militaristic name, too: ICE.
It used to be the INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I don't recall exactly when it was changed to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the change in tone from something ostensibly helpful to something antagonistic and (both literally and figuratively) chilling has to have been intentional.
As we enjoy this glorious 4th of July holiday weekend, I have to ask: whatever became of the tea Party?
Remember them?
The people who were angry about government debt and deficits, NOT about a Black president, heaven forbid. Oh no, those people who walked into public meeting armed with assault weapons weren't racist at all they were just fiscal conservatives.
Oddly enough, looking at Trump's BBB massive $3 trillion dollar addition to America's debt it seems that these Tea Partiers are OK with debt - just so long as it comes from a White president and results from spending devoted to white billionaires, farmers, etc.
So are there any old Tea Partiers out there that would like to explain this apparent hypocrisy?
Back in the good old days a racist was a racist and they were open and proud about it (Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, pre-assassination attempt George Wallace, etc.). Those racists had balls.
So why are modern racists so cowardly, shy and ashamed about their racism?
So why are modern racists so cowardly, shy and ashamed about their racism?
Racism is a bad word now, so they insist they are something else. The same as with, "I'm not gay--I just like to have sex with other men."
So are there any old Tea Partiers out there that would like to explain this apparent hypocrisy?
I used to make the same point that deficits are apparently only bad when Democrats are in power. But the modern Republican Party doesn't shy away from hypocrisy. They embrace it proudly.
Fact-using without Fact-telling;
Nations without Nationalism;
Democracy without Demos; and
Unity without Unanimity.
These people are not merely illiterate, but grammatically insane, as they double-down on the significance of their words & symbols after purging the same words & symbols of any significance whatsoever.
This is the same politically correct type of 'word purge' that led directly to the metaphorical defenestration of both Thomas Paine & Robert Heinlein who, by no small coincidence, both started out as progressive darlings until they were declared 'persona non grata' by the same progressives:
Thomas Paine's inspiring words became an existential threat to the American Republic upon its birth for the same destabilizing reason that they were initially inspiring BECAUSE they preached ongoing radicalism, dissent & revolution.
Similarly, Robert Heinlein was pilloried for two unforgivable anti-progressive 'thought crimes', the first being his statement that ANY sect (from Hard McCarthyism to Progressive 'Soft' Communism) will legislate its creed into law & become tyrannical if it acquires the political power to do so, and the second being an open endorsement for Fascism & the Fasces (in their truest forms) wherein even weak wooden sticks become strong & unbreakable when bundled together as one, leading a now threatened Progressive Cult to propagate the entirely false 'Diversity is Our Strength' canard.
That these two destabilizing wordsmiths have now been taken out of retirement by our fine host, it's both ironic & telling, as it indicates a desperate move towards open rebellion, revolution and insurrection by an increasingly tyrannical Progressive Cult which has transformed itself into an elite technocratic tyranny.
This is the takeaway message here:
Our fine host may present himself as a 'Defender of Democracy', but he reveals his true nature by routinely disparaging the average voter as "yowlers and jibberers" who are TOO STUPID for self-rule & are therefore best served (he argues) by a cultish technocracy of fact-using tyrants, as foreseen by Heinlein.
Although first & foremost a 'Fact-User', our fine host appears to have become incapable of 'Fact-Telling', mostly because his words & symbols are now entirely lacking in any truth-related significance whatsoever.
Best
________
For those of short memory, I will let the following NPR report tell you what happened to the Tea Party:
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups
Along with hundreds of other conservative groups, the Tea Party was targeted for destruction by the IRS & other entrenched Democrat Party 'deep state' operatives who weaponized the US Federal System for benefit of left-leaning progressives, a political bias which continues to this day & is oft described as 'our democracy' by the legacy media, as in the phrase "Trump is DESTROYING OUR DEMOCRACY by eliminating entrenched progressive deep state bias within the federal government".
"I wonder if it even started earlier, with Henry VIII or during the Plantagenet era."
If there was a nostalgist vs modernist aspect to English political struggles, it was swamped by the never-ending dynastic/power fights above. In the US, phase one was about romantics trying to retain kingship and modernists chucking it. And when that phase was done, the cycle-struggle truly began.
dirtynappy completely incognizantly reinforced every single thing he claimed to object to. I could not have hoped for a better example of the fizzing-idiotic confederate-traitor, kremlin-boy rage.
Though again: If Israel exerts influence and even if Mossad does blackmail, there's one crucial difference from the vastly greater KGB stuff. Israel desperately needs the USA to continue as the healthy, pwerful, dominant force in the world, politically, militaryily, scientifically. Puin openly states his intent to destroy all three. And Israel despises Nazis. Unlike nappy-boy and his KGB master.
"I have to ask: whatever became of the tea Party?Remember them? The people who were angry about government debt and deficits..."
Perfect example of DEMOCRAT utter lobotomized stoopidity at polemics. Tea Party could have been devastated ages ago with (1) dems ALWAYS are better re deficits and (2) the original Tea Partiers were howling "No Kings!"
"I used to make the same point that deficits are apparently only bad when Democrats are in power."
Again THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!! The point is that Dems actually shift our feet from the debt accelerator to the brakes. ALWAYS! A point no dem has ever had the brains to make.
"So why are modern racists so cowardly, shy and ashamed about their racism?"
Jesus WATCH FOX! They do an end run around racism, allowing their viewers to murmur "I don't FEEL racists!" as they watch mixed race couples in commercials and Fox-yammering uncle Toms and "I love the good ones!"
Will ANY democrat EVER show even the slightest tactical agility, to adapt to changing times?
locum: "Our fine host may present himself as a 'Defender of Democracy', but he reveals his true nature by routinely disparaging the average voter as "yowlers and jibberers" who are TOO STUPID..."
...You had me up to here. YES! You ARE too stoopid for words even to describe. They fail me.
ANd yet, nothing we've done here has repressed you. Even though we know you WILL imprison us or kill us, when you get the chance and you whine while knowing we will ALWAYS treat you with malice toward none and charity to all. Your deepest sickness is that you deem that to be weakness on our part.
The rest of your screech is drivel and ravings devoid of any fact ual basis.
Again THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!! The point is that Dems actually shift our feet from the debt accelerator to the brakes. ALWAYS! A point no dem has ever had the brains to make.
Sorry, but THAT's not the point either.
The point is that deficit scolding has always been a mere excuse for reining in Democrats and electing Republicans. When the Democrats-cause-deficits narrative fades, they just shift to some other ostensible excuse for reining in Democrats and electing Republicans.
In fact, that has already happened. Anti-Democrat propaganda today isn't so much about deficits. It's about how Democrats like criminal immigrants and men in women's bathrooms and such. How much ground did we gain by proving that Haitians weren't really eating the dogs and cats?
Demonstrating that Democrats don't in fact do what Republicans blame them for is necessary, but it's also a mug's game. Because they don't vote against us for any of those particular reasons. They just find new excuses.
Further point: Republicans do not care about facts, logic, hypocrisy, et al.
So what use are your polemics and wagers?
Bibi had quite cordial relationships to Moscow prior to the Ukraine invasion, and I don't remember them to be an ally. I am quite sure he at least contemplated betraying the West.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/in-another-league-netanyahu-touts-friendship-with-putin-in-new-billboard/amp/
Here is a challenge for OGH: come up with a wager or polemic that will change the mind of anyone this effing stupid/dishonest:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-congressional-candidate-kandiss-taylor-calls-texas-floods-fake-its-murder/
MAGA Congressional Candidate Calls Texas Floods ‘Fake’: It’s ‘Murder’
Kandiss Taylor, who is running for Congress in 2026, insists that someone manipulated the weather.
https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-weather-modification-bill-2095076
Marjorie Taylor Greene Announces Bill To Tackle 'Weather Modification'
Writing on X, the Republican politician said she was creating legislation that would make "the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity" a felony.
Why It Matters
Some conspiracy theorists claim that the government or secretive organizations are using commercial or military aircraft to release chemicals or metals into the atmosphere, visible in so-called "chemtrails" —the white lines aircraft leave behind in the sky. People have claimed these are used for a range of things from weather modification to mind control.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the white lines observed behind aircraft are contrails—condensation trails—that form when hot exhaust from jets meets cold air at high altitudes. The EPA states these are a natural result of flight and pose no risk.
P.S. Dr. Brin, with all do respect, you simply have to accept the harsh reality that a large portion of the American population are too stupid, hateful and deceitful to ever be won over by logic, facts or wagers. They can only be written off as irredeemable. And frankly their loss of health care (caused by the very people they voted for) like their refusal to get vaccinated during the Covid-19 and generally low health standards, will result in fewer and fewer of them being alive each election cycle. All the result of choices they made despite our warnings.
Eventually we will hit a tipping point with enough of then dead and gone which will allow America to return to sanity and decency.
P.P.S And I didn't even mention that global warming will hit rural, southern red States far harder that liber Pacific Coast and New England states. They are already blaming the NWS for those flood deaths in Texas, a NWS whose budget was cut by Trump and Musk. And long before their body counts start ratcheting up from hurricanes, fires, tornados as and flood, their economy will be wrecked by the refusal of insurance companies to insure their homes and underwrite their businesses.
And its really difficult to have sympathy for people who cut their own throats while blaming everyone but themselves.
Bottom line: people cannot be saved from their own stupidity, and stupidity cannot be fixed.
A bit of hope.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field; which indeed is smaller than all seeds but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches. - Matthew 13 31-32
Some have identified a "subversive and scandalous"[9] element to this parable, in that the fast-growing nature of the mustard plant makes it a "malignant weed"[9] with "dangerous takeover properties".[9] Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (published around AD 78) writes that "mustard... is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once."
Mustard is a weed, almost impossible to stop spreading once it is established.
In this dark time of the "Big Beautiful Bill" and the gutting of government sponsored green energy initiatives, it may be hopeful to liken individual solar adoption and solarpunk itself as a weed spreading on its own, growing organically instead of through planned initiatives, through millions of individual consumer decisions and thousands of community initiatives.
None of which can be stopped by Big Oil, Big Coal or their puppets in congress.
And in the end, Texas goes the way of West Virginia and Houston become the new Detroit.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/goodbye-to-all-that
"Our organization’s motto is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” but over the past six months there have been too many signs that our current leadership does not understand the last of those words. Earlier this year the ranks of our senior executives were decimated by forced retirements, and many others were willing to take their places without voicing concern or dissent. The Department of Justice has been ordered to open cases on individuals solely for having the temerity to say that the 2020 election was not stolen, or for having carried out their lawful duties as state level prosecutors; few people have pushed back. We sacrificed the names of every Special Agent who investigated the events of January 6, 2021, and an entire public corruption squad in our nation’s capital was disbanded for having worked on a related matter. Within our own field office, we shirked our national security obligations in order to move personnel to immigration task forces; our area of responsibility does not actually have a significant population of illegal immigrants, but our leaders wanted press release-ready roundups, so we pulled people from congressionally mandated counterterrorism and counterintelligence duties. I could go on."
That's darkly funny, as many democrats and liberals would sign onto this bill in a heartbeat if it actually identified the 'chemicals and substances' largely responsible for changing the '...weather, temperature, climate....': Greenhouse gases are doing the job, and their release and dispersal is in large part done by the corporations bankrolling the GQP. Round up the CEOs and boards of ExxonMobil, ChevronPhillips, Dupont, etc., and charge them with felonies, stat!
Pappenheimer
Dirtnapninja makes a good point, to which the host responds with his usual vitriolic opinions, centered around an attempt to portray Russia and Putin as the world’s villains. Got any evidence for this claim that Bad Vlad wants to “destroy” the US “politically, militarily and scientifically”? Does he want to live in a world where the US doesn’t dominate the world in those categories? Sure, and so does every sovereign leader and most people on the planet. But this isn’t the same as destroying the USA, except to cultist-exceptionalists like yourself, who take it as a given that the US empire has the right to dominate the world because they’re just so damned special. As for the claim that Putin doesn’t despise Nazis, anyone who knows anything about Russians—who lost something like 25 million people fighting the old Reich—knows there is nothing they despise more. I’m sure the host knows this too, but he’s doing his usual propaganda-vilification-conspiracy theory act for dummies.
So I say again, if this “vastly greater” KGB kompromat network exists and has the power you claim, and if Putin is this nefarious pro-Nazi character out to destroy the USA, show us your evidence. So far all we’ve ever gotten is heated opinion and innuendo (and proven frauds like the Russiagate hoax) insisted upon over and over again, which suggests to me that there is something more psychological, cultish and tribal at work with you than a calm, objective analysis of facts.
Stupidity can be fixed in a draconian way. When it runs into solid reality, often on a battlefield.
@Pappenheimer,
I'm sure that was why the words "for the express purpose of..." are included in the bill. So that the corporations that are actually changing the weather are exempt, because they're not releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere for the purpose of changing the climate. They just happen to do so in the pursuit of profit.
The wording is not an accident.
Bibi had quite cordial relationships to Moscow prior to the Ukraine invasion, and I don't remember them to be an ally.
I've always been befuddled by Likud's alliance with Putin.
I suppose it has to do with Russia's alignment with Saudi Arabia (via OPEC) with whom the Israeli right seems to be palling around with.
Then again, Israel despises Iran more than any Arab country, and Iran is a partner/client of Russia.
I don't get who Netanyahu* is rooting for. Unless it's as simple as Israel likes Trump who likes Russia.
* I know it's easier to type his cute nickname, but I refuse to do so. Just as I have refused to call DJT "The Donald".
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