I planned to do a weekend post about how the insatiable (and thus insane) top oligarchs are sparking a world wide revival of the moribund works of Karl Marx. (Alas.) And thusly they seem determined to reserve their rides on Uber Tumbrels.
But that will have to await another time. After I issue the next update of my book on AI... AILIEN MINDS.
Meanwhile, I have to address an even more dire phenomenon that's pervading across the liberal-o-sphere. Something so silly and unjustified that it plays into the very hands of those seeking to wreck Enlightenment Civilization.
Despair.
== The Role of the Courts ==
This essay (not one of mine) makes a strong argument that the Roberts Supreme Court has been betraying the American Republic in many ways, but above all… Two Supreme Court Decisions and the Dismembering of Madison’s Republic, by Earl R. Smith II, PhD.
...and they were, alas! By a Republican Party that is now the most tightly disciplined partisan machine in the history of the republic.
Still, I won't deny that the American Republic -- indeed the entire Enlightenment Experiment that let us escape 6000 years of dreary feudalism -- is in deadly danger! Hence I have tried hard to fulfill my own task in all of this. To imagine possible ways to make things better.
Seriously, If you want to see 35 pragmatic and quickly actionable measures to repair the damage, see my full list of proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms. And pass them on to folks who might act on them!
== In despair? Go to a mirror and... ==
On this blog's comment thread, some are expressing despair. Especially now that the Roberts Supreme Court has stopped pretending to be anything other than a Confederate/Kremlin shill, led by our generation's Roger Taney. And sure, 1859 looked pretty dire, too. As did 1776, when the American Revolution was saved from the pit of despond by Thomas Paine, whose pamphlets - Common Sense and The American Crisis - girded the resolve of brave, shivering patriots to keep fighting for a dimly-perceived better world.
How can I reject despair? Especially when few of you - certainly not even one of the sanctimonious despair wallowers - will actually go and read the epochally stirring words that Paine wrote? As if speaking specifically to you?
Perhaps it is a matter of personality. Wherein I deem despair to be grotesque and somewhat inhuman. But also a kind of pathetically ingrate laziness. So unjustified, when we are typing or narrating into miraculous devices, in comfort with nearby snacks, breathing air that (in urban areas) is vastly better than it had been, when I was young, with a self-repairing Ozone layer and yearly INCREASES in the number of trees on Earth...
... and (for now at least) freedom to research anything, and speak as we wish. For now, at least.
And sure, I read Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE about past civilization fails, more-often-then-not due to environmental negligence, and I know what's at stake. Criminy, do YOU know anyone who has fought this fight harder and longer than I have? From EARTH to The Transparent Society and so on? (Maybe Kim Stanley Robinson.) So,I got some cred.
When solar/wind/tidal+batteries are plunging in price and rocketing in emplacement, it would seem the only thing saving carbon-based electricity is the dam data centers. Which I discuss in Ailien Minds, by the way.
The news is dire, yes. and so is the blatant desperation of the Putinist/Foxites, who can see that a vast majority of citizens are growing aware and angry, as in 1859, and no amount of gerrymandered cheating will save the Kremlin shills from an approaching political comeuppance .
.
== What the traitors will attempt ==
And so it is their villainous desperation that I fear! Because the Project 2025 SOBs will certainly - by now - have concocted a plan for some dire event - perhaps on a 9/11 scale or bigger - to 'justify' an emergency declaration of martial law. Why else would they have already - via Trump - fired or distracted a majority of counter-terror officials, agents and officers and JAGs?
The coming 'event' will only be prevented if they KNOW that we are ready and wary. That we will all hit the streets shouting "Reichstag Fire!"
... and "Appomattox!" And then do much more, to prove the stupidity of proto-feudalists who wage war on all the folks who know law and cyber... along with bio, chem, nuclear and every other potential recourse. And who know where every single prepper bunker lies, and how to crack them open. (Yes, we know, boys.)
Alas, did I mention "stupid"? As they surround themselves with flatterers who croon them into believing they will be immortal lords? That they can terrorize and terrify us into submission. Or coax the masses to blame all the fact professions, as in A Canticle for Leibowitz, instead of the delusional oligarchs who are doing all this?
So no, I am not a Pollyanna. I am shouting warnings!
But those who despair over some despicably partisan, election-cheat court rulings are staring at epiphenomena, not at the real danger.
No, those who despair are historical ignoramuses, too lazy to look at how past Hero Generations girded themselves for a fight that's worth grit and courage and pain, to win. Tom Paine, especially. But also Lincoln, FDR. The soaring words of Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt... getting us on a path that might lead to the stars.
If I could, I would slap you glowering gloom-addicts silly! Till you get up off the couch and shout:
"Okay! Okay! I'll FIGHT instead of wallowing in desolate grumpiness! Now stop that or I'll slap you back! Let's go."
99 comments:
Citizen's United simply made it clear that you could contribute to political campaigns as a member of a group as well as individually.
Not that simple. It made it clear that while individuals have limits on political contributions, corporations do not. Including foreign corporations, if that concept even means anything.
"...ended decades of race-engineering in how congressional districts are drawn."
Who are you trying to kid. Even the supporters of Alito's decision approve of it because it allows for race-engineering in districting. It's just that it allows states to draw districts designed to dilute black representation rather than consolidating it.
How else does one describe the slicing of a city like Memphis or New Orleans into thin segments each watered down by the rural white population surrounding them?
Neither you nor that Feldman guy can argue with a straight face that the districts in Texas or Louisiana or Tennessee are drawn without regard to race. You simply approve of districts drawn to favor whites rather than minorities. At least be honest about that. But "honest Republican" has become an oxymoron.
The Voting Rights Act was dealing with a real racial problem: White politicians were using gerrymandering to slice apart black communities and squash their political power.
Now, SCOTUS is blithely ignoring the issue of political/racial community: say, the black community heavily supports a single Party (Dems) then politicians (GOPS) are slicing up black communities via partisanship and short-circuiting the desire of the Voting Rights Act. Racial gerrymandering under the guise of partisan gerrymandering.
The underlying focus of redistricting could be to have Congress people elected to serve communities. Congress could pass a law to forbid slicing up communities when drawing districts. But then big population centers might drive Congressional representation and we'd be setting up a Rural vs Urban battle. Well, maybe that's a better outcome... I don't know... I'm left with the conclusion that "Gerrymandering SUCKS" and I don't know how we fix that.
Despair is a tool that is wielded to encourage acceptance and compliance.
As Alex Steffen, the former editor for Worldchanging, once put it:
"Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience."
Looking at the 'triumphs of the will' being celebrated by the far right and confederates at the moment, I am struck by how flimsy they are rather than how all-conquering. They only serve to show people what lie beneath the masks and, if the mask wearers think it no longer matters, they've been listening to their own news services for too long. (I predict the emergency Tennessee shuffle will bite in embarrassing places.) Orban's electoral defeat means that a lot of the crypto funding is drying up.
There are ways to counter cynicism. All it takes is effort(!).
---
On a lighter note, this 1952 Pentagon memo, from the just released UFO stuff provides a laugh from the past (and a nod to TASAT, Lance Corporal Jones, and Douglas Adams):
"There is likely nothing to be done at the moment to prepare for these possibilities (the only body of writing available on the subject in an emergency is science fiction), because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic"
Don't panic!
MCS is a towering hypocrite and deeply evil traitor. Clearly stated enough? Roberts defends the right of state legislatures to define THEIR OWN (and congressional) deistricts to ensure that no matter how unpopular their party becomes, they can never again lose power in that state. Get rid of partisan gerrymandering and yes, racial districts should now be unnecessary. In fact, Dems were TRICKED into supporting them, since they WERE a method to gerrymander-minimize Democrat representation. Only now these state goppers are so insatiable that they wish to gerry away even that sliver of packed-together dem representation.
It could bite them in the ass. Gawd I hope so. And did I mention you are a deeply evil traitor, sir?
The framing suggests this is not the motivation in Tennessee, otherwise why move so quickly? Why cancel elections in play? Why lock out the only black representative from the meeting that redrew boundaries to eliminate his district?
btw it's been noted that the council elections just held in the UK may have been crowed as a win for Reform, but not in Scotland, where JK Rowling is now represented by two trans councillors.
Jibberer! One thing drives that. Blue states where so much better for so long that they drew millions who are now CROWDED. EVERY 'problem' you aim at Califoirnia is a price of spectacular success in a paradise that got so overwhelmed that yes, the lower cost of living draws some back away. It's called slosh.
Meanwhile CA is now thew world's 4th economy, the most creative, productive (One QUARTER of the nation's food!) and fun place on Earth. Despite you liars screeching denunciations for all my life. WE PAY YOUR BILLS you freaking ingrates.
If we set aside Utah and Illinois as outliers (or even if we don’t) average rates of almost every turpitude are far higher across Red-run states than Blue-led ones: from gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence and murder to teen sex, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation.
That is a huge, easily-proved fact and it should discredit all ‘conservative’ claims of good governance, especially when you add in the fact that national Republican administrations are always spendthrift wastrels, sending deficits skyrocketing, while Democratic ones are always far more fiscally responsible. Always. And I welcome $$$ wagers on any of that.
Throw in the failure of a single Rightist 'supply side economics’ prediction ever, ever to come true, with the sole outcome of rocketing wealth disparities, along with the deliberate war on science and the planet, and the stench gets overwhelming, even before we go on to all the lies and treason and their war against the US military officer corps and Trump's deliberate disbanding our ant-terrorism agents (*remember that one!*)... plus an ongoing list of other insanities, a mile high.
But the turpitude gap. That is what says it all.
And yes, you are a damned traitor.
I see he ran away.
Complete retreat. Interesting.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
When Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the above lines of "Ozymandias" nearly 100 hundred years ago, this sentiment served as both common knowledge and common wisdom, that all things grand & grandiose were transient fancies made of sand, especially those earthly goods that many men set their hearts upon, from the Holy Roman Empire to the Third Reich to Pax American, the StarTrek Future & the Voting Rights Act.
Power, Reputation, Pride, Mastery & Fame: All these things are fleeting because nothing overcomes, nothing lasts and nothing endures, as exemplified by the young becoming old, the strong feeble & the smart enstupified.
To argue otherwise is HUBRIS, a back-formation of the Greek 'hybris', meaning ""wanton violence, insolence, outrage", in the sense of a "presumption towards the gods", the end result being NEMESIS, also known as an irrational tantrum of self-destructive behaviour, often directed at no one in particular.
As in the case of Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat, it is from this madness that MCS flees, out of embarrassment for the sufferer, but not from an intrinsic sense of shame or guilt.
Best
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"Comment. " -- Mel Brooks
My sack is just fine thank you.
I would suggest in return that it takes cojones to look at harsh reality without flinching or wallowing in denial.
Let's start with the environment.
Even if we completely stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow and went 100% green the next day, it is already to late. We have already burned past too many planetary boundaries and triggered too many climate tipping points to make a difference.
The time to stop global warming and climate change was back in the 90s. No amount of wind power or solar arrays will save us now.
Earth is now a dead planet walking.
AMOC is about to collapse, a super El Nino is on schedule for this year (the first of many), the Thwaites glacier continues to have its foundation eroded away by warming arctic currents and when it goes it takes the entire west Antarctic ice sheet with it, drought is now endemic to half the world especially its food production areas, fire seasons are now year round, etc.
In the 1980s, only three events per year on average caused more than $1 billion in damage (inflation adjusted). The 2010s averaged around 12 such disasters a year—and 2020 made history with 22.
We are already fucked, corporate media just hasn't reported it yet.
But a George Carlin remarked, "The planet is fine. The people are fucked." He believed the Earth will survive and recover, eventually shaking off human beings like a "bad case of the fleas".
That shaking off will result in100s of millions if not billions of deaths globally.
But we won't care, because they will mostly be dark skinned people and non-Christians to boot.
The powers that be will welcome the hordes of desperate people heading north because (like the Syrian migrants that trigger the racial fear Brexit vote) it will give them the excuse to clamp down on civil liberties.
What will upset us is the price of gasoline.
Because that is far more important to us here in the good old US of A.
Re: Despair and how to defeat it:
I call it the Terminator principle.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/May11-8.html
Republicans started this whole process and are probably going to win Round 1, but Round 2, in 2028, could easily go the other way. If all the stars align, the Democrats could conceivable flip up to 16 seats in 2028. That would pretty much eliminate all the swing districts and House elections would become something of a formality. If Democrats went for broke, that might be able to produce a House with more than 218 solidly blue districts that would make Elbridge Gerry roll over in his grave. That could highly motivate the Republicans to get behind legislation to permanently eliminate all gerrymandering.
More evidence of what we already know. Republicans are fine with cheating as long as it helps Republicans. The only way they will vote for fairness is when the cheating hurts them. So for all of the liberals who resist our own gerrymandering on the grounds of not approving of cheating, the only practical path to nationwide elimination of gerrymandering is for Democrats to gerrymander them into the stone age.
Huh? Wow, progressives really do live in a world with a pink sky and purple polkadots. Here's what's happening in THIS world:
"The Democrat party is facing such a host of seemingly intractable problems -- structural, financial, legal, and ideological -- that it will be close to a miracle if it survives after this year’s midterms. The below-deck shuffles -- encouraging illegal alien votes, manipulating the census, making crooked voting almost impossible to check, and stuffing their pockets with illegal contributions through ActBlue and pay-to-play schemes of USAID and NGOs -- are all suddenly being exposed and blocked.
Empty Pockets
Jeff Childers has done a thorough job explaining the party’s terminal crisis. Being short of funds is a good start.
The Laundromat is Closed
Running a modern political campaign requires astronomical amounts of money. For years, Democrats relied on two massive funding streams: small-dollar digital donations via ActBlue, and a sprawling network of government-funded NGOs. Both are now collapsing.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that the Democratic National Committee is facing a massive cash crunch as “top donors have been slow to open their wallets.” The DNC had assured party officials that their resounding 15-point victory in the Virginia governor’s race would open the floodgates. “But big checks did not flood back,” leaving DNC Chairman Ken Martin presiding over a financial and leadership crisis.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has taken a sledgehammer to the NGO complex. DOGE first targeted USAID, leading to the elimination of over 5,000 programs. These programs were rife with fraud and political grift, with taxpayer money flowing through dizzying arrays of cut-out corporations to Democrat coffers. Musk bluntly explained, “This is one of the biggest sources of fraud in the world— government-funded NGOs.”
The broader recent crackdowns on Medicare fraud, autism services, and daycare funding are systematically cutting off the federal spigot that has long nourished progressive advocacy groups and political operatives. The “blue laundromat” is being condemned, and the DNC is suddenly discovering that running a political party requires actual money and real fundraising, which tends to be harder than making backroom deals with Somalian cartels.
The RNC has no debt and, as of March, has almost $117 million in cash on hand. The DNC has about $13.9 million cash on hand, but with $18.4 million in debts/loans owed. (By my arithmetic, that means the DNC is broke and faces a significant disadvantage in November.)
"https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/05/the_party_s_over.html
The fact that Dr. Brin calls me "evil" and a "traitor", simply means I'm over the target! We are done with being Mr. Nice Guy and losing the country to the truly evil followers of Woodrow Wilson. Ayn Rand was correct.
Yep, the Iron Law of Climate Policy wins every time:
"If there is an iron law of climate policy, it is that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-iron-law-of-climate-policy "
I looked at the "Two Supreme Court Decisions and the Dismembering of Madison’s Republic" paper and it is mostly just hysteria. Citizen's United simply made it clear that you could contribute to political campaigns as a member of a group as well as individually.
What did the most damage to what the founders designed was the 17th amendment. That changed the Senate from an assembly of State's Ambassadors to just another popularly elected body.
As for Louisiana v. Callais, Clarice Feldman described what it did better than I can:
This week, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, ended decades of race-engineering in how congressional districts are drawn. The opinion is likely not only to benefit Republicans by increasing their representation in Congress, but it also should end racial engineering in a multitude of local institutions, to the benefit of all. It signals the beginning of the end for progressive governance, begun by President Woodrow Wilson (ironically, a segregationist), whose vision conflicts with the Constitution. [ https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/05/scotus_tolls_the_bell_on_racial_gerrymandering.html ]"
I think Chief Justice John Roberts is correct, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
I certainly don't see any need NOW to consider race in districting. There are a number of black respresentatives from majority white districts.
@Dr. Brin
Why are blue states losing population and red states gaining? Because republican policies improve people's lives. How is it evil and traitorous to support limited government, low taxes and greater freedom?
Wow, so you are, indeed, completely insane. People are fleeing the Blue States because they can't even rebuild. Newsome's Oval Office hopes burned to the ground.
I undid all the deletes. This place is a toxic hellground, but I'm going to bring whatever reality I can into it. The fact that Dr. Brin can't even figure out that so many people are fleeing the Blue States that the 2030 census will result in about 14 house seats changing to the Red States simply demonstrates the insanity here.
Why this change from meek to bold? This column by Kurt Schlichter:
"Yet again, Democrat behavior raises the eternal question – are they stupid or are they evil? The current issue is the notion that the assassination attempts against Donald Trump, which have already killed one man and injured several others, were somehow staged. That’s a popular contention among Democrats—somewhere around 46 percent of Democrats polled believed that the murder and murder attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, was staged by Trump supporters to increase sympathy for him. Yes, you read that right – 46 percent. So, the answer to the eternal question is, of course, yes.
They are both stupid and evil.
Now, do they really believe this nonsense? They certainly want to believe it. It’s not so much that they don’t want it to be true that the kind of incel freaks who tried to cap the commander-in-chief share their views identically. If you read the latest goober’s manifesto, it is absolutely indistinguishable from the dialogue at a typical MS NOW panel discussion. There’s no difference at all. Maybe the problem is this guy took it seriously instead of as performance art—he was stupid, while the people instructing him were evil because they knew everything they said was a lie. What they are concerned about is being held accountable by voters for wanting it to be true. https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2026/05/06/the-democrats-malice-andor-stupidity-is-real-not-staged-n2675519 "
Add in the fact that the green nonsense is being beaten all over the world and its time to be bold!
Net Zero Parties Annihilated By Trump Aligned Candidates in British and Australian Elections
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/05/10/net-zero-candidates-anihilated-by-trump-supporting-populist-parties-in-british-and-australian-elections/
"The Democrat party ..."
All I need to read of that bit.
"The fact that Dr. Brin calls me "evil" and a "traitor", simply means I'm over the target!"
I don't actually think you're evil. I think you are so deep into a right-wing bubble that you really believe the alternate universe that they portray. I would bet that you think gas prices are going down and that Trump's ear was hit by a bullet from an assault rifle.
"We are done with being Mr. Nice Guy and losing the country to the truly evil followers of Woodrow Wilson."
Oh, pulleeeeze. Your side hasn't been nice in my adult lifetime.
"Ayn Rand was correct."
Heh.
What's crazy is the assumption that "red states" and "blue states" are locked into their identities. Virginia was once the powerhouse of the Confederacy, now they're outraged they can't do more for Team Blue. But if there's a "blue state" that needs vote suppression and/or state-level gerrymandering to stay in power, I'm not aware of it. Contrariwise, North Carolina would be recognized for the purple state it is -- except for escalating gerrymanders. Texas is getting bluer, and escalating suppression and corruption are what maintain its ruby-red government. Wisconsin is a purple state that is recovering its actual representation after an exercise much like NC's.
I'm not going to pretend that blue states are utopias and red states never do anything right. But here's something else I don't try to hide: I love the red state I was born in, but its government doesn't love me back.
Even SNOPES says the assasination attempt in Butler, PA was real https://www.snopes.com/collections/trump-assassination-attempt-claims/ . Corey Comperatore was killed by the assassin, so don't try to say it was faked.
You read Kurt Schlichter? The guy who openly wrote in his column about how to plan an invasion and conquest of California? You do realize he's writing all this as a way to try to dissuade the rising notion among Republicans that Butler, PA was staged? A notion that came from evidence that supporters of Victor Orban, darling of Trump intellectuals up until last month, were considering exactly that sort of stunt to try to save his collapsing re-election?
I don't want to believe Butler was staged, nor do I need to; Hanlon's Razor cuts it mighty fine. "Never attribute to malice that which incompetence can explain." Secret Service incompetence provided the opportunity; Trump is just a great showman, and either improvised brilliantly or had planned out such a performance just in case. Teddy Roosevelt did the same with his "Bull Moose" performance, except in his case the bullet did land squarely and he was in plenty of pain doing it.
Schlichter is a psy-operative, consciously and deliberately, and performing that function against his own people, in a mistaken belief that he serves them best by doing so. And that's all I've got to say about that.
Oh, the evil and traitorous Ninja Editor is back again.
The cuts to USAID have both hit US Farmers and approximately 14 Million people, who are protected to die.
That is ten Auschwitz or two Holocausts.
That alone is evil. (Oh, and it's only one of multiple genocides the US currently commit or are supporting.)
It has also gutted a powerful lever for soft power. The US are inches away from being thrown out of Europe, Russia be dammed.
Since Corey Comperatore was killed, ipso facto, the assassination was real.
Okay, let's cut through the chaff. Callais, and Shelby County before it, were based on what I think of as the "pure heart" theory of racism -- that intention, not outcome, is the moral fulcrum of discrimination. If your heart is not full of dark emotions ("fear, anger, aggression...") then you have not sinned. That the outcome favors your faction's hold on power is, in this interpretation, a mere side benefit of your good intentions -- perhaps even a reward for your exemplary attitude! And if enough hearts are pure, then we have "moved on" from racism, as Justice John "Crow" Roberts and Sam "Witchfinder" Alito would have it, and the Voting Rights Act is a relic of a bygone age.
Lest you think I'm a coddled blue-stater who doesn't know what he's talking about... at one point in my life, Shelby County was once just on the other side of the street from my house. This is not an evidence-free theory I am expounding.
What I have come to realize, reading the Witchfinder's work, is that progressives fell into the same epistemic trap as their opponents. It doesn't matter whether the gerrymanderer's heart is pure of racism. It doesn't matter what their heart holds at all. And it doesn't matter what's in their head, either -- racism, sexism, simple factional advantage, cultural purity, raw economic advantage. No rationale justifies enhancing a faction's power by manipulation of the rules. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 used the wrong tool, and tried to solve too small a problem.
Independent districting commissions are good, but they're only another patch on the problem. The problem, properly stated, is that single member districting, first-past-the-post elections, with party primaries conducted similarly in a two-party system, is inherently prone to abuse. That's the voting system most of us have now -- built at the same time as the Voting Rights Act, by people who had just as "pure hearts" as our gerrymanderers claim -- and it is a failure.
To be honest, I don't like California's current attempt at a solution with its "Top Two" all-parties primary. Alaska's "Top Four" with instant runoff seems to be more robust, though a case for Georgia's "jungle primary" can be made. Regardless, the point is that the current rules do not serve the states or the Union as a whole, and that this is true regardless of faction. One-party rule is no better for a blue state than a red, in terms of corruption; that's why Massachusetts has a tradition of electing a moderate Republican -- the sort the national party derides as "RINO" -- to keep a check on the frequently-corrupted legislature.
I would go further, as the NY Times once did, and advocate for a system with multi-member districts, proportional representation, and breaking up both the Republican and Democratic Parties into their component wings. But regardless of the solution, we first must acknowledge the problem. Gerrymandering will exist as long as there is profit in manipulating districts. Trying to restrain district manipulation will never be a solution. We must render district manipulation profitless and pointless. Our liberties will not be secure until we do so.
@ Catfish 'n Cod
Kurt Schlichter sort of agrees with you:
"Gerrymandering is a political act. There’s nothing wrong with that. Politics is the way that we allocate the costs and benefits of government, and the idea that there’s going to be some sort of neutral referee out there who divides up the costs and benefits of government without regard to self-interest is utterly ridiculous. This is the fetish of the progressive technocrats, the guys who believe that neutral experts are going to take self-interest out of government and rule on the basis of objectivity. Yeah, no. There’s no such thing as objectivity in politics. Remember all those neutral, objective technocrats during Covid? Me neither. That’s why the Framers were so wise – they understood that human nature means people will pursue their own self-interest. The only way to curb the resulting excesses is to create effective political checks and balances. The progressive technocrat ideal seeks to remove checks and balances because they hinder technocrat advocates from achieving their goals. When people say, “This issue should not be political,” they mean they want to decide the issue without your input. It doesn’t take a genius to notice how the objective technocrats always conclude that we must enact the policy that the people who love objective technocrats happen to want. https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/07/28/the-gop-needs-to-man-up-and-gerrymander-n2661008 "
"I'm not going to pretend that blue states are utopias and red states never do anything right. But here's something else I don't try to hide: I love the red state I was born in, but its government doesn't love me back."
That sounds like a line from a Netfilx film about Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Owens and a German athlete whose name I forget apparently became good friends and continued as such for many years after the war.
In the film, the two of them are drinking together, and Owens muses on the racism in America, saying "Maybe I should move here (to Germany)." The German runner shakes his head, and while I'm reciting his lines from memory, I'm pretty sure of the accuracy:
"I love my country. But my government has gone insane. They're not even trying to hide it any more. I think they're proud of it."
Sounds to me like a pretty apt description of the Confederate states and the Trump administration.
"Since Corey Comperatore was killed, ipso facto, the assassination was real."
Well, generally speaking, a random guy in a crowd isn't "assassinated". The fact that someone else was in the way of a bullet doesn't speak to the intent of the shooter. If the shot was not meant for DJT himself, but supposed to look like it was, then someone in the crowd would have been in the path.
"Even SNOPES says the assasination attempt in Butler, PA was real https://www.snopes.com/collections/trump-assassination-attempt-claims/ . Corey Comperatore was killed by the assassin, so don't try to say it was faked."
The shots were real. His ear was not hit by an assault-rifle bullet.
I believe the event was staged, but that's neither here nor there. All I said was that Trump's ear was not really hit by a bullet. The reaction, whether impromptu or planned beforehand was certainly staged for the cameras.
"Schlichter is a psy-operative, consciously and deliberately, and performing that function against his own people,"
Everyone that mcs links to is something like that. I don't even bother reading them.
@Larry Hart
"Everyone that mcs links to is something like that. I don't even bother reading them."
Ah, yes, the hallmark of the modern progressive - willful ignorance.
Blah Blah Technocrat blah.
Gerrymandering allows parties to select their constituents, where it should be the other way round, and that is not a democracy, but an oligarchy. Likewise, First past the post direct mandates create lots of "false winners" and thus exclude the majority opinion from political representation.
But I am moderately confident that the sheer level of incompetence, corruption and evil insanity of the GOP and their followers wil even increase up until the election and creates enough counter-energy to stop this madness.
If your previous approach stops working, then move on & try something new.
This is Catfish's based & pragmatic suggestion, but this is something that most liberal progressives (who, in their hubris, expect their temporary triumphs to last forever) simply cannot do, so they choose the madness & symbolic rage of pink pussy-hats to protest 'the dying of the light' that is their inescapable mortality.
After all, Fukuyama promised the liberal progressive that that their 'enlightened rule', as evidenced by their little victories over humanity's baser nature like 'tribalism', 'bullyism', 'genderism' & 'racism' (to name a few), would last forever because it equaled THE END OF HISTORY.
Unfortunately, that fickle bitch we call HISTORY simply shrugged off our collective relevance & moved on, as any & all right-thinking human beings must do if they would remain sane when their time passes, because the future has no place for us & our temporizing solutions.
You & I are already dust.
Best
"Ah, yes, the hallmark of the modern progressive - willful ignorance."
Ah, yes, the hallmark of the modern conservative - every accusation is a confession.
I come here and to other progressive sites. You never get out of the progressive bubble.
"I come here and to other progressive sites. "
You do that to pick fights, not to weigh evidence that might disprove what you already believe.
I prefer to think of it as bringing a bit of truth and sanity into the progressive bubble.
I'm going to point out that Ozymandius was written in the winter of 1817-18 when Napoleon was in exile and his health was finally failing. His 'great work' was already vanishing into the sand as the Great Powers of Europe tried to do a reset.
Except they didn't vanish. The utter mess of small princes of the Germanies changed. Italy pulled itself together too. Those two unifications weren't what Napoleon planned, but they are definitely consequences of his actions and they haven't vanished into the sand.
------
Another event was well underway when Ozymandius was written that was the result of unplanned, unforeseen actions by men and women big and small. A Great Work had been underway for about two centuries in Northern Europe and it was going mostly unnoticed at the time.
Great Britain had a population of about 13 million in 1817. Historically the island supported at most 4-5 million before famine became a serious issue. Malthus published his 'Essay on the Principle of Population' in 1798 and then a heavily revised version in 1803 and more later in the 1820's. The population boom WAS noticed, so while that is a 'great work' of the commoners, it's not the one I want to point out. The great work could be seen indirectly in the fact that Great Britain was managing not to starve in 1817 while supporting a population roughly 3x its former limit. It's not that no one was hungry. It's that they were WAY past the former limit without rampant famine.
(Don't bother trying to explain that away by saying the British Empire's reaping of goods from the world suffices. It doesn't. The numbers don't add up. The empire benefited many, but many of them weren't inclined to feed the exploding population of commoners.)
Malthus' original essay was read as too despairing by his peers which was seen as a sin. Later editions dealt with that by softening the gloom, but also fed into proposed solutions that modern people would consider as racist at best and genocidal at worst. Eugenics wasn't a dirty word for a long time.
Yet here we are today. Great Britain has a population near 67 million and considerably less of an empire. Famine hasn't been seen in a long time and the last big one (their neighbors in Ireland who they should have helped more) left a lasting emotional scar. They've been hungry during wars, but no famine. Malthus wasn't wrong about his observations, but he obviously missed something big. Despair wasn't just a sin judged by his peers. It was simply the wrong thing to do.
------
The poet's observation of the broken stone statue of a long dead Pharaoh and his empire reduced to sand teaches the wrong lesson. If we are to despair at the folly of men, it shouldn't be about them trying to do great works. It should be about them repeating stupid, disproven ways of doing those great works. Alexander's library eventually burned and his empire failed to survive him. Napoleon's empire was carved up again. The great Habsburg family ended in hemophilia and imbecility. We've tried a particular set of methods to accomplish great works over and over through history and proven they end in vast stretches of sand and ancient carvings of unjustified pride.
Yet the world's population stands at over eight billion humans. Famine happens, but it is getting to be rare. Absolute poverty still exists, but it is going extinct. Wars of conquest still happen, but they are now the exception that is largely rejected by most of us. We can fly through the air, talk with almost anyone on the planet, exterminated Small Pox, and have Polio on the knife's edge.
Don't tell me to despair.
I know better.
"I prefer to think of it as bringing a bit of truth and sanity into the progressive bubble."
Well, of course you prefer to think that.
I think rather you're trying to dispirit us and make us doubt our lying eyes and reason. And you somehow think you're exposing us to something we don't see all around us every day in right-wing and (at best) corporatist media? I don't dismiss your links because they disagree with me. I dismiss them because I've already considered their content and found it wanting long ago.
Agree 100% - things are bad today - but they were much much worse in the past - two steps forwards and one step back is still progress
"All shall be well and manner of thing shall be well" was written by Julian of Norwich during the Black Death.
The utter mess of small princes of the Germanies changed
As I live in such a former princedom: At that time, the Code Napoleon was kept as an improvement over the old system, as were the Danish rules we had for over 150 years prior to that.
We actually backslided in progressiveness with the forrmation of the Second Reich (Homosexuality became a felony, reintroduction of the death penalty.)
Up until the seventies, there were movements to make it a federal state of it's own. If it came along again, I would support it.
MCS let's see who is insane. $10,000 escrowed with a reputable atty to put it all before a random panel of not majorly partisan retired senior military officers.
Your states (except Utah) score higher in EVERY TURPITUDE from teen sex to STDs addiction divorce and net tax parasitism - needing support from blue states for 150 years. The reason given by EVERYONE leaving blue states is cost of living which is high here because EVERYBODY CAME.
Your 'low taxes' are for oligarchs restoring feudalism. And you are the ultimate enemies of freedom
But I waste time on a coward who will not step up with wager stakes, the way that an actual man would.
MCS let's see who is insane. $10,000 escrowed with a reputable atty to put it all before a random panel of not majorly partisan retired senior military officers.
Your states (except Utah) score higher in EVERY TURPITUDE from teen sex to STDs addiction divorce and net tax parasitism - needing support from blue states for 150 years. The reason given by EVERYONE leaving blue states is cost of living which is high here because EVERYBODY CAME.
Your 'low taxes' are for oligarchs restoring feudalism. And you are the ultimate enemies of freedom
But I waste time on a coward who will not step up with wager stakes, the way that an actual man would.
And no, he's no kind of Goldwater or even Reagan Conservative. His citations are those of a Nazi. Fortunately, he'll find out what both the WWII Nazis and the confederates found out, about Blue Americans.
I'm not telling you, Alfred or anyone to despair. Instead, I'm only putting out a general reminder that the great works of mortal men are mortal as well.
Alfred then cites Malthus as a potentially meritless cause of historical despair, even though his calculations were indisputably accurate given the food production technologies of his day, the problem being that Malthus could not foresee the vast efficiencies of today's fossil-fuel driven Industrial Food Production techniques & the Green Revolution (GR).
Now, take into account the cumulative environmentally NEGATIVE EFFECTS of those industrial techniques, including oceanic acidification, predatory over-fishing, an ammonium nitrate shortage (and/or oversupply) & the accumulated toxicity of the GR's pesticides & herbicides, and suddenly Malthus has a shiny new relevancy.
And, yes, we can now fly through the air assuming an uninterrupted aviation fuel supply, but that rather arrogant assumption has had some recent Middle Eastern setbacks, hasn't it?
It's called 'Normalcy Bias', this insupportable & unsupported assumption that what we call PROGRESS must continue willy-nilly upon its current upward trajectory, simply because this is the dying wish of the Baby Boomer.
I also agree 100% with Duncan_C that things which are good today were also "much much worse in the past" and could be again, too soon, assuming the inherent mortality of all things human.
Even the Black Death (which killed off 50% of Europe back in the day) has its upside, as Don_G notes, since it led directly to the European REBIRTH known as the Renaissance, so ' Remember you are mortal'.
Best
"And you somehow think you're exposing us to something we don't see all around us every day in right-wing and (at best) corporatist media?"
You have much in common with those evangelical types on the street (or the quad at the University of Illinois) who think that we poor sinners have never heard about Jesus Christ because Christianity is apparently such a marginalized sect in America that it must be a brand new revelation they're bringing to us.
Whereas, in reality, you can't swing a dead cat in this country without hitting Christianity. It's not news to anyone. And there's no such thing in this country as a "bubble" which excludes any knowledge of the existence or nature of Christianity, even among non-believers.
That's also what it's like with right-wing commentary.
A site devoted to stories of ex-MAGAts who came to their senses and left the cult. A sort of combination confessional and group therapy.
https://leavingmaga.org/
...
This happened around the same time I had taken a college journalism class, and discovered that Fox News had biases of its own. I moved to other news sources beyond Fox.
...
Heh.
Like I said, the US civil war is over and the Confederates won.
Racists now have their revenge for passage of the VRA and CRA in 1965.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-clears-path-alabama-redraw-congressional-map/
Supreme Court clears path for Alabama to redraw congressional map
Game over.
The bad guys have won.
I despair over the inability of Democrats to see. Or to understand what they are seeing. And that bodes ill for the (mostly) good side in this latest (8th or 9th) phase of the 248 year US Civil War against a deeply evil recurring Confederate madness. 6 years ago I published Polemical Judo* in the hope that someone, anyone, on the Dem side might be willing to try fresh tactics. Not a single one of 100+ ideas was tried by anyone. Blue Americans are showing guts and grit that will surprise our red neighbors, as happened in 1861... but we may have to go through a lot of pain, as in 1862 and 1863, till at least we find 'generals' capable of the slightest agility.
Latest example? Now we see reflexive cries of RACISM!!!! replacing any possibility of thoughtful analysis, especially of the decision by the Roberts Court to cancel some of the Voting Rights Act.
Dig it, there is some racism to the decision. But it is secondary! Will you stop and think - actually think - about this?
Red politicians have pushed gerrymandering hard, less for Congress than in order to keep majorities in state legislatures. ONLY Blue states and Alaska and Utah have taken measures to reduce the gerrymandering blatant crime, and not all blue states. Even the reformer states, like CA, WA, OR and CO, have been forced to retreat back into the foul practice, because confederates keep upping the evil.
This is why REPUBLICANS FAVORED MINORITY-MAJORITY DISTRICTS! It let them justify cramming all the folks in the Mississip[pi and Alabama and Louisiana and S.Carolina Black belts into single districts so the rest of the state could stay safely Republican. Yes, it resulted in a few more black faces in Congress. Maybe five or six. BFD. Nowadays there are plenty such faces in every election, from across the nation. Meanwhile BLACK VOTERS in those states were robbed of any chance for proportional representation in Congress or the statehouse, And the SKIN COLOR of that representation should matter less than if it's someone whose policies and nature and character you like.
MINORITY-MAJORITY DISTRICTS were a TRAP! So then, why is the Roger Taney... I mean John Roberts... Court majority eliminating minority majority districts now?
Because the Project 2025 / Cambridge Analytica cheaters now feel free to take gerrymandering to the next level! To dilute and liquidate even the minority-majority ghettoes where Southern Blacks might at least get a token voice, with the aim of eliminating even that representation.
It that racist? Sure it is!
But the fundamental crux is POWER! And the GOPpers can sense a huge rejection wave coming in November. So they are scrambling to protect their blackmailed/corrupt fannies. This is just the first of many desperate ploys. Watch as they prepare lists of voters to 'purge' just before the election, on any excuse or none at all. And I see no sign of a DemParty campaign to get folks checking their registration status. And if none of that will staunch the Blue Wave, then we'll have that Reichstag Fire.
But I waste my time. Civil War Part 9 is here. Blues are showing impressive guts and determination, just like their blue forebears in 1776 and 1861. But there's absolutely no sign of tactical sophistication. None, whatsoever.
I offer some here in the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html
... and it will do no good whatsoever. Says Cassandra.
==============
* Polemical Judo, by David Brin: http://www.davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.html
But this is more current:https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html
America the land of the gullible. Gerrymandering could be fixed by requiring proportional representation using ranked choice voting. Simple. Legal. Constitutional. Trivial. It’s what they did to senators, essentially (multi member district. But forgot ranked choice)
It’s the paradox of the intolerant. These new districts are obviously racially biased. The only solution is multi-member districts with ranked choice voting. Essentially impossible to gerrymander to any significant degree.
Nailed it!
Turns out that relationship was essentially made up PR by the Jesse Owen estate, and kudos for the ideas that it spread and supported. (According to an NOR documentary, think it was ‘this American life’
Voodoo economics for the claims of economic ‘growth’ made by politicians and people whose livelihoods depend on more of the same, science for climate change. You decide who to believe. And, yes, America is the land of the gullible.
Okay, c'mere folks. Let me show you how the psy-magic works.
First, misdirection. Pay no attention to the blather about technocrats -- the only technocrats in this discussion are the map-makers, who can work for any faction. The real work is done in the two short sentences at the front:
"Gerrymandering is a political act. There’s nothing wrong with that." Ah, the uses of the ambiguous demonstrative pronoun. What does that refer to? The following sentences imply "that" to be "a political act", as if gerrymandering was the right of all sentient beings. But looking just at those two sentences (as you when starting to read the paragraph), it's equally valid to infer "There's nothing wrong with gerrymandering."
Planting that idea in your brain is Schlichter's actual goal, and the whole rest of the paragraph is crafted to justify that idea without ever saying so. The intended path is to let your brain come up with that sentence, and then let the rest of the paragraph convince you of it, while supposedly talking about something else. Read without those two sentences, the rest of the paragraph is a depiction of redistricting commissions as biased (against Schlichter's faction particularly, of course) and autocratic (because, I suppose, gerrymandering expresses popular expression more accurately). It makes no sense... unless the reader either agrees with, or recognizes, the intended message.
But as skilled as Schlichter's misdirection is, he made a mistake -- he brought up the Federalist #10 thesis of checks and balances. Pray tell, what is the check on acquiring legislative power through gerrymandering? The Executive? Nonsense; the Executive is equally likely to encourage it. The Judiciary? It used to be, but thanks to the tireless efforts of Senator Yurtle, Leonard "Opus Dei uber alles" Leo, and Chief Justice John Crow, the judiciary now paves the path for gerrymanders. The electorate? They're the ones gerrymandering is meant to disempower. Right now, the only balance on gerrymandering is... more gerrymandering. That's not a check, though. That's the opposite of a check. It's a race to the bottom. And as the title of the column suggests, that's exactly what Kurt Schlichter advocates.
There is a principled argument to be made that the Voting Rights Act essentially mandated gerrymandering. But that argument does not lead to Schlichter's vision of Orbanist mapmaking. It leads away from micro-managable districting altogether.
The real mystery here is how mcs found a way to think Schlichter "sort of agreed" with me about anything at all.
Both of you see gerrymandering as inevitable in the system we’ve got.
Der Oger,
I was hoping you'd speak up with your more detailed ground truth. Thank you.
From the outside, I recognize that wars were still fought on your home turf, but they look less and less like other people's proxy wars fought far from home so the war costs landed on others. Errors occurred, but not precisely the same ones... not for long anyway.
From the outside, that utter mess looks designed by other powers to ensure they had a place to fight... elsewhere. Didn't always work... and it eventually got up-ended.
Things changed... and now you get to help us see ourselves absent our rosy glasses.
"The great works of mortal men are mortal as well."
Mmm. Technically true, but when spoken like an incantation, it blocks our awareness of the facts that some of our works change us in fundamental ways and wind up surviving LONG past the lives of those who originated them.
One such change occurred LONG before Malthus. Humans invented markets and eventually coinage. A great many other things occurred in the wake of this invention, but a big one was that we began to adapt. There is good evidence for western Eurasia that during the Bronze Age, the human genome was facing strong pressure to adapt. Very strong. Some changes were initially in one direction and then sharply changed in the other direction. The easiest ones to spot involve immune system alterations, but there were several others too.
Our markets proved to be useful and we adapted culturally. It's rare to find humans anywhere now who do not engage in trade with their neighbors. Intentional trade. The kind of trade where we'd starve if our predictions fail too often. Markets require us to come together, so it should shock no one that diseases became more of an issue during the Bronze Age. Of course they would. Of course we'd face selection pressures and become something slightly different.
The great works of mortal men aren't just the broken stone statues of forgotten pharaoh's or beautiful painted palaces of dynastic rulers. They are the Big Things not always associated with Big Men. Statues may break and vanish in the sand, but the complex writing system invented by Egyptian scholars and fully intended to be hard to learn was recognized by slaves as valuable enough that they invented pidgin versions that stood in for phonemes and became the early syllabic alphabets which morphed later into the ones we use today. Writing was invented long ago, but one of the truly great works of men involved bringing it in reach of people not interested in serving as boffins. Now it is everywhere and the older, complex languages etched on the broken statues almost got lost to antiquity. Well... some of them DID get lost. The Pharaoh just lucked out that his was re-found.
The great works of mortal men are mortal as well, but some of them last long enough that we adapt around them suggesting they'll last as long as modern humans do.
------
Malthus didn't just fail to understand fossil fuel driven food production and modern genomic skills. He was already in error in 1798 before industry had bought into the steam engine. The textile mills weren't going up just because the engines were available. The people were also available. ALREADY available. And... you can't just snap your fingers invent a population to fill them. It took longer to grow a worker than a steam engine.
The population of Great Britain near 1700 was near 5 million. The 1801 census put it nearer to 10.2 million. The population boom began BEFORE industrialization. Malthus saw the booming numbers but failed to imagine why it was happening other than the hoary story of poor people having too many children. Seriously? We are being over run by 'those' people!
Why?
Babies were surviving.
Why?
Populations were moving.
Why?
Malthus didn't see it. Many people today don't either even though populations are still moving for the same f&(*ing reason!
Malthus didn't see it because the great works of the people involved are damn near transparent. Like air, you breathe it without thinking much about it.
We shouldn't ignore Malthus, but we need to pay attention to his initial despair along with his observation of the numbers. What he saw deeply concerned him to the point that his peers thought he went too far in his predictions of dire gloom. Whether you share his religious beliefs about despair or not, it is quite evident today that he missed something big and his despair was unfounded.
The lesson here is to ask yourself what you might have missed that would undermine your own despair? It's hard to see what you can't see, so I recommend ask those you trust NOT to re-enforce your opinions to take a crack at it.
Yersinia Pestis is showing up a a lot of archeological sites as a big killer. Not only have we finally nailed down the cause of the Black Death, we have its genome sequenced from samples spanning millennia. It's going to be most famous for killing off entire populations vacating lands for migrants to re-populate later. Why are so many European languages so similar? Well... Previous occupants were annihilated by it and the Yamnaya moved in later.
I'm pretty sure one of the newest great works of men (and obviously women) will result in some bacterial exterminations in the near future. I'd celebrate the death of m. tb. by dancing naked in streets no matter how many of you suggested otherwise. 8)
Malthus was before the "industrial revolution" - but after the "agricultural revolution" so there was food to feed the extra people - which is why there were almost no famines
King "farmer" George made a non trivial contribution to that - you know the one you guys rebelled against
Yes. Fertilizer was showing up before steam engines.
Many things happened in the 18th century, but the local population only doubled. That's fast by historical standards, but it was in the next gear up by the arrival of the 19th century when Malthus asked a reasonable question about whether it would be enough. As we showed in the 20th century, doubling could be brought down to about as short as a single generation depending on how one defines it.
I love the fertilizer story. Very science-y. A misguided explanatory narrative had a sufficiently potent predictive layer to make it all helpful anyway. It's a wonderful lesson in how explanations can be swapped out leaving predictions largely intact.
Both Cassandra and Jeremiah were attacked for their predictions.
Both Cassandra and Jeremiah were right.
"Pray tell, what is the check on acquiring legislative power through gerrymandering? ...The electorate? They're the ones gerrymandering is meant to disempower. "
If it wasn't so egregious and disingenuous, I would have done a spit-take when (I think it was) Roberts suggested that the remedy for Wisconsin gerrymandering is at the ballot box.
Don't want to talk about the environment Dr. Brin?
Ok, let's talk about inequality and the economy.
Our debt just exceeded 100% of GDP for the first time ever.
The debt of course benefits the rich at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Trump and friends can see what is coming and are preparing their plans for a white power dictatorship (Gestapo ICE is just the tip of the spear)
Here's historian Anne Applebaum on how Trump is following the dictator's playbook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwEtOyaFhCA&t=4563s
Pulitzer Prize Historian: You Won't Notice Until It’s Too Late - Anne Applebaum
But the more you clamp down the higher the pressure builds until it explodes.
America (as measured by the GINI coefficient) is now France a few years before Bastille Day.
French inequality in 1789, as measured by GINI, was near 0.59 and wealth inequality seeing the top 10% owning around 90% of assets.
American inequality, is about 0.48 and - rising - with the top 20% of earners holding over 52% of the nation's income.
No other industrial nation has this level of income inequality.
The income of CEOs last year rose 20x faster than ordinary Americans with average CEO pay now about 400x that of ordinary Americans (during America's economic golden age of the 50s and 60s CEOs made only 20x more than their workers).
It's why one of Timmy's banker friends said "Does anyone really care if the straits of Hormuz are closed?" (the modern version of "Let them eat cake").
The Gini coefficient commonly measures income inequality, but wealth disparity is much higher, with the top 10% controlling nearly 70% of the total wealth. The bottom 50% only controls 1% of wealth.
The top 10% account for 50% of consumer spending,. The bottom 50% account for 25%.
And you have tone deaf idiots like Hassert stating that the explosion of credit card debt (ordinary Americans now need to put groceries on their credit cards) is a good thing.
The top 10% of our K-shaped economy owns 93% of stocks. Half of Americans have no financial assets at all.
To try to keep ordinary Americans in line, the rich promote racial fear and gay disgust.
This is an old trick going back to the reconstruction South when the plantation owners promoted the Klan and White racism to keep poor Whites and recently freed Blacks for working together to fight the system.
Trump's racism is just the latest version of this tactic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyqNXAsdrY
Billionaire Says: "TAX THE RICH" Is a SLUR
When inequality gets so bad one of three things happens.
The Poor revolt and roll out the tumbrels, or firing squads, for Rich, violently redistributing wealth.
The Rich establish a police state to protect their wealth and power, splitting the working class with appeals to racism, antisemitism, homophobia, etc. (the Republicans current game plan)
A reformer appears (Solon in ancient Athens or FDR in America) who uses taxes and social programs to peacefully redistribute wealth (and the Rich who hate the reformer should actually be grateful that he saved them from the mob with pitch forks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8
Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming | Nick Hanauer
Which is why we live here http://theviews.org .
We do have fun http://theviews.org/Life%20at%20the%20Views/2026/may-10-2026-early-hummingbird-season-report.html
Celt:
"Both Cassandra and Jeremiah were right."
I told you before that I do find your descent into despair to be understandable.
My question is what you are demanding for those of us who have not so descended (yet)? You're obviously debating with the goal of having others give up and admit that life is hopeless. But then what? What follows from that?
Commit suicide?
Quit work and engage in hedonism until the end?
Walk into the Tower and pick out a room wi' a view?
If you, like Cassandra, are right, then what are you yourself doing in light of this revelation? And what should the rest of us be doing next instead of what we are doing? Despair might indeed be an option, but I don't see it as a useful end in itself, even in a hopeless situation.
One of my favorite long-lived works of men:
Positional numeration, with its capstone, the number Zero.
That one's a keeper. Even if civilization falls hard, the survivors will unearth those digits and work out arithmetic again. So as long as we're still us, we'll have it. (Or, like with cats and mansions, it'll have us?)
Unlike big heavy fragile statues, the number zero is weightless. Every culture on Earth uses those digits, so that system has conquered the world, with no shots fired.
I am deeply grateful to the Hindus and the Arabs for coming up with this. I cannot imagine building a car, or a telephone, or this Internet, with Roman numerals. A Hindu mystic named the void; an Arab trader used the nothing-number to balance his books; and that meeting of earth and sky transformed the world. Two cultures agreed on Zero, and on nothing else ever since, and that was enough to change everything.
There's also the Klingon/Asgardian option:
Fight back, despite doom, as a matter of Honor.
The very end of CATS CRADDLE... Vonnegut suggests a gesture of defiance aimed at God. Certainly well-earned. Much such impudence is in my theological play THE ESCAPE. Here's a recording of the first public performance . Impudently theological fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy3qPm74XoE
To have Celt raise the alarm about the absolutely 'terrible state' of western society -- its unfairness, its immorality, its economy, its debt-load & its wealth inequality -- it's highly amusing, especially when one realizes that the historical failure rate of its every non-capitalist & marxist alternative has been so incredibly 'terrible' that he dares not mention it.
As for those of you who despair as things fall apart, I only add that 'falling apart' is a prerequisite prior to 'building back better', and all of you die-hard commie democrats remember how much you absolutely loved Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" Party Platform back in 2020, don't you?
It would behoove you all to remember this when the world you love turns to shit because shit makes excellent fertilizer that favors healthy growth, going forward.
You must FALL DOWN first if you would pick yourself up.
Best
Celt is fast devolving into troll range. Jesus man, as LH asked, what's your point or aim here? Cause there is a direct correlation here between gloom and ignoramus-ness.
You dare jabber at me about the environment? The author of EART and EXISTENCE? Are you aware of the hilarious irony of your snark when I do more for all of these causes in any given day than you have in any year?
Your description of three possible outcomes must have come after you swallowed the vitamins your earlier missives indicated you to be lacking.
The will among democrats for an FDR who can SAVE market enterprise from feudalism and restore the flat/fairness of that era. Problem is that they are TACTICAL dunces. As I discuss in this posting.
What was the point of Cassandra's and Jeremiah's prophecies?
To let people know that a new a radical approach is needed, to shake people out of their complacency, and to dispel the naive notion that the good guys always win. And I believe that we underestimate the gravity of the situation. By the time we do and the evidence is overwhelming it will be too late.
As for the environment, as an environmental engineer these past 50 years (hazwaste and superfund sites as my specialty) I think I've earned my stripes in this field. Nearly retired, I volunteer time at EWB and the local Dem party in my red state, they aren't much in numbers or funding but they're all we got.
P.S. Historically, reformers like Solon and FDR are extremely rare and I wouldn't count on another one to save us.
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
"Why not despair?" is something of a rhetorical question (and admittedly the venting of a bitterly disappointed old man who had hoped for a better future ever since he watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon as a 10 year old boy).
But you are right, despair is a sin, specifically a sin against the theological virtue of hope.
But it really is too late to physically save the planet (and its human populations) from terrible changes already set in motion since we have already broken too many planetary boundaries and triggered too many tipping points.
Clathrate deposits are already releasing massive amounts of methane from the ocean floors, the west Antarctic ice sheet is failing, ocean acidity is laying waste to reefs and a food chain based on shellfish, aquifers world wide are being poisoned and drained, AMOC is overturning, the Amazon is collapsing into a savannah, a 6th mass extinction is well underway....
None of these can be stopped, no matter what we do now. It's already too late.
So what to do?
All I have now is just a hazy outline. Since the disaster cannot be stopped, look beyond and plan for the aftermath. Neither triage aimed at using our limited resources (and feeble political will) to save a remnant (who would we chose to save?) or even mass prepping (how could that be coordinated enough to be anything but a waste of time and resources?) will do much good. Maybe something like a secular version of the Benedictine monks that preserved civilization after the fall of Rome in communities scattered across the chaos of Europe, while avoiding the cultlike coercion you find in too many modern ecovillages.
As I get more into community salvage and local politics I may have a better answer for you.
EWB: Engineers without Borders, modeled on Médecins Sans Frontières
They used to be 100% overseas (years ago I helped design a sewer system for a village in Rwanda). But now whole stretches of America are now considered to be Third World in terms of infrastructure and a lot of EWB's work is n here in the good old US of A.
Well, this is interesting.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/12/russian-ship-ursa-major-sank-spain-nuclear-reactors-north-korea
The sinking of a Russian vessel that may have been taking nuclear reactor parts to North Korea took place 17 months ago, just after NK troops joined Russia in the attacks on Ukraine. The damage looks consistent with a type of high-tech torpedo that would implicate NATO or the US, assuming that Russia or Iran did not sink the ship.
And hence Celt ignores BY FAR the most important prophet and deliverer of warnings... Jonah... in the most beautiful book of the BIble. Wherein the warnings ARE heeded and God does relent and change his mins. And the Book of Revelation fetishists HATE JONAH because the implication is that even if John of Patmos was revealing a real threat - instead of obviously a psychotic rant - God CHANGED HIS MIND long ago!
Ukrain has for some time been the leader in drones.
Damage assessment is more likely a high-cavitation torpedo, which would rule out Ukraine, or at least known Ukraine ability.
Plus, the Mediterranean isn't exactly Ukraine-adjacent.
Joe B was still POTUS at the time, just saying.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/May12-2.html
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Yesterday, in a two paragraph order on its shadow docket, SCOTUS has thrown out the special master's map and vacated the lower court's decision striking down the redrawn 2023 map. As a result, Alabama can now use the 2023 map for this year's primary, which had been scheduled for next week. The state legislature passed a law on Saturday to authorize a "special primary election" for Congressional seats in the event the Court allowed the 2023 map to go back into effect. And that's just what the Supreme Court did. So much for the Purcell principle and the concern about causing confusion so close to an election or in an "active primary campaign."
But it's even worse than that. As Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in her dissent, the district court found that Alabama had intentionally drawn the 2023 map based on race. Under Callais, intentional race-based gerrymandering violates Section 2 of the VRA. So, in an unexplained two paragraph order on the shadow docket, the majority is ignoring its own ruling from just two weeks ago to let Alabama use a map that intentionally denies Black voters their rights under the law. And Chief Justice John Roberts wonders how anyone could think the Supreme Court's decisions are based on politics.
...
Roberts seems like he has to mansplain to ignorant voters and congressfolk how the supreme court works--that they don't make law but simply assert what the law means.
What he says is somewhat aspirational. He describes what the court is designed and intended to do and then pretends that critics just don't understand, rather than that we understand all too well and that our very complaint is that the court is behaving other than it is designed and intended to.
But I think he's actually being a bit more insidious than that. Rather than just describing the court's intended function, he's asserting that (since there is no higher appeal available) whatever the court rules actually is--by definition--as assertion of what the law means, whether or not the words of the law or the court's own precedent actually agree with each new ruling. We're supposed to accept the court's infallibility over our lying eyes, even the things that contradict the other things.
Ukraine was the major weapons supplier in the Soviet Union - nobody should be surprised if they still have some torpedoes lying about
SCOTUS has entered "When in the course of human affairs..." territory.
Marc Elias agrees https://twitchy.com/justmindy/2026/05/12/marc-elias-now-calling-for-virginia-government-to-be-abolished-n2428128
@matthew,
"human events", but yes, you're singing my song.
Funny how Marc Elias calling for something is the same thing as "The Democrats" calling for it.
Nobody screams that "The Republicans are calling for the abolition of democracy", even when actual Republicans in political office call for just that.
Larry, well why not. That is how religion has always worked. If there is enough law out there, pick the bit that seems convenient. There is always an apposite quote to be found if the books are thick enough, whether the law, the bible or Shakespeare.
Reason: Here's an Underfable I wrote on that topic.
***
Flexibility
An Underfable, with comment
Once upon a time a Slave-Driver asked a Holy Book if slavery is righteous. The Holy Book quoted several of its passages calling slavery a divine blessing, ordained by the Lord.
Later an Abolitionist asked the Holy Book the same question. The Holy Book quoted several of its passages calling slavery a foul abomination, in defiance of the Lord.
Later still a Skeptic asked the Holy Book about those two opposite answers. The Holy Book said, “I am all things to all men.”
Moral: A meme’s gotta do what a meme’s gotta do.
Comment:
That Holy Book may claim to be a message, but really it’s more like a language. There’s a verse in it for war, and a verse in it for peace; there are verses in it for love and for hate, for day and for night, for scattering stones and for gathering stones together. So what you say with it says more about you than about it.
But though it says two things, you are free to quote one thing and not the other, and credit it to the Holy Book but not you. That’s what you get from the bargain.
MCS: the rhetoric is getting very late 1850's. Both sides believe the other to be insane -- which, analyzing solely from the boutique axioms, is actually correct. And so we have people egging on a fight, sincerely believing that the stakes are existential.
David, I can't afford to despair. I have a Kittenfish who needs a country to live in. I have given up on the pundit/lobbyist/consultant blob that has been the connective tissue of DC and of the Democratic party, but that's far from the end of the story. AOC. Graham Plattner (no, he's not a Nazi, he's a Marine who got drunk. If you know any Marines, you know how he got that tattoo.) James Talarico. Mallory McMorrow. I could go on and on and on.
The dementia is not in one man, however powerful. The dementia is distributed through party structures run by octogenarians who are still acting in response to a country now in the past. And the attempt to place Albionica above Antibabylica rises once again.
John Crow and Samuel Witchfinder know they're incoherent. They no longer care. They just want enough smokescreen to deliver the one-party state they have always been aiming for. Then they can replace competent but sometimes ossified bureaucrats with dynamic, incompetent technofascists that will move fast and break things, and maybe develop some tiny utopia that will shine across the wreckage of their failures.
I used to think the Enclave of Fallout was cartoonish, hyperbolic parody. I don't think that anymore.
Paradoctor,
I think another like that is on the horizon. I finally learned a bit of projective geometry with its inclusion of points and lines at infinity. Parallel lines meet out there. We see horizons yet avoid representing them geometrically... until lately.
Turns out it is easy to write a Euclidean 3D geometry with the extension and even easier to write software simulations in it than in the limited Euclidean model. Far fewer edge cases. Rotations as double reflections. SOOOO much easier to represent Euclidean primitives if one includes a finite expression for infinity. SOOOO much like what happened when we added a zero.
If I read the article right, the Russians finished the sinking job and then blew it up again on the sea floor to make a mess for anyone interested in diving to take a look.
Obviously classified shipment. I'm surprised the Captain spoke about it at all.
Just one demural, Catfish. In my experience it is amazing what a large fraction of Democratic pols appear to be honest and sincere. And their TACTICAL stupidity seems to derail any notion that they are just better at hiding their corruption.
Anyway... ONWARD to a brief update of AiLien Minds...
Onward
onward
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