Most heterodox thinkers have witnessed the NY Times, WAPO, LA Times and other leading media organizations morph into mouthpieces for progressive radicals for years now.....they don't even try to hide it anymore. The good news is that they've been shedding readers in droves to the independent media/journalist landscape. TFP, Public & Rack…
Most heterodox thinkers have witnessed the NY Times, WAPO, LA Times and other leading media organizations morph into mouthpieces for progressive radicals for years now.....they don't even try to hide it anymore. The good news is that they've been shedding readers in droves to the independent media/journalist landscape. TFP, Public & Racket News have been piling up new subscribers by the thousands month after month. These corporate media dinosaur's are finished......we're simply witnessing the final pathetic gasps from them.....good riddance.
Its also well known that so many of the academies are little more than overpriced progressive and marxist indoctrination centers. What will be interesting is to watch what happens when spigot of money is turned off to these institutions by doners who seem to be waking up to just how vile they have become.....especially post October 7th. Lets hope parents who send their children to these schools take notice too. 82% of professors at Harvard identify as "left" or "very left" politically, so I question if any of them can truly course correct if they don't root out the progressive activist administrators and professors who have poisoned these once great institutions. Perhaps we need some ideological affirmative action implemented at our universities.
I'm also watching Bari how many of the BLM and "In This House" yard sign posting progressives will actually move away from these ideologies. So far from my friends who lean left/progressive, the silence from them has been deafening. I just hope they have a reconsider before they step into the voting booth in 2024. I'm not terribly optimistic but you and your staff seem to think something is changing on the left. I guess we'll see.
"What will be interesting is to watch what happens when spigot of money is turned off to these institutions by doners who seem to be waking up to just how vile they have become.....especially post October 7th. "
Won't really matter until the federal student loan spigot is turned off.
'I just hope they have a reconsider before they step into the voting booth in 2024.'
And vote for who else exactly, Evans? The GOP politicians at war with each other in the House, who display their idiocy to the entire nation by refusing to agree on a Speaker? Do you think they'll agree on one before the government lights go out in November? These people are an alternative to the admittedly insane progressive Left?
If I had to vote today, my guess is that I'd vote for RFK Jr. If push comes to shove and my ONLY choices are Biden vs Trump, I'm voting for the orange man.
Right now, I'm leaning towards RFK Jr. He doesn't check all the boxes for me, but he at least sounds like he's done his homework on the things that are important to him. Trump sounds like he listened to 7 minutes of Fox News and just started regurgitating whatever he thought he heard and Biden can only regurgitate his Gerber's apple sauce.......so there's that.
All due respect, the "Biden is senile" schtick is a bit overplayed. Yes, he's old, and he acts old, but he's not senile or drooling into a bib. And he's done a pretty good job so far of dealing with the Israeli conflict, in terms of being committed for Israel (despite pressures from some wings of the Democratic Party), as well as with re-strengthening NATO over Ukraine and Russia. He's been saddled with the brunt of inflation (of which he has very little to no blame on, honestly, inflation is globally experienced and mostly the result of the COVID economy and some highly influential events like bird flu, crop disease, weather as well as yes, Ukraine as the world's largest wheat producer), and with consumer spending remaining high, businesses are feeling little pressure to roll back prices even as the rate of inflation has receded. But on the whole, we've stayed out of a recession - which if had occurred with inflation would have been many times more painful, but of course we don't vote on what didn't happen so much as what did happen, and so Biden is bearing the burden of inflation on top of what is otherwise a very strong economic picture, jobs, wages and otherwise. But people vote on the price of eggs, even if the price of eggs went temporarily high due to bird flu and then went back down again (a dozen eggs in my local store is ~ $3.00 which is about right!), but the lingering feeling of price instability is "sticky". The delusion is that "Trump" will "fix it", or that Trump was in the first place responsible for the pre-COVID economic conditions that have now been glorified beyond what they actually were. The truth is that Trump took Office at the moment of the peak of an 8 year long expansion following the bottoming of the 2009 crash. He did pretty much nothing to effect the conditions many look back towards now, and there's little rational reason to believe that he would wave his non-existent (and actually, based on his business record, reverse Midas touch) simply upon resuming Office. Of course, again irony abounds, as it's very likely that by the time of Jan 2025 Inauguration Day, the declining inflation rate and prices will have normalized and Trump will OF COURSE take and get all the credit for just having been elected. If Biden wins instead, for about 40% of the electorate, the economy will still suck no matter if Biden mailed them a golden egg every month ; P
RFK Jr is not going to win the election. He'll swing it for one of the major candidates, and as it stands now, most of his votes are going to come from the Trump side. He does not have a convincing left-progressive movement behind him, and that's largely the result of his stances on vaccines.
Agree on Trump, of course. LOL. But there's the rest of the GOP which is almost as concerning as Trump, because they are so committed to him. The House Speaker mess is a symptom of it. And even if it wasn't about Trump, there's just the policy agenda of the GOP - you can't expect traditionally Democratic voters to just abandon core support and beliefs for issues like safety nets, health care, pro-choice, taxes (not being constantly lowered for the wealthy), some measures of "climate conscious" policy (the GOP's complete abandonment of the issue is a non-starter even if I don't support or agree with the lengths of all what progressives in the Democratic Party seek, the point is that there is at least a debate in the Democratic Party that leans towards mitigation and a healthy dose of moderation), etc.
The Republican Party has no agenda currently that I can vote for. Anti-woke? There's no federal mechanism that doesn't seriously get in the way of free speech around it, and frankly social and cultural pushback is 1000x worth a heavy fisted legislative policy, a la Florida. "Woke" is a cultural and social phenomenon, it will not be "stamped out" by policy alone, and when policy attempts, it strengthens the cause behind "woke". Honestly, Donald Trump was probably the biggest fuel to the "woke fire" post 2016 that could have been provided, it gave it a broader spread and cogent "raison e'etre" than anything else and made it burn even hotter in the events of 2020. If you want "woke" to flame out, getting behind an inflammatory reaction, regardless of how fleetingly good it might feel, is the worst possible response to getting to that point, instead "woke" will have to suffer an organic and legitimate pushback through the actual culture and institutions (as what seems to be happening, slowly) as a result of its excesses, not ham-fisted politics. Israel? Look, the GOP has its own "issues" around antisemitism, while not in favor of "Palestine to the river to the sea" flavor, but of the white nationalist type within some elements of its base, and some pretty popular and prominent members of the Party are a little too close to comfort to that base. Trump is also a non-starter. And it's not about his "mean Tweets". He's incompetent, corrupt and a complete loose cannon that has, apparently, the backing of an agenda behind him to use his "loose adherence" to "institutions" to reshape the entire federal government into a loyalist machine to a person/ideology that I don't think even conservatives really understand what they might be getting with that. Trump is also old, and if you listen to him "raw" speak at length, he's more discombobulated and non-sensical than on Biden's worse days.
With the Democrats at least, the tent is wide enough to support a solid "centrist" mainstream wing, and that is actually a lot more structurally beholden to than its left wing. Debates and compromise can be had. The GOP has become far right and is absolutely driven by the far right, as we have just watched unfold with this absurd Speaker fight. Matt Gaetz and Trump won, after all. I cannot support, or vote in good conscious, for any Republican that will just hand over more power to this wing. The so-called "moderates" folded like pancakes over Johnson, even though he's just as ideologically extreme as Jordan, they're just hoping his lower profile and "normie" appearance and rhetoric will fool their actual moderate voters in their districts. But it was a clear demonstration, after the brief hope with the defeat of Jordan's bid, that it is still the right wing (which is NOT a minority as "The Squad" is in the Democratic Party) that is driving the car. No. Thanks.
"These corporate media dinosaur's are finished......we're simply witnessing the final pathetic gasps from them.....good riddance."
No. Life would be far worse with them gone. Instead of disappearing, I'd rather they go back to doing straight and fair reporting so we actually understand WTF is going on in the world. Why? Because they reach millions of people worldwide---more, actually, because most smaller papers and almost all social media and TV stations base their stories and news coverage on what appears in NYT and other Bigs.
The public need large, aggressive, and fair corporate news outfits to provide counterweight to large, aggressive, and unfair government, corporate, and institutional propagandists. As much as I like and subscribe to Substackia, they're too small and understaffed to play that role. We need the Bigs, who buy their digital ink by the tanker-car-load, because they're the only ones with the financial and staffing resources to fight back against the propagandists.
We just need them to be honest, not the mewling bullshitters they are today.
I'm the Token white guy in my neighborhood, there is ONE BLM sign. You go 3 blocks(?) in any direction 2 things happen 1. it gets Real white, 2. you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a BLM and "In This House" yard sign.
I'm talking MPLS the 5th CD (Ilhan Omar's district.) This is as Deep Blue area as you will find in the US. On the City Council The Green Party is the opposition.
Be careful when generalizing about "universities." I'm a member of the faculty of a large public university in the American South and, while there are rumblings of wokeness from some corners - most notably from the administration - the faculty have been at pains to affirm our commitment to free inquiry and freedom of expression, and we (mostly) stick to it.
I learned last week that FIRE has upgraded my institution to "green light" status, which is good to know.
An example: Just last week I had a really interesting discussion with one of my classes about whether one could judge Robert E. Lee to have been a virtuous man. (This was in the context of discussing a book about Aristotle's virtue ethics.) There was disagreement on all sides, but the discussion was generally civil and (so far, at least) there has been no move to have me banned from campus.
Good point Bob. I should have been more specific by calling out ivy league schools and schools that are located in blue states and larger blue cities. I shouldn't have been so generalizing in my post.
Very well thought out statement. There has been a coordinated effort by communist/socialists to infiltrate academia. This began decades ago for the sole purpose of what we have been seeing in not only universities but now grade schools across America. Given the ever widening leftist mentality in most “western industrialized” nations, it’s been ongoing abroad as well.
It’s not likely to turn back here, there or anywhere. Ppl have been brainwashed by this corporate media and our college educated leaders are and have been so poisoned by this garbage that they cannot see the forest for the trees.
I saw a car yesterday with a bumper sticker on one side saying “B@ ☮️” one one side and on the other “I stand with Ukraine”. I don’t recall the WH making any serious bid for diplomacy over Ukraine. The neocons in Congress have silenced anyone daring to utter diplomacy over war.
It’s all just business anyway. The military industrial complex is in charge. The medical industrial complex is running a close second. It would take a complete do-over to course correct and there’s no one at the wheel to do it.
Gotta shake my head at how so many otherwise intelligent ppl can be SO blind.
Not entirely true. Recent reports are NYT is doing fine and also making profits. Also, Matt Taibbi's followers are quite heterodox. I've always detected a strange vibe among his followers' comments. They're beyond bickering by people who disagree, more nasty or hostile. I think they follow him because of some perception of bro code. Since the Hamas attack broke out, Matt has been getting clobbered for perceived siding with Israel, when in fact he hasn't even said much explicitly about the geopolitical conflict itself. His comments section is like Palestine Protestors central.
Also speaking of heterodox, I'm kind of disappointed at Glenn Greenwald for the obtuse defense he's been giving to the antisemitic protesting morons too. I know he's speaking from the free speech stance, but imo with this issue he's not seeing the antisemitism brewing and boiling over that ought to be addressed too.
From what I've read of Matt's comments, the "nasty or hositle" comments are few and usually shoot down unsubstantiated comments. I find it a place of reassurance: there CAN be pushback to the extreme. Like here.
totally agree!Matt is getting slammed by his commentators who then bicker back and forth in such an annoying way- I just give up. And I never bother reading comments after Glenn (I'm too exhausted!) but I'm finding him not really addressing the anti-semitism, and almost using free speech as a smoke-screen. (I do agree that we need to avoid following France and GB in shutting it down though!!)
At least it seems like Matt and Walter are just ignoring whatever's going on in the comments and just sticking to their stories. A pretty good strategy actually and I'm glad to see they haven't cowed. Hope they stay the course. IDK what's going on with Glenn though. Agree with what you said. I'm also completely for the lunatics to be free to say whatever vile things they want. It'll show the world how f'd up they are and how crazy the Left has become. But Glenn's zealousness with no balance and not touching on antisemitism at all is wild. I'm just not listening to him until this phase of his ends and he moves on to something else.
I hadn't subbed to him. I just listen to this podcast occasionally. I appreciate a lot of things he did but I feel like he lost the plot with this latest zealousness on the side of the anti-Israel loons in pursuit of free speech. I'm all for these fools showing the world who they are, but his coverage has no balance at all. It's so strange and honestly disturbing.
I agree. I have always respected him for his honest and independent stand on many issues. He is not the only Jew that now revealed their anti-Israeli sentiments and, frankly, their antisemitism, as strange as it sounds. If he sides with those who are for free Palestine “from the river to the sea”, I simply don’t want anything to do with him.
Yes I know. I really like his writing. Very witty. His followers though, many are awful. I'm not talking about the occasional spats or trolls/jerks. It's the whole atmosphere. I don't comment much over there.
I worked at a major mid-western university for years in a job that interfaced with top leadership. The problem is that there are too many democrats – including top administrators – using the institutions very intentionally to advocate for their political ideology with no checks and balances in place. Consider who universities bring in as guest speakers. They are selected to appeal to the majority of faculty and leadership. I used to – very delicately - bring up the point that there is value in airing countering voices and was met with uncomprehending or suspicious looks. At a practical level, the people in charge of speaker selection are evaluated on attendance at the event – and conservative voices aren’t a draw. The breakdown of ethical scholarship (i.e., work/education which is unbiased, reliable and credible) is equivalent to medical doctors ignoring science to pursue their own hypotheses on how to treat patients. One idea, require academies to include political ideology in their DEI practices and loose government funding if they can’t demonstrate that they are bringing political balance to their institutions.
My opinion: the money being turned off might drive the radical left underground somewhat but it won’t change their views, in fact it will probably harden them.
The way to fix this is to do two things: 1) completely discredit elite, left wing universities, as us finally starting to happen and 2) offer an alternative, such as a network of Hillsdale type colleges, that offer affordable, high quality, traditional degrees that actually benefit the student.
When these elite, left wing schools see demand drop and their reputations significantly tarnished, then they will change. They will hire a wide range of professors, stop with letting students run the asylum and drop the gender studies garbage degrees.
From making DEI consultants the same as snake oil salesmen, having major news outlets go out of business, and seeing job cuts and universities as funding dries up, as part of the movement is having the Redskins and Indians back are their team names too much to ask? That is such a reminder of the power of the Woke when I have to talk about either team. Am I wrong in wanting this?
After mandatory DEI meetings, the snake oil looks good. I miss the gatherings which focused on working and achieving together. At those meetings, there was a lightness, a we can do this, and a feel good vibe when exiting. Attend a DEI meeting to discover that you are a horrible clueless oppressor or a victim of history and micro & macro-aggression. Exit that meeting to sit in solitude in your car and make an angry venting phone call.
Most heterodox thinkers have witnessed the NY Times, WAPO, LA Times and other leading media organizations morph into mouthpieces for progressive radicals for years now.....they don't even try to hide it anymore. The good news is that they've been shedding readers in droves to the independent media/journalist landscape. TFP, Public & Racket News have been piling up new subscribers by the thousands month after month. These corporate media dinosaur's are finished......we're simply witnessing the final pathetic gasps from them.....good riddance.
Its also well known that so many of the academies are little more than overpriced progressive and marxist indoctrination centers. What will be interesting is to watch what happens when spigot of money is turned off to these institutions by doners who seem to be waking up to just how vile they have become.....especially post October 7th. Lets hope parents who send their children to these schools take notice too. 82% of professors at Harvard identify as "left" or "very left" politically, so I question if any of them can truly course correct if they don't root out the progressive activist administrators and professors who have poisoned these once great institutions. Perhaps we need some ideological affirmative action implemented at our universities.
I'm also watching Bari how many of the BLM and "In This House" yard sign posting progressives will actually move away from these ideologies. So far from my friends who lean left/progressive, the silence from them has been deafening. I just hope they have a reconsider before they step into the voting booth in 2024. I'm not terribly optimistic but you and your staff seem to think something is changing on the left. I guess we'll see.
"What will be interesting is to watch what happens when spigot of money is turned off to these institutions by doners who seem to be waking up to just how vile they have become.....especially post October 7th. "
Won't really matter until the federal student loan spigot is turned off.
'I just hope they have a reconsider before they step into the voting booth in 2024.'
And vote for who else exactly, Evans? The GOP politicians at war with each other in the House, who display their idiocy to the entire nation by refusing to agree on a Speaker? Do you think they'll agree on one before the government lights go out in November? These people are an alternative to the admittedly insane progressive Left?
If I had to vote today, my guess is that I'd vote for RFK Jr. If push comes to shove and my ONLY choices are Biden vs Trump, I'm voting for the orange man.
There has to be an alternative to vote for. The Republican Party is not it.
Right now, I'm leaning towards RFK Jr. He doesn't check all the boxes for me, but he at least sounds like he's done his homework on the things that are important to him. Trump sounds like he listened to 7 minutes of Fox News and just started regurgitating whatever he thought he heard and Biden can only regurgitate his Gerber's apple sauce.......so there's that.
All due respect, the "Biden is senile" schtick is a bit overplayed. Yes, he's old, and he acts old, but he's not senile or drooling into a bib. And he's done a pretty good job so far of dealing with the Israeli conflict, in terms of being committed for Israel (despite pressures from some wings of the Democratic Party), as well as with re-strengthening NATO over Ukraine and Russia. He's been saddled with the brunt of inflation (of which he has very little to no blame on, honestly, inflation is globally experienced and mostly the result of the COVID economy and some highly influential events like bird flu, crop disease, weather as well as yes, Ukraine as the world's largest wheat producer), and with consumer spending remaining high, businesses are feeling little pressure to roll back prices even as the rate of inflation has receded. But on the whole, we've stayed out of a recession - which if had occurred with inflation would have been many times more painful, but of course we don't vote on what didn't happen so much as what did happen, and so Biden is bearing the burden of inflation on top of what is otherwise a very strong economic picture, jobs, wages and otherwise. But people vote on the price of eggs, even if the price of eggs went temporarily high due to bird flu and then went back down again (a dozen eggs in my local store is ~ $3.00 which is about right!), but the lingering feeling of price instability is "sticky". The delusion is that "Trump" will "fix it", or that Trump was in the first place responsible for the pre-COVID economic conditions that have now been glorified beyond what they actually were. The truth is that Trump took Office at the moment of the peak of an 8 year long expansion following the bottoming of the 2009 crash. He did pretty much nothing to effect the conditions many look back towards now, and there's little rational reason to believe that he would wave his non-existent (and actually, based on his business record, reverse Midas touch) simply upon resuming Office. Of course, again irony abounds, as it's very likely that by the time of Jan 2025 Inauguration Day, the declining inflation rate and prices will have normalized and Trump will OF COURSE take and get all the credit for just having been elected. If Biden wins instead, for about 40% of the electorate, the economy will still suck no matter if Biden mailed them a golden egg every month ; P
RFK Jr is not going to win the election. He'll swing it for one of the major candidates, and as it stands now, most of his votes are going to come from the Trump side. He does not have a convincing left-progressive movement behind him, and that's largely the result of his stances on vaccines.
Agree on Trump, of course. LOL. But there's the rest of the GOP which is almost as concerning as Trump, because they are so committed to him. The House Speaker mess is a symptom of it. And even if it wasn't about Trump, there's just the policy agenda of the GOP - you can't expect traditionally Democratic voters to just abandon core support and beliefs for issues like safety nets, health care, pro-choice, taxes (not being constantly lowered for the wealthy), some measures of "climate conscious" policy (the GOP's complete abandonment of the issue is a non-starter even if I don't support or agree with the lengths of all what progressives in the Democratic Party seek, the point is that there is at least a debate in the Democratic Party that leans towards mitigation and a healthy dose of moderation), etc.
The Republican Party has no agenda currently that I can vote for. Anti-woke? There's no federal mechanism that doesn't seriously get in the way of free speech around it, and frankly social and cultural pushback is 1000x worth a heavy fisted legislative policy, a la Florida. "Woke" is a cultural and social phenomenon, it will not be "stamped out" by policy alone, and when policy attempts, it strengthens the cause behind "woke". Honestly, Donald Trump was probably the biggest fuel to the "woke fire" post 2016 that could have been provided, it gave it a broader spread and cogent "raison e'etre" than anything else and made it burn even hotter in the events of 2020. If you want "woke" to flame out, getting behind an inflammatory reaction, regardless of how fleetingly good it might feel, is the worst possible response to getting to that point, instead "woke" will have to suffer an organic and legitimate pushback through the actual culture and institutions (as what seems to be happening, slowly) as a result of its excesses, not ham-fisted politics. Israel? Look, the GOP has its own "issues" around antisemitism, while not in favor of "Palestine to the river to the sea" flavor, but of the white nationalist type within some elements of its base, and some pretty popular and prominent members of the Party are a little too close to comfort to that base. Trump is also a non-starter. And it's not about his "mean Tweets". He's incompetent, corrupt and a complete loose cannon that has, apparently, the backing of an agenda behind him to use his "loose adherence" to "institutions" to reshape the entire federal government into a loyalist machine to a person/ideology that I don't think even conservatives really understand what they might be getting with that. Trump is also old, and if you listen to him "raw" speak at length, he's more discombobulated and non-sensical than on Biden's worse days.
With the Democrats at least, the tent is wide enough to support a solid "centrist" mainstream wing, and that is actually a lot more structurally beholden to than its left wing. Debates and compromise can be had. The GOP has become far right and is absolutely driven by the far right, as we have just watched unfold with this absurd Speaker fight. Matt Gaetz and Trump won, after all. I cannot support, or vote in good conscious, for any Republican that will just hand over more power to this wing. The so-called "moderates" folded like pancakes over Johnson, even though he's just as ideologically extreme as Jordan, they're just hoping his lower profile and "normie" appearance and rhetoric will fool their actual moderate voters in their districts. But it was a clear demonstration, after the brief hope with the defeat of Jordan's bid, that it is still the right wing (which is NOT a minority as "The Squad" is in the Democratic Party) that is driving the car. No. Thanks.
ROFL!!
How about THIS HOUSE:
https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.2319903172.4437/bg,f8f8f8-flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg
🤣🤣🤣
My progressive Jewish friends are silent too.
I hurts my ears it’s so loud.
I don’t even get “likes” on my Facebook page when I post something in support of Israel.
You are right, the “market” will deal these institutions their due.
It will take lots of time.
"These corporate media dinosaur's are finished......we're simply witnessing the final pathetic gasps from them.....good riddance."
No. Life would be far worse with them gone. Instead of disappearing, I'd rather they go back to doing straight and fair reporting so we actually understand WTF is going on in the world. Why? Because they reach millions of people worldwide---more, actually, because most smaller papers and almost all social media and TV stations base their stories and news coverage on what appears in NYT and other Bigs.
The public need large, aggressive, and fair corporate news outfits to provide counterweight to large, aggressive, and unfair government, corporate, and institutional propagandists. As much as I like and subscribe to Substackia, they're too small and understaffed to play that role. We need the Bigs, who buy their digital ink by the tanker-car-load, because they're the only ones with the financial and staffing resources to fight back against the propagandists.
We just need them to be honest, not the mewling bullshitters they are today.
I'm the Token white guy in my neighborhood, there is ONE BLM sign. You go 3 blocks(?) in any direction 2 things happen 1. it gets Real white, 2. you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a BLM and "In This House" yard sign.
Pardon my cynicism, but… I think those yard signs are defensive tactic.
I'm talking MPLS the 5th CD (Ilhan Omar's district.) This is as Deep Blue area as you will find in the US. On the City Council The Green Party is the opposition.
Be careful when generalizing about "universities." I'm a member of the faculty of a large public university in the American South and, while there are rumblings of wokeness from some corners - most notably from the administration - the faculty have been at pains to affirm our commitment to free inquiry and freedom of expression, and we (mostly) stick to it.
I learned last week that FIRE has upgraded my institution to "green light" status, which is good to know.
An example: Just last week I had a really interesting discussion with one of my classes about whether one could judge Robert E. Lee to have been a virtuous man. (This was in the context of discussing a book about Aristotle's virtue ethics.) There was disagreement on all sides, but the discussion was generally civil and (so far, at least) there has been no move to have me banned from campus.
Brave.
Good point Bob. I should have been more specific by calling out ivy league schools and schools that are located in blue states and larger blue cities. I shouldn't have been so generalizing in my post.
Very well thought out statement. There has been a coordinated effort by communist/socialists to infiltrate academia. This began decades ago for the sole purpose of what we have been seeing in not only universities but now grade schools across America. Given the ever widening leftist mentality in most “western industrialized” nations, it’s been ongoing abroad as well.
It’s not likely to turn back here, there or anywhere. Ppl have been brainwashed by this corporate media and our college educated leaders are and have been so poisoned by this garbage that they cannot see the forest for the trees.
I saw a car yesterday with a bumper sticker on one side saying “B@ ☮️” one one side and on the other “I stand with Ukraine”. I don’t recall the WH making any serious bid for diplomacy over Ukraine. The neocons in Congress have silenced anyone daring to utter diplomacy over war.
It’s all just business anyway. The military industrial complex is in charge. The medical industrial complex is running a close second. It would take a complete do-over to course correct and there’s no one at the wheel to do it.
Gotta shake my head at how so many otherwise intelligent ppl can be SO blind.
Evan be getting up with the roosters to be first commenter so often. Good on ya, I find your comments interesting.
I’m up with the roosters every day. 4AM comes early. 😬
The Left's new elitism is imploding. The empire of woke will fall alongside the empire of old patriarchy.
Not entirely true. Recent reports are NYT is doing fine and also making profits. Also, Matt Taibbi's followers are quite heterodox. I've always detected a strange vibe among his followers' comments. They're beyond bickering by people who disagree, more nasty or hostile. I think they follow him because of some perception of bro code. Since the Hamas attack broke out, Matt has been getting clobbered for perceived siding with Israel, when in fact he hasn't even said much explicitly about the geopolitical conflict itself. His comments section is like Palestine Protestors central.
Also speaking of heterodox, I'm kind of disappointed at Glenn Greenwald for the obtuse defense he's been giving to the antisemitic protesting morons too. I know he's speaking from the free speech stance, but imo with this issue he's not seeing the antisemitism brewing and boiling over that ought to be addressed too.
From what I've read of Matt's comments, the "nasty or hositle" comments are few and usually shoot down unsubstantiated comments. I find it a place of reassurance: there CAN be pushback to the extreme. Like here.
totally agree!Matt is getting slammed by his commentators who then bicker back and forth in such an annoying way- I just give up. And I never bother reading comments after Glenn (I'm too exhausted!) but I'm finding him not really addressing the anti-semitism, and almost using free speech as a smoke-screen. (I do agree that we need to avoid following France and GB in shutting it down though!!)
At least it seems like Matt and Walter are just ignoring whatever's going on in the comments and just sticking to their stories. A pretty good strategy actually and I'm glad to see they haven't cowed. Hope they stay the course. IDK what's going on with Glenn though. Agree with what you said. I'm also completely for the lunatics to be free to say whatever vile things they want. It'll show the world how f'd up they are and how crazy the Left has become. But Glenn's zealousness with no balance and not touching on antisemitism at all is wild. I'm just not listening to him until this phase of his ends and he moves on to something else.
I have unsubscribed to Glenn Greenwald because of his reaction to Oct 7 events.
I hadn't subbed to him. I just listen to this podcast occasionally. I appreciate a lot of things he did but I feel like he lost the plot with this latest zealousness on the side of the anti-Israel loons in pursuit of free speech. I'm all for these fools showing the world who they are, but his coverage has no balance at all. It's so strange and honestly disturbing.
I agree. I have always respected him for his honest and independent stand on many issues. He is not the only Jew that now revealed their anti-Israeli sentiments and, frankly, their antisemitism, as strange as it sounds. If he sides with those who are for free Palestine “from the river to the sea”, I simply don’t want anything to do with him.
Taibbi was at Rolling Stone prior to his Substack work. He's second generation too. His father was at NBC.
Yes I know. I really like his writing. Very witty. His followers though, many are awful. I'm not talking about the occasional spats or trolls/jerks. It's the whole atmosphere. I don't comment much over there.
I worked at a major mid-western university for years in a job that interfaced with top leadership. The problem is that there are too many democrats – including top administrators – using the institutions very intentionally to advocate for their political ideology with no checks and balances in place. Consider who universities bring in as guest speakers. They are selected to appeal to the majority of faculty and leadership. I used to – very delicately - bring up the point that there is value in airing countering voices and was met with uncomprehending or suspicious looks. At a practical level, the people in charge of speaker selection are evaluated on attendance at the event – and conservative voices aren’t a draw. The breakdown of ethical scholarship (i.e., work/education which is unbiased, reliable and credible) is equivalent to medical doctors ignoring science to pursue their own hypotheses on how to treat patients. One idea, require academies to include political ideology in their DEI practices and loose government funding if they can’t demonstrate that they are bringing political balance to their institutions.
My opinion: the money being turned off might drive the radical left underground somewhat but it won’t change their views, in fact it will probably harden them.
The way to fix this is to do two things: 1) completely discredit elite, left wing universities, as us finally starting to happen and 2) offer an alternative, such as a network of Hillsdale type colleges, that offer affordable, high quality, traditional degrees that actually benefit the student.
When these elite, left wing schools see demand drop and their reputations significantly tarnished, then they will change. They will hire a wide range of professors, stop with letting students run the asylum and drop the gender studies garbage degrees.
The number of New York Times subscribers is growing. https://www.statista.com/statistics/315041/new-york-times-company-digital-subscribers/
They should get sued by victims of the global antisemitic violence they instigated.
They won't ever change who they are. The institution itself must fail hard enough to make it clear their leadership did it.
They are getting more followers as they print just what the Jihadist want to hear. Leftist propaganda.
From making DEI consultants the same as snake oil salesmen, having major news outlets go out of business, and seeing job cuts and universities as funding dries up, as part of the movement is having the Redskins and Indians back are their team names too much to ask? That is such a reminder of the power of the Woke when I have to talk about either team. Am I wrong in wanting this?
After mandatory DEI meetings, the snake oil looks good. I miss the gatherings which focused on working and achieving together. At those meetings, there was a lightness, a we can do this, and a feel good vibe when exiting. Attend a DEI meeting to discover that you are a horrible clueless oppressor or a victim of history and micro & macro-aggression. Exit that meeting to sit in solitude in your car and make an angry venting phone call.