This fallacy about "class" and political ideology is getting really old. It doesn't hold up to actual data. Even the NYTs acknowledged that, regardless of "education" level, Trump won a majority of households making over $100K, while Biden won a large majority making under $24K.
I have a masters degree (as does my husband). Our kids at…
This fallacy about "class" and political ideology is getting really old. It doesn't hold up to actual data. Even the NYTs acknowledged that, regardless of "education" level, Trump won a majority of households making over $100K, while Biden won a large majority making under $24K.
I have a masters degree (as does my husband). Our kids attend private school (non-woke). We go to a country club. We are in the top % of income, though unlike the media caricature, super yachts and months long Mediterranean vacations elude our financial means.
While talking heads want to believe I am the average Democrat voter, the reality is, its far more typical for people in my socioeconomic position to vote Republican (high income but no inheritance, no trust funds). I am this "new" Republican party. Which is really just the pre- George W Republican party. I want nothing to do what the fake" Republican" neocon war mongers like George W., Dick Cheney, and John Brennon (and I felt that was LONG before 2016).
Add the insanity of the woke, and yes, I am passionately supporting Republicans. Here are a few of my actual reasons (and they aren't boogeymen like globalization, industrialization, or "fear of a browning US" that left wing ideologues so wish were true)
- We have known for thousands of years a "traditional" two parent family lays the foundation for human thriving, high trust societies, individual fulfillment, human advancement, and societal success. This has been proven. The non-stop attack by the woke on stable two-parent homes is destructive and cruel.
- Few things in human society are more lethal than authoritarianism, the woke embrace it
- We know that, biologically, modern humans can't be divided into distinct races. My Christian faith teaches that there is ONE race - the human race. The woke want me to see everything through their ridiculous racist lens. I find judging others by race to be regressive, bigoted, and simple minded.
- There are biologically TWO human sexes, as with all mammals, yet the woke reduce my innate biological reality to "feelings" while insisting men are entitled to my young daughter's private spaces, athletic competitions, and to rob her of her own comfort and bodily safety because they place the feelings of boys far ahead of the safety and bodily integrity of women and girls. Again, regressive.
- For people who claim to care about the "climate," the woke are relentless in their pursuit of ecologically destructive, and expensive, energy sources that mostly spread pollution and poverty while rejecting the only clean and affordable energy sources that already are available and that would reduce both emissions and poverty - nuclear and natural gas.
- The woke relentlessly attacking actual replicated science have continued that ideology as they INTENTIONALLY destroy our economy and an entire generation of US kids. There has NEVER been ANY replicated studies where actual outcomes show that universal mask mandates work in schools, that children are at meaningful risk from Covid, that children are large vectors of Covid, that lockdowns will "save lives" or prevent the eventual spread of an endemic respiratory virus, that vaccine mandates will decrease the spread of Covid, or that natural immunity is inferior to "vaccine" immunity. In fact, what we see that in huge replication all of these factually wrong ideas embraced with a cult like passion by the woke lead to public policy that causes real harm - direct or collateral - while having virtually no impact on reducing the spread of SARS-Cov-2. Yes, even the vaccine mandates, a recent study compared vaccinations rates to spread in several dozen countries as well as over 2,000 counties in the US and found no correlation between high rates of vaccination and decreased spread. We already knew this in June from Israel and and Iceland.
Those writing these analysis will continue to be completely confused as long as they continue to buy their own narrative over reality.
Industrial workers are not "mad" about robotics, in fact, having worked at a company with some of the most advanced manufacturing plants on Earth, I can tell you first hand that they welcome it. People aren't upset about this boogeyman of "globalization."
Strivers are angry that regulations have gone from a focus on safety and establishing a fair playing field to driving consolidation and creating barriers to entry.
We are angry that the free markets that have been the driver of the American dream are being replaced by oligarchies, unchecked corporate consolidation, and unchecked megacorp CEO power, only made possible by corporate board reform that now allows CEOs to appoint cronies, and ridiculous proxy rules which give these unaccountable CEO's total control over companies they often didn't build, and, more importantly, complete control over the corporation's wealth which they don't personally own.
Obamacare was nothing but a reallocation of healthcare out of the middle class downward towards the dependent class.
The list goes on and on and on (Afghanistan, dependence on foreign oil, Russiagate lies, woke policies always fail. woke people are small minded and regressive).
So please, stop with the nonsense about "class" and who votes for "new" Republicans. No matter how many times you say it, it'll still be a pile of hogwash to claim "fear" is what motivates us, or insinuate we're broke - those assertions are nothing more than woke projecting.
You're right about the dangers of authoritarianism. You're wrong about where it's coming from. I am copying and pasting comments by Thom Hartman. That is not plagiarism.
Authoritarian Coups Are Gradual then Sudden
Meanwhile, all across social media, the word is spreading: “The storm is upon us.”
In 1926, Ernest Hemmingway published his novel The Sun Also Rises, which has this extraordinary bit of dialogue about how change happens in most aspects of life — and how governments rise and fall.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
”Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
”What brought it on?”
“Friends," said Mike. "I had a lot of friends. False friends.”
For some unfathomable reason, Democrats insist on calling their Republican colleagues their “friends.” They are not friends. They are systematically destroying American democracy with the clear objective of replacing it with strongman authoritarianism, a new and American version of what Benito Mussolini called fascism.
Right now they’re moving gradually:
Infiltrating police departments and the enlisted ranks of the military
Taking over school boards and local boards of elections
Firing principals and teachers who defend multiracial, multicultural democracy while banning and burning books that contain such “dangerous” ideas
Gerrymandering states so regardless of how people vote, Republicans control the levers of power
Changing election laws so they can both make it harder for city-dwellers to vote and to ignore and then change the outcomes of elections they don’t like
Building media structures that will support the authoritarian takeover when it happens
Organizing armed paramilitary militias, with back-channel connections to local police
Creating legal organizations to sanitize and rationalize ending messy democracy
Radicalizing average Americans through social media and an ever-growning network of hard-right podcasts
Spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories about Democrats and Jews drinking children’s blood
Firebombing Texas Democratic Party’s Austin headquarters and threatening them that if they don’t stop trying to get Democrats elected worse will come
When General Pinochet declared he was taking over the government of Chile in 1973 — a government that had been run democratically since 1923, the longest in South America — he had already infiltrated and gotten the loyalty of both the police, the army, and the civilian paramilitaries he’d spent the previous few years nurturing.
So when he rolled up to the presidential palace and declared he was taking over, nobody came to the defense of the elected president, Salvador Allende. The police were already loyal to Pinochet, including the police who defended that nation’s capitol. Allende, along with a few more than 30 supporters, held the palace for a few hours, gave a national radio address, and he then put a gun to his head and ended his presidency.
Gradually, then suddenly.
When Chileans poured into the streets, Pinochet swept them up and held them in the national stadium, where tens of thousands were tortured, murdered or simply disappeared. His democratic political opposition lost all its power and went underground; it would be seventeen years before anything resembling democracy would return to Chile, a process that is still pulling itself together.
If Mike Pence had gone along with Trump’s plan to imitate the election of 1876 and install the guy who lost both the popular and the electoral vote as president (as happened that year when Democrat Samuel Tilden won both votes but the House of Representatives instead installed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president), America would be a very, very different country today.
Gradually, then suddenly.
Trump had previously proclaimed his desire to change the nation’s libel and slander laws so he could sue or imprison his political opponents and those in the media who opposed him; that would have happened by now, and people like me (and maybe you) would be in jail.
Trump had previously promised his violent partisans that he’d pardon them and pick up their legal fees; by now hundreds of Kyle Rittenhouse’s would have “defended themselves” against Black people, “Antifa,” and “commie liberals.”
A constitutional convention like rightwing billionaires have been promoting and annually rehearsing in Washington, DC would be underway to rewrite our founding document; the right of all Americans to vote, separation of church and state, civil rights, protections of free speech and assembly, the right to due process and equal protection under the law, even the obscure Emoluments Clause would all be on the chopping block.
Trump-friendly corporations would be running political purges reminiscent of the Republican “Red Scare” and “Blacklist”1950s all across the country as social media accounts were examined for evidence of “leftist” leanings; Johnny McEntee began that process when he was “Deputy President” to Trump and was firing people in the executive branch for “liking” postings by “leftwing” entertainers like Taylor Swift.
The process Trump started in Portland and Seattle in the summer of 2020 of unmarked vans and stormtrooper-like police with no identifying patches kidnapping people off the streets would have expanded nationwide; tens of thousands would be in custody without charges.
Private prisons would expand to take in the hundreds of thousands of people arrested protesting in the streets or speaking out on social media; for most Americans who voted Republican or were completely apolitical, though, life would go on as normal (just like in the early years of the takeovers of Chile, Russia, and Hungary — or Italy, Germany and Spain in the 1930s).
A handful of high-profile progressive politicians would have been assassinated or survived assassination attempts; the police and the FBI, however, would have been as clueless about their killers as they were about 10,000 people planning to storm the Capitol and assassinate the Vice President and Speaker of the House on January 6th.
The Democratic Party would have been labeled the aggressors and as subversives by rightwing media; its ranks by now would have melted away as quickly as the union-aligned parties did in Italy and Germany in the 1930s or the Allende Socialists in Chile in 1973.
First abortion would be criminalized, then birth control, then women in business and politics would find themselves under constant attack in the media and the workplace; white male dominance would by now be close to reattaining the status it had in 1972 when women couldn’t legally get an abortion, execute some contracts, or even get a credit card without the signature of a father or husband.
Newsrooms across the country would be purged by now of liberals and running editorials in support of the “new patriotism” proclaimed by the GOP; the hedge funds headed up by rightwing billionaires — who today own over half of all the nation’s newspapers — would be snapping up the rest of the nation’s media like Viktor Orbán’s oligarch buddies did in Hungary.
Every time these sorts of coups happen, the nation’s people are shocked and surprised. They had no idea how far things had gone. It even happened that way with the American Revolution and the Civil War.
Gradually, then suddenly.
Trump’s supporters are openly calling for the end of democracy, for book burnings, and for public executions of Democratic politicians. The leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives refuses to even reprimand Representative Paul Gosar for openly celebrating his fantasy murder of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
A multimillionaire former head of The Carlyle Group with no political experience, running on a platform of auditing the 2020 election and not much else, won the governorship of Virginia by spreading the naked, racist lie that Democrats in that state were indoctrinating white children to feel ashamed of the color of their skin; not a single elected Republican and only a rare few in the media called him out.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt faced the fascist “America First” movement within the GOP, he went to political war with them and the Supreme Court that backed them. “They hate me,” he thundered to cheers, “and I welcome their hatred!”
President Biden, a creature of deal-making and backroom back-slapping in the Senate, appears to think he can negotiate with these people who want to remake America in Pinochet’s image (with the same type of Chicago School neoliberal advisors who helped Pinochet turn Chile into an autocratic nightmare).
He’s wrong.
They are building their power and their organizations right now; armed paramilitary groups are expanding across the country as the GOP has become so radicalized that they now proclaim Liz Cheney as their enemy.
They are openly preparing for a second Civil War.
Reuters did a major and shocking report on how police forces, presumably sympathetic to local neofascist elements, refuse to even investigate death threats against elections officials and Democratic politicians.
In Michigan, a militia group nearly kidnapped and killed that state’s governor; they were stopped by an insider who turned states’ evidence.
Meanwhile, all across social media, the word is spreading: “The storm is upon us.”
I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't witness Jan 6th. I wouldn't be worried if the right condemned Trump's attempted coup de stat. But not only are you guys not condemning him, you're eager to renominate him.
It's the way Republicans want to pretend that Jan 6th was a big nothing burger that disturbs me. The sentiment is still there. Indeed, it seems to be growing. Trump is the likely nominee for 2024. That tells me that the Republican Party is ready to do away with democracy and install a strongman dictator who will jail and possibly torture political opponents.
"I have a masters degree (as does my husband). Our kids attend private school (non-woke). We go to a country club. We are in the top % of income, though unlike the media caricature, super yachts and months long Mediterranean vacations elude our financial means . . . talking heads want to believe I am the average Democrat voter."
Seriously? What talking head could possibly confuse you with a Democratic voter? Your profile screams "I'm Republican and proud of it." That is is not a knock or criticism, by the way, only that I would never have assumed you a Democrat.
As for "the Woke" demanding you treat people according to their race . . . c'mon. The right wing is just as guilty of demanding that anyone other than white male Christians had any rights worth respecting. Both approaches are disastrous for a free and prosperous America, but you blame only the Woke for every ill in the body politic,
It wasn't the Woke who beat Emmitt Till into a pulp and drowned him in a river for looking at a white woman--it was the racist Southern Right. It wasn't a Woke jury that knew his killers were guilty and let them off anyway with a Coke and a smile. It was the racist right.
This statement of yours, however, is absolute gold and the real driver of many of the problems this country faces today: "Oligarchies, unchecked corporate consolidation, and unchecked megacorp CEO power, only made possible by corporate board reform that now allows CEOs to appoint cronies, and ridiculous proxy rules which give these unaccountable CEO's total control over companies they often didn't build, and, more importantly, complete control over the corporation's wealth which they don't personally own." Kudos for this kind for clarity.
Woodrow Wilson was our most racist President since the Civil War and he was our most left-wing President. FDR comes in as a close second to Wilson and he was on the far left, too.
U.S. Grant and Warren Harding were our least racist Presidents since the Civil War and were among the most right-wing Presidents.
Actually it was the woke of the time - southern Democrats - who beat Emmitt Till. The SOUTHERN LEFT. Who do you think was in the KKK? Are you even aware WHY the Republican party was founded? Democrats have been loyal racist for 2 centuries.
I'm not entirely sure what something that happened decades before I was born has to do with this.....
No, I don't blame the "woke" for all of societies problems. I blame George W for the insane police state our federal government has turned into. I blame both parties for allowing the consolidation that has robbed the country of the business and economic climate that allows good ideas and hard work to innovate and drive value.
I blame the woke for the massive regression we are currently seeing. I blame the woke for allowing their phobic fear of Covid and anti-science authoritarianism to destroy the futures for million of US children. I blame the woke for reviving nearly dead racism. I blame the woke for reviving awful, lethal, deadly ideologies like socialism and communism. I blame the woke for dumbing down everything. The religion of the woke is a huge issue, but by no means are the "woke" responsible for all of societies woes.
The woke didn't create a corrupt and threatening FBI. The woke didn't even notice corporate consolidation (though they like it now because its a very authoritarian ideology). The woke didn't cause geopolitical instability - though they did halt growth in favor of social experiments in poor countries. I don't blame the woke for everything - but I do blame them for placing love of their ideology over actual outcomes. Blaming any group for all of societies ills is a dangerous road to go down - do you think the woke might suffer from that affliction?
"Actually it was the woke of the time - southern Democrats - who beat Emmitt Till. The SOUTHERN LEFT. Who do you think was in the KKK? Are you even aware WHY the Republican party was founded? Democrats have been loyal racist for 2 centuries."
Wrong. Till was murdered by Southern racists, who were right-wing and not remotely Woke. They were Democrats because the parties had not yet switched philosophies. The left had nothing to do with Till's death and the violence of the civil rights era; that was all from the right. I deliberately used right and left and not Democrats and Republicans, because at the time, Democrats were the illiberal right and Republicans were the liberal left.
The Klan was a creation of racist right-wingers who were Democrats. Today's version of the Klan--the Proud Boys and other modern race-haters--the the same racist right-wingers who now belong to the Republican Party. Same dipshits, different party labels.
Yeah, I know why the Republican Party was founded, and that its members were the liberals of that era. Did you know they switched sides during the civil rights era, with Democrats becoming the party of liberals and Republicans the party of rightists and racists?
It's not only the Woke that embrace authoritarianism. Donald Trump does. So do the Trumpists trying to get elected through his brand of baloney. As for "socialism and communism," please. Those are buzzwords, and have been since the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Back in the Sixties, movie theater owners put out flyers urging patrons to "fight the socialism of cable television, contact your lawmakers now!!": This country is not socialist and nobody is trying to make it so---unless you consider fixing our roads, bridges, and infrastructure some kind of "socialism."
Finally, "I do blame [the Woke] for placing love of their ideology over actual outcomes." You know who else does that? Today's GOP.
In what way? What are these terrible policy outcomes from Trump? What are these terribly policy proposals from the Republicans?
The whole “the parties switched” is nothing but a woke urban legend. Just look at Democrats today - just as obsessed with race as they were 200 years ago. Just as anti-woman as they were 100 years ago.
And yes, they WERE the woke of the day who killed Emitt Till - racist, entitled, know-nothing brats who control the narrative but have no brain
For someone who claims to care about Christ, you sure are accepting of that abomination of a human being and the liars who enable him. And the “the parties switched” may be relevant in the exchange on Emmitt Till, but it sure as hell wasn't in mine.
But that's what these sites are all about -- a sounding board to bitch and moan and ignore anything that doesn't compute with your formula.
Like I said, you're far more courteous than most, but grace alone doesn't it done.
"This fallacy about "class" and political ideology is getting really old" -- what a great opening line! You're clearly an intelligent person and I'm counting on that in how you think through my reply.
The woke movement is utterly ridiculous and colossally counterproductive. "Black Lives Matter" with first black POTUS sitting in the White House -- ranks with the dumbest moves in all of human history.
I also appreciate your views about Bush & Co and some other things you wrote. But "passionately supporting Republicans" to combat wokeness has no chance (though I'm not suggesting you support Democrats or any other party). My interest has nothing to do with which party you support, but rather the manner in which you do it.
"Those writing these analysis will continue to be completely confused as long as they continue to buy their own narrative over reality."
The whole country is consumed with buying their own narrative over reality -- woke is just one faction of that folly.
As M. Scott Peck perfectly put it: "[We] must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it." As smart as you are, you surely understand that there's a reciprocal relationship between the Left and the Right. In that sense, Newton's 3rd Law is at the core of our country's ills.
However weak and pathetic the Left is -- they partly got that way because don't know how to win against people who don't play by any rules. I'm not excusing it, I'm simply stating reality -- and it works both ways (as Newton's law goes).
The Right has put on a masterclass of complaining for 30 years -- but because the Left institutionalizes weakness, the Right gets off scot-free for being the crybabies that they are. I didn't write Mentality of a Mob from my imagination:
And yes, a lot of it applies to the Left as well -- but Mentality of a Mob is how I'm invariably treated on an issue that's as demonstrably provable as it gets.
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together -- as they should.
But however absurd those matters may to be today — those emotions are deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace . . .
Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . .
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube: The manipulation of which f$@*#% up the future of the entire world.
What’s wrong with that picture — and this one? (5-minute excerpt from my documentary that deals with the Right being in lockstep on Iraq WMD -- and the Left doing the same on Trayvon):
If you're gonna preach responsibility, you better have a record for it. You don't need credibility to convince people to do the wrong thing -- but you damn well do for the right thing.
The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly.
We can talk about race and responsibility till the end of time — but heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
With your fair-minded assessment of the "warmongers" you mentioned -- where is your detailed analysis on that? Maybe you have it -- and I've love to read it. I would add that in some ways Democrats are even more responsible for the Iraq War, as they knew it was a lie and went along anyway (as Democrats do) . . .
Standard operating procedure for the Democratic Party:
"Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything — they fear looking weak. To avoid this, they cave, surrender, capitulate — and stand for nothing." — Glenn Greenwald
With every single effort to combat wokeness, it's gotten worse. When something isn't working, it's time to change the approach -- I'm old-fashioned that way.
Believe it or not, the best way to serve your interests is to first and foremost — hold your own accountable. If you wanna make the opposition look bad, try looking good. If you wanna have the moral high ground, try earning it:
"The moral high ground, in ethical or political parlance, refers to the status of being respected for remaining moral, and adhering to and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness."
"The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly."
There is lots of other blatantly wrong stuff as well but this one is demonstrably false. For example:
"Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . ."
Those were Democrats on the left, I don't buy into the mythical "party switch" hypothesis.
"The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly." ---
This statement is bad faith and not based on history or facts.
Both Democrats and Republicans went batshit crazy after 9/11 with both setting the world ablaze.
That the Democratic Party is weak and went along on Iraq does not constitute "batshit crazy" -- it's just spineless.
"This statement is bad faith and not based on history or facts."
Jesus, how you can insult your intelligence so spectacularly and be satisfied by it? You have a brain -- just STFU for 5 minutes and use it for a change. You'd be amazed by what you'd see.
I don't give a damn about you -- I care that I live in a country where untold millions mindlessly issue the same kind of crap on a daily basis.
"There is no curiosity in them. There are no questions in their minds. There are no “what ifs?' or 'maybes'”
Your behavior is an embarrassment to the entire history of human achievement:
Perhaps you could enlighten Steven N. on the premise of an argument works.
The framing of "Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . ." is entirely about how that history is riddled with deeply rooted emotions tied to today's problems.
I'm not excusing it or asserting who bears the most responsibility for how it happened. The argument is that the Right wants the Left to listen (as they should) -- but on this matter of how the Right won't even look at the material properties of a tube: That issue is as demonstrably provable as it gets (no baggage -- just pure science in an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter).
And to do this day -- all they do is mock and belittle anyone who challenges them on their baseless beliefs. And lo and behold -- in doing so they helped create the very culture they rail against.
I wrote and produced the most exhaustive documentary ever done on Iraq WMD -- and yet I get nothing but contempt from people who claim to care about facts. And of all those in that crowd that I’ve challenged on WMD — their knowledge combined could fit into a thimble with space to spare.
"demonstrably false, Steven N -- you can't even grasp the premise of an argument, and you're gonna sit there and tell me about what's "blatantly wrong"?
"Those were Democrats on the left, I don't buy into the mythical 'party switch' hypothesis."
Steven N: That has nothing to do with ANYTHING I wrote, and yet you sling your snippets of certitude to satisfy yourself so easily -- and never learn, never change your mind, and not even show an atom of the same courtesy that NCmom did.
First, I can see how Steven read the comment to imply those were sins of the right when, in fact, they were sins of the left. And I do agree with his assertion about the party switch (that may have been more of a temporary George W switch). That said, you, I think, were just pointing out they were sins of an immoral mob as opposed to laying blame at the feet of a particular ideology. ??
What baseless beliefs though? Christianity? I could be totally wrong here, but that seems to be an issue for some. I am not particularly religious, but I am around a lot of very religious people these days, and I have discovered some assumptions I made in the past that were wrong.
No Christians believe God is a magician n the sky granting prayers and casting curses (ok, well, none I've ever met, and my kids go to a very large academically rigorous conservative Christian school). While I don't agree with New World theory, those that do help me to remember that Old World theory is still evolving and has lots of holes. Its also just a theory.
Less than any literal interpretation, the Bible, for me, is a guide for how to live a caring, fulfilling, and contributing life. When you hear a Christian say "you can't change your gender, its how God made you," understand that what they are saying is "mammals are born whatever gender/ sex they are. Its the natural way of things. Nature is more powerful than mere human, and recognizing what humans cannot control is necessary for their ability to thrive. No amount of drugs and hormones will change being born either with or without a Y gene. Seeking truth is important to our existence, and promoting the falsehood that we can change our bodies into a different sex is lying, and we should not lie." There is a love of the natural world and the greater force we call God - which is why "God made everyone in his image, exactly as they supposed to be." There is an acceptance that things which happen in nature may seem very cruel, but that's OK, because our job is not to judge but to love and to accept that we are mere flawed, mortal, humans that are a small piece of a much biggest existence.
I am a science nut and increasingly I appreciate my recently growing Christian faith. It humbles me and opens my mind to the reality of all we do not know, and that I do not know. It drives me to seek truth. It creates space for me to open my mind and my heart. It steadies my moral compass. It allows me to accept when our scientific understanding of this world changes with enthusiasm. It encourages me to seek ways to better test our assumptions, to question, to learn.
Its why I smiled when I read an article yesterday that Australian scientists now believe the continents are a full 750million years older than we thought, well, last year. In the late 1800s we "knew" the world was 400,000 years old. By the 1920's we "knew" it was 4million to 400 million. Last year we "knew" it was 4.54 billion years old and continents 2.5 billion years old. Today that "knowledge" is different.
As a kid volcanos killed the dinosaurs. As an adult it was a meteor. Now they've found small raptor skeletons above the sediment layer from the meteor. It's exciting to know there is so much truth yet to be discovered, and so much we think we knw which we do not.
So I will say this, take or leave faith, but for me, it allows me to pursue my love of science unhindered by the misconception that we really know all that much, and unable to avoid the power of identifying replication in nature (like the fact that every mammal ever born was conceived and carried inside the body of a female - thank you Dave Chapelle). It also allows me to see things like homosexuality as always being present in human society (and some apes too), while being "transgender" is largely a fad, particularly as it relates to natal females. That is how I can say (and the actual reaction from most Republicans/ conservatives/ Christians) that I see no issue with government gay marriage. It is by the same standard I can say that mutilating the genitals of children, or sexualizing young children, is evil - the outcome has always been so no matter the justification of the time. My faith helps guide me because I know far too much about the world from a scientific perspective to be foolish enough to think we have it all figured out, much less that we can control the universe.
As for the whole resurrection thing, well, I am far more inclined to have some faith that a single man rose from the dead a couple thousand years ago than to believe any male can become a "real" woman via really strong feelings, or that we should divide humans into non-biologically distinguishable "races," or that there is no "harm" in sexualizing elementary school children. My faith calls on me to acknowledge the possibility of a single outlier. The religion of the woke calls on its followers to completely reject science, reject replication, and reject actual outcomes. I should thank the woke for helping to revive my faith in Christianity.
If I received a reply that reads, "While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube: The manipulation of which f$@*#% up the future of the entire world."
My first thought would be, "What tubes are you talking about?" To flagrantly ignore the comment about the tube is preposterous -- and a gross breach in the fundamentals of reading comprehension (not to mention courtesy).
"Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on" -- is nothing more than setting up a discussion about human behavior and hypocrisy.
However absurd the issues of race relations are today, they are wrapped up in hundreds of years of history -- which means emotion that's baked in and beaten to death by the Democratic Party.
If you're on the Right and asking the Left to listen and learn -- you damn well better be willing to the same.
But the Right doesn't listen and doesn't learn. And on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, it all boils down the material properties of a tube.
And they won't even listen to THAT -- no hundreds of years of history to muddy the waters, just pure political hackery to get what they want at all costs.
And then they have the bottomless nerve to assail others for refusing to listen.
"PREACH RESPONSIBILITY AND TAKE NONE" . . .
Republicans should put that on a bumper sticker for some truth in advertising for a change.
And incredibly, someone's gonna spout off about "well what about the Democrats?" -- as if I were defending them (never mind I've suggested no such thing).
But that's what the "whataboutism" program is all about. Why bother taking responsibility for your own behavior when you can ridicule others for doing the same?
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Probably the most powerful of these group cohesive forces is narcissism. In its simplest and most benign form, this is manifested in group pride. As the members feel proud of their group, so the group feels proud of itself. A less benign but practically universal form of group narcissism is what might be called “enemy creation,” or hatred of the “out-group.”
We can see this naturally occurring in children as they first learn to develop groups. It is almost common knowledge that the best way to cement group cohesiveness is to ferment the group’s hatred of an external enemy. Deficiencies within the group can be easily and painlessly overlooked by focusing attention on the deficiencies or sins of the out-group.
-- M. Scott Peck
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"First, I can see how Steven read the comment to imply those were sins of the right when, in fact, they were sins of the left."
I implied nothing of the kind -- and the very fact that "While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. . . " was the very next sentence, makes that abundantly clear.
And therein the issue -- as people seize on any statement that serves them and avoid anything that doesn't. Just as I wrote on the Mentality of a Mob: "Rather than read and digest, people scan and dismiss — frantically seeking any fragment they can frame in their favor."
I know a little something about psychology, Ms. NCmom. No objective observer would bypass the tubes comment to make this massive leap that is utterly irrelevant to anything I wrote about.
You only saw the "implication" because you already agreed with him and wanted to talk about that issue (along with the rest of the irrelevant issues you raised). I'm not making commentary one way or the other on those issues at this time -- I'm simply saying that they're not germane to the case I'm making.
I'm not saying we can't talk about those things along the way -- all I'm saying is that there's more to courtesy than showing grace in your willingness to read some links.
If I were in your shoes and someone asked me to enlighten another about the premise of making an argument, I would read the following and think, "Okay, that's what this guy is driving at -- and it sounds like a pretty big deal."
"While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube: The manipulation of which f$@*#% up the future of the entire world."
Sounds like something a reader would take into account, don't ya think?
Responding on point will do far more to serve your interests than anything else.
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"That issue is as demonstrably provable as it gets (no baggage -- just pure science in an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter).
And to do this day -- all they do is mock and belittle anyone who challenges them on their baseless beliefs."
****************
How did you go from baseless beliefs about "fractions of a millimeter matter" to your faith and dinosaurs?
I'll tell you how -- because you wanted to. You're far more gracious and well-mannered than what I'm used to, but I have a very specific purpose in what I'm making the case for here, and instead of considering that -- you made all kinds of assumptions and defended things that I may or may not agree with.
Gracious or not -- that kind of "debate" has been killing this country for decades. Given your views on Iraq -- you should be keenly of that. Granted, you offered to read my links and that's wonderful. But in the meantime, instead of thinking about what I was saying in that follow-up about Steven, and using your intelligence to understand exactly what I'm talking (or asking questions until you do):
You just fed him what he wanted to hear -- and he didn't learn, and neither did you.
I was hoping (and still am) -- that you and I could demonstrate how genuine discussion actually works (where you don't just respond with whatever you wanna say, you take information into account in the exchange).
And we go back and forth in hashing out the truth.
I don't think of you as being in the Mentality of a Mob -- but Steven's behavior is (and all you did was reinforce his beliefs on something utterly meaningless that has no bearing on anything I wrote.
-- Rather than read and digest, people scan and dismiss — frantically seeking any fragment they can frame in their favor.
-- Sensible arguments are snubbed with meaningless replies that are utterly absent of original thought — mercilessly torturing reason with trite talking points.
-- Even against overwhelming evidence served on a silver platter, they will swat it away in disdain without so much as glancing at the goods.
-- Any sound bite that can be manipulated to their liking will be repeated in endless cycles of certitude.
-- Always at the ready — they’ll gleefully “inform” you with 60 seconds of “research” — compiled by copying & pasting material disseminated by the equally uninformed.
-- They’ll look away from a mountain of evidence against their side — while nitpicking over pebbles to pounce on the other.
-- Their civility is a charade in their immovable contempt for correction — playing childish games that fit a formula designed to infuriate you (at which point they’ll pull the innocence card and haughtily condemn your tone).
-- They want a presence without having to exert any effort to legitimately participate
-- They peddle their opinions while shirking any responsibility to validate them
-- They launch volleys of vitriol as fireworks for freedom
-- They see themselves as conveyors of truth while dripping in duplicity
-- They want respect without having to earn it
-- Their hypocrisy knows no bounds
-- You can “agree can disagree” about subject matter you know absolutely nothing about
-- You can have a “line of thinking” — without doing any thinking (“I’M OK, YOU’RE OK”)
-- You can act like a child and want respect as an adult
-- You can be hailed as a hero for “following the facts” — never mind that the trail always seems to lead in the direction you desire
-- You can cite the word of the opposition as gospel — then get right back to assailing them as the liars you love to hate
-- “All opinions are equal” — whenever it’s your baseless beliefs on the line
It will take me sometime to actually go through all your links. I can give a few responses here:
1 - There is nothing small government or states rights oriented about war mongers. Trump oversaw the most peaceful time in my living memory (I’m under 40). Abraham Accords? He might be arrogant and annoying, but he was absolutely a proponent of peace, individual liberty, and limited government. I vote in R primaries now to help ensure war mongers don’t get on the ballot. I’ve never had a problem calling anyone out over anything, snd I expect it from others. There is no exception for politicians in my general approach to life that truth matters even if it’s uncomfortable.
2 - The far right is not actually a threat here. Yes, in a country of 330million there are some lunatics. But as far as actual candidates in my district, city, state, congress, or senate they just don’t exist. While I do love Newton, we aren’t talking about the physical world here. Numerous studies and any objective observation shows that the right has NOT moved to the extremes of their ideology while the left HAS.
3 - I strongly opposed the Iraq war at the time. As a college freshman I wrote a paper that I didn’t want Bush to win because he’d find an excuse to go to war in Iraq (obviously I didn’t foresee 9/11 - which I still think had nothing to do with Iraq). Conservative values are the opposite of war mongering neocons who spend money like it grows on trees and empowers a federal police state to spy and attack citizens.
4 - Political party is not part of my personal identity. I’m registered as an independent. I pay attention to non-mainstream proposals. I voted Trump in 2020, but Johnson in 2016. My motivation to vote Republican is because the authoritarian left has gone so far off the rails - decades in the making - it’s going to take time to bring back merit, individual responsibility, individual freedom, and a commitment to limited government to correct the far left lurch of the US. I tried doing that within the Democrat party - they refused to hear. Republicans and conservatives will at least listen and try to learn. Democrats have no interest in correcting themselves. Republicans have taken on the fight for these universal values of truth, justice, and liberty - and I am in it for more than an election or 2 to make sure they win.
5 - I do believe the high moral ground must be earned, and I see conservatives as earning it. There is nothing moral about the regressive, bigoted, harmful policies of Democrats. Their policies don’t work and their aim to tribalism the country are regressive and destructive. Their outright hatred of children is so in opposition to the natural order of life it’s completely unsustainable - the Democrats are the barbarians at the gates of Rome, but the siege can play out differently each time, and I refuse to do nothing and simply watch society - and my kids future - fall to a new dark ages.
"It will take me sometime to actually go through all your links" -- a society willing to show such courtesy, would be one of limitless potential.
I very much appreciate your thoughtful reply and look forward to when I can respond in more depth. I gotta get going for now, but as a courtesy I wanted to send a short reply to express my appreciation.
"As a college freshman I wrote a paper that I didn’t want Bush to win because he’d find an excuse to go to war in Iraq."
A lot to digest… well written! My opinion.. can make current state of the USA as complicated as we want. Bottom line a country without a firm foundation that most citizens stand for is doomed to fail… Most of the power brokers (deserved and undeserved) look inward for their inspiration… power and money. The human condition hasn’t really changed in all of human history. Doesn’t matter progressive or conservative… history is doomed to repeat… Unfortunately technology and the internet giving a stage to the undeserving and the idiots among us just blindly follow. Day of reckoning is upon us in America…
Russiagate? I take that to mean that there was no reason to investigate Trump and his sycophants' connections to Russia.
Maybe you missed the news that the IG of the DOJ found that the FBI's investigation was "properly predicated".
Maybe you missed the news that the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm did a three-year investigation into Trump and Russia and issued a very revealing 400-page report on the issue. Are you claiming they had no reason to do that?
Also, maybe you forgot that all of Trump's people lied to investigators about their ties to Russia, and Trump tried about seven different ways to obstruct the investigation. Why would innocent people do that?
Anyone who claims the Russia investigation was "all lies", only reveals themselves to be a brainwashed right-wing moron.
President Trump is considered the third toughest President on Russia and the Soviet Union, behind only Truman and Reagan (though Harding deserves a place on the list, too!).
Restored providing defensive weapons to Poland, started by Bush but cancelled by Obama
Called for Germany to refuse the Nordstrom natural gas pipeline from Russia.
Agreed to provide natural gas (LNG by ship) to Poland and the Czech Republic if their supply from Russia is cut off after the pipeline is built.
Entered agreements with Finland and with Norway for joint surveillance of the Arctic region for Russian military activities.
President Trump learned through his decades-long executive education to be friendly in public, but act tough on enemies. Theodore Roosevelt had a policy like that "Speak softly and carry a big stick".
I made no comment on the "Russia conspiracy" -- I simply explained that a myth you cited as true is actually false. It's an honest mistake. Being dead certain that there's nothing to see in "Russia conspiracy" -- is not.
And if you truly understood what I was saying -- you'd know that point is that ulterior motives and dishonesty is how misguided beliefs get established.
Or as Dalrymple put it: “opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion.”
Before you "Like" something -- make sure you understand it.
The "flat Earth" is a myth popularized by Washington Irving and others. According to The Flat Earth Myth: The real myth is the idea that anyone ever believed in a flat earth:
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Essentially no one during the Middle Ages believed the world was flat. Of the many myths about the Middle Ages this one is perhaps the most widespread, and yet at the same time the most roundly and authoritatively debunked.
In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that refuting this myth is like refuting the idea that the moon is made of cheese.
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So how could it be that Columbus set sail against contemporaries who believed the earth was flat — an idea that’s still in some textbooks today?
Woods explains this by quoting the good book above:
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Uncritical acceptance of the myth was too tempting for many scholars, since it fit in so well with the caricature of Christianity they were already inclined to draw. “If Christians had for centuries insisted that the earth was flat against clear and available evidence,” explains Russell, “they must be not only enemies of scientific truth, but contemptible and pitiful enemies.”
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Ulterior motives at work once again.
You don’t like it when people pull that stunt on you — but you have no qualms about doing the same to them.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm's report on the issue?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Let me repeat from the report
"...Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Trump and his associates participated in and enabled Russia's assault on the integrity of the 2016 election.
Matt, again, you copied this DIRECTLY, WORD FOR WORD, from Wikipedia - then you posted it over and over and over to get called our on your simple minded plagiarism as you offer evidence of just how dumb the woke are. Copying from Wikipedia????? My 10 year old is prohibited from using it as a source in 5th grade by her school its so blatantly bad.
Again Matt, stop just regurgitating.
Here is where you plagiarized the comment you posted over and over and over. Staring with the 4th paragraph. Do you not see just how foolish you are acting? wow.
You're just avoiding confronting what I said. You are avoiding confronting the fact that you are wrong about the Russia investigation. It was not a lie. It was not a hoax. You think it was because you get your news from shit sources. That's the issue. Stop trying to distract from it.
No I’m not. YOU haven’t read any source documents. You are an ignorant fool that hasn’t a clue what your talking about. Until you actually go read the documents, and follow up investigations, there is no point in discussing it.
You’re ignorant in the subject (evident by the copy a paste).
Stop convincing yourself your informed when it’s evident you are far too simple and lazy to inform yourself.
Prove that the quote from the investigation is wrong. If you want to pretend it's not true. Fine. I couldn't care less. Live in your pathetic fantasy world of right-wing spin.
"A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."
Even without any evidence at all -- and knowing nothing about the issue, anyone with an atom of objectivity would know that Trump's behavior alone indicates he's hiding something.
Republican or Democrat, I call a spade a spade -- and I know a liar when I see one. I don't need a report to tell me what I can see right in front of me with my own eyes:
I'll go one further than that -- what I find most disturbing is how clear it was all along.
Virtually all politicians are frauds by definition, but it was so blatant with Trump -- a history just riddled with fraud and unscrupulous deceit.
And I just love this bit about "he's not a politician, he's a businessman."
Okay -- why don't you act like one then?
Wouldn't a businessman carry himself with some degree of professionalism? Forget "presidential" if ya like -- just gimme some professionalism of some form.
And whatever you think of the wall, wouldn't a "businessman" provide a proposal for his plans?
But as awful as I thought he was, even I didn't realize what an abomination of a human being he would become.
Do you know the real reason he acted like that throughout his term?
My theory: Boredom.
Trump never wanted the job and still doesn't -- he just wants the adulation and power.
The idea that this guy gives a shit about the country is as laughable as it gets. Nobody who wanted to do that job would spend half the day on Twitter and TV -- starting his day as 11:00, no less.
Despite how I saw him from the get-go, I gave him a chance. But when family members told me of his work ethic and all -- I told them that whatever work ethic and attention to detail that he had in business, would not translate to government.
Trump loved his life in business -- which shows just how desperate and pathetic this POS is:
That he would run again for a job he never wanted -- just to save face.
Nobody beats what "someone else" had to say on the same subject . . .
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The thing that is most disturbing to me, in a sea of disturbing things — is that there is no opportunity in all of humanity, to observe the world we live in, and to see all the scope of life in the world, like being President of the United States. You sit there, and for 4 years, or for 8 years — the crème de la crème of society is presented to you.
“Here’s the bravest man and woman in the military. Here’s the smart scientists. Here’s the most dedicated children in their learning.”
You get to see the ugliest . . . what are terrorists doing in torture camps. You see the world from a vista that only a man, or one day a woman, can have that outlook. And I thought to myself: “Surely, when he won . . . he would change as a result of that.”
Every day, you’re having meetings and talking to serious people. And then you come into the Oval Office to “Here’s the winners of the Spelling Bee of San Diego.” . . .
And you meet these people, and life just comes washing over you. Your heart and your mind open up. What a learning experience — how much you learn about the world.
Yes. I did. I'll do it again when it's easy and convenmient. I was responding to different people. I chose the simplest fastest way of responding because I am responding to so many people. What you are doing is called "deflecting". You're doing that because you don't want to respond to the salient point.
Wikipedia quoted from the actual report.
Face it, your assertion that "Russiagate" is some kind of lie or hoax is wrong. I wonder if your 10-year-old knows that.
LOL!!! My 10 year old knows not to plagiarize, how to form her own thoughts and opinions, she's read over 625 actual books (about 600 more than you).
You stole the comment from Wikipedia - not just the quote.
You aren't "responding" to anyone. You are regurgitating via plagiarizing one of the least reliable sources online.
You didn't just get the quote they chose from the report, you stole their damn write up because you lack the capacity to formulate your own thoughts and responses.
Here's a hint - if you can't respond yourself, then don't respond at all.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm's report on the issue?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm's report on the issue?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era.
Again with the comment you plagerized directly from Wikipedia? Maybe you should try actually reading what you referenced and checking more recently documentation before you continue making such an uniformed lazy fool of yourself Matt the flat-Earther
More projecting Matt. Some of us actually read the Mueller report and the Durham indictments. Apparently they are above your level of reading comprehension. That’s fine, but you’re still factually wrong and uninformed. You really should try to project less though - it’s a good first step.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Committee's report?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
I hope that's not too far above your level of reading comprehension.
Awe look, you can copy and paste from something your masters at Wikipedia. No wonder you love Brandon - you both plagiarize because you're incapable of coherent thoughts (though really, Matt, copying Wikipedia word for word is like what 7th graders at woke public schools do). I have pasted the link below for all to enjoy (4th and 5th paragraphs DIRECTLY, WORD FOR WORD, from Wikipedia). Thank you SO much for the laughs. You continue to make a complete fool of yourself proving that woke people have no brain or original thoughts.
Since actually reading the report is above your capabilities, its really a waste of my time to get into the details
For those following Matt's super original and genius insights - it took about 5 seconds (copy and paste from his comment) to show what everyone has noticed - he is simply regurgitating from some left wing hack source, and I am copying Matt's post below least he try to delete it.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Committee's report?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
I hope that's not too far above your level of reading comprehension."
Matt, I think you will soon understand the error of your beliefs on Russiagate. You really got this one wrong. Are you saying that after the longest, most expensive investigation in US history without a single indictment that alleges a connection between the Trump campaign and Trump, that this apparently wild conspiracy theory is true? Of all the Mueller indictments, not one charged a conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. (Wasn't that what Russiagate was all about?)
Indeed, there was NO reason to investigate Trump's alleged connections to Russia from the get-go because as we know now, there was no evidence of such. It all started with the Steele dossier which was *entirely fabricated*. Yes, made up! And it appears at this point made up at the behest of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Perhaps your new sources haven't let you in on Durham's investigation.
Maybe you should read the conclusions of the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm report.
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Matt - did you notice in my comment above where it took me 5 seconds to find the "source" you plagiarized WORD FOR WORD?
You keep posting this PLAGERIZED comment over and over and over. From Wikipedia - the founder of Wikipedia even rejects it. My 5th grader is prohibited from citing Wikipedia (she's only 10) because the school recognizes its not a reliable or trustworthy source.
And here you are, plagiarizing Wikipedia and posting the comment over and over. Yes, you are proof the woke are morons.
From my comment above in response to well, this exact comment form you:
For those following Matt's super original and genius insights - it took about 5 seconds (copy and paste from his comment) to show what everyone has noticed - he is simply regurgitating from some left wing hack source
And that source you plagiarized beginning with paragraph 4 is.......... right here
Plagerized? Don't be a silly drama queen. Of course, I copy and pasted from Wikipedia. So what? That's some serious moral violation in your pathetic mind?
Is the quote true or not? That's the salient point.
Repeat after me: Trump and his people participated in and enabled the Russians' effort to undermine the integrity of our elections.
You claiming to have read something you clearly didn't, then copying and pasting from Wikipedia WITHOUT ACKKNOWLEDGING YOU DID THAT is not only an ethical violation, its a sign of stupidity.
Repeat after me: Matt will only ever pass 6th grade if he learns to do his own work
when you COPY AND PASTE without acknowledging the source its evident you have NO CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT
Is it true? No, the coordination has been proved to be associated with the Clinton campaign, and Wikipedia isn't a current or reliable source. John Solomon, Glen Greenwald - I trust the accuracy of their reporting on this subject much more. Even Matt Taibbi.
But you wouldn't have a clue about any of it because all yo can do is copy and paste from Wikipedia.
Grow up Matt, and grow a set. If your going to copy and paste, cite your source - the rest of us learned that about 3rd grade.
On the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, the Robb-Silberman Report found that there was no manipulation of Iraq WMD intel.
Do you know what the CIA's definition of "manipulation of intelligence" is? How something is defined and framed is critical -- don't ya think? And how many people swear by that report's conclusions without reading one word of the report?
The point is -- for people who are consumed with politics, you sure don't understand the Gutter Games of Government. I'm sure you know more about "Russiagate" than I do, and I have no desire to debate it. But what I do know better than you and all of America -- is that you're drawing conclusions from a world that wallows in lies and bullshit.
You're dead certain on subject matter that's mirky -- and people like that get that way because they made a habit out of it.
The last time I asked someone to tell me about a time where they pursued the truth when it wasn't in their interests -- he replied that it was "loaded question."
My point was that a report's conclusions and # of indictments does not necessarily mean anything in politics. I'm saying you're dead certain on matters far too murky to warrant such certainty.
By your standards -- O.J. didn't commit murder simply by virtue of being found "not guilty."
There were lots of connections: Manafort, Flynn are the two most obvious ones. They were talking to the Russians and coordinating with them, and then they lied about it to investigators. The Mueller report and the Senate Intel Committee reports are the ones that will inform historians.
The Steele report was not the impetus for the investigation. That's where you are wrong.
Flynn? Did you seriously just go there? You really need to ditch CNN, MSNBC and actually start READING the court cases. They are fascinating.
After reading these and looking at the reporting (based on anonymous source. AKA: Made-up), I realized how much the media straight-up and knowingly lies.
You are so very very wrong but I need to get on with my day and I think it's rude to hijack threads (which we have done here) so I will leave you to your beliefs. I myself will follow the evidence.
So much confusion. So little time. It's evident to me that you are getting your information from very dubious sources. (It sounds like you listen to a lot of talk radio and get your "news" from social media.) Hence, you are very confused about what we on the left want and believe.
This is, at heart, the basic DH0 response ("Name-calling"): Veiled, condescending name-calling, but name-calling all the same. NCmom, of soggy intelligence suffers from "confusion," isn't sharp enough to ignore "dubious" sources of information, classy enough to eschew "talk radio" or sophisticated enough to scorn social media news.
Matt, if you're going to hold your fellow American in such contempt, at least do it honestly. Show a little courage.
Exactly. Please back up your comment. When you attack a well-considered post such as NCMom's post with ad hominem smears, no one who can think clearly and critically is going to pay attention to you or your position. If you have a different point of view and you can express that cogently, then please do so!
He does not have a point of view he has talking points. If you visit other political comments sections you will see them regurgitated almost identically on the same day.
Oh please! Trump couldn't care less about democracy, and his supporters couldn't either. He plotted a coup de stat after he lost the last election, and you guys are aching to renominate the man. And if you've noticed recently conservatives around the country, especially on the state and local level, are trying to get books banned from libraries, and they want to ban schools from teaching LGBTQ and racial issues. That's what authoritarians do. They use the power of the government to regulate thought and speech. Thus one common trait among all authoritarians is their hatred of the free press. This was true for Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Trump, Kim Jong Un, Castro, Viktor Orban... the list goes on.
I'm sure you meant "Obama and Biden" in your comment. President Trump cared a lot about democracy and freedom. It was his priority. He strongly supported free, democratic countries around the world with his actions and words. He strongly opposed the worst authoritarian countries around the world with his actions and words.
And the book banners are Democrats, after all. Your items are trivial compared to the real, endless book bans by democrats.
He said he admires Putin and he fell in love with Kim Jong Un, and he attacked the leaders of European democracies, and he tried to stage a coup de stat here in the US after he lost the election. Those are not the actions of someone who promotes democracy.
Where did you read that Democrats are banning books?
Here's where I read about conservatives banning books:
A few sources I read almost daily (aside from Substack) - and heck no they are not Legacy media with the exception of WSJ - which in recent years has become crap.
WSJ
Reason
Insights and Issues
Science Daily
Just The News
Jonathan Turley (blog)
Tax Foundation (it helps I've been a CPA specializing in international tax for over 15 years)
The only podcasts I listen to with any consistency s Megan Kelly. I also watch Lara Logan's documentaries on Fox Nation (I have a lot of respect for Lara Logan).
I actually read John Ioannidis's article in STAT ON March 17, 2020 (very prophetic) because I read a lot of science publications.
I don't really care what you think of my "reading habits." As far as your comments, you come across like an unintelligent, historically and economically illiterate, entitled, woke little brat. I accept I might be wrong, but you give ZERO evidence of insightfulness or logical reasoning or economic literacy.
But you are good for a laugh, so I appreciate that.
The WSJ is the only one of those sources that actually practices journalism. The others simply comment on the news as originally reported by the legacy news orgs. You're reading nothing but right-wing spin.
You're a little outdated. The recent news is how BLATANTLY almost ALL the MSM simply out-and-out lies. Falsehoods dreamed up outta necessity, right? SURELY someone as well informed as You reads Glen Greenwald, right?
Then You saw his recent post on MSM collapsing? And his link to Glen Greenwald FACTS of matter?
Sorry Matt. You illustrate one-a the PRIMARY characteristics of the Fundamentalist Wokeianity RELIGION: Inability to tell the difference between right and wrong.
Because they are so CERTAIN they're right... No, not just right, but righteous. Well, they don't have ability to see how wrong they are. That is: They just can see the forest of FACTS, nor any tree that is in fact, FACT.
I'm behind in reading, and Your inability to tell right from wrong will mean there is no collection of FACTS that will allow You to see the light.
The Epoch Times is the leading international newspaper today. It is published in 22 languages and has correspondent all around the world. It is a very sensible sources of news.
You clearly have no clue what most of those sources are Matt. Like your getting called out for plagiarizing, you are making a really big fool of yourself right now.... all your comment says is that you haven't a clue what any of those sources are other than you heard Epoch Times bad and you recognize WSJ.
Yes, Epoch Times. Considering it’s run by Chinese dissidents it gives wonderful insight into why they escaped and Chinese regime and culture. I’ve learned a great deal about Falon Gong which is fascinating. I appreciate their international coverage. For Covid they carry interviews with top epidemiologist around the world. I’ve found their reporting to be truthful and accurate and their insights of great value.
I wouldn’t expect you to have any appreciation for diverse viewpoints, and concern about actual objective truth, or any consideration for a practice of devotion to universal truths and justice. Those things repel little woke minds in the heads of little woke boys like yours. 🤷♀️
Great way to see what works, what doesn’t, and how little media talking heads actually know about various tax regimes and entitled funding structures for sure. It’s nice to be appreciated. 😊
I’d actually prefer they know…… then more people might understand Venezuela imposes a wealth tax while Denmark has flat taxes and funds their “free” social programs via regressive VAT taxes. Pre 2017 we had an astronomically high corporate tax rate while also falling on the losing end of VAT border adjustments. My job was mostly “cost allocation” - aka legal offshoring hundreds of millions in profits. Sometimes we sent humans too 😬 for extra “support” of the structure.
The “rich” don’t pay for entitlements in most other developed countries, people pay for their own entitlements - and they are increasingly trying to privatize many of them.
Both Bernie and Brandon actually propose Venezuelan entitlement and funding structures while swearing it’s “really” Denmark and a frighteningly large percentage of the US public buys that ridiculous and entirely false assertion.
I left fortune 500 a couple of years ago to work part time and hang with my kids more....... the one thing I don't know if I'll ever miss is transfer pricing - though when that long report of babble was finished every year it was satisfying. haha
The left embraces authoritarianism? Trump couldn't care less about democracy, and his supporters couldn't either. He plotted a coup de stat after he lost the last election, and you guys are aching to renominate the man. And if you've noticed recently conservatives around the country, especially on the state and local level, are trying to get books banned from libraries, and they want to ban schools from teaching LGBTQ and racial issues. That's what authoritarians do. They use the government to regulate thought and speech. Thus one common trait among all authoritarians is their hatred of the free press. This was true for Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Trump, Kim Jong Un, Castro, Viktor Orban... etc.
“Trump couldn't care less about democracy, and his supporters couldn't either.”
Let me try this: “Biden is a racist hard core Communist and wants to Gulag all his opponents.”
I can just make stuff up as well. It’s not that hard.
Given the Democrats tried a political coup with the Trump/Russian lie… it is easy to see the Democrats hate representative democracy, The Constitution but love authoritarianism.
“ And if you've noticed recently conservatives around the country, especially on the state and local level, are trying to get books banned from libraries”
Parents on both the right and left think assigning readings to 12-14 year old dealing with the positives of NAMBLA talking points should not happen in middle school and the books should not exist in school libraries.
Do you seriously support the statutory rape of 12-14 year old boys by 30-40 year old men?
“ and they want to ban schools from teaching LGBTQ and racial issues. ”
Do you really think teaching kindergarten kids that sex and gender are fluid and social constructs are beneficial?
As for banning racial issues? What you wrote is 100% a categorical lie.
Let me say this simply: CRT is as vile, evil and destructive as the NAZI ideology.
If you support CRT (and it’s various Praxis) you are not a good person.
Trump is not president so there's that. Most of his supporters were not interested in a "coup" but were fed up with media, intelligence community, and DNC manipulation to write them off and write them out of the national conversation. Here is a fantastic and empathetic twitter thread that attempted to explain why what many consider "deplorables" were so angry. https://twitter.com/martyrmade/status/1413165168956088321
Just look at the footage of 1/6: it was mostly LARPing with some mob violence. The only person who died was a young unarmed while female military vet who was shot point blank by an officer whom the government has decided not to prosecute and won't even release the officer's identity. (Hopefully you are now aware that the fire extinguisher bashing, etc was made up by the press and Officer Sicknik died the following day of a natural causes, which cannot be attributed to 1/6. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/19/988876722/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-medical-examiner-ru)
As for book bans, BOTH sides are doing it if you weren't aware. The difference is that the books the "woke" want to ban are classics, while the books the "unwoke" want to ban teach children as young as kindergarten about sex and gender with obvious indoctrination agendas. The fact is, agree or not, *both sides* are pushing to ban certain books. That's what authoritarians do? Yeah, like use the government to demonize people who push back against certain agendas (those questioning vaccines for children come to mind), Or how about using social media as a proxy for government's ban on frees speech. (If you think that is not happening, then you are not paying attention.) I--and I suspect many here--do not belong to any "tribe" and we attempt to understand all sides. It appears by your response that you are caught in a silo As for where the authoritarianism is coming from these days, I cannot more highly recommend Glenn Greenwald (a civil libertarian who has always identified with the left) and Matt Taibbi (certainly from the left). If you haven't read these guys, I suggest doing so without your biases.
Matt, you couldn't rebut even one of NCmom's claims. I don't think your busy schedule is really the problem.
Here is what NCmom wrote in her post:
"Few things in human society are more lethal than authoritarianism, the woke embrace it"
You responded by
(a) Misquoting NCmom: "The left embraces authoritarianism"
(b) Rebutting neither her actual claim ("the woke embrace authoritarianism") nor the fabricated claim which you attributed to her but instead....
(c) Rebutting claims she neither made nor addressed (she wants to renominate Trump, Trump cares about democracy, Trump didn't plot a coup d'etat, Trump loves the free press, Trump fill-in-the-blank etc.)
(d) Asserting that whatever NCmom has to say about the woke is wrong because... she and her side are authoritarians too.
This level of disagreement raises the conversation to DH1 ("Ad hominem"). In this case, basically: "What you write isn't valid because you're not a member of the enlightened party/faction". But there is no actual rebuttal of NCmom's claims or assertions.
None of those are book bans. They don’t want it taught to their children because it’s inappropriate for children. The books are not banned.
I’m excited to see how far you guys go to stop the ‘Nazi Christian Terrorists’. Hard to predict but I know there is no depth to which you will not stoop.
I think the "class" distinction is *not at all about income or wealth or job status* - it is a division between those members of the elite intellectual class (and importantly: their sycophants) who are controlling the narrative (e.g., media, university bureaucrats, and intelligence community workers, etc) or those who are not members of this class.
While I somewhat agree, there is nothing "intelligent" about wokeism. It's actually rather stupid, simple minded, and can only be followed by the very simple minded and gullible.....
They call themselves élite, yet simple and regressive is a more accurate description of their ideology.
And on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, he's a liar who didn't even remotely follow his own "standards" -- and that's an irrefutable fact backed by overwhelming evidence.
If you truly followed his "follow the facts" mantra, it wouldn't matter that I'm a "nobody" challenging Thomas Sowell "The Maverick." All that would matter is that I know something you don't -- and you'd consider that evidence on the merits, and do so politely, I would add.
If you hail him as a hero, shouldn’t you abide by the principles upon which you put him on a pedestal — even it if knocks him off of it?
I looked through these three web posts. They are incoherent.
Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology.
And your argument for how a rotor with a 3mm wall could maintain 90,000 RPM to make highly enriched uranium?
You could borrow from Thomas Sowell's argument on the subject . . . had he made one.
Ah, perhaps that's what this issue's all about -- or is that too
"incoherent"?
Jesus, in Call Sign “Maverick” that bit about the 3mm wall is the headline right after the opening image. Forget the other pages -- forget the site, just ask a question for a change.
For the love of God or the Thomas Sowell you worship, does this response look like someone "following the facts":
"Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology."
Your response is a gross breach of the very principles upon which you put this guy on a pedestal.
On the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, Thomas Sowell shot his mouth off with party-line hackery -- and that's the best ya go?
Just for kicks -- don't you people ever wanna try out the principles you praise, or you just wanna pay lip service to them?
As for my "incoherence"-- your kind had made it IMPOSSIBLE to reach you for nearly 20 years on this topic. It doesn't get any more coherent than the 7-part 2 hours and 40 minutes documentary I wrote and produced on Iraq WMD (as well as some of it on liberals being in lockstep on Trayvon).
And still your kind bitched, moaned, and mercilessly mocked -- never mind that 100% of that crowd couldn't make a sound argument on the subject to save their lives.
If I chopped up the doc and put it on TikTok, you'd still bitch about it and offer your pearls of wisdom about "incoherence."
*******************
"I looked through these three web posts. They are incoherent.
Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology."
*******************
You can't imagine how lucky you are that you can't see yourself through my eyes.
It's infuriating, but most of all -- I feel sorry for you. You'll never know how much more the world has to offer you . . . and what you have to offer it.
All that aside -- thanks for taking a look at the links anyway.
And you're right, it is incoherent -- I don't take offense to what's true. But you have no idea what it's like taking on all of America. You're all so wrapped up in bullshit that you no longer remember what it was like to see straight.
Perhaps you never did.
If someone sent me an excerpt like this, whatever I thought I knew, I'd instantly know that this guy knows something I don't. You know things that I don't -- and I would welcome learning from you (regardless of how you've treated me).
On the above, Thomas Sowell would have no chance in a debate with me. He repeatedly weighed it on the Iraq War -- doesn't it strike you as strange that someone who "follows the facts" has a record of pushing propaganda and never once address the most critical evidence in question?
"Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology."
That's one way to break down the data, but the average incomes of dems vs. republicans tells a different story, and has been telling that different story increasingly since the early 2000s.
The "average" income of Republicans is higher than the average incomes of Democrats.......... there have been some small shifts in the middle class as academia has exploded and rural voters get tired of being called racists, but overall, the more you make personally, the more likely you are to vote Republican.
To a point. If you look at what are called the "super ZIP codes". If I remember (and I might be a bit off on this) the top 20 ZIP codes (by income) represent the holdings of 95% of the wealth in the country and they vote about 75% Democrat.
Your stats are off on the % of wealth they hold, that said, the top 20 zip codes make up about 0.001% of the country's population or area while the 1% is 3.3million people spread across the country and across thousands of zip codes.
Income is easier to find data on but the top 300 ZIPS represent about 1.5% of income. However, wealth and income are radically different. A much smaller number of ZIPS hold a much larger % of wealth (I am simply observing the event not judging on the event) and I can't find that data anymore.
Even in these top 300 ZIPS, political donations, as well voting, are overwhelming Democrats.
It's paradoxical that Democrats tend to have a higher education level, a lower median yearly income but have more people in the top 1% when compared to Democrats and Independents.
Republicans tend to have lower education, higher median income (more small business owners I suspect), more people in the top 20% of income but far few in the top 1%.
Oh, there is a VAST difference between income and wealth - something far too many don't understand. Wealth is not a giant pile of cash. It's assets.
The curves are weird. But interesting
The surprise over the income brake out though I believe comes from a false association between education level and income. Forget how many billionaires are only high school graduates. A meaningful percentage of people with higher education are in academia - and its grown (last I looked a few years ago it was over 25%). They vote Dem. Then you have tons of people going to college and not earning a good living - many end up in a big corporate slog or in some job that doesn't require a degree. These urbanites too tend to vote Dem. The young make less money, and as I can attest first hand, fresh off indoctrination its easy to vote away other people's money (until learning I was really voting away my own).
The business professional class highly educated and is still primarily republican (doctors, financial advisors, accountants, some attorneys). Business owners are still republican and there is a wide array of educational levels - with seemingly little correlation to success. Skilled trades people often skip college, but they do well financially, and tend to vote Republican.
I think its more of a personality and skin in the game thing than actual income or education level.
It is true that the wealthier someone is the more likely they are to vote Republican, but that measures a behavioral tendency in a cohort of voters that gets smaller (and less electorally significant) the higher the income goes (while simultaneously exercising outsize influence on income statistics).
The difference in our understanding of political affiliation + income probably has much to do with the way people and income are sorted into affiliations for statistical purposes in different studies, and when it comes to very recent studies, the rise in "independent" affiliation among people who lean right (and the very intentional addition of low-income voters to Democrate rolls in the last 5-7 years) is probably also skewing data relative to what was available in the early 00s. I don't know that Trump voters are the best indicator of anything, considering the weird things going on in his voter base. I voted Republican my whole life *until* he ran and my household only started making $100k after he was first elected, though that was no particular thanks to him. Other life-long Republicans in my very white family voted for Biden last time.
I've been following these trends in an informal way since Obama's first election when I first noticed a distinct cultural contempt on the left for people they considered "rednecks" or "white trash" (later, "deplorable") a contempt that is firmly rooted in class hostility and that I found curious given their labor base. There is an increasing and obvious sense on the left that people who lack education or cosmopolitan sensibilities are somehow less entitled to inflict their opinions and vision upon the country than those of greater education and means.
It's a group upon which progressives in particular feel compelled to act in really overtly punitive ways. Increasingly, non-white individuals who sympathize with "white trash" cultural resentments (and who frequently have economically or culturally similar upbringings) are lumped in with them, so to say the class divergence is imaginary or a non-factor or not based on income or education really resists most observable indicators.
It also contradicts most of what I've seen in trends of the last 20 years. Brookings indicates a *median* income advantage among democrats of 15% and diverging rapidly. Thanks so much for the scare quotes around "average" to remind me not to play fast and loose with my words.
All good points. I do think the divide is more cultural - though it was the opposite path for my husband and I. We were completely indocrtinated in undergrad/ grad, then we started living, growing, learning, and reproducing and it became evident we really were young and dumb. While I still reject the war mongering neocons, having actual knowledge, learning something about history, and getting some years to observe what actually works, lead me to realize the outcomes I was voting for were the opposite of the rhetoric from the left. Trump opened my eyes because of the overwhelming, insane, extreme reaction from the media - all the media did during Trump was lie, attack his base for placing policy outcomes over personality, and make crap up.
Covid made it clear the authoritarian motivations of the left were not suppressed. The far right, as far as political power an actual influence goes, dies with Hitler. The destructive authoritarian left is alive and well. As is the absolute destruction that follows authoritarianism that is being borne by an entire generation of American children. I learned long ago to never say never, but it will be a LONG time before any Democrat, at any level, for any office, gets my vote again.
Well I didn't say I voted for a Democrat, only that I didn't vote for Trump. I likewise would not choose a Democrat for office unless they demonstrated a compelling divergence from party trends--the very existence of which would likely rule them out as an endorsed candidate for the party anyway.
I could be convinced to hear a case for Gabbard, particularly as part of a mixed independent/centrist ticket.
I could be convinced for Gabby. There are some Democrats I respect. But any candidate would have to overcome the risk of Dem rule. I’ll be honest, if Manchin, who is actually a conservative Democrat that I’ve followed since he was first elected gov of WV, we’re from a state with a Democrat governor, I have no doubt the party would force him out by whatever means necessary. Gabbard isn’t a war monger, and the issues she understands she has thoughtful policy positions. But alas you are correct, the Dems forced her out so Brandon or mini Castro could win…….
This fallacy about "class" and political ideology is getting really old. It doesn't hold up to actual data. Even the NYTs acknowledged that, regardless of "education" level, Trump won a majority of households making over $100K, while Biden won a large majority making under $24K.
I have a masters degree (as does my husband). Our kids attend private school (non-woke). We go to a country club. We are in the top % of income, though unlike the media caricature, super yachts and months long Mediterranean vacations elude our financial means.
While talking heads want to believe I am the average Democrat voter, the reality is, its far more typical for people in my socioeconomic position to vote Republican (high income but no inheritance, no trust funds). I am this "new" Republican party. Which is really just the pre- George W Republican party. I want nothing to do what the fake" Republican" neocon war mongers like George W., Dick Cheney, and John Brennon (and I felt that was LONG before 2016).
Add the insanity of the woke, and yes, I am passionately supporting Republicans. Here are a few of my actual reasons (and they aren't boogeymen like globalization, industrialization, or "fear of a browning US" that left wing ideologues so wish were true)
- We have known for thousands of years a "traditional" two parent family lays the foundation for human thriving, high trust societies, individual fulfillment, human advancement, and societal success. This has been proven. The non-stop attack by the woke on stable two-parent homes is destructive and cruel.
- Few things in human society are more lethal than authoritarianism, the woke embrace it
- We know that, biologically, modern humans can't be divided into distinct races. My Christian faith teaches that there is ONE race - the human race. The woke want me to see everything through their ridiculous racist lens. I find judging others by race to be regressive, bigoted, and simple minded.
- There are biologically TWO human sexes, as with all mammals, yet the woke reduce my innate biological reality to "feelings" while insisting men are entitled to my young daughter's private spaces, athletic competitions, and to rob her of her own comfort and bodily safety because they place the feelings of boys far ahead of the safety and bodily integrity of women and girls. Again, regressive.
- For people who claim to care about the "climate," the woke are relentless in their pursuit of ecologically destructive, and expensive, energy sources that mostly spread pollution and poverty while rejecting the only clean and affordable energy sources that already are available and that would reduce both emissions and poverty - nuclear and natural gas.
- The woke relentlessly attacking actual replicated science have continued that ideology as they INTENTIONALLY destroy our economy and an entire generation of US kids. There has NEVER been ANY replicated studies where actual outcomes show that universal mask mandates work in schools, that children are at meaningful risk from Covid, that children are large vectors of Covid, that lockdowns will "save lives" or prevent the eventual spread of an endemic respiratory virus, that vaccine mandates will decrease the spread of Covid, or that natural immunity is inferior to "vaccine" immunity. In fact, what we see that in huge replication all of these factually wrong ideas embraced with a cult like passion by the woke lead to public policy that causes real harm - direct or collateral - while having virtually no impact on reducing the spread of SARS-Cov-2. Yes, even the vaccine mandates, a recent study compared vaccinations rates to spread in several dozen countries as well as over 2,000 counties in the US and found no correlation between high rates of vaccination and decreased spread. We already knew this in June from Israel and and Iceland.
Those writing these analysis will continue to be completely confused as long as they continue to buy their own narrative over reality.
Industrial workers are not "mad" about robotics, in fact, having worked at a company with some of the most advanced manufacturing plants on Earth, I can tell you first hand that they welcome it. People aren't upset about this boogeyman of "globalization."
Strivers are angry that regulations have gone from a focus on safety and establishing a fair playing field to driving consolidation and creating barriers to entry.
We are angry that the free markets that have been the driver of the American dream are being replaced by oligarchies, unchecked corporate consolidation, and unchecked megacorp CEO power, only made possible by corporate board reform that now allows CEOs to appoint cronies, and ridiculous proxy rules which give these unaccountable CEO's total control over companies they often didn't build, and, more importantly, complete control over the corporation's wealth which they don't personally own.
Obamacare was nothing but a reallocation of healthcare out of the middle class downward towards the dependent class.
The list goes on and on and on (Afghanistan, dependence on foreign oil, Russiagate lies, woke policies always fail. woke people are small minded and regressive).
So please, stop with the nonsense about "class" and who votes for "new" Republicans. No matter how many times you say it, it'll still be a pile of hogwash to claim "fear" is what motivates us, or insinuate we're broke - those assertions are nothing more than woke projecting.
You're right about the dangers of authoritarianism. You're wrong about where it's coming from. I am copying and pasting comments by Thom Hartman. That is not plagiarism.
Authoritarian Coups Are Gradual then Sudden
Meanwhile, all across social media, the word is spreading: “The storm is upon us.”
In 1926, Ernest Hemmingway published his novel The Sun Also Rises, which has this extraordinary bit of dialogue about how change happens in most aspects of life — and how governments rise and fall.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
”Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
”What brought it on?”
“Friends," said Mike. "I had a lot of friends. False friends.”
For some unfathomable reason, Democrats insist on calling their Republican colleagues their “friends.” They are not friends. They are systematically destroying American democracy with the clear objective of replacing it with strongman authoritarianism, a new and American version of what Benito Mussolini called fascism.
Right now they’re moving gradually:
Infiltrating police departments and the enlisted ranks of the military
Taking over school boards and local boards of elections
Firing principals and teachers who defend multiracial, multicultural democracy while banning and burning books that contain such “dangerous” ideas
Gerrymandering states so regardless of how people vote, Republicans control the levers of power
Changing election laws so they can both make it harder for city-dwellers to vote and to ignore and then change the outcomes of elections they don’t like
Building media structures that will support the authoritarian takeover when it happens
Organizing armed paramilitary militias, with back-channel connections to local police
Creating legal organizations to sanitize and rationalize ending messy democracy
Radicalizing average Americans through social media and an ever-growning network of hard-right podcasts
Spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories about Democrats and Jews drinking children’s blood
Firebombing Texas Democratic Party’s Austin headquarters and threatening them that if they don’t stop trying to get Democrats elected worse will come
When General Pinochet declared he was taking over the government of Chile in 1973 — a government that had been run democratically since 1923, the longest in South America — he had already infiltrated and gotten the loyalty of both the police, the army, and the civilian paramilitaries he’d spent the previous few years nurturing.
So when he rolled up to the presidential palace and declared he was taking over, nobody came to the defense of the elected president, Salvador Allende. The police were already loyal to Pinochet, including the police who defended that nation’s capitol. Allende, along with a few more than 30 supporters, held the palace for a few hours, gave a national radio address, and he then put a gun to his head and ended his presidency.
Gradually, then suddenly.
When Chileans poured into the streets, Pinochet swept them up and held them in the national stadium, where tens of thousands were tortured, murdered or simply disappeared. His democratic political opposition lost all its power and went underground; it would be seventeen years before anything resembling democracy would return to Chile, a process that is still pulling itself together.
If Mike Pence had gone along with Trump’s plan to imitate the election of 1876 and install the guy who lost both the popular and the electoral vote as president (as happened that year when Democrat Samuel Tilden won both votes but the House of Representatives instead installed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president), America would be a very, very different country today.
Gradually, then suddenly.
Trump had previously proclaimed his desire to change the nation’s libel and slander laws so he could sue or imprison his political opponents and those in the media who opposed him; that would have happened by now, and people like me (and maybe you) would be in jail.
Trump had previously promised his violent partisans that he’d pardon them and pick up their legal fees; by now hundreds of Kyle Rittenhouse’s would have “defended themselves” against Black people, “Antifa,” and “commie liberals.”
A constitutional convention like rightwing billionaires have been promoting and annually rehearsing in Washington, DC would be underway to rewrite our founding document; the right of all Americans to vote, separation of church and state, civil rights, protections of free speech and assembly, the right to due process and equal protection under the law, even the obscure Emoluments Clause would all be on the chopping block.
Trump-friendly corporations would be running political purges reminiscent of the Republican “Red Scare” and “Blacklist”1950s all across the country as social media accounts were examined for evidence of “leftist” leanings; Johnny McEntee began that process when he was “Deputy President” to Trump and was firing people in the executive branch for “liking” postings by “leftwing” entertainers like Taylor Swift.
The process Trump started in Portland and Seattle in the summer of 2020 of unmarked vans and stormtrooper-like police with no identifying patches kidnapping people off the streets would have expanded nationwide; tens of thousands would be in custody without charges.
Private prisons would expand to take in the hundreds of thousands of people arrested protesting in the streets or speaking out on social media; for most Americans who voted Republican or were completely apolitical, though, life would go on as normal (just like in the early years of the takeovers of Chile, Russia, and Hungary — or Italy, Germany and Spain in the 1930s).
A handful of high-profile progressive politicians would have been assassinated or survived assassination attempts; the police and the FBI, however, would have been as clueless about their killers as they were about 10,000 people planning to storm the Capitol and assassinate the Vice President and Speaker of the House on January 6th.
The Democratic Party would have been labeled the aggressors and as subversives by rightwing media; its ranks by now would have melted away as quickly as the union-aligned parties did in Italy and Germany in the 1930s or the Allende Socialists in Chile in 1973.
First abortion would be criminalized, then birth control, then women in business and politics would find themselves under constant attack in the media and the workplace; white male dominance would by now be close to reattaining the status it had in 1972 when women couldn’t legally get an abortion, execute some contracts, or even get a credit card without the signature of a father or husband.
Newsrooms across the country would be purged by now of liberals and running editorials in support of the “new patriotism” proclaimed by the GOP; the hedge funds headed up by rightwing billionaires — who today own over half of all the nation’s newspapers — would be snapping up the rest of the nation’s media like Viktor Orbán’s oligarch buddies did in Hungary.
Every time these sorts of coups happen, the nation’s people are shocked and surprised. They had no idea how far things had gone. It even happened that way with the American Revolution and the Civil War.
Gradually, then suddenly.
Trump’s supporters are openly calling for the end of democracy, for book burnings, and for public executions of Democratic politicians. The leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives refuses to even reprimand Representative Paul Gosar for openly celebrating his fantasy murder of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
A multimillionaire former head of The Carlyle Group with no political experience, running on a platform of auditing the 2020 election and not much else, won the governorship of Virginia by spreading the naked, racist lie that Democrats in that state were indoctrinating white children to feel ashamed of the color of their skin; not a single elected Republican and only a rare few in the media called him out.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt faced the fascist “America First” movement within the GOP, he went to political war with them and the Supreme Court that backed them. “They hate me,” he thundered to cheers, “and I welcome their hatred!”
President Biden, a creature of deal-making and backroom back-slapping in the Senate, appears to think he can negotiate with these people who want to remake America in Pinochet’s image (with the same type of Chicago School neoliberal advisors who helped Pinochet turn Chile into an autocratic nightmare).
He’s wrong.
They are building their power and their organizations right now; armed paramilitary groups are expanding across the country as the GOP has become so radicalized that they now proclaim Liz Cheney as their enemy.
They are openly preparing for a second Civil War.
Reuters did a major and shocking report on how police forces, presumably sympathetic to local neofascist elements, refuse to even investigate death threats against elections officials and Democratic politicians.
In Michigan, a militia group nearly kidnapped and killed that state’s governor; they were stopped by an insider who turned states’ evidence.
Meanwhile, all across social media, the word is spreading: “The storm is upon us.”
Gradually, then suddenly.
Wow, you really drank some strong Koolaid.
I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't witness Jan 6th. I wouldn't be worried if the right condemned Trump's attempted coup de stat. But not only are you guys not condemning him, you're eager to renominate him.
It must have been the guy with the horns that made all this clear to you. I can see how that would be disturbing.
It's the way Republicans want to pretend that Jan 6th was a big nothing burger that disturbs me. The sentiment is still there. Indeed, it seems to be growing. Trump is the likely nominee for 2024. That tells me that the Republican Party is ready to do away with democracy and install a strongman dictator who will jail and possibly torture political opponents.
Excellent statement. Bari Weiss should make it a substack post on its own.
"I have a masters degree (as does my husband). Our kids attend private school (non-woke). We go to a country club. We are in the top % of income, though unlike the media caricature, super yachts and months long Mediterranean vacations elude our financial means . . . talking heads want to believe I am the average Democrat voter."
Seriously? What talking head could possibly confuse you with a Democratic voter? Your profile screams "I'm Republican and proud of it." That is is not a knock or criticism, by the way, only that I would never have assumed you a Democrat.
As for "the Woke" demanding you treat people according to their race . . . c'mon. The right wing is just as guilty of demanding that anyone other than white male Christians had any rights worth respecting. Both approaches are disastrous for a free and prosperous America, but you blame only the Woke for every ill in the body politic,
It wasn't the Woke who beat Emmitt Till into a pulp and drowned him in a river for looking at a white woman--it was the racist Southern Right. It wasn't a Woke jury that knew his killers were guilty and let them off anyway with a Coke and a smile. It was the racist right.
This statement of yours, however, is absolute gold and the real driver of many of the problems this country faces today: "Oligarchies, unchecked corporate consolidation, and unchecked megacorp CEO power, only made possible by corporate board reform that now allows CEOs to appoint cronies, and ridiculous proxy rules which give these unaccountable CEO's total control over companies they often didn't build, and, more importantly, complete control over the corporation's wealth which they don't personally own." Kudos for this kind for clarity.
Emmitt Till? Seriously? You expose Yourself, I'm afraid, as a talking trope.
I was gonna list all the institutions that the Woke OWNS. I'll say their in the process of owning the KIDS in K - 12, with CRT.
And Ya wanna know something, for a FACT? The Woke are ALL Dems, right?
You have the wings mixed up!
Woodrow Wilson was our most racist President since the Civil War and he was our most left-wing President. FDR comes in as a close second to Wilson and he was on the far left, too.
U.S. Grant and Warren Harding were our least racist Presidents since the Civil War and were among the most right-wing Presidents.
Actually it was the woke of the time - southern Democrats - who beat Emmitt Till. The SOUTHERN LEFT. Who do you think was in the KKK? Are you even aware WHY the Republican party was founded? Democrats have been loyal racist for 2 centuries.
I'm not entirely sure what something that happened decades before I was born has to do with this.....
No, I don't blame the "woke" for all of societies problems. I blame George W for the insane police state our federal government has turned into. I blame both parties for allowing the consolidation that has robbed the country of the business and economic climate that allows good ideas and hard work to innovate and drive value.
I blame the woke for the massive regression we are currently seeing. I blame the woke for allowing their phobic fear of Covid and anti-science authoritarianism to destroy the futures for million of US children. I blame the woke for reviving nearly dead racism. I blame the woke for reviving awful, lethal, deadly ideologies like socialism and communism. I blame the woke for dumbing down everything. The religion of the woke is a huge issue, but by no means are the "woke" responsible for all of societies woes.
The woke didn't create a corrupt and threatening FBI. The woke didn't even notice corporate consolidation (though they like it now because its a very authoritarian ideology). The woke didn't cause geopolitical instability - though they did halt growth in favor of social experiments in poor countries. I don't blame the woke for everything - but I do blame them for placing love of their ideology over actual outcomes. Blaming any group for all of societies ills is a dangerous road to go down - do you think the woke might suffer from that affliction?
"Actually it was the woke of the time - southern Democrats - who beat Emmitt Till. The SOUTHERN LEFT. Who do you think was in the KKK? Are you even aware WHY the Republican party was founded? Democrats have been loyal racist for 2 centuries."
Wrong. Till was murdered by Southern racists, who were right-wing and not remotely Woke. They were Democrats because the parties had not yet switched philosophies. The left had nothing to do with Till's death and the violence of the civil rights era; that was all from the right. I deliberately used right and left and not Democrats and Republicans, because at the time, Democrats were the illiberal right and Republicans were the liberal left.
The Klan was a creation of racist right-wingers who were Democrats. Today's version of the Klan--the Proud Boys and other modern race-haters--the the same racist right-wingers who now belong to the Republican Party. Same dipshits, different party labels.
Yeah, I know why the Republican Party was founded, and that its members were the liberals of that era. Did you know they switched sides during the civil rights era, with Democrats becoming the party of liberals and Republicans the party of rightists and racists?
It's not only the Woke that embrace authoritarianism. Donald Trump does. So do the Trumpists trying to get elected through his brand of baloney. As for "socialism and communism," please. Those are buzzwords, and have been since the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Back in the Sixties, movie theater owners put out flyers urging patrons to "fight the socialism of cable television, contact your lawmakers now!!": This country is not socialist and nobody is trying to make it so---unless you consider fixing our roads, bridges, and infrastructure some kind of "socialism."
Finally, "I do blame [the Woke] for placing love of their ideology over actual outcomes." You know who else does that? Today's GOP.
"Today's version of the Klan--the Proud Boys and other modern race-haters-"
Correction: you obviously meant to say "Today's version of the Klan--the Antifa and BLM members and other modern race-haters-"
I know how to say what I mean, and I did. You want to call BLM and antifa the Klan, go ahead, but do it under your own name.
In what way? What are these terrible policy outcomes from Trump? What are these terribly policy proposals from the Republicans?
The whole “the parties switched” is nothing but a woke urban legend. Just look at Democrats today - just as obsessed with race as they were 200 years ago. Just as anti-woman as they were 100 years ago.
And yes, they WERE the woke of the day who killed Emitt Till - racist, entitled, know-nothing brats who control the narrative but have no brain
For someone who claims to care about Christ, you sure are accepting of that abomination of a human being and the liars who enable him. And the “the parties switched” may be relevant in the exchange on Emmitt Till, but it sure as hell wasn't in mine.
But that's what these sites are all about -- a sounding board to bitch and moan and ignore anything that doesn't compute with your formula.
Like I said, you're far more courteous than most, but grace alone doesn't it done.
NCmom's on fire today....
"This fallacy about "class" and political ideology is getting really old" -- what a great opening line! You're clearly an intelligent person and I'm counting on that in how you think through my reply.
The woke movement is utterly ridiculous and colossally counterproductive. "Black Lives Matter" with first black POTUS sitting in the White House -- ranks with the dumbest moves in all of human history.
I also appreciate your views about Bush & Co and some other things you wrote. But "passionately supporting Republicans" to combat wokeness has no chance (though I'm not suggesting you support Democrats or any other party). My interest has nothing to do with which party you support, but rather the manner in which you do it.
"Those writing these analysis will continue to be completely confused as long as they continue to buy their own narrative over reality."
The whole country is consumed with buying their own narrative over reality -- woke is just one faction of that folly.
As M. Scott Peck perfectly put it: "[We] must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it." As smart as you are, you surely understand that there's a reciprocal relationship between the Left and the Right. In that sense, Newton's 3rd Law is at the core of our country's ills.
However weak and pathetic the Left is -- they partly got that way because don't know how to win against people who don't play by any rules. I'm not excusing it, I'm simply stating reality -- and it works both ways (as Newton's law goes).
The Right has put on a masterclass of complaining for 30 years -- but because the Left institutionalizes weakness, the Right gets off scot-free for being the crybabies that they are. I didn't write Mentality of a Mob from my imagination:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/mentality-of-a-mob/
And yes, a lot of it applies to the Left as well -- but Mentality of a Mob is how I'm invariably treated on an issue that's as demonstrably provable as it gets.
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together -- as they should.
But however absurd those matters may to be today — those emotions are deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace . . .
Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . .
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube: The manipulation of which f$@*#% up the future of the entire world.
What’s wrong with that picture — and this one? (5-minute excerpt from my documentary that deals with the Right being in lockstep on Iraq WMD -- and the Left doing the same on Trayvon):
https://youtu.be/X9Si5T2EmZA
And a 3-minute excerpt that deals with the Trayvon element: https://youtu.be/p4hMfZfN8WA
If you're gonna preach responsibility, you better have a record for it. You don't need credibility to convince people to do the wrong thing -- but you damn well do for the right thing.
The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly.
We can talk about race and responsibility till the end of time — but heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
With your fair-minded assessment of the "warmongers" you mentioned -- where is your detailed analysis on that? Maybe you have it -- and I've love to read it. I would add that in some ways Democrats are even more responsible for the Iraq War, as they knew it was a lie and went along anyway (as Democrats do) . . .
Standard operating procedure for the Democratic Party:
"Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything — they fear looking weak. To avoid this, they cave, surrender, capitulate — and stand for nothing." — Glenn Greenwald
With every single effort to combat wokeness, it's gotten worse. When something isn't working, it's time to change the approach -- I'm old-fashioned that way.
Believe it or not, the best way to serve your interests is to first and foremost — hold your own accountable. If you wanna make the opposition look bad, try looking good. If you wanna have the moral high ground, try earning it:
"The moral high ground, in ethical or political parlance, refers to the status of being respected for remaining moral, and adhering to and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness."
Thanks for your time:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/03/without-passion-or-prejudice/
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/16/mariana-trench-of-mendacity/
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/10/24/thomas-sowell-to-team-of-rivals/
You lost ALL credibility with this view:
"The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly."
There is lots of other blatantly wrong stuff as well but this one is demonstrably false. For example:
"Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . ."
Those were Democrats on the left, I don't buy into the mythical "party switch" hypothesis.
Stirring defense. Good day.
"The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly." ---
This statement is bad faith and not based on history or facts.
Both Democrats and Republicans went batshit crazy after 9/11 with both setting the world ablaze.
That the Democratic Party is weak and went along on Iraq does not constitute "batshit crazy" -- it's just spineless.
"This statement is bad faith and not based on history or facts."
Jesus, how you can insult your intelligence so spectacularly and be satisfied by it? You have a brain -- just STFU for 5 minutes and use it for a change. You'd be amazed by what you'd see.
I don't give a damn about you -- I care that I live in a country where untold millions mindlessly issue the same kind of crap on a daily basis.
"There is no curiosity in them. There are no questions in their minds. There are no “what ifs?' or 'maybes'”
Your behavior is an embarrassment to the entire history of human achievement:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/07/31/impossibly-stupid/
“That the Democratic Party is weak and went along on Iraq does not constitute "batshit crazy" -- it's just spineless.”
As I said, you argue in bad faith.
When you decide to act your age, lemme know. Otherwise, seek playtime elsewhere.
Democrats have been the party of racism for 2 centuries. I agree with you there!!!!
Democrats have also always been the party of big government and intervention.
The “switch” was more human migration than any ideological switch.
Perhaps you could enlighten Steven N. on the premise of an argument works.
The framing of "Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . ." is entirely about how that history is riddled with deeply rooted emotions tied to today's problems.
I'm not excusing it or asserting who bears the most responsibility for how it happened. The argument is that the Right wants the Left to listen (as they should) -- but on this matter of how the Right won't even look at the material properties of a tube: That issue is as demonstrably provable as it gets (no baggage -- just pure science in an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter).
And to do this day -- all they do is mock and belittle anyone who challenges them on their baseless beliefs. And lo and behold -- in doing so they helped create the very culture they rail against.
I wrote and produced the most exhaustive documentary ever done on Iraq WMD -- and yet I get nothing but contempt from people who claim to care about facts. And of all those in that crowd that I’ve challenged on WMD — their knowledge combined could fit into a thimble with space to spare.
https://youtu.be/X9Si5T2EmZA
"demonstrably false, Steven N -- you can't even grasp the premise of an argument, and you're gonna sit there and tell me about what's "blatantly wrong"?
"Those were Democrats on the left, I don't buy into the mythical 'party switch' hypothesis."
Steven N: That has nothing to do with ANYTHING I wrote, and yet you sling your snippets of certitude to satisfy yourself so easily -- and never learn, never change your mind, and not even show an atom of the same courtesy that NCmom did.
First, I can see how Steven read the comment to imply those were sins of the right when, in fact, they were sins of the left. And I do agree with his assertion about the party switch (that may have been more of a temporary George W switch). That said, you, I think, were just pointing out they were sins of an immoral mob as opposed to laying blame at the feet of a particular ideology. ??
What baseless beliefs though? Christianity? I could be totally wrong here, but that seems to be an issue for some. I am not particularly religious, but I am around a lot of very religious people these days, and I have discovered some assumptions I made in the past that were wrong.
No Christians believe God is a magician n the sky granting prayers and casting curses (ok, well, none I've ever met, and my kids go to a very large academically rigorous conservative Christian school). While I don't agree with New World theory, those that do help me to remember that Old World theory is still evolving and has lots of holes. Its also just a theory.
Less than any literal interpretation, the Bible, for me, is a guide for how to live a caring, fulfilling, and contributing life. When you hear a Christian say "you can't change your gender, its how God made you," understand that what they are saying is "mammals are born whatever gender/ sex they are. Its the natural way of things. Nature is more powerful than mere human, and recognizing what humans cannot control is necessary for their ability to thrive. No amount of drugs and hormones will change being born either with or without a Y gene. Seeking truth is important to our existence, and promoting the falsehood that we can change our bodies into a different sex is lying, and we should not lie." There is a love of the natural world and the greater force we call God - which is why "God made everyone in his image, exactly as they supposed to be." There is an acceptance that things which happen in nature may seem very cruel, but that's OK, because our job is not to judge but to love and to accept that we are mere flawed, mortal, humans that are a small piece of a much biggest existence.
I am a science nut and increasingly I appreciate my recently growing Christian faith. It humbles me and opens my mind to the reality of all we do not know, and that I do not know. It drives me to seek truth. It creates space for me to open my mind and my heart. It steadies my moral compass. It allows me to accept when our scientific understanding of this world changes with enthusiasm. It encourages me to seek ways to better test our assumptions, to question, to learn.
Its why I smiled when I read an article yesterday that Australian scientists now believe the continents are a full 750million years older than we thought, well, last year. In the late 1800s we "knew" the world was 400,000 years old. By the 1920's we "knew" it was 4million to 400 million. Last year we "knew" it was 4.54 billion years old and continents 2.5 billion years old. Today that "knowledge" is different.
As a kid volcanos killed the dinosaurs. As an adult it was a meteor. Now they've found small raptor skeletons above the sediment layer from the meteor. It's exciting to know there is so much truth yet to be discovered, and so much we think we knw which we do not.
So I will say this, take or leave faith, but for me, it allows me to pursue my love of science unhindered by the misconception that we really know all that much, and unable to avoid the power of identifying replication in nature (like the fact that every mammal ever born was conceived and carried inside the body of a female - thank you Dave Chapelle). It also allows me to see things like homosexuality as always being present in human society (and some apes too), while being "transgender" is largely a fad, particularly as it relates to natal females. That is how I can say (and the actual reaction from most Republicans/ conservatives/ Christians) that I see no issue with government gay marriage. It is by the same standard I can say that mutilating the genitals of children, or sexualizing young children, is evil - the outcome has always been so no matter the justification of the time. My faith helps guide me because I know far too much about the world from a scientific perspective to be foolish enough to think we have it all figured out, much less that we can control the universe.
As for the whole resurrection thing, well, I am far more inclined to have some faith that a single man rose from the dead a couple thousand years ago than to believe any male can become a "real" woman via really strong feelings, or that we should divide humans into non-biologically distinguishable "races," or that there is no "harm" in sexualizing elementary school children. My faith calls on me to acknowledge the possibility of a single outlier. The religion of the woke calls on its followers to completely reject science, reject replication, and reject actual outcomes. I should thank the woke for helping to revive my faith in Christianity.
I'm VERY surprised there was only one heart until now. (My Way of compliment. (Don't AGREE 100%, but DISagree 0%. ;)
If I received a reply that reads, "While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube: The manipulation of which f$@*#% up the future of the entire world."
My first thought would be, "What tubes are you talking about?" To flagrantly ignore the comment about the tube is preposterous -- and a gross breach in the fundamentals of reading comprehension (not to mention courtesy).
"Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on" -- is nothing more than setting up a discussion about human behavior and hypocrisy.
However absurd the issues of race relations are today, they are wrapped up in hundreds of years of history -- which means emotion that's baked in and beaten to death by the Democratic Party.
If you're on the Right and asking the Left to listen and learn -- you damn well better be willing to the same.
But the Right doesn't listen and doesn't learn. And on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, it all boils down the material properties of a tube.
And they won't even listen to THAT -- no hundreds of years of history to muddy the waters, just pure political hackery to get what they want at all costs.
And then they have the bottomless nerve to assail others for refusing to listen.
"PREACH RESPONSIBILITY AND TAKE NONE" . . .
Republicans should put that on a bumper sticker for some truth in advertising for a change.
And incredibly, someone's gonna spout off about "well what about the Democrats?" -- as if I were defending them (never mind I've suggested no such thing).
But that's what the "whataboutism" program is all about. Why bother taking responsibility for your own behavior when you can ridicule others for doing the same?
*********************************
Probably the most powerful of these group cohesive forces is narcissism. In its simplest and most benign form, this is manifested in group pride. As the members feel proud of their group, so the group feels proud of itself. A less benign but practically universal form of group narcissism is what might be called “enemy creation,” or hatred of the “out-group.”
We can see this naturally occurring in children as they first learn to develop groups. It is almost common knowledge that the best way to cement group cohesiveness is to ferment the group’s hatred of an external enemy. Deficiencies within the group can be easily and painlessly overlooked by focusing attention on the deficiencies or sins of the out-group.
-- M. Scott Peck
*********************************
"First, I can see how Steven read the comment to imply those were sins of the right when, in fact, they were sins of the left."
I implied nothing of the kind -- and the very fact that "While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. . . " was the very next sentence, makes that abundantly clear.
And therein the issue -- as people seize on any statement that serves them and avoid anything that doesn't. Just as I wrote on the Mentality of a Mob: "Rather than read and digest, people scan and dismiss — frantically seeking any fragment they can frame in their favor."
I know a little something about psychology, Ms. NCmom. No objective observer would bypass the tubes comment to make this massive leap that is utterly irrelevant to anything I wrote about.
You only saw the "implication" because you already agreed with him and wanted to talk about that issue (along with the rest of the irrelevant issues you raised). I'm not making commentary one way or the other on those issues at this time -- I'm simply saying that they're not germane to the case I'm making.
I'm not saying we can't talk about those things along the way -- all I'm saying is that there's more to courtesy than showing grace in your willingness to read some links.
If I were in your shoes and someone asked me to enlighten another about the premise of making an argument, I would read the following and think, "Okay, that's what this guy is driving at -- and it sounds like a pretty big deal."
"While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube: The manipulation of which f$@*#% up the future of the entire world."
Sounds like something a reader would take into account, don't ya think?
Responding on point will do far more to serve your interests than anything else.
****************
"That issue is as demonstrably provable as it gets (no baggage -- just pure science in an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter).
And to do this day -- all they do is mock and belittle anyone who challenges them on their baseless beliefs."
****************
How did you go from baseless beliefs about "fractions of a millimeter matter" to your faith and dinosaurs?
I'll tell you how -- because you wanted to. You're far more gracious and well-mannered than what I'm used to, but I have a very specific purpose in what I'm making the case for here, and instead of considering that -- you made all kinds of assumptions and defended things that I may or may not agree with.
Gracious or not -- that kind of "debate" has been killing this country for decades. Given your views on Iraq -- you should be keenly of that. Granted, you offered to read my links and that's wonderful. But in the meantime, instead of thinking about what I was saying in that follow-up about Steven, and using your intelligence to understand exactly what I'm talking (or asking questions until you do):
You just fed him what he wanted to hear -- and he didn't learn, and neither did you.
I was hoping (and still am) -- that you and I could demonstrate how genuine discussion actually works (where you don't just respond with whatever you wanna say, you take information into account in the exchange).
And we go back and forth in hashing out the truth.
I don't think of you as being in the Mentality of a Mob -- but Steven's behavior is (and all you did was reinforce his beliefs on something utterly meaningless that has no bearing on anything I wrote.
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/mentality-of-a-mob/
Land of the Free and Home of the Brave:
-- Rather than read and digest, people scan and dismiss — frantically seeking any fragment they can frame in their favor.
-- Sensible arguments are snubbed with meaningless replies that are utterly absent of original thought — mercilessly torturing reason with trite talking points.
-- Even against overwhelming evidence served on a silver platter, they will swat it away in disdain without so much as glancing at the goods.
-- Any sound bite that can be manipulated to their liking will be repeated in endless cycles of certitude.
-- Always at the ready — they’ll gleefully “inform” you with 60 seconds of “research” — compiled by copying & pasting material disseminated by the equally uninformed.
-- They’ll look away from a mountain of evidence against their side — while nitpicking over pebbles to pounce on the other.
-- Their civility is a charade in their immovable contempt for correction — playing childish games that fit a formula designed to infuriate you (at which point they’ll pull the innocence card and haughtily condemn your tone).
-- They want a presence without having to exert any effort to legitimately participate
-- They peddle their opinions while shirking any responsibility to validate them
-- They launch volleys of vitriol as fireworks for freedom
-- They see themselves as conveyors of truth while dripping in duplicity
-- They want respect without having to earn it
-- Their hypocrisy knows no bounds
-- You can “agree can disagree” about subject matter you know absolutely nothing about
-- You can have a “line of thinking” — without doing any thinking (“I’M OK, YOU’RE OK”)
-- You can act like a child and want respect as an adult
-- You can be hailed as a hero for “following the facts” — never mind that the trail always seems to lead in the direction you desire
-- You can cite the word of the opposition as gospel — then get right back to assailing them as the liars you love to hate
-- “All opinions are equal” — whenever it’s your baseless beliefs on the line
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/07/02/two-sides-of-the-same-counterfeit-coin-part-12-a/
It will take me sometime to actually go through all your links. I can give a few responses here:
1 - There is nothing small government or states rights oriented about war mongers. Trump oversaw the most peaceful time in my living memory (I’m under 40). Abraham Accords? He might be arrogant and annoying, but he was absolutely a proponent of peace, individual liberty, and limited government. I vote in R primaries now to help ensure war mongers don’t get on the ballot. I’ve never had a problem calling anyone out over anything, snd I expect it from others. There is no exception for politicians in my general approach to life that truth matters even if it’s uncomfortable.
2 - The far right is not actually a threat here. Yes, in a country of 330million there are some lunatics. But as far as actual candidates in my district, city, state, congress, or senate they just don’t exist. While I do love Newton, we aren’t talking about the physical world here. Numerous studies and any objective observation shows that the right has NOT moved to the extremes of their ideology while the left HAS.
3 - I strongly opposed the Iraq war at the time. As a college freshman I wrote a paper that I didn’t want Bush to win because he’d find an excuse to go to war in Iraq (obviously I didn’t foresee 9/11 - which I still think had nothing to do with Iraq). Conservative values are the opposite of war mongering neocons who spend money like it grows on trees and empowers a federal police state to spy and attack citizens.
4 - Political party is not part of my personal identity. I’m registered as an independent. I pay attention to non-mainstream proposals. I voted Trump in 2020, but Johnson in 2016. My motivation to vote Republican is because the authoritarian left has gone so far off the rails - decades in the making - it’s going to take time to bring back merit, individual responsibility, individual freedom, and a commitment to limited government to correct the far left lurch of the US. I tried doing that within the Democrat party - they refused to hear. Republicans and conservatives will at least listen and try to learn. Democrats have no interest in correcting themselves. Republicans have taken on the fight for these universal values of truth, justice, and liberty - and I am in it for more than an election or 2 to make sure they win.
5 - I do believe the high moral ground must be earned, and I see conservatives as earning it. There is nothing moral about the regressive, bigoted, harmful policies of Democrats. Their policies don’t work and their aim to tribalism the country are regressive and destructive. Their outright hatred of children is so in opposition to the natural order of life it’s completely unsustainable - the Democrats are the barbarians at the gates of Rome, but the siege can play out differently each time, and I refuse to do nothing and simply watch society - and my kids future - fall to a new dark ages.
I’ll read your links.
"It will take me sometime to actually go through all your links" -- a society willing to show such courtesy, would be one of limitless potential.
I very much appreciate your thoughtful reply and look forward to when I can respond in more depth. I gotta get going for now, but as a courtesy I wanted to send a short reply to express my appreciation.
"As a college freshman I wrote a paper that I didn’t want Bush to win because he’d find an excuse to go to war in Iraq."
That's fascinating and I'd love to read it!
Thanks again!
A great list 👏👏.
A lot to digest… well written! My opinion.. can make current state of the USA as complicated as we want. Bottom line a country without a firm foundation that most citizens stand for is doomed to fail… Most of the power brokers (deserved and undeserved) look inward for their inspiration… power and money. The human condition hasn’t really changed in all of human history. Doesn’t matter progressive or conservative… history is doomed to repeat… Unfortunately technology and the internet giving a stage to the undeserving and the idiots among us just blindly follow. Day of reckoning is upon us in America…
Russiagate? I take that to mean that there was no reason to investigate Trump and his sycophants' connections to Russia.
Maybe you missed the news that the IG of the DOJ found that the FBI's investigation was "properly predicated".
Maybe you missed the news that the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm did a three-year investigation into Trump and Russia and issued a very revealing 400-page report on the issue. Are you claiming they had no reason to do that?
Also, maybe you forgot that all of Trump's people lied to investigators about their ties to Russia, and Trump tried about seven different ways to obstruct the investigation. Why would innocent people do that?
Anyone who claims the Russia investigation was "all lies", only reveals themselves to be a brainwashed right-wing moron.
President Trump is considered the third toughest President on Russia and the Soviet Union, behind only Truman and Reagan (though Harding deserves a place on the list, too!).
May I ask what Trump did to Russia that would be considered "tough"? He openly stated how much he admired Putin. Where was the tough part?
Here are a few:
Restored providing defensive weapons to Poland, started by Bush but cancelled by Obama
Called for Germany to refuse the Nordstrom natural gas pipeline from Russia.
Agreed to provide natural gas (LNG by ship) to Poland and the Czech Republic if their supply from Russia is cut off after the pipeline is built.
Entered agreements with Finland and with Norway for joint surveillance of the Arctic region for Russian military activities.
President Trump learned through his decades-long executive education to be friendly in public, but act tough on enemies. Theodore Roosevelt had a policy like that "Speak softly and carry a big stick".
Thanks for this, Rfhirsch. I wasn't trolling, I was actually interested in the answers.
Maintaining belief in the Russia conspiracy is the equivalent of being a flat-earther.
I made no comment on the "Russia conspiracy" -- I simply explained that a myth you cited as true is actually false. It's an honest mistake. Being dead certain that there's nothing to see in "Russia conspiracy" -- is not.
And if you truly understood what I was saying -- you'd know that point is that ulterior motives and dishonesty is how misguided beliefs get established.
Or as Dalrymple put it: “opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion.”
Before you "Like" something -- make sure you understand it.
The "flat Earth" is a myth popularized by Washington Irving and others. According to The Flat Earth Myth: The real myth is the idea that anyone ever believed in a flat earth:
***************************
Essentially no one during the Middle Ages believed the world was flat. Of the many myths about the Middle Ages this one is perhaps the most widespread, and yet at the same time the most roundly and authoritatively debunked.
In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that refuting this myth is like refuting the idea that the moon is made of cheese.
***************************
So how could it be that Columbus set sail against contemporaries who believed the earth was flat — an idea that’s still in some textbooks today?
Woods explains this by quoting the good book above:
***************************
Uncritical acceptance of the myth was too tempting for many scholars, since it fit in so well with the caricature of Christianity they were already inclined to draw. “If Christians had for centuries insisted that the earth was flat against clear and available evidence,” explains Russell, “they must be not only enemies of scientific truth, but contemptible and pitiful enemies.”
***************************
Ulterior motives at work once again.
You don’t like it when people pull that stunt on you — but you have no qualms about doing the same to them.
And around and around we go:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/06/24/two-sides-of-the-same-counterfeit-coin-part-10/
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm's report on the issue?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Let me repeat from the report
"...Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Trump and his associates participated in and enabled Russia's assault on the integrity of the 2016 election.
Participated in and enabled!
You certainly are dramatically increasing Wikipedia's traffic!
Matt, again, you copied this DIRECTLY, WORD FOR WORD, from Wikipedia - then you posted it over and over and over to get called our on your simple minded plagiarism as you offer evidence of just how dumb the woke are. Copying from Wikipedia????? My 10 year old is prohibited from using it as a source in 5th grade by her school its so blatantly bad.
Again Matt, stop just regurgitating.
Here is where you plagiarized the comment you posted over and over and over. Staring with the 4th paragraph. Do you not see just how foolish you are acting? wow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election
You're just avoiding confronting what I said. You are avoiding confronting the fact that you are wrong about the Russia investigation. It was not a lie. It was not a hoax. You think it was because you get your news from shit sources. That's the issue. Stop trying to distract from it.
No I’m not. YOU haven’t read any source documents. You are an ignorant fool that hasn’t a clue what your talking about. Until you actually go read the documents, and follow up investigations, there is no point in discussing it.
You’re ignorant in the subject (evident by the copy a paste).
Stop convincing yourself your informed when it’s evident you are far too simple and lazy to inform yourself.
Go regurgitate some more little boy.
The quote I provided was from the source document. (page 948)
Prove that the quote from the investigation is wrong. If you want to pretend it's not true. Fine. I couldn't care less. Live in your pathetic fantasy world of right-wing spin.
"A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."
Even without any evidence at all -- and knowing nothing about the issue, anyone with an atom of objectivity would know that Trump's behavior alone indicates he's hiding something.
Republican or Democrat, I call a spade a spade -- and I know a liar when I see one. I don't need a report to tell me what I can see right in front of me with my own eyes:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/03/without-passion-or-prejudice/
Exactly. And Trump is still trying to hide the truth about Jan 6th. Amazing that so many people can't see what he really is.
I'll go one further than that -- what I find most disturbing is how clear it was all along.
Virtually all politicians are frauds by definition, but it was so blatant with Trump -- a history just riddled with fraud and unscrupulous deceit.
And I just love this bit about "he's not a politician, he's a businessman."
Okay -- why don't you act like one then?
Wouldn't a businessman carry himself with some degree of professionalism? Forget "presidential" if ya like -- just gimme some professionalism of some form.
And whatever you think of the wall, wouldn't a "businessman" provide a proposal for his plans?
But as awful as I thought he was, even I didn't realize what an abomination of a human being he would become.
Do you know the real reason he acted like that throughout his term?
My theory: Boredom.
Trump never wanted the job and still doesn't -- he just wants the adulation and power.
The idea that this guy gives a shit about the country is as laughable as it gets. Nobody who wanted to do that job would spend half the day on Twitter and TV -- starting his day as 11:00, no less.
Despite how I saw him from the get-go, I gave him a chance. But when family members told me of his work ethic and all -- I told them that whatever work ethic and attention to detail that he had in business, would not translate to government.
Trump loved his life in business -- which shows just how desperate and pathetic this POS is:
That he would run again for a job he never wanted -- just to save face.
Nobody beats what "someone else" had to say on the same subject . . .
***************************
The thing that is most disturbing to me, in a sea of disturbing things — is that there is no opportunity in all of humanity, to observe the world we live in, and to see all the scope of life in the world, like being President of the United States. You sit there, and for 4 years, or for 8 years — the crème de la crème of society is presented to you.
“Here’s the bravest man and woman in the military. Here’s the smart scientists. Here’s the most dedicated children in their learning.”
You get to see the ugliest . . . what are terrorists doing in torture camps. You see the world from a vista that only a man, or one day a woman, can have that outlook. And I thought to myself: “Surely, when he won . . . he would change as a result of that.”
Every day, you’re having meetings and talking to serious people. And then you come into the Oval Office to “Here’s the winners of the Spelling Bee of San Diego.” . . .
And you meet these people, and life just comes washing over you. Your heart and your mind open up. What a learning experience — how much you learn about the world.
And I thought, “It’s gonna change him.” . . .
He didn’t change one f#%@g gram.
***************************
Yes. I did. I'll do it again when it's easy and convenmient. I was responding to different people. I chose the simplest fastest way of responding because I am responding to so many people. What you are doing is called "deflecting". You're doing that because you don't want to respond to the salient point.
Wikipedia quoted from the actual report.
Face it, your assertion that "Russiagate" is some kind of lie or hoax is wrong. I wonder if your 10-year-old knows that.
LOL!!! My 10 year old knows not to plagiarize, how to form her own thoughts and opinions, she's read over 625 actual books (about 600 more than you).
You stole the comment from Wikipedia - not just the quote.
You aren't "responding" to anyone. You are regurgitating via plagiarizing one of the least reliable sources online.
You didn't just get the quote they chose from the report, you stole their damn write up because you lack the capacity to formulate your own thoughts and responses.
Here's a hint - if you can't respond yourself, then don't respond at all.
GIGO. When the Democrats fabricate the evidence and plant it to the FBI and media.
GIGO.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm's report on the issue?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era.
GIGO. Garbage intelligence in. Garbage report out.
You're kidding, right Matt?
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm's report on the issue?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era.
Again with the comment you plagerized directly from Wikipedia? Maybe you should try actually reading what you referenced and checking more recently documentation before you continue making such an uniformed lazy fool of yourself Matt the flat-Earther
More projecting Matt. Some of us actually read the Mueller report and the Durham indictments. Apparently they are above your level of reading comprehension. That’s fine, but you’re still factually wrong and uninformed. You really should try to project less though - it’s a good first step.
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Committee's report?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
I hope that's not too far above your level of reading comprehension.
Awe look, you can copy and paste from something your masters at Wikipedia. No wonder you love Brandon - you both plagiarize because you're incapable of coherent thoughts (though really, Matt, copying Wikipedia word for word is like what 7th graders at woke public schools do). I have pasted the link below for all to enjoy (4th and 5th paragraphs DIRECTLY, WORD FOR WORD, from Wikipedia). Thank you SO much for the laughs. You continue to make a complete fool of yourself proving that woke people have no brain or original thoughts.
Since actually reading the report is above your capabilities, its really a waste of my time to get into the details
For those following Matt's super original and genius insights - it took about 5 seconds (copy and paste from his comment) to show what everyone has noticed - he is simply regurgitating from some left wing hack source, and I am copying Matt's post below least he try to delete it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election
Matt's comment:
Matt Mullen5 min ago
Did you read the Republican-led Senate Intel Committee's report?
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
I hope that's not too far above your level of reading comprehension."
Matt, I think you will soon understand the error of your beliefs on Russiagate. You really got this one wrong. Are you saying that after the longest, most expensive investigation in US history without a single indictment that alleges a connection between the Trump campaign and Trump, that this apparently wild conspiracy theory is true? Of all the Mueller indictments, not one charged a conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. (Wasn't that what Russiagate was all about?)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/25/muellers-russia-report-special-counsel-indictments-charges/3266050002/
Indeed, there was NO reason to investigate Trump's alleged connections to Russia from the get-go because as we know now, there was no evidence of such. It all started with the Steele dossier which was *entirely fabricated*. Yes, made up! And it appears at this point made up at the behest of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Perhaps your new sources haven't let you in on Durham's investigation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/steele-dossier-arrest-danchenko-trump-durham/2021/11/04/7e76b9ae-3d77-11ec-8ee9-4f14a26749d1_story.html
https://mate.substack.com/p/russiagate-has-no-rock-bottom
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1456607244846575617
Maybe you should read the conclusions of the Republican-led Senate Intel Comm report.
Like the Mueller report that preceded it, the report does not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does go further than the Mueller report in detailing the ties found between Trump campaign members and Russian individuals. Most importantly, it specifically says (on p. 948) that Trump and his associates participated in and enabled the Russian assault on the U.S. electoral process:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Matt - did you notice in my comment above where it took me 5 seconds to find the "source" you plagiarized WORD FOR WORD?
You keep posting this PLAGERIZED comment over and over and over. From Wikipedia - the founder of Wikipedia even rejects it. My 5th grader is prohibited from citing Wikipedia (she's only 10) because the school recognizes its not a reliable or trustworthy source.
And here you are, plagiarizing Wikipedia and posting the comment over and over. Yes, you are proof the woke are morons.
From my comment above in response to well, this exact comment form you:
For those following Matt's super original and genius insights - it took about 5 seconds (copy and paste from his comment) to show what everyone has noticed - he is simply regurgitating from some left wing hack source
And that source you plagiarized beginning with paragraph 4 is.......... right here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election
Plagerized? Don't be a silly drama queen. Of course, I copy and pasted from Wikipedia. So what? That's some serious moral violation in your pathetic mind?
Is the quote true or not? That's the salient point.
Repeat after me: Trump and his people participated in and enabled the Russians' effort to undermine the integrity of our elections.
And you don't care.
You claiming to have read something you clearly didn't, then copying and pasting from Wikipedia WITHOUT ACKKNOWLEDGING YOU DID THAT is not only an ethical violation, its a sign of stupidity.
Repeat after me: Matt will only ever pass 6th grade if he learns to do his own work
when you COPY AND PASTE without acknowledging the source its evident you have NO CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT
Is it true? No, the coordination has been proved to be associated with the Clinton campaign, and Wikipedia isn't a current or reliable source. John Solomon, Glen Greenwald - I trust the accuracy of their reporting on this subject much more. Even Matt Taibbi.
But you wouldn't have a clue about any of it because all yo can do is copy and paste from Wikipedia.
Grow up Matt, and grow a set. If your going to copy and paste, cite your source - the rest of us learned that about 3rd grade.
On the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, the Robb-Silberman Report found that there was no manipulation of Iraq WMD intel.
Do you know what the CIA's definition of "manipulation of intelligence" is? How something is defined and framed is critical -- don't ya think? And how many people swear by that report's conclusions without reading one word of the report?
The point is -- for people who are consumed with politics, you sure don't understand the Gutter Games of Government. I'm sure you know more about "Russiagate" than I do, and I have no desire to debate it. But what I do know better than you and all of America -- is that you're drawing conclusions from a world that wallows in lies and bullshit.
You're dead certain on subject matter that's mirky -- and people like that get that way because they made a habit out of it.
The last time I asked someone to tell me about a time where they pursued the truth when it wasn't in their interests -- he replied that it was "loaded question."
I wonder, what will your excuse be?
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/16/mariana-trench-of-mendacity/
You directed your comment to my post, which is confusing as my post more or less confirms what you are saying.
My point was that a report's conclusions and # of indictments does not necessarily mean anything in politics. I'm saying you're dead certain on matters far too murky to warrant such certainty.
By your standards -- O.J. didn't commit murder simply by virtue of being found "not guilty."
There were lots of connections: Manafort, Flynn are the two most obvious ones. They were talking to the Russians and coordinating with them, and then they lied about it to investigators. The Mueller report and the Senate Intel Committee reports are the ones that will inform historians.
The Steele report was not the impetus for the investigation. That's where you are wrong.
Flynn? Did you seriously just go there? You really need to ditch CNN, MSNBC and actually start READING the court cases. They are fascinating.
After reading these and looking at the reporting (based on anonymous source. AKA: Made-up), I realized how much the media straight-up and knowingly lies.
You are so very very wrong but I need to get on with my day and I think it's rude to hijack threads (which we have done here) so I will leave you to your beliefs. I myself will follow the evidence.
You know how long it took for liberals to make up their minds on Trayvon? I'm betting about as long as it took to make up yours on all-things-Trump.
About 10 seconds.
"I myself will follow the evidence" -- I don't believe you.
But if you can show me a record of consistently going after both parties -- I'll happily reconsider.
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/01/safety-dance-of-self-delusion/
correction "news sources"
So much confusion. So little time. It's evident to me that you are getting your information from very dubious sources. (It sounds like you listen to a lot of talk radio and get your "news" from social media.) Hence, you are very confused about what we on the left want and believe.
So tell us what you on the left "want and believe".... we are all ears.
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
This is, at heart, the basic DH0 response ("Name-calling"): Veiled, condescending name-calling, but name-calling all the same. NCmom, of soggy intelligence suffers from "confusion," isn't sharp enough to ignore "dubious" sources of information, classy enough to eschew "talk radio" or sophisticated enough to scorn social media news.
Matt, if you're going to hold your fellow American in such contempt, at least do it honestly. Show a little courage.
Exactly. Please back up your comment. When you attack a well-considered post such as NCMom's post with ad hominem smears, no one who can think clearly and critically is going to pay attention to you or your position. If you have a different point of view and you can express that cogently, then please do so!
He does not have a point of view he has talking points. If you visit other political comments sections you will see them regurgitated almost identically on the same day.
He regurgitates identical comments only a few lines apart on this post too. 😂🤣😂🤣
Matt is a good little Bolshevik isn't he?
Fine.
She claims the left embraces authoritarianism.
Oh please! Trump couldn't care less about democracy, and his supporters couldn't either. He plotted a coup de stat after he lost the last election, and you guys are aching to renominate the man. And if you've noticed recently conservatives around the country, especially on the state and local level, are trying to get books banned from libraries, and they want to ban schools from teaching LGBTQ and racial issues. That's what authoritarians do. They use the power of the government to regulate thought and speech. Thus one common trait among all authoritarians is their hatred of the free press. This was true for Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Trump, Kim Jong Un, Castro, Viktor Orban... the list goes on.
I'm sure you meant "Obama and Biden" in your comment. President Trump cared a lot about democracy and freedom. It was his priority. He strongly supported free, democratic countries around the world with his actions and words. He strongly opposed the worst authoritarian countries around the world with his actions and words.
And the book banners are Democrats, after all. Your items are trivial compared to the real, endless book bans by democrats.
He said he admires Putin and he fell in love with Kim Jong Un, and he attacked the leaders of European democracies, and he tried to stage a coup de stat here in the US after he lost the election. Those are not the actions of someone who promotes democracy.
Where did you read that Democrats are banning books?
Here's where I read about conservatives banning books:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/10/i-think-we-should-throw-those-books-fire-movement-builds-right-target-books/
This is simply nonsense on every level
That's a very poor argument.
It’s more concise and coherent than anything you’ve said, or even plagerized
BAHAHAH - I don't have social media (I deleted it long ago). You are silly. How old are you? 15?
Okay, where are you getting your information from? I'm guessing you don't subscribe to any legacy media. I'm open to being wrong.
A few sources I read almost daily (aside from Substack) - and heck no they are not Legacy media with the exception of WSJ - which in recent years has become crap.
WSJ
Reason
Insights and Issues
Science Daily
Just The News
Jonathan Turley (blog)
Tax Foundation (it helps I've been a CPA specializing in international tax for over 15 years)
Epoch Times
Times of India
UnHerd
RealClear (Energy, Politics, Investigations, Health)
Al Jazeera
AIER
FEE
STAT
The only podcasts I listen to with any consistency s Megan Kelly. I also watch Lara Logan's documentaries on Fox Nation (I have a lot of respect for Lara Logan).
I actually read John Ioannidis's article in STAT ON March 17, 2020 (very prophetic) because I read a lot of science publications.
I don't really care what you think of my "reading habits." As far as your comments, you come across like an unintelligent, historically and economically illiterate, entitled, woke little brat. I accept I might be wrong, but you give ZERO evidence of insightfulness or logical reasoning or economic literacy.
But you are good for a laugh, so I appreciate that.
The WSJ is the only one of those sources that actually practices journalism. The others simply comment on the news as originally reported by the legacy news orgs. You're reading nothing but right-wing spin.
You're a little outdated. The recent news is how BLATANTLY almost ALL the MSM simply out-and-out lies. Falsehoods dreamed up outta necessity, right? SURELY someone as well informed as You reads Glen Greenwald, right?
Glen Greenwald is a clown.
I don't subscribe, but I know enough to know a clown when I see one. Glen Greenwald, no...
Or Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Andrew Sullivan for that matter.
I read Bari. I think she is hysterical and she sees anti-Semitism everywhere.
I have a love-hate relationship with Andrew.
Then You saw his recent post on MSM collapsing? And his link to Glen Greenwald FACTS of matter?
Sorry Matt. You illustrate one-a the PRIMARY characteristics of the Fundamentalist Wokeianity RELIGION: Inability to tell the difference between right and wrong.
Because they are so CERTAIN they're right... No, not just right, but righteous. Well, they don't have ability to see how wrong they are. That is: They just can see the forest of FACTS, nor any tree that is in fact, FACT.
I'm behind in reading, and Your inability to tell right from wrong will mean there is no collection of FACTS that will allow You to see the light.
IOW, just don't have the time.
Al Jazeera's pretty good for world news as long as it isn't their home country.
True.
The Epoch Times is the leading international newspaper today. It is published in 22 languages and has correspondent all around the world. It is a very sensible sources of news.
Tax foundation is non partisan.
It merely provides tax professionals updates on tax matters around the globe.
You clearly have no clue what most of those sources are Matt. Like your getting called out for plagiarizing, you are making a really big fool of yourself right now.... all your comment says is that you haven't a clue what any of those sources are other than you heard Epoch Times bad and you recognize WSJ.
I know that Epoch Times filters everything through a Christian worldview, which distorts everything.
As I suspected, you live in a right-wing media bubble. Epoch Times? Yikes.
Yes, Epoch Times. Considering it’s run by Chinese dissidents it gives wonderful insight into why they escaped and Chinese regime and culture. I’ve learned a great deal about Falon Gong which is fascinating. I appreciate their international coverage. For Covid they carry interviews with top epidemiologist around the world. I’ve found their reporting to be truthful and accurate and their insights of great value.
I wouldn’t expect you to have any appreciation for diverse viewpoints, and concern about actual objective truth, or any consideration for a practice of devotion to universal truths and justice. Those things repel little woke minds in the heads of little woke boys like yours. 🤷♀️
International tax 👍. I was a corporate tax generalist and relied heavily on my international tax team. Great field of practice.
Great way to see what works, what doesn’t, and how little media talking heads actually know about various tax regimes and entitled funding structures for sure. It’s nice to be appreciated. 😊
Yes, you can see much clearer than many. Don’t tell anyone your secrets.
I’d actually prefer they know…… then more people might understand Venezuela imposes a wealth tax while Denmark has flat taxes and funds their “free” social programs via regressive VAT taxes. Pre 2017 we had an astronomically high corporate tax rate while also falling on the losing end of VAT border adjustments. My job was mostly “cost allocation” - aka legal offshoring hundreds of millions in profits. Sometimes we sent humans too 😬 for extra “support” of the structure.
The “rich” don’t pay for entitlements in most other developed countries, people pay for their own entitlements - and they are increasingly trying to privatize many of them.
Both Bernie and Brandon actually propose Venezuelan entitlement and funding structures while swearing it’s “really” Denmark and a frighteningly large percentage of the US public buys that ridiculous and entirely false assertion.
Don’t forget the magic of our transfer pricing friends 💪.
I left fortune 500 a couple of years ago to work part time and hang with my kids more....... the one thing I don't know if I'll ever miss is transfer pricing - though when that long report of babble was finished every year it was satisfying. haha
Matt, educate us. I mean that sincerely. If you have the time, take NCmom's points and tell her where she got it wrong.
Matt either doesn't understand the definition of "authoritarian" or has been living under a rock the last 2 years.
I have time for one.
The left embraces authoritarianism? Trump couldn't care less about democracy, and his supporters couldn't either. He plotted a coup de stat after he lost the last election, and you guys are aching to renominate the man. And if you've noticed recently conservatives around the country, especially on the state and local level, are trying to get books banned from libraries, and they want to ban schools from teaching LGBTQ and racial issues. That's what authoritarians do. They use the government to regulate thought and speech. Thus one common trait among all authoritarians is their hatred of the free press. This was true for Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Trump, Kim Jong Un, Castro, Viktor Orban... etc.
You’re hatred and lies know no end:
“Trump couldn't care less about democracy, and his supporters couldn't either.”
Let me try this: “Biden is a racist hard core Communist and wants to Gulag all his opponents.”
I can just make stuff up as well. It’s not that hard.
Given the Democrats tried a political coup with the Trump/Russian lie… it is easy to see the Democrats hate representative democracy, The Constitution but love authoritarianism.
“ And if you've noticed recently conservatives around the country, especially on the state and local level, are trying to get books banned from libraries”
Parents on both the right and left think assigning readings to 12-14 year old dealing with the positives of NAMBLA talking points should not happen in middle school and the books should not exist in school libraries.
Do you seriously support the statutory rape of 12-14 year old boys by 30-40 year old men?
“ and they want to ban schools from teaching LGBTQ and racial issues. ”
Do you really think teaching kindergarten kids that sex and gender are fluid and social constructs are beneficial?
As for banning racial issues? What you wrote is 100% a categorical lie.
Let me say this simply: CRT is as vile, evil and destructive as the NAZI ideology.
If you support CRT (and it’s various Praxis) you are not a good person.
“If you support CRT (and it’s various Praxis) you are not a good person.”
————————————————-
*ding ding ding ding ding ding
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
Trump is not president so there's that. Most of his supporters were not interested in a "coup" but were fed up with media, intelligence community, and DNC manipulation to write them off and write them out of the national conversation. Here is a fantastic and empathetic twitter thread that attempted to explain why what many consider "deplorables" were so angry. https://twitter.com/martyrmade/status/1413165168956088321
As for the "coup," the FBI already investigated 1/6 and said it was not an organized effort, so there's that. Of course, that is a pretty important point. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-evidence-us-capitol-attack-was-coordinated-sources-2021-08-20/
Just look at the footage of 1/6: it was mostly LARPing with some mob violence. The only person who died was a young unarmed while female military vet who was shot point blank by an officer whom the government has decided not to prosecute and won't even release the officer's identity. (Hopefully you are now aware that the fire extinguisher bashing, etc was made up by the press and Officer Sicknik died the following day of a natural causes, which cannot be attributed to 1/6. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/19/988876722/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-medical-examiner-ru)
As for book bans, BOTH sides are doing it if you weren't aware. The difference is that the books the "woke" want to ban are classics, while the books the "unwoke" want to ban teach children as young as kindergarten about sex and gender with obvious indoctrination agendas. The fact is, agree or not, *both sides* are pushing to ban certain books. That's what authoritarians do? Yeah, like use the government to demonize people who push back against certain agendas (those questioning vaccines for children come to mind), Or how about using social media as a proxy for government's ban on frees speech. (If you think that is not happening, then you are not paying attention.) I--and I suspect many here--do not belong to any "tribe" and we attempt to understand all sides. It appears by your response that you are caught in a silo As for where the authoritarianism is coming from these days, I cannot more highly recommend Glenn Greenwald (a civil libertarian who has always identified with the left) and Matt Taibbi (certainly from the left). If you haven't read these guys, I suggest doing so without your biases.
Matt, you couldn't rebut even one of NCmom's claims. I don't think your busy schedule is really the problem.
Here is what NCmom wrote in her post:
"Few things in human society are more lethal than authoritarianism, the woke embrace it"
You responded by
(a) Misquoting NCmom: "The left embraces authoritarianism"
(b) Rebutting neither her actual claim ("the woke embrace authoritarianism") nor the fabricated claim which you attributed to her but instead....
(c) Rebutting claims she neither made nor addressed (she wants to renominate Trump, Trump cares about democracy, Trump didn't plot a coup d'etat, Trump loves the free press, Trump fill-in-the-blank etc.)
(d) Asserting that whatever NCmom has to say about the woke is wrong because... she and her side are authoritarians too.
This level of disagreement raises the conversation to DH1 ("Ad hominem"). In this case, basically: "What you write isn't valid because you're not a member of the enlightened party/faction". But there is no actual rebuttal of NCmom's claims or assertions.
Again, ref Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
None of those are book bans. They don’t want it taught to their children because it’s inappropriate for children. The books are not banned.
I’m excited to see how far you guys go to stop the ‘Nazi Christian Terrorists’. Hard to predict but I know there is no depth to which you will not stoop.
What makes you think democracy is incompatible with authoritarianism? Have you never heard of the tyranny of the majority?
Beautifully expostulated. Bravo!!
I think the "class" distinction is *not at all about income or wealth or job status* - it is a division between those members of the elite intellectual class (and importantly: their sycophants) who are controlling the narrative (e.g., media, university bureaucrats, and intelligence community workers, etc) or those who are not members of this class.
Yes, the intelligentsia.
While I somewhat agree, there is nothing "intelligent" about wokeism. It's actually rather stupid, simple minded, and can only be followed by the very simple minded and gullible.....
They call themselves élite, yet simple and regressive is a more accurate description of their ideology.
I agree but it is what is usually referred to as the "intellectual" class ( Nissam Taleb's IYI class, that is Intellectual Yet Idiot https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577) is the class distinction. Not their wealth.
Thomas Sowell wrote an entire book (Intellectuals and Society) on this phenomenon.
And on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, he's a liar who didn't even remotely follow his own "standards" -- and that's an irrefutable fact backed by overwhelming evidence.
If you truly followed his "follow the facts" mantra, it wouldn't matter that I'm a "nobody" challenging Thomas Sowell "The Maverick." All that would matter is that I know something you don't -- and you'd consider that evidence on the merits, and do so politely, I would add.
If you hail him as a hero, shouldn’t you abide by the principles upon which you put him on a pedestal — even it if knocks him off of it?
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/10/24/thomas-sowell-to-team-of-rivals/
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/03/without-passion-or-prejudice/
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/07/05/call-sign-maverick/
I looked through these three web posts. They are incoherent.
Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology.
Kiss-asses to the Core: The Disciples of Thomas Sowell:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/11/14/kiss-asses-to-the-core-the-disciples-of-thomas-sowell/
Your response prompted me to finish "This Conversation Will Self-Destruct in 5 seconds":
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/11/11/this-conversation-will-self-destruct-in-5-seconds/
And your argument for how a rotor with a 3mm wall could maintain 90,000 RPM to make highly enriched uranium?
You could borrow from Thomas Sowell's argument on the subject . . . had he made one.
Ah, perhaps that's what this issue's all about -- or is that too
"incoherent"?
Jesus, in Call Sign “Maverick” that bit about the 3mm wall is the headline right after the opening image. Forget the other pages -- forget the site, just ask a question for a change.
For the love of God or the Thomas Sowell you worship, does this response look like someone "following the facts":
"Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology."
Your response is a gross breach of the very principles upon which you put this guy on a pedestal.
On the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, Thomas Sowell shot his mouth off with party-line hackery -- and that's the best ya go?
Just for kicks -- don't you people ever wanna try out the principles you praise, or you just wanna pay lip service to them?
As for my "incoherence"-- your kind had made it IMPOSSIBLE to reach you for nearly 20 years on this topic. It doesn't get any more coherent than the 7-part 2 hours and 40 minutes documentary I wrote and produced on Iraq WMD (as well as some of it on liberals being in lockstep on Trayvon).
And still your kind bitched, moaned, and mercilessly mocked -- never mind that 100% of that crowd couldn't make a sound argument on the subject to save their lives.
If I chopped up the doc and put it on TikTok, you'd still bitch about it and offer your pearls of wisdom about "incoherence."
*******************
"I looked through these three web posts. They are incoherent.
Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology."
*******************
You can't imagine how lucky you are that you can't see yourself through my eyes.
It's infuriating, but most of all -- I feel sorry for you. You'll never know how much more the world has to offer you . . . and what you have to offer it.
All that aside -- thanks for taking a look at the links anyway.
And you're right, it is incoherent -- I don't take offense to what's true. But you have no idea what it's like taking on all of America. You're all so wrapped up in bullshit that you no longer remember what it was like to see straight.
Perhaps you never did.
If someone sent me an excerpt like this, whatever I thought I knew, I'd instantly know that this guy knows something I don't. You know things that I don't -- and I would welcome learning from you (regardless of how you've treated me).
https://youtu.be/X9Si5T2EmZA
On the above, Thomas Sowell would have no chance in a debate with me. He repeatedly weighed it on the Iraq War -- doesn't it strike you as strange that someone who "follows the facts" has a record of pushing propaganda and never once address the most critical evidence in question?
"Thomas Sowell is considered our country's leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology."
What does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China -- or this: https://youtu.be/uQ-amlCNtA8
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/01/safety-dance-of-self-delusion/
Spot on. Well done.
That's one way to break down the data, but the average incomes of dems vs. republicans tells a different story, and has been telling that different story increasingly since the early 2000s.
The "average" income of Republicans is higher than the average incomes of Democrats.......... there have been some small shifts in the middle class as academia has exploded and rural voters get tired of being called racists, but overall, the more you make personally, the more likely you are to vote Republican.
To a point. If you look at what are called the "super ZIP codes". If I remember (and I might be a bit off on this) the top 20 ZIP codes (by income) represent the holdings of 95% of the wealth in the country and they vote about 75% Democrat.
Your stats are off on the % of wealth they hold, that said, the top 20 zip codes make up about 0.001% of the country's population or area while the 1% is 3.3million people spread across the country and across thousands of zip codes.
Income is easier to find data on but the top 300 ZIPS represent about 1.5% of income. However, wealth and income are radically different. A much smaller number of ZIPS hold a much larger % of wealth (I am simply observing the event not judging on the event) and I can't find that data anymore.
Even in these top 300 ZIPS, political donations, as well voting, are overwhelming Democrats.
It's paradoxical that Democrats tend to have a higher education level, a lower median yearly income but have more people in the top 1% when compared to Democrats and Independents.
Republicans tend to have lower education, higher median income (more small business owners I suspect), more people in the top 20% of income but far few in the top 1%.
They are weird curves.
Oh, there is a VAST difference between income and wealth - something far too many don't understand. Wealth is not a giant pile of cash. It's assets.
The curves are weird. But interesting
The surprise over the income brake out though I believe comes from a false association between education level and income. Forget how many billionaires are only high school graduates. A meaningful percentage of people with higher education are in academia - and its grown (last I looked a few years ago it was over 25%). They vote Dem. Then you have tons of people going to college and not earning a good living - many end up in a big corporate slog or in some job that doesn't require a degree. These urbanites too tend to vote Dem. The young make less money, and as I can attest first hand, fresh off indoctrination its easy to vote away other people's money (until learning I was really voting away my own).
The business professional class highly educated and is still primarily republican (doctors, financial advisors, accountants, some attorneys). Business owners are still republican and there is a wide array of educational levels - with seemingly little correlation to success. Skilled trades people often skip college, but they do well financially, and tend to vote Republican.
I think its more of a personality and skin in the game thing than actual income or education level.
It is true that the wealthier someone is the more likely they are to vote Republican, but that measures a behavioral tendency in a cohort of voters that gets smaller (and less electorally significant) the higher the income goes (while simultaneously exercising outsize influence on income statistics).
The difference in our understanding of political affiliation + income probably has much to do with the way people and income are sorted into affiliations for statistical purposes in different studies, and when it comes to very recent studies, the rise in "independent" affiliation among people who lean right (and the very intentional addition of low-income voters to Democrate rolls in the last 5-7 years) is probably also skewing data relative to what was available in the early 00s. I don't know that Trump voters are the best indicator of anything, considering the weird things going on in his voter base. I voted Republican my whole life *until* he ran and my household only started making $100k after he was first elected, though that was no particular thanks to him. Other life-long Republicans in my very white family voted for Biden last time.
I've been following these trends in an informal way since Obama's first election when I first noticed a distinct cultural contempt on the left for people they considered "rednecks" or "white trash" (later, "deplorable") a contempt that is firmly rooted in class hostility and that I found curious given their labor base. There is an increasing and obvious sense on the left that people who lack education or cosmopolitan sensibilities are somehow less entitled to inflict their opinions and vision upon the country than those of greater education and means.
It's a group upon which progressives in particular feel compelled to act in really overtly punitive ways. Increasingly, non-white individuals who sympathize with "white trash" cultural resentments (and who frequently have economically or culturally similar upbringings) are lumped in with them, so to say the class divergence is imaginary or a non-factor or not based on income or education really resists most observable indicators.
It also contradicts most of what I've seen in trends of the last 20 years. Brookings indicates a *median* income advantage among democrats of 15% and diverging rapidly. Thanks so much for the scare quotes around "average" to remind me not to play fast and loose with my words.
All good points. I do think the divide is more cultural - though it was the opposite path for my husband and I. We were completely indocrtinated in undergrad/ grad, then we started living, growing, learning, and reproducing and it became evident we really were young and dumb. While I still reject the war mongering neocons, having actual knowledge, learning something about history, and getting some years to observe what actually works, lead me to realize the outcomes I was voting for were the opposite of the rhetoric from the left. Trump opened my eyes because of the overwhelming, insane, extreme reaction from the media - all the media did during Trump was lie, attack his base for placing policy outcomes over personality, and make crap up.
Covid made it clear the authoritarian motivations of the left were not suppressed. The far right, as far as political power an actual influence goes, dies with Hitler. The destructive authoritarian left is alive and well. As is the absolute destruction that follows authoritarianism that is being borne by an entire generation of American children. I learned long ago to never say never, but it will be a LONG time before any Democrat, at any level, for any office, gets my vote again.
Well I didn't say I voted for a Democrat, only that I didn't vote for Trump. I likewise would not choose a Democrat for office unless they demonstrated a compelling divergence from party trends--the very existence of which would likely rule them out as an endorsed candidate for the party anyway.
I could be convinced to hear a case for Gabbard, particularly as part of a mixed independent/centrist ticket.
I could be convinced for Gabby. There are some Democrats I respect. But any candidate would have to overcome the risk of Dem rule. I’ll be honest, if Manchin, who is actually a conservative Democrat that I’ve followed since he was first elected gov of WV, we’re from a state with a Democrat governor, I have no doubt the party would force him out by whatever means necessary. Gabbard isn’t a war monger, and the issues she understands she has thoughtful policy positions. But alas you are correct, the Dems forced her out so Brandon or mini Castro could win…….