I don't care what they say about me at Eschaton as long as it isn't true so I don't care what they say about me.
Update: The comments at Eschaton are like a road map into the issue of why the left has failed. It's not unique in that. You could get the same unintentionally supplied information in the comments and many of the articles at Alternet or just about any other magazine or website of the alleged left, most of which are more interested in the materialist ideology of the idiots running and reading it than they are in the lives of the people and the world which is the only legitimate reason for the left to exist.
That is the left which has consistently failed for more than a century, it is the left that destroyed the old Socialist Party, which had done what they never have, won elections at the federal level and many at the state and local levels. It is the left that has championed some of the worst mass murdering dictatorships in the history of the world, it is the left whose foremost presence in American politics has been as a foil for the corporate fascists to discredit the real left. And the result in the reality of government is that poor lefts make a right. It is the left which wheels out one lead balloon after another biding lefties to climb on board, only to have them do what lead balloons always do. You would think that people as smart as those on the alleged left love to tell themselves that they are wouldn't need another century of failure to teach them that it's a complete fraud. But the biggest issue in the minds of such folk is their own illusion of intellectual supremacy. When they repeatedly fail, for decades and centuries, it's never their fault, it's always a failure of The People to adopt their ideas.
If you want to see what I mean, go look at last years program for the Left Forum, especially their events in "Marxism, Anarchism and Theory". Really, in 2016, when the biggest Communist Party in the world is like Victorian Capitalism on steroids, they still think Marxism isn't dead and decayed on the ash heap of history. I read last week how the corporate fascists who run China are mounting a similar effort to promote Marxism as a sort of cover for why China is still a one-party dictatorship.
Get a load of this Left Forum Event, Leninism Today [Really, Leninism Today!]
The Occupy [Really, Occupy] movement in the US, and the movement of the squares internationally, were motivated by the principles of horizontalism and tended to reject organization and parties. But as those movements ran up against the limitations of an increasingly powerful state, the question of organization has again become important. New parties, such as Syriza and Podemos, are contending for power in Europe, but these too raise questions about why kind of party, or parties, we need and how revolutionaries should organize themselves. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and "actually existing socialism", the ideas of Leninism became marginal on the Left and many young radicals dismiss the contributions of this experience as irrelevant to today's conditions. But today's revolutionaries must again answer the question, "what is to be done?". This panel will explore the ways in which Leninism remains relevant today and what a new Leninism should look like. [Really, a new Leninism!]
Sponsoring Journal: International Socialist Organization
The United States has a good chance of having another Republicanfascist for president in less than a year, we have a Congress full of them now, and these idiots are waving the red flag, proposing Leninism as the alternative for a country which will be lucky to elect Hillary Clinton as its best hope AND THEY DO SO IN A FORUM OF OUR INTELLECTUAL CLASS!
I wonder if they have such intellectual forums in Russia or the other countries which had real experience of Leninism. I would love to see Leninism put to a referendum in such places to see what the results would be, but only if it were a non-binding referendum.
I encourage anyone who still maintains such illusions to give them up. The civil rights movement up till c. 1965, under the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the real new left of great thinkers like Diane Nash, the people who pushed the United States to the high-water mark of the left in the United States has more to teach you than these idiots and all their dead theory ever will .
Update 2: I don't care if the Bernie-bots and Stupie the Stalker are talking about me. My only regret is that they're generating money for Duncan Black. I doubt anyone there has ever read anything here so it is nothing to me. I don't write for the EZ reader population.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
My Idea of Cool
A guy in North Queensland, Australia doing things the primitive way.
He's not a survivalist nut case, it's his hobby. This one is really impressive.
Here is his FAQ list
Q.Where is this?
A. This is in Far North Queensland Australia.
Q.Do you live in the wild?
A.I don't live in the wild but just go into the bush to make these projects. Also I camp out here occasionally.
Q. How did you learn all this?
A. Researching books and internet plus trial and error. I'm not indigenous and have no army training.
Q. What about dangerous animals in Australia?
A. The only really dangerous ones in my area are snakes. Care must be taken when walking about and lifting things from the ground.
Q. For the mud huts what stops the rain washing the mud walls away?
A. The roof.
Q. Why don't you talk in the videos?
A. When I watch how to videos I fast forward past the talking part to see the action part. So I leave it out of my videos in favor of pure demonstration.
Here is his website.
He's not a survivalist nut case, it's his hobby. This one is really impressive.
Here is his FAQ list
Q.Where is this?
A. This is in Far North Queensland Australia.
Q.Do you live in the wild?
A.I don't live in the wild but just go into the bush to make these projects. Also I camp out here occasionally.
Q. How did you learn all this?
A. Researching books and internet plus trial and error. I'm not indigenous and have no army training.
Q. What about dangerous animals in Australia?
A. The only really dangerous ones in my area are snakes. Care must be taken when walking about and lifting things from the ground.
Q. For the mud huts what stops the rain washing the mud walls away?
A. The roof.
Q. Why don't you talk in the videos?
A. When I watch how to videos I fast forward past the talking part to see the action part. So I leave it out of my videos in favor of pure demonstration.
Here is his website.
Of Course I'm Against The Use of Girls In The Porn You Defend - What's Obvious Is You Aren't - Hate Mail
Of course I'm totally against the pedophile rape, torture, degradation and use of girls as much as that of boys. When I wrote about the ubiquitous presence of photographs, gifs and movies of children being raped on websites I didn't single out boys for special attention, I repeatedly used the inclusive word "children". I could have pointed out that there are, at times, images on gay porn sites of men raping women and girls, apparently men such as produce porn figure gay men would be attracted to those kind of men. Well, I'm not one of them, I'd arrest the rapists and I would arrest those who make and distribute the photographic promotion of rape.
That some of the many feminist magazines, websites and organizations aren't investigating the clear and horrific misogyny being peddled to anyone old enough to use the internet, why they aren't insisting that the use and destruction of even very young girls in the sex industry isn't stopped and the distribution of its promotion suppressed only shows how feminism is one of the casualties of the "free speech-free press" orthodoxy.
If Andrea Dworkin at times went overboard in some of her statements that does nothing, whatsoever, to change the fact that pornography-prostitution is the most ubiquitous and strongest force and the most seductive means of promoting both male supremacy and the social and peer pressure on girls and coercing women to acquiesce to their own oppression and destruction. When Simone de Beauvoir asked if we must burn Sade she wasn't asking a question, she was announcing that she put the interest of sadistic, misogynistic pornographers, even long dead ones, above the interest of women, under the rousing slogans of 18th century thinking. So have most of the current generation of feminists, it would seem.
I am disgusted at the silence of feminists on this issue, just as I'm disgusted at gay men who accept and participate in and defend the foremost promotion of hatred and self-hatred among gay boys and men thorough pornography. What Pope Francis is being criticized for in the document he released yesterday is a positive benefit to gay men and Lesbians as compared to what the pornographers have to say about us. It is a positive benefit as compared to the civil liberties line on the promotion of our oppression, degradation and destruction. The Pope is wrong on gay marriage, the porn industry and its champions are far more wrong in entirely worse ways. They are worse for women and for gay men.
Update: See my last post yesterday, that's your answer.
That some of the many feminist magazines, websites and organizations aren't investigating the clear and horrific misogyny being peddled to anyone old enough to use the internet, why they aren't insisting that the use and destruction of even very young girls in the sex industry isn't stopped and the distribution of its promotion suppressed only shows how feminism is one of the casualties of the "free speech-free press" orthodoxy.
If Andrea Dworkin at times went overboard in some of her statements that does nothing, whatsoever, to change the fact that pornography-prostitution is the most ubiquitous and strongest force and the most seductive means of promoting both male supremacy and the social and peer pressure on girls and coercing women to acquiesce to their own oppression and destruction. When Simone de Beauvoir asked if we must burn Sade she wasn't asking a question, she was announcing that she put the interest of sadistic, misogynistic pornographers, even long dead ones, above the interest of women, under the rousing slogans of 18th century thinking. So have most of the current generation of feminists, it would seem.
I am disgusted at the silence of feminists on this issue, just as I'm disgusted at gay men who accept and participate in and defend the foremost promotion of hatred and self-hatred among gay boys and men thorough pornography. What Pope Francis is being criticized for in the document he released yesterday is a positive benefit to gay men and Lesbians as compared to what the pornographers have to say about us. It is a positive benefit as compared to the civil liberties line on the promotion of our oppression, degradation and destruction. The Pope is wrong on gay marriage, the porn industry and its champions are far more wrong in entirely worse ways. They are worse for women and for gay men.
Update: See my last post yesterday, that's your answer.
This Election Is About What Will Be - It's About Forestalling Total Disaster In 2016
I am asked what I want if I don't want Bernie Sanders. Well, there are lots of things I want but I don't for a second make the widespread mistake of thinking what I want is what this election is about.
It's about what will be, not what I want. It's not even about what we want, if "we" means the left I'm a part of, the traditional American liberal left of equality, equal justice, economic justice,
What I want includes universal education sufficient to instill the knowledge to exercise the responsibilities and rights of an American but even as important in the moral foundation on which all of that rests. a love of humanity and the natural world we live in, an understanding that we owe each other and the world our best efforts to sustain them in a decent life to the best of our limited human abilities. And that is true even as we inevitably fall short, at times.
There are many parts to that, such as the abolition of the fortunes of the billionaires and obscenely rich who have corrupted everything they touch, with few exceptions. Those few exceptions hardly begin to make up for the corruption. The very rich are a luxury we can no longer afford, not the poor. In my wildest dreams they will be reduced to the middle class which will no longer be in the middle because I'm in favor of economic leveling, the poor raised up as the obscenely wealthy are lowered. The very rich are the ones who have robbed the middle class, they and the electronic entertainment industry which is far more like the one imagined by George Orwell than any thinking person should find easy to accept and imbibe. They are the property and tools of the billionaire-millionaire class, they serve them, not The People. The idea that we owe them the special privileges granted by the short-sighted founders, as they destroy democracy is crazy. We never owed them those, those should have been contingent on the service which our media does not give, accurately informing people of what they need to know to produce democracy.
I suppose one of the things I want is the destruction of the many fictions indulged in by the judiciary and legal system that lies are as worthy of legal protection as the truth, that the absolute grounding of democracy is not, in its most vital sense, totally and absolutely grounded in moral actions and beliefs and that without those there is no democracy. The same court that accelerated the corruption of democracy with its rulings allowing the media to lie with impunity also began an illogical confusion that the non-establishment of religion meant that public institutions weren't there to instill an education into morality. And the even worse opportunity for entertainment media to promote amoral depravity, replacing the absurd production codes that put married couples into twin beds with the cynical, cruel, bigotry spouting, Mammon worshiping obscenity that is the real education system by virtue of its ubiquity. It is the school for fascism that never closes, its message is also omnipresent in a sense that Orwell's nightmare merely implies. It is the totalitarian church of Mammon. That, friends, is a product of the lame-brained good intentions of the liberals on the Supreme Court in the 60s through today. The confirmation of its result in fascist depravity is in its adoption by the worst of the far right in a string of decisions from Buckley v. Valeo to Citizens United and beyond, the phosphate car bomb that has destroyed our elections system, again on behalf of the billionaiare-millionaire class.
Fixing that is what I want, what I know will be the result of this election is not that, it is a brief opportunity to stop the Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy wing of the court from cementing their depravity in place for decades if not centuries - if we should last that long. I have no doubt but that everyone who is running in this election, not least of whom, Bernie Sanders is invested in the wider system of depravity which produces the very things he rails against. He will not appoint justices who will overturn the Sullivan Decision, I don't think he'd think that was a good idea. He wouldn't alter the series of disastrously out of touch supreme court rulings which, just as they made lies equal to the truth, made immorality the equal of morality. All of them are fully invested in the insane way of thinking that allows those to stand even as their entirely predictable results become ever worse and threaten to destroy us, quite literally. The regime of thinking which produced that ability to refuse to see how the results came from those choices in the courts and in government and in society and the intellectual basis of those choices, is ubiquitous among the educated class. The very idea that it was "the process" that mattered and that the results didn't, is one part of that regime of so-called enlightenment thought that I'll write more about, soon. For, make no mistake about it, the idiocy that produced this disaster is another product of that 18th century fashion, one that is absurdly reverenced today.
So, you see, my desires are extremely ambitious, they are radical, far more radical than anything Bernie Sanders ever promoted, more radical than anything you're going to read on Alternet, in The Nation, more radical than Occupy was or whatever temporary-doomed-to-fail vanguard of any ever newer left will articulate.
But this election, any election is not about what I want, it's about what will be. It's about forestalling total disaster in 2016.
It's about what will be, not what I want. It's not even about what we want, if "we" means the left I'm a part of, the traditional American liberal left of equality, equal justice, economic justice,
What I want includes universal education sufficient to instill the knowledge to exercise the responsibilities and rights of an American but even as important in the moral foundation on which all of that rests. a love of humanity and the natural world we live in, an understanding that we owe each other and the world our best efforts to sustain them in a decent life to the best of our limited human abilities. And that is true even as we inevitably fall short, at times.
There are many parts to that, such as the abolition of the fortunes of the billionaires and obscenely rich who have corrupted everything they touch, with few exceptions. Those few exceptions hardly begin to make up for the corruption. The very rich are a luxury we can no longer afford, not the poor. In my wildest dreams they will be reduced to the middle class which will no longer be in the middle because I'm in favor of economic leveling, the poor raised up as the obscenely wealthy are lowered. The very rich are the ones who have robbed the middle class, they and the electronic entertainment industry which is far more like the one imagined by George Orwell than any thinking person should find easy to accept and imbibe. They are the property and tools of the billionaire-millionaire class, they serve them, not The People. The idea that we owe them the special privileges granted by the short-sighted founders, as they destroy democracy is crazy. We never owed them those, those should have been contingent on the service which our media does not give, accurately informing people of what they need to know to produce democracy.
I suppose one of the things I want is the destruction of the many fictions indulged in by the judiciary and legal system that lies are as worthy of legal protection as the truth, that the absolute grounding of democracy is not, in its most vital sense, totally and absolutely grounded in moral actions and beliefs and that without those there is no democracy. The same court that accelerated the corruption of democracy with its rulings allowing the media to lie with impunity also began an illogical confusion that the non-establishment of religion meant that public institutions weren't there to instill an education into morality. And the even worse opportunity for entertainment media to promote amoral depravity, replacing the absurd production codes that put married couples into twin beds with the cynical, cruel, bigotry spouting, Mammon worshiping obscenity that is the real education system by virtue of its ubiquity. It is the school for fascism that never closes, its message is also omnipresent in a sense that Orwell's nightmare merely implies. It is the totalitarian church of Mammon. That, friends, is a product of the lame-brained good intentions of the liberals on the Supreme Court in the 60s through today. The confirmation of its result in fascist depravity is in its adoption by the worst of the far right in a string of decisions from Buckley v. Valeo to Citizens United and beyond, the phosphate car bomb that has destroyed our elections system, again on behalf of the billionaiare-millionaire class.
Fixing that is what I want, what I know will be the result of this election is not that, it is a brief opportunity to stop the Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy wing of the court from cementing their depravity in place for decades if not centuries - if we should last that long. I have no doubt but that everyone who is running in this election, not least of whom, Bernie Sanders is invested in the wider system of depravity which produces the very things he rails against. He will not appoint justices who will overturn the Sullivan Decision, I don't think he'd think that was a good idea. He wouldn't alter the series of disastrously out of touch supreme court rulings which, just as they made lies equal to the truth, made immorality the equal of morality. All of them are fully invested in the insane way of thinking that allows those to stand even as their entirely predictable results become ever worse and threaten to destroy us, quite literally. The regime of thinking which produced that ability to refuse to see how the results came from those choices in the courts and in government and in society and the intellectual basis of those choices, is ubiquitous among the educated class. The very idea that it was "the process" that mattered and that the results didn't, is one part of that regime of so-called enlightenment thought that I'll write more about, soon. For, make no mistake about it, the idiocy that produced this disaster is another product of that 18th century fashion, one that is absurdly reverenced today.
So, you see, my desires are extremely ambitious, they are radical, far more radical than anything Bernie Sanders ever promoted, more radical than anything you're going to read on Alternet, in The Nation, more radical than Occupy was or whatever temporary-doomed-to-fail vanguard of any ever newer left will articulate.
But this election, any election is not about what I want, it's about what will be. It's about forestalling total disaster in 2016.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Hate Mail
OK, ok, ok. So I looked and note that the comment thread that is on is called "More Stupids" and that in a week when some of the guys over there tried to elicit my response to the owner who whined about how he couldn't deal with the "More Stupids" unbanned Gomez who immediately crapped up his blog, enraging the stupid regulars. And I'm supposed to be upset with the people stupid enough to frequent the blog of a guy who obviously thinks they're stupid say - misrepresenting what I said - as they prove they're stupid.
When I'm faced with the "Stupids" I don't encourage them. My experience - much of it gained at said blog - shows that only leads to more "More Stupids". But, then, you derive income from them as they chatter dully.
Duncan, you're having a really unattractive mid-life crisis. Someday you might grow out of it and regret how you're exposing yourself. Or you might turn out like the guy who stalks me.
Why don't you admit it, you unbanned your most OCD commentator, Gomez, to get your hit count up so you'd get more ad revenue. You're only in it for the money.
---------
Oh, the Humanity!
Your earlier post today, the one about the rigors of having to jump start a car, reminds me of nothing so much as Oscar Wilde's description of his exhausting day.
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
I must lack the kind of work ethic that makes you share in that kind of genius. Only Wilde actually wrote something people still read and act out.
Update: People come here to read what I write, they go to Duncan's to ignore what he doesn't write. As it is, I probably block far, far more comments than I publish. Most of them from Duncan's Dolts. Don't worry, Duncan, your guys don't do any more reading here than they do at your place, they're not big on reading.
Update II Well, you see, I write a lot of sentences. Not all of them are the jewel like creations that flow like a cess pool of Xerox toner from the Addison of Eschaton.
When I'm faced with the "Stupids" I don't encourage them. My experience - much of it gained at said blog - shows that only leads to more "More Stupids". But, then, you derive income from them as they chatter dully.
Duncan, you're having a really unattractive mid-life crisis. Someday you might grow out of it and regret how you're exposing yourself. Or you might turn out like the guy who stalks me.
Why don't you admit it, you unbanned your most OCD commentator, Gomez, to get your hit count up so you'd get more ad revenue. You're only in it for the money.
---------
Oh, the Humanity!
Your earlier post today, the one about the rigors of having to jump start a car, reminds me of nothing so much as Oscar Wilde's description of his exhausting day.
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
I must lack the kind of work ethic that makes you share in that kind of genius. Only Wilde actually wrote something people still read and act out.
Update: People come here to read what I write, they go to Duncan's to ignore what he doesn't write. As it is, I probably block far, far more comments than I publish. Most of them from Duncan's Dolts. Don't worry, Duncan, your guys don't do any more reading here than they do at your place, they're not big on reading.
Update II Well, you see, I write a lot of sentences. Not all of them are the jewel like creations that flow like a cess pool of Xerox toner from the Addison of Eschaton.
J.S. Bach: Gottes Zeit Ist Die Allerbeste Zeit - BWV 106
Soprano, Ann Monoyios
Countertenor, Steven Rickards
Tenor, Edmund Brownless
Bass, Jan Opalach
The Bach Ensemble, Joshua Rifkin, conductor
Atheist-Materialism Can't Withstand A Serious Questioning of The Mind As A Material Thing
A week from now it will be a year that I've repeatedly been asking atheists, materialists, those who assert that our minds are nothing but a phenomenon produced by the physical components of our brains to explain how that would work in a specific instance.
If our ideas are dependent on physical structures made by the brain, how do our brains know how to make exactly the right structure to, not only embody but to, in fact, BE that idea before the idea that it is to make is present in the brain to instruct it?
That question has been being asked every month for the past year and for almost a year, they have failed to come up with a way to even begin to address that absolutely important issue for their materialist mind to work.
The question leads to other problems for materialism in that not only would the brain not have any idea (literally) of what to make and how to make exactly that idea-structure, it wouldn't even have the information to know that it needed to make that idea-structure.
How would it know how to make a new idea-structure?
How would it do that for every idea we experience, including every partially formed idea, ideas which we come up with but discard or modify, how would it come up with ideas that we latch onto but which are not accurate representations of or even related to any experience we have of an external world?
And, perhaps most difficult of all, how would it do whatever the materialist proposes in the real time in which we experience all of those creations of new ideas?
How would it come up with just the right idea as a product of random precursor chemicals and other physical entities found in any particular brain? My guess would be that if it were possible to accurately calculate a probability that the entire human species could come up with just the right idea even once as a result of random processes, it would be more vanishingly small than many of the infinitesimally tiny probabilities associated with the fine-tunings of the physical universe. In order to make his point about monkey's typing out the contents of the British Museum, Eddington had to invent a theoretical infinity of monkeys to do it. If there is one thing we know about the numbers of humans necessary to produce the contents of the British Museum, it falls entirely short of infinity.
Since being goaded by the bigotry and obvious political damage that atheists did to the left to study the issues involved, I have come to the conclusion that the entire program of atheist-materialist assertion that the universe is undesigned is nothing more than their ideological preferences dressed up in a lab coat. There is no scientific basis to that, in every case I've looked at of a famous scientist making that assertion, the philosophical underpinnings of their argument are incompetent.
There is, actually, no scientific means of addressing that question. And when you rigorously look at the claims which such a thing would include, it looks no more ridiculous to believe that the universe is designed by God than that it is the product of entirely random events governed by the action of probability. The issue is one that belongs to philosophy and theology, not science. Only scientist are often so lacking in philosophical training that they don't understand that distinction and, so, they arrogantly presume to answer it with science which is not equipped to study it. There never was any scientific reason to claim that and when you consider things like the mind which thinks about such things, it looks like there are excellent reasons to reject the idea.
I would like to see some atheist do something other than invoke the words "natural selection" and "evolution" as if those answered the question. All that has done is point out how the atheists are as habitually prone to invoking magic as a means of producing what they can't account for as anyone they deride in that regard.
If our ideas are dependent on physical structures made by the brain, how do our brains know how to make exactly the right structure to, not only embody but to, in fact, BE that idea before the idea that it is to make is present in the brain to instruct it?
That question has been being asked every month for the past year and for almost a year, they have failed to come up with a way to even begin to address that absolutely important issue for their materialist mind to work.
The question leads to other problems for materialism in that not only would the brain not have any idea (literally) of what to make and how to make exactly that idea-structure, it wouldn't even have the information to know that it needed to make that idea-structure.
How would it know how to make a new idea-structure?
How would it do that for every idea we experience, including every partially formed idea, ideas which we come up with but discard or modify, how would it come up with ideas that we latch onto but which are not accurate representations of or even related to any experience we have of an external world?
And, perhaps most difficult of all, how would it do whatever the materialist proposes in the real time in which we experience all of those creations of new ideas?
How would it come up with just the right idea as a product of random precursor chemicals and other physical entities found in any particular brain? My guess would be that if it were possible to accurately calculate a probability that the entire human species could come up with just the right idea even once as a result of random processes, it would be more vanishingly small than many of the infinitesimally tiny probabilities associated with the fine-tunings of the physical universe. In order to make his point about monkey's typing out the contents of the British Museum, Eddington had to invent a theoretical infinity of monkeys to do it. If there is one thing we know about the numbers of humans necessary to produce the contents of the British Museum, it falls entirely short of infinity.
Since being goaded by the bigotry and obvious political damage that atheists did to the left to study the issues involved, I have come to the conclusion that the entire program of atheist-materialist assertion that the universe is undesigned is nothing more than their ideological preferences dressed up in a lab coat. There is no scientific basis to that, in every case I've looked at of a famous scientist making that assertion, the philosophical underpinnings of their argument are incompetent.
There is, actually, no scientific means of addressing that question. And when you rigorously look at the claims which such a thing would include, it looks no more ridiculous to believe that the universe is designed by God than that it is the product of entirely random events governed by the action of probability. The issue is one that belongs to philosophy and theology, not science. Only scientist are often so lacking in philosophical training that they don't understand that distinction and, so, they arrogantly presume to answer it with science which is not equipped to study it. There never was any scientific reason to claim that and when you consider things like the mind which thinks about such things, it looks like there are excellent reasons to reject the idea.
I would like to see some atheist do something other than invoke the words "natural selection" and "evolution" as if those answered the question. All that has done is point out how the atheists are as habitually prone to invoking magic as a means of producing what they can't account for as anyone they deride in that regard.
I'm Told These Two Stories Appeared In Jeff Bezos' Rag Within 24-hours Of Each Other
I am reading the growing suspicion that the current line of delusion within the Sanders campaign, that he would win the presidency, is coming from Jeff Weaver. who has been Bernie Sander's long time chief of staff and the head of his campaign.
Now, as I've watched this campaign unfold, I've increasingly had the sense that Weaver is a, maybe the key source of toxicity and cynicism in the Sanders camp, and I suspect doesn't care terribly about the November election if Sanders isn't the standard bearer. Obviously Sanders is responsible for his own campaign. And it's difficult to overestimate the mix of exhaustion, frustration and intensity that gets churned up in a hotly contested race like this. People get mad. On both sides. No crying in baseball, of course. Campaigns can and do do what they feel they need to do. But the consequences are ones all should understand and absorb.
This is cynical. It's a lie. And it's playing with fire.
I don't know much about Jeff Weaver or the other men who are running his campaign but what I'm reading doesn't make me feel better about their judgment. I am told that all of the people running Sanders campaign are men, which I do say I've got problems with.
My inclination is to wonder if Weaver realizes that he could be reaching the end of his time as Sanders' chief of staff, when you job depends on the health and vigor of a 75 year old man it's an incentive to keep your resume in order. I would imagine that if Sanders won election that he'd keep Weaver as his Chief of Staff, from what I've heard from him and of him, I don't think you should expect good relations with other parts of the government.
To be honest, I've got my doubts about those who are running Hillary Clinton's campaign, as well. I've got a whole list of people who have worked for her and Bill Clinton as well as those who have worked for Barack Obama who I think should never have anything to do with a Democratic campaign or an administration, ever again. Personal loyalty to long term staffers has to come well after the best interests of the campaign, the party whose nomination they are asking for, the country and the world. All of them are asking us for the most serious privileges anyone can get from us, all of them, candidates and staffers owe us, we are their first and foremost creditors of trust.
I think Sanders and Clinton need to meet, face to face for one or more meetings to avoid such things as what has happened this week. Since both of them agree that the other would be preferable to any Republican winning the election, they owe it to their supporters and the rest of the world to work together to avoid that. I believe they could find a way to navigate the narrow channel of running against each other while not doing the Republican fascists a favor. They might have to ignore some of their advisors who don't seem to care about that.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
there would have been no gun decisions of the kind which are in line with Bernie Sanders' own line of moral compromise in the interest of keeping his Senate seat
It's pretty clear that Bernie Sanders, who I believe began his presidential campaign to move the discussion to the left, is actually believing the pretense everyone who does that begins with. He believes he has a chance of becoming president of the United States. I was talking to what I think is one of the more realistic of the Bernie Sanders supporters I know about that yesterday and he, as well, believes it's possible that Sanders could win the election, is dream depends on the country rejecting Cruz or Trump or, God help the world, Kasich or Romney comes out of Cleveland with the Republicanfascist nomination.
Consider this list. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (Ford), Carter, Reagan Bush I, Bill Clinton, Bush II, Barack Obama. Those are the people who have won American presidential elections in the post-WWII era. Anyone who believes that the country who elected that list of presidents is, suddenly, going to vote for Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton is the kind of person who would, in a fit of insanity, blow their entire wealth on lottery tickets.
With his incredible claim that Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president the other day, Bernie Sanders has crossed the line into delusional thinking. Given that list she would probably count as the second most qualified person to be president in the post-war period, I would only put Lyndon Johnson above her in qualification. I will say that I doubt Bernie Sanders would even mouth that word about someone with her record if she were a man. His conduct and the conduct of his campaign in the past months has raised my doubts about him far more than they have about her. I never had any illusions but that Hillary Clinton was a bit to the left of Barack Obama in politics, though I suspect she would, actually, given a Democratic House and Senate, govern considerably to the left of him. I have no illusions, whatsoever, that anyone who rises that high in any government so as to be in line for the leadership will not also come with considerable baggage. It is true even of the best of them. For whatever reason, democracy doesn't end up meaning that we elect saints for that position, we allow a few of those go gain office in the legislature, and most of them are compromised saints. I'd look for the least compromised of those in the House, not the Senate. Only we don't seem to elect House members as president, either.
Sanders is fast turning into a Republican enabler and a spoiler, I will state that he has only the slightest of slight chances of getting the nomination and even less of a chance to prevent another in the series of horrific and rapidly intensifying Republican fascist presidents we have had since the implosion of the left. I won't forgive that, especially after 2000 and the imposition of Bush II. If Ralph Nader hadn't played spoiler in that year, on behalf of moving the discussion to the left, there would have been no resolution to invade Iraq, no lie campaign to pressure politicians in states and seats not as secure as the one that Bernie Sanders has held to acquiesce to that massive campaign of lies. I don't think there would have been a 9-11 and an invasion of Afghanistan. O'Connor and Rehnquist would have been replaced by justices far more liberal than they were, there would have been no Citizens United decision, there would have been no gun decisions of the kind which are in line with Bernie Sanders' own line of moral compromise in the interest of keeping his Senate seat.
Sanders' inability to flesh out how he would break up banks is disturbing, considering how long that position has been part of his political brand. That he hasn't worked that out in his long years in office forces the question of his own readiness for the office. It makes you wonder what other items in his set list of issues has not been worked out as a clear strategy. He would have to hit the ground running if he were to win, I don't think it could wait for his staff to work up to speed on those issues if Bernie Sanders hasn't done it in the decades he has been in office. It won't be done by magical thinking of the kind so many of his most fanatical followers seem to believe, clapping your hands won't make it happen.
Consider this list. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (Ford), Carter, Reagan Bush I, Bill Clinton, Bush II, Barack Obama. Those are the people who have won American presidential elections in the post-WWII era. Anyone who believes that the country who elected that list of presidents is, suddenly, going to vote for Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton is the kind of person who would, in a fit of insanity, blow their entire wealth on lottery tickets.
With his incredible claim that Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president the other day, Bernie Sanders has crossed the line into delusional thinking. Given that list she would probably count as the second most qualified person to be president in the post-war period, I would only put Lyndon Johnson above her in qualification. I will say that I doubt Bernie Sanders would even mouth that word about someone with her record if she were a man. His conduct and the conduct of his campaign in the past months has raised my doubts about him far more than they have about her. I never had any illusions but that Hillary Clinton was a bit to the left of Barack Obama in politics, though I suspect she would, actually, given a Democratic House and Senate, govern considerably to the left of him. I have no illusions, whatsoever, that anyone who rises that high in any government so as to be in line for the leadership will not also come with considerable baggage. It is true even of the best of them. For whatever reason, democracy doesn't end up meaning that we elect saints for that position, we allow a few of those go gain office in the legislature, and most of them are compromised saints. I'd look for the least compromised of those in the House, not the Senate. Only we don't seem to elect House members as president, either.
Sanders is fast turning into a Republican enabler and a spoiler, I will state that he has only the slightest of slight chances of getting the nomination and even less of a chance to prevent another in the series of horrific and rapidly intensifying Republican fascist presidents we have had since the implosion of the left. I won't forgive that, especially after 2000 and the imposition of Bush II. If Ralph Nader hadn't played spoiler in that year, on behalf of moving the discussion to the left, there would have been no resolution to invade Iraq, no lie campaign to pressure politicians in states and seats not as secure as the one that Bernie Sanders has held to acquiesce to that massive campaign of lies. I don't think there would have been a 9-11 and an invasion of Afghanistan. O'Connor and Rehnquist would have been replaced by justices far more liberal than they were, there would have been no Citizens United decision, there would have been no gun decisions of the kind which are in line with Bernie Sanders' own line of moral compromise in the interest of keeping his Senate seat.
Sanders' inability to flesh out how he would break up banks is disturbing, considering how long that position has been part of his political brand. That he hasn't worked that out in his long years in office forces the question of his own readiness for the office. It makes you wonder what other items in his set list of issues has not been worked out as a clear strategy. He would have to hit the ground running if he were to win, I don't think it could wait for his staff to work up to speed on those issues if Bernie Sanders hasn't done it in the decades he has been in office. It won't be done by magical thinking of the kind so many of his most fanatical followers seem to believe, clapping your hands won't make it happen.
Spotlight, Yeah, Right
So, you
guys who were so enthusiastic about that movie about the Boston Globe
investigation into the priest pedophile scandal are telling me to
TURN
OFF THAT
SPOTLIGHT!
when it comes to commercial pedophile rape and the social networking sites that promote it openly online to a network of pedophiles.
I wonder if any of those Oscar Awards academy members gave even a passing thought to the sexualizing of underage children in the movies as they felt so virtuous as they gave that movie their vote. Only I'm not wondering too hard.
As I said, most people only care about this issue when it's possible to use it to attack religion, especially the Catholic church. The media certainly doesn't care about it. And there isn't any investigative reporting needed. When religion isn't involved they are 100% OK with pedophile rape that doesn't have to be searched out because it's right there in front of you, blatant and self-promoting. Or, perhaps, reporters know that they would be attacked for violating the sanctity of free-speech, free-press, since it's done openly through "the media". Could it be their professional and, so, financial interests in that ideological formula are far stronger than their disapproval of the rape of children?
The Globe reporting was great I wish they still did that kind of thing, I might subscribe again. I doubt the Globe or any other major publication will ever shine their spotlight on the issue when religion isn't implicated. Hollywood won't make a movie about it, they won't give it an Oscar.
I wonder if any of those Oscar Awards academy members gave even a passing thought to the sexualizing of underage children in the movies as they felt so virtuous as they gave that movie their vote. Only I'm not wondering too hard.
As I said, most people only care about this issue when it's possible to use it to attack religion, especially the Catholic church. The media certainly doesn't care about it. And there isn't any investigative reporting needed. When religion isn't involved they are 100% OK with pedophile rape that doesn't have to be searched out because it's right there in front of you, blatant and self-promoting. Or, perhaps, reporters know that they would be attacked for violating the sanctity of free-speech, free-press, since it's done openly through "the media". Could it be their professional and, so, financial interests in that ideological formula are far stronger than their disapproval of the rape of children?
The Globe reporting was great I wish they still did that kind of thing, I might subscribe again. I doubt the Globe or any other major publication will ever shine their spotlight on the issue when religion isn't implicated. Hollywood won't make a movie about it, they won't give it an Oscar.
I Am Breaking One of My Rules Just This Once
Someone doesn't believe that what I posted about the content of gay porn the other day is true. Well, I could say that considering the availability of the worst porn available, if you ever research LGBT issues, you could hardly avoid stumbling over it, I don't believe your skepticism. That is unless chancing upon my post and making your comment was the first time you ever used the internet.
I won't make it easier by providing links and I won't post images of real people being raped, violently abused or degraded. I will certainly not post images of children or others being raped and tortured.
But here's a description posted by the owner of a website of the content on just one of the kind of Tumblr blogs I was talking about. It is the only time I am going to post something like this. I copied and pasted into unformatted type directly from the text on the website, the swastikas are contained in the text, I didn't insert them. The Swastikas are all over the place as are all kinds of other symbols of white supremacy.
Filthy 卐 Brutal 卐 White
spit. sweat. piss. cum. rubber. slings. leather. cockrings. ballstretchers. ink. piercings. toxic. breeding. taboo. breath control. s&m. torture. violence. gunsex. rednecks. military. poppers. smoke. fisting. k9. electro. dungeons. bondage. skinheads. rawfucking. incest. groups. Dad/son. 卐 wHHite only 卐 Wickr: AmorFati88
If the swastikas weren't a clue notice the wHHite and 88, skinheads, etc. Mixing sado-masochism, pedophilia, incest and neo-Nazism is the content of this freely available website on one of the more popular "social networking" sites. I will call your attention to the "networking" part of that term which is rattled off without consideration of its meaning. Tumblr is one of the most networked of networking sites. Most of them, including many of the worst porn sites on them operate as a network of people who find similar things arousing, often some of them are thinly covered prostitution operations.
Nazis mixed with sexual arousal, Nazism as sexy and desirable, presenting domination, torture, use, racism and antisemitism in the context of sexual arousal, what could be the harm in that, right? It can't possibly have any effect on anyone, right? Just like those oil industry propaganda spots with the sexy-cool blond. They hired her because no one would be influenced by her appearance and voice. Right? Somehow, I've got a feeling someone said something like that in Weimar Germany while virtuously preening in their great liberality. My guess would be that if you objected to Tumblr, they'd say "free speech". I've had that answer when I've noted social media companies were hosting overt neo-Nazi content. I got no answer when I noted that neo-Nazis didn't believe in free speech so they had no right to claim it.
It's hardly the worst that you can find though it is pretty bad and that is available to anyone of any age on the internet with a few clicks. Lots of the pictures are of men raping what appears to me to be young boys. One of the pictures shows a naked boy in a cage with the advice that that's how daddy should keep his boy after the age of 5.
But, so long as no one is wearing a Roman collar, that's OK with you guys, isn't it? You figure they don't really mean it and that it won't encourage those who are so inclined? Maybe you think it can be dismissed as "satire" though the photos and images, the brutality, the grimacing, the hate messages, etc. look pretty unsatirical to me.
Update: You are a complete idiot.
"You're perpetuating child abuse by writing about this."
Oh, my, you're even stupider than I thought. If everyone followed your rule that everyone who so much as looks at images of pedophile porn is participating in abuse NO ONE WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO POINT OUT THAT SOMEONE IS PRODUCING AND DISTRIBUTING IT. YOU ARE ENABLING ITS PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION, YOU DOLT!
You are the kind of person who is too stupid to be considered a feminist, a leftist or anything else but someone too stupid for anyone to take seriously.
How do you think they arrest and prosecute these guys in the very few instances when the people doing what they do all over Tumblr and other social networking sites are doing in plain sight are prosecuted?
Go back to play-land, I write for adults.
Update II Go tell it to Tumblr, if it's illegal to just look at what they've got up there then millions who stumble across what they openly distribute are guilty of a crime. No one has been prosecuted for distributing pedophile porn on Tumblr, if my posting this leads to someone getting prosecuted and it getting taken down, well, dopey, why do you think I wrote this?
I won't make it easier by providing links and I won't post images of real people being raped, violently abused or degraded. I will certainly not post images of children or others being raped and tortured.
But here's a description posted by the owner of a website of the content on just one of the kind of Tumblr blogs I was talking about. It is the only time I am going to post something like this. I copied and pasted into unformatted type directly from the text on the website, the swastikas are contained in the text, I didn't insert them. The Swastikas are all over the place as are all kinds of other symbols of white supremacy.
Filthy 卐 Brutal 卐 White
spit. sweat. piss. cum. rubber. slings. leather. cockrings. ballstretchers. ink. piercings. toxic. breeding. taboo. breath control. s&m. torture. violence. gunsex. rednecks. military. poppers. smoke. fisting. k9. electro. dungeons. bondage. skinheads. rawfucking. incest. groups. Dad/son. 卐 wHHite only 卐 Wickr: AmorFati88
If the swastikas weren't a clue notice the wHHite and 88, skinheads, etc. Mixing sado-masochism, pedophilia, incest and neo-Nazism is the content of this freely available website on one of the more popular "social networking" sites. I will call your attention to the "networking" part of that term which is rattled off without consideration of its meaning. Tumblr is one of the most networked of networking sites. Most of them, including many of the worst porn sites on them operate as a network of people who find similar things arousing, often some of them are thinly covered prostitution operations.
Nazis mixed with sexual arousal, Nazism as sexy and desirable, presenting domination, torture, use, racism and antisemitism in the context of sexual arousal, what could be the harm in that, right? It can't possibly have any effect on anyone, right? Just like those oil industry propaganda spots with the sexy-cool blond. They hired her because no one would be influenced by her appearance and voice. Right? Somehow, I've got a feeling someone said something like that in Weimar Germany while virtuously preening in their great liberality. My guess would be that if you objected to Tumblr, they'd say "free speech". I've had that answer when I've noted social media companies were hosting overt neo-Nazi content. I got no answer when I noted that neo-Nazis didn't believe in free speech so they had no right to claim it.
It's hardly the worst that you can find though it is pretty bad and that is available to anyone of any age on the internet with a few clicks. Lots of the pictures are of men raping what appears to me to be young boys. One of the pictures shows a naked boy in a cage with the advice that that's how daddy should keep his boy after the age of 5.
But, so long as no one is wearing a Roman collar, that's OK with you guys, isn't it? You figure they don't really mean it and that it won't encourage those who are so inclined? Maybe you think it can be dismissed as "satire" though the photos and images, the brutality, the grimacing, the hate messages, etc. look pretty unsatirical to me.
Update: You are a complete idiot.
"You're perpetuating child abuse by writing about this."
Oh, my, you're even stupider than I thought. If everyone followed your rule that everyone who so much as looks at images of pedophile porn is participating in abuse NO ONE WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO POINT OUT THAT SOMEONE IS PRODUCING AND DISTRIBUTING IT. YOU ARE ENABLING ITS PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION, YOU DOLT!
You are the kind of person who is too stupid to be considered a feminist, a leftist or anything else but someone too stupid for anyone to take seriously.
How do you think they arrest and prosecute these guys in the very few instances when the people doing what they do all over Tumblr and other social networking sites are doing in plain sight are prosecuted?
Go back to play-land, I write for adults.
Update II Go tell it to Tumblr, if it's illegal to just look at what they've got up there then millions who stumble across what they openly distribute are guilty of a crime. No one has been prosecuted for distributing pedophile porn on Tumblr, if my posting this leads to someone getting prosecuted and it getting taken down, well, dopey, why do you think I wrote this?
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Ellen Davis: The Way of Manna: Culture and Agriculture in the Hebrew Bible
I have found that, contrary to the contemporary common received wisdom, if you want a truly deep reading of history and literature, read or listen to a theologian or a scripture authority. I wasn't familiar with Ellen Davis's work before hearing Krista Tippett's brief exchange about her with Walter Breuggemann during a pause in their formal dicussion. I will be reading her book, Scripture Culture and Agriculture as soon as I can get hold of a copy.
We are in the period where people will learn that if they don't abandon the culture and economics of unsustainability, of unequal distribution of goods and resource we are going to die. We live, conservative and liberal in the culture of death that Breuggemann talked about. That choice is the price of intelligence, we will have to use it for the common good, not relying on what we want without considering the consequences of getting as much of that as we can figure out how to amass.
For example, I think it's ever clearer that we're on the cusp of choosing between having billionaires and millionaires among us or doing without things like self-government or a livable environment. In ever less deniable fact, the choice is between sustaining an international billionaire class of Pharaohs or having a water supply, food, housing, and, ultimately, continuing on with the species. Given what's happening in the United States and virtually every other country in the developed world and the corruption in the rest, I'm not optimistic.
This lecture, reading the text of Exodus in the way that Ellen Davis does, provides a powerful context for thinking about the issues we face. I think it's a lot more important than reiterating the Just-so stories derived from natural selection. It's clear that we can't continue under the system of survival of the fittest because the fittest, equipped with intelligence, culture, government, science and technology will lead to the death of our species as it is leading to the death of so many other species. We won't survive unless we reject that as a way of human conduct. The way we will survive in the desert of our own making is egalitarian justice, it isn't the way of scientistic modernism.
And now that I've left you with something to think about, see you later.
I'm going To Be Away Till Thursday If Not Longer
Family issues.
Here is an really great conversation between Krista Tippett and Walter Breuggemann about the Prophetic Imagination.
Here is a partial transcript of it, as condensed for the program On Being.
MS. TIPPETT: You know, I heard you speak very poignantly this morning to preachers about the fact that there are things that can't be said from the pulpit. Sometimes it feels like they should be said. You said there are silences that it's hard to break. Following on the way we're talking about, this is hard for preachers, religious leaders, to adopt this prophetic voice or draw on these prophetic themes. You know, I think even if you and I talk about this, it's kind of a difficult conversation to have in this culture, right?
MR. BRUEGGEMANN: It's very difficult, and I think the difficulty is that all of us, liberals and conservatives, all of us are basically contained in the ideology of consumer capitalism. We want that to be our universe of meaning. And when you get a poetic articulation that moves outside of that, it's just too anxiety-producing for most of us, so we try to stop that kind of talk. In a local church, obviously people have a lot of leverage for being able to stop that kind of talk.
MS. TIPPETT: So what is it hard for preachers to talk about here?
MR. BRUEGGEMANN: Well, I think at the broadest level, it is hard to talk about the fact — I think it's a fact — that our society has chosen a path of death in which we have reduced everything to a commodity. We believe that there are technical solutions to everything, so it doesn't matter whether you talk about the over-reliance on technology, the mad pursuit of commodity goods, our passion for violence now expressed as our war policies. All of those are interrelated to each other and none of us, very few of us, really want to have that exposed as an inadequate and dehumanizing way to live. I think, if one is grounded in the truth of the gospel as a Christian, that's what we have to talk about. So preachers are really put in a very difficult fix of having been entrusted to talk about that stuff.
MS. TIPPETT: And they also belong to this culture.
MR. BRUEGGEMANN: That's right.
Here is an really great conversation between Krista Tippett and Walter Breuggemann about the Prophetic Imagination.
Here is a partial transcript of it, as condensed for the program On Being.
MS. TIPPETT: You know, I heard you speak very poignantly this morning to preachers about the fact that there are things that can't be said from the pulpit. Sometimes it feels like they should be said. You said there are silences that it's hard to break. Following on the way we're talking about, this is hard for preachers, religious leaders, to adopt this prophetic voice or draw on these prophetic themes. You know, I think even if you and I talk about this, it's kind of a difficult conversation to have in this culture, right?
MR. BRUEGGEMANN: It's very difficult, and I think the difficulty is that all of us, liberals and conservatives, all of us are basically contained in the ideology of consumer capitalism. We want that to be our universe of meaning. And when you get a poetic articulation that moves outside of that, it's just too anxiety-producing for most of us, so we try to stop that kind of talk. In a local church, obviously people have a lot of leverage for being able to stop that kind of talk.
MS. TIPPETT: So what is it hard for preachers to talk about here?
MR. BRUEGGEMANN: Well, I think at the broadest level, it is hard to talk about the fact — I think it's a fact — that our society has chosen a path of death in which we have reduced everything to a commodity. We believe that there are technical solutions to everything, so it doesn't matter whether you talk about the over-reliance on technology, the mad pursuit of commodity goods, our passion for violence now expressed as our war policies. All of those are interrelated to each other and none of us, very few of us, really want to have that exposed as an inadequate and dehumanizing way to live. I think, if one is grounded in the truth of the gospel as a Christian, that's what we have to talk about. So preachers are really put in a very difficult fix of having been entrusted to talk about that stuff.
MS. TIPPETT: And they also belong to this culture.
MR. BRUEGGEMANN: That's right.
Monday, April 4, 2016
No More Blues Songs
Hey, I'd have taken the unbanning of Gomez as a message to all of you from the guy some of you call "Dad". That is if I cared, which I don't. Now, I'm going to filter all of you out so don't bother trying to involve me with your soap opera. I've got other plans with other people.
Who Cares If They Don't Read It? A Response
Well, I can't stop people from taking parts of what I say out of context to misrepresent what I said and I can't stop idiots who think they know what I said without reading it based on that misrepresentation. I can choose to figure idiots will be idiots and liars will be liars and they will impress each other but I shouldn't let that determine what I say. Who knows, maybe one or another of the people who see that might wonder what it really said and read what it misrepresents.
I do know that I am enjoying this a lot more as I ignore them and write what I think I should. I don't write for an audience of idiots and liars. I'll let other people do that.
I do know that I am enjoying this a lot more as I ignore them and write what I think I should. I don't write for an audience of idiots and liars. I'll let other people do that.
Once You've Seen Through The Porn Industries Phony Catch 22 Ruse You Won't Be Intimidated Into Silence
There is nothing more obviously hypocritical and a phony set-up job than the traditional pseudo-liberal response to someone objecting to pornography. If you have not looked at it, you are condemned as criticizing something you haven't looked at, if you have looked at it you are called a hypocrite because you've looked at porn and are assumed to be a consumer of it. It's a set up job which has the effect of inoculating pornography from any criticism, of creating a situation in which no criticism of it is permitted.
If someone criticizes Donald Trump on the basis of having heard what he says, no one is going to accuse you of agreeing with him because you listened to him and are informed about the content of his speech. In fact, it's considered a fair attack to use the content he spewed because you don't rely on what someone else represented that as being, you know first hand what he said. But if you do the same with porn the irrational, habitual recitation - instilled by decades of messaging in the movies and the media and its hired legal team - is that because you've looked at it that means you are prohibited from talking about what you've seen and read because you looked at it and know what it contains. So, you can't criticize porn if you haven't looked at it and once you've looked at it you can't criticize it, either. It's a well known form of dishonest argument called "heads I win, tails you lose". Just as an aside, it's pretty much what much of pseudo-skeptical argument is based on, as well.
Well, I have looked at a lot of porn because it is first and foremost in the business of promoting inequality, hatred, degradation and torture of people and the deaths of people and animals as sexual gratification, easily more than 95% of that the gratification and domination of men over women, children and men presented as weaker than those dominating them. I've looked at it long enough to know that it has grown steadily worse, forms of abuse and degradation that were either absent or very rare have become commonplace as pornographers find that men habituated to their previous level of that need to have it kicked up a notch.
Just as an example, in one area of porn that grotesque hypocrisy of the pseudo-liberal, pro-porn position is absolutely clear. The current fashion of alleged liberals is that no hate talk about LGBT people is to be permitted, to even skirt the practice of degrading or stereotyping LGBT people is to be hectored and blog-mobbed into silence. And, you know, I'm actually OK with that. I'm totally against the toleration of hate speech in society and think we'd all be a lot better off if all of it was suppressed.
BUT when even entirely worse hate speech against LGBT people is done in the context of sexual arousal, in porn, the same people who would jump down someones' throat if what they said could be remotely construed or distorted into an attack against LGBT people, are 100000% OK with it and they will go to any length to protect that presentation of the most vicious hatred because, you know, "free-speech". Though what I think it really boils down to is that the condemnation of porn has been made a cultural marker for Biblical fundamentalism, especially associated with Southerners and Mid-Westerners and their presumed inferiority to secularists who have been to college (as in fact many Southern and Mid-Western Fundamentalists have) by secularists who love nothing, including the values of real liberalism and the intended beneficiaries of those, none of those is as dear to such self-defined "leftists" as their own belief in their own superiority. Which, come to think of it, isn't entirely removed from the dominance-submission theme of porn.
I will speak only for myself as a gay man who is an equality absolutist and say that gay porn is the primary venue for promoting the hatred of gay men in the world today. Both in quantity, virulence and in the context in which it is consumed, hatred of gay men and, especially, hatred of gay boys in porn is far worse than that spouted by hate-talking religious figures and politicians. It is designed to promote and exploit psychological damage induced by hate and bigotry within us.
Several years ago I pointed that out concerning the posting of Russian neo-Nazis who lured gay men by ads for hook ups and who attacked, beat and humiliated men and boys who answered the ads, filmed and photographed their attacks on them and posted the results in online media. The content of those, the physical attacks, the humiliation, the violence, the messages of, hate are exactly the same content as found in a huge percentage of online gay porn. Only with gay porn, it is sold as sexually desireable for men to imagine themselves in either the role of the dominator and abuser or as the "fag" to be used by an "alpha male" or a "daddy" or some other man who will hate them and use them.
Here are some of the milder texts you will find with a simple web search, the kind you could easily see while searching for something entirely unrelated to porn. I won't post the photos, gifs and videos that involve real degradation, humiliation, hatred and general abuse, bullying and the promotion of negative stereotypes of real people. That would merely make me an accomplice in that.
"A collection of shit that turns me on involving the humiliation of faggots in the service of alpha males."
"There are two types of men; Alpha Men, who take what they want and are excused of crude behavior simply because They're the Big Men, then there are faggots, (who may or may not actually be gay men) who are more often than not the effeminate men, as they are usually just Alphas bravely living their life against diversity, who will knowingly bend to Their every Masculine whim, no matter how crude, cruel, humiliating, or pathetic, simply because they are there for the express purpose of making the Better, Stronger (and often bigger-dicked), Dominant Male's life better in every way they can with their faggot obedience.
This is just a collection of Alpha Guys doing their natural things."
"Even though I'm way younger than you, it is clear that I'm way more superior than you ever have been or ever will become. I like to talk to other alphas too."
Slapping, spitting on, spitting in the mouth of, urinating on, being made to drink urine, beating, punching, violently forcing submission, binding, torturing, choking (seriously), raping, maiming, usually smaller, younger boys ,.... all of those are depicted as sexually satisfying on such websites, generally older, bigger men and boys - almost all of them white - doing that to younger, smaller ones, not infrequently darker skinned or members of racial or ethnic minorities. Many of the "models assumed to be 18 or older" are obviously boys who could easily be found in 3rd world countries, many of them South-East Asian.
And there is open peddling of photos and films of men raping what are almost certainly underage boys, much of it with captions and narratives of incest or coaches, teachers, other men in authority raping underage boys.
"Coach disciplining a player."
"Uncle Mike is teaching me how to rub my glans and cum after my circumcision operation."
"taking it for Daddy like a good boy"
"My little brother has a G spot in his ass, so it really is just like a pussy."
I'd love to hear the folks who were all in a rage over what Josh Dugger did last year explain why that's A-OK.
Oh, and did I point out that such "gay" porn also promotes some of the most overt misogyny you will find outside of straight porn.
"This is evolution at work, it is obvious that our dicks are useless and that our cunts are for the use of real Males."
If you throw appropriate search terms into the mix you will find a lot of this porn also promotes neo-Nazism, skinheads, the American swastika aka, the Confederate Flag and overt white supremacy as sexually arousing. No, I don't link to neo-Nazi content. I have noticed an increase in that over the past several years along with an increase in violence and the depravity of the degradation.
And, remember, in the inverted morality of pseudo-liberalism, when those things are done in the name of sexual arousal and satisfaction, that sanctifies them and makes them into some kind of act worthy of legal protection if not a positive value. We practice child temple prostitution now, only its in the temple of secularism and constitutionalism that its done.
Everything that can be said about the content of gay porn will be found in straight porn, with the adjustments made to appeal to the men who want that content. If anything the misogyny that is ubiquitous in gay porn is a dim reflection of the content of straight porn. That "feminists" in such large numbers have been intimidated into passively accepting or even promoting the pornographers' interests by the "free speech" slogans the porn-industry peddled and the porn-industry invented "sex-pos" ruse is one of the most depressing parts of current "leftist" activity.
Many of these porn sites carry links where you can find boys marketed to men who, no doubt, want to do what they've seen in the porn. The distinction made between porn and the trafficking of peoples' bodies for actual sex is a total lie, the two things are just arms of the same industry. That the profits of both suffer from "amateurs" getting into it doesn't make the most destructive part of it any less bad. I'd say it's a sign that they have infected the wider culture with the worst of all sexually transmitted diseases, acquiescence to your own victimization. Steve Biko said that the strongest weapon which the racist oppressor has is the mind of the oppressed, that oppression is what porn sells to its victims, the use of that damaged mind is also taught to those who want to take advantage of it.
If it were my choice, none of it would be available online or published. Its only use would be to track down sex traffickers and the men who pay them to use people. Anyone who would want that done to them needs intensive treatment if not protection from the internalized hatred which is also sold by porn. Victimizers need victims, usually more than one each, the users will be almost all men, their victims can be anyone who can be victimized and victims get used up and discarded so new ones need to be found.
If someone criticizes Donald Trump on the basis of having heard what he says, no one is going to accuse you of agreeing with him because you listened to him and are informed about the content of his speech. In fact, it's considered a fair attack to use the content he spewed because you don't rely on what someone else represented that as being, you know first hand what he said. But if you do the same with porn the irrational, habitual recitation - instilled by decades of messaging in the movies and the media and its hired legal team - is that because you've looked at it that means you are prohibited from talking about what you've seen and read because you looked at it and know what it contains. So, you can't criticize porn if you haven't looked at it and once you've looked at it you can't criticize it, either. It's a well known form of dishonest argument called "heads I win, tails you lose". Just as an aside, it's pretty much what much of pseudo-skeptical argument is based on, as well.
Well, I have looked at a lot of porn because it is first and foremost in the business of promoting inequality, hatred, degradation and torture of people and the deaths of people and animals as sexual gratification, easily more than 95% of that the gratification and domination of men over women, children and men presented as weaker than those dominating them. I've looked at it long enough to know that it has grown steadily worse, forms of abuse and degradation that were either absent or very rare have become commonplace as pornographers find that men habituated to their previous level of that need to have it kicked up a notch.
Just as an example, in one area of porn that grotesque hypocrisy of the pseudo-liberal, pro-porn position is absolutely clear. The current fashion of alleged liberals is that no hate talk about LGBT people is to be permitted, to even skirt the practice of degrading or stereotyping LGBT people is to be hectored and blog-mobbed into silence. And, you know, I'm actually OK with that. I'm totally against the toleration of hate speech in society and think we'd all be a lot better off if all of it was suppressed.
BUT when even entirely worse hate speech against LGBT people is done in the context of sexual arousal, in porn, the same people who would jump down someones' throat if what they said could be remotely construed or distorted into an attack against LGBT people, are 100000% OK with it and they will go to any length to protect that presentation of the most vicious hatred because, you know, "free-speech". Though what I think it really boils down to is that the condemnation of porn has been made a cultural marker for Biblical fundamentalism, especially associated with Southerners and Mid-Westerners and their presumed inferiority to secularists who have been to college (as in fact many Southern and Mid-Western Fundamentalists have) by secularists who love nothing, including the values of real liberalism and the intended beneficiaries of those, none of those is as dear to such self-defined "leftists" as their own belief in their own superiority. Which, come to think of it, isn't entirely removed from the dominance-submission theme of porn.
I will speak only for myself as a gay man who is an equality absolutist and say that gay porn is the primary venue for promoting the hatred of gay men in the world today. Both in quantity, virulence and in the context in which it is consumed, hatred of gay men and, especially, hatred of gay boys in porn is far worse than that spouted by hate-talking religious figures and politicians. It is designed to promote and exploit psychological damage induced by hate and bigotry within us.
Several years ago I pointed that out concerning the posting of Russian neo-Nazis who lured gay men by ads for hook ups and who attacked, beat and humiliated men and boys who answered the ads, filmed and photographed their attacks on them and posted the results in online media. The content of those, the physical attacks, the humiliation, the violence, the messages of, hate are exactly the same content as found in a huge percentage of online gay porn. Only with gay porn, it is sold as sexually desireable for men to imagine themselves in either the role of the dominator and abuser or as the "fag" to be used by an "alpha male" or a "daddy" or some other man who will hate them and use them.
Here are some of the milder texts you will find with a simple web search, the kind you could easily see while searching for something entirely unrelated to porn. I won't post the photos, gifs and videos that involve real degradation, humiliation, hatred and general abuse, bullying and the promotion of negative stereotypes of real people. That would merely make me an accomplice in that.
"A collection of shit that turns me on involving the humiliation of faggots in the service of alpha males."
"There are two types of men; Alpha Men, who take what they want and are excused of crude behavior simply because They're the Big Men, then there are faggots, (who may or may not actually be gay men) who are more often than not the effeminate men, as they are usually just Alphas bravely living their life against diversity, who will knowingly bend to Their every Masculine whim, no matter how crude, cruel, humiliating, or pathetic, simply because they are there for the express purpose of making the Better, Stronger (and often bigger-dicked), Dominant Male's life better in every way they can with their faggot obedience.
This is just a collection of Alpha Guys doing their natural things."
"Even though I'm way younger than you, it is clear that I'm way more superior than you ever have been or ever will become. I like to talk to other alphas too."
Slapping, spitting on, spitting in the mouth of, urinating on, being made to drink urine, beating, punching, violently forcing submission, binding, torturing, choking (seriously), raping, maiming, usually smaller, younger boys ,.... all of those are depicted as sexually satisfying on such websites, generally older, bigger men and boys - almost all of them white - doing that to younger, smaller ones, not infrequently darker skinned or members of racial or ethnic minorities. Many of the "models assumed to be 18 or older" are obviously boys who could easily be found in 3rd world countries, many of them South-East Asian.
And there is open peddling of photos and films of men raping what are almost certainly underage boys, much of it with captions and narratives of incest or coaches, teachers, other men in authority raping underage boys.
"Coach disciplining a player."
"Uncle Mike is teaching me how to rub my glans and cum after my circumcision operation."
"taking it for Daddy like a good boy"
"My little brother has a G spot in his ass, so it really is just like a pussy."
I'd love to hear the folks who were all in a rage over what Josh Dugger did last year explain why that's A-OK.
Oh, and did I point out that such "gay" porn also promotes some of the most overt misogyny you will find outside of straight porn.
"This is evolution at work, it is obvious that our dicks are useless and that our cunts are for the use of real Males."
If you throw appropriate search terms into the mix you will find a lot of this porn also promotes neo-Nazism, skinheads, the American swastika aka, the Confederate Flag and overt white supremacy as sexually arousing. No, I don't link to neo-Nazi content. I have noticed an increase in that over the past several years along with an increase in violence and the depravity of the degradation.
And, remember, in the inverted morality of pseudo-liberalism, when those things are done in the name of sexual arousal and satisfaction, that sanctifies them and makes them into some kind of act worthy of legal protection if not a positive value. We practice child temple prostitution now, only its in the temple of secularism and constitutionalism that its done.
Everything that can be said about the content of gay porn will be found in straight porn, with the adjustments made to appeal to the men who want that content. If anything the misogyny that is ubiquitous in gay porn is a dim reflection of the content of straight porn. That "feminists" in such large numbers have been intimidated into passively accepting or even promoting the pornographers' interests by the "free speech" slogans the porn-industry peddled and the porn-industry invented "sex-pos" ruse is one of the most depressing parts of current "leftist" activity.
Many of these porn sites carry links where you can find boys marketed to men who, no doubt, want to do what they've seen in the porn. The distinction made between porn and the trafficking of peoples' bodies for actual sex is a total lie, the two things are just arms of the same industry. That the profits of both suffer from "amateurs" getting into it doesn't make the most destructive part of it any less bad. I'd say it's a sign that they have infected the wider culture with the worst of all sexually transmitted diseases, acquiescence to your own victimization. Steve Biko said that the strongest weapon which the racist oppressor has is the mind of the oppressed, that oppression is what porn sells to its victims, the use of that damaged mind is also taught to those who want to take advantage of it.
If it were my choice, none of it would be available online or published. Its only use would be to track down sex traffickers and the men who pay them to use people. Anyone who would want that done to them needs intensive treatment if not protection from the internalized hatred which is also sold by porn. Victimizers need victims, usually more than one each, the users will be almost all men, their victims can be anyone who can be victimized and victims get used up and discarded so new ones need to be found.
Marc Andrus, the Bishop of California With Rupert Sheldrake: Detoxifying Christianity
This dialogue between Andrus and Sheldrake is interesting because it accurately identifies why there is a taboo on Christianity in the so-called educated classes in the United States, Britain and so many other places these days. I was especially interested in how Andrus, who had welcomed a prominent Tibetan Buddhist to speak at Grace Cathedral, when the invitation was reciprocated and he was to talk to a large group of Buddhists, was requested to not mention anything to do with God, Jesus, the Church or Christianity for fear of arousing the hostility of the audience of those on the way to enlightenment.
You can hear that here,
beginning after 8:45.
As someone who studied Buddhism very seriously for a number of years and found that Metta was one of the best things in it, I was surprised that this one venue of hate was common enough with serious practitioners to warrant a request that it not be mentioned. Andrus tells how he handled the situation, which was good, but it would have been far better if it had not been an issue. The Buddhists might want to remove that hang up from their practitioners if it is that big a deal for them.
There is enough in the real history of Christians behaving badly to address without the add-on lies and distortions that are current. Some of those, especially in the English language, are the Britatheists' adoption of anti-Catholic invective whipped up by some of the most hypocritical of people. The Tudor Anglicans and their successors who went on and on about The Inquisition served monarchs who killed many tens of thousands more people than who were ever killed in the centuries that the Inquisition was in existence, but they've never had that fact lead to the condemnation of civil authority, the law, courts, or the rule of law. As Sheldrake points out, it is only when the topic is Christianity, these days, that you are permitted to blame living people for things they not only never had anything to do with, but would be the first to condemn them. I can't imagine any modern Anglican or Episcopalian who would say that it was OK to kill people for religious non-conformity, I can't imagine any Catholic who would say that even Thomas Cranmer should have been burned at the stake, something which he had no problem having a hand in while he served Henry VIII or his son.
If you want to find groups which have put that history behind them, you're most likely to find them among Christian denominations, especially the ones denominated to be "liberals".
The most potent of all powers for the oppression, enslavement and murder of millions and millions, money, wealth, the accumulation of political, police and military power are never held up as worthy of abolition or even discouragement by those modern, educated folk who will buy any lie as long as Christianity is the villain in it. I can not recall, ever, hearing the kind of sob story that is so often heard among atheists, condemning the force of their quite often exaggerated oppression when it was something like that which was the real reason behind it. It wouldn't be fashionable or get you the kind of attention blaming it on Christianity would.
I mentioned the other day how the Nazis had beheaded the Blessed Restituta Kafka for putting crucifixes in hospital rooms in Vienna and have mentioned that in the published intentions of the Nazis after their presumed victory in the war would ban crosses, replacing them with the swastika, the Bible, and everything else from churches, Mein Kampf was to be the only sacred text allowed after their victory. We are seeing something similar has been achieved by the victors in the war through the use of atheist propaganda. Especially as seen in movies and TV.
You can hear that here,
As someone who studied Buddhism very seriously for a number of years and found that Metta was one of the best things in it, I was surprised that this one venue of hate was common enough with serious practitioners to warrant a request that it not be mentioned. Andrus tells how he handled the situation, which was good, but it would have been far better if it had not been an issue. The Buddhists might want to remove that hang up from their practitioners if it is that big a deal for them.
There is enough in the real history of Christians behaving badly to address without the add-on lies and distortions that are current. Some of those, especially in the English language, are the Britatheists' adoption of anti-Catholic invective whipped up by some of the most hypocritical of people. The Tudor Anglicans and their successors who went on and on about The Inquisition served monarchs who killed many tens of thousands more people than who were ever killed in the centuries that the Inquisition was in existence, but they've never had that fact lead to the condemnation of civil authority, the law, courts, or the rule of law. As Sheldrake points out, it is only when the topic is Christianity, these days, that you are permitted to blame living people for things they not only never had anything to do with, but would be the first to condemn them. I can't imagine any modern Anglican or Episcopalian who would say that it was OK to kill people for religious non-conformity, I can't imagine any Catholic who would say that even Thomas Cranmer should have been burned at the stake, something which he had no problem having a hand in while he served Henry VIII or his son.
If you want to find groups which have put that history behind them, you're most likely to find them among Christian denominations, especially the ones denominated to be "liberals".
The most potent of all powers for the oppression, enslavement and murder of millions and millions, money, wealth, the accumulation of political, police and military power are never held up as worthy of abolition or even discouragement by those modern, educated folk who will buy any lie as long as Christianity is the villain in it. I can not recall, ever, hearing the kind of sob story that is so often heard among atheists, condemning the force of their quite often exaggerated oppression when it was something like that which was the real reason behind it. It wouldn't be fashionable or get you the kind of attention blaming it on Christianity would.
I mentioned the other day how the Nazis had beheaded the Blessed Restituta Kafka for putting crucifixes in hospital rooms in Vienna and have mentioned that in the published intentions of the Nazis after their presumed victory in the war would ban crosses, replacing them with the swastika, the Bible, and everything else from churches, Mein Kampf was to be the only sacred text allowed after their victory. We are seeing something similar has been achieved by the victors in the war through the use of atheist propaganda. Especially as seen in movies and TV.
Normal People Care About Children And Respect People Like Fred Rogers
I have never been the parent of a child. Since I'm gay that's not surprising but if I were straight it would be more surprising because most straight people eventually have at least one child, many LGBT folk do as well but that only adds to my point.
Childless though I am, I come from a large family and as a single adult I've often been asked to take care of my nieces and nephews and even a few grand nieces and nephews. I declared about five years ago that I'm retired from being the unpaid baby-sitter. My excuse was that my sisters and brothers were retiring and they could take care of their own grandchildren. Children are as important as anyone else and as people who are vulnerable, unable to take care of themselves and protect themselves I can't understand any adult who doesn't care about them or anyone else in that condition. Though I have had to conclude that there are large numbers who don't care about them and even larger numbers who only care about the ones they are closely related to. That's what political conservatism of the worst sort is caused by, people who don't care about vulnerable people or people unrelated to them in general.
While I am absolutely in favor of adults who don't care about children not having any or having anything to do with them, I have to say I find it everything from odd to pathological, depending on the varieties of people who don't like children. And, let me add, since I know how any opportunity to lie about what is intended will be taken, that not everyone who chooses to not have children are indifferent to or hostile to them. I'm not indifferent or hostile to them, after all. Voluntary childlessness is not the same thing as narcissism, you can be a full blown narcissist and have scads of children. Which would take us back to so many of those who are voting Republican these days.
Apparently some people thought it was absurd of me to mention Fred Rogers in my post on Saturday. It was pointed out to me that there was considerable mockery about it. Of those who snarked on that point, those whose identity I know of are all childless, I can't imagine anyone who had children or who cared about children would find it ridiculous or even strange that I said what I did.
Fred Rogers was one of the most conscientious people who dedicated their professional life to benefiting children in the past fifty years. His ministry was a very important service in the lives of millions of very young children. And while he could have made many millions of dollars by accepting any of the offers to license the characters and images he invented, he always refused because he knew how damaging commercials and commerce were to children.
If you don't care about children, it's not surprising that you would be unimpressed by that career choice, I would imagine you don't think very highly of teachers, especially teachers in the early grades and earlier. Normal people do care about children and they care about the conscientiousness of those who teach them, in person or through the media. Fred Rogers was one of the foremost of those who were.
The world might be divided into those who want to help children develop into good, happy, well-balanced people who aren't sociopathic, self-centered, brats. Those brats are the ones who are on the other side of that divide, the kind of people who don't care about children. They're the kind of people who grow up to use people for what they can get out of them instead of having normal relationships. They prey on people who can't protect themselves in many cases. They also tend to have a whole catalog of character defects. Maybe no one cared enough about them as children to help them get past those. Frankly, after they've reached about the age of twenty I'm not too concerned with what they think about what I say. I don't care any more about that when they're 40 or 60.
And I'll bet there are millions of children who heard the first jazz they ever heard on his show, too.
Childless though I am, I come from a large family and as a single adult I've often been asked to take care of my nieces and nephews and even a few grand nieces and nephews. I declared about five years ago that I'm retired from being the unpaid baby-sitter. My excuse was that my sisters and brothers were retiring and they could take care of their own grandchildren. Children are as important as anyone else and as people who are vulnerable, unable to take care of themselves and protect themselves I can't understand any adult who doesn't care about them or anyone else in that condition. Though I have had to conclude that there are large numbers who don't care about them and even larger numbers who only care about the ones they are closely related to. That's what political conservatism of the worst sort is caused by, people who don't care about vulnerable people or people unrelated to them in general.
While I am absolutely in favor of adults who don't care about children not having any or having anything to do with them, I have to say I find it everything from odd to pathological, depending on the varieties of people who don't like children. And, let me add, since I know how any opportunity to lie about what is intended will be taken, that not everyone who chooses to not have children are indifferent to or hostile to them. I'm not indifferent or hostile to them, after all. Voluntary childlessness is not the same thing as narcissism, you can be a full blown narcissist and have scads of children. Which would take us back to so many of those who are voting Republican these days.
Apparently some people thought it was absurd of me to mention Fred Rogers in my post on Saturday. It was pointed out to me that there was considerable mockery about it. Of those who snarked on that point, those whose identity I know of are all childless, I can't imagine anyone who had children or who cared about children would find it ridiculous or even strange that I said what I did.
Fred Rogers was one of the most conscientious people who dedicated their professional life to benefiting children in the past fifty years. His ministry was a very important service in the lives of millions of very young children. And while he could have made many millions of dollars by accepting any of the offers to license the characters and images he invented, he always refused because he knew how damaging commercials and commerce were to children.
The world might be divided into those who want to help children develop into good, happy, well-balanced people who aren't sociopathic, self-centered, brats. Those brats are the ones who are on the other side of that divide, the kind of people who don't care about children. They're the kind of people who grow up to use people for what they can get out of them instead of having normal relationships. They prey on people who can't protect themselves in many cases. They also tend to have a whole catalog of character defects. Maybe no one cared enough about them as children to help them get past those. Frankly, after they've reached about the age of twenty I'm not too concerned with what they think about what I say. I don't care any more about that when they're 40 or 60.
And I'll bet there are millions of children who heard the first jazz they ever heard on his show, too.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Dave Holland - A New Day
Dave Holland, Bass
Kevin Eubanks, Guitar
Craig Taborn, Piano
Eric Harland, Drums
Empty Chair
Dave holland, Bass
Kevin Eubanks, Guitar
Craig Taborn, Electric keyboard
Eric Harland, Drums
The Great Tenor Player And Musician Gato Barbieri Has Died At 83
Here's one of my favorite Barbieri solos, Carla Bley's What Will Be Left Between Us And The Moon Tonight from the album Tropic Appetites.
Those Who Don't Put Childish Things Away
Someone sent me what I guess is supposed to be a spreadsheet that I'm told was concocted by a fanatical Bernie Sanders supporter. It purports to show corruption in the process. The thing is so illogically, no, pathologically constructed that I can't begin to fathom what she thinks it is supposed to show.
From what I can gather, she entirely discounts the primaries, including only data from caucuses to come to the conclusion that about two-million of the actual votes that Hillary Clinton is ahead by aren't there and that Bernie Sanders is going to be the real nominee. Well, wouldn't it be nice if we could come up with the real true figure of our real wealth by considering our income while excluding, you know, expenses.
I am familiar with the woman who did this and I knew she was prone to believing what she wants to believe and to throwing self-indulgent angry tantrums before this but, really, if this is the way they're thinking in Bernie or Bust land, they're even more guilty of fostering irrationality than I'd suspected.
This campaign for the nomination has exposed a lot of why the nominal left has lost in the past. I was pretty hard on Susan Sarandon the other day - for good reason - but what she said is mild compared to some others are spouting.
I am very far to the left, as far to the left and more so than Bernie Sanders on some issues such as guns, but I've got to tell my fellow leftists that you don't get to have your own facts, you certainly don't get to have your own mathematics. No matter what Michael Moore says, you don't get to have your own rule of law and legal process. Moore is another one whose respect is running at a deficit with me. I have to tell them that a lie isn't as good as the truth even if you can get other people to angrily rant and vent with you by telling them.
As recently as last winter I thought Bernie Sanders was better than this, I still hope to come out of this thinking he's better than some of his more febrile followers. But I've got to tell you that this is the year that I've come to the conclusion that the reason figures and publications and institutions of the left don't have more influence than they do isn't merely because they're locked out and lied about. A lot of it has to do with the kind of self-deluded, paranoid, self-damaging fantasy that a lot of these people live in. I will say that a lot of that comes from the supposed big centers of leftism, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, even. A lot of it comes from the capitol city of unreality, Hollywood.
----------
A Response
I am tired of the same people who whine and complain that the only reason everyone in the world doesn't vote for the candidates of the left is because of lies but who are the first ones to flip out when you propose making those same lies have consequences for the media who lie them. You can't have it both ways. Either you pretend that lies don't have an effect on peoples' voting behavior as you pretend that pornography has no effect on their sexual conduct or you admit that in order for democracy to live, media has to be prevented from peddling lies with the most audience tested methods for effectively selling lies. Democracy, government of, by and for, The People is sacrificed on the altar of First Amendment absolutism and there is no group more enthusiastic about that sacrifice than the people who make money out of the media, the liars and their lawyers, foremost among them.
The theory that the truth will naturally triumph over lies by some inherent atavistic force is the biggest of those lies. It is being disproved in this election, certainly on the Republican side and, I'm afraid, likely to be disproved in the general election ONCE AGAIN. The history of the power of lying in politics, in public affairs, in business is massive proof that it wins far more often than is safe. This past half century, after the Sullivan decision gave lies the same protected status as the truth has been an experiment in how that theory favors liars and the corporate oligarchs who own the media.
Free speech absolutists of the supposed left are the chumps of the oligarchs and their PR operation. They have sold out The People for some of the worst in entertainment and some of the most over-rated literature in history. If Ulysses had to go to save democracy, government by an accurately informed public, I have little doubt that an effective majority on the left who have never read the thing through as they mouth reverence for it and pretend to love it would let democracy go. Frankly, I don't think people who would do that deserve to be taken seriously. They deserve to be shoved aside and ignored.
From what I can gather, she entirely discounts the primaries, including only data from caucuses to come to the conclusion that about two-million of the actual votes that Hillary Clinton is ahead by aren't there and that Bernie Sanders is going to be the real nominee. Well, wouldn't it be nice if we could come up with the real true figure of our real wealth by considering our income while excluding, you know, expenses.
I am familiar with the woman who did this and I knew she was prone to believing what she wants to believe and to throwing self-indulgent angry tantrums before this but, really, if this is the way they're thinking in Bernie or Bust land, they're even more guilty of fostering irrationality than I'd suspected.
This campaign for the nomination has exposed a lot of why the nominal left has lost in the past. I was pretty hard on Susan Sarandon the other day - for good reason - but what she said is mild compared to some others are spouting.
I am very far to the left, as far to the left and more so than Bernie Sanders on some issues such as guns, but I've got to tell my fellow leftists that you don't get to have your own facts, you certainly don't get to have your own mathematics. No matter what Michael Moore says, you don't get to have your own rule of law and legal process. Moore is another one whose respect is running at a deficit with me. I have to tell them that a lie isn't as good as the truth even if you can get other people to angrily rant and vent with you by telling them.
As recently as last winter I thought Bernie Sanders was better than this, I still hope to come out of this thinking he's better than some of his more febrile followers. But I've got to tell you that this is the year that I've come to the conclusion that the reason figures and publications and institutions of the left don't have more influence than they do isn't merely because they're locked out and lied about. A lot of it has to do with the kind of self-deluded, paranoid, self-damaging fantasy that a lot of these people live in. I will say that a lot of that comes from the supposed big centers of leftism, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, even. A lot of it comes from the capitol city of unreality, Hollywood.
----------
A Response
I am tired of the same people who whine and complain that the only reason everyone in the world doesn't vote for the candidates of the left is because of lies but who are the first ones to flip out when you propose making those same lies have consequences for the media who lie them. You can't have it both ways. Either you pretend that lies don't have an effect on peoples' voting behavior as you pretend that pornography has no effect on their sexual conduct or you admit that in order for democracy to live, media has to be prevented from peddling lies with the most audience tested methods for effectively selling lies. Democracy, government of, by and for, The People is sacrificed on the altar of First Amendment absolutism and there is no group more enthusiastic about that sacrifice than the people who make money out of the media, the liars and their lawyers, foremost among them.
The theory that the truth will naturally triumph over lies by some inherent atavistic force is the biggest of those lies. It is being disproved in this election, certainly on the Republican side and, I'm afraid, likely to be disproved in the general election ONCE AGAIN. The history of the power of lying in politics, in public affairs, in business is massive proof that it wins far more often than is safe. This past half century, after the Sullivan decision gave lies the same protected status as the truth has been an experiment in how that theory favors liars and the corporate oligarchs who own the media.
Free speech absolutists of the supposed left are the chumps of the oligarchs and their PR operation. They have sold out The People for some of the worst in entertainment and some of the most over-rated literature in history. If Ulysses had to go to save democracy, government by an accurately informed public, I have little doubt that an effective majority on the left who have never read the thing through as they mouth reverence for it and pretend to love it would let democracy go. Frankly, I don't think people who would do that deserve to be taken seriously. They deserve to be shoved aside and ignored.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)