Eric Hoffer is/was? prescient. I've never fallen for a mass movement my entire life: be it religion, a politician or celebrity (I do have a small bromance on Elon though but the man could never do anything that would cause me to betray my principles). I suppose it could be said that the inability to achieve things in life leads to fanaticism, but I believe it is fear. Everything is fear-based. Religion - fear of death or mortality; Bigotry - fear of the stranger.
It is no wonder that the only things that advertise on talk radio are fear-based products: Tazers; MREs; Gold to hedge when society collapses; Lifelock because criminals are out to get your computer; Home Title Lock because people want to steal your home; ad infinitum. I'll bet Sykes could confirm this from his days on the radio.
So they sell fear to the people who fear things because that's what you do. All of America's kooks operate on fear. Which is probably why I'm not fanatical. Apart from heights I fear nothing
Charlie, you are the first conservative writer I recall who is writing in defense of LGBT individuals. It seems to be open season on LGBT individuals in Republican states.
In Ridgeland, MS, the mayor is withholding funds for the city library until "all homosexual materials are removed", adding that he answers not to the law but only to "the good Lord" on this matter.
The unassuming young library director appealed to the public for support and managed to raise over $100,000 to keep the library operating through September while the dispute with the mayor is settled. Upon taking legal advice, the mayor is now pretending that no ban on books depicting LGBT individuals has been issued, but rather the city is merely in a contract renewal process with the library.
They have now added language to the contract (for some mysterious reason) giving the city the right to demand removal from the library of any "adult material", without defining the term adult material.
It's like 1962 all over again when Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett organized a riot (resulting in several murders) in order to ban black students from attending Mississippi universities. Now in 2022 Mayor Gene McGee is attempting to ban LGBT individuals from the library by proxy, by banning any representation of them in the library books.
I find myself in disbelief that there is so little protection of LGBT individuals from these politicians. They are not targeting other groups such as African-Americans, Asians, or Muslims. I noticed that DeSantis' law protecting children from certain types of instruction doesn't ban discussion of interracial marriage or marriage between people of different religions. They are only banning discussion of relationships between two LGBT people.
The Florida law is targeting one specific group, and I'm wondering why the Constitution doesn't protect LGBT individuals from being singled out by politicians while all the other groups are spared.
Does the recent Supreme Court decision that bans discrimination based on "gender", which is designed to ban discrimination against LGBT Americans, not protect LGBT individuals from laws that single them out by not including all the other protected groups (e.g. women, elderly, nationalities, religions, ethnicity)? In other words, can the Florida law ban instruction on LGBT Americans but not ban instruction on Christians, Blacks, Women, Elderly, Asians, Muslims, and Latinos? Isn't this overt discrimination against LGBT individuals by the state of Florida?
Also, on Wehle's piece, doesn't DOJ have to investigate before indicting? They aren't even doing that. From Dan Goldman on this week's Cafe Insider podcast: (I)f the Department of Justice is doing a serious and intensive investigation, they would have to be subpoenaing a lot of the people in Trump’s orbit to figure out what happened, what he knew, whether there were any defenses that he could raise such as an advice of council defense, as an example, with John Eastman or others, and they would have to be talking to all of these people, and I just don’t think that these witnesses would be quiet if they were to receive outreach from the Department of Justice. So the Department of Justice could very well be doing things behind the scenes quietly, and they would not be leaking in, and they would not be saying anything, but we would hear about it in my opinion, from the people who would have to be the witnesses against Donald Trump.
Charlie, please find someone other than Ruy to talk to. It's not that he isn't right in some ways, but I'm still not convinced he has things to say that are useful for, say, 2022.
I don't think the left focused on AOC to an unhealthy level. I also do not believe that the number of followers she has on twitter is a dismissive platform. Also, I believe (coming from a woman that had to put up with drunk sailors and wash every glass by hand) she has more lived experiences in a common person's life then 80% of congress.....maybe more. I believe the unhealthy criticism and focus on AOC comes directly out of the right. The same people that scream they are against abortion because it kills babies but then reach out to single desperate women with zero support and mountains of social stigma are the same people that need an image and person as a target for their frustrations. Making a face out of their perceived enemy is a simple way to speak to their base. They all do it and they all over simplify complex thought processes. I will say one thing, while AOC may be naive in some of her rhetoric. She is not crazy or detached like MTG and her jewish space laser starting forest fires. And I am completely on board with her when it comes to climate change and taxing the rich. I never attached defund the police specifically to her. If cops become gangs and only jail minorities for low level drug offenses. You could give them a billion dollars and your community wont be any better. The chant should have been don't over fund police (some of them literally have tank size suvs) not defund.
re: Today's pod with Tim. I think a term that has generally been disparaged on the right, but that is intended to capture Tim's concern about how the sort of vague language of the "don't say gay" law and the permission structure it gives to treat LGBTQ people and non-traditional families as second class, is "microaggression." You don't have to use offensive terminology or make outright threats to get the message across.
I think it would really be great if a meme got going, wherein people under the influence of Chris Rufo's bullshit would be referred to as having been "Rufied". As in, "Man, that guy doesn't shut up about CRT and woke Disney - someone really slipped some Rufies into his drink ..."
That quotation from Eric Hoffer made me wonder which intellectuals have unwittingly undermined the public's childlike confidence in institutions or morality, paving the way for fanatics. Is that an allusion to college professors and their adolescent students? Hoffer sounds like Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor claiming that Man cannot tolerate freedom. But if advocating freedom is too dangerous even for the academy, where is it appropriate?
It may just be that I'm a young, but as for Totten's piece - the Winter War? Forgotten? Really?
Again, I'm terminally online, but I've seen it referenced in multiple memes that make little sense without a surface-level knowledge of the war ('Americans when the trees start speaking Vietnamese/Russians when the snow starts speaking Finnish' and a nicely multilayered 'Simo Häyhä right now' [at the start of the invasion] one with the Simpsons image of Lenin bursting out of his glass coffin.)
This is like when someone starts talking to me about how 'people don't know that America ran interment camps for Japanese during WWII or that hormone replacement therapy destroys upper body strength' Uh, yes? They do? This was all covered, everyone?
Regarding the Disney hysteria: In the interest of going on offense of lies, damn lies, and statistics, can I make a plea to have basic statistics be a prerequisite for HS graduation. Think of the massive amounts of hysteria that could be eliminated if everyone learned to ask the clarifying question: Did you mean an increase TO 50% or BY 50%? (or my other favorite: Did you mean 100 PERCENT increase or 100 TIMES increase?) … but alas, creating hysteria is the point.
The GOP has become the party of pathologic anger. The pathologically angry person wakes up angry at the world. His anger is inside, but he doesn't realize it. He looks for outside objects to blame. The only time he feels any relief is when he is able to make others angry. But his relief is always brief. The next morning he wakes up angry and starts all over again. Trump personifies pathologic anger. His brain is on fire.
As an old liberal Democrat I find all the hype about the "squad" a joke. I think that Dumper created the group because they are not white American males and females have no place in his mind. But there is one alledged progressive that I think is off the wall and out of touch with us older moderate Dems (that VOTE). I believe that this Jayapal women who has caused severe damage to Biden because she has a vision of something that does not or should not exist. There is also the Bush women from Missou that is also way off the wall for most of us, maybe in her district but where I live I want a well paid police force that is available when needed. These people are just giving the Republicans votes which is sad because the Dems are going to take a hit this fall. Just wait until Jim Jordon takes control of the house, let the investigations begin!
Rufo's "writings" are exponentially more dangerous to a civil society than the provocateur James Callendar of the 1790's ever was. I wonder if the Framers of the Constitution would have had pause around the concept of "free speech", if a Rufo-like person existed back in the day?
Eric Hoffer is/was? prescient. I've never fallen for a mass movement my entire life: be it religion, a politician or celebrity (I do have a small bromance on Elon though but the man could never do anything that would cause me to betray my principles). I suppose it could be said that the inability to achieve things in life leads to fanaticism, but I believe it is fear. Everything is fear-based. Religion - fear of death or mortality; Bigotry - fear of the stranger.
It is no wonder that the only things that advertise on talk radio are fear-based products: Tazers; MREs; Gold to hedge when society collapses; Lifelock because criminals are out to get your computer; Home Title Lock because people want to steal your home; ad infinitum. I'll bet Sykes could confirm this from his days on the radio.
So they sell fear to the people who fear things because that's what you do. All of America's kooks operate on fear. Which is probably why I'm not fanatical. Apart from heights I fear nothing
Charlie, you are the first conservative writer I recall who is writing in defense of LGBT individuals. It seems to be open season on LGBT individuals in Republican states.
In Ridgeland, MS, the mayor is withholding funds for the city library until "all homosexual materials are removed", adding that he answers not to the law but only to "the good Lord" on this matter.
The unassuming young library director appealed to the public for support and managed to raise over $100,000 to keep the library operating through September while the dispute with the mayor is settled. Upon taking legal advice, the mayor is now pretending that no ban on books depicting LGBT individuals has been issued, but rather the city is merely in a contract renewal process with the library.
They have now added language to the contract (for some mysterious reason) giving the city the right to demand removal from the library of any "adult material", without defining the term adult material.
It's like 1962 all over again when Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett organized a riot (resulting in several murders) in order to ban black students from attending Mississippi universities. Now in 2022 Mayor Gene McGee is attempting to ban LGBT individuals from the library by proxy, by banning any representation of them in the library books.
I find myself in disbelief that there is so little protection of LGBT individuals from these politicians. They are not targeting other groups such as African-Americans, Asians, or Muslims. I noticed that DeSantis' law protecting children from certain types of instruction doesn't ban discussion of interracial marriage or marriage between people of different religions. They are only banning discussion of relationships between two LGBT people.
The Florida law is targeting one specific group, and I'm wondering why the Constitution doesn't protect LGBT individuals from being singled out by politicians while all the other groups are spared.
Does the recent Supreme Court decision that bans discrimination based on "gender", which is designed to ban discrimination against LGBT Americans, not protect LGBT individuals from laws that single them out by not including all the other protected groups (e.g. women, elderly, nationalities, religions, ethnicity)? In other words, can the Florida law ban instruction on LGBT Americans but not ban instruction on Christians, Blacks, Women, Elderly, Asians, Muslims, and Latinos? Isn't this overt discrimination against LGBT individuals by the state of Florida?
Thanks for exposing Rufo's lies.
Also, on Wehle's piece, doesn't DOJ have to investigate before indicting? They aren't even doing that. From Dan Goldman on this week's Cafe Insider podcast: (I)f the Department of Justice is doing a serious and intensive investigation, they would have to be subpoenaing a lot of the people in Trump’s orbit to figure out what happened, what he knew, whether there were any defenses that he could raise such as an advice of council defense, as an example, with John Eastman or others, and they would have to be talking to all of these people, and I just don’t think that these witnesses would be quiet if they were to receive outreach from the Department of Justice. So the Department of Justice could very well be doing things behind the scenes quietly, and they would not be leaking in, and they would not be saying anything, but we would hear about it in my opinion, from the people who would have to be the witnesses against Donald Trump.
Charlie, please find someone other than Ruy to talk to. It's not that he isn't right in some ways, but I'm still not convinced he has things to say that are useful for, say, 2022.
I don't think the left focused on AOC to an unhealthy level. I also do not believe that the number of followers she has on twitter is a dismissive platform. Also, I believe (coming from a woman that had to put up with drunk sailors and wash every glass by hand) she has more lived experiences in a common person's life then 80% of congress.....maybe more. I believe the unhealthy criticism and focus on AOC comes directly out of the right. The same people that scream they are against abortion because it kills babies but then reach out to single desperate women with zero support and mountains of social stigma are the same people that need an image and person as a target for their frustrations. Making a face out of their perceived enemy is a simple way to speak to their base. They all do it and they all over simplify complex thought processes. I will say one thing, while AOC may be naive in some of her rhetoric. She is not crazy or detached like MTG and her jewish space laser starting forest fires. And I am completely on board with her when it comes to climate change and taxing the rich. I never attached defund the police specifically to her. If cops become gangs and only jail minorities for low level drug offenses. You could give them a billion dollars and your community wont be any better. The chant should have been don't over fund police (some of them literally have tank size suvs) not defund.
AOC has created more Republicans than Reagan.
re: Today's pod with Tim. I think a term that has generally been disparaged on the right, but that is intended to capture Tim's concern about how the sort of vague language of the "don't say gay" law and the permission structure it gives to treat LGBTQ people and non-traditional families as second class, is "microaggression." You don't have to use offensive terminology or make outright threats to get the message across.
I think it would really be great if a meme got going, wherein people under the influence of Chris Rufo's bullshit would be referred to as having been "Rufied". As in, "Man, that guy doesn't shut up about CRT and woke Disney - someone really slipped some Rufies into his drink ..."
Someone please make this happen.
That quotation from Eric Hoffer made me wonder which intellectuals have unwittingly undermined the public's childlike confidence in institutions or morality, paving the way for fanatics. Is that an allusion to college professors and their adolescent students? Hoffer sounds like Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor claiming that Man cannot tolerate freedom. But if advocating freedom is too dangerous even for the academy, where is it appropriate?
It may just be that I'm a young, but as for Totten's piece - the Winter War? Forgotten? Really?
Again, I'm terminally online, but I've seen it referenced in multiple memes that make little sense without a surface-level knowledge of the war ('Americans when the trees start speaking Vietnamese/Russians when the snow starts speaking Finnish' and a nicely multilayered 'Simo Häyhä right now' [at the start of the invasion] one with the Simpsons image of Lenin bursting out of his glass coffin.)
This is like when someone starts talking to me about how 'people don't know that America ran interment camps for Japanese during WWII or that hormone replacement therapy destroys upper body strength' Uh, yes? They do? This was all covered, everyone?
Regarding the Disney hysteria: In the interest of going on offense of lies, damn lies, and statistics, can I make a plea to have basic statistics be a prerequisite for HS graduation. Think of the massive amounts of hysteria that could be eliminated if everyone learned to ask the clarifying question: Did you mean an increase TO 50% or BY 50%? (or my other favorite: Did you mean 100 PERCENT increase or 100 TIMES increase?) … but alas, creating hysteria is the point.
Tucker is much more than putin - fluffer. This fluffer rhymes but is just shy of the mark.
The GOP has become the party of pathologic anger. The pathologically angry person wakes up angry at the world. His anger is inside, but he doesn't realize it. He looks for outside objects to blame. The only time he feels any relief is when he is able to make others angry. But his relief is always brief. The next morning he wakes up angry and starts all over again. Trump personifies pathologic anger. His brain is on fire.
As an old liberal Democrat I find all the hype about the "squad" a joke. I think that Dumper created the group because they are not white American males and females have no place in his mind. But there is one alledged progressive that I think is off the wall and out of touch with us older moderate Dems (that VOTE). I believe that this Jayapal women who has caused severe damage to Biden because she has a vision of something that does not or should not exist. There is also the Bush women from Missou that is also way off the wall for most of us, maybe in her district but where I live I want a well paid police force that is available when needed. These people are just giving the Republicans votes which is sad because the Dems are going to take a hit this fall. Just wait until Jim Jordon takes control of the house, let the investigations begin!
Rufo's "writings" are exponentially more dangerous to a civil society than the provocateur James Callendar of the 1790's ever was. I wonder if the Framers of the Constitution would have had pause around the concept of "free speech", if a Rufo-like person existed back in the day?
Wait. I thought it was the woke left who cancelled people's free speech. So now there is a woke right. Jeeze, I can't keep it all srraight.