All present at that meeting are friends and community over generations. Still, no one mentions the elephant in the room. The rural don’t trust Gov. or urban folk. Few will admit that their AR-10 or AR-15 isn’t for hunting or sport. They own those for defense from enemies domestic.
treebeard-
We have lots of problems. What’s the difference? We can talk about them without repercussion. We go on, and on, and on about all the problems. I do this all the time too. Yet - we remain free to do so. That makes all the difference in the world. You can’t make any sort of change if you can’t first talk about the problem.
As for drawing a false equivalence between prison population size between the two nations - we don’t rip organs out of pre-selected, healthy prisoners (many of whose only “crime” is to meditate, avoid tobacco and alcohol) in order to supply a multi-billion dollar “healthcare” business. Nor do we send millions of people to “re-education camps” for having specific religious beliefs, only releasing them once they have been shown to relinquish said beliefs.
Scale and severity really do matter.
As for “pointing at others” - that was in the context of the massive moral outrage that a large segment of the US political structure seems to feel about what in truth are relatively minor issues. First World Issues.
Perhaps the problem is, most of the media (servants of our fine corporations) that want us to be upset at stupid things, so we don’t come together on the really outrageous stuff - like sickcare at 18% of GDP. We have the resources to be so much better off. But maybe if they can get us to focus on “faux outrage” issues such as transgender bathrooms (or prayer in schools) we won’t notice the harvesting and do something about it.
And when some really morally outrageous things happen (do Asian Lives matter? Apparently not so much), the “outrage machines” largely ignore these things because of said soft power.
So should we allow these “other places” to control our dialog with soft power? I think that’s a bad thing. Do you think that’s a bad thing too? I’m not making a “moral outrage” case against their use of soft power; it is purely a self-interest case. I don’t want them controlling my speech. Period.
As for the behavior of the US on the international scene - my claim is that whatever evil things the US has done around the world, I believe that if other powers had been in our position, the outcome would have been far more horrific. I base this on how they treat their own people. If you treat your own people with so little humanity, what sympathy would you have for “the other” from whom you simply need resources?
Take for example the Third Reich, Soviet Russia, or the CCP.
What would they have done if they had been the sole superpower? The mind boggles. Consider: if you show no apparent qualms about turning a large group of your own people into an organ bank, what would you do to the population of (say) Africa if they had stuff, and you needed it, and there was literally nobody there to stop you from doing whatever you wanted?
Or if you worried about climate change and overpopulation
Or if you worried about peak oil. Or peak resources of any kind.
Yeah. So I am concerned about soft power from a place with belief systems like that affecting us and our dialog. I reject your attempt at drawing an equivalence between them and us. We may be bad, but - it sure could be a whole lot worse.
Or maybe you can make an alternate case - say that the Third Reich would have shown the world a whole new benevolent face once they had defeated their enemies.
…as I see it: US govt confiscates US Citizens firearms and ammo (good luck…but, follow me here…) to eliminate the “domestic threat”. US Airdrops the armaments to Xinjiang to give the Uighurs the means to keep the CCP occupied in the west…Well, probably wouldn’t work as planned anyway…Aloha, Steve.
Most of those assurances of an imminent trade deal came out of Trump’s mouth. With something over 13,000 lies in his presidency, when indeed are you going to stop believing his bullshit?
Perhaps one of the Democratic candidates should steal the goalpost before he can move it, and shift the conversation to HOW LONG it took to get done. It doesn’t matter if a deal is close to being done if it is already too late for dairy farmers, etc.
As more and more people are looking to alternate news sources even thou they are being censored, the crimes in China are being exposed. How long can that go on? In China they would think forever, but the backlash might be severe if there was some integrity elsewhere but I personally doubt it. There seems no group organized fighting for the good of all, just the illusion that there are some in the political arena who pretend to be. Is the impeachment thing theater? I don’t know, I’m more in the camp that the global elite control the media, pretty much all governments and are dictating the narrative and they let governments do what they want as long as it doesn’t upset their plan.
Im not sure what that look could be described as... perhaps cognitive dissonance breakout? Im sure Chris sees it a lot when presenting the crash course to new audiences.
I’ve gotten it from a few friends and neighbors
This special edition of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour is a series, Ralph and Constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, will lay out the articles of impeachment of President Donald J. Trump.
At yesterday’s Thanksgiving table, fifteen adults present, there was not one word uttered about impeachment, Russia, Ukraine, and, most notably, a certain Golden Golem of Greatness, whose arrival at the center of American life three years ago kicked off a political hysteria not witnessed across this land since southern “fire eaters” lay siege to Fort Sumter.
I wonder if some great fatigue of the mind has set in among the class of people who follow the news and especially the tortured antics of Rep. Adam Schiff’s goat rodeo in the House intel Committee the past month. I wonder what the rest of congress is detecting among its constituents back home during this holiday hiatus. I suspect it is that same eerie absence of chatter I noticed, and what it may portend about the nation’s disposition toward reality.
The dead white man Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) famously observed that “all truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.” America has been stuck in stage two lo these thirty-six months since Mr. Trump shocked the system with his electoral victory over She-Whose-Turn-Was-Undoubted, inciting a paroxysm of rage, disbelief, and retribution that has made the Left side of the political transect ridiculous, and repeatedly, ignominiously so, as their fantasies about Russian “collusion” and sequential chimeras dissolve in official proceedings.
The astounding failure of Mr. Mueller’s report did nothing to dampen the violent derangement. There was no rethinking whatsoever about the terms-of-engagement in the Left’s war against the populist hobgoblin. The solidarity of delusion remained locked in place, leading to Mr. Schiff’s recent antics over his false “whistleblower” and the enfilade of diplomatic flak-catchers tasked to ward off any truthful inquiry into events in Ukraine.
But then, with the Thanksgiving shut-down, something began to turn. It was signaled especially in the Left’s chief disinformation organ, The New York Times, with a week-long salvo of lame stories aimed at defusing the Horowitz report, forthcoming on December 9. The Times stories were surely based on leaks from individuals cited in the IG’s report, who were given the opportunity to “review” the briefs against them prior to the coming release. The stories gave off an odor of panic and desperation that signaled a crumbling loss of conviction in the three-year narrative assault on the truth — namely, that the US Intel Community organized a coup to overthrow the improbable President Trump.
From this point forward, the facts of the actual story — many of them already in the public record, one way or another, and sedulously ignored by the news media — will be officially detailed by federal authorities outside the orbit of the coupsters, and finally beyond the coupsters’ control. The facts may include the uncomfortable truth that Mr. Mueller and his helpers were major players in the bad-faith exercises of the Intel Community against the occupant of the White House.
I’m not so sure that the Resistance can keep up the fight, since their enemy is reality as much as reality’s mere personification in Mr. Trump. The violent opposition Schopenhauer spoke of in his three-stage model was just procedural in this case, moving through the courts and committees and other organs of the state. I don’t think the Left can bring the fight to the streets. They don’t have it in them, not even the ANTIFA corps. The hard truths of perfidy and treachery in the upper ranks of government will rain down in the weeks ahead, and when they do, there’s an excellent chance that they will be greeted as self-evident. The Times, the WashPo and the cable news networks will have no choice but to report it all. My guess is that they will display a kind of breathlessly naïve wonder that such things are so. Most remarkably, they might just assert that they knew it all along — a final twitch of bad faith as the new paradigm locks into place.
I expect that we will see something else happen along with that: a loud repudiation of the Democratic Party itself, a recognition that it betrayed the mental health of the nation in its lawless and demented inquisitions. I expect that sentiment will extend to the party’s current crop of candidates for the White House, to the delusional proposals they push, and perhaps even to the larger ethos of the Wokester religion that has programmatically tried to destroy the common culture of this country — especially the idea that we have a duty to be on the side of truth. https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-turnaround/
Nate, I appreciate that Jim Kunstler writes well and has a special talent for advancing the left/right paradigm that, IMO, keeps people divided and distracted from addressing the three E’s. I read through your lengthy post above thinking that you were the author, and only realized at the end that it was a re-post in its entirety from Kunstler’s “ClusterfckNation" website. I recall at least one other time when you’ve re-posted similar lengthy content in its entirety from Kunstler’s site.
I don’t agree with Kunstler’s perspectives on many counts, but I recognize and appreciate the value in hearing differing perspectives. My preference, however, is to have PP members’ posts clearly marked when content is selectively excerpted from another site/author, with a link to the full content from the author’s website. Personally, I’d rather not see the PP site devolve into a mouthpiece or debate platform for "Clusterfck Nation” or other sites/authors.
Well Sparky, I get the sense that Nate is getting more than a little annoyed with “newsboy” and his analysis-free shovelware. “Newsboy” has posted this specific “Orange Man: Bad” reference now twice in two different groups, with no original content added.
Apparently this particular content was so interesting, he had to show it to us twice.
One wonders just how many sites “newsboy” directs his propaganda firehose at. I’m sure we aren’t the only lucky ones. He is clearly on a mission. Lucky us, to be included in his spray.
Perhaps “newsboy” might consider directing his botlike-propaganda-flow to the daily digest instead?
[Sparky: sorry for the tone. None of it is directed at you.]
When a republican criticizes a democrat it is hard to listen too closely. It is very easy to dismiss this as the bickering between factions aimed at power, not truth.
But when a liberal Jewish democrat (like JHK) criticizes a liberal (largely Jewish) democratic operation like the impeachment operation being carried out in both government and media, I take note and read the words carefully. He reports on how the impeachment is being received in his cohort: by explaining the lack of discussion and interest at his extended family gathering. This is not partisan bickering. While every person comes from their own perspective including JHK, I don’t have the impression that JHK is consciously seeking to deceive me, making his synopsis and analysis valuable.
Plus, I cannot bear to personally invest the time needed to review the MSM to sort through all of the words, suspecting that many are lies.
Like everyone here, I exercise my magical superpower of being able to skip posts that rub me the wrong way or come from people I do not trust.
