August 20, 2019

Call the next one the 'Despite' Recession

"Despite the strong economy..."

That's what we are hearing now and that's what we'll keep hearing as the recession heats up.

"Despite the strong economy, this figure is down from 84 percent at the peak of the last expansion, in 2007"

"Despite the strong economy, San Francisco finance jobs shrank from 45,716 in 2008 to 41,882 last year"

"The congressmen pointed a report from Giving USA which shows last year Americans have less to charity despite the strong economy."

"Republican officials say Trump is harnessing the anger of those who continue to feel left behind despite the strong economy,"

"Despite the strong economy, people are struggling to put food on the table, educate their children and get access to health care"

"Despite the strong economy, there are currently 7.3 million unfilled jobs in America, and a 50-year-low labor participation rate"

"Four in 10 Americans say they still struggle to pay their bills, despite the strong economy"

"Despite the strong economy, voters worry the economy and Republicans will harm their retirement security."

"despite the strong economy, St. Pierre, like many other American manufacturers, is struggling"

"small businesses are hiring less, despite the strong economy, partly because they are losing employees to bigger firms"

It's funny how our "strong economy" sure has a lot of asterisks around it.

Maybe, just maybe, it's not really all that strong?



Prepare yourselves, for "despite" what you may hear about the "strong economy", it's going to get worse.

August 6, 2019

No, the right wing doesn't really want to treat mental illness

They called it communism back then and... well, they actually still call it communism today.

They didn't change a thing, really. Still the same propaganda.

At it's heart, the right wing ideology even with it's veneer of "compassionate conservatism" and with it's mask of right wing evangelicalism, it still sees mental illness as a sign of the "other"; as a consequence of sin, as a personal failing, as a flaw, a defect.

The "cure", according to them, isn't talk therapy, isn't understanding, isn't working against binary thinking and other perceptive errors, isn't anti-psychotic medication, but you know what it is? More marginalization, more isolation, more exclusion, more stigma, more shame.

Get the right away from the table, they have no real interest in helping the mentally ill.

August 5, 2019

You know something? You *CAN'T* make a video game with today's right wing rhetoric

It's funny how the right wing wants to blame video games for mass shootings, but I have yet to play a video game where you're given a mission or quest to "stop the invasion of foreign dark skinned people"

I've recently played a special edition of Skyrim, and in it, there's a civil war going on and in the backstory, there was another war (The Great War) that did not end very well for the empire about 20 years before the game takes place. Here in the real world, the right wing and their allies in the media and government will push on us a war on terror, an "invasion" from the southern border, a clash of civilizations with the Muslim world, a culture war, a war on drugs, and... (checking notes) a war on Christmas.

That's right folks, the fantasy game with the elves and dragons in it is less exaggerated than real life when it comes to having a militarized culture.

Here's Michael Townley AKA Michael De Santa, one of the people you play in as Grand Theft Auto 5. A criminal who escaped into witness protection. And here's Michael Townley, a criminal who did odd jobs for right wing dictator Augusto Pinochet (Which included assassinating Orlando Letelier right here in Washington DC) and escaped into witness protection.

The violence preceded the video game in that case. Weird, right?

And one more thing, there's Deus Ex... where the Illuminati is an antagonist, here they are technocrats who want to control the flow and direction of technology and, which when the series happens, has branched out into human enhancement. Compare that to how... Alex Jones, QAnon, and the right wing conspiracy theories portray the Illuminati... as... uh... a cabal of Je-"Globalists" who are all satanists and pedophiles and run the world from the pizzeria basements who do things just to make Trump look bad or to sacrifice children, I don't know.

My God, the video game conspiracy theory is written better than the conspiracy theory that is out and about in the real world.

It's embarrassing now that I think about it. Wow. Just wow.

So stupid that we even have to discuss this.

July 28, 2019

It's weird how the acceptable vs unacceptable forms of "economic anxiety" are switched around

The "acceptable" economic anxiety: Voting for reality TV stars, vandalizing things with swastikas, paranoia of the 'other', belief in conspiracy theories, and falling in love with confederate statues

The "unacceptable" economic anxiety: Why should we have this economic anxiety? How about instead of racism and sexism, we actually mitigate the source of the economic anxiety? Let's have debt forgiveness, a more robust safety net, not denying things like healthcare or education to people, etc.

It's weird how one of these is SOCIALISM and causing trouble according to the 'liberal' media and *some* of the politicians... and it's not the first one, the "acceptable" one.

It's just weird.

July 28, 2019

"Russia Will Be Free"; stand proud, Russian opposition to Putin and his cronies

Russians who are resisting Putin are not our allies... no, they are our brothers and sisters.

July 23, 2019

The core issue is these 4 Congresswomen could very well be seen as the symbolic face of America

As opposed to Trump

It's day vs night, bigger than Democratic Party vs Republican Party or left wing vs right wing, it's...

Meritocracy vs inheritance
Action vs reaction
Activism vs laziness
Civic participation vs keeping others away from the table
Inclusion vs exclusion
Pluralism vs exclusivism
Self-empowerment vs hostile privilege
Progress vs holding onto the past
"I earned it because I work hard, I study hard, and I didn't do it alone" vs "I earned it because I'm rich and that automatically makes me right and smarter than everyone else"
Hope and change vs paranoia and stagnation

There's a real possibility that when people think of "America", inside and out, they no longer see Trump's mug, but these 4 Congresswomen.

I know I do.

That might also explain the fixation from the right against these 4. They want to destroy the set of things on the left side of that list.

The contest to be the face of America is going on now. I'd rather have the values of that left side of that be our symbolic face, even if that means a permanently diminished symbolic role for the POTUS even after Trump.

July 22, 2019

It's always bubbled under the surface but now it's out to play... the total immorality of the right

Where:

One person's access to healthcare is made sweeter simply because other people do not have access to healthcare

"Good national security" means there is a mass shooter, but it's just a white guy, so you can relax

A heterosexual rapist is somehow more mature and respectable than a law abiding and loving GLBTQ person

"Socialism" is anything that's not acting like a degenerate, a sociopath, putting profits ahead of human lives, or a combination of those things

One's love for their country is put on trial by those who have no love for their country

If you run afoul of them, be prepared to face death threats and insinuations that in any other culture would be taboo to not only participate in but to also accuse people of being in them... like Pizzagate or QAnon

We're told that "all lives matter", but so do statues dedicated to traitors for some reason

We're supposed to have peace with Russia so we can wage war on 1.5 billion Muslims

"True" religion is now a backer of power and status quo seen in things like prosperity gospel, things where you being rich and powerful must be a sign that God loves you

It's apparently "reasonable" to think that if a kid doesn't want to be shot in school, then they must have had their mind warped by "George Soros and his je-'globalist' buddies"

According to Tucker Carlson, a government sometimes has to kill people, but Twitter enforcing it's TOS, that is what is beyond the pale

...

Defend others from them
Vote against them
Deplatform them
Discredit them
Debunk them
Defund them

Ignoring them won't work though, this completely immoral right wing is on parade and it's only going to get worse.

July 6, 2019

Our assumption that everyone is, at heart, a rational actor is as dangerous for our country...

as the "division" and "incivility" ships are.

Perhaps even more dangerous.

The idea that we can simply debate or discuss away racism, sexism, classism, the hypocrisy and double standards surrounding Trump and right wing evangelicals and coming from them on a daily basis, white nationalism and white nationalist terrorism, etc. is naive at best, lazy in the middle, and outright running away from the issue at worst.

Idealism is a nice thing to have, don't get me wrong, but warm fuzzy feelings and nothing but are going to get us the same thing that 65 million votes got us in 2016.

You can point out the fact that middle America or the "real American" is losing his job because a rich white man is closing down the factory and that it is a rich white Republican cutting his safety net all day every day, but you know what? He's still going to blame immigrants for taking his job and minorities for leaving him in the lurch. Happens every time.

This didn't happen overnight, the same forces that turned just the word "liberal" into a pejorative have been cornering the market on using cognitive distortions (Like black and white thinking such as something they don't like being "socialism" ), logical fallacies, ignoring cost-benefit, not caring about the long term consequences of one's actions, and more in our political landscape and using them as rhetorical tools.

And we shouldn't be a party to this, by letting them get away with the lack of rationality, we are contributing to this. It's time to say no more; from debates on forums to discussions at family dinner tables all the way to what we see in DC and as we go into the 2020 election, if people can't discuss things as rational actors, then there's no point in having a discussion and we need to call that out.

And as for platforms that traffic in these things... sites like Infowars, groups like the Alt-Right, and QAnon; looking at you fools... shut them down.

June 30, 2019

The Brits acknowledged our Declaration of Independence. Too late to say "Didn't mean it?"

I read the Declaration of Independence and see the things the founding fathers went to war over and these are things we let Trump and McConnell do and then we say "Oh well" or "Elections have consequences" to.

"He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. AKA gerrymandering.

"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. OK

"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. Ahem, Merrick Garland might have something to say about that.

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. Future Space Force

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. The 'national emergency' right there

"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. Military budget right there for you

"For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: Talk to AG Barr about that one

"For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: It sure would be nice to have a government that represents us, one man, one vote. That sort of thing.

"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: What Trump's bff Putin wants, he's not going to denounce it, are we going to see it here?

So I guess maybe an apology to the British crown and the people of Britain is in order if we're not going to keep living up to the same standards we set up for ourselves in 1776 when we declared independence from them, if we like living under the thumb of McConnell and Trump and being subject to their whims, then at least we should say to the British that we didn't mean all those things back in 1776. It makes sense.

June 30, 2019

"Disenchantment" with liberalism is not a surprise to anyone, it's the authoritarian game

This is what they have been doing... they've whipped up a generation of Americans to see the liberal as the "Them", as a pejorative, you've got Keith Ablow saying on Fox News that the Unabomber had a point about liberalism being bad, and frankly, if liberals started coming out and saying they were against cannibalism, incest, and human sacrifice, we'd have people coming out FOR them and they've got all the "reasons" for it on lock. A combination of contrarianism and conditioning has led us to this point.

I have a feeling that Putin was practicing that speech against liberalism for years, years before Trump was even elected. Just looking for a place to use it, I'm sure he has more lined up.

The authoritarian uses things up and then discards them when they no longer have value to them, you know how how Trump was questioning Obama's legitimacy for 8 years through the racist birther movement then suddenly disavowed when it was clear he was going to win the nomination? Like that.

That applies to people too, just ask the people of Ryazan in 1999 or the people of Beslan when the Russian government needed to look strong against Islamist terrorists and decided to wipe EVERYONE out.

You, me... we're fodder to the authoritarian, an interchangeable part. The same as the 30%ers too, but they won't realize that.

Giving hugs to people who say "I'm not racist but..." won't stop this; it's the Constitution, American values, freedom, equality, guaranteed rights and protections on side and authoritarianism on the other.

I think the least horrible solution here is removing the platform of the authoritarian, it's what we got to do.