November 13, 2023

You are spot on to say so many in USA need a history lesson re how fascism creeps in

First, extreme views are normalized.

Then certain groups of people are declared vermin. Use this as a way to generate outrage in the Right Wing Authoritarian Followers (magats). Use that base as a solid dependable voting block.

Next, fracture the opposition or control parts of it in various ways.

With a solid base, become the single largest political unit or the most powerful, even if a minority because the opposition is split.

Get just enough support from wobbly third parties and groups to get operational power.

Use power to get more power, reducing limits steadily. Squeeze until there is no effective opposition. Torture. Extra-judicial killings. Violent militias.

Rule with an iron fist.

November 8, 2023

Steady now: Mass media desperate for any 2024 horse race since both noms are NOT horse races

The Mass Media (including attention-driving social media) are desperate for any kind of horse race in the 2024 Presidential election. They need one to increase profits.

With the rump's "legal troubles" and looming trial schedules, I'm confident he will become more a wanna-be Emperor with no clothes. I am doubtful he'll even be the nominee, but until the legal machinery grinds further the "perceived narrative" is that tRump gets the nomination. Hence no drama on the GQP side with respect to 2024.

However, even if tRump is the nominee, he will be defeated, resulting from hard work by many Democrats as Robert Reich today encourages Get Out the Vote.

There is no drama on the Democratic Party side, except for what is ginned-up by RepubliConners and foreign bad actors.

So with no profit-making drama for the mass media on either side, they are desperate to create drama between the two men where there is little. tRump flop-sweats and blusters his way through odious lies and revealing authoritarian appeals to his base.

Biden abides undramatically, calmly.

Hence we get torrents of poorly conducted "polls", repeated questions using the RepubliCon narrative of Biden's age, and so forth.

Ignore most of it. Don't become flustered, outraged, derailed, anxious, or exhausted. Keep calm, stay focused and maintain a steady sustainable pace.

November 5, 2023

Reich Wingers have been told "mention socialism with 'nazi' as often as you can"

It's a framing thing (see George Lakoff's work).

The "socialism" in Nazi (National Socialist party) was a ploy in the early 1930s to win power when the left was fractured between communists and anarchists and who knows what else.

It was incidental to Nazism, not fundamental. Further, Nazi policies working hand in glove with corporations were anti-socialist. The Nazis did some socialist things like making the Autobahn, but that was in fact built so Hitler could move tanks and munitions efficiently for blitzkrieg.

The framing the Reich Wing uses in the US today is to reinforce the (bogus) notion that socialism is tyrannical and fascistic. Simply mentioning the two terms together plants the idea in minds and strengthens it where it has taken seed.

It's a way to build a straw man out of socialism they can demolish and pretend to be defending the US Constitution while all the while they are creating the corporate fascism that the Nazis created.

November 5, 2023

Not disadvantage to elect comparatively principled, ethical, logical, knowledgeable people

For one thing, they are more likely to be re-elected!

November 3, 2023

Mad Maga Mike is leading the Lindbergh 1936 wing of the GQP

In 1936, Lindbergh was "America First", which was a thinly veiled racist isolationist movement in US con circles.

Mad Maga Mike is not overtly racist, and to his credit he has expressed empathy with the black man he calls his "son" for what he faces in life as an African-American. But he supports racists and policies that have racist effects.

He is definitely isolationist, which is a childish pull-the-bed-covers-over-your-head strategy in this interconnected world.

One really stupid aspect is that the CONs blame Biden for the inflation which is in large part caused by just-previous and ongoing supply chain disruptions. What is the biggest cause of supply chain disruptions? War and conflict. What policy increases war and conflict in the world? Isolationism, disengagement, not-my-monkeys and not-my-circus emulation of ostriches.

October 30, 2023

We already ARE "beautiful variations on the colour of coffee"

That is the only unifying way to look at race and "color" or colour.

The more we ARE the change the more the change happens.

We already are coffee because COFFEE IS PREPARED SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS.

October 30, 2023

My simplest view is: Parents don't have rights, children do, but all rights are shared

(simplest view, because I have many views and gradations of views)

Parent rights do not trump full and proper care for children. Hence we ban "conversion therapy", for example.

Children have rights, for example, to read any book a librarian puts in their library, and many more than just those books. All the same, children are not fully formed or fully equipped to deal with some kinds of unforgiving realities (think bad judgement driving automobiles), so their rights are limited.

In Canada, the phrase "All children matter" is given greatest use and poignancy with reference to indigenous people and peoples. They have suffered so much at the hands of Residential Schools and other crimes.

Rights are shared, in that there has to be give and take. The right to expression is limited by consideration of harmful untruths (example vax lies) and exploitative production (example historical black musician royalties). The right to tax must respect the right of taxpayers to have their money spent responsibly and carefully for objectives that they collectively endorse.

The biggest "share" is that the majority -- of anything, in any form, at any time, in daily action not just voting -- must respect minorities. The tyranny of a majority can be a terrible thing.

So any supposed right of parents to bring up their children in any damn way they see fit is far away from the rights of children.

October 30, 2023

Example whereof I speak, obvious, but for analysis

(Even if we for the moment treat the given data as fact, ...) The error that is completely ignored and glossed over is that if you truly implemented the premise, the outcome would be very different from the map. If voting were one single day in person only then almost all mailing in ballots would vote in person and vote the same way they would otherwise. The false premise is that large numbers of people would hold to "mail-in or nothing".

But of course such bogosity in the structure of the argument completely demolishes any trust in the data that might have been briefly entertained.

Naturally, we dismiss the whole thing pretty much at the beginning when we read the contrafactual characterization "Marxist Criminals".

However, that kind of argument (map) is frequently just accepted and nodded at.

October 30, 2023

If you meet the buddha on the road, kill him

Fundamentally, if you wanna believe a factoid, try to explode it. If it survives attempts to find it false, then it is probably true or nearly true or mostly true or usually true.

What I see commonly in reich wing and magat cult posts is a search for confirmation. For example skating over or ignoring contradictory facts and details. Or cherry picking. Or completely misinterpreting statistics (most commonly taking a percentage of one thing and inappropriately applying it in calculations over different sets).

Disproof is the fundamental principle of science, since science admits its knowledge is and always will be incomplete and imperfect. Many people think science is all about proving things. Nope, that's mathematics. Science tries to disprove theories. What remains standing after multiple attempts is pretty good.

So it is similarly with our navigation of a bountiful infosphere that we imperfectly understand and apply against imperfect knowledge of history and any given current situation. We should subject anything we'd like to believe is true to a battery of tests to try to eliminate it for bad source, internal contradictions, use of propaganda techniques, cherry picking, contrafactual claims, distortion, slant, assumptions, ....

I am reminded of the famous koan: "If you meet the buddha while travelling on the road, kill him!" Being a koan it has multiple meanings and contexts and flexibilties, but one simple prominent one is the idea that if you think you have actually found the truth, put it to the test.

October 27, 2023

SOTH Johnson is so extreme, call him Mad Maga Mike

He's a very extreme denier: evolution denier, Covid denier, science denier, J6 denier, climate denier, LGBTQ2 denier, women's rights denier, ....

He's a christianist Dominionist.
He claims tRump was elected in 2020 except for massive election fraud.



Henceforth, we should call him Mad Maga Mike. I submit it to you for your approval.