"One reason I started this newsletter was I wanted a forum to work out my uncertainty and to argue with myself about conflicting ideas and emotions."
Cool. I'm down with it, obvs. (Off hand and BTW because I didn't respond - I like the comix culture posts and I like the politics posts, but mixing the two in the same post feels like repeated screeching stops.)
"There are some erstwhile leftists, notably Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, who dismiss this problem as a form of liberal bedwetting. I think they are profoundly wrong."
Welp, as with Sully, I quit paying attention to Greenwald a long time ago. (God only knows why anybody pays attention to DeBoer.) I do remember that Bolsanaro was threatening to imprison GG, and then there was nothing afterwards, so my working assumption is Bolsanaro pwned GG, and GG is doing what our Axis Internationalé wants. Along the lines of: "Senhor Greenwald, we believe you would make an excellent addition to our stable of people upholding our international cause against the nefarious workings of the pig globalists, so you must come to work for us. Of course, you might refuse our generous offer, but then you would come home one day to find your dogs have all been shot, and your little friend there has been nailed to the front door of your burning house - and your troubles will have only just begun." Whether I should look through all the bullshit he's mouthing and have pity on the poor bastard is an interesting question.
I dunno what's going on with Taibbi aside from being pissed off about being cancelled - I mostly don't read him - I pay attention to Ames and Dolan instead but I don't like swallowing anything whole.
"Most journalistic genres demand a show of certitude or conclusiveness, but blogging, I’ve found, is conducive to thinking in public, to grappling in an open fashion with what puzzles us."
Awesome.
"But there is no question that Trump has, at least in terms of the modern era, endangered democracy in a new way with his strongman presidency, his incitement of the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, his ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Biden presidency, and his calls for a rollback of voting rights."
We reached a culmination of the long-standing drive to reverse the New Deal. It just turns out to accomplish the things they want (the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, UI, 'welfare', &c.) they're just going to have to overthrow the government. Given the things I have read by the right, written out again and again, over the course of decades, about the need to overthrow the black helicopter state (i.e. the vicious totalitarianism that oppresses little old ladies with ... Meals on Wheels). Stretching from the 70's all the way through now, the hard hard right has basically been driving for this forever, prodded and funded by assorted nutjob right-wing billionaires. (Like... Donald Trump, say.)
Somebody linked the cranky talking baseball there (https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1390325423800791040) saying "...your party is the existential threat to the classical liberal order & rule of written law, has been for a century." What he doesn't talk about it is what the 'classical liberal order' was (1815-1914 rest in peace, or actually rot in hell). OUTRAGE! that people might try to prevent old people from starving in the streets. OUTRAGE! that pathetic socialists might try to prevent 12-year-olds from a earning a good honest days pay for dying in a coal mine. OUTRAGE! that women ('trollops' I believe would have been the phrase) would try to get the vote. OUTRAGE! that Africans might try and revolt against empires trying to enslave them. OUTRAGE! that these pathetic socialists might try and create a central bank to buttress financial markets against collapse. OUTRAGE! that these communists might try and organize workers for a forty-hour-week and a 5¢/week raise. OUTRAGE! that someone would try and do something about all those black people in the South being lynched and multilated in public. (Outrage wasn't there for the atrocities of the Belgian Congo, a murderous slave empire that was only rivaled by the brief Nazi empire in Eastern Europe and the Stalist Holimidor.)
My ex-person used to do the SCA thing but I was never into it because I could never get the point - where were the flies and the shit? (Yes, I did watch Holy Grail as a child, why do ask?) Eventually she said that they were 'royalty'. OH. I said. That explains it. Cranky here is cosplaying and deeply feels the deep pain and suffering of the much maligned oppressed geniuses like, I dunno, JP Morgan. The Vanderbilts and etc. Not even considered, existing as only shadow figures, are all those other 99.9% of the people - there only to function as furniture and props to support the apotheosis of the great business BRAIN GENIOUSES. Neat!
("Daedalus & Son, Ltd. herein present their newest invention: Narcissism in a can! Now you too can be swallowed by all-consuming self-regard and admiration AT ANY TIME day or night! Available in finer saloons, general stores and soda fountains nationwide!")
Which he followed up with "Republicans have work to do. For Democrats, that work is definitionally impossible. It would require getting rid of the party's ideology, activists, intellectuals, institutions, everyone and everything it has worked for over the past century."
Smells like a would-be genocideaire to me. So, charmed, really. (Maybe I should translate it into German? OK, wow: "Republikaner haben Arbeit zu erledigen. Für Demokraten ist diese Arbeit definitiv unmöglich. Es würde erfordern, die Ideologie der Partei, Aktivisten, Intellektuelle, Institutionen, alle und alles, wofür sie im letzten Jahrhundert gearbeitet hat, loszuwerden." It DOES sound better in the original... uh, machine-translated German!)
Trump has merely (and mostly accidentally I think) translated the FoxNews crazy energy into a Presidential persona. (Much the same thing happened to Reagan in much milder way.) I doubt very much that the guy even understands anything going on other than the need to feed his all-consuming ego.
"But it’s a tragedy that the small anti-Trumpist faction is dominated by the Cheney wing of the GOP. (Aside from Liz Cheney, many associates of the former vice president are active in the Never Trump movement). As a result of the George W. Bush presidency, the Cheney name is synonymous with warmongering, lies and torture."
I would put it to you Jeet, that a lot of the people supporting the neo-conservatives were sincerely ideological committed to the idea of a democracy. (And a whole bunch didn't, probably the overwhelming majority.) The wheat is sorting itself out from the actually fascist chaff here so what Tom Nichols said here (https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1392280752579035138) applies: "If the coalition for democracy includes everyone from Liz Warren to Liz Cheney, that's a pretty big tent, and I'm in. If you're one of the people whose purity demands that you can't be in a coalition with either of them, you're not focused on the real problem here."
I see it as a guy who's been on a 0-57 batting streak hitting a double - great! Can you do it twice? Let's see!
"This was often done hypocritically (the United States supported many anti-communist tyrants) but it’s still the case that during the Cold War the value of democracy shared bipartisan support. In the long arc of American history, the Cold War stands as a period of rare elite consensus. Cheney is not the only political leader that yearns for a return to a period where bipartisan agreement about a foreign threat helped unify a fractious nation."
Well, yeah, the Cold War had its own nasty history - but the right did bend for that. Absent the Cold War, the torpedo without a target tried to find a new target. And has.
"To the extent anti-communism excites contemporary Republicans, it takes the form of a China-bashing that plays into Trump’s hand (he can claim to be ahead of the curve in warning about China)."
*I* can claim to be ahead of the curve (and Donald Trump). The issue with China is that Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoism never died, it just laid low for awhile, and the exact same group of billionaire nutjobs that backs Trump here, was backing opening up China because they wanted to make the profits of all that enserfed Chinese labor. In the process, the exact same group of billionaire nutjobs went hard in on the War on Terror ($MONEY$!), which provoked the inevitable power-balancing by Russia. Who promptly (2005) lined themselves up with the Chinese. Those two powers have lined themselves up with various other tyrannical/oligarchal types, and of course, the exact same billionaire nutjobs who are lined up with Trump are lined up with that crowd.
It isn't for no reason that there's been a slow-crawl of right-wing coups in South America, that the Arab Spring got viciously repressed, that we have got various Arab oligarchies fighting a proxy war in Libya and so on and so forth. (See also the Austerians of Europe and the ECB.) They saw an opportunity in 2009-2010 to get back to 'the classical liberal order' and they took it. They have the bit in their teeth and they want to keep going and win the game.
If it turns out that Liz Cheney doesn't like that game and doesn't want to get to the nasty little end that game comes to, then God bless her for that. Better late than never.
"If the anti-Trump forces inside the GOP want to have a positive influence, they need a newer message and newer messengers."
Seconded. Fine by me!
elm
the noisy baseball will never ever get the biscuit dough back into the 1890 can, but he will happily sell his soul trying, and there's nothing for it
i don't see cheney or trump as the important element in this saga / how can intelligent mature people accept the lies and denigrations that are smeared across our media ?? somebody answer this for me please because i am mystified / covid may be a pernicious virus but this ignorance is a far more devious and damaging virus and it has somehow infected the minds of millions of people / i don't worry about our republic i worry about the citizens of this republic (and of the world) that can't or don't want to know the difference between truth and lies
[Too long. Oh, well.]
Hi Jeet!
"One reason I started this newsletter was I wanted a forum to work out my uncertainty and to argue with myself about conflicting ideas and emotions."
Cool. I'm down with it, obvs. (Off hand and BTW because I didn't respond - I like the comix culture posts and I like the politics posts, but mixing the two in the same post feels like repeated screeching stops.)
"There are some erstwhile leftists, notably Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, who dismiss this problem as a form of liberal bedwetting. I think they are profoundly wrong."
Welp, as with Sully, I quit paying attention to Greenwald a long time ago. (God only knows why anybody pays attention to DeBoer.) I do remember that Bolsanaro was threatening to imprison GG, and then there was nothing afterwards, so my working assumption is Bolsanaro pwned GG, and GG is doing what our Axis Internationalé wants. Along the lines of: "Senhor Greenwald, we believe you would make an excellent addition to our stable of people upholding our international cause against the nefarious workings of the pig globalists, so you must come to work for us. Of course, you might refuse our generous offer, but then you would come home one day to find your dogs have all been shot, and your little friend there has been nailed to the front door of your burning house - and your troubles will have only just begun." Whether I should look through all the bullshit he's mouthing and have pity on the poor bastard is an interesting question.
I dunno what's going on with Taibbi aside from being pissed off about being cancelled - I mostly don't read him - I pay attention to Ames and Dolan instead but I don't like swallowing anything whole.
"Most journalistic genres demand a show of certitude or conclusiveness, but blogging, I’ve found, is conducive to thinking in public, to grappling in an open fashion with what puzzles us."
Awesome.
"But there is no question that Trump has, at least in terms of the modern era, endangered democracy in a new way with his strongman presidency, his incitement of the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, his ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Biden presidency, and his calls for a rollback of voting rights."
We reached a culmination of the long-standing drive to reverse the New Deal. It just turns out to accomplish the things they want (the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, UI, 'welfare', &c.) they're just going to have to overthrow the government. Given the things I have read by the right, written out again and again, over the course of decades, about the need to overthrow the black helicopter state (i.e. the vicious totalitarianism that oppresses little old ladies with ... Meals on Wheels). Stretching from the 70's all the way through now, the hard hard right has basically been driving for this forever, prodded and funded by assorted nutjob right-wing billionaires. (Like... Donald Trump, say.)
Somebody linked the cranky talking baseball there (https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1390325423800791040) saying "...your party is the existential threat to the classical liberal order & rule of written law, has been for a century." What he doesn't talk about it is what the 'classical liberal order' was (1815-1914 rest in peace, or actually rot in hell). OUTRAGE! that people might try to prevent old people from starving in the streets. OUTRAGE! that pathetic socialists might try to prevent 12-year-olds from a earning a good honest days pay for dying in a coal mine. OUTRAGE! that women ('trollops' I believe would have been the phrase) would try to get the vote. OUTRAGE! that Africans might try and revolt against empires trying to enslave them. OUTRAGE! that these pathetic socialists might try and create a central bank to buttress financial markets against collapse. OUTRAGE! that these communists might try and organize workers for a forty-hour-week and a 5¢/week raise. OUTRAGE! that someone would try and do something about all those black people in the South being lynched and multilated in public. (Outrage wasn't there for the atrocities of the Belgian Congo, a murderous slave empire that was only rivaled by the brief Nazi empire in Eastern Europe and the Stalist Holimidor.)
My ex-person used to do the SCA thing but I was never into it because I could never get the point - where were the flies and the shit? (Yes, I did watch Holy Grail as a child, why do ask?) Eventually she said that they were 'royalty'. OH. I said. That explains it. Cranky here is cosplaying and deeply feels the deep pain and suffering of the much maligned oppressed geniuses like, I dunno, JP Morgan. The Vanderbilts and etc. Not even considered, existing as only shadow figures, are all those other 99.9% of the people - there only to function as furniture and props to support the apotheosis of the great business BRAIN GENIOUSES. Neat!
("Daedalus & Son, Ltd. herein present their newest invention: Narcissism in a can! Now you too can be swallowed by all-consuming self-regard and admiration AT ANY TIME day or night! Available in finer saloons, general stores and soda fountains nationwide!")
Which he followed up with "Republicans have work to do. For Democrats, that work is definitionally impossible. It would require getting rid of the party's ideology, activists, intellectuals, institutions, everyone and everything it has worked for over the past century."
Smells like a would-be genocideaire to me. So, charmed, really. (Maybe I should translate it into German? OK, wow: "Republikaner haben Arbeit zu erledigen. Für Demokraten ist diese Arbeit definitiv unmöglich. Es würde erfordern, die Ideologie der Partei, Aktivisten, Intellektuelle, Institutionen, alle und alles, wofür sie im letzten Jahrhundert gearbeitet hat, loszuwerden." It DOES sound better in the original... uh, machine-translated German!)
Trump has merely (and mostly accidentally I think) translated the FoxNews crazy energy into a Presidential persona. (Much the same thing happened to Reagan in much milder way.) I doubt very much that the guy even understands anything going on other than the need to feed his all-consuming ego.
"But it’s a tragedy that the small anti-Trumpist faction is dominated by the Cheney wing of the GOP. (Aside from Liz Cheney, many associates of the former vice president are active in the Never Trump movement). As a result of the George W. Bush presidency, the Cheney name is synonymous with warmongering, lies and torture."
I would put it to you Jeet, that a lot of the people supporting the neo-conservatives were sincerely ideological committed to the idea of a democracy. (And a whole bunch didn't, probably the overwhelming majority.) The wheat is sorting itself out from the actually fascist chaff here so what Tom Nichols said here (https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1392280752579035138) applies: "If the coalition for democracy includes everyone from Liz Warren to Liz Cheney, that's a pretty big tent, and I'm in. If you're one of the people whose purity demands that you can't be in a coalition with either of them, you're not focused on the real problem here."
I see it as a guy who's been on a 0-57 batting streak hitting a double - great! Can you do it twice? Let's see!
"This was often done hypocritically (the United States supported many anti-communist tyrants) but it’s still the case that during the Cold War the value of democracy shared bipartisan support. In the long arc of American history, the Cold War stands as a period of rare elite consensus. Cheney is not the only political leader that yearns for a return to a period where bipartisan agreement about a foreign threat helped unify a fractious nation."
Well, yeah, the Cold War had its own nasty history - but the right did bend for that. Absent the Cold War, the torpedo without a target tried to find a new target. And has.
"To the extent anti-communism excites contemporary Republicans, it takes the form of a China-bashing that plays into Trump’s hand (he can claim to be ahead of the curve in warning about China)."
*I* can claim to be ahead of the curve (and Donald Trump). The issue with China is that Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoism never died, it just laid low for awhile, and the exact same group of billionaire nutjobs that backs Trump here, was backing opening up China because they wanted to make the profits of all that enserfed Chinese labor. In the process, the exact same group of billionaire nutjobs went hard in on the War on Terror ($MONEY$!), which provoked the inevitable power-balancing by Russia. Who promptly (2005) lined themselves up with the Chinese. Those two powers have lined themselves up with various other tyrannical/oligarchal types, and of course, the exact same billionaire nutjobs who are lined up with Trump are lined up with that crowd.
It isn't for no reason that there's been a slow-crawl of right-wing coups in South America, that the Arab Spring got viciously repressed, that we have got various Arab oligarchies fighting a proxy war in Libya and so on and so forth. (See also the Austerians of Europe and the ECB.) They saw an opportunity in 2009-2010 to get back to 'the classical liberal order' and they took it. They have the bit in their teeth and they want to keep going and win the game.
If it turns out that Liz Cheney doesn't like that game and doesn't want to get to the nasty little end that game comes to, then God bless her for that. Better late than never.
"If the anti-Trump forces inside the GOP want to have a positive influence, they need a newer message and newer messengers."
Seconded. Fine by me!
elm
the noisy baseball will never ever get the biscuit dough back into the 1890 can, but he will happily sell his soul trying, and there's nothing for it
i don't see cheney or trump as the important element in this saga / how can intelligent mature people accept the lies and denigrations that are smeared across our media ?? somebody answer this for me please because i am mystified / covid may be a pernicious virus but this ignorance is a far more devious and damaging virus and it has somehow infected the minds of millions of people / i don't worry about our republic i worry about the citizens of this republic (and of the world) that can't or don't want to know the difference between truth and lies