The House of Commons is closer to the US House of Representatives than the Senate. And has the House of Commons ever had a MP show off giant pictures of (would the equivalent of the President be the King or the PM?) his son's penis in the House? America First!
Didn't mean to denigrate Uncle Charlie or the others. Its just that a hallmark of American conservatism in my life has been the ability to build a wall between people they care about and ones they don't. Its how you get compassionate and caring people who see no problem with ICE wearing masks and shooting a priest in the face with pepper balls. I don't believe one negates the other, but one doesn't excuse the other either. Its complicated, like people do.
How can a person show compassion and empathy to strangers while supporting politics that denies it to undeserving Others? Its the "undeserving" part, if they actually think it through. Most people choose their political affiliation for non-rational reasons, they like the way a politician's persona or speech makes them feel. So you can feel compassion for orphans or Aids patients or kids on reservations because you see them suffer and don't think they deserve to suffer, but still support a politician promoting Aids as God's punishment for sin because those are other people you don't see, and you like the idea of people paying for their sins in the abstract. Besides, you met that politician once and he was funny and charming. Superficial, but good and moral people can be superficial.
"Elite", like "Woke", is a purposefully hazily defined word. Like woke, its used to denigrate a class of people as Them, the Problem. To obscure, rather than enlighten.
Elite does have a real definition, but its so broad as to be pretty useless. Its a sub-group of people with exceptional skill in some endeavor, but the usual meaning is a class of people with some combination of exceptional wealth, privilege, and status. Power is assumed in any combination. In this definition there is no single Elite, but the use of the word always implies it, because the point is to accuse The Elite of abusing their power for their benefit and the detriment of The Rest Of Us, the common clay of the West. Whether its a Harvard professor brainwashing midwestern students, movie stars sticking their noses where they don't belong, or a billionaire doing billionaire things, the Elite are shoving things down our collective throat.
Actual elites have power, whether through politics, wealth, or celebrity, though the 3 naturally go together. The people who can directly affect our lives from a distance, who convince us who we should trust and believe. The people we look up to, because we want to or we have to.
Well, these are people who have been absolutely hammered with eliminationist propaganda for a generation now. If you can accept the premise the rest flows naturally, despite the lack of names. Anecdotal violence is pumped up to provide examples of the violent left, and that is sufficient for these warriors for Truth and Good. They love the righteous feeling, but will that be enough to pull the trigger when the moment arrives? We will all find out together, because this kind of worldview never stays controlled, only unleashed.
I have paid no attention to Kirk either, beyond what various liberal blogs would say about him, and now his canonization as a "free speech" advocate. Thos elevation has required everyone to ignore the content of his speech, which is a requirement for what I'd call free speech absolutism, exemplified by the Nazi march through Skokie IL back in the 70-s supported by the ACLU. There's an assumption in absolutism that the answer to free hate speech is more speech, which rests on an assumption of relative equality of speech. Don't like Kirk's speech? Ask your dad and a few billionaires for money to start your own Turning Point, and see if you can get MSNBC (or whatever they're called now) and the Democratic party to hype it.
Kirk's speech is an example of how speech can be leveraged into power, which is where free speech absolutism gets very fuzzy. Now you're defending Kirk's right to weild power, not just speech, and Kirk, like Rush Limbaugh, was very good at his chosen profession of using speech, and weilded a lot of power within the Republican party.
I spent 30 years in Operations at a software company in San Jose (Manufacturing Software Engineering, a job title with an odd history). It was where revenue recognition happened, the rubber met the road, and as I put it, I implemented other people's bad ideas. All the stories above ring true to me.
Re: lukewarm David Brooks. When that name comes up I will always refer to Driftglass, who was tracking Brooks before it was cool, and has the receipts. Go back to Brooks' early days at the Weekly Standard and you'll find a man the opposite of lukewarm. He's become much more moderate as the checks kept rolling in from the Times, Yale, Aspen, Davos, etc. but the anger still remains, as Paul Simon once sang.
Well, the tone I got from that McMansion piece was how RCDC was a corruption of the thought-out sources it munges together that simply juxtaposes them without creating or defining any relationship beyond proximitry. Appropriation, if you will. What mockery there is comes from the analysis of the failure of the idea. Is the mockery undeserved? Is criticizing the asthetic taste of the President of These United States punching down?
The woman who had that McMansion hell website has a Patreon, and she recently posted a dive into what she calls Regional Car Dealership Roccoco, her term for the Trump architectural esthetic. https://www.patreon.com/posts/mcmansionization-126873692
One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump's management style is getting other people to break laws to fulfill his demands, leaving them liable for their actions but not him. Mike Pence is the poster boy for this. It is unsurprising this attitude filtered down.
And a fair bit of early Sabbath is almost prog, mellotrons and pianos shifting through various grooves, much like the more metal songs made up of a collection of power riffs strung together. They never attempted the psuedoclassical styles used by pure prog bands.
The Epstein narrative is an article of faith among the Believers and a very profitable story arc that never gets old for a host of podcaster/influencers. The howls from them are because Trump just ... took that story away from them and replaced it with nothing. Now he's rummaging through his Bag of Tricks and throwing anything that comes to hand out there. It's a hoax! Written by Democrats! Who suppressed it but now want to release it to attack me! This is no fissure or turning point. They will continue to make up stories, the cries for the Tsar to do something will fade, leaving the circus running it's course. Why Trump has shot himself in the foot for no coherent reason will provide endless speculation with him at the center, where he likes it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Am I missing something?”
The House of Commons is closer to the US House of Representatives than the Senate. And has the House of Commons ever had a MP show off giant pictures of (would the equivalent of the President be the King or the PM?) his son's penis in the House? America First!
On “People and poliltics”
Didn't mean to denigrate Uncle Charlie or the others. Its just that a hallmark of American conservatism in my life has been the ability to build a wall between people they care about and ones they don't. Its how you get compassionate and caring people who see no problem with ICE wearing masks and shooting a priest in the face with pepper balls. I don't believe one negates the other, but one doesn't excuse the other either. Its complicated, like people do.
"
How can a person show compassion and empathy to strangers while supporting politics that denies it to undeserving Others? Its the "undeserving" part, if they actually think it through. Most people choose their political affiliation for non-rational reasons, they like the way a politician's persona or speech makes them feel. So you can feel compassion for orphans or Aids patients or kids on reservations because you see them suffer and don't think they deserve to suffer, but still support a politician promoting Aids as God's punishment for sin because those are other people you don't see, and you like the idea of people paying for their sins in the abstract. Besides, you met that politician once and he was funny and charming. Superficial, but good and moral people can be superficial.
On “Brought to you by your latest captain of industry”
"Elite", like "Woke", is a purposefully hazily defined word. Like woke, its used to denigrate a class of people as Them, the Problem. To obscure, rather than enlighten.
Elite does have a real definition, but its so broad as to be pretty useless. Its a sub-group of people with exceptional skill in some endeavor, but the usual meaning is a class of people with some combination of exceptional wealth, privilege, and status. Power is assumed in any combination. In this definition there is no single Elite, but the use of the word always implies it, because the point is to accuse The Elite of abusing their power for their benefit and the detriment of The Rest Of Us, the common clay of the West. Whether its a Harvard professor brainwashing midwestern students, movie stars sticking their noses where they don't belong, or a billionaire doing billionaire things, the Elite are shoving things down our collective throat.
Actual elites have power, whether through politics, wealth, or celebrity, though the 3 naturally go together. The people who can directly affect our lives from a distance, who convince us who we should trust and believe. The people we look up to, because we want to or we have to.
On “I just can’t…”
Well, these are people who have been absolutely hammered with eliminationist propaganda for a generation now. If you can accept the premise the rest flows naturally, despite the lack of names. Anecdotal violence is pumped up to provide examples of the violent left, and that is sufficient for these warriors for Truth and Good. They love the righteous feeling, but will that be enough to pull the trigger when the moment arrives? We will all find out together, because this kind of worldview never stays controlled, only unleashed.
On “Kuzushi and Charlie Kirk”
I have paid no attention to Kirk either, beyond what various liberal blogs would say about him, and now his canonization as a "free speech" advocate. Thos elevation has required everyone to ignore the content of his speech, which is a requirement for what I'd call free speech absolutism, exemplified by the Nazi march through Skokie IL back in the 70-s supported by the ACLU. There's an assumption in absolutism that the answer to free hate speech is more speech, which rests on an assumption of relative equality of speech. Don't like Kirk's speech? Ask your dad and a few billionaires for money to start your own Turning Point, and see if you can get MSNBC (or whatever they're called now) and the Democratic party to hype it.
Kirk's speech is an example of how speech can be leveraged into power, which is where free speech absolutism gets very fuzzy. Now you're defending Kirk's right to weild power, not just speech, and Kirk, like Rush Limbaugh, was very good at his chosen profession of using speech, and weilded a lot of power within the Republican party.
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
I spent 30 years in Operations at a software company in San Jose (Manufacturing Software Engineering, a job title with an odd history). It was where revenue recognition happened, the rubber met the road, and as I put it, I implemented other people's bad ideas. All the stories above ring true to me.
Re: lukewarm David Brooks. When that name comes up I will always refer to Driftglass, who was tracking Brooks before it was cool, and has the receipts. Go back to Brooks' early days at the Weekly Standard and you'll find a man the opposite of lukewarm. He's become much more moderate as the checks kept rolling in from the Times, Yale, Aspen, Davos, etc. but the anger still remains, as Paul Simon once sang.
On “A New Gilded Age”
Well, the tone I got from that McMansion piece was how RCDC was a corruption of the thought-out sources it munges together that simply juxtaposes them without creating or defining any relationship beyond proximitry. Appropriation, if you will. What mockery there is comes from the analysis of the failure of the idea. Is the mockery undeserved? Is criticizing the asthetic taste of the President of These United States punching down?
"
The woman who had that McMansion hell website has a Patreon, and she recently posted a dive into what she calls Regional Car Dealership Roccoco, her term for the Trump architectural esthetic.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/mcmansionization-126873692
On “Everyone is a hero in their own story”
One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump's management style is getting other people to break laws to fulfill his demands, leaving them liable for their actions but not him. Mike Pence is the poster boy for this. It is unsurprising this attitude filtered down.
And a fair bit of early Sabbath is almost prog, mellotrons and pianos shifting through various grooves, much like the more metal songs made up of a collection of power riffs strung together. They never attempted the psuedoclassical styles used by pure prog bands.
On “Your Schadenfreude monitoring open thread”
The Epstein narrative is an article of faith among the Believers and a very profitable story arc that never gets old for a host of podcaster/influencers. The howls from them are because Trump just ... took that story away from them and replaced it with nothing. Now he's rummaging through his Bag of Tricks and throwing anything that comes to hand out there. It's a hoax! Written by Democrats! Who suppressed it but now want to release it to attack me! This is no fissure or turning point. They will continue to make up stories, the cries for the Tsar to do something will fade, leaving the circus running it's course. Why Trump has shot himself in the foot for no coherent reason will provide endless speculation with him at the center, where he likes it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.