#culture wars–brought to you by the democrat party

[usarmytrooper]

[eugenedebs1920]

One of the beautiful things about how our representative democratic constitutional republic works is the varying opinions. The array of views and theories, the proposals and approaches, from the patchwork of ideology America has attracted, gives us the opportunity to select the peak ideas of so many backgrounds and cultures. Many of the founders, Washington in particular, were against the formation of political parties. Because of such contrasting views this was unavoidable.

There used to be a dozen or more political parties in the U.S. Wigs, federalist, socialists, labor and others brought their perspectives and that of their constituency to Congress. This enabled a more zoomed in viewpoint of the issues across the nation.

Our Population in this country, and the planet as a whole, has BOOMED! With it, so have perspectives, concerns and opinions. It becomes harder and harder to address everyone’s needs when the diversity and size of those you’re representing is so vast. This becomes even more burdensome when there’s red and blue to choose from. The puppet on the left or the puppet on the right.

I’ll have to do more research into why exactly but some time between the beginning on the twentieth century and 1940’s the cluster of political parties that had existed before pretty much consolidated in the two that dominate now. Sure, there are other parties out there, but not with much influence, or power as there was before the Second World War.

From a business perspective this makes sense, you buy out your rival for less competition so you can set market value to your liking. But this is not a business, some will argue the federal government is the largest business on earth. It goes beyond the financial side to the personal level. These are policies and practices that have real world implications. That affect real people lives in droves.

This “big tent” approach sounds wonderful in theory, but when you start looking at the details it becomes much more complicated. The extremes of both sides tend to be the loudest voices while representing the smallest fraction of the party.

It has proven to be detrimental to the functioning or our democracy! With just the two sides, when one side is unhealthy, unhappy and unwilling to compromise the system bogs. This last House term being an excellent example. These MAGA obstructionist sinking the ship. Making an ass out of themselves and the entire Republican Party. A party that used to be a proud, noble group, resorted to lacking leadership for months, failed vote counts and the title as the least productive Congress in this century. The “big tent” approach for the Republican Party has the loudest voices being heard while the mature, responsible, more centered Republicans are lumped in with them.

The same can be true of the left to an extent. Dems will kick those with unacceptable behavior words or conduct to the curb though, which is a huge difference. Yet there are extremes on the left that don’t necessarily reflect the views of most Democrats.

This, winner take all grasp for power has lessened the effectiveness and stature of the political spheres in this country. So it’s down to the puppet on the left or the puppet in the right. A brown paper bag with a name on it.

So we have the two parties with the two extremes. One party despite its downfalls wants to govern. Wants to see progress. Wants to enact change.

The other is fighting culture wars, denying science, and tiptoeing a line on bigotry that is stepped over habitually. Their method as the “party of no” which they labeled themselves during the Obama years does NOTHING for the citizens of this country. The obstructionist approach of saying no because the other side proposed it is not helpful, if you’d call it governing at all! The “war on woke” and this owning the libs thing is some childish, useless sh*t! Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Can we have representatives who actually work together and find compromise to accomplish SOMETHING!!!?

Anyway… There’s only one healthy party in America right now. And it sure ain’t the Republican MAGA Party…

[seanofbeankeep]

Another political post outside my usual fantasy genre ones but I got to vent this one as a leftie.

The right wing parties (in this case GOP) have mastered a political strategy the democrats have failed to combat or do themselves.

Trust me left wing politics while a struggle. Has been louder and more influential (usually with strikes and protests) in the past but has been muted over years.

It’s the art of ‘being a political influence when you’ve lost the election’

For me being from England i saw this strategy in full force with how Brexit came about. Brexit was something that neither Tories or Labour wanted. Yet UKIP headed by Nigel Farage it was his main aim and despite the party leader never winning a seat in parliament he managed to get Brexit through parliament. I mean with help from Aaron Banks a millionaire who had few scandals with oligarch deals and the media. They managed to influence the political conversation to Brexit, immigration, and all fear mongering. Press loved them, Farage was on front pages for every entertaining stunt he pulled, he was on the radio, tv shows to excite the debate. His stunts brought what they wanted ratings and maybe more. Not only was parliament forced to react and debate but public opinion was also becoming his parties policy only. Real issues and facts were not heard. He got what he wanted in the end when PM thought the vote would end the debate.

GOP started this with Riger Ailes and Murdoch too. Fox News has always meant that outside elections even if the GOP lost. They could make Democrats react to whatever story they exploded as big news. They dominated the conversation

Other left wing networks constantly reacted to their stories. Politicans debate was consumed to react and debate Republican talking points, Public conversations was about what they aired. People became more conservative because whenever they looked at cost of living or other issues it always went to right wing discourse over immigration because all they ever hear are right wing talking points on this than left wing ones. They may have lost the White House but they still forced society and politics to stay wedged and absorbed in right wing politics. They prevented effectively left wing talking points and made even milder left wing point appear extreme or laughable. So when many people vote they are thinking in right wing opinion or fears. Unless that person is dedicated to left wing politics etc

Trump teams or general right wingers have pushed it further. They don’t only have Fox News but now podcast, Facebook, Twitter, tik tok influencers and pushing algorithm to their talking points. Even left wing influencers are stuck reacting to right wing ones where conversations never elevate or change the conversation but only react to the right wing one. Stuck in its web. You can’t even watch a tv show or play a game without it being dragged into ‘culture war’. You’re constantly thinking about their political reaction or opinions.

They know that this election the on the fence voters would be thinking mostly in right wing perspectives because that’s all people hear without realising it’s conservative unless you’re hyper into political ideology and how they work. If it’s Obama or Biden or Harris, voters were still thinking in Trump terms and they had to react to that more often.

Capitalism media either lets it thrive because owners of the platforms want tax cuts and deals from right wingers. Or it’s the nature of quantity over quality that tv ratings or clicks get when everything turns to misinformation that gets everyone angry. They just make more money and don’t care for consequences. Therefore this strategy thrives. We get stuck in it.

If you’re left wing . As small effort as you can do try to boost left wing media that does more than just reacts to right wing talking points. Try to change conversation than react to it. But I don’t blame you for being stuck it’s a strategy too, we’ve yet to combat fully.

Democrats will slow down their political strategy and will be slowly pushed to talk more like conservatives in reaction to whatever Trump does or says. While GOP if Trump lost would’ve found money or allies to ramp up their campaign and talking points to drown out anything. It’s scary how effective they are at this. They also killed off or controlled libraries and education that’s always been grassroots places where facts come from and equality is found.

If people try to shame you for protesting it’s because they know it’s one left wing strategy for our opinion or talking points to get noticed

As a queer person interested in our rights. I saw us get equality in marriage. I saw that next was activists and politicians sorting out adoption and parental rights. Strengthening anti discrimination in schools etc. Trans rights and medical rights. but right wingers stopped us talking about our conversations. They spread fear and misinformation. The media switched to what’s next for us and only reported to the barrage of hate. Making it worse, making sure public only talked or thought about us in right wing terms of ‘predatory danger’ than facts about our lack of rights and how we’re victimised more often.

Our legal teams and activists had to turn away from their work and forced to react to hate, media coverage and threats than push their work further. Charity money when into legal fees to sue for defamation than other work. Strategy works here too at preventing people from gaining rights because it keep us busy in reacting than working at a higher level. They drag us to their level. They dominate how we are perceived. They make right wing perspectives the mainstream. It’s frustrating.

[definitely-not-the-kgb]

I had to log in to my computer for this. Let's go.

I. Hate. Nationalists.

I. Hate. Conservatives.

I hate self-proclaimed "Marxists" who are both Conservative and Nationalistic.

Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and all Leftist ideologies are incompatible with Conservatism and Nationalism. There is no compatibility between them, and the adoption of Conservatism and Nationalism by economically Socialist people and parties is not only revisionist, it is a total and complete betrayal of Marxism in all its forms, including Leninism and Stalinism, ideologies behind which many of these bastards hide behind.

The LGBT community benefitted thoroughly from Socialism in Eastern Europe, that is undeniable. Countries like the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People's Republic, the Republic of Cuba, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic have brought freedom, in large part, to LGBT people, within the frameset of their times. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the People's Republic of Bulgaria made enormous scientific steps to understand LGBT people. Lenin had liberated LGBT people in the early Soviet Union before Stalin undid that in one of the worst mistakes of his premiership.

For self-proclaimed "Socialists" and "Marxists" to deny this is to deny historical fact and give into the lies of Liberal propaganda, based mainly on a purposeful misunderstanding of history and on survivorship bias. Am I saying that LGBT people were entirely free? Of course not. Persecution was still common in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia, Romania, Albania, and -of course- the Post-Stalinist USSR, and even in countries where it was wholly legalised, often the governments didn't go further to ensure protection, but this happened at a time where in the Capitalist Bloc tens of thousands of LGBT people were executed and imprisoned compared to a few thousand in all of the Eastern Bloc in the same time.

The liberation of LGBT people is inherent to Marxism, and anybody who claims that not to be the case is not only a revisionist and a reactionary but a traitor to the revolution and the cause: Do not let their pitiful attempts at Identity Politics get to you. No war other than the class war means no war based on gender, no war based on ethnicity, race, nation, or anything. The only fight that Socialism must embark upon is that of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie war whose intrinsic goal is overthrowing the established order and liberating the proletariat, be they a woman, a man, neither, both, in between, or someone else entirely. Regardless of who they do or do not love.

Nationalism is against all the values of Marx and Engels, Lenin and even Stalin. Do not let them hide behind their excuses from Kim Il Sung and Stalin. Stalin never supported Nationalism. He explained in Marxism and the National Question that each nation has different material conditions, and thus they each have varying procedures to be taken to achieve the revolution. This is one of the few beliefs he shared with the Left Opposition of Trotsky.

The belief that the primary division of humanity is the nation is revisionist, not just revisionist but one of the main rhetorics of fascists and nazis, according to which the superiority of one nation over every other separates "Good" from "Bad". There is no "National Communism"; there is a "National Way to Communism", no Socialist Nationalism, no Left-Wing Nationalism. Any ideology that puts the nation before the people and culture before the workers, that ideology is not leftist, socialist, or Marxist, but rather some type of Falangism more or less moderate.

Be warned of these reactionaries and fascists pretending to be Socialists: do not fall for their rhetoric and stand your ground. The liberation of the proletariat includes everyone, all people of all nations, everywhere on Earth. No tolerance for the intolerants, no war but the class war, no enemy but the bourgeoisie. Remember, comrades, the revolution is red, rainbow, black, pink, blue, and every colour because the only struggle that unites us is against the oppression of Capitalism. The only things we have to lose from this liberation are our chains.

[antoine-roquentin]

The previous part of this series, Part 2, is available here.

In the world of internal Democratic Party politics, the chosen party of the professional-managerial class, fighting for a role in the party hierarchy is done by resume-padding. You have to have worked the correct jobs under the right managers with subsequent letters of recommendation from your patrons, showing both that you care but your primary commitment is to the job itself, not to the cause you were purportedly fighting for in that position. In that sense, Allard Lowenstein fits the bill as a typical upwardly mobile member of the party in the same way Pete Buttigieg does today. If America knows Lowenstein at all, it's from his role in the popular PBS documentary series on the civil rights movement Eyes on the Prize, especially episode 5. The emotional climax of the episode comes over the party machinations to keep the alternative slate of black voters from being seated at the 1964 Democratic convention, which LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, and his protege Walter Mondale succeeded in because of their superior knowledge of debate club tactics. A series of copyright claims by rightsholders for whom licenses had expired kept this show off the air in the 90s, but early filesharing advocates got to work promoting the show across the internet. After all, if they were trying to ban it, it must be important. The clip here is from that episode.

Lowenstein got his law degree at Yale, did his stint in the military like an honorable American, and then got a job from Eleanor Roosevelt directly, always the most powerful player in the party from her husband's death to 1960. However, Lowenstein also cared to an extent. He wanted the black people of the American south to have a chance to vote, based to a large extent on what he witnessed on a fact-finding tour of Namibia, then an internal colony of Apartheid South Africa. His passion was such that he was a major player in the movement to prevent LBJ from being renominated in 1968, recruiting Eugene McCarthy to run against him. This was because they were both politics nerds in the West Wing sense. Young guns, they believed they knew better than the Democratic machine politicians what voters wanted. They knew the people wanted an anti-war candidate who satisfied liberal pieties and who thumbed his nose at the old hierarchies. The result was three unsuccessful campaigns for presidential nomination and Lowenstein himself becoming a one-term congressman. As Gus Tyler, president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (himself a young rebel against an old guard at one point, now an old man leading younger women) said, Lowenstein was leading politics "away from economics to ethics and aesthetics, to morality and culture", and ultimately "to the Republican Wolves".

The problem here wasn't that Lowenstein cared too much, as most of his contemporaries wrote. Rather, he'd performed like a racer trying to slipstream/draft who had spun out of control. This was because of Lowenstein's background and training. As the consummate liberal striver, he'd managed to become president of the National Student Association in 1951 (note this in particular for future posts). This was a union of students' unions, which was basically the debate club to end all debate clubs because that's all student unions are. Even today, but especially so in the 40s and 50s, the only reason to get involved in student politics was because it was a training ground for how parliaments and congresses work. All they do is argue over arcane resolutions on mundane subject matter, until one manages to land a blow strong enough to gain a majority in favour. It's a weirdo politics junkie's dream.

Lowenstein brought that energy to organizing black people in the American South. Even before his role in organizing 1964's Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the project for which Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered, he was already getting on the nerves of more radical black people. James Forman, right of MLK in the pic below, ended up on the wrong side of Lowenstein at the 1956 NSA convention. Lowenstein didn't want passage of a more progressive civil rights platform than the one the Democratic Party had adopted. At one point, he literally shoved a black man to the microphone to speak on his behalf, according to Forman. He won, of course, because he knew his debate club tactics better.

7 years later, Lowenstein and Forman butted heads over the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's work in Mississippi and Alabama. Forman notes that he arrived almost unannounced, and yet many of the white volunteers suddenly claimed that they were under his orders to do what they were doing, including going to towns that were centres of white violence and had no organizing done. As a Yale alumni, Lowenstein probably had links to major white supremacist orgs to protect these people given that Yale was the university of choice for white southerners in the Ivy Leagues. On the other hand, Lowenstein's line was against black radical politics and towards conciliation. Forman found that Lowenstein often worked hand-in-hand with Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and John Lewis (far right in the pic above), and were close to Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington's Socialist Party (eventually Democratic Socialists of America), bankrolled by Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers union. He was particularly piqued when they went to the Dominican Republic as supposedly independent observers and certified the election of the pro-American candidate not long after an American invasion, despite the well-known popularity of his opponent Juan Bosch.

This rankled Forman because the struggle in America for the civil rights of black people was part and parcel of the decolonization struggle abroad, or so he thought. To have America going around and imposing governments on nations through its military industrial complex and arcane intelligence apparatus reeked of what South Africa was doing in Namibia. After all, there was a reason the SNCC had adopted the phrase "one man, one vote" for its 1964 Freedom Summer campaign: it had been a slogan of the 1958 All African Peoples' Conference, the first meeting of black revolutionaries from all of Africa in history.

This conference was convened by the newly independent Ghana, the eighth independent nation in Africa and the first of a long wave which gained independence between 1958 and 1994. The resounding waves of this action were felt in America. Martin Luther King Jr explained in an interview that year "This event will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions—not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America… At bottom, both segregation in America and colonialism in Africa are based on the same thing—white supremacy and contempt for life". But "Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent", incoming Ghanian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah declared, which is why the All African Peoples' Conference had to be held.

Nkrumah did not learn his debating skills from the NSA. As a student in America in the 30s, he'd given sermons in churches across New York City and Philadelphia, talking always about Africa. Yet it was his experience of American segregation that radicalized him. Being told he was only fit to drink from a spittoon was one of many insults he faced from white Americans. At times, he would buy a subway ticket so that he had a place to sleep. He knew the civil rights struggle was the same as his own, and this followed to the rest of his government. When Ghana became independent, it had virtually no skilled workers because universities in the country barred black students and everybody who had the ability travelled to America to learn. In 1958, Nkrumah spoke at an NAACP dinner in Harlem, telling black American dignitaries that the next step in their fight for civil rights was to send their well educated members back to Ghana, where they would receive a warm welcome and teach their fellow Africans to build a strong, independent nation that could one day bring together a united Africa to rival America.

The opening salvo in this project was the call for all freedom fighters of Africa to send representatives to the AAPC. Nkrumah welcomed them personally. First came Tom Mboya (keep your eyes on this guy) from Kenya, a trade unionist official and future Minister of Justice who one day soon would ensure a member of his tribe, Barack Obama Senior, made his way to America to attend university. Future successful and failed revolutionaries like Joshua Nkomo, George Padmore, Kenneth Kaunda, Hastings Banda, Frantz Fanon, Dr. Felix-Roland Moumie, and Holden Roberto, as well as notable black US Congressman Charles Diggs, were among 300 delegates. Perhaps the most important delegate was accidental. Joseph Kasavubu had initially been invited as the representative from the Congo. However, when the plane to Ghana stopped in Leopoldville/Kinshasa, Belgian authorities had stopped him from getting on, recognizing him from anti-colonial speeches earlier. However, they did allow Patrice Lumumba and two comrades who had impressed the plane's passengers with their rhetoric at a bar to join in. When Nkrumah met Lumumba, he was deeply impressed and called for a photographer to record the moment.

Also among them was Horace Mann Bond as a representative of the African American Institute, a group funded by western mining interests but staffed with academics from major American black universities like Howard and Lincoln. He brought along a reporter named Bob Keith, who was arrested during a closed session of the congress with bugging equipment. Bond was also president of the American Society of African Culture. AMSAC had deep pursestrings, bailing out a number of black groups soon after it was founded, and sponsored Bond as well as CUNY professor John Aubrey Davis, who reported on all the proceedings to former National Student Association president and current AMSAC leader James Theodore Harris Jr, according to AMSAC's archives. A third group that attended the conference was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, who sent white AFL-CIO leader Irving Brown. AFL-CIO in turn sponsored International Ladies' Garment Workers Union member Maida Springer, one of the few black women. One thing that AAI, AMSAC, AFL-CIO, and CCF shared was an explicit commitment to anticommunism in their charters, even as some claimed apoliticality otherwise. CCF sent its future president, South African poet Ezekiel Mphaphele. Some CCF funding came from the Fairfield Foundation, a charitable organization that sent its own observer Patrick Duncan, a white member of the South African Liberal Party. Other funding came from the Ford Foundation, which sent white University of California Santa Cruz professor John A. Marcum on its own. Marcum and Brown helpfully offered to translate ad hoc between French (spoken by Lumumba) and English (spoken by Nkrumah), and the two report an unknown American helping them with all their conversations.

I note these people because they or the organizations that sponsored them were all revealed to be CIA fronts or conduits by the magazine Ramparts in 1967 (Brown's one time boss at the CIA's International Organizations Division, Thomas Braden, wrote a response entitled "I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'"). Many of them defended themselves by saying they were unaware of where the money was coming from or that they did not know the people they reported to were compromised. As Ramparts was drawing primarily on IRS information that had been leaked as well as corroborating testimony, they did not know the full extent of their integration into the intelligence apparatus. As many of these organizations folded in the 70s and 80s after these revelations their archives were given over to universities for preservation. They were rarely perused, two notable exceptions being by Frances Stonor Saunders and Hugh Wilford in the 90s and 2000s respectively. What they revealed was not wholesale domination or complete innocence, but rather a joy that the CIA was funding them to do what they knew was the right thing combined with strident insistence to the conduits for their funding that they not be forced to do anything that would contradict with their politics. When Farmer, of Forman's Lowenstein faction at CORE and SNCC, went on an AMSAC-sponsored tour of Africa, he criticized Malcolm X's beliefs as "apartheid and… worse", then got into arguments with diplomatic staff for his criticisms of American policies towards South Africa, Portugese Africa, and most of all the Congo. He later claimed that seeing apartheid abroad helped to calcify his opinion the American government. When Brown became harshly critical of Nkrumah, Springer, his subordinate and mentee at AFL-CIO, explained decades later that the 1958 conference gave her "goosebumps" and was more significant than the fall of the Berlin Wall in her opinion.

Evidently, many of these liberals, like the more radical leftists they battled, viewed the American civil rights struggle as an anti-colonial one. So too did the CIA, given the similar manner in which they infiltrated both through the liberals. However, portrayals of the struggle in popular culture like Eyes on the Prize show nothing of the sort. They tend to show a struggle from the streets right into the Democratic Party. This pattern also befits all of the above named associated with the CIA, albeit with the ones less inclined to support whoever the current president was also ending up becoming less powerful. Typically, they emerged in academia rather than politics, ie the other glorified debate club. In contrast, the radicals tended to find themselves sidelined or shot. Forman was an early supporter of the Black Panthers along with his associate at the SNCC Stokely Carmichael, but as the group descended into factional infighting, his former comrade stuffed a pistol in his mouth and threatened to shoot, giving him a nervous breakdown. He went into academia and helped ensure his son, now a Yale Law professor, could do the same. To co-author his autobiography, "The Making of Black Revolutionaries", Forman picked Julian Bond, son of Horace Mann Bond.

‘Irving Brown was never a CIA agent’, said Cord Meyer, the head of the International Organizations Division of the CIA. ‘The very notion is laughable. He was as independent as you could get, and very strong-willed. What the CIA did was to help him finance his major projects when they were crucial to the Western cause. But in his operations he was totally on his own’.

[mariacallous]

Every Briton of a certain age remembers where they were the night Tony Blair became prime minister. On the evening of May 1, 1997, drivers on the London Underground announced the exit polls to passengers. Revelers celebrated with bottles of sparkling wine on the streets. The party faithful assembled at the Southbank culture complex by the River Thames where the campaign anthem, D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better,” was blared out.

Now the band, whose song was synonymous with Blair’s victory, says it doesn’t want it played this time around. Its members blame the legacy of Iraq, but it’s not just that. The song feels out of place; the overall mood is sour.

The naive mood of optimism that followed Blair into office disappeared with that war; yet the “New Labour” project proved technically resilient. Blair won his third electoral victory in 2005, only to hand over power, reluctantly, to his erstwhile friend and archrival, Gordon Brown, in 2007. Brown hung on for three years, but the project was exhausted after 13 years.

Everything is relative. It is salutary to remember that the Conservatives have lasted one year longer, from 2010 to 2024­—14 clownish, desultory, unproductive years. Five prime ministers, one Brexit nightmare, and endless corruption scandals, and yet they continue to plough on with their customary bluster.

The paradox of this moment is that Keir Starmer engenders almost none of the enthusiasm that accompanied Blair even though the present Labour leader has turned his party’s fortunes around and is on the cusp of sweeping the Tories out of power. According to opinion polls, Starmer could achieve a landslide even greater than Blair’s, consigning the Tories to the wilderness for a generation.

He has done so by promising as little as possible, focusing on six inoffensive and general pledges—such as cutting waiting times for doctors’ treatments, recruiting new teachers, and cracking down on antisocial behavior to which nobody could object. This is a direct copy from Blair in 1997, a decontamination strategy in which you give your rivals nothing to target. It has worked spectacularly well. The increasingly desperate outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has taken to warning voters not to “surrender”—alarmist talk that has invited mockery.

Starmer cruises on, repeating his mantras such as stability, responsibility, and the vague notion of change. To most voters, this will suffice—anything to kick the Conservatives out. Unlike the naive optimism of 1997, disappointment has already been factored in.

Is this a reflection of the almost complete loss of confidence by the political mainstream across the democratic world, or might this instead be later seen by historians as a masterful example of expectation management? In contrast to Blair, the showman, could the dourer Starmer achieve at least as much during his first term in office? And could he entrench Labour hegemony for at least as long a period as his predecessor did?

Starmer has brought some of Blair’s advisors of yesteryear into his core team. Others are consulted more informally. As for the man himself, Starmer noted recently: “I talk to Tony a lot about the period just before ’97, because obviously I’m very interested in talking to people who have won elections and taken a party from opposition into government.” Starmer reminded his TV interviewer caustically that Labour isn’t very good at winning—only three times since the war has it snatched power from the Tories, the other two occasions being in 1945 and 1964.

Each man’s thinking has been heavily influenced by that record. They share an assessment of Britain as a Conservative and conservative country. Labour has been the imposter. Starmer has pared back his manifesto proposals to the bare minimum—removing tax breaks on private schools to pay for the more underserved, a public energy company, and a minimal increase in workers’ rights.

Earlier, more radical ideas on the environment and on tackling child poverty were watered down. Little of any consequence is said about Brexit and the damage it has caused. The tactic is simple: Don’t rock the boat. Don’t challenge the political and economic fundamentals; instead, do what you can at the margins—if necessary, by stealth.

In the end, Blair did preside over radical improvements in public services—the fabled National Health Service (NHS), education, public transport, and social. But he rarely advertised the investments that had been made.

Perhaps a more accurate comparison would be with the first administration of Harold Wilson, one of only three previous Labour leaders to win elections since the war (the other being Clement Attlee in 1945). In his first six years in power, from 1964 to 1970, Wilson presided over a government that was technocratic but also radical.

More than his predecessors, Blair stood out most of all on the international stage. He presided triumphantly at European Union summits (even if he did little to tackle the intrinsic hostility engendered by the right-wing media). He was buddies with then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, going on to woo the likes of President Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan and Russian President Vladimir Putin to support the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 on behalf of his new friend, U.S. President George W. Bush.

Blair wrapped himself in the flag, but then it was a more optimistic union jack, the pre-millennium era of the Spice Girls and Cool Britannia. The legacy of 1989 and the collapse of communism still resonated a decade and more later. Into the early/mid-2000s, Blair-land was all about liberal democracy and free markets walking hand in hand, convincing recalcitrant autocrats of the errors of their ways. Globalization and free trade would deliver wealth. In the U.K., U.S., and across the EU, such thinking has been largely repudiated.

Two decades on, in these darker post-pandemic times, with war stalking Europe and the Middle East, with climate change targets being missed thanks to a popular backlash, with populists dominating public discourse and accreting power, Starmer ensures that the British flag accompanies every video or photograph of him. The word accompanying these pictures is “change,” but the subliminal message is “security.”

Who can blame him? Starmer has been dealt a miserable deck of cards. Unlike Blair, who was bequeathed a healthy exchequer by his Conservative predecessor, John Major—an underrated premier—the new man in 10 Downing Street inherits a moribund economy, the smallest military since Napoleonic times, an NHS on its knees, schools having to deal with leaking roofs, and post-Brexit bureaucratic obstacles that make trade infinitely harder. Thanks to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and to a (slightly) lesser degree Theresa May and Sunak, Britain’s role is largely trashed around the world.

Starmer struggles to smile in the way Blair did. He doesn’t gladden the hearts, and he certainly isn’t promising the world. He is a man for his times, one of the few grown-up mainstream politicians still standing. With expectations so low, it will be hard for him to disappoint. Might that present him with an opportunity?

[sedoretu]

Holy shit I need everyone to listen to the first half of this 15-minute podcast and the absolutely depraved, horrific things that Republican convention-goers say into a microphone with a smile on their face.

RAMEY: You know, I believe in some aid to other countries, but, you know, we need to support our allies. Ukraine is not really our ally. So - Israel's our ally and always has been. And when you turn your back on Israel, you're turning your back on God. So that's just the way I was always brought up. Israel's God's chosen people. The Jews are God's chosen people. And, you know, they need to be taken care of. They didn't ask to be assaulted. They didn't ask for people to come in and steal their women and children out of their homes. So I know, in West Virginia, if that would have happened, it would have been a war. So - right there in my own backyard. You're not stealing somebody's child or their sister or their brother or their grandma and torturing people without getting some repercussions. So I just believe people need to love each other more and more, you know? They need to read the Bible or whatever faith you belong to and figure out that, you know, we're all in this world together, struggling every day, trying to make it. Be kind to people, you know? Give the kindness, and the kindness will come back to you. I believe Donald Trump loves our country. I believe he - I know he loves our veterans. I know he loves our military. I think he loves me, you know? To be honest, I think he truly cares about the American people. Joe and Kamala - I get no warm, fuzzy feelings at all from those two.

or

KHAN: Well, coming from India, culturally, I'm pro-life. India has 1.4 billion people. And secondly, you know, I support - see, our foundational values are - in America are freedom and liberty and free market enterprise structure - capitalistic structure. It's not the perfect model, but it's an optimal model. I didn't come here for socialism or communism. And out of - you know, I don't want to disrespect any gender thing, but I did not come here to support the LGBTQ rights, to be very honest. Culturally, we don't do that. So my values resonate more with the Republican Party, which happen to be our foundational values as well.

or

DONNA VAN AUSDALL: Aloha. I'm Donna Van Ausdall. I am a kupuna, which is senior in Hawaii. I'm 71 years old. Well, I've been involved with the Hawaii Republican Party since I became a Republican back in 2016. I'm just so thrilled to be here. To see President Trump in person is a huge honor. KHALID: You said that you've been involved with the Republican Party since you became a Republican in 2016. So were you not always a Republican? VAN AUSDALL: No. I was a hard-core Democrat. And JFK was my childhood hero, like many of my generation, right? But my husband and I are devout traditional Catholics, so we made a heartfelt choice to become conservatives because of the abortion issue, you know? President Biden is a Catholic, and I'm very disappointed at his pro-abortion stance, you know? So - and I love the conservativeness of Republicans. You know, we want our country to continue to have its constitutional freedoms with the Second Amendment rights. You know, a lot of states are enacting gun laws that I think are too stringent.

I know some of y'all have beef with Democrats but if we don't organize and turn out the vote in November the government will be run by and for these hateful people

[uboat53]

All right guys, we need to talk. Time for a LONG RANT (TM) about an important topic.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last few years, you may have noticed that Republicans and conservatives have made a lot of noise about protecting children. Some of it came as part of the QAnon conspiracy theory about pedophilia and child sacrifice and some of it came as part of culture war issues like the existence of LGTBQ-etc people.

But one thing that's kind of gone under the radar is all the ways that these same people who claim to be protecting child welfare with every fiber of their being have actually made things far more dangerous for children. Let's run through the list.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Honestly, the most important thing that's been done for child welfare in the history of humankind is the massive decrease in child mortality that's been achieved in the past century. Seriously, until the mid 20th century, it was perfectly normal for about half of all children to die before the age of 5. We've come so far on this that now it's a rare tragedy when this occurs.

Part of this mortality was due to malnutrition, we've overcome Malthus (see the Malthusianism Wikipedia article if you're interested), but a huge amount of it is the power of modern medicine to deal with diseases that used to ravage children. Measles, Mumps, Smallpox, Influenza, and a huge amount of other diseases used to sweep through the population regularly either killing children or weakening them for another disease or condition to do the job.

Vaccines have been a huge part of this progress and are a major reason why viral illnesses no longer ravage the population on a regular basis (antibiotics have been similarly effective for bacterial illnesses) and yet there remains a disturbingly large and well-funded movement to advocate against vaccines and particularly childhood vaccinations, largely based on fraudulent claims that have been debunked more than a decade ago.

While it is true that this vaccine skepticism has strains across the ideological spectrum, it is only in the Republican Party where the idea has been given power by elected and appointed officials. No Democratic Surgeon General, for example, has recommended against the (exceedingly safe!) Covid or Measles vaccines, but that's exactly what the Surgeon General of Florida, Joseph Lapado, has done.

This is, of course, far from an isolated incident. A quick search will find dozens, even hundreds, of cases of GOP elected and appointed officials inveighing against vaccines, pushing to remove vaccine requirements, pushing to limit funding to vaccination programs, and generally echoing the most extreme and unproven claims against one of the most powerful public health tools for the protection of children that has ever been developed.

GUN VIOLENCE

Time to talk about guns. For a long time, this was a secondary issue, automobiles were the largest leading cause of death for children pretty much since we dealt with diseases (see the last section). However, over the last several decades, we've worked hard to implement all kinds of safety features that have dramatically brought down the number of children killed in car crashes. Guns, on the other hand…

Well, gun deaths among children have almost doubled in the last decade and, for the first time ever, they are now the leading cause of death for those under the age of 18 (otherwise known as children).

This increase seems to be largely driven by assaults rather than suicides or accidental deaths (though both of those have increased as well). Now, I'm not going to claim that there's a silver bullet for dealing with gun violence, but there are policies that are well supported by research and shown to reduce gun violence. It's also the case that, considered overall, states that lean more toward Democratic policies have significantly lower (and increasingly lower) levels of gun violence than states that lean toward Republican policies.

All the specifics aside, it speaks to priorities. If gun deaths are now the number one killer of children, anyone interested in protecting children would want to do something about that. My accusation of Republican/conservative officials is not that they don't want to implement my preferred policies to address this issue, it's that they consistently refuse to implement any policies that, even theoretically, would be aimed at addressing this issue.

CHILD LABOR

In the early 1900s, child labor was common and widespread, with children often working 12 hour shifts or more with very little in the way of safety and oversight. Over the course of the first four decades of the 20th century, numerous laws were passed to make it illegal to employ children in dangerous jobs or for long hours that would interfere with their education.

Now, despite an uptick in child labor violations and numerous stories of children killed while illegally working dangerous jobs, Republican governors and legislatures in states as disparate as Wisconsin, Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, and Missouri have been pushing for and passing laws that weaken the protections in place for child workers as young as 14 and sometimes even younger.

RACISM

Racism isn't generally seen as a child issue because it's assumed to affect all ages about equally, but we have to take into account the demographics of this country before assuming that. In fact, children (those under 18) are actually the most racially diverse group in the United States with older groups being much more homogeneously white. In fact, because of this racial difference, racism has a far greater effect on the average child than it does on the average adult.

And, to be clear, there are numerous ways that ongoing racism is actively affecting the health and well-being of children in this country today. Republicans, though, overwhelmingly believe that enough has been done to combat racism and that nothing more should be done to address it.

ACTUAL CHILD ABUSE

Okay, QAnon definitely took this issue and ran off into the woods to do unspeakable things to it, but child abuse is definitely a real issue that impacts children. Unlike the QAnon caricature, though, child abuse tends not to be something carried out by shadowy strangers hidden from public view, but is overwhelmingly (over 90%) committed by someone the child knows personally.

The problem is, by spreading the idea that child abuse is a stranger-danger type of problem, this idea directly impacts efforts to protect children from abuse by draining resources from evidence-based policies and pushing them into nonsense.

Now, you may say "hey, that's QAnon, not Republicans" and, sure, but many elected Republicans are supporters of the QAnon conspiracy (among others) and even those who don't openly profess support are either silent or press for policies based on the conspiratorial worldview. In 2020, 97 open QAnon followers ran in political primaries with 22 Republicans and 2 Independents among them making it to the general election, numerous representatives and party officials have taken part in QAnon organized events, and even Donald Trump, the de facto head of the party and its likely presidential nominee, has repeatedly expressed support for it. It's also notable the only prominent Republicans who have spoken out against QAnon have either been out of office or have quickly either retired or been defeated for re-election.

So, yes, the source of the issue is QAnon, but QAnon is part of the Republican Party now.

LGBTQ-ETC YOUTH

One of the main dangers that Republicans and conservatives like to say they're protecting children from is LGBTQ-ect people, but this also ignores the fact that many children are or will turn out to be LGBTQ-etc themselves. The statistics are pretty clear that suicide rates among this group are twice as high or even higher than the general population but the research is also clear that LGBTQ-etc youth with supportive families and communities have suicide rates that are almost completely back in line with the general public.

There's also no evidence to support the idea that LGBTQ-etc people abuse children at any higher rates than any other group, so targeting them not only fails to deliver any particular gains in child protection, it also alienates LGBTQ-etc youth and drives them to suicide.

POLICIES VS OUTCOMES

So far I've only talked about specific policies, but what do the outcomes look like? There's numerous ways you can measure child well-being, but I figured I'd go with deaths. Specifically, I was able to find good data for both infant mortality and child (1-14) mortality. I then compared this with Ballotpedia's information about party control of state governments over the last 10 years (this link brings you to Colorado, but you can change the state name in the URL to get any state).

Crunch this data and what you find is that Republican control of state government is bad for infant mortality but is REALLY bad for child mortality. There are some outliers, but the pattern is pretty clear that, the longer Republicans had control in a state government and the more control they had, the worse the outcomes are.

Infant mortality is almost 25% higher and the mortality rate of children aged 1-14 is OVER 80% HIGHER in states fully controlled by Republicans than in states fully controlled by Democrats. These patterns also generally hold for the level of partial control as well.

A WORD TO REPUBLICANS/CONSERVATIVES

If you're a registered Republican, if you vote Republican, or if you consider yourself a conservative, you may look at some of this and think "that's not what I believe". And, yes, that's fair, this doesn't perfectly represent the views of every Republican or conservative everywhere.

What it does represent, however, is the view of a large number of people in the party and movement with power. Power that they're using to enact these very policies which, as I think I've shown, endanger children.

You may not identify with these, but your party and movement do.

CONCLUSION

Republicans and conservatives talk a really big game about protecting children but, when you look at what they're actually doing, their policies are one of the biggest threats to children. I don't need a longer conclusion than that.

As usual, if you disagree or have anything to add, please cite your sources appropriately. I think I've done a decent job of that, so I'll just ask that you do the same.

[quotesfrommyreading]

How did we get to this point? The origin story of Taiwan most familiar to Americans begins in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces, locked for years in a civil war with Mao Zedong’s Communists, were defeated. Along with much of his remaining army, Chiang fled to Taiwan and set up a government-in-exile called the Republic of China. That government was recognized by the United States. But within a few years of Richard Nixon’s 1972 Cold War opening to Beijing, the U.S. formally switched diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic. Ever since, Taiwan’s status has been cloaked in ambiguity. The U.S. acknowledges Beijing’s claim to Taiwan without recognizing its sovereignty over the island. To help deter a Chinese effort to seize Taiwan by force, the U.S. has pledged to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.

That origin story explains Taiwan’s curious geopolitical status, but it leaves a lot out. When Chiang fled to Taiwan—with roughly 2 million Chinese from the mainland—there were some 6 million people already living on an island that was just emerging from 50 years of Japanese rule. Most of the people living on the island when Chiang arrived could claim roots in Taiwan going back hundreds of years. They had their own languages and culture. So too did the island’s many Indigenous groups, such as the Amis, the Atayal, and the Paiwan. To subjugate the island, Chiang killed and imprisoned tens of thousands over decades—a period known as the White Terror. He set up a military dictatorship under the leadership of his Chinese nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) and, from this offshore platform, vowed to reclaim mainland China.

Taiwan is different now. With its broad boulevards, glass towers, military monuments, narrow side streets, night markets, and ample signs in English, Taipei today presents an ambience of blended cultures: Chinese, Japanese, Western, and distinctly Taiwanese. Bubble tea, a Taiwanese invention, is everywhere. But consider what it was like to grow up in the shadow of Taiwan’s postwar history, and you can better understand the profound ways in which younger generations have been remaking the island’s politics and identity.

Emily Y. Wu is a professional podcaster who blends a focus on youth culture with an urgent concern for Taiwan’s political present. (One of her shows is called Metalhead Politics.) She is among dozens of Taiwanese I spoke with during the past year, first on Zoom, then in person in Taipei. Wu was born under KMT martial law in 1984. Her family did not come over with Chiang; they had lived in Taiwan for generations. “Chiang Kai-shek brought China over,” she told me. “I grew up always knowing that there was this alternate history: It was Taiwanese history, which was not taught in school.” Students were taught Chinese history and geography under the presumption that the KMT would one day govern China again. Mandarin was spoken in class, and speaking Taiwanese was discouraged. Wu recalled Lesson 9 of her childhood textbook: “ ‘Hello teachers, hello students, we are Chinese!’ ”

But a movement for democracy was building. “We grew up hearing these names, knowing that there was a group of activists, scholars, lawyers that tried to imagine a free Taiwan,” Wu explained. Many of those people were members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which currently governs Taiwan. In 1987, the KMT lifted nearly 40 years of martial law. Wu’s political consciousness was shaped by the protests, marches, and hunger strikes that led to Taiwan’s first true presidential election, in 1996.

By the beginning of the 21st century, Taiwan was becoming ever more democratic—and ever more Taiwanese. The school curriculum changed: Taiwan’s distinct history was taught, as were Taiwanese languages. Taiwan also began to celebrate its Indigenous population. After the election of President Ma Ying-jeou, in 2008, links of trade, investment, and travel helped reduce tensions with China. Ma was from the KMT, and the party’s Chinese heritage and its ties to Taiwan’s business elite eased the way to détente with Beijing. But many Taiwanese, particularly the young, feared that forging too close a connection could ultimately give Beijing leverage over Taiwan. In 2014, in what became known as “the Sunflower Movement,” named for the flower that served as a symbol of hope, students occupied the Taiwan legislature to oppose a free-trade agreement with China. After a tense standoff, they succeeded in stopping the deal. They also helped propel a political wave that in 2016 brought the election of the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen as president.

As Taiwan was becoming more democratic, China was becoming more autocratic. And as Taiwan was becoming more Taiwanese, China was becoming more fervently nationalist. After the ascent of Xi Jinping to the head of the Communist Party, in 2012, Beijing shifted from incentives to coercion. Xi’s government proved adept at bullying companies and entire countries to stop doing business in Taiwan and to recognize China’s narrative of sovereignty. Xi also began escalating crackdowns on China’s periphery—in Xinjiang province and in Hong Kong.

  —  Taiwan Wants China to Think Twice About an Invasion

[mastomysowner]

On the essence of the Galactic Civil War

This is a translation of this text.

When talking about the Galactic Civil War, it is usually seen as a war of galactic dissidents/guerrillas against the galactic Reich. That is, the war of representatives of the interests of the people (or "representatives of the interests of the people") against a totalitarian state.

But this is far from being the case. And the question is not who is right and who is wrong, but what exactly were the opponents.

Let's start with the Galactic Empire. Both its supporters and opponents have the strong image of a totalitarian state, but the Empire was not totalitarian. After all, what is a totalitarian state? This is a state where everything is subject to one idea and all public life is controlled. Sorry, but was the Galactic Empire really like that? There, of course, was an ideology, and a kind of ruling party (COMPNOR), and state security... But the most important component, universality, was missing. The COMPNOR mentioned above was more of a support movement for the authorities than a ruling vanguard party.

Look at Tatooine. Is it a totalitarian society? No, bandits are in charge here. No totalitarianism would tolerate the likes of Jabba openly running the place. Of course, a totalitarian regime is not necessarily a rigid order, but there is not even the appearance of a totalitarian society on Tatooine.

Again, a totalitarian Empire would be unlikely to destroy Alderaan. And not because it would be kinder. It’s just that in this case, Bail Organa would have been sent to Kessel or some other galactic Auschwitz and replaced by an imperial commissar by the time of the 19th year after the founding of the Empire long ago. Alderaan would have been brought under complete control. The Empire may have been concerned about the Alderaanian guerrillas, but not the planetary government. Even if Alderaan were still destroyed, they would've done it either at the beginning of the existence of the Empire, or because of being tired of the guerillas, but not in the way it was in the film.

Maybe the situation is different on other planets? Far from it. The Expanded Universe states that during the entire period of Palpatine's reign, the Empire changed governments only on 1 of the 80 planets. Perhaps Palpatine was not against the totalitarian structure of the state as such, but for all his genius he could not "bring to a common denominator" millions of worlds with different cultures and different political traditions. It was all the more difficult to do this after the millennium of the post-Ruusan "democratic" Republic.

To understand what the Empire is, you need to look at what state it was created from. What is the Old Republic? Its supporters positioned it as a democracy. In a way, of course, they are right. That's just the democracy of the Old Republic resembles a feudal democracy, like the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Many (but not all) planets had their representatives in the Senate. I note that these representatives were appointed by the government of the planet, they were not necessarily elected at all. That is, if the planet had an absolute monarchy, then if its representative was in the Senate, they represented the interests of the absolute monarchy.

One could compare this to the UN, however, the Republic was once a more centralized state, and the Ruusan Reformation turned it into, in fact, a kind of galactic feudalism, moreover - the feudalism of the era of fragmentation. In almost all their internal matters, the planets could pursue whatever policy they wanted (there were certain prohibitions, for example, slavery was forbidden, but by the time of the Clone Wars, most of them no longer paid attention to these prohibitions). As for the foreign policy of the planets, Coruscant gradually lost all control over it. The Republic did not have its own armed forces, and, like the kings of the era of feudal fragmentation, it had to gather the forces of "vassals", which far from always gave their strength to pacify the presumptuous local Napoleons.

What does Palpatine do after coming to power? He creates nationwide armed forces independent of local governments, limits the capabilities of local governments, changes objectionable rulers, and creates special services to spy on them.Furthermore, in addition to the “feudal” management system, an official apparatus (moffs and grand moffs) is being created that is not connected with it in any way.

Palpatine is often compared to Hitler, but his activities are more like the actions of the kings of the era of pacification of the feudal freemen. No, of course, on some planets, the actions of the Empire are reminiscent of colonial conquerors with the driving of the local population into slavery (Kashyyyk), on others, society is reshaped to imperial standards and ideas, including through the education of young people in the Palpatine Youth - COMPNOR‘s SAGroup. But such actions were not carried out on a general galactic scale - neither Leia nor Luke were accepted into any Imperial "Palpatine boy scouts".

Now about the Alliance to Restore the Republic. It’s usually presented as a terrorist/guerrilla movement.

However, their actions are very different from the actions of both guerrillas and terrorists. Yes, they had guerrilla groups that attacked the imperial garrisons, and underground organizations engaged in local propaganda. But neither of them were the main resources of the Alliance. The basis of their forces is the fleet. The Alliance spent 35% of its budget on small aircraft alone (fighters and bombers). Ships can’t be homemade by underground workers. Some of the ships, of course, were hijacked, captured or bought from others (including the Empire), but the rebels produced some part of the equipment (X-wings, for example) themselves. You need either a planet that will host production, hide this from the Empire and spend a lot of money on it, or an uninhabited planet. Either way you have to spend a lot of money. These funds were clearly not collected from students‘ donations. It is known that, for example, the Mon Calamari cruisers were built on that planet, and therefore were “hijacked” by the rebels.

And the leaders of the Alliance were by no means idealistic intellegentsia, disillusioned veterans, or even small businessmen. Organa was the ruler of his planet. Mothma is a toff of Chandrila. Iblis is by no means the last person on Corellia. The top of the Empire, of course, is not all "proletarians", but not of royal blood either. Palpatine is from a noble family, but for Coruscant he was a new man, a provincial. Vader is from the bottom of the society. Did the old aristocracy dislike the fact that the galaxy was ruled by people from the Outer Rim?

Perhaps the rebellion leaders were supported by the democratic forces of the interests of the people? But the Declaration of Rebellion bears no resemblance to a declaration of the rebellious masses. What are the slogans of the movements claiming to be "for the people"? Less taxes, fight against big business, support for small business. And what claims does the Alliance make against Palpatine in the declaration?

“You have disbanded the Senate, the voice of the people;

You have instituted a policy of blatant speciesism and genocide against the nonhuman peoples of the Galaxy;

You have overthrown the chosen leaders of planets, replacing them with Moffs and Governors of your choice;

You have raised taxes without the consent of those taxed;

You have murdered and imprisoned millions without benefit of trial;

You have unlawfully taken land and property;

You have expanded the military far beyond what is necessary and prudent, for the sole purpose of oppressing your subjects.”

Well, and which of the points of the declaration are addressed to the masses? The only paragraph that will really interest the common man is the question of taxes. And, interestingly, we are talking only about taxes, not social transformations. The rest of the paragraphs will affect only those who suffered from them. Seriously, is it even remotely interesting to some hard worker from Coruscant that the Empire enslaved the Wookiees, took away some king's planet and imprisoned those who supported this king? No, of course, this is relevant for the enslaved peoples and individuals who sympathize with them, but, as already noted, the guerrilla movement on the planets conquered by the Empire was not the main force of the Rebellion.

So the people would hardly be interested in listening to it. But the rulers of the planets... It is their representatives who will no longer represent their interests in the Senate. It is they who are forced to obey the Moffs. It is their property that the Emperor can appropriate. And it is their troops that are now being threatened by the Imperial military. Moreover, the democratic rebels, speaking out against the general galactic autocracy, had nothing against the monarchies on the planets. In their declaration there is not even a wish that something needs to be changed on the planets themselves, except for what was brought in by the Empire.

Of course, among the rebels there were many idealists who were attracted by beautiful words about freedom, those who were harmed in one way or another by the Empire, and simply patriots of those planets on which the Empire replaced the rulers (because for many, "our son of a bitch" is better). But at whose expense, as they say, is this banquet? Ideals are ideals, but spare parts for the X-wings must be produced. Armed forces on a galactic scale could be organized only with considerable funds. And if among ordinary people there are many who are ready to sacrifice something for the sake of bright ideals, there are very few altruists among governments, corporations, and just rich people. Such an audience will most likely allocate money only for the sake of what will benefit them.

The fact that the basis of the ideology of the rebels was to "revive the good old days", and not to build something original, also speaks in favor of the Alliance being a movement of discontented feudal lords.

So, Palpatine is not Hitler, but Louis XI or some other monarch who crushes the feudal freemen, and Mothma is not Rosa Luxemburg, she is Charles the Bold in a skirt. Accordingly, the Rebel Alliance can be compared to the League of the Public Weal - the organization of local feudal rulers who were not satisfied with the fact that the king centralized the state, raised taxes, and sought to put local rulers under control. By the way, when the Yuuzhan Vong (they’re from the old canon, but still) invade the New Republic, the latter behaves exactly like a state of the era of feudal fragmentation - everyone seeks to protect their world first of all, hoping that the Vong will fly by. Reminds of Rus' of the era of the Mongol invasion. Beware what you wish for?

Thus, the Galactic Civil War was not at all a war of the people (or terrorists) against the government, but a struggle of the local governments against the government of the entire galaxy.

[usarmytrooper]

More and more we don’t play it here anymore, either. People are starting to wake up (if you’ll pardon the expression) and speak out.

[simplicius-simplicissimus]

Disbelief and Sadness!

My wife's aunt is an US citizen (her husband was an US Army helicopter pilot) and has lived in the USA for decades. Before the US election she visited Germany and we also talked about the situation in the USA - and of course compared it with recent German history. It's hard to bear when a people runs after a fool and just throws their identity and centuries of heritage into the gutter. Thinking and talking about this fact in our history was very emotional for me. I guess that a similar emotion flashed through Jimmy Kimmel's head as well and brought tears to his eyes:

I watch a lot of US news (thanks to YouTube) because I have learned to love the country, culture and people on many trips - and because developments there also have an impact on Europe. It was often annoying when American journalists, politicians or even comedians (also Jimmy Kimmel!) spoke condescendingly about Germany out of a feeling of “moral superiority” - whose history they often only know parts of (mostly just the last 120 years) and even then don’t really understand it. We (at least I am) probably know their history better than they ours🤓. But that's just how Americans are: like a carefree, immaculate, self-centered, almost naive child….that faces now adulthood! Maybe they understand now - because it can happen that overnight you start to live in a different country. I made the following comment on the video above:

„Welcome to the club - Germany's last dictator was not elected with a majority👏🥳! “Project 2025” is the plan of the now open “fascist GOP” to “bring the country into line” at the federal level. The „technical term“ from the „one o one“ for dictators is called „Gleichschaltung“ (synchronization). Germans know this term very well because it’s taught in school - not to apply it, but not to fall for it again! Some idiots over here vote for them (AFD) anyway. Churchill once said: „The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.“

By they way, the GOP has been doing this „synchronization thing“ openly and shamelessly through gerrymandering and voter suppression at the state level for years. These boys and girls are no longer interested in “democracy” - they have long been switched to play another game called “autocracy”. The “Democrats” on the other side want to continue to stick to the “rules of the game”🤦🏼‍♂️.

The good news is: you can also get rid of autocrats - giving up is not the order of the day! Sometimes even bloodless - like the Poles with their PIS party government recently (by the way, the PIS party introduced a nationwide abortion ban!). But sometimes (and that is the bad news) it can cost destroyed cities, destroyed cultural treasures, destroyed identity, destroyed international reputation (Germany used to be known as the country of poets and thinkers - today as the country that killed 6 million Jews) or 6.6 million own deaths (5.5 million soldiers who fought for the wrong ideals and 1.1 million civilian deaths).

I hope that „this dilemma“ ends for you the “Polish way” - and that one day you will not be asked: “Why didn’t you prevent this?” or “What did you do about it?” All the best for your future from over the Atlantic - but I fear it’s going to be a rough ride 👋🏻.“

Moderate Americans must do their homework now - and we Europeans ours!

„It happened so slowly. Yeah, kind of overnight. We woke up one morning and Europe was at war.“

-Lee Miller in movie „Lee“

[bllsbailey]

Comedian Jim Gaffigan Kills It at Charity Dinner, Smokes Kamala for Being MIA

Remember when British comedian Ricky Gervais absolutely destroyed the Hollywood elite at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards? It was a beautiful moment worth revisiting—multiple times. Gervais eviscerated Tinseltown progressives for being so stunningly out of touch with the struggles of real people, and it is a thrill to watch even after all these years.

He laid into the vapid nature of all too many “celebrities":

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

— Theodora 🇬🇧���🇱🇺🇦 (@EmpressThea527) January 6, 2020

On Thursday night, however, it was time for the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York City, where dignitaries from the entertainment, politics, and business worlds all showed up to raise money for Catholic charities. Well, everyone except for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who evidently had more important things to do (what, exactly?). She sent in one of the most cringe-worthy videos of all time to make up for her non-appearance, but it failed to mask the fact that she’s the first candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984 who didn’t have the guts to make an appearance. 

Now I know that not everyone thought Jim Gaffigan was funny, but I have been loving his Saturday Night Live impressions of goofy Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. I thought he brought the heat to the evening and dropped some vicious—though fair—hits on Biden, Harris, Schumer, the Democrat party, and even Trump himself.

Here we go:

Jim Gaffigan: "The Democrats have been telling us Trump's reelection is a threat to democracy. In fact, they were so concerned of this threat, they staged a coup, ousted their democratically elected incumbent, and installed Kamala Harris." pic.twitter.com/ZVgqMbT2p5— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 18, 2024

While there was an extremely serious point behind that joke, it also made me laugh. But wait, there's more.

This one had me guffawing. "They're called the Biden Family":

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 18, 2024

But he really nailed it when he called out Harris for inexplicably failing to appear. Gaffigan: “She did find time to appear on 'The View,' Howard Stern, Colbert, and the longtime staple of campaigning, the 'Call Her Daddy podcast,'” he joked. It’s funny, but it’s also gonna leave a mark because it’s 100 percent true. 

"Twenty-two percent of Americans identify as Catholic. Catholics will be a key demographic in every battleground state."

"I'm sorry... Why is Vice President Kamal Harris not here?" he wondered. A helluva question:

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 18, 2024

Here’s a nice wrap-up of his best moments:

— Overton (@overton_news) October 18, 2024

I have often argued that comedy and satire are some of the best ways to expose the extremism on the left, and it’s something conservatives must continue to do as we fight back against misinformation warfare, censorship, and cancel culture.

I thought Gaffigan was great.

See more--> Harris Snubs, Trump Headlines New York's Al Smith Dinner for Catholic Charities

HOT TAKES: Al Smith Dinner Featured Trump at His Funniest Despite the Elephant (Not) in the Room

[sublimeobservationarcade]

Billionaire Influence: Rich Men & Their Sheep

Individuals who have made a shit load of money are not necessarily wise by nature. There is, however, an all too ready willingness to believe in their superiority by the sheep-like members of our communities. Billionaire influence: Rich men and their sheep. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg, Charles Koch and the list could go on are some of the most influential billionaires of the 21C. The majority of us are content to shuffle along in life and follow the leader. ‘Working for the man’ means for many trading their integrity for a meagre amount of financial security. Crumbs from the trickledown effect of decades of neoliberalism. Once you have passed on your autonomy to another it is no stretch to follow their lead wherever they take you. This makes very wealthy people much more influential than their poorer counterparts.

Brett Sayles at Pexels

Rich Men Ruling The Roost In Our Capitalist Economies

Poorly educated folk generally look up to the materially successful individuals around them. Their measuring criteria tends to be limited to the signs of wealth like amassed private property and positions of exalted status. Indeed, most of us are influenced by these things when displayed within our communities and circles of engagement. The main difference between college educated and non-college educated individuals is the breadth of knowledge brought to their lives and the marketplace. If all you know is your experience of the marketplace, then, it is limited to that measuring stick when evaluating the complexities of life.

Populists Know The People Don’t Read Real History Books

The majority of modern Homo sapiens have a superficial understanding of history. Looking back and deeply into the past is not a generally popular past time. This makes it easier for populists to influence the political decisions of voters within democratic electorates. A perfect example of this is the anti-immigration shibboleth regularly brought out by populist politicians and parties. Blame the bad shit on the new arrivals who may look a bit different and possess strange customs. Billionaires have the money but in a democracy also require the popular vote to get their favoured economic policies over the line. Thus, the culture wars are rolled out to gain the support of the hoi poloi. The anti-woke campaigns which attack and fear monger illegal immigrants, refugees, non-whites, LGBTQI folk, and other demonised targets. In some countries this includes women and their reproductive health rights. Religions born in the Bronze Age cast their outdated shadow over 21C life in a bid to subjugate women and control their bodies. Have you noticed how women rarely play leadership roles within traditional religions? Talk of God, this elusive character who is highly susceptible to having words put into His mouth and has remained scientifically unproven for millennia, is never far from these power seeking groups. Christian Nationalism is a clear example of white skinned Americans twisting the Jesus story out of recognisable shape in their bid to exert control over others and the nation. Jesus of Nazareth did not lobby for political power or bear arms to threaten those in charge, according to the Bible I have read. These Christian Nationalist folk are not content to live by their own rules, no, they want to enforce their interpretation of religious commandments over everybody else. Why is that I wonder? Billionaires Backing Anti-Democratic Candidates Billionaire influence: Rich men and their sheep have reached an apogee in America. J.D. Vance, the Trump anointed VP, is a creature of PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel. The public are being sold a strange vision of a backward focused future. Libertarian freedom is championed by people like Thiel and seems to be about having the freedom to abuse democratic rights. White men who want to suppress the rights and independence of women have increased their power within the Republican party. Thiel has been a major donor to the GOP over recent years. Thiel, like Elon Musk, has become more anti-democratic over the decades and thus supports Donald Trump and his authoritarian bid for Presidential power in 2024. Bottom line is that rich people look out primarily for their own interests. The funny thing about having lots of money is that it can make you more paranoid about protecting it. Thiel attacks phantom demonised welfare recipients like single mothers as a blight on America. This has become a popular stance by some billionaires - to express open derision toward poorer people and blame their poverty on perceived character failings of the individual. This, of course, then, makes it more than okay to be exceedingly wealthy in the face of entrenched poverty within your country of residence. This is the new vision of the GOP and their Project 2025. Rich is good, poor is bad. If you are rich you are doing the right thing but if you are poor it is your own fault and you are doing something wrong. Welcome to America!

Are You A Sheep Or Asleep At The Wheel? These billionaires and populist politicians like Trump don’t get to positions of power and influence by themselves. No, they are enabled by the sheep beneath their feet. White working class people, who toe the line within their little lives and are full of prejudicial biases against anyone different, make up the majority of enablers. Racists, misogynists, and homophobes are the foot soldiers of populist leaders promulgating hate and intolerance. There are exceptions to this general trend with some outliers supporting Trump from outside the main cohort. There are people of colour who so want to be white they financially exploit their racial identity like Clarence Thomas in swimming against the current. It can be very lucrative to become the poster child of the radical right. In addition, there are the millions merely asleep at the wheel, who pay scant attention to the political circus and vote, if they bother to vote at all, where the loudest voice leads them. Money talks in America. The great irony is that many new immigrants vote for the party that promotes keeping immigrants out. Those last in, often, want to lock the door behind them, it seems.

Icons Of White American History A look back at some of the super wealthy individuals of America’s 20C past tells us a familiar story. Henry Ford was the entrepreneurial giant of the early motor car industry in the United States. Unfortunately, Ford became more and more intolerant in his views regarding his fellow human beings. Adolf Hitler had a framed picture of Henry Ford on his wall as an icon of antisemitism and what would become Nazism. Henry Ford and his sponsored Dearborn Independent newspaper would spread a poisonous false narrative about Jews and the Elders of Zion right across America. This has sown the seeds of conspiracy theory BS through generations of poorly educated Americans. Thomas Edison is another celebrated white Protestant American entrepreneurial inventor of the 20C who was involved in many of the major technological innovations of his time. History rings a few familiar bells doesn’t it? Edison’s involvement in the early US film industry saw The Birth Of A Nation by DW Griffith laud the Knights of The Ku Klux Klan via groundbreaking cinematography at the time in 1915. It has been described as the most racist film ever made. It traversed the stereotypical trope of its time of the Black male rapist and his deserving lynching by gallant KKK white men. This BS would pervade white American culture for decades to come as justification for the horrendous treatment of African Americans by vile whites. “The film is credited with reviving the racist KKK, who adopted it as a recruitment tool. “The Ku Klux Klan had been kind of a dead organisation by 1915, but when the film the KKK was refounded, capitalised on and in the 1920s became a massive organisation at the peak of nativist fervour in the United States,” says Paul McEwan.” (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150206-the-most-racist-movie-ever-made) “David Wark Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky, in 1875, the son of an ex-Confederate colonel. His father died when he was seven, and he later dropped out of high school to help support his family. After holding various jobs, he began a successful career as a theater actor. He wrote several plays and, on the advice of a colleague, sent some scenarios for one-reel films to the Edison Film Company and the Biograph Company.” (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-a-nation-opens)

Abraham Lincoln was the last decent Republican President Stranger Than Fiction? Today, you can imagine Elon Musk and Peter Thiel defending the rights of such a film to be shown as an expression of free speech. All of these right wing radicals bemoaning cancel culture are blind or actually supportive of the dark messages being promulgated through such mass media presentations. Indeed, the role of fiction and entertainment in the lives and values of modern human beings is vastly under appreciated. I observed how closely we are all bound up with our recreational lives during the global pandemic when access to these was temporarily limited or restricted on the basis of public health policies preventing the spread of the virus. For many of us, our jobs are largely meaningless outside of the necessary income they provide. Instead, we find meaning and purpose in the games we play, entertainments we engage with and such like. Therefore, the messages sent out inside video games, movies, streaming shows, and other fictional mediums are hugely influential to our values in the 21C. Plus, in the secret governmental activities of today, where everything is classified, access to factual truths are restricted and limited for the majority of us. No wonder so many folk believe in batshit crazy stuff in the current era and are so susceptible to disinformation campaigns by nefarious players and populist politicians. Who controls the media? More billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Musk, and the corporations like National Amusements, Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, and News Corp. Every mainstream media thing you view is funnelled through the filters of these influential billionaires.

Who Filters What You Are Watching? Some people talk about things like human free will and whether it actually exists. If you are one of the billions of sheep grazing in front of your screen the chances of getting any truly independent view of the world is zero. Billionaires are all about making money primarily but they can multitask by feeding you products that fit in with their ideology and charge you a fee at the same time. We live in a rentier economy where ‘user pays’ is the model and we all pay countless subscriptions, fees, and charges for whatever we use. The current cost of living crisis inspired by a high inflationary period following the global pandemic has seen corporations globally achieve record profits. The lack of competition in markets controlled by duopolies and oligopolies allows these dominant corporate players to set the prices without fear of consumer backlash. Companies have sewn up the so called free market by removing competition and governments have been complicit in this – bought off by campaign donations to elected politicians and parties. Meanwhile, we sheep make do on less of everything and direct our ire further down the food chain via downward envy. “While conservatives like to deride the "politics of envy", stoking downward envy has become a standard tactic of politicians and some sections of the media.” (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-05/lewis-and-woods-the-politics-of-downward-envy/5649898)  It is more attractive for weak people to punch down on those less fortunate than take on the bullies above them. Thus, we get poor white folk condemning poor black people and voting for the party that reduces taxes on the rich and is simultaneously cutting social welfare spending on the poor in areas where more African Americans live. Welcome to America.

Manipulating The Masses Billionaire influence: Rich men and their sheep. The Musk’s and Thiel’s control their sheep by teasing out ambitions via aspirational politicking. Many Americans aspire to billionaire status, according to what we see and hear on social media. Weak leaders and populists employ the dropping of strategic breadcrumbs promising possibilities of advancement within their networks. Jostling for favour among the hoi poloi disunifies the many and weakens their resolve when it comes to negotiating deals and wages. This is one of the main reasons why billionaires discourage union membership within their workforces. Billionaires and pro-business  political parties invariably run PR campaigns against unions accusing their leadership of corruption and standover tactics disproportionately. Blue collar crime is always much more severely punished than any white collar crime within our societies. Rich men want to make ever more money and simultaneously pay their employees as little as possible. Our culture lauds the wealthy individual and neglects the community around them that actually makes their success possible. It is always the Steve Jobs and never the team around and below him. Sheep follow and lack the gumption to step out of line. Of course, the huge imbalance of power sees any rebellious sheep quickly taken out of the picture. Mutton sandwiches anyone? The Billionaire Disease & Its Roots In History If you study or read up on some ancient history about the Romans in particular you will come across the fact that extreme wealth was not celebrated at the highest level during the Republican Era. Indeed, it was looked down upon by the more virtuous Roman leaders in the senate. Physical courage within martial settings was regarded as the truly noble characteristic of Roman culture. Being born into a wealthy family or amassing large amounts of wealth was derided to some degree on this basis. This began to change with Julius Caesar buying favour to launch his power grab at the beginning of the Imperial Era and the mixed adventures of Crassus. More Roman governors, like Gaius Verres, would extract and loot as much wealth from their provinces as possible during their tenure. Private property and its tentacles would infect this once proud martial race. We take our laws from the ancient Romans and their culture has a deep association with our Western values. I think it was when our aristocracy stopped risking their lives in martial conflict and stayed at the rear of battles that the rot set in. Overt materialism replaced the virtuousness within our leaders. Billionaires became role models for our young rather than warriors who risked all for glory. I am not suggesting a return to martial valour as the determinate of greatness but merely plotting the rise of greed and materialism as a signifier of laudable behaviour. It has been a slippery slope ever since.

In Conclusion If you find yourself on the populist bandwagon, somewhere down the back, perhaps ask yourself if you have considered the bigger picture? Will the blowhard up on the hustings really deliver on the many promises he is making? Will he deliver on the promise you heard him utter? The one that has its hooks into you. Populists invariably don’t deliver. That billionaire you admire what is he really going to do for you? Do you really think that you will get to share that stage with him? Billionaire influence is enabled by you. You can give it and you can withdraw it too. Take it from me things are not going to change that much and I can’t see the clock going backwards anytime soon. These billionaires are getting richer and richer. You and I are falling further and further behind. Maybe it is time to stand with us and demand an end to the financial exploitation of the working poor. That really rich guy is not going to do anything for you. Look at the evidence so far and stop listening to the BS. We are all a little old to be believing in fairy tales. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©WordsForWeb Read the full article

[mckitterick]

revolutionaries who think in authoritarian ways (of which using violence to create political change often indicates) are likely to simply build a mirror of the authoritarian regime they tear down

however, we do occasionally see alternative routes to revolutionary change - even where violence is necessary - such as in the Star Wars universe

what makes the Resistance resistant to simply installing a new fascist dictatorship is that it's not only a loose affiliation of parties rather than a single unit, but their end goal is to restore representative democracy rather than simply kill off all the Empire-minded types and hope a new dictator doesn't step into the power vacuum

Iain M Banks' Culture novels are a great example of a galaxy-spanning utopian society brought about not through violent revolution, but through incremental, peaceful changes - all evaluated by a democratic process to weed out potential authoritarianism or other freedom-stifling or rights-infringing aspects. imbalanced power cannot accrue in the Culture

fear of revolutionaries comes not only from those holding power in the status quo who hope to instill fear of change (propaganda), but also from fear of revenge by those who've been mistreated under the status quo (self-centered POV of people who cannot imagine peaceful ways of living)

if you want a revolution to be successful - that is, if you want the outcome to not just be a rebranded authoritarian regime - you need the revolutionaries to not be the first to use violence to bring about their political ends, because those willing to use violence first cannot be trusted to not continue using violence to enforce their ideology

this is why status-quo lovers and conservatives so often brand simple protest and change as "violence," because we've seen what those going first to violence do with newly gained power

yet peaceful protest seldom brings change - except in egalitarian, democratic cultures

by definition, authoritarian dictatorships are already violent, so using violence to overthrow them need not result in just a fresh take on authoritarianism. revolutionaries seeking to change dictatorial authoritarian structures have no other routes to enact change, except from within, and even then others in power are almost certain to immediately quash hints of change-seeking (also, what's the likelihood of someone attaining power in such a structure not being authoritarian themselves?)

what's necessary is that the revolutionaries must have a plan to build true representational democracy afterward, after the violence and revolution

and they must not install their own new status-quo enforcers, because that easily leads to the emergence of more authoritarian structures

“When we see violent characters who kill for primarily political reasons, they are often anti-heroes at best, outright villains at worst. The idea of the full circle revolution - of the secret dictator hiding in the throat of every rebel leader, waiting to leap out and betray the non-ideological hero - is utterly pervasive. It appears in videogames, where good old-fashioned all-American heroes like Jim Raynor of Starcraft or Booker DeWitt of Bioshock Infinite are betrayed by villainous revolutionaries Arcturus Mengsk and Daisy Fitzroy (and after all they’ve done for them!). It is common in films, from supervillains like Magneto and Killmonger, liberationists written as would-be conquerors, to the rebels of The Hunger Games, who vote to continue the games as soon as they’re in power, except with the children of the dethroned elite rather than the children of the poor. The same reversal is mentioned in A Song of Ice and Fire, where rebel slaves, once liberated, enslave their former masters; in the TV version, an evil fundamentalist visits the kind of cruelty on the King’s Landing nobility that they visited on others. In all these examples we see an echo of the primal fear of every oppressive class, the nightmare at the heart of modern white supremacy: what if someone did to us what we’ve done to them? Liberation is re-imagined as the world turned not so much upside-down but mirrored.”

— Alister MacQuarrie, Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic

[buzzdixonwriter]

Turn-On! Turned Off (part 1)

Turn-On! Is a legendary 1969 TV show legendary for all the wrong reasons:  It was cancelled during its first commercial break.

Typically when TV shows of that era are discussed it’s out of context with the time.  This is okay when discussing conventional westerns or cop shows or comedy-variety shows since they typically took great pains to avoid the social issues of their day in order to maximize appeal.

But there’s a different breed of cat that went out looking for trouble, and boy howdy!, was Turn-On! one of those.  It was a brilliant misfire, w-a-a-a-y ahead of its time, offensive then, and in an odd way, even more offensive now.

First off let’s set the culture temperature for the U.S. on February 5, 1969, Turn-On!’s premiere:

1967’s Summer of Love morphed into 1968’s days of rage

The Vietnam War continued to drag on in the wake of the Tet Offensive in January 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated

Political infighting split the Democratic Party, culminating with the infamous 1968 Democratic

Convention riot in Chicago “The whole world’s watching!”

White racist George Wallace created the proto-MAGA American Independent Party and siphoned off enough votes from Hubert Humphrey to cost him the election

Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, who until recently were the sleaziest bastards ever to set foot in the White House, won election for the so-called “silent majority”

The popular and innovative 1967 show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour became increasingly more political, rousing both White House and network ire (it would be cancelled on June 6, 1969)

On January 22, 1968 Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In, produced by George Schlatter and Ed Friendly. replaced The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and became an immediate smash hit

The latter bears great importance on the story of Turn-On! and not merely because Schlatter and Friendly produced both shows.

Turn-On! has been accurately described as watching a half-hour’s worth of TikTok videos back-to-back.  While Laugh-In pioneered fast paced rapid-fire editing for skit comedy, it nonetheless maintained enough form for (most) audiences to get their bearings.  Whenever things grew too frenetic, they could always return to hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin or announcer Gary Owen to give viewers a chance to catch their breath.  They employed regular skits so the folks at home could find reassuring familiarity each week as well as more or less conventional satirical musical numbers, all backed by well placed laugh tracks.

They also hired a good cast, created several recurring stock characters who remain familiar to this day, and launched several catch phrases emblemic of the era:  “Sock it to me” “The flying fickle finger of fate” “You bet your sweet bippy” “Here comes the judge” (Okay, that last one is actually a call back to African-American vaudeville, but bravo to Laugh-In for sharing it with the rest of the country.)

And while the show didn’t steer clear of political and social satire, they lacked the heartfelt intensity the Smothers Brothers brought to theirs. 

You’re scarcely nibbling the hand that feeds you when you invite Richard Nixon to say “Sock it to me” on national television.

So Laugh-In had a sense of rebellion, a sense of daring, but in truth often appeared no more edgy than a copy Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang.  It was a format swiftly and ironically even more successfully imitated in cornpone by Hee Haw (and don’t get me wrong, Hee Haw could be damn funny).

 © Buzz Dixon

Turn-On! episode one with Tim Conway

Turn-On! episode two with Robert Culp and France Nuyen