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lligkv · 4 years ago

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what the world will look like when it’s over

Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the first Adam Curtis documentary I’ve seen. I gather it’s not the most successful demonstration of his method; it sounds like Hypernormalization or The Century of the Self are tighter in their construction, less effortful (count how many times Curtis says something like “But then it started to run out of control” in this one), and perhaps less frustrating in their narration. In the early episodes of this documentary in particular, it feels like Curtis is constantly presenting what’s being covered as the turn, the decisive shift in his narrative—the emergence of the American counterculture, the revolution of the “unit of One” led by Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing to help her break the stalemate with the other revolutionaries in China into which Zedong had fallen in the 1960s, George Boole’s development of Boolean logic to describe human thought. And the whole thing feels longer and baggier than it needs to be. The early episodes devote much time to interesting individual narratives, like that of the Trinidadian British activist or sorts named Michael Freitas (or Michael X) or a trans woman named Julie in 1960s Britain; they also sprawl in a way that makes the overall argument a bit hard to divine. It’s not until the fourth episode that the shape of Curtis’s narrative becomes clear—that our age is the product of a struggle between a new, broadly liberal-democratic and capitalist image of individualism, a dying era of collectivist struggle, and older, more vicious systems of power, derived from the control of capital and expressed through the middle classes’ suspicion and viciousness toward the subaltern and toward each other, even as they remain subject to the power of oligarchs and billionaires.

Curtis also seems to play fast and loose with the facts sometimes. When he presents Médecins Sans Frontières’s founder Bernard Kouchner as an avatar of a theory of the “one world” of liberal democracy—the idea that we’re basically one world of individuals, enjoying certain human rights regardless of political orientations or ideologies, and that Western nations are duty-bound by virtue of their prosperity to intervene when other nations violate people’s rights—it seems a distortion of what Kouchner actually says in the footage Curtis includes: “We don’t care on leftist or rightist countries [sic]; there is no leftist and rightist suffering, and there is no possibility to split the world in[to] ‘good’ people or ‘bad’ people, ‘good’ dead and ‘bad’ dead.” Which isn’t to say Kouchner didn’t believe in liberal-democratic ideas—he may well have—but what he’s shown as saying has to do with the consideration of suffering as suffering regardless of a person’s identity or allegiance, which is a different matter.

This is just one of several moments when I stopped to wonder how secure I actually was in Curtis’s hands. But ultimately, I find the emotional history he lays out resonant. The age we’re living through now, in the 2020s, is indeed the product of certain fantasies of individualism and of a post-end-of-history, neoliberal “one world”—with no ideologies but capitalism and putative democracy—meeting age-old systems of power, acquisition, and control, and age-old features of the human mind and heart: resentment, prejudice, betrayal, jealousy, the need to be prosperous, the need to be free.

And Curtis’s work appeals to me for the same reason the writer Pankaj Mishra’s work does. He historicizes our underhistoricized time. What’s more, he does so in a way that’s especially rare to see in any mainstream media venue. Usually, when you want to understand the connections between, say, colonial-era empires and post-war welfare states, or if you want to understand what happened to turn Western societies as they were post-war to Western societies as they are post-financialization, you have to seek the information out on your own. It’s valuable to have someone in a place like the BBC willing to put the pieces of these narratives together. And willing to remind us of the events that are so incredibly easy to forget even in one’s own lifetime. Abu Ghraib, for instance, which pops up in part 6 of the documentary. That shit happened while I was alive. How often do I remember it? How many American sins get drowned out in the new ones that emerge every day of every month of every year? Or in the stasis that sets in when what was once novel, like the War on Terror or the invasion into our privacy represented by the Patriot Act, fades into regular life?

I was jotting down copious notes while watching the doc, as is my wont. The questions and thoughts that came up, in no particular order:

How do the elites of a given era impose their preferred ideologies? How are the structures of power we grow up with constructed, and how do those go on to shape our behavior?

Control, as it’s practiced by societies in the 21st century, often comes down to the recognition of patterns in human behavior—and their manipulation.

The loss of power, like that which was suffered after the collapse of Britain’s empire or in the slow hollowing-out of America’s manufacturing industry in the 20th century, leads to anger and melancholy that people can’t be expected to abandon. Does doing what you’re supposed to do bring you the happiness you were promised—or anything even resembling that happiness? When we’re living in a historical moment in which the answer is no, as is often the case today, we’ll need to watch out. It’s a sign people are being manipulated and abused.

Over time, the tech industry has come to understand that you can manage people en masse by collecting their data and manipulating the messages they receive in social media activity feeds and advertising—and you can make them feel like sovereign individuals at the same time through the very same means. In light of all this, will there ever be a revolution that actually changes the structure of power we’re currently stuck in? Is there a chance to alter this extreme individualism. on the part of people who are surrounded by political systems so enervated, by the supra-governmental system that is global finance capital—which politicians can’t control, and must appease and palliate—that they can’t respond to phenomena like climate change or meaningfully punish atrocities like wars prosecuted on false pretenses? Or are we stuck where we are, in a world that’s corrupt and exhausted? In nations whose governments depend on technologies of surveillance and myths of consumerist abundance or nationalist glory to maintain power, in the absence of any real vision for the future?

It all leads to some interesting takeaways. For one, the way culture reacts to politics and vice versa. As I was watching Can’t Get You Out of My Head, I was reminded of a conversation folks on the Discord server for the Relentless Picnic podcast had had recently about the strange things Richard Dawkins posts on his Twitter account. And it led me to think: when religious “caring conservatism” was in the White House, Richard Dawkins and his New Atheism, this brash repudiation of religion and its pieties, grew as a counterweight. When Obama and his technocratic regime were in power, with social media bringing on a wave of progressivism in popular culture and algorithms presenting us a fantasy of endless choice—much of which was a thin veneer over the same old shit: banks getting bailed out, forever wars going on, productivity rising while wages stagnated—we also got Jordan Peterson-types who claimed to speak to a human need for narrative, even in this point of stability we had seemed to reach, this recovery of sanity after the chaos that was the Iraq War and the financial crisis; who claimed we needed ideas and myths to animate and drive our lives, because they sensed there was something hollow and mendacious driving all this consumer choice, for all it seemed a symbol of our freedom and progress.

Of course, both Peterson and Dawkins are provocateurs, not intellectuals; I don’t mean to dignify the movements they led much, since in both the appearance of intellectual rigor or moral clarity often covered the indulgence of the worst instincts: immaturity, obstinacy, provocation for provocation’s sake, contempt for women and trans people. The New Atheists had a point, and could be absolute assholes about it; they ultimately could be as fundamentalist and dogmatic as any religious people. As for Jordan Peterson, his actual work, in the way of so many grand theorists, uses the appearance of profundity to cover something ultimately pretty banal. And he’s most known for grandstanding in the public sphere—refusing to use people’s pronouns, the usual conservative shit. But these movements do seem to reflect a countercultural response no less than 1960s counterculture reflects a reaction to the staid culture of 1950s America and the sins it covered up.

Which leads me to the question: what was the culture’s response to Trump’s administration? Maybe QAnon and Russiagate, as conspiracies—that is, actual narratives people inhabit to explain the world’s evils, and not just a vague need for them that they satisfied with Jordan Peterson’s light form of Stoicism or his theories of Light and Dark or whatever the fuck. And in that way, perhaps, once a countercultural movement—namely nationalism and Trumpian populism—actually seemed to have overthrown a regime, of Obama-era liberal technocratic management, culture and politics came to mirror each other, rather than standing in opposition to each other. Both became equally conspiratorial and unhinged; in fact, they merged. All the ruling myths and conspiracies mutate in kind these days: Trump’s garbage about draining the swamp, a cover for Trump and his family enriching themselves and Stephen Miller’s like getting to fashion the state they wanted, becomes QAnon’s garbage about rings of child trafficking and pedophilia and Trump, of all people, being their savior—all while actual trafficking and abuse perpetuated by Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk goes unpunished, Epstein’s death swallowed up by the state without a sound—becomes the liberal pundit class’s screaming about Russia: connections between Trump and Putin that were always conjectural to me, because no one who pled them seemed to feel much need to substantiate them.

Here again I feel like what were once centrifugal forces in our culture—between mainstream and the independent media, for example; between people in power and their critics, either in the media or at society’s margins—have collapsed into a single morass. We’re all in hell and there’s no way out.

In all this, what does Biden’s administration represent? Little more than an interregnum, to my mind. How disappointing to see not even a gesture toward forgiving student debt or raising the minimum wage in these first 100 days of his presidency. There’s been some progress in climate legislation, and progress in putting Stephen Miller’s deportation machine to a halt (though they’re also reopening several emergency shelters to accommodate more minors already being held past the mandated limits for keeping them in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement). But there’s also been such triangulation on policy by the administration and its supporters and such complacency on the part of the media covering the administration, refusing to call them out on or even cover this. And how can the average voter respond but with resignation?

Ever since I read Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus near the start of lockdown, absorbing the picture of the world pre-World War II that’s presented in that book, I’ve thought we’re in the same sort of moment that Mann’s protagonist Zeitblom was in. There’s a crisis that’s passing over this whole planet like a wave or a seismic event, and no human intervention can interrupt it. We can only wait for it to pass—holding on to whatever’s to hand, waiting to see what the world will look like when it’s over.

#adam curtis #documentaries #thomas mann #jordan peterson #richard dawkins #pankaj mishra #the relentless picnic #conspiracy

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years ago

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Wherefore art thou, Compromise?

Where is America's ability to compromise? Why can't American politicians compromise?

We couldn't compromise in the 1860's, and that's good because certain things do not allow for compromise - morals and ethics, for starters. The Civil War creeped up then, delivering a win to the forces of equality and the American Dream, something that until recently we took for granted - that anyone in America could be anything, even a Black man a president, which we learned in 2012 and quickly declared victory for the United States despite the fact that compromise in America had already shown itself to be near its end.

And with Trump, Republicans dealt a potentially fatal blow to the concept of compromise, the idea that we could work together to build a shared future and an ongoing conversation between human beings would push us forward with only a few bumps and bruises along the way.

The problem is that we can't compromise, and there are a lot of forces in play that are the reason why everyday adults can no longer just get along. in no particular order, those forces are...

Right-wing media

Money

Conspiracy Theories

Term Limits

Right-wing Media has been a growing concern for some time now - at least a solid two decades. It started with an effort to give the greater Conservative world a voice (and for Rupert Murdoch to make some giant money), and that's what it did. Only with Fox News, the Right got more than some news leaning its way, it got a full-on not-really-news, more-like-infotainment piece (that even a court judge admitted a few weeks ago). Fox News was more like opinion, more talk radio than news, although they threw some news in there to make it look good. Add in talk radio itself, and all of its bullshit -- all of this reaching back to the 90's, and you get what's essentially a powerful propaganda machine. Plus one equals Trump, who full advantage of the growing insanity to push right-wing media over the edge with full-on conspiracy theories. And here we are, right-wing politicans who advocate for some of these conspiracy theories getting elected to Congress in Georgia. A US President that shapes public opinion with conspiracy theories, demonizes anyone who opposes him, and has essentially given birth to an entire movement of alternate reality from the Oval Office via Twitter.

There's no compromising with people who aren't even lucid. And these conspiracy quacks are definitely not looking for ways to compromise and govern together. They are busy uncovering plots of Venezuelan leftists to destroy the Trump empire, unearthing chiild molester cabals in the basements of pizza parlors and declaring Biden a Chinese agent and pedophile. Compromise is suicide for these fools because they've already shown themselves unwilling to even embrace reality. It's rather like arguing with a 5-year old over who spilled the water on the floor. "It was the dog." "The dog is outside." "It was Nana." "Nana died last year." "It was an earthquake." "Nope." "It was aliens." "Hmmm." Just ask the yahoos at QAnon, or the History Channel, it was definitely aliens. The Lizard People. Or maybe it's just the Commies and the Socialists - just ask Rush Limbaugh; he's been repeating white supremacy talking points from the 1870s for decades.

But really, what's the point of all this? Why does any of this bullshit even get anywhere? Simple answer: $$$$$$. Money.

It's all about money. That's all. It's all money. Money answers every question. Why did Trump run for President? Money.Why did QAnon appear on the scene and spread their insanity? Money.Why did Rush Limbaugh get the Presidential Medal of Freedom? He generates support for American Conservative through extremist right-wing propaganda, which in turns generates money - campaign donations is huge money.Why are Republicans supporting the Mad King Trump? Money. Money and power.Why are Fox News personalities willing to say anything on TV? Money.

Everything comes down to money. And a few years ago, the money faucet was turned (possibly) permanently open thanks to Citizens United. Now the money flows from everywhere, and there's little effort to control it, regulate it, track it and see who's giving it. Billionaires and millionaires and moms and pops are sending in cash. The rich send it in to ensure that policies favor them, so they can make more money. The average person sends in money because they've bought into fear politics over the last 2-3 decades of being clued to the Big Lie Machine, like Fox News or now OANN, the new Trump-loving propaganda producer. And with limited rules on how this money is handled or used, much less audited and regulated, we have all these people with big, fat, happy flush funds for lavish dinners and golf trips and 3rd yachts. Now rich people can buy their way into an ambassadorship or a Cabinet position, which generates them even more money because being rich isn't about producing anything, it's about making connections, and connection mean money. Politicians need money for campaigns so they can work on policies that in-turn benefit their benefactors and make them more money, which opens doors for all to....you guessed it, more money.

The propaganda machine delivers the money, and the monied voices reflect the propaganda machine. And when there's as much money as you need to stay in the driver's seat, what the American people want doesn't matter. Because you don't need to convince the Average Joe on the Right to vote for you because the propaganda machine has convinced Joe that the other guy is going to kill your family and give your house and daughter to an illegal immigrant. So, Joe's money and votes are coming your way, even if you murder Joe's wife in the parking lot. It's a machine that grinds people up and spits them out, creates trolls and proles, and all the money lines the pockets of the rich and the representatives of the rich, aka politicians.

And that leads us to our last piece, perhaps the most important one. Term limits.

What we've seen is a perpetual cycle of lies and money, which likely can't be broken because the Supreme Court validated it once and now SCOTUS is owned by the alt-Right for a generation (unless Congress impeaches some judges, which may or may not be possible, or the United States puts service limits on federal judges and SCOTUS, like it should - but that's another discussion). Now we have one way out of this - that I see, and it's in term limits for all federally-elected officials. No more 7-term Senators. No more 10-term Congresspersons. No more Mitch McConnell's and Nancy Pelosi's. You gotta go. Do your 2 terms and get lost. Sure, you can be in Congress two terms and then go to the Senate for two, but that's it. Two terms, then let's get some fresh meat and fresh ideas in there. (Same concept as above with the judiciary at the federal and SCOTUS level.) You do some time in public service, and then you get out and let someone else play. It's one way to ensure that there's some competition, which could lead people to having to prove themselves and sell themselves to the public, based on ideas rather than team. As long as a Senator can just run on name recognition, propaganda and oodles of dark money, it's going to be nearly impossible to get someone who refuses to compromise out of an important seat.

Because that Senator, for example, is safe and no longer has to care about the needs of half the country, or even anyone else at all. They are getting rich, have a secure job and have a massive political machine behind them. The longer they are there, the more entrenched they become, and the less challenged they are for their seat, the less they have to work with anyone or adapt their stances on policies that affect everyday Americans. Now, I'm sure there are a lot more issues that could come up, and there are likely some better arguments out there, but it seems to me that if we ever want to get back to a place where politicians compromise and work together, we're going to have to start somewhere, and I think we have to begin with term limits. But that won't happen by leaning on compromise, ironically; that's going to have to be forced somehow some way. And hopefully it starts with a Senate majority on the Left.

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theliterateape · 3 years ago

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The Therapeutic Approach to Nationalism

by Don Hall

When it came to Chicago Thanksgivings, I could be a real cunt.

Sure, Jen and I would host Orphan's Gatherings—Thanksgiving for people stuck in Chicago and unable to travel to their family's homes over the holiday. I would drop a couple of hundred bucks and make a huge spread of food but the transaction for coming was to have to listen to me bitch about how shitty the holiday was.

"Enjoy the turkey. Afterward, I'll be providing each of you blankets covered in small pox and steal your property. I mean, I'm thankful for a lot but I'm mostly thankful I wasn't native to this country because, man, then I'd be fucked, amiright?"

This screed went all day long and became more and more incessant as I drank Scotch and beer and cooked. Depending on the year, it would spread out from the genocide of Native Americans to the American military industrial complex, the woeful state of our civil rights, and how evil the Republicans were.

"Here's some food and some vitriol as gravy. Happy Fucking Thanksgiving!"

What an asshole. It's hardly a surprise that most of those people in those early days don't bother to talk to me today.

I used to think that blunt honesty was always the best approach to all situations. It's, well, honest, and it's mildly therapeutic to simply air your truth to those around you. I used to believe that until I lived with Alice.

Alice was like me at Thanksgiving but every day of the year. Her inability to accept less than exactly how she wanted things was maddening. She was always brutally honest about her feelings (unless it was something she decided needed to be kept a secret and then it was as if she locked it away in a trunk she bought at a yard sale and hid under the stairs).

"I hate your hair." "This is a stupid Christmas gift." "I can't believe you're wearing that to dinner." "Wow. You're really getting fat." "Don't embarrass me by talking politics with my University friends, OK? You're practically right wing."

After a few years of this constant honesty, I found myself walking around like Eeyore, head down, eyes on the ground, feeling a sense of dread overcoming me with the now drilled-in idea that nothing I did could possibly be enough or correct. If Alice wasn't happy it was because I was inadequate. She now had someone to blame for her disappointments in life.

What I learned from Alice was that for blunt honesty to be effective and useful rather than merely a bludgeon of self importance leveled upon those who are willing to put up with it, it was about seeing how that honesty could be used by them.

If the criticism couldn't be utilized for the betterment of someone or something, it was just noisy, pointless bitching. Childish complaint and attempts to beat down those around into some aspect of submission. Looking for someone to blame as if the recipient's guilt and subsequent anguish could be healing in some way.

Common wisdom suggests that by thoroughly revisiting our traumatic experiences to understand why they happened and how to move past them is therapeutic. Unfortunately, like the movies in the 1980s subsidized by the Pentagon to help recruit kids with a Top Gun drumbeat of "How Cool is War, Right?," the therapy industry proliferates this constant vomiting of pain and search for who to blame for it is in contrast with new research.

"New research is showing that some people only get worse by continuing to brood and ruminate,” Stanford psychologist Mischel said. “Each time they recount the experience to themselves, their friends or their therapist, they only become more depressed."

SOURCE

It's quite possible that I have had uniquely bad therapy experiences. A few when I was younger felt pointless, the couple's therapy I went through with my first and second ex-wives felt disingenuous. While skewed for maximum satire, the talk therapy groups in Fight Club ring more true than anything else—sad, busted up people sitting in a circle complaining about how hard their life has been next to another room with another circle complaining about theirs next to another.

Talking about your problems to be heard seems fine but it also a cul de sac of constantly re-opening the wounds over and over without any sort of solution provided. Even if one discovers an abuser in their past to pin the blame upon, even if there is some sort of reckoning and accountability, neither talking about it or understanding your place in the grievance hierarchy manages to solve the inability to move past the trauma.

That's the goal, right? Move past it? It may not be an easy task but, at the end of the process, learning to get on with things, heal the pain, live with the scars is the goal, yes?

It is the same when it comes to big picture items as well.

As someone decidedly Left in political views, I can't say I've ever been in a huge Bitch Session of Truthtelling with anyone right wing. Not my monkey, not my circus. On the hand, I can't count the number of Leftist circle jerks I've been mired in, often contributing more than my fair share of discourse and blockading to the mix. It is the Choir Preaching to the Choir so that One Solidifies Membership in the Freaking Choir.

So many of these sessions amount to telling the truth and identifying who is to blame for that truth.

"There is no reason for the evil that is represented by the Billionaire Class. How much money does anyone need? And at the expense of everyone else? The System is rigged by the wealthy, for the wealthy."

"The systemic racism in the country's policing stems from its racist beginnings and that's why so many black men are indiscriminately killed by cops. How many videos do we have to endure before things change?"

"Fossil fuels are the source of climate disaster. Everyone can see that. If we don't change course, the planet is going to be destroyed in our lifetime!"

All true, I'd think. But I heard that last week and the week before and the week before that. Sort of like my Thanksgiving rants.

Who’s to blame? The rich. The police. Big Oil. Where are the solutions to the problems?

Playing the blame game never works. A deep set of research shows that people who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and perform worse relative to those who own up to their mistakes. Research also shows that the same applies for organizations. Groups and organizations with a rampant culture of blame have a serious disadvantage when it comes to creativity, learning, innovation, and productive risk-taking.

Harvard Business Review

Blame, beyond personal accountability, is likewise pointless without a plan and “Hold Those to Blame Accountable!” isn’t a great plan.

Truth without pragmatic action is meaningless.

And so … the birthday of the nation comes up. The therapeutic gripe sessions begin. Instead of celebrating the country’s progress, the ideals it is founded upon, any sense of national pride, we have a host of Thanksgiving Don Hall’s pissing and moaning about the missteps and outright horrors committed by those long dead.

There is a lot of blunt trauma truth tossed out just before, during, and after our national day. Things like the fact of indoctrinated worship of the Founders without some serious views upon their flaws as human beings. Like the intentional absence in our collective history of the contributions made by those not in the majority. As I would've said on a typical Thanksgiving, an absence of any genuine reflection on the near genocide of the natives.

Not so much the next step of how to fix the issues or even the simple truth that most of the problems in the past cannot be fixed rather the recurrent results modified for a more just and equitable nation. Lotsa bitching. Not lotsa solution building. Tons of blame. Ounces of creative problem solving.

A whole bunch of Thanksgiving Cunts holding court and demanding that if you want to shoot of fireworks, wave the flag, eat some grilled meat, and get a bit drunk in celebration of the enduring experiment in democracy and multi-culturalism America strives to be, you are forced to listen to them piss all over the parade.

The thing about Alice was that for all of her brutal honesty, none of it made me want to change my hair, I stopped buying her gifts altogether, I intentionally wore things and said things that would embarrass her and the only reason I lost weight was because the gym was a place I could escape her for a few hours. Her mean spirited honesty accomplished the exact opposite of what she was aiming for.

The United States ain't so united and maybe it never has been but wallowing in the painful trauma of the past only has value if the next step is to focus on what we can do together to avoid the mistakes made by our elders. That's the entire point of America in the first place.

So, Happy Birthday, America. Let's keep trying to improve.

#July 4

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actutrends · 5 years ago

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How the Cool Kids of the Left Turned on Elizabeth Warren

No more. Now They’re Simply Fucking with United States” went out of its method to state that Warren is insufficiently confrontational to billionaires.

At some level, the choices and pans of an activist magazine with just a fraction of the readership of, say, pre-2016 Breitbart might not appear of much repercussion as America heads into its next governmental election. As the Democratic Celebration faces its intramural fight over how best to react to the Trump presidency– with determined centrism, or an opportunistic and disruptive stumble to the left– Jacobin has emerged as a hard-to-ignore voice in defining what the latter must look like.

And in many ways, it’s winning its corner of the fight. At that time, Sanders was still seen as a gadfly in the 2016 Democratic presidential main; because then, his design of socialism has actually become its own kind of unlikely hit in American politics, and Jacobin has grown to a paid flow of more than 40,000 and draws more than 2 million special visitors to its website every month.

As the 2020 project has unfolded, Warren has, if anything, added toward Bernie, accepting “Medicare for All” and complimentary college, and making a wealth tax the focal point of her platform. Still, in the pages of Jacobin, Warren has actually gone from looking like a close 2nd to Sanders to being a member of the neoliberal opposition, maybe made worse by her desire to declare the mantle of the celebration’s left. The publication’s newest quarterly print cover makes this point specific in illustration: Sanders and his new democratic socialist comrades in your home are envisioned biking on Group Red in a race against Joe Biden and Warren on Team Blue.

So why the abrupt turn versus a candidate whose soak-the-rich politics would have thrilled the anti-establishment, anti-capitalist left recently?

One simple theory is that Jacobin, beneath the smart historical name and the hip graphics, is basically a house organ for the Democratic Socialists of America, the grassroots political organization that outgrew the now-defunct Socialist Celebration of America and has actually expanded from around 5,000 members prior to 2016 to more than 50,000 now. Bhaskar Sunkara, the magazine’s 30- year-old founding editor and publisher, has been a member of DSA since he was a teen, and he was just recently vice chair of the organization. DSA backed Sanders in 2016 and did so once again this previous March.

Sunkara turns down that theory– as do other DSA members. Technically, he points out, Jacobin and DSA are different, neither taking its marching orders from the other, even if numerous writers are members.

” We can’t straight convert individuals,” he said. “What we can do is attempt to cohere together– from all these various strands and threads– some sort of left opposition to liberalism, offer it a name and call it democratic socialism, and develop a debating premises for these broad sets of concepts.”

That broad set of concepts has consisted of whatever from the propositions now frequently referred to as Medicare for All and a Green New Offer to more radical ideas like jail abolition– all of which are likewise components of the Democratic Socialists of America platform.

The modification in the publication’s treatment of Warren, Sunkara informed me, was not a conscious choice or regulation from higher-ups like himself. The publication, as a 501( c)( 3) not-for-profit, can not officially back political candidates.

But it does show, he stated, what Jacobin‘s mainly young left-wing authors and factors, a number of whom are open Sanders advocates and even campaign volunteers, are thinking. Where a previous generation may have been more than satisfied with a candidacy that would have been a socialist dream a simple decade earlier, a more youthful generation fed up with tempering its hopes is starving for what it believes might be a more innovative outcome.

Warren’s ginger concessions to the center– be it her pronouncements of” faith in markets” or her refusal to say she ‘d raise middle class taxes to pay for single-payer healthcare– hence appear like a betrayal of essential convictions.

” There most likely has actually been, among specific authors, a disappointing with certain parts of the Warren technique to things, and also it’s most likely an attempt to press her to be more resolute,” Sunkara stated. There’s a reason, after all, why the candidate who stated she is a ” capitalist to her bones” was not the socialists’ favorite to start with. (POLITICO reached out to Meagan Day and other Jacobin writers for this story, however they decreased to comment.)

Observers ought to be careful, he said, not to position the blame for the Jacobin– Warren divide only on the publication’s authors, and not likewise on Warren and her team.

Possibly, Sunkara suggested, as Warren has actually refined her policy platform, she’s changed her stripes to try to “accommodate all wings of the Democratic party.”

” I suggest, her record is rather admirable, and I believe her character is quite charming and whatever else, however she needs to be tasty to the establishment. She needs to not scare donors. She’s needs to not terrify the marketplaces, while at the exact same time she wishes to keep qualifications as a left-wing policy person,” he said.

Some Jacobin sympathizers who might be considered old leftists to this new generation enjoy to see socialism rise into the mainstream. They’re also anxious that the publication’s termination of Warren is alarmingly overzealous, especially as it discounts a candidate who seriously worries Wall Street, moderates and billionaires.

” It reflects a particular perceptiveness of a particular generation,” stated Robert Kuttner, a co-founder and co-editor of the liberal publication The American Prospect

” I believe the Jacobin people represent the left wing of Sanders’ assistance,” he stated. “They think it’s really important to self-describe as a socialist.”

Jacobin isn’t the only young lefty publication to turn on Warren. Nathan Robinson, the 31- year-old editor of the smaller sized however similar Current Affairs, composed last week in a column in the Guardian that “progressives no longer require to wonder whether she’s with us or not.

As Robinson’s piece suggests, the brand-new leftist energy isn’t truly a response to Trump– it’s a response to Obama and Clinton and a whole Boomer-era approach to liberalism.

This all-or-nothing approach does not sit well with the older guard of American leftist thinkers. “If the plutocrats themselves believe she’s just as unsafe as Bernie, why does Jacobin doubt that?” asks Rich Yeselson, a labor historian and reporter who’s composed for Jacobin in the past and is a contributing editor of the leftist publication Dissent

Yeselson appreciates Jacobin and its success. “Bhaskar is type of a genius,” he says. “He’s an investor of socialism, and I indicate that as a full compliment.�� However he counts himself among those beginning to have bookings about the publication’s technique to the 2020 presidential election, and specifically its treatment of Warren.

” If she were to be elected president, she would be the most leftist president in American history,” Yeselson said.

” If Sanders is elected, he’s going to draw from the exact same swimming pool of left technocrats to individuals his administration as she will,” Yeselson included. “Is it liberal left? Is it socialist? Whatever. It’s to the left of Biden; it’s to the left of Obama; it’s to the left of Clinton. Neither of them is going to appoint authorities from Goldman Sachs.”

Minor differences in the most enthusiastic legislative proposals– like Medicare for All payment schemes or various techniques to a Green New Deal– from Sanders and Warren are immaterial, Yeselson suggested, since neither will have the ability to get those programs through Congress. That stated, there are real differences in between Sanders and Warren on diplomacy, he stated. “There need to probably be more discussion of that.”

John Judis, author of The Populist Surge, credits Jacobin as an important intellectual force, but says that the great distinctions the publication’s authors are drawing in between Sanders and Warren are more “sectarian” than ideological. “They recall the battles amongst Lutherans and Baptists,” Judis said.

Michael Kazin, the co-editor of Dissent and a professor of history at Georgetown, mentions that neither Sanders nor Warren is a real socialist, at least by international standards. Bernie calls himself a “democratic socialist,” but he also compares himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Still, Kazin states, both Sanders and Warren are “2 of the most certainly left-wing candidates in American history.” (Sunkara said he disagrees, calling it “a strange and ahistorical claim,” though he yields that “she ‘d be among the very best presidents in modern time.”)

Although his party and his publication are all-in for Sanders, Sunkara, who is also the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Age of Extreme Inequality, said he doesn’t see a Sanders win in 2020 as the only barometer of the motion’s– and the publication’s– success.

To Sunkara, his publication’s 2020 coverage is average– comparing and contrasting prospects is part of the primary process. “You air criticisms, you challenge individuals on their record, and the very best politicians adapt and enhance and make themselves stronger prospects as an outcome,” Sunkara stated. They aren’t spreading out falsehoods or making bad-faith reviews, he included. And they’re definitely not “getting together in a space and looking for to tank Warren.” They know there are far worse prospects, he stated. Jacobin is publishing a full book about Joe Biden’s record and why he’s unsuited to be the next Democratic president. “We don’t have a book on Elizabeth Warren.”

But as the 2020 election gets closer, others fear there won’t be a progressive politics after Bernie, much less a socialist future, if the rift in between Democrats and democratic socialists remains this large. Kazin, who wrote a history of the left in America and is currently writing a history of the Democratic Party, frets that Jacobin‘s present strategy could hurt the cause in the short term as well as the long one.

Sunkara countered, “You can make an argument about holding punches for any centrists– center left or perhaps center right if you hold that perspective.” He added, “You can take that reasoning to any severe,” and “you would wind up slamming no one but fascists.”

But for some, this election is so crucial that it’s worth erring on the side of caution. “The final result is what, in the end, really matters,” Kazin stated. “When Trump is president, we won’t have time to say: ‘Well, let’s fight another day. Too bad we didn’t win, however I’m grateful I didn’t support Warren, because that would have been a betrayal of my principles.'”

He added, “You can’t alter society unless you win elections.”

The post How the Cool Kids of the Left Turned on Elizabeth Warren appeared first on Actu Trends.

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watchmanis216 · 5 years ago

Text

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

This house of mourning is full of Idiocy, Manure Politics, and the stuff that nightmares are made of! But in the end, the Harvest is coming; a reward for all their efforts!

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Psa 9:15-20

(15) The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

(16) The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.

(17) The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

(18) For the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.

(19) Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight.

(20) Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.

The rehash of white supremacy, of Nazism, and trashing of Donald Trump is just that. Old news, retired some time ago and brought out for this occasion. Politics and Washington DC all tie together in a myriad of tired worn out phrases. Who cares if the blood of men hollowed the grounds of Charlottesville, Antietam, Gettysburg, Little roundtop, and others. Once before we had division which was bitter. Today, again; the division is there, the lies are there, the stretching of the truth certainly is there, and bigoted leftists in their own right are most certainly there. One thing is certain, Americans have never really learned the lesson of the Civil War. It was not about slavery or state’s rights. It was about division and bitterness. To be sure, this makes for the most disgusting display of ignorance that America has witnessed.

Burn baby burn, House of Mourning, House of Mirth

It’s as if they really think Hitler is in the White House. It’s as if they really think this small group of Nazis are going to take over. But when Obama came on the scene with his socialist ideas, open border policies, and globalist socialist agendas; no one took notice. Like airheads on cocaine, leftists loved the Obama push for world order and the socialist way of life. Let everyone have their own opinion except the right, although today there is no right; just wrong. There are no republicans and democrats, just Trump haters. Today the motion sickness of expedient idiocy floats through DC like a fog bank that rolls in off the Potomac. As I watch this stuff and the stupidity that is America today, I am constantly reassured there is no hope, as long as, division and idiots rule Congress. As long as, Idiots run rampant in the street hating everyone who disagrees with them. As long as, no one has a free voice, nor free vote, or the individual who can continue to stand tall once they have given their opinion. Today, voicing your opinion for Donald Trump, for instance; in the end gets you beaten up!

But today I hear a barrage of ideas, investigations, talking points, articles, and protests. Everyone fighting, everyone mad, everyone pulling in opposite directions, and finally everyone self-absorbed about giving their own point of view. That is what the left wants, to make everyone tired. To make the people give in and say; go ahead and make America as you want. Let me say it for everyone; go ahead and remake America. I disagree with you, but let the consequences fall on your own head! It is for this reason that America today faces the greatest threat of its existence. But of course, the biggest problem we have today is found in three letters, S–I–N!

Tear up the constitution. Burn the bill of rights. Give everyone in America everything free. Let them sit on their asses watching liberal talk show hosts who will reassure them that in their world everything is fine. Who cares if America is great. Afterall, it is the white man’s fault. It is the black man’s fault if that black man doesn’t hate whites like the liberal black fascists who push white hatred do. Let the Indians blame the whites, let the Mexican’s hate the whites, let everyone hate everyone else. If that is all you can do, then go ahead and hate. Why believe in a good God of mercy when you can hate, be vile, and act like a bitch dog in heat. Why turn around and let this nation heal? Why show mercy when you can just as well beat the suckers up. Why listen to anything good, anything moral, and anything just when you follow the globalist agendas of the leftist power dealers of Soros, Obama, black lives matter, and others.

Yes, go ahead and do it, afterall; who cares that America is basically a nation that is purely godless anyway. You want all the statues removed? Go ahead and tear down statues of Gen. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and any others you hate. Tear down the Confederate flag, the American flag, and anything else you want. Go ahead and blame the one in the White house. You might as well paint it black or purple or yellow; because you are a bunch of yellow suckers who are too frightened to admit you are wrong. You are a nation of people for the most part that blames a White billionaire who won the election for President and is now the target of every nut job on the left.

Psa 75:4-8

(4) I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn:

(5) Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.

(6) For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.

(7) But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

(8) For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.

If you would listen, really listen to yourself; maybe you would know the vile filth you push. If our politicians would shut up and just stop talking; all of them. Be silent, work as a peacemaker; and look to the Lord. But for the masses, there is no god. There is only purpose and pursuit of your goal, your agenda. That agenda is felt today as you continue to tear down America, to burn her cities, to remove Trump who wants to make America great again. What is more, because you won’t listen; there is little hope left that anything will make this nation truly great again. But for many on the leftist side, the alt-left, the left, and the republicans and democrats who take part in this visible display of stupidity; you will push your own way no matter what. Though the chasm of division grows by leaps and bounds daily, don’t stop now. Allow the fuel of your rebellion to follow through. Burn, baby burn; trash it all, hate everyone except those who will join in your foolhardy expedition of self-destruction. When the ashes then become cold, and you see the cold dead fingers of America lay in a heap; then be proud oh fool!

The leftists are shocked at everyone and everything, all the time! That is, except for the fact they are never shocked by the things they say. They legitimize their threats, violence, and hate; and in the end, it is either Trumps fault or the conservatives. The two groups, Alt-left and Alt-right are merely reflections of what is in the political parties in America. They mirror the hatred we have seen in DC and the nation called America for a very long time now!

The pit you have dug for those who oppose you shall instead be for you. You shall fall into your own misery when the day dawns on the harvest of your shame!

Be proud for you have really shown us what your vision was to become.

Be proud of fool, for in your eyes only are you a hero!

Anathema, cursed; is that nation and that man whose God is not the Lord!

Ecc 7:4-6

(4) The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

(5) It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.

(6) For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Get the Warn Radio Remnant Battle Lines App here!

Listen anywhere

Listen anytime

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All from your Android phone!

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House of Mourning, House of Mirth An in-depth Biblical commentary, writing, teaching from the WIBR/WARN Radio by The Watchman Dana Glenn Smith

We have vast resources; Audio, Video, and indepth articles. We also provide many materials in High Def Digital Content Articles in PDF E-book format. There is no cost, charge to you! While it is not free to produce, we provide these materials for whoever comes to our websites. To help keep costs down, we have ads, books, and other items to sell.

But the backbone of our support comes from those individuals who join with us in ministry to help us spread the message of Jesus Christ and his Gospel to the glory of our God and Father.

Listen to the WIBR/WARN Radio with the Watchman and Co-Hosted by Tower, see schedule that follows.

Alert: Attention the Battle we Face

Be sure to check out the latest “The Battle We Face” a endtime focus for Remnant Believers in Jesus Christ!

Check out Warn Radio TV!

Check out Western Garden Survivalist TV!

Be sure to visit our 7 Garden Tips for the Apocalypse page!

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“Heralding the Truth of God’s’ Word!”

“Life Expression in its simplest form is simply life in words”

Visit our website: www.danaglennsmith.com

Also do not forget this! Hints, tips, lifestyle Gardening; Do not miss our Visit Gardening lifestyles Page, Video, and slides!

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

WIBR/WARN Radio is an end time, preaching, teaching, advocacy, and warning agency heralding in the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth. We cover many news items on the persecuted church and are advocates for those being persecuted overseas. About WIBR/WARN Radio page here WIBR/WARN Websites are www.warn-usa.com, www.warn-radio.com, www.wingswatchman.org and have been combined into one large resource depository which can be heard worldwide.Hear us Worldwide: Info Here! Proclaiming The ‘Truth’ found in the Word of God. Biblical, indepth, prophetic, pulling no punches regarding God’s Word . Visit the ‘Writers Life’ Blog www.danaglennsmith.com on DanaGlennSmith.com

About WIBR/WARN Radio page here House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Recommended Remnant Resources for you the believer in Jesus Christ on http://www.DanaGlennSmith.com

The Epic Saga of Responsibility

God’s Eternal Clock of Redemption

Faultless to Stand Before the Lamb

America Blood Guilt ‘The Sins of Tophet’

Will the Ungodly, Rich, Powerful Escape America?

America House of Long Shadows

The Battle We Face

Recommended Remnant Resources for you the believer in Jesus Christ on http://www.Warn-Usa.com

The Epic Saga of Responsibility

Reprobate: The nation whose god is not the Lord!

Prophecy Blood guilt ‘Updated for 2017’

The Aperitif of the Coming Son of Perdition

Islam and the Antichrist Jesus

Book the Watchman for your next Event

The Battle We Face

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Visit WIBR/WARN Archives

A Vast resource of Christian teachings based on Gods Word following the Apostolic teachings given to them by Yeshua, Jesus Christ

Find The Warn-USA Archives here

Find The WingsWatchman.org Archives here House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Covering the World this is WIBR/WARN Radio

Warn Radio Blog

Global News RSS Headlines

About WIBR/WARN Radio page here House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Origins: Experience, Dedication, and Anointing

Many years ago we started out in college broadcasting over our college transmitter. Then we broadcast into 150 nations over World Harvest Shortwave Radio and World Wide Christian Radio

Today, we are still moving forward with the gospel. We are the Watchman Institute of Biblical Research and the Watchman Alert Radio network.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

A Reminder: Listen to our Streaming WARN RADIO 24/7 ->Listen to our Stream: click this link for player in new tab.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

WIBR/WARN Current Broadcasts

Thursdays 6:30-9:30 pm mst Remnant Battle Lines

Remnant Battle Lines on WIBR/WARN Radio 6:30 pm mst Thursdays

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Fridays 6:30-8:00 pm mst Sound the Shofar

Sound the Shofar Fellowship on WIBR/WARN Radio Fridays 6:30 pm mst

“They Overcame by the Blood of the Lamb, the Word of their Testimony, and they Loved not their lives unto the death!” Revelation 12:11

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

House of Mourning, House of Mirth House of Mourning, House of Mirth This house of mourning is full of Idiocy, Manure Politics, and the stuff that nightmares are made of!

0 notes

watchmanis216 · 7 years ago

Text

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

This house of mourning is full of Idiocy, Manure Politics, and the stuff that nightmares are made of! But in the end, the Harvest is coming; a reward for all their efforts!

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Psa 9:15-20

(15) The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

(16) The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.

(17) The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

(18) For the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.

(19) Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight.

(20) Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.

Burn baby burn, House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Psa 75:4-8

(4) I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn:

(5) Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.

(6) For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.

(7) But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

The pit you have dug for those who oppose you shall instead be for you. You shall fall into your own misery when the day dawns on the harvest of your shame!

Be proud for you have really shown us what your vision was to become.

Be proud of fool, for in your eyes only are you a hero!

Anathema, cursed; is that nation and that man whose God is not the Lord!

Ecc 7:4-6

(4) The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

(5) It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.

(6) For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Get the Warn Radio Remnant Battle Lines App here!

Listen anywhere

Listen anytime

Listen and chat during live shows

All from your Android phone!

A Reminder: Listen to our Streaming WARN RADIO 24/7 ->Listen to our Stream: click this link for player in new tab.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth An in-depth Biblical commentary, writing, teaching from the WIBR/WARN Radio by The Watchman Dana Glenn Smith

But the backbone of our support comes from those individuals who join with us in ministry to help us spread the message of Jesus Christ and his Gospel to the glory of our God and Father.

Listen to the WIBR/WARN Radio with the Watchman and Co-Hosted by Tower, see schedule that follows.

Alert: Attention the Battle we Face

Be sure to check out the latest “The Battle We Face” a endtime focus for Remnant Believers in Jesus Christ!

Check out Warn Radio TV!

Check out Western Garden Survivalist TV!

Be sure to visit our 7 Garden Tips for the Apocalypse page!

Be sure to visit the Writers Life Blog www.danaglennsmith.com

“Heralding the Truth of God’s’ Word!”

“Life Expression in its simplest form is simply life in words”

Visit our website: www.danaglennsmith.com

Also do not forget this! Hints, tips, lifestyle Gardening; Do not miss our Visit Gardening lifestyles Page, Video, and slides!

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

About WIBR/WARN Radio page here House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Recommended Remnant Resources for you the believer in Jesus Christ on http://www.DanaGlennSmith.com

The Epic Saga of Responsibility

God’s Eternal Clock of Redemption

Faultless to Stand Before the Lamb

America Blood Guilt ‘The Sins of Tophet’

Will the Ungodly, Rich, Powerful Escape America?

America House of Long Shadows

The Battle We Face

Recommended Remnant Resources for you the believer in Jesus Christ on http://www.Warn-Usa.com

The Epic Saga of Responsibility

Reprobate: The nation whose god is not the Lord!

Prophecy Blood guilt ‘Updated for 2017’

The Aperitif of the Coming Son of Perdition

Islam and the Antichrist Jesus

Book the Watchman for your next Event

The Battle We Face

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Visit WIBR/WARN Archives

A Vast resource of Christian teachings based on Gods Word following the Apostolic teachings given to them by Yeshua, Jesus Christ

Find The Warn-USA Archives here

Find The WingsWatchman.org Archives here House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Covering the World this is WIBR/WARN Radio

Warn Radio Blog

Global News RSS Headlines

About WIBR/WARN Radio page here House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Origins: Experience, Dedication, and Anointing

Many years ago we started out in college broadcasting over our college transmitter. Then we broadcast into 150 nations over World Harvest Shortwave Radio and World Wide Christian Radio

Today, we are still moving forward with the gospel. We are the Watchman Institute of Biblical Research and the Watchman Alert Radio network.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

A Reminder: Listen to our Streaming WARN RADIO 24/7 ->Listen to our Stream: click this link for player in new tab.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

WIBR/WARN Current Broadcasts

Thursdays 6:30-9:30 pm mst Remnant Battle Lines

Remnant Battle Lines on WIBR/WARN Radio 6:30 pm mst Thursdays

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Fridays 6:30-8:00 pm mst Sound the Shofar

Sound the Shofar Fellowship on WIBR/WARN Radio Fridays 6:30 pm mst

“They Overcame by the Blood of the Lamb, the Word of their Testimony, and they Loved not their lives unto the death!” Revelation 12:11

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

House of Mourning, House of Mirth House of Mourning, House of Mirth This house of mourning is full of Idiocy, Manure Politics, and the stuff that nightmares are made of!

0 notes