Ezra Klein published an interesting piece in Vox today arguing, among other things, that Aldous Huxley’s dystopia resembles our current state more than Orwell’s did. Klein cites Neil Postman, whose “Amusing Ourselves to Death” came out in 1985:
In his classic 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman wrote of the difference between George Orwell’s and Aldous Huxley’s visions of fascism.
“Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information,” wrote Postman. “Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
Postman’s warning rang out in a different era. He worried over the rise of television, not Twitter; he was reacting to Ronald Reagan, not Donald Trump. And yet the facts of our age are more absurd and insulting than anything Postman prophesied.
The truth IS out there — it’s just a small, shiny pebble that is obscured by a river of bullshit. Klein says what many of us have argued for a couple of years now: the mainstream media’s approach to covering Trump is a failure, and unless they consciously make better choices not only about how they cover things but what to cover, democracy is in serious peril.
Klein acknowledges the complexity of the problem, including the click-driven media of which Klein himself is a part:
That’s particularly true in the hypercompetitive enclaves of cable news and social media, where only the most attention-grabbing, conflict-rich content thrives. The media has no problem ignoring the president when what he says is boring or predictable. It’s when he’s outrageous or absurd that the “breaking” banners light up. That’s an awful incentive structure, as Trump’s gleeful manipulation of our attention has shown.
And yet, it’s damn hard to resist. It’s damn hard to resist because Trump’s behavior really is so outlandish, and because if everyone else is covering Trump’s latest comments you feel like you’re missing the story if you focus elsewhere, and because there really is audience demand, and because Trump rallies make for damn good TV segments and Facebook posts. And I say this as someone whose coverage is just as driven by these incentives as anyone else’s.
Trump knows all this, he is a genius at understanding the dynamics of press coverage, and it’s allowed him to hack the media brilliantly, to even make critical coverage part of his strategy and storyline. He controls our attention more effectively than any president in memory, perhaps than any president in history. But at what cost?
At the cost of our democracy, perhaps. The sensational content Trump produces via Twitter and his big fat mouth daily obscure more important stories, such as the fact that hundreds of immigrant children have been effectively orphaned by government agencies enacting a pointless and evil policy, the exponentially worse-than-Watergate Russia scandal, the administration’s historic levels of corruption and Trump’s manifest incompetence. I’m not 100% in agreement with Klein that Trump is a media genius whose actions, like saying outrageous shit at rallies, are deliberate tactics to hijack the narrative away from events like the Scott Pruitt public corruption flame-out.
IMO, it’s just as possible that events like the Pruitt flame-out, the Manafort trial, etc., trigger insecurity and a hunger for adulation in the brittle narcissist Trump, and his rallies are a way to feed that fragile ego. But in the end, I’m not sure the motivation really matters. The bottom line is, the fire-hose volume of outrages from Trump DOES obscure stories that would have buried a normal administration. Klein cites Postman again to identify the source of the problem:
“To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple,” Postman warned.
So, what to do? If we have to count on a click-driven media to reform itself by refraining from covering politics as entertainment, we’re obviously doomed. But we can work the refs, and working the refs sometimes works. For example, Alex Jones and InfoWars were kicked off YouTube, Facebook and Apple today. That’s a victory.
The very absurdities of the present age may serve as levers to effect change on the margins, or at least inspire more people to fire up their woefully disused bullshit detectors. For example, Buzzfeed is reporting that there’s a lot of evidence to suggest this QAnonsense that made headlines last week originated as a prank to make Trump supporters look stupid. Mission accomplished!
Now, no amount of debunking will unstupid people who think Alex Jones is credible source. No amount of coverage will knock sense into the empty heads people who believe Trump is on a secret mission to bust a global pedophile ring and reclaim U.S. democracy from a degenerate Democratic cabal. Those folks took the bus to crazy town on a one-way ticket long ago.
But there’s a chance that exposing the subterranean madness that is bubbling below the surface of what passes for mainstream conservative politics will be clarifying for people who don’t normally pay attention. And exposing how trolls manipulated Democrats and left-leaning unaffiliateds in 2016 can help us prevent a repeat in upcoming elections. Robby Mook has a piece in USA Today that speaks to that:
The Russians know there’s no better way to help Trump win re-election than divide Democrats and disrupt our primary. They will choose sides. They will seek to inflate divisions on race, gender and geography. They will trump up “scandals” and suspicions of “rigging.” They will infiltrate conversations in our Facebook groups and Twitter threads, and pollute our feeds with manufactured content. There’s no question it will happen. The question is: What will we do about it?
To be clear, I look forward to a sprawling, highly competitive presidential primary next year. A wide variety of choices and a spirited debate about the direction of our country is healthy and will produce the best candidate possible. We should welcome the differences in opinion and passions it will evoke. We just don’t want the Russians manufacturing ways to make it unnecessarily nasty or divisive.
Every Democrat considering a run for president needs to carefully consider where she or he will stand when Russian rumor mongering seeks to divide Democrats. If Russia attacks your opponent or promotes you, will you let it slide? Or will you speak out? Will you commit to ignoring stolen and leaked material? Will you be willing to call on supporters to shut down Facebook groups infected with agents posing as supporters?
Maybe Democratic candidates and leaders need to get together and come up with a pledge to that effect. What do you think?
agorabum
It’s a mix of Orwell and Huxley and something else, since the forces of propaganda and lies are very well funded (including by foreign powers, but mostly domestically). With Huxley, the “truth” of society was acknowledged but art and literature was heavily censored and repressed, so commentary about it was not allowed.
Truth is being drowned with bullshit.
Wapiti
Nah, the hard part is that the Pebble of Truth is drab looking, not shiny.
Elizabelle
I knew this was a Betty Cracker post as soon as I read the title.
Brachiator
Why not both? And neither.
There’s more than a streak of Orwell in Trump’s attempt to redefine words and truth.
But neither author predicted that a prosperous citizenry might so easily toss aside democracy and embrace evil, stupidity and cruelty. Or that a sly authoritarian would be aided by conservative media, craven politicians and hangers on in a slow slide into despotism.
I think I read something close to where we are in a Robert Silverberg SF novel whose title I cannot recall just now.
smintheus
You’re right that this is not a new phenomenon, and it wasn’t new in the 1980s. Trump’s daily barrage of BS is directly analogous to how Sen. Joseph McCarthy played the news media for fools. At that time, journalists understood what McCarthy was doing but they failed to cope with his lies effectively…utterly failed. There was much hand-wringing during and after McCarthy’s years-long demagogic domination of the news, and journalists promised themselves that they wouldn’t allow such demagogues, liars, and confabulators to play them in the future. But in fact they kept on clinging to the same stupid refusal to explain when political liars are lying, and we are back to square one yet again. They keep refusing to act upon lessons that they themselves claim they have learned.
And fwiw, McCarthy was not a brilliant innovator either. Earlier demagogues like Father Coughlin and several notorious European dictators engaged effectively in the same fire-hose-of-BS tactics. It has long been a problem in the era of mass-communication that unscrupulous politicians are capable of manipulating journalists’ unwillingness to cooperate in campaigning against demagoguery.
Mr. Prosser
I think us Dems need to flag those possible candidates that are in it for no good reason than their own egos. I think the serious ones (Warren, Gillibrand, maybe Harris and maybe Booker) need to get on the stick now, or at least after the mid-terms. They need no “middle-way” people and no Sanders. Get out there for a grueling 24 month slog and point to meddling and trolling when they see it.
scott (the other one)
Yes. When I see people talking about how the latest Trump dogwhistle/bullhorn is a distraction from, say, kids in cages, I think that there’s no evidence to suggest that’s how he operates. He simply shoots (people on Fifth Avenue) from the hip and if it distracts from even more heinous behavior, awesome. But that’s not why he does it. He does it ‘cuz he doesn’t think before speaking.
And that too.
germy
TheRoot
schrodingers_cat
[email protected]Wapiti: Truth eventually wins out. You cannot keep a lie going on forever.
geg6
@germy:
It infuriates me that I want to defend Lemon and Stelter. I can’t stand either one, but, dammit, I don’t want them dead!
Uncle Ebeneezer
I’d say his “genius” is more like a toddler who realizes that acting up in certain ways gets them attention. That’s about the intellectual level I’m willing to grant Trump, no more. The way the world reacts to what he says and does, is and always has been steeped in white/class/male privilege and the uncomfortable truth that our society will bend over backwards to avoid accountability for mediocre, white men, ESPECIALLY if they pander to open bigotry. Trump is no more a genius than Milo or Richard Spencer he just has been a bit more lucky with timing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Corporate America is in the process of learning what every internet form, bulletin board and blog had to learn in the 2000s – it doesn’t work without having moderators or the trolls just take over.
Chyron HR
@germy:
“I’m not racist, I want to kill the white guy too!”
rikyrah
If it looks like a ratphuck, call it a ratphuck.
Take no prisoners with these folks.
We can see who they are. No need to tiptoe around their feelings anymore.
GregB
It has been obvious for some time that the media’s inability to understand or worse yet, willingness to be complicit just helps The Greatest Conman on Earth project his propaganda endlessly.
It is also maddening to see that our world has been reduced to whatever message sells to the least educated, most viciously racist, lowest common denominator citizens.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Neither factored in white supremacy either. Or that culture would be used as a weapon to convince significant portions of a populace to abandon democracy because it helps Those People (same-sex marriage, abortion, etc). They were both white men living in an extremely racist age (even worse than now, if you’d believe it). Still, things like the KKK existed and for Orwell, he saw the horrors of the Holocaust. He should have been well aware what racism and bigotry are capable of doing.
I saw a recent study that I can’t find right now that found that bigoted white Americans (Rs and Trump supporters) drop their commitment to democracy when it begins to benefit minorities.
joel hanes
hundreds of immigrant children have been effectively orphaned by government agencies enacting a pointless and evil policy,
It’s worse than that, because the policy actually has and was achieving two objectives:
1. To punish brown Spanish-speaking people for daring to aspire to become Americans by stealing their children.
2. To provide Christianist adoption organizations (see, for example, the one connected to Betsy DeVos) with children. The Magnitsky Act has choked off the flow of Russian orphans. IOW, one point of the policy was effectively child trafficking.
PJ
The problem with the media lies not just with the click-bait, “ooh, there’s an acorn!” squirrel mentality, and with the concomitant inability or unwillingness of the audience to take the time to understand complex issues, nor with the need to have access to the “inside scoop” of horse shit, so that said journalists never label the lies they publish, but with the belief of the majority of publishers and journalists that power and wealth are good in and of themselves, and that long-held liberal beliefs and policies regarding inequality in power and wealth are illegitimate and worthy only of scorn. The media would have roasted any Democrat who tried to get away with the lies and pure fucking evil of the Bush Administration, which were incredibly damaging in terms of lives and dollars, let alone the everyday corruption and mendacity of Trump’s team. The media were all-in for the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob, but Bush or Trump, heaven forbid!
germy
@geg6: @Chyron HR:
“When trump got elected they called us a bunch of violent extremists!
Next time I see them, I’ll kill them!!”
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: The Soviets kept it up for 70-odd years. The truth may eventually prevail, but lies can be maintained for longer than either you or I have breath.
Teddys Person
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Well said!!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“The truth IS out there — it’s just a small, shiny pebble that is obscured by a river of bullshit.”
The exact opposite – the truth is that huge mountain with complex geology. The river of shit is easy to understand because it’s just shit and nothing else next to the mountain. The truth has always been hard to understand, that’s why people reject quantum physics and evolution for inane tripe like creationism.
Mandalay
This x 1,000.
A current example is how they have only just burst the bubble of specious claims such as “There was no collusion!” and “collusion is not a crime!” that have been spewing from the Administration since the Russian meeting in Trump Tower was revealed.
That infantile nonsense has finally been debunked, but it has taken a year to do it. Why? It is a massive failure on the part of the media, with its herds of legal analysts, that this drivel was not rebutted months ago.
The Moar You Know
Damn right. Orwell’s, you couldn’t turn the TV off. Here, people look puzzled by the proposition. Why would you turn the TV off? Hell, people insist on carrying a government-approved monitoring device (your ever-so-convenient cell phone) on their person 24/7.
Orwell’s dystopia still had rebels. Huxley’s bought them all off. I know which one of those looks closer to today’s reality.
different-church-lady
Does anyone else remember the bumper stickers from the 80s that said “KILL YOUR TELEVISION”? Was it just a Boston-area thing? My Google-fu sucks, and I can’t seem to unearth any of the history of that.
Anyway, I’m thinking of reviving those for the digital age: “KILL YOUR FACEBOOK” “KILL YOUR SMARTPHONE”. I don’t know how many people would understand it’s an homage.
Mike Furlan
Here is an easy solution for your Twitter problem. Change the language to that one you have been meaning to learn. Kind of hard to be emotional about something you are not quite sure that you are understanding.
Barney
I can’t understand why so many Americans keep quoting Postman’s comparison. It’s simply wrong.
No, ‘Brave New World’ is nothing like that. No one gets a lot of information in BNW. Everyone is given just what they need to fit in their predestined niche in society, and nothing more (and some are even poisoned to restrict their ability to think). They are also brainwashed to be satisfied with that.
And I can’t really see the controllers of BNW as ‘fascist’. They have abolished nations, and thus nationalism. They don’t use force or fear to control, they use biological tools. The police literally use a water pistol to quell what they think could become a riot – containing sleeping gas. It’s a parody of benign paternalism, making a philosophical point about freedom and happiness.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Maybe someone’s posted this from Buzzfeed
Link
different-church-lady
@Mandalay:
Truth. Pants. Circumnavigation. All that all that.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@PJ:
But the point remains that the truth ultimately often wins out. That nothing lasts forever.
joel hanes
the bumper stickers from the 80s that said “KILL YOUR TELEVISION”?
I saw them in Iowa and California.
But this came first :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwq0YoOy4g
Hungry Joe
One thing that has changed since the 1930s is that fascists have (in general) realized that it’s no longer necessary to suppress the truth, or even to jail and murder opponents. All the RWNJ’s in and out of government have to do is Gish-gallop-drown information and opponents in a tsunami of bullshit. Anyway, smashing printing presses (contemporary equivalent: shutting down tweets/FB/webistes, etc.) and rounding up dissenters not only looks bad, it’s expensive. “Let ’em tweet/post/protest — we’ll just shout louder and keep cranking out the crap.”
(Yeah, I know — Putin. But he’s Old School. He could run the place without offing people, but where’s the fun in that?)
smintheus
@different-church-lady: SCTV used to have an amusing into that showed people in high rises tossing their TVs out the window in disgust at their network’s lousy programming.
A Ghost To Most
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Every question is complex; every answer more so.
They want simple answers to complex questions.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Hungry Joe:
For a thought experiment, what would happen if their opponents attempted the same exact strategy against the RWNJs?
rikyrah
He is supposedly a billionaire.
At the very least, there is still 50 million unaccounted for from the Inauguration.
How you paying for his legal defense fund???
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1026519115735990272
smintheus
@Hungry Joe: The first phases of facism/nazism in most regimes did not involve smashing printing presses or arresting opponents. They rose to power and consolidated power first by inundating the people with massive clouds of lies.
different-church-lady
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: God, imagine a world where liberal trolls get the crazies chasing false flags on such a constant basis they give up out of fatigue — Orwell’s Ministry of Truth reverse-weaponized.
schrodingers_cat
@PJ: True. But T’s lies are catching up with him in real time.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@different-church-lady: Anonymous has announced they are going after Q to expose him/her/them.
Kelly
https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Wiki/safety:start?#vi._international_scale_of_river_difficulty
TenguPhule
With what enforcement?
Also, I recall a Pledge to America that…did not work out so well for the country.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Have your learned nothing from world history?
Truth is always fighting a rearguard action against the previous generation and the current generation of lies.
History is always written by the winners.
MagdaInBlack
@joel hanes:
So glad to see you post the mailman from Maywood, Mr Prine
I was just thinking of that song
EBT
@Barney: Fascism doesn’t require nationalism. Besides a gilded cage is still a cage. The people have zero choice in their day to day life and are ruled by unquestionable dictators.
different-church-lady
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: OMG, HOT MYTHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION ON MYTHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION ACTION!
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
My cellphone is dumber then my dog. And I intend to keep it that way.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Anon is real enough. And while usually a bunch of trolls and assholes, they do have their good points.
Fair Economist
@joel hanes:
DeVos’ agency is selling these kids at up to $50,000 each. That’s not “effectively” child trafficking, it *is* child trafficking – kidnapping children to be sold for money.
Mandalay
@different-church-lady:
Well television is getting killed – every age group except 65+ is watching less traditional TV – but that is only because the internet is taking over.
Gravenstone
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Is this a case of rooting for injuries?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Wapiti:
Reminds me of Indiana Jones movie, “no it would not be a cup of gold, he was a carpenter, it would be made of wood”
Doug R
Cable companies are losing customers. The “kids” don’t watch as much TV as us.
I have a piece of great advice about reality tv, from Lisa Simpson and Paul Anka: Just Don’t Look.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@different-church-lady: That’s funny !
MisterForkbeard
This is a pretty classic Prisoner’s Dilemma problem. Although the party as a whole benefits wildly from such a pledge, there’s enormous benefits to individuals who break the pledge to fuck their opponents or proclaim that they “won’t follow establishment rules” or “is an independent thinker and will evaluate information regardless of the source”. They get indie/media cred AND get to use the illicit information itself, all couched in the language of freedom and self-determination.
It’s worse than the normal case, even: There are already people within the Democratic Party who are peeing inside the tent rather than out. Gabbard and Sanders, for example, have shown historically that they’re willing to ramp up attacks on the many in order to benefit themselves, and some of them may have pre-existing relationships with troublesome groups (for example, Tad Devine).
This is a fight worth having, but it’s not going to entirely work.
different-church-lady
@Gravenstone: This is only an exhibition, this is not a competition, please… no wagering!
different-church-lady
@Mandalay: There will always a new thing that needs to be killed.
Unknown known
@schrodingers_cat:
“The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: Sure. While shrewd at picking out weaknesses in his opponents, Trump is, to be charitable, not very bright and fundamentally lazy, and because he uses and abuses the people around him, he inspires no loyalty in those close to him. As far as his ability to stay out of jail goes, it is a matter of time.
Despite all that, I have no faith that his supporters will change their mind about him (because he enables their bigotry and hatred, which makes them feel really good), and little faith that journalism, as a whole, will become more responsible, because there is little financial incentive for it and too many journalists want to see themselves close to power and wealth.
Mandalay
@geg6:
I don’t have much respect for Don Lemon as a “journalist” – especially when he gave Trump unchallenged air time during his candidacy – but he comes across (to me) as a thoroughly decent human being.
Roger Moore
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.” –John Maynard Keynes
Hungry Joe
@smintheus: Correct. But today’s fascists (and, more important, the millions who support and vote for them) think of themselves as freedom-loving, small-d democrats, so literal up-against-wall,-liberal-asshole tactics won’t fly. My point is that strong-arm stuff doesn’t HAVE to fly: They can get what they want without it, which allows them to continue to look in the mirror and see a Founding Father.
Of course, if I’m wrong we’re even farther up Shit Creek. But it’s Shit Creek either way.
Betty Cracker
@Barney: Admittedly, I haven’t read Brave New World since high school, which was a long time ago. But IIRC, citizens were indoctrinated via “sleep-learning” and entertained 24/7 to dull the senses, along with the sedative. As to whether the government depicted can be accurately described as “fascist,” you’re right that it lacks the physical brutality of the most notorious fascist regimes, but people are controlled and forcibly suppressed by the paternalistic government. I don’t think it’s such a stretch to call it fascistic. Close enough for Postman’s purpose anyway, which was to call attention to the fact that it wasn’t just one danger we needed to guard against.
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: It’s in the original post. ?
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Huxley and Orwell were English. They folded the bigotry of colonialism, which they were deeply aware of, into their general vision of totalitarianism. And Marxism, which Orwell was specifically satirizing, tended to deny the existence of racism. A variation of this denial is currently dogging Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and is seen as an ongoing weakness in Bernie Sanders here.
However, I agree that both authors were blind to issues involving women and the gay/transgendered community.
There is more to it than this. America has often been racist, with the presumption that democracy was for white men and their dependent women only. But this mindless allegiance to Trump, and the assertion that institutions such as Congress or the Courts exist only to rubber stamp some incoherent and inconsistent Christian free market hegemony, while not entirely new, is being hammered home like never before.
ETA: Long ago, I used to win bar bets from people who either thought that Huxley was still alive or could never, never, ever remember when he died.
Wild Cat
Sometimes it’s neither an Orwell or a Huxley, but a farce-world like Vonnegut’s post-Watergate “Breakfast of Champions,” where the presidency was openly bought by wealthy buffoons.
Bess
I feel a need for a Wiki-Current Events. A site that has an entry for important developments/stories and which is edited by a group of qualified individuals.
Let the media gather information. Then have a place where reliable information can be consolidated over time.
MattF
I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the notion of ‘bullshit’. Harry Frankfurt’s little book is helpful– Frankfurt’s main point is that bullshit a form of falsehood for which truth simply doesn’t matter. That’s an important point, but the concept is still rather elusive.
That said, it seems pretty clear that truth— real, factual truth– is the antidote for bullshit, and it’s important to bear that in mind.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Roger Moore:
I understand what you’re saying; that it means little in the here and now. But my real point is that there is always hope that things will improve; that the Russians, the Republicans, or whoever are not infallible gods who will rule for the rest of eternity. They make mistakes just like any of us and can be defeated eventually.
Neldob
Constantly writing letters to various media and representatives helps to keep them focused on whatever issues are important. Like weekly letters about the child snatching, corruption, etc to infinity.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Yep. The drug of choice was called Soma.
Today, this would be Fox News or video games. Maybe Facebook.
BTW, The Stallone movie Demolition Man is not too bad a riff on some Huxley themes. And Sandra Bullock’s character’s name, Office Huxley, is a sly nod to the author of Brave New World.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Betty Cracker: Ha sorry I totally whiffed on that.
Unknown known
@Bess: There are places like that currently, for different topics. The problem isn’t that there aren’t good explanations of truth available for those who know where to look. The problem is that grandma is hopped up on Fox lies, and other journos are chasing bits of story day to day as they churn out content that will win views in a competitive content market, and that most people don’t even watch the news at all.
Also, that people are so thoroughly saturated with bullshit, that when you tell the actual truth it sounds either tedious or implausible to them, so they move back to the latest sportsball drama, and that ex-friend who is telling totally untrue things about them, the JERK!
What we really need is better civic education, starting in primary school, that builds a body of knowledge, bullshit detectors, and an interest and passion in the well-being of their fellow humans. Then wait a generation. Can’t be hard, right?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Wasn’t Demoliton Man essentially a sneering strawman of poltical correctness?
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
No.
Chip Daniels
Get off Twitter and Facebook.
Seriously, I don’t see any value that these platforms provide, and whatever value there is, is outweighed by their ability to spontaneously combust into hysterical lynch mobs like some Twilight Zone episode or provide a vector for troll armies.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Well, I took it that way. Admittedly, I only partly watched a Nostalgia Critic review of it where he used a Reddit vs Tumbler theme as a recurring joke to relate to the movie, which also pissed me off. I thought the whole movie was some criticism of “PC culture” and how it would suck the fun out of everything and leave everyone soft and manipulatiable by evil elites. Honestly, even before Stalone’s character wakes up in the future, the “present” seemed to be an over-the-top grimdark version of the real world’s crime waves of the 1970s-80s.
jl
I’m worrying about midterms now. I think shape of Congress will have a huge effect on political landscape and getting Congress back is crucial. Not sure a Dem president with without a Dem Congress will have enough power to make big enough change.
As for artistic model of our times, I look to the movie Brazil.
Gin
Any of our actual or pretend lawyers know anything about how Rick Gates is doing today?
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Just riffing on your thoughts: in 1984 the members of the party were whipped into the two-minute hate frenzy by the government. In BNW, they were controlled through pleasure and decadence. What we have today is a weird mashup, as though the two-minute hate was an open-mic night and people are doing it for kicks.
different-church-lady
@MattF:
Yes and no: bullshit is dependent on entertainment value — it works on the emotional level. It’s performance. If the truth is not more entertaining to the consumer of the bullshit, the consumer will continue to prefer the bullshit.
different-church-lady
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I rather hope the kinds of mistakes they make are very very different from mine.
rikyrah
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
said it before…
they don’t have a problem with socialism, as long as it’s WHITE socialism.
but, when it’s spread to everyone equally..that’s when they can’t stand it.
they despised Obamacare because it was the first expansion of the American Social Safety Net, that DID NOT, have in its original design – the exclusion of huge swaths of the American people.
It took the Roberts Court to do that.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
Unquestionably Facebook.
Gin & Tonic
Huh, posted a comment, and it vanished. Try posting it again, and it says “duplicate comment.” But it’s not here.
Anyway, any news on how Rick Gates is doing today?
schrodingers_cat
George Orwell was astute when it came to the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of a communist state but what was his stance on colonialism? I remember reading a sneering article about Gandhi written by him but not much else. I know that like Kipling he was born in India.
Leto
@Brachiator:
Or reading a book, playing sports, commenting on blogs… virtually endless list.
rikyrah
@joel hanes:
say it again for the bleacher seats.
different-church-lady
@Leto:
Hey, why is everybody looking at me?
Brachiator
@Leto:
Fox News is deliberate propaganda. A book? Maybe if you read the same book over and over. And then it would depend on the book.
rikyrah
Outrageous!!!
Kushner Reportedly Worked to Strip Jordan’s Two Million Palestinians of Refugee Status
Kushner raised the issue with Jordanian officials during a visit to Amman, Foreign Policy reports ■ Move appears to be part of broader effort to halt UNRWA, which Kushner allegedly called ‘corrupt and inefficient’
Haaretz
Aug 06, 2018 1:16 PM
Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, has reportedly pressured Jordan to strip the refugee status of more than two million registered Palestinians living in the country.
According to a report in the U.S. magazine Foreign Policy, Kushner raised the issue with Jordanian officials in the region during his visit there in June.
Hasan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, claimed that the senior aide’s move was part of a broader effort by him and the U.S. administration to render UNRWA, the UN aid agency providing relief to Palestinian, irrelevant and halt its work in Jordan and in other countries in the Middle East.
“[Kushner said] the resettlement has to take place in the host countries and these governments can do the job that UNRWA was doing,” Ashrawi said.
The Palestinians’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told reporters after Kushner’s visit to Jordan in June that the latter’s delegation said it was ready to stop UNRWA funding and redirect the sum allocated to the agency to Jordan and other countries that host refugees.
Emails written by Kushner and obtained by Foreign Policy point to Kushner’s evident dismay with the UN agency as well as to discreet attempts to put a stop to UNRWA’s work — a move that would essentially render millions of Palestinian refugees status-less.
MattF
@schrodingers_cat: Orwell had a deeply sentimental streak when it came to England’s follies. I recall he wrote defensive essays about Kipling and P.G.Wodehouse. Wodehouse got into trouble with some unwise radio broadcasts at the start of WWII. I’ll agree that old P.G. was innocently unaware of the badness of what he did, but Orwell argued that the badness was actually a good thing– which it was not.
Kathrine Clarke
@different-church-lady:
Saw a bumper sticker in CA (in response to the KILL YOUR TELEVISION sticker) that read: TELEVISE YOUR KILL.
Unknown known
@schrodingers_cat: Here is Orwell writing about nationalism which he defines as not just the love of your side, but the belief that it is in all respects superior to any other, and the bending or rewriting of reality to maintain that with absolute fervour. He doesn’t even restrict it to just nation states – religions and philosophies can also qualify.
It’s actually remarkably similar to what a modern psychologist Bob Altemeyer calls “Right wing authoritarianism” (extremely readable and enlightening free e-book at link)
schrodingers_cat
@MattF: In the 90 years of rule under the British crown, 55 to 60 million Indians died because of the genocide by starvation policies. These were human rights abuses on a massive scale. So Mr. Clarity had massive cultural blinders of his own.
ruemara
I’m not going to argue the point, largely because I’m trying to edit some things. The blame for this is squarely on two things. The media that hungers for scandal, excitement, power access & scoops plus, the audience that thrives on confirmation bias. You can’t be fooled by things you don’t desire. Desire controls what we do, what we accept. We chase our desires off a cliff. Anyone who could rationally believe in QAnon – without having some level of disorder – wants to believe it. The media are more complex, but I think it’s because we’ve been trained to sneer at the idea of good. Not simply feel good stories, they have value. But the idea that doing good as a basic way of being is somehow gauche and unworthy. Competence is not sexy. The idea of using power to aid others, that’s not sexy. Analysis that focuses on practicalities, not sexy either. Pontificating, pretending that you can read a person’s emotional depth due to contrarian actions, that’s sexy. It’s why you can see them offering meanings on Trump’s actions and frankly, every goddamned asshole who’s ever held office, they spend time avoiding obvious realities and giving deep thoughts on why the asshole move is not really an asshole move. They want to be seen as serious, socratic, & relevant critics. It’s just too easy to report accurately & say this isn’t true or this isn’t really relevant. We must look smart! They desire the chaos, the disorder & the drama for their reporting. The voters want to believe in the myths of a big strong white macho guy representing America, that weaponry equals strength and that they can force all those people who don’t agree with them to conform to a 1940’s American virtuous society that never really existed. They are right goddammit and if it kills them and everything they love, so be it. So Ezra et al can blame entertainment, repressive government, or not being nice to Nazis. The truth is, enough people wanted this to exist and enough people felt secure that they wouldn’t be affected, that this current situation exists. Once we have a belief, it takes the metaphysical equivalent of a nuclear bomb to change that belief.
And those twats who came up with QAnon probably aren’t liberal at all (why do people really think just because it targets a group of idiots it must be the opposition to that group). This current world of chaos is still a laughing matter to a lot of people. Putin’s entire operation was not really a Trump presidency. It was to sow as much discord & chaos as possible in the heart of Americans so they’d distrust their own government and tear down things by themselves. Trump actually hastening the plan and isolating us is just an amazing 99¢ for a Monet type of deal. He just couldn’t have done it without Americans ready to destroy a nation that dared to make them share equality with people they despise.
ok, back to reformatting all my content for Instagram.
rikyrah
But….that’s who Rafael is…
…………….
A tale of two campaigns:@BetoORourke is visiting every county in Texas, reaching out to Dems, Independents, and Republicans with an unabashedly progressive [email protected] is…defending a lunatic conspiracy theorist who incites the harassment of Sandy Hook families https://t.co/U7K1rxLbZ5
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) August 6, 2018
Leto
@Brachiator: So far I haven’t seen anyone name their kid my user name, but I’ve seen an endless list of Rands. Plenty of people read the same stupid shit over and over, just as an equal number of people watch the same TCM replays over and over. Soma is a virtually endless list.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Beto is kinda cute, reminds me of RFK. I hope he wins. The less said about Oily Cruz the better.
WhatsMyNym
The whole “Democratic Party is divided” is BS. You never hear it about the Repugs who are in control and still can’t pass any of their wet dreams/bills.
Let’s just work on getting the vote out in places that matter, instead of reading click bait.
Jay
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
The boards where QAnon started, are filled with RWNJ’s, Gaters, Incels, Deplorables, Gullibillies, Trumpists, Nazi’s and trolls trolling for the LUTZ.
and now the Russian bots and trolls are all over the hype of the CT,
and of course, QAnon as it sits now, is a result of collective hive mind insanity and piling on by the ususal nutters, not the Q codes origionally posted.
So, summing up, it’s doubtful that Q is “lefty” art trolling of those cesspools, but instead, Occam’s Razor suggests that QAnon is the natural product of those cesspools.
rikyrah
Whatever muthaphucka.
…………………………………..
‘This is my neighborhood!’ White man melts down after seeing a black woman park her motorcycle on his street
Brad Reed
06 AUG 2018 AT 13:17 ET
A Boston woman says she found herself being accosted by an angry white man simply because she parked her motorcycle on the street where he lived.
In a video posted on her Facebook page, Boston resident NeNe Judge’Mayo can be seen getting screamed at by a white man after she parked her motorcycle in what he described as “his neighborhood” of Dorchester — despite the fact that Judge’Mayo lives in Dorchester as well.
“Do you live here?” the man yelled at Judge’Mayo, who replied affirmatively that she did.
This, however, only seemed to enrage the man further and he insinuated that he would get shot due to her presence on his street.
“I’m not getting shot in my neighborhood!” he yelled. “This is my f*cking neighborhood! It’s my f*cking neighborhood! You’re bringing this f*cking sh*t into my neighborhood? No! No!”
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Orwell seemed to be conflicted about imperialism, and saw some of it up close. He joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, served for 5 years but decided to quit. From an essay about his novel, Burmese Days.
MattF
@Jay: Part of the RW bubble is the proposition that ‘lefty’ means something like ‘treasonous pedophile’. If the QAnon business presents the counter-proposition that ‘lefty’ means ‘sane’, I won’t complain.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: So he was down with the looting and atrocities but not the self righteousness. So in today’s R party he would have been a T Republican rather than a Paul Ryan type R.
Roger Moore
@joel hanes:
To be pedantic, the Magnitsky Act did no such thing. The Russians decided that part of their retaliation for the Magnitsky Act would be to block American adoptions. But the basic point- that talking about “Russian adoptions” is really talking about the Magnitsky Act- is correct.
Mandalay
@MattF:
There is an excellent BBC radio play on this titled How to be An Internee with No Previous Experience:
You can download it as a torrent file (and then convert it to mp3 to play it) from here.
Aleta
@ruemara: This is great.
Gin & Tonic
Wonderful photo collage here. What do these six white men have in common?
MattF
@schrodingers_cat: It’s more complicated than that. After all, Orwell served in a Trotskyite military organization in the Spanish Civil War and was on the front lines of that conflict. He’s been co-opted by the right wing because of ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’, but he was anti-Stalinist rather than right-wing.
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: It would help if you read some Orwell before you judged him based on an internet posting. Orwell served as a colonial officer in Burma, and his basic view was that imperialism was exploitative, and, as described in his famous essay, Shooting an Elephant, it was destructive even when people had good intentions. Here is his summary about British rule over Burma https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/how-a-nation-is-exploited-the-british-empire-in-burma/:
schrodingers_cat
@PJ: I have read both Animal Farm and 1984 but not his writings on imperialism. That’s why I was asking the question.
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: Please stop spouting nonsense. Orwell was a socialist to his core.
Jay
@MattF:
Buzzfeed’s article grabs plot similarities between an obscure Italian novel set in the 16th century, an Italian Anarcho-Socialist group that pranked media with elaborate plots, to leap to the conclusion that “Q” is a lefty trolling the trolls.
Occam’s razor holds that QAnon is the natural product of the cesspool that is 4Chan and 8Chan, no “leftie” ratfucking required.
The Moar You Know
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: You based your opinion of a movie based only on a partly-watched review of it?
I am left without words. Next time, try actually viewing the thing you’re opining on.
PJ
@MattF: That’s not what Orwell argued. You can read it here: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/in-defence-of-p-g-wodehouse/. He argued that Wodehouse should not be tried as a traitor for his radio broadcasts while a prisoner of the Nazis because, essentially, he was simple: his view of the world was formed prior to the turn of the century and had not changed, and that he could not understand the damage his broadcasts were intended to do. Orwell added that if the British wanted to try citizens for treason leading up to and during the war, there were plenty better subjects in the political world.
Brachiator
@ruemara:
Yep.
MattF
@PJ: I can see that my 30-year old recollections of Orwell’s writings aren’t very reliable. However, I’ve never bought the RW’s attempt to co-opt Orwell.
A Ghost To Most
Frank Figliuzzi just said Shitler’s Twitter app should pop up a Miranda warning everytime he tweets.
As Shrek said, “You HAVE the right to be silent. What you lack is the will”.
John Revolta
And this is Good Old Boston!
Home of the Bean and the Cod
Where Lowell speaks only to Cabot
And Cabot speaks only to NeNe Judge’Mayo
needs work………………
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
4:08 p.m.: Prosecutors call Treasury official, not Rick Gates, as next witness
The prosecution has just called its next witness, Paula Liss, a special agent with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Treasury Department, who is an expert in money-laundering and accounting.
MattF
@A Ghost To Most: Also apparently lacks a competent lawyer that he will pay attention to.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
Whole thing should be in block quotes. WaPo.
Mike in NC
In 2024 the GOP is going to nominate Alex Jones for president.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Here’s an excerpt from an Orwell essay, “Shooting an Elephant.” It always stuck with me because it has a very memorable first line, included below, and also because of the ambivalence expressed about imperialism:
I’d conclude from that Orwell was at least marginally more self-aware than Kipling.
Bess
@Unknown known:
A central site. Continually updated as new information surfaces.
joel hanes
@Roger Moore:
The Magnitsky Act did no such thing
You are of course correct. Thanks for catching that.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: Thanks.
waratah
@zhena gogolia: thank you, I am starting to not like that judge.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: This is probably a good move by the prosecution. Start with Gates in the morning. He will probably be on the stand all day. Let the cross examination happen after lunch when the jury is bored and sleepy.
Aleta
@Gin & Tonic:
Gates has just been called to testify.
WaPo
4:21 p.m. Rick Gates has been called to testify
The prosecution’s start witness and Paul Manafort’s former business partner has been called to testify against him, after brief testimony from a Treasury official.
James E Powell
@PJ:
Right. And the argument that the press/media just don’t know what to do about Trump is bullshit. They could just pretend it’s a Clinton and do what they always do. Klein and others who have written this by-now tired lament are insisting that the owners, editors, and news directors have no agency in all this. They are just so powerless, right?
JWL
I tend to think Kellyanne Conway has yet to strike a plea deal with Mueller Inc., only because I just saw videotape of her yakking on TV over this past weekend, fast-talking utter gibberish and looking scared to death.
Immanetize
@waratah: That is a standard “move along” instruction. Keep the testimony in bounds — and short. Of course, the defense may ask some stupid question Opening the door to all sorts of troublesome treasury department questions on redirect.
Anonymous At Work
t’s hard for the media to connect the dots because the dots overlap.
Ruckus
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
drumpf also figured out long ago that wealth gets one listened to in this country. He’s been lying about his wealth for decades. Remember the 10, then 11, then 12 billion he was supposed to be worth? And now Forbes says at best, 3 1/2 billion. And that’s being generous and I’ll bet doesn’t account for all the off the books loans and bail outs.
Humdog
@ruemara: My goodness, this is deep insight and you were just popping in here! Thank you for this.
I think you’ve been on a real streak here.
Immanetize
@Aleta: Well, now the defense will have a cross examination opportunity in the morning. Or maybe judge Ellis will just keep them going until Gates is finished?
MattF
@Ruckus: Not to mention cash debts that Uncle Vlad has ordered written off. Except, y’know, not actually.
tobie
@Aleta: Was Paula Liss’ testimony cancelled? It looks like she had just 13 minutes on the stand.
Aleta
@Aleta: About Liss, the Treasury official who was called around 4 pm, before Gates
James E Powell
Democratic candidates who criticize other Democrats are the most popular on cable news.
Barney
@EBT: Yes, fascism does require nationalism.
a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism
BNW is closer to an extreme communism – global, the state directing all economic activity, everything planned “for the good of all”. There’s no glorifying of the family, or of history. While Mustapha Mond is known to all the students we see at the start, they don’t recognise him – it’s not a personality cult around him. He was recognised as very clever, and co-opted rather than letting him cause trouble. He’s one of several “World Controllers”.
Omnes Omnibus
@waratah: Why? That’s a fairly typical thing to hear a judge say. Part of their job is to move the trial along. If they don’t do that, you get the OJ trial.
Aleta
Liss testimony, WaPo
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Nope. Orwell was a long time out and out socialist. Also, I provided a link to more of his writings about imperialism. I don’t know that you can come to a conclusion based on a single sample of his writing.
But I would say that Orwell understood how Burma and India were exploited, but he underestimated the ability of colonized countries to throw off their oppressors and prosper on their own. From an essay or speech about Burma.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: I think you owe me royalties or something (133). ?
MattF
@Barney: Also, don’t forget that BNW population was divided into immutable genetic castes. I don’t think that’s either exactly left- or right-wing
James E Powell
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
That’s been my anecdotal experience since the late 70s. In fact, the majority of white Americans will oppose nearly every decent 20th century program or policy once they realize that African Americans will be able to be part of it. Public education, union membership, suburban living, public goods & services in general.
Stuart Frasier
@Ruckus:
I strongly suspect that Trump’s debts exceed his assets. Trump doesn’t behave like a man with his head above water.
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Not surprised that C-SPAN has degenerated that it’s nonchalantly airing violent threats. Stopped listening when President Obama was elected.
Gin & Tonic
@Aleta: Who the fuck does Zehnle think he’s kidding with those questions? We’re not talking about +/- $10k, where you might be under because of FX fluctuations. And while the filing requirements may be in some respects tedious, that’s why you hire accountants. It’s only overly complicated if you’re dishonest. Like the old line that if you only ever tell the truth, then you don’t have to “remember” anything.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: So, he was a socialist where British people were concerned but an apologist for the Empire where the Burmese or Indians were concerned. He understood that the Empire was exploitative but then concluded it was the best the subjects of the Empire could aspire to. Some animals are indeed more equal than the others.
eric
@Immanentize: and so the defense cannot order the dailies to prepare for his cross exam.
Aleta
HeleninEire
@Aleta: LOL. Bullshit. This is an online form that took me all of 10 minutes to fill out. Now granted I have one bank account, but still. If Paulie had 100 accounts his accountants could have done it in no time.
Fucking liars. And you know for sure the prosecution is gonna show the jury the form. Any idiot can fill it out.
eric
@eric: i would not ask him much of the meat of the exam unless the judge made me
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: This is the truth. It’s the job of the defense to throw up smokescreens, kick sand into the jurors’ eyes, blow smoke up their butt — pick your metaphor. But the prosecution needs to cut through that and they did, it seems. If you own 100% of an overseas account and it has over 10k in value, do you have to report it?
Hell, probably every juror had had a time when they had to report 5K — if they ever travelled abroad.
divF
OT: Just got this link in my mailbox from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Bixby is her name.
Gin & Tonic
@Aleta: That’s because Sciutto is comparing him to humans he’s acquainted with. If you compare Manafort to his fellow reptiles, it’s completely normal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: Great minds? And slow typing on a phone on my part.
Immanentize
@eric: I suspect Gates will be on direct for at least two hours. Will Ellis break? If so, advantage Manafort. If not, big advantage Government.
eric
@Immanentize: it tells me that Manafort is not testifying for sure. The prosecution could just ask the 10k / 100% ownership question on every problematic non-disclosure. that would be a cross exam for the ages.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: well, you may have a great mind — mine seems to be completely muddled this month so far. I need a vacation.
HeleninEire
@Gin & Tonic: It is not tedious. They want your name, address, name and address of your bank, account #, and the largest balance you had during the year. They even give you a link to do the currency conversion.
I shit you not. It took me 10 minutes.
eric
@Immanentize: completely agree and the government should have planned accordingly. it also means Gates cannot talk to his lawyers overnight. I do not like ending the day with “my” witness on the stand
Immanentize
@eric: I never thought he would, but I have opined that his defense depends on his testimony. He is in a very bad place.
ETA. Gotta pick up the Immp from his job….
Aleta
@Gin & Tonic: Trying to make the 10K be questionably variable seems close to forlorn.
A Ghost To Most
Can I just say “Fuck Bret Stephens”, since Nicole Wallace looked like she wanted to. Fuck conservatives lecturing us on civility while defending racists.
eric
@Immanentize: agreed. He has to be a likable dupe to a slick mean Gates. He has to testify. People do not pay dupes $10M for anything ever.
Gin & Tonic
@HeleninEire: I’m not talking about the traveling with cash thing, I’m talking about being a US citizen/taxpayer who earns income from a business outside the US. I thought that was the direction this was going in. Or at least it should be, IMO.
JPL
@Immanentize: Don’t you want to wait until after the trial, before abandoning us?
Aleta
@Gin & Tonic: I remember his photo the first time his face accessorized the Trump campaign. Still smushed by the rock and blinking against the light.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: Immps wait for no man.
Waratah
@Omnes Omnibus: @Immanentize: I should not be aggravated because he is also trying not to give the defense reason to use him on appeal. That is my non lawyers reasoning.
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: Uh, no. HIs point was that, at the time (1920s), the Burmese were unlikely to rise up to rule themselves for the reasons he listed (#1, the British kept the locals uneducated), and that, as they had no real military, if the British left, another empire (like the Japanese) would swoop in to take control.
HeleninEire
@Gin & Tonic: I think the questions that Aleta quotes were about does he have more than $10k in foreign bank accounts. If so he’s gotta fill out the form online.
I do it because I live in Ireland. It is called the FinCEN 114. In addition there’s another form that goes with your Federal taxes. Form 8938. Both are extremely easy to complete.
HeleninEire
@Gin & Tonic: I can see exactly what the prosecution is doing here. They are taking the easiest question: Did he have more that 10k in foreign bank accounts, yes or no? If yes did he fill out this very easy form? If no he broke the law.
Its not complicated at all.
Mike Furlan
@Mike Furlan: What, nobody wants to see what Trump looks like in the original German?
schrodingers_cat
@PJ: Indians did in after the aftermath of WWI were slapped with the Rowlatt Acts. They fought and died for the Empire, to be brutally repressed at home. Frankly without the British Indian Army, the Empire itself fizzled out after WWII. As for Orwell, ultimately, whatever his condescending reasons, he was an apologist for the Empire, the various quotes in this thread make it apparent.
I appreciate and admire Orwell’s writings on the dangers of a totalitarian communist state but he seems to have had a huge blind spot with respect to the British Empire. He did not see the subjects of the empire as human beings at all.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Not quite. Orwell didn’t think much of smaller European countries, either (this does not excuse him). From a New Yorker profile on his views.
He did not see Empire as either good or necessary, but could not see how a small country might be able to resist being overcome by a great power.
Yep. He was blind to a degree in this regard.
schrodingers_cat
Last word on Orwell
He seems to be more worried about what the Empire did to its British officials than the “beasts” they were subjugating.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Did he advocate for India’s independence? Because that rationale can’t be applied to India.
He made snarky comments about the Indian freedom fighters either they were too violent or British puppets.
J R in WV
@different-church-lady:
There was a long, book length, piece about the hazards of television that ran in the Mother Earth News in the long ago, when the back to the land counter culture was a thing. I’m not remembering the year/decade when I saw that, I only read a little of it because I had already given up TV for the most part. But there were back to the farm hippies in MA back then, weren’t there?
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. Orwell is honest, but not admirable. He does not write about imperialism as a duty or burden, or depict the imperialist colonizers as heroic or strong or stoic. But no, he is not as deeply concerned about those who are subjugated. He reminds me of some white 19th century authors writing about the impact of Southern slavery on the sensibilities of white people, but not caring at all about those who were actually enslaved.
He was not a strong advocate of anything other than England and socialism. He never visited the US, for example, nor thought much about the country.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: He was born in India, served there British India for the Crown. He worked for the BBC too, IIRC covering India.
As we have discovered in twenty first century T’s America, its all about the sensibilities of the white people.
J R in WV
@MisterForkbeard:
Sanders cannot pee inside the big Democratic tent – he is not a member of the Democratic party!! Gabbard is just a LWNJ – left wing nut job. Probably doesn’t know or care where she’s peeing.
geg6
@PJ:
It’s no use. She’s never read his stuff beyond the fiction and is too biased to read snippets without massive misunderstanding. This is an area where she can be a bit blind.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
@schrodingers_cat:
I think it’s fair to say that Orwell was someone who was born into a deeply racist society who tried his best to reject what he had been taught, but was not always successful.
He died in 1950 aged only 46, so it’s hard to say what he would have made of a post-imperial Britain he never saw. Indian independence was only the first action in the eventual dissolution of the whole enterprise.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Or may be I could just have a different POV.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Interestingly, Soma is the name of an FDA approved pharma medication for muscle-relaxation after spasms occur, for example in the lower back. I was dumbfounded when my doctor prescribed it for my back pain many years ago. One of the most common injuries for office workers who do active hobbies on weekends, like whitewater, backpacking, etc.
Soma isn’t used as much now, more effective drugs are available. I was quite shocked when I saw what Doc had prescribed, I tell you three times!
Origuy
@Kelly: The last time I went whitewater rafting, we were going down the California Salmon, rated as a Class V. It was the first run of the year; we were all experienced rafters with guides we’d gone with before. We were all wearing wetsuits and helmets. We were in three boats. At the put-in point, the guides checked the flow gauge. On the first rapid down the river, two of the boats capsized. All but one of the people in the first boat got to the riverbank immediately; one guy got out a half mile down the river. My boat, the second to go through, flipped. I got to a rock and eventually to the bank. So did everyone else but one guy, was nowhere to be found. The third boat made it through, and were able to get everyone to the bank next to the road.
The guides used ropes to help us get up the steep bank to the road. They took us back to the lodge we were staying at, while the sheriff was called to help search for the two that were missing. They quickly found the one guy, and eventually found the body of the other two miles down the river. His wife was one of the others in the boat. Physically, he was in the best shape of any of us, but if the river pulls you down it doesn’t always matter.
It was supposed to be a two-day trip, so we stayed that night and took a long, sad bus ride back home.
Weeks later, I saw a small notice in the outdoor section of the newspaper that the BLM had placed a new gauge on the river, and it has been reading low. Had it been reading correctly, we never would have gotten on the river.
Aardvark Cheeselog
IDK quite what I think, other than it’s noteworthy, the role USA Today has come to have in the last couple of years. Yoosta Bee they were a kind of a parody of a news organization: now they compete on more or less equal terms with The Newspaper of Record, at least sometimes. How much that had to do with their riding to the occasion, versus the fall of the latter, I’m not sure. I like to think it’s more the former than the latter.
I remember that in the days of Reagan, I looked forward to the time when everybody would have a computer, and all the computers would be connected. I thought the resulting disintermediated flow of information would be a great force for freedom and the victory of the good guys. I totally did not anticipate the disintermediated flow of disinformation and bullshit.
Tim Cameron
“Maybe Democratic candidates and leaders need to get together and come up with a pledge to that effect. What do you think?”
I think it’s the second best idea. The best idea is no pledge at all. Make them speak. If we let them off with a pledge, they sound like a politician. Plus, the won’t keep it anyway. The best thing we can do is make them answer with something besides talking points.