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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.
A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.
This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Democracy is not a spectator sport.
This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.
I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.
Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.
There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.
You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.
Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.
Good lord, these people are nuts.
Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.
Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”
“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”
You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Episode #3 of Personality Crisis Podcast Is Up
comrade scotts agenda of rage
This one is really, really good.
Her analysis of the inherent racism underlying the Danish tax/welfare state and how whenever you hear people here in the USofA yammer on about how great it is, they conveniently forget just how white, small and xenophobic the country is.
At the end y’all talk about doing a 4th episode with her on her work on offshoring money. Please do that sooner rather than later.
Elizabelle
Lol. Forgot about the podcast, and assumed this was going to be video of Trump lecturing the South African president today. Complete with evidence of persecution of white Afrikaaners. Jesus.
dc
Really interesting talk. Thank you!
Ixnay
Excellent, many thanks.
BeautifulPlumage
Yay! I’ll listen later today. I enjoyed the first 2 episodes. I like the questions Cole asks and the discussions they start. I also appreciate that there are no ads. But I’ll understand if ads are needed to pay for the cost of putting these together.
laura
I’m still convinced that a “Fernwood Tonight” set backdrop would improve this, or frankly, any other on-line serious subject/variety show type thing.
prostratedragon
Will have to listen. Sounds like a good discussion, on something I’ve often thought about when considering those pleasantly “socialist” societies.
A new resource from Lawfare: Trump Litigation Updates. Live blogs, links to filings, etc., covering the administration that is determined to make the “NO” in that “We said No” cartoon visible from space.
TheOtherHank
You sell yourself short, John
piratedan
have you folks thought about adding a bluesky link button so us jackals can help promote this amongst our venn diagram overlaps on social media?
Joy in FL
Well, I forgot to listen to the second one, so I’m going to listen to this third one and then the second one.
One of my favorite things about Personality Crisis is that it stays around 30 minutes in length. I keep finding podcasts I really want to listen to, but they’re 90 minutes, and I get about 30 minutes in and then have to stop, and I forget to come back before too much other good stuff gets all over my radar.
Matt McIrvin
This is a point of pride among Canadians I’ve talked to–their welfare state isn’t Denmark’s, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the US and they also argue the place is at least as welcoming to immigrants as the US at the best of times, without the explicit ethnic idea of nationhood that exists across Western Europe.
That said… the part of Canada closest to me is Quebec, and I’m not so sure they’d hold with that there, since they see themselves as a culture under perpetual threat. My kid was thinking about going to one of Montreal’s Anglophone universities and ended up rejecting the idea in part because the provincial government was going through a spasm of punitive behavior toward non-French-speakers, mostly aimed at Anglophone Canadians and their institutions, but she’d have been in the splash zone.
Of course, staying in the US it was out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Matt McIrvin
…Thinking again about a conversation I had with my Dominican boss shortly after Trump got elected the first time. He was wondering aloud why people in the US considered jus soli citizenship so important, since from his perspective, most countries didn’t have this concept–he didn’t consider it the norm; citizenship in most countries was usually dependent on parentage to some degree. I argued that the key thing was that the US didn’t consider itself an ethnically-based nation.
Later, I realized that jus soli is actually far more common than either of us realized at the time, and is actually the norm almost everywhere in the New World–with the Dominican Republic being one of the rare exceptions! It was actually the DR that was the odd man out in this hemisphere.
I’m embarrassed to remember that it was only recently that I realized the obvious reason WHY the DR is the odd man out (land border with Haiti).
schrodingers_cat
@prostratedragon: I have commented on this before when BS bros tell us that socialism means being like Denmark.
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Quebec has “dibs” on all immigrants from French speaking countries, then it makes them learn Quebecois, which at best, can be described as a French dialect.
The language issue in Quebec is mostly performative.
English is fine, everywhere.
If you spend any great amount of time in Quebec, you will learn some great swearwords and curses, at the bare minimum.
Matt McIrvin
@Jay: Quebecois both fascinates and frustrates me, because as a supposed speaker of French as a second language I feel like I SHOULD be able to understand it but I largely don’t–and, for obvious geographic reasons, I’ve spent a lot more time in Quebec than in France! I can read it, at least. They seem to be able to understand me.
dc
@Matt McIrvin: I was just going to comment that Haiti connection.
Neophema
Great interview. I like that John just lets her talk.
My takeaway is that the Danish economy/welfare state is not set up to manage a massive influx of immigrants and they can be pretty nasty and racist in keeping migrants out. (Same true in Sweden (where I’ve spent a bit more time) and probably much of Europe. You can’t pay out benefits to people who don’t “pay in” in within smaller, ethnically “pure” national economies and wait for the next generation to pay off.
Not true in the US. Our economy is based in having a constant influx of immigrants to take low-paying jobs for a chance to build a life here. We are diverse by virtue of our history. Our payout comes with the next generation whose careers their parents could never have dreamed of.
Without the influx of immigrants, we’re screwed. None of the second or third generation descendants of immigrants want those entry level jobs. Our ability to welcome immigrants is really what American “exceptionalism” is all about.
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Stay away from the North Shore of New Brunswick.
Quebecois exists because of almost 300 years of isolation from France, Indigenous languages infiltrating, and having to create words for things and stuff that didn’t exist in 1700’s France.
In the North Shore of New Brunswick there are villages and small towns that were isolated from France for almost 300 years, and isolated from each other for 250 years, that claim they speak “French”, but they can’t understand what the person from a village 25km away from them is saying.
I used to be fluent in Quebecois, got A’s in French classes in New Brunswick, when we moved out to BC, got D’s and F’s in French because it wasn’t Parisienne French and my “French” teachers had never been to Quebec.
Matt McIrvin
@Jay: The strange language that is Louisiana Cajun French is descended from that, no?
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Kinda, Acadian becomes Cajun.
But the Acadians were/are from around the peninsula that connects New Brunswick to Nova Scotia.
Some were expelled for refusing to swear an oath to the English Crown, (they were pacifists, didn’t swear an oath to the French Crown either). The rest took to the woods, lived with the Micqmak, went back to their farms when the Brit’s left.
RedDirtGirl
Really interesting! Thank you!
schrodingers_cat
@Jay: That was my experiece too. Everyone can speak English.
Mr. Bemused Senior
John, thank you for this. I hope you will have Prof. Harrington back to discuss the international money hiding industry, a topic of great interest to me. Probably you are familiar with Oliver Bullough’s Moneyland, a good introduction the subject.
Spider-Dan
Great interview! I wasn’t aware of how far gone Danish immigration was.
@Neophema: Not sure what ethnic purity has to do with it, but as for the rest… yeah, this describes any society with robust social programs! I think the key takeaway is that without that ethnic homogeneity, you probably don’t get enough popular support to implement that level of social programs in the first place, due to suspicion of the Undeserving Other abusing the system (see: USA).
Jørgen
@Neophema:
Some of what she says is correct, but just as much is wildly inaccurate, and obviously out of date. It sounds to me like her social circle in Denmark was a white ghetto, and she never left it. About 15% of the population are immigrants, and two thirds of these are from non-western countries. Before 1970 the immigrant population was basically zero. I have lived through these changes, and Danish society is still adjusting. At my current job about 20% of my colleagues are immigrants, and I have had jobs where more than half were immigrants.
Harrington is fixated on Inger Støjberg, a politician in the mold of Nigel Farage. Very nationalist right-wing and charismatic. She was impeached because of her policies, some of which were mentioned in the podcast, and was booted out of both parliament and her political party (Venstre). She has since started her own party, which has very little influence. So to say that she represents mainstream Danish politics is ridiculous.
sherparick
You look and sound great John. Seriously! and great substance.
Tenar Arha
Great, fascinating, enjoyed listening. I did have a hard time getting back to this. You should have a podcast tag, or topic added.
I don’t need something to wrap it up. It’s fine just ending. But if you want something to indicate “hey this podcast is now ending,” maybe —
But seriously, your simple wrap up is 👍👍