A search said the last of the ‘boomers’ were born in 1964. Subtracting that from 2020 provides the age of 56 for the youngest ones. Given the way septuagenarians are either running for office or getting elected, I doubt if that “era” will be over for a while. I’d favor a constitutional amendment setting the age of 70 as the maximum which an otherwise qualified person could take office, and even then he/she would be limited to a single term.
In a WTF decision, the Navy and SecDef Esper upheld the firing of Captain Crozier of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, because, get this, he did not do enough early enough to stem Covid infections on his ship. Crozier is, of course, the only one who actually tried to do something while his entire chain of command, both military and civilian, profoundly and manifestly didn’t give a sht. I think this whole warped process is a backassward way to appease Trump, and Chief of Naval Operations Gilday who orchestrated this travesty should be sacked.
I do not buy into this age thing. Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority in the Senate has been stacking the federal judiciary with young, totally incompetent, radically reactionary judges so they can infect the judiciary for decades.
Disney pays their employees shits. Right now, the hotel and restaurant workers are getting paid more from the extra $600 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance — atop of the regular unemployment benefits they are getting. They will be taking a huge personal health risk if they go back to work. However, as per the unemployment benefits rules: if they refuse to go back to work, then they will lose their unemployment benefits and PUA.
So Disney wants them to take a huge personal health risk to go back to work for less money than what they are getting now from unemployment. Of course, the best solution is for Disney to pay their “essential” workers MORE, which Disney would never even consider.
In the US, companies can pay “tipped” workers below the minimum wage. Hotel and restaurant workers get tips, so cheapo Disney obviously pay them below minimum.
Pulling down dozens of statues of the varied lot of honored traitors, racists and genocide perpetrators dotting the public squares all over the country is of course a symbolic act of defiance and independence in the midst of public chaos. Ultimately it may not mean a thing. But at the moment, it’s triggering the rightists and fascists looking for their moment to strike. Defending the statues from the mob has become one of their things. A man was shot and gravely wounded by one of the statue-defenders in Albuquerque. The shooter wasn’t just a statue-defender, he was a Trumpist and a Republican convention delegate and party candidate for the city council, a serial abuser and assaulter of women, and an all around mischief-maker. But that aside, he saw his primary role the day of the shooting as joining those defending the bronze statue of Juan de Oñate, invader, torturer, murderer, enslaver, from the mob of justice-seekers outside the Albuqerque Museum. The museum board had voted to remove the statue and the entire sculptural group (“La Jornada”) the week before, but never mind that. Defenders there would be, and defenders there were.
Of course, people outside New Mexico probably have no idea what this is about, and I won’t go into details, but it’s not unlike the efforts to remove the statues honoring Fr. Junipero Serra in California. The mythos of history is being turned inside out. These cruel men did not bring light to the darkness of savagery that pre-existed their arrival. They brought terror and death to thriving and mostly peaceful and cooperative societies that had survived thousands of years. Honoring them dishonored what they destroyed or attempted to destroy. Removing their statues begins a process of rebalancing history.
Symbolism and narrative are important enough in our efforts toward dignity, justice, community and peace that at least some people are willing to kill or lose their lives to preserve or create narratives. We get closer to a denouement to this period of chaos every day. Which version of history — and future — will prevail?
Tucker Carlson all but calls out Trump by name, in indicting his pathetically weak and hypocritical response to the rioting. Actually, he calls out the Republican leadership, in general. But his comparison scenario involves Obama and his Justice Department dealing with right wing rioters, doing things like tearing down statues of Martin Luther King. So, there’s no mystery about who is the main target of his ire.
See “Tucker: No one attempted to stop Democratic power grab” on youtube, June 19.
In fairness, Obama’s Justice Department seemed solidly behind Obama’s political objectives. Meanwhile, Hilary, Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe are still un-indicted, while Flynn is still in legal jeopardy over a non-crime, which he ‘confessed’ to, to spare his family.
@Hugh
“Appease Trump?” What government or military agency has the slightes interest in appeasing Trump. He orders troops out of Syria and the military merely moves them south within Syria. He orders troops out of Germany and a dozen generals, including two on active duty, call him a traitor. Whatever the reason for not reinstating this Captain, it was not for the purpose of “appeasing Trump.
@KT Chong
In California, tipped employees are not exempt from minimum wage requirements, and employers cannot interfere with tips. Where minimum wage is set at $15/hour, wait staffs make that $15/hour PLUS tips.
News w/contextual history taken from a comment of mine on another thread:
…the RECENT news that the Supremes, led by Republicans Gorsech & Roberts just enshrined into law…civil rights for all, including transgender people.
I note including transgender people with special emphasis because Democrats led by Barney Frank[D] SPECIFICALLY left out transgender people in their civil rights legislation. Barney Frank[D] was acerbic when asked why he had stripped out transgender rights from the bill, “let them get their own bill through congress” he said with a laugh. Nice guy that Barny Frank[D], a real “liberal” huh?
[And let’s not forget how “liberal” today’s Wilsonian D’s really are]
And as far as gays & lesbians serving openly in the military services, it was again R’s NOT D’s who led the fight. Only when the Log Cabin Republicans had prevailed in the courts on the issue AGAINST OMAMA’S STRIDENT OPPOSITION did D’s reverse themselves.
[On a positive note, I think…this court ruling means everybody can finally now sit at the same lunch counter]
“In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex. The ruling was 6-3, with Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first appointee to the court, writing the majority opinion. The opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices. Today,” Gorsuch said, “we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear.” He found such discrimination is barred by the language in the 1964 law that bans discrimination in employment based on race, religion, national origin or sex. The decision is a huge victory for the LGBTQ community”
George Webb, gonzo-investigative reporter, was finally “taken out”. I mean, digitally. His youtube account was deleted (read: censored). According to a commenter, at the Farmer Jones youtube channel,
“DC longtime investigative journalist George Webb reported on Friday, June 19, 2020 about the Democratic National Committee plan to replace our local police with NATO contractors from all over the world or groups like Blackwater mercenaries. Youtube IMMEDIATELY terminated George’s account just as I finished watching. The plan is to city-by-city de-fund police as ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter terrorists move large city to large city causing chaos and forcing police precincts to close. He says his insider sources have documents showing it is a well-established CIA – NATO joint plan to replace local police with UN ‘peacekeeper’ global terrorists policing the United States just has been done over the last 20-30 years in many countries around the world. Now the weapon is turned on US.”
“Opening pro sports games to fans is probably a terrible idea, in terms of public health,” said Humphreys, one of the authors of the paper “Professional Sporting Events Increase Seasonal Influenza Mortality in U.S. Cities.” “You’re right on top of people and everybody’s yelling, screaming, high-fiving and hugging. And you’ve got people eating and drinking. You could be putting the virus right into your mouth. The bottom line is we need to be very careful if we’re considering opening up games to the fans.”
It’s a no-brainer, and that’s why such advice will probably be ignored in 2020 US of A.
What cripples American politics, from the vantage of the electorate, is more complex than any one problem; there are clusters and cascades of problems, some of them as intractable as self-interest, power and vanity.
But, politically, there is a binary set of assumptions that reinforces two-party control of government, and therefore the ruling class control of the parties:
1. Assumption one: the primary human value is liberty, reducible to a basic unit of one, that of the theoretical individual. That liberty is impossible to fix in definition, and unscalable for persons or peoples, only adds to the versatility of the liberty value concept. It is a multipurpose, flexible spectrum notion that signals boundaries but ceases to be useful as a signifier when it shows those boundaries sharply enough to be used as constraints on the basic unit. Liberty hints at autonomy, but only up to the point where the boundaries autonomy demands start to be seen, or used.
2. Assumption two: the primary human value is society; society is equally fluid, and equally resistant to fixed definition. Whereas individual liberty can never be demonstrable without simultaneously undermining its value, by revealing boundaries, society is demonstrated precisely in the exposition of boundaries. Society is legible, even when it cannot be shown, because society is the memory-mapping of constraints and contingency. But this mapping of contingency is also almost always regulatory, because it is the capture of the fact that existence itself limits use, need, desire and autonomy.
3. The two parties have each staked their politics, even including all the intersections of class, gender and race, on strengthening the signal of one of those assumptions while denigrating or eliding the other. Republicans and their nominally conservative allies prefer the assumption of liberty, up to explicitly embracing the inequities inherent in the inability of this primary value to scale up or down to address the boundaries generated by the politicization of autonomy, and more importantly, how these boundaries distribute autonomy unevenly to the basic unit of actual individuals.
Democrats, and even moreso their progressive fellow travelers, are the party of society, which is to say, theirs is the politics of regulation. And while their opponents strengthen the signal of autonony, and therefore disequity, the Democrats prefer to work within the myth cycle of the evening out and horizontalization of regulation; in short: everyone becomes regulated evenly, and therefore “fairly”.
The ruling class is not bounded by either assumption. Power is unbinding; it negates autonomy, and it subsumes regulation and equity, towards the maintenance and expansion of power.. And as long as the electorate (or any subject-captive population) is divided into two fealties, those of autonomy or society, there will he two camps to organize their desires and frustrations, and one ruling class to purchase control of those organizing efforts.
As long as we are maintained in the belief in the duality of individual and society, their binary opposition to each other, and their unresolvability, we will remain both subject to those who need neither, and limited in iur capacity to conceive of alternatives.
Any thoughts on if there will be a second lockdown in America and when it could happen? Our incompetent leaders will not want another lockdown. If the health system collapses though there might not be a choice for them to ignore the virus and pretend everything has returned to normal.
Liberty for whom, though? To do what? Any time I ask this question, I’m met with the blank stare of someone who immediately recognizes I’m not one of the “Liberty Tribe” and so dismisses me and the question. Of course, the whole liberty canard is sold like an addictive drug to those who believe their lives are otherwise worthless and without meaning and that any little thing is an infringement of their fundamental rights.
Krake is right. At bottom we’re not really dealing with a binary, liberty or society, but that’s the way we’re conditioned and that’s the way many, too many, Americans believe.
Bill H., Trump doesn’t do policy. He just randomly throws rocks at things, mostly, because he is so deeply diseased individual, to keep the spotlight on himself. We still have troops in Syria, protecting oil wells instead of the Kurdish people. If Trump had wanted to withdraw troops from Iraq, he certainly could have done so. I’m not not real sure why you apply agency to his Syria decision but not his lack of one for Iraq. And far from withdrawing troops from the Middle East, he increased their numbers with deployments to the KSA and Qatar.
Without a Trump, Crozier would never have been removed in the first place. And yes, Gilday reversed the initial decision that Crozier should be re-instated. Because that is how institutions work. Just as recently it has been reported that Trump’s war on science has been taken up by mid-level officials in government agencies, not because they believe any of Trump’s crap but because they want to protect their own jobs and department budgets.
We are a banana republic, and that is how banana republics operate.
As for metamars, what’s next? the return of black UN helicopters? Can’t you guys come up with more original nutcase conspiracy theories? Are you reduced to re-cycling the same tired ones?
Even more interesting, I think, is that both autonomy and society are both somewhat recent, unsustainable constructs of mass-civilization. In practice (read: the 100s of thousands of years of human existence, minus the past few thousand) human beings cannot live sustainably, peaceably, and satisfactorily in either total autonomy (I can get whatever I want regardless of its effect on others) or within a mass society (lets make sure we design everything super, super nice so that thousands, millions, billions of us can all have prosperity.)
So basically, most people are arguing over two deluded systems. My guess is they’re just the chocolate and vanilla of the same bullshit princess twist that put human affairs at the top of the cone, blind to the quickly advancing pavemen…SPLAT!
“Emperor Orangius”? First time I’ve seen this site, so I know nothing about it. However, the “About” section declares the Editor In Chief to be a neocon nut named Bill Kristol. Do they expect Biden to be THAT much better in starting new wars for the Apartheid state?
On the plus side, it’s a pleasant thing to learn the numbers of suicidal Americans have been greatly overestimated.
Something I have observed on — and concluded from — YouTube: Indians are OBSESSED with China. On the other hand, Chinese do not care much about India.
Here is an experiment: if you search for videos about “China” on YouTube and filter the search results to “This year”, about 50% of all results are made by Indians who were hating on China. If you filter the result to “This month”, the Indian-hating-on-China videos increase to about 60% to 70%. If you filter the results to “This week”, those Indian videos increase to over 80%. If you filter to “Today”, about 90% of the videos about China are Indians hating on China. Indians sure love to talk about China and, IMO, they spend so much time talking about China that it is mental unhealthy. Indian channels like WION (the Indian version of Fox News) have been spamming tens and tens of videos on China every day for almost a year.
ON THE OTHER HAND, if you search for “India” videos on YouTube, you rarely see any Chinese bother with India, either in a year, a month, a week, a day or an hour. Occasionally you may come across a Chinese channel actually talking about India, but it is NEVER negative but just straight reporting news.
So, the amount of China vs. India videos floating on YouTube should give you an idea on who is being mentally unhealthily obsessed with who. Often I searched for news on “China” on YouTube, and the results were nothing but Indians talking about — or, more accurately, shitting on — China, just page after page of Indian SPAM for me to scroll through, and it has been getting so annoying.
The essence of nuttery is conclusions first, facts second or not at all. Conclusion: China is a benign, peace-loving, anti-imperial power. Therefore any indications to the contrary are clearly false. Massage, invent, and/or twist data until it agrees with said conclusion.
“Baby Boomer” is a demographic term that applies to a range of years in which birth rates were abnormally high. Demographers study birth and death rates, and they assigned this term to a range of years with higher-than-normal birth rates. This range covers more than an entire generation. My parents were not boomers but people my exact age have parents who are also boomers.
I am a tail end baby boomer. I have absolutely nothing in common with boomers born in 1942, and very little in common with people born in 1952. By the time I reached my majority, there was a recession, it was very difficult to find a job, and it has been a shit sandwich ever since. I never had the chance to experience adult life before neoliberalism and Reagan.
The logical fallacies (all boomers are bad) and the binary thinking (black is bad, white is good) that are constantly not only encouraged in this culture, but declared by some as truth, need to be recognized. Pitting us against each other is a strategy to keep us from the truth. Facts are good, but without context they lack meaning, and are frequently distorted. Terms like “boomer” become a pejorative that conveniently lumps a group of people as “similar” and simultaneously creates a target. The point is to get you focused on a faceless, amorphous group to distract you from focusing on who is actually responsible (who may or may not be a boomer). The point is to give you an entire group on which you can focus your ire, so you won’t pursue the actual truth.
“There are two kinds of truth: there is the kind that comes from darkness that gets bent and manipulated to serve someone’s self interest, and then there’s the kind that you carry inside and know is real.” (Michael Connolly)
anon (are we cousins?)–these are my guesses based upon what has happened thus far:
we are not going to ever do another lockdown. there may be rolling, localized public health recommendations, but nothing will be enforced.
they never wanted to do the initial lockdown. they want us to DIE.
this is plain. they lied in various ways at the outset to ensure that we ran around spreading it among ourselves. they lied about masks, about distancing, about whom would get it. it has all of the fingerprints of a psyop telling the majority “you have nothing to worry about, and those who are worrying are simply victims of mass hysteria or have sick ulterior motives, or are weak and soon to die anyway, thus can be disregarded”. everything -they- (shorthand for powers-that-be) has done has simply been to ensure that they again come out on top and can ride this sucker out.
you can see that in every action taken. slow to stop international flights, slow to lockdown, ineffective lockdown, blatant lying about masks and then lying about the reason they were lying about masks, disinfo about every possible treatment path, allowing the Fedgov to aid and abet bidding wars over vital PPE that they claimed they had to lie to us about to “save” for medical workers, dissemination of false info about the severity of the virus and who suffers/dies most.
in all their actions, i have been saying from the start “they don’t intend to do SHIT, and want as many of us as possible to die. we are on our own”. and i haven’t been wrong yet.
as far as my conspiracy-brain works, they wanted the economy to crash because they had been funneling money in through the backdoors secretly from Sept. of last year, and everyone was calling for a crash this year. crashes are good, as long as -they- can secure their assets. it allows them to bankrupt the rest of us and buy up anything of worth.
notice all that has happened, and the aim overarching is to bring on full-on fuedalism without the bother of any gloss that it is “mutually beneficial” (you give me food, i give you protection) racket.
When I worked in China, mostly in Jinan, I kept teasing our database analyst, an Indian, that since China and India were neighbors, for sure there will be an Indian restaurant in Jinan. If only we could find it (I love Indian food).
When Chinese people want to eat something different, they opted (20 years ago) for Chinese food from another regions of China. On the whole, I didn’t find people very curious about life outside China.
However, Beijing seemed very different (probably Shanghai, also). On a brief trip there, we indeed found an Indian restaurant, and even chatted with an Indian diplomat. Häagen-Dazs had a store there, people seemed to have much better English, and actually enjoy speaking it, etc. More cosmopolitan.
I’ve seen videos from the “In the Lab” youtube channel, of large crowds watching street basketball games. So, I think Chinese people are quite aware of some American sports (well, just basketball, maybe track and field), and American music. Aside from potential military conflicts, also, I don’t think they care too much about the US.
“Protecting oil wells in Syria.” That’s a good one, I like that. I have a really nice bridge in Brooklyn and maintenance is getting expensive, so I will sell it to you at a bargain price, today only. Cash, of course, I don’t take checks.
anon y’mouse – I agree with you that a second lockdown will be thwarted by the same officials who should be protecting their citizens by imposing a lockdown. If there is a lockdown, it will be at the state level with a lot of backlash from Republicans and business owners. Of course, we all know that Trump will be against any second lockdown even if we have people dropping dead in the streets.
Chiron
We’re seeing the ending of Boomer America, this is their last election and comes next is unknown and scary but also hopeful.
Zachary Smith
A search said the last of the ‘boomers’ were born in 1964. Subtracting that from 2020 provides the age of 56 for the youngest ones. Given the way septuagenarians are either running for office or getting elected, I doubt if that “era” will be over for a while. I’d favor a constitutional amendment setting the age of 70 as the maximum which an otherwise qualified person could take office, and even then he/she would be limited to a single term.
Hugh
In a WTF decision, the Navy and SecDef Esper upheld the firing of Captain Crozier of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, because, get this, he did not do enough early enough to stem Covid infections on his ship. Crozier is, of course, the only one who actually tried to do something while his entire chain of command, both military and civilian, profoundly and manifestly didn’t give a sht. I think this whole warped process is a backassward way to appease Trump, and Chief of Naval Operations Gilday who orchestrated this travesty should be sacked.
Hugh
I do not buy into this age thing. Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority in the Senate has been stacking the federal judiciary with young, totally incompetent, radically reactionary judges so they can infect the judiciary for decades.
KT Chong
70% of China’s MILLENNIALS own homes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otM5a4M3atg
And that is JUST the millennials.
On the other hand, in America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MJcRVxP2Qw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbt0ZDI1v4I
KT Chong
Also, Disney is forcing their “essential” employees to go back to work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sexOoQyw9Oo
Disney pays their employees shits. Right now, the hotel and restaurant workers are getting paid more from the extra $600 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance — atop of the regular unemployment benefits they are getting. They will be taking a huge personal health risk if they go back to work. However, as per the unemployment benefits rules: if they refuse to go back to work, then they will lose their unemployment benefits and PUA.
So Disney wants them to take a huge personal health risk to go back to work for less money than what they are getting now from unemployment. Of course, the best solution is for Disney to pay their “essential” workers MORE, which Disney would never even consider.
KT Chong
In the US, companies can pay “tipped” workers below the minimum wage. Hotel and restaurant workers get tips, so cheapo Disney obviously pay them below minimum.
Ché Pasa
Re: Statues…
Pulling down dozens of statues of the varied lot of honored traitors, racists and genocide perpetrators dotting the public squares all over the country is of course a symbolic act of defiance and independence in the midst of public chaos. Ultimately it may not mean a thing. But at the moment, it’s triggering the rightists and fascists looking for their moment to strike. Defending the statues from the mob has become one of their things. A man was shot and gravely wounded by one of the statue-defenders in Albuquerque. The shooter wasn’t just a statue-defender, he was a Trumpist and a Republican convention delegate and party candidate for the city council, a serial abuser and assaulter of women, and an all around mischief-maker. But that aside, he saw his primary role the day of the shooting as joining those defending the bronze statue of Juan de Oñate, invader, torturer, murderer, enslaver, from the mob of justice-seekers outside the Albuqerque Museum. The museum board had voted to remove the statue and the entire sculptural group (“La Jornada”) the week before, but never mind that. Defenders there would be, and defenders there were.
Of course, people outside New Mexico probably have no idea what this is about, and I won’t go into details, but it’s not unlike the efforts to remove the statues honoring Fr. Junipero Serra in California. The mythos of history is being turned inside out. These cruel men did not bring light to the darkness of savagery that pre-existed their arrival. They brought terror and death to thriving and mostly peaceful and cooperative societies that had survived thousands of years. Honoring them dishonored what they destroyed or attempted to destroy. Removing their statues begins a process of rebalancing history.
Symbolism and narrative are important enough in our efforts toward dignity, justice, community and peace that at least some people are willing to kill or lose their lives to preserve or create narratives. We get closer to a denouement to this period of chaos every day. Which version of history — and future — will prevail?
metamars
Tucker Carlson all but calls out Trump by name, in indicting his pathetically weak and hypocritical response to the rioting. Actually, he calls out the Republican leadership, in general. But his comparison scenario involves Obama and his Justice Department dealing with right wing rioters, doing things like tearing down statues of Martin Luther King. So, there’s no mystery about who is the main target of his ire.
See “Tucker: No one attempted to stop Democratic power grab” on youtube, June 19.
In fairness, Obama’s Justice Department seemed solidly behind Obama’s political objectives. Meanwhile, Hilary, Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe are still un-indicted, while Flynn is still in legal jeopardy over a non-crime, which he ‘confessed’ to, to spare his family.
Bill H
@Hugh
“Appease Trump?” What government or military agency has the slightes interest in appeasing Trump. He orders troops out of Syria and the military merely moves them south within Syria. He orders troops out of Germany and a dozen generals, including two on active duty, call him a traitor. Whatever the reason for not reinstating this Captain, it was not for the purpose of “appeasing Trump.
@KT Chong
In California, tipped employees are not exempt from minimum wage requirements, and employers cannot interfere with tips. Where minimum wage is set at $15/hour, wait staffs make that $15/hour PLUS tips.
S Brennan
News w/contextual history taken from a comment of mine on another thread:
…the RECENT news that the Supremes, led by Republicans Gorsech & Roberts just enshrined into law…civil rights for all, including transgender people.
I note including transgender people with special emphasis because Democrats led by Barney Frank[D] SPECIFICALLY left out transgender people in their civil rights legislation. Barney Frank[D] was acerbic when asked why he had stripped out transgender rights from the bill, “let them get their own bill through congress” he said with a laugh. Nice guy that Barny Frank[D], a real “liberal” huh?
[And let’s not forget how “liberal” today’s Wilsonian D’s really are]
And as far as gays & lesbians serving openly in the military services, it was again R’s NOT D’s who led the fight. Only when the Log Cabin Republicans had prevailed in the courts on the issue AGAINST OMAMA’S STRIDENT OPPOSITION did D’s reverse themselves.
[On a positive note, I think…this court ruling means everybody can finally now sit at the same lunch counter]
“In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex. The ruling was 6-3, with Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first appointee to the court, writing the majority opinion. The opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices. Today,” Gorsuch said, “we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear.” He found such discrimination is barred by the language in the 1964 law that bans discrimination in employment based on race, religion, national origin or sex. The decision is a huge victory for the LGBTQ community”
metamars
George Webb, gonzo-investigative reporter, was finally “taken out”. I mean, digitally. His youtube account was deleted (read: censored). According to a commenter, at the Farmer Jones youtube channel,
“DC longtime investigative journalist George Webb reported on Friday, June 19, 2020 about the Democratic National Committee plan to replace our local police with NATO contractors from all over the world or groups like Blackwater mercenaries. Youtube IMMEDIATELY terminated George’s account just as I finished watching. The plan is to city-by-city de-fund police as ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter terrorists move large city to large city causing chaos and forcing police precincts to close. He says his insider sources have documents showing it is a well-established CIA – NATO joint plan to replace local police with UN ‘peacekeeper’ global terrorists policing the United States just has been done over the last 20-30 years in many countries around the world. Now the weapon is turned on US.”
Zachary Smith
“All animals — on land or in water — had the same amount of time to evolve, so why do land animals have most of the smarts?”
The article also has a plausible explanation as for why humans are now much brighter than chimps. Something called “patchy landscapes”.
Zachary Smith
Some research about the old ordinary flu has implications for our present situation.
US cities with pro sports see more flu deaths
It’s a no-brainer, and that’s why such advice will probably be ignored in 2020 US of A.
krake
What cripples American politics, from the vantage of the electorate, is more complex than any one problem; there are clusters and cascades of problems, some of them as intractable as self-interest, power and vanity.
But, politically, there is a binary set of assumptions that reinforces two-party control of government, and therefore the ruling class control of the parties:
1. Assumption one: the primary human value is liberty, reducible to a basic unit of one, that of the theoretical individual. That liberty is impossible to fix in definition, and unscalable for persons or peoples, only adds to the versatility of the liberty value concept. It is a multipurpose, flexible spectrum notion that signals boundaries but ceases to be useful as a signifier when it shows those boundaries sharply enough to be used as constraints on the basic unit. Liberty hints at autonomy, but only up to the point where the boundaries autonomy demands start to be seen, or used.
2. Assumption two: the primary human value is society; society is equally fluid, and equally resistant to fixed definition. Whereas individual liberty can never be demonstrable without simultaneously undermining its value, by revealing boundaries, society is demonstrated precisely in the exposition of boundaries. Society is legible, even when it cannot be shown, because society is the memory-mapping of constraints and contingency. But this mapping of contingency is also almost always regulatory, because it is the capture of the fact that existence itself limits use, need, desire and autonomy.
3. The two parties have each staked their politics, even including all the intersections of class, gender and race, on strengthening the signal of one of those assumptions while denigrating or eliding the other. Republicans and their nominally conservative allies prefer the assumption of liberty, up to explicitly embracing the inequities inherent in the inability of this primary value to scale up or down to address the boundaries generated by the politicization of autonomy, and more importantly, how these boundaries distribute autonomy unevenly to the basic unit of actual individuals.
Democrats, and even moreso their progressive fellow travelers, are the party of society, which is to say, theirs is the politics of regulation. And while their opponents strengthen the signal of autonony, and therefore disequity, the Democrats prefer to work within the myth cycle of the evening out and horizontalization of regulation; in short: everyone becomes regulated evenly, and therefore “fairly”.
The ruling class is not bounded by either assumption. Power is unbinding; it negates autonomy, and it subsumes regulation and equity, towards the maintenance and expansion of power.. And as long as the electorate (or any subject-captive population) is divided into two fealties, those of autonomy or society, there will he two camps to organize their desires and frustrations, and one ruling class to purchase control of those organizing efforts.
As long as we are maintained in the belief in the duality of individual and society, their binary opposition to each other, and their unresolvability, we will remain both subject to those who need neither, and limited in iur capacity to conceive of alternatives.
anon
Any thoughts on if there will be a second lockdown in America and when it could happen? Our incompetent leaders will not want another lockdown. If the health system collapses though there might not be a choice for them to ignore the virus and pretend everything has returned to normal.
Ché Pasa
Liberty for whom, though? To do what? Any time I ask this question, I’m met with the blank stare of someone who immediately recognizes I’m not one of the “Liberty Tribe” and so dismisses me and the question. Of course, the whole liberty canard is sold like an addictive drug to those who believe their lives are otherwise worthless and without meaning and that any little thing is an infringement of their fundamental rights.
Krake is right. At bottom we’re not really dealing with a binary, liberty or society, but that’s the way we’re conditioned and that’s the way many, too many, Americans believe.
And our rulers, bless their hearts, don’t.
someofparts
People used to say that there are no athiests in foxholes. I would ammend and update that to add that there are no Objectivists in a maternity ward.
Hugh
Bill H., Trump doesn’t do policy. He just randomly throws rocks at things, mostly, because he is so deeply diseased individual, to keep the spotlight on himself. We still have troops in Syria, protecting oil wells instead of the Kurdish people. If Trump had wanted to withdraw troops from Iraq, he certainly could have done so. I’m not not real sure why you apply agency to his Syria decision but not his lack of one for Iraq. And far from withdrawing troops from the Middle East, he increased their numbers with deployments to the KSA and Qatar.
Without a Trump, Crozier would never have been removed in the first place. And yes, Gilday reversed the initial decision that Crozier should be re-instated. Because that is how institutions work. Just as recently it has been reported that Trump’s war on science has been taken up by mid-level officials in government agencies, not because they believe any of Trump’s crap but because they want to protect their own jobs and department budgets.
We are a banana republic, and that is how banana republics operate.
As for metamars, what’s next? the return of black UN helicopters? Can’t you guys come up with more original nutcase conspiracy theories? Are you reduced to re-cycling the same tired ones?
Marcus Gardner
krake, interesting, if a bit obstuse for me.
Even more interesting, I think, is that both autonomy and society are both somewhat recent, unsustainable constructs of mass-civilization. In practice (read: the 100s of thousands of years of human existence, minus the past few thousand) human beings cannot live sustainably, peaceably, and satisfactorily in either total autonomy (I can get whatever I want regardless of its effect on others) or within a mass society (lets make sure we design everything super, super nice so that thousands, millions, billions of us can all have prosperity.)
So basically, most people are arguing over two deluded systems. My guess is they’re just the chocolate and vanilla of the same bullshit princess twist that put human affairs at the top of the cone, blind to the quickly advancing pavemen…SPLAT!
Zachary Smith
Make Arenas Empty Again
“Emperor Orangius”? First time I’ve seen this site, so I know nothing about it. However, the “About” section declares the Editor In Chief to be a neocon nut named Bill Kristol. Do they expect Biden to be THAT much better in starting new wars for the Apartheid state?
On the plus side, it’s a pleasant thing to learn the numbers of suicidal Americans have been greatly overestimated.
KT Chong
Something I have observed on — and concluded from — YouTube: Indians are OBSESSED with China. On the other hand, Chinese do not care much about India.
Here is an experiment: if you search for videos about “China” on YouTube and filter the search results to “This year”, about 50% of all results are made by Indians who were hating on China. If you filter the result to “This month”, the Indian-hating-on-China videos increase to about 60% to 70%. If you filter the results to “This week”, those Indian videos increase to over 80%. If you filter to “Today”, about 90% of the videos about China are Indians hating on China. Indians sure love to talk about China and, IMO, they spend so much time talking about China that it is mental unhealthy. Indian channels like WION (the Indian version of Fox News) have been spamming tens and tens of videos on China every day for almost a year.
ON THE OTHER HAND, if you search for “India” videos on YouTube, you rarely see any Chinese bother with India, either in a year, a month, a week, a day or an hour. Occasionally you may come across a Chinese channel actually talking about India, but it is NEVER negative but just straight reporting news.
So, the amount of China vs. India videos floating on YouTube should give you an idea on who is being mentally unhealthily obsessed with who. Often I searched for news on “China” on YouTube, and the results were nothing but Indians talking about — or, more accurately, shitting on — China, just page after page of Indian SPAM for me to scroll through, and it has been getting so annoying.
Hugh
The essence of nuttery is conclusions first, facts second or not at all. Conclusion: China is a benign, peace-loving, anti-imperial power. Therefore any indications to the contrary are clearly false. Massage, invent, and/or twist data until it agrees with said conclusion.
Trinity
Let’s get one thing straight.
“Baby Boomer” is a demographic term that applies to a range of years in which birth rates were abnormally high. Demographers study birth and death rates, and they assigned this term to a range of years with higher-than-normal birth rates. This range covers more than an entire generation. My parents were not boomers but people my exact age have parents who are also boomers.
I am a tail end baby boomer. I have absolutely nothing in common with boomers born in 1942, and very little in common with people born in 1952. By the time I reached my majority, there was a recession, it was very difficult to find a job, and it has been a shit sandwich ever since. I never had the chance to experience adult life before neoliberalism and Reagan.
The logical fallacies (all boomers are bad) and the binary thinking (black is bad, white is good) that are constantly not only encouraged in this culture, but declared by some as truth, need to be recognized. Pitting us against each other is a strategy to keep us from the truth. Facts are good, but without context they lack meaning, and are frequently distorted. Terms like “boomer” become a pejorative that conveniently lumps a group of people as “similar” and simultaneously creates a target. The point is to get you focused on a faceless, amorphous group to distract you from focusing on who is actually responsible (who may or may not be a boomer). The point is to give you an entire group on which you can focus your ire, so you won’t pursue the actual truth.
“There are two kinds of truth: there is the kind that comes from darkness that gets bent and manipulated to serve someone’s self interest, and then there’s the kind that you carry inside and know is real.” (Michael Connolly)
anon y'mouse
anon (are we cousins?)–these are my guesses based upon what has happened thus far:
we are not going to ever do another lockdown. there may be rolling, localized public health recommendations, but nothing will be enforced.
they never wanted to do the initial lockdown. they want us to DIE.
this is plain. they lied in various ways at the outset to ensure that we ran around spreading it among ourselves. they lied about masks, about distancing, about whom would get it. it has all of the fingerprints of a psyop telling the majority “you have nothing to worry about, and those who are worrying are simply victims of mass hysteria or have sick ulterior motives, or are weak and soon to die anyway, thus can be disregarded”. everything -they- (shorthand for powers-that-be) has done has simply been to ensure that they again come out on top and can ride this sucker out.
you can see that in every action taken. slow to stop international flights, slow to lockdown, ineffective lockdown, blatant lying about masks and then lying about the reason they were lying about masks, disinfo about every possible treatment path, allowing the Fedgov to aid and abet bidding wars over vital PPE that they claimed they had to lie to us about to “save” for medical workers, dissemination of false info about the severity of the virus and who suffers/dies most.
in all their actions, i have been saying from the start “they don’t intend to do SHIT, and want as many of us as possible to die. we are on our own”. and i haven’t been wrong yet.
as far as my conspiracy-brain works, they wanted the economy to crash because they had been funneling money in through the backdoors secretly from Sept. of last year, and everyone was calling for a crash this year. crashes are good, as long as -they- can secure their assets. it allows them to bankrupt the rest of us and buy up anything of worth.
notice all that has happened, and the aim overarching is to bring on full-on fuedalism without the bother of any gloss that it is “mutually beneficial” (you give me food, i give you protection) racket.
metamars
@KT Chong
When I worked in China, mostly in Jinan, I kept teasing our database analyst, an Indian, that since China and India were neighbors, for sure there will be an Indian restaurant in Jinan. If only we could find it (I love Indian food).
When Chinese people want to eat something different, they opted (20 years ago) for Chinese food from another regions of China. On the whole, I didn’t find people very curious about life outside China.
However, Beijing seemed very different (probably Shanghai, also). On a brief trip there, we indeed found an Indian restaurant, and even chatted with an Indian diplomat. Häagen-Dazs had a store there, people seemed to have much better English, and actually enjoy speaking it, etc. More cosmopolitan.
I’ve seen videos from the “In the Lab” youtube channel, of large crowds watching street basketball games. So, I think Chinese people are quite aware of some American sports (well, just basketball, maybe track and field), and American music. Aside from potential military conflicts, also, I don’t think they care too much about the US.
Bill H
“Protecting oil wells in Syria.” That’s a good one, I like that. I have a really nice bridge in Brooklyn and maintenance is getting expensive, so I will sell it to you at a bargain price, today only. Cash, of course, I don’t take checks.
Hugh
And yet, Bill H, that is why Trump wanted to keep any troops at all in Syria.
anon
anon y’mouse – I agree with you that a second lockdown will be thwarted by the same officials who should be protecting their citizens by imposing a lockdown. If there is a lockdown, it will be at the state level with a lot of backlash from Republicans and business owners. Of course, we all know that Trump will be against any second lockdown even if we have people dropping dead in the streets.