Outside the Asylum

taz6_0.jpg

Come outside.

As I mentioned last week, it's easy to occupy the mainstream. This is particularly true when it comes to communities of belief. Whether you're talking about religion, politics, or even some variety of fandom, a conventional view provides the benefits of occupying a well-mapped area, with GPS to help if you ever risk getting lost. You know where you are. You know what you're expected to do, and where you're expected to go. Most importantly, perhaps, you know where to find like-minded people.

For instance, when I was an Episcopalian, I knew what that meant. The structure of beliefs was laid out for me every Sunday, most succinctly in the Nicene Creed. I knew what I was supposed to believe, what I was supposed to do, which principles I was supposed to uphold, which rules I should follow. I knew where to go and how to find like-minded people. I even had a weekly and seasonal practice mapped out for me by the institution. And here's the crucial thing: I didn't need to think about any of it. (Many of us did, of course, but if we'd chosen not to, it would not have interfered with our Anglicanism at all).

When I became a pagan, I left that well-mapped territory, particularly since the more structured, institutional forms of paganism didn't appeal to me. Rather than navigating a well-mapped landscape with GPS-enabled device in hand, I was moving through unknown territory with a personal compass and some field notes made by previous explorers.

Usually, this is a rewarding if difficult way to live. When it comes to politics, the rewards of living thus have declined over the years as authoritarianism, and indeed totalitarianism, has increased. My essay last week was about how high the costs of being outside the mainstream can be--even when you're talking about a fairly mundane, moderate life, and not talking about the NSA, CIA, or JSOC knocking on your door. Indeed, there are few rewards for venturing outside the asylum, aside from the pleasure of refusing, as often as you can, to be manipulated--at least within the bounds of your own skull.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass, and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.”

― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

One must look deeper than gratification--or at least, must consider a form of gratification more subtle than that provided by rewards--to discover why anyone would choose, under these historical circumstances, to go their own way. Under the current circumstances, being truthful, even to oneself, provides much more punishment than reward.

What I suspect we're looking at, when we consider those who walk outside the asylum, is a remnant of a community of belief. It's an ill-defined community, because these beliefs used to span the whole culture. When truth and its cousins (accuracy, logic, and evidence) were less costly to embrace, it was simply assumed, almost culture-wide, that of course the truth was preferable to lies, that fact was preferable to error, and that unfounded opinion was less compelling than a logical argument backed by evidence. There were pockets of resistance to these beliefs, mostly in places where loyalty and faith were considered more important than truth (certain religious communities and the military come to mind). These beliefs were also tactical annoyances to those who lie for pay. Considering who has been influential in steering the ship of state, and the culture generally, for the past 35 years, I guess it's not surprising that these beliefs no longer enjoy the popularity they once did. Neither is it surprising that they have been replaced with a politics, and a morality, whose primary currency is the character attack.

For those of you who don't know who has been steering the ship for the past 35 years, check out this article by the late, great Robert Parry:

Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.

The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-world-with-psyops/

But because rationalist beliefs used to exist culture-wide, the proponents of those beliefs were not understood as a community. In fact, the beliefs themselves were not understood as beliefs, but rather as just the way things were. When those beliefs were torn down, their endemic nature paradoxically made it more difficult to see the destruction that was happening. The destruction of rationalism in American culture was not as obvious or palpable as the anti-feminist backlash of the same years, for instance. Like air pollution, the destruction of something that permeates your environment can remain invisible for a long time. Like global warming, of which it is a contributing cause, the destruction of reason-based ethics and politics continued mostly unnoticed by the masses. Those who did notice were already being targeted for character assassination.

The end of rational politics includes habituating people's minds to several fallacies. These fallacies become fundamental to how people think, replacing the old principles of accuracy, logic, and reason. One of the least noticed of these fallacies that has become especially prominent is the concept of a laundry list of issues. There are many fallacies associated with this concept, but I'd like to start with the notion of the list itself.

I'd wager this notion came originally from polls, because polls are where such lists are most often displayed. You've all seen them; they look something like this:

Abortion
The economy
Jobs
Health care
The deficit
Debt (personal)
Debt (national)
Government spending
Some specific war
Climate change
Pollution

The usual custom is to ask people to rate, or weight, these issues against one another. This gesture makes a number of assumptions, many of them bad, but I'd like to focus on one: the policies have no fundamental difference, one from the other, except the relative number of people who invest attention in them. In other words, abortion is equivalent to the economy is equivalent to the deficit is equivalent to health care; the only thing that differentiates them is how many people care.

This may seem sensible until you start putting items like nuclear war or global warming on the list (or, excuse me, climate change; no mainstream poll worth its salt would ever say the words global warming). Then the fallacy reveals itself. Global warming and nuclear war are not "issues" in the sense that abortion is an issue or the federal budget deficit is an issue. The assumption of the list is that we are all of us looking at a restaurant menu and deciding which dishes are best. That assumption falls apart when one or more of the items on the menu has the capacity to blow the restaurant to rubble or poison all the customers.

Should I order sushi or cyanide?

said no one ever.

Something that can bring down human civilization, wipe out 80% of the species on the planet, and kill 6 1/2 billion people cannot reasonably be placed on a list with the question of whether or not a woman in the U.S. should be able to terminate a pregnancy, whether minimum wage should be $5 or $15, or whether the government should further cut its spending on everything but the military. Making this point is dangerous; it usually leads to accusations of bigotry, privilege, and selfish indifference to suffering. The person making the point must be a selfish bigot who doesn't care if a woman dies in a botched back-alley abortion. They must be a terrible racist who doesn't care if black men get abused every day by the state and racist vigilantes. It's as if the woman denied a legal abortion won't starve when the biosphere collapses along with everyone else, or as if the black man being harassed won't die of radiation poisoning if a nuclear bomb drops on his city.

But you cannot treat a threat to the existence of human life on the planet as one in a list of issues. Global warming and nuclear war are the sorts of "issues" that end all issues. We won't have to worry anymore about the budget deficit, abortion, racism, or any of a hundred things when the planet has changed into a place that can only support 1/2 billion people or when most of us have died in a nuclear apocalypse.

These are the sorts of issues that entirely change your politics--if you let them.

Blessings on those of you who have stuck with me thus far. Tune in next week for how these issues changed my politics.

Thoughts?

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I will not be here Sunday morning as I am leaving today (Saturday) to attend a pro wrestling show in Jacksonville, FL. Not getting back till Sunday afternoon. I'll check in then to respond to comments.

Yes, I am a leftie who eats meat, likes Led Zeppelin and Rush, and watches pro wrestling and hockey.

I also wish that V8 engines were something I could reconcile with my conscience. Damn, those cars are fun to drive.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal my SO used to drag race and we’d really like to get a project car, probably a vintage truck or Bronco. But she just bought a hybrid and just sold the race car. I guess the times change.

Your comment about being a lefty into non-lefty things really struck me. I always think it’s a tragedy that “the left”, whatever it is, has such a stigma towards “deplorable” culture. In my experience, there’s a lot more commonality with the folks I used to work construction with than say the people running he Democratic Party. They’ve been abandoned to people who prey on their fear of the unknown and other and use that to keep them in line and voting Republican. But really, they want a lot of the same things I do and feel the same way I do about a lot. I’ve often felt Hillary’s “deplorables” comment was an even bigger deal than just an insulting line dropped on the stump. Maybe I’ve thought about it because I know a lot of “deplorables”...

And I’m far from an expert but you and I have discussed many times how understanding pro wrestling unlocks a lot of understanding about modern US politics.

It’s interesting that so many on the left yell about purity tests yet they’re pretty big on cultural purity tests. Just like everything else, they’re not really troubled by purity tests, just certain ones.

PS, I'm unappologetically a fan of KISS. That one always raises some eyebrows when people find out. They toured with Rush in the 70s and I guess there were some legendary prank wars, which knowing what I know about both bands sounds likely.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

lotlizard's picture

Dutch maths teacher admits fake communist party scam that fooled Mao Zedong

A 76-year-old retired Dutch maths teacher described yesterday how for more than 25 years he was feted by communist leaders around the world as the inspired head of a radical Marxist-Leninist party that never, in fact, existed.

As Chris Petersen, head of the supposedly 600-member Marxist-Leninist party of the Netherlands, Pieter Boevé travelled to Beijing more than two dozen times and met Mao Zedong. He was also welcomed with open arms in Albania by Enver Hoxha, and in the eastern bloc capitals of Europe.

“In fact we had at most a dozen members, none of whom had the faintest idea of the truth,” Mr Boevé said yesterday from his home in the seaside resort of Zandvoort. “The whole thing was a hoax, set up by the secret services to learn all they could about what was going on in Marxist Peking.”

The Mao regime was so impressed by the revolutionary zeal of Mr Petersen/Boevé and his MLPN that it gave him regular briefings on the chairman’s latest thinking at the Chinese mission in The Hague. Beijing even funded the non-existent party’s newspaper, De Kommunist, which was written entirely by Dutch secret service (BVD) agents.

Fake views, fake news — just more techniques elites use to stay in the saddle . . .

Also:
Zuckerberg takes $5B fine in stride at “Summer Camp for Billionaires”

And speaking of schemes, setups, and people who are not what they seem:
Real hedge-fund managers have some thoughts on what Epstein was actually doing

Long before Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in Florida more than a decade ago, his fellow Palm Beach resident and hedge-fund manager Douglas Kass was intrigued by the local gossip about his neighbor.

“I’m hearing about the parties, hearing about a guy who’s throwing money around,” says Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management. While stories about young girls swarming Epstein’s waterfront mansion and the sex parties he hosted for the rich and powerful were the talk of the town, Kass was more focused on how this obscure person, rumored to be managing billions of dollars, had become so wealthy without much of a track record.

Kass was well-connected on Wall Street, where he’d worked for decades, so he began to ask around. “I went to my institutional brokers, to their trading desks and asked if they ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested,” he recalls. “Not one institutional trading desk, primary or secondary, had ever traded with Epstein’s firm.”

When a reporter came to interview Kass about Bernie Madoff shortly before that firm blew up in the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Kass told her, “There’s another guy who reminds me of Madoff that no one trades with.” That man was Jeffrey Epstein.

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gah
Same as it ever was, worse. Just shoot me in the head and get it over with please, I can't wait for the train. It does seem as if nobody cares, society kicks people harder when they are down, especially if they can't conform to strict rules, arbitrarily imposed. Shelter bed nightmares continue, thanks Obama!

Federal judge sets rules for Santa Rosa homeless camp sweeps
Normal! omg wtf Wrestling like a professional.

Like Boise, Santa Rosa has a similar ordinance prohibiting camping on public property — and a far larger homeless population, with about 60% of the nearly 3,000 homeless people in Sonoma County.

Even before Chhabria’s ruling, Santa Rosa officials had said they planned to abide by the court’s decision in the Boise case during the upcoming sweeps, which are expected to clear encampments occupied by up to 40 people.

The city already provides notice to people and plans to ensure that it has sufficient shelter beds before cracking down on the two encampment areas, said Kelli Kuykendall, the city’s homeless services manager.

"Homeless services" are entrenched in the economy now, they provide the few well paid jobs for the ever-shrinking professional class. good luck P.S. Homeless counts are made up data surveys prepared by "trained" volunteers, once a year they walk around for a few hours starting at day break. subjective heck
---
The Bohemian Grove and the menace of truly fake news

Latham views grove intruder McCaslin’s conscience-driven but potentially deadly raid as a case study of the peril that can come when “voids of context” lead to the acceptance of fiction as truth.

He said by phone from across the pond he has no particular problem with the Bohemian Grove Encampment: “It’s a golf club, pretty much.”

But he suspects it would be good on many levels if what’s said and done under the redwoods every year at this time were more out the open.

Wow Chris Smith, Mary Moore might not like the fake news you wrote for the newspaper today. lying guy

Sonoma Stories: Peace-justice activist Mary Moore donates personal archive to UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library

She took all of Moore’s papers on the Bohemian Grove Midsummer Encampment, the exclusive, male-only retreat that takes place each year beneath the redwoods near Monte Rio, just up Bohemian Highway from Moore’s place.

The activist founded the Bohemian Grove Action Network in 1980 to mount demonstrations at the camp gate and highlight what she regards as the perils to the world and its people by cabals of political and corporate elites.

Salazar “took all of the Bohemian Grove stuff,” Moore said. “She got all of the Judi Bari stuff.”

my people
Happy Sunday
excuse me while I light my spliff

Bob Marley - Thank You Lord
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9DDDj_JdMA width:400]
PEACE
edited: out the profanity. censorship rules

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I have been puzzling for some time as to how intelligent, educated people can have such illogical priorities. Thanks for the link to the Parry article. Your list reminds me of discussions I would have with other white, educated, upper middle class people during the primaries. I was discussing getting rid of corruption and the influence of money in the political system that contributed to all the "isms" and moved our world away from valuing the greater good. My contemporaries would say, "But don't you think its about time we see a female president?" Well, yes, of course I'm a feminist but that woman running is a part of the problem, I would counter. People became enraged. Any criticism of her meant I was part of the sexist hoards, which is ridiculous to imagine if you knew me. I was left scratching my head.

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@Lizotte65 @Lizotte65
no trouble understanding that, "A woman, any woman!" is not a workable battle cry for freedom (or justice, or any other good and important thing).

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

ggersh's picture

https://www.bayoubrief.com/2019/07/12/national-news-coverage-of-tropical...

Al Roker is not a meteorologist.

Al Roker has never lived anywhere even close to the Gulf of Mexico. He is, however, second cousins with Lenny Kravitz, and Lenny Kravitz once owned a house in the French Quarter.

I’m singling out Roker because he calls himself a weatherman, but he isn’t the only national reporter who has completely misrepresented the on-the-ground reality.

This morning, MSNBC reported that New Orleans was “already underwater.” Not true. And it’s not just standard sensationalism.

No one is predicting the levees will breach, but, once again, the Army Corps of Engineers hasn’t been inspiring confidence. And the confusion and ambiguities they created are the pretense currently being used by the national press to still cite the wrong numbers.

No y’all. No one thinks the water could rise to more than 20 feet.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

TheOtherMaven's picture

@ggersh

The Mighty Wurlitzer is being employed to distract people from something a lot more worrisome than a flooded New Orleans. Yes that would be bad, but a failure of the Old River Control Structure would be catastrophic. And TS Barry is on track to stress the facility worse than it's been stressed in forty years....

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

ggersh's picture

@TheOtherMaven is working 24/7, it's BS is relentless

MAGA doesn't involve anything amerikan, how long
before Russia is nominated?

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/07/13/massive-power-outage-manhattan/

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

detroitmechworks's picture

Hell, a Five minute Randori is tough enough after a practice, so I respect the athleticism in even doing a exhibition match. (Which is what pro wrestling really is IMHO. Which means it isn't fake, but the real stuff just doesn't look purty... And good ground work is hard to make look good and be effective at the same time.) Hell, Judo is technically a form of wrestling, according to some, so there's that.

Finally got a piece done that I'd been wanting for a while. Aphrodite piece that I had an artist friend draw for me a couple years ago. Really nice and the whole room smells of eucalyptus and bees wax today.

I'm enjoying the feeling of climbing the technological stairs slowly. I'm getting a real appreciation for the way volcanic glass shatters. It's really interesting, especially when you can see some of the rivulets of it. And plus it's sharp. I mean, REALLY sharp. Gotta be really careful with it. I've been joking that the Aztecs had it right that you have to pay in blood. ) Soon to climb out of the stone age, I hope, to the Bronze age. I really want to explore making some of this bronze age glass that I have a few samples of. Supposedly it's the result of the bronze casting process, so guess what I'm gonna be doing as soon as I can... Smile

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIa9UEXd98Q]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Lily O Lady's picture

belief that what lost Al Gore the election wasn’t his personality, or his membership in elite. It was his concern for global warming. He even made two films trying to gain public support to do something. Sadly, he had to content himself with things like light bulbs because there was no political will (whatever that is) to actually do anything substantive.

The 1% are out for themselves. What global warming might do to the rest of us is of no concern to them. They just need to keep us distracted while they suck up every last penny they can get before it all goes to hell.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

lotlizard's picture

@Lily O Lady

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Lily O Lady @Lily O Lady
being aware of global warming at the time, let alone of making it a major campaign issue. The Clinton years' environmental record was putrid and a lot of enviros were down on Gore for several reasons. He had almost no positives as a candidate, had no charisma, charm or oratorical skills.

I'll try to keep it short, but he was irrevocably tied to Clinton and Clinton's policies and the whole DLC / New Democrat thing. Folks who felt that they really should've been more outraged and harsh in their reaction to Clinton, especially about Lewinsky and lying, and felt guilty about it, were able to take it out on Gore, and many did.

Beyond that, federal workers, normally a staunch Democratic bloc were totally pissed at Gore for ramrodding Clinton's project to downsize and outsource government. That ranged from vote against through stay home to hold your nose and vote but don't actively campaign for or fund. Shall we speak of NAFTA? A lot of labor rank and file reacted much as the federal workforce did. Classic US liberals were totally pissed off over deregulation, welfare reform (which also pissed off some blacks), the whole media thing, etc. Green thinking people were pissed off at how little environmental progress came out of the Clinton years, but also they and peaceniks, and global rights types were all in a stew about Gore's refusal, in spite of repeated letter and petition campaigns to use his leverage to get his family to use the family's huge stake in Occidental Petroleum to force or at least pressure for change in its practices and activities or else divest and do something responsible with their money.

Besides that, who was he? Senator Gore? That was his dad. A huge swath of the country, including most of his home state, it seems, simply saw him as somebody without any particular talents or competencies who stepped into his quasi-famous father's shoes and Senate seat. He was an early proud member and showpiece up-and-comer of the DLC and, when called upon to do so, could and would/did echo patented scripted neo-liberal talking points.
his chosen running mate, Lieberman, was another DLC hack and otherwise seriously odious, another drag on the ticket.

My 2 cents worth.

edited to fix multiple typos

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris @enhydra lutris
find just about every avenue to failure. He lost Tennessee, fer chrissakes. He was also assisted in losing by the media, which I think failed to take W seriously enough to realize that playing along with the Boring Gore, Lying Gore, Clintonite Gore narrative so as to have something resembling a horserace might actually result is W "winning" the election.

For the record, Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet", and anybody who took that accusation seriously was kinda dumb -- and also didn't understand that The Internet is not synonymous with the networking protocols (hardware and software) upon which the Internet is built. Gore actually did take a lead role in "creating the Internet", meaning, in providing the government support that resulted in a working infrastructure.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

enhydra lutris's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Gore actually did take a lead role in "creating the Internet", meaning, in providing the government support that resulted in a working infrastructure.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@UntimelyRippd

he was still cheated.

You can cheat a loser.

Particularly if the guy running against him is another loser.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
blown W's doors off -- the cheat was only possible because Gore had effed the pup so badly.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Lily O Lady's picture

@UntimelyRippd

them on. The media were all on team Bush. Bush lead the broadcasts with his sleeves rolled. Face it, he was an oil man and was the darling of the oil industry. Gore promised to interfere in their “free enterprise”. And remember the howls of laughter when Gore promised to put Social Security funds in a lock box? The MSM gave Bush shade while while shining a glaring light on Gore. And the Brooks Brothers riot was treated like a real protest instead of the political psyop that it was. The MSM made sure Gore lost.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@UntimelyRippd

I respectfully disagree.

I don't know where the idea came from that if you are beating the other guy by a lot, election fraud is impossible.

If you are in control of the vote count, then you are in control. The question is: who is going to stop you? The media? The cops? The courts?

“Mr. Ness, everyone knows where the booze is. The problem isn’t finding it. The problem is who wants to cross Capone.”

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lookout's picture

@enhydra lutris

...before he became VP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_in_the_Balance

I don't recall Gore as even being aware of global warming at the time

Al seemed a different person in each debate. Nader was the best candidate running in that election IMO. I know many Floridians who voted for Ralph....most later regretted that vote.

Gore really won that state but brother Jeb insured a Bush win...
https://www.gregpalast.com/florida-by-the-numbersal-gore-won-florida-in-...
https://www.gregpalast.com/one-million-black-votes-didnt-count-in-the-20...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Lily O Lady's picture

@Lookout

demonstrated an awareness of global warming that few had at the time. When I worried about the affects of a warming climate, I comforted myself that VP Gore could lead us to stop the madness when he became president. I think TPTB didn’t want him because he threatened the status quo, so they executed the media death by a thousand cuts. And so we had Florida and the bogus Brooks Brothers riot in which our latest “esteemed” Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh participated.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout

I wanted to vote for Nader, but I was a good little girl and voted for Gore. Look what happened.

The Democratic party I'd given my allegiance to allowed itself to be cheated by a shyster and left all of us hanging out to dry.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

This being an open thread and all.

Here is my observation: If somebody says something really, really stupid, nobody is obliged to argue the matter.

That is all.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

enhydra lutris's picture

@UntimelyRippd

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

enhydra lutris's picture

attacked the list fallacy, which is, as you note, really a cluster of fallacies. One that came to mind that isn't so obvious is the fact that it buys into a key myth of most academic economic systems that we can and should rank and value absolutely everything, and do so comparatively. How much world peace would you give up for a new Chevy? How many bananas for a couch? etc.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

@enhydra lutris  
is okay, as long as some “experts” can provide cover by constructing some kind of hypothetical and tendentious argument that Y number of lives were saved or improved, Y being greater than X.

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@enhydra lutris
i mean, what are we talkin' here?

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0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Too long, did not watch version: Faster trading advantages Wall Street, cui bono. So thousands of low orbit laser beam satellites and private $200 antenna boxes spewed globally will somehow produce hoi polloi access to the info highwaze. fer sher fer sher this time it's fer sher
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs width:450]
LOL
omg wtf again
call me crazy
insane rain awaits
looking good billy ray
PEACE

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lotlizard's picture

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war...

Many of the battles around YA books display the worst features of what is sometimes called “cancel culture”. Tweets condemning anyone who even reads an accused book have been shared widely. I have heard about publishers cancelling or altering books, and asking authors to issue apologies, not because either of them believed they ought to apologise, but because they feared the consequences if they didn’t. Some authors feel that it is risky even to talk in public about this subject. “It’s potentially really serious,” says someone I’ll call Alex. “You could get absolutely mobbed.” So I can’t use your real name? “I would be too nervous to say that with my name to it.” None of the big three UK publishing groups, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins or Hachette, was available for comment.

Another author I will call Chris is white, queer and disabled. Chris has generally found the YA community friendly and supportive during a career spanning several books, but something changed when they announced plans for a novel about a character from another culture. Later, Chris would discover that an angry post about the book had appeared anonymously on Tumblr, directing others to their website. At the time, Chris only knew that their blog and email were being flooded with up to 100 abusive messages a day.

“These ranged from people telling me that … I was a sick pervert for tainting [their] story with my corrupt, westernised ideas,” Chris says, “to people saying [I] had no right to appropriate [their] experiences for [my] own benefit and I must immediately stop work. Some emails and comments consisted of just four-letter words.” There were threats of beatings and sexual assault. One message made the threat of a group “coming to my house in the middle of the night, and breaking in so that they could give me a lethal overdose”. Some messages came through Goodreads, although Chris does not know if they were linked to the main YA community. The “vast majority”, and all of the most violent threats, “came from an ideology that I would identify as left”, Chris says, and every message made the same demand. “Stop writing this. Don’t write this. You can’t write this. You’re not allowed …”

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