Honestly, I don't know how I do it either. That's no false modesty; this is just what I do. It probably helps that I don't have a life outside of writing.
You criticize (rightly IMO) those who fear Trump or Orban will criminalize dissent, but turn right around and express the same fear about Harris. That's equally paranoid. I can't speak to Hungarian affairs (that's your job, Rod) but in the US we will never criminalize political speech, absent some inconceivable catastrophe, the sort which leaves too many bodies to bury
I tend to agree with you on your last point, but there is a difference between what is de jure and what is de facto. There will never be a law banning dissent (of course there is precedent for this sort of behavior with the Alien and Sedition Acts) or an amendment to the constitution ridding ourselves of the 1st amendment. But, over the past half century the law, as it is written by Congress, has rarely stopped the executive branch from pursuing its own ends, even if those ends contravene the written law. Maybe, some of the executive branch’s agendas have been slowed down by lawsuits, but that’s only when respective agendas have been discovered by the public. If enough factions within the bureaucracy get behind a push to prosecute political dissenters, they’ll make it happen, and when the public gets wise to it, they’ll be hauled up before Congress and obfuscate and then hauled up before the courts and say, “I’m sawry 🥺 it won’t happen again.” But, the damage at that point will likely have been done.
I’m not saying that I agree 100% with Rod that American political persecution/criminalization is imminent, but the mechanisms are there for it to occur if those in power choose to go that direction.
Well, that's why they like war so much, right? One of the many reasons. Abraham Lincoln could suspend habeas corpus (the only feature of English law, Dr. Johnson said, superior to anything found across the channel), Wilson could throw Debs into jail, and FDR could intern innocent Japanese because there was a war on. Right? RIGHT?
That is a gross exaggeration. There is no viewpoint, however outlandish or self-serving or distorted, that did not get bandied about during COVID. Most of it was head-in-the-sand horse manure by spoiled brats who have been protected all their lives by so many vaccinations that they couldn't conceive of the need to take short-term public health precautions against a brand new pathogen. It was so INCONVENIENT! But they were heard, constantly.
So Zuckerberg is lying about political pressure being applied to Meta to disallow certain COVID related posts? If he's not, then there's absolutely no reason to believe that other outlets/platforms weren't targeted as well. There is a lot of discussion of this sort of narrative-control in both RFK Jr's and Rand Paul's books on the pandemic, all of it well documented. Noli timere. Tolle lege.
Zuckerberg may or may not be lying. I doubt you have ever believed Zuckerberg to be credible on anything else under the sun, but sometimes a criminal turning state's evidence is essential so who knows? Its like wondering who to believe about Jeffrey Epstein. I'm a First Amendment purist, and I think social media should be treated as a public utility in many respects. But political pressure to disallow certain posts is far from shutting down all dissemination and discussion. The government just doesn't have control to suppress. RFKJ and Rand Paul are not sources I would trust. But if you want a thoroughly researched book on the origin and handling of the pandemic, I ran across a copy of Brendan Borrell's "The First Shots" on a library bookshelf. It should be required reading to graduate high school.
"Most of it was head-in-the-sand horse manure by spoiled brats who have been protected all their lives by so many vaccinations that they couldn't conceive of the need to take short-term public health precautions against a brand new pathogen."
Oh, is this how it went down!?
What about the "spoiled brats" who knew that the CDC had already planned for something similar and who knew that masks wouldn't work against an infectious virus and that all prior plans had recommended nothing more than a 2-week max lockdown? What about the Diamond Princess quarantine, which made it clear by Spring 2020 that the virus was just a flu to anyone under age 70 or not with a prior condition? What about the people who've been proved right when they warned how the hysterical response would destroy businesses and destroy the educations of millions of kids?
Do you mean "short-term public health precautions" like the obvious bullshit that was 6 feet apart or the obvious bullshit that was closing down parks and beaches? And that stretched on for years!? And I really hope you don't mean the phony "vaccine" that doesn't stop transmission and that was forced on adults and children w barely any testing?
What you call "head-in-the-sand horse manure by spoiled brats" turned out to be free thinking by the few people that used their brains instead of falling for media-generated hysteria. If refusing the phony vax and refusing to be locked inside my house by panicked bureaucrats makes me a spoiled brat (and there are many like me), then I'm proud to be one—beats being a lemming.
Well let's take that one point at a time. Whatever accusations were bandied about, they were taken up fervently by people who simply worried that prudent measures to protect the lives of others on a mass scale were an infringement on "muh freedom." A mere 60 years ago, measles, mumps, and rubella were almost universal rights of passage of childhood. We were still vaccinated against smallpox, and most people alive could remember schools shutting down for weeks due to polio outbreaks. (There are old photos of children grouped around a radio to get their daily lessons). The Supreme Court considered and rejected the notion that mandatory vaccination is a constitutional violation a century ago, for very good reasons. The lives of everyone else in the community count for more than how you or I or anyone is feeling. But in 2020, the very idea that thousands of people should not ride their motorcycles from all over the country for a planned rally because of a mere virus clogging ICUs with more near-death patients than the staff could handle... well, that would be the cutting edge of fascism or communism or both to try to stop it. That's what I mean by spoiled brats.
CDC had been, quite rightly, planning for 'something similar" for many years, because everyone knew that "something similar" would emerge from somewhere sometime, and it wouldn't always stop short like SARS-1 and Ebola. You may remember that one of the first to warn us that this virus was going to be a major hazard to millions of people was... Rod Dreher! I know the full story about the back and forth on whether masks would work. Its all documented in Brendan Borrell's thoroughly researched "The First Shots." Read it and weep. There were plausible reasons to doubt anything but an N95 mask would stop a virus (and there weren't enough of those for medical personnel, especially since we depended on Chinese imports, and China was hoarding its own supply). But, subsequent research showed good reason to think more easily produced masks would stop transmission by 80 percent, and that was well worth it. The virus was not 'just a flu." First, flu is a specific family of viruses, and they are not coronaviruses. Second this was a virus virtually no human in the world had any immunity to. Third, whatever the details of the Diamond Princess, ICUs were overflowing with dying patients, while medical staff was just guessing how to treat this one since nobody had any previous experience to go by. Thankfully, by the time I caught it, doctors had figured out that a course of steroids at day 10 prevented the worst difficulty with getting oxygen through the lungs into the bloodstream, but that wasn't known for the first few months.
OF COURSE shutting down human interaction causes economic damage -- but lives were at stake. They really were. Now, for the future, I would have a team of economists develop a plan for putting the economy into a temporary deepfreeze. People who don't work can't pay rent or mortgage, landlords who don't collect rent can't pay their mortgage, banks that don't collect mortgages get dinged by federal regulators... follow the whole chain of dominoes and figure out how to suspend obligations without destroying everything, and then bring the economy back. Its was damaging, but necessary. The unfortunate thing is that it became a political football, so some made it less effective by flaunting necessary measures, then others insisted on renewing it just to flaunt that it HAD been necessary, when we couldn't keep that up so long. Of course this is a weakness of a complex economy. If everyone is on a family farm, quarantine is a lot easier to handle. Children evacuated from London during the Nazi blitz were psychologically damaged too, but it saved their lives.
Your state of denial tells me that you want what you want and screw the rest of the world because you don't care. You are exhibiting the attitude I compared to the gay men who refused to let public health authorities shut down gay bath houses during the original onset of AIDS, insisting they were going to f*** as many men as possible, and nobody was going to stop them. I expect those who said that and survived would be insulted to be compared to you, and you are insulted to be compared to them, and you both deserve the insult.
The vaccine worked just fine. It is precisely what allowed us to return to normalcy. Your state of denial undermines your credibility on anything. Don't confuse your own selfishness with free thinking. You are not thinking at all, just emoting at the most elementary animal level.
I stand by everything I wrote and history has my back. There was no difference in results bw maximalist and minimalist places like Cali/NY v Florida or in Europe bw Germany etc and Sweden. Covidmania was a destructive error that caused massive social damage and seriously injured an entire generation.
And there was no "vaccine" just a temporary immune boost that was oversold and undertested and that was used as a pretext to destroy civil liberties.
i regret responding to you and never will make the mistake again.
Just to address the "lives were at stake" comment. Logically, it would be better put, "some lives were at stake." Most individuals were not at risk. This was well known from data in Italy and China early in the lockdown. A better response would have been a limited, voluntary advisory to the elderly and obese to avoid public exposure. The rest should have been allowed to pursue their lives.
A few corrective facts. True, COVID , is not a flu. Being a corona virus, it is related to another coronavirus, the common cold.
It is not true that nobody was immune. Many are. In my own small circle, one 85 year old friend had to be tested prior to a hospital procedure to adjust her pacemaker. Tested positive, and never had a single symptom.
Vaccines did not work that well. I had the first two plus booster, and got it anyway a few weeks later.
I might add that I fell into 3 high-risk categories at the time, including age and asthmatic. A cold usually knocks me down for 3 weeks, and flu ends up with going on steroids for severe asthma uptick. COVID? Sick 4 days and then done. Period.
Vaccine also has severe and sometimes permanent side effects. Again in my circle, peripheral neuropathy after first shot, which is permanent. She is much younger.
Don't know about you, but our Chief-of-Staff let us know that they were monitoring social media and we would be disciplined if there were any divergent viewpoints.
That is a much larger issue. As a one time union shop steward, I would advocate that what any of us post on social media is no more our employer's business than what we say in a private phone conversation. The only caveats to that would be (1) If I reference my employer and position specifically, or (2) if I say something that directly implicates my ability to do my job. E.g., the EMT who posted "I would rescue every cat and dog in a burning house before I would worry about a nigger" could certainly be fired, because he had stated he could not be relied upon to do his job properly. Employers have been trying to control employees' speech and even who we vote for for centuries. When such cases go to court, the employer argument tends to be that employees 'represent their employer' at all times, but that simply isn't true. Actually, its Marxist -- Marx said by purchasing a man or woman's labor power the employer is effectively purchasing the entire person. But we must reject that notion.
You couldn’t be more off base here. Robert Reich has explicitly called for Elon Musk’s arrest. His crime is being famous and having opinions and expressing those opinions. The New York Times is running explicit pieces about reining in free speech. That is not paranoia.
And speech itself need never be criminalized as such. As Willie Stark says to Jack, “There’s always something.”
"Reich called on people to boycott Tesla and X and added, "Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X."" - So right now, it is international, Jon, with Rod flying into Berlin just after writing this. No, he is not Elon Musk and he says so. But it is OK for him to see that a police state could be coming even in the USA someday.
Right. Under which jurisdiction would Elon be arrested? It doesn't have to be the U.S. And Reich isn't Joe Soap. He's Clinton's former Labor Secretary.
The US has - up to now - been adamant that people within its borders cannot be extradited for 'political crimes.' For example, the Turkish government has tried for years to extradite multimillionaire and former Sufi cleric Fethullah Gulen on trumped up terrorism charges, and the US has repeatedly demanded proof of these allegations, proof that has yet to appear. Unless there is a major reversal Elon Musk is not going to be extradited to the EU or Brazil or anywhere else.
Reich doesn't need to specify a jurisdiction, because he has no power to act. He may be a former labor secretary, but he has no power of arrest anywhere.
Brussels needs an invitation? Anyway, we all know Europeans emerged from absolute monarchy and aristocratic principalities with very different notions of freedom and democracy than ours.
Reich is an old man making a damned fool out of himself. Robert DeNiro does the same thing, saying he'd like to punch out Trump. I think Reich ought to knock down a couple of Manhattans, watch a few episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and go to bed.
I think that's about right. And while I've seldom had a good word to say about Trump, I thought DeNiro made a damned fool of himself using a dubious epithet instead of making a coherent criticism. (Anyone who says f*** any politician, I've started responding "If that's the way you feel, by all means give them your phone number." Trump, Biden, Harris, I don't care. That's my response.)
Harold Stassen once recommended that all communists should be put in concentration camps, but it didn't happen. More sensible voices, like Thomas Dewey, responded, let them talk, they'll make fools of themselves. Which they generally did. Elon Musk will too -- to some extent he already has. Musk reminds me of Henry Ford, and that is not a compliment to either one.
Tell the Russians and Ukrainians that divisions are yesterday's methods.
"How many divisions" is more broadly a question, so, this person said such and such ... does he have any power to inflict it on us effectively? Yeah, Reich has an audience, but he's mostly preaching to the choir.
We are not in danger from Russian divisions. We are in danger from the rapidly developing consensus against free speech, to be enforced through the corporate world, rather the way racist and homophobic attitudes have been policed through the corporate world.
You would rather stir the pot than examine the contents. "Divisions" are not ipso facto "yesterday's methods" since divisions are still in use in the world today. The USA has divisions too. They have not been used to suppress free speech, which is how things are supposed to work. The rapidly developing consensus you refer to is a balloon to be pricked, not a juggernaut to be feared. Like I said, it depends on how much of a spine we have.
Elon Musk has enough money he could buy a country and proclaim himself Lord High Poobah and Grand Master. He's pretty much proof against any public affliction this side of nuclear war (and he probably has a luxurious shelter in New Zealand prepped against that). Though she's pretty rich, she's not in Musk's league (almost no one is), but J.K. Rawlins proved pretty impervious to canceling. There was a country singer a while back who also laughed all the way to the bank.
Reportedly the charges against Durov are only in part about content moderation, the most serious allegation concerns encryption of child pornography. Musk has nothing to fear on that account. Now, Tim Cook at Apple might have reason to worry.
The French lost patience with Durov’s obstinacy in refusing to allow them to examine Telegram. That’s what this is about. They say there is child pornography on the app, but at this point, that’s a mere guess, not a charge with evidence to back it up. But the entire utility of the app is its encryption.
Oh, police can usually verify the existence of child porn by pretending to be procurers of it. Remember Rod quoting a NJ state trooper who claimed that about 10% of the adults in his state were viewing it. Given a number like that I have little doubt it's the same with the French (and to quote the immortal Basil Fawlty "They invented it").
The Right fears the Left and the Left fears the Right. There care provocateurs, foreign and domestic, pulling those strings. And I'm almost convinced this is ultimately due to demonic powers, seeking the ruin of the world.
I thank God that I am impervious to propaganda, and can see right through the phantom menace Hell raises.
You're right: I sound arrogant above. That's what I get for posting at a bike trail shelter with some bike club gabbling around me like a flock of contentious geese.
In actual fact I have come to my fearlessness at a very high, astronomically high price. And yet it's not wrong to thank God for adversity, and such things as we may learn thereby.
Jon, fear about Harris is irrational? She's an empty head, Jon. She'll do whatever she's told, laughing hard. There's a reason her handlers want a muzzle kept firmly over her mouth. Every time she opens her mouth, she reminds us that her 20-year political training was being a really good adultery-committing mistress to Speaker-of-CA-House (married) Willie Brown. You don't think she'll do whatever Soros and Obama and Pelosi tell her to do? She's in it for her billion. Obama is up to $500 million, only another $500 million to go. Censorship? No problem, just get Google and Zuckerberg on the phone.
I agree she is an empty head, but I don't know that she will do what she is told. She shares in common with Trump an abiding self-love, infatuation with seeing herself in office, and the notion that she has all the answers.
Some politicians have redeeming qualities. A few actually try to promote themselves by paying attention to what they could actually deliver that would be good for the people. Neither of these two qualifies.
Jon is a kind man, but incomprehensible to me. To him, it's not the thick, multiformed web which is descending rapidly upon us which is the menace, it's noticing the fact which is the menace.
But then, that isn't really fair to Jon, I guess, because I have come to believe he's not a well meaning dissenter who wants to shake the rest of us out of our unwarranted alarm, he really doesn't see the web which is descending, at all. He doesn't see anything to be alarmed about. He thinks we are in the grip of group induced and mutually reinforced delusion. There were people on the Titanic who had places on lifeboats available to them but rejected their opportunities because they thought that being on the massive Titanic was a far better bet than being on a little lifeboat rowing around at night in the icy North Atlantic. Yes, that concussive feeling and its accompanying brief, grinding sound were disturbing, but come on!
I've been reading Rod since he showed up at TAC in 2008. Jon's always been in the comments section. I think he's personally a good guy, but I think there's something wrong there that isn't just contrarianism. I think he's oblivious to how he comes off and writes so much that he genuinely doesn't remember a lot of what he writes. I would note as well that the "principled moderate" stand rarely seems to break against the left, but he came out hard against people like Kim Davis and Nick Sandman. (The latter later apparently being the fault of everybody but himself)
I wouldn't go that far. I have noticed a tendency for JonF to state a fact he knows, as if a fact I or another person had just stated must be false in order for the fact he has just stated to be true. Its along the line of "That wasn't in the book I read that relates at least as a tangent to what we are talking about." But its quite possible for one book to talk about China being the equal of Europe in a certain century, another to talk about India, another to talk about Africa, and all of them be accurate. It is also possible for all those situations to be very different in another century. He doesn't always consider that each of us may know something he does not.
That doesn't justify it Jon. For one thing I know a LOT of things you don't. A lot of people here know things you don't, have ideas you haven't considered. Some of those ideas make you uncomfortable, some of them are things you don't want to be true, but are. Some of them have life experience you don't have and don't appreciate you trying to tell them how to feel about it with your glib rejoinders.
Rod knows a lot of things you don't know, and he's gracious enough to put up with you dismissing him day after day after day. He's very well read, experienced, well travelled and very very smart. You KNOW that. Show our working boy more respect, he's damn well earned it.
Get some help, psychological and spiritual, and do it now. Maybe go up to the Monastery in Reseca, it's not that far from you. You need to be here less, but you also probably don't need to be alone in your own head.
Andrew, you have been very kind to me on occasion, and I thank you for that. But you really don't know what you're dealing with in this. And in these larger matters you (and Rod, etc.) have been seduced by those with evil intent-- definitely humans, maybe dark powers of Hell who plot great ruin. Be certain I am not just blaming the Right-- I also blame the Left who also allow themselves to be seduced by lies*. A plague on both houses I'd like to scream-- but plagues have a way of spreading beyond their targets, so, no, I won't.
* As an aside: One can lie quite effectively with the truth, and deceive with facts.
Criminalization will occur if other methods of censorship do not work. It can also occur by de-fanging the First Amendment protections, as is already under way regarding freedom of religion. Don't be so dense as to say "It can't happen here!" The First Amendment isn't divine writ, nor did the Bill of Rights descend from heaven.
Hardly. They could outlaw guns completely tomorrow and no one would do a thing other than protest. They’d ignore the protestors and proceed to criminalization forthwith. Only court actions are slowing it down currently. There will be no actual armed resistance.
The Bill of Rights and other Constitutional guarantees are only as good as the justice system that enforces them. See how well the protections are "protecting" the J6 hostages, who are being subjected to unequal "protection under the laws," "cruel and unusual punishments," and denied a "speedy trial." That's because (1) J6 riot was a "fed-surrection" (see Ray Epps and the Capital police opening doors and escorting "rioters" on tours), and (2) The Wash DC justice system is "unjust" and "corrupt". NYC judicial system 2nd place runner-up for most corrupt judiciary in the USA. Judge Merchan will sentence Trump on Sept 18th on "trumped up" charges. Trump's now under an unconsitutional "gag" in which Trump cannot criticize the corrupt, biased judge and the judge's daughter (who is enriching herself--$12 million-plus-and-running) on the Trump case). Judge Merchan and daughter ought to be called out for what they are: "judicial thugs, bought and paid for."
But I always wonder who would confiscate the guns. Certainly not the police. They would be overwhelmed, and know it. I can't see the military doing it. The military doesn't swear an oath to the President, but to the Constitution.
Yes. Resistance sounds good in principle, but few want to actually take the hit when push comes to shove. Unless there's a major resistance it's gonna be you, the lone rebel, against the feds.
People imagine jackbooted thugs and gun owners courageously standing up against them, but I don’t think that’s the way it will play out at all. I have thought for years now that people will be pressured indirectly. Think of how many people ply their trade only through the “privilege“ of professional licensing. Now, imagine you’re a plumber or electrician or teacher or doctor or lawyer or accountant, or whatever—you’re going through a divorce, and your estranged spouse lets slip to her attorney that you have guns now deemed illegal. Borrowing a page from Justin Trudeau‘s playbook, the state threatens to destroy your livelihood.
The above describes a kind of terrorism tactic, because news of this sort of thing will spread. Then, the neighbor’s wife, who was never crazy about her husband‘s guns, but tolerated them, now wants them out of the house. “Think of the children!” Variations on this theme continue to play out. Holdout gun owners become more and more isolated from society, and live under constant threat of their world crashing down. What’s “resistance” here? There’s no one to shoot.
You ever see that Will Smith movie “Enemy of the State”? It’s more than 25 years old now, at this point. Dystopia is here. Our lives can be up-ended with the flick of a switch.
I jest, but I wonder if this will be another issue that divides men and women even further than now.
It's off topic, but I've always wondered why feminists don't support gun ownership. A man will think twice about harming someone if they know they're packing heat.
"Guns for Women!" should be a winning campaign slogan.
Trevor, come to PA. Women love guns in PA, and men too. They are responsible gun owners. No one comes into another's house unannounced and uninvited, especially at night.
Exactly! This is the "soft" in "soft totalitarianism." Americans will almost certainly not face jail for their contrarian opinions. But that doesn't mean that they won't be forced to pay a price as a way of punishing dissent.
Think about it: if you were a professor at many US colleges, and you offered the opinion in class that adding transgenderism to Title IX was a violation of women's rights, you would be in a world of trouble, and might even be left fighting for your job. You'd have to be a brave sumbitch to do it.
A professor that said that would be immediately suspended in an Ivy League college, if not summarily fired. There would be a lawsuit, but the Ivies are rolling in cash, rolls right off their back. See Prof. Joshua Katz, run out of Princeton for stating an "racist" opinion in Quilette.
We'll be squezzed out of our lst and 2nd amendment and other rights by a transition to CBDCs with bank freezes (that's why the Left insists on a transition to digital money that they will surveil and control). See Canadian trucker's strike. TrueDope stopped it by freezing the truckers' bank accounts. Presto. He fired a Canadian worker for having contributed to the strikers. "Give-Send-Go" was hacked and there was a disclosure of everyone who had contributed to the trucker strike.
It's coming, and faster than we think: 1984, Big Brother, Double Think and Double Speak.
Not completely off topic, here is a story from the weekend NYTimes a friend of mine gifted me (paywall for everybody else). Eight percent is huge. What they don't share are the attrition rates, funny about that:
One of the features of our Beloved Police Procedurals is the reluctant or hostile citizen who is browbeaten into co'-operation with the police by threatens of loosing offical licenses or being inspected to dearh.
Jon, that’s not true. Look broadly across the country at all the institutions controlled by liberals and progressives. Do they favor free speech? I don’t think Harris will necessarily promulgate laws against political speech — we have a First Amendment—but there will be lots of administrative harassment. Eg, what they do to Tulsi Gabbard making it hard to fly.
And they will pack the court. The only reason FDR wasn't able to do so was there were independent Democrats like Burt Wheeler of Montana as well as Republicans who weren't having it. Oh, and those nasty segregationist southern senators as well. Look at today's Democrat side of the aisle. Profiles in courage, right?
And yet we say what we want, within very broad limits.
This fear is quite possibly of demonic origin. As I read these furious responses they sound like desperate denials of addicts when confronted with the truth of their condition.To be healthy in the spirit one must say No (144 pt bold red font, maybe an f-bomb with it) . And beware that fear's fraternal twin, Hate, also does not come creeping in.
Well, you’re right, on some levels, to remind us of the potential to become what we hate. This can happen with any political movement.
But you’re discounting completely the very notion of vigilance and prudence in our dealings with political groups and figures who have been quite explicit.
Solzhenitsyn when he lived in the United States questioned our free speech even back then, pointing out that we may be able to say and write what we want, but if we can’t get it published openly that is not true free speech.
2 words, JonF: Julian Assange. The people most likely to have their free speech rights violated by the government are those who have a large audience. Hobbits like us (I'm excluding Rod because he has a large audience) are less likely to face shut-down by the government but definitely are subject to blacklisting and boycotts by social mobbing. An outspoken, conservative bodega owner in my town was driven out because progressive social media mobs on Facebook managed to get much of the town to boycott the store. It was a haven for like-minded conservative thinkers and Rod readers, but there weren't enough of us to keep him in business. And I could tell stories about being harassed by people who reported me to HR for opinions I shared about the company's support for abortion--before I blessedly retired from corporate America.
It all depends on growing a spine. Woodie Allen's "The Front" was basically made by a bunch of cowards who were fantasizing decades later about what they wish they had had the courage to do when the Blacklist and the Red Scare were running rampant. The movie Trumbo is about a modicum of undermining the Blacklist until it was a hollow shell and then dispensing with the charade. Not a profile in courage, but closer to the right way to fight back. Perhaps those who wish to stand up for free speech can learn from all of this.
Martin Ritt directed The Front. Not a great movie- but ok. Part of what Ritt was showing was in Jewish New York/ Communists were a fact of life. The character played by Woody Allen is told so and so was a Communist- his response is - oh yeah- like I’m not- but that was part of the milieu . Ritt was blacklisted.The movie was after the fact. It couldn’t have been otherwise. It’s not cowardly and your comments seem out of place- maybe unfair.
I don't know if Allen directed any of the movies he starred in, but they are all referred to as Woodie Allen movies. In America in the 1930s communists were a fact of life -- and that wasn't entirely a bad thing, partly because they had not the misfortune to have any chance of taking power. The cowardice was in the 1940s, not when the movie was made. At the end of the movie, there is a long list of credits of people who were blacklisted. Not one of them told HUAC to "Go f*** yourselves." Someone should have. Kirk Douglass finally told a HUAC staff person, who I hire to write a script is my business. At any rate, since the discussion here is about using means short of actual censorship and criminal prosecution for prohibited speech, perhaps there is something to learn from how people responded to use of this sort of intimidation in the past.
Ritt was blacklisted because he was very, very left-wing at a time early in the Cold War. He ended up having a fine career directing. "The Long Hot Summer" and "Hud" were especially good.
Those were good movies. Ritt also got favor for directing Sounder .Ritt was part of particular milieu. New York , Jewish , Communist/ - that was part of what he was trying to show in The Front. As to who directed Woody Allen’s films Herbert Ross directed Play It Again Sam - from a play written by Woody Allen ( Konigsberg).The rest were directed by Woody Allen. On American Communism , I often think of Irving Howes comments on Vivian Gornicks Romance of American Communism/ . Howe commented on Gornicks notion of their positive contributions, they have no idea how much they harmed the American Left.
Presumably the following comment by Tim Walz leaves you untroubled:
WALZ:
I think we need to push back on this. There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.
Or this from Robert Reich on Musk:
Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X."
Or:Hawaii lawmakers demand TSA explanation for Tulsi Gabbard's inclusion on terrorist watchlist
0r:IRS visited Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi’s home same day as congressional testimony
Or:My biggest concern," said Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday, "is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways."
All the above are disturbing but what really stood out for me were Dem reps Plaskett & Wasserman Shulz calling Taibbi a "so-called journalist" during that hearing. Taibbi, whose writing c.v. is longer than Plaskett & Wasserman's monthly credit card statement for haircare products... Unbelievable, but that's where we're headed.
Well, that does give us the necessary context for her remark, which does have some validity. It's a tricky fine line.
We who notice how often remarks of those we favor are taken out of context must be quick to notice when those on our side do it too. We always profit by having a truer understanding of any incident even if that seems to momentarily remove ammunition from "our side".
We must value truth and clear understanding, more than any one party or faction. This us true for all people, and doubly true for anyone identifying as Christians. We should not be afraid of any truth, whether that truth supports our politics or not.
The Tulsi Gabbard persecution is truly outrageous! I can’t believe that the excrement isn’t interacting with the rotating blade nationally in the US on that one!
Walz is wrong. Of course so were Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy and a lot of other people. I don't care what ideology it comes from, the First Amendment is NOT about protecting worthy speech. It exists because we don't trust any government official to make the judgement, which speech is worthy of protection. Accordingly, we all put up with a lot of godawful nonsense, so that nobody can suppress our own speech if they think it is godawful nonsense, or "misinformation' or "hate speech" or an attack on "our democracy."
There are limits to free speech: Perjury; Fraud; Slander and Libel; Direct and immediate excitation to panic or violence.
I do think it's not inappropriate to require fact checking in publications. Every one of us makes mistakes and we should be willing to own up to and fix them. And should we be blithe about hostile foreign provocateurs spreading lies among us? I would OK with such people being told to get on the next jet out of this country.
Those are not limits to free speech. Those are ways in which speech can be used to commit a tort or a crime. The distinction is highly relevant to the question of prior suppression, a key point in the Pentagon Papers case. Maybe Daniel Ellsberg can be prosecuted for theft of government documents, maybe the New York Times can be sued for libel, but the government cannot suppress the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
So, perjury is a crime, not because a person is not free to lie, but, because telling a lie in court under oath is a crime, as it perverts the process of criminal justice. The same lie, spouted on the street, is not subject to criminal prosecution.
That lie may be subject to a suit for slander, or if printed, libel. Crying "Fire" in a crowded theater induces panic. If it results in death, that may be some level of criminal homicide.
When you say "its not inappropriate to require fact checking in publications," what authority do you reference? Journalists must submit their articles to a government fact-checker before being permitted to publish? It would be good ethical business practice for editors to require and perform fact checking? Articles which lie about someone should be subject to libel suits? The last is of course consistent with current law. The second used to be commonly accepted practice, but not legally enforceable.
The kind of broad, vague sentiment Walz expressed (if he is being quoted accurately) is to take this kind of specific and expand it to almost infinite elasticity. "Speech is violence," etc. If I don't approve of your speech, I can have you arrested. Etc.
I no where said "govermment fact checkers". However I would not have a problem with media outlets being required to hire their own fact checkers, and to print apologies or retractions for mistakes that are made. Once upon a time that was just accepted business practice. Then they all got cheap and hurried. I am just suggesting a return to previous standards.
In the old days, we had the “capital gate” keeping trash from inside publishing houses. When a print run required large resources in capital to produce, publishers were very good at ensuring accuracy (and decently proofread copy).
Today, we expect readers to do that work. Some still do. Many don’t. But that’s what freedom of the press looks like.
"And should we be blithe about hostile foreign provocateurs spreading lies among us?"
Of course not. But the answer is to identify the foreign provocateurs and counter with better speech. For example, Facebook should have an 'Index of Russian Facebook Misinformation Pages' page that we could all visit to see and laugh at.
Agents of foreign governments (who are not American citizens) have no constitutional rights to a welcome in this country. I see no problem with tossing malicious ones right back where they came from.
America's libel laws are very generous to free speech in comparison to Britain's. In America, you really have to say something way over the top. Didn't Carol Burnett win a big suit with National Enquirer forty years ago? It had to do with her getting drunk with Henry Kissinger. Burnett does not drink so she sued. But that's rare.
You're living in a dream world, Jon. If the past five years have taught us anything, it has shown how remarkably easy it is to implement soft dictatorship among an easily manipulated populace guided by the latest top-down policy initiatives disseminated among legacy media. These days, it only takes a few months to go from "this could never happen" to "we need to do this for the sake of democracy" and to demonize anyone who tries to resist The Big Lie.
Or as someone said above "Lives were at stake." Of course it is not a true statement as a universal affirmation, but it was, and still is, being used as a cudgel to force assent.
We do take heavy-handed emergency measures when disaster threatens. Hurricane evacuations. Curfews during riots. Do you object to those? If not then there's really no overarching principle being debated here, just the pragmatic questions of what measures are justified in what sort of emergency.
Having been through a few of both of those, emergency measures were days long at the most. Not the months to years of the Covid Lockdowns. And, given the risk of Covid was specific and not universal as for a hurricane or riot, the analogy does not hold.
I think you are a bit new here? I'm very much on record here saying the initial lockdowns were prudent given that Covid was a Great Unknown and better safe than sorry. By summer of 2020 we knew we were not facing a 21st century Black Death and the measures should have sealed back to few sensible precautions.
Come on Jon, that’s being naive. Go back to the last election 2020. 51 intelligence agencies publicly stated the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, it’s now a fact that was a bold face lie as the FBI had the laptop! Mark Zuckerberg recently confessed that Meta was pressed to silence factual information about Covid, vaccines and the laptop. So it’s already been happening.
While some may want to legislate away constitutional protections, as per the NYT, governments can make unwanted speech DE FACTO illegal by harassing and intimidating dissidents. Which results in the same thing.
It’s important to bear in mind that mind, the left do not believe in free speech. They say this openly.
Well, nothing incriminating as yet has come from that laptop even though Tucker Carlson claims to have its contents and is supposedly shocked by them. The only thing so far released by the those with access (and political motivation to release the material) has been a lot of nude pics of Hunter-- and shame of the GOP for going that route.
OK, but obviously nothing of any political consequences. House Republicans have had access for many months but so far all the public know is what Hunter looks like in the buff-- there have been no impeachment articles forthcoming about his father. are even House Republicans part of some grand Democratic conspiracy?
It WOULD have had political consequences had it been allowed to be discussed broadly in the media. But the mainstream media embargoed the story completely.
JonF311, you express a deep faith in our constitution being upheld; "the dogma lives loudly in you." I hope your faith is justified, but I have my doubts about the future.
Oh, come on, Jon, you and I both know that there are ways to criminalize dissent that don't involve passing laws. There are all kinds of administrative penalties. For example -- and I'm going to lay this marker down right here -- it is possible to get the IRS to audit politically problematic people. They can use TSA to make it burdensome to travel, like what they've done to Tulsi Gabbard. They can offer friendly suggestions to financial institutions to de-bank the dissenters. That sort of thing.
And what you fail to grasp is that the Left can tell these fearful nightmare tales about the Right too-- and they do. Their actions now are predicated on the fact that they perceive you folks as a very real threat to their liberty and maybe even their lives.
Please think about this Rod:
Something terrible is coming. Beyond your darkest dreams of terrible. But instead of coming together despite differences (and yes, I get it, those differences are real and deep), fear and hate have left people divided and at each other's throats.
Doesn't that sound exactly like a hellish strategy?
Sure, there are tons of folks on the left that literally believe a Handmaid Tale type future is just around the corner, Trump will make himself dictator for life, and his storm troopers will march them off to camps. But there is zero evidence for that. There is a lot of evidence of creeping totalitarianism from the left, and they have the universities, MSM, and most of the tech world to back them up. Anyone who works in a large corporation or has kids in the school system or at college has seen direct evidence of which way the wind is blowing.
Sure, some of the angst is overblown, but it's not a 50-50 balance. From reading your comments you seem desperately to want to believe both sides are equally contributing to the division.
"Their actions now are predicated on the fact that they perceive you folks as a very real threat to their liberty and maybe even their lives."
That's because they buy into the BS hype from their side. People are divided by misperceptions of those on the other side, spread by media and politicians, and soon those misperceptions become reality. And yes, even if hell hasn't directly sown those misperceptions, surely it laughs over them.
"Blessed are the peacemakers", but those peacemakers are few and often ignored.
Re: That's because they buy into the BS hype from their side
Oh, I very much agree! You folks don't see it here,. but I take the paranoia and catrastrophizing on the Left to task no less when I run across it in a forum where I can comment. They don't like that any more than people here do.
Think of Sam Francis, marginalized by fellow conservatives like Linda Chavez and John J. Miller. Francis was financially damaged by being cracked down on.
So do We The People. Although I am fond of quoting from a senate hearing circa 1962 inquiring into whether the government in Saigon was the paragon of democracy our government was proclaiming it to be. A state department rep replied to a question with some exasperation "Senator, I know Americans would never put up with having to carry photo ID -- but its different over there!"
There were not. My first provisional license at age 16 was a pink slip of paper with my name, address, and license number typed on it. My first adult license at 18 in 1972 was a similar blue slip of paper. My first license with a photo on it was obtained in California in 1975, but most states took several more years to catch up. California has always been a leader in suppressing civil liberties.
Thanks for the info! My first DL was in 1983, and it had a picture. Though it looked cheap as all get out. In 1993 I was refused service at a bar in New York state because my Michigan license looked like something that had been run off a cheap copy machine.
That began in Pennsylvania in 1982. I had about four expired paper New Jersey licenses an older friend gave me that I used to go to bars before I was 21.
Given all that continues to dribble out about the US Government directly threatening social media to suppress actual news, the worry is less that political speech will be criminalized than that the government has the power to simply make it increasingly difficult to get out.
But I also very much doubt the US will long resist the temptations to criminalize political speech overtly - there are enough recent stories, for instance, about pro-life picketers getting arrested, or getting early AM state or federal police raids, for protesting at abortion clinics - and this has been a problem , I should note, for decades. We also had the Biden administration (admittedly hamfistedly) attempting to create a "disinformation tsar". And then there are the religious conscious rights routinely attacked (especially during the Obama administration), of business owners over all sorts of matters, under the invidious guise of "equal protection".
The battle will be more subtle to protect free speech here, but neither party has covered itself in glory actually defending it.
My concern is that over time, they won't need formal legislation to get the effects they want. A court case here, a "Dear Colleague" letter there, some vague allegations about needing to clamp down on criminal activity on a network...
Dear Colleague letters are effective because they are accepted. They have no binding legal force. They can be followed up by legal action, but that is civil in nature, and there are a diverse range of judges who might get the case. Court cases can be appealed, and they can attract wide publicity. Its not that everything is cool, its all been worked out, but there is a good deal that can be done to challenge the steam roller.
See above. We need laws to protect workers from workplace retaliation over political activities, and speech, outside the workplace. Yet the lingering affection on the Right for "heroic job creators" seems to suppress down any thought of such a thing.
I don't know where you're getting that - the push to punish private speech via employee termination, for speech made off-hours, comes predominantly from the left.
See: The Soviet Union. Those who had something to say the authorities didn't like couldn't say it in official forums. but they could and did by word of mouth and via samizdat publications. No one has ever been able to stop word of mouth, and the samizdat option is still a viable one. Step back in time two millennia: The Christian revelation was spread word of mouth and private writings (which, happily, came at a time when relatively "cheap" codices, the first books, could be passed around and read aloud to groups)
Re: And then there are the religious conscious rights routinely attacked (especially during the Obama administration), of business owners over all sorts of matters
I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but IMO there's a question of whether employers should have the right to impose their religious views on their employees. Outside some very narrow exceptions involving actual religious roles, I vote a resounding No on that-- workers have rights too. which is also why I occasionally suggest we should have laws that would protect employees who engage in political activities outside work which their employer does not approve of.,
Christian schools having to defend themselves for their employee conduct policies and opposition to gay marriage.
The funeral home who went to the Supreme Court (and lost) over insisting on sex-differentiated employee dress codes because an obviously cross-dressing man was weirding out the mourners.
Hobby Lobby having to go to the Supreme Court to get out of paying for abortions in its health insurance policies.
And dozens of smaller cases besides.
Of course then there is Masterpiece Cakes.
You say " there's a question of whether employers should have the right to impose their religious views on their employees".
No, there isn't because it's not actually happening.
The issue at Hobby Lobby was not "abortions", which are NOT required coverage under the ACA, but rather contraception which is required coverage. You seem like a very good guy so I have to assume you have been misinformed in this. Hence why I inveigh against propaganda and disinformation.
But I will insist it is none of Hobby Lobby's business what (legal) things their employees do with their compensation, and that includes their health insurance. It does not belong to the company (and the workers certainly do not)-- it is a benefit people have worked for.
"Morning after pills" are chemical abortion enablers, I am not misinformed.
Again, YOU do not run a business, so I have to assume YOU are misinformed about insurance and its financing.
The COMPANY buys the policy, negotiates the rates and terms, and has to pay for the majority of it on the workers' behalf, giving the company a direct stake in the insurance policy and what it covers.
The company may pay for the policy, but the workers earn it by their labor- it's theirs, not the employer's. Empters have no business meddling any more than they do in their employees' political beliefs and actions outside the workplace.
"Last year, Calgary passed a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that bans “specified protests” inside and outside any buildings owned or leased by the city."
On its face, I agree that protests should not blockade individual citizens seeking to enter a building for a lawful or routine purpose. The protest can leave ten feet of space for people to walk by. Of course a labor dispute is another matter. One of my favorite All In The Family episodes was when Archie lectured meathead on how he always wore his best suit when picketing during a strike, and there was no violence. Edith remarked "Except when someone tried to cross the picket line."
I was referring to the word "access." The article is actually a bit unclear, since its a broad summary posted on a source clearly supporting what the pastor did. Maybe his "protest" was more aggressive than he made it sound when facing criminal charges. Some Black Lives Matter protesters did the same. I don't know who is willing to mask their actions in innocuous language. I wouldn't be surprised if the law or the way the judge rules is an over-reach. I view what it should be the same way I view sidewalk counseling outside an abortion clinic. Pro-life activists have an undoubted right to be present, to offer their advice, even to call or exclaim, but not to grab, obstruct, block, etc. Yes, I know efforts have been made to keep them 100 feet of more from the entrance. Ten feet is about as much as I think the First Amendment allows. You have a right to express, not to coerce. People who are passionate about whatever have been known to cross that line.
I haven’t read Return of the Gods by Jonathan Cahn, but I do not recall any discussion of perhaps Mars/Ares or Pluto/Hades being in the book. The perversion of the human race to embrace and worship war and death is as deep as any impulse the sexual perversion. Everyone who knew much about Iraq knew what would come after the invasion. It was only a matter of what direction it would take and how quickly. With Ukraine, I thought the war would be over quickly and then turn into a western-backed insurgency. I was wrong, but no one in good faith could ever have said that the brinksmanship with Russia would end well.
People love war and death. The military is not a Christian institution. War is one of the four horsemen of the Bible. People are awes with machines designed to kill and destroy on a large scale. Flyovers at sporting events. And so on. I guess you could say Ares has never really left us. It is not good now that we have perversion after perversion, each worse than before, but now we have people pushing on with something far worse, nuclear annihilation of the human race. And that is what we’re not supposed to call out, I guess.
Also, Rod, if I remember correctly, you were leery of Vance accepting the nomination at this point in his career. If you have so much influence over the man, I would suggest that he would not have done so. I’ve seen Vance speak in person, back before he was even a senator. He had a thoughtfulness about him that is rare among everyone, especially among politicians. I guess maybe it is true about most who hold office, that they are easily influenced by those around them, but I got the impression from him that he would influence those around him just as much as they influence him.
I too think that censorship is coming. It is what happens when your positions become so absurd that they go beyond the power of normal persuasion to win an argument. No one could say with a straight face that communism was working, so instead of admitting and fixing the problem, the answer was to silence those who pointed that out. Our system is becoming g so broken that it is getting beyond the ability of persuasion to make a case as well.
That's nothing new. The Chicago Board of Health has had some of the strictest regulations in America, but in the heyday of the Daley machine, it was only enforced against a business that had a disfavored sign in the window, like "Adamowski for Mayor."
They are flat out making Rod blessed - that's twice in two days now (Carville, Politico). Blessed? - - "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (Matthew 5:11)"
Yes, we can believe that the USA is probably the safest place on earth for free speech, at the moment, due to our constitution. Pray it remains a safe place. Let's pray for Rod, trust he will be able to continue to speak freely. We can recognize that he is being maligned for free speech, much of it in favor of overtly Christian values, recognize that God prepared him for this role, that Rod is going to continue to speak, and that God is with him no matter what may happen.
I would consider the USA to have very limited free speech. From experience, if someone chose to expose Mr. G's incendiary comments on an incendiary platform, someone might fire Mr. G, or not hire him, or socially erase him. Mr. G. has experienced this before. So, if Mr. G does not have freedom of speech, who are you who experiences otherwise?
Strictly speaking. free speech refers to a lack of legal impediments or sanctions, not to private actions. When it comes to other people, not officials, no one has a right to have others agree with them. Free speech also means that even vehement and vitriolic disagreement must be allowed. When it comes to employers we're dealing with a power imbalance (yes that lefty trope is sometimes a valid analysis ).Above, and not for the first time, I've suggested laws to protect employees from retaliation for outside the workplace actions and speech. I've never been able to stir up any interest here for that idea. Apparently people would rather curse the darkness than light candles.
The thing to remember about Russia/Ukraine is that the primary reason that the neo-con/neo-lib establishment supports Ukrainian "independence" is that Russia is a hindrance to globalization. Basically, it won't play our game. Everything else is secondary.
Mearsheimer: "If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy."
This is a fascinating paragraph. I don't believe that the West would settle simply for the third prong, because that in and of itself doesn't do much to lessen Russia's role as a speedbump to globalization. What is likely is that the West would initially agree to the third prong only, but then work towards prongs one and/or two anyways, acting deceptively like we always do.
I do not trust Putin/Russia to play fair, but it mustn't be forgotten that we've given him no reason over the last ten years to trust us either. This is not to posit some sort of moral equivalency, but rather to make the fairly simple observation that BOTH sides have for the past decade lied like old rugs, the neo-con/neo-lib adjacent hacks at Politico, etc., being chief among them.
I don’t follow that argument. Let me try to explain. As an international economic actor, Russia isn’t all that important. China it’s not.So the idea that these globalists want a war in the Ukraine to promote their globalist agenda doesn’t make all that much sense.
They didn't want the war to begin with. But once Putin invaded what were they supposed to do? You poke the bear for 10 years, yet you're surprised when it takes a swipe at you? That's some real hubris there. Or else some real stupidity.
And it took ten years for it to get around to dinner? Come on, man. Can't believe you're buying the narrative from the same clowns that got us into Iraq.
I was opposed to that consistently at the time.I’m a long time long term anti interventionist. Because I don’t buy into neo con BS doesn’t oblige me to accept Putin’s BS.
That Putin is a BS-er doesn't mean that the globalists aren't. Even if Putin were "literally Stalin," that doesn't mean Zelensky is Churchill. Etc., etc. In no sense has the West cornered the market on truth here.
I'd argue that Russia has significance because of its large supplies of energy (which Biden's policies have foolishly made even more valuable, btw). Many of the foreign conflicts rest on wrestling for energy and economic dominance. Not to mention that the IC has significant outposts (31 biolabs last I heard) in Ukraine. And the contractors are making big $$ out of this conflict. The trillions to be made via "rebuilding Ukraine" causes outfits like Blackrock to salivate profusely.
There is little discussion among the cognoscenti of the vast human cost (hundreds of thousands dead and wounded) of the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Any realist can see this must end in a negotiated settlement--but not too soon or else the IC/globalists won't get their ounce of flesh.
“Don’t you know this is a DEMOCRACY? And you actually want OPEN DEBATE about government policy? You think such FASCIST EXTREMISM will be tolerated?! We will not sit idly by and let it happen. No, we will defend our OPEN SOCIETY. All discourse that doesn’t repeat our policy directives is DISINFORMATION and will be treated as such!”
It’s actually gotten this far. Such brazen incoherence is one of the characteristics of nascent totalitarianism. Its function is to demean the citizenry.
Ryszard Legutko: “Finally, a short comment on another mendacious concept: open society. An open society is not a society that is open to various groups and creeds, but it is a society in which a fierce war is being waged against the enemies of an open society. And the enemies are legion, they are profoundly evil, and the omnipresent danger they pose is apocalyptic. It is almost like in the Revelation of Saint John: “a monster having ten horns and seven heads and upon its horns there were ten crowns; and upon its crowns were the names of blasphemy.” Here is a sample of today’s crowns with the names of blasphemy: misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, eurocentrism, phallocentrism, logocentrism, binarism, populism, white supremacy, nationalism, xenophobia, hate speech, far right, Euroscepticism, misgendering, bigotry, fascism, global warming denial, and so on, and so forth. Almost every day, someone discovers a new sin and a hideous head with new hideous horns. As you can see, the more open the open society becomes, the more hydras it has to fight. In other words, for an open society to exist and grow, we need more and more policing and self-policing, as well as more and more censorship and self-censorship.”
PS - You all saw what I did in this column? Enthusiastic vote in favor of free speech. Can you question that the Dems would *like* to do what Labour is doing in the UK? I certainly can't. Please do not stay home in November, no matter the color of your state.
I'm a Christian who embraces my faith as literally true. I will fight this demonic evil to martyrdom -- the Rapture is for wussies. If you tell the truth, they will target you. I tell the truth.
They are coming for our food supplies -- THAT is how Stalin and Mao purged dissenters. I write about food supplies for that reason -- no food, no revolution. Even martyrs gotta eat!
I am thinking of educating members of my church how to garden and compost without relying on commercial pesticides and fertilizers. That is important for independence
Amen! God intends us to be reliant on His provision through the Earth, not technological idols made with human hands (Isaiah 2:8). The consequence of disobedience to God's command to Adam (Ge. 3:17-19) is famine (Rev. 6: 5-6).
No/ I am not a Luddite, but I recognize the harms caused by many technologies. The Amish have the right idea -- except guns. They are pacifists who will not stand up to tyranny. I believe.
I wouldn't describe the Amish as "Luddites". They are not motivated by resentments but by asceticism-- which to be sure I consider excessive,. but to each his own. (As I understand it they are not anti-gun-- they do own hunting weapons)
I agree we need to recognize the downsides of even very good technologies, but, IMO, our approach should be one of "nothing in excess", in the knowledge that nothing of this world comes to us as an unalloyed blessing.
I agree -- I did not intend to imply the Amish are Luddites; just that I'm not. :) I think they are correct to view technology with skepticism, as alienating from God and destructive of human spiritual life. By anti-gun I meant they are pacifists who will not engage in armed opposition to our oppressors -- and others will quickly take their food when the End hits.
I can see certain cities and a handful of states doing this, but where I'm currently at, I have a difficult time seeing the local sheriff trying to arrest someone for posting contentious arguments online.
This is a point brought up by Jon before (and I agree), but a lot of America is still rural, and we're also a country with a healthy 2nd Amendment. This is the one time I say "Thank God for all the gun-nutters!", because I really do believe that any concerted, real effort to crack down on dissent will be met with *substantive* pushback (think Kyle Rittenhouse, or that couple slandered in the media for brandishing their firearms during a BLM protest in what I think was Missouri).
What you say makes a lot of sense. I cannot claim any kind of prescience, but when Poppy came out with New World Order regarding Iraq I (which I weakly supported), and we got a department of Homeland Security before Iraq II (which I opposed with every fiber of my being), I did wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have said. The thing to watch out for is any kind of national gendarmerie. You know, like the FBI.
The idea that the local sheriff will be stopping by to take your gun is outdated.
Think rather in terms of all the electronic damage that can be done to a person. The FBI could flag you and your bank could de-bank you, making it very difficult for any but the most determined prepper to survive. Meanwhile, most people have to earn money. What would an employer think about all this activity? And if retired, what about the security of that Social Security check?
There are 99 ways from Sunday short of classic police action that could shut down your life.
Cops can stop you by the side of the road and seize your cash. In Oklahoma, they’ve even emptied people’s checking accounts electronically, claiming that they suspected illicit profits from drug sales.
They can do anything they want and no one will believe they’re doing it and no one will believe you, or they’ll think you had it coming.
The problem is social trust and shared values. Can’t fix that kinetically.
That's what profiling is all about. Its not just racial profiling. A couple with a large amount of cash with three kids in the car driving to a used car lot passing through a drug interdiction checkpoint in a semi-rural area "fits the profile" that drug couriers carry large amounts of cash and take children along as cover. If you surrender the cash they will drop charges, and if you file a complaint later you will be offered the opportunity to self-surrender.
You can get back things seized in civil forfeiture but that costs $$$ and often is not worth it. I wish Elon Musk or some other billionaire with mega-money to burn would start funding legal challenges to such cases. Yes, even drug dealers have rights and those should be respected.
Re: Cops can stop you by the side of the road and seize your cash.
Civil forfeiture is the most serious breech of the Constitution in our lifetimes. And it's based in a specious legal theory that future generations will laugh at as we laugh at the Middle Ages for putting roosters on trial if they failed to crow for the dawn.
I fully agree. This stuff represents the very lowest point in the War on Drugs that began under Nixon and accelerated under Reagan. It was the final, worst backlash against the 1960s counterculture.
Good idea but this may be why the government might push for a cashless Society. Such as the US and other Cental Banks promoting Central Bank digital currency (CBDC).
I'm starting to wonder for real whether I can trust my bank. There's not only debanking, but corporate IT errors, and increasingly sophisticated scammers working to gain electronic access to my funds, not impossible since I do online banking, though I have avoided setting up Zelle.
For myself, I use a local bank, which has its advantages (they refund any transaction fees from other ATM's. I was pleasantly surprised to find they also refund foreign ATM fees as well!)
This! I made a similar comment above, before seeing yours; and I’ve been saying something like this for 20 years now. “ Jackbooted thugs” is a distraction— truly, fighting the last war.
Indeed. The current-day equivalent is your bored, cynical IT jockey in the back room manipulating everyone’s access to the world, while subsisting on Doritos and soda.
In other words, resistance is a romantic idea perhaps. Who are you going to point your gun at? Walk down the street and nobody’s around. Your problem is some guy working from home a thousand miles away. The server farm is hidden away somewhere in Elizabeth, New Jersey or maybe the uplands of Wyoming, an hour out of Casper. Or both.
They tried to De-bank Nigel Farage , the only reason they didn’t get away with it was because he is such a prominent public figure, but what of the unknown guy with no means to fight…
Yep. But what happens if your bank decides that it's too risky to do business with you, because the feds have declared you a potentially dangerous person? That's the kind of thing I worry about.
Rod, there are still state-chartered banks not under the federal regulatory regime. They have "S.A.", State Association, not "N."A.", National Association, at the end of their name. I don't see state regulators in red states like Louisiana going after those banks as you fear federal regulators would with federally chartered banks. Federalism still does exist.
Carville and company are entirely too interested in you.That’s not good news. On the Ukraine thing(I’ll broken record repeat my dissent from you if I have time), you’ve apparently gotten under their skin and they go after people who have . Consider the current harassment campaign against Tulsi Gabbard. Consider Tim Walz comments on the first ammendment. Consider that we have a Supreme Court justice who publicly worries about the restrictions the first amendment places on the government. Consider Reichs comments on Musk. Consider that Matt Taibbi got a home visit from the IRS when he piped up about the Twitter files.
On Ukraine: you are not a Putin stooge. That’s the kind of thing people say to discredit people who are saying things they don’t like. It’s somewhat like my bete noir Tim Walz calling Vance weird-oh I hate that. My attitude towards Walz dovetails with Walter Kirns who indicated in the last Racket podcast he’d avoid the man in a wax museum.Ok on to it!
I don’t even understand what, post Cold War the purpose of NATO is.I don’t think NATO fans can coherently explain that one. Oh it was to prevent Russia from retaking Eastern Europe. Post Soviet Russia had trouble holding on to Checnaya. They were going to conquer Eastern Europe? Under Yeltsin?😀I’m sure Putin would love to but he doesn’t have the wherewithal.Offering NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia was stupid, not because this actually constituted an existential threat to Russia but because we had nothing to gain from it and all it was going to do was piss off the Russians. Why risk confrontation when there nothing to gain. I believe the people who are generally called neo Cons want a large NATO that continually growls at Russia. Now I think the main reason Putin invaded Ukraine when he did is because he did fear some day, it might join NATO. That might of meant when he invaded ( which I suspect is something he’s always wanted to do))you’d have WW3. Fear of NATO expansion per se was not the cause of the invasion. I think and Putins comments suppport this , he wants Ukraine, period. In his most portentous, mystigog moments he’s quite the expansive Russian nationalist, imperialist.At minimum he wants it connected to Russia in the way Belarus is.Although I suspect he wants it more or less eliminated.So simply saying Russia invaded Ukraine because it feared NATO expansion is misleading. Russia didn’t think NATO was going to invade from Ukraine. It didn’t like the idea of a Ukraine it couldn’t dictate to. It’s ours!Yes, the US took a similar attitude towards Cuba. You can see where that lead.No talking about Chinese troops in Mexico is neither helpful nor illuminating. The US does not see Mexico as part of the US and therefore illegitimate.That is how many Russian nationalists see Ukraine.
Two comments by others on Ukraine:
1) Obama - the Russians are always going to be more interested ( invested) in Ukraine than the US
2)Tucker Carlson- invading Ukraine is bad. What difference does it make to the US?
I think I've written about this here before, but in Democrat controlled municipalities in Pennsylvania, Human Relations Commissions have popped up and their mission is to "work towards the elimination of discrimination and unlawful harassment of all people who work, live and have visited the Borough of Lansdale". Across the board, the appointed members of these Human Relations Commissions are progressive Democrats based on their social media profiles. I have applied twice and been rejected twice. My resume is very good (if I do say so myself), but because I am Republican, I am sure that is the reason I was rejected. Soon I will pen an opinion piece to the local paper denouncing these commissions as precursors to the Communist tribunals established after the October Revolution. It will be interesting to see how the Democrats react.
Based upon my experience the GOP will use that type of information against you. The elites do not have these problems, therefore to you will be assigned the cause.
Ascribed to Mark Twain "Don't complain and talk about all your problems. 80% of the people won't care. The other 20% will think you deserve them."
Phrases such as "former GOP operatives" and "misinformation and disinformation" are automatic triggers for considering the opinion suspect.
As Tucker has said, when all the wrong people are advocating for a position (folks like Carville, van den Leyden, and many of the most "esteemed" blob figures), then the best bet is to support the opposite plank.
<<<"While Trump, during his time in the White House from 2017-2021, often expressed his personal respect for Putin, the war in Ukraine has made an open relationship between the two diplomatically untenable. Orbán, according to the FORMER GOP OFFICIALS (emphasis mine), is stepping into the void. He has visited Trump in Florida twice this year.">>>
What do you want to bet these "former GOP officials" are something like the Lincoln Project, or of the like the 51 "former US intelligence officers" (of both parties) who signed the letter engendering false belief about the laptop? Maybe some of the same intelligence people?
So Orban is now the point-man for Trump's Russia support. And Rod is "paid to promote American Orbanism". Do you see? Pray for a hedge of protection around Rod. Not panicking, we don't know what is happening, but that paragraph is really concerning.
"What do you want to bet these "former GOP officials" are something like the Lincoln Project, or of the like the 51 "former US intelligence officers" (of both parties) who signed the letter engendering false belief about the laptop? Maybe some of the same intelligence people?"
Or the bureaucrats who simply ignored him. In business that gets you fired.
Ignored who, Trump? Well, we have anonymous comment from "officials" about support for Russia. Wonder who has done that before. Nothing to do with intelligence officials, I guess.
Gosh, forgot all about the Lincoln Project (the name not the people behind it). Yeah, possibly different peas but same basic pod, like most of the people associated with Bulwark.
James Carville is linking Rod Dreher with J.D. Vance because using dishonest campaign tactics is something he does. To Carville, a campaign tactic that defeats his enemies is always valid even if it is dishonest because Carville is a fundamentally dishonest person.
People like Ursula von der Leyen are to be wary of. Most European countries do not have the absolute free speech guarantees that America does. Will she and others in the elite silence dissent? I don't think the elites will go that far. But they will marginalize those who don't bow to the elite. They will ghettoize the opposition. Witness yesterday's AfD victory in Thuringia. AfD will not form a government despite its win, the other parties will coalesce and form their own government even if it means the Christian Democrats join with the Green and the Left Party. The voices of the 33 % of Thuringian voters are not to be heard, to be banished to the outer darkness.
But remember that the elites in Europe and America are rattled by the rise of national populism. Just reported today, Jorge Paoletti of the United Nations admitted that the UN elite is "terrified" with a second Trump presidency. "Absolutely nobody wants Trump......because the purpose of Donald Trump is to end the international institutions that somehow level the playing field. He wants America first." Trump will probably fail to destroy people like Ursula von der Leyen or Jorge Paoletti but it is thrilling that he produces fear in the elite. That is why he will earn my vote.
It is thrilling that he produces fear in the elite. However, I wouldn't want him in a position of power either. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes rise because liberals create a vacuum in which there appear to be no other alternatives. Trump isn't organized enough to be totalitarian, and he is too self-infatuated to develop institutions. But I find nothing to admire about him.
Just an Update: Sep 1, 2024 #WSJ #AfD #germany
"Far-right German political party AfD scored its first electoral win since its creation 11 years ago."
So far the world has not ended. Updates every two hours. /s
Watching this now, from Unheard
Katja Hoyer & Thomas Fazi: Political earthquake in East Germany
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmFxwMg8ULE
Sep 2, 2024 #UnHerd #afd #election
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to Katja Hoyer and Thomas Fazi discuss the recent German election results.
_____________________________________________________
In 66 Stephen Stills wrote a song "For What Its Worth"
"There's Something Happening Here. What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear."
There's been Something Going On for the last 10(?) years. Not sure What, But Something is.
There is a former communist with an anti-immigration platform making headway too.
Everyone who grew up in the sixties, well remembers that song.
It Applies to the recent past
Rod Dreher, fastest pen in the West. I am now deeply ashamed about all the time I've wasted at airports during flight delays.
No kidding! I’m in awe that Rod pounded this out in that short time, and it partly explains how he can be so prolific (which I’ve wondered about).
It takes me 90 minutes to successfully log onto airport WiFi...
And don’t by the way!
Yeah, I have to agree. I don't know how he has the time to write, and read as much as he does. He is as much speed reader as a speed writer...
Honestly, I don't know how I do it either. That's no false modesty; this is just what I do. It probably helps that I don't have a life outside of writing.
we have to change that!
You ought to go to Lake Balaton for a weekend and do a little fishing between writing.
You criticize (rightly IMO) those who fear Trump or Orban will criminalize dissent, but turn right around and express the same fear about Harris. That's equally paranoid. I can't speak to Hungarian affairs (that's your job, Rod) but in the US we will never criminalize political speech, absent some inconceivable catastrophe, the sort which leaves too many bodies to bury
I tend to agree with you on your last point, but there is a difference between what is de jure and what is de facto. There will never be a law banning dissent (of course there is precedent for this sort of behavior with the Alien and Sedition Acts) or an amendment to the constitution ridding ourselves of the 1st amendment. But, over the past half century the law, as it is written by Congress, has rarely stopped the executive branch from pursuing its own ends, even if those ends contravene the written law. Maybe, some of the executive branch’s agendas have been slowed down by lawsuits, but that’s only when respective agendas have been discovered by the public. If enough factions within the bureaucracy get behind a push to prosecute political dissenters, they’ll make it happen, and when the public gets wise to it, they’ll be hauled up before Congress and obfuscate and then hauled up before the courts and say, “I’m sawry 🥺 it won’t happen again.” But, the damage at that point will likely have been done.
I’m not saying that I agree 100% with Rod that American political persecution/criminalization is imminent, but the mechanisms are there for it to occur if those in power choose to go that direction.
Yes.
We came very damn close to criminalizing dissent during COVID. The mechanism for control was established during that "crisis" and remains in place.
Well, that's why they like war so much, right? One of the many reasons. Abraham Lincoln could suspend habeas corpus (the only feature of English law, Dr. Johnson said, superior to anything found across the channel), Wilson could throw Debs into jail, and FDR could intern innocent Japanese because there was a war on. Right? RIGHT?
That is a gross exaggeration. There is no viewpoint, however outlandish or self-serving or distorted, that did not get bandied about during COVID. Most of it was head-in-the-sand horse manure by spoiled brats who have been protected all their lives by so many vaccinations that they couldn't conceive of the need to take short-term public health precautions against a brand new pathogen. It was so INCONVENIENT! But they were heard, constantly.
So Zuckerberg is lying about political pressure being applied to Meta to disallow certain COVID related posts? If he's not, then there's absolutely no reason to believe that other outlets/platforms weren't targeted as well. There is a lot of discussion of this sort of narrative-control in both RFK Jr's and Rand Paul's books on the pandemic, all of it well documented. Noli timere. Tolle lege.
Zuckerberg may or may not be lying. I doubt you have ever believed Zuckerberg to be credible on anything else under the sun, but sometimes a criminal turning state's evidence is essential so who knows? Its like wondering who to believe about Jeffrey Epstein. I'm a First Amendment purist, and I think social media should be treated as a public utility in many respects. But political pressure to disallow certain posts is far from shutting down all dissemination and discussion. The government just doesn't have control to suppress. RFKJ and Rand Paul are not sources I would trust. But if you want a thoroughly researched book on the origin and handling of the pandemic, I ran across a copy of Brendan Borrell's "The First Shots" on a library bookshelf. It should be required reading to graduate high school.
"Most of it was head-in-the-sand horse manure by spoiled brats who have been protected all their lives by so many vaccinations that they couldn't conceive of the need to take short-term public health precautions against a brand new pathogen."
Oh, is this how it went down!?
What about the "spoiled brats" who knew that the CDC had already planned for something similar and who knew that masks wouldn't work against an infectious virus and that all prior plans had recommended nothing more than a 2-week max lockdown? What about the Diamond Princess quarantine, which made it clear by Spring 2020 that the virus was just a flu to anyone under age 70 or not with a prior condition? What about the people who've been proved right when they warned how the hysterical response would destroy businesses and destroy the educations of millions of kids?
Do you mean "short-term public health precautions" like the obvious bullshit that was 6 feet apart or the obvious bullshit that was closing down parks and beaches? And that stretched on for years!? And I really hope you don't mean the phony "vaccine" that doesn't stop transmission and that was forced on adults and children w barely any testing?
What you call "head-in-the-sand horse manure by spoiled brats" turned out to be free thinking by the few people that used their brains instead of falling for media-generated hysteria. If refusing the phony vax and refusing to be locked inside my house by panicked bureaucrats makes me a spoiled brat (and there are many like me), then I'm proud to be one—beats being a lemming.
Well let's take that one point at a time. Whatever accusations were bandied about, they were taken up fervently by people who simply worried that prudent measures to protect the lives of others on a mass scale were an infringement on "muh freedom." A mere 60 years ago, measles, mumps, and rubella were almost universal rights of passage of childhood. We were still vaccinated against smallpox, and most people alive could remember schools shutting down for weeks due to polio outbreaks. (There are old photos of children grouped around a radio to get their daily lessons). The Supreme Court considered and rejected the notion that mandatory vaccination is a constitutional violation a century ago, for very good reasons. The lives of everyone else in the community count for more than how you or I or anyone is feeling. But in 2020, the very idea that thousands of people should not ride their motorcycles from all over the country for a planned rally because of a mere virus clogging ICUs with more near-death patients than the staff could handle... well, that would be the cutting edge of fascism or communism or both to try to stop it. That's what I mean by spoiled brats.
CDC had been, quite rightly, planning for 'something similar" for many years, because everyone knew that "something similar" would emerge from somewhere sometime, and it wouldn't always stop short like SARS-1 and Ebola. You may remember that one of the first to warn us that this virus was going to be a major hazard to millions of people was... Rod Dreher! I know the full story about the back and forth on whether masks would work. Its all documented in Brendan Borrell's thoroughly researched "The First Shots." Read it and weep. There were plausible reasons to doubt anything but an N95 mask would stop a virus (and there weren't enough of those for medical personnel, especially since we depended on Chinese imports, and China was hoarding its own supply). But, subsequent research showed good reason to think more easily produced masks would stop transmission by 80 percent, and that was well worth it. The virus was not 'just a flu." First, flu is a specific family of viruses, and they are not coronaviruses. Second this was a virus virtually no human in the world had any immunity to. Third, whatever the details of the Diamond Princess, ICUs were overflowing with dying patients, while medical staff was just guessing how to treat this one since nobody had any previous experience to go by. Thankfully, by the time I caught it, doctors had figured out that a course of steroids at day 10 prevented the worst difficulty with getting oxygen through the lungs into the bloodstream, but that wasn't known for the first few months.
OF COURSE shutting down human interaction causes economic damage -- but lives were at stake. They really were. Now, for the future, I would have a team of economists develop a plan for putting the economy into a temporary deepfreeze. People who don't work can't pay rent or mortgage, landlords who don't collect rent can't pay their mortgage, banks that don't collect mortgages get dinged by federal regulators... follow the whole chain of dominoes and figure out how to suspend obligations without destroying everything, and then bring the economy back. Its was damaging, but necessary. The unfortunate thing is that it became a political football, so some made it less effective by flaunting necessary measures, then others insisted on renewing it just to flaunt that it HAD been necessary, when we couldn't keep that up so long. Of course this is a weakness of a complex economy. If everyone is on a family farm, quarantine is a lot easier to handle. Children evacuated from London during the Nazi blitz were psychologically damaged too, but it saved their lives.
Your state of denial tells me that you want what you want and screw the rest of the world because you don't care. You are exhibiting the attitude I compared to the gay men who refused to let public health authorities shut down gay bath houses during the original onset of AIDS, insisting they were going to f*** as many men as possible, and nobody was going to stop them. I expect those who said that and survived would be insulted to be compared to you, and you are insulted to be compared to them, and you both deserve the insult.
The vaccine worked just fine. It is precisely what allowed us to return to normalcy. Your state of denial undermines your credibility on anything. Don't confuse your own selfishness with free thinking. You are not thinking at all, just emoting at the most elementary animal level.
you expect me to read all that!?
my god, what a pompous tiresome windbag you are.
I stand by everything I wrote and history has my back. There was no difference in results bw maximalist and minimalist places like Cali/NY v Florida or in Europe bw Germany etc and Sweden. Covidmania was a destructive error that caused massive social damage and seriously injured an entire generation.
And there was no "vaccine" just a temporary immune boost that was oversold and undertested and that was used as a pretext to destroy civil liberties.
i regret responding to you and never will make the mistake again.
Just to address the "lives were at stake" comment. Logically, it would be better put, "some lives were at stake." Most individuals were not at risk. This was well known from data in Italy and China early in the lockdown. A better response would have been a limited, voluntary advisory to the elderly and obese to avoid public exposure. The rest should have been allowed to pursue their lives.
A few corrective facts. True, COVID , is not a flu. Being a corona virus, it is related to another coronavirus, the common cold.
It is not true that nobody was immune. Many are. In my own small circle, one 85 year old friend had to be tested prior to a hospital procedure to adjust her pacemaker. Tested positive, and never had a single symptom.
Vaccines did not work that well. I had the first two plus booster, and got it anyway a few weeks later.
I might add that I fell into 3 high-risk categories at the time, including age and asthmatic. A cold usually knocks me down for 3 weeks, and flu ends up with going on steroids for severe asthma uptick. COVID? Sick 4 days and then done. Period.
Vaccine also has severe and sometimes permanent side effects. Again in my circle, peripheral neuropathy after first shot, which is permanent. She is much younger.
Don't know about you, but our Chief-of-Staff let us know that they were monitoring social media and we would be disciplined if there were any divergent viewpoints.
That is a much larger issue. As a one time union shop steward, I would advocate that what any of us post on social media is no more our employer's business than what we say in a private phone conversation. The only caveats to that would be (1) If I reference my employer and position specifically, or (2) if I say something that directly implicates my ability to do my job. E.g., the EMT who posted "I would rescue every cat and dog in a burning house before I would worry about a nigger" could certainly be fired, because he had stated he could not be relied upon to do his job properly. Employers have been trying to control employees' speech and even who we vote for for centuries. When such cases go to court, the employer argument tends to be that employees 'represent their employer' at all times, but that simply isn't true. Actually, its Marxist -- Marx said by purchasing a man or woman's labor power the employer is effectively purchasing the entire person. But we must reject that notion.
And we outlawed freedom of assembly and religion
Well then, it all depends on what kind of spine each of us has.
You couldn’t be more off base here. Robert Reich has explicitly called for Elon Musk’s arrest. His crime is being famous and having opinions and expressing those opinions. The New York Times is running explicit pieces about reining in free speech. That is not paranoia.
And speech itself need never be criminalized as such. As Willie Stark says to Jack, “There’s always something.”
"Reich called on people to boycott Tesla and X and added, "Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X."" - So right now, it is international, Jon, with Rod flying into Berlin just after writing this. No, he is not Elon Musk and he says so. But it is OK for him to see that a police state could be coming even in the USA someday.
Right. Under which jurisdiction would Elon be arrested? It doesn't have to be the U.S. And Reich isn't Joe Soap. He's Clinton's former Labor Secretary.
That’s rather key. I think they’re hoping to egg on the Europeans to do their dirty work.
That's likely how it would go down.
The US has - up to now - been adamant that people within its borders cannot be extradited for 'political crimes.' For example, the Turkish government has tried for years to extradite multimillionaire and former Sufi cleric Fethullah Gulen on trumped up terrorism charges, and the US has repeatedly demanded proof of these allegations, proof that has yet to appear. Unless there is a major reversal Elon Musk is not going to be extradited to the EU or Brazil or anywhere else.
Reich doesn't need to specify a jurisdiction, because he has no power to act. He may be a former labor secretary, but he has no power of arrest anywhere.
As has been pointed out in these boxes this could very well be an invitation to Brussels to act.
Brussels needs an invitation? Anyway, we all know Europeans emerged from absolute monarchy and aristocratic principalities with very different notions of freedom and democracy than ours.
Reich is an old man making a damned fool out of himself. Robert DeNiro does the same thing, saying he'd like to punch out Trump. I think Reich ought to knock down a couple of Manhattans, watch a few episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and go to bed.
I think that's about right. And while I've seldom had a good word to say about Trump, I thought DeNiro made a damned fool of himself using a dubious epithet instead of making a coherent criticism. (Anyone who says f*** any politician, I've started responding "If that's the way you feel, by all means give them your phone number." Trump, Biden, Harris, I don't care. That's my response.)
If I were Musk I'd avoid Europe or Brazil (obviously), though I don't know if that's an option given his business.
I chose a Bolt over a Tesla for the simple reason that Tesla is less reliable, more expensive, and the Bolt is produced under a UAW union contract.
"Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison.
How many divisions does Robert Reich have?
Harold Stassen once recommended that all communists should be put in concentration camps, but it didn't happen. More sensible voices, like Thomas Dewey, responded, let them talk, they'll make fools of themselves. Which they generally did. Elon Musk will too -- to some extent he already has. Musk reminds me of Henry Ford, and that is not a compliment to either one.
Divisions are yesterday’s methods. Reich has an audience, one that can influence policy and procedures in both the public and private sectors.
And yes, Musk is embarrassing, considered as a public intellectual, which he isn’t.
He is a defender of free speech and highly visible in doing so. Kudos to Musk, the more who are on our team the merrier.
I was making a concession for reasons of etiquette, but yes, Musk is invaluable for free speech.
Tell the Russians and Ukrainians that divisions are yesterday's methods.
"How many divisions" is more broadly a question, so, this person said such and such ... does he have any power to inflict it on us effectively? Yeah, Reich has an audience, but he's mostly preaching to the choir.
We are not in danger from Russian divisions. We are in danger from the rapidly developing consensus against free speech, to be enforced through the corporate world, rather the way racist and homophobic attitudes have been policed through the corporate world.
You would rather stir the pot than examine the contents. "Divisions" are not ipso facto "yesterday's methods" since divisions are still in use in the world today. The USA has divisions too. They have not been used to suppress free speech, which is how things are supposed to work. The rapidly developing consensus you refer to is a balloon to be pricked, not a juggernaut to be feared. Like I said, it depends on how much of a spine we have.
Elon Musk has enough money he could buy a country and proclaim himself Lord High Poobah and Grand Master. He's pretty much proof against any public affliction this side of nuclear war (and he probably has a luxurious shelter in New Zealand prepped against that). Though she's pretty rich, she's not in Musk's league (almost no one is), but J.K. Rawlins proved pretty impervious to canceling. There was a country singer a while back who also laughed all the way to the bank.
Didn’t help Durov evade French law, such as it is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Durov
Reportedly the charges against Durov are only in part about content moderation, the most serious allegation concerns encryption of child pornography. Musk has nothing to fear on that account. Now, Tim Cook at Apple might have reason to worry.
If they are IN ANY WAY about content moderation, Houston, we have a problem.
But if the content IS child porn...?
The point I’m making is that riches didn’t buy Durov a free pass.
Too much of this stuff is in the eye of the beholder.
The French lost patience with Durov’s obstinacy in refusing to allow them to examine Telegram. That’s what this is about. They say there is child pornography on the app, but at this point, that’s a mere guess, not a charge with evidence to back it up. But the entire utility of the app is its encryption.
Oh, police can usually verify the existence of child porn by pretending to be procurers of it. Remember Rod quoting a NJ state trooper who claimed that about 10% of the adults in his state were viewing it. Given a number like that I have little doubt it's the same with the French (and to quote the immortal Basil Fawlty "They invented it").
Wake up and smell the coffee.
"...in the US we will never criminalize political speech..."
What you mean "we" kemosabe? I'm putting this one on ice. We'll see, OK?
Ready and counting...
Perhaps a little paranoia is called for.
The Right fears the Left and the Left fears the Right. There care provocateurs, foreign and domestic, pulling those strings. And I'm almost convinced this is ultimately due to demonic powers, seeking the ruin of the world.
I thank God that I am impervious to propaganda, and can see right through the phantom menace Hell raises.
...and not as these publicans.
You're right: I sound arrogant above. That's what I get for posting at a bike trail shelter with some bike club gabbling around me like a flock of contentious geese.
In actual fact I have come to my fearlessness at a very high, astronomically high price. And yet it's not wrong to thank God for adversity, and such things as we may learn thereby.
Jon, fear about Harris is irrational? She's an empty head, Jon. She'll do whatever she's told, laughing hard. There's a reason her handlers want a muzzle kept firmly over her mouth. Every time she opens her mouth, she reminds us that her 20-year political training was being a really good adultery-committing mistress to Speaker-of-CA-House (married) Willie Brown. You don't think she'll do whatever Soros and Obama and Pelosi tell her to do? She's in it for her billion. Obama is up to $500 million, only another $500 million to go. Censorship? No problem, just get Google and Zuckerberg on the phone.
I agree she is an empty head, but I don't know that she will do what she is told. She shares in common with Trump an abiding self-love, infatuation with seeing herself in office, and the notion that she has all the answers.
Re: . She shares in common with Trump an abiding self-love, infatuation with seeing herself in office, and the notion that she has all the answers.
You have just described almost every major politician.
Some politicians have redeeming qualities. A few actually try to promote themselves by paying attention to what they could actually deliver that would be good for the people. Neither of these two qualifies.
Chester Arthur was an empty-head and he didn't burn the country down.
"I thank God that I am impervious to propaganda,"
"11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—"
Jon is a kind man, but incomprehensible to me. To him, it's not the thick, multiformed web which is descending rapidly upon us which is the menace, it's noticing the fact which is the menace.
But then, that isn't really fair to Jon, I guess, because I have come to believe he's not a well meaning dissenter who wants to shake the rest of us out of our unwarranted alarm, he really doesn't see the web which is descending, at all. He doesn't see anything to be alarmed about. He thinks we are in the grip of group induced and mutually reinforced delusion. There were people on the Titanic who had places on lifeboats available to them but rejected their opportunities because they thought that being on the massive Titanic was a far better bet than being on a little lifeboat rowing around at night in the icy North Atlantic. Yes, that concussive feeling and its accompanying brief, grinding sound were disturbing, but come on!
Jon would have been one of them.
I've been reading Rod since he showed up at TAC in 2008. Jon's always been in the comments section. I think he's personally a good guy, but I think there's something wrong there that isn't just contrarianism. I think he's oblivious to how he comes off and writes so much that he genuinely doesn't remember a lot of what he writes. I would note as well that the "principled moderate" stand rarely seems to break against the left, but he came out hard against people like Kim Davis and Nick Sandman. (The latter later apparently being the fault of everybody but himself)
Pleas consider the possibility, even if you rate it minimal, that I know something you do not. My PTSD did not come from a hangnail or a bad hair day.
I wouldn't go that far. I have noticed a tendency for JonF to state a fact he knows, as if a fact I or another person had just stated must be false in order for the fact he has just stated to be true. Its along the line of "That wasn't in the book I read that relates at least as a tangent to what we are talking about." But its quite possible for one book to talk about China being the equal of Europe in a certain century, another to talk about India, another to talk about Africa, and all of them be accurate. It is also possible for all those situations to be very different in another century. He doesn't always consider that each of us may know something he does not.
See my reply above to Theodore, Andrew.
That doesn't justify it Jon. For one thing I know a LOT of things you don't. A lot of people here know things you don't, have ideas you haven't considered. Some of those ideas make you uncomfortable, some of them are things you don't want to be true, but are. Some of them have life experience you don't have and don't appreciate you trying to tell them how to feel about it with your glib rejoinders.
Rod knows a lot of things you don't know, and he's gracious enough to put up with you dismissing him day after day after day. He's very well read, experienced, well travelled and very very smart. You KNOW that. Show our working boy more respect, he's damn well earned it.
Get some help, psychological and spiritual, and do it now. Maybe go up to the Monastery in Reseca, it's not that far from you. You need to be here less, but you also probably don't need to be alone in your own head.
Andrew, you have been very kind to me on occasion, and I thank you for that. But you really don't know what you're dealing with in this. And in these larger matters you (and Rod, etc.) have been seduced by those with evil intent-- definitely humans, maybe dark powers of Hell who plot great ruin. Be certain I am not just blaming the Right-- I also blame the Left who also allow themselves to be seduced by lies*. A plague on both houses I'd like to scream-- but plagues have a way of spreading beyond their targets, so, no, I won't.
* As an aside: One can lie quite effectively with the truth, and deceive with facts.
Criminalization will occur if other methods of censorship do not work. It can also occur by de-fanging the First Amendment protections, as is already under way regarding freedom of religion. Don't be so dense as to say "It can't happen here!" The First Amendment isn't divine writ, nor did the Bill of Rights descend from heaven.
At that point, I would ask how they're going after the 2nd Amendment.
It's kinda dangerous to try and enforce prohibitions against it.
Hardly. They could outlaw guns completely tomorrow and no one would do a thing other than protest. They’d ignore the protestors and proceed to criminalization forthwith. Only court actions are slowing it down currently. There will be no actual armed resistance.
Color me skeptical. I think gun ownership is the one issue that would meet with real resistance.
I’d love to think you’re right. But I have serious doubts about the fortitude of our actual citizenry as it is.
The Bill of Rights and other Constitutional guarantees are only as good as the justice system that enforces them. See how well the protections are "protecting" the J6 hostages, who are being subjected to unequal "protection under the laws," "cruel and unusual punishments," and denied a "speedy trial." That's because (1) J6 riot was a "fed-surrection" (see Ray Epps and the Capital police opening doors and escorting "rioters" on tours), and (2) The Wash DC justice system is "unjust" and "corrupt". NYC judicial system 2nd place runner-up for most corrupt judiciary in the USA. Judge Merchan will sentence Trump on Sept 18th on "trumped up" charges. Trump's now under an unconsitutional "gag" in which Trump cannot criticize the corrupt, biased judge and the judge's daughter (who is enriching herself--$12 million-plus-and-running) on the Trump case). Judge Merchan and daughter ought to be called out for what they are: "judicial thugs, bought and paid for."
But I always wonder who would confiscate the guns. Certainly not the police. They would be overwhelmed, and know it. I can't see the military doing it. The military doesn't swear an oath to the President, but to the Constitution.
Yes. Resistance sounds good in principle, but few want to actually take the hit when push comes to shove. Unless there's a major resistance it's gonna be you, the lone rebel, against the feds.
We make poor street fighters. Too much to lose.
People imagine jackbooted thugs and gun owners courageously standing up against them, but I don’t think that’s the way it will play out at all. I have thought for years now that people will be pressured indirectly. Think of how many people ply their trade only through the “privilege“ of professional licensing. Now, imagine you’re a plumber or electrician or teacher or doctor or lawyer or accountant, or whatever—you’re going through a divorce, and your estranged spouse lets slip to her attorney that you have guns now deemed illegal. Borrowing a page from Justin Trudeau‘s playbook, the state threatens to destroy your livelihood.
The above describes a kind of terrorism tactic, because news of this sort of thing will spread. Then, the neighbor’s wife, who was never crazy about her husband‘s guns, but tolerated them, now wants them out of the house. “Think of the children!” Variations on this theme continue to play out. Holdout gun owners become more and more isolated from society, and live under constant threat of their world crashing down. What’s “resistance” here? There’s no one to shoot.
You ever see that Will Smith movie “Enemy of the State”? It’s more than 25 years old now, at this point. Dystopia is here. Our lives can be up-ended with the flick of a switch.
I need to find a woman who loves guns 😅
I jest, but I wonder if this will be another issue that divides men and women even further than now.
It's off topic, but I've always wondered why feminists don't support gun ownership. A man will think twice about harming someone if they know they're packing heat.
"Guns for Women!" should be a winning campaign slogan.
Trevor, come to PA. Women love guns in PA, and men too. They are responsible gun owners. No one comes into another's house unannounced and uninvited, especially at night.
Exactly! This is the "soft" in "soft totalitarianism." Americans will almost certainly not face jail for their contrarian opinions. But that doesn't mean that they won't be forced to pay a price as a way of punishing dissent.
Think about it: if you were a professor at many US colleges, and you offered the opinion in class that adding transgenderism to Title IX was a violation of women's rights, you would be in a world of trouble, and might even be left fighting for your job. You'd have to be a brave sumbitch to do it.
A professor that said that would be immediately suspended in an Ivy League college, if not summarily fired. There would be a lawsuit, but the Ivies are rolling in cash, rolls right off their back. See Prof. Joshua Katz, run out of Princeton for stating an "racist" opinion in Quilette.
We'll be squezzed out of our lst and 2nd amendment and other rights by a transition to CBDCs with bank freezes (that's why the Left insists on a transition to digital money that they will surveil and control). See Canadian trucker's strike. TrueDope stopped it by freezing the truckers' bank accounts. Presto. He fired a Canadian worker for having contributed to the strikers. "Give-Send-Go" was hacked and there was a disclosure of everyone who had contributed to the trucker strike.
It's coming, and faster than we think: 1984, Big Brother, Double Think and Double Speak.
Not completely off topic, here is a story from the weekend NYTimes a friend of mine gifted me (paywall for everybody else). Eight percent is huge. What they don't share are the attrition rates, funny about that:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/black-enrollment-affirmative-action-amherst-tufts-uva.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HE4.Stz_.bUOwQZ0IafYc&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
A case of Soft Totalitarianism- New York Attorney-General Letitia James' financial destruction of VDare.
Very realistic scenario.
One of the features of our Beloved Police Procedurals is the reluctant or hostile citizen who is browbeaten into co'-operation with the police by threatens of loosing offical licenses or being inspected to dearh.
Exhibit A: Jordan Peterson
Turdeau: bank account freeze. "How you gonna live now, gun-boy?" So simple.
Jon, that’s not true. Look broadly across the country at all the institutions controlled by liberals and progressives. Do they favor free speech? I don’t think Harris will necessarily promulgate laws against political speech — we have a First Amendment—but there will be lots of administrative harassment. Eg, what they do to Tulsi Gabbard making it hard to fly.
And they will pack the court. The only reason FDR wasn't able to do so was there were independent Democrats like Burt Wheeler of Montana as well as Republicans who weren't having it. Oh, and those nasty segregationist southern senators as well. Look at today's Democrat side of the aisle. Profiles in courage, right?
And yet we say what we want, within very broad limits.
This fear is quite possibly of demonic origin. As I read these furious responses they sound like desperate denials of addicts when confronted with the truth of their condition.To be healthy in the spirit one must say No (144 pt bold red font, maybe an f-bomb with it) . And beware that fear's fraternal twin, Hate, also does not come creeping in.
Well, you’re right, on some levels, to remind us of the potential to become what we hate. This can happen with any political movement.
But you’re discounting completely the very notion of vigilance and prudence in our dealings with political groups and figures who have been quite explicit.
Solzhenitsyn when he lived in the United States questioned our free speech even back then, pointing out that we may be able to say and write what we want, but if we can’t get it published openly that is not true free speech.
2 words, JonF: Julian Assange. The people most likely to have their free speech rights violated by the government are those who have a large audience. Hobbits like us (I'm excluding Rod because he has a large audience) are less likely to face shut-down by the government but definitely are subject to blacklisting and boycotts by social mobbing. An outspoken, conservative bodega owner in my town was driven out because progressive social media mobs on Facebook managed to get much of the town to boycott the store. It was a haven for like-minded conservative thinkers and Rod readers, but there weren't enough of us to keep him in business. And I could tell stories about being harassed by people who reported me to HR for opinions I shared about the company's support for abortion--before I blessedly retired from corporate America.
Governments take a dim view at espionage, always have and always will. And some of the stuff Assange released may have gotten people killed.
I won't discuss his Swedish or Australian legal issues-- my comments elsewhere in this thread apply to the US.
Exactly!
It all depends on growing a spine. Woodie Allen's "The Front" was basically made by a bunch of cowards who were fantasizing decades later about what they wish they had had the courage to do when the Blacklist and the Red Scare were running rampant. The movie Trumbo is about a modicum of undermining the Blacklist until it was a hollow shell and then dispensing with the charade. Not a profile in courage, but closer to the right way to fight back. Perhaps those who wish to stand up for free speech can learn from all of this.
Martin Ritt directed The Front. Not a great movie- but ok. Part of what Ritt was showing was in Jewish New York/ Communists were a fact of life. The character played by Woody Allen is told so and so was a Communist- his response is - oh yeah- like I’m not- but that was part of the milieu . Ritt was blacklisted.The movie was after the fact. It couldn’t have been otherwise. It’s not cowardly and your comments seem out of place- maybe unfair.
I don't know if Allen directed any of the movies he starred in, but they are all referred to as Woodie Allen movies. In America in the 1930s communists were a fact of life -- and that wasn't entirely a bad thing, partly because they had not the misfortune to have any chance of taking power. The cowardice was in the 1940s, not when the movie was made. At the end of the movie, there is a long list of credits of people who were blacklisted. Not one of them told HUAC to "Go f*** yourselves." Someone should have. Kirk Douglass finally told a HUAC staff person, who I hire to write a script is my business. At any rate, since the discussion here is about using means short of actual censorship and criminal prosecution for prohibited speech, perhaps there is something to learn from how people responded to use of this sort of intimidation in the past.
Ritt was blacklisted because he was very, very left-wing at a time early in the Cold War. He ended up having a fine career directing. "The Long Hot Summer" and "Hud" were especially good.
Those were good movies. Ritt also got favor for directing Sounder .Ritt was part of particular milieu. New York , Jewish , Communist/ - that was part of what he was trying to show in The Front. As to who directed Woody Allen’s films Herbert Ross directed Play It Again Sam - from a play written by Woody Allen ( Konigsberg).The rest were directed by Woody Allen. On American Communism , I often think of Irving Howes comments on Vivian Gornicks Romance of American Communism/ . Howe commented on Gornicks notion of their positive contributions, they have no idea how much they harmed the American Left.
Presumably the following comment by Tim Walz leaves you untroubled:
WALZ:
I think we need to push back on this. There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.
Or this from Robert Reich on Musk:
Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X."
Or:Hawaii lawmakers demand TSA explanation for Tulsi Gabbard's inclusion on terrorist watchlist
0r:IRS visited Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi’s home same day as congressional testimony
Or:My biggest concern," said Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday, "is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways."
All the above are disturbing but what really stood out for me were Dem reps Plaskett & Wasserman Shulz calling Taibbi a "so-called journalist" during that hearing. Taibbi, whose writing c.v. is longer than Plaskett & Wasserman's monthly credit card statement for haircare products... Unbelievable, but that's where we're headed.
I was reading Taibbi back when he was in Moscow mocking Putin (and all other comers) to his face.
Here's a bit of contact re Ketanji Brown Jackson's line for anyone who cares about context: https://reason.com/2024/03/19/hamstringing-the-government-a-viral-narrative-distorts-ketanji-brown-jacksons-understanding-of-free-speech/
No, Aguiñaga said, because that's still protected speech, no matter how dangerous.- that’s my position as well.
Well, that does give us the necessary context for her remark, which does have some validity. It's a tricky fine line.
We who notice how often remarks of those we favor are taken out of context must be quick to notice when those on our side do it too. We always profit by having a truer understanding of any incident even if that seems to momentarily remove ammunition from "our side".
We must value truth and clear understanding, more than any one party or faction. This us true for all people, and doubly true for anyone identifying as Christians. We should not be afraid of any truth, whether that truth supports our politics or not.
The Tulsi Gabbard persecution is truly outrageous! I can’t believe that the excrement isn’t interacting with the rotating blade nationally in the US on that one!
Walz is wrong. Of course so were Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy and a lot of other people. I don't care what ideology it comes from, the First Amendment is NOT about protecting worthy speech. It exists because we don't trust any government official to make the judgement, which speech is worthy of protection. Accordingly, we all put up with a lot of godawful nonsense, so that nobody can suppress our own speech if they think it is godawful nonsense, or "misinformation' or "hate speech" or an attack on "our democracy."
There are limits to free speech: Perjury; Fraud; Slander and Libel; Direct and immediate excitation to panic or violence.
I do think it's not inappropriate to require fact checking in publications. Every one of us makes mistakes and we should be willing to own up to and fix them. And should we be blithe about hostile foreign provocateurs spreading lies among us? I would OK with such people being told to get on the next jet out of this country.
Those are not limits to free speech. Those are ways in which speech can be used to commit a tort or a crime. The distinction is highly relevant to the question of prior suppression, a key point in the Pentagon Papers case. Maybe Daniel Ellsberg can be prosecuted for theft of government documents, maybe the New York Times can be sued for libel, but the government cannot suppress the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
So, perjury is a crime, not because a person is not free to lie, but, because telling a lie in court under oath is a crime, as it perverts the process of criminal justice. The same lie, spouted on the street, is not subject to criminal prosecution.
That lie may be subject to a suit for slander, or if printed, libel. Crying "Fire" in a crowded theater induces panic. If it results in death, that may be some level of criminal homicide.
When you say "its not inappropriate to require fact checking in publications," what authority do you reference? Journalists must submit their articles to a government fact-checker before being permitted to publish? It would be good ethical business practice for editors to require and perform fact checking? Articles which lie about someone should be subject to libel suits? The last is of course consistent with current law. The second used to be commonly accepted practice, but not legally enforceable.
The kind of broad, vague sentiment Walz expressed (if he is being quoted accurately) is to take this kind of specific and expand it to almost infinite elasticity. "Speech is violence," etc. If I don't approve of your speech, I can have you arrested. Etc.
I no where said "govermment fact checkers". However I would not have a problem with media outlets being required to hire their own fact checkers, and to print apologies or retractions for mistakes that are made. Once upon a time that was just accepted business practice. Then they all got cheap and hurried. I am just suggesting a return to previous standards.
“Required” implies force, which in a civilized society is the government. A free country allows Alex Jones to do his thing unmolested.
In the old days, we had the “capital gate” keeping trash from inside publishing houses. When a print run required large resources in capital to produce, publishers were very good at ensuring accuracy (and decently proofread copy).
Today, we expect readers to do that work. Some still do. Many don’t. But that’s what freedom of the press looks like.
If something is to be "required" then the requirement must be enforced.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
Antecedent to that question: Who allows? Who forbids?
"And should we be blithe about hostile foreign provocateurs spreading lies among us?"
Of course not. But the answer is to identify the foreign provocateurs and counter with better speech. For example, Facebook should have an 'Index of Russian Facebook Misinformation Pages' page that we could all visit to see and laugh at.
Agents of foreign governments (who are not American citizens) have no constitutional rights to a welcome in this country. I see no problem with tossing malicious ones right back where they came from.
Resident aliens do have constitutional rights. You might find 'tossing malicious ones right back where they came from' to not be that easy.
Like James Joyce?
America's libel laws are very generous to free speech in comparison to Britain's. In America, you really have to say something way over the top. Didn't Carol Burnett win a big suit with National Enquirer forty years ago? It had to do with her getting drunk with Henry Kissinger. Burnett does not drink so she sued. But that's rare.
You're living in a dream world, Jon. If the past five years have taught us anything, it has shown how remarkably easy it is to implement soft dictatorship among an easily manipulated populace guided by the latest top-down policy initiatives disseminated among legacy media. These days, it only takes a few months to go from "this could never happen" to "we need to do this for the sake of democracy" and to demonize anyone who tries to resist The Big Lie.
"But think of the children. If it [almost anything] saves the life of one innocent child, it surely worth it!"
I thought long before covid that if Fascism ever came to America it would be in a white lab coat holding the hand of a child.
Reminds me of Florence King who professed immediate skepticism over any politician crying "Think of the children!"
Or as someone said above "Lives were at stake." Of course it is not a true statement as a universal affirmation, but it was, and still is, being used as a cudgel to force assent.
We do take heavy-handed emergency measures when disaster threatens. Hurricane evacuations. Curfews during riots. Do you object to those? If not then there's really no overarching principle being debated here, just the pragmatic questions of what measures are justified in what sort of emergency.
Having been through a few of both of those, emergency measures were days long at the most. Not the months to years of the Covid Lockdowns. And, given the risk of Covid was specific and not universal as for a hurricane or riot, the analogy does not hold.
I think you are a bit new here? I'm very much on record here saying the initial lockdowns were prudent given that Covid was a Great Unknown and better safe than sorry. By summer of 2020 we knew we were not facing a 21st century Black Death and the measures should have sealed back to few sensible precautions.
Come on Jon, that’s being naive. Go back to the last election 2020. 51 intelligence agencies publicly stated the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, it’s now a fact that was a bold face lie as the FBI had the laptop! Mark Zuckerberg recently confessed that Meta was pressed to silence factual information about Covid, vaccines and the laptop. So it’s already been happening.
While some may want to legislate away constitutional protections, as per the NYT, governments can make unwanted speech DE FACTO illegal by harassing and intimidating dissidents. Which results in the same thing.
It’s important to bear in mind that mind, the left do not believe in free speech. They say this openly.
Well, nothing incriminating as yet has come from that laptop even though Tucker Carlson claims to have its contents and is supposedly shocked by them. The only thing so far released by the those with access (and political motivation to release the material) has been a lot of nude pics of Hunter-- and shame of the GOP for going that route.
Prosecutors used texts and photos from the laptop as evidence during the trial back in June.
OK, but obviously nothing of any political consequences. House Republicans have had access for many months but so far all the public know is what Hunter looks like in the buff-- there have been no impeachment articles forthcoming about his father. are even House Republicans part of some grand Democratic conspiracy?
It WOULD have had political consequences had it been allowed to be discussed broadly in the media. But the mainstream media embargoed the story completely.
The place for misdeeds to be prosecuted is a court of law. And high officials like the president can be impeached.
Maybe the answer why these things have not happened is a very simple: There's nothing significant on that laptop unless you think nude pics signify.
Those 51 vipers actually said, “it has ALL THE MARKS of Russian disinformation…” thereby leaving themselves an out.
JonF311, you express a deep faith in our constitution being upheld; "the dogma lives loudly in you." I hope your faith is justified, but I have my doubts about the future.
Oh, come on, Jon, you and I both know that there are ways to criminalize dissent that don't involve passing laws. There are all kinds of administrative penalties. For example -- and I'm going to lay this marker down right here -- it is possible to get the IRS to audit politically problematic people. They can use TSA to make it burdensome to travel, like what they've done to Tulsi Gabbard. They can offer friendly suggestions to financial institutions to de-bank the dissenters. That sort of thing.
And what you fail to grasp is that the Left can tell these fearful nightmare tales about the Right too-- and they do. Their actions now are predicated on the fact that they perceive you folks as a very real threat to their liberty and maybe even their lives.
Please think about this Rod:
Something terrible is coming. Beyond your darkest dreams of terrible. But instead of coming together despite differences (and yes, I get it, those differences are real and deep), fear and hate have left people divided and at each other's throats.
Doesn't that sound exactly like a hellish strategy?
Sure, there are tons of folks on the left that literally believe a Handmaid Tale type future is just around the corner, Trump will make himself dictator for life, and his storm troopers will march them off to camps. But there is zero evidence for that. There is a lot of evidence of creeping totalitarianism from the left, and they have the universities, MSM, and most of the tech world to back them up. Anyone who works in a large corporation or has kids in the school system or at college has seen direct evidence of which way the wind is blowing.
Sure, some of the angst is overblown, but it's not a 50-50 balance. From reading your comments you seem desperately to want to believe both sides are equally contributing to the division.
"Their actions now are predicated on the fact that they perceive you folks as a very real threat to their liberty and maybe even their lives."
That's because they buy into the BS hype from their side. People are divided by misperceptions of those on the other side, spread by media and politicians, and soon those misperceptions become reality. And yes, even if hell hasn't directly sown those misperceptions, surely it laughs over them.
"Blessed are the peacemakers", but those peacemakers are few and often ignored.
Re: That's because they buy into the BS hype from their side
Oh, I very much agree! You folks don't see it here,. but I take the paranoia and catrastrophizing on the Left to task no less when I run across it in a forum where I can comment. They don't like that any more than people here do.
Sue the bastards. Don't cringe in dark corners whispering in fear.
Think of Sam Francis, marginalized by fellow conservatives like Linda Chavez and John J. Miller. Francis was financially damaged by being cracked down on.
Do not bring up anarcho tyranny or you know who, who clearly doesn’t understand the concept, will start up again.
"in the US we will never criminalize political speech, "
Well we might not, but the government has a plenty of workarounds.
So do We The People. Although I am fond of quoting from a senate hearing circa 1962 inquiring into whether the government in Saigon was the paragon of democracy our government was proclaiming it to be. A state department rep replied to a question with some exasperation "Senator, I know Americans would never put up with having to carry photo ID -- but its different over there!"
Serious question (since I wasn't born yet in 1962): Were there no driver licenses with pictures back then?
There were not. My first provisional license at age 16 was a pink slip of paper with my name, address, and license number typed on it. My first adult license at 18 in 1972 was a similar blue slip of paper. My first license with a photo on it was obtained in California in 1975, but most states took several more years to catch up. California has always been a leader in suppressing civil liberties.
Thanks for the info! My first DL was in 1983, and it had a picture. Though it looked cheap as all get out. In 1993 I was refused service at a bar in New York state because my Michigan license looked like something that had been run off a cheap copy machine.
Ah, that must have been the model half way between my first license and the plastic numbers we all carry now.
That began in Pennsylvania in 1982. I had about four expired paper New Jersey licenses an older friend gave me that I used to go to bars before I was 21.
Given all that continues to dribble out about the US Government directly threatening social media to suppress actual news, the worry is less that political speech will be criminalized than that the government has the power to simply make it increasingly difficult to get out.
But I also very much doubt the US will long resist the temptations to criminalize political speech overtly - there are enough recent stories, for instance, about pro-life picketers getting arrested, or getting early AM state or federal police raids, for protesting at abortion clinics - and this has been a problem , I should note, for decades. We also had the Biden administration (admittedly hamfistedly) attempting to create a "disinformation tsar". And then there are the religious conscious rights routinely attacked (especially during the Obama administration), of business owners over all sorts of matters, under the invidious guise of "equal protection".
The battle will be more subtle to protect free speech here, but neither party has covered itself in glory actually defending it.
Dribbling about threats is one thing. Criminal legislation is another.
My concern is that over time, they won't need formal legislation to get the effects they want. A court case here, a "Dear Colleague" letter there, some vague allegations about needing to clamp down on criminal activity on a network...
Dear Colleague letters are effective because they are accepted. They have no binding legal force. They can be followed up by legal action, but that is civil in nature, and there are a diverse range of judges who might get the case. Court cases can be appealed, and they can attract wide publicity. Its not that everything is cool, its all been worked out, but there is a good deal that can be done to challenge the steam roller.
But such challenges take $$$$.
See above. We need laws to protect workers from workplace retaliation over political activities, and speech, outside the workplace. Yet the lingering affection on the Right for "heroic job creators" seems to suppress down any thought of such a thing.
I don't know where you're getting that - the push to punish private speech via employee termination, for speech made off-hours, comes predominantly from the left.
Steady and persistent soft pressure that gradually redefines what is socially acceptable does what a formal decree would not.
See: The Soviet Union. Those who had something to say the authorities didn't like couldn't say it in official forums. but they could and did by word of mouth and via samizdat publications. No one has ever been able to stop word of mouth, and the samizdat option is still a viable one. Step back in time two millennia: The Christian revelation was spread word of mouth and private writings (which, happily, came at a time when relatively "cheap" codices, the first books, could be passed around and read aloud to groups)
Re: And then there are the religious conscious rights routinely attacked (especially during the Obama administration), of business owners over all sorts of matters
I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but IMO there's a question of whether employers should have the right to impose their religious views on their employees. Outside some very narrow exceptions involving actual religious roles, I vote a resounding No on that-- workers have rights too. which is also why I occasionally suggest we should have laws that would protect employees who engage in political activities outside work which their employer does not approve of.,
Christian schools having to defend themselves for their employee conduct policies and opposition to gay marriage.
The funeral home who went to the Supreme Court (and lost) over insisting on sex-differentiated employee dress codes because an obviously cross-dressing man was weirding out the mourners.
Hobby Lobby having to go to the Supreme Court to get out of paying for abortions in its health insurance policies.
And dozens of smaller cases besides.
Of course then there is Masterpiece Cakes.
You say " there's a question of whether employers should have the right to impose their religious views on their employees".
No, there isn't because it's not actually happening.
The issue at Hobby Lobby was not "abortions", which are NOT required coverage under the ACA, but rather contraception which is required coverage. You seem like a very good guy so I have to assume you have been misinformed in this. Hence why I inveigh against propaganda and disinformation.
But I will insist it is none of Hobby Lobby's business what (legal) things their employees do with their compensation, and that includes their health insurance. It does not belong to the company (and the workers certainly do not)-- it is a benefit people have worked for.
"Morning after pills" are chemical abortion enablers, I am not misinformed.
Again, YOU do not run a business, so I have to assume YOU are misinformed about insurance and its financing.
The COMPANY buys the policy, negotiates the rates and terms, and has to pay for the majority of it on the workers' behalf, giving the company a direct stake in the insurance policy and what it covers.
The company may pay for the policy, but the workers earn it by their labor- it's theirs, not the employer's. Empters have no business meddling any more than they do in their employees' political beliefs and actions outside the workplace.
"Last year, Calgary passed a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that bans “specified protests” inside and outside any buildings owned or leased by the city."
https://thepostmillennial.com/canadian-pastor-convicted-of-criminal-harassment-for-opposing-drag-queen-story-hours
On its face, I agree that protests should not blockade individual citizens seeking to enter a building for a lawful or routine purpose. The protest can leave ten feet of space for people to walk by. Of course a labor dispute is another matter. One of my favorite All In The Family episodes was when Archie lectured meathead on how he always wore his best suit when picketing during a strike, and there was no violence. Edith remarked "Except when someone tried to cross the picket line."
Unless I’m misreading the article, the pastor in question wasn’t blocking access.
I was referring to the word "access." The article is actually a bit unclear, since its a broad summary posted on a source clearly supporting what the pastor did. Maybe his "protest" was more aggressive than he made it sound when facing criminal charges. Some Black Lives Matter protesters did the same. I don't know who is willing to mask their actions in innocuous language. I wouldn't be surprised if the law or the way the judge rules is an over-reach. I view what it should be the same way I view sidewalk counseling outside an abortion clinic. Pro-life activists have an undoubted right to be present, to offer their advice, even to call or exclaim, but not to grab, obstruct, block, etc. Yes, I know efforts have been made to keep them 100 feet of more from the entrance. Ten feet is about as much as I think the First Amendment allows. You have a right to express, not to coerce. People who are passionate about whatever have been known to cross that line.
Ha ha ha. The federal government weaponizes federal agencies to persecute those who dissent. See Tulsi Gabbard among others.
I haven’t read Return of the Gods by Jonathan Cahn, but I do not recall any discussion of perhaps Mars/Ares or Pluto/Hades being in the book. The perversion of the human race to embrace and worship war and death is as deep as any impulse the sexual perversion. Everyone who knew much about Iraq knew what would come after the invasion. It was only a matter of what direction it would take and how quickly. With Ukraine, I thought the war would be over quickly and then turn into a western-backed insurgency. I was wrong, but no one in good faith could ever have said that the brinksmanship with Russia would end well.
People love war and death. The military is not a Christian institution. War is one of the four horsemen of the Bible. People are awes with machines designed to kill and destroy on a large scale. Flyovers at sporting events. And so on. I guess you could say Ares has never really left us. It is not good now that we have perversion after perversion, each worse than before, but now we have people pushing on with something far worse, nuclear annihilation of the human race. And that is what we’re not supposed to call out, I guess.
Also, Rod, if I remember correctly, you were leery of Vance accepting the nomination at this point in his career. If you have so much influence over the man, I would suggest that he would not have done so. I’ve seen Vance speak in person, back before he was even a senator. He had a thoughtfulness about him that is rare among everyone, especially among politicians. I guess maybe it is true about most who hold office, that they are easily influenced by those around them, but I got the impression from him that he would influence those around him just as much as they influence him.
I too think that censorship is coming. It is what happens when your positions become so absurd that they go beyond the power of normal persuasion to win an argument. No one could say with a straight face that communism was working, so instead of admitting and fixing the problem, the answer was to silence those who pointed that out. Our system is becoming g so broken that it is getting beyond the ability of persuasion to make a case as well.
"Nice hair salon, you have here. It would be a shame if the Health Department showed up weekly."
That's nothing new. The Chicago Board of Health has had some of the strictest regulations in America, but in the heyday of the Daley machine, it was only enforced against a business that had a disfavored sign in the window, like "Adamowski for Mayor."
They are flat out making Rod blessed - that's twice in two days now (Carville, Politico). Blessed? - - "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (Matthew 5:11)"
Yes, we can believe that the USA is probably the safest place on earth for free speech, at the moment, due to our constitution. Pray it remains a safe place. Let's pray for Rod, trust he will be able to continue to speak freely. We can recognize that he is being maligned for free speech, much of it in favor of overtly Christian values, recognize that God prepared him for this role, that Rod is going to continue to speak, and that God is with him no matter what may happen.
Yes, great comment!
I would consider the USA to have very limited free speech. From experience, if someone chose to expose Mr. G's incendiary comments on an incendiary platform, someone might fire Mr. G, or not hire him, or socially erase him. Mr. G. has experienced this before. So, if Mr. G does not have freedom of speech, who are you who experiences otherwise?
Happy Labor Day.
Strictly speaking. free speech refers to a lack of legal impediments or sanctions, not to private actions. When it comes to other people, not officials, no one has a right to have others agree with them. Free speech also means that even vehement and vitriolic disagreement must be allowed. When it comes to employers we're dealing with a power imbalance (yes that lefty trope is sometimes a valid analysis ).Above, and not for the first time, I've suggested laws to protect employees from retaliation for outside the workplace actions and speech. I've never been able to stir up any interest here for that idea. Apparently people would rather curse the darkness than light candles.
The thing to remember about Russia/Ukraine is that the primary reason that the neo-con/neo-lib establishment supports Ukrainian "independence" is that Russia is a hindrance to globalization. Basically, it won't play our game. Everything else is secondary.
Mearsheimer: "If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy."
This is a fascinating paragraph. I don't believe that the West would settle simply for the third prong, because that in and of itself doesn't do much to lessen Russia's role as a speedbump to globalization. What is likely is that the West would initially agree to the third prong only, but then work towards prongs one and/or two anyways, acting deceptively like we always do.
I do not trust Putin/Russia to play fair, but it mustn't be forgotten that we've given him no reason over the last ten years to trust us either. This is not to posit some sort of moral equivalency, but rather to make the fairly simple observation that BOTH sides have for the past decade lied like old rugs, the neo-con/neo-lib adjacent hacks at Politico, etc., being chief among them.
I don’t follow that argument. Let me try to explain. As an international economic actor, Russia isn’t all that important. China it’s not.So the idea that these globalists want a war in the Ukraine to promote their globalist agenda doesn’t make all that much sense.
They didn't want the war to begin with. But once Putin invaded what were they supposed to do? You poke the bear for 10 years, yet you're surprised when it takes a swipe at you? That's some real hubris there. Or else some real stupidity.
But that poking the bear cliche explains nothing. The bear was hungry. The poking had little or nothing to do with it. It wanted food.
And it took ten years for it to get around to dinner? Come on, man. Can't believe you're buying the narrative from the same clowns that got us into Iraq.
I was opposed to that consistently at the time.I’m a long time long term anti interventionist. Because I don’t buy into neo con BS doesn’t oblige me to accept Putin’s BS.
That Putin is a BS-er doesn't mean that the globalists aren't. Even if Putin were "literally Stalin," that doesn't mean Zelensky is Churchill. Etc., etc. In no sense has the West cornered the market on truth here.
I'd argue that Russia has significance because of its large supplies of energy (which Biden's policies have foolishly made even more valuable, btw). Many of the foreign conflicts rest on wrestling for energy and economic dominance. Not to mention that the IC has significant outposts (31 biolabs last I heard) in Ukraine. And the contractors are making big $$ out of this conflict. The trillions to be made via "rebuilding Ukraine" causes outfits like Blackrock to salivate profusely.
There is little discussion among the cognoscenti of the vast human cost (hundreds of thousands dead and wounded) of the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Any realist can see this must end in a negotiated settlement--but not too soon or else the IC/globalists won't get their ounce of flesh.
Agreed -- when Russia sends you lemons.....
“Don’t you know this is a DEMOCRACY? And you actually want OPEN DEBATE about government policy? You think such FASCIST EXTREMISM will be tolerated?! We will not sit idly by and let it happen. No, we will defend our OPEN SOCIETY. All discourse that doesn’t repeat our policy directives is DISINFORMATION and will be treated as such!”
It’s actually gotten this far. Such brazen incoherence is one of the characteristics of nascent totalitarianism. Its function is to demean the citizenry.
I think they justify things this way-
"We must therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate intolerance"- Karl Popper.
Of course, that is part of their spiel. But then the devil is in the details. They will define "intolerance". And their definitions keep expanding.
Marcuse said something about tolerance not needing to be extended to anti-progressive entities. Leftist tolerance extends leftwards only.
Repressive tolerance.
Girard: No one will be allowed to be persecuted except persecutors.
Yes, a brilliant formulation.
Ryszard Legutko: “Finally, a short comment on another mendacious concept: open society. An open society is not a society that is open to various groups and creeds, but it is a society in which a fierce war is being waged against the enemies of an open society. And the enemies are legion, they are profoundly evil, and the omnipresent danger they pose is apocalyptic. It is almost like in the Revelation of Saint John: “a monster having ten horns and seven heads and upon its horns there were ten crowns; and upon its crowns were the names of blasphemy.” Here is a sample of today’s crowns with the names of blasphemy: misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, eurocentrism, phallocentrism, logocentrism, binarism, populism, white supremacy, nationalism, xenophobia, hate speech, far right, Euroscepticism, misgendering, bigotry, fascism, global warming denial, and so on, and so forth. Almost every day, someone discovers a new sin and a hideous head with new hideous horns. As you can see, the more open the open society becomes, the more hydras it has to fight. In other words, for an open society to exist and grow, we need more and more policing and self-policing, as well as more and more censorship and self-censorship.”
PS - You all saw what I did in this column? Enthusiastic vote in favor of free speech. Can you question that the Dems would *like* to do what Labour is doing in the UK? I certainly can't. Please do not stay home in November, no matter the color of your state.
Yes, don't let them throw the popular vote in our faces. But it's not looking good.
Unless something drastic happens, California alone makes the popular vote unreachable.
Minus Cally, Trump won the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.
Costal California is it's own universe.
You could make similar points about populous red states too: subtract their totals and Biden won by a landslide.
Minus Tom Brady, New England wins zero Super Bowls.
I'm a Christian who embraces my faith as literally true. I will fight this demonic evil to martyrdom -- the Rapture is for wussies. If you tell the truth, they will target you. I tell the truth.
They are coming for our food supplies -- THAT is how Stalin and Mao purged dissenters. I write about food supplies for that reason -- no food, no revolution. Even martyrs gotta eat!
I am thinking of educating members of my church how to garden and compost without relying on commercial pesticides and fertilizers. That is important for independence
Amen! God intends us to be reliant on His provision through the Earth, not technological idols made with human hands (Isaiah 2:8). The consequence of disobedience to God's command to Adam (Ge. 3:17-19) is famine (Rev. 6: 5-6).
Grow a garden!! Buy a cow!
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/01/the-coming-cow-wars-why-raising-cows-is-a-revolutionary-act/
Are you old order Amish such that you reject post-industrial technologies?
No/ I am not a Luddite, but I recognize the harms caused by many technologies. The Amish have the right idea -- except guns. They are pacifists who will not stand up to tyranny. I believe.
I wouldn't describe the Amish as "Luddites". They are not motivated by resentments but by asceticism-- which to be sure I consider excessive,. but to each his own. (As I understand it they are not anti-gun-- they do own hunting weapons)
I agree we need to recognize the downsides of even very good technologies, but, IMO, our approach should be one of "nothing in excess", in the knowledge that nothing of this world comes to us as an unalloyed blessing.
I agree -- I did not intend to imply the Amish are Luddites; just that I'm not. :) I think they are correct to view technology with skepticism, as alienating from God and destructive of human spiritual life. By anti-gun I meant they are pacifists who will not engage in armed opposition to our oppressors -- and others will quickly take their food when the End hits.
"The Coming Criminalization of Dissent"
I can see certain cities and a handful of states doing this, but where I'm currently at, I have a difficult time seeing the local sheriff trying to arrest someone for posting contentious arguments online.
This is a point brought up by Jon before (and I agree), but a lot of America is still rural, and we're also a country with a healthy 2nd Amendment. This is the one time I say "Thank God for all the gun-nutters!", because I really do believe that any concerted, real effort to crack down on dissent will be met with *substantive* pushback (think Kyle Rittenhouse, or that couple slandered in the media for brandishing their firearms during a BLM protest in what I think was Missouri).
What you say makes a lot of sense. I cannot claim any kind of prescience, but when Poppy came out with New World Order regarding Iraq I (which I weakly supported), and we got a department of Homeland Security before Iraq II (which I opposed with every fiber of my being), I did wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have said. The thing to watch out for is any kind of national gendarmerie. You know, like the FBI.
GESTAPO generically simply means "National Police."
Actually it means Secret State Police: Geheime Staatspolizei. But you can call them la Gendarmerie and it ends up as the same thing.
I accept the additional adjective as a friendly amendment.
Anyway “No one expects the Geheime Staatspolizei!” has more of a ring to it than “No one expects the FBI!”
The idea that the local sheriff will be stopping by to take your gun is outdated.
Think rather in terms of all the electronic damage that can be done to a person. The FBI could flag you and your bank could de-bank you, making it very difficult for any but the most determined prepper to survive. Meanwhile, most people have to earn money. What would an employer think about all this activity? And if retired, what about the security of that Social Security check?
There are 99 ways from Sunday short of classic police action that could shut down your life.
Not gonna lie, this makes me want to keep some cash reserves on hand lol.
I suppose more people could embrace the prepper lifestyle, but that could only go so far, unless you own land (and I don't!).
Cops can stop you by the side of the road and seize your cash. In Oklahoma, they’ve even emptied people’s checking accounts electronically, claiming that they suspected illicit profits from drug sales.
They can do anything they want and no one will believe they’re doing it and no one will believe you, or they’ll think you had it coming.
The problem is social trust and shared values. Can’t fix that kinetically.
Wow. What was it for? I mean, why did the government empty people's bank accounts? Was it for stuff they posted on social media?
If I recall, it was a typical 1990s-era drug suspicion. No social media back then.
That's what profiling is all about. Its not just racial profiling. A couple with a large amount of cash with three kids in the car driving to a used car lot passing through a drug interdiction checkpoint in a semi-rural area "fits the profile" that drug couriers carry large amounts of cash and take children along as cover. If you surrender the cash they will drop charges, and if you file a complaint later you will be offered the opportunity to self-surrender.
You can get back things seized in civil forfeiture but that costs $$$ and often is not worth it. I wish Elon Musk or some other billionaire with mega-money to burn would start funding legal challenges to such cases. Yes, even drug dealers have rights and those should be respected.
Re: Cops can stop you by the side of the road and seize your cash.
Civil forfeiture is the most serious breech of the Constitution in our lifetimes. And it's based in a specious legal theory that future generations will laugh at as we laugh at the Middle Ages for putting roosters on trial if they failed to crow for the dawn.
I fully agree. This stuff represents the very lowest point in the War on Drugs that began under Nixon and accelerated under Reagan. It was the final, worst backlash against the 1960s counterculture.
Good idea but this may be why the government might push for a cashless Society. Such as the US and other Cental Banks promoting Central Bank digital currency (CBDC).
“The problem is social trust and shared values. Can’t fix that kinetically.” Good point!
I'm starting to wonder for real whether I can trust my bank. There's not only debanking, but corporate IT errors, and increasingly sophisticated scammers working to gain electronic access to my funds, not impossible since I do online banking, though I have avoided setting up Zelle.
For myself, I use a local bank, which has its advantages (they refund any transaction fees from other ATM's. I was pleasantly surprised to find they also refund foreign ATM fees as well!)
This! I made a similar comment above, before seeing yours; and I’ve been saying something like this for 20 years now. “ Jackbooted thugs” is a distraction— truly, fighting the last war.
Indeed. The current-day equivalent is your bored, cynical IT jockey in the back room manipulating everyone’s access to the world, while subsisting on Doritos and soda.
In other words, resistance is a romantic idea perhaps. Who are you going to point your gun at? Walk down the street and nobody’s around. Your problem is some guy working from home a thousand miles away. The server farm is hidden away somewhere in Elizabeth, New Jersey or maybe the uplands of Wyoming, an hour out of Casper. Or both.
Yes, that's right.
They tried to De-bank Nigel Farage , the only reason they didn’t get away with it was because he is such a prominent public figure, but what of the unknown guy with no means to fight…
Yep.
Yep. But what happens if your bank decides that it's too risky to do business with you, because the feds have declared you a potentially dangerous person? That's the kind of thing I worry about.
Surveillance Capitalism - Not just for mega corporations anymore!
People who've never read Zuboff's book should do so pronto.
Rod, there are still state-chartered banks not under the federal regulatory regime. They have "S.A.", State Association, not "N."A.", National Association, at the end of their name. I don't see state regulators in red states like Louisiana going after those banks as you fear federal regulators would with federally chartered banks. Federalism still does exist.
Excellent! I’m glad your flight was delayed. Sorry. 😉
Carville and company are entirely too interested in you.That’s not good news. On the Ukraine thing(I’ll broken record repeat my dissent from you if I have time), you’ve apparently gotten under their skin and they go after people who have . Consider the current harassment campaign against Tulsi Gabbard. Consider Tim Walz comments on the first ammendment. Consider that we have a Supreme Court justice who publicly worries about the restrictions the first amendment places on the government. Consider Reichs comments on Musk. Consider that Matt Taibbi got a home visit from the IRS when he piped up about the Twitter files.
On Ukraine: you are not a Putin stooge. That’s the kind of thing people say to discredit people who are saying things they don’t like. It’s somewhat like my bete noir Tim Walz calling Vance weird-oh I hate that. My attitude towards Walz dovetails with Walter Kirns who indicated in the last Racket podcast he’d avoid the man in a wax museum.Ok on to it!
I don’t even understand what, post Cold War the purpose of NATO is.I don’t think NATO fans can coherently explain that one. Oh it was to prevent Russia from retaking Eastern Europe. Post Soviet Russia had trouble holding on to Checnaya. They were going to conquer Eastern Europe? Under Yeltsin?😀I’m sure Putin would love to but he doesn’t have the wherewithal.Offering NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia was stupid, not because this actually constituted an existential threat to Russia but because we had nothing to gain from it and all it was going to do was piss off the Russians. Why risk confrontation when there nothing to gain. I believe the people who are generally called neo Cons want a large NATO that continually growls at Russia. Now I think the main reason Putin invaded Ukraine when he did is because he did fear some day, it might join NATO. That might of meant when he invaded ( which I suspect is something he’s always wanted to do))you’d have WW3. Fear of NATO expansion per se was not the cause of the invasion. I think and Putins comments suppport this , he wants Ukraine, period. In his most portentous, mystigog moments he’s quite the expansive Russian nationalist, imperialist.At minimum he wants it connected to Russia in the way Belarus is.Although I suspect he wants it more or less eliminated.So simply saying Russia invaded Ukraine because it feared NATO expansion is misleading. Russia didn’t think NATO was going to invade from Ukraine. It didn’t like the idea of a Ukraine it couldn’t dictate to. It’s ours!Yes, the US took a similar attitude towards Cuba. You can see where that lead.No talking about Chinese troops in Mexico is neither helpful nor illuminating. The US does not see Mexico as part of the US and therefore illegitimate.That is how many Russian nationalists see Ukraine.
Two comments by others on Ukraine:
1) Obama - the Russians are always going to be more interested ( invested) in Ukraine than the US
2)Tucker Carlson- invading Ukraine is bad. What difference does it make to the US?
George Kennan didn't think NATO was a good idea.
Ike grudgingly supported NATO but wanted it phased out when Western Europe got back on its feet. That time was long ago.
Or at the latest 1995.
Bureaucrats tend to justify their existence long after the need for them has ended.
I think I've written about this here before, but in Democrat controlled municipalities in Pennsylvania, Human Relations Commissions have popped up and their mission is to "work towards the elimination of discrimination and unlawful harassment of all people who work, live and have visited the Borough of Lansdale". Across the board, the appointed members of these Human Relations Commissions are progressive Democrats based on their social media profiles. I have applied twice and been rejected twice. My resume is very good (if I do say so myself), but because I am Republican, I am sure that is the reason I was rejected. Soon I will pen an opinion piece to the local paper denouncing these commissions as precursors to the Communist tribunals established after the October Revolution. It will be interesting to see how the Democrats react.
Post your letter on the comments salon. I’m sure it will be interesting! And post the response you get as well!
Based upon my experience the GOP will use that type of information against you. The elites do not have these problems, therefore to you will be assigned the cause.
Ascribed to Mark Twain "Don't complain and talk about all your problems. 80% of the people won't care. The other 20% will think you deserve them."
Phrases such as "former GOP operatives" and "misinformation and disinformation" are automatic triggers for considering the opinion suspect.
As Tucker has said, when all the wrong people are advocating for a position (folks like Carville, van den Leyden, and many of the most "esteemed" blob figures), then the best bet is to support the opposite plank.
Rod, I"m sure you will stay fearless, bravo!
You could make a better case than that if you did not rely on stale analogies.
Now we need another commission to regulate the injustices promulgated by these commissions.
Here is something Rod didn't quote - quite ugly -
<<<"While Trump, during his time in the White House from 2017-2021, often expressed his personal respect for Putin, the war in Ukraine has made an open relationship between the two diplomatically untenable. Orbán, according to the FORMER GOP OFFICIALS (emphasis mine), is stepping into the void. He has visited Trump in Florida twice this year.">>>
What do you want to bet these "former GOP officials" are something like the Lincoln Project, or of the like the 51 "former US intelligence officers" (of both parties) who signed the letter engendering false belief about the laptop? Maybe some of the same intelligence people?
So Orban is now the point-man for Trump's Russia support. And Rod is "paid to promote American Orbanism". Do you see? Pray for a hedge of protection around Rod. Not panicking, we don't know what is happening, but that paragraph is really concerning.
"What do you want to bet these "former GOP officials" are something like the Lincoln Project, or of the like the 51 "former US intelligence officers" (of both parties) who signed the letter engendering false belief about the laptop? Maybe some of the same intelligence people?"
Or the bureaucrats who simply ignored him. In business that gets you fired.
Ignored who, Trump? Well, we have anonymous comment from "officials" about support for Russia. Wonder who has done that before. Nothing to do with intelligence officials, I guess.
Gosh, forgot all about the Lincoln Project (the name not the people behind it). Yeah, possibly different peas but same basic pod, like most of the people associated with Bulwark.
James Carville is linking Rod Dreher with J.D. Vance because using dishonest campaign tactics is something he does. To Carville, a campaign tactic that defeats his enemies is always valid even if it is dishonest because Carville is a fundamentally dishonest person.
People like Ursula von der Leyen are to be wary of. Most European countries do not have the absolute free speech guarantees that America does. Will she and others in the elite silence dissent? I don't think the elites will go that far. But they will marginalize those who don't bow to the elite. They will ghettoize the opposition. Witness yesterday's AfD victory in Thuringia. AfD will not form a government despite its win, the other parties will coalesce and form their own government even if it means the Christian Democrats join with the Green and the Left Party. The voices of the 33 % of Thuringian voters are not to be heard, to be banished to the outer darkness.
But remember that the elites in Europe and America are rattled by the rise of national populism. Just reported today, Jorge Paoletti of the United Nations admitted that the UN elite is "terrified" with a second Trump presidency. "Absolutely nobody wants Trump......because the purpose of Donald Trump is to end the international institutions that somehow level the playing field. He wants America first." Trump will probably fail to destroy people like Ursula von der Leyen or Jorge Paoletti but it is thrilling that he produces fear in the elite. That is why he will earn my vote.
It is thrilling that he produces fear in the elite. However, I wouldn't want him in a position of power either. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes rise because liberals create a vacuum in which there appear to be no other alternatives. Trump isn't organized enough to be totalitarian, and he is too self-infatuated to develop institutions. But I find nothing to admire about him.
Trump is organized enough to build but it is true that he couldn't organize a post office in rural Idaho.