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keep_left

keep_left's Journal
keep_left's Journal
February 4, 2025

I remember that. Many of the kids sent were the failchildren...

...of the neocons from the Bush administration as well as the right-wing foundations and "think" tanks. I recall that Garrison Keillor had a few bon mots when it came to the disastrous Iraq reconstruction attempt. Keillor excoriated "the gilded corporate socialism of the right-wing think tanks" which served as "a make-work jobs program for the otherwise unemployable children of those who ran them".

February 4, 2025

Yep. "He's not hurting the right people!".

Anyone remember that? In this case, they were hoping Trump would hurt the other brown people...they never imagined they would get hurt as well.

The full quote is "I thought he was going to do good things. He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting!"...Trump's policies weren't attacking the brown people enough, and were in fact harming nice white people like her.

https://democraticunderground.com/100219776302#post82
February 4, 2025

This is why some of the Reddit groups, like the former ChapoTrapHouse subreddit...

...changed over to a federated approach, usually through either Mastodon or Lemmy social networking software. Reddit is really only good for uncontroversial, non-political uses these days (e.g. hobbies). Any controversy at all gets Reddit management nervous, especially since they became a publicly traded company. The old ChapoTrapHouse subreddit is now hexbear.net. (CW: Hexbear is far-left, and some DUers will definitely find it offensive).

February 4, 2025

I never thought we would see political malfeasance reminiscent of the old USSR...

...in America, but here we are. Trump releasing billions of gallons of water right into the ocean, political witch hunts over "wokeness" and "DEI", and now Sean Duffy giving us a taste of Romania-style Natalism as applied to transportation policy. What's next, Lysenkoist experiments funded by the USDA?!

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

February 3, 2025

Thanks for the history!


I remember some of it, but I forgot how many reprobate cases there were of Germans who just wanted to whine about losing the war, while taking no responsibility for having started it. And yes, ending Nazism did require bombing most of Germany into rubble. I recall that there was some discussion early on in the Manhattan Project about the use of an atomic bomb on Germany, but when it became clear that the Germans had no viable nuclear weapons program, the idea was abandoned. (Ironically, it was largely due to the Germans' persecution of Jewish scientists that they lost this technology to the Americans and the British).
February 3, 2025

I can think of only two effective responses to fascism.

The first is the "Paradox of Tolerance", which is a principle first stated by the philosopher Karl Popper.

...unlimited tolerance necessarily results in the destruction of the tolerant by the intolerant, resulting in a society in which tolerance is no longer possible.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The second response: Dresden.

It took the bombing of Dresden to disabuse many Germans of their love for fascism. That's something to think about.



https://democraticunderground.com/100219718068#post2
https://democraticunderground.com/100219670010#post89

February 3, 2025

One wonders where Trump is getting all these moronic ideas...

...about shutting down various agencies and programs that have existed for time immemorial. He can't possibly have the intelligence to make these plans, or even the curiosity to know that these things exist. I wonder if this is one of those instances where Trump is plagiarizing various insanities from Fox "News" or the WSJ editorial page. Or maybe this is coming from alt-right websites or something. But I just can't see Trump being the least bit interested in the workings of agencies like USAID, etc.

February 1, 2025

Yep, anyone getting gov't services is a "grifter" or "taker", and...

...according to their self-appointed "intellectual" gurus, "democracy is done"--which is really what this is all about.

...These assholes destroy the country with their "think" tanks, bought-and-paid-for media, "public relations", political megachurches--a million anti-democratic streams that all run together like mud--and once the destruction is nearly complete, they then brazenly declare to the little people that "democracy is done". They're the reason why!

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219958419
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219958419#post9

It's called Economic Calvinism...

...[which] has always been a pernicious feature of American culture. You know: the rich are blessed, the poor are cursed, and so both deserve their station in life...The "transhumanism" being pushed by Eloon et al. is just the latest version of old wine in new bottles. Every few years, someone invents a new way to dress up the same old Calvinism, which serves to mystify it, keeping the rabble from noticing that the wonderful Tech-Bro transhumanist future will not be available to any of them.

https://democraticunderground.com/100219957391#post3

These people have been at it for decades. And now we have the sorry spectacle of a Congressman attacking "kids sponging off the government"...because they get their breakfast and lunch at school.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219955982

Remember Mitt Romney getting caught on a hidden microphone making his snide little remark about the "47% takers"? And Romney is supposed to be one of the nice, respectable, moderate Republicans! These people need to be a lot more careful where they speak this kind of garbage. At this point, they're just asking for it.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219955982#post16

February 1, 2025

Maybe Trump is more like Kim Jong-Un than we realized. He's apparently...

...become a convert to the North Korean state religion of Juche--or at least the American version of it.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Juche

?si=dLjw5mPQ26cP8Rxp

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Member since: Thu Apr 15, 2004, 05:56 PM
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