06-17-2021, 08:52 AM
(06-16-2021, 12:43 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 16-Jun-2021 World View: Putin press conference
Putin held an hour-long press conference, following his meeting with
Biden. As usual, Putin was extremely combative, and took on every
question with an aggressive response, often claiming that the United
States was worse.
Putin is ex-KGB. "Are you still lynching negroes?"
Quote:For me the most interesting exchange occurred when some
hostile-sounding American reporter asked why all the opposition
figures in Russia are in jail or dead.
Putin responded that dozens of innocent peaceful protesters from the
January 6 protests have been rounded up and jailed for months without
charges. He also alluded to Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was shot dead
by the capitol police for no reason, and about which the capitol
police and the Democrats are stonewalling.
...except that our opposition is part of the Establishment. That people connected to the ideology of the Tea Party such as the Oath Keepers could be so heavily involved in the violent effort to nullify a Presidential election is a complete shock. People are not going to be prosecuted for what they think. Physical assaults on law enforcement are crimes, and the reason matters little other than legitimate self-defense in the rare cases of excessive force. Chasing elected officials out of a scheduled session is an assault on lawful government.
Many people still believe in the stated objectives of the Hard Right that is still part of the Establishment.
Quote:This is in fact what's been going on. It's being censored by the
mainstream news, though it's been covered in detail by Tucker Carlson
on Fox News and on several conservative news sites.
FoX News gravely distorts the news. It is programmed to create a mental state. If it isn't a one-sided view of political life, it is stories of violent crime intended to make people scared or tugs at (conservative) heartstrings. "War against Christmas", you know. Yes, the world and America as a whole are changing. I can imagine many people scared that their precious children might go to the big state university with the intent of getting the preparation to be a schoolteacher, county agent, accountant, or engineer and get exposed to exotic ideas, faiths, and people. They might even find that they are attracted to same-sex relationships or decide that they want to have a heterosexual relationship with someone who looks very much unlike them. Or they might encounter readings from Karl Marx in the syllabus for a history or economics class.
So perhaps you decide that you would prefer that your precious son stay home and be a farm laborer instead of encountering such. Guess what? He might recognize that the sister of one of his fellow workers at the feed lot is cute and has a rich cultural tradition that offers more. The Mexican-American culture might seduce him. Or while your precious daughter waits tables at a diner off Exit 130 on Interstate 62 on some lonely night she meets some black guy and wonders whether the rumors are true about black **cks. A one-night stand ensues at the no-tell motel at Exit 145 on her day off. Rural life is boring, and he introduces her to the "urban contemporary" music that you consider barbarous... and maybe his black **ck. Economic distress is not good for promoting some vague, stale tradition. Or perhaps she meets some fellow with a German surname (much of rural America is rich in German-Americans, as many German immigrants chose agriculture as their American Dream) who believes in most of the Bible -- just not the part that begins with Matthew 1.
It is impossible to fully insulate children or young adults from the influence of other cultures. The real contest is not between tradition and nihilism but instead between cultures. Most people end up picking and choosing between the elements of different traditions. So there is a piñata and pizza at the birthday party of Scandinavian-American kids. Neither is native to any Scandinavian country, and neither is the bonsai plant in the house nor Italian opera. Cultural purity isn't so easy to protect, and the stultifying effort and stale result are both rarely worth the consequences.
OK, there are crazy ideas out there, and people will encounter those no matter what their educational level. I look at Marxism and recognize that the fault is not so much with Marxist thought as it is with an economic order that fits a Marxist stereotype of how capitalism works. I have watched bits and pieces of FoX News, and it is not good for my blood pressure. "Get angry! Be afraid! Your world is falling apart!"
Speaking of Marxists... the insurrection at the Capitol looks more like the Bolshevik takeover of the Winter Palace in Petrograd in 1917 than like anything else. One big difference is that our institutions are much stronger. I do not want our political life decided more by the willingness of people to use violence than by popular votes. Next time the people who storm the Capitol could bring Soviet flags and images of Lenin, Mao, and Castro. If you want to believe that only deluded people could fail to recognize the Greatness of Donald Trump, then more people think him horrid. Let's start with the conservative value of monogamy. Did Obama consort with porn stars? Did Dubya? Did they sleep with anything that moved? Monogamy is far safer for children than is dumping a wife who turns 40 for someone who looks like the Playmate of the Month.
Well, maybe some parts of our world need to fall apart. That is progress. We don't rely upon poultices and medicinal leeches any more when we have better means in medicine. We generally recognize that workers need a stake in the economic system if they are not to fall for some demagogue who offers Marxism-Leninism as real-world progress instead of suffering in This World on behalf of plutocrats for pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. (Consumerism is better and safer than either oppression for traditional elites or the Marxist-Leninist madhouse).
Quote:Having rigged the 2020 election, the Democrats are turning into a
full-fledged fascist regime, invading homes across the country and
locking up Trump supporters without charges, engineering a censorship
regime with the purpose of censoring any opposing voices, and enabling
it's own antifa-blm fascist militia.
Bullhist! Donald Trump is the closest thing to a fascist dictator that America has ever had. Whether I go through the infamous lists of Laurence Britt or Umberto Eco, Trump has gone much further down the road to a fascist Hell. Maybe he isn't so competent at it as were Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Satan Hussein, but we all know where his heart is. America still has tycoons, executives, and big landowners who still believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such makes them richer, makes them more powerful or enforces their rule, and fosters their sybaritic indulgence. Much of the distress in human history comes from people believing that they are entitled to live like sultans while treating everyone else as serfs, slaves, or zeks -- and being able to enforce such. What ideological rationale people use for treating other people badly matters little. They can be pharaohs, a praetorian guard, medieval lords, slave-owning planters, colonial adventurers, tycoons, or even a Commie nomenklatura; the effect is just the same.
Donald Trump is simply a "Berzelius Windrip" except without having ever been to pharmacy school (the reference is to Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, which didn't happen here until Trump became President. His sort is usually the unwitting cover for people more resolute, ruthless, and organized... and willing to steal anything and kill or imprison anyone. Associated with Donald Trump is our modern Winfield Mattoon Scott (from Seven Days in May), the real-life Michael "Quisling" Flynn.
People are still free to believe and promote their anti-abortion, anti-environment, anti-union, classist, militarist, racist, anti-science, Christian Dominionist ideology. They have no right to expect the rest of us to concur with their dreams.
Quote:It's ironic that it takes someone like Putin to call attention to
this. CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, the WaPost, and liberal bloggers
online have turned into nothing but worthless trolls, lying about what
happened and lying about their lies, saying whatever they want to
promote the fascist Democrat censorship regime.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Quote:According to some conservative bloggers, Attorney General Merrick
Garland is preparing for military action in Arizona, as the ongoing
Maricopa County election audit is proceeding, and may well find that
Trump should have won the state of Arizona. This finding, if it
occurs, would be a major political threat to the Democrat party
fascist regime.
Some bloggers will tell you that human superiority is an ethnic hierarchy in which the noblest examples of Humanity are those that best fit some Aryan ideal of tall, blue-eyed, blond peoples and that Humanity falls off from there. Modern Greeks fall short of that standard (never mind that when the Greeks were establishing what constitutes beauty and common sense in the Western World, while my barbarous German and Scandinavian hunter-gatherer ancestors were picking berries in the summer and hunting wild boars for bare survival in the winter and trying to protect themselves from bears. And don't let me start discussing the Jews who long ago established the bulk of the self-evident morality of the West. (I am neither Greek nor Jewish, although I well fit five Jewish stereotypes. Basically, any German-sounding surname can be a Jewish surname. No, I do not have an oversized schnozz, but when I had colorful hair it was somewhat reddish).
Quote:The next event is Biden's press conference, which is just starting as
I'm typing this. I would expect him to pale in comparison to Putin.
In a press conference two days ago, Biden was two hours late and then
seemed confused, and he mixed up Syria and Libya several times.
Hopefully, Biden will be better prepared this time.
Donald Trump mixes up right and wrong and truth and falsehood. That is infinitely worse. Vladimir Putin does that too, only he is more cunning and ruthless -- and knows what he is doing. But if you would rather be in Russia than America because you prefer Putin to Biden, Aeroflot can get you there.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
