Zooey wrote:

I use Facebook for my news feed. I follow a bunch of leftist groups there (and Libs), and mark them “Show First,” or whatever it is.

Twitter…my fear is following so many people that the feed becomes Niagara Falls. I’m only following around 30 people, and it’s like watching NASCAR. Too many cars, and I’m not sure how many of them I’ve already seen.

But Mack is there. And he posts gold, like the Pumpkin Spice Bleach tweet. And zn is there to chip in on Rams related stuff. He is there to point out stuff like the Rams need an Offensive Line in order to keep the enemy off of Goff. And Nittany is there to say, “Akshually…if you blend bionanphosate with xyoletholine, you will never achieve homeostanthesis. Under the conditions prescribed, you would have to….”

So that’s all good.

I am there to get retweeted by John Cleese…which Mack, zn, and Nittany never have.

I don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account. I have Google and Apple News feeds and try my best to customize them, but that’s not easy. They seem to slant center-right, MSM, if left alone, and keep wanting me to read Fox News stories, even though I keep giving them thumbs down. But some good stuff gets through as well. I also set up Duckduckgo favorites, separately, and made direct choices for specific websites that way . . . including Nate Robinson’s Current Affairs, Jacobin, and several excellent writers, like Jason Hickel and Jason Moore, plus the usual assortment of Arts and Letters stuff.

Long story short: Is it worth it to have FB and Twitter? Especially with the former, I just don’t want to support the Evil Empire, and its war on our personal privacy, etc.

Happy belated birthday, Mac.

Zooey wrote:

I just have to say that I just got retweeted by John Cleese 10 minutes ago which is kinda cool because…John Cleese retweeted me.

That is cool:

‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies!
‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig!
‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!!

On Biden: I don’t think this is about him, either. He’s going to remain a centrist, but he’ll surround himself with relatively competent people, who aren’t aggressively, psychotically cruel, won’t purposely deny science, won’t open up places like Tongass National Forest to logging and development, won’t turn mask-wearing into a political statement, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands, and he/they won’t have a policy to separate families and slash asylum levels, just to please the fascist base.

(Reporting today details the extent of this plan, and implication Rod Rosenstein as well.)

Opening up Tongass, btw, slipped under the radar for most Americans, but it’s a body blow to the plant. Trump decided to do this near the end of his term, and its effects will radically accelerate climate change. It’s a major tragedy for Planet Earth. For that alone, if for nothing else, leftists shouldn’t have to think twice about their votes.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

You’re just being modest. I’ve always seen you as pretty good at that sort of thing, WV. Patient, almost tireless, and able to communicate with pretty much anyone. You’re a very good spokes-dude for the left.

I have my good days too, but I suspect they’re far rarer than yours, and my bull in a china shop moods hit me too often.

Lately, I’ve been discussing these things with family, too, with some recent, surprising advances, but mostly mixed results. I still have a ton to learn.

As always, thanks to you and others here for recs on this or that writer/thinker/activist, etc.

=================

Well, I dunno. I think maybe all the Propaganda-Induced-Ignorance has just taken a toll over the years. But more than that, i guess, is I just KNOW how all the conversations are gonna go. I know how people are going to respond. I can play all the parts. I do not experience anyone changing anyone’s mind. So, what is the point?

Like many many many leftists, who got old, and burned out, i have basically turned to Nature. Quiet, soothing, peaceful Nature.

w
v

Thanks for the vid. Will take a look.

Nature. At the risk of sounding grandiose, that’s where I should have made my home. That’s what the plan was, in a sense, after my first go-round with college. Be a painter of nature. Paint abstractions. Make it new. Make it surreal. Write poetry to go with those paintings, and survive on that. But it wasn’t to be.

I still write poems, but disabused myself of the idea of major recognition, if not renown, via those poems or paintings. But, yeah, being a leftist? Makes that retreat necessary again.

In Fromm’s book, he talks about the difference between a poem by Tennyson and one by Basho.

Tennyson:

Flower in a crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the
crannies,
I hold you here, root and all
in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could
understand
What you are, root and all,
and all in all,
I should know what God
and man is.

__

Basho’s, in English translation:

When I look carefully
I see the nazuna blooming
By the hedge!

Fromm notes the two poems hold very different visions. Tennyson wants to possess nature, knowing he’ll have to kill that part of Her to do it. Basho, on the other hand, wants to really “see” Her. Leave her intact.

Being versus owning. Becoming versus having, possession, property, etc.

It was a catastrophe when humans removed the divine from nature and placed a god above it all, transcendent, instead of immanent. Stripping her of the Sacred, offloading all of that into the being of the former volcano god, Yahweh, was the beginning of the end of Planet Earth.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

waterfield wrote:

<
My answer is never to tell people they are “wrong”. But to ask them questions-much like taking a deposition. If one says science doesn’t know everything-my question is “why do you say that”. Then they will say something like “I had a friend who…” Then I ask “do you personally know of others”. At some point the message comes across without them feeling they are looked down upon by someone who comes off as “having all the answers”. Might and likely won’t change their opinions but might give them a pause to think a second time about an issue. “Why do you ” are three very powerful words.

=================

OK, but at what point do you usually pull out an ice-pick and run it through their walnut-brain? Because i find that its best to do it just after I’ve asked them an ‘I have a friend’ question.

w
v

You’re just being modest. I’ve always seen you as pretty good at that sort of thing, WV. Patient, almost tireless, and able to communicate with pretty much anyone. You’re a very good spokes-dude for the left.

I have my good days too, but I suspect they’re far rarer than yours, and my bull in a china shop moods hit me too often.

Lately, I’ve been discussing these things with family, too, with some recent, surprising advances, but mostly mixed results. I still have a ton to learn.

As always, thanks to you and others here for recs on this or that writer/thinker/activist, etc.

Zooey wrote:

Yeah, Billy. That’s well put. That’s what I’m driving at, I guess. And I just think that the GOP is more completely inclined to view people as Things than liberals are, and that just aligns with how everybody is indoctrinated to think, and it removes the Condescension. You never condescend to a Thing.

Liberals ARE condescending. Leftists, too. Maybe Leftists even more so. And so the masses hate universities and experts and everybody whom they feel look down their noses at them.

So…you take Trump. They identify with him because he is interested in the same things they are interested in – letting it all hang out without apologies to the snotty elitist types – and because he talks their language naturally. No condescension. He isn’t one of them, and has no use for them other than as a commodity, but he can bang their drumbeat like nobody else in decades. So even though he would spit in their faces if they showed up at Mar-a-Lago, his disdain for them never shows. Not because he likes them. But because they like him. And that’s ALL he cares about. They’re just Things to him, but because he does not care for them at all, they paradoxically feel included in his circle. He gives them attention, and makes them roar with delight.

They have grasped tightly to the Illusion of Acceptance.

Well put. Condescension is a huge problem for the left. At least the perception of condescension.

We gotta find another way of messaging. We gotta get better at “sales.” It basically helps keep the GOP in the game — our inability along those lines — cuz they’ve mastered the Big Lie. Invented it, actually. They’re great at sales, which they need, cuz their product is for shit.

Also, unlike the left, they can play at “man of the people,” drive into town with their beat-up truck, wear their old cowboy hat, give their spiel, then go back to their mansions, laughing up a storm, and cut new tax breaks for themselves and their billionaire friends. Lefties reject that game. But this often hurts lefties at the polls, ironically.

In the capitalist system, no one is more at a disadvantage than folks with consciences, moral compasses, shame or empathy, and I think it’s safe to say that “the left” kicks butt on those grounds. We also have a much tougher time, in general, lying about the way things are. Or lying, period. The right couldn’t care less about its lies and their effects, as long as it “wins.” Means to an end.

Again, in general. Exceptions exist, of course.

___

Good topic. More later. Possible tangent? Different life-choices for left and right. Why are “creatives” far more likely to be lefties, for instance? Or social workers, teachers, scientists, and so on? Again, Being versus Having. Which is more important? Who we are? Or What we Own?

Hope everyone is healthy and safe.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Happy for the win. But since I didn’t get to see the game, I don’t know what happened, at all.

Thought they would crush the Giants, and continue running well. Apparently, that didn’t happen.

Looking forward to the next two games, which I’ll be able to watch, “live.” Washington and SF. Should be some goodin’ football.

. . .

Still not sure if this season lasts. Hope so, of course. But who knows at this point?

Hope all is well with youze guys.

Join us in the chat room during a game or 2.

You would be welcome and it’s a good chat room group.

And we have nachos.

Thanks for the invite. I may do just that. At least during half time. TV is in the other room.

;>)

Zooey,

I’m currently reading a really interesting book by Erich Fromm — he of the Frankfurt School. To Have or to Be. He talks about the way our language itself has changed over time, due to the shift into a mass consumerist society.

I agree with most of what you say about the divisions between left and right and the way folks look at the world, and how the right basically sees people as things. But isn’t that the prerequisite for capitalism itself? Isn’t that basically the underlying, unspoken rationale for making it legal for one human being to own the productive labor of hundreds of thousands?

They have to be things. And then to rationalize selling shit, they have to turn consumers into things too. Things can’t be hurt by that shit. We don’t have to care about things, especially those we can’t see. Or the ones we see here but aren’t like us — which is yet another level of thingliness.

Humankind needs a radical transformation into Being. People who are. Not people who own. Recent discussions with folks who should know better show how difficult this change will be, cuz, “human nature,” apparently, but if we don’t do it, we won’t last as a species much into the 22nd century.

In short, capitalism has done a number on the way we think about ourselves, our own “nature,” each other, and it’s all wrong. None of it is the case. None of it is accurate. And all of it is deadly.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

Far too much to respond to in recent times. Have been doing my best not to get wound up beyond measure, so have stepped back a bit.

Skimming through the above, could comment about a hundred things. But I’ll try some low-hanging fruit.

The Nation makes a good point about the Middle Class, and the mistaken ways of defining it, but diminishes its own point a bit by using “household” as a metric. That’s a very slippery measure, cuz it can mean several incomes or just one. Far better way to define “Middle Class” is via a single income. Find the median for that, not an entire “household.”

This has been used by the right for decades now to try to make things look less fucked up than they actually are. Cuz, well, prior to the 1970s, one bread-winner could bring home what it takes two or more now — relative to cost of living, etc. etc. And it slowly got worse from there. As in, one bread-winner, no credit card debt, to two bread-winners, plus credit cards, and then all of that plus second mortgages, and then side hustles, Uber, etc. etc.

Time to update the metrics and tell the truth for once, and then compare all of that with the rest of the world which is even more fucked up.

Watched the replay on NFL Gamepass (free trial). Thought Goff looked much improved from last year, and am impressed with Henderson.

The Defense? Not so much. Gashed via the run and the pass. They need to fix that or they won’t get to the playoffs, which would be a shame, given the quality Offense, etc.

Will throw in some belated two cents over on the football side later.

Hope all is well.

I’m happy about the Tight End group too. They’ve got a lot of athleticism now. And Higbee really stepped it up last year, obviously. He’s that big, relatively athletic target the Rams have lacked for so long. Not quite as athletic as Hopkins or Everett, but close, and a lot bigger.

On a side note: It wouldn’t have taken much at all to make that helmet remix excellent. Can’t help but wish they had just made the arc bigger, all around, at least an inch on the top, toward the back of the helmet too, and then done the old loop on the bottom ear part. It would have been so easy to get it right.

;>(

But I’m getting used to it enough not to think it’s awful now.

This must have been the sequel:

Btw, what was Perry Mason doing in Tokyo?