wv wrote:

This is the biggest threat to our fake-democracy, since I’ve been voting.

Its startling.

I’m gonna stand in fucking line, and risk getting Covid. And i dont mind. I’m going to enjoy risking my life to vote against that disgusting piece of trump-shit.

Maybe its about time voting was actually a risk for white people, in this country.

No way I’m relying on the mail, now.

w
v

I’m thinking the same thing. Our voting place rarely has much in the way of lines, and if I time it correctly, I can probably avoid the worst of them. Will be wearing a double mask, protective goggles for my eyes, and quite possible full body armor.

Haven’t looked into the local or state laws regarding medieval weaponry and horses inside community centers, but I have a feeling they’ll accept whatever I do.

Also, more from the “I need to get a life” column.

I think the host of that video misuses the term “neoliberal,” and I’ve noticed that with other lefty Youtube folks, like Krystal Ball.

Neoliberalism was never, and is not now, the exclusive domain of the Dems, nor does it have anything to do with “liberals” or “liberalism.” It’s all about “liberalizing the markets,” at least as a euphemism for ceding even more power to the ultra-rich and corporate America. But the liberal part of the word has nothing to do with political liberalism per se.

It’s a right-wing economic philosophy that rose in opposition to Keynesianism and the Keynesian Consensus, and basically supplanted it in the 1970s. It’s also sometimes called “freshwater economics,” Chicago School economics, or Reagan/Thatcherism. Ironically, it had and still has vastly more adherents among Republicans — basically the entire GOP, including Trump — and the Republican version is far more hard-line. Its main tenets are:

1. Slash taxes for rich people and corporations
2. Deregulate the markets, business in general, and Finance especially
3. Sell off and otherwise privatize public goods and services

Dems have a “soft” version of this; Republicans have a “hard” version. The latter goes much further in scope and kind.

___

Oh, and while we’re at it, we need to get rid of shaky cams, too. They’re almost as bad as microfiche, which, thank goddess, are nearly dead and buried, except in a few Cathar libraries in Southern France which escaped the Inquisition.

wv wrote:

Omar won her primary
https://twitter.com/i/events/1293444813874847744

That’s really great news. I admire her a ton. She’s brave, like the entire Squad. They receive an endless stream of death threats, and until recently, weren’t even supported by their own party.

As you note, it’s still only 99-1 in the Senate. But the way our (glacial) system typically works, is that the House is the farm team for future senators. I’m betting AOC (or someone like her) moves on to the Senate in a few years. The more folks like AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Cori Bush win House seats, the better shot this will translate to an increase in progressives* in the Senate.

*Personally, I’m not a fan of using that word to describe “leftists.” But I’m not the Mayor of the Political Spectrum. My own take — and it’s obviously not a big deal, one way or another — is that “leftists” are to the left of progressives . . . and that “progressive” can be used interchangeably with “liberal” in many cases. I think it exists as a term today because “liberals” got sick and tired of seeing that term being abused by wingnuts, and too few had the courage of their own convictions to be fight for and be proud of the word.

Of course, all too many liberals aren’t liberal about much beyond culture war stuff, so there’s that, too. But the same can be said about some “progressives,” too, unfortunately. So, to me, the best catch-all term for those of us who include “systems,” economics, the environment, imperialism, empire, the carceral state, foreign policy . . . and so on . . . is leftist.

I really have to get a life.

;>)

You guys have probably seen this already. But Trump is going full-on “birther” with Harris too, and praised the nutcase who pushed this racist garbage in Newsweek.

link https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/newsweek-claims-birtherism-article-about-kamala-harris-isnt-about-race-of-course-it-is/

In the midst of all the other shit going on in the world, he does this?

Stick a fork in me. I’m done. It’s over. After seeing this, I did the unthinkable. I tuned in to an Easy Listening station on my cable system.

wv wrote:

So, i was, masked, in the big-box-grocery-store, pushing my clanky cart, looking for my corporate-food. Clanking along in the corporate-soup-aisle, searching for progresso-lentil-soup.
(I add corporate-black-bean-spicy-hummus, and corporate-hot-sauce to it)

Turning the corner, I see a Vision. Plain-as-day, in a blinding-bright, blue-and-yellow jersey. A tall young man, wearing a big jersey — no.99.

Astonishment. Breathtaking.

It was like….that moment in ‘The Natural’ when Robert Redford looks into the stands and sees the shining-light-woman. Except this was in the corporate-box-store, in the corporate-soup-aisle.

I mean, this never happens in Motown, WV. This…never….happens. A human in a fucking Rams Jersey.

So, i practically levitated. I cried out, “Aaron Donald! He’s my man! Yes!”
(I dont even know what that means. It just erupted out of me.)

And this ram-vision smiled at me (like Jesus) and said, “Yeah, man.”

So much more to say, of course — I closed this distance toward him — and then I saw. The mother-fucker had no mask. NO mask.

So, i turned and wheeled away.

A pandemic ram-vision. What to make of it all. I dont know.

w
v

;>)

You got too close to Glenn Close.

As your neighbor to the east, I’ve run into the maskless all too often. For a bit there, I often made the mistake of getting mad and telling them to put on their freakin masks, and why. Luckily, no fisticuffs ensued. But after my many recent eye surgeries, and reading so many stories of these things escalating into shootings (and murder), I thought it best to try a different approach. Speed up my hunter-gathering efforts in said stores and exit quickly stage left.

But it still pisses me off. All the science (and common sense) tells us that if America had bought into wearing masks, the official count of deaths (165K or so) would have been a tiny fraction of what it is today. It would have been more in line with South Korea’s (300?), if not New Zealand’s (22).

Which kinda sorta forms a bridge to your comments and quotes in the other thread. As Sartre said, Hell is other people.

wv wrote:

Havent heard from him in too long a time.

And Fast Eddy, where’s Fast Eddy?

w
v

Fast Eddy? I remember him. And Team Builder too. And Ramble On. Give or take a year or two, I think I started posting on Rams boards (that made their way to the Original Herd, one way or another) back in 1995.

And it all ended cuz I spoke out about the blatant conservative bias of the mods, especially when it came to the subject of Kaepernick’s kneeling.

Wonder if things have changed there recently, now that a majority of America supports what he did.

Which leads me to this riff/sidebar:

I often think about the conservative record overall on issues, going back decades. Objectively speaking, it’s always been horrendously, dangerously, historically wrong. In no particular order: on economics, inequality, the environment, science, evolution, civil rights, voting rights, workers’ rights, education, guns, health care . . . and now, the pandemic.

Given that record, why does the media insist on grading “the right” on a curve, year after year after year? Why does it — and I’m talking about the MSM — go out of its way to try to be “balanced” when “the right” has so clearly aligned itself with the flat-earth side on every issue?

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Written by the author of The Evolution of God, which I also loved, it’s basically a very intelligent pitch for a kind of secular Buddhism, with mindfulness meditation at its heart. Wright is an evolutionary psychologist, and gets scienzy (at times) in the service of the Buddhist Way, showing how it fits with natural selection, and can offset the “environmental mismatches” our evolution has created. Where it becomes relevant to the above discussion is via psychological studies regarding how easily we humans are led, misled, our opinions (re)shaped, altered, via (at times) very simple suggestions. And that’s all of us. We all are subject to this, to conditioned responses, etc.

(Wright asserts that strong meditation practices can help us break free of that conditioning to one degree or another).

Capitalist marketing weaponized/weaponizes all of the above to a degree we’ve never seen before, and the right does capitalist marketing far, far better than the left. It’s not even close.

But we’re all “naturally” susceptible to this, for these illusions and delusions, cuz they once helped us stay alive/spread our genes into the next generation. Passing on our genes is our Prime Directive, as biological units. Wright contends that the secular Buddhist Way can help us get beyond that Prime Directive, rebel against it if need be, and it often is needed, given those increasing environmental mismatches.

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

Well i basically agree with all that.

Cept i would qualify it with somethin along the lines of…I suspect that once Corporate-Capitalism has damaged a human brain so utterly that it has, say, turned them into a Neo-Nazi, or NeoCon or whatever– I am not sure any form of ‘meditation’ could save them. Ya know. Too much capitalist-damage at that point. They might just meditate and become even more focused assholes.

I just dont believe everyone can always come back to the light. Take, Zooey for example…

w
v

That makes sense. But Wright doesn’t really get into the politics stuff, per se, beyond talking about our increasing tribalism and how this is gonna get us all killed, one way or another, if we don’t wake up. Climate change, wars, etc. But it’s not his main angle in the book, and, unless I already forgot the section, which is more than possible, he doesn’t talk about meditation “saving” the already lost. I’m pretty sure his take is preventative, rather than post-darkside coversion.

I think you’d like it, WV. And he’s really pretty humble about the whole thing. I think his meditation sessions and retreats must have had that effect. A really different “tone” to the book than The Evolution of God.

. . .

Haven’t looked at any of the videos here, but he mentioned this site in the book:

https://bloggingheads.tv/programs/current/wrightshow

Just remembered this study from the book:

Wine experts were given different wines to taste and rate, or so they thought. They had different price tags. Ninety dollar bottles and ten dollar bottles. Guess which ones they thought were better.

It was the same exact wine.

If people can be manipulated by something that simple, of course they can be manipulated into believing conspiracy theories, especially by demagogues who know how to push all the right buttons.