We should all be very disappointed that the Mueller investigation worked out pretty much exactly the way I was afraid it would. [stderr] Making such predictions is pretty easy; just assume the worst.
Actually, I suppose that this is far from the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing would be that the entire exercise was a stalking goat to flush anti-regime sympathizers from their hidey-holes and get their names on the list of people who are about to disappear. That’s what a competent autocrat would do; in fact that’s pretty much exactly what Mohammed Bin Salman did, and he’s hardly a stable genius. In the Orwellian nightmare-world scenario, the secret police would have been smart enough to be the ones selling the “It’s Mueller Time” Tshirts, so they could use a big data app to match who bought the shirts against federal or federal contractor employee lists, and all those people would find themselves unemployed and blacklisted. That’s what a competent Big Brother would do – write and print Emmanuel Goldstein’s book and make sure it has embedded tracking devices. Everyone who was cheering Mueller on, and their families, would become unpersons. By the way, that’s pretty much exactly how the Chinese Government is dealing with the Uighur areas in the north: they’re keeping a list, they’re updating it constantly, and if you’ve got a black mark next to your name, your ability to draw on public services (such as: driving on the roads) is curtailed.
The Mueller investigation was a distraction for the media, and the media did a good job making fools of themselves – none of it made any difference because the goggle-eyed chelonian spawn of Miskatonic, Mitch McConnell, controls Congress. Did you see what he did with the Green New Deal? He held it up to the light, just so he could knock it down; it was a demonstration of naked power. Unfortunately for all of us, McConnell is not an incompetent like Trump.
It’s become something of a pastime for liberals to bemoan that maybe “we didn’t try hard enough” or “Bernie had a chance instead of Hillary” but the system has been rigged completely, ruthlessly, and thoroughly. My root cause analysis says that the game was lost when the north didn’t plow the south under during reconstruction – allowing southern politics to survive after the drubbing they were handed in their treasonous war exerted darwinian pressure to produce sneakier, backstabbier, southern politicians. They were given generations to practice gerrymandering and vote suppression, we should stop pretending to be shocked that they’re really, really good at it. I’m coming to believe that Sherman should have marched through the south as Octavian would have, decorating the trees for Morrigan’s ravens. (I know that’s a weird mix of cultural references but, contrary to current white supremacist thinking, the nordics were small beer compared the least of the Romans when it came to organized mayhem)
The fixation on Russia, Russia, Russia, is an emotional withdrawal by those who can’t accept that Clinton was a horrible candidate and that she was a bureaucrat centrist who believes in nothing, running against a true radical who also believes in nothing and is nihilist enough to just make up whatever ‘facts’ serve him. A wordy policy wonk like Clinton is helpless against someone whose whole life has been a sort of extended Gish Gallop. I have said this before, too: Comey’s butt-fisted interference with the campaign had vastly more effect than any Russian troll farm ever could have had. There should have been an investigation into Comey’s actions, except that would never have happened because Comey got Trump elected; he’s just a sore loser that Trump fired him because he didn’t kiss ass well enough. Memo to Comey: you can only sell your soul completely, your new master understands loyalty better than anyone in the FBI ever could.
My main regret, watching all of this, is that Hunter S. Thompson is not around and all we’ve got is hipster Matt Taibbi trying to be “edgy.”
We’re fucked. There are still democrats and journalists howling about Russia and they didn’t even notice that Israel made it illegal to criticize their policies. Both parties (as Nancy Pelosi said) are strongly loyal to Israel, so long as nobody phrases that wrong – the same congress that invited Netanyahu to come address them in order to spite a sitting president – now breathlessly demonizes Vladimir Putin. Putin’s got to be sitting back, looking at Brexit and Trump and pinching himself because this all might be a dream. He’s like the punter who was invited to throw out the first ball and suddenly was declared the winner and champion.
At least we no longer need to pretend to take the reactionary “conservatives” at their word – they have hopelessly contradicted, debased, and perjured themselves. We know they don’t believe in anything, themselves, so we don’t need to engage with their stated beliefs. Family? You don’t believe in the integrity of families while you’re taking nursing infants from their mothers and locking children in cages. Education? You don’t believe in education, you’re dancing this rigamarole about “charter schools” while allowing schools to re-segregate. Democracy? You don’t believe in democracy when you’re re-electing representatives based on gerrymandering. Diplomacy? Pardon me while I laugh in your face. Right to life? You don’t believe in right to life when you’re supporting air strikes in Yemen. Fiscally conservative? You voted for every bloated defense budget the pentagon asks for. “No,” I wink, “I know you’re a nihilist and you have no beliefs except for a love of power. Your ‘beliefs’ are a convenient smoke screen of self-justification. I’m a nihilist, too – can’t we talk honestly? If you accept your worship of naked force it will empower you, you ubermensch – you don’t need to be a coward any more. Just tell it like it is. And, oh, I know you’d just as soon see me up against a wall facing a firing squad, and I feel the same way about you. I’d do any horrible fucked-up thing I wanted to you, if I had the power to, and I know the feeling is mutual. There’s no difference between us, only who’s got the upper hand and if I found myself in a position where I had the political power to obliterate you, I would, unhesitatingly.”
I know it’s not a significant matter to you, dear reader, but I have decided to release myself from my pledge to not forge weapons. I know there will always be enough weapons, and the world does not need any more of them, but let me mold my hate into a tangible form, for my own mental health.
Stepping over the threshold, eh? Well, we readers are duly informed.
I am lucky never to have made any pledges to myself, knowing their futility, so I shan’t have to face the like.
(BTW, technically, even an eye-gouging knife is a weapon. As you well know)
Knife-making is a hobby. Marcus is a computer security specialist. (And I will understand completely if this comment never makes it out of moderation.)
In my opinion, speculating about alternative history (what would have happened, if somebody had acted differently some years ago) is utterly pointless. Yet now I’m tempted to do that, because I somewhat disagree with your speculation. Let’s assume that after the war politicians had enacted a different voting system—whichever candidate gets the most votes wins, and it’s irrelevant where each voter lives. That would certainly be an improvement compared to what you have in the USA right now. But would it really have made that much of a difference? Let’s begin with the fact that northern politicians were also sneaky backstabbers and racists (how long did it took northern politicians to decide that black people ought to have equal rights rather than just be “not enslaved”?), and then there’s also the fact that southern politicians wouldn’t have disappeared anywhere. They would remain where they were. Ultimately, all politicians are sneaky backstabbers, it doesn’t matter from which part of the USA they come. And, on top of that, it’s also perfectly possible to elect an awful politician though popular vote. Creating a normal electoral system is easier after a war when the whole country is a mess anyway. But, if people wanted to do so, they could change it at any given moment, including now. Then there’s also the fact that gerrymandering might be a uniquely American problem, but attempts of vote suppression exists all over the world. Combating attempted vote suppression is a continuous process, countries must do that at each election, it’s not sufficient to just settle for a nice voting system once during 19th century.
Now you got me wondering to what extent I’m a nihilist. I mean, I know that some of my beliefs are leaning towards nihilism, but I hadn’t really thought about how bad exactly it is. It’s probably pretty bad: the number of things that matter for me is abysmally low, my own entertainment and pleasure is pretty much the only thing. I don’t even care for power that much, for me power is just one of the tools that can be utilized for the purpose of increasing one’s pleasure.
So we’ll get to see some pretty sharp things? OK, I’m cool with that. I like pretty sharp things.
Seriously, though, I don’t think that a decision to make only knives that are meant to be tools is even reasonable. Firstly, just because the knife maker intended some knife to be used for a certain purpose doesn’t guarantee that other people won’t use this knife for something else. After all, lots of people have been injured or killed with cooking knives. Secondly, the line between knives that are meant to be either tools or weapons is pretty blurry. Yes, I know that certain blade shapes are better suited for specific purposes, but there are also blades that can be considered multi-purpose and would be suited as either a tool or a weapon.
Personally, for my own mental health, I have chosen a different approach—to simply stop caring about things. My inherent inability to feel empathy makes this one pretty easy for me. I have been born privileged. Nobody is dropping explosives on my head, I had access to excellent education, I have enough money to live comfortably. I’m free to enjoy myself and not worry about all the unfairness that exists in this world. I don’t even have to worry about the humanity trashing the planet and changing its climate, because I don’t have children and I’m not afraid of dying once this planet becomes uninhabitable.
Ieva Skrebele@#3:
Now you got me wondering to what extent I’m a nihilist. I mean, I know that some of my beliefs are leaning towards nihilism, but I hadn’t really thought about how bad exactly it is.
“Nihilist” has become a pejorative, for some. I think it’s an extreme position of skepticism about morality, politics, culture, and language. As such, it’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing, let’s just acknowledge that it’s a scam to enforce social compliance and let’s observe that there are plenty of delopers who act without constraint and seem to do just fine. It makes justifying one’s actions difficult, because it’s solipsistic – I think it’s hard for a nihilist to argue why anyone else should do anything, but that’s also a problem skepticism has suffered with for a long time. (Naturally, I remain unconvinced by humanist claims that there is an objective morality, and I think consequentialist systems don’t even rise to the status of being a joke)
The stereotypical nihilist of the 1900s was a bomb-throwing anarchist who just wanted to see the world burn, but that stereotype was not actually a viewpoint offered by any extreme skeptic or nihilist I’ve ever encountered. It’s a calumny. After all, why would a nihilist want to go around increasing suffering or destroying the world; it would have no value to them unless they found it entertaining – which is pretty much the only reason for doing anything that a nihilist might agree with.
When I characterize these people as “nihilists” I am saying that I reject their claims of belief. They may say that the reason they want to pass anti-trans laws is for the betterment of public bathroom users but I don’t buy it – I assume that they have no good reason for their attitudes and actions, other than that they wish to flex their power and it appears to amuse them to see other people suffer. That’s in tune with my interpretation of nihilism – they’re just doing what they want, and retconning a moral facade (not bothering to make it consistent or defensible) over their desires. To bring this all around to a full circle, that’s what I believe racists, nazis, and republicans do: the things they claim to believe are obviously indefensible bullshit yet they are still willing to act on those claimed beliefs – which tells me that the actions are where the game was, all along. The claims of belief were lies.
Once we reject everyone’s claims of motivation, we are liberated to see the world as we wish to see it, though our viewpoint’s clarity comes with a certain cost; that cost is the conviction that everyone is at best fooling themself and at worst maliciously trying to fool us. The best we can hope from politics and society is that they leave us alone while we collectively sit around waiting to die.
Some of this is “bullshitter” in Frankfurt’s usage. Other parts are closer to the common idea of “sociopath.” Not much to do with “nihilism,” in philosophy-speak.
There is something odd about characterizing yourself this way. One would not usually take ownership of a label like this. And even if you did (go ahead and be unusual, for all I care), using it as a rhetorical cudgel would make no sense, if the intent was not self-harm. Put a hair shirt on that, self-flagellate a bit, tell us we’re all doomed to burn in hell as sinners — assuming the difference is not merely verbal, there’s probably something in there which you won’t actually endorse.
It’s reasonable to consider the possibility that they’re simply wrong about something, and that you have a (perhaps tentative, vague, etc.) notion about what’s right. This would not put you in the same boat, but more importantly, it wouldn’t be incoherent or self-undermining. That provides a relatively stable foundation — the things you’re genuinely right about, which don’t consist of bullshit — upon which you can develop serious analysis, criticism, understanding, opportunities for self-reflection, and so forth.
Then you would have a place to stand, where you could actually do significant things like reject a claim or not reject a claim. This is the sort of place where people are, when they say things like “I don’t believe in leprechauns,” and it doesn’t have the same meaning as statements like “rocks don’t believe in leprechauns,” because in fact they’re not behaving the same ways.
There’s another way to read it: projecting your own layers of motivation and interpretation onto the external world.
If you’re a lucid dreamer, you are liberated to see the dream-world as you wish to see it. The dream-world may bend to your will, and it may indeed be a vivid experience for you, which might seem like clarity. But clarity about what? Must that be the real world, or must the real world work in the same ways?
John Morales@#1:
(BTW, technically, even an eye-gouging knife is a weapon. As you well know)
I was making a play on words; Americans often call the little buds on a potato “eyes” and Jazzlet was looking for a knife to remove potato eyes. The “eye-gouging knife” would be capable of inflicting nasty damage on a living creature, for sure, but it’s really not a combat set-up; the handle is too thin and the blade is pretty narrow. For the up close and stabby you want a good big handle so you can stick it in and lever it out without losing your grip. Of course, I would say that, being a fan of Japanese swords, which are (in my opinion) the acme of slashy-stabby design.
I think that it might be a big mistake to assume that conservatives (or anyone else) doesn’t really believe in what they say they believe in just because their beliefs don’t make sense to you. In my experience, most people really do believe in what they say they believe, even if what they believe is illogical, or contrary to evidence, or contradicts other beliefs that they hold. After all, people believe in illogical, unsupported, contradictory things all of the time.
Of course, there are some people who don’t really believe in anything other than gaining power, and use professed beliefs as a way to further that end. I suspect that they are a small minority, though, even in the proverbial halls of power.
“It is entertaining” is the only reason why I ever bother to do anything. Even when I work or seek food and shelter (take care of my body’s biological necessities), I do these actions only because they allow me to pursue pleasure in my life. I think that human life has no meaning. This leaves me only one option for what to do with my own life—being a hedonist. I don’t think that pursuing pleasure gives meaning for my life, it’s just that I have nothing else better to do. I can either kill myself now or pursue pleasure for a while before I die. So far I’m doing a pretty good job at keeping myself entertained and happy, so for now I’m not looking forward to dying just yet.
Have you actually tried talking to transphobes? How you describe their motivations differs from what I have observed. I know that not all transphobes and homophobes believe the same things, which is why what I’m going to say next is true only for those Latvian transphobes I have debated against. Latvian LGBTQ haters believe that homosexuality and transsexuality are like contagious diseases. By advertising their depraved lifestyle, openly homosexual people infect innocent kids and turn them into gay or trans people. For Latvian LGBTQ haters, their fight against gay and trans people is an existential struggle—they believe that Latvians will die out once people embrace LGBTQ culture, stop having heterosexual marriages, and stop having children. On top of that, there’s also religious hatred. For Christians, LGBTQ people are depraved sinners. By spreading and normalizing their depraved and immoral lifestyle, gays and lesbians are tempting “normal” and healthy” people to lose their moral foundations and become sinners instead of having virtuous lives. Thus LGBTQ people are endangering the whole society and condemning normal people to burning in hell as a punishment for tolerating the existence of this depravity in their own cities and neighborhoods. Homophobes and transphobes fear that their own home towns may experience the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah. For Latvian transphobes this is serious business, it’s an existential struggle, it’s not that they just “wish to flex their power and it appears to amuse them to see other people suffer.”
My assumption is that most people with inconsistent worldviews are fooling themselves rather than maliciously trying to fool me. Unless some person gives me a reason to believe that they are intentionally lying, I will assume that I’m just dealing with a fool. Just because some claim is obviously indefensible bullshit for you doesn’t mean that a person who is less educated and too lazy to think cannot believe this claim.
Marcus
Have you ever tried to make scissors?
On reading our esteemed host’s screed above, pls remember Tomlin’s Law:
Why not both? Clinton will not be running again, so it is perhaps more important to address the question of foreign interference in our elections. Since Trump’s ego prevents him from acknowledging that Russian interference helped him, our government has not made a concerted effort to address the problem in future elections.
Reginald Selkirk @#11
Is there really a problem? If it is legal for an American citizen or some corporation with an office in the USA to purchase advertisements or create social media campaigns in order to promote one political candidate, then why should it be illegal for some person who happens to have a Russian passport to do the exact same thing?
If you defined the problem as “billionaires influencing elections by manipulating the media,” then I’d agree that there really is a problem. It really worries me how rich people are routinely influencing voters. But if you define the problem as “somebody who happens to have a Russian passport is trying to do the exact same thing that American citizens have been doing for ages,” then I have to wonder about xenophobia and double standards.
Reginald Selkirk @#11
If it is important to worry about foreign influences affecting US elections, I would suggest that you forget any minor Russian influences, if any and have a look at Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Perhaps the UAE as well?
The USA has had two years of raging Russiophobia and there is nothing there except some dodgy stuff out of the DNC and paranoia by people in the USA who have not heard the news: The USSR collapse back in 1989–1990. Russia != USSR. There is no KGB.
There are private banks, private manufacturing, privately owned farms. Russian tourists in Turkey and Egypt by the planeload.
Russia is a much smaller, basically social democratic, country than the USSR that just has no real reason to disrupt elections etc. Putin implied, they would have preferred Trump over a mad cold-war Clinton. It was a case of the lesser of the two evils.
Did you notice that it was Israel getting the US Embassy in Jerusalem; it was Israel getting the US’s agreement to annex the Golan Heights: it was Saudi Arabia getting continued arms and support for its genocide in Yemen; it was Saudi Arabia who may get assistance in developing a nuclear programme.
It was Russia who got more sanctions; it was Russia who lost the INF treaty; it was Russia whose Nord Stream 2 pipeline Trump has been attacking; it was Russia whose diplomats got kicked out of the USA and a lot of other countries and whose San Francisco Consulate closed.
And, nobody, Mueller or the House and Senate committees who have found any sign of collusion with Russia.
Trump is a contemptible piece of crap and probably has had all sorts of shady deals with Russians, Iranians, Germans and Americans. There just is no evidence of collusion with the Russian Govt.
I’d suggest it is time to really question just who own Trump. It, sure the devil, is not Russia.
We’re still on opposite sides of this thing? Weird.
I think everyone is taking the press at its word here concerning the Mueller investigation but I don’t believe the press knows what they are talking about. I just listened to a lawyer dissecting the Barr letter on the Mueller report and the Barr letter actually does say that there are real problems. It just says it in a real “lawyerly” way that tries to “spin” everything to make Trump look as good as possible under the circumstances. Anyone who is interested in a break down of what it says: https://openargs.com/oa264-the-barr-summary-of-the-mueller-report/ There seems very little hope these days but this did cheer me up at least a little.
Regarding conservatives saying what they believe, I always think of this video which IMHO does an excellent takedown / analysis.
> The Alt-Right Playbook: The Card Says Moops
> Innuendo Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4
I think many conservatives do strongly believe some things, but I think a great many of them believe things almost subconsciously without quite knowing what they believe, or they lie about what they believe and just repeat talking points without believing it.
What conservatives in America believe in is Christian supremacy, white supremacy, and male supremacy, and tribal identity and loyalty, and they’ll repeat whatever talking points they need to repeat to stay loyal to that identity. Obviously, I’m generalizing a lot, and this is not the whole story, but I’ll be damned if it’s not at least half of the story.
I really, really love how the guy in the video points out the inconsistency of wanting guns to overthrow the government while being extremely servile to police abuse and the police state. That contradiction pisses me off so much, and it’s almost never addressed by leftists when they critique the right.
Of course, I can explain the real beliefs of conservatives easily enough: Conservatives believe that the police state should exist for racial minorities and other people, and there is no police state for white Christian men, and so it’s ok.
It reminds me of another video of a white redneck trying to help us city-living leftists talk to redneck rightists. He gives the advice: when talking to white rednecks about the problem of police abuse in cities, we should compare it to the ATF and the fear that the ATF instills in that certain segment of the population. Also BLM (and I’m not talking about Black Lives Matter). He goes on to explain that police in redneck areas are often not strangers, impersonal thugs, and that might be a big contributing factor, but ATF, BLM, and other police forces are strangers, impersonal thugs, and the white rednecks can relate to that. I thought that was a brilliant insight. Too lazy to find the link right now.
@EnlightenmentLiberal, could you please explain what you mean by “ATF” and “BLM” for non-americans?
Charly @ # 17 – “ATF” = Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms, a US federal regulatory agency hated by gun nuts.
“BLM” = Bureau of Land Management, US federal agency responsible for nationally-owned land not part of parks, military bases, etc. In western states particularly, it leases grazing rights to ranchers at rates well below area-standard rents for such deals, but Fox News and other right-wing agitprop groups whip up hatred against it anyway, trying to force it to sell off such property to ranches, resort corporations, etc – do a search for “Cliven Bundy” for accounts of a prolonged anti-BLM demo that almost turned very violent.
Apologies for stepping on EL’s space, but since I dunno when EL might check back in here…
@Pierce R. Butler, thanks. I know the Cliven Bundy debacle, but I find it hard to keep up with the plethora of abbreviations that are used in these discussions on Internet, since one and the same abbreviation can mean sometimes literally a dozen things.
jkrideau:
I agree with a lot of your points, but I think you ignore or miss how much questionable Russian money has flowed to The Trump Organization. Because he is such a multi-point screw up nobody else would lend him any money. I also think your argument downplays how intertwined the Russian state is with the vaunted “independent” businesses you mention. Distaste for an authoritarian Russian State is not illogical, even if it is taken to extremes.
Still, compared to a century of American meddling…Putin is a piker.
Bmiller @#20
Personally, I strongly dislike Putin’s regime. There are plenty of problems to complain about when it comes to all that shit that’s happening in Russia—election rigging, human rights abuses, limiting free speech, arrests of opposition politicians, corruption, sending Russian army to various other countries, etc. That being said, I still want consistency and no double standards. It’s not like Russian money is any dirtier or more questionable than American money. It’s not like rich Russians are any worse than rich Americans. The way I see it, there’s a huge problem with money in politics. I don’t want billionaires or corporations manipulating election results. Yet I couldn’t care less whether the billionaire who purchased some advertisements happens to have American or Russian citizenship. I don’t care about the source of money, because, in my opinion, firstly, it’s not that important, secondly, most of the money that goes into politics is “dirty” anyway regardless of where it came from, thirdly, the real problem is that rich people in general can influence election results rather than the fact that this time it was “the wrong billionaire” who purchased some advertisements. What annoys me is that people aren’t nowhere nearly as upset when the billionaire who purchased some political advertisements happens to have an American or Israeli or whatever other citizenship instead of a Russian citizenship.
Phaw, leva. Allow me to keep just a tiny, tiny crumb of nationalist “my team” thinking.
A little bit??? Just a tiny bit? Even as a regular here on Marcus’ “Cure for Patriotism House of Fun”?
@ 20 bmiller
I see your point but I do not think I am ignoring the Russian money into the Trump Organization. Trump and crew would take money from anyone and launder it or steal it if possible. There seems good evidence that his organization was willing to launder money from the Iranian Republican Guard. Which, by the way, would not bother me but I am not American.
I just have not seen anything that convinces me that it was buying Trump for the presidency. There just is no evidence that when you look at it does not prove to be pure crap.
I also think your argument downplays how intertwined the Russian state is with the vaunted “independent” businesses you mention.
Sorry I did mean to imply that they were all independent of the government the way that Boeing is in the USA. Or is it?
What I meant to imply was that it appears that the average US citizen and the average US media person has not progressed beyond about 1975 in their views of the evil empire. However one looks at it, Russia of today is not the USSR for a vast number of reasons.
Most of the Russian economy seems to be in private hands just like it is in the USA. That does not mean in the USA that the big military contractors, or Google or Sam’s Sub Shop and Susi bar are not intertwined with the government. It means they are in private hands. The Kolhozes are gone.
Distaste for an authoritarian Russian State is not illogical, even if it is taken to extremes.
Well yes it is if it results in behaviour that is damaging to yourself or your country. And even more it is seems illogical to have a distaste for an authoritarian state because its name is the Russian Federation and not to have an equal dislike for other authoritarian states.
How authoritarian is the Russian Federation? Worse than a NATO member like Turkey or a theocratic undemocratic monarchy such as Saudi Arabia or Bahrain where the US 5th Fleet is based? Is it as authoritarian as the USA?
My bet is that the Russian Federation is nowhere near as authoritarian as Saudi Arabia though I have never been in Russia. I have lived in Saudi Arabia and the public beheadings in the market place after Friday prayers were something to avoid.
Does the same thing apply, that distaste for Saudi Arabia is not illogical even if taken to extremes?
I think what is annoying me is that at least the US media and apparently the Congress know so little about Russia that they do not have even the slightest basis on which to interpret whatever bull they are parroting and, unfortunately but quite reasonably the public whom we cannot expect to be Russian experts, have no criteria against which to evaluate it.
And to go back to my original point, so far no one has produced one iota of believable evidence of collusion. Given the standard of “analysis” that the US press produces and the rhetoric from Congress and Senate that told us that there would be “absolute proof” tomorrow, it is time to forget a stupid witch hunt based on a dodge dossier paid for by the DNC and either do something constructive or try to nail Trump on something he did do and there must be lots of that.
Even if Putin had done any of this and I have my doubts you are right…Putin is a piker.
Thanks Pierce R. Butler