If only Barry J Kaufman were President... Perhaps Barry could offer some novel solution of whimsy, a thoughtful insight, or anything other than the standard contribution of Thom is basically the crook silhouette on Neighborhood Watch signs.
Patriotism has its place and time when evoked in pursuit of our highest ideals. Now is that time.
We have ample supply of anti-democracy oligarchs within. The prople certainly won't benefit from supplemental influence by foreign oligarchs. That's a "Plus 1" invitation sailing for the dumpster.
Haha, Gutter-rats-R-Us. Best part of politics. Clubbing them. Being nice doesn't work. Neither does being mean. Nothing works on their stubborn asses, so may as well have some fun.
Although I’ve heard about the evils of “Russian oligarchs” countless times in the last couple of weeks, I believe that our oligarchs are way better at being bad than Russia’s oligarchs, if only because ours have more money and power. In fact I submit that our oligarchs are better at oligarching than any others (yet another example of the bad kind of American Exceptionalism). Oligarchs and the other money/power-addicted billionaires around the world are the root cause of the existential threats that confront Earth’s creatures. In his SOTU address, Biden met his Constitutional purpose within the parameters of what the oligarchs are letting him get away with. With 21st Century election fraud, voter suppression, and plain old cheating to “deal” with nonexistent voter fraud, the oligarchs are now ready to run the table. Contemporary knowledge and tech give the world’s best-ever propagandists the tools to manipulate our authoritarian follower-citizens (i.e., the “patriots” who learned to be “racetriots”). That means the oligarchs can continue to exploit their powers of corporate personhood to control a critical mass of our elected and appointed decision-makers. Perhaps the most damaging frame job in the history of democracies is that the contest to choose who leads our government is some kind of conservative vs liberal fight, where in reality it has always been a competition between our citizens and the morbidly rich, and they almost always control the message. (Especially when it comes to laying low, or as was noted in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”)
Daphne, it just struck me how simple the solution becomes if you can label the bad guys as authoritarian-follower assholes. Can you say that on basic cable?
Thank you for your questions, I believe you have identified the heart of the issues that matter most. So, since you asked, here’s what I think: Question 1) On 2/18, Thom’s article made mention of the only metric I’ve ever seen that helps to address the behaviors of authoritarian-follower type citizens by allowing me to make even more assumptions and say that since Germany has only 6.7% of their citizens that tested as having “highly authoritarian worldviews and behaviors” and America has 25.6%, let’s assume that we baseline it at 5% of people are born to be that way regardless of what they learn and have been taught, (you might call them congenital authoritarian assholes) and any others over 5% of the population learned and were taught to be that way. However, and ironically, the very nature of being authoritarian assholes means that they are highly unlikely to change short of costly and probably illegal brainwashing. So, good for Germany that they don’t raise a bunch of assholes. (And couldn’t that be a perfect description of being a role model democracy i.e., promote the general welfare of our citizens by protecting us from the assholes that do things adverse to our rights and our communities’ interests?) Therefore I don't think we can do much about them in the short term because they are crucially important to the authoritarian leaders, which leads to Question 2) My opinion is that we need an amendment-changing majority in Congress of people who would pledge to share a common purpose that pithifies the Preamble (just like Hamilton did a long time ago). And they must pass the amendment that stops the madness of corporate personhood. I could tell you how I think that must be done, but then I’d have to…you know. As far as Question 3) Our reality is that liberal means our citizens and conservative means the morbidly rich and their authoritarian followers. Although I would submit that a true conservative would be obligated to use best practice-based solutions to meet their purpose, so if we actually shared a common purpose we might even get along for once.
I keep arguing that America actually does have a higher concentration of the congenital authoritarians. Garrison Keillor had a laugh line about it: "Remember our forebears were tossed out of every decent country in Europe." How not so funny, anymore.
ok, class. The reason Thom uses "patriotic" in this context is to try to reclaim the word from the corrupting clutches of jingoists and white supremacists, and return the concept of "patriotism" to some connection to doing the right thing.
Same for the word "liberal." And for displaying the flag. Take it back! How many of us automatically assume someone is a Republican just because they proudly honor our nation's symbol? How many Democrats don't because they don't want to be confused with Republicans? Not only do the good citizens have to reclaim the basic principle of democracy in their own minds, they must also embrace the outward trappings of a truly free people: the lexicon, gestures, and traditions. And at the same time, wholly reject the trappings of fascism.
The State of the Union is always informative, even if it's Trump giving it. President Biden gave a strong speech despite his impediment that he has dealt with all his life. It was written all over the faces on the right. The more Republicans call him weak, old, and stupid the more it informs me of what they fear. No one knows better than they do what a war can do for a president.
What Thom is telling me is that the Republicans need to stop lying for the duration and not use the war to campaign. He presented the fossil fuel facts.
The folks on the right demand quick remedies, and the Trumpers are suffering from oppositional defiant disorder. Those are terrible positions in a crisis. Lucky for us, we have leadership willing to think it through and cooperate with the rest of the free world instead of acting like we are the masters of the universe.
Republicans want us worried about gas lines and prices, not humanity. They should not be so cocky, because Putin just bombed a nuclear plant. He also has Chernobyl and is in love with his tactical nukes for the field and his hyper-sonic delivery system. He is a psychopath, he's proved it, and he views people as objects and obstacles, especially Americans.
In response to the picture of Biden walking away from the podium, billed as "This is what weakness looks like, there should have been a million posts of a selected image of Trump drooling all over Putin at Helsinki, labeled "No, this is what weakness looks like." Re: Putin, I am reflecting on a Mary Trump quote about T. exhibiting "...narcissist meltdown, when cornered." The "when cornered" part is very scary. I think it's fair to be concerned that in Putin we have us a narcissist who pathologically can not stand to back down, and he has nukes. I was married to one, and he would not back down on the most trivial, obvious thing. But at least he wasn't in charge of a country. My anxiety level just zoomed.
They are one in a hundred; some think there are more. I am convinced empathy and conscience are on a sliding scale or spectrum. Every family has one. Mine was a brother-in-law. Stood guard at Sis's house after she kicked him out; I would have.....
The demarcation between the minds of conservatives and liberals these days is a chasm so wide, egged on incessantly by (R) troglodytes, that it's unbreachable in the foreseeable future, when everything is quickly coming to a head. Forget verbal persuasion or gun fights; raw numbers at the polls is the only way to cure the disease of fascism at this late date. It's not a dramatic flare to point out that all life on the planet is at stake.
Good reference to a great movie. Very true indeed.
I'm in agreement with you on the US oligarchy. They've refined and reinforced the art of oligarching to a degree in which it is miraculously - nearly invisible...
It's not a judgment of who's worse, it's a question of "How many".
Less is better. I think. But there is the concern that "less" is also their goal. All of these subhuman wannabe kings are clawing for the top. We (people of the world) pay the price by warring on behalf of this giant peepee contest. It's just a different wrapper for us, like "Operation Iraqi Liberation" ( they should've stuck with that) or some other "values-based" reason to murder our neighbors across the globe as well as those on our street. The Liberal vs Conservative mirage is a travesty, a fantastical dividing tool, and just plain dumb to engage from a team sport perspective.
It's about being human, it's about issues, it's about time the cosmic woodchipper fires up its wind turbines and sucks in the traitors of Life.
You lost me at the "woodchipper," but the point about the Liberal/Conservative labeling is serious stuff. I have long wondered if there was some way to communicate how insulting to sincere conservatives the co-option of the term has become.
...And now, Putin is attacking the largest nuclear power plant in the world with artillery. Of course he is. In one fell swoop, the king of oil and gas magnates and his latest military misadventure in Ukraine is proving why it is crucial for this gluttonous world to reject fossil-fuel energy AND nuclear power. If not now, when?
It is disconcerting to see Thom Hartmann employing nationalist propaganda. What does "patriotic enough" mean? Am I not "patriotic enough" because I found Biden's State of the Union to be standard-issue drivel? Or that I think his lack of communication with Putin to be a fatal error in diplomacy? The question itself is bizarre, as if Republicans are the only ones who might struggle economically due to inflated oil prices. As usual, there are salient points here but the framing and anti-Republicanism in this context is needlessly divisive.
Well, no worries, according to all the rhetoric coming from the Republican fund raising pleas I get ten times a day you are very "patriotic". This response is right on point. Biden said nothing in the SOTU and totally blew it for Ukraine by not just talking to Putin. So simple. You are absolutely correct that there is no excuse for Thom's framing of the Republican Party at all. They are perfectly capable of being needlessly divisive by themselves.
Written like a true Democrat in the McCarthy era. Patriotism can be a dangerous term, and the neglecting of history in favor of electoral politics as Biden spouts nonsense about "funding the police" and virtually ignores the catastrophe of climate change does not put many in our society in a better place. Your sarcasm and the accusations of me being a Republican are right out of the McCarthy playbook. An interesting historical reversal that certainly contributes to our dangerous time and the rightward shift that Democrats continue to adopt to adapt to the corporate alliances of their leaders.
Rabid ReTrumplicans who don't believe in democracy play the victim because they also don't like and can't take the criticism so richly deserved of their party of traitors, terrorists, pathetic liars, and goddamn fools. The majority of people in this country as well as the rest of the world hate what they stand for, except, of course, all their like-minded fellow authoritarians, fabulists, and delusionists like Putin, who is inspired by a dystopian, nightmarish future not that different from where Republicans want to drag this nation.
As they whine effusively, poor babies, about being shunned by the civilized world, notice how Republicans (the trolls anyway) completely lack the self-awareness to see in themselves the very same faults that they falsely project onto their mortal enemies, which is anyone daring to believe in multiracial, multi-ethnical, multi-religious, multi-people democracy -- especially anyone calling themselves big-D Democrats. In other words, the authoritarian, one-party-rule mindset is by nature blindly egocentric, expecting courtesies and privileges they don't accord others as the rights of superior beings above accountability.
As the glaring example of everything evil, Pouty-face Putin is steaming mad (from intelligence sources) about the extent to which most of the world has come together with the singular purpose of destroying him personally along with devastating his beloved homeland economically. Typical of right-wingers, Putin does not display a hint of irony or concern about his own destruction of Ukraine and its families -- economically, militarily, physically, socially, spiritually, or any other way that matters!
Putin and cold-hearted, bloodthirsty tyrants like him are pure inspiration for Trump and his hypocritical acolytes like Fucker Carlson, who represents virtually the entire base of a party actively sabotaging American democracy while calling themselves patriotic.
Democrats would be remiss not to criticize the hell out of the whole sad lot at every opportunity. If they can attack the seat of our democracy in broad daylight, then the truth can be hurled at their stupid faces without sugarcoating it.
Trump lost; Biden won. All viable evidence supports that simple reality. Just say it.
No. Wild-eyed Republican "leaders," with their long, lying noses firmly planted up Daddy Trump's fat ass, have made the crass political decision to enter the midterms promoting an "alternative fact" -- in fact, the single biggest non-fact ever told in our long, now-broken history of transferring power peacefully. It's the same exact big lie about election fraud, not surprisingly, that all aspiring dictators invariably cite as the reason to hang onto power illegally while destroying the principle of democracy in every way but name.
If only Barry J Kaufman were President... Perhaps Barry could offer some novel solution of whimsy, a thoughtful insight, or anything other than the standard contribution of Thom is basically the crook silhouette on Neighborhood Watch signs.
Patriotism has its place and time when evoked in pursuit of our highest ideals. Now is that time.
We have ample supply of anti-democracy oligarchs within. The prople certainly won't benefit from supplemental influence by foreign oligarchs. That's a "Plus 1" invitation sailing for the dumpster.
Less corruption, not more.
Republicans-R-Corruption. ReTrumplicans-R-Traitors. Republicans-R-Fascists. It's not because other people say so but because they are.
Tetch tetch. Michele Obama is frowning on you in spirit. (You know: "When they go low....)
Haha, Gutter-rats-R-Us. Best part of politics. Clubbing them. Being nice doesn't work. Neither does being mean. Nothing works on their stubborn asses, so may as well have some fun.
Although I’ve heard about the evils of “Russian oligarchs” countless times in the last couple of weeks, I believe that our oligarchs are way better at being bad than Russia’s oligarchs, if only because ours have more money and power. In fact I submit that our oligarchs are better at oligarching than any others (yet another example of the bad kind of American Exceptionalism). Oligarchs and the other money/power-addicted billionaires around the world are the root cause of the existential threats that confront Earth’s creatures. In his SOTU address, Biden met his Constitutional purpose within the parameters of what the oligarchs are letting him get away with. With 21st Century election fraud, voter suppression, and plain old cheating to “deal” with nonexistent voter fraud, the oligarchs are now ready to run the table. Contemporary knowledge and tech give the world’s best-ever propagandists the tools to manipulate our authoritarian follower-citizens (i.e., the “patriots” who learned to be “racetriots”). That means the oligarchs can continue to exploit their powers of corporate personhood to control a critical mass of our elected and appointed decision-makers. Perhaps the most damaging frame job in the history of democracies is that the contest to choose who leads our government is some kind of conservative vs liberal fight, where in reality it has always been a competition between our citizens and the morbidly rich, and they almost always control the message. (Especially when it comes to laying low, or as was noted in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”)
How to do something about the stew of issues you hit upon?
1) significant population of congenital authoritarian followers
2) bizarre legal institution of corporate personhood
Daphne, it just struck me how simple the solution becomes if you can label the bad guys as authoritarian-follower assholes. Can you say that on basic cable?
Thank you for your questions, I believe you have identified the heart of the issues that matter most. So, since you asked, here’s what I think: Question 1) On 2/18, Thom’s article made mention of the only metric I’ve ever seen that helps to address the behaviors of authoritarian-follower type citizens by allowing me to make even more assumptions and say that since Germany has only 6.7% of their citizens that tested as having “highly authoritarian worldviews and behaviors” and America has 25.6%, let’s assume that we baseline it at 5% of people are born to be that way regardless of what they learn and have been taught, (you might call them congenital authoritarian assholes) and any others over 5% of the population learned and were taught to be that way. However, and ironically, the very nature of being authoritarian assholes means that they are highly unlikely to change short of costly and probably illegal brainwashing. So, good for Germany that they don’t raise a bunch of assholes. (And couldn’t that be a perfect description of being a role model democracy i.e., promote the general welfare of our citizens by protecting us from the assholes that do things adverse to our rights and our communities’ interests?) Therefore I don't think we can do much about them in the short term because they are crucially important to the authoritarian leaders, which leads to Question 2) My opinion is that we need an amendment-changing majority in Congress of people who would pledge to share a common purpose that pithifies the Preamble (just like Hamilton did a long time ago). And they must pass the amendment that stops the madness of corporate personhood. I could tell you how I think that must be done, but then I’d have to…you know. As far as Question 3) Our reality is that liberal means our citizens and conservative means the morbidly rich and their authoritarian followers. Although I would submit that a true conservative would be obligated to use best practice-based solutions to meet their purpose, so if we actually shared a common purpose we might even get along for once.
I keep arguing that America actually does have a higher concentration of the congenital authoritarians. Garrison Keillor had a laugh line about it: "Remember our forebears were tossed out of every decent country in Europe." How not so funny, anymore.
3) liberal vs what the heck does "conservative" mean?
Truer words never spoken. Well said. Russian oligarchs took their inspiration from the masters of deceit and theft, American oligarchs.
Nah. Remember the Protocols.
Yeah. Just talk to Putin. Works like a magic charm.
ok, class. The reason Thom uses "patriotic" in this context is to try to reclaim the word from the corrupting clutches of jingoists and white supremacists, and return the concept of "patriotism" to some connection to doing the right thing.
Same for the word "liberal." And for displaying the flag. Take it back! How many of us automatically assume someone is a Republican just because they proudly honor our nation's symbol? How many Democrats don't because they don't want to be confused with Republicans? Not only do the good citizens have to reclaim the basic principle of democracy in their own minds, they must also embrace the outward trappings of a truly free people: the lexicon, gestures, and traditions. And at the same time, wholly reject the trappings of fascism.
The State of the Union is always informative, even if it's Trump giving it. President Biden gave a strong speech despite his impediment that he has dealt with all his life. It was written all over the faces on the right. The more Republicans call him weak, old, and stupid the more it informs me of what they fear. No one knows better than they do what a war can do for a president.
What Thom is telling me is that the Republicans need to stop lying for the duration and not use the war to campaign. He presented the fossil fuel facts.
The folks on the right demand quick remedies, and the Trumpers are suffering from oppositional defiant disorder. Those are terrible positions in a crisis. Lucky for us, we have leadership willing to think it through and cooperate with the rest of the free world instead of acting like we are the masters of the universe.
Republicans want us worried about gas lines and prices, not humanity. They should not be so cocky, because Putin just bombed a nuclear plant. He also has Chernobyl and is in love with his tactical nukes for the field and his hyper-sonic delivery system. He is a psychopath, he's proved it, and he views people as objects and obstacles, especially Americans.
In response to the picture of Biden walking away from the podium, billed as "This is what weakness looks like, there should have been a million posts of a selected image of Trump drooling all over Putin at Helsinki, labeled "No, this is what weakness looks like." Re: Putin, I am reflecting on a Mary Trump quote about T. exhibiting "...narcissist meltdown, when cornered." The "when cornered" part is very scary. I think it's fair to be concerned that in Putin we have us a narcissist who pathologically can not stand to back down, and he has nukes. I was married to one, and he would not back down on the most trivial, obvious thing. But at least he wasn't in charge of a country. My anxiety level just zoomed.
They are one in a hundred; some think there are more. I am convinced empathy and conscience are on a sliding scale or spectrum. Every family has one. Mine was a brother-in-law. Stood guard at Sis's house after she kicked him out; I would have.....
The demarcation between the minds of conservatives and liberals these days is a chasm so wide, egged on incessantly by (R) troglodytes, that it's unbreachable in the foreseeable future, when everything is quickly coming to a head. Forget verbal persuasion or gun fights; raw numbers at the polls is the only way to cure the disease of fascism at this late date. It's not a dramatic flare to point out that all life on the planet is at stake.
These Republicans and authoritarians have been addicted to drama, well now they have the real thing.
Good reference to a great movie. Very true indeed.
I'm in agreement with you on the US oligarchy. They've refined and reinforced the art of oligarching to a degree in which it is miraculously - nearly invisible...
It's not a judgment of who's worse, it's a question of "How many".
Less is better. I think. But there is the concern that "less" is also their goal. All of these subhuman wannabe kings are clawing for the top. We (people of the world) pay the price by warring on behalf of this giant peepee contest. It's just a different wrapper for us, like "Operation Iraqi Liberation" ( they should've stuck with that) or some other "values-based" reason to murder our neighbors across the globe as well as those on our street. The Liberal vs Conservative mirage is a travesty, a fantastical dividing tool, and just plain dumb to engage from a team sport perspective.
It's about being human, it's about issues, it's about time the cosmic woodchipper fires up its wind turbines and sucks in the traitors of Life.
You lost me at the "woodchipper," but the point about the Liberal/Conservative labeling is serious stuff. I have long wondered if there was some way to communicate how insulting to sincere conservatives the co-option of the term has become.
...And now, Putin is attacking the largest nuclear power plant in the world with artillery. Of course he is. In one fell swoop, the king of oil and gas magnates and his latest military misadventure in Ukraine is proving why it is crucial for this gluttonous world to reject fossil-fuel energy AND nuclear power. If not now, when?
It is disconcerting to see Thom Hartmann employing nationalist propaganda. What does "patriotic enough" mean? Am I not "patriotic enough" because I found Biden's State of the Union to be standard-issue drivel? Or that I think his lack of communication with Putin to be a fatal error in diplomacy? The question itself is bizarre, as if Republicans are the only ones who might struggle economically due to inflated oil prices. As usual, there are salient points here but the framing and anti-Republicanism in this context is needlessly divisive.
Well, no worries, according to all the rhetoric coming from the Republican fund raising pleas I get ten times a day you are very "patriotic". This response is right on point. Biden said nothing in the SOTU and totally blew it for Ukraine by not just talking to Putin. So simple. You are absolutely correct that there is no excuse for Thom's framing of the Republican Party at all. They are perfectly capable of being needlessly divisive by themselves.
Written like a true Democrat in the McCarthy era. Patriotism can be a dangerous term, and the neglecting of history in favor of electoral politics as Biden spouts nonsense about "funding the police" and virtually ignores the catastrophe of climate change does not put many in our society in a better place. Your sarcasm and the accusations of me being a Republican are right out of the McCarthy playbook. An interesting historical reversal that certainly contributes to our dangerous time and the rightward shift that Democrats continue to adopt to adapt to the corporate alliances of their leaders.
Oh man, McCarthy era? Really?
Rabid ReTrumplicans who don't believe in democracy play the victim because they also don't like and can't take the criticism so richly deserved of their party of traitors, terrorists, pathetic liars, and goddamn fools. The majority of people in this country as well as the rest of the world hate what they stand for, except, of course, all their like-minded fellow authoritarians, fabulists, and delusionists like Putin, who is inspired by a dystopian, nightmarish future not that different from where Republicans want to drag this nation.
As they whine effusively, poor babies, about being shunned by the civilized world, notice how Republicans (the trolls anyway) completely lack the self-awareness to see in themselves the very same faults that they falsely project onto their mortal enemies, which is anyone daring to believe in multiracial, multi-ethnical, multi-religious, multi-people democracy -- especially anyone calling themselves big-D Democrats. In other words, the authoritarian, one-party-rule mindset is by nature blindly egocentric, expecting courtesies and privileges they don't accord others as the rights of superior beings above accountability.
As the glaring example of everything evil, Pouty-face Putin is steaming mad (from intelligence sources) about the extent to which most of the world has come together with the singular purpose of destroying him personally along with devastating his beloved homeland economically. Typical of right-wingers, Putin does not display a hint of irony or concern about his own destruction of Ukraine and its families -- economically, militarily, physically, socially, spiritually, or any other way that matters!
Putin and cold-hearted, bloodthirsty tyrants like him are pure inspiration for Trump and his hypocritical acolytes like Fucker Carlson, who represents virtually the entire base of a party actively sabotaging American democracy while calling themselves patriotic.
Democrats would be remiss not to criticize the hell out of the whole sad lot at every opportunity. If they can attack the seat of our democracy in broad daylight, then the truth can be hurled at their stupid faces without sugarcoating it.
Trump lost; Biden won. All viable evidence supports that simple reality. Just say it.
No. Wild-eyed Republican "leaders," with their long, lying noses firmly planted up Daddy Trump's fat ass, have made the crass political decision to enter the midterms promoting an "alternative fact" -- in fact, the single biggest non-fact ever told in our long, now-broken history of transferring power peacefully. It's the same exact big lie about election fraud, not surprisingly, that all aspiring dictators invariably cite as the reason to hang onto power illegally while destroying the principle of democracy in every way but name.