"I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt."
"Oh, did PUTIN tell you to pump nihilism and cynicism into the brains of your fellow citizens!?!?!?"
It's political delegitimization 101. Your concerns are preemptively invalidated. You can only cheer and obey, or else you're working for Russia. Anne Applebaum is literally an aspiring autocrat.
I checked her background a bit and did not discover that. However, there are numerous photos circulating on the net depicting her smelling her own armpits lustily. So the 'whiff' part, on-point.
"I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt. Illegal immigrants are entitled to free health care, education, housing, good, clothing, minimum basic income. People who we made too scared of the flu and cold to work for three years need all of the above, too. Because I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt."
As a long time self-medicator, I recommend copious quantities of Scotch, (or in your case, Bourbon). Consume PRIOR to reading/viewing any "news" related to any of: rapidly growing federal debt, illegal immigrants, rising prices, the drug crisis, or the abolishment of the constitution.
The booze won't make any of these problems go away, but perhaps it will help you care just a little less.
One of the downsides of democracy and liberalism is that the elite class has to pay lip service to these concepts and twist themselves into mendacious pretzels to pretend that they actually care about the country and its people, even when it's become blatantly obvious that they would smother and immiserate all of us for another hot insider trade, another vacation home, another promotion or sinecure or another phony award for best moralistic circle-jerk.
My point is that Anne Applebaum is a born aristocrat who has lived her entire life inside castles and mansions, who has multiple homes in multiple countries and who knows nothing about real life except for whatever words she may overhear coming from her servants' quarters.
Wouldn't it be better for all of us if she just trimmed her prose to its essentials and spoke honestly from the heart? At this point it would be refreshing to see the masks drop and hear what we all read between the lines: "Will you filthy peasants just shut up and do what we tell you to do?! Let them eat fentanyl!"
Well said. We need our aristocrats to do better, but they can’t admit they were wrong. They have devolved into an astoundingly brainwashed and deceitful clique. Get them a few more jabs. Should take care of things.
Potential problem with that Nick, is that the jabs that were seen to be injected into the bodies of many of our lords and masters were probably saline. Which, unfortunately, did not do unto them what the poison they injected into the masses did to so many of us.
Yeah. I read that doctors in New Zealand were given secret exemptions, yet those cowards forced it on everyone else around them. I’ll never trust any doctor ever again. I also read about many US congressmembers having many staff and their families that had jab injuries but they’ve said nothing publicly about it, despite the fact they were all exempted from the mandates. Senator Ron Johnson and I think Margorie Taylor Green are almost the only two elected officials in the federal government that have publicly spoken on the issue at all. Contemptible.
Very much so. These are the pseudo-elite. Ivy people -- these days largely young women of connected families -- who attended Snub Prep Academy, lived lifelong in The Bubble, and are utterly clueless about real life. Not to mention uncaring about real life.
“…the elite class has to pay lip service to these concepts and twist themselves into mendacious pretzels to pretend that they actually care about the country and its people…would smother and immiserate all of us for another hot insider trade…”
The disdain and economic rape is bad enough, but what really galls me is that they demand we publicly profess our “enjoyment” in latter day struggle sessions.
Put another way, do we think the firing on Ft. Sumter would have occurred when it did if the North was also insisting on Southern grade schoolers being able to chop off their genitalia? The elite class is depending on our current inertia.
It's possibly bad form to recommend a podcast on someone else's Substack, but lately I've been recommending Josh Slocum's podcast, Disaffected. Slocum's contention is that Cluster B personality disorder has gone viral, and that it explains a lot of what we see politically/socially.
Anne Applebaum could very well be the deep end of the deep state pool. Her connections are amazing - the CFR, NED, GDI, etc - the list is very long. and she said the hunter biden laptop story didn't need to be covered because it was irrelevant.
"Accuse your enemy of exactly what you are doing-"- Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals ( mentor of both Hillary and Obama)
'Color revolution' is a concept and plan developed by the CIA for use in destabilizing other governments. They have turned it against the people of the United States in the pursuit of influencing weak minds and emotionally driven useful idiots to swallow the bitter pill of"socialism" . These same idiots believe socialism is a sustainable type of governance but is really just a transitional phase to communism.
The trap snaps shut and they all wonder " whaaat just happened?"
If millions upon millions of dead communists could talk, they'd tell you. Instead, they'll just vote Democrat.
Common sense says if the government really believed China Russia etc were really pro Trump, Biden would be tariffing and sanctioning the crap out of them. But in fact, since he had taken so much money from them personally, he is too compromised to do that. EXACTLY what they accuse Trump of. Why are we giving Ukraine so much money? Iran so much money? Because Biden is compromised by his families businesses in the regions . They promise not to tell as long as he funnels money and he gets 10% for the big guy.
I once attended, as an invited guest, a two-day seminar for middle management-type careers. Part of it was how to deal with people, both from within and without the organisation you worked for. (I'm translating here, obviously):
"Never admit errors, mistakes or assume responsibility: to do so equals culpability" was one item.
"Always pass the buck" was another.
"Always attack when in conflict, never defend your actions".
"Always be sure of being in the right"
And so on. This was for your typical middle-of-the-org-chart clerks, civil servants, internal auditors, HR-people, and such.
It was basically Alinsky's rules re-written into middling management-lingo.
“socialism is…really just a transitional phase to communism”
There is not, and never has been, a communistic government. Actually, that’s wrong – Plymouth Colony almost starved to death (even after its first & extremely tough winter) b/c it used communal sharing of the harvest that had been grown using volunteer labor. They recovered only when the land was divided into private family plots.
Back to the main point: All purported communist movements stop at the initial stage of “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Intellectuals might like the concept of communism, but the activists who motivate people care only about power.
Robert Caro's story about the way Lyndon Johnson lied: When he needed to believe something that he knew to be false, he said it to himself over and over again, out loud, until he made himself believe it. After that, anyone who disagreed with his calculated lie was a DAMN LIAR!!!!
They're willing tools who gradually self-hypnotize.
In the "Power Broker", Caro sketches a similar portrait of Robert Moses: a man who began his career as a reformer and accomplished genuinely laudable achievements, but by the end had convinced himself he could do no wrong and told himself that repeatedly.
Incidentally Applebaum in her not-batshit-insane moments can produce a competent piece of history such as "Iron Curtain", but oh man does she go Mr. Hyde when "Trump" is allowed to roam unfettered in her Deep State Plato's cave.
I've noticed a lot of writers who had done excellent work in the past, have been coopted more recently. Obviously Applebaum, but Michael Lewis is another good example with his The Premonition - a Pandemic Story. Also, Roger Lowenstein America's Bank. In each case, I think they've been paid for their reputation and writing skills to produce propaganda to cover for the regime in areas where the people are starting to smell the bs.
This is the great mystery. They've gotten much worse at something they used to do pretty well. Experience doesn't usually make people dumber. Anyway, I hope the checks clear for them.
yep, quite the mystery! I've seen online the government's massive list of all the media and influencers that they pay. Parts are redacted, but it's clear as day what's happening. No question about Applebaum since she works for the Atlantic which is a DNC mouthpiece. Pretty sure that Lewis and Lowenstein are now on team Mockingbird.
Ted Kennedy said, "Tell a lie enough times, and it becomes the truth." He was so sure he could sell any lie, that he had no concerns with telling everyone he was doing it.
Case in point was his utterly despicable speech called “Robert Bork’s America,” delivered 20 min after the WH announced Bork’s nomination:
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”
Interestingly, other than back alley abortions, the Democrats alone have brought about all the items on Kennedy’s list.
I met Ted Kennedy when I was eleven. He looked liked a giant pumpkin head, big and orange, and he smelled weird, like something stale but perfumed. Nobody smiled. Everybody was looking around, around. Then I was pushed out of the room.
I think Volume 4 of his never ending LBJ bio, The Passage of Power, is one of the best books of any kind I've ever read. Who could have imagined I'd learn more about JFK from that book than I'd learned anywhere else?
I think my favorite part is toward the end, which, as you know, is about Johnson's ascent to the Presidency. While Johnson is being magnificent in his projection of leadership after Kennedy's assassination, he's making sure a private line is being installed in the White House which will enable him to get stock tips from his fixer, Judge Moursund, back in Texas.
99% of dumbocraps I know have no degrees, vocational school at best. They were indoctrinated by their parents who, mostly, worked over paid factory jobs (car manufacturers). They are violently, I repeat, violently, against anything other than other dumbocraps. They don't believe provable points that it's the fascist left that is destroying the country.
Or the degrees are meaningless. For example, Biden's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Jared Bernstein, who was unable to explain to a fellow progressive why the government can't just print money instead of collecting taxes, has a BM in music, a MSW in social work, and a DSW in social work. It's possible he's never had a single course in economics, though given "modern monetary theory" even a doctorate in economics might not have helped.
A good analogy is trying to explain to a moslem or an orthodox jew that they can indeed eat pork.
Even if they can understand it intellectually, they still can't, because "not eating pork" is so central to who they are.
I often ponder that conflating "I can't" with "I don't want to" or "I choose not to" is a key problem for many of us. "I /can/ do 20 pushups morning and evening, but I'm /choosing/ not to" is honest; saying "I can't" because rationalisations isn't.
And that seems to have become the norm in all western nations now, to conflate these tiny yet so important verbs, in meaning and in usage.
They are mostly people I interact with at work, or people that live in my community. I'm not going to run away from money, or move because I don't like the way my neighbors think.
In college, I would have rip-roaring debates with liberals over policy differences, and come away respecting them. But beginning with the Clinton admin, the Left began losing its mind. My concern with our current post-modern liberals is that their connection to reality is very much in doubt. In Reagan’s words, “they know so much that isn’t so.” Much of this is borne from an existence based on “feelings” rather than facts. In short, if I were to meet an alien who factually described life on his home planet, I would have more in common with him than a TDS sufferer.
The Atlantic seems to always be on the leading edge of this crap. Thank you Lorraine Jobs - and Anne Apolebaum, for your contributions to shoddy, divisive attempts at journalism.
The Atlantic is America's leading globalist rag. Wasn't the Lesser Jobs a frequent guest on Epstein's island? And hasn't editor Jeffrey Goldberg been wrong about most everything? From Wikipedia: "Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg 'one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq,' saying Goldberg had 'compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact.'"
(I'm not a better person than you. I laughed so I startled the dogs and my napping wife, so I'm getting an earful right now.)
Anne Applebaum? The same letters spell "banana eel pump". It sounds. . . lewd. And icky.
Her anal-ysis is so off the mark it's sad - if anything, China rejoices in a president like Biden. To the, the greedier, more venal and corrupt the president and his cabinet, the better for them. A principle man or woman in office is the last thing they want.
It's cool. I have to work to come up with puns these days, because about a year ago, I retired from my "must come up with one great pun a day in my Facebook groups" vocation.
I've never been able to do anagrams without a lot of work, however, and am lost in wonder at those to whom it comes easily.
This is the same issue that has made the coverage of the protests in Georgia (which I suspect are Soros funded astroturf, but I'm not sure) so comical. The Georgia Parliament wants to make foreign NGO's to identify their funding sources. Since all major NGOs in Georgia are foreign funded, it seems like a basic transparency requirement: "hey, we'd like everyone to know where your money comes from, since your actions will undoubtedly touch on domestic political issues." The US has something similar called the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
However, the US and UN and EU are coming down on Georgia like a ton of bricks, calling this the "Russia law" and threatening to pull out the EU membership rug. Why? Because they know the NGOs blatantly engage in electioneering in Georgia and every other country they operate in. Heck, Samantha Powers went to Hungary last year and bragged about it.
So if Russia and China use social media to affect our election, it's authoritarian interference in liberal democracy. When we use NGOs to drive political unrest in Russia and Iran and Hungary, it's a triumph of liberal democracy! Yeah, right. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.
The NGOs use a network of smaller NGOs to launder their incoming money for the same reason Biden uses a network of LLCs. One item on Trump’s to-do list must be to require all 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations disclose on their IRS filings all incoming and outgoing payments over $250K (aggregated for the year). This will force disclosure of exactly where the Zuckerbucks went, for example.
I’ve lived in Texas my whole life. Dallas, Austin, San Marcos, Dripping Springs etc. country and city. I’m a working class contractor as well…I have never, ever met a red hat wearing, MAGA loving Trumper. not once. I have met many people who voted for Trump and they usually fall into two categories: conservatives who don’t care for Trump but vote because they dislike the Dems more, or the pissed off, dissident liberals, libertarians and working class people who see Trump as a giant middle finger to a system that has betrayed them over and over.
he got 74 million votes. how many of those votes were from the rabid, red hat base? 1 million? maaayyybe 2 million? does Anne Applebaum really think that 70 million voters are being brainwashed by Putin and redneck Bubba? the panic is at 11 and they are gonna run with MAGAts and Christian Nationalist until they lose…
"Anyone who tries to delegitimize the popular political opposition by smearing them as puppets of foreign governments is dangerous, and acting in bad faith."
Anne Applebaum has made a career out of this. She needs a new shtick. She's married to Radoslaw Sikorski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, a long time Polish govt. official & former presidential candidate. Applebaum, like her hubby, is an anti-Russian neo-con - & so by the way, is The Atlantic. It all fits.
"I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt."
"Oh, did PUTIN tell you to pump nihilism and cynicism into the brains of your fellow citizens!?!?!?"
It's political delegitimization 101. Your concerns are preemptively invalidated. You can only cheer and obey, or else you're working for Russia. Anne Applebaum is literally an aspiring autocrat.
Super super subtle, for sure.
Anne Applebaum is following the footsteps of American CCP bootlicker Sidney Rittenberg. He stayed loyal even after 16 years of solitary confinement: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sidney-rittenberg-the-man-who-stayed-behind
She's so remarkably a Soviet figure that I have to wonder if she sometimes gets a whiff of it herself and feels moments of shame.
She adores the smell. She's a fart-sniffer who needs a fart-snifter (channeling South Park).
“Smug Alert!” – I have that on our movie server and periodically rewatch it.
I doubt it.
Nope
I checked her background a bit and did not discover that. However, there are numerous photos circulating on the net depicting her smelling her own armpits lustily. So the 'whiff' part, on-point.
I'm here if you need me for more dependable info.
See, that's just good information.
That would suggest self-awareness which is a neurological impossibility in the brain of a postmodern liberal.
Here's a great column idea: tell some of the stories of those from "The God That Failed"...
See excerpts from the book, Willing Accomplices:
"Infiltration and Subversion of American Education and Academia: Why, how, who, when, where?
George Counts, creator of "Social Reconstruction", destroyer of Normal-America"
https://kentclizbe.substack.com/p/infiltration-and-subversion-of-american
“baizuo” – What a wonderful word that captures the true essence of performative liberalism.
"I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt. Illegal immigrants are entitled to free health care, education, housing, good, clothing, minimum basic income. People who we made too scared of the flu and cold to work for three years need all of the above, too. Because I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt."
damn. when you put it like that my vitals start going haywire.
rat bastards!
As a long time self-medicator, I recommend copious quantities of Scotch, (or in your case, Bourbon). Consume PRIOR to reading/viewing any "news" related to any of: rapidly growing federal debt, illegal immigrants, rising prices, the drug crisis, or the abolishment of the constitution.
The booze won't make any of these problems go away, but perhaps it will help you care just a little less.
Shiiit...I can drink enough booze to float a battleship around...
It's either Putin or Tucker Carlson these days.
“Anne Applebaum is literally an aspiring autocrat.“
Until 11 days ago, I would have said that the only living Democrat who’s NOT an autocrat at heart is Joe Lieberman.
One of the downsides of democracy and liberalism is that the elite class has to pay lip service to these concepts and twist themselves into mendacious pretzels to pretend that they actually care about the country and its people, even when it's become blatantly obvious that they would smother and immiserate all of us for another hot insider trade, another vacation home, another promotion or sinecure or another phony award for best moralistic circle-jerk.
My point is that Anne Applebaum is a born aristocrat who has lived her entire life inside castles and mansions, who has multiple homes in multiple countries and who knows nothing about real life except for whatever words she may overhear coming from her servants' quarters.
Wouldn't it be better for all of us if she just trimmed her prose to its essentials and spoke honestly from the heart? At this point it would be refreshing to see the masks drop and hear what we all read between the lines: "Will you filthy peasants just shut up and do what we tell you to do?! Let them eat fentanyl!"
Make aristocrats great again!
Well said. We need our aristocrats to do better, but they can’t admit they were wrong. They have devolved into an astoundingly brainwashed and deceitful clique. Get them a few more jabs. Should take care of things.
Potential problem with that Nick, is that the jabs that were seen to be injected into the bodies of many of our lords and masters were probably saline. Which, unfortunately, did not do unto them what the poison they injected into the masses did to so many of us.
Yeah. I read that doctors in New Zealand were given secret exemptions, yet those cowards forced it on everyone else around them. I’ll never trust any doctor ever again. I also read about many US congressmembers having many staff and their families that had jab injuries but they’ve said nothing publicly about it, despite the fact they were all exempted from the mandates. Senator Ron Johnson and I think Margorie Taylor Green are almost the only two elected officials in the federal government that have publicly spoken on the issue at all. Contemptible.
Very much so. These are the pseudo-elite. Ivy people -- these days largely young women of connected families -- who attended Snub Prep Academy, lived lifelong in The Bubble, and are utterly clueless about real life. Not to mention uncaring about real life.
Dangerous, privileged and unstable.
“…the elite class has to pay lip service to these concepts and twist themselves into mendacious pretzels to pretend that they actually care about the country and its people…would smother and immiserate all of us for another hot insider trade…”
The disdain and economic rape is bad enough, but what really galls me is that they demand we publicly profess our “enjoyment” in latter day struggle sessions.
Put another way, do we think the firing on Ft. Sumter would have occurred when it did if the North was also insisting on Southern grade schoolers being able to chop off their genitalia? The elite class is depending on our current inertia.
Liberals always accuse others of doing exactly what they themselves are doing.
It's possibly bad form to recommend a podcast on someone else's Substack, but lately I've been recommending Josh Slocum's podcast, Disaffected. Slocum's contention is that Cluster B personality disorder has gone viral, and that it explains a lot of what we see politically/socially.
No it's not. That's how we share information
Yeah, you're right. I'm terribly old fashioned. And terribly old.
We need your wisdom
I'm laughing.
Anne Applebaum could very well be the deep end of the deep state pool. Her connections are amazing - the CFR, NED, GDI, etc - the list is very long. and she said the hunter biden laptop story didn't need to be covered because it was irrelevant.
She is nearly the belly of the beast... https://thomas699.substack.com/p/ned-karen-bass-and-the-world
>>> their civilization is dying... Geez, who could look at San Fran, or Portland, or Columbia, UCLA, or degenerate child groomers and think that?
Saboteurs and wreckers! Do not listen! The five-year plan is working!
"Accuse your enemy of exactly what you are doing-"- Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals ( mentor of both Hillary and Obama)
'Color revolution' is a concept and plan developed by the CIA for use in destabilizing other governments. They have turned it against the people of the United States in the pursuit of influencing weak minds and emotionally driven useful idiots to swallow the bitter pill of"socialism" . These same idiots believe socialism is a sustainable type of governance but is really just a transitional phase to communism.
The trap snaps shut and they all wonder " whaaat just happened?"
If millions upon millions of dead communists could talk, they'd tell you. Instead, they'll just vote Democrat.
Common sense says if the government really believed China Russia etc were really pro Trump, Biden would be tariffing and sanctioning the crap out of them. But in fact, since he had taken so much money from them personally, he is too compromised to do that. EXACTLY what they accuse Trump of. Why are we giving Ukraine so much money? Iran so much money? Because Biden is compromised by his families businesses in the regions . They promise not to tell as long as he funnels money and he gets 10% for the big guy.
I once attended, as an invited guest, a two-day seminar for middle management-type careers. Part of it was how to deal with people, both from within and without the organisation you worked for. (I'm translating here, obviously):
"Never admit errors, mistakes or assume responsibility: to do so equals culpability" was one item.
"Always pass the buck" was another.
"Always attack when in conflict, never defend your actions".
"Always be sure of being in the right"
And so on. This was for your typical middle-of-the-org-chart clerks, civil servants, internal auditors, HR-people, and such.
It was basically Alinsky's rules re-written into middling management-lingo.
WOW! That explains damn near everything, every day that ticks me off in life. I just assumed people were dumb,inept and/or lazy.
“socialism is…really just a transitional phase to communism”
There is not, and never has been, a communistic government. Actually, that’s wrong – Plymouth Colony almost starved to death (even after its first & extremely tough winter) b/c it used communal sharing of the harvest that had been grown using volunteer labor. They recovered only when the land was divided into private family plots.
Back to the main point: All purported communist movements stop at the initial stage of “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Intellectuals might like the concept of communism, but the activists who motivate people care only about power.
I often wonder if these people actually believe the crap they say or are they just wiling tools of the leftist state.
Robert Caro's story about the way Lyndon Johnson lied: When he needed to believe something that he knew to be false, he said it to himself over and over again, out loud, until he made himself believe it. After that, anyone who disagreed with his calculated lie was a DAMN LIAR!!!!
They're willing tools who gradually self-hypnotize.
In the "Power Broker", Caro sketches a similar portrait of Robert Moses: a man who began his career as a reformer and accomplished genuinely laudable achievements, but by the end had convinced himself he could do no wrong and told himself that repeatedly.
Incidentally Applebaum in her not-batshit-insane moments can produce a competent piece of history such as "Iron Curtain", but oh man does she go Mr. Hyde when "Trump" is allowed to roam unfettered in her Deep State Plato's cave.
I've noticed a lot of writers who had done excellent work in the past, have been coopted more recently. Obviously Applebaum, but Michael Lewis is another good example with his The Premonition - a Pandemic Story. Also, Roger Lowenstein America's Bank. In each case, I think they've been paid for their reputation and writing skills to produce propaganda to cover for the regime in areas where the people are starting to smell the bs.
This is the great mystery. They've gotten much worse at something they used to do pretty well. Experience doesn't usually make people dumber. Anyway, I hope the checks clear for them.
yep, quite the mystery! I've seen online the government's massive list of all the media and influencers that they pay. Parts are redacted, but it's clear as day what's happening. No question about Applebaum since she works for the Atlantic which is a DNC mouthpiece. Pretty sure that Lewis and Lowenstein are now on team Mockingbird.
Ted Kennedy said, "Tell a lie enough times, and it becomes the truth." He was so sure he could sell any lie, that he had no concerns with telling everyone he was doing it.
It's not The Big Lie which is so deadly to societies and individuals, it's The Repeated Lie. With The Repeated Lie, one can go a long way
Of course, there's Jesus to deal with eventually.
Definitely. On both counts. Eternity is truly frightening, the most frightening thing there is.
Based on parts of Scripture, it is safe to assume that the next visit by the King will be less . . . lamblike.
Amen, bro'.
Case in point was his utterly despicable speech called “Robert Bork’s America,” delivered 20 min after the WH announced Bork’s nomination:
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”
Interestingly, other than back alley abortions, the Democrats alone have brought about all the items on Kennedy’s list.
I met Ted Kennedy when I was eleven. He looked liked a giant pumpkin head, big and orange, and he smelled weird, like something stale but perfumed. Nobody smiled. Everybody was looking around, around. Then I was pushed out of the room.
And that’s why he was called the Master of the Senate.
Caro is a national treasure. Love his writing and his work ethic
I think Volume 4 of his never ending LBJ bio, The Passage of Power, is one of the best books of any kind I've ever read. Who could have imagined I'd learn more about JFK from that book than I'd learned anywhere else?
I think my favorite part is toward the end, which, as you know, is about Johnson's ascent to the Presidency. While Johnson is being magnificent in his projection of leadership after Kennedy's assassination, he's making sure a private line is being installed in the White House which will enable him to get stock tips from his fixer, Judge Moursund, back in Texas.
“When he needed to believe something…”
But the issue is why these people “need” to believe this crap. It’s possible to be greedy without papering over it with baizou beliefs.
They believe you should believe it
See Nassim Taleb's explanation of the "Dictatorship of the Intolerant Minority".
I know plenty of people that would read Anne Applebaum and completely agree with her. TDS is real.
I'm, sometimes, not even sure it's TDS anymore. More like just insanity, pure and simple.
I call it educated stupidity. They have to learn how to be this dumb.
99% of dumbocraps I know have no degrees, vocational school at best. They were indoctrinated by their parents who, mostly, worked over paid factory jobs (car manufacturers). They are violently, I repeat, violently, against anything other than other dumbocraps. They don't believe provable points that it's the fascist left that is destroying the country.
Or the degrees are meaningless. For example, Biden's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Jared Bernstein, who was unable to explain to a fellow progressive why the government can't just print money instead of collecting taxes, has a BM in music, a MSW in social work, and a DSW in social work. It's possible he's never had a single course in economics, though given "modern monetary theory" even a doctorate in economics might not have helped.
A good analogy is trying to explain to a moslem or an orthodox jew that they can indeed eat pork.
Even if they can understand it intellectually, they still can't, because "not eating pork" is so central to who they are.
I often ponder that conflating "I can't" with "I don't want to" or "I choose not to" is a key problem for many of us. "I /can/ do 20 pushups morning and evening, but I'm /choosing/ not to" is honest; saying "I can't" because rationalisations isn't.
And that seems to have become the norm in all western nations now, to conflate these tiny yet so important verbs, in meaning and in usage.
aka brainwashing
You need to change your circle of acquaintances…
They are mostly people I interact with at work, or people that live in my community. I'm not going to run away from money, or move because I don't like the way my neighbors think.
In college, I would have rip-roaring debates with liberals over policy differences, and come away respecting them. But beginning with the Clinton admin, the Left began losing its mind. My concern with our current post-modern liberals is that their connection to reality is very much in doubt. In Reagan’s words, “they know so much that isn’t so.” Much of this is borne from an existence based on “feelings” rather than facts. In short, if I were to meet an alien who factually described life on his home planet, I would have more in common with him than a TDS sufferer.
@jasonzweigwsj
three ways to get paid to write:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
and the fourth being
lie to the people who want the truth and you will be fox news.
If you have ever watched a severe TDS meltdown, (and I have) gnashing teeth, foaming at the mouth, convulsions like they are possessed...
Such people really want to see headlines like:
Trump rapes Nuns on Tuesdays! Sodomizes them with pee-pee tape!
that is a Huge, easy market.
I guess once the war in Ukraine ends the way we all know it will, we will see a whole lot of such meltdowns.
Nah, already forgotten, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and all their other failures. But they've still got their trans officers and DEI to celebrate.
Based on Chris remaining in the LA area, we can assume he’s in Group 2.
I mean I guess we must be crazy cuz we're right too early?...
I'm afraid we're going to need experienced patriots to prevent the ruin of our nation.
The Atlantic seems to always be on the leading edge of this crap. Thank you Lorraine Jobs - and Anne Apolebaum, for your contributions to shoddy, divisive attempts at journalism.
Steve Jobs did some amazing things but she is RAPIDLY Pevening the score
The Atlantic is America's leading globalist rag. Wasn't the Lesser Jobs a frequent guest on Epstein's island? And hasn't editor Jeffrey Goldberg been wrong about most everything? From Wikipedia: "Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg 'one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq,' saying Goldberg had 'compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact.'"
(I'm not a better person than you. I laughed so I startled the dogs and my napping wife, so I'm getting an earful right now.)
Anne Applebaum? The same letters spell "banana eel pump". It sounds. . . lewd. And icky.
Her anal-ysis is so off the mark it's sad - if anything, China rejoices in a president like Biden. To the, the greedier, more venal and corrupt the president and his cabinet, the better for them. A principle man or woman in office is the last thing they want.
I'm curious: do anagrams come naturally to you or do you have to work for them?
Heh heh, normally they pop up spontaneously but this time I cheated by using a generator.
It's cool. I have to work to come up with puns these days, because about a year ago, I retired from my "must come up with one great pun a day in my Facebook groups" vocation.
I've never been able to do anagrams without a lot of work, however, and am lost in wonder at those to whom it comes easily.
This is the same issue that has made the coverage of the protests in Georgia (which I suspect are Soros funded astroturf, but I'm not sure) so comical. The Georgia Parliament wants to make foreign NGO's to identify their funding sources. Since all major NGOs in Georgia are foreign funded, it seems like a basic transparency requirement: "hey, we'd like everyone to know where your money comes from, since your actions will undoubtedly touch on domestic political issues." The US has something similar called the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
However, the US and UN and EU are coming down on Georgia like a ton of bricks, calling this the "Russia law" and threatening to pull out the EU membership rug. Why? Because they know the NGOs blatantly engage in electioneering in Georgia and every other country they operate in. Heck, Samantha Powers went to Hungary last year and bragged about it.
So if Russia and China use social media to affect our election, it's authoritarian interference in liberal democracy. When we use NGOs to drive political unrest in Russia and Iran and Hungary, it's a triumph of liberal democracy! Yeah, right. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.
The NGOs use a network of smaller NGOs to launder their incoming money for the same reason Biden uses a network of LLCs. One item on Trump’s to-do list must be to require all 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations disclose on their IRS filings all incoming and outgoing payments over $250K (aggregated for the year). This will force disclosure of exactly where the Zuckerbucks went, for example.
I’ve lived in Texas my whole life. Dallas, Austin, San Marcos, Dripping Springs etc. country and city. I’m a working class contractor as well…I have never, ever met a red hat wearing, MAGA loving Trumper. not once. I have met many people who voted for Trump and they usually fall into two categories: conservatives who don’t care for Trump but vote because they dislike the Dems more, or the pissed off, dissident liberals, libertarians and working class people who see Trump as a giant middle finger to a system that has betrayed them over and over.
he got 74 million votes. how many of those votes were from the rabid, red hat base? 1 million? maaayyybe 2 million? does Anne Applebaum really think that 70 million voters are being brainwashed by Putin and redneck Bubba? the panic is at 11 and they are gonna run with MAGAts and Christian Nationalist until they lose…
There’s a 3rd group: Conservatives who see Trump as a giant middle finger to a system that has betrayed our Nation over and over.
Putin made me do it.
I still laugh when I think that the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) blamed Russia for the Truck Convoy…lol
"Anyone who tries to delegitimize the popular political opposition by smearing them as puppets of foreign governments is dangerous, and acting in bad faith."
Anne Applebaum has made a career out of this. She needs a new shtick. She's married to Radoslaw Sikorski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, a long time Polish govt. official & former presidential candidate. Applebaum, like her hubby, is an anti-Russian neo-con - & so by the way, is The Atlantic. It all fits.