Friday, October 11, 2013

Professional Left Podcast #201

ProfessionalLeft
"Both Sides Don't"

-- driftglass, since forever




Links: 


Da' money goes here:






8 comments:

Jack said...

This is interesting. At 10:20 on this podcast, Driftglass says that one of the goals of conservatives is to break the federal government to such an extent that people are forced to fall back on their own resources, become dependent on noblesse oblige, the beneficence of our masters.

Sounds interesting, right?

Well here's radical teabagger Col. Allen West proving Driftglass right. TB West proposes dependence on noblesse oblige as the model for our society, and one of the fruits of the government shutdown. Seriously, listen to it.

So, yeah, you nailed that one, DG.

Anonymous said...

@Jack

That's half of it. The other half is that the Church and the Family will have to step in. This is critical for Evangelicals, it's a way to put Christians back in control.

Neo Tuxedo said...

I was just struck all over again by the Mayer essay.

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

[...]

But of course this [going directly from "German Firm" stickers to Zyklon-B] isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

That is how you boil a frog. And that is how the Ownership class has been boiling us ever since they decided that letting an actual Left exist in Unistat would be [DEL: their ticket to 1789 all over again :DEL] an immediate unconditional surrender to the International Communist Conspiracy.

steeve said...

"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained"

That's true for skillful dictators. It's not true for conservative elites. So this time it really is the frog's fault. (Though we should insult the most powerful frogs first - the media.)

Each step was so grating, so trivially wrong, so buttnakedly obviously void of contact with reality, that any idiot in this information age, with these republicans, is an extra-idiotic idiot.

Anonymous said...

Good afternoon, Mr. Glass.

Tron-Good music, memorable visuals, but a story that I only subject myself to in order to enhance the experience of watching Tron: Legacy.

The Fountain-While I don't really understand why they HAD to split it into three time periods, the story basically makes sense. Guy doesn't want to lose his wife, loses her anyway, wants immortality as a result of this, realizes it ain't gonna happen, accepts his fate.

Oh, and Ms. Gal? I'm "Ken" now? :)

Enjoy your day.

KeVIn Holsinger

Anonymous said...

Another great episode. I bet you feel like your trapped in a beseiged city with the ability to see the future, but long ago when you refused the beltway medias attempt at seduction, the made so nobody will ever believe you. :/

Hate to keep linkjacking your comment thread, but it's become my preferred method of contacting you. I thought you would find this interesting:

http://i.imgur.com/XgfLCBU.png

I put 'false equivalence' into Google trends and it's amazing how it starts from nothing. That first bump is March 2010. It's not an artifact either, other searches go many years farther back.

-------------------------
I think part of the reason for walter white's popularity is middle aged white men are always looking for credible bad ass/tough guy role models. Recapture lost youth and all that. I think this is one reason Men in Black, Matrix Agents and Hannibal Lector type anti-hero's struck a nerve. Plus Tom Clancy stock characters too.

Anonymous said...

I wasn't going to blather on about "The Fountain", but I happen to like it, and KeVIn :-) brought it up.

There is one very critical part of the end that a lot of people miss.

-*spoiler*spoiler*spoiler*-

So, the "futre" timeline is him flying through space to Xebulba before it explodes. He is experiencing delusions, and talking to a tree as if it is his wife. You learn that the "present" is what happened to break him, and the "past" is his wife's book that she left for him to finish (but he does not want the story to end).

As he starts to have his epiphany at the end, there is a subtle but significant change to the future story. He is suddenly wearing striped pajamas with cloth buttons.

Like you would expect for a mental institution.

The implication (though *nothing* is explained) is that his wife's death broke him so badly that is literally broke his mind. The "future" is actually a psychotic delusion, fueled by his own life and his wife's story. Essentially, everything is taking place in his own mind, and this is his attempt to resolve his broken mind. That is why all three stories have the same people. He could not save his wife, and he could not finish her story because that would be closure.

Mike.K.

jazzidiot said...

I think I know how to pronounce the name we all struggle with: [ROSS DOUBT'THAT].