Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Professional Left Podcast #364


"To hold a pen is to be at war."
-- Voltaire, writer


Links:



6 comments:

jim said...

Emotional hygiene & critical thinking are essential survival skills when you have high-tech as powerful as ours. History is crystal clear: societies that succumb to mental dysfunction tend to quickly go extinct. There may be no other issue - not even nuclear weapons or the environment - that more urgently needs real focus as an emerging global emergency.

The most reliable cure for Dunning-Kruger is also the deadliest: experience.

In the wake of its limbic bender, Reel Amerikuh is getting a wee dram of that cure from their suddenly squishy God-Emperor, & it's like making Dracula chug a flaming garlic shot.

2017 is when that dram gets replaced with a magnum.

No wall, no Muslim registry, no jobs coming back, no Hillary For Prison, no Draining Teh Swamp ...
"Ach! The Dolchstoss is coming from INSIDE Trump Tower! Gott im himmel! ARRGGHHH!"

dinthebeast said...

I don't know any Trump supporters except one guy, and I won't be seeing him at Thanksgiving, so no awkward politics around here. The one Trump guy I do know is kind of hard to deal with. He's been a solid friend for more than twenty years, but he's dealing meth and it's driving him crazy. I saw him last night and all the while he was defending Bannon, it was all I could do not to ask him how he supports someone who wants to institute stop and frisk in the "inner cities" and whether he believes they don't see Oakland as the "inner city" and therefore advocate grabbing him off the street and throwing him in prison for the rest of his life. Reason doesn't work with Trump supporters, and he really is a good friend, so I didn't say anything, but Briana showed him the video of the crowd giving Richard Spencer the Nazi salute, and while he thought that was fucked up, it didn't change the way he sees anything.

-Doug in Oakland

RUKidding said...

Happy Thanksgiving!
You talked on your podcast about the continuing anger of Trump fans even though Trump won. Why? But how do you turn off all that anger & fear just by one big win? These people have been riled up by Fox, Hate Radio & now Trump to be constantly angry & fearful. So it never stops. But it makes them easily manipulated. Oh you're angry? Hate the blahs. Blame the Mexicans. Be pissed at women & gays. Anything but look at who's really responsible for your misery or lack of jobs or whatever. Divide & conquer.

I heard a Trump voter in the radio: retired teacher, life long Democrat. Looked around at "all the people on welfare" & decided that she needed to change parties & vote for Trump. Not kidding. Not exaggerating. She perceived that there was cohort of people on welfare for generations & it needed to change. No concept that maybe the poor economy etc may have resulted in new people on welfare. No. it's just those same old bludgers who can't be bothered to work so fuck them.

Pretty much that's where middle class Trump voters are at. Willfully ignorant & remorseless.

Anyway... best to you Driftglass Blue Gal & the kids. Keep up the good work! Cheers.

mike said...

Obamacare works good for me, this year there is less choice and the premiums are higher, but my susbsidy went WAY up and I am better off than last year.

gonna miss it if it goes away

Unknown said...

Esquire made the change to 'news and politics' from just 'politics' --complete with extra writers-- months ago.

Like many Americans, Charles P. Pierce is taking much of Thanksgiving week off. He stated as much in his last blog on Nov. 18. It's no more sinister than that.

Yes, Trump voters are still angry. Hell, some Southerners are still angry the North won, and that was over 150 years ago. Rage media has TRAINED the GOP base that anger is the appropriate first reaction to everything that disappoints them. Why would they stop being angry?

CM said...

Really nice podcast. But I think you may be wrong about the reason why Clay county voters support GOP. The reason why they vote against welfare is not because they are stupid or that they want to prevent some minority somewhere else from getting welfare. They just want to live in an economy where they are prosperous enough to not need welfare. So they vote for GOP.

At least this was the explanation given to me by friend (not a Trump voter). Seems to be a plausible reason. They are not stupid or hateful.