Friday, January 26, 2018

Professional Left Podcast #425


"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot."
-- Charlie Chaplin
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9 comments:

John M. Hall said...

Destroy the lifeboats. These 'convertatives' don't deserve to reinvent themselves after they contributed to f*cking everything up in this country.

Besides, it's all a ruse anyway. As you said, no need for the networks to bring you or anyone else who was right the whole time in to talk about the Republicans and Trump when they can bring in convertatives to pretend-anger about it.

jim said...

Two BIG problems with this one:

"Now that their backs are against the wall" they run the bulk of your state governments & all the branches of your national government, have injected a tsunami of judges into it & can stack the Supreme Court at will. Those backs are also against the wall of an economic boom, which must surely give them nightmares. By the by, home-schooled wingnuts in Alabama trailer parks aren't the only ones who're getting a Stockholm Syndrome pandemic party going on right now. To see so much of the American Left returning to the same poisoned electoral well that burned it to a crisp in 2016 in blithe expectation of a 2018/2020 Zerg Rush redemption has been educational to say the least. Believing that the DERP Reich isn't also a well-planned systematic state-of-the-art corporate Kulturkampf operation due to the absurd public behavior of its figureheads, rabid fans & hench-folks is a textbook case of the Sedgwick Paradigm in action.

"We're on the verge of ultimate victory because they're all going to die soon" as a liberal trope in 2018 is literal memetic cyanide. DON'T TAKE THE BROWN KOOL-AID OR IT WILL KILL YOU. This leftist Utopian premise wasn't fucking lucid in 1970, nor has it aged gracefully. Ben Shapiro isn't on Social Security & neither is Tomi Lahren. Heather Heyer wasn't murdered by a 400 lb. Grandma on a turbocharged Mobility Scooter. Neither Greece's Golden Dawn, Duterte's Just Say No death-squads nor Modi's mobs in India are populated by multitudes of withered grumpy old farts playing shuffleboard & Yahtzee. In an age where commercial electronic media can (& does) turn public opinion on a dime, demographic determinism in politics - whether by age, gender, race or class - is about as credible as phrenology ... even jokingly, this idea qualifies as a masochistic obscenity & any comfort or joy it produces is delusional.

Back in the day, Vietnam kicked your ass with the tactical equivalent of BB-guns & duct-tape, over & over, until they drove the deadliest army in history home in disgrace. Essential to their victory was a dedication to thorough & merciless critical assessment of every field operation they ever conducted, whether won or lost, alongside a commitment to make a series of large-scale sacrifices for long-term success. Their troops initially hated & mocked the Marxist auto-critique sessions but soon grew to respect their results, & wisely developed their own improved variation on them that the USAF could never hope to copy, for obvious reasons.

Steal your opponents' cleverest ideas & improve on them.
They do.
It's no small part of why they keep beating you.

Beatdowns will continue until sentience improves.

jim said...

On a lighter (?!?!?!!) note: ladies & germs, LAY YER BETS.

"- Whose nuclear button is bigger? Donald Trump 4/7, Kim Jong-Un 13/8
- Melania to leave Trump and file for divorce before November 8th: 16/1
- Melania to be revealed to be living with another man during Trump's first term: 8/1
- Trump to be impeached in 2018: 9/4
- Trump accidentally refers to Putin as 'Vlad' during a press conference: 7/1
- Putin and Trump to holiday together, and Vlad to pee on Donald to help with a jellyfish sting: 300/1
- Trump to be filmed falling on a state visit in 2018: 10/1
- Trump to have his likeness minted on US currency during his term: 100/1
- Trump gets banned from Twitter: 20/1
- Will France ask for the Statue of Liberty back? Yes: 50/1
- Michael Moore to be deported: 80/1
- Trump to publicly reference a country that does not exist during a 2018 press conference: 10/1"

Neo Tuxedo said...

"Trump to publicly reference a country that does not exist during a 2018 press conference: 10/1"

Two weeks ago, professional comedy person Sara Benincasa offered a $300 reward "to the journalist who very seriously asks Trump his opinion on our nation’s relations with Wakanda and gets the question and answer recorded live on video". Somebody whose name is escaping me offered to match that reward if the journo then went on to ask Trump to comment on Wakanda's harboring of known international terrorist James Buchanan Barnes.

Robt said...

Thank goodness I received my honorable discharge in the nick of time from the Deep State. That I would not be there when the great surrender to the GOP took place..

After getting out of Deep State. I had this void, and need to be filled. So I joined this "secret Society".. A secret Drone just delivered my Secret society secret decoder ring.

Which I used my newly acquired secret society decoder ring to decode my first secret society coded message. Which I can share with you.

I found that the reason the GOP Majority Congress only has time to vote on America's budget as a Continuing Resolution bill because, Te Republican majority are too busy with more impratant issues concerning the country.
Which is why Leadership just tosses on the floor a Budget CR and Rank and file are kept simple and vote for when the Speaker acts.

This leave more time for the GOP Majority to focus on using tax dollars for sex harassment settlements that are not visible to the public.
This imprtant issue is very demanding.

That is why the GOP who are cought doing this by the public may stay in their committee chair or their district seat. That they can address all the needs of the country.
Like making sure there is no disclosure to the public of how much Viagra Obamacare is paying the viagra prescriptions for Congress members.

This could harm America's security if disclosed.

Besides, they want to be able to tell their district voters they are working hard for them. They can't have voters realizing working hard because of the Viagra enhancement is in part raising levels of Sex harassment.

National Security is at stake here.

And this from my first secret society message decoded with my first secret society ring.
I really like this Secret Society Club. It is like counter espionag-ing in one of the Bond films.

I hope this conspiracy lasts longer than the Deep State one. Because this conspiracy Secret Society one is Rockin!

How come you never formed the
Professional Left Secret Society and offered decoder rings. Huh?

dinthebeast said...

As far as the celebrating goes, I still take my cue from Molly Ivins, who kept reminding everyone to have fun while we're fighting for freedom, because as she put it, we don't always win so sometimes the fun is all you get.
Which, as I see it, is as good of a mental health regimen as is available in these grave, troubled, times, when our very lives hang in the balance.
Thank you again for the podcast, and the cat thanks you, also.

-Doug in Oakland

Cirze said...

I love your writing/thinking, Jim.

Bravo!

Cirze said...

I'm signing up for one!

trgahan said...

I must respectfully disagree that there is any coming demographic shift that is going change the vote.

Our society is socially segregated enough that there is always going to be a 35-40% conservative authoritarian vote. Most of the people I know reading NYT editorial page today (and taking it seriously) will become the FoxNews viewers of tomorrow.

Additionally, as some have already pointed out, conservatives have always been willing to bestow the Whiteness mantel on almost any demographic in exchange for replenishing their voter rolls (see European-descended urban Catholics after 1964). My guess is anyone checking the Hispanic-White box over Hispanic-Nonwhite are getting their own tryout right now.