"Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason."
-- James Randi, stage magician & skeptic
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To date, this is how the very few interactions I've had with Never Trumpers have gone, because I want to talk about the Befor...
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“This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really j...
7 comments:
Good morning, Mr. Glass.
You want to know what's f*cked up? You just filled a nearly 1.5-hour podcast, and didn't even get into Mr. Trump's wiretapping claim because you had so much other horror to cover.
Be seeing you
Such a fitting quote: I shall henceforth think of you as "The Amazing Driftglass".
Honestly, the fact that "paranormal" explanations are still so widely accepted decades after Project Alpha and subsequent failures of anyone to get close to the JREF prize, that Uri Geller still can make a living, etc is what makes me rail against even innocuous "sloppy thinking" - whether or not a person thinks that horoscopes have meaning is irrelevant to me, except that same sloppy thinking also enables The Trumps, Brookses et al.
Skepticism deployed consistently is a superpower; strangely, using it everywhere except it on one's self is its kryptonite.
"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired."
-- Jonathan Swift, letter to a young clergyman (January 9, 1720), often misquoted as "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
Essential to a lucid view of recent US history is the ugly fact of Objectivism - paranoid sociopathy as an ideology - being a major player in its culture after WW2 via Rand's books, & later in its economy via her zealous student Alan Greenspan. Libertarians aspire to act as a political fulcrum working both philosophically & mechanically to disempower & devalue any alternative to their mental magic kingdom of atomized faux-Nietzschean heroism.
For all her loathing of religion one can readily imagine Rand being persuaded to make an exception for the useful idiocy of Prosperity Gospel fundamentalists - or hear her phlegmatic nasal snarl describing them as noble heralds of Objectivism triumphant, a distasteful but essential pupa from which her ultimate vindication as humanity's salvation will soon spread its vast black leathery bat-like wings when the correct stars finally align.
Some might argue that Trump is Ayn Rand's weaponized dowry to America made manifest.
Thank You, Driftglass, for picking up on something I have been arguing with some of Progressive fellow travelers, especially since Trump's election. The Fox News/ Rush Limbaugh bubble excuse for the reason Crazy Uncle Liberty "just is this way" doesn't hold a damn drop of water for me TODAY if they are younger than 65 (and many over, I'm being generous here). It's not 1990, you've had the Web available for 20 years, and satellite TV longer than that.
If Romney's decisive defeat in 2012 didn't cause you to question Fox News, and you chose to live in that bubble, well that's just on you, you're not some kind of victim here. Uncle Liberty & Auntie Freedom (Can't forget about her), looked 8 years of pretty good (on policy) and more importantly exceptionally competent on operations (picture Trump & Deepwater Horizon, bye bye Gulf!), decided to pitch all that in the trash because MAGA
Thanks again for your work. I'm going to use the Bertrand Russell letter to Mosley.
I agree about the futility of engaging the perpetrators of this awful crime for their betterment. Something about pigs and singing, I think.
The opioid thing was good, there are finally some folks starting to cover it. I remember grade school and the indoctrination they served up against heroin addiction. Even as I burnt past all of the other anti-drug indoctrination, I never wanted anything to do with heroin. It only took knowing one seriously addicted heroin user to steer me as far away from it as I could get, even while acquiring addictions to other substances.
I remember the way opioid pain relievers were strictly regulated when I was younger, so I was appalled when I was in rehab from my stroke and they handed them out like candy. First thing in the morning, and last thing before sleep: "Describe your pain from 1 to 10... Those Vicodin not doing it for you? Here, try some of this Morphine Sulfate."
I remember being thankful that I wasn't in any pain, because I felt like it was going to be hard enough for me when I went home without being addicted to pills while I was relearning how to live.
I've had close friends do prison time for illegal drugs, and when I think about those guys at Purdue Pharma and their bogus study that got Oxycontin prescribed for anything and everything that hurt at all, and how none of those greedy bastards will ever see any consequences for it, I want to yell and throw things.
So may the lawsuits being brought against them find a way to serve up some of those consequences to them, and not just their shareholders or insurance companies, and may anyone involved in gutting the FDA be slowly buggered to death by a sheep. And yes, I am Irish, why do you ask?
-Doug in Oakland
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