Signifyin(g)Monkey

If Trump is convicted this will qualify as a beautifully metaphorical gif. (Ref=legal system, arena=world stage) Not sure what the meaning of the wrestler in the background would be though…

Fitting—he is the political equivalent of a WWE character. (If a WWE character were to gain such a huge following of fans taking his antics seriously that it had malignant effects on society)

True, these things, like every other horrible injury Trump has brought upon society, are by no means amusing—but, at the same time, I sort of understand where best3444 is coming from. As my favorite poet once wrote about being black in Jim Crow America: -Langston Hughes, “Homesick Blues” (and in all honesty, the fact that they have a recording of Trump literally bragging to people about his possession of classified documents is darkly hilarious)

Apologies; he kind of repeats most of the key points he makes here: Just to be clear, the Rogan clip just showed up on my feed and seemed to solely involve Zeihan explaining his views on the outcome of the war. I would otherwise not be caught dead listening to the dude. (But go ahead and make it a bannable offense--I'll be sure not to post anything from him in the future)

@Commissar SFLUFAN @CayceG I was wondering what your thoughts were on Peter Zeihan's comments/predictions in the last few minutes of this exchange, or in general: I've heard the guy's pronouncements on China, which I think are totally misguided, but I don't know if maybe that's just not his wheelhouse and he's better informed about Russia/Ukraine--or if he's just a total moron in regards to every subject he weighs in on. (Rogan tends to invite a lot of those types onto his show)

I wish this were the case, (regarding this being 'straight up law and order stuff now') but I don't think it is. Honestly, I think any time you're applying the law to a politician, you're doing something that is inherently political, because the manner of its application will always have political consequences. I'm reminded of Comey's re-opening of the investigation into Hillary right before the election. Even if one believes (inaccurately) that Comey had legally justifiable reasons to do so, it's naive to suggest the question of whether it should have been done and when it should have been done wasn't at least partly a political decision. (a very bad one, too, I might add) But I also think just because it is political doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. And I agree that the downside is minimal for the Democrats. Especially since it looks like there's more substance to these charges than there was with the Russia collusion stuff.

I've heard speculation from Russian partisans for awhile that if NATO sends in troops, Russia will counterbalance it by convincing China to enter the war. I'm thinking the Chinese leadership would more or less say, "Hey, we love you guys and will still buy your oil but...no. No no no."

I guess we'll just have to disagree. I know you've said you've been in a very dark place lately and I don't want to diminish how you feel. But I will note that the same thing could have easily been said about gay rights not that long ago, and now there is far more support for things like gay marriage and gay adoption. (not that we should let our guard down by any means) No doubt things look bleak now, but I think you're being too pessimistic. Probably in the same way you think I'm being too optimistic. Maybe that's as it should be--at their best, the pessimist can benefit the optimist by reminding them to keep their head out of the clouds, and the optimist can benefit the pessimist by annoying them with a more hopeful vision of the future. Oh there's no reason not to call it terrorism. Terrorism is the ultimate form of bullying. I'm just saying the whole "it's okay that X was bullied because they seem to have recovered just fine and the material effects of the bullying seem minimal" is a bad way to frame it. It may seem a sensible framing when applied to rich and famous people who are supported by the right, like, say, Jordan Peterson, but applied to vulnerable people--and the trans community is very vulnerable--it minimizes the often invisible social and psychological damage being done, and encourages unproductive practices. There is a huge difference in degree. That's definitely something the right doesn't understand, and why their 'cancel culture' antics are way worse than the left's IMO. But the underlying thinking is the same--"No need to make an argument to try and win anyone over, let's just shame/terrorize/bully the other party into submission." In the US, most of the major victories for marginalized groups in the 20th century were not won that way. For the past 100 years, the significant advances in civil rights for women, the black community, and, most recently (and incompletely), the gay and lesbian community were ultimately secured in the US largely by winning over the sympathies of average people who started out on-the-fence. (and, just as importantly, winning over their kids) Yes, there was often violent confrontation in the interim, and yes, it's shitty that these idiots needed so much cajoling just to get on the right side of history. But compare that to the manner in which the biggest victory for civil rights had to be won in the 19th century. An estimated 620k people died in the Civil War. Civil Wars are what you get when you give up on dialogue and decide to resolve a social division by sheer force. I think the messy, cloying, imperfect, and frustratingly slow incrementalism of building consensus by winning support from the average moron by rhetorical appeal and force of argument is far superior to that. Not coincidentally, I'm reminded of this dialogue from Lincoln, where Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens joust over whether it's worth it to 'win over' people on the fence about something as indisputably abominable as slavery.

"Target sees more foot traffic despite anti-LGBTQ+ backlash, research finds" I think this is actually a good illustration of why this sort of reasoning-- --while maybe well-meaning, is actually a flawed way of framing these flare-ups of (no pun intended) targeted mass social censure. If we use this reasoning, then it leaves the door open here for someone to say "See? The right wing didn't 'cancel' anybody. Target's profits are up! Right-wing canceling isn't a thing." Just because a bullying tactic didn't work doesn't legitimize said bullying tactic or change its militantly coercive nature. And, IMO, too much of the discourse over trans issues (among other things) has turned into a contest of "who can bully who the most", although I think it's less the fault of any one group and more due to the way the social media ecosystem has evolved and the pernicious behavioral incentives it has created. Whatever its cause, however, it is the kind of contest that does no one any good, no matter where one falls on the political spectrum, because you can't really bully your way to a social consensus. The latter emerges mainly out of far less exciting tasks of pragmatic social negotiation and compromise--which unfortunately just isn't the sort of thing that gets retweets.

Yikes. From the server-oriented tech comments I’ve occasionally heard you make I always thought you did something back-end/full stack-ish in tech? My parents did this vaulting up the income ladder all their life very effectively. I’ve always had trouble doing it because I have the terrible habit of developing loyalty to the people and places I work for, and because I hated moving every few years as a kid and don’t want to make my kids go through it. So I’ve often stuck around at the places I work for too long. And I’ve been in the same general metro area ever since I got out of grad school, again to be near family. Not meant as a dig in any way—you know what’s best for you and your family. And jumping around a bit to go from 45k to 100k+ is probably the wiser path than limiting yourself and not fully leveraging the market. (Or if you’re unattached—and *especially* if you’re unattached and in the Wild West era known as your 20s—then there’s no reason not to move around and see as much of the world as you can)

We live in bizarre and interesting times. The labor market is still gangbusters but production is stagnant, slow, or declining depending on how you measure it. The culprit, as the article mentions, is an unprecedented slump in labor productivity. (That sounds bad, but it essentially translates to workers getting paid more for less) IMO, we really are seeing something akin to what happened during and immediately after World War 2. Workers have power they haven’t had since before the 70s, and the long disinflationary trend that’s defined the economy since the Volcker Recession is over. Just out of curiosity, has anyone used this to their advantage? Many of my friends have secured major raises or jumped to much higher-paying jobs since the end of the pandemic. The capitalists among them, however, are clawing their eyes out courtesy of how expensive labor is getting. I, for one, think that Western capitalism’s best shot to beat Chinese socialism is to let the workers win for awhile. Prepare for your Big Mac to cost a lot more, though, ‘cause that may mean inflation’s here to stay.

No, MAGA was a patch for Tea Party 1.0 that went horribly wrong and permanently screwed up the meta.

No—shave the beard, but grow out the mustache, preferably to an absurd length. This would properly comport with Ukrainian cossack tradition.

See, I’m not so sure we are, which is partly what this ruckus is about. (definitely not entirely, though, because a lot of it is just the usual GOP culture war tactics and right-wing trolling) We’re definitely in a world which is more accepting of alternative sexualities. But the idea that as a consequence of not caring who you want to sleep with or marry, we can dispense with gender altogether, is by no means as universally accepted, even by many gays and lesbians. (old AND young). Especially when things like, for example, the celebration of masculinity, is still an integral part of gay male subculture, and facing the trials of womanhood still defines what it means to be lesbian for many lesbian women. This is why, I think, polls show that most Americans do not support laws that explicitly target trans people, but also show that a majority do not necessarily support, say, trans women playing in women’s sports. That’s an indication that gender still has meaning for most people. Part of what’s causing friction here is that many trans people believe asserting that gender exists implies that the trans identity does not exist. That they don’t exist. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, and there are plenty of people who are willing to accept the existence and validity of gender AND the validity of a *trans*-gender, or the idea that for some individuals gender is more fluid than it is for others—and I think the trans community could benefit from enlisting them as allies. However, it’s not a settled matter, and a fairly crucial one, so at the very least it would be nice to be able to have a conversation about it. Unfortunately, it seems like there’s no space for polite exchange or reasoned debate or any attempt to find common ground right now, between the right-wing hate campaigns and spasms of Twitter mob outrage. And, as usual, it’s the most vulnerable and marginalized people who suffer as a result.

I still think if DeSantis upsets Trump in an early primary he has a good chance. The Republican base just needs a reminder that they can vote for someone other than Trump and still ‘own the libs’. Once that happens I think the whole ‘I’m a winner, Trump’s not—do you really want to vote for a loser?’ message DeSantis is focusing on will resonate. Trump does have his own diehard following, but I think the basis for most of the conservative base’s attachment to him is nostalgia. At the end of the day they’ll settle for someone else as long as that person serves up red meat for the chuds and seems to have a better chance at putting them in power. This might be the optimal scenario for Biden, actually, because we all know Trump will never concede anyway and burn it all down before he exits the stage. He is, as ever, the ‘Mad King’.

I definitely think this is a valid, sound perspective. However, I also think the ‘realpolitik’ perspective—that it won’t really matter, because there’s no ‘real’, resource-based impediment stopping the treasury from continuing to honor its debts and issuing more, and at the end of the day the consequences of not honoring them are too dire for its officials to let legal technicalities interfere with the process—seems fairly sound. The question is partly whether you think the people who are *really* in charge are going to allow democracy and institutionalism get in the way of holding on to power. I’m not sure they will—but I also wouldn’t *completely* rule out the possibility that they could.

Many take this position; however, there are also scholars that dispute the Essene label as something that was conveniently assigned to the scrolls by the vested interests of later Christendom to make them seem like the work of a radical sect rather than the authoritative version of the Bible. This tracks with the rise of the creditor oligarchy I mentioned, who would have obvious reasons to do so, so I think it’s a fairly substantive claim. Even accepting them as a particular sect’s rendering of the text, however, the clear evidence of cultural connective tissue between Babylonian law and practice and the early Christian practicioners suggest the notion of the jubilee year and its associations with the restoration of liberty for the poor vs the creditor class is central to the religion. I agree it’s worth pointing out that the scrolls themselves are a point of scholarly debate, though.

He may have been concerned with the world to come, but he was also taking back, ideologically, the interpretation of Mosaic law that the oligarchic Israeli kings had grown increasingly opposed to over time, which put economic justice and the device of debt forgiveness--embodied in the 'Year of the Lord', which btw in Hebrew is called the deror, which btw is a derivative and descendant of the Babylonian term for a debt jubilee, or andurarum--back at the heart of the religion. We know, for example, that his first sermon upon returning from Nazareth centered around Isaiah 61, in which Isaiah goes forth to proclaim the deror, and that it included the Lord's Prayer, itself an expression of this principle. We also know that the only recorded act of his that could be characterized as violent is his overturning of the tables of the moneylenders in the temple of the Pharisees. It is clear his preaching along these lines made him a threat to the Roman creditor class and its client appointees in Jerusalem which eventually killed him, and the lack of records documenting jubilee years around this time period suggest that the practice had been abandoned by Jesus's time, leaving Rome heavily indebted as a result--with this class and groups like the Pharisees being the clear beneficiaries and owners of these debts. (It's noteworthy that historians of the time like Livy, Plutarch and Diodorus pointed to frictions between this class and the lay people--i.e., the debtor class--as being a key element of the fall of the empire.) But most strikingly of all, we know from the Dead Sea scrolls that Christianity's early practicioners were much more concerned with economic justice--with the problems of inequality and political polarization that arise from the dynamics of debt--than they were about things like sexual or dietary practices. (something they, again, probably got from the Babylonians) Take, for example, the key text of 11q of Melchizadek, which collected every instance of deror found in the early translations of the Bible; it is suggestive of the character of most of the rest of the scrolls themselves--they are by and large midrashes collecting early translations of the Bible from the Prophets to the Laws of Moses, and their principle focus is debt and the liberatory act of the jubilee. Things like sexual practices are, in fact, treated largely as ancillary matters related to the more central issue of the abuse of creditor power--i.e., "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" was more about "Don't make a loan to someone that you know they can't afford just so they'll wind up pledging you their wife as payment" than it was about adultery in and of itself. These are clearly not the foundations of a religion that supports the vices of financial predators and corrupt bazillionaires against the poor and marginalized members of society. Or one that cares more about who you're sleeping with than about the use of wealth and power by one social group to hold another in bondage. So I would say that if the right is going to use Jesus and the Judeo-Christian tradition as a cudgel to fight for their political interests, the left should not be afraid to do the same, because the latter is on comparatively sounder footing. If the church is going to continue to grow in importance, they shouldn't just cede it to the right; they ought to treat it as a properly contested political space.

This is part of the Democrats’ struggles with Hispanics that I posted about earlier. I think it might continue to marginalize them if they don’t move closer to the where these voters are on some key social issues. I would like for there to be another way, but given the demographic reality I don’t know what that way is—although I’m always open to new ideas. Centrism is cloying and full of annoying compromises, but historically it’s been necessary in the US to blunt the momentum of shifts to the right by the electorate. History has a leftward direction, IMO, but we forget that it’s dialectical. And America in aggregate has always been center-right-ish. We’ve just gone through a period where the left has gained major victories for certain marginalized groups. Gays and lesbians in particular are more accepted in mainstream society than anyone would have thought possible 20 years ago. But progressives had to navigate their way through Bush Jr.’s right-wing evangelical revivalism, and make annoy compromises, to get there. We might have to do something similar again. On that note, you know what would be nice to see? A properly organized left-wing evangelical revivalist movement. There’s space for it—Jesus was not a right-wing dude. He was killed by the Pharisees for spouting off communist shit like “forgive people their debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us.” Not exactly an idea right-wing banking oligarchs wanted to see gaining popularity amongst the common people, much less their bond-slaves, much less from some brown-skinned hippy from Nazareth.

This was made pretty clear some time ago. Although I’ve had more than a few pitchforks brandished in my direction for saying so. Theoretically, a sound case could have been made for going after Manafort, though. Thing is, if Trump hadn’t fomented an insurrection at the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a lawful election, this might have helped his public image and convinced people (conservative people) who were once on the fence about him to come back to his camp. Now his image is going to be hard to rehabilitate to anyone except his die-hard “he could shoot someone down in Times Square and I wouldn’t care” fans, even with assists like this. (Thank God)

With a strange hiatus from 2016-2020.

This is basically as close to a formal declaration of DeSantis’s candidacy as we’ll probably get before the legal deadline. I used to be of the “he has no chance against Trump” school of thought, but I’m not so sure now. It’s not just that Trump won’t be able to brush off the stink of January 6th. It’s that DeSantis is right—Republicans hate ‘losing’ more than they love Trump. Winning matters more than principles, policy, or ethics. Behind all the ideological posturing about ‘murica, politics is just sports to your average not-so-bright conservative, (sans the comparative sanity of the anti-Trump faction and sections of the libertarian/business class wing) and they could care less about who the quarterback is. And Trump lost. Plus, DeSantis has nothing in his record that even bares a whiff of liberalism or cooperation with anyone left-of-center, and he’s offered the base plenty of red meat, making ‘defection’ to him from dear leader’s camp socially acceptable to movement conservatives. I smell upset. Whether that would be a good thing or not, I’m unsure on. Do you want your villains to be lawful evil (DeSantis) or chaotic evil (Trump)? Hard to say.

Meanwhile, dedollarisation is picking up steam, as China and Russia are driven into each other’s arms by U.S.-led geopolitical wrangling. Cold War 2.0 is achieving liftoff—unfortunately, I am not at all confident that the US is better-equipped than China to win it. US cold warriors see it as just a warmed-over remake of the Soviet Union, when it is something far better run and far more formidable. And, of course, stuff like this accomplishes less than nothing.

This is very clearly a manufactured moral panic. The right quite obviously doesn’t have much of substance to sell to the public right now, so they’re ginning up hysteria against a tiny group of ‘others’ and posing as moral crusaders to distract the average voter. I’m open to debates about whether ‘gender-affirming’ care is appropriate for minors, but it’s a lot more rare of a phenomenon than conservatives are making it out to be. Yet despite its vanishing rarity it’s all Republicans want to talk or legislate about, and they act like every hospital in the nation is handing out puberty blockers like candy and performing sex-reassignment surgeries on five year olds a million times a day. I’ll go out on a limb and say I do think sometimes portions of the trans lobby are a bit too militant for their own good and alienate people by jumping straight for the ‘bigot’ label even when someone has a minor point of disagreement with them, but that doesn’t change the fact that these conservative crusaders are clearly exploiting the trans demographic and trying to profit from alienating and bullying them. So sad that no matter how many times they ultimately reveal themselves to be mass acts of bad-faith, politically-motivated bullshit artistry, old-fashioned “But think of the children!” campaigns still bewitch the average voter’s mind.

Dollar Scarcity Threatens Bolivia's 'Economic Miracle' For context, Bolivia is no Venezuelan-style tinpot socialist basketcase. Yes, it has leaned on commodity exports, but so does every developing country, regardless of ideological affiliation. However, it has been prudent with its finances, so that it has relatively low public and foreign debt, and it has avoided expropriating firms in the private sector, so that the country sports a well-functioning market economy. As a result, it has enjoyed years of relatively strong growth, and its redistributive policies have lowered inequality and fostered a growing middle class, while allowing businesses in the non-rent-based sectors of the economy to operate in relative freedom. In terms of inflation and GDP, it has been among the leaders in the region in containing the former and expanding the latter. Its level of industrial development is also well above the regional norm. All of this being in contrast to what it was like before its 'socialists' came into power, when all the gains from its growth went largely to a small oligarchic class and international financiers, and the average person's standard of living arguably declined. But the dollar standard will now be used to try and club it into acquiescing to demands by the IMF and international finance to implement policies on their behalf, rather than on the behalf of its own populace. Not because it pursued horrible development strategies, smothered the productive economic forces of its private sector, and pissed away its wealth--missteps socialist regimes often make, but it did not--but because it doesn't own the dollar printing press. This happens like clockwork to any developing country that doesn't have the U.S. subsidizing its growth, (as it did for Japan during its 'economic miracle', the 'Asian Tigers' in the 90s, and China from Nixon until Trump) whether it pursues good or bad economic policies. Some exogenous shock is suffered (like a drop in commodity prices, or a pandemic) and they begin to run out of dollars. A crisis is generated and the oligarchs rush in to buy up the means of production at firesale prices, screaming "WE TOLD YOU SO!" To Bolivia's credit, the government isn't turning to devaluation to bail it out--largely because it's been smart with its money. But We. need. a. better. system.