So, the stimulus bill got passed, Piers Morgan revealed himself to be one of the greatest scumbags on the planet, and all's well with the world. Yea!
But meanwhile those of us in Waferland have been having some good discussions, and I appreciate all of your excellent contributions. And the antisemitic trollfoons, those vomititious pieces of dreck, have been ground into the dirt, forced to realize that the Jews are better than them, and do indeed rule the world. Also Yea! (Is 'vomititious' a word? Barf-inducing, is the idea.)
Let us continue the work of the Greatest Blog on Earth, amigos.
-mb
Dear Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from Los Angeles, where we're still undecided whether writing is meant only for movie scripts or for loftier forms of expression.
Between the stimulus bill and Piers Morgan, I do wish there were a genuinely ennobling newsmaker. Of course, there is none—another of those lingering signs of the times.
BUT. I recall you writing (or rather, commenting) not long ago, against the background of what must have been your own forays into Buddhist thought, that Thich Nhat Hanh, the prolific Vietnamese master-author, is "the real thing" (your quote!). Would you care to perhaps recall some of your thoughts about the value of Buddhist thought, not necessarily as an antidote to our contemporary gloominess but as a primer perhaps about the meaning of life itself?
With every warm wish,
Ajay
Ajay-
ReplyDeleteI don' have the time, I fear; plus, the whole thing has been covered in extenso by greater minds than my own. You might start by checking out the work of Alan Watts.
mb
https://www.idolnetworth.com/ta-nehisi-coates-journalist-net-worth-217271
ReplyDeleteAs you can see, the great SJW icon Ta-Nehisi Coates is worth 6 million now. Surely, one would think he wouldn't amass that kind of fortune if he were in favor of justice and equality. There are millions of desperately poor Americans who could benefit from some of that money.
https://freebeacon.com/culture/the-wages-of-woke-2/
Robin DiAngelo, the famous SJW author of the bestselling anti-racist, pro-black, anti-capitalist book "White Fragility", routinely makes tens of thousands of dollars per lecture. Yeah, anti-capitalist my ass. And she makes more money per lecture than black people giving similar lectures...and of course, she hasn't protested against *this* particular racial injustice. Yeah, anti-racist my ass. Google used to list her net worth as 10 million about 6 months ago when I last checked, but it isn't coming up anymore. It seems Google has chosen to hide her financial information for whatever reason. And since she's made all this money over the last couple years, she's on track to make something like 100 million dollars. This woman is a hustler extraordinaire.
Also, sorry I forgot to include the links. I'm a bit careless sometimes.
Cornel West will leave Harvard after being denied tenure. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/cornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html
ReplyDeleteMost likely bc of his views on Palestine. These institutions are a complete joke.
Nadine-
ReplyDeleteI don't have the ref for you, but a couple of yrs ago Cornel West did a takedown of Coates showing how his writings actually set the cause of black people back. I think John Gray did an essay recently, showing how the real beneficiaries of the 'woke' movement were the woke movement. These woke stars are so full of shit. The adoration they evoke, not to mention rivers of $, certainly oughtta tell us something.
Percy-
Not sure. Palestine may have 0 to do w/it. Larry Summers--a neoliberal jackass in my opinion--opposed West, yrs ago, on the grounds of weak scholarship. West is, of course, a black hero, and the 'tribal' attachment to him is quite fierce; but that doesn't mean he's doing quality work. Certainly, giving Summers a hip hop CD as evidence of his scholarship was not the smartest move. I can't really judge, because I never read any of West's bks; but I have read a # of his articles, and they seemed to have a clear flavor of self-promotion: more abt him, in other words, than the topic at hand. I guess for me the jury is still out (not that I care that much one way or the other; in the context of a collapsing society, what's the diff).
mb
Biden Iran envoy boasted of depriving civilians of food, driving up Iranian inequality in sadistic sanctions manual
ReplyDeletehttps://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/08/biden-iran-envoy-starving-civilians-pain-sanctions/
A friend who is currently reading the Wafer trilogy sent this to me recently. The article was written way back in 1993 in Harper’s. Can’t access the original but someone copied the text onto their blog. Basically says multiculturalism, what we now call wokeness or intersectionality, is really just about making money for corporations by gaining new “customers.” I came across a quote (can’t find who said it) that “intersectionality is that most capitalist of phenomena: a low cost provider of moral self-worth.” That sums up the article in a nutshell.
ReplyDeletehttps://lovelycountryblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/multiculturalisms-silent-partner/
I hear you, Nadine. I thought White Fragility was the silliest, most ridiculous book I’d ever read. Its influence on American “culture” is terrifying. How can others not see her and the many others as the hustlers they are? Oh wait, never mind!!! It’s the “even smart Americans are stupid” people Dr B warns us about. The only info about her net worth is on right leaning sites. MSM won’t touch it
Re: Earlier question of Chris Hedges.
ReplyDeleteI went back and read some of your blogs for the last year. I usually don't read the blogs. That's why didn't know your feelings of Hedges.
Here is just one sign of America's decline that I have noticed.
About ten years ago, TV channels started changing thier content drastically. The History Channel, for instance has practically no shows about history. They mostly air shows that put a price tag on some historic items like in "American Pickers." Or "Ancient Aliens" where they explore the "real" possibly that we have been visited by aliens from another planet. The Discovery Channel no longer airs shows like "Paleoworld", a long series about prehistoric animals and humans. I now longer turn to these channels anymore. The only relavance that Geography has with the National Geography Channel is the episodes' location. They have several series about prison life that often airs multiple episodes on prime time. Same for Wicked Tuna. A series about, you guessed it, tuna fishermen.
Just my two cents.
They cannot or will not dare air shows that might offend the population that refuses to accept scientific facts like evolution.
TKR-
ReplyDeleteNot sure what all of this hasta do w/Hedges, but thanks for yr input on History Channel etc. The fact is that we have become a nation of children, emotionally speaking. There are a # of reasons for this, but the impt thing is that it is a fact. Americans are a silly people, incredibly immature, and intellectually clueless. These TV shows are trimming their programs accordingly, to maintain their ratings.
mb
Hickory-
ReplyDeleteAnd here I was thinking Biden was a liberator of mankind. Oh well.
Jamie-
In America, there is no ideology besides the bottom line. Of course, multiculturalism sells, so it will be backed by all corporations and institutions. If it turned out that wearing fish heads was popular, Wall St. et al. wd be promoting that.
mb
This is gd:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/mar/11/steve-bell-on-prince-william-leading-the-defence-of-the-royal-family-cartoon
Note to Brazil-
ReplyDeleteSorry, that link was too antisemitic for this blog. I have no patience w/Protocol-style crap, wh/was in fact a Tsarist police forgery. You might look into other blogs: there are thousands that believe "Die Juden sind unsere Unglück."
mb
ps: Have I mentioned how stupid Americans are?:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/11/business/oprah-patio-chairs-christopher-knight/index.html
MB's reply to TKR
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely spot on sir, and it's why we have this din of infantile superhero films (and even dramatic series spin-offs of them [see: "WandaVision"....pee-yew!])
I was dating a woman last year in the the middle of the pandemic and she got cross with me one day because she felt like i was never going to be interested in watching the film "Joker" with her (tbh it did seem like a pointless film to me and if not pointless then kind of sick).
She tried comparing it to Greek tragedy and Homer!
We're not seeing each other anymore....
Kav-
ReplyDeleteLooks like ya dodged a bullet w/that damsel. Imagine having to sit around w/her, watching poop, and telling her it was great. Vey iz mir.
Note to antisemitic trollfoons-
Here is Meyers Leonard's apology for using the word 'kike':
“I am deeply sorry for using an anti-Semitic slur during a livestream yesterday,” Leonard wrote. “While I didn’t know what the word meant at the time, my ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong, I am now more aware of its meaning and I am committed to properly seeking out people who can help educate me about this type of hate and how we can fight it. I acknowledge and own my mistake and there’s no running from something like this that is so hurtful to someone else.”
“This is not a proper representation of who I am and I want to apologize to the Arisons, my teammates, coaches, front office, and everyone associated with the Miami Heat organization, to my family, to our loyal fans and to others in the Jewish community who I have hurt. I promise to do better and know that my future actions will be more powerful than my use of this word.”
Do you know why he is able to make this apology? Because he is a mensch, and because he has testes. Will you assholes ever apologize to me? Not a chance. Because you are not menschen, and you have no balls at all. What u.r., is dreck.
mb
Young and middle-aged Americans are increasingly dying due to suicide, alcohol and drug abuse along with other conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.phillyvoice.com/younger-and-middle-aged-americans-are-dying-higher-rates-study-shows/
Tom-
ReplyDeleteWhen a nation has no purpose, its citizens have no purpose. This is Sociology 101.
mb
But what if it's just simply a fact?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9350921/Georgetown-investigates-professor-saying-black-students-bottom-class.html
Re Ajay interest in Buddhism: I have been practicing since last summer and it’s incredible. I would say Buddhism is less about meaning of life and more about being in life. Two book recommendations: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Suzuki and Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen. Mind you, these are from the Soto Zen school perspective.
ReplyDeleteMB,
ReplyDeleteTo note -- I couldn't care less about the Royal Family, and even if I think Piers is a pugnacious prick, this is pretty crazy:
Variety: ‘U.K. media regulator Ofcom launched an investigation after more than 41,000 people complained about Piers Morgan’s comments on Meghan Markle.’
https://variety.com/2021/tv/global/meghan-markle-ofcom-investigation-1234925557/
The British Govt shouldn't be censoring/investigating their country's news broadcasts!
Piers comments were ridiculous (as always) but that’s not what this is about.
Zim-
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's easy to get distracted by personalities, and remain oblivious to what they represent. Which is what America did w/Trumpi (pro and con). But Trumpi is an icon, or synecdoche: he encapsulates who we are, and what America is all abt. (Otherwise, how cd he have gotten elected?) Piers functions in the same way for England: an upper-class twit, a snobby, racist douche bag. (See the Monty Python skit on upper-class twits.)
mb
MB:
ReplyDeleteI had a similar reaction to yours—if I understand you correctly—to the Georgetown law professors mishegas. (Hope I use the word correctly.)
I came to the story through a website I read regularly to see what sort of nuttiness goes on in the legal profession (abovethelaw.com). I sent the article to a labor lawyer friend in North Carolina and to a friend who’s an adjunct professor of international affairs at Georgetown, with this comment:
Discard any notion that opinions can be safely shared with another where race is involved, veracity or reasonableness of the utterance notwithstanding.
https://abovethelaw.com/2021/03/georgetown-racist-profs/
Jas-
ReplyDeleteWe're at a pt now that stating a completely true fact, if it might just possibly offend someone, is grounds for opprobrium and dismissal. Also to the pt that any public statement is offensive.
mb
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago, during a break in class, a couple of my students were discussing some superhero film or another.
I told them that when I was a student, there's no way I would have talked about this subject in the presence of a prof, even if I did watch such movies. I wouldn't have wanted the prof to think I exposed myself to this type of dreck.
They replied with something about how "standards in film have changed..."
I imagine the writer Umair Haque has come up before on this blog. He, too, is observing the collapse of the US in horrified bewilderment. His most recent essay, "How My People Became the World’s Greatest Idiots," has many Bermanian touches. Behold: "Anglo-Americans are not like other societies and cultures in the world. Most cultures and societies seem to value friendship, goodness, truth, social bonds, emotions, happiness, community above their opposites. Anglo-American culture doesn’t. It values selfishness and greed. Ruthlessness and cunning. Acquisition and materialism. Brutality and punishment..." Worth a read!
ReplyDeletehttps://eand.co/how-my-people-became-the-worlds-greatest-idiots-5073de68fb3e
Dr Berman, Wafers. It has been come out that Steven Pinker seems to have been a buddy with none other than Jeffrey Epstein, but now of course he can’t admit it. We have been “enlightened now” by Pinker’s past dealings with Epstein, including pictures taken with him and flying in his private jet dubbed back then the “Lolita Express”. He even contributed to his legal defense in 2007 for Alan Dershowitz but now says he “only did it as a favor to a friend and colleague”, posted it proudly on twitter. Even back then, how could he not know what was being charged. So, he is now doing the standard revise history routine, he now “could never stand the guy” and apparently only randomly crossed paths with Epstein from time to time. Yeah, I call BS!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinkers-aid-jeffrey-epsteins-legal-defense-renews-criticism-increasingly
Here is a nice quote summarizing Pinker’s grand case for progress, it is “simplistic rubbish”. Pinker seems to have no problem revising both his personal history and actual history if it suits his purposes.
https://www.forbiddenhistories.com/jo-edge_vs_stem_bros/
“Pinker’s entire book is a case for the modern era, a panegyric to what he sees as ‘progress’, and a build up to his 2016 work, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress which of course follows the same thesis: the Enlightenment was brilliant and everything is better now than it was before. But this is simplistic rubbish. Pinker does exactly what he accuses medieval thinkers of – not relying on rigorous evidence. He cherry picks evidence, which suits his thesis and quotes historians of the Enlightenment out of context to back his over-simplistic teleological narrative.”
John-
ReplyDeleteI've said it b4: the elite are trash. Epstein, Pinker, Prince Andrew, that whole crowd: trash. Don't think they're better than you; they are much worse. In addition, Pinker is a liar, and a total phony, and his argument abt the modern era has been blown outta the water a # of times by serious scholars. He writes not to know the truth, but to get applause and be an intellectual star.
mb
MB,
ReplyDeleteYou're right: if a so-called "public intellectual" or "contemporary philosopher" is enormously popular and make tons of money, he's completely full of shit. Telling people what they want to hear is great for business; telling people the truth, which always exposes them to emotionally inconvenient facts, is terrible for business.
And there are countless contemporary examples, some of which have been discussed on this blog. These people seem to multiply like roaches in dying civilizations. They also infect previously decent intellectuals with their nonsense, like James Howard Kunstler:
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/fore/
Here, Kunstler argues that Biden won through massive voter fraud, and that Trump is a great president.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/covid-or-no-covid/
Here, Kunstler argues against making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, and argues against universal basic income and other things that might strengthen America's anemic social safety net. Clearly, Kunstler doesn't give a shit about compassion, truth or justice anymore. And he's set up a Patreon for himself; could money be a motivator as well?
Indeed, the axis of trash is way too long but please let me mention the famous scientist, celebrity atheist and big bang guru Lawrence Krauss:
ReplyDeleteLawrence Krauss, accused of sexual misconduct, received $250K from Jeffrey Epstein
Former ASU Professor Defended Jeffrey Epstein Before His Own Sex Scandal Arose
"As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I've never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people."
Say what? What about "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" for starters?
Malleus-
ReplyDeleteTrash, I tell u; trash. The guy needs a severe beating.
Nadine-
What a shame. I wonder how that happened.
mb
@Naidine,
ReplyDeleteI mentioned before that social justice ideologues take their power mainly from projective-identification, projective-identification being a mostly, but not always, unconscious process where one projects their feelings/beliefs onto another and then takes it a step further and manipulates that person to experience themselves in ways that falsely “proves” the projection. Consequently, this manufactures and creates a self fulfilling prophecy where the projector’s justification for their projection is manufactured.
This shows up in the wider society by SJ ideologues acting bigoted/racist/sexist towards the “non-marginalized” and then claiming that when the “non-marginalized” don’t like them, that it’s because of their racism/sexism/bigotedness. This is frequently demonstrated in movies/shows, where social justice ideologues write “SJ characters” that are intentionally written to be crappy, stupid, unlikable and insulting; then when movie goers dislike the character, they are screeched at “oh, you hate them because they are women/colored-skinned/homosexual etc!”... this is proof that you are biased! Example: think about the purple-haired women in the Star Wars movie “The Force Awakens”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI0HCHnU4Lc
Note to Greg-
ReplyDeleteYr the latest piece of antisemitic shit to show up here. Do you really have 0 better to do? Check out Meyers Leonard's apology, above. Do you know why you cd never make such an apology? Because unlike him, yr not a man. Unlike him, you don't have the balls to do it. A man can apologize; a man can engage in real dialogue. All you can do is generate hit and run attacks on someone you can't even begin to approach in terms of quality. Yr an insecure little termite, so you try to build yrself up by tearing someone who is head and shoulders above you down. What gd are you contributing to the planet, you sick little roach? This might help: go to your bathrm mirror, and look into yr eyes. Notice how empty they are? Trashy piece of garbage, you. No testes, amigo; no cojones at all. Are you really wondering why you have no friends, and no sex life? What woman wd want a scumbag such as yrself? Yr ugly inside and out; they cross the street when they see you coming. They know yr a wanker. Meanwhile, go back to beating off; that's just abt all yr good for. What dreck you are.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteResponse to my destruction of Greg? More antisemites! Rivers of shit...
mb
Wafer reading:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/American-Extremist-Psychology-Political-Extremism-ebook/dp/B08SNW6TC2
This book psychologically explains for both the left and right or liberals and conservative types how America is a factory for psychopathological behavior. Uh - you don't say.
What institutions aren't corrupt? The psychological violence alone is mind-blowing.
Merca-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the ref; bk looks gd. However, this para from the Amazon bk description strikes me as overtly demented: "This is a work with the potential to change American political discourse, and a first corrective measure to reconcile the schizophrenic tendencies of what is ultimately a great and noble people."
1st of all, if there is one thing Americans are not, it's great and noble. Au contraire, they are assholes of the first order; "sick" is not too strong a word. 2nd, there is nothing, and certainly not a bk, that has the potential to chg American political discourse. This is typical 11th-hr American optimism, and has nothing to do w/the reality clearly demonstrated by the author. To quote the Amazon review again: "[the author] shows that extremism is at the heart of American culture." Exactement, mon cher. I have said repeatedly what other social critics refuse to acknowledge: the problem lies not so much in corporations, Wall St., the Power Elite, and so on, but in us--hustlers who are violent down to our socks. Real change is thus impossible; it wd require going from one house to the next and performing lobotomies on its inhabitants. This is the bottom line; all else is blather.
mb
Biden's warmongering Sec of State Blinken and CIA agent turned State Department spokesman are making it clear that they are destroying the Iran nuclear deal.
ReplyDeleteFor the rest of the world, there is no real difference between Trump and Biden
https://reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2B32WJ
https://www.amazon.com/Decadent-Society-America-Before-Pandemic/dp/1476785252
ReplyDelete"....a powerful portrait of how our wealthy, successful society has passed into an age of gridlock, stalemate, public failure and private despair."
The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
The new edition is called
https://www.amazon.com/Decadent-Society-America-Before-Pandemic/dp/1476785252
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteThis may get the anti semite crowd going. This song reminds us that their lord and savior Jesus H. Christ is a doggone communist and worse yet a lowdown Jew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU0gJefGW-M
https://antigonejournal.com/2021/03/10/caesars-and-sopranos/
ReplyDeleteFascinating essay on the connection to Rome's caesars & America's Sopranos !
Tom Holland never disappoints.
WAFERS,
ReplyDeleteNot a big fan of Bill Maher, but much of what he says here regarding Americans is spot on, especially regarding pc nonsense.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2DH4v6FnbvM
Hundreds of covid cases reported at TSLA plant following Musk’s defiant reopening, county data shows https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/12/hundreds-covid-cases-reported-tesla-plant-following-musks-defiant-reopening-county-data-shows/
ReplyDeleteI *really* don't like this man.
Dr. Berman, Wafers. Another wildly overrated reactionary is Sam Harris, infamous for claiming literally we can derive morality from science, just do a bunch of MRI scans or watch rats in a maze and we can derive the golden rule from that - I guess. He is also infamous for his “thought experiments” that preemptive strikes on Muslim countries that we might imagine have nukes is morally justified (link below) and being a big fan of American military actions in general (link below).
ReplyDeleteThen there is the Ezra Klein debate (below), where Harris also defends the nasty and discredited ideas of Charles Murray’s “The Bell Curve”, that he is supposedly just doing innocent science, and it can’t be helped that he discovered that whites are superior in IQ to blacks, political correctness be damned. Sam Harris can’t seem to get into his dimwitted skull that IQ isn’t some monolithic thing and measures like IQ tests are heavily culturally conditioned so aren’t in any way shape or form good measures of intelligence between the races or even individuals. But Harris is so dense, when Klein calls him out on this, he hears it only as a personal attack, and shows he is incapable of understanding the simplest points. He is also a big promoter of meditation for happiness, but has such a thin skin ego, he needs to do a lot more intense zazen before he opens his mouth again. Like Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, etc., this sophisticated bubba or prog “reason out of your ass” talk populism passes for “intellectual” conversation in the US these days. You won’t find the likes of an H.L. Mencken or Gore Vidal in the public sphere anymore.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus
http://www.critical-theory.com/sam-harris-awkwardly-debates-with-noam-chomsky/
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17210248/sam-harris-ezra-klein-charles-murray-transcript-podcast
Caitlin Johnstones new piece says we must collectively become aware of the situation we're in before we can impact any meaningful change in our future course. But with CRE(Cranial Rectal Embeddment) rates as high as they are in America, I don't see that happening anytime soon. If you've got your head up your ass, the only thing you'll become aware of is that something stinks. And still I don't think Americans are aware of the shitstorm heading their way soon.
ReplyDeletehttps://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/03/13/if-the-rich-were-propagandizing-us-wed-have-heard-about-it-in-the-news/
MB - That’s the takedown I never want to hear! Poor Greg, bereft in a hopeless world is not a good place to be.
ReplyDeleteRoger Stone - clinical case study of sociopathy - they are all sixth graders in the end
https://youtu.be/JK3ePiaPU7E
Thanks for your feedback - I concur. I noticed what you mention BTW. The problem with hustlers is they'll do anything for money - become a mercenary for a violent destructive divisive political cause that weakens the majority in order to elevate the powerful - like intelligence agency operatives. So I don't feel the author is truly erudite as a researchist about the full-spectrum landscape of horrors America is glued onto. Changing America would be like removing viruses from arteries with no tools - tricky operation.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what came first corps or the state? That power has long been merged with central banking meaning anyone and everyone is dependent on their oppressors and for hire at all the institutions bought and controlled. The American scenario is like using money as tinder to feed the resource scarcity going on including any positive educational or cultural sponsorship. What good is coming from the government for the masses? So extremism prevails IMO. It's a 3rd world dystopia and the left has the state backing them for that oligarchic goal - rioters released as mercenaries from courts etc.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteLots of gd stuff here; thank u all.
Xair-
Terrific link, thanks. He's rt on: we are incompetent fools, a silly people. Again, I said it yrs ago: jokes dressed up as human beings. America will beat off until it has no more testes--like the trollfoons.
Mike-
Speaking of wh, it takes 0 to get these ball-less buffoons going. I tell them repeatedly that I'm not rdg their messages (I know who they are in 2 secs), and yet the barrage keeps coming. What cd be dumber? I don't think it's really abt me. It seems to serve a purpose of personal catharsis. That they are cowardly and passive-aggressive doesn't bother them at all. And the human garbage continues to pile up, as the nation goes down the toilet.
mb
ps: John: pls watch length. You have a tendency to run over. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteResponding to "Jamie" from the 420 thread:
ReplyDeleteOne afternoon in the spring of 2000 I was working (or playing, I really don't remember) at the computer, and I had the small TV in the study tuned to CSPAN, which happened to be airing one of those book/author events. Gradually I became aware of someone on the TV saying some really astounding, bold things...things I'd felt for years and NEVER heard anyone else saying before. I suspended my keyboard activity and gave the program my full attention. It was MB promoting TAC. I watched until the very end, and either that day or the next went to Borders and purchased a copy. Within another couple of days I had read the whole thing, and I knew I had just digested one of the most important books I would ever encounter.
Thus began a 20-year quest (with DAA and WAF following) to get someone, ANYONE, else I know to read MB. Number of takers in 20 years: zero.
Hola a los Waferes,
ReplyDeleteThe great decline, in "the great state of"- fill in the blank - (in this case Houston, Texas, a place and a locale I've come to know well over the past forty-seven years). A short, Waferish essay.
https://www.theacquarian.com/2021/02/24reality-check-the-lone-star-state-disaster/
Worrisome. The direction is obvious. The whole state, every state, the entire nation.
Ram-
ReplyDeleteGee, that's a surprise. Glad u found me, anyway. But by now you need some fun:
https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Matter-Morris-Berman/dp/1635619319/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=morris+berman&qid=1615688382&s=books&sprefix=morri%2Cstripbooks&sr=1-5
gene-
Link didn't work.
mb
Dr Berman,
ReplyDeleteApologies for 24 hour rule violation. The corrected link is:
https://www.theaquarian.com/2021/02/24reality-check-the-lone-star-state-disaster/
mean
gene-
ReplyDeleteNo luck, amigo. I got "404: Page Not Found."
mb
Dan Hanrahan - Thank you for the Umair Haque article! It's the angriest, and best, from him I've read and that's really saying something.
ReplyDeleteAnglo-Americans are truly Iks who drive cars.
https://eand.co/how-my-people-became-the-worlds-greatest-idiots-5073de68fb3e
alex-
ReplyDeleteUmair is one of the very few critics who lays the problem rt at the door: the people. The only thing that bothers me is his failure to use words like 'douche bags' and 'buffoons', wh/I think wd lend greater clarity to his essay.
mb
John, yes, Harris is another toxic piece of trash, together with his fellow new atheist Hitchens, a big fan of the Iraq War. On the other hand, Dawkins did oppose it and has also talked of the suffering of the Palestinians, although it might be argued that he suffers a bit from casual Islamophobia...
ReplyDeleteBut the real issue is "The Bell Curve." I'm open to the possibility that different "races" might have some invisible differences in addition to the obviously visible ones. Maybe, statistically, black people have a slightly lower IQ (for some artificial measure of IQ). Also, maybe white people have a higher probability of being psychopaths (funny how I don't see many studies on that). But at some point you have to face the bullshit myth of "pure science" and question the usefulness of these studies, because historically they've only been useful for really abominable regimes to justify their nefarious policies. I'm sure we all know exactly who we're talking about...
I'm bored with Caitlin Johnstone - she seems within Overton windows to me, states the obvious, needs more creativity and edge.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the blog's opinion outside of the obvious cultural problems on over-population and resource scarcity? Was empty consumerism the only choice N. Americans were given - promoted through TV?
Like Carlin I think the problems are too deep and that the vaccine or vaccines like computer tech just helps central bankers, the corp state minions and oligarchs, to consolidate more power and resources. The people dependent on their companies and institutions are not allowed to morally resist even if they weren't stupid and brainwashed. The courts, everything, is bought and paid for - managed by the worst people.
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteFilm recommendation: "Things to Come" 2016, with Isabelle Huppert(Hulu).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come_(2016_film)
Also using Gene's second link to the Aquarian home page then search for "reality check lone star state" will get you to the James Campion article.. I echo your praise for the numerous links and commentary from the Wafer community here, an oasis of sanity in a maelstrom of shit. The path of the New Monastic Individual inside the matrix is not an easy one. Thanks to all...Quiet
I appreciate this blog's occasional harping at S. Pinker. Although he doesn't come off as evil like a H. Clinton (though different field) etc. - I guess I just have a personality conflict. Anyway, I can't see him doing hard and dangerous labor as I have done, logging, construction, etc. And I can't see the guy fitting into my HS. Though I don't think B. Shapiro would have either. For the former being full of Sh*t did not go far since people died at their jobs at times. For Shapiro, coming off as an argumentative know it all definitely would have cost him social points and a few beat downs.
ReplyDeleteI know that Americans are full of childish nonsense but they can also have core values of hard work beyond incessant grifting which financialization of the economy preys upon killing the host as the economist Michael Hudson would say - a relative of Trotsky of all people. In an honest world Pinker wouldn't have a job as an "academic/intellectual".
Here is a video from David Cross "Why America Sucks at Everything". Nice to see an American critic not finishing his critique by taking a big hit off his hopium pipe.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNghg1Y-WIc&list=WL&index=37
Merca-
ReplyDeleteTry to include links/evidence in yr posts. We're not big here on the mere broadcasting of opinions. Thanks.
mb
Malleus - my main pt. was that race and IQ are not monolithic typologies, they are messy categories heavily intermixed with culture, so simple dichotomous comparisons are fallacious, and besides, there is a long ugly history of related topics like eugenics, I’m skeptical that these types of studies are ever undertaken to discover the “truth”.
ReplyDeleteDr B, Wafers, – Once in a while interesting shows are still made. Two recommendations (nexflix) – “The Queens Gambit” miniseries is about an orphan girl who becomes a chess grand master but is haunted by her past. Another, “Dark” is a three season completely German written show about a small town called Winden with a nuclear power plant and time travel with a lot of existential themes about the self, choices, human connectiveness, desire and death. For fans of David Lynch, has a “Twin Peaks” feel to it. This clip compares “Dark” to Heidegger, just watch the first 1 & ½ minute or so to get a feel - unless you have no intent to see it, or look up reviews elsewhere, otherwise you’ll get too many spoilers. Anyway, if this ain’t your cup of tea, no big deal, just passing it along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHqBh3UVdZw&t=233s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNt9XdsiPvE
ReplyDeleteJeanine Anez, the Bolivian fascist who committed a coup, has been arrested. How long before America intervenes and "saves" Bolivia from that awful socialist Morales who has improved the country in countless ways ever since he took office?
Also...
https://dissentpins.com/products/secret-jewish-space-laser-corps-enamel-pin
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Lasers-Universe-Flying-T-Shirt/dp/B08VG91R8L
Surely, purchasing a product that makes fun of the Jewish Space Laser conspiracy theory will help quell that madness that is Qanon. (Not in a million years.) Wild conspiracy theories, most of which are antisemitic, are part of why America is dying. America has always profited off the destruction of other nations. Nowadays, many Americans seek to profit off the destruction of America itself. Clearly, a nation with a glorious future.
Nadine-
ReplyDeleteLove that line on the pin: Mazel Tough. Pure genius! Misspelling on the shirt co., however: shd be Shmate. One shmate, several shmates.
John-
Where can we get "Queen's Gambit"? I plugged it into Netflix online and got "no results." Nuts.
mb
ps: Nadine: I wd love 2c a T-shirt that said:
ReplyDeleteAMERICA: VEY IZ MIR
Appropriate for our times, I think.
MB:
ReplyDelete"The Queen's Gambit" is definitely on Netflix. Maybe go to the TV shows section it still comes up as one of the 1st options for me even w/o searching for it.
You'll LOVE it!
Note to bankrupt-
ReplyDeleteJust broadcasting an opinion is not how this blog works. Opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one. Big deal. What we look for is evidence--refs or links to responsible bks and articles. You provided 0. If you wanna participate in this blog, por favor, don' waste our time.
mb
Dreamtime:
ReplyDeleteWith $25 Billion to Vaccinate the World
The U.S. Government Must Ramp up Vaccine Production and End the Global Pandemic
https://www.citizen.org/article/25-billion-to-vaccinate-the-world/
Reality:
https://www.law360.com/lifesciences/articles/1363457/wto-fails-to-reach-deal-on-covid-ip-waiver-proposal-again
"WTO fails to reach agreement" AKA Global South countries have been fighting for the right to manufacture and import affordable versions of the covid vaccines. A couple days ago, the USA, UK and European Union joined forces to block them at the WTO. The West is indefensible.
https://www.law360.com/articles/1360519
"The US Chamber of Commerce warned the WTO's director-general not to 'distract' herself with proposals to suspend intellectual property rules in order to distribute COVID-19 vaccines around the world."
Abdul-
ReplyDeleteSays who we are, eh?
mb
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beyond-bad-by-chris-paley-review-kzh56x8bw
ReplyDeleteFor those that have read Morris Berman's "Wandering God" this seems like an entertaining read
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Bad-obsolete-morals-holding/dp/1529327091/
"Beyond Bad: How obsolete morals are holding us back"
Searching for evidence of morality in ancient societies usually finds it basically isn't there, in the modern sense. Justice meant cosmic balance, maybe requiring "immoral" sacrifice. "Goodness" is piety, pleasing gods or the forces of nature.
Shivvy
Another week ends in the Laughing Stock of the World, otherwise known as our Dysfunctional States of America.
ReplyDeleteBut fear not, Dr. Berman & Wafers. Our Karens come to the rescue! LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eHL9Ruzq7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWFF5vHJlPQ
Astronomers and physicists are a pretty tame bunch. We tend to avoid controversy, and we don’t like the spotlight. In this age of celebrity, however, we have our own miscreant named Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor. A few years ago, the interstellar comet “Oumuamua” passed through our solar system. An interesting artifact from the galaxy’s distant past. Loeb, apparently, sensed an opportunity. He told anyone who would listen that this piece of rock was probably an alien spacecraft. The story got a lot of play then disappeared, then reappeared, then disappeared again. Every three months or so, this story comes back to haunt us. Now, Loeb is claiming that we have definitely been visited by aliens:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomer-avi-loeb-says-aliens-have-visited-and-hes-not-kidding1/
Loeb is no longer suggesting we have been visited—he insists on it. Of course, this plays very well with billionaires like Musk and their dreams of interstellar space travel (and interstellar profits), and Loeb’s fans eat it up.
MB and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone on here has yet brought up the case of Andrew Cuomo, a really towering douche bag, in my humble opinion. Even the God-awful New York Times has done a half decent take-down piece on this turd: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/us/politics/andrew-cuomo-scandals.html
The sad thing is that he's being asked to resign over accusations of several women rather than his role in the covid nursing home deaths and the cover-up of the number of deaths by 50%. I knew this would happen, of course. Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball do great Cuomo take-down as well, especially in connection the fawning done by MSNBC and CNN over this guy during the time of covid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZXUsC9Cpc8
Wafer Joe: Thank you for the Karen videos depicting US-ians in proper form.
ReplyDeleteI still scratch my head why on G-d's green Earth, would ANYONE want to immigrate to the US empire? They must be fucking brain damaged and/or brain dead.
ccg-
ReplyDeleteOnce again, elites are trash. This whole drama is v. American, really.
mb
Pinker is a barely sentient haircut.
ReplyDeleteMB here's the Cornel West vs Coates you mentioned (CW basically implies Coates has no interest in attacking real power - and makes a fetish of race identity. Hey it pays the mortgage):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-cornel-west
For Musk-haters Common sense skeptic is THE BEST. First rate - does superb by the numbers takedowns - watch em all:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgKWj1pn3_7hRSFIypunYog
Double Down news - WATCH this intelligent and funny English tuber. He gets it - and is as mentioned FUNNY - great comedic timing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMuzTmb77YU
Regarding Harris and Bell Curve idiocy - another Brit-tuber 'Shaun' did a massive 1 and a half hour takedown - he completely demos it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
derm-
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the refs, much obliged. Identity politics changes 0, wh/is why the US is so into it. And this goes for BLM, pussy hats, furor over Dr. Seuss, and so on. Black share of the wealth today is same as it was in 1960(!)--after Selma and MLK and everything else; altho just b4 he died, MLK began to connect the dots. The # of Americans of any color, who are able to connect the dots, is roughly .000001% (one reason my bks don't sell). They jus' don' know shit from Shinola, and as time goes on, they seem to be getting worse.
A spiritual teacher of mine, many yrs ago, said to me that most people want to chg w/o changing. As I got older, I realized that this was true of nations as well.
mb
Democritus you might check out Yuri Bezmenov BitChute and Adam Clark's movie about hyper-normalization of disinformation. Controlling populations through disinformation, hyperbole, trauma, sheer draining toxic cognitive defying absurdity includes experts or truth seekers talking about aliens or flat earth or whatever without much substance or context, seems like anything these days - "fact checkers" do this all the time.
ReplyDeleteI know the host MB is asking for links but just a simple search will provide those. I remember reading the Harvard astronomer's ideas about spacecraft and wanting to spit out my coffee or pee on someones' shoes. I don't know that he's narcissistically hustling though. I think that alien premise was more along the lines of disinformation to detract from something heavier in the news.
Doi-
ReplyDeleteThis is really how you spend yr time? Talk abt a wasted life. Plus, you have no testes. Maybe you shd worry abt *that*.
Smith-
Links: always a courtesy to our readers.
mb
Nine American billionaires, including Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg, saw their wealth increase a cumulative $360 billion over the past year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/12/musk-bezos-zuckerberg-gates-pandemic-profits/
ReplyDeleteBillionaire bailouts!
Is Germany about to vote for its first Green Chancellor? Or opt for more Bavarian-style conservatism instead?
ReplyDeletehttps://unherd.com/thepost/angela-merkels-crumbling-legacy/
"Bitcoin mining’s energy consumption eclipses that of major global tech companies providing entertainment and services, looking at annual electrical energy consumption values from various reports:” and ALL EV!
ReplyDeletehttps://ketanjoshi.co/2021/03/11/bitcoin-is-a-mouth-hungry-for-fossil-fuels/
Not good.
I felt WAFers might appreciate this followup to the Georgetown law professor’s racist remarks, which cost her job and drove her colleague to resign. Reading what she said, I think we can all agree she got what she deserved; and as for him, well, he didn’t raise any objection to her statements.
ReplyDelete“David Batson, an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University who was party to a recorded discussion where a fellow adjunct professor made disparaging comments about Black students’ academic performance, has resigned. Georgetown terminated the other professor, Sandra Sellers, who made the comments. "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks," Sellers said. "Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, oh, come on. You get some really good ones. But there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy."
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/03/15/professor-resigns-over-colleagues-racist-comments
And, in the throes of March Madness, this:
“Michigan State University entered into a sponsorship deal with the Detroit-based company Rocket Mortgage last week, and the university’s men’s basketball team will now be referred to as the “MSU Spartans Presented by Rocket Mortgage” in stadium and athletics broadcast advertisements, according to a university press release. No word on whether any portion of the university budget previously going to the athletic department might now be directed to other departments or staff salaries.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/03/15/michigan-state-men’s-basketball-will-be-‘presented-rocket-mortgage’
I have recently been suffering from bouts of tinnitus. At a weak moment I wondered what my life would be like if I was completely deaf. Yes, I would miss music; on the other hand I would be bulletproof to the effects of listening to mainstream media and Modi supporters and the general inane conversation about real estate and the weather. I would have liked to have put up some links about the continuing farmer protests, but I find that reading the news gives me a pounding headache. In the stale news department, neoliberalism marches on without an end in sight, with more "give the rich more money, it will trickle down eventually."
ReplyDeletehttps://m.thewire.in/article/political-economy/atmanirbhar-bharat-rich-patronage-poor
Jas-
ReplyDeleteBut wasn't Sellers just stating an observed fact? She even said it upset her (angst, drives her crazy).
mb
MB:
ReplyDeleteApologies for this 24-hour violation, meant to correct the misimpression I caused. I’m still trying to figure out how, without explicitly saying “Here comes sarcasm”, that, well, here comes sarcasm. Absolutely agree, she was stating the facts and expressing her feelings; in this environment, perhaps only the weather is a safe subject. And demonstrating you aren’t a racist is like proving a negative. “When did you stop beating your wife?” Again, my apologies.
"Filled with extraordinary visions, Amarcord is one of Fellini's most beloved pictures."
ReplyDeletehttps://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/il-maestro-federico-fellini-martin-scorsese/
I liked your thoughts on Fellini in "Genio" Mr Berman.
Unfortunately Canada has its share of Darren's.
ReplyDeletehttps://bc.ctvnews.ca/caught-on-camera-anti-maskers-berate-staff-at-vancouver-pizzeria-appear-to-rough-up-teenager-1.5331422
Luckily up here they can't carry guns.
Anjin-
ReplyDeleteHa! I usta hang out a lot in Kitsilano.
Cassady-
Thanks. I'm really proud of that bk. My favorite chs. are the ones on Fellini, Machiavelli, and Gramsci.
mb
J. Allen thanks for the info - cancel culture is no joke unlike this cruel fake system.
ReplyDeleteBrendon those guys like their wealth can be seen as front-men for bankers, NGO's, think tanks, all state apparatus and approved. They never get cancelled wonder why? Fun links as well Dermot.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/uaBGNJQbLmbr/
-The god of private school is money
ReplyDelete-Money is how rich people express their deepest feelings
-This was not a group with a high tolerance for frustration
-->Exceptionally good writing in this takedown of private schools
The gestation pools of our elites.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private-schools-are-indefensible/618078/
Dr. Berman, Wafers. TS Eliot wrote in Four Quartets “in the beginning is my end, in my end is my beginning.” I’ve always been fascinated by what it is about us humans that finds origins and endings of things so compelling even an obsession. Let’s stick to origins.
ReplyDeleteScientists say that the origins or the universe, solar system, life, consciousness, language, of the first humans who broke off from the apes will tell us something about ourselves. Same with religion, in Christianity – Adam and Eve eating the apple – origin of sin and death tells us about the human condition. Buddhists ask what is our original face. Historians always want to go back to the founding fathers to find the origins or real meaning of the republic, or the origins of WW2 etc. In cinema, “rosebud” is supposed to tell us what Charles Foster Kane was really all about. We want to get DNA tests to find out the origins of our ancestry, like finding we are the ancestor of a king makes any difference? But what if the “origin” is no different that all the events that follow. Maybe we are addicted to stories, beginning and endings that's all. But I’ve always been curious about why people thing that knowing the origins of something will tell you about the whole process, maybe it will, but maybe it won’t. Maybe it is just a point in time like everything else, and no answers are found at the origin of anything.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteImpt news item:
https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/bachelor-matt-james-rachael-kirkconnell-split-what-went-wrong/
mb
Regarding the Georgetown law professor, I beg to disagree, partially. Caveat, without having been there, all I'm going to say is speculative, but please hear me out. I absolutely agree that she shouldn't have lost her job for her comments, that's insane. However, about her innocently just stating a fact, I have my doubts. She used words like "angst" and "driving me crazy" that I wouldn't consider very professional for a teacher, unless the pupils were disruptive, but it seems it was only a matter of performance. A good teacher should try to help the pupils that are struggling, with empathy and patience.
ReplyDeleteNow, I work in a technical field and even there many judgements are highly subjective, believe it or not. In a less technical field, I think subjectivity is even a weightier factor, so the possibility that at least some of the black students were at the bottom because she put them there cannot be discarded out of hand.
More Jooish genius that formed us all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xemq4sNfMf8
ReplyDeleteHonestly, Disney, feh. Give me Fleischer every time. Who's gonna remember Disney? I gotta watch this again noshing on some chopped liver once I work up a good recipe.
Malleus-
ReplyDeleteActually, I think that possibility *can* be discarded out of hand. You might check out James McWhorter's bk "Losing the Race," for an astute analysis of what she's talking abt. The data abt black students in college have been around for decades, and they all say the same thing. When she said that this gave her angst, drove her crazy, bothered her--this was hardly a put-down. It was not disparaging. Rather, it was an expression of genuine frustration w/a situation that no one knows how to fix (McWhorter tried). But we have now gotten to the pt in America that we have simply lost our marbles with respect to race. So making an observation abt the situation, wh/is simply a fact in this case, means you lose yr job. We've got an hysterical nation walking on eggshells.
mb
Film recommendation: Check out "I Care A Lot" on Netflix
ReplyDeletehttps://wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Care_a_Lot
MB - No need to despair. There are so many waiting in the wings if Trumpi doesn't run in 2024.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/south-dakota-kristi-noem-covid-1142068/
What could be better than a female Trump!
@Systems, some positive news coming from different quarters. As you probably have followed, Lula da Silva got his conviction (which was a sham to start with) dismissed and is free to challenge Bolsonaro. This is big in IMO.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/08/lula-convictions-annulled-by-brazil-judge-bolsonaro-election-2022
Modi and Shah are facing a novel challenge in the state elections in West Bengal in the form of civil society resistance to their fascist party which they don’t know how to handle. This may be out of the radar for the readers/followers outside India. But like the farmers’ movement and the Brazil elections, this is hugely important. It will determine whether neoliberal policies in their most naked form March on, or are restrained even if temporarily.
But, as Wallerstein had said, the next 30-40 years in this terminal phase of capitalism are going to be hell.
re: struggling students, it’s so bad no one can anymore call a spade a spade no matter how obvious (pun intended & politically incorrect!) Mr Myagi said it best in the Karate Kid movie, “there is no such thing as a bad student, only bad teachers”. I’m sure there are a thousand reasons for a black student to be @ “bottom” of the class. Here’s an analogy, check out what basketball looked like b4 Wilt Chamberlain not to mention Michael Jordan. Seems to me whenever black folk get to improvise (jazz) the end result is pretty good, maybe it’s the same in university.
ReplyDeleteWhite Men Can’t Jump
https://youtu.be/eqs8wOiBLhc
Malleus, Dr Berman,
ReplyDeleteThis is why, a while back, I intentionally walked I to a land mine and recommended Jared Taylor's "White Identity", and not because I like him or advocate his ideas--I honestly don't know what to think of him. Taylor strikes me as a very odd bird, and his obsession with race seems somehow unwholesome to me. Still, he is a damned engaging writer whether one agrees with him or not, though I think the label "white supremecist" is inaccurate. (technically, Taylor admits in the book, that the Ashkenazi Jews--wink, wink--
are the smartest people alive). Nevertheless, "White Identity" remains a fascinating and relatively cheap (only a few $'s on kindle) read, and it showed me just what an intractable mess the race issue really is in America, especially on college campuses. You really do have to read it to believe it. For the small price it is well worth the in-depth analysis that it provides.
On another, more elevated subject (let's call it "surviving cultural and spiritual death in today's America), check out anything by Nikos Kazantzakis. A truly splendid writer. I especially recommend his "St Francis"--truly fine book, exquisitely conceived and executed. Lovely and powerful in equal measure. You won't be able to read it with dry eyes. Two fine, noble souls, both Kazantzakis and St. Francis.
https://www.salon.com/2021/03/13/the-true-story-of-michel-foucaults-lsd-trip-that-changed-history/
ReplyDeleteThe true story of Michel Foucault's LSD trip that changed history
The French philosopher burned and rewrote much of "The History of Sexuality" as a result of his acid revelations
Working my way through University in the late 90's science and engineering I had the privilege (note sarcasm) of teaching math for a semester at a famous 5A city high school - started out as a sub and the teacher got sick so they made me the teacher for a few months until they found a replacement or she came back.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is holy God - like pulling teeth even sometimes for the advanced students. Later I found that college algebra is the most failed required class at the state university. Perhaps for a lot of the population some of the minds just don't work logically. And now I know a little about this common core curriculum that is absolutely there to confuse students. Plus the kids were rude to the point where if I had acted like that growing up my dad would have beat the hell out of me. At the parent teacher's conferences I had a few professional but not necessarily politically correct or kind words by today's standards I would have gotten cancelled. These were maybe 50-60% white kids regarding the demographic. At the time I thought this country has no chance. The contrast in ability and socially acceptable behavior between my talented high school friends and those degenerate mal-behaved misfits was absolutely glaring. I honestly don't see how teachers can keep their sanity in these environments. Also, recently a checker at a grocery store couldn't even add rudimentary change in her head - flipped out a little.
Here's a guy whose head doesn't seem to filled with vegetable puree.
ReplyDeletehttps://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/ps2021-9
I read about this paper initially in recent Tom's Dispatch also a good piece.
https://tomdispatch.com/on-shedding-an-obsolete-past/
Megan-
ReplyDeleteCheck out St. Francis chapter in "Genio".
mb
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteStimulus check dept.:
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/police-find-man-lying-back-23734065
Eric Detiege, 47, was arrested for masturbating on private property w/an uneaten pickle inserted into his rectum.
Miles
Dr. Berman, Wafers. Here is something from the BBC. Bitcoin mining now literally consumes more power per year than used by Argentina and it is growing. Not only is the whole cryptocurrency hype a scam built on sophisticated mathematical algorithms and speculation, but it might all by itself accelerate the warming of the planet. And Bitcoin is only one of hundreds of cryptocurrency coins. Since Elon Musk (Tesla) has literally bought into the hype as well, it is proof positive that his dream of “electric cars” has nothing to do with noble ideas for reducing or planetary carbon footprint. If this isn’t the definition of insanity, hundreds of terawatt-hours (trillions) of energy per year and rising to produce what amounts to computer code algorithms for imaginary money for some speculators to get rich, I don’t know what is. Maybe that should be the in the green new deal – kill cryptocurrency to save energy.
ReplyDelete[An aside – battery powered cars (like rooftop solar panels) are just another form of hyping a new innovative gadget to look “progressive” when in fact the actual benefit will be minimal (beside the fact that battery production creates carbon too) without coupling these with major conservation/communitarian lifestyle changes that are not going to happen ever, in Big Car + Big House = Better America.]
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/tesla-buys-1point5-billion-in-bitcoin.html
Diode-
ReplyDeleteIn future, pls provide links and related specific refs. Follow the lead of other Wafers. Thank you.
Nadine-
Check out my reply to Diode.
mb
As Michael Parenti a hero has said John S. we need to help people on this planet. Musk's heavily subsidized failures hyper-loop, Cadillac in space, lithium constrained fantasies, not to mention strange marriages - in the end he's part of a billionaire club which is always state sponsored flaunting a disregard for humanity and common peoples.
ReplyDeleteMarcus-
ReplyDeleteOn tech as the hidden American religion, check out WAF ch. 3. Musk is typically in that mold; or to put it in other terms, a consummate asshole.
mb
It's the deep kindness of America that I esp. like:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/magazine/laos-agent-orange-vietnam-war.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
https://ca.style.yahoo.com/harry-meghan-gofundme-19-million-home-shut-down-010451532-041325659.html
ReplyDeleteWhy not a fund to have The Wafer World Headquarters built?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxmF-u8jnKI
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNt8Vg9XaL8
Interesting videos from Dutch Professor Karel van Wolferen speaks abt America's addiction to having enemies, for full spectrum dominance, a braindead (mostly Northern) Europe, and journalistic self-censorship in the propaganda mainstream media.
Also, a chat abt Japan being a vassal state/self-governing colony of the US empire.
For anyone here who isn’t aware, this is the 53rd anniversary of a murderous hideous despicable action undertaken by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. But as our “patriotic conservatives” like to say as we ensure “freedom” to the rest of the world from those godless Commies: “Oh but we’re soooo good.”
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spokanepublicradio.org/post/spokane-veterans-remember-vietnams-my-lai-massacre-day-53-years-ago#stream/0
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/22295461/nursing-home-deaths-private-equity-firms
ReplyDeleteA moral abomination
Hilde-
ReplyDeleteI suppose the whole country is a moral abomination. Covid certainly tore the lid off our 'health care' system.
Joe-
Check out
https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/1250045061/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HH7I9GL5GABA&dchild=1&keywords=kill+anything+that+moves&qid=1615945790&s=books&sprefix=kill+any%2Caps%2C382&sr=1-1
Apparently there were many My Lais; My Lai itself was different only in that it got exposed.
Rollo-
A question I've asked myself many times.
mb
ps: Rollo: I didn't realize that Harry and Meghan were down and out.
ReplyDelete@Saul
ReplyDeleteThe article in the conventional sense makes a good point, but...
The answer Flanagan gives, which I’m inferring is to level the playing field of schools, doesn’t make sense ultimately. The central function of schools in the US is to produce a class society; that is what grades are for. There is a common saying in the states “Not everyone can go to Harvard” and the reality that phrase highlights is “who is gonna take out the garbage”?
In great Americanized fashion, the answer of school system critics is “let’s keep the competitive system in place that reduces most to the place of second class citizens, but we should give children of all socioeconomic strata an equal shot at the competition, and that would make the class society justifiable”.
… is that really an answer of a decent society?
It’s a wonder why decades of school critics like Flanagan never were able to see that... the idea of the school system becoming an engine of equality is a ffing joke!
Land of the free, home of the brave, etc.:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/17/us/metro-atlanta-shootings-wednesday/index.html
No agenda against Europeans to see here. Enjoying all this privilege of minorities being pandered to.
ReplyDeleteWhite farmers outnumber minority farmers in the US more than 13 times yet minority farmers are receiving 50% of the $10.4 billion total aid offered to farmers of all races in the relief bill.
Voluntarily reducing votes for Trump in 2014.
ReplyDeletehttps://ca.news.yahoo.com/poll-50-percent-of-unvaccinated-trump-voters-say-they-will-never-get-inoculated-for-covid-how-biden-hopes-to-change-their-minds-090001162.html
Sorry, Megan, but I think Jared Taylor is trash:
ReplyDelete“Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.”
If he thinks he can cover his racist bullshit with respectability by saying Jews are the most intelligent people on earth, he's mistaken.
By the way, I do have a very long list of Jews who I admire profoundly, Dr Berman included, and today I'd like to recommend a book by another one of them: David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years. I don't know if it has been discussed in the GBOE, but this book is an absolute pleasure, like putting dynamite to the pillars of capitalism and watching the whole edifice collapse and turn into rubble without hurting anybody.
Malleus-
ReplyDeleteGraeber actually made an appearance here, some yrs ago. Unfortunately, he wasn't terribly courteous. Nor have I read the bk, but people do rave abt it.
Art-
2014? Meanwhile, I think Trumpaloni recently endorsed the vaccine.
Brune-
Proof? You cite no sources.
Glans-
Re: Japan: Check out "Neurotic Beauty" for more on that subject.
mb
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/american-dream-broken-upward-mobility-us
ReplyDeleteThe 'American Dream' of upward mobility is broken. Look at the numbers
MB, I dug up the Graeber thread FYI:
ReplyDeletehttp://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2014/01/210.html
He does throw some snoot around. His initial post about occupy is moot. Whatever the origins of OWS, it took about 15 minutes for that mo(ve)ment to be co-opted by upper/middle class identity politics and their odious 'progressive stack'. This rightish thread has an interesting top comment from lefty 'Lore Prophet' describing the takeover/takedown:
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2mxe5l/progressive_stack_ows_and_defeating_far_left/
QUOTE: Less and less it became about the movement and more about id politics. These people would come in only to shout orders and rain down guilt trips. San Francisco had it the worst, of course. These types wouldn't even stay in the camps with the rest of us. Instead, as soon as sundown came and the last meeting was held, they would bolt back to their high rent apartments. Any second police would show their face, they'd be gone. They somehow became the leaders simply because they started controlling how people were allowed to communicate.UNQUOTE
The Progressive Stack (gross, who concocts these odious word salads?) Oppression Olympics, read & weep (or laugh, if you're a Divide & Conquer oligarch):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_stack
@Ordinary I hope you are right. I don't have much hope left, but maybe it's because I am surrounded by mostly doofuses (is that a word?) in this part of India. It extraordinary but the MSM can grind people down no end. You can watch all the news you want and still have no idea of whats actually happening on the ground. Only way is to join the movement if you don't fear state reprisal aka when you have nothing left to lose. Like the farmers. And now the bank employees.
ReplyDeletehttps://thewire.in/banking/bank-unions-two-day-nationwide-strike-privatisation-of-psbs
Unless you are a crony of some crony capitalist, you are going down. I see a lot of formerly pro BJP uncles afraid of losing their jobs. Unfortunately they still can't put two and two together, so maybe Modi is right to fire their dumb asses.
While working my way through the Greek books Dr B recommended, I took a break and read American Awakening, a book about identity politics as a aberrant form of Christianity. Basically Joshua Mitchell says it’s a retooled version of the Christian notion of transgressor v innocent. Transgressors are white, hetero men, and innocents are women, other races, homosexuals, etc. Unlike in Christianity where forgiveness comes through Christ’s sacrificial blood, white men can never atone for their sins and must be enteral scapegoats. Other “innocents” will also eventually join the transgressors over time probably starting with white women and then non-white men. I also recommend Mitchell’s book about Alexis de Tocqueville in Arabia.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/American-Awakening-Identity-Politics-Afflictions/dp/1641771305
https://www.amazon.com/Tocqueville-Arabia-Dilemmas-Democratic-Age-ebook/dp/B00EARH2H8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Tocqueville+in+Arabia&qid=1615997600&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
Thanks to everyone who shared their Wafer story. Dr B, I think you should rewrite the Wafer trilogy at a first grade reading level with illustrations. Might appeal to more Americans?
Hilde - not the difference between:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.voxnews.com/
http://www.vox.com (Mainstream approved)
Links as you wish regarding minority farmer bailouts. There is a good video you can youtube about Montana farmers committing suicide after a bad year by their own equipment for the insurance money etc. Truth and justice is about money after all - what the powerful approve. Generational farms that were in families for years.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/13/how-covid-relief-bill-aims-to-help-socially-disadvantaged-farmers/4637103001/
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article249839933.html
Richard Dawkins BTW approves Titania McGrath's twitter sarcasm about cultural appropriation etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q
ReplyDeleteHere, Jaron Lanier, one of the creators of the internet, explains how social media ruins your life. Well worth watching, I think.
Malleus,
ReplyDeleteHe might well be. I certainly would never defend him. I mentioned the book "White Identity" though. I meant "Paved With Good Intentions". There is plenty in there to get upset about and disagree with. But I found it engaging nevertheless. It certainly shows how hopeless college campus have become. Still, recommending the book is in no way to be confused with recommending the man.
Dr Berman, Wafers. The Georgetown Law professor getting fired and John McWhorter was brought up earlier in the discussion. Turns out, McWhorter has posted his thoughts on the matter, though he himself seems to walk on eggshells which seems to weaken his point at the end a bit. Still, I largely concur with his points.
ReplyDeleteNote that McWhorter does not question the entire bogus caste system in which going to the right colleges and getting the right grades is necessary in the first place to be part of the “elite” crowd – why is that not in question too?
https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/so-there-was-a-law-professor-at-georgetown
Jamie-
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking of a bk involving pop-ups.
Systems-
Doofuses is possible, altho Doofi (the i pronounced as eye) has a nice ring to it.
dermot-
The issue of Graeber raises an interesting pt. He showed up on the blog and in an arrogant manner, began telling us what we supposedly needed to do. No adjustment at all to the context; no, he knew best, and wasn't shy abt making that clear. During the past decade I've had a # of email interactions w/'star' lefties, big shots in that political arena. These are names all of us wd recognize. And here's the punch line: to a man, their behavior was disgusting. Plagiarism, stabbing in the back, refusal to dialogue, and so on. And I realized something v. impt, as I did w/Graeber: "Le style est l'homme meme"; the style is the man (Buffon). These clowns think they can usher in a liberated society simply because of their politics; but what I saw was that their politics were irrelevant. What's relevant is how you treat people; and if yr a left-winger and you treat people like shit, once in power you will easily reproduce the oppressive regime you overthrew. Honestly, I can't imagine anything worse than having Hedges, for example, in power: rigid, Manichaean, dishonest, self-righteous, ego-driven, self-aggrandizing, blech. And he cd well be the tip of the iceberg.
I elaborate on this in the Machiavelli ch. of "Genio". He was a wise old bird, and toward the end of his life he got it: left vs. rt was not the issue. The issue was ego vs. decency. My own personal discovery was that on the American left today, it was all ego; and that there was no guarantee that regimes run by them wd be any better than Trump's. Now I hope you'll excuse me while I go blow my lunch.
mb
Instagram is doing something v. interesting to wellness / spirituality / religion. Whole new generation of 'preachers', mainly women. They tend to be attractive, well-turned-out, affluent. It's image-based spirituality, as opposed to word-based religion. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/influencers-glennon-doyle-instagram.html
ReplyDeleteWhat a spiritual wasteland.
This is what counted as "journalism" and/or a "documentary" in the US empire--imbeciles craving chicken sandwiches.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUdqlbQfWyg
New: The sheriff's official who said the Atlanta spa shooter had "a bad day" shared an image of T-shirts that said "Covid 19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA" on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteAfter BuzzFeedNews asked about the shirt, the public post became unavailable.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/skbaer/spa-shooter-bad-day-racist-facebook
Dr. Shit-
ReplyDeleteRemember 2 yrs ago, the new Popeye's chicken sandwich, w/lines for it a mile long? This is what Americans care abt. This is where their focus is. I suspect the revolution will be delayed just a bit.
Lin-
I have repeatedly said the country is a joke. Glamorous spirituality + chicken sandwiches.
John-
Thanks for the ref. Clearly, if you blow yr nose, it's racism. But I hafta say to everyone: this blog seems to have become more of a clog than a blog, and what is clogging it up is endless discussions of race. Fuck race. I'm tired of race. Let's get back to the actual focus: the collapse of the American empire. Thank you.
mb
Bill Maher:"Americans are a silly people"
ReplyDelete“In China alone, they have 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. America has none. … We’ve been having Infrastructure Week every week since 2009 but we never do anything. Half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a d*** and the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they’re eating babies. We are a silly people,”
Ben Cain: Seeing Through the Platitudes of Biden’s Neoliberalism
"Biden thinks he’s reassuring the country with his slogan, “America is coming back.” This slogan assumes that Trumpism was an aberration rather than a reaction to the neoliberal norm that elite Democrats prefer."
Woman accused of making 'deepfake' videos of daughter's cheerleading rivals.
Spone also sent messages with the so-called “deepfake” pictures to the the girls and suggested they kill themselves, officials said.
Alfie-
ReplyDeleteIt's kinda hard (for some) to really see it, that Americans are simply not v. bright, and contain a shitload of hatred w/in them. Once you grasp that, the weird events that happen every day are not so puzzling. Nor is the fact that we are disintegrating as a nation. But it's not easy for most Americans to see.
mb
A footnote in Nicholas Christakis’s “Blueprint,” when talking about Aquinas’s church view of man’s domination over nature, makes this comment on Saint Francis:
ReplyDelete“The teachings of Saint Francis are often highlighted by those seeking to demonstrate that early Christians did not necessarily create a schism between humans and the natural world. In stark opposition to Aquinas, Francis asserted that one’s treatment of the natural world should be directly modeled on the treatment of one’s own kind. But in fact, Francis’s views were so discordant with Catholic Church dogma that historian Lynn White Jr. concluded, “The prime miracle of Saint Francis is the fact that he did not end at the stake.””
Ok, no more race, but one last post about Graeber, if I may. I had read he had a reputation for being "difficult" but I didn't know the story. I emphatically agree with Dr Berman: the older I get, the less important ideologies become and the more important kindness becomes.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I still think his book is well worth reading. I think Graeber is intellectually stronger than Hedges. Many flawed human beings have produced something of value and we all have a shadow, whatever its size. Wagner was a terrible anti-semite but, in these long years, the one joke by Woody Allen I didn't find funny was when he said that listening to Wagner made him feel like invading Poland; I can't understand how anybody with sensibility can listen to "Tristan und Isolde," for example, and feel that way.
Malleus-
ReplyDeleteI never said "Debt" was not worth rdg. I only observed that Graeber behaved imperiously--something I have found true repeatedly among left-wing big shots--and that no matter how fabulous his analysis, a person like that in power wd reproduce the very oppression they managed to overthrow. It wasn't a case of lack of kindness on Graeber's part; rather, he had no sense of elementary courtesy, of trying to work w/in the given context. He just showed up and ordered us around. Such a person, like Hedges, "knows" the Truth, and other people had better fall in line. It reminds me of something Saul Alinsky once said, when I attended a lecture he gave in 1964: "To me, the man who stands up and says, 'I have the Truth', wears the mask of the Inquisition." Ultimately, ideology is no guarantee of anything, no matter how gd it sounds on paper. One needs to read *between* the lines, altho Graeber was hardly hiding his personality when he showed up on this blog. In addition, when I kept asking him for an OWS equivalent to the Port Huron Statement of the SDS, he waffled and fudged. Of course: OWS produced no such statement, wh/goes to the heart of why they were, in the last analysis, a lot of blather.
Graeber didn't need accolades or acolytes; what he needed was therapy.
As for Woody, I think yr overreacting. Comedians exaggerate; it's part of the trade. I very much doubt he really felt like invading Poland. And altho I personally like Wagner, it *is* an imperious type of music, imo.
mb
Ralph Fiennes to direct and star in TS Eliot's Four Quartets https://amp.theguardian.com/stage/2021/mar/17/ralph-fiennes-to-direct-and-star-in-ts-eliots-four-quartets
ReplyDeleteDr. Strangelove redux:
ReplyDeleteThe return of the Mineshaft Gap? In a senate hearing on the US nuclear arsenal this week, Tom Cotton asked: “China could possibly have nuclear overmatch against the United States, before the end of this decade, is that correct?”
Admiral Philip Davidson: “If they were to quadruple their stockpile. Yes.”
Well, no, Admiral. China currently has about 320 nuclear warheads, compared to the 5,800 in the US stockpile.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/12/roaming-charges-fear-of-a-black-prince/
MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteColumbia University is going all out on diversity politics, planning to have six separate graduation ceremonies depending on student's race, income level, ethnicity, etc:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/columbia-university-graduation-ceremonies-income-race-ethnicity
I'm sure that anyone at Columbia who voiced opposition to this would immediately be branded a racist. McCarthyism is alive and well in academia.
I probably shouldn't say, empty statement but Graeber, Musk, Hedges, so many of these people are really personality conflict invoking, so off-putting regardless of their ideologies and activities. Graeber and Musk's voice inflections and mannerisms are insufferable for me. Also, there is a famous phone call of Mia F. crying while berating Woody for "what he did" to the children.
ReplyDeleteSystems crash go - the highest IQ guy C. Langan has been tweeting lately regarding this passage of humanity and why the powerful are doing what they're doing due to resource constraints etc. He's vaguely pessimistic that common folk will continue to be fodder but also mentions that historically the types of social engineering that the oligarchs for lack of a better word (bankers) are doing almost always backfires on them.
How to remake Britain: The perils of grand designs
ReplyDeleteBy John Gray
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/03/how-remake-britain-perils-grand-designs
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteI fully agree having Hedges as president would be an unmitigated disaster. I think the links I posted showing him platforming Julie Bindel, who has publicly stated she wants all men in concentration camps, says it all. Who knows what Hedges would do to men, particularly white men, if elected? It's a terrifying thought.
Also...
https://networthpost.org/net-worth/chris-hedges-net-worth/
https://powerfullblog.com/2021/01/02/chris-hedges-net-worth/
According to the websites I looked at, Hedges is worth several million dollars, although different amounts are listed on different websites. I suspect Hedges went to a lot of trouble to hide his net worth from the prying eyes of the internet, and that this is why people can't agree on what his net worth really is. After all, the internet accurately lists the net worth of nearly everyone of note, including celebrities who go to great lengths to maintain their privacy.
I looked up HEART OF THE MATTER in WorldCat, an international online catalog of thousands of libraries. Not a single library owns it. I live in a small town of 10,000 but we have a public library. So I submitted an interlibrary loan request thinking maybe they could find a copy. The librarian called me to say HEART OF THE MATTER is not available anywhere, but she recognized the name Morris Berman and she wants to read the book, too. So she ordered it, and other trilogy titles, for the collection. I thanked her for purchasing the book and congratulated her for recognizing the importance of MB's work. Public libraries are communist, with a small "c" ... kinda like the teachings of Jesus. If public libraries didn't already exist, nowadays people would think they are a "left-wing" idea.
ReplyDeleteEmpowering Library Users Through the Five Laws of Library Science
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4268&context=libphilprac
Luxury Communist Jesus: Ideology, the Work Ethic, and the Antiwork Politics of Jesus
http://bit.ly/communist-jesus
"On the other hand, the film’s a reprehensibly fictionalized fantasy about the lives of elderly dispossessed people who live in their vehicles & work seasonal gig-economy temp jobs...utopian film emerging out of a dystopian framework of a failing nation"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/03/nomadland-review
- Pub
'Cold war-era weapon': $100bn US plan to build new nuclear missile sparks concern | Nuclear weapons | The Guardian
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/cold-war-era-weapon-100bn-us-plan-to-build-new-nuclear-missile-sparks-concern
Recommended reading: Ellsberg's "Doomsday Machine"
Matt Taibbi just had Ellsberg on his cast to discuss this
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HIPOoIbSEPM&feature=youtu.be
Unknown-
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for yr support. In future, pls post w/a real handle; I normally don't post Unknowns.
Nadine-
What a crock of shit that guy is. Of course there is no attempt to check up on *my* net worth, because it wd read something like this: Berman/Net Worth/Practically Bupkis.
mb
"Why did Meghan Markel want to represent the British monarchy to its formerly colonized peoples?"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/meghan-and-diana-could-have-saved-royal-family/618318/
Caitlin Flanagan still keeping up with writing quality articles thru her 3rd bout of cancer
Here's the link from Sybok's post above by Ben Cain. That other link didn't work for me.
ReplyDeletehttps://medium.com/discourse/president-bidens-platitudes-and-lullabies-18e7f5ee4679
Dr B, I love the idea of a pop-up book! This could really alter your net worth because Americans would be thrilled with a new pop up. Why wouldn’t you want to be rich? You were born in America, right? I like your quote by Saul Alinksy. Quite similar to Voltaire who said, “Cherish those who see the truth but beware of those who find it.” True believers are seriously scary and are usually super far up their own asses. Very insightful about Graeber’s time on this blog and really provides a great explanation fo why so many intellectuals become sclerotic.
ReplyDeleteTo show a bit of solidarity with Meghan on controversial books, I read Abigail Shrier’s controversial book about the unprecedented rise of transgenderism among teenager girls. I don’t think she is anti-trans in the least. She is concerned with rising rates of transgenderism among teenage girls who previously demonstrated no gender dysphoria. These teens are given the green light by the medical and psychological community to undergo treatments that can raise cancer risks and cause infertility. Anyone who questions this, especially parents, are branded as transphobic therefore halting debate. I do wonder what role money plays in all of this. A few years ago a US doctor recommended an operation. My husband is an EU citizen (I’m a permanent resident) and the doctor there said it would have been criminal to have done surgery to someone in my age group for this particular issue. Just goes to show you what happens when health is a money making enterprise.
Dr. Berman, Wafers. Biden and Putin are at it for the 1st time after Biden called Putin a “killer”. Maybe this is the start of a new “Kitchen Debate” who knows. Rachel Maddow & the media in general needs something new spectacle to obsess about the next 4 years to fill air space, while the nation crumbles, now that Russiagate is over.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/europe/biden-putin-killer-comment-russia-reaction-intl/index.html
“Kitchen Debate” (1959) –Richard Nixon tells Nikita Khrushchev that capitalism kicks ass because we make better domestic appliances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CvQOuNecy4&t=208s
Jamie-
ReplyDeleteLink for Shrier wd be gd.
mb
I apologize for messing up the link to Ben Cain's article in my last post. He just wrote an even better one that really reveals the root of American decline here.
ReplyDeleteHowever, since he now posts all of his essays on Medium it would be best to access them directly from hisblog. Medium is a pay service, but if you access his essays from the links on his blog then there is no pay wall.
Here are two articles regarding communism and fascism coming to America.
ReplyDeletehttps://fee.org/articles/communism-survivor-warns-what-will-happen-if-americans-take-freedom-for-granted/
https://www.fredericknewspost.com/opinion/columns_syndicated/neither-fascism-nor-communism-is-coming-to-america/article_edd4c875-fde1-546c-ad24-cbc6608ed190.html
All I know is that communism is super evil. All the tech makes communism easier.
Preston-
ReplyDeleteWell, ya don't know very much, amigo. It's that sort of Manichaean thinking that got us into the Cold War, wasted millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Communism actually has some positive aspects to it--as does capitalism--and if instead of operating w/yr type of mindset, we had been able to create detente and appreciate things such as social safety net, community, free education and health care, we wd have been a lot better off. And the USSR wd have been better off had it also avoided B&W thinking, and appreciated things like individual achievement and the entrepreneurial spirit. The real super evil is blindly calling things you don't like and are ignorant abt, super evil.
mb
Hola a los Waferes,
ReplyDeleteDr Berman, I think we're all painfully aware of the ongoing suicide epidemic and how it underscores the general decline:
https://hudsonvalleycountry.com/woman-dies-after-jumping-from-bridge-in-the-hudson-valley/
A 53 year old woman. The winter of our discontent, eh? Evidently this span has seen at least 11 suicide jumps in the past 15 years or so. I am guessing you've been over the bridge. I stopped overnight In Kingston, NY five days after the 6thANYWSM, on the drive to northern New Hampshire. Unfortunately, I can't get to DC, as much as I would love to, for the next WSM. I have many great memories from that month-long trip in 2019. I am indeed fortunate.
"Fortune may have yet a better success in reserve for you and they who lose today may win tomorrow' - Cervantes
Pub - That Jacobin article on Nomadland is really good. The book is said to be a lot more political and bleak. I wonder what kind of gilt-edged puff piece Hollywood would make out of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle?
ReplyDeleteI'm looking down the barrel of the same late life as the people in that movie, except I won't be doing it with an RV or anything like that. At least I don't plan to dig up turnips or any heavy work like that.
There's a channel on YouTube called Cheap RV Living where the host, Bob Wells, runs down the expenses of actual people and their setups. What's not mentioned is things with vehicles, or human bodies, can go very bad very expensively at any time.
MB - If I weren't so lazy I'd have done a Trump version of "The Richard M. Nixon Coloring Book" I grew up with in the 70s. I was hilarious.
https://spectator.org/transgender-women-american-spectator-print-magazine/
ReplyDeleteAbigail Shrier.
https://youtu.be/ALeWZWs66RU
Interview with Derrick Jensen and Lierre kitty.
And here is the hate campaign the Trans community has waged on women https://terfisaslur.com/
BTW if anyone has the article about myth and technology it would be very appreciated.
Nesim-
ReplyDeleteNot sure wh/article yr referring to. I deal w/this theme in WAF ch. 3.
mb
John Gray reviews An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida by Peter Salmon in The NewStatesman:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newstatesman.com/an-event-perhaps-biography-jacques-derrida-review
What good comes from gov MB - the vastness of the corp state? What "state" social welfare programs are provided and working across the West except moving in a lot of refugees through NGO's? C. Hedges mentioned that the state is the only institution powerful enough to protect and provide for the people - when it can or wants to. Communism has been good for killing and maiming millions etc. Now we live in a communistic snitch low trust culture of people who can't process reality or speak outside political correctness without getting cancelled. Our living arrangements are unsustainable due to population and lifestyles.
ReplyDeleteWhere are the success stories? Russian and Cuban kitchen gardens? Is there capitalism and free markets with such powerful private central banking? The USSR and Soviet block BTW squashed individual freedoms (which lead to achievement) hence entrepreneurship. D. Orlov has mentioned that agriculture failed under communism though Russia had a better infrastructure (electrical) plus free housing and kitchen gardens.
Preston-
ReplyDeleteTrue, but yr only looking at one side of the situation. I think yr mind's made up (i.e., closed); so I'll leave you to yr Manichaean world view. The reality is complex; what you want are simple, B&W answers; they make you feel comfortable, assured. Hard to get anyone out of that mindset, and into a more subtle space; and I'm not really into an extensive dialogue that won't chg anything in the end. I have the same problem w/communists and Zionists, BTW; anti-communists really aren't very different.
The story of Whittaker Chambers, who went from being a fervent communist to a fervent anticommunist. He said to one friend: "See? I've changed!" His friend replied, "No, you just changed sides, Whittaker. *You* haven't really changed at all."
Best of luck-
mb
With this country now becoming a de facto Christian theocracy, thanks to conservative hegemony in many states mainly obsessed with end times and violent apocalyptic scenarios, this article perhaps accurately ascribes the Christian Right’s contribution to the ongoing collapse here in the Dysfunctional States of America.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/atlanta-mass-shooting-anti-asian-violence-guns-misogyny-20210318.html
p.s. A question for Dr. Berman: What do the above posted hateful transphobic links provided by Wafer Nesim Watani have to do with the downfall of the United States and this blog?
To Wafer Nesim Watani: In case you haven’t heard, I am trans; I’m actually female even though I still use the male name assigned to me at birth since I’m pre op; I “knew” at the age of 5 that I’m actually a girl when I put on my sister’s nightgown; I’ve always had natural feminine gestures; my handwriting is feminine cursive; I never could lift weights; I can’t stand what is between my legs right now and always have disliked it; I’m not a sexual predator but am in fact a 67 year old virgin; like you and also like all women that use them for breastfeeding, I have nipples on my chest; like the other 99.9 percent of transfolk, MtF or ( think Chaz Bono) FtM that number in the millions worldwide, the only “agenda” I have is just to be left alone and live my life; and much as Dr. Berman resents the many anti-Semitic remarks sent to him, I utterly resent the above hateful anti-trans post by you and the links to these bigoted conservative transphobes whom you quoted.
The Biden administration consulted with "career security professionals" and determined that young white house staffers who previously partook of cannabis use should be fired for national security reasons?
ReplyDeleteOk.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-white-house-sandbags-staffers-sidelines-dozens-for-pot-use
Jourdan-
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Biden starts off gd foreign policy rels. by insulting the Chinese and calling Putin a 'killer'. Smooth move! He cd benefit from a bit of weed, obviously.
Joe-
Well, someone had cited Abigail Shrier w/o a link, so I guess Nesim was trying to be helpful. What his views of transfolk is, I really don't know. But I appreciate yr pt, that it's a bit too easy on this or any blog, to get sidetracked into issues of race and gender, turning the blog into a clog. I too wd like us to dispense w/all of that, and return to the coming American collapse. I do respect your anger, however, and add that however anyone chooses to live their private life, is, imo, their business.
mb
Link for Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YL6XK55/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Love the quote about changing sides in regards to Whittaker Chambers. I’m writing that down.
Dr. B:
ReplyDeleteR.I.P. to James Levine, long-time music director of the MET Opera in New York City-
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/17/james-levine-former-met-opera-conductor-dies
"After four decades in the position, Levine was eased aside as a result of poor health before being fired for sexual harassment"
I used to enjoy PBS's "Great Performances" in the 1980s and 90s, often featuring opera from the MET. Today, opera on TV is as rare as hen's teeth. Our local PBS radio station went all-talk about 10 years ago; hard to believe.
Wafers,
ReplyDeleteConsidering what Biden just said about China, I thought this article is quite current and interesting.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-thirty-tyrants
https://ca.yahoo.com/style/britney-spears-reportedly-considering-tell-092300506.html
ReplyDeleteWould you consider an all-paid flight to USA for an interview by
Oprah herself? If she will allow for a "tell all" session, you
could mention the pending collapse of the whole shittery that
is her country.
Art-
ReplyDeleteI have a funny vignette abt Oprah in the 3rd story of "Destiny." I wd go on her show only if she agreed to say nothing whatsoever, just allow me to read that section to the audience, then get up and leave.
Birn-
I suspect that more than 2/3 of the country wd not be able to say what opera was. The % that wd be able to identify the composer of "Don Giovanni" wd be abt .0000000001.
mb
@Birney, Yeah, decaying Jimmy finally died. He spent the last years of his life alone bared from conducting and was frequently seen eating at NYC rich men clubs sitting at tables by himself; he had no life outside of conducting and fortunately in this case, it looks like karma paid the autist-sociopath back.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find most hideous in all of this, even more so than photographs of Jimmy, is how those around him in the classical music world covered his behavior for decades as he seduced and assaulted budding teenagers. A big part of the reason for this, is that many in the classical music world identify with power and the abuse of power. After having gone through the torture of the audition circuit, once one does well and is lucky, and becomes admitted to a prestigious institution, the temptation to turn around and become a narcissist is too great for many; Why is that?… If one doesn’t have a substantive inner life, one has no internal argument about why the abuse of power is bad other than just “it hurts weak people’s feelings”.
Classical musicians, like most Americans, treat their profession as another career to climb. They lack an ability to parse the difference between being in love with what one does vs desiring prestige for it. My reflections are from having attended one of the top music conservatories.
Brian-
ReplyDeleteThat's a rather heavy accusation (2nd para). Do you have any proof?
mb
Film rec: "The Trial of the Chicago 7"
ReplyDeleteOne is reminded of Germany in the 1920s when the unconscious
ReplyDeletemind of the masses starts to move to the surface. Motivation
by deeply buried fears makes for credulity of the absurd.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/qanon-quarter-republicans-favour-conspiracy-114930373.html
Nesim Watani - I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find some fringe writer's rant on how just about any group is the Devil Incarnate. What does that have to do with collapse. If you want to rant about how trans people are going to make the Earth's crust melt or whatever the accusation is, you can always start your own blog, it's easy. www.blogger.com
ReplyDeleteMB - Oops! "I was hilarious" was meant to be "It was hilarious" and the Richard M. Nixon coloring book was.
A look at a wonderful, at least to some, time: https://caravantales.ca/2021/03/07/in-praise-of-idle-wandering-a-lament-for-the-gainfully-misemployed/ I remember coming across, in a Hawaii flea market of all places, a wonderful book about a couple of guys who traveled across Europe in the 1930s desirous of playing the violin with Roma people. No internet, no telephone, hardly even letters. What a time!
Hey, don't you ever mess with classical music! Film recommendation: The Soloist.
ReplyDeleteBack to business: Biden 'doing fine' after stumbling once, twice, thrice on steps of Air Force One. Maybe we should start worrying about what a president Harris would be like. La Kamala, for starters, did indeed sleep her way to the top. Oh, and by the way, I'm sorry, but I have personally seen women sleep with their bosses and get promoted, so if you want to call me sexist I couldn't care less...
PS Dr Berman, that Woody Allen joke is actually funny, I only meant that I personally didn't find it funny due to my emotional connection to Wagner's music.
Ordinary-
ReplyDeleteA bit too long. If you cd edit it down to half a pg, and resend, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.
mb
@Systems, a few words.
ReplyDelete1. Anyone remotely admiring Modi/BJP, cut all non-essential connections, not matter who. No arguments, no discussions. This is survival-101 in the present situation.
2. You seem to be younger than me. If yes, I have no words of 'hope' for your generation. I have been telling my son over the last ~8 yrs, he will have to face much worse time. He is 18 now. Only advice: keep your critical faculty alive, even if in hibernation, as long as you have your body and soul together.
Try to see Modi's logic of his economic decisions. Corporations /cronies have invested heavily in Modi/BJP, and they want their returns. So he is serving them all public resources/wealth on a platter. Remember how corporations benefitted from the Nazi rule: https://www.wonderslist.com/10-popular-companies-profited-nazis/ Capitalism, pure and simple.
The crisis is global. You either face economic collapse, or climate catastrophe or both. No scape. But slowly ppl in India are beginning to realize that something sinister is afoot. On a brighter note, history has its own dynamics and even fascists cannot always control the consequences of their actions.
Hola a los Waferes,
ReplyDeleteDr. Berman, I apologize; that link was short circuited. At any rate the bridge incident was Kingston-Rhineskill Bridge, March 8, 2021:
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2178634787640/woman-dies-after-jumping-from-bridge-in-area
The newsbreak link feeds into two more curious and ironic stories. The Dutchess county royalty includes a Proud Boy Duke, ex-MTA employee; and a Grand Dutchess of perversion. Check out the photos of these two amerikan all-stars. Denial Decline with Doubled "D" s.
Malleus,
ReplyDeleteIt's not sexist to point out that some women *do* sleep their way to the top. You're not saying all women do that, or even that a majority of women do that, so I see no harm in you calling out women who behave this way. Progs, of course, would disagree: prog ideology dictates that women should never be held responsible for their misdeeds.
To show how far this attitude has spread among progs, here's a prog article from the Washington Post claiming that women shouldn't go to jail for anything - not even for torture, murder or child molestation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/we-should-stop-putting-women-in-jail-for-anything/
Keep in mind that newspapers only publish articles they think most of their readers already agree with. It's therefore possible most people who read the Washington Post think women should be above the law. I strongly suspect Hedges would agree.
ReplyDeleteHow America Betrayed Reality Winner
MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-many-betrayals-of-reality-winner
This is painful stuff. Why is she still in prison? Why is one of the journalists whose actions apparently got her--and another source--arrested still working at the Intercept?
On Whistleblowers more generally: Amazingly, on Matt Taibbi's most recent substack-cast episode Daniel Ellsberg admitted he's not really sure how much of an impact he's had, and cites a terrible Malcom Gladwell piece in the New Yorker that contains shocking journalistic errors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdsIH7brl7Y
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/daniel-ellsberg-edward-snowden-and-the-modern-whistle-blower
Schumer Insists on Keeping Beachfront Bailouts for Wealthy Americans' Vacation Homes
ReplyDeleteThe senate majority leader is stymying long-needed increases in federal flood insurance rates.
https://reason.com/2021/03/19/schumer-insists-on-keeping-beachfront-bailouts-for-wealthy-americans-vacation-homes/
How "progressive"....
@Alex Carter. This is not a fringe issue. When you have the ACLU advocating that biological sex does not exist. That Trans women are biological women and advocating the ERA, which erases biological sex from the law, replacing it with gender identity. Did you not bother watching Abigail Shrier's testimony or did you simply ignore her testimony?
ReplyDeletehttps://adflegal.org/blog/aclu-debunked-real-facts-about-men-womens-sports
That is not fringe. The ACLU is not FRINGE. This is a show of cultural collapse. That people are so dumb that they think GENDER which means behavioral expression overrides and makes SEX not exist. Btw Transgender is not Transsexuals. Go look up Transexual who are denigrated by Transgenders as TRUSCUM.
https://mynorthwest.com/2666243/doc-washington-correctional-center-women-men-transfer/
This is what the tran activists are advocating for. This only happens because culture has collapsed and the Western nations are dying.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/vincent-chin-shocking-real-life-232455667.html
ReplyDeleteNo surprise here, for American history began when white British
stole what they could from the indigenes and the Spanish. The
lesson learnt was how to keep all this loot in the hands of whites
and not share it with UNwhites who want to be part of the country,
unless, of course, these exploitables can make money for the native
rich whites. From European empires came the ideology of racism,
and their presence in all these countries bred the same feelings
in the colonized.
Dr Berman. Wafers. On the Abigail Shrier phenomena, I’ll pass. Reading some reviews, strikes me as a new version of the old anti-gay reactionary literature of the past, we have to stop the gays because they are going to convert the world to gaydom, this is delusional. Same with trans, they are not going to take over the world any time soon, no matter what you feel about the issue, it is always going to involve only a minority of people. And it is also strait dishonest scholarship. Shirer interviews parents of kids considering becoming trans and all their issues with it, but not the kids involved themselves, why if your goal is to get to the “truth”, and then deliberately changes the stories to disguise who was actually interviewed. This is like writing a book on the Civil War and only interviewing Northerners. And changing actual stories turns the whole thing into fiction. I think she is just another example of the 15 minutes of fame if you shout loud enough phenomena in US culture.
ReplyDeleteJohn-
ReplyDeleteAre there any critical reviews of Shrier that you know of? (Not that I want this discussion to go on indefinitely)
mb
Meanwhile, here's one of the greatest shmucks America ever produced. What a bulvan:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/20/elon-musk-declared-himself-technoking-hes-just-a-hyper-capitalist-clown
In the US it looks like they've never even heard of the maxim by Aristotle "in medio virtus". People need to go all the way one extreme or the other. Typically people will say something that makes sense and something that doesn't in their attempt to prove they're absolutely right. The opposite tribe will pick the things that don't make sense in an attempt to prove they're absolutely wrong. Not difficult to predict what the resulting quality of the intellectual discourse will be. Hegel was mistaken, at least in the US there is no synthesis, only ever more extreme cycles of thesis and antithesis.
ReplyDeleteApologies for the preachy and abstract post.
But reality is never black and white, for example: Did the “Hotel Rwanda” Hero Become a Terrorist?
@ Nessim Watani
ReplyDeleteYou write, "the Western nations are dying." Perhaps this is a good thing. Who knows, maybe our new trans overlords will be kinder than the present ones? Joking aside, I have come across a lot of this "Western values/culture/nations are under threat" stuff lately and too often it is the redoubt of various bigots.
"The values of liberty, tolerance and rational inquiry are not the birthright of a single culture. In fact, the very notion of something called ‘western culture’ is a modern invention".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/western-civilisation-appiah-reith-lecture
@Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteApologies, I assumed folks on here who follow the classical music scene and listen to it would be guaranteed to have heard by now. Anyways, that he was "like that" was an established rumor for decades; I heard this years before the multiple allegations broke, so it wasn’t just random people claiming a phony “Me-too”. I was very disappointed when I first heard about the rumors because I really liked a lot of his work. Two articles:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/02/590282661/new-details-emerge-in-abuse-allegations-against-conductor-james-levine
https://nypost.com/2017/12/02/legendary-opera-conductor-molested-teen-for-years-police-report/
Dr. Berman & Wafers,
ReplyDeleteHere is a link that includes quoting science that repudiates Abigail Shrier and shows what an outright amateur and fraud she really is when it comes to this topic.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202101/review-irreversible-damage-abigail-shrier
Wafer Nesim Watani,
I am not going to waste any more of my time with you. I’ll only say in closing that, unless you are one of us, you have absolutely no damn idea what we’re about. I don’t care what any of the so called “professionals” out there, along with their “credentials”, may happen to say regarding me and my ilk and asseverate why we are what we are. It also especially applies to uneducated transphobic amateurs like Abigail Shrier, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, the Heritage Foundation, the Christian Right, and all the other many narrow-minded conservative bigots out there. We trans folk happen to be unique and gifted. I‘m happy to be born like this and wouldn’t have it any other way. And like most trans people I “knew” at a very early age. In contrast to what Ms. Shrier claims, it isn’t a case of “try it, you’ll like it,” or “hopping aboard the trans train” for our adolescent and prepubescent youth. To me, it’s obvious that we are large in number, both now and have been in years past. We’re used to transphobes being able to spout hateful venom about us. It’s been happening to us here in the West for decades. That’s because we trans folk are the very last remaining minority that can be stigmatized and insulted with impunity, and even outright murdered, just for being what we are. But that notwithstanding, we’re now defiantly finally out in the open after being closeted for many decades. We’re here to stay. And much to your and the far right’s dismay, we’re not going away.
Now this here, folks, is a REAL part of the dysfunctional States of America coming apart at the seams. Never fear, Karen is here! And a Darren too! LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ojEIgT2YI
Wafer,
ReplyDeleteHard to argue with this.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rMOxj8w0K-c
Dr. Berman, Wafers. A couple reviews from psychologists on the new Shrier book and a relevant quote. To me this is dishonest scholarship period, no matter what your thoughts on the issues.
ReplyDelete“Shrier's book tells the stories of several young people who came out as transgender to their parents. The book claims that these adolescents and young adults were not actually transgender, but actually just confused. The problem is Shrier didn't actually interview any of these people she wrote about.
The author’s note points out that she only interviewed their parents, who uniformly did not accept their children’s transgender identities. Many of them were estranged from their kids because the children were so hurt by their parents' rejection. To actually understand the psychology of these young people, one would need to talk to them, not simply rely on stories from parents with whom they do not speak.
To make things worse, the author's note explains that Shrier changed details in the book to ensure the transgender people she wrote about would not be able to recognize themselves. In doing so, she ensured they could not provide their side of the story or point out any inaccuracies in her reporting.“
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/202012/new-book-irreversible-damage-is-full-misinformation
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202101/review-irreversible-damage-abigail-shrier
Xair-
ReplyDeleteNice to see that Bill has finally caught up w/me, but there's one connection he failed to make: that this, above everything else, is why we are going down the drain.
As far as the trans debate goes: Ya chole!, as we say in Mexico. Enough, already. Por favor, let's call it a draw and move on to the actual topic of this blog.
mb
Dr. Berman. Thanks for sharing your personal story about meeting Chomsky. I saw a couple of public lectures in the past but never met Chomsky. On balance I still think Chomsky has made some important contributions to society particularly in his anti-war efforts, but I have always been struck by his surprising levels of dogmatism and assurance about almost everything he talks about, not from direct personal interactions like you but from his public appearances and writings, so what you say confirms my impressions, of course this trait seems to be a feature not a bug with intellectual figures these days (I am an expert on X => I am an expert on everything, syndrome).
ReplyDeleteWafers. In the meantime, descending even lower, David Brooks is now recommending Christianity as the prime solution to all our social ills. But like all his writing, it is vapid and sentimental and full of smug satisfaction for his rather banal insights. The man doesn’t seem to possess even an ounce of self-awareness imo.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/social-justice-christianity.html
John-
ReplyDeleteIn future, pls send all messages to most recent post. No one reads the older stuff. Re: Brooks: a walking joke. He dumped his (Jewish) wife of 26 yrs and married a much younger Christian woman. Some woman columnist did a very funny critique of him a while back, attributing his new Christian enlightenment to his new wife's vagina. He's so full of shit it's astounding; his writings are indeed banal. But the crucial pt is that NYT readers love him, think he's cutting edge. Of course, they are Americans, so that's to be expected. God, what passes for quality in this upside down world.
mb