I was originally planning on avoiding talking ’bout the assassination o’ Trump’s right ear, — ¡typical leftist bias! — so I wouldn’t be put on a list when “Massive Dumps” Trump is coronated as CEO for Life o’ the new Patriotic States of America, or the reveal that Biden had a been an animated vegetable this whole time, or the twist that Biden is stepping down ’cause another Biden vs. Trump election is just cringe & so he can spend mo’ time playing as Luigi in Mario Kart, — ¿& who wouldn’t prefer that to giving missiles to Israel, who aren’t e’en grateful — or whate’er inane soap-opera twist comes up before this article comes out that will ruin my sweet jokes, but I just had to stumble ’pon this dumbass article by The Daily Beast: I shit you not, it’s called, “What Donald Trump’s Abandoned Shoe Reveals About Him and America” with a solemn photo o’ said “abandoned” shoe standing on velvet red carpet — albeit this goofy solemnity is ruined by the subtitle, “Sole Survivor” ( “ahaha, I don’t feel like they get that” ).
Sometimes a shoe is more than a shoe.
I’ll believe that as much as I’ll believe all those bronies trying to tell me that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic isn’t just a fun cartoon for kids but is a philosophical exploration as deep as Dostoevsky or that e’ery episode o’ the Pokémon anime after the 1st takes place in Ash Ketchum’s coma.
In the mayhem of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a single black Oxford shoe was left behind, abandoned on the platform where the former president was wounded by a sniper’s bullet and smothered in a Secret Service protective scrum.
Programmers have ne’er felt as sympathetic toward Trump as during those last few words, shuddering as they imagine the former president having to hold 15-minute stand-up meetings e’ery day to explain the the Secret Service what he’d done the previous day to contribute to that fortnight’s sprint. I am not 1 o’ them & call “fake news”: there is no way the wildly disciplineless Trump could be tamed by e’en the most legendary o’ scrum masters.
Trump, it seems, lost one shoe in the melee on stage.
& this is where this writer publisher/CEO, if the bio is correct, gets led astray by his thesaurus: “melee” is not just a generic synonym for any kind o’ battle, but specifically a hand-to-hand fight, not a gun battle. Perhaps save your flowery language for the poetry you’re still sure any day now will be published in those big journals that don’t exist anymo’ ’cause it’s no longer the 50s & nobody reads poetry anymo’ & stick with just regular-ass words, please. Trump’s fucking shoe is the last thing that deserves poetic prose.
That shoe–a sole survivor–
“¡This pun is so great, I just have to use it again!”
[…] reveals a lot about Trump as a consummate performer who cannily thinks first about himself and then about his audience. Under fire and on camera, the events in Butler offer a remarkable window into Trump’s primal instincts and mastery of political theater.
No, I’m pretty sure that shoe only reveals that Trump probably wears a slightly too-big shoe size, which I guess could say something ’bout his ego & his delusions o’ bigness. I’m pretty sure anyone, if they left their shoe while being led away by the Secret Service, would have left it there. If Trump had somehow o’erpowered the Secret Service agents holding onto him & insisted on getting his shoe back on, that would be mo’ notable.
After some irrelevant details I don’t care ’bout, including the introduction o’ a pointless side character, “Hawkeye”, who I’m going to assume is a M.A.S.H. cosplayer, we finally get something resembling an answer:
The goal, in Secret Service jargon, is to get Trump off the “X” (the target) as fast as possible. But Trump doesn’t sound in any particular hurry.
“Let me get my shoes,” he says, “Let me get my shoes.”
So, ¿Trump leaving his shoe ’hind is indicative o’ his “master of political theater” because… he didn’t want to leave his shoe ’hind, but he was forced to?
A male agent says, “I got you sir, I got you sir.”
Trump repeats: “Let me get my shoes on.”
Another agent suddenly notices the former president has been wounded. “Hold on,” the agent says, “your head is bloody.”
“Sir, we’ve got to move to the car, sir,” an agent says. Trump is wounded and bleeding. Every second counts.
But Trump is undeterred. He insists for a third time in only nine seconds, “Let me get my shoes.”
A female agent says “OK” and another agent says: “We got to move, we got to move.”
This is the worst Tom Clancy book I’ve e’er read.
Making space with his hands in the middle of the phalanx so that he can see the crowd–and the cameras can see him–Trump mouths the words “fight, fight, fight” while pumping his fist.
Trump’s first thought: Himself. He needs his shoes for whatever reason–to run, to stand tall, they’re expensive. But then, his mind turns to his second thought: The crowd and what they really want. A gladiator rising back to his feet, his head bloodied and unbowed, shoes or no shoes.
So what Trump’s abandoned shoe reveals is that… it isn’t important @ all.
In a historic sense, of course, the shoe won’t matter.
As we’ve established, it also doesn’t matter in the symbolic sense, — or any sense — either.
For his supporters, Trump’s well-polished shoe left on the stage surely stands for his invincibility and indestructibility.
In this same moment, his opponent’s shoes may be perceived very differently: signs of President Joseph R. Biden’s potential vulnerability.
This makes no sense: ¿how is Biden, who still has both shoes, weaker than a man who only has 1 shoe now? ¡All Biden has to do is stomp on Trump’s uncovered foot to win!
For a politician who spent a half century in traditional black leather shoes, Biden’s recent footwear choices suggest an older man now focused on stability, steadiness and comfort: black Hoka Transport sneakers with cushioned soles, Sketchers slip-in sneakers, and Cole Haan Brogue Oxfords with rubber soles.
I’m glad to see that pundit hacks have developed their shallow wardrobe critiques from basic tan suits to these elaborate descriptions that seem to come straight from American Psycho.
Yes, shoes matter in politics. In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon tried to show his casual side with strolls on the San Clemente beach. On the white sand, he wore black wingtip dress shoes. That faux pas confirmed what many suspected about Nixon.
Yes, that is what made Nixon 1 o’ the most hated presidents: not that whole Watergate scandal, but the fucking shoes he wore. That’s why the billions o’ satires ’bout him in various media like Futurama always make sure to make a comment ’bout the shoes he wore — they’re as iconic as Abraham Lincoln’s top hat or George Washington’s “wooden teeth” he scammed off his slaves.
In 2008, the holes in Barack Obama’s shoes reminded voters of Adlai Stevenson soles with holes. Men of the people, those holey shoes proclaimed.
1st, the only people who care ’bout Adlai Stevenson or e’en remember that he existed are Final Fantasy VI conspiracy theorists; 2nd, nobody e’er talked ’bout the holes in Obama’s shoes. The rest o’ the world doesn’t share your foot fetish, sorry.
For Trump, one shoe is a reminder of his moment in crisis. His first impulse was that he needed his Oxfords and didn’t want to leave them behind. But then his second instinct took over, making an even more indelible mark. At this moment in American politics, it seems this enduring image of a raised fist in the midst of chaos and confusion may be winning over stability and comfort.
So the significance o’ Trump’s abandoned shoe is as a red herring in the article: the actually important symbol is his naked fist. In my high school language arts class I once bullshitted that Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was ’bout the failure o’ German & Italian territories to unite into singular nations till the late 1800s as symbolized by Nora & Torvald Helmer’s breakup, which doesn’t e’en make sense as that play was both published & took place after Germany & Italy finally succeeded in unifying themselves, & yet my 17-year-ol’ self did a better job o’ stretching that idea out than this cracker did with making up any kind o’ symbol for Trump’s shoe. In short, this essay gets an F, see me after class.
Tier: F
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If this article is a representation o’ what “the Beast” is, ¡then sign me up! Or maybe I’ll just be a dirty pirate & hack thru your clever DRM by just removing the stupid banner you show & changing the CSS so the article can scroll ’gain. ( I realize the irony that just after this post will be asking readers to pay to my Patreon ). I do appreciate how “Can’t get enough of the Beast?” sounds like a nu-metal or post-grunge lyric, tho — probably the best writing I’ve read here so far, & it wasn’t e’en by this publisher/CEO.
On New Year’s Eve of 2014, I became the subject of a terrifying experiment.
By the end of my stay, I had turned from a happy-go-lucky novelist into a squeaking gerbil of a man, psychologically compromised and barely sure of what constituted reality.
This “terrifying experiment” this melodramatic writer experienced was watching laughably inane state propaganda. The hairs haven’t stood up on my flesh this much since when H. P. Lovecraft described the unspeakable horrors o’ having to stand next to a black person on a New York bus. If they wanted to engage in a truly terrifying experiment they could subject themselves to the kind o’ real torture Russia — & the US — inflicts gainst people who were very naughty rather than the kind o’ shit the average unemployed person watched in the afternoon while bored & on drugs.
On the one hand, the length of my sentence has been commuted to five days from seven; on the other hand, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the state’s propaganda has become even more loud, brash, and genocidal, making any length of exposure to it psychologically problematic.
Clearly the worst tragedy o’ this invasion aren’t the many, many Ukranian lives lost but this o’erpaid writer’s emotional hardships having to endure this prison sentence that they inflicted on themself o’ sitting on their useless ass & watching TV all day.
Day 1
I arrive at the Public Hotel on the Lower East Side on a cold day this past April. My room has nice views of most of the downtown-Manhattan skyline, which lights up in flashes of pink and purple as the sun begins to set over New Jersey —
O, ¡fuck off! I fucking hate these shitty writers stroking their own hard-on pretending like they’re fucking Tom Wolfe. Nobody fucking cares what the weather was on a day you decided to sit on your fucking ass watching TV you assclown. “My orange Cheetos glowed under the dim light o’ my apartment. Now that my TV was muted during a commercial the only sound that could be heard was the skrit-skrit o’ me scratching my hairy balls”.
The first thing you notice when you switch on Russian TV is its totemic fascination with the swastika, which regularly appears on one of my screens. Sometimes it is taken from footage of the Nazi era, sometimes from purported videos of the Ukrainian far right. Sometimes it is on the news, sometimes in a documentary, sometimes in a TV drama. By my third or fourth swastika of the day, I start to believe that when the symbol is shown this often, it is not done so entirely with disparagement, but with a subconscious appeal to authoritarian power and to the state’s own fascism.
While I don’t disagree that contemporary Russian culture has an affinity for authoritarianism, this thesis o’ his is self-contradictory & absurd. ¿Why would Russia heavily associate the Ukrainian far right, the problem they use as a ’scuse for their invasion, & thus something they want to appear e’en mo’ gainst than Ukraine’s government, with their own culture? Furthermo’, as we will see, Russian propaganda apparently also loves to cater back to WWII & Russia’s fight against the Nazis. ¿Wouldn’t it be the ultimate treason to praise the very organization that tried to obliterate Russia, which literally put Russians in the holocaust? ¿Why not pick a mo’ fitting authoritarian leader, like, you know, Stalin, an actual Russian leader? I don’t want to doubt this writer’s amazing arm-chair theorizing that isn’t totally pulled out o’ his ass, ¿but wouldn’t it make mo’ sense that Russian propaganda is just using the Nazis as an effective Godwin’s rule tying the west in general to the Nazis & to try inducing constant fear gainst the west in their populace that if they don’t support the Ukrainian invasion the west will invade & mass murder them like the Nazis did in the 40s? After all, it’s not just Russian media obsessed with the Nazis: American media, like the History Channel, is notorious for their obsession with Hitler & the Nazis. ( Granted, given that this US election has a candidate who outright admits he’ll become a dictator “[only] for day 1” & is still ’bout half & half in popularity with his opponent, we can’t rule out the US having an affinity for authoritarianism, or Hitler, for that matter, given that candidate’s dogwhistling references to Hitler & the Nazis ).
A lot of time on all three networks is given over to flashy “newsroom” sets populated by older men in blazers who scream about the West. Kto Protiv (“Who Is Against”), on Rossiya 1, is one such program. The subject matter is often akin to what one sees on far-right television in the U.S., the exemplar of which is Fox News.
Fox News has always been known to scream ’bout “the West”.
But Russian state television is several degrees to the right of Fox, or even of its more lunatic competitor, Newsmax, although Tucker Carlson, the onetime king of televised white supremacy, is frequently shown on Russian TV as well—or, at least, he was back in April.
& here this hack writer stumbles o’er himself in contradictions, presumably so as not to offend his American audience. If Russian state television is “several degrees” to the right o’ Fox, ¿why does it regularly have on a former regular Fox white supremacist, — acknowledging that US media regularly has on white supremacists, ¿how can any media be several degrees to the right o’ that? — who is apparently moderate compared to worse US media? It sounds like Russian state television is @ just the level o’ lunatic fascist propaganda as US media — which I would agree is too much.
A panelist mispronounces the term LGBTQ+ to general laughter. (“Is it plus or minus?” another panelist asks.) Afterward, an “economic expert” tells the audience that transgender bodies have begun to fall apart. No evidence is cited for any of this; it’s merely people talking or, as some like to say, “asking questions.”
Meanwhile, on Channel 1, a black-and-white documentary shows Khrushchev greeting a group of cosmonauts. The glories of the Soviet past on one screen are contrasted with the realities of the present on another.
O’ all the bad propaganda Russian state media surely has defending their dumbass war, the typical nostalgia fuel is the least “terrifying” I could imagine. I know I always hide in pure terror @ the dystopian I live in whene’er I see histories ’bout George Washington. Clearly this is a devious plot by the US to make me like the US mo’. It’s almost as if e’ery country likes to pump up its past accomplishments. Hell, it’s better than Russia pretending they have present accomplishments.
You may ask why a government obsessed with propaganda would be showing programs about broken families. One reason is that audiences of all nations enjoy watching their fellow citizens in pain.
The show is presented by two dapper male hosts who are part of a well-trod Russian-TV theme: Provincials in distress are interviewed by stylish urban hosts, as if they are Chekhovian peasants being judged before the district court in czarist times. Subconsciously, shows like these teach poorer and older Russians (the kind of people who regularly watch state television) that they should be ashamed before their betters and that they cannot expect much from life or their immediate families.
This isn’t really any different from US daytime television, which is also aimed @ unemployed poor & is also infamous for propaganda denigrating toward poor people, especially Cops, literal state propaganda that shows cops as always competent & in the right & the criminals they go after always being incompetent, lazy, sloppy, ( usually ethnic ) & always poor. & if you were to ask my mother @ the time why she watched it, she would say the same thing: it’s comforting to see someone e’en worse off — e’en if clearly fake. Hardly the traumatizing torture that this article writer presents it as. If anything, what’s wrong with this is how boring it sounds compared to US shows like Maury or Jerry Springer, when he was still alive & it was still on.
The old woman crawls on the floor. “Forgive me! Forgive me!” she cries to her children. Now we have left the pages of Chekhov and arrived in Dostoyevsky Land.
This writer must’ve thought himself so clever & well-read for referencing 2 o’ the 3 most well-known Russian writers & not, like, any o’ the thousand other writers mo’ fitting — & my research indicates that this writer came from Russia, so either he barely read anything in his original language or he’s deliberately dumbing down this article for his audience. ¿& how would an ol’ woman crawling on the floor & crying, “Forgive me!”, be out o’ step for Chekhov — especially when you just described “Chekhovian peasants being judged before the district court in czarist times”.
The show about the dysfunctional family cuts to a commercial for a fast-food chain that has replaced McDonald’s after the sanctions for the Russian invasion of Ukraine were imposed.
Truly we see the unbearable hardships Russians now face for their imperialist crimes: ¡being deprived o’ that irresistible American cuisine!
The copycat McDonald’s is offering an unconvincing-looking “beeeeg speshal roast beef,” as an announcer describes it.
To be fair, if the roast beef looks unconvincing, then they did a pretty good job o’ emulating McDonalds.
On Rossiya 1, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is giving one of his usual bombastic speeches: “They want to cancel our country, as they like to say. They’re trying to cancel our country for pursuing its own politics. The West has long groomed Ukraine … Just like Germany invaded Russia.” The television shows another Nazi parade, a long sea of swastikas and chanting in German.
It’s only 9 p.m., but I am exhausted. I have drained two glasses of pisco sour and eaten my ceviche from the hotel’s restaurant, and am blindly watching a movie called Razplata (“Payback”), which seems to be about a drunken man who beats his wife. My vision is getting hazy and my eyes can barely see what’s happening on the three monitors, but I can sense that it is a triptych of a nation that has no idea what it is supposed to be.
What I love is that this article is far worse anti-US propaganda than Russia’s weak-ass attempt: nothing makes the Americans look like weak-ass crybabies like getting “exhausted” from sitting on your ass watching TV till 9 PM instead o’ working a real job. For any non-Americans out there reading this: we’re not all that lazy & useless; some o’ us have real, productive jobs & don’t just sit around watching shitty TV all day. Shit, as this blog shows, I read shitty news articles in my free time, & somehow I don’t get exhausted. Maybe this writer should eat better & work out mo’; it sounds like he has health problems.
Day 2
O my god, ¿we’re only @ day 2 out o’ 5? I take back what I said: I’m tired o’ this shitty article.
“Not my King!” The day’s news begins with anti-monarchist demonstrations in the U.K. “At least no one is throwing eggs at him like last time,” the NTV announcer intones as King Charles III is booed.
¡Hell yeah! I agree with this propaganda. ¿Who doesn’t hate filthy monarchs? Obviously only fascist Americans who have rejected e’en the watered-down liberalism on which the US was founded, that’s who. The only person I disagree with is the announcer: I wish they did throw eggs @ him.
Here the Royal Family is criticized for a variety of sins, such as colonialism in Africa and the 3 million pounds King Charles supposedly received from a Qatari sheikh.
Well, it’s cool to hear this white writer simp for colonizing Africa; ¿or is this writer like Kanye West & denies that the west colonized Africa? I dunno, I’m a far-leftist extremist, so I don’t support colonization & slavery, so maybe I’m not a reliable perspective, especially given the aforementioned large American audience hungry for white supremacists, but maybe it’s not a good idea to try attacking Russia by associating them with critics gainst African colonization. I’m sure this writer is implying that Russia is cynical in their criticism; but the west is surely a li’l cynical when they criticize Islamic fundamentalists & their treatment o’ women ( especially when they largely supported those Islamic fundamentalists gainst the Marxists who respected women’s rights better in Afghanistan earlier as part o’ their proxy cold war with the Soviet Union ), & yet it would still be right to call someone who snorts @ criticism, e’en by the west, o’ Islamic fundamentalist oppression as assholes.
Although Russian propaganda normally skews far right, its producers are able to pivot quickly from feigning horror at transgendered people to promoting a kind of Soviet-flavored anti-colonialism.
It’s almost as if Russian propaganda serves its own materialist interest rather than the US’s own made-up abstract ideology groupings. To be fair, I’m sure foreigners find the US supporting left-wing ideas like political democracy, but opposing economic democracy & supporting right-wing economics absurd.
Surely something will appeal to Misha from Murmansk or Vanya from Vladivostok, or any of the more than 100 million viewers who spend an average of almost four hours a day digesting this spicy gruel.
I would say that you could feel the seething disdain this writer has for these filthy foreigners with their weird names, but as stated, this writer came from the Soviet Union, so either he’s just cynically playing on the average American’s seething racism so he can be 1 o’ the “good ones” or is like that Dave Chappelle black KKK member.
After the booing of King Charles, the national weather forecast features temperatures in Donetsk and Melitopol in addition to Yalta, all cities stolen from Ukraine. I note that the city of Kherson, liberated by the Ukrainian army, does not make an appearance.
Clearly the worst thing Russia has done to Ukraine is refuse to tell them what the weather is in their cities. Ukrainians are now rethinking this war thing. “Let’s face it: ¡we are nothing without Russia’s irreplaceable weather-predicting technology!”.
But NTV is skewing younger with a show about women being stalked by ex-lovers. “He’s a professional boxer and he punched me several times,” a woman says of her former boyfriend. “He has a very aggressive nature.” A model is being blackmailed over sex videos by her ex. “Smartphones have made stalking easy,” the announcer intones. “He threatened to knock my teeth out,” another woman says, and we are treated to an array of horrifying bruises. The program notes that stalking of exes by spurned lovers is a problem in the U.S. and Germany as well.
If this article taught me anything — & that’s if this writer isn’t completely making e’erything up, which is possible — it’s that for all Russia’s talk o’ the weak, decadent west, Russia’s media is just as trashy as US media. That’s what happens when you let that capitalism into your country. Lenin wouldn’t have let this happen. ¿Where are Marx & Lenin when we need them, Counter Punch?
This may be true, but after watching Russian television for less than 24 hours, I am starting to see a through line here, which is the consistent presence of violence in Russian shows, usually committed against women and children. The verb meaning “to hit” comes up constantly, which makes sense in a country where men encounter horrific hazing in the military as well as a cruel and violent penal system. In 2017 the Duma even passed a law decriminalizing domestic abuse that does not result in the victim being treated in a hospital.
I would love to hear this writer’s theory on why US media — & media all o’er the world, in fact — is also full o’ violence, especially gainst women. It’s terrible, yes, but not terribly relevant to Russia’s invasion o’ Ukraine or their authoritarian politics. I can’t imagine thinking, { Well, yes, they are making an imperial conquest on Ukraine & have essentially a president for life; but a’least they don’t love to hit women }.
There’s an ad break for a male anti-impotence drug called “the Emperor’s Secret,” supposedly made in China out of various fungi. “The Emperor’s Secret can be mixed with alcohol,” the announcer helpfully advises the Russian male.
¿What is the point o’ this? This shit exists in the US. I’m sorry writer who has ne’er watched TV before & is apparently amazed by this 20th-century technology, but I’m not enthralled by this carnival you’re attempting to exhibit. All you’re telling me is that Russians are just as boring as Americans. ¿Is this meant to make me sympathize with Russians? ’Cause the idea that anti-impotence drug commercials will be the seed to the US’s own fall into fascism doesn’t make me feel better.
Next up, NTV introduces an American named John McIntyre who fought with the Ukrainians but then fled to Russia. He has been described as mentally unstable by fellow soldiers and commanders and was allegedly pushed out of the Ukrainian army for incompetence, but in Russia he is a prized asset, proudly wearing his Che Guevara baseball cap and T-shirt. The program intimates that it was a right-wing Ukrainian battalion that caused the well-known massacres in Bucha and Irpin, and not the Russian soldiers whose campaign of rape, execution, and terror was well documented.
I’m not sure why this writer assumes we’re all ableist assholes like him & think we’re going to naturally hate someone Ukrainians insult for illnesses that are not his fault or ’cause he wears T-shirts. I love how American media is so shitty that it makes me almost sympathize with the opposite side with which they want me to sympathize when I already sympathize with their side. It’s almost as if American culture is repugnant & has a twisted conception o’ what is “good”. We can’t emphasize Russia’s imperialism too much, as imperialism is too popular for Americans to make them hate Russians as we want them to, so let’s bring up neurodivergent people & Che-Guevara-shirt-wearing hipsters: those people Americans hate.
It’s especially ludicrous that they mix that nonsense with a short sentence o’ actual, serious whitewashing @ the end, in the same paragraph, e’en tho it has nothing to do with the sentence before. It’s almost as if this writer is an illiterate hack who doesn’t know how paragraphs work.
“Are there people like you in the States?” the interviewer asks McIntyre. “There are many pro-Russian Americans,” the young man replies. “American intelligence, they own the media machines. Most people watch CNN, but Fox has the most objective positions.”
I mean, if most Americans are watching fucking CNN, that would explain why so many o’ them are stupid ’nough to be pro-Putin.
“Their voices are getting louder!” an announcer on a Rossiya 1 newscast booms as older Germans are shown marching in a pro-Russia demonstration. “NATO out of Ukraine!” they chant. “U.S. and CIA out of Ukraine!” Afterward, an attractive young female correspondent brings cakes to Russian soldiers at the front. The war may be brutal, but, for Misha from Murmansk, it can also be sexy and exciting.
There is nothing mo’ sad than this o’erpaid idiot shaking his fist @ this rando Russian he made up in his head. “¡Damn you, Misha from Murmansk! ¡You were the cause o’ e’erything!”. ¿Can I get a citation proving that this totally-real Misha from Murmansk finds this war sexy & exciting & gives a shit @ all ’bout this woman & isn’t just listening to this program in the background while grinding for shiny Pokémon like most Americans do?
Channel 1 is stepping up its game in the propaganda Olympics with a “documentary” series called The Age of the USSR, which blends animation and old footage. The Russian language, the announcer tells us, has no word for “loser,” but instead has neudachnik, literally “unlucky person.” “The loser is guilty for what he hasn’t achieved,” the announcer explains. “The neudachnik is not guilty of a lack of achievement, just a lack of fortune, and he deserves sympathy.” Hence, Russia, a country of poor roads, decaying houses, and abysmal life expectancy, is not a nation of losers who lack achievement, but simply those upon whom fortune has not smiled. In other words: Don’t blame Putin for the mess we live in.
Yes, Russia should be mo’ like the US, who always blames ourselves for our own failings, which is why we try to blame Russia for magically brainwashing us into electing a white supremacist president in 2016 & not the US voters themselves, who are surely not racist, that’s why they were still lynching black people into the 50s. I’m not sure who this “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” line is aimed @: the Republicans dumb ’nough to believe in it are too far gone down the Russian hole & leftists don’t believe in this right-wing idea o’ shitting on “losers” for not being rich. I guess I’m not sure who this article is aimed @. Presumably a tiny minority o’ self-important people who will have no actual effect on US politics. But I won’t let that burst the bubble o’ this creative-writing-associate-degree dropout from his valiant, hard-hitting work sitting around watching shitty TV while judging the “losers” from his o’erpriced New York apartment. Here’s a propaganda tip for this writer that he could have learned from his “experiment”: propaganda works better if it’s not delivered by an insufferable douche.
And then the genocidal rhetoric is amped up with an animation showing a half-naked drunk Ukrainian in a pigsty (the actual pig is snorting nearby). The Ukrainian is shown with a haircut featuring a long lock of hair. This hair symbolism refers to the khokhol, a slur that Russians use against Ukrainians. It is equivalent to the worst kind of anti-Semitic and racist slurs. The image of the drunken Ukrainian with his khokhol haircut is no less eliminationist than the “hook-nosed Jew controlling the world” imagery of the Third Reich.
Yeah, ¿how would Russians feel ’bout media depicting them all as drunken losers who sit around their decaying homes drinking watching shitty TV all day & making up excuses for why they’re just “unlucky” instead o’ lazy & just let their husbands beat them all day?
O, wait: that’s this entire article. Well, like I said: we know why so many Americans end up pro-Putin — racist fascists tend to flock together. Perhaps this Russian-American writer didn’t intend to feed into that sentiment, but that is 100% the demographic the WASPs who run The Atlantic were aiming @ when they agreed to publish this.
Meanwhile on NTV, more German grannies are chanting “for peace” in a pro-Russia march, participating, whether they realize it or not, in what amounts to their own Nuremberg rally.
O my god, this propaganda is so fucking boring. Go back to the ol’ woman crawling on the floor & begging for forgiveness. Man, I can’t fathom what kind o’ country would have so much propaganda favorable to itself in its media.
As the day continues, NTV presents a documentary entitled I Was Zelensky’s Filth. A young imprisoned woman is accused of trying to bomb Mariupol’s city hall, after the battered city held a sham election in favor of joining Russia. “Mariupol is a place of glory for Russian forces and shame for the Kiev führer,” the announcer declares. That führer, of course, is none other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, a Jew whose relatives perished in the Holocaust. The show visits the apartment of the supposed terrorist, which is hilariously staged with an American flag and Nazi memorabilia. Can Sasha from Samara possibly believe this nonsense?
This is pissing me off @ Russian media for a different reason: you can’t name your show “I Was Zelensky’s Filth” & have it be this boring. ¿Where’s the sex? I want to see some bad Zelensky imitator fucking plow 3 women @ a time. I want to see him make ol’ woman beg on the floor.
Meanwhile, on Rossiya 1 news, we learn that German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz has “fully committed himself to America. Germany can’t deal with the rising price of energy. The Greens are to blame. Germany will be turned into Kenya soon.”
This is hilarious propaganda ’cause, other than the Kenya exaggeration, it’s true: if Germany’s dumbass chancellor hadn’t shut down those nuclear power plants Germany wouldn’t need Russia’s climate-killing gas. I’m not sure how this sick burn serves Russia’s political goals, howe’er.
Geopolitics takes up an inordinate amount of airtime on Russian TV. Russian viewers are probably subjected to more images of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen than their American or European counterparts.
It makes sense that western media would want to keep such a warmonger as Blinken from too much scrutiny, which is why only the filthy leftist In These Times wants to bring it up here. Perhaps “journalists”, as they call themselves when they want to feel cute, in both countries should be ashamed @ their lack o’ scrutiny toward their own military leaders.
Day 4
There is a sadness to watching this much Russian television. I have started drinking earlier and have switched from pisco sours to vodka martinis. A part of me wants to die.
I find this writer’s constant moaning & groaning e’en mo’ unbearable ’cause here I am having to read his awful fucking reiteration o’ Russian propaganda. So not only do I get the most dumbed down version o’ what he sees, I have to see it thru his shitty-ass writing. Also, I’m not a money-wasting jackass, so I don’t know what is so inferior ’bout vodka martinis to pisco sours, ’cause I don’t waste thousands o’ $ on shit that’s just going to make me go blackout drunk, anyway. If this fuckface actually cared ’bout Ukraine he would have saved his money on grocery-store beer that’s just as good — or just not have been a degenerate drunk while hypocritically criticizing Russians for being degenerate drunks — & sent that money he saved to Ukraine’s cause. But that would be actually sacrificing himself for someone other than himself, & he only wants to pretend to do so.
But not before I catch Maria Butina’s new show on Channel 1. Butina is famous for being arrested and jailed as an unregistered Russian foreign agent in the United States. Once she was deported from the U.S., she became a member of Russia’s Parliament and, of course, the host of her own TV program. (“Today’s program is brought to you by Erecton Activ. Every woman wants to be near a strong man, strong in every way. Only 2,999 rubles.”)
Yeah, it’s crazy that Russia’s government would reward someone who did work for Russia’s government. It’s almost as if they serve their own interests & not the US’s. Like, that would be crazy if an American spy became a government official or had a show ’bout all the cool spying they did, ¿right? Clearly nobody would take that person seriously, since absolutely nobody likes spies or finds them cool.
Today, the redheaded Butina, wearing an equally red blouse and suit pants, decides to talk about Hillary Clinton. Wait, what? Who still cares about Hillary Clinton? Apparently, Butina and Tanya from Taganrog still do.
Damn, I don’t think Trump has said something so cold ’bout Clinton.
Tense music begins. According to the program, Clinton laughed “hysterically” when she was shown pictures of the death of Muammar Qaddafi. “What kind of monster responds to a person’s death like that?” Butina asks. A “psychiatrist” appears and says, “Yes, she’s a monster. But it’s because she has had to compete with men.”
I love how this writer glides o’er the inconvenient footage o’ Clinton laughing @ someone’s brutal death, which apparently included being sodomized with a bayonet. Whether “hysterical” or not, well-adjusted people don’t laugh @ pictures o’ brutal death, e’en gainst dictators. So while I don’t agree with this so-called psychiatrist’s public psychoanalysis without consent, which violates many psychological ethics, I think a layman would agree that it does make Clinton look like a terrible human being who lacks empathy. Many Americanliberals think Clinton is a monster: that’s kind o’ why she failed to win an election gainst Donald fucking Trump. Hating on Clinton, 1 o’ the most hateable American politicians, is the most low-hanging fruit e’er. Wake me when Russian propaganda has some shit to say ’bout Jimmy Carter.
But Hillary is just the appetizer to the entrée of evil that really controls the strings of world government. That man is of course George Soros. “He helped the Gestapo arrest his own co-religionists and then take away their own possessions,” an announcer says to chilling background music. “George Soros. The spider.”
I can’t believe Russia would steal Glenn Beck’s best bits.
Of course, the image of Jew as vermin or as a spider holding the world in its web is typical and, frankly, not even very imaginative anti-Semitic propaganda.
I would love to know how this writer thinks imaginative anti-Semitic propaganda would look.
But as I watch Butina’s show, I remember that my own grandfather was a Jew born in Ukraine who died fighting Germany’s fascist armies during the siege of Leningrad. A decade after his death, another fascist named Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in the city my grandfather died defending. Watching Butina and her garden-variety anti-Semitism feels like a terrible desecration of his memory.
If it makes you feel better, Russia was desecrating Ukrainians long before Putin was born. If the Nazis didn’t get him, there was a good chance the famine would’ve. You could say his invasion o’ Ukraine was “typical and, frankly, not even very imaginative”. & honestly, I think the fact that your father begat such a whiny, spoiled buffoon who compares sitting on his ass & watching television to actually fighting a war is a far greater desecration o’ your grandfather’s memory. To paraphrase the wise Kendrick Lamar: “I read this & wish your grandpa would’ve worn a condom”.
Meanwhile, on NTV’s news program, Elon Musk declares in a clip, “All news is propaganda. People have to decide for themselves.” Russian state television could not have said it better.
This is baffling on all accounts. I expect Musk to say something as empty & hypocritical; ¿but is The Atlantic trying to claim that “People have to decide for themselves” is a totalitarian idea & not, what most would consider it, an Orwellian lie that a totalitarian regime pretends to follow while presenting only voices they disagree with as the “real authoritarians”? ¿Is The Atlantic unironically against people deciding for themselves? ¿Why else would they make the absurd statement that “Russian state television could not have said it better”? Liberals would certainly say they could live it better. Also, all news is propaganda, as empty as that is to say: as George Orwell said, all art is propaganda. ¿Or is George Orwell, 1 o’ the western world’s leading critics gainst Soviet Russia, a Russian asset, too? The fact that The Atlantic, a rich, relatively powerful ( which to be fair, still isn’t all that powerful anymo’ ) part o’ the news decided to hammer its readers o’er the head with this digression gainst “the news” certainly doesn’t convince me that The Atlantic isn’t propaganda — & very sloppy, poorly-concealed propaganda, to boot.
Day 5
I can almost taste my freedom. The weather is improving, spring is finally here, and all of New York seems to be beckoning me to escape my luxurious prison cell.
Anyone who uses the term “luxurious prison cell” does not know what a real prison cell is.
But I also feel overwhelming disgust, as if there’s a thick layer of dirt behind my shirt collar.
That’s ’cause you’re a dirty fucking slob who didn’t shower the whole time you were laying there boozing up & watching shitty Russian propaganda. But you’re not a loser who can’t be bothered to take care o’ your fucking self while engaging in the easiest job in the world, you’re just a neudachnik, an unlucky person.
I watch a show called For Men / For Women, in which a woman is attacked on the street by her ex-husband, who, with the aid of his relatives, also kidnaps her little son. “I fell on the asphalt, and he is holding me down and beating me,” the woman says. “I lost my breast milk. I went to the police. The police didn’t do anything.”
The poor woman’s lament reminds me of the show I watched a few days prior (it now seems like a lifetime ago) about women being stalked and beaten by their ex-lovers. “He has a very aggressive nature,” a woman said of her former lover, the professional boxer. As does Russia in 2023. So many of the shows I’ve watched during the past five days were obsessed with the West, with our Clintons and Soroses and Von der Leyens. Russia is the spurned lover with the “very aggressive nature” taking out his inhumanity on the innocent neighbor next door. Despite all the posturing and doublespeak, Russian television announces as much to the world. Whether on the airwaves or, perhaps someday, at the Hague, the evidence has been clearly presented.
I sure hope Gary’s middle-school teacher gave him gold stars for this totally-not-corny metaphor. “It’s like, ¿what if Russia was, like, an abusive lover to Ukraine, bro?”.
& as an extra taunt, this article ends with an ad for this writer’s book — ’cause I certainly want more o’ this great writing. Said book is, shockingly, a bunch o’ rich assholes in a rich house & half o’ them are struggling writers & the other half are racist stereotypes, like a “Korean-American app developer” or “Southern flamethrower of an essayist” ( the latter o’ which is both ). Or if you want a real treat, you can read his most recent article @ The Atlantic, titled, “Crying myself to sleep on the biggest cruise ship ever”, which repeats this article’s riveting day-to-day gimmick, almost as if this writer is a 1-trick pony ( & that 1 trick blew ass ). The only article I want to read ’bout some rich asshole crying himself to sleep on the biggest cruise ship e’er is just before he & the ship are burned down by the proletarian uprising, &, spoilers, that badass shit doesn’t happen. Thanks for writing propaganda just as boring as Putin’s lame-ass I Was Zelensky’s Filth yet again.
Fuck The Atlantic for publishing what has got to be the least effective propaganda against Russia’s aggression against Ukraine e’er — & most insufferable writing I’ve read in a while — & fuck Putin for sparking a war that, e’en indirectly, led to it being published. With all the paranoid red-scare conspiracies people drum up, ¿are we sure The Atlantic isn’t infiltrated by Russians & this article isn’t an attempt to delegitimize Putin’s critics as useless morons? If The Atlantic really wants to help Ukraine, they should start writing propaganda for Russia: they’re such unlikable twats that they’d hurt Russia mo’ by association than by antagonism.
As e’eryone knows, my favorite genre o’ news article is that genre o’ porn known as self-masturbation. Newspapers writers ( or the editors who force them to write these articles or they won’t get the Twix candy bars they get as their salary ), lacking any semblance o’ self-awareness, wonder all the time why people aren’t taking their “news” seriously while rewarding their loyal readers with faces full o’ cum. Well, ¡get your spoons, folks, ’cause we’re digging right in! This is “We Have Two Medias in This Country, and They’re Going to Elect Donald Trump” from some newspaper called The New Republic. Man, I wish we had a new republic, but I get the feeling that their name is a reference to how the US felt new 2 centuries ago.
It’s often asked in my circles: Why isn’t Joe Biden getting more credit for his accomplishments? As with anything, there’s no single reason.
If this writer were as smart as they think they are, they would follow this inane question not by throwing out a bunch o’ answers that sound like they make sense, strewn o’ any evidence, but with their own questions: ¿“credit by whom” & “credit for what”? Obviously Biden isn’t going to get credit from right-wing media, whose express purpose is to make him look bad. This has always been the case & has ne’er been a full stop to Democrats winning in the past. ¿Does this writer not remember how Obama was blamed for a recession his Republican predecessor had caused? If anything, there are far mo’ Democrats defensive o’ Biden than of Obama — probably due to being mo’ sensitive to the prospect o’ losing to Trump after scoffing @ the idea back in 2016. To put it into perspective, Ralph Nader, who infamously ran as a 3rd-party candidate to deliberately siphon off votes from the Democratic party as a form o’ going on strike, has said he will support Biden ’cause he prefers “autocracy” — which, weirdly, in his mind, don’t suppress votes or suppress freedom o’ speech, which sounds exactly what actual autocracies do — to fascism. ( If Nader had a better grasp o’ words he’d have maybe been able to come closer to a mo’ accurate term to describe mainstream US politics, like “oligarchy”, which is not as authoritarian as autocracy, but not quite democracy ).
Inflation is a factor.
It should be noted that while Biden did help pass bills that ameliorated inflation, he also insisted in following decorum tradition in keeping Trump’s shitty head o’ the Federal Reserve, who has been trying to sabotage the possibility o’ wages keeping up with inflation. Perhaps we could talk ’bout the media’s terrible framing o’ inflation, inflating its own importance when in sexy grand #s, while ignoring the fact that wages have been barely keeping ’bove inflation for decades.
But there is one overwhelming factor in play: the media.
Underpinning this whole article is 1 major fallacy: that “media” — which is so vague it’s practically meaningless, specially as the internet has opened up all avenues as potential forms o’ propaganda, but I’m going to take, given the clues this article offers, as newspapers, or as young people call it, “dying media” or “irrelevant media” — plays a vital role in election’s outcomes. There’s a good reason for this fallacy: it can be nonfalsifiably defended, as one can easily scrounge up a ’scuse, no matter what the papers say, that what the papers said made people think howe’er they think. The fact that the media — which, to its credit, is a’least not gullible ’nough to fall for e’en Trump — has been warning gainst Trump for years, only for him to win in 2016, doesn’t matter, ’cause bad news is good news, & this only made people like him mo’ thru o’erexposure, somehow. Ne’er mind that the vast, vast majority o’ Trump fans don’t read The New York Times. It’s widely acknowledged that Trump’s win in 2016 was mo’ a loss for Clinton: the culprit was a low turnout by Democrats, people who are much mo’ likely to read The New York Times. You’d think all these warnings would’ve induced them to get out & vote if we assumed that e’en the majority o’ Democrats let themselves be inspired by The New York Times. If we reject this assumption, we get a much simpler picture — both to Trump’s victory & to The New York Times’s falling #s.
Or rather, the two medias.
In fact, there are many mo’ medias if one isn’t geriatric & ventures beyond only the few richest o’ newspapers or TV channels.
At the same time, as a culture, it’s consistently obsessed with who “won the day,” while placing far less value on the fact that the civic and democratic health of the country is nurtured through practices such as deliberation, compromise, and sober governance.
This is a remarkable statement in how contradictory it is to the central thesis o’ this article. Later on he will assert that the problem is that “the media” is too obsessed with both-sidesing e’erything — which is essentially refusing to call any side ( well, any o’ the 2 officially-accepted rich, powerful sides ) a winner.
“Deliberation, compromise, and sober governance” are so vague, they’re basically just empty superlatives. Right-wingers are very sober & deliberate when they are exploiting people’s superstitious bigotries to divide & conquer them. As for “compromise” — ¿compromise with whom? As this article will admit many times, the media has done a great job o’ compromising with bigots while speaking on various topics like Israel vs. Palestine or Venezuela’s political issues with the subtlety o’ a Jack Chick comic. ¿Was Thomas Friedman, longtime writer for The New York Times, & thus very much o’ the traditional, not the fringe right-wing, media, evoking “compromise” when he told Muslims to, & I quote, “suck on this” in reference to the US’s illegal war gainst Iraq?
Let me begin by discussing these two medias. The first, of course, is what we call the mainstream media: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the major (non-Fox) news networks, a handful of other newspapers and magazines. This has also been known as the “agenda-setting media,” because historically, that’s what they did: Whatever was the lead story in The New York Times that day filtered down, through the wire services and other delivery systems, to every newspaper and television and radio station in the United States.
My biggest question: if a few small newspapers like The New York Times & The Washington Post held the “historical” role o’ essentially monopolizing the media & “setting agenda” — which is a nice way o’ enforcing beliefs — like communist dictators, — which is this writer’s inane claim, not mine, remember — ¿would that not have been just as “tragic for democracy”, as this writer claimed earlier was an upcoming threat? I don’t know ’bout this writer, but where I come from democracies don’t have their entire agenda decided by a tiny minority o’ large organizations but allow things like free thought. Luckily that’s not the case & this idiotic writer is just spewing right-wing conspiracy theories &, in actual fact, nobody gives a shit what The New York Times says.
Then there’s an avowedly right-wing propaganda network. This got cranked up in the 1970s, when conservatives, irate over what they (not incorrectly) saw as a strong liberal bias in the mainstream media, decided to build their own.
Here’s a golden rule for knowing what one’s political leanings are, regardless o’ what they say in some sad attempt to crank the overton window: if one thinks the media is biased on 1 side, one is biased on the other side. Nobody who is taken serious within the left-wing community considers the media to be left-wing any mo’ than anyone who is taken serious within the right-wing community considers the media to be right-wing ( the fact that this writer probably isn’t taken seriously by either, or by anyone, is a different story… ).
Note, ’course, that nowhere in this article does this writer provide any evidence o’ this “not incorrect” liberal bias, which would get this writer a pretty nasty grade in my high school. I guess my high school just had higher standards than The New Republic.
Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post. In the 1980s, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon started The Washington Times. In the 1990s, right-wing talk radio exploded (enabled, in part, by a 2–1 decision by a judicial panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals making the Fairness Doctrine discretionary; those judges were Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork). Then the Fox News Channel was launched.
Also, there’s an inherent contradiction to this story: you just claimed that the media was liberal biased, but then say that the Fairness Doctrine, which pressured the media to take a balanced approach to issues ( how well this could be done, given the subjectivity o’ what a “balanced” approach is, — many bizarrely consider being 100% pro-Israel & anti-Palestine or being explicitly pro-capitalist & anti-socialist to be “centrist” views in the US ( & only the US ), for instance — is a different story ), & imply that it was effective. But if ’twere effective, the media would have been balanced, not “liberal biased”.
Back then, even with the launch of Fox, the mainstream media was much larger and more influential than the right-wing media. If the mainstream media was a beachball, the right-wing media was the size of a golf ball.
Today? They’re about the same size. In fact, the right-wing media might finally be bigger.
That’s OK, ’cause both are dwarfed by some high-school dropout “influencer”’s X account.
The success of the right-wing media is by and large due to the way they speak in lockstep, with one voice, and the way they push one very partisan agenda. They promote Republicans and conservatives, and they say nothing good ever about Democrats or liberals (exception: people who go off the reservation and willingly foul the Democratic-liberal nest, like Joe Manchin or some liberal academic or talking head who turns right, like Glenn Greenwald). Their guiding ethos is not journalistic but political: to advance one party and creed and work their readers and viewers into a constant state of agitation about the other party and creed.
Sure, they’re “liberal,” in two senses. First, their editorial pages typically endorse Democrats. And second, they are culturally liberal, because they are mostly based in big cities and their staffs include lots of LGBTQ people, for example, and precious few evangelical Christians.
When The New York Times or CNN or MSNBC gets a scoop about serious corruption in the Biden administration, they pursue the lead and, if verified, report it.
So, to the loud and bumptious anti-Biden chorus that blames him for everything bad, there is no equally loud and bumptious pro-Biden answering chorus speaking as one and giving him credit for everything good.
You’ve clearly ne’er been on /r/politics. ’Gain, there’s no such thing as liberal media — well, ’cept for “mainstream” media, which is liberally-biased ’cause they don’t fire all gay people & only spread bigoted lies ’bout trans people half the time, but treat mediocre Democrat president evenly with insurrectionist Republican presidents. ¿Daily Kos? Ne’er heard o’ ’em. It’s embarrassing that this writer’s revealing their lack o’ knowledge o’ any media beyond the most basic & trying to present it as “wisdom”.
¿Why should it matter that much how well these newspapers treat equally rich & powerful white men like Biden & Trump? ¿How does these various newspapers treat working class people or Palestinian civilians or trans people?
And with respect to economics specifically, the imbalance is made worse by the fact that the mainstream business press, as Tim Noah pointed out not long ago, tends to accentuate the negative and see bad news nearly always coming around the corner.
That & they’re ignorant o’ the complexities o’ economics & will accept whate’er some salesman economist like Paul Krugman says uncritically.
It is blatant to me how much this writer is deliberately ignoring factors. When talking ’bout demographics like “not hating LGBTQ+ people”, urban, & the vague term “culturally liberal”, ¿how do you not list the economic status o’ the people who run these papers when talking ’bout skewed economic perspectives? ¿Is it because that would mean this pretend leftist — or “liberal”: I’m not sure if this writer considers “liberal” to be separate from “leftist”, as some people think; but if they do, that would make the term “liberal-biased” weird, as it would leave a giant question mark where leftists would fall: in such a circumstance “liberal-biased” would seem to be a pejorative for “centrist-biased” — would have to critically analyze the US’s very-much-pro-rich economy using actual left-wing ideas, & not just, “well, inflation’s lower than expected, so there’s no reason the average working class person should complain that they’ll still have to work 40 hours as a menial worker drone till they’re in their 60s while others get rich lying to people”.
Most reporters know that they are personally pretty liberal, so they overcompensate for that.
Sorry, let me fix that: “Most reporters know that they are personally rich, white, & cis, so they’re equally biased in favor o’ their material interests as Republicans”.
Most of them went to elite schools and have maybe never known a Southerner or an evangelical, so they overcompensate for that as well.
¿Do they o’ercompensate for their ignorance & lack o’ class interests with the urban working class or religions that are not the dominant religion in the US, like Muslims, too? ¿Why does this writer think there has ne’er been a rich Southerner or evangelical or that these people have ne’er been to elite schools? Clearly this writer has ne’er gone to an elite school, ’cause they are unbelievably stupid if they expect anyone with a brain to think “Southerns” ( which, when used in this context, only e’er includes white people: e’en tho southern states like Mississippi & Georgia have ’mong the highest ratio o’ black populations, black southerners might as well be imaginary people to these ignorant journalists ) & evangelicals are the most victimized minorities in the US. This person is literally just regurgitating the most inane, obviously false right-wing lies e’er & pretending to be fighting gainst right-wing lies while doing so.
That’s what gave us all those stories of reporters venturing out into the heartland to try to “understand” Trump voters.
Right: stupidity.
Meanwhile, no reporters are sent to pro-Palestinian protests to “understand” them: their newspapers just call them antisemites ( tho, bizarrely, the pro-Israel protests aren’t Islamaphobic or arabphobic, e’en tho, as a “Jewish state”, Israel, inherently, treats anyone outside that religion or race as 2nd-class, just as nobody would seriously think the US could be a “Christian state” or “white state” & not treat non-Christians or non-white as 2nd-class citizens ) & gleefully join their Republican friends in calling for them to be obliterated.
And all those stories about people who refused to wear masks or get their shots.
Yeah, it really shows the lack o’ good taste in these newspapers that they would rather focus on useless morons than people who have actual interesting problems. Good thing I read actually good news so I didn’t have to read this garbage.
How many more of these can we bear to read, I kept wondering at the time.
Yeah, it’s tragic you’re too uneducated to know there are better outlets out there.
And I couldn’t help but notice that there was no mass effort to find and understand Biden voters after he won in 2020.
Maybe ’cause it’s boring to read the obvious.
“¿Why did you vote for Biden?”.
“I’m not a dumbass”.
“Thank you for this interview”.
I sent a journalist, Marion Renault, down to red America (Mobile, Alabama, specifically) to report on the people who were following the rules—who were wearing their masks and getting vaccines in an inhospitable milieu. She produced a beautiful, moving report that I felt certain would land her on TV and get attention. No one cared.
& this is how our young journalists 1st discovers this beautiful economic system known as capitalism.
It didn’t fit the narrative—either right-wing or mainstream. Not enough chaos or conflict to be found in American citizens helping to knit up the civic fabric during a traumatizing pandemic, I guess.
I mean, if you armed the pro-mask people & had them violently fight back gainst the already-violent disease-spreaders, maybe you could have both conflict & be on the right side. Maybe the problem isn’t just that the “liberal” side is too willing to “understand” the other side, but also that they’re not willing to actually fight gainst the other side, but keep insisting that the most important thing is to tell warm fuzzy stories ’bout grandma getting her COVID vaccine rather than preparing oneself for all the right-wingers arming themselves & getting away with terrorist attacks.
So, to show you how idiotic this writer is, they acknowledge that the problem is economic, — that the media has to lie in a way that helps right-wingers to entice the moronic cattle that makes up their audience, any intelligent person having long abandoned these Jerry Springer sideshows long ago in disgust in search o’ actual honest information — but their recommendation is… the mainstream media should just stop doing the bad things they personally don’t like, e’en if it goes gainst their material interests. Just “call a lie a lie”, bro. ¿Why should they do that when, as businesses in a capitalist system where any failure to fully profit hurts your competitive edge, specially in a medium like newspapers that are becoming narrower & narrower monopolies, making money is e’erything? They claim, “Remember that we are not just in the “news” business. We’re in the information business. We’re in the preservation of the civic fabric business. And we’re in the business of people”, but they’re wrong: their business is selling people what they want to hear & what gets them to view your ads.If the country loses democracy, it’s not as if that’s a full impediment to The New York Times; they can still make money selling what King Trump tells them to say. As they themselves say, they’re perfectly comfortable with kowtowing to Republicans.
But there is much better news: people don’t need to read either the mainstream media or the right-wing media, but can read from an infinite variety o’ media — or better, read actual scientific studies, statistics, history books by actual historians or economics books by actual economists & not hack journalists with creative writing degrees. Or they could just read The Onion, since it’s just as informative & much funnier.
But, no, you should totally spend that monthly $10 to save democracy from “dying in darkness” by filling some rich, white, Republican newspaper owner’s large stash o’ Scrooge McDuck cash.
Anyway, now the New York Times won’t be able to keep her around to write such totally-not-lurid tales ’bout beheading 40 child heads, — my favorite Arabian Nights story, right next to the 1 where some guy prays to God for a giant dick — as opposed to the way civilized countries kill children thru blowing them up or shooting them, meant to paint Arabs as stereotypical cartoon villains with wacky pirate sabers who should be treated as — I believe the term Verthaim used that Schwartz liked so much was “human animals”, which is redundant, as all humans are part o’ the kingdom animalia — similar to inventing a story ’bout Jewish people drinking the blood o’ their victims, which I’m sure I’ll see soon in the next Sinfest on the social media formerly known as “Twitter”, which e’en the conservative New York Post called a “conspiracy theory” ( tho perhaps with the interest o’ making Biden His Time look bad — clear proof that they’re making up that he’s making it up, since my senpai president ne’er lies. ¿What’s next, NYP: “Biden actually played as Donkey Kong in Mario Kart”? ).
Also, ¿did NYT really need to write this in such a silly way:
“Those ‘likes’ are unacceptable violations of our company policy. We are currently reviewing the matter.”
“Our establishment does not find this behavior rizzed. We are currently reviewing whether or not we will cease smashing that like button on their work in the future”.
Anyway, I was lucky ’nough to stumble ’pon a much mo’ riveting article from The New York Post: “Joe Rogan and Kid Rock clash over how Israel should win war against Gaza: ‘That’s actually a war crime’”. I don’t know if we should waste these 2 intellectual titans on such a meager topic as this. I do have to say, tho, that “That’s actually a war crime” is my favorite VH1 war reality show in the dystopian world I live in ( real life ).
Having made the mistake o’ actually reading this article, I refuse to believe it isn’t a bit by both o’ these “debaters” talking ’bout war as if it’s an XBox game & the New York Post reporting dryly like the middleaged school teacher still waiting for them to turn in their paper due last week:
Kid Rock disagreed, pointing to Nagasaki and Hiroshima. “Boom. Just wiped out,” he said of the atomic bombings, which maimed hundreds of thousands of people.
I have to admit, I can’t argue with, “Boom. Just wiped out”. Check mate, mate.
But the twist is when the surprise 4th clown enters the article, with the greatest joke o’ all:
“I was on the telephone with the people in the region,” Biden told reporters on the South Lawn Thursday morning, adding: “Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful.”
¿What “people in the region”? ¿The government? ¿Hamas? I mean, considering they’re in hiding, I can imagine it isn’t easy to get contact with them. ¿Is he just cold-calling randos in Gaza, saying, “Hey, ¿are you in Hamas? ¿Could you — ¿Hello?”.
The president said earlier this week he hoped a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas could be in place in roughly a week at an ice cream shop in New York as part of an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “We’re close, we’re not done yet,” Biden said.
This will be the ace in the hole: Islamic-fundamentalist militants can’t resist New York ice cream & hearing some really funny monologues by Seth Meyers.
[Note: I only now realized the article meant that Biden said this to Seth Meyers with ice cream, not that he invited Hamas to have ice cream. Very weird how they organized this sentence: ¿why not lead with where Biden said this & end with the actually important part ’bout his goals for a weirdly hyphenated ceasefire? Putting the part ’bout ice cream & Seth Meyers @ the end makes it sound like it’s an important part o’ Biden’s strategy, not just the background to the important part. ]
The U.S. and Israel are still waiting to hear back from Hamas on whether it will agree to a six-week pause in fighting and a new proposal for a prisoners-for-hostages exchange, that person said.
I can just imagine Biden constantly calling Hamas HQ & the top leader shakes his head @ the attendant & says, <Don’t answer. It’s fucking Biden ’gain with his dumbass ice cream>.
“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” he said during an event at the border on Thursday. “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.
Such deep, meaningful words inspired me to compose the following political ( sprite ) comic:
Question: if you’re the president & your goal is to win an election & you have made the tough decision to heavily support Israel in the Israel/Palestinian war — I don’t want to discuss not making this decision, as valid an option as it is, for now, as I want to make a mo’ specific point here — & you are, inevitably & predictably, faced with outrage from Arab Americans with family in Palestinian who died during said war, ¿how would you respond? If you’re halfway socially competent & trying to minimize alienating voters you need to remain president, you would probably spew out some characteristically politician fake expression o’ sympathy — something along the lines o’, “I am deeply sorry for your loss. I understand that war is bad for e’eryone. I am working on ending this war so both Israel & Palestine can prosper in peace”, but preferably better written by someone who has experience in writing this kind o’ fluff. Obviously this would be dishonest, but all politicians talk in lies: telling your potential voters the truth is the best way to get them to not vote for you.
Q The part was: Are you concerned with the Arab American votes voting for you during this election because of Gaza? Many say they will not vote for you.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, the President wants to put a — the former President wants to put a ban on Arabs coming into the country. We’ll make sure he — we understand who cares about the Arab population, number one.1
Number two, we got a long way to go in terms of settling the situation in Gaza.
Let’s ignore the hilarious gaff o’ Biden accidentally doing the same thing Republican conspiracists slyly do o’ continuing to call former president Trump the current president ( ¿SEE? ¡E’EN BIDEN KNOWS DEEP DOWN THAT HE IS A FAKE & HE RIGGED THE ELECTION WITH THOSE COMMUNIST USB PORTS! ¡THIS PROVES IT! ). E’en tho, no matter what side you’re on, it’s unquestionable that many Arab Americans like Jewish Americans have faced increased hardship due to this war, either having family members die or experiencing increased hate crimes from bigots, Biden doesn’t e’en offer condolences, e’en tho he’d lose nothing by doing so, other than maybe alienating the vital vicious bigot demographic who get enjoyment from Arab suffering like cartoon villains, but unironically pulls the, “Well, my opponent is worse, so you weak-ass minorities have no choice but to unconditionally support me. ¡So there!”, for which Democrats are widely criticized by their own base. E’en worse, unlike in most scenarios, in this case it’s not e’en necessarily true: ¿why would Arab Americans who are already citizens o’ the US care mo’ ’bout other Arab Americans being able to get in than their own family dying? Biden seems to assume like all too many liberals that people o’ a race love & care ’bout e’eryone else in their race. I’m a perfect example: I don’t give a fuck ’bout my fellow Welshman. ¿What the fuck good has Wales e’er done for the world? If those crackas try to get into the US, I tell ’em, <Take a #>, & they look @ me with bewilderment ’cause that doesn’t actually mean anything.
On Sunday, the Democratic representative from California said she would like the FBI to investigate potential Russian connections and funding behind American calls for an armistice in the Israel-Hamas war.
Responding to a question on CNN’s State of the Union about growing anger among Democrats, particularly young people and Arab Americans, at the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict, Pelosi said: “What we have to do is try to stop the suffering in Gaza … But for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message.”
Adding to her charges of Russian influence, in a video posted by the anti-war group Code Pink on X on Monday, Pelosi can be seen telling activists outside her home in October to “go back to China where your headquarters is.”
’Gain, I’m not interested in whether or not this McCarthiesque conspiratory claim without evidence is true — I’ve heard plenty o’ very smart liberals™ ( the wacky & very original ™ let’s you know that I don’t actually think they’re smart ) argue that it must be true ’cause she’s on the Intelligence Committee & obviously can’t release evidence, as that’s classified, tho apparently revealing out loud so that Russia can hear that they’re scrutinizing them isn’t, ’cause apparently just putting faith in government officials without any o’ the limitations liberal republics are known for is what “liberals” do. If Pelosi were truly concerned with Russian & Chinese infiltration, the FBI could always investigate in secret & Pelosi could keep her mouth shut ’bout it. Personally, while I could see Russia wanting to troll Democrats & letting in the mo’ sympathetic Trump, I don’t see why China would want Trump to win, given he’s much mo’ hostile toward them than Democrats & is e’en threatening an absurd 10% tariff that would be disastrous for both the US & China’s economies. Then ’gain, they’re scary yellow people, so clearly they must be up to something, no matter how antithetical to their material interests that something is. I wonder if the very moderate & level-headed liberal Pelosi also has any enlightening information on how the Bolshevik Jews are running all o’ US media. It’s a wonder people don’t want to vote when both parties are full o’ people who spew this kind o’ John Birch Society shit. I am also well aware o’ the irony that Pelosi herself is an asset o’ the foreign country known as Israel ( note: pointing out this objective fact is antisemitic, but saying that “those commie Russians & Chinese always be spyin’” isn’t a common racist stereotype gainst Russians & Chinese people, ’cause in the US bigotry is only bad if it’s gainst a race that the US government can pretend to care ’bout to get propaganda points ), as many on the left have already quipped. I think you have to be blissfully ignorant o’ who Pelosi is, or politicians in general, to have any expectations o’ consistency.
No, what I’m interested in is the question, ¿what value does saying this out loud provide to Pelosi & the Democratic party whose interest I assume she holds. ’Gain, I want to emphasize that in politics politicians don’t act like super pooper smart Reddit users & Just Say It Like It Is™2 & tell women that, yes, they’re fat, but, if they’re competent, carefully craft their language to maximize voters. ¿What demographic o’ voter is she hoping to please by saying this?
Obviously not the people who sympathize with these protestors, who, if they have any backbone ( which, to be fair, is not an assumption one should make quickly when it comes to liberals ) would not take kindly to veiled threats o’ being “investigated” ( read: harassed ) by the FBI, the famously corrupt organization infamous for having assassinated civil rights leaders they deemed too radical. As a lifelong anarchist Democrat voter, I myself oft dunk on purity-contest leftists who have way too lofty a view o’ the US’s not-truly-democratic election system & refuse to vote for someone who supported genocide gainst Palestinians ’cause that makes them dirty by association somehow & these people are such rampant narcissists that they hold the delusion that anyone cares ’nough ’bout them to judge them o’ such dirtiness, but will continue to collect blood-money foodstamps or pay taxes to that same government ’cause they “have no choice” ( are too cowardly to form this glorious revolution they insist is the only solution ); but there is a big difference ’tween people so self-centered that they refuse to exploit the meager tool they have to effect political change in the US for petty personal squabbles like being called extreme by some politico & someone unable to stomach voting for someone who lead to them being actively harassed ( or had a family member blown up by said politico ).
¿So is this aimed @ so-called centrists? While so-called centrists ( read: upper-middle-class people who want their taxes lowered but are embarrassed by what ignorant savages Republicans are or hopelessly ignorant people who lazily fall into the golden mean fallacy so they can avoid having to make any critical thinking decisions ) constantly try to guilt Democrats into separating themselves from the fringe left who call for such extremist ideas as black people not being randomly murdered by cops or there being some limits on how much the poor can be whipped ( tho these “centrists” rarely apply this same scrutiny gainst Republicans, who, after all, are completely incapable o’ any sense o’ shame & will, in fact, deliberately shit their pants now that liberals have criticized them for doing so just to show that liberals can’t tell them what to do ), increased authoritarianism is usually not popular ’mong these so-called centrists ( a’least when applied by Democrats ), who, after all, not being full-on Democrats themselves, may find themselves under the same scrutiny.
I guess you could say this outburst o’ Pelosi’s is popular ’mong the most fervent Democrats — those are certainly the people who have gone to lengths to defend this outburst. That is to say that this outburst worked to convince people who are already strongly convinced to vote for Democrats @ the cost o’ e’ery other viable voter. ¡Somebody give these brilliant Democrat planners a raise & maybe write a shitty brown-nosing account ’bout them where you describe them like a love interest in an airport novel!
What we’re seeing is Democrats, both the politicians themselves & the desperate defenses Democrats make for their actions here, making the same mistakes they made in 2016: treating a swing state like Michigan or Wisconsin for granted, attacking significant chunks o’ their target demographic for no reason. Except it makes e’en less sense now, not only due to us having hindsight now, but also due to the mo’ precarious circumstances now: Clinton a’least had a good reason to expect to easily beat Trump when he was widely viewed as a sad clown after Obama’s relatively successful presidency; @ a time when Biden has remarkably low approval rating & polls show literal insurrectionist who claims he’ll be a dictator “for a day” Donald Trump ’bout even or ’bove, for Biden to try so li’l to do the bare minimum not to alienate vital voters he must really not want to be re-elected. & if he were running gainst an early-2000s style Bush Republican who’d only hurt poor minorities, I could understand Biden wanting a retirement 4 years earlier; but given Trump saying he has “no choice” but to lock up Biden if he wins re-election & given the way Republicans have been emboldening people like the guy who violently attacked Pelosi’s husband or threatened e’ery legislator when trying to count electoral votes, it seems weird how unconcerned they are with keeping people who may be a threat to their lives from winning. Clearly the protestors trying to annoy Pelosi into not funding foreign wars are a bigger threat. But we must ne’er underrate Democrats’ valiant determination to lose half their elections, since we don’t want Republicans — e’en those who want us dead — to feel bad if they don’t get their participation trophies. & we can be rest assured that as Biden & Pelosi stand out in the wilderness with a guns aimed @ the back o’ their heads like Francisco Madero, they’ll be thinking, { ¡This is all young people’s fault for not voting harder! ¡They should have #votedbluenomatterwho! }.
Q The March for Life is tomorrow in Washington, D.C. — the March for Life is tomorrow in Washington, D.C.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I know that.
Q What’s your message to those attending?
THE PRESIDENT: March.
BIDEN BOT RECOMMENDS THAT THE MOST RATIONAL BEHAVIOR IN WHICH TO ENGAGE DURING MARCHES IS TO MARCH.
2 Disclaimer: “Like It Is™” may not be an accurate representation o’ authentic reality, but may in fact be the delusions o’ someone whose interpretation o’ reality comes entirely from what random people say on social media.
The Department of Defense clapped back at Fox News host Jesse Watters on Wednesday after he said Taylor Swift could be a “psyop” for the Pentagon.
“I wonder who got to her from the White House or wherever,” Watters said on his show Tuesday night. “Who makes that initial handshake.”
Waters was referencing a partnership between Swift and Vote.org intended to encourage young people to register to vote.
The remark spawned conspiracy theories suggesting Swift could be a government asset or part of a broader information campaign.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh shut down the speculation Wednesday in a statement to Politico.
“As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off,” she said, a tongue-in-cheek reference to one of the pop star’s hits.
¿What the fuck kind o’ world am I living in?
I’m grateful the hip kids @ The Hill took the time to ’splain to my grandpa living under a rock that the phrase “shake it off” is a “tongue-in-cheek reference to one of the pop star’s hits”.
The fact that neither side is “pumpkin pie”, which is, objectively, the best choice that anyone would e’er make, is proof that Newsweek can’t be taken serious. ¿Fucking stuffing? Stuffing is the very telltale American “let’s just throw a bunch o’ random shit together & pretend it’s food” kind o’ “food”. Stuffing gets a D tier — as do both these articles.
For comparison, nobody e’en blames the Nazis for the Dresden bombing & claims that the Nazis really killed those Germans by being dirty Nazis — & you could make a better case for that, since the Nazis truly did start that war by just invading countries, whereas history clearly shows that both Israel & Palestine started the current conflict 80 years ago by ne’er truly agreeing on borders or e’en whether or not they should be 1 or 2 countries. This kind o’ empty-headed propaganda is the apex o’ cowardice & it’s understandable that any news organization who received it would blacklist the artist due purely to the evidence o’ their hopeless hackery & the inevitability that they will ne’er produce any good art.
The gruesome details and brutal savagery of the October 7 attack launched by Hamas operatives on innocent civilians was shocking to even the most battled-hardened [sic] soldiers and war correspondents.
No it wasn’t. Ramirez couldn’t know this ’cause he isn’t a “battled-hardened” ( which is how an illiterate person says “battle-hardened” ) soldier or war correspondent, but a sheltered, spoiled, upper-middle-class cartoonist. My nerdy ass wasn’t shocked by it — probably ’cause unlike most o’ the people who’ve come out o’ the woodwork to share the “wisdom” they just learned on social media last month, I didn’t just become aware o’ the intermittent violence ’tween Israel & Palestine for the past 80 years or so.
Evidence of beheadings, babies shot in their cribs, parents shot in front of their children, entire families massacred, the torture and execution of the elderly, people burned alive, and hundreds of young people gunned down while attending a musical festival for peace, were widely reported and verified by video, audio, and forensic evidence.
Rational people judge actions not on their ultimate outcomes, but on how gross they look. In the end, Palestinians murdering Israelis in exotic ways is no different than Israelis evaporating Palestinians in an instant with drones: death is death. The #s — & in this scenario, Israel’s death count is much higher than Hamas’s — should matter most. If anything, the real revealing aspect is how much poorer Palestine is that they have to resort to brute force while Israel can just use expensive technology. In essence, Palestine is bad ’cause they’re low class.
Most people would be horrified. Yet in an interview on Lebanese television, Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad hailed the brutal October 7 attack and pledged to repeat the October 7 attack again and again until Israel is “removed,” claiming Hamas “was the victim,” therefore “everything they do is justified.”
Wow, nobody’s e’er said stuff like that before in war. It’s not like the US is infamous for calling civilian deaths “collateral damage”.
That interview was the inspiration for a recent cartoon I drew for the Washington Post depicting Gazi [sic] Hamad and his human shields.
No, your inspiration for making this comic involving Ghazi strapping Palestinian civilians round him was mirroring Israeli government propaganda, which invented the concept o’ “human shields”, which is, as mentioned earlier, their Orwellian way o’ saying, “It’s the other side’s fault I’m killing civilians”. If anything, one should give credit to Hamas for a’least being honest ’bout the brutality o’ war. If what Ghazi said had inspired a comic from you, it should show Hamas leader killing Israeli civilians & hypocritically criticizing Israel for attacking civilians. That would’ve made mo’ sense & probably would’ve garnered less outrage since it’d actually be true, whereas Ghazi, in fact, ne’er did strap Palestinians round him while they stared @ the camera bug-eyed like wacky cartoon characters ’cause “human shields” is a myth.
Also, kudos to the tag-team incompetence on both Ramirez & the Newsweek editor that nobody noticed this inconsistent spelling o’ Ghazi’s name.
Any decent human being would agree that this war is catastrophic. I mourn the loss of innocent life—on both sides. I am shocked by the destruction that has shattered their lives and grieve for those families. I wish for the safe return of the more than 240 hostages that Hamas has taken. But those are separate issues.
“Look, I know this is a complex issue that only an idiot would try to boil down to a single-panel cartoon; but I’m choosing to completely ignore all that context & just focus on calling 1 guy a poopy face”.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that blames Israel for the attack on civilians, but ignores its own complicity in their suffering. It was Hamas that first launched the attack on Israel, continues to use civilian infrastructure as cover, and restricts the evacuation of Gaza civilians from areas which Israel has given advanced warning of strikes. [ Emphasis mine ]
Ramirez is so dumb or thinks his readers are so dumb that he’s saying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict started this year, that there wasn’t already violence building up to this day. He is literally just as dumb as those TikTokkers who just realized that Osama bin Laden existed.
It’s ironic that those who criticize the cartoon for overgeneralizing and stereotyping cannot seem to distinguish between a known terrorist group and Palestinians.
No, it’s mo’ ironic that Ramirez is too dumb to realize that the “human shields” is a stereotype o’ all Palestinians, not just Hamas. That’s like if someone were to make a comic o’ Netanyahu being a puppet leader o’ the media or being a banker &, after the inevitable criticism o’ antisemitism, being all, “No, you’re the antisemite ’cause you can’t distiguish 1 Jew from ’nother”. This is, in fact, a common rhetorical game that propagandists use to try & justify their sloppy bigoted statements.
And it’s a tragedy that their only way of coping with the truth depicted in my cartoon is to erase it from view.
¿What truth? Show me this video evidence o’ Ghazi tying children round him like body armor. Let’s see it, Ramirez.
In my speeches, I say, “An editorial cartoon is not humorous for the sake of humor. It is not controversial for the sake of controversy. Whether you agree with it philosophically or not, a good editorial cartoon engages the reader in debate. It informs and challenges. It draws the reader into the democratic process.”
This comic does none o’ that. ¿What debate does this comic inspire? ¿Are civilians fair game if they’re tied round a government official @ which you’ve gone to war? Nor does it challenge anyone: it’s straight-up redundant repetition o’ Israeli government propaganda. ¿Why not just read an article from The Times of Israel? It’d certainly be better written.
Liberty, the free exchange of ideas, is the foundation of our democracy. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Our Liberty depends on the freedom of press, and that cannot be limited without it being lost.” The reason our Founding Fathers included the right to a free press in our Constitution was because they knew the communication of ideas and information, the right to inform and be informed, the dissemination of ideas and the expression of opinion, are all necessary components in a political system based on self-governance and individual liberty. Limiting the exchange of ideas even in our common culture limits our freedom.
There is nothing mo’ embarrassing that reading e’ery mediocre pundit trying to pretend like the Constitution was made specifically to prevent their terrible work from being put in the slush pile — like that makes them the next Salman Rushdie.
So, ¿how are we serving the freedom o’ the press by forcing the press to serve government propaganda they don’t like? It seems to me that freedom o’ the press means that any press outlet like The Washington Post can choose to publish & not publish any crap they want & if you don’t like it, well, you can always make your own blog, Ramirez — or just get a 3rd-rate newspaper like Newsweek to publish your whines. This is literally this “I am being silenced” cartoon. ¿How are you being “canceled” when Newsweek is publishing your stuff? Shit, Newsweek won’t publish my articles ’bout you being an idiot; I guess that means I’m getting canceled. & yet, somehow I manage to keep living my life.
The purpose of an editorial cartoon, and a good editorial page is to be the catalyst for thought. By promoting the thoughtful exchange of ideas, we forge a consensus through the fiery heat of debate.
So then it’s a good thing The Washington Post removed your idiotic comic from the editorial page, as ’twas impeding thought & the exchange o’ ideas by making readers dumber. Also, debate ne’er “forge[s] a consensus”, a consensus is — you know what, I don’t need to do that lecture ’gain.
Today, political correctness and the woke —
Good news: since this paragraph uses the word “woke” unironically, we can skip it, since nothing that involves that can e’er be intelligent or useful. You can already guess what it says: people complaining to The Washington Post that they don’t want to pay money for garbage is the exact same as putting Ramirez in the gulag. Left-wing people are the only people to e’er remove content that doesn’t agree with their opinions from their media; this is why Fox News regularly has socialists on their program & those LGBTQ+ book bans ( by government officials, not private organizations, mind you, ’cause conservatives provide the only major forces in support for government censorship in the US ) are not a thing.
Critics of my cartoon are using an accusation of racism as a device to “cancel” the truth—the overwhelming empirical evidence that Hamas uses civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, as human shields.
You can’t fucking put scare quotes round a word that you are using unironically. ¿What, are you making fun o’ your own inane whining?
Yes, ¡look @ all that empirical evidence that Ghazi tied people to him with rope! ¡It’s right there! ¡Just look!
I do not mind being attacked for my cartoons. People should be emotionally invested in their politics. While the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech, it does not insulate you from the consequences of your speech. I accept that. It is part of the job.
Those consequences being the ability to make e’en mo’ money whining ’bout this “punishment” on a different newspaper.
Tier:E
All right, that was intolerable. It would be e’en mo’ intolerable if I found ’nother article ’bout a rich white man whining ’bout being “canceled” while their opinions are clearly still being —
This is “The University of Michigan Failed to Protect My Right To Free Speech” by Josh Hammer. You may recognize him from my previous Newsweek article as the only person to land on the coveted 🤪-tier, given to him ’cause he sounded like a fascist nut, using Nazi phrases like “fifth column”, which is used to depict all members o’ certain races, like Jews, as conspiring with enemies, both real & imaginary; repeatedly using the far-right conspiratory term “liberal imperium”; & writing ’bout modern “decadence” — which as I said, is an idea only entertained by certain reactionary Marxists & fascists, & Hammer certainly is no Marxist. You’ll notice that his photo looks a lot less drunk & disheveled here, tho he does seem to be doing the good ol’ “Dreamworks Smirk”. Good for him. ¿But has he cleaned up his fringe fascist rhetoric?
The talk’s blunt title, selected by the local Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter, reflected my own unambiguous approach to the conflict: “Israel’s Righteous Fight Against Jihadism.”
Nope. Remember, in the previous article he described Israelis who were too sympathetic to filthy Arabs & Muslims as “fifth column”, so we were already familiar with this man’s ardent support for Israeli Islamophobia.
Within minutes of starting my speech, 20 to 25 protestors stood up in unison. They held their arms high in the air to expose their shirts, which featured photos of Palestinian-Arabs who have died in Gaza since the war started. (The students are unaware of, or simply disinterested in, the fact that every one of those deaths is legally attributable to Hamas under international law.) Undeterred, I continued. A few minutes later, the students began obnoxiously coughing in unison each time I opened my mouth, in a clear attempt to drown me out. I reminded them of the university’s code of conduct, which prohibits shouting down speakers, but that only made them cough louder.
Shortly thereafter, the mass coughing turned into shouting, coordinated by a visible ringleader toward the front of the pack. The chants would be familiar to those who have paid attention to the explosion of on-campus antisemitism since the Hamas Holocaust of Oct. 7: “Remember their names!,” “Free Palestine!,” “Stop the genocide!,” and so forth. At one point, a protestor started to walk briskly toward the stage, prompting my body man to leap out of his front-row seat to protect me. Finally, a tepid university administrator replaced me at the podium, seemingly to once again remind the students that their conduct violated university policy. He too was drowned out; his exhortations were largely inaudible.
Eventually, the protestors escorted themselves out of the back of the room. They never ceased chanting, and proceeded to physically bang on the walls of the lecture hall exterior once they exited—leaving red handprints all over the wall behind them, since they had painted their hands blood-red. The whole disruption lasted probably 30 to 35 minutes, after which I finished my remarks for those who had the patience to remain in their seats. After student Q&A and photos, a campus police officer escorted me to my friend’s car.
Even more important, the university failed to secure the other half of the right to free speech: the right to freely listen, especially for those who drove hours to Ann Arbor just to hear my talk.
This is not a thing.
University administrators and campus police officers acted shamefully in failing to suppress the pro-Hamas students’ heckler’s veto—a disreputable act that here, there, and everywhere falls outside the scope of First Amendment-protected activity under well-established case law, and which may even be prosecutable depending on the jurisdiction.
This is, in fact, utter hogwash, & it’s notable that he ne’er provides a single citation. All cases I could find related to the Heckler’s vote, like Feiner v. New York, are defenses o’ police arrests o’ people when they believe those people are in danger o’ starting a riot ( how this is proven or judges is, ’course, vague so as to give the government flexibility to suppress anyone they wish ); it has ne’er involved charging an institution for neglecting to suppress hecklers, nor have I seen any case where people are charged for heckling when they could have started a riot, but didn’t. The fact that a riot didn’t happen here makes this whole idea moot & idiotic. Like all fascists, he makes up whate’er law he wants that serves his interest — for that is the purpose o’ law for fascists: to serve the chosen people & work gainst the hated people.
Most o’ the rest o’ this article is boring, pathetic lusting for punishment gainst the people who don’t obey him & lame, uncreative slanderous attacks gainst people he doesn’t agree with ( anyone who doesn’t support Israeli theocracy is an antisemite, just as how anyone who opposes school prayer wants all Christians to be fed to lions, etc. ). There is something to be said ’bout cooling the bloodthirsty rhetoric o’ protestors; then ’gain, there’s also something to be said ’bout not giving racist, empty-headed propagandists like this writer a special spot to spew hateful propaganda. I ask ’gain, ¿why do colleges, which charge mo’ than $10,000, & oft up to $100,000 & o’er, waste their students time & insult their intelligence by inviting these mediocre partisan hacks speedrunning logical fallacies & not actual scientists? @ that point students may as well just be watching Stephen Crowder on YouTube & save the $100,000. ¿What message are they teaching their students by encouraging them to treat uncredentialed influencers as experts to be listened to & not questioned? ¿That they should be just as shallow as the average person on social media? ’Gain, ¿can’t you get these kind o’ rock-bottom standards for free? ¿Why pay so much money to colleges so ready to throw ’way their credibility?
But I do want to end with 1 ironic part @ the end:
In April 2019, I was personally present at my alma mater, the University of Chicago Law School, to see fellow alumnus and legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich speak about the First Amendment and state-level anti-BDS (“Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions”) legislation.
’Gain, it could not be clearer that this writer thinks the 1st amendment just protects whate’er he likes. In fact, Kontorovich’s anti-BDS laws are real violations o’ freedom o’ speech by governments, which, in some cases, have been struck down.
Color me with the brightest o’ surprises that someone as inarticulate & primitive-minded wilts like grass the second he encounters anyone with a different opinion & runs & hides ’hind authoritarian institutes rather than trying to argue back with them.
Tier: E
Ugh. Tired o’ all this government propaganda for Israel. Well…
This is “Hamas Can Never Again Decide Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die”. It reminds me o’ that inane article from our last trawl thru Newsweek in which a retired lieutenant insisted that Putin, the world’s only war criminal, must be tried for war crimes, e’en tho that was ne’er going to happen — & still hasn’t happened. Similarly, this writer makes the empty moral case that Hamas cannot be allowed to decide who lives & dies ( only Israel can, since, as the Torah says, they are God’s chosen people ). What this article doesn’t do is specify how Israel bombing the hell out o’ random civilians — like I said, Israeli government choosing who can live & die — stops Hamas, many o’ whose members very well may not e’en be in Palestine anymo’, since bombing people & fleeing to unexpected areas is a common tactic o’ terrorists, from deciding who will live & die. If we agree with the “human shields” theory, then Israel killing Palestinian civilians is what Hamas wants & so by doing so they are, in fact, helping Hamas choose who lives & dies. Which means those protestors are, if anything, idiots for protesting: Israel & Hamas are getting ’long fine, both killing each other’s civilians. It’s not like Hamas or the Israeli government are the ones bearing the brunt o’ it.
I won’t quote much o’ this article ’cause it’s boring & makes e’en less attempts @ arguments than the previous 2 articles. This article can be summed up as: the Holocaust existed, the Hamas attack on Israel was kinda like the Holocaust if you squint @ it & multiply its casualties by 5,000, therefore Hamas is like Hitler 2.0.
For all the post-Holocaust promises of “never again,” international support for Israel eroded rapidly once Israel went on the offensive and launched a ground invasion into Gaza.
Yeah, it’s shocking that people who don’t like genocide don’t like invasions, either. I’m not sure why this writer assumes that “no Holocaust e’er ’gain” means “we unconditionally support anything Israel does” or why this idea that genocide is bad should only apply to Hamas threatening to destroy Israel & not Israel’s threat gainst Palestine’s existence or the very nature o’ a Jewish state making any non-Jewish person a 2nd-class citizen. The mo’ shocking thing is that a people who witnessed the horrible outcome o’ a people setting up a state to serve only them, while all others are treated as lesser people, would turn round & try the same thing, but with them as the chosen people now. You’d think they would support secularism & not giving any priority to any religion or race, but nope. It’s mo’ shocking how many people who probably think o’ themselves as “liberal” simping for either Israel or Palestine, when neither are compatible with the principles o’ secularism — & in fact, due to Israel’s insistence on keeping Israel a Jewish state, are also not compatible with democracy, as Israel disallows Palestinians in occupied territory the right to vote for the very reason that they consider so many non-Jewish voters a threat.
After 75 years believing Israel would protect Jews from being lined up and singled out for life or death, Oct. 7 awakened a sobering realization that even the Jewish state’s military, economic, and technological strength offer no guarantees.
¿Who believed this? ¿Dumbasses who had no idea what was going on politically in that region for the past 80 years? I mean, yeah, when you have an unresolved land dispute ’caused by the goal o’ creating a Jewish state in land with both Jews & Muslims, that’s inevitable. Maybe 2 groups trying to set up theocracies that upholds 1 people as better than all others in such a culturally-diverse place ’cause some ancient fairy tales said ’twas super important to an invisible man in the sky was the dumbest idea in the world.
Today, the voices calling for a ceasefire are far louder than those affirming Israel’s right to defend itself.
¿Really? ’Cause I’ve been getting 3/0 on “Israel Rules, Palestine Drools” from Newsweek. ¿Where’s the Newsweek article titled “IDF Can Never Again Decide Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die”?
The goal of peace-loving people should not just be an end to this current war; it should be to end all wars between Israel and Hamas. And the goal of Israel must be to ensure that no enemy will ever again decide who among the Jewish people shall live and who shall die.
Yes, eliminating Hamas will totally eliminate racist hatred gainst Jews that existed for many decades before Hamas existed. This will totally happen & we won’t see several mo’ decades o’ continuous murder & destruction by both sides. This writer is super wise & has demonstrated great awareness o’ the development o’ realpolitik ’tween Israel & Palestine & isn’t just spewing empty hallmarkcard pleasantries while intentionally heeing & hawing o’er the unsavory aspects & was totally worth wasting an article on. ¿Did she pay Newsweek for the privilege o’ writing her blog post for them? That’s the only reason I could think o’ for why they would accept this middle-school drivel. I certainly can’t imagine anyone dumb ’nough to consider it worth monetary compensation.
But I think my favorite is “I’m an Israeli Arab. I’m Embarrassed—and Hamas Is to Blame”, the obligatory apologia by the racist’s Arab best friend defending their racist friend as totally not racist. In actual fact, Hamas is only responsible for what they do, not what they inspire your fellow Israeli to do. If your Israeli respond to actions by Hamas by blaming all Arabs, then that is on them.
Against this backdrop, the paranoia, tension and fear that Jews feel when they encounter Arabs is understandable.
That’s right: Newsweek wants you to think that feeling paranoia round any Arabs, including those who have been citizens o’ Israel for their whole lives, is “understandable”, just like how you can’t blame white people in the US if they feel uncomfortable round black people. I mean, it’s the fault o’ the black people who commit crimes, not racists. If black people ne’er committed crimes, then racists would stop being racist gainst them, totally. Newsweek are literally KKK-level bigots — & cowardly & pathetic ones, too, since they bribed an Arab to give a fake N-word-privileges to the hate they spew.
The other question I’m frequently asked is, “Do you condemn Hamas?” Asking Israeli Arabs this question misses a fundamental aspect of just how much we’re intertwined with Israeli life. Does it make sense to ask an Israeli Jew if they condemn Hamas? Of course not.
This is why the world needs to understand that Israeli Arabs reject Hamas and its ideology just as much as Jews do.
The fact that this writer feels the need to say this is damning: if the average Israeli Jew weren’t racist, they wouldn’t need to be told this; & since they are, they ne’er will understand this. I don’t hear ’bout many American Jews going round questioning random Arabs if they support Hamas, ’cause if they did they would be associated with far-right racists like Glenn Beck.
Showing empathy for one side in a conflict does not negate the capacity to have empathy for the other. Rather, it shows that you’re human. Arabs do not need to choose a side in this conflict.
“Arabs don’t need to choose a side, but if they don’t choose the Israeli government o’er Hamas, they’re evil”.
For the sake of humanity, I implore the Arab community to move forward and to cleverly and responsibly understand the Jewish narrative, as we have been asking them to understand ours for 75 years. For the first time, as an Arab minority we are requested to stand with empathy and understand the majority’s narrative.
1st, ¿how do you “cleverly understand” something? Cleverness is inventiveness that comes from oneself, understanding is getting information externally. When you think ’bout it, they’re contradictory. That doesn’t mean one should always be clever & ne’er stop to understand others; but doing both @ the same time is… I dunno. I’ve ne’er heard anyone use the phrase “cleverly understand” ’cause it means nothing — it sounds like gibberish poorly translated from a different language. If this writer wrote this in a different language, then they should fire the translator.
2nd, this writer is morally demanding that all Arabs just bow down & throw ’way their own beliefs & feelings & just let the “Jewish narrative” ( right-wing racist doctrine ) dictate them, ’cause they are the “majority” ( that’s debatable, considering the amount o’ Arab-majority Palestinian territory Israel controls ). As an American who doesn’t think black people or Native Americans should just accept the “majority” white narrative, I find this peculiar — ¡but this American-oriented article certainly inspires this idea ’mong Newsweek’s majority-white audience! This brings up questions that don’t get answered: ¿why do Jews & Arabs have different understanding in the 1st place? ¿Why is there no call for compromise on this understanding? ¿Is it perhaps ’cause Israel power finds the idea o’ seeing eye-to-eye, to treating Arabs as equally, distasteful? Or maybe it’s that Newsweek finds this distasteful, since, despite what your local Nazi says, I don’t think Israel can force them to publish anything they don’t want. Also, I love how she says that Arabs have been asking Jews to understand their perspective, but doesn’t say how most Jews have responded. If Jews are indifferent to Arabs’ perspective, ¿why should anyone expect Arabs to be open to theirs? Also, I’m very doubtful that this is the 1st time Arabs have been asked to have empathy with Jews & “understand the majority’s narrative” ( just unconditionally accept what the dominant ideology tells them, as in an authoritarian regime ). Undoubtedly, there are many Arabs who don’t have empathy for Jews & ne’er had, entertaining such lovely topics as Holocaust-denial, but despite what Israeli propaganda cries into their pillows, the world has been pretty disgusted by these things, just not ’nough to think they merit decimating any Arab one can find — after all, if Holocaust denial deserves death, then Israel’s own prime minister deserves it.
At University of Haifa, we’re preparing to do just that. While the beginning of the school year has been delayed due to the war, the University’s administration is brainstorming ways to turn down the temperature on campus so that our students are reintegrated into a peaceful environment.
By violently suppressing any protests — just as Newsweek hopes the US starts doing gainst ideas they don’t like.
In the city of Haifa, there are mixed neighborhoods and mixed apartment buildings. At the University, Jews and Arabs learn and grow together. This is the paradigm that Israel must replicate in order to move on from the tragedy of Oct. 7.
I’m not upset when I see the posters in Hebrew around campus stating, “Together We Will Win,” because I know that Arabs are included in that fight.
“A’least I will be, ’cause I’m 1 o’ the good 1s”.
Together we can use our voice to speak against rising levels of discrimination we’re seeing.
You were just saying you weren’t being discriminated gainst. ¿What happened to the idyllic mixed apartments you were raving ’bout just earlier?
I was also asked recently if I ever see myself leaving Israel to a place with a much larger Arab population, like France. My answer is clear: I’m not going anywhere. Israel is my home.
The sad thing is that she treats this racist sentiment as normal. Like, if somebody asked me if I’d be happier being somewhere surrounded by people o’ my own race, I wouldn’t answer them calmly; I’d tell that Nazi to fuck off.
For Jews and Arabs alike, this country is special. When each of us sees an olive tree, we’re in awe of this majestic force, of nature’s ability to grow out of the arid desert soil.
“I see that all the races are equal in their superstitious stupidity & mystification in the face o’ basic biology”.
If Jews and Arabs are adamant about not going anywhere, it’s up to both communities to determine what’s next in a healthy and productive way.
They are not doing that.
On Oct. 7, Hamas did far more than kill 1,400 people. It also set back any hope we had for peace, gearing us all up for another generation of nothing but violence.
But for every tragedy, there is a silver lining. A recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) indicated that 70 percent of Arabs in Israel identify with the State of Israel. IDI reports the highest percentage of respondents who feel part of the state since they began asking this question in 2003. This demonstrates that the Arab community in Israel aspires to further integrate into society and distance itself from bad faith actors like Hamas.
That’s pretty sad when you have to celebrate a whopping 70% o’ your country’s minority citizens not preferring another country, specially since it’s not as if the people who answered couldn’t lie & wouldn’t have a good reason not to loudly announce, “Nope, I’m an enemy o’ this state”. If you have any attachment to Israel’s far-right government, I guess this is heartening. Personally, I don’t like governments that engage in antisemetic conspiracies round George Soros, so I don’t give any greater fuck than if American Arabs identify with the US. The real issue is how we can get both Jews & Arabs to accept the supremacy o’ Englesist Magical Socialism o’er their silly superstitions, which don’t involve cool things like sticking dicks in each others’ bums, but, in fact, are very anti-dicks-in-bums.
Israeli Arabs and Jews are like salt and pepper: They both belong on the table, and once they’re sprinkled into a dish, it’s almost impossible to distinguish between them.
You got me in favor o’ Arabs & Jews getting together & putting their dicks in each others’ bums till you brought up this metaphor. I disagree: salt does not belong on the table — salt is in too much stuff already & gives you hypertension — & I can very much tell the difference ’tween spicy pepper & too-sharp salt. For me, ¡it’s all pepper, from the river to the sea!
This was the most reprehensible article I have e’er read — e’en compared to the COVID-denial 1 — & Newsweek are detestable for publishing it.
Tier: F
For a palate cleanser, let’s look @ a familiar topic: simping for school privatization schemes, ’cause nothing’s better for the US’s low education problem than doing the opposite o’ what better-educated schools do & dig our heels into the US’s uniquely fanatical obsession with privatizing e’erything & fighting gainst woke schools who teach things like that gay people exist & that dinosaurs didn’t chill with people 6,000 ago when both were invented by that same wacky sky god we can thank for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We came so close. Texas was on the brink of passing a significant school choice bill (HB1) that would finally achieve the impossible: break the public school monopoly and empower parents with a choice of where they send their children to be educated.
This kind o’ propaganda is perplexing: ¿who likes parents? Parents are dumb karens, & taking ’way their choices only makes the world a better place. After all, they were dumb ’nough to think having kids was a good idea. Plus, parents already have influence o’er their children by being able to teach them whate’er fringe ideas they want for the whole time they have them outside o’ school & have the advantage o’ children hating school ’cause it’s boring & parents’ emotional connection with children ( ’less they’re abusive, which is the only case where schools would probably be liked better by children ). ¿How ’bout we worry ’bout parents monopolizing childrens’ learning so they can’t just indoctrinate them in whate’er cult ideas they have & polluting the voting population so their bad parenting hurts the rest o’ us? Since it’s unquestionabe that how children are raised affects the whole community, including those who don’t have children, it in fact makes sense that the whole community should have a choice in whether or not children are raised into abortion-clinic bombers, not just totalitarian parents. This is the central fallacy o’ this “choice” idea: the Orwellian “freedom” for parents to control their children like dictators. ’Course, dictatorships being freer than democracy is a common philosophy ’mong the right, including laissy libertarians, so this is nothing new.
Now, instead of a law that could help fix our broken public education system, Texan legislators will vote on yet another bill that throws money at the problem. As a public school teacher myself, I wouldn’t mind the extra cash, but I know only a tiny sliver would end up in my paycheck, and today’s systemic problems would continue to fester.
Maybe instead o’ trying to throw money @ random rich organizations with li’l o’ersight, you should try electing government officials that aren’t incompetent, corrupt loons — like, maybe not the kind o’ government officials who take so much cream off the top. I love laissy libertarians who emphasize how corrupt & evil their governments are, but have no concern with keeping them in power, as if that corruption won’t manifest as a problem in other ways. This is probably ’cause the corrupt governments who support them love having their corruption normalized & accepted & can exploit privatization schemes to employ mo’ corruption. In short, when you start with the refrain, “our government is corrupt”, then you already found the root o’ the problem that must be solved before you start discussing issues like education. The idea that a privatization scheme could be properly employed by a corrupt government doesn’t e’en make sense: if your government can so easily embezzle money out o’ funds, ¿what checks & balances exist to keep them from just giving money to their friends during privatization, which is a mo’ subtle form harder to detect?
The original bill would have “establish[ed] an education savings account initiative that would set aside $10,500 every year per student for private school expenses” and “include[d] a bump in per-student spending by the state, from $6,160 to $6,700.”
This is contradictory: ¿does each student get $10,500 or $6,700?
It also would have increased teacher pay.
This is a virtual word-for-word quote o’ the article they cited, but without quotation marks, which is plagiarism.
Neither article provides evidence for this claim, but what data I could find from a decade ago shows the opposite: that private schools tend to pay less than public school.
No longer would poorer students be forced to attend failing public schools in their area. They could use their voucher to attend an alternative.
As one might guess, the success of a bill like HB1 comes down to funding and accountability. It’s not enough to simply hand families a check and expect them to reward good schools with their business. First, there must be viable alternatives to the underperforming public school (whether private or charter) that offer families a real choice. Moreover, those alternatives must be amply funded and properly accredited to successfully compete with the public school.
¿Why are funding & accountability not ’nough for improving public schools? This writer just recently complained ’bout a bill that “throws money at the problem”, but now is doing so, so long as its for their rich friends’ organizations.
The closest thing this article does to back up the vague idea o’ “viable” & “real” choices, as opposed to imaginary choices, is proper accredation, which I assume means regional accredation, but is vague ’nough that it could include any loose restrictions. ¿& if we’re forcing these schools to be accredited, are they truly “alternatives”, since they’re just following government rules? This is the problem: choice & standards are inherently contradictory: in order to have high standards, you must have strict rules; in order to have choice, you must give people terrible choices. & as this article outright admits, parents are too ignorant to know what is & is not a good school, anyway.
As it stands, most charter and private schools have much smaller budgets than their public school counterparts.
That link, which is a pro-school-choice organization quoting a pro-school-choice, conservative newspaper, quoting a study by a pro-school-choice organization, CREDO, is interesting, as a different study by Sanford says the opposite.
This funding gap limits the former’s appeal and makes neighborhood public schools the default option for most families. After all, who wants to send their kids to a school that rents out space from an ugly building and is staffed with untrained adults?
¿What evidence is there that giving mo’ money to charter schools will lead to better training for adults when apparently giving mo’ money to public schools doesn’t lead to better teachers? ’Cause there aren’t tons o’ businesses that make loads o’ money & still barely pay their workers. That’s why expensive iMacs aren’t made by lowly-paid workers in 3rd-world countries.
School choice legislation that significantly boosts funding to public and charter schools can foster meaningful competition between campuses. Schools would be incentivized to increase academic rigor, offer interesting course options, hire the best teachers, and create safe, aesthetically pleasing environments.
¿By what basis? ’Gain, we’re assuming the economic fallacy o’ perfect information: that parents will choose the optimal choices, despite knowing nothing ’bout academics. Based on that logic, video games have mo’ academic rigor than books, ’cause people choose to spend mo’ money on video games than books. ¿& how do we define “best teachers”? ¿The teachers mo’ liable to kowtow to karen parents who demand they give their special child A’s & let them act like li’l shits? ’Cause that’s the kind o’ criteria we’re feeding by giving parents mo’ power.
¿How would creating mo’ school choices — mo’ schools — lead to less inefficiency? In actuality, monopolies can lead to greater efficiencies due to needing fewer redundant resources ( since competing schools, by the nature o’ competition, are working separately, & thus cannot share resources ). As for “expensive technology boondoggles”, that points to ’nother advantage monopolies can have: greater independence from consumers gives mo’ discretion for innovation & research beyond what consumers could e’en conceptualize before it already exists, — ’gain, imperfect information — while competition will just lead to schools climbing o’er each other to fit consumers’ desires, while schools that take the risk on innovation probably won’t last long ’nough to see their innovation to fruition. Meanwhile, the downsides to monopoly are offset by these public schools being democratically run. It’s harder for schools to gouge people when citizens can vote out the government officials gouging them. The fact that this writer doesn’t realize these issues shows how fake is their knowledge o’ economics: rather than truly understanding the complexities o’ competition, they just fall into the lazy “competition is good” fallacy.
I should add that this whole concept assumes that monopolies are only created by the government, which only the most religious o’ market thumpers who have ne’er heard o’ such obscure mom-&-pop stores as Google or Microsoft believe. ¿What happens if 1 private school drives out all other competition? ¿What’s to stop the propagation o’ the Wal-Mart o’ schools, spread out all ’cross the state, but all controlled by the same business? Then you get both the downsides o’ public monopoly & private lack o’ democratic o’ersight.
Ideally, they would have the opportunity to attend schools with advanced coursework, vocational training, and exceptional programs in fine arts and athletics.
Yes, & ideally I’ll win the lottery I ne’er enter & win a million $. Unfortunately, neither will happen.
For once, this wouldn’t only be a possibility for richer parents who can afford to send their child to such schools, but for all students who desire it.
I’m pretty sure there are rich parents who pay mo’ than the $10,000 max than the Texas state is offering students, so this is straight-up false. ¿Does this bill include regulations forcing private schools to accept poor students who cannot pay their full fees? I saw no mention o’ such.
If this same bill is proposed again and actually passes, it could be massive shot in the arm and offer a whole new model for American public education.
Considering this boondoggle goes back to a’least the 90s, there is nothing new ’bout this model.
If the dollar amount of the vouchers is too low, then the only beneficiaries will be private schools and the students already enrolled in them. Private schools will simply raise their tuition, and the parents who already have their kids at those schools would apply for a voucher and enjoy a small subsidy—while those who do not will still be priced out.
This makes absolutely no sense: they claim that paying a li’l to vouchers will cause private schools to raise their tuition; ¿but someone paying a lot won’t? ¿What’s to stop private schools, specially those who don’t want dirty poors in their halls, to just add the voucher amount to their tuition, so that rich people pay the same & poor people are still priced out? “It just subsidizes the rich while still pricing poor people out” sounds like the strongest case one could make gainst voucher systems, & it’s made in this article trying to promote them. Amazing.
If states increase per-student enrollment funding only marginally, or even reduce it, charter and public schools will have to cut back on what they offer. Thus, instead of schools trying to deliver the best product, they will be competing on who can provide the cheapest product and coax the best students. This is the current complaint of a lot of public school educators—they claim charter schools essentially steal away the most motivated students from public schools, which are then left with the most high-need, at-risk students. When vouchers are thrown into the mix, both public and charter schools may be left unequipped to handle their respective student populations. This in turn forces state and local governments to drop standards for teachers and cut back on various school programs, something that is now happening in Arizona.
’Gain: we have a fundamental problem with voucher systems, evidence o’ it happening in real-life examples o’ voucher systems, but then this article claims that magically mo’ money will ’scape these problems, e’en tho they provide no evidence, they just make sloppy claims.
’Gain, the cited evidence is gainst, not for. Moreo’er, the whole point o’ putting schools on the market is to exploit the s’posed regulatory role o’ the market: you were just talking ’bout how market competition would lead to efficiency. If we’re spending government resources on accountability measures to o’erride the market’s failure to lead to efficiency, ¿why have the market @ all, since the proliferation o’ scammers proves that the market utterly fails to do its job? & if a government who’s directly running the schools can’t ensure standards, ¿how would they better ensure standards when they’re indirectly o’erseeing private schools? ’Gain, none o’ this deals with the true root o’ the problem, which is Texas’s corrupt & incompetent government who can’t provide any form o’ good schooling, whether private or public. This is what laissy libertarians fail to realize: the market is ultimately run by the government, so a corrupt & incompetent government will bungle a market just as badly as socialist economics.
That being said, this article is still better written than the last charter-school article I wrote, as it a’least attempts to counter criticisms rather than pretend they don’t exist.
Thanksgiving is the best holiday on the American calendar. It applies to everyone, there are no presents involved, and even if Black Friday is coming, it hasn’t arrived just yet.
Um, no, Halloween is. Halloween also applies to e’eryone ( & Thanksgiving doesn’t e’en apply to e’eryone — ¡it only applies to Americans! Newsweek can’t stop revealing their bigotry by literally being oblivious that there exist countries outside the US ) &, unlike Thanksgiving, does have presents in the form o’ candy.
It brings us together as does no other day[…]
Yeah, it brings us together to fight o’er the dinner table ’cause Uncle Bob couldn’t stop enlightening us on the intriguing news he heard on YouTube ’bout Biden’s globalist, Marxist plot to… ¿be woke? I don’t think e’en conservatives can think o’ anything nefarious for that president to do.
[…]and can be celebrated whether you were born in this country or arrived last Tuesday.
Well, ’less you’re celebrating Thanksgiving inside those cages they put caught illegals in.
Sure, the tradition—at least in the movies—is for families to gather and hate each other, but not only is that an overplayed trope, it doesn’t consider just how sleepy everyone is from the tryptophane and alcohol that are part and parcel of the celebratory meal.
Yeah, pessimists: it’s your fault for not plastering Uncle Bob with so much booze he can’t e’en speak beyond mumbles.
And this year, there are many things to be grateful for. I know it doesn’t look like it at first glance. There are wars being fought and fears they may grow. There are global rivalries, that are, if not hot, scary and point to a dangerous future.
¡Nothing’s scarier than global rivalries that aren’t e’en hot!
Anyway, let’s see what Newsweek thinks should make us thankful weeks after Thanksgiving:
Will Israel and Hamas fight until the last baby is slaughtered?
Interesting choice. I mean, on the upside, it would end the conflict once & for all — you can’t have a war if neither side exists anymo’. You clowns ne’er considered that solution, ¿did you?
We must face the truth that while the war looks lopsided now […]
This is the 1st time Newsweek seems to give some credit to Palestine, that they are the much weaker —
[…] offer Hamas the chance and more Israeli children will die.
Ne’er mind. This article is literally Newsweek being the drunk uncle. Dude, I’m trying to be thankful, ¿& you can’t go a single article without opening your trap with your lazy, uneducated takes on an 80-year war that long predates Hamas? Yeah, & I’m sure given the chance — which Israel has, since they are the mo’ powerful side — Israel would accept & raise in comfort & health all Palestinian children as their own & totally aren’t shoving them out as filthy otherbloods whose cursed blood will make them grow up to be terrorists, regardless o’ who’s raising them.
Will the United States need to face off directly with the cult of death that runs Iran?
No, ’cause Iran isn’t being run by a “cult of death”, but cynical Islamic fundamentalists who pretend to care ’bout religion to keep their uneducated populace obedient, just as how the US is run by the “death cult” Christianity — a religion that looks forward to Jesus coming back & destroying the world in a glorious apocalypse — as a way to get its uneducated populace obedient. Funny how this writer says this, when it’s well known that many US supporters for Israel do so ’cause they view it as playing a part in the Christian apocalypse, as stated in that great religious work, the airport novel Left Behind. It amazes me that a newspaper I assumed was as prestigious as Newsweek would let someone as uneducated as a Jack Chick hero write for them.
And if the Middle East doesn’t get us, perhaps China will.
Ah, yeah, ¡bringing back the classics with that sweet yellow peril! Hey, ¿why stop there? ¿Why not warn us ’bout those sneaky Bolshevik Jews undermining the Aryan race while you’re @ it?
¡That’s the heinous thing China did that you’re complaining ’bout? ¿Having too many nukes they will ne’er, e’er use! ¡Not their treatment o’ Uyghurs? ( ’Course not — they’re dirty Muslim terrorists ). ¡Not their increasing hostility toward Taiwan? ¡Fucking nukes?
A bigger deterrent, as if their hundreds of nukes aren’t scary in themselves. How many bombs does it take to be scary? One is enough. One bomb will do the trick.
¡Then why the fuck are you complaining ’bout China having too many, you fucking moron?
This idiot writes with the elementary-school-level eloquence o’ Donald Trump & it infuriates me mo’ than anything else in these articles. “Let me restate the point that contradicts my earlier point ’cause I assume Newsweek readers are all illiterate imbeciles who just blackhole entire sentences, distracted by their efforts to keep themselves from drowning in their own saliva”.
Thousands more merely ensure the radioactive grease spot that was humanity will be… well, a radioactive grease spot.
We know this thanks to the effects o’ the only e’er use o’ nukes gainst people done by… ( checks notes ) the US. Tell me, ¿how many nukes does the US currently have? ¿Does that not give you concern? ¿Or is it just when dirty foreign hands touch them that they’re dangerous?
And Russia, of course, is fighting a war against Ukraine—a war for which the United States and European Union are paying half. A war for democracy where very little democracy may actually be involved.
O, ¿Newsweek is gainst the war in Ukraine? They just straight up are 100% Republican now, aren’t they.
At home, people are scared to death about their way of life, which is being attacked from so many angles that it’s hard to keep track.
¿What way o’ life & how are they being attacked? Please give me these details, person who has established himself so far as very reasonable & not unhinged @ all.
For decades, people have felt worse off than their parents. And in some ways they are, despite enjoying luxuries and technologies the Greatest Generation could only dream about. There is the feeling of being left behind as the top of the pyramid reaches into the clouds while the people inhabiting it no longer have any idea what lies below them. Those better off have always been with us, but rarely have they been so far from the muck of everyday life. Flying in economy to and from your family this Thanksgiving gives you a sense, certainly, of the divide between that haves and have nots.
Stability at work is virtually unheard of. Keeping a job from one year to the next is the stuff of legends for many. And the flip side of that is that customer service—such a staple of the service economy that we long ago became—has gone to hell. Nobody wants to work crappy service jobs and that makes the service ever more crappy.
It’s pretty funny that the closest to a liberal sentiment Newsweek has had in all these articles has been a Marxist sentiment. That’s OK, ’cause they’re advocating for national socialism, not the filthy Bolshevik kind.
(But by no means consider allowing in immigrants who will do these jobs for the price of air. Keep them out at all costs!)
This writer a’least found 1 thing to like ’bout foreigners: making them their wage slaves.
We’ve reached that point in the column where you’re probably expecting sarcasm and an admonition to enjoy your holiday—if you dare!
I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing for this whole article. It says something that a curmudgeonly asshole like me who constantly complains ’bout “hallmark card” shit is now wishing you’d done that ’stead o’ whate’er this is.
Former President Donald Trump and the end of democracy loom on the horizon (He’s saying it himself, folks, believe it!), but there’s still plenty of time to act and room for hope. People may yet see that when someone tells you Freedom Is Slavery, you might want to look for another option at the ballot box. We must vote it to make it so, and 2024 hasn’t even arrived, yet. President Biden may triumph—or not be on the ticket, allowing someone not older than my grandfather when he died to serve in the highest office in the land.
¿Did this article jumble together the various sloppy hot takes o’ fascists, socialists, & milquetoast liberals or is this writer schizophrenic? My bet: he’s just very ignorant & has no idea how these ideas connect or contradict each other.
And, as much as we all fear economic uncertainty, it’s hard to beat an unemployment rate that stands below 4 percent and has for quite a while.
That’s actually pretty shitty, considering we were @ full employment not that long ago. O, wait, I forgot, low employment is good, ’cause it keeps those dirty poors from getting too much money & keeping it where it belongs, in rich people’s stock market.
It’s encouraging to see that at least some of the country’s infrastructure issues are being addressed, that we’re making some small efforts to fight climate change, to make medicines somewhat more affordable, to stand up to our enemies around the globe.
You mean your enemies; Palestinians & Chinese have done nothing to me & Israelis have done nothing for me.
Sure, the forces of medieval darkness—left and right—are trying to draw us away from the light with book bans, the resurgence of antisemitism, and an ignorance of history that is simply astounding.
¿Where are the left-wing examples? I’ve only seen right-wing examples so far…
Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek and the author of the murder mystery Death in Twilight.
I love how all the other articles are written by people who are part o’ organizations that a’least seem respectable ( e’en if in reality they are hack partisan think tanks ), but this writer is just a hack airport novel writer — an airport novel that cynically exploits that most cliché & common repository for cheap, easy catharsis, the Holocaust, like a Swiss bank taking in Nazi gold.
Unfortunately, this article came out too early to be thankful for the biggest thing we should be thankful for this year: ¡Henry Kissinger is finally dead!
O’ all the brain-damaging stupidity I’ve read in this article, this is the worst o’ them. Like I said, this writer literally just filled this article with empty Uncle Bob rants @ Thanksgiving. Well, I’m thankful I didn’t have to spend Thanksgiving with this writer, as he sounds insufferable.
We’re not going to read it, — well, you fuckers don’t have to read any o’ it; I still had to — ’cause it’s all empty drivel ’bout how we need to be mo’ civil & dicksuck George Washington some mo’ in a way that’s virtually identical to what pundits were doing in the 90s. The 1 thing I will note is this:
Hans Zeiger is president of the Jack Miller Center, a nationwide, nonpartisan civic venture to build talent networks of educators who share a commitment to the stories, documents and values we hold in common as Americans.
This writer is hypocritically criticizing a lack o’ thinking on the part o’ citizenry ’cause they can’t pass some empty multiple-choice questions that in no way challenge critical thinking skills, but this writer is “nonpartisan”, e’en tho the kind o’ person who can’t tell the moral or qualitative difference ’tween the 2 parties, — like that only 1 o’ them e’en supports democracy anymo’ — must be extremely uninformed. It takes literally no thinking to just say “both sides” for all issues, regardless o’ the actual issues. It’s also ironic, given how 1-sided most o’ the articles in this paper have been — which also doesn’t take much thought if one fails to e’en try arguing their case beyond appealing to mystical phenomena like “the collective Jewish soul”, as all these writers have. Also, if this writer knew so much, he’d know the US was ne’er founded as a democracy, but as a deliberately vague “republic” as a compromise ’tween populists & aristocrats, & that many o’ the founding fathers hated democracy, but this basic fact easily obtained simply by reading their own writing in works like The FederalistPapers, as I had to do in high school, is embarrassingly elusive ’mong “intellectuals” who write for these papers. Complaining ’bout how kids these days don’t know nothing ’cause they don’t know what year the constitution was ratified while being blissfully ignorant o’ the actual philosophical underpinning o’ said constitution is the kind o’ classic boomer energy I expect from dinosaurs like Newsweek.
Tier: F
We’ve finally come to e’eryone’s favorite part: the final tier list.
As you can see, compared to the last Newsweek article, this is a particularly terrible showing. It says something when the articles praising stuffing & cranberry sauce are ’mong the least idiotic.
So, o’ the 14 articles I read in this newspaper that AllSides calls “centrist”, 2 o’ them aren’t right-wing ( the 1st 2 ’bout best Thanksgiving food ) & 1 was a schizophrenic mix o’ e’ery political belief, so long as it’s stupid; & o’ those 11 right-wing articles, only 1 o’ which wasn’t racist & far-right, the milquetoast laissy-libertarian 1 ’bout school choice. 2 articles were unfiltered propaganda straight from far-right governments themselves. Note, I’m not e’en including the op-ed they let Texas Senator, Trump footrest, & pretend human Ted Cruz write for them the riveting & enlightening, “Marxists Have Always Aimed To Infiltrate Education” ( ¿who doesn’t want to infiltrate education? I don’t see Christian fascists going all, “Nah, we’re good”, but Cruz is as absent on that subject as during a Texan winter storm ), ’cause I’m not reading that shit. ¿So I guess Newsweek is just a far-right periodical now? The Southern Poverty Law Center seems to think so, going into detail ’bout our friend Josh Hammer’s lovely connections with white supremacists & fascists & his own use o’ violent civil-war-type rhetoric.
While we’re talking ’bout AllSides, I should note that, despite bragging ’bout how transparent they are ’bout their owners, shocking o’ shocks, their own biases are sus. They were founded by a right-wingers & a “centrist”, while adding on a token leftist. Their definitions o’ right-wing & left-wing are dumb: they list “freedom of speech” & “decreasing taxes” as right-wing principles, despite the right-wing’s notorious history o’ censorship, up to their LGBTQ+ book bans today ( in contrast, most examples o’ left-wing “cancel culture” doesn’t involve government @ all & are just individuals engaging in their right to not consume bigoted garbage ) & right-wingers only support lower taxes for rich people.
In fact, it’s clear that they base these just on the reputation o’ the papers rather than the actual contents o’ the article. Take the article, “House Intel panel chair Mike Turner says Biden ‘absolutely’ deserves credit for Hamas hostage deal”. Now, it’s debatable whether or not this is right-wing or left-wing depending on whether or not you consider the US getting involved & pressuring Hamas to do what Israel wants them to do to be right-wing or whether its praise o’ Biden @ all makes it left-wing. This is why these kind o’ 1-dimensional “maps” are so inane. I would argue that anything that doesn’t call for Israel & Palestine to become secular, racially-equal, democratic socialist societies with no mention o’ Judaism or Islam in the constitution or any government apparatus to be the left-wing side, while both the Israeli government & Hamas are far-right theocracies. Like much US media, the actual left side doesn’t exist, but is shoved to the fringes. But considering regurgitating Israeli propaganda is “centrist”, we’d expect praise for Biden to be considered “left-wing” — we’d assume they define “left-wing” as “pro Democratic Party”, keeping in mind that the Democratic Party is also mostly pro-Israel, with only a few stragglers. But no: they list this article as right-wing. ¿Why? Presumably ’cause it’s The Washington Times, which is popularly considered a right-wing paper. Meanwhile, Vox calmly explaining the recent Israel-Hamas hostage deal is considered far-left. ¿Why? Presumably ’cause Vox wrote it, & people consider Vox super left-wing — & by “people”, I mean ol’ boomers who think anything left o’ calling black people the N word is Marxism.
So if you want a website that will tell you e’erything from Fox News is right wing, e’erything from CNN is left-wing, & e’erything from Newsweek is centrist, then here you go. If you want actually useful information, I would recommend you look somewhere that isn’t run by absolute morons.
#NAFO has its critics, even among opponents of Russia’s war against Ukraine, who accuse the fellas of sometimes going too far in trolling Russia, pointing to recent posts mocking a young Russian tourist who was killed by a shark in Egypt.
But #NAFO has no editors or censors. It’s young and brash, self-aware, and epitomizes the way young people communicate today. The Russian government and its propagandists often have a tin ear when it comes to humor, which the “NAFOFellas” are only too happy to exploit.
While I can appreciate the value in crowding out inane imperialist propaganda with similar inanity, — tho e’en if it arguably contributes to further deterioration o’ good-faith argument, I’m too realistic to believe that good-faith argument is possible in the zoos o’ social media — these 2 paragraphs stood out to me. This article admits that NAFO is engaging in racist attacks gainst an innocent civilian, then just immediately wipes that concern ’way with a, “But that’s just the hip young people not giving into your censorship, bro. Only propagandists have a problem with racist hatred”, ironically feeding into 4chan sentiment that racism is rebellious. I wonder if CNN would take this sentiment when commenting on young people posting memes ’bout Israel. ¿Is it only the Israeli government who has a “tin ear” when it comes to certain kinds o” “humor” that certain propaganda groups are happy to exploit”? That’s the danger o’ borrowing tactics from the far-right: while it can in many ways be mo’ effective than what the left is doing, in some ways it’s intrinsically tied to right-wing ideas like racism.
@ the very least, perhaps a stuffy, pseudointellectual institution most definitely not aimed @ young people like CNN shouldn’t be praising this kind o’ irrationality, specially when bugging me to sign up for a subscription. A’least the college dropouts @ NAFO aren’t pretending their memes are worth money ( well, maybe ).
But, then ’gain, I can’t pretend to be surprised that an institution as mentally mediocre as CNN would trade these long-term issues o’ feeding racism & global division ( which, now that I think ’bout it, CNN probably likes the global division part ) for the quick hit o’ getting their readers on the right side o’ things. Lord knows, it’s hard to get the kind o’ people who still read newspapers to not support Russia — & it’s totally a reasonable goal to obsessively try to get e’ery single person on the planet to agree with your sentiment when there are people who still insist that the world is flat, climate change is fake, & the world was created 6,000 years ago by sky god who is his own son — so it’s important that we encourage young people to be 4channers so we can get that extra 1% o’ people putting Ukraine flags on their social media & doing shit-all-else. The good news is, since no young people read CNN, CNN won’t have any real effect: CNN’s mummified readers will snort ’bout those wacky young people & their beepboops & forget all ’bout.
I also love how so many psuedointellectuals are trying to pump up this random group o’ people screwing round with poorly-paid Russians who probably couldn’t give a rats ass what inane drivel their bosses force them to spew out — if it’s not AI — as if it’s some deep sociological phenomenon.
NAFO was described as a “Western civil society response to Russian campaigns” by Tobias Fella, a political scientist training Bundeswehr soldiers in dealing with social media. It is part of a larger “battle for sovereignty of interpretation” on shared online spaces. According to Politico, “To delve into NAFO is to get a crash course in how online communities from the Islamic State to the far-right boogaloo movement to this rag-tag band of online warriors have weaponized internet culture.”
American media studies professor Jaime Cohen argues that the NAFO movement “is an actual tactical event against a nation state”. British-Lebanese journalist Oz Katerji asserts that NAFO “has hampered Russia’s propagandists and made them look absurd and ridiculous in the process”. Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand Vasyl Myroshnychenko noted that the grassroots, decentralized nature of NAFO is an important part of its strength.
According to one analysis, “The largely English-language memes have kept Western attention on Ukraine’s war—attention that is vital given the importance of Western arms to Ukrainian forces.” American Lt. Col. Steve Speece of the Modern War Institute at West Point argues “Meme content shared in NAFO channels … is almost exclusively English language and presumably not intended for Russian audiences … These fora exist to generate content for the entertainment and status of their own members. Yet even Western national security policy is sometimes explicitly driven by the emotions—like outrage—cultivated in online communities.” Speece argues that online agitators like NAFO take the role of bad cop in a good cop/bad cop dynamic with policy makers.
According to the Berliner Kurier, “Like real NATO, NAFO has an Article 5 duty of assistance. This means that each fella can call on the others for help if they are under attack or encounter serious disinformation. For this, the NAFO members use the hashtag #NAFOarticle5 and then receive support from other fellas.” An analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations assessed it as being “very effective”.
Yes, I’m sure a bunch o’ randos shitposting to Russian bots is what will save Ukraine, not the fact that Russia’s faltering economy & tin-can military. That’s the dream for pseudointellectuals who pretend that e’ery time they like something on Twitter X they’re fighting the system. I think my own blog is already proof that this tactic doesn’t work: if it did, all my shitposting ’bout capitalism & its cousin wearing a moustache named dapitalism & Zombie Marx from the past decade would’ve brought us sexy communism already, & I sure as shit don’t see any sexy communism in my midst. Nope, it’s all ugly-ass brutalist architecture on 1 side o’ the curtain & pretend copyrights for ugly monkey pictures on the other. O yeah, & CNN.
Normally I don’t like to dive deep into the ugliness o’ politics during the best month o’ the year, October, a time best spent on autumn weather & horror, but recently there’s been an interesting development in arguably 1 o’ the most spine-tingling o’ topics — the current state o’ the economy. ( ¡Boo! ¡Whack Family-Circus-ass joke! ).
CNN, desperate to get their 15 seconds o’ fame for clicks & hits in the same way Jessica Simpson did decades ago or the modern celebrity moron, the average Republican, does today — saying something incredibly stupid & getting e’eryone to make fun o’ them — cooked up something fun for us tonight:
“You” is the word that deserves scrutiny. A common misconception that economists & people who pretend to know anything ’bout the economy ( ¡like me! ) imply is that there is some magical economy that gives e’eryone what they want. For instance, I would question the idea that someone who would otherwise be unemployed not being unemployed endured any cost by having the means to keep themselves from starvation. But people who have plenty o’ money in the stock market are costing a lot by having that stock ticker be orange.
An eternally accurate commentary on US economic philosophy.
Here’s why: Inflation is still biting. Prices continue to rise faster than anyone would like. Although annual price increases aren’t in wild-runaway mode like they were when inflation was above 9% last year, inflation is still above 3%, which is unhealthy for the economy, according to the Federal Reserve and a number of economists. (The Fed believes 2% inflation is ideal over the long haul.)
What I want to emphasize most with this paragraph is that it feels like ’twas written by an elementary school student, with its short, choppy sentences that assert simplistic claims that don’t fit the true complexity o’ modern economics. Saying that “prices continue to rise faster than anyone would like” is as meaningful as saying “there are mo’ deaths in the world than anyone would like”: any inflation greater than 0 is going to rise faster than anyone would like — that doesn’t mean it warrants comment.
The funny thing is that e’en someone who knows nothing but economics but takes CNN @ their word, but can compare #s, can see the mismatch o’ CNN’s tone & what the #s tell: inflation went from a whopping 9% down to “above 3%” ( I had to go to a better news source, NBC News, to find the actual # 3.7% ), which is the best way to try to imply a # >= to 4% without outright lying, which is a whopping 1.7% greater than what the Federal Reserve — here called by their rap name, “The Fed”, ’cause CNN is too down with the sickness to use their stuffy full name that might go o’er the heads o’ the teenagers they’re desperately trying & failing to get to read them — considers “ideal”. I don’t know ’bout you, but inflation going down from such a historical high — 7% greater than “ideal” — to just ’bout a % point or 2 ’bove the “ideal” without hurting the high employment level or rising wages sounds miraculous to me. In fact, it sounds better than the usual pattern since the 70s — coincidentally, when we started taking the monetarist witchcraft “the Fed” tries & laughably fails with time & ’gain — o’ stagnating wages that can’t keep up with e’en the small “ideal” inflation.
Economists had expected the data to show a 3.6% overall increase in inflation compared to a year ago. Annual inflation has now ticked up two months in a row after 12 consecutive months of decline.
These 2 data points — 1 o’ which is just empty tarot-card reading from economists, who tend to acknowledge that economic science is not developed ’nough ( & probably ne’er will be due to the unpredictability o’ humanity & the “observer effect” o’ economists’ predictions being loudly announced to e’eryone thru the media tampering with results ) — don’t connect, since they use completely different time units, the latter o’ which is vague. ¿Who cares if annual inflation has “ticked up” some vague amount 2 times in a row? ¿Is the amount “ticked up” a lot or a li’l? ¿& how would it be better if ’twere 2 months broken off by other months. Anyone who understands basic math knows that consecutive months vs. split-off months wouldn’t affect the sum — which is what the former data point references. ¿Does the 2nd data point add up to the expected o’erall 3.6% increase? We don’t know, ’cause CNN for some reason is trying to give us a fun Halloween mystery by not giving us specific #s. Luckily, as mentioned earlier, a better news source was less interested in Encyclopedia Brown puzzles & just said 3.7%, which, to be fair to economists, is remarkably close to expectations. We should give them all that stuffed carnival panda as a sweet reward.
When you see gas prices at $3.75 on average (and above $4 in plenty of places across the country)…
Hold on — gas prices are that low. $5 gas prices were normal a decade ago. I’ve ne’er in my life seen gas lower than $3.75, certainly not any time in the 21st century. I would expect it to be $8 a gallon by this point — specially since what with gas production literally destroying the planet, I would expect there to be, you know, tax penalties to keep people from buying this shit & helping to destroy the planet.
…and a restart to student loan payments for millions of Americans, that’s why a majority of Americans say President Joe Biden’s policies have made economic conditions worse.
Ah, yes, Joe Biden’s policy o’ forcing students to repay their loans, I remember that. I also remember just 2 days ago CNN themselves mentioning, let’s see, “Biden cancels another $9 billion in student loan debt days after payments restart”. Clearly that’s just a devious plot by Dark Brando the Grando Wizando to lure students into a false sense o’ security before he strikes with surprise loans later. This is what the test broadcast last Wednesday was — those o’ us who believe we had our student loans paid off have now been infected with “swine student loans”, which will be sucked out o’ us thru microchips soldered by Bill Gates himself & into Biden’s secret Marxist pedophile fund for erecting statues o’ Karlos Marukasu e’erywhere — for e’eryone knows that Marx is so sexy that any child who sees a statue o’ him will themselves become erect — ¡e’en those without penises, that red devil is so magical!
That’s CNN’s opinion: very sloppily argued by throwing out a bunch o’ data that doesn’t actually serve their intended conclusion, & some o’ it just straight lies, & saying “that’s why” — the best way to make an argument, I always learned in the ol’ debate class. My opinion, which I would say is backed by centuries o’ gleaned wisdom from experts, is that the reason the average American thinks these things is that they’re uninformed, uneducated morons who jump to “bad economy president’s fault” ’cause that’s the kind o’ best guess you can make when you’re utterly bereft o’ any mental tools for economic analysis. Certainly the legislature ( “¿the ‘ley-jeez-what’?” ) & their barely managing to agree to hold off yet ’nother hilarious government shutdown in the richest country in the world for ’bout a month or so as the final magnum opus o’ politician nobody likes Kevin McCarthy just before he got his face eaten by his fellow leopards & shitposting Democrats had nothing to do with the US’s economy… somehow not being in as bad shape as Europe ( the US is a perfect specimen o’ “failing upward” ). Nonetheless, Americans, ne’er ones to settle for less, have higher expectations & are still debating ’mongst themselves whether or not they might give ’nother chance to the candidate who attempted a dictatorial insurrection, has plans for his next term including indictments gainst all his political enemies & setting up a “gulag” for legal immigrants, & who, those with memory ( not Americans ) remember was the one who exacerbated this whole inflation problem in the 1st place by delaying COVID treatment o’ the nation with his hilarious shitposting on Twitter X.
As prices continue to grow, paychecks are barely keeping pace. They grew 4.2% over the past year, the slowest pace of growth since the early days of the pandemic in 2020.
Also, I can’t imagine “the Fed” are too disappointed by these #s, as the Federal Reserve’s policy for trying to bring down inflation was trying to bring down wages by, get this, inducing unemployment. ( The fact that e’ery “workable” form o’ capitalism that has e’er existed in the real world involves the government using their vast controls o’ the economy to induce or reduce unemployment is why anyone with e’en the most basic understanding o’ economics finds the ol’ “pull yourself by your bootstraps” idea o’ capitalism to be a laughable fairy tale on the same level as “pray to Jesus for economic success” ).
So a robust job market won’t make most people feel like the economy is strong.
Well, yeah: ¿who wants to go back to work after year long forced vacations due to COVID? I wanna stay home & play Animal Crossing all day.
The Fed is working to slow the economy by hiking interest rates — the only tool it has to fight inflation.
Ah, so you are aware o’ this fact, & thus the previous complaint ’bout wages not being high ’nough completely contradicts this point.
It’s too bad there are no other parts o’ the government, like the legislature, who could pass, like, fiscal policy to help lower-class Americans make up for the greater burden o’ high inflation while waiting for inflation to keep decreasing as manufacturing continues to spin back to life. Nah, they would rather focus their efforts on conspiracy theories ’bout the son o’ the president & his possessed laptop o’ the occult, like any serious government should.
A still-robust job market — see the 336,000 jobs added last month — means the central bank could continue to increase rates without fear of sending the economy into a recession.
“The economy is roaring with the demand for workers literally through the roof,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, in a note to clients on Friday. “Interest rates are likely to remain higher for longer to ensure the inflation fire is out.”
Educate me, ’gain, on what the “cost” is o’ the Federal Reserve having mo’ room to fight inflation without the fear o’ inducing a recession. I guess if you want recession or are ’fraid o’ inflation going too far down that’s a problem. Or maybe not having a ’scuse for keeping unemployment up is the real problem.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon repeated in recent weeks his fear that rates could go to 7%. Government bond yields are rising to multi-year highs in expectation of rates going up — and loans pinned to those yields, including mortgages and credit card rates — are set to go up, too.
Ah, average American, CEO o’ giant-ass monopolistic bank, will educate me. It sounds to me like this is a big ol’ problem for creditors, — also known as parasitical leeches — not for people who actually work for their money. I guess when CNN said it’ll cost “me”, they meant it’ll cost my bank CEO.
Credit card rates are well north of 20% on average, a two-decade high. People who carry a balance month to month are paying a hefty premium in interest, which means it will take even longer to pay off what they owe.
O, ne’er mind: e’en the leeches are still doing fine. The only people who seem to be doing worse are people who have debts, — people who have been being screwed for eternity, already — & not e’en by all that much, since according to Nerd Wallet, the average rate was 16.44% in 2021. ’Course, CNN doesn’t offer this # as a comparison themselves, since actually informing people is much less valuable than throwing round #s bereft o’ context & using super scary language is much better for rage clicks.
Meanwhile, US mortgage rates climbed to 7.49% this week, up from 6.66% a year ago and the highest level in more than two decades. That has kept the housing market in neutral [ emphasis mine ], keeping the key to middle-class wealth growth out of reach for so many would-be homebuyers.
Man, you’re really convincing me of our dire situation with this neutral housing market. ¿When will someone finally impeach Biden already?
We should never cheer a bad job market. But a job market that has remained this healthy for this long really isn’t excellent news for average Americans struggling to pay their bills. Meanwhile, we remain in a “good news is bad news” conundrum that makes most people feel like the US economy is in a bad spot.
The best part o’ this self-contradicting incoherent jumble o’ a paragraph trying pathetically to work as propaganda is how self-inflicting it is: @ a time when young people are becoming mo’ & mo’ jaded with capitalism & mo’ supportive toward socialism, I can’t imagine that telling people “an economy good for working class people is actually bad” & calling for mo’ unemployment after Millennials withstood a whole decade o’ being shamed for their high unemployment works as a good advertisement for capitalism, nor can I imagine the average worker having a positive opinion o’ self-proclaimed economic experts whose only solution is to throw 2% o’ potential employees into destitution. & people wonder why homelessness is such a problem when it is considered good economic policy to try & force people to be jobless. Bums who beg for money on the streets told to “get a job” should quip back, “¡but then I’d be causing you inflation & costing you e’en mo’!”.After all, it’ll be much harder for you to buy food if you keep having that job that allows you to have money to buy food @ all. It’s almost as if capitalism is an unreasonable “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” economic system where people who aren’t politically powerful have no chance to succeed no matter what they do & offers absolutely no solution to homelessness or poverty & finding some alternative to capitalism is the only solution. That’s the message CNN delivers, anyway. I doubt they intended to — but then, given how incoherent & inane this article was, I don’t think anyone @ CNN are smart ’nough to understand what they’re trying to say.
As a fun bonus, the New York Times tried the same thing, titling 1 o’ their articles “U.S. Job Growth Surges Past Expectations in Troubling News for the Fed”, which sounds like the title o’ a Superman comic. Like what happens a lot in the modern world o’ social media where ol’, out-o’-touch, moderate conservative New York Times editors have their anti-lower-class biases pointed out & ridiculed by the vicious liberal masses, — who nonetheless, are their target audience, & must be fed accordingly, as papa market demands o’ them — they changed the title like Stalin erased Trotsky out o’ those photos. This is the real liberal fascism that, um… that 1 generic conservative whose name I don’t want to look up wrote ’bout.
