I’ll get to the “Elephant in Room” news in a moment, but I want to arrive there by a slightly roundabout route, hopefully to elucidate some other notable developments which don’t flow directly from Samuel Alito’s jurisprudence.
Here is the problem, they have already been screaming since 2016 about how those dirty right wingers are literally the worst people in human history. How do you even ramp it up from there? Also getting a bit off track, but how the hell do you bitch on and on about women's' bodies when you can no longer even define what a woman is?
I may be wrong but I think I heard AOC use the word "woman" on one of the Sunday talk shows as she discussed the Supreme Court decision. Now, of course, she must be expelled from Congress and banished to a rat-infested island for this abomination.
All of this linguistic turmoil (and seeming ludicrousness) could be swept away simply by using the words "male" and "female". The words "man" and "woman" can be viewed as being social poses -- that being, traditionally anyway, the main contention of trans advocates. A well known trans person of decades past, Virginia Prince, self-described as a "male woman". I have no problem with that, nor should anybody else. ""Male" and "female" describe the unchangeable biological reproductive entity. Only females can get pregnant, even if they are "female men".
Is it so hard to simply say "pregnant female" instead of the ludicrous "pregnant person"?
I would agree with this, and it's certainly true under the definition of progressive that's currently in circulation.
The only reason I would pause is this: I read recently about a GOP guy running for Congress (I think in Mississippi, but I could be wrong) who's running on universal healthcare, generous monthly stipends for couples with children, 5 years of paid family leave and other family-friendly policies BUT who opposes abortion and strongly defends the 2nd Amendment. Plus, he's also a white male!
Since I assign about 90% importance to a person's stand on economic issues that materially affect most of us every day of our lives and I don't give a flip about race, gender or "identity," that GOP guy for me is a true progressive. Yet I'm sure most people in our current climate would characterize him as a right-wing nut.
Imagine being that person who said that government-mandated injections under threat of losing one's livelihood and segregation was totally legitimate and the morally right thing to do is now the same person coming out in fierce and proud public defense of "bodily autonomy."
I can't think of anything richer.
And yet people like that are everywhere lol.
I always think back to that Jordan Peterson bit where he talks about the Nazi concentration camp guards, and how the main factor in determining who would be a Nazi concentration camp guard was the ability for self-deception.
Those most likely to be the guards were those who had the greatest ability to lie to themselves.
These "people" are creating real conservatives by the minute. Not the "Rush Limbaugh listening, George Will reading, Weekly Standard subscribing, pound that Budweiser after work, flag waving losers who got dunked on all day and night by the real power, the Liberal Progressive Beast" fake conservatives, but the people who are not ok with the "my mask won't work unless you wear YOUR MASK by force!!" types.
People on the right have always (and still do) argued over what it means to be a conservative. Now I think it's just a catch-all for "not being miserable and insane".
For me, the turning point in journalism was marked by Jim Rutenberg's article, "Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism." Not only had leftist journalists abandoned all pretense of being an objective observer/reporter, they now felt positively righteous in their blatant bias. The entire country is sick to the point of dying but journalism has been dead and rotting for more than a decade.
To many of us for to long have been unwilling or afraid to voice our views. No more. My beliefs and opinions, derived from a long history of Judeo-Christian philosophy and long time accepted norms of Western Civilization are certainly reasonable and defensible. I will defend them.
Uh...no. FYI; I pay a buck a week for NYT subscription. I look over its news daily, and TBH, the investigative stuff's pretty good. I got it on a special deal 4 years ago, and when it's up for renewal I call and tell them keep it at a buck a week or I'm gone.
I did WaPo for a year for $12, but I didn't find it as good a source for what I wanted as the NYT
Here's the thing: since I was a kid I read the NYT daily, and had a subscription until I moved from NYC to Canada. Still, I was a loyal reader until I had my Awakening™. That was during the 2105 early campaign. That's when I found out how they were sooo slanted against Sanders; I learned that via reading the comment section, not the articles.
Which made me wonder, if they're lying about this, what else have they lied about?
Hooo boy... down the rabbit hole.
7 years later, I spend about 2-300/year on Substack subscriptions and Supercast for Breaking Points and The Realignment. I look at it like the magazine subscriptions I used to have back in the 80's and 90's (I'm a Boomer- fuck you! LOL)
Secondly, I read the NYT b/c I'm looking for the 'center' that was so well discussed on the most recent Bill Maher on HBO. And I need to see where these ppl are coming from if I want to have a chance to find common ground.
Weigel was “asked to leave” by Reason for too brazenly endorsing the Hope-n-Change fad sweeping the nation; If you write for Reason you’re allowed to say you’re voting for the Democrat as long as you say 10 Our Franklins and 20 Hail Madisons first. This is only relevant since he really wasn’t a Somnez-style freebooter and wrote plenty of party-line stuff too, like critiques against Obama on warmongering (which have aged well). Back then you couldn’t have destructive people on the staff, it looked bad in front of the subscription-paying/ad-consuming readership. There was a trade-off in that you still had to put up with partisan fluff like hymning whoever was your side’s latest doofus or doofette in dulcet Peggy Noonanish tones. So I am not sure it’s bad that we lost that form of media. Well before Substack were bete noire operations that true journolists disdained, e.g. Breitbart and the Gawker sites. There were also basically glorified zines like The Baffler (Jacobin is the current rehash of this) which were online yet not read by any IP address outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The over educated idiots at the Washington post didn’t know enough to fire Felecia Sonmez when she sued them! Can you imagine that in the real world, say at an Amazon warehouse, some grunt suing for hurt feelings. The morons at WaPo really have no understanding of the outside world: they have no insight into their own privilege.
I’ve always thought of liberals as people educated unto stupidity and now progressives have bullied these erstwhile liberals into a state of cowardly acquiescence to woke insanity.
Michael asked us a question: will pro-life be equated with conservatives and MAGA? Hell ya! The liberals will thoroughly enjoy that, that is their pleasure, their superiority demands an enemy and pro-life fits the bill perfectly. These people are religious zealots , they hate very deeply.
This is the reason I subscribe to MT on Substack. If you told me 5 years ago I would no longer subscribe to the Times and WAPO, I would have doubted it for sure. Not any more. There is so much better journalism than the Times and the WAPO.
"Colleagues who might have been previously paralyzed into “silence” started to cautiously vocalize their aggravation with Felicia, whom they probably always privately thought of as nuts." People like Felicia are all over the place now and are destructive to organizations. Truly destructive. Felicia, I hear they are looking for freedom fighters in Ukraine.
Michael - always a very colorful and informative perspective. Thank you!
Me thinks we shall see an explosion in the use of verbal litmus tests imposed by those who claim a high regard for traditional liberal democracy, but really think that any one possessing a thought or idea that doesn’t wholly align with their own isn’t entitled to any rights…in their view that’s the only way our hard fought “democracy” can be saved…
Rough weather ahead…. We are about to encounter the “leftist” version of Puritanical rule all screaming “burn those MAGA witches!”
I agree. I don’t think the black shirts will be able to sustain the sympathy of ordinary people this time. The irony of the Floyd riots was that much of America was disgusted by excessive police power used against a helpless black man - as it seemed at the time. By and large, the US is largely over its systemic racism and most don’t care what color you are, or actively sympathize with poor people of color. (Of course exceptions exist) This time abortions are not even outlawed- you can go to a dem state and get one. The rage seems over the top, particularly when you consider their recent complete lack of interest in the root issue: does the state have power over your body? I’m forced to conclude that the rage is opportunistic. The goal has little to do with the actual issue. The goal is to first break and then gain control over the government apparatus. It’s seems like idealism but it’s factionalism. It’s about who has power: the flyover people or the “educated” coastals.
Is there a new media ethos? I don't think so. People pleased with the overthrow of Roe vs Wade will be compared to Hitler/Fascism/Nazism and all other atrocities, as usual.
Probably the most clarifying piece on this subject of what is and isn't acceptable anymore. Here's my own tiny two bits: As a former journalist of many years I find myself recoiling at nearly every use of the word "lie" in major media to characterize what someone has said. I don't believe such usage would ever have passed muster at any level of editing at any publication that I ever worked for.
It has occurred to me that the media’s overly used resort to the term “lie” in characterizing political speech (even if unintentionally a probably accurate description of any politician’s statements) is nothing more than an attempt to get back at Joe Wilson’s utterance at Obama’s address to congress. They were offended that “the chosen one” was subjected to that, and they want to pay it back in spades to those who they identify (any Republican) as in league. In other words it has no substance, it is merely a political tactic.
Here is the problem, they have already been screaming since 2016 about how those dirty right wingers are literally the worst people in human history. How do you even ramp it up from there? Also getting a bit off track, but how the hell do you bitch on and on about women's' bodies when you can no longer even define what a woman is?
In a House floor speech, AOC intentionally omitted the word "woman" from her denunciation of the ruling, and instead used the term "pregnant people"!
I may be wrong but I think I heard AOC use the word "woman" on one of the Sunday talk shows as she discussed the Supreme Court decision. Now, of course, she must be expelled from Congress and banished to a rat-infested island for this abomination.
All of this linguistic turmoil (and seeming ludicrousness) could be swept away simply by using the words "male" and "female". The words "man" and "woman" can be viewed as being social poses -- that being, traditionally anyway, the main contention of trans advocates. A well known trans person of decades past, Virginia Prince, self-described as a "male woman". I have no problem with that, nor should anybody else. ""Male" and "female" describe the unchangeable biological reproductive entity. Only females can get pregnant, even if they are "female men".
Is it so hard to simply say "pregnant female" instead of the ludicrous "pregnant person"?
Anyone else feel a headache coming on?
It seems like everyday AOC finds a new way to pronounce herself a lunatic. 🤪
I would agree with this, and it's certainly true under the definition of progressive that's currently in circulation.
The only reason I would pause is this: I read recently about a GOP guy running for Congress (I think in Mississippi, but I could be wrong) who's running on universal healthcare, generous monthly stipends for couples with children, 5 years of paid family leave and other family-friendly policies BUT who opposes abortion and strongly defends the 2nd Amendment. Plus, he's also a white male!
Since I assign about 90% importance to a person's stand on economic issues that materially affect most of us every day of our lives and I don't give a flip about race, gender or "identity," that GOP guy for me is a true progressive. Yet I'm sure most people in our current climate would characterize him as a right-wing nut.
It’s called ‘gaslighting’ or perhaps more accurately, ‘mind fxcking’.
Imagine being that person who said that government-mandated injections under threat of losing one's livelihood and segregation was totally legitimate and the morally right thing to do is now the same person coming out in fierce and proud public defense of "bodily autonomy."
I can't think of anything richer.
And yet people like that are everywhere lol.
I always think back to that Jordan Peterson bit where he talks about the Nazi concentration camp guards, and how the main factor in determining who would be a Nazi concentration camp guard was the ability for self-deception.
Those most likely to be the guards were those who had the greatest ability to lie to themselves.
The human mind is a fascinating thing.
OK. I'll say it.
These "people" are creating real conservatives by the minute. Not the "Rush Limbaugh listening, George Will reading, Weekly Standard subscribing, pound that Budweiser after work, flag waving losers who got dunked on all day and night by the real power, the Liberal Progressive Beast" fake conservatives, but the people who are not ok with the "my mask won't work unless you wear YOUR MASK by force!!" types.
My body my choice. Get outta my face.
https://education-ny.blogspot.com/2022/06/one-way-to-create-real-conservative.html
Word up. I’m with the flag waving losers now, you absolute fucks.
People on the right have always (and still do) argued over what it means to be a conservative. Now I think it's just a catch-all for "not being miserable and insane".
For me, the turning point in journalism was marked by Jim Rutenberg's article, "Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism." Not only had leftist journalists abandoned all pretense of being an objective observer/reporter, they now felt positively righteous in their blatant bias. The entire country is sick to the point of dying but journalism has been dead and rotting for more than a decade.
To many of us for to long have been unwilling or afraid to voice our views. No more. My beliefs and opinions, derived from a long history of Judeo-Christian philosophy and long time accepted norms of Western Civilization are certainly reasonable and defensible. I will defend them.
I honestly do not know or care who Dave Weigel is. It's been years since I read the Washington Post (or any other newspaper.)
Ditto the New York Times
Uh...no. FYI; I pay a buck a week for NYT subscription. I look over its news daily, and TBH, the investigative stuff's pretty good. I got it on a special deal 4 years ago, and when it's up for renewal I call and tell them keep it at a buck a week or I'm gone.
I did WaPo for a year for $12, but I didn't find it as good a source for what I wanted as the NYT
Here's the thing: since I was a kid I read the NYT daily, and had a subscription until I moved from NYC to Canada. Still, I was a loyal reader until I had my Awakening™. That was during the 2105 early campaign. That's when I found out how they were sooo slanted against Sanders; I learned that via reading the comment section, not the articles.
Which made me wonder, if they're lying about this, what else have they lied about?
Hooo boy... down the rabbit hole.
7 years later, I spend about 2-300/year on Substack subscriptions and Supercast for Breaking Points and The Realignment. I look at it like the magazine subscriptions I used to have back in the 80's and 90's (I'm a Boomer- fuck you! LOL)
Secondly, I read the NYT b/c I'm looking for the 'center' that was so well discussed on the most recent Bill Maher on HBO. And I need to see where these ppl are coming from if I want to have a chance to find common ground.
Weigel was “asked to leave” by Reason for too brazenly endorsing the Hope-n-Change fad sweeping the nation; If you write for Reason you’re allowed to say you’re voting for the Democrat as long as you say 10 Our Franklins and 20 Hail Madisons first. This is only relevant since he really wasn’t a Somnez-style freebooter and wrote plenty of party-line stuff too, like critiques against Obama on warmongering (which have aged well). Back then you couldn’t have destructive people on the staff, it looked bad in front of the subscription-paying/ad-consuming readership. There was a trade-off in that you still had to put up with partisan fluff like hymning whoever was your side’s latest doofus or doofette in dulcet Peggy Noonanish tones. So I am not sure it’s bad that we lost that form of media. Well before Substack were bete noire operations that true journolists disdained, e.g. Breitbart and the Gawker sites. There were also basically glorified zines like The Baffler (Jacobin is the current rehash of this) which were online yet not read by any IP address outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
How far Reason has fallen, nowadays if you DON'T vote Democrat, you're not allowed to write articles.
The over educated idiots at the Washington post didn’t know enough to fire Felecia Sonmez when she sued them! Can you imagine that in the real world, say at an Amazon warehouse, some grunt suing for hurt feelings. The morons at WaPo really have no understanding of the outside world: they have no insight into their own privilege.
I’ve always thought of liberals as people educated unto stupidity and now progressives have bullied these erstwhile liberals into a state of cowardly acquiescence to woke insanity.
Michael asked us a question: will pro-life be equated with conservatives and MAGA? Hell ya! The liberals will thoroughly enjoy that, that is their pleasure, their superiority demands an enemy and pro-life fits the bill perfectly. These people are religious zealots , they hate very deeply.
This is the reason I subscribe to MT on Substack. If you told me 5 years ago I would no longer subscribe to the Times and WAPO, I would have doubted it for sure. Not any more. There is so much better journalism than the Times and the WAPO.
"Colleagues who might have been previously paralyzed into “silence” started to cautiously vocalize their aggravation with Felicia, whom they probably always privately thought of as nuts." People like Felicia are all over the place now and are destructive to organizations. Truly destructive. Felicia, I hear they are looking for freedom fighters in Ukraine.
If only Jonathan Swift were here to write a new Gulliver’s Travels. So much material.
Were we always this mad, only we just didn’t notice? Or this a genuinely new thing?
I would give anything for a news outlet that said "This is what happened. Here are are links to the opinions. Knock yourselves out."
It is nice to see you publish something. I was starting to worry you'd been forced underground after going against the Ukraine narrative.
Michael - always a very colorful and informative perspective. Thank you!
Me thinks we shall see an explosion in the use of verbal litmus tests imposed by those who claim a high regard for traditional liberal democracy, but really think that any one possessing a thought or idea that doesn’t wholly align with their own isn’t entitled to any rights…in their view that’s the only way our hard fought “democracy” can be saved…
Rough weather ahead…. We are about to encounter the “leftist” version of Puritanical rule all screaming “burn those MAGA witches!”
Already here.
I agree. I don’t think the black shirts will be able to sustain the sympathy of ordinary people this time. The irony of the Floyd riots was that much of America was disgusted by excessive police power used against a helpless black man - as it seemed at the time. By and large, the US is largely over its systemic racism and most don’t care what color you are, or actively sympathize with poor people of color. (Of course exceptions exist) This time abortions are not even outlawed- you can go to a dem state and get one. The rage seems over the top, particularly when you consider their recent complete lack of interest in the root issue: does the state have power over your body? I’m forced to conclude that the rage is opportunistic. The goal has little to do with the actual issue. The goal is to first break and then gain control over the government apparatus. It’s seems like idealism but it’s factionalism. It’s about who has power: the flyover people or the “educated” coastals.
Where you been YO?
Is there a new media ethos? I don't think so. People pleased with the overthrow of Roe vs Wade will be compared to Hitler/Fascism/Nazism and all other atrocities, as usual.
"Join me in bellowing with laughter...." I spent a good deal of my time doing that while reading this. Thanks for a day-brightener.
Probably the most clarifying piece on this subject of what is and isn't acceptable anymore. Here's my own tiny two bits: As a former journalist of many years I find myself recoiling at nearly every use of the word "lie" in major media to characterize what someone has said. I don't believe such usage would ever have passed muster at any level of editing at any publication that I ever worked for.
It has occurred to me that the media’s overly used resort to the term “lie” in characterizing political speech (even if unintentionally a probably accurate description of any politician’s statements) is nothing more than an attempt to get back at Joe Wilson’s utterance at Obama’s address to congress. They were offended that “the chosen one” was subjected to that, and they want to pay it back in spades to those who they identify (any Republican) as in league. In other words it has no substance, it is merely a political tactic.