Month: February 2023

Lie to me, lover

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

It’s challenging to not feel wholly vindicated that Rupert Murdoch admitted to lying to his audience about the “Big Lie”.

But here we are. Every accusation seems to be a confession, that’s what the “they” are saying.

Lying is okay so long as it keeps the base angry and motivated, right? So long as it sells advertising. I don’t understand how the audience isn’t questioning all things said on the Fox Entertainment Network.

But truth ain’t in the cards for some people. It feels good to be lied to, because it supports insecure feelings of wanting so desperately to be right, that nothing shall stand in the way.

That saying that Fox News & Facebook did to your parents what they thought video games would do to us.

Now just add Twitter, NewsMax, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, etc etc etc.

I don’t watch/consume them anymore than I watch MSNBC, CNN, et al. They’re all brain rotters.

The moral stance of shunning

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

This blog post by A.R. Moxon is a great take on the immoralities of politically motivated hate speech and recognizing the mandate to shun those who push racist ideologies.

There has to come a point when we finally insist to take the evidence before us and to draw moral conclusions—because unless we do, we won’t ever be able to address the problems before us. If we don’t make moral judgments about speech, we’ll find ourselves on a treadmill of discourse, always running but never getting anywhere, endlessly compelled to apply an indestructible skepticism to the evidence, and an indestructible credulity to specious conjecture and lies.

It’s time for us to understand people for what they insist on being. To understand that participation with the popularized genocidal urges gripping our country is an unacceptable moral failing, as is support for the politicians and pundits who are pursing it, as is membership in the political party around which it is organized and energized. To understand that unforgivable moral failings deserve not our ears, but our backs.

Related, this interview with Bryan Cranston is a shining example of why the term “Make America Great Again” is racist.

There comes a point when the people you associate with have taken their racism and allegiances too far. I’ve written about life-long relationships that had to be walked away from because they prioritize immoralities over friendships. It’s only a matter of time before those behaviors leak out into your head and you begin to rationalize poor comportment over moral values of integrity and honesty.

Push people to higher standards. And if they push back and insist, shun them and walk away. We all deserve better.

Also related: this article on how lying to yourself and others can build your self-confidence. Psycho.

who’s groomin’ who?

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment
I’ve been following a blogger who has been collecting articles of pastors arrested and charged with crimes against children and teenagers. Since November, he’s posted that 83 arrests have been made toward church leaders for molesting, raping or for child porn or all the above. Thirty one since the beginning of February.

Do you know how many transvestites have been arrested for abusing children? None.

And yet the culture wars rage against secularism, humanism and diversity. Meanwhile the number of hate crimes is going up, usually by right-wing extremists.

I follow the culture wars with masochistic interest. Probably because back in high school, the curriculum went out of its way to demonize secular world views. After high school, I carried those ideas with pride, because at the time, our teachers had built us up to be warriors for Christ.

When I heard people talking at parties or wherever, I would butt in and talk about how wrong they were. When interviewed for teaching scholarships, I berated secular teachers for not fairly representing the “facts” of science and history. It’s no wonder I wasn’t given those teaching scholarships.

The more I paraded around as a know-it-all, the more embarrassed I was by “real life.” Parading around with these Christian philosophies that every ideology other than the ones from school or church were wrong, ended up being the death knell toward my belief system.

Continue reading “who’s groomin’ who?” →

Why some people say AKS (or ax) instead of ask

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

Well, you do learn something new everyday. Check out this editorial piece for more insight:

First, it’s important to understand that, as English goes, “ax” is a perfectly normal thing to have happened to a word like “ask.” Take the word “fish.” It started as “fisk,” with the same -sk ending that “ask” has. Over time, in some places people started saying “fisk” as “fiks,” while in others they started saying “fisk” as “fish.” After a while, “fish” won out over “fiks,” and here we are today. The same thing happened with “mash.” It started as “mask.” Later some people were saying “maks” and others were saying “mash.” “Mash” won.

Via Kottke

TIL about the “American Redoubt” movement

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The above tweet is from a guy who did a little exposé work on a mass movement of people to isolated North Western areas to escape from American government and establish white nationalist, evangelical groups.

My favorite book from 2022 was “Educated” by Tara Westover which gave a tiny glimpse into a Mormon version of this kind of perspective.

This Redoubt movement growing. And thriving. And these groups, by certain brainwashing and eschatological ideologies will poison the minds of great groups of people.

This particular kind of movement isn’t surprising and Jack Jenkins is not the first person to report on this. He’s behind, really, as it seems that if you google “American Redoubt,” you may be stunned by the results.

Continue reading “TIL about the “American Redoubt” movement” →

The Guardian: The American climate migration has already begun

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

From Jake Bittle at The Guardian:

We as Americans don’t often hear about this chaotic process of displacement and relocation, but the scale of movement is already overwhelming: more than 3 million Americans lost their homes to climate disasters last year, and a substantial number of those will never make it back to their original properties. Over the coming decades, the total number of displaced will swell by millions and tens of millions, forcing Americans from the most vulnerable parts of the country into an unpredictable, quasi-permanent exile from the places they know and love.

This migration won’t be a linear movement from point A to point B, and neither will it be a slow march away from the coastlines and the hottest places. Rather, the most vulnerable parts of the United States will enter a chaotic churn of instability as some people leave, others move around within the same town or city, and still others arrive only to leave again. In parts of California that are ravaged by wildfire, disaster victims will vie against millions of other state residents for apartments in the state’s turbulent housing market. In cities like Miami and Norfolk, where sea levels are rising, homeowners may watch their homes lose value as the market shies away from flood-prone areas. The effects will be different in every place, but almost everywhere the result will be the same: safe shelter will get scarcer and more expensive, loosening people’s grip on the stability that comes with a permanent home.

Read the rest.

This is how I expect most conservatives to feel

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

This morning, we drove to a nearby town to meet my family for breakfast. On the way, we heard an NPR article of an interview with a conservative political commentator named Tara Setmayer. I never heard of her before this.

You can listen/read it for yourself here.

The big part that stood out to me (all in italics).

MARTÍNEZ: You left the Republican Party in 2020. Can you tell us what prompted that decision?

SETMAYER: Absolutely. After 27 years with the Republican Party, as I saw the embrace of Trumpism overtaking the Republican Party that I initially joined, I recognized that there was no longer a place for someone like me in the party. After everything that had taken place during the Trump administration and now on top of his threatening our free and fair election system, questioning our constitutional order and party leadership, not fully rebuking that, I decided I could no longer be a part of such an illiberal organization.

MARTÍNEZ: If the Republican Party were to, say, disavow Donald Trump, would that be the last or only big obstacle to really having an effort by the Republican Party to try to diversify?

SETMAYER: It has to start there. We’ve seen the xenophobia. We’ve seen the racism. We have seen how hostile Trumpism has been to diversification in this country, to minorities, to immigrants. The idea of America first has been very exclusive; it’s not inclusive. And until the Republican Party has a full repudiation of that, there’s no credible attempt at saying that this is a party that is inclusive and that they’re welcoming of diversity. There’s a fine line between being inclusive and tokenizing minorities. Just because they put up a couple of brown faces and a few women, that does not mean that the party as a whole and their policies and the behavior of people within the party is in line with being inclusive.

I was perplexed by her use of “Illiberal organization”. But in this context, it means narrow minded or intolerant. Alt-right. Among other things.

What Trumpism is doing to American conservative politics, especially among young people, is turning their stomachs. Most youth are pro-gay, not religious, fiscally conservative, curiously aware of the global warming crisis and welcoming to diversity. And while the xenophobic Reagan-era Republicans are dying out, they are not going to be replaced by more of the same, which is why Florida and Texas are trying their damnedest to undermine education in their states. Poorly educated people tend to, but do not exclusively, vote republican. How do you create more political people instead of attracting them by shedding old traditions of anti-gay, anti-diversity cultures? Why, you strip them of education, silly billies!

The Republican Party has an inside-out soul searching to do. And it’s NOT the path their leadership with Trump or DeSantis is taking them. The closest guy they got to keeping their momentum was probably Paul Ryan and our dear dead friend John McCain, who should have been a boon for the Party by embracing Affordable Heath Care, but gullible people are subject to the public relational machine of big money and propaganda.

Netherlands, the quiet superpower

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

A friend of mine shared this video from a YouTube content creator who goes by Jack Chapple who makes videos on economics, business, science, etc.

You can watch it for yourself, but in sum, Chapple gives a breakdown of the history of the Netherlands, it’s rise to a global superpower because of its strategic method for international trade ports through the globe, and the current state of its strong hold on an essential part of our everyday lives, computer chips & trade.

The video is well made and interesting. Its thesis is revelatory and a bit scary. While America, with Joe Biden at the helm, has secured deals with Dutch computer chip makers at a company called ASML, the Dutch also have a hold on trade partnerships with China. Biden is working to bring chip making to our soil so we can become strong and have our name at the top of the scoreboard when it comes to scientific and economic successes.

Continue reading “Netherlands, the quiet superpower” →