A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 649 of 725
Shove it, idiot. We're living through 2 years of fascism right now.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I found an entire book that charmingly explains people like you and my Trumptard relatives. It is called DENIAL
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Shove it, idiot. We're living through 2 years of fascism right now.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
The Unspeakable Truth by Keith Kahn-Harris
– Preface –
I’ve always loved nonsense dressed up as scholarship. During my A-level studies in early modern history, one of my teachers gave me a copy of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail to read and report back on to the class. I loved it. Its outré thesis – that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to live in the South of France and spawned a secret society, the ‘Priory of Zion’, that has acted as a hidden hand in the history of Western civilisation – was thrillingly written. And of course, as I took pleasure in pointing out in my class presentation, it was no less improbable than the Christian story of crucifixion and resurrection.
I cannot say that my teacher’s point-by-point dismantling of the book’s thesis was a shock to me; I never seriously believed its claims. But the debunking was disillusioning because my first exposure to the world of alternative history was so much fun. I felt the same about other works I devoured as a teenager, such as Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of The Gods, a 1970s bestseller arguing that aliens visited earth and inspired the glories of ancient civilisations. Books like these seemed to me to be delightful in their portentous ludicrousness. Finding evidence that debunked their claims felt like a duty; it also felt like a disappointment. Although I was never taken in, I almost envied those who were.
My Jewish upbringing meant that I had been conscious of the Holocaust from an early age. As a teen who liked to read radical anti-fascist publications such as Searchlight, I also heard about Holocaust denial, although I never encountered it first-hand. This was pre-Internet, and it took commitment to track down such works – commitment that, as a soft suburban Jew, I didn’t have. But I did yearn to explore this demi-monde. What could be sillier than arguing the Holocaust never happened? It was all a big joke to me. A Jewish university friend and I used to fantasise about forming a Jewish metal band that espoused Holocaust denial and boasted that we really do kill Christian kids and use their blood in our Passover rituals. On holiday in Egypt, another Jewish friend and I visited bookstores to ask if they stocked Did Six Million Really Die? and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What larks!
Today, it’s harder for me to see the fun in all this. The breezy insouciance with which I consumed ‘alternative’ scholarship was based on the assumption that none of it really mattered. In my cynical, self-absorbed late teens and twenties during the smug 1990s there was no reason to think that neo-Nazis were anything other than marginal idiots; alternate histories and conspiracy theories similarly appeared to pose no threat to anyone.
I should have looked harder. It wasn’t just neo-Nazis and fringe cranks who were constructing alternative scholarship; big business and conservative politics were doing it too. Of course, I knew that there were those who denied nicotine was addictive, who tried to prove that environmental pollution wasn’t happening or wasn’t harmful. I was appalled at this, but it wasn’t my major worry. What I didn’t spot was either their long-term determination to prevail or the threads that tied them to the shady world that I refused to take seriously.
Mea culpa. We are a long way from the smug certainties of 1990s liberalism, and my attitude to those who challenge real scholarship is no longer one of indulgence. As I will show in this book, for decades, centuries even, something deeply poisonous has been growing. This poisonous process has produced diseased fruit in our ‘post-truth’ age.
My focus is on denial and denialism, which deploy a cluster of techniques that enable
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
If You’re Like Me, You’ll Want To Send This To Everyone You Know
By A.T. On October 19, 2022
Seriously: you will. Click here. Turn on sound. https://twitter.com/iampoliticsgirl/status/1582175918411304961?s=46&am
p;t=qEyCnqOtAMiq2FYNr3VtZg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Red State Murder Problem . . . And Everything Else
By A.T. On October 20, 2022
A thoughtful piece we should send viral:
. . . Murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.
For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations. In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry . . .
That’s one of my friend Carl’s key issues — crime.
Carl sends me one or two often nasty emails each day in what I have to assume is his sincere effort to heal the world. Why am I always picking on Trump and perpetuating the Russia “hoax”? (He knows it’s a hoax because he did not read the Mueller report.) Why am I not demanding an investigation of Hunter Biden? (See below.**) Why am I not blasting Democrats on crime?
The first thing to say about that last one — crime — is that whoever came up with the slogan “defund the police” had the right motivation but, taken literally, a horrible solution. Effective criminal justice reform may in some cases require more funding, not less. “Defund” is a position not held by a single Democrat I know of among the thousands running for office.
The second thing to say is that Carl is right: Crime sucks (well, duh) and we should all be looking for ways to reduce it.
Both kinds:
> White collar crime that involves money. (Here’s a start: funding the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats at the expense of honest wealthy taxpayers and all the rest of us. Dems support; R’s oppose.)
> And, even more concerningly, violent crime. (A start on that: Keeping kids too young to buy beer from buying assault weapons; imposing universal background checks for gun-buyers of any age. Dems support; R’s oppose.)
Another needed improvement — already underway — is to tweak some of the bail reforms Democrats (and some Republicans) have supported. Do we want not to ruin poor kids’ lives because they can’t make bail on minor non-violent infractions? Yes! That’s simple justice — and a good investment because a ruined life costs taxpayers a lot of dough and often leads to more crime. But should we help alleged violent offenders make bail? Clearly (in my view), rarely if ever.
The main takeaway on crime? We might well have less of it going forward — both kinds — if Carl chose to vote Democrat this year. Spread the word.
https://andrewtobias.com/the-red-state-murder-problem-and-everything-e
lse/
** Hunter Biden. Carl is convinced he’s guilty of a crime — and if Carl is right, the First Son should be indicted, tried, convicted, and punished. (The FBI, long dominated by Republicans, is investigating.) No one should be above the law. But Hunter Biden should only be of significance to voters if (a) he holds some role in running the government, which he does not; or (b) his dealings in China have corrupted his father in his dealings with China (maybe he secretly hopes to make a fortune building a Biden Hotel in Beijing?) But that’s clearly not been the case. E.g.: With New Crackdown, Biden Wages Global Campaign on Chinese Technology. And there are lots more examples of Biden’s standing firm. So even if Hunter needs to be punished for something, of what possible relevance is that to your vote? To whether we should codify Roe (as Dems want to) or entertain cuts to Social Security and Medicare (as Republican leaders want to). Please! Focus, Carl!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
If You’re Like Me, You’ll Want To Send This To Everyone You Know
By A.T. On October 19, 2022
Seriously: you will. Click here. Turn on sound. https://twitter.com/iampoliticsgirl/status/1582175918411304961?s=46&am
p;t=qEyCnqOtAMiq2FYNr3VtZg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Thanks. Cool. Nothing of interest to see here. I'll save the free bandwidth.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I found an entire book that charmingly explains people like you and my Trumptard relatives. It is called DENIAL
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Shove it, idiot. We're living through 2 years of fascism right now.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
The Unspeakable Truth by Keith Kahn-Harris
Oh cool. I found a book that charmingly explains you as well.
And one for Ted too.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Many who grow up living in peaceful, prosperous liberal democracies take their form of government for granted. Because they have never experienced an actual tyranny, they imagine that the democratically elected governments under which they live are themselves evil dictatorships conniving to take away their rights, whether that is the European Union or the administration in Washington. But reality has intervened. The Russian invasion of Ukraine constitutes a real dictatorship trying to crush a genuinely free society with rockets and tanks, and may serve to remind the current generation of what is at stake.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Shove it, idiot. We're living through 2 years of fascism right now.
--------------------------------------------------
Oh cool. I found a book that charmingly explains you as well.
In his time in the White House, Trump had made it his business to short-circuit representative democracy, embedded in Congress, political parties, and the full range of American institutions. He had weakened the checks and balances of the system, pushing out government watchdogs and pulling back oversight mechanisms. He had also tried to eliminate or push aside established political and social intermediaries. Populist systems always give a boost to those who are best funded and can shout the loudest, which is exactly what Trump was good at doing — drawing in money, setting up a myriad of political action committees, and drowning out everyone else. During his tenure, America veered toward plebiscitary democracy — a system driven by polling, popular opinion, and periodic personality-focused elections, precisely the kind of political territory carved out by Vladimir Putin over the twenty years of his rule in Russia.
Indeed, Russia offered a grim comparison and a portent of something much worse ahead. In the 1990s, President Yeltsin had fired on his parliament in the Russian “White House” to push through a constitution that gave him stronger executive powers. In the end, Yeltsin did not use those powers to their full effect. He too was a populist, but of a “softer” sort, and the Russian state was weaker under his tenure. Yeltsin’s appointed successor, Vladimir Putin, however, had proven to be of a harder disposition. In the following years, Putin took the constitution’s presidential powers and ran with them. He also enhanced them to the point of extending his own term in office essentially indefinitely. Likewise, President Trump’s interpretation of executive power and his attempt to usurp the presidency may have paved the way for another, less personally insecure and more capable populist president — someone who actually did his or her homework and was skilled in project management — to pull a Putin in America.
- from Fiona Hill, The Great Reckoning, Chapter 14 of There Is Nothing for You Here
Download the free book from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.nz/search.php?req=fiona+hill
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
- from Fiona Hill, The Great Reckoning
There isn't enough money in the world to get me to read a book by that dude.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Angry poor white trash don't have money because they don't read much more than trashy novels and Rush Limbaugh-style books complaining about libtards. The exact same thing (lack of money because of not reading worthwhile books) is happening in 21 countries around the world:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
- from Fiona Hill, The Great Reckoning
There isn't enough money in the world to get me to read a book by that dude.
Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place.
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004.
John F. Kennedy lost college-educated voters by a two-to-one margin yet won the presidency thanks to overwhelming support among white voters without a degree. Sixty years later, our second Catholic president charted a much different path to the White House, losing non-college-educated whites by a two-to-one margin while securing 60 percent of the college-educated vote. The latest New York Times/Siena poll of the 2022 midterms showed this pattern holding firm, with Democrats winning 55 percent of voters with bachelor’s degrees but only 39 percent of those without.
A more educated Democratic coalition is, naturally, a more affluent one. In every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the top 5 percent of America’s income distribution were more Republican than those in the bottom 95 percent. Now, the opposite is true: Among America’s white majority, the rich voted to the left of the middle class and the poor in 2016 and 2020, while the poor voted to the right of the middle class and the rich.
Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon; it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every western democracy. And though center-left parties throughout the West have shared some common failings, these inadequacies cannot tell us why many working-class voters have not merely dropped out of politics but rather begun voting for parties even more indifferent to their material interests.
Educated professionals tend to be more socially liberal than the general public. In fact, the correlation between high levels of educational attainment and social liberalism is among the most robust in political science. As early as the 1950s, researchers documented the tendency of college graduates to espouse more progressive views than the general public on civil liberties and gender roles. In the decades since, as the political scientist Elizabeth Simon writes, this correlation has held up with “remarkable geographical and temporal consistency.” Across national boundaries and generations, voters with college degrees have been more likely than those without to support legal abortion, LGBTQ+ causes, the rights of racial minorities, and expansive immigration.
They are also more likely to hold “post-material” policy priorities — which is to say, to prioritize issues concerning individual autonomy, cultural values, and big-picture social goals above those concerning one’s immediate material and physical security. This penchant is perhaps best illustrated by the highly educated’s distinctively strong support for environmental causes, even in cases when ecological preservation comes at a cost to economic growth.
Underlying these disparate policy preferences are distinct psychological profiles. The college educated are more likely to espouse moral values and attitudes associated with the personality trait “openness to experience.” High “openness” individuals are attracted to novelty, skeptical of traditional authority, and prize personal freedom and cultural diversity. “Closed” individuals, by contrast, have an aversion to the unfamiliar and are therefore attracted to moral principles that promote certainty, order, and security. Virtually all human beings fall somewhere between these two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I'd be concerned that you'd choke on your own dick and nobody would find you for weeks, but it's only two inches so you'll be fine.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME