Political Civilian

While it's difficult to penetrate the Republican bubble when it comes to Trump, I don't really understand why the wealthy cheating and manipulating the tax system more generally doesn't draw more outrage.  I get that there's something of an intrinsic wealth - worship among conservatives that includes the " prosperity gospel " and all that. Combine that with the "taxation is theft" gibberish that they frequently espouse, and you’ve got what I can best describe as a Darwinist economic mindset. But every dollar of debt the government takes on, and then every fee that is increased, every fine or nickel - and - dime way that our payments to our government increase because of that is because the wealthy are avoiding , evading, and lying about their taxes without consequences. The rest of us… can’t do that. Even the parts of tax avoidance that ARE legal requires attorneys and accountants to exploit the loopholes that most people can’t afford. They don’t eve

It’s worth taking a step back for a moment to appreciate the sheer number and power of the cultural forces arranged against the Republican party at present. At the top of course, is almost all entertainers, including high profile film and television stars. You have musicians - most of whom at this point have asked Trump to stop playing their songs . Then sports stars - and with few high profile exceptions, all are either openly “liberal - ish” activists kneeling in support of BLM or keeping quiet so as not to lose fans (don’t worry, we still see you, Mr. Bundechen!). Most high - profile CEOs are either proud activists, devoutly focused on issues relevant to their industry, or just keeping their tax cuts to themselves and not trying to attract too much attention. Public relations are nice, but profits are more important, after all. And yes, one can even throw in a lot of the mainstream “news” media in there as well - the majority of which are not exactly the Republican demographic - the

Image credit: ??? There’s an anti - Biden ad that I’ve seen on the regular that’s as lazy - and as simple - as political ads get. It’s an hilariously out of context clip from a Biden speech that is simply “your taxes are going to get raised, not cut”. It’s cheap, it’s lazy, it’s reductive, and it’s probably an effective message for millions of Americans. And that’s because the sad fact about our collective political focus being dominated by national political fights is that national politics doesn’t actually affect millions of people’s lives in a practical sense. Yes, millions are affected by things like mortgage interest deductions, flood insurance, healthcare regulation, and federal laws and court decisions set huge precedents that affect our state and local governments. That @#$% rolls downhill in a big way. Informed people mostly get that. But millions of people don’t know someone who has suffered from COVID, let alone died from it. Millions of people aren’t concerned with - or do

It’s been heartening to watch traditional and mainstream media outlets slowly stop using the “some disagree” formulation when discussing climate change .  With five named storms in the Atlantic, most of the west coast on fire, and record temperatures everywhere, “science doesn’t know” is falling so far out of the discourse that it doesn’t even merit attention at all except as a punchline. To “not believe in climate change” is to not believe in gravity.  Finally. We know that there will always be a group of wealthy elites that will resist changes to the status quo for pragmatic reasons - they’re contractually obligated by shareholders to do so. But the continued banishment of “climate change is a hoax” from the discourse begs the question of what to do about the rank - and - file climate change deniers who are quickly joining the flat earthers in ignominy . The two primary conservative objections to action on climate change take two tracts - economic and cultural. The economic question

When it comes to “cancel culture”, I think a lot about Matt Damon . Really. A few years ago, Damon gave an awkward statement seemingly in defense of sexual harassers. A few years before that, he said some deeply stupid things about diversity  in regards to his “Project Greenlight” series. But he, unlike a lot of other public figures, hasn't really been subject to much “cancelling” by the public or the broader entertainment industry. I’d argue that the reason for that is that there really wasn’t enough evidence to create a full fledged narrative around those mostly isolated incidents, and ample, persuasive evidence that Damon seemed to be decent enough guy from Bah - ston who may have made mistakes, but generally wanted to do the right thing (or maybe he had a PR team dedicated to make it SEEM like he was a decent guy and they just did a very good job). Which brings us to the narrative of Donald Trump’s contempt for US soldiers and public service in general. Just about every article

As much as super clever internet people like to think that “news” is what’s on the internet, millions of people still get daily news they trust from anchors that live in their town . It's all about trust in the local news on their TV. It’s mostly a benign personality - based phenomenon, but even without malefactors like Sinclair Media pushing propaganda, it’s still a dynamic that is ripe for exploitation. And local news overall paints a picture of a surreal world in ways that are far more dangerous than Fox News does. It's been a complaint of mine for years that while newspapers still hold to the "story on page 1, retraction on page 36" standard, local news has a "story at the top of the hour, retraction almost never" standard. Gruesome news stories lead the hour, every hour, and then get little to no follow up. It looks like this: Crime. Accusation. Arrest. Trial. Then... something, something... verdict. Sometimes. There are higher priorities, after all. T

I mean, one certainly exists, it’s a fairly easy narrative to exploit, it doesn’t sound too conspiratorial, and it has the huge benefit of being true (and I’ll lay it out below in just a few sentences). Now, not everything Republicans are saying about Biden is false ( but yeah, kinda ), but most of the major talking points that are being endlessly repeated are almost laughably unpersuasive. And lies. They’re lies. The first of course is that Biden is a leftist (bless your hearts, no. Next!). The second is that he’s influenced by leftists, or some secret cabal. Aside from the not - too - subtle anti - Semitic undertones of that, there is the dopey conspiratorial factor AND the fact that this is kind of a selling point to a lot of progressives - that President Biden’s views could be influenced. So that’s a pretty terrible talking point, but it does dovetail nicely with the third odd lie about Biden - that he is in cognitive decline . That sort of collapses a bit when you hear him speak

The fairly wrote definition for “terrorism” that I’ve always used has been something along the lines of this: Terrorism is violence used against civilian populations in order to achieve a political outcome.  But we can’t call things terrorism because we’ve imbued the word with such mystique and taboo that we can’t use it plainly for what it means - trying to terrorize civilian populations to get politicians to change laws. Religion or ideology in general don’t really enter into it - if someone is willing to hurt others for political reasons, it’s an act of terrorism. Full stop. And as painful as it is for most of us to admit - we have a fair amount of terrorists among our neighbors, friends and family.  But we should say it plainly - the Kenosha murderer was absolutely a terrorist. Anyone burning down buildings in protest is... also a terrorist. They’re entirely different orders of magnitude, but still essentially acts of terrorism. I can’t believe we have to argue about this at the mo