Far too many people just follow orders.
That and Congress appears to have no objections to handing government agencies over to Musk. I expected as much from Trump loyalists. I’m disgusted that there’s no opposition party.
Category Archives: Thought for the Day
“The only way out is through.”
Identity Politics
As much as left-wing identity politics are counterproductive and annoying, right-wing identity politics are vile. Trump and co are right-wing identity politics 24/7/365.
Michael Ignatieff, I was born liberal. The ‘adults in the room’ still have a lot to learn:
By the late 1990s, the conservatives began to gain power by playing to the resentments of the ignored. The authoritarian right, especially, understood that it could build an entire politics on mocking the blindness of the liberal elite. It didn’t need solutions; stoking the rage was enough. We are now the embattled object of that rage. What will it take to earn the trust of those whose discontent we ignored? Liberalism in the next generation will need to save social solidarity from the “creative destruction” of the market by rebuilding the fiscal capacity of the liberal state and investing in the public goods that underpin a common life for all. Saying this, at a high level of generality, is easy enough: The tougher part will be finding the language and the cunning to convert a radical liberalism into a politics that wins elections and a governing strategy that pushes change through the veto-rich thicket of interests waiting to derail our best-laid plans.
Thought for the Day – January 18, 2025
Be patient with your grief.
Thought for the Day – January 14, 2025
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe…
One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty “hi,” is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one?
Los Angeles
It’s been almost 30 years since I spent time in Los Angeles. I contemplated a move. It would’ve been a different life. Seeing places I remember burned to the ground is surreal and too on the nose.
Thought for the Day – January 10, 2025
2025 Word of the Year will “quisling”. Language Innovation of the Year will be its adoption as an adjective. Use it in a sentence:
“Wow, why is Fetterman turning into a quisling shitstain?”
Thought for the Day – January 8, 2025
Overheard:
We’re not all in the same boat. But we’re in the same storm. And all boats sink.
We survive the storm together or not at all.
Thought for the Day – November 19, 2024
If [Rep. Nancy] Mace finds it difficult to use the toilet without thinking sexual thoughts or inspecting the genitals of the others in the bathroom she would be well advised to shut the stall door and keep her hatred and darkness to herself.
-Rep. Sean Casten
As some of you know, I have a trans son. I think it’s fine to thoughtfully debate whether trans girls can be in girls sports. Not debatable: Transgenderism is real & stirring up hatred against a minority community for political gain is despicable. That’s what this is. Period.
Thought for the Day – November 15, 2024
I get the desire to believe we can ideology our way past an electorate that wants to think it can eat 10 cheeseburgers a day and lose weight meeting a candidate shameless enough to tell them they can and a news ecosystem too scared to correct him. But we can’t.
-Andre Green