ViperMan

Your post reads like an invitation to becoming better-informed. If that's an authentic feeling, you might consider checking out this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-re-considered-with-peter-boghossian/id1650150225 It's from a (previously) liberal professor who has witnessed the change in tone and tenor in the conversation that has taken place inside American universities (and bled over) over the last 10 years. He was one (of many) who have been subjected to the increasingly illiberal attitudes and actions that are finding aid and comfort in our society. At times it has some hokey elements, but overall it is sharp and on point. Boghossian and his co-host correctly identify the broader trend in some of our cultural institutions (i.e. NPR) that are working to enable such illiberal attitudes, that being: lies are now espoused and propagated as truth, and these lies are in turn used to enable illegitimate power. He and his co-host pick through numerous stories and how they were reported on NPR. He then contrasts their reporting with what actually happened and lays bare the striking contrast between those two things. A podcast with this type of meta-reporting is something which was sorely overdue, and deserves much accolade. Case in point: the Kyle Rittenhouse saga. NPR worked overtime casting that story in a false light. They systematically dive into the details, how easy it was to get it right, and how NPR got it so exceptionally wrong: to listen to NPR is to become misinformed. Their reporting is conducted in a soothing, breathy tone, and in delectable, oh so perfectly-enunciated English, but it is largely a disinformation network. Your complaint about Republican over-focus on "dog whistle" issues is fair, but it's also wholly incomplete. There are real constitutional issues that were on trial in the court of public opinion, which are not diminished by the other "issues" you raised. NPR played (and plays) a major part in the mosaic of propaganda that makes up our information space. For my part in the mid 2010s, I underwent the same transformation as espoused in many of the show's featured vignettes with regard to NPR. I listened to it everyday on the way to work - yes, I am an ex-NPR acolyte - but somewhere in there it just became insufferable. I couldn't point at any one thing, but my belief is that their transformation coincided directly with the 2016 presidential election. Wrapping up: it's all well and good if you don't believe the "media is stacked against us" argument, but there's a source for you that lays it out in black and white. To all my conservative friends: it's a good podcast in that it goes far deeper than just shouting at the TV and yelling "get off my lawn." In short, it's actual reporting.

Girls, girls...it wasn't just the DNC that acted to suppress the laptop story...more than 50 MAJOR intelligence officials came out in unison - WITHOUT EVIDENCE (or maybe with???) - and stated that it was a Russian hoax. That was false. Those same officials are eerily quiet right now. Accountability much anyone? The number of officials who have gotten it wrong and felt zero (0) need to go back and correct the record or publicly re-evaluate their thinking over the past number of years is sickening, and it portends very, very bad things for the future of our country because not only do the PTB not care about having gotten it wrong, this shows they no longer care what us proles think, and it demonstrably proves that they are not politically neutral. Politically neutral entities have no reason to not go back and correct the record. Amirite? https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 Generally speaking, heads of TLAs don't all speak out together about things that "aren't a big deal." It was and IS a big deal. I invite you to conduct a brief thought-experiment. Imagine for one minute that the propaganda you're steeped in is invisible to you. What does the world look like? Are you sure about that 5 minutes!!?? Stated differently: The TRUTH “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Makes you think.

Watched this a bunch, and I've yet to hear him call for a riot, coup, or insurrection. Now, it's some Dem's turn to post the part where he does. I'll wait.

#doubleracist

LOL, so you get to use your special pass for the day spent in bed with the shakes and chills as your body reacts to the shot?!? Sounds like a great idea to me. 🤣

Duh, guessing is racist. I'm surprised you didn't know that.

All the Rs are lamenting the midterms. But for me, there's plenty of silver lining: I'll take Roe v Wade. I'll take the death of collegiate Affirmative Action. I'll take Biden and Harris having to run on the dem ticket again. I'll take Florida. I'll take the House flipping (pending). I'll take more government gridlock. I'll take the repudiation of Trumpism - it needs to die. I'll take all of that 10 times out of 10 for the republican's coming up short other day. It's a perfectly fine trade to me. You can't win everything.

Ah, ok. I'm tracking what you're saying now. I agree.

Aren't those things one and the same?

Some things just take time, and other things are completely beyond your control. The sooner you realize that, the less grief you'll feel over not being able to convert or connect with the crazies. Do you honestly think you're going to be able to "logic" your way into someone's feelings? What I'm saying is that there may be no "how," as you put it. If there was a "how," then by corollary, there would be a correspondent "how" to get you to think boys can be girls. Do you think there is a "how" that will accomplish that? Yeah I didn't think so. No. Sometimes, you just need to batten down the hatches, preach the truth to anyone who will listen, protect who you can, and let the shit collapse under its own weight - like seems to be happening right now in places like Oregon. To not be too cynical though, honestly, the best thing to do is probably approach all this indirectly - i.e. don't focus on "defeating" your opponent or converting people to your team. Create (or participate in) good institutions that reflect your values and be truly welcoming to other people who don't necessarily think like you. Put another way: show them, don't tell them.

My hat's off to you. I used to listen to NPR on my way to work as well, but it became absolutely too much for me. Now I only listen to it when I want to piss myself off - which is to say, never. It's blatant propaganda. Now that I recognize it as such, I see less value in *understanding* where they are coming from. Their message is from a different universe, using different facts, using different logic. Once I grasped that, I understood there was no longer any return for my time and attention. Yep. I wish more Rs and Ds understood this. We would have more productive conversations about how to help people out. Oh well.

Fair enough, but they're so far gone, fact, reason, and logic aren't going to work either...hence, I'll choose ridicule and laughter.

Oh. There is NO doubt about that. You either have a DEI slide in your sales pitch and have HR "on board" with hiring people based on immutable characteristics, or you can kiss any privilege the government grants you in whatever field you operate in goodbye. Period. Appease the God in government, or GTFO. Look at every airline right now. United is trying to hire 50% "POC" (whatever that means) and women. And it's not because they thought it up in a corporate meeting all by themselves.

#1, but with a whole lotta "been woefully misled" into thinking all manner of asinine things.

For a newb, can someone define BOD and TA?

No clearer trap has ever been set.

I normally agree with your posts, but I think you miss the mark on this topic. Of course people's experiences affect their view of the world, their outlook, how they approach problems, and how they think. BUT, the left loves to use this as a substitute for their actual argument, which is that people with different skin colors necessarily have different experiences, and are necessarily different from each other. This is unequivocally untrue. Put another way, it's the argument that gets trotted out anytime the left wants to increase participation of group 'X' because of some reason, but they need a reason that sounds legitimate because of course the actual argument is racist. How do I know this? Precisely because of the argument you just made. No one - not one politician, not one general officer, not one pastor, not one poster on an internet forum, and not you, has ever been able to articulate why someone of a certain race has an essential characteristic that makes them fundamentally different from someone of a different race. Because of course, such arguments are inherently and correctly recognized as racist; hence the deferral to substitute arguments. The left makes an argument for including certain races based on characteristics that aren't tied to those races, and then justifies it with an appeal to different 'experiences.' Katie Hobbs' most recent hum and haw session in this Univision interview is exhibit #1. A 'true believer' was completely unable to describe why she thought so highly of her extended Hispanic family (as she should be unable to because of course she's not actually racist, she just plays one to her constituency). So we learned what she loves is "hanging out with them" and "practicing her Español". M'kay. What is glaringly obvious in this interview is that she doesn't believe a word of what she's saying, knows it's bullshit, but has chosen to say it anyway. Our society is endangered when our politicians are so willing to go there. This is not an indictment of Katie Hobbs. It's an indictment of everyone who thinks this way. It's effing poison. It's cowardly. "Yes" to the woman question. "No" to the Hispanic and black question. Women are different from men. Men are different from women. Regardless of the current social discourse. Blacks, Hispanics, and whites are not fundamentally different from each other. I know the left thinks the right is missing "context" in how our society operates. What the left is missing is that there is never a reason (good or bad) to discriminate upon the basis of race. Somehow we once knew this, but we seem determined to forget it and regress. Sigh.

Credit given where due. Good Job.

Yeah, I'm not too sure about that...

We - modern people - necessarily cannot recognize every bit of propaganda in our society. So with that said, understand that you may be falling prey to the actual purpose of propaganda you've unknowingly consumed. As obvious as previous generations' propaganda seems to us, it likely compelled behaviors from people unwittingly. Point: what you may be focused on may be bait to get you to behave exactly as you're beginning to behave. I hope you realize that at least one of propaganda's purposes is meant to demoralize you and get you to not care and finally to disengage. That creates maneuver space for your enemy. I'm not saying you should spend more time on reddit. I'm saying you might consider exactly why it is you feel the way you feel and to not disengage at large. You should speak your mind, vote, and be a beacon to other people who think like you do. Because they do. I hear your about peer pressure. Most students and academia nowadays have succumbed in one way or another to this pressure, and even whole parts of "science" have now fallen to it. The irony of college being about free-thinking in the modern era should instantly collapse when presented with the fact that it has become a nearly complete mono culture, rife with conformity. It's disheartening and demoralizing...until you realize that these things only have as much power over you as you give them. Because America.

I have also had it up to here with USAA. They don't know it yet, but I am switching to **something** come December when their 2.5% cashback card goes TU, but I haven't quite figured out exactly who yet. I'm thinking Fidelity, but does anyone have a recommendation for a good, one-stop-shop, for investments, banking, insurance, etc? I want the ability to project out expenses and financial scenarios in my banking app without it being a pain in the ass. USAA's app has changed so much in the last 5 months that I'm basically done with it.

Let me clarify for you @BashiChuni. That post was getting long and fairly unwieldy and I didn't want the main point to be lost. I guess it was. One of my other points was to say that there is a log jam of BS making its way through our collective system right now under the cover of "nuance" - in quotes. "Nuanced" positions on who is at fault in the Russia/Ukraine war fall squarely into that category. It's become highly fashionable to stake out a "nuanced" position on some topic in the world. "Look at how smart my opinion is!" "Look ma, both sides of the issue!" All I can say is no shit, there are two sides to an issue - people are fighting, duh. Take the Russian war in Ukraine as an example. "Nuance" has gotten some of us thinking that we are in the wrong on this one. "Nuance" gets us talking about the Gulf of Tonkin, COVID response, the Iran contra affair, Iraq '03, the moon landing, that the Earth is flat (which it is), etc, etc. Not all those topics, of course, but the point is that someone will always point to some instance in history where we probably fucked something up (or there's at least the perception that we did) and use it to score points presently. In short, the purpose of "nuance" is to place hand-cuffs on a given entity - in this case us. "As if" is my only response. Always thinking of the world in terms of "nuance" and "shades of gray" are their own memes. The world is more black and white than most of us now-a-days probably think. Putin has absolutely no moral authority or legitimate reason for his adventure in Ukraine - how incompetent America is at home or abroad doesn't change that one iota. Putin started this war. He drew first blood. It's his war to end. Us backing down or being "fearful" of escalating is going to get us more of the same. He needs to be made to fear for his life. IMO, we don't need "nuanced" opinions coming from soldiers who might be called upon to fight a war that sprouts out of this current conflict. Just ask Putin's troops how their moral is doing. Or how their shit feels when it's moving in the wrong direction. Probably a lot worse than "pretty darn good." "NATO expansion became an excuse post facto..." for Russian militarism and autocracy. "The ability of countries to determine their own foreign policy and their alliances, is written into the UN Charter...written into the 1975 Helsinki act...written into the 1990 charter of Paris for a new Europe...written into the 1997 NATO-Russia founding act...Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Moscow signed the UN Charter, it signed the Helsinki final act...signed the NATO-Russia founding act that places no limits on NATO expansion..." etc, etc. I've posted this before, but it contains a density of fact that really should be grasped by anyone wearing a uniform who might have a "nuanced" opinion on who is to blame for this current war. I don't want to come across as saying that people shouldn't have nuanced opinions or that all stones shouldn't be overturned, so don't walk away with that message, either. I'm just saying that when you have very strong opinions, which are not based in fact (because in fact you don't know and will never know), there is another - unspoken - reason why you have that opinion, whether or not you admit it to yourself. I MFing guarantee you that no one getting shelled in Ukraine thinks of this as "nuanced".

I recently listened to a podcast hosted by the Federalist (right wing), and I was startled by the nonchalance John Davidson was able to claim the US sabotaged the pipeline. He did so without evidence (https://www.spreaker.com/user/10614200/populism-keeps-surging-across-the-west). I posted the link for reference, not as a recommendation to listen to it. Don't. I consider(ed?) the Federalist a legitimate source (albeit right wing), but needless to say, I'll be far more suspect of what else I hear come from them going forward. Why I bring it up is because I see the same thing from some on this message board, and from many others on the right side of the isle (which I am part of). I find this highly incongruent, actually. In my view, this default position has less to do with the goodness or badness of the action per se, and much more to do with the fact that it's being carried out by the Biden administration and is therefore necessarily wrong. Get over it. Putin is the one making threats. Not Europe. Not Biden. Not the USA. Not Trump. Pick your side. Your fear of "risking escalation" strengthens Putin's ability to escalate. Want to see him STFU? Next time he makes a nuclear threat, we indicate we will respond in kind on behalf of Ukraine. Fuck it, let's say we did blow it up: Putin threatens to cut off Europe from gas as strategic leverage, and we blow the pipeline up, thereby taking away his ability to leverage acquiescence from European governments, you know, a "burn the fleet" "shoot the hostage" type of logic. Fairly brilliant if you ask me. Maybe we should blow up NS1 in a couple months. Followed by others as time goes on. Maybe Putin will start to realize that oil flows in one direction, but money flows in the other. Yes, the administration is incompetent, has lost all SA, and seems to be doing its best to drive wedges wherever they can. And yeah, on about 99.9% (repeating of course) of issues, they've made objectively bad decisions. Be that as it may, it doesn't necessarily mean everything they do is wrong by default - all things and decisions should be judged according to their own merit, and in the case of the Russian war in Ukraine, we are doing good things, notwithstanding the likely fact that our spectacle of retreat in Afghanistan probably signaled to Putin (et al) that now would be a good time to get started with those war plans - but that's another discussion. That is what I think is a blind spot on the right - the unwillingness to give any credit even in places where it may be due. Lest we forget, this war started before the current admin was in power. No one on this message board knows - or ever will know - exactly what happened or who sabotaged the pipeline. Unless you're someone special, that is a fact. Another fact is that in each of us there is something that wants the world to be like a Tom Clancy movie - with clear cut lines of conspiracy and wrong doing. That fact is really what drives such strong opinions on matters like this, because in all truth not one of us knows. You don't know because you typed some URL in your interweb browser and read someone else's opinion/analysis. For my part, I strongly, strongly discount the possibility we did it, if for no other reason than the risk/reward ratio is way, way too high. The payoff? Very little. The potential cost if it was discovered that we unilaterally destroyed the pipeline? Well, we just achieved one of Putin's major objectives by getting NATO to act against itself. It's so unlikely, it's crazy and conspiratorial to consider it a possibility, given these realities. Insane even. The chances Putin did it? Nearly 100%. It lets him generate propaganda within and outside his country, and if it is ever discovered for certain that he did blow it up, well there are no political consequences because it belonged to him anyway. So there is a far higher payoff to risk ratio on his side as far as I can tell. All in all, I don't really care. We probably didn't do it, but if we did, I'm fine with it because it ultimately takes away leverage Putin thought he had. Putin is wrong. We are right. He should stop. It's that simple.

Your spew is difficult to keep pace with - I'll give you that. In fact, I have a feeling you might be having fun with GPT-3 (https://openai.com/api/)? Aaaaaannnnnnnywaaaayyyyy. The part that is MMT is the idea that deficit spending is 'free'. A Stony Brook economics professor, Stephanie Kelton, wrote a (terrible) book about it called The Deficit Myth, in which she spells out a lot of the theory that you promulgate in this thread. In a sentence, the idea is that the government can spend and spend and spend and all will be ok. The implicit assumption that is taken for granted, is that this only works for so long, and is additionally propped up by the fact that we hold the world's reserve currency. Money is a key factor that helps the economy function, but productivity is the core of the economic system. Elon Musk, though you dismissed him without refuting him, sufficiently understands and stated that money's function is to allow goods and services to be transferred through its medium, and to transfer spending across time and space. You seem to be wrapping yourself up about a relic of the modern financial system - not every dollar in existence has a physical bill. Nor has anyone you're speaking to asserted such. My objection is not about money being printed - when there is productivity, there needs to be money in order to facilitate transaction. The problem becomes when there is no productivity, misdirected productivity, or even negative productivity. The phraseology "printing money" refers specifically to those situations wherein the government has exhausted all sources of revenue, determines they need more, and goes to the federal reserve for a "loan." That, by definition, is spending without productivity, and is thus inflationary. It creates demand where there was no supply (i.e. no supply of previous labor). Private banks are different for a number of important reasons. 1. They cannot initiate unlimited loans. 2. They cannot (do not) provide a loans without collateral. 3. Private banks can become insolvent and go bankrupt. The Fed is precisely to opposite of each of those factors. Home mortgages are not unproductive. Your mortgage (if you have one) provides you "housing services" each and every month - ultimately providing you housing for an indeterminate amount of time if you succeed in paying it all the way off. Look up imputed income. You'll gain an understanding about just how productive a mortgage can be. Lastly, I think people do consider that inflation. Who doesn't think the stock market and housing are at all time highs because there's a dearth of money rushing around in the system? For real. I have one question for you. What is your purpose?

See your own thread. No need to be cagey. You have clearly advocated for the magical ability to place something onto a balance sheet, conjuring it out of thin air. That is MMT. People who advocate for that framework forget that money is ultimately worthless - it depends on a real economy to function. The actual effect of printing money distorts and damages the real economy. Here, this is simple, clear, and understandable. "Money is a database for resource allocation." Edit to answer: Yes. I agree. Further edit: I'll engage on this topic over at Money and Finance - don't need to digress on this thread.