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Originally posted by second:
How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”

“A society that is both clear and articulate about its intentions is something of a rarity in modern history,” Perry Miller lectured. “Most of the nations of Europe and Asia grew up by chance and by accident either of geography or politics.” In other countries, so much had changed over so much time, he explained, “that even the most patriotic citizens would not dare say to what conscious purpose the nation was originally devoted.” Europe had legends and myths, a murky past misted over by a cloud of unknowing. But America had a recorded past — a written and articulate beginning. All one needed to do was gather up the texts. All one had to do was check the sources. All one really had to do, Miller insisted, was read a single sermon by Winthrop.

This need for a purpose — this story of a nation founded in purpose and defined by it ever since — resonated with a wide range of thinkers and writers following the close of World War II and the opening of the Cold War. In the late 1950s, for example, Henry Luce, the powerful editor of Life magazine, asked respected intellectual and political leaders to articulate and explain the purpose of the country. “More than anything else,” he claimed, “the people of America are asking for a clear sense of National Purpose.” Respondents included politicians, poets, journalists, evangelists, and government officials — everyone from Billy Graham to Adlai Stevenson.

Most in this august group were haunted by a nation that seemed to have lost its way. As John Jessup, a prominent journalist, wrote, “Is there not a connection between the rise of nations and great purpose, between the loss of purpose and their decline?” The problem, it seemed, was complacency. Wealth had made Americans weak. “Part of our problem,” John W. Gardner declared, “is how to stay awake on a full stomach.” Nothing was being asked of the American people. Having achieved material success and world power, the United States seemed content to let citizens go about spending and consuming, little caring about a higher cause.

A whole culture of academics and public intellectuals took up these concerns. David Brinkley, Betty Friedan, Richard Hofstadter, C. Wright Mills, David Reisman, William Appleman Williams, and so many others in their own ways condemned American consumerism and anti-intellectualism in works that were broadly digested and debated by the American masses. Miller, who portrayed himself as a “lone wolf,” was by no means alone in his concerns. He, like others, believed that America’s influence might be terribly short-lived. “History is littered with the corpses of civilization that reached the limit of expansion, dug in behind walls and moats, and there yielded to decay,” he proclaimed. According to him, the materialistic culture of America would soon exhaust itself. It didn’t require particular genius “to ask yourself, at least from time to time, whether this American way of life is not rushing at a steadily accelerating pace toward a massive megalopolis which finally, of sheer dead weight, shall grind to an agonizing stop, and then crumble into ruin by the force of inertia.” As one of his students summarized, “He could imagine the end of America, if not of American affluence.” Yet for Miller, as for others, mere affluence constituted its own form of demise.

The content of Winthrop’s sermon — what Miller thought Winthrop was actually saying or proposing as a model — differed radically from what Reagan and others would make of it. According to Miller, this sermon called Puritans to model radical communal solidarity. It had nothing to do with the American Dream, nothing to do with bettering one’s life, nothing at all to do with making money or getting ahead. In fact, Miller claimed, Winthrop specifically rejected all such ideas. Going it alone, pulling ahead of others, getting rich or even trying to — these were the very dangers that Winthrop sought to guard against. Society’s success depended instead on mutual affection, being “knit together in this work as one man.” According to Miller, the Puritans exhibited “a mighty conviction of solidarity,” a “living cohesion” and “concept of a fellowship united in a common dedication.” Unlike today, Miller insisted, New England theorists thought of society “not as an aggregation of individuals, but as an organism functioning for a definite purpose, with all parts subordinate to the whole, all members contributing a definite share, every person occupying a particular status.”

According to Miller, the commitment to a higher cause and the dedication to God had made the Puritan community unusually successful, and the success of their venture — the wealth it generated — had eventually undermined the venture itself. When Puritans started making money, their purposes collapsed. “A hundred years after the landings, they were forced to look upon themselves with amazement, hardly capable of understanding how they had come to be what they were,” he wrote. They had lost sight of their cause and plan, their purpose and devotion.

That was the story Miller saw playing out again in the 1950s: The success of the United States, its sudden wealth and power, would soon prove the nation’s undoing.

More at www.neh.gov/article/how-america-became-city-upon-hill

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Explain to me how Democrats are the answer to any of this.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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SIX:Explain to me how Democrats are the answer to any of this.

SECONDRATE: Explain to me how cutting back Medicare, Social Security, taxes on the Wealthy, regulations on pollution, and building more H-bombs and increasing the Pentagon's budget is the answer to anything other than making the Rich even more Wealthy. Every time I do another summing up of my own wealth, it has increased at a faster and faster rate and I can only thank Trump and the Republican Party for that. Were Democrats in control I would NOT be swimming in a vast, overflowing pool of money.

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.

History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.

History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.

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'This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.

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Yep, she is a russian troll...

T

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SECONDRATE: The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNY: Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history. History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.

SECONDRATE: This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.

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Originally posted by THG:

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.

History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.

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'This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.

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Yep, she is a russian troll...

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Originally posted by second:
How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy

Dystopian titles are often nothing more than marketing tools, but such a title is necessary for this book. How America Lost Its Mind describes the sorry state of our democracy at this early point in the twenty-first century. The corruption of thought, information, and common sense is eroding governing institutions and traditions that took more than two centuries and ten generations of Americans to build.

Americans have lost touch with reality. On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with the facts. As I show in the first chapter, today’s level of misinformation is unprecedented and is a far greater danger to our democracy than the long-standing problem of an uninformed citizenry. The uninformed know what they don’t know, whereas the misinformed think they know something but don’t know it, which leads them into senseless decisions. The second chapter examines the link between misinformation and partisanship. On almost every issue, misinformation is concentrated in the minds of either Republicans or Democrats. It has reached the point where, although Republicans and Democrats live in the same country, their minds reside in different ones, making it nearly impossible for them to understand each other, much less resolve their differences.

Age-old incentives—the lure of power, celebrity, and money—have corrupted the media system that is the source of our information. Media dysfunction began decades ago but is now careening out of control. One set of information corruptors, whom I call the “disruptors” and discuss in the third chapter, lust for power and have weaponized information, twisting it to serve their political and personal agendas. Another set, whom I call the “performers,” lust after celebrity and thrive in a mutual-referential world of caricatures and inane chatter. Their role in misinforming us is explained in the fourth chapter. Then there are the “marketers,” who are the subject of the fifth chapter. Their lust is money, and they peddle what sells, no matter how trivial, inaccurate, or distracting. Collectively, these media and political actors have scrambled our minds. We’ve reached a point where we think that nonsense is knowledge. It’s a dangerous position for a democracy. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt noted decades ago, demagoguery is abetted by “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

The forces that have brought us to this point are powerful and will not bend easily. But I discuss in the final chapter what could be done to bring about change. It would require us to wrest power from the ideologues and mind twisters and entrust it to level-headed leaders and reliable sources. It would also require us as citizens to accept our role in the misinformation crisis. We can’t have a thriving citizen democracy if citizens fail to accept the responsibilities of citizenship.

www.amazon.com/How-America-Lost-Mind-Distinguished/dp/0806164328/
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/02/12/when-balance-comes-at-the-exp
ense-of-the-truth/


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by THG:
GEEK SPEAK

Fox hits local ‘Firefly’ group with cease and desist

https://blog.mysanantonio.com/geekspeak/2011/04/fox-hits-local-firefly
-group-with-cease-and-desist/

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Originally posted by second:
Bernie Sanders has refused to release his medical records even though (a) he promised to do so, and (b) he’s 78 years old and recently had a heart attack, making him the exact kind of person whose medical history is especially salient in a presidential election. Will this pay off? It seems like it: Sanders is soaring in the polls. The price of concealing his medical history is — in his estimation, anyway — smaller than the price he’d pay for whatever his medical history shows.

In 2016 Donald Trump refused to release his income tax records even though (a) he had promised to do so, and (b) he’s a real estate billionaire, the exact kind of person whose financial history is especially salient in a presidential election. This paid off: no one really cared, apparently, and Trump became president. The price of concealing his financial history was smaller than the price he would have paid for whatever that history would have shown.

Presidential candidates are learning that releasing records of any kind is all downside. If the records show that everything is OK, no one cares and it buys you nothing. But if the records show a problem, it could blow your candidacy to pieces. The voters will literally give you no reason to do it. Voters might want to think about that more clearly because NOT showing your record is absolute evidence you are a crook and a liar.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Should probably change the laws about that. Dontcha think?

Given that Bernie's doing it now, you would think it would be a bi-partisan effort, at least for the president.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by second:
Why the Presidency Can’t Just Go Back to ‘Normal’ After Trump

The “norms and traditions” that Trump has incinerated aren’t timeless features of American democracy; they’re actually quite new—and brittle.

Under President John F. Kennedy, the Department of Justice approved wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. and ordered the IRS to audit Richard Nixon, JFK’s once and presumed future opponent. On President Lyndon B. Johnson’s watch, the FBI illegally bugged King’s hotel rooms, attempted to blackmail him into suicide, and famously infiltrated and attempted to sabotage the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Under LBJ, the CIA also ran extensive, extralegal sabotage of domestic political organizations, while the FBI placed violent saboteurs in the ranks of peaceful anti-war demonstrators.

President Nixon, whose abuses of office are well-documented, instructed the IRS to audit wealthy Jewish Democrats, whom he privately denounced as “cocksuckers.” At White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman’s request, the agency subjected Edward Bennett Williams, the Washington Post’s attorney in the Pentagon Papers case, to three consecutive audits. (“I wouldn’t want to be in Edward Bennett Williams’ … position after this election,” Nixon told his staff members. “I think we’re going to fix the son-of-a-bitch. Believe me. We’re going to. We’ve got to, because he’s a bad man.”) On the advice of Pat Buchanan, a conservative White House speechwriter, Nixon ordered the IRS to investigate the finances of liberal organizations like the Ford Foundation and Brookings Institution; the agency complied, compiling data on over 1,000 institutions and 4,000 individual citizens.

It wasn’t just the IRS. When news of the highly secret bombing campaign in Cambodia broke on the pages of the New York Times in late 1969, then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger ordered FBI wiretaps on 13 of his own aides and four journalists. When even the FBI balked at tapping the phone of Joseph Kraft, a highly respected syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s chief domestic policy adviser, hired a private detective to do the job without the cloak of legal authority.

Nixon also ordered the FBI, CIA and NSA to surveil New Left organizations and instructed the Justice Department to arrest several thousand anti-war protesters who marched on Washington, D.C., in May 1971. The federal courts overturned many of the convictions. But the judges did not know the half of it. Coordinating the arrests from the Oval Office, Nixon heartily approved of plans by Charles Colson, a top political aide, to have rank-and-file teamsters rough up the protesters before their detention. “They’ve got guys who’ll go in and knock their heads off,” the president beamed. Nixon’s chief of staff, Haldeman, confirmed this point. “Murderers. Guys that really, you know, that’s what they really do … they’re going to beat the shit out of some of these people.”

In the wake of Nixon’s disgrace, Congress undertook a sweeping investigation of these abuses, leading to new congressional oversight mechanisms and restrictions on FBI and CIA political activity.

All of which is to say, the idea of independent agencies staffed by nonpartisan career public servants, free of political interference, is a very recent development. Once unraveled, it is not certain to be reassembled.

More at www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/15/why-presidency-cant-go-back-
normal-trump-115362

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by second:
America’s monopoly problem, explained by your internet bill

We should be asking the government and corporate America how we got here. Instead, we just keep handing over our money.

Seriously, be mad about your internet bill.

In 2019, New York University economist Thomas Philippon did a deep dive into market concentration and monopolies in The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets. And one of his touch points for the book is the internet. Looking at the data, he found that the United States has fallen behind other developed economies in broadband penetration and that prices are significantly higher. In 2017, the average monthly cost of broadband in America was $66.17; in France, it was $38.10, in Germany, $35.71, and in South Korea, $29.90. How did this happen? In his view, a lot of it comes down to competition — or, rather, lack thereof.

That’s where the government could come in by regulating the network or forcing the company that built it to lease out parts of it to rivals. As Philippon notes, that’s what happened in France — an incumbent carrier was compelled to lease out the “last mile” of its network — basically, the last bit of cable that gets to your hours or apartment building — and therefore letting competitors have a chance at also appealing to customers.

In the US, however, just a few big companies, often without overlap, control much of the telecom industry, and the result is high prices and uneven connectivity.

Experts and advocates have laid out a range of ideas for restoring healthy competition in the economy. Some of it would entail new laws, which, given the current state of affairs in Washington, seems unlikely — Congress can barely agree to fund the government, let alone enact a major overhaul of the workings of the US economy. But it has happened in the past. “What happened in the New Deal was a systemic attack on every aspect of the old order, and the old order was somewhat similar to what we have now,” Stoller noted.

Competition is lacking across countless industries, including baby formula, agriculture, candy, beer, just to name some examples. When you look, monopolies and oligopolies (meaning instead of one dominant company, there are a few) are everywhere. They’re a systemic feature of the economy.

More at www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/2/18/21126347/antitrust-monopolies-internet
-telecommunications-cheerleading

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.

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Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.

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Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Yup. I clearly remember Obama being known for all of that monopoly busting he did.

Oh... wait...

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.

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Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Yup. I clearly remember Obama being known for all of that monopoly busting he did.

Oh... wait...

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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6ix, you never stop missing the point, do you? Trump is Doubling Down on Obama and Bush's Legacy of Going Soft on Antitrust Problems. If you keep missing the point, 6ix, you will end up dead sooner rather than later. While thinking about that, go have a smoke, then suddenly realize you must give up smoking.
www.vice.com/en_us/article/evmqye/trump-is-doubling-down-on-obama-and-
bushs-legacy-of-going-soft-on-antitrust-problems

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I like smoking. I have zero plans on quitting.


I'm not missing the point. You just made it for me.

There isn't anybody on that Democrat debate stage that is going to do a goddamned thing about breaking up monopolies, so in light of the fact that Democrats are just awful in every other thing they say or do I'm going to be voting for Republicans.

Hopefully when they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college to Trump and get crushed in November, they'll start coming around and being a better party for the next cycle.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I like smoking. I have zero plans on quitting.


I'm not missing the point. You just made it for me.

There isn't anybody on that Democrat debate stage that is going to do a goddamned thing about breaking up monopolies, so in light of the fact that Democrats are just awful in every other thing they say or do I'm going to be voting for Republicans.

Hopefully when they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college to Trump and get crushed in November, they'll start coming around and being a better party for the next cycle.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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I have not watched any debates, but even I know about Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Big Fight’ Against Monopolies: Warren speaks to The Nation about power, markets, and breaking up corporate giants. Why does 6ix not know better?

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
. . . she brought over 10 million dollars of big money donations from her previous Senate run while lying and saying she had no big donors for the primary.

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Originally posted by JO753:
I'v reseeved 10$ so far.

That wuz in 2017.

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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com .

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Originally posted by second:
Brett Kavanaugh does not approve of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

https://qz.com/1811652/

Today, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Ironically, this agency that protects Americans from predatory lenders now needs help. It has a “friend of the court” assigned to advocate on its behalf, having been abandoned by its own director, appointed by Trump, in a supreme legal challenge that could unravel a decade of the bureau’s work.

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The voter base is shifting in a big way now. Soon the Trump voter will no longer have the numbers to scratch an itch. Texas in on the verge of flipping and may do so this very election. Judges can be impeached.

tick tock


T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

Quote:

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Originally posted by THG:

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Originally posted by second:
Brett Kavanaugh does not approve of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

https://qz.com/1811652/

Today, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Ironically, this agency that protects Americans from predatory lenders now needs help. It has a “friend of the court” assigned to advocate on its behalf, having been abandoned by its own director, appointed by Trump, in a supreme legal challenge that could unravel a decade of the bureau’s work.

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The voter base is shifting in a big way now. Soon the Trump voter will no longer have the numbers to scratch an itch. Texas in on the verge of flipping and may do so this very election. Judges can be impeached.

tick tock


T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Originally posted by JO753:
Sumthing haz me a little worried.

Wut if Putin haz dirt on Bernie?

The evidens for that iz paper thin now, but wut if?

Its an alternate explanation to the theory that they are boosting Bernie kuz they think he will be eazy for Trump to beat.

Insted, depending on exactly wut the dirt iz, Putin cant looz if Bernie iz the candidate. He may still prefer Trump, but coud at least work with a komprimized Bernie.

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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com .

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