A thread for Democrats Only by THGRRI

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 13, 2024 08:08
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Thursday, January 19, 2023 6:55 AM

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

It Didn’t Start with Trump: The Decades-Long Saga of How the GOP Went Crazy

The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.

By David Corn

Joe Biden expressed a sentiment during the 2020 campaign that if Donald Trump was out of the White House, the GOP would return to normal and be amenable to forging deals and legislative compromises.

Biden has bolstered the notion that the current GOP is a break from the past. But was the GOP’s complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern. Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections.

In my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, I lay out this sordid history in great detail. But even a highlight reel makes it clear that the GOP has bowed to, depended on, and promoted far-right extremists and conspiracists for the past 70 years.

Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower surrendered to Senator Joe McCarthy in October 1952. Eisenhower, the heroic World War II general and the GOP presidential nominee running as a moderate, was campaigning in Wisconsin with McCarthy, the nation’s No. 1 Red-baiter. Two years earlier, Wisconsin’s junior senator had claimed he possessed a list of 205 Communist Party members “working and shaping policy” in the State Department. That was a lie. But McCarthy helped trigger a national panic over supposed commie infiltration and became a powerhouse within the GOP.

In 1951, McCarthy fingered the ultimate villain: George Marshall, the secretary of defense who had helped create the postwar recovery program for Europe known as the Marshall Plan. McCarthy alleged that Marshall was deliberately weakening the United States so it would fall to the Soviet Union.

This conspiratorial nuttery — designed to prey on Cold War paranoia — struck a chord with millions of voters, and McCarthy was lionized at the GOP convention the following year. Eisenhower believed McCarthy to be a dangerous demagogue and fabricator. Yet in the 1952 campaign, Ike was expected to campaign side by side with — and legitimize — this scoundrel who was up for reelection.

Eisenhower considered a public strike against McCarthy and had asked a speechwriter to add a short riff to a major speech in Wisconsin that would defend Marshall and assail McCarthy’s attack on him.

When top Republicans on the campaign train caught wind of Ike’s intention, they became alarmed. McCarthy had millions of supporters. Many were Catholic, which gave the GOP an opportunity to break the Democrats’ hold on the Catholic vote. Plus, the party might need Wisconsin to win the election. A senior Eisenhower adviser explained this political calculus to Ike. “Are you telling me this paragraph should come out?” Eisenhower asked. Yes, the aide replied. Eisenhower deleted the paragraph.

That night, in his speech, Eisenhower cautioned against the “spirit of violent vigilantism” in the fight for freedom. But he decried left-wing “contamination” in “virtually every department…of our government” and called for “the right to call a Red a Red.” Rather than assail McCarthyism, he sounded as if he were defending it. The Milwaukee Journal observed, “The general went far toward surrendering ethical and moral principles in a frenzied quest for votes.”

Eisenhower, who decisively won the election, would later regret his decision to cut the anti-McCarthy paragraph. As president, he continued to loathe McCarthy, but refused to directly confront him — though behind the scenes he encouraged criticism of the senator. Eventually, McCarthy’s own excesses did him in, and he was censured by the Senate and lost his power and influence. Eisenhower snickered that McCarthyism was now “McCarthywasm.”

But Ike was wrong; others in his party, including his vice president, Richard Nixon, would keep Red-scare hysteria alive. The demagogic promotion of unhinged paranoia had become baked into the GOP’s DNA.

More at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/it-didnt-start-with-trump
-the-decades-long-saga-of-how-the-gop-went-crazy/

Download the free book about the Historical Investigation into the Republican Party from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.ink/search.php?req=David+Corn+American

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, January 20, 2023 6:25 AM

SECOND

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

Victimhood and Vengeance

The contemporary rise of Christian nationalism in the US is a reactionary response to the country’s liberalization over the past half-century.

We tend to think of Christian nationalism, the political ideology based on the belief that the country’s authentic identity lies in its Christian roots and in the perpetuation of Christian privilege, as having burst upon the scene to accompany and facilitate the rise of Donald Trump. But as Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry explain in The Flag and the Cross, Christian nationalism—white Christian nationalism, to be more accurate, since the ideology has no place for nonwhites—is “one of the oldest and most powerful currents in American politics.” They trace it back to the New England Puritans’ wars against the indigenous groups who dared to stand in the way of the claim by self-described chosen people to their new Promised Land, and follow it through the Lost Cause of a post–Civil War South destined to “rise again”—a Christological narrative of crucifixion and redemption “crucial to understanding contemporary claims of Christian victimhood and vengeance among white Christian nationalists.” The drive for western expansion, aptly known as Manifest Destiny, was widely understood as part of a divine plan handed to those who would “civilize” an entire continent.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, 60 percent of Americans believe the country was founded to be a Christian nation, and nearly half (including 81 percent of white evangelicals) think it should be one today. Whether that has changed over the course of US history is beside the point: what’s new is the contemporary political and social salience of Christian nationalism. As mainline Protestantism has faded, David Hollinger observes in Christianity’s American Fate,

Christianity has become an instrument for the most politically, culturally, and theologically reactionary Americans. White evangelical Protestants were an indispensable foundation for Donald Trump’s presidency and have become the core of the Republican Party’s electoral strength. They are the most conspicuous advocates of “Christian nationalism.”…Most of Christianity’s symbolic capital has been seized by a segment of the population committed to ideas about the Bible, the family, and civics that most other Americans reject.

How did this happen? Gorski and Perry, Hollinger, and David Sehat in This Earthly Frame agree that the answer lies in white evangelicals’ response to the profound cultural changes the country experienced during the second half of the twentieth century. That may sound obvious, but with varied approaches, these three books offer insights that are both illuminating and alarming.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/02/09/victimhood-and-vengeance-t
he-flag-and-the-cross/

The three books can be downloaded for free:

1. The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy,
by Philip S. Gorski https://libgen.unblockit.ink/search.php?req=The+Flag+and+the+Cross

2. Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular
by David A. Hollinger https://libgen.unblockit.ink/search.php?req=Christianity+American+Fate

3. This Earthly Frame: The Making of American Secularism
by David Sehat https://libgen.unblockit.ink/search.php?req=This+Earthly+Frame

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 7:55 AM

SECOND

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

Both parties have extremists — but those on the left are less extreme, relatively few, and none of them in key leadership roles. On the right, they are the majority (well over half voting not to certify the 2020 election) and they set the agenda.

Their party is controlled by extremists. (Bring back the good old days when it was controlled by the wealthy and corporations! Or even the good old days of Barry Goldwater.) Yet they’ve been highly effective at portraying the views of a tiny few as “the Democratic agenda.”

For example: Only a tiny few Democrats actually want to “defund the police.” In reality, Biden and Congressional Democrats and Democratic mayors and governors are all about increasing police funding . . . while making needed reforms. (Can anyone favor instances of police brutality? Favor killing unarmed men as they are running away? Favor sending police, unassisted, to handle mental health issues?)

And consider a fourth colossal difference — what the extremes want:

> On the left, “The Squad” want things like Medicare for all. You may oppose it, or believe we can’t afford it (somehow, every one of our industrialized allies can); but is it pernicious to want everyone to have access to decent health care? Or to want workers to be paid a living wage? Or to want to keep Earth habitable for future generations?

> On the right, those who wrested effective control of the House from Kevin McCarthy favor 18-year-olds’ being allowed to buy assault weapons without universal background checks; oppose a higher minimum wage for the working poor; favor government control of women’s bodies even in cases of rape or incest; oppose funding IRS enforcement of tax law on billionaires; oppose citizenship for DACA kids; oppose capping the price of Insulin . . . and more.

I think those positions are pernicious.

https://andrewtobias.com/giant-gaping-glaring/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 8:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Both parties have extremists — but those on the left are less extreme

No. The Democratic party as a whole has moved so far to the left that they are all extremists.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Monday, January 23, 2023 5:43 AM

SECOND

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

Why The Rich Are Inevitable

Physicists normally study the physical world. But they started using their methods to study economics – a field now dubbed econophysics. They looked at how two people might interact in a transaction, and then modeled how that might play out on a large scale. This helped them model wealth distribution.

In 2002, physicist Anirban Chakraborti published a paper that laid out the "Yard-sale" model.

To be clear, econophysics gets its fair share of criticism. But the Yard-sale model isn't meant to model the real world with exacting precision. Tufts University math professor Bruce M. Boghosian compared the Yard-sale model to an "X-ray" described as follows:

We believe that this purely analytical approach, which resembles an x-ray in that it is used not so much to represent the messiness of the real world as to strip it away and reveal the underlying skeleton, provides deep insight into the forces acting to increase poverty and inequality today.
—Bruce M. Boghosian

The Yard-sale model can be useful as a way to think about the general "trickle-up" characteristics of a free market. It's contrary to what many conservative politicians have argued for decades – that wealth trickles downward. They've said the government should just get out of the way to let the wealthy create jobs for the rest of us. This ideology has led to massive tax cuts for the rich, from Ronald Reagan's tax cut in 1981 to Donald Trump's 2017 tax cut.

In his 2002 paper on this model, Chakraborti wrote, "Wealth concentration can be prevented, for example, by government intervention via taxes." So what if we run the "Yard-sale" game again, but every turn we take a percentage of money from everyone and redistribute it evenly?

This time players will be willing to bet 20% of their wealth each game. After each round, we'll tax every player 0.5% and disperse it evenly to all players.

People playing with redistribution fare better compared to people playing without redistribution. From the simulation you can see that even a small amount of redistribution stops a single uber wealthy person from emerging.

This is similar to what Boghosian and his colleagues did in a 2017 paper, where they modeled real-life redistribution with far more accuracy than in the "Yard-sale" version. They were able to match the wealth distribution in the US and Europe to within 2 percent. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037843711730081
X

Currently in the US, the wealthiest 20% of families own about 70% of wealth. But this doesn't capture the true wealth disparity in the US: If the US population was represented by 1,000 people in a room, the richest one person would have four times more money than the poorest 500 people.

One more thing in this simulation: Even with redistribution, the wealthiest person in the game is exponentially richer than the poorest. And this emerged out of complete luck. But imagine what would happen if we played this game with real people: Some of the wealthy players would inevitably argue that they deserve to be rich because they're better at guessing the result of a coin flip.

More at https://pudding.cool/2022/12/yard-sale/

And also at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/

Is Inequality Inevitable?

Wealth naturally trickles up in free-market economies, model suggests.
Although the origins of inequality are hotly debated, an approach developed by physicists and mathematicians, including my group at Tufts University, suggests they have long been hiding in plain sight—in a well-known quirk of arithmetic. This method uses models of wealth distribution collectively known as agent-based, which begin with an individual transaction between two “agents” or actors, each trying to optimize his or her own financial outcome. In the modern world, nothing could seem more fair or natural than two people deciding to exchange goods, agreeing on a price and shaking hands. Indeed, the seeming stability of an economic system arising from this balance of supply and demand among individual actors is regarded as a pinnacle of Enlightenment thinking — to the extent that many people have come to conflate the free market with the notion of freedom itself. Our deceptively simple mathematical models, which are based on voluntary transactions, suggest, however, that it is time for a serious reexamination of this idea.

In particular, the affine wealth model (called thus because of its mathematical properties) can describe wealth distribution among households in diverse developed countries with exquisite precision while revealing a subtle asymmetry that tends to concentrate wealth. We believe that this purely analytical approach, which resembles an x-ray in that it is used not so much to represent the messiness of the real world as to strip it away and reveal the underlying skeleton, provides deep insight into the forces acting to increase poverty and inequality today.

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

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Monday, January 23, 2023 7:25 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

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Monday, January 23, 2023 8:52 AM

SECOND

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

A horror show of technological and moral failure

Book Review: “Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo and the Road to the Atomic Bomb”, by James M. Scott

On the night of March 9, 1945, almost 300 B-29 bombers took off from Tinian Island near Japan. Over the next six hours, 100,000 civilians in Tokyo were burnt to death, more possibly than in any six hour period in history. James Scott’s “Black Snow” tells the story of this horrific event which was both a technological and a moral failure. It is also the story of how moral failures can result from technological failures, a lesson that we should take to heart in an age when we understand technology less and less and morality perhaps even lesser.

The technological failure in Scott’s story is the failure of the most expensive technological project in World War 2, the B-29 bomber. The United States spent more than $3 billion on developing this wonder of modern technology, more than on the Manhattan Project. Soaring at 30,000 feet like an impregnable iron eagle, the B-29 was supposed to drop bombs with pinpoint precision on German and Japanese factories producing military hardware. . . .

When pinpoint precision bombing was ineffective, enter Gen. Curtis “The Demon” LeMay. As a pilot in the European theater, he quickly advanced through the ranks through sheer grit and gumption, often leading seemingly suicidal missions against Germany himself. His philosophy in life was simple – never give up. That philosophy metamorphosed into a very different philosophy for winning wars – “The way to win wars is to kill people. And if you kill enough of them, they give up.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the war against Japan reached a crescendo, Curtis LeMay replaced Gen. Haywood Hansell.

LeMay quickly found out that Hansell’s strategy for precision bombing was ineffective, but unlike Hansell he had no moral qualms to take the next giant step. In a moment of inspiration he had an idea: take the B-29, strip it of unnecessary antiaircraft defenses, drop it down from 30,000 feet to 5000 feet and load it up to its gills with incendiary bombs containing napalm, a substance discovered by a Harvard chemist in 1942. Napalm burns with a demon-like ferocity and resists attempts to put it out. LeMay knew the damage it could do, but he knew something more important. He knew that more than 90% of the houses in downtown Tokyo were made out of wood. A mock Japanese town, complete with restaurants, hospitals and single-family homes with bedrooms and cribs was set up at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The ominous nature of the destruction of infant cribs and hospitals probably did not register in the minds of planners who wanted to end the war as quickly as possible.

More at https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/01/a-horror-show-of-technol
ogical-and-moral-failure.html

Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.ink/search.php?req=James+M.+Scott+2022

Personal note: my father flew B-29s on firebombing missions over Japan. He never talked about it, but my mother did after he was dead. The only souvenirs from that war in the family are a photo of my father in uniform with his B-29 aircrew, a Distinguished Flying Cross, both kept by my eldest sister, and a US Army 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol I kept.

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

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Thursday, January 26, 2023 11:32 AM

SECOND

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

FairTax, the GOP plan for a 30 percent national sales tax, explained

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to put a radical plan to remake the tax code up for a vote.

The FairTax, at its heart, is simple enough: it would take almost every federal tax and replace them with a fat 30 percent sales tax on everything. Virtually every American would get a monthly check from the government to cover the cost of paying the tax on essentials. It’s a radical idea, but one which since its first introduction to Congress in 1999 has been a favorite of conservative Republicans. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) already has 23 cosponsors for the current iteration. Prominent party figures like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have all championed the idea over the years.

So, how big is this FairTax?

It’s 30 percent! And it would apply to just about everything, from groceries to health care to rent and home purchases to interest on your credit card.

I assume the FairTax people have … a response to this?

They do. For one thing, they don’t like it when you refer to their tax rate as “30 percent.” While it increases the cost of, say, a $10 item by 30 percent, or $3, they argue that because $3 is 23 percent of the $13 post-tax cost, it’s actually a 23 percent tax.

Wait … seriously?

Yes, it’s stupid.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that FairTax proponents insist they want to tax more sales than just about any sales tax currently existing in the real world. Gale estimates that about 91 percent of household spending would be hit by the FairTax. Meanwhile, a recent Tax Policy Center study found that state sales taxes in the US only cover 39 percent of spending; most states tax much less than half of spending, with California taxing 36 percent and Texas 38 percent. Value-added taxes in other rich countries, which generally work better than retail sales taxes because they also tackle business-to-business transactions, only hit 56 percent of consumption.

It’s of course possible that Congress would pass the FairTax without including a multitude of exemptions for things like food and medicine and cars and other things that people don’t like to see taxed. However, this is Congress we’re talking about, so this will not happen.

Thousands of more words at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/26/23563563/fairtax-nat
ional-sales-tax-kevin-mccarthy

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

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Thursday, January 26, 2023 12:20 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Virtually every American would get a monthly check from the government to cover the cost of paying the tax on essentials.

...

It’s of course possible that Congress would pass the FairTax without including a multitude of exemptions for things like food and medicine and cars and other things that people don’t like to see taxed. However, this is Congress we’re talking about, so this will not happen.

You got any more info on the amount of the monthly check, how it would be administered, and what hoops you'd have to jump through for it?

i.e.: Would it be a blanket amount that every American would get (which would be likely be extremely unfair and inequitable), or would you end up having to keep receipts of everything and send them in every month for your check (which would be a ridiculous proposal and would likely require the Government to open up a new alphabet branch just to administer the system, while at the same time end up being a glorified REBATE program which most people would be too stupid and/or lazy to cash in on every month if you make it incumbent on the individual taxpayer to handle it)?

Sounds like a huge pain in the ass to do, and I think everybody would just rather see ESSENTIALS be exempt from the tax in the first place.

However, I don't necessarily disagree with a value added tax system if it TRULY doesn't impact actual essentials, like food, gas, heating/electric, your 1st vehicle, repairs on your first vehicle (and two vehicles, if your taxes prove that two adults in the home need a vehicle to drive to work), etc.

The idea is not too far off from how Indiana taxes brand new vehicles hard with the yearly registration, and the EXPENSIVE brand new vehicles SUPER hard, while charging less tax on these vehicles every year for the first 10 years until it's almost nothing for the tax.

This additional money generated by taxing people who make the choice to keep buying new and expensive vehicles goes a very long way to keeping property taxes in the state down for people who either can't afford and/or have no interest in owning a brand new expensive vehicle.

This could be a way of encouraging Americans to be more judicious about their spending, and rewarding people who don't spend their days buying a ton of shit they don't need.

But as the article says, "this is Congress we’re talking about", so I'm sure they'd find a way to fuck it up and screw everybody.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Friday, January 27, 2023 10:56 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You got any more info on the amount of the monthly check, how it would be administered, and what hoops you'd have to jump through for it?

You could read the whole bill if you want: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25/text?r=18&a
mp;s=1

It won't pass into law, so don't worry about reading it. Meanwhile, there are many things that Republicans in Congress could do, but won't because, you know, Republican voters would start making accusations of creeping Communism:

Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-it-great-to-be-a-wor
ker-in-the-u-s-not-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-developed-world/?utm_term=.033a3ba1cb08

The U.S. labor market is hot. Unemployment is at 3.8 percent, a level it’s hit only once since the 1960s, and many industries report deep labor shortages. Old theories of what’s wrong with the labor market — such as a lack of people with necessary skills — are dying fast. Earnings are beginning to pick up, and the Federal Reserve envisions a steady regimen of rate hikes.

So why does a large subset of workers continue to feel left behind? We can find some clues in a new 296-page report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of advanced and advancing nations that has long been a top source for international economic data and research. Most of the figures are from 2016 or before, but they reflect underlying features of the economies analyzed that continue today.

In particular, the report shows the United States’s unemployed and at-risk workers are getting very little support from the government, and their employed peers are set back by a particularly weak collective-bargaining system.

Those factors have contributed to the United States having a higher level of income inequality and a larger share of low-income residents than almost any other advanced nation. Only Spain and Greece, whose economies have been ravaged by the euro-zone crisis, have more households earning less than half the nation’s median income — an indicator that unusually large numbers of people either are poor or close to being poor.

Joblessness may be low in the United States and employers may be hungry for new hires, but it’s also strikingly easy to lose a job here. An average of 1 in 5 employees lose or leave their jobs each year, and 23.3 percent of workers ages 15 to 64 had been in their job for a year or less in 2016 — higher than all but a handful of countries in the study.

If people are moving to better jobs, labor-market churn can be a healthy sign. But decade-old OECD research found that an unusually large amount of job turnover in the United States is due to firing and layoffs, and Labor Department figures show the rate of layoffs and firings hasn’t changed significantly since the research was conducted.

The United States and Mexico are the only countries in the entire study that don't require any advance notice for individual firings. The U.S. ranks at the bottom for employee protection even when mass layoffs are taken into consideration as well, despite the 1988 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act's requirement that employers give notice 60 days before major plant closings or layoffs.

And when you lose your job in the United States, it’s harder to find another. Fewer than half of displaced workers find a job within a year, the researchers found — that puts the United States near the bottom of the five countries for which the researchers provided recent data. Japan’s rate was similar to the U.S., but Finland, Australia and Denmark were well ahead. Furthermore, the report’s authors find that “two in three families with a displaced worker fall into poverty for some time.”

Even when Americans do find another job, their earnings don’t recover. After four years, displaced workers are still about 6 percent behind their peers in terms of annual earnings. In countries such as Finland and Denmark, workers more or less recover completely over that time period.

These gaps at the lower end of the labor market can be traced back to weak government programs and hamstrung union bargaining, the report says. The United States spends less of its economic wealth on active efforts to help people who either don’t have a job or who are at risk of becoming unemployed than almost any other country in the study.

The unemployed, in particular, receive relatively little assistance. U.S. unemployment benefits provide less support in the first year of unemployment than those in any other country in the study, and the maximum length of benefits in a typical U.S. state, 26 weeks, is shorter than in all but a handful of countries. In some states, the maximum benefit length is less than half of that.

Only 12 percent of U.S. workers were covered by collective bargaining in 2016 — among all the nations the OECD tracks, only Turkey, Lithuania and South Korea have been lower at any point this millennium. And, based on an OECD review of almost four decades of data, countries that have decentralized collective-bargaining systems, like the United States, tend to have slower job growth and, in most cases, higher unemployment than other advanced nations.

These collective bargaining and government support systems might have something to do with another report finding as well: Workers’ share of national income dropped about eight percentage points between 1995 and 2013, faster than anywhere but Poland and South Korea over that time.

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

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Friday, January 27, 2023 11:16 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You got any more info on the amount of the monthly check, how it would be administered, and what hoops you'd have to jump through for it?
You could read the whole bill if you want: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25/text?r=18&a
mp;s=1

It won't pass into law, so don't worry about reading it.

It's a whole lot of words that tell you almost nothing.

I glean two thing from this...

1. If you as an individual or a family fall into the poverty level, you will be granted an undetermined sum of money per month, split evenly between each individual over the age of 18. Once again, I'll stress that no mention of money or any numerical values are given here whatsoever.

2. If you as an individual or a family are above the poverty level, it is incumbent upon you to save every receipt and file every single month for a rebate.

Let's all hope this bill doesn't pass. 80% of Americans not below the poverty level get fucked every month because they're too stupid and/or lazy to do this every month, and the government will make it as HARD AS POSSIBLE to do at the same time.

(eg: If you don't file a "timely monthly report (with regard to extensions)" in time, it looks like you're fucked for the month, because there is no mention of how you would file for previous months if you missed the deadline. The only mention of retroactivity in the document is a retroactive 6 months of payments missed if a family under the poverty level screws up and commits a "Failure To Provide Annual Registration" on time to prove that they're still under the poverty level.)

And I'd even think that a similar percentage of Americans below the poverty level would get screwed as well. The only saving grace that they would have is if they're already working with SNAP and/or medicaid then this monthly process would already be figured out for them with whatever Family Services apparatus their state has in place. That being said, I'm sure the quality of these governmental institutions vary greatly from state to state.

Here's the two relevant chapters that say a lot but tell you almost nothing:

“CHAPTER 2—CREDITS; REFUNDS

“Sec. 201. Credits and refunds.
“Sec. 202. Business use conversion credit.
“Sec. 203. Intermediate and export sales credit.
“Sec. 204. Administration credit.
“Sec. 205. Bad debt credit.
“Sec. 206. Insurance proceeds credit.
“Sec. 207. Refunds.

“SEC. 201. Credits and refunds.

“(a) In General.—Each person shall be allowed a credit with respect to the taxes imposed by section 101 for each month in an amount equal to the sum of—

“(1) such person’s business use conversion credit pursuant to section 202 for such month,

“(2) such person’s intermediate and export sales credit pursuant to section 203 for such month,

“(3) the administration credit pursuant to section 204 for such month,

“(4) the bad debt credit pursuant to section 205 for such month,

“(5) the insurance proceeds credit pursuant to section 206 for such month,

“(6) the transitional inventory credit pursuant to section 902, and

“(7) any amount paid in excess of the amount due.

“(b) Credits Not Additive.—Only one credit allowed by chapter 2 may be taken with respect to any particular gross payment.

“SEC. 202. Business use conversion credit.

“(a) In General.—For purposes of section 201, a person’s business use conversion credit for any month is the aggregate of the amounts determined under subsection (b) with respect to taxable property and services—

“(1) on which tax was imposed by section 101 (and actually paid), and

“(2) which commenced to be 95 percent or more used during such month for business purposes (within the meaning of section 102(b)).

“(b) Amount of Credit.—The amount determined under this paragraph with respect to any taxable property or service is the lesser of—

“(1) the product of—

“(A) the rate imposed by section 101, and

“(B) the quotient that is—

“(i) the fair market value of the property or service when its use is converted, divided by

“(ii) the quantity that is one minus the tax rate imposed by section 101, or

“(2) the amount of tax paid with respect to such taxable property or service, including the amount, if any, determined in accordance with section 705 (relating to mixed use property).

“SEC. 203. Intermediate and export sales credit.

“For purposes of section 201, a person’s intermediate and export sales credit is the amount of sales tax paid on the purchase of any taxable property or service purchased for—

“(1) a business purpose in a trade or business (as defined in section 102(b)), or

“(2) export from the United States for use or consumption outside the United States.

“SEC. 204. Administration credit.

“(a) In General.—Every person filing a timely monthly report (with regard to extensions) in compliance with section 501 shall be entitled to a taxpayer administrative credit equal to the greater of—

“(1) $200, or

“(2) one-quarter of 1 percent of the tax remitted.

“(b) Limitation.—The credit allowed under this section shall not exceed 20 percent of the tax due to be remitted prior to the application of any credit or credits permitted by section 201.

“SEC. 205. Bad debt credit.

“(a) Financial Intermediation Services.—Any person who has experienced a bad debt (other than unpaid invoices within the meaning of subsection (b)) shall be entitled to a credit equal to the product of—

“(1) the rate imposed by section 101, and

“(2) the quotient that is—

“(A) the amount of the bad debt (as defined in section 802), divided by

“(B) the quantity that is one minus the rate imposed by section 101.

“(b) Unpaid Invoices.—Any person electing the accrual method pursuant to section 503 that has with respect to a transaction—

“(1) invoiced the tax imposed by section 101,

“(2) remitted the invoiced tax,

“(3) actually delivered the taxable property or performed the taxable services invoiced, and

“(4) not been paid 180 days after date the invoice was due to be paid,
shall be entitled to a credit equal to the amount of tax remitted and unpaid by the purchaser.

“(c) Subsequent Payment.—Any payment made with respect to a transaction subsequent to a section 205 credit being taken with respect to that transaction shall be subject to tax in the month the payment was received as if a tax inclusive sale of taxable property and services in the amount of the payment had been made.

“(d) Partial Payments.—Partial payments shall be treated as pro rata payments of the underlying obligation and shall be allocated proportionately—

“(1) for fully taxable payments, between payment for the taxable property and service and tax, and

“(2) for partially taxable payments, among payment for the taxable property and service, tax and other payment.

“(e) Related Parties.—The credit provided by this section shall not be available with respect to sales made to related parties. For purposes of this section, related party means affiliated firms and family members (as defined in section 302(b)).

“SEC. 206. Insurance proceeds credit.

“(a) In General.—A person receiving a payment from an insurer by virtue of an insurance contract shall be entitled to a credit in an amount determined by subsection (b), less any amount paid to the insured by the insurer pursuant to subsection (c), if the entire premium (except that portion allocable to the investment account of the underlying policy) for the insurance contract giving rise to the insurer’s obligation to make a payment to the insured was subject to the tax imposed by section 101 and said tax was paid.

“(b) Credit Amount.—The amount of the credit shall be the product of—

“(1) the rate imposed by section 101, and

“(2) the quotient that is—

“(A) the amount of the payment made by the insurer to the insured, divided by

“(B) the quantity that is one minus the rate imposed by section 101.

“(c) Administrative Option.—The credit determined in accordance with subsection (b) shall be paid by the insurer to the insured and the insurer shall be entitled to the credit in lieu of the insured, except that the insurer may elect, in a form prescribed by the Secretary, to not pay the credit and require the insured to make application for the credit. In the event of such election, the insurer shall provide to the Secretary and the insured the name and tax identification number of the insurer and of the insured and indicate the proper amount of the credit.

“(d) Coordination With Respect to Exemption.—If taxable property or services purchased by an insurer on behalf of an insured are purchased free of tax by virtue of section 2(a)(8)(C), then the credit provided by this section shall not be available with respect to that purchase.

“(e) Insurance Contract.—For purposes of subsection (a), the term ‘insurance contract’ shall include a life insurance contract, a health insurance contract, a property and casualty loss insurance contract, a general liability insurance contract, a marine insurance contract, a fire insurance contract, an accident insurance contract, a disability insurance contract, a long-term care insurance contract, and an insurance contract that provides a combination of these types of insurance.

“SEC. 207. Refunds.

“(a) Registered Sellers.—If a registered seller files a monthly tax report with an overpayment, then, upon application by the registered seller in a form prescribed by the sales tax administering authority, the overpayment shown on the report shall be refunded to the registered seller within 60 days of receipt of said application. In the absence of such application, the overpayment may be carried forward, without interest, by the person entitled to the credit.

“(b) Other Persons.—If a person other than a registered seller has an overpayment for any month, then, upon application by the person in a form prescribed by the sales tax administering authority, the credit balance due shall be refunded to the person within 60 days of receipt of said application.

“(c) Interest.—No interest shall be paid on any balance due from the sales tax administering authority under this subsection for any month if such balance due is paid within 60 days after the application for refund is received. Balances due not paid within 60 days after the application for refund is received shall bear interest from the date of application. Interest shall be paid at the Federal short-term rate (as defined in section 511).

“(d) Suspension of Period To Pay Refund Only if Federal or State Court Ruling.—The 60-day periods under subsections (a) and (b) shall be suspended with respect to a purported overpayment (or portion thereof) only during any period that there is in effect a preliminary, temporary, or final ruling from a Federal or State court that there is reasonable cause to believe that such overpayment may not actually be due.
“CHAPTER 3—FAMILY CONSUMPTION ALLOWANCE

“Sec. 301. Family consumption allowance.
“Sec. 302. Qualified family.
“Sec. 303. Monthly poverty level.
“Sec. 304. Rebate mechanism.
“Sec. 305. Change in family circumstances.

“SEC. 301. Family consumption allowance.

“Each qualified family shall be eligible to receive a sales tax rebate each month. The sales tax rebate shall be in an amount equal to the product of—

“(1) the rate of tax imposed by section 101, and

“(2) the monthly poverty level.

“SEC. 302. Qualified family.

“(a) General Rule.—For purposes of this chapter, the term ‘qualified family’ shall mean one or more family members sharing a common residence. All family members sharing a common residence shall be considered as part of one qualified family.

“(b) Family Size Determination.—

“(1) IN GENERAL.—To determine the size of a qualified family for purposes of this chapter, family members shall mean—

“(A) an individual,

“(B) the individual’s spouse,

“(C) all lineal ancestors and descendants of said individual (and such individual’s spouse),

“(D) all legally adopted children of such individual (and such individual’s spouse), and

“(E) all children under legal guardianship of such individual (or such individual’s spouse).

“(2) IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS.—In order for a person to be counted as a member of the family for purposes of determining the size of the qualified family, such person must—

“(A) have a bona fide Social Security number, and

“(B) be a lawful resident of the United States.

“(c) Children Living Away From Home.—

“(1) STUDENTS LIVING AWAY FROM HOME.—Any person who was a registered student during not fewer than 5 months in a calendar year while living away from the common residence of a qualified family but who receives over 50 percent of such person’s support during a calendar year from members of the qualified family shall be included as part of the family unit whose members provided said support for purposes of this chapter.

“(2) CHILDREN OF DIVORCED OR SEPARATED PARENTS.—If a child’s parents are divorced or legally separated, a child for purposes of this chapter shall be treated as part of the qualified family of the custodial parent. In cases of joint custody, the custodial parent for purposes of this chapter shall be the parent that has custody of the child for more than one-half of the time during a given calendar year. A parent entitled to be treated as the custodial parent pursuant to this paragraph may release this claim to the other parent if said release is in writing.

“(d) Annual Registration.—In order to receive the family consumption allowance provided by section 301, a qualified family must register with the sales tax administering authority in a form prescribed by the Secretary. The annual registration form shall provide—

“(1) the name of each family member who shared the qualified family’s residence on the family determination date,

“(2) the Social Security number of each family member on the family determination date who shared the qualified family’s residence on the family determination date,

“(3) the family member or family members to whom the family consumption allowance should be paid,

“(4) a certification that all listed family members are lawful residents of the United States,

“(5) a certification that all family members sharing the common residence are listed,

“(6) a certification that no family members were incarcerated on the family determination date (within the meaning of subsection (l)), and

“(7) the address of the qualified family.
Said registration shall be signed by all members of the qualified family that have attained the age of 21 years as of the date of filing.

“(e) Registration Not Mandatory.—Registration is not mandatory for any qualified family.

“(f) Effect of Failure To Provide Annual Registration.—Any qualified family that fails to register in accordance with this section within 30 days of the family determination date, shall cease receiving the monthly family consumption allowance in the month beginning 90 days after the family determination date.

“(g) Effect of Curing Failure To Provide Annual Registration.—Any qualified family that failed to timely make its annual registration in accordance with this section but subsequently cures its failure to register, shall be entitled to up to 6 months of lapsed sales tax rebate payments. No interest on lapsed payment amount shall be paid.

“(h) Effective Date of Annual Registrations.—Annual registrations shall take effect for the month beginning 90 days after the family registration date.

“(i) Effective Date of Revised Registrations.—A revised registration made pursuant to section 305 shall take effect for the first month beginning 60 days after the revised registration was filed. The existing registration shall remain in effect until the effective date of the revised registration.

“(j) Determination of Registration Filing Date.—An annual or revised registration shall be deemed filed when—

“(1) deposited in the United States mail, postage prepaid, to the address of the sales tax administering authority,

“(2) delivered and accepted at the offices of the sales tax administering authority, or

“(3) provided to a designated commercial private courier service for delivery within 2 days to the sales tax administering authority at the address of the sales tax administering authority.

“(k) Proposed Registration To Be Provided.—Thirty or more days before the family registration date, the sales tax administering authority shall mail to the address shown on the most recent rebate registration or change of address notice filed pursuant to section 305(d) a proposed registration that may be simply signed by the appropriate family members if family circumstances have not changed.

“(l) Incarcerated Individuals.—An individual shall not be eligible under this chapter to be included as a member of any qualified family if that individual—

“(1) is incarcerated in a local, State, or Federal jail, prison, mental hospital, or other institution on the family determination date, and

“(2) is scheduled to be incarcerated for 6 months or more in the 12-month period following the effective date of the annual registration or the revised registration of said qualified family.

“(m) Family Determination Date.—The family determination date is a date assigned to each family by the Secretary for purposes of determining qualified family size and other information necessary for the administration of this chapter. The Secretary shall promulgate regulations regarding the issuance of family determination dates. In the absence of any regulations, the family determination date for all families shall be October 1. The Secretary may assign family determination dates for administrative convenience. Permissible means of assigning family determination dates include a method based on the birth dates of family members.

“(n) Cross Reference.—For penalty for filing false rebate claim, see section 504(i).

“SEC. 303. Monthly poverty level.

“(a) In General.—The monthly poverty level for any particular month shall be one-twelfth of the ‘annual poverty level’. For purposes of this section the ‘annual poverty level’ shall be the sum of—

“(1) the annual level determined by the Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines required by sections 652 and 673(2) of the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 for a particular family size, and

“(2) in case of families that include a married couple, the ‘annual marriage penalty elimination amount’.

“(b) Annual Marriage Penalty Elimination Amount.—The annual marriage penalty elimination amount shall be the amount that is—

“(1) the amount that is two times the annual level determined by the Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines required by sections 652 and 673(2) of the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 for a family of one, less

“(2) the annual level determined by the Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines required by sections 652 and 673(2) of the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 for a family of two.

“SEC. 304. Rebate mechanism.

“(a) General Rule.—The Social Security Administration shall provide a monthly sales tax rebate to duly registered qualified families in an amount determined in accordance with section 301.

“(b) Persons Receiving Rebate.—The payments shall be made to the persons designated by the qualifying family in the annual or revised registration for each qualified family in effect with respect to the month for which payment is being made. Payments may only be made to persons 18 years or older. If more than 1 person is designated in a registration to receive the rebate, then the rebate payment shall be divided evenly between or among those persons designated.

“(c) When Rebates Mailed.—Rebates shall be mailed on or before the first business day of the month for which the rebate is being provided.

“(d) Smart cards and Direct Electronic Deposit Permissible.—The Social Security Administration may provide rebates in the form of smart cards that carry cash balances in their memory for use in making purchases at retail establishments or by direct electronic deposit.

“SEC. 305. Change in family circumstances.

“(a) General Rule.—In the absence of the filing of a revised registration in accordance with this chapter, the common residence of the qualified family, marital status and number of persons in a qualified family on the family registration date shall govern determinations required to be made under this chapter for purposes of the following calendar year.

“(b) No Double Counting.—In no event shall any person be considered part of more than one qualified family.

“(c) Revised Registration Permissible.—A qualified family may file a revised registration for purposes of section 302(d) to reflect a change in family circumstances. A revised registration form shall provide—

“(1) the name of each family member who shared the qualified family’s residence on the filing date of the revised registration,

“(2) the Social Security number of each family member who shared the qualified family’s residence on the filing date of the revised registration,

“(3) the family member or family members to whom the family consumption allowance should be paid,

“(4) a certification that all listed family members are lawful residents of the United States,

“(5) a certification that all family members sharing the commoner residence are listed,

“(6) a certification that no family members were incarcerated on the family determination date (within the meaning of section 302(1)), and

“(7) the address of the qualified family.
Said revised registration shall be signed by all members of the qualified family that have attained the age of 21 years as of the filing date of the revised registration.

“(d) Change of Address.—A change of address for a qualified family may be filed with the sales tax administering authority at any time and shall not constitute a revised registration.

“(e) Revised Registration Not Mandatory.—Revised registrations reflecting changes in family status are not mandatory.

--------------------------------------------------

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Friday, January 27, 2023 12:28 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

“SEC. 304. Rebate mechanism.

“(a) General Rule.—The Social Security Administration shall provide a monthly sales tax rebate to duly registered qualified families in an amount determined in accordance with section 301.

“(b) Persons Receiving Rebate.—The payments shall be made to the persons designated by the qualifying family in the annual or revised registration for each qualified family in effect with respect to the month for which payment is being made. Payments may only be made to persons 18 years or older. If more than 1 person is designated in a registration to receive the rebate, then the rebate payment shall be divided evenly between or among those persons designated.

“(c) When Rebates Mailed.—Rebates shall be mailed on or before the first business day of the month for which the rebate is being provided.

“(d) Smart cards and Direct Electronic Deposit Permissible.—The Social Security Administration may provide rebates in the form of smart cards that carry cash balances in their memory for use in making purchases at retail establishments or by direct electronic deposit.

6ix, are you anxious to get some free money from the Federal Government? Why not go fully criminal by filing fake income tax returns with huge tax rebates? Or fake disability with Social Security? Or commit stock fraud? There must be some way to rob old people with email by convincing them you are their grandson who needs money. Do that!

What to Do if Someone Files a Fraudulent Tax Return in Your Name
https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/taxes/articles/what-to
-do-if-someone-files-a-fraudulent-tax-return-in-your-name

5 Examples of Social Security Disability Fraud
https://www.thegoodlawgroup.com/blog/social-security-disability-fraud/

If it is not clear to you, there is absolutely no way the FairTax Act of 2023 will pass in the Senate or get Biden's signature. The FairTax Act is nonsense from the mentally ill Trumptards.

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

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Friday, January 27, 2023 12:59 PM

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

What The Proposed ‘FAIR Tax’ Really Looks Like

"After September 30, 2027, no money will be appropriated for enforcing the taxes repealed by the act (income, estate, payroll) and all records related to the administration of those taxes are to be destroyed by then except for records related to ongoing litigation. It does strike me as an invitation to go out of compliance, but being a CPA and all I'm not supposed to give that kind of advice."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2023/01/20/what-would-the-fa
ir-tax-really-be-like-/?sh=6cac12b463f2

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

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Friday, January 27, 2023 1:35 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

“SEC. 304. Rebate mechanism.

“(a) General Rule.—The Social Security Administration shall provide a monthly sales tax rebate to duly registered qualified families in an amount determined in accordance with section 301.

“(b) Persons Receiving Rebate.—The payments shall be made to the persons designated by the qualifying family in the annual or revised registration for each qualified family in effect with respect to the month for which payment is being made. Payments may only be made to persons 18 years or older. If more than 1 person is designated in a registration to receive the rebate, then the rebate payment shall be divided evenly between or among those persons designated.

“(c) When Rebates Mailed.—Rebates shall be mailed on or before the first business day of the month for which the rebate is being provided.

“(d) Smart cards and Direct Electronic Deposit Permissible.—The Social Security Administration may provide rebates in the form of smart cards that carry cash balances in their memory for use in making purchases at retail establishments or by direct electronic deposit.

Yes. This is part of the entire thing that I posted just above your post.

Simply re-posting it doesn't make it any more clear than when it was part of a greater whole.

Quote:
6ix, are you anxious to get some free money from the Federal Government?

No. As I stated yesterday, I might actually support a Value Added Tax, but ONLY if necessities including Food, Water/Trash pickup, Electric/Natural Gas, Gasoline, Your first car (and your spouses' first car if it's a 2 income household), Car repairs for said cars so you can get to work, Hell... even things like diapers for kids, had no up front sales taxes.

I also stated that these things simply shouldn't be taxed in the first place, and that a rebate system would be asinine. But here we are... With a bill that will fuck over millions of Americans who are too stupid and/or lazy to jump through all these needless hoops.

Quote:
Why not go fully criminal by filing fake income tax returns with huge tax rebates? Or fake disability with Social Security? Or commit stock fraud? There must be some way to rob old people with email by convincing them you are their grandson who needs money. Do that!

Why would I do any of that? Not only is the ROI terrible on any of those suggestions with the risk you're taking, but I don't have a love of money like you do. I also wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I were a con man.

Quote:
If it is not clear to you, there is absolutely no way the FairTax Act of 2023 will pass in the Senate or get Biden's signature. The FairTax Act is nonsense from the mentally ill Trumptards.

I agree. It will not pass. And I'm glad that it will not pass. I would only support it if necessities weren't taxed on the front end and they dropped this ridiculous rebate program.

And here's why: How Mail-In Rebates Rip You Off

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/how-mail-in-rebates-r
ip-you-off.aspx

Quote:
Rebate deals are a way to get customers into stores and encourage them to spend. Even better, the companies know they often won't have to pay out that rebate money at all. According to ConsumerAffairs.com, more than $500 million in rebates go unclaimed every year.

"Between 40% and 60% of rebates are never redeemed," says Edgar Dworsky, founder and editor of ConsumerWorld.org.

I always file mine. I've gotten nearly $4,000 worth of rebates in the last 2 years now.

But half of Americans would get raped on VAT taxes by not filing for their rebates (or knowing somebody smart enough to do it for them since the Government will make it at least as difficult as it is to apply yearly for governmental assistance programs would be... every single month).

Yes. As it is written, H.R.25 — 118th Congress (2023-2024) is a terrible piece of proposed legislature and deserves to die.

Every once in a while we agree on something, even if the road we took to get to that conclusion was very different.

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, January 29, 2023 8:07 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Every once in a while we agree on something, even if the road we took to get to that conclusion was very different.

Contemplate the fact that High-income workers work fewer years and live a lot longer than low-income workers. Here's what that looks like for the US:

Here's the rich vs poor life expectancy differential internationally:

https://jabberwocking.com/frances-retirement-system-is-unfair-so-is-ev
eryones/

All around the world, life is short and unfair to angry poor white trash.

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

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Sunday, January 29, 2023 9:44 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Every once in a while we agree on something, even if the road we took to get to that conclusion was very different.
Contemplate the fact that High-income workers work fewer years and live a lot longer than low-income workers. Here's what that looks like for the US:

I've worked less than any not rich person you will ever know. And my house is paid for.

And no. I won't look at your graphs from jabberwocking.

Quote:
All around the world, life is short and unfair to angry poor white trash.

Oh. You must be in Shitting on the People mood this morning. Let me know when you're back in defending the people from the evil corporations mode.

I'm just kidding. Don't bother. I don't care about any of your multiple personalities or their opinions on anything.

That being said, if you want to remove your head out of your ass and go back to the discussion we were having instead of taking the last sentence of a long post and quoting it just so you can shit-talk and insult somebody because you're a worthless piece of shit with a never-ending supply of sand in his vagina, let's talk.

--------------------------------------------------

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Monday, January 30, 2023 8:33 AM

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

What Republicans (and anyone else) who support Trump need to know

THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/04/10/tru
mp-university-settlement-judge-finalized/502387002/

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions-in-fines-for-u
npaid-work

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexua
l-misconduct/story?id=51956410

That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-dona
ld-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you exclaimed, “He sure knows me.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-dona
ld-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/

That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year-old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t — you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, “That’s cool!”
https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-criticized
-after-he-appears-mock-reporter-serge-kovaleski-n470016

When you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/americas-first-po
st-text-president/549794/

When the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has
-said-central-park-five/1501321001/

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-campaign-protests-2016031
3-story.html

When you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-orders-proteste
r-s-coat-is-confiscated-and-he-is-sent-into-the-cold-a6802756.html

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/why-cant-trump-ju
st-condemn-nazis/567320/

When you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-insult-foreign-countries-leaders_
n_59dd2769e4b0b26332e76d57

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!”
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/12/29/138-trump-policy-chan
ges-2017-000603/

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!”
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-05/how-is-donald-trump
-profiting-from-the-presidency-let-us-count-the-ways

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, “That makes sense.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/09/26/the-very-bi
g-ocean-between-here-and-puerto-rico-is-not-a-perfect-excuse-for-a-lack-of-aid/

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/donald-trump-dictators-kim-jon
g-un-vladimir-putin/index.html

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas – he explains that they’re just “animals” – and you say, “Well, OK then.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-
according-new-count-n1071791

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/confronting-cost-trumps-corru
ption-american-families/

What you don’t get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also…hear me…charitable.
https://kzoodems.com/2020/07/what-republicans-and-anyone-else-who-supp
ort-trump-need-to-know/

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

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Wednesday, February 1, 2023 1:17 PM

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

When Americans Lost Faith in the News

Half a century ago, most of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, most say they don’t. What happened to the power of the press?

Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office, he started calling the news media “the enemy of the American people.” For a time, the White House barred certain news organizations, including the Times, CNN, Politico, and the Los Angeles Times, from briefings, and suspended the credentials of a CNN correspondent, Jim Acosta, who was regarded as combative by the President. “Fake news” became a standard White House response — frequently the only White House response — to stories that did not make the President look good. There were many such stories.

Suspicion is, for obvious reasons, built into the relationship between the press and government officials, but, normally, both parties have felt an interest in maintaining at least the appearance of cordiality. Reporters need access so that they can write their stories, and politicians would like those stories to be friendly. Reporters also want to come across as fair and impartial, and officials want to seem cooperative and transparent. Each party is willing to accept a degree of hypocrisy on the part of the other.

With Trump, all that changed. Trump is rude. Cordiality is not a feature of his brand. And there is no cooperation in the Trump world, because everything is antagonistic. Trump waged war on the press, and he won, or nearly won. He persuaded millions of Americans not to believe anything they saw or heard in the non-Trumpified media, including, ultimately, the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

The press wasn’t silenced in the Trump years. The press was discredited, at least among Trump supporters, and that worked just as well. It was censorship by other means. Back in 1976, even after Vietnam and Watergate, seventy-two percent of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, the figure is thirty-four percent. Among Republicans, it’s fourteen percent.

That we need a free press for our democracy to work is a belief as old as our democracy. Hence the First Amendment. Without the free circulation of information and opinion, voters will be operating in ignorance when they choose whom to vote for and what policies to support. But what if the information is bad? What if you can’t trust the reporter? What if there’s no such thing as “the facts”? . . .

In the memoir slash manifesto “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life” (St. Martin’s), Margaret Sullivan argues that objectivity is not so much impossible today as meaningless, and that the press ought to stop striving to achieve it. The events of 2020 and 2021 showed that the press’s values were in the wrong place. “The extreme right-wing had its staunch all-in media allies,” she writes. “The rest of the country had a mainstream press that too often couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do their jobs. Too many journalists couldn’t seem to grasp their crucial role in American democracy.”

She complains about a number of common journalistic practices, but what concerns her most is precisely the “objectivity” standard. She thinks this leads to both-sides-ism, the insistence on giving each party in a dispute equal coverage. In her view, the traditional news media engaged in a pattern of treating election denialists as “legitimate news sources whose views, for the sake of objectivity and fairness, must be respectfully listened to and reflected in news stories.” And this was true of the mainstream coverage of national politics generally. “Almost pathologically,” Sullivan says, reporters “normalized the abnormal and sensationalized the mundane.”

Sullivan’s position is an appeal to the original rationale of the First Amendment. We have a free press in order to protect democracy. When democracy is threatened, reporters and editors and publishers should have an agenda. They should be pro-democracy. Reporters should “stop asking who the winners and losers are,” Sullivan says; they should “start asking who is serving democracy and who is undermining it.” The press is in the game. It has a stake.

The power of the press, such as it is, is like the power of academic scholars, scientific researchers, and Supreme Court Justices. It is not backed by force. It rests on faith: the belief that these are groups of people dedicated to pursuing the truth without fear or favor. Once they disclaim that function, they will be perceived in the way everyone else is now perceived, as spinning for gain or status.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20230130155305/https://www.newyorker.com/m
agazine/2023/02/06/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news

For 86% of Republicans, there are no facts other than what Trump approves.

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

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Wednesday, February 1, 2023 4:36 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
When Americans Lost Faith in the News

It was earned. And The New Yorker is a part of that problem.

That's fine. They are all going to be laid off now.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Thursday, February 2, 2023 9:55 AM

SECOND

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

Trump's wall settles into a strange, costly afterlife

The border wall is largely ineffective as immigration policy. But it's very effective as an assertion of values.

By Frank Wilkinson

Donald Trump's signature border wall is morphing in strange and costly ways - even as it seems to play little role in stemming illegal migration.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been busy spending state money - in hundred-million-dollar chunks - to erect his own political statement on the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott's wall, which the Texas Observer calls a "colossal waste of money," has generated contracts for GOP campaign donors and a talking point for Abbott's political future. But Abbott's wall is running into some of the same difficulties that plagued Trump's wall. As USA Today reported in 2017, 4,900 privately owned land parcels in Texas "sit within 500 feet of the border." Thus, building a wall provides annuities for an army of lawyers as well as for construction firms. The Texas Observer estimates that at its current rate, completing the state wall would cost around $17 billion.

In Congress, Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a leading Republican defender of those who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just introduced the Finish The Wall Act. The legislation is largely self-explanatory. It's designed to complete the Trump wall and stop the "horror" that President Joe Biden is "forcing on America."

Meanwhile, in Arizona, before leaving office in January, Governor Doug Ducey agreed to remove the shipping-container wall that had transformed parts of Arizona's southern border into a linear junkyard. The state's taxpayers will spend about $76 million or so to remove the eyesores, which is a bargain compared with the roughly $95 million that they spent to install them in the first place.

Each of these barriers, state and federal, has something in common beyond the waste of public money and the hazards they pose to wildlife: Each can be surmounted by a ladder, a technology that is many thousands of years old and widely available in Mexico. Smugglers with a taste for more elaborate gear can deploy an inexpensive power saw to get through. The Washington Post reported last year that traffickers had done exactly that - 3,272 times in the preceding three years. Some of the openings they created were large enough to drive a vehicle through. Occasionally, authorities find a tunnel that enables passage beneath the wall.

If you're young and athletic, you can climb freestyle. But in places where the height of the wall was raised to 30 feet, some migrants have been getting injured or even dying, according to Mexican consulate data provided to Border Report. Carlos González Gutiérrez, Mexico's Consul General in San Diego, told Border Report that the higher wall hasn't deterred migrants but has led to hundreds of cases of bruises, fractures and lacerations as well as spinal cord or brain injuries. Hospitalizations from falls have increased.

The correlation between the wall and deterrence is shaky at best. "In fiscal year 2022," states a report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian, pro-immigration think tank, "the border wall was breached 4,101 times - more than 11 times per day. This was far more than the number of breaches in any of the prior six years and double the number of breaches for fiscal year 2016 before any of the Trump wall was built."

It's a paradox, isn't it? Apparently, the more wall you build, the more it is breached for illegal access. Sometimes the breaches are cosmetically repaired by the same smugglers who created them, so that the opening can be used over and over.

All of which raises the question of why so many Republican politicians, and the voters who elect them, are so enamored of this costly symbol of failure and futility. After all, the same data that I quoted above are available to governors and members of Congress. And it's not as if champions of the wall are recalling the glory of some ancient ruined rampart. For most of American history there was barely a border, let alone a wall, between the U.S. and Mexico.

"Even after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the international boundary, the dividing line remained loosely marked, haphazardly maintained and casually observed," writes Michael Dear in "Why Walls Won't Work."

The tensions and complexities of 21st century migration surely demand a less casual approach to the border. But that doesn't explain why so many have rallied around the notion of a wall - often against their own better judgment - instead of more effective responses. When U.S. Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Thom Tillis recently offered a modest proposal that included money for migrant processing centers at the border and badly needed immigration courts, one result of which would almost certainly be speedier expulsions of migrants from the U.S., the idea was promptly killed. Yet Trump's wall lives on.

Perhaps the wall has an emotional resonance that no courts or processing centers can match. The wall is largely ineffective as policy. But it's very effective as an assertion of values. It's a silent scream of fear and loathing directed at the people on the other side. In which case maybe the wall is not a costly, colossal failure. It's therapy.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230202145051/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/outlook/article/donald-trump-border-wall-immigration-17757262.php

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

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Thursday, February 2, 2023 11:10 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump's signature border wall is morphing in strange and costly ways - even as it seems to play little role in stemming illegal migration.

A wall doesn't hold anybody out if it was never finished.

A wall with doors doesn't hold anybody out if the people who hold the key keep it unlocked and open at all times.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Friday, February 3, 2023 7:49 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump's signature border wall is morphing in strange and costly ways - even as it seems to play little role in stemming illegal migration.

A wall doesn't hold anybody out if it was never finished.

A wall with doors doesn't hold anybody out if the people who hold the key keep it unlocked and open at all times.

The finished sections of the wall are being climbed over or, for those with power tools, cut. But you didn't pay attention.

What I want to see is a shoot-to-kill law passed in Congress. Who to shoot? Anybody who hires an illegal. I know that would kill many Trumptards in Texas who compete with me. Too bad, so sad, but to stop the flow of illegals requires stopping Americans from hiring illegals. When will House Republicans pass that shoot-to-kill law?

Migrants, smugglers cutting through new Arizona border wall

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

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Friday, February 3, 2023 11:42 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What I want to see is a shoot-to-kill law passed in Congress. Who to shoot? Anybody who hires an illegal. I know that would kill many Trumptards in Texas who compete with me. Too bad, so sad, but to stop the flow of illegals requires stopping Americans from hiring illegals. When will House Republicans pass that shoot-to-kill law?

You're letting your Arthur Fleck bleed out again.

I already said that anybody caught doing it should have assets frozen and their business shut down and MASSIVE penalties for anyone hiring them for the household, which is just about every rich Democrat in California too.

But you can't stop there.

No anchor babies. No free school. No free medical care. No free housing... even free cages.

Nothing. Let them know that there is NOTHING here for them, other to die in the streets like our own homeless citizens do.

Noboody is going to come here when Democrats aren't giving them free shit anymore.

P.S. The thumbnail to your video isn't a wall. That's hardly a fence.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Friday, February 3, 2023 11:59 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What I want to see is a shoot-to-kill law passed in Congress. Who to shoot? Anybody who hires an illegal. I know that would kill many Trumptards in Texas who compete with me. Too bad, so sad, but to stop the flow of illegals requires stopping Americans from hiring illegals. When will House Republicans pass that shoot-to-kill law?

You're letting your Arthur Fleck bleed out again.

I already said that anybody caught doing it should have assets frozen and their business shut down and MASSIVE penalties for anyone hiring them for the household, which is just about every rich Democrat in California too.

But you can't stop there.

No anchor babies. No free school. No free medical care. No free housing... even free cages.

Nothing. Let them know that there is NOTHING here for them, other to die in the streets like our own homeless citizens do.

Noboody is going to come here when Democrats aren't giving them free shit anymore.

P.S. The thumbnail to your video isn't a wall. That's hardly a fence.

That wall was the one Trump chose out of all the different designs. If you wanted a better wall, it is all Trump's fault. As for my "shoot-to-kill people who hire illegals" law, it ain't gonna happen because it is far too quick and brutal for Congress. Congressmen hate, absolutely hate, making irrevocable decisions that would upset their voters. That is why Congress has not made a declaration of war since 1942. It is too much scary responsibility for easily frightened Congressmen to handle.
Declarations of War by Congress
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/declarations-of-war.htm

Your ideas are a bunch of litigation, which is slow and exactly the kind of non-lethal and totally ineffective solutions Congressmen love to write into law. I look forward to many years of committee hearings about precisely what will be written as new law. I expect nothing will pass out of Congress.

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

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Friday, February 3, 2023 12:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

You're never going to see anybody pass a law where American Citizens get shot without a trial, so that's just pure fantasy on your part.

When (and not if) things get bad enough, and the right people are in office, we will shoot foreign invaders to kill.

That's not an outcome that needs to happen if we completely financially disincentivize them from coming here in the first place, and then use those policies retroactively on any criminal invaders living here now. For them, we could let them know that with no access to free money and no ability to work for money here, our final government subsidy to them will be to escort them back over the Southern Border

--------------------------------------------------

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Monday, February 6, 2023 6:22 AM

SECOND

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

Strongmen Leaders and the Infallibility Trap

Posted on Monday, Feb 6, 2023 1:50AM by Thomas Wells

It is easy to become exasperated with democracy. Various factions bicker and maneuver against each other in an endless grubby contest for power, hypocritically appealing to a shared public interest while continuously generating and sustaining social divisions. Things that are necessary do not get done, lost amidst the endless dithering, quibbling, and bargaining for advantage. Things that should not be done become official policies against all common sense, seemingly as a way of trolling the opposition.

So it is disappointing but perhaps not surprising that people around the world are increasingly likely to endorse the strongman theory of government, that “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and an election is a good way to run the country”.

A strongman government has two major attractions compared to democracy. First, it promises wise and benevolent rule: undistracted by factions motivated by political interests the strong leader will be freed to make wiser, better decisions in the national interest. Second, it promises decisiveness: without the endless bickering and second-guessing, strong leaders can get on and do what needs to be done.

Let us start with the virtue of wise and benevolent leadership. It is easily observed that democracies are far from wise. This should not be surprising if you consider that voters have little interest at stake in making voting choices well because – unlike when weighing up even trivial decisions like what sandwich to buy – they know that their choice will not decide the outcome. So voters mostly choose on the basis of things irrelevant to the policy platforms of politicians, in particular as a way of expressing their social identity. In addition, few people of great capability are willing to put themselves forward for the thankless task of public service, especially given the many easier and more rewarding careers available to such people in a free society. Hence the low ability and excessive confidence of most candidates for political office in democracies. The result is that democracies are emphatically not governed by wise statesmen in the interest of society as a whole.

Nonetheless, merely because democracy isn’t great doesn’t mean that autocracy is better.

More at https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/02/strongmen-leaders-and-th
e-infallibility-trap.html

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

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Monday, February 6, 2023 9:31 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
So it is disappointing but perhaps not surprising that people around the world are increasingly likely to endorse the strongman theory of government, that “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and an election is a good way to run the country”.

You mean like Trudeau ruining lives of truckers protesting? Or the entire continent of Australia on lockdown and forcing them into concentration camps if they refused the jab? Or many of the state governors in the US claiming "emergency powers" for themselves and shutting down everyone's businesses? Or Joe Biden* using OSHA to mandate vaccinations?

I know you dipshits are talking about what's going to happen in 2 years, but we're already living it.

--------------------------------------------------

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Monday, February 6, 2023 12:15 PM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You mean like Trudeau ruining lives of truckers protesting? Or the entire continent of Australia on lockdown and forcing them into concentration camps if they refused the jab? Or many of the state governors in the US claiming "emergency powers" for themselves and shutting down everyone's businesses? Or Joe Biden* using OSHA to mandate vaccinations?

I know you dipshits are talking about what's going to happen in 2 years, but we're already living it.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

I know people like you, even down to the fake patriotism: 'Growing up in a Republic was nice...'

I also know people like this McGowan, emergency room physician, who is nothing like you: They cursed her out for telling them they had the virus. “I have heard so many people say, ‘I don’t care if I make someone sick and kill them,’” McGowan says. Their ruthlessness simultaneously terrified and enraged her — not least because she had an immunocompromised husband at home. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moral-injury-is-an-invisibl
e-epidemic-that-affects-millions/

All the people I know like you, 6ix, vote for Trump. They also struggle to stay in the middle class, mainly because they have a huge repertoire of non-adaptive beliefs and behaviors that Trump knows how take advantage of. Meanwhile, the McGowans are nothing like you. Neither am I. We prosper.

Trump knows how his Trumptards think. So do I because his Trumptards are all around Texas. The Trumptards don't do well (except in their own estimations) because of their non-adaptive beliefs and behaviors, and they sure are mad about it, but not willing to change those attitudes they learned while still children from maladjusted parents.

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

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Monday, February 6, 2023 12:31 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You mean like Trudeau ruining lives of truckers protesting? Or the entire continent of Australia on lockdown and forcing them into concentration camps if they refused the jab? Or many of the state governors in the US claiming "emergency powers" for themselves and shutting down everyone's businesses? Or Joe Biden* using OSHA to mandate vaccinations?

I know you dipshits are talking about what's going to happen in 2 years, but we're already living it.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
I know people like you

You don't know anybody like me, Arthur.

--------------------------------------------------

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Tuesday, February 7, 2023 7:39 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You don't know anybody like me, Arthur.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

You are made of the common clay. You'd do much better in life if you stopped imagining yourself as unique and special and deserving of Jesus's Love or whatever embarrassing subterranean religious impulses that are driving you and the average Trumptards to act in ways unfortunate for you.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, February 7, 2023 7:40 AM

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

Behold, the new Republican culture war — because they have nothing else

Republicans are resorting to their age-old tactic of manufactured moral outrage to distract from the fact that they have no economic agenda other than to enrich the already wealthy. It would be laughable if their culture wars didn't have a deadly impact on people's lives. From attacks on the right to an abortion, to the right to be transgender, to the right to study accurate history, conservative attacks on vulnerable populations have reached a fever pitch. And it's destroying the nation.

As if overturning Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court in 2022 wasn't enough, 20 GOP state attorneys general are now targeting pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS for fulfilling mail orders of the abortion drug mifepristone. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency, in January expanded availability of the drug across the country. The abortion pill was relatively unknown some years ago but is now used in more than half of all abortions nationwide, likely in response to the rapidly disappearing access to surgical abortions. Now, as they go after mail-order abortion pills, Republicans are showing just how hell-bent they are on ensuring that the bodies of women (and transgender men) remain glorified baby incubators.

More at https://www.salon.com/2023/02/06/behold-the-new-culture--because-they-
have-nothing-else_partner/

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

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Tuesday, February 7, 2023 9:46 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Behold, the new Republican culture war — because they have nothing else

Republicans are resorting to their age-old tactic of manufactured moral outrage to distract from the fact that they have no economic agenda other than to enrich the already wealthy. It would be laughable if their culture wars didn't have a deadly impact on people's lives. From attacks on the right to an abortion, to the right to be transgender, to the right to study accurate history, conservative attacks on vulnerable populations have reached a fever pitch. And it's destroying the nation.

As if overturning Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court in 2022 wasn't enough, 20 GOP state attorneys general are now targeting pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS for fulfilling mail orders of the abortion drug mifepristone. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency, in January expanded availability of the drug across the country. The abortion pill was relatively unknown some years ago but is now used in more than half of all abortions nationwide, likely in response to the rapidly disappearing access to surgical abortions. Now, as they go after mail-order abortion pills, Republicans are showing just how hell-bent they are on ensuring that the bodies of women (and transgender men) remain glorified baby incubators.

More at https://www.salon.com/2023/02/06/behold-the-new-culture--because-they-
have-nothing-else_partner/

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

None of that is true. It is a Salon.com article, after all.

--------------------------------------------------

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Tuesday, February 7, 2023 9:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You don't know anybody like me, Arthur.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
You are made of the common clay. You'd do much better in life if you stopped imagining yourself as unique and special and deserving of Jesus's Love or whatever embarrassing subterranean religious impulses that are driving you and the average Trumptards to act in ways unfortunate for you.

How was work today, honey?

... and what makes you think I have a religious bone in my body?

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 12:26 PM

SECOND

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

Republicans make three central claims, each of which is amazingly wrong and easily discredited. Let’s take them one at a time.

1. Republicans claimed Biden was wrong to say some in the GOP want to “sunset” Medicare and Social Security. During the State of the Union address, the Democrat said “some“ Republicans want to subject the social insurance programs to re-approval every five years. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, among others in the GOP, was among many who said the president was “lying.”

He wasn’t. Scott released a written plan that really would sunset Social Security and Medicare, just as Biden claimed. Other Republicans have endorsed the same idea. Yesterday’s GOP whining was as bizarre as it was baseless.

2. Republicans claimed the GOP isn’t tying entitlements to the debt ceiling fight. In fact, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida wrote on Twitter, “Joe Biden flat-out LIED when he said Republicans want to see cuts to Medicare and Social Security in the debt ceiling negotiations.” Sen. Mike Lee of Utah pushed a very similar message.

I don’t understand what it is that Donalds and Lee don’t understand. A variety of Republican officials have said — out loud, in public, and on the record — that they want to pursue Social Security and Medicare cuts by way of the GOP’s debt ceiling crisis. To drive home the point, the Biden White House sent Politico quite a few documented examples that leave no doubt that the president was right and Republicans like Donalds and Lee were wrong.

3. Republicans claim that the GOP doesn’t support Medicare and Social Security cuts in general. While it’s certainly true that prominent party leaders, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have recently begun running away from the idea, the fact remains that Republicans have spent decades pursuing Social Security and Medicare cuts.

In fact, yesterday’s GOP pushback led to a variety of newly published reports documenting the many prominent Republicans who’ve made no secret of their support for cutting the social insurance programs.

All of which is to say, Republicans have decided to pick a fight over one of the Democrats’ strongest issues, claiming Biden was lying about something they’re lying about.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ignoring-reality-g
op-picks-weird-fight-social-security-rcna69900

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

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 1:07 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republicans make three central claims, each of which is amazingly wrong and easily discredited. Let’s take them one at a time.

1. Republicans claimed Biden was wrong to say some in the GOP want to “sunset” Medicare and Social Security. During the State of the Union address, the Democrat said “some“ Republicans want to subject the social insurance programs to re-approval every five years. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, among others in the GOP, was among many who said the president was “lying.”

He wasn’t. Scott released a written plan that really would sunset Social Security and Medicare, just as Biden claimed. Other Republicans have endorsed the same idea. Yesterday’s GOP whining was as bizarre as it was baseless.

In context, Scott wanted ALL CURRENT EVERYTHING to come back up for re-approval every 5 years. Every single fucking thing... which SS and Medicare are a part of, along with everything else.

Personally, I DON'T agree with this on SS and Medicare, but I do think that this is a good idea for 90% of government bills that are active.

We can't have any REAL DISCUSSION about this though when you and your President and your Party are going to LIE about it.

I won't even read the rest of whatever what's his name has to say since he started out with this whopper of a lie.

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 3:11 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

the clownshow continues?

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 3:49 PM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I won't even read the rest of whatever what's his name has to say since he started out with this whopper of a lie.

Things that interest GOP legislators:
Child marriage
Children's genitals
Children's bathroom habits
Children's sexual habits
Adult genitals
Adult bathroom habits
Adult sexual habits
Adult pregnancy

Things that don't interest GOP legislators:
Poverty
Welfare
Education (unless it's Biblical)
Childcare
Vaccinations
Nutrition
Pre-natal care.
Infant healthcare.
Mental Health
Job Security
Universal Healthcare
Gun Control
Criminal Justice Reform
The Stability of Social Security
The Stability of Medicare
Prescription Drug Prices

And yet people continue to vote for those monsters.

https://bofh.social/@gme

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

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 6:27 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

LOL

Sure.

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 8:04 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Children's sexual habits
Adult bathroom habits

Is there something wrong with you, do you support those Weinstein Maxwell types and those other bunches of pedophiles?

,

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Gun Control

Yup another 3 Dozen Shot and 5 Killed in the Gun Control city of SHITCAGO

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

And yet people continue to vote for those monsters.

Maybe you're correct here, maybe Lori Beetlejuice Lightfoot does look like a monster

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is filmed DANCING in streets of Windy City as murders soar
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11691129/Chicago-Mayor-Lori-L
ightfoot-filmed-DANCING-streets-Windy-City-murders-soar.html

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Sunday, February 12, 2023 9:13 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Yes. Second supports pedophilia and the molesting of children. So does Ted.

This is why they won't even post in the threads dedicated to these topics, such as the drag queen show that a bunch of Leftist single moms brought their kids to, with video footage of a 5 year old white girl rubbing up on 250lb black man Princess Ariel's junk while the other two 250lb drag queen clowns smiled and none of the Leftist single mom's tried to stop it.

Democrats are all for this behavior.

--------------------------------------------------

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Tuesday, February 14, 2023 10:18 AM

SECOND

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

The G.O.P.’s Long War Against Medicare and Social Security
Feb. 13, 2023, 7:00 p.m. ET

Politically, the most crucial moment in President Biden’s State of the Union address was his declaration that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.” Why did he say that? Maybe because Senator Rick Scott, when he was the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released a fiscal plan last year with the bullet point “All federal legislation sunsets in five years.”

Seems straightforward, doesn’t it, despite cries of “lies” from the floor? But right-wing news media — well aware that Biden hit a nerve — has gone into overdrive insisting that his claim was false. Even some mainstream media figures have claimed that Biden was “over the top.”

The basis for these denunciations, as far as I can tell, is the idea that calling a plan to sunset legislation a plan to sunset legislation is somehow misleading, because voters don’t know what “sunset” means. Indeed, just because the legislation authorizing a program comes to an end needn’t mean that the program will die; Congress can always vote to reinstate it.

But, of course, many Republicans do want to eviscerate these programs. To believe otherwise requires both willful naïveté and amnesia about 40 years of political history.

First of all, if Republicans had absolutely no desire to make major cuts to America’s main social insurance programs, why would they sunset them — and thus create the risk that they wouldn’t be renewed? As Biden might say, c’mon, man.

And then there’s that historical record. Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.

So, about that history. It has been widely forgotten, but soon after taking office Ronald Reagan proposed major cuts to Social Security. But he backed down in the face of a political backlash, leading analysts at the Cato Institute to call for a “Leninist” strategy — their word — creating a coalition ready to exploit a future crisis if and when one arrived.

To that end, Cato created the Project on Social Security Privatization, calling for replacing Social Security with individual accounts — which George W. Bush tried to do in 2005. By then, however, Cato had quietly renamed its project; “privatization” polled badly, and Bush insisted that it was a “trick word” used to “scare people.”

So there’s a history here, and there’s a similar history for Medicare. Many people probably recall that Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in 1995. I don’t know how many people realize that Gingrich’s key demand was that President Bill Clinton agree to large cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

After Republicans gained control of the House in 2010, Paul Ryan began pushing for major cuts in spending. One key element was converting Medicare from a system that pays medical bills to a system offering people fixed sums of money to be applied to the purchase of private insurance — that is, vouchers.

But many though not all supporters of the Ryan plan insisted that calling vouchers “vouchers” was a left-wing smear.

So are people who claim that Biden was over the top unaware of this track record? Do they really not know that Republicans have spent more than four decades trying to find ways to undermine Medicare and Social Security? Are they unaware that there’s a long history of Republicans whining that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe Republican policies using exactly the same words Republicans used themselves until political consultants urged them to find euphemisms?

Well, I don’t think Biden is going to let up. He knows (as do his hysterical opponents) that his attacks are effective, and he has the facts on his side.

Oh, and one Republican who might be especially vulnerable to Democratic attacks over social insurance programs is Ron DeSantis.

Before becoming Florida’s governor, DeSantis enthusiastically endorsed Ryan’s Medicare voucher proposal and declared that allowing seniors to retire in their late 60s was “unsustainable.”

As governor, DeSantis has made headlines with culture-war attacks on education and his opposition to public-health measures. But in some ways his biggest achievement, if you might call it that, has been blocking the expansion of Medicaid in his state under the Affordable Care Act; in so doing he’s leaving hundreds of thousands of Floridians with no realistic way to get health insurance and is leaving billions in federal funds on the table.

True, Medicaid, unlike Medicare and Social Security, is means-tested. But it’s also extremely popular; DeSantis’s actions suggest that he’s an ideologue who hates social programs on principle.

So to go back to our original premise, when Biden suggests that “some Republicans” want to eviscerate key programs, he’s right; and Ron DeSantis is almost surely one of the Republicans he’s right about.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/opinion/columnists/republicans-medi
care-social-security.html

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

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Tuesday, February 14, 2023 7:07 PM

SECOND

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

Ronald Reagan predicted that Medicare would destroy freedom.

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

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Sunday, February 19, 2023 1:35 PM

SECOND

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

How a Black veteran desegregated a Texas medical school

STAT spoke with Gamble about a new paper she published on Herman A. Barnett III, a Black veteran who desegregated the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1949. Technically, Barnett was admitted to the school on a contract basis — to uphold racial segregation, the university leadership planned to build an entirely separate medical school for Black students where Barnett would be required to transfer. But that school was never built, and Barnett graduated from UTMB in 1953.

Texas was the only place where they appropriated the money for the separate medical school. North Carolina wanted to do it. They passed legislation, but they didn’t appropriate the money. So Texas was different.

Even though Barnett was a part of the school, and he did well, there was still segregation. He had to sit at a desk by himself. He could only see patients at the Black hospital.

The other part about Dr. Barnett’s story that’s connected to the broader civil rights narrative is that he was a vet. He had been a Tuskegee airman. So one of the major narratives of the civil rights movement and the medical civil rights movement was: here were these people who had fought, had served their country, and could not get into a veteran’s hospital for whites only.

There’s a quote you found in your research, where somebody joked, “What was the state going to do when a Negro applied for a medical education — build him a whole medical school?” And then that’s exactly what UTMB tried to do. What can we learn today from this story?

More at https://www.statnews.com/2023/02/14/medical-school-desegregation-herma
n-barnett/

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

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Sunday, February 19, 2023 1:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

All this talk about desegregation and all I ever hear from Black Democrats is how they don't want any white people around 'em.

Funny that, huh?

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, February 19, 2023 3:51 PM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
All this talk about desegregation and all I ever hear from Black Democrats is how they don't want any white people around 'em.

Funny that, huh?

You heard blacks complaining about "angry poor white trash Trumptards" but misinterpreted what you heard.

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

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Sunday, February 19, 2023 4:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
All this talk about desegregation and all I ever hear from Black Democrats is how they don't want any white people around 'em.

Funny that, huh?
You heard blacks complaining about "angry poor white trash Trumptards" but misinterpreted what you heard.

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

I suppose there are a lot of "Trumptards" at Uni, huh?

Forbes: Black And Brown Students Are In Need Of Safe Spaces On Campus!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2021/08/11/black-and-brown-st
udents-are-in-need-of-safe-spaces-on-campus/?sh=47fa10936000

The Atlantic: The Fine Line Between Safe Space and Segregation

Schools want black students to feel welcome, but sometimes their attempts go awry.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/finding-the-line
-between-safe-space-and-segregation/496289/

Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Creating Antiracist Spaces Where Black Students Can Breathe and Thrive

https://www.diverseeducation.com/demographics/african-american/article
/15107570/creating-antiracist-spaces-where-black-students-can-breathe-and-thrive

The Washington Post: A group demanded a space for students of color. Now they say they’re being called racists.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/01/a-group-
demanded-a-space-for-students-of-color-now-they-say-theyre-being-called-racists/

The Fire: Trend of racially segregated campus events is putting institutions on dangerous legal ground

https://www.thefire.org/news/trend-racially-segregated-campus-events-p
utting-institutions-dangerous-legal-ground

I don't think any Trumptards were lining up to see Wakanda Forever, for that matter...

This dumb college brainwashed racist bitch wasn't talking to Trumptards here. She knows goddamned well they wouldn't even see the movie, let alone listen to her speak for 10 seconds. She was giving marching orders to all the college "educated" pink haired twitter weirdos and their soy-cucked, virgins-for-life, friend-zoned, future rapist, chemically castrated, feminist, white, "male" friends.

FYI... WesSideLive is not a Democrat retard and he just earned himself another subscriber here.

And you, Second... Get fucked, you idiot. Every time we talk I end up destroying you.

--------------------------------------------------

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Thursday, February 23, 2023 9:01 AM

SECOND

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

Assume the Worst: The Graduation Speech You’ll Never Hear

This commencement address will never be given, because graduation speakers are supposed to offer encouragement and inspiration.

That’s not what you need. You need a warning.

After an uncommonly long career observing and writing about misbehavior, I have one piece of advice as you launch yourselves from college: Assume the worst.

Based on the last six thousand years of human history, it’s the only sensible way to proceed. Lowering your expectations will inoculate you against serial disappointments. It will also set you up for heart-lifting surprises on those occasions when someone you meet turns out to be unexpectedly honorable, generous and selfless.

If I were actually standing at a podium, looking out at a sea of young hope-filled faces, I’d begin with a raw appraisal of the real world: It’s pretty fucked up.

It was fucked up when I graduated, too, but not this bad. Our vernacular contained no such terms as “active shooter,” “ISIS-inspired” or “viral cat video.”

Still, I’d bet that even the brightest of you would sit there thinking—as past generations have—okay, it’s got to get better.

I’m here to say: No, it doesn’t.

And where did you get such a tender idea?

The day I got out of college, in 1974, a vainglorious paranoid was in the White House, shredding the U.S. Constitution for toilet paper. There was a futile and tragic overseas war, hatred and bloodshed in the Middle East, dissent and injustice on the streets of America.

Ring a bell?

The forces of indifference, incompetence and evil — yup, it exists — are thriving in the twenty-first century. No matter what good things you try to do, you’re in for a slog.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t dream of making an impact. Just understand that the odds are stacked against you.

One key to meaningful achievement is disregarding the lame platitudes you’ll hear in real commencement speeches, group therapy and self-help podcasts:

1. Live each day as if it’s your last.

As wise and appealing as this might sound, it’s actually terrible advice. If you live every day as if it’s your last, you won’t accomplish a damn thing.

Spending all your waking hours doing only what feels good is a viable life plan if you’re a Labrador retriever, but for humans it’s a blueprint for unemployment, divorce and irrelevance.

Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.bio/search.php?req=Roz+Chast

or https://www.amazon.com/Assume-Worst-Graduation-Speech-Youll/dp/0525655
018/

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

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Sunday, February 26, 2023 8:20 AM

SECOND

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

Letters from an American
February 22, 2023 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-22-2023
Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 23

Last week’s court filing in the Dominion Voting Systems case proved that Fox News Channel personalities knew full well that Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election. They pushed Trump’s Big Lie of voter fraud anyway, afraid they would lose viewers to right-wing networks that were willing to parrot that lie.

Since the 1980s, Republicans have relied on a false narrative to win voters. To get rid of the active government put in place after 1933 to put guardrails around the unfettered capitalism that had led to the Depression, they argued that government regulation, the social safety net, civil rights, and investment in infrastructure were socialism and were undermining traditional America.

Their argument was that business regulation gave the government control over the way a man ran his business, and that taxes to support government bureaucracy, social services, and public investments redistributed wealth from white men to minorities and women. Real Americans, they suggested, must be willing to defend themselves and the country against the “socialist” national government.

Lately, this determination to get rid of the New Deal government has taken the shape of cutting Social Security and Medicare, which led to the brouhaha over President Biden’s charge during the State of the Union address that Republicans would cut those programs. After Republicans booed him and called him a liar, he backed them into agreeing they would take cuts off the table.

But former vice president Mike Pence brought it up once more this morning on CNBC, saying, “While I respect the speaker’s commitment to take Social Security and Medicare off the table for the debt ceiling negotiations, we’ve got to put them on the table in the long term,” because they were facing “insolvency.”

Reversing 40 years of Republican tax cuts would also address financial shortfalls, but that approach does not fit the Republican narrative that cutting taxes promotes growth and raises revenue.

As their policies became increasingly unpopular, Republicans ramped up that narrative until we have the extraordinary scenario we saw last night: former president Trump telling a campaign audience that the United States has blown right past socialism and is now a communist, Marxist country. That, of course, would mean that the people’s government owns the means of production: the factories, services, and so on.

Instead, as President Biden pointed out today in response to right-wing attempts to blame his administration for the Ohio derailment, deregulation has moved money upward and compromised Americans’ safety. He noted that he has committed the federal government to make sure Ohio has all it needs to address the crisis. Then he added: “Rail companies have spent millions of dollars to oppose common-sense safety regulations. And it’s worked. This is more than a train derailment or a toxic waste spill—it’s years of opposition to safety measures coming home to roost.”

That narrative has also enshrined the idea that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, originally intended to limit the federal government’s power over state militias but now interpreted to mean that individuals have a right to own whatever weaponry they want, defines the nation. After a number of right-wing congressional lawmakers have taken to wearing assault rifle lapel pins, Representative Barry Moore (R-AL) this week introduced a bill to make the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.” Moore claims that “The anti–Second Amendment group won’t stop until they take away all your firearms.”

From February 17 through February 19, there were ten mass shootings in the United States. According to Grace Hauck of USA Today, there were “two mass shootings in Georgia and Missouri and one each in Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi.” Thirteen people were killed and 46 injured. At least 15 of the victims were under 20. Mass shootings are up in 2023 compared to 2022: 82 this year, compared with 59 at the same time last year.

The idea of strangling government programs and saving tax dollars has gotten to the point that we had the extraordinary scene in Alaska earlier this week of Republican state representative David Eastman, who attended the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., suggesting that children dying of child abuse would save the state money in the social services those children would otherwise need.

The Republican narrative to attract voters, as warped as it has become, has now begun to drive the government itself. Today, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post reported that after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then–attorney general, Mark Brnovich, concealed a report produced after 10,000 hours of investigation by his own staff, that said virtually all the claims of fraud leveled against the 2020 Arizona election were unfounded.

Brnovich was running to win the Republican nomination for a seat in the U.S. Senate. He kept the report hidden and instead released an “Interim Report” saying that his office had found “serious vulnerabilities.” He continued to circulate hints that the vote was off, somehow, despite fact checks disproving those allegations. His office put together a document refuting the idea the election was stolen and saying that none of the people making that accusation produced any evidence. Brnovich did not release that summary.

In a later memo summarizing their work, investigators noted that none of those making outlandish claims about the election were willing to repeat those claims to agents, when they would be subject to a state law prohibiting them from lying to law enforcement officers.

Brnovich was involved in the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee case, decided in July 2021 by the Supreme Court, that made it much harder to challenge voting restrictions that make it harder for minorities to vote. Voters replaced Brnovich this year with Kris Mayes, a Democrat, who shifted Brnovich’s “Election Integrity Unit,” which focused on fraud, to address voter suppression.

The attempt to maintain the Republican narrative is now deeply embedded in the government itself. House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has apparently given to Tucker Carlson of the Fox News Channel exclusive access to more than 44,000 hours of video taken within the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. This amounts to “one of the worst security risks since 9/11,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said in protest today, “a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected.”

Carlson has repeatedly challenged the official accounts of the riot, blaming the federal government for launching the attack and claiming that FBI agents were behind it. Carlson is also one of the key conspirators in the Fox News Channel promotion of the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election, even though they dismissed that notion privately. The expectation is that Carlson will hack whatever videos he can into a version of the Republican narrative.

But there is more: McCarthy is fundraising off his release of the videos to Carlson, claiming he is delivering “truth and transparency over partisan games” and asking “patriots” to “chip…in” to help House Republicans.

—

Notes:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/additional-bre
nnan-center-comment-supreme-court-upholds-discriminatory-az

https://www.lwv.org/blog/brnovich-significant-blow-our-freedom-vote

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/us/politics/arizona-voter-fraud-att
orney-general.html

https://twitter.com/atrupar/pstatus/1627826358775586819
Twitter avatar for @POTUS
President Biden @POTUS
Rail companies have spent millions of dollars to oppose common-sense safety regulations. And it’s worked. This is more than a train derailment or a toxic waste spill – it’s years of opposition to safety measures coming home to roost.
11:14 PM · Feb 21, 2023

https://www.al.com/politics/2023/02/alabama-congressmans-bill-would-ma
ke-ar-15-the-national-gun-of-america.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/20/mass-shootings-w
orst-gun-violence-weekend-2023/11304958002/

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/22/alaska-house-censures-rep-eastman-
for-comments-about-the-economic-benefit-of-child-abuse-deaths/

https://alaskapublic.org/2021/01/19/rep-eastman-was-at-the-rally-in-wa
shington-and-blames-antifa-for-the-violence-now-he-faces-calls-to-resign/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/22/arizona-election-fr
aud-claims-mark-brnovich/

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-02-21/fox-news-trump-domini
on-lawsuit

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

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Sunday, February 26, 2023 1:00 PM

SECOND

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

Tucker Carlson Deserves a Raise for His Shameless Lies
Carlson’s job is to make money for Fox, not tell the truth.

By Jon Schwarz

By now you probably know about the filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. It includes a vast trove of communications to and from various Fox hosts — including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — as well as Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Rupert Murdoch, chair of the parent corporation of Fox News.

The most wonderful part of the filing is Carlson’s inspiring, principled stand against telling the truth. On November 12, 2020, nine days after the election, Carlson flagged a tweet for Hannity and Ingraham by Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich. In it Heinrich had accurately pointed out that there was “no evidence” for then-President Donald Trump’s preposterous claims about the election being stolen by Dominion’s voting machines.

Heinrich’s reference to reality understandably enraged Carlson. He texted his fellow hosts: “Please get her fired. Seriously… What the fuck? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Heinrich didn’t lose her job, but her tweet soon disappeared.

Carlson’s concern was that Fox’s viewers simply wouldn’t accept the facts and, if presented with them, would flock to competitors who would tell them the comforting lies for which they yearned. At about the same time, Carlson texted his producer that “we’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating for us.”

It’s easy and fun to jeer at Carlson for his hilarious deceit, and I wouldn’t want to dissuade anyone from doing so. It’s especially enjoyable to find out Carlson believes Trump is “a demonic force” (page 43 of the filing), yet has never told his audience this. In fact, Carlson still enjoys sharing a hearty guffaw with the demonic force at Saudi golf tournaments.

But once we’re done pointing and laughing at Carlson, we have to think more seriously about this if we’d like to have a society that’s based — at least a little bit — on rationality and evidence. Because in the society we have now, Carlson should logically be rewarded for everything he’s done.

Fox Corporation has shareholders who expect it to make as much profit as possible. According to one of Fox Corporation’s recent fillings, its “competitive strengths” include “premium brands that resonate deeply with viewers.” In particular, “FOX News is among the most influential and recognized news brands in the world.”

You’ll note that Fox does not claim that one of its strengths is, say, “exposing its viewers to the cold, pitiless light of reality.” That’s because its viewers don’t want that. Imagine you’ve created an extremely profitable business by getting 5-year-olds to tune in every night to hear about how much Santa Claus loves them, and also that the world is full of terrible people trying to assassinate Santa Claus. You wouldn’t switch things up all of a sudden and tell your 5-year-olds that there is no Santa Claus. They’d immediately switch channels to Santamax.

This fact about television “news” was explained cogently in a 1970 memo produced by the Nixon White House that illuminates the thinking behind Fox in embryonic form. Titled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” the memo explains that television news was popular because “People are lazy. With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.” (Emphasis in original.) The last thing you want to do is drive viewers away by forcing them to think.

Viewer loyalty is especially important to Fox because of the structure of its revenue stream. According to the New York Times, Fox Corporation’s cable segment, which mostly consists of Fox News, took in $283 million in ad revenue in the first three quarters of 2021. But licensing fees — what cable and satellite companies pay to carry Fox News — were $1.07 billion. This explains why Fox’s top concern must naturally be its viewers. Non-cable “free” news makes essentially all its money from advertising, meaning it wants to keep advertisers happy above all else. But Fox needs the specific audience it’s cultivated — i.e., not just any group of affluent watchers who will appeal to advertisers, but the people who are addicted to Fox’s comforting worldview. This is especially true since only a small fraction of cable subscribers actually watch Fox News, even as it commands much higher fees per subscriber than other news outlets. Fox depends on maintaining an audience who will complain vociferously if their cable providers drop their favorite network – which leads us to yet another way in which our corporate overlords cater to the right-wing mob, because Verizon, AT&T and other cable companies don’t have the backbone to tell Fox they won’t continue to overpay the network.

In other words, Tucker Carlson & Co. were simply doing their actual jobs — that is, protecting the profitability of Fox News. Meanwhile, by focusing on the facts, Heinrich was genuinely damaging the company and therefore not doing her actual job. You can hope that corporate employees somehow will act in ways that damage their company’s profitability in defense of journalistic ethics, because it’s the “right” thing to do. This kind of hope will be fulfilled as much as 2 percent of the time.

In fact, seen from this perspective, the only thing Carlson did wrong was foolishly expressing his views in forms that were discoverable in a lawsuit. On Wall Street the smarter executives are sophisticated enough not to do this, and message each other “f2f” — i.e., face-to-face — to indicate to their co-workers when they need to discuss something that wouldn’t look good if written out and cited in court.

So in the end, the problem with Fox News is the problem of all for-profit news organizations. Fox may present it in an especially distilled, enraging, shameless form. But neither advertisers nor, unfortunately, most people want to hear things that conflict with their treasured illusions about the world. For-profit news outlets can do great investigative reporting, but that reporting is itself generally not profitable and is subsidized by their cooking apps or sports coverage that actually do make money. By itself, telling the truth is generally not just unprofitable, it’s also actively anti-profit. The lesson of the Dominion lawsuit isn’t that Fox is extremely bad, although it is. It’s that to have a news system that works, we have to take profit out of the equation.

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/26/fox-news-tucker-carlson-dominion/

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

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Wednesday, March 1, 2023 6:14 AM

SECOND

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

Yellowstone’s Politics Are Left. And Right. And American.
Why Taylor Sheridan’s Dutton saga continues to confuse.

By Tyler Austin Harper
Feb 28, 2023, 9:00 AM

Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan’s immensely popular neo-western prestige drama, has emerged as one of America’s most beloved television shows in recent years. Yet, despite its soaring popularity—which has led to an evolving universe of spinoffs, including 1923, whose first season concluded this Sunday—the show has been snubbed by major awards and has often received lukewarm treatment from the media. Perhaps not unrelatedly, Yellowstone has gained a reputation, including in this very publication, as a “conservative” series, one targeted toward viewers who also voted for a certain former president. However, notwithstanding its reputation as a cowboy soap opera for Trumpists, it is not always clear what, if anything, about Sheridan’s work is actually right-wing.

In an interview in November 2022 that touched on accusations that Yellowstone and its spinoffs are aimed at Republicans, Sheridan responded incredulously. “The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated, and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?” On those rare occasions when he has discussed his politics, it is clear enough that Sheridan—who infamously referred to Trump as “that motherfucker” in 2017, calling for the former president’s impeachment—seems to view his work as an ongoing critique of structural racism, misogyny, and the economic status quo. These are not exactly popular Republican talking points.

Why do both red-staters and blue-staters want so desperately to see their politics in Sheridan’s vision of Montana?

This tension between the show’s “red-state” aesthetics (big hats, handguns, horses) and its left-of-center messaging has confounded critics and viewers since the show’s release in 2018, as evidenced by a revolving door of articles that can never seem to agree as to where exactly Sheridan’s work falls on the political thermostat. This yearslong debate exploded again last week after a critic at IndieWire declared that the newest Yellowstone spinoff, 1923 (the second of two, after the miniseries 1883), is not simply progressive—its unflinching look at the Indigenous boarding school system is “critical race theory” embodied. Responding to that article in the New York Times on Friday, Ross Douthat asserted that the IndieWire piece represented a fundamental misreading; Sheridan is producing conservative content that is squarely aligned against “blue-state outsiders,” the columnist insisted. For viewers like Douthat, the Yellowstone universe is one big traditionalist romance, offering the ranch’s “masculine freedom … as an alternative to the crowded suffocations of the city.”

Yet, for my money, what is most interesting about this interpretive fracas is not which political reading of Sheridan’s series—conservative or progressive—is correct. (For what it’s worth, I see all three of the Yellowstone shows as being deeply left-leaning). Rather, what is most interesting, or at least most revealing, about the cultural reception of Yellowstone is that pundits and critics of all political persuasions are increasingly eager to claim it as their own.

Sheridan’s series are those rare birds in our deeply polarized media environment: they are politically ambiguous. To this end, perhaps the real question critics should be asking is not whether Yellowstone and its spinoffs are “red-state” or “blue-state.” The real question is this: Why do both red-staters and blue-staters want so desperately to see their politics in Sheridan’s vision of Montana?

In my view, the answer to this quandary is straightforward. Sheridan’s world offers something that the mainstream American left and the mainstream American right each sorely lack: a positive conception of human purpose that is tethered to an equally coherent conception of authority. Sheridan’s protagonists are often antiheroic, frequently unethical, and invariably tribalistic. But what these characters almost never are is confused, and therein lies the appeal of Sheridan’s shows. Their protagonists’ place in the world and their duties to their community are always perfectly, and often painfully, clear.

For both the Duttons and the shows’ Indigenous characters, there are only a few meaningful sources of obligation and authority: the tribe, the family, and the land. These characters are sometimes unequal to these duties and fail to meet them, but the duties themselves—and the authority they stem from—are almost never in question. And it is here, in its valorization of authority, that we might locate the key to the pan-political enthusiasm for the Yellowstone universe.

Although the American left and right differ profoundly on nearly every issue of importance, what both camps share is a conception of freedom that the philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously called “negative liberty.” For Berlin, a society that values “negative liberty” understands freedom as the absence of constraints on one’s behavior. Indeed, where Democrats and Republicans often differ concerns not their basic conception of freedom, but rather the particular constraints that tend to keep their denizens up at night.

For lefties like myself, freedom primarily means freedom from things like intolerance, bigotry, economic inequality, and reproductive coercion. For the Fox News set, freedom tends to mean freedom from religious censure, “compelled speech,” the threat of crime, and being made to share resources with outsiders. Chasmic policy differences stem from how these constraints are valued, but that does not change the fact that the left and right increasingly tend to define freedom in the same way: Freedom means being left alone to be who you are, and above all, not being made to do things you don’t want to do.

Although there is much to recommend this conception of freedom, it also has a fatal flaw that has long been recognized by philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists: Negative liberty places a heavy burden on the modern individual, who must decide for themselves who they are, what they want, and how they should live. It is this burden that characters in the Yellowstone universe—at least the ones audiences root for—do not have to shoulder, precisely because they are immersed in meaningful communities that provide ready-made answers to these questions. Indeed, Sheridan’s shows all reflect the conviction that the conception of freedom endemic to modern American society is dogshit—that true freedom comes not through the absence of constraint, but the presence of authority.

If it sounds odd to assert that a show I see as left-leaning should be interpreted as a paean to authority, that is because our conception of what authority actually means has been almost entirely eroded in modern life. Hannah Arendt, the German philosopher whose work on totalitarianism had a renaissance during the Trump era, was persistently at pains to distinguish authority from authoritarianism. “Since authority always demands obedience,” the philosopher wrote, “it is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence.” Arendt went on to note that although we tend to associate authority with coercion or persuasion, these actually signal the absence of authority. “Where force is used, authority itself has failed!” she claimed. By contrast, she argued that “authority implies an obedience in which [people] retain their freedom.” It is this conception of freedom through obedience to a higher authority that the Yellowstone universe champions.

. . .

Yet, even as both Dutton men offer plenty in the way of freedom talk and red meat (“Government’s man’s way of trying to control our behavior” and “I kill for a living, you do not want to fight me” are two actual lines delivered on this show), they are, like Teonna, defined by their submission to a worthy authority: in Jacob’s case, what’s good for the cattle and what’s good for the land; in Spencer’s, the familial duty that cannot be shirked. Like Teonna, both men are faced with endless physical hardships, but they are spared the hardship of uncertainty, indecision, or insecurity about their identity. Every character worth rooting for in 1923—Elizabeth and Cara, Teonna, Jacob and Spencer—knows exactly who they are, and because they know who they are, they know exactly what is required of them. And you would be hard-pressed to say any of them aren’t free in the ways that matter.

Perhaps critics like me miss the entire point when we spend our energy trying to crack the code of the Yellowstone universe’s politics. Ultimately, these shows’ real affinities may not be with the left or right, and their ultimate targets may not be bankers or bad priests or land developers or coastal elites. Rather, the real target of Yellowstone and its spinoffs is a society that champions the kind of empty freedom that comes without obligations to others, a prevailing political culture—on both sides of the aisle—that is (often rightly) so busy worrying about what we need freedom from that it rarely stops to ask what makes a free life worth living in the first place.

More at https://slate.com/culture/2023/02/yellowstone-1923-1883-politics-taylo
r-sheridan-trump.html

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

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