ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
WARNING: This is where all the really political things are found. Know that I am so liberal that I don’t mind at all that others are conservative—as long as your opinions are based on facts. While I have mellowed considerably with age, I still suffer fools poorly.
As Artemus Ward reputedly observed: “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we do know that just ain’t so.”
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“SO YOU THINK YOU’RE RIGHT and everybody else is wrong?” I heard those words from my father many times while growing up. Of course, the rationale behind those words is sound: most of the times we hold an opinion that differs with that of 99% of everybody else, then 99% of the time we will probably be wrong. [Read more] “barbara lee and the boundless consequences of war”
FAKE NEWS AIN’T NEW NEWS. The term has been in fairly regular if not quite common use for years: it initially referred to the mis/disinformation and propaganda circulated by the thousands of well-connected, rightwing radio talk shows for propaganda. It grew to even vaster proportions with the emergence of the millions of ‘conservative’ websites and blogs known as the Rightwing Blogosphere. [Read more] “lies, damn lies, fake news, and the misinformation ecosystem”
WE LIVE IN A WORLD of early childhood damage, says Morris Berman. This is what caught my eye when I was turned on to Berman’s website, Dark Ages America. The reader will find below excerpts from an interview with Berman by Murray Cox for Omni magazine (August 1991 issue). [Read more] “in a dark time, the eye begins to see a world of early childhood damage”
AS I HAVE MENTIONED over and over again, the prevalence (that’s a bit of understatement there) and virulence of rightwingnuts on various social media on the Internet—how they inject hate and fear here, there, and everywhere. I thought I’d let someone with a bigger pulpit reiterate some of my points: in October 2017, Right Wing Watch featured “White Supremacy Figured Out How To Become YouTube Famous” by Jared Holt. [Read more] “right-wing extremists inject hateful rhetoric”
I DON’T GIVE A HOOT what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms, in their offices, in a hotel room, or in the White House. I don’t care that Donald Trump may have had some sexual relations or any other kind of relations with Stormy Davis—although the Forbes magazine thing is funny. [Read more] “I did not pay that woman with whom I did not have sexual relations to not talk about not having sexual relations with me!”