a lot of liberals tend to believe exactly that whatever you read will automatically program you
Basically admitting that they're passive consumers of propaganda, and that they apply this mindset to everything. Which is a massive self-own, given that liberals are usually the ones trying to lecture everyone else on "bias" and the importance of "critical thinking."
Now I'm inspired to write an article on "Putin the Joseph Smith-ite" or "Putin the Neo-Platonist" and submit it to a conservative journal.
Mao Zedong, whom Putin surely read
Here we have the usual conservative anti-intellectualism on full display. If you are a statesman, you should be well read, especially in political theory; and if you are at all serious, you will have read authors whom you disagree with. Having read Mao doesn't make Putin a Maoist, any more than Stalin having read John Locke makes him a liberal. Many of us here have read authors like Julius Evola and Mueller van den Bruck in order to better understand the fascist position -- does that mean we're about to emigrate, join a mercenary group, and Slava Ukraini ourselves into Kinzhal-induced oblivion? Of course not.
But this is how we Americans get politicians and public figures who, apparently out of some desire not to be tainted by Evil Commie Ideas, have read Democracy in America (final chapter only) and nothing else.
The liberal dream is for a black man to be brutally beaten to death by cops, but on Martin Luther King Street, not Bedford Forrest Avenue.
Hadn't heard of it -- will check it out! Thanks for the rec.
Yep. Even just the atmosphere of certain places.
LA, for instance, has the strangest "feel" of any major city I've been in. Did even in the early 2000s when it wasn't quite so run down and a bigger percentage of the population wasn't homeless.
There's something so indescribably Reddit about everything the Economist puts out.
Here's one explanation I've heard, that I think makes a certain amount of sense. The United States can walk away from this war tomorrow, with its reputation as a great power intact; in fact, not having any more of its advanced weaponry blown up by the Russian orc Asiatic Hordes would go a long way toward preserving whatever international prestige the US military still has. Naturally, it would be a major geopolitical setback for Washington, and for the Democrats a political disaster. But it would not mean in any way the end of American global power. (The war itself actually undermines American power, and there may be a few people in the state apparatus who can see it -- one or two high-place individuals who aren't totally drunk on their own propaganda of the US as some unstoppable military and economic juggernaut).
The UK, on the other hand, wants to be seen as a great power, and this is a reputation they can very much lose. Defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan created demoralization at home, and a sense abroad that the UK was militarily and on the world stage basically inconsequential; which latter was especially galling, given that Americans already tend to view the UK as a colony (American talk of "our valued partners in London" has been for the past fifty years mostly a sop to British feelings). Nor did Brexit create some kind of prosperous, internationally significant "third bloc" distinct from both the US and the EU; the country has been going downhill economically, and its domestic politics have been even more overshadowed by Washington. Thus Ukraine becomes for the UK's government a kind of last-ditch military adventure meant to salvage their reputation on the world stage. It is a war against the old enemy, Russia; and it will, if successful, show the superiority of the neoliberal order over the controlled, neo-Soviet economy Russia is supposed to be. But the war is very much not succeeding, and the UK is thus compelled to throw more money and equipment -- and huge numbers of Ukrainians, not that they care about this -- into a bottomless pit.
I live there, and "weird" doesn't begin to describe it.
This smells like concessions to avoid larger inconveniences to me.
That's exactly what it is, and it's not new. It might seem paradoxical, but the very wealthiest capitalists -- the movers and shakers of the entire ruling class -- are often less concerned about day-to-day profits than maintaining the stability of the system. This is because their wealth is so bound up with the entire system, and if it collapses, they do too; hence they are often willing to countenance "progressive" reforms, especially if they can so swing it that other capitalists lower down the ladder of wealth are the ones footing the bill. This is sometimes referred to as capital taking on a "managerial" mindset. Examples of it are DuPont supporting the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Rockefellers supporting Roosevelt, and so on. This creates tensions, of course, within the ruling class, as less wealthy capitalists (whose business empires will often shrink) resent the restrictions which high-level capital is forcing on them, and seek to throw off the imposed restraints.
Glad I could help! It was sort of an epiphany that came to me yesterday, I don't know why, while I was reading a NYT editorial.
His dream (of a free Africa) is the nightmare that haunts the sleep of western imperialists.
Reminder that Israel is cutting off electricity and water to Gaza.
"We are now moving at about three and a half times the typical speed of an Amtrak transcontinental, and about twice its occasionally-reached top speed."