Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

@mommabear,

mommabear wrote:

I've had the impression that protestors or anti-Putin types in Russia were pretty nearly all leftover communists, pussy-riot types, or possibly disgruntled oligarch types.

Interesting impression.
And where does this impression come from, having been to Russia many times?

1 Reply

Why was the gun control thread locked??

MJ and I were right in the middle of a polite, civil, and productive conversation without a hint of name-calling.

0 Replies

@mommabear,

mommabear wrote:

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I've had the impression that protestors or anti-Putin types in Russia were pretty nearly all leftover communists, pussy-riot types, or possibly disgruntled oligarch types.

Are there any other kinds of disaffected people in Putin's Russia?

I don't know. I do hear that some people are jailed in Russia just like the Democrats are trying to do in the US.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Quote:

And where does this impression come from, having been to Russia many times?

Just what I read, never been to Russia.

2 Replies

@mommabear,

I can't imagine what you are reading but it's obviously lacking.

0 Replies

@mommabear,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_Vladimir_Putin_in_Russia

1 Reply

@BillW,

The point remains. If it's OK for the Democrats to conduct political witchhunts against people who do not agree with them, then it is also OK for Mr. Putin to do this.

Mr. Biden can cry all he wants when this is pointed out, but it's still true.

1 Reply

Quote:

Rick Perlstein
@rickperlstein
Jun 16
So, "critical race theory": right-wing strategists identifying, then exacerbating, local discontents about cultural change as an organizing tool has been utterly routinized for almost 50 years. THAT'S THE STORY! Yet somehow it comes off as novel each and every time.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

the point remains that what you call witch hunts are in fact against people who have been tried and convicted by juries of their peers, whether you like it or not. trump and his cohorts are guilty and so far his only punishment is losing the presidency in disgrace. he'd better hope he avoids the deserved orange jumpsuit and 15 to 25 in the slammer.

2 Replies

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

the deserved orange jumpsuit and 15 to 25 in the slammer.

It is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

0 Replies

@blatham,

Badf ideas of all kinds have been around for a long time. That doesn't make them correct or useful.

Marxism and various arguments for authoritarian governments aspiring to total control of the lives of its citizens go back well over a century. Their applications in the modern world (and arguably throughout history) have all yielded only tyranny, suffering and poverty. Despite this some amazingly still adhere to their methods and promises.

Critical race theory advocates call for a new form of racism as a "cure" for an old one. Thus too defies common sense.

Individual freedom is better.

1 Reply

@Jsorel,

Quote:

Marxism and various arguments for authoritarian governments aspiring to total control of the lives of its citizens go back well over a century. Their applications in the modern world (and arguably throughout history) have all yielded only tyranny, suffering and poverty. Despite this some amazingly still adhere to their methods and promises... Bad ideas of all kinds have been around for a long time. That doesn't make them correct or useful.

I was listening to a Christian-nationalist preacher recently and had the same thought.

Quote:

Critical race theory advocates call for a new form of racism as a "cure" for an old one.

I'm afraid you've been rather sadly misinformed. It's not difficult to get up to speed on the matter but you'll have to put in a small bit of work. Heck, just start with wikipedia.

By the by, you write very much like an old acquaintance who used to putter around the Pacific in a big boat.

2 Replies

@blatham,

What if the misinformation is sought after and welcomed? What if there is no desire to know anything beyond what verifies things prejudged?

1 Reply

@snood,

Up until something like 6 months ago, you could cast a net across the American conservative world to catch up anyone who'd even heard the term "critical race theory" and that net would come up almost completely empty. But suddenly, it's all the rage. These guys do propaganda very effectively. And as Perlstein notes, it's the same moral/cultural panic game each time.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

the point remains that what you call witch hunts are in fact against people who have been tried and convicted by juries of their peers, whether you like it or not.

Just like the political witch hunts that Mr. Putin wages in Russia.

MontereyJack wrote:

trump and his cohorts are guilty and so far his only punishment is losing the presidency in disgrace. he'd better hope he avoids the deserved orange jumpsuit and 15 to 25 in the slammer.

You shouldn't complain about Russia when Mr. Putin carries out the same sorts of political witch hunts that the Democrats carry out.

0 Replies

@blatham,

Christopher F. Rufo is an American conservative activist and the director of several documentary films. Rufo is a research fellow at the right-wing Discovery Institute and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributor to its magazine, City Journal. He was also a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation - a Koch operation. (wikipedia)

Quote:

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️
@realchrisrufo
Mar 15
Replying to
@realchrisrufo
and
@ConceptualJames
We have successfully frozen their brand—"critical race theory"—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️

@realchrisrufo
Mar 15
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think "critical race theory." We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.

That's just one corner of this project. As noted earlier in the Media Matters piece I posted, Cato (a Koch operation) is deeply involved as well and FOX is the main conduit to its right wing audience.

2 Replies

@blatham,

Facts? We don’t need no steenking facts! We’ve got scary words!

1 Reply

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Quote:
Marxism and various arguments for authoritarian governments aspiring to total control of the lives of its citizens go back well over a century. Their applications in the modern world (and arguably throughout history) have all yielded only tyranny, suffering and poverty. Despite this some amazingly still adhere to their methods and promises... Bad ideas of all kinds have been around for a long time. That doesn't make them correct or useful.
I was listening to a Christian-nationalist preacher recently and had the same thought.

Quote:
Critical race theory advocates call for a new form of racism as a "cure" for an old one.
I'm afraid you've been rather sadly misinformed. It's not difficult to get up to speed on the matter but you'll have to put in a small bit of work. Heck, just start with wikipedia.

By the by, you write very much like an old acquaintance who used to putter around the Pacific in a big boat.

Was that old acquaintance a gob?

1 Reply

@blatham,

Mind you, the laws passed in a number of Republican controlled states to counter the threat of Sharia Law being codified in their states' legal systems stopped that threat in its tracks - whereas in Dem controlled states, it's Sharia Law everywhere you look now.

And as we now know, the covid scamdemic was a hoax and counter-measures like masks and hand-sanitizing were oppressive government tools to bring people under the dominion of so-called scientists. That the flu almost totally disappeared over the last year and a bit was actually caused by sunspots, I suppose.

And Jade Helm... well, the military now controls everything so they were right about that, too.

And Christmas. It's now merely a fond memory of a long-lost past.

0 Replies

@snood,

Quote:

Facts? We don’t need no steenking facts! We’ve got scary words!

Yes. We don't often get such a clear statement as to the goals and techniques employed in such propaganda programs. Another example is Roy Blount celebrating Stacy Abrams' support of the Manchin proposal because now they can label it as the "Abrams' proposal" rather than the "Manchin proposal". Of course, these are both appeals to emotion and to notions that have already been effectively implanted in the minds of the right wing audience. You blacks are dangerous, Snood. And you've beaten us white people down into powerlessness.

One criticism leveled against CRT is it's purposeful forwarding of anecdotal accounts - of stories being told or recounted. Statistics and careful analyses ought to be the form of such work, is how the complaint is made. Of course, the amount of statistical data and careful analyses on racial disparities in the US laid out page by page could reach from the North Pole all the way to Mississippi. "You academic-loving liberals", the implicit argument goes, "are just hypocrites after all". Of course, the content of FOX or Breitbart or Newsmax is somewhere around 99% stories (unsupported but we'll just leave that for now). But the real kicker for me here is The Bible. How many graphs, statistical analyses and footnotes do we find in it?

0 Replies

Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know