A New York Times/Siena College poll found that other problems have seized voters’ focus — even as many do not trust this year’s election results and are open to anti-democratic candidates.
Voters overwhelmingly believe American democracy is under threat, but seem remarkably apathetic about that danger, with few calling it the nation’s most pressing problem, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.
In fact, more than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as they assigned greater urgency to their concerns about the economy than to fears about the fate of the country’s political system.
The doubts about elections that have infected American politics since the 2020 contest show every sign of persisting well into the future, the poll suggested: Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 41 percent of Republicans, said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm elections.
Political disagreements appear to be seeping into the fabric of everyday life. Fourteen percent of voters said political views revealed a lot about whether someone is a good person, while 34 percent said it revealed a little. Nearly one in five said political disagreements had hurt relationships with friends or family. …
The poll showed that voters filtered their faith in democracy through a deeply partisan lens. A majority of voters in both parties identified the opposing party as a “major threat to democracy.”
Most Republicans said the dangers included President Biden, the mainstream media, the federal government and voting by mail. Most Democrats named Donald J. Trump, while large shares of the party’s voters also said the Supreme Court and the Electoral College were threats to democracy.
Seventy-one percent of all voters said democracy was at risk — but just 7 percent identified that as the most important problem facing the country. …
(Does this suggest the power of memes to alter politics?)
With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights. Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.
Numbers…
Likely voters: 45% favor Dems, 49% favor GOP.
By age, among those below 45, Dems are narrowly favored. For those 45-54, GOP is strongly favored (59% to 38%). For those over 65, its tied.
By ethnicity, among whites, 40% favor Dems, 55% favor GOP. Among Hispanics, 60% favor Dems. Amng Blacks, 78% favor Dems.
Buried in these results, one sees that more likely voters disapprove of Joe Biden than they do Trump. Trump: favorable 43%, unfavorable 52%. Biden: favorable 39%, unfavorable 58%.
This is disturbing. Does it reflect the power of memes?
In 2024, likely voters supposedly favor Trump over Biden (45% to 44%).
The partisan view of politics suggests to me that democracy is 10% ephemera and 90% unicorns. On the plus side though, my political views have not harmed my relationship with any friends or family (in-laws – mine are deceased) whether they be liberal or conservative voters. Rather, I receive begrudging agreement with my POV. However, this suggests that people do get their political POV from the meme-o-sphere, but with little thought of their own and accept what feels good either because it suits their basic biases or just emanates from the social sphere that they have come to identify with.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
answer is probably nothing. the deeply superficial have always been led by the deeply ambitious, and so, being more numerous, they get more done, for better or worse.
but. there is a guy on the you tube. name of Vlad. He is a careful thinker, and yet, as I think about it, I can’t see what his careful thinking does for him, or us, or the world
it’s just another form of entertainment. like hitting yourself on the head with blocks of wood as you march through the streets singing hymns of repentance.
[you/your here is plural]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
It’s hard for me to accept that more people can manage to approve of Trump’s horrible performance in office (and support his return to that office) than those who support Biden, who has struggled mightily to deal with all the turmoil left by his predecessor. With an able assist from Trump buddy (& mentor) Vlad Putin.
I think the turmoil is getting an assist from us however.
If there is any hope, I got a call from one of those pollsters [if it wasn’t a scammer] the other day. About halfway through I got fed up with the questions. Have to imagine that happened to a lot of people who answered the pollsters.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Well the bad news is that this is definitely not the End Times. I do not believe in reincarnation. So, if I am correct in that, then there will at least be an end time for me before too long. Matter of fact, reincarnation would really suck. Imagine coming back again and again to the same tired BS. The names may change, but the song remains the same.
OTOH, there may be an end time for humanity sometime in the future, but it will probably only be tangentially related to politics. Climate change, which appears to be proceeding unfettered, will bring mankind to its whimpering knees at least, if not quite snuffing out the species. However, that is the optimistic POV. Maybe cockroaches will have better politics when they inherit the Earth. Worst case is humankind falls into the nuclear winter of some nut job and that would be politics far worse than our contemporary status quo.
Understand that I don’t “believe in” anything, but let me put in a word for reincarnation:
We humans have absolutely no idea what the Universe (the Great Everything) is made of, made how, made for
That said we have no reason to believe the universe does not include “awareness,” “preference”, or “choice” (free will) as part of its fundamental substance…along with energy and matter and causation.
I left “morality” out of that list for no particulary good reason except that it is another badly misused concept.
It is entirely possible that there is a “purpose” to All Things, and that purpose might be …among other things…for humans to not only learn “the good” but come to prefer it for it’s own sake.
humans are slow learners, don’t learn much in a whole lifetime..the time it takes bodies to wear out and make the cause-and-effect system of things “work’ (don’t jump off the temple tower to prove that “God” will save you}.
there is no reason not to belive… that is to belive it is not…that the moral system of things is not arranged so that when the body wears out..or is shot to pieces in the course of things (cause and effect)…the “soul” (undefined concept, but “you know what it is”) continues and is recycled into another body (birth-to-death) thing in order to continue its moral development where it left off (was so rudely interrupted). this has nothing to do with being “reincarnated” as a cockroach or other “punishment” for sins in your past life. it’s just that sins are what impedes progress in learning “the good” and persist, having to do more with what you “think” than with what you “do”…though doing of course sometimes follows from thinking. “god’ does not punish, but “sin” is self punishing.”
or something like that it’s an idea that sustains p
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Yes sir. I have no reason to disagree with you on this.
My now deceased best friend did his best to teach me about Tao, Buddhism, and Hindu mysticism and also the teachings of Don Juan as presented to Carlos Castaneda along with Herman Hesse’s take on it all. I did also learn about Fritz Perls and William James from him, both of which actually took (the former more than the later) on me. Despite listening over the years to him tell me about his three former incarnations, I never really embraced the idea. However, just because I did not come to believe in reincarnation myself does not mean that I deny the possibility. I just do not put much store in it either. OTOH, I hope that my friend Jame J. Hiles (a.k.a., Duck) was correct. The world is poorer now without such a strange Duck as he, and probably would do well to find another. For me though, the world has become more dull and drab and that makes facing my own end anything but fearful.
i’m not sure about dull and drab. i get depressed at times. when i was younger and that happened, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about. doctors were no help and sometimes dangerous. but i have learned…and this is hard to explain and sounds too much like the cheap advise you get that i don’t like when i hear it…i have learned that just by “taking the attitude”…that i can do soething about it, it turns out i can…or at least it goes away on its own, having failed to accomplish its purpose [and yes that is a “superstitious” way of describing it].
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The good thing is that rather than depressed I have become isolated in this dull, drab world. Not that my life is that exciting, but it is OK for one my age. Also, during the pandemic that isolation had me back in vogue again. My wife and I are safe and happy, but our social activity is nearly nil. After she retires and the pandemic is far back in the rear view mirror, then maybe we will make some new friends, but I do not expect to ever again find myself amidst a vibrant culture of social activists and creative artists. For stimulating conversation, then you are about all that I now have.
but just by coincidence i was looking for a name for something and fell into a website of names from ancient Welsh mythology…stories
and that reminded me of a modernized version of “the Mabinogion” which I read many years ago and really didn’t pay much attention to, but the lady on the youtube who called herself a witch, and at least the modern version of the stories i read, fit in with the conversation we were having to this extent:
it struck me that these stories are concerned with the same things we have been talking about. “things” that are “real”… that is, thoughts that are real enough to still be talked about a thousand or six thousand years later and concern people in every country and culture
except perhaps ours, which has taught itself not to think about them or about much of anything that can’t be weighed on a scale or measued in money
something worth thinking about?
“Then lie still; maybe you can escape It’s notice. Do nothing, for you cannot help me.”
“You cannot help yourself either,” said the bogey.
“I can try. That is what men are sent to earth for: to learn and to try.”
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Not so much grim as I am older now and the world has changed. I believe that among the young, then there is still a space for broader interests. As we age we have more specific interests such as not living in poverty and yet still living longer. What close relationships that have survived with us require more attention and care leaving much less of us for peripheral interests.
For my part, by age 50 I had already lived more than the average two or three people combined. Now though, I am no longer physically capable of doing all that I did in those past lives, so to speak.
oddly enough so did the French revolution: “The Revolution has no need for philosophers.”
I remember when Adlai Stevenson was disparaged for being an “egghead,”
Even I get a litle tired of self identified intellectual sometimes, but not enough to chop their heads off. and maybe not as much as the “ignorant and proud of it.”
Funny that the Anti-communist right should rely on the same “base” as the Bolsheviks.
Roughly three years after moving in, General Electric is bidding farewell to its Fort Point headquarters.
The company notified employees Tuesday morning that it plans to vacate the 100,000 square feet it occupies in two renovated brick buildings at 5 Necco Street and seek out smaller office space elsewhere in Boston. While the company initially envisioned an 800-person campus along Fort Point Channel, fewer than 200 people are based there now and many only come in on a part-time basis. …
In another sign of the once-ginormous conglomerate’s shifting ambitions, GE also said it will put its longtime corporate campus known as Crotonville, in Ossining, N.Y., up for sale. GE is splitting itself into three companies over the next two years, and none of them will need such a large conference center …
GE has already shrunk considerably since it relocated to Boston from Connecticut with much fanfare in 2016. GE divested a number of business lines — including biotech, lighting, and transportation — under (current CEO Larry) Culp, and his predecessor, John Flannery.
GE initially promised to bring 800 new jobs to Boston under then-CEO Jeff Immelt, but they never materialized as his two successors pared back GE’s ambitions. …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Yeah. I read some time ago that Jack Welch’s shareholder value transformation stripped GE of its future by outsourcing everything that would sustain an innovative collaborative knowledge base.
Federal Reserve officials are barreling toward another three-quarter point increase in November, and they may decide to do more as inflation refuses to budge.
Federal Reserve officials have coalesced around a plan to raise interest rates by three quarters of a point next month as policymakers grow alarmed by the staying power of rapid price increases — and increasingly worried that inflation is now feeding on itself.
Such concerns could also prompt the Fed to raise rates at least slightly higher next year than previously forecast as officials face two huge choices at their coming meetings: when to slow rapid rate increases and when to stop them altogether.
Central bankers had expected to debate slowing down at their November meeting, but a rash of recent data suggesting that the labor market is still strong and that inflation is unrelenting has them poised to delay serious discussion of a smaller move for at least a month. The conversation about whether to scale back is now more likely to happen in December. …
Another batch of quarterly profits beat analyst expectations, but some warn that the rally could be short-lived, giving way to more selling.
Stock markets rallied for a second day on Tuesday, recording another jump as bond yields edged lower after a batch of better-than-expected earnings reports from big companies. …
(AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law Wednesday in the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow annexed and given additional emergency powers to the heads of all regions of Russia.
Putin didn’t immediately spell out the steps that would be taken under martial law, but said his order was effective starting Thursday. His decree gives law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals.
“We are working to solve very difficult large-scale tasks to ensure Russia’s security and safe future, to protect our people,” Putin said in televised remarks at the start of a Security Council meeting. “Those who are on the frontlines or undergoing training at firing ranges and training centers should feel our support and know that they have our big, great country and unified people behind their back.”
The upper house of Russia’s parliament was set to quickly seal Putin’s decision to impose martial law in the four regions. Draft legislation indicates it may involve restrictions on travel and public gatherings, tighter censorship and broader authority for law enforcement agencies.
Putin also didn’t provide details of the extra powers to be given to the heads of Russian regions under his decree. …
Former President Donald Trump signed a document swearing under oath that information in a Georgia lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true, even though his own lawyers had told him it was false, a federal judge wrote Wednesday.
The accusation came in a ruling by the judge, David Carter, ordering John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who strategized with the former president about overturning the election, to hand over 33 more emails to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Carter, who serves with the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, determined that the emails contained possible evidence of criminal behavior. …
Carter wrote Wednesday that the crime-fraud exception applied to a number of the emails related to Trump and Eastman’s “efforts to delay or disrupt the Jan. 6 vote” and “their knowing misrepresentation of voter fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court.”
Carter found four emails that “demonstrate an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to press false claims in federal court for the purpose of delaying the Jan. 6 vote.”
In one of them, Trump’s lawyers advised him that simply having a challenge to the election pending in front of the Supreme Court could be enough to delay the final tally of Electoral College votes from Georgia.
“This email,” Carter wrote, “read in context with other documents in this review, make clear that President Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings through the courts.” …
Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak and Ben Wallace, all current or former Conservative cabinet members, are seen as candidates for Britain’s next prime minister.
The leading candidates to replace Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister include key figures from her cabinet as well as former rivals for leadership of the Conservative Party. Some analysts have even speculated that Boris Johnson, who resigned as prime minister in the summer, could make a return.
On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt, who was appointed chancellor of the Exchequer last week and is credited with restoring some economic stability, said he would not run for party leader, the BBC reported. …
NY Times: Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain said on Thursday that she would resign, just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, sweeping away a free-market fiscal agenda that promised a radical policy shift for Britain but instead plunged the country into weeks of economic and political turmoil.
Her departure after only six weeks in office — the shortest tenure ever for a British prime minister — was a rapid fall from power that throws her Conservative Party into further disarray, following the messy departure of Boris Johnson over the summer. She said she would remain party leader and prime minister until a successor is chosen within a week. …
Jeremy Hunt, who ran in the last Tory race, said he no longer has any leadership ambitions. In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, he stated he would not run a third time.
“I think having run two leadership campaigns and, by the way, failed in both of them, the desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me.”
The South West Surrey MP was appointed the UK’s fourth chancellor in four months last Friday. … (Yahoo! News)
Liz Truss is eligible for a taxpayer-funded allowance capped at 115,000 pounds ($129,000) a year for the rest of her life.
Despite her short time in office, Ms. Truss became eligible on Thursday for what’s called the Public Duty Costs Allowance — a government reimbursement plan for staff and salary costs incurred by former prime ministers “arising from their special position in public life” after they leave office, according to the government’s website.
This has drawn scorn, however, from some of Ms. Truss’s political opponents, who have called for her to be refused the payment because of what they see as her role in Britain’s political and economic turmoil. …
Amid an intensifying spat with the US on oil production, Saudi Arabia has expressed its “desire” to join BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), a move Chinese experts view as a setback for Washington’s “oil for security” approach toward the Middle East and its increasingly reckless interference in other countries’ affairs. Citing South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s local radio station ABC reported on Tuesday that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, who is also Saudi Arabia’s prime minister, “did express Saudi Arabia’s desire to be part of BRICS,” and Saudi Arabia is “not the only country” seeking BRICS membership. Ramaphosa paid a state visit to Saudi Arabia last week, during which the two countries signed agreements and memorandums of understanding worth about $15 billion, Reuters reported. South Africa will hold the rotating BRICS presidency in 2023. Saudi Arabia’s reported interest in joining BRICS comes as the country is locked in a diplomatic spat with the US over oil production.
On the morning of July 8, former President Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Barely 8,000 people shared that missive on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended his megaphones after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms — not to mention podcasts, talk radio or television.
Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one million people saw his claim on at least dozen other sites. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter, from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an analysis by The New York Times. …
… A study of Truth Social by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home for some of the most fringe conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April, has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, the online conspiracy theory.
He has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times. QAnon believers promote a vast and complex falsehood that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles. Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during this year’s primaries. …
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.[4]
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.
Media Matters for America (MMfA) is a politically left-leaning 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization and media watchdog group.
yes. but does that mean that disinformation is lies?
and yes, but is “left leaning” a conspiracy theory? as in, calling it left leaning part of the conspiracy meant to discount what it says? or is “left leaning” part of the conspiracy to discount what “the right” says?
I sincerely doubt that the NY Times is espousing conspiracy theories when it uses the term ‘left-leaning’. Their political-correctness meters may have been turned off, or they are just showing centrist tendencies.
Disinformation is lies. Some lies are not disinformation.
Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority
NY Times – Oct 18
A New York Times/Siena College poll found that other problems have seized voters’ focus — even as many do not trust this year’s election results and are open to anti-democratic candidates.
Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds
NY Times – Oct 17
With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights. Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.
Numbers…
Likely voters: 45% favor Dems, 49% favor GOP.
By age, among those below 45, Dems are narrowly favored. For those 45-54, GOP is strongly favored (59% to 38%). For those over 65, its tied.
By ethnicity, among whites, 40% favor Dems, 55% favor GOP. Among Hispanics, 60% favor Dems. Amng Blacks, 78% favor Dems.
Buried in these results, one sees that more likely voters disapprove of Joe Biden than they do Trump. Trump: favorable 43%, unfavorable 52%. Biden: favorable 39%, unfavorable 58%.
This is disturbing. Does it reflect the power of memes?
In 2024, likely voters supposedly favor Trump over Biden (45% to 44%).
detailed results
Fred,
The partisan view of politics suggests to me that democracy is 10% ephemera and 90% unicorns. On the plus side though, my political views have not harmed my relationship with any friends or family (in-laws – mine are deceased) whether they be liberal or conservative voters. Rather, I receive begrudging agreement with my POV. However, this suggests that people do get their political POV from the meme-o-sphere, but with little thought of their own and accept what feels good either because it suits their basic biases or just emanates from the social sphere that they have come to identify with.
It also suggests that most people are deeply superficial (to coin an ironic oxymoron) with regards to their opinions of the sociopolitical economy.
Ron
“deeply superficial”. sounds about right to me.
but what do about it?
answer is probably nothing. the deeply superficial have always been led by the deeply ambitious, and so, being more numerous, they get more done, for better or worse.
but. there is a guy on the you tube. name of Vlad. He is a careful thinker, and yet, as I think about it, I can’t see what his careful thinking does for him, or us, or the world
it’s just another form of entertainment. like hitting yourself on the head with blocks of wood as you march through the streets singing hymns of repentance.
[you/your here is plural]
Coberly,
Yes sir – yes indeed.
It’s hard for me to accept that more people can manage to approve of Trump’s horrible performance in office (and support his return to that office) than those who support Biden, who has struggled mightily to deal with all the turmoil left by his predecessor. With an able assist from Trump buddy (& mentor) Vlad Putin.
I guess it’s indeed the End Times.
Fred
I agree with you mostly.
I think the turmoil is getting an assist from us however.
If there is any hope, I got a call from one of those pollsters [if it wasn’t a scammer] the other day. About halfway through I got fed up with the questions. Have to imagine that happened to a lot of people who answered the pollsters.
Fred,
Well the bad news is that this is definitely not the End Times. I do not believe in reincarnation. So, if I am correct in that, then there will at least be an end time for me before too long. Matter of fact, reincarnation would really suck. Imagine coming back again and again to the same tired BS. The names may change, but the song remains the same.
OTOH, there may be an end time for humanity sometime in the future, but it will probably only be tangentially related to politics. Climate change, which appears to be proceeding unfettered, will bring mankind to its whimpering knees at least, if not quite snuffing out the species. However, that is the optimistic POV. Maybe cockroaches will have better politics when they inherit the Earth. Worst case is humankind falls into the nuclear winter of some nut job and that would be politics far worse than our contemporary status quo.
Ron
Understand that I don’t “believe in” anything, but let me put in a word for reincarnation:
We humans have absolutely no idea what the Universe (the Great Everything) is made of, made how, made for
That said we have no reason to believe the universe does not include “awareness,” “preference”, or “choice” (free will) as part of its fundamental substance…along with energy and matter and causation.
I left “morality” out of that list for no particulary good reason except that it is another badly misused concept.
It is entirely possible that there is a “purpose” to All Things, and that purpose might be …among other things…for humans to not only learn “the good” but come to prefer it for it’s own sake.
humans are slow learners, don’t learn much in a whole lifetime..the time it takes bodies to wear out and make the cause-and-effect system of things “work’ (don’t jump off the temple tower to prove that “God” will save you}.
there is no reason not to belive… that is to belive it is not…that the moral system of things is not arranged so that when the body wears out..or is shot to pieces in the course of things (cause and effect)…the “soul” (undefined concept, but “you know what it is”) continues and is recycled into another body (birth-to-death) thing in order to continue its moral development where it left off (was so rudely interrupted). this has nothing to do with being “reincarnated” as a cockroach or other “punishment” for sins in your past life. it’s just that sins are what impedes progress in learning “the good” and persist, having to do more with what you “think” than with what you “do”…though doing of course sometimes follows from thinking. “god’ does not punish, but “sin” is self punishing.”
or something like that it’s an idea that sustains p
Coberly,
Yes sir. I have no reason to disagree with you on this.
My now deceased best friend did his best to teach me about Tao, Buddhism, and Hindu mysticism and also the teachings of Don Juan as presented to Carlos Castaneda along with Herman Hesse’s take on it all. I did also learn about Fritz Perls and William James from him, both of which actually took (the former more than the later) on me. Despite listening over the years to him tell me about his three former incarnations, I never really embraced the idea. However, just because I did not come to believe in reincarnation myself does not mean that I deny the possibility. I just do not put much store in it either. OTOH, I hope that my friend Jame J. Hiles (a.k.a., Duck) was correct. The world is poorer now without such a strange Duck as he, and probably would do well to find another. For me though, the world has become more dull and drab and that makes facing my own end anything but fearful.
p…
the preacher seems to have been cut off by an act of god
“for blasphemy?”
“no. just the opposite.”
“?”
“god doesn’t want anyone to tell his secrets.”
Ron
nobody who knows likes the idea of reincarnation. they are all anxious to get off the wheel.
Ron
i’m not sure about dull and drab. i get depressed at times. when i was younger and that happened, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about. doctors were no help and sometimes dangerous. but i have learned…and this is hard to explain and sounds too much like the cheap advise you get that i don’t like when i hear it…i have learned that just by “taking the attitude”…that i can do soething about it, it turns out i can…or at least it goes away on its own, having failed to accomplish its purpose [and yes that is a “superstitious” way of describing it].
Coberly,
The good thing is that rather than depressed I have become isolated in this dull, drab world. Not that my life is that exciting, but it is OK for one my age. Also, during the pandemic that isolation had me back in vogue again. My wife and I are safe and happy, but our social activity is nearly nil. After she retires and the pandemic is far back in the rear view mirror, then maybe we will make some new friends, but I do not expect to ever again find myself amidst a vibrant culture of social activists and creative artists. For stimulating conversation, then you are about all that I now have.
ron
that IS grim.
Ron
speaking of which…
i am no scholar, or believer, or new-age fadder
but just by coincidence i was looking for a name for something and fell into a website of names from ancient Welsh mythology…stories
and that reminded me of a modernized version of “the Mabinogion” which I read many years ago and really didn’t pay much attention to, but the lady on the youtube who called herself a witch, and at least the modern version of the stories i read, fit in with the conversation we were having to this extent:
it struck me that these stories are concerned with the same things we have been talking about. “things” that are “real”… that is, thoughts that are real enough to still be talked about a thousand or six thousand years later and concern people in every country and culture
except perhaps ours, which has taught itself not to think about them or about much of anything that can’t be weighed on a scale or measued in money
something worth thinking about?
“Then lie still; maybe you can escape It’s notice. Do nothing, for you cannot help me.”
“You cannot help yourself either,” said the bogey.
“I can try. That is what men are sent to earth for: to learn and to try.”
Coberly,
Not so much grim as I am older now and the world has changed. I believe that among the young, then there is still a space for broader interests. As we age we have more specific interests such as not living in poverty and yet still living longer. What close relationships that have survived with us require more attention and care leaving much less of us for peripheral interests.
For my part, by age 50 I had already lived more than the average two or three people combined. Now though, I am no longer physically capable of doing all that I did in those past lives, so to speak.
Trump is such a Bad Boy, and the little people love to have a Bad Boy running the country, because it shows the Intelligentsia what’s what.
The Bolsheviks preferred a more direct approach for dealing with the Intelligentsia.
Ron
oddly enough so did the French revolution: “The Revolution has no need for philosophers.”
I remember when Adlai Stevenson was disparaged for being an “egghead,”
Even I get a litle tired of self identified intellectual sometimes, but not enough to chop their heads off. and maybe not as much as the “ignorant and proud of it.”
Funny that the Anti-communist right should rely on the same “base” as the Bolsheviks.
GE (General Electric) used to be such a big deal.
GE scales back, plans to vacate HQ next year for smaller office space
Boston Globe – Oct 18
Yeah. I read some time ago that Jack Welch’s shareholder value transformation stripped GE of its future by outsourcing everything that would sustain an innovative collaborative knowledge base.
Ron
re Jack Welch
something like deJoy with the Post Office: shift the costs to the workers.
The Fed, Staring Down Two Big Choices, Charts an Aggressive Path
NY Times – Oct 18
Federal Reserve officials are barreling toward another three-quarter point increase in November, and they may decide to do more as inflation refuses to budge.
Stocks Rise as Corporate Earnings Again Defy Expectations
Another batch of quarterly profits beat analyst expectations, but some warn that the rally could be short-lived, giving way to more selling.
It’s a Bear Market these days. As such, a ‘rally’ of a couple of days is likely to be followed by a ‘correction’ of profit-taking.
Buying opportunities abound!
Putin declares martial law in annexed regions of Ukraine
Boston Globe – Oct 19
Security Council of Russia
(Will Trump get away with this? What are the odds…)
Judge says Trump signed statement with information his lawyers told him was false
NY Times via Boston Globe – Oct 19
Liz Truss is out, as UK PM after six weeks in office. Seemed longer.
These are the likely front-runners to replace Liz Truss
NY Times – Oct 20
Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak and Ben Wallace, all current or former Conservative cabinet members, are seen as candidates for Britain’s next prime minister.
The leading candidates to replace Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister include key figures from her cabinet as well as former rivals for leadership of the Conservative Party. Some analysts have even speculated that Boris Johnson, who resigned as prime minister in the summer, could make a return.
On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt, who was appointed chancellor of the Exchequer last week and is credited with restoring some economic stability, said he would not run for party leader, the BBC reported. …
NY Times: Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain said on Thursday that she would resign, just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, sweeping away a free-market fiscal agenda that promised a radical policy shift for Britain but instead plunged the country into weeks of economic and political turmoil.
Her departure after only six weeks in office — the shortest tenure ever for a British prime minister — was a rapid fall from power that throws her Conservative Party into further disarray, following the messy departure of Boris Johnson over the summer. She said she would remain party leader and prime minister until a successor is chosen within a week. …
Jeremy Hunt, who ran in the last Tory race, said he no longer has any leadership ambitions. In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, he stated he would not run a third time.
“I think having run two leadership campaigns and, by the way, failed in both of them, the desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me.”
The South West Surrey MP was appointed the UK’s fourth chancellor in four months last Friday. … (Yahoo! News)
Liz Truss is eligible for a taxpayer-funded allowance of £115,000 a year for life
NY Times – Oct 20
just another case where US bullying is backfiring….
Exploding Online, Disinformation Is Now a Fixture of US Politics
NY Times – Oct 20
“left-leaning”
is that a conspiracy theory?
what does it mean?
Disinformation…. does that mean lies?
Wikipedia:
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.[4]
Media Matters for America (MMfA)[2] is a politically left-leaning[3] 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization and media watchdog group.[4]
Wikipedia:
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.
Media Matters for America (MMfA) is a politically left-leaning 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization and media watchdog group.
Fred
yes. but does that mean that disinformation is lies?
and yes, but is “left leaning” a conspiracy theory? as in, calling it left leaning part of the conspiracy meant to discount what it says? or is “left leaning” part of the conspiracy to discount what “the right” says?
you won’t find the answers in the dictionary.
I sincerely doubt that the NY Times is espousing conspiracy theories when it uses the term ‘left-leaning’. Their political-correctness meters may have been turned off, or they are just showing centrist tendencies.
Disinformation is lies. Some lies are not disinformation.
well, I’m glad we got that cleared up.