"If you think there is a vast climate conspiracy out to silence you, corrupting science and public discourse in order to accrue power, then why accept the result of an election? Why accept the findings of the IPCC or CSIRO, or the authority of the UN? And by extension, why engage with any criticism, which is ideologically motivated to begin with? It’s the ultimate political and intellectual cul-de-sac"
#environment
#politics
#ideology
#australia
"If the subject is politically sensitive this paragraph will contain quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public “controversy” exists."
#satire
#ideology
#publishing
"What I don’t understand is how corporations were granted their immunity. How it is axiomatically understood that their interests come before those of people or even their governments? Why must they be defended against reform? How do they recruit their friends in politics and reward them? How do politicians win support from voters whose own wages and safety are threatened?"
#business
#politics
#corruption
#ideology
#sociology
#environment
The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged →
Frank Rich in the NYT on the Tea Party. He’s sort of responding, I think, to Ben McGrath’s great New Yorker article about that same “group” (if a loosely organised collection of smaller groups with different motivations can be called a group). There’s a growing recognition that the movement (ah, that’s a better word) isn’t just an easily-dismissed collection of kooks and conspiracy theorists. Not easy to dismiss, at any rate. Yikes.
"After pouring over literature, message boards and talking with proponents, it’s challenging not to see those who carry a handgun as dweeby 15-year-old kids who carry a condom everywhere. They’re “prepared,” “just in case,” because “you never know,” “it could happen.” Equally, they both seem to fantasize about situations when they might actually use it."
I sort of skimmed a bit of this, but Abe Sauer’s thing about
handguns in the USA is pretty good, as usual.
"After witnessing three days of inchoate, spittle-flecked rage from the people who had the run of all three branches of government, some wag (probably Jon Stewart) puzzled over the “anger of the enfranchised.” And it would be puzzling if the driving force here were a public policy agenda, rather than a set of cultural grievances."
#politics
#USA
#ideology
#rhetoric
"The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes."
#politics
#usa
#rhetoric
#ideology
"How long ago was it that a black woman would be denied entrance to a whites-only restroom? Well, at one point in the afternoon, a white woman wearing a shirt that said “Kill Fags,” which appeared to be a homemade silkscreen job, felt a similar call of nature. At the door of [A LOCAL SPORTS BAR], she met Matt [LAST NAME REDACTED], one of the bar’s managers. He told her that she could not use the restroom.
“So you’re refusing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Matt said. “There’s no public option here.”
“Bastard,” she said.
“I can do you one better,” Matt said. “I suck cock.”
He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.
“I’m one of those,” he said, pointing at her shirt.
She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort."
#usa
#politics
#ideology
"The alternative explanation — that a free-market, consumer-addicted, image-obsessed society created by a certain stage of capitalism creates a society where a narcissistic style is the norm rather than the exception — could not be considered. Why? Because it would suggest that free market liberalism and cultural conservatism are in total contradiction — and since their fusion is the core fantasy on which the contemporary right is founded, such thoughts must be screened out."
#ideology
#capitalism
