The Dictator observations thread.

Politics and other such topical creams.
Flex
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Flex »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Jan 2022, 7:08am
revbob wrote:
28 Jan 2022, 10:09pm
Why arent there firing squads at his point.
In this thread or in civil society?
first one, and then the other
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

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Dr. Medulla
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Flex wrote:
29 Jan 2022, 11:01am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Jan 2022, 7:08am
revbob wrote:
28 Jan 2022, 10:09pm
Why arent there firing squads at his point.
In this thread or in civil society?
first one, and then the other
IMCT has always been the vanguard party.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

I'm reading response pieces from students about a book on 80s punk and it's a bit unsettling how many just flat-out admit they don't really know anything about Reagan. I get that he was dead before a lot of them were barely out of diapers, but, yeesh, given what a monster he was in my adolescence, the notion that he's not even a blip now is disconcerting. I mean, I knew who FDR or JFK were when I was 20.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Sparky »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:06pm
I'm reading response pieces from students about a book on 80s punk and it's a bit unsettling how many just flat-out admit they don't really know anything about Reagan. I get that he was dead before a lot of them were barely out of diapers, but, yeesh, given what a monster he was in my adolescence, the notion that he's not even a blip now is disconcerting. I mean, I knew who FDR or JFK were when I was 20.
He was elected when I was one year out of high school. "Reagan Hates Me" t-shirts were pretty cool punk apparel at the time, he tripled our national debt, rich got richer under his "trickle down" economics & he cut education spending.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Sparky wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:34pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:06pm
I'm reading response pieces from students about a book on 80s punk and it's a bit unsettling how many just flat-out admit they don't really know anything about Reagan. I get that he was dead before a lot of them were barely out of diapers, but, yeesh, given what a monster he was in my adolescence, the notion that he's not even a blip now is disconcerting. I mean, I knew who FDR or JFK were when I was 20.
He was elected when I was one year out of high school. "Reagan Hates Me" t-shirts were pretty cool punk apparel at the time, he tripled our national debt, rich got richer under his "trickle down" economics & he cut education spending.
Can't write as much as I'd like right now, but I've come to think punks bought a huge caricature of Reagan. He was a monster, but there was more contradiction and complexity going on.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Mark^Bastard
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Mark^Bastard »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 5:01pm
Sparky wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:34pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:06pm
I'm reading response pieces from students about a book on 80s punk and it's a bit unsettling how many just flat-out admit they don't really know anything about Reagan. I get that he was dead before a lot of them were barely out of diapers, but, yeesh, given what a monster he was in my adolescence, the notion that he's not even a blip now is disconcerting. I mean, I knew who FDR or JFK were when I was 20.
He was elected when I was one year out of high school. "Reagan Hates Me" t-shirts were pretty cool punk apparel at the time, he tripled our national debt, rich got richer under his "trickle down" economics & he cut education spending.
Can't write as much as I'd like right now, but I've come to think punks bought a huge caricature of Reagan. He was a monster, but there was more contradiction and complexity going on.
Happens every time, it's baked into the system. It's good guy vs bad guy bullshit, when really it's always bad guy vs bad guy.

The difference between Dems and GOP is that when the GOP do it the 'left' (Liberals, not true leftists) screech and moan about it. Then the Dems get in and everyone gives them a free pass. You can reverse this exact thing with right-wingers. They screech and moan about anything the Dems do (inc immigration) then don't question the GOP when they do the same shit. For example immigration of labour to decrease working class salaries has been a playbook of both sides for decades now.

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 5:01pm
Sparky wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:34pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
10 Feb 2022, 3:06pm
I'm reading response pieces from students about a book on 80s punk and it's a bit unsettling how many just flat-out admit they don't really know anything about Reagan. I get that he was dead before a lot of them were barely out of diapers, but, yeesh, given what a monster he was in my adolescence, the notion that he's not even a blip now is disconcerting. I mean, I knew who FDR or JFK were when I was 20.
He was elected when I was one year out of high school. "Reagan Hates Me" t-shirts were pretty cool punk apparel at the time, he tripled our national debt, rich got richer under his "trickle down" economics & he cut education spending.
Can't write as much as I'd like right now, but I've come to think punks bought a huge caricature of Reagan. He was a monster, but there was more contradiction and complexity going on.
Okay, just to throw some contradiction into the usual Reagan stuff. For a conservative, he was curiously in tune with more leftist views. For one, he was absurdly optimistic and believed human beings are inherently good. This was distinctly not conservative, which has a rather jaundiced view of human nature (either to justify aristocratic rule or to be wary of state power). He believed that the Cold War could be won, that a concerted effort to beat the Soviet Union was worth the gamble. And then, when the opportunity presented itself, he went big the other way and endorsed eliminating all nuclear weapons. Again, this kind of desire to change the world as it exists to one you dream of is distinctly unconservative. He was also a proponent of hedonism—consume, enjoy life, don't worry about the future. Isn't this a commodified version of what the 60s counterculture was urging (minus dope and free fucking)? Reagan did promote modesty and quiet productivity.

Now, none of this is to suggest I'm a Reagan apologist. He was a callow agent of gutting any sense of common good, and he presided over a vicious persecution of African Americans and gay people. He reveled in superficiality and commodification of daily life. He played footsie with apocalyptic religious swine. If there's a hell, he deserves to burn.

But he's a distinctly strange figure, especially for the right to revere. In some respects, Trump purging Reagan fealty from the right is a sensible corrective (even if Trump is a deviation of conservatism in other significant ways). Reagan was the monster Satan of my adolescence, but I've come to appreciate that I'd bought into a caricature.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Low Down Low »

So after being all juiced up and made "redy" for war by the politicians and blue tick liberals, it's looking increasingly like we're not going to get our invasion after all. How deflating. Putin just going to run away like a big scaredy cat. I reckon it was the pics of Liz Truss in the tank wot won it.

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:04am
So after being all juiced up and made "redy" for war by the politicians and blue tick liberals, it's looking increasingly like we're not going to get our invasion after all. How deflating. Putin just going to run away like a big scaredy cat. I reckon it was the pics of Liz Truss in the tank wot won it.
A few weeks ago, I read a piece that suggested the main point of this was to exposing and expand divisions in NATO and the EU, that seizing Ukraine wasn't the prize. That hasn't happened, so he shrugs and departs.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Low Down Low »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:31am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:04am
So after being all juiced up and made "redy" for war by the politicians and blue tick liberals, it's looking increasingly like we're not going to get our invasion after all. How deflating. Putin just going to run away like a big scaredy cat. I reckon it was the pics of Liz Truss in the tank wot won it.
A few weeks ago, I read a piece that suggested the main point of this was to exposing and expand divisions in NATO and the EU, that seizing Ukraine wasn't the prize. That hasn't happened, so he shrugs and departs.
That seems like good, reasonable analysis but 90% of the coverage i've read has been low rent, toadying garbage. Seems to me, if we were dealing with some hapless third world entity here, they'd devise another gulf of tomkin as a pretext for dropping a load of "hardware", but as it's a nuclear armed superpower, they're reduced to whipping up hysteria and empty rhetoric to a most obliging and appreciative media. And as a "Brucie bonus", they get to direct a few slaps at the Stop the War lefties who get smeared as Putin "apologists". It got boring after the first day.

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:51am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:31am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:04am
So after being all juiced up and made "redy" for war by the politicians and blue tick liberals, it's looking increasingly like we're not going to get our invasion after all. How deflating. Putin just going to run away like a big scaredy cat. I reckon it was the pics of Liz Truss in the tank wot won it.
A few weeks ago, I read a piece that suggested the main point of this was to exposing and expand divisions in NATO and the EU, that seizing Ukraine wasn't the prize. That hasn't happened, so he shrugs and departs.
That seems like good, reasonable analysis but 90% of the coverage i've read has been low rent, toadying garbage. Seems to me, if we were dealing with some hapless third world entity here, they'd devise another gulf of tomkin as a pretext for dropping a load of "hardware", but as it's a nuclear armed superpower, they're reduced to whipping up hysteria and empty rhetoric to a most obliging and appreciative media. And as a "Brucie bonus", they get to direct a few slaps at the Stop the War lefties who get smeared as Putin "apologists". It got boring after the first day.
Whether it was the "extra! extra!" yellow journalism in the late 19th c or the hot take clickbait today, there's always been a market for angrying/scaring people up. Funny enough, the people who scream the most about fake news and don't trust the media are the ones who buy into the fearmongering the most.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Low Down Low »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 8:26am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:51am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:31am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:04am
So after being all juiced up and made "redy" for war by the politicians and blue tick liberals, it's looking increasingly like we're not going to get our invasion after all. How deflating. Putin just going to run away like a big scaredy cat. I reckon it was the pics of Liz Truss in the tank wot won it.
A few weeks ago, I read a piece that suggested the main point of this was to exposing and expand divisions in NATO and the EU, that seizing Ukraine wasn't the prize. That hasn't happened, so he shrugs and departs.
That seems like good, reasonable analysis but 90% of the coverage i've read has been low rent, toadying garbage. Seems to me, if we were dealing with some hapless third world entity here, they'd devise another gulf of tomkin as a pretext for dropping a load of "hardware", but as it's a nuclear armed superpower, they're reduced to whipping up hysteria and empty rhetoric to a most obliging and appreciative media. And as a "Brucie bonus", they get to direct a few slaps at the Stop the War lefties who get smeared as Putin "apologists". It got boring after the first day.
Whether it was the "extra! extra!" yellow journalism in the late 19th c or the hot take clickbait today, there's always been a market for angrying/scaring people up. Funny enough, the people who scream the most about fake news and don't trust the media are the ones who buy into the fearmongering the most.
That's true, there isn't anything new happening here. But I'm also old enough to remember Thatcher denouncing the BBC in parliament during the Falklands because it wasn't being patriotic enough. I don't think Johnson is worrying about the media this past week, they have his back on Ukraine and making for a quite pleasant distraction from his other woes.

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 8:39am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 8:26am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:51am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:31am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:04am
So after being all juiced up and made "redy" for war by the politicians and blue tick liberals, it's looking increasingly like we're not going to get our invasion after all. How deflating. Putin just going to run away like a big scaredy cat. I reckon it was the pics of Liz Truss in the tank wot won it.
A few weeks ago, I read a piece that suggested the main point of this was to exposing and expand divisions in NATO and the EU, that seizing Ukraine wasn't the prize. That hasn't happened, so he shrugs and departs.
That seems like good, reasonable analysis but 90% of the coverage i've read has been low rent, toadying garbage. Seems to me, if we were dealing with some hapless third world entity here, they'd devise another gulf of tomkin as a pretext for dropping a load of "hardware", but as it's a nuclear armed superpower, they're reduced to whipping up hysteria and empty rhetoric to a most obliging and appreciative media. And as a "Brucie bonus", they get to direct a few slaps at the Stop the War lefties who get smeared as Putin "apologists". It got boring after the first day.
Whether it was the "extra! extra!" yellow journalism in the late 19th c or the hot take clickbait today, there's always been a market for angrying/scaring people up. Funny enough, the people who scream the most about fake news and don't trust the media are the ones who buy into the fearmongering the most.
That's true, there isn't anything new happening here. But I'm also old enough to remember Thatcher denouncing the BBC in parliament during the Falklands because it wasn't being patriotic enough. I don't think Johnson is worrying about the media this past week, they have his back on Ukraine and making for a quite pleasant distraction from his other woes.
Luckily the media will soon enough be evil and biased and all that to the government. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Low Down Low
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Low Down Low »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 8:56am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 8:39am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 8:26am
Low Down Low wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:51am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Feb 2022, 7:31am


A few weeks ago, I read a piece that suggested the main point of this was to exposing and expand divisions in NATO and the EU, that seizing Ukraine wasn't the prize. That hasn't happened, so he shrugs and departs.
That seems like good, reasonable analysis but 90% of the coverage i've read has been low rent, toadying garbage. Seems to me, if we were dealing with some hapless third world entity here, they'd devise another gulf of tomkin as a pretext for dropping a load of "hardware", but as it's a nuclear armed superpower, they're reduced to whipping up hysteria and empty rhetoric to a most obliging and appreciative media. And as a "Brucie bonus", they get to direct a few slaps at the Stop the War lefties who get smeared as Putin "apologists". It got boring after the first day.
Whether it was the "extra! extra!" yellow journalism in the late 19th c or the hot take clickbait today, there's always been a market for angrying/scaring people up. Funny enough, the people who scream the most about fake news and don't trust the media are the ones who buy into the fearmongering the most.
That's true, there isn't anything new happening here. But I'm also old enough to remember Thatcher denouncing the BBC in parliament during the Falklands because it wasn't being patriotic enough. I don't think Johnson is worrying about the media this past week, they have his back on Ukraine and making for a quite pleasant distraction from his other woes.
Luckily the media will soon enough be evil and biased and all that to the government. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As Omar says in the Wire, "All in the game yo!"

Dr. Medulla
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Goddammit, I've been summoned for jury duty for the first time in my life. Given that it's the middle of the school year, I'm hoping to get out of it. Otherwise I'm going to have to come off as a lunatic to be dismissed. Flex, what are some of the things you say about the Exploited?
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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