If Music Could Talk

Good (but longish) essay on conservative victimhood and the rhyming history of intolerant liberals "forcing" conservatives to become worse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... edirect=on

The best history is where you get to invent your own facts and ignore the ones you don't like!

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

30 Sep 2019, 6:52am

I always forget about this comic but I always like it.

It's adorable because she's a celebrity and he's a war criminal who got away with it!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ellen-de ... 475f9c3ce5

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

07 Oct 2019, 10:33am

It's adorable because she's a celebrity and he's a war criminal who got away with it!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ellen-de ... 475f9c3ce5

As has been pointed out on Twitter and such: he supported a constitutional ban on same sex marriages, but class solidarity among the rich remains stronger than any single social issue.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

07 Oct 2019, 10:33am

It's adorable because she's a celebrity and he's a war criminal who got away with it!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ellen-de ... 475f9c3ce5

It makes me especially happy the Cowboys lost.

Flex wrote: ↑

07 Oct 2019, 11:18am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

07 Oct 2019, 10:33am

It's adorable because she's a celebrity and he's a war criminal who got away with it!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ellen-de ... 475f9c3ce5

As has been pointed out on Twitter and such: he supported a constitutional ban on same sex marriages, but class solidarity among the rich remains stronger than any single social issue.

And the general population's deference to celebrity, especially when it can be spun as some kind of bridging the divide. Jon Voight and Alec Baldwin going out for ice cream would assure everyone that it's gonna be okay after all.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ate-228111

My sister sent me this. It has some useful observations, certainly, but the sample used, I think, is flawed. A lot of the polarization in American (and Canadian) politics is less rooted in conservative vs liberal or conversative vs. left, even tho that's how it's manifested, than formal education vs. non-formal education. Learning and employing more critical approaches vs. a greater reliability on gut thinking. It's harder to have meaningful conversations when each side has reservations (if not contempt) for the other's way of thinking about problems.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

18 Oct 2019, 8:40am

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ate-228111

My sister sent me this. It has some useful observations, certainly, but the sample used, I think, is flawed. A lot of the polarization in American (and Canadian) politics is less rooted in conservative vs liberal or conversative vs. left, even tho that's how it's manifested, than formal education vs. non-formal education. Learning and employing more critical approaches vs. a greater reliability on gut thinking. It's harder to have meaningful conversations when each side has reservations (if not contempt) for the other's way of thinking about problems.

I really agree with this. There is a lot of contempt out there and it's personal contempt. It feels like disagreements over policy are one thing, but when the disagreement is so much more fundamental it becomes very hard to reach across the aisle. It becomes a personal attack and I think it (obviously) goes beyond education, but extends into areas like religion (some of us rely on a higher power to fix things and some of us look for more realistic solutions). I will forever be a proponent of a liberal arts education because I believe it teaches kids how to think. It doesn't tell them what to think (which many conservatives believe), but it teaches them to how to critically approach problems.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

18 Oct 2019, 10:01am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

18 Oct 2019, 8:40am

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ate-228111

My sister sent me this. It has some useful observations, certainly, but the sample used, I think, is flawed. A lot of the polarization in American (and Canadian) politics is less rooted in conservative vs liberal or conversative vs. left, even tho that's how it's manifested, than formal education vs. non-formal education. Learning and employing more critical approaches vs. a greater reliability on gut thinking. It's harder to have meaningful conversations when each side has reservations (if not contempt) for the other's way of thinking about problems.

I really agree with this. There is a lot of contempt out there and it's personal contempt. It feels like disagreements over policy are one thing, but when the disagreement is so much more fundamental it becomes very hard to reach across the aisle. It becomes a personal attack and I think it (obviously) goes beyond education, but extends into areas like religion (some of us rely on a higher power to fix things and some of us look for more realistic solutions). I will forever be a proponent of a liberal arts education because I believe it teaches kids how to think. It doesn't tell them what to think (which many conservatives believe), but it teaches them to how to critically approach problems.

I always tell my students—and I'm sincere about this—that I don't especially care if they forget all the "facts" of my class after they've received their grade. That's not what's important about a humanities education. It's about learning to be a better thinker and to get better at expressing those thoughts in text and aloud. It's about becoming a better citizen. Which is why business-oriented perspectives happily shit on the humanities for not being "practical." No, it isn't in the way they think; it's about strengthening the essence of democratic participation. I don't need to indoctrinate my students to a particular ideology. I just want students who are better equipped to reflexively employ intelligent skepticism. That I think that works against conservatism as it's devolved in the past fifty years is just a happy bonus.

An old Onion piece, but still fantastic: https://www.theonion.com/area-man-passi ... 1819571149

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... alist-poll

What I especially like is that the poll was sponsored by Victims of Communism.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bill-gat ... 5138825814

Can you imagine somebody fretting about hypothetically being reduced to having "only" $6B? Wealth really is a sickness.