WOOP WOOP! WARNING, POLITICAL COMMENTARY! WOOP WOOP!
Based on the fact that the contraceptive hearing did not include a single woman.
Is this a Dave Kelly comic? The style looks like his.
WOOP WOOP! WARNING, POLITICAL COMMENTARY! WOOP WOOP!
Based on the fact that the contraceptive hearing did not include a single woman.
Is this a Dave Kelly comic? The style looks like his.
My current issue with communism is my mistrust of any economic theory that becomes a political or a general philosophy. Seeing all through an economic lens, especially reducing people to their economic role, seems dehumanizing no matter who is doing it.
– Jubi Dutcher
I was struck by this, as it is exactly why I currently regard the United States with a sort of mesmerised horror. My responses for those who don’t or won’t visit FaceBook:
That’s pretty much encapsulating what seems to have gone wrong with the United States to me: free market economics - a theory originally about market activities alone - has been generalised to cover areas of society that it does not, and cannot, work in. (E.g. the provision of necessities, citizen welfare and support, even interpersonal and religious areas of life.)
It actually worries me. The United States basically sets the standard for Western European-style civilisation - and the standard keeps dropping.
I’m beginning to think that the United States is more self-denying than anything else - namely, that it refuses to acknowledge that *IS* a society, instead of some ideal market space of isolated individuals making deals with each other - adults, men, women, children, and so on.
As you probably guessed from that second paragraph, I consider the current free-market-addled model to be a major retrograde step in humanity’s development.
This is an interesting article, which discusses the potentially corrosive impact of the “…isn’t-everything-awesomesauce exultation that is a social tic in some corners of Web culture.” It also takes a swipe at the infamous Favourite or Like button, with its implicit censorship of dissent or disapproval, its insistence on presenting you and me as Liking Things who like, well, things.
Curmudgeons like you and me might as well be members of Al Qaeda or Westboro Baptist Church, which is a broad brush and a half:
At their wound-licking, hater-hatin’ worst, the politics of enthusiasm bespeak the intellectual flaccidity of a victim culture that sees even reasoned critiques as a mean-spirited assault on the believer, rather than an intellectual challenge to his beliefs. Journal writer Christopher John Farley is worth quoting again: dodging the argument by smearing the critic, the term “hater” tars “all criticism—no matter the merits—as the product of hateful minds.” No matter the merits.
Which is really a good point. Why should I have to remain silent if I disapprove or disagree with you? Is the modern man so insecure and thin-skinned that he must be agreed with and approved of in all interactions?
The problem with all our online interactions is that sooner or later some jackass will attempt to monetise them. And that means forcing us to make an arbitrary decision to dis/like even when its Coke/Pepsi as opposed to apples/oranges.
Like buttons create a nice easy to understand metric. But as author Mark Diery says:
…what we like or dislike is rarely half as mind-opening as why we did or didn’t.
And what we neither dislike nor like, but both like and dislike—where’s the button for that?—or are simply fascinated by, is more enlightening still.
0. The United States is broken and needs to be repaired.
At the present time, the political dialogue between the Republican and Democratic parties has become thoroughly toxic. Elected officials have openly admitted - not in as many words - that they would rather betray their constituent citizens in order to spite the current Democrat government. Metaphors of war and killing are rife. Cronyism for corporate interests, like the parties’ fixation on seizing power above all else, is an open secret.
The climate of fear has made entering or leaving the country a potentially abusive situation (Google ‘TSA abuse’ and see what I mean.) The financial industry, after being bailed out after a massive collapse, has continued to behave in the manner which caused the collapse in the first place.
Basic civil rights are vanishing. The ranks of the impoverished are swelling, more so if you include the ‘working poor’. The differential between the lowest and highest wage is immense.
Social safety nets such as Medicare, the public school system etc. are in tatters, thanks to the national obsession with free market dogmas. Worse, the psychological social safety nets - i.e. civic responsibility and patriotism - have been systematically destroyed, replaced with what can only be described as ‘selfish consumerism’.
As such, it is vital that a plan be put into place to repair the problems that are helping to bring about the end of the American Dream.
This streaming consciousness rant is a sort of white paper thinking about what needs to be repaired. Consider it a wish list.
Dictatorships don’t work in the long run. People get disgruntled, upset, so everything is compromise, negotiation, discussing and agreeing. The best word for it, Plato said, is politics.
Click the link for the full post; bullet points are as follows:
I can’t even imagine how awful political comics are going to be the next few days.
I never really got into Rosenberg’s previous opus Goats, but this comic is simultaneously topical, surreal and consistently funny.
Every Friday there’s another episode of an ongoing story, the first famously being Sciencemaster Adler and his mysterious fan. Or fans. Or maybe they’re not fans but are sentient vegetable people. (Mind you, this is a multiverse, so maybe there’s sentient clothing accessory people as well, but that could be heading into the Douglas Adams Territories.)
How To Suck At Your Religion by The Oatmeal
This is long but excellent
Most people don’t have faith in their god/s. Just brand loyalty. And artificially inflamed brand loyalty at that.
Minimum wage 101 part 2.
I don’t understand this. “Apples so say no to raising the minimum wage because government”? Oh wait, it’s made by anarchists. No wonder nobody takes them seriously. Please reblog the tags.
Let me know what you don’t understand and I’d be happy to educate you. I assume most people understand the basics of supply and demand and the effects of scarcity in a market. I apologize for making that assumption.
To be honest, I saw this on my dash via nathanadored, and flicked through it quickly – then again, a little slower – still couldn’t get it. So I’m going to attempt a closer reading and figure out why it’s pissing me off. Come walk through my mind…
This is an interesting article, which discusses the potentially corrosive impact of the “…isn’t-everything-awesomesauce exultation that is a social tic in some corners of Web culture.” It also takes a swipe at the infamous Favourite or Like button, with its implicit censorship of dissent or disapproval, its insistence on presenting you and me as Liking Things who like, well, things. Curmudgeons like you and me might as well be members of Al Qaeda or Westboro Baptist Church, which is a broad brush and a half:
At their wound-licking, hater-hatin’ worst, the politics of enthusiasm bespeak the intellectual flaccidity of a victim culture that sees even reasoned critiques as a mean-spirited assault on the believer, rather than an intellectual challenge to his beliefs. Journal writer Christopher John Farley is worth quoting again: dodging the argument by smearing the critic, the term “hater” tars “all criticism—no matter the merits—as the product of hateful minds.” No matter the merits.
Which is really a good point. Why should I have to remain silent if I disapprove or disagree with you? Is the modern man so insecure and thin-skinned that he must be agreed with and approved of in all interactions? The problem with all our online interactions is that sooner or later some jackass will attempt to monetise them. And that means forcing us to make an arbitrary decision to dis/like even when its Coke/Pepsi as opposed to apples/oranges. Like buttons create a nice easy to understand metric. But as author Mark Diery says:
…what we like or dislike is rarely half as mind-opening as why we did or didn’t. And what we neither dislike nor like, but both like and dislike—where’s the button for that?—or are simply fascinated by, is more enlightening still.
