The results of this election have been overdetermined to the point of absurdity.
In 2004, W's approval rating the week of the election was 51%. He got 50.7% of the vote.
In 2012, Obama's approval rating the week of the election was 50.5%. He got 51.1% of the vote.
In 2020, Trump's approval rating the week of the election was 46%. He got 46.8% of the vote.
In 2024, Biden's approval rating was 41% the week of the election. Kamala got 47% of the vote.
Now, I assume if the first debate had not been televised, in which it was made clear to the country that Joe Biden was suffering from dementia, his approval rating would have been higher, perhaps 43-44%. But Donald Trump won because there are two choices in every American election, and the American people think the current president is doing a bad job. It doesn't have a ton to do with toxic masculinity, or podcasts, or Hollywood, or intersectionality, or ignoring January 6th. There are two choices and the American people chose "the other guy" as opposed to "reupping with the current guy". (There is a universe where Kamala Harris could have aggressively contrasted herself with Joe Biden and shit all over his policies and said she was going to do things very differently, and perhaps that would have worked--or failed miserably--but we do not live in that universe, plain and simple.)
Why do Americans think Joe Biden is doing such a terrible job? There are roughly 38 political issues on the table at any time, but two of them hold 95% of the public bandwidth: the economy and (national) security. People have opinions and preferences about every issue, but they mostly care about feeling safe and being able to feed their families. Joe Biden presided over the largest hike in inflation in forty years, and on the security front, he was at the helm during a three-part "security" disaster: 7.5 million new illegal immigrants entering the country, with no end in sight; an enormous 2020 crime wave that still leaves murder rates 20% higher than their 2019 low (and everything at CVS locked up); and a wave of pro-Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi/Iran protests that left bridges blocked, hospitals inaccessible, flags burned, Death to America chanted, janitors at elite universities assaulted, and a constant barrage of slogans and placards promoting what are officially designated as terrorist groups by the United States government.
There are lots of ways of processing that information with data that minimize the effect of everything I've just said, and most of those counterarguments are straightforwardly factual. Inflation has declined significantly since its 2022 high; as has crime from its 2020 high; no one has been killed in any of the student protests, and most of the students are not demonstrably anti-semitic, or even anti-American. What Chuck is noticing is that media junkies inhale the aforementioned set of stats, since many members of the media have made it their personal raison d'être to use facts and numbers to defend the Democratic Party, as if it was facing death row and they were its last chance at a fair trial. And the junkies down that information like a life raft in a hale storm, as if there is some supervenient set of facts that all voters are compelled to respond to, as opposed to these factoids serving as competing set of numbers which fly around like betting lines on DraftKings. (My favorite version of this tendency was during Trump Era I, when on a nightly basis, Rachel Maddow would uncover some evidence of Trump's corruption or misgivings and triumphantly shout, "We got him!", as if Trump was going to instantly leave office simply because Rachel Maddow herself had discovered that the president had once done something wrong.)
As Lee Atwater said, "in politics, the truth is what the voters believe", and the impression the Biden administration gave, in part caused by his senility, was not just that they were okay with all the chaos and decay they were engendering, but that they were powerless to do anything about it. That higher crime rates and unfettered illegal immigration and runaway inflation were just a naturally occurring part of the declining empire we live in, and trying to stop them was like trying to stop the sun from shining. People joke that the left-wing response to cancel culture is, "It's not happening and it's good that it is"; well their response to government incompetence seems to be "it's not happening and well, it is but we can't even do anything about it so shut up". And to this, Trump says no. He has a vision--or at least a plan; or maybe concepts of a plan--to restore America to its 1990s apogee of a soaring economy, tasteful nudity, moderate tolerance for racism, open and free usage of the phrase "Merry Christmas", crime declines, fewer mixed-race couples in ads for paper towels, and violent and masculine movies. Some of his ideas are illiberal, almost all of them are illegal, and perhaps one or two of them will come to pass. But the Democrats have little left to fight back with. Once the party of making the world a better place--which meant a bigger and better government--it has transformed into the party of the right side of history, which, as far as anyone can tell means a barrage of name-calling and exclusion if you disagree with their preferences, even if they have lead to the dysfunctional results so many Americans are currently unhappy with. The Democrats have transformed from a party of Leslie Knopes to a party of Regina Georges, and the Republicans have remained the party of Al Bundy, feckless, reactionary, and retrograde, but with a core that at least remains impervious to fashion. At least he'll let you sit with us.
It is not clear Biden is suffering from dementia. He is almost 80 and wasn't all that sane to begin with. Here in Quebec after 1600 years, Roman Catholicism and all Volcano Worship is considered a mental health problem and the Holy Father is persona non grata until he issues a formal apology for 1600 years of barbarism and human and cultural genocide. It wasn't Moslems the Crusaders slaughtered on their way to Jerusalem. Jewish villages existed along the Rhine from before ZERO A.D.
Yeah, I like Klosterman a lot, but that section of the podcast seemed strange to me. National voter registration data supported a Trump win. Early voting data, as Ethan has noted, did too. The betting markets had Trump at around 60-65% to win for basically the whole month leading up to election day. Two-thirds of the country thought things were on the wrong track. Democratic senators in swing states were running ads where they openly and positively linked themselves to Trump. And so on and so on.
None of that meant a Trump victory was 100% certain, of course, but if you were as surprised by the result as Chuck supposedly was, you're just getting your information from the wrong places. It reminds me of how the only people surprised by Biden's terrible debate were those in deep left circles. Everybody else had been saying he was that far gone for a while.
So I would go a step further to say the media intentionally framed (lied) this election as a toss-up for normative social influence. It was keep non-political junkies like Chuck, but pay attention to the news, in the dark of the social proofing that was happening around Trump. If Chuck knew Trump was more popular than the media wanted you to believe, especially among men of any ethnicity, would they feel more comfortable voting for him? I would say, yes.
I agree they intentionally lied, but not to keep normies interested. I think they thought if they kept lying and lying, that maybe their lies would become true.
What is striking about this election is the unanimity of the mainstream media in deriding Trump. In almost all my usual haunts, NYT, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Washington Post, CNN, CBS News there were whole sections of stories devoted to the dangers of a second Trump presidency with multiple examples of how uniquely horrible he would be for the country.
If one was to consume all of that, as many of us have, one would wonder why a single citizen would vote for this horrible, horrible convicted felon.
From such a position perhaps it was hard to see the election tilt any way but towards justice (ie: Harris) and therefore the fact that Trump swept the swing states and won the popular vote at all, is a shocker even if it was by a thin margin.
The one giant problem with their ‘dangers of a trump second term’ argument is that his first term was by all objective standards, fine, and that argument wouldn’t be taken seriously by those who don’t live in those media bubbles (ie regular people pissed off with the inflation and being told that it’s worse elsewhere so they’re doing well?)
Then again if you live in that media bubble and when a 12 pack of eggs is $2 more (ie a rounding error) you probably won’t notice how the average person is feeling it, and likely will have your head too far up your own ass to notice.
Every election is a choice election and I believe the American people make the following choices:
1) Will they protect me and my own (family usually) from foreign and domestic danger?
2) Will they put forward policies that benefit me financially?
3) Do I trust them not to lie to me?
4) Could I go out and have a good time at an Applebees with them?
Every presidential winner hits all four - call them the quadrants to the White House - every time. Even the teetotalers (W, Biden, Trump) could have a good time at Applebees.
There's two ways media outlets can serve their audiences:
1. Telling them the truth
2. Telling them what they want to hear
Ideally, outlets can do both, when the truth aligns with what they want to hear.
As before, I think Nate Silver's journey is instructive here.
I am not qualified to validate his methods, but my impression is that he has fairly consistently applied his model to the polling data. In 2012, this told those on the left what they wanted to here -- that Obama was overwhelmingly likely to win the election, and this turned out to be true.
Today, he is a reviled figure for those audiences. Why? They would say because he was "wrong" in 2016, but he gave Trump a 30% chance of winning. Who is more reviled now? Silver, who said this outcome was the most likely (albeit generally thinking it was a toss-up), or the commentators who jumped on the Iowa poll and predicted a cakewalk?
I think the answer is still Silver. Which points to why most people "engage" in politics. It's not be be informed, it's to be comforted.
Some self-aware people like Klosterman may consider their information diet based on these mistakes, but most people won't.
Your point about Klosterman's social circle possibly being (almost exclusively) "affluent & liberal" points to some very compelling reasons how and why Harris lost the Presidency. But, also, culture and demographics plays a big role. Speak to the Jewish populations of NY/NJ and Florida, there was a very sharp split on how Jews felt about the Democratic Party and their support/lack of support for Israel.
But, then go into very liberal corners of NYC, and there were a lot of people protesting and standing with Palestine.
Michigan is the case-study for how the conflict in Gaza swayed the electorate in that State.
And as for legacy media, the NYT still has over 10 million digital subscribers. And the WSJ has over 3 million.
Granted Joe Rogan still outpaces them with over 14 million followers on spotify and over 16 million subscribers on YouTube (I'd image there is quite a bit of overlap in the Rogan viewership).
It all Depends™️ what you read. I am having subscription problems living close to Vermont on the Globe but living in a French speaking nation inside Canada means my internet is in the middle of Old France while I live in Nouvelle France next to Vermont (Green Mountains) and next to the Sentier Internationale Appalache (Appalachian Trail). All I can say is I will renew my subscription and I can afford to subscribe to people who like to write their truths whether or not I agree.
John Ralston Saul wrote the Collapse of Globalism and the Re-Invention of the World 30 years ago while I lived in a Southside ghetto in Chicago. Time Magazine called him a prophet and he disappeared in all America's media mainstream or not. He is still writing andI trusted him on Covid and I am still among the living as is my Juliette.
Woodlawn is not in Hyde Park and neither is the Obama shrine but Woodlawn is cheap and Hyde Park is the Chicago School of medieval economics. I had to cross campus to get to the Co-Op and my wife drove to work in a Chicago suburb. She did a backwards commute from inner city Chicago to a residential suburb that was once a prosperous Village when Gary Indiana was the Music Man not the Jackson Five.
Kamala Harris grew up in my neighbourhood where we sang God Save the Queen and studied English Protestant history. We know Thomas More was responsible for the KJV which led to Cromwell's genocides of Roman Catholics in Scotland and Ireland. We learned what the English extreme conservative linguistic philosopher and ethno-centric racist Samuel Johnson meant by the words Thomas Jefferson called an abomination in 1805 after Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin made slavery no longer an economic imperative. We learned America was a democracy in 1689 when William Prince of Orange and Mary Queen of Scotland and Ireland surrendered all power for their perpetual pension. The Stock exchange opened in 1699 and parliament owned all the shares of the East India Company.
In Montreal our history of the Boston Tea Party is the story of Bonhomme Richard who spoke French and went on to lead the occupation and withdrawal of Quebec by the USA in 1775-1776.
The tea in Boston Harbour was not subject to tariffs because Parliament owned The East India Company had two warehouses filled with tea and they needed to liquidate the effing tea to pay the effing Hessians and Scottish Presbyterians who ran the effing colonies and collected the taxes and paid the mercenaries from Hess and Prussia. The East India Company owned Boston Harbour, the ships flew the flag of the East India Company and the tea was not subject to the tariffs that the independent merchants needed to pay. The merchants dressed like Aborigines and spoke a Latin language called French and Bonhomme lived in the communes of Paris and grew up in Boston's Commons where he never went to school and started working full time at 10. Benjamin Franklin was a scoundrel and "The Patriot" according to Boswell who wrote The Life of Johnson. I know Original Intent and the Original intent was making only Anglicans and non-conforming Protestants full American citizens as only England was virtuous, and the world was filled with Hobbe's purveyors of evil.
Let's talk about the media. Paul Revere photoshopped the Boston Massacre just like FOX in 2016 and 2020. Where the media serves only business there can be no democracy and I can't decide America's fure. First America must decide whether it wants Rome or it wants liberal democracy and America is 50/50 and Quebec is 85/15 LIBERAL DEMOCRACY and our conservative government passed Bill 21 saying prayer belongs in the closet so we can all enjoy the sunshine.
What? Is that a query or a indication of not being cognizant of what the discussion is about. I am not a mind reader. What? Tells me nothing. In Kabbalah Adam Kadmon is primordial man. I live in Quebec Canada and religion is for closets. Is there a Question that you want answered or you really just want some attention like President elect Peter Pan of America's Never Never Land and you don't need to know anything that you don't already know?
The one thing looking back that I still find amazing, why the fuck did anyone think Tim Walz was a good idea?
He’s basically what the “affluent and liberal” people think a “manly man” is, when the reality is most men think he’s a tool and probably did a lot more damage than they realise, especially with the whole “Vance is weird” when you are rolling out that guy who’s basically a living breathing parody who’s a serial bullshitter (who a lot on the left bent over backwards to apologise for yet when trump lies it was the worst thing ever and proof he is unfit for office).
Rogan’s point on how Walz was the reason he got involved should literally be a wake up call to those people, but I highly doubt many of them will learn that they need to learn to speak to normal people like normal people, not like idiots because they don’t agree with them on every little thing and don’t prioritise the Middle East and other issues that have no impact on their lives over things like crime and food prices.
Thank you for being able to produce a well-reasoned post even though YOUR 49ers are in shambles.
Thought it was an interesting analogy between how Klosterman is able to not put a current filter on the past (which so many people are either unable or unwilling to do) and the NYT etc which are unable to put a current filter on the current.
The results of this election have been overdetermined to the point of absurdity.
In 2004, W's approval rating the week of the election was 51%. He got 50.7% of the vote.
In 2012, Obama's approval rating the week of the election was 50.5%. He got 51.1% of the vote.
In 2020, Trump's approval rating the week of the election was 46%. He got 46.8% of the vote.
In 2024, Biden's approval rating was 41% the week of the election. Kamala got 47% of the vote.
Now, I assume if the first debate had not been televised, in which it was made clear to the country that Joe Biden was suffering from dementia, his approval rating would have been higher, perhaps 43-44%. But Donald Trump won because there are two choices in every American election, and the American people think the current president is doing a bad job. It doesn't have a ton to do with toxic masculinity, or podcasts, or Hollywood, or intersectionality, or ignoring January 6th. There are two choices and the American people chose "the other guy" as opposed to "reupping with the current guy". (There is a universe where Kamala Harris could have aggressively contrasted herself with Joe Biden and shit all over his policies and said she was going to do things very differently, and perhaps that would have worked--or failed miserably--but we do not live in that universe, plain and simple.)
Why do Americans think Joe Biden is doing such a terrible job? There are roughly 38 political issues on the table at any time, but two of them hold 95% of the public bandwidth: the economy and (national) security. People have opinions and preferences about every issue, but they mostly care about feeling safe and being able to feed their families. Joe Biden presided over the largest hike in inflation in forty years, and on the security front, he was at the helm during a three-part "security" disaster: 7.5 million new illegal immigrants entering the country, with no end in sight; an enormous 2020 crime wave that still leaves murder rates 20% higher than their 2019 low (and everything at CVS locked up); and a wave of pro-Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi/Iran protests that left bridges blocked, hospitals inaccessible, flags burned, Death to America chanted, janitors at elite universities assaulted, and a constant barrage of slogans and placards promoting what are officially designated as terrorist groups by the United States government.
There are lots of ways of processing that information with data that minimize the effect of everything I've just said, and most of those counterarguments are straightforwardly factual. Inflation has declined significantly since its 2022 high; as has crime from its 2020 high; no one has been killed in any of the student protests, and most of the students are not demonstrably anti-semitic, or even anti-American. What Chuck is noticing is that media junkies inhale the aforementioned set of stats, since many members of the media have made it their personal raison d'être to use facts and numbers to defend the Democratic Party, as if it was facing death row and they were its last chance at a fair trial. And the junkies down that information like a life raft in a hale storm, as if there is some supervenient set of facts that all voters are compelled to respond to, as opposed to these factoids serving as competing set of numbers which fly around like betting lines on DraftKings. (My favorite version of this tendency was during Trump Era I, when on a nightly basis, Rachel Maddow would uncover some evidence of Trump's corruption or misgivings and triumphantly shout, "We got him!", as if Trump was going to instantly leave office simply because Rachel Maddow herself had discovered that the president had once done something wrong.)
As Lee Atwater said, "in politics, the truth is what the voters believe", and the impression the Biden administration gave, in part caused by his senility, was not just that they were okay with all the chaos and decay they were engendering, but that they were powerless to do anything about it. That higher crime rates and unfettered illegal immigration and runaway inflation were just a naturally occurring part of the declining empire we live in, and trying to stop them was like trying to stop the sun from shining. People joke that the left-wing response to cancel culture is, "It's not happening and it's good that it is"; well their response to government incompetence seems to be "it's not happening and well, it is but we can't even do anything about it so shut up". And to this, Trump says no. He has a vision--or at least a plan; or maybe concepts of a plan--to restore America to its 1990s apogee of a soaring economy, tasteful nudity, moderate tolerance for racism, open and free usage of the phrase "Merry Christmas", crime declines, fewer mixed-race couples in ads for paper towels, and violent and masculine movies. Some of his ideas are illiberal, almost all of them are illegal, and perhaps one or two of them will come to pass. But the Democrats have little left to fight back with. Once the party of making the world a better place--which meant a bigger and better government--it has transformed into the party of the right side of history, which, as far as anyone can tell means a barrage of name-calling and exclusion if you disagree with their preferences, even if they have lead to the dysfunctional results so many Americans are currently unhappy with. The Democrats have transformed from a party of Leslie Knopes to a party of Regina Georges, and the Republicans have remained the party of Al Bundy, feckless, reactionary, and retrograde, but with a core that at least remains impervious to fashion. At least he'll let you sit with us.
It is not clear Biden is suffering from dementia. He is almost 80 and wasn't all that sane to begin with. Here in Quebec after 1600 years, Roman Catholicism and all Volcano Worship is considered a mental health problem and the Holy Father is persona non grata until he issues a formal apology for 1600 years of barbarism and human and cultural genocide. It wasn't Moslems the Crusaders slaughtered on their way to Jerusalem. Jewish villages existed along the Rhine from before ZERO A.D.
Marc Andreessen RTing this article and revealing himself as House of Straussian is big news!
I just listened to him on the Free Press
Yeah, I like Klosterman a lot, but that section of the podcast seemed strange to me. National voter registration data supported a Trump win. Early voting data, as Ethan has noted, did too. The betting markets had Trump at around 60-65% to win for basically the whole month leading up to election day. Two-thirds of the country thought things were on the wrong track. Democratic senators in swing states were running ads where they openly and positively linked themselves to Trump. And so on and so on.
None of that meant a Trump victory was 100% certain, of course, but if you were as surprised by the result as Chuck supposedly was, you're just getting your information from the wrong places. It reminds me of how the only people surprised by Biden's terrible debate were those in deep left circles. Everybody else had been saying he was that far gone for a while.
So I would go a step further to say the media intentionally framed (lied) this election as a toss-up for normative social influence. It was keep non-political junkies like Chuck, but pay attention to the news, in the dark of the social proofing that was happening around Trump. If Chuck knew Trump was more popular than the media wanted you to believe, especially among men of any ethnicity, would they feel more comfortable voting for him? I would say, yes.
I agree they intentionally lied, but not to keep normies interested. I think they thought if they kept lying and lying, that maybe their lies would become true.
What is striking about this election is the unanimity of the mainstream media in deriding Trump. In almost all my usual haunts, NYT, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Washington Post, CNN, CBS News there were whole sections of stories devoted to the dangers of a second Trump presidency with multiple examples of how uniquely horrible he would be for the country.
If one was to consume all of that, as many of us have, one would wonder why a single citizen would vote for this horrible, horrible convicted felon.
From such a position perhaps it was hard to see the election tilt any way but towards justice (ie: Harris) and therefore the fact that Trump swept the swing states and won the popular vote at all, is a shocker even if it was by a thin margin.
The one giant problem with their ‘dangers of a trump second term’ argument is that his first term was by all objective standards, fine, and that argument wouldn’t be taken seriously by those who don’t live in those media bubbles (ie regular people pissed off with the inflation and being told that it’s worse elsewhere so they’re doing well?)
Then again if you live in that media bubble and when a 12 pack of eggs is $2 more (ie a rounding error) you probably won’t notice how the average person is feeling it, and likely will have your head too far up your own ass to notice.
Agreed to all of that!
Every election is a choice election and I believe the American people make the following choices:
1) Will they protect me and my own (family usually) from foreign and domestic danger?
2) Will they put forward policies that benefit me financially?
3) Do I trust them not to lie to me?
4) Could I go out and have a good time at an Applebees with them?
Every presidential winner hits all four - call them the quadrants to the White House - every time. Even the teetotalers (W, Biden, Trump) could have a good time at Applebees.
There's two ways media outlets can serve their audiences:
1. Telling them the truth
2. Telling them what they want to hear
Ideally, outlets can do both, when the truth aligns with what they want to hear.
As before, I think Nate Silver's journey is instructive here.
I am not qualified to validate his methods, but my impression is that he has fairly consistently applied his model to the polling data. In 2012, this told those on the left what they wanted to here -- that Obama was overwhelmingly likely to win the election, and this turned out to be true.
Today, he is a reviled figure for those audiences. Why? They would say because he was "wrong" in 2016, but he gave Trump a 30% chance of winning. Who is more reviled now? Silver, who said this outcome was the most likely (albeit generally thinking it was a toss-up), or the commentators who jumped on the Iowa poll and predicted a cakewalk?
I think the answer is still Silver. Which points to why most people "engage" in politics. It's not be be informed, it's to be comforted.
Some self-aware people like Klosterman may consider their information diet based on these mistakes, but most people won't.
Your point about Klosterman's social circle possibly being (almost exclusively) "affluent & liberal" points to some very compelling reasons how and why Harris lost the Presidency. But, also, culture and demographics plays a big role. Speak to the Jewish populations of NY/NJ and Florida, there was a very sharp split on how Jews felt about the Democratic Party and their support/lack of support for Israel.
But, then go into very liberal corners of NYC, and there were a lot of people protesting and standing with Palestine.
Michigan is the case-study for how the conflict in Gaza swayed the electorate in that State.
And as for legacy media, the NYT still has over 10 million digital subscribers. And the WSJ has over 3 million.
Granted Joe Rogan still outpaces them with over 14 million followers on spotify and over 16 million subscribers on YouTube (I'd image there is quite a bit of overlap in the Rogan viewership).
Klosterman is from North Dakota. He might have some conservative friends.
It all Depends™️ what you read. I am having subscription problems living close to Vermont on the Globe but living in a French speaking nation inside Canada means my internet is in the middle of Old France while I live in Nouvelle France next to Vermont (Green Mountains) and next to the Sentier Internationale Appalache (Appalachian Trail). All I can say is I will renew my subscription and I can afford to subscribe to people who like to write their truths whether or not I agree.
John Ralston Saul wrote the Collapse of Globalism and the Re-Invention of the World 30 years ago while I lived in a Southside ghetto in Chicago. Time Magazine called him a prophet and he disappeared in all America's media mainstream or not. He is still writing andI trusted him on Covid and I am still among the living as is my Juliette.
Woodlawn is not in Hyde Park and neither is the Obama shrine but Woodlawn is cheap and Hyde Park is the Chicago School of medieval economics. I had to cross campus to get to the Co-Op and my wife drove to work in a Chicago suburb. She did a backwards commute from inner city Chicago to a residential suburb that was once a prosperous Village when Gary Indiana was the Music Man not the Jackson Five.
Kamala Harris grew up in my neighbourhood where we sang God Save the Queen and studied English Protestant history. We know Thomas More was responsible for the KJV which led to Cromwell's genocides of Roman Catholics in Scotland and Ireland. We learned what the English extreme conservative linguistic philosopher and ethno-centric racist Samuel Johnson meant by the words Thomas Jefferson called an abomination in 1805 after Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin made slavery no longer an economic imperative. We learned America was a democracy in 1689 when William Prince of Orange and Mary Queen of Scotland and Ireland surrendered all power for their perpetual pension. The Stock exchange opened in 1699 and parliament owned all the shares of the East India Company.
In Montreal our history of the Boston Tea Party is the story of Bonhomme Richard who spoke French and went on to lead the occupation and withdrawal of Quebec by the USA in 1775-1776.
The tea in Boston Harbour was not subject to tariffs because Parliament owned The East India Company had two warehouses filled with tea and they needed to liquidate the effing tea to pay the effing Hessians and Scottish Presbyterians who ran the effing colonies and collected the taxes and paid the mercenaries from Hess and Prussia. The East India Company owned Boston Harbour, the ships flew the flag of the East India Company and the tea was not subject to the tariffs that the independent merchants needed to pay. The merchants dressed like Aborigines and spoke a Latin language called French and Bonhomme lived in the communes of Paris and grew up in Boston's Commons where he never went to school and started working full time at 10. Benjamin Franklin was a scoundrel and "The Patriot" according to Boswell who wrote The Life of Johnson. I know Original Intent and the Original intent was making only Anglicans and non-conforming Protestants full American citizens as only England was virtuous, and the world was filled with Hobbe's purveyors of evil.
Let's talk about the media. Paul Revere photoshopped the Boston Massacre just like FOX in 2016 and 2020. Where the media serves only business there can be no democracy and I can't decide America's fure. First America must decide whether it wants Rome or it wants liberal democracy and America is 50/50 and Quebec is 85/15 LIBERAL DEMOCRACY and our conservative government passed Bill 21 saying prayer belongs in the closet so we can all enjoy the sunshine.
What
Adam, please forgive me but what?
What? Is that a query or a indication of not being cognizant of what the discussion is about. I am not a mind reader. What? Tells me nothing. In Kabbalah Adam Kadmon is primordial man. I live in Quebec Canada and religion is for closets. Is there a Question that you want answered or you really just want some attention like President elect Peter Pan of America's Never Never Land and you don't need to know anything that you don't already know?
What did John Ralston Saul say about Covid?
Found an interesting interview from April 2020, more concerning economics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeYVdUFEzdg
1:17 English subtitles
The one thing looking back that I still find amazing, why the fuck did anyone think Tim Walz was a good idea?
He’s basically what the “affluent and liberal” people think a “manly man” is, when the reality is most men think he’s a tool and probably did a lot more damage than they realise, especially with the whole “Vance is weird” when you are rolling out that guy who’s basically a living breathing parody who’s a serial bullshitter (who a lot on the left bent over backwards to apologise for yet when trump lies it was the worst thing ever and proof he is unfit for office).
Rogan’s point on how Walz was the reason he got involved should literally be a wake up call to those people, but I highly doubt many of them will learn that they need to learn to speak to normal people like normal people, not like idiots because they don’t agree with them on every little thing and don’t prioritise the Middle East and other issues that have no impact on their lives over things like crime and food prices.
Thank you for being able to produce a well-reasoned post even though YOUR 49ers are in shambles.
Thought it was an interesting analogy between how Klosterman is able to not put a current filter on the past (which so many people are either unable or unwilling to do) and the NYT etc which are unable to put a current filter on the current.
Life's all about perspective. I've decided to enjoy how the season could end on Thursday.
Really good blog post!