I don’t think there can be any doubt about my position on, or what I think in general about the insanity of the last two years. The reason we still have to talk about it is the many conversations I had on the subject, all too often with the same disappointing outcome of no common ground. I tried to challenge the beliefs of my opponents by asking them to provide me with some falsifiability criteria so that we can bring the conversation beyond the perpetual restating of our positions. Continue reading →
Category Archives: Political discourse
Hey Bros, can you spare a trillion?
The New York Times asked some silly and some supposedly serious questions from 21 democrat presidential candidates. The question that got me worked up was the last one:
- Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?
…and here is why: Continue reading →
A new contract
The problems I described in my previous post are just the latest manifestations of Western civilization’s political malaise.
The October issue of the Atlantic Monthly was dedicated to the question “Is democracy dying?”
The articles in it are fascinating testaments of the confusion surrounding that malaise. Continue reading →
Tying the threads together
I had my Sunday morning coffee with two videos. The first one was the latest from Black Pigeon Speaks about the vote in South Africa on a constitutional amendment that would allow the government to seize land from white people without compensation.
The second was a new Vertigo Politix video titled “The Alt-Right Reformation Against Liberal Theocracy”. It is outspoken, disturbing white supremacist propaganda. The worst I have seen so far on this channel. (And just to avoid misunderstandings, I plucked the above picture from the Vertigo Politix video. It is not a representation of my beliefs but an illustration of what’s to come: neo-fascist iconography and memes) Continue reading →
Uneasy Politix
I just came across this post on YouTube: Chicago: Demographics, Deficits, and White Flight. I encourage you to watch it. The issue is serious. The facts are uncontested. Illinois is de facto bankrupt. The only question is how long will it take to become officially so. At this point, after Moody’s re-evaluation of its credit rating, it (the rating) is supposed to hold for a while:
Respectable Marxism
My attention was called to an article printed in the Toronto Star:
“I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous” It was written by (an apparently reformed) friend of his, Bernard Schiff. But this post is not about Jordan Peterson or Schiff’s article about him. It is about assumptions and perceptions. Continue reading →
Political Chassé
Chasing the elusive notion of political correctness
The word chassé means two things. It is the past participle of the French verb ‘to chase’ and it is a noun describing a ballet step, in which one leg is sort of ‘chasing’ the other.
Watching the last Munk debate gave me a visceral demonstration of the two meanings. The CON side hopelessly chasing the pro side which was consistently chasseing away from the real subject. The subject, which was supposed to be political correctness. The resolution of the debate was:
“Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress…” Continue reading →
An autopsy of the dialog – part two
In my last post I vented my frustration with the sorry state of the left-right dialog.
I described the problem, but we are still left with a set of questions:
What is the basis of the differences? What makes them so predictable? What stands in the way of productive communication? Continue reading →
HDS – Hypothetical Debate Syndrome
As I was gearing up to comment on a libertarian debate about the police, I realized that the post that started it is a perfect example of what we could call a “Hypothetical Debate Syndrome” a particularly vicious libertarian affliction.