50 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
  2. Feb 2024
    1. Zum Hintergrund des Rückzugs großer Investoren der Wall Street aus dem Netzwerk Climate Action 100+. Der Rückzug ist vor allem das Ergebnis zunehmenden Drucks aus der Republikanischen Partei. Er hängt auch damit zusammen, dass Climate Action 100+ in einer Phase 2 von seinen MItgliedern nicht nur Informationen über die Klimafolgen von Investitionen verlangte, sondern Aktionen gegen fossile Emissionen. Dem Journalisten David Gelles zufolge werden die Wall Street-Firmen ihre bisherige, auf Redukton von Emissionen ausgerichtete Linie aber nicht völlig aufgeben. Weitgehend ist und bleibt diese Firmenpolitik aber kosmetisch. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/climate/wall-street-environmental-pledge-retreat.html

    1. Fachleute rechnen damit, dass ein Sieg Trumps bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen zu einem Rollback bei den Projekten für saubere Energie führen würde, die die Biden-Administration eingeleitet hat. Der Inflation Reduction Act hat bereits zu Investitionen von etwa 200 Milliarden Dollar in solche Projekte geführt. Wie weit der Rollback gelingen würde, ist unklar, zumal besonders republikanisch dominierte Regionen von den Projekten der aktuellen Administration profitieren. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/us/politics/inflation-reduction-act-republican-attacks.html

    1. Sollte Trump zum zweiten Mal Präsident der USA werden, wird er wesentlich systematischer und ideologischer gegen alle Regelungen vorgehen, die die Treibhausgasemissionen einschränken. Der Guardian beschreibt die wahrscheinlichsten Maßnahmen aufgrund von Gesprächen mit Republikaner:innen. Schon jetzt sind die USA der größte Öl- und gasproduzent der Welt. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/06/trump-climate-change-fossil-fuels-second-term

  3. Jan 2024
  4. Nov 2023
    1. The historian David Hackett Fischer identifies presentism as a fallacy also known as the "fallacy of nunc pro tunc". He has written that the "classic example" of presentism was the so-called "Whig history", in which certain 18th- and 19th-century British historians wrote history in a way that used the past to validate their own political beliefs. This interpretation was presentist because it did not depict the past in objective historical context but instead viewed history only through the lens of contemporary Whig beliefs. In this kind of approach, which emphasizes the relevance of history to the present, things that do not seem relevant receive little attention, which results in a misleading portrayal of the past. "Whig history" or "whiggishness" are often used as synonyms for presentism particularly when the historical depiction in question is teleological or triumphalist.[2]

      This sort of Whig History example seems to be cropping up again in the early 21st century as Republicans are basing large pieces of their beliefs/identity/doctrine on portions of The Federalist Papers which were marginally read at the time they were written, but because those historical documents appear to make their current positions look "right" today, they're touting them over the more influential Federalist tracts at the time of the founding of America.

      Link this to example of this (which I can't seem to find right now.)

  5. Oct 2023
    1. I assumed, unreflectively, that he had made up the whole thing, simply because for a long time that’s what I would have done.

      Is it possible that many on the far right don't believe science or facts about how people live because they've got a fabulist streak in themselves? They're so used to lying about basic facts about themselves that their first thought is that "everyone else is doing it".

      Now compound this with their utter lack of context as well as their privilege and you've got a terrific cocktail for bad decisions.

    1. In 2022, PRRI asked Americans their views on the utility of violence as a political tactic. Three in 10 Republicans said they agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That was about three times the percentage of Democrats agreeing with the same sentiment.
    2. There was former Ohio congressman Anthony Gonzalez (R) — a former professional football player — who deemed the hostility he faced after opposing Trump too much of a risk for his family. Former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney (R) described similar fears from other legislators, as did former Michigan representative Peter Meijer (R). That these three are all former legislators is not a coincidence: They resigned or were beaten in primaries largely because they saw how the party had turned against them. See also: Romney, Mitt.

      The threat of physical violence is silencing those in power even on the right. We're already at war except for the bullets.

    1. He used the chance to declare “cultural war” for the “soul of America,” against an enemy of radicals “cross-dressing” as moderate Democrats, who were preaching “abortion on demand” and “radical feminism” while working-class Americans watched their jobs disappear and a “mob”—the Rodney King riots—looted and burned Los Angeles. The liberal columnist Molly Ivins memorably wrote that the speech “probably sounded better in the original German,” but its themes would form the founding document of today’s Republican Party. Indeed, when I mentioned the speech to a former Trump Administration official, he immediately recited several lines by heart.

      Pat Buchanan ran for the Republican nomination in 1992 and in a prime-time speech at the Republican convention that summer he declared a "cultural war" for the "soul of America".

  6. Jun 2023
  7. May 2023
    1. An analysis of the modern capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent

      What is the current separation of political and civil society in America in 2023? Do the differences in these two (particularly with respect to Antonio Gramsci's framing) still have distinguishing features?

    2. Is there potentially a worry amongst Republicans that by losing the "culture wars" that they'll somehow lose control of society and the capitalist order which funds their party and helps to keep them in control?

      Link to Gramsci's idea about cultural hegemony: https://hypothes.is/a/pRnPLPTtEe2_pyt2-Z7pwg

  8. Apr 2023
    1. A political system, he said, needs people who are fair,open-minded, and think for themselves; it doesn’t want people who aresubservient to authority.

      Is there a better direct quote from Locke for this indirect one?


      Oddly, large portions of the religious right and Republican right are highly subservient to authority while simultaneously espousing the idea of "freedom".

      Apparently the base definition of "freedom" on the right has shifted in large portions of American culture.

  9. Jan 2023
  10. Oct 2022
  11. Sep 2022
    1. One reason for this is that poverty is not something that people wish to ac-knowledge or draw attention to. Rather, it is something that individuals andfamilies would like to go away. As a result, many Americans attempt to concealtheir economic difficulties as much as possible.22 This often involves keeping upappearances and trying to maintain a “normal” lifestyle. Such poverty downthe block may at first appear invisible. Nevertheless, the reach of poverty iswidespread, touching nearly all communities across America.

      Middle Americans, and particularly those in suburbia and rural parts of America that account for the majority of poverty in the country, tend to make their poverty invisible because of the toxic effects of extreme capitalism and keeping up appearances.

      Has this effect risen with the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and the idea of "living one's best life"? How about the social effects of television with shows like "Keeping up with the Kardashians" which encourage conspicuous consumption?


      More interesting is the fact that most of these suburban and rural poverty stricken portions of the country are in predominantly Republican held strongholds.

      Is there a feedback mechanism that is not only hollowing these areas out, but keeping them in poverty?

    1. McConnell said it’s up to the Republican candidates in various Senate battleground races to explain how they view the hot-button issue.   (function () { try { var event = new CustomEvent( "nsDfpSlotRendered", { detail: { id: 'acm-ad-tag-mr2_ab-mr2_ab' } } ); window.dispatchEvent(event); } catch (err) {} })(); “I think every Republican senator running this year in these contested races has an answer as to how they feel about the issue and it may be different in different states. So I leave it up to our candidates who are quite capable of handling this issue to determine for them what their response is,” he said.

      Context: Lindsey Graham had just proposed a bill for a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

      McConnell's position seems to be one that choice about abolition is an option, but one which is reserved for white men of power over others. This is painful because that choice is being left to people without any of the information and nuance about specific circumstances versus the pregnant women themselves potentially in consultation with their doctors who have broad specific training and experience in the topics and issues at hand. Why are these leaders attempting to make decisions based on possibilities rather than realities, particularly when they've not properly studied or are generally aware of any of the realities?

      If this is McConnell's true position, then why not punt the decision and choices down to the people directly impacted? And isn't this a long running tenet of the Republican Party to allow greater individual freedoms? Isn't their broad philosophy: individual > state government > national government? (At least with respect to internal, domestic matters; in international matters the opposite relationships seem to dominate.)

      tl;dr:<br /> Mitch McConnell believes in choice, just not in your choice.

      Here's the actual audio from a similar NPR story:<br /> https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2022/09/20220914_me_gop_sen_lindsey_graham_introduces_15-week_abortion_ban_in_the_senate.mp3#t=206


      McConnell is also practicing the Republican party game of "do as I say and not as I do" on Graham directly. He's practicing this sort of hypocrisy because as leadership, he's desperately worried that this move will decimate the Republican Party in the midterm elections.

      There's also another reading of McConnell's statement. Viewed as a statement from leadership, there's a form of omerta or silent threat being communicated here to the general Republican Party membership: you better fall in line on the party line here because otherwise we run the risk of losing power. He's saying he's leaving it up to them individually, but in reality, as the owner of the purse strings, he's not.


      Thesis:<br /> The broadest distinction between American political parties right now seems to be that the Republican Party wants to practice fascistic forms of "power over" while the Democratic Party wants to practice more democratic forms of "power with".

  12. Jul 2022
    1. it was quite possible that Trump would be ahead on election night because his voters were more likely to vote in person, and more Democratic-heavy mail ballots are often counted later — something dubbed the “red mirage.”

      The "red mirage" is a phenomenon in which it appears that the Republican party candidate will win an election based on early returns on election day because Republicans are statistically more likely to vote in person on election day and Democrats are more likely to have voted by absentee ballot or via mail. Many states don't begin counting mail in ballots until late on election day or after and the manual process takes more time than in person balloting.

  13. May 2022
    1. the underprivileged are priced out of the dental-treatment system yet perversely held responsible for their dental condition.

      How does this happen?

      Is it the idea of "personal responsibility" and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" philosophy combined with lack of any actual support and/or education?

      There has to be a better phrase or word to define the perverse sort of philosophy espoused by many in the Republican party about this sort of "personal responsibility".

      It feels somewhat akin to the idea of privatize profits and socialize the losses. The social loss is definitely one that is pushed off onto the individual, but who's profiting? Is it really so expensive to fix this problem? Isn't the loss to society and public health akin to the Million Dollar Murray problem?

      Wouldn't each individual's responsibility be better tied to the collective good as well as their own outcomes? How can the two be bound together to improve outcomes for everyone all around?

  14. Apr 2022
    1. the Institute of Medicine had released a landmark report on patientsafety, To Err Is Human. The report found that as many as 98,000 Americanswere dying each year as a result of preventable medical errors occurring inhospitals—more people than succumbed to car accidents, workplace injuries, orbreast cancer. And some significant portion of these deaths involved mistakes inthe dispensing of drugs.

      Some might see the 98,000 preventable medical error deaths reported by the Institute of Medicine in To Err is Human (1999) now and laugh at the farcical number of deaths due to coronavirus since 2020, a large proportion of which could have been prevented due to better communication and coordination?

      What if a more pragmatic anthropological viewpoint could be given to the current fractured state of American politics? If anthropologists are taught not to make value judgements on the way other cultures have come to live their lives, but simply to appreciate and report on them accurately, then perhaps we should leave those on the far right who believe in top down, patriarchal rule to their devices?

      What if we nudged (forced) them all to actually live by their own rules by enforcing them to the nth degree? Republican politicians can only get away with badmouthing abortion or homophobic viewpoints because their feet are not held to the fire when those issues impinge upon their own families or even themselves. They have the wealth and the power to flout the laws and not face the direct consequences personally. Would their tunes change if forced by their own top down patriarchal perspectives applying to them?

    1. As a general rule, if your call is to dismantle institutions without a plan for what is supposed to take their place, you can safely assume the default setting is “the market will take care of it.”
  15. Jan 2022
    1. It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

      The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.


      Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.


      Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

    1. As Wilson quips, “an unregulated organism is a dead organism.”

      We definitely need aphorisms like this embedded into our political and economic spheres.

    2. And contrary to that science-denying slogan of Margaret Thatcher’s, that “there is no such thing as society,” no human has ever survived or thrived without a tribe or society.

      Is this a general feature of the conservative far right of constantly denying our humanity and care for each other?

  16. Nov 2021
    1. After that, she must wear a scarlet A—for adulterer—pinned to her dress for the rest of her life. On the outskirts of Boston, she lives in exile. No one will socialize with her—not even those who have quietly committed similar sins, among them the father of her child, the saintly village preacher.

      Given the prevalence of people towards making mistakes and practicing extreme hypocrisy, we really ought to move toward restorative justice. Especially in the smaller non-capital cases.

  17. Sep 2021
    1. Repubs are the American Taliban.

      Perhaps not so funny, but I said this same thing yesterday in regard to the Texas law relating to abortion.

      They just want physical power and control over everyone.

  18. Jul 2021
    1. Among white people, 38 percent of college graduates voted for Trump, compared with 64 percent without college degrees. This margin—the great gap between Smart America and Real America—was the decisive one. It made 2016 different from previous elections, and the trend only intensified in 2020.

      Trumps margin.

      How can this gap be closed in the future?

    2. The narrative of Free America shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for Smart America. Free trade, deregulation, economic concentration, and balanced budgets became the policy of the Democratic Party.

      The deregulation part has hurt us immensely. Cross reference this with the thesis found in American Amnesia by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.

      Which parts of the Democratic party went along with this? Evidence? More of the deregulation parts seemed to be identified with the Republican party.

    3. Rather than finding new policies to rebuild declining communities, Republicans mobilized anger and despair while offering up scapegoats.
  19. Jun 2021
    1. We live in a moment where censorship and free speech are hot button topics. So it’s all the more striking that these anti-CRT bills, with clear intent to limit a discussion of the basic facts of American history and society, are being made into law all over America with minimum protest from the people who yelp the loudest about cancel culture. 

      This is another solid example of the hypocrisy of large portions of the Republican party. Do as we say, not as we do. How far can these laws drift from our overarching principles before there is a schism?

      How does this fit into the [[beyond the pale]] idea going from small communities to a much larger internet-connected society?

    1. “‘Evangelical’ used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with ‘hypocrite,’” Timothy Keller, one of the most influential evangelicals in the world, wrote in The New Yorker in 2017.

      Interesting.

      I've found myself looking at statements from Republicans over the past several years and tagging them as "hypocrisy".

      I wonder what the actual overlap of the two groups is?

    2. “In American pop-culture parlance, ‘evangelical’ now basically means whites who consider themselves religious and who vote Republican,” according to the Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd.

      I feel like this is the general case...

  20. Feb 2021
    1. Democrats should try campaigning on the truth: The Republican Party is controlled by intelligent, college-educated, and affluent elites who concoct dangerous nonsense to paper over a bigoted, plutocratic agenda and to justify attacks on the democratic process.
    1. He is seriously concerned – as many of us are – about the destructive repercussions of identity politics, the censorship of dissenting opinion, and the rewriting of American history.

      A lot of inflammatory dog whistle rhetoric here (not to mention the poor use of en dashes posing as em dashes).

      He calls out destructive repercussions of identity politics, but fails to notice that everyone wants to feel safe in their identity, not just cis-gendered white male Republicans.

      He calls out censorship of dissenting opinion while writing on his own website. When did the government censor his opinions or any other opinions? Republicans are so pro-corporation and pro-enterprise, but then get upset when those same great companies enforce basic social norms?

      And then, in the same breath: "rewriting American history?!" Perhaps we just taking a more nuanced perspective of the actual truths? Maybe we're hearing the stories and perspectives of those who's dissenting opinions have been not only been censored out of the media, but never allowed in for almost 250 years?

    2. “Of course, we want to cut taxes. Who would ever want to pay more taxes? [It] seemed crazy to want to pay more taxes. You know, of course, you want to have a safe and secure community. Who wouldn’t want that?” Miller said. “You know, of course, we want to have a strong military. I just remember reading it and thinking this just makes a lot of sense.” 

      Now tell us how you do both of these things well? What do you think funds a safe and secure community and a strong military?

  21. Nov 2020
    1. political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.
    2. And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

      An interesting example with some inflamatory rhetoric, but coupled with his resignation which is all he has left...

    1. Here’s the grim kicker: The conditions that made Trump and this Republican Party possible are set to worsen. Republicans retained control of enough statehouses to drive the next redistricting effort, too, and their 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court will unleash their map-drawers more fully. The elections analyst G. Elliott Morris estimates that the gap between the popular vote margin and the tipping point-state in the Electoral College will be 4-5 percentage points, and that the GOP’s control of the redistricting process could push it to 6-7 points next time.
  22. Oct 2020
    1. That they are defending a person who is fundamentally malicious, even if he makes judicial appointments of which they approve, is too painful for them to admit.

      But surely in the multi-millions of Republicans, they could find someone who could also appoint those judges, but not have the myriad moral failings that Trump does. For surely if they can't, then they're doomed to failure and misery sooner or later.

  23. Aug 2020
  24. Jan 2018
    1. Republican Party

      Meliora students, how and why did the Republican Party get founded? What were the initial "planks" in its platform? Summarize and cite your source(s).