Our Destiny Is in the Stars
The flip side of my previous post: If humanity is to become a truly spacefaring species, we will have to leave fascism behind. Our destiny is in the stars.
Gil
Can Fascists Reach the Stars?
Ok let’s talk about aliens. They’ve apparently been visiting? According to numerous high level testimonies? So – should we be afraid of our visitors from another world? Do they come in peace or is it more likely they’ve come to do us harm? In his famous trilogy, Cixin Liu presents a pessimistic view, a vision … Read more
The Overton Window
WaPo will now only publish opinion pieces “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” I hope that means op-eds promoting robust constitutional democracies, free global trade and labor movement, and personal autonomy. And not neoreactionary “democracy is incompatible with freedom” party propaganda. Never forget the role the media plays in … Read more
Natural Allies
Who are your natural allies? My natural allies are the people who share both my values and my struggle, who face the same system of oppression and make the same choices affirming a shared vision of the true and the good. There are other kinds of allies. Accidental allies, opportunistic allies, and allies of times … Read more
Shameful Company
To Joe’s summary below, I will only add that this is shameful company in which to find ourselves, on an issue that should be a no-brainer. Our national security on the Syrian front (Russia could invade our airspace at any time and bomb Jerusalem if they wanted) can not be tied to appeasing the imperialism … Read more
Our World Is on Fire
We plod and stumble through this horror of a deal after over a year and a half of war. The ayatollahs’ Islamo-fascist lapdogs parade the corpses of captured children, exchanged for living murderers and would-be murderers hailed as heros on resistance tv. Our economy suffocates as we collectively gasp for air. Still no elections. Meanwhile … Read more
Russia Is Fighting NATO
“Did you hear the news, Russia is fighting NATO.” “Are you serious?” “Yes, yes! Russia is fighting NATO.” “So how’s it going?” “Well, 70,000 Russian soldiers are dead. The missile stockpile has almost been depleted. Ships are sunk. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up.” “And what about NATO?” “NATO hasn’t even arrived yet.” … Read more
On the Bibas Family
Since I first heard of the Bibas family’s capture, I thought the chances were remote that Shiri and the kids would survive captivity. It seemed unlikely to me that their captors would take the trouble to care for the children, and it seemed likely to me that their mother would either spend her last breath … Read more
Epistemic Warfare
Why have they been hiding where millions of US tax dollars go?! If you’ve heard someone ask this question (perhaps spurred on by a social media post or thirty by prominent members of the ruling party) in spite of the fact that all allocations and payments are publicly tracked in broad daylight, down to the … Read more
The Contradictions of Contemporary Politics
Democracies don’t fail overnight, the descent into oligarchy and dictatorship is preceded and sustained by a whole lot of rhetorical BullSht. The bullsht has a purpose: to generate cognitive dissonance in party loyalists (“epistemic destabilization”) and to resolve that dissonance in the direction of enhanced loyalty and submission to the party’s leader. Truth doesn’t matter, … Read more