We receive a few proposed comments on SST from leftists who want me to allow them to use SST as a platform for rants against Trump that are based on nothing but their TDS religious beliefs. These will not be posted. Come up with proofs rather than hysterical accusations and I might be interested. pl
Thank you for this position.
Calling a spade a spade: “Russia-gate is becoming FBI-gate”
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01/15/fbi-hand-behind-russia-gate%E2%80%A8/
“In the Watergate era, liberals warned about U.S. intelligence agencies manipulating U.S. politics, but now Trump-hatred has blinded many of them to this danger becoming real, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48572.htm
They mad.
When they scream against the sky as a form of Trump protest is has entered the realm of religion. Looking at it from that angle is interesting, hearing them otherwise is tedious.
Cognitive dissonance induced madness. Who said witch burnings were a thing of the past?
All
TDS = Trump Derangement Syndrome pl
These people are down right insane and have no concept of reasoning. In general, what came to be known as “liberalism”, in its modern connotation, is a form of mental illness.
Col. Lang,
I am curious what is the cause of TDS.
If one excludes his speech, his mannerisms and his style, which, IMO, are superficial stuff, unless of course that is the trigger, what he’s actually done can’t be any more controversial than what a run of the mill GOP president does policy wise.
Reading the text messages between FBI’s Peter Strzok & Lisa Page. Watching Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow and all the rest in the corporate media. Reporters like David Brooks, Maggie Haberman, Luke Harding going off the deep end. The editorial writers at the WaPo and the NY Times. Then of course all the neocon think-tankers like Billy Kristol. And all those high officials in the previous Obama administration – Sally Yates, Clapper, Brennan, Evelyn Farkas and on and on in a desperate soft coup attempt.
They all seem completely UNHINGED! What’s up with that?
I recall ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) but that seemed to be limited to the fringes of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy. Not widespread in the MSM except maybe on Fox!
blue peacock
IMO it is because he represents for the Rousseau crowd a focus for the counter-revolutionary forces present among the Deplorables. Those “reactionaries” still have the power to reverse “progress” to a Brave New World filled with Animal Farm values, “Two legs bad, Four legs good!” etc. Many of those swept along are merely useful idiots, but useful nonetheless. pl
First, Trump; never sat at the cool kids table – the permanent swamp of think tanks, academics, bureaucracy, media, lobbyists.
Second, he got elected by calling out the cool kids for their gross incompetence, corruption and self-enriching, self-aggrandizing schemes.
Third, he’s just not polished – like the cool kids; talks like the “guy in a bar.”
Dear Colonel,
Cognitive dissonance reigns among rank and file Dems – though not the leadership and I think much of the media, who are exceptionally cynical. How to explain voting for warrantless spying capabilities to the same administration they blast as the most dangerous and incompetent ever.
Perhaps we are moving from alternate facts and fake news to alternate reasoning where A does not equal A and that black is white. In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, this lead to death at the next zebra crossing.
ISL
Mob psychology has taken hold. What the foule wants is for the mob to march to the Bastille (WH). pl
TDS is most definitely not a grass roots movement. The Women’s Protest did not emerge organically, it was financed & planned well in advance. Snowflake turmoil on campuses are engineered by the likes of David Horowitz; BLM is not grass roots — I swear, somebody packs a van full of money & travels to Black churches each week, handing out $20s with the Talking Points du jour attached; they’re heard the next day-week on C Span. Resistance was/is not grass roots, nor is #MeToo; Oprah & pals decided at the very last minute to wear black on the red runner — riiigght. Not just the ChristoZionists but even Mainline Christian churches are targets for manipulation by allies of the same folks who engineered Pink Hats, BLM, #MeToo etc — a recent announcement of an AIPAC seminars for rabbis to take the message home to their congregants included a special task force for dealing with “Christian churches,” which simply follows on the comments Mitchell Bard (who manages Jewish Virtual Library & circulates a Zionist newsletter in DC suburbs) made to a gathering of “Children of Holocaust Survivors” in California in 2010 — https://www.c-span.org/video/?296741-1/the-arab-lobby&start=3359
All are Projects of the New Anarchic Bolshevik/Borg. The plotting is exquisitely rational: observe the pacing of each movement as it emerges in turn, then melds Venn-like into the others in an overlapping, supporting fashion: it’s a giant Hollywood production in however many acts are felt necessary to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance of US political and social culture.
(I predict that before year’s end — certainly before decade’s end– we will see a euthanasia/right to die movement to deal with seniors. Gentlemen, start your ice floes.)
Colonel,
Upholding the Constitution and acknowledging the election results are one thing. But, supporting Donald Trump is whole another thing.
Yes, he has done a lot;
Deep-sixed the TPP trade pack.
Signed the tax-cut bill.
Neil Gorsuch confirmation.
Roll-back of regulations.
The travel ban.
Declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
Withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
Roll-back of Cuba polices.
Repeal of net neutrality rules.
Ended the Caliphate.
The only clear win is tossing of the trade pack. All the rest have problems. They accelerate the destruction of the middle class and environmental degradation. Cement corporate rule. Alienate the rest of the world. And, continue the forever wars.
The 25th amendment counter coup and media attacks are one group of oligarchs attacking an upstart NYC ex-casino boss over who controls the looting.
Well Tyler will just threaten to kill us all (again) so why worry?
51% of Republicans still believe Obama was born in Kenya.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-birther-obama-poll-republicans-kenya-744195
I will think TDS is a big problem when we have 8 Russia- gate investigations to match the 8 Benghazi investigations we had. Until then, it is all just revenge and ordinary politics as practiced for the last 25 years. (Look at our recent history. We had sleazy special prosecutor Ken Starr. Dishonest Dan Rather going after Bush. Trump going after Obama with the birther stuff, then 4 years of Benghazi hearings.) Mostly just fake politics to try to embarrass Trump and make it more difficult for him to work, but then that is how things work. Would be nice if Trump supporters would stop whining, suck it up, and move on. Bunch of crybabies. Just as bad as the Obama supporters who said he couldn’t get anything done because Republicans were mean to him.
That said TDS is boring and non-productive.
Steve
I am confused… Is the Borg a communist conspiracy that wants an Animal Farm future for all if us? Is Hillary a socialist/communist and are all those big banks and corporations that backed her stupid… or are they Commies too!? I hate Hillary and the Dem establishment… but I am a leftist that admires the existing socialist Animal Farms in northern Europe.
I’ve been reading your blog for years and enjoy the diverse opinions and intelligence of many of your commenters. I worry that – like most of the vast wasteland of the American media and punditocracy – your blog may start to resemble most of our farmland… monoculture with depleated soil.
I preferred Trump to Hillary, but he’s been a disappointment. Subordination to Bibi and plutocratic interests. Couldn’t even get rid of the carried-interest tax provision he campaigned against. Maybe on the way to Bibi’s dream of US bombing Iran. With Bannon gone, no vision, no strategy, no populist trend. Looks like the “infrastructure plan” will involve large-scale privatization of roads, bridges, airports on favorable terms to corporations. Looting the commons. See Matt Taibbi’s book “Griftopia” for the MO.
I still think he’ll be run out of office soon unless he changes. “The system” rejects the constant manufactured drama. either for high-minded reasons like preserving national unity or because the crooks want to continue looting the country discreetly.
Whether there was collusion with Russia directly by Trump or not, Mueller will provide some reason from within Trump’s shady dealings to run him out of Washington. You know Ryan and McConnell are sick of him. Polling for the midterms may cause a sudden epiphany for marginal Republicans.
Pence is a perfect pious replacement. That banshee Nikki Haley selected as VP.
Korea could change everything of course.
With the clowns in power, and the clowns on the bench for both teams, make sure your children and grandchildren start learning Mandarin.
I have noted those afflicted with ODS/HDS & TDS are interchangable in invective, emotion & religiosity. Deep in ODS/HDS land, I discern no substantive disticnction between critical cases. Name-calling, foundational rationale in certainty of one’s ideals, red-hazed hate… same / same from my cheap seat. Loud, sincere insults and hackneyed phrases fail even to entertain.
Dear Colonel.
I think you nailed it. The only reasoning with a mob is with a 12 Gauge (or better an automatic rifle).
The cause ,in a word ,is Fear.They are afraid they will not be able to continue living in their comfortable world if their apple cart is tossed over.How many of the above mentioned people could make it as a farmer in 1880?or a farmer’s wife?
And once the mob frees the Bastille prisoners, you have a Marquis de Sade… (Fortunately, its a legend, Sade was transferred to Charenton (mental asylum) a couple of days before the 14th of July 1789).
Col,
The Democrats are not “Left” by any imagination. Their destructive campaign agaisnt Trump is not good for the country. However, perhaps you could consider also adding CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome) and USDS (US Derangement Syndrome) to the list of unwelcomed posts?
Colonel,
Like sheep stuck in a bramble patch the progressive elites – a poor name but as I think you remarked some time ago one has to describe them somehow – will continue to ram their heads further in. They are doubling down on the Continent. It seems that the response to public disquiet about the surge of immigrants into Europe is to send aeroplanes to Africa to fetch more. From all I read and hear they are doubling down in the US. The very name “Trump” now sends them into paroxysms of vengeful dismay.
Wonderful. The greatest threat to the West has been the long quiet slide into decay that we do not fight. We do not fight it because each small increment of that decay has been in itself barely noticeable. Let them double down. Let them become ever more frantic and extreme. Let the fake news become ever more obvious, and the false reasoning ever more infantile. They may win, that is true, but at least it can no longer be the case that we will not notice losing. At least we will know that we have a fight on our hands.
I always thought that tolerance of opposing views was supposed to be a sign of liberal behavior but it would seem that many so-called liberal blogs in America are quite happy to ban commentators or delete comments when they criticize liberal shibboleths such as how Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate for president of the United States ever. The same can also be said of more august websites such as The Guardian where pointing out that the paper used the Ahrar al-Sham new agency as a source for its reporting on the war in Syria will result in your comment being deleted.
Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” was chosen the “Unwort” of the year 2017 in Germany.
http://www.dw.com/en/alternative-facts-wins-2017-german-non-word-of-the-year/a-42150398
“The term is a concealing and misleading expression for the attempt to make false claims acceptable in the mainstream by presenting them as legitimate in public debate,” the jury stated in their reasoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts
https://ballotpedia.org/Kellyanne_Conway
LeaNder
Means what? pl
TonyL
From my POV the now dominant Warren/Bernie/snowflake wing of the Democratic Party is plenty Left. Understand that what I am banning is UNSUPPORTED claims about anyone. I was infamous in my spook career for asking “how do you know that?” pl
Thank you sir. This is one of the last bastions for reason and against TDS.
What do you feel, Pat, it might mean? Spontaneous response to ISL. It was simply a coincidence that I had just herd the term was selected, in its German translation no doubt. Alternative Fakten. … Wasn’t even aware in which context it surfaced. Surely didn’t see/watch the specific “Meet the Press” edition. Meaning: unaware of the larger setting.
I wasn’t very interested in the debate about the crowd size during the inauguration to start with. Being familiar with the clashing perceptions/perspectives from inside and outside the crowd. Vaguely looked at ways to deal with it in other contexts. But never were too interested in it.
Wasn’t my intention to slander Kellyanne Conway, if that was your impression. Random link.
Although I answered your question already, Pat.
Ok I cannot check to what extend Kellyanne was lured into a trap. Would be no big surprise. Via Wikipedia I cannot get to link fast on first sight. Seemingly (it feels) more then usually links seem to be disconnected there lately. Occasionally harder to mend. If there ever was one giving context before. I did not check. …
Our news give me the surface necessarily. I was a bit surprised why and how it was selected. First time ever I looked into the history of “Unwort des Jahres” or for that matter the person that originated it in 1991. I do not have the alternative choices offered either. … Never mind on who, individual or group, offered them.
Here is a YouTube video. Strictly the tone is pretty bad. Low. Meet the Press seems to have chosen to disconnect the video for people to check:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8z-TJH7hw
I would describe myself as a liberal, but there is definitely some truth to what you say and, besides, the photo of the “tolerant Liberal” is absolutely hilarious. I actually projected my coffee onto my computer screen when I saw it.
Score One for “The Colonel”!
LeaNder
Sadly, Trinity College here in DC has disowned Conway, an alumna. My wife was taught by the same nuns up in Boston. They are “Notre Dame de Namur.” They are, IMO, afflicted with TDS. I once told a Muslim at a dinner party that we Catholics are still sure we are right in matters of religion but are no longer so sure that they are wrong. IOW, with the same “facts” one can reach different conclusions without trying to deceive. pl
Blake
You are not “puzzled.” You are just another person trying to influence my editorial policy. Good luck! pl
You have great command of the understatement. I rarely comment but that is pure genius.
Mueller is the equivalent of Ken Starr and Benghazi. Although there were no special counsel for either Benghazi or Fast & Furious.
IMO, the hysteria that we see in the media and in the political establishment is unprecedented. Don’t recall anything like this in the past 65+ years of my adult life.
Thanks for the sober non-partisan comments. Clearly many of the “Committee” are unhinged partisans.
I hate thinking about the kinds of things you wrote about here but thanks anyway. it reminds me of a John Reed book I read last year. I couldn’t put it down and at times I wish I had never laid eyes on it.
does the world really work like that? I don’t know for sure but regardless I have to turn my back on some ideas and things periodically because if I don’t I tend to forget what’s important, especially people and their immense capacity and DESIRE to love each other. thanks Colonel Patrick for this site. I have learned a great deal here and I love the birds and space posts.
IOW, with the same “facts” one can reach different conclusions without trying to deceive.
Obviously. As I wrote, I never paid too much attention to the “Unwort des Jahres”. …
Makes sense to add Conway after Cruz was out. One didn’t need a crystal ball to prognosticate the campaign would circle around: The first female US president ever.
Bad decision in both cases. Disowning Conway, she seems smart, and choosing the term. I am sure it will be picked up eagerly.
Concerning the latter, as German I recognize the larger struggle to come to terms with Trump. Or to not simply equate him with his support for specific EU parties over here, for instance? Arbitrarily the more general onslaught on public media: I have to admit, I appreciate our media laws. They were created in the aftermath of WWII. I wouldn’t like to see it completely surrendered to purely financial interests. Ever more low brow entertainment? Vaguely watched trends. Humiliation as entertainment? Viewer ratings? Never mind to what extend public media may or not have failed in one of its central aspects the educational task over the years. Since more and more pressured to pay attention to ratings too? And yes, I still consider tolerance for other groups necessary. Understand?
I love Tyler and his helicopter rides. Very scenic.
LeaNder – It is a great strength of this site that the off the wall left is permitted to roam freely.
As a moderate centrist myself I do sometimes find that difficult. Why do they not disclose their premises, I fume. Do they even know their premises? Or is it all knee jerk conformism and what is called in the States, I believe, virtue signalling?
But then I think, you can’t grasp the ecology if some of the fauna are left unstudied. We can’t do without hearing from the off the wall left, or moderate liberals as they are sometimes called, if we are to understand the craziness of today’s politics. For there can be no time in history when the bulk of the educated classes have been so remote from, so contemptuous even, of common sense or even plain survival.
They still can’t quite grok what happened on November 8, 2016. Their precious Hillary was on track to inherit the throne, which was to be the crowning achievement of modern liberalism. Then they wake up and find out they had lost to the ‘orange monster’–a truly devastating blow from which they have yet to recover.
Under Obama, they could convince themselves that all was right with the world, that the end of history was nigh, and that the golden millennium was at hand. Trump’s victory shattered not only their world view, but even their very self-image. It was as though the end of history itself had suddenly ended.
Are you familiar with the Kuebler-Ross grieving process? The liberals are still stuck in the denial phase. They simply cannot accept their defeat.
Sorry Colonel, I think my last post was jumbled. Here is my comment to VV again.
Thanks VV. I agree with all your points. But I would add the Paris Climate Accord to your list. Because of this decision, no nation will believe the US can honor its obligation/treaty.
and what is called in the States, I believe, virtue signalling
‘Virtue signalling’ is a useful term. Have to admit that. But Tyler and me may not use it the same way. His seems to be purely a fighting term. Mine is not. Only a result of a mixture of observation of the world around me, self-observation and, admittedly, growing confusion.
I share concerns about our neo-right, that’s true. I dislike manipulation, I also think we long ago left the state of pureness in this context. Meaning Trump wasn’t the first to use the given tools, he simply re-organized them. He surely needed no court as Bush43
Anyway our neo-right: Smells like nationalist neo-liberalism to me, with vague reminisces of the late 19/early 20 century neoliberal national variant. But then??? The evil Germans exploiting the Brits and Greeks? …
We may well have another election in summer over here in Germany.
Yanis Varoufakis via DIEM25 no doubt might be helpful to bring US campaign politics over here. Into Die Linke and the rebelling part of the SPD? I think a saw a text on the German page says they will be readily organized in summer. Via top right you’ll get to the English version.
https://diem25.org/home-de/
Sahra Wagenknecht, the elegant Rosa Luxembourg copy, and Varoufakis would make a telegenic couple campaigning for Die Linke. Thus not all hope is lost in Germany. On the other hand will Varoufakis go to a country that offers only 10% in his field? Maybe he’ll send Lambros Moustakis, the Greek homeless translator, whom he met once, and for whom he fights ever since, without telling him he choose him as central symbol for the dispossessed in a book. One meeting, one promise, eight times mentioned in print. … Late last year Lambros still sold homeless papers around his corner, if I recall correctly. He surely was too busy to notice. Yes, we got them over here in Cologne too, paper too. The Do-gooders do serve them meals.
Adult in a Room called Europe:
https://www.amazon.de/Adults-Room-Battle-Europes-Establishment/dp/1847924468?language=en_GB
Since Varoufakis–no doubt someone with a bigger fan cult then Sahra, more ‘polite’ connections, and thus with quite a bit of appeal–has such good connections with US and UK financial elite circles, I may wake up in summer and realize the rearrangement plus financial redistribution plan may work, if only Europe has the right democratic framework. (Populism is good after all? And its only about perspectives?) But hold on, Redistribution is something that didn’t even work from West too East Germany easily. Never mind the “blooming East” speech by Kohl at the Brandenburger Tor. By now 1,6 trillions spent and some decades later still not quite self-sustaining. …
But once again it will work on a larger European democratic scale? All we have to do is to focus on European as the Utopia it was always meant to be, not look back but ahead into the sunlight?
Well let’s see.
The Atlantic council meanwhile announces a neo-Maidan in 2019 at latest.
And I, you guessed it, am confused. I cannot wrap my head around all I would like to know and understand down to the most intrinsic detail.
Nations have interests. When a thing that was at one time an interest is at the current time no longer an interest, it is abandoned.
Treaty’s are transitory; obligations are like paper money they are based on the promises of liars.
My understanding of the term virtue signaling is this: announcing one’s support for something or other at zero cost to ones-self, loudly enough to make sure an audience hears that announced support, so that the members of the audience may be sure to think the announcer to be virtuous.
We need some new words for other kinds of virtue-whatevering. For example, early in his Vice Presidency, Cheney sneered at personal energy conservation as
a “commendable practice of private virtue”.
So, if I were to support other peoples’ conserving energy, that would be virtue signaling.
If I were to practice energy conservation lifestyling in my own life, that would be virtue practicing.
If I were to announce and describe my individual energy conservation lifestyling to all and sundry, that would be virtue horntooting.
If other people think these definitions have any value, feel free to use them. I give them away for free.
Well I don’t know, LeaNder. Sometimes I wonder if we’re quite on the same track, you being keen on the EU an’ all.
I’ll do a deal with you. Once we’ve strangled the last crony with the entrails of the last neo-con – you’re on board with that, right? – then we’ll look about us and if any Eurocrats or progs have survived you can keep some as pets.
On second thoughts, scrub that last. Whilst we’re conducting our seemly debates history is looking the other way: –
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-18/incredible-shrinking-population-2080-italians-will-be-minority-their-own-nation
Gives “Kennst du das Land …?” an entirely new meaning.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re quite on the same track,
there are no “same tracks” in my opinion. Parallel, sometimes touching, sometimes diverging ones maybe?
“Diverging”. Right. But our respective countries seem to be on the same track. Here are a few figures for Germany –
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/01/17/german-population-grew-2016-solely-due-mass-migration/
It’s a similar situation here. Far from diverging I think we’re all going much the same way. We’re in roughly the same boat with outsourcing. Much the same with foreign policy – amazingly, both our respective countries are still effectively supporting the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis. I haven’t looked at the figures for the income gap in your country but from what I see the gap between the top few per cent and the rest is growing there too. And my German deplorable friends are as fed up as here.
Should we concern ourselves with such things? Does any of this matter? Unless we are to regard politics merely as some sort of fashion statement or as idle recreation it matters a lot. Our political classes are outside democratic control and most of our intelligentsia find it boring, irrelevant, or even reprehensible to examine closely such problems as I have outlined above. “Divergent” views are fine, necessary even, when it comes to proposing solutions to such problems. Not so much when it comes to refusing to acknowledge them.
I consider Trump a bad President and a lousy human being, but I can explain my opinions, and I can also see some positives to his Presidency (inadvertently forcing Europe to grow gonads, uh, maybe something else). Most of my liberal friends waste way too much time & attention on him; I prefer not to torture myself that way. It’s usually fairly easy to drag them out of it though: just remind them of how much more dangerous Pence would be.
We live in a time that a state doesn’t have a few treaties but thousands. You can not simply abandon one treaty without making every other treaty suspect. If you want out the way to do it is renegotiate or fake following it. Not by saying no.
This is especially true for a very weak treaty like Paris that has no action if you fail to get the promised reductions and who reduction is something the US will likely obtain without even trying because of shale gas.
As President Trump’s position-in-office becomes more secure through the slow but visible public decay and exposure of the ClintoBorg rolling soft-coup against his election and administration, it seems safer to me to offer comment from time to time in complaint against some of his policies and personnel choices ( bearing in mind Professor Kiracofe’s saying that “personnel is policy”). Till recently I didn’t want to do that for fear of “offering ammunition to the . . . ” or “playing into the hands of . . . ”
And it seems reasonable to offer such comments here first rather than just-randomly-anywhere ( unless the development of some other thread or sub-thread would be specifically advanced by such a comment).
So here is a critical comment about a freshly-announced TrumpAdmin policy.
It is about a TrumpAdmin legal opinion bearing upon the scope and applicability of the Migratory Bird Protection Act, and why the TrumpAdmin’s newly announced legal opinion creates new kill-risks for American birds. The article itself explains it.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/01/trump-administration-rolls-back-protections-for-migratory-birds-drawing-bipartisan-condemnation.html