The NYT Presents the “News”

This paragraph from an article in the New York Times speak for itself:

Mr. Kennedy has singled out Froot Loops as an example of a product with too many artificial ingredients, questioning why the Canadian version has fewer than the U.S. version. But he was wrong. The ingredient list is roughly the same, although Canada’s has natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots while the U.S. product contains red dye 40, yellow 5 and blue 1 as well as Butylated hydroxytoluene, or BHT, a lab-made chemical that is used “for freshness,” according to the ingredient label.

Continue ReadingThe NYT Presents the “News”

What People are Missing if They Aren’t reading X (Twitter)

It's wild out there in the lands of Politics and Culture. I've been doing some collecting and I'd like to offer some of the things that especially caught my attention recently.

Glenn Greenwald is on fire. Here he is once again pointing out DNC/Corporate Media Hypocrisy:

I've lost count of the people who have told me that they don't know what Robert F. Kennedy actually says and they don't want to find out. And then They claim that he is "anti-vax" and a "conspiracy theorist," as though saying that is a substitute for knowledge. Michael Shellenberger comments:

This really happened. How could EVERYONE in the corporate media forget?

The Ukraine war (which has killed 600,000 Ukrainians so far) must must must go on because . . . trust us . . . says Anthony Blinken, neocon in Joe Biden's cabinet and one of the architects of the Iraq War.

Tulsi Gabbard was really put on this list this year after she expressed a political position in support of Trump. Everything else here is absolutely true. Does this sound like America?

It's guaranteed won't hear these things about Matt Gaetz at your favorite corporate media outlets. Independent journalist Lee Fang will tell you:

If really you'd like to learn RFK, Jr's positions on important topics (and you should want to know them), here are some of his main points, succinctly set out and annotated:

Continue ReadingWhat People are Missing if They Aren’t reading X (Twitter)

What it is Like to Start Seeing the Progressive Left for What it is.

Fascinating video. This woman recently started seeing the DNC and progressive left for what they are. She describes the experience of scales falling from her eyes.

I created a transcript of her 3-minute video:

I feel like I have a unique perspective with this whole election thing. Because I used to be very, very far left, like I was one of the people having a fucking mental breakdown in 2016 when he won, right? And I didn't even like him up until six months ago, when it became very obvious that they were staging a coup and tried to assassinate him. And then some shit started clicking. So I'm still very new to this whole side of things. But the thing is, when I was very far left, like, radically far left, I thought I knew what was going on. I genuinely believed I was informed. I thought I knew better than everybody else, and that's what these people think, too. And the thing is I would get so triggered and so angry when people would question me because I didn't actually know what the hell I was talking about. I thought I did, but really I didn't actually know any policies. I didn't actually know any politics. All I actually knew was what I had seen online, in mainstream media, and because everybody was saying, I just assumed it had to be right, right. And I think where a lot of this comes from is like, people just don't want to be wrong. Like, it's humbling and it's embarrassing to acknowledge that you were wrong or that you didn't know as much as you thought you did, but I would get so defensive and fly off the handle when and whenever somebody would question me, because I didn't actually have any talking points, and the talking points I did have were inaccurate.

But I didn't want to be wrong so I just kept fucking regurgitating. I just kept echoing the same shit that I was hearing over and over again, and that's what people are still doing. And I I don't blame them. I'm not mad at them, because really, I mean, if you're only exposed to that, then that's what you're gonna believe.

But it's crazy to be on the other side of it for this election and see just how misinformed people are, and they will argue with you, and I won't have a card, because they will argue with you till they're blue in the face because they are just so convinced that they're right, and I was one of those people, and the fear they're feeling is very real. I'm not invalidating the fear. I'm just it's just that the fear is not founded in anything factualbecause it's not the things that they're scared about. It's not going to happen. It didn't happen last time, it's not going to happen this time.

And it's just it's so crazy. It's like being the sober person at a party full of drunk people.

Continue ReadingWhat it is Like to Start Seeing the Progressive Left for What it is.

Bernie Sanders Misses the Boat

Here's one way to lose all credibility: Say something very important--something that you strongly believe--when it's too late to matter. Apparently Bernie Sanders was trying to make sure that we were ruled by Democrat elitists who "ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economy and political system." I canvassed for Sanders in 2020. His silence during this campaign is incredibly disappointing. If he runs for anything again, his slogan should be "I should have told you so."

Continue ReadingBernie Sanders Misses the Boat

Political Power and the Need for Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff of FIRE:

In a democracy, the majority doesn’t need special protection for freedom of speech because their power is protected by the majority vote. The bully and the bigot easily get their way if they have the votes.

The fact is that only those with opinions that are unpopular with the majority or the ruling elite need the special protection of freedom of speech. It is not, in fact, a coincidence that the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s rights movement, and the gay rights movement (just to name a few) only really took off when the protections of the First Amendment became strongly interpreted beginning in the 1950s. Prior to that, without a strong First Amendment, those movements were easy to shut down.

But the powerful in higher education find this narrative inconvenient. This is because, frankly, they are unsatisfied with the amount of power they have over speech and thought (which is already immense, and regularly abused). They prefer a narrative in which they are still the underdog (which they've never really been) and still the hero (which they very rarely are). At the same time, they’d like to continue to censor “bad” speakers and “bad” speech — not just with new tools, but with a continued sense of self-righteousness about their authoritarian impulses.

Continue ReadingPolitical Power and the Need for Free Speech