This is another bizarre right wing group. They showed a big presence in the last Trump’s rally. They believe and spread bizarre, defaming, grotesque conspiracy ideas. Our political world these days is surreal. It is so unsettling to see how far the public zeitgeist has schizm’ed, with one part rocketing into an alternate, radical right wing, nightmare.
This is what happens when the people don’t trust the government. So far it has just been words. Let’s hope it doesn’t go further. My suggestion is not to buy the book.
It’s not JUST distrust of the govt. It clearly seems to have prefer the left as the target of its insanity, and to prefer our current POTUS as its champion. Also “Pizzagate” was a precursor bout of disinformation. In that, many came to believe that she was a ringleader of child sex slavery being conducted from the basement of a Pizza shop (btw, the Pizza shop didn’t even have a basement. And my memory is vague, but didn’t some nut job kill somebody or try to, based on believing that one. So that wasn’t JUST words.) Now Q anon asserts that Hillary is the grand poobah of a Satanic Cabal, that our current POTUS and Mueller are secretly teaming up to oppose.
So, no, it’s not JUST distrust of the govt.
You are right. I forgot about the Pizza guy.
My viewpoint. Works for me and is really simple.
I take a progressive view on the subjects. I get this progressive view point from past human history. One of the main goals of the progressive is to create a working civilization. What has it taken in the past for the best civilizations to exist? Here are the common factors. The first seven are a must. But they can be in different orders and still work.
Civilization
Top common factors
High protein
Happiness
Rules of Laws
High knowledge level
Capitalist system
Control of greed
Minimal caste
Good monetary system
Belief in certain deity
Medical
Security
Entertainment
Good trade access
OK. Let’s compare Antifa to Qanon and say they are both equally bad from a moral point of view. But are they equally bad for civilization?
Antifa is based upon expanding “greed” and “caste”. Qanon is based upon fighting “greed and caste”.
Antifa is really bad for America. You just introduced me to Qanon. And I don’t like Qanon. But it does not look like it will harm America and may even be good for American in fighting greed and the caste system. Murder is bad. But is praised on TV in war and western movies.
5 directly contradicts 6 and 7, and also 4 and 10 to a lesser degree.
9 isn’t worth my time refuting.
If you limit the list to 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12, you might be on to something that’s pretty obvious.
I honestly don’t know the relevance of 1. Where did you hear that protein is a notable influence on a civilization’s success? It’s potentially an interesting idea, but I’ve never heard of it.
I’m all for leaving out #9. I would keep #5 but combine it with #6 (greed-controlled-capitalism). I like protein, too. Isn’t it good for the brain? So I would keep #1. And we probably need #8 and 13.
Re: the rest, “Antifa” is short for anti-fascist. Fascism seems to have a well deserved BAD reputation. Therefore, anti-fascism is a good thing. I have no clue what u mean by Antifa being based on expanding greed and caste, while Q anon is based on fighting greed and caste. Those seem to me to be complete non sequiturs.
I’m all for not responding to Mike at all. He throws things up against the wall, nothing sticks, but he keeps throwing. Here’s my conclusion in my blog post about this current situation:
To have that sort of creative energy, to allow the brilliant people of the day to discover something, you have to first have some degree of peace. You have to have a little extra left over at the end of the day to give to the general welfare, to build some roads, to have some nurses ready to take care of us instead of working overtime to pay off student loans and a mortgage from that house they bought before the bankers destroyed the economy.What gets left out of historical discussions like this is none of it happens if we don’t care about people that we will never meet; people on the other side of the world and people who are not born yet. If we aren’t keeping the world clean and free from violence and filled with beauty, if we aren’t nurturing the people who grow our food, or who are sitting in a room somewhere coming up with formulas that who knows what they will do, but we can bet they will do something, then none of this happens. Then we slip back into using those stone tools to harm each other and take whatever we can just because we can. None of this happens if we don’t realize we need each other.
OK, since no-one here yet has visited the “Introduce Yourself” page to even say “hello, and welcome,” I guess I’ll post a comment here.
Yes “Antifa” is short for Anti fascist, and from the little I know of them are grass roots activists who are militant in their opposition to the far-right movements now afoot in western societies. (such as Q Anon, which is not a movement, but probably more of a disinformation blog, and a brainchild of Steve Bannon who seems to be an end-times aficionado.)
“Progressive” can mean anything you want it to be or say that it is. Shortly after 9/11 there was a vigorous discussion on some “progressive” forums of coming up with another label or identifier for all those things that self-labeled progressives hoped to embody. Concurrent with that discussion was the well known vilification of the word “liberal” by the conservative right-wing narrative managers (see Saint Ronnie.) That discussion even found its way into the pages of Skeptical Inquirer and floating the idea of the label “Brights.” Thank Dog that one fell flat. My parents were proud and open liberals who were children during the great depression and lifelong Democrats because of the leadership of FDR and all that transformed what came before into what fruited and died in the 1970’s - 80’s.
So I did the obvious; I got out my Merriam-Webster and looked up liberal and liberalism. From that Collegiate Dictionary (11th Ed.) - “liberalism”: @2c; “a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.”
Damn, that was my parents, and that, despite the relegation of that term to the status of a curse, continues to be my core belief(s). However, I know when a battle has been lost, and so I say to those that must have a political label to affix to me, that I am a “progressive.”
There can be no ongoing progress if there is not a human civilization based on sustainability. Sustainability will be impossible if the mantra of the professional political class continues to spout the nonsense of limitless growth on a finite planet. It seems to me that what that nonsense is really shorthand for, is continued growth of profits for those that already have more than they need, deserve, or is rational for a society in which great disparities of opportunity, health, and security exist. Bernie Sanders remarked that “Billionaires should not exist,” for which he was taken to the woodshed by all the capitalist narrative managers. Accused of wanting to start a pogrom against the wealthy. Lost in the bizzaro-land of current US political discourse was the fact that during the height of “The American Century” that taxes on the wealthy were in the range of 70-90%, billionaires hardly existed, and, oh yes, the US thrived and prospered.
Looks like the publisher slipped up with the spelling there, it’s clearly intended to be titled: Quacko.
Vince, Welcome and hello. Sorry I missed visiting the Intro page, lately. Thanks for your input. Personally, I am a Progressive and I’m Prode. (Scottish dialect for “Proud”)