Notices by Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/115720161014479157

Important thread. A dose of reality AND a glimmer of hope.

Thank you for this, @inthehands.

@cmthiede

When the richest country in the history of the world can’t deliver affordable energy/heat to the people it claims to represent, that’s deep political dysfunction.

I’m not an anarchist, so I’m troubled by this fundamental violation of the social contract.

“Rural America knows the truth long before the rest of the country feels it. Nothing collapses all at once. It just stops working in small places first while everyone else calls it local hardship. That’s why wood banks—like a food bank but for fuel—are important. They’re the clearest sign that basic systems in this country have already failed.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/204051/firewood-banks-heating-bill-winter

My intellectual history students read Lyotard's, "The Postmodern Condition" (1979) for our final class meeting today.

Lyotard says the chief characteristic of postmodernity is its skepticism toward grand narratives.

He writes about the need for intellectual inquiry that challenges the rules and orthodoxies of the age and what disasters await if we allow ourselves to be guided by nothing more than uncritical consensus.

1/x

The House voted 427-1 to release the Epstein files.

The Senate gave its unanimous approval.

Where are the files today? Only the dictator can say, and yet he doesn’t.

Democracy in full retreat. George III and Louis XVI governance. The people’s chosen representatives hold no sway.

Ill fares the land.

One of my favorites.

Locals call this Frank Gehry building in Prague “Fred and Ginger.”

#architecture

RIP, Frank Gehry.

#architecture

Assembled my new bike yesterday. Still fiddling with some cable routing and accessories (cages and rack). Have some new SPD/flat combo pedals on order.

Behold, my new touring rig!

Can’t wait for spring!

#cycling #biketouring #BikeTooter

The MAGA free speech warriors have created a "Media Offenders Hall of Shame," which is now posted on the official (.gov) White House website.

It has a "leaderboard" and snappy info graphics to illustrate who are the "repeat offenders."

This is what our gov't does with its (your) resources.

#uspol #democracy #media

https://www.whitehouse.gov/mediabias/

This year, instead of making a Thanksgiving dinner at home, we went to the Salvation Army, to serve a meal to families staying at the shelter.

Besides our family, there was a couple there, who seemed very nice. Guy and his wife, around 40, I’d guess.

Waiting to clean up after dinner, the guy tells me that the United States is the only country in the world with an entire holiday dedicated to gratitude. “One of the things that makes us the greatest country in the world,” he added.

1/

And, boy, did he launch.

“You heard they’re trying to take it away, right. Turn it into something negative. Indigenous Peoples’ Day, they want to call it.”

I could have said nothing.

14 yo daughter looked me dead in the eye and said through clenched teeth: “Dad, shut this down.”

Reader, I did not shut it down.

3/

I could have said nothing. Could have smiled and nodded and kept things agreeable.

But I thought I caught a whiff of something below the surface.

So I told him that Canada has their own Thanksgiving in October. Same basic thing. Harvest celebration.

Not a real country, he replied. Going to be the 51st state anyway.

Wife gave him a look: Not here. Not today.

But he was clearly ready to launch, and you could tell that his wife’s request for self-restraint wasn’t going over well.

2/

It’s been this way for 100 years, he said.

We’ve lost our country. The culture is degenerate. Both parties did this. Trump will undo it.

Etc.

I asked him how long he’d been inclined to see things this way.

Always.

I asked him if his views had made any of his relationships difficult.

Never.

5/

I told him he was thinking of Columbus Day.

He did not appreciate this gentle correction.

The whole MAGA thing came spilling out of him for the next 25 mins.

Founders wanted a Christian nation. Immigrants no longer assimilate. They elected a communist in NYC. People don’t know what bathroom to use. COVID was a hoax. COVID was a Chinese bio-weapon. COVID was used by dem governors to scare Americans into compliance. Trump is God’s agent.

Etc.

4/

At one point, he said that people have to use their brains. They have to THINK. People are led by their emotions, and emotions make truth indecipherable.

I told him about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the book he wrote, Emil, in which he said that a man who lives according to pure intellect would be a of monster.

He asked whether Rousseau was a Christian.

6/

I’ve not been up close and personal with this kind of formless certitude for a while.

It was like looking into an abyss.

He said that people used to call him a conspiracy theorist, but now they call him “THE TRUTH.”

People actually call you the truth?

They WILL.

8/

I said Rousseau was a Deist, but not a traditional, practicing Christian.

“Well, there’s the problem,” he said. You can’t mix that kind of stuff into a Christian nation.

I said that Jefferson modeled the DOI in large part after Rousseau’s “Social Contract.”

Reader, he did not appreciate this gentle correction.

7/

It’s important to understand that the GOP members of Congress who now appear to be “standing up to Trump” are not having a come to Jesus moment.

They are simply having a come to the polling data moment.

They will still be garbage people, if they decide to leave the cult.

Why do I say this?

Because they played footsie with fascism while MAGA still had the wind in its sails.

Ex-communication won’t make them into salvageable human beings.

#uspol #democracy #maga

Right on cue.

#uspol #democracy #maga

This is not a both sides argument. There is a moral difference that matters greatly.

But, again, if outcomes are the main focus, then the crisis is something ongoing.