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Joe Republic
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« Reply #25 on: February 21, 2015, 06:39:14 PM »

That was a perfectly acceptable addition to this thread.

Not that it matters.  It'll probably be deleted without notice.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #26 on: February 21, 2015, 10:02:41 PM »

That was a perfectly acceptable addition to this thread.

Not that it matters.  It'll probably be deleted without notice.

The post or the thread?
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Joe Republic
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« Reply #27 on: February 21, 2015, 10:32:22 PM »

That was a perfectly acceptable addition to this thread.

Not that it matters.  It'll probably be deleted without notice.

The post or the thread?

The post.  Like mine was.
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Joe Republic
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« Reply #28 on: February 22, 2015, 12:20:45 AM »

But I never understood why the old Liberal Party began to decline to begin with. If anything, you'd think they would have been a more logical place - in terms of ideology - for supply side economics and neoliberalism to grow in the 1970s and 1980s than the Conservative Party would have been.

I think a better question to ask is why the liberal parties in Canada and United States didn't decline. After all, the patter in most of the west is a conservative party versus a labour party, with other ideologies bringing up the rear.

Liberalism in the way that the original Liberal Party was liberal (free trade, extending the franchise, etc) is just part of what America is. Our Left and Right parties are just extensions of that premise. Old Toryism would require existing institutions in need of defending - there were/are none here: no peerage, no Church, no monarchy. Socialism/social democracy requires a sense of community cohesion that our individualist society of temporarily embarrassed future millionaires lacks. And because those things weren't there, we never had any major issues with fascism or communism, which is why we also lack a European-style center-right/Christian Democracy presence.

We're Americans. The rich want as much money to stay in their private bank accounts as possible, consequences to society be damned. The poor want as much money to flow into their private bank accounts as possible, consequences to society be damned. We're not interested in tradition or class or national identity or the well-being of the community. And the rest of our politics is determined by how we feel about fetuses and guns.
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Nathan
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« Reply #29 on: February 24, 2015, 02:27:06 PM »

"Society" is just the sum total of individuals interacting with one another. It has no "point" or "goal" at all because it isn't a conscious entity, just the sum total of the independent actions of many different conscious actors (individuals).

You don't think that people band together and form goverments, societies, and hierarchies to advance some sort of goal or in hope to achieve something?  When you say "sum total of independent actions" it's quite indicitive of your ideology, because the way you say it is almost in assumption that everything is done for completely selfish motivations and that it couldn't possibly be any other way.  Tell me then; and going back to the famous "state of nature", why did the first laws against stealing and killing others arise from our animalistic beginnings?  Hell, why have we ever had any laws?  Conservatives would never argue that murder or theft should be made legal, but that the modern "wilderness" (that is, economic competition) where it is determined who prospers and who dies should be subject to extreme limitations on how much can be regulated.  If the most basic of laws are a reaction to the brutal nature of reality at the beginning of human civilization, is it not true that our economic regulations and society safety nets are merely a modern extension of that?  This is why I can't understand the conservative argument on its most philosophical of levels.  The idea of protecting people from physical harm is incredibly obvious, but protecting people from economic harm is so unconscionable.  They are the same damn thing. 
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King
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« Reply #30 on: February 24, 2015, 03:06:37 PM »

But Deus Naturae's post sounded so cool, like something Tyler Durden would monologue about. Come on, guys!
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #31 on: February 24, 2015, 07:46:02 PM »

But Deus Naturae's post sounded so cool, like something Tyler Durden would monologue about. Come on, guys!

Margaret Thatcher was what came to my mind.  not as cool.
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IceSpear
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« Reply #32 on: February 25, 2015, 03:22:46 PM »

It's time to suck it to the dumb environmental groups and get building.
It's ironic that you call the opposition to Keystone dumb, considering the scientists who study these projects are against it.
Sure, I'd prefer to eliminate oil one day and be totally on renewables, but that's a LONG ways off.
 
Look, the environmentalists have no actual evidence, backed up by a study, that says that Keystone would significantly harm the environment in any situation that doesn't involve a spill, and I've already addressed why the "it's risky" argument is a ridiculous strawman. The pipeline is no longer being investigated by Nebraska Courts. We've had six years to study its possible effects - and it's clearly not the automatic, guaranteed environment ruiner that the far-left would like it to be.

Look I get that it's not some masterful economy saver and I'd like to see serious regulation of any exporting, but neither of those are big enough concerns for any sensible person to be against the pipeline. It's time for Obama to just tell the Sierra Group, and leftist Senators, and everyone else who opposes it to just give up because there aren't even the beginnings of a logical argument against the pipeline.

Obama likes to think that republicans get nothing after their big victory last year. That's not how things should work. Republicans won big, so they have earned the right to get some of their ideas passed, and it should start with this pipeline. Obama's Veto today shows that, at least on this issue, he only cares about ultra-liberal Chris Murphy, Elizabeth Warren, Jeanne Shaheen, and their allies, and doesn't care about what's popular among the people, which is the Keystone Pipeline.

The Democrats won big in 2008 and the Republicans sure seemed to think they should get nothing then.  Obama was elected and re-elected by relatively solid margins and yet many Republicans won't even acknowledge that he is a legitimate President.  The Republican strategy since Obama was elected has essentially been "let's make it impossible for anyone to govern and block everything Obama and/or congressional Democrats support on principle, and then throw in a healthy dose of race-baiting for good measure." 

I know how frustrating it must be for you guys that the Republicans finally have a majority in both houses of Congress, but can't seem to get anything done because the Democrats are refusing to compromise on anything.  All I can really say to that is that pay back's a bitch and I hope you guys enjoy your useless majority for the next two years.
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TNF
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« Reply #33 on: February 25, 2015, 03:58:04 PM »

Savage is most fascist.

Levin is most reactionary.

Limbaugh is most hyperbolic.

Hannity is most misleading.

Beck is most insane.

Voted for Hannity, but they all make me want to puke.

No.
to be fair savage is a serial flip flopper and went through a phase of pandering more to the white nationalist crowd for a couple years beyond his usual anti-immigration rants. this back when the israeli lobby was arguing for invading syria in 2013 ish. but his schtick has always been sort of a bizarre kind of weather vane politicking. basically he always picks up on whatever the most acceptable 'far right' position is then does that. he just obscures it a little with the shock humor, blatant lies and ranting for the lulz. it's sort of the same professional trolling that ann coulter does. its actually entertaining sometimes which is more than i can say for hannity, rush or the other losers. the only person that comes close is o'reilly, who he affectionately named the leprechaun
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #34 on: March 02, 2015, 01:14:34 PM »

Well, now that I have put down our resident WASP supremacist, I might as well comment further on this matter.

Obviously I would go with the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book.  I mean for all we know there might be several Harvard faculty from that kind of selection anyways, whereas the Harvard Faculty only guarantees that the only people who would have input are Harvard faculty.  I believe that having their knowledge is helpful, but that is not the only thing that is needed to run a society.  I feel that having all only Harvard faculty would be bad, for much the reasons that Al said plus it would accomplish nothing more than have an insulated confirmation bias among the leaders that would only end up being harmful in the long run (even the more meek among them might tend towards egotism and thus not be as receptive to the demands of the people).

Recent election results as well as referndum passes suggest that the people of Boston would not be the reactionary neanderthals that some of you suggest.

Which isn't to say there are problems with just selecting the first 2,000 people in the book whose name starts with the letter "A", which would create some resentment of course.

And also, I share a lot of TNF's sentiments on this subject.  The Ivy League's dominance of intellectual achievement and privilege is a pox on the country.  Nationalize it now and make the Blue Bloods and Lace Curtains there have to deal with the dillema of being as equal as the common working man.
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IceSpear
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« Reply #35 on: March 05, 2015, 06:44:52 PM »

Journalism is largely entertainment and web-journalism is click-based.

If you write an article stating the obvious, Hillary is almost certain to win the Democratic primary, 1.  it's not news, and 2. it will not elicit a reaction.

If you write an article with a new, outrageous take that gives relevance to recent stories, you create interest and clicks.  It gives people a reason to pay attention, even to say, "you're dumb!! Martin O'Malley!?  Are you serious!??."  It's like ESPN writing articles about NFL mini-camps.  It's irrelevant, but they're selling a product in the off-season and they want you to care about football all year long.  WaPo wants you to care about the 2016 Presidential race before anything truly relevant happens and follow each little nothing story as if it matters.  They're selling a product in the off-season, they have to try to make a porterhouse steak out of slim-jims.

Just don't pay attention to this stuff, it just encourages them.
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Mechaman
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« Reply #36 on: March 07, 2015, 10:11:08 AM »

A little old, but necessary reading for the forum regarding "moderate Republicans":

The biggest difference between Conservative Southern Democrats and Liberal Northeastern Republicans was that the latter were far more willing to put their own differences with the party aside to do what the leadership wanted, while the former were more likely to raise an active fuss when they didn't get their way and either threaten to run as independents or simply defect to the GOP.

From the end of World War II, when the hardcore Gilded Age-style Republicans who were strongly anti-New Deal had either retired, died or been voted out of office, until the rise of the Reagan Coalition in the late 1970s, the three overarching themes that held the GOP together were:

(i) Being more strongly anti-communist than the Democrats, either in substance or in style/perception.
(ii) A desire for the New Deal, Great Society and other welfare state programs to be run "more efficiently" which could cover anything from modest Dewey/Rockefeller-style tinkering to flirting with wholesale privatization.
(iii) General distance from organized labor, for reasons ranging from a good government desire to avoid corrupt machine politics to a general desire to destroy any bargaining power for workers in order to enrich large corporations.

When push came to shove, all Republicans, from the left to the right, were willing to vote in ways that advanced these three planks.

By comparison, I can't think of a single issue in the post-New Deal era where the entire spectrum of Democrats were willing to present a unified front on anything. And when defections happened, it was inevitably a case of a conservative (usually Southern) Democrat siding with the Republicans on a given issue.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #37 on: March 08, 2015, 10:54:06 PM »

One of those times where a single word answer is no good.

Nobody died at Three Mile Island. Security measures even in 1970s standard worked. It's like pointing to a BMW accident where everyone survived as proof that BMWs are unsafe.

Fossil fuels have significant direct mortality rates associated to them where as nuclear is 0. A lot of the fear of nuclear power comes from the misconception that it has anything to do with a nuclear bomb. Nuclear power plant reactors and nuclear bombs are like comparing apples with apple-flavored Jolly Ranchers.  Blowing up a nuclear power plant cannot cause a mushroom cloud.

Even if we want to go into indirect deaths (estimations of how many people will die of cancer from radiation leaked at Fukishama), it still pales in comparison to the indirect deaths in the mining of precious metals in Africa that compose solar panels.  Or environmental displacement by hydroelectric dam construction.

The only energy that is truly environmentally safe is wind and it's wholly inadequate.  In all other scenarios, you are playing a game of risk and the sheer amount of energy nuclear can produce means per accident it's a good deal as a opposed to per accident at an oil rig, a dam, a platinum mine, a coal mine, or a wind turbine manufacturing plant.

In other words, "No."
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BRTD
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« Reply #38 on: March 08, 2015, 11:15:50 PM »

Damn, three or four years later now, and we still have folks defending that piece of garbage Gaddafi. When murderous tyrants are killed, this is absolutely the correct reaction, and Gaddafi's death will go down in history with some of the other great mob executions of dictators, like Mussolini's or Ceausescu's.
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politicus
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« Reply #39 on: March 09, 2015, 04:34:05 AM »
« Edited: March 09, 2015, 04:44:11 AM by Charlotte Hebdo »

One of those times where a single word answer is no good.

Nobody died at Three Mile Island. Security measures even in 1970s standard worked. It's like pointing to a BMW accident where everyone survived as proof that BMWs are unsafe.

Fossil fuels have significant direct mortality rates associated to them where as nuclear is 0. A lot of the fear of nuclear power comes from the misconception that it has anything to do with a nuclear bomb. Nuclear power plant reactors and nuclear bombs are like comparing apples with apple-flavored Jolly Ranchers.  Blowing up a nuclear power plant cannot cause a mushroom cloud.

Even if we want to go into indirect deaths (estimations of how many people will die of cancer from radiation leaked at Fukishama), it still pales in comparison to the indirect deaths in the mining of precious metals in Africa that compose solar panels.  Or environmental displacement by hydroelectric dam construction.

The only energy that is truly environmentally safe is wind and it's wholly inadequate.  In all other scenarios, you are playing a game of risk and the sheer amount of energy nuclear can produce means per accident it's a good deal as a opposed to per accident at an oil rig, a dam, a platinum mine, a coal mine, or a wind turbine manufacturing plant.

In other words, "No."

Not a good post, because it is irrelevant in the context. The issue was not all the things King writes about (most of which I agree with), but the "no" comment (CrabCake objected to single word posts in his crapoposts thread, which is why I challenged you on this one). Kings post actually proves that "no" is a crappy answer. If you had started with writing something similar to Kings post everything would be fine.

EDIT: Besides leaving out the issue of nuclear waste when dealing with the hazards of nuclear energy makes it not a good post.
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CrabCake
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« Reply #40 on: March 09, 2015, 04:47:42 AM »

Friends! I have created a new poll in IP about nuclear energy where we can argue to our heart's content.

Also I'm very much in favour of being cited in arguments about the forum's rules. What an ego boost! Smiley
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Simfan34
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« Reply #41 on: March 09, 2015, 07:24:53 AM »

That's not the point. The post is good because of the content, not the context.
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Nathan
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« Reply #42 on: March 09, 2015, 09:00:07 PM »

People familiar with my occasional cultural cringe tendencies and habit of melodramatically writing off the country as a lost cause after elections whose results I don't like might be surprised that I'm posting this here, but

The only country with a flag on the moon

This is a surprising answer.

Also wtf why is Uruguay not winning?

Why is it surprising that people would vote for the country they're from?  Sure, the whole "beacon of freedom" thing can be overdone, and large swathes of our political culture and built environment are stupidly dysfunctional.  But we took your continent's (not just yours, of course) tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free (hell yearning to just breathe in many cases), and more often than not have fulfilled that promise.  That's a legacy worth celebrating.

In other words,

USA! USA! USA!
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BRTD
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« Reply #43 on: March 09, 2015, 09:40:59 PM »

Is anyone truly shocked by the behavior of these SAE douches? I mean, I understand they're saying some pretty terrible sh[inks], and since it was captured on video, they're essentially representing the University ... but come on.

This is how ALL frat douches act. They may not say the n-word, but guaranteed they're douching it up being exclusionary against SOMEONE. THAT'S WHAT FRATERNITIES ARE ... exclusionary organizations. Certain people don't make it in ... could be money, could be looks, could be race, could be religion. They exclude based on SOMETHING in each and every case. Hell, historically black fraternities don't have a hell of a lot of white people, either. Do they say some sh[inks] behind closed doors that people would be "shocked" by?

Yeah, probably so.

So while these douches are particularly vile because of the sh[inks] they were saying ... which, for the record, I can't defend other than it being technically protected speech ... they are representing every single fraternity's essential, core behavior.

This shouldn't surprise anyone.
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TDAS04
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« Reply #44 on: March 10, 2015, 03:07:26 PM »

This is absurd and yet another example of jails and prisons overcrowded with nonviolent offenders whose wrongs really don't merit incarceration to begin with.

I seriously doubt McGill, of his own volition, went in to work extra early, fired up a garbage truck and went out during a restricted time. Some supervisor probably overlooked the restriction and sent this man out earlier than authorized. The article says he was a "new" employee which means he likely wouldn't have known better and certainly wouldn't have been in a position to contradict his managers. The company should be getting fined. And if the vengeful people of Georgia absolutely must throw someone in jail, why not the man's supervisor or whoever is highest up on the chain of command?

Furthermore, the fact that an upscale neighborhood won't allow trash collection before 7 am because they don't want to be woken up just feeds into the stereotypes about Southerners - including rich Southerners - being lazy. If you're an adult in a professional or managerial job and you're still in bed at 7 am, you probably don't deserve whatever salary you're being paid. The hedge fund managers in Manhattan have been up since before 6. How fitting that the descendants of slaveowners down in Dixie are taking a cue from their ancestors and sleeping in while the darkies outside do all the work.
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MATTROSE94
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« Reply #45 on: March 10, 2015, 04:34:23 PM »

Hopefully Hagan becomes the next Feingold, and returns to give One Term Thom a good spanking in 2020!
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SawxDem
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« Reply #46 on: March 10, 2015, 11:21:16 PM »



  Presence of Mad opens the NYSE today, at present, down 200, a correlation that is not unique. Those that take the money are taking the money, nothing new. Artificial compassion toped of with artificial stimulus on a seedless apple is a field of dreams harvested by the minority, living without it by the majority is uniquely free, for now.





jao
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #47 on: March 10, 2015, 11:22:41 PM »

since you're more up on these things than I am: could you point me to some current historians/historiographers who are central to this 'crisis of the Historical profession', and how this connects with arguments that the impact of the French Revolution has been repeatedly overstated?

This is fairly complicated, so I'll try to summarise without losing too much along the way. You'll be familiar with some of this already, I suspect. During the Post War decades the historical profession in the West became increasingly influenced by Marxist tendencies as it appeared that a Marxist (or quasi-Marxist) approach to history could explain the past in a rational and scientific manner. Political life and historical events were seen as offshoots of social and economic factors and changes rather than as independent phenomenons. This tendency took different forms in different countries (i.e. the approach of British Marxists - Hobsbawm, Hill, Thompson and so on - was notably less dogmatic than that of the German Bielefeld School) but by the 1970s was close to universal: it even spread to French social history, which was previously the exclusive domain of the anti-Marxist (but still materialist) Annales School, for instance. Even historians with right-wing political views tended to subscribe to some form of Marxist analysis.

You know what happened next, of course: The Forward March of Labour Halted and so on. By the end of 1970s it was becoming clear that contemporary political events could not be explained in terms of orthodox academic Marxism. This led to a massive crisis of confidence in Marxist historiography, because if it could not explain the present, were historians really right to assume that it could explain the past as well? New research (often by historians on the fringes of the profession) was also beginning to undermine certain critical assumptions about the past (but we'll come to this later). Younger historians overwhelmingly deserted the Marxist camp and began to scrabble around for alternatives. Many found one in Postmodernism -and in particular in Poststructuralism - and in other forms of cultural theory.1 This is often referred to as the linguistic turn. A great example of this is Gareth Stedman Jones who had written Outcast London (a classic of Marxist social history) in early 1970s, but who's 1983 work Languages of Class explicitly denied even the existence of class in a Marxist sense.2 But again, and alas, another problem. The sort of reheated (and if I'm being honest barely comprehended) Poststructuralism that so many younger historians seized on in the 1980s was no substitute for the old certainties of academic Marxism; it did not (could not) provide a holistic explanation for all of human history or for current events. Material reality is not language, after all. If you read through academic journals from the 1990s (I've not done this since I left academia a few years ago, but whatever) you see furious arguments between the Poststructuralists and the Marxist rearguard for the first half of the decade, and then a gradual petering out of interest (on both sides) around about 1996 or so. Unfortunately this was actually a sign of the deepening of the crisis, because during the same period (i.e. 1980s onwards) higher education across the world was increasingly brought under the sway of market logic and managerialism. Instead of trying to find explanations for the past and to uncover great theories that might underpin them, most historians (and this is not their fault as individuals) generally write about whatever will get funding and whatever will get them published (because a publication record now matters more than the actual content of what is being published). This leads to an emphasis on the topical, on the local, and on (I'm sorry but this is absolutely true) what certain malicious types would label the politically correct.3 There's still some very good work done, of course, but it's generally the product of brilliant individuals doing their own thing or concerns pre-1789 history.

So that's what I mean by a crisis in the historical profession. It's a really sad state of affairs and makes me personally unhappy.

How does the French Revolution relate to this? Largely by plunging into a great historiographical crisis, one that shows no sign of ending, and by doing so at exactly the same time (as there was increased interest - including from the publishing industry - for new and bold research into the Revolution in time for the bicentenary in 1989) as the entire profession lurched into the previously mentioned existential permacrisis. A large number of stridently revisionist works on the Revolution were published during the 1980s (the most important are probably François Furet's Interpreting the French Revolution and Simon Schama's Citizens; the latter is in some respects more 'radical' in that it stresses continuities with the past, while the former still insists on the Revolution as the turning point) and together they successfully undermined the old idea that the Revolution had anything to do with class (which, as you know, is one of the central assumptions to Marxist history). Other research published during the decade (including posthumously published work by Fernand Braudel) more-or-less conclusively demonstrated the relative unimportance of the Revolution to social structures in rural France and even to the development of capitalism in the country (i.e. that the process was well underway by the 1760s even and that the Revolution, whatever impact it had, certainly did little speed it along). Consequently, the importance of the Revolution to the development of modernity is now disputed, even if British undergraduates are still routinely taught (as I was) that 'Modern History' starts in 1789 and that there was no such thing as nationalism before that date. Habit dies hard apparently.

1. There were a huge number of other trends as well, some of them rather more sensible than Poststructuralism. Peter Clarke and his 'primacy of politics' followers (although probably too obsessed with detail for details sake) are a case in point. There was also an increased interest - particularly at the wacky end of the profession - in historical narrative.

2. Others went further; ex-Marxist Patrick Joyce went so far as to deny the existence of class in any non-linguistic sense in favour of a rather nebulous conception called 'The People' that he has never managed to explain coherently.

3. During one of the few academic conferences I ever attended, a complaint of Hobsbawm's about this latter point was read out by a speaker for the sole purpose of laughing at a relic. It wasn't a terribly dignified moment.


Actually all that thread is worth reading except for Ingemann's awful, awful posts.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #48 on: March 12, 2015, 10:48:56 AM »

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/hillary-clinton-media-bias-email/

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Good to see Democrats won't be buying the right-wing media's anti-Hillary smears!

Most Republicans seem to constantly fall for the the "I didn't do anything wrong, the liberal media is just out to get me" non-sense, so it shouldn't be any surprise that most Democrats seem to fall for the equally absurd "I didn't do anything wrong, the conservative media is just out to get me" version.  When politicians in either party face criticism, negative news stories, or become embroiled in scandals, one of the easiest and most reliable responses is to claim or imply that it is just part of a smear campaign by the right/left-wing media.  

In reality, the media doesn't have an ideology, for example I doubt most of the commentary by the talking heads at Fox (or MSNBC for that matter) is informed by any sort of genuine ideological conviction.  Certainly nothing beyond the generic "I'd prefer for this party to win, I guess" that most voters probably have.  There are occasionally instances where the media is clearly in the tank for a certain candidate (Cory Gardner in 2014, Obama during the pre-New Hampshire part of the 2008 primaries), but such instances are few and far between.  The media isn't treating this non-story about the e-mails like a big deal because they're part of a right-wing conspiracy to bring down Hillary Clinton.  They're doing it because it is in their interest to do everything they can to create the perception that the Democratic nomination race isn't a forgone conclusion (so more people will watch their coverage of it) and because it is clear by now that their is a significant audience for stories about the Clintons that reinforce certain perceptions most Americans have of them.

At the end of the day, the media only cares about making money.  If saying stupid sh!t for attention, race-baiting, affirming the worldview of a particular party's base or certain demographic groups, sensationalized "reporting", fear-mongering, misinforming viewers, treating non-stories as Big News, etc boosts ratings and thus leads to more advertising dollars, that's what they'll do.  If such things didn't work or stopped working, they'd try something else.  

Even the media's corporatism likely stems more from the financial incentive to promote the economic interests of the companies that own ABC, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, CNBC, CBS, etc than from any sort of genuine ideological commitment to a pro-big business ideological agenda.  This probably contributes to the lack of investigative reporting a little bit, but that can probably be primarily attributed to a combination of laziness and most importantly the unfortunate fact that investigative reporting usually doesn't produce stories that attract as many viewers as CNN babbling about a missing Malaysian airplane (whose direct impact on the viewer or someone they know well can be fully explained in no more than two concise and simple sentences).  Actually, that's probably a good test for how damaging a scandal will be (how many concise sentences would it take to convey it's significance and impact to someone who doesn't follow politics at all).

Side note: This is also why affairs are such dangerous scandals compared to something like campaign finance violations.  They are easy to sensationalize and they can be easily described: "Senator ___ cheated on his wife.  If he broke his marriage vows, how can we believe anything else he says?"  With campaign finance violations you have to explain why these laws even matter, how the amount of money someone gave to Senator ___ exceeded the legal limit and that they tried to get around the law by...zzzzzzzzzzz.

At the end of the day, the media only cares about making money.  If saying stupid sh!t for attention, race-baiting, affirming the worldview of a particular party's base or certain demographic groups, sensationalized "reporting", fear-mongering, misinforming viewers, treating non-stories as Big News, etc boosts ratings and thus leads to more advertising dollars, that's what they'll do.  If such things didn't work or stopped working, they'd try something else.  But again, even the "news" networks whose business model involves blatantly supporting one party over the other, they don't necessarily do do so in a way that benefits the said party.

Take Fox News, they don't always act in a way that benefits the Republicans politically and have hurt the party quite a bit.  Often when the Republican Party is trying to avoid jumping off a cliff, Fox works to rile up its viewers to the point that it turns a fringe position into the mainstream one within the party (even as folks like Boehner know better).  As a result, what could've been a Ted Cruz or a Steve King embarrassing himself again turns into the whole party stampeding off the cliff like swarm of lemmings.  What Fox does do very well, however, is stoke the resentments, play to the fears, exploit and encourage the prejudices, and yes, even speak to the concerns* of certain demographics (especially white men who are either 60+, evangelicals, or members of the working class) that feel like no one is fighting for them and/or that the country has changed so much they barely recognize it anymore...and that they were left behind when it did so.  Frank Luntz once observed that "We don't watch news to inform us anymore, we watch news to affirm us."  

*This is a distinctly different thing than advocating for a group's actual interests, which Fox has never done.

That's exactly what Fox News does, it makes money by affirming the worldview of certain groups and giving them a sense of validation about their fears and prejudices.  It happens that in Fox's case their audience means part of their brand will be promoting a right-wing worldview, but I'd bet a lot the more extreme, hysterical, and/or bigoted comments and personas of people like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, etc are just schtick.  A lot of that stuff is likely just an act, these guys are entertainers in a perverse sort of way.  It’s like Beck, Huckabee, etc are screenwriters and their TV personas are the characters they’ve written for themselves.

Everyone has there own little niche at Fox (and MSNBC, for that matter).  O'Reilly is the chief race-baitor, Beck used to be Fox's "the government is out to get you" guy, Huckabee is the lead cultural warrior, Hannity does the most blatant pandering to generational animosities of older viewers, etc (although the niches all inevitably overlap at times).  

MSNBC does that same thing, but for different demographic groups such as college-educated white liberals in suburbia.  They’re just as shameless as Fox though and just as insincere in their commitment to their so-called ideology.  Also like Fox, they don't truly help the party they are associated with.  Watching the likes of Chris Matthews or Ed Schultz is like having every negative stereotype about liberals reinforced.  MSNBC's talking heads generally have a smug elitist persona and preach tolerance while promoting bigotry against minorities that don't vote how they want them to ((*cough* Lawrence O'Donnell *cough*).

They also play to their audience's class and cultural prejudices against religious and rural Americans by constantly looking down their noses at the rural poor and paternalistically acting like white southerners and the white working class are all a bunch of dumb, racist hicks who need a good educated liberal to come and tell them about what their interests are.  The liberal version of the "here in the Real America" schtick is constantly bellowed by MSNBC: "If only the dumb rednecks would listen when we tell them what's best for them, everything would be perfect in America."  

And what does this sort of non-sense do?  Well, for MSNBC's target audience, it affirms their worldview and gives them a false feeling of validation about their prejudices.  But it also ensures that anyone who watches MSNBC and isn't part of its target audience will likely come away with the impression that liberals are everything the Republicans accuse them of being: smug, arrogant, and hypocritical elitists who think they know whats best for everyone else.  MSNBC doesn't care if this hurts the Democratic brand with independents or reduces the chances of rural Americans voting Democratic again.  They only care that there is money to be made promoting their warped and distorted pseudo-reality.

TL;DR: The media isn’t babbling about the e-mails because they are part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to bring down Hillary Clinton.  They’re doing it because, for whatever reason, there is an appetite for anything remotely dramatic (or pseudo-dramatic, in this case) involving the Clintons.  Thus, it is in the media’s interest to peddle this sort of non-story and treat it as if it were a big deal.  The idea that the media has a commitment to anything for reasons other than its own direct financial self-interest is laughable.  



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« Reply #49 on: March 13, 2015, 02:24:21 AM »

I don't have lots specific to say, Indy Texas.  I really like reading your posts and I hope things turn up better soon.

What I will say I'll keep general.  Everyone goes through dry, lonely times in life.  I felt a lot of what you are describing on a personal level between the ages of 21 and 26--it was rough.  Life is always changing and, most of the time, things never stay either good or bad for first-worlders.  When things are going well, it's important not to get too cocky, and when things are going bad, it's important to hang in there and not despair.  Life is hard for most people in different ways--it's not singling you out on that score.  So, just keep going, and while you're at it, a few other things maybe to keep in mind.

It's true, I think, that meeting people often gets trickier as we grow older and social circles change.  One thing that might work is finding a hobby and then joining groups, associations, teams, societies of people who also do that.  You'll already have something important in common off the bat, and you'll meet people you'll like beyond the hobby that way.

Not trusting people or being motivated by fear of rejection won't help in the long run.  Trust is only earned through friendship.  But, a good default attitude might be not so much not to trust people, but just not to expect too much.  If you know people who don't ask you for all sorts of things when you're up and don't kick you when you're down, that's already pretty good, so stick with those types and just deal with the rest.

As far as being risk-averse, it's pretty hard, and unwise, to just start taking risks arbitrarily.  You have to find something you love, that's really meaningful to you, something that you'd like to try no matter whether you succeed or fail.  Something that you don't want to find yourself at 45 saying: "I wish I would have at least tried that."  If you have something that you really have passion for, you'll take necessary risks for it without even thinking about it.  What you do for a living is something you'll spend most of your waking hours with for the next several decades.  Make it something you love and that's meaningful to you, because work that's anything else can make life a real bummer.  "Follow your bliss;" Joseph Campbell got that one right.

That's just my two cents.  Might not work for you, everyone's different.  But it's the only two cents I have at the moment.

Hope you feel better soon, Indy.  Like I said, I enjoy your posts a lot.
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