Badger of Basra posted:

i guess andrew sullivan started tweeting again if anyone wants more dipshit phrenology takes

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1008839604395528197

mrmcd posted:

I honestly wonder how he got such a good rep. Like it was all built on being the one Republican for gay marriage and Obama that seemed to endear him to totebaggers. Meanwhile he's always had these weird hobby horses about race science and circumcision and the world dominating Muslim menace, and of loving course he was pro James "ladybrains can't touch computers good" Damore too.

It's almost like he doesn't give a poo poo about or even comprehend the experience of anyone who isn't Andrew Sullivan.

Zeroisanumber posted:

He's a pithy, arrivist pile of poo poo. He wasn't even actually for gay marriage until the culture turned hard after 2012.

mrmcd posted:

Nah to his credit, he was pretty clearly on the full marriage no civil union second classness in the Bush years too. It just coincidentally happened to be an injustice that affected Andrew Sullivan personally.

mrmcd posted:

Nah to his credit, he was pretty clearly on the full marriage no civil union second classness in the Bush years too. It just coincidentally happened to be an injustice that affected Andrew Sullivan personally.

get that OUT of my face posted:

i wanna say he was for same-sex marriage even further back, like in the clinton years. but yeah sully is a eugenics-supporting fuckwit

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

He was for same-sex marriage as a purely self-serving gay man.

quote:

Populism and communism: a ‘bromance’

One of the most interesting geopolitical realignments of our age is the brazen flirtation between democratically elected populists and self-professed “communist” regimes. Last week, for instance, the world was treated to the spectacle of an American president lavishing praise on and cordially hobnobbing with the leader of the world’s most repressive regime.

During his historic meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong-un, a visibly enthused Donald Trump described his younger counterpart as “smart,” a “great personality” and a “very talented” leader who “loves his country very much.” He predicted a “terrific relationship” with the North Korean regime, even raising the prospect of reciprocal state visits in Pyongyang and the White House in the coming years.

The American presidency has long represented the leadership of the so-called “free world.” Yet, Trump’s unremitting admiration for strongmen, most of all for the president of post-communist Russia, Vladimir Putin, has gone hand in hand with a barrage of insults against democratic neighbors and allies.

Just days ahead of his meeting with Kim, Trump described Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “weak” and “dishonest” amid intensified trade tensions between the two countries. Since coming to office, Trump has seemed far more at home among authoritarian leaders of the East than colleagues from the Western alliance, as seen during his participation at the G7 summit (among allies) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit (mostly among autocrats) in the past year.

Closer to home, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has had his own strategic dalliance with communist nations. Back in April, during my visit to North Korea, a senior official excitedly asked me about the Filipino leader. In a spirit of bonhomie, I quipped that Mr. Duterte also has his own philosophy of “Juche” (self-sufficiency), which he has often described as an “independent” foreign policy.

Mr. Duterte, notorious for his anti-Western cuss-laden rhetoric, has seemingly magnetized North Korean officials more than any other leader in Southeast Asia. Last year, during the Asean Regional Forum in Manila, Mr. Duterte warmly welcomed North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and described Pyongyang as a “good dialogue partner” of the regional body. Over the succeeding months, Mr. Duterte consistently pushed for dialogue and diplomacy as a solution to the conflict in the Korean Peninsula, earning countless fans north of the 38th parallel.

Yet, Mr. Duterte has reserved his greatest and most eloquent praise for China. He has often described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a protector and friend. Last April, he couldn’t restrain himself from exclaiming, “I simply love Xi Jinping.”

Why the “bromance” between firebrand populists such as Trump and Mr. Duterte, on one hand, and communist regimes, on the other? What’s going on?

The first glue that binds them all is their shared ideological antipathy toward liberalism. While communist regimes categorically oppose liberal democracy as a Western-capitalist perversion of modern society, right-wing populists oppose liberalism as the ideology of cosmopolitan elites supposedly deracinated from their organic-national roots.

Moreover, populism and communism tend to emphasize what British philosopher Isaiah Berlin described as “positive freedoms,” namely social and economic justice, often at the expense of “negative freedoms,” namely civil liberties and political rights.

Most crucially, right-wing populists and communist leaders tend to share similar psyches and personalities. From Trump to Mr. Duterte and Xi, what all these figures have in common is their unshakable belief in themselves as the guardian and savior of their respective peoples, not to mention their limited patience for political rivals and critics.

Political science mentions the theory of “dictatorial peace” (the converse of Immanuel Kant’s age-old theory of “perpetual peace” among democratic nations). As three American political scientists wrote in a widely cited journal piece earlier this century: “No two personalist dictators or two military regimes have gone to war with each other since 1945.”

Trump and Mr. Duterte are no dictators — yet. But their shared psychological as well as ideological affinity with communist leaders may explain the mind-boggling transformation in US-North Korea as well as Philippine-China relations in recent years. After all, as some feminists would put it, all politics is personal.

Jose posted:

Thanks, obama

https://twitter.com/ImmCivilRights/status/1008905352681844736

gradenko_2000 posted:

Aschlafly posted:

I always loved r/LSC's list of "introductory" socialist reading that includes Lenin, Marx, Luxemburg, Engels, and Kropotkin--the youngest item on their list is actually an essay by Einstein.

If I wanted to introduce someone to physics, I'd give them a modern textbook or pop-sci book, or if I wanted to introduce someone to evolution, I'd have them read *The Greatest Show on Earth* (one of the few Dawkins books that is actually good). I wouldn't have them read Newton or Darwin, because their writing is somewhat opaque by modern standards and anyway we've learned a great deal about the world since their time; there's little reason to peruse such old texts unless you're explicitly interested in the history of the discipline. Even if you wanted to introduce someone to capitalism or some other strain of modern liberal thought, you wouldn't start by having them read Adam Smith or David Ricardo or whomever. You'd give them a digestible, modern, accessible introduction.

The one kind of belief system I can think of where it's considered important to read very old foundational texts as introductory material is religion.

hackbunny posted:

If I remember my ancient history right, though, by then they had been lying in the coffin for a long time

gradenko_2000 posted:

hackbunny posted:

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

hell, the publishing industry thought this - remember around '10 when a ton of young adult authors just suddenly appeared

then it turned out that kids just kept rereading harry potter over and over lol

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1008915857857183744

hackbunny posted:

Jeb! Repetition posted:

Nazbol is an eternally hot take like a tire fire that never stops burning

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

hell, the publishing industry thought this - remember around '10 when a ton of young adult authors just suddenly appeared

then it turned out that kids just kept rereading harry potter over and over lol

hackbunny posted:

StashAugustine posted:

(the germans were actually encouraging jews to leave the country)

StashAugustine posted:

(the germans were actually encouraging jews to leave the country)

Troy Queef posted:

https://twitter.com/IjeomaOluo/status/1008844937561948162

the replies are great, if only because she's blocking anyone arguing with her

hackbunny posted:

Troy Queef posted:

https://twitter.com/IjeomaOluo/status/1008844937561948162

the replies are great, if only because she's blocking anyone arguing with her