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We need to flatten the wealth curve for our society to continue to move forward and prosper. The out of balance economic shakedown that has been the status quo for so long needs to change. Paul Street writing for Counterpunch lays out the grim details:
“+ 23. Capitalist Inequality Puts Anti-Science Fascist Lunatics in Power. The savage economic inequalities that are written into the inner logic of capitalism put a pandemic-spreading anti-science lunatic, the demented fascistic oligarch named Donald Trump, atop the world’s most powerful nation. In his useful book How Fascism Works, Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley notes that one of contemporary right-wing nationalist authoritarianism’s key taproots is harsh socioeconomic disparity:
“Ever since Plato and Aristotle wrote on the topic, political theorists have known that democracy cannot flourish on soil poisoned by inequality…the resentments bred by such divisions are tempting targets for demagogues…Dramatic inequality poses a mortal danger to the shared reality required for a healthy liberal democracy…[such] inequality breeds delusions that mask reality, undermining the possibility of joint deliberation to sole society’s divisions (pp.76-77, emphasis added)…Under conditions of stark economic inequality, when the benefits of liberal education, and the exposure to diverse cultures and norms are available only to the wealthy few, liberal tolerance can be smoothly represented as elite privilege. Stark economic inequality creates conditions richly conducive to fascist demagoguery. It is a fantasy to think that liberal democratic norms can flourish under such conditions” (p. 185, emphasis added).
The political culture of pseudo-democratic duplicity and disingenuousness generated by modern capitalist inequality and plutocracy creates space for fascist-style politicians who “appear to be sincere” and “signal authenticity” by “standing for division and conflict without apology. Such a candidate,” Stanley writes, “might openly side with Christians or Muslims and atheists, or native-born [white] Americans over immigrants, or whites over blacks…They might openly and brazenly lie…[and] signal authenticity by openly and explicitly rejecting what are presumed to be sacrosanct political values….Such politicians,” Stanley argues, come off to many jaded voters as “a breath of fresh air in a political culture that seems dominated by real and imagined hypocrisy.” Fascist politicos’ “open rejection of democratic values” is “taken as political bravery, as a signal of authenticity.”
That is no small part of how malevolent far-right politicos – many of them dedicated enemies of science in service to the common good (e.g. the malevolent right-wing narcissist and instinctual fascist Trump and Brazil’s monumentally despicable and ecocidal racist Jair Bolsonaro) – have risen to power at home and abroad. The opening is provided by fake-progressive capitalist neo-“liberals” (in the U.S) and neoliberal social democrats and fake “socialists” (in Europe and elsewhere), whose claims to speak on behalf of the popular majority and democracy are repeatedly discredited by their underlying commitment to dominant capitalist social hierarchies. The demented fascist uber-assholes Trump and Bolsonaro, both of whom have acted to increase COVID-19 deaths in their own nations and thus in the world, are outcomes of capitalism in this and other ways.”
A segment of the left has really lost the plot and gone of the rails. The idea that feelings are more important that material reality, that one should expect others to validate your personal choice and that sex is changeable have all originated from the political wing I used to call my home. It was bullshite like this that made me distance myself from the so called ‘progressives’ because much of their ideology is a regressive, male-centric circus shit shitshow of tragically absurd assertions and baseless presuppositions. Meghan Murphy writes on the Feminism Current about the superciliousness of the woke left:
“Last year, Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard published an article at Vice complaining that his heterosexual male friends didn’t want to sleep with him, writing:
“I’m single this Valentine’s Day, and I feel like shit. I feel undesirable, and I feel powerless to change that. Most of all, I want to know why the guys I crush on, namely cis, straight, male 20-somethings, won’t fuck me.”
When Blanchard discussed this problem with his friends, they tried to ease him into the truth, letting Blanchard know that pestering his male friends about this would only make him feel bad: “They said the guys I like won’t fuck me because they’re straight.” Blanchard wrote this off as “transphobia” — his friends were *gasp* “implying that heterosexuality is male attraction to women,” meaning he didn’t “make the cut.”
Despite Blanchard’s insistence that “desire is fluid,” the categories of “gay” and “straight” exist for a reason: this describes the vast majority of people’s sexual preferences. And there is very little politicizing can do about this.
A hard-to-hear reality I’ve made clear many times is that the crux of transgenderism, for many who identify as trans, is delusion. And that trans identity rests on others — the “woke,” as it were — playing along. When we use preferred pronouns, we participate in this, as we do when we refer to trans-identified males as women, and trans-identified females as male. Many claim this is simply an issue of being kind, respectful, and polite, but, in the end, these lies hurt trans-identified people, as well as the rest of us. The result is a group of males left wondering why, despite being told they are literally women, are not viewed as or treated as literal women. And women are left without rights, boundaries, or the ability to speak the truth.
The woke, I’m sorry to tell you, are liars. This is not a coincidence; it is the basis of their politics.
The answers to the questions asked by the woke are easy. But they pretend there is some long, deep discussion to be had about, as Blanchard puts it, “what it would take for someone to want to fuck me.”
The question is wrong, of course, and intentionally so. And the answer is obvious. If we were to engage with the truth, Blanchard and Violet would be less hurt by the answers. Instead, we’ve decided the lie is what is “nice.”
The time for ‘nice’ is fucking over. Entitled males need to step back and get themselves waaaaay back to their own lane.
I wish people would vote on a rational rather than dogmatic basis. This kind of wonderland level of stupid could have been avoided.
But the kit, Sagan argues, isn’t merely a tool of science — rather, it contains invaluable tools of healthy skepticism that apply just as elegantly, and just as necessarily, to everyday life. By adopting the kit, we can all shield ourselves against clueless guile and deliberate manipulation. Sagan shares nine of these tools:
- Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
- Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
- Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
- Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
- Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
- Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
- If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
- Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
- Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
Here in Alberta I am really enjoying our neoconservative UCP government. They replaced a government that sough to balance economic investment and diversification with support of the public good. The UCP essentially tore up that balanced economic plan and went ‘all-in’ on ramping up the Oil & Gas industry and making building pipelines a major campaign promise.
The UCP budget forcast included oil prices to be well north of $50 a barrel. And here we are speculating that the current oil prices (April/May 2020) may hi the (negative)-40 dollars per barrel figure.
Yep, they were elected on the premise of killing the deficit and now are forecast to run some of the largest deficits in Alberta’s history. But this is nothing new for Alberta under conservative rule. Allegiance to the large business sector and Oil & Gas has always been a fixture. The people of Alberta and the public services they need have always come a distant 10th.
So, the price of Oil has now cratered and is tunneling downward toward the core. What next dear UCP?
“Alberta’s oilpatch history is full of ups and downs, dating back to the province’s first big oil rush more than 100 years ago near Turner Valley. But who would have thought oil would one day be worth less than $0?
On Monday, the price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the North American benchmark, fell more than $50 to close at negative $37.63 US.
“It’s certainly not something I ever thought I would witness,” said Matt Murphy, a Calgary-based equity research analyst with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.
“I won’t wager a guess how it may trade [Tuesday]. Could it go worse than negative $40? I don’t know,” he said.
Oil companies in Western Canada and offshore Newfoundland were already drastically reducing costs, slashing payroll and pulling back on oil production in recent weeks with commodity prices hitting multi-year lows. Now, the cuts are being accelerated further with Husky Energy and Crescent Point Energy both on Monday cutting spending more than previously announced.
It was a crazy day on the markets.WTI prices swung wildly as oil traders began to panic as time runs out to get rid of oil contracts for May. The price of oil is determined by investments known as futures contracts, which are agreements to buy and sell a certain amount of oil at a certain time in the future. Typically, the contracts are bought and sold countless times before the oil is actually delivered to the final buyer.
But the May contracts are set to finalize on Tuesday, meaning anyone left holding one will have to physically receive the oil — and storage options are filling up, especially in the U.S. Midwest. No one wants to be stuck with the oil and traders were willing to take heavy losses to ditch the contracts before they come due.”
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