The Trump Tapes make the Watergate Tapes seem like Polyanna. It’s not like a 10x or a 100x — it’s like a 1000x Watergate. Here is the full audio of the President of the United States essentially verbally abusing GA SecState Brad Raffensperger for over an hour on Saturday, January 2: Trump Tapes: phone call […]
Authoritarian Personality Traits: Deference to a higher power
Sociologist Theodor Adorno created the “F scale” in a 1950 seminal work entitled The Authoritarian Personality, in order to rank the level of predilection to fascism in an individual, which became desirable both during and shortly after World War II. According to Adorno and his cohort, the defining authoritarian personality traits of the Platonic fascist […]
Cult of Personality vs. the Rule of Law
In contrast to the cult of personality, the rule of law is a moral force. It’s an ethical tour de force that’s been hard-fought and won in democracies around the world beginning with the French Revolution. And it’s still going on today — everywhere citizens are struggling to achieve political power and equality. When justice […]
Extremism
- Uncategorized
Extremism is a mentality; a black and white worldview. It’s a willingness to go too far to meet one’s objectives — to violate moral boundaries in pursuit of one’s aims. A political extremist is an individual or group adhering to ideologies that are far removed from the mainstream beliefs of society. These ideologies often promote […]
Design guru Don Norman’s shortlist of everything wrong with the internet
When usability pioneers have All the Feels about the nature of our creeping technological dystopia, how we got here, and what we might need to do to right the ship, it’s wise to pay attention. Don Norman’s preaching resonated with my choir, and they’ve asked me to sing a summary song of our people in […]
Optimism and the Condorcet jury theorem
Is it possible the Condorcet jury theorem provides not just a mathematical basis for democracy and the justice system, but a model predictor of one’s political persuasion as well? If you’re an optimist, you have no trouble believing that p > 1/2. You give people the benefit of the doubt that they will try their […]
Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey: Welfare queens
Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey are a particularly toxic breed of billionaire welfare queen, who outwardly revile government with every chance they get while having both sucked at its teat to make their fortunes, and currently making a luxe living on taxpayer largesse. Thiel’s Paypal and Facebook-induced riches rode the coattails of the DARPA-created internet, […]
Women in Congress: Factoids
Republicans do not like to elect women in Congress. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Stats of note: Women need more representation across the board! Let’s do this, America. P.S. If you have any need for a Slack bot that returns data on sitting Congresspeople, look no further! You can install this bot in Slack […]
My soul is going to starve
Without the doing of some thing brand inappropriate Something unmonetizable Unclickable Untraceable Untradeable Β | If i don’t rend the cloth of this Culture Fit soon i will die Like the coral Like two-thirds of the wild Like the humans on the edge of a rising shoreline In a ceaseless world With iceless poles And […]
Republicans do not live up to their ideals of small government (and also, we need Keynesianism right now)
Regardless of whether or not you agree that slashing spending, fiscal austerity, balanced budgets, and a low federal deficit are good ideas, the fact remains that the Republican Party does not generally live up to its aims of expense reduction and small government. As hard as it is to believe, there are still some people […]