Updating a few blog and Twitter links on the right sidebar, as I've been remiss lately. I've added three new Twitter links (Emptywheel, Lincoln's Bible, and Noel Casler) for different reasons, but essentially the same reason -- they are consistently fun and interesting reads.
On the blog front, I've updated Booman Tribune to Progress Pond (Martin Longman's new site), which I've been meaning to do for a while. I've dropped Global Guerrillas, as John Robb seems to be writing exclusively on Twitter and Patreon these days. That one may come back at some point, as there is a wealth of archived posts at that site.
And I'm dropping Dave Cohen's Decline of the Empire and Jim Kunstler, more or less for the same reason -- they've lost the thread. Cohen is a bit more lucid, but doesn't post fresh material anymore, preferring instead to repost Tim Pool or whatever confused pseudo-lib culture-con YouTube asshole is peaking at the moment.
Kunstler has essentially found a weird niche these days as Q-adjacent and putatively Trump-skeptical, yet not really, preferring to smirkingly refer to him as the "Golden Golem of Greatness" while endorsing every ridonkulous "deep state" theory swirling in the great Twitter toilet bowl of nonsense. For a while it was amusing, then it became a fine example of rank stupidity, but now it's just old and stupid, much like the aforementioned golem, and so I think it's just time to cut loose this repository of scatterbrained bullshit.
Clusterfuck Nation was one of the very first sites to be linked here, so it wasn't an easy decision. But one has to be careful in how one approaches conspiracy theories, lest they end up as a parody of themselves. No matter how sincere one may be in their unorthodox beliefs, in the case of the "deep state" theory, you have to take the following assumptions as essentially being baked into the theory:
Kunstler and the rest of the "defenders" of this monstrous halfwit would like you to believe something along the lines of "his words are being misconstrued" or that his boorish behavior and utter lack of style, tact, or even basic intelligence have made mountains out of mosquito bites. That is the most pernicious lie of all, but it is crucial to their thesis.
WHAT TRUMP HAS BEEN DOING IS ILLEGAL. Not merely "bad" or "wrong" according to some imaginary set of elitist points of political correctness, not "hurtful" according to some overly sensitive SJW type. It is against the fucking law to do many of the things we know he has done, not just his attempts to conspire with the Russians or shake down the Ukrainians, but the open influence-peddling with the Saudis as well.
He has been doing this sort of thing his entire adult life. If anything, it is a more ludicrous conspiracy to concoct that absolves him of continuing that conduct -- for which he has never been held accountable, and therefore has been given no incentive not to continue -- than simply applying Ockham's trusty razor and observing that it is far more likely that he would simply continue doing the things he has always done, and purge anyone who points out the inconvenient laws.
I am always up for interesting, thoughtful opinions that differ from my own, but are at least based in empirical reality. Kunstler is just rolling around in his parboiled nonsense, ignoring the myriad obvious factors that would undermine such fevered declarations. And his commenters are just an addled swamp of Q-tards peddling the same or worse. Again, it's not that your government hasn't been up to some nefarious shit, whether the imperial custodian of the moment happens to be Saint Barry or Fat Donnie or whoever. But again, Trump has never met a camera he didn't want to hump endlessly, has exhibited this behavior and temperament his entire life, and never made any bones about it. So you literally have to believe that he (for some unknowable reason) did a one-eighty on those lifelong tendencies, but was still the victim of this impossibly coordinated and drawn-out conspiracy, initiated by disgruntled foreign policy weasels. It makes 9-11 trutherism sound utterly rational and reasonable.
And I think at this stage, where you have Trump blithely talking about executing whistleblowers and imprisoning Congressional representatives and journalists who dare to pursue an investigation of this entirely plausible narrative, the endorsement of people like Kunstler for the baroque, unworkable conspiracy theory becomes downright irresponsible. Trump is openly betraying and undermining the USA's foreign policy interests, as well as subverting the Constitution, and Kunstler and his commenters think it's all a lark.
Maybe if we all did this to the mainstream media outlets that, for example, continue to have chronic liars on to poison the narrative and pollute the waters of discourse, for nothing more than a few bucks on the back end as recompense for selling their country down the river, we might get somewhere on this.
On the blog front, I've updated Booman Tribune to Progress Pond (Martin Longman's new site), which I've been meaning to do for a while. I've dropped Global Guerrillas, as John Robb seems to be writing exclusively on Twitter and Patreon these days. That one may come back at some point, as there is a wealth of archived posts at that site.
And I'm dropping Dave Cohen's Decline of the Empire and Jim Kunstler, more or less for the same reason -- they've lost the thread. Cohen is a bit more lucid, but doesn't post fresh material anymore, preferring instead to repost Tim Pool or whatever confused pseudo-lib culture-con YouTube asshole is peaking at the moment.
Kunstler has essentially found a weird niche these days as Q-adjacent and putatively Trump-skeptical, yet not really, preferring to smirkingly refer to him as the "Golden Golem of Greatness" while endorsing every ridonkulous "deep state" theory swirling in the great Twitter toilet bowl of nonsense. For a while it was amusing, then it became a fine example of rank stupidity, but now it's just old and stupid, much like the aforementioned golem, and so I think it's just time to cut loose this repository of scatterbrained bullshit.
Clusterfuck Nation was one of the very first sites to be linked here, so it wasn't an easy decision. But one has to be careful in how one approaches conspiracy theories, lest they end up as a parody of themselves. No matter how sincere one may be in their unorthodox beliefs, in the case of the "deep state" theory, you have to take the following assumptions as essentially being baked into the theory:
- The entire foreign service apparatus, including the intelligence agencies and diplomatic corps, have actively decided to conspire with each other behind the scenes -- and with certain members of Congress, such as Adam Schiff -- in order to undermine Trump's presidency and "undo" the results of the 2016 election.
- Trump is completely innocent of all of the criminal charges and accusations -- collusion, conspiracy, campaign finance laundering, money laundering, influence peddling, tax evasion, bank fraud, and more -- that have been leveled at him throughout his term.
- We're almost to the 2020 election already, so removing Trump from office would result in Mike Pence (unless he can be implicated as well) becoming a president with an asterisk.
- The FSOs and intel officers that supposedly comprise this nefarious cabal are career service professionals, many of them conservative Republicans, who have served under administrations of both parties with nary a peep.
- The House Democratic leadership has been notoriously slow and reluctant to even initiate an impeachment inquiry, which is where we are at now. They clearly would have preferred not to do it at all, and let the voters sort it out next year. Trump's own words and actions made that increasingly untenable. The record is there for all to see.
- Trump's corruption and lying has mostly been in plain sight -- the mass no-show bookings at his hotels, the multiple lies per day about every possible issue. He doesn't even try to hide it. He admitted multiple times last week that he pushed Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, and then openly doubled down and asked China's leadership to do the same.
Kunstler and the rest of the "defenders" of this monstrous halfwit would like you to believe something along the lines of "his words are being misconstrued" or that his boorish behavior and utter lack of style, tact, or even basic intelligence have made mountains out of mosquito bites. That is the most pernicious lie of all, but it is crucial to their thesis.
WHAT TRUMP HAS BEEN DOING IS ILLEGAL. Not merely "bad" or "wrong" according to some imaginary set of elitist points of political correctness, not "hurtful" according to some overly sensitive SJW type. It is against the fucking law to do many of the things we know he has done, not just his attempts to conspire with the Russians or shake down the Ukrainians, but the open influence-peddling with the Saudis as well.
He has been doing this sort of thing his entire adult life. If anything, it is a more ludicrous conspiracy to concoct that absolves him of continuing that conduct -- for which he has never been held accountable, and therefore has been given no incentive not to continue -- than simply applying Ockham's trusty razor and observing that it is far more likely that he would simply continue doing the things he has always done, and purge anyone who points out the inconvenient laws.
I am always up for interesting, thoughtful opinions that differ from my own, but are at least based in empirical reality. Kunstler is just rolling around in his parboiled nonsense, ignoring the myriad obvious factors that would undermine such fevered declarations. And his commenters are just an addled swamp of Q-tards peddling the same or worse. Again, it's not that your government hasn't been up to some nefarious shit, whether the imperial custodian of the moment happens to be Saint Barry or Fat Donnie or whoever. But again, Trump has never met a camera he didn't want to hump endlessly, has exhibited this behavior and temperament his entire life, and never made any bones about it. So you literally have to believe that he (for some unknowable reason) did a one-eighty on those lifelong tendencies, but was still the victim of this impossibly coordinated and drawn-out conspiracy, initiated by disgruntled foreign policy weasels. It makes 9-11 trutherism sound utterly rational and reasonable.
And I think at this stage, where you have Trump blithely talking about executing whistleblowers and imprisoning Congressional representatives and journalists who dare to pursue an investigation of this entirely plausible narrative, the endorsement of people like Kunstler for the baroque, unworkable conspiracy theory becomes downright irresponsible. Trump is openly betraying and undermining the USA's foreign policy interests, as well as subverting the Constitution, and Kunstler and his commenters think it's all a lark.
Maybe if we all did this to the mainstream media outlets that, for example, continue to have chronic liars on to poison the narrative and pollute the waters of discourse, for nothing more than a few bucks on the back end as recompense for selling their country down the river, we might get somewhere on this.
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