I think this article is a very good assessment of the social dynamic that is really going on in the United States politically. It is not about political philosophy, it is about sociopaths who want power and money vs decent ethical people who want to preserve democracy and foster wellbeing. WE all get to choose which side we are on in November.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) attend a House Oversight Committee hearing related to the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden, on Capitol Hill July 19, 2023 in Washington, DC. Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty
The culture war is not fundamentally between left and right, liberal and conservative, progressive and reactionary, tolerant and intolerant.
Fundamentally it has nothing to do with ideals, values or visions of the future. It’s a fight between decent people and sociopaths.
Psychopaths are congenitally shameless. Born, that way, they are neurologically deaf to the inner nag of empathy.
Sociopaths aren’t born but made. Some are brainwashed but many are not. Many are motivated sociopaths because being one is tempting, satisfying, efficient and effective.
Sociopaths learn how to be shameless. We underestimate the appeal of shamelessness. Shame constrains us. Shamelessness is a liberation. If you learn to be absolutely shameless – even shameless about your shamelessness, you grant yourself the ultimate dream come true, a reliable feeling of perfect freedom and perfect invincibility, as though you can do anything and whatever you do beats all. […]
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Staff Writer - The New Yorker
Stephan:
It is my view that Biden should retire on his laurels which are many, but not the relevant point. This election is not about his ego or his family’s egos; it is about whether the United States remains a democracy. Biden’s answer to George Stephanopoulos’ question about how, given what he knows will happen if criminal Trump wins, he will feel if he loses — I’ll feel I did my best — is appallingly egotistical, and grossly inappropriate and inadequate at this juncture of our nation’s history. If Trump is not defeated, and the MAGAt Party (formerly the Republican Party) is not overwhelmingly defeated in both the House and the Senate, given the complete politicization and corruption of the Supreme Court, the country we have grown up in and known all our lives is going to disappear.
President Biden and his wifeCredit: The New Yorker
Families have long memories. Longer than those of White House correspondents, or communications directors, or cable-news producers. Following Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week, as a loud chorus of pundits and donors—and a few elected Democrats—called for the President to end his reëlection campaign, Biden’s family members have emerged as his most important and perhaps final defenders, drawing on resentments and defenses that extend deep into the President’s personal history.
Speaking with the Times this week, a former adviser to First Lady Jill Biden, Michael LaRosa, focussed on the end of Joe Biden’s 1988 Presidential campaign, which Biden abandoned under pressure after it was revealed he had plagiarized a speech from Neil Kinnock, the leader of the U.K. Labour Party, about his personal experience of class inequities. “In 1987, she saw him be forced out by the press, pundits and polls, and it really was a scarring experience for both of them,” LaRosa said. […]
If convicted felon and rapist Trump wins the election you may be sure that the United States will be woefully and miserably unprepared for climate change. Criminal Trump is not smart enough to understand the realities of climate change, and he has whored himself to the carbon industries to get them to give his campaign millions of dollars. If he becomes President again millions of Americans will face complete disruption of their lives misery and death.
The convicted former president speaks at Greenbrier Farms in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 28. Credit: Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot/ZUMA
When Donald Trumpembarked upon a lengthy complaint at a recent rally about how long it takes to wash his “beautiful luxuriant hair” due to his shower’s low water pressure, he highlighted the expanding assault he and Republicans are launching against even the most obscure environmental policies—a push that’s starting to influence voters.
In his bid to return to the White House, Trump has branded Joe Biden’s attempt to advance electric cars in the US “lunacy,” claiming such vehicles do not work in the cold and that their supporters should “rot in hell.” He’s called offshore wind turbines “horrible,” falsely linking them to the death of whales, while promising to scrap incentives for both wind and electric cars.
But the former US president and convicted felon, who has openly solicited donations from oil and gas executives in order to follow industry-friendly priorities if re-elected, has also spearheaded a much broader attack on a range of mundane […]
We are watching our nation’s laws be taken apart by the christofascists who control the Supreme Court. This is the only article in the general media I have seen that touches on this, but the professional legal media is aflame with what this political cabal is doing to our justice system. Nothing but a strong Democratic majority in the Senate is going to be able to stop this.
The corrupt christofascist majority dismantling the U.S. justice system. Credit: CNN
The Supreme Court isn’t making it easy to be a law professor these days.
After overturning the 40-year-old Chevron deference last week, the justices threw law curricula for another major loop on Monday with their earth-shaking ruling on presidential immunity — all this just two years after Roe v. Wade was struck down after 50 years on the books.
Law school professors have been meeting to discuss the forthcoming changes to their courses, trying to get their heads around the new legal landscape the conservative-leaning court is creating.
“Administrative law goes through some periods where change is glacial, if at all, and other periods when it’s extremely rapid. The period around the New Deal is a very rapid change, the Nixon administration and immediately afterwards was a period of rapid change and this is now a period of very rapid change,” said David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law. “So if you were to compare a syllabus from three years ago, four years ago, with one from next year, I think you’d see […]
Here is some good news about the advancement of offshore wind, and evidence that the lies promoted by the petroleum industries are nothing more than their usual lies to stop the transition out of the carbon era. Wind power is not harming whales.
The pace of the US offshore wind industry is picking up, despite years of opposition fueled by fossil energy interests. Credit: CleanTechnica
The US offshore wind industry has faced some choppy waters in past years, including demonstrably false accusations of whale-killing and the impact of a maritime law dating back to 1920. Nevertheless, the clouds are clearing. Somewhat ironically, much of the new offshore activity is taking place hard by former President Trump’s old stomping grounds, in the waters of New York and New Jersey.
Offshore Wind Turbines Are Not Killing All Your Whales
The false whale-killing accusations have featured prominently in the activities of local anti-wind groups in New Jersey, though reporters and other observers note that out-of-state fossil energy stakeholders are also at work, including a web of activity supported by the Delaware-based organization Caesar Rodney Institute.
In February of 2023, for example, the news and analysis organization Governing: The Future of States and Localities observed that some of the local opposition groups were “funded by pro-fossil fuel organizations.” Governing pointed out that the group Protect Our Coast New Jersey “solicits donations […]
