You can choose whatever adjective you like, it's not important. My point is that he was all those things I listed, and given that précis it's curious who we continue to sanction as a "decent person" this far into the 21st century.

Scruton's career provided gravitas to hate speech and dehumanization via a veneer of elegant writing and highfalutin rhetoric in order to frame and legitimate Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc. as profound intellectual positions. They are not.

Roger Scruton once said that it was an "impossible proposition" to think that a Muslim "from the hinterlands of Asia" could produce a child loyal to a secular European state. The guy was a rabid islamophobic, anti-semite (I've cover this in another thread), sexist, and homophobe. Ah, but he wrote so elegantly!!!

yeah RIP a guy who characterized Syrian refugees in Hungary as a "sudden invasion of huge tribes of Muslims from the middle east", truly a great loss for decency

One person spoke to all the white people, explaining how it's difficult to acknowledge that their existence as a white person was harmful to others, — Marchesk

Guaranteed that no one who is part of a diversity training program said this

At least the Bush administration attempted (and succeeded) to manufacture consent. The Trump administration thought they could pull the trigger and that the cart would lead the horse.

"Consider the woman who plays with her clitoris during the act of coition. Such a person affronts her lover with the obscene display of her body, and, in perceiving her thus, the lover perceives his own irrelevance. She becomes disgusting to him, and his desire may be extinguished. The woman’s desire is satisfied at the expense of her lover’s, and no real union can be achieved between them"

Damn RIP a true conservative intellectual.

Just vote for Bernie, thanks

If Iran's response to Soleimani and Trump's follow up speech is any indication, there shouldn't be any further escalation. Fortunately, Trump doesn't have the national support that Bush had for Iraq. Only 39% approve of Trump's actions in Iran, whereas in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, up to 60% of the US population were in support.

added that Soleimani and his Quds Force “were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.” — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Killing military personal who are in occupying countries is hardly befitting of the term "terrorist". Seems that the appellation is simply being used to denote any and all perceived enemies of the US. Additionally, as has been noted, Soleimani was a prominent government official. Should the US consider Putin a terrorist and assassinate him? Kim Jong Un? Maduro? Xi Jinping?

This is hilarious

1. tRUMP (aka "Individual-1" "Putin's Bitch" "Agent Orange" "M.oscow A.sset G.overning A.merica" "SCROTUS" ...)
3. Bush 43 (aka "Dubya" "Shrub") — 180 Proof

I would say, minimally, Bush's War in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has lead to the death of most likely around 400,000 people in addition to around 7,000 Americans (while also helping to birth and enable ISIS), is worse than Trump (although he's doing his best to surpass him!)

Misspoke, meant enlist, but the point remains the same

I think it's pretty sad that NOS4A2 is too old for a draft because imagine being that stupid and jingoistic and being over 30, rather than just some 14 year old that would hopefully grow out of it.

ah that's always convenient

Are you going to enlist

Let's see in 2019 I read:

Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Non-Fiction by Brian Dillion
The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative by Mark Fisher
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Crime and Punish by Michel Foucault
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson
Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials by Malcom Harris
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn
From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century by Alex Gourevitch
Capital In the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) by Elizabeth Anderson
White Identity Politics by Ashley Jardina
The Prince by Machiavelli
Grundrisse by Marx
Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon by Marx
Theses on Feuerbach by Marx
The Limits of Capital by David Harvey
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750 by Peter Brown
Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism by Charles Mills
In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown
The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Gibney
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse

One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse

Depends on what month it was, but I was either in my mother's womb or shitting in my crib :monkey:

Likewise. I'd attended a few readings / lectures she'd given in the late 1980s and met her in 1990 at a private dinner given in her honor by William Kennedy (I crashed that party as Hayden Carruth's last minute wingman (HC was invited)), which, for me, had turned out to be an incredible evening, especially Ms. Morrison, who was by turns easily charming & brilliant, down home funny & regal. — 180 Proof

Excellent, very jealous, although I doubt you want to know where I was in 1990 :razz:

Origin of Capitalism so good!

Gravity is a concept and doesn't decide anything. But things fall down. — unenlightened

Not at all analogous to a social-economic concept.

Trump should be convicted, removed, and consequently arrested, but in actuality he will acquitted and most likely not arrested even after leaving office.

Article 1: Abuse of Power just passed the House

No doubt true, but still worth thinking about. — tim wood

Of course it's worth thinking about, as I said the solution should be collective ownership. My issue is it's exigency, which I think is clearly overblown.

My candidate for 'the biggest threat to labor' is customary or state regulated denial of easy / universal access to (a) clean water; (b) safe, effective, family planning; & (c) quality education of females of all ages. Y'know, because - Ignorance breeds surplus. Sickness breeds surplus. Poverty breeds surplus. But 'surplus people' are only a symptom (pace Malthus), like 'automation' (pace Harari) which compounds it, and not the problem: malign neglect ... abetted by the scale & complexities of technocapital societies. — 180 Proof

You are of course correct, I meant the biggest threat to labor specifically in terms of occupational displacement, rather than existential.

An UBI is not as good as truly distributed ownership, but it's certainly better than the status quo — Pfhorrest

Exactly, so as @180 Proof stated, let's make a truly collective ownership our goal, rather than cede to a limited technocratic political imagination via the restrictive TINA nihilism that Capital demands.

Really? Is it not decided by the invisible hand? If the robot is cheaper, the robot takes the job. And if the the capitalist has scruples he goes out of business. — unenlightened

The Invisible Hand is a concept. It doesn't decide anything. It may be true that Capital tends towards greater production at cheaper cost, but this isn't, strictly speaking, a law by any means. Certainly a number of factors,social, technical, play into deciding whether or not to replace workers with some form of automation, often a huge undertaking made with great risk. Ultimately, automation shouldn't be considered fatalistic lest we forgo our agency and our ability to demand and determine what kind of society we want.

It’s complete speculation — NOS4A2

Meanwhile the GOP is actually purging voters

This type of eschatological talk around automation is mostly a boogeyman; a two hundred year old cudgel used to threaten labor to put it in it's place when it get too rowdy against capital. The biggest threat for labor within developed and developing economies continues to be free trade, not automation. Further, note how the author of the article writes as if automation is inevitable, as if implementing new innovations that replace the workforce just happen, as oppose to being a concerted choice by the owners of a company. Automation is a decision. Not fate.

Besides which, an economy powered by automation is an ideal for socialists; where productive forces replace human labor enabling humanity to decrease the need to work allowing us to pursue whatever ends we choose. This is only made possible, however, if value created by automation is reinvested back into society by collective ownership, contra private hands. Others, like Andrew Yang, lacking political imagination because they've drank the nihilistic kool-aid of neoliberalism, instead argue not for collective ownership but UBI (general at the expense of a welfare state and social services), further formalizing economic power in fewer hands, producing greater wealth inequality, and placing people in greater economic precarity.

100% agree

Maw is convinced the support for impeachment with voters is such that if the republicans acquit it will cost them dearly in the election, leading to an extensive win for the Democrats. I'm not so sure because Trump's character was quite clear during the previous election and it didn't make a difference. — Benkei

I don't know about an "extensive win" for the Democrats, but it's not clear to me how a GOP controlled Senate acquitting Trump of impeachment encourages anyone to vote for Trump who wouldn't have otherwise. Besides, the 2018 midterms was a clear Democratic refutation of Trump: the House's biggest seat swing since the early 70s.

It's the Boomer Death Drive

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James

Toni Morrison — 180 Proof

I met her several years ago she was very lovely.

Do we have a deficit of empathy? — Brett

Jordan Peterson once said that Feminist defend Islam because of an unconscious desire to be subjugated, so maybe this guys sucks and no one should care what happens to him

haha this sucks ass

"Socialism is the people! If you afraid of socialism, you afraid of yourself." - Fred Hampton

who gives a shit

• The Color of Money, Mehrsa Baradaran — 180 Proof

Heard wonderful things about this

Power

You still haven't explained the distinction you are making between the self and individual. — Harry Hindu

That's because I never made such as distinction, or said that we are defined by social interactions. I'm not sure how I can make it more clearly to you. Perhaps the only other analogy I can offer is that an individual comes to understand and speak a language through socialization, yet what she says isn't directed by some abstract societal force, or whatever concept you have in mind. She has agency to say what she ever she wants to say.

ok but please tell fishfry to do better.

Too bad you still haven't heard it. — fishfry

I literally commented about it over a year ago here. And 6 months ago we had this exact same conversation here, where even then I told you we had had this conversation before and that you routinely forget and bring it up, honestly are you OK? Do you have memory problems?

Today AOC voted to renew the PATRIOT act. [It was cynically buried in a larger appropriations bill]. So goes what passes for the left in this country. — fishfry

God damn, AOC, Ilhan and Tlaib voted against the bill, you are an embarrassment. Just log off and go away, please.

If the self is socially constructed, then how can you say that the individual has autonomy? What relationship does the constructed self have with the individual self? It seems to me that if what you are saying is true, then the constructed self would dictate the actions of the individual. — Harry Hindu

How did you come to understand and speak language? Behavioral norms? Ideology? Concepts? Where did you get food and water? How did you form an identity or character? Personality? Through a complete lack of social interactivity? With an absolute deprivation of other people? Did you pull your Self up like Baron Munchausen? No, the development of who you are is made possible only by being a social and natal being. This does not entail that your individual actions are dictated by some background collective as if you were a member of the Borg. I could digress into how socialization, material opportunities and lack thereof affect an individual, their character and actions, but that's unnecessary.