Kaspar Hauser

Speaking of post-truth tendencies, I think this quote speaks to a lot of we're hearing from the Alt Right:
 
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean Paul-Sartre

Speaking of post-truth tendencies, I think this quote speaks to a lot of we're hearing from the Alt Right:
 
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean Paul-Sartre

Speaking of post-truth tendencies, I think this quote speaks to a lot of we're hearing from the Alt Right:
 
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean Paul-Sartre

Speaking of post-truth tendencies, I think this quote speaks to a lot of we're hearing from the Alt Right:
 
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean Paul-Sartre

It's truly appalling how fast some (perhaps many) people seem to have accepted the idea of a  'post-truth society' as being 'just the way things are'.
 
It. Is. Not. OK.

With an occasional David Lynch scene in a Russian hotel room.

I think this monologue by Hugh Laurie's character from the criminally underappreciated movie Tomorrowland says it better.  (Bolding is mine)
 
Nix: "Let's imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to... the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because, what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
 
"But, how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn't fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won't take the hint! In every moment there's the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up! That's not the monitor's fault. That's yours."
 
Now I think the latest Star Trek movies have been generally more positive than most SF offerings of late, much in keeping with the original series.  (The opening scene of Yorktown station in Star Trek: Beyond was, to my mind, a brilliant example of the idealized future Roddenberry had in mind for Star Trek, and reminded me a great deal of Tomorrowland.)  But to anyone who was paying attention, the villains of the three movies--Nero, Khan, Krall--were all warmongers  And the big question of Star Trek: Into Darkness was--do we go out and explore the galaxy, or wage war upon it?  The movies--and Star Trek in general--favor the former answer.  But there are more than a few people in science fiction fandom who favor the latter.
 
And there are people in real life who would favor the latter answer with regards to the world.  They are the ones, I think, who voted for Donald Trump, and support his plan to massively increase defense spending at the expense of all other government services.  As I said in my post in this thread immediately following the election, their idea of when America was last great was during and after World War II, when we had just defeated the Axis and were everyone's heroes--more or less.  That is what they want to re-create in this country--but what they fail to understand, I think, is what history teaches us about what ultimately happens to warmongers.
 
Those are my thoughts on the subject--take them as you will.

Here's a good piece on Trump's use of "humiliation porn" as both a candidate and a president, and how the blowback could erode part of his base:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/20/humiliation-porn-trumps-gift-to-his-faithful-and-now-the-blowback/
 
The brutal truth is that humiliated people want to humiliate others in order to temporarily relieve their own feelings of shame.  As one of Altemeyer's "social dominators", Trump instinctively gets that and uses it perfectly.
 
Social dominators tend to have pronounced sociopathic traits. In his book, "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic," Psychiatrist James Gilligan argues that contrary to popular opinion, sociopaths are not shameless; in fact, they experience almost nothing but shame. Gilligan believes that, when taken to its extreme, shame shuts down all emotional experiences except, perhaps, for rage. Gilligan worked in a maximum-security penitentiary for many years, counseling people imprisoned for monstrous acts of violence. The prisoners he worked with consistently described themselves as the "living dead", referring to their inability to feel anything besides anger. They backed up these assertions with horrific acts of cruelty and self-mutilation. How could they do such things, Gilligan asks, unless they were in some way emotionally numbed? Each of these prisoners had suffered profound emotional or physical abuse in childhood, and each responded by going on the offensive.

Gilligan uses the prison system to illustrate the strategic use of shame in capitalist societies, drawing attention to the role that institutionalized rape plays in modern penitentiaries. He argues that the purpose of the digital anal rape euphemistically referred to as a "cavity search" isn't really to find concealed drugs, but rather to humiliate prisoners into submission. He also writes that guards turn a blind eye to prisoner-on-prisoner rape because, by dividing prisoners into rapists and rape victims, the prisoners' rage is redirected away from the guards and towards one other. The cost of this strategy is borne entirely by the prison population, whose already compromised humanity is systematically ravaged.

Gilligan believes that the prison system apes the class structure of capitalist society. Just as the guards break the collective strength of the prisoner population by encouraging the stronger prisoners to humiliate and oppress the weaker, so the upper classes preserve their social dominance by encouraging the middle classes to humiliate and oppress the lower classes. The guards and the upper classes both use shame as a weapon in the battle to control their social environment. The victims of prison rape, like the lower classes, are psychologically damaged by the excessive shame they're forced to bear. Relative to other classes, their capacity for positive emotion is greatly impaired, and their risk of developing psychological disorders is dramatically heightened. These problems limit their individual and collective power to fight for social change.

Members of the middle class are terrified of losing their class status and descending into the underclass not only because of the material hardships they would face, but also because of the extreme humiliation accompanying the plunge. People who have learned how to despise the underclass will despise themselves if they fall into it. By condemning vast numbers of people to the economic underclass, economic catastrophes like the ongoing fallout from 2008/2009 create epidemics of shame.

Shame fertilizes hatred. We hate in others what we hate in ourselves, and what we hate in ourselves are usually the emotional needs we’ve psychologically repressed. Our sexual, intellectual, and social maturation depends upon our ability to satisfy those needs. We feel ashamed when our needs go unmet for great lengths of time, which is a common experience among the working class. Such unrelenting shame can make our needs seem like threats to our peace of mind, prompting us to drive them from our conscious awareness. The more we repress our needs, the more our emotional development is stifled, the more frustrated and angry we feel, and the more vengeful our desires become. This, in turn, compels us to repress our needs all the more.

Unacknowledged needs don't disappear. Instead, they re-assert themselves by focusing our attention upon people and practices that remind us of them. These reminders rub salt into our wounds, and so we’re tempted to attack them. Unacknowledged emotional pain doesn't disappear, either; instead, it re-asserts itself at the edge of our awareness, shaping our perceptions. The filth we recoil from in the world around us is often the gore spilling from the wounds we've inflicted upon ourselves. The more mutilated we become, the more loathsomely mangled the world seems to be, and the more we desire its destruction. Psychological repression thereby fuels political violence and oppression.

By leaving people chronically frightened and ashamed, and by encouraging misogyny and contempt for weakness, the psychological trauma inflicted by unrestrained capitalism makes us more susceptible to right-wing authoritarianism and manipulation by people like Trump.  The man has accessed the stockpiles of self-loathing we've been building up in the American underclass and turned it against his enemies--the "elites" in government, the media, and academia whose security, confidence, wealth, and education represent everything his supporters have been denied. 
 
​Again, reason alone won't dent his supporters' faith in the man.  The pain goes way, way too deep for that.

IN-SEMINATE! IN-SEMINATE!

IN-SEMINATE! IN-SEMINATE!

IN-SEMINATE! IN-SEMINATE!

I must respectfully disagree with you in part. The only thing that ever improved the human condition, is compassion for the condition of our fellow humans leading to attempts to improve it. Science motivated by compassion has led to great advances in education, medicine, nutrition, and more. Science motivated by our baser impulses has led to environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation, rampant global warming, and more. There's no inherent ethical dimension to technology, and no guarantee that the benefits of technology will trickle down to the disenfranchised. In much of the world we see the opposite happening.

It's hard to anticipate the changes technology will bring to society in the future. Our modern Western civilization is pursuing technological innovation and refinement as though those were both inevitable and inherently good, rarely even attempting to anticipate what they'll do to our society and even mentality. We're conducting a massive experiment on our descendants with no clear purpose or desired outcome.
 
Riding a runaway train downhill, by the time you see a wall on the tracks it's usually too late to hit the brakes.

Here's a good piece on Trump's use of "humiliation porn" as both a candidate and a president, and how the blowback could erode part of his base:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/20/humiliation-porn-trumps-gift-to-his-faithful-and-now-the-blowback/
 
The brutal truth is that humiliated people want to humiliate others in order to temporarily relieve their own feelings of shame.  As one of Altemeyer's "social dominators", Trump instinctively gets that and uses it perfectly.
 
Social dominators tend to have pronounced sociopathic traits. In his book, "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic," Psychiatrist James Gilligan argues that contrary to popular opinion, sociopaths are not shameless; in fact, they experience almost nothing but shame. Gilligan believes that, when taken to its extreme, shame shuts down all emotional experiences except, perhaps, for rage. Gilligan worked in a maximum-security penitentiary for many years, counseling people imprisoned for monstrous acts of violence. The prisoners he worked with consistently described themselves as the "living dead", referring to their inability to feel anything besides anger. They backed up these assertions with horrific acts of cruelty and self-mutilation. How could they do such things, Gilligan asks, unless they were in some way emotionally numbed? Each of these prisoners had suffered profound emotional or physical abuse in childhood, and each responded by going on the offensive.

Gilligan uses the prison system to illustrate the strategic use of shame in capitalist societies, drawing attention to the role that institutionalized rape plays in modern penitentiaries. He argues that the purpose of the digital anal rape euphemistically referred to as a "cavity search" isn't really to find concealed drugs, but rather to humiliate prisoners into submission. He also writes that guards turn a blind eye to prisoner-on-prisoner rape because, by dividing prisoners into rapists and rape victims, the prisoners' rage is redirected away from the guards and towards one other. The cost of this strategy is borne entirely by the prison population, whose already compromised humanity is systematically ravaged.

Gilligan believes that the prison system apes the class structure of capitalist society. Just as the guards break the collective strength of the prisoner population by encouraging the stronger prisoners to humiliate and oppress the weaker, so the upper classes preserve their social dominance by encouraging the middle classes to humiliate and oppress the lower classes. The guards and the upper classes both use shame as a weapon in the battle to control their social environment. The victims of prison rape, like the lower classes, are psychologically damaged by the excessive shame they're forced to bear. Relative to other classes, their capacity for positive emotion is greatly impaired, and their risk of developing psychological disorders is dramatically heightened. These problems limit their individual and collective power to fight for social change.

Members of the middle class are terrified of losing their class status and descending into the underclass not only because of the material hardships they would face, but also because of the extreme humiliation accompanying the plunge. People who have learned how to despise the underclass will despise themselves if they fall into it. By condemning vast numbers of people to the economic underclass, economic catastrophes like the ongoing fallout from 2008/2009 create epidemics of shame.

Shame fertilizes hatred. We hate in others what we hate in ourselves, and what we hate in ourselves are usually the emotional needs we’ve psychologically repressed. Our sexual, intellectual, and social maturation depends upon our ability to satisfy those needs. We feel ashamed when our needs go unmet for great lengths of time, which is a common experience among the working class. Such unrelenting shame can make our needs seem like threats to our peace of mind, prompting us to drive them from our conscious awareness. The more we repress our needs, the more our emotional development is stifled, the more frustrated and angry we feel, and the more vengeful our desires become. This, in turn, compels us to repress our needs all the more.

Unacknowledged needs don't disappear. Instead, they re-assert themselves by focusing our attention upon people and practices that remind us of them. These reminders rub salt into our wounds, and so we’re tempted to attack them. Unacknowledged emotional pain doesn't disappear, either; instead, it re-asserts itself at the edge of our awareness, shaping our perceptions. The filth we recoil from in the world around us is often the gore spilling from the wounds we've inflicted upon ourselves. The more mutilated we become, the more loathsomely mangled the world seems to be, and the more we desire its destruction. Psychological repression thereby fuels political violence and oppression.

By leaving people chronically frightened and ashamed, and by encouraging misogyny and contempt for weakness, the psychological trauma inflicted by unrestrained capitalism makes us more susceptible to right-wing authoritarianism and manipulation by people like Trump.  The man has accessed the stockpiles of self-loathing we've been building up in the American underclass and turned it against his enemies--the "elites" in government, the media, and academia whose security, confidence, wealth, and education represent everything his supporters have been denied. 
 
​Again, reason alone won't dent his supporters' faith in the man.  The pain goes way, way too deep for that.

I'll just tell you what I am told when I have insomnia.
 
"Why don't you just go to sleep"
 
Doesn't help you either huh  

I'll just leave this here. Came across it today on the Internet and it was a good reminder.

I think the last few weeks have put the last nails in the coffin of the theory that Trump actually is trolling everyone else. He's responding like he's been trolled at every turn. The idea that he is brilliantly distracting everyone from his main goals is entirely at odds with the fact that almost all his goals have faced trouble from both sides of the fence, and that he spends a huge amount of his energy on responding to every action, which is exactly what a troll doesn't do.

Between Trump winning the election and Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize, I've half-seriously wondered if we're living in the Matrix and the code has been corrupted. Or the new sysop has a really sick sense of humor.
 
Dean Shomshak

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  
 
For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.
 
On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  
 
For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.
 
On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.

I've often thought that the best metaphor for our social order is methamphetamine addiction. Trump's election has only reinforced the connection.
 
Consider that crystal meth use and industrialization are simply strategies for pursuing unlimited productivity within limited living systems.  The difference is one of scale: whereas crystal meth is meant to increase the productivity of the human brain, industrialization targets the planet’s biosphere.  In both cases, the enhanced productivity is an illusion created by accounting methods that selectively focus on the acceleration of narrow domains while ignoring degeneration in the overall system. 
               
Crystal meth, the demon is a powerful stimulant.  It gives users a burst of euphoria and energy while reducing hunger and fatigue. Besides numbing the pain of the human condition, the drug lets users get more done in a day, bolsters their concentration, and helps them lose weight.  In our highly competitive world, crystal meth promises an edge that’s hard to come by elsewhere.
               
Unfortunately, this edge carries a severe price.  Tolerance develops quickly, so users have to constantly raise the amount they put into their bodies to achieve the desired results.  Prolonged use damages nerve terminals in the dopamine-containing areas of the brain.  This produces anxiety and confusion, as well as psychotic symptoms like paranoia, aggression, delusions, and auditory hallucinations. There’s evidence that the drug can trigger schizophrenia in predisposed individuals, and strokes aren’t uncommon among chronic users.  Wrapped up in crystal meth’s delights, by the time users notice the price they’re paying they’re probably already hooked.
               
The deeper that hook sinks, the more time the addict spends wriggling.  Users find themselves spending all their energy getting their next dose and managing their growing misery.  Their lives fall into disrepair.  They stop learning new skills, and begin losing their old ones.
               
If they give up the drug, they have to go through a period of vicious withdrawal and exhaustion.  The longer they put off this reckoning, the worse the reckoning will be, and there’s no guarantee of a full recovery.  Injuries inflicted by this drug may not heal, and the strength it steals—strength desperately needed by the recovering addict—may never return.
               
In trying to escape their limitations, these addicts soar briefly before plunging into the abyss.  The higher they fly, the deeper and wider the chasm opens beneath them.
               
The pattern is similar with industrialization.
               
Pre-industrial societies distrust surplus production, and strive to avoid it.  For example, the practice of sacrifice in traditional agrarian societies usually had less to do with winning the favour of wrathful deities than with eliminating the surpluses produced by unusually bountiful harvests.  Potlatch ceremonies served a similar purpose.  By avoiding surpluses, traditional societies taught their members that free lunches simply don’t exist, and that short-term bursts of productivity tempt long-term costs—costs that are often initially hidden from view.
               
In contrast, industrial economies depend upon surplus production.   We take it for granted that our economies need to “grow”—that is, to increase their surplus production each year.  This growth depends on rapidly advancing technologies, expanding markets, highly differentiated labour pools, and feverish consumption.  Each of these requirements increases our collective resemblance to the crystal meth addict.
               
Our dependence on technological development and market expansion encourages us to dig blindly into fragile, finely-tuned ecosystems for the resources needed to feed the engine of consumption.  Just as the energy crystal meth steals from the user’s brain is returned as toxic levels of dopamine, we return industrially processed resources to the planet in the form of ecologically poisonous waste. 
               
Labour differentiation may build our skills in certain areas, but only by reducing the incentive and time needed to develop overall competence.  In the same way that the crystal meth user’s time and effort is lost in service to the drug, ours is lost in service to the industrial economy. We’re just as incompetent and immature in comparison with our pre-industrial counterparts as chronic crystal meth users are in comparison to non-addicts.
               
Finally, our enflamed desires, without which consumerism would collapse, resemble the euphoric delirium of the methamphetamine high.  The delirium’s worst among the wealthy.  Their position in the economic order inflates their egos beyond all measure and lets them enjoy pleasures most of us will never know.  The less-wealthy, from the middle classes down to the most impoverished, vicariously participate in this indulgence through immersion in a torrential stream of media-driven ideology and fantasy.
               
This generates what can only be called a mass psychosis.  To keep our desires boiling, our economy encases us in a media universe designed to exploit our dreams and nightmares, our yearnings and terrors, in increasingly sophisticated ways.  Our infinitely-layered media institutions are like a psychological maze of funhouse mirrors.  We apply much of our ingenuity to enlarging and complicating this maze, ensuring that more and more of us will become lost inside it.  All of us, to one degree or another, are now trapped by our own distorted reflections.
               
Knowledge of these dynamics would threaten our self-esteem.  To keep awareness at bay, we use defence mechanisms familiar to every addict.  Though scientists tell us that we’re responsible for inciting our planet’s sixth mass extinction, that we’re disastrously altering our climate, and that we’re exposed to mounting levels of toxins in our daily environment, we steadfastly deny there’s a problem.  We teach ourselves to dissociate from our emotions and physical sensations, numbing ourselves to the damage our economy’s inflicting. When the world we’ve created becomes too painful to dismiss or ignore, we find scapegoats to project our fear, anger and guilt onto. 
               
We also spread our addiction to other societies, stooping to seduction, corruption, and brute force to get them hooked, and thereby keep them from reminding us that there might be lifestyles healthier than ours.  We turn their gardens into deserts, and their souls into wastelands more barren than even our own.  To feed and defend our addiction, we use our military and economic might in ways that make us the most dangerous pushers in human history.
 
We're electing far right leaders because by now we're all late stage meth-heads.              
​

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  
 
For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.
 
On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  
 
For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.
 
On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  
 
For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.
 
On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  
 
For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.
 
On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.