So, in the car again, NPR again; sorry, I just can’t do podcasts. Besides, NPR offers the morbid fascination of a five-car pile-up on I-95. It’s the consummate expression of the characteristic mental illness of my people, which is to say to the North American professional-managerial caste.
Of course it was all about the feckin Ukraine. They brought on — as an “expert” — a chick who used to be Zelensky’s media flack. Not any more, probably an interesting backstairs backstabbing story there. But she was staying with the story line, you know, the brave bold Ukies beating back the Russian bear’s gory claws, et cetera.
Her main schtick was Zelensky’s enlightened HR policies — she was a young fresh-faced woman, with reasonably good English, very Euro-oriented, and he picked her over all the old Ukie men! Why, say no more! The triumph of diversitarian meritocracy.
Of course about half the segment, apart from the chick’s resume, and fluffing her recent book, was devoted to unsourced, unexamined, third-hand atrocity stories. No skepticism shown by NPR; the former flack’s tale taken as Gospel. No “other side” mentioned, needless to say. The other side’s story is ridiculous a priori.
NPR’s audience eat this rancid shit up and beg for second helpings. Warm and fragrant from the steam table.
Oh, and China is pretty bad too. I recently had dinner with an old friend who assured me that tiktok was a sinister Chinese plot to brainwash the US public. And I’m not talking here about some Carl Hiaasen Yahoo; this is an intelligent, well-educated person — well-educated by US standards, anyway — with a fairly important job in the indoctrination sector, aka “publishing”.
I’m very glad the subject of Russia didn’t come up. My friend is Jewish — or rather — Jew-ish, as Seinfeld says; never darkens the door of a shul, doesn’t keep kosher, violates Shabbos with gay abandon. But there’s a kind of hereditary antipathy here. Great-grandpa’s tales, reinforced by the propaganda system.
Reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
don’t tell NPR, but turning Ukraine into Israel is something a lot of Nazis fully support. i believe Terry Gross recently insisted that we simplify matters by referring to Russians as “commies”.
there’ll be some fun, before the ship sinks, in watching the crack up well before we hit the iceberg. Tucker Carlson has suddenly discovered that the USG might sabotage a pipeline. The implication of that fact is still VOTE MAGA but there it is. Mussolini’s daughter bitching about French imperialism in Africa is sweet, isn’t it? Jordan Petersen discovered that Russia is not really our enemy. In fact, they embody all the manliness and patriotism and muscularity and gender non-confusion and heroism and nationalism and weapons advances that made America great, so we need to harvest that national greatness and really real exceptionalism and spirit of patriotic fervor for the really real enemy: Commie China, the evil awful godless commie Chinese who are better capitalists and virologists then we are. the real enemy. use Russia to defeat China, instead of using Ukraine to defeat Russia. for Jesus and Western Civ. and it doesn’t hurt that Russians look like us. The idea that we should have focused on China (yes, “we”) will be used to explain the inevitable ruling class failure in Russia, inevitable for forces that can’t defeat the poorest country on the planet, despite all the heroin and DU they dumped everywhere.
who would have guessed that Biden’s ICE was in on the Desantis/Abbott immigrant nightmare? or that the donkeys are funding the Trump campaign? or that the latest iteration of the war on civilization requires the biggest tax cuts for the ruling class in the history of ever? or wealth growth among the 1% during a pandemic “lockdown” (no lockdown for cows or cars, right)?
“there’s two kinds of people, those with loaded guns and those that dig…” he who sits in the director’s chair laughs and demands a suitable score for the scene.