12095

This is a terrific piece on the pure hypocrisy of good old boy Joe Kennedy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/22/our-foghorn-leghorn-republican-senator-little-resembles-his-former-democratic-self-louisiana-we-know-type/

We recall the brainy graduate of Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia Law School and Oxford University’s Magdalen College; the relatively progressive Democrat who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004; the man who, despite his 2007 party switch, served capably as state treasurer from 2000 to 2017; the official who, although in the same Republican Party as then-Gov. Bobby Jindal, was a fierce critic of Jindal’s reckless fiscal policies.

He was no Bernie Sanders liberal, but he was the progressive Democrat in the race — so much so that some prominent Black leaders, including our congressional delegation’s most liberal member, Rep. William J. Jefferson of New Orleans, backed him.

But what stood out in that 2004 interview was the absence of the homey sayings, abusive zingers and character assassinations that have become Kennedy trademarks. He was nothing like the man you see these days insulting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — “It must suck to be that dumb” — or vilifying then-Interior secretary nominee Deb Haaland as “a neo-socialist, left-of-Lenin whack job.”

12096

There is a kind of downward spiral in the politics of feeding red meat to a crazy base. The base is crazy, wants the red meat, so you tell them some insane thing, and they believe it and get more crazy and want more, and you have to dig deeper. So people like Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, Graham, Kennedy just get more and more unhinged over time.

12097

Thus “centrism” is devoid of meaning - nihilism, basically - the right continually drags the “center” further insanity. But of course our medias tend to frame it as the left getting leftier.

“Moderate” is pretty degraded, too.

12098

It’s not a ‘downward spiral’ - it’s profit/power motive, at least for the 5 mentioned (and pretty much the * entire * GOP *, as well as Manchin, Sinema and a decent handful of Dems. Feeding red meat to the base to make them more crazy is monopolist lock-in for those 5 (and the others). This enables more donations and eliminates “independent” voters from switching AND enables the corruption. Read Cory Doctorow’s thread (with DATA) here:

That’s the goal, getting the money from the 10% and becoming them, in any way possible. Selling the Crazy is just the method.

12099

Sure. The point is that the red meat has to get redder and meatier, as the base gets crazier. That’s the downward spiral. I understand their motivation, I’m talking about what happens as the strategy to achieve it plays out. They have to become more crazy.

12100

There’s also an angle to this that I call the “extremism ratchet” which is when a person has gone down the rabbit hole of red meat extremism, it becomes almost impossible to pull back. You folks have talked about the feedback loops that push people further and further to the extreme. In addition to that there is cognitive dissonance, the terrible difficulty of admitting to oneself that one was wrong, the massive humiliation that would accompany one admitting one was fooled by idiots like Trump, and on top of all that the social and (potentially economic and real world) pushback from fellow extremists. All of these factors make “coming to one’s senses” damn near impossible.

So there are feedback loops driving this and also forces acting as ratchets to keep people from recovering their critical thinking objectivity.

Once a person has gone far down the right wing rabbit hole only a teeny tiny percentage ever come back.

12101

Oh, definitely. Just look at the evolution of Limbaugh, Hannity, Carlson. Once you are dependent on selling outrage!, if you want repeat customers and to grow your audience, your outrage! needs to get more and more extreme to get those eyeballs.

That feedback loop however isn’t a closed system, as we saw in Charlottesville, 1/6, etc.and it definitely is spiraling out of control

The gamble the purveyors are taking is that the short term profit is more valuable than the long term stability. Rather like just about every corporate enterprise in the US (at least those beholden to shareholders). - see Exxon Climate Denial vs Investing in R&D energy production diversification - great short term strategy, but long term leaves Exxon a dead company walking (absent a billions to trillions bailout… when Tesla and others are staking out the Energy future and will probably crush them).

It’s short-sighted and will generate a ton of chaos (see examples above), but it does do wonders for short term thinkers. They may even see opportunity in that Chaos (see Trump and 1/6 as well as Charlottesville) to grab even more power/profit.

They may even be right. For them at least.

12102

Running a company into the ground is irrelevant as long as you got paid well to do it.

12103

That’s the thing – most will walk away with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, and live in a fortress somewhere.

The laws are set up to reward capital gains investing so their families will have so much money they will be ultra-rich for generations as long as they are not foolish and the U.S. remains relatively stable. It’s the IGMFU to the rest of the country.

12104

As a general rule, corporate management teams exist to enrich members of the corporate management team. That is their one overriding priority. This seems to be true even in a lot of non-profit corporations, where even organizations that do some good can have insane executive compensation.

12105

It’s crazy the compensation these execs get, and they like to say it’s because they are so, so elite that few people can do the job they do, so they have to be compensated so well.

Just look at Randall Stevenson, recent ex-CEO of AT&T. Since he took over in 2007 AT&T stock has lost 25% in value. When he tried to acquire T-Mobile and it failed, AT&T had to pay a penalty of $4B. AT&T paid $49B for DirecTV and sold 30% of it recently for $16B, but that sale also included Uverse and AT&T TV. AT&T bought Time Warner for $108B three years ago and and is spinning it off for $43B, though its stockholders are retaining 71% of the new spinoff.

And for all of this he made tens of millions as the CEO, including $30M over his last three years, and gets a $274,000 monthly pension for life. These execs do not need to be compensated so highly. If they can find a better paying CEO job elsewhere, let them go!

12106

On the other hand, if this chaos does happen, how much will those $$$ be worth? A lot of these people will be stupid enough to think that their profits will be safe in the US after the demise of the US.

12107
12108

Ewww. Gorka seem to really want to touch Madison. Did the clip end before he said “and not only arm wrestle”.

12109

“Winner of the footrace gets to have the unstable teenage murderer in their office” is a hell of a political party platform.

12110

Especially when one of them is in a wheelchair.

12111

Being the terrible trash fire humans that they are, I imagine at least one of them is picturing the contest going something like this

xavier-stairs

12112

I love how jacked Xavier keeps his chest and arms.

Stay swole, brother.

12113
12114

The chuds are next-level when it comes to idolatry.

Also, spite, pettiness, incompetence…