“The very media figures that continue to laud themselves as brave, truth-telling checks on power were the ones running vicious interference for the lies.” That’s a fair criticism. However, I find the liberals have a self-critique mechanism that holds itself accountable. The Joe Biden mental state criticism has been coming from figures like Jon Stewart and now Jake Tapper, an anchor in the “liberal” CNN. I wish to see that on the MAGA side.
That’s only half of it. After listening to Biden, listen to Trump’s speech to West Point. Then ask yourself if worrying about Biden is important. We have two old dodgers both on the decline, but only one of them is the current president, and it’s not Biden.
A new low in obsequiousness for poor Oren. The whataboutism is what the establishment right does to salve their guilty conscience over their support of Don. I agree that Joepa should not have run, and that he and his inner circle should have been honest. But seriously Oren, have you attended, or watched in its entirety, a Don rally? His rambling, racist, conspiracy laced, incoherent babble is astonishing. In the end, Joepa and the party did the right thing. My former party though, nominated this corrupt imbecile for a third time. And, you still want to work for him? Shame on you, you should tell the truth, just like Joepa should have. And ironically, like JD and Little Marco did, before they publicly self-gelded. Authoritarians depend on the acquiescence of elites. Isn't it time to dump the current establishment right, elites like Oren? They've ruled for a decade now, it seems time for a real "new" right, the old one is a cult of Don.
Oh no! We don't have norms anymore! And since the other party has not respected norms, this is why I am going to paper over my own party's absolute incineration of the most fundamental norms of good government and decency.
Good character matters regardless of who is in charge.
Since Oren is such a fan of norms, I couldn’t help sharing just one of hundreds of such morsels from the leader of Oren’s “new” right. The man in charge of the “modern” Republican establishment. Here he is, with his ridiculous red MAGA hat, lecturing the graduating cadets at West Point on this sacred Memorial Day weekend. He’s speaking about “the great, great real estate man” William Levitt: “He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife,” Trump said. “Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn’t work out too well, but that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work out. But it made him happy for a little while at least. But he found a new wife.” Has there ever been a more execrable human? How many of you would leave your daughter in his care, hire him to run the local Arby’s, tolerate him as a member of your church council, or vote to hire him as a school principal? Or even leave him in charge of the receipts from your son’s lemonade stand? Tell the truth Oren, tell the truth. Stop following JD and Little Marco down the capitulation trail. Think of the “norms” that are at stake… Meanwhile, we should all apologize to the cadets and their parents. Think of the impressive, heroic young women being subjected to such a vile creep on their graduation day. On Memorial Day weekend. What a role model to represent a party once known to believe in character.
“In this telling, China has risen to global industrial dominance by protecting its market, manipulating corporations, and leveraging its geoeconomic power, which is why the U.S. must do none of those things.”
Many such cases. The NYT and WSJ weekly reveal their preference for the CCP over President Trump and common sense economic policies.
One thing that separates our ambitions though from these policies by China, we must not chase the export market! Roughly 45% of their manufacturing is consumed by the export market. In 1950 in the U.S. when we were the dominant productive power, 90% of our product was consumed domestically.
As Henry Clay said in his “speech on industry” the home market is first in order and paramount in importance. China is a paper tiger, a successful paper tiger, but we shouldn’t fall into the same export trap they have.
Joe Biden, even with half a brain, wasn’t nearly as dangerous to our Constitution and “Democracy” as the ‘man’ in the White House right now. Maybe Biden should have stepped down, I don’t know, But as long as these issues are weaponized and used to sell books the American People LOSE.
Until the Cult of Trump is willing to stand up and call it all out, and educate themselves and Understand the systems we need in Government, we are going to be busy reconstructing the infrastructure the right is destroying for sport and the sheer Joy of cruelty for decades to come!
I agree 100% with your assessment of the relative danger of Trump vs. Biden. But it is not reasonable to expect the Cult of Trump to call Trump out.
However, Oren's point is that the very institution that needs to call Trump out burned its credibility on advancing a false narrative around Biden's mental acuity. The U.S. is not in a very good place.
I think trying to equate a declining mental acuity with someone's purposeful destruction of our Government is a little weak. Trump has literally pulled the pin on the grenades and threw them into decades of work for the public and the Worlds betterment.
Oren has lost ALL credibility by not simply calling out the extreme destruction of our Country right before our eyes. Instead he continues to sift through the gaffes and mistakes of other administrations to find an “equal” example.
The only “equal” example is Hitler=Trump=Hitler. Until ALL the people who thought Trump was a good choice admit they were lied to and that he went too far STAND UP and call it out, we are truly screwed.
Why is it not reasonable? Democrats have been calling Biden out since the debate. Democrats have never (to my dismay) struggled to set up a circular firing squad. It's not always politically effective, but I am much happier to be on the side that is comfortable being critical of their leaders.
What?? Why does it matter who instituted the norms?
I happen to think that most of these norms are pretty darn important. You don't deport someone to a prison camp without proving you should. You don't accept bribes from foreign governments. You don't use your government power to provide favors for people who buy your meme coin. And yes, you don't cover up for a candidate who doesn't have their mental faculties.
The big difference here, whatever you say about "elites" breaking their own norms, is that Democrats are livid about ALL of these, and Republicans somehow are only upset about the last one.
I think AI is going to become a massive political liability. It seemed weird to me in Vance's interview how uncritical he was of the techno-optimist narrative here. Somehow we are supposed to believe that the same people and the same companies that commoditized our attention and our relationships are going to usher in a period of unconstrained egalitarian growth?
ChatGPT is the NAFTA moment for knowledge workers. Just as the threat (and reality) of outsourcing marked a big shift in power between workers and their employers, the threat of automation + the imperative to grow productivity (for the same or less compensation) is going to be a yoke around the necks of white-collar workers.
Oren's getting into his poopy diaper zone again. The preemptive whataboutism over Biden's inner circle hiding his infirmity is intellectually bankrupt. In case Oren didn't notice, Democrats paid for that folly. I'd say rightly so, except the cost was at the expense of the nation. The History we all wish were true is Biden graciously steps aside early on and Democrats go through a serious primary process in which no one is ever owed a "turn" at office. That process would have yielded a suitable candidate who ends the excesses of the language police and the overreach of social issue groups. One who focused on the material interests of the working class at the expense of the financial elite. And continued and expanded Biden's infrastructure and re-industrialization policies. Trump would have lost.
Oren can't honestly defend Trump's policy making nor Trump's behavior as president. There's tariffs, which Oren correctly sees as just one of several necessary tools to be used to re-establish our industrial base and associated jobs. Trump isn't employing the tariffs that way and is doing the opposite in his domestic policy of re-establishing our industrial base. Literally, on nearly all fronts, the exact wrong direction. So what is the point of this Biden bashing? Discrediting "the media" for being too "lib"? That's dumb. The NYT seems to practically trip over itself to avoid using honest direct words to describe the reality we see in front of us. It describes presidential Theft, Grift, Breaking the law in our face as "pushing the boundaries". That Is not Lib. It's infuriating.
"The Media" is quite heterogeneous. Fox News IS the mainstream media, by the numbers. Ex-twitter is mainstream social media. And is a right wing controlled speech cesspool. Oren's unseemly gloating over the right wing's social media success contains an absurd alternate reality statement. "They’ve got the media, (wrong!)they’ve got Hollywood (nope), they’ve got academia (wrong again), at this point they’ve got corporate America" (That's a hoot!). Fox News breathlessly fawns over Trump's erratic petulant behavior as shrewdness or toughness or something, and Musk when he was saving us SOOOO much money in fraud and corruption by destroying the institutions voters rely on. (We have to be clear, if there is a "deep state" it is Big Money corporate corruption of our parties and our government. The institutions are not the problem. Our government is not the problem.)
Really, this is Oren discrediting himself. I'm embarrassed for him. This kind of screed makes him seem less than intellectual, or dishonest, or bought or all the above. I try to be supportive because on several fronts he agrees with progressive worker oriented economic policy. But this kind of bullshit is blatantly disingenuous to no discernible good end.
The massive, glaring difference is that Democrats were (and are!) livid about the Biden issue. They felt blindsided and betrayed. Republicans simply DO NOT CARE about the far worse character flaws in their own leaders.
"preemptive whataboutism" - that is a new concept for me. What does it mean?
Whataboutism, I understand. It's like a kid coming home with a horrid, horrid report card and then saying "But what about Doofus? Doofus failed too!" Whataboutism is saying "See! We are at least as good as failure!"
For preemptive whataboutism, how do I distinguish it from "You can't criticize my side that way because I might want to make a similar criticism about your side in the future?"
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex.
The title is "A Part-time Job in the Country: Notes Toward a New Way of Life in America" and you can find it on Amazon.
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex.
The title is "A Part-time Job in the Country: Notes Toward a New Way of Life in America" and you can find it on Amazon.
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Great piece thanks Oren. Yes, I feel sorry for Joe. He was an old man that was badly used by his party and people close to him. And now they are still profiting off of an old sick man. I pray he will improve and get better.
- Nations whose citizens are not prepared to fight to defend their country is the very definition of national decadence -
Great point Jeff. In that spirit, I'm sure you'll join me in condemning Don for inciting an armed insurrection and perpetrating the big lie? What patriotic American would not? After all, they are the worst acts ever committed by a US president. I love your line about "profiting off an old man", given Dons craven grifting. $TRUMP coin anyone?
“The very media figures that continue to laud themselves as brave, truth-telling checks on power were the ones running vicious interference for the lies.” That’s a fair criticism. However, I find the liberals have a self-critique mechanism that holds itself accountable. The Joe Biden mental state criticism has been coming from figures like Jon Stewart and now Jake Tapper, an anchor in the “liberal” CNN. I wish to see that on the MAGA side.
“However, I find the liberals have a self-critique mechanism that holds itself accountable.”
I always come to the comments section for the humor.
That’s only half of it. After listening to Biden, listen to Trump’s speech to West Point. Then ask yourself if worrying about Biden is important. We have two old dodgers both on the decline, but only one of them is the current president, and it’s not Biden.
A new low in obsequiousness for poor Oren. The whataboutism is what the establishment right does to salve their guilty conscience over their support of Don. I agree that Joepa should not have run, and that he and his inner circle should have been honest. But seriously Oren, have you attended, or watched in its entirety, a Don rally? His rambling, racist, conspiracy laced, incoherent babble is astonishing. In the end, Joepa and the party did the right thing. My former party though, nominated this corrupt imbecile for a third time. And, you still want to work for him? Shame on you, you should tell the truth, just like Joepa should have. And ironically, like JD and Little Marco did, before they publicly self-gelded. Authoritarians depend on the acquiescence of elites. Isn't it time to dump the current establishment right, elites like Oren? They've ruled for a decade now, it seems time for a real "new" right, the old one is a cult of Don.
Totally!
Oh no! We don't have norms anymore! And since the other party has not respected norms, this is why I am going to paper over my own party's absolute incineration of the most fundamental norms of good government and decency.
Good character matters regardless of who is in charge.
Since Oren is such a fan of norms, I couldn’t help sharing just one of hundreds of such morsels from the leader of Oren’s “new” right. The man in charge of the “modern” Republican establishment. Here he is, with his ridiculous red MAGA hat, lecturing the graduating cadets at West Point on this sacred Memorial Day weekend. He’s speaking about “the great, great real estate man” William Levitt: “He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife,” Trump said. “Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn’t work out too well, but that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work out. But it made him happy for a little while at least. But he found a new wife.” Has there ever been a more execrable human? How many of you would leave your daughter in his care, hire him to run the local Arby’s, tolerate him as a member of your church council, or vote to hire him as a school principal? Or even leave him in charge of the receipts from your son’s lemonade stand? Tell the truth Oren, tell the truth. Stop following JD and Little Marco down the capitulation trail. Think of the “norms” that are at stake… Meanwhile, we should all apologize to the cadets and their parents. Think of the impressive, heroic young women being subjected to such a vile creep on their graduation day. On Memorial Day weekend. What a role model to represent a party once known to believe in character.
Character matters! Let's return to a more localist, pro-worker, public morals world!
But also, let's uncritically support the most disgusting human being to ever walk the earth and let him be the Hammurabi for our new moral code.
“In this telling, China has risen to global industrial dominance by protecting its market, manipulating corporations, and leveraging its geoeconomic power, which is why the U.S. must do none of those things.”
Many such cases. The NYT and WSJ weekly reveal their preference for the CCP over President Trump and common sense economic policies.
One thing that separates our ambitions though from these policies by China, we must not chase the export market! Roughly 45% of their manufacturing is consumed by the export market. In 1950 in the U.S. when we were the dominant productive power, 90% of our product was consumed domestically.
As Henry Clay said in his “speech on industry” the home market is first in order and paramount in importance. China is a paper tiger, a successful paper tiger, but we shouldn’t fall into the same export trap they have.
Joe Biden, even with half a brain, wasn’t nearly as dangerous to our Constitution and “Democracy” as the ‘man’ in the White House right now. Maybe Biden should have stepped down, I don’t know, But as long as these issues are weaponized and used to sell books the American People LOSE.
Until the Cult of Trump is willing to stand up and call it all out, and educate themselves and Understand the systems we need in Government, we are going to be busy reconstructing the infrastructure the right is destroying for sport and the sheer Joy of cruelty for decades to come!
I agree 100% with your assessment of the relative danger of Trump vs. Biden. But it is not reasonable to expect the Cult of Trump to call Trump out.
However, Oren's point is that the very institution that needs to call Trump out burned its credibility on advancing a false narrative around Biden's mental acuity. The U.S. is not in a very good place.
I think trying to equate a declining mental acuity with someone's purposeful destruction of our Government is a little weak. Trump has literally pulled the pin on the grenades and threw them into decades of work for the public and the Worlds betterment.
Oren has lost ALL credibility by not simply calling out the extreme destruction of our Country right before our eyes. Instead he continues to sift through the gaffes and mistakes of other administrations to find an “equal” example.
The only “equal” example is Hitler=Trump=Hitler. Until ALL the people who thought Trump was a good choice admit they were lied to and that he went too far STAND UP and call it out, we are truly screwed.
Why is it not reasonable? Democrats have been calling Biden out since the debate. Democrats have never (to my dismay) struggled to set up a circular firing squad. It's not always politically effective, but I am much happier to be on the side that is comfortable being critical of their leaders.
The problem isn't the concept of norms. It is the failed ruling class the established them and still tries to enforce them.
What?? Why does it matter who instituted the norms?
I happen to think that most of these norms are pretty darn important. You don't deport someone to a prison camp without proving you should. You don't accept bribes from foreign governments. You don't use your government power to provide favors for people who buy your meme coin. And yes, you don't cover up for a candidate who doesn't have their mental faculties.
The big difference here, whatever you say about "elites" breaking their own norms, is that Democrats are livid about ALL of these, and Republicans somehow are only upset about the last one.
I think AI is going to become a massive political liability. It seemed weird to me in Vance's interview how uncritical he was of the techno-optimist narrative here. Somehow we are supposed to believe that the same people and the same companies that commoditized our attention and our relationships are going to usher in a period of unconstrained egalitarian growth?
ChatGPT is the NAFTA moment for knowledge workers. Just as the threat (and reality) of outsourcing marked a big shift in power between workers and their employers, the threat of automation + the imperative to grow productivity (for the same or less compensation) is going to be a yoke around the necks of white-collar workers.
Oren's getting into his poopy diaper zone again. The preemptive whataboutism over Biden's inner circle hiding his infirmity is intellectually bankrupt. In case Oren didn't notice, Democrats paid for that folly. I'd say rightly so, except the cost was at the expense of the nation. The History we all wish were true is Biden graciously steps aside early on and Democrats go through a serious primary process in which no one is ever owed a "turn" at office. That process would have yielded a suitable candidate who ends the excesses of the language police and the overreach of social issue groups. One who focused on the material interests of the working class at the expense of the financial elite. And continued and expanded Biden's infrastructure and re-industrialization policies. Trump would have lost.
Oren can't honestly defend Trump's policy making nor Trump's behavior as president. There's tariffs, which Oren correctly sees as just one of several necessary tools to be used to re-establish our industrial base and associated jobs. Trump isn't employing the tariffs that way and is doing the opposite in his domestic policy of re-establishing our industrial base. Literally, on nearly all fronts, the exact wrong direction. So what is the point of this Biden bashing? Discrediting "the media" for being too "lib"? That's dumb. The NYT seems to practically trip over itself to avoid using honest direct words to describe the reality we see in front of us. It describes presidential Theft, Grift, Breaking the law in our face as "pushing the boundaries". That Is not Lib. It's infuriating.
"The Media" is quite heterogeneous. Fox News IS the mainstream media, by the numbers. Ex-twitter is mainstream social media. And is a right wing controlled speech cesspool. Oren's unseemly gloating over the right wing's social media success contains an absurd alternate reality statement. "They’ve got the media, (wrong!)they’ve got Hollywood (nope), they’ve got academia (wrong again), at this point they’ve got corporate America" (That's a hoot!). Fox News breathlessly fawns over Trump's erratic petulant behavior as shrewdness or toughness or something, and Musk when he was saving us SOOOO much money in fraud and corruption by destroying the institutions voters rely on. (We have to be clear, if there is a "deep state" it is Big Money corporate corruption of our parties and our government. The institutions are not the problem. Our government is not the problem.)
Really, this is Oren discrediting himself. I'm embarrassed for him. This kind of screed makes him seem less than intellectual, or dishonest, or bought or all the above. I try to be supportive because on several fronts he agrees with progressive worker oriented economic policy. But this kind of bullshit is blatantly disingenuous to no discernible good end.
100%
The massive, glaring difference is that Democrats were (and are!) livid about the Biden issue. They felt blindsided and betrayed. Republicans simply DO NOT CARE about the far worse character flaws in their own leaders.
"preemptive whataboutism" - that is a new concept for me. What does it mean?
Whataboutism, I understand. It's like a kid coming home with a horrid, horrid report card and then saying "But what about Doofus? Doofus failed too!" Whataboutism is saying "See! We are at least as good as failure!"
For preemptive whataboutism, how do I distinguish it from "You can't criticize my side that way because I might want to make a similar criticism about your side in the future?"
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex.
The title is "A Part-time Job in the Country: Notes Toward a New Way of Life in America" and you can find it on Amazon.
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex.
The title is "A Part-time Job in the Country: Notes Toward a New Way of Life in America" and you can find it on Amazon.
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
I love the title of Oren's new book: "The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry."
It makes me think he ought to take a second look at my new book about the idea of factories in the countryside that run on part-time in which I look not only at a revolutionary new form of extended family that such factories would make possible, but also at the new kinds of local neighborhood communities and country towns that might develop around them. I think of it as the third and final stage in the suburbanization of the metropolitan complex. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Great piece thanks Oren. Yes, I feel sorry for Joe. He was an old man that was badly used by his party and people close to him. And now they are still profiting off of an old sick man. I pray he will improve and get better.
- Nations whose citizens are not prepared to fight to defend their country is the very definition of national decadence -
Great point Jeff. In that spirit, I'm sure you'll join me in condemning Don for inciting an armed insurrection and perpetrating the big lie? What patriotic American would not? After all, they are the worst acts ever committed by a US president. I love your line about "profiting off an old man", given Dons craven grifting. $TRUMP coin anyone?