On 04/03/2022 11:58, Philip Herlihy wrote:
> In article <svqkp3$sk6$1@dont-email.me>, mayayana@invalid.nospam says...
>>
>> "Philip Herlihy" <thiswillbounceback@you.com> wrote
>>
>> | * The Spectator (conservative leaning, but sound reporting)
>> | * The New Statesman (left-leaning, also with sound reporting)
>> | * The Economist ('liberal' in the old sense - certainly not the US usage)
>>
>> It's hard to pin down the US usage. The US has always had
>> a split personality, I think, going between monarchy/plutocracy
>> and socialism. Our founders, after all, started as monarchists.
>> But over time we've developed radical wings. The conservatives
>> serve the rich, but the duty of noblesse oblige is gone. The
>> liberals seek social progress, but personal freedom has become
>> a fetish. Both sides have lost the core sense of ethics that used
>> to be part of their view, while "citizen" has been replaced by
>> "consumer".
>>
>> Money has also got into it. Liberals are not so much union
>> workers now as they are feminists, abortion rights advocates,
>> etc. They're concerned mainly with equality for the upper
>> middle class. So liberals want affirmative action hiring for
>> female executives, and they want abortion rights guaranteed.
>> Progressive was sort of the new name for the real liberal --
>> the socialist-leaning idealist -- but
>> now the progressive is that one who wants gov't funding for
>> child care and special accommodations for LGBTQ. Once
>> again, it's mainy upper middle class concerns. The working
>> class only dream of a job to pay the bills.
>>
>> A great example might be Ellen Pao, who worked at Kleiner
>> Perkins. She's a millionaire lawyer and venture capitalist. She
>> sued KP for racial and gender bias when she wasn't elevated
>> to full partner, suing for $7 million. Her 19 claims were all
>> thrown out by a jury. But she's now hailed as a warrior for
>> womens' rights. Not a woman's right to food and shelter. A
>> woman's right to make oodles of money. That's the new
>> progressivism: King of the Hill defined in terms of identity
>> politics.
>>
>> It's so complicated. Since Reagan, 40+ years ago, we've
>> increasingly instituted corporate welfare, to the extent that
>> corporations almost act as gov't. For example, much of the
>> drug research is done with gov't grants, yet drug companies
>> can charge as they like. In Biden's address the other night, the
>> conservatives were predictably against Medicare (elder health
>> insurance) being allowed to bargain over prices. It's simple
>> corporate welfare. (And our major netwrok news here is
>> funded mainly by drug ads for happy pills, sleep aids, allergy
>> pills, acid reflux pills, and various other dubious treatments
>> for the maladies du jour.
>>
>> Why has this been allowed? Companies no longer provide
>> retirement. Workers no longer have loyalty. Workers invest
>> for their own retirement. So everyone's in the stock market.
>> It started with tax rules allowing IRAs -- tax-free retirement
>> accounts. Even left wing extremists like AOC probably now
>> have a vested interest in the growth of Apple, Exxon, Bayer,
>> etc, at the same time they deride corporate welfare.
>> Even the most left of the left wing don't see a problem with
>> the Wall Street casino that feeds money to corporate CEOs.
>>
>> Then there's the marketing and anti-marketing of terms.
>> Conservatives have worked to define "liberal" as God-hating,
>> selfish tax lovers.
>> But they've been attacked for decades. In the 1960s, Phil
>> Ochs, the popular activist folk singer, had a song titled "Love Me,
>> I'm a Liberal". In concert he defined a liberal as 10 degrees
>> left of center in good times and 10 degrees right of center when
>> something affects them personally.
>>
>> https://genius.com/Phil-ochs-love-me-im-a-liberal-lyrics
>
> I think we'd find we agree on much of that (once the wrinkles were ironed out).
> In any event, people can get along - be friends even - if they share the same
> values, even if their analysis of effects may be drastically different. Here,
> I don't detect much difference even in that.
>
> In my view, the three key dimensions on which people (and parties) differ are
> these:
> * Preference over size and reach of Government
> * Attitude to personal liberty and freedom of choice
> * Tolerance of inequality
>
> Extremes on any of those scales (and the first two are arguably interdependent)
> make you a crank, and very likely a damn nuisance.
> The last one is interesting, as - just like inflation - too little is a bad
> thing too. Though that's something we don't have to worry about in our
> lifetime. (That Russian oligarch's yacht seized in Germany had TWO helipads:
> who needs more than one, I ask you?)
>
> In the UK, both our major parties are split on ideological lines. The Labour
> party has until recently been obsessed with middle-class (and that means
> educated and affluent over here) ideologues obsessed with "identity" politics
> like race and gender, rather neglecting the working people who it was founded
> to serve. The Conservative party is dominated by hard-right (but not quite
> far-right) ideologues prepared to cause any amount of damage to achieve the
> deregulation (from all sources) they worship, and have actively suppressed the
> broader element of the party whose main goals are prosperity and stability.
> Much still to work out in both parties, but meanwhile the damage mounts. Just
> as the hardening divisions is continuing to damage the US. I'd hope the
> emergence of a clear shared enemy intent on a reconstructed USSR will bring us
> all closer together, both within and between our nations.

Very well said, apart from the last bit. The pandemic didn't heal
divisions so I'm not convinced Russia will either in the long term.
Foreign policy is another ideology which splits the right/left.

> That Windows 10 is quite good, isn't it? I like the multiple paste buffer, and
> Quick Assist best.

Nah, bring back WinXP :P

In article <svt71f$r1j$1@dont-email.me>, mayayana@invalid.nospam says...
>
> "Philip Herlihy" <thiswillbounceback@you.com> wrote
>
> | In the UK, both our major parties are split on ideological lines. The
> Labour
> | party has until recently been obsessed with middle-class (and that means
> | educated and affluent over here) ideologues obsessed with "identity"
> politics
> | like race and gender, rather neglecting the working people who it was
> founded
> | to serve. The Conservative party is dominated by hard-right (but not
> quite
> | far-right) ideologues prepared to cause any amount of damage to achieve
> the
> | deregulation (from all sources) they worship, and have actively suppressed
> the
> | broader element of the party whose main goals are prosperity and
> stability.
>
> That all sounds very familiar. And then there are the uneducated,
> afraid of change, who want to be led according to their interpretation
> of the Bible, but don't mind if Trump or some similar anti-Christ is
> the leader, so long as they ban abortion and deride change.
>
> I came across an interesting analysis recently, in my efforts
> to understand the roots of wokism, identity politics, triggering,
> and so on:
>
> https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/how-journalism-abandoned-the-working
>
> Bari Weiss started her website after quitting the NYT because
> they were becoming wokist censors. This piece makes the
> case that it's still, really, about class. It's not about food
> and shelter for poor blacks, but rather about getting more rich
> blacks into the ruling class, which will allow upper-middle-class
> trust fund babies to believe that they've fought for equality,
> without giving up their inheritance for social programs.
>
> Which goes a long way toward explaining the wokist approach
> of let them eat cake. Talk of poverty is glaringly absent from
> wokist rants. Much more important is the right to wear an afro
> to work, or the demand that Lizzo be officially declared beautiful.
>
> Perhaps the biggest difference is that in England, class in
> institutionalized, while in the US it's ubiquitous but rarely
> acknowledged. We pretend we're all equal, as we believe
> we should be.
>
> |
> | That Windows 10 is quite good, isn't it? I like the multiple paste
> buffer, and
> | Quick Assist best.
> |
>
> Oh... yeah... yeah... Great stuff.

That's a very interesting article - I'll keep the link to read it again in a
while.

"This is how white liberals arrived at a situation where instead of agitating
for a more equal society, they agitated for more diverse elites. Instead of
asking why our elites have risen so far above the average American, they asked
why the elites are so white."

Still processing it, but it seems to chime with my underlying conviction that
inequality (the extreme kind you see everywhere) is inequality wherever you see
it. Poor white boys in UK schools tend to do worst of all. It's the
disadvantage and hardship of each individual that actually matters, and when we
start putting the disadvantaged into categories, and weighing one category
against another, we're blurring the essential point: Everyone matters,
individually.

Critical Race Theory has been a difficult notion for me to reach any
perspective about. I have a visceral and instinctive aversion to those who
bray about it as would-be moral preachers, but when that mist clears there is
still persisting inequality and disadvantage and yes, it is unevenly
distributed. I found the following two complementary (rather than opposing)
viewpoints very helpful in this. From my old friend The Economist, of course:

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/05/24/john-mcwhorter-on-how-
critical-race-theory-poorly-serves-its-intended-beneficiaries

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/05/24/jason-stanley-on-critical-
race-theory-and-why-it-matters

(You may need a basic free registration to read them.)

Meanwhile, Windows 10 boots far more quickly than I'd ever have expected, even
on what's getting to be quite elderly kit!

--

Phil, London

In article <svt747$rqc$1@dont-email.me>, ithinkiam@gmail.com says...
>
> On 04/03/2022 11:58, Philip Herlihy wrote:

> >
> > ... I'd hope the
> > emergence of a clear shared enemy intent on a reconstructed USSR will bring us
> > all closer together, both within and between our nations.
>
> Very well said, apart from the last bit. The pandemic didn't heal
> divisions so I'm not convinced Russia will either in the long term.
> Foreign policy is another ideology which splits the right/left.
>

The one ray of hope I have in the present situation is that 141 countries voted
at the UN General Assembly to condemn the invasion, with five (hardly
respectable) ones voting against. I do think there are some signs of a common
resolve among the US, the EU and the UK, with differences mostly of emphasis
rather than aspiration. I guess we'll see. It's a problem that isn't going to
go away at all soon; in a recent BBC Radio 4 podcast (see link, if you can
reach it) Margaret Macmillan, Emeritus Professor of history at the University
of Toronto, argued convincingly that Putin sees himself (astonishingly) as a
successor to Peter the Great, and will be satisfied by nothing less than a
reconstruction of the manifestation of a Russian Empire that was the USSR. We
should recognise that the stakes could not be higher for him, and act with
great caution.

Podcast (9m) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0brzdd7
(BBC Best of Today, 2nd March)

Meanwhile, XP was great, to be sure, but I do prefer W10. Though XP was the
last version I really knew in depth - in W10 the settings are just a vague
fuzzy cloud, and I struggle to remember what to search for, let alone navigate
to directly.

--

Phil, London

On Fri, 4 Mar 2022 at 09:16:57, Mayayana <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote
(my responses usually FOLLOW):
[]
>acknowledged. We pretend we're all equal, as we believe
>we should be.
[]
Some are more equal than others, though (-: [Animal Farm]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as
they were. - Marcel Proust

Philip Herlihy <thiswillbounceback@you.com> posted this :

> In article <svt747$rqc$1@dont-email.me>, ithinkiam@gmail.com says...
>>
>> On 04/03/2022 11:58, Philip Herlihy wrote:
>
>> >
>> > ... I'd hope the
>> > emergence of a clear shared enemy intent on a reconstructed USSR will
>> > bring us all closer together, both within and between our nations.
>>
>> Very well said, apart from the last bit. The pandemic didn't heal
>> divisions so I'm not convinced Russia will either in the long term.
>> Foreign policy is another ideology which splits the right/left.
>>
>
> The one ray of hope I have in the present situation is that 141
> countries voted at the UN General Assembly to condemn the invasion, with
> five (hardly respectable) ones voting against. I do think there are
> some signs of a common resolve among the US, the EU and the UK, with
> differences mostly of emphasis rather than aspiration. I guess we'll
> see. It's a problem that isn't going to go away at all soon; in a
> recent BBC Radio 4 podcast (see link, if you can reach it) Margaret
> Macmillan, Emeritus Professor of history at the University of Toronto,
> argued convincingly that Putin sees himself (astonishingly) as a
> successor to Peter the Great, and will be satisfied by nothing less than
> a reconstruction of the manifestation of a Russian Empire that was the
> USSR. We should recognise that the stakes could not be higher for him,
> and act with great caution.
>
> Podcast (9m) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0brzdd7
> (BBC Best of Today, 2nd March)
>
> Meanwhile, XP was great, to be sure, but I do prefer W10. Though XP was
> the last version I really knew in depth - in W10 the settings are just a
> vague fuzzy cloud, and I struggle to remember what to search for, let
> alone navigate to directly.

Just when I get used to Windows 10 settings, they go and spring Windows 11
on me.

Now I have to buy new computers because my old ones won't take Windows 11.

I hope the prices come down and the selections increase soon.

It all goes back to COVID and supply chains, right?

Fuukeen Democrats... That's what they *want* *you* to believe.

--

"To survive the frontier, you must learn to recognize those who won't and
be weary of their doomed decisions. They are to be avoided at all costs,
because their fear is tragedy's closest cousin. And tragedy is contagious
in this place." -- Elsa Dutton, Episode 10, February 27, 2022

Notice how USA Democrats want to give Ukraine $20B in emergency aid BUT
they tie an additional $25B in "COVID funding" to the bill? Bear in mind
that "COVID funding" translates into "Bailouts for targeted traditionally
Democrat controlled states and cities who have incompetently, corruptly,
and consistently mismanaged their budgets for decades."

Hope this helps. (Puerto Rico, New York, California, Detroit, Chicago,
Washington, D.C., BLM, NAACP, DNC, and yer mama.)

J. P. Gilliver (John) <G6JPG@255soft.uk> posted this :

> Some are more equal than others, though (-: [Animal Farm]
> --
> J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
>
> Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things
> as they were. - Marcel Proust

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
-- Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD)

--

"To survive the frontier, you must learn to recognize those who won't and
be weary of their doomed decisions. They are to be avoided at all costs,
because their fear is tragedy's closest cousin. And tragedy is contagious
in this place." -- Elsa Dutton, Episode 10, February 27, 2022

Notice how USA Democrats want to give Ukraine $20B in emergency aid BUT
they tie an additional $25B in "COVID funding" to the bill? Bear in mind
that "COVID funding" translates into "Bailouts for targeted traditionally
Democrat controlled states and cities who have incompetently, corruptly,
and consistently mismanaged their budgets for decades."

Hope this helps. (Puerto Rico, New York, California, Detroit, Chicago,
Washington, D.C., BLM, NAACP, DNC, and yer mama.)

"Philip Herlihy" <thiswillbounceback@you.com> wrote

| Critical Race Theory has been a difficult notion for me to reach any
| perspective about. I have a visceral and instinctive aversion to those
who
| bray about it as would-be moral preachers, but when that mist clears there
is
| still persisting inequality and disadvantage and yes, it is unevenly
| distributed. I found the following two complementary (rather than
opposing)
| viewpoints very helpful in this. From my old friend The Economist, of
course:
| | https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/05/24/john-mcwhorter-on-how-
| critical-race-theory-poorly-serves-its-intended-beneficiaries
| |
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/05/24/jason-stanley-on-critical-
| race-theory-and-why-it-matters
| | (You may need a basic free registration to read them.)

Someone gave me McWhorter's Woke Racism book. I found it
awkwardly written and repetitive, but it seems his central premise
is that special accommodation is, in itself, racist and condescending.
Good point. Yet his book is also an example of that same racism. It
could have just as well been talking about sexism. So why is
he defining social inequality as only a black issue?

I had no trouble accessing Jason Stanley. Maybe because I
block script. To my mind the idea of CRT is much bigger than
race. And educators are being disingenuous when they say it's
not being taught in schools. It's not being taught as a theory
to gradeschoolers, but it's increasingly embedded in peoples'
thinking. It's embodied in curricula that leave out the Pilgrims
and put in slavery history, for example. The 1619 project,
meanwhile, has been criticized by historians. But according to
CRT that doesn't matter. It only matters that official black
issues get more "power" in curricula.

CRT is also expressed with issues like teaching children to
choose pronouns. It's saying that treating a "non-binary" child
fairly is not the point. Rather, everyone must subscribe to the
non-binary child's version of reality. If they choose to no longer
be a boy or girl then everyone must believe that they are no
longer a boy or girl. Reality is what the individual says it is.
There's "my truth", which you can't question
because you don't have my suffering. If I feel hurt by you then
you have hurt me. It's reality defined by my personal experience.

CRT also involves identity politics and "intersectionality", which
says I'm triple oppressed if I'm a black lesbian.

This is all a way of looking at fairness in terms of tribal indentities.
And it's obsessed with "power". I can see that affirmative action
has limitations, but at least it's an approach of trying to provide
equal rights and opportunity to all in a civil society. I don't see how
society can co-exist with tribal power grabbing. And how do identities
get officially confirmed in such a deconstructionist approach that
denies anything but "personal truth". That sounds to me very
close to anarchy.

Even if it were not so complicated and everyone's identities were
clear, it essentially defines separate tribes that only care about
themselves. It's essentially racist and sexist, and divisive of society.
It denies all common truth and all basic moral values as being anything
more than prejudices of power elites.

On 3/5/2022 10:27 AM, Mayayana wrote:

> Someone gave me McWhorter's Woke Racism book.

I had hoped all the posts on OAUTH2 had finally killed this stupid
fucking thread. I guess not

On Sat, 5 Mar 2022 at 11:27:33, Mayayana <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote
(my responses usually FOLLOW):
[]
Here was a Mayayana rant [much of which I agreed with, but he tends to
go on even more than I do ... (-:]. Also confused me by apparently
talking about cathode-ray tubes a lot, but not.
[]
> Even if it were not so complicated and everyone's identities were
>clear, it essentially defines separate tribes that only care about
>themselves. It's essentially racist and sexist, and divisive of society.

On the whole, I agree ...

>It denies all common truth and all basic moral values as being anything
>more than prejudices of power elites.
>
.... But of course "basic moral values" (and "common truth" to a small
extent, unless indisputable) to one person_are_ prejudices to another!
>
>
>
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

WANTED, Dead AND Alive: Schrodinger's Cat

"sticks" <wolverine.01@charter.net> wrote

| > Someone gave me McWhorter's Woke Racism book.
| | I had hoped all the posts on OAUTH2 had finally killed this stupid
| fucking thread. I guess not

I see 3 posts by you recently. The last two were
political. This one is complaining. Maybe you'd feel
better if you knew that McWhorter's book is anti-wokism?

On 3/5/2022 1:45 PM, Mayayana wrote:
> "sticks" <wolverine.01@charter.net> wrote
>
> | > Someone gave me McWhorter's Woke Racism book.
> |
> | I had hoped all the posts on OAUTH2 had finally killed this stupid
> | fucking thread. I guess not
>
> I see 3 posts by you recently. The last two were
> political. This one is complaining. Maybe you'd feel
> better if you knew that McWhorter's book is anti-wokism?

Bullshit. You're evidently too stupid to notice humor as a way of
politely suggesting people are being ignorant and off-topic. FWIW, I
ain't complaining. I don't care one way or another about this book
HERE. I am simply stating the obvious that to continue spewing
individual analysis of world politics in a windows 10 group is damn
stupid.

I am more than happy to discuss these things. It is apparent from this
thread that those talking the most about their views, know the least
about those they pretend to speak of. I am all for discussion, I just
don't want to do it here because it is so destructive to a group. If
everyone thought like you, that if you just put OT in the subject you
could discuss whatever you want here, the groups becomes unusable. That
people don't understand this has always baffled me.

In article <t00gc8$iu2$1@dont-email.me>, wolverine.01@charter.net says...
>
> On 3/5/2022 1:45 PM, Mayayana wrote:
> > "sticks" <wolverine.01@charter.net> wrote
> >
> > | > Someone gave me McWhorter's Woke Racism book.
> > |
> > | I had hoped all the posts on OAUTH2 had finally killed this stupid
> > | fucking thread. I guess not
> >
> > I see 3 posts by you recently. The last two were
> > political. This one is complaining. Maybe you'd feel
> > better if you knew that McWhorter's book is anti-wokism?
>
> Bullshit. You're evidently too stupid to notice humor as a way of
> politely suggesting people are being ignorant and off-topic. FWIW, I
> ain't complaining. I don't care one way or another about this book
> HERE. I am simply stating the obvious that to continue spewing
> individual analysis of world politics in a windows 10 group is damn
> stupid.
>
> I am more than happy to discuss these things. It is apparent from this
> thread that those talking the most about their views, know the least
> about those they pretend to speak of. I am all for discussion, I just
> don't want to do it here because it is so destructive to a group. If
> everyone thought like you, that if you just put OT in the subject you
> could discuss whatever you want here, the groups becomes unusable. That
> people don't understand this has always baffled me.

Perhaps I'm 'spoiled' by my very useful news client (Gravity). Not only does
it allow me to consign nuisance posters (this doesn't include you - your
argument is a legitimate one, even if I'm unconvinced) but it also allows me,
with a single keystroke (I) to Ignore a thread from now on. (I understand some
clients allow this for subthreads, which is even better.) In any event, you
have the option to skip over threads marked OT.

I don't agree that an occasional OT excursion makes a group unuseable - we see
many threads which are simply trolling, and most of us simply step over them.
Here, I found a correspondent with interesting and informed contributions to
make on Windows 10 also had interesting and informed contributions to make on
social issues, so (having flagged the thread accordingly) we exchanged a small
number of messages. Nobody said you have to read them, just as nobody says I
have to read any thread here (or elsewhere). I do think that continuing such
an excursion indefinitely would begin to dilute the value of the group, and
while my correspondent has come back with more interesting insights I gauge
this is the place to stop. But given your freedom to choose a news client with
the ability to manage content not to your taste, I don't think we should give
you the freedom to shut that content down. A gentle nudge to "get a room"
might have been reasonably well-received. But your insults above - aimed at a
fellow group user who is inoffensive and thoughtful - show that you'e not
someone whose views need concern me unduly. You'll be pleased to know that I'm
unlikely to develop *this* subthread further, as it is arguably OT itself.

--

Phil, London