blue_mood

Sam Harris: "Elon needs help as a person. Obviously, he is not well. This is a story of psychological and social unraveling, enabled by all of the sycophants in his circle. Al this harem of surrogate mothers and fourteen kids - the warning signs are everywhere in this guy's life. He's just been unravelling for years now - and his engagement with Trump has been the sign of that unravelling."


Scott Galloway: "Somehow we've decided in America that innovation and money replaces or obviates or excuses depravity.

I think if somebody is making Nazi salutes, if somebody is being sued concurrently by two women for sole custody of their child because that person has not spent any time with that child, when someone is so severely addicted to drugs they can't get their shit together to show up to the White House without looking exceptionally high — I don't think that's the right role model for young men.

So what I would ask of all of us is: look at what money has done to us. If someone can land a rocket on metal scissors or create a great EV he's a genius. He's the wealthiest man in the world, but does that mean we should excuse depravity? Unlike Bill Gates he's not using his billions to help people. He's not planting trees the shade of which he won't sit under.

I think this is an individual who has literally come off the tracks, who is rapidly addicted to drugs, and is using his immense power to get people elected, and that too many of us excuse what is abhorrent behavior. I think his legacy is not going to be an EV or putting rockets into space. I think it's going to be unnecessary death, disease and disability of the world's most vulnerable. That is not what it means to be an innovator, it's not what it means to be an American, it's not what it means to be a man."


Не то, чтобы вторая характеристика противоречит первой - просто она звучит как-то... не по-современному. Так сейчас не говорят, в общем.


John Calvin: "Man, having been corrupted by his fall, sins voluntarily, not with reluctance or constraint; with the strongest propensity of disposition, not with violent coercion; with the bias of his own passions, and not with external compulsion: yet such is the depravity of his nature that he cannot be excited and biased to anything but what is evil..."


Дэвид Фрум пишет об упадке моральной традиции кальвинизма в послевоенной Америке в своем эссе "Were the Founding Fathers Libertarians?" (откуда я взял вышеприведенную цитату из Кальвина):

"It would be hard to imagine a mental outlook less conducive to the libertarian celebration of individual choice than that bequeathed by Calvinism not only to New England Puritanism but also to the “hardshell Baptists” of the South — such as for example the parents of Abraham Lincoln.

Only a very few Americans of the Founding generation enjoyed anything like material security. While most white Americans enjoyed a higher standard of living than European peasants, that comparative abundance was a desperately precarious state. An American who drank too much, who had too many children, who got into a fight and suffered a wound that could be infected — in short anyone who did not tightly control his impulses — risked disaster not only for himself or herself, but also for his or her loved ones. In such a world, the psychology of modern libertarianism — the desire to live unrestrained by any force outside oneself — would be seen by most as an invitation to self-destruction.

Libertarianism is very much a movement of post-1945 affluent society America, a society that has developed birth control and drug rehab, antibiotics and antidepressants. We are a society abounding in second chances. 18th century America was a society in which a personal misstep could easily lead to premature and unpleasant death. Self-actualization through self-expression was a concept not imaginable until GDP per capita rose many, many thousands of dollars higher than the level prevailing in 1776."

Интересно, что, согласно Википедии, отец Скотта Галловея - эмигрант из Шотландии. Может, там пуританский слог сохранился дольше, не знаю.

По требованию администрации телекомпания ABC отстранила от работы журналиста Терри Морана, за то, что он написал пост про Стивена Миллера - о том, что им движет исключительно ненависть.

"The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that's not what's interesting about Miller. It's not brains. It's bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate. Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end his his own glorification. That's his spiritual nourishment”.

"Ненависть" тут, может - не совсем точное слово. Скорее, речь идет об особого рода радости.

Поводом для поста (одним из поводов?) послужило, по-видимому, недавнее сообщение о том, как Стивен Миллер наорал на руководителей ICE: "What do you mean you’re going after criminals? Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?"

Не могу не отметить, что Миллер - в отличие от Трампа, который думает, что хлеб в магазине продают по паспорту - обладает определенным знанием реалий. Результатом устроенного Миллером разноса стал, в частности, рейд ICE на Home Depot в Лос-Анжелесе, который привел к протестам и беспорядкам.


Вчера Миллер подтвердил, что для него массовые депортации - самый важный вопрос, цена не имеет значения.


Ханания писал о Миллере так:

"Few people in public life strike me as purely sadistic in the way Stephen Miller is. He doesn't even seem that racist, just looking for ways to make people suffer, and I think if it wasn't immigration it would be something else."

И сегодня:

"Too bad the original tweet was deleted. As someone who has been deeply involved in right-wing circles, I can report that sadism and hate are common explanations for opposition to immigration.

Not every restrictionist, but among those who make this their calling in life, a very high percentage. Especially true in a case like Stephen Miller, who clearly gets joy out of the thought of others suffering and seems to have no positive vision or goal.

When Vance says Miller supports Trump because he wants everyone to play by the same rules, it gives the game away. There's nobody who is more into cronyism and favoritism than Trump! The guy is openly selling pardons and hosting foreigners at the White House because they bought his meme coin.

So clearly, "he just likes fairness" isn't credible as an explanation as to why Miller latched on to Trump early on and has stayed by his side all these years. The fact that Vance relies on this explanation shows he has nothing.

We have to look for an alternative reason, and Miller's passion for hurting innocents based on the excuse they were born in the wrong country gives away what is really driving him."



А в школьные годы Миллер, который тогда еще был волосат и, отчасти, бородат, отличился тем, что произнес речь следующего содержания:

"Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash? We have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us!"

Иммиграционный статус школьных уборщиц в Санта-Монике начала нулевых сейчас уже трудно установить.

В провинции - беспорядки, в столице танки готовятся к параду на день рожденья президента, президент угрожает олигарху "серьезными последствиями", если он начнет поддерживать оппозицию.

В принципе, нормальное такое положение дел для банановой республики. Разве что бананы - завозные. А так - жить можно, только осторожно.

Я, кстати, не помню, когда и где в последний раз было такое, чтобы народ пытался непосредственно воспрепятствовать жандармам в их жандармской деятельности. В Сирии инсургенты атаковали полицейские участки чтобы освободить задержанных, но там, все же, гражданская война была.