The Invisible Counterpoint

Milo is Salon's replacement. Salon isn't to be seen as empowering Milo, but rather as shuddering as they sense the limelight passing. Amanda Marcotte noticed that there were many who identified as strongly feminist... who were the sort of people who previously loudly applauded Salon when it went after sexist men, who suddenly revealed themselves as actually not so feminist at all -- and in fact as actually very, very angry at women -- when they became Bernie Bros. It was if they'd finally found a safe space where they could finally speak their minds without feeling like they would be obliterated for it, and they indulged as if previously prisoners humiliated into forced identification.  They had aligned with people like Marcotte, that is, defensively. By being with her, they couldn't give voice to their prejudices -- and in fact had to experience the constipated discomfort of staunching them -- but they could partake in her being bitchy, arbitrary and dismissive...

Original Article:  Kudos to Hillary for playing the woman card: If people are going to call her a witch, she’ll tell them she’s Hermione Granger FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2016 3:23 PM  Aunt Messy   Emporium   turney333   Jayne Cullen  Just for you, Aunt Messy: The fact that Hillary and Chelsea wore different color dresses intrigues me as well. They weren't unified, part of one-another -- all white. It was a white and red "split". Maybe not a priming of good-and-bad-witch, pure-and-bad-blood split... something which will soon be displaced onto Trump, as he gets portrayed as a foreign Russian devil, with noticeable female attributes. But I wonder if they were encouraging us to see Chelsea as the blood on Hillary's hands: that with Hillary elected, the future of the young would be a sacrifice of blood.  A subconscious communication: if you're tired of pushy, uppity, disrespectful youth -- you don't need to go Trump Republican... Hillary will make sure...

Original Article:  His dark materials: After that diabolical, masterful performance, Donald Trump could easily end up president FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2016 6:09 PM  Christine B.   BrainDrain  Yeah, your point is one Steven Pinker would corroborate with his "Better Angels of Our Nature." Permalink

Original Article:  GOP war on porn: The same party that nominated a libertine for president is now calling your porn a “public health crisis” THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2016 2:30 PM  Jayne Cullen   Algernon2  The war on pornography that is going on right now though is perhaps best understood as a war against pleasure. It is the emerging prudish attitude of the 1930s condemning Jazz Age fun as civilization-destroying. It really just isn't the time to be with those who argue that porn dehumanizes. Such times might have once existed. Not now. Best to go with Marcotte's people just having a bit of me time on occasions.

Original Article:  Don’t blame Brits for the Brexit: The EU strayed from its roots in post-war unity to become a neoliberal technocracy WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 2016 4:23 PM  E.L. Deflagrante   kumicho  "we do not get that the member nations are not US states, but nations with thousands of years of history" I always wonder when people talk about the importance of the length of time a country has been a country, if they're thinking that somehow a race's history gets passed on through the genes. It's like as if some serum was injected into each young child, so they're inextricably infected with the millions of voices of their ancestral heritage. Within each one is actually a Jungian legion! I'm sorry, but weren't they rather just playing with their X-boxes and listening to their Taylor Swift? How exactly was the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Chesterton and Churchill lurking somehow, even within that? Maybe it's rather that if you've been well...

Original Article:  Smart country, foolish choice: The U.K.’s Brextremely stupid move SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2016 3:02 PM  If this cosmopolitan world somehow manages to keep going, we're going to see some of these Anglophiles genuinely pressed on exactly how much, truly, they're disappointed when a cosmopolitan world collapses... how disappointed they are, truly, when suddenly everyone in their own country wants to know more of their Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Wordsworth origins, rather than what the rest of the world "bursted" (good literature bursts?) with their ostensibly equally worthy literature.  For if it somehow keeps going, Literature departments will likely be pressed on this habit of sticking to, of permitting, study according to country. Why communicate to students that it's okay to devote oneself to more or less uninterrupted involvement in your own country, when the world you're in is an interconnected reality? Why communicate that people shar...

Original Article:  No, Syrian refugees didn’t rape a child in Idaho: Right-wing urban legend shows how ugly anti-refugee movement has become WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2016 7:52 PM  susan sunflower   Emporium  Good point about the similarity between this case and the scapegoating of Jews as child-abductors. Referring specifically to Jews, this was a minority actually leaps ahead in terms of childrearing, true child care, than the rest of Germans -- they were the most progressive group in the country.