Tag Archives: 2024 US Elections

Seeking relief from the constant depressing news?

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Let me share two profoundly wise items with you

But not yet….

Sharing news items on my Mastodon and Facebook this morning was not fun — but needed to be done.

That Sydney Morning Herald analysis is paywalled, but if you can see it do read it.

“A star is born!” US President-elect Donald Trump told his raucous supporters just a few hours before the US election was called in his favour. “Elon!”

“He’s a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super genius.”

Months of fuelling a budding bromance, millions of dollars in political donations and millions more memes and tweets all culminated at this moment: a comprehensive Trump victory, and one that bore the mark of the world’s richest tech bro….

Forget Lachlan, or James. The real heir to Rupert Murdoch is perhaps not one of his own family members but Musk and the podcasters, including Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman and Ben Shapiro. They are now more relevant than any legacy media outlet and have become essentially the new media.

Millions of Americans are no longer reading The New York Times or watching CNN. They’re not plugged into mainstream media and they are often outright proud of the fact. They’re listening to Rogan’s three-hour-long podcasts on the train and during gym sessions, and they’re listening to Huberman’s Huberman Lab podcast, dissecting neuroscience and discussing how to live longer via biohacking….

And over on Loon Pond:

And that is just a sampling on one issue! So how are we to cope?

Vlad Vexler to the rescue

We have shared items by Vlad Vexler many times before.

What follows are two of the best responses to events in the USA that I have so far seen. A sequel is in the works to the second one, depending on Vlad’s precarious health no doubt.


Vlad Vexler 21 hours ago The shallowness of the analysis of why Trump won is shuddering. Titanic levels of denial among our very best commentators. Not understanding democratic decline at all – and, nearly all of them talk about democratic decline and authoritarian populism all the time. A case of not understanding the import of their own views. That itself is a symptom of democratic decline – when intellectual and curious elites who have integrity and support democratic institutions are blind.

Recovering — just…

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I’m fine, even if the world is not…

An apt performance

Read it all

Meanwhile in China

Not everything is politics…

And 30+ years ago Michael Xu told me about this phenomenon:

And here in West Wollongong?

Nothing as exciting as either of those, but hey! — I’m 81 now! I make myself some tasty meals — well, I like them….

Yes, that is Chicken Kyiv! My supplies are delivered to my door once a week by the local Woolworths store, and this morning’s has just arrived. There is more ready-prepped Chicken Kyiv in one of those bags.

It is a touch grey this morning in West Wollongong, but still beautiful.

That’s Mount Kembla on the left.

I thought of an American classic — of several in fact

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… but Sinclair Lewis especially

I first read It Can’t Happen Here (1935) in 2016, when I added it to my growing eBook Library on Calibre on my laptop. It is not, of course, an exact parallel to what we are now witnessing, but it sure does resonate!

There is no Peace! For more than a year now, the League of Forgotten Men has warned the politicians, the whole government, that we are sick unto death of being the Dispossessed—and that, at last, we are more than fifty million strong; no whimpering horde, but with the will, the voices, the votes to enforce our sovereignty! We have in no uncertain way informed every politician that we demand—that we demand—certain measures, and that we will brook no delay.

And again:

I don’t pretend to be a very educated man, except maybe educated in the heart, and in being able to feel for the sorrows and fear of every ornery fellow human being. Still and all, I’ve read the Bible through, from kiver to kiver, like my wife’s folks say down in Arkansas, some eleven times; I’ve read all the law books they’ve printed; and as to contemporaries, I don’t guess I’ve missed much of all the grand literature produced by Bruce Barton, Edgar Guest, Arthur Brisbane, Elizabeth Dilling, Walter Pitkin, and William Dudley Pelley.

Others have also recalled this novel.

Which is more than a bit over the top, of course…

The play was 1936, the novel 1935.

(15) Congress shall, immediately upon our inauguration, initiate amendments to the Constitution providing (a), that the President shall have the authority to institute and execute all necessary measures for the conduct of the government during this critical epoch; (b), that Congress shall serve only in an advisory capacity, calling to the attention of the President and his aides and Cabinet any needed legislation, but not acting upon same until authorized by the President so to act; and (c), that the Supreme Court shall immediately have removed from its jurisdiction the power to negate, by ruling them to be unconstitutional or by any other judicial action, any or all acts of the President, his duly appointed aides, or Congress.

Addendum: It shall be strictly understood that, as the League of Forgotten Men and the Democratic Party, as now constituted, have no purpose nor desire to carry out any measure that shall not unqualifiedly meet with the desire of the majority of voters in these United States, the League and Party regard none of the above fifteen points as obligatory and unmodifiable except No. 15, and upon the others they will act or refrain from acting in accordance with the general desire of the Public, who shall under the new régime be again granted an individual freedom of which they have been deprived by the harsh and restrictive economic measures of former administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

“But what does it mean?” marveled Mrs. Jessup, when her husband had read the platform to her. “It’s so inconsistent. Sounds like a combination of Norman Thomas and Calvin Coolidge. I don’t seem to understand it. I wonder if Mr. Windrip understands it himself?”

The quotes are from It Can’t Happen Here.