The Presidency of the Joes: more like INFRASTRUCTURE WEAK

I’m not disagreeing, I guess I just find it unproductive to dwell on the waaf so much.

https://twitter.com/ccadelago/status/1374784469664739330?s=20

8 Likes

Well he just got that job if he wants it.

1 Like

Moral arcs, as defined by MLK, is clearly real and supported by all historical, sociological and economic data.

Not believing it is like denying gravity.

1 Like

Jeez, poor guy’s only been on the court for (almost) 17 years and we’re already rushing him off to retirement at 82?

If you want to define the arc as the past couple hundred years, limit it to western civilization, and assume it can never dramatically curve the other way, sure. A wider view doesn’t support it.

I think many people don’t appreciate how much they treat the idea of perpetual progress as a religion. It is simply taken on faith that things just will not ever get significantly worse, and that informs their entire world view without them even being aware of the assumptions they’ve made.

This is a broad point stemming from your comment. Please don’t do your clovis thing and interpret it as a hyper personal attack.

6 Likes

very interesting poll imo, though not surprising.

It sucks that 22 and Ma$on had to make the moves they did. One of the nice things about that community was genuinely being exposed to people from all over the political spectrum who at least theoretically respected logical argument. I learned a lot of the good arguments for universal health care, for example, from conservative posters earnestly trying to defend the lack of it. I like UP a lot, but that’s not what we have here.

Dana wouldn’t be allowed on this site

Conservatives accidentally reinventing universal healthcare was a recurring bit over there.

1 Like

https://twitter.com/usembassyhaiti/status/1374753568914292736?s=21

1 Like

Can you cite any sociological, historical or economic research that supports this? Everything I have ever read shows clear progress over the long term, globally, not just western civilization.

Sure there are short term bends the other way but I don’t know of any long terms ones.

Climate change might precipitate the first global bend the other way.

1 Like

Good lord.

I would hardly call the 1,000 years between the fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance a short term bend.

You’re also measuring from the vantage point of the winners. The surviving descendants of quite a few indigenous groups might have a slightly different view of all that “progress”.

8 Likes

GRAVITY DOESN’T PULL DOWN HARD ENOUGH!

Indeed, also every tiny bend in the arc requires enormous contrarian effort. Make Good Trouble, as the wise man said.

1 Like

Yeah, Was the triumph of capitalism progress? It CIA hadn’t caused the massacres of millions of left wingers the world over in order to “save” capitalism wouldn’t we have a far far better world?. If you’re a one armed iraqi with radiation sickness from depleted uranium did the world get better in the last few decades?

8 Likes

By those metrics nothing could ever make the world better.

While he didn’t predict a price tag, Manchin said Congress should do “everything we possibly can” to pay for it. He said there should be “tax adjustments” to former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law to boost revenues, including by raising the corporate rate from the current 21 percent to at least 25 percent.

The tax benefits in the Republican law were “weighted in one direction to the upper end,” Manchin said. He also suggested an “infrastructure bank” paid for with revenues, potentially a value-added tax, that would be used for “rebuilding America.”

6 Likes

https://twitter.com/JamesGleick/status/1374758529781891079

If I was pres

Pres. Devil: Ron, tell Mitch’s people to have him call me.

Mitch: Hello Mr. President, Mitch here. You wanted to speak to me, sir?
Pres. Devil: Yeah, Mitch. Now listen close. Go fuck yourself. click

12 Likes

During the entire arc of human history on a long enough timescale, things have always gotten better. Yes, there have been reversions and some horrific aberrations, but the trend is clear.