I haven’t been paying much attention to politics for the past… half decade or so. There used to be a joke ’bout comedians intentionally voting for incompetent presidents so they’d have great material, but we have since learned that this is wrong: truly incompetent presidents & the long shadow they cast ’cross politics e’en after their ignoble defeat are themselves jokes, leaving satirists useless. There’s nothing interesting in mocking republicans: they’re self-parodies. Also, I’m getting too ol’ to keep up with whate’er new redundant ingsoc pundits have garbled up without any hope o’ creating any coherent conversation.

Anyway, I have sometimes peeped in for a few seconds just to check to make sure the government hasn’t been o’erthrown while I valiantly fight back with my sword & shield flee to Canada sit round laughing @ how desperate Mario Party fans are for fantasizing o’er DLC GameCube boards for that half-assed remake Nintendo’s regurgitated back onto them like Roger Waters spitting on 1 o’ his unwanted pets. & in this time the “lamestream media”, as all the hip-hopping fly-dog boomers call it, has become, um… weird…

Marx provided a solution. He observed that the working class (the 99%) overwhelmingly outnumbered the rich at the top (the 1%), and thus the working class could transform its massive size into political power by uniting together in a cohesive political movement. Workers of the world, unite!

That is not from some 90s-era website run by a bunch o’ bearded disgruntled commies in their basement but Salon, a major newspaper I’m sure would’ve been stroking themselves o’er the latest milquetoast pontifications o’ Paul Krugman a decade ago.

So you might think I’d be all, “¡Hot shit! ¡I guess you guys are kinda cool all ’long!”. But you clearly don’t know how impossible to please I am. I am, after all, the one who wrote the Nobel-Prize-winning critical review o’ the positive review for Wario Land 3, despite that being my favorite game o’ all time. I don’t know ’bout you young whippersnappers, but I been taught by my school that done taught me good that any dumbass honkey can have the “right” conclusion — a true G has good arguments to back them up.

& the article we’re reviewing, “Republicans claim to fear left-wing authoritarianism — but there’s no such thing”, doesn’t.

1st, let’s appreciate this glorious caption with its glorious Photoshop filters:

Poor Hitler looks so camera shy & Kim Jong-Un looks bored out o’ his mind. Hairpiece, who does not belong with these people, not the least ’cause he’s not nearly as crafty as they were, looks like a turtle looking up @ dangling food offscreen.

Anyway, this article is notable in how poorly written it is. Not to be all “both sides, bro”, but it does kind o’ sound like Hairpiece in its simplistic, broad vocabulary & choppy sentences. After the previous snippet ( which was probably the best o’ that article, helped by being able to steal 1 o’ its sentences by a far better writer ), we have this gem:

This is a powerful idea. Extremely powerful. This idea filled the suffering working class with great hope and inspired them to attempt to join together in unity in order to seek greater fairness for workers.

The article starts by talking ’bout how right-wingers are all liars. This is true, but it’s also true that all politicians lie, &, most importantly, many o’ the greatest politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, were some o’ the biggest liars. ¿Remember when Lincoln tricked ’nough moderates into thinking he was a moderate on the issue o’ slavery when he was, in fact, rightfully, completely gainst slavery. The difference is that some rare few manage to, gainst all expectations, lie for the good o’ society ( which is definitely possible ).

In fact, lying is the only way the right wing can win elections. After all, its policies are profoundly unpopular with ordinary people because the right-wing favors the 1% rich over the 99% working and middle classes.

This is true; ¿but how many “left-wing” politicians truly support the majority? ¿Could it also be that none o’ the politicians offered by the US’s “democracy” truly serve the masses, leaving many o’ the masses, specially the lower class, to not bother voting? Also, this is nice o’ this writer to assert that the poor whites who joke-voted for Hairpiece would prefer improving their own station o’er screwing o’er minorities. ¿Could it not be that the US masses are just legitimate terrible people who prefer others’ failure o’er their own success?

By the way, I still haven’t shown you the absolute worst o’ this article’s writing. I’m now ready to unleash it ’pon you:

The lies are not just little lies. They are whoppers. They are the complete opposite of the truth. They are 180 degrees from the truth. They are the polar opposite of the truth, like from the North Pole all the way to the South Pole. Hence the term Big Lie.

This legit reads like Lionel Fanthorpe trying to fill out 1 o’ his 5 daily Badger Books. I think if I were this dumb ’nough to need this many redundant clarifications I’d be legally dead.

Yet, shockingly, many of these egregious lies actually work. They take hold. They create a false impression in the mind of the public.

You know, I’m still not entirely sure what this “lie” thing is. ¿Could you please elaborate a bit mo’?

The writer finally gets round to describing the “big lie”: that Democrats are totalitarian commies & that Karl Marx is the devil & all socialism is satanic. Interestingly, despite the writer’s constant attempts to simplify, I still get confused on whether or not they’re trying to defend socialism, Democrats, or mock the very idea o’ “socialism” ( which they keep putting in quotation marks ) as a real specter @ all. For instance, when they say “Republicans allege that electing Democrats will turn America into a failed socialist state like Venezuela”, the 1 time they don’t put “socialist” in quotation marks, I don’t know if they’re, ironically, accidentally regurgitating the Republicans’ lie that Venezuela is full-on socialist ( it’s mo’ what most would call a mixed economy, with private property & copyright explicitly protected as rights in the Venezuelan Constitution ).

The most problematic part o’ this article is its, um, historical inaccuracies:

Along came the liberal Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, which celebrated liberty of the individual and emancipation from the strictures of monarchy. These new ideas led to the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, including the American Revolution of 1776, in which the United States declared its independence from the King of England, thereby giving birth to modern liberal democracy. France soon followed with the French Revolution in 1789, overthrowing the French monarchy.

1st, the US was ne’er founded as a democracy ( & it still isn’t 1 ): many o’ the founding fathers, specially the 1s most instrumental in the creation o’ the Constitution, like James Madison & Alexander Hamilton, hated democracy ( literally every use o’ the term in The Federalist Papers is negatively comparing it to a republic, a concept originated by Plato as a distinctly technocratic, hierarchical system in opposition to democracy ) — & it certainly wasn’t a “modern” 1.

Anyway, the real issue is how this article is going to discuss the French Revolution, what with its controversial fall into chaotic mass murder & tyranny…

Unfortunately for the working class, however, even the elimination of monarchies did not improve their plight as they had hoped. From approximately 1850 to 1880, Karl Marx came along and explained the problem. Even though monarchies were receding, a new oppressive force was emerging: capitalism.

Um… I think we might’ve missed some important details regarding the French Revolution. Tho, to be fair, people who emphasize the brutality o’ the Reign o’ Terror noticeably don’t talk as much ’bout things like the violent suppression o’ the Paris Commune o’ 1848, which some historians say had mo’ casualties than the Reign o’ Terror, not to mention worse wars primarily gainst poor people thruout history — too many to count. ¿How many historians or journalists would get ’way with saying “Unfortunately for the US, howe’er, e’en the fall o’ the Taliban did not improve the plight o’ the middle east”? Probably none, since no journalist would allow their writers to write “o’” ’stead o’ “of”. But it is definitely true that while mass murder gainst the rich is a horror that is considered inexcusable in polite media, mass murder gainst the poor is merely an interesting debate to be held by rich people during their surfeit o’ laborless time ( we can call this “Socially-Unnecessary Idle Time”, or SUIT ). So they’re basically a less-bad reverse o’ the whitewashing o’ mass murder vs. poor people customary to the LAME-PEE Media™.

I’m also glad that Karl Marx came round & ’splained a problem that many socialists & nonsocialists who preceded him, like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the Utopian Socialists, & e’en Plato had already described years before.

The world was shocked as it watched Marx’s theoretical idea come into actual fruition in the Russian Revolution of 1917 when the working class united in the Bolshevik party led by Vladimir Lenin and overthrew Czar Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty, ending the Russian Empire and creating the Soviet Union.

I, too, am shocked, but mainly @ the sheer magnitude o’ inaccuracies found in this li’l paragraph. Anyone actually familiar with Marx’s “theoretical idea” — which is that a fully-developed capitalistic society would lead to a “bourgeois revolution”, setting up a parliamentary democracy/republic, which the working class would exploit to gain control o’er the government — would know that the Russian Revolution — wherein an underdeveloped pseudofeudalistic tsardom ’ventually became a totalitarian statist regime ( so it merely became a li’l mo’ developed ) — is hardly “fruition” for the former. & anyone who has e’er read a history book that wasn’t written by Stalin himself would know how obviously wrong the rest o’ this paragraph is. 1st, Lenin had nothing to do with the February Revolution that deposed the Czar — he was still hiding out in Switzerland. In fact, no single party was responsible for that revolution: ’twas a spontaneous uprising.

2nd, apparently the person who wrote this was somehow completely oblivious to the existence o’ the Mensheviks, despite their rivalry being a famous part o’ Russian Revolution history. Either that or they’re ignorant that the Mensheviks were Marxists, too — nor that the founding divergence ’tween them came from the fact that the Mensheviks were less elitist, opposing Lenin’s authoritarian scam that was his small party o’ “professional revolutionaries” ( also known as an “oligarchy” & obviously contrary to any conception o’ democracy ), which was completely contrary to the Marxist idea that socialism would come from the rational self-interest o’ the masses in a democratic system that, by definition, serves the masses’ desires, not from the idealistic ideology o’ a “good” tiny minority totally different from that other tiny minority who were a “bad” tiny minority.

Moreo’er, they were ignorant o’ the existence o’ the Socialist-Revolutionaries ( they certainly couldn’t have missed that they were a socialist party by their name ), who actually won the election after the October Revolution, only for the Bolsheviks to lead a coup gainst them with bullshit claims o’ electoral collusion with the rich elites like US Republicans ( only Lenin, to his credit, was actually competent ’nough to carry it out ). Later, Lenin would have SRs destroyed with show trials gainst 12 prominent SR leaders that ended in their execution, which was heavily criticized by socialists all thruout the west, such as Karl Kautsky:

The Bolsheviki were first to use violence against other Socialists. They dissolved the Constituent Assembly not by way of resistance against any violence on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists and Mensheviki but because of their realization of their own inability to obtain the support of the majority of the peasants and workers by means of free propaganda. This was the fundamental cause of the Bolshevist coup d’etat against the representatives of the revolutionary workers and peasants. Hence, the abolition of all rights of all other Socialists who refused to submit to the crack of the Bolshevist whip.

This isn’t e’en taking into consideration the many anarchists who, as per their name, had no involvement with “official” politics, but were heavily involved in the Soviets ( labor unions ) that held a lot o’ power in the weird 2-tiered system Russia had ’tween the February & October Revolutions, who were also backstabbed by the man who declared “¡Power to the Soviets!” by taking power ’way from them & keeping it within the government once the Bolsheviks managed to finally get their filthy paws all o’er it. For instance, Kropotkin, a famous anarcho-communist who actually knew the OG Marx ( tho didn’t like him ), who supported the February Revolution, said o’ the October Revolution, “This is the burial of the Russian Revolution”, as well as the following:

They have deluded simple souls. The peace they offer will be paid for with Russia’s heart. The land they have been given will go untilled. This is a country of children – ignorant, impulsive, without discipline. It has become the prey of teachers who could have led it along the slow, safe way. . . . There was hope during the summer. The war is bad – I am the enemy of war – but this surrender is no way to end it. The Constituent Assembly was to have met. It could have built the framework of enduring government.

(I should add that Lenin, after 1 letter too many from Grampa Kropotkin, apparently became enraged & grumbled, “I am sick of this old fogey. He doesn’t understand a thing about politics and intrudes with his advice, most of which is very stupid”).

Emma Goldman, ’nother famous anarcho-communist, who had been deported back to Russia from the US during the US’s 1st red scare, had this to say ’bout Lenin’s treatment o’ anarchists & his treatment o’ free speech:

I broached the subject of the Anarchists in Russia. I showed him a letter I had received from Martens, the Soviet representative in America, shortly before my deportation. Martens asserted that the Anarchists in Russia enjoyed full freedom of speech and Press. Since my arrival I found scores of Anarchists in prison and their Press suppressed. I explained that I could not think of working with the Soviet Government so long as my comrades were in prison for opinion’s sake. I also told him of the resolutions of the Moscow Anarchist Conference. He listened patiently and promised to bring the matter to the attention of his party. “But as to free speech,” he remarked, “that is, of course, a bourgeois notion. There can be no free speech in a revolutionary period. We have the peasantry against us because we can give them nothing in return for their bread. We will have them on our side when we have something to exchange. Then you can have all the free speech you want — but not now.

He goes on to ramble like an ol’ man ’bout how they recently needed to trade salt for the peasants’ wood & how @ 1st they couldn’t find salt, ¡but then they could! What relevance this had to the issue o’ freedom o’ speech, I have no idea, other than that they apparently needed to find mo’ salt before they had time to not spend time locking up pesky anarchists.

Emma Goldman had good reason to emphasize freedom o’ speech: she had been deported from the US for her political views during World War I. Not e’en the typical US-military-industrial-complex-apologetic moderate “liberal” defends the kind o’ flagrant 1st-Amendment violations the US government enacted during this time. But here we have “leftist” Lenin declaring it OK to throw free speech to the wind when inconvenient. I should add that, despite what many who base Marx’s views on this stranger’s actions think, Marx himself was an ardent supporter for freedom o’ speech, & in fact, 1 o’ his most popular tracts during his time was “On Freedom of the Press”.

Emma Goldman continues…

Why did Zorin resort to lies? Surely he must have known that I would not remain in the dark very long. And then, was not Lenin also guilty of the same methods? “Anarchists of ideas [ideyni] are not in our prisons,” he had assured me. Yet at that very moment numerous Anarchists filled the jails of Moscow and Petrograd and of many other cities in Russia. In May, 1920, scores of them had been arrested in Petrograd, among them two girls of seventeen and nineteen years of age. None of the prisoners were charged with counter-revolutionary activities: they were “Anarchists of ideas,” to use Lenin’s expression. Several of them had issued a manifesto for the First of May, calling attention to the appalling conditions in the factories of the Socialist Republic. The two young girls who had circulated a handbill against the “labour book,” which had then just gone into effect, were also arrested.

But, yeah, other than all those li’l squabbles, socialists were all 1 big, happy family.

Anyway, please continue, Salon article:

But Lenin fell ill not much later, became weak and disabled, and died in 1924. Within a few years, Joseph Stalin seized control, consolidated his power, and ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for three decades, until his death in 1953. Stalin is now justly regarded as among the worst dictators of the modern era. Stalin created a deplorable totalitarian state, waged a campaign of murder and imprisonment against millions of political dissidents (as well as imaginary enemies) and repressed human rights, free speech and any version of democracy.

We’re gonna need mo’ paint, Jake, ¡’cause it’s white-washing time! The idea that Stalin came in & turned Lenin’s nice li’l democracy into totalitarianism is a blatant lie: Lenin had already banned all other political parties & had called for the Red Terror, as well as many other onslaughts, such as the mass murder o’ kulaks after a peasant revolt.

It’s ironic that they’re praising Lenin when talking ’bout honesty, since it’s well known the many “Big Lies” Lenin spread, such as the aforementioned lies he gave Emma Goldman or his aforementioned unfulfilled promise to give power to the soviets or spreading the name “Mensheviks” based on their purported “minority” status, when, in fact, on most votes they received the majority & had many mo’ members ( Mensheviks, as stated before, allowed people who were not full-time revolutionaries into their party — i.e. real workers ) — which is precisely why Lenin used nondemocratic means to suppress them.

In Lenin’s defense, the Soviet Union did do some ahead-o’-their-time things under Lenin that distinguished him from Stalin, such as setting up free education, implementing greater tolerance for gay people & greater equality for women, legalizing abortion, granting self-determination for countries like Finland ( tho they violently suppressed the independence movement in Ukraine ), ending involvement in World War I ( not doing so being the 1 major mistake the provisional government made — other than putting any trust in Bolsheviks & giving them weapons & access to military ). & ’course he also smashed that capitalism like a like button, which is always fun, but then replaced it with just a shittier Grand Dad bootleg, which isn’t fun.

I don’t know if any o’ this makes up for the mass murder, rampant violation o’ human rights, & tyrannical rule, e’en with civil war going on. Despite Leninists always calling the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, & anarchists “right-wing”, I see no evidence that they were a threat to the Bolsheviks beyond their opposition to the Bolsheviks’ tyrannical behavior after the Bolsheviks were already doing so, which was before the civil war began. It’s not as if the provisional government they unseated were a major threat — ¡they practically just gave up during the October Revolution! All evidence to me points to Lenin having been an obstacle to democracy & socialism, not a beleaguered leader forced to do ugly things to prevent worse tyranny or disaster. It would be no exaggeration @ all to call him an enemy o’ socialists — he literally spent mo’ time fighting other socialists than monarchists or capitalists.

So what is the assessment here? Was the Soviet Union left-wing? Was Stalin left-wing? Are dictatorships left-wing? Is totalitarianism left-wing?

A bigger question is: ¿who cares? ¿Would this early-20th-century left-wing have any relevance to the average hippie leftist in the US today?

This transformation of the Soviet Union by Stalin from a beneficial left-wing movement into a hideous right-wing dictatorship was masterfully described by George Orwell in his famous novel from 1945, “Animal Farm.” That book, summarized here, tells an allegorical tale about animals on a farm who rise up in revolt, banish the humans from the farm, and seek to govern themselves on the farm under a free and democratic animal society.

Let’s hear Orwell’s actual opinion o’ Lenin:

The article is entitled ‘Lenin’s Heir’, and it sets out to show that Stalin is the true and legitimate guardian of the Russian Revolution, which he has not in any sense ‘betrayed’ but has merely carried forward on lines that were implicit in it from the start. In itself, this is an easier opinion to swallow than the usual Trotskyist claim that Stalin is a mere crook who has perverted the Revolution to his own ends, and that things would somehow have been different if Lenin had lived or Trotsky had remained in power. Actually there is no strong reason for thinking that the main lines of development would have been very different. Well before 1923 the seeds of a totalitarian society were quite plainly there. Lenin, indeed, is one of those politicians who win an undeserved reputation by dying prematurely. Had he lived, it is probable that he would either have been thrown out, like Trotsky, or would have kept himself in power by methods as barbarous, or nearly as barbarous, as those of Stalin.

The Salon article tries to ’splain the mystery ’hind this charade:

Clearly, tyrants should pretend to be someone who can offer what the people desire. Many tyrants falsely proclaim to be Marxists, socialists and left-wingers because the ideas of the left are broadly popular among the oppressed classes in many countries around the world. And for good reason: Left-wing policies would indeed improve the quality of life in most societies.

If we acknowledge that not everyone who calls themselves “left-wing” is honest or good, ¿what people who call themselves “left-wing” can we trust? ¿This Salon writer? ¿Me? Perhaps it’d be mo’ useful to talk less o’ “left-wing” or “right-wing”, which are meaningless when we acknowledge that the words that come out o’ politicians’ mouths are meaningless, but ’stead focus on the composition o’ the government that makes & enforces law — the who, not the what. US leftists elect rich man after rich man into government & are surprise Pikachu face that they serve their fellow rich man — after serving themselves, ’course. If only we could elect a godly perfect human that only thinks o’ everyone else that doesn’t exist. Or if only we didn’t follow a system that actually gave the majority choices that they actually want, rather than a 2-party state.

But implementing a few left-wing policies does not magically convert a right-wing dictatorship into a left-wing democracy. The societies ruled by Castro and Chávez were never left-wing democracies, and cannot truly be considered “socialist.” They were overwhelmingly defined by right-wing attributes, including strongman rule, a one-party monopoly on power, suppression of free speech, false propaganda glorifying the regime, persecution of political dissidents, the restriction or elimination of democracy and so on.

See, I find it funny that this writer goes to such lengths to defend Lenin, but slams on Chàvez, who is generally agreed, e’en by the US, to have been legitimately democratically elected — moreso than US politicians, specially the president we elected @ the time, who didn’t win the popular vote, not to mention all the scuzziness surrounding his victory, such as the Brooks Brothers riot, which succeeded in stopping the vote that may have put Al Gore in the oval office ’stead o’ the man who created decades-long wars & the worst US economic crash since the Great Depression. Maybe this Salon writer should acknowledge that it’s not just Trump — Republicans have always been antidemocracy. It’s not till after Chàvez’s death & Maduro takes o’er that elections get questionable, tho Chàvez did seem to engage in some media intimidation near the end o’ his administration, specially with his shutdown o’ Globovision o’er their support for the attempted 2002 coup & Chàvez certainly said a lot o’ stupid, strongman things. Also, Venezuela has ne’er been a 1-party state, a’least till maybe very recently with the other major party’s boycott o’ the 2020 election. Lenin was certainly worse. In fact, Venezuela broke down the weird power-sharing 2-party state system it had ( basically a reflection o’ the Republican & Democratic Parties in the US ) &, a’least for a while, opened up a plurality o’ parties.

Does anyone really believe that China is a “People’s Republic”?

Considering “republic” is just a vague word that means “people thing” ( making “People’s People Thing” as ridiculously redundant as “The Los Angeles Angels” ) & historically referred to any kind o’ government, not just democratic ones, yes, I do believe China has some sort o’ government.

But Trump intentionally sought the support of blue-collar, working-class voters by promising left-wing policies. He promised a new health care system with universal coverage for everyone at a mere fraction of the cost. He promised he would stop U.S. corporations from shipping jobs overseas, and would bring jobs back to America. He promised he would never cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. He promised to get tough on Big Pharma and cut the high cost of drug prices. He promised a massive investment in America’s infrastructure, like roads and bridges. He promised to tax the rich, including himself, and to provide a massive tax cut for the middle class.

But once Trump was elected, of course, he abandoned all these promises of policies that would benefit the working class, instead implementing right-wing policies that benefited large corporations and the rich at the top, including granting a massive tax cut to himself and the rich, slashing regulations for big business, seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act and seeking to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But then the article seems to end with a commercial for the Democratic Party, which is not accurate:

The Democratic Party is not authoritarian, and does not seek to create an authoritarian regime such as those in China or Cuba. In truth, the Democratic Party favors robust democracy in direct opposition to authoritarianism.

Perhaps the Democratic Party doesn’t support full on dictatorship, but since it supports the current nondemocratic US electoral system, with its laughable electoral college ( which gave Clinton the majority o’ actual, real, people votes, but, as per the US system as set by the founding fathers, gave the victory to Trump for having the most magical “electoral votes” ), its skewed senate, its unelected judges for life, its legalized bribery in the form o’ lobbying, & its 2-party monopoly, saying it supports a “robust democracy” is a joke, as is the idea that these clowns sitting round in the white house & capital doing nothing while Republicans are standing round putting together their nooses in public sight as “direct opposition to authoritarianism”. That’s a weird way to talk ’bout the Neville Chamberlains o’ the 21st century US.

I thought I’d ’scaped politics till next November, but looking up vital information on Lederhosen Luigi in some new Mario Kart thing I otherwise don’t care ’bout caused me to stumble on this juicy bit o’ conservative news that the liberal lame-pee media won’t tell you:

“Conservatives decry media coverage of Biden playing Mario Kart and his dogs after four years of critical Trump headlines”.

That is from the Washington Examiner, which sounds like it’s a conservative bootleg o’ the Washington Post — which means we have to do the unfathomable & imagine a newspaper with e’en lower standards than the Bezos in the Trap Post. I can’t wait till they sell themselves to eBay.

As the title hints, this article is nothing mo’ than the writer whining vicariously thru “conservatives” ’cause a newspaper wrote a fluff piece, like they always do for non-fascist presidents, ’bout Biden-His-Time, the most generic o’ Presidents, whose greatest achievement as President, in fact, was playing as best Mario character Luigi in Mario Kart. This is in contrast to all the negative coverage they had gainst TV star who stumbled himself into the presidency thru memes & almost sparked an insurrection &, mo’ importantly, ne’er played as Luigi in Mario Kart, Donald Trump. Conservatives, which, those o’ us with memories stronger than goldfish recall, hated Trump when they expected him to blow their chance to beat Clinton till he managed to stumble into a surprise victory, after which conservatives fell o’er themselves to suddenly start sucking his wrinkled balls, can’t fathom that the reason newspapers have such a stark bias gainst a president who sat by while millions o’ US citizens died o’ a disease whose containment they actively tried to sabotage is ’cause there is an authentic inequality in quality ’tween the 2 — which says something dire ’bout their precious beloved, since Biden isn’t e’en B-tier. Only absolute scrubs play as Biden; you wanna play, you better pick Abraham Lincoln — or Luigi, ’course — in Final Destination with no items, or you better get the fuck outta Super American Bros. Melee. But just like how scrubs who can’t figure out how to wavedash want Melee trophies — wait, no they don’t; only nerds still care ’bout that 20-year-ol’ game — conservatives want their participation trophies simply for having a president, e’en tho they constantly criticize other people for s’posedly wanting participatory trophies.

Try convincing me there is no such thing as liberal media bias. https://t.co/wd5jqYiKYT

— Rep. Jeff Duncan (@RepJeffDuncan) February 16, 2021

Fun social experiment: show this Tweet to someone outside o’ the US — maybe someone @ Nintendo o’ Japan — & watch them stare @ you in confusion. You people outside the US don’t realize it, but Mario Kart is sacred to our culture.

What’s funniest is that this article contradicts its own main point when it writes:

Melissa Cooke, Politico’s communications director, told the Washington Examiner that the outlet “is committed to vigorously holding the Biden administration to account — to the same standard that we have covered previous administrations.” She added that since Biden’s inauguration, Politico has reported stories about how Biden’s aim to isolate China on coal could blow back on the U.S. and about how Democrats are preparing for heartburn over Biden’s immigration plan.

Politico is, in fact, so determined to compromise & find some kind o’ fake balance ’tween moderate conservative Democrats & fascist Republicans that they manufactured flaws for Biden, like that some vague immigration plan o’ his will magically cause people heartburn, which doesn’t e’en make any sense. The Washington Examiner could’ve bitched ’bout other newspapers & been accurate if they just stuck with the simpler hypothesis that newspaper articles are written by morons with nothing insightful to say. After all, reading that he played this at Camp David indicates that he was there for something to do with the US involvement in the very controversial conflict ’tween Israel & Palestine. Maybe that would be something to discuss & what Biden-His-Time’s doing there. ¡I’m sure it’s playing “Imagine” for everyone & telling everyone “Give peace a chance, guys” & not giving mo’ money to the Israeli military ( money we definitely don’t have for single-payer health insurance or student debt forgiveness ) so the fun war games will ne’er stop! Perhaps Biden & his daughter should’ve played Call of Duty ’stead, to be mo’ fitting. & perhaps this super-serious newspaper should be deeply embarrassed that wacky blog ’bout Italian Plumber video games, poetry that seems like it’s written by a madman, & such savvy political commentary as jokes ’bout zombie Karl Marx & made-up religions like “Magical Socialism” or “laissez-faire economics” saw fit to discuss such a serious topic mo’ than they did. If conservatives want, they can read actually left-wing newspapers like The Nation, who do criticize Biden for, true to his name, biding his time on Israel policies or watch Noam Chomsky, who has apparently transformed into Gandalf the White in the last few years, @ Democracy Now criticize Biden for his jingo-red-meat policies gainst China & Iran, as well as Palestine. Turns out the solution to the “lamestream liberal media” is to read better newspapers.

But for the Washington Examiner, who sees fit mo’ to whine ’bout the “liberal media” that apparently has no problem with feeding racist wars ’tween 2 theocracies that worship the same imaginary god in the middle east like cockfighters & eats up jingo-red-meat for dinner every night for not criticizing Biden for… for what, they don’t say, since they ne’er bring up a real issue @ all ( I’m sure conservatives are staunchly gainst US involvement in these wars or the trade wars with China or their hypocritical dick-waving in front o’ Iran, considering how much their idol Trump… also did that shit ), that would be pot calling kettle black ( & conservatives are ne’er hypocrites, so that would be an impossibility ). You can’t blame newspapers ’cause they, gainst their will, live in a reality racist ’nough gainst conservatives to make the Democrat president not have nearly as exciting failures as the Republican president. Maybe if you guys elect a president who isn’t a complete fuck-up for once & only funds wars, rather than feed wars & do a lot o’ other terrible things, too, you can get your fluff pieces ’bout your president playing Fortnite @ an Afghan graveyard or some shit nobody cares ’bout ’cause only Boomers read newspapers.

This article doesn’t help Trump’s case, anyway:

The media has also overwhelmingly lauded the Bidens for bringing two dogs into the White House after Trump’s tenure saw no pets.

If conservatives can’t fathom the difference in inner integrity ’tween people who have cuddly pets & those who don’t, then they’re just hopeless nihilists.

While a headline from the Washington Post published on Tuesday reads, “Power Up: Scrunchies and dog walking: the country gets a taste of Jill Biden’s radical normalcy.”

It’s almost as if most o’ the country is revolting gainst the brain dead daytime TV show conservatives have been trying to turn the US into thru their assembly line o’ talking bobbleheads spouting moronic extreme rhetoric in desperation for their 5 minutes o’ attention.

The Washington Examiner then talks ’bout how vague “conservatives” — ¡not them, ’course, ’cause they’re unbiased & objective, unlike these other newspapers! ¡Buy a subscription for only $29.99 a month & get a free mug! — have no real problems unlike the islanders who are ’bout to drown thanks to climate change bolstered by the tax cuts given to coal companies passed by inherently repugnant conservatives & spend their time whining ’bout the media’s bias in favor o’ Biden’s wife, an Ed.D who runs a breath-health-awareness nonprofit gainst Melania Trump, a fashion model who dropped out after 1 year o’ college. It’s almost as if people literate ’nough to write for newspapers prefer educated people who do useful things for the world. This is just like all the times the liberal media showed bias in favor o’ immunologists when discussing COVID o’er what Uncle Roger barks ’bout on his Twitter page. The liberal media should feel ashamed o’ themselves for having such racist “standards”, as they call them.

If Trump was President this tweet would mention thousands dying of COVID as he played and freezing from a huge winter storm with no power. 🤔🧐 https://t.co/0IF210c8SJ

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) February 16, 2021

“If this were a shittier president who utterly failed in the time o’ crisis, they would be accurately pointing out their failure ’stead o’ accurately discussing how boring this mo’ boring president is. ¡Damn the liberal media & their belief in individual responsibility! ¡Why can’t they just blame Democrats for bad things Republicans do already!”.

All I can say is that this is a great advertisement for the Washington Examiner. I can’t wait to spend my hard-earned money listening to entitled people whine ’cause mo’ & mo’ people are becoming smart ’nough to not respect them anymo’. This is worth so much mo’ money than the same insipid shit I can get for free on Reddit.

Update:

I happened to stumble ’pon news o’ Biden-His-Time doing something maybe, possibly better than playing as Luigi in Mario Kart:

“Biden responds to report that Trump tested positive for COVID before their debate: ‘I don’t think about the former president’”.

Good idea: maybe we should all stop thinking ’bout former presidents who don’t play as Luigi in Mario Kart.

I guess Democrats failed ’gain this year, I think. That’s what all the progressives whining all o’er Reddit seem to imply. All I know for sure is that some WASP-ass right-wing honkey beat some moderately liberal honkey in Virginia. I guess this is s’posed to be surprising, since apparently this hick town is solid blue. According to the senile ol’ men who run CNN, this spells trouble for Democrats, since “a tie in this year’s gubernatorial election would essentially be in line with Republicans winning the national House vote by 5 points next year”. I guess political hacks all follow the gambler’s fallacy. It’s just like how the Democrats winning the Presidency & both parts o’ the legislature in 2020 proves that Democrats would wipe the floor with the next election.

I hear Youngkin did run on a strong policy o’ whining ’bout the fear o’ whitebread, chicken-shit motherfucker children being taught that they’re whitebread, chickenshit motherfuckers — also known as “CRT”, or “Critical Righteous Traintown” — & ’cause the other guy whose name I can’t be bothered to remember made the gaff o’ telling inbred parents they’re too dumb to decide what their children should “learn”, as opposed to people with actual degrees & credentials. This is 100% true, but you don’t win elections by honestly telling idiots they’re idiots. Shockingly, they don’t admire you for that, but, in fact, double-down on their idiocy, like these idiots did when the painstream media asked them if they knew what Capacious Rapturous Tommyguns is & they said, no, but that which I don’t understand can’t kill me. & then they died o’ COVID, the end, hope you liked my story, like & subscribe & leave a comment, it helps this channel out, sponsored by manscaped RAID VPN.

But the other results in other states I couldn’t care ’bout are mo’ mixed. New York’s brain-damaged brother, New Jersey, still hasn’t gotten their shit together & decided their election. I’m pretty sure they’re a blue state, so ’twould be an embarrassment if they let a Republican win, but then they did let Chris Christie win, e’en tho I’ve ne’er met anyone who likes him. Then ’gain, I’ve ne’er met anyone who likes New Jersey, either.

In Ohio, 1 Democrat won & 1 Republican won, which must be filling centrists like Jonathan Chait with cum. ¿Is that man e’en still alive? ¿Did he die o’ COVID? ¿Who cares? NBC News doesn’t bother to tell me who occupied these seats before, so I’m not bothering to link to them. I bet their crying to themselves all night @ the loss o’ such a juicy link. According to Wikipedia, these seats were tied, tho, mo’ hilariously, Wikipedia also informs me that 1 o’ these bums will have to give up their seat in 2022 ’cause Ohio loses a representative ’cause nobody wants to live in that shithole & everyone left. That won’t stop them from deciding national elections, howe’er, ’cause that’s how the US’s pretend democracy republic oligarchy works. According to MSN, Democrats “dominated” the Cincinnati council as well as mayorship & that this year had a record-low voter turnout ’cause Americans are coming to their senses & realizing that the US electoral system is a sham & that violent revolt sitting @ home playing with their pee-pees while scarfing down Doritos is the only solution. O’erall, this seems mostly positive for Democrats, which, if anything, seems like it tends to lean Republican — tho Cincinnati is a blue city. They did vote out an anti-corruption bill, tho, since Ohios still love their corruption.

Florida’s election is just primaries, e’en tho its November, ’cause Florida is always a backward swamp.

The 1 “major” loss for Democrats is in my city, Seattle, where a super progressive lost to a moderate Republican as district general. This super progressive supported such deranged, radical policies as forcing minor offenders to see therapists or addiction councilors, rather than the rational, scientific approach o’ sticking them in a cage with a bunch o’ violent drug addicts & hope they turn out to be law-abiding, successful citizens afterward.

So it sounds like the real reasons progressives are so glum is just that this election has reminded them that states like New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio, & Florida exist. I think centrists & progressives just want any ’scuse to pull out a bitchfight o’er who’s to blame for their failure to win invalid elections systems, e’en when they do sorta win them.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I agree that in the short run Republicans are totally going to take o’er the country & ramp up authoritarianism ( tho in the long run I think the social democrats will be burying them, as, historically, social democrats always have done to fascists, since fascists can’t last for mo’ than a couple decades @ most, usually less than 1 decade — just look @ who runs Germany & Spain now ). But I think this will be less due to whate’er arcane sign this election will foretell & mo’ ’cause Republicans orchestrated an insurrection & Democrats are such laughable pusho’ers that e’en when their lives were endangered they still haven’t done shit to protect themselves beyond walking out ( surrendering like pussies ) when 1 o’ them becomes an elected official. Beloved leaders like Lincoln or Churchill wouldn’t have flinched before ramming the military hard on such acts o’ treason, but to the Democrats, that would be uncivil, which is why they are well-remembered, since nobody likes civil politicians ’cause they’re fucking losers.

I almost didn’t e’en want to bother posting this or e’en reinstating the host for this blog ’cause my host stupidly forgot how to charge my credit card — ¿what kind o’ un-American commies forget how to charge a credit card? Next year you Democrats better truly get your asses rammed in in an exciting & sexy way or I’m just going to write a haiku ’bout dog shit like I should’ve sufficed with last year.

When I started this blog what feels like a lifetime ago, back in that innocent time when fascism was a joke nobody took seriously & I mostly wrote ’bout laissy libertarians ’cause ’twas hipper & they still had some relevancy back then, the 1st article I wrote was “Conservative Political Correctness”, ( this was also before such hip terms like “SJW”, which has now completely usurped the term “PC” ) making fun o’ the hypocrisy o’ conservatives who criticized leftists who… have morals that they believe in & care fervently ’bout & how conservatives could be, naturally, quite peevish ’bout having their sacred cows like capitalism, Christianity ( which comes 2nd, ’course — let’s be honest here ), or o’erpriced, low-quality fast-food chicken mocked, e’en tho these things deserve it mo’ ’cause 1, they’re mo’ powerful, & 2, they’re older & therefore obviously less sexy than religions like Hylianism or economic systems like dommunism, — only reactionaries still like communism, get with the 21st century — which is a government-controlled market place that operates entirely on voluntary S&M trades — that trade mainly being o’ the product known as “cum”. You can learn mo’ ’bout this in the latest Robert Heinlein novel.

Anyway, that article was badly-written & is full o’ cringe, which is why I didn’t link to it. I think I recommended people “expand their minds” by reading that dumb Britain-worshipping Richard Dawkins, who was dumb ’nough to put up Shakespeare o’ all people as “evidence” that Britain has the best poets, e’en tho Shakespeare’s poetry is his worst work that clings sickeningly close to that incessant iambic pentameter, which to a largely-atheist internet crowd is like recommend white rock fans expand their minds by listening to Metallica. You should read Proudhon, tho, as he came up with a lot o’ interesting economic questions that mainstream hacks like Keynes & Marx ripped off & watered down as they clung to classical economics¹.

Anyway, years later I wrote a marginally better article, “People Who Criticize “Social Justice Warriors” Are Mindless Hypocrites”, wherein I declare myself a “Social Justice Black Wizard”, which is a weirdly self-effacing thing to say, as anyone who has e’er played Final Fantasy knows that Black Mage/Wizard are some o’ the weakest classes, since Square Enix are racist. You’d think my commie ass would’ve picked “Red Wizard”, since that better matches my ADD-riddled master-o’-none tendencies.

Anyway, a certain event that wasn’t a big deal that recently happened — & if it takes me half a year to publish this article, that event was 1/6, by the way; & if you’re not a US citizen, ¡good job! Also, that was a day when a bunch o’ Dukes of Hazard cosplayers invaded the hilariously badly-defended US capitol ( Islamic terrorists: ¡take note! ) as revenge for their favorite TV star not winning the US’s most prestigious beauty contest — made me realize ’nother fun hypocrisy I can joke ’bout to my tiny clique o’ people who already agree with me & will not derive any change in opinion, thereby making this article useless ( & by that, I mean confusion as to why a blog that’s been talking ’bout nothing but programming & video games for the past years is suddenly talking ’bout political punditry bullshit ): conservatives, who oft criticize leftists for their s’posed “moral relativism”, oft exhibit these same traits themselves. ¡How droll!

¿How else can we describe conservatives who try to defend the attempted capitol insurrection by comparing it to Black Lives Matter riots? Ironically, conservatives are proven right ’bout many liberals ( who are just half-assed leftists ) in that many liberals will rush to point out minute details, like that a few people were killed in the attempted insurrection ( as if it would’ve been perfectly fine if nobody died ), while ignoring the far grander answer: the Black Lives Matter riots were gainst racism, which decent people agree is bad; the attempted insurrection was bad ’cause ’twas gainst democracy, well, it wanted to make the US e’en less democratic than it already is, which decent people agree is good. After all, Americans have no problem cheering on our “founding fathers” when they committed acts o’ terrorism & treason gainst their government for the sake o’ democracy aristocratic republicanism. You can’t claim violent revolt sets a bad precedent when your country was founded on the precedent.

But despite the snake flags & dumbass hats they wear, the Capitol Crusaders weren’t revolting gainst monarchy, but for it. & the conservatives who defend them are just using moral relativism to shroud their implicit support for racism & opposition to democracy.

We see this with the way they throw round ’nother fancy new slang term that doesn’t mean anything, “cancel culture”. Back in my day we called this “boycotting” & ’twas an intentional part o’ market economics to empower consumers thru their “money votes”. To be fair, since genuine electoral systems — which, also to be fair, doesn’t include the US government, which apparently thinks giving hundreds o’ thousands o’ people in cities the same voting power as 10 people in Wyoming & the electoral college system, which is as logical as the ceremony they use to choose the Pope, is in any way comparable to true democracy — don’t give a few people millions o’ times the voting power as other people, this is, indeed, a stupid system, but I don’t see conservatives doing much ’bout that but to… I guess try to “cancel” people or institutions that do this. ¿Shall we call this “cancel cancel culture”? I can only expect this to build up the strange loop o’ meta levels.

The truth is that pretty much everyone who has some semblance o’ morality engages in “cancel culture”. ¿How many people would willingly pay to watch a movie that advocates for legalizing pedophilia? Well, maybe conservatives, since they supported a bill to allow doctors to feel up li’l girls’ hoohaws in their valiant attempt to foil the crafty plots o’ young men disguising themselves as girls so they can… play sports gainst them — ¡the worst crime! Nobody seems to question why we have gender-segregated sports in the 1st place. I guess it’s ’cause the average women has ’bout 2% less muscle mass. Letting the giant bully kid pound the fuck out o’ the thin-boned sickly kid in dodge ball is still perfectly fine, tho.

¿So why don’t leftists throw round “cancel culture”? Well, for one, we’re hipsters who care too much ’bout our dignity. But the other reason is that they’re mo’ likely to focus on the actual issue in question, rather than the vague idea that some person is being negatively affect in some nebulous way. For instance, we could say that Republicans threatening to let doctors sexually assault trans kids is a form o’ “cancel culture” gainst trans people… or we could call it encouraging people to sexually assault trans people, which is far worse. But when conservatives throw round “cancel culture”, it’s not to defend trans people but to defend designing CPAC’s stage in the shape o’ some dorky Nazi symbol that’s probably based on Norse mythology, ’cause whitebread cracker-ass motherfuckers are all RPG dorks. The only alternative would be to defend supporting Nazism. & while conservatives might think that showing support for the most infamously murderous government regime in history is on the same moral level as defending people who change their genders, people who aren’t deranged tend to disagree.

This is nothing new: I noticed conservatives’ lack o’ consistent morality when I witnessed the ’bout turn from “questioning the President is unpatriotic” under Bush to “anti-government libertarians” under Obama², & now twisting all the way round to outright fascism. Granted, fascism & libertarianism aren’t nearly as diametrically opposed as many on the internet will tell you: Ludwig von Mises defended the OG fascists as “necessary” for combating communism ( which is odd, since they got their asses kicked by Stalinist Russia, so they didn’t e’en succeed @ that for which they were “necessary” ); & Friedrich Hayek lavishly praised fascist dictator Pinochet, arguing that he was fine with dictators so long as they “govern[ed] in a liberal way” ( used violence solely to benefit rich people — also known as how gangs operate ). While both showed misgivings for the inconveniences fascism might hold for property rights ( which Mises literally defines as the core definition o’ liberalism ), neither showed nearly as many misgivings for the mass murder that happened under either regime, since people aren’t money, & only money deserves rights ( so long as it’s not 1 o’ those dirty fiat currencies — ¡they go straight to the gas chambers! ).

All o’ this is to say that I still remember all the mean things I looked up ’bout laissey libertarians years ago.

Also, all o’ this is to say what everyone already knows ’bout conservatives: their only consistent principle — or rather, lack o’ principles — is serving their own short-term, hedonistic self-interests, which includes debasing themselves in every ways they can, including spewing the most flagrant lies in the world like that a bunch o’ fat, middle-aged military men who refuse to wear masks that were @ the capitol insurrection party were the kind o’ hippies that comprise antifa or that bro country is good music — which includes the lie where they pretend to have morals @ all.

Having now opened all your eyes to the grand secret, I now look forward to the Republicans fooling the majority the minority o’ ignorant rural hicks, who’ll hold the country hostage till the s’posedly-educated urban people grow the spine to o’erthrow them, into voting them into office in ’22 & continue valiantly keeping the US government from doing anything useful while people continue to die o’ COVID & the economy continues to collapse & Nintendo will continue to make shitty rehashes o’ series that haven’t had good games since under the Clinton administration.

Treue schwören, keine Flagge,

Gottnation, gottverdammt;

der Teufel tanzt mit den Verachteten,

und wie das Feuer uns warm hält.

—Septuplum ultio dabitur de Cain de Lamech vero septuagies septies…

It’s that time o’ the year. ¿Will the Democrats after years o’ humiliating failure finally snatch victory from the US’s 2nd least competent president¹? Stay tuned to find out… Or, you know, just pay attention to real news.

For instance, votes have already been counted in the tiny community o’ Dixville Notch, NH — all 5 votes ( that’s popular votes, not electoral votes ) for Sleepy Joe, which is proof that people are taking seriously the need to exorcise the Hairpiece, as the kind o’ people hipster ’nough to count votes @ 12:00 AM are the kind o’ people mo’ likely to vote for a 3rd party, like 1 o’ the 4 alternate Republican parties I saw on my primary ballot last August.

As a laugh, I decided to watch the 1st the presidential debate after The Guardian alerted me to how so-bad-it’s-good ’twas, &, yeah, ’twas bizarre. I don’t know what I like best: journalist whose boring white name I recognize, but I know nothing ’bout, trying & failing to take some control as moderator as Hairpiece rambles & Sleepy Joe grumbles; Sleepy Joe’s straight not giving a shit attitude, which is refreshing from the typical false sincerity o’ Democrats; or Hairpiece seeming to care mo’ ’bout getting sweet jabs on Sleepy Joe than whether or not these jabs were actually politically potent, such as when he claimed that Sleepy Joe would lose the “far-left” for claiming he didn’t support “socialist” health care ( the kind o’ nationalized health care that pretty much all civilized countries have & has led e’en poor countries like Cuba to have better health care than the US ), which goes gainst Hairpiece’s attempt to portray Sleepy Joe as a far-left antifa Soros whate’er. I mean, I do that, but I’m a satirist, not a president. Maybe Hairpiece should be debating Colbert ’stead.

Actually, I think my favorite part was when Hairpiece claimed that he would make insulin as cheap as water thru magical trade agreements ( which from what vague info he gave, sounded like a scheme to get cheaper-made medicine from seedier places by butchering health regulations… which would not make people healthier ), which e’en the moderator couldn’t stop laughing @. Nobody asked the obvious question: ¿why hadn’t Hairpiece enacted this brilliant plan o’ his in the 4 years he had?

It always amazes me when I watch debates & see how li’l substance is ’hind either candidates arguments — high school students in debate class could do better. I’m sitting here thinking ’bout all the ways e’en someone as simple as I could deconstruct Hairpiece’s complaint ’bout “socialist” health care — ¿what is his definition o’ “socialist”? If it is government control or use o’ government taxes, ¿how is that different from the use o’ tax $ to fund police, which is ironically something that only the “far-left” supports? — or thinking ’bout all the statistics that show the US’s inferior health care performance compared to e’en poor countries like Cuba, including life expectancy, infant mortality, & death by cancer. Hell, I myself could make a better shot gainst the Democrats than Hairpiece by pointing out how lucrative government-funded health care is for private insurance companies, who get their money either way ( & lobbied for it, from both the Republicans, who were the ones who actually created Obamacare ). Sleepy Joe just babbles on some nonsense ’bout how Obamacare on 1 hand barely changed anything — it s’posedly just gives health care to people already eligible for medicaid ( which he accidentally called “medicare” once ), ’cept those whose governors tell them, “fuck you, you can’t have it, either” — but on the other s’posedly does a lot mo’ than just regular medicaid for helping people get insurance ( ’cept for the people in red states, who would still be fucked o’er ). Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here wondering why I should care so much ’bout keeping my private insurance, anyway — ¿Who cares ’bout their particular insurance provider? & indeed, I looked it up & found out that it’s not just the “far-left” who prefer “socialist” health care, but the majority o’ Americans, as well, making the whole debate subject a farce. So we have a ludicrous situation where both candidates are arguing o’er whether 1 o’ them is a socialist when the majority’s saying, “Actually, we want a socialist, please”.

Then ’gain, these debates are aimed @ the same type o’ people who voted for the rambling Hairpiece, anyway, so maybe research & critical thinking would be less palatable than Sleepy Joe dodging questions on expanding the supreme court ( rather than point out all the ways Republicans have been cheaply sabotaging Democrats from appointing judges when Obama was president, like a competent candidate, or be so audacious as to point out that having judges be appointed for life rather than elected for limited terms is stupid & antidemocratic ) or eliminating filibuster ( rather than, ’gain, pointing out that everyone knows it’s a stupid loophole & should have been eliminated decades ago ) by urging people watching to vote, which, presumable they’re going to do if they’re wasting their time watching a debate.

Still, with how nonchalant & passive-aggressive the debate is, it’s hard not to see it as as the elites sober-minded ’nough to know that the US’s government is a joke & now everyone has been let in on it by & are just going thru the motions in the waning years before the country is devoured by rioters & brownshirts.

As a refresher to moderate liberal Redditors fantasizing ’bout things the Democrats definitely won’t do if they win, such as prosecuting Hairpiece or fixing the mess that is the US’s electoral system, I checked in on my favorite faux-rural leftist hipsters @ Naked Capitalism & saw that Yves Smith is still somewhat o’ a crank. For instance, in her article, “One Trump Voter Explains Why Trump Will Win”, which quotes some anonymous hipster Trump voter named Zelda, she links to an o’erly-long thinkpiece that points out the shocking revelation that Democrats like Clinton ( who is still enemy #1 o’ hipster leftists, who is, as Eric Idle would say, an uppity rich bitch, & a’least she isn’t male, so fuck you all so very much ) are rich airheads who only exploit the troubles o’ minorities for their get-rich schemes & then later in her own article calls medicine “a medieval art”, as opposed to random online person’s thinkpieces, which are as hard a science as natural sciences.

FiveThirtyEight has frozen their election forecasts & are currently predicting that Sleepy Joe has a 9/10 chance of o’erthrowing Hairpiece & Democrats have a 3/4 chance o’ retaking the Senate. Howe’er, they were wrong in 2016, so we can ignore what they say & make armchair theories ’bout the psychology o’ the “average American” that I’ve ne’er met, ’cause I only know rich white people like me.

But in FiveThirtyEight’s defense, they do now have cute fox cartoons on their site, so that should absolve them o’ their sins o’ being know-it-alls who are sometimes wrong.

Daily Kos has an interesting spreadsheet listing important referendums and measures on the local state level, including an attempt by Republicans to repeal Colorado’s inclusion in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which, if ’nough states sign up to it, would make presidential elections based on popular vote ( genuine democracy ) rather than the silly electoral college the US’s drunk slave-holding founding fathers conjured up, — since it’s already well established that Republicans are opposed to democracy — as well as many other electoral reform measures. If there is 1 good thing from the great 2016 mistake it’s that mo’ normies are realizing how botched the US electoral system is & starting to actually reconsider it & consider ways to fix it, rather than just obsessing o’er whether candidates are civil ’nough or whether they come from “Starbucks” or “Chick-fil-a” America, or whate’er bullshit. This Cookie Monster man named Stephen Wolf e’en says that there’s a possibility the National Popular Vote could pass by 2024, which genuinely excites my cold, stony heart.

Hilariously, there is a website called “American Interregnum” that provides a table listing various social media’s policies regarding posts calling election results early. Only the US would form brands round the US’s crumbling electoral system.

The /r/politics ne’er mind, I somehow ended up on the /r/neoliberal subreddit, — don’t know why I would e’er want to go there — which I mentioned earlier in this very post already planning for what the Democrats would s’posedly do when they won ( which they most definitely would not do ) are now in despair mode ’cause they feel the polls were off ’gain, tho I feel like that’s just ’cause it’s not a blowout as they wanted, e’en tho that’s not what the polls promised. Anyway, I don’t see how anyone could have any idea o’ whose on top yet, considering how partial the results we have now seem to be. I particularly love the story 1 person told o’ smacking chicken nuggets their mother made for them out o’ their mother’s hand ’cause o’ how stressed they are. Good job making us look like adult-children, buddy. ¡Ha! ¡Ha! ¡I always knew neoliberals were secretly 30-year-ol’s still mooching off their mommies’ chicken nuggets! I’m glad that 1 person yelled @ them to apologize to their mother, tho.

Everyone knows it’s not o’er till Daily Kos starts despairing, & they’re still as calm as e’er.

Thanks to stumbling into the wrong neighborhood o’ /r/neoliberal, I did find this exciting livestream o’ 2 boring white people noodling o’er FiveThirtyEight’s stats all day. I thought neoliberals liked to pretend they were smart ’nough to read.

There’s a few fun electoral hijinx stories, like UPSP ignoring federal court orders to actually count all votes, a poll manager being late to work ’cause they just needed a few hours o’ extra sleep, & Facebook sabotaging liberals’ ability to get noticed. The fact that Facebook’s spokesman’s last name is literally Bourgeois just makes it all the funnier.

¡Ha! ¡Ha! ¡Look @ these Fox News polls showing what socialist atheists the majority o’ Americans are! I can’t wait for Republicans to still win the election, tho, ’cause polls don’t matter, since the US isn’t a democracy.

Everyone’s dour, but I don’t think that’s ’cause they necessary assume Sleepy Joe’s going to lose but just ’cause they for some reason expected a landslide & were hoping that all the Americans in the middle wilderness would come to their senses on Hairpiece. Considering the shitshow W. Bush was, I take for granted that Republicans are incapable o’ coming to their senses & that this was wishful thinking for people in the blue bubble. I have to say tho that I am a bit salty toward people who say things like “I can’t believe so many Americans are this racist, fascist” ( ¿Why didn’t Hairpiece’s original win convince them? ¿Were his sentiments subtle then? ). I’ve been aware o’ this before Hairpiece, but you don’t see me begging for pity.

Washington D.C. elects to turn themselves into the Mushroom Kingdom by legalizing hallucinogenic shrooms. We now have objective proof that the US’s politicos are all on shrooms.

The New York Times embarrassed themselves as they always do by claiming that declaring the winner o’ the election “falls to the news media” ( which only includes rich, connected papers like them, not newbie websites ) to determine election results.

Politico “news”: “We don’t like Hairpiece voters”. I can think o’ a few reasons that’s not exactly news, specially the fact that everyone knew this long before this election.

A great snapshot o’ both Hairpiece’s diehard fanatics’ disdain for e’en the weak form o’ democracy that the US has & their strategical brilliance: they chant “Stop the Vote” in front o’ a vote-counting building e’en tho voting has already stopped — they’re counting now — & @ the current count Sleepy Joe is ’head.

( Laughs ). Thank you for this, Zimbabwe: United States Risks Sanctions From Zimbabwe If Elections Are Not Free And Fair. Obviously, this isn’t truly important, politically, but it is a nice “Fuck You” jab.

I’m also amused @ this comment chain o’ Canadians expressing concerns o’ US people immigrating to Canada & the pros & cons.

( Laughs ). Vanity Fair: “Donald Trump, Colossal Asshole, Says Doctors Get Extra Cash If People Die of COVID-19”. I think you may be editorializing just a tiny bit in that headline, Mr. Lamestream Media. ’Sides, it’s needlessly wordy: “Colossal Asshole” is absolutely redundant before “Says Doctors Get Extra Cash If People Die of COVID-19”.

That article led me to a Twitter stream ( Fun fact: I don’t think I’ve read a single thing Hairpiece — or any politican — has said on Twitter for the entire 4 years o’ his presidency, & I can’t say I missed out much ) that I’d be better off not reading, & I found this bizarre tweet in response to some irrelevant bitching gainst General Motors that Hairpiece was doing for unknown reasons that I can’t tell if it’s ironic or genuine:

President Trump is an amazing man. Because He does everything he can, with his big strong hands, and even bigger plans. Although He is a billionaire, he understands the demands of the working poor, His biggest fans. United We Stand, for only Donald can Make America Great Again!🇺🇸

— Anthony Cornrod (@TWIT_ANTHONY) March 27, 2020

It’s too bad Hairpiece’s hands weren’t big & strong ’nough to win this election. ( Hopefully tomorrow doesn’t prove me as wrong on that as I was mo’ than 5 years ago. If that happens, this paragraph may have to mysteriously disappear like Trotsky did from Stalin’s selfies ).

Ne’er mind: I just found out he outright says he loves Hairpiece “*Sometimes sarcastically*” ( ¿What do asterisks mean in this context? This foreign Twitter culture is strange to someone as backward as me, who still thinks o’ the internet as the place for Geocities-like fan sites ’bout Super Mario 64, where I can learn such intriguing facts as “friendly Bob-ombs” & “70 stars to beat game, or come back to levels for all 120 stars” ).

I must admit, it’s surreal to see a milquetoast left-centrist like Paul Krugman echo the very same “extreme” critiques o’ the US electoral system & warnings ( well, in my case jokes ) ’bout the US becoming a failed state I’ve been making for years. & then we have milquetoast motherfuckers like Bloomberg offered this comprehensive deconstruction o’ all the problems o’ the US electoral system, which includes admitting that the US is the least democratic o’ all countries that aren’t blatantly nondemocratic — tho I would insist that it’s still inaccurate to call the US a democracy for both defacto & historical reasons ( the US was ne’er founded on democracy &, in fact, many o’ its most important designers, like James Madison, were very hostile to democracy, as anyone will learn from The Federalist Papers ).

I must say this election has completely fucked up my yearly tradition — that’s a far greater crime than COVID or the security dangers o’ vote-counters threatened by wingnuts ( ¿why does nobody use this term anymo’? It’s a beautiful word ). What was usually a recap o’ news sources commenting on a finished election has devolved into a muddled stream-o’-consciousness collage o’ random bullshit I found on Reddit. ¿Does it make sense to try talking ’bout how Daily Kos has reacted to Sleepy Joe’s victory when they’ve been talking ’bout it for days?

Well, fuck you, I’m going to do so, anyway. Here they are, showing off Sleepy Joe & Rando VP in their sinister anarchist black face masks, presumably ready to smash every small business window in the universe & cut socialist spending on police like the rabid laissez-faire-lovers they are.

I love this line, by the way:

There are still potential state wins on the table, but he does not need them.

Fuck you, Georgia & Arizona — Get outta here. Nobody needs you anymo’.

( O, shit, we still have 2 senate elections in George — ¡No, wait, come back! ).

I thought everyone’s favorite economist troll, Noah Smith, stopped updating his blog, but then I found out half a year ago he wrote an article ’bout keeping rabbits as pets. It is probably the only article he’s written that I 100% agree with — I am radically pro-rabbit, which is why I voted for Bugs Bunny for president this year, actually, which is why I feel absolutely no sympathy for Hairpiece & his whining o’ so-called sabotage. Bugs was the true victim here.

Lord Keynes, who I also haven’t been reading for years, still makes blog posts every blue moon, but he’s been quiet on any topic regarding Hairpiece or the alt-right — or alt-left, I guess — for the past few years, presumably after Hairpiece’s major tax cuts completely shattered any delusions o’ him being a Keynesian socialist whate’er. I can’t fault this decision o’ his.

Speaking o’ Reddit, I couldn’t get it to load to see what those idiots say, so I’m just going to assume Hairpiece shut it down in his beginning bid to silence all opposition. ¡Soon obscure blogs like mine will be the only 1s left & we will get our chance to shine!

The Nation responded with a seemingly backward schmaltzy article ’bout how, despite Sleepy Joe being a nothing centrist, they should still be appreciated for their “decency” ’cause he was 1 o’ the few people in the world to have family members who have died. ( I’ve had family members die, too, & no sane person would call me decent. ) I thought The Nation was a bit less coddling to centrists. On the other hand, The Intercept had no problem gleefully pointing out all the ways moderate Democrats were hypocritically attacking their base, not ’cause their ideas are bad ( like maybe some o’ Hairpiece’s mo’-rabid fanbase’s racism, sexism, etc. ), but ’cause it might make Democrats look bad. No wonder there are still many who prefer voting Republican: apparently Republicans still allow their voters to have independent ideas & try to attune their policies to their voters’ whims, rather than the opposite, trying to tell voters what they should believe & say. It’s shocking voters are so ambivalent toward a party that treats them as if they should be their servants, not the other way round.

’Course, I say that moderate liberals are only slightly better than utter failures, since as almost every major newspaper has been admitting ( thanks to Hairpiece breaking the moral horizon so much that e’en mainstream media can no longer delude themselves with the ol’ “both sides” bullshit ), the fact that Hairpiece received mo’ votes than he received last election & that this election was so close is still a deep embarrassment. Also, the Senate will probably stay red, — those fucking commie reds — so I look forward to 4 years where nothing happens & the embittered poor turn back to the right wing for ’nother zany heiler. Apparently the real-life version o’ Thursday O’Beefe is a top contender for 2024.

CounterPunch, a news site I have definitely not read in years, came out with an article called “Why Capitalism Was Destined to Come Out on Top in the 2020 Election”. The answer is obviously: “’Cause Capitalism Always Comes Out on Top”. This is as opposed to the 2016 election, when communism was so close to sweeping up the US & giving us all sweet Lenin-brand Po’ Boy hats. This article is legit so generic & transparently phoned-in that it could be applied to just ’bout every election. ¿Why e’en bother writing a new article? If anything, this election could’ve threatened to pull us much farther backward, which should a’least alarm or excite e’en noncompromising communists.

The only interesting thing they note is @ the end:

But those signs also reveal a huge remaining problem: disorganization on the left.

The problem is that CounterPunch doesn’t realize the obvious reason why: intellectual people tend to try avoiding conformity. CounterPunch should understand this, as their founder was praised for s’posedly being gainst the grain, which included his controversial climate-change denialism. The idea that everyone sympathetic to the left will zombie-like become urban labor unionists with the same fervor as Republicans fall into step is delusional.

Democracy Now! makes fun o’ spoiled white people for blaming Latin Americans for not stepping in line to the Democrats, when those honkeys are too busy playing The Last of Us to get off their ass & vote themselves, failing to realize that many Latin Americans are whitebread motherfuckers themselves, like a lot o’ Florida Cubans who couldn’t give a fuck ’bout Mexicans, they just want their tax cuts, bro.

FiveThirtyEight argues that the election was not as close as people thought ’twas this whole time, thanks to making judgments before all the votes were counted ( which is what we’re still doing now, as Sleepy Joe’s victory is still technically a projection ). Honestly, I agree with a lot o’ people, including Naked Capitalism, who expressed skepticism toward a huge landslide. Most pundits, many o’ whom still want to cling to the “both sides” idea, e’en if it’s been debunked, just wanted to believe that most US citizens weren’t low ’nough to support the kind o’ person who outright expressed tyrannical aspirations, a delusion that could be fed only by only associating with their kind o’ enlightened upper-class kind.

Anyway, let us end this week-long voyage thru the strange waters o’ the US’s 300-year-ol’ election system with these words o’ wisdom from our ex-president:

I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

These might be as good as such words o’ wisdom as “IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE”, “IF ALL ELSE FAILS USE FIRE”, & “I FEEL ASLEEP!!”.

&, truly, ¿didn’t we all win this election, by a lot, metaphorically?

Well, ’cept Republicans — but those fuckers wouldn’t be reading this now, so fuck them. We can whisper secrets ’hind their backs & there’s nothing they can do ’bout it.

Sorry I haven’t been writing much. Nobody else has been saying much notable & I got distracted by this neat book called They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. Not sure where I’d get the idea to read a book like that in a time like this. Unlike 2016, this election went just as everyone expected: Democrats barely win the House & barely lose the Senate.

If Democrats have any spine, the best they can do is cockblock Republican bills like Republicans did to Obama & pressure the Hairpiece administration into revealing its dirty laundry. I hope they a’least do the latter, as that will a’least be intriguing. ¡Don’t be boring for once in your life, Democrats!

According to DailyKos, this is 1 o’ the biggest waves ( keeping in mind that, in Democrats’ defense, they were unlucky with few senate seats up for grabs ). That’s not too surprising: 1 o’ the reasons I’m rather optimistic is that the obvious rancidness o’ Hairpiece has made mo’ people turn their nose & overtly oppose Republicans — when self-described centrists are mo’ & mo’ ending this “both sides” shit & going, “Yeah, no, clearly 1 side is much smellier than the other”.

For god’s sake, The New York Times, a newspaper that a decade ago was ‘fraid to call torture torture is warning ’bout fascism. Reddit, a forum with a somewhat undeserved notoriety with their alt-right forums & weirdness, has its main politics subforum mostly dominated with furious Democrats. While 538 tried to keep a nonpartisan visage, its comments are full o’ people sad when Democrats lose & happy when Democrats win, & you could see in Nate Silver’s mea culpa for his infamous misprediction o’ Trump’s loss that Nate Silver considered Trump, & to an extent, the Republicans in general kind o’ a joke. ¿& who could blame him? Halfway moderates have always known that Republicans are dumb; they just always tried to handwring round it ’cause they feel it’s too mean to tar an entire political class, ’cause they make that wrongheaded conflation conservatives try to feed that people who choose certain morals are the same as people who don’t choose their race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic stature ( a’least as much ), e’en though moral behavior is exactly what you should judge people on if your society is to survive. Turns out, this moral nihilism o’ “both sides are wrong” on behalf o’ centrists leads to a complete flouting o’ morals, & only by actually punishing those who flout good behavior do you actually lead people to act morally.

1 thing’s certain: intellectuals are certainly veering e’en mo’ ‘way from conservativism, which isn’t surprising, considering the geniuses they have. Studies prove it. This, ‘gain, we already know by the way conservatives attack intellectuals & colleges.

This is why I’m, as odd as it may seem for a cynic like me, totally dour ’bout the future. People compare conservative America to Nazi Germany but forget what Germany is like now: a progressive social democracy. That’s ’cause, if you look back @ history, you learn that, in the long run, the intellectuals always win, ’cause ideas are the only thing that outlasts people & are what basically all development comes from.

This is already happening. Climate change denialism is looking mo’ & mo’ ridiculous to mo’ & mo’ people; mo’ & mo’ moderates are becoming less enthralled with the ol’ “Washington Consensus” o’ neoliberalism. Economists who praised Bush’s tax cuts now roll their eyes @ the conspicuous cynicism o’ Hairpiece’s tax cuts. LGBQT rights has gone from a controversial issue to an issue as black-&-white, good-&-evil as racial equality, so that e’en nonpolitical children’s shows aren’t ‘fraid to embrace them.

Yes, there are still outspoken conservatives; but there are also outspoken flat-earthers. Mo’ & mo’ people are finding it hard to distinguish ‘tween the 2 — & most o’ those who can’t are ol’, &, in their defense, were raised on irrational ideas so long that it’s hard to break from them. Something you don’t e’en need empirical evidence to see is that the ideas o’ the young will definitely win in the long-run, since in the long-run, the young will be the only ones left.

That’s not to say that the US’s politics will get so good so quickly, since it is e’en mo’ corrupt than is dawning on moderates now. ( Though e’en normal people are starting to see it, as we shall get to soon ).

Which brings me to the actual important wins: Florida allowing ex-convicts to vote & Missouri passing a bill to weaken gerrymandering. The former will be vital since Florida is such a strong, unpredictable swing state, & Democrats tend to win when mo’ people vote, ‘specially lower-class people.

On the other end, you have righteous fury @ Georgia for letting someone running for representative monitor & control the very election machines. Conveniently, they had a shortage o’ machines in mostly inner-city, black areas. Then ‘gain, this is the same guy who “lost” voting records when they got sued.

Anyway, I may continue tomorrow, when I’m not too tired to write. ¿Why’d it take so long to get all these results? 2014 everyone knew by 8 PM.

Looks like Democrats got fucked out o’ the Senate. Everyone claims they’ll win the House, but Google still shows them below. I think maybe the blue states are waiting longer to count their votes, as my state still isn’t showing any results.

¿Why all the hate gainst 538? This time it seems like they’ve been accurate — as they’ve been for just ’bout every election ‘cept 1 particularly odd 1.

It’s that time o’ year: time to stay up far too late having my computer die trying to load political pundits’ haphazard websites made with templates & doused in advertisement JavaScript & autoloading video with Hairpiece’s loud mouth embarrassing me in front o’ anyone within a 5-meter radius.

As usual, not being a presidential election, this 1 was rather quiet & subdued. The fact that everyone expects Democrats & Republicans to be rather even in this outcome, with Democrats retaking the House & Republicans keeping the Senate. Since the opposite party o’ the party that recently took the presidency failing to take the House the next midterm only happened twice in the last 100 years or so, if the Democrats fail to take the House, they’ll prove themselves to be ultra mega utter fucking failures. Can’t wait to see that.

& what’s always predictable is the way pundits react:

DailyKos generally shows subdued optimism, which is the only way they can keep their teacher mom audience from slitting their wrists. I did find this fascinating post on California’s slow vote-counting. That’s what happens when you’re those filthy liberals who actually want everyone to vote.

Though this post seems bizarrely alarmist, e’en if trying to stem alarm.

O, wait, ne’er mind: I just checked & Democrats are a li’l below on the House. & they usually vote early, too. Wow, Democrats are fucking losers.

Meanwhile, “Interested Observer” is already prepared for a letdown:

Short diary.

Democrats are going to come up short in the house, lose ground in the senate and likely do nowhere near as well as they had hoped in the governors races.  Your country is run by an overt racist, sexist asshole and he is again being rewarded for that very behavior.

Nice country you have there.

I hate to break it to you, Interested Observer, but the US is run by overt racist & sexists whether the Democrats win or not.

Meanwhile, Naked Capitalism shows their typical cynicism by predicting that e’en if Democrats win anything, they won’t do shit ‘cause they’re filthy moderates. Then they do what these kind o’ cranks always do & point out the weaknesses in polling data & then care mo’ ‘bout their own arm-chair theories, which have no scientific backing, empirical or mathematical. They will then try to argue that this makes it better ‘cause science is flawed, unlike this 1 s’posedly enlightened beard-stroker, who knows all. I’ll stick to my tried-&-tested philosophy o’, “either science knows or nobody knows” ( economics falls in the latter ), which is why everyone who predicts some wacky amazing economics event is an idiot.

( To be fair, his claim that Democrats are filthy moderates is backed on data ).

FiveThirtyEight claims Democrats have a 9 in 10 chance o’ winning the House but a 5 in 100 chance o’ winning the Senate — the latter o’ which shows how naive people who thought Hairpiece’s 3 in 10 chance was “impossible” were. ¡Let’s still have hope for no reason!

I oft make blog rounds in search for things to write ‘bout & decided to check on Lord Keynes’s continuing brain rot into what could only be called “reactionary liberalism” — moderate liberal economics matched with backward social politics. I guess this was popular in the 50s, when many European countries had that postwar boom o’ theirs. That Nordic countries are now doing the best while also being the most socially liberal & some o’ the most tolerant o’ foreign cultures breaks this crude “causation = correlation”, but whatever.

Anyway, I was hoping I’d finally see our precious Hairpiece-supporter eat crow & admit that the President who supported tax cuts, tried to sabotage Obamacare, & is now planning to slice food stamps isn’t the “Keynesian” gainst that vile neoclassical, Clinton, who wouldn’t have done these things. But, ‘course, he’s been conspicuously silent on Hairpiece for the past year or so. There has been plenty o’ racist woo masquerading as science, by cranks like Charles Murray — the Bell Curve guy, whose conclusions based on ( accurate, but not new ) statistics are illogical & based on backward biology. Same goes for Nicholas Wade, not a scientist @ all, whose book has been refuted by most o’ the actual scientists whose research he cited.

But then, that’s easy to keep up without refutation: just declare any refutation, no matter how much evidence is ’hind it, as being “liberal-biased”, or whatever the Realist Left™ equivalent is, based on some sentimental inability to see cold, hard reality. That this is the same thought process that Keynes mocked conservative economists for is rich in irony. I will settle for discovering a new logical fallacy: “Appeal to Bad Consequences”, the opposite o’ “Appeal to Consequences”. This is the idea that we should believe in something that’s ugly ’cause it’s ugly, regardless o’ evidence or reality, ’cause this makes us feel “stronger” & less sentimental. ( That proponents o’ these ideas are ne’er harmed themselves by these “harsh truths”, we need not focus on… )

Anyway, I got bored o’ that, & was planning on just moving ‘long, till I stumbled ‘pon him complaining ‘bout some conservative neoclassical tract on economics, which I just used as a platform to muse on what I feel to be the weakness o’ all economic “schools”, Post-Keynesianism included.

(1) “Wealth is not Money”.

This is a meaningless “lesson”, since “wealth” is a vague idea. E’en Lord Keynes falls into ol’-fashioned assumptions like all other economic pundits. He defined “wealth” as “the good [sic] and services we consume”. “Consume” itself is vague: it implies that the “good” or “service” ( ¿how do you eat a “service”? ) is destroyed as one uses it. ¿So if I pay to use something that isn’t destroyed, like living on land for a temporary period, is that “wealth”, or something different?

Money cannot be consumed in the way that commodities can.

Actually, money can be used the same way commodities are. There’s nothing stopping some particularly creative fellow from eating money. Most people just don’t ‘cause in most current societies money has greater value in a different use.

A mo’ serious example: commemorative coins are money, but they are simply used as collectible commodities ( which means they could be bad for the economy, since it’s money that’s added to “currency”, but doesn’t actually run in it, which s’posedly creates inflation; but the connection ‘tween adding money to the economy & inflation are much mo’ mixed — ‘specially since some dollars inevitably get destroyed in the violent scramble to grab them all when they’re dropped from Friedman’s helicopter ).

Libertarians are fond [ sic ] accusing Keynesians of saying that “money is wealth” or that “money creation is wealth creation.”

In a society where there exist mo’ than a few people who believe ( or say they believe ) that the Democrats are touching kiddies in their hoo-haws in Chuck-E-Cheese, it’s not that hard to believe that quite a lot o’ people believe things ‘bout other things simply ‘cause they ne’er deign to actually read such works — which means that any correction will also go unread, making it futile.

But I can’t even recall seeing any left heterodox economists who even say this. The maxim that money is not everything – which many people on the Left are fond of saying – is even a subtle admission of the point.

Both Keynesians & neoclassicals do claim that money is value ( or, in connection, that demand is value ), through their hypocritically-named “subjective theory o’ value”, which is just as wrong.

This is not a lie, since I can use Lord Keynes’s own words to prove it in his immensely flawed critique o’ the immensely flawed labor theory:

In modern economics, value is normally exchange value, that is, something has an economic value when it is traded or bought as a commodity in a market.

“Economic value” is market demand ‘cause it’s specifically defined that way, making “economic value” tautological & meaningless.

&…

It is the demand for goods caused by the subjective desires of people that is the cause of value, not labour.

If one believes that demand — the willingness to pay money for something — creates value, then the only logical conclusion one can make is that creating mo’ money gives people mo’ money to pay, & therefore mo’ value to create. That’s obviously absurd, just as the idea that people wanting things magically makes it appear is absurd.

Anyone with any sense would realize that if value is subjective, then the means to create value is subjective, & therefore can’t be narrowed down to any 1 grand thing — including money or labor. For instance, price can make something mo’ valuable if I want something expensive to show off how rich I am, or for any other social reason. Similarly, I may value something simply ‘cause I worked hard on it, which means that labor did create that thing’s value, & nobody can tell me that I’m wrong ‘cause they have no objective basis on which to judge my values.

To show you how ridiculous this claim is, remember that Lord’s Keynes’s blog doesn’t sell for any price on any market — it has no demand. Lord Keynes is saying outright that his blog has no value.

Some may protest that economists are only talking ‘bout “commodities” — “economic value”. That is to say that economists, both Keynesian & neoclassical ( & Orthodox Marxist¹ & Austrian, actually — which is to say, all economists ), prove the market to be integral to economics ( both good & bad ), by simply refusing to acknowledge economics outside o’ the market — that good ol’ “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” argument ( or as they say it in economic parlance, “We don’t talk ‘bout that thing, e’en though it’s perfectly relevant & we truly ought to, ‘cause it might make us question our assumptions like true scientists” ).

(2) “The Economy is not a Zero Sum Competition”.

Lord Keynes’s critique isn’t bad — & his general conclusion that it’s a mix is just ‘bout right. But his examples are a small speck o’ what could be said in this immensely complex issue. He focuses on small, isolated examples like gambling, & 1 major ( but still not fundamental ) example, finance. I have much mo’ fundamental problems with it.

The most important problem with this idea is that it contradicts subjective value: if value can be anything anyone deems it to be, then basic logic tells us that either there must be cases where certain values conflict with others, creating a zero-sum game, or that we can all get anything we want at the same time, which is obvious fantasy.

This is so hypocritical ‘cause this argument is used to argue gainst certain people’s values. People use this to argue gainst things like economic redistribution; ¿but what if I highly value relative wealth? Then I can either have my value or economists can have theirs — we have a zero-sum game.

‘Gain, economists try to argue that value is only their narrow “economic value”, but it isn’t: value is anything — economic, political, spiritual, aesthetic, personal, emotional, psychological, technological, social… Economics affects all these things, so economists can’t ignore these if they want to talk ‘bout economics in a complete way. If an economy that creates lots o’ “economic value” conflicts with, say, an equal society with high “political value”, then these 2 contradict each other & one must pick 1. For economists to say that they prefer “economic value” simply ‘cause they’re economists is to say that economists are just arbitrary pundits — propagandists. A true scientist isn’t objective within “their particular field”, but o’er everything.

(3) “International Trade is not a Zero Sum Game.

This involves the typical moderate-left critique that Lord Keynes’s readers should already be sick o’ reading a million times. The fundamental idea that he hints at, but doesn’t specifically say, is that neoclassical “efficiency” assumes that efficiency comes from minimizing costs now, disregarding the long-term ( which is ironic, considering their strawman criticism o’ Keynes & his economically-poisonous homosexuality — ne’er live down that classic, Forbes ). This applies in general to any “race to the bottom” situation.

He points out that this idea relies on the assumption that workers can retrain instantly. This is true, but ironically falls into the same problem he criticizes elsewhere: that efficiency must come immediately. It’s perfectly consistent to acknowledge both that workers can’t retrain instantly but that they should for long-term efficiency — e’en when things change rapidly. A perfect example is an industry I’m quite familiar with, web design. That’s an industry wherein workers voluntarily retrain themselves constantly ‘cause they see that in most cases taking the extra time to learn new things is worth lessening e’en mo’ time spent doing the same thing that can be automated from what they learned. Not only that, but retraining can actually in itself be a mo’ rewarding type o’ work, since it adds variety to something that’d otherwise be monotonous — it ironically takes them outside o’ the assembly line that capitalism is notorious for — & ‘cause learning is developing, personal growth.

‘Course, middle-class web developers are quite different from the working class. For 1, web development isn’t a particularly capitalist industry: there is relatively low capital investment ( the education needed is probably a’least 40 times the cost; the rest is just a computer, software, — which you can just download open-source or pirate — & internet ), & thus much mo’ competition. Most web development “businesses” are individuals or groups working for their own salary. Thus, they benefit directly from the efficiency.

The problem with this effect on working class people is the same problem the effect that “efficiency” has on a country in general: there’s no guarantee that all parties will be allowed to share in the efficiency. It’s not that workers shouldn’t retrain to mo’ efficient skills; it’s that in real-world economics, workers aren’t given the option; they’re just laid off & sent into unemployment, where they don’t have the resources to retrain.

In this situation, like many, both neoclassicals & Keynesians are wrong on the solution: the solution is neither to let a tiny few rich people get e’en mo’ money while the majority are made worse off or to stifle development to benefit the majority, but to use government funds to keep poor people healthy & well ( both physically & mentally ) — think a mandatory minimum living salary, or whatever they call it — while offering them tools to retrain them so they can get better jobs.

The failure to understand the efficiency & social benefits o’ this idea come from a common contradictory sentiment: 1. the ( right ) idea that efficiency comes not from working mo’, but from working less — rather that labor creating value, eliminating labor is what creates the most value, & 2. the idea that we should demand people work to make money, else we’ll be inefficient. That workers being unemployed to train off the government dole so that they can do mo’ productive work in the future is mo’ efficient than having them continue to do work they’re not good at doing as others is beyond them, which is strange, since this is how college works for many people.

This particularly annoys me ‘cause these jobs that these modern Luddite Keynesians try to keep are the kind that are least appropriate for humans. The kind o’ jobs that can be automated are the most mind-numbingly dumb & monotonous — hence why mentally inferior machines can do them. While socialists bemoan the inhuman way capitalists turn workers into cogs in a machine, ¡Keynesians panic that humans won’t be able to be cogs anymo’! ( But then, Keynesians have ne’er had much respect for working-class people, so maybe they’re not so interested in treating them like fellow humans as they are protecting the stability o’ their own station ).

This leads to a central conundrum for philosophers to debate: what’s worse, an Austrian dystopia where workers are starved off, or a Keynesian dystopia where workers are trapped in a dour living that makes them wish for death.

His claim that Ricardo’s 3rd point, “it does not matter what you produce (e.g., you could produce pottery), as long as you do it in a way that gives you comparative advantage” is “utter nonsense” is vague. ¿Is he claiming that certain goods are intrinsically better than others? ( i.e. that value is objective ). It’s amazing how much a tricky idea like value being subjective can utterly trip up economists everywhere.

He also seems to assume that manufacturing is where true economic development comes from, which is ( ironicly, considering his repeated criticism ) an outdated Marxist idea. If value is subjective, than “development” is just as much — ‘specially when that “development” comes @ huge environmental costs. Much as efficiency comes from minimizing labor, not making more o’ it, efficiency comes mo’ from creating value from as li’l manufacturing as possible, rather than trying to maximize it. Thus, the obvious reason developed countries, which are still much better off than developing countries, are mo’ & mo’ “service-based” economies.

Despite Lord Keynes’s racist conspiracies, developing countries aren’t outsmarting developed countries; developed countries as wholes are still benefiting mo’ from shifting their dirty industries to poorer countries while keeping most o’ the profits within the developed countries — e’en in the long run. E’en if we acknowledge that only a tiny minority o’ rich westerners benefit from the profits, basic logic would tell you that redistributing this larger chunk o’ wealth to the displaced working class is better than forcing working class people to work crappy jobs for a ( almost certainly smaller ) share o’ a smaller chunk o’ wealth while people in developing countries starve from a lack o’ jobs for themselves.

An e’en better, though unlikely, solution: make laws that force western businesses to pay foreign workers a minimum wage & have western standards o’ safety & worker well being & foreign workers will lose their competitive “advantage” while also allowing foreign workers to make mo’ money & develop their economies mo’ so that they don’t have to rely on western companies for technology just so their people don’t starve — but then, we have to remember that in Lord Keynes’s fever dreams, Chinese workers are living like kings with their wonderful 12-hour sewing jobs without safety regulations while unemployed westerners with better safety nets are the true victims.

Or maybe it’s that protectionists like Lord Keynes don’t care ’bout Chinese people, or the rest o’ the vast majority o’ working class people who aren’t a part o’ the narrow western 17%. Then ’gain, considering LK’s views on women’s rights, that would include half o’ that percentage, & e’en less considering his views on nonwhites — quite a niche populism you have there, LK. It would seem absurd to anyone who wants to defend the lowest classes ( not white, male westerners ) or the mass majority ( also not white, male westerners ), which is what that word “leftism” that LK likes to claim himself to be the only true follower o’ has traditionally meant… ¡till they realize that questioning this makes them on the side o’ the corrupt neoclassical bourgeosie Nazis! ( The most transparent o’ ad-hominem is also serious empirical science that the silly SJW poopy-heads refuse to acknoledge ).

(4) Say’s Law.

His critique here is absurd & hypocritical. He notes that “The Academic Agent” defines Say’s Law differently from Keynes & his worshippers & acknowledges that many economists agree that Say himself didn’t believe in what Keynes claimed was “his” law, but then asserts that Keynes’s definition is the right 1, ‘cause he’s God apparently. He then diverts the subject to Keynes’s critique o’ how Adam Smith & John Stuart Mills interpreted “Say’s Law”, with 1 point also believed by Ricardo. This adds a hitch to Lord Keynes’s critique: this is s’posed to be an o’er-all attack on classical & neoclassical economics, which are s’posedly very similar; but neoclassicals reject “Say’s Law”, since they have incorporated some elements o’ Keynesianism. &, in fact, not e’en all o’ what Keynes called “classical” is included here, ‘cause classical socialists like Proudhon & Marx also didn’t believe in “Say’s Law”.

But he doesn’t go far ‘nough in his critique gainst whatever “The Academic Agent” claims is “Say’s Law”: “(2) supply and demand are not independent of one another, but dependent in the sense that factor payments by producers or income to producers provide the source of demand for other goods.”. He claims that “no serious economist even disputes” this, but only adds that “credit money” adds to demand. Since demand is based on money paid for things, this should be obvious ( it’s supply that it has the risk o’ hurting by creating too much consumption, a problem rare in developed countries, but still real in developing countries, as Venezuela shows ). Not only is this point vague on what counts as a “producer” or what “sense” these are dependent, it’s limited: maybe payment to “producers” can provide demand — if they chose to buy things. Since this is a point Keynes made, it’s odd that the Lord o’ Keynes neglects to mention this.

(5) “Every part of the economy is connected to the whole of economy… .” [ I have no idea why this period & ellipsis are formatted so oddly ]

“Connected” is so vague, it’s meaningless, & this is clearly a “law” that can be “proven” by twisting the word “connected” so that this point is proven by it. I’m not e’en sure what context this is based on — ¿what concrete point is it trying to prove?

Lord Keynes’s rebuke seems ridiculous:

While this is true, this does not vindicate Léon Walras’ Neoclassical economics, which “The Academic Agent” cites as his source for this insight, which has quite specific assertions about capitalist economies.

“Walras may be right ‘bout this thing, but his other irrelevant ideas are wrong”.

I actually looked @ the video, — it’s such strong Dunning-Kruger syndrome that I can’t bear to watch the whole thing — & the video glosses o’er “general equilibrium” & ’stead talks ’bout e’en stupider shit, all in haphazard trawls o’ logic. ¿Why doesn’t LK make fun o’ this other stuff? For instance, he complains ’bout how interest caps s’posedly mostly affects poor people being able to get loans ( no evidence, or e’en Libertarian-style simplistic “logic”, to back that up — like most o’ this video, it’s just a Biblical commandment ), e’en though the 2008 recession showed exactly why blocking poor people from getting loans they can’t pay back may be very much positive. He also parrots Milton Friedman ( who isn’t a classical economist ) saying, “There’s no such thing as free lunch”, which is 1 o’ those sayings that sounds profound, but is vague & almost certainly wrong. Saying that you can’t gain without loss is equivalent to saying that there’s no such thing as profit or growth, which is obviously wrong & contradicts point 2: if every gain comes with an equal cost, then the sum will be 0. Either “The Academic Agent” didn’t proof-read his smug shit or he doesn’t understand basic math. Either way, “The Academic Agent” should stick with foiling terrorist plots by Blofeld in exotic countries & leave economic thought to people who bother to read their own work, much less the work o’ other economists.

[B]oth Austrian and Neoclassical theory ultimately hold that free markets have a tendency towards general equilibrium

He’s mistaken ‘bout Austrian-schoolers — something he should be well aware o’, since he wrote ’bout it before. Many Austrian-schoolers acknowledge that their incoherent conception o’ “free” markets can go into disequilibrium; they simply say that this is just ‘nother example o’ capitalism’s marvelous mysteriousness. The INVISIBLE HAND works in mysterious ways.

No mention, by the way, o’ how inconsistent the concept o’ a “free” market is that we can’t e’en truly define it in a concrete, cohesive way — we just use a jargon word. “Freedom”, ‘course, is a paradoxical concept, since it requires force to keep round, which is why e’en the “freest” countries have police & governments. Economies, too, need governments to run them, or else some other authority just as authoritarian will take its place in the ensuing vacuum.

[M]arket systems are complex human systems subject to degrees of non-calculable probability and future uncertainty

The question no economic school, e’en Post-Keynesians, has the bravery to answer: if economics is so subjective, so non-calculable, & so uncertain, ¿how could anyone devise an objective, certain science that could predict ways to make society better off in the future? This should not lead one to Post-Keynesianism, but an anti-economics — a complete deconstruction o’ the whole branch, just as a “Science o’ Art” has been rendered nonsensical.

(6) “Marginal Utility”.

“The Academic Agent” ends with pointing out the “value” in the sense of desiring or evaluating commodities is subjective. This is true, but does not take you very far.

It takes one quite far if they actually follow it consistently. The problem is that every bozo who squawks ‘bout value being subjective — Marxists included, by the way — then falls onto their own pet preference for the “true” source o’ value & simultaneously proclaims it objective.

He’s right on diminishing returns, though: it mostly applies, but not always, & doesn’t refute government intervention. In fact, applied to money itself ( which is logical — you know the story ‘bout the person so rich they use $ bills as tissue ), it shows that income redistribution literally creates value. This applies intuitively, too: a poor person can have their whole world rocked by gaining just $1000, while someone in the upper 1% whole hardly notice if they gained it or lost it. A minuscule loss paired with a huge gain is the very definition o’ efficiency.

One thing that bugs me ‘bout Post-Keynesians is that they love parroting the same tiny, isolated points in their disparate soup o’ a framework, but don’t go deeper than the floor panels under the carpet. They blow up ‘bout “endogenous money”, prices being based on the cost o’ production rather than supply & demand ( ne’ermind that they already debunk neoclassical supply & demand, making this point redundant ), & all those hokey moral plays by their god Keynes, but ignore the deeper problems with market economics in general that make the foundation ‘pon these questions debatable themselves. Post-Keynesians still treat money in the same superstitious way every other economist does², as if it follows natural laws & isn’t something humans made up. ( That this invention may be practical is fine to acknowledge — but debating whether a human invention works a certain way as if it had gained sentience & turned gainst its master like AI is ridiculous ).

In short, I’m sick o’ all these conservatives scribbling out how their narrow laws ‘bout how their “capitalism” works when run by robots with no self-awareness; I want to know ‘bout economics its fundamental self.

Addendum

I mostly wrote ’bout this blog article, not the video, ’cause I couldn’t stand the video, but can I reiterate how ignorant the video is ’bout the history o’ economics. I’m not e’en saying what he’s saying is wrong ( it’s definitely made-up assumptions worthy o’ a religious Bible ): he mixes up the history o’ the development o’ economic thought, mixing up neoclassical & classical economics. Ironically, this mixup comes from that devil himself, Keynes, who admits he pulled the definition out o’ his ass. E’en mo’ ironic, the term “classical economist” originates from that e’en mo’ devilish o’ devils, Karl Marx; & his main basis for definition was belief in the so-called labor theory, which this video doesn’t mention @ all.

So LK writes this blog post as if he’s arguing gainst some serious economists, & I finally realize that it’s just some fringe crank on the YooToobs right next to videos o’ 20-year-ols screaming @ their video games who read some fringe crank websites from some think tanks & think they actually know anything ’bout economics.

It also took me this long to realize it’s a fucking listicle video, too. I’ll stick to YouTube Poop next time, LK. Thanks, though.

A bit late ’cause it’s an odd year &, seriously, nobody cares ’bout odd years, ’specially not the hip kids, who probably care mo’ ’bout Mayor Pauline & her city o’ freakish uncanny valley realistic humans in that new-fangled Mario game than Seattle’s mayor being replaced ’cause he touched kiddies in their hoo-haws.

When I say “slightly less failures”, I mean the Democrats took o’er Virginia & Washington… state ( not to be confused with the Washington people actually care ’bout ), which they already mostly owned, anyway. Republicans still, ’course, control all 3 branches o’ the federal government.

Virginia is the main focus, ’cause nothing else important has happened. Virginians hated Republicans so much that they elected a transgender & filthy socialist just to piss on them. The former has, predictably, led some to question how Christianity, a religion that’s lasted multiple millenia, will survive the existence o’ exactly 1 lowly state legislator who’s trans, which is reminiscent o’ that time Christianity vanished after gay people & rock ’n roll spontaneously appeared in the 1960s or after they let in those filthy Gentiles with their unsnipped dicks.

’Course, this ( very miniscule ) turn-round should be expected: voters are notoriously fickle & generally turn gainst the party in power¹ ’cause it gives them the delusion that they’re radicals raging gainst the machine & not sad ordinary people who couldn’t o’erthrow a bossy cellphone.

Still, with victories by such Democrats as a Goldman Sachs financier ( WARNING: link contains obnoxious video that plays without warning ) ( gainst Chris Christie, that infamous New Jersey governor that nobody liked, ’cept as a target for mockery @ how unlikeable he is — so, Hairpiece before Hairpiece ), a Clinton fundraiser who will soon be Virginia’s new governor, & Democrat Jenny Durkan, Seattle’s 1st woman mayor & heavily funded by Comcast, CenturyLink, AT&T, & Amazon gainst ’nother woman who was actually mo’ left-wing, we can see the key to Democrats’ success: spend much mo’ money. That’s always been Democrats’ main strategy for getting America’s rich o’erlords to give them elections: just convince them Democrats will also give them everything they want without being as dangerously self-destructive as Republicans ( “Filthy Capitalism without the Dumbassery” could be their tagline ).

’Course, there will always be naysayers on ours necks telling us there are still problems with our beloved loser party, as well as all our secrets to our crush in a Stewie-like voice. For instance, we have this “autopsy”, which is just some pundit saying things we already know: Democrats care mo’ ’bout money than people & lowerclass people aren’t so fond o’ them anymo’. Meanwhile, Breitbart — & you owe me for stepping into that cesspool o’ popup ads & tacky clickbait web design — handles this election with straight-up denial: their home page had mo’ references to the 2016 election than to this 1, as if that wasn’t a whole year ago, & therefore ancient & irrelevant.

O yeah, & I guess Ohio & Maine will get public health care & Ohio passed a bill forcing pharmaceutical companies to lower the price on their much-needed pain medicine in this torture hole known as planet earth, cheating these companies out o’ the money they themselves earned on their own hard work lobbying the government for free funding grants. But that’s not as sexy as… um, ¿what else was accomplished ’gain? ¿Democrats finally got their “You’re pretty good, too” trophy?

Also, apparently the “Involuntarily Celibate” subreddit has been banned, which may be a victory for liberals, I guess, but is definitely a victory for good taste. For those blissfully unaware o’ it, ’twas a place for people to publicly whine ’bout not getting sex — the most vital thing to human existence if you’re a middle-class white male with a well-off family that gives you infinite economic support. “¡It’s fucking torture, being ‘forced’ to live in security & comfort & not being able to fuck any woman I want!” ’Cause just paying a prostitute or jerking off is pathetic, unlike whining in public ’bout not getting sex “only” ’cause they’re s’posedly fat & ugly while bashing s’posedly fat & ugly women & making up misogynist conspiracy theories while outright admitting that it’s based on emotional problems & not rational reasons, which is the epitome o’ dignity.

Tune in next year when we’ll hopefully see the Democrats stop being utter fucking failures & actually win back the house & senate so they can go back to backstabbing the lower classes & then lose goodwill for the dozenth time, leading to the election o’ that Milo Yapalopolis guy to presidency so he can touch all o’ America’s children in their hoo-haws ( edit for fairness: but only if they’re gay & still have sex organs². Milo does have standards, & I respect him for that ). After all, if America doesn’t have their vicious cycle o’ Coke vs. Pepsi elections, ¿what do they have anymo’?