JackMatlock.com
Musings … “Russiagate” Hysteria
Jack Matlock | U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991
See also
See also
Unsurprisingly, the picture of Russia in the West, in the media and elsewhere, has become very dark; a revanchist state and kleptocratic autocracy, a regime sustained by a combination of propaganda and fear, a direct military threat to its neighbours, intent on subverting and undermining the West. This picture has taken particular hold in Washington DC where well established hostility to America’s old Cold War opponent has been given a sharp new partisan twist by allegations of covert Russian collusion with the Trump Presidential campaign.
The aim of this paper is to pick out which parts of this picture are right and which wrong, and to look at where the relationship is now going. This first Part introduces the issues and deals with Putin; the second Part, which will appear on 31 May, with Foreign Policy and the Economy; and the third and final Part, on 28 June, with relations with China and prognoses for the future....More realistic than most Anglo-American analysis, but still accepts some of the assumptions that more balanced analysts like Stephen Cohen and Paul Robinson question or reject.
LobeLog
Russia and the West: On the Brink
Tony Brenton | British ambassador to Russia from 2004 to 2008
51 comments:
Textbook cognitive dissonance:
“Now, that does not mean that Donald Trump’s election was a good thing for the country just because Americans elected him. In my opinion, the 2016 presidential and congressional elections pose an imminent danger to the republic. They have created potential disasters that will severely try the checks and balances that our founding fathers built into our constitution.”
The people that voted for him think exactly the opposite...
This guy is not qualified to comment on Trump because he admits he didn’t vote for Trump...
The people that think like this are generally assuming that DJT and his base are neo-fascists similar to the nationalistic populist parties in Europe that have at least a marginal but visible neo-Nazi base.
This assumption is a core belief with at least some of them, and the also have assumed it is grounds for removing him, extra-constitutionally if need be to save the republic. They consider themselves patriots, while others view them as traitors.
This is an emerging battle in the West and a challenge for the poltiical establishments of these countries, as well as the Atlanticists.
BTW, this is what HRC meant when she called DJT's base "deplorables."
It's behind Russiagate, in trying to tie DJT to "Putler." Recall that HRC compared Putin to Hitler for intervening in Ukraine in the aftermath of the coup.
As I have been saying, this is a low-level civil war going on in the US. It began with the election of Bill Clinton and the constant attempt to remove him constitutionally. It accelerated in the Bush-Gore debacle in which Bush was awarded the presidency by SCOTUS under a GOP dominated court. Then it amped up again in the attempt of the GOP to "break" Obama as soon as the election was over.
It can be traced back further to the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, that many believe were inside jobs. This is from the Democratic side. On the GOP side, many in the GOP believed that the removal of Nixon was a soft coup.
Much of this goes back to unresolved issues after the Civil War, which was the outcome of a fundamental divided at the founding of the republic.
Matlock gets is, at least dimly, and is concerned that the divisiveness is destroying what's left of the republic tending toward empire, recalling Rome.
Matt FrankoJune 3, 2018 at 8:38 AM
Textbook cognitive dissonance:
...
This guy is not qualified to comment on Trump because he admits he didn’t vote for Trump...
Great textbook example, LOL.
The 'civil war' is between various factions of the deep state / shadow government, which use the two political parties as ground forces while they remain hidden behind the scenes. Trump is not an adherent of either, nor is he an acolyte of any cause (other than Trump). Both sides are playing with / against him as it suits their objectives. Mostly it's just puppet theater for our distraction, kind of like Kim Kardashian. Meanwhile all the nefarious business continues at break-Earth speed.
" DJT and his base are neo-fascists"
this is a tell for CD.. the 'reductio ad hitlerum"...
Tom,
this is interesting from the Dilbert guy he does a whiteboard and goes thru all the tells for CD and uses the present TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) as a back drop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21hHM3y3lcc
"various factions of the deep state / shadow government,"
The whole 'deep state!' thing is another 'absurd absolute'... similar to you guys 'neoliberal conspiracy!", etc...
There were a bunch of Democrat partisans who misused surveillance systems they were in control of at the time to illegally conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign...
They are attempting to justify their actions now by demonizing "Russia!" and positing that they were acting in good faith... this is their defense for the revelation of their previous illegal/criminal activity...
dont think this will stand up in court...
People do illegal shit and try to justify it all the time...
We rational people shouldnt have to create an alternative reality "deep state!" in response...
It all depends on one's POV.
There is no overarching "true" POV.
There are essentially two options, multi-dimensionality, uni-dimentionality
Most people that are multi-dimensional don't have a worked up POV. They are subject to cognitive dissonance as a result. Mostly, it doesn't bother them if pointed out, like the incompatibility of Ayn Rand and a fundamentalist or conservative Christian viewpoint.
This is because the prevailing ideology of the US is 18th century liberalism, which is the basis of the US Constitution and political theory. But liberalism has three aspects, social, political and economic. Each of these has a range with many points along it from reactionary to conservative, to liberal to radical. Positioning involves intersections of these curves and that results in paradoxes of liberalism, as I have often pointed out.
Most uni-dimensional people have a worked up POV but they don't recognize that all POV's are partial (hence the dialectic). They are true believers. Inconsistency doesn't bother them and studies have shown that when presented with contradictory evidence, they must double down.
Just about everyone is subject to CD to some degree because it really really difficult to work up a comprehensive POV that is consistent and its the data. This is what philosophy is about. For the ancient Greeks, the pieces of the puzzle that don't fit or are missing being to light puzzles (aporia) and this drives inquiry as the search for an explanation of the whole in terms of reasons and causes.
Hegel resolved the matter by observing that POV's are oppositional and come into conflict. This is the driver of historical development in search of an overarching POV that is comprehensive (compete) and consistent.
Scott Adams is clever and fun, but not a deep thinker. He does get that it is about systems though. He wrote book about how to be successful by building a system that works for you given what you have and can develop by working with in a complementary way.
"paradoxes of liberalism"
Isnt that just another phrase for dissonant beliefs in the context of CD Theory?
iow liberalism contains some dissonant beliefs? so we will see liberal people exhibiting the behaviors Adams identifies all the time?
Wouldnt a rational person then always be seeking to eliminate dissonance from their thinking as much as possible? or at least be seeking to continuously eliminate it?
there is the scripture "a house divided against itself cannot stand..." which should be in view here...
Lincoln 1858 (pre-war): ""A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided."
Then he went to war a few years later...
You guys may not understand this here as you are all pretty much biased anti-war...
Noah,
You are a lefty Democrat... so instead of accepting the fact that your party was comprised of some criminal element you are experiencing CD and conjuring up some big fantasy in your own mind that some phony "deep state!" exists and was doing all of this...
Sober up... its just some typical white collar political crimes...
"the incompatibility of Ayn Rand and a fundamentalist or conservative Christian viewpoint."
good example imo... and maybe notice Ayn Rand pin up boy Paul Ryan has resigned ie "house divided against itself cannot stand..."?
the other thing is that this will continue to go on in Christendom at least for sure:
"because they do not receive the love of the truth for their salvation. 11 And therefore God will be sending them an operation of deception, for them to believe the falsehood,
12 that all may be judged who do not believe the truth, but delight in injustice." 2 thess
You can see people like Ryan who cant resolve these dissonant beliefs (in truth it cant be both..) they actually seem to delight in the injustice of it... get all worked up at the big Ayn Rand rallies, etc... then go out the next day and give a speech about helping the poor, etc or wash already clean dishes at the soup kitchen. .. they literally see no problem with this behavior...
imo they cant get out of it...
Isnt that just another phrase for dissonant beliefs in the context of CD Theory?
CD implies that a rigorous approach can remove the dissonance. No evidence of that with liberalism. Some really bright people have tried and failed. Marx was probably the first to account for why. Bourgeois liberalism is class based and class interest results in internal societal contradictions that constitute paradoxes of liberalism. The way to remove the conflict is not by indentifying the CD within interest groups and removing it, but rather in removing the cause, which is class structure and class power, in the case of bourgeois liberalism based on wealth as ownership of the means of production. But this is only one aspect the range of conflict generated within liberalism owing to the intersection of social, political and economic aspects, and the intersection of liberalism with the persistence of traditionalisms in liberal societies. Traditionalisms are also ridden with internal inconsistency, especially dogmatic forms in which inquiry is disallowed.
Capitalism as an expression of 18th century bourgeoise liberalism is not compatible with political liberalism conceived as democracy as governance of, by and for the people as a whole. That's why the US was founded as a republic based on class power and regional differences.
This results on actual conflict based on different interests and assumptions rather than CD, but the whole system is based on CD insofar as the assumptions are inconsistent, being based on apparent contradictions involving different approaches to social, political and economic liberalism individually and collectively.
This is especially the case in complex adaptive systems involving reflexivity and emergence. The historical resolution is through either conflict or cooperation, not everyone putting aside CD when it is pointed out to them.
Liberalism is based on freedom from coercion and constraint, freedom to think and choose, and freedom for self-development and self-actualization. Open inquiry is a necessary but not a (sufficient) condition for this. As a consequence, liberalism involves rights that guaranteed the necessary conditions, like freedom of thought and expression, assembly and so forth.
The assumption is that open inquiry will result in changing minds or at least compromise to reach consensus.
But there are core beliefs conflicting socially, and for the most part individuals don't care if all their beliefs don't mesh with each other or conform to the facts. when these core beliefs become principles that serve as criteria in the framework of a POV, they cannot be altered without change the POV. But many if not most people regard their POV as reality, and as a result they are very dogmatic about their principles.
The historical dialectic is messy.
There are two major POV's coming into conflict in the US and it is either compromise (difficult when dogma is involved) or a zero-sum game (one-side is eliminated from the game).
Not just in the US. It is is also involved with the US vs the ROW, and it is leading to more conflict rather than compromise as the unipolar world view of the Anglo-American establishment and its cronies and minions confronts the multipolar world view of the ROW.
So while exposing some fate CD might be helpful in removing it, I doubt it will scale. CD is difficult enough to deal with at the level fo the individual, as people that do counseling know. But so far there is little evidence that scales to groups, especially large one with strongly held beliefs and deep-rooted interests.
BTW, I am not saying that I think that CD is irrelevant, or that psychological factors are not highly significant. They are.
I am particularly aware of this since I have friends that are in psychological professions as psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and psychotherapists. They listen to clients on a regular basis and they are trained to pick up on "tells."
They also do this naturally in their everyday interactions.
Once one realizes this and learns a bit of how it works, it is simple to pick up on the tells that indicate deep structure and subliminal "stuff."
It's endemic and a lot more influential in shaping behavior individually and socially then most people realize.
This is also a weakness of 18th century liberalism, which highly rationalistic. The psychological dimension was not discovered and explored until the 19th century.
Developers of 18th century liberalism were, of course, unaware of Marx, Darwin, and Freud, who were thought leaders in the 19th century, and by then the US Constitution had been adopted, modeled on classical thought, the Roman republic, and British liberalism that began with the Magna Carta.
George Lakoff has observed that most people today are still thinking in the 18th century mode. He has analyzed a lot of the resulting CD that affects contemporary political thinking and discourse in the US and how the Democratic Party might deal with it. But that would involve changing establishment thinking and belief, so it won't happen without a fight. Even then, there are few if any that fully comfort to what Lakoff prescribes to remove the CD.
The reason is that moral principles are involved and people take these are "sacred" and are dogmatic about them, even if they led to CD that is pointed out to them and evidence shown.
But the foundational issue is not CD but rather that 1) it is impossible for humans given their limitations to formulate an overarching POV that is comprehensive, consistent, useful and simple enough to deal with, and 2) it is difficult to impossible to identify and eliminate all cognitive-affective bias, if only because humans are so diverse dispositionally as individuals and culturally at the group level.
imo they cant get out of it..
But maybe not through reasoning.
This kind of dissonance is a "tell" for people that deal with psychological issues that there is a foundational misalignment and it probably needs deeper psychological analysis rather than more rational argumentation and presentation of evidence.
But the problem is wider than that. This is not only an individual phenomenon but a cultural one. There is a very large cohort in the US from whom this is an spect of their foundational structure of what they take to be reality. This means altering the view of reality of the group, which result in disbanding it.
You are a lefty Democrat... so instead of accepting the fact that your party was comprised of some criminal element you are experiencing CD and conjuring up some big fantasy in your own mind that some phony "deep state!" exists and was doing all of this...
Sober up... its just some typical white collar political crimes...
Wrong again (as usual). I am neither Rep nor Dem.
And of course Republicans are morally and intellectually superior in every way, and absolutely immune to corruption. Talk about cognitive dissonance - Franko, you've finally something that you are materially competent to talk about.
Imagining that both parties DO NOT engage in the exact same behavior for the benefit of the exact same people (the 0.1%) is not cognitive dissonance, it's mental retardation.
There were a bunch of Democrat partisans who misused surveillance systems they were in control of at the time to illegally conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign...
They are attempting to justify their actions now by demonizing "Russia!" and positing that they were acting in good faith... this is their defense for the revelation of their previous illegal/criminal activity...
dont think this will stand up in court...
I assume that is a factor, but I don't think it is the only factor.
I think that at some of the career intelligence people were/are really convinced based their experience that Russiagate and Trumpgate are factual rather than fictions, based on "intelligence." The issue here is that intelligence is seldom based on factual evidence since it is difficult to obtain without a credible mole. Most intel is based on "analysis" that involves mostly data collection and processing and then drawing inferences. But I think that some of the intel people are "convinced" that their analysis was and is correct.
I hope it is litigated, but the problem is that intel cannot be exposed where it would be damaging to current and future operations. So we will probably never know, or it will be buried for at least half a century.
Democracy cannot function in secret.
Isnt that just another phrase for dissonant beliefs in the context of CD Theory
Not really. I should have explained the reasoning for this earlier in the thread.
To meaning full, CD needs to be specified as an analytic concept as a key definition in the framework for theory construction.
The problem is that CD is analytic concept in in psychology and analytic concepts other than those in social psych cannot be exported to other fields and retain the same analytic sense, which applies to individuals.
Liberalism is a framework for world views based on prioritizing human freedom. However, many POVs are possible this framework and they are indeed many example of different such POVs within the context of liberalism.
Disagreement over foundations is not evidence of CD.
It is possible to have a variety of POVs within liberalism that are positioned differently wrt to social, political and economic aspects of liberalism. Many liberal theories have been developed but none of them has managed to compelling enough to generate universal acceptance, let alone absence of critique.
Getting individual liberty, equality of persons, and social needs met is to harmonize in a single theory that unites economic theory, political theory and social theory has been elusive. Not only has not state achieved it but no theorist has either.
If one accepts Hegel's dialectical approach, which Marx adopted and adapted, it's not possible since "the truth is the whole" (Hegel) and all POVs are partial, not only viewing reality from different angles of vision and appreciation but through different cognitive-affective lenses.
So CD can be exported from psych but as not as the analytic concept defined in psych. It would have be defined analytically for use in social, political and economic frameworks and an overarching framework that unite all three aspect of liberalism. Or else it would be "a figure of speech."
Have at.
I would add that the distinction between the parties and factions within the parties is pretty much about which factions of the 1% policy favors. The jockeying is among the factions at the top that comprise the ruling elite.
So how is it that you get to comment on people you didn’t vote for Matt?
Democracy cannot function in secret
Another paradox of liberalism. Democracy requires security (necessary but not sufficient condition). Security, especially national security require secrecy to avoid exposing sources and methods. But democracy also depends on open inquiry, the rule of law, and open judicial proceedings as necessary conditions.
“Imagining that both parties do not engage in the exact same behavior for the benefit of the exact same people (the 0.1%) is not cognitive dissonance, it's mental retardation.” ~ Noah Way
I agree with you but let’s clarify that there are two Democrat parties. One is identical with Republicans. One is not.
Democrat Party #1 consists of genuinely progressive democrats who rely on crowdfunding, and who favor populist programs like Single Payer health care. They usually don’t favor war, nor “free trade” agreements. Some do not favor Israeli atrocities. They usually lose elections, because all power is held by Party #2 (the Republican Democrats). Their greatest enemy is not Republicans, but members of Democrat Party #2.
Democrat Party #2 consists of establishment democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer who are identical with Republicans. They are pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-Israel, and anti-democracy. They despise and ignore their constituents. They are neoliberals who are paid by the rich to oppose things like Single Payer Health care. During presidential elections, they become “super delegates” who checkmate progressive candidates from Democrat Party #1. Since they hold all the power, nothing changes. Democrat Party #2 sustains the illusion that voters have a choice, when in fact Democrat Party #2 prevents choice. If a progressive becomes too popular, the establishment democrats (Democrat Party #2) use various tricks (e.g. rigged primaries) to torpedo him or her. They employ armies of people to dig up whatever dirt they can find.
QUESTION: Does it bother Party #2 when Party #1 members get wiped out in elections?
ANSWER: On the contrary, it delights Party #2, since they are paid by the rich to make sure that Party #1 never wins elections. When Party #1 gets wiped out during elections, it’s Miller time.
When we fail to distinguish between the two Democrat parties, we think that all Democrats are the same as Republicans (which is false) or else we think that all Democrats are progressives (again this is false).
Failure to distinguish between the two Democrat parties makes people become illogical and self-contradictory. They say things like, "Yes Democrats are identical with Republicans, but Democrats are still better."
"So how is it that you get to comment on people you didn’t vote for Matt?"
I never commented on Obama I stayed out of it as I didnt vote for him... I only would perhaps comment on O's beliefs on "out of money!" here etc...
I was really into politics and watched Fox News all the time pre-Obama...
Then Obama won...
So ofc I suffered CD as a result...
So I used solution #1 here and deprioritized politics and got into other things for 8 years..
This is from CD Theory wiki:
"In practice, people reduce the magnitude of their cognitive dissonance in four ways:
1 Change the behavior or the cognition ("I'll eat no more of this doughnut.")
2 Justify the behavior or the cognition, by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat my diet every once in a while.")
3 Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new cognitions ("I'll spend thirty extra minutes at the gymnasium to work off the doughnut.")
4 Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not a high-sugar food.")"
I probably watched Fox News 10 times in Obama's 8 years... I just didnt care about politics.. changed my behavior...
(I actually think it was a good thing for me... I learned a lot about other things during this time...)
So now I voted for Trump and he won sooooooo....
I'm literally back to watching Fox News EVERY DAY... I am drawn back in probably due to Trump policies being more in consonance with my own...
I voted for Trump so if you guys who didnt vote for him want to know what he is doing, I can probably tell you better than people who didnt vote for him who are going to instead be just demonstrating the behavioral effects of CD...
"The way to remove the conflict is not by indentifying the CD within interest groups and removing it, but rather in removing the cause, which is class structure and class power,"
Yeah but Tom classification is necessary in any material type endeavor... you cant get rid of it..
there are always people created among us who are F-ED... how do you impose judgement (judgement is "to set right") if you dont identify (thru classification) those who are getting F-ED?
What is someone is born with disabilities? substance abusers? sent off to war and come back with PTSD?
You HAVE TO classify these people...
You have to have classification of the different cohorts in some way...
Tom,
Paul is establishing class right in the scripture above here:
" they do not receive the love of the truth for their salvation."
Paul is establishing at least two classes of people, 1 here that does not love the truth and 2 those of us that do...
You have to classify people... its material systems/ scientific method 101...
"“Imagining that both parties do not engage in the exact same behavior for the benefit of the exact same people (the 0.1%) is not cognitive dissonance, it's mental retardation.”
So please explain to me how this conspiracy SPECIFICALLY was applied in the case of Bill Gates and his Microsoft? Steve Jobs and his Apple Computer and Pixar?
Sam Walton and his WAL-MART? etc...
How were these people "benefited" by the "deep state!"???
They bought software off of them?????? Went shopping there????
Snap out of it... they were focused on the development of their businesses and were successful in their efforts..... SO THE F WHAT??????
btw you guys are breaking your own recommendation when you say "the one percent!" as this is a class of people...
You have to have classification of the different cohorts in some way.
Demographic classification already exists and the numbers are provided by the census.
There is also a lot of social, political and economic data available in developed countries.
Different theorists have articulated different analytic concepts of class, from Marx to Weber to Parsons to C. Wright Mill, for example.
Marx's conception of class and class struggle is presaged in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
https://economicsociology.org/2015/10/10/class-struggle-explained-by-adam-smith/
"The 1%" can be viewed as based on a variety of factors, from control of wealth including real and financial, to control of real resources, to analysis of the networks to which the members of the class belong that exclude those lower in the structure.
This can be analyzed into the top 0.1% and 0.01%, for instance.
Class structure is a sociological aspect of groups and societies as systems that have social, political and economic aspects that can be specified and measured, and a lot of those measurement already exist in the historical data.
From this different theories can be constructed, for example, along Marxian, Weberian, etc. lines.
This is not at all recondite.
So please explain to me how this conspiracy SPECIFICALLY was applied in the case of Bill Gates and his Microsoft? Steve Jobs and his Apple Computer and Pixar?
Much of IT tech was a spin off of government research and military programs. The Internet itself arose that way. But it was billed as entrepreneuring genius.
Google and Amazon are even more blatant, arising from and cooperating with the CIA.
Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance
See Mariana Mazzucato's work.
Sam Walton and his WAL-MART? etc...
How were these people "benefited" by the "deep state!"???
HRC was on the board of Walmart.
Noah,
You appear to be applying the economic concept of "crowding out!" when you go off on one of your rants about "the one percent!"... as if the political hijinks of the "one percent!" crowds out the ability for us to make any additional economic adjustments thru policy for the "99%" (your term)...
Meanwhile that is what Trump is ACTUALLY DOING thru intro of his new policies, but you are so messed up due to your CD you cant even see this what is actually going on...
Imagine living in a tower with porthole views from a spiral staircase.
As you climb the spiral, more and more of the landscape comes into view, but changes.
In the human world you could categorise the view types broadly as ‘political, economic, religious’. But each portal has a filter over it that reveals nuances. And each person that may look through the portal will see something different to the rest, because of internal filters; and claim the view as ‘reality’. People squabble over the view. This is mind.
Kabir would say if you wanted to see reality, you are looking in the wrong direction. And if you wanted everyone to see the same thing they would have to be standing at the same place, free of filters (mind still and clear – simply functioning as an eye into the world). But the view will still change with elevation.
The key is direction, orientation; which way you look; what you fall in love with.
"HRC was on the board of Walmart."
So what? she was on the board of the American Society for Establishment of Third Bathrooms for Transexuals (ASETBT) too...
So being on the board of wal-mart didnt prevent her or the Obama people from putting in transgender bathrooms...
You posit that the financial success of these "one percent!" people is somehow at the exclusion of other policies related to socio-economic justice... this has no basis in reality ..... there have been many other socio-economic policies implemented at the same time as the establishment of the current crop of over the top financial success people....
as if the political hijinks of the "one percent!" crowds out the ability for us to make any additional economic adjustments thru policy for the "99%" (your term)
It's about government capture by an oligarchy that makes the US into a plutonomy rather than a genuine democracy of rule of, by and for the people. The founding fathers as property owners and propertarians were all adherents of bourgeois liberalism who wished to obviate the rule of the rabble. The country was set up that way. And it is documented.
So what? she was on the board of the American Society for Establishment of Third Bathrooms for Transexuals (ASETBT) too...
CD?
It's a tell, Matt.
@ jrbarch
Sums it up. Not just Kabir either. The body of perennial wisdom.
To get a more comprehensive view, it is necessary to climb the ladder of ascent.
The way to overcome disharmony and difference is love that develops in the direction of universal and unconditional.
INET
Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
Lynn Parramore
"Its a tell"
no its hyperbole/metaphor being used in argument ... I'm not the one in dissonance on this issue I'm perfectly fine with what the Obama people did for the LGBTs .. you are bringing up an irrelevant fact about what corporate boards Hillary was on...
My point is that the Obama people manifestly promulgated ADDITIONAL socio-economic policies none the least of which is in the area of LGBT policies... so to say that govt is "captured!" or something is a result of some sort of CD on you guys part...
you are bringing up an irrelevant fact about what corporate boards Hillary was on...
You think they pick directors' names out of a hat?
Even if it didn't make any difference, there is the perception of cronyism and conflict of interest.
See also Interlocking Directorate
It's this kind of networking that sociologists and political scientists view as indicative of oligarchy.
And many board members are people that pass through the revolving door.
Man, all the comments are off topic.
So, let me add my off topic comment here and say that I find NYT correspondent Maggie Haberman to be super attractive :)
I would not say off topic. These are significance issues in understanding.
Matlock is saying that American s are talking past each other owing to different viewpoints and it is getting dangerous.
We need to bear in mind that keeping the republic is the first priority.
Matlock is suffering CD as he disclosed he didn’t vote for Trump...
It’s like listening to a “deficit dove” talk about the deficit.., ie no value added...
Ofc you guys probably think the “deficit doves” are all part of the vast “neoliberal conspiracy!”...
OK, we are back to the beginning again, like nothing happened.
Off topic or not it was a great conversation.
“like nothing happened”
You mean like the same amount of success that the MMT people have had in policy in over 20 years?
That same nothing?
Ever get tired of losing?
You mean like the same amount of success that the MMT people have had in policy in over 20 years?
Most people are wearing blinders and when MMT explains where they want wrong in detail, they still make the same mistake and ask the same dumb questions.
Same with most things that involve rigid world views, strongly held beliefs and cognitive-affective bias.
Reason and evidence doesn't work for them.
So it a matter of going around in circles and arriving back at the same place.
"want wrong" = went wrong.
OK, we are back to the beginning again, like nothing happened.
Franko has gone full retard.
Off topic or not it was a great conversation.
Indeed. And here's something that blew me away:
In a 2011 paper on the medical effects of scurvy, author Jason C. Anthony offers a remarkable detail about human bodies and the long-term presence of wounds. “Without vitamin C,” Anthony writes, “we cannot produce collagen, an essential component of bones, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissues. Collagen binds our wounds, but that binding is replaced continually throughout our lives. Thus in advanced scurvy”—reached when the body has gone too long without vitamin C—“old wounds long thought healed will magically, painfully reappear.”
Given the right—or, as it were, exactly wrong—nutritional circumstances, even a person’s oldest injuries never really go away. In a sense, there is no such thing as healing. From paper cuts to surgical scars, our bodies are mere catalogs of wounds: imperfectly locked doors quietly waiting, sooner or later, to spring back open.
http://davidmaisel.com/essays/infinite-exchange/
PS: I can talk to Maggie Haberman all day :)
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