I’ve spent a lot of time around doctors and nurses and low level bureaucrats.
Way too much time.
I’ve learned a couple things as a result, however.
- You get the best care from doctors or service from anyone else when they feel you as a human.
- The best way to get them to feel you as human, is to feel, and act, as if they are human.
Ian’s rule of doctors is as follows: all the best doctors really care about their patients and are upset when their patients die or are hurting.
Obviously my experience is not “study wide” but it’s far more than most people and I have literally never had a good doctor who didn’t attach to me on a human level.
Now some people are just like this: they treat everyone as another human. When you do so, there’s a queer acknowledgement that the other person is like you: they have feelings, thoughts. They hurt sometimes. They matter.
But most people don’t, because that acknowledgment of others as human means you open yourself to care, and when you care you can be hurt thru the other person. (You can also, and people forget this, experience great joy and happiness thru other people. One of the four Buddhist emotions which are trained is “happiness for other people’ being happy.” After all, no matter how shit your life is there’s always someone whose life is going great.)
Jobs where you see tons of people in trouble going by, there is a temptation to shut down. To treat them as objects and simply do your job by the book. It’s self protection. But, again, in my experience, for whatever reason, if the care isn’t there, in most jobs where the real tasks is helping people, if you don’t care, you don’t do a good job. It shouldn’t be that way, maybe. If you do all the right things without giving a damn, it should be the same, right?
But it isn’t.
There’s a tactical level here. I made a connection with one doctor who injured himself by asking about it and following up. Of course, if I hadn’t actually cared that he was in pain, just asking would have meant nothing. In another case I had a doctor spill out his problems with his daughter. He was a good guy, and had always been a good doctor, but after that he took extra care of me.
But the tactical level isn’t important, it’s an outgrowth of the correct attitude. We’ve all met people who we know care about us the second we meet them. Some of them are the true Saints of the world: those who genuinely care for everyone. Others, we just made an instant connection.
But it’s this care that matters most. If you care about others, most of them (there are always exceptions) will be aware of it, even if only subconsciously, and they will reciprocate, again, often without even realizing they’re doing so.
Of course the best way to do this is to just care about everyone, at least somewhat. If I’m aware someone I don’t know well is unhappy, I’ll usually try and be kind to them even when I’ll never meet them again. Why not? I take particular care with people like service workers, homeless people, janitors and so on. These people are regarded by most as human appliances (janitors, service workers) or as unpleasant human trash (the homeless.)
They don’t get a lot of kindness or care, so a little goes a long way.
We’re all human. We all can suffer. And we don’t have anything but each other. This is true between us and animals too, in a different way. Not human, no, but they feel pain, many of them feel love, and we are lesser if we do not see the bond of consciousness between us.
Generally, as I used to write a lot, the right thing to do is the right thing to do. For you, and for everyone around you.
Everyone reads these article for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
spud
wealth, power, immunity, limited liability, these are all policies that create elites far far removed from the average person. creating contempt of us and our rights.
trump won twice, not because most of his voters liked him, but because the elites in the 1990’s laughed at them as they gutted their jobs and standard of living, whilst sitting back and watching the courts dismantle the bill of rights.
sabby sabs is covering the beginnings of the movement that will break down whats left of the american society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYuEpgfZg0c
Warehouse Fires EXPAND Across America!
——
when covid hit, trump worked with workers to get medical equipment and supplies made here, because we were all cut off because bill clintons long long supply chains, based on just in time.
not one peep out of the democrats like duh, maybe we should reverse those policies. instead they offered us biden, then harris.
no wonder trump won, no wonder he knows that he will get away with the destruction of the american government.
trump could care less about working people, but at least he put on a good show, vs. the clintonites calling working people deplorable. when covid showed who is really the backbone of our society.
mago
These are all valid observations, that require a kindly bent to implement. It’s not so easy given cultural and social conditioning, which is often competitive and egocentric. Biases and judgments are often hardwired, so even if one wishes to practice tolerance, patience, kindness and caring, those good intentions can be obliterated by ill treatment or ugly behavior on the part of others.
Even years of training and practice in the four immeasurables of equanimity, loving kindness, compassion and joyful rejoicing (in the accomplishments and positive qualities of others) may not overcome all the knots tied in one’s heart. (The 4 immeasurable practice is a Buddhist practice.)
Having said all that, it’s a worthy endeavor to practice kindness and cultivate an altruistic mind and an open heart. It’s so true that when one treats others with warmth it has a positive effect, however subliminally as Ian mentions.
On the subject of animals, who are voiceless and dependent, contemplating their suffering can be a useful exercise. I often think of factory farms, slaughter houses, puppy mills and wet markets, for example. Mistreatment and cruelty of animals is widespread. There’s some incomprehensible hatred towards wolves who are tortured and slaughtered in so many ways including pouring gasoline into their dens and tossing a match. There are countless examples of human cruelty.
Anyway, living where I do I have opportunity to observe wild animals, and you can see their expressions of affection as well as aggression. You can observe it with livestock and of course with our domestic animal friends. You have to be pretty dense to not recognize the intelligence and the emotional sensitivity of animals. Yes, they’re also prone to torpor, dullness and stupidity. Not trying to idealize anything.
I remember Herbert Selbey Jr, author of Last Exit to Brooklyn saying one should learn to love the torturer as much as the tortured. At that long ago time I was like no way Jose, but now I get it.
Then there’s the story of a Buddhist master who was asked which of two monks he considered the most accomplished, and he said so-and-so, because he always has a kind heart.
Finally, to quote Allen Ginsberg as I have in the past:
And what is the purpose of life?
To work for the benefit of others
Everything else a drunken dumb show.
Just thought to share a few of my morning thoughts after reading this thoughtful essay. Now I’ve got to go take it on the road.
Like & Subscribe
The working backbone of America is mostly the immigrants, not MAGA. MAGA has truly proven Hillary to be correct, and I am no Hillary fan by any stretch. In fact, they’re worse than deplorable. They are truly evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFr5RSKfui4
Purple Library Guy
Not as deep, but in a hospital setting I found they treated me more like a human when I got my hands on my own clothes. In a hospital gown, I was “the patient”. In my relatively dignified thick purple velour robe and my purple beret, I was a particular guy.
Alphonse
I agree. People often live up, or down, to the expectations we have of them. If we expect them to be cold and selfish, they will be. If we expect them to be kind and generous, they will be. Not everyone, not always, but often enough.
How we treat others is how we treat ourselves. Not merely because they are likely to reflect our behaviour back to us, but because what we do makes us who we are. I believe that within each of us is a core spirit that responds to how we engage with the world. When we act with generosity of spirit, when we expand our sense of ourselves to encompass and flow into the life around us, it blurs the boundary of the self and enlarges our spirit. When on the other hand we treat people coldly or as tools, means to an end, our spirit shrinks within us and away from the world. (Sometimes we must do this – we still pay the price. Achieving good can entail sacrificing one’s own spirit.) The fundamental reason to treat others with dignity, I believe, is because to the spirit within us there is not so much difference between the self and the other. When we diminish them, we diminish ourselves.
I am talking about an experiential and intuitive relationship. I am not talking about suffering for wrongs to which one has only an intellectual relationship. There is a reason that the examples given are doctors and nurses whom one meets and interacts with. Compassion for distant victims is a different, more abstract relation. To think of oneself as the defender of a victim draws the line between subject and object. These two ways of being (I am thinking of Iain McGilchrist’s work here) can be complementary, but they are also mutually exclusive. When I am one, I am not the other. If I live too much in the mind it becomes difficult to live in the spirit.
In the world we have made of intellect and machines this is a problem. How do we address the scale of human wrong and suffering without drawing the line that isolates us from the wholeness that justifies the exercise in the first place? Trying to feel the pain of the world is too much for any human to bear and can slide into self-indulgence. Abstracting it, the necessary first step to dealing with it rationally, separates us from our humanity. I find it a struggle. I remind myself that anger, while often justified, is a sign that I am cutting myself off. Sadness and melancholy, on the other hand, place me very much in the world.
One of the great tempting abstractions is the label. What motivated me to comment at all is something Iain wrote some time ago: “The right looks at people who are hurting and says, ‘how can we hurt them more?’.” I think I was angry at the time. Now I am just sad.
I have been reading Ian for years. I do not label myself, but over that time I have slid from the left towards the right. I do not see left and right as alternatives but as complementary components of a whole. There are so many definitions of these positions. I remember Corey Robin arguing that the core purpose of the right is to preserve existing hierarchies and privileges. There is some truth to that. But I think the difference is deeper, psychological, to a significant extent innate. Conservatives (set aside the right, which encompasses a number of contradictory groups) believe that human nature is flawed and unchangeable. The left believe that human nature is malleable. Thus for conservatives change is to be found within. They focus on an internal locus of control. The left seek to change society so focuses on an external locus of control: “another world is possible.”
My point is that we do need to acknowledge the human in each other. But when I read that the desire of half the population is to hurt people more, I don’t see it.
Feral Finster
A great deal of truth to what spud wrote. Trump won twice, in part because Team D offered such pathetic policies, in part because Team D offered such pathetic opponents.
Hell, Biden was only barely able to wheeze out a win over Trump, and that after four years of non-stop Trump clownshow. Then in 2024, we were duly assured that the obviously senile Biden was “sharp as a tack”, doubtless solving vexing new problems in particle physics when he was not running laps around the White House, until he popped a clockspring live on national TV.
Then Team D tried to foist Harris on us. Had they run, say, 2008 Obama, Trump would be a late-night comedy show punchline. Of course, Obama and his utter disdain for the lives or problems of the little people are what made Trump a viable candidate in the first place.
You cannot run as a protest candidate if people have nothing to protest.
Mark Level
Great post as (nearly) always, Ian.* Some truths are complicated, require head work, some are simple and straightforward, as this was.
Usually one can tell pretty quickly if another new acquaintance is really interacting with you on a human, humane level, but with some people, not, there is secret intrigue, possibly jealousy or contempt based on external appearances.
I tend to start most relationships with the best of assumptions and openness, unless on first meeting I see some warning sign that the person is a user or untrustworthy. I was once accused by the mother of a terrible son of having “negative body language” the first time I met her, and actually the accusation was correct. She and the boy’s father were total assholes, I’m pretty sensitive and respond to subtle signs without even surface consciousness at the time, & I’d immediately responded to her with caution and distance.
Over the years, I have had a # of friends who seemed normal, but actually suffered from BPD, Borderline Personality Disorder, and would, if you seemed vulnerable, turn on you and try to bully and dominate, insult you in an instance. I had one friend who was that way, we’d been friends for 3 decades, and he & his wife had introduced me to the love of my life, who I was with for 4 years. I made the mistake during Covid when I was getting my big relief check (& a Golden Handshake offer from my District) knowing that he had a weak heart and needed a $2,000 operation to get a pig’s part added to fix it, gave him a $2,200 check since my fortune was so good at the time.
A couple years later, I saw him badly bullying a house guest of his, while treating me with respect. I realized there was something wrong with him then. But here’s the thing, sometimes karma is Instant, as the John Lennon song reminds us. When his talented, smart wife (senior faculty in Physics at Cal Berkeley) dumped him, she brought home the bacon while he worked in a video rental store while writing in Esoteric Studies (which he had some success and profit in, a couple decades later), he needed a place to live, and I sent him to a coworker who had a nice place nearby. The coworker, Loren, kicked him out within 4-5 months ‘coz he too had BPD (nearly lost his job prior for outbursts, eventually got bought out after erratic behavior) and read what Robert was quickly. (Btw, his wife though brilliant was emotionally unstable and an alcoholic like her father, was on her 4th marriage last I heard.)
He betrayed me thrice within 2 years after my gift (which he never tried to pay back), first stole money from me (had a “deal” on something I couldn’t get where I was, did not mail me what was promised, even lied about postage charges for the partial freight sent), then he sent me hostile and bizarre emails, telling me what he had decided I was allowed to talk about with him (!!) despite supposedly being a freethinker, then commanding me to his “brilliance”, only HIS ideas and preferences were to be bowed down before.
When I did not respond he did what abusers typically did, called me, “Marco, I’m your friend and brother, always will be!!” Shocked that I hurt him by non-contact.
Now some responses to posters:
To spud, good calls as usual. Trump was in all actuality a little more on the ball Term 1, wanted a term 2, not entirely insane as now. And anyone can be more humane than Killary Klan Klinton (ex-Goldwater girl, the n—–s didn’t deserve “civil rights”), lowest bar possible. Lt. Colonel Wilkerson recently shared his complete contempt for Clinton, even as a Christian.
A coincidence, I switch between 3 different college stations mornings over breakfast and tea or coffee, happened to be listening to the Amy Goodman show for the first time in like 6 months when she covered the Luigi Mangione of the Arsonist movement, set the fire in the paper factory and announced, “It’s too bad they didn’t pay us enough to live on!” $3 million or more done in damage in that case, not surprised there are copycats. (I admit that after the George Floyd killing I felt sympathy for whoever in Texas shot those 2 cops, hell, as John Steinbeck warned during the Depression, people who lose their homes, family members will at some point attack or kill back. Or as Pulp put it, “Like a dog lying in the corner/They will bite you and never warn you/Look out! They’ll tear your insides out”.
mago again speaks wisdom, as usual. I am not up on the inside nuances of Buddhism, being more Taoist myself, but am in harmony with 90% or more of it. Sadly, I have known some horrible (fake) Buddhists, we had an administrator once who was eventually forced out for berating a subordinate as “a fucking moron” in front of a crowd. She was badly autistic though, and didn’t know it. She made immediate assumptions about people and thought, literally, that she was a group ABOVE teachers and not accountable in any way. I once had her cornered (as a Union rep) for attacking a tiny Asian teacher (she was herself half Asian, half-Latino, self-hating, could pass for “White” sometimes but resented her background) and lying about her. We asked her a question about her behavior, her boss was telling her to respond, she basically retreated to, “You are beneath me in rank. I do not have to justify ANYTHING I did or said to the likes of you.” Here’s one more, some people in helping professions love to bully others. We had a School Psychologist, Ms. Belcher (great name) who had nominal power over the Special Education Staff (one of the most difficult jobs imaginable, thus highly paid) and loved to call them out and bully them in front of parents. When our monster Principal got fired after 2 Newspaper stories about his abuse of students, then abuse of staff over 8 years (bullied 4 women teachers/ counselors, forced into meaningless “apologies” to the bullied by his bosses, but always went back to reset like a dog to its vomit), and I shared the 2nd story with staff who were effected, she quipped to one of the victims, “Why’d he share that? Slow news day?”
I also appreciate your mention of Last Exit to Brooklyn, mago. It relates strongly to Ian’s points. Hubert Selby Jr. was told when he was like 19 years old that he had at best 5 years to live. In fact he lived to age 75!! I loved that novel despite its bleakness and realness. I tried to turn on a friend of mine who was a gay nurse to the book, because of the nuanced characters. Selby laughed at the fact that many people assumed he was gay himself because of the scene(s) with a catty queer group going after each other. But there was one shining star in that group who cared about everyone else and tried to bring out the best in them. This was the character who made a great impression on me. My friend stupidly assumed he was homophobic and trafficking in stereotypes, nothing of the type. Spoiler warning here: The book is a masterpiece, the movie not so much so. The most brutal scene in the book is a gang rape, and the victim doesn’t live through it. In the film, she does live, and the one “good” young man in the neighborhood comes to her rescue once the brutes have exited. It rings false.
LAS, sorry you are wrong once again. Killary is a mass-murdering psychopath; Trump may be approaching her in the body count if he continues his wars and invasions another year or two. He’s nowhere near her or Madelyn Albright or Dick Cheney levels YET.
Purple Library Guy, absolutely. The System dehumanizes people, some fall into the trap and lose their compassion (literally “feeling with.”). Few systems do so more than weaponized, financialized US “Health Care.”
Another note to mago on animals. I completely agree. When I was teaching philosophy, I taught my students about what a horrible piece of shit Rene Descartes was. As a “Christian” he decide that animals had “no souls” and therefore “could not feel pain,” they could be tortured, vivisected, whatever, for the sake of “Science”. The noises of pain they made were from automatons, they don’t suffer, it’s like banging on a clock’s metal when you take it apart. Deeply sick, sociopathic. Teaching Psychology-sociology, I covered the Bush Torture Psychologists from the APA (eventually ejected, they never apologized) and would also tell the girls & boys how makeup was tested on the eyes of captive bunnies, just to teach them the effects of the “beauty” industry.
*Note to Ian: you were wrong when you claimed the Biden Crew was about to initiate a new draft, but we’re pretty much there now. And maybe years from now, LAS might be proven half-right, you are closer to all right now. Never underestimate the Epstein class.
Like & Subscribe
Of course, Obama and his utter disdain for the lives or problems of the little people are what made Trump a viable candidate in the first place.
I’m not arguing that what you say about Obama’s disdain for the lives and problems of the little people is or isn’t true, but that’s not what made Trump a viable candidate. What made Trump a viable candidate is the idiocy of a substantial percentage of the population. A population of morons does not a democracy make.
We held our nose and voted for Harris. After weeks of deliberation and weighing everything, we decided that to not vote would have been to vote for Trump, effectively, so we voted for Harris and the deciding factor was even though she refused to denounce Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians, we knew she wouldn’t be as enabling and as evil as Trump in that regard.
The simple fact is, had she been elected, America would not have waged war on Iran with Israel.
Now, as for 2026 and 2028, we have crossed the Rubicon for certain and are now beyond electoral politics making a discernible difference AT ALL. So, we will not be voting ever again and we will just live or die with whatever is coming our way.
mago
Omigod Mark Level, I totally forgot about that monster Descartes, the so called father of Western philosophy. Yeah, no shit. That tells you something. Dude would dissect dogs alive in front of an audience claiming they felt no pain since they lacked a soul. What’s that agonizing sound you hear? Nothing. Your senses are lying to you. Listen to me the rational master of the universe.
In the slice of life department I made a foray into the local community today. It’s impossible to explain where I live, except to say it’s remote. The nearest traffic light is 60 miles away—that’s a hundred kilometers for those who do metric.
Anyway I’m toodling down the road and the driver of every car that comes my way waves. That custom passed by the wayside around here years ago. I shot the peace sign back.
In what passes for town here even a shop clerk who usually treats me with indifference at best wished me a sincere good day with a warm smile.
Then I’m leaning against my truck looking at my phone outside the main store, and three different women who I don’t know said hello. Of course I responded in kind.
Okay, this is all circumstantial happenstance, yet I couldn’t help but think about Ian’s posting today and making some kind of connection.
Do the right thing and it will all come back to you. Cheers.
spud
Like & Subscribe:
what a B.S. elitist response. the clintonites removed the ability of about two thirds of americans to contribute to americas GDP. today its called flyover country, before clinton it was the envy of the world.
to the neo-liberal, low wages equal productivity, that is productive for higher profits, and that’s all that matters to the capitalists.
no wonder the socialist countries of russia, china, and iran are beating the pants off of us.
https://capitalandmain.com/lessons-from-the-bust-that-followed-bill-clintons-economic-boom
Bill Clinton’s presidency kicked off an economic boom with nearly 10 years of continuous growth and unemployment fell to below four percent. But his continuing deregulation of the financial sector and the North American Free Trade Agreement also fueled today’s severe inequality and de-industrialization, a new book argues. Clinton’s economic policy options were restricted by what historian Nelson Lichtenstein calls the “deep structures” of American and global capitalism.
The UAW strike today, although not designed this way, is in support of [President Joe] Biden’s administration’s green transition, which is only going to work if these new battery plants built with government money have wages and unionization that are similar to what’s in the North. Otherwise, [former President Donald] Trump is right: You are eliminating high-paying jobs, and you’re creating lousy jobs. So both of these strikes were political strikes, with the UAW aligned with a kind of New Deal-ish industrial policy program.
————–
https://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/
Posted December 9, 2013 at 4:00 pm by Jeff Faux
NAFTA’s Impact on U.S. Workers
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NATFA) was the door through which American workers were shoved into the neoliberal global labor market.
By establishing the principle that U.S. corporations could relocate production elsewhere and sell back into the United States, NAFTA undercut the bargaining power of American workers, which had driven the expansion of the middle class since the end of World War II. The result has been 20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.
NAFTA affected U.S. workers in four principal ways. First, it caused the loss of some 700,000 jobs as production moved to Mexico. Most of these losses came in California, Texas, Michigan, and other states where manufacturing is concentrated.
To be sure, there were some job gains along the border in service and retail sectors resulting from increased trucking activity, but these gains are small in relation to the loses, and are in lower paying occupations. The vast majority of workers who lost jobs from NAFTA suffered a permanent loss of income.
Second, NAFTA strengthened the ability of U.S. employers to force workers to accept lower wages and benefits. As soon as NAFTA became law, corporate managers began telling their workers that their companies intended to move to Mexico unless the workers lowered the cost of their labor.
In the midst of collective bargaining negotiations with unions, some companies would even start loading machinery into trucks that they said were bound for Mexico. The same threats were used to fight union organizing efforts. The message was: “If you vote in a union, we will move south of the border.” With NAFTA, corporations also could more easily blackmail local governments into giving them tax reductions and other subsidies.
Third, the destructive effect of NAFTA on the Mexican agricultural and small business sectors dislocated several million Mexican workers and their families, and was a major cause in the dramatic increase in undocumented workers flowing into the U.S. labor market. This put further downward pressure on U.S. wages, especially in the already lower paying market for less skilled labor.
Fourth, and ultimately most important, NAFTA was the template for rules of the emerging global economy, in which the benefits would flow to capital and the costs to labor. The U.S. governing class—in alliance with the financial elites of its trading partners—applied NAFTA’s principles to the World Trade Organization, to the policies of the World Bank and IMF, and to the deal under which employers of China’s huge supply of low-wage workers were allowed access to U.S. markets in exchange for allowing American multinational corporations the right to invest there.
The NAFTA doctrine of socialism for capital and free markets for labor also drove U.S. policy in the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-95, the Asia financial crash of 1997 and the global financial meltdown of 2008. In each case, the U.S. government organized the rescue of the world’s bank and corporate investors, and let the workers fend for themselves.
In terms of U.S. politics, the passage of NAFTA signaled that the Democratic Party—the “progressive” side of the U.S. two-party system—had accepted the reactionary economic ideology of Ronald Reagan
A “North American Accord” was first proposed by the Republican Reagan in 1979, a year before he was elected president. A decade later, his Republican successor, George H.W. Bush negotiated the final agreement with Mexico and Canada.
But the Democrats who controlled the Congress would not approve the agreement. And when Democrat Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, it was widely assumed that the political pendulum would swing back from the right, and that therefore NAFTA would never pass. But Clinton surrounded himself with economic advisers from Wall Street, and in his first year pushed the approval of NAFTA through the Congress.
Despite the rhetoric, the central goal of NAFTA was not “expanding trade.” After all, the U.S., Mexico, and Canada had been trading goods and services with each other for three centuries. NAFTA’s central purpose was to free American corporations from U.S. laws protecting workers and the environment. Moreover, it paved the way for the rest of the neoliberal agenda in the US—the privatization of public services, the regulation of finance, and the destruction of the independent trade union movement.
The inevitable result was to undercut workers’ living standards all across North America. Wages and benefits have fallen behind worker productivity in all three countries.
Moreover, despite declining wages in the United States, the gap between the typical American and typical Mexican worker in manufacturing remains the same. Even after adjusting for differences in living costs, Mexican workers continue to make about 30% of the wages of workers in the United States. Thus, NAFTA is both symbol and substance of the global “race to the bottom.”
Here in North America there are two alternative political strategies for change. One is repeal. NAFTA gives each nation the right to opt out of the agreement. The problem is that by now the three countries’ economies and populations have become so integrated that dis-integration could cause widespread dislocation, unemployment, and a substantial drop in living standards.
The other option is to build a cross border political movement to rewrite NAFTA in a way that gives ordinary citizens rights and labor protections at least equal to the current privileges of corporate investors. This would obviously not be easy. But a foundation has already been laid by growing collaboration among immigrant, trade unionist, human rights and other activist organizations in all three counties.
If such a movement could succeed in drawing up a new continent-wide social contract, North American economic integration, instead of being a blueprint for worker exploitation might just become a model for bringing social justice to the global economy.
Mark Level
Thanks to Spud for a thorough takedown of LAS’ BillBot and HillBoting. Shameful, and “assumes facts not in evidence” is therefore a Category Error.
And to mago; had a good experience doing my taxes almost late yesterday, great guy and I wasn’t hit nearly as bad as I usually am, which was a yuuuuge surprise. Won’t bore others with detail.
I find the experience you described comes and goes in cycles, I kind of assume there’s something astrological going on. Haven’t been very much in that cycle recently. A couple months back, I got subtle (not rude) sexual come-ons from 2 different people, one male, one female, at my age that’s a major blessing, not much expected. Both happened in my same neighborhood grocery which I generally go to. Had to give my age for the bottle of wine I bought to cashier, the young lady who was bagging, early 20s, said, Oh cm’on, you’re not THAT old!! I demurred, when done said simply “Thanks for your kind words, young lady”, don’t want to look like an old fool pursuing someone young enough to be my grandchild. Also, earlier I was in the shopping carts area, some guy in his mid-40s, decent looking who’d seen me come in, said “Well, hello, how’re you?” I said great, and you? He replied & gave me a very warm smile, but I went on my way. Ian’s point is met, just being kindly recognized brings warmth.
Back to LAS– you clearly have no consistent ethics or standards. You have (rightly) excoriated Diff Clue for his “The Dimmies will save us!! Vote Blue No Matter Who” dreck, then you write slop like, “We held our nose and voted for Harris. After weeks of deliberation and weighing everything, we decided that to not vote would have been to vote for Trump, effectively, so we voted for Harris and the deciding factor was even though she refused to denounce Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians, we knew she wouldn’t be as enabling and as evil as Trump in that regard.” You minimize what she actually said, and what lost her Michigan (an unforced error) & possibly other states according to studies done by the Dimmicrap party post-getting trounced. Her husband (picked by the political class for her) is a shlubby Zionist agent. She pledged to continue the slaughter, the most she said is what Gavin Newscum now says “Some of the images [of civilians, elderly, women, children being exterminated, the first live-streamed genocide in history] are terrible” but basically there’s nothing I can do, “Israel has a right to defend itself” by exterminating the Indigenous people (who are the ACTUAL descendants of the actual Jews, not the Turkic Khazar converts of the 8th century from Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Moldova, Russia, etc.)
You have no consistency, and evidently no balls either. Bragging about voting as if it makes a goddamn scintilla of difference!! Pure Slave morality (see Socrates, then Nietzsche.)
I voted for Jill Stein rather than not voting. There were local races I cared about. I do not pretend, even to myself, that it mattered in the least.
Like & Subscribe
I’m not arguing that the Clintons and the Dem Party and Establishment aren’t evil. They ALL are. That doesn’t mean Hillary was not correct when she called MAGA deplorable if she did indeed call them, specifically, deplorable. She was correct. Strike that, she was rather tame and benign in her characterization. MAGA is pure, unadulterated evil if evil exists.
The answer to the subterfuge of the Dem Party pretending to be the champion of the unwashed’s rights and interests was NEVER the conservatives let alone Donald Trump. Anyone with more than a brain stem up top would know this. MAGA apparently didn’t know this, so they have nothing more than a brain stem up top and maybe they don’t even have a brain stem. They represent the worst of America. The dregs. They are violent, immoral, evil cruel beasts and nothing can ever be made right in America or anywhere in the world until they, collectively as a group, are put asunder. The sooner the better. The Dems will never put them asunder let alone bring Trump and his cabal of demons to justice. The Dems are complicit. Trump and MAGA have been great for the Dems. It allows them to maintain minority power in perpetuity.
spud
oh and add Ontario and Quebec to the mix of being ruined that was the main driver of Canadian GDP.
immigrants are cheap labor. i am not against some immigration, but the flood is for wage suppression, and increased profits, that the neo-liberals and conservatives claim is productivity.
Feral Finster
@L&S
“We held our nose and voted for Harris. After weeks of deliberation and weighing everything, we decided that to not vote would have been to vote for Trump, effectively, so we voted for Harris and the deciding factor was even though she refused to denounce Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians, we knew she wouldn’t be as enabling and as evil as Trump in that regard.
The simple fact is, had she been elected, America would not have waged war on Iran with Israel.”
You sure about that?
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-the-iranian-ballistic-missile-attack-against-israel
Key Statements on Iran-Israel Conflict (2024–2025):
On the October 2024 Attack: “I condemn this attack unequivocally… Iran is a destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East”.
On Israel’s Defense: “I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist militias”.
On U.S. Intervention: “We will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend U.S. forces and interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists”.
On Nuclear Strategy: While advocating for diplomacy to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, she noted that “all options are on the table”.
On Escalation (Oct 2024): Following an Israeli strike in October 2024, Harris warned Iran against retaliating, saying, “It would be a mistake”.
Lots of radical noises, but in the end, you always toe the Team D line.
Mark Level
LAS: Kettle calls Pot black, that means a lot!!
No, sorry, it doesn’t, it means nothing.
It is pure Narrative for the suckers, empty words in a vacuum.
Both parties cooperate with one another, the Republicans are the party of Pure Evil (& now a pretend “God-Emperor”, or as Pepe Escobar notes, a Neo-Caligula, who uses the Executive Branch entirely for the gain of the Epstein Class and himself, his fail-children and presumably pimps who procure for him. The Dimmies are purportedly “Center Right”, with regard to foreign rapine, wars and economics follow the EXACT same policies, pretend to care and gesture performatively that they “care” about LGBTQ+, women (look how they helped kill Roe!), “people of color” etc. All they care about is power, looting, pretend-lose 90% of “conflicts” with the Rapepubs and help move the political Overton Window further and further to the right, every single day. (I’ve been politically conscious since Nixon’s term, couldn’t even have imagined at the time how far Fascist and Murderous this country would become.)
Bloviate all you want, you’re getting so absurd I may just scroll past your future babble. Oh, btw, Lt. Col. Wilkerson called Killary out because she’s praised the Neo-Caligula repeatedly for FINALLY being the one who attacked Iran (Obama said no, Bush Jr. said no, even Biden’s people didn’t go there). You think that’s hunky-dory and cool? You think calling former Obama voters garbage makes the world a better place? You have no credibility. I don’t know why you are on a Leftist, Humanist site like this one. You seem like perfect fodder for Lawyers, Guns, and Money or The Daily Kos. You might get some respect over there. You don’t seem to get much here.
Mark Level
Speaking of good people vs. evil. Due Dissidence reporting this morning that a massive swarm of hundreds of thousands of bees has entered Southeastern Israel, in the are of an illegal settlement!! God is sending a message.
Candace Owens tweeted “I have a dream.” One old Testament tale involving hornets attacking the unjust (Canaanites, of course) is Exodus 23:28. There are a couple more, one denouncing “the bee in Assyria.” Keaton Weiss jokes it’s vengeance for the attacks by Netanyahu and Trump on Pope Leo.
Suggestive, but who the Hell knows? Will they take the hint. Nope, Zionist monsters never do.
Like & Subscribe
Yes, I am 100% certain that Harris would not have partnered with Israel in an illegal war of aggression on Iran. Harris and Trump may both be evil scumbags, but on the evil spectrum, Trump is off the charts and many times more dangerous FOR ALL OF HUMANITY.
Simpletons will conflate Trump and Harris as one and the same or Trump and Biden as one and the same or Trump and Obama as one and the same. They’re not one and the same. There are differences and the differences are more than nuance.
That’s not advocating for Team D. As I have said and I will say again, we held our nose but no more. The Rubicon has been crossed. The Beast is not slouching but instead in a full sprint toward Bethlehem. We have zero influence at this point if we ever had any influence.
Ian Welsh
Enough off topic arguing with ad homs in this thread. No more such comments will be let thru.
Ja Wiklund
Even French bureaucrats are human when they are treated as humans. If you treat them as bureaucrats they just obstruct and act according to the rules.
shagggz
The humorous irony of Ian having to make such a pronouncement, given the topic, must be noted 🙂