Mark Lawrence Schrad writes that Republicans have abandoned policy to promote the public good, including assistance following natural disasters.

William Lindsey :toad:

@wood5y @philip_cardella Touché. Who'd have thought we'd have to relive that grim period, when so many of us claimed we'd learned the lesson it taught us? But here we are.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella Thank you for finding the piddling efforts I make to share what I'm reading worthwhile. I keep trying!

William Lindsey :toad:

@peterbutler Yes, and yet, ironically, it's all about asserting stongman, macho dominance and power in a very strutty performative way.

William Lindsey :toad:

@timo21 @philip_cardella Yes, Mencken captured something core to a formative strand of American culture — which remains active and alive in American culture down the centuries — with that observation.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella Yes, of course. I think at least historians have in recent years sought to sketch the larger picture of the Holocaust. Millions of Jews were murdered and must absolutely not be forgotten. But political dissidents, those considered mentally and physically disabled, Slavs, LGBTQ people, Romani: others were targeted and killed, too. It all began with murdering children in facilities for the disabled.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella "Trump is openly channeling Hitler. Repeatedly. The press needs to identify this AND why it's so dangerous *in headlines*."

I very much agree. And his choice to hold his big upcoming rally at Madison Square Gardens, where the big Nazi rally was held back when underscores what he's doing.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Phiend I agree.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy I wish there were something other than a "like" button that says, I see what you said and I appreciate it without any sense of "that's such a fun thing you said!" Lol.

Scary times.

It's seemed like Miller was driving the bus but I wasn't sure until HCRs post today.

There's just no way using MSG is a coincidence.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella Yes, emojis provide a limited range of emotions! I'd like a more diverse language-emotive system built into them, too.

Steve Woods

@wdlindsy @philip_cardella The biggest lesson I've learned from history is that lessons are never learnt from history.

Take for instance the UK's involvement in Bush's Afghanistan war. In the 19th century the British fought 3 wars against the Afghans. Result: Afghans 3, British Empire 0.

William Lindsey :toad:

@wood5y @philip_cardella I fear you're exactly right. My spouse is German-American and has spent years reading everything he can get his hands on about the Holocaust, as he struggles to understand how his people, German Catholic people, could have been responsible for or have silently colluded in mass murder. He's concluded that the notion of progress as history unfolds is total bunk. He says that the same battles have to be fought over and over again against inhumanity.

Steve Woods

@wdlindsy @philip_cardella The fact that the plays of Aristophanes are still being performed after millennia is indicative of human nature's lack of changing despite the changing times.

William Lindsey :toad:

@wood5y @philip_cardella Very well-noted. I can hear my 12th-grade English teacher Margaret Hamilton saying those very words as we read Aristophanes for the first time in our lives in her class.

Steve Woods

@wdlindsy @philip_cardella I've never read him. Must remedy that before I'm put to bed in pine pyjamas/pajamas.

William Lindsey :toad:

@wood5y @philip_cardella "Lysistrata" is a wonderful starting point, and a play that remains surprisingly timely right to today.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy @wood5y lol. I love that play so much.

Steve Woods

@wdlindsy @philip_cardella Downloaded to phone.

It'll be next on my reading list when I've finished George Orwell's Collected Essays.

Cheers!

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy @wood5y I recommend a translation that's not fully literal. If I recall that's the play where some women are selling "pigs" by the side of the road in the literal translation but in the slang adaptation it's "cats" and it makes a lot more sense to the modern reader.

I definitely remember the plot of that play but might be mixing the selling of "cats" up with a different play.

Possumantha

@wdlindsy @philip_cardella I think the distraction industry may kill democracy. Too many people are getting their information 8th hand from influencers. All the fascists have to do is get people to not act.

William Lindsey :toad:

@kastope @philip_cardella Excellent point. I agree. And I like the phrase "distraction industry."