The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Partisan hatred for the other party over time

    By artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 3:59pm |

    Quite a chart, quite a chart.

    via @JonHaidt pic.twitter.com/mVyoxjehYV

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) October 6, 2018

    Edit to add original source:

    Comments

    Good point to add:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 9:43pm

    solidarity returns to the GOP, at least temporarily:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 12:30am

    Screwing someone and assholism are their only metrics. Not quite idealists.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 1:35am

    Smith makes a good point about measuring division by awful things people do to each other. But it is not crazy talk to note how bitter political discourse has become. The take no prisoner methodology of Gingrich is hard to step back from once it is started.


    by moat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:47pm

    Offered just as a thought provoker, I don't know if I necessarily agree simply because of how fast our society can change now. It may no be a long lasting thing. Just compare Trump vs. Obama. There could be backlash.  The millennial generation is huge and will influence where this goes and boomers influence less as more are in the nursing home or grave. I definitely sense that Trump will eventually tire people about expressing outrage on social media soon and that will affect things. A majority of people can only sustain angry passion for so long, that why they created a label of "fringe" for those who can't.

    Look at the radicals of the late 60's and early 70's. By the late 70's, Jerry Rubin was a networking enterpreneur. And the rest of us were using up our outrage at the gas station.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 1:41pm

    I can't tell if you are reflecting or projecting about what has just happened with another great victory for Trump and loyal Americans. I doubt the snowflake resistance, fake news media or their wealthy backers will cease to promote their angry passion driven degeneration to the lowest levels of behavior the whole world watched during the anti-Kavanaugh fiasco. Conservatives and their voters are happy and celebrating this weekend and although some anger was used to help Trump overcome the Red Queen and her cult followers they seem to be more determined and focused now on the future. The commie snowflake left has shown their true colors and determination not anger is what will return the liberal left to the wastebin of history. Jerry Rubib was one of my favorite people during the '60 because he used humor not anger and street theater to oppose LBJ's dirty war. He was more Libertarian than commie radical and he along with fellow Yippie Phil Ochs despised liberals who tried to coopt the anti-war movement for their dirty party politics. He also wasn't a professional activists supported by leftist technocrats like todays career seeking agitators so he had to seek his own fortune when the war ended.

    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:08pm

    I can hear that something terrible happened to you when you were young.
    Do you have any way to corroborate your story? 


    by moat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:26pm

    Jerry Rubin:

    Quotes -

    Don't trust anyone over thirty.

    Most men act so tough and strong on the outside because on the inside, we are scared, weak, and fragile. Men, not women, are the weaker sex.

    By the end, everybody had a label -- pig, liberal, radical, revolutionary ... If you had everything but a gun, you were a radical but not a revolutionary.

    Phil Ochs:

    Ochs performed at many political events during the 1960s counterculture era, including anti-Vietnam War and civil rights rallies, student events, and organized labor events over the course of his career, in addition to many concert appearances at such venues as New York City's Town Hall and Carnegie Hall. Politically, Ochs described himself as a "left social democrat"[1] who became an "early revolutionary" after the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to a police riot, which had a profound effect on his state of mind.

    After years of prolific writing in the 1960s, Ochs's mental stability declined in the 1970s. He eventually succumbed to a number of problems including bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and committed suicide in 1976.


    by barefooted on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:19pm

    Are you trying to be a clever snowflake? If so it isn't working any better for you than the rest of that mob. The Yippies ran Pigasus for president in '68 because the liberal dems were running a war pig and the supposed anti-war young liberals wanted people to vote for that war party even though the party bosses violently shut down the anti-war wing of the party. Today the liberal snowflake resistance is now in bed with the Clintonite establishment R2P warmongers and all the nasty elements of the deep state that we rejected in the 60's.

    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 9:45pm

    You have gotten on to the wrong bus. Those fellow travelers you are shaking pom poms with don't want what you say you want.


    by moat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 6:55am

    Strikes me from the reveals on this thread that Peter might some solidarity with another member here using the name Lulu, if only they had a chance to sit down and share war stories over a beer. Peter's love for the use of the snowflake derogative in an odd manner confused things all to heck. Semiology matters! We can't communicate well if we have different meanings for slurs. So of course, now I am thinking about the meaning of the term "Identity Politics".... wink


    by artappraiser on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 7:22am

    Your arguments over terms with Lulu reflect a difference of viewpoint about what is happening and what can be changed. You are not incomprehensible to each other. As a witness to the conversation, I can sort out my opinion of where you actually disagree with each other and where you talk past each other. Other witnesses have other opinions.

    Peter is not trying to persuade anybody here that what he thinks is the truth. He is announcing our impending death without interest in whether we understand why we are dying.

    The snowflake stuff is the rhetoric of class war where Peter plays the proletariat consciousness denouncing the "liberal" bourgeoisie. Sort of like Lenin without the chewy Marxist center. Now combine that inchoate substance with a heaping portion of blood and soil to establish the privilege that the enemy is hell bent upon taking away from poor victims of equal rights. Hard to say what this thing is he is speaking for but I hear the announcement of my impending death clearly enough. This is not a conversation.


    by moat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 10:24am

    the proletariat consciousness denouncing the "liberal" bourgeoisie. Sort of like Lenin without the chewy Marxist center.

    Ah yes, thank you for the reminder. It was so long ago that I heard this stuff (and regurgitated it myself for a short while) that I tend to forget these finer points, hah.

    Still, who'd ever imagine back in those days that a (supposed) billionaire with tastes that are virtually a stereotype illustrating the french term bourgeois would become an inspiration to the proletariat consciousness. I cannot handle Peter's cognitive dysfunction as well as you, sorry, it is simply far too complex for like a SNL parody, very few would recognize it.

    Edit to add: I wasn't referring to Lulu about the miscommunication issue, that was about someone else here and their definition of "identity politics".


    by artappraiser on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 10:50am

    I cannot make heads or tails out of it. I doubt the generator of the rhetoric can either.


    by moat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 11:31am

    You're flattering Peter - he just goes for scorched earth, insults on insults. As long as "liberals" are uncomfortable, he's content, whatever it means to real people in real life. When he waxes nostalgic about Yippies it just means he likes jokey motherfuckers like Rubin and Trump who can do marketing/be-ins that overturns the apple cart. He's a chaos monkey without actual ideology, just a sports team to root for. 


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 11:44am

    You're correct that I use class rhetoric but I prefer to use American definitions over antiquated Marxist claptrap. The snowflakes represent the leisure class and aspire to remain part of the ruling class while feigning empathy for the working class. They proudly show their contempt for working class people and anyone else who are aware enough to reject their degenerate self serving agendas. This elitist arrogance is clearly displayed by their hate filled use of the term deplorables/racists to describe anyone who supported Trump and helped elect him. You seem to be becoming somewhat aware, along with Art, that your death spiral is self inflicted as displayed by the snowflake resistance clawing at the doors to the Supreme Court desperately seeking lost power. My hope now is that you and your ilk won't be capable of destroying the rest of us as you auger in to the dustbin of history for eternity.

    by Peter (not verified) on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 1:58pm

    I am feeling the love.

    Too bad your model fails to include any working class people who are not white and/or female. Or all the working class people who understand that your team is increasing the power of wealth over others. Or the fact that corporations are just as global as they were before you got on the bus with Mitch.

    But I appreciate you dropping the smarmy concern troll crap and just got down to celebrating our demise.


    by moat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 2:15pm

    Here's a nice rant on Rubin & Libertarianism and how jacked up their supposed protest is...
    http://exiledonline.com/radicals-imbeciles-fbi-stooges-from-jerry-rubin-...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:22pm

    Interesting site. The very different contributors are seriously into documents.

    Anecdotal note that cannot be verified: When I was a very young man in Colorado, I knew some hippies who scoffed when I showed them my copy of Steal This Book. I remember one encounter very clearly:

    "We are trying to prove to others that our way doesn't have to kill other people in order to live with other people. This is just more binary shit that will get people killed."


    by moat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:07pm

    wise person, great quote, I would remember it too if it had been said to me. Makes me think about how there were actually a lot of sympathetic grownups involved in "the movement" trying to guide us, but we didn't often listen that closely, we knew better....or we weren't communicating  well...whatever...


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:12pm

    That is the generation gap, not being able to complete the circles started before and giving the same problem to the ones who follow.


    by moat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:33pm

    The author of this rant is confusing, possibly intentionally, the Yippie Libertarian left of Rubin's day with the Randian Libertarian right of a decade later. There is some agreement between the two about the dangers to freedom from a piggish statist liberal ruling class and foreign adventurism but not much else.

    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 9:57pm

    Oh, I imagine he just thinks both of them are clueless and suck, even if in different ways.
    (apparently Rubin's book on sex between the sheets is even more bizarrely awful as well)
    You have a different opinion?


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 8:29am

    Most commies like this ranter are self centered idiots who believe only they have the answers or even understand the questions. I admired Rubin because he used humor during a very dark and depressing era something that is sorely lacking today. I didn't read his books and I don't have blind faith in anyone to have all the correct ideas about life.

    by Peter (not verified) on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 2:30pm

    I am doing none of that, I am trying in a feeble way to get info. on which way the world is going to go in the next decade in order to know how to plan for me and mine. Personally, I actually pretty much loathe political activism.ever since they made us go to pep rallies in high school. Though I did the radical thing for a short while as a freshman in college which I quickly dropped for the new and exciting disco world where straights mixed with gays.

    Since you do appear to be a political activist, though, I would love it if you answered moat's question above.

    I can hear that something terrible happened to you when you were young.
    Do you have any way to corroborate your story? 


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:08pm

    Corroborate or combobulate?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:59pm

    It's 1968.  The candidates.  The democratic convention.

    It's Vietnam...  Peter is a very disaffected liberal.  My suspicion is that he's not a young man; he's extremely bitter.


    by barefooted on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 12:14am

    One more fed up with the partisan hatred gaming, not going to partake anymore:

    Why I’m Leaving the Republican Party

    The Kavanaugh confirmation fight revealed the GOP to be the party of situational ethics and moral relativism in the name of winning at all costs.

    By Tom Nichols (Tom Nichols is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College), @ TheAtlantic.com, Oct. 7

    {....] As an aside, let me say that I have no love for the Democratic Party, which is torn between totalitarian instincts on one side and complete political malpractice on the other. As a newly minted independent, I will vote for Democrats and Republicans I think are decent and well-meaning people; if I move back home to Massachusetts, I could cast a ballot for Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Democratic Representative Joe Kennedy and not think twice about it.

    But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party—with some honorable exceptions like Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar—was execrable. From the moment they leaked the Ford letter, they were a Keystone Cops operation, with Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono willing to wave away the Constitution and get right to a presumption of guilt, and Senator Dianne Feinstein looking incompetent and outflanked instead of like the ranking member of one of the most important committees in America.

    The Republicans, however, have now eclipsed the Democrats as a threat to the rule of law and to the constitutional norms of American society. They have become all about winning. Winning means not losing, and so instead of acting like a co-equal branch of government responsible for advice and consent, congressional Republicans now act like a parliamentary party facing the constant threat of a vote of no-confidence [....]


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 9:31pm

    Both sides do it'ism. Except Mitch told them he was going to plow this through, withheld the normal records, expedited the schedule, and as usual sidelined the Dems in the process despite revious perjury and real evidence of covered up heavy judicial activism. But instead of accepting this fait accompli the Dems acted execrably. They leaked something that was supposed to be left buried. They acted as if Kavanaugh had alread committed perjury when he had, or that he had distributed stolen Democratic Congressional papers, which he had.

    Fuck Radio Tom.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 12:54am

    Yep, false "both sides do it'ism" from Nichols.

    Mann and Ornstein, two devoted establishment non-partisans, factually demonstrated that there is nothing remotely close to equivalence between the two major parties, in It's Even Worse Than You Think.  The Republican party, both procedurally in terms of their politics is war by other means MO and the deviation of their substantive agenda from majority public opinion on most issues, has gone far to the extreme radical right.  Much, much farther than the Democratic party has moved away from its "center" before the Southern Democrats exited.  

    Those who consider themselves above the fray "moderates" or "centrists" have nowhere now to go other than to the Democratic party.  They can pretend as though they have no dog in this fight.  I fundamentally disagree.  It is not opinion but fact that one partisan side is well off the rails, both in terms of any sort of commitment to minimal operating norms necessary to have a functioning government, and in terms of its radical right wing policy agenda far outside the mainstream of public opinion in this country.  All of which former GOP warrior Jennifer Rubin fully seems to grasp. 

    By no means does this mean I have no criticisms of or dissatisfactions with the Democratic party, in re to any offering the idiotic strawman "you're an apologist for the Democratic party" retort.  And I challenge anyone to find any Democrat who does not feel the same way.  


    by AmericanDreamer on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 1:00pm