If You Walk Without Rhythm, You Won’t Attract the Worm

What happens when you make a pundit talk about Antifa, the Dune trailer, the Republic ...

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What happens when you make a pundit talk about Antifa, the Dune trailer, the Republic of Venice, and 60s Iron Man cartoons all in one go? Tune in to the weekend Ruminant to find out!

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  1. Joe1776

    I sort of agree with you on being a moderate is not freaking out. But is there a time when even moderates should be really concerned? In the very same podcast @ 23:00 - 25:30 you talk about how the natural state is authoritarianism and how we need to be ever vigilant of our freedoms and system. I agree but what I see is many people seem to think america is invincible.

    The unity agreement with a self proclaimed socialist is hard for me to just sort of brush past. Having the author of the Green New Deal co-chair a task force on climate change is not reassuring. I think it is the moderate in me that says whoa wait a second! I don't mean to say I can predict it will be so bad it may not be that bad. But it is going to be worse and it *might* be really bad. If we plunge into a depression and start looking more and more to the government this could be really bad.

    If we are not supposed to be sounding the alarm bells now, what objective measure can you give? When do you ever start to really get worried?

    I guess you don't find the unity agreement and the talk of stacking the courts enough. IMO stacking the courts could mean the Constitution becomes close to meaningless. But even there it is not like it is against the constitution to enact a really devastating form of socialism that would spiral out of control.

    If Bernie Sanders won the primary would you then be concerned?

    You say - just wait for the backlash. But I don't think history is on your side there. Just because people elect republicans that does not mean socialism gets rolled back. I mean the tax cut was the first time in a long time we had any sort of substantial tax cut. And the spending really didn't decrease anyway. By and large the republicans just stop us on the march toward bigger government and socialism - rarely do we march away from it. Have we ever lowered the minimum wage? I really don't know, but I don't remember it happening.

    It seems to me that as more people become dependent on the government for their pay check we will have more and more big government voters. Socialism ratchets up but rarely does it government spending actually decrease.

    https://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_chart_1792_2018USp_18s1li011lcn_F1fF0sF0l


    I would love to be corrected and told of times where we really reversed the trend and decreased the power of government and gave more power back to individuals. If you can offer this I will be more of your sort of moderate. So if that has happened let me know. Otherwise I remain suspicious of your backlash theory.

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  2. Joe1776

    So the idea is that Woodward somehow somewhere represented he wouldn't say anything until the book was published. That is not even anything close to a confidentiality rule of ethics. Attorney client privilege and doctor patient privilege do not last until the attorney or doctor decides they want to publish a book on the person. I find the whole comparison ridiculous. Clearly there was no expectation of privacy since the purpose was to publish a book based on what was said.

    I think Woodward knew it wouldn't have much impact if he published right away and he wanted to publish right before the election.

    This is all just political theater and his refusal to publish it early proves it.

    I also liked comic books as a kid but as much as I try to like the Marvel movies they just don't deliver. Robert Downey Junior sucks.

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    Bart Hickman

    This is a silly point, but you mentioned that you think Vulcans might be based on the Mentat guild in Dune, but I think Star Trek was probably being created before Dune was published in 1965.

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    Sean

    I am still searching for something better than "centrist" to describe this similar of not-extreme politics. A few I am trying out on myself to check the fit:
    - Temperates (too 1920s)
    - Considerates (too close to Confederates)
    - Civil-ian (comes with the bonus of forever explaining "no not that kind")
    - Little Ls (from always having to qualify liberal or libertarian this way, but ironic since it has only Big Ls)
    - Mild Mannered (My go-to at the moment. Like most superheroes, you should spend most of your time in your alter ego, getting along with your coworkers and friends and not out fighting for the future of humanity)

    None of these will likely stick. I hope someone else thinks of something better so I can use a simple label to let people know I'm a reasonable guy who thinks you are probably a reasonable person too.

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    Tracie

    The always reasonable and eternally smiling @prchovanec tweeted something that fits with my thoughts on "centrism" since you brought it up.

    https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/1305307802643107845?s=20

    I would not be the first to point out that this is a rare moment. Who ever thought that "moderate" or "centrist" would just mean "not bent on destruction."

    Can't we just go back to arguing about the minimum wage and civil liberties and the capital gains tax and school choice? Remember that? When everything wasn't burning.

    That said, while we're sitting here wide eyed and kinda quiet in the center, we all have to figure out what it is we really believe. We can't count on a sane opposition to hand us our side of the issue by default. Not sayin everybody did that, but I've been guilty of it. Think that's part of what's so exhausting about these times. I can't just look to team blue to give me a reasonable position, and there's loud people on the fringes who scare me. The wreckage of team red has little to offer either.

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  6. Brilliantly Oblivious

    Jonah- do yourself a favor a check out the fantasy books of Guy Gavriel Kay- especially the Fionavar Tapestry, A Song for Arbonne and my favorite, The Last Light of the Sun. No one has yet put these on the screen but they are wonderful alt-history-fantasy, beautifully written. And the audio books are even better. Shana Tova U'm'tookah (A good and sweet New Year)

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  7. PM

    Is the critical point against the last two Dune adaptations that the sandworm wasn't pretty?

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    Gideon

    De gustibus non est disputandum.

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    Seth B

    Regarding awful Shibbolethith (?) woke/academic writing, WS Gilbert had that type pegged back in 1880:

    "And ev'ry one will say
    As you walk your mystic way
    'If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me
    Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!' "

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      Tracie

      Maybe the best thing my high school English teacher ever had us read is that famous 1946 Orwell essay on bad writing. When I'm falling into dementia, I'll still remember this sentence:

      "A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field."

      https://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/nb3.htm

      https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

      Can't imagine what he'd think of academic-speak now.

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    The Stray Goose

    When we refer to a transgender as a 'woman' without mentioning that she was formerly a man, we have truly lost. Men are not women.

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