Authoritarianism Has a Bunch of Names

Maoism was responsible for 50 million or more deaths, and Stalinism another 20 or 30 million, but I can’t think of a single important American novel or film depicting those holocausts. Offhand I can recall one American movie that seriously portrayed the inhumanity of collectivism — The Killing Fields, though one hopes there are at least some others I’ve forgotten. That movie is now 36 years old.

Somehow, I have to do better than feeling angry because people with different experiences feel differently than I do, even if they are stupid fuck ups. 

I remember 10 to 20 years ago when, following any discussion of a contentious issue someone had to pronounce how the solution was better education. Now days I realize that "education" as dictated by the government will always be part indoctrination, and for some reason, government school systems are not always loaded down with passionate libertarians who love liberty more than coercion - or can even tell the difference.  

Amazing that we have to be reminded of this.

Murders. Child mortality. Death in automobiles. Work place death. Protection from disease by the medical system. 

All substantively better, yet we collectively are as worried as ever. Education system, where are you? Elected officials, why are you reinforcing this? 

Is it as simple as there's far more incentive to keep us worried than to remind us of how good we have it? Or, do we as a species need to worry - is that a functional state for a tribe of hunter-gatherers and we don't know what to do with our angst in the time of the greatest plenty and safety in the history of the world?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/02/21/bernies_wrong_we_are_better_off_today_than_we_were_45_years_ago_142456.html

Too Obvious

This is a story of the obvious - authoritarians governments don't care about individuals and even if they did, they are constrained by acting in their behalf.

Not sure why this isn't obvious to all those who incessantly push for more government power and control.

https://outline.com/ynTxL4

Bloomberg, Elitist Antii-Gunner and Racist?

Michael Bloomberg has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars in his bid to become president, swamping television sets and smartphone screens with carefully compiled ads that present the anti-gun billionaire as a pragmatic technocrat who can solve problems without needless partisanship. That narrative was challenged Monday evening as Twitter users shared audio from a 2015 speech to the Aspen Institute where Bloomberg talked about fighting crime by disarming young black men.

https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/02/11/twitter-bloomberg-speech/?fbclid=IwAR0oGMRx3n7G3mkCEe91MIiZFvcdiBvqmDGUPDP4e2PSzC1CQNOfIeuiX-o

Journalism Isn't

When scrutinizing Trump’s economic record, our fact checkers oscillate from the hyper-contextual argument to the raw data, depending on which strategy works best to give Obama credit.

In reality, Obama, hampered by a Republican Congress, did virtually nothing on the economic front from 2010 onward. Why he deserves any special credit for the growth a decade out is a bit of a mystery.

But if we’re going to talk about Obama’s record, let’s mention that post-recession economies typically offer huge and dynamic job-growth potential. Yet Obama’s initiatives brought us the slowest recovery in American history. Trump had far less running room and so has a strong argument to make that tax cuts and rolling back the regulatory regime helped sustain what is now unprecedented growth, historically low unemployment, and a tightening labor market that has led to higher wage gains.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/trump-state-of-the-union-address-factchecking-factcheckers/#slide-1

Journalists pretending to be objective is impossibly silly. None of us is objective.