The Sorensen Monologues
Bad Ukraine Takes
This Guardian article provides a synopsis of some of the more ridiculous assertions by Carlson, Bannon, and others. And this is a good explainer on the energy issues at stake (bottom line: renewables pose a threat to Russia through energy independence.)
In case you need a translation for the third panel, Putin is saying “Thanks, fools!” Though his actual net worth is impossible to know, this Money article lays out the likely range.
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Contraception Cops
For further background, see this article.
I think these scenarios sound far-fetched to those who have lived in an era of social progress on these issues, but given the infiltration of the US legal system by Federalist Society extremists, and what we’ve seen so far with abortion cases, the repeal of many of these rights seems entirely plausible.
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Recycling Dilemmas
I’ve long been an avid recycler, and I get annoyed by cynics who point out the many shortcomings of the process without offering a solution other than doing nothing. Plastic recycling, however, seems uniquely problematic, given the massive carbon inputs used to create plastic in the first place, the tiny fraction that actually gets recycled (especially now that China has stopped taking our shipments), and the fact that plastic pollution is rapidly pervading every space on Earth, including our own bodies.
Uighur Olympics
A few relevant sources to check out if you’re interested: this Daily Beast article pulls no punches on the choice of a Uighur athlete to light the Olympic flame. “Gaslighting the world” gets it about right. The practice of organ harvesting sounds far-fetched and feels impolite to mention, but is alas well-documented by credible organizations such as the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. This NBC News article from 2019 headlined “China forcefully harvests organs from detainees, tribunal concludes” is also rather unambiguous.
As far as forced labor is concerned, the IOC has “failed to offer credible evidence that there are no products made with forced labour in the thousands of items of Olympic-branded merchandise sold or worn in connection with the Beijing Winter Games” according to the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region.
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High Tech Medievalism
Among other things, Joe Rogan has been promoting ivermectin as a miracle cure, refusing to get the vaccine himself and suggesting healthy young people don’t need to bother. Corporations aren’t going to turn down profits to preserve basic ethical standards on their own; nor is government, sans equal time laws, going to do anything, so it’s up to us to defend the public commons. Boycotts are one of the only tools we have left.
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The Great Acceleration
I’ve long been a fan of the film Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. It has always seemed obvious to me that the ever-increasing speed of late industrialization was both pointless and harmful to life on the planet. In recent decades, we have seen most productivity gains go to the very top; inequality has spiked, the climate crisis is exploding, and democracy is wilting under a rapid-fire glut of disinformation. Change is inevitable, but this degree of disruption and instability is simply inhuman.
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Petro-persecution
As many readers here probably already know, the American Legislative Exchange Council is a Koch-backed group that pairs corporate lobbyists with right-wing lawmakers to generate model bills that are pretty much industry wish lists. The Energy Discrimination Elimination Act would require that states maintain a blacklist of financial firms that have divested from fossil fuels, and deny any government contracts to those companies. This anti-divestment campaign is already the law in Texas.
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Playing the Short Game
Over the course of decades now, we’ve seen a pattern of Republicans egregiously violating norms, only to be followed by passivity on the part of Dems. Meanwhile, the R’s have been fervently playing the long game, laying the groundwork for a complete takeover of American democracy through radical obstructionism, court-packing, attacks on voting rights, and disinformation campaigns. It’s true that more recently we’ve seen Biden give a speeches about the January 6 insurrection and voting rights, and Attorney General Merrick Garland quietly revealed that he was pursuing perpetrators “at any level.” Yet as Dean Obeidallah points out in this MSNBC column, Garland’s “lack of urgency is troubling.” Maybe things are starting to change — but we need to keep the pressure on.
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Wide Cars
As I have noted before, these are not the pickup trucks of my childhood growing up in rural Pennsylvania. These are ostentatious $70,000 monstrosities that exist to intimidate others and perform some extremist vision of masculinity. I think some people are afraid to criticize them because they view them as work trucks or objects of authentic Americana, and while some percentage may be used for actual labor, these luxury behemoths are faux-working class vehicles often driven for pleasure by affluent people. (It seems safe to assume they’re also luring less-affluent people into debt they can’t afford.)
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Mandatory COVID Measures vs. Forced Birth
You would think that the Supreme Court seeming pretty much okay with state laws forcing girls to bear their rapists’ spawn would create a tidal wave of revulsion. But that would involve “norms,” which are apparently in short supply.
The data cited about maternal deaths among Black women comes from the CDC website. As many of you probably know already, the US has the highest rate of maternal death among developed nations. The $233,610 cost of raising a child is from a widely-cited USDA study announced in 2015. That figure does not account for inflation.
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The “Fancy” Farce
There’s a massive double standard when it comes to how we talk about spending by different groups of people. Republican men can live as opulently as they like and get a pass. Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Trump, Steve Bannon, Rush Limbaugh — all of them are (or were) fabulously wealthy and support policies that hurt working people. There’s also a cult of dandyism and fancy tailored suits on the alt-right. Yet who gets called out again and again?
When the right pulls these hypocritical stunts over and over and over again, we should recognize them as textbook smears that have nothing to do with actual economic policy positions.
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Tips for Future Protests
It goes without saying that in a country awash in mass shootings, a teenage boy waving an assault weapon around in a crowd, or firing any shots, is going to scare people. Someone is going to risk their life to stop him and protect others, not unlike the passengers of Flight 93 who were lauded for charging at the 9/11 hijackers. Now we have a recipe for intimidation and chaos. And nothing on the horizon to address it, as far as I can tell.
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