What makes The Handmaid’s Tale so correspondent to reality is that the right and the left both often base their political imperatives on withdrawing and trading away the rights of women.

The men and the authoritarian theocracy in THT have a mixture of (mostly) right-wing ideas with some left-wing pragmatism and language tossed in. Reminds me very much of many of Donald Trump’s supporters, and that is not accidental.

Many of the left’s “compromises” betray women every opportunity they get, by the way.

It’s not just the right. Nope.

I think about 80% of right-wing men and 60% of left-wing men would be perfectly happy to live in a society similar to Gilead.

So, yes, the right is worse. But it’s not alone. “Not worse” doesn’t mean at all great.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Stock Soars Again: Should You Buy?

Naw, all ya’ll should’ve bought two weeks ago when I did.

When you read articles like this, it’s usually too late. Don’t fall for them.

I suspect Noam Chomsky was substantially wrong about his idea of “universal grammar,” but correct to argue that language acquisition and use is innate.

“Universal grammar” as such appears to me to be just the concordance certain sensory and causal-seeming experiences must have with the world and with our sensory apparatuses.

Where I’m guessing Chomsky went wrong is that the idea of universal grammar doesn’t dictate that some innate, hidden grammar corresponding to features universal to all languages, but rather a more-accurate account is that language tendencies are partially genetic (Would humans invent language again? Of course.), and that due to the structure of the world both as we perceive it at and at a remove as it actually is, language was constrained to and by certain parameters — not to mention the usefulness tradeoffs such as time, processing, and semantic complexity.

I wonder if all our societal problems can’t just be reduced down to that people and society in general just no longer care to deal with nuance?

And is this post itself an example that illustrates that larger leitmotif?

Otterly cute.

If that doesn’t cheer you up at least a little — well, I got nothin’ for ya.

The left is doomed to lose on immigration and related if it continues to pretend — and it shows no sings of stopping — that there aren’t valid concerns with communities rapidly changing, and the related worries of long-time residents distressed by being displaced or just finding themselves navigating unfamiliar territory and then being told they are racist for wondering why they can’t live in their own neighborhood any longer.

Call it xenophobia, call it racism, call it what you like — I call it human nature.

I’m for fairly high levels of immigration, by the way.

The left is absolutely excellent at shooting itself in the foot (both feet, really) and on this issue is no different.

People would be far more accepting of immigration and immigrants if:

1) The left didn’t insist that everyone who expressed any doubts about anything any less than full open borders is a fiendish, crazed cackling racist.

2) The left didn’t insist on siding with neoliberalism on this, where the desire for immigration has nothing to do with compassion or self-determination, but rather with the aim of preventing wage gains and for busting labor.

Sure, the left is marginally better than the right. But with their current ideological and functional-level dimwittedness, they are bound to lose.

Just as they usually do.

What makes The Handmaid’s Tale so unnerving is its plausibility.

A lot of dystopian fiction is escapist, because it feels incredible in the older sense of that word. By contrast, The Handmaid’s Tale for the US is something that could happen in a few years, or sooner.

It’s probably easier to grasp the show deeply if you grew up among the Religious Right as I did — it’s clear that many liberals have no idea just how many of them there are and even less understanding of their true beliefs and how well the show in particular reflects them.

What makes the book work, and what makes the show even more affecting, is that it’d only take a few crises for America to look exactly like that — and most liberals would be just as complacent and unaware as even the protagonists are on the show. That is, until it is far too late.

I could never be a talk show host or anything like that because I tend to say whatever comes to mind. It’s just built in. Or more accurately, it doesn’t ever impinge on my mind consciously, rather it egresses from my mouth seemingly ex nihilo.

One of the reasons I tend to be quiet is that if I speak, I am never sure what is going to emerge. Better to say nothing.

A friend of mine used to ask me, “Do you have to just say whatever pops into your head?”

But here’s the thing. It didn’t pop into my head. I only knew it was going to come out of my mouth when I heard it, just as you did.

Oftentimes, I am just as surprised as anyone else by what I hear emanating from my own face.

You might be wondering why I constantly bag on Kevin Drum and the Crooked Timber crew.

All four of you.

It’s because they represent the worst of the pseudo-intellectual left — the left that is into using “true” data they believe proves something or other, when in reality the data is (as it always is) contingent on a certain way of conceptualizing the world and the inter-relations therein. (And yes, I am using plural “data” as singular. Gaze upon my field of fucks to give, and find that it is barren.)

It might seem like I am stating something obvious. Of course, everyone has a worldview, a gestalt of understanding and comprehension, a way of making sense of the world.

However, these types don’t get this. They believe with their Excel spreadsheets and unexcelled data viz corresponds exactly to the world out there, that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would reach the same conclusions if they only knew the “truth.”

Such can be seen with Drum’s frequent and ill-informed screeds against single payer. Or the Crooked Timber’s implicit and explicit endorsement of orthodox economics at every turn.

Sure, they are better than Trump. Better than Sean Spicer. Better than Stephen Bannon. But that’s an awfully low bar. That’s like saying eating a live toad is better than eating a rotten one. Yes, it is. But…?

In other words, yes, they are preferable to the other group of clowns, but they aren’t good enough, and if that’s the best we can do, we still lose.

I call them pseudo-intellectuals because they mistake data for wisdom, an Excel spreadsheet for the truth, the scope of the extant for the limit of the possible, the map for the territory.

And since to a one they know very little about the territory, they are always fighting battles with their little Excel spreadsheets that match up very poorly to the vagaries and vicissitudes of the world and how it operates outside of whatever produces their charts and graphs.

Furthermore, they are completely unable to conceptualize that their baseline assumptions are as much myths and fairy tales (rather than the ground truths they imagine them to be) as any climate change denier’s ideas about how you can disprove mountains of verified and verifiable collective understanding with some soda bottles and alka seltzer.

That is why I attack them. They aren’t improving the world, and are in fact standing in the way of any betterment.

Their intellects are weak, their insights are poor, and their reasoning and ratiocination are deficient. Isn’t that enough?

i think most people who say the Handmaid's Tale could never happen here have basically no familiarity with the religious right

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) May 30, 2017

Absolutely true. I grew up among the Religious Right. The Handmaid’s Tale is not dystopian to them. Again, not dystopian.

It is their preferred world. Hell, I went to school with at least two girls who dressed very similarly to the women in the book and the show, just not quite as much scarlet.

(Most of the RR does not attend public school, but a few do. There were many more in my hometown that I only vaguely knew, though they were numerous.)