Do we sufficiently love our thought leaders, our public intellectuals and our tall poppies?

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-thirty-tyrants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smith_(journalist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/legacy/papers/lightman.html
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/07/11/why-academics-should-strive-be-public-intellectuals-not-thought-leaders-essay

https://www.tumblr.com/markblackham/109527094963/uppity-poppy-syndrome


https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/65626235/eleanor-catton-should-speak-the-truth-as-she-sees-it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Catton
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/bryce-edwards-the-politics-of-eleanor-catton-and-public-debate/BVQCOSPJJDJSYNKBE3WXIVZNKE/
https://medium.com/@maetl/land-of-the-wrong-white-clowns-f21b9908b856
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/how-shallow-is-intellectual-life-in-new-zealand
https://web.archive.org/web/20160202124242/http://www.metromag.co.nz/editors-blog/eleanor-catton-confronts-men-scythes/
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/steve-braunias-the-secret-diary-of-eleanor-catton/ZASUTIJADV5ORUG3A4XHPJ2HBU/

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The Talmudic Quality of the Impeachment Trial (2-11-21)

https://forward.com/culture/463892/with-jewish-lawyers-on-each-side-interpreting-the-constitution-is-not/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/02/10/trump-lawyer-drinking-water/

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Free Britney II (2-10-21)

00:00 Free Britney news coverage, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=136960
05:45 JF Gariepy: People Are Waking Up To #FreeBritney, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdMXJ37xS6o
34:10 Watching the sun go down with Elliott Blatt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D34bYtinPWs
57:00 Is All Inequality Unjust? by Martin Gurri, https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2021/02/09/is-all-inequality-unjust/
1:02:00 Nick Fuentes mentioned at the impeachment hearing, https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1359604533844934663?s=20
1:12:00 Alt Hyp on IQ and wealth, https://www.bitchute.com/video/QPCVGr76VME/
1:19:00 Elliott Blatt, Babs joins
2:45:50 Tucker Carlson
2:56:00 Closing socially distanced hymn from St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Che-qybTiU

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A majority of the people arrested for Capitol riot had a history of financial trouble

The most objective score for assessing somebody’s morality is their credit score. People with higher scores tend to be more responsible.

Those who fail at their finances tend to make terrible decisions in other areas of their life. Marginalized people tend towards marginalized politics.

Losers far more than winners are likely to latch on to conspiracy theories. Once people feel like victims, they feel released from moral constraints and often do dangerous things.

From the Washington Post Feb. 10:

Jenna Ryan seemed like an unlikely participant in the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. She was a real estate agent from Texas. She flew into Washington on a private jet. And she was dressed that day in clothes better suited for a winter tailgate than a war.

Yet Ryan, 50, is accused of rushing into the Capitol past broken glass and blaring security alarms and, according to federal prosecutors, shouting: “Fight for freedom! Fight for freedom!”

But in a different way, she fit right in.

Despite her outward signs of success, Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes when she was arrested. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010.

Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.

The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.

While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Trump and his brand of grievance politics tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.

“I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a political science professor who helps run the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab at American University, reacting to The Post’s findings. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”

People who stoke feelings of victimhood do great damage.

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Impeachment II

My nihilist friend says: “Given the dying down of interest in politics post election, the people who really love it, I’d imagine mostly out of lack of other outside interests. Like, I’m having hard time grasping who really gives a shit about impeachment trial. I really don’t care either way. It’s of zero interest. If I was a news segment producer, I would do close to zero on it as possible. Ann Coulter, yes, you were right about Trump. Yes, his daughter is a disaster. Yes there is no wall. Yes demographics are changing. Yes, neo liberalism holds the whip hand. Why shake your fist at the wind though?”

Bud: “The most reliable heuristic for me is that those in possession of the truth are relaxed and good humored when engaging with dissent. Those uncomfortable with the other side of the argument get triggered and angry.”

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