Well…here we finally are. One of the very founders of the modern Post-Truth era is coming right out and saying what appears to be the “truth” of the matter. Of course…he is tip-toeing around the ancient “Liar paradox”.
“Everything I say is a lie.”
But this is a very effective lawyerly trick. If a jury or a culture can be convinced that there is no “truth,” then they cannot convict or blame anyone for anything that they “might” have done or not done.
Giuliani used this idea quite brilliantly in the aftermath of 9/11. There he was, shacking up with his mistress while “overseeing” the carnage and clean-up work, claiming that he was America’s mayor.
Check him out. Everything that he says is a lie. Bet on it. And everything that Trump says is a lie, too. Ditto almost every powerful politician in the U.S. and the major media as well.
The real truth?
We are now living in Post-Truth America.
Will the lies come tumbling down?
Will Humpty Trumpty finally fall to the point that all the King’s horses and all the King’s men…with Giuliani, as usual leading from the rear…won’t be able to reassemble his shell of lies again?
Let us pray.
We all know in which direction Giuliani is praying.
Down like a motherfucker!!!
Read on.
There is “evil” in this world.
Truer words were never said.
Will it win this time?
I pray not.
You?
Later…
AG
P.S. Trump recently dispoke:
Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.
Once again…skirting the edges of the Liar’s paradox. The problem for these people…and this approach…is that while they are lying, they are being forced to tell the truth.
And…the American people are beginning to be able see the trees for the woods.
The truth that is necessarily implicit in the lies.
That is what my recent Mehelection post and the several that I wrote under the general heading of “Go West Young Man” are really saying. The “truth” of the matter is that almost everybody in a position of political or media power is lying through their dental implants.
The old peacenik meme?
“What if the gave a war and no one showed up?”
Well…what if the held an election and no one showed up?
Of course…that’s not going to happen, because all of the Trumpinesses, other rightinesses and remaining leftinesses are still under the illusion that one or another side in this jiveass media circus is telling the truth, and that the rest of them bastids are nasty liars.
But there is really only one truth regarding this ongoing scam.
And what is that?
It’s an ongoing scam.
Duh.
And may the best liar(s) win.
Meanwhile…back at the ranch:
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Like a vaccine, the only way to protect yourself against this media dispersed sickness is to consume prophylactic doses of all of the media viruses
Be well.
Check this out!
Yes.
Giuliani is certainly not alone.
He’s just more…crude…about it.
He makes it easier to see where the country’s really at.
A golem made entirely of lies.
AG
It’s all the Jews’ fault, I suppose.
Even if this is snark…you suppose wrong.
I use the word “golem” quite consciously. No other culture that I know has quite the understanding to produce so perfect a vision of the dangers of man-made entities.
AG
. . . to you.
You’re welcome.
I do not believe that.
“Golem” was the only possible reference to Jewish culture in the entire thread.
Who do you think to whom Joel is referencing?
AG
. . . Joel’s comment was posted in direct reply to! (Is obviously the person his reply was addressed to!)
Duh! This ain’t rocket surgery.
You not believing it makes no difference whatsoever, matters not at all.
Have you never made a mistake and hit the reply button on the wrong comment? Or hit a comment or reply button when you meant to hit the other?
Oh.
Wait a minute!!!.
You are omniscient.
Sorry.
My bad.
The rest of us humans just have to scuffle through.
Have a nice day.
AG
. . . All that is required:
The proof of what I said in that previous post is in your post above.
Thank you.
AG
. . . astonishingly long list of words that do not mean what you think (or pretend to think) they mean.
. . . from the horse’s mouth (so to speak, no offense to Joel intended), EXACTLY as I told you (though I’d bet you didn’t bother to click the links I provided to clue you in — just scurried right past them to your nonsensical and absurdly false claim of “proof” of . . . er . . . something or other).
Good Lord.
My snarky comment was in response to OUI, because buried in his stream-of-conscience ramblings and his links to his own earlier writings were–as I have come to expect–antisemitic allusions. He’s usually pretty careful to give himself plausible deniability by making his antisemitic comments look like attacks on Zionism, but he slips up from time to time and then his animus towards Jews shines through pretty clearly.
I tried for a very long time to convince myself that Oui was not really an antisemite, but as my rationalizations became more and more convoluted, I realized that an application of Occam’s Razor was in order.
sorry, I mean “stream of consciousness”.
. . . of the ratings system by troll-rating this!
You can’t make this stuff up.
Our in-house hasbara troll …
○ War On BDS, Progressive Left Under Attack
○ Israel Lobby is Leading in Attack on Corbyn
○ New Fascist Pariah States America and Israel Lashing Out
○ International Coalition to Defeat Democrats and Hillary in 2016
On Israel I’m not alone!
○ Peace Activist Uri Avnery Dies at 94
I had to look up what “hasbara troll” means:
“Hasbara Troll describes a faceless anonymous online social media nuisance who repeats Israeli propaganda (hasbara is Hebrew for ‘explanation’ and is translated as ‘propaganda’ or ‘public relations’) and attacks any public figure critical of Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians.” (http://left.wikia.com/wiki/Hasbara_troll)
Do me a favor and list in detail the Israeli propaganda that I have repeated.
Do me another favor and list in detail the public figures critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians whom I have attacked.
Provide citations. I mean, you’re a genius at citations, especially your own.
The man seem to have an eidetic memory when it comes to remembering his own writings, or the writings of people who agree with him, but citing evidence to support his claims seems to escape him.
. . . yeah, what you said. As for
Been there, done that. Boy howdy, have I ever!
AG, with friends like Da/да, you hardly need enemies.
Well, now Joel — the only person in existence who could do so — has confirmed irrefutably that:
So, despite the certitude with which you stated them, your assertions were, in fact, factually false, wrong.
So naturally, what with you being an honorable, honest individual and a decent, upstanding member of this community, your retraction/correction and apology will be forthcoming . . . well . . . any second now!
Indeed!
My reply is more fitting here asshole! Worst of the worst 😄
. . . surprising to see you confess to it like that. Good on ya!
Troll-rating explained (i.e., why not “0”) and justified.
RE: Your serial trolling with the serial lie that “dissent” is what you get troll-rated for —
In fact, trolling — ^ like that! — is what you get troll-rated for. No matter how many times you lie that it’s for “dissent”, it will not change that fact.
A very obvious case-in-point: This diary I just troll-rated would not have earned a troll-rating (at least not from me) absent that very blatant and dishonest trolling quoted above. Demonstrating again that you’re lying when you pretend your trolling gets troll-rated for “dissent”, when the fact is that it gets troll-rated because it’s trolling.
Looking in the mirror old boy when you are writing this shit. Truly not worthy of any reply …
How two worlds can move so far apart: the Old and New World. I enjoy writing @EuroTrib and the appreciation I receive … warmth.
Democrats seem to put differences in black and white; no shades of grey. The empire slowly disintegrates from within.
AG–Aside from your occasional on-the-road commentaries, which are in fact pretty interesting, everything you write amounts to reflections on the liar’s paradox.
Wrong again.
Everything I write…including my on-the-road stuff…consists of my reflections on a certain kind of morality.
Or of course…this is the United States of Omertica, after all…the lack thereof.
Everything.
AG
What’s the “certain kind of morality” that you have in mind, AG?
“Moral” politics.
Gandhi.
MLK Jr.
Malcolm X in his last years.
Mandela
Other attempts.
Sadly, they seem to most often attract bullets to the head and/or long prison sentences.
So it goes.
AG
“Moral” politics.
The Ron Paul policy agenda which Arthur so very fervently supports includes freeing States to force juvenile victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term and freeing States to allow people to physically beat LGBTQ Americans in the streets and in their homes. Quite the morality AG is sporting there.
Bonus delusion points for associating his nasty brand of racism and sexism with Gandhi, King, Malcolm and Mandela.
Morality cannot be legislated. I believe this to be true on the basis of the utter failure to successfully legislate “morality”…legislate it and then enforce it…that I have observed in my own time on earth.
But faith that morally correct actions will eventually triumph and that morally incorrect actions will eventually fail is what motivated those people I mentioned…and many others throughout human history…to put their lives on the line.
Faith in evolution, and in the evolution of humankind.
Evolution can’t be legislated either.
You do what you do; you do what you believe to be morally correct. Ditto for me and damned near everybody else. It is the very rare madman that cannot truthfully argue that he believes what he is doing is “correct” in a moral sense. Hitler justified his actions, for example. So did Stalin; so did every mass murdering leader in history.
It all comes out in the wash.
AG
The old “you cannot legislate morality” canard again….
The Civil Rights Act does not attempt to legislate morality. It does not legislate people’s beliefs. What it does is specify penalties for behavior that infringes on people’s civil rights.
The right wing and religious fundamentalists have been keen to blur the distinction between belief, or morality, and behavior, or perhaps better said, to assert that religious beliefs take precedence over civil rights, so that behavior that violates civil-rights laws magically becomes alright because such behaviors were grounded in a set of beliefs.
The way that the US Supreme Court has carved out religious exceptions to civil rights laws would be regarded as absurd and scandalous in at least some other democracies, with France being perhaps the clearest example.
I wrote (emphasis mine):
You write:
And…The Civil Rights Act has been almost a total failure for most of the darker-skinned portions of this population over the preceding…Lord!!! Over the preceding 54 years!!! A short look at the racial imbalances and angers in this country is all you need to know about this. Racists believe in their own superiority in a moral sense.
I disagree with their morality. So do you. But they will do whatever they must to enforce their own morality, and as a result real enforcement of that well-meaning Civil Rights Act has been hamstrung up and down the line.
Equal employment opportunities?
Equal education?
Equal protection from the police?
Give me a break!!!
A total, media-created and enforced/reinforced lie.
A “media truth” that goes right to the topic of my original post.
“Truth isn’t truth.”
Yup.
AG
The incredibly hateful depths of your racism and sexism cause you to make patently false claims over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
I’d like to read you describe honestly the response you get after telling one or more of your African-American colleagues or acquaintances that they were better off before the Civil Rights and Voting Rights and Housing Rights Acts. Describe to us the adventures you experience when you tell them they should fight to return to Jim Crow laws.
What an appalling charade you engage in here day after day after day, lecturing progressives on what we should do and how we should deny our votes for Democrats, all while telling your leisurely tales of traveling in conservative areas of America and making no attempts at all to persuade Republicans and Trump supporters to refuse to vote for GOP candidates and issues.
You don’t think it’s evident what you’re trying to do here?
FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK OFF.
i cannot describe to you “…the adventures [that I] experience when [I] tell [people of color that] they should fight to return to Jim Crow laws,” because I never say that to anyone.
Nor of course have I said that here.
What I do say is that if one finds oneself living in a local culture that has thoroughly proven not to be willing to treat all people of every race, creed and/or sexual proclivity on a basis of equality, then you should either be prepared to fight…to the death, if necessary…or move somewhere less hostile to who and what you are as soon as it is humanly possible to do so.
Let the racists stew to death in their own hatreds.
Or…go to war with them if necessary.
Your kneejerk hostility to any outside-the-leftness-box thought is astoundlingly stupid, and your repeated name-calling is ludicrous.
But…have a nice day, anyway.
When this current political crisis is over…no matter which side of the question wins…shortsighted people like you will still be in the catbird seat.
And I will still be fighting them.
WTFU…
AG
It’s worth adding that the poverty rate in the United States was at 29% in 1959, and was brought down to 11% in the 1970’s after the Great Society social welfare programs had a chance to do their work.
Then your boy Ron Paul was made happy and ready to enter Congress after the Reagan Revolution. Our national poverty rate went up during the Reagan years and has never made it back down to where it was in the ’70’s.
Fuck your Ron Paul evangelism.
You still rely on the proven inaccurate so-called “polls” after their total failure to predict Trump’s win in 2016?
As little as several hours before the final results were in?
I must admit…at least you are not alone, as much as I wish you were.
Go ahead.
Post…
Or…go live and work in those neighborhoods as have I…In the Lower East Side of NYC from the mid-’60s through the early ’70s, then in Carroll Gardens and Red Hook in Brooklyn for another number of pre-gentrification years, and simultaneously working on a daily basis in the South Bronx and other NYC ghettos…Harlem, East New York, da Bronx in general, Detroit, San Juan, Indianapolis, the black neighborhoods of Atlantic City, Newark, Roxbury MA, San Juan PR and other areas of South/Central America, etc…well into the ’80s. And then living inna Bronx for the last 17+ years.
Go live and work cheek to jowl with the people who were most affected by the failures of the so-called “Civil Rights Bill” and, then tell me that you know what you are saying and doing.
You don’t know shit!!!
You ain’t been there!!!
WTFU!!!
AG
Jeez, tell us more.
When you reveal your old white man blinders, you blunder into writing all sorts of revealingly offensive things.
Keep on attempting to do Trump’s bidding here. It’s refreshingly honest when you show who you are and what you really want.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I don’t mind people opposing what I have to say here…it’s part of the push and pull of political culture.
But if you actually believe what you are saying about me, you should be banned on the grounds of pure stupidity.
And if you don’t?
You’re just another in a long line of DNC-style snake oil salesmen.
AG
It’s crystal clear what you’re doing here.
You continue to come here and make the explicit case to this progressive community that we should not vote for Democratic Party-supported candidates and issues.
You have reported here over the last two years that you have frequently gone into Trump Country and talked to Trump supporters. When asked if you have told them that they should not vote for Trump or Republican Party-supported candidates or issues, you have told us no, you have not told them that they should withhold their votes for Trump or Republican Party-supported candidates or issues.
You’re in all meaningful ways a Trump supporter. You are now, as you did during the 2016 campaign, taking numerous actions to help Trump gain and grow his power.
(Noting the link is to a piece about how the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media frequently enable such monstrous nonsense via endless “perseverance porn” stories that grossly distort and misrepresent the Reality — including their root cause in societal failure — of the situations they “report”. h/t atrios)
AG–Hitler didn’t have a moral framework for his genocidal actions. What he had was a belief that ethnic Germans were superior to everyone else and deserved to rule. His antisemitism was not meaningfully different from the antisemitism that was common in Europe in his era