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phorbin.bsky.social
phorbin
@phorbin.bsky.social
100 followers 130 following 520 posts
I think therefore I think therefore I think some more. This is subject to change without notice. (Right now I think we're all in trouble.)
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phorbin.bsky.social
January 22, 2026 at 2:42 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
You mean something like this?
January 18, 2026 at 6:04 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
I put the image through an online OCR site, broke the article into sections and you can read it in the Alt text.
America had been warned about this moment Like Plato, writers and thinkers have been making forecasts about democracy's end that look a lot like U.S.'s current dark state GARY MASON OPINION Donald Trump's authoritarian instincts and imperialist ambitions have spawned plenty of how-did-we-get-here hand-wringing among Americans. That, in turn, has produced much commentary about the signs missed, the predictions ignored. Perhaps none of the forecasts were as prescient as the one from Richard Rorty, an American philosopher whose warning about the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. was dusted off in 2016, when Mr. Trump first got elected. It has found even greater relevance and meaning in his second term. "Members of labour unions and unorganized unskilled work-ers will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking and to prevent jobs from being exported," the late Mr. Rorty wrote in Achieving Our Country, a book based on lectures he'd given at Harvard in 1997. "Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white collar workers - themselves desperately afraid of being down-sized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for - someone willing to assurethem that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky law-yerst overpaid bond salesmen and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots." Mr. Rorty imagined the gains made by Black and brown Americans would be wiped out. "Jocular contempt" for women would come back in fashion. "All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. He [this strongman] will be a disaster for the country and the world. People wonder why there is so little resistance to his inevitable rise.” Mr. Rorty argued that this phenomenon would be the fault of many on the Left, who would become increasingly less interested in the real-world concerns of the white middle class in favour of identity politics, diversity and inclusion and culture wars. "Outside the academy [leftist intellectuals]," Mr. Rorty wrote, "Americans still want to feel patriotic. They still want to feel partof a nation which can take control of its destiny and make itself a better place." Sounds like the genesis of the MAGA movement. Even before Mr. Rortyt the American writer Sinclair Lewis imagined a similar scenario in his 1935 novel It Cant Happen Here. In it, a senator named Buzz Windrip becomes the U.S.'s first fascist leader, a president whowas "vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic." Mr. Windrip brands the press liars.He's obsessed with the U.S. balance of trade. He promises to hand Americans cheques of up to $5,000 a year. His believers become convinced he's been sent to rescue the country from financial and cultural ruin, and "they raised hands to him in worship," Mr. Lewis wrote. With three years left in the Trump administration, who knows where things will stand by the time the President's termexpires? How far will his efforts to extend America's global footprint take him? Will the masked ICE officers abducting people offthe streets become regular features of American life? Will state sanctioned police be going door to door, looking for those who don't fit the profile of people Mr. Trump wants in the U.S.? Will the great divide Mr. Trump has created in his country become a final, unbridgeable chasm that leads to a fatal, internal conflagration? Well before Mr. Rorty – millennia beforet in fact — ano… He theorized that democracy's emphasis on freedom and equality created conditions for a demagogue to spring forth and establish autocratic rule. In Plato's mind, a republic, at its zenith, would celebrate enormous freedoms and reject forms of authority and self-restraint, which eventually would sow rampantpublic disorder. Plato imagined a would-be dictator promoting himself as a protector of the values many in the country held dear. He would use lies and over-the-top rhetoric to bolster his views and positions. And he would incite foreign conflicts to distract the population and create a perception of strength and respect abroad. This sounds very much like where the U.S. finds itself today: at the mercy of an authoritarian leader growing in strength and fearlessness by the day as he aggressively pushes the boundaries of his powers. So Americans can't say they weren't warned about the dark place in which they currently find themselves. They absolutely were — and instead of changing course, many of them laid the groundwork for it.
January 15, 2026 at 1:56 AM
phorbin.bsky.social
Yes.

Doug's been underestimated all along.

'been trying for years to get people I know to judge him (& cons) through the lens of his/their success instead of lib and left worldview.

We've been sandbagged thrice and I think that demands a collective look in the mirror.
Quoting Sun Tzu's The Art of War 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you succumb in every battle'
January 9, 2026 at 1:15 AM
phorbin.bsky.social
Putin is not above blowing up his own people in false flag ops to start a war.

I'd think the optics of a false flag attack against one of his residences would suit his purposes.

"Old age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm every time."
A quote from Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
January 1, 2026 at 4:11 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
I agree, but we either need compulsory voting, a cultural immunisation to vote suppression or both to counter the cons eternal vote suppression campaign.

From every angle, the last Ontario election was an object lessoning in vote suppression.
November 19, 2025 at 4:38 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
By J B Priestley from 'Postscripts' 1940 Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior. It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities. And any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all its own most unpleasant types—the very people who, for years have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in and you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you'd always distrusted.
November 8, 2025 at 8:45 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
By J B Priestley from 'Postscripts' 1940 Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior. It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities. And any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all its own most unpleasant types—the very people who, for years have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in and you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you'd always distrusted.
October 11, 2025 at 1:24 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
By J B Priestley from 'Postscripts' Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior. It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities. And any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all its own most unpleasant types—the very people who, for years have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in and you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you'd always distrusted.
October 6, 2025 at 1:01 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
Agreed but consider Poilievre's 'complaining' as part of an efficient influence strategy campaign w media compliance if not always collusion.

maybe reflect on the need to get ppl up to speed about the what, where, when, why, how of it coupled w organising to mobilise effective persistent counters.
Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior. It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities.
September 29, 2025 at 12:55 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
I prefer faith to hope.
September 18, 2025 at 1:11 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
She does.

I think this observation with very little translation for the times does as well.
Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior. It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities. And'any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all its own most unpleasant types — the very people who, for years, have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in, and you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal, you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you’d always distrusted.
September 18, 2025 at 12:07 AM
phorbin.bsky.social
They are. …They've chosen a position giving impunity, power and licence to inflict unwarranted, warrantless suffering on and clearly instant summary execution on innocents.

I think the quote tracks the reality.
September 13, 2025 at 5:44 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
Doesn't take much to adjust this to current circumstances and personages.
Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior. It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities. And'any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all its own most unpleasant types — the very people who, for years, have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in, and you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal, you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you’d always distrusted.
September 9, 2025 at 2:43 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
Back in the day there was an I Ching hexagram I liked a lot. 'Change rising up from below'.

People talk about hope.

I choose faith that the US ppl will break the egoligarchs.

IMO to be useful in this pass, help, aaand save our own sorry asses we must lose wishful hope, organise & mobilise.
August 30, 2025 at 1:33 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
but faith works better.
August 26, 2025 at 6:58 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
August 1, 2025 at 1:15 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
I think this describes the type.
A quote from Postscripts by J. B. Priestly. Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities.
July 29, 2025 at 6:58 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
May well be that him operating the thing on the road is illegal. Note the 'unless permission is expressly granted' bit.

The cite's straight from Transportation Alberta and highway means any road in the province.
July 28, 2025 at 7:40 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
All of which leads me to the suggestion, 'Never underestimate the enemy.' and the Sun Tzu cite.
July 28, 2025 at 1:38 AM
phorbin.bsky.social
& goes back to Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.

‪@drmarkbourrie.bsky.social‬ posted the image noting 1940.

I grew up with this stuff at home and in school.

IMO 'War Plan Red' (see Wikipedia) casts it all in sharp relief.

Various formats at: archive.org/details/cana...
Image of a book dust jacket. Canada America's Problem For 150 years the U.S.A has taken Canada for granted. Suddenly Americans are asking vital questions about their neighbor's status. Rival? menace to peace? or partner? This book tells… A revealing history and survey by the New York Times Canadian correspondant 1934 to 39. John MacCormac
July 11, 2025 at 12:26 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.] "Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.] "And what do they think? Against it, are they?" "It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray." "Nope." "Pardon?" "There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." "It's a lot more complicated than that--" "No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.” "Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--" "But they starts with thinking about people as things..." --from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
July 9, 2025 at 11:57 AM
phorbin.bsky.social
Nazi-ism is not really a political philosophy, but an attitude of mind — the expression in political life of a certain very unpleasant temperament — of the man who hates Democracy, reasonable argument, tolerance, patience and humorous equality— the man who loves bluster and swagger uniforms and bodyguards and fast cars, plotting in back rooms, shouting and bullying, taking it out of all the people who have made him feel inferior It’s not really a balanced, grown-up attitude of mind at all it belongs to people who can’t find their way out of their adolescence, who remain overgrown, tormenting, cruel schoolboys — middle-aged “dead end kids”. That’s why the gang spirit is so marked among these Nazis, and it explains, too, why there has always seemed something unhealthy, abnormal, perverted, crawlmgly corrupt, about them and all their activities. And any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all its own most unpleasant types — the very people who, for years, have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in, and you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal, you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you’d always distrusted. Postscripts by J.B. Priestly
July 2, 2025 at 11:18 AM
phorbin.bsky.social
Y'know, I think 'no longer my game' sums a kind of discussion that needs to escape into the wild, build and grow deep roots.
"There are times when the world is rearranging itself and at times like that, the right words can change the world" Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
July 1, 2025 at 8:01 PM
phorbin.bsky.social
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing betwen the disastrous and the unpalatable. John Kenneth Galbraith.
June 13, 2025 at 11:18 AM