Poisonous politics

The blog Dead Wild Roses, written by a Canadian blogger calling herself The Arbourist, regularly posts worthwhile insights into politics and modern social issues.  One recent post in particular, "Friend-enemy politics is the operating system of political decay", perfectly assesses the toxic polarization bedeviling our politics today.  As the opening has it:

One of the most destructive temptations in politics is the urge to turn disagreement into moralized tribal war..... Friends and enemies.  Allies and traitors.  The pure and the contaminated.  Once that frame takes hold, politics stops being about order, restraint, and judgment.  It becomes a loyalty machine.

One sees this again and again in the political blogosphere.  Those with different views are not merely mistaken but depraved, vile creatures to whom no courtesy or fairness is due.  Arguments for a position contrary to one's own are not opportunities to test the validity of one's own beliefs and spot possible errors -- they're a source of, yes, contamination, to be avoided lest they sully one's ideological purity.

As The Arbourist points out, this type of politics can (and does) manifest itself in any ideological camp:

The vocabulary changes.  The mechanism does not.  A public enemy is named, and then a moral test is imposed:  how fully will you align against him?

Typically the true hard-core ideologist's hatred is not only for the opposing camp -- it's focused equally (or even more) against those in his own camp who don't hate the opposing camp enough.

You either join the mobilization or you are suspected of serving the enemy's cause.  Hesitation becomes complicity.  Refusal becomes betrayal.  Moderation becomes guilt.  That is how political movements become purge machines.

The purity/purge mentality leads to ludicrous exercises in making the tent smaller.  Compromises which are necessary to win actual elections in the real world are denounced as heresy and betrayal in the ideological echo chamber.  Voters whose opinions, or even priorities, differ from those of the zealot fringe are denounced as fools or enemies -- never mind that the political party favored by the zealots themselves may need their votes.  And of course any suggestion that the political party should cater to the voters and reflect their wishes -- an integral part of how representative democracy is supposed to work -- becomes anathema when the party is no longer viewed as a mechanism for expressing the voters' will but rather as a temple charged with safeguarding and promulgating immutable holy writ.

Of course, genuine evil does exist in politics.  Nazis qualify -- real ones, not in the fatuous modern "everything I don't like is Hitler" sense in which, for example, anyone who votes Republican is denounced as a Nazi.  I have asserted here, and I stand by it, that opposing the current military campaign to overthrow the Iranian theocracy is evil, given the immense evil of that regime's ideology and actions, and the bravery with which the Iranian people have repeatedly rebelled against it.  But I've also made it clear that this issue is a very unusual case in that way.  And even with this one, I know well that most Americans know very little about Iran and are probably not consciously aware of the depth of the evil they are working to preserve by taking such a stance.

The zealot fringe offers no such courtesy or nuance.  Several of my posts about Iran have gotten comments consisting purely of insults -- not arguments or questions, but just name-calling and denunciation, because I'm not marching in lockstep with what the ideological left quickly and mindlessly established as its party line on this issue.  Readers don't see those comments because of the comment moderation.  If right-wing trolls don't do the same here, it's because most of them don't know I exist -- and those that do, don't perceive me as "one of theirs" who keeps straying off of the plantation.  When I've occasionally gotten drawn into arguments in the comment threads on right-wing zealot blogs, the fervor and crackpottery I've run into there has been, if anything, even worse.

I'm now actively trying to neutralize any perception that my blog is a political one, partly because I'm genuinely fed up with the subject, but also because I'm tired of being perceived as a leftist who keeps venturing into heresy and needs to be scolded back into line.  I agree with the left on far more issues than with the right, but in our current hyper-polarized and ideological-purist climate, being identified with either political "side" is not only miserable and exhausting but inconsistent with my intellectual integrity.  It's two fringe groups of paranoid fanatics screaming "fascist!" and "communist!" at each other over the heads of the increasingly exasperated and turned-off mainstream majority.  My only possible place is with that majority.  I do mean what my Blogspot profile says, "I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party."

As The Arbourist concludes, "A civilized society cannot survive on those terms."  I strongly recommend you read her whole post.

A few news and commentary updates

The media have been in something of a tizzy over Trump's recent bizarre claim that he's negotiating with some important figure in the Iranian theocracy, while the theocracy itself flat-out denies that any such talks are happening.  The obvious explanation is that this claim gives Trump a pretext to back off from his idiotic threat to destroy Iran's energy infrastructure, but the main reason is probably something more important and more subtle -- sowing mutual suspicion and mistrust among leaders of the regime.  And it seems to be working, even though some in Iran have apparently figured out the scheme.

While Trump has been all over the place about the goals of the war, even absurdly claiming that "regime change" has already happened, Israel remains focused, continuing to systematically destroy facilities of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, the theocracy's main instruments for repressing uprisings.  Israel assesses that it will only be a few more weeks before the system is degraded enough for a new rebellion to succeed.  The collapse of tyranny is a process, not an instantaneous event, and in Iran that process is already underway.

Westerners, too, need to stay focused.  Whether you like or dislike Trump or Netanyahu -- even if it's with good reason -- that doesn't make the Iranian people any less deserving of liberation, and recent events have shown that that liberation is not achievable without some external force intervening to wreck the apparatus of repression.  Those in the West who oppose the current military campaign to do so are de facto collaborating with the continued rule of a monstrous evil over tens of millions of people.  Their motives are wholly irrelevant.  The same applies to the media, whose preferred spin is rooted mostly in petty domestic political considerations.  Similarly, it doesn't really matter what motivated Trump or Netanyahu to launch the campaign.  Only the eventual actual results on the ground are important.

As the old Balkan saying has it:  The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Image round-up for 24 March 2026

More pictures from my collection -- click any image for full size.

[For the link round-up, click here.  For the "extreme shepherding" video, click here.]

"We're we!  Here fuck!  We're shit!  Queer up!"

Gdańsk (formerly Danzig), Poland

Milan, Italy

What it would look like if Neptune were as close to Earth as the Moon is -- of course in this scenario Earth would be orbiting Neptune, not vice versa

This moth is actually called an owl moth due to its remarkable mimicry

A sea anema ameno anmena abomination

Video of the day -- extreme shepherding

A bit of fun from Wales.  And no, this wasn't faked with "AI" -- it was posted in 2009.

Link round-up for 21 March 2026

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Lookit me, I'm doing a wheelie..... oops.

You can tell where this dog is from.

Apparently this garage is haunted by the ghost of Rube Goldberg.

Asshole pranksters get pwned (and wet).

He wasn't letting the door close, so.....

Actual physics doesn't work like in the cartoons.

A search for missing property ends with a shocking discovery.

What are we growing this year?

Read a disquieting hypothesis about the Cars movies.

We Kant survive this kind of nonsense.

A quick-thinking citizen pwns a couple of robbers.

It's a small but cozy home.

When they say it's windy in Wyoming, they mean it.

If you like odd and creepy stuff, Brno in the Czech Republic may be the place for you.

On the other hand, there's plenty of weirdness in Ohio too.

This is Neptune Beach in Oregon.

Blogger Lady M has some pictures from Wales.

This is the New Forest in southern England, and the witchy town of Burley nearby (though "new" is something of a misnomer now since the New Forest was established by William the Conqueror nearly a thousand years ago).

For centuries Londoners celebrated "Frost Fairs" whenever the Thames river froze over.

He can see clearly for the first time.

See (and hear) US anti-missile defense protecting our embassy complex in Baghdad.  This looks like some kind of laser, but it's actually high-explosive projectiles designed to explode if they miss the target, to avoid damage on the ground from them falling.

Iran has lost the technological edge it once had, as more and more of its best scientific minds have emigrated rather than live under a repressive theocracy.  Israel, too, worries about a brain drain in the long term, and even the UK's cuts to spending on basic science threaten the country's progress.  I've already linked to reports on how growing numbers of US scientists are considering emigration because of funding cuts and Trump's authoritarianism.  The best minds will go where they can find an atmosphere of freedom and where their work is supported.

China's large-scale development of clean energy makes it less vulnerable to disruptions of oil supplies like those caused by the Iran war.  There's a lesson there for the US.  Europe is already acting on it.

Must-read of the week:  Ed Zitron, in his usual entertaining style, explains why there is absolutely zero possibility of "AI" companies ever coming anywhere close to profitability, and he dissects and debunks the various rationalizations and gobbledygook used by the hypesters.  Make no mistake -- this whole thing is a scam, everybody involved is up to their eyeballs in debt that can never be paid, and when the whole house of cards eventually collapses, it's going to take down a good chunk of the economy with it.

"The mice couldn't turn this off.  But you?  You can."

A self-driving Tesla nearly drove off a freeway overpass.  The owner is suing.  Stay away from these things unless you have a death wish.

Accurate translation matters.  Obviously machine "translation" would be hopeless at nuances like this.

What's next for "LGB without the T"?

Jesus was concerned about getting to the airport.

Google search is using "AI" to falsify some headlines in its search results.

This is what these people find amusing?  I could understand it if they were, like, eight, but teens and twenty-somethings?

Waymo still expects San Francisco's first responders to move its robotaxis when they malfunction and get stuck.  It's no wonder the city is now seeing a massive backlash against the maddening machines, with some people even setting them on fire.

Every time I think there's a limit to how arrogant and hypocritical and loathsome politicians can get, one of them proves me wrong.

Here's how debt has lately become a major tool for the billionaire parasite class to extract even more wealth from both workers and consumers.

"Kill all Jews", says graffiti at San Jose State University.  Then there was this.  We have a problem.

The University of Florida did take some serious action against anti-Semitism.

The next "No Kings" rallies will take place on Saturday, March 28.

What does "queer" really mean?

Attention Catholics:  You'd have a lot to lose if the "Christian nationalist" nutcases ever took over this country.  A preacher who has the ear of Pete Hegseth believes that Marian and Eucharistic processions should be banned as forms of "idolatry", and such views are not rare among militant Protestants, some of whom even regard Catholicism as Satanic.  The comments on this article similarly reveal a lot of Catholic intolerance toward Protestant "heretics".  Only fully secular government preserves freedom for everyone.

Oh, and here's an example of a Christian nationalist in politics.  Then there's this guy.  Such people would be seriously dangerous if they attained real power.

You can't improve understanding of a problem by lying about it.

Gamblers betting on the Iran war threatened a journalist, trying to force him to alter a news report so they would win money.

Voters in Ohio strongly support libraries.  There's no reason to think voters elsewhere don't.

The American people are rapidly reaching a bipartisan consensus on trans ideology.  It's time for politicians to fall in line.

The recent Temple Israel terrorist attack in Michigan could have been one of the worst mass killings in US history, if not for the vigilance of the temple's security officers.

Joe Kent is not worthy of admiration or support, no matter what you think about Trump.

83% of Republican likely voters support the military campaign to overthrow the Iranian theocracy.

More than sixty thousand Washington Post subscribers canceled in one week after Bezos fired almost half the paper's journalists.  Just wait until the remaining subscribers find out about his new algorithmic price-gouging plan.

"The point is that if we recognize it or find out about it, we get recourse....."

What is the true meaning of the International Day to Combat Islamophobia?

Democratic politicians still have a lot to learn about appealing to rural and mainstream voters.  Just changing the subject away from their unpopular cultural positions isn't good enough.

However, Democratic voters have more sense, at least in Illinois -- all six of the Israel-bashing fringe House candidates perceived as potential "Squad" members in that state lost their primaries this week and will not be candidates in the general election.

"The assumption that academic dishonesty is okay is rooted in the idea that what you’re learning to do doesn't matter."

A US district judge has blocked a lot of the damage RFK Jr is doing to the US vaccine recommendation system.  Now let's see whether he obeys the order.

Opposition by residents has stopped a data center in Maryland.

Promoters of Jew-hatred like Mamdani, Tucker Carlson, "the Squad", and Nick Fuentes need to be ostracized and universally condemned.  Neutral attitudes, such as that of JD Vance, are not good enough.

If you live in the UK, don't vote for the Greens, even if they seem like a safe protest vote.

The volume of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia has doubled since November, while Russia's ability to intercept them has declined as its air defense systems are being destroyed.

Ukraine is developing sea-going drones capable of operating in the open ocean, promising to revolutionize naval warfare.

Protesters in one town in Cuba ransacked and vandalized the local Communist party office.

The Iran war has exposed the Arab states of the Gulf as paper tigers.

In Iran, the appointment of a military adviser drew widespread ridicule on social media.

Here's a summary of why historian Victor Davis Hanson believes the Iranian theocracy will fall, and fairly soon.

Israeli air attacks are increasingly targeting the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards -- the enforcers the theocracy would rely on to suppress an uprising.

Crown prince Rezā Pahlavi's latest interview mentions a network of resistance operatives, the "Immortal Guards", working within the theocracy to undermine it.  Pahlavi and his supporters are already planning for what comes after the end of the regime.

China, like Russia, is now providing military aid to the Iranian regime.

More links at Red State Blues and Comedy Plus.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a job worth getting done, and a video of our highways in the sky.

o o o o o

I admit I don't know much about Ro Khanna, but can we at least consider him as a presidential candidate in 2028?  He's strongly supporting Bernie Sanders's billionaire tax bill, he seems solid on anti-Semitism, and he worked closely with Thomas Massie to get the Epstein files exposed -- an important cause in itself, and we need a president who can work with members of the opposite party.  The guy seems like a better option than most.

o o o o o

o o o o o

Dumbass politicians have no clue how technology works -- and they don't even know that they don't know: