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Whenever James roams for the week, a dilemma emerges. How do we make up for his erudition and charm? This time we reached out for a northerner from across the pond. Our guest is Niall Ferguson, one of the few men alive truly qualified to explain the subtleties of consensus misinterpretations of history–and the consequences. Are western leaders making foolhardy wagers in Ukraine? And if so, what’s informing them? Tune in to get a take from “the world’s most useful historian.”
Further, Peter and Rob give their unscientific answers to the curiously controversial woman question, their thoughts on our presumed new Supreme Court Justice; plus the state of the Oscars and movies themselves.
Music from this week’s podcast: I’m Every Woman by Whitney Houston
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The SCOTUS hearings for Democrat nominees are very boring. The nominee spends hours trying not to say anything. It is worse than a Federal Reserve hearing.
This is the good news. I got this from Kash Patel. You’re going to get a communist no matter what. Ketanji Brown Jackson is an lightweight that isn’t going to sway anybody else’s vote, ever. He said that Breyer was actually good at that.
The reason young people want socialism is because we have done every single thing wrong in the face of the wage deflation and job destruction from automation and globalized labor. The second the Soviet Union fell, we should have switched to a deflationary economy and total libertarianism. Pay bounties to procreate W-2 slaves. Get the unfunded liabilities in order.
In the meantime, all of this inflationist stupidity just created massive inequalities that serve no social purpose and it grew government. now government is simply a tool to steal from each other on net.
In fact, it’s probably worse than that —->
https://www.realvision.com/shows/mike-green-in-conversation/videos/is-the-golden-age-of-liberal-capitalism-over-486q
Here is a couple more. Pay the dollar if you want to transcript, but otherwise both of these are free over on YouTube.
https://www.realvision.com/shows/real-visionaries-lyn-alden/videos/in-the-dollar-we-trust-has-the-us-lost-its-economic-power
https://www.realvision.com/shows/the-interview/videos/when-things-fall-apart-why-the-us-may-never-recover-from-the-supply-chain-crisis
Hey, I’m available too!
I don’t understand why conservatives give in to the Left and call Lia Thomas “she” and “her”. If he wants to go by the name Lia, go for it. But Lia is a man and should be referred to as “he” or “him”.
Ferguson was great – very informative.
I go by the equipment. If a male-to-female trans has had the lopitoffamy, I’ll use female pronouns. If a female-to-male trans has had the addadictomy, I’ll use male pronouns. If they won’t say, I’ll use “it.”
Still, when conversing with a person, we use the grender neutral, second person singular “you,” so it’s only third-person singular pronouns that come into play.
Or has that changed now?
I’m guessing Rob was in Saint Barthélemy. Guadeloupe and Martinique aren’t quite as high-end.
Exactly. People change names. People don’t change sexes.
Sad to hear a movie-lover like Rob shrugging off the demise of two-hour dramatic storytelling the way he did on this week’s podcast.
After all, economical, “one off” dramatic storytelling is a tradition that pre-dates Aristotle. Indeed, you can draw a straight like from Oedipus the King to Hamlet to The Importance of Being Earnest to Casablanca to A Streetcar Named Desire to Chinatown to Jaws to Unforgiven.
But Rob could not have been more blasé about it. He was all, “Snooze. You like smart, entertaining stories? Noooo problem. They’re still around. They’re just a little longer now, that’s all. Better Call Saul is the new Chinatown.”
No, Rob, it’s not. The two forms are not the same. And their rewards are different. The traditional “one off” form, when done to a turn, tends to have far more dramatic resonance than a serialized TV show. Also: Let us remember that serialized drama is nothing new. Daily soap operas have been on TV since the 1950s (and well before that on the radio) and miniseries such as Roots, The Winds of War, The Thorn Birds, etc were hugely popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Yes, there are fine serialized TV shows now (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Queen’s Gambit, etc) but I would argue even the greatest of these are diminished by the greatest traditional plays and movies.
David Mamet has argued that we may be hard-wired to receive our dramas in 90-minute to 2-hour “bursts” with a beginning, middle, and end — that drama works best that way — and I’m inclined to agree with him.
“It’s just a little longer now. Go watch Better Call Saul.”
Please.
I have yet to hear anyone speculate what could happen when KBJ is forced to interact with Clarence Thomas day after day. I for one think he might be very persuasive on someone who has probably never been forced to listen to conservative values well explained.
That might work, if she’s smart enough. But she probably isn’t.
All this transgender crap reminds me of a striking detail from a monograph on Chinese eunuchs which I read years ago. When the volunteer was completely prepped for quick and bloody removal of his manhood, the man who was ready to perform the task always asked, “Will you regret it?” If an immediate and convincing “No!” was not heard from the man on the table, the procedure was aborted.
I expect the current “trans” people would also give that answer.
That’s because true regret comes later.
You’re probably correct. If you view gender dysphoria as a mental illness then you must view any “consent” to treatment with a jaundiced eye. Does a mentally ill person have the capability to offer informed consent if they’re told by peers and professionals alike that this “feeling” that impairs their ability to function will disappear through hormones and the scalpel?
The NIH published a study that concluded that 71% of postoperative transgenders reported an improvement in their happiness. I’m not sure how that gets measured.
Real data disputes that. A 30-year follow up study in Sweden showed a suicide rate 20 times higher among postoperative individuals than the general population.
One thing I’ve noticed about this. In the old days, if you heard somebody had gender dysphoria it always came with the fact that this person felt like that since they were four years old or something. You never hear that anymore.
You also got the impression that they really hated being in that situation. It isn’t like that right now.
Mr Ferguson, I hope you’ll understand how my Catalan Father and Irish Mother gives me a different perspective on which separatist movements are obviously virtuous and which you dismiss so cavalierly.
I promise to show appropriate sympathy when the UK breaks up after the next change in monarch.
She probably considers him a race traitor, an “Uncle Tom”, and whatever he does, she will do the opposite.
As a progressive, Ketanji Brown Jackson will take a utilitarian approach to the law. That is, she will make contradictory arguments as long as they get her where she wants to go.
I’m always reminded of the story about Thurgood Marshall in his later years on the Court, when he would spend his days watching soap operas. He would tell his clerks how he was going to vote on a particular issue, so they could go make up some kind of plausible-sounding Constitutional argument. What they came up with didn’t matter, as it wasn’t the basis for his decision, which was actually based on which outcome he personally preferred.
Rob Long should be reminded that what KBJ says during the hearings has no legal weight, and no bearing whatsoever on what she does once she’s on the Court. I’m sure she was instructed to make some moderate noises to make it easier for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to vote for her.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/03/21/exclusive-alan-dershowitz-my-encounter-with-ketanji-brown-jackson-at-harvard-in-1991/
II thought this guy was really good. 11 minutes.
If I understand this right, she came up with some excuse to say that she doesn’t have a judicial philosophy, and never mind it’s still logical that she can be a Supreme Court justice. lol
The other thing is, she won’t use the LEGAL term “alien” with regard to immigration. Supposedly this is going to be a big problem.
https://rumble.com/vygt7q-ketanji-brown-disqualifies-herself.-ken-klukowski-with-sebastian-gorka-on-a.html
I’ve heard other arguments that say this isn’t right, but they end up at the same conclusion.
Y’all know the judge is related (kinda, sorta) to former Speaker Paul Ryan, right?
His wife’s brother is married to the judge. Cozy, no?
If she married a white man, doesn’t that make her a “race traitor” too?
I’m not endorsing this, but it’s pretty interesting.
Maybe that’s why Putin tells them to destroy all that stuff before they go in.
Seriously, this is a pretty interesting topic.
Exactly, which could be reason for Putin to tell them to shell everything before going in, so his troops don’t see how much better the Ukrainians were living.
That is interesting. I hadn’t seen something like that yet.
At this point I think the elite will have more in-breeding than the royalty of 1800’s Europe.
According to Slate.com, “Jackson’s husband has a twin brother, who is married to Ryan’s wife’s sister.”
That is, Jackson’s brother-in-law is married to Ryan’s sister-in-law.
That the judge’s extended family is, it seems, biracial may be considered a good sign.
There is too much crazy stuff in here for me to highlight it. Scan it yourself.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/03/28/exclusive-ketanji-brown-jackson-involved-anti-racist-agreement-all-parents-georgetown-day-school-sign/