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Last week, Rob Long and Peter Robinson found themselves in a disagreement about –not kidding– The Crusades. Well, one of the great things about having a very popular podcast is that you can get just about anyone to show up and adjudicate any dispute or question one might have. It’s basically like having Wikipedia on call. But more about that in a moment. Up first, independent journalist Michael Tracey had a radical idea: there was a lot of talk about the riots in the mainstream media, but almost no reporting on the aftermath and the human cost of the unrest. So he got in his car and did it himself. His story is very much worth your time, as is this conversation with him (thanks to Ricochet member @concretevol for the suggestion!). Then, as mentioned, we tracked down Professor Thomas Madden, aka the world’s foremost authority on The Crusades to determine who got it right. You’ll have to tune in to get the results. Also, @bossmongo wins the coveted LPoW badge this week, and are movie theaters history? We discuss.
Music from this week’s show: Ourselves To Know by Warren Zevon
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Whatever your point is, this is not at all what I’m talking about,
It is sort of a hobby with Democrats.
@peterrobinson:
I’ll tell you why you don’t see letters in the newspaper criticizing all the rules. That’s because the papers aren’t printing any. I’ve sent letters to our local newspaper criticizing the Aiken City Council for imposing an emergency wear-a-mask ordinance, and none have gotten printed. No shocker…
But that requires Truthful speech. It requires having to tell Puerto Ricans that what they are doing isn’t as effective as what some American states and cities do. Puerto Rico might be better run than say, Minneapolis but a huge percentage of the world’s Puerto Ricans live in American because Puerto Rico has a culture of bad governance.
Basically, Anglo culture is way better than Spanish culture when it comes to politics. Imperial wars are dumb and cruel but being a culture imperialist is the only decent thing to be because in some cultures, people flourish and in other cultures they literally perish because the governance is so bad, that they can’t grow enough food. Though clique, it is accurate to observe the different cultures of South Korea and North Korea.
But you aren’t allowed to say that Anglo culture is better for Puerto Ricans than the actual culture of Puerto Rico because that’s racist or imperialist or whatever ist or phobia is popular. Our corrupt, decadent and poorly educated elite, are condemning people to live below their potential because of their weird neuroses about race and inequality or whatever.
I have no Earthly idea what to do. But we need to start by saying that the culture and government of Puerto Rico caused Puerto Rico’s problems and we don’t want refugees to continue a culture of failure and corruption. We should take the exact same approach to Californians.
They aren’t their own country. It’s a vortex of grief that is going to get continually worse as they keep getting whacked by hurricanes and earthquakes. All I’m saying is make a pitch to them. We will wipe out all of your debt if you let us turn your whole country into one gigantic toll road, except for your justice system. We would have to deliver them deluxe public goods and public utilities. It would be very easy for them to set up a progressive way to pay for it. I read one article about this. The math couldn’t even be seen with a microscope in our budget.
They could continue to have a crappy, corrupt culture, or whatever they want, but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad, and we could manage their predictable weather disasters much easier. I would think this would make people want to move there given their tax status.
It sounds like a joke book written by WFB or his son. The old people were living so long, they kept cashing Social Security checks and were going to bankrupt the nation. So the government started an agency to encourage the elderly to take more risks so more of them would die. Inevitably, the agency ended up costing the taxpayers more money than it save. The agency grew and thought it grew, elderly people still didn’t die as much as the taxpayers would like.
I like your idea. But I’m not sure governments can do that sort of thing.
The thing is, we get paid to do it. Utility systems are all rip offs anyway. It’s just the same thing, only it clearly makes the country better off. We would get a great yield on our investment.
This would be way less complicated than rural broadband, which everybody keeps babbling about like it’s not communism, which it is.
It didn’t all start with The Civil War, it started with Brooklyn Bridge – which is a legitimately impressive documentary about the greatest feat of engineering of its era.
Yes, but the REA needs something else to do, now that rural electrification was achieved 40 years ago.
This is the great thing about starlink or OneWeb – if they’re cheap enough – that they’ll provide broadband service to remote areas without a large public infrastructure.
Another cheap way to provide broadband internet to rural areas is Power-Over-Ethernet. The power cables that already provide electricity to farms could serve double duty and provide gigabit speed internet to everyone quite cheaply.
@blueyeti: We need to interview Michael Levitt on uncommon knowledge or ricochet
Darth Vader
Right after Crusade historian Thomas Madden signed off, Rob commented that he was reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, in which Marshall McLuhan shows up to tell an annoying blowhard in line that he has completely misunderstood the ideas of — Marshall McLuhan!
“But,” Rob continues to Peter, “I can’t honestly say who in this story is Woody Allen, and who is the guy behind him … [grudgingly] I suspect I’m more of the annoying guy in line and you’re more Woody Allen, but it’s not 100%.“
So Rob eats a little crow, even if it’s a marzipan crow.
Here’s what I wrote after last week’s show:
Conservatives, especially the wishy-washy, milquetoast kind like Rob, are conservative only on certain issues, about which they are more fully informed and know the conservative arguments. About other issues, they default to the middlebrow liberal consensus, without even knowing that another narrative is possible.
Thus, Rob defaults to the liberal consensus on the Crusades, largely unaware that a different viewpoint exists.
Rob’s comments about the condition of things in his W Village neighborhood clashes with those of relatives of mine.
Life-long New Yorkers. Had not been to Manhattan since mid March….each of these hard nosed professionals said : ‘They’ve killed it…it’s not coming back.” A nephew who is a realtor, also in the West Village, said: “It’s over.”
4/4 opinions from lifelong full time sophisticated New Yorkers …ages 50 to 76.
I’m still grumpy that in the first crusade the Christians slaughtered the Jewish quarter. Dick move crusaders.
It’s never over until the atom bomb hits.
I guess no one else will do it, so I will. I object to the characterization by Michael Tracey of “the killing of George Floyd.”
Just for starters, “assuming facts not in evidence.”
And to the extent that George Floyd was “killed” – rather than just “died” – it’s quite likely that he “killed” HIMSELF, via fentanyl overdose and everything else he had in him at the time.
The illustration is great, but I think @jameselileks would be up front, leading the way. Rob is the follower.
More recent evidence seems to suggest that George Floyd’s surrender to the police was erratic and did nothing to help the situation.
I’m late getting here but thanks for having Michael Tracey on! He can be found here.
Funding independent journalism may be a far better way to counteract the MSM than having our own right wing media that falls into many of the same partisan traps as the left does.