All well and good for Dan a decade on but GMAFB with the both sides’ing and lack of contrition over his previous “well, but” attitude in deference to libertarian principles that he refused to look beyond. Any person of his substance as a student of history wants to take a real stance on this has to, has to, say that Republicans blatantly corrupted the Supreme Court via withholding Garland, and failed the moral test of history when not impeaching Trump on the Jan 6 charges. Those two things are absolutely crystal clear definitive actions that put us where we are today, and they did both with extremely power craven motives that were directly opposed to the spirit, principle, and laws of a democracy. In fact, thinking about his statement while typing this, it’s a continuation of his failure to adequately address the matter in a way he reasonably should.
I’ve disagreed with Carlin before on certain topics, but that last post is not a “both sides equally bad” argument. He is 100% correct that the Democrats stood meekly by while the hateful tide was rising for fear of losing their own precious positions, and Hakeem Jefferies whining the other day that there’s nothing they can do now is gross. Is it a 50/50 problem? No, because Republicans don’t have to be assholes. They choose to be. But standing there watching the bully beat the shit out of another kid and just finger wagging is indeed part of the problem.
dont think that’s what we’re talking about he’s complicit in normalizing Trump and Jan 6 and he’s just now realizing it and it makes him a fool
I haven’t listened to any of those Common Sense pods because listening to a self described Centrist talk politics sounds like a punishment but I listened to then new one and thought he gave about as good of an argument to his MAGA to cut it with their bullshit as you’re going to hear.
true, felt like a really long podcast to essentially make 1 point. I would argue that Trumps policy is also uniquely evil, but I get that awknowledging that does not really facilitate the argument
He detaches policy and complains that Trump is just blowing through norms to amass more power as president. Makes all the lazy comparisons to Ceasar and the death of the Roman Republic. He also finger wags dems for being feckless. WHILE SAYING THEY SHOULDNT HAVE DONE ANYTHING WHEN THEY HELD POWER TO PREVENT THIS. He thinks he's giving good historical analysis while ignoring one party plays by the 'norms' game and is getting bulldozed.
It’s uniquely stupid as well and I bet a lot of them would have tuned out if he harped on that because saying Trump is a moron is essentially the same thing as calling the MAGA listeners morons.
I thought it was a pretty good episode. Appreciated the historical context surrounding the slow creep of executive power and how it was inevitably going to lead to someone like Trump. His politics leave a lot to be desired but at least he was unequivocally anti-Trump
For him to say this at all is pretty crazy It's still garbage and he needs to do better but he's more concerned about his paycheck and losing right wing ears to his content
Trying to make it all about Trump ignores that the GOP has been doing this for almost 50 years now. He's a historian and he's not even doing a good job fully informing people on the history of why this is happening. It's a failure of a statement on his part due to his background. This isn't some never trump republican, this is a man who prides himself on his historical work. He can't call the democrats feckless then turn around and not talk about how the fault of all of this is the fault of the GOP.
I am guessing you only listened to the first half. There is a significant portion about Bush 2 and his minions arguing about expanded presidential power in court. Do a transcript search for “smashing son’s testicles”
In a vacuum this podcast episode is fine. At the same time, he has a long history of ignoring inconvenient truths about his political world view. It doesnt pop up in Hardcore History, but does w Common Sense. It's why he didnt do it for over a year. This all is a the logical conclusion of this libertarianism. You can tell it's confronting for him. I suppose that's a good thing but it's awfully late. Especially for someone who for all purposes is a basically a historian that willfully ignores a significant piece of how we got here.
His assumption that the right wing isn’t the vast majority of ‘talk show listeners’ and instead some fictitious logical medium was such an eye roll. He still doesn’t get it
Kind of crazy so many people on this forum listened to that podcast and are mad about it. not everyone is going to hit everything on your checklist. I agree he is willfully ignorant because he doesn’t want to confront the stupidity of being “dangerously independent” or whatever the stupid tagline is. But also this thread is reminding me of the meme about liberals hating each other unless they are ideological mirrors. Meanwhile GOP is “lower taxes? ok I’m in!!!!”
Liberals don't have any real beliefs (other than we hate you gays and POC's but we need your votes so we'll just be nice to you while doing nothing to stop the GOP and conservative dems from destroying your fucking lives), so you're not thinking about them. You're thinking about people with real policy beliefs, and that's for some strange reason seen as bad. All this meeting in the middle dogshit and pleas for compromise with idiots who don't know shit about shit is why we're here. I'm personally done with the mealy mouth garbage that got us into this situation with fascists in the first place. Breaking and bending on beliefs rather than fighting for them is literally why were here and why folks are fed up with people like Carlin. He doesn't even say them the word fascist or Nazi in that statement on his X account despite that literally being what's happening because he's so desperate not hurt the feelings of fucking racists and bigots Liberals are so desperate to appease racists whites they've started throwing LGBTQ people under the bus. Trust me "liberals" aren't who youre thinking about when it comes to people that are serious about making the world better and wanting real improvement in all of our lives. Because those mother fuckers have had zero interest in doing anything that improves the material conditions of everyone for a long god damn time
I get the sense that all the patriotic bullshit he was fed as a kid ended up turning into a quasi-religion for him and isn’t well versed in shit like The John Burch Society. He must think that centrism is some set position with people who are centrists having similar moral imperatives to himself. It’s a pretty gaping blind spot because there is always going to be push & pull from the right and left in politics and people in the middle will adjust to whichever way the Overton Window shifts. Most of them probably delude themselves into thinking they have principles but in reality they just want everyone to like them.
I’m not expecting some liberal purity test to be passed. Almost no one can. I do expect him to realize and get past the whole silent majority fan fiction he has and acknowledge the current right wing is not comparable to anything historically and is beyond repair and salvaging. No one gives a fuck about what FDR did in comparable context.
. Nailed it on the first point. I actually think the FDR comparison was very good. Mostly because it was a contrast. FDR actually had a mandate. Trump has nothing that even resembles it
That’s not how I interpreted the FDR stuff at all. I saw it as using it as an example of even when the executive branch expands its power to do good, it added to the erosion of the balance of powers idea. Every subsequent President has done something to increase the power of the Executive making it impossible to remain in check when an unprincipled, tyrannical person has that power. Your namesake only told a few members of other branches about the nuking of Japan. I think FDR did what he had to do but he is just one of many Presidents that have played a role in the erosion of the balance of powers.
Makes me want to do a full list of the long series: 1 wrath of the khans 2 blueprint 3 death throes 4 supernova 5 punic nightmares 6 ghost of the ostfront 7 alexander 8 aesir 9 king of kings Not sure if im missing any
They’re like $3 per episode. I think I bought blueprint for $15 total. Considering their length and the amount of research he did, seems fair to me
As far as one off eps go, prophets of doom is #1 for me. I’ve listened to it probably a dozen times. It’s so weird and unbelievable it’s fascinating.
Mike Duncan and Tony Gilroy are guests on Jon Stewart's pod today talking about Andor and Revolutions.