Politics & Stuff

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The spectre of insecurity

Liberals have forgotten that in order for our lives not to be nasty, brutish and short, we need stability. Enter Hobbes

https://aeon.co/essays/why-liberals-fear-mongering-about-trump-should-read-hobbes

Downtown Welch, rural West Virginia, 19 May 2017. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty

Alongside equality, freedom and opportunity, fear has long played a powerful role in political discourse. In ordinary life, fear is often a fitting response to danger. If you encounter a snake while out on a hike, fear will lead you to back away and exercise caution. If the snake is poisonous, fear will have saved your life. By contrast, the fears that dominate political discourse are less concrete. We are told to fear elites, terrorists, religious zealots, godless atheists, sexists, feminists, Marxists and the enemies of democracy. Yet even as these purported poisons are less obviously lethal, political rhetoricians have long understood that making them salient is a powerful way to shape citizens’ motivations. As Donald Trump told Bob Woodward: real power is fear.

It is tempting to think that political fear is largely manufactured – a cynical ploy to manipulate the masses. Trump’s dark vision of the United States would seem to be a prime example of this. Yet, fear can be fitting in politics. Citizens face real dangers from failed political leadership, as lethal to our livelihood as snake bites.

Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century political philosopher, understood fear. Hobbes was born in 1588 in the English town of Malmesbury, during the Anglo-Spanish war. As rumours of an impending Spanish attack circulated, he described his mother as ‘filled with such fear that she bore twins, me and together with me fear.’ Fear would follow Hobbes throughout his life. England in the 17th century was torn apart by religious and political factions, recurring plagues, misinformation, inflation and a changing labour market. Like in our current moment, pessimism and uncertainty ran rampant. As Jonathan Healey notes in his fantastic book on this period, The Blazing World (2023), the parallels between these historical periods are not hard to find: ‘We, too, are living through our own historical moment in which a media revolution, social fracturing and culture wars are redefining society and politics.’

Frontispiece of Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes, engraved by Abraham Bosse. Public domain

Many dismiss Hobbes as a curmudgeon whose argument for authoritarianism was guided by his view that people are naturally selfish and violent. In Leviathan (1651), his most influential book, he argues that, without a powerful executive in absolute control, we would lead lives that are ‘nasty, brutish, and short’. He also seems to suggest that, once that sovereign is established, we have no right to rebel against it since the alternative is invariably worse (though commentators disagree on whether this is a fair interpretation).

We have good reason to reject the view that even the most horrific authoritarian regimes are always better than the chaos brought about by rebellion. Stability is not the only political value. But we have lost sight of how important it is. And though we certainly should reject Hobbes’s most extreme authoritarian conclusions, there is much we can learn from understanding the motivations that led Hobbes to accept them, particularly in this current moment in which the appeal of authoritarians like Trump is ascendant.

On the Hobbesian picture, fear is a fitting response to instability and insecurity. As Hobbes describes in one of the most influential passages in political philosophy, ‘wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them’, there is no point in hard work, because the results of it are uncertain. You might work hard to build a home or start a business, only for it to be taken from you by someone who finds a way to do so through strength or cleverness. And, as Hobbes argues, if the connection between our effort and the fruit of that effort is severed by uncertainty and instability, then so much of what we value loses its point. Without security there is ‘no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society.’ Instead, Hobbes suggests, we live in a state of continual fear.

It is not hard to see why insecurity about the future diminishes our lives. A dental emergency or a stolen catalytic converter might wipe out your savings. Inflation can turn a budget teetering on the edge of affordability into a financial emergency. When you are living in precarity, planning seems futile. Inflation, a rental increase or a medical emergency can leave you feeling a fool, with your plans and little else to show. Security is the foundation for much of what makes our lives worth living.

Like in the tumultuous period in which Hobbes wrote, far too many people currently face various sources of insecurity and instability. The 2023 report on the economy by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences finds that many Americans cite financial uncertainty and precarity as a central concern. The Starbucks worker who has no idea when their shift will be, how many hours they will work, or whether they will be able to keep their job is in a state of insecurity that makes it hard to plan for the future. And even if you are feeling flush today, workers are increasingly working jobs without guarantees against being fired from one day to the next, or of being able to afford retirement. Almost half of private-sector employees in the US do not have the option of saving for retirement through work.

The US is the only developed nation in the world to have the phenomenon known as ‘medical bankruptcy’

Inflation is also a source of insecurity. When you cannot know whether you can afford tomorrow what you can afford today, you are not certain how far your salary will go, even if you feel sure you will remain employed. Your life feels increasingly tenuous when your expenses multiply from one month to the next. Historically, Americans have purchased homes to protect themselves against rising housing costs, increasing rents and eviction. However, for younger Americans, owning a home has become a dream rather than a plan.

Housing costs have become one of the principal complaints of citizens across the wealthiest countries. Gallup has found that, in OECD countries, half of respondents are dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing. Only 10 per cent of US adults surveyed by a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll in July 2024 said homeownership was easy to achieve, though 89 per cent thought it essential to their future. Furthermore, half of all renters in the US spend more than 30 per cent on rent and are classified as ‘cost-burdened’, according to a recent report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Healthcare costs are also a concern for many. The US is the only developed nation in the world to have a common phenomenon known as ‘medical bankruptcy’, and it is the leading cause of bankruptcy for Americans. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service has suffered under decades of austerity economics. And, of course, the threat of climate change looms over all our lives. In many parts of the developing world, its devastating effects are already taking lives, destroying homes, and turning existence itself into a perilous proposition. After a brief pandemic blip, the safety net is in tatters in the US, and in the UK nearly a third of children live in poverty.

An economic system that values market efficiency over creating security and stability erodes the central planks of our lives – work, home and health.

Even if you are lucky enough not to experience these sources of insecurity yourself, it is rational to fear the possibility when you see it happening to those around you. What Hobbes understood is that instability and insecurity ripple through our social world undermining the lives even of those who haven’t been directly affected. If my neighbour’s insurance refuses to cover the damage his house sustained during an unprecedented storm and my friend’s insurance bill has wiped out her savings, my position starts to feel less secure. And when instability and insecurity take hold of the citizenry, the political project is in peril.

Many have interpreted Hobbes as a ‘law and order’ philosopher primarily concerned with political infighting and civil war. However, unpacking the historical context in which he was writing allows us to see that political instability was but one factor in a broader set of conditions to which Hobbes was responding. The English economy transitioned from feudalism to a market-based system during this period. The face of poverty changed from one of serfdom in the countryside, where at least one could count on room and board, to wage poverty in cities where homelessness and starvation were real threats. The very real precarity facing what we would now call the working class was a critical factor.

In Leviathan, Hobbes draws an extensive metaphor between the body politic and literal bodies to warn against the various diseases that can lead to the dissolution of the commonwealth. He writes that:

[T]here is sometimes in a Common-wealth, a Disease, which resembleth the Pleurisie; and that is, when the Treasure of the Common-wealth, flowing out of its due course, is gathered together in too much abundance, in one, or a few private men, by Monopolies or by Farmes of the Publique Revenues; in the same manner as the Blood in a Pleurisie, getting into the Membrane of the breast, breedeth there an Inflammation, accompanied with a Fever, and painful stitches.

This inflammation – massive inequality of power and wealth – breeds the instability and insecurity that characterise Hobbes’s historical period and resonate so much with our own.

If enough people stop trusting that this system works, we are, as Hobbes would put it, in a state of ‘warre’

For Hobbes, much like the fear of a poisonous snake should lead us to tiptoe away from danger, the rational response to the fear of insecurity is to seek its opposite: stability and security. Without it, we lose the precondition that makes so much of what we value – education, culture, industry, community – possible. Hobbes argues that it is rational to sacrifice many of our freedoms to achieve such stability and security. Those freedoms are, after all, entirely pointless if we are in conditions where we cannot enjoy them.

Political society is meant to solve this problem by protecting us against uncertainty and insecurity so we can lead our lives looking forward, rather than in a heightened state of anxiety about how to make it through today. The problem we face is that there are many people for whom the system of government doesn’t offer protection from daily insecurity and instability. And if enough people stop trusting that this system works better for them than the alternative, we are, as Hobbes would put it, in a state of ‘warre’.

At a rally in Virginia in June 2024 after the disastrous first debate of the latest election season, Trump said: ‘As every American saw firsthand last night, this election is a choice between strength and weakness, competence and incompetence, peace and prosperity, or war or no war.’ Carefully crafting the choice as one between the security that comes from strength and competence, and the insecurity that comes from weakness and incompetence, Trump again reinforced his message. If you don’t choose me, your lives will get only more insecure and uncertain. And after he was the target of an assassination attempt, he reinforced this message by emerging, fist pumping in the air – a picture of strength in the face of chaos.

Trump’s proposed solution is authoritarianism (as he said in 2016: ‘I, alone, can fix it’). The problem with this solution is that it ends up trading one source of insecurity – our fractured political system – for another – the whims of an individual whose principal interest is his own power rather than the wellbeing of the body politic. But even if we reject this solution as flawed, we cannot dismiss the concerns that drive many to consider it. The democratic party has a new candidate now, but it isn’t clear whether Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s policies will address the need for security and stability.

Hobbes was wary of democracy precisely because he thought it would lead to instability and insecurity. Competing factions and groups would undermine the system’s stability by vying for power. Hobbes argued that stability is to be found in consolidating power into the sovereign and in the compliance of the governed. However, we cannot forget that for Hobbes, as for other social contract theorists, compliance is earned, not demanded.

Democratic liberal states have rejected authoritarianism as the solution to the problem of insecurity, preferring to emphasise the benefits of living in a state where our wellbeing is safeguarded by the enshrinement of our freedom into laws and institutions. Stability is meant to be the product of citizens’ acceptance of the shared values at the heart of liberalism. But does this compact guarantee the material security and stability that are preconditions for flourishing lives? For the millions who worry about whether they can afford their grocery bill, rent or medical expenses, the answer appears to be no.

Nostalgia’s power is most potent when no compelling, believable vision of a brighter future exists

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath offered a glimpse of a solution. When things felt precarious and uncertain, the US government stepped in with eviction moratoriums, universal basic income, free vaccines and a child tax credit. (Let’s not forget that Trump made sure that those stimulus checks bore his name.) But a few short years later, we are back to business as usual, leaving millions on the edge of precarity.

This is not to deny that xenophobia, sexism and racism also churn through the current discontent with liberalism. Nostalgia for times past is a strong undercurrent of the appeal of Right-wing movements. Some want the return of the well-paid factory job with strong benefits, while others want a return to white male supremacy. But nostalgia’s power is most potent when no compelling, believable vision of a brighter future exists.

Those who fear Trump’s re-election and the rise of Right-wing political movements keep reminding us that democracy is on the line. But sowing fear and doubt only adds to the growing sense of insecurity and uncertainty that is already unravelling people’s trust in the liberal project. It plays right into the hands of the strategy that Trump is so adept at playing. For people to see the value in the current system, we need to do more than fear-monger about the alternative.

Hobbes is often interpreted as being narrowly focused on justifying a powerful state that could control our worst appetites so as to prevent us from killing each other. I have argued that if we take his concern for stability and security seriously, the solution requires a far more radical rethinking of liberal states as they currently exist. Material insecurity and political instability cannot be divorced. A liberal state that leaves so many feeling as if their lives are on the verge of being ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ falls short of solving the problem that political society is meant to solve. Freedom is meaningless if you cannot count on a stable connection between the work you put in today and a good life tomorrow. But this is precisely the connection that has become severed for so many. If political society is to enable flourishing lives, then we need a political and economic system that can provide that kind of stability. This requires more than mere rhetoric. If we fail, Leviathan is waiting in the wings.

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https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/what-if-it-just-comes-down-to-chance

In a presidential election this close, partisan supporters of both candidates desperately want some indication that things are going to break their way and that their theory of the American electorate is correct. 

Party boosters may be disappointed on November 5 in more ways than one. 

No hard-core Trump or Harris supporter wants to hear this but the election results may not be that decisive and could ultimately come down to chance—a few shifts here and there that produce a victory for one of the two without reflecting some grand voter theory or genius campaign moves. It’s turtles all the way down.

The contours of the election have been clear for a long time now, and if there’s a decisive victory for either Trump or Harris on Election Day it will be relatively straightforward to explain—in hindsight. 

A decisive Trump victory would mean the former president ran up big numbers with irregular and working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines in the most important states while keeping his suburban and college-educated defections to a manageable level. Why? Likely because enough voters rejected the policies of the incumbent administration and got over any trepidations they may have had about Trump’s character and actions as president. 

Conversely, a decisive Harris victory would arise from her amassing huge independent and college-educated numbers in the “Blue Wall” and other contested states, more than enough to offset any white, black, and Hispanic working-class defections. Why? Probably because enough voters got over their displeasure with Biden’s economy and immigration policies—and Harris’s past radical positions—but didn’t overlook their negative feelings about Trump and his behavior as president.

Polls have consistently highlighted these demographic, issue, and personality trends throughout the nearly two years of battles between Trump, Biden, and Harris. If voters behave one way or the other on Election Day, it won’t be hard to explain after the fact.

The maddening reality for everyone involved in this election, however, is that there is no clear way to anticipate which of two decisive outcomes is more likely to happen.

Pundits who confidently proclaim their analysis of the data or proprietary election model can predict the outcome of this puzzle are pulling your leg. They are either guessing or projecting what they want to occur. Maybe something will shift decisively in the final two and half weeks of the campaign to favor one of the above scenarios with more confidence, but probably not since nothing to date has been determinative.

There’s no analytical shortcut this cycle—we really do have to wait for people to vote.

A third very real possibility is that the 2024 election ends up being decided by exceptionally narrow margins in both the Electoral College and the popular vote in major swing states.

Why? No reason really. A Trump or Harris victory in November may not have the big meaning everyone craves—it could just be a few random things in different places. 

Maybe black turnout is down in Philly, Detroit, and Milwaukee while small-town and rural turnout in PA, MI, and WI is better than expected. Maybe the all-important suburban vote ends up more split than it seems and nudges only slightly in one direction. Maybe the economy/immigration and abortion/democracy party priorities cancel each other out and no one issue set dominates the minds of American voters this year. Maybe both the Trump and Harris campaigns end up doing the best they possibly can in all the battleground states, and the numbers—agonizingly for the losing team—end up a tad higher for one candidate over the other for no particular reason. 

In this scenario, no new theory of American politics is vindicated. No serious realignment of voters in either party direction occurs. It’s just another 100,000 or so votes in a few states that determine presidential power for another four years.

This “no rhyme or reason” outcome understandably will be disappointing to a great deal of people on the losing side, and will be rejected by the winning side as they claim an electoral mandate. Uncertainty and randomness are difficult for people to process.

Yet American politics is increasingly shaped by chance in a nation sharply divided between two political parties with a large chunk of people disgusted by both of them. The search for meaning and explanation after the election will certainly commence, but political cryptographers may not unravel any political Da Vinci Code.

The reasons for how and why people vote certain ways in recent times are somewhat confounding and do not match up with known historical, demographic, and ideological patterns in politics. Partisans line up in known ways while the unaligned and disengaged make decisions based on a number of factors including specific issues that may not fit into the traditional left-right spectrum, personality traits, or something unrelated to the campaign messages of Democrats and Republicans.

Americans will have to come to terms with more elections being determined by chance unless something fundamentally alters in our national life to lead voters towards a more unified political direction—or until one of the two political parties figures out how to represent the values and desires of a larger chunk of Americans in more places.

On this development, stay tuned tomorrow in TLP for Ruy Teixeira’s and Yuval Levin’s well-argued case for why both Democrats and Republicans have failed to overcome their weaknesses to build a sustainable majority—or even a convincing case for re-election. 

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In Israel, the War Is Also the Goal

Today on TAP: Yahya Sinwar’s death is unlikely to change the situation in Gaza.

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-10-17-israel-gaza-yahya-sinwar-dead/

Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, chairs a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, on April 13, 2022.

 

One story you can tell about the Middle East over the last year is that Hamas engaged in an attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, and Israel systematically hunted down and killed everyone responsible, culminating with Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the attacks who was apparently killed on Wednesday. There would be alignment between this story and fiction, like the film adaptation of the Munich attacks, where Israel puts its intelligence arm to work to methodically find the Olympic hostage-takers and deliver extrajudicial justice.

That story would be false, because it blots out a year of unmitigated horrors against the Palestinian people in one of the most tragic examples of collective punishment in modern memory. In Munich, the last revenge killing signaled an ending, a settling of accounts. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to say during the announcement of Sinwar’s death, “The war isn’t over.”

That Netanyahu’s personal and political goals vastly outweigh whatever could resemble military goals in this war in Gaza by now has become a cliché. Netanyahu wants to stay out of prison, and ending the war is likely to place him there. So new missions and operations and objectives sprout up for no reason.

Suddenly Bibi’s party has mused about re-settling northern Gaza for the first time in nearly 20 years, while transparently using a policy of mass starvation as a way to implement it. This was enough to even get the Biden foreign policy team to threaten a pullback of military aid—in 30 days, after the election—if the humanitarian situation didn’t improve. This led to 50 aid trucks coming in from Jordan; estimates from earlier in the year were that 500 trucks of aid per day must enter to meet the needs of Gaza.

Meanwhile, the leader of U.S. humanitarian efforts in Gaza whispered months ago that military aid will never be threatened, which I’m sure is not something unknown to the Israeli government. The modest steps at allowing food and water in have to be seen as performative at some level. The U.S. wants to get through the elections, package up some deal with the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates to declare a vassal state in Gaza, and pat themselves on the back. I don’t even think it’s worth crediting this by calling it a plan.

The war has long passed any moment where Israel has any interest in declaring victory, in the fight against terror or in the fight for the security of its people. Even bringing up the fact of continued Israeli hostages inside Gaza seems irrelevant at this point. The war is actually the goal itself, a continuation of punishment to fulfill the needs of the prime minister and his far-right political aims. The annals of blowback indicate pretty clearly that incessant bombing of hospitals and refugee camps will create many Yahya Sinwars, more than who can be killed. That is not something that particularly burdens the Israeli government. Another pretext would serve their continuing interests.

I am glad Sinwar will not be terrorizing anyone any longer. His tactics were disastrous for Palestinians. But if his death cannot lead to an end to the killing, there’s not much hope anything will.

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Down the Memory Hole

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JD Vance Shows That the Future of the GOP Is in Racist Conspiracy Theories

Trump’s deluded fantasies have now become the GOP gospel.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-vance-gop-conspiracy-theories/

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance speaks to supporters during a campaign event in Traverse City, Michigan.(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

JD Vance is Donald Trump’s heir, but an awkward one. Trump has spent decades shamelessly hustling, so deception comes as naturally to him as breathing. Trump no longer operates, if he ever did, in a world where the difference between truth and falsehood is relevant: He only says and believes what is most convenient for him at any given moment. Better than anyone else in our era, Trump illustrates the crucial distinction, insisted on by the late philosopher Harry G. Frankfurter, between being a liar (someone who consciously fabricates) and being a bullshitter (someone indifferent to the truth).

As I’ve noted before, JD Vance is a liar with a bad conscience because he can’t bullshit. Vance always knows he’s spreading falsehood and has to develop post facto rationalizations. Which doesn’t mean that Vance isn’t given to lying profusely.

The way the two men handle conspiracy theories illuminates this distinction. Conspiracy theories have long been central to Trump’s political vision. He rose to prominence for his unabashed embrace of birtherism: the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Throughout his rise, Trump and those closest to him embraced a host of sinister delusions, buying into Pizzagate and the QAnon movement’s portrayal of Trump’s political foes as pedophiles and Deep State cabalists. The Big Lie of election denial in 2020, the motivating force behind the January 6 attempted coup, was a distillation of Trump’s conspiracism: the master narrative of Trump as a brave rebel leading a mass movement against a corrupt elite.

Conspiracism is Trump’s instinctive mode, fitting in with his formative years as a resentful outer-borough real estate developer who felt that Manhattan old money looked down on him. Vance, by contrast, has risen from a working-class background by studiously imitating the elite, fueled by emulation and admiration rather than resentment. Until his recent conversion to Trumpism, Vance in fact aspired not to overthrow the establishment but to join it, which meant going along with the elite consensus against conspiracy theories about the American ruling order.

As NPR noted last month:

JD Vance not long ago described conspiracy theories as the feverish imaginings produced by “fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy.”

That was before he became a rising star in Republican politics.

The Ohio senator and GOP’s vice presidential nominee has in recent years declared that the federal government deliberately allowed fentanyl into the United States to kill conservative and rural voters. He has praised Alex Jones, a well-known conspiracy theorist who claimed the deaths of 20 young children in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.

And he’s echoed—contrary to all evidence—former President Donald Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was unfairly won by Democrats and that those charged in the subsequent Capitol insurrection are “political prisoners.” More recently, he gave credence to the debunked idea that Haitian immigrants were abducting and devouring pets in Ohio.

Vance is also an ardent (but in this instance possibly sincere) proponent of the racist Great Replacement theory, holding that elites are bringing in non-white immigrants to supplant the white population.

NPR describes Vance as someone who has gone from being an “intellectual” to being a “conspiracy theorist.” This description obscures the truth. Vance is still an intellectual—but now uses his considerable mental energy to defend conspiracism and use it as a glue to bind together the MAGA coalition. Writing in AlterNet, Lindsay Beyerstein notes that Vance’s function is to reassure the more buttoned-down Republicans that it’s possible to collaborate with outlandish fantasists such as Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Green. Beyerstein also notes that Vance uses conspiracy theories to unite “integralist Catholics, protestant New Apostolic Reformation types, and the more secular Silicon Valley contingent exemplified by Elon Musk.”

Beyerstein helpfully calls attention to a talk Vance gave in 2021 at the Teneo Network conference, where he laid out why respectable conservatives should accept conspiracy theorists as part of their coalition. According to Vance, “Believing crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected. Believing important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody, and if they believe some crazy things on the side, that’s fine. We need to be okay with non-conventional people.”

Addressing his willingness to listen to Alex Jones, Vance said:

But then the second criticism that I get is, well, he’s a crazy conspiracist, right? He doesn’t believe that 9/11 actually happened or he believed 9/11 was an inside job. And look, I understand this desire to not be called terrible names. It’s like, yeah, okay, this person believes crazy things. But I bet if you’re being honest with yourself, every single person in this room believes at least something that’s a little crazy, right? I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society. That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now. Even though, of course, they participate in it without knowing about it. But that’s a separate, a separate matter.

But ladies and gentlemen, the most important truths often come from people who are crazy 60% of the time, but they’re right 40% of time. I don’t know Elon Musk very well. I know him a little bit. I’ve had a couple of private conversations with him. Elon Musk believes some crazy stuff.

Vance’s arguments are, of course, pure sophistry. There’s a difference between saying that otherwise good and intelligent people can believe in conspiracy theories and actually elevating those conspiracy theories to the forefront of your politics.

In fairness, conspiracy theories aren’t just the preserve of the right. There are plenty of liberals and leftists who believe in absurd conspiracies—see Hillary Clinton’s willingness to loosely denounce her critics as Russian assets, or the recently popular idea that the assassination attempts on Trump were staged. Fortunately, the more fanciful versions of Russiagate sputtered out, and in general the Democrats don’t promote conspiracism on the national stage.

The ascendency of Vance, by contrast, shows that conspiracism has become central to the GOP. In the long run of American history, we can trace an apostolic succession of paranoid politics: Joseph McCarthy mentored Roy Cohn, who in turn tutored Donald Trump, who provided a role model for Vance. McCarthy and Cohn flourished only briefly on the national stage, while Trump and Vance prove that conspiracism is now the central ideology of the Republican right.

Podcaster Matthew Sitman, cohost of Know Your Enemy, recently noted, “Vance is one of the highest profile conspiracy theorists in U.S., he should not be Trump-eating-one-too-many-Big-Macs from the presidency.” Unfortunately, Vance also proves that embracing conspiracism is good politics for a Republican. Even if Trump loses in November, Vance’s version of cynical conspiracism is here to stay.

[Vesper 28,825]

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-al-aqsa-hospital-attack-fire/

Fire breaks out on the tents of displaced Palestinians after Israeli attacks in the garden of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza, on October 14, 2024. (Ashraf Amra / Anadolu via Getty Images)

 

It was around 2 am on Monday when an Israeli air strike tore through the tents of the displaced at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza—where families, patients receiving treatment, and many of my friends and colleagues were sheltering. The strike cast a horrific, searing glow of fire that soon consumed the place they thought would provide safety.

 

In videos from the scene, the people’s cries for help could be heard as they stumbled through the dense smoke, searching for loved ones amid plumes of smoke that curled up into the sky. The air itself seemed to scream, and the ground burned with the heat of destruction.

 

What brought me to tears were the wails of people burning alive before they even registered the sounds of the attack. That night has left both the living and the dead destroyed beyond recognition.

 

 

Among the chaos, nurse Amira struggled to reach the patients whose fragile bodies lay in beds just inside the tent perimeter. “I could feel the heat on my skin, smell the burning plastic,” she recalled. “People were running in all directions, and I had to shout over the noise just to be heard.”

 

“We were asleep, or at least trying to sleep, when the explosions started,” said Abu Khalid, a father who lived behind the hospital with his three children. His voice quivered as he described the scene: “We woke up to smoke and fire. Burning pieces were falling on the tents from every corner. The explosions—I’ve never heard or seen anything like them.”

 

His children clung to him as they ran, ducking between burning tents, the smell of scorched fabric and flesh overwhelming their senses. Around them, “It was like hell on earth,” he said.

 

Dr. Anas Wazeer, a volunteer anaesthesia specialist, was at the emergency department door when the first patients arrived. “It was a horror show,” he told me, his voice cracking.

 

“The burns covered 60 to 80 percent of the bodies that came in—most wouldn’t survive. The air smelled like burned flesh and melting plastic,” he said. “It was hard to breathe, hard to see through the smoke and fire. People died trapped between the flames.”

 

The overwhelmed medical staff struggled to prioritize care. “There were so many people with burns. Their skin was blackened and charred, their eyes open but lifeless.”

 

“Some were barely clinging to life as we worked to ease their suffering.” Dr. Wazeer pauses, shaking his head. “We didn’t have enough supplies, not even basic pain relief. It was as if we were asked to perform miracles with our hands tied.”

 

 

The blaze consumed over 20 tents, collapsing the frail shelters onto families who had nowhere else to go. People attached to IVs were seen burning alive, and others succumbed to smoke inhalation. Those who survived the initial explosion were left with scars that would never heal.

 

The attack stole more than just lives—it seared away what little hope remained in the hearts of those who had been living on the edge for a year.

 

Osama, a 19-year-old who had fled from Beit Lahia, had been staying in one of the tents closest to the fire when the strike hit. “The heat was unbearable,” he told me. “It felt like my skin was peeling off, and the smoke.… I watched my friend, someone I grew up with, die right in front of me. We were trying to pull people out, but he didn’t make it.”

 

Osama described the helplessness of that moment, the way he screamed at the sky, his voice drowned out by the roaring flames. “We had nowhere to go. There were no fire trucks, no way to put out the blaze. It just kept burning. There were bodies everywhere.” He struggled to finish his sentence, his hands trembling.

 

 

For Amira, a 38-year-old mother of four, the attack was yet another chapter in a year-long journey of displacement and terror. She and her family had fled northern Gaza last year in October, following the evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army to the residents in Gaza City and the north.

 

“We thought we would be safe here, that the south would shelter us,” she said. “But safety does not exist in Gaza. Not in our homes, not even in hospitals.”

 

She recalled how her children cried that night, not just from fear but from a coldness that seeped into their bones as they huddled away from the fire. “We had fled our home with nothing, and now, once again, we have nothing,” Amira said. “This is not a life. It’s like the world is trying to erase us, as if we have no place anywhere.”

 

The assault was the third time in two weeks that the Al-Aqsa Hospital had been targeted, according to Gaza’s Media Office. The recurring strikes left an indelible message to the displaced—there was nowhere left to run.

 

Inside what remained of the hospital courtyard, the charred ground bore silent testimony to the devastation. The tents were now little more than blackened cloth and twisted metal.

 

 

The grief was compounded by the sheer inhumanity of peoples’ final moments. “It wasn’t just death,” Dr. Wazeer told me. “It was suffering—slow, excruciating suffering. That’s what haunts me.”

 

For many, the scars—both visible and invisible—may never heal. With each passing day, those dreams slip further from reach, replaced by the stark reality of their suffering—caught between endless trauma and the faint glimmer of hope for a peaceful tomorrow that doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.

 

Yet despite the devastation and heartbreak, Amira has not lost her spirit of resilience. “We are still here,” she said, “and we will keep hoping, even if it’s all we have.”

 

Edited October 18 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,323]

12 hours ago, Vesper said:

Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon calls for the public execution of women who falsely claim to have been sexually assaulted: "#MeToo would end real fast ... All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied."

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/joel-webbon-wants-publicly-execute-few-women-who-have-lied

 

 

They are thick on the ground.
If you are an mp or something like that chances are there will be 25 false accusations against you.

[Vesper 28,825]

7 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

They are thick on the ground.
If you are an mp or something like that chances are there will be 25 false accusations against you.

So you agree with Webbon?

[Fulham Broadway 16,852]

Blokes who claim some woman stuck something up their Arne Slot should also be executed

[Vesper 28,825]

Trump Suggests Abraham Lincoln Should’ve Let the South Keep a Little Slavery

He answered a 10-year-old’s question about his favorite president by saying Lincoln should have “settled” the Civil War.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-suggests-abraham-lincoln-shouldve-let-the-south-keep-a-little-slavery

Donald Trump appeared on Fox News this morning, where, during a characteristically bizarre interview, he suggested Abraham Lincoln could have avoided the Civil War by cutting a deal with the South—which, as a reminder, wanted slavery to remain legal.

Asked by a 10-year-old who his favorite president was when he was “little,” Trump began by saying he “liked Ronald Reagan.” (Note: Trump was 34 when Reagan first took office, and 42 when he left.) Then he turned to Lincoln, who he believes was a great president—but could’ve been better if he’d “settled” the Civil War.

“Great presidents?” Trump said. “Lincoln was probably a great president, although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know, I’m a guy that—it doesn’t make sense we had a Civil War…. You’d almost say, like, why wasn’t that [settled]? As an example, Ukraine would have never happened, and Russia, if I were president. Israel would have never happened; October 7 would have never happened, as you know.”

It’s not exactly clear what Trump thinks Lincoln should have done to “settle” the dispute between the North and the South, the latter of which seceded from the Union largely because it wanted to keep enslaving people. Does Trump think Abe should have come to the negotiating table, Art of the Deal–style, and let the South keep some slaves? Because that’s what it sounds like.

As for the idea that “Ukraine would have never happened…if I were president,” or October 7 for that matter, these are claims that he has repeatedly made with zero evidence to back them up. He did suggest on Thursday, though, that he would end the war in Ukraine by siding with Russia, bizarrely claiming that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “let that war start.” (In fact, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.)

Elsewhere in Trump’s sit-down with Fox, he claimed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “very much into women’s health,” that Kamala Harris is “a low-IQ person,” and that in a Harris presidency, “you won’t have any cows anymore.”

Trump: Joe Biden should just let Benjamin Netanyahu do his thing

 

In which the GOP candidate suggests a convicted rapist got a raw deal

 

 

Edited October 18 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,323]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

So you agree with Webbon?

I would send them to desert island Gyaros to eat lobsters.

[cosmicway 1,323]

47 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Blokes who claim some woman stuck something up their Arne Slot should also be executed

We are common Joe Bloggs types so they don't bother.
But stealth and deceit is in their blood.

[Vesper 28,825]

7 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

We are common Joe Bloggs types so they don't bother.
But stealth and deceit is in their blood.

in who's blood?

[cosmicway 1,323]

7 minutes ago, Vesper said:

in who's blood?

Metoos.

There was this Greek actor who got convicted.
One metoo comes forward and says he took her in his car drove to blind alley and proposed sex. I opened the door and ran away she says but that is rape.
Then a friend of hers comes along and says "I had almost forgotten (!) but he raped me also ten years ago (!) - he promised to give me a role in his show, we had sex but he did n't let me play - sp it's rape".
This was enough to convict the man, to avoid the street demonstrations by the metoos.
 

Edited October 18 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,825]

4 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Metoos.

There was this Greek actor who got convicted.
One metoo comes forward and says he took her in his car drove to blind alley and proposed sex. I opened the door and ran away she says but that is rape.
Then a friend of hers comes along and says "I had almost forgotten (!) but he raped me also ten years ago (!) - he promised to give me a role in his show, we had sex but he did n't let me play - sp it's rape".
This was enough to convict the man, to avoid the street demonstrations by the metoos.
 

You are a deeply misogynistic individual.

Based on what I have seen you spew for ages, you, IMHO, detest women on balance, and certainly think that we belong in a subservient role and/or are some sort of scheming arch-villains who exist to torment poor, forever-victimised men. 

Your own vile, casually pejorative use of the term 'metoos' instantly exposes that.

Your positing that the default stance for the majority women who call out abuse (violence, psychological, and/or sexual) they have done to them is that they are lying and/or simply trying to punish 'innocent' men is offensive AF.

You take the exception (a woman making false charges) and try and paint it as the rule, when in reality, down through the millennia, the level of damage (all of types) done to us females as a whole is exponentially greater than what we have done to men.

If you take measure of all the pain, death, abuse, heinous crimes, misery, and deprevations of basic rights (including the basic rights to equality and autonomy) that has rained down on humans throughout human history, the VAST majority has been done by men, not women.

Weak men are obsessed with controlling and/or punishing women, blaming us for their own failures and short-comings.

Show me a misogynist and you have shown me, in the vast majority of cases, a weak man (and on occasion, a weak woman), the type who has to blame others for their own self-generated weakness.

 

 

[cosmicway 1,323]

44 minutes ago, Vesper said:

You are a deeply misogynistic individual.

Based on what I have seen you spew for ages, you, IMHO, detest women on balance, and certainly think that we belong in a subservient role and/or are some sort of scheming arch-villains who exist to torment poor, forever-victimised men. 

Your own vile, casually pejorative use of the term 'metoos' instantly exposes that.

Your positing that the default stance for the majority women who call out abuse (violence, psychological, and/or sexual) they have done to them is that they are lying and/or simply trying to punish 'innocent' men is offensive AF.

You take the exception (a woman making false charges) and try and paint it as the rule, when in reality, down through the millennia, the level of damage (all of types) done to us females as a whole is exponentially greater than what we have done to men.

If you take measure of all the pain, death, abuse, heinous crimes, misery, and deprevations of basic rights (including the basic rights to equality and autonomy) that has rained down on humans throughout human history, the VAST majority has been done by men, not women.

Weak men are obsessed with controlling and/or punishing women, blaming us for their own failures and short-comings.

Show me a misogynist and you have shown me, in the vast majority of cases, a weak man (and on occasion, a weak woman), the type who has to blame others for their own self-generated weakness.

 

 

You are making use of cribs.
No I 'm not misogynist, I will disappoint you.
We have always been ruled by women:

Aspasia - Cleopatra - Theodora
Lucretia Borghia - Isabella - Maria Theresia - Catherine the great - Queen Victoria
Margaret Thatcher - Angela Merkel

But metoo is an organization for false accusations, everyone knows that.

I understand why a victim of sex abuse might be reluctant to seek justice.
It's because sex is regarded as a sin.
Imagine yourself in this situation,
You are invited to the notorious villa of orgies in the northern suburbs.
It's clean cut orgy nothing to do with rapes and things like that, a nice orgy but nevertheless an orgy.
On the way back you take the tube.
You descend at the central station and there as is usual are the Antenna TV - Sky TV girls with mikes taking street interviews.
They catch you and they ask you this:

what is your opinion about the wave of immorality that is plaguing the city of Athens ?

What will you reply ? Hand auf herz, what will you say to the TV program ?
Likewise reporting rape is not the same as reporting a stolen cellphone.

So metoo is created by certain busybodies.
In this atmosphere however vagabondry plays a big part.
What about Bill Clinton ? You side with Monica Lewinsky ?
And many other frameups.

So they should be taken to Gyaros island with the lobsters.
 

Edited October 18 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,825]

1 hour ago, cosmicway said:

What about Bill Clinton ? You side with Monica Lewinsky ?

Clinton abused his position of ultimate power, end of story.

I do not give a toss how many women offered themselves to him, he should have said no, especially as POTUS, as he instantly created a national security potential nightmare.

[cosmicway 1,323]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Clinton abused his position of ultimate power, end of story.

I do not give a toss how many women offered themselves to him, he should have said no, especially as POTUS, as he instantly created a national security potential nightmare.

The question we are asked is not if we approve of the affair.
Since Clinton was married (to Hillary) it was an extramarital affair - one the bible belt condemns.
The question is was it a real metoo situation ? It was n't.