Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Sixteen Years Ago

Columbia was lost on this date in 2003, putting a final stake through the heart of the Space Shuttle program. We were staying at a Residence Inn in San Bruno (Patricia was working in Millbrae), when I was awoken by someone on the east coast with the news. Here were my immediate thoughts, which held up pretty well, I think. And if you go to this page, you’ll find that post at the bottom, but can scroll up to see my further reflections over the next few days (or click on “Next post” from the first blog link). I had only been blogging for a year and a half or so at the time.

Today, Ian Kluft had a thread on Twitter on his recollection of seeing the disaster live, though at the time he didn’t know exactly what was happening:

[Early-afternoon update]

Here is the archived version with comments. In that post, and this one, you can see the beginning of formulating my thoughts for the book, though it wouldn’t happen for another eight years or so.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

AOC

14 Comments

Why Trump superfans admire her.

Like Obama and Trump, she and Trump actually have a lot more similarities than most fans of either realize. They’re both charismatic, they both know how to use social media to get attention and get around the MSM, and facts and reality never get in the way of their message. Now that I think about it, I’ll bet that if Twitter had existed four decades ago, Reagan would have used it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Leaving California

15 Comments

A meditation.

The one thing she doesn’t mention about why people hate Californians when they move into their community; they’re afraid that they’ll bring with them the voting habits that have made the state such a disaster. I remember when we were in Austin a couple years ago, doing wine tasting in Hill Country. The tone of the conversation got distinctly chillier when they learned we were from CA. I tried to assure them that we weren’t the problem.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Covington Pile On

5 Comments

This is how the Left destroys itself. I’d sure like to think so.

Via David Bernstein, who notes:

Conor asks why so many on the left get caught up in politically counter-productive overreaction to the Covington kid. A lot of it is revenge fantasy against some obnoxious jerk from middle or high school. The “smirking” Covington kid (or Brett Kavanaugh before him) becomes a stand-in for the hated adolescent alpha, who probably was as bad as they remember. They couldn’t retaliate properly then, so they publicly join a twitter mob that fantasizes about committing violence, while engaging in doxxing designed to effectuate it. Of course, Nick Sandmann was not actually one’s high school tormentor, and getting caught up in this sort of psychological drama is a good way to alienate those who notice the gap between the vitriol and the evidence purportedly justifying it.

It was pretty obvious to me.

[Friday-morning update]

Treacher: “I’m about ready to buy a MAGA hat just to spite these child-hating A-holes.”

[Bumped]

[Update a couple minutes later]

The politics of aggressively standing. Yes, there is nothing he could have done to avoid criticism. Because hat.

[Saturday-morning update, before we head to Vegas]

The Left’s culture of hate. It’s not accidental. And this is why the Founders distrusted democracy. And rightly so.

[Update a while later]

Long term, how do we live with these human dumpster fires?

while SOME liberals did at least admit that they got the story wrong, most of them doubled down and continued portraying an innocent 17-year-old kid as a racist and a Nazi. When the pushback on that came, the basic response came down to, “He’s a smiling white kid wearing a MAGA hat, therefore he deserves everything he gets.”

It would be nice to make it into a joke by calling it what it really is, a “hat crime,” but it’s not funny. If you’re willing to falsely brand a kid as a racist, a Nazi, and a horrible person because he stood there and smiled while some weirdo beat a drum in his face, where do we go from there? Do we declare every person who wore an “I’m With Her” shirt to be a pedophile? If Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination in 2020, is it acceptable to try to destroy the lives of random liberal teenagers for wearing “I’m With Joe” shirts?

This is the world liberals are dragging us into with their myopic vision, unquenchable hatred for people who disagree with them, and their raging intolerance. Is this good for the country? No way. Will it produce a better America? No. Is it entirely possible that this sort of thinking could lead to increasing amounts of political violence? Absolutely, because you can’t live in harmony with people who think there’s no punishment too great for people who wear hats designed to support their political opponents. We keep hoping against hope that saner heads will eventually prevail on the Left, but so far voices of sanity are few and far between.

Yes.