BC RUSH
Saved by @jay_millerjay

Rush Limbaugh will be remembered as one of the most consequential figures in the history of American conservatism, because he reflected and shaped the world view of the post-Reagan GOP base more than any other single person.

 Limbaugh is also a good example of how the distinction between “respectable” conservatism and “the more radical fringe” can easily be overstated. https://t.co/MD81JaUbpG
In 1992 George HW Bush had Rush Limbaugh open his final campaign event before Election Day. https://t.co/G580dznhkL
Rush descended from a well-off and well-connected family in Missouri, but he played the role of “pissed off Joe Six Pack” really well. He’s a perfect example of “plutocratic populism.” https://t.co/eUSIiffk07
Limbaugh’s cruel bigotry and aura of aggrieved entitlement was a feature, not a bug. In an era of shifting social mores, Limbaugh gave his listeners permission to be a-holes and be proud about it. He perfected the schtick that would get Trump elected.
Limbaugh's buffoonery actually shaped my politics in a significant way, though not in the way he intended. Between 1992 and 1997 I made several, 10-hour drives between Chicago (where I was in grad school) and central PA (where my family was). I listened to Rush each time.
Rush was still a fairly new figure in the political universe at that point, but he was becoming a big hit with a certain segment of the population with which I was experientially familiar, angry white people. I totally got why his bit resonated...and it wasn't good.
I grew up in a conservative small town. Both of my grandpas voted GOP. The idea of voting Republican, in 1992-4, was not some outlandish thing in the world I was socialized into. But Rush made it clear that being proudly deplorable was a requirement for membership in his GOP.
Between 1992 & 1997 I was becoming a US Historian. What I heard on Rush's radio show was an affirmation of the most anti-democratic impulses in the nation's history, and a rejection of the historical figures & movements who advanced the nation's ideals of equality and democracy.
Rush sounded exactly like all of the right wing lawyers, dentists, and real estate agents in my hometown who'd sit around at the Country Club bar and complain about black people and feminazis, and then climb in their Lincoln town cars and drive home drunk.
Rush, like those guys, was an elitist bully. He thought he was better than most other people, and he didn't even have the integrity to even try to tell the truth to his "dittohead" fans. He was a mean-spirited huckster who built a politics that harmed his working class listeners.
This is in part why I have so little sympathy for the conservatives of the 90s who now are shocked, shocked about what the GOP became. The worst of Trumpism was all right there on Rush's 90s show to behold. Choosing not to see the horror of what the GOP was becoming was a choice.
I find it terribly sad that "being hated by liberals" is something that Limbaugh was proud of. I'm sure he'd find my criticisms of him to be affirmations of just how great a person he was. He loved to make people angry. He loved to watch our political culture burn. What a legacy.
Anyway, if you're curious about how the GOP went from the smiley, sunny, optimistic Reagan messaging to the dark, foreboding, apocalyptic, resentful Trump...few transitional figures are as important as Rush.
Here's an archive of 5700 of Rush's shows from 2005 to 2017, in case anyone's interested. https://t.co/tUaozue8Eb
In 1994 it was clear that Rush Limbaugh became richer (because he was already from a family of means) and more famous BECAUSE of the vile and hateful things he was willing to say on air. He was proud of this. It was his brand. https://t.co/K7LwJvo3LX
So for all of those "conservatives" out there saying how formative Rush was for them. This is what they're referring to. THIS is what people loved about him.
He gave conservatives permission to take pleasure in hating their fellow Americans who weren’t like them, and then to call such behavior “the pinnacle of American patriotism.”

More from Seth Cotlar

Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Wish folks cared as much about countering the political culture of far right hyper-nationalistic populism that traffics in anti-Semitic tropes and naturalized conceptions of racial and gender hierarchies, as they care about dissing those who use the word “fascism” to describe it.

Ultimately, I think that’s what lay behind this terminological dispute. Is democracy more threatened by “center-left/center-right neoliberalism” or by the far right? People who resist the f-word say the former is the *real* threat. People who use the f-word focus on the latter.

My sense is that the people who use the "f-word" are not the neoliberal simpletons their critics tend to think they are. And likewise, the f-word refuseniks are no fans of the far right, they just don't see it as being as powerful and threatening as others do.

This might be overly reductive, but I think at least some of this has to do with where one lives. If one lives in a very blue part of the country, I can see how the threat of far right paramilitaries would seem hyperbolic and exaggerated.

I happen to live in a state capitol were heavily armed, far right paramilitaries have spent the past year assaulting people on a regular basis and working in cahoots with GOP legislators to invade and shut down the state legislature. Things feel quite edgy here.
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Thinking about all of those Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who drilled for months (if not years) in preparation for January 6 while visions of “Antifa super soldiers” danced in their heads.

Anyway, watch this video and share it with everyone you know.
INSURRECTION
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Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
The "center" of American politics is not a fixed point, it shifts over time. What is "the center" today would have been considered pretty far left in the 1990s. Likewise, what was the imagined "center" in the mid-1980s would have been considered pretty far right in the 70s.

One of Lincoln's skills as a politician was that he moved the center of American politics into an antislavery place, and he also evolved in his own thinking about slavery and race. Finding and helping to move "the center" is one (not the only) form of effective politics.

There is no such thing as a democratic political culture that lacks an imagined "center" and people who inhabit it. This is especially the case in a diverse and often fractious nation. The politics of persuasion is all about moving that imagined center in the direction you want.

Most of the people currently on the American far right are highly unlikely to move to the center, because their basic political commitments are hostile to America's multi-racial democracy. One task ahead is to prevent that segment of our political culture from growing.

How to do that is unclear. History shows that deplatforming can often work. History also shows that sometimes right wing radicals can gain fame and attention by presenting themselves as "martyrs" who've been persecuted by "elites." There's no iron clad formula.
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
It's important to note how deeply rooted & completely canonical these kooky ideas are in the US far right, & how dangerous it is that a sitting president is giving legitimacy to them. It's like Father Coughlin, the John Birch Society, and Geo Lincoln Rockwell had an orange baby.


Thanks (I think) to @z3dster for bringing this batshit tweet to my attention.

There's a long history of the American center-right and center-left laughing at this kind of stuff. It is indeed laughably ludicrous. But it's important to know that to millions of people, this is their truth. This is how they see the world. And now the President is condoning it.

One hallmark of fascism is that it defines "communism" as its enemy. One can be opposed to communism without being a fascist. But it's impossible to be fascist without being obsessed with the existential (and often hysterically overblown) threat of communism.

Every significant, US variant of fascism has depicted itself as a movement of Christian patriots defending the US from anti-American enemies of Christ. One can be a Christian and/or a patriot without being a fascist, but fascists almost always call themselves Christian patriots.
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
I seem to recall a story from a while back that revealed that Ginni Thomas met weekly with a group of right wing operatives that included the Project Veritas hoax artist.


Oh hey.

Gosh, look at that.

It’s all just so absurd, and yet so potent.


Here’s Anna Khait speaking at a pro-Trump, pro-steal the election rally last December.
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Anastasis
Anastasis
@OrdersofM
https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.


Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.
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Khatvaanga
Khatvaanga
@khatvaanga
Sri Gurubhyo Namah.
Some tweets on Adi Shankaracharya and in particular the Guru Parampara of @sringerimath. [I had done this series earlier 5 years ago on account of Shishya Sweekaram].


Adi Shankara established the Sringeri Peetham as the 1st of 4 amnaaya peetams.

The four being
1. Sarada Peetam at Sringeri.
2. Govardhana Peetam at Puri
3. Kalika at Dwaraka
4. Jyothir at Badarikashramam.

He installed his 4 most prominent shishyas as heads of the peetams.

Sureshwaracharya was assigned to Sringeri as its head.

Sringeri is a corruption of Rshyashrunga giri.

Rshyashrunga maharshi [and his father Sri Vibandhaka Maharshi] did their tapas at this place.

It is at Sringeri that Shankara spent 12 of His precious 32 years!!

That gives you and idea how much He loved this place.

Rshyashruga maharshi had a horn on his forehead, a result of being born to a deer. His mere presence was enough to shower rains!!

Rshyashrunga was one who led Putrakamesthi Yaagam of Dasaratha Maharaj and which resulted in Sri Rama's birth!!
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David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
If there is one thing I have learned it is that people love bullshit. They buy bullshit stories from professional bullshit artists, accept bullshit philosophies, purchase bullshit how-to-books, vote for bullshitting politicians.

At first, I resisted believing this because it is illogical and dumb and frankly, doesn't reflect well on the human race of which I am a member (and thus have long been hopeful that it is more of a distinction than it actually turns out to be.)

But if you actually are interested in facts you begin to notice how little most people care for them. Sometimes it is because they are heard to learn and bullshit is so much more widely and easily available. Sometimes it is because facts make them uncomfortable about themselves.

Sometimes it is because just one tiny fact will upset a whole worldview that has grown as comfortable as an overstuffed chair. (Settling into such worldviews is a lot like settling into chairs like that because the longer you're there and the deeper you sink...

...the harder it is to hoist yourself up and out of your fat-assed intellectual laziness.) But I actually think the reason people have such an appetite for bullshit goes deeper, goes to an aspect of ourselves we just can't accept.
LIFE
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.


See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:
SOCIETY
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𝕍𝕠𝕪𝕒𝕘𝕖𝕣...
@V0YAGERTWEETS
Ｇａｕ Ｍａｔａ Ｉｎ Ｖｅｄｉｃ
Ｃｕｌｔｕｒｅ

It is said that the one who bears the dust thrown from the hoof of Gaumata on his head, as if taking a bath in the water of the teerth sthalam and getting rid of all sins.


Ved and all other Hindu scriptures venerate the cow. The Vedic dictionary, Nighantu, gives amongst other synonyms of 'Gau' [ or cow] the words 'Aghnya', 'Ahi', and 'Aditi'.

Yaska the vedic decoder and commentator on Nighantu, defines these as-

Aghnya —— the one that ought not to be killed
Ahi —— the one that must not be slaughtered.
Aditi —— the one that ought not to be cut into pieces.

These three names of cow signify that this is an animal which should not to be put to tortures. These words appear frequently throughout the Veda in context of the cow.

But in due course the falsehood of killing cows spread far and wide and they became even more deep rooted when western scholars with their half baked knowledge of Sanskrit transliterated these interpretations of commentaries of Sayanacharya ,
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