I keep thinking this level of depravity has to cause pain. But I guess when a guy has no depth to begin with, there's no depth to which a guy like 45* can't sink. Hypothesis: The only way you won't feel the pain of breaking with morality is to abandon that morality, and substitute a kind of Micro-Level Moral Relativism, where your "morality" is relative to your situational needs at any given moment(?)
Art Education helps us develop critical thinking skills and a sense of shared experience (empathy).
Brian Kasida & Daniel Bowen, Brookings: Engaging with art is essential to the human experience. Almost as soon as motor skills are developed, children communicate through artistic expression. The arts challenge us with different points of view, compel us to empathize with “others,” and give us the opportunity to reflect on the human condition. Empirical evidence supports these claims: Among adults, arts participation is related to behaviors that contribute to the health of civil society, such as increased civic engagement, greater social tolerance, and reductions in other-regarding behavior. Yet, while we recognize art’s transformative impacts, its place in K-12 education has become increasingly tenuous.
A critical challenge for arts education has been a lack of empirical evidence that demonstrates its educational value. Though few would deny that the arts confer intrinsic benefits, advocating “art for art’s sake” has been insufficient for preserving the arts in schools—despite national surveys showing an overwhelming majority of the public agrees that the arts are a necessary part of a well-rounded education.
Gee - I wonder why "conservatives" are always trying to cut back on what the arts can do for us. Maybe it's because the problems we love to bitch about - poverty, crime, ignorance, tribalism, the degeneration of civil discourse, etc - can be at least partly attributed to the erosion of the skills we need, but don't get to learn about anymore, because Republicans keep shitting on the arts by cutting the funding. And maybe those problems are due to deliberate efforts to cause the problems, blame it all on "the other", and then trade on that disinformation to gain ideological advantage and political power. The GOP Playbook, Page 1:
Fuck something up
Wait
Point at it and say, "Whoa, look - it's fucked up."
Run for office by promising to fix it
"Fix" it by contracting the solution out to your pals
Collect "contributions" from those pals
Get re-elected as a "Problem Solver"
Start again at #1 above
- and -
We find that a substantial increase in arts educational experiences has remarkable impacts on students’ academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Relative to students assigned to the control group, treatment school students experienced a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others. In terms of our measure of compassion for others, students who received more arts education experiences are more interested in how other people feel and more likely to want to help people who are treated badly.
When we restrict our analysis to elementary schools, which comprised 86 percent of the sample and were the primary target of the program, we also find that increases in arts learning positively and significantly affect students’ school engagement, college aspirations, and their inclinations to draw upon works of art as a means for empathizing with others. In terms of school engagement, students in the treatment group were more likely to agree that school work is enjoyable, makes them think about things in new ways, and that their school offers programs, classes, and activities that keep them interested in school. We generally did not find evidence to suggest significant impacts on students’ math, reading, or science achievement, attendance, or our other survey outcomes, which we discuss in our full report.
Turns out the Mark Zuckerberg character in the movie Social Media wasn't the plucky entrepreneurial good guy supernerd after all. I think maybe the writers and producers had that suspicion all along. WaPo, Yaël Eisenstat: I joined Facebook in June 2018 as “head of Global Elections Integrity Ops” in the company’s business integrity organization, focused specifically on political advertising. I had spent much of my career working to strengthen and defend democracy — including freedom of speech — as an intelligence officer, diplomat and White House adviser. Now I had the opportunity to help correct the course of a company that I viewed as playing a major role in one of the biggest threats to our democracy.
In the year leading up to our 2016 election, I began to see the polarization and breakdown of civil discourse, exacerbated by social media, as our biggest national security threat; I had written about that before Facebook called. I didn’t think I was going to change the company by myself. But I wanted to help Facebook think through the role it plays in politics, in the United States and around the world, and the best way to ensure that it is not harming democracy.
A year and a half later, as the company continues to struggle with how to handle political content and as another presidential election approaches, it’s clear that tinkering around the margins of advertising policies won’t fix the most serious issues. The real problem is that Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools that allow political operatives to engage in a new level of information warfare. Its business model exploits our data to let advertisers aim at us, showing each of us a different version of the truth and manipulating us with hyper-customized ads — ads that as of this fall can contain blatantly false and debunked information if they’re run by a political campaign. As long as Facebook prioritizes profit over healthy discourse, it can’t avoid damaging democracy.
I'm good with the argument that we don't want a private sector entity deciding questions of free speech - that's not really what we're talking about - but I get the argument.
Coupla things:
It's everybody's job - everybody's right, and everybody's obligation - to hold as many people as possible to account for telling the truth.
There's a near-absolute expectation that advertisers don't get to put out false or misleading claims about their own products, or the products of their competitors.
Caveat Emptor applies, but only to a certain extent. So if (eg) your dealership has a car for sale that you advertise as a peach, when it's a lemon - you can expect a visit from the fraud unit.
You can be fined.
You can go to jail.
You can be barred from that industry.
Thing 3: No rights are absolute or unlimited. Speech is not just an expression of ideas - it's also an action. If your actions present a clear and present danger to others - as individuals or as a community - you can be (and should be) smacked down.
We've got to have a taste of a Teddy Roosevelt-style Trust Buster in the White House. Some of these companies have grown too big and too powerful.
"We wear our widow's weeds like nuns, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice."
And while we're at it, let's all be sure to ask 45* about that little incident from a coupla years ago, when he was so very actively trying to "help our brave beautiful veterans."
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to pay $2 million to an array of charities as a fine for misusing his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests.
New York state Judge Saliann Scarpulla imposed the penalty after the president admitted to a series of abuses outlined in a lawsuit brought against him last year by the New York attorney general’s office.
Among other things, Trump acknowledged in a legal filing that he allowed his presidential campaign staff to coordinate with the Trump Foundation in holding a fundraiser for veterans during the run-up to the 2016 Iowa caucuses. The event was designed “to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign,” Scarpulla said.
He pimps a worthy cause to raise money for the veterans, but instead of giving over the full amount, he puts a big chunk of the money in his own pockets - which is consistent with his pattern of self-dealing, and why he and his kids are now barred from being involved in charitable organizations.
Anyway -
This is a day for remembering the fallen The lost Those who won't grow old with us. And yet they're still right here Forever young Forever by our sides And will remain for as long as we don't forget their names I raise my glass to them
People are "debunking" it, saying it's a selective edit, but that's a real hiss. He really did kinda spit the words "thank you" at the reporters as they continued asking questions after he tried to dismiss them the first time. I'm not giving him any kind of pass on this at all.
The point is to feed yourself. You need a good meal. But if you're thinking you'll have to fuck somebody over so you can grab a bite - when there's actually enough for both of you - then you're raising the probability that you both go hungry instead.
I want my favorite (right now that's Elizabeth Warren) to get the Democratic nomination, and I'm going to talk her up when I get the chance. But I'm not gonna shit on any other Democrat in the process.
The GOP jumped off the cliff and mashed itself into this weird amalgam of TheoCons and Radical Libertarians and Mindless Robotic Cheerleader Rubes - right 'round the fuckin' bend.
And for the last 25 or 30 years it's meant the Dems have had to do the work for both major parties. "Progressives" vs "Lefties" vs "ConservaDems" vs "Limousine Liberals" etc etc etc.
If we get hung up on any kind of purity tests or we shit on each other for backing "the wrong Democrat", then sure as fuck, we're going to be standing there with our dicks in our hands watching the impala run away. Again. Don't bring the DINO shit in here.
There are plenty of factions that make up the Democratic Voter Cohort. Every one of those factions is important if not absolutely vital in every election. But not one of them is more vital than all the others. What I'm thoroughly sick of hearing is the contest between factions to lay claim to the title of "Single Most Important blah blah blah". Yes, your issues are important, because your votes are important, and everybody - EVERY-FUCKING-BODY - gets that. Congratulations. Whoopty-fuckin'-doo for you. Now chop the wood and carry the water. Cuz y'know what? If the Dem doesn't win, then your issues don't mean shit. Your chances of even getting a hearing on your issues are less than shit. And can you guess why? Because you wouldn't work together last time, and they're at it again. So even when you know Putin and the Mercers and Steve Bannon (et al) are still doing everything they can do to get us to fight with each other, you can't figure out how to ignore all that divisive shit and do what it takes to send the Republicans straight to political hell? C'mon.
Robert F. Kennedy Cleveland City Club April 5, 1968
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear - only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
