Hmmm

[james_davis_nicoll]

Is that the sound of despair from Mr Card?

Comments

[onyxlynx]

It's certainly an alternate history. I recognized one fact in that farrago of weirdness.

Conservatism is not a mental illness, but it seems to disrupt logical thought rather badly.

[solarbird]

Tribal identification does so far more.

Only, if only

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

We still lived in caves and men wuz men, wot a wonderful whirled it wud be.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

What an ass.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

I almost feel sorry for him: the imaginary reality he has constructed for himself is a pretty unhappy place to live in. Doom doom doomity-doom!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Dear gods, I read half that screed, and Card has reached the point that most of his ideas don't make any sense at all - it's just a collection of far right screeds unconnected by any shreds of rationality.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

That was exactly what I thought.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I got through Obama's election as a sign of the apocalypse (whether because he's a Democrat or because he's black OSC didn't say), and bailed out when he tried to pitch "rich" as meaning upper middle class middle aged people. I don't know if that's willful ignorance or willful bullshit and I can't be bothered to care.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The amazing thing is how indistinguishable it is in prose style and general construction from John C. Wright in similar screed mode. I would have difficulty telling them apart if the references to their specific sects were removed, except that Wright's adjectives are somewhat purpler. But only somewhat.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I'd call it petulance rather than despair.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

that was all very confusing... now my brain aches..

[nebogipfel.livejournal.com]

A decade or so ago they believed that by now they would be part of a right-winger bunch dominating the world - and now they realize that they don't even return their phone calls.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

He really has completely peeled away from observable reality. This bit made me laugh: "...the ones they call 'rich' are usually just hard-working people in late middle age, finally reaching their peak earning years." He might just as well have said "I now live in a world formed entirely of my own anxieties, because I am the center of the universe."

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The self-similar nature of income inequality in the US makes it hard to think about who is rich, because even people in the top 1% are keenly aware that there are people almost unimaginably richer than they are. And our weak social insurance means that even people who are quite rich feel insecure.

I'm more or less one of the "peak earning years" people Card is thinking of. I'm not in the 1% but I'm safely top quintile. And there are gigantic gaps above me just as there are below me, and I am in no way resentful of people proposing to raise my taxes, and I'm especially not resentful of efforts to raise the taxes of people making ten or a hundred or a thousand times as much as I do (and those people exist).

The whole system is messed up; I shouldn't have to be in the economic elite just to secure my daughter a place in some kind of social lifeboat.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've heard that "the one per cent" isn't accurate-- the lower half of the one per cent includes a lot of professionals who earned their money by skilled work.

However, the top half of the one per cent is mostly finance, and a lot of that is getting fees for shuffling money around in useless or destructive ways.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

"Carter and Clinton did slash defense and weaken America's capacity, but they did not damage the economy to the point where we could not recover our strength within a few years of a responsible person occupying the Oval Office."

Holy Krap! Alternate realities really do exist!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

He can't very well point out that the Clinton administration prepared a more efficient and modern military force for George W. Bush to go send into pointless conflicts. Clinton was a Democrat!

[jimlj1715.livejournal.com]

"Obama, however, because he is ideologically pure and never compromises,"

That does it. He's posting from an alternate universe. Otherwise some of his other observations such as: "Since there was never either truth or evidence supporting this belief, contradictory evidence will hardly make a dent in it," would indicate he was looking in a mirror, and thinking that he was reporting on the left.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

The mirror model does match if you replace 'Obama' with 'Boehner' or other right-wing leaders.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Man, I miss the OSC of a few years ago, who was nutty about gay marriage and Islam but still sane on lots of other issues. Including the Obamas, on occasion.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

The Brain Eater is rarely satisfied with just a snack.

[malada.livejournal.com]

It appears that Don Card Quixote is busy jousting with straw men. As in the original, the straw men are winning.

-m

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Seeing that Card has deteriorated so far makes me sad. This rant is not sane, honest, or honorable, and he used to be all three, or at least able to pass for them.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

If you believe in the two-parent family, you aren't getting tenure at most universities. Because it's about faith, not science.


What he really means is "fag bashers find it hard to get tenure"

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

YOU SEE THE PROBLEM IS WITH ALL THOSE LATTE LIBERALS WHO ENFORCE CULTURAL MARXISM IN SCIENCE IF THEY HADN'T SUPPRESSED THE BRILLIANT DEAN DRIVE BECAUSE JOHN W. CAMPBELL WAS BRAVE ENOUGH TO SPEAK THE TRUTH TO POWER WE WOULD BE LIVING ON THE CANALS OF MARS BY NOW IN THE BRAVE NEW FREE WORLD OF MARS WHERE MEN ARE FREE TO BE RUGGED INDIVIDUAL MEN WITHOUT BIG GOVERNMENT BREATHING DOWN THEIR NECKS AND RESTRICTING REAL SCIENCE WHILE THE ESTABLISHMENT ORDER KEEPS ON WITH ITS PROGRAM OF CONDUCTING SCIENTIFIC LYNCHINGS AGAINST ANYONE WHO DARES QUESTION THE ORTHODOX VIEW WHILE THE SOVIETS POISON OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS, FLUIDS WHICH CAN BRING THE LIGHT OF CIVILIZATION TO THE GREEN FIELDS OF MARS WHILE WE STRIP-MINE ITS FORESTS FOR MORE COAL TO POWER OUR MIGHTY TURBINES OF STEAM, BUT YOU KNOW THOSE EFFETE INTELLECTUALS WOULD SAY CARBON DIOXIDE DOESN'T DO ANYTHING GOOD, BUT TREES POLLUTE MORE THAN HUMANS DO ANYWAY, RONALD REAGAN SAID IT AND WHO ARE YOU TO CORRECT THE GIPPER

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

My eyes!

Card lives in a different reality

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

Carter and Clinton did slash defense and weaken America's capacity...

The first hit on the Google shows that Pentagon spending went UP every year under Jimmy Carter:
1976 283.8
1977 286.2
1978 286.5
1979 295.6
1980 303.4


( http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html#ixzz3Eex2oNI1 )

We now have conclusive evidence that the best predictor of educational success is to grow up in a two-parent household.

So why then would one ever be opposed to allowing single-parent gays to marry?

Re: Card lives in a different reality

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

*ndr* L**v*n has asserted -- or assumed -- that the crucial difference is between two sexes of parents vs. one sex of parent, rather than two parents vs. one parent. The reasoning is beyond my feeble understanding.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

My wife asserts that Obama is further right than Reagan. But then I think a sizable percentage of the U.S. is completely batshit crazy, OSC is just one of the voices of these hateful jackalopes.