Republicans pay homage to Hungary’s neo-fascist dictator, again!

American fascists in the 1930s

The New York Times writes in an opinion piece by Jamelle Bouie:

This year, the American Conservative Union decided to hold one of its Conservative Political Action Conference gatherings in Hungary. The group met last week in Budapest, guests of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who — since winning back office in 2010 — has led the country away from liberal democracy toward a system he proudly calls “illiberal democracy.”

Of course, with its endemic corruption, repression of sexual minorities, de facto state control of media, constitutional manipulation and an electoral system designed to give supermajorities to the ruling party whether the votes are there or not, there is little that is democratic about Orban’s democracy.

For American conservatives, however, the degradation of Hungarian democracy is a feature, not a bug, of Orban’s rule.

Hungary isn’t a particularly large country (by population, it’s about the size of Michigan) or a particularly rich one (its gross domestic product puts it somewhere between Nebraska and Kansas), but it is a showcase for how a reactionary movement in an ostensibly free society might seize control of the state to reshape society in its own image. And the goal, for both Orban and his American admirers, is the suppression of wokeness, a pejorative term for a broad range of progressive ideas about race, gender and sexuality. This includes, for some, the mere existence of L.G.B.T. people on an equal basis.

That shared goal of suppressing wokeness is why Tucker Carlson, one of the most prominent conservatives in the United States, hosted his show from Hungary for a week last year. “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions,” Carlson told his audience at the time, “you should know what is happening here right now.” It’s also why Rod Dreher, a popular conservative blogger and author, wrote that his readers “ought to be beating a path to Hungary.” And it’s why Donald Trump endorsed Orban’s re-election campaign not once but twice.

Which is to say that this CPAC session may have been held in Hungary so that conservatives can learn a little more about how they might unravel American democracy in order to impose their cultural and ideological vision on the country. They even got a little encouragement from Orban himself. “We need to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels,” he said in opening remarks on Thursday. “We need to find friends, and we need to find allies. We need to coordinate the movement of our troops, because we have a big challenge ahead of us.” Attendees heard from Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Carlson himself, whom Orban singled out for praise: “His program is the most watched. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcast day and night. Or as you say, 24/7.”  

What’s striking about this display of longing and affection for Orban’s regime — beyond the obvious spectacle of people who are ostensibly American nationalists working in concert with a foreign autocrat — is how it underscores a defining trait of conservative populists, if not conservative populism itself. For all the talk of “America First,” there is a deep disdain among members of this group for both Americans and the American political tradition.

The Republican Party neo-fascism, Christian nationalism and laissez-faire capitalism constitutes a deadly threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. The threat is obvious and undeniable. People either see it, or they cannot or could but won’t.  

Going forward, additional evidence of neo-fascist intent probably will not chance many minds. After all that has gone before, it is hard to imagine that  there are more a just a few open minds left, maybe ~5%, maybe less? The battle lines are drawn. War is coming to America.

Canada sees a threat from rising American conservative authoritarianism

A lot of people all over the planet are coming to recognize just how severe a threat the Republican Party, the ex-president and their propaganda Leviathan are to both American and Canadian democracy and liberty. A CBC article comments:

Canada should rethink relationship with U.S. as democratic 'backsliding' worsens: security experts

Canada's intelligence community will have to grapple with the growing influence of anti-democratic forces in the United States — including the threat posed by conservative media outlets like Fox News — says a new report from a task force of intelligence experts.

"The United States is and will remain our closest ally, but it could also become a source of threat and instability," says a newly published report written by a task force of former national security advisers, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) directors, ex-deputy ministers, former ambassadors and academics. Members of the group have advised both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Now is the time for the federal government to rethink how it approaches national security, the report concludes.

The authors — some of whom had access to Canada's most prized secrets and briefed cabinet on emerging threats — say Canada has become complacent in its national security strategies and is not prepared to tackle threats like Russian and Chinese espionage, the "democratic backsliding" in the United States, a rise in cyberattacks and climate change.

"We believe that the threats are quite serious at the moment, that they do impact Canada," said report co-author Vincent Rigby, who until a few months ago served as the national security adviser to Trudeau.

"We don't want it to take a crisis for [the] government of Canada to wake up."

Tucker the neo-fascist slandering Trudeau falsely claiming  

he set up a dictatorship in Canada

Evidence that information can flow backward in time

In 2011 researcher Daryl J Bem published a paper with data indicating that (i) information from the future could flow backward in time several seconds, and humans are unconsciously respond to it as if they are aware of it in the past. That article, Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect, sparked controversy. The experiments and data interpretation were relentlessly attacked and rejected. As far as I can tell, the data is still being attacked and rejected. There is no mechanism known to science that could account for information flow backward in time. The phenomenon is called precognition and is part of research into psychic phenomena, or psi research.

In an ongoing effort to show that the results are real, Bem and colleagues published updates in 2015, 2016 and 2022 of analyses of follow-on studies designed to replicate the original results of 2011. Those updates are described in the article, Feeling the future: A meta-analysis of 90 experiments on the anomalous anticipation of random future events.[1] According to Bem et al., the results are real and humans can sense at least some future events. 

Future events are shown to be sensed by the human brain or mind by showing images on a computer screen. Most images are neutral and do not elicit a detectable brain response. But images of erotic or strong negative content do elicit a detectable brain response. A computer randomly shows images, so humans are not involved in that aspect of the experiment. The data is that a few seconds before the computer “chooses” a response-eliciting image humans respond to it with a detectable burst of brain waves. That looks like information is flowing from the immediate future to a human in real time. Some people take this kind of data as evidence that a God(s) can exist and that psi phenomena are real.

Bem’s 2022 update claims that the results are rock solid real, not an anomaly, statistical fluke or flawed research protocol: 

We here report a meta-analysis of 90 experiments from 33 laboratories in 14 countries which yielded an overall effect greater than 6 sigma, z = 6.40, p = 1.2 × 10-10 with an effect size (Hedges’ g) of 0.09. A Bayesian analysis yielded a Bayes Factor of 5.1 × 109, greatly exceeding the criterion value of 100 for “decisive evidence” in support of the experimental hypothesis.

Statistical significance at a level of ‘6 sigma’ means that the results have about a two in one billion chance of being a fluke or false positive result. In physics, reports of fundamental new phenomenon require proof at a level of at least 5 sigma, or about 1 in 3.5 million. Physicists accepted the reality of the Higgs Boson, the last of the undetected fundamental particles the standard model of the universe predicted. It was proven at the 5 sigma level. If that is true, then what Bem has been arguing in the face of years of overwhelming criticism is real and his critics are wrong. One cannot rationally argue with 6 sigma results unless there are unknown flaws in the research and/or data analysis protocols.

Assume that Bem is right and this phenomenon is real what are the implications? Is there a God? Why don't brains produce responses to “neutral” images the computer shows? Are other psi phenomena real, e.g., telepathy or clairvoyance?

Reseasrchers inclined to believe Bem’s results acknowledge the difficulty most people have accepting this psi precognition phenomenon as real. A 2018 paper commented: 

“Most scientists consider the idea that prospection may also involve influences from the future to be flatly impossible due to violation of common sense or constraints based on one or more physical laws. We present several classes of empirical evidence challenging this common assumption. If this line of evidence can be successfully and independently replicated using preregistered designs and analyses, then the consequences for the interpretation of experimental results from any empirical domain would be profound.” 

In the face of Bem's analyses and his persistence, current research on this is getting more sophisticated. Results continue to come out that continue to undermine Bem’s explanation. A 2021 paper, found evidence of precognition with one experimental protocol, but it went away in a second protocol that was designed to control for past visual experiences. That paper commented: 

“Results from some individual participants suggest on the first glance a precognition pattern, but results from our second experiment make a perceptual history explanation more probable. On the group level, no precognition effects were statistically indicated. The perceptual history effects found in the present study are in confirmation with related studies from the literature. The precognition analysis revealed some interesting individual patterns, which however did not allow for general conclusions. Overall, the present study demonstrates that any future experiment about sensory or extrasensory perception urgently needs to control for potential perceptual history effects and that temporal aspects of stimulus presentation are of high relevance.”

This is an example of how science progresses. As something unexplainable comes up using early generation research protocols, later protocols are designed with better controls. That's especially important for social science research. Since we do not yet have a deep understanding of the brain-mind,  unknown biases and human complexities can lead to false conclusions.

Footnote:

1. The 2022 version of Bem’s paper comments: 

Precognition is one of several phenomena in which individuals appear to have access to “nonlocal” information, that is, to information that would not normally be available to them through any currently known physical or biological process. These phenomena, collectively referred to as psi, include telepathy, access to another person’s thoughts without the mediation of any known channel of sensory communication; clairvoyance (including a variant called remote viewing), the apparent perception of objects or events that do not provide a stimulus to the known senses; and precognition, the anticipation of future events that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process.

 

Buy Republican!

 There's a simple tried-and-true solution to climate change.

By Milt Policzer

Courthouse News columnist; racehorse owner and breeder; one of those guys who always got picked last.

Sometimes solutions to seemingly intractable problems pop up in unexpected places.

I was reading a New Yorker article on energy storage last week when, toward the end of the piece, this quote appeared: “The politicization of climate and energy policy comes from fossil-fuel companies that give enormous amounts to the Republican Party.”

Aha! Of course!

I’ve often wondered why any politician would be against saving the planet they live on. If not for themselves, at least for their children. Apparently, money is a factor.

So now we know how to save the planet — offer Republicans more money than the anti-planet people.

I know you’re thinking this is not possible — but it is. We don’t have to offer a mountain of money to the entire Republican Party. The U.S. Senate is equally divided. We just need enough money to buy a couple of votes.

Throwing some cash at Joe Manchin alone could make a huge difference.

Yes, I know some of you think this sounds like bribery. That’s because it is bribery. Let’s not quibble about a tried-and-true solution.

Is corruption that saves the planet really corruption?

https://www.courthousenews.com/buy-republican/

Is Milt - one of those guys who always got picked last - onto something here?

An expert opines: Russia is fascist

Timothy Snyder is a prominent scholar who studies how democracies fall and how tyrannies work. He wrote a 2017 book, On Tyranny, that described concrete steps average people can take to oppose the fall of democracy to tyrants. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist, he writes:

Fascism was never defeated as an idea.

As a cult of irrationality and violence, it could not be vanquished as an argument: So long as Nazi Germany seemed strong, Europeans and others were tempted. It was only on the battlefields of World War II that fascism was defeated. Now it’s back — and this time, the country fighting a fascist war of destruction is Russia. Should Russia win, fascists around the world will be comforted.

We err in limiting our fears of fascism to a certain image of Hitler and the Holocaust. Fascism was Italian in origin, popular in Romania — where fascists were Orthodox Christians who dreamed of cleansing violence — and had adherents throughout Europe (and America). In all its varieties, it was about the triumph of will over reason.

Because of that, it’s impossible to define satisfactorily. People disagree, often vehemently, over what constitutes fascism. But today’s Russia meets most of the criteria that scholars tend to apply. It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. It has a cult of the dead, organized around World War II. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness, to be restored by a war of healing violence — the murderous war on Ukraine.

Many hesitate to see today’s Russia as fascist because Stalin’s Soviet Union defined itself as antifascist. But that usage did not help to define what fascism is — and is worse than confusing today. With the help of American, British and other allies, the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany and its allies in 1945. Its opposition to fascism, however, was inconsistent.

Before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Soviets treated fascists as just one more form of capitalist enemy. Communist parties in Europe were to treat all other parties as the enemy. This policy actually contributed to Hitler’s ascent: Though they outnumbered the Nazis, German communists and socialists could not cooperate. After that fiasco, Stalin adjusted his policy, demanding that European communist parties form coalitions to block fascists.

Stalin’s flexibility about fascism is the key to understanding Russia today. Under Stalin, fascism was first indifferent, then it was bad, then it was fine until — when Hitler betrayed Stalin and Germany invaded the Soviet Union — it was bad again. But no one ever defined what it meant. It was a box into which anything could be put. Communists were purged as fascists in show trials. During the Cold War, the Americans and the British became the fascists. And “anti-fascism” did not prevent Stalin from targeting Jews in his last purge, nor his successors from conflating Israel with Nazi Germany.

Because Mr. Putin speaks of fascists as the enemy, we might find it hard to grasp that he could in fact be fascist. But in Russia’s war on Ukraine, “Nazi” just means “subhuman enemy”— someone Russians can kill. Hate speech directed at Ukrainians makes it easier to murder them, as we see in Bucha, Mariupol and every part of Ukraine that has been under Russian occupation. Mass graves are not some accident of war, but an expected consequence of a fascist war of destruction.

Fascists calling other people “fascists” is fascism taken to its illogical extreme as a cult of unreason. It is a final point where hate speech inverts reality and propaganda is pure insistence. It is the apogee of will over thought. Calling others fascists while being a fascist is the essential Putinist practice. Jason Stanley, an American philosopher, calls it “undermining propaganda.” I have called it “schizofascism.” The Ukrainians have the most elegant formulation. They call it “ruscism.”

Spiritual but not religious...

“Spiritual but not religious.” Many people are claiming that designation these days, when asked about their religious affiliation.

Q1: How would you define that "spiritual" designation?  What’s the difference between those two designations?  Is it some kind of non-sequitur?  A cop-out?  Pure nonsense?  An attempt to insult/belittle orthodox religions?  What exactly are the missing/included ingredients that sets those two designations apart?

Q2: Have you ever experienced spirituality without religion?  If so, tell us your story.

Thanks for thinking about it, posting and favoriting.