SAM JARED BONAR
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SAM JARED BONAR

sam rants

Sam's got some huge problems

It would have been so much easier

12/31/2016

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Please listen to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast's episode on courageous satire (thanks Ginnie!). Really inspiring and useful to think about as we keep normalizing and laughing at Trump for being a hypocrit. Nobody cares if you're a hypocrit if they're on your side.

And also read this piece about the right way to criticize Trump:
Let’s, then, go through a few insults and criticisms of Trump that don’t seem to work very well. A few of the most obvious:
Trump is orange
Trump is vulgar
Trump is dumb
​
Trump has funny hair
These are all given frequent mention. They are also beside the point. One should care far more about what Trump thinks and does than what he looks like. Now, one could say that what he looks like is in some ways a reflection of who he is, since the ridiculous spray-tan with the little white eye-regions is the product and consequence of his vanity. But the broader principle of progressives should be: what someone looks like is of minimal relevance in evaluating them. That’s what we believe. And we should be consistent in that belief. If someone made fun of our candidate’s appearance, no matter what that appearance was, we would declare that as a matter of principle, image should matter less than substance. Such high-mindedness is both admirable and correct. But it has no force unless you maintain it consistently, even as applied to people whom you detest.
And, it's a little late for a hot take on the election, but here's mine:

The reason our collective failure hurts so much is because we were SO READY to just hand over the keys. And really just focus on us, ya know? Like we could have been done with poltiics, finally! This was the last election racist, mysoginst, old white men could (thank god for Hispanics!), and we just had to get over this little hurtle and then we'd be done! That black guy and that old grandma would be President because of us! Wouldn't that feel great?!?

And then we wouldn't really have to care anymore! We'd get upset about things, but generally we'd trust Hill to get us through it (let me be clear, she would have with flying colors). And if she ever did something disagreeable, we'd just be kinda bummed about it but not hold her accountable or anything - after all, she's way better than those feed-bags in Congress blocking her path on the good stuff! And she's sure as shit better than that loser Donald J. Drumpf. Ah, wouldn't that have felt good to say....

But we can't say it. We have to work now. We have to resist. We have to make jokes for a reason now. We have to be courageous.
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No-win foreign Policy

11/7/2016

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Just found a super excellent, moderate, and even-handed description of the difficulties of taking over after Obama and trying to find solutions for our new multi-polar and super complex world. Obama has tried to have it all and be status-quo after inheriting a pretty bad situation in general. So we are just limping along, continuing our politics of steering the world trying to avoid disasters instead of creating a coherent vision for it. And meanwhile we can't really even talk about what we want because we've lost our "internal strength", or "the health and sanity of our own society." Preach.
In this context, Barack Obama will likely be viewed by posterity as a status quo President who sought to maintain continuity with U.S. grand strategy and alliance partnerships, even if he tried to do so on the cheap. Perceiving a rising China as the greatest challenge to the United States, in his first term he reduced military assets in Europe and attempted to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; both moves were intended to shift scarce resources to Asia. But Putin’s assault on Ukraine and the explosive emergence of ISIS forced him to reengage in both Europe and the Middle East. Whipsawed by events, Obama has been justly criticized for misreading Putin, underestimating ISIS, and damaging U.S. credibility thanks to his feckless posturing with respect to Assad.

However, these assessments often fail to account for the global perspective that a U.S. President responsible for sustaining American primacy in all theaters of the globe must constantly bear in mind. For Obama this meant putting a premium on husbanding strength and avoiding military entanglements while relying on the panoply of instruments within the U.S. diplomatic toolbox—what Kennan referred to as “measures short of war.” But such is the mismatch between U.S. resources and global commitments that Obama arguably ended up overstretching the U.S. military anyway, while still under-resourcing his de facto containment strategy toward China.

Donald Trump has a coherent vision for the world. And it's even based on old ideals of American exceptionalism. But these ideas aren't based in reality, but the article interestingly says that they "nonetheless represent a plausible and even inevitable future should the United States continue on its present course of institutional paralysis and political gridlock". Though Making American Alone Again may decrease some of our more acute problems of trying to balance competing interests and being responsible for everyone, it is extremely dangerous to the greater peace we have forged since WWII. (via kottke)

The hard part seems to be that there is no coherent vision that is also a feasible vision. What's sad is no one seems interested in feasible visions at all. 

Sorry this is all over the place. The simple part of this election is coming to an end. The hard part has just begun.
Obama, in short, has attempted to execute a balance of power strategy that in principle is well suited to a multipolar global system. Whether such cold, Nixonian realism in foreign policy is suited to the American temperament is another question altogether. Since the radical break with isolationist tradition in the wake of World War II, public support for U.S. global leadership has been sustained by a romantic faith in America’s overseas mission—a kind of internationalized Manifest Destiny. Obama’s challenge to the myth of omnipotence, although based on a realistic appraisal of the changing balance of power in the world, has been psychologically deflating. The risk over time is that the American people will choose to recoil from a world that readily bends neither to America’s power nor its moral vision. In the meantime, especially when feelings of vulnerability run high due to recurrent terrorist attacks in Europe and on U.S. soil, the public nostalgically hankers for leadership that projects confidence in America’s capacity to defeat all comers: thus the attraction throughout 2016 of candidates who promised a restoration of American primacy—an America that wins again.
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Donald Trump is Citizen Kane

10/27/2016

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From the ever-excellent Jason Kottke, here's a video and article about Trump admiring yet (seemingly) knowing the faults and foibles of the title character of the all-time classic ​Citizen Kane.
And of course he doesn't really get it, but he seems to possess a really, really, truly beautiful and fantastic self-awareness for a hot second there. By far the most interesting explainer of Trump I've read over the past 15 months (good god).
Trump either fails to see the moral emptiness at Kane’s core, or else he does, and it doesn’t strike him as exceptional. Either way, however we spin it—wherever we draw the line of his self-delusion—Trump is admitting that he’s every bit as hollow as Charlie Kane; every bit “the empty box” (as Welles called him); every bit the liar and narcissist and demagogue.
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Voldemort hugs Draco just a bit too long

9/13/2016

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I would watch a much longer extended cut of this. No way you can go wrong with this.
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Who Puts the Pokemon There?

8/10/2016

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I scoffed when I first heard this from my friend - an algorithm, of course!

Boy was I wrong:
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Rename "Fire ants" to "Spicy Boys"

7/22/2016

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This needs to be done NOW! I'm tired of this rigged system. Sign your name for real change.

https://www.change.org/p/rename-fire-ants-to-spicy-boys?recruiter=577256789&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
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Now that's spicy.
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Mesmerizing Witches

7/6/2016

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That is all.
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LeftLand and RightLand

7/5/2016

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George Saunders really killing it with this piece on Trumpism and the two countries we are living in. Especially this:
​The night was sad. The center failed to hold. Did I blame the rioting kids? I did. Did I blame Trump? I did. This, Mr. Trump, I thought, is why we practice civility. This is why, before we say exactly what is on our minds, we run it past ourselves, to see if it makes sense, is true, is fair, has a flavor of kindness, and won’t hurt someone or make someone’s difficult life more difficult. Because there are, among us, in every political camp, limited, angry, violent, and/or damaged people, waiting for any excuse to throw off the tethers of restraint and get after it. After which it falls to the rest of us, right and left, to clean up the mess.
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Disney Princesses Reimagined as Cats Reimagined as Sharks That Are Not Disney Princesses

7/5/2016

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 This is where we need to be heading. More here.
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As one commenter put it, "go home internet, you're drunk".
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More on the Disturbing Front

5/13/2016

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Joan Cornella. This fucking guy. Everything he does is either disturbing, disorienting, sadistic as fuck, or all three.
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The last one reminds me of this other animator - Cyriak (without Cyriak's crazy use of techno). Used to be huge on the youtube scene.
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