Topix Underground

"..Here's Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) on the *permanence* of wealth disparity in the USA...
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The factual: America is not a bootstrap-friendly land. If you have money in America, chances very good are you inherited it.

American wealth is now dynastic, perpetuating itself and growing thanks to a whole Versailles' worth of courtiers: money managers, lawyers, and overpaid babysitters who can keep even the most Habsburg-jawed nepobaby in turnip-sized million-dollar watches and performance automobiles and organ replacements for their whole, interminable lives.

But it's not just that the American rich stay rich – it's that the American poor stay poor. America is a world-trailing loser in the international social mobility league-table. If you change classes in America, chances are you're a middle class person becoming poor, thanks to medical costs or another of the American debt-traps; or you're a poor person who is becoming a homeless person thanks to America's world-beating eviction mills.

As a factual matter, America just isn't the land of bootstraps; it's a land of hereditary aristocrats. Sustaining the American narrative of meritocracy requires a whole culture industry, novels and later movies that constitute a kind of state religion for Americans – and like all religious tales, the American faith tradition is riddled with gaps and contradictions.."

"...From Hairstylist to Jan. 6 Influencer: Meet the Man Helping the GOP Whitewash the Insurrection
Brandon Straka went from house arrest to convincing Republicans to embrace the Capitol rioters..."

"..Why are Nate & Elon & Donald & Jim so opposed to research on how to stop misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories?.."

You actually believe that?

Yes. No one except "anonymous sources" heard it. Bolton wasn't the only one. You have Pompeo, Fuentes, among others.

The people who made the claim haven't come forward and still haven't come forward.

Never happened. Even John Bolton said it didn't happen.

the more a lie is repeated the greater the chance that someone will believe it.

Off to the dentist. yuk

Trump did call fallen soldiers "losers," his former chief of staff says

Former President Trump didn't want to visit a cemetery near Paris for Americans who fought and died in World War I because it was filled with "suckers" and "losers," John Kelly, his longest-serving chief of staff, said in a statement to CNN on Monday.

Why it matters: In the statement, Kelly supported this and several other instances of Trump disparaging service members that were reported by The Atlantic in 2020 and vehemently denied at the time by the Republican 2024 presidential front-runner.

Of note: Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin previously confirmed parts of The Atlantic's story, including his refusal to visit the Aisne-Marne Cemetery in France.

The big picture: Other instances in the statement from Kelly, whose Marine son, Robert Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, that appeared to confirm the report were:

Trump saying at a 2017 Memorial Day event in Arlington National Cemetery: "I don't get it. What was in it for them?"
Kelly said Trump did not want to include military amputees at a White House military event in 2018 because it would make spectator's uncomfortable, and added that Trump had said their presence "doesn't look good for me."
Kelly also noted that Trump in 2016 publicly belittled the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain and Gold Star recipient who was killed in Iraq in 2004, after they criticized him for his anti-Muslim rhetoric.
And he condemned Trump for accusing retiring Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley last month of treason and suggesting that the punishment for such an act would have once been death.
What they're saying: ""A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women," Kelly said of Trump.

"A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason — in expectation that someone will take action," he continued, referring to Trump's statements on Milley.

Pentagon & Congress
Report: Trump disparaged US war dead as ‘losers,’ ‘suckers’