<.....As historian Heather Cox Richardson told me recently:

A lot of privileged white men simply do not believe that there's a different way to look at the world than theirs. And they also don't believe that anything could happen to them. ... [M]any of them, in my experience, seem to believe that everybody ideally lives in a world in which they make all their own decisions, and they have no demands on them. … Now, I don't know a woman who approaches the world that way. Because there are always family demands and friends’ demands and children and work demands. There's a web of demands on you. You start from a position in which you can't imagine that you can do whatever you want under any circumstances. And then if you take a step beyond that and you actually add into it, people who wish you ill ... the world feels much more like a web than a world in which you can do anything you want. I can imagine a world in which I am not either allowed to do what I want, but also in which my very life is at stake. I sometimes think that that's much easier for somebody like me to imagine, who's worked as a waitress ... than for somebody who came from a middle class suburb and went to a good school and has a good solid job.

In a series of essays at The American Prospect, historian Rick Perlstein shared a conversation he had with journalist Jeff Sharlet about the New York Times and its failings. Sharlet told him that on many previous occasions he had resisted others' use of the word "fascist," until he finally concluded that, in the Trump era, "This is the real deal. There’s a real fascist movement. And I don’t think we have on the table all the storytelling tools we need to counter it."

The result was Sharlet's book "The Undertow," based on holding "hundreds of conversations, witnessing dozens of political and church services, and logging thousands of miles on the road." But in a public discussion with Sharlet, an unnamed New York Times journalist — who evidently had not read Sharlet's book — rejected the word "fascism":

He was especially smug in the first utterance he offered to the audience: “Yeah, I don’t know if I would use that word” — his eyebrows arched disapprovingly — “it’s not a word we use in The New York Times.”

Then he practically giggled.

Sharlet then directed a question to him — “with love and affection for The New York Times and the dilemma that you’re in: What is the argument against calling that ‘fascism’?” ...

“For the same reason we don’t call Trump ‘racist.’ It’s more powerful to say what something is than to offer a label on it that is going to be debated, you know, and distract from the reporting that goes into it."

Sharlet: “Who is debating Trump’s racism right now?”

Mr. Times: “You can say something is ‘racist.’ You can say something is a racist thing. But putting a label on someone is distorting from the reporting that we do. And the reporting is much harder. And much more powerful than the writing” — what he implied was the only thing Sharlet did, perhaps in an armchair in a book-lined study, smoking a pipe, mongering labels. “And people are welcome to label things however they want, but there’s frankly nobody else doing the reporting that we do. ... That’s what ten million people are subscribing to The New York Times for … And not to like sound too high and mighty, but the market has spoken, and they like what we’re doing.”

Privilege is the ability to avoid discomfort, and to bend subjective reality to fit your whims and desires. Black and brown people, Muslims, Jews, women, the LGBTQ community and members of other marginalized and targeted groups lack such a luxury. The mainstream media’s willful blindness to the threat of Trump and his movement, and what it will mean if he takes power in 2025, is creating the conditions for an American dictatorship and its reign of terror.>

<Wrong page, so often the case from a litterbug.

Magnus Carlsen skipped out on Tata Steel Masters 2024 "the Wimbledon of Chess". Was MC dodging last year's winner Anish Giri?

No. Magnus Carlsen has won Tata Steel eight times in his illustrious career....

....Perhaps Carlsen didn't want to get nicked up by the rising teenage talents sitting atop the leader board, or the ever-steady women's champion Ju Wenjun...

Or was this tournament simply too much work for the semi-retired Carlsen (age 33)? The best way to protect one's legacy is not to play in the toughest tournaments....>

There is, of course, another way: by winning everything in sight, as Carlsen has done for many years.

<[Event "6th Monadnock Marathon"] [Site "Jaffrey NH"]
[Date "1983.10.30"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "10"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Albrecht, Klaus"]
[ECO "A53"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "6th Monadnock Marathon"] [Site "Jaffrey NH"]
[Date "1983.10.30"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "12"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Casillas, Adrian"]
[ECO "E42"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d3 d6 6.O-O a6 7.Nbd2 O-O 8.Bb3 Qe7 9.Re1 Ng4 10.Re2 Kh8 11.h3 Nxf2 12.Rxf2 Bxf2+ 13.Kxf2 f5 14.exf5 Bxf5 15.Ne4 h6 16.Kg1 Be6 17.Be3 b6 18.Bxe6 Qxe6 19.Qe2 Rae8 20.Ng3 Qg6 21.Kh2 Ne7 22.c4 Qe6 23.Re1 Ng6 24.Qd2 Kg8 25.b3 Rf7 26.d4 Ref8 27.d5 Qd7 28.Qe2 b5 29.c5 c6 30.Qd3 Rxf3 31.Qxg6 R3f6 32.Qd3 dxc5 33.Bxc5 Re8 34.Ne4 Rf4 35.Nd6 e4 36.Qg3 Ref8 37.Nxe4 Re8 1-0>

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bf4 Bg7 4.h3 O-O 5.c3 d6 6.Nbd2 b6 7.e3 Nbd7 8.a4 a6 9.Bc4 Bb7 10.O-O c5 11.Re1 Nd5 12.Bh2 Nc7 13.e4 b5 14.Bf1 cxd4 15.cxd4 bxa4 16.Qxa4 Ne6 17.e5 dxe5 18.dxe5 Ndc5 19.Qa3 a5 20.Rac1 Qb6 21.Nc4 Qa7 22.Ra1 a4 23.Qe3 Bd5 24.Red1 Rfd8 25.Re1 Qb7 26.Bf4 Bxf3 27.gxf3 Nb3 28.Ra3 Nbd4 29.Rc1 Nxf4 30.Qxf4 Nb3 31.Re1 Nd4 32.Rc3 Ne6 33.Qe3 Nd4 34.Bg2 Nf5 35.f4 Qxg2+ 36.Kxg2 Nxe3+ 37.Rexe3 Bf8 38.Kf3 e6 39.Red3 Bb4 40.Rxd8+ Rxd8 41.Rc2 Rd3+ 42.Ne3 a3 43.bxa3 1/2-1/2>

No dice--you are only allowed to complain/critique/infest things from afar.

<[Event "17th RIC Pawn Eater"] [Site "Providence RI"]
[Date "1985.01.27"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "4.5"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Hynick, Tim"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "A36"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<Greed does not become you, O my brother>

And so it was that Black came to his end in the following game.

<[Event "Boylston Thanksgiving Open"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1983.11.25"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "1.1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "B11"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<Litterbug stew. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa gets no respect here. Magnus Carlsen opted out of Tata Steel 2024 to avoid tarnishing his legacy.

Not to worry, Pragg -- you will have many more accomplished days in the future even if Americans are too dumb to know it.>

<[Event "Midwest Masters"] [Site "Chicago IL"]
[Date "1988.??.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Lukowiak, William"]
[Black "Chachere, Lawrence"]
[ECO "B91"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Midwest Masters"] [Site "Chicago IL"]
[Date "1988.??.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Rolletschek, Heinrich"]
[Black "Lukowiak, William"]
[ECO "C65"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Cambridge Invitational"] [Site "Cambridge Mass"]
[Date "1984.11.29"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Pearson, Fred"]
[ECO "D00"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

< He likely may not have as well.

C'mon man, stop being so lazy. Your 50,000 cheapo posts are as tarnished as Hunter Biden's reputation for stuffing the family pockets with foreign money.

His sidekick from Budapest will, by his own admission, evidently go on wholesale whistle-blowing expeditions in a revanchist sort of way.

<South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem delivered comments today suggesting that she believes that Texas was one of the original colonies that signed the articles of confederation or a participant in the constitutional convention.

Noem: Texas and the 13 original colonies would have never signed the treaty that formed the first constitution of the United States if they didn't think their right to protect themselves and defend their own people was protected.

The only problem is Texas didn’t become a state until 1845

Noem has often promoted ‘patriotic education.’ In 2022, Noem released social studies standards for her state. The standard for fourth-grade students requires them to be knowledgeable on the Constitution and its history.>

In fairness, this is egregious, but not as bad as the clip I came across recently in which a young person is asked to name three states, spits out two continents, reflects a while and names a third.