Category Archives: Transhuman News

EXCLUSIVE: Bill Maher is back and ready to rumble.

I feel like Covid is still the dominant issue of our lives right now and it should not be anymore, the Real Time with Bill Maher host says as the HBO series prepares to kick off its 20th season tonight. And I think the big discussion on our show Friday night when we go on, is should we continue with the Covid policies weve had in the past?

Set to feature a one-on-one interview with On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century author Timothy Snyder and panelists Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Honestly podcasts Barri Weiss, the Real Time 20th season debut will undoubtedly see professional contrarian Maher also tackle the legacy and possible future of Donald Trump. Even with a tendency to lapse into grumpy old white man mode and false equivalencies when it comes to the culture wars, Maher has proven an unsparing Cicero of sorts against the tyranny of Trumpism and the frequent ineptitude of American liberals.

In that vein, the multi-Emmy nominated satirist spoke with me about his 2024 fears and the progress, or lack thereof, in the fight against the pandemic. Looking back over the years, currently longest running late-night host on the air, Maher also noted the shifts hes observed in the increasingly ravaged body politic since Real Time premiered in 2003 when George W Bush was in the White House.

DEADLINE: Years ago I saw a documentary about the Rolling Stones and they interviewed the late great Charlie Watts outside some airplane hangar or something on a video shoot. And theyre asking the clearly unimpressed drummer about his career and the band, and at one point Watts looks at the camera and says, Work five years and 20 years hanging around, f*cking around or something like that. So, I wanted to ask you, looking back now, what does 20 seasons of Real Time feel like to you?

BILL MAHER: Not bad. Because theres never any just doing f*ck all on my show, I mean, I work really hard on it. I like the grind. You know Im just coming off a vacation so it kind of lands with a thud like, wow, I forgot this takes a lot of work every week. But you know it keeps me off the streets, and Ive always enjoyed the process of putting a show together over a whole week to be able to make it the best possible show.

As opposed to my first show in the 90s, Politically Incorrect, which was an everyday show. And when you do an everyday show its a different animal. Youre just kind of throwing sh*t up against the wall and seeing what sticks. I mean, thats sort of the beauty of it too, you know, its a little less polished and that can be great too.

DEADLINE: One thing I always loved about Politically Incorrect was it always felt like you were a little bit on the knifes edge, as was the show itself.

MAHER: Yeah, like I say, theres some virtue in both of them. Just like to continue with your music analogy with the Rolling Stones thats a raw sound, you know, theyre not overproduced, whereas like the Beatles most of their stuff is like very perfectly completed in the studio. With the Rolling Stones, youre just going to feel like theyre letting it rip. Theres good in both.

DEADLINE: Its an understatement to say there hasnt been a lot of good news the past couple of months around the ongoing pandemic with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. Covid saw Real Time filming from your backyard for a while in 2020 and even go dark last year for a spell when you tested positive. So, heading back to a new season this week, whats your feeling about the pandemic in 2022?

MAHER: Im over Covid.

DEADLINE: Really?

MAHER: I was never scared of it. I was always scared of the reaction to it, and as this has played out that only proved to be more true for me. Im sure many people feel different, but thats me. It was never that virulent a threat, I thought, to people who were in good health.

Now, some people cant help that theyre not in good health. We should, of course, protect the vulnerable, but it was mostly a disease of the very old, which every disease is a threat to, and people who have comorbidities, which mostly is due to lifestyle.

DEADLINE: Yeah, youve always been quite strong about that in terms of people taking care of their health and the way they can do it.

MAHER: Right. I mean, 78%, this is just the CDC fact, 78% of the people who died or went to the hospital were obese. Now, Im not saying they deserved to die. Dont twist my words, please. Im just saying that is a lifestyle, you know? So, the fact that America, the medical establishment, never even attempted to get people to live a healthier lifestyle as a response to this pandemic is a giant scandal to me. [Editors note: The CDC study from March 2021 that Maher seems to be citing actually says among 148,494 adults who received a Covid-19 diagnosis during an emergency department or inpatient visit at 238 U.S. hospitals during MarchDecember 2020, 28.3% had overweight and 50.8% had obesity.]

Its not a rarefied or weird point of view to say that if people would up their vitamin D levels, up their zinc levels, stop eating sugar, get a proper amount of sleep, stop overeating and day drinking, which is what went on during this pandemic, they would have a much better chance. The people who didnt do that have blood on their hands. Theres no other way to put it.

I understand that the Western medical establishment is rather cozy with the pharmaceutical industry, so I understand that their only idea about solving this is a pharmaceutical response. And Im glad there is a vaccine because many people need a vaccine. It does stop you from dying. But shouldnt we also have at least mentioned this other way to deal with it?

DEADLINE: In terms of mentioning another way, you attracted a lot of attention last fall in your Slow-Moving Coup segment when you warned against Donald Trump declaring himself the winner of the 2024 election regardless of the outcome, the vote count consequences of the stooges he is installing right now and the threat of violence that will make January 6 look like a training session. It was a stark assessment that not a lot of people wanted to hear

MAHER: I dont know anyone who didnt want to hear that except Trumpers, but maybe I missed it. Actually, what I mostly heard the reaction from that was you scared the sh*t out of us and Im glad you did. And since I said it, Ive noticed basically that theme being put out there in dozens of places. Its now like part of the dialogue in America and thats exactly what my show is meant to do, is to put ideas in the water that other people are ignoring or too afraid to say.

And you know that is certainly what Im going to be doing about Covid also, as you mention that.

DEADLINE: How so?

MAHER: I mean, were in a very different place with Covid than we were just when I was on the air last time, and that is the vaccines, we know, do not prevent you from either transmitting it or getting the disease. We know that. Thats a fact now. They just prevent you from dying, which is a great part of it, lets not undercount that. But if they dont prevent you from transmitting it and they dont prevent you from getting it why are we still treating this disease the way we always have? And what the f*ck is the use of a booster shot? Because I will never get a booster shot.

DEADLINE: Because you think its useless?

MAHER: Its not only useless, but this is a very, very new vaccine. Okay, I didnt want the first vaccine. We should not treat people unfairly who want to allow their own immune system to take care of the situation. But okay, I took one for the team. Now, theyre giving a fourth one in Israel with the booster shots. Now, this I read in the front page of the New York Times, which is a very pro-vaccine publication, and even they printed that many scientists in Israel were against this, scientists and doctors, because they said it might have a reverse effect, something called immune system fatigue.

Well, I dont want that, do you? So, now youre not protected by the vaccine or your immune system? I dont think so.

DEADLINE: One of the emerging realities over the past few months is that many are simply exhausted by the pandemic now and what feels like ever-changing standards from governments and scientists changing regulations, requirement and edicts, like the recent move to quarantine now for just five days if you test positive for Covid. Listening to you, it sounds like you really dont think Dr. Anthony Fauci or the medical establishment really know what they are doing, that this is more whack-a-mole?

MAHER: They dont know a lot about anything.

Thats not a criticism of them like theyre being corrupt although there certainly is plenty of corruption in the medical establishment. But Ive always maintained that the big overarching theme should be that people look back and say, oh, look how far weve come medically. Yes, thats true. Were not putting wooden teeth in our mouth like in the George Washington era, and of course we have antibiotics and lots of vaccines and lots of other things that have been miraculous. But in general, we still dont understand too much about how the human body works.

So, dont sit there in your white coat and tell me just do what we say. When have we ever been wrong? A lot is my answer. A lot. They drilled mercury into my teeth when I was a child. Now, of course, we dont do that anymore, but do you really think in 50 years people will look back and say, oh, yeah, we had it all figured out in 2022? No, they will be appalled at things were doing right now.

Medical error is still the third leading cause of death in America and thats just based on what we know now and what we know in the future will certainly make that number rise. [Editors note: According to the CDCs most recent report from December 2021, Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020 after heart disease and cancer. The fourth leading cause was unintentional injuries, which include car accidents, poisoning and falls, followed by stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia.]

DEADLINE: Flipping that look forward, looking back over the history of Real Time, theres obviously been a lot of change in this country since 2003, a lot of change in this industry. For you, what has changed in terms of the show itself and the way you put it together, and what you emphasize?

MAHER: I think the politics around me have changed. In other words, the first years George W. Bush was president and the liberal half of the country was, I thought, pretty sane. Now, since about I dont know 2015 or so theres been a real sea change in whats going on, on the left.

Now I always will maintain that the right is the more dangerous faction in this country, especially since they dont believe in elections I mean you have to keep that in perspective. One side does not believe in the form of government we have. What do you do about people who are in the government who dont believe in your form of government?

I mean, the peaceful transfer of power was always the feather in our cap as America. It was always the jewel in our crown. It was the thing that other countries, so many other countries, had a problem with. They could not peacefully transfer from one guy to the next. We had that figured out. And now these people on the right have broken that and God knows whats going to happen in the future. But on the left, you know, I mean a big problem is that they strike too many people in this country, for good reason, as the party of no common sense.

DEADLINE: How so?

MAHER: They have inverted so much of traditional liberalism, I mean, traditional liberalism was all about creating a colorblind society as opposed to so much of what goes on now is insisting on seeing race everywhere, things like that.

So, whereas before what I was doing was, almost always, making fun only of the conservatives. Now, I have to, if Im an honest broker, if Im going to just call things as I see them, Im doing it for both sides. I mean, again, with the perspective that the right is worse, but that is a big change. And by the way, it has been embraced by the audience. Everywhere I go people tell me they appreciate this and Im talking about mostly liberal people. You know they are not okay with what has gone on with that faction of the left.

DEADLINE: Well

MAHER: Excuse me let me finish my thought. They want someone to call it out.

DEADLINE: So, at the beginning of your 20th season, where do you see America at?

MAHER: Not a great place. It couldve been worse if the election went the other way.

And I, again, per the prediction you were talking about, think the real day of reckoning is going to be between election day 2024 and Inauguration Day 2025, because thats when the rubber really hits the road.

Trump, who, as Ive said before, will definitely be running and definitely be the candidate for the Republican Party. Hes already running if you saw that display this weekend, and this time like last time hes not going to concede. But this next time, hes going to have people in place who will back him up on his lie that he won the election whether he did or not. And then what do you do when those people are much more powerful and there are two claimants to the throne? I mean, weve seen this play out in other countries and its not pretty. And I dont know what will happen, but it frightens me a great deal.

DEADLINE: And in terms of the show itself?

MAHER: Oh, I mean, Ill say this, we dont live in dull times. Its frightening in many ways, sometimes depressing, but not uninteresting.

I feel like Covid is still the dominate issue of our lives right now and it should not be anymore. And I think the big discussion on our show Friday night when we go on, is that is should we continue with the Covid policies weve had in the past? Or do we have to do a reset, and just say this thing is never going away and we cant always be living in a state of emergency? And of course the other thing is, as weve been talking about also, Trump and whats going to happen with our democracy.

Read the original:
Bill Maher On Real Times 20th Season, Being Over Covid & Americas Upcoming Real Day Of Reckoning - Deadline

Earlier this week, a pair of right-libertarian journalists announced the launch of their new site, BASEDPolitics. All hell promptly broke loose on right-wing Twitter.In the first editorial for their new site, co-founders Brad Polumbo and Hannah Cox define 'based' as 'upfront, on point, or rooted in true principles.' That fits pretty well with my understanding of the term, but it leaves something out.

That 'something' accounts for the pushback they received from the post-liberal, national conservative crowd. According to them, libertarians like Polumbo and Cox are nothing more than Koch-funded shills who fight for tax cuts and weaker antitrust laws while drag queens read to our children. They are not 'based' and have no right to refer to themselves as such.

'Our culture is not your costume,' one popular right-wing Twitter personality quipped. Sohrab Ahmari, an American Conservative editor who advocates for 'political Catholicism,'tweeted'Im never using based again, now that these corporate schmucks have appropriated it.'

Ahmari also threw in some disparaging comments about Polumbos 'gigantic' head and Coxs 'tackily overspilling dcolletage' as they appeared in the announcement graphic.

I asked Polumbo (full disclosure: he and I are both affiliated with Young Voices) whether he expected this kind of reaction. Heres what he had to say:

Oh yeah, we anticipated pushback from the very-online nationalist crowd. Im not particularly bothered by it, although some of it has been ad-hominem and juvenile, and thats pretty pathetic, fan behaviour. We wont stoop to that. But the pushback is kind of the point. The nationalists want to redefine what it means to be conservative so that it resembles big government, socially conservative Elizabeth Warren economics more than Ronald Reagan. We still believe the future of the Right should be rooted in free markets, individual liberty, the Constitution, (and)limited government.

The term 'based' originated as slang for being high on crack. Perhaps theres some connection with 'freebasing', or smoking cocaine. From there, the terms definition expanded to cover all the strange and erratic behaviours typically associated with 'crackheads'. A modern equivalent might be to say someone is 'trippin' or 'tweakin'. These dont necessarily mean the person is under the influence of psychedelics or meth, only that theyre acting like it. 'Youre crazy,' spoken either with total dismissiveness or with a hint of admiration, would convey the same meaning.

'Based' began to take on its current connotation with rapper Lil B the Based God, who released his first album, Based Boys, in 2007. According to Lil B, 'Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do.'

According to one online dictionary, the term, now a 'signal of power and swagger,' became associated with the online right in the 2010s as a synonym for 'politically incorrect'. Donald Trump was 'based' because he was willing to say things that annoyed the libs and then laugh at their outrage.

'Can you believe OrangeMan said X?!' the outraged soycuck shrieks. 'Lol, based,' the gigachad responds.

It seems to me that at this point, an earlier definition of 'based' unrelated to West Coast drug culture began to influence the terms use by the new right. 'Based' retained its sense of the manic, un-self-conscious energy of Trumps Twitter, but it also took on the the sense of being 'based on' or 'based in' something older and sturdier than the endless flux of liquid modernity. ric Zemmour is based. So is Viktor Orbn. Jailing pornographers, seizing the assets of the Ford Foundation, and going to Latin Mass with your nine kids and tradwife are all based. On the darker corners of right-wing Twitter, Rhodesia, Mussolini and overt expressions of sexism are also 'based'.

The prevailing definition of 'based' sits somewhere near the intersection of troll and trad.

Polumbo told me hes fully aware that hes going against the usual meaning of the term:

'While not our only mission, a crucial part of our project is to explicitly combat the nationalist conservative movement in a substantive and ideas-based way. We are redefining what it means to be based, whether they like it or not. Freedom is based. Catholic integralism and other forms of lite-theocracy are authoritarian and un-American.'

The post-liberal response, of course, would be that right-libertarianism, like progressivism, is a dominant ideology masquerading as a scrappy resistance. They are two faces of the same beast called liberalism. They divide the world between them: freedom in the boardroom and freedom in the bedroom.

Im not nearly the libertarian Polumbo is, but Im not a fully convinced post-liberal yet either. I think wokeness is a far greater threat than socialism. At the same time, I worry that any sort of post-liberal political project could lead to tyranny. The levels of social conservatism and, frankly, religiosity it demands simply dont have enough buy-in to win national elections.

Imagine the average Joe Rogan listener. Not the alt-right white nationalist monster sketched out in thinkpiece after thinkpiece, but the representative of the American median, the 'barstool conservative'.Hes economically agnostic, an admirer of entrepreneurship who distrusts large corporations. Socially, hes slightly to the left of centre. The idea of giving puberty blockers to kids freaks him out, but he has no interest in outlawing gay marriage or no-fault divorce. Hed be more likely than Polumbo to support trade protectionism and breaking up big tech, but Ahmari would have a hard time selling him on porn bans and blue laws.

Polumbo and Cox are betting that this voting bloc will be more open to Friedrich Hayek than to Thomas Aquinas. Their plan seems to be to stan capitalism while casting wokeness as a collectivist distortion of individual liberty rather than its natural outgrowth. Its possible, they promise, to combat the excesses of progressivism to be 'based' without throwing out many of the fundamental assumptions of American politics and culture.

It might work. If their attempt to reclaim 'based' succeeds, well know it has.

Link:
Who will win the battle for 'based'? - Spectator.co.uk

By Ariana Ceballos

Every year, Hollywood stars are invited to sit through award ceremonies to praise one another for their various accomplishments. Ceremonies for televised events like the Golden Globes and the Oscars invite audiences to witness these special occasions celebrating the accomplishments of beloved actors, actresses, and movies of the year from the comfort of their homes. While spectators are given a window view into the world of elites, associations that host these events have largely ignored the people outside their exclusive circles.

In recent years, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) that runs the Golden Globes and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) that runs the Oscars have experienced a steep decline in viewership for their shows, because they neglected to reflect on connecting to ordinary audience members.

The pandemic pushed many issues to the forefront of the media, especially those of racial inequality and class disparity. These are issues that cannot be dismissed and should be addressed by any platform with great power. Award shows are entertaining, but they need to address these inequalities within their systems before attempting to show allyship.

This years Golden Globes ceremony took place on a different platform. Rather than being shown on television, winners of the award were posted on social media. The decision to move the award show from its established televised event to social media was a reaction to the recent issues with the HFPA.

Many issues have surrounded the HFPA, like a lack of diversity within its members and past winners. People look forward to seeing the ceremony for many reasons including hoping to see a winner that may resemble their gender, religion, race, or identity. With a majority white members in the association, theres no one appealing to POC, and others who are out of the organizations perception as the common audience.

Ann Hornaday for The Washington Post states, The Globes are looking like what the Oscars used to be, and might benefit from becoming, at least for the time being, meaning a private event. Hornaday says that the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association) has inner work to undertake before it can gain a wider audience.

Given the reception of the Golden Globes this year, not much is expected of the Oscars, whose viewership has been in a steady decline. Brooks Barnes and John Koblin note in their New York Times article that the 2021 Oscars ceremony failed to garner 10 million viewers.

The production of the show has also changed, such as the absence of a host for three years. 2022 should mark the return of a yet unannounced host. AMPAS is trying to fix their production to resonate with a larger audience. Recent years have shown first-time winners for POC communities, such as Parasites Best Picture win in 2020, becoming the first Korean film to receive the award.

In 2021, Yuh-jung-Youn became the first Korean to win an Oscar in an acting category and Chlo Zhao became the first Chinese winner of the best director award as well as being the second woman to win. These are monumental wins that should be celebrated, and one cant help but think why it took so long for POC communities to receive such awards.

Award associations can no longer shut down non-elites or turn a blind eye to societal issues. Even if it means promoting a foreign movie dealing with such issues, the associations should attempt to discuss them. In order to capture a wider audience, the associations need to have awareness when approaching diverse communities. Not only will this appeal to a wider audience, but it will uphold values that are fundamental to our overall social welfare and prosperity.

View post:
Student Opinion: Are Award Shows for Us Ordinary Folks? - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

Peacemaker, played by John Cena, was introduced in 1966 with the tagline A man who loves peace so much hes willing to fight for it! (Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics)

We already know from last years The Suicide Squad movie that John Cenas Christopher Smith aka Peacemaker is among the dumbest and most brutish entities in the superhero universe, given his slogan is: I cherish peace with all of my heart. I dont care how many men, women and children I kill to get it.

To quote the immortal Napoleon Dynamite: Ugh! Idiot!

Peacemaker is also a politically incorrect, misogynistic, wildly inappropriate, socially tone-deaf, ignorant lunkhead but in the care of Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director James Gunn, the HBO Max spinoff series placing Peacemaker front and center works, because the titular characters boneheaded and often misguided but sincerely felt words and deeds make for the primary running joke in this wacky and subversive comedy/action romp.

Consider the moment when Peacemaker is shown a photo of a senator, his wife and their two children and told his assignment is to assassinate the entire family, because theyre not actually human, theyre something quite different and dangerous. But Peacemakers new supervisor says he doesnt trust Peacemaker enough to reveal any further information, so Peacemaker exclaims: So what is it, Just trust us and shoot kids? Come on man, look how adorable that one (kid) is. The other one, not so much. Hes got a Children of the Corn vibe going on. Are you sure those two kids came out of those parents? Thats an attractive couple

Thats some twisted and funny stuff right there.

Of course, it helps to have as your lead the chiseled and amiable former pro wrestler Cena, who has an admirable one-two punch of action skills and comedic timing and is the perfect foil for meta humor, e.g., when Peacemaker opines that climate change isnt real and a colleague retorts, Why do all the people who think pro wrestling is real think climate change is a hoax?

The deadpan lunacy tone of Peacemaker is set with the opening credits, where Cena and the ensemble cast, in character, perform a hilariously stiff choreographed dance number to the sounds of the bombastic glam-rock anthem Do You Wanna Taste It? by Wig Wam. (Writer-director Gunn is a master at pop/rock needle drops; a running joke in this series is Peacemakers love of glam metal bands from the 1980s.)

In the pilot episode, we pick up the story just after the events of The Suicide Squad, with Smith/Peacemaker miraculously recovering from his injuries after having killed Rick Flag during the Task Force Xs mission in Corto Maltese. Upon his release, Peacemaker is offered another Dirty Dozen type of deal: He can avoid prison by joining a task force helmed by Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), and you can be sure the ensuing mission will involve Peacemaker getting into all sorts of comedically violent scrapes and well eventually see guts spilling and heads exploding.

Peacemakers new colleagues include the obligatory snarky tech nerd John Economos (Steve Agee); the gorgeous, no-nonsense and quite lethal Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and the eager and inexperienced Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks). He also has to contend with the irritatingly chipper Vigilante aka Adrian Chase (Freddie Stroma), who is kind of like a Dimwit Deadpool and is dying to be Peacemakers BFF, and Peacemakers father, Auggie (the always formidable Robert Patrick), a white supremacist who is so hateful and has been so awful to Peacemaker, we begin to feel empathy for the big guy. Its clear Peacemakers bravado stems from his deep-rooted insecurity and his aching need to be loved. (Hes still a jerk, but theres hope for him.)

Brimming with references to D.C. characters such as Harley Quinn and Aquaman and brutally frank jokes about real-world figures such as Louis C.K., Peacemaker is a James Gunn creation through and through, with Gunn flexing his pop culture muscles and spilling blood, guts and irreverent humor all over the screen. There are times when the jokes seem stuck on repeat mode, but Cena and the terrific ensemble cast are real gamers who sink their teeth into the often absurd material, and were happy to ride along with them in their ridiculous undercover van that looks exactly like an undercover van.

More here:
John Cena hits the small screen as a boneheaded, misguided DC superhero - Albuquerque Journal

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FROM THE PUBLISHER | Bridget, Hazy Davy, and the appeal of the specific - Manhattan Mercury

I mutter, I am sorry. But the victims never hear my apologies.

I mutter them while glancing into my rear-view mirror at the disappearing taillights of a vehicle that had been coming toward me a moment earlier, in the dark and in the rain.

Often too often, I think the headlights of that oncoming vehicle blind me.

He has his high-beams on! I growl. Not necessarily accurate.

I assume the oncoming driver is a guy. Thats a politically incorrect assumption these days.

I claim that the driver has his headlights actually switched to high beams.

But even on low beam, the much brighter headlights on some of todays vehicles force me to squint and panic as I cannot see clearly from behind my own steering wheel.

Several things are at work here. One is the cataracts on my eyes, not yet dense enough to require surgical removal.

That is a good thing because, since childhood, I have had a phobia about anybody doing anything near my eyes.

I would rather have a no-anesthesia root canal on a tooth than have a glaucoma test done by puffing air past my held-open eyelids and onto my eyeball.

So I have not yet had cataract surgery. That is one explanation for the nighttime glare problem while driving.

Another, I think, might have to do with headlight alignment. Back when cars were simpler (and clunkier), it was easy to realign three or four screws around the bezel of each headlight while shining the lights onto a garage wall at the appropriate height and breadth. But that re-aiming had to be done often, because those cars, e.g., my rusted-out 1956 Plymouth, rattled and shook everything loose, including headlights.

Today? The light housing is a giant one-piece monstrosity, costing hundreds of dollars to replace if damaged. It is much more stable but also more expensive. I have no idea how to realign new-vehicle headlights.

Headlight alignment should be checked as part of annual state inspections. But that is an entire year between checkups.

The headlights themselves, I think, are the third factor. Todays cats-eye designs and LED loops look snazzy. I have driven or ridden in a few of those vehicles. They do make the road ahead brighter for the driver.

But what about the driver of the oncoming vehicle?

In 50 years of having vehicles inspected, I have never had anyone question the aim of the headlights on my vehicles and I have driven some clunkers.

A friend recently recounted how oncoming headlights blinded him. Before his eyes could recover to see the road ahead, he hit a deer. He thinks he might have avoided the deer if he had not been blinded.

The oncoming driver probably did nothing wrong. How can most of us tell if our headlights are incorrectly aimed? Even if, after we buy a vehicle, we think its headlights are too bright, what are we going to do? Fords headlight modules do not fit Chevys cars, etc.

Who regulates the lights on new vehicles? Does the National Transportation Safety Board do that? Some governmental agencies release all sorts of data about vehicle safety in crashes. But what about vehicle headlights? Do we just trust the designers and their lust for sales and profits?

Sometimes, after I flick my headlights to bright and back to normal to suggest that the other drivers lights are on high beam, the oncoming driver flicks his own lights onto high beam, then back off. That shows me that I am mistaken in thinking that his lights are set at the high beam level. Happily, in the dark, I cannot discern how many fingers he is using to wave jovially at me.

I mutter my apology because just blinking my own headlights at the oncoming car does distract that driver a bit. I am distracted when that happens to me, justifiably or not.

This is not a widespread problem yet. Most vehicle headlights are no big problem to others, unless they are really misaligned due to a fender-bender, or the driver is a vehicular moron.

But some headlights do make me react in ways that are dangerous to me, to my passengers, and to other vehicles or pedestrians.

If we cant see, we cant drive safely.

Is this just a problem for one old guy? Not according to what I hear from friends though those friends are mostly other old guys or gals.

Maybe I do need to find a way to defeat my phobia and get my cataracts removed. If that will fix the headlight problem, Ill try it.

But if it doesnt fix the problem, if some of todays headlights really are unsafe, who does what about it?

Denny Bonavita is a former editor/publisher at newspapers in DuBois, Brookville, New Bethlehem and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: notniceman9@gmail.com

Go here to see the original:
Are new headlights too bright? | Opinion | theprogressnews.com - Clearfield Progress

Trigger warning: This article contains transcriptions of chats describing graphic sexual violence against women.

New Delhi: On January 17, 2022, a tweet featuring a video of a group of people talking with each other on the social media app ClubHouse, went viral. The subject of the discussion was Muslims Gals are More Beautiful Than Hindu Gals (Gals Opinion. (sic)

Below is a paraphrased transcription of the video. The content is highly offensive in nature.

An account by the name of Kira xD, was one of the moderators.

In the discussion, an account called Harsh says, In my opinion this topic is wrong, because at the end of the day, all Muslim girls are Hindu in the end. How can you compare?

A female account called Roma interjects approvingly, saying Ye baat (this) and another one says Jai Shri Ram.

Harsh continues, When we do ghar wapsi (conversion), when RSS bhakts like us take Muslim women, they will become Hindu women. Roma interjects to say that either way, 70% of all Muslims are converts.

Then comes the most provocative line. Harsh says, Did you know, that if we hit a Muslim pussy, our sins will be washed away? Has anyone else heard this? To which Kira xD, the moderator, replies, In the last panel, one guy said that if you are hitting a pink pussy, you will get the same blessings as building seven temples.

He follows up by asking, Id like to test this. Is there a Muslim woman here? Harsh interjects, saying, Kiraji, I have to correct you its not about 7 mandirs Babri todna itna punya milta hai (You get as many blessings as you would for destroying Babri)

Everyone in the group approves this vocally, but one pipes up saying that they are moving away from the subject that pink coochie is a priority. The account called Roma asks, Ek confusion hai Kira, you keep saying this again and again, Muslim pussy pink pussy is Indian, Hindu pussy not pink? To which the men unanimously respond, Nahi, woh kali hoti hai, kali kalooti (No, it is black, very black.)

In subsequent videos, the account Kira xD proceeded to outline a graphic scenario where he asked the group for aid in engaging in sexual congress with his mother, here being characterised as a Muslim woman. The conversation that follows can be viewed here:

After the video went viral, there was immediate outcry, with many calling for the arrest of those present in the group, equating them with mass rapists, saying they sounded like co-conspirators of the Bulli Bai app, and warning that it was the height of radicalisation.

The Delhi police lodged an FIR against the unknown perpetrators by the next day, with KPS Malhotra, DCP (Cyber Cell), saying an FIR has been registered under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the ground of religion), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion) and 354 A (sexual harassment).

Curiously, this outrage neglected to take into account that Hindu women were also explicitly insulted towards the end of this video.

A day after this discussion took place on the Clubhouse app, a new Room was opened with the subject, Gals do not have the privilege to marry upper cast boys (sic). In the video, the same account as before Kira xD is seen saying Girls should have just enough privilege that they can walk on streets naked.

He proceeds to call women objects in the videos that follow, saying at one point, Women should be made to lie down, have their chests opened, and be rubbed from head to foot with a hot iron rod.

In this video, he appears to be talking about all women, without qualifiers of caste or religion.

The Wire spoke to the person handling the account Kira xD, who was responsible for some of the most provocative statements in both groups, under conditions of confidentiality.

It was in fun

Kira is an 18-year-old male student, and claims to be both apolitical and irreligious, having no particular political inclinations to any party, nor believing in any religion. In conversation, he seems surprised by the amount of outrage that the video has generated, saying that these conversations take place as a matter of course on the Clubhouse platform, irrespective of what political affiliation or religion those engaging might belong to.

This sentiment was echoed by multiple people discussing the situation on the app, including a Hindu woman, Sarita*(24), who circulated the videos of the caste-oriented Room on the following day.

According to her, misogynist actions happen agnostic of religious or political affiliations, alleging that on that day, pictures of her were taken from her linked Instagram account and morphed onto lewd pictures something which again, seems to be a regularly occurring activity on the app. Sarita says she plans to take legal action, but was hesitant as it would be difficult to explain to her family.

Also read: A Reporters Notes: The Only Way Out for Targets of the Bulli Bai App is Forward

This is not the first time extreme misogyny has been reported on the app BBC reported that Clubhouse hosts a sustained atmosphere of misogynistic abuse, including a mock auction which featured 200 people watching and went on for two hours. However, unlike the Sulli Deals and Bulli Bai cases, this auction did not discriminate based on religion.

I did this in the heat of the moment, and it wasnt my intention to offend anyone, Kira said, saying that these rooms and this speech was preceded by another insulting Hindus, Sikhs, his parents, and making insults about attacking India, to which he and his friends were responding. He did not provide any evidence to substantiate this.

I only heard of Sulli Deals yesterday when I found out about this viral tweet, he said. On Clubhouse, when we make rooms, we put out a disclaimer saying if anything happens in the room, it should not be recorded.

I was not insulting anyone else I was using myself to insult, I thought it was okay. I made a story about a Muslim mother, this is why I was not targeting anyone else, because they get offended. I took my own name, its my decision.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

When asked about his intentions, he said it was a form of fun. Serious discussions were not happening there, it was in fun I was abusing myself. I did not want to hurt anyone. According to him, Trolling is not a crime.

Kira says he does not intend on doing this again, but he seems troubled at the idea that this was something problematic at all, saying that insulting people is a regular occurrence on the platform, and that the worst thing that he did was not respect his parents.

Kira seems to have been under the impression that this speech would not leave the confines of the Clubhouse room an element which is incongruous given the anti-Muslim speeches made and disseminated by the political right wing and by radical Hindutva activists. He also does not think that these actions in any way translate to real life, saying, Of course I do not believe (that rape is an art), when questioned about an allegation that accused him of making this statement. If someone was threatening to rape a girl in front of me, I would protect her.

This again is a small but significant deviation from the Hindutva radical hate speech, which when advocating for violence against Muslim bodies, follows up the threat with very real-world hate crimes be it against interfaith couples, Muslim sites of work or simply visible Muslims occupying public spaces.

So what exactly is going on here? Is Kira part of an ecosystem of right-wing hatred, like the trads that The Wire has previously reported on? If so, why is he disowning his ideology? Or is he the product of an osmotic effect, as the official poison leaches into the social topsoil, producing wild contaminations? And most alarmingly, why did nobody on the app seem to take issue against these horrific statements while they were being made?

The answer to a lot of these lies in the nature of the platform of Clubhouse itself, and the specific digital subculture within which this speech is operating.

What is Clubhouse?

ClubHouse is, simply, a place for people to talk to each other. Accounts that do not necessarily need to be linked to real-world handles, guaranteeing a degree of anonymity, engage with each other in Rooms very similar to a conference call.

The space is currently more anarchic and less structured in nature than the usual social media spaces like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, because you can join any Rooms publicly available, without barriers to access like the invitation of those involved as a result, while space does create an algorithmically directed political bias (for instance, if you choose to follow clubs about Hinduism, it will recommend popular groups on the subject), it lacks the intensely silo-ed nature of the more established social media platforms.

It also has a distinctly ephemeral nature while many conversations in rooms can be made available for replay, for the most part, they are not, giving the conversations taking place a momentary, dynamic nature in contrast to the archival nature of other platforms.

Illustration: The Wire

Clubhouse was launched in 2020, making it among the youngest platforms currently available, and only recently aiming for a mass audience. In August of 2021, it was launched to the public before that, you needed an invitation to get in. When you take the combination of anonymity, the lack of algorithmic silos making for discrete political spaces, and the ephemeral nature of the content itself, were looking at a digital space which resembles the early days of the 4chan message-board and were seeing a subculture with very similar characteristics arising from it, with its attendant dangers.

When 4chan was first developed in 2003 by the 15 year old Chris Toole, it was meant to be a space prioritising absolute freedom of speech. While it had seven major messageboards, the ones which shot to notoriety were /pol, short for politically incorrect and /b, a miscellaneous space for random items of speech which would be unlikely to be tolerated in mainstream spaces.

These two spaces were where the culture of trolling was born. As Emma Grey Ellis, a specialist in internet culture at WIRED put it, this was home to all the creepy porn and violent imagery banned from the rest of the site. Users are in it, they say, for the lulz. They make swatiskas trend on Google, tell Justin Bieber fans to self-harm, and leak celebrity nudes. By 2010, it had become distinguished by its lawlessness, obscene content and vindictive campaigns.

Also read: Tek Fog in Action: Targeting Women Journalists, Pushing Communal Narrative on COVID, Delhi Violence

An analysis of /b/ on 4chan made points that are pertinent to Clubhouse today that This language is part of the group identity: pushing the bounds of propriety in order to hack the attention economy and turn heads. It also made the important point that, Not only does anonymity invoke disinhibition on /b/, but styling the collective as Anonymous also suggests de-individuation and mob behavior.

As a result, ironic humour and the use of violent hyperbole plays a critical part of how this group understands and relates to each other, and creates an intra-group identity.

So what the literature would suggest is that when Kira creates a fictitious narrative of his mother as an object of his sexual interest, its plausible that his speech is not meant to be interpreted as a literal desire, as much as a provocation to a group where earnest communication would be suspect. This aim in this communication is to shock, to throw down a gauntlet as a form of play, to see if this shock quotient can be met or escalated. In a manner similar to hazing, the premise is that the group will explicitly be attempting to push or violate social boundaries, and your ability to take a joke becomes directly proportional to your status within the group.

These are rituals which have been consistently recorded in hypermasculine spaces as ways of establishing identity and creating social bonds, and as such, it is not surprising that they come along with extreme misogyny even though the groups themselves feature women.

In a conversation with Sarita, as well as in monitored conversations on the app itself, a point which came up repeatedly was that women were targeted simply for being friends with men who were the enemies of the aggressor, and faced violence like morphed images and verbal abuse even if they didnt say anything at all a punishment by association.

*Name changed on request.

Link:
Clubhouse and the Fantasy of Sexual Violence Against Muslim Women - The Wire

This is the team I am predicting Eddie Howe will name for Saturdays clash at Leeds. It has just one change from Watford with Jacob Murphy coming in on the right for Ryan Fraser.

Newcastle played well for 50 minutes last weekend against Watford but were limited in creating chances. Once Allan Saint-Maximins bit of magic broke the deadlock early in the second half, the lads withdrew into their shell.

The cautious approach allowed Watford over 30 minutes to push for the leveler which they eventually found in the closing stages. Howe admitted after the match that the fragile mentality of the group when taking a lead played a large part in the outcome.

Despite that, I believe Howe will make minimal changes tomorrow. There are no new signings to come into the team, unlike the last two weekends. Howe is still without Federico Fernandez, Callum Wilson, and Isaac Hayden.

Ryan Fraser has enjoyed a long spell in the starting eleven. The winger has started the last five matches but has created very little in the final third. Though he did link up well with new signing Kieran Trippier against The Hornets.

Jacob Murphy could be an option to come into the team and provide something different on the right. Newcastle need to create more clear-cut chances and this could be an opportunity for Jacob, who played well in the FA Cup defeat against Cambridge.

Jamal Lewis is also a potential change. However, tomorrow may be too soon for the young left-back despite returning to the bench last weekend. Howe was asked about Lewis during his Friday morning press briefing. He was quick to stress that the 23-year-old hasnt been back in training for long.

Paul Dummett was a safe hand at left-back against Watford. The 30-year-old should start again tomorrow. I just dont see Howe dropping either Jamaal Lascelles or Fabian Schar just yet. Though once a new arrival comes in or Fernandez returns that could be a different story.

More here:
Howe Makes Just One Change In Our Predicted Team For Leeds - The Newcastle United Blog - The Newcastle United Blog

One is always told one should never, never, never, compare anybody to Hitler. He is beyond the pale, too evil and too often the person most people latch on to while trying to prove some badly constructed analogy. To a large extent, this is of course true. And if Helen Zille would only take this advice about comparing things to apartheid and colonialism, the DA might attract some more voters. You can at least put me in this camp.

Of course, there is some irony in the above, in that the apartheid government could well be compared to Hitler. Certainly Hendrik Verwoerd, Nico Diederichs, Piet Meyer, John Vorster and PW Botha were all great supporters of Hitler and his dreams in the 1930s and 1940s. The comparison can be made, surely? But what of Zilles recent comparison of the ANC to the National Party? Her exact words were: The old NP cadre deployment usually managed to build strong state-owned entities, a capable state, and led to significant industrialisation and economic growth. Quite the opposite under the ANC.

Offensive though it might be, I am told by many people around me that Zille is making a perfectly valid comparison. To me when I first read it, it smacked of the Italian right-wingers who long for the reincarnation of Il Duce. Mussolini, the saying goes, got the trains in Italy to run on time. This is easily comparable to saying that apartheid led to significant industrialisation and economic growth, is it not? The Mussolini quote is, I was told by an old Italian, wholly untrue and has been variously debunked. Interestingly, it was also a comment regularly made in the US when Donald J Trump came to power.

Much like the Mussolini craving, Zilles comment is not only morally and politically questionable, but factually incorrect. As the academic Jonathan Hyslop has shown, under apartheid the country and the government paid heavily for replacing bureaucrats in the 1940s, 50s and 60s with National Party supporters (ie cadre deployment).

The new officials placed in the senior positions of the civil service lacked the training and expertise of the people they had supplanted. This led to an all-too-familiar skills shortage, an issue that plagued the apartheid government. And when it packed the courts with its own judges, none of them brought the country justice or accountability. No government official was ever prosecuted during apartheid, while perfectly harmless intelligent men and women were thrown into jail for little to no reason, often without charge.

What is more, the quasi-fascist state that was apartheid was in fact deeply inefficient. It lost the fight in Angola, the economy tanked in the late 1970s, it lost control of the country in the 1980s and in fact was hopelessly outmanoeuvred by Cyril Ramaphosa during the negotiation process. As Jacob Dlamini has written about and shown, the competent apartheid bureaucrat is something of a myth.

It is true that for the first 30 years of apartheid rule the economy was booming. But the boom included many factors that had next to nothing to do with the government itself it was riding an international economic wave. And the mines, where the money came from, were not under their control. The 80s and 90s tell another story. When the Nats jumped the sinking ship in 1994, the country had suffered three years of negative growth. This position was, however, turned around somewhat after they left. In fact, until 2008 the economy under the ANC was reacting well. There were of course signs, with the onset of load shedding and the continual issues with corruption, that many planks in our ship were rotten.

So, if a comparison is to be made it should be:

As one of the great South African historians, Cornelis de Kiewiet put it, South Africa has always advanced politically by disasters and economically by windfalls. And the simple truth is, we havent had an economic windfall in many a long age. This is certainly one of the main issues behind our current set of woes.

But getting back to comparisons, it is said comparisons should always in some manner trade on like-for-like, apples against apples and oranges against oranges. So, is comparing the National Party to the ANC really possible?

The apartheid government in 1966 admitted in fact it boasted that it had since 1948 spent only R4-million on housing for South Africas 16.3 million blacks, coloureds and Indians. At the same time, it had spent R216-million on housing for about 3.3 million whites.

The apartheid government provided services for a tiny proportion of our population. Add to this, the population providing all the hard labour in this service delivery were the very ones not benefiting from it. One might well be able to build things better when workers have no rights to citizenship, no rights to vote, no right to protest. The pharaohs did a pretty decent job in building those pyramids! Or more correctly, their slaves did the good job. But again, maybe this is not a like-for-like comparison. Apartheid and the land of the pharaohs were very different systems of government, although they did both live off the labour of the dispossessed. Perhaps a better comparison with apartheid is what happens in certain current Middle Eastern states.

Thankfully, apartheid no longer exists south of the Limpopo. And its systems and ways of working are simply not comparable to our current problems. The terrible and corrupt job done by the ANC is not operating under apartheid laws and apartheid ways of working. To compare the two is like comparing a bucket to a battleship.

The question is, why doesnt Zille compare apples with apples? Why does she not compare us with countries with similar population sizes, similar democratic and economic systems, similar bills of rights, and with similar ethical racial concerns? France, Britain, Italy, Germany and South Korea (even the US) are all there ready for comparison.

And when we compare these to the way our country is run, then you really do see what an appallingly bad job the ANC is doing. Our education system is bordering on hopeless, we have no national health service, our police force is creaking at the seams, our National Prosecuting Authority is seemingly incapable of prosecuting anybody in authority, and tens of millions of people live in appalling conditions comparable only with the structures and facilities of the Middle Ages.

Sure, I hear those saying there are problems in the UK, France, the US and so on. But it would be a denial of the truth to claim the UKs trains are like ours; that the French education system is similar to what we have; that US prosecutors are just like the NPA; and the constant flow of electricity into US, Asian and European homes is similar to our shoddy shedding. These are in many senses (but not all) incomparable. Even living in the slums of the US is quite different from living in a South African shanty town or on our cities pavements. The ANCs attempt to better the lives of our people has been a complete disaster, a betrayal and in many ways amounts to the actions of the morally bankrupt. No one can, in all honesty, deny this.

So, with these comparisons readily available to Zille, why does she go back to the bad, flawed and morally repulsive comparison with apartheid? Well, the only thing that strikes me is that she is doing it to benefit her politics, which has now progressively (or regressively) become that of the white right.

She, for whatever curious psychopolitical reason, has given up on attracting black voters and has thrown, once and for all, her lot in with the progeny of apartheid hence the comparisons. Her political soundbites are nothing more than a political dog whistle, calling all the racists back into the laager.

One assumes this can be the only reason why she likes, so regularly, to mention those Caucasian days when electricity managed, without fail, to reach 750,000 homes; when judges found in favour of their racist views rather than those of justice; when the apartheid government destroyed the economy; and when a state could murder the likes of Steve Biko with impunity.

Helen Zille, of all people, should know better. DM

Related Articles

See the rest here:
Please, Helen Zille, stop the 'worse-than-apartheid' cadre-deployment dog-whistle tactic - Daily Maverick

We have learnt in recent weeks that there was a culture within 10 Downing Street of ignoring the rules. For those who are mystified about how this could have happened (and, in theory, there may be such people), all I can say is that this would not have happened under Theresa May. Or David Cameron. Or, I suspect, any other prime minister in modern times.

This is a Conservative government very different from its predecessors. In its attitude to rules and conventions, the manner and style of leadership, its coalition of electoral support, its policy priorities and its views towards our institutions; it all represents a distinct break with the past. This break has enabled a Conservative Party that had been in office for nine years to renew itself and win the support of new voters. It has also, on a number of occasions, caused queasiness from supporters of, and senior figures from, previous Tory administrations.

Are these characteristics determined by the character of the Prime Minister or are they the consequence of larger forces? Are the years of Boris Johnson an aberration or evidence of a more fundamental change in our politics? As Johnsons hold on office weakens and the prospect of a change of prime minister increases, the answers to those questions will help explain the future direction that the Conservative Party and the country will take.

There is no doubt that Johnson was an unusual figure to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He came to office without having been leader of the opposition or long years as a minister. He had a brief and undistinguished spell as foreign secretary a grand position but of little relevance in understanding domestic policy and eight years as mayor of London where he was content to delegate many of his responsibilities.

Johnson was an inexperienced minister, however, he was an experienced public figure. He had been a household name for more than 20 years as a television personality who also happened to be a politician. People described him as colourful and larger than life and they very often liked him.

In 2008, when I was canvassing in my constituency I would find people volunteering that they were voting for Boris in the London mayoral elections, at least until I pointed out that they lived in Hertfordshire. Some years later, Mays cabinet held an away day and travelled by train to Runcorn station in Cheshire. There were a few locals milling around as the entire cabinet (minus the prime minister) walked along the platform unrecognised before the excited cry went up theres Boris! Johnson has always been judged more as a celebrity than as a politician. This has contributed to him being generally more highly regarded by those not closely engaged with politics than by fellow politicians.

[See also: Why Boris Johnsons No 10 is so dysfunctional]

He was widely viewed including by Conservative MPs as lacking administrative ability, a deep understanding of policy (only now, we learn, is he reading his briefing papers) and, it has to be said, a reputation for integrity. These perceptions blew up his 2016 leadership election campaign when the crown was there for the taking. It also meant that he was not the obvious successor to May for most of her time in office but, by the time of her fall in 2019, the majority of his colleagues were prepared to put aside their reservations and support him. He was seen (correctly as it turned out) to be a solution to the Brexit impasse and a means of delivering a Conservative majority. This was more important than competence and honesty.

The politics of 2019 were extraordinary and, if you want to make the case that Johnson is an aberration, one can argue that he would only have assumed office in those extraordinary circumstances. Now that those circumstances have passed, the argument goes, we can return to normality. The Conservative Party can elect a more conventional leader and pursue a more conventional Tory agenda. Post-Johnson politics can look like pre-Johnson politics (only with the UK outside the EU because, after all, he got Brexit done). Let us not speak of him again.

Just at the moment, this prospect is somewhat tempting for many Conservatives, but it would be a misreading of events. It ignores the causes of the Brexit impasse, it ignores the political risks that faced the Conservative Party in 2019 and it ignores the political opportunity which Johnson seized at the last general election and which the Conservatives are likely to want to replicate.

Johnson skilfully exploited the nations weariness with a problem he had helped to create the apparently endless drama that was leaving the European Union. Reassured by Leave politicians that this would be a simple and straightforward matter in which the UK held all the cards, it came as a shock to the electorate that negotiations proved to be complicated and that the EU was not prepared to give the UK everything it demanded.

Matters were not helped by the most intractable issue being one of little direct relevance to the population of Great Britain the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This received little attention at the time of the 2016 referendum (despite the best efforts of Tony Blair and John Major) but the logic of the issue meantthat there was no way of delivering a satisfactory Brexit.

The UKs regulatory and customs divergence from the EU meant that a UK-EU border was necessary. In the context of Ireland, this meant either a border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland (raising questions about the integrity of the UK) or between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (raising questions about the Northern Ireland peace process). We could, of course, have decided not to diverge on regulatory and customs matters, but this would have brought into question the whole point of Brexit.

[See also: Commons Confidential: Will Allegra be next to turn on Boris Johnson?]

It was this trilemma that sunk Mays withdrawal agreement. As a sincere unionist and someone acutely conscious of the risks of creating a border on the island of Ireland, she obtained an agreement that effectively kept the UK in the single market for goods until the border issue could be resolved. This was a practical solution to the trilemma, but it failed the Brexiteers purity test.

Brexit had become redefined so as to mean that any compromise with the EU (or, indeed, any compromise with logic) was unacceptable. As one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, Johnson might have engaged with and understood the issue and tried to explain to his followers that it was necessary to address a real practical problem. Where he led, Brexit supporters might have followed.

Instead, Johnson dismissed the Northern Ireland border as nit-picking by Remainers (once likening it to moving between the two London boroughs of Islington and Camden) and sided with the sovereignty purists of the European Research Group. His answer to the Northern Ireland border question was to hang tough, shout louder and threaten the EU with a no-deal Brexit.

On the substance, Johnson turned out to be wrong. He thought he could avoid a border but agreed in October 2019 to putting one in the Irish Sea. He tried to reverse this while negotiating a new EU trade deal in the autumn of 2020 but again backed down and is still trying to renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol without much success. His position, however, did bring political rewards the support of the European Research Group in the Conservative leadership election and a comfortable victory among the staunchly Eurosceptic party membership.

Johnsons triumph among Conservative MPs was not, of course, limited to the diehard Brexiteers. It helped enormously that he was the favourite among the members and was always likely to win. That can focus the minds of those wanting a frontbench career. He was also the candidate who could most plausibly see off Nigel Farages Brexit Party, the winner of the 2019 European Parliament elections.

The risk for the Conservatives in 2019 was that they faced being squeezed on the Brexit-supporting right by Farage while being squeezed on the Remain supporting centre by the Liberal Democrats. This had happened in the European elections and Conservative MPs were terrified that it would happen again in a general election.

Johnsons strategy was to unite the Brexit side of the debate. Brexit had created a risk but also created an opportunity. By seeing off Farage, it meant that the Conservatives could appeal to a new part of the electorate cultural conservatives who had voted Labour and Ukip in the past and who wanted to see Brexit done. They liked Johnson a charismatic, anti-establishment, politically incorrect, optimistic, patriotic, affable character who did not take himself too seriously. He promised them change, more nurses and police officers and a bit of a laugh. He was also up against Jeremy Corbyn. In December 2019, Johnsons ambition was fulfilled and he won an 80-seat majority.

It is worth dwelling on this moment. It tells us three things about modern politics that are relevant to the post-Johnson world as well as his emergence as Prime Minister the nature of the parliamentary party; the determination to close down space to the Conservatives right; and the changing alignment of British politics.

Johnsons three predecessors as Conservative prime minister John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May were all brought down (or, at least, deeply damaged) by their inability to control the Eurosceptic right. Johnson, in contrast, exploited the right.

For a sizeable element of the Tory party, sovereignty has assumed an almost theological quality. They no longer exist in a world of trade-offs and compromises, of pros and cons, but a world of absolutes. In the context of Northern Ireland, this requires a continued refusal to accept the choices available and an insistence that we can avoid a border in the Irish Sea and diverge from the EU. Future leadership candidates will be acutely aware of this.

Incidentally, for most of these MPs, they also have a vision as to what Brexit means. Divergence is for a purpose and that purpose is to make the UK more competitive, to deliver the next stage of the Thatcherite revolution. The reality is that Brexit means reversing much of Thatcherism putting up taxes because the economy is smaller than it otherwise would have been, erecting trade barriers and imposing new regulatory burdens on business but the increasing tendency is to blame Johnsons Big State instincts for this predictable turn of events.

The events of 2018-19 also revealed a wider change of temperament within the parliamentary party. Conservative politics became about campaigning not governing, with well-organised factions talking to the like-minded, and using every method possible to exert pressure on the government. The Tories became more a party of protest than of government, with a research group for every cause.

In recent weeks, the most prominent of these groups has organised opposition to Covid restrictions. The country is fortunate that Omicron has turned out to be as mild as it has something that was not certain when a hundred Conservative MPs rebelled over the Plan B restrictions. Had these MPs got their way, with Plan B not implemented, (and had Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, not warned the public to ration their socialising), the NHS may well have been overwhelmed this January.

[See also: The question is not if Boris Johnson goes but when]

Again, as with Brexit, Covid-19 has exposed a tendency among Conservative MPs to view the world as they would like it to be, not as it actually is. Their risk appetite is insatiable. Johnsons removal would not change this he was relatively cautious on Omicron.

The threat of an alternative party to the right of the Conservatives has diminished since 2019. This is partly due to Johnsons positioning and partly due to coronavirus. Farage and other Brexit veterans have associated themselves with the anti- lockdown cause, which has had little cut-through with their traditional older, Covid-vulnerable supporters. The Reform Party has consistently performed poorly in by-elections and opinion polls.

Post-Covid, however, the opportunity to change the subject and prompt public animosity towards immigration will increase. A significant breakthrough for the Reform Party remains unlikely but Farages influence comes not from his own success but his influence over those Conservatives easily spooked by the prospect of losing votes to him. If anything, Johnsons removal would increase these Tory concerns because his successor will not have Johnsons track record of diminishing Farages appeal.

The final lesson is that there is a long-term realignment of politics in the UK and throughout the developed world. Whereas once the economically secure voted centre right and the economically insecure voted centre-left, voting behaviour has become increasingly influenced by cultural matters. The way in which a particular constituency votes increasingly depends not on income levels but upon population density, ethnic diversity and education levels.

This has created an opportunity for the centre right and helped deliver the Red Wall to the Tories. Johnson, with his performative patriotism, ideological flexibility and apparently disarming personality, was able to woo this part of the electorate in a way that few Conservatives can. Reconciling the small-state instincts of many Tories with this electoral opportunity is a challenge that any leader of the Conservative Party will have to address but, with our current political geography, it is hard to see how the views of the median voter in a Red Wall swing seat (economically to the left, culturally to the right) can be ignored. This does not suggest a return to Cameroon-style liberal conservativism any time soon.

Johnsons period in office may be coming to an end. What replaces him will not be Johnsonian as such. He never offered a coherent philosophy and, ethically, any change will be a step in the right direction. Rule-breaking parties wont be an issue. But the forces apparent in 2019 an unruly, even delusional, parliamentary party, the fear of a threat from the right, and a realigned electorate that rewards cultural conservatism will continue to drive the politics of the Conservative Party for years to come.

David Gauke is a former Conservative secretary of state for justice and was MP for South West Hertfordshire from 2005 to 2019

This piece is the cover story of this weeks New Statesman magazine,subscribe here.

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David Gauke: How my party lost its way - The New Statesman