"the New York Times reports that Russian, Chinese, and Iranian (?) hackers are all trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine data from good, wholesome Western drug companies and research institutions."

"But leaving that aside, and courtesy of journalist Adam Johnson, I think you’ll appreciate how the NYT deals with the awkward question of whether US spies are similarly attempting to pilfer other countries’ vaccine data:

American officials insist their own spy services’ efforts are defensive and that intelligence agencies have not been ordered to steal coronavirus research. But other current and former intelligence officials said the reality was not nearly so black and white. As American intelligence agencies try to find out what Russia, China and Iran may have stolen, they could encounter information on those countries’ research and collect it.

So the US is, as it turns out, probably trying to steal other countries’ vaccine data. But it’s different. When the Bad Guys spy, you see, that’s Bad. But when Americans spy, that’s just a good faith accident that’s really caused by the Bad Guys, because we wouldn’t even be doing that kind of thing if they hadn’t started it first. It’s all very simple and believable."

https://fx.substack.com/p/world-update-september-6-2020

"The heroes of Frank’s book are the anti-monopoly, proto-socialist midwestern Populist Party of the 1890s. Their program was simple: nationalize the railroads, get rid of the gold standard, and root out political corruption. That was it"

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/populism-thomas-frank-the-people-no-review/

"The United States is no longer a model for other countries to envy, emulate, or admire. The pandemic, and the American government’s response to it, has laid bare a society marked by deep inequality and a state sapped of its basic capacity after decades of neoliberal reform."

"The prevailing views inside the United States and out are increasingly converging: this country is a failure. A decrepit private health care system, a pathetic social safety net, and enduring racialized class inequalities, it turns out, add up to disaster."

"For the right wing, the greater the distance between American promise and American existence, the more extreme the conspiratorial explanation must become."

jacobinmag.com/2020/09/joe-biden-imperialism-trump-america/

"It is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the conscience — be it only at the stage of an instinct — of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependence of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed." - Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

https://truthout.org/articles/david-graeber-left-us-a-parting-gift-his-thoughts-on-kropotkins-mutual-aid/

"William F. Buckley bequeathed the right the ability to disguise cheap, fallacious talking points as reasonable arguments. He is best remembered as the creator of contemporary pseudo-intellectualism. His model is not one we should wish to see revived."

currentaffairs.org/2020/09/how-to-be-a-respectable-public-intellectual/

Right-wing storytellers engaged a tried-and-true strategy linking two potent symbols: the scarecrow — who to fear — and the scapegoat — who to blame.

Build up fear. Give it a name. Put a face to the name. Blame the face. Attack the face. Rouse the followers to do the same. Repeat as necessary.

Keep the loyal followers continually terrified — and always on alert.

Conservative anxiety is activated primarily through three scarecrows, each of which provide many targets for blame:
1) They Will Take Our Safety
2) They Will Take Our Liberty
3) They Will Take Our Culture

https://truthout.org/articles/the-right-wing-worldview-is-one-of-scarecrows-and-scapegoats/