Stupidity on the left

From the Daily Kos (Susan Sarandon: A Privileged Fool):

I caught some of Chris Hayes’ “All In” tonight on MSNBC. One of his guests was Susan Sarandon and a more sanctimonious privileged twit I haven’t seen in some time. She made it quite clear that she hates Clinton and pretty much supports the stupid idea that it’s fine not to vote for Hillary in the general if she winds up being the nominee. 

But when Chris pushed on whether she herself would not vote for the nominee if it was Hillary, she coyly demurred and said she’d have to see. But then she showed her true colors by merrily claiming that if Trump were elected President, we’d get the “revolution” immediately. What unadulterated crap!...

More from The Daily Beast on the same interview:

Sarandon said, adding that “some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.” Asked if she thinks that’s “dangerous,” she replied, “It’s dangerous to think that we can continue the way we are with the militarized police force, with privatized prisons, with the death penalty, with the low minimum wage, threats to women’s rights and think you can’t do something huge to turn that around.”

One thing Hayes neglected to confront Sarandon over was her support in 2000 of third-party candidate Ralph Nader instead of then-Vice President Al Gore. The actress served as a co-chairwoman of his[Nader's] National Steering Committee the year that George W. Bush narrowly beat Gore, thanks to Nader’s status as spoiler for the Democrats...

Michelle Goldberg on Slate (“After Trump, Our Turn!”):

What Sarandon is voicing is the old Leninist idea of “heightening the contradictions,” which holds that social conditions need to get worse in order to inspire the revolution that will make them better. 

In this way of thinking, the real enemy of progress is incremental reform that would render the status quo tolerable. That was the position of the German Communists in the early 1930s, who refused to ally with the Social Democrats, proclaiming: “After Hitler, our turn!” 

A similar—if less deadly—assumption underlay Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign, for which Sarandon served as co-chair of the national steering committee. George W. Bush, Nader argued then, could serve as a “provocateur,” awakening the power of the left. “If it were a choice between a provocateur and an 'anesthetizer,' I'd rather have a provocateur,”said Nader. “It would mobilize us.”

See this by Jill Abramson: This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest

See also Kevin Drum on Hillary.

"The Silicon Valley of Recycling"

From the NY Times today:

...You won’t find San Francisco’s Pier 96 in any travel guidebook but it has become a must-see destination for visitors from Afghanistan to Vietnam. They’ve come to explore Recology — Mr. Reed is a spokesman — one of the world’s most advanced recycling plants, a deafening, Rube Goldberg system of conveyor belts and sorters that, with the help of human hands, untangles a 30-foot hill of debris collected by trucks every day from across the city...“It’s like a modern art installation,” marveled Mauro Battocchi, the Italian consul general here. “So fabulous — the people and machines and objects of our lives all working together.”

Foreign officials and others come here to pick up tips on how to handle their own mushrooming piles of garbage back home. As the world’s population grows, people are consuming more, creating more trash, and countries are looking for ways to deal with it that put less stress on the environment...