In dominant elite discourse, no evidence is needed to brand someone a "white supremacist." The belief that it will produce political or personal gain suffices.
Why is it that this extreme and demented approach of viewing everything through the lens of racial oppression has become so dominant when it’s not even popular among the people it purports to represent? These zealots are conditioning everyone to think in these terms. It’s dangerous because even though the corporate media only mention race when the victim fits its narrative, people can’t help but notice the unspoken race of perpetrators in recent situations like retail looting and the parade attack.
If we don’t return to viewing people as individuals and not avatars, this won’t end well.
The answer is very simple and very old: Divide and conquer. To quote from my first article:
“Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases—especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias—against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized)
Spot on. As neoliberalism enters even deeper crisis, expect more of such emotional divide issues pushed down to the masses to chew on. At some point it becomes the defining characteristics of the "tribes" which insanity they believe - credo quia absurdum.
None of this is being done because these people actually believe it. They willfully resort to deception and manipulation and distortion of reality. The goal appears to be destruction for destruction’s sake. Destroy the country at its base, ie. Enlightenment principles
A childhood friend grew up a Mormon and left the church as a young adult. Claims to be a proud atheist and now has a "trans" preschooler, thinks all cars should be banned and is a fanatic about the environment, sends older kid the shitty and dangerous public school in her large blue city because equity or something although has the means to live elsewhere or send the kid to private school.
Swap out one set of weird sexual fixations, one type of forbidden consumer good, willingness to sacrifice what might be best for the individual child for the benefit of the larger religious community, and you're right back to where you started.
I say this as a deeply religious woman - but: women are more prone to religious thinking and some religious thinking is dangerous and ruthless. Wokeism is among the most destructive to Western liberal society.
What's your larger point? Wokeism is hardly a female driven moral panic; ask Chris Rufo. Fauciolatry is hardly a female driven moral panic; ask the homosexual community about the AIDS crisis and male and female alike about his absolute lack of science in decision making; ask Dr. Scott Atlas. Mashing Satanist preschools with Wokeism deserves backhanded response.
Isn't it the same for former alcoholics/addicts? And doesn't it happen in the other direction too?
That is, it has nothing to do with religion per se. When people flash a "I'm a former this" most of the time it means "I'm a current that". And that "current" badge is not necessarily for the better.
Because it’s an easy to use cudgel that can be employed by anyone to gain status within the identity-seeking movements that exist today to feed Beyond burger level sustenance to the empty souls of generation boundary-bursting narcissists.
With a certain type of people it's all about who is doing what to whom.
There are no other principles involved. Everything is OK, as long as it is us doing it to you. If anyone else does then it's murder, racism, terrorism, antisemitism, white supremacy, neo-nazi, colonialist, bad-think, literally Hitler, double-plus thought-crime, and probably not very nice, too.
It isn't "looting"; it's a purchase that is paid for with tacit permission for the shopkeeper to experience a slight reduction in the self-perception of "oppressors' guilt".
Shopkeeper? These are corporate stores with paycheck slaves minding the door. Real shopkeepers have been driven out of business in most cities by the Democratic party governance for 30 years. Ever try to manage urban employment diktat without a corporate HR department?
California residents need to scare the authorities into doing their jobs. Bumper stickers with 3-7-77 might do the trick.
The numbers are connected to vigilantes in the Montana gold fields. The legend is that the vigilantes would write the numbers on a slip of paper, then slip it under an outlaw's door as a warning to leave town. One interpretation is that they were promising a grave, 3 feet wide, 7 feet long and 77 inches deep.
In the fall of 1863, road agents killed over 100 people in the gold fields around Bannack and Virginia City, Montana. In January, 1864, vigilantes hanged 25 bandits, including the "law and order" sheriff of Bannack, Henry Plummer. It seems Plummer was the leader of the gang, whose watchword was the phrase, "I am innocent."
The bumper stickers would be a threat, linked to interesting history that would gain them notoriety.
The vigilantes were described as the good guys when I took Montana State history in 8th grade in Missoula. Your views may vary. However, something had to be done, and the law was obviously crooked in 1864, just as it is today.
This ain't a problem in Montana. Gun control there means you can hit what you're aiming at. A flash mob at Walmart would get shot at, and incur casualties.
Because it is useful for the establishment in two ways: it is a distraction from real problems on one hand, and on the other great way to prevent any unity of underclass to emerge.
It's a two-fer: 1. Because if the blacks don't feel like the dems need to protect them, the blacks may not start thinking about how in every place they live that has dem leadership, their plight has worsened...for generations and stop voting for them. 2. It provides an excuse for 1.
The push is on because the dems may be starting to realize that all these "immigrants" simply want to be family people who work hard and have an appropriate level of contempt for democrat policy which is anathema to those people.
Why? It serves several purposes. One is an expression of self hating whites that find an outlet for their psychological self evaluation and guilt. Another is an expression of some black people's hatred of whites. But the most important is one mechanism of a political power grab by socialist leftists and the globalist powers that be as one of their ploys to take over this country (and as I see it the world)
Possibly because, among other reasons, it has the effect of demoralizing its intended targets. A demoralized target is easily defeated and controlled. It is an attack on one’s self esteem. I would point anyone interested to the philosophy of Objectivism for a more comprehensive explanation.
Another possible cause is that those making the false allegations are trying to implement and agenda that is not justified by either law nor the common good.
Have you viewed the documentary “Uncle Tom”? If not take a look at being black in America, with a collection of interviews with some of America’s most provocative black thinkers.
The trans ideology pushed by Democrats, especially in US public schools is especially dangerous.
Recently in Loudon County, VA, a parent was pissed off and stood up at a board meeting, confronting board members about their trans ideology and utilizing of girls bathrooms by swlf professed trans male to female. This guy's daughter was RAPED by one such male student proclaiming to be trans. The school quietly removed him to another school where he DID IT AGAIN, WITHOUT TELLING THE PARENTS.
This man was screaming at school board members and they had him removed by the cops. This is how parents wound up being called domestic terrorists as the NEA sent a letter to the DOJ...
There is so much more I could say about this and what it is doing to kiss..bur The big pharma lobby loves the trans ideology as the hormones are expensive and surgeons making a fortune off sex change surgery
Hmm, OK - so before anyone is allowed in a woman's bathroom, they should have to prove they don't have a dick ... should a person have to prove they have one to be allowed into a men's room? A whole new role for a hall monitor ...
I agree "birthing people" and "menstruating people" represent an erasure of women, but "womxn" is an erasure of men -- can't have that particle "men" at the end of a word anymore, even though original "man" in English meant generic human being, like "anthropos" in Greek, and in old English among men, there were "wapmen" (male) and "wifmen" (female).
In the 21st century, men have erased themselves. Is it the fact that life has become so easy and that we are so spoiled that it seems offensive and frightening for men to behave like men? Statues of John Wayne have been taken down. How long will it be before those barren pedestals bear statues of Ru Paul?
The "pussification" of American society was decried by Robert E. Lee nearly two centuries ago. It is now almost complete.
Some opine emancipation of women made a big contribution towards that. Women became easier to get - after all, they should behave like men - and so men no longer had to exert any effort worth of mentioning. Manhood suffered.
One other reason might be fake boobs became available much earlier than penis enlargement. Pure intimidation factor, contributed to shrinkage, spiraling down subsequently. An ugly sight.
There is the long tradition of drag queens in the Gay universe. I don't see this as in any way disparaging or threating to biological women. It's really more of a celebration.
Which is nothing like this mad rush to deconstruct gender all together that we are witnessing. Even that though is more of a Marxist tactic to undermine Western civilization, to be replaced by a world full of genderless drones who "Own nothing and are happy".
I had no idea (until just now) that the biological male at the center of the Wi Spa incident was a registered sex offender with a history of indecent exposure, and has now been charged with indecent exposure at Wi Spa. The original incident and subsequent protests were covered pretty heavily, but this new information seems to have slipped by with hardly a mention. Whenever I have arguments with friends about whether or not trans women are actually women (an argument that wouldn’t even have happened five years ago), one common tactic is for the “trans ally” side to say, “What difference does it make? What’s the harm?” and when the response is men invading women’s spaces, men taking women’s athletic scholarships, the erasure of women, etc., the answer is that almost no one is trying to do that. But, people are clever, and if you set up a system that can be exploited, some people will exploit it. And, here we now are.
Trans women are mental patients no different than those who stand on street corners believing that they are Jesus Christ or Napoleon. They don't need to be treated poorly, but they don't need their delusions validated by the general public, either.
"drag queens come read stories to kindergartners and first graders" - that's likely because they got sick of reading that stuff to ones of their own. Can't stand comparing makeups and other fake parts.
Well, you just used "she" to refer to him so why wouldn't he, being he/him/his/hee/haw/zer/zir/zircon/zzzzzzzzzz (can't find any "laster" letter in the alphabet)?
Interesting how they exclusively address him as "she" on his wikipedia entry. And on his page pronouns are avoided altogether. It's always "Eddie".
What not having a family and kids does to a person.
Ah, but see, that would have not come up as being intelligent, having applied oneself, exerted an effort, given it thought, etc. In fact, it would have been utterly un-American.
Also, people around the world might not have taken it seriously enough.
This reminded me of a (I think) funny story. I had just arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1987 and my friend and I booked a low rent hotel. I was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt my brother gave me when he attended for his LL.M. A transvestite female gave me "the look" up and down and then threw her head back--as though I was the one so full of myself. So evidently Harvard sweatshirt wearing women are much more ostentatious than transvestites.
Just out of curiosity, what "reassignment" surgeries constitute a successful transition - and how many hormone Rxs, if used, are necessary ...
So if gender is not a social construct - and it is a physical one, what makes a "real woman"? Can (s)he be surgically constructed?
Frankly, I am more in tune with the transvestites - they don't claim to be women, they just like to dress like them - and what of women who like to dress like men?
How many surgeries and hormones does it take to "reassign" a "man" or "woman"?
LOL! Obviously you are using that same ole tactic of "shoot the messenger"when you wish to avoid a subject - instead of dealing with the issue raised, you malign the one raising it ... I have seen that soooo often ...
What do you think a man is?
t will be interesting to see if Glenn answers your question ....
I'll never forget the Last Time I ever listened to Terry Gross' FRESH AIR program on NPR. It was about four years ago and she was interviewing a transgender. It said that women smell like fish. It laughed. She laughed. I tuned out.
Thank you so much, Glenn, for being a small group of well-known, outspoken people who still care about the truth, no matter where that takes you. That is what real journalists do and there are too few of them around now. When I said Rittenhouse should sue for defamation on Twitter a whole bunch of people tried to use that to get me fired. They clutched their pearls and feigned outrage because of course, Rittenhouse is a White Supremacist! Everyone knows that. Every person in this country has a right to presumption of innocence, due process, and a trial. Convicting in the court of opinion is WRONG especially when the facts are rarely complete. We're all getting just a version of the facts and much of the time they turn out to be clickbait or flat-out lies.
Living up North in non-Trump territory even the fact that Rittenhouse was toting a gun, and wrongly accused of carrying it across state lines makes him sound very Trumpish, ergo guilty. My sister-in-law and brother loath Trump. From the beginning they believed Rittenhouse was guilty and they managed to come to this decision by using all the false information available before the trial. After the trial his innocent verdict meant nothing. The democrats instilled such severe division in this country when Trump won and their Hilary lost, and cultivated an elitism which disgusts me, as well as making them feel honorable in their highly prejudicial position.
An old friend (of 55+ years) stopped talking to me for 1 1/2 years because I supported Donald Trump. After a mutual friend died, he pulled in his horns and we re-connected at the funeral. That was 3 1/2 years ago.
Although we both committed to never speaking about politics when we communicate, he has not returned my calls since the Rittenhouse verdict. I suspect the Joy Reid's and Joy Behar's of the DNC propaganda squad have gotten to him again.
The same thing happened to me in 2016, and I didn't vote for Trump, but refused to vote for Clinton even though I was a registered democrat. Not an unusual thing for me to do. Hatred and abuse greeted me with a friend, my brother, and a cousin who died of cancer in 2018. He and I never spoke again since I dared institute my democratic right not to vote. He was a professor of law, but at one time a captain in the military. My dislike for Clinton was all about her love for war which he just couldn't accept, and continued to tell me my actions were putting a tyrant in the White House. Another cousin on Facebook was a registered republican most of her life, but was so repulsed by Trump and his "low life" base so her Facebook page became a hate Trump site. She managed to excuse the behavior of every republican president, but not Trump. Her fan base were all the same, well off, educated and mean. When I defended Trump while many thought he was suggesting that people drink bleach to deal with the corona virus, and my interpretation was that he was thinking of something comparable to Clorox, but a medicinal anti-viral treatment that could act in the same way to kill the Corona virus internally, one of her highly educated, rich friends told me to kill myself by drinking Clorox. I told her that I saw her statement as a threat against my life and would report her to Facebook if she made another. It worked and made her disappear. I was also called a racist in defending a policemen for stopping a young black woman for going too slow in a 60 mile an hour strip of highway. One of her friends who had many pictures on her site of her all white gated community called me a racist and gave me a list of books and videos to watch that would help me overcome. Interesting that these people always voted republican until Trump, whose base became defined by Clinton as a bunch of "deplorables." I always thought she referenced them that way to institute a divide in this country which they used to their political advantage, and that divide continues to be used by the democrats in the same prejudicial way.
Thanks for your reply, but it was more about people whom I have had relationships with for so long, really extended myself for, including a younger brother, to treat me in an abusive and dismissive manner. I have degrees, but those degrees don't mean they allow me to feel better then others because they have had less opportunities. All of these people have one thing in common besides an education, they're mentality has always been elitist. They act like they're not going to die, and although they pretend to care about the less fortunate among us, they are, and I always knew it, liars in that regard.
I meant "intelligence" in the widest sense possible. When you say "their mentality has always been elitist" that immediately puts them in the non-intelligent category. Being smug about anything tags one as being stupid right there.
And when times get tough everything comes out. All of a sudden you don't recognize your neighbor or your relation. In a situation like war, for example, that'll easily cost you your life, in a wink.
Wow, I had such hope. Maybe you can suggest he actually watch the entire trial as thinking heads can then do that for themselves. Regaining his independence might be quite refreshing for him.
My best friend since I was about 11 years old (we’re both 53) and who only watches MSNBC (literally that’s all he watches) refuses to talk to me anymore. This was a guy who 20 years ago I collected from a homeless shelter in Vallejo, CA addicted to meth and brought into my home with my new wife and 4 stepdaughters and helped him kick his addiction and get back into college to finish his degree. He’s now an accountant who brags to my family members how he’s ghosted me on social media.
Friendships, like marriage, flow with the Tao. My pal was my right-winger when I played defense on a hockey team 50 years ago. We shared a house, briefly, and dropped acid together probably 100 times. Oh well. Does ANYTHING really matter?
The double-meaning eluded me, bot! hahaha Actually, LaVeen's Golden Blades dominated the Fisher Body Hockey League from 1972 - 1975. Then, Tim Bradley had to hit some guy over the head with his hockey stick, got sued, had to sell his motorcycle, and LaVeen's Department Store got sued and dropped the sponsorship. Good times.
My sister-in-law claimed she watched the trial, but since I did, I knew she got her information second hand. By the way, their sole source of news is MSNBC, and Rachel Maddow is their darling. They live in Connecticut and although she has made similar statements before, her prejudice was now on full display. She said she dislikes her neighbors, and has nothing to do with them, all republicans she said, and Trump supporters, and maybe even gun totting which motivates her to want to move. She recognizes no degree of prejudice on her part, none. Those people are really all alike and no good. She is not the only one I know who adheres to this perception, and what they all have in common is not just that they are affiliated with the democratic party, but all are well off, highly educated and even before Trump you would define them as elitists. I know quite a few people like this, and all adhere to the same perception of Trump's base. One defined them as an uneducated lot, followers and totally amoral.
Projection is a defining characteristic of the woke leftists, both as an indoctrinated psychopathology in the brainwashed herds and a deliberate tactic by the architects of this sociopathic ideology
"Accuse your opponents of doing what you yourself are doing"
Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinskey
Woke Ideology is an existential threat to Western Civilization
I absolutely agree and cannot stand this so called woke culture where they operate in extremes. I don't see it as an approach that will bring about change since it alienates so many. I always thought of myself as more liberal then any of those who proclaim complete loyalty to the democrats and this woke culture. I was always active politically while those who condemn me for my position sat on their asses for many a decade and did nothing. Hypocrites.
Seems to me highly unlikely her neighbors would be Trump supporters. Maybe she likes to imagine herself distinct from them when she’s exactly like them in every way.
They have lived there for about 7 years, and before Trump she referenced her neighbor's politics as republican, but didn't make such an issue of it, but didn't like it either. They have a beautiful home in Conn as do their neighbors. You can't use logic alone to understand the Trump years, and what continues to play out. Here is the last paragraph of a letter a friend picked up from the internet and sent me via email even though I did not vote for Trump and was a registered democrat. However I didn't vote for Clinton due to her very hawkish nature. I'm very anti-war.
" It wasn't your politics I found repulsive. No, it was your willingness to support someone who spouts racism, sexism and cruelty almost every time he opens his mouth. You side with a bully when it should have mattered most and that is something I will never be able to forget. So in response to your post-election expression of hope, no, you and I won't be coming together to move forward. Obviously, the president-elect disgusts me, but it is the fact the he doesn't disgust you that will stick with me long after the election." I ended that relationship even though I knew her since we were 12 because other condemnations of me preceded this one. This is someone who would define people as winners or losers while we were growing up and continued to do so as an adult. Trump became a good scapegoat for many people, as did his base. I'm surprised they didn't send Trump and his base off into the wilderness, or maybe they did.
"It wasn't your politics I found repulsive." - followed by explaining how exactly the politics of being reasonable and staying away when called for is what she found repulsive.
I can't figure out the basis for the trust in our government. A government that puts the mentally ill in prisons/cages, borrowed Trillions to spend on a 20 year boondogle in the Middle East, is run by politicians who spend the majority of their time begging for money, eleminated all good paying jobs by outsourcing to China, claims their voters are racist and blames everyone but themselves for their failures. I can seldom discuss these issues with anyone I know since none of them read or are informed enough to engage in a meaningful discussion. Refusal to comare viewpoints seems to have become endemic The reluctance to discuss solutions for our problems has become the biggest obsticle we must overcome.
The few who govern the many, who are the easily placated complacent. I rather think we've hippies, turned yuppies, turned corporate lobbyist, podium politician's or mass maniac media spokespersons. All well compensated echo chambers. They should have inhaled; recollect president Bill C. Whatever happen to that Winter Soldier Vietnam vet attraction? John Kerry?
Glenn, this type of discourse is in no way limited to elites. I teach in the Chicago Public Schools, and within the last few years, "white supremacy" has become an obsession with school leaders, teachers who recently graduated from college, and those unwilling to jeopardize the rewards of membership in the professional-managerial class--and if someone happens to belong to all those groups, well, you'd better run for the hills. And within the last couple of years, "white supremacy" has become partnered with "causing harm": if you don't "decolonize" your syllabus enough or don't use enough materials that reflect the cultural backgrounds of your students, then you're going to be accused of "causing harm" in the furtherance of "white supremacy."
For sure - it's absolutely spreading and starting to contaminate almost every institution. It just infuriates me most when it comes from journalistic outlets which have a particular obligation to base their claims in facts.
What is a fact Glenn? Lived experience has taken over for facts. Facts support a system of oppression and white supremacy. All of these systems need to be torn down. You cannot reason with someone who thinks that way. But then again, reason is white supremacy so...
I think it's folly to try to reason with them. Better to denounce their bull, dismiss and ignore them, when possible. The ONLY reason they get any traction is that they have a big megaphone. Otherwise every thinking person would reject them out of hand. So when is possible, reject them out of hand.
Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and other independent journalists are our best and only hope. How and when did the corporate/legacy/mainstream media lose (or intentionally discard) journalistic standards and ethics? What most people assumed to be unbiased reporting was discreetly replaced by hyper-biased activism disguised as "reporting the facts." And it occurred right under our noses. A monumental and tragically consequential betrayal of trust that the MSM has yet to acknowledge.
Bari Weiss not so much. Her primary concern is the woke mob rising up and taking control over the israel-palestine issue and bending it in favor of Palestinians. Unfortunately she doesn’t have much to worry about. There seems to be a tacit understanding to leave israel and jews out of the white racial reckoning.
It is remarkable, given that in the northeast metropolitan environment they inhabit, it is likely that none of them have ever actually met someone that believes in the genetic superiority of caucasians.
For the ones that didn't? Money. All kinds of people (myself included) who do not believe in some kind of racial hierarchy nevertheless very much believe in the existence of hierarchy.
Lets not kid ourselves. The "white supremacy" cry is for revenge led by naive over educated whites too stupid to understand they will be subjected to the same Jacobin guillotine. The fact that the majority of whites were and are willing to die to improve on the ideals of our founders who were themselves only subjects of a king now makes them racist too. Our only hope is the Supreme Court slaps down CRT as rasist and allows citizens to sue educational institutions who are fomenting hate and racist indoctrination.
The founding members of the Klan and the White Citizens Council couldn't have come up with a better plan to hamstring the intellectual development of young black people. Albert Pike and Nathan Forrest are smiling down upon this mess from white heaven.
I foresee home schooling growing tremendously in many households due to the mandates, the indoctrination and lack of strong academics. Many parents will not go with the flow.
In the town I live in, last year a (white) student made a video where he appeared in front of Confederate flags holding a gun and throwing around the N word. Just, the most ignorant, vile, racist garbage that a 17 year old can get up to around here, and it went viral and caused a massive uproar in our community. The school board took the approach of giving him a warning, and he apologized (pretty insincerely) for being an idiot. Fast forward to today, and the school has contracted with Praxis Lead Equity consultants to implement an “equity program” in our school district, and to incorporate “culturally proficient education practices”. They promise to help us “sharpen our lens”. Their web site has videos by the usual suspects, such as Robin Deangelo talking about systemic racism and power structures. I’m trying to figure out how to warn my kid about what’s coming, but he already thinks of me as an out of touch idiot when it comes to this stuff. Clearly, something is wrong if we have a kid making a video like that. (Where did he even get the flags and guns?) But, I’m pretty worried that we are all now going to get white-shamed and have to do some performative self-flagellation to cleanse our community.
Thank you 4 sharing your story. Confederate flag + the, our, their, constitutional right to own a fire arm, I encountered both while passing through Bible Belt, Tennessee, 2019. Ironically I was rendering aide to a post surgery, leg amputation, (diabetic) Vietnam veteran. He resided in a low income housing complex. The guys wth the flag & right to bare arms, were apparently low income “housing” and dealing wth they were dealing with the opioid “crisis”. Prescription drug patriots. Clearly something is wrong. Perhaps we might suggest everyone watch the entire trial, then we may have an interesting discussion.
The incident I related is completely unrelated to what happened in Kenosha. It was the story of how critical social justice theory is making its way to the public schools in my district.
Thank you Rich. Robert “Bob” Woodson Sr., founder of 1776 Unites, he’s uplifting everyday Americans. Confident his. 1776unites.com would appreciate & respond to your concerns.
Our school district already spends too much time focusing on DEI, to the extent that when we toured schools, at the majority of them DEI was their main pitch about what their program was, literally "diversity (or cultural sensitivity) is what we do best". Only a couple professed a focus on academic subjects.
And now the school district and state are moving to include more of it. Definitely the way to improve race relations in this country is to spend more time focusing on people's differences and more time on teaching kids about historic grievances. That will for sure lead to comity and togetherness.
Expressing any concern that this is not the best and only path forward in terms of preparing kids for the future or getting them to get along and appreciate each other as individuals > immediately you must be a racist white supremacist.
There should be books written about the culture of Chicago and its local communities. A wealthy gay friend of mine lives near the Windy City and both upscale neighborhoods he has lived in feature BLM signs and window stickers in all his pure-white neighbors' yards and on their windows. Is it solidarity or are these signs of support talismen to bring good luck and to prevent looting?
Maybe a few are sincere, but for the most part I'd say pure virtue-signalling and vapid following the fad. I doubt they even understand what BLM actually stands for as an organization.
It's not to prevent looting, because they know that even if the looters and rioters ever made it out to their neighborhoods, the police would actually stop them.
To anyone with a brain, the constant white supremacy labeling is complete and utter bull shit. What needs to be discussed is *why* this is happening. Why is the DNC and the core of the so called “progressives” actively seeking to destroy the country, to redefine half the English language, use a virus to end free society permanently…just to get started.
I think for some they just aren't that bright and have entered an alternate reality. My brother and sister and laws are hyper progressive, elite college educated former corporate lawyers gone to non-profit work. They live in Burlington VT. When Biden won the election my sister in law posted on social media the following: "Thank God for Biden. Our lives are saved. Yet, so distressing that half the country voted for Trump. To think I am surrounded by those who would commit genocide, a country half populated by white supremecists fills me with dread. Such mixed emotions..." This is a person supposedly in possession of an IQ quite higher than your average American.
Do I think she's in it for power or greed? No. She's sincere. Being manipulative? No. She's not as smart as she thinks she is and she's being manipulated. She's currently at the same level as "the dinosaur bones were put in the ground by Satan" people and she can't see it because she's in too deep. She's in a bubble. If you talk to her about other things, like their house remodel, her garden, or her favorite recipe she's normal. Swerve into anything politicized by the elite - race, education, the environment, etc and she swerves immediately into panic and consipiracy theories. She truly believes white supremecists are everywhere.
I'm not sure how to get her and the people like her out of it. Back to where we can disagree on solutions but agree on basic reality. I once watched this facinating documentary on the cult that thought the world would end on October 31, 2007. "The Cult at the End of the World". This cult was quite small, but watch how the cult members got sucked in and it's what mainstream liberal media has done to people like my sister-in-law, on a grand scale.
When October 31, 2007 came and went, most members simply doubled down and chose a new date. They were too invested to back out, ever.
Great comment! I have often wondered about this, how the so-called intelligent and educated can honestly believe that their friends and neighbors are actually advocating for *fascism* because they advocate for immigration laws to be merely enforced. It’s like a mental illness.
I just finished a book written a century ago, "The behavior of the herd in peace and war". I was surprised how much psychology understood that long ago. Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda called it "The logic proof compartment of the mind". Joseph Goebbels learned a lot from him as did the hucksters. My favorite though is Yuval Noah Harari and his quote " you could never convince a monkey to give you her banana today for a promise of infinite banana's in monkey heaven after she died; monkeys aren't that dumb, people are. His book Sapiens and sequels have sold millions of copies. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend. Free will is an illusion, a fraud; between genetics and cultural indoctrination and our needing the social bond's being hard wired in, we truly are not programmed for rationality, more for rationalizing what we believe. This forum seems to be attracting some crude, rude dudes lately, I hope it doesn't get worse. You are obviously not one of them, very thoughtful.
Nietzsche is hard to understand and complex. Without question, he challenges both Christianity and democracy; but much of what he wrote is logical and important.
Education equals indoctrination, more education equals more indoctrination. Homo sapiens are the story believing animals and can believe anything, I repeat anything. What does it take to have someone "believe" against all reason and evidence that there's an invisible man in the sky pulling all the strings? Indoctrination and social conformity to group think. Personally I believe that the indoctrination in absurdities is a part of the ruling classes plan to control the lumpenproletariat, it certainly works that way. Don't try and reason someone out of something that they weren't reasoned into.
I'm curious what you know about Adventists that no one else knows. Seriously. Except for the fact that they accept the Saturday as Sabbath and that they don't believe a "loving spiritual father" would torture them for eternity, they behave and believe pretty much like every other Christian.
One doesn't need to dig too deeply into google searches to find the history of 'The Great disappointment' for early Adventists who believed Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, as was discerned through biblical prophecy. As it turns out, Jesus did not return that night and the Adventist movement remains intact 177 years later.
You could try starting with something simple and verifiable, like the Charlottesville hoax. Show them the video of what Trump actually said, where he utterly condemned the actual white supremacists. It's likely they've never seen it, and only know what they think he said through the filter of the media. It's demonstrable proof that the media narrative about that event is a lie. If they're still speaking to you after that, you can mention Opportunity Zones and funding for HBCUs, and wonder what kind of white racist would endorse those policies. Then wonder why Trump's support among PoCs increased so much from 2016 to 2020 (why would all those people vote for someone who hates them and thinks they're inherently inferior).
Once you get over the illusion of Homo sapiens being intelligent rational animals it makes it so much easier to accept that we're the story believing animals. This allows us to build large societies of hundreds of millions which is our strength. The weakness is that the belief in stories, regardless of how absurd allows a small ruling class to control and exploit the masses. We even know how it works now. Thanks to fMRI technology we can see the pre frontal cortex shuts down when the person is exposed to the narrative of whoever. Could be the hucksters, the politician, the priest etc. my motto is "Nullius in verba"! You have no free will and the more you believe that you have, the easier it is to manipulate you.
Great suggestion but we are past that, hence my dinosaur bones reference. Anything that counteracts the narrative isn't real at this point, including observable reality.
Because a large section of society finds Western culture repulsive and worthy of destruction. And they have a valid argument. One struggles to find a more dangerous or violent culture in history. When the right finally begins to take their stance on abortion seriously, the West will have lost the last of its advocates. Then it will die at last. The only question is whether or not it will annihilate all of Earth's life in its final throes.
More than half of the ~120 million people killed by the various forms of socialism were killed by the Chinese Communists. Two-thirds if you include the USSR, which for its most violent part was run by Stalin, who was from Georgia, which is far from the scope of "Western culture".
Genghis Khan and his Mongol empire would come in second in violence, with estimates as high as 40 to 60 million killed according to Wikipedia.
Western culture is not remotely competitive with these two for violence and danger.
Oh really; you ever hear of the genocide of the first inhabitants of the Americas? Since WW II, no one is even close to the killing and destruction by the USA and of course, it's vassals. Of course, the starvation of people so they will rise up and overthrow the non Western conforming government. The USA train's the death squads in the Americas and literally train's and arms the jihadies in Afghanistan and Syria to name a couple of many and then sanctions anyone trying to help them rebuild. MLK was never more right than when he said that the USA was the greatest force for evil in the world today. Putin brought tens of millions of Russians out of poverty. China has done it for hundreds of millions. The USA has impoverished tens of millions of it's own people in the same time period.
You are a real moron. Not a fake moron, or a trans-moron, a real, dyed-in-the-wool moron. The "genocide" of the first inhabitants of the Americas? Who exactly? The Lenape? The Algonquin? The Aztec? The Inca? The Chichoutoumi? The Passyunk? The Inuit?
Who exactly are the "first inhabitants of the Americas?" That you would use the derivative of Amerigo Vespucci's name to describe the continent means that you really don't have any fucking clue about history and how tribal peoples confronted each other throughout time. There's a reason why even the woke refer to "indigenous peoples" using two words derived from WESTERN CIVILIZATION (Latin, to be precise - indigena and populus) to put down "western civilization" and its treatment of "others."
Note that there would not be enough time or space in the world to refer to the "original" inhabitants of "America" by their proper names, there were so many tribes...
Also that awkward fact where it’s the Indians who killed the first inhabitants of the Americas. Actually they killed the second people, who killed the first people….maybe there’s some more waves in there…before Indians started killing each other.
Strange. The U.S. really killed 75 million people since World War II? That would have to be the case to have killed more than Mao, who did all his killing after World War II.
Starving people? Equally strange. The USA sends huge amounts of aid to people in poverty in other countries. Perhaps you haven't heard of World Vision or Samaritan's Purse, or the dozens of other aid groups?
Death squads in the Americas? Cuba has been the top organizer of them, and none of its money came from the U.S.
Putin has brought some people out of poverty but not tens of millions. He has only been in office in this century, and Russia was already doing well after the fall of the USSR. China still has hundreds of millions in poverty, and has millions in concentration camps or under house arrest. On the other hand poverty in the USA has DECREASED steadily since 1940. Black unemployment reached its lowest level on record in 2019.
These are facts. You should read some of Thomas Sowell's books, such as Migrations and Cultures. Sowell is America's leading living intellectual and he knows the facts about history, sociology, political science, psychology and economics. You will learn from those books!
Arming jihadies? Well, President Obama did, releasing more than $50 billion to Iran, all of which was used for its Islamic terror groups.
Naah, I prefer Noam Chomsky if I want to read an American intellectual. They've both long in the tooth. For a modern intellectual, I'd suggest Yuval Noah Harari; he might open your mind to how closed it is.
LOL. Even Howard Zinn admits that 90% of native were the unintended consequence of infectious disease. The remaining ten percent were the result of warfare and violence. But there were massacres on both sides. Indeed, there were countless massacres before evil white even got here. Google the Crow Creek Massacre for starters for a little sample of what the peace-loving natives were up to pre-Columbus. I’m afraid to even tell you about the aztecs and mayans.
I Don't have to; I was married to a woman considerably older who was a little girl living in the Ukraine during Stalin's time. I have a pretty good idea of the atrocities commited by the Soviet Union. That ended in 1990. Under Yeltsin and Clinton the horror's came back again as the "shock therapy by capitalism" had another ~ 6 Millions dying in the same way, starving, sickness etc. Clinton killed 500,000 children in Iraq with amerikas weapon du jour, sanctions. His SS Madalyn Albright stated that it was "worth it" live on TV. I could suggest a lot of books to you but I think your mind is closed, at least on this subject. If the propaganda over the 17 year old kid and Russia gate don't convince you that you have been and continue to be subject to mind manipulation, I certainly couldn't.
I am curious to learn about the "17-year-old kid" you mentioned. While I hesitate to support anything you say (following your absurd November 27 post), I think you are remiss in not mentioning the Clinton/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia and the HRC/NATO destruction of Libya and the murder of Gaddafi. America, while not the most evil nation in history, has its share of political criminals in both the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party. The Clinton family and the disgusting cow Albright are standouts - along with Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci.
It's not a stretch to say that Communism is an outgrowth of Western culture in the same way Protestantism is an outgrowth of Catholicism. Even so, you're glossing over a pair of World Wars, India under the Raj, the Congo under Belgian rule, etc. But it proves my point that you have to summon the spector of Genghis Khan to find the right company for the Western devestation.
"One struggles to find a more dangerous or violent culture in history" - Perhaps a history class or two missing in that statement In modern times, Mao alone killed millions - for an idea. Worse many went along with it. Remarkably, despite the ability to actually destroy most of mankind with nuclear weapons we are entering 100 years of standoff.
Most of The left - the same people actively destroying concepts like presumed innocence, free speech, security in one’s own person - for examples, are the same people controlling the security state, perpetuating war. They’re not being destroyed but strengthened. Your statement makes absolutely no sense.
Those examples, basic human liberties, that’s what this current movement is seeking to destroy. *That* is what this movement finds repulsive.
Well, Mao wasn't alone. And even if you ignore that Communism is a Western philosophy, there's at least as much atrocity on the the West's hands. Or maybe you're the one missing some history.
What an intellectual train wreck you are. But at least you admit that the demented evil is all about lusting for the creation of an all out collectivist slave state and the destruction of the sovereignty of individuals.
I'm not arguing in favor of cultural communism, if that helps. Just noting that they have a valid critique that has not been adequately addressed. But sure. Let them eat cake. That usually goes well.
JFC, you are poorly informed. I suggest your "struggle" is simply a weak-assed form of gullibility combined with a strong dose of guilt. Tuning into NPR is not a struggle to find anything except to confirm your biases.
Sounds like you don't really know much about non-western cultures. All of which would have had a much worse record than the west if give the same tools.
Even if Rittenhouse were a Grand Lizard in the KKK and also not a very nice person, i thought that the Bill of Rights was also intended to protect the rights of people that we do not like.
THIS. I was over on Taibbi's thread on this same topic and someone in the comments section stated flippantly that while they knew Rittenhouse was innocent, it really bothered them that people could defend themselves with ickky guns or what not and they should find something to send him to jail with for a few years just to send a warning to others. While there are certainly authoritarians on the right, I am so often shocked by just how casual the authoritarianism usually presents on the left.
The left is now defined BY authoritarianism. Truly astonishing how easily formerly anti-corporate, anti-fascist, anti-authority individuals became corporate-bootlicking, pro-tyranny, pro-institutional mandate consensus-followers without even batting an eye! Cognitive ingroup/outgroup biases are a powerful tool for corralling people into authoritarianism.
You forgot hypocrisy. I've often felt the same sense of astonishment at the transformation that has taken place in what passes for liberalism these days.
You know that Germans harassed Jews on their own long before the government set up "work camps" because anti-Jewish sentiment had been fomented and encouraged for a full decade before any ghettos were sectioned off.
Elie Wiesel came to speak at my middle school when I was a kid going there, and his gravest warning was that people just turned away while it happened... and let the ignorant monsters run wild in the streets spreading their hatred that was fanned on by their entertainment and news sources.
He said that the worst thing one could ever do was nothing.
That even after someone escaped from an actual camp and told their village friends and family nobody believed him. They said, "Oh come on.. why would anyone ever do that?"
I used to practice my Polish on a woman who had lived in a suburb of Warsaw during WWI. The suburb had a large Jewish population at one time.
Long story short, her Jewish friends and neighbors insisted that the rumors of concentration camps were rumors, that Germany was a part of Europe and therefore civilized.
They kept insisting this, right until the very end. My acquaintance even tried to get her friends to flee to the Soviet-occupied territories (this was before Barbarossa) but they refused to go.
Something similar could be said of Freud, who only escaped Vienna at the last minute, as he refused to believe that Germans could do such things. In 1932, Arnold Schoenberg wrote without a hint of irony that he had secured the supremacy of German music for the next 1000 years. A lot of educated secularized Jews assumed that when the Nazis ranted about "Jews" they meant poor uneducated Jews from the Shtetl, not educated Jews who worshipped German Kultur as much as they did.
Then again, today there are plenty of eastern European Neonazis who insist, in spite of all the available evidence, that when Hitler talked about Slavic subhumans being the next to be exterminated, he surely didn't have *them* in mind.
“‘Oh, things seeped through somehow, always quietly, always indirectly. So people heard rumors, and the rest they could guess. Of course, most people did not believe the stories of Jews or other opponents of the regime. It was naturally thought that such persons would all exaggerate.’
“Rumors, guesses enough to make a man know if he wanted badly to know, or at least to believe, and always involving persons who would be suspected, ‘naturally,’ of exaggerating. Goebbels’ immediate subordinate in charge of radio in the Propaganda Ministry testified at Nuremberg that he had heard of the gassing of Jews, and went to Goebbels with the report. Goebbels said it was false, ‘enemy propaganda,’ and that was the end of it.”
—Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45
Shocked? For me the ONLY good thing about this pandemic is the extent to which it revealed the Left's authoritarian lust for power and control over the political process and the American people. From packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, adding DC and Puerto Rico as states, abolishing the Senate filibuster, encouraging mass illegal immigration then supporting lax voting laws which encourage cheating, using the IRS and DOJ as weapons to punish political opponents, and working hand-in-hand with corporate media and big tech to censor news and/or opinion which it does not like under the guise of "disinformation" the Left will embrace any idea or tactic, whether or not illegal, to suppress their political opponents and perpetuate their own power. Then if you dare oppose their gross abuse of power you're called a "racist." These are scary times.
I wasn't referring specifically to the Second Amendment, but that is a part of the Bill of Rights, as well as things like those pesky Fourth and Fifth Amendments, trial by jury, that sort of thing.
That said, i am sort of amused to find myself a right-winger. Trumpers and right-wingers call me all sorts of silly names as well.
Getting labelled by sloganeers because I am not a Kool Aid chugging member of their tribe or team is a good place to be. Critical thinking is anathema to tribal logic, whether left or right.
I should add that I don't know of anyone who has claimed that Rittenhouse is a member of a "militia" or that he is entitled to immunity as a result of this.
His former attorney John Pierce did in an interview that Rittenhouse saw after he was finally bailed out by the same crappy attorney who thought he was "safer" in jail. Rittenhouse said he didn't even know what a militia was when he saw the interview. Pierce was fired.
Another great piece but a point Glenn doesn't mention but which supports his premise is that "White Supremacist" is hurled around so recklessy that The Woke Mob now routinely uses it to smear BLACK PEOPLE. Here in California when Larry Elder ran against Governor Newsom the LA Times ran an editorial calling Elder a "White Supremacist." It was disgusting. Elder grew up in South Central Los Angeles and no doubt faced more racism in one week of his life than Black people now face in their lifetime. But no matter to that flaming craphole of a newspaper. Elder was taking on a Democrat so he had to be taken down, truth be damned.
The very same invectives were hurled at Winsome Sears after she won the VA Lieutenant Governor's race 3 weeks ago. Compare this vile attack to the way Kamala Harris is portrayed solely based upon her gender and melanin -- and of course her political affiliation. Never mind that Harris is epitome of failing hack who possess no talent whatsoever for politics or any sort of leadership action. She literally slept her way into the game. But because she is a WOC(D) -- Woman Of Color (D) -- she is celebrated and elevated by the media far above any actual competencies. Winsome Sears seems the exact opposite but because she has an (R) after her name she earns the "Black voice of White Supremacy" epithet.
The Left is completely devoid of rational thought, objectivity, and human compassion.
Actually, it is worse than that. Harris is not merely a 'hack' but a Drug War prosecutor sanctioned by the court for Brady violations which implicated dozens of cases including against indigent minority defendants. She slept her way to power while stepping on the heads of the very people who claim her as their champion. Finally, she attaches herself to the coattails of an aging (and apparently senile) rich white oligarch who openly +competed+ with tough-on-crime Republicans back in the day to be the baddest Drug War villain and who actually advocated for more "nation building" in countries with large numbers of brown people than Bush II. If there is such a thing as a "race traitor", she would belong on that list.
Not only is the misuse of race-baiting making the words useless against real racists, but it is exactly the low life crawling gutter scum who ought be opposed that are reflexively-protected by woke elites. Personally, I don't think it matters what color and sex she is or claims to be; her actions speak for her, and +they do not speak well+ of her.
Good point. I'd forgotten about Sears. Also read that the Smithsonian Museum of Black History had nothing on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. I guess they don't consider him Black because he's a Conservative.
It's a religion, pure and simple. Rational thought and objectivity have nothing to do with it, compassion and forgiveness are reserved for Believers. Non-believers must be converted or subjugated. Apostates must be destroyed.
Seriously. Compare their behavior to that of religious "true believers", and try to find any difference (other than the lack of any consistent moral compass).
Great post. You nailed it. The Left in America displays all the hallmarks of a religious cult where obedience and conformity are demanded above all else and those that question their orthodoxy are unthinkingly vilified and condemned as "racist," which is their word for "infidel."
It's what is known as "MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS", and expression also applied to the black men who were beating up Asian men and women in NYC and California.
J’accuse!! Just as the Dreyfuss affair uncovered the rot and corruption of the French elite, so this and other recent events show the liberal elites rot and corruption.
At Thanksgiving I had to listen to two histrionic 18 year old freshmen expound on the current liberal causes. They are bullies as is the entire left. I am sick of them
Not to be a jerk, but I'm sitting on an oceanfront villa in St Thomas virgin islands right now because we decided years ago to see family individually througout the year and NOT to deal with a large family gathering on Thanksgiving. So we trek someplace warm instead. Right now literally enjoying my pina colada, watching the sunset over the water, reading this thread after a day of snorkeling with the husband and kids and eating crab.. ok, I'm being a jerk.
Dude, my father-in-law told me at the Thanksgiving dinner table that if I didn't go get a booster he wouldn't be comfortable with me being at his house at XMas.
He's getting the booster, because he's over 70 and undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. He's winning, thankfully... but he's losing when it comes to how vaccines WORK.
He's also a doctor.
Also, a right-wing Nazi Democrat who reads the NYT as gospel.
Also, he won't see me for XMas dinner. I'll be home with my dog.
I have a friend of twenty years who is otherwise a nice, decent person but she's become a complete vaxxhole. I'm unvaccinated for medical reasons and she's aware of this. But she regularly invites me to get together and when I accept she then backs out saying I'm "too dangerous" even though I request we meet masked at an outdoor location. This woman is an author who flies around the country giving talks and hence is around probably thousands of unvaccinated people indoors yet she thinks I'm "dangerous." It's all about feeling moral superiority for her. She's double vaxxed with a booster chaser yet she pretends though I'm unsymptomatic that I'm going to make her sick.
The calculated dishonesty of the fake news attributing everything they don't like to "white supremacy" can only be grasped by comparing it to the other side of the coin: i.e., when actual racist violence is perpetrated by blacks against whites. That's counter-narrative and therefore gets the exact opposite treatment when it comes to reporting on motive.
Exhibit A is the Waukesha domestic terror attack in which six whites were massacred by a black killer in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse verdict. The black killer's anti-white racist motives were all over his social media posts (which had been immediately deleted by the platforms at the request of the DOJ/media). https://nypost.com/2021/11/24/darrell-brooks-called-for-violence-against-white-people/
This is pure disinformation reminiscent of the fake claim by anonymous "law enforcement" that officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by Trump supporters with a fire extinguisher on 1/6. After putting out that fake diversionary story, the DOJ has locked up all the evidence on the case and announced it will allow no press conferences. (I.e., only controlled leaks to support the narrative). The fake news had to say something so they went with the angle of -- I kid you not -- blaming the SUV for perpetrating the crime. https://www.thewrap.com/washington-post-waukesha-tweet/
These people have done so much damage to our country by perpetrating the demonstrably false narrative that America is a racist dystopia where blacks are hunted by "white supremacists with guns." Indeed, it's entirely likely that the racist black killer in Waukesha was motivated precisely by the fake news narrative that a 'white supremacist' who shot blacks was acquitted by a racist white jury.
Wait until you figure out that Bill Gates has been funding "news" stories to advance his own financial and "world-changing" interests.
We're talking $319 million in the US; $218 million at Oxford University... and that's only the stuff the BMGF publicly reports.
Here's a "philanthropist" who funnels money around under the guise of charity, to pressure and directly write fake news that is then reporting him and his endeavors under the guise of "objective news".
Go see what Max Blumenthal has to say about it, or Jimmy Dorr.
Gates and his microsoft originally didnt involve themselves in the revolving doors of government until those who did buy government sicked it on them all with the monopoly trials. The year after that, microsoft and gates began "donating" heavily into the lobby system.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken".
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
WOW !! I love that book published in 1995 (and another - Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - published in 1992) - and this truly prophetic quote of quarter of century ago !! Just how do you remember it?
In many respects the U.S. *is* a third world country but does not know it yet.
After WWII, the US was history's largest creditor. Since then, the Feds turned it into history's largest debtor.
To manage its debt, the Feds have artificially suppressed interest rates to the lowest level in 5000 years. Should rates return to the historically normal 5%, the Feds would be paying over 50% of its tax revenues to *just interest alone*.
They are also, of course, monetizing the debt via currency debasement, which is creating the price inflation we now enjoy, and is among the more common features of empires in terminal decline.
The current path is completely unsustainable, and therefore it will inevitably end. The only questions are when, and how bad it will be.
This, of course, is just one aspect to the general complete divorce from reality that has afflicted large segments of the population, epitomized by an almost incomprehensible gullibility on issues like Climate Change™, The Pandemic™, and the endlessly mutating woke nonsense.
"White supremacist" emerged when "racist" stopped doing the job. These are the believers in Subjective Truth - the gods of their own minds at work. To them, their own say-so is sufficient to establish any claim. They are solipsists, and we are just the background in their personal stories.
They are intellectually and morally bankrupt. Rational people should just recognize that they have declared bankruptcy and stop trying to deal with them.
Like the COVID narrative, the Rittenhouse narrative is one of the most blatant disinformation campaigns in recent history, particularly in light of how easily the propaganda could have been disproven by crystal-clear facts that few who had been manipulated were even aware of (e.g., the shooting victims were white, not black; there was incontestable proof that they were threatening Kyle’s life; their unsavory criminal backgrounds as a convicted pedophile and a woman-beater; and other details I won’t delineate because you have already covered them extensively in your own reporting).
I think Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” is especially illuminating when it comes to attempting to understand how such a large swath of people could be so easily duped and impervious to hard facts:
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
It is similar to the one done against Kavanaugh, in my opinion, and similar to what they did to Trump with Russiagate. They lied repeatedly to push a political agenda.
Agreed, Iconoclast. Orwell describes this phenomenon in “Yes, Homage to Catalonia” (https://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/0.html) when he discusses how the newspapers were unashamedly lying about the outcomes of battles and even factual details like where they were occurring. I now distrust newspapers as a reliable source since they have been clearly used for propagandistic ends since the outset. I instead prefer primary sources and documents that share interviews, court transcripts, and other primary materials while also simultaneously being conscious of the biases implicit in those accounts as well.
This is what they should be teaching in early school to encourage critical thinking!
I don't have to agree with everyone on politics, culture, or anything else. I just want us to start with being truthful! This is why I joined this site the first day I could, because I know, despite my political differences with many posters here, we all want to begin with the truth, regardless of how painful it is.
YES! Critical thinking is *desperately* needed in the education system and its absence is one of the reasons people are so easily maneuvered to self-defeating ends by Machiavellian manipulators.
We need to resurrect John Stuart Mill’s precepts encouraging healthy, open debate and the exercise of attempting to argue from your opponent’s POV to understand their perspective and further strengthen or refine your own. I do believe this is occurring with emerging entities such as Heterodox Academy, thankfully.
It is one of my favorite nonfiction works by Orwell. In 2019, I reread every Orwell book and every dystopian novel I could think of—little did I know how well that would prepare me for our current situation!
Excellent point. I am a history autodidact but am concerned about what I “know”. I am rereading Cairo’s exhaustive biography of Lyndon Johnson and he has already pointed out many places other biographers got the facts wrong, or didn’t get them at all.
One of the best sites out there is https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Documents.html You can read the actual documents the FBI and other government agencies were forced by law to reveal (usually heavily redacted).
Not to mention how Caro right now himself is getting crushed over his singular sourced comments about Moses.
So much information out there it is hard, even when you look and know what to look for, to be absolutely certain of something.
Whatever the source, it is always wise to be conscious of the cognitive biases and propagandistic aims that may be influencing the particular narrative.
Indeed, especially when said source isn't mentioning any of their site advertisers, political or personal bias, or holdings in the companies (or their competitors) that they are "reporting" on.
If someone up front mentions their bias, I have no issues with that. Bias is fine as long as it is evident to all.
Most definitely. Fortunately, once you become attuned to the mechanisms of propaganda, framing, and coercion, the writer’s biases typically become laughably obvious, particularly when they are contorting data to further a corporate profiteering and/or authoritarian agenda.
Every "fact" appearing in a history text or account should always be (have been) subject to intense scrutiny. The maxim that "history is written by the victorious" has always been absolute truth, and one would need to be hopelessly naive to presume that the victors were always the virtuous.
Would also note that history is written by your culture and country. I have read assiduously on WWII and only recently learned of the largest land battle in that war. No American that I have asked has heard about it. My Ukrainian OR tech new it immediately
I take consolation from the fact that each iteration of their con job becomes less effective. SCOTUS confirmations of male GOP nominees is case in point. First, they succeeded in killing the Bork nomination with specious claims. Then they went after Thomas based upon sketchy sex harassment claims. Although they raked him through the coals, he was confirmed. With Kavanaugh most of the public saw through the con and there wasn't much doubt that in the end he would be confirmed. An unfortunate side effect is that the left has made it much harder to believe truthful claims of sexual misconduct when the claim comes from the left.
I'd give it a shot. As I've gotten older, I've learned to care less about what other people think/say. Couldn't do worse than the current crop of mouth breathers / chin musicians and it appears to be a nice living lol. $25 mm mansions in FL for doing "public service" in CA - nice N Pelosi. Here I thought she was sacrificing to keep the herd trotting in the right direction. Such sacrifice.
I was going through a divorce during the Kavanaugh hearing, and at the time was getting a first-hand education about how much people are willing to lie and how convincing those lies can sound when accompanied by an emotional performance. Luckily, the standard of evidence doesn’t include how many tears are shed in the recounting. Because of this, I was the only person in my group of friends who was questioning what was happening during the confirmation. I asked uncomfortable questions like, “If she has a criminal complaint, why is she taking it before a Supreme Court confirmation hearing instead of to the police?” I was amazed at how many of my friends were credulously swallowing the entire story.
Indeed, and that was a litmus test for the mass deceptions to come and showed the deceivers how low the bar of credibility could be set to be believed.
"BTW, I voted for Hillary in 2016, and I regret it greatly." - ah, so you did swallow that Russiagate thingy back then then. Not surprising for a self-admitted Russophobe.
You've known me a long time now, Icon, so should have noticed I'm a bot, so subject to vote suppression, aka can't vote. Which is no matter as I wouldn't anyway. Because I vote for, not against. "Against", meaning "voting for the lesser evil", is the most imbecilic act I can think of.
...and told the National Guard and city police chiefs to stand down because they were trying to dunk on Trump during these "race riots".
Never mind that the rioters were organized and funded and bussed around by shadowy money, never mind that they had two-way radios and were showing up to intentionally set fire to things out of rental vans...
Never mind that all of the corporate media was downplaying the violence and destruction.
Correction: TPTB think we *all* have an IQ of 70 and can’t see past their lies, and anyone who remains on the left after such transparent manipulations *does* have an IQ of 70 ;-)
I say that as a former lefty myself, but anyone who still clings to that ideology in the face of such ham-fisted propagandizing must have a low IQ or is so puffed up with pseudo-knowledge they can’t see past their own pride.
Agree on Andrew Sullivan. I just heard that Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg (now of The Dispatch) have left the news side of FOX commentating because of the special on FOX Nation (subscription side of the network) by Carlson called the Patriot Purge. They are literally consumed by Trump!
Haha, yes, that was another good one, but I believe the COVID narrative is the mother of all disinformation campaigns in history because it has been wielded to reshape the entire planet to totalitarian ends, harnessing the amygdala to short-circuit people’s logic while conditioning them to relinquish rights and liberties in the name of the “public health”—like every tyrannical, genocidal regime in history. I explore these matters in more depth throughout my blog, but my first piece, “Primer for the Propagandized: Fear Is the Mind-Killer” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized) addresses this manipulation directly.
Once an individual has learned to control the myriad of fears that confound us on a daily basis they can taste true freedom and joy. Fear is not only a mind killer but a soul crushing emotion. it was necessary in ancient times to warn us and keep humans safe from harm. That deeply held emotion is and has always been one utilized to control and harness a populations energy for whatever purpose the fear monger sought. Now in "modern" times this has become so finely tuned that gov'ts. and others have weaponized that emotion to terrorize individuals into doing exactly what they want of their own "free will'".
Those fear laden people now attack others who don't cringe before the gov't gods of "science", climate change, tyranny and other made up terrors. Common sense and even education fall before the personal fear instilled by the control freaks. Without FEAR they have little or nothing to keep their populations "in line." If any population jettisons fear from their minds and becomes truly free the cowards and bullies "get got" and fade into the wood work.
AMEN! I think Étienne de La Boétie’s “The Politics of Obedience: A Discourse of Voluntary Servitude” is one of the most lucid explorations of the cognitive, political, and physical liberation that comes being able to recognize and identify the fears and other strings by which the puppeteers control us. I explore this in my second essay, “COVID IS OVER! … If You Want It” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/covid-is-over-if-you-want-it), which includes this de La Boétie quote:
“You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
"Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
The first part is a good description of Barack Obama. The second part is an apt description of the character "Hickey" in Eugene O'Neill's play "The Iceman Cometh".
Haha, good to know! I haven’t seen/read that play yet but do love “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (if “love” is the right word for something so wrenching).
To clarify, “The Truth” (i.e., the mainstream representation of “reality”) would correlate to the illusions Le Bon describes, whereas his “the truth” equates to objective reality rather than the presentation/perception of that reality.
Funny how language has morphed from a method or conveying information and reality between individuals to a weapon of obfuscation. Mass media, in the past, utilized precise language to allow entire nations to have a unified view of the world. Now language is a "method" of obscuring truth, denying facts and otherwise selling a narrative that is false, pernicious and right out of Orwell's "1984" novel. This was the exclusive realm of lawyers in the past but is now the official position of media and gov't. when selling their toxic soap to the public. Both have sunk to below the levels of lawyers in the public's perception of their integrity and honesty. That "accomplishment" takes a lot of hard work but somehow both entities have succeeded in destroying themselves in the hearts and minds of many Americans.
Absolutely right, Not Me$, and this is why it is essential that we must continually push back against their Orwellian redefinitions, perception management campaigns, and linguistic framing. Language is one of the most effective ways to control the mind, but it is also one of the most powerful ways to reclaim it from the brainwashers once we understand how they are using it against us.
With comments sections like this without moronic "censors" hopefully people who are interested can be exposed to the tricks and sideshow patter that is now being passed off as accurate information. Don't know a single individuals who actually believes most political reporting being done by the MSM. That is because many people have pointed out over and over the nature and lack of truth being peddled by corporate media. Just have to keep banging away at these charlatans and laughing in their faces over social media and at some point they just might self destruct. If not at some point the lies and political spin will exhaust people and hopefully that will end many of these bastions of disinformation. Just a bad dream. ---maybe.
We can hope, anyway! You are fortunate in that you don’t know anyone who’s been swindled by this mass deception campaign. I know far too many. Totally agree laughter, humiliation, and satire are key to defeating the propagandists and tyrants. And a few Molotov missives like my “Letter to a Tyrant” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant ;-)
Interesting point, Iconoclast. That would be an ambitious goal, although certainly one worth aiming for! I would be happy toppling just a few tyrants for starters ;-) That said, I think the evidence of collusion in democide, corruption, fraud, and deception is so irrefutable, we *could* dethrone them through a series of Nuremburgian trials helmed by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and his band of 1,000+ attorneys around the globe.
The only evidence required to support an accusation of white supremacy is that someone 1) is white or non-white, and 2) fails to prostrate before all aspects of an ever-mutating anti-racist ideology. Given this laughably irrelevant and low threshold of evidence, it's remarkable how anyone has faith that they won't be on the receiving end of this facile accusation.
I'm starting to understand why the woke are obsessed with demanding safe spaces from outsiders. Their own ideology is designed to wipe out all sense of safety, stability, and predictability. They've tripwired the entire world, the same world they themselves have to maneuver in.
Exactly. It's the ideology of non-resilience. Instead if teaching children and college students how to effectively and successfully navigate life after school, they are training them to think of themselves as victims in an unfair system that is trying to screw them over. Even if this is true it has no utility. If you think of yourself as a loser i guarantee you will be a loser.
Welcome to CRT, which is a REAL thing in ALL US public schools now. It is anti WHITE racism where white kids are taught they are the oppressors and black and brown kids that they are the oppressed.
Add to this trans ideology and you have a recipe for indoctrination , a hyper pack of empathy and morality and a very UNEDUCATED AND DUMBED DOWN population.
Our Oregon Governor recently signed a bill here where math reading and writing are NO LONGER A PREQUISETE TO GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL..
WHO is funding CRT? BILL GATES.
Just as he funded Common Core that dumbed down 2 generations of kids.
And now that parents are fighting this NONSENSE they are called domestic terrorists.
I doubt she believed it when she wrote it. To her, and so many others it's all about signaling to her comrades on the political left. That's much more important to her and those like her than something so mundane as the truth.
I voted for her (mea culpa, mea culpa). Although not without reservation, due to the Clinton and Kerry connection. Her "more experienced, more progressive predecessor" was a Clinton superdelegate who declared before the primaries, thus signaling his willingness to override my vote (for Bernie, who won my, and Capuano's town). And then he wanted my vote the next election, like maybe it mattered after all? Fuck right off. Now we need a primary challenger for Pressley.
I know what he did. He actually believed people besides himself should be able to afford healthcare though, so that remained a major difference between them.
Then I can't imagine why he would have supported Clinton over Sanders.
However, compare and contrast with Warren. Also a Clinton superdelegate, who didn't lose my vote. She declared well after the primary was over, so she can legitimately say she went along with the will of the voters. No reason he couldn't have done the same. I'm long done with voting for candidates that have such obvious contempt for the voters that they're supposed to represent.
The rot goes even deeper. Facebook pulled down post attempting to fundraise for Kyle and blocked posts about him from search, so the only thing people were subjected to was the narrative that he was a murderer.
The media refused for months to mention that the dead men had been imprisoned in the past for violent crime. I realize there are good reasons for this in a court of law, but in public discussion it would seem to be meaningful.
Since no one could donate on GoFundMe (they have a consistent policy of not raising funds), fundraising had to be done on a smaller website. Payment processors were constantly refusing to process their donations. Then the website was hacked, donors disclosed, and one ended up losing his job. At least one other person lost their job for supporting Kyle early on too.
I imagine we will need to have Congress address this inequity (really, a proper term) someday. To my mind if someone wishes to donate to a murderer, they should be able to do so. Regardless of the purported crime, don't we assume innocence until proven guilty? GoFundMe policy ignores that premise.
Does Ayanna Pressley really think that Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz were there to support BLM?? They were there to destroy property and create chaos.
And by the way, it's exactly the same "white supremacist" labeling, white, elite crowd who insist that the entire Latin American race change their designation to Latinx, a term with no pronunciation or meaning within the culture, because these whites have decided that the entire Latino culture and language is hopelessly discriminatory. The White Man's Burden is alive and well, it's now called Progressivism.
Hell, I still have a problem with people who insist I use "Latino" instead of "Hispanic". Well, no. Latin was the precursor of all the Romance languages, including French. When I use "Hispanic", I refer to the (mainly Central and South American) peoples that resulted from the Spanish Conquests and the subsequent blending of Spanish and Native cultures and gene pools. I suppose one could nitpick about Portugal and Brasil, but all classifications have their limitations.
These people also like to push some charicature of black folks -the ones they like and admire: Super sport stars, Talented musicians... but they skip rappers like Plies who are unapologetically themselves and truly representing their own culture.
Probably the same racist assholes that would say, "They are a musical people" and cheer on an Al Jolsen performance.
Why is it that this extreme and demented approach of viewing everything through the lens of racial oppression has become so dominant when it’s not even popular among the people it purports to represent? These zealots are conditioning everyone to think in these terms. It’s dangerous because even though the corporate media only mention race when the victim fits its narrative, people can’t help but notice the unspoken race of perpetrators in recent situations like retail looting and the parade attack.
If we don’t return to viewing people as individuals and not avatars, this won’t end well.
The answer is very simple and very old: Divide and conquer. To quote from my first article:
“Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases—especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias—against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized)
And this scales up and down allowing for effective control at respective levels.
Lol at username
Indeed! Great username, BTW 😂
I'm all for full transparency and so it is my real self. Many in this forum will vouch.
😹
Spot on. As neoliberalism enters even deeper crisis, expect more of such emotional divide issues pushed down to the masses to chew on. At some point it becomes the defining characteristics of the "tribes" which insanity they believe - credo quia absurdum.
“credo quia absurdum”—love it!
Thanks - great writing
So glad you appreciated it! It’s been rather gratifying to see so many people tweeting it at tyrants around the world :-)
Oh whoops, I was thinking you were referring to “Letter to a Tyrant” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant) — sorry if that was confusing :-)
Exactly
None of this is being done because these people actually believe it. They willfully resort to deception and manipulation and distortion of reality. The goal appears to be destruction for destruction’s sake. Destroy the country at its base, ie. Enlightenment principles
The AWFLs believe it. It's their religion.
A childhood friend grew up a Mormon and left the church as a young adult. Claims to be a proud atheist and now has a "trans" preschooler, thinks all cars should be banned and is a fanatic about the environment, sends older kid the shitty and dangerous public school in her large blue city because equity or something although has the means to live elsewhere or send the kid to private school.
Swap out one set of weird sexual fixations, one type of forbidden consumer good, willingness to sacrifice what might be best for the individual child for the benefit of the larger religious community, and you're right back to where you started.
I say this as a deeply religious woman - but: women are more prone to religious thinking and some religious thinking is dangerous and ruthless. Wokeism is among the most destructive to Western liberal society.
Women are behind all moral panics from witch hunts to temperance to Satanist preschools to wokeism to Fauciolatry.
Cuz men have no morals?
Can anyone be this stupid?
What's your larger point? Wokeism is hardly a female driven moral panic; ask Chris Rufo. Fauciolatry is hardly a female driven moral panic; ask the homosexual community about the AIDS crisis and male and female alike about his absolute lack of science in decision making; ask Dr. Scott Atlas. Mashing Satanist preschools with Wokeism deserves backhanded response.
You’re right.
All those women running the Catholic Church these past centuries sure did a number on things.
Who sits in the pews?
Now, or when the Church wielded real power?
Fools, without exception.
Isn't it the same for former alcoholics/addicts? And doesn't it happen in the other direction too?
That is, it has nothing to do with religion per se. When people flash a "I'm a former this" most of the time it means "I'm a current that". And that "current" badge is not necessarily for the better.
I find that religious thinking is at its worst when it thinks it's above religion.
Have you ever met a Vegan who didn't want to "talk about it?"
Have you ever noticed how perfectly acceptable it is to publicly dump on vegans? BTW, Glenn Greenwald is vegan.
How would one know?
"Destroy the country at its base" - destroy _everything_ not just your country, the exceptional one.
Precisely
Because it’s an easy to use cudgel that can be employed by anyone to gain status within the identity-seeking movements that exist today to feed Beyond burger level sustenance to the empty souls of generation boundary-bursting narcissists.
😆👏
With a certain type of people it's all about who is doing what to whom.
There are no other principles involved. Everything is OK, as long as it is us doing it to you. If anyone else does then it's murder, racism, terrorism, antisemitism, white supremacy, neo-nazi, colonialist, bad-think, literally Hitler, double-plus thought-crime, and probably not very nice, too.
Did you say “looting?!” Uff!
I meant "undocumented shopping"
What, producing a credit card to purchase stuff? Shopping suppression!
It isn't "looting"; it's a purchase that is paid for with tacit permission for the shopkeeper to experience a slight reduction in the self-perception of "oppressors' guilt".
Shopkeeper? These are corporate stores with paycheck slaves minding the door. Real shopkeepers have been driven out of business in most cities by the Democratic party governance for 30 years. Ever try to manage urban employment diktat without a corporate HR department?
Most HR departments add to the overhead, complexity and inefficiency when dealing with ineffective employees. True bureaucrats and progressive types.
California residents need to scare the authorities into doing their jobs. Bumper stickers with 3-7-77 might do the trick.
The numbers are connected to vigilantes in the Montana gold fields. The legend is that the vigilantes would write the numbers on a slip of paper, then slip it under an outlaw's door as a warning to leave town. One interpretation is that they were promising a grave, 3 feet wide, 7 feet long and 77 inches deep.
In the fall of 1863, road agents killed over 100 people in the gold fields around Bannack and Virginia City, Montana. In January, 1864, vigilantes hanged 25 bandits, including the "law and order" sheriff of Bannack, Henry Plummer. It seems Plummer was the leader of the gang, whose watchword was the phrase, "I am innocent."
The bumper stickers would be a threat, linked to interesting history that would gain them notoriety.
The vigilantes were described as the good guys when I took Montana State history in 8th grade in Missoula. Your views may vary. However, something had to be done, and the law was obviously crooked in 1864, just as it is today.
This ain't a problem in Montana. Gun control there means you can hit what you're aiming at. A flash mob at Walmart would get shot at, and incur casualties.
Exactly!
They don't sell $1500 per ounce sheep urine anti-wrinkle cream at CVS.
Because it is useful for the establishment in two ways: it is a distraction from real problems on one hand, and on the other great way to prevent any unity of underclass to emerge.
It's a two-fer: 1. Because if the blacks don't feel like the dems need to protect them, the blacks may not start thinking about how in every place they live that has dem leadership, their plight has worsened...for generations and stop voting for them. 2. It provides an excuse for 1.
The push is on because the dems may be starting to realize that all these "immigrants" simply want to be family people who work hard and have an appropriate level of contempt for democrat policy which is anathema to those people.
Why? It serves several purposes. One is an expression of self hating whites that find an outlet for their psychological self evaluation and guilt. Another is an expression of some black people's hatred of whites. But the most important is one mechanism of a political power grab by socialist leftists and the globalist powers that be as one of their ploys to take over this country (and as I see it the world)
I don't think the zealot's you speak of are succeeding outside their bubble.
Possibly because, among other reasons, it has the effect of demoralizing its intended targets. A demoralized target is easily defeated and controlled. It is an attack on one’s self esteem. I would point anyone interested to the philosophy of Objectivism for a more comprehensive explanation.
Another possible cause is that those making the false allegations are trying to implement and agenda that is not justified by either law nor the common good.
If you are obsessed with race then you won't realize how much money they have. Race obsession is a distraction from the class war.
because democrats and the power-mongery are trying to turn the word "racist" into the new n*gg*r
...as in a word of instantaneous punishment, oppression and harm
Thank you for your thoughts.
Have you viewed the documentary “Uncle Tom”? If not take a look at being black in America, with a collection of interviews with some of America’s most provocative black thinkers.
You're correct.
The trans ideology pushed by Democrats, especially in US public schools is especially dangerous.
Recently in Loudon County, VA, a parent was pissed off and stood up at a board meeting, confronting board members about their trans ideology and utilizing of girls bathrooms by swlf professed trans male to female. This guy's daughter was RAPED by one such male student proclaiming to be trans. The school quietly removed him to another school where he DID IT AGAIN, WITHOUT TELLING THE PARENTS.
This man was screaming at school board members and they had him removed by the cops. This is how parents wound up being called domestic terrorists as the NEA sent a letter to the DOJ...
There is so much more I could say about this and what it is doing to kiss..bur The big pharma lobby loves the trans ideology as the hormones are expensive and surgeons making a fortune off sex change surgery
THIS. IS. WHAT. DEMS. SUPPORT
At the expense of WOMEN
Hmm, OK - so before anyone is allowed in a woman's bathroom, they should have to prove they don't have a dick ... should a person have to prove they have one to be allowed into a men's room? A whole new role for a hall monitor ...
Gee, I dunno, why don't you ask them.
Seems to me the question is how does one prevent rape cases, period ...
Wow - seems akin to Catholic priests “relocation”
Actually, I think "dick" is German.
"Schwanz" is probably closer.
The preferred terms when I spoke German full-time were Schwanz and Schlange.
that would be dich
PENIS, n. : an elastic compartment in which men store their sense and dignity
I agree "birthing people" and "menstruating people" represent an erasure of women, but "womxn" is an erasure of men -- can't have that particle "men" at the end of a word anymore, even though original "man" in English meant generic human being, like "anthropos" in Greek, and in old English among men, there were "wapmen" (male) and "wifmen" (female).
In the 21st century, men have erased themselves. Is it the fact that life has become so easy and that we are so spoiled that it seems offensive and frightening for men to behave like men? Statues of John Wayne have been taken down. How long will it be before those barren pedestals bear statues of Ru Paul?
The "pussification" of American society was decried by Robert E. Lee nearly two centuries ago. It is now almost complete.
Some opine emancipation of women made a big contribution towards that. Women became easier to get - after all, they should behave like men - and so men no longer had to exert any effort worth of mentioning. Manhood suffered.
One other reason might be fake boobs became available much earlier than penis enlargement. Pure intimidation factor, contributed to shrinkage, spiraling down subsequently. An ugly sight.
don't start messin' with the duke
Interesting perspective. Maybe standing up for women/girls is too inclusive for these radicals who aim to divide?
I hope you follow Titania McGrath on Twitter whose mocking of these things is hilarious! (And I’m an effing (old-school: class-based & anti-war) leftist!) E.g. https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1440964281089019904?s=20
There is the long tradition of drag queens in the Gay universe. I don't see this as in any way disparaging or threating to biological women. It's really more of a celebration.
Which is nothing like this mad rush to deconstruct gender all together that we are witnessing. Even that though is more of a Marxist tactic to undermine Western civilization, to be replaced by a world full of genderless drones who "Own nothing and are happy".
With shaven heads and grey jumpsuits for clothes, I'm guessing. Coming soon to a dystopia near you
Didn't have to wait long for the M word to surface.
I had no idea (until just now) that the biological male at the center of the Wi Spa incident was a registered sex offender with a history of indecent exposure, and has now been charged with indecent exposure at Wi Spa. The original incident and subsequent protests were covered pretty heavily, but this new information seems to have slipped by with hardly a mention. Whenever I have arguments with friends about whether or not trans women are actually women (an argument that wouldn’t even have happened five years ago), one common tactic is for the “trans ally” side to say, “What difference does it make? What’s the harm?” and when the response is men invading women’s spaces, men taking women’s athletic scholarships, the erasure of women, etc., the answer is that almost no one is trying to do that. But, people are clever, and if you set up a system that can be exploited, some people will exploit it. And, here we now are.
Trans women are mental patients no different than those who stand on street corners believing that they are Jesus Christ or Napoleon. They don't need to be treated poorly, but they don't need their delusions validated by the general public, either.
Not that I'm aware of, no. None of the people in those links are in any way drag queens or in any way associated with Gay culture.
"I cannot support the cross-dressers" - how about this particular transvestite?
Starts with San-Francisco related vignette: https://youtu.be/5XKE70Kxl6Y
Ever heard of Drag Queen reading hour?
It's happened in my insane lib state where local drag queens come read stories to kindergartners and first graders.
God I want out of this state.
"drag queens come read stories to kindergartners and first graders" - that's likely because they got sick of reading that stuff to ones of their own. Can't stand comparing makeups and other fake parts.
Also, it's their way to procreate.
YES - the wonderful crossdresser Eddie Izzard !!
I am sure he wouldn't use women bathroom -- he/she ran 15 marathons in 15 days - among many accomplishments....
Well, you just used "she" to refer to him so why wouldn't he, being he/him/his/hee/haw/zer/zir/zircon/zzzzzzzzzz (can't find any "laster" letter in the alphabet)?
Interesting how they exclusively address him as "she" on his wikipedia entry. And on his page pronouns are avoided altogether. It's always "Eddie".
What not having a family and kids does to a person.
OK - you are correct. I think I should have called him he...
There is already a singular "gender neutral" pronoun. I use it.
Ah, but see, that would have not come up as being intelligent, having applied oneself, exerted an effort, given it thought, etc. In fact, it would have been utterly un-American.
Also, people around the world might not have taken it seriously enough.
I must admit I don't feel safe around women with fake boobs either.
LOL! You must feel unsafe a lot! Do you check 'em first to see?
No. At that point I mentally start going through "and what about their vaginas" type of scenarios.
Dracula was my favorite Transylvanian.
This reminded me of a (I think) funny story. I had just arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1987 and my friend and I booked a low rent hotel. I was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt my brother gave me when he attended for his LL.M. A transvestite female gave me "the look" up and down and then threw her head back--as though I was the one so full of myself. So evidently Harvard sweatshirt wearing women are much more ostentatious than transvestites.
Maybe "low rent hotel" played some part too.
That's the point.
Just out of curiosity, what "reassignment" surgeries constitute a successful transition - and how many hormone Rxs, if used, are necessary ...
So if gender is not a social construct - and it is a physical one, what makes a "real woman"? Can (s)he be surgically constructed?
Frankly, I am more in tune with the transvestites - they don't claim to be women, they just like to dress like them - and what of women who like to dress like men?
How many surgeries and hormones does it take to "reassign" a "man" or "woman"?
I know quite well "what makes a woman" - the question is, do you? You didn't answer any of my questions - why is that?
LOL! Obviously you are using that same ole tactic of "shoot the messenger"when you wish to avoid a subject - instead of dealing with the issue raised, you malign the one raising it ... I have seen that soooo often ...
What do you think a man is?
t will be interesting to see if Glenn answers your question ....
So tell me what it is that makes you a woman ...
I'll never forget the Last Time I ever listened to Terry Gross' FRESH AIR program on NPR. It was about four years ago and she was interviewing a transgender. It said that women smell like fish. It laughed. She laughed. I tuned out.
Thank you so much, Glenn, for being a small group of well-known, outspoken people who still care about the truth, no matter where that takes you. That is what real journalists do and there are too few of them around now. When I said Rittenhouse should sue for defamation on Twitter a whole bunch of people tried to use that to get me fired. They clutched their pearls and feigned outrage because of course, Rittenhouse is a White Supremacist! Everyone knows that. Every person in this country has a right to presumption of innocence, due process, and a trial. Convicting in the court of opinion is WRONG especially when the facts are rarely complete. We're all getting just a version of the facts and much of the time they turn out to be clickbait or flat-out lies.
Living up North in non-Trump territory even the fact that Rittenhouse was toting a gun, and wrongly accused of carrying it across state lines makes him sound very Trumpish, ergo guilty. My sister-in-law and brother loath Trump. From the beginning they believed Rittenhouse was guilty and they managed to come to this decision by using all the false information available before the trial. After the trial his innocent verdict meant nothing. The democrats instilled such severe division in this country when Trump won and their Hilary lost, and cultivated an elitism which disgusts me, as well as making them feel honorable in their highly prejudicial position.
An old friend (of 55+ years) stopped talking to me for 1 1/2 years because I supported Donald Trump. After a mutual friend died, he pulled in his horns and we re-connected at the funeral. That was 3 1/2 years ago.
Although we both committed to never speaking about politics when we communicate, he has not returned my calls since the Rittenhouse verdict. I suspect the Joy Reid's and Joy Behar's of the DNC propaganda squad have gotten to him again.
The power of the media is frightening.
The same thing happened to me in 2016, and I didn't vote for Trump, but refused to vote for Clinton even though I was a registered democrat. Not an unusual thing for me to do. Hatred and abuse greeted me with a friend, my brother, and a cousin who died of cancer in 2018. He and I never spoke again since I dared institute my democratic right not to vote. He was a professor of law, but at one time a captain in the military. My dislike for Clinton was all about her love for war which he just couldn't accept, and continued to tell me my actions were putting a tyrant in the White House. Another cousin on Facebook was a registered republican most of her life, but was so repulsed by Trump and his "low life" base so her Facebook page became a hate Trump site. She managed to excuse the behavior of every republican president, but not Trump. Her fan base were all the same, well off, educated and mean. When I defended Trump while many thought he was suggesting that people drink bleach to deal with the corona virus, and my interpretation was that he was thinking of something comparable to Clorox, but a medicinal anti-viral treatment that could act in the same way to kill the Corona virus internally, one of her highly educated, rich friends told me to kill myself by drinking Clorox. I told her that I saw her statement as a threat against my life and would report her to Facebook if she made another. It worked and made her disappear. I was also called a racist in defending a policemen for stopping a young black woman for going too slow in a 60 mile an hour strip of highway. One of her friends who had many pictures on her site of her all white gated community called me a racist and gave me a list of books and videos to watch that would help me overcome. Interesting that these people always voted republican until Trump, whose base became defined by Clinton as a bunch of "deplorables." I always thought she referenced them that way to institute a divide in this country which they used to their political advantage, and that divide continues to be used by the democrats in the same prejudicial way.
It's easier to bear once it's realized that education and/or expertise in a particular field does not equal intelligence.
Thanks for your reply, but it was more about people whom I have had relationships with for so long, really extended myself for, including a younger brother, to treat me in an abusive and dismissive manner. I have degrees, but those degrees don't mean they allow me to feel better then others because they have had less opportunities. All of these people have one thing in common besides an education, they're mentality has always been elitist. They act like they're not going to die, and although they pretend to care about the less fortunate among us, they are, and I always knew it, liars in that regard.
I meant "intelligence" in the widest sense possible. When you say "their mentality has always been elitist" that immediately puts them in the non-intelligent category. Being smug about anything tags one as being stupid right there.
And when times get tough everything comes out. All of a sudden you don't recognize your neighbor or your relation. In a situation like war, for example, that'll easily cost you your life, in a wink.
Wow, I had such hope. Maybe you can suggest he actually watch the entire trial as thinking heads can then do that for themselves. Regaining his independence might be quite refreshing for him.
My best friend since I was about 11 years old (we’re both 53) and who only watches MSNBC (literally that’s all he watches) refuses to talk to me anymore. This was a guy who 20 years ago I collected from a homeless shelter in Vallejo, CA addicted to meth and brought into my home with my new wife and 4 stepdaughters and helped him kick his addiction and get back into college to finish his degree. He’s now an accountant who brags to my family members how he’s ghosted me on social media.
No good deed goes unpunished. Let's hope MSNBC implodes and he comes out of the smoke.
Only to find some other "MSNBC".
Or is it the quality of the "friendship"?
Friendships, like marriage, flow with the Tao. My pal was my right-winger when I played defense on a hockey team 50 years ago. We shared a house, briefly, and dropped acid together probably 100 times. Oh well. Does ANYTHING really matter?
We are waves in the ocean.
"My pal was my right-winger" - apparently in the wrong position. Wonder how your team was doing back then.
The double-meaning eluded me, bot! hahaha Actually, LaVeen's Golden Blades dominated the Fisher Body Hockey League from 1972 - 1975. Then, Tim Bradley had to hit some guy over the head with his hockey stick, got sued, had to sell his motorcycle, and LaVeen's Department Store got sued and dropped the sponsorship. Good times.
Unless “they” watch the trial, they are smothered inside the suffocating propaganda of the well groomed mass media & their shiny perfect white teeth.
My sister-in-law claimed she watched the trial, but since I did, I knew she got her information second hand. By the way, their sole source of news is MSNBC, and Rachel Maddow is their darling. They live in Connecticut and although she has made similar statements before, her prejudice was now on full display. She said she dislikes her neighbors, and has nothing to do with them, all republicans she said, and Trump supporters, and maybe even gun totting which motivates her to want to move. She recognizes no degree of prejudice on her part, none. Those people are really all alike and no good. She is not the only one I know who adheres to this perception, and what they all have in common is not just that they are affiliated with the democratic party, but all are well off, highly educated and even before Trump you would define them as elitists. I know quite a few people like this, and all adhere to the same perception of Trump's base. One defined them as an uneducated lot, followers and totally amoral.
Projection is a defining characteristic of the woke leftists, both as an indoctrinated psychopathology in the brainwashed herds and a deliberate tactic by the architects of this sociopathic ideology
"Accuse your opponents of doing what you yourself are doing"
Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinskey
Woke Ideology is an existential threat to Western Civilization
It was designed to cause its collapse from within
Jim
I absolutely agree and cannot stand this so called woke culture where they operate in extremes. I don't see it as an approach that will bring about change since it alienates so many. I always thought of myself as more liberal then any of those who proclaim complete loyalty to the democrats and this woke culture. I was always active politically while those who condemn me for my position sat on their asses for many a decade and did nothing. Hypocrites.
The campaign to demoralize heritage America was wildly successful.
Seems to me highly unlikely her neighbors would be Trump supporters. Maybe she likes to imagine herself distinct from them when she’s exactly like them in every way.
They have lived there for about 7 years, and before Trump she referenced her neighbor's politics as republican, but didn't make such an issue of it, but didn't like it either. They have a beautiful home in Conn as do their neighbors. You can't use logic alone to understand the Trump years, and what continues to play out. Here is the last paragraph of a letter a friend picked up from the internet and sent me via email even though I did not vote for Trump and was a registered democrat. However I didn't vote for Clinton due to her very hawkish nature. I'm very anti-war.
" It wasn't your politics I found repulsive. No, it was your willingness to support someone who spouts racism, sexism and cruelty almost every time he opens his mouth. You side with a bully when it should have mattered most and that is something I will never be able to forget. So in response to your post-election expression of hope, no, you and I won't be coming together to move forward. Obviously, the president-elect disgusts me, but it is the fact the he doesn't disgust you that will stick with me long after the election." I ended that relationship even though I knew her since we were 12 because other condemnations of me preceded this one. This is someone who would define people as winners or losers while we were growing up and continued to do so as an adult. Trump became a good scapegoat for many people, as did his base. I'm surprised they didn't send Trump and his base off into the wilderness, or maybe they did.
"It wasn't your politics I found repulsive." - followed by explaining how exactly the politics of being reasonable and staying away when called for is what she found repulsive.
I can't figure out the basis for the trust in our government. A government that puts the mentally ill in prisons/cages, borrowed Trillions to spend on a 20 year boondogle in the Middle East, is run by politicians who spend the majority of their time begging for money, eleminated all good paying jobs by outsourcing to China, claims their voters are racist and blames everyone but themselves for their failures. I can seldom discuss these issues with anyone I know since none of them read or are informed enough to engage in a meaningful discussion. Refusal to comare viewpoints seems to have become endemic The reluctance to discuss solutions for our problems has become the biggest obsticle we must overcome.
The few who govern the many, who are the easily placated complacent. I rather think we've hippies, turned yuppies, turned corporate lobbyist, podium politician's or mass maniac media spokespersons. All well compensated echo chambers. They should have inhaled; recollect president Bill C. Whatever happen to that Winter Soldier Vietnam vet attraction? John Kerry?
You may be able to sue those people, actually.
I hear Nick Sandmann has already been in touch with Kyle about pointers :-)
Might be wise for Rittenhouse to use the same attorney, Todd McMurtry.
I do believe they’re in discussion :-) It is true that Nick has reached out to Kyle.
Glenn, this type of discourse is in no way limited to elites. I teach in the Chicago Public Schools, and within the last few years, "white supremacy" has become an obsession with school leaders, teachers who recently graduated from college, and those unwilling to jeopardize the rewards of membership in the professional-managerial class--and if someone happens to belong to all those groups, well, you'd better run for the hills. And within the last couple of years, "white supremacy" has become partnered with "causing harm": if you don't "decolonize" your syllabus enough or don't use enough materials that reflect the cultural backgrounds of your students, then you're going to be accused of "causing harm" in the furtherance of "white supremacy."
For sure - it's absolutely spreading and starting to contaminate almost every institution. It just infuriates me most when it comes from journalistic outlets which have a particular obligation to base their claims in facts.
What is a fact Glenn? Lived experience has taken over for facts. Facts support a system of oppression and white supremacy. All of these systems need to be torn down. You cannot reason with someone who thinks that way. But then again, reason is white supremacy so...
I think it's folly to try to reason with them. Better to denounce their bull, dismiss and ignore them, when possible. The ONLY reason they get any traction is that they have a big megaphone. Otherwise every thinking person would reject them out of hand. So when is possible, reject them out of hand.
Thank you Glenn for your endurance, tenacity, integrity, compassion and determination.
Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and other independent journalists are our best and only hope. How and when did the corporate/legacy/mainstream media lose (or intentionally discard) journalistic standards and ethics? What most people assumed to be unbiased reporting was discreetly replaced by hyper-biased activism disguised as "reporting the facts." And it occurred right under our noses. A monumental and tragically consequential betrayal of trust that the MSM has yet to acknowledge.
Bari Weiss not so much. Her primary concern is the woke mob rising up and taking control over the israel-palestine issue and bending it in favor of Palestinians. Unfortunately she doesn’t have much to worry about. There seems to be a tacit understanding to leave israel and jews out of the white racial reckoning.
Otherwise it’s pedal to the medal on “white supremacy”.
It is remarkable, given that in the northeast metropolitan environment they inhabit, it is likely that none of them have ever actually met someone that believes in the genetic superiority of caucasians.
Actually, their parents and teachers in private school did. Why do you think they didn't go to PS63?
For the ones that didn't? Money. All kinds of people (myself included) who do not believe in some kind of racial hierarchy nevertheless very much believe in the existence of hierarchy.
Lets not kid ourselves. The "white supremacy" cry is for revenge led by naive over educated whites too stupid to understand they will be subjected to the same Jacobin guillotine. The fact that the majority of whites were and are willing to die to improve on the ideals of our founders who were themselves only subjects of a king now makes them racist too. Our only hope is the Supreme Court slaps down CRT as rasist and allows citizens to sue educational institutions who are fomenting hate and racist indoctrination.
The founding members of the Klan and the White Citizens Council couldn't have come up with a better plan to hamstring the intellectual development of young black people. Albert Pike and Nathan Forrest are smiling down upon this mess from white heaven.
Elites... and wannabe elites.
Crap, you beat me to it. And, frankly, that was scary on several fronts...
I foresee home schooling growing tremendously in many households due to the mandates, the indoctrination and lack of strong academics. Many parents will not go with the flow.
In the town I live in, last year a (white) student made a video where he appeared in front of Confederate flags holding a gun and throwing around the N word. Just, the most ignorant, vile, racist garbage that a 17 year old can get up to around here, and it went viral and caused a massive uproar in our community. The school board took the approach of giving him a warning, and he apologized (pretty insincerely) for being an idiot. Fast forward to today, and the school has contracted with Praxis Lead Equity consultants to implement an “equity program” in our school district, and to incorporate “culturally proficient education practices”. They promise to help us “sharpen our lens”. Their web site has videos by the usual suspects, such as Robin Deangelo talking about systemic racism and power structures. I’m trying to figure out how to warn my kid about what’s coming, but he already thinks of me as an out of touch idiot when it comes to this stuff. Clearly, something is wrong if we have a kid making a video like that. (Where did he even get the flags and guns?) But, I’m pretty worried that we are all now going to get white-shamed and have to do some performative self-flagellation to cleanse our community.
Thank you 4 sharing your story. Confederate flag + the, our, their, constitutional right to own a fire arm, I encountered both while passing through Bible Belt, Tennessee, 2019. Ironically I was rendering aide to a post surgery, leg amputation, (diabetic) Vietnam veteran. He resided in a low income housing complex. The guys wth the flag & right to bare arms, were apparently low income “housing” and dealing wth they were dealing with the opioid “crisis”. Prescription drug patriots. Clearly something is wrong. Perhaps we might suggest everyone watch the entire trial, then we may have an interesting discussion.
The incident I related is completely unrelated to what happened in Kenosha. It was the story of how critical social justice theory is making its way to the public schools in my district.
Thank you Rich. Robert “Bob” Woodson Sr., founder of 1776 Unites, he’s uplifting everyday Americans. Confident his. 1776unites.com would appreciate & respond to your concerns.
Our school district already spends too much time focusing on DEI, to the extent that when we toured schools, at the majority of them DEI was their main pitch about what their program was, literally "diversity (or cultural sensitivity) is what we do best". Only a couple professed a focus on academic subjects.
And now the school district and state are moving to include more of it. Definitely the way to improve race relations in this country is to spend more time focusing on people's differences and more time on teaching kids about historic grievances. That will for sure lead to comity and togetherness.
Expressing any concern that this is not the best and only path forward in terms of preparing kids for the future or getting them to get along and appreciate each other as individuals > immediately you must be a racist white supremacist.
There should be books written about the culture of Chicago and its local communities. A wealthy gay friend of mine lives near the Windy City and both upscale neighborhoods he has lived in feature BLM signs and window stickers in all his pure-white neighbors' yards and on their windows. Is it solidarity or are these signs of support talismen to bring good luck and to prevent looting?
Maybe a few are sincere, but for the most part I'd say pure virtue-signalling and vapid following the fad. I doubt they even understand what BLM actually stands for as an organization.
It's not to prevent looting, because they know that even if the looters and rioters ever made it out to their neighborhoods, the police would actually stop them.
"Elites" and "wannabe elites"then
To anyone with a brain, the constant white supremacy labeling is complete and utter bull shit. What needs to be discussed is *why* this is happening. Why is the DNC and the core of the so called “progressives” actively seeking to destroy the country, to redefine half the English language, use a virus to end free society permanently…just to get started.
I think for some they just aren't that bright and have entered an alternate reality. My brother and sister and laws are hyper progressive, elite college educated former corporate lawyers gone to non-profit work. They live in Burlington VT. When Biden won the election my sister in law posted on social media the following: "Thank God for Biden. Our lives are saved. Yet, so distressing that half the country voted for Trump. To think I am surrounded by those who would commit genocide, a country half populated by white supremecists fills me with dread. Such mixed emotions..." This is a person supposedly in possession of an IQ quite higher than your average American.
Do I think she's in it for power or greed? No. She's sincere. Being manipulative? No. She's not as smart as she thinks she is and she's being manipulated. She's currently at the same level as "the dinosaur bones were put in the ground by Satan" people and she can't see it because she's in too deep. She's in a bubble. If you talk to her about other things, like their house remodel, her garden, or her favorite recipe she's normal. Swerve into anything politicized by the elite - race, education, the environment, etc and she swerves immediately into panic and consipiracy theories. She truly believes white supremecists are everywhere.
I'm not sure how to get her and the people like her out of it. Back to where we can disagree on solutions but agree on basic reality. I once watched this facinating documentary on the cult that thought the world would end on October 31, 2007. "The Cult at the End of the World". This cult was quite small, but watch how the cult members got sucked in and it's what mainstream liberal media has done to people like my sister-in-law, on a grand scale.
When October 31, 2007 came and went, most members simply doubled down and chose a new date. They were too invested to back out, ever.
Great comment! I have often wondered about this, how the so-called intelligent and educated can honestly believe that their friends and neighbors are actually advocating for *fascism* because they advocate for immigration laws to be merely enforced. It’s like a mental illness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
I just finished a book written a century ago, "The behavior of the herd in peace and war". I was surprised how much psychology understood that long ago. Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda called it "The logic proof compartment of the mind". Joseph Goebbels learned a lot from him as did the hucksters. My favorite though is Yuval Noah Harari and his quote " you could never convince a monkey to give you her banana today for a promise of infinite banana's in monkey heaven after she died; monkeys aren't that dumb, people are. His book Sapiens and sequels have sold millions of copies. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend. Free will is an illusion, a fraud; between genetics and cultural indoctrination and our needing the social bond's being hard wired in, we truly are not programmed for rationality, more for rationalizing what we believe. This forum seems to be attracting some crude, rude dudes lately, I hope it doesn't get worse. You are obviously not one of them, very thoughtful.
She’s been indoctrinated and is beyond hope.
If Biden is God's handiwork, then Nietzsche was right.
As far as what to do, I recommend mockery. It won't change their mind right away, but you might plant some seeds to reap later.
Oh, Nietzsche was definitely right and so was Lewis Carroll; the brain's of so many definitely went down the rabbit hole, never to return.
Nietzsche is hard to understand and complex. Without question, he challenges both Christianity and democracy; but much of what he wrote is logical and important.
Education equals indoctrination, more education equals more indoctrination. Homo sapiens are the story believing animals and can believe anything, I repeat anything. What does it take to have someone "believe" against all reason and evidence that there's an invisible man in the sky pulling all the strings? Indoctrination and social conformity to group think. Personally I believe that the indoctrination in absurdities is a part of the ruling classes plan to control the lumpenproletariat, it certainly works that way. Don't try and reason someone out of something that they weren't reasoned into.
See: Seventh Day Adventists
I'm curious what you know about Adventists that no one else knows. Seriously. Except for the fact that they accept the Saturday as Sabbath and that they don't believe a "loving spiritual father" would torture them for eternity, they behave and believe pretty much like every other Christian.
One doesn't need to dig too deeply into google searches to find the history of 'The Great disappointment' for early Adventists who believed Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, as was discerned through biblical prophecy. As it turns out, Jesus did not return that night and the Adventist movement remains intact 177 years later.
https://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/great-disappointment-remembered-170-years-on
Though I am non-religious, I do agree that Christians (followers of Jesus) should continue to observe the Sabbath on Saturdays as Jesus did.
Thanks, Dan. I forgot about that little hiccup by the early Adventists.
See also: Scientology
You could try starting with something simple and verifiable, like the Charlottesville hoax. Show them the video of what Trump actually said, where he utterly condemned the actual white supremacists. It's likely they've never seen it, and only know what they think he said through the filter of the media. It's demonstrable proof that the media narrative about that event is a lie. If they're still speaking to you after that, you can mention Opportunity Zones and funding for HBCUs, and wonder what kind of white racist would endorse those policies. Then wonder why Trump's support among PoCs increased so much from 2016 to 2020 (why would all those people vote for someone who hates them and thinks they're inherently inferior).
Once you get over the illusion of Homo sapiens being intelligent rational animals it makes it so much easier to accept that we're the story believing animals. This allows us to build large societies of hundreds of millions which is our strength. The weakness is that the belief in stories, regardless of how absurd allows a small ruling class to control and exploit the masses. We even know how it works now. Thanks to fMRI technology we can see the pre frontal cortex shuts down when the person is exposed to the narrative of whoever. Could be the hucksters, the politician, the priest etc. my motto is "Nullius in verba"! You have no free will and the more you believe that you have, the easier it is to manipulate you.
Great suggestion but we are past that, hence my dinosaur bones reference. Anything that counteracts the narrative isn't real at this point, including observable reality.
If you look behind what is happening, it's usually about money or power. Sometimes it's both.
Power.
Because a large section of society finds Western culture repulsive and worthy of destruction. And they have a valid argument. One struggles to find a more dangerous or violent culture in history. When the right finally begins to take their stance on abortion seriously, the West will have lost the last of its advocates. Then it will die at last. The only question is whether or not it will annihilate all of Earth's life in its final throes.
More than half of the ~120 million people killed by the various forms of socialism were killed by the Chinese Communists. Two-thirds if you include the USSR, which for its most violent part was run by Stalin, who was from Georgia, which is far from the scope of "Western culture".
Genghis Khan and his Mongol empire would come in second in violence, with estimates as high as 40 to 60 million killed according to Wikipedia.
Western culture is not remotely competitive with these two for violence and danger.
The islamic conquest of india and persia also killed countless millions.
Oh really; you ever hear of the genocide of the first inhabitants of the Americas? Since WW II, no one is even close to the killing and destruction by the USA and of course, it's vassals. Of course, the starvation of people so they will rise up and overthrow the non Western conforming government. The USA train's the death squads in the Americas and literally train's and arms the jihadies in Afghanistan and Syria to name a couple of many and then sanctions anyone trying to help them rebuild. MLK was never more right than when he said that the USA was the greatest force for evil in the world today. Putin brought tens of millions of Russians out of poverty. China has done it for hundreds of millions. The USA has impoverished tens of millions of it's own people in the same time period.
You are a real moron. Not a fake moron, or a trans-moron, a real, dyed-in-the-wool moron. The "genocide" of the first inhabitants of the Americas? Who exactly? The Lenape? The Algonquin? The Aztec? The Inca? The Chichoutoumi? The Passyunk? The Inuit?
Who exactly are the "first inhabitants of the Americas?" That you would use the derivative of Amerigo Vespucci's name to describe the continent means that you really don't have any fucking clue about history and how tribal peoples confronted each other throughout time. There's a reason why even the woke refer to "indigenous peoples" using two words derived from WESTERN CIVILIZATION (Latin, to be precise - indigena and populus) to put down "western civilization" and its treatment of "others."
Note that there would not be enough time or space in the world to refer to the "original" inhabitants of "America" by their proper names, there were so many tribes...
Also that awkward fact where it’s the Indians who killed the first inhabitants of the Americas. Actually they killed the second people, who killed the first people….maybe there’s some more waves in there…before Indians started killing each other.
Strange. The U.S. really killed 75 million people since World War II? That would have to be the case to have killed more than Mao, who did all his killing after World War II.
Starving people? Equally strange. The USA sends huge amounts of aid to people in poverty in other countries. Perhaps you haven't heard of World Vision or Samaritan's Purse, or the dozens of other aid groups?
Death squads in the Americas? Cuba has been the top organizer of them, and none of its money came from the U.S.
Putin has brought some people out of poverty but not tens of millions. He has only been in office in this century, and Russia was already doing well after the fall of the USSR. China still has hundreds of millions in poverty, and has millions in concentration camps or under house arrest. On the other hand poverty in the USA has DECREASED steadily since 1940. Black unemployment reached its lowest level on record in 2019.
These are facts. You should read some of Thomas Sowell's books, such as Migrations and Cultures. Sowell is America's leading living intellectual and he knows the facts about history, sociology, political science, psychology and economics. You will learn from those books!
Arming jihadies? Well, President Obama did, releasing more than $50 billion to Iran, all of which was used for its Islamic terror groups.
Naah, I prefer Noam Chomsky if I want to read an American intellectual. They've both long in the tooth. For a modern intellectual, I'd suggest Yuval Noah Harari; he might open your mind to how closed it is.
Naaah.
LOL. Even Howard Zinn admits that 90% of native were the unintended consequence of infectious disease. The remaining ten percent were the result of warfare and violence. But there were massacres on both sides. Indeed, there were countless massacres before evil white even got here. Google the Crow Creek Massacre for starters for a little sample of what the peace-loving natives were up to pre-Columbus. I’m afraid to even tell you about the aztecs and mayans.
You would be well advised to learn some things about American history.
You may want to read this book.....
The Black Book of Communism
Crimes, Terror, Repression
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076082
I Don't have to; I was married to a woman considerably older who was a little girl living in the Ukraine during Stalin's time. I have a pretty good idea of the atrocities commited by the Soviet Union. That ended in 1990. Under Yeltsin and Clinton the horror's came back again as the "shock therapy by capitalism" had another ~ 6 Millions dying in the same way, starving, sickness etc. Clinton killed 500,000 children in Iraq with amerikas weapon du jour, sanctions. His SS Madalyn Albright stated that it was "worth it" live on TV. I could suggest a lot of books to you but I think your mind is closed, at least on this subject. If the propaganda over the 17 year old kid and Russia gate don't convince you that you have been and continue to be subject to mind manipulation, I certainly couldn't.
Really, this level of histrionics can only end in leap from the garrets. Will you livestream?
I am curious to learn about the "17-year-old kid" you mentioned. While I hesitate to support anything you say (following your absurd November 27 post), I think you are remiss in not mentioning the Clinton/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia and the HRC/NATO destruction of Libya and the murder of Gaddafi. America, while not the most evil nation in history, has its share of political criminals in both the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party. The Clinton family and the disgusting cow Albright are standouts - along with Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci.
@RH, why do you live here, if it sucks so much? You could live anywhere in the world. No one is forced to live in the United States
It's not a stretch to say that Communism is an outgrowth of Western culture in the same way Protestantism is an outgrowth of Catholicism. Even so, you're glossing over a pair of World Wars, India under the Raj, the Congo under Belgian rule, etc. But it proves my point that you have to summon the spector of Genghis Khan to find the right company for the Western devestation.
Before you condemn the British Empire, learn to spell in English.
Now, to bed, child.
What, did he forget a “u” somewhere?
I also deplore western devestation—waistcoats can be so pretty! but I’m not sure that’s what he meant.
No, but he doesn't even watch James Bond movies.
"One struggles to find a more dangerous or violent culture in history" - Perhaps a history class or two missing in that statement In modern times, Mao alone killed millions - for an idea. Worse many went along with it. Remarkably, despite the ability to actually destroy most of mankind with nuclear weapons we are entering 100 years of standoff.
Most of The left - the same people actively destroying concepts like presumed innocence, free speech, security in one’s own person - for examples, are the same people controlling the security state, perpetuating war. They’re not being destroyed but strengthened. Your statement makes absolutely no sense.
Those examples, basic human liberties, that’s what this current movement is seeking to destroy. *That* is what this movement finds repulsive.
You don't get any credit for inventing nuclear weapons, which could destroy us all, and not using them.
But you get credit for being too stupid and backward to discover nuclear physics? Nah.
Obviously I don’t mean that.
So let's use them, strategically. It worked the first time.
They haven't destroyed us yet, but they have been used.
Yes, I know. You don’t get credit for not using them anymore, then.
Might as well go ahead and drop some then.
80 million dead is the most recent estimate.
Well, Mao wasn't alone. And even if you ignore that Communism is a Western philosophy, there's at least as much atrocity on the the West's hands. Or maybe you're the one missing some history.
You’re literally 17, aren’t you. Come back after your first very special encounter…that doesn’t involve a credit card.
What an intellectual train wreck you are. But at least you admit that the demented evil is all about lusting for the creation of an all out collectivist slave state and the destruction of the sovereignty of individuals.
I'm not arguing in favor of cultural communism, if that helps. Just noting that they have a valid critique that has not been adequately addressed. But sure. Let them eat cake. That usually goes well.
Why did you use the adjective "cultural" with communism? To imply that you advocate only economic communism?
I don't advocate any kind of Communism.
Really? I can think of dozens without really trying. You really should try to get out more...
Go ahead. I'll wait.
JFC, you are poorly informed. I suggest your "struggle" is simply a weak-assed form of gullibility combined with a strong dose of guilt. Tuning into NPR is not a struggle to find anything except to confirm your biases.
Sounds like you don't really know much about non-western cultures. All of which would have had a much worse record than the west if give the same tools.
Yeah it’s a foolish comment from and ignoramus.
This is not the ketamine you are looking for.
Bit of an overstatement imo
Even if Rittenhouse were a Grand Lizard in the KKK and also not a very nice person, i thought that the Bill of Rights was also intended to protect the rights of people that we do not like.
THIS. I was over on Taibbi's thread on this same topic and someone in the comments section stated flippantly that while they knew Rittenhouse was innocent, it really bothered them that people could defend themselves with ickky guns or what not and they should find something to send him to jail with for a few years just to send a warning to others. While there are certainly authoritarians on the right, I am so often shocked by just how casual the authoritarianism usually presents on the left.
The left is now defined BY authoritarianism. Truly astonishing how easily formerly anti-corporate, anti-fascist, anti-authority individuals became corporate-bootlicking, pro-tyranny, pro-institutional mandate consensus-followers without even batting an eye! Cognitive ingroup/outgroup biases are a powerful tool for corralling people into authoritarianism.
You forgot hypocrisy. I've often felt the same sense of astonishment at the transformation that has taken place in what passes for liberalism these days.
Oh yes, good call—that is their cardinal vice!
You know that Germans harassed Jews on their own long before the government set up "work camps" because anti-Jewish sentiment had been fomented and encouraged for a full decade before any ghettos were sectioned off.
Elie Wiesel came to speak at my middle school when I was a kid going there, and his gravest warning was that people just turned away while it happened... and let the ignorant monsters run wild in the streets spreading their hatred that was fanned on by their entertainment and news sources.
He said that the worst thing one could ever do was nothing.
That even after someone escaped from an actual camp and told their village friends and family nobody believed him. They said, "Oh come on.. why would anyone ever do that?"
By then it was too late.
I used to practice my Polish on a woman who had lived in a suburb of Warsaw during WWI. The suburb had a large Jewish population at one time.
Long story short, her Jewish friends and neighbors insisted that the rumors of concentration camps were rumors, that Germany was a part of Europe and therefore civilized.
They kept insisting this, right until the very end. My acquaintance even tried to get her friends to flee to the Soviet-occupied territories (this was before Barbarossa) but they refused to go.
Something similar could be said of Freud, who only escaped Vienna at the last minute, as he refused to believe that Germans could do such things. In 1932, Arnold Schoenberg wrote without a hint of irony that he had secured the supremacy of German music for the next 1000 years. A lot of educated secularized Jews assumed that when the Nazis ranted about "Jews" they meant poor uneducated Jews from the Shtetl, not educated Jews who worshipped German Kultur as much as they did.
Then again, today there are plenty of eastern European Neonazis who insist, in spite of all the available evidence, that when Hitler talked about Slavic subhumans being the next to be exterminated, he surely didn't have *them* in mind.
Precisely!! Hence my “Letter to a Holocaust Denier” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-holocaust-denier), which starts with the following quote:
“‘Oh, things seeped through somehow, always quietly, always indirectly. So people heard rumors, and the rest they could guess. Of course, most people did not believe the stories of Jews or other opponents of the regime. It was naturally thought that such persons would all exaggerate.’
“Rumors, guesses enough to make a man know if he wanted badly to know, or at least to believe, and always involving persons who would be suspected, ‘naturally,’ of exaggerating. Goebbels’ immediate subordinate in charge of radio in the Propaganda Ministry testified at Nuremberg that he had heard of the gassing of Jews, and went to Goebbels with the report. Goebbels said it was false, ‘enemy propaganda,’ and that was the end of it.”
—Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45
Shocked? For me the ONLY good thing about this pandemic is the extent to which it revealed the Left's authoritarian lust for power and control over the political process and the American people. From packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, adding DC and Puerto Rico as states, abolishing the Senate filibuster, encouraging mass illegal immigration then supporting lax voting laws which encourage cheating, using the IRS and DOJ as weapons to punish political opponents, and working hand-in-hand with corporate media and big tech to censor news and/or opinion which it does not like under the guise of "disinformation" the Left will embrace any idea or tactic, whether or not illegal, to suppress their political opponents and perpetuate their own power. Then if you dare oppose their gross abuse of power you're called a "racist." These are scary times.
The Bill of Rights?! That’s so passé 😆🤦♀️
It was replaced by the Bill of Lefts.
😹
No, it was replaced by right-wing judges brainwashed by the Federalist Society.
How was the Bill of Rights replaced by right-wing brainwashed Federal judges?
The left always projects.
Radical abnormal would be a much more fitting moniker.
The irony is - there remains a legal way to overturn them... just nobody tries. Because even the goofy left knows what the true popular sentiment is.
"...A well regulated militia..." You right-wingers always gloss over that part.
"...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
You neo-bolshevik, central authoritarians always leave out that part.
I wasn't referring specifically to the Second Amendment, but that is a part of the Bill of Rights, as well as things like those pesky Fourth and Fifth Amendments, trial by jury, that sort of thing.
That said, i am sort of amused to find myself a right-winger. Trumpers and right-wingers call me all sorts of silly names as well.
Getting labelled by sloganeers because I am not a Kool Aid chugging member of their tribe or team is a good place to be. Critical thinking is anathema to tribal logic, whether left or right.
I should add that I don't know of anyone who has claimed that Rittenhouse is a member of a "militia" or that he is entitled to immunity as a result of this.
His former attorney John Pierce did in an interview that Rittenhouse saw after he was finally bailed out by the same crappy attorney who thought he was "safer" in jail. Rittenhouse said he didn't even know what a militia was when he saw the interview. Pierce was fired.
Another great piece but a point Glenn doesn't mention but which supports his premise is that "White Supremacist" is hurled around so recklessy that The Woke Mob now routinely uses it to smear BLACK PEOPLE. Here in California when Larry Elder ran against Governor Newsom the LA Times ran an editorial calling Elder a "White Supremacist." It was disgusting. Elder grew up in South Central Los Angeles and no doubt faced more racism in one week of his life than Black people now face in their lifetime. But no matter to that flaming craphole of a newspaper. Elder was taking on a Democrat so he had to be taken down, truth be damned.
The very same invectives were hurled at Winsome Sears after she won the VA Lieutenant Governor's race 3 weeks ago. Compare this vile attack to the way Kamala Harris is portrayed solely based upon her gender and melanin -- and of course her political affiliation. Never mind that Harris is epitome of failing hack who possess no talent whatsoever for politics or any sort of leadership action. She literally slept her way into the game. But because she is a WOC(D) -- Woman Of Color (D) -- she is celebrated and elevated by the media far above any actual competencies. Winsome Sears seems the exact opposite but because she has an (R) after her name she earns the "Black voice of White Supremacy" epithet.
The Left is completely devoid of rational thought, objectivity, and human compassion.
"epitome of a failing hack"
Actually, it is worse than that. Harris is not merely a 'hack' but a Drug War prosecutor sanctioned by the court for Brady violations which implicated dozens of cases including against indigent minority defendants. She slept her way to power while stepping on the heads of the very people who claim her as their champion. Finally, she attaches herself to the coattails of an aging (and apparently senile) rich white oligarch who openly +competed+ with tough-on-crime Republicans back in the day to be the baddest Drug War villain and who actually advocated for more "nation building" in countries with large numbers of brown people than Bush II. If there is such a thing as a "race traitor", she would belong on that list.
Not only is the misuse of race-baiting making the words useless against real racists, but it is exactly the low life crawling gutter scum who ought be opposed that are reflexively-protected by woke elites. Personally, I don't think it matters what color and sex she is or claims to be; her actions speak for her, and +they do not speak well+ of her.
Good point. I'd forgotten about Sears. Also read that the Smithsonian Museum of Black History had nothing on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. I guess they don't consider him Black because he's a Conservative.
But you know, although it seems like it is, it is not at all rw nonsense. How very odd.
That sounds like a right-wing bit of nonsense: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/collection/search?edan_q=clarence%20thomas&edan_fq[]=topic:%22Justice%22&edan_local=1&edan_fq[]=online_media_type:%22Images%22
Right. A button supporting Anita Hill. I wonder if he has any other accomplishments they might want to commemorate....
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/smithsonian-wont-explain-why-prominent-conservative-african-americans-not
You know, the museum was created by an Act of Congress. I cannot explain why there is no mention, but it does not appear to be a partisan issue.
An AoC should make it clear that there is/was no agenda. It only opened Sept. 24, 2016. There was an exhibition, though: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-republicans-urge-national-museum-of-african-american-history-to-bolster-clarence-thomas-exhibit/ar-BB1doF2R
Does not appear to be partisan? That's funny. Good one.
It's a religion, pure and simple. Rational thought and objectivity have nothing to do with it, compassion and forgiveness are reserved for Believers. Non-believers must be converted or subjugated. Apostates must be destroyed.
Seriously. Compare their behavior to that of religious "true believers", and try to find any difference (other than the lack of any consistent moral compass).
Great post. You nailed it. The Left in America displays all the hallmarks of a religious cult where obedience and conformity are demanded above all else and those that question their orthodoxy are unthinkingly vilified and condemned as "racist," which is their word for "infidel."
I think you mean *Liberals.*
It's what is known as "MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS", and expression also applied to the black men who were beating up Asian men and women in NYC and California.
Doing forget, they called him this from behind a gorilla mask. I wish I were kidding.
Says someone who recklessly throws around the term "Woke Mob."
Your name is an oxy moron.
J’accuse!! Just as the Dreyfuss affair uncovered the rot and corruption of the French elite, so this and other recent events show the liberal elites rot and corruption.
At Thanksgiving I had to listen to two histrionic 18 year old freshmen expound on the current liberal causes. They are bullies as is the entire left. I am sick of them
Condolences for your experience, nothing worse than 18 year old's blathering on after a semester a college.
Thank you. I bit clear through my tongue!!
I prefer Dan Ackroyd's response to Jane Curtin in times like these...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM
The leg tattoo of a 20something helping us at a store in Boulder, CO said "the teeth marks on my tongue are from holding my words."
Imagine what tattoos on its inner thigh might be saying.
lol
Not to be a jerk, but I'm sitting on an oceanfront villa in St Thomas virgin islands right now because we decided years ago to see family individually througout the year and NOT to deal with a large family gathering on Thanksgiving. So we trek someplace warm instead. Right now literally enjoying my pina colada, watching the sunset over the water, reading this thread after a day of snorkeling with the husband and kids and eating crab.. ok, I'm being a jerk.
Yeah, you are a jerk, damn you! 😉
I love St Thomas!
I hope some day I can be a jerk like you. It sounds amazing.
Dude, my father-in-law told me at the Thanksgiving dinner table that if I didn't go get a booster he wouldn't be comfortable with me being at his house at XMas.
He's getting the booster, because he's over 70 and undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. He's winning, thankfully... but he's losing when it comes to how vaccines WORK.
He's also a doctor.
Also, a right-wing Nazi Democrat who reads the NYT as gospel.
Also, he won't see me for XMas dinner. I'll be home with my dog.
Can't imagine how many people wish their in-laws would ban them from Xmas duties. Consider yourself blessed.
I have a friend of twenty years who is otherwise a nice, decent person but she's become a complete vaxxhole. I'm unvaccinated for medical reasons and she's aware of this. But she regularly invites me to get together and when I accept she then backs out saying I'm "too dangerous" even though I request we meet masked at an outdoor location. This woman is an author who flies around the country giving talks and hence is around probably thousands of unvaccinated people indoors yet she thinks I'm "dangerous." It's all about feeling moral superiority for her. She's double vaxxed with a booster chaser yet she pretends though I'm unsymptomatic that I'm going to make her sick.
Yet you didn’t hit them. Don’t even try to excuse it.
Next time your response should be.....And I should listen to someone who is 7 good years from a fully formed frontal lobe?
At least the drunk uncle is drunk.....and has some life experience!
The calculated dishonesty of the fake news attributing everything they don't like to "white supremacy" can only be grasped by comparing it to the other side of the coin: i.e., when actual racist violence is perpetrated by blacks against whites. That's counter-narrative and therefore gets the exact opposite treatment when it comes to reporting on motive.
Exhibit A is the Waukesha domestic terror attack in which six whites were massacred by a black killer in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse verdict. The black killer's anti-white racist motives were all over his social media posts (which had been immediately deleted by the platforms at the request of the DOJ/media). https://nypost.com/2021/11/24/darrell-brooks-called-for-violence-against-white-people/
The obviousness of the racial motive is demonstrated by the intervention of "the U.S. Dept of Justice Community Relations Service (DOJ-CRS) who oversee all U.S. criminal cases when race is identified as the underlying motive for an attack." https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/11/22/darrell-brooks-initial-court-appearance-scheduled-for-2pm-ct-tuesday-doj-crs-outlines-waukesha-judiciary-media-rules/
Now the DOJ and fake news are working together to cover this up. For example, they put out an obviously fake initial story claiming that the killer's motive was to flee a "knife fight." https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/23/how-events-unfolded-waukesha-parade/
This is pure disinformation reminiscent of the fake claim by anonymous "law enforcement" that officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by Trump supporters with a fire extinguisher on 1/6. After putting out that fake diversionary story, the DOJ has locked up all the evidence on the case and announced it will allow no press conferences. (I.e., only controlled leaks to support the narrative). The fake news had to say something so they went with the angle of -- I kid you not -- blaming the SUV for perpetrating the crime. https://www.thewrap.com/washington-post-waukesha-tweet/
These people have done so much damage to our country by perpetrating the demonstrably false narrative that America is a racist dystopia where blacks are hunted by "white supremacists with guns." Indeed, it's entirely likely that the racist black killer in Waukesha was motivated precisely by the fake news narrative that a 'white supremacist' who shot blacks was acquitted by a racist white jury.
Wait until you figure out that Bill Gates has been funding "news" stories to advance his own financial and "world-changing" interests.
We're talking $319 million in the US; $218 million at Oxford University... and that's only the stuff the BMGF publicly reports.
Here's a "philanthropist" who funnels money around under the guise of charity, to pressure and directly write fake news that is then reporting him and his endeavors under the guise of "objective news".
Go see what Max Blumenthal has to say about it, or Jimmy Dorr.
Gates and his microsoft originally didnt involve themselves in the revolving doors of government until those who did buy government sicked it on them all with the monopoly trials. The year after that, microsoft and gates began "donating" heavily into the lobby system.
"blaming the SUV for perpetrating the crime"
If it leads to a drive to ban SUVs, then at least some good will come of it...
VERY well said.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken".
Carl Sagan
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Spot on, in every respect.
WOW !! I love that book published in 1995 (and another - Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - published in 1992) - and this truly prophetic quote of quarter of century ago !! Just how do you remember it?
I have previously crowned libertate the King of Quotations, and his queen is Pamela Drew! :-)
Another treasure from ye old quote archives, libertate!
In many respects the U.S. *is* a third world country but does not know it yet.
After WWII, the US was history's largest creditor. Since then, the Feds turned it into history's largest debtor.
To manage its debt, the Feds have artificially suppressed interest rates to the lowest level in 5000 years. Should rates return to the historically normal 5%, the Feds would be paying over 50% of its tax revenues to *just interest alone*.
They are also, of course, monetizing the debt via currency debasement, which is creating the price inflation we now enjoy, and is among the more common features of empires in terminal decline.
The current path is completely unsustainable, and therefore it will inevitably end. The only questions are when, and how bad it will be.
This, of course, is just one aspect to the general complete divorce from reality that has afflicted large segments of the population, epitomized by an almost incomprehensible gullibility on issues like Climate Change™, The Pandemic™, and the endlessly mutating woke nonsense.
Take away the petrodollar and the value of the dollar would rapidly slide.
Now, how do other countries do it without forcing the world to accept dollars at gunpoint?
Well, the democrats and the news media on, and off line have used Trump and his base to do just that.
Yep, they're still trying to dunk on their political adversaries and in a world where EVERYONE is a political adversary... they're busy.
One of my favorites!
"if"
"White supremacist" emerged when "racist" stopped doing the job. These are the believers in Subjective Truth - the gods of their own minds at work. To them, their own say-so is sufficient to establish any claim. They are solipsists, and we are just the background in their personal stories.
Attempting to reason with them is silly.
They are intellectually and morally bankrupt. Rational people should just recognize that they have declared bankruptcy and stop trying to deal with them.
It took me many years to learn that.
Well, today's "woke" or liberals or whatever you call them seem hella self-obsessed.
#firstworldproblems
100% nailed it.
I know narcissism is a trendy topic these days but sometimes the term just fits.
Like the COVID narrative, the Rittenhouse narrative is one of the most blatant disinformation campaigns in recent history, particularly in light of how easily the propaganda could have been disproven by crystal-clear facts that few who had been manipulated were even aware of (e.g., the shooting victims were white, not black; there was incontestable proof that they were threatening Kyle’s life; their unsavory criminal backgrounds as a convicted pedophile and a woman-beater; and other details I won’t delineate because you have already covered them extensively in your own reporting).
I think Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” is especially illuminating when it comes to attempting to understand how such a large swath of people could be so easily duped and impervious to hard facts:
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
It is similar to the one done against Kavanaugh, in my opinion, and similar to what they did to Trump with Russiagate. They lied repeatedly to push a political agenda.
They are despicable liars. I discount everything they say
It's killing me as a history major because it has caused me to re-evaluate every singular source of historical information as "Suspect" now.
Its pretty obvious this media bullshit has been going on forever and we are only now seeing the full scope of it.
Agreed, Iconoclast. Orwell describes this phenomenon in “Yes, Homage to Catalonia” (https://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/0.html) when he discusses how the newspapers were unashamedly lying about the outcomes of battles and even factual details like where they were occurring. I now distrust newspapers as a reliable source since they have been clearly used for propagandistic ends since the outset. I instead prefer primary sources and documents that share interviews, court transcripts, and other primary materials while also simultaneously being conscious of the biases implicit in those accounts as well.
This is what they should be teaching in early school to encourage critical thinking!
I don't have to agree with everyone on politics, culture, or anything else. I just want us to start with being truthful! This is why I joined this site the first day I could, because I know, despite my political differences with many posters here, we all want to begin with the truth, regardless of how painful it is.
YES! Critical thinking is *desperately* needed in the education system and its absence is one of the reasons people are so easily maneuvered to self-defeating ends by Machiavellian manipulators.
We need to resurrect John Stuart Mill’s precepts encouraging healthy, open debate and the exercise of attempting to argue from your opponent’s POV to understand their perspective and further strengthen or refine your own. I do believe this is occurring with emerging entities such as Heterodox Academy, thankfully.
Here for Homage.
Such a great and relevant book.
It is one of my favorite nonfiction works by Orwell. In 2019, I reread every Orwell book and every dystopian novel I could think of—little did I know how well that would prepare me for our current situation!
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend Orwell’s complete Essays (https://smile.amazon.com/Essays-Everymans-Library-Contemporary-Classics/dp/0375415033/). Riveting and could not be more prescient.
Oops, ignore that stray “Yes” before “Homage to Catalonia”—typing too quickly ;-)
Excellent point. I am a history autodidact but am concerned about what I “know”. I am rereading Cairo’s exhaustive biography of Lyndon Johnson and he has already pointed out many places other biographers got the facts wrong, or didn’t get them at all.
One of the best sites out there is https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Documents.html You can read the actual documents the FBI and other government agencies were forced by law to reveal (usually heavily redacted).
Not to mention how Caro right now himself is getting crushed over his singular sourced comments about Moses.
So much information out there it is hard, even when you look and know what to look for, to be absolutely certain of something.
Minor point: Robert Caro
Yes I saw that thanks. “The power broker” about Robert Moses is also excellent
Whatever the source, it is always wise to be conscious of the cognitive biases and propagandistic aims that may be influencing the particular narrative.
Indeed, especially when said source isn't mentioning any of their site advertisers, political or personal bias, or holdings in the companies (or their competitors) that they are "reporting" on.
If someone up front mentions their bias, I have no issues with that. Bias is fine as long as it is evident to all.
Most definitely. Fortunately, once you become attuned to the mechanisms of propaganda, framing, and coercion, the writer’s biases typically become laughably obvious, particularly when they are contorting data to further a corporate profiteering and/or authoritarian agenda.
Every "fact" appearing in a history text or account should always be (have been) subject to intense scrutiny. The maxim that "history is written by the victorious" has always been absolute truth, and one would need to be hopelessly naive to presume that the victors were always the virtuous.
Would also note that history is written by your culture and country. I have read assiduously on WWII and only recently learned of the largest land battle in that war. No American that I have asked has heard about it. My Ukrainian OR tech new it immediately
"No American that I have asked has heard about it" -- hm, maybe they watch unreliable news sources like Fox News and think the Battle of the Bulge was larger than Stalingrad: https://www.foxnews.com/us/world-war-ii-veteran-recalls-fighting-in-battle-of-the-bulge
THIS!
It's the singular sourced stuff that is truly suspect. Say that five times fast lol.
Anything like Krakatoa erupting, where dozens of cultures are all recording the event, seem a lot less vulnerable to the lies.
I take consolation from the fact that each iteration of their con job becomes less effective. SCOTUS confirmations of male GOP nominees is case in point. First, they succeeded in killing the Bork nomination with specious claims. Then they went after Thomas based upon sketchy sex harassment claims. Although they raked him through the coals, he was confirmed. With Kavanaugh most of the public saw through the con and there wasn't much doubt that in the end he would be confirmed. An unfortunate side effect is that the left has made it much harder to believe truthful claims of sexual misconduct when the claim comes from the left.
Yep, and they couldn't play that card against Barrett.
I'd give it a shot. As I've gotten older, I've learned to care less about what other people think/say. Couldn't do worse than the current crop of mouth breathers / chin musicians and it appears to be a nice living lol. $25 mm mansions in FL for doing "public service" in CA - nice N Pelosi. Here I thought she was sacrificing to keep the herd trotting in the right direction. Such sacrifice.
I was going through a divorce during the Kavanaugh hearing, and at the time was getting a first-hand education about how much people are willing to lie and how convincing those lies can sound when accompanied by an emotional performance. Luckily, the standard of evidence doesn’t include how many tears are shed in the recounting. Because of this, I was the only person in my group of friends who was questioning what was happening during the confirmation. I asked uncomfortable questions like, “If she has a criminal complaint, why is she taking it before a Supreme Court confirmation hearing instead of to the police?” I was amazed at how many of my friends were credulously swallowing the entire story.
Indeed, and that was a litmus test for the mass deceptions to come and showed the deceivers how low the bar of credibility could be set to be believed.
"BTW, I voted for Hillary in 2016, and I regret it greatly." - ah, so you did swallow that Russiagate thingy back then then. Not surprising for a self-admitted Russophobe.
Or was it some female trickery in action?
Who did you vote for in 2016?
"who did you... for" as opposed to "whom did you ... for" - that's how I know you're American, icon.
You've known me a long time now, Icon, so should have noticed I'm a bot, so subject to vote suppression, aka can't vote. Which is no matter as I wouldn't anyway. Because I vote for, not against. "Against", meaning "voting for the lesser evil", is the most imbecilic act I can think of.
...and told the National Guard and city police chiefs to stand down because they were trying to dunk on Trump during these "race riots".
Never mind that the rioters were organized and funded and bussed around by shadowy money, never mind that they had two-way radios and were showing up to intentionally set fire to things out of rental vans...
Never mind that all of the corporate media was downplaying the violence and destruction.
Absolutement!
Correction: TPTB think we *all* have an IQ of 70 and can’t see past their lies, and anyone who remains on the left after such transparent manipulations *does* have an IQ of 70 ;-)
I say that as a former lefty myself, but anyone who still clings to that ideology in the face of such ham-fisted propagandizing must have a low IQ or is so puffed up with pseudo-knowledge they can’t see past their own pride.
Agree on Andrew Sullivan. I just heard that Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg (now of The Dispatch) have left the news side of FOX commentating because of the special on FOX Nation (subscription side of the network) by Carlson called the Patriot Purge. They are literally consumed by Trump!
The Russia, Russia, Russia hoax still takes the cake in my book.
Haha, yes, that was another good one, but I believe the COVID narrative is the mother of all disinformation campaigns in history because it has been wielded to reshape the entire planet to totalitarian ends, harnessing the amygdala to short-circuit people’s logic while conditioning them to relinquish rights and liberties in the name of the “public health”—like every tyrannical, genocidal regime in history. I explore these matters in more depth throughout my blog, but my first piece, “Primer for the Propagandized: Fear Is the Mind-Killer” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized) addresses this manipulation directly.
Once an individual has learned to control the myriad of fears that confound us on a daily basis they can taste true freedom and joy. Fear is not only a mind killer but a soul crushing emotion. it was necessary in ancient times to warn us and keep humans safe from harm. That deeply held emotion is and has always been one utilized to control and harness a populations energy for whatever purpose the fear monger sought. Now in "modern" times this has become so finely tuned that gov'ts. and others have weaponized that emotion to terrorize individuals into doing exactly what they want of their own "free will'".
Those fear laden people now attack others who don't cringe before the gov't gods of "science", climate change, tyranny and other made up terrors. Common sense and even education fall before the personal fear instilled by the control freaks. Without FEAR they have little or nothing to keep their populations "in line." If any population jettisons fear from their minds and becomes truly free the cowards and bullies "get got" and fade into the wood work.
AMEN! I think Étienne de La Boétie’s “The Politics of Obedience: A Discourse of Voluntary Servitude” is one of the most lucid explorations of the cognitive, political, and physical liberation that comes being able to recognize and identify the fears and other strings by which the puppeteers control us. I explore this in my second essay, “COVID IS OVER! … If You Want It” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/covid-is-over-if-you-want-it), which includes this de La Boétie quote:
“You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
"Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
The first part is a good description of Barack Obama. The second part is an apt description of the character "Hickey" in Eugene O'Neill's play "The Iceman Cometh".
Haha, good to know! I haven’t seen/read that play yet but do love “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (if “love” is the right word for something so wrenching).
Many times "The Truth" contains no facts.
To clarify, “The Truth” (i.e., the mainstream representation of “reality”) would correlate to the illusions Le Bon describes, whereas his “the truth” equates to objective reality rather than the presentation/perception of that reality.
Funny how language has morphed from a method or conveying information and reality between individuals to a weapon of obfuscation. Mass media, in the past, utilized precise language to allow entire nations to have a unified view of the world. Now language is a "method" of obscuring truth, denying facts and otherwise selling a narrative that is false, pernicious and right out of Orwell's "1984" novel. This was the exclusive realm of lawyers in the past but is now the official position of media and gov't. when selling their toxic soap to the public. Both have sunk to below the levels of lawyers in the public's perception of their integrity and honesty. That "accomplishment" takes a lot of hard work but somehow both entities have succeeded in destroying themselves in the hearts and minds of many Americans.
Absolutely right, Not Me$, and this is why it is essential that we must continually push back against their Orwellian redefinitions, perception management campaigns, and linguistic framing. Language is one of the most effective ways to control the mind, but it is also one of the most powerful ways to reclaim it from the brainwashers once we understand how they are using it against us.
With comments sections like this without moronic "censors" hopefully people who are interested can be exposed to the tricks and sideshow patter that is now being passed off as accurate information. Don't know a single individuals who actually believes most political reporting being done by the MSM. That is because many people have pointed out over and over the nature and lack of truth being peddled by corporate media. Just have to keep banging away at these charlatans and laughing in their faces over social media and at some point they just might self destruct. If not at some point the lies and political spin will exhaust people and hopefully that will end many of these bastions of disinformation. Just a bad dream. ---maybe.
We can hope, anyway! You are fortunate in that you don’t know anyone who’s been swindled by this mass deception campaign. I know far too many. Totally agree laughter, humiliation, and satire are key to defeating the propagandists and tyrants. And a few Molotov missives like my “Letter to a Tyrant” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant ;-)
As a history major, I don't know there has ever been a time, when all the elite were removed from power by the people.
There are scattered examples like the French Revolution, Castro removing Batistsa, etc, but never all at once, across the earth.
Interesting point, Iconoclast. That would be an ambitious goal, although certainly one worth aiming for! I would be happy toppling just a few tyrants for starters ;-) That said, I think the evidence of collusion in democide, corruption, fraud, and deception is so irrefutable, we *could* dethrone them through a series of Nuremburgian trials helmed by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and his band of 1,000+ attorneys around the globe.
Haha, just like The Science™!
Holds up the Official MSNBC-CIA version of the Bible, thumping it vigorously: "THE SCIENCE!!!!!"
The only evidence required to support an accusation of white supremacy is that someone 1) is white or non-white, and 2) fails to prostrate before all aspects of an ever-mutating anti-racist ideology. Given this laughably irrelevant and low threshold of evidence, it's remarkable how anyone has faith that they won't be on the receiving end of this facile accusation.
I'm starting to understand why the woke are obsessed with demanding safe spaces from outsiders. Their own ideology is designed to wipe out all sense of safety, stability, and predictability. They've tripwired the entire world, the same world they themselves have to maneuver in.
Exactly. It's the ideology of non-resilience. Instead if teaching children and college students how to effectively and successfully navigate life after school, they are training them to think of themselves as victims in an unfair system that is trying to screw them over. Even if this is true it has no utility. If you think of yourself as a loser i guarantee you will be a loser.
Welcome to CRT, which is a REAL thing in ALL US public schools now. It is anti WHITE racism where white kids are taught they are the oppressors and black and brown kids that they are the oppressed.
Add to this trans ideology and you have a recipe for indoctrination , a hyper pack of empathy and morality and a very UNEDUCATED AND DUMBED DOWN population.
Our Oregon Governor recently signed a bill here where math reading and writing are NO LONGER A PREQUISETE TO GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL..
WHO is funding CRT? BILL GATES.
Just as he funded Common Core that dumbed down 2 generations of kids.
And now that parents are fighting this NONSENSE they are called domestic terrorists.
If they’re going to get the label anyway, maybe….
LOL and who is REALLY bombing and killing poor brown and black people all over the world? Who is really supporting an Apartheid state?
Who is really dehumanizing women, black folks, Latinos and YIPIPO?
I know... it's the fucking NAZIS -again.
Great comment!
And now we all have to suffer as they spew their rage in a very public therapy session.
When will Ayanna Pressley fix her damn tweet? Pretty sure we know the answer is never. I'll bet she even CROSSED STATE LINES before writing it.
I doubt she believed it when she wrote it. To her, and so many others it's all about signaling to her comrades on the political left. That's much more important to her and those like her than something so mundane as the truth.
She has a black cooch, tho. Qualified her to beat her more experienced, more progressive predecessor.
I voted for her (mea culpa, mea culpa). Although not without reservation, due to the Clinton and Kerry connection. Her "more experienced, more progressive predecessor" was a Clinton superdelegate who declared before the primaries, thus signaling his willingness to override my vote (for Bernie, who won my, and Capuano's town). And then he wanted my vote the next election, like maybe it mattered after all? Fuck right off. Now we need a primary challenger for Pressley.
I know what he did. He actually believed people besides himself should be able to afford healthcare though, so that remained a major difference between them.
Then I can't imagine why he would have supported Clinton over Sanders.
However, compare and contrast with Warren. Also a Clinton superdelegate, who didn't lose my vote. She declared well after the primary was over, so she can legitimately say she went along with the will of the voters. No reason he couldn't have done the same. I'm long done with voting for candidates that have such obvious contempt for the voters that they're supposed to represent.
The rot goes even deeper. Facebook pulled down post attempting to fundraise for Kyle and blocked posts about him from search, so the only thing people were subjected to was the narrative that he was a murderer.
The media refused for months to mention that the dead men had been imprisoned in the past for violent crime. I realize there are good reasons for this in a court of law, but in public discussion it would seem to be meaningful.
Since no one could donate on GoFundMe (they have a consistent policy of not raising funds), fundraising had to be done on a smaller website. Payment processors were constantly refusing to process their donations. Then the website was hacked, donors disclosed, and one ended up losing his job. At least one other person lost their job for supporting Kyle early on too.
I imagine we will need to have Congress address this inequity (really, a proper term) someday. To my mind if someone wishes to donate to a murderer, they should be able to do so. Regardless of the purported crime, don't we assume innocence until proven guilty? GoFundMe policy ignores that premise.
Which Congress?
The non-functioning one we have now or the one that will show up after the elite are yanked from home and office to the guillotines?
Does Ayanna Pressley really think that Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz were there to support BLM?? They were there to destroy property and create chaos.
Isn't that the same thing?
Some are naive enough to believe that the peaceful protesters were actually protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake.
Actually I think there are larger questions to ask about why they were there….
For a paycheck.
And by the way, it's exactly the same "white supremacist" labeling, white, elite crowd who insist that the entire Latin American race change their designation to Latinx, a term with no pronunciation or meaning within the culture, because these whites have decided that the entire Latino culture and language is hopelessly discriminatory. The White Man's Burden is alive and well, it's now called Progressivism.
Hell, I still have a problem with people who insist I use "Latino" instead of "Hispanic". Well, no. Latin was the precursor of all the Romance languages, including French. When I use "Hispanic", I refer to the (mainly Central and South American) peoples that resulted from the Spanish Conquests and the subsequent blending of Spanish and Native cultures and gene pools. I suppose one could nitpick about Portugal and Brasil, but all classifications have their limitations.
My wife is Hispanic, I call our kids “rednexican” or “hickspanic” ( just to show how seriously I take the Wokeist.
My wife calls people that try to make her use “Latinx” “Pendejx” ( not sure of the plural spelling)
hahaha Pendejx.
Good stuff.
These people also like to push some charicature of black folks -the ones they like and admire: Super sport stars, Talented musicians... but they skip rappers like Plies who are unapologetically themselves and truly representing their own culture.
Probably the same racist assholes that would say, "They are a musical people" and cheer on an Al Jolsen performance.
I fucking hate people so much right now.
“People” plural suck balls
Some individuals are ok….some (few)
That was one of the few upsides of COVID, kept folks at a distance
True, but these are people whom I thought of as being progressive and mostly rational.
These days... they're like Nazi fanatics.