« First « Previous Comments 18 - 57 of 75 Next » Last » Search these comments
Harvard was in on the intelligence operation scam from beginning to end.
The stakes are apocalyptic but our political and military leadership and the blue-check geniuses on Twitter do not seem to care. Like blustering Western leaders of ages past, this group seems willing to risk it all for their “master of the universe” sense of superiority. As Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told MSNBC in a recent, essential piece on how we might have averted this crisis, “It was the desire of Western governments not to lose face by compromising with Russia.”
Why is there a Federal Department of Education for example? These and others are afraid of Trump or someone like him focusing attention on them.
Great post ! Without reading the 380 comments I'll just say that in my experience THEY WILL NOT ENGAGE. I stopped trying as I only receive blank stares and they walk away. If you send them links they do not respond with "Thanks for sharing I'll take a look." they say nothing. (Even though you are my sister, or best friend, who I was close to for 50 long years and you do have a master's in Critical & Creative Thinking...I'm not looking). What is mind blowing to me is that they have zero consideration of your research and how you came to your opinion. Rather they have outsourced their thinking to their traditionally trusted sources, NYT, NPR, etc. and those sources in my view are telling them that even considering an alternative version of the narrative puts them in the dreaded 'conspiracy nut' basket. Thinking themselves the academics (many I know are) they can't stomach the idea of the label. (Your average Joe doesn't have this fear and knows that they have been treated as 'less than' for their blue collar work, when they are the ones keeping the lights on, so they have always smelt shit from these main stream sources.) The best way in my view is not to try to have any conversation rather it is putting the truth out on T-shirts from sea to shining sea. This way everywhere they look they are seeing that their sources are not being trusted by millions. They will not lose face by having to back down in a conversation but the exposure of these alternate opinions will then will have them secretly questioning their stance. As much as they don't want to be labeled 'conspiracy theorist' they also don't want to be left behind as 'stupid' for being the last one to 'get it'.
The best way in my view is not to try to have any conversation rather it is putting the truth out on T-shirts from sea to shining sea.
."Noah was a conspiracy theorist and then it rained"
I'll just say that in my experience THEY WILL NOT ENGAGE. I stopped trying as I only receive blank stares and they walk away. If you send them links they do not respond with "Thanks for sharing I'll take a look." they say nothing.
How about "I didn't believe in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and I don't believe in this vaccine".
Need to line the elites up against a wall and, well...you guess the rest.
I have 2 family members in healthcare industry and they both believe in vaccines, I don't know, I am confused.
There is no reason for them to engage because engagement doesn't benefit them, power often works this way.
gabbar says
There is no reason for them to engage because engagement doesn't benefit them, power often works this way.
Might be better to send them a few choice memes, because they can often make the point before defense mechanisms kick in.
https://patrick.net/memes
Greg Price
@greg_price11
Dec 5
Sen. Kennedy: "These woke, high IQ stupid people, they walk around with zip lock bags of kale that they eat to give them energy. If you want to eat kale, that's up to you. I don't eat kale. You know why? Because kale tastes to me like I'd rather be fat."
Townhall.com
richwicks says
How about "I didn't believe in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and I don't believe in this vaccine".
I have 2 family members in healthcare industry and they both believe in vaccines, I don't know, I am confused.
How about "I didn't believe in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and I don't believe in this vaccine".
Maginot Line
All of the academic scholarship of the last 100 years failed to protect society from the mind virus of fascism. It was another Maginot Line that provided a very expensive illusion of safety yet it was easily circumvented when the fascists launched their blitzkrieg. One by one the heroes of the anti-corporate left pledged their allegiance to the Fascist Pharma State and support for the iatrogenocide — Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, George Lakoff, Michael Moore, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Micah White, Slavoj Žižek.
If we survive, we have to completely dismantle and restructure all of the institutions that failed over the last three years, especially education. If the system fails the moment it is tested, then it was never a good system to begin with.
richwicks says
How about "I didn't believe in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and I don't believe in this vaccine".
Almost. But the proper analogy is
Iraq WMD : War in Iraq :: Wuhan Virus : Mandatory Vaccination
So my line is: "I didn't believe in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (so I didn’t support the war in Iraq), and I don't believe in a deadly supervirus from Wuhan (so I don’t support mandatory vaccination)”
Not very catchy I admit.
Clever Pseudonym
6 hr ago
Not only is the Trump phenomenon the most important event of our time, but now (oddly enough) it looks like Trump and his 4 years in power are only a footnote in comparison to the reaction he engendered.
Trump in his way almost qualifies as a revolutionary moment, but which has been swamped almost entirely by the counter-revolution.
Every single power center in our society, from the FBI and State Dept to the legacy news corps down to your local branch library and county clerk, were jolted into some kind of allergic response where (mostly because all our modern modes of communications work best as conduits of mass hysteria) nothing mattered except ejecting the Orange Beast of the Apocalypse.
This has meant blasting through every possible guard rail and tradition, tearing up the Bill of Rights like Pelosi tore up his speech, and nothing has been off limits: 2 spurious impeachments, the prosecution of anyone who worked for him, the social blackballing of anyone who supported him, up to and including unleashing massive riots in the hope of dislodging him.
I am not as optimistic as Martin Gurri: our Corporate Social Justice ruling class is officially post-democratic, they simply do not recognize any legitimate political opposition, and they absolutely believe that the only reason anyone opposes them (on any point) is retrograde bigotry.
They would sooner turn our entire culture into one single endless Maoist struggle session than admit any possible mistake.
it’s an old saw that “the smart, educated people become liberals because progressivism is somehow the “better” or “more intellectual” or “higher” position on the political spectrum.”
the leftward shift among the more and most educated and especially among the faculties at schools and universities is often trotted out as evidence to this end.
but what if the causality flows the other way?
what if this “blueshift” among the most credentialed who spend the most time in school is not illumination but indoctrination and capture?
what if they are just being inducted to this worldview from long years in institutions designed for just that purpose and then locked into durable allegiance by the elevation of “credentialed classes” into preferential guild-like structures around things like law, science, medicine, and academia where one must be granted and maintain some sort of accreditation to participate?
because there sure seems to be a lot of that going around. ...
the civil war, we were assured, was about nothing but slavery. issues like state’s rights, secession, free association, preferential internal mercantilism, and large scale tax and spend infrastructure projects were not mentioned. the same idea of “no taxation without representation” was not applied to tyranny of the majority and north vs south or industrialized vs agrarian. ...
i have spoken before about the importation of prussian notions that school was meant not to “educate” and generate free thinking but rather to mold model citizens loyal and subordinate to the state and its ends. ...
the minds of the young are not like the minds of the adult. they are missing parts and far more prone to intense irrational loyalty that lacks the basic self-awareness and self-governance that comes later. the human mind is not really fully finished until into one’s 20’s. before that they are more malleable, more easily programmed. how tantalizing then that this is just the age that “school” seems to have evolved to finally let them go. one might well wonder what it evolved to optimize…
but what happens when these systems of indoctrination become utterly corrupt?
and what happens when the fact of this really starts to leak out? ...
these wizards of woo woo ran into a buzz saw of people who had real domain expertise outside the walled gardens of academic endeavor and the pattycake peer review of friendly guild systems. they came from a world where one has to actually be right for a living, not just “socialized and credentialed.”
the “experts” ran headlong into the reputation economy and it turned them into mulch.
and it’s going to keep coming.
and it needs to keep coming. ...
universities and university systems hung together because this pvivileged class had FAR more invested in keeping this system intact and functioning than it did in knocking it down or pruning back its power or prestige over trifling matters like truth, honesty, or accuracy. ...
it’s tearing ivory towers down because this newly informed and enfranchised class does not care about “keeping the system as it is” and are happy to bulldoze the castles of the would be feudal lords of academia because they have come to realize that this group is not here to protect us from invasion.
it IS the invasion.
and this invasion is dishonest.
and it is weak.
it has succeeded because it retained sufficient reputation to gaslight society into being too frightened, too alienated, and too intimidated to challenge it. but it was all woo-woo, a kung fu theater of phony facility. it’s all flash, no substance; it’s all hat, no cowboy.
the true power of woo-woo lies in making you too afraid to challenge it.
and a lot more of the world works like this than you think. ...
the level of access and education available to any who seek it and engage with it is almost impossible to overstate and is certainly impossible to compete with. it just takes desire, diligence, and application. 3 years of arguing economics in earnest on twitter probably has more value than most econ degrees.
and the cream will find ways to rise.
i don’t know about cream. i see a lot of crooks, swindlers and professional liars rise. thats what our system rewards.
This lad from Deep Appalachia knows more about history than most Harvard grads
Coastal elites look down on "flyover country," especially the Southern boys in places like Appalachia, like the Capital looked down on District 12 in Hunger Games. They imagine backwards, ignorant hicks when many of them are actually smarter and wiser than they are.
I'll post the full video if you want to watch more interviews with some of the poorest but best people in America - a place wrecked by the ambitions and ideology of the elites.
If you want the history kid, his interview starts around the 50-minute mark and he knows a TON more than what you saw in that short clip (and can sing to boot). Truly an amazing young man...
Despite a rhetorical commitment to egalitarianism and “democracy,” the elite class deeply distrusts and fears the people over whom it rules. These elites have concentrated themselves into a separate oligarchic political body focused on prioritizing and preserving their rule and their own overlapping set of shared interests. Wracked by anxiety, they strive constantly to maximize their control over the masses, rationalizing a need to forcefully maintain stability in the face of dangerous threats, foreign and domestic. Everything is treated as an emergency. “Safety” and “security” have become be the watchwords of the state, and of society generally. ...
They view human beings themselves as machines to be programmed, and, believing the common man to be an unpredictable creature too stupid, irrational, and violent to rule himself, they endeavor to steadily condition and replace him with a better model through engineering, whether social or biological. Complex systems of surveillance, propaganda, and coercion are implemented to help firmly nudge (or shove) the common man into line. Communities and cultural traditions that resist this project are dismantled. Harmfully contrary ideas are systematically censored, lest they lead to dangerous exposure. Governing power has been steadily elevated, centralized, and distributed to a technocratic bureaucracy unconstrained by any accountability to the public. ... both China and the West, in their own ways and at their own pace, but for the same reasons, are converging from different directions on the same point – the same not-yet-fully-realized system of totalizing techno-administrative governance. Though they remain different, theirs is no longer a difference of kind, only of degree. China is just already a bit further down the path towards the same future. ...
This managerial takeover was accelerated by what I call the managerial doom loop: the larger and more complex an organization grows, the exponentially more managers are needed; managers therefore have a strong incentive to ensure their organization continues to grow larger and more complex, resulting in greater relative power for the managers; more growth means more managers must be hired, who then push for more expansion, including by rationalizing a need for their cancerous bureaucracy to take over ever more functions of the broader economy and society; as more and more territory is surrendered to bureaucratic management, more managers must be educated, which requires more managers…
Utopianism: The belief that a perfect society is possible – in this case through the perfect application of perfect scientific and technical knowledge. The machine can ultimately be tuned to run flawlessly. At that point all will be completely provided for and therefore completely equal, and man himself will be entirely rational, fully free, and perfectly productive. This state of perfection is the telos, or pre-destined end point, of human development (through science, physical and social). This creates the idea of progress, or of moving closer to this final end. Consequently history has a teleology: it bends towards utopia. This also means the future is necessarily always better than the past, as it is closer to utopia. History now takes on moral valence; to “go backwards” is immoral. Indeed even actively conserving the status quo is immoral...
Meanwhile the managerial corporation also has a great deal to gain from the project of mass homogenization, which allows for greater scale and efficiencies (a Walmart in every town, a Starbucks on every corner, Netflix and Amazon accessible on the iPhone in every pocket) by breaking down the differentiations of the old order. The state, which fears and despises above all else the local control justified by differentiation, is happy to assist. ...
When the Communist Party took control of China, the bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy were not gently coopted into joining the managerial elite. Instead, as with the Kulaks (middle-class peasants) of Lenin and Stalin’s USSR, they were virtually exterminated. An endless series of bloody “campaigns” launched in the name of liberation by Mao Zedong against “landlords,” “rich peasants,” “rightists,” “counter-revolutionaries,” and “bourgeois elements” all had the same objective. Through relentless collective persecution, confiscation of property, and mass torture, rape, and murder, the bourgeois middle class that had begun to emerge during China’s Republican period was systematically destroyed.
This served a straightforward purpose. Political theorists since Aristotle have recognized that “a numerous middle class which stands between the rich and the poor” is the natural bedrock of any stable republican system of government, resisting both domination by a plutocratic oligarchy and tyrannical revolutionary demands by the poorest. By eliminating this class, which had been the powerbase of his Nationalist rivals, Mao paved the way for his intelligentsia-led Marxist-Leninist revolution to dismantle every remaining vestige of republican government, replace the old elite with a new one, and take total control of Chinese society.
« First « Previous Comments 18 - 57 of 75 Next » Last » Search these comments
Populism is the idea that ordinary people who did not attend Ivy League schools are as capable of governing as the elite who did.
Note that Trump, though a billionaire, did not attend an Ivy League school and does not have the manners or ideas or the elite.
This makes him a mortal threat to that elite, especially because he demonstrated the ability to avoid wars and boost the economy quite well in spite of being an outsider.
And so their Ivy League degrees and other signs and symbols of being better than everyone else have been devalued. Everything they worked for to separate themselves and place themselves on a pedestal above the hoi polloi is being devalued as they are publicly proven over and over to be incompetent and venal, not deserving of any authority at all.
- Thomas Frank on why the elite hated Trump
And so the mandatory jabs are the latest expression of the obviously psychotic and desperate attempts of the elite to achieve utter obedience to their "superior wisdom". They are also a way to filter those obedient to the incompetent and venal elite from those who are not obedient so that they can be killed.