192 Comments

I don't listen or watch any of the left wing news outlets at all. I know what they're going to say just based on what the topic is. So why waste the time.

I prefer people like you, Chris, to listen for me, and add their insanity to your postings. Usually much funnier then and I get a laugh or chuckle out of it.

Danny Huckabee

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Yep. I don't know about the A10 thing. Seems to me that deliberately turning on NPR is like inviting a midget to punch you in the balls.

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This does not always happen when I'm reading--but occasionally--but when I read your post, I pictured a midget punching someone right in the junk very clearly! I laughed out loud--by myself, in front of the computer. Too funny!

bsn

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Hey people, we know who's laughing and you will be reported to the authorities! So, there!!

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Hahaha lesson learned long ago. I never listen.

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Why were you listening to NPR? Their new CEO has the cringiest LinkedIn and wedding announcement I have ever seen: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/commissar-npr-ceo-katherine-maher-she-her

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Because NPR is a window into the collective brain of the entire midwit HR class that so unfortunately runs the world. If i want to know what legislators and administrators think....

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Haha, me too. My NPR “best time” of the past couple years is 66 seconds. I’m going for a full 90 in ‘24. Wish me luck!

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I had to turn off the radio (in my car, yes I’m old so that’s still a thing for me) and restrain myself from yelling at it after the NPR newsreader read some headline about medical outcomes for “black birthing people.” Took me a while to figure out that they meant women (not midwives or doulas or something, which is what I thought a “birthing person” might be — someone who helps with the birthing process!). Women. You know, that half of the population that is physiologically capable of giving birth?

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And it's not just vagina-owners who hate the term "birthing people."

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Sounds like me when I began cold plunging a year ago. I started with cold showers, only 20 seconds. Got to a minute, then decided I needed to fully submerge--so jumped in nearby lake for 60 seconds.

I now understand that it is one's breath that matters more than time. The sooner I control my breathing, I can stay indefinitely once I relax.

bsn

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“…I can stay indefinitely once I relax.”

It’s amazing what you can stand once frostbite starts… 🤣

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That's pretty funny! I did read that freezing to death is comfortable, you just fall asleep!

bsn

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Same here. When I was a young adult, apathetic towards history or any other educational discipline, I watched PBS (NPR on television). It made me feel a lot smarter than I was. Because it's mostly ideology and emotions sprinkled with some objective statements of fact. Easy to remember and repeat.

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. . . with trickling water or garbage truck brakes squeaking in the background, always, depending upon the narrative.

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ha! Perfect! LOL.

I've forgotten that part. Thanks for the reminder!

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It's been a great tactic since Bill Clinton transitioned the Democratic party's message from "We're the working-class!" to "We're smarter and more educated than you and if you don't want to be seen as a dummy you better start liking us Democrats."

They tell their audience that being a Democrat is what makes them smart and wise. It makes it easy for people because then they don't have to read much of substance or do their own research to sound smart. They can just parrot the opinions and hot takes of Democrat pundits and politicians and then snarkily dismiss opinions and facts that disagree with them.

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Ah, now that you say that about Clinton, I see it now. It is true, what you say!

I was in the middle of it. My goodness, was I manipulated. And I didn't like Clinton - I considered myself a Republican during those years. I voted for Ross Perot. I really liked Ross Perot.

But my thoughts were manipulated. I still thought PBS was trustworthy and wholesome.

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For us here in Canada the equivalent is the CBC, especially CBC Radio One which is essentially a form of bondage/discipline and humiliation ritual in aural form, where the Canadian credentialed midwit class is told over and over and over and over and OVER again what evil, white-supremacist settler colonialist heteronormative scum they all are. And they keep coming *back*, for more!

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"...bondage/discipline and humiliation ritual in aural form."

LOL, yes.

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Feb 15
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You aren't missing a thing. My memories of the CBC go back to the late 70s through the mid nineties, so the good years of Mr. Dressup, Friendly Giant, Beachcombers, and Hockey Night in Canada up to the Kids in the Hall era. I would say Schitt's Creek is the last worthy thing they put out, but were it not for the heft of Levy and O'Hara I doubt it would be greenlit now unless it was more "diverse", and thus less funny. There's a new cop show they've been hyping with a Strong South Asian Female Lead and crusty old white guy that looks *paaaainnnnful*.

CBC Radio is not the radio you remember with Lister Sinclair, Gothe, etc. (I think the Randy Bachman show is still ok if he hasn't been "decolonized" yet). But last time I heard it in an Uber it's what I described it as earlier: essentially an audio Struggle Session with the subtlety of a crowbar to the skull.

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It’s true. Sometimes I force myself to listen so I can understand what my coworkers are doing/saying/thinking.

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MSNBC is another such outlet. I've occasionally switched it on just to see the heinous venom being spewed from the management class.

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I honestly think even they don’t listen anymore. I think it’s all on autopilot at this point and the cabal thinks that as long as their scripted noise is still happening, they’re still in control, whether or not any humans are actually listening.

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"They listened to music at the Black Cat jazz club and then saw 'Hamilton' at the Orpheum Theater..."

Yep.

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I need to be careful...my bias against the elites is showing. This Katherine Maher...she likely married (fancy pants girl boss may not marry...cramps her style & upward trajectory) the dude from Sunday's post--Trevin or Taylor or Tyler or Tristan...whatever his/they name actually is, they are all the same.

I've often fantasized about seeing if we could influence a 1 week or 1 month complete fast from legacy media. If we could convince our tottering Boomers to just turn off the TV, don't look at any newspaper, magazine--what would it take for all of these companies to just collapse? I don't think it would take much. 5% drop in viewership?

Legacy Media looks like Biden climbing stairs, or waking on stage. It would only take the smallest of nudges...

bsn

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Got news for you, smart ass. We “ tottering boomers “ are here in droves, whilst your younger set are watching tit toc. I gave up the stupid box about thirty five years ago.

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Well played Sir! You caught me flat-footed making a lazy, broad generalization. Point taken. Appropriately chastised.

You're an outlier without a TV, especially 35 years ago.

The only people keeping legacy media alive are the boomers. I should have been way more specific about tottering. Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi. Mitch McConnell.

bsn

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Brian, your reply was polite and inspirational for me, and it came off as classy as I try (but often fail) to be.

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Thanks Fred.

bsn

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Agree.

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I lived on a beautiful beach, although one more famous for ice volcanoes than the other kind. It was rather easy.

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Yah, boomer here, never have had a TV as an adult, and that's been 53 years. And I surely am not tottering.

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I’m only 68, no tottering yet.

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Totter here! Waddle like a drunk duck. Sad to admit but Slow Joe walks better than me.

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Good idea. It's crazy how addicting 'the media' is. People are afraid they will miss something important. But will find (like I did) the only thing they will miss is the anxiety.

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Did a 3 day Ayahuasca experience back in 2021. Interesting experience, for sure.

I did a 60 day 'water only fast' of media prior to the retreat. Actually stopped paying attention on Jan 6...what a perfect day to miss the news.

Took about 3-4 days before I stopped pining, scratching my arm for a hit.

I now periodically go into a zero media cave. It is helpful, even if (probably because) it is uncomfortable.

I have been fasting for the last 12 years. Usually once a week, sometimes twice a week. About 36 hours each fast. No matter what, it is still hard. Harder if I eat poorly (fast food, snacks, etc) day before the fast, but it is never super easy.

I'm almost a decade retired from the military, but haven't gained any weight.

I find it to be infinitely easier to fast for 36 hours (only one choice/decision--NO) compared to appropriately sizing every bite of every meal all the time. Fasting gives me a little wiggle room.

bsn

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And none of the doom they point to ever comes true (and the real doom they ignore) and so there’s new manufactured doom each day.

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Getting Boomers off tv would be good for everyone's mental and financial health.

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Obviously not just the Boomers--but I think they are the primary demographic that keeps legacy media (print, tv, radio) alive. The death of legacy media will also be good for everyone's mental, emotional, physical, and financial health.

It is almost screening criteria for who to ignore.

"Where did you hear that?" I ask.

"On the evening news.." they answer.

"Ignore the ignorant" I think to myself.

bsn

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“The death of legacy media (print, tv, radio) will also be good for everyone’s…”

Perhaps, but we should be mindful that it will come with the loss of 2 critical features: news gathering by reporters, and editorial supervision. The loss of reporters will force reliance on citizen videos à la TikTok: some will be incisive (like Saint George Floyd), and some will be less so (Jussie Smollett, or as Dave Chappelle pronounces it “Juicy Smolliér).

The loss of editorial supervision will allow errors and opinions to flow unrestrained by a second set of eyes. I realize that with the liberal press right now, the editor may well be the one *injecting* bias and error, but at a minimum, having a formal organization provides a target to sue.

The devolution of the news media into a cottage industry where every “reporter” is a sole proprietor narrow-casting from his spare bedroom will not (IMHO) improve the quality of the information flowing to the public.

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John,

Agreed. It may take 5-10 years, but I think a newer media will consolidate and reform--but likely along ideological lines: Blaze Media, Daily Wire, PJ Media, Daily Kos, etc for the national/regional stuff. While not perfect, at least one will know the slant/bias of the publication.

Local news is/has been suffering for some time.

bsn

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Sadly, I agree. On the one hand, that will be “truth in advertising,” but on the other, it violates Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s truism: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

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You think having TV news dominated by Millennials & Zoomers will IMPROVE things??

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As viewers. Regime media is dead and I don't really care who runs it. The boomers need to get outside and get some air. I'm a boomer and headed out for a 20 mile bike ride. Cheers!

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My favorite part was the NYT wedding write up. "Non-denominational seder." Oppressed grandparents. I could not stop laughing because so much of this sounded like satire.

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It probably is. The cabal love fucking with us.

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dude didn't really need that green card after all. would have been more profitable if he'd come through arizona. and if he was that desperate he could have hooked up with katie hobbs instead

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Know thy enemy.

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Yuval Noah Harari is Gollum with a PhD

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I worked up a Yuval Noah Harari impression, but everyone I showed it to just said OH GOD STOP NO.

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He’s way worse than Gollum, who was a poor lost soul to be pitied. Harari is a proud servant of Satan.

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Creepiest man alive, although several of his cohorts are tough competition for the title.

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For shame:

There was a time, call it my late 20s-early 40s, when I wanted to be part of the cool kids club. I read all the things the cool kids books--Sapiens was one of them. I thought Yuval was smart...

Because I was posing instead of learning, I questioned myself before I questioned someone 'as smart as Yuval'--another turd I gave too much credit--Sam Harris.

Smart does not equal moral.

When I was in high school, we were a bit enamored with the book 'Poor Man's James Bond'. I think that was it. The introduction was written by a UC professor. He wrote that the world should stop sending food to India (1986ish). Sending them food only exacerbated the problem, they had outstripped the land's ability to sustain the population.

The premise was to let them die.

Yuval and his WEF fellows are of the same moral fiber. Just let them die.

When I was 16, I thought this made sense. Just let them die.

Frightening.

bsn

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“…they had outstripped the land's ability to sustain the population.”

That’s the correct description of the problem. Their government has made no effort to dissuade the population from unlimited reproduction. It is only astounding improvements in world agriculture and the West’s moral compulsion to alleviate suffering that evades the natural consequences of those bad decisions.

If fossil fuels are done away with, those consequences will manifest with a horrific vengeance.

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One of my students gave a book report on Homo Deus. He didn't really know what to think of the book. I informed him that Harari is on my top 10 list of people most likely to destroy the human race. He said that perspective helped him a lot.

I tell my students to trust their instincts. If they think they're encountering an anti-human ideology that will devour their souls masquerading as liberation... that's a sign to stop.

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Good on you man! Those are the "tiny" victories we need.

Millions of them.

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He has a PhD??? And he’s just the front bullshitter robot spouting things to push our buttons. I bet there’s an off button somewhere.

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I hope he shows his face here when the revolution starts. .

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Everyone has a religion, or belief system. For some of us, it's our own take on an organized religion like Christianity or Islam or Judaism or whatever. For many, it is scientism, the belief that we can figure everything out and that we can manage this knowledge to our collective benefit. I believe that both of these aspects of scientism are false. First, there are things that are not knowable or understandable through science. Second, we are not capable of managing our knowledge without someone like Gates or Fauci manipulating data for their own gain. We live in a fallen world and are incapable of grasping the struggle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, nor are we able to stand against it all on our own. We need Christ.

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“We need Christ.”

Personally, I think we could also do with some modern examples of God’s response to Sodom & Gomorrah. Just how many times do we get to be discovered worshiping the Golden Calf and escape divine retribution?

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I'm old and sick and I believe I'll see some of that in my lifetime, possibly this year...

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E Hunter Christie offers his opinion that Elon and Tucker are "directly at war against Ukraine," then goes on to say, "There is no other interpretation." Wow, can you imagine what it must be like to enjoy that degree of certitude about anything, let alone what someone else might think?

It's all about clicks, and E Hunter has learned that making nasty, unverifiable accusations against others will generate more clicks than saying nice, complimentary things.

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On a name kick last couple of days...

E. Hunter Christie.

I don't have any friends who choose a letter instead of a name.

bsn

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He figured out if e. Jean Carroll can sue for nothing and get 83 mil award, he might try it.

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Im gonna try to start a fad, would love it to catch on: all names of media outlets begin with not just one but two letters, F and U. So

for instance F U Atlantic etc. etc. etc etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. e fucking cetera.

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I sincerely hope most of them don’t believe it because panicked true believers are more likely than anyone else to do stupid dangerous shit.

“You know when you put it that way, making the whole world go to hell because we were worried the whole world was going to go to hell might have been a bit short sighted.”

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“And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Trump, and Fascism followed with him.”

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**literally shaking**

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** quakebuttocks shakin' **

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Great post. My reaction: "Tucker is witch! Elon is a witch! They must be burnt at the stake. Trump is the Devil! Putin is the Devil!" It appears humanity hasn't really progressed for centuries.

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What is he made of? Woood woood woood. Does he float?

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Trump does look a little like a duck... (for the Monty Python fans only.)

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Woof woof.

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We have heard the end of the world is coming, since, well, the beginning of time. Sure is taking the slow route. Common sense keeps getting in the way…

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Chris Bray is our Christopher Lasch for the 2020s

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Christopher Lasch just from the other side called to say that Chris Bray is a dork, but let's go with this as a theme.

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Have you ever read "The Pursuit of Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages" by Norman Cohn? I think it would be right up your alley - plus it's fun to read history books from before the complete domination of progressives in the humanities, he takes a bunch of potshots at Marxist historians who try to turn bloody Millenarian movements into early examples of revolutionary proletarian action. Worth a read!

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Haven't. Willing!

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It's really interesting stuff, and there's a cheap ebook version on Kindle. His book on the origins of the witch hunt in Europe is also fascinating and full of modern parallels - he wrote them for "The Center For The Study Of Collective Psychopathology," they were founded after WWII and all their work explores the origins of violent mass movements and persecution.

I wrote a brief summary of his book about witchcraft a few weeks ago if you'd be interested in a super condensed version

https://open.substack.com/pub/theplenum/p/food-politics-and-music-12924

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Thanks!

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When the superlatives are so over the top, as you so humorously portrayed, it triggers common sense in most rational thinking folks. The Europeans have happily sucked on the US tits and are now (still) crying when someone asks a perfectly good question - and not for the first time - as you point out. Spain’s socialist leader was the one who cried foul the most and Spain is the least compliant in funding NATO of the larger countries. Only Luxembourg pays a lower percentage of GDP. Is it possible that we may be entering a period of realism that understands the futility of allowing the decimation of an entire generation of Ukrainians? funded by US?

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I doubt it. Throughout history, mankind has been quite willing to stand by and watch people destroy themselves. There is no evidence that we’ve progressed as a race.

We’re living through the rapidly dissipating post-WWII dedication of that war’s survivors to not go through another bloodbath.

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Sadly, the evidence, sofar, bears you out.

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I mean it's probably actually ending for both parties. It's the end of their world, but not the end of existence, which is what they would like to conflate it with. When you're used to everything going your way without challenges, yeah, then it becomes the end of the world, like a drama queen.

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I would love to see both parties die, and to start over. Let's hope!

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Same, but it’ll probably get really hard and bad before then.

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The world will again divide between realists and fantasists.

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Very perspective comment. Chris' title is Apocalypse Now. The other translation of "apocalypse" is "revelation", as in revealing of unveiling something that was hidden. What's going on is definitely a revelation, and revelations often result in the end of A world, just not THE world. In this case, the world being ended is the post-WWII political order. The demise of this order is upsetting a lot of powerful people with large megaphones. For them, it will be a cataclysm, but its effect on most of us need not be world-ending.

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I think the changes are deeper than the merely political, though there are certainly huge threats on that front. Lava comes from deep underground but it only destroys things when it reaches the surface after all.

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I agree with you that the changes are larger. The bursting of postmodernism out of the university and into the real world (ironic considering that postmodernism denies that there is a real world, but I digress) in the form of BLM, DEI, whiteness, trans, wokeness, pregnant men, etc... has certainly been a revelation for many normal people who didn't spend 4 years gazing at their navels at university. The political realignment is being caused by that well of cultural lava.

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Sounds very wyrd punishing to me.

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“Sackcloth, ashes, endlessly refillable SSRI prescription: journalist starter kit“ you wrote this on Fat Tuesday? lol hit differently

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Went right past me, unnoticed. Good catch.

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Yo, Happy Valentine's, ya'all.

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They do this because they know it works. When “The Atlantic” made up the story in 2020 that Trump called the WW2 U.S. soldiers buried in France “losers”, my neighbors, a very intelligent and delightful couple, went batshit crazy. They posted a huge homemade sign on their mailbox that both their fathers were WW2 veterans, Orange Man bad, blah blah blah. They updated their outrage almost daily with more signs and more evil things attributed to the Orange Julius Caesar dictator wannabe. By the time the election rolled around they had a sign for everything except, “World Famous Wall Drug Store! Only 2,100 miles!”

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Media induced mass psychosis has gripped the world. It is only wise to be prepared for what is reasonably likely to come next. I don’t say this and a black pill as I believe it’s more than likely. The people running the show have given themselves over to depraved minds. I do believe they will rig the election again. And what comes after will be very bad for quite a long while. Stay healthy and be prepared. Stock up and improve your relationships with your neighbors. And never give up. After all, what else do you have to do?

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I dismissed Mattias Desmet's book, for reasons that I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I need to revisit it.

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I never believed I would ever have to consider how to prepare for the complete failure of American electoral democracy. I still believe it to be a <5% probability event, but the entire idea that one must consider it at all is appalling.

This is what happens when one party convinces itself that the other is fascist. Assuming the republic does manage to survive this year (and we probably will) can we please stop pretending that people we disagree with are all Hitler? (The "we" there is all Americans.)

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“…can we please stop pretending that people we disagree with are all Hitler?”

I’ve been a conservative for 55+ years and I’ve always considered liberals as being misguided b/c of their belief that all men will act for the collective good despite 10K years of contrary evidence. It wasn’t until Biden’s “Red Speech” that I decided they’d become overt fascists, either by choice (leaders) or propaganda (followers).

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