It's consistently embarrassing how just plain dumb these supposed intellectual heavyweights are. They're all credential, no ability. Like the scarecrow, they have diplomas in place of brains. It's not even just that they're discourse consists entirely of sophistry; it's that they can't even do sophistry right.
Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by Chris Bray
If the Jan 6 protesters had successfully taken over the capitol building it would have been roughly comparable to what protesters in Seattle accomplished back in 2020 with their "CHOP" or "Summer of Love" or "mostly peaceful arson festival" or "failed experiment in socialism" or whatever you choose to call it.
It wouldn't have amounted to a permanent takeover of the US federal government -- or anything else really. It certainly would not have destroyed Democracy, any more than Seattle's CHOP did. It would have amounted to a dull footnote in a history textbook, which is pretty much its status right now. In fact, that's the reason congressional Democrats schedule hearing after hearing after hearing about it: the whole mess is already fading from popular memory.
Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by Chris Bray
Pretty much everything the federal government and many state and local governments did over the past two years is in *On Tyranny.* Other than hijacking our tax dollars to make Pfizer rich (let's not forget whose baby "Operation Warp Speed" was), Trump wasn't behind any of it.
1: Do not obey in advance. That's everybody I know, getting the C19 shots because "at some point, my boss or the government will make me."
2: Defend institutions. That's the Catholic Church in the US rolling over and shutting down Mass, even though I've been taught my entire life that to miss Mass on a Sunday is a mortal sin. What's 2000 years of teaching, when there's a bad cold going around?
3: Beware the one-party state. Well, that's been a problem forever, but I didn't see anybody in Congress sticking up for us until Ron Johnson and Rand Paul decided they kind of cared about a few things. So yeah, we have a one-party state.
4: Take responsibility for the face of the world. Swap out "virtue-signaling face mask" for "swastika." Yep.
5: Remember professional ethics. Ah, the article after article on "compassion fatigue" written by doctors who just couldn't even! when faced with a patient who hadn't gotten an experimental C19 shot, and had the audacity to get sick and seek medical care. Also, making people die alone, and locking old folks up in nursing homes. Good times.
6: Beware of paramilitaries. Like the guys Trudeau sicced on the truckers. No face, no name, no badge.
7: Be reflective if you must be armed. Google the cellphone footage of NYPD slapping black people to the ground for walking around outside without a face diaper.
8: Stand out. Kinda obvious.
9: Be kind to our language. "Dead end for this virus" comes to mind. Using "safe and effective" about a product that HAD NOT YET RECEIVED A BLA also comes to mind.
10: Believe in truth. Bad cattitude has covered this far better than I can. A few nice "we have the receipts" bits are Deb Birx on whether the vaccine would work and virtually everything Rochelle Walensky says.
11: Investigate. Hahahahahahahaha FOIA requests.
12: Make eye contact and small talk. Or, you know, stay locked in your house and don't allow your child to see any human faces.
13: Practice corporeal politics. See point 12 above.
14: Establish a private life. Well, this one is actually one that Biden's online storm troops have helped along. If you're banned from every social media platform, you have to spread your message in other ways. Then again, if you're Mark Crispin Miller, and the NYU goons have gotten you, you're forced online. YMMV.
15: Contribute to good causes. Ah, like the truckers. Then get your contribution seized by GoFundMe.
16: Learn from peers in other countries. Or spend months mocking Sweden before pretending it doesn't exist. Also ignore Uttar Pradesh and other regions that have used off-patent drugs to treat a virus.
17: Listen for dangerous words. Like calling people "anti-vaxxers" because they don't want their 12-year-old to take an experimental mRNA product to enter buildings in NYC? Or calling parents who attend school board meetings "terrorists"? Duly noted.
18: Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Hard to recall any administration that hit the panic button as often as Biden's.
19: Be a patriot. And if you're Ron DeSantis, get called every perjorative word in the book by the current regime.
20: Be as courageous as you can. Like maybe going outdoors for a walk without a face diaper. Oh, wait, cops would throw you to the ground if you did that. In York County, PA, a woman was arrested for going for a drive by herself that wasn't "essential travel."
So I think Snyder would agree with me that nearly every in-office politician from 2020 through the present is part of the most tyrannical movement the US has ever seen. Right?
Someone (a true hero) signed me up for MoveOn dot org emails and they are PRECIOUS. It’s the highlight of my week that I get to read the most unhinged lunacy known to man. ORANGE MAN BAD!!! COUP!!! RIGHT WING WHITE SUPREMACY!!!!
These people are nuts. They are members of the most dangerous religion ever known to man.
I used to read Animal Farm and think it was funny how absurd the pigs' lies were and how stupidly gullible so many of the other animals were to believe them. But now I see the ease with which our own political leaders and their apologists in academia and mainstream media tell such obvious lies, and the complete credulity of the NPCs taking them at their word without ever noticing their words are self-contradictory, and Animal Farm doesn't seem so funny anymore. It's like 1% of the population are psychopaths and another 50% (or more) are mindless NPCs programmed to believe anything the psychopaths tell them.
“ In a democracy, Democrats win elections; if Republicans win an election, we have lost our democracy, because obviously they will have cheated.” - This is outstanding
So funny you landed on this Chris. I was going to interview him hoping to draw the parallels between C-19 tyranny and his book on tyranny and then I did a Google search of his attitudes. I threw my hands up in the air.
One would think that people who hold the titles and accolades from their hard work in gaining them at higher learning centers would have a vastly superior grasp of basic civics and economics than they apparently do.
It never ceases to amaze me when these gilded experts are brought in front of a camera or microphone and the amount of factual garbage (as in it’s a fact that garbage is coming out of their mouth) falls out their pie holes. The entire time with a smug look on their faces.
Members of the Democratic Party not winning an election ruins our democracy? Democracy in practice is he who has more people agreeing with him wins. In a nutshell mob rule. The only reason shifts in power happen in our nation is due to the Electoral College. I really wonder what his stance would be if we practiced “democracy” and he found himself on the losing side? Would he acquiesce his loss and concede an election was fair, or would he throw a temper tantrum just like all his screed seems to be? I already know the answer.
With what Chris posted of Snyder’s statements, Snyder is so woefully inept of comprehension of what is actually playing out across the state elections it’s mind numbing. States are making it so Trump will be installed? States have done nothing since 2020. Maricopa County in Arizona still has rogue Election Officials who have been in contempt of The State Senate since May of last year. Nothing has changed even after their audit. Georgia is still a hotbed of election corruption. A county in Mew Mexico just this week after live streaming an audit rejected the Dominion voting machines and declared they would recount the election results by hand. That was unanimous by that county’s election board, yet the AG overrode them and said pound sand, dominions count stands. Is that even legal, I have no clue? But it demonstrates as well as the others I mentioned that facts on the ground are entirely in another universe than Snyder’s claimed reality.
Don’t even get me started with politicians. We have a gaggle of lawyers who only a small handful have practiced law, most have never had a real job where they lived paycheck to paycheck, more than a bushel who are morally bankrupt, and even one who thinks an island is able to capsize if too many inhabitants live on one side of it as policy and law makers. All look down their noses at those who pay their salaries. They can’t even agree on how best to screw us over let alone understand not have ever read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have protected classes of people except children and elderly as we do now.
These people may have high degrees and titles but that is all. Otherwise the lot of them all, academics, talking heads, news topic experts, politicians, and bureaucrats are narcissistic, spoiled, petulant nowits(spelling intended) who find it entertaining to gaslight and bite the hands that feed them on a daily schedule.
I have gotten to the point where when I hear someone using neuro linguistic programming techniques to speak to others as if the ones being spoken to are somehow beneath the speaker, that speakers voice turns into an adult voice from a Charles Schulz cartoon. Regardless of political affiliation.
They are not my tribe and will never be part of my tribe. We aren’t that dumb.
Snyder is a buffoon. I read "On Tyranny" in 2017, when my Dad was dying. Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny, which lifted my spirits a little but drew some weird looks from the nurses.
It does no good to call out their hypocrisy. They are in power, rubbing our noses in it, and laughing at us when we whine about it. (Not saying you're whining. I mean our side in general.)
That's what you do when you're in power; of course they're hypocrites. People in power make you hold the piss bucket and piss all over your hands deliberately. And then laugh at you because you're not in power and you have piss on your hands. The only answer is to fight and claw back power so there are some checks and balances.
It's just a good thing that Trump wasn't there when they raided his house. He is a fat slob who is way out of shape but he nearly overpowered 2 secret service agents on Jan. 6th. Imagine how quickly he could have overpowered those 30 FBI agents if his weak flabby fat slob super strength was not contained inside an automobile. He would have quickly subdued them and then used the nuclear launch codes he obviously stole to plunge this world into nuclear winter or much worse given kompromat on the French president to Putin. Just think what kind of leverage Putin would have over Europe with that AND control over their energy supply!
I'm just glad they moved so quickly and didn't wait 4 days to execute that search warrant after letting Trump hold on to all the top secret information for 18 months.
It's consistently embarrassing how just plain dumb these supposed intellectual heavyweights are. They're all credential, no ability. Like the scarecrow, they have diplomas in place of brains. It's not even just that they're discourse consists entirely of sophistry; it's that they can't even do sophistry right.
If the Jan 6 protesters had successfully taken over the capitol building it would have been roughly comparable to what protesters in Seattle accomplished back in 2020 with their "CHOP" or "Summer of Love" or "mostly peaceful arson festival" or "failed experiment in socialism" or whatever you choose to call it.
It wouldn't have amounted to a permanent takeover of the US federal government -- or anything else really. It certainly would not have destroyed Democracy, any more than Seattle's CHOP did. It would have amounted to a dull footnote in a history textbook, which is pretty much its status right now. In fact, that's the reason congressional Democrats schedule hearing after hearing after hearing about it: the whole mess is already fading from popular memory.
Pretty much everything the federal government and many state and local governments did over the past two years is in *On Tyranny.* Other than hijacking our tax dollars to make Pfizer rich (let's not forget whose baby "Operation Warp Speed" was), Trump wasn't behind any of it.
1: Do not obey in advance. That's everybody I know, getting the C19 shots because "at some point, my boss or the government will make me."
2: Defend institutions. That's the Catholic Church in the US rolling over and shutting down Mass, even though I've been taught my entire life that to miss Mass on a Sunday is a mortal sin. What's 2000 years of teaching, when there's a bad cold going around?
3: Beware the one-party state. Well, that's been a problem forever, but I didn't see anybody in Congress sticking up for us until Ron Johnson and Rand Paul decided they kind of cared about a few things. So yeah, we have a one-party state.
4: Take responsibility for the face of the world. Swap out "virtue-signaling face mask" for "swastika." Yep.
5: Remember professional ethics. Ah, the article after article on "compassion fatigue" written by doctors who just couldn't even! when faced with a patient who hadn't gotten an experimental C19 shot, and had the audacity to get sick and seek medical care. Also, making people die alone, and locking old folks up in nursing homes. Good times.
6: Beware of paramilitaries. Like the guys Trudeau sicced on the truckers. No face, no name, no badge.
7: Be reflective if you must be armed. Google the cellphone footage of NYPD slapping black people to the ground for walking around outside without a face diaper.
8: Stand out. Kinda obvious.
9: Be kind to our language. "Dead end for this virus" comes to mind. Using "safe and effective" about a product that HAD NOT YET RECEIVED A BLA also comes to mind.
10: Believe in truth. Bad cattitude has covered this far better than I can. A few nice "we have the receipts" bits are Deb Birx on whether the vaccine would work and virtually everything Rochelle Walensky says.
11: Investigate. Hahahahahahahaha FOIA requests.
12: Make eye contact and small talk. Or, you know, stay locked in your house and don't allow your child to see any human faces.
13: Practice corporeal politics. See point 12 above.
14: Establish a private life. Well, this one is actually one that Biden's online storm troops have helped along. If you're banned from every social media platform, you have to spread your message in other ways. Then again, if you're Mark Crispin Miller, and the NYU goons have gotten you, you're forced online. YMMV.
15: Contribute to good causes. Ah, like the truckers. Then get your contribution seized by GoFundMe.
16: Learn from peers in other countries. Or spend months mocking Sweden before pretending it doesn't exist. Also ignore Uttar Pradesh and other regions that have used off-patent drugs to treat a virus.
17: Listen for dangerous words. Like calling people "anti-vaxxers" because they don't want their 12-year-old to take an experimental mRNA product to enter buildings in NYC? Or calling parents who attend school board meetings "terrorists"? Duly noted.
18: Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Hard to recall any administration that hit the panic button as often as Biden's.
19: Be a patriot. And if you're Ron DeSantis, get called every perjorative word in the book by the current regime.
20: Be as courageous as you can. Like maybe going outdoors for a walk without a face diaper. Oh, wait, cops would throw you to the ground if you did that. In York County, PA, a woman was arrested for going for a drive by herself that wasn't "essential travel."
So I think Snyder would agree with me that nearly every in-office politician from 2020 through the present is part of the most tyrannical movement the US has ever seen. Right?
Someone (a true hero) signed me up for MoveOn dot org emails and they are PRECIOUS. It’s the highlight of my week that I get to read the most unhinged lunacy known to man. ORANGE MAN BAD!!! COUP!!! RIGHT WING WHITE SUPREMACY!!!!
These people are nuts. They are members of the most dangerous religion ever known to man.
I used to read Animal Farm and think it was funny how absurd the pigs' lies were and how stupidly gullible so many of the other animals were to believe them. But now I see the ease with which our own political leaders and their apologists in academia and mainstream media tell such obvious lies, and the complete credulity of the NPCs taking them at their word without ever noticing their words are self-contradictory, and Animal Farm doesn't seem so funny anymore. It's like 1% of the population are psychopaths and another 50% (or more) are mindless NPCs programmed to believe anything the psychopaths tell them.
“ In a democracy, Democrats win elections; if Republicans win an election, we have lost our democracy, because obviously they will have cheated.” - This is outstanding
So funny you landed on this Chris. I was going to interview him hoping to draw the parallels between C-19 tyranny and his book on tyranny and then I did a Google search of his attitudes. I threw my hands up in the air.
One would think that people who hold the titles and accolades from their hard work in gaining them at higher learning centers would have a vastly superior grasp of basic civics and economics than they apparently do.
It never ceases to amaze me when these gilded experts are brought in front of a camera or microphone and the amount of factual garbage (as in it’s a fact that garbage is coming out of their mouth) falls out their pie holes. The entire time with a smug look on their faces.
Members of the Democratic Party not winning an election ruins our democracy? Democracy in practice is he who has more people agreeing with him wins. In a nutshell mob rule. The only reason shifts in power happen in our nation is due to the Electoral College. I really wonder what his stance would be if we practiced “democracy” and he found himself on the losing side? Would he acquiesce his loss and concede an election was fair, or would he throw a temper tantrum just like all his screed seems to be? I already know the answer.
With what Chris posted of Snyder’s statements, Snyder is so woefully inept of comprehension of what is actually playing out across the state elections it’s mind numbing. States are making it so Trump will be installed? States have done nothing since 2020. Maricopa County in Arizona still has rogue Election Officials who have been in contempt of The State Senate since May of last year. Nothing has changed even after their audit. Georgia is still a hotbed of election corruption. A county in Mew Mexico just this week after live streaming an audit rejected the Dominion voting machines and declared they would recount the election results by hand. That was unanimous by that county’s election board, yet the AG overrode them and said pound sand, dominions count stands. Is that even legal, I have no clue? But it demonstrates as well as the others I mentioned that facts on the ground are entirely in another universe than Snyder’s claimed reality.
Don’t even get me started with politicians. We have a gaggle of lawyers who only a small handful have practiced law, most have never had a real job where they lived paycheck to paycheck, more than a bushel who are morally bankrupt, and even one who thinks an island is able to capsize if too many inhabitants live on one side of it as policy and law makers. All look down their noses at those who pay their salaries. They can’t even agree on how best to screw us over let alone understand not have ever read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have protected classes of people except children and elderly as we do now.
These people may have high degrees and titles but that is all. Otherwise the lot of them all, academics, talking heads, news topic experts, politicians, and bureaucrats are narcissistic, spoiled, petulant nowits(spelling intended) who find it entertaining to gaslight and bite the hands that feed them on a daily schedule.
I have gotten to the point where when I hear someone using neuro linguistic programming techniques to speak to others as if the ones being spoken to are somehow beneath the speaker, that speakers voice turns into an adult voice from a Charles Schulz cartoon. Regardless of political affiliation.
They are not my tribe and will never be part of my tribe. We aren’t that dumb.
Snyder is a buffoon. I read "On Tyranny" in 2017, when my Dad was dying. Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny, which lifted my spirits a little but drew some weird looks from the nurses.
I like the cut of your jib, Bray. Good stuff.
I think you're on to something there, at the end. Here's somebody taking the same thought a little further:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/its-not-hypocrisy-youre-just-powerless
"Wouldn't it be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another?" (Bertold Brecht circa 1950, I think.)
It's assholes like this guy that keep assholes like Justin* in power because it's 'their asshole'.
*I say Justin because he's a far bigger asshole than Biden.
I miss my old school leftist professors, who would denounce the FBI, CIA, and the American empire.
It does no good to call out their hypocrisy. They are in power, rubbing our noses in it, and laughing at us when we whine about it. (Not saying you're whining. I mean our side in general.)
That's what you do when you're in power; of course they're hypocrites. People in power make you hold the piss bucket and piss all over your hands deliberately. And then laugh at you because you're not in power and you have piss on your hands. The only answer is to fight and claw back power so there are some checks and balances.
It's just a good thing that Trump wasn't there when they raided his house. He is a fat slob who is way out of shape but he nearly overpowered 2 secret service agents on Jan. 6th. Imagine how quickly he could have overpowered those 30 FBI agents if his weak flabby fat slob super strength was not contained inside an automobile. He would have quickly subdued them and then used the nuclear launch codes he obviously stole to plunge this world into nuclear winter or much worse given kompromat on the French president to Putin. Just think what kind of leverage Putin would have over Europe with that AND control over their energy supply!
I'm just glad they moved so quickly and didn't wait 4 days to execute that search warrant after letting Trump hold on to all the top secret information for 18 months.
I've taught my children: listen to what people say, they tell you who they are, believe them.