I think the most amazing part of the Rhodes admission is not that he said it but that the media didn’t pay attention. He literally told them he will keep lying until they figure it out. And many of those people have then been lied to, repeatedly, probably by the same group of people. Wouldn’t you think at some point those same “journalists” would put 2 and 2 together? Or is it all in service of the “cause” by now?
Exactly! Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty has to reflect that they were deliberately misled for a long time. Maybe they were happy or Ok with the end result, so they kind of ignore it, but I was hoping it would dawn on them that they were, quite literally, useful idiots. Doesn’t quite square with their self image of thought leaders.
True. They need to fake some outrage or admit that they are propagandists. I have to think anyone not brainwashed has to cringe at that, at least a little, but maybe there is no other way to keep your mass media job today.
Not much time today, but I did want to touch on a couple semi-related stories that have recently surfaced. First, the DOJ subverted then-President Trump’s legal order to declassify documents revealing how the FBI lied in order to ‘investigate’ Trump after his 2016 election win.
This story has sort of been dripping out since it happened, but from where I’m sitting, the entire Russiagate hoax was to prevent Trump from digging into what happened at the FBI during the 2016 election and just afterward. This stuff makes Watergate look like something the Riverdale 4-H club would pull. Yet today, the criminals are back in power and (surprise!), they aren’t interested in telling you about their crimes.
Exactly. The only way the Biden syndicate etc. could be getting away with all of this all these years is that they are 'in on it'.! Western Civilization is toast. I don't think the few rays of light...substack, twitter etc. can save it.
In 20 years we'll be wondering why nobody is having kids; after 20% sterilized themselves after being told it's what cool kids do; and 50% more are taught that sex and family are crimes committed by men.
Now say it two more times while staring in front of the mirror and you will be transported to your shiny, new meta hi-density housing pod.
I used to say, I'd love to come back in 100 years (maybe an invisible time traveler - because I'm really not interested to interact with future "us") just to see how things turned out...the shit show.
I have cut that down to 50 years, which I'll probably be around for...since its not going to take too long, for the tide pod eating idiots to create the Utopia of ML (Meat Legos).
I used to work in NYC media and still know some people there: the only thing they excel at (besides having no personality) is massive, desperate, terminal STATUS ANXIETY.
ALL CAPS doesn't even do service to it: 9 out of 10 media wannabes will do or say anything if it means they get to sit at the cool kids' table and be a bona fide Insider, and maybe get opportunites to do things like work at the Times or sit on some dull panel or be a TV talking head.
Nothing else matters, and they certainly would never worry about any consequences for bad reporting or dishonesty: no one they know has ever been punished for any of this, so why would they?
Hacks seeking status. Can you imagine? What kind of lameness is THAT?
H.L. Mencken wrote somewhere—I'm not inclined to go hunting right now—about the baleful consequences of journalists seeking professional status. And, of course, he was nationally famous a century ago. He also happened to right.
I've been in this dumb business for 30 years. When I was an editor at my college newspaper, I had this Hunter S. Thompson quote plastered on my office wall:
"Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel f_____s. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for f__offs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."
Yes, I bowdlerized it. I think Bray would be cool with it, but I don't want to be presumptuous. And, incidentally, the unredacted quote got me into trouble on Facebook a couple of years ago. I can only imagine what would happen to me if I were a college student today.
The upshot, however, is that Thompson was also right. That's the proper outlook. Anyone who goes into the journalism business expecting to save the world should be exiled to a work camp in North Dakota forthwith!
"Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage." —Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
It cracks me up every single time I watch it, because there's ZERO chance that Ari doesn't know about the frequent communications between government and media to do exactly what he's talking about.
Edit: Oops, lost track of where I was in the thread. This is the video I'm talking about:
they're just like the pledges in Niedermayer's ROTC frat and they want it so hard the only response they can muster is "thank you sir may I have another?!"
What I find tragicomic and frightening is why would anyone want to be in that club?
How can one "accidentally" drink whisky? When I feel inclined to a wee dram, its NOT an "accident". I'm sure Chris is a man of immaculate taste. In all things. Including whisky.
They're all insane, in particular the young women like Miss Spring. But don't take too much time off: we need your gems about these sort of people: I can't watch much on TV because of them but need to know what they're up to. You may just have a touch of PTSD. For your medicinal treatment, I recommend a slightly dry, Sobieski Vodka martini, with blue cheese-infused olives, stirred, not shaken. Maybe several of them.
May 23, 2023·edited May 23, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
For a long time, my sister used to send me all the "died suddenly" she found on Facebook. And then after a while she started to slow down and finally there seemed to be hardly any at all. I said to her one day, "Well, the whole dropping dead [from the vaccine] thing must be better." She laughed sadly and said, "No. I just got tired of sending them." I guess we've just gotten used to the idea that 20 and 30 year olds drop dead from heart attacks. This is the world we live in now.
I feel for you. I read a lot of people coming at our current bout of madness from many angles, but the one thing that's true is that it never abates, it never lets up, and just when you think you've seen peak (or nadir) insanity, someone says, well, Florida is a terrorist state and I was just there for spring break. Nobody come here because DeSantis.
But honestly I think that's part of the "plan." You bombard people with this s--t until they give up. They say, "Have your reality. I don't want to fight you anymore. I can't take it." But we can't give up, unless we want to lose any slim chance we have of bringing the world back to equilibrium.
(1) When you mentioned recalling a Ben Rhodes quote, what immediately came to my mind was when Rhodes brazenly lied to the NY Times in 2018 saying he and Obama were completely clueless about the Clinton connection to the Trump/Russia collusion hoax and just learned about it in the newspapers.
(2) I marvel at your capacity for finding these outrageously hypocritical vignettes and admire your ability to quickly and humorously dissect the word salads, but I worry about how much more you can take. I am thinking about a journalist in the traditional Catholic world who tried to keep up with all the lies and obfuscations of the shameless Bergoglio crew wrecking the Church. The journalist went batshit crazy, nearly ruined his marriage, lost his faith and crossed over to the dark side.
I've been lied to by older people who were not creditable for all of my adult life or at least as much of it as I was even slightly aware of worldly happenings. Now I'm being lied to by both young and old - no surprise for me whatsoever. All of the alphabet agencies that are part of the tyrannical federal and state governments are totally and completely untrustworthy. Hey, we've gotten what we deserve - lazy citizens who want something for nothing. There was and is a leadership vacuum and evil has filled it.
My recommendation is that we all bow our knees, fall on our faces, and beg God for forgiveness. How have we managed to screw up the greatest country on the globe - a gift from God. Better get right with the Lord, as this out of control government is racing us towards WW III and bankruptcy. Probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better... be well.
I am so looking forward to hearing your plan! Hope it's simpler than mine, which is somehow regain control of the media, somehow stop Big Tech censorship, and somehow get rid of government corruption/control.
In all seriousness, I think you have your goals 100% right.
"regain control of the media" should be priority #1. Control of the media is, IMO, the means by which the leftists accomplish all the rest of their agenda of evil. It seems to me that Substack could be a weapon, if we ever decided to really fight back.
Since you're leaving anyway, you might as well watch this video in which the media proclaims DeSantis is a white supremacist like Trump and the rest of MAGA:
I'd say 95+% of the reality-friendly Substack writers have long reached and dwelt in this state, and only 5-10% of them, at most, are only just beginning to realize it: to wit, "I’ve spent a lot of time talking about things like this, breaking down the difference between what media and political figures perform and what they actually know and do, but it begins to feel like I’m telling you that another lump of shit is a lump of shit. “Chew it carefully, and you’ll see that this, too, has the distinct flavor of fecal matter.” It’s important to notice propaganda, and to say that hey, that’s propaganda!, but let’s not be tedious about it."
LOL ironically this is my exact thought on the Durham "revelations" about the malfeasance of the FBI. Like....it's great that the "mainstream" is catching up........but my readers (and Chris' readers) have known all this stuff for a while.........
You mean Chuck Todd being gobsmacked, the other day, about the lies from the intelligence agencies, isn't enough to restore your faith in our institutions?
It's complete B.S. but caters to a low brow uncritical mentality that the BBC assumes is out there. I suppose it is targeted at a younger uncritical audience. British intelligence probably has a hand in it (to quell the masses).
But we look anyway. Let's just say, I can look at maps too. Basically, the war in Ukraine is a stalemate, and if the US stops funding it, the Ukraine will be Russia in no time. And the UK won't be there to save the day.
The UK has a particular obsession with racism in the United States. It allows them to ignore their own problems with racism and classism. Marianna Spring is endorsing fake twitter accounts to spy on Americans. Marianna, if you are reading this, I should let you know that you might have a screw loose. Is this the new ethical standard for investigative journalism in the UK?
Re: Florida. I read a similar article in the press yesterday. They're just hit pieces against DeSantis for his stance on trans issues. I wouldn't put more energy into it than that simple observation.
27-year-olds run DC. Yes we can be all concerned about septuagenarians in Congress and the White House, but the legislative staffers actually reading and writing stuff are children. It’s a little disturbing.
May 24, 2023·edited May 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
A country governed by dotards following the instructions of willful children. It’s like one of the islands visited in Part III of “Gulliver’s Travels.”
Yes! The one where the courtiers carry rattles made from pigs' bladders to wake up the legislators, advisors and so on when it's time to do something.
Fits right in with his description of academia too - I fondly remember reading about the professor who had built a huge wooden frame with random letters on rods connected to cranks: turn the cranks and random words and sentences would form, sometimes with meaning.
Perhaps this will be of absolutely no use in your quest, but I like it anyway. Because the engineered disconnect from reality and the problems that causes is the big theme of our time. Everything we are told is important or true is a lie, is fabricated, and it’s all harmful for anybody trying to live in the real world. Courtesy of Ayn Rand, (Objectivist Ethics 1961), partially via an investment newsletter I like:
“Man is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. . . . That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. . . . Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction.”
We are embarked on a course of self destruction in the West.
Stay strong, Chris. I appreciate your outstanding abilities to separate the rare grains of wheat from all the 💩💩 (let’s call it chaff). I had a temporary roommate from December until May 1st who watched MSM every day, ad nauseum. He’s lucky I moved out before I started polishing my Ruger .38 in front of him on an hourly basis.
I think the most amazing part of the Rhodes admission is not that he said it but that the media didn’t pay attention. He literally told them he will keep lying until they figure it out. And many of those people have then been lied to, repeatedly, probably by the same group of people. Wouldn’t you think at some point those same “journalists” would put 2 and 2 together? Or is it all in service of the “cause” by now?
It IS pretty weird how the media isn't pissed off that they'd been 'lied to' for years about Russiagate...........
Exactly! Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty has to reflect that they were deliberately misled for a long time. Maybe they were happy or Ok with the end result, so they kind of ignore it, but I was hoping it would dawn on them that they were, quite literally, useful idiots. Doesn’t quite square with their self image of thought leaders.
In reality, we know they were all in on the scam the entire time. They could at least fake some outrage, though............
True. They need to fake some outrage or admit that they are propagandists. I have to think anyone not brainwashed has to cringe at that, at least a little, but maybe there is no other way to keep your mass media job today.
I was going to say, "It's almost like they were in on the joke," but you beat me to it.
See also: FBI, DOJ
I don't forget them!
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/whats-the-difference-between-resistance
Not much time today, but I did want to touch on a couple semi-related stories that have recently surfaced. First, the DOJ subverted then-President Trump’s legal order to declassify documents revealing how the FBI lied in order to ‘investigate’ Trump after his 2016 election win.
This story has sort of been dripping out since it happened, but from where I’m sitting, the entire Russiagate hoax was to prevent Trump from digging into what happened at the FBI during the 2016 election and just afterward. This stuff makes Watergate look like something the Riverdale 4-H club would pull. Yet today, the criminals are back in power and (surprise!), they aren’t interested in telling you about their crimes.
Right on !
This is the scary part. I'm sure we're all on the naughty list of the Intel agencies. Oh well
All the good, honest journalists have been censored or self-censor. These useful idiots are...useful, until they’re not useful.
Exactly. The only way the Biden syndicate etc. could be getting away with all of this all these years is that they are 'in on it'.! Western Civilization is toast. I don't think the few rays of light...substack, twitter etc. can save it.
In 20 years we'll be wondering why nobody is having kids; after 20% sterilized themselves after being told it's what cool kids do; and 50% more are taught that sex and family are crimes committed by men.
Testosterone will be zero. The revolution is complete.
Repeat after me....Meat Lego.
Now say it two more times while staring in front of the mirror and you will be transported to your shiny, new meta hi-density housing pod.
I used to say, I'd love to come back in 100 years (maybe an invisible time traveler - because I'm really not interested to interact with future "us") just to see how things turned out...the shit show.
I have cut that down to 50 years, which I'll probably be around for...since its not going to take too long, for the tide pod eating idiots to create the Utopia of ML (Meat Legos).
Lol. And true!
I wish I could disagree
but that was a "nothing burger"
💥
I used to work in NYC media and still know some people there: the only thing they excel at (besides having no personality) is massive, desperate, terminal STATUS ANXIETY.
ALL CAPS doesn't even do service to it: 9 out of 10 media wannabes will do or say anything if it means they get to sit at the cool kids' table and be a bona fide Insider, and maybe get opportunites to do things like work at the Times or sit on some dull panel or be a TV talking head.
Nothing else matters, and they certainly would never worry about any consequences for bad reporting or dishonesty: no one they know has ever been punished for any of this, so why would they?
Hacks seeking status. Can you imagine? What kind of lameness is THAT?
H.L. Mencken wrote somewhere—I'm not inclined to go hunting right now—about the baleful consequences of journalists seeking professional status. And, of course, he was nationally famous a century ago. He also happened to right.
I've been in this dumb business for 30 years. When I was an editor at my college newspaper, I had this Hunter S. Thompson quote plastered on my office wall:
"Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel f_____s. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for f__offs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."
Yes, I bowdlerized it. I think Bray would be cool with it, but I don't want to be presumptuous. And, incidentally, the unredacted quote got me into trouble on Facebook a couple of years ago. I can only imagine what would happen to me if I were a college student today.
The upshot, however, is that Thompson was also right. That's the proper outlook. Anyone who goes into the journalism business expecting to save the world should be exiled to a work camp in North Dakota forthwith!
Bray is cool with it, and quite fond of it.
"Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage." —Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
Sounds like a diffi-cult job.
Ya know, because if you don't know everything about everything, you are clearly HITLER.
Sure happy you didn't succumb to "tSA" Clever!
hey, i was never more than a copy editor. i would rather be a Bartleby with a dumb job than someone blessed/cursed with a "career".
i would only ever do custodial work in the narrative-production factory...which obvs makes me literally HITLER!! ;))
Ah. You crack me up
ha u2
At this point journalist could be called bureaucrats by proxy for the state imo.
Paid propaganda-peddling presstitutes?
Better!
It cracks me up every single time I watch it, because there's ZERO chance that Ari doesn't know about the frequent communications between government and media to do exactly what he's talking about.
Edit: Oops, lost track of where I was in the thread. This is the video I'm talking about:
https://rumble.com/v1zqs97-lolololol.html
Zero. Nada. Null. Cero. 不存在!!!
The journalists used to be informal leftists vigilantes.
Now they are more like barely-unofficial deputies of U.S. totalitarian deep state.
100% agree
I call journalists “propagandists for oligarchs”
Or primadonna puppet propagandists for plutocrats.
they're just like the pledges in Niedermayer's ROTC frat and they want it so hard the only response they can muster is "thank you sir may I have another?!"
What I find tragicomic and frightening is why would anyone want to be in that club?
"I accidentally watched a few minutes of MSNBC."
See, now why would you go and do that? That's like whipping up a depleted uranium smoothie for yourself.
Maybe Chris was accidentally drinking whiskey? That's the excuse I would use. Chris probably has a better one.
How can one "accidentally" drink whisky? When I feel inclined to a wee dram, its NOT an "accident". I'm sure Chris is a man of immaculate taste. In all things. Including whisky.
CORRECT
They're all insane, in particular the young women like Miss Spring. But don't take too much time off: we need your gems about these sort of people: I can't watch much on TV because of them but need to know what they're up to. You may just have a touch of PTSD. For your medicinal treatment, I recommend a slightly dry, Sobieski Vodka martini, with blue cheese-infused olives, stirred, not shaken. Maybe several of them.
Danny Huckabee
Haven’t tried Sobieski, is it worthy? I like a very dry (show me the vermouth on a website, that’s close enough) and slightly dirty Belvedere martini.
"Sobieski". Haven't heard of that one. In which of Scotland's secret glens is the distillery located?
For a long time, my sister used to send me all the "died suddenly" she found on Facebook. And then after a while she started to slow down and finally there seemed to be hardly any at all. I said to her one day, "Well, the whole dropping dead [from the vaccine] thing must be better." She laughed sadly and said, "No. I just got tired of sending them." I guess we've just gotten used to the idea that 20 and 30 year olds drop dead from heart attacks. This is the world we live in now.
I feel for you. I read a lot of people coming at our current bout of madness from many angles, but the one thing that's true is that it never abates, it never lets up, and just when you think you've seen peak (or nadir) insanity, someone says, well, Florida is a terrorist state and I was just there for spring break. Nobody come here because DeSantis.
But honestly I think that's part of the "plan." You bombard people with this s--t until they give up. They say, "Have your reality. I don't want to fight you anymore. I can't take it." But we can't give up, unless we want to lose any slim chance we have of bringing the world back to equilibrium.
Chris, two things...
(1) When you mentioned recalling a Ben Rhodes quote, what immediately came to my mind was when Rhodes brazenly lied to the NY Times in 2018 saying he and Obama were completely clueless about the Clinton connection to the Trump/Russia collusion hoax and just learned about it in the newspapers.
(2) I marvel at your capacity for finding these outrageously hypocritical vignettes and admire your ability to quickly and humorously dissect the word salads, but I worry about how much more you can take. I am thinking about a journalist in the traditional Catholic world who tried to keep up with all the lies and obfuscations of the shameless Bergoglio crew wrecking the Church. The journalist went batshit crazy, nearly ruined his marriage, lost his faith and crossed over to the dark side.
We love you, Chris, but be careful out there!
"....but I worry about how much more you can take."
ME TOO
I've been lied to by older people who were not creditable for all of my adult life or at least as much of it as I was even slightly aware of worldly happenings. Now I'm being lied to by both young and old - no surprise for me whatsoever. All of the alphabet agencies that are part of the tyrannical federal and state governments are totally and completely untrustworthy. Hey, we've gotten what we deserve - lazy citizens who want something for nothing. There was and is a leadership vacuum and evil has filled it.
My recommendation is that we all bow our knees, fall on our faces, and beg God for forgiveness. How have we managed to screw up the greatest country on the globe - a gift from God. Better get right with the Lord, as this out of control government is racing us towards WW III and bankruptcy. Probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better... be well.
I am so looking forward to hearing your plan! Hope it's simpler than mine, which is somehow regain control of the media, somehow stop Big Tech censorship, and somehow get rid of government corruption/control.
In all seriousness, I think you have your goals 100% right.
"regain control of the media" should be priority #1. Control of the media is, IMO, the means by which the leftists accomplish all the rest of their agenda of evil. It seems to me that Substack could be a weapon, if we ever decided to really fight back.
Maybe Chris will ponder this in his sabbatical.
Since you're leaving anyway, you might as well watch this video in which the media proclaims DeSantis is a white supremacist like Trump and the rest of MAGA:
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2023/05/20/msnbc-previews-desantis-2024-labeling-him-pro-white-supremacy
You can see what the 2024 'playbook' will consist of..............
Chris, take time but in the end I hope you keep doing what you e been doing. I, for one, appreciate the analysis you do.
I'd say 95+% of the reality-friendly Substack writers have long reached and dwelt in this state, and only 5-10% of them, at most, are only just beginning to realize it: to wit, "I’ve spent a lot of time talking about things like this, breaking down the difference between what media and political figures perform and what they actually know and do, but it begins to feel like I’m telling you that another lump of shit is a lump of shit. “Chew it carefully, and you’ll see that this, too, has the distinct flavor of fecal matter.” It’s important to notice propaganda, and to say that hey, that’s propaganda!, but let’s not be tedious about it."
LOL ironically this is my exact thought on the Durham "revelations" about the malfeasance of the FBI. Like....it's great that the "mainstream" is catching up........but my readers (and Chris' readers) have known all this stuff for a while.........
You mean Chuck Todd being gobsmacked, the other day, about the lies from the intelligence agencies, isn't enough to restore your faith in our institutions?
Bonus if you know what video this is before you click:
https://rumble.com/v1zqs97-lolololol.html
I still haven't clicked yet.
Is about Chuck Todd lecturing about the threat of Trump being a poodle called Hitler in Putin's lap?
ahahhah close
I have no idea. I can't keep up with you. But I'm going to find out
Marianna Spring: "We're able to look at maps!"
Well, goody.
It's complete B.S. but caters to a low brow uncritical mentality that the BBC assumes is out there. I suppose it is targeted at a younger uncritical audience. British intelligence probably has a hand in it (to quell the masses).
As Chris might point out. Marianna Spring has permission to look at maps, we don't.
But we look anyway. Let's just say, I can look at maps too. Basically, the war in Ukraine is a stalemate, and if the US stops funding it, the Ukraine will be Russia in no time. And the UK won't be there to save the day.
The UK has a particular obsession with racism in the United States. It allows them to ignore their own problems with racism and classism. Marianna Spring is endorsing fake twitter accounts to spy on Americans. Marianna, if you are reading this, I should let you know that you might have a screw loose. Is this the new ethical standard for investigative journalism in the UK?
Re: Florida. I read a similar article in the press yesterday. They're just hit pieces against DeSantis for his stance on trans issues. I wouldn't put more energy into it than that simple observation.
27-year-olds run DC. Yes we can be all concerned about septuagenarians in Congress and the White House, but the legislative staffers actually reading and writing stuff are children. It’s a little disturbing.
SO SO clear when you watch legislative hearings. The actual legislators mostly just read things off a piece of paper.
A country governed by dotards following the instructions of willful children. It’s like one of the islands visited in Part III of “Gulliver’s Travels.”
Yes! The one where the courtiers carry rattles made from pigs' bladders to wake up the legislators, advisors and so on when it's time to do something.
Fits right in with his description of academia too - I fondly remember reading about the professor who had built a huge wooden frame with random letters on rods connected to cranks: turn the cranks and random words and sentences would form, sometimes with meaning.
Swift predicted AI, mayhaps.
Perhaps true - of the ones that can actually read. Others just repeat the words they hear in their headsets.
Sublime contemplation of the madness around us. Hey, the governor of NC has declared a PUBLIC EMERGENCY!!!111!!! over school choice. Yowzah!
Permacrisis.
Good coinage!
NC over school voucher law
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article275659111.html
Perhaps this will be of absolutely no use in your quest, but I like it anyway. Because the engineered disconnect from reality and the problems that causes is the big theme of our time. Everything we are told is important or true is a lie, is fabricated, and it’s all harmful for anybody trying to live in the real world. Courtesy of Ayn Rand, (Objectivist Ethics 1961), partially via an investment newsletter I like:
“Man is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. . . . That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. . . . Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction.”
We are embarked on a course of self destruction in the West.
Stay strong, Chris. I appreciate your outstanding abilities to separate the rare grains of wheat from all the 💩💩 (let’s call it chaff). I had a temporary roommate from December until May 1st who watched MSM every day, ad nauseum. He’s lucky I moved out before I started polishing my Ruger .38 in front of him on an hourly basis.