As the owner of 5 equines (3 horses & 2 miniature donkeys), I’m troubled by the use of “horseshit” (including by myself) to describe manifestly insane & hateful speech.🤣
In fact, horse manure is a highly effective fertilizer, creating healthy plants and bringing nutrition to animals & people, and is thus the polar opposite of leftist speech.
That Biden speech with the reddish hell sheen and two Marines standing in the back ground, to whom I would pay 2 or 3 thousand bucks, possibly 5 or 6 if they don't mind waiting while I sell all my comic books, mostly Marvel, also some original art by Jack Kirby, including a Fantastic Four cover, you heard me, if they give me a verbatim transcription of their every thoughts while Biden spewed his Adderol fueled mouth acid.
Being a jaded skeptic (is that a mutually-neutralizing descriptor?) I just now wondered, were they really Marines, or actors pretending? I mean really, could an honest-to-God UNITED STATES MARINE listen to Hitler Reimagined 2.0, hurl those rancid, sputtering chunks, and not go raving mad?
Good question. Seems from what I read, the Marines may be the ones resisting this BS the most. So yeah, I think there are still real Marines. But also some new wannabe’s.
This is a great article, thank you! It definitely fleshes out so much of the WHY of my thinking, especially since 2020, but really since Obama hit the scene out of nowhere. "But he TALKS so well, doesn't he?" Obama institutionalized this crap. Not that it hadn't started, certainly, but we went from experience and accomplishment as criteria to... well, this. My dad told me once, when I was stuck writing a huge paper on a very dull subject in college, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." This is where we are as a nation - or, really, the entire West. And it IS baffling.
Nothing baffling about it our technocratic elite are all cut from the same cloth. The talkers, not the doers. In the Anglosphere we convinced ourselves the top guy should be a politician. The guy running the car company should be some bullshit artist who clambered to the top. In Japan they'd ensure he was an engineer. Same with the Chinese.
Politicians are the ultimate example. Few of them have had real jobs or lived normal lives.
Can you imagine? What about checking oil levels then topping it up, lol.
We should also add if politicians suggest war we have a random ballot and send five percent of them to the front. Free rifle and flak jacket obviously 😊
Agreed! How many young men and women have died because some stupid politician voted to go to war? They should go FIRST. Besides, if you are selling the bombs and the bandaids, there is always a profit for you to go to war. They will always vote for more money for themselves.
Change a tire, yes indeed. Also: Fight for their country. Clean something thoroughly. Defend a thesis in oral or written argument. And maybe: raise an animal or a child. Play an instrument, even if just a blade of grass between the thumbs.
Japan and China do not have effective capital markets. Japan has “keiretsu,” or interlocking business relationships that largely prevent failures. China has…well, the CCP. In the U.S., we expect the CEO to be a one man band, generating innovation, managing a huge workforce and tap dancing for Wall Street.
I rather think that it is because we have management like Boeing’s who are willing to do anything at all for personal profit including stock buybacks even if it means killing people. It was not universal, but common in the past, to make a great product or service and get wealthy as a byproduct. Today, it is all about the grift.
Speaking of Boeing, if you have Netflix, you should strongly consider watching “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” (2022). It describes the bizarre outcome of the 1997 Boeing acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, in which the McD leadership team somehow took control of the combined company. The entire history of Boeing up to that point was of an engineering company focused on performance and safety, while McD’s reputation was of cost cutting and barely adequate products, a situation that led to their vulnerability to acquisition.
The movie document numerous examples of the old Boeing ethic of any employee can “send up a red flare” on the production line, giving way to the McD ethic that production yields to no one and nothing. Pulling the ripcord on a safety issue is to be shown the exit fairly quickly.
The engagement of Spirit Aerosystems as a low cost finisher of mfg processes is a perfect example. And I read that Boeing is in talks to ACQUIRE Spirit!!
The current issue is not REALLY about Spirit’s incompetence. It’s about an imported culture ingrained over the last 28 yrs that intentionally downgraded safety to the lowest priority. If Boeing were a bank, the FDIC would already have arranged for its takeover.
I wish. When the banks failed like Boeing is failing back in 2008 they were rewarded with trillions in bailouts, bonuses and a 14 year flood of continuing "quantitative easing". Not a single one of them went to jail for the largest fraud in history. And we wonder why we're led by liars and frauds: no one with a shred of honesty and decency gets anywhere near power and if they do, the mistake is quickly corrected by destroying that person financially and socially.
University educated people are flattered when leaders use language they think only they understand. That's why they synergize solutions to the forthcoming climate catastrophe exacerbated by human activity. It sounds less impressive when converted into plain English: we will raise your taxes to change the weather.
Yes, actively discouraged by these guys, who are embedded in the Privy Council and in other departments. "BeSci: because we know what's best for you." https://impact.canada.ca/en/behavioural-science
Any competent project manager knows that ideas are fucking dirt cheap. Implementing effective ideas is where 99% of the hard work is. No wonder our elected leaders, bereft of any problem-solving skills, suck so much.
I couldn’t stomach Obama’s condescending way of speaking bs. Literally couldn’t listen for more than 1 minute tops. The crap that passes as discourse today comes out of the mouths of deranged, ignorant psychopathic / sociopathic ideologues where truth is & never has been a value. The ends justify the means. Past present comparisons would give any sane person sleepless nights.
You hit it with Obama. Just saw a replay of his victory speech after winning the Dem nomination in 2008 - you know, “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ..."
We also have a society where everyone is one connection away from someone who will gladly tell them the straight scoop on Covid, vaccines, election interference, Trump trials, etc but they NEVER ask.
No other society ever believed it was intelligent without intellectual curiosity.
I think Bill Clinton institutionalized it. GWB had 8 years in between Clinton and Obama, and that entire 8 years was filled with liberals claiming that Bush was an idiot and they wished we had a smart, intellectual president who spoke well.
(GWB by all accounts has a damn near photographic memory and a complex understanding of most topics presented to him. His main failures were deferring way too much to the "expertise" of the neocon project for a new American century assholes in his admin)
I can’t dump on Clinton too hard – at least in the 1996 SOTU speech he said “the era of big government is over” vs. Obama who said (effectively) “the era of big government has not yet begun.”
LBJ once said, "I'll have those n——s voting Democratic for 200 years." Biden’s effectively said “I’ll have our descendants paying off this debt for 200 years.”
Really interesting, Chris. I also did research in Worcester at the AAS. It's a true treasure house, though what you found in those militia records sounds just as fascinating.
Yes, our ability to write, reason, speak, and do does seem to be in decline. Education, the decline of the same, is part of it, since education is more like training today, with the emphasis on STEM and making money.
Who needs lessons in writing, rhetoric, debate, speech, civics, etc.? Just use AI to write something for you. That seems to be where we're headed: allowing the "experts," even AI, to do our writing and thinking for us.
No, I'm not saying that. Those farmers were immersed in a literate culture without all the distractions of FB, TikTok, video games, cable TV, and other exercises in shallow navel-gazing that are all around us today.
They may not have had a lot of books, but they had "classic" examples of fine speech from Shakespeare, the Bible, and Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." And they actually read the U.S. Constitution and understood their rights.
Subjects like civics, English, rhetoric, debate, history, etc., aren't limited to universities, as you know. Kids should be learning the basics in these subjects in elementary school, as we did.
History, indeed not. I think debate being taught in high school or lower may be a US thing. My schools in the 80s and 90s did not teach this, and I don't recall my parents ever mentioning such an activity either.
I've seen videos of US high school debating clubs. It sounds like no real debate I've ever heard before, that's for sure! And I read somewhere that even slowed down the argumentation is ridiculous, with immediate wins awarded to teams who use "kritiks" or something like that, where these are just purely left wing rhetorical devices. What is rewarded here doesn't seem to match what any normal person thinks of as debate.
As for civics, I don't recall any such lessons in my non-US schools. There might have been one or two at some point that I forgot.
Don't get me wrong. It sounds super to try and teach kids logic, debate, civics etc. I'm just not sure it's really happening. At least not anymore.
It’s NOT being taught anymore b/c the liberals killed it. You can’t have the electorate thinking. “Feelings” are the Left’s focus b/c they’re easy to influence with BS. Here’s an example of the Left’s ideal voter:
For a very long time, our country has been declining intellectually--perhaps not in certain branches of technology and science, but in most other areas. Even though standardized tests, entry exams, and even military selections have all been severely dumbed down., students have been increasingly unable to pass even the dumbed-down tests on dumbed-down material. At some point in recent decades, we seem to have passed a tipping point, and now our culture is in a mad race to the bottom. I don't know how it can be stopped. But I can't stop myself from trying anyway, however little it may matter.
I worked in recruiting for a few years. One of my besties was trying to get two young high school seniors to enlist. These kids would graduate. This was 2009/2010-ish.
Their ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test scores (0-100 is the scale) were 7 and 13.
SEVEN AND THIRTEEN. HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS. THEY GRADUATED.
This should have been above-the-fold news in our local paper inciting a response by the citizens of pitch forks & torches.
Functionally illiterate. They are legion. There are millions and millions of barely functional men and women who are incapable of reading a book, doing 7th grade math, of counting change, of knowing our history, civics.
I'd like to blame someone/something--but the truth is we all need to look in the mirror. We've allowed this to happen.
No, I think 35 is the bare minimum--and that is called CAT IV--those options only open in September when the Army realizes it will not make end strength without the lowest scores admitted.
What can a young man do who has been pushed through our education system without becoming even literate? The school board, the union, and everyone of his teachers, counselors, and admin-principles/etc should lose their jobs. It is a crime.
These barely functional illiterates take all the low skill work like fast food and attempt to make a career of it, thereby denying my 18 year old son a chance at one of those jobs for maybe a year so he can learn about being in the workforce. He tried for 16 months to get a minimum wage job, part time, and was turned down each time because they all already had full time workers or only wanted full time workers. When I was sixteen, I walked into a Carl’s Junior hamburger joint, interviewed with the manager, and was hired on the spot. Pretty much all my co-workers were under 20 years old and all part-time. Things have definitely changed.
Taco Bell for me. We were all teens--I think the only full time staff was the managers, shift managers were the only people in their twenties.
That is insane. Our school systems created an underclass. It feels deliberate.
Do you still love Carl's Junior? I LOVE Taco Bell. It remains my favorite fast food--which seems ironic after learning how unhealthy the food truly is.
After US teacher unions were allowed to unionize about 50 years ago, I watched teachers become more concerned about which of them got the smart and polite kids and which newbie teacher would get the most "bad" students. An ever faster race to the bottom for students' skills as teacher pay escalated. Same thing when government employees were allowed to unionize. Bad US bureaucrats like bad teachers suddenly became harder to fire each year.
Meanwhile, I live in a good school district but every year there are more kids going to private, charter and home schools where teachers are not unionized.
For at least a decade, with few exceptions, every time I have bought sliced meat at a deli, I have found the employee who is serving me is unable to convert approximately 2/3 of a pound, which is how I always voice the order, into what it should read on the scale, .63 - .70.
I have been handed packages as low in weight as .23 and as high as .88.
Years ago, when arguing about whether or not everything should be in English (from schools to government forms and tests, for example), I heard a very compelling argument.
Learning English is hard. A lifetime poverty is much harder.
Sadly, we’ve enabled stupidity and ignorance at large. Apparently a lifetime of poverty isn’t so hard…
It's not just in the US, either - it's all the western nations. Educational standards are dropping, as is IQs among the ones born post-1990.
And since PISA, TIMSS et cetera are not compared to each other over the years, a universal decline isn't visible - only decline relative other participants.
There are ways to start fixing things of course, but the feminised corpus of teachers are the first ones to insist upon the practices that doesn't work. When I suggested anonymising our National Tests at the school I worked at, and having teachers from a different school grade them (and vice versa), the few men among the faculty mulled it over and gave it serious thought and brought up good points re: problems with logistics and other practical matters.
The women? /reeeet/ is the best way to sum up their response. Adult women, older women, younger women. "How dare you suggest we don't grade unbiased and objectively! To even suggest doing that is an assault on our integrity!" and so on. Pure emotion, full-on egocentrism. Zero ability to look at the actual issue.
And the higher the class and or/the more academically "educated" the woman in question is, the greater the odds for her reacting and behaving like that, is my experience. Not so for women with real jobs - nurses, construction workers, lorry drivers, cooks. "Sounds reasonable, isn't that the way it's done?" is their response.
I really think we need some other selection process for "higher education" than money and grades, I really do.
How many women work as construction workers or lorry drivers or cooks? Aren't they all male-dominated professions?
Question is, if you proposed some equivalent level of enhanced checking and supervision to the nurses, would they also react the same way. Based on experience during COVID probably the answer is yes.....
The sex-ratio in jobs, professions and careers (what a bother english is sometimes, we just say "arbete" no matter if you're a lumberjack or an attorney) is of course skewed dep. on sector, as is always the case unless DEI* or other forms of quotas are made a requirement.
Nurses, meaning our eq. to registered nurses, can come under scrutiny at any time, in one of the following ways:
A patient not satisfied with the nurse may file a complaint to the Patients' board of inquiry.
Another HCW or the nurse in question may file a Lex Sarah or Lex Maria-notice to the supervising agency. Anyone working in health care, even if they do not work with patients, are compelled by these laws to report suspected injury, damage, malfeasance or other incident; not reporting is cause for termination, and can get your license to practice revoked (inc. for life) - and the guilty party may even face a civil suit and a criminal suit as well, though that would entail something extreme like actual assault or abuse of patients, theft of drugs, and so on.
A report for an incident or eq. may be filed to the Inspector of Health Care.
This goes for anyone, including admin-staff and technicians employed in or contracted by our public health care sector.
So our health care-workers over here are quite used to work under close scrutiny, and see it as a resource rather than a hindrance.
If you're interested in looking at the numbers for Sweden re: sex/career, you can follow the below link to our national bureau of statistics' summary on the topic:
NOBODY likes somebody looking over their shoulder. Too effing bad. If there is ANY motivation to cheat, then an internal control is needed. Of course, this premised on the job being done right is an actual objective. Foolish, I know.
I worked in the skilled trades for decades, after having been a schoolteacher, and with a master's degree in education.
It should come as no surprise that the skilled tradesmen are the smart ones. Reality doesn't give a damn how they want things to be. The tradesmen must very deliberately analyze the reality and find a way to manipulate that reality into what they want it to be. Construction is not for sissies.
Which is why I say, manipulating people is easy. Manipulating reality is tough.
Hey bro. Same. I quit teaching and picked up a toolbelt in my late 20's.
I think most tradesmen are pretty mid-range with intelligence though. A few geniuses here and there. You've got to have your shit together to be a lead contractor, even if it's not obvious to the people around you. But there is always a few standing around staring at their hammer trying to figure out which end you hold. I think trades are a good way to knock the edges off though, especially if you're working with lots of different crews. You have to work out how to not be an uptight arsehole or you don't get any work. Other more bureaucratic jobs seem a bit more tolerant of that and I don't think that benefits anyone. Might just be the all-male work environment or something. IDK.
The problem is we're dealing with people who think that if there is consensus (even if manufactured through censorship) what they're saying cannot, by definition, be a lie. However...
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie."
I disagree – we’re living through the refutation of that axiom. Whether it’s the border, $8T budgets, a killer vaccine, attack on societal norms 15K years in the making, actual or threatened wars all over the globe, the perpetrator of this maelstrom of evil still enjoys support in the mid-40s. This guy makes Carter and James Buchanan look like Pericles & his Golden Age.
I have extended family members who remain blue pilled, and can assure you that they are - to the person - shielded from these travesties.
I can also assure you that when either the economy collapses, conscription starts (unlikely but possible), or they wake up to the harm they did to their kids with the injections, they're going to go completely ape shit.
Biden's diminishing support reflects this. There's a reason things like wokeness are increasingly only present in cloistered, consequence-free environments. They'll be the last to catch on.
“I can also assure you that when…they wake up to the harm they did…”
Harking back to “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” Mattias Desmet made the point that once a person focuses their anxiety, etc. on the external point of fixation (masks & vaccines in the case of COVID), they do NOT come back to reality.) Many, many ordinary Germans in the 50’s still did not see Hitler in a bad light.
Accordingly, because the level of external fixation required to put your children through a Cuisinart is extraordinary, the prospect of such parents EVER recognizing the reality of their conduct is essentially zero.
What I DO expect is a significant increase in patricide of the parents of transgenders. Especially of parents who were publicly “proud of our multiple LGBT toddlers.” Those fuckers need to buy fake papers & disappear to the northernmost island of Nunavut…if they want to live, that is.
Regrettably, not that I’m able to link to. It is a column about the findings of a psychologist who went to live for a year in the early 50’s with various families in German villages and interviewed as many family members, friends, & residents as he could.
I read it online about the same time as Robert Malone’s famous Joe Rogan interview. I suspect it was published in support for Desmet’s findings.
Unfortunately, I didn’t save the link, and 3+ hrs of searching hasn’t turned up the column I read or the underlying research. I hadn’t then developed my present habit of saving meaningful links & quotes that I’m likely to refer to in the future (e.g., “We choose truth over facts!”).
BTW, I’m of 100% German descent, so these observations go against natural ancestral pride.
Any society can go off the deep end. I've lived in Germany. Seen their love of order such as housewives sweeping their already clean front porches. I think Germans just went too far way too fast in the 1930's in part due to the ruinous cash reparations they had to pay after WW1 crashing their post-war economy.... until Hitler got a nice line of credit from Brown Harriman and other offshore bankers like Prescott Bush whose Brown Harriman bank in early 1942 [sic] was still holding IG Farben trade secret patents as secret collateral for many of its loans to Hitler.
As US Marine General Butler wrote in 1935, "War is a racket."
"their speech acts don’t connect to the real, anymore."
This is actually a core tenant of postmodernism, that reality is unknowable. Instead our words create a shared delusion which we take to be "real" even though it isn't. Western universities have been run by postmodernists for decades, so the entire ruling class had imbibed this philosophy even if they don't realize it. So have you and I; Nietzsche and Foucault pervade the air we breathe.
This won't be fixed. It will eventually lead to our collapse, since systems of unreality always lose eventually, but that may still be decades away. We're going to put Adam Smith's dictum, "there's a lot of ruin in a nation", to the test.
BTW: Where can we get a copy of your dissertation, Chris? It wounds like a fascinating read.
It's only okay. I wrote it to escape grad school, not to change the world. I expected to change the world later, which is still...not quite working out?
The is also a great deal of blame to be laid at the foot of consumer culture created by our "anything for a dollar" corporations. We are experiencing a culture where media phantasmagoria is the primary enculturating and socializing agent. The result is a society made of barely functional retards who exist only to consume product. It's a wonder we are not more deranged.
New word for me, and a “beyond perfect” description of liberal communications. In fairness, it’s also a decent description of some of the conservative emails & texts I’m inundated with, but at least their hyperbole is based on the truth.
“This won't be fixed. It will eventually lead to our collapse…”
I certainly see the potential for that outcome, but I don’t see it as a certainty. The reason being that the U.S. is a center-right democracy and the people have not yet spoken conclusively. If Trump were not the Republican candidate, the polls would be running at least 60-40 against Biden. The Blue areas are bleeding makers to Red areas and getting freebie-seeking illegal aliens in return. At least 2 states have already taken action against DEI and more are sure to follow.
Electoral democracy can certainly delay the collapse, but it won't fix it. Postmodernism is far too entrenched among our elite class. It will destroy itself and us before we have time for our own "counter-march through the institutions" (the beginning of which you're describing wit the DEI bans) has time to take effect.
Restating this after a day of driving: When people didn't just talk for a living, their talk was more likely to be meaningful and serious. The emergence of talking for a living, of the "going to a meeting" professions, has degraded and emptied discourse. It's not inevitable, and a bunch of people who talk for a living are interesting people. But the trend overall is steadily downward.
In the chicken coop, all the chickens cluck. But only some of them are good layers of eggs and brooders of chickens. Same goes for the roosters, only some of them are good at caring for the hens and chickens.
So those not up to spec are for the chopping block.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:1.
Great article. Our culture is playing with fire, or at least those who have not mastered their own inner tyrants, are playing with fire.
My mind went off on a weird tangent while reading this.
I spent my summers at a YMCA summer camp in the Sierra Nevadas. I was voluntold by my stepdad to be part of the kitchen crew in 1985 for three weeks of my glorious summer. HIGH CRIMES AND MISDOMEANDERS!
I ended up staying an additional 6 weeks and the next three years all summer long. To this day it was one the most important, impactful experiences of my life. Occasionally the fat bastard was correct, even if he didn't know it.
One year, someone in my girlfriend's cabin brought an Ouija Board. Grew up in a Baptist church--not the shaking snakes kind--but not the most reserved, intellectual discussion of God/Satan, Heaven/Hell. I had absorbed a literal shit-ton (doctrinal term) of 'hell & damnation' lessons by my 16th year. I knew these boards were, if not evil, certainly not Divine. I had been warned about them.
But, my girlfriend was asking me to join them...
So, I'm the only guy in this cabin of 12/13 year old girls and my girlfriend. It is rather fun. Who likes who. Is so and so going to date so and so. Kids stuff. Everyone was laughing and have a good old time. I was beginning to relax.
The opportunity finally comes to me to begin to ask questions.
So I ask some rather benign questions, but then for a display of proof I asked it what my father's (he had passed when I was 4) middle name was. It was Arden. No one knew that, and in fact I have never met anyone with this name, nor read the name in any story or anything . Rare name. No one outside of my family knew this, I doubt my fat step dad even knew.
This young girl who was running the board begins to spell: A...R...D...E...N
As I type this I am still unnerved. Here is the bedeviling part:
All of a sudden I knew there was something very real going on, and I could maybe maybe get some answers to things I maybe shouldn't.
Did I run out of there terrified? No. I was so torn. I stayed around for the rest of the evening, but the damn game seemed to call to me for the rest of the week. I wanted to go back. I wanted to know. I wanted the power.
There are things/phenomena that is real that remains outside of our ability to detect or measure. Coincidences. 'I was just thinking about you..' when someone calls.
Speech is powerful. Thought is powerful.
These people are literally changing reality with their language. How we think about things. Doublethink and Newspeak. It is terrifying in its effect. In its nearly universal acceptance. Why does propaganda work if we hear it 100 times? I don't know, but maybe we do not have the mental fortitude to maintain constant vigilance required to avoid the language games from changing how we think about something.
They know what they are doing, but they do not know, nor understand from where the power emerges. Their Hubris will be their end, but the victims along the way will reach millions.
No, Camp Jack Hazard...where everybody rocks out (ROCKS OUT).
Up highway 108 past Pinecrest, across from the Dardanelles (not of Gallipolli infamy) close to the Sierra Pass. Was about 6K feet elevation. Totally out of breath the first week of camp.
Look up the CIA-funded Stanford University hypnotism studies in the 1950's if you don't already know about it. It showed 30% of humans are easy to hypnotize with a simple rhythm, a specific frequency of motion like a swinging pocket watch or a pulsing hand gesture. 30% can't be or need mind-altering drugs to be hypnotized. Remaining 40% can go either way. Note: in the USA about 70% took at least one covid jab after hearing "the message" repeatedly or caved in to peer or authority figure pressure which 60% will do (Milgram and Asche experiments).
As for ouija board and ESP as well as the Biblical warnings about "sorcery." I have little doubt there are good and bad "spirits" that can get and send messages. It's a rare person who can access those messages or send them who will only use that ability for good. l've known a few of them and they are all humble characters about their skills and only use those skills to help others. The old saying about absolute power corrupts absolutely sticks in my mind. Sounds like you learned that fast at that Sierra camp.
I think that this all makes sense. Great history lesson btw. Thank you.
Farmers live in the real world. They are Uber-practical. They work hard seven days a week. They have to know how to do a large variety of things- among them, take care of animals, get food from said animals, raise crops, run machinery, fix machinery, understand meteorology and its impact on their livelihood, deal with pests, understand markets, understand how to manage a business, time management, and if they aren’t a giant corporate entity, they need to do it themselves.
Madison, WI where I did my general surgery residency, is basically an island of Commies surrounded by an ocean of farmers. The farmers were great patients because they understood the cycle of life. They are realists.
Couple the detachment of the urban managerial type from toil, soil, biology, and nature with the decline and fall of American education, and you get to where we are now. Everything is performative.Deviation from the accepted narrative is verboten. Being emotional is good. Being rational and skeptical is bad. Yes, it’s all stupid. But it works on many people who are intellectually lazy and want instant simple answers to complicated problems. It’s terrifying. Some try to characterize this as a “feminine” way of doing things, and I understand the argument , but I think this is unfair to honest, intelligent women. Not all women are hysterical and sneaky. Not all men are strong and brave.
I’d rather be judged by a dozen farmers than a dozen administrative mandarins or petty bureaucrats all day long. Common sense and a sense of fair play used to be universally valued, as did truthfulness. Now we live in an empire of lies and denial of reality. Trust is hard to come by. This sickness will burn out. Just try not to get roasted in the coming conflagration.
My kids - zero c19 shots. Have to educate the kids ourselves. I just tell them the truth. They will have to decide for themselves as they become adults. So far it’s working for the most part. Teenagers are a pain in the ass. 😂
I was just talking about this to a good friend of mine. It makes me sad when I read first person accounts from just 60 years ago, people as a whole were more erudite and eloquent, with a general intelligence we sorely lack today. I think that is by design though if you see what passes as an education today. And our culture doesn’t reward intelligence, it rewards outrageous behaviors and depraved materialism.
My grandparents, all born before 1910, never went beyond some high school, but they were incredibly smart, had beautiful handwriting, and knew tons of stuff, both practical and less so. Clear thinkers, well-considered opinions, voracious readers. We used to produce people like that easily, but we can't seem to do it anymore.
In May, 1968, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy were running against one another in the Democratic presidential primaries. ( I'm pretty sure that Hubert Humphrey, the eventual nominee, was not running in the primaries. )
LIFE magazine commissioned an article about which poets of the day were supporting McCarthy and which were for Kennedy. When I say "poets," I mean poets, people such as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Marianne Moore, Donald Hall.
It seems as if such a thing couldn't have happened in this country ever, doesn't it? But I do remember the article.
Go read this: California Sixth Grade Reader https://a.co/d/eKy78FM and compare and contrast to the drivel taught today. How many college students, let alone sixth graders, could understand and absorb that book today?
I had a fine time reading the “sample” of the book on the Amazon website. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I was struck by the instructions to teachers on how to use the reader in their classrooms, as well as the list of short readings and poems that were to be memorized by sixth graders. I doubt there are more than a handful of children today who could recite from memory even one of the items on the list. I also was reminded of the difference between this reader and the pornographic books available to sixth graders today. How far we have fallen as a nation.
What you describe with accuser/defender is how the legal system worked in Scandinavia until the 16th century, roughly (and very over-simplified; parts of the old system were already gone by then and some parts survived into the early 20th century):
Elected, not selected, members of the community of a class called odalmän meaning they owned the land they used or their own business (a farrier f.e.) and were not indebted to anyone made up what passed for a court of law, and the elders of the community as well as the priest sat in at the Ting, since any and all disagreements and accusations were to be made public.
The same went for business-deals, promises of marriage, settling of inheritances and so on - public, at the Ting. In later times, after church on Sunday.
The downside of the system was for anyone not endowed with a family of that or a higher class; the landless, the day-labourers and so on.
The above is a layman's off-the-cuff summary of over 500 years of judicial (d)evolution, so any historian could drive a tank through the holes in it.
As for insomnia, my father - being career military for life - sometimes quipped "That's why the King invented push-ups". I don't know, persnally. I've always found mulled wine or hot mead to do the trick, if judiciously applied.
“Mouth slop” is as good of a euphemism as it gets. That’s all I have to say because you put it all very succinctly.
But somehow “slop,” doesn’t quite capture the corrosive effect. Perhaps something along the lines of “projectile vomit.”
"verbal diarrhea" is another term I've heard used to describe the absolute horseshit that comes out of the mouths of pundits and politicians.
As the owner of 5 equines (3 horses & 2 miniature donkeys), I’m troubled by the use of “horseshit” (including by myself) to describe manifestly insane & hateful speech.🤣
In fact, horse manure is a highly effective fertilizer, creating healthy plants and bringing nutrition to animals & people, and is thus the polar opposite of leftist speech.
Briben's speeches are "mouth slop," aided by a teleprompter and energy supplements. 🤪
I think it is something a lot stronger than energy supplements that keeps him upright.
Yep. Agreed. I guess I just included the PC version, lol. 🤣
That Biden speech with the reddish hell sheen and two Marines standing in the back ground, to whom I would pay 2 or 3 thousand bucks, possibly 5 or 6 if they don't mind waiting while I sell all my comic books, mostly Marvel, also some original art by Jack Kirby, including a Fantastic Four cover, you heard me, if they give me a verbatim transcription of their every thoughts while Biden spewed his Adderol fueled mouth acid.
Being a jaded skeptic (is that a mutually-neutralizing descriptor?) I just now wondered, were they really Marines, or actors pretending? I mean really, could an honest-to-God UNITED STATES MARINE listen to Hitler Reimagined 2.0, hurl those rancid, sputtering chunks, and not go raving mad?
Good question. Seems from what I read, the Marines may be the ones resisting this BS the most. So yeah, I think there are still real Marines. But also some new wannabe’s.
Don’t ask that question of a Marine – they just might show you.
Yes, that hell stage was straight out of Leni Reifenstahl.
You have to wonder if Trump will put out some ads from that speech with Biden sporting a toothbrush mustache & wearing a swastika arm band.
This is a great article, thank you! It definitely fleshes out so much of the WHY of my thinking, especially since 2020, but really since Obama hit the scene out of nowhere. "But he TALKS so well, doesn't he?" Obama institutionalized this crap. Not that it hadn't started, certainly, but we went from experience and accomplishment as criteria to... well, this. My dad told me once, when I was stuck writing a huge paper on a very dull subject in college, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." This is where we are as a nation - or, really, the entire West. And it IS baffling.
Nothing baffling about it our technocratic elite are all cut from the same cloth. The talkers, not the doers. In the Anglosphere we convinced ourselves the top guy should be a politician. The guy running the car company should be some bullshit artist who clambered to the top. In Japan they'd ensure he was an engineer. Same with the Chinese.
Politicians are the ultimate example. Few of them have had real jobs or lived normal lives.
Nobody should be sworn into any political office or government job until they first demonstrate that they can change a tire.
Can you imagine? What about checking oil levels then topping it up, lol.
We should also add if politicians suggest war we have a random ballot and send five percent of them to the front. Free rifle and flak jacket obviously 😊
I LOVE this idea! All you need to do is have a lottery with ONE NAME chosen from those who vote for war. Maybe Miss Lindsey would get a tour of duty.
All wars would stop tomorrow. We would certainly see who was keen, lol.
Strongly agree with the premise - but perhaps that percentage could be a trifle higher. Say - 25%.
Or maybe just all of them 😜
Agreed! How many young men and women have died because some stupid politician voted to go to war? They should go FIRST. Besides, if you are selling the bombs and the bandaids, there is always a profit for you to go to war. They will always vote for more money for themselves.
No, 80% of them go to the front. Oldest first. Someone needs to step on mines so valuable soldiers don't have to.
The Iranians did this with teenage boys in the Iran-Iraq war. Totally different conception of life.
But I concur. A most useful use of politicians.
But what do they have to change it into?
Change a tire, yes indeed. Also: Fight for their country. Clean something thoroughly. Defend a thesis in oral or written argument. And maybe: raise an animal or a child. Play an instrument, even if just a blade of grass between the thumbs.
Or a 💡 without help.
Japan and China do not have effective capital markets. Japan has “keiretsu,” or interlocking business relationships that largely prevent failures. China has…well, the CCP. In the U.S., we expect the CEO to be a one man band, generating innovation, managing a huge workforce and tap dancing for Wall Street.
I rather think that it is because we have management like Boeing’s who are willing to do anything at all for personal profit including stock buybacks even if it means killing people. It was not universal, but common in the past, to make a great product or service and get wealthy as a byproduct. Today, it is all about the grift.
Speaking of Boeing, if you have Netflix, you should strongly consider watching “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” (2022). It describes the bizarre outcome of the 1997 Boeing acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, in which the McD leadership team somehow took control of the combined company. The entire history of Boeing up to that point was of an engineering company focused on performance and safety, while McD’s reputation was of cost cutting and barely adequate products, a situation that led to their vulnerability to acquisition.
The movie document numerous examples of the old Boeing ethic of any employee can “send up a red flare” on the production line, giving way to the McD ethic that production yields to no one and nothing. Pulling the ripcord on a safety issue is to be shown the exit fairly quickly.
The engagement of Spirit Aerosystems as a low cost finisher of mfg processes is a perfect example. And I read that Boeing is in talks to ACQUIRE Spirit!!
The current issue is not REALLY about Spirit’s incompetence. It’s about an imported culture ingrained over the last 28 yrs that intentionally downgraded safety to the lowest priority. If Boeing were a bank, the FDIC would already have arranged for its takeover.
I wish. When the banks failed like Boeing is failing back in 2008 they were rewarded with trillions in bailouts, bonuses and a 14 year flood of continuing "quantitative easing". Not a single one of them went to jail for the largest fraud in history. And we wonder why we're led by liars and frauds: no one with a shred of honesty and decency gets anywhere near power and if they do, the mistake is quickly corrected by destroying that person financially and socially.
If the FDIC were a bank, it would be insolvent. ;)
We pay him a ton and pretend he's worth it. To have a king over us is to be free.
Reminds me of that saying, "Why use a hundred words when a thousand will do?" Baffled with B.S. we are...
University educated people are flattered when leaders use language they think only they understand. That's why they synergize solutions to the forthcoming climate catastrophe exacerbated by human activity. It sounds less impressive when converted into plain English: we will raise your taxes to change the weather.
Best one I heard: "We're going to ideate some solutions." Government of Canada.
My understanding is that "ideation", like any form of thinking, is actively discouraged, if not outright illegal, in Canada now.
Canadian here: can confirm.
Yes, actively discouraged by these guys, who are embedded in the Privy Council and in other departments. "BeSci: because we know what's best for you." https://impact.canada.ca/en/behavioural-science
Oh yes, ideation. An abomination. An abuse of the King's English. Hanging's too good for them.
Any competent project manager knows that ideas are fucking dirt cheap. Implementing effective ideas is where 99% of the hard work is. No wonder our elected leaders, bereft of any problem-solving skills, suck so much.
BARF
Captured a long time ago by the phrase “I wrote you a long letter because I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
I couldn’t stomach Obama’s condescending way of speaking bs. Literally couldn’t listen for more than 1 minute tops. The crap that passes as discourse today comes out of the mouths of deranged, ignorant psychopathic / sociopathic ideologues where truth is & never has been a value. The ends justify the means. Past present comparisons would give any sane person sleepless nights.
You hit it with Obama. Just saw a replay of his victory speech after winning the Dem nomination in 2008 - you know, “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ..."
“Our planet will begin to heal” when we shoot Obama’s ashes into the Sun.
We also have a society where everyone is one connection away from someone who will gladly tell them the straight scoop on Covid, vaccines, election interference, Trump trials, etc but they NEVER ask.
No other society ever believed it was intelligent without intellectual curiosity.
I think Bill Clinton institutionalized it. GWB had 8 years in between Clinton and Obama, and that entire 8 years was filled with liberals claiming that Bush was an idiot and they wished we had a smart, intellectual president who spoke well.
(GWB by all accounts has a damn near photographic memory and a complex understanding of most topics presented to him. His main failures were deferring way too much to the "expertise" of the neocon project for a new American century assholes in his admin)
I can’t dump on Clinton too hard – at least in the 1996 SOTU speech he said “the era of big government is over” vs. Obama who said (effectively) “the era of big government has not yet begun.”
LBJ once said, "I'll have those n——s voting Democratic for 200 years." Biden’s effectively said “I’ll have our descendants paying off this debt for 200 years.”
Really interesting, Chris. I also did research in Worcester at the AAS. It's a true treasure house, though what you found in those militia records sounds just as fascinating.
Yes, our ability to write, reason, speak, and do does seem to be in decline. Education, the decline of the same, is part of it, since education is more like training today, with the emphasis on STEM and making money.
Who needs lessons in writing, rhetoric, debate, speech, civics, etc.? Just use AI to write something for you. That seems to be where we're headed: allowing the "experts," even AI, to do our writing and thinking for us.
It doesn't bode well ...
Thanks for an interesting article.
We’ve outsourced literally every other aspect of our lives, why not finish the job?
Are you saying that the problem making people mentally disordered is insufficient time spent spent in universities? :o
The farmers in the taverns, we can safely assume, were not credentialed.
No, I'm not saying that. Those farmers were immersed in a literate culture without all the distractions of FB, TikTok, video games, cable TV, and other exercises in shallow navel-gazing that are all around us today.
They may not have had a lot of books, but they had "classic" examples of fine speech from Shakespeare, the Bible, and Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." And they actually read the U.S. Constitution and understood their rights.
Subjects like civics, English, rhetoric, debate, history, etc., aren't limited to universities, as you know. Kids should be learning the basics in these subjects in elementary school, as we did.
History, indeed not. I think debate being taught in high school or lower may be a US thing. My schools in the 80s and 90s did not teach this, and I don't recall my parents ever mentioning such an activity either.
I've seen videos of US high school debating clubs. It sounds like no real debate I've ever heard before, that's for sure! And I read somewhere that even slowed down the argumentation is ridiculous, with immediate wins awarded to teams who use "kritiks" or something like that, where these are just purely left wing rhetorical devices. What is rewarded here doesn't seem to match what any normal person thinks of as debate.
As for civics, I don't recall any such lessons in my non-US schools. There might have been one or two at some point that I forgot.
Don't get me wrong. It sounds super to try and teach kids logic, debate, civics etc. I'm just not sure it's really happening. At least not anymore.
It’s NOT being taught anymore b/c the liberals killed it. You can’t have the electorate thinking. “Feelings” are the Left’s focus b/c they’re easy to influence with BS. Here’s an example of the Left’s ideal voter:
https://youtube.com/shorts/MsHEjUuzBSI?si=uDznu4l2VCbTaYX1
For a very long time, our country has been declining intellectually--perhaps not in certain branches of technology and science, but in most other areas. Even though standardized tests, entry exams, and even military selections have all been severely dumbed down., students have been increasingly unable to pass even the dumbed-down tests on dumbed-down material. At some point in recent decades, we seem to have passed a tipping point, and now our culture is in a mad race to the bottom. I don't know how it can be stopped. But I can't stop myself from trying anyway, however little it may matter.
Reed,
I worked in recruiting for a few years. One of my besties was trying to get two young high school seniors to enlist. These kids would graduate. This was 2009/2010-ish.
Their ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test scores (0-100 is the scale) were 7 and 13.
SEVEN AND THIRTEEN. HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS. THEY GRADUATED.
This should have been above-the-fold news in our local paper inciting a response by the citizens of pitch forks & torches.
Functionally illiterate. They are legion. There are millions and millions of barely functional men and women who are incapable of reading a book, doing 7th grade math, of counting change, of knowing our history, civics.
I'd like to blame someone/something--but the truth is we all need to look in the mirror. We've allowed this to happen.
bsn
SEVEN!?!?!? What could he possibly do? Did he get in?
No, I think 35 is the bare minimum--and that is called CAT IV--those options only open in September when the Army realizes it will not make end strength without the lowest scores admitted.
What can a young man do who has been pushed through our education system without becoming even literate? The school board, the union, and everyone of his teachers, counselors, and admin-principles/etc should lose their jobs. It is a crime.
bsn
These barely functional illiterates take all the low skill work like fast food and attempt to make a career of it, thereby denying my 18 year old son a chance at one of those jobs for maybe a year so he can learn about being in the workforce. He tried for 16 months to get a minimum wage job, part time, and was turned down each time because they all already had full time workers or only wanted full time workers. When I was sixteen, I walked into a Carl’s Junior hamburger joint, interviewed with the manager, and was hired on the spot. Pretty much all my co-workers were under 20 years old and all part-time. Things have definitely changed.
Taco Bell for me. We were all teens--I think the only full time staff was the managers, shift managers were the only people in their twenties.
That is insane. Our school systems created an underclass. It feels deliberate.
Do you still love Carl's Junior? I LOVE Taco Bell. It remains my favorite fast food--which seems ironic after learning how unhealthy the food truly is.
bsn
After US teacher unions were allowed to unionize about 50 years ago, I watched teachers become more concerned about which of them got the smart and polite kids and which newbie teacher would get the most "bad" students. An ever faster race to the bottom for students' skills as teacher pay escalated. Same thing when government employees were allowed to unionize. Bad US bureaucrats like bad teachers suddenly became harder to fire each year.
Meanwhile, I live in a good school district but every year there are more kids going to private, charter and home schools where teachers are not unionized.
For at least a decade, with few exceptions, every time I have bought sliced meat at a deli, I have found the employee who is serving me is unable to convert approximately 2/3 of a pound, which is how I always voice the order, into what it should read on the scale, .63 - .70.
I have been handed packages as low in weight as .23 and as high as .88.
Years ago, when arguing about whether or not everything should be in English (from schools to government forms and tests, for example), I heard a very compelling argument.
Learning English is hard. A lifetime poverty is much harder.
Sadly, we’ve enabled stupidity and ignorance at large. Apparently a lifetime of poverty isn’t so hard…
bsn
We let it happen because we just want to be left alone.
They pushed it too far, so now I'm going to fight to get back to a place where I'm comfortable just being left alone....or at least my kids.
And here we are; "alone " but never so alive.
It's not just in the US, either - it's all the western nations. Educational standards are dropping, as is IQs among the ones born post-1990.
And since PISA, TIMSS et cetera are not compared to each other over the years, a universal decline isn't visible - only decline relative other participants.
There are ways to start fixing things of course, but the feminised corpus of teachers are the first ones to insist upon the practices that doesn't work. When I suggested anonymising our National Tests at the school I worked at, and having teachers from a different school grade them (and vice versa), the few men among the faculty mulled it over and gave it serious thought and brought up good points re: problems with logistics and other practical matters.
The women? /reeeet/ is the best way to sum up their response. Adult women, older women, younger women. "How dare you suggest we don't grade unbiased and objectively! To even suggest doing that is an assault on our integrity!" and so on. Pure emotion, full-on egocentrism. Zero ability to look at the actual issue.
And the higher the class and or/the more academically "educated" the woman in question is, the greater the odds for her reacting and behaving like that, is my experience. Not so for women with real jobs - nurses, construction workers, lorry drivers, cooks. "Sounds reasonable, isn't that the way it's done?" is their response.
I really think we need some other selection process for "higher education" than money and grades, I really do.
How many women work as construction workers or lorry drivers or cooks? Aren't they all male-dominated professions?
Question is, if you proposed some equivalent level of enhanced checking and supervision to the nurses, would they also react the same way. Based on experience during COVID probably the answer is yes.....
The sex-ratio in jobs, professions and careers (what a bother english is sometimes, we just say "arbete" no matter if you're a lumberjack or an attorney) is of course skewed dep. on sector, as is always the case unless DEI* or other forms of quotas are made a requirement.
Nurses, meaning our eq. to registered nurses, can come under scrutiny at any time, in one of the following ways:
A patient not satisfied with the nurse may file a complaint to the Patients' board of inquiry.
Another HCW or the nurse in question may file a Lex Sarah or Lex Maria-notice to the supervising agency. Anyone working in health care, even if they do not work with patients, are compelled by these laws to report suspected injury, damage, malfeasance or other incident; not reporting is cause for termination, and can get your license to practice revoked (inc. for life) - and the guilty party may even face a civil suit and a criminal suit as well, though that would entail something extreme like actual assault or abuse of patients, theft of drugs, and so on.
A report for an incident or eq. may be filed to the Inspector of Health Care.
This goes for anyone, including admin-staff and technicians employed in or contracted by our public health care sector.
So our health care-workers over here are quite used to work under close scrutiny, and see it as a resource rather than a hindrance.
If you're interested in looking at the numbers for Sweden re: sex/career, you can follow the below link to our national bureau of statistics' summary on the topic:
https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/labour-market/employment-and-working-hours/the-swedish-occupational-register-with-statistics/
NOBODY likes somebody looking over their shoulder. Too effing bad. If there is ANY motivation to cheat, then an internal control is needed. Of course, this premised on the job being done right is an actual objective. Foolish, I know.
And they all vote.
Feature, not a bug.
Here’s that level of student personified:
https://youtube.com/shorts/MsHEjUuzBSI?si=uDznu4l2VCbTaYX1
That hurts.
bsn
I worked in the skilled trades for decades, after having been a schoolteacher, and with a master's degree in education.
It should come as no surprise that the skilled tradesmen are the smart ones. Reality doesn't give a damn how they want things to be. The tradesmen must very deliberately analyze the reality and find a way to manipulate that reality into what they want it to be. Construction is not for sissies.
Which is why I say, manipulating people is easy. Manipulating reality is tough.
Hey bro. Same. I quit teaching and picked up a toolbelt in my late 20's.
I think most tradesmen are pretty mid-range with intelligence though. A few geniuses here and there. You've got to have your shit together to be a lead contractor, even if it's not obvious to the people around you. But there is always a few standing around staring at their hammer trying to figure out which end you hold. I think trades are a good way to knock the edges off though, especially if you're working with lots of different crews. You have to work out how to not be an uptight arsehole or you don't get any work. Other more bureaucratic jobs seem a bit more tolerant of that and I don't think that benefits anyone. Might just be the all-male work environment or something. IDK.
I’m curious how the iron workers cutting up the Key Bridge in Baltimore scored in their DEI struggle sessions. 🤣
The problem is we're dealing with people who think that if there is consensus (even if manufactured through censorship) what they're saying cannot, by definition, be a lie. However...
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie."
"The lie can be maintained only…”
I disagree – we’re living through the refutation of that axiom. Whether it’s the border, $8T budgets, a killer vaccine, attack on societal norms 15K years in the making, actual or threatened wars all over the globe, the perpetrator of this maelstrom of evil still enjoys support in the mid-40s. This guy makes Carter and James Buchanan look like Pericles & his Golden Age.
I have extended family members who remain blue pilled, and can assure you that they are - to the person - shielded from these travesties.
I can also assure you that when either the economy collapses, conscription starts (unlikely but possible), or they wake up to the harm they did to their kids with the injections, they're going to go completely ape shit.
Biden's diminishing support reflects this. There's a reason things like wokeness are increasingly only present in cloistered, consequence-free environments. They'll be the last to catch on.
That describes my sister to a t. She has been fully protected from Biden consequences.
Her budget and savings are sufficient that bumps in food and energy costs have a negligible effect.
She lives in a tony Boston suburb where illegal aliens are pool boys and maids. Totally insulated.
By the time it hits her, the rest of the nation will be destroyed.
“I can also assure you that when…they wake up to the harm they did…”
Harking back to “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” Mattias Desmet made the point that once a person focuses their anxiety, etc. on the external point of fixation (masks & vaccines in the case of COVID), they do NOT come back to reality.) Many, many ordinary Germans in the 50’s still did not see Hitler in a bad light.
Accordingly, because the level of external fixation required to put your children through a Cuisinart is extraordinary, the prospect of such parents EVER recognizing the reality of their conduct is essentially zero.
What I DO expect is a significant increase in patricide of the parents of transgenders. Especially of parents who were publicly “proud of our multiple LGBT toddlers.” Those fuckers need to buy fake papers & disappear to the northernmost island of Nunavut…if they want to live, that is.
Do you have a source for the claim about the Germans? It sounds interesting.
Regrettably, not that I’m able to link to. It is a column about the findings of a psychologist who went to live for a year in the early 50’s with various families in German villages and interviewed as many family members, friends, & residents as he could.
I read it online about the same time as Robert Malone’s famous Joe Rogan interview. I suspect it was published in support for Desmet’s findings.
Unfortunately, I didn’t save the link, and 3+ hrs of searching hasn’t turned up the column I read or the underlying research. I hadn’t then developed my present habit of saving meaningful links & quotes that I’m likely to refer to in the future (e.g., “We choose truth over facts!”).
BTW, I’m of 100% German descent, so these observations go against natural ancestral pride.
Any society can go off the deep end. I've lived in Germany. Seen their love of order such as housewives sweeping their already clean front porches. I think Germans just went too far way too fast in the 1930's in part due to the ruinous cash reparations they had to pay after WW1 crashing their post-war economy.... until Hitler got a nice line of credit from Brown Harriman and other offshore bankers like Prescott Bush whose Brown Harriman bank in early 1942 [sic] was still holding IG Farben trade secret patents as secret collateral for many of its loans to Hitler.
As US Marine General Butler wrote in 1935, "War is a racket."
Thank you for making the effort to search for it though!
Correct is "wokex".
I think it was Dr. Robert Malone who wrote "all doctors agree . . . when you fire the ones who don't."
"their speech acts don’t connect to the real, anymore."
This is actually a core tenant of postmodernism, that reality is unknowable. Instead our words create a shared delusion which we take to be "real" even though it isn't. Western universities have been run by postmodernists for decades, so the entire ruling class had imbibed this philosophy even if they don't realize it. So have you and I; Nietzsche and Foucault pervade the air we breathe.
This won't be fixed. It will eventually lead to our collapse, since systems of unreality always lose eventually, but that may still be decades away. We're going to put Adam Smith's dictum, "there's a lot of ruin in a nation", to the test.
BTW: Where can we get a copy of your dissertation, Chris? It wounds like a fascinating read.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pm8547r
It's only okay. I wrote it to escape grad school, not to change the world. I expected to change the world later, which is still...not quite working out?
The is also a great deal of blame to be laid at the foot of consumer culture created by our "anything for a dollar" corporations. We are experiencing a culture where media phantasmagoria is the primary enculturating and socializing agent. The result is a society made of barely functional retards who exist only to consume product. It's a wonder we are not more deranged.
“phantasmagoria“
New word for me, and a “beyond perfect” description of liberal communications. In fairness, it’s also a decent description of some of the conservative emails & texts I’m inundated with, but at least their hyperbole is based on the truth.
“This won't be fixed. It will eventually lead to our collapse…”
I certainly see the potential for that outcome, but I don’t see it as a certainty. The reason being that the U.S. is a center-right democracy and the people have not yet spoken conclusively. If Trump were not the Republican candidate, the polls would be running at least 60-40 against Biden. The Blue areas are bleeding makers to Red areas and getting freebie-seeking illegal aliens in return. At least 2 states have already taken action against DEI and more are sure to follow.
Electoral democracy can certainly delay the collapse, but it won't fix it. Postmodernism is far too entrenched among our elite class. It will destroy itself and us before we have time for our own "counter-march through the institutions" (the beginning of which you're describing wit the DEI bans) has time to take effect.
Restating this after a day of driving: When people didn't just talk for a living, their talk was more likely to be meaningful and serious. The emergence of talking for a living, of the "going to a meeting" professions, has degraded and emptied discourse. It's not inevitable, and a bunch of people who talk for a living are interesting people. But the trend overall is steadily downward.
In the chicken coop, all the chickens cluck. But only some of them are good layers of eggs and brooders of chickens. Same goes for the roosters, only some of them are good at caring for the hens and chickens.
So those not up to spec are for the chopping block.
Mouth slop is copy pasta is word salad. Recursive NPC PMC cognitive dissonance loop.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:1.
Great article. Our culture is playing with fire, or at least those who have not mastered their own inner tyrants, are playing with fire.
My mind went off on a weird tangent while reading this.
I spent my summers at a YMCA summer camp in the Sierra Nevadas. I was voluntold by my stepdad to be part of the kitchen crew in 1985 for three weeks of my glorious summer. HIGH CRIMES AND MISDOMEANDERS!
I ended up staying an additional 6 weeks and the next three years all summer long. To this day it was one the most important, impactful experiences of my life. Occasionally the fat bastard was correct, even if he didn't know it.
One year, someone in my girlfriend's cabin brought an Ouija Board. Grew up in a Baptist church--not the shaking snakes kind--but not the most reserved, intellectual discussion of God/Satan, Heaven/Hell. I had absorbed a literal shit-ton (doctrinal term) of 'hell & damnation' lessons by my 16th year. I knew these boards were, if not evil, certainly not Divine. I had been warned about them.
But, my girlfriend was asking me to join them...
So, I'm the only guy in this cabin of 12/13 year old girls and my girlfriend. It is rather fun. Who likes who. Is so and so going to date so and so. Kids stuff. Everyone was laughing and have a good old time. I was beginning to relax.
The opportunity finally comes to me to begin to ask questions.
So I ask some rather benign questions, but then for a display of proof I asked it what my father's (he had passed when I was 4) middle name was. It was Arden. No one knew that, and in fact I have never met anyone with this name, nor read the name in any story or anything . Rare name. No one outside of my family knew this, I doubt my fat step dad even knew.
This young girl who was running the board begins to spell: A...R...D...E...N
As I type this I am still unnerved. Here is the bedeviling part:
All of a sudden I knew there was something very real going on, and I could maybe maybe get some answers to things I maybe shouldn't.
Did I run out of there terrified? No. I was so torn. I stayed around for the rest of the evening, but the damn game seemed to call to me for the rest of the week. I wanted to go back. I wanted to know. I wanted the power.
There are things/phenomena that is real that remains outside of our ability to detect or measure. Coincidences. 'I was just thinking about you..' when someone calls.
Speech is powerful. Thought is powerful.
These people are literally changing reality with their language. How we think about things. Doublethink and Newspeak. It is terrifying in its effect. In its nearly universal acceptance. Why does propaganda work if we hear it 100 times? I don't know, but maybe we do not have the mental fortitude to maintain constant vigilance required to avoid the language games from changing how we think about something.
They know what they are doing, but they do not know, nor understand from where the power emerges. Their Hubris will be their end, but the victims along the way will reach millions.
bsn
"...a YMCA summer camp in the Sierra Nevadas."
Arbolado?
No, Camp Jack Hazard...where everybody rocks out (ROCKS OUT).
Up highway 108 past Pinecrest, across from the Dardanelles (not of Gallipolli infamy) close to the Sierra Pass. Was about 6K feet elevation. Totally out of breath the first week of camp.
It was GLORIOUS!
bsn
Look up the CIA-funded Stanford University hypnotism studies in the 1950's if you don't already know about it. It showed 30% of humans are easy to hypnotize with a simple rhythm, a specific frequency of motion like a swinging pocket watch or a pulsing hand gesture. 30% can't be or need mind-altering drugs to be hypnotized. Remaining 40% can go either way. Note: in the USA about 70% took at least one covid jab after hearing "the message" repeatedly or caved in to peer or authority figure pressure which 60% will do (Milgram and Asche experiments).
As for ouija board and ESP as well as the Biblical warnings about "sorcery." I have little doubt there are good and bad "spirits" that can get and send messages. It's a rare person who can access those messages or send them who will only use that ability for good. l've known a few of them and they are all humble characters about their skills and only use those skills to help others. The old saying about absolute power corrupts absolutely sticks in my mind. Sounds like you learned that fast at that Sierra camp.
If you had stayed with the Ouija board you would have turned into a Democrat.😁
It both fascinated and terrified me.
bsn
I think that this all makes sense. Great history lesson btw. Thank you.
Farmers live in the real world. They are Uber-practical. They work hard seven days a week. They have to know how to do a large variety of things- among them, take care of animals, get food from said animals, raise crops, run machinery, fix machinery, understand meteorology and its impact on their livelihood, deal with pests, understand markets, understand how to manage a business, time management, and if they aren’t a giant corporate entity, they need to do it themselves.
Madison, WI where I did my general surgery residency, is basically an island of Commies surrounded by an ocean of farmers. The farmers were great patients because they understood the cycle of life. They are realists.
Couple the detachment of the urban managerial type from toil, soil, biology, and nature with the decline and fall of American education, and you get to where we are now. Everything is performative.Deviation from the accepted narrative is verboten. Being emotional is good. Being rational and skeptical is bad. Yes, it’s all stupid. But it works on many people who are intellectually lazy and want instant simple answers to complicated problems. It’s terrifying. Some try to characterize this as a “feminine” way of doing things, and I understand the argument , but I think this is unfair to honest, intelligent women. Not all women are hysterical and sneaky. Not all men are strong and brave.
I’d rather be judged by a dozen farmers than a dozen administrative mandarins or petty bureaucrats all day long. Common sense and a sense of fair play used to be universally valued, as did truthfulness. Now we live in an empire of lies and denial of reality. Trust is hard to come by. This sickness will burn out. Just try not to get roasted in the coming conflagration.
We might. But will the children?
C19 for example. Not only are they not being told/taught what happened didn't work...they are not being told that it was WRONG how they were treated.
Seems like fertile ground...
My kids - zero c19 shots. Have to educate the kids ourselves. I just tell them the truth. They will have to decide for themselves as they become adults. So far it’s working for the most part. Teenagers are a pain in the ass. 😂
Ha. No doubt. My twins turned 13 yesterday
Thanks Chris, how I long to have been born in those harder, simpler times, when work meant working and talk was just that.
Harder and simpler. That’s a great way to put it.
I was just talking about this to a good friend of mine. It makes me sad when I read first person accounts from just 60 years ago, people as a whole were more erudite and eloquent, with a general intelligence we sorely lack today. I think that is by design though if you see what passes as an education today. And our culture doesn’t reward intelligence, it rewards outrageous behaviors and depraved materialism.
My grandparents, all born before 1910, never went beyond some high school, but they were incredibly smart, had beautiful handwriting, and knew tons of stuff, both practical and less so. Clear thinkers, well-considered opinions, voracious readers. We used to produce people like that easily, but we can't seem to do it anymore.
I'm 72, so I remember the following:
In May, 1968, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy were running against one another in the Democratic presidential primaries. ( I'm pretty sure that Hubert Humphrey, the eventual nominee, was not running in the primaries. )
LIFE magazine commissioned an article about which poets of the day were supporting McCarthy and which were for Kennedy. When I say "poets," I mean poets, people such as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Marianne Moore, Donald Hall.
It seems as if such a thing couldn't have happened in this country ever, doesn't it? But I do remember the article.
Go read this: California Sixth Grade Reader https://a.co/d/eKy78FM and compare and contrast to the drivel taught today. How many college students, let alone sixth graders, could understand and absorb that book today?
I had a fine time reading the “sample” of the book on the Amazon website. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I was struck by the instructions to teachers on how to use the reader in their classrooms, as well as the list of short readings and poems that were to be memorized by sixth graders. I doubt there are more than a handful of children today who could recite from memory even one of the items on the list. I also was reminded of the difference between this reader and the pornographic books available to sixth graders today. How far we have fallen as a nation.
A challenge for home schoolers.
Another fan of the California Sixth Grade Reader! Hi!
What you describe with accuser/defender is how the legal system worked in Scandinavia until the 16th century, roughly (and very over-simplified; parts of the old system were already gone by then and some parts survived into the early 20th century):
Elected, not selected, members of the community of a class called odalmän meaning they owned the land they used or their own business (a farrier f.e.) and were not indebted to anyone made up what passed for a court of law, and the elders of the community as well as the priest sat in at the Ting, since any and all disagreements and accusations were to be made public.
The same went for business-deals, promises of marriage, settling of inheritances and so on - public, at the Ting. In later times, after church on Sunday.
The downside of the system was for anyone not endowed with a family of that or a higher class; the landless, the day-labourers and so on.
The above is a layman's off-the-cuff summary of over 500 years of judicial (d)evolution, so any historian could drive a tank through the holes in it.
As for insomnia, my father - being career military for life - sometimes quipped "That's why the King invented push-ups". I don't know, persnally. I've always found mulled wine or hot mead to do the trick, if judiciously applied.
I love old documents. They feel so powerful -- all the effort of the quill and the ink -- it's like the paper is alive.
It's a great privilege to hold those handwritten documents. A great privilege.
And the brains were too!