Chris, thank you for a brilliant - and deeply disturbing - analysis of what is and isn't happening in our country politically, economically and culturally - and why. How the F do we unwind this crazy shit and try to return to something resembling the old normal?
Hello Chris. Thanks for the article. I spent many of my younger years studying, practicing and implementing many forms of dipshittery.
In fact I wrote a thesis on “Dipshittery in Modern America” for one of my many doctorate’s degrees in the many disciplines of dipshittery. I can unequivocally confirm that today’s political arena falls well within the scope of not just dipshittery, but highly gifted dipshittery. A form of dipshittery that can only be expressed by the most proficient dipshit masters. Dipshittery students will be studying this era of dipshittery with amazement for many years.
And here I thought trying on swimwear as a 60-year-old woman was the most depressing part of my day…
But in all seriousness, Chris, thank you for the analysis. I always appreciate your work even if it reminds me what a 💩🤡 show world we are living in right now.
Same thing here. Out of control immigration levels, stagnating/collapsing GDP, non-existent R&D and economic development outside of flipping houses, a military shriveling into a force smaller than some US State Troopers, houses beyond reach of many, growing tent cities but Trudeau's budget? More taxes and *more* because something something LGTBQBLAHBLAH...
Great article, Chris.. I like the line: competing concerns. No matter how little you think about economics, it is called "the dismal science" because there are never infinite resources, so some choices have to be made. Even the government money printing will end sometime, as Herbert Simon (a great economist) said: What cannot go on forever must stop.
Yes, when I heard RFK, Jr's VP choice, I had a moment's disgust as I realized that campaign was over.
He's right, of course, about our health crisis. I'm still stunned that a majority of the population rates as "obese." Type II. diabetes, among many other things, is killing America. And how did it happen? Thirty years ago, many Boomers and GenXers were obsessed with health. I wonder if obesity came in train, as they used to say, with tattoos, piercings, pink hair, and shopping for donuts while wearing your pajamas?
I'm just starting to read this book, "The Mighty Wurlitzer: how the CIA played America" by Hugh Wilford. It mentions most of the well-known CIA-funded misdeeds. Some I wasn't aware of, like former Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem, ("women's rights activist") worked for a company that was a front for the CIA. A LOT of things tie together, this isn't accidental cultural change, folks. I'm 1/3 of the way into the book and am totally disgusted.
I previously read the book, "December, 1941" by Craig Shirley. Lesson? Communists never quit. In 1941, college kids were trained to act up, be disruptive. Sound familiar? The CIA has their tentacles in Unions, besides Academia, and Media.
I'm not a fan of the Queens-Trump personality, but he's the ONLY candidate talking about saving our country as we were all born into it, or came here legally to it. I think he's the only one willing to tell the UN, WEF, and WHO to go F themselves.
Eisenhower was truly spot-on, when he warned of the military industrial complex. My gut feeling is that government on ALL levels (including Los Angeles in this, as I am L.A. born) is run by people who have invested in the destruction of said City, County, State, US. Not only is this wealth redistribution, but the selfies, the dancing, the flaunting it in our faces - all of it, I feel, is to rub our noses in it while we're being destroyed. Including by Big Pharma. I'm a senior, and in my lifetime, TV "drug" ads have initially gone from diet aids, headache, cold, and allergy relief to all manner of "if your body part is broken, we've got the cure" for it. All showing happy people frolicking in the park or whatever, looking like they never have a sick day now, thanks to Big Pharma! Besides taxes, it's another way to bleed us dry - sometimes quite literally.
Great piece. Sovereign debt crisis coming. Soon. We are reminiscent of those cartoon characters that have run off the Cliff and haven’t realized their predicament….yet
"The overarching theme common to all of these individual themes is closed discursive systems: 'It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.'"
What I noticed, Chris, is that those systems reinforce each others' power. The politics of distraction works because, even though the world is smaller than it's ever been in modern times, there is no shared reality that is large enough to pierce through the bullshit. And the bullshit makers, because they rule government, media, and academia, always have the floor.
So by default, they serve one audience -- everyone whose life's meaning hinges on seeing Trump as an existential threat. Buy into that, and you buy into everything else the elites are selling you. Disinformation as you define it is a threat? More please. We should allow men to compete in women's sports? More please. Russia is a monster? Yes, yes, yes.
Would the support for Ukraine be anywhere near where it is now if it weren't seen as a way to get back at Trump? Wasn't the entirety of the Covid response shaped by being anti-Trump? "What, he's not going into hysterics over Covid? He's evil and we must mask, social distance, and inject ourselves until our bodies are 80% mRNA.
If Trump were smart, he would have been all for the most draconian responses. Guess which side of the debate MSNBC's wealthy "thanks for paying off my student loans, Joe" audience would be on?
They repeat the same narratives: marginalization, systemic oppression, social injustice. There is no feedback mechanism to call them out, because they control those levers, too. If you disagree, you're alt. Of the Dark Web.
It's a grift, and a powerful one. And it won't go away when Trump leaves the stage. They have spent the last eight years honing their skills and cementing more of their power. Which is why their lack of power in the Supreme Court drives them batshit crazy. "We run the WEF, the CDC, the WHO, the Deep State, NATO, et al, but we don't control all three branches of government? It's an injustice. We were meant to rule."
Remember when NPR sulked at being called state media on Twitter? What defense do they have when the entirety of their news reportage is defined by access journalism and acquiescing to the power they approve of? Ask yourself when they give a fair hearing to any issue?
Across the pond, it's the same. I listen to BBC World Service Overnight, and I don't know how many brains must be melting at the sheer preening, the freeze-dried neoliberalism they dispense for hours every night as if they're reading a lullaby. There is no two sides to Russia-Ukraine. It's just Ukraine.
There's no two sides to the abortion debate. It's just cheerleading for the pro-choice side. There's no border-security issue. It's just racist Republicans encouraging populism. And we know what use liberal elites have for populists.
Their programming is of a realm that exists only within the closed, academic-inspired system you write about -- one with little relation to the way our lives are lived and experienced. It's a stew of noxious navel-gazing whose main purpose is to announce: "Look how evolved we are. Can you even stand it?"
One one BBC World Service Overnight podcast -- "Dear Daughter" -- narrated with the sickly-sweet self-regard that defines progressive public radio, the host prefaced that night's theme with:"There is so much history and cultural weight" of...wait for it...black hair. Who the fuck is this for if not Brooklynites sipping pinot noir late at night on the fire escape?
NPR and the BBC's ouroboros programming is of a piece with The Atlantic Council. The Global Engagement Center. The Election Integrity Project. They are forever and always finding the marginalized narrative, the stray dogs of opinion so that they have something against which to act and assert their power.
They're all united by their love of systems. Finding the systems that have manipulated them. Manipulating the systems. The world is multicultural, we're told; those telling us this fetishize multiculturalism.
But they crave monoculture. They rule as elites who think they're the first group in history to "get it right." What they are is the first group in history to extend its tentacles this far around the world.
If you're a technocrat who went to or are going to an Ivy League school, you are living in the Renaissance. This is your time to shine.
Generations of students who were indoctrinated into seeing the world as little else but power structures are so enamored of the system, so used to seeing the world through that prism, they made it their mission to ascend to corporate and government and NGO and global media and non-profit power centers. Katherine Maher is their platonic ideal of what it means to be a fully-realized human being in 2024 and into eternity.
"So the second most obvious reality of American politics is that power doesn’t care about public sentiment. You can oppose whatever you want, peasant, but don’t think that it means something. Institutions have no levers that people outside of the institutions can get their hands on."
The 'issues' are cherry-picked for us. We get to decide which side of THEIR issue we're on, and then fight each other over it. And while we are thus distracted, they get away with murder.
It's strange, we don't have exactly the same problems in UK but like you, we find ourselves "withdrawing" certainly from mainstream politics. It doesn't leave many options tbh. Healthcare is "free" here (paid for via taxation, if you need meds, you pay for them) and since convid I've turned down every opportunity to engage with the medical profession except for my annual asthma review. Which is done over the phone because I'm otherwise fit and healthy. We are drawn to people like us, but are noticing more of our other friends (from pre convid times) "joining the dots". The latest is a mate who's multi jabbed hubs has survived bowel cancer and heart/lung problems since the jabs. He's now had a massive stroke and in a specialist unit. All the other patients are young men between 20-30. All need 24 hrs care, some will never recover. She finally realised the jabs had done it. No more for her.
Chris, I have seen three or four interviews with you and unlike me, you present the craziness and never seem to get really maniacally pissed off. I try to mirror that approach but the information in this post elevated my pissed off level to the maniacal range. How about you?
I get how NPCs supporting The Current Thing get’s one’s goat at and it is well known that Ukraine has a corruption problem — though I note the Ukrainian government is the one making the accusations and prosecuting offenders. Also, “you have a corruption problem so we should not support you against a Russian invasion that is explicitly genocidal” (as Putin told us it is) is not a morally impressive argument.
But the aid to Ukraine is a tiny part of both US GDP and even of the US defence budget. Even tinier when one realises that much of it is about giving old weapons and munitions to Ukraine and the Pentagon then buys shiny new versions for US Armed Forces. The US also gets to see how technology is changing warfare without any US forces doing the dying.
Moreover, a whole lot of other countries are coming to the same calculation. Here in Australia, as a Pacific US ally and the only US ally to fight in every one of the US’s major postwar conflicts, while prepared to do its own fighting (Malaysia, Borneo) and its own interventions (East Timor), our policy is very pro-Ukraine in part because we are very keen to have the CCP regime in China be convinced that attacking neighbours is a bad move.
Chris, thank you for a brilliant - and deeply disturbing - analysis of what is and isn't happening in our country politically, economically and culturally - and why. How the F do we unwind this crazy shit and try to return to something resembling the old normal?
Hello Chris. Thanks for the article. I spent many of my younger years studying, practicing and implementing many forms of dipshittery.
In fact I wrote a thesis on “Dipshittery in Modern America” for one of my many doctorate’s degrees in the many disciplines of dipshittery. I can unequivocally confirm that today’s political arena falls well within the scope of not just dipshittery, but highly gifted dipshittery. A form of dipshittery that can only be expressed by the most proficient dipshit masters. Dipshittery students will be studying this era of dipshittery with amazement for many years.
And here I thought trying on swimwear as a 60-year-old woman was the most depressing part of my day…
But in all seriousness, Chris, thank you for the analysis. I always appreciate your work even if it reminds me what a 💩🤡 show world we are living in right now.
“I’m unable to analyze dipshittery.” Once again, Chris Bray clearly articulated exactly how I feel every damn time I read any mainstream “news”.
Great article!
Same thing here. Out of control immigration levels, stagnating/collapsing GDP, non-existent R&D and economic development outside of flipping houses, a military shriveling into a force smaller than some US State Troopers, houses beyond reach of many, growing tent cities but Trudeau's budget? More taxes and *more* because something something LGTBQBLAHBLAH...
It's all nothing, *literally* nothing.
Great article, Chris.. I like the line: competing concerns. No matter how little you think about economics, it is called "the dismal science" because there are never infinite resources, so some choices have to be made. Even the government money printing will end sometime, as Herbert Simon (a great economist) said: What cannot go on forever must stop.
Yes, when I heard RFK, Jr's VP choice, I had a moment's disgust as I realized that campaign was over.
He's right, of course, about our health crisis. I'm still stunned that a majority of the population rates as "obese." Type II. diabetes, among many other things, is killing America. And how did it happen? Thirty years ago, many Boomers and GenXers were obsessed with health. I wonder if obesity came in train, as they used to say, with tattoos, piercings, pink hair, and shopping for donuts while wearing your pajamas?
During the original founding of our country we used to burn politicians houses down when they did shit we didn’t like….just sayin’
Great article, thank you, Mr. Bray.
I'm just starting to read this book, "The Mighty Wurlitzer: how the CIA played America" by Hugh Wilford. It mentions most of the well-known CIA-funded misdeeds. Some I wasn't aware of, like former Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem, ("women's rights activist") worked for a company that was a front for the CIA. A LOT of things tie together, this isn't accidental cultural change, folks. I'm 1/3 of the way into the book and am totally disgusted.
I previously read the book, "December, 1941" by Craig Shirley. Lesson? Communists never quit. In 1941, college kids were trained to act up, be disruptive. Sound familiar? The CIA has their tentacles in Unions, besides Academia, and Media.
I'm not a fan of the Queens-Trump personality, but he's the ONLY candidate talking about saving our country as we were all born into it, or came here legally to it. I think he's the only one willing to tell the UN, WEF, and WHO to go F themselves.
Eisenhower was truly spot-on, when he warned of the military industrial complex. My gut feeling is that government on ALL levels (including Los Angeles in this, as I am L.A. born) is run by people who have invested in the destruction of said City, County, State, US. Not only is this wealth redistribution, but the selfies, the dancing, the flaunting it in our faces - all of it, I feel, is to rub our noses in it while we're being destroyed. Including by Big Pharma. I'm a senior, and in my lifetime, TV "drug" ads have initially gone from diet aids, headache, cold, and allergy relief to all manner of "if your body part is broken, we've got the cure" for it. All showing happy people frolicking in the park or whatever, looking like they never have a sick day now, thanks to Big Pharma! Besides taxes, it's another way to bleed us dry - sometimes quite literally.
Thanks for speaking out.
Great piece. Sovereign debt crisis coming. Soon. We are reminiscent of those cartoon characters that have run off the Cliff and haven’t realized their predicament….yet
"The overarching theme common to all of these individual themes is closed discursive systems: 'It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.'"
What I noticed, Chris, is that those systems reinforce each others' power. The politics of distraction works because, even though the world is smaller than it's ever been in modern times, there is no shared reality that is large enough to pierce through the bullshit. And the bullshit makers, because they rule government, media, and academia, always have the floor.
So by default, they serve one audience -- everyone whose life's meaning hinges on seeing Trump as an existential threat. Buy into that, and you buy into everything else the elites are selling you. Disinformation as you define it is a threat? More please. We should allow men to compete in women's sports? More please. Russia is a monster? Yes, yes, yes.
Would the support for Ukraine be anywhere near where it is now if it weren't seen as a way to get back at Trump? Wasn't the entirety of the Covid response shaped by being anti-Trump? "What, he's not going into hysterics over Covid? He's evil and we must mask, social distance, and inject ourselves until our bodies are 80% mRNA.
If Trump were smart, he would have been all for the most draconian responses. Guess which side of the debate MSNBC's wealthy "thanks for paying off my student loans, Joe" audience would be on?
They repeat the same narratives: marginalization, systemic oppression, social injustice. There is no feedback mechanism to call them out, because they control those levers, too. If you disagree, you're alt. Of the Dark Web.
It's a grift, and a powerful one. And it won't go away when Trump leaves the stage. They have spent the last eight years honing their skills and cementing more of their power. Which is why their lack of power in the Supreme Court drives them batshit crazy. "We run the WEF, the CDC, the WHO, the Deep State, NATO, et al, but we don't control all three branches of government? It's an injustice. We were meant to rule."
Remember when NPR sulked at being called state media on Twitter? What defense do they have when the entirety of their news reportage is defined by access journalism and acquiescing to the power they approve of? Ask yourself when they give a fair hearing to any issue?
Across the pond, it's the same. I listen to BBC World Service Overnight, and I don't know how many brains must be melting at the sheer preening, the freeze-dried neoliberalism they dispense for hours every night as if they're reading a lullaby. There is no two sides to Russia-Ukraine. It's just Ukraine.
There's no two sides to the abortion debate. It's just cheerleading for the pro-choice side. There's no border-security issue. It's just racist Republicans encouraging populism. And we know what use liberal elites have for populists.
Their programming is of a realm that exists only within the closed, academic-inspired system you write about -- one with little relation to the way our lives are lived and experienced. It's a stew of noxious navel-gazing whose main purpose is to announce: "Look how evolved we are. Can you even stand it?"
One one BBC World Service Overnight podcast -- "Dear Daughter" -- narrated with the sickly-sweet self-regard that defines progressive public radio, the host prefaced that night's theme with:"There is so much history and cultural weight" of...wait for it...black hair. Who the fuck is this for if not Brooklynites sipping pinot noir late at night on the fire escape?
NPR and the BBC's ouroboros programming is of a piece with The Atlantic Council. The Global Engagement Center. The Election Integrity Project. They are forever and always finding the marginalized narrative, the stray dogs of opinion so that they have something against which to act and assert their power.
They're all united by their love of systems. Finding the systems that have manipulated them. Manipulating the systems. The world is multicultural, we're told; those telling us this fetishize multiculturalism.
But they crave monoculture. They rule as elites who think they're the first group in history to "get it right." What they are is the first group in history to extend its tentacles this far around the world.
If you're a technocrat who went to or are going to an Ivy League school, you are living in the Renaissance. This is your time to shine.
Generations of students who were indoctrinated into seeing the world as little else but power structures are so enamored of the system, so used to seeing the world through that prism, they made it their mission to ascend to corporate and government and NGO and global media and non-profit power centers. Katherine Maher is their platonic ideal of what it means to be a fully-realized human being in 2024 and into eternity.
"So the second most obvious reality of American politics is that power doesn’t care about public sentiment. You can oppose whatever you want, peasant, but don’t think that it means something. Institutions have no levers that people outside of the institutions can get their hands on."
The 'issues' are cherry-picked for us. We get to decide which side of THEIR issue we're on, and then fight each other over it. And while we are thus distracted, they get away with murder.
It's strange, we don't have exactly the same problems in UK but like you, we find ourselves "withdrawing" certainly from mainstream politics. It doesn't leave many options tbh. Healthcare is "free" here (paid for via taxation, if you need meds, you pay for them) and since convid I've turned down every opportunity to engage with the medical profession except for my annual asthma review. Which is done over the phone because I'm otherwise fit and healthy. We are drawn to people like us, but are noticing more of our other friends (from pre convid times) "joining the dots". The latest is a mate who's multi jabbed hubs has survived bowel cancer and heart/lung problems since the jabs. He's now had a massive stroke and in a specialist unit. All the other patients are young men between 20-30. All need 24 hrs care, some will never recover. She finally realised the jabs had done it. No more for her.
Chris, I have seen three or four interviews with you and unlike me, you present the craziness and never seem to get really maniacally pissed off. I try to mirror that approach but the information in this post elevated my pissed off level to the maniacal range. How about you?
I get how NPCs supporting The Current Thing get’s one’s goat at and it is well known that Ukraine has a corruption problem — though I note the Ukrainian government is the one making the accusations and prosecuting offenders. Also, “you have a corruption problem so we should not support you against a Russian invasion that is explicitly genocidal” (as Putin told us it is) is not a morally impressive argument.
But the aid to Ukraine is a tiny part of both US GDP and even of the US defence budget. Even tinier when one realises that much of it is about giving old weapons and munitions to Ukraine and the Pentagon then buys shiny new versions for US Armed Forces. The US also gets to see how technology is changing warfare without any US forces doing the dying.
Moreover, a whole lot of other countries are coming to the same calculation. Here in Australia, as a Pacific US ally and the only US ally to fight in every one of the US’s major postwar conflicts, while prepared to do its own fighting (Malaysia, Borneo) and its own interventions (East Timor), our policy is very pro-Ukraine in part because we are very keen to have the CCP regime in China be convinced that attacking neighbours is a bad move.
An informative and witty video on this is provided by a fellow Australian. https://youtu.be/Qc436PwqeqM?si=aI0lgjHfHXl-Zg6h
Amen.
Those bureaucrats running healthcare, (hospital systems, insurance companies) are special kind of cancer.
You are outlining here why they will bring about a dollar based CBDC as soon as they can.
Research site for you in case you’ve not discovered it yet:
theconservativetreehouse.com