Left-wing thinking is selfishness coded as principle. It starts with "truth is subjective" and "words are power constructs", both of which are infinite license to lie.
And they lie to themselves more than to anyone else.
Many people spend a lot of time and effort countering left-wing talking points, but the simple problem is that they do not even begin to presuppose that they ought to be honest.
As someone who spends a lot of time countering left-wing talking points, the reason I do it is not to convince the left-wingers making the argument, it's to convince the undecided people reading along.
And to sharpen the thinking of those who are in moral agreement. Providing useful insights to people who already lean to your side may be even more valuable than convincing the undecided, because they're the ones who will learn to see with your vision and pass your points along.
When censorship was at its peak in media, they could gaslight with fake photos from another time and place with out any voices to counter the lies. I believe that your voice, Chris's voice and all the citizen journalists collectively have broken the back of the narrative machine. The measure of this is the only demographic still consuming the MSM are the over 65's we see now as the mainstay of the rabid crazy protests.
I suggest a look at this--Democratic senators "Unveil New Bill to Require ICE to Display Clear Identification, Stop ICE Agents from Hiding Behind Masks":
She has a state college bachelor's degree in gym (1972) and spent a few years as a preschool "teacher" (babysitter) and community college teacher before being placed on King County's school board...
...preparatory to being placed in the state's Senate in 1989, booting out the Republican former Boeing electrical engineer (BS, MS), social worker (MSW), and Marine who held the seat.
Yes, that’s all one person. He was also an enthusiastic Savoyard. Bill Kiskaddon.
Then she was installed in the US Senate after a media-based proto-Me-Too operation against the (Democrat) incumbent.
The intrepid lawyer in that case was later made Seattle’s mayor.
The ostensible victim (the girl--a longtime family friend--who showed up at his house at night while his wife was away) was the wife of the man later made president of Evergreen State College. He had formerly headed up the Mary Gates Foundation at UW-Seattle and Whitman College (private lib arts college in Walla Walla; they charge $64,000 a year now, and the manjawed presidenta diversicrat currently in charge is a big supporter of "Dreamers").
Patty Murray has occupied the Senate sinecure for THIRTY-ONE YEARS. Nearly two human generations.
Her consistently media-touted qualification for the job? She was "A Mommy In Tennis Shoes [TM]."
Somebody needs to Unveil A New Bill To Require Patty Murray To Stop Hiding Behind The Mask Of Competence In Anything. What a total tool she is. And co-conspirator in a larger, older operation to make Washington's elections a farce.
A "farce" is a polite way of describing the corruption & filth of washington state politics.
The state being the backwater that it is gets no national scrutiny. The fraud practiced here was exported on a national level for 2020 useing a panic over a lab created weaponized virus financed by us tax payers.
Chris's piece is at The Federalist this morning with a headline of "Furor Over Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park Illustrates Democrats’ Total Departure From Reality"
Beginning to think Mike Tyson was something of a genius when he said, "Everyone has a plan, until they're punched in the face." Applied to this, narratives have a life until reality kicks them in the balls.
Let's hope that, bit by bit, the postmodern experiment comes crashing down on itself.
Short of mushroom clouds blossoming in a town near them, I can't think of any way in which the objective reality we know can penetrate their veil of delusion.
Nope. It will continue kicking the rest of us in the balls.
They'll keep taking a slice of your paycheck to finance "education" and blame the dull, draining pain you experience on Christopher Columbus or "Math is Hard Barbie" or whatever.
The narrative has no problem continuing to ignore inconvenient reality, so that kick to the balls is just a foot swishing through a holographic projection.
If you haven't read Lasch, I can't recommend The Revolt of the Elites or The Culture of Narcissism too strongly. They are absolute must reads, possibly even above Hoffer's The True Believer.
MacArthur Park has been a center for massive drug dealing since the 1970s, it's got a nationwide reputation, Swalwell's statement is, like, come the f*ck on, dude...
"By ANDREA FORD
June 25, 1989 12 AM PT
Times Staff Writer
On a bright, hot afternoon last week, shirtless young men brazenly peddled bags of marijuana on a grassy knoll in MacArthur Park just west of downtown Los Angeles, hurrying toward buyers as they emerged from a tunnel walkway under Wilshire Boulevard.
A short distance away, at a park entrance just off 7th and Alvarado streets, scores of men and women milled about crowded park benches, opening their hands quickly so passers-by could see glass vials of what looked like tiny gray pebbles.
“How much you want, baby?” rasped a heavily made-up, very pregnant woman, whose belly jutted out oddly from a rail-thin body.
“Roca roca. Roca roca, “ a man standing nearby said repeatedly. ‘Roca’ is a Spanish term for “rock,” or crack cocaine.
This scene unfolded in the sixth week of a massive police crackdown on drug dealing in the park, a square, 32-acre expanse that is the centerpiece of Los Angeles’ Westlake District and what may be the most popular open-air drug market in the city." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-06-25-me-6398-story.html
"MacArthur Park is melting in the dark," sang Richard Harris on his immortal 1968 recording of the song "MacArthur Park". "Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark," sang Weird Al Yankovic on his parody, capitalizing on the mid-nineties popularity of Steven Spielberg's scary-dinosaur movie. Strictly speaking, MacArthur Park must also, in that era, been pretty frightening in the dark. Legend has it that, by then, the place had become, effectively, an open-air market of vice: drugs, sex -- human souls, no doubt. I've heard "Permanent Midnight" author Jerry Stahl tell some serious MacArthur Park stories. Despite sensing little of that former menace today, I can assure you that the neighborhood retains its robust trade in fake identification documents. Walk down certain side streets, and you hear the same short question over and over again -- "IDs? IDs? IDs?" -- no matter whether you look like you have indeed just endured a trying illegal border-crossing, or whether you look like, well, me. (After turning down yet another fake ID, my friend with the office remarked that the slouchy entrepreneur offering it must have mistaken him for "the world's baldest sixteen-year-old, non-chemotherapy division.")
It's a cash cow. The ones squealing have their hands in it. Same for the ones defending it. Drugs, human traffic, slavery all very profitable with convenient cartel gang worker bees. I wonder with this opening dance if like MK-ultra there is a three letter face off we can't see.
They've had "massive police crackdowns" for decades there - another cash cow - more tax dollars for the "War On Drugs" - and then the payoffs to and shakedowns by the police, by the dealers... And the "social services" have a steady flow of constant "clients" - if three-letter agencies are involved, they're way high up on the food chain.
These articles youve been writing about the SoCal dystopia and the attendant slide of the media into utter fictionalization about it should be compiled into a book. It would be good to have some kind of widely published hard copy historical record about how this all came about in case the Commies win and the “official” history that is written about it prevails on the internet and in the collective conscience.
I told my wife that I think 50% of the country is mentally ill and 75% are delusional. She said "But that's more than 100%" And I said "There's an overlap. You know, like a Venn diagram."
Eric Swallwell is THE poster child for the inane and insane take on reality - which is to say hyper-delusional descriptions of the world that support the radical left view of America,
Chris Bray has a clarity of vision and sense of context that is rare. Today's piece is another example of why I look forward to his daily analysis and insights. Thank you!
You can't make a reasonable comment to unreasonable and unserious posturing people. The apparent very elaborate theatre would have everyone become despondent and hopeless after the initial anger and frustration. Is that the intention?
Dirty Laundry Corner: Husband says to me "you just don't like it when people disagree with you." I reply, "it's not a matter of disagreement!" Thanks Chris for making the definitive case in my domestic argument (and beyond) better than I ever could.
MacArthur park is free. No fee means people feel no responsibility in caring for it. Completely fence it and charge a small fee for use. It is the reason that there are fees for National and State Park use. This solution has always been available, but Marxists don’t fix things, they only break them.
Marxists only like the things they create or can control, so your trash removal idea, “reimagined”so they could claim credit for it, might be a hit with them.
Chris- thank you for exposing this to anyone who has eyes to see. I just don't understand why they lie about something so easy to verify. This country is a hot mess with folks like Karen Bass supposedly leading the way. Ugh! Dei was the ugliest mistake made in this country. It did expose all the dimwits though. What a painful joke that we the people should never forget.
Keep letting us know what you are seeing on the ground so we can share with others. It's great that people like you take the initiative to go out at your personal risk so others may know the truth.
Here in Berserkeley we had for 55+ years a micro-MacArthur Park, the legendary People's Park, as much a claim to fame for the city as the world-renowned university. A negative energy vortex that attracted every human behavioral pathology, it has always been romanticized by the left side.
Finally, the decades-long court battles were concluded and in January 2024 the university, the owner of the park, surrounded it with two layers of shipping containers and hired 24/7 security, and began construction of much-needed student housing.
It’s a matter of wordsmiths hammering out the words Loki…
Children (Feral Children in adult bodies) are “playing” (gangbanging) at a “picnic” (of drugs and prostitution) and was quiet (as corpses and zombies🧟) and “peaceful” (mostly peaceful).
I’m willing to bet not one of the nitwits claiming the park is safe and for children, have ever brought their children there. And if they had, they would leave immediately upon seeing a nodding fentanyl zombie or gangbanger.
The Democrats can't score points on the truth, so they ignore the truth and pretend they're scoring points with lies.
But they're losing points instead!
Left-wing thinking is selfishness coded as principle. It starts with "truth is subjective" and "words are power constructs", both of which are infinite license to lie.
And they lie to themselves more than to anyone else.
Many people spend a lot of time and effort countering left-wing talking points, but the simple problem is that they do not even begin to presuppose that they ought to be honest.
They only presuppose that they ought to win.
As someone who spends a lot of time countering left-wing talking points, the reason I do it is not to convince the left-wingers making the argument, it's to convince the undecided people reading along.
And to sharpen the thinking of those who are in moral agreement. Providing useful insights to people who already lean to your side may be even more valuable than convincing the undecided, because they're the ones who will learn to see with your vision and pass your points along.
When censorship was at its peak in media, they could gaslight with fake photos from another time and place with out any voices to counter the lies. I believe that your voice, Chris's voice and all the citizen journalists collectively have broken the back of the narrative machine. The measure of this is the only demographic still consuming the MSM are the over 65's we see now as the mainstay of the rabid crazy protests.
^^This!!^^
I suggest a look at this--Democratic senators "Unveil New Bill to Require ICE to Display Clear Identification, Stop ICE Agents from Hiding Behind Masks":
https://www.murray.senate.gov/murray-padilla-booker-colleagues-unveil-new-bill-to-require-ice-to-display-clear-identification-stop-ice-agents-from-hiding-behind-masks-plainclothes/
Patty Murray.
She has a state college bachelor's degree in gym (1972) and spent a few years as a preschool "teacher" (babysitter) and community college teacher before being placed on King County's school board...
...preparatory to being placed in the state's Senate in 1989, booting out the Republican former Boeing electrical engineer (BS, MS), social worker (MSW), and Marine who held the seat.
Yes, that’s all one person. He was also an enthusiastic Savoyard. Bill Kiskaddon.
Then she was installed in the US Senate after a media-based proto-Me-Too operation against the (Democrat) incumbent.
https://archive.is/d8Lxi
The intrepid lawyer in that case was later made Seattle’s mayor.
The ostensible victim (the girl--a longtime family friend--who showed up at his house at night while his wife was away) was the wife of the man later made president of Evergreen State College. He had formerly headed up the Mary Gates Foundation at UW-Seattle and Whitman College (private lib arts college in Walla Walla; they charge $64,000 a year now, and the manjawed presidenta diversicrat currently in charge is a big supporter of "Dreamers").
Patty Murray has occupied the Senate sinecure for THIRTY-ONE YEARS. Nearly two human generations.
Her consistently media-touted qualification for the job? She was "A Mommy In Tennis Shoes [TM]."
Somebody needs to Unveil A New Bill To Require Patty Murray To Stop Hiding Behind The Mask Of Competence In Anything. What a total tool she is. And co-conspirator in a larger, older operation to make Washington's elections a farce.
https://x.com/BevHarrisWrites/status/1854408541957972081
A "farce" is a polite way of describing the corruption & filth of washington state politics.
The state being the backwater that it is gets no national scrutiny. The fraud practiced here was exported on a national level for 2020 useing a panic over a lab created weaponized virus financed by us tax payers.
Proposed by Alex Padilla, who wore plainclothes and no Senate identification while charging at Kristi Noem.
Did you say Antifa is taking off their masks?
Chris's piece is at The Federalist this morning with a headline of "Furor Over Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park Illustrates Democrats’ Total Departure From Reality"
Beginning to think Mike Tyson was something of a genius when he said, "Everyone has a plan, until they're punched in the face." Applied to this, narratives have a life until reality kicks them in the balls.
Let's hope that, bit by bit, the postmodern experiment comes crashing down on itself.
Short of mushroom clouds blossoming in a town near them, I can't think of any way in which the objective reality we know can penetrate their veil of delusion.
Nope. It will continue kicking the rest of us in the balls.
They'll keep taking a slice of your paycheck to finance "education" and blame the dull, draining pain you experience on Christopher Columbus or "Math is Hard Barbie" or whatever.
The narrative has no problem continuing to ignore inconvenient reality, so that kick to the balls is just a foot swishing through a holographic projection.
Christopher Lasch just (concisely but also thoroughly) described this phenomenon 100% accurately in a single paragraph.
Bravo to him...and you Chris for introducing a person that thinks so incisively.
If you haven't read Lasch, I can't recommend The Revolt of the Elites or The Culture of Narcissism too strongly. They are absolute must reads, possibly even above Hoffer's The True Believer.
Ordering now. Thx for recommendation. Been looking for something new anyways
I can't say these are happy reads though, so there is that. But at least you'll have a better understanding of why we are where we are.
I’ll second the thanks for the recommendation. I like to have physical copies in case everything ends up down the memory hole.
Culture of Narcissism. 100%. Lasch can occasionally wield some dense language, but mostly readable and worth it all.
MacArthur Park has been a center for massive drug dealing since the 1970s, it's got a nationwide reputation, Swalwell's statement is, like, come the f*ck on, dude...
"By ANDREA FORD
June 25, 1989 12 AM PT
Times Staff Writer
On a bright, hot afternoon last week, shirtless young men brazenly peddled bags of marijuana on a grassy knoll in MacArthur Park just west of downtown Los Angeles, hurrying toward buyers as they emerged from a tunnel walkway under Wilshire Boulevard.
A short distance away, at a park entrance just off 7th and Alvarado streets, scores of men and women milled about crowded park benches, opening their hands quickly so passers-by could see glass vials of what looked like tiny gray pebbles.
“How much you want, baby?” rasped a heavily made-up, very pregnant woman, whose belly jutted out oddly from a rail-thin body.
“Roca roca. Roca roca, “ a man standing nearby said repeatedly. ‘Roca’ is a Spanish term for “rock,” or crack cocaine.
This scene unfolded in the sixth week of a massive police crackdown on drug dealing in the park, a square, 32-acre expanse that is the centerpiece of Los Angeles’ Westlake District and what may be the most popular open-air drug market in the city." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-06-25-me-6398-story.html
From 2013--source? PBS:
"MacArthur Park is melting in the dark," sang Richard Harris on his immortal 1968 recording of the song "MacArthur Park". "Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark," sang Weird Al Yankovic on his parody, capitalizing on the mid-nineties popularity of Steven Spielberg's scary-dinosaur movie. Strictly speaking, MacArthur Park must also, in that era, been pretty frightening in the dark. Legend has it that, by then, the place had become, effectively, an open-air market of vice: drugs, sex -- human souls, no doubt. I've heard "Permanent Midnight" author Jerry Stahl tell some serious MacArthur Park stories. Despite sensing little of that former menace today, I can assure you that the neighborhood retains its robust trade in fake identification documents. Walk down certain side streets, and you hear the same short question over and over again -- "IDs? IDs? IDs?" -- no matter whether you look like you have indeed just endured a trying illegal border-crossing, or whether you look like, well, me. (After turning down yet another fake ID, my friend with the office remarked that the slouchy entrepreneur offering it must have mistaken him for "the world's baldest sixteen-year-old, non-chemotherapy division.")
https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/a-los-angeles-primer-macarthur-park
https://archive.is//jK4nS
It's a cash cow. The ones squealing have their hands in it. Same for the ones defending it. Drugs, human traffic, slavery all very profitable with convenient cartel gang worker bees. I wonder with this opening dance if like MK-ultra there is a three letter face off we can't see.
They've had "massive police crackdowns" for decades there - another cash cow - more tax dollars for the "War On Drugs" - and then the payoffs to and shakedowns by the police, by the dealers... And the "social services" have a steady flow of constant "clients" - if three-letter agencies are involved, they're way high up on the food chain.
Accurate IMO/IME.
The Tramp Industrial Complex is what my darling called it. So much money to be made in managing decline and destruction.
These articles youve been writing about the SoCal dystopia and the attendant slide of the media into utter fictionalization about it should be compiled into a book. It would be good to have some kind of widely published hard copy historical record about how this all came about in case the Commies win and the “official” history that is written about it prevails on the internet and in the collective conscience.
I told my wife that I think 50% of the country is mentally ill and 75% are delusional. She said "But that's more than 100%" And I said "There's an overlap. You know, like a Venn diagram."
Democrats are so far gone they can't even lie well anymore.
Eric Swallwell is THE poster child for the inane and insane take on reality - which is to say hyper-delusional descriptions of the world that support the radical left view of America,
Remind me the name of his CCP paramour?
Fang Fang?
You mean Fang Fang? Or were there others?
Chris Bray has a clarity of vision and sense of context that is rare. Today's piece is another example of why I look forward to his daily analysis and insights. Thank you!
You can't make a reasonable comment to unreasonable and unserious posturing people. The apparent very elaborate theatre would have everyone become despondent and hopeless after the initial anger and frustration. Is that the intention?
There are preconditions for logic. There are preconditions for reason. There are preconditions for debate.
Left-wing people do not meet them.
You might as well try to win a debate with a grizzly bear.
Left-wingers: "Fallacy? What's a fallacy?"
“Everything you believe”.
YES. It's also blindingly obvious now that they couldn't care less how many they harm --- or kill --- with their recklessness.
Dirty Laundry Corner: Husband says to me "you just don't like it when people disagree with you." I reply, "it's not a matter of disagreement!" Thanks Chris for making the definitive case in my domestic argument (and beyond) better than I ever could.
so we have to keep law enforcement out of the park because it would create park hesitancy?
MacArthur park is free. No fee means people feel no responsibility in caring for it. Completely fence it and charge a small fee for use. It is the reason that there are fees for National and State Park use. This solution has always been available, but Marxists don’t fix things, they only break them.
public housing projects go to hell for the same reason
but if we stopped funding GAVI, USAID etc we'd have plenty of moola to empty the trashcans in the park - assuming that people would use them
Marxists only like the things they create or can control, so your trash removal idea, “reimagined”so they could claim credit for it, might be a hit with them.
a marxist trashcan rats you out to the trash police if you put recyclables in there
Job security for the brown shirtz, or should I say brown noses?
"...but 40% of the population works for brawndo!"
Chris- thank you for exposing this to anyone who has eyes to see. I just don't understand why they lie about something so easy to verify. This country is a hot mess with folks like Karen Bass supposedly leading the way. Ugh! Dei was the ugliest mistake made in this country. It did expose all the dimwits though. What a painful joke that we the people should never forget.
Keep letting us know what you are seeing on the ground so we can share with others. It's great that people like you take the initiative to go out at your personal risk so others may know the truth.
Here in Berserkeley we had for 55+ years a micro-MacArthur Park, the legendary People's Park, as much a claim to fame for the city as the world-renowned university. A negative energy vortex that attracted every human behavioral pathology, it has always been romanticized by the left side.
Finally, the decades-long court battles were concluded and in January 2024 the university, the owner of the park, surrounded it with two layers of shipping containers and hired 24/7 security, and began construction of much-needed student housing.
It’s a matter of wordsmiths hammering out the words Loki…
Children (Feral Children in adult bodies) are “playing” (gangbanging) at a “picnic” (of drugs and prostitution) and was quiet (as corpses and zombies🧟) and “peaceful” (mostly peaceful).
I’m willing to bet not one of the nitwits claiming the park is safe and for children, have ever brought their children there. And if they had, they would leave immediately upon seeing a nodding fentanyl zombie or gangbanger.