I've got a confession to make: I'm often pissed off at the most propagandized. My intellectual self knows I should see them as victims and throw a little compassion their way, but damn, the shadows on the cave wall are so obviously shadows that there's no excuse to pretend otherwise. People being dumb on purpose piss me off.
If this is an indication I need to grow as a person, I can accept that. As it is, to me, these ghouls are accomplishing their goals with the most rickety lies imaginable. It would be nice if we at least put them to work a little. Or better yet, stop listening to them altogether.
A lot of the really good propaganda has a lot of truth to it. Then there is a bait and switch maneuver on where the blame goes. Tucker may be the best at it. But when I talk to people nobody swallows all of it whole and it made me realize that we absorb so much of it in the assumptions of the subtext and over time we end up believing stuff we never really took the time to inspect. The limitations of how we gain understanding.
I don't watch Tucker regularly, but in his defense, he at least has Greenwald and Jimmy Dore on and lets them speak. Who else does?
A lot of truth to it you say? Maybe...but I'm talking about the heaps that don't. Like when I asked my family member for the single best example of why he believed Trump was working for Putin, he said this: "When they met, Trump was laughing." I mean, seriously. He's not a stupid person, but holy shit. And I don't think he's unique by any means. People really believe that Trump was fighting the deep state; that Obama meant well and was only thwarted by republicans; that Hillary lost due to misogyny and Russian meddling; that AOC's word salads actually mean something; that Israel's apartheid deserves blind defending. And on and on...
I was on the 'Obama meant well and was only thwarted by republicans' train myself for quite awhile. Wasn't paying close attention back then. It was in the subtext of all the news and probably some SNL sketches. I remember thinking Bernie was a silly candidate until Jon Stewart had a clip where he cut through it. Its disappointing. The news we watch gets us to accept so much without thinking. I'd love it if the US did a viral, trade your news for mine, type deal. But even then there would be friction. Once you are in a camp its hard to give other narratives a chance to make their case.
I think you hit the nail on the head. My 95 year old mother "likes that Rachel Maddow." I cut her slack because she's 95 years old. And my mother. But my younger family member has the same access to information that I do, yet stubbornly clings to legacy media like the NYT and other blue check fantasy mills. For him, there is no excuse.
Attempting to break through their bubble triggers the same reaction as if you are attacking their essence. None of this is personal, yet mostly since Trump, political discussions have taken on an aspect of identity.
Political discussions with my family member used to be just that -- agreements or disagreements about politics and no one's feelings got hurt. No longer. He claimed, with an air of frustration, that my rejection of his paradigm meant "I was creating my own reality." I guess that's what it must feel like when someone challenges your MSM world view.
The sad part is not that people are finding the wrong answers; it's that so many have stopped looking.
For my dream viral news exchange program to work it would have to be properly calibrated. I'd recommend a show like the Majority Report to MSM people to start. I'd recommend Dore to Fox viewers. With CNN maybe BreakingPoints. But the painful part is then if I did this I'd have to agree to watch some combination of Fox/MSM/CNN
How could anyone be on the "Obama meant well" train? He refused to prosecute 15 million unlawful foreclosures. Could anyone miss their neighbors moving away in the middle of the night? Could anyone miss Occupy in every large city? I can't even believe people not noticing any of that.
Very easy. I was worried about my career at the time. I had a hard time getting started in my field and got my first 'real' company job and was worried about cutting it. So it was work, watch some sports, whatever News I got was by accident, or from the Daily Show.
When I started working from home I started getting News from YouTube...even then I didn't right away buy all the anti-moderate left stuff, but I liked SecularTalk's 10-minute compact clips. And over time found out a lot of what I disagreed, or didn't believe in the subtext of the progressive worldview and its critique of the moderate left was true. That still happens from time to time with me.
Woah Woah Woah 'I've always hated Monopoly. What a tedious, vindictive waste of a perfectly good afternoon. I am so pissed off that we're going extinct over what essentially is just a global game of Monopoly that virtually none of us want to play.'
The game was created to show the flaws in capitalism and how awful monopoly is by a feminist in 1903. It's a beautifully constructed living metaphor, or analogy, (I never learned the difference) that I'd argue hits the same notes as the best literature. The fact US culture took the satire literally doesn't negate the brilliance of it. Just because capitalist zealots love the movie Wallstreet doesn't mean it wasn't a brilliant critique of greed...but shows the danger in how satire can be coopted. Lord knows what would happen if A Modest Proposal by Swift came out in the year 2021.
When we'd play all the money paid in taxes and penalties went into a pot and whoever landed on Free Parking got it. I guess this was a child's attempt to make a tedious and dreary game more fun.
My best friend would always win but when he played with me and my sisters we'd all gang up against him. It drove him mad. Fittingly he's a conservative and a great lawyer and is quick to point out all the unintended consequences of policy that comes from the left.
Great, great insight about miracles still being possible— they are as inevitable as the paradigm shifting miracle called awakened awareness— because they will come from outside our conditioned patterns and thus something we cannot anticipate.
Yes, the more conscious we become the more we see clearly how lost and confused and manipulated we are... and yet we still feel some inner impulse to carry on, to help, to survive long enough to awaken to our collective oneness.... long enough for the miracle to emerge.
The source of society’s propaganda is our inner propagandist, the mind-made ‘me’. This egoic “me” is made of narrative, of stories about “my life” and so it constantly creates narratives in order to survive and stay in power over us. This inner self-created propaganda keeps us feeling powerless and unable to experience the truth of who we are and of reality.
would have twitted your newsletter as i often have done before, but the zionist cockroaches have blocked my twitter account and disqus account as well. how long before they block my substack account??? the cockroaches are mosdef depsperate, LOL.
I've got a confession to make: I'm often pissed off at the most propagandized. My intellectual self knows I should see them as victims and throw a little compassion their way, but damn, the shadows on the cave wall are so obviously shadows that there's no excuse to pretend otherwise. People being dumb on purpose piss me off.
If this is an indication I need to grow as a person, I can accept that. As it is, to me, these ghouls are accomplishing their goals with the most rickety lies imaginable. It would be nice if we at least put them to work a little. Or better yet, stop listening to them altogether.
A lot of the really good propaganda has a lot of truth to it. Then there is a bait and switch maneuver on where the blame goes. Tucker may be the best at it. But when I talk to people nobody swallows all of it whole and it made me realize that we absorb so much of it in the assumptions of the subtext and over time we end up believing stuff we never really took the time to inspect. The limitations of how we gain understanding.
I don't watch Tucker regularly, but in his defense, he at least has Greenwald and Jimmy Dore on and lets them speak. Who else does?
A lot of truth to it you say? Maybe...but I'm talking about the heaps that don't. Like when I asked my family member for the single best example of why he believed Trump was working for Putin, he said this: "When they met, Trump was laughing." I mean, seriously. He's not a stupid person, but holy shit. And I don't think he's unique by any means. People really believe that Trump was fighting the deep state; that Obama meant well and was only thwarted by republicans; that Hillary lost due to misogyny and Russian meddling; that AOC's word salads actually mean something; that Israel's apartheid deserves blind defending. And on and on...
I was on the 'Obama meant well and was only thwarted by republicans' train myself for quite awhile. Wasn't paying close attention back then. It was in the subtext of all the news and probably some SNL sketches. I remember thinking Bernie was a silly candidate until Jon Stewart had a clip where he cut through it. Its disappointing. The news we watch gets us to accept so much without thinking. I'd love it if the US did a viral, trade your news for mine, type deal. But even then there would be friction. Once you are in a camp its hard to give other narratives a chance to make their case.
I think you hit the nail on the head. My 95 year old mother "likes that Rachel Maddow." I cut her slack because she's 95 years old. And my mother. But my younger family member has the same access to information that I do, yet stubbornly clings to legacy media like the NYT and other blue check fantasy mills. For him, there is no excuse.
Attempting to break through their bubble triggers the same reaction as if you are attacking their essence. None of this is personal, yet mostly since Trump, political discussions have taken on an aspect of identity.
Political discussions with my family member used to be just that -- agreements or disagreements about politics and no one's feelings got hurt. No longer. He claimed, with an air of frustration, that my rejection of his paradigm meant "I was creating my own reality." I guess that's what it must feel like when someone challenges your MSM world view.
The sad part is not that people are finding the wrong answers; it's that so many have stopped looking.
What you are describing is cognitive dissonance.
For my dream viral news exchange program to work it would have to be properly calibrated. I'd recommend a show like the Majority Report to MSM people to start. I'd recommend Dore to Fox viewers. With CNN maybe BreakingPoints. But the painful part is then if I did this I'd have to agree to watch some combination of Fox/MSM/CNN
How could anyone be on the "Obama meant well" train? He refused to prosecute 15 million unlawful foreclosures. Could anyone miss their neighbors moving away in the middle of the night? Could anyone miss Occupy in every large city? I can't even believe people not noticing any of that.
Very easy. I was worried about my career at the time. I had a hard time getting started in my field and got my first 'real' company job and was worried about cutting it. So it was work, watch some sports, whatever News I got was by accident, or from the Daily Show.
When I started working from home I started getting News from YouTube...even then I didn't right away buy all the anti-moderate left stuff, but I liked SecularTalk's 10-minute compact clips. And over time found out a lot of what I disagreed, or didn't believe in the subtext of the progressive worldview and its critique of the moderate left was true. That still happens from time to time with me.
Woah Woah Woah 'I've always hated Monopoly. What a tedious, vindictive waste of a perfectly good afternoon. I am so pissed off that we're going extinct over what essentially is just a global game of Monopoly that virtually none of us want to play.'
The game was created to show the flaws in capitalism and how awful monopoly is by a feminist in 1903. It's a beautifully constructed living metaphor, or analogy, (I never learned the difference) that I'd argue hits the same notes as the best literature. The fact US culture took the satire literally doesn't negate the brilliance of it. Just because capitalist zealots love the movie Wallstreet doesn't mean it wasn't a brilliant critique of greed...but shows the danger in how satire can be coopted. Lord knows what would happen if A Modest Proposal by Swift came out in the year 2021.
--https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins
When we'd play all the money paid in taxes and penalties went into a pot and whoever landed on Free Parking got it. I guess this was a child's attempt to make a tedious and dreary game more fun.
My best friend would always win but when he played with me and my sisters we'd all gang up against him. It drove him mad. Fittingly he's a conservative and a great lawyer and is quick to point out all the unintended consequences of policy that comes from the left.
Great, great insight about miracles still being possible— they are as inevitable as the paradigm shifting miracle called awakened awareness— because they will come from outside our conditioned patterns and thus something we cannot anticipate.
Yes, the more conscious we become the more we see clearly how lost and confused and manipulated we are... and yet we still feel some inner impulse to carry on, to help, to survive long enough to awaken to our collective oneness.... long enough for the miracle to emerge.
The source of society’s propaganda is our inner propagandist, the mind-made ‘me’. This egoic “me” is made of narrative, of stories about “my life” and so it constantly creates narratives in order to survive and stay in power over us. This inner self-created propaganda keeps us feeling powerless and unable to experience the truth of who we are and of reality.
On censorship --- About Facebook, Google, Tweeter, Amazon MONOPOLIES:
A very good discussion on simple and available solutions that are NOT enforced
DEMAND from our endlessly tweeting "progressive" Congressmen/women -- ENFORCEMENT of antitrust and anti-tracking laws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw6N8IbvjkE&feature=emb_logo
would have twitted your newsletter as i often have done before, but the zionist cockroaches have blocked my twitter account and disqus account as well. how long before they block my substack account??? the cockroaches are mosdef depsperate, LOL.
I kind of backed off retweeting as well. Seems my engagement goes down after such retweets. Then again it could just be my awkward prose.