Indeed. I find it quite tiresome trying to explain to certain self-described (ultra-partisan) progressives that if you step back a little and take an objective look, you might observe that the ground under our feet is shifting as it pertains to the mostly artificial, media-engineered political divide they we have come to know for so many decades, and that in fact it has increasingly evident for a while now, as I attempted to do as recently yesterday at a family picnic, only to elicit the predictably vacuous response "yeah well Tucker and Rachel really hate each others guts at this point".
"Cult" really, they're liability labels to justify & rationalize one selfish endeavor, additionally your username "goat" really > "Scapegoat" makes your intention questionable. What's with gamification & reductionism? Huh.
This article itself has a questionable framing & you're not helping.
Another excellent written construct at putting together a cluster of passages that speak to the core of my being. I'm a Moderate who doesn't believe that western governments are in the business of truly caring for their population, but only pacifying them while bleeding them dry financially, intellectually, morally, spiritually and physically.
I praise you for triggering us to think differently than what we've been taught all our lives by the Propaganda Industrial Complex and all the other three letter government agencies that seek to control us by telling us that they are "safe & effective" even while in the midst of the world's biggest silent war: The Plandemic. Keep doing what your heart compels you to do because it's very effective in comforting those of us who really understand your words of wisdom. The world needs your medicine to heal the millions of lost souls who put too much trust and service in their government.
I unashamedly admit that this is my personal echo chamber. Here I am seldom subjected to the ranting of idiots who see the world in a different way. That's why I come here.
I’ve been left my whole life. Covid and the vaccine woke me up. Now that I’m awake I see where the left is headed and what they’ve been planning. Moving the west towards a tyrannical corporate run state on the name of “climate change” is insanity. You don’t agree with this?
I consider myself independent and my line my entire life is “politics should be played between the 40yd lines. Everyone hanging out on their own 5yd line is close minded.
I see things differently nowadays. The left is out to destroy middle America and especially “white” middle America because we represent a class who will fight against tyranny and censorship. Point being... it’s different now.
I find your language and references confusing. If there is concentrated, unaccountable power of ANY ideology, and you are opposed, you are on the left. If liberals are forcing integration on defiant conservatives or shutting down platforms where loons and racists spew hate, or closing factories and eliminating jobs as part of a grand global vision, or imprisoning whistleblowers for exposing government fraud, this isn’t an evil left wing despotism. It’s late capitalism where totalitarianism is the favored logic of power.
The fake adversarialism of the U.S. electoral system would have us all believe that the right loves small government, opposes abortion, and favors white-skinned, god-fearing gun owners, and the left promotes black causes and gay rights and access to abortion and scandalous American histories where racists were empowered and the innocent were persecuted.
It’s all third-rate theater. There is no left in America, and only feeble remnants in Europe.
I'd note that "right" and "left" no longer have any meaning other than being the party lines of the Rs and Ds. And their doctrines can change at any time.
All this is just like the USSR. One day you hear nothing but how great Leader A is. The next day the photo of Leader A is replaced by one of Leader B and you hear nothing but peans to B. It was like that with the Covid lab leak idea. One day it was banned. The next day it was required. The media was like a company of marching soldiers hearing "face right! face left!" But I have learned that hardly anyone notices stuff like this.
I’m not sure why you use “what we hear” about the Soviet Union as analogous to my comment. I’ve never been to Russia, but what I hear about it, I am fairly certain is not to be believed. And, not to be critical, but I think you missed my point, or you completely disagree with it. I believe the labels “right” and “left” do have meaning, and their meanings don’t change. The terms are bastardized by the ruling elites, to put forth narratives to keep the public distracted. So the issues over which the fake parties argue can change, but those are not to be confused with “doctrine.” To me, at least, doctrine is what all the fraudulent players agree upon, namely power is to be wielded, not shared, money, and those who possess it are always accorded respect, war is good, enemies abound, taxes are evil, truth is what we are told, and surveillance of everyone is necessary for everyone’s protection.
What I take from much of Caitlin’s writing, we all live too much in our heads. We are not wired to accurately gauge how false or toxic our acquired thoughts and knowledge actually are or can be. When I was very young, I “knew” that my country was on the side of good. That message was never imparted directly, but it was so insidiously driven home from every quarter. The church, the teachers, my parents and older friends and siblings. The TV and newspapers and books. How could they all repeat and underscore the essential moral upstanding and “intelligence” of our home if it was not true?
Did you miss the part where he's blocked all access to the files again, and censored all links to Substack? Because the little putz is terrified by Substack's new Notes feature?
It suited him to play the free speech card for a few weeks, but he's the same dissociated asshole he was last year, and the decade before, building toy rockets while people starve in the street. Pretending Teslas are saving the environment when their ecological impact is 100 times worse than my '96 Tacoma. Heedless extraction and mindless consumption are all he "understands," if you can stomach calling that understanding. He's the perfect person to be head Twit.
You only need to engage the public in a discussion of substantive issues, ie. social reform to find out how closed their minds are due to the pervasive propaganda they are subject to daily. Our minds are shackled to this Kool Aid Fountain of misinformation and lies. The worst part is that the public is oblivious to it.
Too much illegitimate unaccountable power in too few hands=chaos and decline.
All the great ideas have been expressed what remains is to act upon at least a few of them of which we appear totally incapable.
While the West appears totally determined to destroy itself, I hope the East survives and moves forward. Here in the West we constantly ignore we are only 13% of the world's population and we think that entitles us to rule the world! Global parochialism and parasitism are very big issues of our times .
If anything, it is the distortions and corruption that have rendered capitalism as an unworkable thesis. Any institution or organization can be corrupted, even saintly religions.
Faulty capitalism still works far better than socialism or communism on its best days. The WEF and other parasitical elite cults all use capitalism to gain power and prominence until they get around to enslaving mankind.
I couldn't care less about musk, CNN or liberals. They are all firm examples of brain dead, over propagandized people and organizations all basking in their supreme arrogance while hating humanity at the same time. I guess it's a kind of multitasking.
“I've never encountered anyone with whom I agree all the time, and it would be silly for me to expect to. I agree and disagree on various subjects with the communists I follow, and the libertarians, and everyone else. I've agreed and disagreed with things I've heard from Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. And you should too. That's normal.”
You nail it here for me. It is very hard these days in the online world to deal with differing viewpoints. And lest someone thinks I agree with you (Caitlin Johnson) on every issue: no. Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other documents like the Bill of Rights (USA), and Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada) are very important to me human rights take priority for me. Therefore, I am very critical of the CCP and Xi Jinping due to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet. But my country (Canada) takes a hit thanks to the Fairy Creek Old Growth protests, Indigenous land defenders and the Truck Convoy. No fan of Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau (last two Prime Ministers).
a. often capitalized a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity
b. a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard
c. a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.
That seems odd, seems like liberals (or at least progressives) actually believe people are innately not good, which is why they favor government coercion to force people to be “good”.
Oh really? Tell me how (for example) speech codes and DEI pledges as a condition of academic employment, mask and vaccine mandates, government collusion with corporations to suppress disfavored speech by private citizens -- all supported by liberals -- “has nothing to do with individuals” and is instead is focused on “market failures”. And of course these examples are nowhere near exhaustive, I could cite innumerable examples of progressive authoritarianism
If you find yourself agreeing with your preferred slice of the political spectrum all the time on every issue, it means you are in a cult.
I always agree with Caitlin. The Cult of Caitlin? Sounds Irish.
Once you get deeply into it they tattoo a shamrock on your forehead and drink the blood of something or other. Then it's too late to get out.
Don't tell anybody I told you this. I'd get in trouble. Big trouble.
0.0
Indeed. I find it quite tiresome trying to explain to certain self-described (ultra-partisan) progressives that if you step back a little and take an objective look, you might observe that the ground under our feet is shifting as it pertains to the mostly artificial, media-engineered political divide they we have come to know for so many decades, and that in fact it has increasingly evident for a while now, as I attempted to do as recently yesterday at a family picnic, only to elicit the predictably vacuous response "yeah well Tucker and Rachel really hate each others guts at this point".
Um yeah Ok. Never mind.
"Cult" really, they're liability labels to justify & rationalize one selfish endeavor, additionally your username "goat" really > "Scapegoat" makes your intention questionable. What's with gamification & reductionism? Huh.
This article itself has a questionable framing & you're not helping.
That's a good point.
I'm a Zardoz man myself.
We can export the excised genitals to China. It could be big. Really big.
Another excellent written construct at putting together a cluster of passages that speak to the core of my being. I'm a Moderate who doesn't believe that western governments are in the business of truly caring for their population, but only pacifying them while bleeding them dry financially, intellectually, morally, spiritually and physically.
I praise you for triggering us to think differently than what we've been taught all our lives by the Propaganda Industrial Complex and all the other three letter government agencies that seek to control us by telling us that they are "safe & effective" even while in the midst of the world's biggest silent war: The Plandemic. Keep doing what your heart compels you to do because it's very effective in comforting those of us who really understand your words of wisdom. The world needs your medicine to heal the millions of lost souls who put too much trust and service in their government.
I bet the government doesn't see you as a moderate; you're a rebel and domestic terrorist by their definition.
I refer CNN to my liberal friends and family as "The other Fox news".
I unashamedly admit that this is my personal echo chamber. Here I am seldom subjected to the ranting of idiots who see the world in a different way. That's why I come here.
You are welcome here Patrick, in the echo chamber.
Mass media has *The Sheeple* fighting a culture war instead of a class war.
Get it. I’ll be brief.
I’ve been left my whole life. Covid and the vaccine woke me up. Now that I’m awake I see where the left is headed and what they’ve been planning. Moving the west towards a tyrannical corporate run state on the name of “climate change” is insanity. You don’t agree with this?
I consider myself independent and my line my entire life is “politics should be played between the 40yd lines. Everyone hanging out on their own 5yd line is close minded.
I see things differently nowadays. The left is out to destroy middle America and especially “white” middle America because we represent a class who will fight against tyranny and censorship. Point being... it’s different now.
I find your language and references confusing. If there is concentrated, unaccountable power of ANY ideology, and you are opposed, you are on the left. If liberals are forcing integration on defiant conservatives or shutting down platforms where loons and racists spew hate, or closing factories and eliminating jobs as part of a grand global vision, or imprisoning whistleblowers for exposing government fraud, this isn’t an evil left wing despotism. It’s late capitalism where totalitarianism is the favored logic of power.
The fake adversarialism of the U.S. electoral system would have us all believe that the right loves small government, opposes abortion, and favors white-skinned, god-fearing gun owners, and the left promotes black causes and gay rights and access to abortion and scandalous American histories where racists were empowered and the innocent were persecuted.
It’s all third-rate theater. There is no left in America, and only feeble remnants in Europe.
I'd note that "right" and "left" no longer have any meaning other than being the party lines of the Rs and Ds. And their doctrines can change at any time.
All this is just like the USSR. One day you hear nothing but how great Leader A is. The next day the photo of Leader A is replaced by one of Leader B and you hear nothing but peans to B. It was like that with the Covid lab leak idea. One day it was banned. The next day it was required. The media was like a company of marching soldiers hearing "face right! face left!" But I have learned that hardly anyone notices stuff like this.
I’m not sure why you use “what we hear” about the Soviet Union as analogous to my comment. I’ve never been to Russia, but what I hear about it, I am fairly certain is not to be believed. And, not to be critical, but I think you missed my point, or you completely disagree with it. I believe the labels “right” and “left” do have meaning, and their meanings don’t change. The terms are bastardized by the ruling elites, to put forth narratives to keep the public distracted. So the issues over which the fake parties argue can change, but those are not to be confused with “doctrine.” To me, at least, doctrine is what all the fraudulent players agree upon, namely power is to be wielded, not shared, money, and those who possess it are always accorded respect, war is good, enemies abound, taxes are evil, truth is what we are told, and surveillance of everyone is necessary for everyone’s protection.
I have read that 1984 is Amazon's best seller. Evidently I am not the only one who thinks are living in the 1984 world.
I wrote of the world in which I live, not of a world in which I would prefer to live.
What I take from much of Caitlin’s writing, we all live too much in our heads. We are not wired to accurately gauge how false or toxic our acquired thoughts and knowledge actually are or can be. When I was very young, I “knew” that my country was on the side of good. That message was never imparted directly, but it was so insidiously driven home from every quarter. The church, the teachers, my parents and older friends and siblings. The TV and newspapers and books. How could they all repeat and underscore the essential moral upstanding and “intelligence” of our home if it was not true?
For Twitter Files alone Elon Musk has entered history.
True! And yet I believe that Caitlin is right that he's yet another status quo personality.
Did you miss the part where he's blocked all access to the files again, and censored all links to Substack? Because the little putz is terrified by Substack's new Notes feature?
It suited him to play the free speech card for a few weeks, but he's the same dissociated asshole he was last year, and the decade before, building toy rockets while people starve in the street. Pretending Teslas are saving the environment when their ecological impact is 100 times worse than my '96 Tacoma. Heedless extraction and mindless consumption are all he "understands," if you can stomach calling that understanding. He's the perfect person to be head Twit.
No - I didn’t !!
But Twitter Files revelations are infinitely more important than e.g., Watergate.
You are just blinded and unbalanced ;-))
You only need to engage the public in a discussion of substantive issues, ie. social reform to find out how closed their minds are due to the pervasive propaganda they are subject to daily. Our minds are shackled to this Kool Aid Fountain of misinformation and lies. The worst part is that the public is oblivious to it.
Here's Sam Spade Jr.'s musical take on this situation. 1984 Blues. https://youtu.be/0LoE5lGGM24
Too much illegitimate unaccountable power in too few hands=chaos and decline.
All the great ideas have been expressed what remains is to act upon at least a few of them of which we appear totally incapable.
While the West appears totally determined to destroy itself, I hope the East survives and moves forward. Here in the West we constantly ignore we are only 13% of the world's population and we think that entitles us to rule the world! Global parochialism and parasitism are very big issues of our times .
YES!
And may it never go to your head!
If anything, it is the distortions and corruption that have rendered capitalism as an unworkable thesis. Any institution or organization can be corrupted, even saintly religions.
Faulty capitalism still works far better than socialism or communism on its best days. The WEF and other parasitical elite cults all use capitalism to gain power and prominence until they get around to enslaving mankind.
I couldn't care less about musk, CNN or liberals. They are all firm examples of brain dead, over propagandized people and organizations all basking in their supreme arrogance while hating humanity at the same time. I guess it's a kind of multitasking.
"American liberals just spent days raging at CNN for hosting a town hall with Donald Trump"
The goal is to prevent the havenots from organizing by depriving them of leadership.
Opinions and assholes, everyone has one... Keep on poking holes in the matrix. Arguably, I agree most of the time with your writing ... :)
This is entirely intentional.
“I've never encountered anyone with whom I agree all the time, and it would be silly for me to expect to. I agree and disagree on various subjects with the communists I follow, and the libertarians, and everyone else. I've agreed and disagreed with things I've heard from Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. And you should too. That's normal.”
You nail it here for me. It is very hard these days in the online world to deal with differing viewpoints. And lest someone thinks I agree with you (Caitlin Johnson) on every issue: no. Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other documents like the Bill of Rights (USA), and Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada) are very important to me human rights take priority for me. Therefore, I am very critical of the CCP and Xi Jinping due to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet. But my country (Canada) takes a hit thanks to the Fairy Creek Old Growth protests, Indigenous land defenders and the Truck Convoy. No fan of Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau (last two Prime Ministers).
Thanks and take care :)
Liberal \Lib"er*al\ (l[i^]b"[~e]r*al), a. [F. lib['e]ral, L.
liberalis, from liber free; perh. akin to libet, lubet, it
pleases, E. lief. Cf. {Deliver}.]
1. Free by birth; hence, befitting a freeman or gentleman;
refined; noble; independent; free; not servile or mean;
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Huh. I always thought it meant "generous and accepting."
How meaning changes over time!
And then "we" wonder why the left thinks we are authoritarian / fascist.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberalism
Only in the minds of people on the right.
liberalism
noun
1. the quality or state of being liberal
2.
a. often capitalized a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity
b. a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard
c. a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition (2003)
That seems odd, seems like liberals (or at least progressives) actually believe people are innately not good, which is why they favor government coercion to force people to be “good”.
Oh really? Tell me how (for example) speech codes and DEI pledges as a condition of academic employment, mask and vaccine mandates, government collusion with corporations to suppress disfavored speech by private citizens -- all supported by liberals -- “has nothing to do with individuals” and is instead is focused on “market failures”. And of course these examples are nowhere near exhaustive, I could cite innumerable examples of progressive authoritarianism