https://www.the-reframe.com/acceptable-losses/ "He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved."
It’s fascinating. During all my years attempting to teach my classes on Language, Logic and Persuasion to college students taking philosophy classes – and my years teaching classes on Critical Thinking to the Honors students – I always found that the most energy-consuming and time-demanding students were the F- students, because they did not have the wit to understand that their faulty reasoning actually could be wrong.
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The A students were always focused on what areas of their work they might not be getting quite right, and how they might improve their understanding and their work, so they were constantly interested in having their work and their understanding corrected. Generally, they actually underestimated how well they were doing, and always examined their own faults closely. Thus, they were constantly improving their competencies, and more likely to find fault with themselves, than look to find fault in their professor.
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The B students were not quite as sharp, and did not recognize their faults and misunderstandings as quickly, but they were educable, and could often be trained in methods of reasoning, so they did not usually outright quarrel with their professor, and were somewhat open to learning from the professor, and learning from the material under study.
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The C students could be mixed in their level of adaptability to the educational process. Some genuinely wanted to develop themselves. Others were there simply to pick up a grade and gradually earn a college certificate, and therefore could be actively resistant to the learning process.
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The D students were also mixed in their capabilities, in that some just had genuine difficulty with competencies, but were sincere about wishing to learn. Other D students, however, were really F students who were benefiting from the contemporary grade inflation that has been intransigent since the time of the Vietnam war, and the inflating of the grades of all the students which allowed concerned professors to help keep their students from earning a bullet in the jungles of East Asisa.
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Given that tradition of pervasive grade inflation, many (but by no means all) contemporary students who earn anything from a C to an F are often actually what I would call “F- students.” An “F- student”, to my mind, is someone who never truly grasps that the purpose of education is to fundamentally overturn one’s own ignorance, which requires a special moral courage apparently unavailable to many students today – or, for that matter, to many members of the public: the simple ability to utter the three words: “I don’t know.”
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Without that basic ability to acknowledge one’s own possible ignorance on any given subject at hand, true learning is unavailable to anyone, and ever after, all that a person learns is the ability to reject true knowledge in others – and therefore for oneself – and ever more energetic ways to assert one’s own ignorance as the gospel truth.
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[In terms of this anecdotal report on my part, please bear in mind that I am simply referring to my experience of that selection of students that took my classes in reasoning and logic, and how the grades that they earned there tended to align with their attitude to the learning process and their engagement with it.
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Other students in other classes with other professors might earn A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and so forth, due to entirely different factors – in some cases, factors having more to do with the professor in question than with the student. I am just talking here about my experience of my students in my classes, and their engagement with logic and reasoning, or, as in some cases, their unwillingness or inability to do so].
It's simpler than that. CK was directly and specifically a product of right-wing rich people with too much money. He met a rich guy who heard him give a speech when he was 18 who told him not to go to college, but to be a right-wing influencer (gadfly) instead, and "co-founded" (funded) his company to the tune of millions, and put him in the way of other rich conservatives, which is how CK was pulling down a salary of over $300,000 from his $39 million company.
The media keeps saying that CK was effective in pulling young voters for Trump, but according to Wikipedia, that crashed and burned to mutual blame.
So, this is basically an obnoxious high-school kid who never got over his know-it-all attitude, and was paid a lot of money to be that way. Because right-wing rich people are not taxed enough.
It's not merely about "stance". It's an issue of truth or falsehood. In the UK (for one example only) we are told that migrants arriving in small boats are "illegal" and are "swamping" the country. Neither is true. In many cases such refugees are found to be entitled to legal status after due process has been followed. And anyway all of them comprise only about 3% of total immigration. They are singled out because a bureaucratic system focuses on them and on their temporary accommodation. They are singled out because they are not white. There was no such problem of "stance" with white Ukrainians. The issue with Trump, Vance, Musk, Kirk, Faridge and "Robinson" is that they never direct their bile at rich white people. They believe you can shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Some of them believe you can set fire to migrant accommodation with people inside. That's not a stance or a point of view.
What a wonderfully irony-free proposal from voter Elly May on Trump’s Truth Social account – the creation of a Ministry of Truth to enhance government control over what should be deemed truth and what should be deemed lies. In George Orwell's 1984, the four government ministries were the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty.
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The Ministry of Truth was responsible for propagating government propaganda. The other three ministries were likewise responsible for achieving the opposite of what they were called. I guess the people pushing these ideas today don’t care for books too much?
The USA/West is moving exactly in a direction that was predicted long ago. Frank Zappa was telling us some things 50+ years ago. The facade, lies, and curtains of "freedom & democracy" will fall once the supremacist judeo-nazi rulers/masters see no longer the need for that and is no longer convenient. Supremacist western Kakistocracies hate human intelligence, integrity, competence, truth, humanity, freedom, and honesty.
Were all the journalist killed in Gaza not telling the truth? Does Israel and supporters tell the truth? Arrest all who have supported the Genocide. 1 State: Palestine. Expel Israel from the U.N. and Palestine, and bless the Flotilla.
Oh, please, enough already. I mourned when my last hiking buddy died; my beautiful dear friend Golden Retriever. He was worth a gazillion Kirks, a hundred gazillion Trumps and anyone who supports this nonsense act. ENOUGH ALREADY.
Who is this man that has the whole of the US in a frenzy whilst the daily killing of people's round the world are dying and being genocided. Really this verging on hysteria!
So sad about your dog Vin and my dearest cat also on his last few months.
Thanks, Dear Jenny. Hysteria it is. A national pastime fomented by the MSM. Turns out to be one of the main functions of The NY Times et al. — Distraction, of course. Keep the proles masticating on the meaty bones and sinews of celebrity anyone — be it Kirk or some corporate insider rebooting a sinking career, and the MSM will have you wasting your time and energy on complete BS, while children are starved to death by psychopaths who walk around continuing to contaminate the world with their filthy rhetoric.
THIS. We must simply take over and sterilize these soulless cyphers. Seriously, it's what the left is missing, the acceptance of the biological reality at play.
Gotta love America, where hate speech is protected speech and speaking truth is a criminal act. Someone should tell them that Orwell’s book “1984” was a cautionary tale, a warning, not an instruction manual.
We're already getting backlash for saying 'fascist'. The continuity of agenda of Washington's white christian patriarchy (powered by US based interests in fossil fuels, finance, animal ag, agrochemicals, pharma, tech, gambling, porn, drug and sex trafficking, arms, AI, media, surveillance and full spectrum global dominance) don't like being called what they are ie fascist Nazi terrorists- so they're making it a crime to say it (further proving what they are)!
Yes, end its stream of wealth by not buying their products. No more fossil fuels, animal ag, agrochem, pharma or recreational drugs, gambling, Netflix or Amazon. We don’t need a strike of public service workers which would impact the most vulnerable; we need autonomous local communities with their own energy supply, growing and looking after their own.
That would mean transferring power and authority to the farmer workers, sweat shops, call centres and factory workers in the Global Majority, not in the West. That can’t happen will the majority middle classes in the West continue to support the profits, hegemony, regime change and genocides of Washington. It’s not a class struggle it’s a Imperialist/West vs multipolar/global majority struggle.
GS-z-14-1, Isn't that precisely what Jo Waller is saying?:
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"We don’t need a strike of public service workers which would impact the most vulnerable; we need autonomous local communities with their own energy supply, growing and looking after their own".
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I presume that Jo is thinking along the lines of somethnig like Rick Wolff cooperative economic enterprises (Democracy at Work, yes?).
As Trotsky wrote in 39, to defeat fascism, “it is necessary to set in motion millions, tens and hundreds of millions of the oppressed throughout the whole world and lead them in the assault upon the strongholds of the old society.”
We’ve been through this already.
Fascism cannot and will not be defeated by acts of individual heroism or protests, or boycotts, or the pseudo-left ‘opposition’ of social democratic oriented parties. 1933 showed us that.
No faction of the ruling class, or any of its parties, or any faction of the political or media establishment is going to lead that struggle.
The defeat of fascism necessitates the conscious, organized mobilization of the working class — the vast majority of society — based on a revolutionary socialist program.
With anything less or anything else, fascism’s success is ensured.
I recommend that you recognize that the absence of any and all commitment to the system of governance described by the constitution means that the United States Republic has fallen, passed from history, and no longer exists.
Defeat the fascism, or it is repression, authoritarianism, war and interminable global war.
Some of us have been warning of this for decades. But it wasn’t the spokespersons of the social democracy tendency!
In George Orwell's 1984, the four government ministries were the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty.
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The Ministry of Truth was responsible for propagating government propaganda. The other three ministries were likewise responsible for achieving the opposite of what they were called. (I guess the people pushing these ideas today don’t care for books too much?)
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As Ron Stockton wrote above:
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"Gotta love America, where hate speech is protected speech and speaking truth is a criminal act. Someone should tell them that Orwell’s book “1984” was a cautionary tale, a warning, not an instruction manual".
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What a wonderfully irony-free proposal from voter Elly May on Trump’s Truth Social account – the creation of a Ministry of Truth to enhance government control over what should be deemed truth and what should be deemed lies.
How the hell could anyone ask Drumpf to start a truth act? There is no connection or perception of truth in man's brain, noting one cell ever, he lies bout everything, all the time. The woman is delusional to think Drumpf could ever know truth if it bit him in his father arse.
The logic of Team Trump is: whatever Trump says is truth. Whoever contradicts him is lying. Trump and his admirers are not the first ones to come up with this. It is a very ancient meme and theme. Plato addresses this problem in the first chapter of his most famous book, The Republic. Aso, Robert Bolt does a good job of dramatizing it in his play about Henry VIII (he of the six wives and the beheadings) called A Man for All Seasons.
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In the play, Bolt has one of the king's sycophants says: ”If the king says a man is a bad man, that man is a bad man." That's' it in a nutshell.
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That's where we are at. The six wives, the beheadings, and the death from syphilis or some other unpleasant social disease cannot be far behind.
Anything revolving around government is incapable of ever being truthful. Doesn't matter what clowns are running the show. They are all certified liars.
Here maybe, because here goverment, for many decades, has been captured and held hostage by the corporations and the wealthy and the captialists. Elsewhere, things can different. Brazil just sent their criminal ex-president to jail for over twenty years. Trump is mad at hell at them, but it seems like good governance to me.
The entire idea of adults "governing" other adults (with an armed police force and a military) keeps us like sophisticated barbarians. Nothing could be stupider than individuals handing over the power over themselves to someone else, let alone total strangers whom you can never have a discussion with.
It’s sad, really. A thought I have been contemplating throughout this last year is that America (meaning the U.S., that is) never really transitioned into a postcolonial society. I think that, in truth, America is still the settler colonial society of 200 years or more ago. To my mind, the core proof of this proposition is to be seen, not just in personal gun ownership alone, but also in the pervasive employment of guns by the various federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities.
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I grew up in the Republic of Ireland, which was founded upon the provisionally semi-independent status that twenty-six counties in the South of Ireland won from Britain in the early 1920’s and, on the basis of which they created a full-blown republic a couple of decades later.
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The interesting thing about Ireland’s transition to a Republic is that, prior to independence, the Royal Irish Constabulary were an armed police force. The newly formed Gardai (Irish police force) of the newly independent republic-to-be, the Irish Free State, were established as an unarmed police force, and were continued as such in the later Republic of Ireland.
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As the time of Ireland’s War of Independence, and Ireland’s Civil War, in the early 1920’s, many Irish households were armed to the teeth. With independence, however, and with the end of the Irish Civil War, there was a collective commitment, both by the citizens of the country, and by the Irish government authorities, to de-weaponize their lives as much as was feasible.
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Thus, the Irish police have, ever thereafter, carried out most of their daily responsibilities, for the most part, with an unarmed police force. Obviously, for certain unique circumstances, armed officers can be assigned when an extreme need arises, but the police officers that the public meet with, and deal with, on a daily basis, are usually unarmed.
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In a similar vein – to the best of my knowledge at any rate, and apart from Republican households committed to the ideology of continuing armed struggle against British occupation of Northern Ireland; which is largely abandoned today, of course – in the aftermath of the War of Independence, and the accompanying Irish Civil War, personal gun ownership as a regular way of life was given up, and has not been taken up by since then as such by the great majority of the citizens of the Republic of Ireland; who, to my perception at any rate, greatly value the peaceful merits of a mostly gun-free society.
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[I allow the caveat that I could be entirely wrong about the stats on all of this. Maybe there are vast quantities of guns stashed in all kinds of households that I am unaware of, but this was my own impression growing up in Ireland; that, certainly guns were owned by the Republicans who were still committed to armed struggle, but that was a minority of the population].
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What I am struck by is that one thing the Irish did want from their decolonization process, were the kind of unarmed police that also traditionally populate the police force of Britain – i.e., who are genuinely a part of the citizenry themselves, and who participate as such – so, to me, the fact that the U.S. has not been able to transition to an unarmed police force suggests to me that this is a country which remains under occupation to this very day.
To be a lying liar is a precondition to be a successful western politician (with very few exceptions). They couldn't speak truth even if tortured. It is in their genes.
I think "we've" been lost for quite a while now...it simply took people a while to realize this - and I doubt most people even realize HOW LOST our civilization (and humanity) is...😔
That's a difficult point. I try not to look at the past through rose tinted glasses, but we have certainly lost our way now. Social media has been harnessed to get us where we are now. But where did that originate? Certainly not in middle America. Probably not in Europe. I have my suspicions, but I won't air them - I'd just need serving those who drive this destruction. 😔
Ah! This is an understandable reason for CK's murder. Make out that people saying he was a racist and sexist Nazi were stirring hatred and inciting the violence that got him killed. So a law protecting the white christian patriarchy from such slurs would be just fine. As the government is controlled by the patriarchy it wouldn't prosecute those saying racist lies about, for example, immigrants.
I can see how that would work and how the whole left right drama has fed into this latest backlash. Don't call a racist racist but let racists lie with impunity.
That description of the power structures is sadly very inaccurate and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. It's a classic leftist conspiracy theory that is used to keep people brainwashed and ineffective.
If your thinking keeps you in a left/right paradigm, it's wrong, because that paradigm is patently false.
My thinking and description does not keep me in the left right paradigm. It is the correct view point as is describes how the paradigm controls and divides people into some being'leftists' and some having 'conspiracy theories'.
When people in the government have the power to determine what truth is, we know that there is no freedom of speech. When has our government ever told us the truth about anything? Its goal is to deliver a narrative that we are supposed to accept and believe.
As I understand what Kirk did, he was all about debating with someone who had differing views. There will be no such thing as debate if truth is pre-determined, so, in essence, this is an anti-Kirk proposition.
When people are coerced into being automatons who chant "yes", we will have become machines.
IMHO, Wren, not really. Not if one considers what Kevin Donovan posted above, at the top of this discussion thread:
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https://www.the-reframe.com/acceptable-losses/ "He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved."
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Kirk was only performing a theater of open debate. In fact, his strategy was simply to deny anyone who contradicted him. Since he never accepted any proof offered by his opponents, he could put on a charming act of being an amenable sceptic. In fact, however, he was just being a contrarian jerk, dressed up as a convivial performer. It's John Cleese's (Monty Python) parrot sketch, only in a less truthful form.
>>"As I understand what Kirk did, he was all about debating with someone who had differing views."
Actually, Kirk was about anything BUT debating. He (and his moneyed right-wing backers) were more about 'indoctrinating' young people with right-wing ideologies (and sowing division amongst people). He was about hate, making money, being a patsy of the rich, and more.
The last thing in the world CK cared about was 'free speech', as no one that truly believes in 'free speech' (or even understands what it means and the different contexts of application of it) would behave (and act) in the ways that CK did.
So, no - CK was never about free speech - that was an illusion. CK's speech was HATE SPEECH (and more) masquerading as 'free speech'.
Well, I can’t wait to see what South Park make of this…
For anyone not following it, South Park are tackling the subject of Trump in the White House and all the implications. As usually they put it in a hilarious context which almost seems too close to the truth. Gos bless them for reaching the millions and putting the situation in the most easy to understand format.
Will South Park even survive the Trump Ascendancy?
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I don't just mean will Trump shut it down? There's a very good chance of that, of course. I mean: what place does satire, irony and parody have in a world where the objects of satire, irony and parody are already self-parodying themselves?
It eventually will but the problem is that 100s of millions if not billions will die before that. Misery, poverty, illnesses, mass starvation, etc. will set, what is left of, humanity 500-1000 years back. Stupid humans never learn.
Nick, I appreciate your sense of clarity and alertness to the trials ahead. At the same time, IMHO, I personally cannot escape my own inclindation to hold a candle up against the darkness.
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And it's worth considering the propostiion put forward by journalist and social activist, George Monbiot -- that the dial on social change can be moved from "impossible" to inevitable" if just 25% of the people come around to supporting that change.
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IMO, 25% will not be easy to achieve, but also not impossible.
His opinions cut other humans like a sword .He wasn’t known for Love and unity he was known for hate. I think u know all of this but ur going through denial. Bless ur heart
Well, Charlie Kirk was not undefeated in debate. It was, rather, his denial of defeat that was undefeated. Because there is no path to defeating denial.
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Kirk was only performing a theater of open debate. In fact, his strategy was simply to deny anyone who contradicted him. Since he never accepted any proof offered by his opponents, he could put on a charming act of being an amenable sceptic. In fact, however, he was just being a contrarian jerk, dressed up as a convivial performer. It's John Cleese's (Monty Python) parrot sketch, only in a less truthful form.
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This is what Kevin Donovan was talking about when he posted above, at the top of this discussion thread:
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https://www.the-reframe.com/acceptable-losses/ "He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved."
https://www.the-reframe.com/acceptable-losses/ "He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved."
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It’s fascinating. During all my years attempting to teach my classes on Language, Logic and Persuasion to college students taking philosophy classes – and my years teaching classes on Critical Thinking to the Honors students – I always found that the most energy-consuming and time-demanding students were the F- students, because they did not have the wit to understand that their faulty reasoning actually could be wrong.
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The A students were always focused on what areas of their work they might not be getting quite right, and how they might improve their understanding and their work, so they were constantly interested in having their work and their understanding corrected. Generally, they actually underestimated how well they were doing, and always examined their own faults closely. Thus, they were constantly improving their competencies, and more likely to find fault with themselves, than look to find fault in their professor.
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The B students were not quite as sharp, and did not recognize their faults and misunderstandings as quickly, but they were educable, and could often be trained in methods of reasoning, so they did not usually outright quarrel with their professor, and were somewhat open to learning from the professor, and learning from the material under study.
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The C students could be mixed in their level of adaptability to the educational process. Some genuinely wanted to develop themselves. Others were there simply to pick up a grade and gradually earn a college certificate, and therefore could be actively resistant to the learning process.
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The D students were also mixed in their capabilities, in that some just had genuine difficulty with competencies, but were sincere about wishing to learn. Other D students, however, were really F students who were benefiting from the contemporary grade inflation that has been intransigent since the time of the Vietnam war, and the inflating of the grades of all the students which allowed concerned professors to help keep their students from earning a bullet in the jungles of East Asisa.
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Given that tradition of pervasive grade inflation, many (but by no means all) contemporary students who earn anything from a C to an F are often actually what I would call “F- students.” An “F- student”, to my mind, is someone who never truly grasps that the purpose of education is to fundamentally overturn one’s own ignorance, which requires a special moral courage apparently unavailable to many students today – or, for that matter, to many members of the public: the simple ability to utter the three words: “I don’t know.”
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Without that basic ability to acknowledge one’s own possible ignorance on any given subject at hand, true learning is unavailable to anyone, and ever after, all that a person learns is the ability to reject true knowledge in others – and therefore for oneself – and ever more energetic ways to assert one’s own ignorance as the gospel truth.
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[In terms of this anecdotal report on my part, please bear in mind that I am simply referring to my experience of that selection of students that took my classes in reasoning and logic, and how the grades that they earned there tended to align with their attitude to the learning process and their engagement with it.
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Other students in other classes with other professors might earn A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and so forth, due to entirely different factors – in some cases, factors having more to do with the professor in question than with the student. I am just talking here about my experience of my students in my classes, and their engagement with logic and reasoning, or, as in some cases, their unwillingness or inability to do so].
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CK is just a product of rotten western societies. There are many like him. No intelligence, no integrity, no honesty, just lies and cheap demagoguery.
It's simpler than that. CK was directly and specifically a product of right-wing rich people with too much money. He met a rich guy who heard him give a speech when he was 18 who told him not to go to college, but to be a right-wing influencer (gadfly) instead, and "co-founded" (funded) his company to the tune of millions, and put him in the way of other rich conservatives, which is how CK was pulling down a salary of over $300,000 from his $39 million company.
The media keeps saying that CK was effective in pulling young voters for Trump, but according to Wikipedia, that crashed and burned to mutual blame.
So, this is basically an obnoxious high-school kid who never got over his know-it-all attitude, and was paid a lot of money to be that way. Because right-wing rich people are not taxed enough.
I believe you are right.
Great comment. Free speech to pollute civil discourse. This will be Kirk’s legacy.
Everybody on the Internet acts like that. I've never changed anyone's stance on anything
It's not merely about "stance". It's an issue of truth or falsehood. In the UK (for one example only) we are told that migrants arriving in small boats are "illegal" and are "swamping" the country. Neither is true. In many cases such refugees are found to be entitled to legal status after due process has been followed. And anyway all of them comprise only about 3% of total immigration. They are singled out because a bureaucratic system focuses on them and on their temporary accommodation. They are singled out because they are not white. There was no such problem of "stance" with white Ukrainians. The issue with Trump, Vance, Musk, Kirk, Faridge and "Robinson" is that they never direct their bile at rich white people. They believe you can shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Some of them believe you can set fire to migrant accommodation with people inside. That's not a stance or a point of view.
“Ministry of Truth” - straight out of Orwell’s 1984
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What a wonderfully irony-free proposal from voter Elly May on Trump’s Truth Social account – the creation of a Ministry of Truth to enhance government control over what should be deemed truth and what should be deemed lies. In George Orwell's 1984, the four government ministries were the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty.
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The Ministry of Truth was responsible for propagating government propaganda. The other three ministries were likewise responsible for achieving the opposite of what they were called. I guess the people pushing these ideas today don’t care for books too much?
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Yep, Big Blatherer
The USA/West is moving exactly in a direction that was predicted long ago. Frank Zappa was telling us some things 50+ years ago. The facade, lies, and curtains of "freedom & democracy" will fall once the supremacist judeo-nazi rulers/masters see no longer the need for that and is no longer convenient. Supremacist western Kakistocracies hate human intelligence, integrity, competence, truth, humanity, freedom, and honesty.
Were all the journalist killed in Gaza not telling the truth? Does Israel and supporters tell the truth? Arrest all who have supported the Genocide. 1 State: Palestine. Expel Israel from the U.N. and Palestine, and bless the Flotilla.
Oh, please, enough already. I mourned when my last hiking buddy died; my beautiful dear friend Golden Retriever. He was worth a gazillion Kirks, a hundred gazillion Trumps and anyone who supports this nonsense act. ENOUGH ALREADY.
Who is this man that has the whole of the US in a frenzy whilst the daily killing of people's round the world are dying and being genocided. Really this verging on hysteria!
So sad about your dog Vin and my dearest cat also on his last few months.
Thanks, Dear Jenny. Hysteria it is. A national pastime fomented by the MSM. Turns out to be one of the main functions of The NY Times et al. — Distraction, of course. Keep the proles masticating on the meaty bones and sinews of celebrity anyone — be it Kirk or some corporate insider rebooting a sinking career, and the MSM will have you wasting your time and energy on complete BS, while children are starved to death by psychopaths who walk around continuing to contaminate the world with their filthy rhetoric.
Couldn't agree more.
Israel & supporters Lie, People Die.
That is in their blood. They cannot live without lying and perverting things.
THIS. We must simply take over and sterilize these soulless cyphers. Seriously, it's what the left is missing, the acceptance of the biological reality at play.
Gotta love America, where hate speech is protected speech and speaking truth is a criminal act. Someone should tell them that Orwell’s book “1984” was a cautionary tale, a warning, not an instruction manual.
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LOL
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Too True.
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Kirk as the excuse for what fascists always intended.
We're already getting backlash for saying 'fascist'. The continuity of agenda of Washington's white christian patriarchy (powered by US based interests in fossil fuels, finance, animal ag, agrochemicals, pharma, tech, gambling, porn, drug and sex trafficking, arms, AI, media, surveillance and full spectrum global dominance) don't like being called what they are ie fascist Nazi terrorists- so they're making it a crime to say it (further proving what they are)!
It is powered by ‘Capitalism.’
It is resisted in class struggle.
Its shape is the General Strike.
Intent? End its stream of Wealth.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/09/prin-s25.html
Yes, end its stream of wealth by not buying their products. No more fossil fuels, animal ag, agrochem, pharma or recreational drugs, gambling, Netflix or Amazon. We don’t need a strike of public service workers which would impact the most vulnerable; we need autonomous local communities with their own energy supply, growing and looking after their own.
Jo:
I realize this is a radical turn for you. But as important as they are for raising awareness, etc., boycotts will never end Capitalism.
Transfer all power and authority to the 90%, which is the working class.
Revolutionary struggle is the sole way forward.
That would mean transferring power and authority to the farmer workers, sweat shops, call centres and factory workers in the Global Majority, not in the West. That can’t happen will the majority middle classes in the West continue to support the profits, hegemony, regime change and genocides of Washington. It’s not a class struggle it’s a Imperialist/West vs multipolar/global majority struggle.
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Thank you for your response, Jo Waller, although I'm not quite sure what you're arguing. I will take a fruther look at this later. regards.
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GS-z-14-1, Isn't that precisely what Jo Waller is saying?:
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"We don’t need a strike of public service workers which would impact the most vulnerable; we need autonomous local communities with their own energy supply, growing and looking after their own".
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I presume that Jo is thinking along the lines of somethnig like Rick Wolff cooperative economic enterprises (Democracy at Work, yes?).
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Greetings, Sean!
As Trotsky wrote in 39, to defeat fascism, “it is necessary to set in motion millions, tens and hundreds of millions of the oppressed throughout the whole world and lead them in the assault upon the strongholds of the old society.”
We’ve been through this already.
Fascism cannot and will not be defeated by acts of individual heroism or protests, or boycotts, or the pseudo-left ‘opposition’ of social democratic oriented parties. 1933 showed us that.
No faction of the ruling class, or any of its parties, or any faction of the political or media establishment is going to lead that struggle.
The defeat of fascism necessitates the conscious, organized mobilization of the working class — the vast majority of society — based on a revolutionary socialist program.
With anything less or anything else, fascism’s success is ensured.
I recommend that you recognize that the absence of any and all commitment to the system of governance described by the constitution means that the United States Republic has fallen, passed from history, and no longer exists.
Defeat the fascism, or it is repression, authoritarianism, war and interminable global war.
Some of us have been warning of this for decades. But it wasn’t the spokespersons of the social democracy tendency!
Now we’re here — in ‘33 again.
We must all consider our ways.
Take care, Sean, and keep safe.
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Excellent, Jo Waller!
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IMHO, you're on the right track!
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Jo, unless or until we understand class relations based on relationship to the productive system, we are condemned to a life of political illiteracy.
I wish you well in your quest! Take care, Jo, and be safe!
This is the most chilling thing I've heard from Trump. Wasn't there a 'Ministry ofTruth' in Orwell's book 1984?
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Yup!
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In George Orwell's 1984, the four government ministries were the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty.
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The Ministry of Truth was responsible for propagating government propaganda. The other three ministries were likewise responsible for achieving the opposite of what they were called. (I guess the people pushing these ideas today don’t care for books too much?)
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As Ron Stockton wrote above:
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"Gotta love America, where hate speech is protected speech and speaking truth is a criminal act. Someone should tell them that Orwell’s book “1984” was a cautionary tale, a warning, not an instruction manual".
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What a wonderfully irony-free proposal from voter Elly May on Trump’s Truth Social account – the creation of a Ministry of Truth to enhance government control over what should be deemed truth and what should be deemed lies.
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How the hell could anyone ask Drumpf to start a truth act? There is no connection or perception of truth in man's brain, noting one cell ever, he lies bout everything, all the time. The woman is delusional to think Drumpf could ever know truth if it bit him in his father arse.
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The logic of Team Trump is: whatever Trump says is truth. Whoever contradicts him is lying. Trump and his admirers are not the first ones to come up with this. It is a very ancient meme and theme. Plato addresses this problem in the first chapter of his most famous book, The Republic. Aso, Robert Bolt does a good job of dramatizing it in his play about Henry VIII (he of the six wives and the beheadings) called A Man for All Seasons.
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In the play, Bolt has one of the king's sycophants says: ”If the king says a man is a bad man, that man is a bad man." That's' it in a nutshell.
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That's where we are at. The six wives, the beheadings, and the death from syphilis or some other unpleasant social disease cannot be far behind.
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Explains MAGA.
Anything revolving around government is incapable of ever being truthful. Doesn't matter what clowns are running the show. They are all certified liars.
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Here maybe, because here goverment, for many decades, has been captured and held hostage by the corporations and the wealthy and the captialists. Elsewhere, things can different. Brazil just sent their criminal ex-president to jail for over twenty years. Trump is mad at hell at them, but it seems like good governance to me.
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The entire idea of adults "governing" other adults (with an armed police force and a military) keeps us like sophisticated barbarians. Nothing could be stupider than individuals handing over the power over themselves to someone else, let alone total strangers whom you can never have a discussion with.
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It’s sad, really. A thought I have been contemplating throughout this last year is that America (meaning the U.S., that is) never really transitioned into a postcolonial society. I think that, in truth, America is still the settler colonial society of 200 years or more ago. To my mind, the core proof of this proposition is to be seen, not just in personal gun ownership alone, but also in the pervasive employment of guns by the various federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities.
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I grew up in the Republic of Ireland, which was founded upon the provisionally semi-independent status that twenty-six counties in the South of Ireland won from Britain in the early 1920’s and, on the basis of which they created a full-blown republic a couple of decades later.
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The interesting thing about Ireland’s transition to a Republic is that, prior to independence, the Royal Irish Constabulary were an armed police force. The newly formed Gardai (Irish police force) of the newly independent republic-to-be, the Irish Free State, were established as an unarmed police force, and were continued as such in the later Republic of Ireland.
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As the time of Ireland’s War of Independence, and Ireland’s Civil War, in the early 1920’s, many Irish households were armed to the teeth. With independence, however, and with the end of the Irish Civil War, there was a collective commitment, both by the citizens of the country, and by the Irish government authorities, to de-weaponize their lives as much as was feasible.
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Thus, the Irish police have, ever thereafter, carried out most of their daily responsibilities, for the most part, with an unarmed police force. Obviously, for certain unique circumstances, armed officers can be assigned when an extreme need arises, but the police officers that the public meet with, and deal with, on a daily basis, are usually unarmed.
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In a similar vein – to the best of my knowledge at any rate, and apart from Republican households committed to the ideology of continuing armed struggle against British occupation of Northern Ireland; which is largely abandoned today, of course – in the aftermath of the War of Independence, and the accompanying Irish Civil War, personal gun ownership as a regular way of life was given up, and has not been taken up by since then as such by the great majority of the citizens of the Republic of Ireland; who, to my perception at any rate, greatly value the peaceful merits of a mostly gun-free society.
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[I allow the caveat that I could be entirely wrong about the stats on all of this. Maybe there are vast quantities of guns stashed in all kinds of households that I am unaware of, but this was my own impression growing up in Ireland; that, certainly guns were owned by the Republicans who were still committed to armed struggle, but that was a minority of the population].
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What I am struck by is that one thing the Irish did want from their decolonization process, were the kind of unarmed police that also traditionally populate the police force of Britain – i.e., who are genuinely a part of the citizenry themselves, and who participate as such – so, to me, the fact that the U.S. has not been able to transition to an unarmed police force suggests to me that this is a country which remains under occupation to this very day.
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To be a lying liar is a precondition to be a successful western politician (with very few exceptions). They couldn't speak truth even if tortured. It is in their genes.
When the truth becomes lies and lies become the truth, we are lost.
Sign of end-of-times, age of Dajjal
I think "we've" been lost for quite a while now...it simply took people a while to realize this - and I doubt most people even realize HOW LOST our civilization (and humanity) is...😔
That's a difficult point. I try not to look at the past through rose tinted glasses, but we have certainly lost our way now. Social media has been harnessed to get us where we are now. But where did that originate? Certainly not in middle America. Probably not in Europe. I have my suspicions, but I won't air them - I'd just need serving those who drive this destruction. 😔
Ah! This is an understandable reason for CK's murder. Make out that people saying he was a racist and sexist Nazi were stirring hatred and inciting the violence that got him killed. So a law protecting the white christian patriarchy from such slurs would be just fine. As the government is controlled by the patriarchy it wouldn't prosecute those saying racist lies about, for example, immigrants.
I can see how that would work and how the whole left right drama has fed into this latest backlash. Don't call a racist racist but let racists lie with impunity.
By George I think he's got it.
That description of the power structures is sadly very inaccurate and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. It's a classic leftist conspiracy theory that is used to keep people brainwashed and ineffective.
If your thinking keeps you in a left/right paradigm, it's wrong, because that paradigm is patently false.
My thinking and description does not keep me in the left right paradigm. It is the correct view point as is describes how the paradigm controls and divides people into some being'leftists' and some having 'conspiracy theories'.
When people in the government have the power to determine what truth is, we know that there is no freedom of speech. When has our government ever told us the truth about anything? Its goal is to deliver a narrative that we are supposed to accept and believe.
As I understand what Kirk did, he was all about debating with someone who had differing views. There will be no such thing as debate if truth is pre-determined, so, in essence, this is an anti-Kirk proposition.
When people are coerced into being automatons who chant "yes", we will have become machines.
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IMHO, Wren, not really. Not if one considers what Kevin Donovan posted above, at the top of this discussion thread:
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https://www.the-reframe.com/acceptable-losses/ "He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved."
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Kirk was only performing a theater of open debate. In fact, his strategy was simply to deny anyone who contradicted him. Since he never accepted any proof offered by his opponents, he could put on a charming act of being an amenable sceptic. In fact, however, he was just being a contrarian jerk, dressed up as a convivial performer. It's John Cleese's (Monty Python) parrot sketch, only in a less truthful form.
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>>"As I understand what Kirk did, he was all about debating with someone who had differing views."
Actually, Kirk was about anything BUT debating. He (and his moneyed right-wing backers) were more about 'indoctrinating' young people with right-wing ideologies (and sowing division amongst people). He was about hate, making money, being a patsy of the rich, and more.
The last thing in the world CK cared about was 'free speech', as no one that truly believes in 'free speech' (or even understands what it means and the different contexts of application of it) would behave (and act) in the ways that CK did.
So, no - CK was never about free speech - that was an illusion. CK's speech was HATE SPEECH (and more) masquerading as 'free speech'.
Well said Wren.
Well, I can’t wait to see what South Park make of this…
For anyone not following it, South Park are tackling the subject of Trump in the White House and all the implications. As usually they put it in a hilarious context which almost seems too close to the truth. Gos bless them for reaching the millions and putting the situation in the most easy to understand format.
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Will South Park even survive the Trump Ascendancy?
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I don't just mean will Trump shut it down? There's a very good chance of that, of course. I mean: what place does satire, irony and parody have in a world where the objects of satire, irony and parody are already self-parodying themselves?
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I wonder the same.
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We're in Cloud Cuckoo land here. Anything could come next.
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When I see JD Vance now, I just see his south park version. Like, he is that version.
It’s like when you hear actual crickets outside, and you think it’s someone’s phone ringing.
"Elly May" . . . Clampet 🙄
The last time I checked if you live by the sword there’s a real good chance u will leave this earth by the sword
Live by promoting easy access to guns, die by easy access to guns.
Spelling it out appears to be needed.
It eventually will but the problem is that 100s of millions if not billions will die before that. Misery, poverty, illnesses, mass starvation, etc. will set, what is left of, humanity 500-1000 years back. Stupid humans never learn.
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Nick, I appreciate your sense of clarity and alertness to the trials ahead. At the same time, IMHO, I personally cannot escape my own inclindation to hold a candle up against the darkness.
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And it's worth considering the propostiion put forward by journalist and social activist, George Monbiot -- that the dial on social change can be moved from "impossible" to inevitable" if just 25% of the people come around to supporting that change.
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IMO, 25% will not be easy to achieve, but also not impossible.
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In this case, then his career would’ve been murdered by a better debater. Did he kill anyone?
His opinions cut other humans like a sword .He wasn’t known for Love and unity he was known for hate. I think u know all of this but ur going through denial. Bless ur heart
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Well, Charlie Kirk was not undefeated in debate. It was, rather, his denial of defeat that was undefeated. Because there is no path to defeating denial.
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Kirk was only performing a theater of open debate. In fact, his strategy was simply to deny anyone who contradicted him. Since he never accepted any proof offered by his opponents, he could put on a charming act of being an amenable sceptic. In fact, however, he was just being a contrarian jerk, dressed up as a convivial performer. It's John Cleese's (Monty Python) parrot sketch, only in a less truthful form.
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This is what Kevin Donovan was talking about when he posted above, at the top of this discussion thread:
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https://www.the-reframe.com/acceptable-losses/ "He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved."
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