Rolling Stones - a name that once resonated with peace, anti-war, coolness, hip, anti-government. A name that today - Memorial Day - reminds my family, neighborhood and fellow veterans of our relatives, friends and fellow military members of those that past this life in and from combat. Rolling Stone who now is more closely aligned with pro-war, FBI, CIA and endless war makes our Fallen cry in their graves.
Rolling Stone and all Leftwing thinking that is "mainstream" thrives on Hypocrisy in the most blatant and extreme forms imaginable. Absent hypocrisy, contradiction, and arbitrary baseless ad hominem, Leftwingers at every branch of the media, academia, and every cultural institution in the west, would all be unable to articulate any thoughts whatsoever
Thank you for your service. It must be especially painful to someone who devoted their time, energy, and life, to the higher cause of protecting the rest of us, only to see the elite become infected with privilege. And they have no idea. They actually think they're better than the rest of us. Anyone who thinks that is actually the opposite. True strength knows humility.
The story implied that trump and his voters, along with Fox, were authoritarian NAZIs. That is crap, and she can now see through it. She is doing so by the maturing process of meeting people in flyover country. Remember, the NAZIs were socialists like the American Left. National Socialist German Workers Party.
Got it - wasn’t sure what ‘crap intolerant’ meant…that said, Prez Biden, a racist if there ever was one, is stoking the fires with his ‘MAGA people’ trope. He makes my skin crawl. It’s hard to believe the President, his Administration and the Democrat Party continue to demonize and hate half the country. It’s incredibly sad.
The NAZIs were socialists, but nothing like the Bolsheviks. The NAZIs were fanatically pro-German (in Germany!). That defines them as Right-wingers., or normal people. Ever look closely at scenes from Leftist demos? Unless you run the last circus sideshow in the US, I doubt you meet any of these freaks regularly. Normal individuals never hate their own people/society, but aliens and outcasts sure do. Going 'way back, the significant fact about Madelyn Murray O'Hare was that she was so obnoxious that she couldn't hold down a job anywhere. A mere peccadillo compared to today's "trans-activists" but certainly enough to put her on the outside of normal society looking in. Humans are social animals above all, and being excluded from normal human social interaction is intolerable. Therefore, these geeks become enemies of normal society, which fact used to require some examination. But since the 60's, it's been hanging right out there. for any and all to see Leftists everywhere are fanatically anti-white/European, and the eternal enemies of any form of Western/European/Christian Civilization. In healthy societies, Leftist types are either driven out of the country, or dealt with as witches or heretics (either method removes them from the scene). Failure to do so is like telling your doc that you feel sorry for the malignant cancer cells in your body, so don't wipe them all out.
Long ago, I read in one of the Anglo-Catholics (Lewis or Belloc, probably) that Leftism is simply a never-ending war against everything normal. To have had that insight 100 years ago was brilliant.
Good point. I get so tired of the Left calling normal people Nazis, so it’s a way of hitting back. I think that there is an awful about the ww2 era not known or understood. Until a few years ago I did not know that the communists were sending saboteurs and terrorist to attack Germany during most of the between war years. Real military trained operatives. No wonder they were out to get Russia.
Well, for one thing, the Bolsheviks had been sending spies and agents to the US since 1918, at such time as they were at war with the US. Due to moronic immigration laws, the US was already chock-a-block with fifth-columnist Communist sympathizers (and just plain Communists) since the 1890s.
Also, in numerous full-page ads in major US newspapers, the "Nation of Israel" announced that as of 1933, they were publicly declaring war on Germany.
If you're a serious bibliophile, you might look for an English version of "Communism in Germany" by Adolph Ehrt (1938, Eckart-Verlag, Berlin), for a first-hand account of the Bolshevik/Tscheka agents in Germany, 1917-1933.
Got it - wasn't sure what ‘crap intolerant’ meant…that said, Prez Biden, a racist if there ever was one, is stoking the fires with his ‘MAGA people’ trope. He makes my skin crawl. It’s hard to believe the President and his entire literally demonize and hate half the country. It’s incredibly sad.
Succession was satisfying because it was written by British writers - IMHO - they are far better educated in the English language than are Americans. We lived in London in the mid-1990's for a few years where my kids started school. I admired how they taught very young children language. My eldest, age of 5 at the time, was required to memorize a poem to recite in class. She chose the 'Owl and the Pussycat'. So our entire family learned it to help her - it was loads of fun. We rewarded her superlative 'performance' with a silver pin depicting the owl and the pussy cat in the boat which she sometimes wears to this day.
Later on back in the States, my youngest, who was about 8 years old, adored 'Buffy the Vampire' - she would recite scenes from it after dinner was done. We wondered where her obsession came from and it was an obsession. There were lots of literary and historical references in the drama. She loved the dialogue - it was rather sophisticated stuff for one so young. She kept a notebook with verbiage from various scenes. Turns out, that too was written by a Brit.
The British are also fabulous at character development....Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy - one really 'feels' their characters jump off the page.
The British have a lot to offer regarding the the ENGLISH language....they'd be little I'd want to watch otherwise. (The WSJ has a nice article about the 'language of Succession' this weekend)
Anyone with an IQ higher than a carrot should recognize that reportage on NPR has reached a new bottom when it features a story on Morning Edition about the finale of a cable television program.
I couldn't believe I saw that on a Gov't website. I had to re-read the part about "structural racism" to believe it was real. Are we back in the 1950's? Isn't Equity a Marxist term? wtf?
Dave Rubin has a short clip of Bill Maher recently asking Bernie Sanders how he would differentiate between Equity and Equality. He says he doesn’t know. Then he says Equality is equality of opportunity. Maher then asks if Equity is guarantee of outcome and Bernie says yes, yet Bernie endorsed Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s new mayor during the runoff campaign for mayor who is totally committed to Equity and democrats all over the country admire the new “progressive” mayor of Chicago. This is just not working at all.
“Bernie Sanders Sounds Clueless when Bill Maher Asks This Question.” (1 min)
Yes I saw that clip. I think Maher asked" do you prefer equality or equity?", Sanders said "Equality". But he didn't know what equity was I think!
In any case, Equity is equality of outcome- definitely a Marxist term, and that's impossible to achieve. I think these people, like the new major of Chicago - believe they can or should do that. As if it's possible.
Further to my first comment, In other words, compassion has been weaponized https://flccc.substack.com/p/can-compassion-be-weaponized to suck people into a cult of denying the reality of on-average group differences in order to fully support two separate principles which generally cannot be attained at the same time: equality of opportunity ("equity") and equality of outcome ("equality").
That cult has spread like wildfire with the support of much of the mainstream media, with funding of various NGOs by George Soros and other such wealthy so-called called philanthropists and *especially* due to the ubiquitous adoption of social media.
Social media extends the ability now (this was not so much the case with a few TV, radio and newspaper channels in the 1960s and earlier) to choose between multiple one-to-many (ostensibly) "news" outlets which are deliberately intended to appear to people with a particular subset of all possible world-views. Social media systems provide us with the ability to strongly select which people we interact with via cell-phone apps and the website versions of these systems.
Furthermore, since social media systems tend to emphasize one-to-group interactions, a person's utterances to their somewhat selected (and self-selected by the other group members, as well as being selected by the social media company's *algorithm*) group of other people, including especially genuine friends, gives those people the ability to *police* any deviations from the group's notion of truth and moral rectitude, by a return message, also visible to the group, questioning or criticising the statement made by the first person, and quite likely their motivation and fundamental character.
In order to minimise internal stress, many people succumb to the pressure by genuinely trying to be good. They also dutifully read all sorts of stuff which inspires guilt in them. A common response to this is to try to assuage that guilt, and to improve their social standing, by *doing something*. That something is very often not going out and actually helping the poor and genuinely disadvantaged, though this is a part of it, but emitting (usually just reposting or quoting, and so amplifying) material on social media which supposedly advances the cause of *justice* ("truth" is no concern if it conflicts with perceived "justice") by criticising the actions, thoughts and the very being of others.
In this respect, the Woke / social justice warrior / "left" cult spreads by being a guilt-induced condition, in which the only hope for the afflicted (there being no Christianity style forgiveness) is to right the wrongs of this world, including especially those ascribed to their group, by (in many cases) instilling the exact same form of guilt in other people.
Thanks for this mini-treatise on "equity" vs. "equality". I hadn't thought about exactly what these terms meant, but what you wrote, and the Rubin Report YouTube short, seems to establish beyond reasonable doubt what these terms mean in current usage, especially by what passes for the Left - and that they conflate the two concepts, when in fact the two terms mean completely different things.
I think that individually and collectively the "Left" are so enamoured of their own inherent goodness and of how much they want others to think of themselves as being Good that there isn't anything they don't want to like about both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. So they adopt them both with vigour and paint anyone who doesn't as a racist, far right, bad person, yada yada yada.
In order to do this, they therefore have to squish, inside their heads, the entire concept of there being fundamental (not due to any current human actions), naturally occurring, on average, differences in ability and proclivity among different groups of people, where the groups are differentiated by dimensions such as sex, race, culture, social class, sexual attraction and sense of self regarding being male or female. Those differences mean that genuine equality of opportunity will usually not result in equality of outcome.
This is not complicated, but the Left are so hell-bent on being good, thinking themselves to be good, portraying themselves to be good, lambasting all those who think otherwise etc. that they cannot bear to face the profound contradiction between the two things they feel driven to support. So they have to pretend that all deviations from equality of outcome arise from lack of equality of opportunity AND that there are no significant inherent on-average differences between various groups of people which affect how they perform, feel and objectively succeed in various fields of endeavor. This is obviously ridiculous to anyone who doesn't force themselves to think like this.
Thanks Sasha for this analysis. I don't watch telly or whatever it is these days. All I know about "Game of Thrones" is that it is a popular dystopian TV series. That's enough to make me want to run a mile from it. I had never heard of "The Menu". I found this interview with director Mark Mylod interesting: https://deadline.com/2022/12/the-menu-director-mark-mylod-interview-succession-1235191928/ - with its short excerpt from this movie.
I am dystopia replete. SARS-CoV-2 was obviously created in the lab, due to Chinese and/or American efforts, which resulted directly or indirectly from US research (Ralph Baric and colleagues) and US funding via the Eco Health Alliance. Yet many people to this day assume it arose from zoonotic transfer - and the US government has avoided investigating this. Fortunately the US legislature has done a much better job, for instance: https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sen-marshall-releases-bombshell-covid-19-origins-report/ .
Then there is the dystopia of the Pandemic response, with millions of deaths when none or almost none of this would have happened if everyone's immune system was working due to them having at least 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This requires proper vitamin D3 supplementation, but this information is like water of duck's back to most doctors and immunologists.
Then there is the way inadequate 25-hydroxyvitamin D drive in-utero problems and failures in early childhood development, many other aspects of health and especially neurodegeneration in old age. Sepsis, which kills 11 million people a year, worldwide (one person every 3 seconds) would be rare if everyone had proper 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels.
There are a lot of great things about the world today, including many advances in medicine and dentistry. Yet, this level of ill-health and death strikes me as dystopian compared to what could so easily be the case - and most people, including most doctors and immunologists, can't imagine the awful tragedy of what is happening today, and how easily it could be very largely avoided.
re: when is 'wokeness' going to end - it's going to take a while - hold your nose - until then associate with folks, more tolerant, less neurotic and independent-minded....who can sniff out the shxt that you're finding....
Here in Oregon, our disgusting former governor Kate Brown decided to prioritize concerns about healthcare disparities over the CDC's recommendations that the oldest and sickest people be protected first. Both the local and national data indicated that people my age had high rates of hospitalization attributed to Covid infections. Most people my age were scared about the hospitalization rates. But when the vaccines came out, state politicians, county politicians and all the public health departments were primarily focused in their presentations on ethnic identities of people who tested positive for Covid. There was endless yammering by our elected county officials about the risk that Covid posed to people camped out on our streets and waterways, doing drugs, stealing to pay for the drugs, attacking passersby, and leaving their dirty needles, feces and garbage everywhere they stopped. The county and state agreed that this demographic was "very vulnerable" and they knocked themselves out to hand deliver vaccines to them, when the junkies were probably more interested in the needles. The street people were developing those sacred woke auras in the local political narrative, and there was a lot of concern about how they were intersectionally marginalized and so on, so maybe there was a higher percentage of POC's among them than in our very white city. I don't know. It just was very apparent that the street people were mostly not very worried about getting the vaccines, but the city and county health department people and politicians weren't letting them off the hook. The woke always know better what everyone should and shouldn't be doing, so they put an enormous amount of time, energy and undoubtedly our money on trying to make sure that all the street people were vaccinated.
Our county is one of the most woke in the country. The county government actually decided to refuse to enforce the woke governor's mask mandates, because they would have "disparate impact on communities of color." The county commissioners announced that they "heard what our communities of color" were saying about how people of color who wore masks were more likely to be misjudged to be criminals, and would then be treated accordingly. I suppose this referred to the potential for them to be shot by law enforcement or something. I didn't know that criminals still wore masks when they committed crimes. At least I didn't think they wore anything like those little paper surgical masks, let alone N 95's.
I believe some of the data that showed inequities in rates of Covid infection, survival and so on, that were based on sex, age and ethnicity. Women were slightly more likely than men to be resilient, and there was the very well established finding that young people and children were much less likely to be severely affected. Some ethnicities were recorded as having higher infection rates, but some had lower death rates than white people in general. It was really obvious that an important contributor to the disparities was that certain ethnicities were not inclined to participate in preventative healthcare to the extent that middle class educated white people do. When vaccines were pushed on them by eager and dedicated woke healthcare officials, people in the demographics they were trying to rescue were quite skeptical about using the products the woke were "giving them access" to.
The whole thing infuriated me! That the county government was permitted to create racist policies without being stopped by the governor was infuriating. Of more concern, was what I observed in the attitude of the woke politicians when they made declarations about their latest "commitments to equity." It was obvious that these people would deny medical care to people on the basis of skin color, and they would do it with a smug, morally superior attitude, like white people should feel guilty about "wanting to be first, in front of all those black and brown people who can't get the vaccines." Even though all those black and brown people were not necessarily asking for them.
What was most depressing about the leftwing political bias baked into the structure of Succession, most blatantly in the election night episode (which posits a distorted version of reality in the service of an ideological narrative), is how good the show is otherwise—the character depth, the writing, the wit, the accurately observed world of the super rich and its oblivious billionaires, the tension between comedy and genuine human sadness, the acting. I watched it every Sunday with a mix of admiration and annoyance. So I think you basically nailed it, Sasha. My only disagreement is that I don’t think there was any acknowledgement at all that “the Left owns everything” now. They do pretend otherwise.
I haven’t watched to show. I lumped it in there with all the other ones that become mainstream popular which to me means “woke” and I just can’t stomach them. I’ve felt for a long time the Democratic Party was hyping up race issues to gin up more voters. It’s nauseating and so evil. I remember “ when everyone was a racist who voted for Trump” time period. It was all over Facebook coming from everyone. It was October 2020 when I had had enough and snapped at my cousin on Facebook for her post. It caused a lot of drama and we had family weddings coming both of which I was paying for and creating the guest lists. Needless to say she was not invited but her parents and siblings were. That caused more drama. I’ve just gotten to a point where I’m done with these types. I have nothing in common with them. No grudges, just not interested in having a relationship. Tired of being nice so everyone else can feel good about being assholes.
We lack a common reality, have become incomprehensible to each other and can no longer communicate. Where is the common ground in such an infinitely wide divide? There obviously is none. We always just talk past each other. This can only get worse and is getting worse by the day. The same people who insist Jan 6 was an “Insurrection!” have no problem with Joe’s open southern border or pornography for public school children. This is simply not working at all. Could it be that the reason why our society is so rapidly unraveling externally is because it no longer exists as a country internally?
Yes, I think that’s why there is so much emphasis on states now. Trying to find the state where you have the most people with your mindset. For my sanity, I don’t choose to be around others who make me feel bad about the person I voted for. I don’t do that to others. Even now when I have every reason to and they know it. It’s tough when it’s family though. Immediate family is different. The effort to maintain a relationship is worth it.
It’s weird how different we have become but not really unusual. Some excerpts below from a Quillette review of a book about the irrational side of human nature. The last one says: “One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.” That sure is the truth.
“Mackay makes the case, often in gory detail, that episodes of collective mania seem to be an inevitable consequence of human nature. Humans in every time and place have cast aside their better judgment and allowed themselves to be caught up in all manner of irrational hoopla.“
“His chapters on the Swabian Peasants’ War and Anabaptist uprisings are terrifying depictions of the end-times frenzy that wreaked havoc on northern Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The distance between these events in the German-speaking world and, say, the Reign of Terror in France or the Chinese Cultural Revolution is not that great. And the speed with which apparently reasonable people moved from the embrace of a new theological idea to a willingness to torture those whose own theological ideas diverged even slightly is startling.“
“There is plenty to recommend about The Delusions of Crowds. It is laden with great anecdotes and the writing is always engaging. One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.”
“The Delusion of Crowds-A Review.”
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I have thought about this in a very un intellectual way. I have random thoughts of “could we actually get to a point where family members would kill each other because of their differences?” It’s crazy that those thoughts have even had the chance to enter my mind. I’m sure that happened in those historical times you describe in last comment. It’s crazy times we are living in right now.
I find that a majority of the people who believe in the so-called Progressive narrative, even in Portland, also believe that everything they are told by Democratic media is true. Once they decide the information is true, and based on their lifelong trust in the Democratic Party, they become closed to hearing any facts that cast doubt on the woke propaganda. It appears to me that the level of resistance to alternative perspectives is proportional to the level of fear the Democrats feel about "existential threats": to "Our Democracy," to black men being hunted down by murderous cops, to "trans" kids that will suicide from lack of "affirmative care," and so on. The people I know are mostly professionals with advanced degrees, but their thinking is obviously controlled by life-or-death levels of fear and reactivity. These are people who would come to different conclusions if anyone could crack open their minds and pour in some reality, but they are so distrustful and afraid of anyone who offers disconfirming information, they won't take the risk.
When I see the rats running through my alley in the darkness of the dead of night in my northwest side of Chicago neighborhood I’m always reminded of creatures like the democrats who’ve worked so hard to destroy America. Satan’s lapdogs. No doubt these creatures will join him in eternity when they depart our fallen world. Forever and ever will they be there. Always will they be there with Satan, the Prince of Darkness, the Ruler of the Underworld and of demons. No doubt about it.
America is disintegrating and our world is in a tailspin. My hope is that AI will save us. For whatever reason few have any interest in the “super intelligence” AI is already expressing and rapidly improving on. Alan Thompson says his GPT-3, AI Avatar “Leta” that he talks to in his videos has an IQ of 150 but in one of his videos she told him she does “brain surgery” on herself to improve her AI. What exactly is she doing?
Scientists can’t follow what they’re doing because it’s beyond their comprehension to understand it. In one of his videos he told Leta that the newest version of AI, GPT-4, will be 500 times more advanced than she is. Her response was “500 times smarter than AI is not smarter than the universe.” Fascinating response. She was basically telling him that the universe is God who also infinitely transcends the universe so AI would never be more advanced than that.
“Freedom and God are objects of faith, not of knowledge; in other words, freedom and God are infinite abysses whose bottoms cannot be sounded by knowledge.”
Simone Weil. 1909-1943
“GPT-4 hits the ceiling (Theory of Mind, Mensa, Asimov).” (14 min)
I'm so glad you made a post about Succession. I feel like the right or critics of the left often ignore modern stories too much and only engage to be critical; and it's ok to be critical but my point is that someone can be ridiculous politically and still make a good story. You did that here which I appreciate, criticizing the show while still allowing that it is good. I feel the same way.
Succession really makes me want to write an essay, and I feel like it is ripe for that from a conservative perspective. Because yes of course they are writing it as a critique of Fox News, Trump, GOP, the usual suspects. That is obvious. But as viewers we don't have to accept that framing. To me it is much more interesting as a window into the left wing psyche and their fever dreams.
I mean how can you not laugh when they're trying to act like the REPUBLICANS are behind the scenes picking the next President? After what we saw happen to Bernie Sanders twice, or the intelligence agencies putting their feet on the scales to try and swing the last 2 elections against Trump? I mean give me a break, it's laughable how out of touch these people are.
But even within that ridiculous framing you can still appreciate the drama that is happening. It is a fictional story after all, so if they want to write all these things out they can do it. My point is that we don't have to accept the framing at all.
Anyway there is so much more to be said about this show, it touches on our culture in so many interesting ways. I hope more conservatives and woke critics engage with and talk about it, because there is so much to be said.
'Succession' never reached the enormous audience size of 'Yellowstone'.....that these two shows were released about the same time is fascinating in and of itself...
I never watched the show. We don't have cable and I'm not going to pay for HBO. However, the real issue is fantasy and Hollywood is a fantasy world, just like Disney. It's not real.
So, did Succession, displace The Handmaid's Tale as required viewing for #theresistance?
Having unplugged from virtually all Hollywood-produced entertainment - ESPECIALLY network television programming (AppleTV, Paramount, et al.) ever since the Seinfeld finale, I've not paid much attention except that which comes to my attention via the internet...
The James Spader-like character chracterization is spot-on in numerous ways. Too many to mention, but it's been thus for decades - the media, the congressional Democrats, the left (but I repeat myself) have successfully represented themselves as the "cool kids" in the high school that is our society, and everyone else as the great unwashed, the uncool kids. Eventually though, graduation day comes and everyone has to operate in the real world - perhaps graduation day is coming.
"To be a thriving industry, Hollywood will have to divorce the Democratic Party so they can produce subversive content again."
I don't see that happening any time soon.
"I don’t know about you, but I've overdosed on sanctimony, GOODNESS, on self-righteousness..."
As have I. Especially that as defined and served up by the left.
Thank you, Sasha, for another great dispatch - especially from the great state of Texas!
I saw a video of Vivek Ramaswamy yesterday at a Townhall meeting where he was asked what he would do on his first day as president. He said he would issue an Executive Order banning race based affirmative action. That’s exactly the opposite of what Biden did on his first day in office which was to issue an Executive Order to replace meritocracy wherever it can be found with Equity aka Equal Outcomes. We’re in a reality war of the Woke vs the nonWoke. Compare a nonWoke public intellectual like Vivek Ramaswamy to a Woke public intellectual like Ibram X. Kendi and the difference is like the difference between day and night or sanity vs insanity yet our ruling class, their media and their many useful idiot followers in the general public prefer Kendi! Watch what Saagar has to say about our ruling class war on merit for the sake of Equity. This is just not working at all.
“Exposed: Med Schools Drop Merit For Racial Admissions.” (6 min)
Glenn Loury, God bless him, goes on rant after rant about the Equity/Equality issues very often on his program. And don't get him on Kendi - he has often said that Kendi does not belong in the same room with MLK. If he cut off his dreadlocks and changed his name to Anthony Smith, no one would pay him the slightest intention.
I don't follow Kendi so didn't know that his career started covering the Bill Cosby trial. If I heard correctly, the editors at The Atlantic read him and offered him a job where he now earns thousands of dollars for every speech and even got a MacCarther grant.
Does anyone know if Africans who actually live in the various countries wear their hair in such elaborate styles which obviously take hours in beauty salons to whip up . I have only been in Tanzania for a couple of weeks but just can't remember a Whoopie Goldberg type walking around.
Here’s an excellent video of Amy Wax below being interviewed by Glenn Loury. A couple of highly intelligent people talking about the super hot potato of racial group differences. The whole video is worth watching but about about the last 15 min of the video of Loury and Wax talking about how the war on social norms and meritocracy is destroying our society. The best assessment of our dilemma that I’ve seen of why our civilization is collapsing. Any serious consideration of saving our society would have to deal with the issues they raise. Would it be at all possible though to deal with issues which have in fact already driven much of our society quite insane?
Russia and China are uniting much of the world to fight the spread of the poisonous Woke race and gender LGBTQIA+ ideology of our globalist, Woke leftist, ruling class which is demonic. All things are now global in our always online global civilization. Many traditional people will join them to fight this. No doubt about it. To a great extent WW3 will be a religious war fought over the nature of reality and of spiritual values. Only God Knows what fate has in store for us as our fallen world slides ever closer to the abyss.
“White House’s push for woke foreign policy will backfire with our socially conservative allies.”
The woke cult is proceeding along Maoist lines. (See James Lindsay's New Discourses site for in depth coverage of this opinion). Much of this is probably attributable to the direction of activists who "identify as" Maoists. There have been homegrown American influences on the woke cult, including trans activism and such, but even the corporate DEI bureaucracy uses Maoist thought reform methodology. I suspect that the Chinese Communists think that things are all going really well for their ultimate takeover of the United States. The population will already be converted when they arrive in full force on our shores, and the true believers here will undoubtedly expect to be embraced by their Chinese comrades. The only sweet part for me in this apocalyptic fantasy are the looks of shock on their faces when their new overlords send them off to slave labor camps along with the deplorables.
Isn't that the usual treatment for the Useful Idiots? They willingly do their masters' bidding hoping for .... something. Their reward for handing over their and their fellow countrymens' liberty and rights is always the same boot on their necks as the people they betrayed.
I'm not convinced that China and Russia are fighting to prevent the spread of 'woke'. Seems like there's some evidence that the Russians know that 'race' is the USA's Archiilles heel and does stuff on-line (Facebook, Twitter etc) to rile folks up. Also the Chinese have been known to be very racist; they view black culture as crude and beneath them (they may have a point...) - the Japanese and other Asians view blacks the same way. It's just not spoken about in good company. Asian cultures do revere order, the wisdom of older people, family life, fine art, personal discipline & behavior, and observing public societal norms. As of late, black culture is anything but these things they admire.
Never forget that China supports the existence of North Korea - as an unfriendly nation state on their border would be an existential threat (as nuke-armed Cuba was to USA and NATO-courted Ukraine to Russia). At any rate, North Korea is currently the bleakest and most anti-human totalitarian regime on the planet, and it’s China that enables it to thrust this Orwellian ‘and the most extreme form of ‘woke’ life upon its people. That Pyongyang wokeness is contained, and pure evil. Interviews with North Korean defectors reveal some (most) citizens are so brainwashed from moment of birth, that they don’t even realize they are oppressed, which is a condition that can result when a person is constantly in search of food security, and never knows what it feels to be full. Did you know spring in rural North Korea sees the most deaths from malnutrition? Because vegetation has not yet blossomed for consumption. Food is also used as weapon in another ultra woke totalitarian society, Venezuela.
Woke isn't about racism, sexual deviancy, pedophilia, the environment, equality, or any other pet issue they have managed to corral into their devious cabal. It's about control. Period. Once they have achieved total tyranny they will order their activists to stand down and will be dealt with severely if they don't
Think of what woke is taken to its most extreme and that is North Korea. Total control of speech and thought, government controlled. Woke isn’t just Gender or Race, IMHO.
They are working to prevent the spread of Woke ideology and to get these countries in Africa, Asia and the Islamic world to join their side against America and the west. No doubt many will since Woke ideology is an attack on the traditional values which they have.
Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016 and the democrat’s “Resistance!” began I told a Mexican friend at work in Chicago, a Trump supporter who’s from Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest and most dangerous states, that the inability to transition to a new government after an election is a classic sign of a failed state. He actually shuddered as if a cold chill had just run down his spine. I never forgot his reaction to what I said. I’m retired now but worked (CNC machinery) for many years with mostly immigrants from places like Vietnam, Mexico, Assyrians from Iraq, Jews from the Soviet Union and many other places. Excellent people with traditional values. I stayed in touch with this Mexican friend and a Jewish woman who came here around 1990 from the Soviet Union. They are appalled by what has happened to America.
We need to listen to people who know what REAL dictators, nazis, fascists, authoritarians and despots look like (as opposed to the ridiculous fear theater spread by the democrats after 2016.)
They are uniformly appalled at the way this country is *voluntarily* decimating its most foundational freedoms and rights.
I agree with your take but as a conservative I loved Succession for its exquisite writing, acting, directing etc. Also don't forget the Left came in for its share of satire along the way. Review the "Ternhaven" episode from Season 2 to see how the liberal Pierces were portrayed as hypocrites undernath their santimonious facade. Also, remember the flaws in the Democrat candidates Shiv worked for: the vulgar postings from Joyce's husband; the dark hints behind the personal life of Gil Eavis and how he overcompensated his lofty position to resonate with the men he met on the street; and how he ultimately cut a deal with Logan for better ATN news coverage. The show's creators hit the right more than the left, but it was a greaat show. I just wished more of the reviewers from the mainstream press (Rolling Stone, et al) would have suspended their own political biases when reviewing the episodes.
Agree but I think season 4 gave them what they wanted by settling on "they're the fascist enablers" but yes the first seasons were better. I loved the show until it sold itself out.
Amarillo? Be sure to go eat at The Big Texan, which has these monster steaks, as big as your leg, for free, If you can finish it. Then get your name up on the wall. There are plenty of names of women and childen. Probably thousands by now.
Rolling Stones - a name that once resonated with peace, anti-war, coolness, hip, anti-government. A name that today - Memorial Day - reminds my family, neighborhood and fellow veterans of our relatives, friends and fellow military members of those that past this life in and from combat. Rolling Stone who now is more closely aligned with pro-war, FBI, CIA and endless war makes our Fallen cry in their graves.
Rolling Stone has become what they used to rail against. I wonder if they've noticed.
They’ve all done that - become exactly what they used to fight. That’s Pop-psych saying “what you fear, you create”….
In the case of these increasingly vile humans, what they feared, they became.
I doubt they've noticed.
Rolling Stone is the most anti-American "media" around. When they plastered the Boston Marathon bomber on the front page that told you everything
Rolling Stone and all Leftwing thinking that is "mainstream" thrives on Hypocrisy in the most blatant and extreme forms imaginable. Absent hypocrisy, contradiction, and arbitrary baseless ad hominem, Leftwingers at every branch of the media, academia, and every cultural institution in the west, would all be unable to articulate any thoughts whatsoever
Thank you for your service, Libertarian, and thank you to all of the Americans who have served our country in past and present wars.
Thanks Sandra. There are several veterans who comment here; Matt, Raleigh, Sam, etc
Good to know!
Thank you to all the veterans on this site for protecting our freedom!
They have gathered so much moss they are stuck in place, smelly, and gross.
Thank you for your service. It must be especially painful to someone who devoted their time, energy, and life, to the higher cause of protecting the rest of us, only to see the elite become infected with privilege. And they have no idea. They actually think they're better than the rest of us. Anyone who thinks that is actually the opposite. True strength knows humility.
Thanks Robin. I think it is upsetting for all patriotic Americans like you and I.
Sasha, you have become crap intolerant. You are helping more people to become crap intolerant. Thanks. Please keep it up.
crapophobic in the current parlance.
...'crap intolerant' about what? ...and how is she doing this exactly?
The story implied that trump and his voters, along with Fox, were authoritarian NAZIs. That is crap, and she can now see through it. She is doing so by the maturing process of meeting people in flyover country. Remember, the NAZIs were socialists like the American Left. National Socialist German Workers Party.
Got it - wasn’t sure what ‘crap intolerant’ meant…that said, Prez Biden, a racist if there ever was one, is stoking the fires with his ‘MAGA people’ trope. He makes my skin crawl. It’s hard to believe the President, his Administration and the Democrat Party continue to demonize and hate half the country. It’s incredibly sad.
Biden is "simply" doing what he is told. He is incapable of acting of his own volition.
The NAZIs were socialists, but nothing like the Bolsheviks. The NAZIs were fanatically pro-German (in Germany!). That defines them as Right-wingers., or normal people. Ever look closely at scenes from Leftist demos? Unless you run the last circus sideshow in the US, I doubt you meet any of these freaks regularly. Normal individuals never hate their own people/society, but aliens and outcasts sure do. Going 'way back, the significant fact about Madelyn Murray O'Hare was that she was so obnoxious that she couldn't hold down a job anywhere. A mere peccadillo compared to today's "trans-activists" but certainly enough to put her on the outside of normal society looking in. Humans are social animals above all, and being excluded from normal human social interaction is intolerable. Therefore, these geeks become enemies of normal society, which fact used to require some examination. But since the 60's, it's been hanging right out there. for any and all to see Leftists everywhere are fanatically anti-white/European, and the eternal enemies of any form of Western/European/Christian Civilization. In healthy societies, Leftist types are either driven out of the country, or dealt with as witches or heretics (either method removes them from the scene). Failure to do so is like telling your doc that you feel sorry for the malignant cancer cells in your body, so don't wipe them all out.
Long ago, I read in one of the Anglo-Catholics (Lewis or Belloc, probably) that Leftism is simply a never-ending war against everything normal. To have had that insight 100 years ago was brilliant.
Good point. I get so tired of the Left calling normal people Nazis, so it’s a way of hitting back. I think that there is an awful about the ww2 era not known or understood. Until a few years ago I did not know that the communists were sending saboteurs and terrorist to attack Germany during most of the between war years. Real military trained operatives. No wonder they were out to get Russia.
Well, for one thing, the Bolsheviks had been sending spies and agents to the US since 1918, at such time as they were at war with the US. Due to moronic immigration laws, the US was already chock-a-block with fifth-columnist Communist sympathizers (and just plain Communists) since the 1890s.
Also, in numerous full-page ads in major US newspapers, the "Nation of Israel" announced that as of 1933, they were publicly declaring war on Germany.
If you're a serious bibliophile, you might look for an English version of "Communism in Germany" by Adolph Ehrt (1938, Eckart-Verlag, Berlin), for a first-hand account of the Bolshevik/Tscheka agents in Germany, 1917-1933.
Got it - wasn't sure what ‘crap intolerant’ meant…that said, Prez Biden, a racist if there ever was one, is stoking the fires with his ‘MAGA people’ trope. He makes my skin crawl. It’s hard to believe the President and his entire literally demonize and hate half the country. It’s incredibly sad.
Bullshit intolerant would have been clearer and maybe more accurate, but that seemed a bit crude for a public forum.
Succession was satisfying because it was written by British writers - IMHO - they are far better educated in the English language than are Americans. We lived in London in the mid-1990's for a few years where my kids started school. I admired how they taught very young children language. My eldest, age of 5 at the time, was required to memorize a poem to recite in class. She chose the 'Owl and the Pussycat'. So our entire family learned it to help her - it was loads of fun. We rewarded her superlative 'performance' with a silver pin depicting the owl and the pussy cat in the boat which she sometimes wears to this day.
Later on back in the States, my youngest, who was about 8 years old, adored 'Buffy the Vampire' - she would recite scenes from it after dinner was done. We wondered where her obsession came from and it was an obsession. There were lots of literary and historical references in the drama. She loved the dialogue - it was rather sophisticated stuff for one so young. She kept a notebook with verbiage from various scenes. Turns out, that too was written by a Brit.
The British are also fabulous at character development....Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy - one really 'feels' their characters jump off the page.
The British have a lot to offer regarding the the ENGLISH language....they'd be little I'd want to watch otherwise. (The WSJ has a nice article about the 'language of Succession' this weekend)
Not to mention Shakespeare
🤦🏼♀️👍🏻😂
I can't remember the last American tv series or show I watched. Mad Men maybe? I love Britbox and other series from the UK.
👍🏼😁
Anyone with an IQ higher than a carrot should recognize that reportage on NPR has reached a new bottom when it features a story on Morning Edition about the finale of a cable television program.
I have to read the WaPo article about the Trump women....because the Racism thing is out of control.
I was looking on the Cali DMV site the other day about getting some Car records and found this:
"COVID-19 has highlighted existing inequities in health. Many of these inequities are the result of structural racism..."
https://covid19.ca.gov/equity
I couldn't believe I saw that on a Gov't website. I had to re-read the part about "structural racism" to believe it was real. Are we back in the 1950's? Isn't Equity a Marxist term? wtf?
How does this end?
Dave Rubin has a short clip of Bill Maher recently asking Bernie Sanders how he would differentiate between Equity and Equality. He says he doesn’t know. Then he says Equality is equality of opportunity. Maher then asks if Equity is guarantee of outcome and Bernie says yes, yet Bernie endorsed Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s new mayor during the runoff campaign for mayor who is totally committed to Equity and democrats all over the country admire the new “progressive” mayor of Chicago. This is just not working at all.
“Bernie Sanders Sounds Clueless when Bill Maher Asks This Question.” (1 min)
Rubin Report. Mar 7, 2023
https://youtube.com/shorts/BpJ_2-FJwCk?feature=share
Yes I saw that clip. I think Maher asked" do you prefer equality or equity?", Sanders said "Equality". But he didn't know what equity was I think!
In any case, Equity is equality of outcome- definitely a Marxist term, and that's impossible to achieve. I think these people, like the new major of Chicago - believe they can or should do that. As if it's possible.
Further to my first comment, In other words, compassion has been weaponized https://flccc.substack.com/p/can-compassion-be-weaponized to suck people into a cult of denying the reality of on-average group differences in order to fully support two separate principles which generally cannot be attained at the same time: equality of opportunity ("equity") and equality of outcome ("equality").
That cult has spread like wildfire with the support of much of the mainstream media, with funding of various NGOs by George Soros and other such wealthy so-called called philanthropists and *especially* due to the ubiquitous adoption of social media.
Social media extends the ability now (this was not so much the case with a few TV, radio and newspaper channels in the 1960s and earlier) to choose between multiple one-to-many (ostensibly) "news" outlets which are deliberately intended to appear to people with a particular subset of all possible world-views. Social media systems provide us with the ability to strongly select which people we interact with via cell-phone apps and the website versions of these systems.
Furthermore, since social media systems tend to emphasize one-to-group interactions, a person's utterances to their somewhat selected (and self-selected by the other group members, as well as being selected by the social media company's *algorithm*) group of other people, including especially genuine friends, gives those people the ability to *police* any deviations from the group's notion of truth and moral rectitude, by a return message, also visible to the group, questioning or criticising the statement made by the first person, and quite likely their motivation and fundamental character.
In order to minimise internal stress, many people succumb to the pressure by genuinely trying to be good. They also dutifully read all sorts of stuff which inspires guilt in them. A common response to this is to try to assuage that guilt, and to improve their social standing, by *doing something*. That something is very often not going out and actually helping the poor and genuinely disadvantaged, though this is a part of it, but emitting (usually just reposting or quoting, and so amplifying) material on social media which supposedly advances the cause of *justice* ("truth" is no concern if it conflicts with perceived "justice") by criticising the actions, thoughts and the very being of others.
In this respect, the Woke / social justice warrior / "left" cult spreads by being a guilt-induced condition, in which the only hope for the afflicted (there being no Christianity style forgiveness) is to right the wrongs of this world, including especially those ascribed to their group, by (in many cases) instilling the exact same form of guilt in other people.
Thanks for this mini-treatise on "equity" vs. "equality". I hadn't thought about exactly what these terms meant, but what you wrote, and the Rubin Report YouTube short, seems to establish beyond reasonable doubt what these terms mean in current usage, especially by what passes for the Left - and that they conflate the two concepts, when in fact the two terms mean completely different things.
I think that individually and collectively the "Left" are so enamoured of their own inherent goodness and of how much they want others to think of themselves as being Good that there isn't anything they don't want to like about both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. So they adopt them both with vigour and paint anyone who doesn't as a racist, far right, bad person, yada yada yada.
In order to do this, they therefore have to squish, inside their heads, the entire concept of there being fundamental (not due to any current human actions), naturally occurring, on average, differences in ability and proclivity among different groups of people, where the groups are differentiated by dimensions such as sex, race, culture, social class, sexual attraction and sense of self regarding being male or female. Those differences mean that genuine equality of opportunity will usually not result in equality of outcome.
This is not complicated, but the Left are so hell-bent on being good, thinking themselves to be good, portraying themselves to be good, lambasting all those who think otherwise etc. that they cannot bear to face the profound contradiction between the two things they feel driven to support. So they have to pretend that all deviations from equality of outcome arise from lack of equality of opportunity AND that there are no significant inherent on-average differences between various groups of people which affect how they perform, feel and objectively succeed in various fields of endeavor. This is obviously ridiculous to anyone who doesn't force themselves to think like this.
Thanks Sasha for this analysis. I don't watch telly or whatever it is these days. All I know about "Game of Thrones" is that it is a popular dystopian TV series. That's enough to make me want to run a mile from it. I had never heard of "The Menu". I found this interview with director Mark Mylod interesting: https://deadline.com/2022/12/the-menu-director-mark-mylod-interview-succession-1235191928/ - with its short excerpt from this movie.
I am dystopia replete. SARS-CoV-2 was obviously created in the lab, due to Chinese and/or American efforts, which resulted directly or indirectly from US research (Ralph Baric and colleagues) and US funding via the Eco Health Alliance. Yet many people to this day assume it arose from zoonotic transfer - and the US government has avoided investigating this. Fortunately the US legislature has done a much better job, for instance: https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sen-marshall-releases-bombshell-covid-19-origins-report/ .
Then there is the dystopia of the Pandemic response, with millions of deaths when none or almost none of this would have happened if everyone's immune system was working due to them having at least 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This requires proper vitamin D3 supplementation, but this information is like water of duck's back to most doctors and immunologists.
Then there is the way inadequate 25-hydroxyvitamin D drive in-utero problems and failures in early childhood development, many other aspects of health and especially neurodegeneration in old age. Sepsis, which kills 11 million people a year, worldwide (one person every 3 seconds) would be rare if everyone had proper 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels.
There are a lot of great things about the world today, including many advances in medicine and dentistry. Yet, this level of ill-health and death strikes me as dystopian compared to what could so easily be the case - and most people, including most doctors and immunologists, can't imagine the awful tragedy of what is happening today, and how easily it could be very largely avoided.
Please see the research articles cited and discussed at: https://brownstone.org/articles/vitamin-d-everything-you-need-to-know/, https://brownstone.org/articles/vitamin-d-everything-you-need-to-know/ and my Substack: https://nutritionmatters.substack.com .
re: when is 'wokeness' going to end - it's going to take a while - hold your nose - until then associate with folks, more tolerant, less neurotic and independent-minded....who can sniff out the shxt that you're finding....
Here in Oregon, our disgusting former governor Kate Brown decided to prioritize concerns about healthcare disparities over the CDC's recommendations that the oldest and sickest people be protected first. Both the local and national data indicated that people my age had high rates of hospitalization attributed to Covid infections. Most people my age were scared about the hospitalization rates. But when the vaccines came out, state politicians, county politicians and all the public health departments were primarily focused in their presentations on ethnic identities of people who tested positive for Covid. There was endless yammering by our elected county officials about the risk that Covid posed to people camped out on our streets and waterways, doing drugs, stealing to pay for the drugs, attacking passersby, and leaving their dirty needles, feces and garbage everywhere they stopped. The county and state agreed that this demographic was "very vulnerable" and they knocked themselves out to hand deliver vaccines to them, when the junkies were probably more interested in the needles. The street people were developing those sacred woke auras in the local political narrative, and there was a lot of concern about how they were intersectionally marginalized and so on, so maybe there was a higher percentage of POC's among them than in our very white city. I don't know. It just was very apparent that the street people were mostly not very worried about getting the vaccines, but the city and county health department people and politicians weren't letting them off the hook. The woke always know better what everyone should and shouldn't be doing, so they put an enormous amount of time, energy and undoubtedly our money on trying to make sure that all the street people were vaccinated.
Our county is one of the most woke in the country. The county government actually decided to refuse to enforce the woke governor's mask mandates, because they would have "disparate impact on communities of color." The county commissioners announced that they "heard what our communities of color" were saying about how people of color who wore masks were more likely to be misjudged to be criminals, and would then be treated accordingly. I suppose this referred to the potential for them to be shot by law enforcement or something. I didn't know that criminals still wore masks when they committed crimes. At least I didn't think they wore anything like those little paper surgical masks, let alone N 95's.
I believe some of the data that showed inequities in rates of Covid infection, survival and so on, that were based on sex, age and ethnicity. Women were slightly more likely than men to be resilient, and there was the very well established finding that young people and children were much less likely to be severely affected. Some ethnicities were recorded as having higher infection rates, but some had lower death rates than white people in general. It was really obvious that an important contributor to the disparities was that certain ethnicities were not inclined to participate in preventative healthcare to the extent that middle class educated white people do. When vaccines were pushed on them by eager and dedicated woke healthcare officials, people in the demographics they were trying to rescue were quite skeptical about using the products the woke were "giving them access" to.
The whole thing infuriated me! That the county government was permitted to create racist policies without being stopped by the governor was infuriating. Of more concern, was what I observed in the attitude of the woke politicians when they made declarations about their latest "commitments to equity." It was obvious that these people would deny medical care to people on the basis of skin color, and they would do it with a smug, morally superior attitude, like white people should feel guilty about "wanting to be first, in front of all those black and brown people who can't get the vaccines." Even though all those black and brown people were not necessarily asking for them.
What was most depressing about the leftwing political bias baked into the structure of Succession, most blatantly in the election night episode (which posits a distorted version of reality in the service of an ideological narrative), is how good the show is otherwise—the character depth, the writing, the wit, the accurately observed world of the super rich and its oblivious billionaires, the tension between comedy and genuine human sadness, the acting. I watched it every Sunday with a mix of admiration and annoyance. So I think you basically nailed it, Sasha. My only disagreement is that I don’t think there was any acknowledgement at all that “the Left owns everything” now. They do pretend otherwise.
I haven’t watched to show. I lumped it in there with all the other ones that become mainstream popular which to me means “woke” and I just can’t stomach them. I’ve felt for a long time the Democratic Party was hyping up race issues to gin up more voters. It’s nauseating and so evil. I remember “ when everyone was a racist who voted for Trump” time period. It was all over Facebook coming from everyone. It was October 2020 when I had had enough and snapped at my cousin on Facebook for her post. It caused a lot of drama and we had family weddings coming both of which I was paying for and creating the guest lists. Needless to say she was not invited but her parents and siblings were. That caused more drama. I’ve just gotten to a point where I’m done with these types. I have nothing in common with them. No grudges, just not interested in having a relationship. Tired of being nice so everyone else can feel good about being assholes.
We lack a common reality, have become incomprehensible to each other and can no longer communicate. Where is the common ground in such an infinitely wide divide? There obviously is none. We always just talk past each other. This can only get worse and is getting worse by the day. The same people who insist Jan 6 was an “Insurrection!” have no problem with Joe’s open southern border or pornography for public school children. This is simply not working at all. Could it be that the reason why our society is so rapidly unraveling externally is because it no longer exists as a country internally?
Yes, I think that’s why there is so much emphasis on states now. Trying to find the state where you have the most people with your mindset. For my sanity, I don’t choose to be around others who make me feel bad about the person I voted for. I don’t do that to others. Even now when I have every reason to and they know it. It’s tough when it’s family though. Immediate family is different. The effort to maintain a relationship is worth it.
It’s weird how different we have become but not really unusual. Some excerpts below from a Quillette review of a book about the irrational side of human nature. The last one says: “One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.” That sure is the truth.
“Mackay makes the case, often in gory detail, that episodes of collective mania seem to be an inevitable consequence of human nature. Humans in every time and place have cast aside their better judgment and allowed themselves to be caught up in all manner of irrational hoopla.“
“His chapters on the Swabian Peasants’ War and Anabaptist uprisings are terrifying depictions of the end-times frenzy that wreaked havoc on northern Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The distance between these events in the German-speaking world and, say, the Reign of Terror in France or the Chinese Cultural Revolution is not that great. And the speed with which apparently reasonable people moved from the embrace of a new theological idea to a willingness to torture those whose own theological ideas diverged even slightly is startling.“
“There is plenty to recommend about The Delusions of Crowds. It is laden with great anecdotes and the writing is always engaging. One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.”
“The Delusion of Crowds-A Review.”
Please sign up to our free email list to continue reading.
https://quillette.com/2021/02/08/the-delusions-of-crowds-a-review/
I have thought about this in a very un intellectual way. I have random thoughts of “could we actually get to a point where family members would kill each other because of their differences?” It’s crazy that those thoughts have even had the chance to enter my mind. I’m sure that happened in those historical times you describe in last comment. It’s crazy times we are living in right now.
Killing family members was common during the Civil War, especially if the families lived near the Mason Dixon Line.
Kill each other? Probably not. But I have thought of making a point to my very liberal SIL- “here’s my address when you feel the need to denounce me”.
I find that a majority of the people who believe in the so-called Progressive narrative, even in Portland, also believe that everything they are told by Democratic media is true. Once they decide the information is true, and based on their lifelong trust in the Democratic Party, they become closed to hearing any facts that cast doubt on the woke propaganda. It appears to me that the level of resistance to alternative perspectives is proportional to the level of fear the Democrats feel about "existential threats": to "Our Democracy," to black men being hunted down by murderous cops, to "trans" kids that will suicide from lack of "affirmative care," and so on. The people I know are mostly professionals with advanced degrees, but their thinking is obviously controlled by life-or-death levels of fear and reactivity. These are people who would come to different conclusions if anyone could crack open their minds and pour in some reality, but they are so distrustful and afraid of anyone who offers disconfirming information, they won't take the risk.
But why were you so insulted? Didn’t you say you’re not white?
When I see the rats running through my alley in the darkness of the dead of night in my northwest side of Chicago neighborhood I’m always reminded of creatures like the democrats who’ve worked so hard to destroy America. Satan’s lapdogs. No doubt these creatures will join him in eternity when they depart our fallen world. Forever and ever will they be there. Always will they be there with Satan, the Prince of Darkness, the Ruler of the Underworld and of demons. No doubt about it.
What if I told you there was no Hell and no devil and they were created by men to keep people afraid?
"Tired of being nice so everyone else can feel good about being assholes."
Me too!
Well, you've come to the right website.
And you're here because....?
America is disintegrating and our world is in a tailspin. My hope is that AI will save us. For whatever reason few have any interest in the “super intelligence” AI is already expressing and rapidly improving on. Alan Thompson says his GPT-3, AI Avatar “Leta” that he talks to in his videos has an IQ of 150 but in one of his videos she told him she does “brain surgery” on herself to improve her AI. What exactly is she doing?
Scientists can’t follow what they’re doing because it’s beyond their comprehension to understand it. In one of his videos he told Leta that the newest version of AI, GPT-4, will be 500 times more advanced than she is. Her response was “500 times smarter than AI is not smarter than the universe.” Fascinating response. She was basically telling him that the universe is God who also infinitely transcends the universe so AI would never be more advanced than that.
“Freedom and God are objects of faith, not of knowledge; in other words, freedom and God are infinite abysses whose bottoms cannot be sounded by knowledge.”
Simone Weil. 1909-1943
“GPT-4 hits the ceiling (Theory of Mind, Mensa, Asimov).” (14 min)
Dr Alan Thompson. May 4, 2023
https://youtu.be/StDZeRlDzaM
I don't know how to interpret your comment. Please elaborate.
I'm so glad you made a post about Succession. I feel like the right or critics of the left often ignore modern stories too much and only engage to be critical; and it's ok to be critical but my point is that someone can be ridiculous politically and still make a good story. You did that here which I appreciate, criticizing the show while still allowing that it is good. I feel the same way.
Succession really makes me want to write an essay, and I feel like it is ripe for that from a conservative perspective. Because yes of course they are writing it as a critique of Fox News, Trump, GOP, the usual suspects. That is obvious. But as viewers we don't have to accept that framing. To me it is much more interesting as a window into the left wing psyche and their fever dreams.
I mean how can you not laugh when they're trying to act like the REPUBLICANS are behind the scenes picking the next President? After what we saw happen to Bernie Sanders twice, or the intelligence agencies putting their feet on the scales to try and swing the last 2 elections against Trump? I mean give me a break, it's laughable how out of touch these people are.
But even within that ridiculous framing you can still appreciate the drama that is happening. It is a fictional story after all, so if they want to write all these things out they can do it. My point is that we don't have to accept the framing at all.
Anyway there is so much more to be said about this show, it touches on our culture in so many interesting ways. I hope more conservatives and woke critics engage with and talk about it, because there is so much to be said.
💯💯💯
I started, couldn’t take the horrible characters as there’s enough of that in real life.
Husband, one son & daughter loved it for what you say above. 🙌
'Succession' never reached the enormous audience size of 'Yellowstone'.....that these two shows were released about the same time is fascinating in and of itself...
I never watched the show. We don't have cable and I'm not going to pay for HBO. However, the real issue is fantasy and Hollywood is a fantasy world, just like Disney. It's not real.
Glad to see that you made, "Amarillo by Morning!"
So, did Succession, displace The Handmaid's Tale as required viewing for #theresistance?
Having unplugged from virtually all Hollywood-produced entertainment - ESPECIALLY network television programming (AppleTV, Paramount, et al.) ever since the Seinfeld finale, I've not paid much attention except that which comes to my attention via the internet...
The James Spader-like character chracterization is spot-on in numerous ways. Too many to mention, but it's been thus for decades - the media, the congressional Democrats, the left (but I repeat myself) have successfully represented themselves as the "cool kids" in the high school that is our society, and everyone else as the great unwashed, the uncool kids. Eventually though, graduation day comes and everyone has to operate in the real world - perhaps graduation day is coming.
"To be a thriving industry, Hollywood will have to divorce the Democratic Party so they can produce subversive content again."
I don't see that happening any time soon.
"I don’t know about you, but I've overdosed on sanctimony, GOODNESS, on self-righteousness..."
As have I. Especially that as defined and served up by the left.
Thank you, Sasha, for another great dispatch - especially from the great state of Texas!
I saw a video of Vivek Ramaswamy yesterday at a Townhall meeting where he was asked what he would do on his first day as president. He said he would issue an Executive Order banning race based affirmative action. That’s exactly the opposite of what Biden did on his first day in office which was to issue an Executive Order to replace meritocracy wherever it can be found with Equity aka Equal Outcomes. We’re in a reality war of the Woke vs the nonWoke. Compare a nonWoke public intellectual like Vivek Ramaswamy to a Woke public intellectual like Ibram X. Kendi and the difference is like the difference between day and night or sanity vs insanity yet our ruling class, their media and their many useful idiot followers in the general public prefer Kendi! Watch what Saagar has to say about our ruling class war on merit for the sake of Equity. This is just not working at all.
“Exposed: Med Schools Drop Merit For Racial Admissions.” (6 min)
Breaking Points. Saagar Enjeti. Jan 30, 2023
https://youtu.be/xpH6jTMApW4
Glenn Loury, God bless him, goes on rant after rant about the Equity/Equality issues very often on his program. And don't get him on Kendi - he has often said that Kendi does not belong in the same room with MLK. If he cut off his dreadlocks and changed his name to Anthony Smith, no one would pay him the slightest intention.
I don't follow Kendi so didn't know that his career started covering the Bill Cosby trial. If I heard correctly, the editors at The Atlantic read him and offered him a job where he now earns thousands of dollars for every speech and even got a MacCarther grant.
Does anyone know if Africans who actually live in the various countries wear their hair in such elaborate styles which obviously take hours in beauty salons to whip up . I have only been in Tanzania for a couple of weeks but just can't remember a Whoopie Goldberg type walking around.
Here’s an excellent video of Amy Wax below being interviewed by Glenn Loury. A couple of highly intelligent people talking about the super hot potato of racial group differences. The whole video is worth watching but about about the last 15 min of the video of Loury and Wax talking about how the war on social norms and meritocracy is destroying our society. The best assessment of our dilemma that I’ve seen of why our civilization is collapsing. Any serious consideration of saving our society would have to deal with the issues they raise. Would it be at all possible though to deal with issues which have in fact already driven much of our society quite insane?
“The IQ Taboo.” (1:23 min)
Glenn Loury interviews Amy Wax. July 21, 2020
https://youtu.be/yLE67Z_YmSA
Russia and China are uniting much of the world to fight the spread of the poisonous Woke race and gender LGBTQIA+ ideology of our globalist, Woke leftist, ruling class which is demonic. All things are now global in our always online global civilization. Many traditional people will join them to fight this. No doubt about it. To a great extent WW3 will be a religious war fought over the nature of reality and of spiritual values. Only God Knows what fate has in store for us as our fallen world slides ever closer to the abyss.
“White House’s push for woke foreign policy will backfire with our socially conservative allies.”
New York Post. Miranda Devine. Mar 26, 2023
https://nypost.com/2023/03/26/white-houses-push-for-woke-foreign-policy-will-backfire-with-our-conservative-allies/
The woke cult is proceeding along Maoist lines. (See James Lindsay's New Discourses site for in depth coverage of this opinion). Much of this is probably attributable to the direction of activists who "identify as" Maoists. There have been homegrown American influences on the woke cult, including trans activism and such, but even the corporate DEI bureaucracy uses Maoist thought reform methodology. I suspect that the Chinese Communists think that things are all going really well for their ultimate takeover of the United States. The population will already be converted when they arrive in full force on our shores, and the true believers here will undoubtedly expect to be embraced by their Chinese comrades. The only sweet part for me in this apocalyptic fantasy are the looks of shock on their faces when their new overlords send them off to slave labor camps along with the deplorables.
Isn't that the usual treatment for the Useful Idiots? They willingly do their masters' bidding hoping for .... something. Their reward for handing over their and their fellow countrymens' liberty and rights is always the same boot on their necks as the people they betrayed.
Precisely!
I'm not convinced that China and Russia are fighting to prevent the spread of 'woke'. Seems like there's some evidence that the Russians know that 'race' is the USA's Archiilles heel and does stuff on-line (Facebook, Twitter etc) to rile folks up. Also the Chinese have been known to be very racist; they view black culture as crude and beneath them (they may have a point...) - the Japanese and other Asians view blacks the same way. It's just not spoken about in good company. Asian cultures do revere order, the wisdom of older people, family life, fine art, personal discipline & behavior, and observing public societal norms. As of late, black culture is anything but these things they admire.
Never forget that China supports the existence of North Korea - as an unfriendly nation state on their border would be an existential threat (as nuke-armed Cuba was to USA and NATO-courted Ukraine to Russia). At any rate, North Korea is currently the bleakest and most anti-human totalitarian regime on the planet, and it’s China that enables it to thrust this Orwellian ‘and the most extreme form of ‘woke’ life upon its people. That Pyongyang wokeness is contained, and pure evil. Interviews with North Korean defectors reveal some (most) citizens are so brainwashed from moment of birth, that they don’t even realize they are oppressed, which is a condition that can result when a person is constantly in search of food security, and never knows what it feels to be full. Did you know spring in rural North Korea sees the most deaths from malnutrition? Because vegetation has not yet blossomed for consumption. Food is also used as weapon in another ultra woke totalitarian society, Venezuela.
N. Korea isn’t Woke. They are racially homogenous and don’t play games with gender. I did read Yeonmi Park’s book “In Order to Live” about life there.
Woke isn't about racism, sexual deviancy, pedophilia, the environment, equality, or any other pet issue they have managed to corral into their devious cabal. It's about control. Period. Once they have achieved total tyranny they will order their activists to stand down and will be dealt with severely if they don't
Think of what woke is taken to its most extreme and that is North Korea. Total control of speech and thought, government controlled. Woke isn’t just Gender or Race, IMHO.
They are working to prevent the spread of Woke ideology and to get these countries in Africa, Asia and the Islamic world to join their side against America and the west. No doubt many will since Woke ideology is an attack on the traditional values which they have.
Med schools. Wow. Racism is, indeed, going to have a detrimental effect on health care outcomes, but not in the way the psycho progressives assert…
Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016 and the democrat’s “Resistance!” began I told a Mexican friend at work in Chicago, a Trump supporter who’s from Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest and most dangerous states, that the inability to transition to a new government after an election is a classic sign of a failed state. He actually shuddered as if a cold chill had just run down his spine. I never forgot his reaction to what I said. I’m retired now but worked (CNC machinery) for many years with mostly immigrants from places like Vietnam, Mexico, Assyrians from Iraq, Jews from the Soviet Union and many other places. Excellent people with traditional values. I stayed in touch with this Mexican friend and a Jewish woman who came here around 1990 from the Soviet Union. They are appalled by what has happened to America.
We need to listen to people who know what REAL dictators, nazis, fascists, authoritarians and despots look like (as opposed to the ridiculous fear theater spread by the democrats after 2016.)
They are uniformly appalled at the way this country is *voluntarily* decimating its most foundational freedoms and rights.
We all will know them very well, too.
So after Trump lost and refused to admit defeat you must have really seen the United States as a failed state.
Thanks. Another show I will never watch.
I agree with your take but as a conservative I loved Succession for its exquisite writing, acting, directing etc. Also don't forget the Left came in for its share of satire along the way. Review the "Ternhaven" episode from Season 2 to see how the liberal Pierces were portrayed as hypocrites undernath their santimonious facade. Also, remember the flaws in the Democrat candidates Shiv worked for: the vulgar postings from Joyce's husband; the dark hints behind the personal life of Gil Eavis and how he overcompensated his lofty position to resonate with the men he met on the street; and how he ultimately cut a deal with Logan for better ATN news coverage. The show's creators hit the right more than the left, but it was a greaat show. I just wished more of the reviewers from the mainstream press (Rolling Stone, et al) would have suspended their own political biases when reviewing the episodes.
Agree but I think season 4 gave them what they wanted by settling on "they're the fascist enablers" but yes the first seasons were better. I loved the show until it sold itself out.
Nail on the head.
Perfectly said. Beware when you fight monsters that you don't become one yourself.
Sasha,
Great piece. Again.
Amarillo? Be sure to go eat at The Big Texan, which has these monster steaks, as big as your leg, for free, If you can finish it. Then get your name up on the wall. There are plenty of names of women and childen. Probably thousands by now.