They use their tools to remove elements of truth and elements of freedom beyond our gaze. We are finding out the mechanism slowly, but we are learning how they did it through the work of Matt Taibbi and the others who have seen totalitarianism's fist behind this and will not be controlled. Your voice is not Matt's - it is actually more eloquent than he is, Sasha, and you are just as important, in your way. You two are working two opposite ends of this burning candle that is 2023.
What have we learned? We learned that they are playing jenga with the future in a particularly feckless way. They haven't won, and we haven't lost. Not yet anyway. We're just waiting to see where the collapse becomes complete.
Keep chopping wood, Sasha. Love you and what you're doing here.
Here is how most of my family and working class neighborhood recalls what happened and the consequences of it. The hippies and protesters of the Vietnam war really didn’t get motivated until the Draft and their own personal ass was on the line. Before that, they didn’t give a shit about poor American deaths in Nam. Jane Fonda and he photo ops with North Vietnam we’re their favs. These draft dodgers and protesters then went in to academia in a big way and who was their worst enemy? Why poor white trash of course. Those under educated salt-of-the-earth bastards who didn’t want to give up what little they had left to the government. This hypocrisy and culture continued for decades and is alive today; who do you think actually does the fighting for our country? You Lieutenant Weinberg?! As our country has become ever more socialist, we have fewer and fewer freedoms and a tax base to sustain welfare. Anyway, I thank you Sasha for your courage and exceptional talent in bringing multiple complex subjects together in to a compelling and thought provoking essay. Maybe some day a historian will point to you as one that made a difference.
Another great piece Sasha. I wish more people could see that the great division we face today is not the traditional right vs. left but the global elite vs. the common people. I don't know why so many on the left (with a few notable exceptions) are so eager to be the minions of big tech and big pharma and so reluctant to criticize the Ukraine war which seems to have no end in sight. It seems to me that these are issues where traditional opponents could find more common ground.
I don't know if you've seen the video of Steve Bannon on Tim Pool's show at AMFEST but it's an example of conservatives, libertarians, and anarchists agreeing on the basic issue of freedom.
I force my little kids to watch old shows like Gilligans Island and Scooby Doo where there were episodes that never would be allowed to air these days. This is to help them understand that aspects of life can be funny even if the humor is not aligned with today's forced narratives.
This was excellent (as always), and one point I'd add on the 1984 theme: that the O'Brien characters that run the WEF and police state exempt themselves from the rules and restrictions. They can vacation in paradise, travel in private jets without masks, eat pasta rather than bleached crickets, and in fact not have to "love Big Brother". In many cases they can do it in broad daylight, while the Winstons of the world have to follow all the rules and be happy about it>
I live in a very progressive New England town, and we are recognized on our street as one family who doesn't have "all the signs" up in front of their house (i.e., the BLM, hate has no home, we believe ..., rainbows, etc.) Very recently a woman who DID or does have all the signs spoke out (mildly) conceding some people made reasonable points about objecting to some explicit cartoons that showed up in the school library and folks went berserk. I'd guess, even though the signs are probably still up, she lost most of her friends that evening. Guess she will have to be "Winston'-ed
Don’t know if you have read David Mamet’s article from 2008ish in the Village Voice of all places entitled “Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal.” But, Sasha, based on this article and your apparent conversion finding sanity, you could have written it. It was the first cogent confession I had read of a staunch New York liberal who figured himself wrong and then changed it. It took his wife telling him to shut up and rethink his thinking. It is beautiful. Thanks for this piece as all. Very encouraging.
Excellent analysis of the last 60 or so years - I lived the timeframe and some of the events. Only the USA has had both the freedom and the brave people to explore these historical trends. It would be very sad that at this cusp the country chose Big Brother over enlightenment. There truly is no other country in this world that can overcome might makes right in the long term
I listened to this piece twice, to fully get (enjoy) how beautifully woven together Sasha’s commentary and analysis colored in the last 50-60 years. The interspersed videos, personal comments, even sound effects, however, brought back much of the detailed misdirected violence of the recent past, vividly. We do tend to forget some of this, as the passage of time blurs, even distorts events primarily experienced and then translated via the media.
The essence, though, of this substack is how vulnerable individual freedoms really are, in conjunction with how moldable the general public tends to evolve through the ages. The general public’s tendency to compliantly follow orders, ingest expert’s opinions, avoid their own gut feelings of what is true or not, continues to erode the very freedoms that so many in the world envy. The concerning aspect of all this is that so many seldom know the value of something or somebody until it is gone.
I believe Jan 6th more than anything was the frustration of the people not being heard. We were locked up and treated like toddlers for months and then when anyone questioned the election at all we were accused of being an election denier or conspiracy theorist. If I had lived close to DC I too may have protested but I wouldn’t have been trying to over turn an election. I could handle if Biden won but what I can’t handle is constantly being told there’s nothing to see here.
Good piece, Sasha. My three young adult children are not GenZ zombies; we have raised them in the real world that has consequences. Just encouraging you all to do the same. And also to follow Sasha's example of leaving your tribe and engaging with others and you'll find out you actually agree on >90% of all issues discussed which is what the Machine fears more than anything else leading to the persecution of one side.
Yeah Ramaswamy is good, I read his book it was worth the time. Excellent writeup, it's an interesting time right now, hard to tell whether the big issue is taking place more so on the left, or is it the establishment. Glenn Greenwald makes a good point that political labels can be vague and hard to pin down and lead to tribal thinking and get in the way of actually debating issues. Someone hears you are on the right or left and their opinion is formed and they're soon arguing with a caricature they've built up in their mind.
The problem for the globalists is that trust in the institutions is extremely low. While the left is in love with government at this particular moment, that will fade immediately if a Republican gets in office.
Plus without the support of China and India the globalists will be reduced to lecturing Western countries about why they need to support massive taxes and restrictions on freedom
They use their tools to remove elements of truth and elements of freedom beyond our gaze. We are finding out the mechanism slowly, but we are learning how they did it through the work of Matt Taibbi and the others who have seen totalitarianism's fist behind this and will not be controlled. Your voice is not Matt's - it is actually more eloquent than he is, Sasha, and you are just as important, in your way. You two are working two opposite ends of this burning candle that is 2023.
What have we learned? We learned that they are playing jenga with the future in a particularly feckless way. They haven't won, and we haven't lost. Not yet anyway. We're just waiting to see where the collapse becomes complete.
Keep chopping wood, Sasha. Love you and what you're doing here.
Here is how most of my family and working class neighborhood recalls what happened and the consequences of it. The hippies and protesters of the Vietnam war really didn’t get motivated until the Draft and their own personal ass was on the line. Before that, they didn’t give a shit about poor American deaths in Nam. Jane Fonda and he photo ops with North Vietnam we’re their favs. These draft dodgers and protesters then went in to academia in a big way and who was their worst enemy? Why poor white trash of course. Those under educated salt-of-the-earth bastards who didn’t want to give up what little they had left to the government. This hypocrisy and culture continued for decades and is alive today; who do you think actually does the fighting for our country? You Lieutenant Weinberg?! As our country has become ever more socialist, we have fewer and fewer freedoms and a tax base to sustain welfare. Anyway, I thank you Sasha for your courage and exceptional talent in bringing multiple complex subjects together in to a compelling and thought provoking essay. Maybe some day a historian will point to you as one that made a difference.
Another great piece Sasha. I wish more people could see that the great division we face today is not the traditional right vs. left but the global elite vs. the common people. I don't know why so many on the left (with a few notable exceptions) are so eager to be the minions of big tech and big pharma and so reluctant to criticize the Ukraine war which seems to have no end in sight. It seems to me that these are issues where traditional opponents could find more common ground.
I don't know if you've seen the video of Steve Bannon on Tim Pool's show at AMFEST but it's an example of conservatives, libertarians, and anarchists agreeing on the basic issue of freedom.
I force my little kids to watch old shows like Gilligans Island and Scooby Doo where there were episodes that never would be allowed to air these days. This is to help them understand that aspects of life can be funny even if the humor is not aligned with today's forced narratives.
This was excellent (as always), and one point I'd add on the 1984 theme: that the O'Brien characters that run the WEF and police state exempt themselves from the rules and restrictions. They can vacation in paradise, travel in private jets without masks, eat pasta rather than bleached crickets, and in fact not have to "love Big Brother". In many cases they can do it in broad daylight, while the Winstons of the world have to follow all the rules and be happy about it>
I live in a very progressive New England town, and we are recognized on our street as one family who doesn't have "all the signs" up in front of their house (i.e., the BLM, hate has no home, we believe ..., rainbows, etc.) Very recently a woman who DID or does have all the signs spoke out (mildly) conceding some people made reasonable points about objecting to some explicit cartoons that showed up in the school library and folks went berserk. I'd guess, even though the signs are probably still up, she lost most of her friends that evening. Guess she will have to be "Winston'-ed
Thank you Sasha!
Nailed it. 100%. Thank you.
Don’t know if you have read David Mamet’s article from 2008ish in the Village Voice of all places entitled “Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal.” But, Sasha, based on this article and your apparent conversion finding sanity, you could have written it. It was the first cogent confession I had read of a staunch New York liberal who figured himself wrong and then changed it. It took his wife telling him to shut up and rethink his thinking. It is beautiful. Thanks for this piece as all. Very encouraging.
Excellent analysis of the last 60 or so years - I lived the timeframe and some of the events. Only the USA has had both the freedom and the brave people to explore these historical trends. It would be very sad that at this cusp the country chose Big Brother over enlightenment. There truly is no other country in this world that can overcome might makes right in the long term
I listened to this piece twice, to fully get (enjoy) how beautifully woven together Sasha’s commentary and analysis colored in the last 50-60 years. The interspersed videos, personal comments, even sound effects, however, brought back much of the detailed misdirected violence of the recent past, vividly. We do tend to forget some of this, as the passage of time blurs, even distorts events primarily experienced and then translated via the media.
The essence, though, of this substack is how vulnerable individual freedoms really are, in conjunction with how moldable the general public tends to evolve through the ages. The general public’s tendency to compliantly follow orders, ingest expert’s opinions, avoid their own gut feelings of what is true or not, continues to erode the very freedoms that so many in the world envy. The concerning aspect of all this is that so many seldom know the value of something or somebody until it is gone.
I believe Jan 6th more than anything was the frustration of the people not being heard. We were locked up and treated like toddlers for months and then when anyone questioned the election at all we were accused of being an election denier or conspiracy theorist. If I had lived close to DC I too may have protested but I wouldn’t have been trying to over turn an election. I could handle if Biden won but what I can’t handle is constantly being told there’s nothing to see here.
Good piece, Sasha. My three young adult children are not GenZ zombies; we have raised them in the real world that has consequences. Just encouraging you all to do the same. And also to follow Sasha's example of leaving your tribe and engaging with others and you'll find out you actually agree on >90% of all issues discussed which is what the Machine fears more than anything else leading to the persecution of one side.
We are already a third world nation.
I’m just trying to keep my children and grandchildren safe from
the Leftist Pigs destroying the country that I fought for in Vietnam and
my relatives fought for in WWII and Korea.
Yeah Ramaswamy is good, I read his book it was worth the time. Excellent writeup, it's an interesting time right now, hard to tell whether the big issue is taking place more so on the left, or is it the establishment. Glenn Greenwald makes a good point that political labels can be vague and hard to pin down and lead to tribal thinking and get in the way of actually debating issues. Someone hears you are on the right or left and their opinion is formed and they're soon arguing with a caricature they've built up in their mind.
My hope waxes and wanes, but then I’ll see something like SS’s brave writing, or a tweet like this, and the hope rises again..
https://twitter.com/staunch_namo/status/1619273683822075905?s=46&t=IH6wV1gX2BjEvsnvBzGu6A
Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII... How does this 4th turning end?
The problem for the globalists is that trust in the institutions is extremely low. While the left is in love with government at this particular moment, that will fade immediately if a Republican gets in office.
Plus without the support of China and India the globalists will be reduced to lecturing Western countries about why they need to support massive taxes and restrictions on freedom
Here is a plausible analysis from Michael Lind at the Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/power-mad-progressive-utopianism-must-be-stopped