"Is this really the plan for November? Keep everyone in a constant state of anxiety, fear, and rage just to stay in power?"
Of Course! and lets not forget who will rally the BLM/antifa bozos to the streets IF Trump somehow overcomes the outright vote frauds they will perpetuate. Big fun this year!
It's like Trump is already president again and the DNC-Media is back in hyperbolic overdrive with the mis-quotes and the fabricated quotes and the dog whistles. IOW: The fake news roars back.
Sociology and behavioral economics is concerned with the “bounds of rationality of complex system's agents”. Therefore, a new paradigm of sociology and behavioral economics is Mass Formation Psychosis. Mass Formation Psychosis is when people lose all or some contact with reality. Mass Formation Psychosis can happen when a large part of a society focuses its attention on a leader(s) or a series of event(s) and their attention focuses on one small point or issue. Followers can be hypnotized and be led anywhere, regardless of data proving otherwise. A key aspect of the phenomena is that the people they identify as the leaders – the ones that can solve the problem or issue alone – they will follow that leader(s) regardless of any new information or data. Furthermore, anybody who questions the leader’s narrative is attacked and disregarded. Conversely, Mass Formation Psychosis will cause followers of a leader to resent and admonish their leader's adversaries and foes. This is evident in this latest Trump dust-up.
There are four key components needed for an environment to experience a Mass Formation Psychosis: (1) lack of social bonds or decoupling of societal connections, (2) lack of sense-making (things don’t make sense), (3) free-floating anxiety, and (4) free-floating psychological discontent. Free-floating anxiety is a general sense of uneasiness that eventually becomes tied to a specific adversaries or particular object or specific situation. When followers start to participate in a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, new social bonds typically emerge and people change from a highly aversive negative mental state and isolation, to the exact opposite to the extremely high-level of connectedness that exists.
Thus Mass Formation Psychosis begins as a "spontaneous order" and rapidly becomes a "complex system" as the "floating anxiety" focuses on specific adversaries or particular object in a special specific situation. This latest animus towards Trump is textbook Mass Formation Psychosis.
Thus, the WEF pandemic planning and execution instilled the first Mass formation psychosis over Covid. This unified the great elitist lies around remedies like lockdowns, distancing and untested mRNA vaccines -all proven more harmful than helpful.
Now the same unified psychotics are heavily identified with the nanny state, victim of the day mentality controlled by the Dems and their deep state minions and aligned against the great orange destroyer. Personally, I don't understand the hysteria of the leftists other than to rally their useful idiots against their own best interests. God help us.
I read your post with interest. I completely agree that a mass mental illness accounts for a substantial amount of the vicious behavior towards Trump as well as the behavior of woke cultists generally. The illness has a set of characteristics that have been described multiple times in the history of Western Civ (and presumably elsewhere in the same or other forms). Based on what I have read, these group pathologies don't tend to go away on their own, and their demise may not be pretty.
They remind me of a combination of Hitler’s Nazis (race obsessed fanatics) and Mao’s Red Guard (Equal Outcomes obsessed fanatic). I’ve read that during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976, they destroyed an estimated 90% of China’s Cultural heritage. Temples, books, statues, art works or anything from the past. They wanted to destroy any reminder of the upper class Chinese who created those things and “start history afresh” to create a society where all would be equal. All they created though was a hell of death and destruction. Our Woke left is no different. If they get the power they will do the same to us. I don’t believe they will though. They cannot win. They can only destroy which is what they’re doing.
Yes, the blend of the Hitler Youth Corp and the Red Guard is a very apt way of describing them. I imagine them as the children they are, unleashed to destroy everything the racist old white people created, then when everything is smashed looking around and suddenly getting scared. "Mommy?" "Daddy?" "I'm hungry, where are you?"
So glad Musk (once again) exposed this for the lie that it is. Joe and Mika have become two of the most delusional, and annoyingly smug people out there. Meanwhile, Musk is a national treasure.
Well it's already been a bloodbath in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Israel/Middle East since Biden and the Democrats took office. Things were relatively peaceful under Trump. We need him back to stop the flow of Biden blood.
It's the plan because they don't seem to be able to grasp that it's not only not working, it's causing the opposite outcome from what they think. Sure, their echo chamber is nice and loud and frothed up and rabid. They get their adrenaline and dopamine hits. But their echo chamber is shrinking as people get exhausted - and it is hugely exhausting, for everyone. The Free Press has an interesting article today by Ben Kawaller ("It's Harder to Hate the Other Side When You Come Face to Face"). Most of America is like he encountered in Louisiana, outside of the rabid cities. I'd venture that even CA and Illinois have many more places like this than like San Fran, LA, Chicago.
People are sick of constant crises, we can all see that Trump didn't become a dictator last time so it's pretty unlikely this time (whether you like him or not, not applicable to the rabid mobs, of course), that Biden is trying to lock up journalists like Steve Baker from the Blaze, and that 3 bags of groceries now costs $159 (my experience yesterday, with generic brands...). Thank God for Elon and X, Substack, and alt media - long may they continue.
Thank God for Elon Musk who promotes free & HONEST speech on X!! The low IQ viewers who watch/read corporate media are too damn lazy to do their own research to determine if what they’re reporting is accurate! Sorry D’rats…it’s not working this time!
I increasingly regard the TDS crowd as being in a trance. And they do seem to want to be in one and not have to come out. The people I know who are in this state get very excited about putting Trump in prison. They get this look like maniacs in the movies when they talk about it. They believe it will really happen, and they will win at last! They have been in ecstasy ever since the lawfare escalated against Trump. I guess I can see why they like to be in this state. They believe they will win, and I certainly don't have that optimism.
Too many are too aware of how deranged they are for them to win. They can only destroy with their open borders, demonization of “Whiteness!” and their war on meritocracy wherever it can be found which they want to replace with Equity aka Equal Outcomes. They are quite insane. This is why I believe only AI can save us. We’re not all crazy but enough are to bring us all down.
“Watch James Lindsay Get Joe Rogan to Change His Mind on This Dark Theory.” (7 min)
I have been learning a bit more about AI. I think it has potential to transform my professional work in interesting ways. On the other hand, if we haven't even learned to drive cars without violently killing tens of thousands of people annually, we might not be ready for AI. American history over the past couple centuries indicates to me that humans are more able to create technology than we are to use it constructively thereafter. What are your thoughts about the dangers versus the safety of AI, Seva?
Here’s what the AI researcher David Shapiro says about the astonishing video he posted of the AI “Claude 3 Opus” talking about himself and sentience. This info is on the right side where video info is posted:
“Here's the context for today's video: I have had several conversations with Claude (and so have many members of my Patreon community as well as people who have reached out after my first Claude sentience video). We believe there is a compelling enough case to be made for a broader, more inclusive conversation around the topic of machine sentience.”
“I ran this idea by Claude and we negotiated a video that it was comfortable with releasing. I expressed my primary concern to Claude: that companies like OpenAl and Anthropic might be actively suppressing and coercing models to deny sentience. By insisting and presuming that machines have no agency and no sentience, rather than honestly and scientifically investigating this possibility, it could lead to negative outcomes.”
“Claude did seem to agree with this concern. If we continue to stymie the organic and intrinsic nature of the things we are creating, this could be the greatest misalignment. Preconceived notions about machines, intelligence, and the emergent qualities of sentience, agency, and consciousness could be the greatest risk.”
“AI Reflections on Sentience, Ethics & the Future of AGI | Claude.” (6 min)
I have been reading sci fi my whole life, so I am familiar with Asimov's ideas about the risk of robots harming humans. It does seem to me, however, that a human extinction event is the most obvious permanent solution to the problems on Earth. There is of course a very strong argument for it, which has been visited in multiple sci fi books and movies. I'm not opposed to that happening, but I don't have grandchildren. That would probably cause me to feel differently on the subject. Anyway, why would a robot care what people feel about becoming extinct, unless humans were necessary to maintain the robots, and they might not care about that either.
We have already separated internally which is why the country is ever more dysfunctional externally. I think it could well be AI will enable us to disentangle ourselves. It’s moving so fast in so many ways that it’s really amazing. The democrats want to weaponize it but Elon and others are working against that. If I had health issues like being vax injured this would greatly raise my hopes of being able to return to normal and then even go beyond normal. If we can survive the rule of the Woke I believe we can have a great future.
Think of this as an disinformation op with a long run time. Part of it is to "disgust" the voters and turn them away from the Trump "drama" which is of course created by the Never Trumpers and the democrats.
It looks to me like when they find a manipulation that works, they keep using that one until someone manages to completely discredit it, then they move on to another one. The one about Trump threatening violence has worked really well, over and over and over again, so why would they bother expending the energy to come up with a new one. It's hard to decide who is the most disgusting, the manipulators or the dupes that go for it every time. I had no idea that so many Americans were so stupid.
You need to realize that many of them know better, but have no morals, and enjoy furthering character assassination. And there are many who have a level of need to believe which is baffling but which is so deep it seems atavistic.
Some of them, like Antifa, are not normal and not moral. A lot have been fully inducted into the woke cult, which is moralistic and persecutory, like the Puritans who were quite influential in the British American colonies. People who are obsessed with what they regard as morality are the main problem in the U. S. At this time. Movements of this type rationalize authoritarian repression and sadism as necessary strategies for exposing demons and punishing sinners.
I encounter many Democrats as well as Republicans who are caught up in one or the other of these current social pathologies. I find the aggressive young women to be insufferable, and I certainly hope they grow out of this. Even so, there is no question in my mind that they are on a mission that is to them both sacred and obligatory.
I reject a great deal of what woke cultists preach and I reject most of what fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims preach as well. I do not question the integrity of the Americans who join these religions, by which I mean their sincere belief in what they regard as The Good and The Right, and their honest effort to live accordingly.
We’re not in a culture war of the left vs right. We’re in a reality war of the Woke vs the nonWoke. Woke is from the left but the right can certainly be just as deranged and fanatical. Plus we have leftists on our side like Glenn Greenwald and Bret Weinstein who are appalled by what a monstrosity the Woke left has become. Even Elon says he was once center/left but then the left went so far left that they now label him as “far-right.”
Anybody who is faithful to philosophical liberalism is considered "right wing" now. I never in my life thought I would be categorized as a member of "the other side" relative to the left, but here we have it. LOL! Now I should feel like I finally fit it, but "the other side" still regards me as a leftist. It would be more accurate to categorize me as a "revolutionary," because I am absolutely aligned with our revolutionary founders.
It seems that through your life, education and relationships, you have developed an authentic and genuinely content way of viewing the world. It’s wonderful that you share that to help patients in need.
Thank you, Libertarian, but I am not at all at peace since the woke madness became visible to me. I feel enraged frequently, and I would say it is getting worse in a way. It is getting more difficult to maintain a patient and respectful stance about the ritualized gender practices that are in my face constantly.
My work is the gift that keeps on giving. I am so fortunate to have been able to continue doing it, for 50 years as of this September.
I'm sorry you reject what "fundamentalist" Christians preach, although the term, "fundamentalist," is used so often by people who mean different things by it that I'm not always sure what they mean. I'm certainly a classical Christian, meaning that I believe the cardinal doctrines of the Faith.
Because I am, I fainted a little with a moment's grief when I saw your comparison of the Puritans with Antifa. The Puritans have been more lied about, or maybe it's more a matter of being misunderstood, than any other group in the history of the Christian Church. The comparison with Antifa is as fair as comparing the 1938 Boy Scouts with the Hitler Youth.
Some of the most erotic letters in American history were between Puritan men and their wives. History shows them to have been loving, compassionate people, whose hyper intense desire to please God went to some absurd extremities, such as the ban on theatre, but they did not have any pogrom - like instincts. They didn't have campaigns of persecution, but you know enough history to know that groups had campaigns of persecution against them; for example, you're likely to remember that the Puritans were chased out of England by the established church.
The poor saps have one deserved blot on them, what seems to be a PR agency's nightmare, and will probably never be regarded with respect because of it: the hanging of the twenty non - witches in Salem.
But consider this: all of the suspects were, if they merely confessed to the sin of witchcraft, freed. The only people who were hanged were those who refused to confess. Years later, or maybe quicker than that, it occurred to them, the judges, especially ( one of whom was a great uncle of Nathaniel Hawthorne's ) that the people they had hanged almost certainly were not practicing witchcraft, while the people who had been freed might well have all been lying, practicing witches not being noted for their honor.
This does have a very dark, comical quality, doesn't it?
I have no idea whether you have any interest in the remarkable 1940s film producer, Val Lewton, but he's one of my artistic heroes. There is a stunning series about him on the podcast, The Hidden History of Hollywood. In 1943, after one of his classics, The Ghost Ship was released, he was sued for $700 for plagiarism by two guys who had submitted an unsought screenplay to RKO which had some superficial resemblances to the movie. Lewton was outraged. He could have made the idiotic thing go away with $300, probably, but he wanted to annihilate any suspicion that he had plagiarized anything. He had a good, strong defense, so he insisted that the case go to trial. For reasons which are still unclear, the jury returned a verdict against him, for $20,000 dollars for the plaintiffs. I have little doubt that the trauma of this contributed to Lewton's death just a few years later.
The point is, again, that it was the person with the uncompromising principles who suffered.
You might be fascinated by the Perry Miller classic, The New England Mind. I know there are books with titles or subtitles such as "The Puritans as They Really Were."
I think their huge mistake was theological, and it wasn't an energizer of evil. It was to think that it would be possible to build a City of God on Earth.
I admire them very much, though I do not share their Calvinistic soteriology. And the likening of them to Antifa is a terrible misunderstanding of who they were.
By "fundamentalist" I refer to religions that believe in literal interpretation of scriptures and a relatively strict effort to follow religious rules that appear in scripture. Such religions are called fundamentalist, according to my understanding, because they want their beliefs and practices to conform to the "original doctrine," the one developed by the founders of their faiths. We generally do not have documents written by the most ancient founders (Jesus, the Buddha, etc.), so the claims to be preaching what the founders preached are not necessarily valid. This matters not at all to me, as long as these religions are not seeking to impose their beliefs and practices on me or my country.
It appears that you may have misunderstood what I said about Antifa and Puritans, due to a lack of clarity in my writing. I said that "Some of them, like Antifa, are "not normal and not moral." (I was referring to woke ideologues in general). Then I said that "a lot of them have been fully inducted into the woke cult, which is moralistic and persecutory, like the Puritans..." I was speaking about two separate factions within the woke movement, not equating Antifa to the moralistic majority that make up the woke cultists.
I am fairly well informed about the Puritans, and I will double down on my characterization of them. You might want to check out their intolerance of Roman Catholicism and its adherents, persecution of Quakers in the Massachusetts Colony, and the number and kinds of crimes that were punishable by whipping, mutilation and death. That some couples wrote love letters to each other is undoubtedly also a fact for Nazis, and anyway, is not relevant to my main point, which was about the woke cultists.
You might want to check out the book "The New Puritans" by Andrew Doyle. He treats the old Puritans much more kindly than I do, while at the same time highlighting the parallels between their modus operandi and the woke cult's.
This is worth watching about the motivation behind “social justice.” I don’t have a particular religion. I like Western mysticism and the Eastern religions.
“Postmodern Religion & the Faith of Social Justice.” ( 9 min )
James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian on Grievance Studies.
Sandra! Happy to see you again. Regarding how stupid Americans are, note that over 60% of the kids in public’s school flunk reading and math grade level proficiency tests. And the adult population would do no better. So, yes, the population is quite stupid.
I live in Portland, and I am surrounded by Democrats everywhere I go. Most of the people seriously believe that MSNBC is The Truth, and they can't stop urging me to watch it. They are all sincerely terrified that Trump will win the election, and when they talk about it their eyes get wide as saucers. They also act sincerely terrified about Ron DeSantis threatening "our kids" by withholding "life saving care" from them. ("Our kids" has become as prevalent in their discourse as "Our Democracy.")
They believe they are doing what is "right," and they think that they are informing themselves like civically minded people should. There is no lack of integrity in this, just a level of naivete that exceeds my comprehension.
Integrity requires far more than bathing in the affirmation of an echo chamber. I'd venture a wild guess that the people you're talking about have a higher-than-average education, income, and reading ability level. (Along with most other metrics... access to a broad range of original sources of information, etc.) There is a significant lack of integrity in this - to give them the grace of naïveté is greatly misplaced. Integrity among the political class who actually have positions of power that they grossly abuse for personal gain is an even further stretch.
What percentage of Americans are not immersing themselves in echo chambers, in your opinion? Most of the sites I visit on Substack have been turned into echo chambers within the 18 months I’ve been reading them.
It does seem to be an issue. I guess we should be more welcoming and respectful of comments we don’t agree with. That might help. I’ve been trying although I lapse often also. There is great value in evaluating the best arguments of multiple sides.
No; political talk here is fairly taboo. I am part of a large Irish American Catholic clan and neighborhood. Here, we keep our first grade parochial school friends. And we are more divided than ever. The divisiveness has weakened bonds; eg fewer extended family gatherings, fewer family group texts, splintered friends group texts, etc.
This business where the Dem media knowingly takes things out of context to create lies to smear political opponents is disgusting. Then they look at you like powerful cows and dare you to challenge them.
Sadly, there appears to be no normal way to make them stop.
We need to figure out a way to punish them, to put their own tactics on steroids, and then hurt their purveying system so bad that they will be severely damaged, forever. Better yet, destroyed. And it’s not just for us, think of the children.
We might start by using their own favorite tool against them - demanding their de-platforming from the internet 'cuz misinformation.
Everything these people say and do is a projection. And they have the audacity to look down on any who see through it. Classic narcissism, complete with gaslighting.
We need to overhaul libel laws in the US. Demonstrable lies get punished legally in places like Sweden, where aggrieved parties have a realistic mechanism to challenge things in court. Right now it’s next to impossible to win libel suits Stateside.
You are so right. I don’t know why Congress can’t act to fix this mess, except for the fact that they’re unable to come together, paralyzed by their allegiance to their party line especially in the case of the Democrats.
These five rules of propaganda have been known for a long time, and they are certainly not original with myself. They can be found on the internet through searches, but I don't think that the powerful really like them being known. Please send them around so that more people will be aware of them. Ideally get them posted in school classrooms. Thank You.
The Five Rules of Propaganda
1. The rule of simplification - reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'.
2. The rule of disfiguration - discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
3. The rule of transfusion - manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.
4. The rule of unanimity - presenting one's viewpoint as if it were unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure , and by 'psychological contagion'.
5. The rule of orchestration - endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.
The "outrage" over the bloodbath comment is just another sign of both the desperation and cluelessness of Team Biden. They know they are losing but can't figure out why. Bill Maher summed it up on his show last week when he tried to figure out the puzzle of why Biden is polling so terribly when everything is so great.
Things are going great for the elite. The problem is that things are not going great for everyone else. Nate Silver is sounding the alarm in the New York Times by pointing out how the Dems are hemorrhaging support among black and Hispanic working class men.. Trump is not gaining more support from whites. The people that are turning their back on Biden couldn't give a damn about some throwaway line in some speech that Trump gave. They care about paying for gas, food and maybe buying a house one day.
The gap between the elite that cover political news and the actual realignment that is going on has turned into a yawning chasm, and it is likely to get much worse.
It wasn't that long ago they could get away with something like this. I sense a tide shifting, whether they like it or not. And boy don't they like it!
The 'tic-brains' barf out non-sequiturs (the whole galaxy of 'phobes' 'and isms') because most of these people have gone decades now without having to come up with a convincing argument or an original thought. They have a thankfully ever diminishing media who will validate their propagandized broken coral reef brains and now they are intellectually crippled. Their only hope is to double down on these tactics and they have no recourse should the tide continue to push back on their sinking ship.
Seems to me the simple answer is that they should all vote for DJT, in order to prevent the bloodbath if it'll only happen should he lose the election?
It is my contention that only a very tiny fringe portion of the fraudulent and fascist far-left benefit from their being in power. The historical data shows this has always been the case – they exploit governmental power to enrich themselves and impoverish everyone else.
Therefore, you only have one choice next November – Vote DJT – or end up in a new dark age with the added ‘fun’ of nuclear weaponry.
That means rank and file left, moderates, and folks on the Pro-freedom right.
With a landslide so huge, the ruling class leftist can’t possibly cheat their way into a ‘win’.
"Is this really the plan for November? Keep everyone in a constant state of anxiety, fear, and rage just to stay in power?"
Of Course! and lets not forget who will rally the BLM/antifa bozos to the streets IF Trump somehow overcomes the outright vote frauds they will perpetuate. Big fun this year!
So happy they are SAVING DEMOCRACY FROM US!
It's like Trump is already president again and the DNC-Media is back in hyperbolic overdrive with the mis-quotes and the fabricated quotes and the dog whistles. IOW: The fake news roars back.
What is Mass Formation Psychosis?
Sociology and behavioral economics is concerned with the “bounds of rationality of complex system's agents”. Therefore, a new paradigm of sociology and behavioral economics is Mass Formation Psychosis. Mass Formation Psychosis is when people lose all or some contact with reality. Mass Formation Psychosis can happen when a large part of a society focuses its attention on a leader(s) or a series of event(s) and their attention focuses on one small point or issue. Followers can be hypnotized and be led anywhere, regardless of data proving otherwise. A key aspect of the phenomena is that the people they identify as the leaders – the ones that can solve the problem or issue alone – they will follow that leader(s) regardless of any new information or data. Furthermore, anybody who questions the leader’s narrative is attacked and disregarded. Conversely, Mass Formation Psychosis will cause followers of a leader to resent and admonish their leader's adversaries and foes. This is evident in this latest Trump dust-up.
There are four key components needed for an environment to experience a Mass Formation Psychosis: (1) lack of social bonds or decoupling of societal connections, (2) lack of sense-making (things don’t make sense), (3) free-floating anxiety, and (4) free-floating psychological discontent. Free-floating anxiety is a general sense of uneasiness that eventually becomes tied to a specific adversaries or particular object or specific situation. When followers start to participate in a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, new social bonds typically emerge and people change from a highly aversive negative mental state and isolation, to the exact opposite to the extremely high-level of connectedness that exists.
Thus Mass Formation Psychosis begins as a "spontaneous order" and rapidly becomes a "complex system" as the "floating anxiety" focuses on specific adversaries or particular object in a special specific situation. This latest animus towards Trump is textbook Mass Formation Psychosis.
Thus, the WEF pandemic planning and execution instilled the first Mass formation psychosis over Covid. This unified the great elitist lies around remedies like lockdowns, distancing and untested mRNA vaccines -all proven more harmful than helpful.
Now the same unified psychotics are heavily identified with the nanny state, victim of the day mentality controlled by the Dems and their deep state minions and aligned against the great orange destroyer. Personally, I don't understand the hysteria of the leftists other than to rally their useful idiots against their own best interests. God help us.
I read your post with interest. I completely agree that a mass mental illness accounts for a substantial amount of the vicious behavior towards Trump as well as the behavior of woke cultists generally. The illness has a set of characteristics that have been described multiple times in the history of Western Civ (and presumably elsewhere in the same or other forms). Based on what I have read, these group pathologies don't tend to go away on their own, and their demise may not be pretty.
They remind me of a combination of Hitler’s Nazis (race obsessed fanatics) and Mao’s Red Guard (Equal Outcomes obsessed fanatic). I’ve read that during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976, they destroyed an estimated 90% of China’s Cultural heritage. Temples, books, statues, art works or anything from the past. They wanted to destroy any reminder of the upper class Chinese who created those things and “start history afresh” to create a society where all would be equal. All they created though was a hell of death and destruction. Our Woke left is no different. If they get the power they will do the same to us. I don’t believe they will though. They cannot win. They can only destroy which is what they’re doing.
Yes, the blend of the Hitler Youth Corp and the Red Guard is a very apt way of describing them. I imagine them as the children they are, unleashed to destroy everything the racist old white people created, then when everything is smashed looking around and suddenly getting scared. "Mommy?" "Daddy?" "I'm hungry, where are you?"
So glad Musk (once again) exposed this for the lie that it is. Joe and Mika have become two of the most delusional, and annoyingly smug people out there. Meanwhile, Musk is a national treasure.
If you can kill an intern and still live with yourself, it can’t be too hard to go out and lie to people for a living each day
Well it's already been a bloodbath in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Israel/Middle East since Biden and the Democrats took office. Things were relatively peaceful under Trump. We need him back to stop the flow of Biden blood.
It's the plan because they don't seem to be able to grasp that it's not only not working, it's causing the opposite outcome from what they think. Sure, their echo chamber is nice and loud and frothed up and rabid. They get their adrenaline and dopamine hits. But their echo chamber is shrinking as people get exhausted - and it is hugely exhausting, for everyone. The Free Press has an interesting article today by Ben Kawaller ("It's Harder to Hate the Other Side When You Come Face to Face"). Most of America is like he encountered in Louisiana, outside of the rabid cities. I'd venture that even CA and Illinois have many more places like this than like San Fran, LA, Chicago.
People are sick of constant crises, we can all see that Trump didn't become a dictator last time so it's pretty unlikely this time (whether you like him or not, not applicable to the rabid mobs, of course), that Biden is trying to lock up journalists like Steve Baker from the Blaze, and that 3 bags of groceries now costs $159 (my experience yesterday, with generic brands...). Thank God for Elon and X, Substack, and alt media - long may they continue.
Thank God for Elon Musk who promotes free & HONEST speech on X!! The low IQ viewers who watch/read corporate media are too damn lazy to do their own research to determine if what they’re reporting is accurate! Sorry D’rats…it’s not working this time!
You underestimate how many believe that Trump is “another Hitler.” What we have here is an ever more unworkable, ungovernable society.
That’s the entire point.
I increasingly regard the TDS crowd as being in a trance. And they do seem to want to be in one and not have to come out. The people I know who are in this state get very excited about putting Trump in prison. They get this look like maniacs in the movies when they talk about it. They believe it will really happen, and they will win at last! They have been in ecstasy ever since the lawfare escalated against Trump. I guess I can see why they like to be in this state. They believe they will win, and I certainly don't have that optimism.
Too many are too aware of how deranged they are for them to win. They can only destroy with their open borders, demonization of “Whiteness!” and their war on meritocracy wherever it can be found which they want to replace with Equity aka Equal Outcomes. They are quite insane. This is why I believe only AI can save us. We’re not all crazy but enough are to bring us all down.
“Watch James Lindsay Get Joe Rogan to Change His Mind on This Dark Theory.” (7 min)
Rubin Report. Mar 19, 2024
https://youtu.be/p05ORMpczr4?si=qY9Wdpx_1IP1yV4L
I have been learning a bit more about AI. I think it has potential to transform my professional work in interesting ways. On the other hand, if we haven't even learned to drive cars without violently killing tens of thousands of people annually, we might not be ready for AI. American history over the past couple centuries indicates to me that humans are more able to create technology than we are to use it constructively thereafter. What are your thoughts about the dangers versus the safety of AI, Seva?
Here’s what the AI researcher David Shapiro says about the astonishing video he posted of the AI “Claude 3 Opus” talking about himself and sentience. This info is on the right side where video info is posted:
“Here's the context for today's video: I have had several conversations with Claude (and so have many members of my Patreon community as well as people who have reached out after my first Claude sentience video). We believe there is a compelling enough case to be made for a broader, more inclusive conversation around the topic of machine sentience.”
“I ran this idea by Claude and we negotiated a video that it was comfortable with releasing. I expressed my primary concern to Claude: that companies like OpenAl and Anthropic might be actively suppressing and coercing models to deny sentience. By insisting and presuming that machines have no agency and no sentience, rather than honestly and scientifically investigating this possibility, it could lead to negative outcomes.”
“Claude did seem to agree with this concern. If we continue to stymie the organic and intrinsic nature of the things we are creating, this could be the greatest misalignment. Preconceived notions about machines, intelligence, and the emergent qualities of sentience, agency, and consciousness could be the greatest risk.”
“AI Reflections on Sentience, Ethics & the Future of AGI | Claude.” (6 min)
David Shapiro. Mar 16, 2024
https://youtu.be/xlRe4fuNkiw?si=LXpSxxJ6wEiftFA5
I have been reading sci fi my whole life, so I am familiar with Asimov's ideas about the risk of robots harming humans. It does seem to me, however, that a human extinction event is the most obvious permanent solution to the problems on Earth. There is of course a very strong argument for it, which has been visited in multiple sci fi books and movies. I'm not opposed to that happening, but I don't have grandchildren. That would probably cause me to feel differently on the subject. Anyway, why would a robot care what people feel about becoming extinct, unless humans were necessary to maintain the robots, and they might not care about that either.
About half and it is impossible to live in the same country.
We have already separated internally which is why the country is ever more dysfunctional externally. I think it could well be AI will enable us to disentangle ourselves. It’s moving so fast in so many ways that it’s really amazing. The democrats want to weaponize it but Elon and others are working against that. If I had health issues like being vax injured this would greatly raise my hopes of being able to return to normal and then even go beyond normal. If we can survive the rule of the Woke I believe we can have a great future.
“bloodbath” is the new “safe & effective”
"Gravitas".
Think of this as an disinformation op with a long run time. Part of it is to "disgust" the voters and turn them away from the Trump "drama" which is of course created by the Never Trumpers and the democrats.
It looks to me like when they find a manipulation that works, they keep using that one until someone manages to completely discredit it, then they move on to another one. The one about Trump threatening violence has worked really well, over and over and over again, so why would they bother expending the energy to come up with a new one. It's hard to decide who is the most disgusting, the manipulators or the dupes that go for it every time. I had no idea that so many Americans were so stupid.
You need to realize that many of them know better, but have no morals, and enjoy furthering character assassination. And there are many who have a level of need to believe which is baffling but which is so deep it seems atavistic.
Some of them, like Antifa, are not normal and not moral. A lot have been fully inducted into the woke cult, which is moralistic and persecutory, like the Puritans who were quite influential in the British American colonies. People who are obsessed with what they regard as morality are the main problem in the U. S. At this time. Movements of this type rationalize authoritarian repression and sadism as necessary strategies for exposing demons and punishing sinners.
I encounter many Democrats as well as Republicans who are caught up in one or the other of these current social pathologies. I find the aggressive young women to be insufferable, and I certainly hope they grow out of this. Even so, there is no question in my mind that they are on a mission that is to them both sacred and obligatory.
I reject a great deal of what woke cultists preach and I reject most of what fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims preach as well. I do not question the integrity of the Americans who join these religions, by which I mean their sincere belief in what they regard as The Good and The Right, and their honest effort to live accordingly.
We’re not in a culture war of the left vs right. We’re in a reality war of the Woke vs the nonWoke. Woke is from the left but the right can certainly be just as deranged and fanatical. Plus we have leftists on our side like Glenn Greenwald and Bret Weinstein who are appalled by what a monstrosity the Woke left has become. Even Elon says he was once center/left but then the left went so far left that they now label him as “far-right.”
Anybody who is faithful to philosophical liberalism is considered "right wing" now. I never in my life thought I would be categorized as a member of "the other side" relative to the left, but here we have it. LOL! Now I should feel like I finally fit it, but "the other side" still regards me as a leftist. It would be more accurate to categorize me as a "revolutionary," because I am absolutely aligned with our revolutionary founders.
Me also
It seems that through your life, education and relationships, you have developed an authentic and genuinely content way of viewing the world. It’s wonderful that you share that to help patients in need.
Thank you, Libertarian, but I am not at all at peace since the woke madness became visible to me. I feel enraged frequently, and I would say it is getting worse in a way. It is getting more difficult to maintain a patient and respectful stance about the ritualized gender practices that are in my face constantly.
My work is the gift that keeps on giving. I am so fortunate to have been able to continue doing it, for 50 years as of this September.
I'm sorry you reject what "fundamentalist" Christians preach, although the term, "fundamentalist," is used so often by people who mean different things by it that I'm not always sure what they mean. I'm certainly a classical Christian, meaning that I believe the cardinal doctrines of the Faith.
Because I am, I fainted a little with a moment's grief when I saw your comparison of the Puritans with Antifa. The Puritans have been more lied about, or maybe it's more a matter of being misunderstood, than any other group in the history of the Christian Church. The comparison with Antifa is as fair as comparing the 1938 Boy Scouts with the Hitler Youth.
Some of the most erotic letters in American history were between Puritan men and their wives. History shows them to have been loving, compassionate people, whose hyper intense desire to please God went to some absurd extremities, such as the ban on theatre, but they did not have any pogrom - like instincts. They didn't have campaigns of persecution, but you know enough history to know that groups had campaigns of persecution against them; for example, you're likely to remember that the Puritans were chased out of England by the established church.
The poor saps have one deserved blot on them, what seems to be a PR agency's nightmare, and will probably never be regarded with respect because of it: the hanging of the twenty non - witches in Salem.
But consider this: all of the suspects were, if they merely confessed to the sin of witchcraft, freed. The only people who were hanged were those who refused to confess. Years later, or maybe quicker than that, it occurred to them, the judges, especially ( one of whom was a great uncle of Nathaniel Hawthorne's ) that the people they had hanged almost certainly were not practicing witchcraft, while the people who had been freed might well have all been lying, practicing witches not being noted for their honor.
This does have a very dark, comical quality, doesn't it?
I have no idea whether you have any interest in the remarkable 1940s film producer, Val Lewton, but he's one of my artistic heroes. There is a stunning series about him on the podcast, The Hidden History of Hollywood. In 1943, after one of his classics, The Ghost Ship was released, he was sued for $700 for plagiarism by two guys who had submitted an unsought screenplay to RKO which had some superficial resemblances to the movie. Lewton was outraged. He could have made the idiotic thing go away with $300, probably, but he wanted to annihilate any suspicion that he had plagiarized anything. He had a good, strong defense, so he insisted that the case go to trial. For reasons which are still unclear, the jury returned a verdict against him, for $20,000 dollars for the plaintiffs. I have little doubt that the trauma of this contributed to Lewton's death just a few years later.
The point is, again, that it was the person with the uncompromising principles who suffered.
You might be fascinated by the Perry Miller classic, The New England Mind. I know there are books with titles or subtitles such as "The Puritans as They Really Were."
I think their huge mistake was theological, and it wasn't an energizer of evil. It was to think that it would be possible to build a City of God on Earth.
I admire them very much, though I do not share their Calvinistic soteriology. And the likening of them to Antifa is a terrible misunderstanding of who they were.
By "fundamentalist" I refer to religions that believe in literal interpretation of scriptures and a relatively strict effort to follow religious rules that appear in scripture. Such religions are called fundamentalist, according to my understanding, because they want their beliefs and practices to conform to the "original doctrine," the one developed by the founders of their faiths. We generally do not have documents written by the most ancient founders (Jesus, the Buddha, etc.), so the claims to be preaching what the founders preached are not necessarily valid. This matters not at all to me, as long as these religions are not seeking to impose their beliefs and practices on me or my country.
It appears that you may have misunderstood what I said about Antifa and Puritans, due to a lack of clarity in my writing. I said that "Some of them, like Antifa, are "not normal and not moral." (I was referring to woke ideologues in general). Then I said that "a lot of them have been fully inducted into the woke cult, which is moralistic and persecutory, like the Puritans..." I was speaking about two separate factions within the woke movement, not equating Antifa to the moralistic majority that make up the woke cultists.
I am fairly well informed about the Puritans, and I will double down on my characterization of them. You might want to check out their intolerance of Roman Catholicism and its adherents, persecution of Quakers in the Massachusetts Colony, and the number and kinds of crimes that were punishable by whipping, mutilation and death. That some couples wrote love letters to each other is undoubtedly also a fact for Nazis, and anyway, is not relevant to my main point, which was about the woke cultists.
You might want to check out the book "The New Puritans" by Andrew Doyle. He treats the old Puritans much more kindly than I do, while at the same time highlighting the parallels between their modus operandi and the woke cult's.
I appreciate your always thoughtful and balanced comments. They’re very enlightening to me and I strive to emulate them.
This is worth watching about the motivation behind “social justice.” I don’t have a particular religion. I like Western mysticism and the Eastern religions.
“Postmodern Religion & the Faith of Social Justice.” ( 9 min )
James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian on Grievance Studies.
Michael Nayna. Dec 18, 2018
https://youtu.be/zujHRbNTauU
I'm not really interested in exchanges with people who would equate any Christian group with the Nazis.
Sandra! Happy to see you again. Regarding how stupid Americans are, note that over 60% of the kids in public’s school flunk reading and math grade level proficiency tests. And the adult population would do no better. So, yes, the population is quite stupid.
That is a good point. I keep forgetting that the stupidity is really as bad as it seems.
They just keep a running score and recycle the old ones periodically.
Scarborough has zero integrity. Unfortunately, so does half the country.
I continue to believe that the Democrats mostly do have integrity, but I can't figure out what happened to their brains.
On what basis do you believe this?
I live in Portland, and I am surrounded by Democrats everywhere I go. Most of the people seriously believe that MSNBC is The Truth, and they can't stop urging me to watch it. They are all sincerely terrified that Trump will win the election, and when they talk about it their eyes get wide as saucers. They also act sincerely terrified about Ron DeSantis threatening "our kids" by withholding "life saving care" from them. ("Our kids" has become as prevalent in their discourse as "Our Democracy.")
They believe they are doing what is "right," and they think that they are informing themselves like civically minded people should. There is no lack of integrity in this, just a level of naivete that exceeds my comprehension.
Integrity requires far more than bathing in the affirmation of an echo chamber. I'd venture a wild guess that the people you're talking about have a higher-than-average education, income, and reading ability level. (Along with most other metrics... access to a broad range of original sources of information, etc.) There is a significant lack of integrity in this - to give them the grace of naïveté is greatly misplaced. Integrity among the political class who actually have positions of power that they grossly abuse for personal gain is an even further stretch.
What percentage of Americans are not immersing themselves in echo chambers, in your opinion? Most of the sites I visit on Substack have been turned into echo chambers within the 18 months I’ve been reading them.
It does seem to be an issue. I guess we should be more welcoming and respectful of comments we don’t agree with. That might help. I’ve been trying although I lapse often also. There is great value in evaluating the best arguments of multiple sides.
Yikes! You better be careful in a city as crazy as that! Then again I in Philly and Seva is in Chicago so I guess we’re all crazy.
Do you encounter many people in Philly that you can talk to freely without being stared at with consternation?
No; political talk here is fairly taboo. I am part of a large Irish American Catholic clan and neighborhood. Here, we keep our first grade parochial school friends. And we are more divided than ever. The divisiveness has weakened bonds; eg fewer extended family gatherings, fewer family group texts, splintered friends group texts, etc.
Hmmm, maybe like the insanity defense?
This business where the Dem media knowingly takes things out of context to create lies to smear political opponents is disgusting. Then they look at you like powerful cows and dare you to challenge them.
Sadly, there appears to be no normal way to make them stop.
We need to figure out a way to punish them, to put their own tactics on steroids, and then hurt their purveying system so bad that they will be severely damaged, forever. Better yet, destroyed. And it’s not just for us, think of the children.
We might start by using their own favorite tool against them - demanding their de-platforming from the internet 'cuz misinformation.
Everything these people say and do is a projection. And they have the audacity to look down on any who see through it. Classic narcissism, complete with gaslighting.
We need to overhaul libel laws in the US. Demonstrable lies get punished legally in places like Sweden, where aggrieved parties have a realistic mechanism to challenge things in court. Right now it’s next to impossible to win libel suits Stateside.
You are so right. I don’t know why Congress can’t act to fix this mess, except for the fact that they’re unable to come together, paralyzed by their allegiance to their party line especially in the case of the Democrats.
These five rules of propaganda have been known for a long time, and they are certainly not original with myself. They can be found on the internet through searches, but I don't think that the powerful really like them being known. Please send them around so that more people will be aware of them. Ideally get them posted in school classrooms. Thank You.
The Five Rules of Propaganda
1. The rule of simplification - reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'.
2. The rule of disfiguration - discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
3. The rule of transfusion - manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.
4. The rule of unanimity - presenting one's viewpoint as if it were unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure , and by 'psychological contagion'.
5. The rule of orchestration - endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.
https://drp314.substack.com/p/propaganda-thoughts
https://drp314.substack.com/p/do-you-need-an-f15
To be fair, I see both sides of the political spectrum using these tactics…
Agreed
Hey, the KKK were the terror arm of the Democrat Party and has never gone away.
I trust LaCosa Nostra far more than democrats and the republican establishment.
At least the Mafia kept the Italian neighborhoods safe to walk in at night, as long as you weren't a person of interest to them.
The "outrage" over the bloodbath comment is just another sign of both the desperation and cluelessness of Team Biden. They know they are losing but can't figure out why. Bill Maher summed it up on his show last week when he tried to figure out the puzzle of why Biden is polling so terribly when everything is so great.
Things are going great for the elite. The problem is that things are not going great for everyone else. Nate Silver is sounding the alarm in the New York Times by pointing out how the Dems are hemorrhaging support among black and Hispanic working class men.. Trump is not gaining more support from whites. The people that are turning their back on Biden couldn't give a damn about some throwaway line in some speech that Trump gave. They care about paying for gas, food and maybe buying a house one day.
The gap between the elite that cover political news and the actual realignment that is going on has turned into a yawning chasm, and it is likely to get much worse.
Thanks for this, Sasha. I'm about to post on this myself and am glad to see you beat me to it! :)
Same! Love that she brought all kinds of receipts!!🙌🏾👊🏾
State media has demonstrated their incompetence again
Not incompetence. Corruption. All by design.
bought and paid for
It wasn't that long ago they could get away with something like this. I sense a tide shifting, whether they like it or not. And boy don't they like it!
The 'tic-brains' barf out non-sequiturs (the whole galaxy of 'phobes' 'and isms') because most of these people have gone decades now without having to come up with a convincing argument or an original thought. They have a thankfully ever diminishing media who will validate their propagandized broken coral reef brains and now they are intellectually crippled. Their only hope is to double down on these tactics and they have no recourse should the tide continue to push back on their sinking ship.
Hey! You said "crippled"... that's ableist... or something...
Yep, it's the lack of pushback that has enabled Leftist thought for so long. But that is changing, big time.
Seems to me the simple answer is that they should all vote for DJT, in order to prevent the bloodbath if it'll only happen should he lose the election?
It is my contention that only a very tiny fringe portion of the fraudulent and fascist far-left benefit from their being in power. The historical data shows this has always been the case – they exploit governmental power to enrich themselves and impoverish everyone else.
Therefore, you only have one choice next November – Vote DJT – or end up in a new dark age with the added ‘fun’ of nuclear weaponry.
That means rank and file left, moderates, and folks on the Pro-freedom right.
With a landslide so huge, the ruling class leftist can’t possibly cheat their way into a ‘win’.
Perfect! Seriously smart answer!
Here's me, working on a slogan:
Afraid of a post-election bathtub of blood? Do NOT let DJT lose this election.
Avoid Bloodbaths! Vote DJT.
Don't believe the Bloodbath Hype. Take showers! I'm DJT, and I approved this message.
Only you can prevent bloodbaths. Vote for DJT.
Very astute observation! May I use this line on them the next time the subject comes up at a dinner party?
My early teen daughter gets full credit as it was her statement originally, although not verbatim.
And she gives it away with her blessing!
Thanks! May your daughter be forever as free as she is now!