And it’s based on a web of Big Lies
One of the worst things about what’s been happening now, and actually for a long time, is the acceptance of lies as truth. It’s easy to spread a simple lie that grabs people and energizes them. Truth sometimes requires deeper thought, and maybe even a little math on occasion.
This is worth listening to on the subject:
And in the same vein – the lies constantly being told on the left – please read this, this, and this. I plan a longer post some day on that last article in particular, which is about the statistics on police violence against black people.
If they can’t debate on the facts, lies will do. In fact, maybe lies are better, because you can shape them as you wish. Coordinated lies are best of all, because if practically everyone is saying it, it must be true.
And the widespread acceptance of the lies encourages more lies, because they work.
“And the widespread acceptance of the lies encourages more lies, because they work.”
As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of this boils down to the white power structure that runs the Democratic Party, the media, and most of the organized Left, needing to energize minority supporters while maintaining their own power. If you’re not willing to offer minority voters a message of economic hope…what’s left?
Mike
The old saying that a lie travels around the world before the truth can get its boots on seems more applicable than ever now. I am a naturally pessimistic person, and am really discouraged about the future of the country. This blog is a great service to truth, but it seems that most of its readers are fairly old, at least over 50 and many over 70 (me, for instance). I’d like to think it’s just a function of the people I know, but it seems that almost everyone I know under 40 is more or less on board the leftist train. Not militantly, but never ever opposing it in any way. At least half the people my age are, too.
It’s a massive irony to me as a one-time hippie that “Question Authority!” is, like, over. Now it’s all “The experts say”. Not to mention “My beloved Democrat politicians say.” Turns out it was only the authority of the old order that was to be questioned.
Our friend, Modern Renaissance Man, the black guy who does wonderful music reaction videos which neo once posted, isn’t drinking the BLM kool-aid. He is stepping up as a concerned citizen and a Christian to point out the obvious:
“Black Lives Matter when it comes to Mr Floyd; What About Retired St. Louis Police Capt David Dorn?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSMwtXRids8
It’s longer than I want to sit through (almost two hours) but his heart is in the right place and, I’ve got to say, his courage too.
______________________________________________
The news, the media and TV especially target blacks.
Why?
75% of us don’t have fathers in the home.
Who is the one who is raising your son?
I can tell you who’s raising all these other little people out here.
I can tell because you’re acting just like your father.
Who’s your father?
Hip-hop, TV, rappers, singers.
I don’t care if you’re a boy or a girl. That’s who your father is.
Your father and mother is TV.
@50:00
You all may want to send this Michael Knowles tweet to your social circles:
https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1267921090451435520 , on how
“You can spend many years reading many books to try to understand liberal modernity, or you can just watch this 24-second video.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1267921090451435520
A guy gets occasion to exclaim:
“We’re on your side! We’re on your side! Holy sh*t….”
It may well become immortal.
Maclin Horton:
I’ve had similar thoughts myself. We do seem to be an older demographic here.
I wonder, though, whether some day the current younger generations will wise up, if experience teaches them. I just hope by then it won’t be too late and the damage irrevocably done.
It’s a massive irony to me as a one-time hippie that “Question Authority!” is, like, over. –Maclin Horton
About half the men who were hippies in the day and I still know are now conservative.
Just about all the women hippies, however, remain progressive.
They don’t have to lie often distortion is quite enough:
Seattle Times story 6/4/2020
“In Idaho, armed white vigilantes mobilize for Antifa protests that never occurred”
As opposed to ‘In Idaho, armed citizens prepared and prevented riots’
There are videos out of what appears to be a well speaking black women driving up to an entrance of a Seattle suburban community that has white men standing on the sidewalk with AR15’s at arms. She said something scornfully about those “white people” (showing a willingness to defend one’s home and family?) without attempting to enter or talk to anyone. Black privilege allows one to be a racist.
Hey there, Neo, I’m a younger person! Almost 40! I’ve been reading your blog since 2008. 🙂
I saw that Carlson video. He’s right: 10 wrongful deaths do not equate to genocide. Not even the 38 wrongful deaths from 2015.
I don’t think many leftists are actually hearing these facts, though, because they block or unfriend people who try to share the info on social media. They feel like their anger is justified and don’t want to be told “Calm down, you’re not being rational.” (Who *does* like to be told they’re overreacting, when they feel righteous anger at an outrage?)
Rebecca Emmons:
Wow, you were really young when you first came here.
Of course, from my present perspective, I was pretty young then, too 🙂 .
I know that there are plenty of younger people who might agree with what Carlson was saying, but unfortunately I think they are in quite the minority among their peers. Or, perhaps, they are just afraid to say so, because they risk more by saying so than old people do.
huxley:
That’s an interesting observation. I can’t say it’s the same among the people I know, who have mostly stayed liberal. But I have noticed more male acquaintances of mine are conservative than female acquaintances are. I’m far more out of place in that respect when among female acquaintances.
The reason the men became more conservative is they have to perform… (their mates demand it – which is why the current ladies cant find any – they cant win even if they try)
Given the way women can be total fruit bats and still be ok, there is no force to make them move in that direction… (the prettier, the less force to move them)
Fleetwood Mac – Little Lies (Official Music Video) – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGD9dT12C0
It’s not a big enough of a sample to mean much, but off the top of my head I think the only conservatives from my old crowd are men. Counting me, that’s a total of three. One died a few years ago (relatively young, 65 or so), and the other is rather a strange bird, probably more libertarian than conservative: pro-Trump but still very much into a lot of the counter-culture stuff.
(That was me earlier, posting under my full name, which I don’t usually do–browser form-fill that I didn’t notice.)
As for the younger generation, Neo, my guess–and that’s all it is–is that it will take more than one generation. Which is to say that it *will* be too late, and the damage will be done, possibly irrevocably. And then will come a generation who will curse those who threw away the American heritage.
But like I said I’m a pessimist by nature.
This is the town in ID that the Seattle Times has it’s knickers in a twist about, Coeure d’Alene, which is about 30 miles east of Spokane WA. Lots of those evil AR-16s and AK-49s (Joe Biden speak) in the video.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1267978871187615750
There may be some Antifa soy bois in Spokane, Seattle being ~ 300 miles west.
They also weren’t social distancing! Karen! Where’s Karen? From ace.mu.nu of course.
I’m another relatively young one, at the age of 32. I think I started following this blog around 2010.
It is difficult to gauge how many conservatives exist among my generation, because they tend to keep their politics to themselves (both due to personality type and fear). There is no doubt, however, that progressive ideology is dominant. I will admit I have been more cynical over the last few days about this country’s future than I have ever been. I hopefully have several decades left to live, but I see only storm clouds on the horizon. There are too many decaying institutions and too many forgotten virtues.
“Coordinated lies are best of all, because if practically everyone is saying it, it must be true.” Neo
Hence the rise of Journolist back under Obama’s tenure (and if anyone thinks they disbanded after they were outed, I’ve got one of those proverbial bridges to sell …)
huxley on June 4, 2020 at 6:46 pm said:
Our friend, Modern Renaissance Man, the black guy who does wonderful music reaction videos which neo once posted, isn’t drinking the BLM kool-aid. He is stepping up as a concerned citizen and a Christian to point out the obvious:
“Black Lives Matter when it comes to Mr Floyd; What About Retired St. Louis Police Capt David Dorn?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSMwtXRids8
* * *
I don’t think there is any coordination going on, but Kayleigh McEnany talked about Mr. Dorn at length in her last press conference, and Candace Owens mentioned him in this video — I don’t want to call it a rant, exactly, but she got rather heated.
https://www.facebook.com/realCandaceOwens/videos/273957870461345/?redirect=false
“Confession: I DO NOT support George Floyd and I refuse to see him as a martyr. But I hope his family receives justice.”
aNanyMouse on June 4, 2020 at 6:53 pm said:
You all may want to send this Michael Knowles tweet to your social circles:
https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1267921090451435520 ,
* * *
Down in the replies is this anti-Trump meme, which encapsulates the twisted points Jim Acosta tried to force McEnany into acknowledging in her last press conference.
https://twitter.com/___lor__/status/1267921378981920772
It’s ugly, and representative of what’s going around on the left.
huxley on June 4, 2020 at 6:46 pm said:
Our friend, Modern Renaissance Man, the black guy who does wonderful music reaction videos which neo once posted, isn’t drinking the BLM kool-aid. He is stepping up as a concerned citizen and a Christian to point out the obvious:
“Black Lives Matter when it comes to Mr Floyd; What About Retired St. Louis Police Capt David Dorn?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSMwtXRids8
It’s longer than I want to sit through (almost two hours) but his heart is in the right place and, I’ve got to say, his courage too.
* * *
People like these are coming out on the internet, but not mentioned in the MSM (big shocker, huh) — who are also not covering Dorn’s murder, per the comments to this video.
Hooray for them all.
I especially rooted for the black lady lambasting rioters for destroying her tiny storefront — “How come MY black life don’t matter?”
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/06/02/watch-black-woman-lambasts-looters-who-destroyed-her-store-in-last-nights-new-york-rioting/
Watch all these videos soon, I’m sure they will be taken down.
Speaking of the fairer sex, I am so lucky that my wife is conservative, sometimes I think more than me. She cracks me up with some of her rants!
I am going to take the position that the lying doesn’t actually work, and that is why the lies get bigger and more ridiculous.
A rational person would find a limit to the lies he is willing to tell- a rational person knows what is actually believable and what is not, and won’t waste his time telling the unbelievable ones. An emotional person, on the other hand, can’t see his way out of being caught out other than to double down, and then double down again. The people in the media are emotional, not rational, people for the most part- they just can’t see that credibility is trashed if you aren’t willing to step back and say, once in a while, “Yeah, you got me- I wasn’t telling the truth,” or, “Yes, I was wrong.”
There is a commenter over at Althouse called “Inga” who is a truly remarkable example of my description above- there is no lie she isn’t willing to tell, or apparently believe. No amount of evidence ever is enough to get an admission that she was wrong about anything- she simply moves on to the next lie or swallowed “truth”.
Aesop Fan,
Frontpage Mag led off today with that Candace Owen video. She went through Floyd’s previous crime record and the fact that he was on fentanyl when he died and had meth in his blood.
I also saw a Scott Adams video about fentanyl, which killed his stepson. We really don’t know what the police were responding to. It seems like chokeholds should be replaced with other restraining methods, but this is up to local officials who control police departments.
George Floyd should not have been killed by brutal police officers.
BUT, he was guilty of handing out counterfeit cash.
He was guilty of acting drunk – high on drugs and/or alcohol, not fully in rational control.
He was a BIG guy, and dangerous to others.
The police were right to restrain him.
Every looter is guilty of looting, and rioters who support the violence are guilty.
The Dem big lie is that “racism” is the problem.
The truth is that bad behavior is the problem, including too much crime by too many people, and too much acceptance of bad cops.
David Dorn, the ex-cop murdered, is a far bigger tragedy than Floyd.
The fact that some 77% of black kids today are not being brought up by married mothers and fathers is the biggest tragedy, and it is to avoid mentioning this 70-78% fact that so many lies are told. (Some 30% of white kids, now. Far fewer Asians or Jews.)
Bad behavior, especially sexual promiscuity, is the big problem.
That’s the truth.
George Floyd should not have been killed by brutal police officers.
What’s with the use of plurals? Only one of the four manhandled him in any way.
There’s been a certain amount of upset in the last few days over Twitter pranksters broadcasting videos of a “George Floyd Challenge”, where one young man compresses another’s neck with his knee for eight minutes. Some of the upset is indubitably due to person x being playful with person y’s pieties. Some of it is indubitably real anxiety about what such demonstrations will show about how lethal that usually is. Floyd had coronary artery disease and four different street drugs in his system, including an intoxicating quantum of fentanyl.
There is a commenter over at Althouse called “Inga” who is a truly remarkable example of my description above- there is no lie she isn’t willing to tell, or apparently believe. No amount of evidence ever is enough to get an admission that she was wrong about anything- she simply moves on to the next lie or swallowed “truth”.
If my experience is representative, somewhere around 75% of partisan Democrats who comment in fora such as these (or who drop cr!p on our Facebook wall) are like Inga. She is the archetype of the committed street-level Democrat in our time.
Looking in wonder at some of my high school friends’ senior pix I found when moving my father out of our home, I noted maybe half a dozen which said, on the back, “You’re so logical!”
i’d heard that in real time during my school days. Never figured it out. I noted that the pix saying it were all from women. My schooling had me in the same system from fourth grade on to graduation and the same building with all my classmates from seven through twelve. IOW, we knew each other pretty well.
These days, I am inclined to believe I was not seen as choosing positions based on what we would today fall “feelz”. As if it were some kind of failing.
My parents were educated and had been through what happened when you were born in 1920, including Purple Hearts in the family. Maybe that’s where it became my more or less basic operating system. You can’t afford feelz when things are tough.
Which is probably why I get so frustrated with lib/dem/prog ordinary types. Leaders are just corrupt and lie and know they lie. The foot soldiers….I don’t know.
I frequently explain something to someone “not because I think you don’t know it but because you obviously think I don’t know it, you want to start over?”
Or “I watched the hearings. You want to start over?”
Invariably the response is anger and deflection.
This convinces me they know better. IOW they lie and they know they lie. Even the foot soldiers. But from time to time, when it’s in person, there’s some kind of–even physical–manifestation of severe distress when I explain I know they know Michael Brown didn’t have his hands up–or similar issues.
I note the frequent quote from Friends. It isn’t a lie if you believe it when you say it. I think they actually believe it, for the moments it takes to say it and then when contradicted…they know better.
It would be easier for them to straight out lie than switch back and forth as to which knowing they use when in discussion with someone who knows better and be forced to admit to themselves they know better, too. Not that they’ll change their approach next time the subject arises.
How does the human mind do that?
Or maybe they’re lying coldly and with malice aforethought, even the foot soldiers, and are just annoyed that they can’t put it over on someone.
My parents were educated and had been through what happened when you were born in 1920, including Purple Hearts in the family. Maybe that’s where it became my more or less basic operating system. You can’t afford feelz when things are tough.
Not necessarily. My mother was born in 1930. The Depression and the War were quite real to her. However, she was a feelz person who conflated the personal and the political. She spoke of George Bush the Elder as if he were the husband of a friend of hers. She didn’t have much respect for most of her friends’ husbands.
On aging hippies and gender: yesterday the wife and I took the dogs for a walk on the town green which is 2 miles in circumference. The town said they prefer we go clockwise for covid purposes, but also said they know a lot of people can’t make the thw whole circuit, so ok to turn around and go back, just give other people room. The dogs got tired about 3/4 of the way down the first side (it was 85 out) so we turned around, about 100 yds from the end, a women coming the other way started screaming at us from 50 yds out that we were going the wrong way. Her tirade got more intense as we got closer…sure enough, grey stringy long hair, beads, tie dyed, etc. the string of profanities continued even as we passed her by.
Not sure I’ve always bought into Art’s feminist theory, but I would also add that I did note from 2002 or so until I retired last year at the college, more and more women were hired, and due to hiring bias, were all left/radicals. As a result that really helped shift the college way left. OF course there were left male hires also, but I can say the most vocal harridans leading the leftists charge were the women.
As a result that really helped shift the college way left. OF course there were left male hires also, but I can say the most vocal harridans leading the leftists charge were the women.
If my own experience in (non-faculty) higher education employment is representative, women in salaried positions therein tend to fall into the following categories: cheesy office politicians, harridans, chronic complainers, and people who got fired or left to avoid being fired by a bitc! / office politician. There were some exceptions, of course.
It would be interesting to ask some protestors some interesting questions..
1) Does the president (regardless of party) control the local police force?
2) Would you prefer if the federal government took over the state power of control over the local police force?
3) would you prefer all police be federal and out of the hands of state and local control
be interesting to see what they say since the federal govt has no power over the police force, its training, personnel, but the state officials do – which is why this is only happening in blue states where for some reason they think the feds have power they dont have..
just a thinking mans point..
I also started following this blog in my early thirties over 10 years ago, as I was someone who realized they had undergone a “political change” in the latter half of the aughts.
There is no way to tell how many (what you are considering) younger people aren’t leftists. I’ve always suspected there are more of us out there than you would think, and they are likely the people who don’t immediately chime in with a daily media talking point or simply “orangemanbad!” when prompted. The only people I’ve observed with the courage to say they don’t think Trump is that bad in mixed company are over 60 years old with less to lose.
As for myself, I have never joined social media (facebook, twitter) out of fear that I’d post something or even click on someone else’s post which caused me to lose my job, no matter how harmless it seemed to me. It pains me more and more to keep my mouth shut around my colleagues year after year, but until I’m forced to put the sign in my shop window (to cite yesterday’s post), I’ll simply keep quiet.
Neo: You would have enjoyed a private conversation I had some time back with two colleagues where I’ve worked for 7-years. Both black & female & mothers & wives.
One is a naturalized American citizen from Ghana; the other a naturalized citizen from Ethiopia. “Michael, what is this ‘Black Lives Matter’ business? Doesn’t your life matter?” (I’m a WASP) Another question they hit me with: “What is this term, ‘African American’? We are froim Africa and we are AMERICANS!!”
Bless them. They’ve never been discriminated against in their adopted country. They shake their heads and roll their big Brown eyes.
Side Note: My wife’s brother in law was given a sign by hII brother for hIs Labrador’s house. It reads, “Black Labs Matter!!”
Love it.
Tear gas was not used but pepper balls were used. As described here:
[Pepper balls are similar to tear gas]. Both are chemical irritants that cause “sometimes severe irritation to mucous membranes (e.g eyes, mouth, nasal passages, lungs), causing people to experience burning sensations on the skin and in the eyes, tearing, coughing, sneezing, difficulty breathing, nausea, vomiting, disorientation.”
If you are in a crowd and get hit with pepper balls you will not know if it’s tear gas or not. You’ll just know your eyes and lungs don’t like it. The media certainly should have made the distinction but pepper balls are not just smoke.
And if you think pepper balls are not so serious take into consideration this fact.
Trump signed legislation last year that banned the commercial exportation of certain riot-control devices to Hong Kong police. The list of “covered munitions” included “pepper balls.”
So, it’s okay to use on protesters in DC but not to be shipped overseas to be used on protesters in Hong Kong? Interesting….
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/the-semantics-of-tear-gas-versus-pepper-spray/
During the next ten years or so, as they see the fruits of their leftist voting, lots of young adults may well change their minds. The indoctrination thoughtlessly absorbed in school fades and the memories of what really happened can return, interpreted differently.
So, lots of young, non-black — and now middle-aged — students will remember how unfairly the system treated them, how others got undeserved good grades at their expense for ideological reasons, how basically stupid the teachers hired through affirmative-action programs were, and how whatever good things now exist in their lives came after leaving school. There may well be a massive reckoning with the political movements and attitudes that deformed their education as they slowly but inexorably take up political attitudes opposite to those of their youth.
I think young people, who were entering middle age and changing their minds after having lived through the failures and leftism of the 1970’s, were a crucial part of the political coalition that elected Reagan, defeated inflation, and won the cold war. It can happen again.
The gender split of the progenitors of unjustified police shootings came up in a private discussion at work today, as we recalled some recent incidents both nationally relevant and in our personal lives. Sure enough it was almost invariably a female calling the cops on a male, lying hysterically, and facing no consequences for those lies.
Feminist are not solely responsible for society and it’s law enforcement’s penchant to reinforce the age old nasty lie that “Men Bad, Women Weak”, but they certainly have had an outsized influence.
What is even a paragon of virtue in uniform to do when a screaming women calls them for help? Either disbelieve her and risk her death, or believe her and risk his. When we task these cops with our protection (rather than simply post-facto arrest and punishment) we hand dangerous power to cops AND immature and immoral citizens alike. And unfortunately women are far more willing to use others to inflict violence on their behalf.
That doesn’t absolve the mostly male politicians and generals who send men to their needless death by the C-130 load, but that’s a different topic.
Let’s see… File under No Surprise Here… or Well, DUuuuhhh..!!
1.) Rev. Al ‘Tawana Brawley’ Sharpton spoke at George Floyd’s funeral.
2.) Pravda aka The NY Times removed Senator Tom Cotten’s editorial on using Federal troops to quell the violence.
Yep… Ain’t I F***ing Surprised!!
Really…. Seriously…?!
An observation about education and a story about changing political minds, a subject dear to neo and long neglected here, perhaps. On the whim worshipping “feels” of the young! “Persuasion” by testimony because “I feel it’s True!”
Perhaps Cameron will open and help us elders. But feel good raising “self-esteem” building non-sense used to be the dominant mania of fad fed educationists, before being supplanted by the evil SWJ neoMarxist Educrats.
It’s this psychosocial malignancy that form the opportunistic base for the neo Marxist agenda driven teachers of the past two decades. I bet the older and more senior teachers today are from the “self-esteem Uber alles!” Ilk.
Sure – most of these types are co-opted or else gulled into neo
Marxist SWJ conformism.
But their one redeeming virtue was they more or less individualist focus. That later changed with an aggressive Race/gender/KKKlass teaching agenda.
I recall auditing a local university (yes, in Boulder, CO) course in English in the mid-90s, taught by a 70-ish prof trained at the University of Oklahoma. The literary survey subject was the Romantic and Victorian poets and writers.
The friend I made there was an English major. She was sensibly trying to combine that with teaching prep, the second major, securing a backup employment option.
She gave it up. A victim of theoreah. The only practical part of her training was the lesson plan, she complained. The rest was touchy-feely and education theory. Therefore, it was repetitive, boring, and dull. And no challenge.
The Romantic Poets teaching and discussion was fun, the literature inspiring, and I saved the textbook for my library. Later bumping into my friend, she’d decided to do the masters in English lit. Perhaps with a future in tech writing, I surmised.
Contrast her with another young CU graduate in English whom I’d met just over a decade later. This was at an Obama presidency comfort zone group – devoted to socialising and libertarian politics – called “Liberty on the Rocks.” It was an outfit that went national and even international (Europe, Australia), benefiting from the local Rightwing think tank’s sponsorship.
Lisa bought the SWJ indoctrination at CU, completely. Her conversion or Damascus Gate moment, was singular: the Academy Award winning Best Foreign Language film, the new classic about life in East Germany during the early-mid 1980s under the Stasi – the massive secret police state surveillance force – “The Lives of Others.”
The genius of this story turns on the fact, the Truth, that the Stasi collected and maintained surveillance on one-third of all East Germans. This was the highest within the East Block of communism.
As the drama explains, the personally destructive consequence was this, as revealed in documents smuggled out of the sweet, then published in Der Spiegel news magazine: that the East German rate of suicide had become the highest in the world, and thus was a statistic too embarrassing to be kept to Eric Honecker, the leader.
That was all she needed to reject PC indoctrination, that film. It led her to question and reject the entire political programme she had absorbed from 16 years of public state education.
If that historical Truth was so devastating to one young woman’s fidelity to her teachers, what would requiring the teaching of the history of the Cold War do to the neoMarxist indoctrinators effectiveness, if taught en mass?
Since the prior-to-last decade, what’s changed? Mass social media. Via your own personal phone. And China abusing facial recognition software and the internet to monitor and surveil everybody in a nation of 1.2-4 billion people?
Given all this, do we want to live like that, too? Who’s going to argue that? And for the collectivist virtue to enforce “anti-racism” thru intrusive powers like this? Given the many examples of Chinese racism and genocide and millions imprisoned for religious deviance?
THIS is the national conversation we must have.
We live during times where China deviously suckered the US into a new trade deal, while evilly hiding a dangerous new and deadly virus while foisting it upon the entire globe.
Who’s the villain now? And who will be the hero in this worldwide story?
Let’s have this confrontation, within and without.
Montage:
Because the USA is just the same as the CCP? or you hope it soon will be, and that is a good thing to you? Funny the protestors in Hong Kong were waving American flags while “protestors” in Lafayette Park were burning a church, another one of those “just the same moments.” Funny that CCP police use handcuffs just like police in the USA; the USA must be just the same as the CCP. Funny that people who oppose the CCP somehow disappear and whole ethnic groups (Uigars) or religious groups (Falun Gong) go into reeducation institutions (concentration camps) just like in the US……..
Please Montage tell us more about pepper balls and magic bicycles. Maybe the export was banned because of how the CCP was using them on the people of Hong Kong as well as treaty obligations to Hong Kong being broken? Have you recently been hit in the head by a brick or bashed with a skateboard or beaned with a bike lock? It seems you have been.
NeoConscum: I have a parallel story on African immigrants: We had a student in the mid 90s who immigrated from Senegal. Arrived in NYC with basically no money, but had been a semipro soccer player. Lived on the streets making enough money hustling soccer games in Central Park where he was discovered by my college’s soccer coach. Long story short: became one of the top physics students we ever graduated, got his PhD in EE from Brown, worked at MIT Lincoln Labs, then came back to teach with us. A self made man if there ever was one. His take on American blacks: spoiled rotten and immature idiots.
Not sure I’ve always bought into Art’s feminist theory – not theory, history…
there is history to go by… which you can look up… and dig to find…
but what other proxy group wielded the power to change language, school, relationships, home life, sexual relations, law, business, and on and on (including things like the creation of the LGBT and racial movements as offshoots with their support)… all the while claiming everything was against them and they had no power?
I have asked this question over and over and no one answers it…
[do note that i have also said that except for a very few, they been tricked at first by the wives of the wealthy, and the powers with malice and forethought… I even put up the rules of the revolutionary which openly states this as the goal!!!!! ]
A ray of hope.
Let’s hope there are many….
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/06/04/what-caused-a-progressive-reporter-to-go-off-on-the-entire-lefty-media-world-duri-n2570055
H/T Blazingcatfur blog
“I note the frequent quote from Friends. It isn’t a lie if you believe it when you say it.”
======================
I think it’s from Seinfeld, but I didn’t watch either (NTTAWWT). Wherever it is from, it has always bugged me.
If somebody asks for directions to city hall and you say “turn left at the second traffic light”, but it should actually be the third traffic light, is that a lie? IMHO, that is a mistake, not a lie, but then I’m not writing comedy. If that’s what it was supposed to be.
People who emigrated to North America voluntarily had initiative and courage enough to leave behind everything they knew and face the unknown, expecting to work hard to succeed. To the extent these sorts of traits are inherited — and it is by no means clear to what extent this happens — you would expect their descendants to have more of these qualities, and less of the opposite.
There is one exception, of course — those who were transported here against their will as slaves. It is possible that these were not the best and brightest that Africa had to offer, with consequences that are all around us. It would be unwise to assume that IQ scores, impulse control, etc., etc., as measured in the United States are representative of Africans in general.
There is, however, regression-to-the-mean that has to be taken into account. For example, separate out a group of mammals by, say, their weight and breed only the heaviest with the heaviest. The next generation will on average be less heavy than their parents, closer to the average of the species. This is called regression-to-the-mean, and it has been confirmed to occur in humans for many traits that are (and many that are not) important to society. As one professional animal breeder put it, when having children artifically inseminated by Nobel prize winners became a fad in the 1980’s, you don’t want theirs, you want their fathers’. Maybe enough time has passed — and enough regression-to-the-mean has occurred — that the history of how different groups arrived here is not that relevant anymore.
“It isn’t a lie if you believe it when you say it.”
I first noted the conflation of all false statements as “lies” back when the invasion of Iraq was not turning up chemical weapons stocks as fast and early as people with unreasonable expectations thought they should. More recent examples include Floyd’s statements to the FBI being described as “lies”.
Lies are not the only morally culpable false statements, but to be a “lie” there must be the following:
a) A false statement b) known to the speaker to be false at time of utterance c) intended by the speaker to be believed and d) intended to deceive.
a) Of course you can deceive people with true statements by being selective or through mental reservations; morally culpable but not “lies”.
b) This is what the line from Seinfeld references, the joke being that George knows perfectly well what he’s about. For people not George Costanza, if you don’t know it’s false it cannot be a lie, though it may be culpable in some other way (such as “bullshit”, where you are indifferent to the truth value of what you say).
c) Irony is an example of knowingly false statements not intended to be believed.
d) An example would someone who tells a story to illustrate a point which may not be true but is represented as being true, for example parables, or the kinds of jokes stand-up comedians tell.
Rev. Al ‘Tawana Brawley’ Sharpton spoke at George Floyd’s funeral.
Permitted by his family. Recall the late Michael Kelly’s remark back in 1999: “We have achieved the classless society. Nobody has any class at all”.
“So, it’s okay to use on protesters in DC but not to be shipped overseas to be used on protesters in Hong Kong?”
Uh…you do understand there’s a difference between Hong Kong authorities and Washington, DC law enforcement?
Mike
BREAKING News-Minneapolis aims to abolish its police force, replacing it with a committee for public safety. Dennis Prager citing The Blaze.
Mr Bunge:
Montage may be suffering from traumatic brain injury, peaceful brick to the noggin from a peaceful protestor.
Frederick:
You mean “Flynn’s false statements to the FBI.” (Not “Floyd’s false statements…”).
But it turns out that Flynn didn’t even make false statements to the FBI. If I recall what some of the recently released documents indicate, it was the FBI that was misrepresenting what he had said in his phone call and how it related to his statements to them.
D. Cohen:
On this blog there’s been a number of discussions of nature-nurture, and I’m not going to rehash it here. Suffice to say that I think the problem is more cultural, and that there have been many disruptive conditions in the history of black people in this country.
It’s been going on since the Tet Offensive in ’68–media lies for a political outcome.
More recently I call it the “Katrina Playbook”.
They do it cuz it works.
Montage says “Pepper balls are similar to tear gas.” Legally, in Europe, assuming pepper spray and pepper balls are similar enough, the law is…quite, quite complicated concerning ownership and self defense of either.
If this difference was clear, as claimed, why would there not be clear patterns on that continent?
According to a law firm, Robert Reeves Law
https://www.robertreeveslaw.com/blog/pepper-spray-europe/
But comment or Gabor Voss complains:
“This is a misleading article.
“In Hungary it is FREE TO OWN any kind of tear gas/irritant spray. However it is legal to carry only those under 20 grams of payload, and NON-pepper ones.
So CS, CN, CR are LEGAL.
“In Germany NO licence required for Peppersprays (pfefferspray) IF there is a TIERABWHERGERAT (defense against animals) label on them. Free to carry, too.
“Denmark legalized pepperspray in January 2019”
– – – – –
Elsewhere, people despair at having any tool for self defense. Especially the most vulnerable, the elderly and the disabled.
And worst of all in Britain.
The only non criminal defense that’s universally lawful in Europe is a marking gel or paint to mark an accused offender.
Therefore, montage, I think your sweeping claim is very suspect, if not simply…wrong.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda
By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell – and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.
Adolf Hitler
The Big Lie is a major untruth uttered frequently by leaders as a means of duping and controlling the constituency.
Adolf Hitler
The media and demokrats (but I repeat myself) are fully aware of the power of propaganda and the power of constant repetition. (Think of those My Pillow ads).
Combine this with their “editing” of the “news;” that is, by determining not only how to present news, but also selecting which news to broadcast and which news to ignore (ignored news is thus, not news at all; it never existed. )
Basically the news presented today is right out of Orwell’s 1984, where the media and the demokrats ARE the Ministry of Truth.
I think it’s from Seinfeld, but I didn’t watch either (NTTAWWT). Wherever it is from, it has always bugged me.
In context it was funny, because you knew damn well the character (Costanza) didn’t believe it. He was just just trying to find cover for his pathological dishonesty. Out of context you’re right, it doesn’t make sense.
@neo:You mean “Flynn’s false statements to the FBI.”
Yes, good catch, both names much in the news of late…
But it turns out that Flynn didn’t even make false statements to the FBI.
I don’t disagree. But if the statements were false, doesn’t make them lies. A few years ago I would have said “even at NR they’re calling it lies”, unfortunately it’s no longer surprising or cause for comment when at NR they endorse the MSM narrative.
On day one, what we saw about this incident, all made their judgment, most were invested for Trump haters, by using early missing half the truths about both side.
We saw pictures/video (its horrifying off course) but now we knew:
Gorge has many cases one of them home invasion mother with a baby?
He was worked with nightclub with the same policeman showed on video?
There are many charges of drugs and other things.
So this case overwhelmingly misjudged by people in vast.
Neo,
the lies constantly being told on the left
May I correct you with what you stated, please?
1-Former President Bush: We need to examine ‘our tragic failures’
Is he trying to say his “LIES” for the war? He is not lefty……
2- Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair questions Trump’s …
Is he lefty?
FB:
It’s fairly easy to do your homework and search this blog for the hundreds of posts I wrote about Bush and the Iraq War. Summary version: he didn’t lie.
As for Tony Blair, by American left/right standards he is somewhat to the left, although not what we’d call far left. He was the leader of the Labour Party.
FB:
Dead horse alert on George W Bush and the Iraq war; you don’t want to touch that tar baby.
Tony Blair is a lefty, as in PM from the Labor Party not from the Conservative Party.
Physicsguy (12:10pm): Thanks for the comment & similar experience shared. Senegal brought an instant smile to my chops. We had a wounded warrior from Senegal at the Traumatic Brain & Spinal Injury place where I work in the therapy end. Bocari & his wonderful sister immigrated to Texas back years ago and he joined the Army and did multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He got his spinal injury from an IED In the latter. He is a proud American Warrior and Citizen now as is his sister. They LOVE America and that’s what they call themselves. An honor to know them and their incredible lives.
artfldgr: Just so you know, I agree to a significant extent with you about feminism. I probably don’t go as far as you. We might argue about how much and exactly in what way, but feminism definitely bears a great deal of the blame for the current state of things.
Feminism and related ideologies are greatly responsible for fixing in the minds of a whole lot of people, including, apparently, nearly all academics and journalists, the idea that “women and minorities” are purely and only victims, more or less without agency in the face of the white male oppressor, and therefore blameless for all problems. It is a destructive falsehood for many reasons, not least of which is that it absolves feminists and minorities of responsibility for anything except denouncing and attempting to disempower the white male.
And of course they have in fact way more power, and therefore responsibility, than they admit. I’m not likely to do it, but I’ve often thought of writing a substantial blog post titled “Women And Minorities Making the World Worse.” By “women” there I really mean feminists, but “women and minorities” is their chosen catch-phrase.
“It’s fairly easy to do your homework and search this blog for the hundreds of posts I wrote about Bush and the Iraq War. Summary version: he didn’t lie.”
Then why wasn’t he upset with how things turned out?
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/IraqUraniumClaim
Mike
🙂
Mr Bunge:
You can read George W Bush’s mind too? Amazing powers you have developed on your hobby horse. For multitude of reasons I am more than satisfied with Neo’s assessment of history and facts than yours. To each their own.
Neo
G.W. Bush he did lie,
Then what you say abut this lier:
LIE AFTER LIE: WHAT COLIN POWELL KNEW ABOUT IRAQ 15 YEARS AGO AND WHAT HE TOLD THE U.N.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin-powell-knew-about-iraq-fifteen-years-ago-and-what-he-told-the-un/
Is he lefty?
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE for Montage: no tear gas or pepper spray was used:
Via Twitter:
Sean Langille
@SeanLangille
· Jun 5
#BREAKING: A Secret Service Spokesperson tells @FoxNews: The Secret Service has determined that no agency personnel used tear gas or capsicum spray during its efforts to secure the area near Lafayette Park on Monday, June 1st, 2020
===========*
Count me as unsurprised. Why? Despite a chorus of charges that these were used, where are the documented complaints? The video? The VICTIMS?
None, it seems. As usual in the Fake News forever era, just gangs of liars.
May Death be upon all you.
Feminism and related ideologies are greatly responsible for fixing in the minds of a whole lot of people, including, apparently, nearly all academics and journalists, the idea that “women and minorities” are purely and only victims, more or less without agency in the face of the white male oppressor, and therefore blameless for all problems.
Disagree. The notion that you’re without agency and blameless for your problems is a default setting for a great many women, who devote quite a bit of space in their minds to rationalizations. (The ‘hamster wheel’ in manosphere parlance). What ‘feminism’ is is the migration of this mentality from the realm of domestic arguments to the realm of magazine journalism. The problem we face is that these addle-pated women get a lot of positive feedback for this mentality from institutions, from the generators of culture, from stupid men, and from other women (as long as said other women aren’t feuding with the subject).
Bunge & FB: Tiresome.
All the monstrous, mass murdering Saddam Hussein needed to do was open all doors to the inspectors and temporarily halt aid & comfort to the Islamist death cults who had declared war on us. Nope. NOPE.
May I suggest exposing yourselves to the unaccustomed torture of critical thought by reading two books-memoirs by men with close up experience: “The Greatest Threat” by Richard Butler, former Chairman of UNSCOM, and “Saddam’s Bombmaker” by Khadhir Hamza after his (and his family’s) escape to the West.
Saddam’s Iraq was a festering cancer in the Mideast.
Obama was handed a peaceful, begining-to-bloom Iraqi republic after a costly war. He was given a Victory with fewer Amercans dying by violence than in his adopted hometown if Chicago. And, after pausing, he Abandoned that costly Victory.
Purple fingers of millions of voters. Dozens of newspapers without dire consequences. American Army engineers restoring the wetlands of the Marsh Arabs…. Women voting by the millions…
Nope…NOPE… The bearer of the Vast Testicular Concavity ABANDONED our Victory.
Unforgivable.
Neo has it right.
Obama was handed a peaceful, begining-to-bloom Iraqi republic after a costly war.
Violence was at a low ebb for a period of several years, although the situation wasn’t great – civilian deaths were still running at about 350 a month on average over the period running from the beginning of 2009 to the middle of 2013. There have been 1,900 civilian deaths logged in the last 12 months, or about 160 per month. It’s the quietest 12 month period the country has seen in 17 years.
ArtDeco: “…with fewer Amercans dying by violence than in his adopted hometown of Chicago.”
The above is well worth repeating. Did we abandon our postwar presence in Germany, Japan or South Korea?? Nope. NOPE. But, for Obama, why LEARN from History?!
Despicable.
American troops withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011. That wasn’t an occasion of a deterioration in the situation therein. It was about a year and a half later when ISIS began to enter the country that things went south very rapidly. After ISIS was defeated in the middle of 2017, the level of violence returned to pre-ISIS levels and then began to decline further. Parliamentary institutions are still in place in Iraq, btw.
ArtDeco: We’re on the same page. Or, very close. Yes, it took the Islamist Butchers around a year and a half to jump into the vacuum left by Obama’s Abandonment of our Huge Victory. Inexcusable. “If history has taught us anything, it is that WEAKNESS IS PROVOCATIVE.” (Dick Cheney the Great)
The years 1/20/2009 ’till 1/20/2017 are breathtaking proof of the truth spoken by the great Cheney.
For the Dems, the Left, who needs History?! Who needs to learn from vast historical lessons?! Hello, Neville Chamberlain… Hello, Barack Hussein Obama..?!?!
TJ on June 6, 2020 at 4:52 am said:
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE for Montage: no tear gas or pepper spray was used:
* * *
Mollie Hemingway noted the curious fact of the protesters NOT running away with tear-streaming eyes.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/02/media-falsely-claimed-violent-riots-were-peaceful-and-that-tear-gas-was-used-against-rioters/
Now, if & when AG Barr finds out who was at the top of the chain that didn’t follow his orders to clear the park in the morning —
However, there did seem to be some pepper device in use, according to Mollie’s details on this part of the controversy.
But, as she hammers home, people don’t use language precisely when they are going for partisan propaganda points.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/03/after-falsely-claiming-tear-gas-use-media-now-trying-to-pretend-tear-gas-and-pepper-spray-are-identical/
Because, of course she did.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/05/lisa-page-starts-new-political-job-as-msnbc-analyst/
“And the widespread acceptance of the lies encourages more lies, because they work.” – Neo
No one knows, or applies, this more effectively than the Left.
Angelo Codevilla masterfully discusses the history of the original fascism under Mussolini, its correspondence with the administrative state that now rules in all Western nations, and the Communist conversion of the definition of “fascism” to mean “anyone to the right of Lenin.”
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-original-fascist/