Compare and contrast: loyalty to the candidates
During the 2016 campaign Trump famously said, speaking of the loyalty of his voters, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.”
He was excoriated for saying it. But it was hyperbole, meant not literally but to illustrate how devoted his most devoted followers were. And they were. And they still are.
Fast forward to now. I find it grimly amusing (meaning, not amusing at all) that in 2020 Joe Biden actually could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn’t lose any media support. He doesn’t have “followers,” he has fixers who are determined to cover up whatever he does that might cause voters to turn away from him and lead to the re-election of Trump.
And unlike Trump in 2016 I am not being hyperbolic. No, Biden hasn’t shot anyone. But what I wrote about him shooting someone and the media covering it up – or calling it Russian disinformation even if there was a video proving it was true – is not an exaggeration. I now believe that it is literally true that the media (and the Democratic Party, but I repeat myself) would cover up any act of Biden’s no matter how despicable, in the effort to secure his victory over Trump.
When the press takes sides so openly and nakedly, and is joined by social media giants, we have reached a level of partisan information control I thought I’d never see in this country. But that’s where we are. And it’s in service of a candidate who has always been of mediocre intelligence at best and is now cognitively faded, who is almost certainly corrupt, who has been wrong on almost every important issue that exists, is a long-term liar and plagiarist, and will be putty in the hands of the most extreme leftists in his party who hate America and capitalism and want both destroyed.
On the topic of information control, it has been reported (at the NYPost by Sohrab Ahmari) that several Chinese nationals are employed by Facebook in Seattle to work on the Orwellian-sounding “Hate Speech Engineering”, which will no doubt be manipulated in order to censor conservative opinions should the Dystopian Duo prevail in less than two weeks. Without question, one can assign much blame to the spineless and cowardly Republicans who have done nothing to fight against the power-mad oligarchs in Silicon Valley who yearn for complete control over the dissemination of information.
Very well said, Neo.
You can crush a man with journalism. ~William Randolph Hearst
“. . . and will be putty in the hands of the most extreme leftists in his party who hate America and capitalism and want both destroyed.”
There’s your explanation right there for (1) why he was chosen, and (2) why the media is covering for him.
I know some of his supporters. Some may have the motivations Neo ascribes. But Biden couldn’t get the votes without the mush head cohort. Those are the folks I know.
One is studying Wallis’ “America’s Original Sin” and has concluded you’re not Christian if you vote for Trump. And the cross is to ward off facts as if they were Dracula.
As Wretchard has said “they are all in to defeat Trump.” They do this to preserve the world order that was before Trump came along. So they have dropped all pretense.
Why do they want to preserve the old order? They felt they had a certain higher status than just being the news reporters but they were PART of the news. They are content to be the court jesters and scribblers to the elite powers. They prance and dance around like puppies hoping to get scraps from the master’s table. A sad existence for sure. But when all you have is a meaningless credential you hold it like a talisman and demand recognition of your status. You see this in all Totalitarian/Authorization regimes.
To be labeled “fake news” and internally know that it is right is a hard reality to face. The irony of it all is after this election and inauguration there is going to be a huge purge in the old line media regardless if Trump wins or not. The podcasts, blogs and Twitter/Parlor has destroyed their business rationale. I would rather read/listen to those formats and know where they are coming from than the current news format.
Look how effective the “walk away” videos have been. That is real information from real people. Sure beats a townhall with planted actors.
And if God forbid that Biden’s win then you will see the implementation of the China’s social credit system and they will not like being under it.
Jeffrey Toobin was caught spanking it during a work-related Zoom video call and people have come out to defend HIM. This isn’t just about Biden. It’s about the generalized corrupt and decadent nature of our elites.
I’m not necessarily saying our elites are filled with Jeffrey Epsteins, but they are full of those who enable or look the other way for Jeffrey Epsteins.
Mike
“Why do they want to preserve the old order?”
The hilarious part is that NOTHING would do more to crush the old order than the obvious-as-the-nose-on-your-face looming catastrophe of the Biden Administration. Those white suburban wine moms supposedly voting for Biden? They’ll be jumping up and down to vote for a Republican in 2024 who will likely look and sound more “normal” than Trump but with a far more radical agenda.
Mike
Yes,
And when you attempted in the most tactful and gentle manner possible to point to just a fragment of that during a conversation with an ostensibly intelligent and open minded long term acquaintance recently, you reported that she became so enraged she left immediately, her car tires squealing as she departed.
Now, what kind of person when conversing with a friendly acquaintance turns on a dime like that, breaching all standards of civility, and forgoing even a pretense of rational engagement?
Is this person fit for citizenship? Is she even mentally stable?
I will not ask if she is unusual: because by all reports from family members posting here who have been wounded by unexpectedly strident responses from siblings, or parents, or their own children, she is not.
She won’t reason, will not say why she won’t reason, and she reacts with emotional outrage when challenged to the slightest degree.
Who the f##k are these people, why are they so arrogantly malevolent, and how the f##k did they get that way?
Doing what?
What with Epstein, Raniere (the NXIVM leader) and now Toobin, I’m wondering if I didn’t dismiss Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” about an elite secret society involved in perverse sex rituals, too quickly.
I have been reading the comments of several of you who have been referring to ego investment and the fulfillment in being a credentialed this, or a certified that, or a recognized something, as a significant motivator in shaping the behavior of the people we derisively and mockingly refer to as “elites”. And I now think maybe that I have underestimated the role that this simple, non-ideological type of thing can play in the lives of some people, and its generalized effects on the polity as a whole.
I have run into relatively few people of such astounding shallowness and moral bankruptcy; but I suppose we can all – if we think back on it – recall certain people we ran across who were addicted name droppers, comically ridiculous social climbers, and so unapologetically status conscious and uninhibited about it, that they were simply too tedious, nonchalantly soulless, or outright viper-like to bear being around.
It’s given me an additional aspect of the problem to think about.
Re Toobin.
Never mind. I looked it up.
These people are insane.
I have been reading the comments of several of you who have been referring to ego investment and the fulfillment in being a credentialed this, or a certified that, or a recognized something, as a significant motivator in shaping the behavior of the people we derisively and mockingly refer to as “elites”.
DNW: Welcome to what Tom Wolfe coined and called the “statusphere.”
Hi, DNW. Yes, something as small and minor as that can be the tipping point sometimes. It happens to me sometimes, too – I mean the longing for some feather in the cap like that.
I think it may be healthy for everyone to have at least one thing in life, no matter how niche-bound it may be, at which he/she has some kind of talent or is good at in some measure. I’m into a couple of pretty niche things, so this is somewhat consoling for me. 🙂 And if one has two or three such things, so much the better, especially if they’re in any way complementary – so long as the accompanying pride baggage is carefully minded.
When a party and its supportive media is willing to kill 50 million of the most innocent of lives, it’s hardly a reach to cover up treason and pedophilia.
A good point Geoffrey Britain at 8:50 p.m.
As for Trump shooting someone in the Middle of Fifth Avenue… that would depend upon who he shot.
“Some men need killin” Clay Alison
biden lost child, sra?
They’ll be jumping up and down to vote for a Republican in 2024 who will likely look and sound more “normal” than Trump but with a far more radical agenda.
Venezuela.
One man, one vote, one time. There won’t be an American election 2024.
I greatly fear Ymar is for once totally right.
The media, multi-national corporations, academia and entertainment industries are all aboard. It will be like the old USSR: in 2024 everybody must vote, but there will be only one candidate, no choice. The cow-like suburban females, anti-Trump in their tens of millions, will rue the day of their anti-Trump vote. Too late, bimbettes!
Venezuela redux.
Mr Bunge:
It must be a very very baaaaa (d) headache you got today when Yammer makes more sense than you.
“These people are insane.”
It’s class bias. If they saw a TV show about some working class guy spanking it on the job, they’d be merciless in mocking and disdaining him. But one isn’t allowed to acknowledge the moral and spiritual deficiencies of a fellow white collar professional.
How many young black men have Biden and Harris helped put in prison for drug use while Hunter got to go to rehab?
Mike
DNW:
The woman who screamed at me and then drove away, tires squealing, is a very politically-minded more-or-less leftist type person, who is also very emotional. I do know several people like that, but most people I know who disagree with me wouldn’t have reacted quite that way. At least, they haven’t so far. I’ve had it happen, though, with maybe five or six different people. Others have gotten quite cool and distant.
I think it’s very threatening to people to have their deepest beliefs challenged. They also see it as condescending, because basically you’re telling them they don’t know what they’re talking about, even if you’re being polite about it.
“I think it’s very threatening to people to have their deepest beliefs challenged.”
If “Trump is a Russian asset” is one of your deepest beliefs, you are a whack job. Say what you like about hatred of Bill Clinton but at least it was built on Clinton violating a moral taboo thousands of years old. What is Trump hatred built on? There are conservatives who literally thought Barack Obama was born in a foreign country who didn’t viscerally hate Obama the way people hate Trump.
I would suggest that a lot of the most fragile and deranged Trump haters don’t actually have much in the way of deeply held beliefs. They have a lot of casual, trivial, superficial beliefs which are central to their self-worth and those are the ones threatened by Trump.
Mike
MBunge:
For most of my friends, their belief about Trump goes like this: “He is a racist white supremacist who hates black people.” There are other things they believe about him, but the “Russian asset” part is way down the list if it’s there at all. I was challenging a friend about what Trump actually said at Charlottesville, for example – she thought he said the white supremacists were good people. She didn’t want that challenged.
They also think he ignored COVID. And let people die, because he’s such a terrible person. So if you challenge that, it’s upsetting.
That’s the sort of thing I mean. Or if you challenge the narratives about police hunting down black people out of sheer animus. That’s another one.
The meta belief they don’t want challenged is this: Democrats good, Republicans bad, and the MSM tells the truth, and Fox and conservative media lie.
You forgot “rapist” and “pedophile“
Why would people not want to hear that the president isn’t racist? Or that he didn’t just “let people die” of a disease? Or that police aren’t hunting down black men in the streets? It’s sad when such horrible beliefs are so central to a person’s identity, that such beliefs so energize a person, that they don’t want to hear the good news that they’re not true.
But I don’t know… I guess we’ve all been guilty of going on some kind of moral crusade at some point, and being disappointed when unable to continue in that crusade. But even so, you’d think people would really want to know that the sitting president isn’t a mortal threat.
I do not permit a Venezuela or Turkey one man, one vote, last time scenario. To clarify, I am merely pointing out the dark’s strategy on this, given how well I read the Vampiric Cabal’s upper strategic layers.
So I am actually more optimistic than MB.
As ironic as that may be, given where I tend to come from. I am the king of conspiracies here after all.
As for why there won’t be an election in 2024, that’s because it can be a good or bad thing. But inevitably, God wins. And the Golden Age is here in 2021, it doesn’t matter what the dark do at this point.
So long as the WHITE player isn’t an idiot like some of those arguing online.
Spartacus…”Why do they want to preserve the old order? They felt they had a certain higher status than just being the news reporters but they were PART of the news. They are content to be the court jesters and scribblers to the elite powers.”
In the days of the Holy Roman Empire, there was a small group of men called the Prince-Electors. They, and only they, got to choose who the next Emperor would be.
We have something sort of similar in America today. There is a group of people…national journalists, Ivy League academics, senior government officials…who, while they may not be able to make the final decision on who becomes President, believe it is their absolute right to vet the candidates and decide who is eligible for the Presidency.
Much/most of the support for Biden is not based on love or even respect for Biden, but on hate for Trump…and, worse, for Trump supporters.
I’m reminded of G K Chesterton’s line: “The true soldier fights not out of hatred for what is in front of him, but out of love for what is behind him.”
There is a shortage of True Soldiers, in Chesterton’s sense, on today’s Left.
GB, try 5 billion lives at the upper limit. 50 is peanuts and a statistic.
Read Georgia Guidestones. Billionare depopulation agenda meetings.
We have something sort of similar in America today. There is a group of people…national journalists, Ivy League academics, senior government officials…who, while they may not be able to make the final decision on who becomes President
There’s no election commission to deterimne who wins the Presidency on vote night. The Main sewer media does that. Guess who they will call as winner? Kama.
101% voter turnout, 75% for Trump, Cali flips to Trump…. your journolists will call Kama as winner.
These are their orders. Zombies do not DISOBEY.
“For most of my friends, their belief about Trump goes like this: “He is a racist white supremacist who hates black people.” “
But what is the deeply held belief about race that Trump has violated? If we were talking about Latinos and people with a profound investment in the open borders story of immigration, Trump has at least done actual things contrary to that story.
Of course, that open borders story is not and has not been the complete truth of America’s immigration history, but that’s beside the point. The “Trump hates Latinos” argument could at least be over real things Trump has actually done.
By the way, does anyone else find it immensely revealing how Latinos have been shoved to the back of the bus when it comes to anti-Trumpists?
But what is the “Trump is a white supremacist” stuff based on? Things Trump hasn’t done and things Trump hasn’t said. Heck, calling Republicans racist has been standard operating procedure for Democrats for decades, Neo, without them behaving the way you’ve described with friends and associates. What changed?
I say from personal experience, people don’t always understand themselves. They don’t understand why they do the things they do. People may say it’s about Trump being a white supremacist, but it’s not.
What is it about? Well, if Trump did everything the same but used a greater than eighth grade vocabulary, if he sounded more like Mitt Romney or George W. Bush, your friends would still hate him, Neo, but not with the irrational intensity that renders them incapable of adult conversation.
Mike
Mr Bunge:
Ah yes George W Bush was loved for his speaking skills. If that was the case but it was not.
Seriously, om, I’m never going to have sex with you.
Mike
Mr Bunge:
You are a twisted dude.
Just try to keep your comments/posts intelligent.
BTW Neo’s standards for comments aren’t your standards.
I think it’s very threatening to people to have their deepest beliefs challenged. –neo
Indeed.
Again, I keep finding myself surprised that many here — not neo — are surprised by or disappointed in people.
Human beings are not pure rational actors. They are quite complex and emotional. Most are insecure in multiple areas. Some are deeply wounded. They are not having tea with Rene Descartes and Edmund Burke in order to arrive at their decisions.
Maybe I was scarred by earlier experiences, but I understand people as potentially dangerous animals, who can turn on you without notice. Good luck reasoning with them.
We live on the Planet of the Apes. I’m amazed we do as well as we have to maintain civilized standards.
MBunge:
Their belief that Trump is a white supremacist racist is built on several things, all of them coming from the MSM and their circle of acquaintances, who mostly think the same.
The first is his immigration policy. The second is the lie about what Trump said re Charlottesville. The third involve the usual propaganda about all Republicans being racists, something they’ve believed for decades. The fourth involves what they see as support from actual white supremacist groups or groups labeled as such by the left and the media.
Neo:
And the left/media ignores recent statements by Richard Spencer, a self identifying white supremacist, who now supports BLM and the Democrats. He has stated that President Trump has not furthered white supremacist goals but the racist goals of BLM are consistent with his (Richard Spencer’s) ends. Richard Spencer was one of the white supremacists involved at Charlottesville IIRC.
As I keep saying, in various blogs, I don’t know if the media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dem Party, or if it’s the other way round, but it’s obvious that they are in cahoots.
Ymar — once again you’ve gotten it wrong. Everyone knows the world ends in the year 6000 of the Hebrew calendar, so there are 219 years to go!
om:
And the left/media ignores recent statements by Richard Spencer, a self identifying white supremacist, who now supports BLM and the Democrats.
The Law of Implied Reciprocal Endorsement only applies to conservatives.
(Similar to the Law of Political Synecdoche: any crazy act or statement by a conservative/white/straight/male is attributable to the whole class and must be apologized for by every member; any crazy act or statement by a liberal/poc/gay/female is a one-off and must be ignored.)