Joe’s best friend was – and is – the MSM. But it’s not America’s.
The media has treated Joe Biden in a manner so gentle that it far eclipses even the fawning obeisance they paid to Barack Obama. And although the MSM may have low ratings and Americans may not trust the press, at least half of them are highly highly influenced by it – something I’ve observed time and again in my friends and family, who regularly don’t even know of certain news stories and/or events I might bring up.
If the MSM hasn’t covered them, they don’t exist. And of course the media’s slant on the stories they do deign to cover tends to affect people more than most people realize, too.
So the infuriating findings of this study should come as no surprise:
According to an explosive new study the Media Research Center (MRC) released on Tuesday, the legacy media’s suppression of eight key election-related news stories effectively handed the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. According to a poll conducted by The Polling Company on behalf of MRC, a whopping 17 percent of Americans who voted for Joe Biden would not have done so had they been aware of just one of these stories…
The Polling Company surveyed 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Six of these states (all except North Carolina) have been called for Biden. The poll found that a whopping 82 percent of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of the news stories, while only five percent said they did not know about all eight…
The poll raised these eight news stories: Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden; Joe Biden’s involvement in the Hunter Biden corruption scandal; Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) getting rated the most leftist senator; 33 percent GDP growth in the third quarter of 2020; 11.1 million jobs created from June 5 to October 2; the Middle East peace deals with Israel that led to three Nobel Peace Prize nominations for Trump; U.S. energy independence; and Trump’s successes with Operation Warp Speed in fighting the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
These were not obscure stories, either. They were big. And I wonder how much the respondents read of any news, actually. Perhaps a lot of people simply are generally uninformed. After all, they may be busy living their lives.
Note, however, that only 17% would have changed their minds had they known of these things. My own experience with talking to friends is that literally nothing would have changed their minds this year. Trump was evil and had to be gotten rid of, and replacing him with anyone would have been just fine. So Joe Biden would do, and it didn’t really seem to matter much who Joe was and what he stood for, as long as he was a Democrat.
And no, my friends are not stupid, certainly not in the conventional sense. Nor are they evil. Their worldview is mostly shaped by the MSM and by their friends and family who believe the same things they do. I’m a weird outlier, and although most of them tolerate me and even think I’m intelligent, I believe they think I’ve been taken over by something strange and inexplicable, even though many have heard my explanations.
I truly feel that the MSM is responsible for a great deal of what has happened to America, and that they have a lot to answer for. Not that they’ll ever be tasked with answering it, any more than Joe Biden will be subject to their grilling.
There appears to be nothing we can do about any of this. I said a long time ago it appears the left has truly won, though they were certainly helped along with the virus. But even without the pandemic, I begin to wonder if Trump would still have lost given the forces arrayed against him.
And for my left/lib friends, like Neo’s this is their theme song, and nothing will ever dissuade them of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqsT4xnKZPg
We’re living in a world where the quondam ‘Republican’ Governor of Michigan informs us that ‘Trump lacks a moral compass’, so we should vote for…Joe Biden.
The real problem here is collective frivolity.
I believe the Governor of Michigan is a Democrat.
Joe Biden isn’t the peoples president. Joe Biden is the MSM’s president. Now that the media has elected him they will have to protect him for the next 4 years. They have their work cut out for them!
Rush Limbaugh has long called Democrats “low information voters.” Many don’t know they’re being lied to, and even if they know, many don’t care.
Related (by Andrea Widburg):
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/tucker_takes_on_how_the_election_was_really_stolen.html
H/T Zero Hedge.
Widburg, quoting Tucker Carlson, blames the Mainstream Corrupt Media for their non-stop demonization of Donald Trump and his supporters.
Yet, IN SPITE OF ALL THIS and in spite of their power and their 24/7 propaganda machine spewing garbage on all cylinders, Trump won this election (had it been a fair one).
Not only won it but in a LANDSLIDE.
Which is an absolutely amazing feat. (What’s that? You say, you haven’t read about it in the MSCM?)
And so we go into the final stretch (or perhaps the final stretch before the final stretch) and see—with mixed feelings of nausea and hope—whether the Democrats and their MSCM allies will be able to protect this historical (and nation-destroying) heist and prevent it from being overturned, as Justice demands it ought to be.
https://www.oann.com/dominion-executive-trump-is-not-going-to-win-i-made-fing-sure-of-that/
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pennsylvania-ag-declares-trump-is-going-to-lose-if-every-vote-is-counted/
H. L. Mencken said it best: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
When the results of this election (higher taxes, higher prices for everything, decreasing supplies of and higher priced energy, open borders with many more illegals taking jobs from low income citizens, continuing to ship jobs to China while they continue to steal our intellectual property, an Iran friendly policy that will destabilize the Middle East [again], and more “America last” policies) become manifest, my answer to those who complain will be, “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for Biden.”
In the meantime, it’s time to continue to support those who believe in America first. We’ve had a setback (mostly due to a rigged election), but the results down ballot on a nationwide scale give reason to keep working for the cause of MAGA. If you can, donate to the Senate campaigns of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. The Senate is up for grabs. We need it to stay in GOP hands.
I believe that DJT is going to continue to be involved. He has a huge following and will continue to be a major figure in the populist movement. “Young man, walk away from the hate. Young man, let’s make America Great ……” 🙂 Yes, we can!
“And no, my friends are not stupid, certainly not in the conventional sense. Nor are they evil. neo
What’s the difference between those who are evil and those who through willful blindness enable evil?
Willful blindness being defined as, “none are so blind as they who will not see”.
Doesn’t refusing to see evil… enable evil? If so, how does being complicit in that evil not follow?
“Trump was evil and had to be gotten rid of, and replacing him with anyone would have been just fine. So Joe Biden would do, and it didn’t really seem to matter much who Joe was and what he stood for, as long as he was a Democrat.”
Yes. And if my friends are any indication, it may be important to remember that no small number of Democrats, to the extent that they actually voted for anyone (rather than just against Trump), voted for Kamala Harris, the first woman/black/Asian president-to-be.
MollyG:
I would have thought Kamala to have been more of a factor with my friends than she appeared to be. They never mentioned her and they almost never mentioned Biden. Everything was about Trump. They certainly didn’t seem to mind her, but for some reason she didn’t seem to have interested them any more than Biden did.
G.B. Exactly. “will not” They cannot afford to know they know these things or they will lose their exalted opinion of their exalted status as the great and good, just and righteous, intellectual and compassionate.
They’d be deplorable.
So, to work out my resentment, I’m figuring out ways to say “you voted for it” when something goes awry. Not likely to make any difference to them.
But perhaps seeing that others are on to them might….
Don’t bother contributing for the Georgia races – the fix is in and they will get away with another cheat. At this point I am wondering if Stacy the alleged governor of Ga. maybe really did win the governor’s race but didn’t have enough cash to convince the Dominion folks to deliver. Also Mitch the turtle would just love to be the decision maker for anything that Biden’s orders can’t deliver. He couldn’t bother to back Trump for the last four years, but I am sure he and his best pal Pierre Delicto will be eager to reach across the aisle to help the “winner” get his agenda done.
Meanwhile, check your bloodpressure and heart meds, because your Chinese friends sure aren’t doing it. Quality control isn’t their thing.
Re: evil…
From reading some comments lately, I’d say Republicans have caught up with Democrats:
__________________________________________
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
–Charles Krauthammer
https://tucson.com/opinion/national/charles-krauthammer-conservatives-can-agree-that-liberals-are-stupid/article_88c69db5-56a8-5515-9140-2304c5dbec93.html
Geoffrey Britain:
For many crimes, the law sees a big difference in acts that involve intent and those that do not. But ignoring the legal situation, I think that morally there is a huge difference. I think that traditionally, post-classical (post Greek – and perhaps post-Roman?) morality and ethics recognizes a difference. I was always troubled by ancient Greek plays such as Oedipus Rex – which I became familiar with at a fairly young age – in which the character has no idea that he/she is doing evil (marrying his mother, in this case) and yet is punished as though he did. That seems quite a different standard to me.
Those who enable evil thinking they are doing good are guilty of misjudgment, which is not the same as evil. And it’s only over time that we realize the consequences of our actions or inactions, and maybe in many cases not even then.
fiona:
I think you are giving VERY poor advice. The fix may indeed be in, but giving up on supporting the GOP senatorial candidates will certainly make sure that if the fix isn’t in, or if the fix that’s in is inadequate, we still will lose a fight we might have won.
And if we lose there, we lose everything. Contributing money doesn’t require extraordinary self-sacrifice for most people. I strongly urge all to give money to those candidates.
McConnell falls short in certain areas, but he’s no Romney. And he has been stellar with judicial appointments, which is something that matters. You seem to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Take a look.
My own experience with talking to friends is that literally nothing would have changed their minds this year. — Neo
The 82% and 5% numbers don’t strike me as surprising or even terribly outside the norm. The 17% number of voters who would have changed their vote does surprise me as being quite high. If the GOP could have gotten half of those 17% it might have been a landslide. Propaganda and information suppression works.
Hello there. Why are they having both Senate seat runoffs for the same state in the same year? I just lost track of what was going on, I guess, but I thought it’s not possible to have both Senate seats for the same state on the ballot at once.
Neo,
Their worldview is mostly shaped by the MSM and by their friends and family who believe the same things they do.
One could just as easily say the same about many conservatives out there by changing your sentence a bit.
>Their worldview is mostly shaped by conservative media news outlets, Rush, Hannity, Trump’s tweets and Breitbart as well as by their friends and family who believe the same things they do.<
Many people are shaped by the media they consume. Some of my friends only watch the MSM while others definitely have a very steady diet of right wing conservative views and news. And it's very interesting communicating with both sets of friends who truly see the world differently. This is one reason I read both left and right political views on the internet.
I think many of us are more comfortable with one side over the other. Would be nice to read something more down the middle but that rarely happens. So you have to hope for candor that goes against the grain coming from either side that bridges the gap every now and then.
Philip Sells,
The reason Georgia has two this year is because Johnny Isakson – who was re-elected in 2016 – resigned in 2019 for health reasons. So Kelly Loeffler was appointed to the seat until the closest election for the Senate and that was the 2020 election. The other seat was regularly scheduled for the 2020 election. So two for control on one Senate. Stay tuned.
Agreed about Fiona’s advice being very bad.
I’m sending money to each (and, more than I’ve ever given to a candidate previously).
Fiona, you correctly acknowledge that mainstream GOP Senators’ agendas (or, at least, the agendas they can pursue within the boundaries set by McConnell’s leadership) do not overlap entirely with what we want.
So far so good.
But whatever a 52-to-48 GOP Senate majority might accomplish, it’s better than what a 50-to-50 even split (with Kamala as tiebreaker) would accomplish. We should not compare a disappointing RINO narrow margin with some fantasy alternative, but with what will actually happen in the real world if Perdue and Loeffler lose. The narrow RINO majority will consistently be spineless and disappointing, to be sure; but this will be better than four years of being railroaded and hunted by a weaponized government bureaucracy unrestricted by either chamber of Congress.
Likewise, you might be correct that “the fix is in,” and that no amount of money and enthusiasm (and actual votes!) can possibly result in a win for Perdue and Loeffler.
But you might not be correct. And even if you are, be aware: Every time the Democrats use the same cheating methodologies, especially in front of a populace already enraged by the last usage and primed to pounce on the first evidence of the next, they increase their chances of being caught. That’s not so desirable as actually winning and stymieing the Biden agenda with a Senatorial veto, but it’s not nothing. Whereas, if Perdue (a decently conservative guy who doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with Loeffler) and Loeffler (chosen largely for being female and moneyed, but still preferable to any Democrat) get an underwhelming GOP turnout, then the Democrats will not need to cheat to defeat them. In that case (a.) the Democrats run no risk of self-incrimination, and (b.) they reinforce the narrative that this year was not, after all, a Red Wave.
We need the Red Wave narrative (amply demonstrated by GOP gains in the House, which were certainly the result of Trump’s coattails) to prove how unlikely the Trump loss was: if not in current certification-challenges, then at least to future generations.
So: Help preserve the chain of evidence: Do what you can to get Perdue and Loeffler into office. The more unfettered the Democrats are, the worse things will be in the future.
We need all the opportunities and options we can get…even if they aren’t what we wish we had.
Neo, on “most of them tolerate me… they think I’ve been taken over by something strange and inexplicable….”
I say, there’s a big moral diff, between those who tolerate you, and those who diss you.
As, between those who go along with Leftism (to avoid Cancellation), vs. those who go out of their way to diss you.
If the latter aren’t outright Evil, they surely don’t deserve to be regarded as Adults in good standing.
For the “But the two sides are entirely symmetrical!!” crowd:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/416095/
“I believe the Governor of Michigan is a Democrat.”
He meant Rick Snyder, not Mrs. Lurch.
He was using a relatively unusual latinate term for erstwhile. You see it about as often as “whilom”
Montage:
One could just as easily say a lot of things, but that doesn’t make those things correct.
For example, you write:
Incorrect. That is not the case for the vast majority of conservatives. The difference – and I’ve written about it many many times – is that conservatives get both points of view and do not live in a bubble. I’m sure there are a few who do live in a bubble, but it’s a small minority because – unlike liberals – most conservatives cannot avoid hearing and reading much of liberal/left thought.
In fact, I wrote a post on the subject just a few days ago. An excerpt:
About those Google searches, see this. I noticed that on my own quite dramatically when Google changed its algorithm several years ago in order to achieve this bias. I do many searches nearly every single day, and there was a dramatic change that was very noticeable.
One could just as easily say the same about many conservatives out there by changing your sentence a bit.
Montage: Once again with the “it’s all equivalent.” Like much commonsense, that’s true … unless it isn’t.
Unfortunately, in this case (and is often the case in your equivalence exercises) it’s not true.
Conservatives can’t help but hear the liberal side because it’s constantly blaring at us from everywhere we turn, when it comes to news, movies, social media and everyday conversation. This is emphatically not visa-versa true for liberals.
There’s even research on this. See Jonathan Haidt for a start. I’d look up a direct reference for you, but it’s not worth the effort since you only read responses some of the time and I doubt your good faith in following up.
I dunno, DNW, I’ve seen ‘quondam’ an infinitely greater number of times than I’ve seen ‘whilom’ until now. 🙂 To be sure, now that you put it in your post, the ratio has definitely become a finite quantity, probably around 6 to 1, but still heavily in favor of ‘quondam’.
In my experience, liberals’ reactions to actual facts which would be inconvenient could be mimed by holding up a Crucifix in the face of a demon.
Conservatives will check it out. Liberals will call names. It’s not symmetrical. As Montage knows.
I think Neo misunderestimates the precise words of Geoffrey Britain.
Which thinking leads her to not judge her friends for what they are, and what they believe. As she herself said, these friends/relatives believe Trump is evil, despite all objective evidence to the contrary. They tolerate Neo, but their hearts and minds are closed. That is willful blindness.
As G.B. so very well states, “Willful blindness being defined as, “none are so blind as they who will not see”. Doesn’t refusing to see evil… enable evil?”
Of course it does.
I wonder what they would say if they read tne memos in Hunter Biden’s laptop concerning the Big Guy’s cut of the take.
In any event there is a difference between “being evil” ( if you believe that the term has real and objective meaning) and cooperating with evil.
But I have been assured [not talking of your friends here as I have never communicated with them] by progressives and secular liberals for many years now, that there really is no such thing as “evil” as it was conceived of as recently as say, a 130 years ago: i.e., as a categorically, objectively, and metaphysically profound badness.
There are, the “enlightened ones” contend, only the ends we choose; which then justify the means we use to accomplish them. All based on feelings. Even yammering on about “human thriving” will not avail. Some people may feel one way about it, and others another way. So when they say something is “evil” they are basically saying little to nothing more than that they don’t like it.
They know this for a fact because David Hume, or somebody proved it.
We have discussed this several times before at least.
I am confident that it could be probably demonstrated to apply with regard to your friends as well; but not without the near certainty of wounding them emotionally, and estranging them forever. They would probably consider even being encouraged to discuss such a sensitive matter as an affront, if not a virtual assault.
By the way, I want to thank whoever it was that provided the links to the various essays on the blending currents of deconstruction, critical race theory, and cultural marxism, which explored not only the problem of having a dialog with the end-product theorists, but why exactly, based on their own operating assumptions, it was impossible.
neo,
Legally there certainly is a difference and there’s no legal culpability.
Morally is less cut and dried. Re:
“Those who enable evil thinking they are doing good are guilty of misjudgment, which is not the same as evil. And it’s only over time that we realize the consequences of our actions or inactions, and maybe in many cases not even then.”
I’m not suggesting that those who out of ignorance enable evil are in fact evil themselves. And simple misjudgment open to new information is certainly blameless.
I am saying that those who enable evil… after being repeatedly offered information that factually and logically renders untenable beliefs that enable evil and who do so through willful blindness… render themselves complicit in that evil.
It’s the refusal to even consider reasoned argument with confirmable data that confers culpability in the furtherance of that evil.
In fairness, a judge like Sullivan who is in an impactful position bears far more culpability than low-info aunt Martha. Yet, if aunt Martha refuses to even consider evidence and reason that challenges her beliefs, then even if only to a small degree, she is to that degree complicit in the evil she denies exists.
In a representative democracy, citizens bear responsibility for the societal ills to the degree they support them. We have an obligation to educate ourselves when information emerges that puts in doubt our assumptions. To refuse to do so is to choose complicity when that info challenges support for those who would do evil.
A perfect example being the relative lack of outrage among democrats with mass murderer Andrew Cuomo.
Years ago, Czech President Vaclav Klaus placed his finger precisely where culpability lies;
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.
It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.” [my emphasis]
In life we all play the fool at times. It’s foolishness that willfully refuses to see that it may be enabling evil where some degree of complicity in evil lies.
Neo wrote
“Google changed its algorithm several years ago in order to achieve this bias. I do many searches nearly every single day”
Stop using Google. Use Duck Duck Go or Bing.
They are so busy… during a quarantine. What is their work, shoveling people into concentration camps?
About those Google searches, see this. I noticed that on my own quite dramatically when Google changed its algorithm several years ago in order to achieve this bias. I do many searches nearly every single day, and there was a dramatic change that was very noticeable.
Google’s algorithm change was due to suppressing conspiRACISTS like Flat Earth theory back in 2015 ish.
At the time I brought up this subject, you declared it as spamming too much Flat Earth stuff here. You chose not to notice the far more important topic you chose to delete, which was the censorship. You used censorship… to delete comments about Google’s censorship. Just as you deleted my comment telling Om to not attack Tom, and declared it an “insult” to call humans, human.
The past does not exist and the future is not yet here. What I make a note of is your current comments do not reflect your total actions in any consistent fashion.
Geoffrey Britain on November 24, 2020 at 8:35 pm said:
I agree with those points, for the most part.
DNW,
“…various essays on the blending currents of deconstruction, critical race theory, and cultural marxism, which explored not only the problem of having a dialog with the end-product theorists, but why exactly, based on their own operating assumptions, it was impossible.”
It might have been James Lindsay’s “No, the Woke Won’t Debate You. Here’s Why”:
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/
His “Social Justice Encyclopedia/Translations from the Wokish” is indispensable:
https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/
huxley on November 24, 2020 at 5:52 pm said:
Re: evil…
From reading some comments lately, I’d say Republicans have caught up with Democrats:
__________________________________________
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
–Charles Krauthammer
It took me a long time to introduce the counter to Krauth’s stated truth, but I finally got enough info so that the 100th monkey effect would activate.
Now people are mirroring my view that, yes, Leftists are evil. It’s a real thing and not just rhetoric as you have often seen.
I am very good at breaking “fundamental laws”. The thing about Georgia is that Ymarsakar’s territory is in GA. They didn’t seem to realize that when they tried to steal multiple elections here.
Meanwhile, the Overton window will not only shift further if Biden becomes president;
it will be entirely upended and undergo something akin to a global change in polarity (though entirely apropos considering the compromised thug that—if it comes to it—will be occupying the Oval Office):
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/two-joe-bidens-cabinet-picks-have-ties-past-scandals
+ this:
“This intention to dramatically broaden what falls under the National Security umbrella is alarming.”
https://twitter.com/themarketswork/status/1331418425889984513
And regarding Jake Sullivan:
https://twitter.com/themarketswork/status/1331418425889984513
https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1331414003705393152
https://dailycaller.com/2020/11/24/jake-sullivan-chinese-propaganda-cgtn/
H/T Jeff Carlson twitter feed.
Needless to say, just as Obama spent an inordinate amount of time—strategically—blaming his predecessor for anything and everything, Biden/Harris (or whoever) will use the same playbook.
(As if not enough hatred has been fomented thus far…)
In fact, it is likely going to be a case of “You ain’t seen nuthin’ quite like it….”
Regarding the idea of submerged personal evil.
Some time ago, Neo brought up for discussion how puzzling and mystifying she found that doctrine of original sin, said to be held by most orthodox Christian denominations.
Misunderstood or misrepresented by many self-professing Christians themselves, as leading to a state of “total depravity”, and being caused by some mystery having to do with sex, the doctrine in its classical form merely asserts that man’s intellect and will have been darkened and lowered, but not destroyed, by a sin connected with man’s origination: an act or adopted disposition combinimg aspects of both will and intellect directed, by the creature, at the goal of becoming like unto, and thus supplanting, God,the actual creator. (There is an obvious thematic thread there with the story of the fall of Lucifer.) That is more or less the idea, anyway.
Now, what has this to do with the labeling of people and their acts and inclinations as “evil”?
Well, in the Christian moral economy, good and evil are radically separate, as they also appear to be in the Old Testament.
However in modern secularism, as well as, we have been given to understand in the Talmud, there is no completely separating the two.
Thus, lies, and deception, and even self-deceit have a different metaphysical, and downstream of that, anthropological, status according to the conditioning narrative; and thus naturally bear differing individual guilt assignments, as well as moral economy critiques.
Lying, deceit, manipulation, and outright deception, shall receive different levels of condemnation and or tolerance depending on how intrinsic they are imagined to be to any typically operating, or at least normatively representative operating individual.
You don’t shoot cowards if everyone is inescapably and as part of their nature, incurably cowardly. It just must be accepted, as there is no alternative. God, or nature, made them that way, and there is no cure for it: not in training, not in assortative selection (immediately anyway), not in grace.
The fact is that the God of that particular mankind, if such a god existed, would in some sense be expressing Itself through Its – from our point of view, rather pathetic- creation.
Now we see the arrow of design, or chance, that decends also points upward: whether your God is a personal or suprapersonal Being, or mere nature itself, if the creature is a liar, you will assume that that is just part of all ascending existence too. And therefore the liar has done nothing to deserve a level of opprobrium which would cause you to radically ” other” the liar and cheat. Unless, there was a break or a fall in human nature which can be rectified.
“Good”, then, is decoupled from “Truth” and they no longer are held to be convertible terms which derive their ultimate significance from a God who has revealed Himself as the light; as One who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Evil, under this theory, is a deprivation of truth and being; and a will toward such a state is an evil will.
He, this God, cannot be lied to, fooled, manipulated, bribed or extorted. Nothing of that kind can exist in His immediate presence. All apart from this goodness, is ultimately “evil”
Now, having grasped that conceptual setup, perhaps it is easier to understand how people who seem nice and tolerant and even giving, can also be reckoned – under this interpretive paradigm – as participants in spiritual evil, while they seem perfectly normal. To be out of sync with the ultimate good is to participate in the economy of evil willy nilly.
Whether they are imagining things or not, some NDE types have announced that they have been given just such a realization. It is pretty common for those sorts to come back shaken by an experience in which they were confronted with a record of their life in which their deepest and most ulterior motives both for that which they did and did not do, were exposed and left laying there before them, utterly undeniable.
If you believe that this kind of Truth exists, or even if you think that it is conceptually defensible, then the confessions of Catholic penitents, and visions of chastened visitors to the realms of the dead, announcing that they have come to recognize that they were guilty of material evil through many of the most seemimgly petty transgressions and failures, will begin to make sense.
I of course do not know what anyone else means when they say that they see ordinary, and normally quite affable people cooperating with evil.
But that is how I would probably see it, if I ever thought that I did recognize it.
I have too many family members, that get all of their news from Comedy Cenral, and people like Jimmy Kimmel, and Colbert.
Yammer is falling off the edge again, plane for all to see.
Neo, Huxley
So we agree to disagree. I read a lot of right wing views. But I don’t much like them unless they are serious. Thomas Sowell is serious and I sometimes agree with him. The personalities on Fox News? No. Just like you don’t like left wing or liberal views much. Reading them, of course, doesn’t mean agreeing with them. Which is partly my point.
Art+Deco,
“Quandam.” Had to look that one up.
(Well it’s great for Scrabble—just make sure you spell it right…).
In any event, Ron Coleman has some retweets that are worth perusing—yes, still, in spite of everything…since I still fervently believe—and fervently hope (is that a contradiction?)—that “things” are gearing up; as I find the possibility that a smiling thug such as Biden, and his group of smiling backup thugs, BLATANTLY stole an election AND might become the leader of the “last best hope on earth” to be OFF THE CHARTS OBSCENE….
So FWIW:
“The most astonishing thing…”
https://twitter.com/NiermanJoe/status/1331459537249951745
Peachy Georgia:
https://twitter.com/Wizard_Predicts/status/1331441787093864448
Cheesy Wisconsin:
https://twitter.com/PhillDKline/status/1331374045019992066
A long shot?
https://twitter.com/HonorAndDaring/status/1331369406639828993
+ bonus: Jordan Peterson is back (so pass out the kleenex…):
https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1331364253417304064
BTW Robert Barnes twitter feed also has important retweets pertaining to Georgia.
I know people who, given the opportunity, would have eagerly voted for anyone, living or dead, only because he or she was not Donald Trump.
Which, of course, is a perception issue crated and advanced by media behavior.
Sorry neo. I tried to bold only my headline and three sections of article text, but failed.
Regarding the Senate seats of Georgia, yes, blocking bad laws is huge. But just as consequential or more is Senate control of investigations, of the evil done by Democrats past and present. Without Republican control, it will be entirely censored, treated as conspiracy theories. There will be no platform for criticism and oversight criticism whatsoever. None. Zero.
Republicans will be dead to influence in politics.
@ Hubert,
Yes, that was the article. I went on to trace and read quite a number of the embedded links as well.
The essays were particularly helpful in my view, in identifying the various strands that went to make up critical theory, and the authors who have contributed to its actual development as it now stands; as most of us know only percusor names like Foucault, Derrida and maybe Judith Butler.
The section on the “metaphysics of discourses” is key to explaining the core of their view of human reality. But the internal links throughout are enough to keep one busy for hours, following the author as he peels the mental onion of the types.
“Epistemic violence” was a good one. “It’s not just cant, it’s a whole theory!’
Academia is the Planter Class in the 1850’s. Instead of living on the labor of slaves and poor whites, Academia is living on the borrowings of students who are slaves to amazing levels of debt, which can’t even be discharged in bankruptcy thanks to Biden. It is producing a surplus of elites with nothing to do and hopelessly in debt.
We have a totally unsustainable situation and everybody knows it at some level. Biden voters are in denial of a need to actually change, and the actual change that will be needed is not clear.
We have huge debt in all parts of society. Young adults can’t buy their first house or start a family due to student loan debt. Seeing racism as the problem and devoting the time to fighting it that in other times would have been devoted to job, house, and family is a displacement behavior. It is unfulfilling but it is the only game available.
The MSM is talking to those needing to believe that racism is the only real problem, and taxing the rich is the obvious solution to everything else.
Meanwhile, an explosion of technology is set to wipe out middle class jobs. Andrew Yang described it well in his War On Normal People.
Maybe Trump as head of a new media empire with journalists who actually report what is happening is the best outcome.
Then let us truly think out of the box. What if a new GOP supported by a Trump Network and with actual solutions takes both houses in 2022? That might see Biden throwing in the towel. Harris replaces Biden but her appointment for a VP is refused by Congress. She is then impeached and actually removed and the new House Speaker becomes President.
“Pre … cursor” obviously.
Turning off spell check is like walking a tightrope without a net and blindfolded.
Scott wrote, “I have too many family members, that get all of their news from Comedy Central, and people like Jimmy Kimmel, and Colbert.”
ditto. sigh.
It’s not just that they’ve been bought.
It’s that they’ve been bought so cheaply.
Back in 2012 I was on a road trip with a good friend of mine. He is not a leftist but he loved Comedy Central and folks like Kimmel and Colbert.
We were in our hotel room when he turned on the TV and tuned to one of them. This was an election year and the jokes were *all* anti-Republican. Every. Single. One.
After about fifteen minutes of that, I told him either tune to something different or I was going to cut the cable.
There is something else to notice besides comedians who politically opine, and that is TV commercials. Blacks are 13% of the population, 80% of black babies are born to single mothers, and blacks’ median incomes are significantly lower than whites’.
But you would not know this if all you saw was TV commercials.
By my estimate, 40 to 50 % of all commercials regardless of network feature blacks, especially black nuclear families. Why the ad push to blacks, who have less money to spend?
It is because the major, usually multi-national, corporation CEOs and their ad agencies have bought into the social justice theme. They show happy integrated neighborhoods, happy nuclear families.
All lies.
Something’s happening (Georgia, PA):
Scroll through Ron Coleman’s twitter feed
Ditto John Solomon’s twitter feed
+ this (regarding “Joe’s best friend”):
“The NYT is a fraud”
https://tinyurl.com/y23z52rv
H/T Powerline blog.
+ bonus: Black Friday?
“My sources tell me that Durham is dropping indictments on Friday.”
https://twitter.com/avenue62/status/1331656055814819846
So we agree to disagree. I read a lot of right wing views. But I don’t much like them unless they are serious. Thomas Sowell is serious and I sometimes agree with him. The personalities on Fox News? No. Just like you don’t like left wing or liberal views much. Reading them, of course, doesn’t mean agreeing with them. Which is partly my point.
Montage: I don’t care what you like or don’t like.
The issue on the table, which you miss or evade as usual, is whether there is an equivalence between the left and the right bubbles. My point is a matter of fact, not opinion.
The fact being that the media, social media, movies and academia are overwhelmingly liberal/left. Thus, people on the right are constantly being exposed to liberal/left views, while people on the left can live happily ensconced in a bubble with little or no corresponding exposure.
It’s not about your opinion … or mine for that matter.
________________________________________
Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
–William F. Buckley
Google steers with prejudice. Don’t Google, search. Google, Youtube, etc. operate under the Alphabet umbrella corporation.
huxley:
Montage never met a strawman he/she didn’t like.
Montage could be the Wicker Man? Wouldn’t end pretty, but “if he (Montage) only had a brain.” His theme song “Me and My Strawman (Shadow)?”
Neo, your analogy to Montage and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice was apt.
Happy Thanksgiving! 😉
DNW (and others) delved into this impressively above, but I heard recently (I forget where) that a certain Biblical use of the word “fool” entailed moral as well as intellectual stupidity.
In rereading what I wrote, it is clear that I left out some connective tissue or transitional wording here and there.
In certain paragraphs it would have become clearer exactly when and where I was shifting back and forth between the two metaphysical views, whether or not you already had a sense of the ground I was covering.
Thus the contrasting conceptions of a Pure, Holy, True and Good God, and His fallen but redeemable [and thus liable to judgment] mankind who have been offered “grace”, on the one hand; and on the other hand the god of the naturally born liars for whom there is no profound judgment or shame in lying – as it is an inextricable part of their nature as products: of either purely natural processes, or the Janus faced god that created them – would have required no background knowledge to read into it when I was shifting from evaluating one, to the other.
But I was using a Tablet. And avoiding all possibly confusing possessive and demonstrative pronouns by simply repeating names or phrases as I ought to have done, can be a real trial.
So I just spun it out in one fell swoop in a more or less stream of consciousness manner.
TJ on November 25, 2020 at 6:01 am: good point about the rules providing for the majority party having control of congressional investigations. In fact, we might think that the minority party, as the “loyal opposition”, should also be fully empowered to conduct their own investigations into possible abuses by the majority. How else do we realize the benefits of constructive criticism to reduce error and uncover corruption and abuse of power?
Dick Illyes on November 25, 2020 at 6:41 am: great comment. The national debt is possibly the biggest elephant in our room right now, aside from the actual or potential election corruption removing the prospect of real two party contests going forward. But if the debt is not addressed and the national bankruptcy is not defaulted on openly and responsibly, then the republic will also fail via that collapse.
However, I recently read something (but I cannot recall where) that suggested this commonly held view is not quite correct: “Young adults can’t buy their first house or start a family due to student loan debt.” From memory: perhaps 5 to 15% of the student debt is in the $100K range, mostly held by people on a professional path and thus able to eventually pay it off. Most of the rest is apparently in the $8K to $20K range and not quite the burden the MSM might have us believe, except it is recognized that many holding this debt did not complete their degree and are thus saddled with debt that is more difficult to repay on a non-college degree income. Still an important debt related issue/ source – just maybe not quite as serious as portrayed.
Cicero on November 25, 2020 at 1:21 pm: I have noticed the same thing about black and biracial families being depicted in various ads. Plus, even fast forwarding through recorded ads this evening, I saw a family montage with a homosexual couple (male) for a brief second or two. Distortion of the LBG 3% of the population (10 million people?) and the transgender group at 0.6% (or 2 million people) as larger than they really are seems to be quite common.
But I am not sure if that is such a bad thing. In the context of showing successful blacks and families, might this bolster the conservative arguments in favor of marriage and families, and serve as “evidence” that continuing the prior (now failing) progressive policies are no longer needed since they have “clearly” succeeded?
This kind of thing (along with my own experience at a large corporation with pretty decent diversity programs, etc.) has/had led me to believe our racial divide was being reduced significantly after all these years of affirmative action, etc. (Up through 2007 and Obama/Holder, anyway.) If that was wrong and the race based debasement or failures is still real, then of course these kinds of ads reduce the support that I and other conservatives might be willing to provide – but we would still be justified in asking for clear metrics and measurements of the success of any new policies/programs/ expenditures. E.g., Head Start should have worked, but it appears it did not. Why not? What alternatives are justified now? Etc. But we can no longer afford such progressive program largess.
Re: National debt….
R2L, Dick Illyes: I worry about that too. Sometimes the 21st C looks like a race to be last to go bankrupt.
However, I’ve been reading a blog, “The Futurist,” which claims technology causes deflation which offsets government debt and inflation, and as tech penetrates more deeply into the economy, the greater that offset.
But let the blogger tell it. (Strictly FYI.)
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The accelerating pace and diffusion of technological change has taken control of an ever-growing fraction of the world economy. This fraction is being assimilated into a different set of economic fundamentals, such as the rapid and exponential price deflation inherent to technology. The effect of this was insignificant until recently, but is now beginning to create conspicuous distortions in many economic metrics, and is just years from being the dominant force across the entire economy.
In response to technological deflation, the central banks of the world will have to create new money in perpetuity, increasing the stream at an exponentially rising rate much higher than is currently assumed. This now-permanent need for monetary expansion, if embraced, can fund government spending more directly. This in turn creates a very robust, dynamic, and efficient safety net for citizens, while simultaneously reducing and even eliminating most forms of taxation by 2025-30. Alternatively, this monetary expansion can be a means to create Sovereign Venture Funds that can hedge a country’s risk far more effectively than existing sovereign wealth funds.
Failure to recognize that technological deflation mandates permanent and ever-rising central bank monetary expansion that can and should gradually become the primary source of government spending could result in countries falling behind more enlightened countries in a very short time.
The nature of current worldwide technology is to link various disruptions with each other, consume monetary liquidity to generate deflation, and lower the effective prices of most goods and services over time. Therefore, the entirety of worldwide technology has to be seen as a holistic economic entity, and can be defined as the ‘Accelerating TechnOnomic Medium’, or ‘ATOM’.
https://atom.singularity2050.com
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Perhaps too good to be true. But it would explain why the mega financial crash keeps not happening. Or maybe we’ve just been lucky…
Huxley: Very interesting, thanks. It sounds very plausible.
When Alexander Hamilton introduced fractional reserve banking it funded a significant surge of commercial growth.
The tool of negative interest rates goes against my libertarian instincts however.
Late remark – when I opened my first bank account, in the sixties, we all had a negative interest rate: they called it “account fees”.
We PAID the bank to hold our money for us.
It was only much later that the banks started paying US for the use of our money.
I used to could count on around $10-20 income a month; now, I get about 10 cents a month on all our accounts combined, including a fairly large savings balance.