Picture in your mind a political debate between acquaintances, perhaps on social media, or in meatspace. You make your point, your opponent makes his. Demands for evidence are made. Your opponent cites a media piece. Perhaps an article on CNN, or a reference to a study on The Atlantic. The onus is on you to prove that the item is now incorrect. Yet you cannot do so, for the citations within it are true, even though the spin has rendered it into something it really is not. How do you articulate that?
Consider this CNN headline: Children found in New Mexico compound were training for school shootings, prosecutors say.
What is wrong with it? The headline is true. The children were indeed in a compound in New Mexico, and were indeed training to commit school shootings. Ah, but it omits that this was linked to Islamic terror. Now the article itself sort-of admits this in the last section of the article.
Hogrefe said FBI analysts told him the suspects appeared to be “extremist of the Muslim belief.”
Compare this to how the same event is reported on Fox News: Investigators raided New Mexico compound on tip from terror-tied New York City imam, cleric claims.
Note the difference in spin. One emphasizes ‘school shootings’ and the other ‘terror-tied’ and ‘imam’. This is how the tone of a thing is subtly changed, depending on the journalist’s preferred viewpoint. Of course, aside from Fox News, most media outlets are Left-leaning. So the spin is much more weighted toward the Left, and furthermore Fox News is usually casually dismissed by any Leftist. It is, in essence, banned from the court of polite opinion. And yet, both articles are fundamentally true.
I’ve been on a Tolkien kick of late, for which I blame my friend Francis. And so I caught the connection quite readily when I read the above headlines:
The Stones of Seeing do not lie, and not even the Lord of Barad-dûr can make them do so. He can, maybe, by his will choose what things shall be seen by weaker minds, or cause them to mistake the meaning of what they see. Nonetheless it cannot be doubted that when Denethor saw great forces arrayed against him in Mordor, and more still being gathered, he saw that which truly is.
Denethor was shown nothing but truth by the palantir. It could not be made to lie to him. But Sauron could spin what was shown, and cause Denethor to mistake the meaning of the things he saw. This tactic is readily employed by the media, and in the past it has been extremely effective. The journalist, if confronted on his spin, could escape with the excuse “but everything I have said is true!” We know there is a wrong here, we can sense it, but to prove it unequivocally is difficult, and essentially impossible if the instances are few enough.
Over time, with many such incidences, we can begin to notice the pattern. The old saying “if every bank error is in the bank’s favor, get a new bank” applies here. If every coin toss is in Hillary’s favor, get a new coin tosser. If every media article from your chosen outlet slants Left, get a new outlet. Note, too, that whenever an election is close and we have to start digging for uncounted ballots, the count always favors the Democrat. This is happening right now in Ohio. But it likewise happened in my home state of Florida in 2000. Every time a pile of uncounted votes was discovered, it invariably favored the Democrat.
And they have the temerity to accuse us of election fraud.
We are told to ignore the evidence of our eyes and ears, that we are being paranoid, perhaps. Or conspiracy-minded. Yet, every bank error is favoring the bank. Why is that? Has Sauron hijacked the palantir? I should think the answer is obvious to my readers by now. The question is what to do about it? Denethor made the mistake of thinking he could control it, that he could bend it to his will. The effort drove him insane.
So how does one deal with that debate, where links to CNN are lobbed out like candy on Halloween? The short answer may be to do as they do when they dismiss Fox News. Your source is extremely Leftist, go away. This, however, contains a weakness. The spin, the rot, has infected academia as well. So many of the academic sources for information are similarly contaminated, though again they may be perfectly true in the sense I’ve described above. The real answer, though anything but short and simple, may be to go find the information out for ourselves; to document it and record it ourselves.
In other words, we may have to give up the expedient of looking into the palantir, and just find the answers on our own, the hard way.
“To win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths.”
I have problems with both headlines. Try this one, New Mexico terror training camp trains kids in school shootings. I think that would have been better. Terrorists and school shootings are much more important as grabbers than anything else IMO.The investigators and the Imam should have been mentioned in the body of the story. That’s something I learned so long ago I cant remember which grade it was.
Thales main point is spot on, you need to turn off All tv news and do research on your own.
Old Soviet era joke: To improve cultural relations the USA and USSR decided to have a car race. In the race the American car finished #1 and the Russian finished #2. The American newspapers headlined as follows: “International car race. American car first, Russian car second.” Pravda headlined: “International car race. Russian car among top two finishers. American car next to last.”
There are many ways to use truth to lie.
I thought that was CNN. Good thing you straitened that out.
The only difference is that, today, the American newspapers would use the same headline as Pravda, but would have blamed Trump’s collusion with Russia on the “poor” performance of the American car.
My only critique of your example is it left out the radical Muslim angle, the trainers could have been radical right wing militia, or some Branch Davidian style Christian cult and your headline would still fit, thus it does not have all the relevant facts. Even better would have been “New Mexico terror training camp, run by radical Muslims, trains kids in school shootings. That pretty much covers all the relevant facts in the case.
Muslim angle would have gone in the sub header.
THIRD!
Cicero had the answer.
In his debates, he would not try to ‘turn the argument’ ponderously and methodically. He would simply attack the misdirection, deliberate omission or planned miscalculation with a swift verbal sword and cut it down.
IOW: you don’t defend. You ATTACK. And when you attack, the attack must be swift, decisive and skilled enough to bypass or overthrow the enemy defenses with maximum efficiency.
The first thing is to recognize that you have an ENEMY ATTACK, not a friendly disagreement, with which to contend. The rest follows.
This does not make sense. That is a construction site for a rammed earthship, not a training camp. Where is the shooting range? How does one AR15 and four Glocks constitute an armory? I know that country and that is not on any school bus route. How does that become a school shooting? They were not even set up to survive the winters we get in these parts.
And just one more thing. In Northern New Mexico close to the border there are no damned Muslims. Or Black Panthers, for that matter. The Conquistador Catholic cartels have had the territory sewn up for four hundred years.
My point being that I fooking live here and there is a complete lack of context, facts, and evidence to support any of the spin. I am getting old but it still pisses me off.
?
1. “Rammed earthship” – so they built it robustly and cheaply. Why is that a problem?
2. “Shooting range” – who needs a shooting range when you’re in the middle of nowhere and have a backdrop to shoot against?
3. 5 guns is not enough for an armory?
4. “School bus route” – you must be trolling.
5. What??!?!? There wasn’t a ‘school’ to shoot there….?
6. Maybe they weren’t set up to survive winter explains why at least one corpse was discovered.
7. Yes, there are moslems in NM. And black panthers.
You must be trolling.
Or perhaps the answer is “I do not believe you or your sources, nor do I care what you think of the subject or of myself”.
Ps. Yes I realize that in a sense this is ceding the field, but it also must be acknowledged that the other side will never accept anything offered by you, ever. All dialogues with these people (unless they are for general posterity) are useless.
Agreed.
They’re not interested in reasoned debate, facts, evidence or logic. Their goal is simply to be declared the winner in the disagreement. There’s no need of proof on their part and your position is automatically wrong and evil, because they are on the right side of history and they are the forces of social, economic and redistributive justice that will remake society and humanity into a purely perfect and beneficial form – beneficial, that is, for everyone equally.
Frequently enough, after completely overwhelming a neo-maoist position, proclamation or stance with very simple facts, evidence and logic, I have been confronted by silence, a blank stare, then a pasted-on, condescending smile followed by “Well, you may be a great debater, but…” and then a dismissive shrug.
You can’t reason with CULTISTS, folks. The more you try, the more they dig in. They’ll kill you or themselves before they’ll concede. Only personal experience on their part, in the form of a brutal, mentally destructive slap in the face by cold hard reality, will destroy the ridiculously artificial architecture they’ve built in their head. They’ll be a basket case at that point – perhaps permanently. Or they might slowly recover, though I doubt if the recovery is ever total. What will be left after that recovery will be a more sane but nonetheless damaged person, most likely.
Your first paragraph describes the ideology of the base leftist. But the reality is it ALWAYS ends up benefiting the top people and the bottom gets dumped on. Prime example being that paradise known as Venezuela. Not even the Castros went that far.
Robert A. Heinlein — Lord, how valuable that man’s insights have been! — once wrote that there are two highly effective ways to lie, both of which employ the truth and nothing else:
1) Tell just enough truth, then shut up. What you choose to omit is key here, as it allows your listener to mis-infer from what you did say.
2) Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener concludes that you must be lying!
“Journalists” have clearly mastered the first method. I don’t know how they could employ the second one, but I have no doubt their researchers are studying it as we speak.
The first method is taught in the military as part of SERE training with the added twist of adding ten percent falsehood. Communists have used that as an effective propaganda tool forever.
they do already employ the second tactic, with the use of the sneering scarequote. notice how they write headlines reporting on a conservative quote, always written in a way to cast doubt on what was quoted while appearing neutral.
Holy Smolies Thales,
You’re getting as talkative as I am and I am certain you’re not a Chaldean! This modern world is puzzling.
Francis, Michel, Patriarch – I fear there is more. And worse.
I perceive in the leftist MSM and fringe media a complete lack of ability and interest to communicate across ideological lines. The response of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) to ben shapiro is actually a good illustration. An open request for constructive dialogue and polite debate was rejected with contemptuous vitriol, accompanied by generous accusations of intrinsically evil intent and perspective.
It is only one example of many. There have been a few complaints these last weeks from hollyweird and MSM talking heads along the lines of “why can’t we just talk things over?”, immediately followed by statements that demonstrate the speaker looks at reality thru a lens which produces images of Wonderland, Oz or the planet Coosbane. In other words, they show that the social, economic, cultural and political leadership of the Left simply does not look at the world in terms that coincide in the slightest with the perception of reality those of us common folks on the Right have.
It worries me greatly.
It occurred to me last night that we may be facing a situation that has many parallels with the past but also a moderately unique twist. I refreshed my understanding of Arnold Toynbee to bring to mind his definition of a civilization in disintegration. My summary of his thoughts:
—>The nature of breakdowns of civilizations can be best generalized as the failure of creative power in the ruling Creative Minority; a withdrawal of ‘mimesis’ (imitation) by the proletariat who lack innate creativity; a consequent loss of social unity; the transformation of the previously Creative Minority into a Dominant Minority that seeks to force the proletariat to return to mimesis; and the breakdown of the proletariat into an internal minority that is outwardly submissive but quietly and passively resistive along with an external proletariat that is openly hostile and resists the Dominant Minority vigorously and violently.<—
Two historical examples come to mind: Rome and China. Both, while in their growth periods and pre-imperium, radiated cultural, economic and political influence beyond their political boundaries to the barbarian peoples and other more stagnant societies. This 'radiance' diminished gradually beyond the frontier and, of course, eventually ceased to have influence after enough geographical separation. The radiance was an inspiring light, drawing outsiders (the External Proletariat) towards it in a positive and imitative manner. Some bid to seek protection and shelter under it (such as a few greek cities and towns scattered thru the mediterranean, along with a number of Celtic barbarian tribes in Gaul who actually wanted to be under a Roman aegis), as others maintained their independence while seeking to emulate the radiant, growing civilization to whatever extent they could.
When both China and Rome entered their crisis periods ("A Time of Troubles", wherein unresolved political, social and/or economic issues began to see mores, values and institutions wilting and failing), a gap in sympathy, understanding and shared values & goals began to grow between that society's internal proletariat and its Creative Minority (who was losing its creativity for failure to respond to the "time of troubles" successfully – after all, people who achieve success and power from dealing with a previous crisis tend to stick to what they know, which isn’t always good for solving a new crisis.) Growth stopped and society began to break down. Rome experienced the Social Wars around the last century B.C.; China entered a Warring Kingdoms period of squabbling petty states around the third century B.C.
At a certain point in civilizational crises, someone would rise up to artificially restore order, overcome internal enemies, forcefully reunite the people and their rulers, and reinforce the current system thru brute strength. Rome first had Sulla, who abruptly retired; then Catullus, who failed; and finally Caesar, who prevailed in the end, despite his assassination. China unified under Qin Shi Huang/Ying Zheng after several decades of campaigning against 6 other states – wars that began under earlier rulers of the kingdom of Qin.
At this point, social unity was temporarily re-established in China and Rome. However, the Creative Minorities in both states completed their transformation to Dominant minorities, doing the only creative work such leadership is capable of performing – establishing and growing a ruling bureaucracy (which became corrupt and fatally wounded the Rule of Law), implementing ever more onerous systems of taxation, and extending their militarism beyond the frontiers (following the principle of "hey, it's been working, so let's keep doing it.") The internal problems that instigated the Time of Troubles remained unresolved and the states become less free instead of more free, driving the Internal Proletariat away from the Dominant Minority with an increasing sense of bitterness, disillusionment and cynicism. The initiation of all out war against the External Proletariat would turn the political frontier into an absolute military one or "limes", in the latin sense. The previous radiation of influencing light would stop cold at that frontier, with the External Proletariat now becoming inimicably hostile to the decaying civilization on the other side of the fortifications, learning from it only in the sphere of the military arts.
So: why did I just go thru that litany of the historical record?
America's creative minority (Hollywood types like Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn; politicos such as Eisenhower and Kennedy;MSM people such as David Brinkley and Chet Huntley, and others unmentioned) inspired 'mimesis.' They're long gone.
Our ruling class in academia, politics, the corporate world, the MSM and entertainment ceased inspiring confidence and providing effective leadership 25-30 years ago. Are we entering or already in a 'disintegration phase' with a societal breakdown between a dominant minority, an internal proletariat and an external proletariat?
I think Yes – but the classification of the above societal groups is not as clear as it was in the past.
We no longer have savage barbarian hordes beyond the Rhine and Danube or Hadrian's Wall or the Great Wall of China. Some might say the Dar Al Islam fits that description, but I don't think it does. What I am noticing is that the Dar Al Islam still desperately envies Western civilization and America in particular as they rail against us on their smartphones, but still is more drawn to its light than repelled by it. As an example: AQ and ISIS have failed. Rumps of their organizations still exist, but they are no longer the existential threats they once were. The House of Saud has quite openly broken with its 50 year tradition of financially, logistically and theologically supporting the Ghazi cadres (i.o.w., the sunni jihadist groups) formed by the Wahhabi bastards and their infernal madrassa indoctrination/brainwashing system. You can see it as well from the new King's arrest and imprisonment of the 8 richest and most influential people in S.A. over the last 18 months – all people closely tied to the Wahhabi. Another example: does anyone remember James Mattis and his story of a jihadist who he captured and chatted with in Iraq? He was, if I remember, a fellow who enjoyed making IEDs. Just before Mattis left to return home, the jihadi, now in custody, asked him “Hey – do you think they’ll let me emigrate to America?” From what I've come to understand, that story is not unique. Nothing could be more illustrative of an external proletariat that is actually still very strongly attracted to a particular civilization, still viewing it as a great light in the darkness atop a distant hill.
What I'm beginning to believe is that our Dominant minority is today's spiteful and envious academia; a filthily debauched, astonishingly stupid, stupendously venal and overwhelmingly corrupted Hollyweird establishment; 90% of the MSM (including social media); and the DC political establishment (including a sizable portion of RINOs) along with a cadre of chrony capitalists (Soros sticking out as the most sinister and diabolical amongst them, but also including the Koch brothers, Warren Buffett and Tom Steyer.) The internal proletariat is a strange mix, in my mind: people in the worst parts of the big metro areas who are disgusted with the current state of affairs but are nonetheless materially dependent on the current broken system and are unable to see beyond its confines; 'true believers' who swear allegiance to Big Brother in order to forget their troubles and find solace, security and a sense of community in the embrace of a neo-maoist pseudo-church; and an assortment of leftist voters who simply haven't given these things much thought as they continue to strive day to day in their lives. Within that population, there are some of the internal proletariat who are very much at odds with their fellow citizens, yet are increasingly powerless to act against them politically, economically, culturally or socially. I give as an example the few towns in southern california in Orange County that are suing the State over sanctuary laws. It's a rearguard action at best.
So what is the 'external proletariat'?
Well, folks: it's US.
We still love the institutions, mores and values that worked. We are far less content with how many of them have been transformed or destroyed. And we have new ones in which we believe wholeheartedly – in particular, the right of absolutely ALL people to live their own lives freely, keep what they own and earn, and both be left alone WHILE LEAVING OTHERS IN PEACE. In short, we have expanded our understanding of Freedom of the Individual so that it is even closer to what the Founding Fathers and Renaissance & Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Paine, John Locke and Ben Franklin envisioned it to be.
But the Dominant Minority, along with some of the elements in the Internal Proletariat who still adhere to them, have CAST US OUT. They reject us from their enclaves in Berkeley, San Francisco's Pacific Heights, the heavily policed and protected L.A. neighborhoods such as Bel Air and Malibu, the DC suburbs and Georgetown, as well as Manhattan and Chicago's Golden Mile. We are the Deplorables, the Iredeemables, the unwashed and improperly educated hordes that fail to see the light emanating from the pages of the NYT or WaPo or the proper canon announced daily by CNN and MSNBC. We are too stupid to vote for our own interests, too backwards and clingy to our guns and religion to unquestioningly obey our betters gazing down upon us from their ivory and glass towers. We are beasts, missing teeth, married to our cousins and sisters and brothers, wearing white hoods and burning Patriarchist-supporting crosses while secretly constructing death camps for people not exactly like us and flashing the Nazi salute when we meet.
This is why the complete disconnect between the leadership of the Left (along with its acolytes and RINO hangers-on) and us common folk on the Right is so disturbing. The "limes" has been established at a media level, in terms of the ability and willingness to communicate, negotiate, reason together and work things out at least partially. And the “limes” is also crossing other parts of our civilization. If you go to a university today, they will harangue you and possibly expel you should you not embrace The Faith. You can't do your job objectively as a reporter on even a local TV station unless you openly espouse The Doctrine. You cannot participate on social media if you transgress The Canon because it would be Hate Speech. If you live and work in a blue city or state, you cannot express a vaguely contrary opinion or you will lose your job and should rightfully be imprisoned for life, you racist homophobic islamophobic transphobic misogynist patriarchist TURD!
I could go on, but this essay is already too long. I think you understand what I'm getting at.
They've drawn the line of battle. We are on the other side of that frontier.
There is an additional concern. When an external proletariat wages war against a disintegrating civilization, an interesting thing happens within that civilization. The internal proletariat invariably import and embrace a religious faith from the outside, gradually seducing the dominant minority with it. This faith becomes the chrysalis for the rebirth of a new civilization, rising from the ashes of the old and stronger than its predecessor, like a Phoenix. The external proletariat, once it breaks thru the “limes” and conquers the dying society, embraces this creed, and together the internal and external proletariats shape it and, along with an already absorbed and deposed dominant minority, become one people again.
The question is:
What faith is there out there that will come forward?
Are WE bringing it??? And what is it???
Food for thought.:-)
I wrote this essay in between bouts of working in the yard in 102 degree heat battling with the final weed assault of the summer. They breached the walls but did not reach the citadel, and I consequently slaughtered them.
Somebody needs to invent a weed killing technology that emits radioactive particle beams. I truly hate weeds.
TSW,
What you are seeing (I think) is the Left’s last great throw of the dice. They are losing.
Mighty Slayer of Chaldeans,
The dominant minority always fails over time. The internal proletariat merges with a conquering external proletariat to absorb the deposed dominant minority and institute a new, prosperous, vital and growing order.
So: yes, if we are indeed the external proletariat in this situation, we will win. I don’t know when, but some day we will win.
But the struggle is underway. And it will be ugly.
Just notice what happened today:
Omarosa Manigault is on a book tour. Even her leftist TV interviewers are finding her to be sensationalist and not credible. People whom she cites in her screed to verify her claims are vigorously rejecting them.
Notice, however: when the press asked Trump what he thought of his former protege, he called her a “lowlife”, and the press authoritatively stated that ‘lowlife’ is Trump’s official code word for n******.
Think of the twisted nature of people who have such virulently radioactive malice to invent such a claim. There’s no compromise, no middle ground, no meeting of the minds with such people: they hate us and wish us the absolute worst. They have declared us absolute enemies – no two ways about it.
There is no scenario stemming from the midterms where this gets better. If the left doesn’t win at least one house of congress, the call will be “We’re not fighting hard enough! DOUBLE DOWN!” If the left wins at least one house, the call will be “It’s WORKING! We can take it ALL! DOUBLE DOWN!”
I’m lucky that I don’t live in a blue state or urban center. I feel very safe where I am. Nonetheless, the coming expansion and intensification of the Time of Troubles will still affect me and mine, I’m sure.
You didn’t by chance play a RPG called Survive when you were younger did you? That Time of Troubles phrase was used in the game as preceding the ruin (also known as the collapse).
LOL! No, Michel, I am unacquainted with this RPG. I’ve played Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4, Skyrim and GTA 4 & 5, though. For the last two, I know I’ve condemned my soul to burn in Hell, but those were really fun games ;-).
My mistake. The game was called Aftermath. It came out in the eighties and was a GM’s dream (few modules, required creativity on GM’s part). You’re probably to young though.
TSW, I think Thales would rather have six long posts than thirty or so of the Twtter type. Just don’t make them longer than his original or he might start having you guest blog a’la Instapundit.
You are more optimistic than I am. Each “Dark Ages” era lasts at least 400 years. And it is often the case that the center of the prior civilization never recovers. Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and Ancient Persia are just a few that never returned to anything close to their prior glory.
Perhaps China will be the first to resurrect itself. But if “Americanism” decays, I fear it will be many hundreds of years before anything like the respect for individuality and our level of freedom and liberty will return.
There’s a difference here, I believe.
We don’t have ‘the cake of custom’ baked into our society in quite the same way and with the same depth/length of time as do the societies of Europe, the ME, South Asia and the Orient. (Note: I deliberately used “Orient over “Far East” simply because there are SJWs out there who pretend that there is a racist connotation to “Orient” where there isn’t any and never has been. Anything that irritates SJWs and other social marxists should be shouted from the rooftops in order to give them high blood pressure that leads to their having a stroke or cardiac event.)
Recall that Europeans have been stunned for a good century over America’s ability to ‘reinvent itself.’This periodic American ‘re-invention’ stems from our historical youth as a people and our tremendous dynamism, a vital artifact of our political, economic and social system.
A historical pattern which applies to America more strongly than any other nation, people or culture in human history is the Generational cycle as defined by Strauss and Howe. This historical cycle, lasting typically from 80-100 years and rather closely matching to generations that wax and wane over that period, is now decidedly in its 4th or disintegrational phase, or ‘turning.’ We were in this stage just before the Revolution, the Civil War, and the combined cataclysm of the Great Depression and WW2.
The period from 1990 to 2010 amounts to our previous period of economic prosperity that began just before WW1 and continued thru the “Roaring Twenties.” 9/11 occurred midway thru our ‘blowout’ period and was the first toll of the bell. The decade that followed was prosperous, but in the same artificial way as the 20’s were. America’s economy roared along in the 20’s based on the extension of very cheap credit to Europe to help it rebuild and then consume after WW1. Just like then, America mortgaged its future to live high on the hog in the present, as evidenced by the housing boom up to mid 2008 and the tremendous acceleration of federal and state debt.
The second toll of the bell, and a fateful one, was the May 2008 crash in equities and commodities. Along came Obama, the progressive/social marxist Messiah and Light Bringer, with a rehashed and even more heavily socialist (and chrony capitalist oriented) federal spending spree than the New Deal, coupled with very artificially depressed interest rates. Note how America barely emerged from the 2009 downturn and staggered along like a drunkard carrying a case of whiskey. Note especially how awful the commodity and shipping indexes have been for the years since the 2008 peak.(Go to StockCharts.com and create graphs of the BDI and CRB from 5/1/08 to today. You will be flabberghasted.)
Note from the charts how things appear to bottom out in 2016. This appears to be the shift in a 4th Turning that Strauss and Howe identified in 400-500 years of tracking this cycle of dynamic societies going back to Renaissance England. In a 4th Turning, a truly existential crisis deepens until the arrival of a “Grey Champion” – someone from the “Prophet” generation which rebels from their Hero parent generation and calls for the way forward to recapture the energy, purpose, sense of mission, unity and nerve of that Hero generation. In our case, it is someone from the Baby Boomers who has emerged to proclaim the way forward so that we might once again assume the mantle which the GI Generation tried to pass forward but which most in the Baby Boomer generation shamefully, carelessly, selfishly and slothfully threw away.
IF the Grey Champion is not overthrown, we will begin emerging rather clearly from our crisis around 2019-2021. A reborn American eagle will start to emerge from the ashes of its funeral pyre, and it will be glorious to watch as it unfolds its wings and takes flight.
But it is vital that this Grey Champion – an Orange one, in this case – not be dethroned. Else we will indeed fall into a long, dark, dismal night.
p.s. I need to post shorter comments or Thales might begin charging me by the word…. 😉
Fascinating perspective from Toynbee. Never looked at it that way before. I tend to compare todays situation to the late Roman empire for insight.
Hey folks! Wanna see something funny?
CNN observed the “Unite the Right” demonstration and the Antifa counter-demonstration in D.C. today.
Their conclusions:
Antifa is an ‘anti-hate group.’
This, while the assaulted people in the streets (including an NBC news crew), chanted “F*** THE POLICE” and threw eggs, fireworks and rocks at the cops.
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2018/08/12/cnn-calls-marchers-chanting-fck-the-police-and-throwing-eggs-anti-hate-groups/?utm_campaign=twitchywidget
Not surprising when you consider the media has almost universally joined the barbarian class.
Here’s another one:
Apparently this “Unite the Right” group was going to have 400 protestors, all eeeevil white patriarchists anxious to lynch people of color and plant burning crosses as they marched around with white pillow cases on their heads.
SO: how many were there of this newly resurgent, ginormous KKK of millions of nazis and racists brought into being by the Orange S***gibbon?
Turns out there were…….20-30.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-nationalists-march-in-washington-jeered-by-larger-counter-rally/
How many of you think the MSM will stop and say to itself: “Hey….wait. Are we blowing this all out of proportion? I mean, sure we disagree with Trump voters, but are they REALLY the demons that we make them out to be?”
I’ll take money bets giving 10:1 odds that none of them do. Can’t harsh the narrative, after all!
I have been regularly voting for forty years. I have resigned myself to the fact that each and every vote, of those thousands cast, has been nullified by some Democrat double voting or committing some other fraud.
It’s not as difficult as the author makes out. Ask any lawyer about evidence selection. If there are two thousand pieces of evidence, and fourteen of them point to your client being innocent, you discard the other one thousand nine hundred and eighty six. Does that mean the discarded facts are irrelevant? Of course not. Does that mean the fourteen are untrue? Obviously not. Built into our very biology is foreground and background- we select what is important from our environment. How SUCCESSFULLY we do this process determines how well we live, and how well we argue. Successful societies don’t ignore the bulk of the evidence because it is inconvenient or fails to meet some ideological standard. America has been successful because up until recently, it paid attention to all the facts. But lead by the left/progressives, it is now plugging its ears to the inconvenient facts and only listening to the ones it likes. I predict a very unsuccessful future.
As any PSYOPer will tell you, the best propaganda uses only accurate information. This is also why witnesses in the US court system must swear to “tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth.” By omitting some facts, you can skew the interpretation of those facts that were submitted. To illustrate with a William F Buckley observation: “…to say that the CIA and KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus; on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.” Context means a lot.
Argument with the left is useless. If you have friends that are lefties, you have to decide how much you value the friendship if preserving it requires ignoring important topics. While I haven’t completely abandoned friendships with my old chums on the left, I have strictly circumscribed the boundaries of our interactions. Those relationships will never be the same because I find it inherently distasteful to pretend like nothing is wrong when something is very wrong indeed. This superficiality leads to inevitable erosion. Friends are slowly reduced to acquaintances, acquaintances are reduced to strangers. In my mid-60’s, I find that I’m not interested in investing further in relationships that are not based on a reasonably close alignment of values and moral precepts. And all of this is fine: if you die with a single handful of very close friends–or less–you’ve probably done it right.
In the day of the Fairness Doctrine spin was called editorializing. If it was done it was required to give equal time to dissenting views, for free. Which means it wasn’t done very often. That is how the spin got wrung out.
No, Mike. That’s not how it worked. In the days of the Fairness Doctrine, almost all the news was spun, but if anyone said anything outside the center-left consensus of the newsroom, _then_ they also had to have explicit lefty commentary. The Fairness Doctrine was worse than what we have now.
We’re doomed. Let’s just set fire to ourselves!
“So many of the academic sources of information are similarly contaminated”
Any page of Wikipedia that could possibly have a political slant leans left.. They had to lock down pages from the old ‘anyone could edit’ model because of constant pressure by editors even more left to vandalize pages of notable conservatives.
Since Thales used that particular headline. Judge in NM terror case sets bail at 20k for the two male defendants. Judge a former Public Defender has history of low bail for violent defendants.