Prior to Trump’s victory many mainstream Republicans were extremely critical of him. His victory not only silenced almost all his conservative critics it seems to have transformed most of them into Trump loyalists. Lindsey Graham provides an excellent example of Trump’s transformative power: he was polymorphed from a savage attacker to Trump’s attack dog. Few dared oppose him, such as John McCain and, most recently, Mitt Romney. This has caused some hand wringing and soul searching among the few surviving conservative critics of Trump, but it must be said that Trump is the logical result of decades of GOP strategies and efforts. If the Republican party were a Pokemon, Trump would be the final evolution of the party.
The surrender and assimilation of the Republican leadership is thus not surprising; the party has focused on winning and holding power rather than developing and advancing a specific set of policy goals. Whatever ideology once defined it has become simply an ideology of power for the sake of power and profit. Under Trump, all talk of a balanced budget, all worries about deficits and so on have ceased. What is more interesting is the impact Trump has had on his followers.
Conservative Joe Walsh recently tried to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination; it is hard to imagine a more futile effort. But the experience seems to have been a very educational one. During his effort, he asked Trump supporters if Trump has every lied. They said that he had not. Walsh brought up Trump’s criticism of Obama playing golf and Trump’s claim that he would be too busy as president to play golf. While most people did not care about Trump this matter, some insisted Trump had never played golf as president. His supporters also believed that hundreds of miles of the wall had been built and paid for by Mexico and that the Democrats in congress are treasonous liars. Walsh closed by noting that he “…realized once and for all that nobody can beat Trump in a Republican primary. Not just because it’s become his party, but because it has become a cult, and he’s a cult leader. He doesn’t have supporters; he has followers. And in their eyes, he can do no wrong.” This certainly raises some interesting philosophical concerns.
Some might respond by saying “what about the Democrats?” and accusing them of also being a cult. While one could certainly debate the matter of political cults, this “what about” would (as always) be irrelevant to the matter at hand. Even if the Democrats were a cult, this would prove or disprove nothing about Republicans. My concern is with looking at the belief formation and claim making of the voters Walsh encountered.
One possible explanation is that these voters have normal epistemic abilities and hold to true beliefs but are lying in support of the president. That is, they actually believe that Trump lies, that the wall is not being paid for by Mexico and so on. People do, after all, lie in support of people they like—especially when they think those people are being attacked. For example, think of a friend being asked about the misdeeds of their friend: they can be aware of the misdeeds but decide to defend their friend. This would be a matter of ethics: believing that it is right to lie in defense of someone you support especially when speaking to an opponent of the person you support. This is certainly subject to moral assessment but need not be cultish.
A second explanation is that these voters’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have always been defective in ways that go beyond normal weaknesses in belief formation and reasoning. That is, they are unusually bad at forming true beliefs and critically assessing claims. This could be due to various biases and, of course, the usual suspects of falling victim to fallacies and rhetoric. But this need not be cultish—everyone has defects to a certain degree and believing false things because of epistemic defects or failures in critical thinking is certainly a common occurrence. On this explanation, Trump supporters who make these false claims just happen to be wrong about these claims, but they are not wrong because of being cult followers of Trump. Rather, they are following Trump because they are wrong.
A third explanation is that these voters’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have been corrupted by Trump’s influence. That is, they reject the rational methods of forming beliefs and reject the methods of critical thinking in favor of believing in Trump because Trump tells them to believe in him. They are wrong because they are following Trump. In this case, they might be cultists. They would be accepting a “Trump command theory” in what Trump says is true is true because Trump says so and what Trump says is false because Trump says so. If this explanation is correct, Trump is shaping the perceived reality of his followers—they are not lying to defend him or themselves, they are true believers in Trump’s false description of the world. That is, they are a cult with a charismatic leader.
Really? You are asking this in this way?
You have crossed yet another line, Mike. Not only do you continue to present biased opinion based on limited accepted resources, and not only do you continue to abandon any acceptable process of critical thinking in order to promote your “I Hate Trump” narrative, but now you have reduced yourself to hurling insults. Of course, this is nothing new from the left – but as a “professional philosopher”, one highly trained in the art of critical thinking and logic, one might hope that you would rise above this smarmy tactic that has become increasingly popular – but I’ll put that hope in the same little box where I keep my lottery tickets, I guess.
At the Iowa caucus, a citizen asked Joe Biden about his involvement with his son Hunter’s association with Burisma. Joe responded by calling the guy a liar and saying he was fat, and curiously, challenging him to do pushups with him. I thought Biden might be unraveling – letting his frustration get to him and starting to suffer a little from dementia, but now, thanks to you, I’m coming around. I’m now thinking that Biden is just a little clumsy in expressing what is increasingly becoming (as you would say) a “stock Left Wing response to ideological challenge”. Rather than address higher levels of thinking – philosophical or even practical approaches to differences in thinking, let’s just attack the messenger. Find some blackface picture of them from high-school, trot out “witnesses” who will claim some past abuse that, even if we can’t prove it in court, we can use to sway public opinion in an onslaught of media attacks.
Or just shout over the challenger, avoid the question, call the challenger some name like “fat” (to the glee of the rest of the audience), and move on.
In similar fashion, to the question, “Why is Trump increasingly popular among Republicans?” or “Why do so many Republicans, who were initially critical of him, suddenly support him?”, your answer is just as insulting, just as “Ad Hominum”, and just as evasive as Biden’s.
1. They are lying in support of the President
2. Their thinking skills are defective, and always have been
3. Their thinking skills have become corrupted by Trump.
This kind of abusive, insulting response is emerging as some kind of left-wing strategy, but given my own voter registration it’s no surprise that I missed the memo. It’s similarly no surprise that there’s no media coverage – but you and Joe aren’t the only ones for whom it’s a go-to response.
In a recent speech, Mike Bloomberg indicated that the “intelligentsia” (including himself) are the only ones who can understand the nuance of left-wing ideology. He is very big on legislation that “we know is best for the unwashed masses”, willing to step on all sorts of freedoms in order to mandate what the more educated, intelligent ruling class knows is best.
We can only hope that he will get himself elected – and he can pass legislation for government-funded, mandatory shock therapy or other remedies for us poor Republicans who are so defective, so brainwashed, and so vulnerable as to fall for such stuff. It would be a kindness, really.
No doubt, given the fact that this is such a common left-wing opinion, if Bloomberg gets a majority in Congress, this legislation will be a slam-dunk. What better solution to the “Conservative Problem” than rounding us all up, putting us all on trains, bringing us to government facilities, and applying the remedy?
In the absence of a majority, we can employ the Bork/Kavanaugh “solution” to the more extreme members of Congress (just because unfounded allegations and the attempt at public smearing failed in the Trump impeachment doesn’t mean it can’t be an effective strategy; it just has to be
tweaked a little.) Once we’ve done a little weeding, then we can pass the legislation with our new majority and put the rest of them on the trains for treatment. And of course, once we ensure that all of Congress is of the “clear-thinking” ilk, there is no end to what we’ll be able to accomplish.
There are so many possibilities! How about forced abortion or mandatory sterilization for married conservative couples? Or here’s an idea: the idea of postpartum abortion has already been floated and has gained support … why not just adjust the timeline wherein an ex-utero fetus can be aborted – say, fifteen years or so, when they start forming political opinions?
“Per recent consensus among top scientists, we have determined that conservatism, and much right-wing ideology is the result of a mental defect. This defect is equally responsible for the incomprehensible beliefs that life begins when a heartbeat can be heard, or when a child can survive outside of the womb.
We now know that life begins when the fetus can begin to think for itself, and are thus extending the window for abortion. No family should have to suffer the inconvenience of being forced to support an unwanted Republican, and the government will finally support this choice!”
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. You have put your credentials behind the theory that the only reason people support Trump is based on the absence of an ability to think “correctly”. The next step has to be to promote this as a public health problem – once that’s done we can work on the rest. Great job, though – good start!
Seriously, though – it is frightening indeed to think that you really mean what you say in this post – more frightening to realize that this is a commonly held belief among so many so-called educated, erudite members of the left.
You do not even consider that Trump’s popularity might be based on the fact that there might be some merit to right wing platform ideology – like tax cuts, the renegotiation of trade deals like NAFTA or the TPP, or the elimination of the Iran Nuclear deal, policies that deal with immigration reform, Welfare reform, and the left-dominated “griftocracy” in Washington; and that his harshest critics during the campaign may have “come around” after seeing what he has been able to accomplish relative to stated platform objectives and campaign promises.
Perhaps you should put your big giant brain to work trying to understand, rather than dismiss, opinion and philosophies that differ from your own. Stop with the insults, start with the objective analysis.
You have reached a new low. It is beyond disgraceful, it is downright disgusting.
I just went back for another look at your “I look away because I want to get paid” post, with the intent of posting a response there – but I was stopped by one of your first statments:
“I am not going to straw man his supporters and say that it is because they are all stupid or racist. “
So are we to now believe that you have risen far above this straw-man?
Clearly, in the days since that post, you have sat and studied and researched and applied all your powers of critical thought and objective analysis to arrive at the conclusion that people support Trump because of some compromised mental capacity – one that has either always been compromised or that has been affected by some cultish control Trump has over his followers.
So Trump supporters support Trump not because of racism or stupidity, but because of some diminished mental capacity (as you so describe – are you a psychologist as well as a philosopher?). But that is NOT a “straw-man”, because it is the result of careful, professional analysis – is that correct?
Next, of course, you will claim that this is a “consensus” among top thinkers, and is thus “settled science” or some equivalent, and trot out a bunch of credentialed psychologists who will analyze eye-twitches and body language and “unbiased opinion” to prove your point.
No wonder there is so much doubt surrounding the causes, the extent, the predicted effects, and the proposed solutions to anthropogenic global warming.
Mike, I didn’t vote for Trump and I worried that he would be a disaster as president.
However, he has done *much* better than I expected. I just tune out all the culture war stuff that seems to drive you nuts.
I do worry about the national debt, but doubt the Dems would do better on this front.
I agree entirely. I imagine a lot of Republicans who also expected Trump to self-destruct quickly are now big fans because they see him push back on the lies and distortions of the Democratsm and are cheering him on. That explains the turn-around in so many opinions.
A fourth explanation is that a one-term Congressman from a decade ago challenging the wildly popular leader of his party is engaging in selective recounting, exaggeration, cherrypicking, mischaracterisation, and omitting context, if not lies, when explaining why he received a hostile reception and dismissive answers when trying to undermine the incumbent at a political party meeting – which is what the caucus was.
Why didn’t you present that explanation? Did it not occur to you?
Did you do your due diligence before repeating the article? Did you research Joe Walsh’s record? Did you visit his website? I couldn’t get it to work properly, but there doesn’t seem to be anything on it except a clip of him on CNN. Did you read anything else he has written, explaining why he turned anti-Trump? Did you search for any other accounts of the caucus meeting he describes? Did you search for evidence that corroborates anything he said? Did you watch any of his radio shows on YouTube?
Do you believe you have a responsibility to perform that level of evaluation before broadcasting an essay like this?
Do you remember when you hyped the unfinished paper Feinberg, Branton, and Martinez-Ebers that you unthinkingly repeated from the pages of the same Washington Post? The paper that even I, in a couple of hours from a standing start, could demonstrate did not hold up to cursory scrutiny? The paper that was comprehensively refuted by a couple of postgrads at Harvard? The paper that never earned publication? Did you read that paper before repeating it? Did you search for contradicting or confounding evidence?
If it had been a paper claiming that hate crimes were higher in counties where there was a Clinton rally, would you have examined it more closely then? Would you have dismissed and ignored it without even reading?
THIS is why I say that Trump’s opponents are worse than he is. At least he’s getting some things done.
A fifth explanation is that some bloggers’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have been corrupted by hatred of Trump. That is, they reject the rational methods of forming beliefs and reject the methods of critical thinking in favor of believing that all Trump does is bad because their preferred media tells them to believe he is evil. They are wrong because they are reflexively rejecting everything associated with Trump. In this case, they might be cultists. If this explanation is correct, Trump is shaping the perceived reality of his detractors—they are not lying to attack him, but because their own cognitive dissonance requires them to keep attacking so that they don’t have time to assimilate contradictory information. That is, they are a cult without a leader.
Agree with all the criticisms here as on the “I look away…” post. These are things, while from DH and CT more loquaciously stated, which I have been saying here for …. over ten years now. Gee….has it really been….
Mike is of course not alone in behaving in this manner. And neither is the left, though personally I consider it a more dangerous problem as the left holds considerable influence on our society. As I pointed out to Magus, there are quite a few on the right who are just as bad. What we have is a society that, as Magus pointed out, cannot accept that there is soooo much that is unknowable such that expectations and perceptions can even be discussed. Despite the failure, time and time and time again of socialist policies, they just KNOW things will be different this time. Despite the failure to integrate cultures they just KNOW that all cultures can be integrated to achieve an ideal. It’s all Procrustes’ bed with these people, but they pretend otherwise. It’s what drives the mountains and mountains of new laws created, each a jobs program for more lawyers. They KNOW how the world should work. If only we would let THEM run it. And let someone comes along and point out that these petty little emperors in their deep state wannabe fantasies have no clothes, well you got trouble my friend.
Meh…I really need to edit/modify that but I got real work to do. Hopefully you get my general point.
Again, proof that this never was and never will be about policies or oft-touted morality. So I won’t even address specific arguments. As with past cases they don’t count for anything.
Essentially my thesis is that through social network centrality, 90% of America’s misanthropes and depressives have aggravated on one side of the political spectrum. Nietzsche’s Slave Morality has been described as “sour grapes made into a value system”. This is my honest assessment. This is the roots of leftism. It’s the kid picked last in kickball. It’s the kid who hates the high school quarterback. If the strong eat meat, than the Leftist must consider veganism. If obesity is ugly, the left must count it as beauty. If men built the world, they must be undermined. If the strong drive an 450 hp,8 cylinder Dodge Challenger, the left must declare it evil and declare an electric car to be good. If the strong squat, deadlift and benchpress a barbell, the left must choose yoga and Pilates. Think I’m kidding?
https://time.com/4276154/justin-trudeau/
Add in the mimetic force-multiplier of mass and social media, and this is what we’ve got. Mass psychosis.
And this really is how civil wars begin. Because there is simply no way for the left to overcome the massive amount of cognitive dissonance that has washed over them. They will double down, as they’ve continually done until some sort of centrality or reset is achieved. The only thing saving us is the brilliance of people like James Madison, who clearly set out in Federalist Paper 10 why the only way to keep a democratic system alive is to maximize the number of factions thus limiting any of their power. Fortunately we see the crypto-communist Bernie fighting against the Progressive Socialist Apache Cheif Warren.
Here’s an aside I just ran across at a certain “true-con” NeverTrumper conservative blog…They have been banging on about this “Trump cultist” crap as well and today they’re arguing that Trump fears running against Bernie because they’re all in the Joe Rogan cult…or some crap like that. One way or the other it’s kind of the blind leading he blind.
This one always seemed rather cult-like to me.
https://youtu.be/9gtfizIbBDI
Klomentum. All the way with Amy K!
I think Amy is the only one who can beat Trump. Comments?
Why not? since I doubt we’ll get any sense out of this one otherwise.
I would love to see Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Gabbard, Yang build (more of) a political presence, or get more national experience and/or exposure.
Buttigieg seems like a great guy, but a lot leftier than he is presenting himself, and I’m suspicious about who he owes and how he slingshotted to the pole position at the start of the race. Is he The Google Candidate? Did he Make A Deal for pulling out of the DNC Chair race? The boost is fading though. I think Mayor Pete is about to get creamed on Super Tuesday.
I’ve tried to listen to Klobuchar, but she seems to be avoiding defining herself (apart from not being a partisan Democrat while embracing the core party talking points in footnotes) as the aim of her life at the moment. She can’t win anything that way.
I suspect I’d like Gabbard, but I can’t make sense of her positions, and she has the wholehearted support of, I suspect, all the people who think they do understand her.
I would like Yang, love to work with him, but he doesn’t have even a whole platform for the WH.
Not one of them would leave so much as a stain on the floor when matched against Trump.
Warren is done. She’s smart, driven, energetic. Has a nasty vindictive streak that shows up now and again, and is wobbly on her recollections of her past life, but I could live with those. She’d be great in a bureau-technocratic role, as she was in setting up the CFPB. She even has some ideas I could back, but her overall platform badly needs trimming and shaping, and Trump would strangle her with the loose branches. Example: she went back to the spreadsheet when challenged on taxes, and just muddled things more.
Biden is done. The whole Ukraine exposure put an end to him. I don’t think he’s many people’s choice anyhow.
Bernie could be the candidate. Prepare to watch ads showing real life in Venezuela. Cuba, Soviet Russia et. al. for the next six months in that case. His diehards will have endless energy, but most Dems will tune out, and the DNC establishment with all their contacts and resources will find an elsewhere to be for the duration. He would be a disaster for the country, but even more of a disaster for the Party. Expect leaks and backstabbings, which Trump will gleefully and gratefully accept,
Bloomberg. I dunno. Maybe? I have no sense of the guy. Democrats don’t seem committed, but he could buy votes by the trainfull if he really wants to.
Spotlight on K early was she has high staff turnover because she’s has her own nasty vindictive streak, which is why her numbers dropped soon after entering. But I suppose that has passed now as if it never happened. As you note, Thin Lizzy is the new dragon woman.
Yang just quit. Tell me, what was the appeal of that guy? Near as I can tell a lot of people thought he was a Chinese American billionaire and Chinese==MATH==Cool Nerd or something? His whole appeal smells like racism. He’s nobody special. His parents had fairly successful STEM careers, but considering where he came from, he’s mostly ridden the path of upper middle class modest expectations. His companies were basically community organizer stuff. His net worth is pretty average for his class (about $2 million or so). Hell, there’s probably at least 100 people just in the building that I work in that stand out more than he does. I really don’t get the appeal there. Perhaps the universal basic income policy but there’s nothing new about that. And given where it’s been tried it hasn’t worked very well if at all. I kinda believed in it when I was younger, but the more I’ve looked at it and studied it, it’s implementation would be just another socialism baby-step.
As for the rest, all this primary crap is media BS. It’s all emotions and rah-rah and momentum, it’s like sports for wonks. Especially on the D side as that gets the media’s juices flowing. It’s all show and very, very little substance. No one mentions party platforms anymore. It’s all about personality cults.
My thinking is that Amy can probably win battleground states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Maybe a better chance than the other D’s but I wouldn’t say any of them can “probably win” those states.
I don’t see her taking Florida. I doubt her appeal to the black and hispanic demographics here, relative to some other D, would be sufficient to stem their losses of those demographics as it stands now. Those other states, maybe. Only somewhat familiar with PA and OH, but only in a Pittsburgh/Cincinnati/rural PA sense. I really know next to nothing about northern OH, and eastern PA is probably too far left to balance western PA. But again, not sure what to make of them. I do think Trump has big support in what we used to call the Rust Belt in general. I have quite a few D and D-leaning relatives in western PA who are big Trump fans.
But that said, I don’t put much faith in any of the information that would enable me to make any reasonable predictions on much of this. Polls are BS and the media is losing its grip on anyone over 30. As fewer and fewer young people get suckered into the “if you don’t go to college you’re a loser” BS and start to see how many losers are burning cash, and worse, the best years of their lives, on mostly useless degrees, that MAY start to slip as well. But I think we may be another POTUS election cycle or even decade from that having sufficient impact. Provided the republic holds together that long. We are increasingly moving back into the pre-scientific(ish) polling and predictability that has been the case for most of my life.
Maybe not, but I would not be surprised if a certain amount of “Trump fatigue” is setting in. In that case someone low key like Amy may be attractive.
I think “Trump fatigue” is mostly a symptom and function of the chattering classes. The average person with a life to live and kids to raise and a reasonably demanding job that doesn’t dovetail into the news business, pays little attention to what Trump tweeted about Roger Stone’s sentencing, etc. A conservative blogger (or perhaps ‘conservative’ fits better as he’s a former Cruz fan who plans to vote for anyone but Trump or Bernie) has a post on the Roger Stone thing saying “All Hell Is Breaking Loose”. Nobody normal whom I know cares about this but “All Hell Is Breaking Loose”? Yeah, in his head. People are tired of this crap. And I also think there’s a bigger fatigue syndrome that Trump is a bit of an reaction to. End Of The World Fatigue Syndrome. The world has been coming to an end for well over 2000 years now. And the Democrats now think that *they* dreamed up the Sweet Meteor Of Death meme? Heh. Right.
I don’t know what your life in meat space is like but I’m the only person that I know that pays much attention to this political crap. Who even knows what a blog is let alone reads one. And to comment on one? Well, that’s a little weird. And I know a relatively broad range of people. And even I have grown tired of keeping up with the politics. Though I’ve never liked them either, really. I’m only interested in politics because politics is way too interested in people like me. That and that somewhere along the way I was taught that as a citizen with a vote I have an obligation to pay attention to it. But many of my friends have just started to pay attention to this crap. I think the Obamacare failure was a big reason. So they’re pretty far from fatigued. They’re more fatigued by how politics has creeped into their NFL, their church, their children’s school, their public bathrooms, etc. They weren’t interested in politics, but now that they see how much politics is interested in them, they’re starting to wake up. And it’s not DJT that they’re mad at.
Hell, there’s probably at least 100 people just in the building that I work in that stand out more than he does.
Did any of them launch a presidential campaign from scratch, attract thousands of enthusiastic volunteers, donations, maintain about 5% of the vote, persuade people to donate $30M to the cause, and get through several televised debates while staying positive and not indulging in petty meanness? Then maybe they don’t stand out more than Yang does.
He never had a chance at the nomination, of course, but I really hope his drive and spirit gets picked up somewhere else. You can do with more people who aren’t throwing bricks.
As for “smells like racism” … as the kids say these days, I can’t even.
Let’s see, per Wiki…Parents: Father graduated with a PhD in physics and worked in the research labs of IBM and General Electric, generating over fifty patents in his career. Mother graduated with a master’s degree in statistics, became a systems administrator at a local university and later became an artist.
So upper middle class
His education: Brown University, where he majored in economics and political science, and graduated in 1996. He then attended Columbia Law School, earning a Juris Doctor in 1999.
So somewhat typical education given his family background, but oddly father and mother were STEM but he chose more loosy-goosy college path into the argumentative “sciences”.
Career: Corporate attorney, but the “build something” aspiration was bugging him…ok, good. But what does he decide to build? Stargiving, a website for celebrity-affiliated philanthropic fundraising. So…glorified begging. And that folded. Next became involved in other ventures, including a party-organizing business. Eyebrows raised yet? From 2002 to 2005, he served as the vice president of a healthcare startup. Oddly no word in wiki on exactly what “startup” that was. Nor anything in the wiki footnoted article at CNN. Wasting my time so let’s move on…Becomes CEO of “Manhattan Prep”, a test-prep company. Good, I guess. But not exactly a world-beating kind of thing. Founds Venture for America, a non-profit which connects recent college graduates with start-ups. Again, kinda weak on the objectivity. Writes a book about building things, yet oddly he really hasn’t built much. But I like the sentiment. Somehow along the way he seems to have gotten his nose planted in Obama’s (or more likely the administration’s) ass.
Based on that, he’s running for president? And in all this time he’s accumulated a net worth of a whopping $834K…or $2.4 million. Not bad but not exactly outstanding for a guy born on second base. Yet for some reason a lot of people got the impression he was some sort of wiz kid billionaire. You don’t think his being of Chinese ancestry had anything to do with that? I’m not saying he’s racist. I’m saying that the only significant thing that distinguishes him from many people that I see every day is he’s simply been able to schmooze the right people. That’s not much of a selling point with me. And to be clear, I don’t (based on what little I know) dislike the guy. I actually kind of liked him. But there doesn’t seem to be a sufficient amount of ‘there’ there to justify him being considered POTUS material. He’s only 45. Perhaps if he had spent the last 10 years actually doing the things the LIV types think he’s done, we might have something there. But he seems to be suffering from too much book learning and not enough hard experience. Thus his attraction to soft business concepts and Universal Basic Income. An appealing idea on certain levels. Sounds good. (Supposedly) Eliminate all that bureaucracy with food stamps, etc. I think even Milton Friedman endorsed it. I was a fan early on. But based on what I’ve seen in the last couple of decades, on how the government is so entrenched, invested in perpetuating the existing welfare system, and on how it’s played out where it has been tried, not a fan myself. But it is ONE thing that Yang had going for him. Meh, but he quit so…
“Yang just quit. Tell me, what was the appeal of that guy? Near as I can tell a lot of people thought he was a Chinese American billionaire and Chinese==MATH==Cool Nerd or something? His whole appeal smells like racism. He’s nobody special.”
Too much is a media construct or astroturf paid for my billionaires. A monstrous amount of things actually. #MeToo and BLM were media constructs. The current coronavirus scare may well turn out to me the same. Around 12,000 people have died in the US this year from the flu…. “Star” leftists candidates are also media constructs.
When the elections were going on in Florida, I did research on Andrew Gillum. It became obvious how he was selected years ago by the powers that be (Democrats and the media acting as a cartel) to be in politics. This goes all the way back to his days when he was a student at FAMU. Nobody really cared about Yang that much either but with the media running constant accounts of his “new” ideas, young people are vulnerable to stars in their eyes.
Yellow journalism works; it makes money and hacks the human need to be aware of impending disaster and also to rumormonger.
Transgender craziness is a media construct, impending wave of Nazis are a media construct, anti-Kavanaugh riots were astroturf. Remember when the media tried to make a recession happen a couple of months ago by telling scary stories about an impending recession?
We were also going to fight WW3 with Russia before the 2016 election, and then recently Iran.
Heh. We were going to fight WW3 with Russia back in the 80’s when Reagan “outlawed Russia” and bombing was to begin in 15 minutes. We were supposed to reach peak oil and run out of the stuff by 1978. The population explosion was going to strip fertile land bare and dust storms would consume the planet. Billions would die. Personally, I thought the world was coming to an end when I lost my spelling text book back in 4th grade. But life goes on.
Interesting about the flu killing over 10K in the US. Did not know that. But hey, Corona Virus sounds more ominous. My coworker, Indian woman a bit taken to whatever her panic network is banging on about, keeps mentioning the Corona Virus, so I’ve been following it. Even in it’s context, the death rate, outside of China, is not all that surprising. Like 2 people, last I checked. 3 if you consider Hong Kong “outside of China”. God only knows what’s really going on in China but the fear mongering is out of control. I heard a news report yesterday that because of the virus, the economy in China is slowing such that the price of oil is “plunging” Look at a chart for WTI. The current price drop is interesting, but not as outstanding as many, many other fluctuations over the last 10 or 20 years. Plunging? Yeah, whatever. But price of oil goes up, panic, end of the world, economic collapse is at hand. Price of oil goes down, panic, end of the world, economic collapse is at hand.
Not sure why anyone is engaging Mike in these manners. As you can see, I’m not doing it anymore, evident from the content of my posts. He’s trolling at this point. I’m just trolling back. He’s even fallen to the point of repeatedly seeing a giant Nazi and white supremacy problem in the US. These are the very things that drove so many white liberals from the Dem party. But Mike is a Marxist at heart. If he does not abide by the letter of the Marxist law (economic determism), he certainly abides by its spirit (envy). The power is now not with the control of the means of production, but with the control of the means of communication. Thus, the intelligentsia is free to do what it’s always done: troll civilization.
Not sure why anyone is engaging Mike in these manners. As you can see, I’m not doing it anymore, evident from the content of my posts. He’s trolling at this point
Well, that’s been the case for years now. Pretty much the whole ten or so years I’ve posted here. As I’ve noted before he never really says anything, but he heavily alludes to the Marxist narrative while pretending to be a “fiscal conservative”. Fiscal conservative in the sense that instead of the government borrowing more money, they just take more and more of it.
It’s really sad how he refuses to engage. When he stopped addressing my points under the ruse that I’m a mean, mean, meany, I was encouraged when DH showed up here and politely, with extreme patience fisked Mike’s pieces. DH puts a lot of work into those and I personally find them far more valuable than a lot of other stuff that I read on blogs and such. But Mike ignores them. It’s sad. And I sense DH’s frustration.
CT has done a pretty good job as well, but Mike has little time for the real substance of what anyone else has to say. Which under his own name, as just some guy on the internet, well whatever. But the idea that we must pretend that NONE of his Marxist favoritism, his terrible bias against even the ideas of non-Marxists, has absolutely ZERO bleed over into his classroom? Is anyone here really so naive to believe that? But he’s just one obscure guy at one moderately obscure university teaching classes that the kids mostly take because it’s an easy pass. But the kids are burdened with paying for some of it and us taxpayers pick up the rest. All so that the few students who do attend are provided the tools by which they are actually made stupider. It may not be a legal crime, but it certainly is a truly moral one.
But all that said, I enjoy at least the starting points. And I greatly enjoy discussing these things with yourself and TJ over the years and now lately with CT and DH.
Not sure why anyone is engaging Mike in these manners.
I am a lot better informed about America and the Culture Wars than I was a year ago. And it’s a handy stop on my way to Lichess. 🙂
“Accuse your opponent of what you are doing, to create confusion and to inculcate voters against evidence of your own guilt”
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.
Watch the video and see the prototype of the modern Leftist psychopath. Same rhetoric, same likely lies about death threats, same fake identification with the downtrodden. In reality just a personification of malignancy. Pretty sure Nyarlathotep cares more for the poor.
https://youtu.be/OfAyNrEsqic
“Accuse your opponent of what you are doing, to create confusion and to inculcate voters against evidence of your own guilt”
Similar to my theory about conspiracy theories.
That is also Trump’s strategy. Rhetoric works for any master.
I’ll just use this space to remind people of the things that Mike will inevitably avoid.
1) Nancy Pelosi tried to have Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat, disbarred from law practice, for his testimony to the Senate during impeachment hearings. Dershowitz’s testimony changed the minds of several Dems.
2) Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, offered LTC Vindman the Ukrainian Minister of Defense position three times.
https://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2019/11/20/strange-media-silence-after-vindman-testified-he-was-offered-job-of-ukraine-minister-of-defense-3-times-by-thomas-lifson/
Vindman in all likelihood lied during his congressional testimony in his attempts to hide the ID of the fake whistleblower. There are multiple reasons he would do this, the least of which is that this whole event was likely a violation of Executive Order 12333 which severely limits the ability of US intelligence services’ ability to “collect” on US citizens. 12333 places domestic counterintelligence operations strictly within the purview of the FBI.
The real story went something like this. CIA agent Eric Ciaramella, assigned to the White House as an Ukrainian expert, found a fellow traveler in Vindman, an Army officer described by a retired superior officer as a political activist in uniform. Both Ciaramella and Vindman, leftist zealots (don’t be fooled by the “Ukraine really needed our help”, story. Obama did almost nothing for Ukraine, Trump has done much more), decided Trump had to go; his boisterous, egoistic ways reminded them too much of the high school quarterback who always got THEIR girl or the high testosterone guy in Ranger school that everyone seemed to naturally follow that Vindman secretly hated (and reportedly stole food from).
So, Vindman “collected” on the president. “Collect” is intelligence parlance for intelligence work. He then communicated his biased observations to Ciaramella,, whom with the likely help of members of congress or their staff, wrote the whistleblower letter. Notice the lengths to which the Dems went to hide the ID of Ciaramella, even making up fake stories about death threats. What the Dems did not want to get out, is that this was an illegal, off-the-books intelligence operation by two member of the intelligence community gone completely off the rails. Instead, they wanted to present it as organic in nature, two people working in their normal capacities and just happening to find out about bad things.
The truth is, neither Vindman nor Ciaramella knew the exact words of the President’s call with Zelensky. They only heard through their sources that Trump was pushing for an investigation of Biden and more info on Crowdstrike. This terrified many Dems, because the corrupt practices between the Dems (and yes a few Republicans too but mostly Dems) runs very, very deep. Some of it is legal but very unethical and harms the US and would not bode well politically if and when it comes to light. Ciaramella had already been removed from the White House for suspected illegal leaks to the media.
Note the whistleblower’s opening line in his letter to Burr and Schiff:
“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election”.
He wants to emphasize passive collection, that this was not an operation (which it was).
I incidentally came across a dispositive reply in an article on Medium: “After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready For 2020”
“Now, Trump is always going to present the best case he can. And yes, he lies. This is provable. But the strength of this rally wasn’t about the facts and figures. It was a group of people who felt like they had someone in their corner, who would fight for them. Some people say, “Well, obviously they’re having a great time. They’re in a cult.” I don’t think that’s true. The reality is that many people I spoke to do disagree with Trump on things. They don’t always like his attitude. They wish he wouldn’t tweet so much. People who are in cults don’t question their leaders. The people I spoke with did, but the pros in their eyes far outweighed the cons.”
Why didn’t I think of that answer? Simple and conclusive.
That not all supporters of leader X are cultists does not prove that X is not a cult leader.
While some supporters do not love his attitude or tweets; do they engage in substantial criticism or disagreement?
You mean, no matter how many white sheep I point out, there might be a handful of black sheep somewhere? First, I don’t accept the burden of proof, but I think I have a better answer as well:
That not all supporters of leader X are cultists does not prove that X is not a cult leader.
Actually, it kinda does, Pick your cult leader – Jones, Manson, Hubbard, Rajneesh, Applewhite, Asaharam, Raniere – and you will find that there were people in the cult, and people out of it, but not lukewarm or semi-committed supporters. Thinking about my own understanding of the words, I consider the difference betwen a “sect” and a “cult” to be the barriers that a cult erects between its members and outsiders.
But if we’re down to picking at definitions, we’ve mined this one out.
Exactly.
This post is stuck in a filter I think, but I’ll try again:
I’ll just use this space to remind people of the things that Mike will inevitably avoid.
1) Nancy Pelosi tried to have Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat, disbarred from law practice, for his testimony to the Senate during impeachment hearings. Dershowitz’s testimony changed the minds of several Dems.
2) Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, offered LTC Vindman the Ukrainian Minister of Defense position three times.
https://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2019/11/20/strange-media-silence-after-vindman-testified-he-was-offered-job-of-ukraine-minister-of-defense-3-times-by-thomas-lifson/
Vindman in all likelihood lied during his congressional testimony in his attempts to hide the ID of the fake whistleblower. There are multiple reasons he would do this, the least of which is that this whole event was likely a violation of Executive Order 12333 which severely limits the ability of US intelligence services’ ability to “collect” on US citizens. 12333 places domestic counterintelligence operations strictly within the purview of the FBI.
The real story went something like this. CIA agent Eric Ciaramella, assigned to the White House as an Ukrainian expert, found a fellow traveler in Vindman, an Army officer described by a retired superior officer as a political activist in uniform. Both Ciaramella and Vindman, leftist zealots (don’t be fooled by the “Ukraine really needed our help”, story. Obama did almost nothing for Ukraine, Trump has done much more), decided Trump had to go; his boisterous, egoistic ways reminded them too much of the high school quarterback who always got THEIR girl or the high testosterone guy in Ranger school that everyone seemed to naturally follow that Vindman secretly hated (and reportedly stole food from).
So, Vindman “collected” on the president. “Collect” is intelligence parlance for intelligence work. He then communicated his biased observations to Ciaramella,, whom with the likely help of members of congress or their staff, wrote the whistleblower letter. Notice the lengths to which the Dems went to hide the ID of Ciaramella, even making up fake stories about death threats. What the Dems did not want to get out, is that this was an illegal, off-the-books intelligence operation by two member of the intelligence community gone completely off the rails. Instead, they wanted to present it as organic in nature, two people working in their normal capacities and just happening to find out about bad things.
The truth is, neither Vindman nor Ciaramella knew the exact words of the President’s call with Zelensky. They only heard through their sources that Trump was pushing for an investigation of Biden and more info on Crowdstrike. This terrified many Dems, because the corrupt practices between the Dems (and yes a few Republicans too but mostly Dems) runs very, very deep. Some of it is legal but very unethical and harms the US and would not bode well politically if and when it comes to light. Ciaramella had already been removed from the White House for suspected illegal leaks to the media.
Note the whistleblower’s opening line in his letter to Burr and Schiff:
“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election”.
He wants to emphasize passive collection, that this was not an operation (which it was).
Saying that Nancy Pelosi tried to have Dershowitz disbarred is an exaggeration. She didn’t make a complaint to a Bar Association, she just ranted in a press conference, Exaggerating grievances and points in public speeches is what politicians do – Trump’s Twitter feed is evidence of that!
Your second point, though, I think understates the problem. The whole Ciaramella-Misko-Schiff connection smells, and the changing of the whistleblower form needs an investigation, I’m sure Barr must have some reliable people other than Durham to call on. Is there tangible evidence of a crime somewhere to kick it off?
Yes, she called for him to be disbarred is a better way to say it. But since almost all of Mike’s posts about Trump involve criticism about what Trump says and than giant extrapolations about his character based on those statements, maybe he should address the asinine things Dems say everyday.
On the second point. Oh I’m not underestimating in the least. This is a single data point really. But it would take a book to show how bad it is. If you have th time and energy I suggest “Ball of collusion” by Andrew McCarthy.
1. I haven’t seen any evidence that steps have been advancing to disbar him.
2. Vindman was offered the job; he turned it down each time and reported the offers. As you might recall, Satan made offers to Jesus, but that does not make Jesus Satan’s boy. It is not being offered bad things that is wrong, it is accepting them.
All evidence shows that Vindman has served the United States loyally and well; he was wounded in Iraq fighting for our country.
Let’s settle some terms:
1. I reject now, after years of consideration, any idea that the crazies, zealots, criminals, degenerates, and generally malignant folks are somehow evenly distributed along the political spectrum. These are overwhelmingly on the Left.
Three reasons for this but there are more: First, birds of a feather flock together (social network theory). Second, the simple idea that these schools of thought or for a lack of a better description, schools of neuroticism, would evenly distribute is a mathematical impossibility. It is a complete cop-out.
Lastly, as William Barr Stated in his speech to the Federalist’s Society in November of last year:
“In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.
Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a “rule of law” standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying, in a given circumstance was universalized – that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?”
Notice the Will to Abstraction by Leftists. Why? Because as Nassim Taleb says, it’s easer to bullshit the big things than it is the small things. Thus “intellectuals” can just sit around and imagine stuff. Their religious zeal when it comes to politics drives them to envision YOU and ME as playthings with which they can experiment with the ideas they’ve dreamt. What’s worse is, they have totalitarian minds, with no intent of learning through trial and error. Their experiments are less experiments than dictates from their self-perceived god-like minds. I could much more respect intellectuals if it were not for the fact they always get into politics. It’s an imperative.
Mostly Leftists never change unless they have an existential crisis or life threatening event that directly occurs as a result of their beliefs. See Dostoyevsky’s experience. They simply won’t mind their own business, ever.
Tend to agree, but I think the more extreme crazy, the kind committing the more violent acts is more a function of their own individual failures manifested within whatever ideology is perceived to be the culture’s ‘approved’ one. That is to say that many of these people are not really capable of forming a reasonably coherent political philosophy (though I sometimes wonder if anyone is). They seek approval and thus protection and support by committing destructive acts against the perceived/ othered enemy. Were the culture arranged in such a way that conservatives were viewed as the one that one could get protection and comfort from, the crazies would be drawn to the other side.
Which I suppose is in practice kind of the same thing. It just speaks more to the motivating factor(s).
You wanna talk cult? Here’s some cult talk fors ya…
https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1228402861140332550?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1228402861140332550&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2F
Or this…