Note: Behind the green door is a post about living in a world where you can be jailed for holding the wrong opinions and a post about my used car lot. The Sunday podcast was posted early for a change. Subscribe here or here.
Joseph de Maistre famously observed, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” We get a sense of that in the weekend media drama over Trump using the word “bloodbath” in a speech. He used the word in reference to what would happen to the auto industry under a second Biden term, but the media left out the part about the auto industry.
The result was a media frenzy based on the false claim that Trump was promising some sort of homicidal revenge if he did not win the election. One media pinhead after another went to their favorite platform to repeat the claim. In some cases, they did so on video platforms as the video of Trump giving the speech in which he used the word was playing in the corner of the screen with the sound muted. So much for the second half of that de Maistre quote about honest people perpetuating the crime.
It probably would have gone like so many other fake media narratives in that normal people without access to the megaphone would have spent days clarifying what was said but by that point the media would be onto the next lie. This time the world’s richest man noticed and posted about it on Twitter. Joe Scarborough deleted his post about it, but others kept up the lie. Nancy Pelosi made the rounds stammering through the claim that Trump is promising a homicidal rampage.
There is nothing new about this, of course. The entirety of the Trump administration was spent this way, where the media would make up obvious lies and people would spend days correcting the lies. The difference now is the world’s richest man has suddenly started to notice things like this. Elon Musk is an eccentric guy, but when he notices something the world notices it with him. Musk seems to be taking aim at the legacy media this cycle, so it will make for some good drama.
This misses the larger issue we see with this story. The person who initiated this drama over Trump using the word “bloodbath” lied and she knew she was lying when she claimed he said, “there would be a bloodbath if he lost.” Her bosses surely knew she was lying but went along with it because it would get attention. The rest of the media who piled on also knew it was a lie. In other words, everyone involved knew it was a lie, but they kept on lying, even when everyone knew it was a lie.
In theory, the media is supposed to be the arena of public debate, where the political combatants argue for their proposals. In imagination land, the media is just a referee, but in more sober telling the media is a collection of competing entities fighting to gain the trust and attention of the market. The marketplace for information should correct for this constant lying, much as it prevents the one airplane maker from filling up on diversity hires and building planes that fall apart in midair.
Therein lies the problem. Just as Boeing is pretty much a monopoly, the media is also a monopoly and for the same reasons. Over the years, Boeing was able to make the best of friends in government, so that it was able to buy up the competition. Similarly, the media has coalesced around a critical mass of flatterers who have exclusive access to permanent Washington. If you want to buy a commercial plan you go to Boeing and if you want to reach the public, you go to the media.
Just as the free market always seems to end up with a few players controlling the marketplace, democracy seems to end up with a few players controlling the marketplace for ideas. The reason a nonsense story like the Trump “bloodbath” comment runs wild is that the media is a monolith. The people in it speak only to each other and the people in it are selected for their ideological compliance. The media is a massive hive controlled by the uniparty.
Of course, the fact that we have the expression “uniparty” and everyone understands exactly what it means speaks to the reality of “democracy.” Instead of it being the marketplace of ideas, it collapses like all markets into monopoly. Reformers like Trump are treated like upstarts in any industry dominated by a few players. If a collection of rich guys tried to challenge the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing, they would quickly cease to be rich guys, as they would be crushed.
That is the plight of anyone who seeks to reform democracy. The desire for reform comes only when it has evolved to its natural state of oligopoly, which often appears to the people as a monopoly. Like the upstart challenging the major players in an industry, the reformers get crushed, unless they have friends in government. To get friends in government means making the same deal as the major players. The path forward is always a deal with the devil or death by his minions.
Joseph de Maistre said, “To hear these defenders of democracy talk, one would think that the people deliberate like a committee of wise men, whereas in truth judicial murders, foolhardy undertakings, wild choices, and above all foolish and disastrous wars are eminently the prerogatives of this form of government.” That was two hundred years ago before any nation foolishly set about proving him correct. Every day the media reminds us that there is no reforming democracy.
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I don’t consume any mainstream US media, written or on television. And probably many people commenting here are in the same boat. Just blatant lies and propaganda. People who do consume this garbage probably deserve the system they get.
I don’t know what Pelosi or Graham shriek or howl and I don’t want to. They are part of the media-entertainment complex.
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Same here, Arshad.
It is so bad now that, when confronted with a TV and a rhetoric-spewing-son-of-Satan, I find it to be like looking into another world.
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As lies and propaganda it’s not even coherent. Just one hysterical sound-bite to the next, interspersed with “a message from our sponsors.” A complete lack of coherence and continuity. Probably induces ADHD. But then again, the average reading level in the US today is around fifth or sixth grade level.
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It is hard to believe there are still people out there falling for this stuff, but I meet them regularly. It is beyond religious zealotry for some of them, I just can’t understand it.
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Am I a bad person if I think the bloodbath sans auto industry part sounds entirely justified?
Preferable, even?
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When I first heard the media’s interpretation of it, I thought, now we’re talking. Rather disappointing when I read the whole quote.
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We were already going to vote for Trump. The media doesn’t need to sell us on it.
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Why would anyone downvote this? The “sell us on it” meme was the first thing I thought of when I heard the bloodbath story. It’s never not funny.
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The rest of the media who piled on also knew it was a lie. In other words, everyone involved knew it was a lie, but they kept on lying, even when everyone knew it was a lie.
This demonstrates some of the worst behaviours of The Leftist: the extent to which they lie and knowingly manipulate. Lying, of course, is a pretty big sin – effectively bearing false witness against a person, if you like. And how many do it these days? Almost everyone to some-degree-or-another.
Perhaps the worst of it is that these people will resolutely defend their actions. It is not just ‘Democracy’ that will not be reformed, but a serious Christian belief amongst the people – one that requires self-reflection and constant checking of oneself against sin.
It staggers me that people take any of ‘our’ politicians seriously at all. The Evil is so obviously and constantly on display.
Thanks for the article (a bit early in the day for you, Z Man?!). And God bless as always to you and all here.
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Hey MSM
Re “bloodbath”
Quit giving us ideas
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I was watching some well-meaning vestigial “dirt bag” remnants of the free speech left talking about the Boeing fiasco in a YouTube powwow. They concluded that it was due to the financialization of the airline industry, as with medicine, which led to all kinds of cost-cutting shenanigans that literally imperiled people’s lives. If you’ll pump safe and effective poison into someone’s veins for profit, you’ll skimp on airfoils and bolting on fuselage. It makes sense, up to a point. They couldn’t countenance it as a “both/and” problem. Blaming the DEI initiative, they thought, was just declassee white former middle and working class people trying to fob the blame off on minorities.
It is clearly a both/and problem, though (and plenty of working class whites are also to blame, as revealed in that undercover video of factory workers hammered on oxy, weed, and beer.) The thing these people don’t understand, though—and even some normiecons and dissidents don’t seem to grasp—is that the elite are right in thinking they can no longer leave elections or much of anything else to chance, or trust Americans to be engaged, even “low information voters” as Limbaugh used to say.
We’re simply getting too brown and black and stupid to leave anything to the masses. I’d also imagine that the flooding of borders is going to lead to much higher population density, which will erode the vestigial concept of individual liberty from the public sphere. You don’t just need a smart fraction to keep things running. You need a lot of normal white people to keep things running as they have been, and also to have these Western ideals preserved, even in forms most on our side tend to mock: i.e. the Constitution in your back pocket crowd. These are not bad people, just the easiest for bad people to take advantage of. When there are enough of them in society, it makes the society better.
Have enough of the marks wised up? I haven’t heard any normies I know talking about “God’s Chosen people” or the “Free Market” for awhile. Fewer listen to AM talk radio and most would rather watch Alex Jones or Tucker online than some human hairdo talking on Fox. Yes, they’re going to vote for Trump, not in the hope that he’ll save them, but like a man on the scaffold spitting in the face of the executioner.
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We’re simply getting too brown and black and stupid to leave anything to the masses.
Yeah, the DIE stuff is one problem but there are others. There seems to have been (from my experience) a general drop in ability and character across the board, with whites affected as well. Add to that the way these companies just don’t seem to have the same ethos they used to (read about Boeing in the early years), this sort of result seems baked into the cake.
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The increasingly poor quality human capital in the collective West will be its eventual undoing.
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The Uniparty is freighted and this Bloodbath story is good evidence of that. They’ll be coming harder after Musk and X as immediately debunking one of their myths in real time and mocking them for it is something they can’t allow.
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It’s interesting to watch Musk. He’s started noticing, so you can see him struggling to put the pieces together. How far down the path will he let himself go.
People on our side of the divide just assume that once you start noticing, you’ll end up here, but there are many who don’t. Steve Sailer and Charles Murray notice racial differences but don’t notice anything unusual about politics and who runs the show behind the scenes. So, it’s not a given that Musk will notice everything.
Of course, the fact that he’s already been punished once for noticing some inconvenient facts hints that he’d head down our path if he allows himself. But who knows.
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He’s noticed for a long time. Right now he’s playing a very dangerous game where he is slowly trying to build an alternative elite coalition with people on our side. People rag on him for not going hard enough, but I would argue he’s close to coming in too hard on these topics.
This doesn’t mean he’s one of /our guys/. He just wants his technocratic future of chips in people’s brains and space rockets, ad the current elite will ruin everything if they stay in power.
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He just wants his technocratic future of chips in people’s brains and space rockets…
Of course, the Transhumanist/Futurist agenda. Musk seems to have his role to play, but this sort of thing is pretty creepy if you ask me (chips in the brain).
In addition, probably more important things to worry about than sending wockets into space.
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Musk’s recently announced Starshiwld project for the DoD is terrifying.
If that comes to fruition, there will literally be nowhere left to run and hide.
Dissidence is a journey. I used to be a grillin’ normiecon boomer that thought the jews were our friends and Ben Shipiro owned the lefties.
Then I started hanging out here and I got violated and corrupted. 😂
It’s a journey that takes time. I’m even seeing lefties getting red pilled in huge numbers now.
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It would be a great service to humanity if the people who would say, “Aksually, we have a Constitutional Republic,” would… stop saying that. Or consider Canadian options.
Why? It doesn’t seem to be sinking in on many people.
Trump is promising a homicidal rampage.
Hmm….
Now, hear me out…
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Yeah, even if he said that I’d say let him cook.
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Is it still a federal offense to vote more than once?
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Only if you’re a republican.
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I sometimes get the sense the media is performing primarily for other media. They are judging each other on how close each sticks to the party line. if you want to be the cool kid you have to be exactly on the same page as everyone else. It’s a bit like high school, with mean girls (pundits), a BMOC (the New York Times) and the losers (Rachel Maddie and the gang at MSNBC)… And Trump is the new kid, mercilessly picked on. God help you if they doxx you and you have to go to that 🏫 school!
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And we also hear now that dictator Putin has foisted himself upon the Russian people for another six years to possibly become to longest serving ruler in Russian history – in a “stolen” election of course. God, the media and government here are so unbelievably pathetic…
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It’s clear Putin was not popular — he only got 88% of the vote. Whereas Biden will get 110%. That’s popularity.
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I would laugh my ass off if Putin asked that international observers be deployed to monitor the upcoming American election. That would be funny even if not necessary since no one takes this ludicrous shitshow of a country seriously any longer.
I think Musk’s days are numbered at this point. Some people have been posting the text of that so-called “Tik-Tok” bill on-line and it’s clear as can be that it’s actually directed against Musk and Twitter. The President can basically determine unilaterally that some platform or web-site is under “foreign influence” and shut it down and even imprison or fine the U.S. citizens that are allegedly under this “foreign influence” without any ability for them to appeal anywhere but the D.C. Circuit Court. And just like clockwork – as the clowns of the GOPe and Con., Inc. are running around declaring a great triumph for our side – the Dems are immediately out claiming that Twitter allows “terrorists” to post and Twitter is therefore under foreign influence. I’m expecting Twitter to be shut down shortly in advance of this year’s election.
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The harridans and harpies may be right. I don’t think the next election will be about Trump vs Biden…it will be the ballot box vs the cartridge box.
Leftie is telegraphing his intent. Given the nature of the women on the Other Side, some kind of lethal comedy is almost guaranteed.
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Well, that started the week off on a cheery note.
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A bigger point is missed here. The propaganda organs largely are spent and wasted assets. Therefore, what do they really have left to lose with easily disproved lies and transparent falsehoods? Is there any real downside to becoming blatant State propaganda?
The only people who routinely continue to believe their banal and ludicrous actual disinformation and misinformation never will stop believing it. While this is a far smaller number than in the past, it is still a significant amount of people. Some of that remaining number believe it because the WANT to believe it, so literal truth is irrelevant to that particular subset. With some luck the repetitious lying from time to time may effect more than the permanently gullible and the True Believers. Again, since it is already largely a wasted asset its preservation is a secondary concern. This may damage future use of Deep Fakes such as a holographic BOM extolling the virtues of Uncle Adolph, but that’s not a given or apparent concern.
I once was a First Amendment absolutist and while the concept remains appealing, I now realize it never as an actual and real thing. The only goal should be to become the censors rather than the censored. Whether that even is possible is beside the point. Each new information technology has been the immediate target of government censorship via licensing and increasingly pressure on the so-called “private sector.” The digital age is somewhat problematic but great strides toward censorship have been made.
As for Musk, he knows full well what the deal is and his feigned enlightenment is laughable. Given Musk is the world’s biggest Welfare Queen, it is surprising he has given as much guff as he has to Uncle Sugar. Perhaps he has a kill switch in the sense of an ability to crater the economy in a way that isn’t easily apparent. Maybe he just enjoys the troll. Who knows.
Just as the Neocons will move to their next humiliation and catastrophe after the Ukraine cluster implodes, the propaganda organs seamlessly will transition into their next farcical lying campaign soon enough. Yes, what can’t go on will stop at some point, but the point is failure is not an impediment at the moment.
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