Imagine you are the head of a grocery chain and one of your executives comes to you with a plan to boost sales of over-the-counter remedies. These are the things you buy for a sore throat or an upset stomach. His plan involves subtly infecting the customers with a mild virus. They will get sick and then come back to buy something to remedy the symptoms of the virus. The virus will be mild, but enough to cause most people some symptoms in the week after having been infected.
Unless you are a sociopath, you will think the guy is nuts. Odds are you will think it is some sort of elaborate gag. If he is serious, then you will call security to have the guy removed from the building. The reason is not just the ghoulish plan to poison people, but the fact that he could think of such a thing. You would quickly start to wonder what else this guy is capable of doing. If he is willing to poison thousands of people to boost sales, he is capable of anything.
The truth is though, companies are full of people who think like the ghoulish executive in that short example. For example, there was someone at the multinational that owns the Häagen-Dazs brand who decided to start shrinking the pint. It used to be that a pint is a pound the world around, but no more. A pint of ice cream in the United States has shrunk down to 14-ounces. The container has been subtly changed so the shrinkage is not as obvious to the consumer.
Shrinkflation has been a thing for a couple of decades now. Bottles of beer have started to shrink as well. Many are 11-ounces now. They changed the shape of the bottle to trick the consumer. This was a trick they started at ballgames. They made cups taller, but narrower, so they could call the regular sized beverage a large, when it was the same amount of fluid as the smaller size. Packaging science is now mostly about tricking the consumer into thinking less is more.
The marketplace has always been about deception. The seller is motivated to lie about his product and the consumer is motivated to lie about his interest. Since the dawn of the marketplace, authorities have promulgated rules in an effort to keep the lying to a minimum and therefore maintain a peaceful market. Those rules have fallen away in the modern age, where deception has now become a virtue. In this age, only suckers are honest in their dealings.
Mass media is the prime example. The big media operations publish stories that they know are false when they post them. They are not simply wrong about a few facts, but deliberately designed by a staff of people to tell a false story. We saw that with the Russian collusion hoax in the Trump years. The Post and Times had teams whose job was to make up fake stories, with the help of friends in government. Everyone involved volunteered for the job of deceiving the public.
We see this with the war coverage. This story is being pushed by the Drudge alternative called Revolver News. It looks very official, but a quick search of the three authors reveals they are Ukrainian activists sponsored by the usual suspects. All three are children, fresh from school, with no experience in this area. The people behind that institute had them do the copy editing and let them put their name on it in order to add to their resume. It is a common fraud in Washington.
That is the thing though. It is a swindle and a well-known one. Operations like “Institute for the Study of War” are just lie machines. Their task is to pump out regime friendly information that will get circulated by the media. The media, of course, knows this better than anyone, but they choose to pass it along anyway. Given what we saw in the Trump years, it is possible that the Washington Post put out an RFP for a fake study to fit the latest narrative on the war.
Joseph de Maistre famously said, “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.” This is true, in that the authorities in this age pump out false opinion in immeasurable volume. Normal people inevitably believe some of it and pass it onto friends. That gives it authority and before long a third of the public wants nuclear war over Ukraine.
Of course, that survey could be entirely fake. That is something else that has changed over the last several decades. It used to be that polling firms guarded their reputations by avoiding sensationalism. Now they only care about getting noticed, so we have polling firms publishing complete nonsense. Many are happy to give the customer what they want and those customers are sociopaths in the media. Polling is just a corrupt as everything else now.
If we return to our grocery store CEO and his psychopathic executive, the issue is not the scheme, but the person behind it. The sort of person who thinks it is normal to poison people is not going to think twice about poisoning his boss. Similarly, the sorts of people who think it is normal to fabricate studies, stories and so on in order to fool the general public is no different from the psychopathic executive. These are people who lack the ability to tell right from wrong.
It is tempting to think this is just the way the world is and we just see it more clearly now thanks to the mass media age. Some of that is true, but we also know that this sort of behavior was a primary concern in the past. Medieval governments passed rules to limit deception in the law and the marketplace. The ancients had draconian punishments for those who deceived the public. The ancient Persians treated deception more harshly than murder. People used to worry about this problem.
In this age, we have turned this on its head. Deception is a valued skill. The media selects for sociopathy. Our political parties admire those with a natural skill to deceive and quickly raise them to national status. That grocery store CEO would not exist as described, because he would have hand-picked that executive and probably gave him the idea for the mass poisoning campaign. The lie is the coin of the realm and the liars are the new aristocracy.
America is often called a great experiment and that is true. This is the first society to exist with nothing holding it together but impersonal economic relations. We are reaching the point where there are no rules, just who can get over on whom. It is the anarcho-capitalist society in which no one can trust anyone or anything. Instead, a war of all against all, it is an endless series of confidence games. Everyone has an angle and is trying to get over on someone else.
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Our ruling and pundit class resemble more and more carnival barkers. All have or pushing a hustle to see who bites. It’s lies and manipulation 24/7. Social media just expedites it.
‘’ Our political parties admire those with a natural skill to deceive and quickly raise them to national status.‘’ sounds like a certain evolutionary genetic trait.
5
No little hat for you!!
4
I think another social aspect that plays into the lurch toward mass caption is that we have more and more gay men in politics, and these guys will do anything. Growing up my friend’s dad was a proctologist, and the stories he would tell us of the the things they stick up their butts was just crazy. Then look at how they slime around public parks. Lure children. All sorts of slimy nasty behavior.
But to our rulers, they are just tender hearted innocents lost in forbidden love 🙄
So it’s a deception about a deception.
6
Caption = deception
” … and these guys will do anything.”
You have NO idea.
I am retired from CDC, where I wasted 23 years in medical research and publishing. And during that time, I edited hundreds of articles from behavioral scientists, whose research was intended to find out what kinds of *behavior* transmitted sexually transmitted diseases.
And I learned a lot of things that I wish I could unlearn, but can’t. I know things I wish I could unknow, but can’t.
You really have NO idea.
Really, really, really REALLY NO idea.
3
I can only vaguely imagine, but then take what you know and every time you see a guy like jake Sullivan on tv or some other creep, imagine these are the guys who engage in those behaviors.
Why I think one of the best illustrations of just how corrupt and sick our society is was in the move the devils advocate. It just clicked with me on a very base but also higher level. If you haven’t seen it, give it a try.
2
Saw it when it was first released. Riveting and disturbing.
And you are right. I hadn’t thought of them as “them” but yeah, you’re right.
“I can only vaguely imagine, … .”
Lord! I HOPE not! No, I don’t think you can. I’d bet the rent that you can’t. That’s why I say I wish I could unknow this stuff, but can’t. Ordinary imaginations can’t get to those places. Believe me.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the article Z referenced from the ISW has a bunch of citations at the bottom which I think are listed as sources.
The provider of the citations is…wait for it…
Facebook
I burst out laughing when I saw that.
Next week, read the story that is sourced by Looney Tunes.
9
Seems like alot of the guys that are doing war reporting and analysis from open sources (so called open source intelligence – OSINT) grab information from all over the place facebook, twitter, telegram, vk, etc. This type of analysis became a big deal in 2014 when it was used to attribute the MH17 shootdown to Russian troops that had crossed the border into Ukraine.
Newish thing that is happening this war is that Russians soldiers seem to be posting less online than they did in 2014, so less Russian intel overall. On the other hand, Ukrainians seem pretty comfortable propagandizing their postings (truths mixed with lies mixed with Geneva Convention violations – desecration of dead bodies, names faces of captured prisoners). Feels post Christian. If we don’t believe in anything anymore, what prevents us from desecrating the dead and humiliating the captured.
The ISW link that Z posted has many Ukrainian references and few Russian references and thus likely reflects a pro-Ukrainian bias.
2
“The ISW link that Z posted has many Ukrainian references and few Russian references and thus likely reflects a pro-Ukrainian bias.”
I know for a fact that the Russian gov’t cut off access to Facebook for Russians last week.
I haven’ seen what you are referring to, but look at the dates of the postings from those posting as Russians.
1
Access to Facebook for Russians (in Russia) was cut off on or about the 7th of March.
1
Russians’ access to instagram was cut off o/a the 13th.
1
“…and before long a third of the public wants nuclear war over Ukraine.”
Paging General Pinochet, paging General Pinochet; the f*cktards are getting us all killed. We need you to take charge immediately. The helicopters are being lined up outside per your request.
8
” … a third of the public wants nuclear war over Ukraine.”
And they just might get it:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/nato-calls-up-hundreds-of-thousands-of-troops-ready-to-begin-wwiii/
3
Somehow the US managed to sneak over 100k troops into Europe for the first time since 2005.
The normies at work are all excited because, “…this Ukraine thing is gonna provide job security!”
1
“The normies at work are all excited because, “…this Ukraine thing is gonna provide job security!”
Okay, if this is stupid, just tell me so point blank. But things are so weird nowadays that I have to ask: Are normies saying that?
1
TIP-
Not a bad question at all.
That is a direct quote from an early 60s technician that watches Faux News and surfs Citizen Free Press.
Of course, he got double-jabbed and boosted with Moderna as soon as they were available.
The initial scenario doesn’t sound so crazy to me.
I mean something like a McDonald’s puts chemicals in their foods so you don’t feel like you’ve eaten enough and eat more. Think about that. Not a bridge too far to them poisoning you lightly so you buy an aspirin. Or look at how insane our pop culture is, which I know has some planning involved around it so people feel confused and buy anxiety meds and stuff like that to help cope. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cartels are behind it so people buy heroin and fentanyl to cope. Look at how they poison the minds with all sorts of other things so we keep buying whatever or subscribe to a certain belief system or political ideology.
Sick sick sick
Anyway, we may need our own St Patrick to chase away these snakes !
11
I feel impotent, murderous rage tbh
6
The Dorito Effect is a great example of why you cannot allow markets to determine morality. The food makers found that industrial food production resulted in food that was not very tasty. The solution to that problem was the chemical industry and their flavor enhancers. That sounds like a win, but the result is it tricks the brain into thinking the food is more nutritious than it is in reality. You have the Happy Meal and you are still hungry.
In other words, they were not trying to fool you into eating more. They were trying to fool you into eating their industrial created crap. The original lie was in the false presentation.
8
Oh geez, well isn’t that even worse? Why not just sell them chemically-deceptive cardboard or saw dust burgers ? Why even bother with the food at all?
But who am I kidding. They are already trying to pass off flavored slime as alternatives to meat.
And the media and press and oligarchs like Gates are cheering them on like coaches on the sidelines
1
“It is tempting to think this is just the way the world is and we just see it more clearly now thanks to the mass media age.”
NO! Since Glubb, civilizational cycles should be considered established knowledge, not speculation. Cultures can be healthy or sick. The West is culturally terminal and is becoming the ugliest d*mn thing you could ever imagine. The Woke disease is absolutely real, the West IS dying.
14
“We are reaching the point where there are no rules, just who can get over on whom. It is the anarcho-capitalist society in which no one can trust anyone or anything. Instead, a war of all against all, it is an endless series of confidence games. Everyone has an angle and is trying to get over on someone else.”
In essence, we’ve taken on the culture of our rulers – the usual suspects – who slowly gained control of the commanding heights of society, particularly media, over the second half of the 20th century and took full control (behind the scenes) at around the turn of the 21st century.
Naturally, this situation can’t last. We can’t all be the scheming middle-man. A functioning society runs on trust, which is being consumed at an alarming rate and not being replenished. Just a matter of time before such a society falls.
13
I’d watched a show on Tokugawa era Japan that mentioned that towards the end of the system the merchants, who were technically on the bottom of the rigid social hierarchy, had amassed more wealth than the nobles. It was part of what led the Shogunate to try and reform their system, though in hindsight the proper course of action would have been to put all the merchants on a boat and sink it in the ocean.
4
Fascinating era. Towards the end, however, reform of the noble classes wouldn’t have done much. The shogunate system and samurai class were nearly as disconnected from the common person as our beloved cloud people. People saw them as severely anachronistic, even alien.
2
Btw – and I apologize for bringing up a an off-topic subject and promise not to do it again but I do think that this is important – is anyone else a tad concerned that the Senate voted unanimously and Biden said publicly that Putin is a “war criminal”?
They just made this whole affair a win or die situation for Putin. Why would he negotiate with the US? For that matter, why would the US negotiate with a war criminal?
Our leaders are so used to having absolute power over those whom they choose to “cancel,” that they act like hysterical teenagers. It’s astoundingly dangerous.
24
GAE funds and trains terrorists in Ukraine to endlessly* harass, murder, and maim Russian civilians for no other reason than to get a rise out of Putin, and Putin is the “war criminal”.
*I say “endlessly”, but their end is very near if not already in the rear view mirror. Good riddance.
7
The Gay American Empire is desperate and lashing out. These senile old fools and overgrown man-children who’ve never been punched don’t understand that the other powers aren’t scared of them anymore. It would be funny if it wasn’t risking WW3.
9
Z Man among others have studied up on the fall of the USSR
I wonder if there are parallels. Such as at that time, many guys in the upper ranks of leadership were saying just as many stupid things as our guys today? Were there guys in the background calling for Reagan’s assassination a la Lindsey graham? And things of that nature. I guess my larger point is to look for similar behaviors from a people whose worlds as they knew were similarly ending.
And if we find enough maybe we have yet more circumstantial evidence and hints that our system is also about to break apart.
3
” … maybe we have yet more circumstantial evidence and hints that our system is also about to break apart.”
I don’t think we need any more. And I’m being serious, not ironic or jocund.
3
Well, let’s do a checklist.
1. Geriatric, barely functional top leadership? Check. The Politburo’s choices near the end were Brezhnev (75), Andropov, (a spry 69), Chernenko, (73).
Biden’s already pushing 80, Pelosi (81) and of the Vichy Right, McConnell is 80.
2. Assassination as statecraft? Check. Andropov as KGB chief decided to kill the Polish Pope, contracting it out through cutouts to a Turk.
3
Did you see Pelosi’s recent incoherent rant about bombing the Russian convoy in Ukraine?
She’s looking and sounding way less functional than Joe right now.
10
“Did you see Pelosi’s recent incoherent rant about bombing the Russian convoy in Ukraine?”
No. Do you have a link? Was she serious–I mean, had such a thing actually happened, or was she talking tough or something?
TIP-
I do have a link for Pelosi:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/15/nancy-pelosi-has-putin-strategery-figured-out-he-is-trying-to-bait-her-into-a-nato-attack/
I also have a link for Joe sputtering about how, “…every American knows someone blackmailed by explicit photos…”:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/16/joe-biden-says-every-american-knows-someone-blackmailed-by-intimate-naked-and-sexually-explicit-pictures/
I suppose sometimes the mask slips a bit…
Completely reckless in an increasingly dangerous crisis. They, incredibly, still do not understand that they are not dealing with some backwater, desert sh*thole but the country with the largest – and most advanced mind you – nuclear arsenal in history. And they are just making absolutely sure there can be no meetings of the mind now. Wanting to avoid too much foul language, I have no words for this. They are literally provoking a nuclear war. [further thoughts deleted for the sake of decorum]
14
* for technical accuracy; largest nuclear arsenal in the world; the USSR in the 1970s or 1980s had the largest in history and far larger than today. Not sure how much of a silver lining that is.
2
It’s in the hands of fate if you ask me
I mean, if Putin truly is a righteous man, events will unfold accordingly. If we are truly an evil nation, the same. If there is a little bit of both in both sides, then who knows.
But it is like a duel, where righteousness gives one a slight edge.
My take is that the Russian side is the more righteous. Not only their military but their people. And their collective desires and prayers may outweigh ours and cause the cosmos to tilt and shine on them. Or however it works.
10
who knew that the cancel culture we inhabit would rise to America’s highest virtue or raison d’etre.
2
Tucker touched on something either last night or night before, but the idea was that the Covid thing may have even made our leaders crazy. The masking etc the shock of it all etc
Wouldn’t that be poetic justice that they set out to demoralize and cripple us mentally and spiritually and yet they are the ones who had it happen to them!
Never ever underestimate the powers of a guilty conscience even among the most sociopathic people. These people know they did wrong and no amount of lying to oneself will ever change it. Nature won’t be fooled !
6
“Never ever underestimate the powers of a guilty conscience even among the most sociopathic people.”
I doubt that some–probably most–of “them” don’t even have a conscience, let alone guilty ones.
1
Haste does make waste.
I doubt that they *have* a conscience.
Yeah, that’s great poetic justice, except for the fact these fools are on track to get us all killed in a nuclear WW3.
WWW3 is next episode
We are not there yet 😜
“Why would he negotiate with the US?”
You’d think he’d have asked that question of himself several years ago, but he continued negotiating in good faith with utterly faithless (((people))), until last month, when he seems to have realized–and accepted–that negotiating with liars and lunatics was pointless. Right up until the very last moment, he and Lavrov continued using the phrase “our Western partners.”
“For that matter, why would the US negotiate with a war criminal?”
They wouldn’t. They have no intention of doing such a thing. They never did. They are going hell-for-leather for their beloved “regime change.”
In Russia.
For the first time. I am beginning to feel a bit nervous.
These Great Reset freekazoids might do *anything.*
They are evil. Not “sick.” EVIL.
They know that a nuclear war would wipe out the dirt people. And thy know that they have their bunkers. And they know that the danger of radiation and fallout will disappear in a few weeks after the final exchanges.
And they are evil.
10
“I am beginning to feel a bit nervous.
These Great Reset freekazoids might do *anything.*”
Honestly I think the problem is that they basically know that drawing and quartering or burning at the stake, both meant literally, probably awaits them if they lose control now and their historically great mega-crime against their Western homelands were fully exposed and the veil lies dropped. They may actually have decided that they stand a better chance in nuclear war than if they lose control of the countries they have raped and destroyed for decades. We may be seeing that, them having concluded that only something like nuclear war will distract people enough that they can make a get-away to New Zealand or wherever.
3
“We may be seeing that, them having concluded that only something like nuclear war will distract people enough that they can make a get-away … .”
You know, you might be onto something with that. I hadn’t looked at it that way, but it makes a bushel and a peck of sense when you write it out and look at it in b & W.
1
@ Moran ya Simba:
Yeah, if they had told the truth in August of 2019, when Jerome Powell announced the Fed’s “special Repo market window for foreign central banks,” they would have been torn to pieces in the streets, and that’s why the chinkypox was proclaimed less than 5 months later. And that kept them safe for 2 years, but it has stopped working.
And who believes it’s coincidental that Fauci disappeared simultaneously with the arrival of the Ukraine business?
And Armstrong has reported that “they” actually believe that the world has only five years left if they don’t fix the climate.
And to even be able to believe such an idiotic superstition speaks volumes.
But “they” seem to *believe* that they have to save the world.
A powerful motivation, even to lunatics. Or, I might have said, *especially* to lunatics.
3
I’m not worried that they’ll go crazy(er) and start a nuclear exchange right away. But these are people who have absolutely no concept of consequences, especially over the long term. They have zero ability to consider their actions, and all the possible outcomes and potential reactions. They are like children, where the totality everything is right here, right now.
That’s what worries me. The idea that there may be unintended consequences does not occur to them.
2
“I’m not worried that they’ll go crazy(er) and start a nuclear exchange right away.”
I hope to God you’re right. But for them, it might not be “right away.” They’ve been planning this for a long time.
Armstrong is saying the week of April 18th (Paul Revere’s Ride!) going into the first week of May are possibilities for this crisis to become a “confrontation.”
NATO has mobilized hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The US has mobilized 100,000. Apparently since yesterday.
To the pack of morons known as the ruling class, this is just another attempt at doing anything and everything the opposite of the previous administration.
Living in the fantasy world they live in, using hashtags to smear Putin will surely defeat him, right?
1
I expect bad things from Democrats. But I am still surprised at the poor quality of Republicans in the Senate. Isn’t there a single Republican there that sees things from even a vaguely DR perspective? What is going on?
2
Here in Hochulstan a bag of Utz potato chips is now $4.29 for 7.75 oz.
In North African countries like Egypt, prosecutors are jailing people for, “storing food commodities to exploit recent price increases”:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220317-egypt-jails-merchant-to-5-years-for-hiding-commodities/
Egypt is also imposing price caps on unsubsidized bread:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220316-egypt-caps-unsubsidised-bread-prices/
I wonder what things will look like in that region in 3 months’ time…
4
thee will not be any bread for sale. for a start.
3
“thee will not be any bread for sale. for a start.”
Most of the Ukraine’s exported wheat goes to the middle east and N Africa.
And we already know what they will do when food prices rise beyond their reach.
Argentina has just decided not to export soy meal. Many countries are now stopping food exports.
3
The country of Algeria has banned the re-export of the food that it spends a mint to import:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220316-algeria-bans-food-exports-amid-fears-of-global-shortages/
Yeah, North Africa is gonna be lit in the near future…
Well the thing is supermarkets (and pharmacies) do sell poisonous products, that do induce further sales. Half the products in a grocery store are demonstrably unhealthy to consume, but there they are. The herd of normies isn’t getting obese (and diabetic) all on its own; they are getting plenty of help along the way – including from the media. Then there is Pfizer…
Isn’t it possible – if not likely – that having so many gullible people in the populace, not only allows, but actually causes, so many sociopaths all over the economy/government? i.e. society got dumb, first, then predatory.
4
An operative word and concept is chutzpah
The image that pops up in my head is you get starry eyed white people who want to become stars so they go onto something like a talent show and perform for the (((judges))) their version or interpretation of chutzpah. And they end up having to take it to increasingly absurd lengths to get noticed. Meanwhile the judges are sitting there smiling deviously and loving it, loving the taste. More more more.
And if you think about it, what has our society become but an endless parade of ambitious goys tripping over themselves to show the world they can do the chutzpah just as well as the originators?
But for me, though they have technical skills, I have never seen an Asian who can perform Beethoven as well as a white person with less technical skill but with superior feeling. And I have yet to see a guy or gal perform the chutzpah as well as an (((originator))). They are too self conscious and don’t just let it rip. So what we have throughout society are poor facsimiles of JJJs. Pale imitations but so very destructive!
3
I had a buddy in psyops who was fond of saying, “You want to know how the psyop campaign has begun? Don’t look for the flyers falling from the airplanes onto the civilians of the invaded country. Look on your TV for the first story about enemy bombs hitting a civilian hospital.”
Of course, in this kind of transactional con artist society (where even the authorities are on the take) the only kind of justice that can exist is frontier justice. You need to be able to string up the pickpocket quickly, and, though it’s barbaric (and stinky) you have to leave the body dangling on that tree at the town’s outskirts to let those passing through know not to bring snake oil or smallpox. Strange that progressives, so obsessed with lynching, have worked so tirelessly to create the conditions in which it will be almost unavoidable, unless they want something totally Hobbesian. And they don’t want that. A Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow gets shredded mighty quick in a world red of tooth and claw.
12
This reminded me of a conference I attended years ago which had numerous guest speakers. One of them was an accomplished entrepreneur who had worked in the automobile industry for a long time. He gave a presentation about how American car companies needed to reinvent themselves because their prior business model was to build cars that would crap out at around 70k to 100k miles so they could cash in on the service required to fix them.
Of course, this all came crashing down when Americans began buying Honda and Toyota vehicles.
3
Yep, the old planned obsolescence game
Spend your life making things that are made to break.
Lol. What a life and career. You spend more time and effort thinking of how to make something last for two years rather than making it last for 20 years.
I don’t see how decent people cannot either quit or lose a bit of themselves staying on with a company like that, but then people have to eat so you get guys who hang on and just become old and cynical. I know a number of them. They started out as decent people.
4
I used to be a skeptic, now I’m a cynic. It stinks.
Here at GloboBank, as valued employee number 35, 463, my health and safety is the companies number one concern.
Since I haven’t taken the experimental Covid19 gene therapy nor the required booster, the company cares so much that I can’t go into the office nor attend any client or business events.
Needless to say, I press the appropriate buttons and do the absolute minimum, each and every day. If something is broken or can be improved? I don’t care. “Not my job.”
I’m sure the serfs in the Polish or Indian offices are all over things. Or perhaps the 30 people who work directly on the corporate jet fleet.
1
“People used to worry about this problem.”
During the entire human history, people used to think that good and evil were absolute things and you have a responsibility to do and enforce good and to avoid and persecute evil. This was not limited to laws (which are always the last emergency mechanism, only when conscience and stigma have failed). Read “Bring back stigma” by Roger Scruton https://www.city-journal.org/html/bring-back-stigma-11807.html
Now the theory is that good and evil are relative and that anybody can define these concepts by himself. Only the most important evils (like killing or stealing in a traditional way) are punished by law. This creates an anarchy of everybody trying to exploit everybody. We have an inertia from the old Christian tradition but this is gradually disappearing and the anarchy gradually increases.
5
“Only the most important evils (like killing or stealing in a traditional way) are punished by law.”
And as we’ve seen recently, even those laws are malleable if the murderer is non-white and the victim is white.
I worked, and now run a contract lab, for a consumer products company. After successful launch of any product, the very next project is to “cost-save” the product. i.e., cheapen it up while given the illusion it still performs as well as the original. So, it was no surprise to me, and this many years ago, perhaps in the 90s, when the vending machine started featuring Mallo cups, three to a pack. Theretofore, it was two cups. Upon closer inspection, the package read, “now, with 33% more cups!” It goes without saying that the net weight had been reduced.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive
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I posted the comment below on an article related to the military support Biden recently announced that will be sent to Ukraine. Judging from the replies calling me a Russian puppet, Trumper, coward, et all, it seems alot of people enjoy being misled. Not much debate on the negative repercussions that may occur. While most couldn’t find Ukraine on a map yesterday they now give full-throated support for starting WWIII.
One of the greatest fallacies in decision-making at all levels, from personal, professional and especially in the political realm of foreign and domestic policy, is the belief that there are absolute solutions to every problem. Too many hold onto unrealistic expectations that a course of action taken will result in a tidy solution with no loose ends, or undesirable affects.
Persistently, well intentioned choices made to address a current issue led to worse outcomes. Blowback is the popular term for the unforeseen consequences that occur from these types of decisions made with no regard to the unknown variables that will be created from the outcome of our choices.
Is it the best idea to send over this massive amount of weaponry to a country that consistently dwells at the bottom of the list for the least corrupt?
Are we truly to believe that every piece of military-grade firepower and equipment will be used as intended? Or is a more realistic assessment that there will be U.S. supplied arms that end up being sold on the black arms market? Or used in future conflicts against groups other than intended?
What could this money have done in America’s communities? This is money that would have been great for job training programs, childcare, healthcare and a slew of other areas that used to be in the wheelhouse proclaimed by the Left.
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“We are reaching the point where there are no rules, just who can get over on whom. It is the anarcho-capitalist society in which no one can trust anyone or anything. Instead, a war of all against all, it is an endless series of confidence games. Everyone has an angle and is trying to get over on someone else.”
This is as American as Apple Pie. The “medicine show”, patent medicines, “snake oil” etc. have been part of our scene from the beginning. The glib salesman is ingrained in our culture (Music Man, Death of a Salesman). The main difference today, I think, is that the pitchman has been elevated from the bottom of society to the top.
Meanwhile, unfortunately this isn’t what Zman calls” anarcho-capitalism”. We could cope with that. Instead, it’s fascism combined with cartel capitalism. From morning ’til night, Americans interact with one cartel after another; the cartels have captured their “regulators” (banks, health care insurers) or they pass “laws” requiring that you buy from them (Obamacare,Vaxx) or they have a stranglehold on media/”information” (Google, Facebook). Just ask any little kid trying to open a Lemonade stand.
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Thinking about our evolutionary origins as human beings— in hunter-gatherer groups made up of 50 to 150 members of our extended family and their spouses and kids— it’s not hard to see why honesty was considered so vitally important.
Lying was corrosive of the social fabric of the group, in the same way that stealing and murder would be. A sociopath who was unable to refrain from lying would eventually be cast out from the group; and being separated from the group meant certain death.
So refraining from lying and deceiving was important on two levels: for the individual, since it alllowed him to remain in the group; and for the group, since only in a population characterized by mutual trust among honest individuals could social cohesion develop and flourish.
When (around 10-15,000 years ago) people abandoned their family bands and moved into cities, the entire dynamic changed. Individuals were no longer limited to one group of people who’d known them all their lives; if you lost the trust of people in one neighborhood, you could move to another neighborhood where you weren’t known. Or eventually, to another city.
Trustworthiness could no longer be assumed: rules were needed, and courts to enforce them. Assuming that your neighbor was lying, and acting accordingly, became the safest bet.
Fast-forwarding to today: we’re now at the point where it’s generally acknowledged that there are shades of honesty.
Not only is deception and prevarication assumed, a distinction has arisen between outright lying—- labeling a carton containing 14 oz. as ’16 oz.’— and clever deception: labeling the carton as ’14 oz’, while subtly changing the shape so it still appears to be 16 oz.
While both methods are aimed at the same result— preventing the consumer from realizing that the container now holds 2 fewer ounces of ice cream— the former is outlawed, while the latter is allowed.
So we have two categories of dishonesty: allowable deception, and illegal deception.
Whether we’re talking about politics, or retail marketing of ice cream, it’s in the former category of socially-acceptable deception where the sociopath truly comes into his own and shines.
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It’s telling how Joseph Goebbels is always cast as the peak evil propagandist (for basically telling the truth about the nose), but he’s got nothing on our current j-media. How much death and destruction has resulted from their lies and distortions over the past couple of decades? Probably easily into the millions and they’re apparently not done yet.
Now, supposedly nearly 1/3 of Americans favor war with Russia even if it risks nucs. That’s just f-ning great. I have to say though, it may be true as nearly every conversation I hear is decidedly anti-Russia/Putin. The progagandist’s seem to be winning the battle for hearts and minds – we need a good guy divine intervention asap.
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Revolver.News also has stories from the Russian perspective on the war. It’s not clear what their own position is. Their funders may be divided.
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I’ve been taking note of all of this too
Breitbart and revolver are like 50/50
Gateway Pundit is 90/10 on Putin’s side
Populist Press has been 95/5 on Ukraine’s side. Which makes me wonder who might be behind it.
I’ve been reading Sputnik and the Saker and Southfront to get my info on how the war is going. These sites are definitely pro Putin /Russia but they seem fairly objective in their reporting.
And we all know Fox is 99/1 on the Ukraine side. The rest of the MSM is positive 1 million to negative 1 trillion
Deprived of divine authority, the concept of human personality has been relentlessly defined conditionally, and therefore arbitrarily. The concrete person is now an abstraction, the subject of legal freedoms and restrictions. Rights are now conditional. This is humanism put into practice. Resting as it now does on arbitrary, flimsy, and shifting foundations, Dostoyevsky observed that such unmindful, “humaneness is only a habit, a product of civilization. It may completely disappear.”
As a modern bard had it, don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone?
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Here’s a little thing anyone can do
I have a puppy. A beautiful chocolate lab. Everything he does cracks me up. He was walking around yesterday with a green grape hanging off his mouth and didn’t even know it.
And I think I remember Z saying something similar about the role of pets in our lives.
But imagine when the dog is sitting there that God created him solely to be our entertainment, that the dog is there for us and God made us to be the rulers of the earth. It may take a while to get your mind totally in it but at some point it clicks. And it is a strange feeling. I actually felt a bit dizzy. it is so unlike our general mindset and perceptions today. But you start to realize how life might have been viewed back in the day, with far less of the confusions and uncertainties and supposed advanced scientific knowledge. You certainly feel more at ease and “complete” for lack of a better word
So why not believe it? And imagine if all of a sudden people started to believe it. Talk about a revolution.
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I think the central idea is that democracy is the kind of thing the must select for sociopaths as leaders. It’s the nature of the beast. There’s no getting back to a time when the democracy was not selecting for sociopaths, because that would be like looking for dry water.
That’s why there is some benefit to older systems where the elite was expected to fight. At the very least, your elite could be counted on to have the virtue of courage. In a world where the options are either to select for wickedness or else to select for a lonely, single virtue, you’d prefer the single virtue selection process.
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First, all is not lost. Solutions exist.
Second, the sociopaths that afflict us are best described as disease cells. If everyone was a disease cell, then our society would already be dead. The disease cells are still relatively few compared to the whole population. Most of the sheeple have just been trained to acquiesce to this sociopathy in exchange for a comfortable life in the burbs.
Third, if the sociopath in the example of today’s post were to die in a horrible accident in which he is run over by his own riding mower and experiences an agonizing death therefrom, most of his neighbors would get over it because of the rarity of such things. But that dynamic starts to change when the riding mowers start get more uppity more often. Think outside the box.
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TomA, you should definitely consider taking up playing the Hitman series of video games. Your lawnmower thing is a perfect fit for it. He he he. Very devious ! But Good hitman !
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as this story is pointing out, propaganda is in our midst. I would hope any reader of this, would understand that the author, is in fact spreading propaganda. The author is trying very hard to make you second guess yourself.
You know very well that the sky appears blue because of science. ( https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/) However this author is trying to tell you that the sky is in fact red. Even though you see blue, the author is trying to make you second guess and pretty soon you believe the sky is red.
Continue to think critically. Use your brain to tell you the truth, not some op ed that espouses what you believe to be false. Do not let the truth become lies, and lies become truth. We are stronger than that.
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“as this story is pointing out, propaganda is in our midst.”
When you say, “the author,” to whom do you refer?
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“We are stronger than that.”
When you say, “we,” to whom do you refer?
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Here is an excellent example of deceptive propaganda from our controllers:
Younger Workers Believe ‘Remote Work Revolution’ Has Gone Too Far
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/younger-workers-believe-remote-work-revolution-has-gone-too-far
Yes, dear reader, they really expect you to sit here and believe that a generation that has been online since the cradle is just itching to get back into the office.
Someone is desperate to prop up the value of their commercial real estate so they can unload it to the next sucker…
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People look back on the middle ages as a barbarous period, but it was a time when extreme discipline was necessary. In the great reset, social credit score, etc., we see history starting to rhyme, but the people concocting these schemes are merely recognizing and attempting to surf the tide of history, not controlling it. They think they’re shooting the curl, but they’re headed for a gnarly wipeout, dude. (Lame, I know. Couldn’t resist 🙂 )
To the Z Man’s well-founded observations, I would add that there is a strong current of religious fanaticism behind the motivations of a certain segment of the liars and deceivers that plague what’s left of our society. In my lifetime, the old quote of how “you can’t make an omelette with out breaking a few eggs” was attributed to historical monsters like Stalin; now it is a dogmatic operating principle by our immoral elite and their rabid true believers. These people (cultists) have no qualms about lying because they do it in service of their degenerate, evil beliefs – in fact, they go out of their way to do so and take a disgusting sort of pride in it.