The war in Ukraine has brought into focus a strange belief among the ruling elites of the West that the world is controlled by narratives. If they can conjure a good story that seems to cover the facts in evidence, then the story is not only true, but it will control reality for the people in it. It is a form of abductive reasoning where they start with observations of varying degrees of plausibility, make sweeping conclusion and then declare war on anyone who raises doubts about them.
Formally, abduction is a form of logical inference. You begin with a set of observations and then look for the most likely conclusion from the observations. It is simply the best available explanation for what is observed. There is the possibility that some less likely or entirely unknown explanation is the correct one. This is where the ruling class logic departs from the formal definition. The explanation deemed most likely becomes an article of faith, often in support of some other belief.
Another difference from the formal definition is that the initial set of observations are never debated or reevaluated. The faith of the ruling class in their own ability to observe and define the world rules out uncertainty about their observations. Since many of the observations are part of this process, reconsidering these observations means questioning the reasoning behind them. More important, it means doubting the reasoner behind them and that is forbidden.
With regards to the war in Ukraine, Western leaders told the politicians that Russia was nothing but a big gas station with large land holdings. They could not sustain a large army in the field for very long. They lacked the capacity to make the ammunition and equipment needed for the war. Her economy was no better than Venezuela, so a boycott would bring it crashing down and before long it would lead to one of those mysterious color revolutions so popular these days.
This set of observations dates back to the post-Cold War days when the Russian economy was recovering from the collapse of communism. To whatever extent they were true at the time, no one has bothered to update them. They have become articles of faith, pillars upon which all relations with Russia are based. Over time, the new set of observations about Putin have been synthesized by the same crowd to fill in the gaps between the prior observations.
This mental framework with regards to Russia and the war in the Ukraine is so brittle and inflexible, it is forced to ignore facts on the ground. This story in a main Western media organ has become a standing head. In the old days of the newspaper business, a standing head was a headline used so often that it was made into a permanent block for the printer. For five months, Western media has been quoting regime experts claiming the Russians are about to run out of supplies.
The first quoted official is illustrative. “There will come a time when the tiny advances Russia is making become unsustainable in light of the costs and they will need a significant pause to regenerate capability.” This is true only within the logical framework of the belief set. The fact that Russia is obliterating the Ukrainian army and seizing large chunks of territory is ignored. The fact that the prior predictions have been false and the Russians show no signs of running out material is also ignored.
The undeniable truth of the war is that the Russians are using an expeditionary force of about 200,000 men from its professional army to systematically annihilate the Ukrainian army, which is larger and dug into fortified positions. This is possible because Russia is not a gas station with land holdings. In fact, it now has a military industrial capacity greater than the West. It can sustain its operations in Ukraine for as long as it takes to destroy the Ukraine and its ability to field an army.
None of this seems to register with the decision makers. This quote from retired Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. forces in Europe who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis, is illustrative. “I remain very optimistic that Ukraine is going to win.” He then added, “Right now it sucks to be on the receiving end of all this Russian artillery. But my assessment is that things are going to be trending in favor of the Ukrainians in the next few weeks.”
The natural assumption by people in control of their faculties and aware of what is happening in the Ukraine is that these people are lying. Many of them, especially the ISW types, have a well known cultural affinity for lying. This general, and many like him in the decision tree, display no signs of sociopathy. They genuinely believe the narratives that they have played a role in creating. The fantasy world they have made for themselves is now more real than physical reality.
This disconnect between the world the elites imagine they control and the world that exists for everyone else is the crisis in the West. Four months ago, that general should have seen that their plan to bunkerize the Donbas and wait out the Russians was quickly becoming a suicide pact. The Russians are simply standing off and hammering these fortifications with artillery. This reduces their losses to the barest minimum, while it slowly and systematically destroys Ukraine.
That is reality, but for Western elites, this does not exist. Instead, they imagine a world where heroic fighters, who look a lot like them, are defending against an increasingly desperate horde of barbarians from over the horizon. It is the great battle for Middle Earth and the beautiful people are the elves and the Ukrainians are the humans, hobbits and other lower creatures of the world. Meanwhile, Putin is Sauron and his army are those vicious, bloodthirsty orcs.
The war in the Ukraine is but one glaring example. The gap between reality and the narratives created by the ruling class are everywhere. The energy crisis they created is not angry people paying five dollars a gallon for gas. It is the struggle to break free from hydrocarbons and transition to a world powered by fairy dust. Food shortages are just the price to be paid for transitioning to sustainable food created in labs using twigs and bugs so that the woodland creatures may be free.
No matter the problem, they have a story for it. They call these stories “messaging” but they are just stories to comport the bits of reality that interrupt the dream, with the larger narratives that define ruling class reality. This summer we will be awash in messaging in the run up to the election, which now works like an award show for the freaks that populate the political class. The best message wins. The winner then gets to spin some new narratives to please the Cloud People.
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I think I figured it out – Zelensky is Epstein’s dead man switch.
I have an increasingly bad feeling about this crisis, that it could end in nuclear exchanges. And anyone with 3+ connected neurons can see that Washington is the aggressor. How the h… would DC respond to Russia, or China, making a strategic alliance with Mexico or Canada, placing nuclear weapons there. And, icing on the cake, declaring that it was their official policy to throw the United States out of the ranks of the great powers?? That’s what DC has served Putin for breakfast. I’m not Russian, I’m not a fan of Putin. But if he doesn’t go nearly ape over that, I can recognize dereliction of duty on his part right there. And now the batsh*t crazy idiots in DC have painted themselves, and everyone else on the planet, into a corner we can’t get out of without someone with 3000+ nukes having to lose face. I believe we have never been this F*cked.
The phenomenon described is perfectly correct. However, let’s be honest, the idea that a cabal of elites are pulling the strings of society is far too simplistic and can be considered as just another narrative that is being pushed as truth.
There have always been people who machinate to secretly influence society. In recent times though, the real issue we are up against is bleeding-heartism. That’s it and that’s all. Bleeding-heartism is the one and only problem. Hysterical bleeding-heartism accounts for everything that is going on that we all hate – immigration, multiculturalism, and wokism. Bleeding-heartism is the reason we all huddle here consoling ourselves about the state of society.
Question is, does bleeding-heartism come top-down from a few elites, or bottom-up from the thinking-and-feeling masses? I say the latter. It only looks like the former because certain people are controlling the media. But that’s because the media tends to be dominated by gays, Karens and self-righteous sensitive people who have pushed up from the masses.
The phenomenon is seen clearly in the battle being waged between the current British government (ostensibly hard-headed-conservative) and the BBC (rampantly bleeding-heartist). This is the front line we should be focussing on. The day the BBC and other hysterical bleeding-heart media are reigned in, is the day we will be on the road to sanity.
You appear to be suffering from normie disease of media infection that makes you believe politicians and media are opposed to each other and concomitant hallucinations about the continued existence of conservatives.
A gave you an upvote, but there’s a few important things you miss:
1) Bleeding heartism as you call it is certainly a key component bringing down western society. However, it’s bleeding heartism mixed with tabula rasa blank slate egalitarianism. Charity and bleeding hearts isn’t necessarily a bad trait if you’re a race realist. Going to Africa and helping a village create a safe drinking water well is good. Wanting to import people who can’t engineer simple wells into your neighborhood is bad.
2: You missed a very prominent group in those that you listed as dominating the media
Way normie. familiarize yourself with the worle economic forum, their young global leaders program , the great reset, and the forth industrial revolution .
Germania is the center-of-gravity in the struggle between the West and Russia.
Ukraine is a front or theater or sideshow or whatever.
I can imagine the Russians throttling things down in the autumn before waging winter war the Eurasian way in 2023. There is cold weather gear and theory to be tested, etc.
But the real point would be to bring about the collapse of the weak German governing coalition and bring the pain to provincial Germans. The strategy is to drive a wedge between the German people and their government, between their government and the Anglosphere and to do achieve both while wedging the EU apart in a dozen places.
To do this, Putin will literally just turn out the the lights all over Europe.
But above all in Germany.
The Russians have the Germans by the balls. They got one of them anyway. The usual suspects are still holding the other. Simply stunning how it came to this. A predicament of Biblical proportions for our friends across the Rhine.
“Simply stunning how it came to this. A predicament of Biblical proportions…” It didn’t come to “this”, or Biblical proportions, just because you said so. Pretty dramatic. Still, interesting comment. Cheers.
The Russians have a lot to offer Germany besides pain. And the Poles, as usual, are overplaying their hand,
What would it take to get Berlin to switch sides?
A replacement of the puppet globalists pretending to be a government.
The late humorist Art Hoppe said, “Well, Washington is several miles square and about as tall, say, as the Washington Monument, give or take a little. It is surrounded on all four sides by reality.”
That was in 1962 and has only gotten worse. In a way the reality distortion field has now expanded to cover the entire US and our vassal states. But still, outside of the empire, reality continues to exist.
In the US the Narratives are safe. The people who don’t in them do not have power. The young are the strongest believers in the Narratives. However, the craziness of the narratives combined with the stick only approach to foreign relations and our demonstrable incompetence are not winning hearts and minds among the darker races.
The anal agenda though may end up being the symbolic divider between the American Empire and reality. The empire places man in man anal sex as one of its defining values. The reality side isn’t going along with that.
The new BRICS+ has to seem like an island of sanity in comparison.
I can’t believe I’m witnessing SCOTUS limiting government power like this. Have they gone rogue or has there been a sea change?
I would hypothesize a connection between the leaking of the discussions of the forthcoming RvW decision and this. That leak was such an obvious dirty trick from the Deep State that it became unavoidably clear that they were actively seeking to undermine the S.C. So maybe this is a bit of fight back. They think of themselves as a third, and equal, branch of the federal government. Thomas and Alito find it easier to make their cases under these circumstances.
Maybe…
The EPA oral arguments predated Roe the leak by months as likely did the draft opinion. Still, it is amazing. While AINO is a goner, if this had been done even two decades ago it could have been saved.
Don’t worry, Romney et al. are going to break their ankles jumping to help the democrats pass bills to roll this back.
Totally irrelevant, but ya know?
The 4th of July would be a really symbolic day for something to happen.
This is right in line with the “believe all women” theme. As soon as an accusation is made—no matter how lacking for evidence—it’s treated as absolute truth no matter how much evidence comes out to the contrary. It was true in the Kavanaugh charade, the Rittenhouse trial, across the entire Trump presidency, and in numerous “me too” incidents. A large segment of the population is seemingly defective and unable to independently process information.
Here’s a question I have – to what extent was the green movement really using the anti-smoking playbook?
What they did was take a true statement “excessive smoking can cause lung cancer or emphysema” or “carbon emissions can.cause rising sea levels” and use it as a blank check for whatever ulterior motives they had
The big reason why anti smoking push never got the backlash that the green movement did was that it was less abstract (seeing smokers at 55 that look 75). The green movement was always something of an abstraction and had a much bigger risk (i.e. power outages).
Nonetheless it would be interesting to find out who was behind or who was funding the 🚭 movement and how it might (or might not) overlap with the green movement
Well, they have been assiduously trying to make the “climate crisis” out to be a matter of public health. The same playbook is invoked with “raycism!” as a public health matter. And then there has been a similar logic invoked surrounding the Coof and vexination. Hmm.
“Public Health Crisis!” Is a common thread here, it would seem.
Stampeding the credulous populace after some conditioning, lately, in the case of the Coof, a major component of the conditio ing being operant conditioning; comply or be punished, because you know, “We’re All In This Together”.
Everything is a narrative. Science is a narrative.
The question is, for someone with power, how many people are you willing to shame or fire or cancel or banish or kill in order to insist that your failing narrative is The Truth?
Credit where due: last winter I distinctly remember repeated media headlines warning basically “Russia gonna invade Ukraine!” Turns out, sure enough, they were correct. I’m the first to admit that what I’ve just offered is both an example of selection bias as well as as relative rarity by the powers that be: propaganda that turned out to be true. Yes, the little boy cries “Wolf!” very often to a false alarm. But sometimes the wolf actually shows up.
The media in the last 25 years have predicted war with every country on earth (and dont forget space aliens too) except Canada and fiji. They’ve predicted nuclear war with India, Pakistan, Iran, France, and Russian (and maybe space aliens too?). It is quite literally just FUD disinfopro.
Here’s a market prediction you can take to the bank: today, the Dow will either go up, down, or stay the same! Hey look, tomorrow I will have been 100% correct 1/3 of the time!
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lying at the time and didn’t think Russia would really invade.
Oh, I think TPTB have known that Russia would invade Ukraine for some time. They’ve been goading them to do it since 2014. Once the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic were declared, it was just a matter of time. I can’t help thinking they thought the Russians wouldn’t win, though.
Why do you imagine the powers that be thought Russia wasn’t going to win? In the preamble of this war, every single prediction made by western “expert” sources in the media saw Russia taking over Ukraine in a matter of weeks.
The only ones who didn’t consider an Ukrainian army quick collapse all that likely were, ironically, those who didn’t think Putin was reckless enough to invade.
“Why do you imagine the powers that be thought Russia wasn’t going to win?”
Why? Because TPTB don’t think they can lose. Do you think they would keep pushing Russia if they expected them to win? If Russia wins, the BRICS system will grow in power, the petro-dollar will be useless, and the West will be a second class federation. Whether or not a large population of the West is suicidal, TPTB are not. They will live forever. Of course, they need an endless supply of babies to sacrifice and to get adrenochrome from.
I do wish you would stop calling this “abductive logic”. Abductive logic is simply the logic of scientific discovery — hypothesis formation. Hypotheses are then supposed to be tested, not blindly followed whatever the data. I suppose the word for that is “faith.” Yes, you make some qualifications in the second paragraph, but “here is where it departs from the formal definition” simply means you’re misusing the word.
Oddly enough, what you are doing is exactly what you accuse the Elite of doing: clinging on to a narrative. It’s like calling something a “vaccine” when it doesn’t prevent or cure the disease, or “democracy” when the votes are rigged.
Peirce, who first identified abduction and distinguished it from induction and deduction, also formalized “pragmatism,” but when W. James started misusing it, coined a new term, “pragmaticism”, which he said was a baby too ugly to be kidnapped. Perhaps abduction needs a new name as well.
they don’t believe their narratives. they are stories to keep the masses enthralled. they work really well to. meanwhile the blackrock/central banker/CCP crowd continues to destroy our civilization and depopulate us. they think that AI and automation means they don’t need a worker middle class anymore.
sure hope I’m wrong about this…..
They’re vastly overestimating the capability of AI and automation.
And I wish them the best of luck trying to run an aluminum smelter using wind power.
C’mon, Mr. Howard. Nobody believes they can run an aluminum smelter with windmills. That is just foolish.
They will use solar panels.
Or big honkin’ magnifying glasses
But just like those solar panels, you need a nice sunny day, and likely cloudless, too.
once we are gone or enslaved they will go back to oil and coal. as I said, They don’t believe any of their lies. the lies are an end to a means . they tell us the lies so we don’t understand what they are really doing . you notice they all have multiple mansions, private jets, and yachts the size of of an ocean freighter. clearly they are not worried about their carbon footprint.
I think they believe it. And there is some basis for their belief. We lasted twice as long in Afghanistan and had minimal casualties to their massive ones. We kicked Iraq’s behind twice and Russia trained/equipped those troops. We defeated them in Syria (supposedly) and Russia had to flee/retreat from Snake Island a day after boasting about seeing off attacks. Russia’s navy is a joke and the Turkey deal means US Naval forces in the Black Sea will sink what remains of it soon. Russia’s attempted take-over of Kiev and Kharkiv was a debacle (like Arnhem) with repeated attempts to take the airports east and west of Kiev by airborne troops soundly defeated (by anti-air missiles). Russian air force assets and air defense is reportedly no match for our forces, and they believe that with a massive defeat by a Poland based “thunder run” to Moscow that generals will refuse to follow Putin’s orders (as ours refused to follow Trump’s) and remove Putin, surrender, and see Russia cut up into different nations under the US thumb. This is penciling in Iraq over Russia. Stupid but understandable.
This is wishful thinking but there is some basis in reality.
Indeed its an open question if the Regime wants victory over Russia or to keep them around as a boogeyman / excuse for oil at $200 a barrel (which is their Green goal).
your info is just western media propaganda. next you will tell us the ghost of kiev will shoot down the Russian air force in an afternoon. I am sorry to say none of what you have been told is true. there are a number of more accurate appraisals :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnc496-PPmFZVKlYxUnToA
out there https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDuran/videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfUzUq5L9NFv2GMVGbEBgkg/videos
OT: saw you are in market for a new TV. get something made in Japan, for best quality. now being made by a Japanese company doesn’t necessarily mean made in Japan. the Sony models that begin with an “X” are what you want 🙂
Good lord are people still watching TV?
“Good lord are people still watching TV?”
No, now it’s watching THEM.
They are used for other sources than just broadcast tv.
My electronic recommendation would be a new computer monitor for anyone doing work that requires them.
There is a real sweet spot for 27″, 2K (2560×1440) monitors right now.
Graphics cards are returning to normal pricing now that crypto interest is plummeting in sync with prices.
It’s all fun and games until the narrative collapses. Bracken notes that recruitment for the US Military is at an all time low. They’ve dropped the requirement for a high school diploma in hopes of finding people naive enough to enlist and serve with the trannies, queers, and menstrual women and take orders from them.
There seems to be a lull in the action for the moment. It might make sense. Vlad can give the boys a breather, and let the economic war rage and take its toll. Fwance and Germany are near the end of their ropes and the fuel shortages could finish them at any moment. They will certainly be on the ropes by fall. I heard that NATO plans to retaliate by capping oil prices…. in other words, by telling Putler what he can sell his oil for. For his part – Joe is gearing up to drop major firepower and manpower on the Polish border. Hmmmmmm. With kneecapped allies in Europe? And a force run by perverts, degenerates and girls? With China making noises about moving on Taiwan?
This would be the height of high comedy if it were happening to somebody else.
ever seen a Polish compass? E and W are reversed!
china won’t need to move on Taiwan. the Taiwanese have seen how effective NATO and US protection was in the Ukraine. they will accommodate ccp wishes .
China’s smartest move would simply be to buy off the current Taiwanese government or pay them to step down in lieu of China friendly leadership.
Wouldn’t surprise me if pro-CCP infiltrators are already in the government just waiting for the signal to go out. I suspect it’s the same in Vancouver.
And, given the way the West looks right now I wouldn’t blame Taiwan for going back to China. is anybody really going to fight to remain a part of the American Empire (other than Ukrainians)?
My guess is bloodless takeover and initially great reconciliation from CCP towards Taiwan to try and bring the people back into it’s fold. Xi Jingping is many things but he doesn’t hate his own people.
Huh. Not so sure. More like this:
Taiwan: let’s just be friends with benefits, while keeping our distance and options open?
Emporer Xi: Ho, bring yo azz hur NOW, fo I go upside yo head.
Taiwan: y..y.yes sir, Mr. Xi.
Speaking of creating a narrative to fit the observation, Nancy was just adjusting the little girl’s position for the camera, like we all would have done – with our elbows?
Din C. Nuttin: Nancy’s a shrew and the little girl a mere pawn. And I despise the repukes lionizing the girl’s immigrant Mestiza mother as yet another super duper real conservative of color. Never forget, family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande, and diversity is our strength.
waste of time normie politics.
“The energy crisis they created is not angry people paying five dollars a gallon for gas. It is the struggle to break free from hydrocarbons and transition to a world powered by fairy dust. ”
I wish they would just look at their own numbers. Solar is at best a 6:1 EROI (energy returned on energy invested). They are hoping, probably falsely, that fusion is going to be positive when the experimental reactor under construction is finally fired up, but even if it is positive, it’s not going to be 50 to 1. It will be lucky to be 1.2 to 1. The only decent renewables are hydro and wind. Even a good portion of modern oil is very low. Tarsands are like 3 or 4 to 1. Tight oil is better, but not by much (and appears to be collapsing). Western civilization needs high return energy sources, like 50 to 1 to keep running well.
Assuming these problems are fixable at all, our leaders are absolutely incapable of leading us through it.
Wind ROI is probably negative, when all the maintenance costs are factored in, and the fact that wind has a low load factor, which requires spinning backup reserves (negating the whole benefit)…Wind is a straight boondoggle….
I’m just going by the numbers they publish, which is about 18:1, which, if true, is not that bad and worth pursuing. But you are probably right in there are a lot of rosy predictions about things like lifespan and maintenance.
“The numbers they publish”
Without knowing anything about wind power, if the G said it, it ain’t true.
Maybe 18:1 on an optimally windy day, but not one so windy that they have to stop the wind turbines for fear of damage. On low wind to dead calm days, well…
I’m with Bartleby below. Although I claim no engineering credentials, I dabbled in the renewables debate last year. I read enough to know or at least “reasonably suspect” that virtually all the data published, even by apparently impartial non-profits and so forth, was shall we say, not of the highest credibility. As with many large organizations, a mere inquiry into the known or probable conflicts of interests various entities have, alone, would make anyone be dubious of almost any claim.
While the data are perhaps a bit harder to obtain in something complex like alternative energy or electric vehicle merits, much less poorly understood systems like climate change and man’s influence upon it, broadly speaking the conflicts of interest are on the same order as Big Pharma’s claims in the merits of their Covid-19 drugs: “safe and effective!” Just take our word for it, no need to ask for data or proof. What are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist nut? How dare you question our integrity!
windmills don’t even produce enough energy to offset the energy used to make them!
But windmills have been used a very long time. Sure, the big megawatt commercial electricity generating windmills are not Dutch Windmills, but we do know windmills powered sawmills and water pumps and the like for a long time.
Really, wind is a very good energy source, especially if you are turning the wind directly into work.
But the big problem with figuring this stuff out is there are all kinds of subsidies and other distortions that interfere with true calculations, especially calculation by proxy like cost.
Still, it is hard to imagine wind being a net energy loss. Wind is a very potent energy source. It basically is concentrated sunlight.
The problem isn’t if it is positive or not. A small positive like 5 or 6 or probably even 10 or 12 just is not enough to run civilization. Civilization is made possible because most of the population does not need to provide the basics for themselves and can go specialize. 2% of people raise ALL of our non-imported food, which is most of it.. This is only made possible with enormous machinery that can only be powered by a high EROI (otherwise, you are just shifting all the farmers to energy production) energy sources. There is a direct causal link between the price of energy and the EROI of that energy. It is what makes tarsands so expensive. They require a HUGE open pit mining operation with tons of huge machinery all slurping diesel, then they have generate steam using natural gas in -40 temperatures to “wash” the bitumen off of the grains of sand. Then you have to add a bunch of natural gas to the bitumen to make Syncrude. Because it is so remote, it also has to be pumped. It needs special pumps and special pipe because it has the consistency of peanut butter. Every one of these steps is a huge energy investment.
What is the lifetime and build input I wonder of the old style windmill (hundred years?) versus modern wind turbines?
Are they comparable?
the old style windmills didn’t require smelting (except maybe for nails, but probably not even them). and as mentioned by others, they have/had a working life measured in hundreds of years.
“Wind is a straight boondoggle”
And it’s ugly. Driving down the A10 from Paris to Orleans and beyond, those stupid generators make it look like the aliens have landed.
Key question is: Does shoveling up the dead birds count as a green job?
Nope. It takes more power to make the solar module than it will ever produce. This is a complex issue with many very important variables with huge impacts on the module’s performance. Shading is an issue. Most modules degrade at 1% per year with most being much worse. China produces the bulk of the world’s solar power modules because they can use slave labour with no environmental constraints on manufacturing. Seasonal fluctuations in intensity and length of exposure vary widely by region as do the effects of mechanical damage from rodents, weathering and corrosion.. Your average environmentalist f-tard can play hide-the-salami with the numbers all day long to get any answer he wants. Solar energy is the biggest grift in the history of the energy sector. If you have problems with the morals and ethics of Big Oil… those guys are pikers compared to the carpet baggers and robber barons of Big Solar.
I’m a fan of the oil companies. I would volunteer to shill for oil. (big oil is a bit of a misnomer. Most “big oil” is state owned oil/gas companies like gazprom and Saudi Aramco) Nothing else in human history has had anywhere near the impact of fossil fuels and oil in particular. We ourselves are human SUVs deriving most of our food energy from oil and other fossil fuels. I read fairly recently that the average food calorie in the US has about 20 fossil fuel calories “embedded” within that 1 calorie.
I absolutely hear you on the Chinese panels. The earliest Chinese panels dating from about 08-09 are all junk and most have already been replaced (bubbling IIRC). A great big quagmire of sunken forever lost energy. NO Chinese solar panel is anywhere near it’s alleged life span at this point. They may all break before they reach 6 EROI.
People think the price of solar has come down by magic. Yes, scale helped, but a drop in quality was even bigger. There are 40 year old US made solar panels in use today. They were like 10 times the price. There are other reasons, some you touched on, why solar panels have come down in price, but most is lower build quality.
Solar panels are also Goldilocks when it comes to efficiency versus temperature.
If the temp isn’t just right, efficiency plummets:
https://blueandgreentomorrow.com/energy/can-solar-panels-overheat/amp/
I bought a battery pack with a built-in solar cell. You can’t leave it in the summer sun to charge because it rapidly overheats. Thinking of sending it back.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, the solar cell is probably just a gimmick and would take a month to charge the battery. I’ve seen many of them reviewed and they all say the same thing, that the solar part is useless.
dude. they know dammed well and that there will be no green energy. they are busily disenfranchising the 99% for their own enrichment . they want us living in dense cities , in dorms , and never leaving our unit except for work . the lies they are telling now are just
to keep people from resisting . as long as joe lib and joe normie believe there will be a green way to live life as they live now, they won’t resist. when all the cars are gone, the gasoline and diesel are gone, and the rolling blackouts last for days , they will willingly move into the ” temporary” relief centers . all the while wondering when the windmills will go on line so they can go back to their normal life. of course they never will .
Hydro isn’t so great either; hydro looks good looking backwards, but water is a scarce resource nd getting scarcer due to demand. Most hydro facilities are out west and have replenishment problems (most of them self-inflicted) that are only getting worse as the development locusts ravage the intermountain west. If Denver, Vegas, and Phoenix double in size yet again, there will be tough choices like “do you want water to drink today, or the lights to stay on?”
That and TVA, so probably the SE Duke grid will remain stable for a while. Might have to go back to isolated regional grids in the next decade-plus.
And of course, the “Russia is about ready to run out of supplies, any day now!” is particularly absurd, because if there is one thing that the Russians are good at, it’s churning out huge numbers of cheap, reliable, and not particularly sophisticated weaponry. Even under the old USSR, dysfunctional as it was, they could create enough fairly good weapons to equip a massive military, and there is every reason to believe that the current Russian MIC is more efficient than the old USSR. The Russians may or may not be able to match NATO with regard to high-tech weaponry, but if the war comes to an artillery duel with dumb, low-tech shells, bet on the Russkies. They ground the Wehrmacht down this way, and I doubt that the Ukrainian Army, while doing much better than I thought they would, is up to than standard.
Of course, Z-man was being nice about the “observations”…they are mostly made up too…
Their observations are most often what philosophers of science call “theory-laden”. Their predetermined theory or “narrative” colors their interpretation and description of what they see.
If the US had not entered WW2, the Germans would have eventually prevailed, though at great cost.
Götterdamn-it-all: If US domestic production had not equipped both Britain and Russia, the Germans would most certainly prevailed. Not to minimize the Russian production of solid, basic weapons, but people continue to discount the 400,000 US made jeeps and trucks sent to Russia, not to mention tons of other materiel.
And as Anthony Sutton clearly demonstrated in his technical analysis books, The US carried on funding and building the Soviet Military all the way through the cold war.
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-Iqz3ytYcb3wWYJ0c/page/n5/mode/2up
There was a US Army supply officer in Montana that logged all the trains the US was using to move material to the West Coast to ship to the Soviets.
The numbers he recorded were absolutely mind-boggling.
During the war or during the Cold War?
Mike-
During WW2.
Pretty sure this officer was stationed at a rail depot in Montana.
Dumb, low-tech shells backed up with drone and even satellite spotting and coordinates derived therefrom are working very well, indeed. There is video out there demonstrating this fact.
Meanwhile the mostly titanium whizbang M777 howitzers go out of alignment or even get bent out of shape after a few rounds.
Titanium? Gee where did they get that rare metal from so we can fix and replace these m777s… Oh, snap, this isnt good.
Its the F15 problem all over again. We have a great, cheap, workable weapon, but profit margins are just too tiny to allow those post-tenure kickback jobs for the senators. $500k for a m198 steel howitzer, $2m+ for the Titanium m777. Stupid MIC.
I noticed that creating a false reality & narrative out of nothing during the COVID pandemic too.
They were saving people’s lives by wearing a mask and staying in. They would get really shaken up when I say something like “no, you’re just cowering in your basement, and wearing a mask alone in your car doesn’t save anyone”. Or, the narrative that the vax is “keeping them safe”. Angry NPC face when they get told that if the vaccine worked they wouldn’t have gotten sick.
It’s getting worse, they’re increasingly unhinged, “Christofascist” is the new word, pickup driving, kkk member, hillbillies are crawling out of the hills to overthrow democracy and spread COVID. In fact the only people who are mad about gas prices are those white trash rednecks with huge pickup trucks.
This is just what average people think based on the media. Every singlular event is turned into a narrative. (Drumpf is DONE this time!) Being outside the hivemind I can see everyone going crazy. This time Ukraine is actually winning since they’re “making Russia fight for every inch of territory”. In reality that’s just what a war is. It does seem quite dangerous to have so many people and so many elites living in a fantasy narrative world. A Reddit world. They won’t wake up.
“They won’t wake up.”
It is worse. The CAN’T wake up. Something has been done to their brains. Whether trumpton’s theory about mind worms is correct or not, he’s onto something there. A mechanism has been found to speed up the lemmings going off the side of the cliff. We are powerless to stop it, and given the increasing likelihood of weapons of mass destruction raining down on us because of the mass insanity, we had better pray there is at least some element of the military/national security state sane enough to stop it by hook or crook. Don’t bet the farm, though.
Yes, most will only learn when their stomachs are empty. And some, unfortunately, even when starving to death, will think they’re saving the world.
the level of insanity in our young people is completely off the charts. between LGBTERQPEDO++ and havin no idea how to deal with members of the opposite sex they are crazy. meanwhile , https://www.fox5ny.com/news/mob-attacks-man-during-robbery-inside-brooklyn-subway-statione
the strongest lemming drowns the furthest out.
The theory about mind worms feeds into my thoughts about the hysterical reaction to the anti-parasitics proposed as early Covid treatments.
It was almost as if the hysterics were under the influence of an organism trying to defend itself.
I mean, there’s evidence that toxoplasmosis creates cat ladies. Who knows what else is out there?
Seems likely.
Before Cochran went nuts over the coof his analysis was that male homosexuality is better modeled as a parasitic infection in the population, rather than genetic.
Make a lot of sense as to why the anti-parasitical was so attacked in the west and access to children is a primary goal.
If you accept the theory of evolution as plausible, that rules out homosexuality being genetic. Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end.
homosexuality increases under conditions of overcrowding. it’s too persistent and prevalent to be a mutation or anything other than “part of the plan”.
Lucius, so it would seem, but not all believe homosexuality is a genetic “dead end” in that it stops genetic inheritance. Think “group” propagation and survival, not individual. For example, I’m gay, but my brother isn’t. He shares genes with me. I promote and protect his progeny and in doing so promote my own genetic lineage through him.
Dutton has some interesting writings on this topic, but admittedly is controversial.
That’s because Twitter is what the hive people think is reality. It is an embarrassing display of mental illness.
B125
They cant wake up. Like any true believer, if they wake up and embrace reality, their whole world view is shattered.
As has been said here, and I’m relating more and more to my people, a parallel society/living arrangement is the way to break free from their nightmare.
Food to expensive/not available?
Grow your own and/or live in farm country. Your surrounded by food.
Gas too expensive/not available? It’s only a matter of time before and enterprising person or people start refining their own fuel. And it won’t have ethanol in it to tear up ones engine.
I’m not saying it will be easy or quick, but when alternatives are taken away, people find work arounds.
Follow what Z does, always say “the Ukraine” not Ukraine. It’s not a real country and never has been. I prefer the Russian term for it though, country 404. Their language is basically Russian, they used Cyrillic and culturally had always been close to Russia until probably the Holodomor. But even then, they refuse to admit that the rest of the USSR suffered equally during that time. So pretty much screw them and they deserve to suffer just for stupidity.
Fuckin’ A, Mike!
Tldr: they hate us and want us dead, our children raped, and our women enslaved. Welcome to the party, pal.
“Another difference from the formal definition is that the initial set of observations are never debated or reevaluated. The faith of the ruling class in their own ability to observe and define the world rules out uncertainty about their observations.”
This is not true for the ruling class. Its not that don’t know they are lying, its just that it is part of the job. This statement is only true for the peasants that rely on the disinformation and lies of the ruling class for their view of the world. I remember a time when people believed that the political class was actually on their side. Every pronouncement was believed because they had access to so much more information than we did. So, naturally, it had to be our being so far removed from the levers of power that made it seem like they were……mistaken. There were always politicians that were known to be engaging in criminal behavior, but they were always in another State. OUR politicians always had our best interests at heart. There were people like H. L. Mencken who were saying things a century ago that seem like they came out of today’s headlines. But, he was just a gadfly that didn’t have all the facts. Why, the powers that be knew things we didn’t WANT to know and kept us in the dark to protect us. Especially the women folk. Like UFO’s. The truth would make us panic! Its for our own good!
Today, it is harder to make this argument. Too many people know they are being lied to and don’t want to hear its for our own good. Everyone has a timeline that they think things started to get out of control, usually around the 60’s. But, when you realize that the politicians that represented both the peasantry and the States were bought off to give the creation of currency to private enterprises in the Federal Reserve Act, and when the Federal government decided to declare war of the Southern States in 1861, or killed sitting Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen, you have to know that this has been going on for centuries. The question you are left with is, “Was there ever a time when the powerful didn’t control the people?” The answer is probably, “No.”
“There were always politicians that were known to be engaging in criminal behavior, but they were always in another State. OUR politicians always had our best interests at heart.”
I was born, raised, schooled, lived, and worked in Illinois until I escaped.
We knew they were all crooks. Still are.
Old man Daley used to say “you can steal, you just have to leave something for the people”.
My dad would say that the G leaves the proles just enough so they would whine.
They want everything now. Screw the dirt people.
Duh Mare (1902-76) was at least a serious guy, as were most of his portly, besuited contemporaries. His son, who had a rocky start in the state Senate (his sense of entitlement got him the nickname Dirty Little Richie), matured as States Attorney (he had his prosecutors actually convict the black underclass) and as Mayor. He made some blunders, such as privatization schemes, and some of his bureaucrats ended up in federal prison, but he learned from his father that power and authority would solve the problem of wealth, something that even powerful aldermen failed to learn. Richie abdicated when he realized that being Mayor wasn’t much fun anymore. The Panic of 2008 was raging, and the yuppies of yore had decamped to tony suburbs along the METRA Union Pacific (ex-C & NW) corridors. The middle class followed their leads, to be replaced by hipsters with “studies” degrees; the Lexuses were replaced by e-scooters and e-unicycles, with the attendant revenue losses. Not coincidentally, flawed but serious men have been replaced by characters who look like escapees from Tim Burton’s workshops.
Aye.
And under ‘Hizzoner’…
…you didn’t look sideways at a Chicago cop.
Now they’re assassinated.
Illinois has a lot to answer for. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama. Chicago. It might be a decent State if they just decapitated Chicago from the body.
Here here!!
Most everything south of I-80 is Red. There’s even a guy who has a huge “Trump Won” billboard complete with a nap of states on it, along 57 north around Kankakee.
I’ve read that there are things in the works,(amazingly that are not reported Ted on the mainstream media), that a large portion of southern Illinois is trying to be some southern Indiana.
Who knows. I wish them well.
The problem is, democracy selects for bad people, people whose stock-in-trade is mendacity and sociopathy. Basically, democracy is just stupid people deciding which bad people will rule.
Anonymous White Male: My dearest friend used to be a super-duper patriot. Loved the constitution, etc. She now recognizes all the lies she was taught. Although she still loves the heritage American people (of whom she is part), she now questions whether real America and its history was ever remotely like the stories. It’s actually very sad to see her former pride and trust so shattered.
the red pill is bitter indeed.
It is her sorrow, but not her fault. That largely lies with the 18th-early 19th century stream of “boat people” streaming in from Europe, with some small propotion of these most culpable for later, pernicious developments.
True, but I’m a simple man. I just want to have lived in a time and place where it was “Leave it to Beaver” on the tube, wife in the kitchen, and kids non-killed at a public school.
Great post. One sticking point – let’s never call them anything that contains the term elite. Elite implies earned and proven superiority in some general or specialized field. These people are not elite.
Unaccountable Failed Ruling Class
Parasitic Ruling Class
…
…
We have all opened a closet door on this cultural rot. As a youngster I learned the classic forms of essay and writing: Succinct thesis; concise argumentation and supporting evidence; summary.
I got my first job at a startup that ended up being a candidate for buyout by a now infamous Mortgage Company. The buyout didn’t happen but a senior executive joined our firm looking for instant IPO riches. It was a time of massive opportunity and creative possibility. I would regularly think of new business ideas. I remember writing up one of my ideas and showing it to said executive. He gave it a milliseconds long glance, saw that it contained a page of short paragraphs and said, “Give me bullet points.” He then handed it back to me. I didn’t have the capital or entrepreneurial spirit to pursue that idea, but someone else did and became a billionaire.
Shortly after that the phrase, “Managing perceptions”, became the business/government phrase du jour. Every time I heard it I kept thinking, “How about dealing with reality?” Often this phrase was used to discuss how to centrally plan economic activity. Just manage perceptions and the consumers will keep on spending you would hear Harvard, Stanford and other Ivy League geniuses say.
Back at the company, I was leading a small team that had to deal with the fallout of deceptive advertising and releasing trading software that was sub-beta quality into production. Needless to say it was not fun dealing with that fallout. I proposed plans for organizational and other changes that would have solved and/or mitigated the problems. In so doing, I became a problem. I eventually left for an adventure and they gleefully hired someone from Stanford to replace me.
A year later the problems only worsened and the savior from Stanford had fared no better than me, and was not well liked by the staff I once managed. This was a good person, but adding a Stanford wasn’t a solution. It was a narrative the decision makers told themselves so they could dismiss me and my lack of pedigree as the problem. It was a means to avoid looking in the mirror to see that their Wild West dishonesty and attempt to run before they could walk was the problem. Having a person with a Stanford degree was the solution baked up by the decision makers to magically solve the problems that were of their own making.
I didn’t realize at the time that this was a microcosm of what I now understand to be the Degenerate Phase of the Progressive Era. I call it Living In The Land of DegPera. If I was a novelist I would write this, with the intention of being the Petronius of our time. Someone out here with a deep talent for novel writing is welcome to riff off of that and write it. I’ve got my own chronicles to create in other mediums.
In any case, for the Failed Parasitic Ruling/Managerial Class I am going to distill things down to a single bullet point:
* How About Dealing With Realty?
People need to believe in something, right? Punch a hole in someone, and you can fill it with whatever you want. These are one trick ponies. Demoralize, subvert, rebuild with lies. Only works from the dominant position, but it takes some self-awareness to realize that.
I mean, it’s already over. We’re just witnessing the spectacle as that self-awareness creeps in like the first flood waters.
“you can fill it with whatever you want”
One of the most difficult conclusions that I have come to in my life is that the media must be controlled. In any sort of representative democracy, where the people influence policy, control of the media is everything because people are so easily manipulated by the media. If you don’t control it then your enemy will.
Few people are more in favor of free thought or “Live and Let Live” than me. But if you don’t want to be crushed by your enemies then you must engage in dirty and unpleasant work.
I didn’t make these rules, I just observe them.
Every revolution movement since print media has understood this simple fact.
Well said. It isn’t just the media. It is any person who is acting to subvert the first principles of the civilization. In terms of my orientation on how to organize a civilization, my most intentional conclusion was the minarchist libertarian solution of self organizing with a central government limited in powers and individuals protected by property rights voluntarily interacting/freely associating.
That is all well and good when the vast majority of the civilization wants to be civilized. This is where I agree with ZMan that libertarianism is unworkable. At least, the libertarianism that castrated the parts from the founding writings and discussion that did not advocate for tolerating subversive and treasonous activity.
Everything has in it the seeds of its own destruction. Whatever gets formed next is going to have to acknowledge and address those who act in bad faith. You can say and think whatever you want. However, you bring these ideas into the institutions and you are cast out. You organize and promote subversive and treasonous ideas you will be marginalized. You persist and start organizing and acting on them, you will be neutralized.
I don’t want it to be that way. Sadly the plain reality of human history dictates it has to be that way. Even more sadly, the decades long replacement operation means that a firm and harsh no, backed up by a firm and brutal course of action is going to be even more necessary going forward. Moreover, it is either going to be us or them as they not we have made very very clear.
In short, I have capitulated like you and think that ZMan is mostly right about libertarianism. Mostly right in that the original libertarianism actually addressed reality, but not sufficiently. We now have another failed republic as a learning experience. There will be bad faith actors and they must be identified and dealt with ruthlessly. Me we be the ones holding the gavels when the war for our civilization is over.
At the risk of injecting religion, something I puzzle over from time to time is how Jesus preached not to resist evil, while also saying He came with a sword, disciples should sell their cloaks and buy swords, etc. Seems a profound contradiction.
I read VD’s post earlier about American genocide of Indians, and the chickens coming home to roost or whatever. But, as he acknowledges, it’s complicated and that’s how history goes. Even Buddhists have armies.
The best I’ve ever come up with is that there is always the aspirational and the practical. Life is the cross, and we’re all going to die for it. No empty tomb without first taking up the cross. Do the best you can in good faith to fill in the blanks. Deny life too much and become a nullity, embrace it too much and become an animal.
Then again, that could be me being heretical or something, idk.
“Jesus preached not to resist evil,”
I think the money changers in the temple might have a different view of Jesus.
Indeed. Plenty to confuse a person!
Tales of genecide lack all subtlety and truth. A huge percentage of the native hunter gatherers died in contact with no natural immunity to European diseases. That accounts for most of the devastation.
They had no resistance to alcohol. Most of the rest exchanged all they had for booze.
They also had their own plans and schemed with each other and the French and constantly attacked settlers. In the southeast they never cooperated and thus, yes, we’re removed. A time when our leaders and citiz me were realistic and serious about protecting civilization and the nation.
They weren’t innocent victims. Jefferson’s plans to settle the frontier assumed these hunter gatherers were able to negotiate on our terms. They weren’t capable or cooperative. Perhaps a way back into realism in today’s dilemmas s to look to how we settled the continent and d alt with realities we could not control.
Yes. Locally, the Amish initially settled in what’s now Berks County on land Billy Penn had acquired from the Indians iirc. The Indians killed them anyway, and the Amish moved into what’s Lancaster County now.
Meanwhile, Scots-Irish along the Susquehanna went vigilante, and massacred Indians.
Penn tried to establish PA on friendly relations, but bad actors on both sides and the French and Indian War really soured all of that in this area.
It’s complicated, but this was their land and I don’t begrudge them long remembering what happened. At the same time, I’m not plagued by guilt because it’s not like the colonists didn’t pay a heavy price to take it.
What’s really complicated is knowing that if you’re an American of old stock, you’re probably part Indian, even if only a little.
The story telling works just fine in Illinois, where free elections are not allowed.
$6.00 gasoline, 5% income tax, 10% sales tax, diversity and unlimited votes coming out if the Chicagoland hive. According to the official propaganda organs, more people voted for JB the Hutt, who was running unopposed, than in the Republican primary.
Meanwhile, reality is private/ homeschools, concealed carry permits and for everyone who can, U-Haul trucks.
If you’re still in Silly-nois, GET OUT! Yeah, you’ll take a haircut selling your house, like we did, but the sooner the less ugly the loss.
Speaking of JB, your worries may soon be over and America’s worries may soon begin. That bloated buffoon aims to take a run at the Presidency (well, in JB’s case more like a waddle at the Presidency)
Feast your eyes on this bit of hagiography: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a40461683/pritzker-reelection-primary-win/
There are two comments to the story:
“Thanks for recognizing our governor. He may not be Barack Obama, but he has governed quite well. I will be proud to vote for him again. And Illinois was pretty well in the dumps after Blago and Rauner finished with us. Plus, he knows where Goreville is! One of the prettiest places on earth!”
“i live in ill he is the best gov we have ever had do not take him away from us”
That remind me why I moved out of Silly-nois.
“JB The Hutt.” Gotta steal that one. My neighbors and I are relatively well off, here in our “Kosciuszko Park” neighborhood, but there are signs of changes-a-comin’. There are already several Black Sign People in our “cop and fireman” community. And there are not a few Fruity Ensigns “flying” here and there. I fear they may stay up long after Shame Month. It may be in my self-interest to sell to these wealthier folks, but I’ll hold out for married East European immigrants like my neighbors. OUR pride flag is Old Glory. Either way, capital gains taxes will be the least of my worries.
There are psychological consequences to relentless lying; you’ll come to believe the lies and cut off your hold on reality.
From the moment their obsession with foreign policy began in the 70s, the neocons ceaselessly churned out exaggerations, distortions and outright falsehoods to justify their warmongering. The USSR had thousands more ICBMS; Grenada was a mortal threat to America; the Sandanistas were really SMERSH in sombreros, and so on. They became very skilful in manipulating the media in Washington through so-called ‘perception management’. At the beginning, there was a lot of knowing cynicism behind all this; they did what was necessary to advance their goals. But look ahead 25 years to Karl Rove’s declaration that ‘we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality’. There wasn’t a humorous twinkle in his eye; however insane this obviously was, he was in earnest. He and his ilk had spent so long presenting a false picture of reality that the world of their wishes became more real to them than the world which actually existed.
And they’re still in power
Z: “The natural assumption by people in control of their faculties and aware of what is happening in the Ukraine is that these people are lying. Many of them, especially the ISW types, have a well known cultural affinity for lying. This general, and many like him in the decision tree, display no signs of sociopathy. They genuinely believe the narratives that they have played a role in creating. The fantasy world they have made for themselves is now more real than physical reality.”
A-W: “There are psychological consequences to relentless lying; you’ll come to believe the lies and cut off your hold on reality.”
This question – whether the Passive Aggressive termites in the Deep State ackshually believe their own press clippings – is of fundamental importance.
Many years ago, I intentionally turned my back on and walked away forever from the Passive Aggressive Industrial Complex, so I no longer have a strong empirical sense of how bad the situation on the ground has become, although the behavior of the Passive Aggressives during COVID was simply shocking, bordering on terrifying [were it not for the 2nd Amendment].
If the termites do now believe their own press clippings, which is to say, if they can no longer distinguish between factual reality and narrativistic lies, then that would be a signal triumph of their masters in the Psychological Testing & Selection Industrial Complex.
My guess is that many amongst the readership & commentariat chez Z are old enough to have children who are undergrads, and who are pondering medical skrewl, and the New Hotness there is the “CASPer” psychological exam, as an accompaniment to the M-CATs.
Eventually, “CASPer” [or should I say, (((CASPER)))?], and similar psych exams, will weed out any and all students who show a potential propensity for Pro-Life Pro-Patient Anti-Infanticide Anti-Euthanasia Anti-Genital-Mutilation [which is to say, Anti-Sadistic] personality types, and over time, as the Psychological Testing Industrial Complex perfects the reliability of the exams, the uniformity & predictability of Med Skrewl student personality types will come to asymptotically achieve 99 & 44/100ths purity.
It’s everywhere now – the Psychological Testing & Selection Industrial Complex – and the Passive Aggressives, both female & male, chosen for employment by the PT&SIC, are increasingly displaying precisely the personalities of literal Stepford Wives.
Both my liberal and conservative friends will spontaneously start talking about how evil Putin is. He has successfully been cast as the new Hitler. My friends are simply unaware of how programmed they are by the media. It’s sad and funny. And they all think that they are so smart and discerning.
I can’t stand to lose any more friends as this point, so I bite my tongue. If someone should ask my opinion, I will say, “I’m America First and this conflict doesn’t concern us. We’re a broke country and we shouldn’t be sending billions to protect a border that is not our own. If you force me to choose between Putin and Biden, I will proudly side with Putin.” Most of them would literally faint.
I would dump them as if push comes to shove they are going to be offering you up without a second thought to the new stasi.
you are right, those “friends” are like Ole Yeller; sad that he was shot, but it was necessary (once he contracted rabies).
Yeah. I’d rather be alone than have friends like this.
Line: Obviously you know your own situation and needs best, but I’d be extremely careful with those ‘friends.’ As trumpton says, they’d offer you up on a platter to the authorities for wrongthink without a second thought. There are very few people I legitimately consider ‘friends’ – where I don’t have to censor my thoughts or words and whom I would trust with my life.
Strongly considered changing my Facebook profile pic to a Russian flag behind the words “No Russian ever called me Deplorable” but I’m probably better of not having done that.
If I was still on FB, that’s probably what I would have done.
And that’s why I’m not on it anymore.
Good for you for showing discretion.
put a pic of a Weber grill for your facebook profile.
That’s the thing I hate most about this brave new world we live in. Having to hold my tongue with everybody or else I can’t have a social life. The worst in recent memory was this middle-aged blowhard that was paying me to harvest some of my bushes (I guess florists pay for twigs or something). Somehow he got on a track about how tough and tenacious the Js are and how Israel is doing so well without any help whatsoever even after those Germans were so mean to them.
I was sorely tempted to do a John Cleese and start screaming at him in fake German: “You shtinking Judenscheiseliebhaber! Gitzen sie auf mein property or else its lampshade time!”
So, recently I’m on a long driving trip with literally a Mars project scientist and we’re having a wide ranging high IQ conversation in which the Ukraine War comes up. This very intelligent person, who is normally very judicious in his comments, suddenly starts making assertive proclamations about Russia and it’s conduct in the war. Apparently, according to this borderline autistic engineer with two masters degrees and a PhD, the Russian army has already suffered 40,000 dead and lost almost all of it’s tanks and armored vehicles. Worse yet, every single NCO and field officer is now dead and won’t be replaceable for at least 2 decades. The only thing that the Russians can do right is artillery, and that is the only reason that they have not yet lost the war. And all of this accurate “insight” is supported by official statements from the governments of Russia, Ukraine, and the US.
I try to inject some “data” from the myriad videos on the internet which demonstrate the exact opposite point of view and the normally calm voice in the passenger seat starts to get loud and hysterical in protest. The power of social media indoctrination should not be underestimated. Even people that possess the intellectual ability to reason objectively can be converted into meme zombies. We are now living in a world akin to The Walking Dead, only this time its the Walking Brain Dead.
I have described this before.
There is something akin to an information tapeworm that is simply implanted wrapped inside other media (mostly moving pictures) that exploits the neural structures and lives independently from the conscious mind. Most people are infested with many of these and they all live independently of each other and the host’s symbolic capacity it seems.
The worms become extremely agitated when input touches on the boundaries of their domain or threaten to dislodge them and they create massive emotional and physical agitation in the host.
You see it all the time.
Your worm concept is very akin to “crimestop,” one of several Newspeak terms found in the glossary of Orwell’s “1984” :
“Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity”
I mean a little more literally as in some form of information virus that is passed inside other information and is structured to basically form a running circuit in the neural framework in the brain.
You see echoes in the idea of spells as affecting the perception of reality, and the fact that most effective programming techniques appears to be via 3/4 word closed loop phrases with specific cadences that build around other similar interlocking phrase structures.
TomA, I think we all have a similar story with some variation. Your intelligent friend simply doesn’t understand how the media is controlled.
For many, that’s a big hurdle to clear. I’m sure he thinks your sources are fringe lunatics or something. After all, they’re not on ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN.
Maybe there’s a psychology where it’s comforting to believe the mainstream sources, and the information outside of that is unsettling.
Wolf
I think the intelligent folk who are mesmerized by the MSM don’t cop to being deceived because they think it would make them look stupid, or less intelligent. It would be admitting a mistake, and we can’t have that.
Disagree. It is an exploit of human nature. We are pattern-finders. You cannot effectively find patterns if you inherently distrust what you see, smell, or hear. So we believe what we hear until something triggers a disbelief. We are the opposite of formal logic’s dictate that the proponent of a proposition bears the burden of proof; the human mind works opposite, assuming truth of any new statement and requiring disproof to stop believing.
For example: If I, an anonymous voice on the internet, tells you that I have a tractor, you will probably believe it. If I tell you I have a Kubota 25BX, you’ll probably believe that too (or at worst, be open to the likelihood of that being true). But if I tell you I live in a Manhattan high rise, you are likely to believe that and, in a complete lack of logic, think I am lying about having that Kubota. But none of it is true (or is it!?! Duh-duh-duuuun).
You are a believing animal with an instinctual response. You must overcome that to escape the obfuscation of modernity.
you are fortunate he didn’t try and crash the car into something. STEM fields are totally pozzed now, and have been for awhile.
lucky he wasn’t in the car with trump.
hehe good one!
kvhkvhkvhkvhkvh
Humans are meaning making machines. Myth makers. We’re uncomfortable living with MUD, mystery, uncertainty, and doubt.
This makes us vulnerable to stories told to us by handsome, attractive, well groomed actors who tell us stories, the “News”. Better to believe something rather than nothing, no matter how unbelievable. Something needs to ground us.
It’s a hardwired, universal human need. While we have certain innate powers that can be called rudimentary memory, logic and reasoning (Most higher animals do — if we had none, we’d all be dead in very short order). As humans however, we also have far greater mental powers. Alas, as you note, some of these are subject to going awry. It’s a fact that the human psyche prefers a story that “makes sense,” that seems to have some purpose. Many lessons that could be, often should be, learnt do not fit that preference and the mind resists them mightily. The witch doctor, the shaman, the story-teller, have careers stretching back well into prehistory. I will grant the mentioned men did indeed provide some positive benefits. Yet in stark contrast, it was the scientist or his intellectual forebear who actually discovered or invented 99.9999% of the actual knowledge that allowed Man to advance from the primordial muck. For his trouble, more often than not, he’s been “rewarded” by being stoned to death, expelled from the tribe, or whatever the equivalent of a Twitter ban was in his epoch. The Greek myth of Prometheus is instructive.
TomA, high IQ types can actually be easier to indoctrinate than those with normal IQs. For example, psychological studies have shown that it is much easier to hypnotize those with high IQs. I am not sure what the mechanics are on this, but it’s a similar pathway to political indoctrination.
He sounds like the “fearful believer” I mention below: people who are otherwise intelligent but afraid to let go of the narrative and accept some uncomfortable truths. Like our democracy is dead/a joke, our military is not invincible, we are not the Bea on of justice in the wod, etc.
Beacon of justice in the world.
Scientists may be intelligent but not broadly so. If you ever listen to any of those science documentaries on TV, they do have people on there who are legitimate scientists that have actually done something (not just popularizers like Bill Nye or Black Science Man). The thing is, once they drift into social issues they have this retarded naivete about human nature as if the future will be Star Trek: Next Gen where Wesley listens to classical music and does science fair projects instead of spending all his time coating the holodeck with space jism. Or they’ll prattle excitedly about some future technology that has obvious dystopian applications, but they can only see the positive applications.
If I’ve read correctly, Isaac Newton was one of the brightness to have lived, but spent his later life as an alchemist.
This is not because he was an idiot trying to turn dross into gold, but rather a pattern seeker. He was more akin to followers of Pythagoras, seeing the mystical linkages between numbers and the material, corporeal world. Or perhaps more directly in the alchemical tradition that flows from the Hermetic tradition – as above, so below – seeing correspondances between the higher spheres and the lower spheres of existence. He was also obsessed with the numerological underpinnings of Biblical texts.
Like I say, a pattern seeker, but translating his pattern seeking back onto his own spiritual life, and not confining it to research into gravity and the movements of celestial bodies, or the refraction of light. He preserved his sense of wonder, and the spirituality available to us incarnate human beings via the recondite connections of matter, energy, and spirit.
Whether it’s “Green” energy or “Let’s start a war!”, I can’t stop thinking about Stalin in the 1930 pushing forward with massive “collectivization” leading to the deaths of about 10 million people (this was separate from the Holodomor). Mao did much the same thing, with many of the same results.
Our elites are mad when it comes to “green” energy. Poverty, death, and despair are a small price to pay for everyone (well: not EVERYONE) to be forced into a golf cart. Energy disruption, leading to supply chain problems, not to mention making it impossible to start a major war…which they want to do anyway.
It’s insanity.
Only to you.
Paranoid delusions are often internally consistent to those suffering from them. The brain just fills in the gaps to make it seem to fit the world.
I would expect that you could not explain the madness to the G7 meeting even if you tried.
I think we should start using the term “salvation energy” in place of “green energy.” The people endlessly yammering on about climate and fossil fuels are innumerate and lack the reasoning skills to grasp the basics of energy and energy economics. For them, it is all about salvation. The imagine living in a world of lollipop forests and windmills powered by moonbeams.
Z, have you ever read Doomberg?
They have a number of very accessible articles on the insane energy policies in the US and Europe. They seem to be ex-energy industry scientists and executives who now run a consulting firm. Doomberg is their anonymous public outlet.
Or even that the hydrocarbons are not from fossils.
If you’re talking about the abiotic oil theory, yes. Nothing is proven or really can be but it’s an intriguing theory and I wouldn’t discount it.
Given massive amounts of hydrocarbons are on Titan, in the Horsehead nebula and lots of other places in space I would say its more than a theory.
Care to hypothesize a biological basis for these?
Trumpton. We can have “fossil” fuel from both sources—can’t we?
“Fossil fuels? Where are the dinosaur space ships?”
Re Titan’s methane seas.
How about ‘promised land energy”? Doesn’t roll off the tongue as well as salvation but twists the knife a little more.
You must mean a Garden- immortality, health, youth, beauty, peace, love, knowledge, diversity, inclusivity, and equality in a perfected world.
I am so picking out my Eloi wardrobe now, swanning about in white linens. Getting a head start before the Season begins, you know.
It’s more accurately called ‘Greed Energy’…
…given all the kickbacks to the Biden and obozo crime family cronies making Don Quixote toys and silicon grid squares.
[Warning! Incipient Spanish Lit flashback 😀 ]
The Quixote reference is very apt. Permit me to pontificate. In the story, the windmill is real enough (they were actually a practical use of wind energy: to mill grain). Don Qiuxote thought they were monsters and thus he charged with lance upon horseback, to poor effect.
In today’s world, mayhap his delusion would be somewhat altered. He’d be a Greenie seeking to replace a working mill (albeit fossil powered), with a monster that looks like a windmill.
C’mon man, we’re not all as poorly read as you intimate. I watched the Don Coyote cartoon.
And me, the Barber of Seville. Figaro! Figaro!
That’s worth a graduate degree, at least.
And I know Wagner!
“Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit!”
Aye.
I’m picturing a soy boy with a man bun…
…standing with his lance in the ‘sun roof’ of a prius (pun intended)…
…that’s run out of juice yards before the windmill…
…and he’s on the smart phone askin’ the tow truck guy if’n he’s got a generator (gas-powered).
Maybe you could go with something like, “I am overwhelming grateful to Putin for getting the Covid insanity out of the news so people finally moved on from it.”
Hehehe. You think Covid is gone. You’re going to be in for quite a shock come next flu season, I mean, the outbreak of Omicron II: electric boogaloo this fall.
The ride never ends.
Golf carts?
At the rate the lunatics running the collective West are moving we are going to be lucky if we find ourselves in a place where we can keep a decent bicycle running smoothly.
Wild Geese: Have you seen the price (and lack of availability) of legitimate Gorilla carts lately? Massive utility in all sorts of scenarios; absolutely insane prices.
3g4me-
The Gorilla cart shortage could be local to you. My local Home Depots are showing good stock.
Generator stocks here are also solid. I really need to get that figured out soon.
Wild Geese: They are available here at Home Depot; I just wanted different models (out of stock at Amazon). Just found a good deal on one at Walmart – got spousal approval to buy one for my friend’s birthday and an extra for ourselves. Now to figure out where on earth the box is going to go in the garage.
Given Stoltenberg’s talk of electric vehicles for NATO in the next war against the Russian climate heretics, perhaps the new troop deployments in Eastern Europe have been assigned all the golf carts in your area?
Begging the Colonels pardon Sir, but if vehicles with batteries are used in a conflict, and that conflict has really cold winters like,say,Russia, I’m pretty sure the batteries would be useless in such scenarios.
Am I thinking correctly?
Stoltenberg has cunningly accounted for global warming to heat up the Russian winters.
From now on all places will be Florida weather.
The USPS, of all people, were so adamant about it that they all stood up in unison, and screamed at the top of their lungs, “Oh hell no!” to the Biden Administration’s plans to deliver the mail via electric vehicles.
That was back in February of this year.
I guess the American Postal Workers Union didn’t like the idea of running out of juice in the middle of nowhere, miles & miles & miles from the nearest charging station, shivering in the cold, when the snow & sleet & hail of a major winter storm struck, with a dead battery unable to so much as provide any heat in the cab of the delivery truck.
Can’t enjoy that taxpayer-funded pension if you freeze to death before you retire.
Well, that was my thought wrt electric vehicles for the USPS. However, I assumed they’ll just equip/hire an additional arm of the PO to maintain/rescue their “stranded/disabled”vehicles. This is the USPS after all and are not required to follow profitability after all—only make the government look green.
Insanity?
Vengeance too.
“Yes we will suffer too. Monkeys flying airplanes, doing disease research, building iPhones? Maybe not, but when the apocalypse comes we will bring the white man down low too and it will have been worthwhile.
“In fact, it now has a military industrial capacity greater than the West.”
Very true. The readers here should read Andrei Martyanov’s “Losing Military Supremacy” and the two subsequent books he came out with (many here probably have). To tie in today’s post with yesterday’s, the West has become a self-deluding idiocracy incapable of dealing with any sort of objective reality.
The problem for today’s aspiring young desk jockey (whether military or political) is that to win advancement he or she has to internalize ruling class lunacy. He or she has to be incapable of thought crime. The system selects for such people. The consequence is people like Anthony Blinken and Liz Truss.
I have followed the thinking of Andrei Martyanov for some time, first becoming aware of it at the now pitiable blog run by Col. Lang, at which he was a some time commenter.
He and his family immigrated to the US from Azerbaijan during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A trained engineer, he landed employment at Boeing, and was well-positioned to observe the increasing rot of the US. Along with his prior career in the navy of the SU, this provided him with the parallax useful to inform his subsequent books.
The GAE elites breezy dismissal of Russia capturing UK territory and destroying their army reveals something about themselves.
Specifically that they dont think capturing territory matters at all. Which fits with their lack of concern regarding what happens with the borders of the US. What matters to them is controlling the network of their empire and the narrative.
“Right now it sucks to be on the receiving end of all this Russian artillery. But my assessment is that things are going to be trending in favor of the Ukrainians in the next few weeks.”
What a glib, tin-eared statement. Someone ought to grab Former General Hodges, stick him in a fortified bunker in an open field, and open up on the bunker with some 105 and 155mm howitzers and see how much it “sucks” to be on the receiving end of “all that artillery”.
“With regards to the war in Ukraine, Western leaders told the politicians that Russia was nothing but a big gas station with large land holdings. They could not sustain a large army in the field for very long. They lacked the capacity to make the ammunition and equipment needed for the war. Her economy was no better than Venezuela, so a boycott would bring it crashing down and before long it would lead to one of those mysterious color revolutions so popular these days.”
Wow, sounds like somebody else who gravely miscalculated Russia’s / The USSR’s ability:
“We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
I wonder what happened to that dude?
As for us, sadly it’s late June and we missed the 22nd for a surprise invasion of Russia. Perhaps we can invade in say, late November – Early December.
And not to be forgotten was the part played in the late start on Operation Barbarossa by the Serb uprising that necessitated a large intervention by German troops to quell. The late start meant that General Winter had a large role to play soon enough.
The Serbs, yet again, played a role as a tripwire, taking one in the neck, with their effort paying off down stream for Russia. Likewise, due to the unhinged NATO attack on Serbia in the more recent Balkan war, even Yeltsin began to wake up to the geopolitical danger to Russia when that happened, this turn of events sending up a red rocket amongst Russian nationalists. Who knows, maybe that raised the stock of Putin and others in Russia, leading to the downfall of the alien oligarchs and turning back the “Harvard Boyz” and their designs of carving up Russia. Serbia, the stone in the shoe of the Western “elites”, providing a wake up call to all who were not apt to be passively poisoned by the fetanyl of NeoLiberalism.
Land war in winter in Russia! Our Values of Who We Are in our Rules Based System demands it! Forward to the everlasting glory of Next Tuesday!
Yesterday I read we are moving actual units into Poland – 101st airborne for starters and more naval assets into the Mediterranean – along with more idiotic sanctions. These GD people are not going to let this go, and the lapdog Europeans willingly go along with it. Erdogan has now dropped his opposition to Sweden & Finland joining nato.
I seriously doubt Putin wants a WW3, but how much more provocation he is willing to accept before enough is enough? These bastards and bitches (mostly ours) are seemingly willing to slaughter millions everywhere in the name of THEIR “higher” cause – everyone else be damned.
Its pretty obvious that the regime wants war with Russia. Hell they probably need such a war to survive in the short term. Its pretty common in history for the clique controlling a fading empire to seek war as a distraction and buttress for their own position. This one has a Valerian vs Persia feel to me.
The europeans are going along with it as subjects of the empire, ie their actual desires are irrelevant.
They NEED war with Russia, because if Russia wins in the Ukraine, it sends the entire narrative of the ruling elite tumbling down.
all their narratives collapse! it never wakes normie up, so why would they treat ukraine narrative any differently? just declare victory and move on to the next fantasy…
In the coming weeks, the collapse of the Ukrainian army in the Donbas will be clear to all, especially the rest of the Ukrainian military. I keep thinking about how that will change the psychology of this war. I do not think it changes Washington, but I think it could cause Europe to think hard about what they are doing. Public opinion in the West has turned against this war. The grinding economy will only tilt the numbers further in that direction.
On the other hand, ten dollar gasoline, which is something the Biden admin is thinking is possible this fall, could cause the West to start a shooting war as a way out of the crisis. Germany is talking about a one third cut in energy supplies this fall. A war may sound like a good option under such conditions.
Yeah, I’m more curious about the Ukrainians and Germans than the Americans. How many of the Ukrainian troops in the field are from western Ukraine vs eastern Ukraine? Are Ukrainian troops in the field in the Donbas mostly from that region or nearby regions? Will Ukrainians from other parts of Ukraine be willing to continue fighting in the east and the south after witnessing the losses there?
As to the Germans, they’re setting themselves up for a long-term drop in their standard of living. They relied on cheap energy from Russia not only for heating their homes but for powering their industry. More expensive energy means higher heating and electric bills at home and lower wages at work to remain competitive.
Outside of the Ukrainians, the Germans are the big loser in this affair.
Western elites envision the shared meaning and sacrifice of FDR era ration cards.
Since Covid, I imagine half the population will jump at the chance. Hollywood will stage spectacular paens, except this time Bing Crosby will be a light creme mulatto with hair like a dust mop.
Interesting. So who fights this war? It doesn’t seem like this is one that fits the pattern of Special Ops forces breaching doors in villlages or urban ghettos with air cover and/or small squads getting in firefights and calling in aerial bombardments. That is the War on Terror.
Russia is a real power with a real army. Our special ops guys are the best, but this requires a real army. Do Poles and Lats fight? Do young Americans fight?
Somewhere I hear Xi laughing while the West’s FRC continues its self immolation. Perhaps someone will wise up and drag the neocons out by the scruff of their necks before we do it in hindsight.
Zman: In addition to cost/lack of supply of energy and food, metal prices will rise. Not because of Goldman Sachs’ estimate (they’re often quite far off the mark) but because the US Mint’s finite and limited output and distribution for the rest of calendar year 2022 is going to be way below market demand (not to mention dropping stock market and industrial output). This will primarily affect gold, and in turn drive up the cost of other metals.
Just one source of many: https://thedeepdive.ca/us-mint-cancels-2022-morgan-and-peace-dollars-due-to-silver-shortage/
You begin with a set of observations and then look for the most likely conclusion from the observations. It is simply the best available explanation for what is observed. There is the possibility that some less likely or entirely unknown explanation is the correct one. This is where the ruling class logic departs from the formal definition.
The GAE elite have taken it a step further.
They believe that their narratives create reality. They aren’t trying to deceive the public. They aren’t fitting observations into an obsolete mental paradigm. Instead, They know that they are creating reality with their stories.
Its a variation of magical thinking. Their wizards (the IC and media) cast spells (stories) that change reality. Not the perception of reality but the reality itself.
Thats how childish and delusional they are.
Another example was their reaction to the ignorant dirz about Trump on Jan 6. They all thought her story was a game changer – despite its completely lacking any supporting evidence and fantastical nature.
This works when you control the media, academia and the enforcement mechanisms. The full spectrum dominance allows you to blare it 24/7 in people’s faces using the cultural pathways, produce endless studies and support articles professing intellectual word salad support and the old favorite to punish those whose still resist.
So within the boundaries of the country it works fine and they have been using it for decades. Its just not as evident as to its joined up nature as with this.
With Russia, they do not control all the information, the academics cannot hide the physical evidence as its there on a map in front of your face despite attempts at “strategic victory in losing 1/3 of the country”, and most importantly there is no punishment arm they can bring to bear without risking actual violence against themselves for a change. Hence the use of the sanctions.
Logically speaking, as this is usually the goto, NATO is now being set up as the international FBI and why they are trying to constantly kick off UN trials for every false flag they themselves have manufactured.
The pathway is so tried and tested for them I can’t see them backing away as it has worked for the last 50 years and I doubt they even see the pattern themselves.
Unfortunately it means its escalation all the way.
I agree there is a fair portion of the public that buys into this from simply weak minds/low IQ/hatred of opponents. But I can’t shake the impression that a significant number buys into the gaslighting because facing the reality means we are f@cked.. accepting the fact that Trump won and the Dems stole 2020 is accepting our democracy is dead, if it ever existed. Many would accept the existence of space aliens before accepting that truth.
These people will continue to buy into the Ukraine debacle because facing it means facing other uncomfortable realities.
But reality is about to reassert itself, good and hard.
My assumption is that the usual suspects are lying: their professed beliefs are so far removed from observable reality that deceit is Fr Occam’s choice. I saw yesterday that there are more and bigger countries queuing up to join BRIC’s than EU. Current tally G8 countries 770 million people. BRIC’s 3,300 million people. The GDP of the West (Actually Gross Domestic Spending not production) actually goes up if Twitter hires another Karen to ban the Z-man’s ilk. How is that production?
Increasingly however honest belief in the fantasy may be a/the factor. The Lithuania fracas is one example; I gather Lith, is connected to the Russian (ex Soviet) power grid, with plans to plug in to the Euro grid by 2025. What sort of perception of reality mandates idly pissing of the one country who can literally turn your country off?
I’m sure Russia is working on resolving any problems this would cause in Kaliningrad.
The clowns in the West may honestly believe that when they remove the sanctions in a couple of months the grateful Russians will flood Europe with oil and gas. If so they are likely in for a shock. I think there is a better than 50% chance that the next three years will see the de-industrialization of Europe.
“Increasingly however honest belief in the fantasy may be a/the factor. ”
Fantasy and delusion are driving most of this insane bumbling into war. Greed and opportunism are there to be sure, but most of this is straight up insanity. The West hardly would be the first civilization to fall into madness, but it would be the first to do so with nuclear weapons (I don’t include the Bolsheviks because by the time Stalin got the bomb from Tribal traitors the USSR’s fantasists largely had been purged).
Its already baked in.
As Boris fuckwit says long term instability and hunger in the west is a price worth paying to continue to support the ethnic hatred of Russia and their own delusions of “standing together” (Gods how I hate the puerile stupidity of that phrase).
Yes. At the outset of the war, handmaidens of the Clouds here routinely asked Americans how much they were willing to sacrifice to bring Drag Queen Story Hour to Keeeeevvvvee. The answers must have been unacceptable to them because the question stopped being asked.
“Be safe”, Trumpton.
Lol.
I am not sure which i one is more irritating. During the coof that got awfully grating.
Not heard it for a while thank god, but the stand with seems to be everywhere about everything at the moment.
I hope they get to stand together at the bitter end. With blindfolds and a final cigarette.
Think like a vengeful Khazarian; it’s the Morgenthau Plan, just a little delayed in its impementation. Besides, if you can’t strike a blow against the hated Russians, the consolation prize is to crush those dastardly European gentiles who, according to tribal lore, themselves did nothing to save the Juice. And a good, teachable moment for us gentiles here in Oceania about what awaits those who deviate from subserviance…even if it takes 80 years for vengence to be fulfilled.
As to the consequences for the Tribe of these strategems, eh, details. Just savor the moment.
Incoming writ served pro (their) bono by Arnold Bloch Leibler in 3, 2, 1… Goyo!
Hehe.. Not really funny though.
It seems they believe that managing scrip for proles to buy bling is an actual, sustainable economy.
We’ll all be grilling and entertaining in our lovely Hollywood sets, wearing fabulous clothes, glam jewelry, and living nifty campus lives in an urban mod.
“Messaging” seems to be synonym for “lying” and “fantasizing.” Lies are preferable to fantasies because the latter also is a synonym for “delusions.” The latter is now more the case than the former and a grave danger when nuclear weapons are involved.
I’m an agnostic on Russia’s Alexander Dugin, who is both a major intellectual and a cheerleader when necessary, but this piece he wrote yesterday is chilling because it is so accurate:
https://katehon.com/en/article/united-states-court-against-ideology-progress
Please read that.
What Dugin labels as pragmatism and ideology are also realism and delusion. The Russians know full well the madness gripping the elites of the West, and, unfortunately, those of us who he calls “pragmatists” would die in a nuclear holocaust right along with the ideologues who control the buttons. My biggest fear from the start has been the Russians would correctly calculate the United States is batshit insane and launch a first strike in response to its provocations. The Russians realize the internal psychosis has spilled into the international realm.
Does anyone seriously think for one second Biden, or any other major Western leader, has a Dugin? Within a span of two years people have gone from hiding from others, clad in masks and trembling in fear in isolation, to pumping out their tiny chests and begging Putin to bring on a nuclear strike. The saddest part is this could have been stopped at some point.
Each dollar of American financial aid could be a Rider of Rohan, sweeping in… here they come… and out… there they go, “dollars,” too, being a narrative.
The usual explanation for narrative “trumping” fact is the hubris of the believers, but that explanation requires explanation in a way that doesn’t end in a tautology.
I’d like to see more Zman reflection on this conundrm that’s dragging us down to the Cracks of Doom.
The root of this is the post-Marx culturalism that crept in during the last century. The American Left was the result of pubic Protestantism. Go back and read Progressive tracts from the earlyn20th and they are shot through with references to scripture. That started to change as new ideas from Europe crept in with the new people from Europe creeping into the ruling elite.
The New Left fused the ideas about the role of culture and the resulting cultural relations and blended them with the old Progressive notions about social justice. The people at the bottom were no longer the result of sin on their part, but the victims of a social construct called society.
The use of the term social construct is the key. For the modern Left, society is a giant narrative structure in which the subplots of life operate. This larger narrative structure is not the result of nature, but the product of the people who created it. The bad things we see in the world, therefore, are the fault of the narrative structure and the people who created it.
When your foundation is based on the belief that life is just a story created by someone, it is not a great leap to create your own stories, especially for the lesser minds that dominate every ruling class. Just as the priesthood is not populated with theologians, a ruling class is not populated by philosophers. These people do not know why they believe what they believe. They just believe it.
Dead on. There was a time when leaders who were not philosophers surrounded themselves with people who understood what they believe. No longer. Like all totalitarians, those in control most of the West need an echo chamber and amplification of The Current Thing. We live in a very dangerous time and moment.
Part of the blinders that our Dear Leaders, political and military, have put on with Russia is an acceptance of dismissive stereotypes about the Russian soldier, going back to the beginning of the 20th century and the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, continuing through both world wars and ending with their small wars, most notably their Afghanistan war in the 1980s.
The extremely short version is that the Russian soldier is a barely literate, drunken, incompetent, unmotivated, and undisciplined peasant, incapable of warfare, and led by thickheaded, vodka fueled officers, and saddled with obsolete weapons. The only time he can win a war is when he massively outnumbers the enemy.
Been reading some of Alexander Dugin’s thoughts on the Russians as a people, and, if his analysis is correct, it’s very clear that they are a people with a frame of view of the world completely and utterly at odds with western conceptions of reality.
Doesn’t make them superior or inferior as a people, but the effect of our diplomats in finger waving about international norms and universalism among them has just about as much effectiveness as speaking Korean to your average American.
Our rulers automatically assume whites who don’t think like white westerners are backwards and barbaric, all the while worshipping what some some inner city jogger or Indian smoking peyote says.
This is a point I have been making for a while. The great diversity of mankind is a real thing. We are better served thinking of civilizations as the starting place, rather than nations. Dugin is correct that there is a unique Eurasian worldview, just as their is a unique Chinese worldview and a unique South Asian worldview and so on.
Ukraine is a clash of civilizations.
I linked Dugin above precisely on this topic. It may be a translation issue, but what he terms Western “ideologues” in yesterday’s piece are more or less fantasists and psychopaths.
One of the great ironies of globohomo is that for all their talk of cultural relativism they are at heart cultural supremacists.
They act as if their own culture – deviant NE puritanism – is self evidently superior to all others to the point that other cultures don’t actually exist.
They’re hamfisted latinX bullshit is an example. Only some group completely ignorant of Latin derived cultures and the spanish language could come up with something so idiotic. But they thought it was awesome next step that all the darkies would embrace.
It is worse than even that. They have been told that very thing by the people to whom they applied “Latinx” to stop it and in response decided the Latinx simply didn’t appreciate the brilliance of that term. I increasingly understand why Stalin snuffed Most of the remaining original Bolshevik leadership: they actually believed their own bullshit propaganda.
Nietzsche (and no doubt others) makes the interesting point: In many eras, such as during the Inquisition and related religious persecutions of medieval Europe, the authorities prosecuting for (say) witchcraft were entirely sincere in their belief in the truth of the charges. In many cases, the accused were equally accepting that they bore some guilt. This was also a feature in the New England witch trials. Now surely there must have been cases where one or both parties knew the charges were fabricated. But the take-away from this lesson to me is: In many cases, both accuser and accused keep absolute faith in the veracity of a world-view, even though later observers might be aware of the false, underlying assumptions.
They don’t exist in a real sense to them, unless its tourist native basket weaving ec.
Any opposition is an existential threat to the hive and so must be destroyed. Its instinctual not cognitive.
how did these people get this way? they are like drug addicts living in a make believe world that is cocooned away from the real world. and they are physically very vulnerable, at the point where the control structure interfaces with the cocoon. for some individuals, this is their private security, for others it is the armed forces. but they are very close to the point where they get taken down into the basement for their final “narrative”. they are an impediment to the world, and so they will be removed. perhaps they sense this impending conclusion, and that is why they act so frenzied now…
I wish it would just happen already. They are an insufferable, reprehensible bunch.
” but they are very close to the point where they get taken down into the basement for their final “narrative””
That literally made me laugh. Will it happen before they get the rest of us killed, though?
The West does feel like Jonestown the day before the end. I wish it weren’t so, but wishing doesn’t make it so.
To play on KvH’s hilarious and brilliant metaphor, someone either takes the “Western leadership” to the basement for its final narrative first or the Western leadership takes all of us to the basement for our final narrative. Tsar Nicholas II nods from the great beyond.
it was the Tsar and his family that I was thinking of when I used “basement” 🙂
I’m glad you used a Lord of the Rings analogy instead of the tired Star Wars one.
It’s a funny thing about Putin, either he is a demonic genius who can control foreign elections and subvert their economy or a sickly dying leader of a third world economy destined to get obliterated in an unwise war.
How long can a country survive with the likes of a ruling elite running an idiotic and ill advised political show trial? Paraphrasing Kissinger regarding both political parties in the U.S., why can’t they both lose. No, we lose.
The greatest narrative fail has to be the difference in Military spending between Russia and the United States, with the U.S. spending something like 6x the amount of Russia on defense, with zero curiosity about how much actual tangible military output comes out of said spending.
With a multitude of military bases, the middle east debacles, and the rapidly accelerating costs of keeping troops, it’s clear Russian is getting at least 3x the bang for their buck.
For one anecdotal story, one of my previous employers was tasked with upgrading a fleet of C-130 planes, which are very old but incredibly reliable machines. What was supposed to be a quick two year task became an 8 year boondoggle, to the point where it would probably been cheaper to just build an entirely new fleet. We had requirements that would change every few weeks. Stop work that lasted a few months only to be refunded and we had to start from scratch in experience as all the people in the project moved to other ones.
Mind you, this wasn’t some new fancy-pants system, but just a basic upgrade of a very basic transport, and had hundreds of millions in waste attached to it.
Wouldn’t completely discount the military though, as I have a friend who is privy to some confidential weapons systems that’s some real space age stuff. whether they will work when it’s game time is another story though, especially since it’s a given Russia and China have secrets up their sleeve also. A hot conflict will be between powers much more equal than our rulers care to admit, which means the deaths on both sides will be staggering.
whiz bang toys are nice, but if the personnel and decision makers (behind them) are incompetent, your military is going to get flattened.
The hardware being sent to the Ukraine is better than the Russian artillery, but the Russians still have a functioning Air force. A week back I read the Russians were doing 200 sorties a day, they are also firing god knows how many cruise missiles and rockets a day to any part of the Ukraine they want, I wonder how many spies the Russians have inside the Ukrainian military, sending out targeting info
SU 25, KA 52, and Hind-d, all have their roots way back in the cold war, but are perfect for a war like this. If the US military couldn’t win a war without total air dominance, how do they expect the Ukraine to win
Western politicians are totally delusional, but at this point everyone in the US/NATO military has to know the Ukraine is finished. they just play along for the money or future promotions
I admit I don’t have any up-to-date military knowledge. Having not been in combat arms, and it being nearly 40 years ago, I never personally touched anything more up to date than infantry weapons dating to Vietnam. That said, if you had to bet on which of the following two would win in battle, would you choose:
(A) The latest high-tech gee-whiz weapon from the USA, perhaps a MLRS or similar type rocket system, that cost $50 million each, and required a platoon of highly trained crew to operate, (Just how easy will it be train rough troops that speak no English?)
— OR —
(B) An equivalent amount of hardware in terms of cost and crew requirements, trading high-tech in exchange for older gear, even decades old, but battle-proven and relatively easy to operate,
each requiring far less technical training and independently deployed?
Or at the individual level, pretend you’re a SEAL or other commando with $10,000 worth of weaponry. There are ten plain old soldiers, each with $1,000 worth of weapons looking to destroy you. Guess what team the odds favor?
Two thing keep coming to mind. One is the fact that the last war won by the American empire was when America was an industrial powerhouse. The regime went to industry and said, build as many tanks, planes, small arms and so as you can so we can win this war. That industrial base and the knowledge of it is gone.
The other thing that comes to mind is how the Germans invested in cutting edge weapons, rather than in volume. The best German tanks were remarkable, but not better than a hundred Shermans or T-34’s. America invests enormous sums on space age weapons that may not be terribly useful against a peer army.
jeebus, the. nazis had jet fighters and ICBMs, but they couldn’t build them in volume…
Going off your second point, the Germans not only had high tech weaponry but a high caliber soldier behind each weapon system. The modern American soldier is a gay tard with a medical profile that couldn’t fight its way out of a bag of Doritos. Diversity, inclusion and equity has taken its toll even on 11 bravo types.
So you’re saying a man wearing female military attire with a pink rifle isn’t going to scare Chinese or Russian soldiers into retreat?
Paroxysms of laughter perhaps. 🤣
That reminds me, has M*A*S*H been cancelled yet? How dare they intimate that a man in a dress and pearls was a sign of mental illness!
No, but the time the Chinese and Russians take raping them will surely slow their advance. 😉
It’s hard to fathom how stupid it is for the US to be dependent on China or other foreign countries for manufacturing things that would be needed in war. This comment could also fit in the essay about incompetency a couple of days ago.
Nonsense. With the Defense Production Act and other laws in place, our nation’s industrial base and native genius would be ready to answer a need at the shortest notice 😀
Why, just in the past few years they have been invoked to produce ventilators and more recently, baby formula.
Stalin’s line (at least attributed to him) “Quantity has a quality all its own” has much truth in it. Coupled with that Russia probably has better systems for fighting a war, I have no doubt the US systems are much better gee whiz generators.
Delusional “Elites” just lurv them some Wunderwaffen. But, as has already been remarked, the industrial base presupposed for their production no longer is there and, critically, some of these weapons rely upon components from putative enemies, well then, bucko, these Winderwaffen may as well not exist.
That goes back to the early Cold War,and my above comment, when the US military started thinking about how to fight the Soviets. They began by approaching all the captive German generals who had fought Ivan (and lost) from 1941 to 1945, and to a man, they promulgated their belief that the big, dumb, Red Army could be defeated by a smaller, high technology, superbly trained army like the Wehrmacht, which the US Army and Air Force took to heart. We are seeing that idea from the Ostfront still being used as a basis for war planning today.
That did work in the 19th century.
Smaller much more technologically advanced western countries easily overwhelmed third world peoples.
So the German generals were in some way reflecting lessons from the 19th century, and refused or unable to update their paradigm with new evidence – ie their own experience in WWII.
Similarly, the mustache man’s goal for the east were reminiscent of what the US had done in North America 140 years earlier. He somehow didnt realize that the Russians were a couple of orders of magnitude more advanced than our Indians.
Yes but that was when the technology curve was horrific. If an army had five-year old gear during that period they were going to get annihilated by a technologically superior foe. Now-a-days GAE might be able to show up with a slightly faster missile or a slightly smarter drone, and it may help out of the gate, but the advantage must be maintained which is where it really falls apart.
Come on man.
Its not crazy to set up wars at the same time with the 2 largest other powers who happen to also be your industrial base and the fuel /raw material supplier.
What could be more sensible than that?
Take note than when “Western leaders” demand China sanction/isolate Russia or….the “or” never gets filled in. Going to war with your sole source for antibiotics, and, given the current situation, psychotrophics, is a non-starter.
“One is the fact that the last war won by the American empire was when America was an industrial powerhouse. The regime went to industry and said, build as many tanks, planes, small arms and so as you can so we can win this war. ”
The smartest thing FDR did was appoint then GM President William Knudsen Chairman of the Office of Production Management. He was key in managing the multiple manufacturers needed and keeping a steady stream of equipment flowing to US forces and our allies.
Now GM’s President is Mary Barra. Probably couldn’t tell you how to build a car but her pronouns are probably in her emails.
“The other thing that comes to mind is how the Germans invested in cutting edge weapons, rather than in volume. The best German tanks were remarkable, but not better than a hundred Shermans or T-34’s.”
When you look at the figures that show between 1933 – 1945, German industry built roughly 35K tanks (and late war, the definition of “tank” covered “Anything with caterpillar tracks and a gun mounted on it, turret or not”) and from a period of summer 1942 – summer 1945 US industry built 49K M4 Sherman tanks of all sub-variants, and that was just one type of tank we built, it hits home.
But don’t worry Z, we’ll have plenty of troopers to fix our wiz-bang machinery:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/06/army-cuts-high-school-diploma-requirement-to-boost-recruiting/
Or not. We’ll see.
“Now GM’s President is Mary Barra. Probably couldn’t tell you how to build a car but her pronouns are probably in her emails.” Very funny. Or not.
That, plus Russia is motivated and its people more united. How many ‘murricans would take up arms to fight for GAE?
Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith. We won’t be so lucky as to get Cyclops Dan Crenshaw or Anal Pete Buttgeig to resign from office and put on a uniform again to fight for Our Democracy.
“Anal Pete Buttgeig”
He [she? they/them?] was in the news today; he wants to outlaw “Racial In-Equity” in roads, which means that all those thoroughfares which come to a sudden stop just before the wealthy part of town will now be opened up so that the Obama Voters can waltz right into the McMansion Zone.
Every shitlib university town I ever lived in had a negro neighborhood with a strong demarcation line where the streets OUT of negro town suddenly simply stopped [physically, geographically] in order to prevent the negroes from proceeding any further towards the heart of Richville.
The other thing that’s really hilarious about university towns is that invariably the town dump will be right next to the traditional negro neighborhoods, miles and miles and miles away from the heart of Richville.
tl;dr == Road Equity is precisely the sort of thing which could send White shitlibs straight into thermonukular mode.
There are some ideas which one simply does not mention in polite shitlib society.
Your C-130 story is par for the course.
Space age stuff?
You mean like the latest hypersonic test failure announced by the Pentagon this morning?
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/us-hypersonic-missile-fails-in-test-in-fresh-setback-for-programme
As we know from prior discussion here, there are serious issues with the entire concept. Yet, the Pentagon continues to throw money at it.
An interesting bit of psy-ops from the Russians is in calling their missiles hypersonic missiles. While technically true, these are traditional ICBM’s in that they leave the atmosphere and then re-enter over the target. When people talk about hypersonic weapons, they mean glide missiles that do not leave the atmosphere, reach more than Mach 5 and maintain maneuverability. These do not exist at this time and may never exist.
The genuinely scary thing should be for Washington is that the Russians do have ICBM that can hit the US carrying enough kinetic energy to wipe out a city without using nuclear warheads. That changes the math of total war.
city killers just using kinetic energy? no. unless they are using mass drivers in space :P. I agree that non-nuclear ICBMs change the math of war though. reach out and touch someone indeed!
The ICBM itself is so expensive that anything less than a thermonuclear bomb seems like a waste of payload.
If the Russians need suggestions on which American cities to target, I have a list they could start start with:
1. Washington DC and
Baltimore (sorry Z, but
there is still time to get
out)
2. Los Angeles
3. NYC
4. Chicago
5. Detroit
6. Boston
7.Atlanta
8. San Francisco
9. St. Louis
10. New Orleans
11. Seattle
12. Portland
13. Baton Rouge
haha Baton Rouge?? there has to be a story there; spill :P. did you get clipped by a mechanic there or something?
I would add Austin to that list.
Yeah, you gotta have those Shitlib Central places on the list. Austin belongs on the list.
Your mention of Mach triggered my memory of the briefing scene in Firefox (1982) where they point out the Soviet plane can do Mach 5+ and the West’s best design melts above Mach 3:
https://youtu.be/zw4BfD1cDf8
The film actually gets it correct that atmospheric friction is an issue during high speed atmospheric flight.
This may indeed be one of the insurmountable challenges for the desired hypersonic weapons.
isn’t anything that flies faster than the speed of sound, hypersonic? maybe biden and co are working on “ultrasonic” missiles!
isn’t anything that flies faster than the speed of sound, hypersonic?
Supersonic.
That was a good movie, but I suspect that “Mach 5” was (still is, I’d bet) about as fanciful as full mind control of the fighter plane. The SR-71 only did slightly above Mach 3, and that would have been a near-outer-space altitudes. Closer to the ground? No way.
An interesting bit of psy-ops from the Russians is in calling their missiles hypersonic missiles.
And Western media is more than happy to oblige them.
In a way, this is analagous to “voting harder”. If we just stick with the plan, the problems will sort themselves out, you betcha.
The greatest narrative fail has to be the difference in Military spending between Russia and the United States, with the U.S. spending something like 6x the amount of Russia on defense, with zero curiosity about how much actual tangible military output comes out of said spending.
It’s budget thinking: we have a problem, we need to do something:
Politician 1: “I’ll do a billion dollars about it!”
Politician 2: “Lol faggot, I’ll do TWO billions about it!”
So when the problems turns out to have gotten worse, “not our fault, we did five billion dollars.”
The Russians don’t need to keep executive compensation and share prices pumped up.
The level of bureaucracy, waste, and fraud in the US MIC is epic. 3 or 4 out of every 5 paper-pushing jobs could be eliminated and productivity would be unchanged.
On an even more micro-level, the security on internal PCs is now so tight it interferes with legitimate research on legitimate technical sites.
Wild Geese: You mean the internal PCs with Chinese software? Not to mention all the magic paper super loyal Han ‘murrican scientists and researchers with top secret security clearances?