148 thoughts on “The Culture of Deceit”

1. .One gal related her story:

   Smokin’ hot, with long blonde hair and a tight black miniskirt, hanging around a bdsm convention.

   Meets her future husband there, a California Democrat politician. Loaded. This guy is way high up.

   Chick’s smokin’, “adventurous”, all that, right? Bedsports for days.

   Well, after a year, there was no sex at all. Mr. Politico had lost all interest.

   What got it up for him?
   Wrecking her mind. Fookin’ with her head and heart was literally a bigger thrill than the most primal urge of all.

   He loved mental cruelty, did it to people with a bright, hard smile on his face.
   It was his life’s mission.

2. This piece on another of Zee’s topics is worth reading if just for this:
   The Spectacle of Woke Feminists

   An army of privileged unhappy neurotic women – with an endless amount of spare time – try to bring meaning to their boring lives.

   ” Two hundred-pound, 5’2 middle-aged women who painted their breasts green and wore white blood-stained pants while running across the basketball court looked like a cross between Shrek and the Hulk escaping a lunatic asylum.”

   https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/spectacle-woke-feminists-dawn-perlmutter/

   • Really interesting. I like the style of Dawn Perlmutter

3. Comparing media to Mimus polyglottos borders on blood libel of the poor birbs, who are still reeling from the abuse suffered as a result of that Lee woman’s trashy this’ll-please-muh-yankee-overlords dime novel.

4. “Only a complete idiot trusts anything he reads or hears in the media. The starting assumption is not only that the facts are wrong, but the people behind them know they are wrong. It is not partisan zeal or human error, but a deliberate effort to deceive. The people endlessly going on about disinformation are the primary source of disinformation. They either promote the lies of government or they create their own lies…… The point is, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

   Theodore Dalrymple sees this world of lies upon lies as part of a deliberate effort to erode people’s sense of truth and falsehood, and weaken their willingness to stand up for the truth:

   “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

   Forced to go play along with the craziest members of society and use their “preferred pronouns”…. forced to pretend that Blacks are no different than Whites, that women are just as capable as men…. unable to express the truth you can plainly see because of the dire consequences of doing so…. our natural sense of rightness becomes dulled.

   Faced with a world of competing contradictory claims, many people will react by shutting down: ‘How can I possibly know what’s true? Fuck it all…what do I care?’

   The more complacent and alienated a population is, the easier they are to control.

   • A demoralized enemy is always easier to defeat. I for one can’t help feeling this way most everyday. It’s not just lies vs the truth—either. It’s a despair of life in this society. It’s the age old question: “How does one live a good and moral life in an evil world?”

     • You and all must be vigilant and process information consciously. Be especially vigilant about vague words.

       Good vs bad makes physical sense. I.e. good harvest vs bad harvest. “Evil” is an imagination.

       There is a preponderance of a certain group of people in gov media finance doing stuff that harms us. That’s a real physical thing, a thing that can be dealt with. “Evil” is just a spiral into no where, where nothing can be done.

       Many of these kinds of sites incite helpless, stand guard at the doorway of your mind.

       We can easily win, as we get our wits together.

       • Sorry Charlie. Evil is very real (look around) and if you refuse to see it you are part of it.

       • Nietzsche makes much of the two distinctions between good and bad vs. good and evil. If I’m reporting it correctly, these two are quite distinct.
         “Good” is how the master (the noble, the upper class, etc.) thinks of himself and his morality; in contrast, “bad” is what Master labels the slave (peon, commoner, etc.) It’s critical to note that “bad” in this context simply means that the serf shares few, if any of the attributes that the noble thinks are his alone. E.g. nobility is clean, cultured, honorable. The peon is dirty, barbarous, and uncouth.

         “Evil” to him, quite distinctly, is how the underdog views the ruler. As a victim of resentiment, the poor develop a “slave morality,” which to a large degree is an inversion of the noble’s “Master morality.” For example, merely because you are poor, oppressed and so forth, you are “good” in my eyes; it is the rich, the noble, who rule over us, who are evil. As such, the commoner can think of individuals of the ruling class as “evil,” without regard to the fact that the nobility might in fact treat the peons relatively gently, all things considered.

         If you think these distinctions only apply to theoretical moralities of other societies and times, I urge you to reconsider. There is likely a lot more here than meets the eye.

     • i personally separate myself from the outer world as much as possible. i also restrict what i watch to things made before 2000 (for the most part; sometimes i make exceptions if i know something isn’t pozzed). knowing people are un-reachable i don’t try and inform anyone (even family) about things i know – such as the vaxx beng toxic, election being stolen, etc. it’s not how i would choose to live my life, given a less pozzed world, but it keeps me from getting down (for the most part). being retired helps a lot, since i don’t have to deal with a pozzed workplace. hopefully things will change for the better in the next couple of years, and i can resume a more normal lifestyle.

     • Join a subset of the evil superset Compsci, whose elements are your companions who will see you through these difficult times. There are more of us than you may think.

5. An oldie but a goodie.

   It’s not enough to just complain about the systemic lying of both our government and the MSM, you have to become proactive with regard to a remedy as well. And just saying to others that they should turn off the idiot box is weak gruel. But you can do this and make an important statement to your neighbors.

   If you have an old TV, great, but if not, go get a cheap one at the Goodwill. On Saturday afternoon, take it out onto your front yard and position various “tools” nearby. Make some noise to attract the attention of your neighbors. Gather a crowd if possible. Then start smashing the bejezzus out of the TV. Work up a sweat. Use a 10 lb. sledge. Make the pieces as small as feasible. Dance and whoop it up while doing so.

   Extra credit. Coordinate with a neighbor to “feign” religious inspiration from your act of rebellion and have him then bring out his TV and follow suite. Ideally everyone in the neighborhood gets inspired and you make it on the local news. At the least, put the video on the internet. Start a movement.

   • Sounds like a good way to get SWATted.

   • so maybe burning your home down will really get the message across?

6. As is generally the case, an excellent article. On a highly related theme, at Unz there’s a long essay that delves into the shadowy history of government’s (typically via covert intelligence services) relationship with supposedly “free” or “independent” press, whether the daily paper or book publishers. I’d heard about this of course; it shouldn’t be a surprise that governments lie and censor (say) during wartime, but during peace time? Absolutely. And the extent to which they do it is mind-numbing. Of course, all that ties in with Z’s central theme about media, especially news, being a torrent of lies. Z’s use of “mockingbird” is apropos, as that was the name of a CIA operation to plant stories in the press, which were then echoed by other press. Of course that probably still happens, and many times over, as with the enablement of rapid dissemination of ideas via social media. As the old saw would have it, the lie had circled the globe while the truth was still putting its boots on.

   https://www.unz.com/article/how-spooks-and-the-establishment-media-are-circling-the-wagons/

   Medicine: While the issues have existed for decades, it took the Covid-19 pandemic really brought to the fore, for anyone paying attention at least, the utter corruption of the system. It’s only a slight simplification to say that Big Pharma owns its supposed regulatory apparatus, and exerts great control over much else: other agencies, domestic and international, legislators, the media (need that advertising money), etc. It is not even an exaggeration to note that a handful of powerful corporations and billionaires basically control the world medical system, to include many nations, UN agencies (WHO) as well as many alleged charities and other NGOs. They may not be out to actually kill off or sterilize much of the world population, as some of the more left-field lunatics (?) would have it, but beyond any reasonable doubt, they have captured much of the essential mechanism to insure that the money keeps flowing. There is plenty of evidence that public health is NOT a priority. Although amazingly some drugs get rejected, enough dubious ones slip through to doubt that there’s much integrity in the system. The recent approvals of the Covid-19 “vaccines” for children and babies is a new nadir: Even leaving the ethics of allowing, much less requiring these shoddy products for pregnant women and small children, they aren’t even defensible on strictly medical grounds: children are at near-zero risk of severe illness AND it is now established the “vaccine” does little to prevent transmission of the virus. (If even interested laymen can deduce this, what does it say about the ethics of the “independent advisors” that make decisions that affect the health and even lives of hundreds of millions of people?) This move is a transparent attempt for Pharma to get these products on the vaccine schedule, where they will have indemnity if/when the emergency is ended and, likely, a springboard to future mRNA “vaccines” (google “Future Framework” if interested.).

   In sum, you’re darned right that you can’t put much trust in what you read. If it’s important, try and do your own fact-checking. (It’s ironic that you can’t even rely on the many so-called fact-checkers and various accuracy in media outfits, as they are almost always partisan, as the Unz article cited mentions. Don’t accepted unchallenged all you read, even here. Sometimes a claim can be judged false on its face, in the case of it’s being internally contradictory. Other times external knowledge is required for secondary sources.

7. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Culture of Deceit

8. The problem of being lied to by the elites is as old as Plato’s cave. The elites always and everywhere concoct some line of bullshit to describe the shadows on the wall.

   Americans have been lied to as long as there have been Americans. The Constitutional Convention was supposed to create a government that could never, ever take your natural rights away. Seventy-odd years later it burned Atlanta to the ground and then burned Savannah.

   Hearst lied us into the Spanish-American war, Wilson lied us into WWI, FDR lied us into WWII, Johnson lied us into Vietnam and Bush lied us into Iraq.

   The question is simply, did they deliberately and knowingly lie to bamboozle the rubes, or did they really believe their own bullshit and think that they were doing the right thing? Sometimes it’s hard to say.

   The currents crop of “elites” doesn’t seem to by lying so much as sadistically rubbing our noses in shit like a bad puppy. They aren’t even trying to lower gas prices, they’re openly trying to outlaw your gas-powered car. They aren’t even trying to cut spending or reduce the debt. They openly want to take your guns. They don’t want abortions to be “safe, rare and legal,” they want them to be frequent so they can openly sell the body parts. They aren’t even trying to prosecute blacks who loot and riot and attack whites, they’re not even trying to keep your kids away from queer pedos and they’re not even trying to close the border.

   It’s not so much the lying that concerns me as the “shut the fuck up and eat your peas because I said so” attitude.

   • From a historical perspective, that all may be true. But I am 55 years old and this is the first time in my life that I am being lied to left and right by major institutions.

     The federal government was always there to play the fair and honest judge when the cities and states would not, at least that was the perception or popular mythology, but the idea was that you might get shafted by the city or county or even the state courts, but you could always rest assured the federal courts or scotus would give you a fair hearing. That was the idea in my lifetime. That’s gone now. That is a huge change

     Cops have now lost regular white people. They lost blacks long ago. Now they lost whites. Huge change.

     Same happening with the military. And banks.

     No one I know ever really trusted the media for at least since clinton

     So from a historical long term view, yes, I’m sure there have always been people getting screwed by the institutions, but for America this is a major change especially for boomers and Xers. I honestly don’t think boomers are able to process these changes. Xers seem to be taking it in stride.

     • “I honestly don’t think boomers are able to process these changes. Xers seem to be taking it in stride.”

       Not a surprise, since Fedgov still works reasonably well for Boomers. Did it not just end civilization in order to protect them from a lethal disease?

       Boomer: But muh Social Security, pension and stock investments are doing fine! We just need better people in charge to handle this year’s inflation. Remote-working from my summer home is great!

       GenX: *long, silent stare* Latchkey citizenship? No problem.

   • Eat your bugs, not eat your peas. Peas are for compliant proles and the elite’s vegan pets, you schlub Dirt Person. You get bugs until you get your mind right and masturbate into another man’s anus to prove your dedication to Our Rules Based Who We Democracy System Order Are.

   • We are definitely moving from the “carrot” phase, “How can you have any pudding, if you don’t eat yer meat?”, to the “stick” phase, EAT THE BUGS, LIVE IN THE POD, OWN NOTHING, BE HAPPY!

   • It’s worth commenting on Plato’s cave. While this is a very famous metaphor in philosophy, I dislike it because I believe Plato has it exactly backwards. Very simply, Plato places higher value on the interior imagined world, he even calls it the “real.” In contrast, he calls the world of our senses the “apparent” world. Both of these are important to human existence.

     In my opinion (and no doubt, those of other philosophical views, but I don’t know their techncial names), Platos Cave goes wrong this way:

     The shadows on the wall are NOT an illusion; nor are they the clever machinations of the actors throwing the shadows. They are the sensory inputs which Nature (not man!!!) has “designed” to provide information about the physical world. Why? Because it’s critical to survival. Now, it’s true that this sensory input isn’t complete or perfect. It is sometimes even wrong due to various factors. But from Evolution’s point of view, none of these senses would have arisen, much less be kept as advantageous traits, unless it increased survival of the species. In other words, that “apparent world” is mostly not under our control, except our powers to respond to the stimuli.

     Xman is absolutely right to note that it’s the domain of “bullshit” to EXPLAIN the shadows on the wall; that is the domain, if you will, of the creative, imaginary part of the brain (Plato’s “real”, skewered below.) It’s worth mentioning, however, that it’s the same faculty that provides useful, valid explanations of the “apparent world.” To cite a contrived example: it is our senses (eyes) that might see a bright disc in the sky (“apparent world.”) It’s the brain (“real”) that supplies an interpretation, if any. A rich imagination might conclude it’s a flying saucer or some other magical phenomenon. But the same brain if operating by logic and knowledge might identify it as the Moon.

     In glaring contrast, Plato’s “real” world, which in the Cave represents the magical outside world, has few if any rules. Yes, it’s given us mathematics and a thousand other useful things, but it’s also the domain of fantasy, whim, insanity, and everything in between.

     I hope I’ve explained it well, but do you see my point? Plato’s Cave has imagination and reality completely reversed.

     Please forgive me if I often belabor these points but they are fundamental to a large body of human beliefs and as I hope I’ve explained, people, including highly intelligent people, have been getting them ass-backwards for at least 2400 years, and probably a lot longer.

     • Plato didn’t get it backwards. The progress of Western man is based upon realizing that “truth” is not based on sensory perception and the apparent world.

       Doo you have electric lights in your house? Of course — but you have never seen an electron flowing through a copper wire. Have you ever flown on an airplane? I can guarantee you’ve never seen the Bernoulli effect with your own eyes.

       Taking the shadows on the cave wall as literal truth and then inventing mythology to explain them is the realm of primitives and savages and liars and hucksters. The Aztecs were damned certain that every time they cut the beating heart out of a living person the sun god would make the maize grow.

       Well, the sun did shine and the maize did grow, didn’t it? Were they right?

       Today’s primitives and and liars and hucksters are openly mocking Senators for thinking that men don’t get pregnant.

       • I don’t really disagree with what you said. To a large degree, it’s even correct. This, perhaps is why there have been in philosophy, warring factions since Plato’s time. I’m not denying that the interior reality (Plato “real”) is worthless, in fact I expressly said that is where mathematics and other useful theory originates.

         One of the most frequent criticism of Plato and his heirs is to value the mental world as superior to the crass perceived world, the “rabble of the senses”.

         I’m not about to engage in a debate over what the meaning of Truth may be. Did Plato err in his assertion that Forms are a higher reality? Do Love, Truth, Virtue, and so on truly exist? Or do they, as I hold with, only exist as abstractions in the human mind. In support of that, I’d say you’d be hard pressed to find me pure Love, Truth, etc. in the physical universe. Or any chosen integer, for that matter. Or from geometry, how about a line? Infinite length and zero thickness? Good luck with that!

         Now, let’s get back to mathematics, or the theories of light, or that Bernouli effect. To the extent these are successful, and often they are perfect, for all practical purposes, they are mental models of how real world processes work, ultimately (and solely) apprehended by our senses (= the “apparent world.”) Please, don’t forget that crucial point: they are models that describe and predict the real world.

         Your point is well taken, that no one has seen an electron or many other phenomena. It’s even possible that some of those were first devised by thought processes (mental creations). But at some point, if they can lay any claim to being real-world phenomena, they in fact must be verified using some type of sensory input, most likely via some type of measurement instrument, which is functionally an extension of the five natural senses.

         Next major point: unlike the “apparent world,” the mental world has absolutely no constraints. The imagination is free to devise a “mathematics” where 2+2 = 5, or a biology where sex can be switched at a whim, or where all people are of equal traits and race is just pigmentation, or belief that news media report fact without any bias. I suspect that these will be very poor models of observed reality, but they’re no harder, in fact much easier, to devise because they lack the constraint that they accurately model observed reality. Your example of mythological explanation (sun god) is perfect. For primitives, that might have been a sufficient explanation for their observations. When modern times came along, however, what we now call science demanded descriptions and explanations that adhered to a higher standard.

         As for what appears on the wall: as sensory inputs, they are essentially not under our control. Barring some horrible malfunction or disease, the senses would not confuse, say, the eye registering a red fruit with the sound/smell of a sulfurous fart. The senses are hard wired. Presented with “Apparent world stimulus A,” a unique pattern of shadows will appear upon that wall.

         What we have control upon is the interpretation we attach to different stimuli, whether and how we’ll respond, and so on.

         Mandating that the outside world bend to every whim of our imaginings, not so much.

     • The cave is the realm of illusion, where whims come and go a la Descartes’ daemon. The mind would be governed by reason and logic.

   • Xman,

     “The question is simply, did they deliberately and knowingly lie to bamboozle the rubes, or did they really believe their own bullshit and think that they were doing the right thing?”

     In the case of Johnson and Vietnam, Ken Burns’s documentary provides the answer to your question:

     First we hear audio of a 1965 private conversation between Johnson and McNamara in which Johnson admits that the war in Vietnam is unwinnable, but refuses to pull out: “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna go down in history as the president who lost Vietnam.”

     Followed by audio of Johnson assuring the American people that “victory is just around the corner.”

     Lies is the language they speak….

   • No such thing as a bad puppy. Only a bad owner.

     • Pit bulls. Enough said.

   • I didn’t think he burned Savannah.

   • Great post.

     Yes, the lies were always there. But we’ve reached the demographic and cultural tipping point where they’re just ready to say, “Eat shit and die. You’ll be happier!”

     This is some Joker level derangement and abuse here.

9. Social trust and government trust go hand in glove, and is usually unwarranted. The highest trust society on earth is probably Japan. And there’s plenty of perks that come with that. You dropped your wallet? Don’t worry, someone will find you and give it back with the cash inside. However, Japanese politicians and bureaucrats may have a much more low key way of lying than American ones, but they’re still liars. So when, just yesterday, they came out with a statement saying that Japan was completely solvent (meaning no reason to panic) the sting the ordinary Japanese will feel when this turns out to be a lie will be quite something. Japanese savers will mostly be obliterated. The social turmoil unleashed will be a coiled spring.

   Fast forward to what’s going to happen in the U.S., not this year, but on its way, when we hit the same problem. The politicians will all start coming out of the woodwork saying “The U.S. debt is perfectly solid. The most solid in the world in fact.” You would expect many Americans to run, not walk to their banks. Unwarranted trust is extremely dangerous. It’s what got us into Vietnam. How many people in let’s say 1962 thought “that McNamara is so nice, so professional, and just as sharp as a tack, I’m glad we have people like that looking after us.” Generally, in the U.S. the older you are, the more shocked you’ll be at our final outcome. Those with zero faith are at a distinct advantage.

   • That’s why they’re buttering up minorities and immigrants

     They’re hoping they can win enough of their hearts and minds and get them thinking they have futures here while they toss us aside. They’re done with us. They know they’ve lost us. Demonizing us is part of that program. Get all the newbies hating us so it seems natural and reasonable that the government would give us the heave ho. “The government is only doing that to the whites because the whites are bad people.”

     I’m sure they are going to come back begging at some point. But for now we are being written off as bad debt

     • “They’ve lost us” and there’s a master plan “to get rid of us”. Make up your mind.

10. “In addition to his stupidity, Biden is also a notorious liar” – like about 99% of all politicians. However, in his case, he tends to get aggressively petulant when called on his lies and thinks himself a real tough guy with his aviator shades. He’s a definite simpleton, but not the particularly affable type – one of 535 dirtbags (at an absolute minimum) who need to go.

    • I think the difference there is that he’s one that lies about stuff that no one even cares about.

11. I asked my parents why they pay $150 or so per month for cable. I told them that they’re paying people that hate them, their progeny and grandchildren to beam awful, mind-rotting propaganda that is nothing but a pack of lies and damned lies into the their house and to add insult to injury, try to sell things to them while they do it.

    They didn’t have an answer.

    When I visit them, I’m just overcome by the stench of the lies on TV. Lying just to lie. I can’t even watch sportsball and not hear lies.

    I’m not saying that all of these ruling class people fit Ann Barnhardt’s definition of diabolical narcissism. But far too many do.

    Diabolical Narcissist is a person who has freely chosen, exactly as the fallen angels (satan and the demons) did, to purge themselves of all charity and are thus voluntarily incapable of love or empathy, and whose entire emotional palate is thus limited to anger, hatred, jealousy and fear.

    She says that DNs get off on lying because they consider themselves to be a higher order of creature. I think our ruling class loves spewing these whoppers because they consider us to be beneath contempt and every time they put one over on normie, it results in an almost sexual satisfaction.

    • Diabolical Narcissist–I’m going to have to remember that one. Very good. Very good, indeed.

    • Sounds like there’s a lot of overlap between her category of Diabolical Narcissist and the standard (non-religious) category of Psychopath.

      • Psychopaths are only driven by the desire for power and wealth, their cruelty is typically just used to manipulate to further those ends. Narcissists engage in sadism because they can’t handle their own constant negative emotions and need to redirect them onto others.

        • They are also known as leftists.

    • 90s music video: Henry Rollins “Liar.” While the topic is relationships, it’s easily applicable to what we discuss here. 🙂

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awY1MRlMKMc

12. Medicine as an institution really did destroy its credibility. From my primary care doc up through the policy makers at NIH and CDC they demonstrated a truly breath taking incompetence combined with an infuriating and unshakable false confidence despite a near perfect record of complete failure. The government institutions’ demonstrated malfeasance was less disillusioning than my own PCP’s failure to draw on his own education and expertise and to review freely available up to date publications in order to make well considered prescriptions for his individual patients.’First do no harm’, I consider myself to have a very high cynicism quotient but I have to admit the collective behavior of the medical profession and its institutions took me by surprise. Previous demonstrations of corruption and lack of integrity like the very cruel encouragement of mutilating children at the behest of perverted tranny freaks and their champions are not the outlier phenomena but in fact the window on the true nature of profession.

    • I agree that irreparable damage has been done to the Medicine Establishment; at least from what I can see with mine own eyes.

      But that’s the thing about doctors: they are not really researchers. And many do not have that unceasing love for their trade that would see them pore over journals from dusk to dawn for the good of their patients. I’ve known a number of doctors, and all mentioned that they did what they did because they “liked to help people”. I often wondered if the promise of a grand eventual salary had anything to do with it.

      You see, already early one, the would-be doctor is deluding xzherself with such statements. Being a doctor is (used to be) a very high status job, and rather well paying – albeit after a long training period and punishing hours. So that’s got to be the primary motivator right there.

      I just don’t think such people have the time nor inclination to do through research on new matters. I mean, most ‘technical’ people don’t even do this in their own work, either. Too much hard thinking.

      And what of the people who’s job it is to research these things? How are they funded? To whom do they owe allegiance? How much rectum do they want to kiss to attain status and power? I don’t really trust those people much either. There’s another reason for my lack of trust: these people often make simple and definite statements about incredibly complecks systems; or, “The science is settled”.

      Lord have mercy on us.

      • “The science is settled.’ One of the early gifts of the man made climate change cult. Substituting ‘policy’ is the simple decoder ring entry for ‘science’ to translate the newspeak back into english of course. ‘Who are you that are so wise in ways of Science?!!’ is one satisfying reply I have found when hearing it in person. I like to lean down and tip up my imaginary face shield as I recite it in as deliberately insulting a way as I can.

        • On Fedi someone had a long screed along those lines and he ended it with “there is no ‘science’ that can overcome human desperation”.

        • Maybe they mean that “government-funded science is settled” – like the solar ridiculousness. Short of the numerous subsidy/rebate/incentive schemes, solar just doesn’t cut it in 2022. Any excess energy you send to the grid in CA is only credited back to you in the form of allotted battery charge time for your electric vehicle. Scam one supporting scam two – subtle, huh?

          Ditto for the federal ethanol farm supports – the entire country (not to mention car industry) has pretended for decades that ethanol is an important ingredient in gasoline blend. About a third of US corn crop goes into this ethanol scam! Clearly, ethanol’s importance is Rock Solid Settled Science – because just imagine the reaction if any presidential candidate called to end this scam while licking ice cream cones on the Iowa primary circuit!

          • “The science is settled!”–Claudius Ptolemy

          • Ethanol definitely doesn’t need any subsidies, but it is a tremendously useful fuel additive, as it helps solve the cold-temp gelling problem, as well as the excess water problem. Also, it has historically been the case that ethanol was used as regularly as gasoline for fuel prior to WWII. There’s also some evidence that an engine optimized for pure ethanol will get better mileage, last longer and be lower maintenance. This isn’t to say that ethanol is a magic bullet, or that it deserves subsidies, but it’s a bit far to dismiss it completely because it’s subsidized and greenies love it.

          • Drew, Ethanol is problematic in my opinion for many reasons. Subsides you mentioned, but also food usage. Here the world is going into a grain/food shortage and we take a major supply out of world circulation.

        • “Who are you that are so wise in ways of Science?”

          So this proves that climate scientists weigh the same as a duck.

        • Blum Distribution, Watsonville CA- a farmer has been demonstrating the viability of 100% ethanol for 20 years.

          It eliminates entirely the pollution problem of tuoulene, bitumen, etc. of petro distillates soaking the land; it’s exhaust is water vapor.

          Ford Motor has been producing tri-fuel hybrids in Brazil for near 50 years.

          Do the political Greens care about any *actual* solutions to any problem?

          Not one. Not the slightest interest in any but the worst consequences.

          Lying, and opportunities to lie, is the hearthstone, the creed of their religion.

          • No one denies that ethanol can power a motor vehicle. So can bio-diesel, many vegetable oils, and so on. If memory serves, a normal diesel engine can burn soybean oil, not even requiring modification.

            ~1980 I saw a pickup truck powered by “wood gas” something also done by the Krauts in WW II due to extreme wartime shortages.

            The more practical of these — ethanol is surely near the top of that list — may even burn cleaner than today’s first choices (diesel or gasoline.) However, save in exceptional cases they cannot compete with fossil fuels. In many cases it costs more energy input (often in fossil fuels) than the finished product will return. The free market isn’t stupid; if that were not true, then these alternative fuels would see much wider use than is the case.

      • Yeah, I take what my doc says with a relative grain of salt anymore. With the ability to easily research everything, why take anything they have to say at face value? Especially after virtually all went totally in lockstep with the establishment BS – no original thinking at all – either through fear or stupidity. Just like dentists – these days, I figure the semi-annual teeth cleaning is nothing more than a recurring revenue stream scam that we’ve bought into.

        • The entire allopathic medicine philosophy of Western doctors is “nothing more than a recurring revenue stream scam”. By treating symptoms and not curing the disease, they give their “patients” a quick fix and then requires regular checkups before they renew your prescription medications. Never mind that the petroleum based chemicals they give you have side effects, negatively effect the entire body, and cause rebound symptoms if you discontinue them. No, medical doctors are just overpaid quacks that will sell you out so that they can continue to get those sweet private insurance and Medicare dollars so they can buy their 3rd wife a new Lexus.

        • I too have skepticism of medicine.

          However, I beg you reconsider your dismissal of the dentist. Most people have no concept of how important good dental health is, not only in ability to chew what hopefully is your healthy diet, but also for a whole list of systemic health issues, some of them potentially serious or even fatal, in the case dental hygiene is missed.

          It’s well worth the several hundred dollars a year you pay. As the old saying goes, you can pay a little now, or a whole lot more later. Your choice.

        • Yeah, the British believe like you and look at their teeth.

      • Many doctors I know were poring over the journals in the early months of covid, some obsessively so. The problem was that all the journals at that time were pumping out publications that advanced the global politicians’ narrative, most based on flimsy, manipulated, or non-existent data. So your doctors who were the most well-informed and well-read were the ones reading about how the virus was extremely deadly, that conventional medications had no effect on it, lockdowns and outdoor masking were sensible and necessary, that there was no natural immunity to covid, etc. The fact that there were rubes out there that were skeptical of them, that dared to question them and their fellow experts, only made them more fanatical in their faith to the narrative and their Rightness. By the time any well-researched and non-hysterical literature was published by the journals, most doctors were such die-hard covidians that they were incapable of questioning any conclusions they had jumped to in the years before.

        • You can not read books about Covid, nor even *published* articles and be on the cutting edge in a fast moving field. Articles that await peer review are placed online for review. You need to read those publications.

          There are also peer to peer communications in the field that one should/could read. Their were also numerous meetings/seminars held to discuss Covid developments. Many of those were rebroadcast online.

          That being said, I maintain that most doctors are technicians—not scientists, and are lazy.

          Here’s what really happened wrt Covid and typical physician response. Doctors are all connected to medical associations and other specialty groups. They send them information wrt “best practices” in their field. The doctors read these blurbs and that sets their treatment response to patients. It also has the added effect that if a physician holds to this new, emerging “standard of care”, they have a better chance avoiding costly law suites.

          Of course, the medical higher establishment has been coopted and were notorious in supporting the Covid fiasco from the top down. They enforced their dogma and cast dissenting voices into the void—but not all dissenting voices. There were some folk that were of such stature as to be independent of the establishment. I found these people, so could your personal physician—if he cared enough.

          • vlantic nibbled around the edges of the issue, but the problem is that the major journals themselves are corrupt to varying degrees. That’s not to say that everything they publish is a lie, but here are some general criticisms:

            1. The journals themselves lack editorial independence; they are dependent upon subscriptions, from universities and such. Also some depend upon advertising revenue. If you’re publishing articles critical of Phizer’s new nostrum, that may adversely affect future advertising income.

            2. They are subject to outside manipulation, sometimes blatant in retrospect. This was seen in early 2020 when Fauci et al. coerced a few journals to publish opinions asserting that SARS-CoV-2 was of natural origin, and harshly condemning any suggestion of artificial origin. This is all well-documented in the later FOIA email dumps. Some of the journals have retracted the earlier articles.

            3. The published studies themselves are riddled with so many flaws, I can only scratch the surface. In the first place, they’re designed to put a product in the best possible light (or worst, if you’re looking to make competitors look bad.) Objectivity suffers. Huge amounts of money, millions, billions, of potential profits are at stake. It should be easy to understand the motives to sway the outcome. Contracting firms and staff know they’re expected to produce certain results. If they don’t please the client, future business or grants may dry up.

            4. There are probably many more, but that is from memory.

            Bottom line: Most studies and their publications should be viewed with suspicion.

            Compsci: Another curious feature, especially with the Covid-19 lies, is that many of the claims, even from supposedly reliable sources, even government, did not stand up to known science. Examples abound, but here are a few. The mRNA technology had never been very successful in actual use, in fact scarcely used in humans and often with dismal results. Then suddenly it’s a star technology, rushed to market, relatively little testing, and we were assured (and still are!) that no corners were cut, that everything is above board, and it’s a safe, highly effective product! Now, with a claim like that, you don’t even require much background in medicine or vaccine development to be naturally suspicious. What are the odds that a virtually untried technology suddenly becomes the answer to all the world’s problems? More worrying: If one knew that traditional vetting of vaccines was a period of many years, wasn’t something that was tested for a few months, using procedures that were dubious at best, not exactly worthy of being claimed to be safe and well-tested? For those with some background knowledge (again, the well-informed layman, reads some articles, one doesn’t need to be a virologist…) they might inquire upon what basis any vaccine might be developed against a type of virus that had never been known to have a successful vaccine earlier?

            Major point: even from the outset, there were plenty of red flags, holes in the arguments, that should have been obvious to experts, and were even apparent to laymen who took some effort to educate themselves on the particulars.

          • replying to Ben
            I am entirely of the same opinion. I does not take a genius or even anything but a moderately intelligent layman’s familiarity with viral infections to know what a joke the masking ritual was for instance. Fauci could not have looked dumber when he put 2 on than if started hitting himself on the head with a hammer. Fundamental medical principals both ancient and modern were cast aside overnight at the behest of obvious morons and fear mongers. It is interesting to analyze the scale of this crime, the damage done to society by the perpetrators, and contemplate the appropriate punishments.

      • My grandpa was a surgeon, a good one too, and my sense was he got into it because at that time it was an exciting field, you made good money, and got a lot of respect from the community.

        But I think the excitement of the field is what drove him. It just seems there were lots of new things coming out and there was a lot camaraderie within the profession, which was mostly men. The camaraderie aspect, looking back, the feeling of being part of a community, talking shop with other docs, all of that surely played a big role. Knowing you were helping people was an incredible psychological bonus. It was just a great life. I only ever remember being around him and feeling positive energy. He was an amazing man, in the context of my life, perhaps the best man I have ever known.

        Today the profession is a mess. And the quality is piss poor. The docs have none of the qualities of the men I remember. Half of them talk like they’re gay. Most are foreign.

        • I see several MDs. I’m pretty sure the foreigners are: Haitian, Indian subcontinent. My primary doc is American but she looks like what Jen Psaki will probably look like in her 50s if she has a bad hangover 😀

          Other than one of these trying to poison me with Paxlovid recently, I’ve had satisfactory service for a couple years from this motley collection.

      • “Being a doctor is (used to be) a very high status job, and rather well paying ”

        At its best It was never a “job” . It was always a professional practice where competence and reputation was everything. That changed when doctors became mere employees of the giant medical corporations, whether honestly in it for the money hospitals or “not for profit” foundations. That’s the core of the solid unvarying line of bullshit.

        • So i slide over to Maggies after that post, to find this.
          https://workweek.com/2022/06/30/the-death-and-life-of-the-private-practice-physician/

          Same point, but with numbers.

          • I’m not disputing the article. However, the private practice still exists and probably for a reason. Not the least is that a truly independent doc has a lot more leeway in how he practices. While I’ve never specifically looked for one, I am considering doing so just for the potential benefits of routine care. I just got over my first Covid infection. It was mild, but a month later I have a lingering sinus infection (but could be allergies.) My traditional doctor, part of a group, would likely never prescribe the “forbidden” drugs like Ivermectin. Yet an independent probably would. This varies highly by State, of course. In some States, or Nations, a doctor can face loss of license for prescribing the wrong thing. Now that might have served a purpose to discipline an MD handing out opiates like candy. But if you need to be convinced that politics has taken over medicine, look no further than Ivermectin. Some pharmacists refuse to fill the scripts. Yet this isn’t an addictive substance, in fact it’s supposed to be a very safe drug. Since when did politicians or regulators become better at practicing medicine than a physician?

            Anyway, back to that independent doc. He’s still regulated by the State, of course. But he doesn’t kiss ass to some corporate administrator more concerned about money than delivering the correct health care. Many are fee for service; merely being free of insurers must grant much freedom and less paperwork.

            There are probably downsides of course: they may not have hospital privileges. They are cash only. But they may have many advantages too. If the doctor has more freedom to practice, his patients have more options.

        • 1000% bile.
          Corporate medicine has destroyed the art, the calling, the profession of Galen and Hippocrates.

      • you would think a doctor knows what is and what isn’t a vaccine. half the stuff they prescribe is toxic, and the other half is ineffective.

    • Medicine has gone fully corporate. Owned by Big Pharma and insurance companies. Doctors are just employees.

      The American Medical Association (AMA) was always a government connected cartel to keep MD salaries high and prices astronomical.

      • Just as an example of how wrong and lying “medicine” can be:

        remember when they said eggs are red meat were killers and you should eat more carbs? WRONG!

        And it came out that egg and meat shortages were driving this “scientific” proclamation!

        Eat that red meat, boys!

        • that and the grain states bribing them to push carbs.

      • AMA cartel, brought to you by JD Rockefeller, to hide the damage being done by petroleum based, non-organic drugs and the trauma-based medicine ‘requiring’ those drugs, being pushed by his licensing university/hospitals.

        Btw, father Nathan Rockefeller came to the US already immensely rich in 1840, nee Frrance, nee Turkey, nee Spain. Crypto as sh**. And now we have the Vaccine Regime. He!!, that bunch was doing poisons and spells in Egypt.

13. “The partisans in the media make their case for their cause, often cherry picking the facts that work best for them.”

    Once you reach this point, the media becomes incapable of being honest. No man is an angel, but there are ways to mitigate a man’s desire to be an activist or advocate rather than a teller of the facts. You can put 2 opposite partisans on the story or an opposite partisan editor. But when “facts” become tools of propaganda, what are you left with? Now this partisanship has taken over every aspect of news and not just political. Even something as seemingly simply as a product review or reporting on a new technical innovation is all just noise and advocacy. Allowing an EV fanatic cultist to review a Tesla is as ridiculous as allowing a partisan Democrat to report on politics.

14. The real pandemic has nothing to do with Kovid and everything to do with mendacity. But that’s only the half of it. The other half is that all of the lies are in the service of a single ideology and in aid of compelling endorsement of that ideology.

    In short, all of the lies do one of two things: they either harm white people or they strengthen the institutions that harm white people. The only whites who trust these institutions are fossils whose faith in ‘Murica can only be shattered by a firing squad salvo, or Leftist whites who long to pull the triggers. In the latter case, trust should properly be understood as support.

15. Outstanding.

    I think a lot of this ties closely into that poast you made recently about stories and narratives. Without them, no one at all would go along with any of crap coming out of the media. Concocting a narrative that the simpletons can emotionally glom onto is a huge part of keeping this failing empire running.

    It will probably even work… for awhile.

    JFC – the home page of my computer is set to MSN news and when it comes up with the day’s headlines I have to willfully force myself to ignore it – it’s like being trolled by little girls. STUPID little girls. I am trying to make the Brave browser my go to, but old habits die hard.

    For me the indicator of a potential good news source with integrity is in the moderation. A site like this one is a perfect example. Our esteemed blog host doesn’t care one whit whether I agree with him or not. Regardless, he always has legitimate ammo for his argument. He is willing to expand and elucidate for doubters. There is no real agenda here – he notices stuff, presents his take on it, and doesn’t really try to force his views on others as those with agendas do. I have never seen a legitimate poaster banned here to date.

    It won’t be long now. The narratives are falling apart faster than they can cobble them together. Come fall, when heating costs soar and the currency and economy problems deepen… unless something changes the gloves will come off.

    One can only hope.

16. Biden’s physiognomy suggests his proper level in a just society would be used car salesman.

    Yes, it is terrible to know that those in charge see all the people as fungible slaves.

    • The Zman: “Biden is the sort of glad-hander that should be selling Cadillacs in Boca Raton”

17. I wonder if Gallup has a poll on peoples trust in polls?

    • That is the killer shot right there.

      Lefty does everything through polls – leadership, science, parenting, you name it. The problem is when those polls and “studies” come back with the wrong answer.

      I am technically and scientifically inclined and I noticed early in the game that Lefty gets very tetchy when you question his data, methods and math. This is why so many of them advocated death camps for the unvaxxed during the Covid debacle. Their science requires unquestioning trust – and that is the kiss of death right there. Real scientists and researchers actually invite critique and and questions.

      • “Their science requires unquestioning trust”

        If Z approves it, I will have a lengthy post on the psychology of what you’re calling “unquestioning trust” [it appears to emanate from a mid-brain structure called the Insula].

      • Polling reinforces reactivity, to the detriment of longer term considerations. That short term focus survives in an environment of news cycles. One more reason to turn off your television, and to be selective about which media you consume.

        • This here is one of several stops. Sometimes I miss a day, but I’m quite sure I learn more than if I had watched evening news or perused one of the mainstream news sites. Well worth the $5/mo. I contribute to pay for the electricity the nightlight in his guest bathroom uses 😀

    • Polling results are whatever you pay them for. At my daughter’s wedding, I met up with an old friends daughter. She was out of college and employed by a polling firm. I always “knew” that these firms gave you whatever response you were looking for, but it was even worse than I thought and she confirmed it. She was also looking for another job as the duplicitousness of her position was too much for her.

      As it was put to me, there are basically *2* types of polls commissioned by political organizations: one for the masses—to persuade by whatever falsity/deception that was needed, and the other, internal—to give the clearest and most accurate findings for the organization to use.

      This is why, when Trump ran against Clinton, there was a poll out 10 days or so before the election giving Hillary a 12 point lead. However, in the last couple of days, the same poll organization then had Trump only trialing by a percent or so. This was so the firm could maintain its credibility for the next election cycle.

18. “In a world where no one trusts anyone, the cost of doing even simple things goes up. A big part of the drop in the standard of living is due to the collapse in social trust due to the constant lying.”

    The premise and content of this article was good. The thesis added at the end is dubious Z-Man. The reason for the drop in our standard of living are the lies that the economic system is based upon:

    – spending and consuming more then is saved and produced is great!
    – you can “manage perception” to keep the economy booming or out of recession
    – artificially low interest rates stimulate economic growth
    – inflation is desirable because it is necessary
    – we can measure and twist all of the knobs (inflation, interest rates, perception) at the Eccles Building
    – we can import endless hordes of unskilled labor
    – we can sustain a massive warfare/welfare state with no economic or social consequences
    – guys like Neil MacFarquhar (Scots/Arab???), Kamil Galeev, Igor Gerkin … … will “manage perceptions” and “nudge” the public into never ending support

    The chickens are coming home to roost in the form of a lower standard of living. The collapse in trust is simply a reaction to the lying and the deliberate creation of strife and anger along racial and other social value lines. Why a governing class that is sitting on top of a debt implosion powder keg this big would want to inflame a society and destroy trust is incomprehensible. But, people like us, have a different value system with things like integrity, honor and solemn respect for duty and responsibility at its core.

    btw, MacFarquhar has quite a fixation on Charlotsville, VA.

    • Z: “There is a cost to lying.”

      PL: “The reason for the drop in our standard of living are the lies that the economic system is based upon…”

      Kinda sounds like pretty much the same thing, bro.

    • A little nit to pick, but it speaks to something larger about today’s world and what to expect coming down the pike. Where I think the “standard of living” metric is rather dubious and perhaps misleading.

      I say this why? An example is Europe and specifically Italy where for the longest time the word was that Italy has a lower standard of living. These things are measured mainly by a nation’s per capita income. When I was a younger man living in Italy on and off over some years I had a good view into this because I would go back and forth between there and here. The juxtaposition of what the average income buys there versus here was very obvious. Long story short, for the world to say that Italy had a lower standard of living than america it only really meant, in practice, that you could spend more on a car or perhaps afford an extra jet ski or maybe get a bigger truck. Because all of the essentials were the same, so all the American superior “standard of living” translated into was something more disposable income you could spend on crap. Because that’s all it is is reality. Average Joe in America makes $50,000 when Tony over there makes only $38,000!

      It just means that Joe blows that extra $12,000. It has nothing to do really with “standard of living”. Both Joe and Tony have a decent place to live, running water, personal and public transportation, etc. and it could be argued that Tony had a better quality of life because he didn’t have to work as many hours, had a summer month off, had access to better quality food and cleaner beaches, wasn’t forced to live among blacks. Etc. I guess we can say, thus, that the American “black tax” is $12,000 in this case because that’s how much more you need to pay someone to be relatively happy in a world with lots of blacks, providing the economy is decent.

      Anyway, there is much more I’m ours keep adding to this, but I hope the point was made.

      • Yes.

        Official metricks and what is often meant by ‘the standard of living’ seem to be purely about what your dosh can buy.

        However, I’d gladly give up a hefty portion of my wage and a whole lot more material things if I could have: minimal Evil in government, minimal minorities, a populace that didn’t feel guilty about it’s history.

        I mean, it’s great that I can walk down the High Street and buy some amazing laptop if I want. Still gotta walk past all the aliens to get there, plus billboards peddling insanity. Now I could buy it online… still gotta put up with the website’s ‘Pride’ banner, or a pop up asking me to give my dosh to the ‘Plucky’ Ukes.

      • “Anyway, there is much more I’m ours keep adding to this, but I hope the point was made.”

        Your point was made quite well. I will share my abbreviated anecdote. As a young man, I had the great fortune to live and work for some time in both Japan* and a fly speck nation that is basically an Imperial Protectorate, Palau. The former has an exponentially higher standard of living, to use the conventional definition. The people there also were among the unhappiest I’ve ever encountered. The economic and social pressures were enormous. While Palauans would chew betelnut and drink kava-kava, basically to socialize and get a buzz, the Japanese got hammered sometimes nightly to deal with the pressures of life. I use that as one minor example.

        I don’t want to go full Rosseau and glamorize life in Palau because it, too, was troubled albeit in different ways, but it made me realize how these measurements and metrics take so little that is important into account. While Japan certainly isn’t Western, it is somewhat adjacent and if forced to choose between the two I consequently would choose it as the place to live due to the material benefits; I am a Westerner, after all. I still would be living in the harsher of the two places, though.

        *JR above referenced the deception and corruption of Japanese and he is spot on. As for the coming tumult he mentioned there, I am not as certain it will happen, but if it does happen, all hell will break out. As some Frenchman once noted, the Japanese essentially are ant people and go about their lives in a strictly planned manner, until the day they don’t and kill anything and everything around them.

    • The points about standard of living are well taken. I agree there are more than economic metrics. We can say that standard of living are the “pure” economic metrics and quality of life is the better and more comprehensive, albeit subjective, measure.

      I’ve a lot of experience with Italy. Having strong family and strong tradition and strong community are great QOL benefits. Even 25 years ago they had the same problems with immigrants from Africa, North Africa, and even Eastern European countries that all had radically different cultures and practices (think Albanians). It was a source of ire for the native Italians. And it wasn’t as fragmented. You could be on a lonely Sardinian beach or at the train station in Milan and could think you were in a Madiagascaranian or Moroccan street peddler’s market. It is way worse now.

      It was and is, even more so now, a major drag on standard of living and quality of life when you throw in the welfare state. There are massive employment problems. For all of the talk of population and demographic implosion, the youth of Italy have very poor job prospects because the employment rate is so bad. They have debt and government size and regulation problems that dwarf ours.

      This disconnect between messaging and policy is yet another good example of why we have such low trust. Their politicians say they must import people to do the work, while the native born people have high un and under employment. We have the same narrative lie confusion here. We need UBI because robots will be taking all of the jobs. At the same time we need mass immigration to keep growth going and fill the jobs Americans won’t do. That is just one of many examples of the staggering contradictions amongst the lies that we all know about. it isn’t just the lies, it is the sheer volume of them that contradict and refute each other. Which speaks to Z-Man’s point about their contempt for the truth and for us that they don’t even bother to keep a story straight.

      There is a great malaise in Italy because of their economic as well as alien immigration policies. Standard of living is a part of quality of life. It isn’t just the economic benefit of work, but the meaning in meaningful work that is essential to a high quality of life.

      • Italy today is not much better than America in terms of “demographics.” In fact I’d go as far to say that it’s shit.

        And I hate saying it

        Milan and Naples have always been shitholes imo. Asians and blacks in Milan and Albanians in Naples. No thanks. But even 25 years ago the secondary cities like Turin or Genoa were all very nice. Not as sweet as the dolce vita years but I’d say equivalent to comparing the 1980s in America to the 1950s in America. Maybe 80% as good.

        My father’s side is from Bologna. It was always a bit dumpy in the city, but the outskirts and farm areas and so forth were gorgeous, and that’s where most of my family lived. Today it’s still holding on but the upbeat spirit doesn’t seem to be there anymore. People are just tired and becoming miserable. Or seems to me at least. And there are not enough young people around to give you that jolt of youth and energy and positive outlooks for the future. Even the young people seem depressed. But again that might just be me, but I doubt it, seems everyone is seeing the same thing. And the same thing is happening in America. No one seems very happy or hopeful for the future.

        My mom’s side, they’re from Sicily. And that place has always been a mess, but mostly in a fun and good way. I used to have the best times there at the beaches. And Palermo, the craziest things happen there. But yes lots of weird foreigners, and more and more blacks. But we have so much property in both Sicily and Bologna that we have to tend to it. But most of my Sicilian family have left for the mainland, so it’s usually me and my few cousins venturing down to Sicily to make sure nothing has been ransacked or burned down. And it’s not up to me to be in charge of selling it. But a story for another day.

        My brother lives about 45 mins north of Rome. It is still mostly Italian, small villages and little cities and valleys and hills all strung together up into Siena and Tuscany. Still wonderful and beautiful. Still preserved. But he tells me, funny enough, there are more and more Ukrainians there.

        Moral of the story, Italy needs something like a big gulp of espresso to get its ass in gear and give the people the energy to kick out the foreigners and make the place lovely again. And America is in the same boat. If there is anything I pray for in terms of the future, it is this.

19. “In this regard, it makes sense why they selected Biden for president. In addition to his stupidity, Biden is a notorious liar.”

    It doesn’t really. Excuse the profanity but Biden is a scumbag of the first magnitude, and has been for the half century of his political life. He has always been an amenable and pliant tool for ruling-class interests. But it’s not as if there’s any shortage of candidates where mendacity and lack of integrity is concerned.

    Looking at past presidents all I see is one inveterate liar after another. Reagan, Clinton, GWB, Obama. Even Trump played fast and loose with the truth — and I voted for him twice.

    What I see with the installation of Biden (unless you insist it was a fair election) is a slap in the face of the American people by the oligarchy. “See, we’re installing a vegetable and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

    • It does seem to be a provocation, as does the installation of Richard Levine as the first woman 4 star general or admiral or whatever title they handed that pedo advocate with hairy sweat man boobs tucked into a girdle.

      • Yeah, you know he’s a major “check box” when promoted to such a post. Here is a medical “expert/authority” who himself is mentally unstable/delusional and we sit people are to look to him for guidance. 🙁

    • The slate of candidates willing to run for President has been bad for decades and has been getting worse each cycle. The field Biden was selected over was pathetic. The only you can even argue was worse was the 2004 Democrats. These guys also seem to have very little input into VP selections. Kerry loathed John Edwards, McCain knew nothing about Palin before she was on the ticket and considered her a stupid hick, Obama picked Biden so he would look better by comparison, Trump had Pence forced on him by donors. The pattern in Presidential elections seems to be mega donors selecting mouthpieces for their pet positions, when the donor told them to drop out, they did. A lot of the old guard donors on the Republican side are dead now (Boone Pickens, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson), so it will be interesting see how this develops going forward.

      • Yeah, it’s really something to recall that in 1988, Biden was a lying dunce whose candidacy was a short-lived joke … and then realize that Biden has only gotten worse in the 34 years since. That they couldn’t find anyone better to install as President and VP than Biden and Harris displays the degradation of the system.

    • > What I see with the installation of Biden (unless you insist it was a fair election) is a slap in the face of the American people by the oligarchy

      With all psychopathic/sociopathic commies, the humiliation ritual is the primary purpose.

    • The “Uncle Joe” meme is coming into contact with the Pedo Peter and 10% for the big guy realities. Try spinning that, little smelly lesbo negro at the podium with your dwarfish hands.

      He was never a bumbling nice guy. He was always a nasty son of a bitch and should have had his teeth knocked out at the public pool he talks about with little girls rubbing his legs, would have saved the world a lot of problems

      I hope he goes down hard, along with his pos boy.

      I’d settle for his boy going down hard. That should cause the old man to croak. Win win. And take that mannish square jawed wife with ya.

      • You, sir, are my spirit animal. My hero. For decades I have wondered why others could not see what I saw so plainly. Stupidity, incredible arrogance, maliciousness, vindictiveness, lasciviousness, vanity…I could go on and on. A near perfect embodiment of all the worst traits one could ascribe to humanity. And NO ONE seemed able to recognize it. It was almost sci-fi worthy, some weird cognitive block, to which I was the sole exception. Finally, another voice in the wilderness.

20. Biden is the sort of liar who lies even when the truth would be more to his advantage. This is a very dangerous sort. The other liars come to the conclusion they should be incontinent liars too.

    No way that ends well.

    • At least wrt Biden, seems TPTB are considering pulling the plug on him. Question is, what comes next? If an incompetent liar like Biden can do this much damage, imagine what a competent liar could do.

      • biden is an indictment on the competence and foresight of TPTB. he blew up in their faces in less than 2 years. so typical of this inbred crew…

      • Competent liar was bill clinton

        He was a scumbag but a decent administrator, at least compared to the people lately.

        • It says something when I actually feel nostalgic for Slick.

21. Chemotherapy is terrible, but it is better than dying from cancer
    —
    As with all medical treatments, of course, your mileage may vary.

    • Indeed. And the fact is we’re all gonna die of something at some point. If you’ve got stage IV pancreatic cancer, you can have a few good months to wrap life up followed by a few months of painkillers and time abed philosophisizing; or you can squeak out maybe a year with chemo, but barfing up your guts on the regular. I’d rather make peace with death on my own terms.

22. Low societal trust, I think, really helps Oligarchs and is the hallmark of modern Oligarchies. Inflation is its handmaiden.

    Inflation creates low trust in cash money, allows Oligarchs to use leverage to buy up all the worthwhile hard assets, taxes the people’s savings and promotes bullsh*t inflation-hedge schemes like Bitcoin.

    Low trust keeps the peasants fighting with each other instead of directing their wrath upwards. It normalizes crookery and graft. It taxes all transactions because either political influence or “lawyers, guns and money” have to back up every deal, which is fine with the Oligarchs who can afford this tax, but burdens the average guy who cannot.

    The other tax is psychological: the stress from living in a low-trust society is meaningfully higher than the “picket fence” American of our youths. This is killing everyone through depression, booze, drugs and fatty foods.

23. “The transaction cost of everyday life.”

    That’s something that’s easily overlooked in the busy-ness of everyday life similar to the sunk cost of having ever to question our confirmation bias which . leaves us suspended, not trusting anything but our instincts that our intellect then tells us may be erroneous because of our confirmation bias. It’s a variation of the prisoner’s dilemma. If I believe that everyone is saying or doing what they believe to be in their self-interest, long or short term, I have no basis to trust anyone. But since, to survive, not being an island, I have to trust someone or something, I throw the dice and gamble. The end of paranoia: utter randomness.

24. Since knowledge is no longer based on rationality lying has become simply a difference of opinion stated as facts. This can’t work in genuine science or apples wouldn’t fall from trees. Since humans began moving upright there have been two genders, as is the case with almost all animals. Even the simplest shepherd wouldn’t argue differently. Without the nation/states nobody would have even known that there was such a thing as Covid-19 because there isn’t. When supposedly lucid people tell us that the world is coming to an end because coal is used to produce electricity it’s time to re-evaluate our what’s left of the surrounding culture.

    • > Without the nation/states nobody would have even known that there was such a thing as Covid-19 because there isn’t.

      Covid is a case where data saturation actually worked against everyone. A fifty years ago Covid-19 would be known as a particularly bad cold season. Now with data overload, along with corrupt and haphazard methodologies, they could make it look like a catastrophe.

      Quants who love charts and graphs but with no underlying natural instinct for human behavior, or understanding that nonquantifiable data can be just as important as quantifiable data fell for it wholesale.

      Our new technocratic society is going to get real wild with these spergs dictating policy.

      • On Covid:
        – They proclaimed “exponential growth” even though they had CENTURIES of data showing that pandemics never spread exponentially.
        – They proclaimed covid a “novel” virus with “no natural immunity” despite knowing at the very beginning it was similar to other coronaviruses (that have been with humans for millenia).
        – They said we had to lock down despite there being pandemic preparation plans in place in every major country that stated to do the opposite (and were backed up by data).
        – They said masking would protect us by providing “source control” despite knowing that coronaviruses spread through aerosols.

        All of this was KNOWN by doctors, epidemiologists, and “public health” imps from the very beginning.

        To Z’s point: this had nothing to do with “haphazard” methodology. It was ALL deliberate LIES from the very beginning.

        • “It was ALL deliberate LIES from the very beginning.”

          Indeed. It is because those with clout are Evil, and doing deliberate damage at the behest of the demons that control them.

25. There was a military recruiter who recently was wailing about how terrible recruitment is right now. The hilarious part was him blaming it partially on a “toxic” propaganda campaign on the right framing the military as a hapless, woke institution that was a bureaucratic mess.

    He then moved to complaining that health disqualifiers that ended possibility of enlisting, such as ADHD medications, history of depression, etc. He said in the old days people would just lie in their apps and there would be no verification.

    The funny part was that he completely glossed over two salient facts that are clearly true.

    1. It wasn’t a toxic campaign by conservatives that tarnished them, but their own advertising.
    2. Our youth are an overmedicated mess of anxieties and pathologies, only made worse by big pharma.

    The oddest part was he was a real true believer. He actually believed his own BS, and actually saw no problems with a guy who wanted to chop his dick off entering active service.

    These clowns look at collapsing trust and assume some boogeyman, because, of course, THEY don’t see any problems. Zero self reflection.

    • They let Bradley Manning join the US millitery, how did that turn out

      How low is the minimum standard now, how low next year

      • I truly hope they start to use trannies as recruiters in every office in every strip mall in every city big or small. To do otherwise would be transphobic, anyhow.

      • As I often say on this topic, the military won’t take (roughly) the dumbest 25% of the population. To enlist, in addition to being at least of reasonably good health (~50% fail that) and not being a druggie or criminal (~10%), you need roughly the IQ of an 8th grader (back in Grandpa’s day) or (until recently?) a HS diploma, which achievement wise is about the same as that 8th grade education back in 1945. And for that semi-humorous closing: Anyone who’s served in the military and/or lower levels of government service, knows the intellectual hurdle isn’t set very high. And they want to lower it even more??? 🙁

    • At the same time, the military is expelling over 60,000 personnel over the covid-19 vaccine mandate.

      • Pittsburgh, PA is on track to lose 50% of its officers over jab mandates.

        21,000 DHS employees are looking for jab exemptions.

        You just love to see it.

    • “Zero self reflection”.

      Liberals (leftists) lack insight. They are like mentally ill people in this regard.

      • “Zero self reflection”.

        Yeah, running White alpha males out and expecting queers, Shanikas and LaTrashas and Juans and Juanitas to fill the void was a big oopsie they can’t force themselves to acknowledge. I’m glad it happened because the military is done now.

        • Load up on popcorn.

          We’re going to see tons of ships crashing into each other, planes crashing into carrier flight decks, and subs crashing into underwater mountains.

        • “… the military is done …”

          The empire really is panicking right now. Fear of GAE stormtroopers was the glue holding the empire together. GAE Ukrainian proxies, who were at the start of the war probably more proficient at ground combat than homegrown GAE imperial regulars, have gotten clobbered. Most of the rest of the world will still have relations with the GAE, but won’t obey GAE dictates to shun anyone (Russia, China) who won’t obey GAE dictates.

          Sanctions didn’t work back when we were an industrial powerhouse. “Obey or we won’t sell you the stuff we used to make but whose manufacture we shipped over to China!” oops

          A system attempting planetary control that relies upon financial mediation of trade between third parties only works when the price the third parties pay for using the system is lower than the price of setting up their own system. The GAE has both increased the cost to others of compliance with its dictates while lowering the cost of non-compliance. There is a slot in the mass grave of history awaiting the GAE, right on top of Sodom and Gomorrah.

    • Anecdotes like this is why deplorables should be feeling good going forward.

      Another good sign is the F/A-18 that just blew off the carrier deck in the Med.

      Who knew those had a super stealthy sub mode like the F-35?

    • That sounds about right CR. I read as much as I could tolerate of Z-Man’s references in this article. This one was particularly hilarious: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html

      They effectively describe their methodology, of course, always quoting a non-regime actor describing what someone else is doing.

    • How long does the “white supremacy” boogeyman last? I mean, how long can the lie carry on? Will it persist until all whites are either dead or have fled the country?

      • If Haiti is a model then they next turn on the mixed race people and purge them.

26. The collapse of public trust is a very good thing and a prerequisite for what everyone agrees must be done since reform of an inherently corrupt system is impossible–separation. Dissolution already has started around the edges and lies that destroy peace and prosperity will accelerate the trend. Separation initially will be de facto but eventually the collapse will allow it to become de jure.

    • Yes Jack, but with whom will you make peace after the separation and the dust settles? Perpetual chaos ain’t so great. Perhaps Lebron James will be their new king and you can cut a deal with him. But it could also be a never-ending mess.

      • They will eat each other because their competence level does not allow for planned chaos outside their hives. Peace with them is both undesirable and impossible.

        • He is my concern:

          Conservatives are weak, stupid, and unwilling to stand up for their own interests.

          I think they could only achieve separation inadvertently through collapse of some central authority. Their aversion to wielding power will mean that they will be ultimately be unable to maintain whatever they get through such a collapse.

          • Conservatives won’t survive a charcoal shortage.

27. The further you descend down into the toilet bow, the faster the vortex spins and the more relentless is the centrifugal force that ultimately pulls you into the abyss. That is where the USA and Europe find themselves today. Yes, the lying is now as pervasive as gravity, but that is just a symptom of our impending demise. Desperation is the real danger now. At the bottom of the social pyramid, desperation will manifest as chaos and wanton violence (get out of the big city now). But at the top of the governmental pyramid, desperation will become an imperative for distraction. And a big distraction is needed to mask the economic disaster that is about to unfold. Manufactured war has traditionally served this purpose, but the Joint Chiefs are not going to allow a nuclear confrontation, so Plan B is now in play. The RONA second wave will arrive soon and this time there will be a lot of dead bodies among the vaccinated. mRNA is a time bomb about to go off. Expect marshal law to be declared.

    • who will enforce marshal law, given that cops and army were forced to vaxx? if bodies start dropping, a lot of them will be wearing uniforms. the usual forethought by TPTB…

      • It’s martial, as in military, law. Not marshal law.

        • The only unvaccinated in the Banana Empire’s tranny janissaries either have been court martialed or in the process of being discharged. They also tend to be in the age range most likely to die from myocarditis.

        • thanks :). i know that but brain farted 😛

          • I never have brain farts—but my spell checker does! 😉

      • First, apologies for the spelling error. Live and learn. Second, the coming Second Wave death toll will not be apocalyptic, but it will be significant. Severe economic hardship will drive many of the residual able-bodied men into government service in order to receive a paycheck and feed their families, so the Jackboot ranks will be filled. My essential point is that hardship is coming on like a freight train, and it’s a way overdue remedy for the softness that currently is killing us in slow motion. But a lot of deadweight is going to fall by the wayside as the strong survive this gauntlet of fitness selection pressure.

    • who’s going to enforce martial law, oh wait, no need, we will willingly comply-curfews and rationing and turning in your neighbors aka neighborhood watch..

      The meek may be going to inherit the earth, but only what’s left after the cruel and the clever have done with it-

      • People power in Beijing got China’s first jab mandate tossed in 48 hours:

        https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/beijing-scraps-chinas-first-covid-vaccine-mandate-just-48-hours-after-outpouring-social

        If droney Chinese folks with no firearms can do that, what could heritage Americans do?

      • According to the late Frank Zappa, the meek shall inherit nothing.

28. there is also a sexual component to lying (and crime in general); people get off on getting away with it. this is pretty universal and seems to be hard wired. why did god make us this way??

    • Because evolution made us this way, not some fairy-tale sky father.

      • Well some fairy-tale sky father must have set up the process of evolution, as there is no scientific explanation for how order magically came from chaos, and how life spontaneously sprang from non-life. Unless you believe in magical lightening or mystical sea vents.

        • Ultimately an unanswerable question. Even if you could prove beyond all argument that God existed, it is a legitimate question to ask where He came from.

          DLS, above, is making a very common specious argument, a fallacy that (I think) is a form of the “Fallacy of appeal to ignorance.” Or “ad ignorantiam” if one wishes to sound urbane. This essentially says “I believe it must be true, because it hasn’t proven to be false.”

          DLS, it’s certainly true that life as we know it, almost certainly arose from non-living matter. Life is exceedingly complex, and we hypothesize that it arose from simpler antecedents. And yes, against great odds. But arise it did. We just don’t know how for sure.

29. What’s starting to get to me is they can’t even tell anyone truthfully how many genders there are. The media I can kind of see, but the government? That is just so far gone to the point where how anyone now trusts any word from a government official is beyond me. And it’s going to start becoming the norm for the medical community. So I’m supposed to trust a doctor who can’t tell me how many genders there are?

    Next time I visit a doctor that’s going to be my first question. I might give my name first. But then after that it’s “can you tell me how many genders there are?”

    And that black woman yesterday arguing with Josh Hawley about whether men can have babies. They’ve trained their pet monkeys well.

    • Given even the densest Normie realize there are only two genders, such a transparent lie works to our benefit. I hope they start to make federal cops and military officers publicly claim there are 43 or whatever genders. In time, the GOP will compromise, and the official number of genders will be lowered to 41.

    • There’s no such thing as gender, only biological sex. Start your conversation with the doctor with that one. See if he or she has the courage and clarity to acknowledge the obvious.

      • If he answers “There are two biological sexes and a lot of crazy people” that’s the doctor you want.

      • The AMA, of which many doctors are members, has also declared that white supremacy, i.e. witchcraft, is among the most serious public health threats.

        Any doctor who believes this, by declaration or association, is an ipso facto quack who shouldn’t be trusted with a divining stick.

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