190 thoughts on “The Survival Problem”

1. This image is the final word on what “progressives” believe:

   https://imgur.com/a/2QXat4W

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2. “Directly in front of me was a tsigani – a gypsy – with a hand-lettered begging sign.”

   Man, I kid you not, I saw the exact same woman last week! I live in one of the small cities (on Interstate 20) about 5 hours east of Dallas. I was in the local Wal-Mart last Tuesday and this little lady (19 to 23 years old) comes up to me with a hand lettered sign (written on a 5 x 7 card) and sticks it in front of me while I’m looking at a bottle of Vitamin C. At first my brain registered “Mexican”, but then I instantly realized that this is NOT the way a Mexican would beg for money; they never come inside a store to do that. Years ago, in Paris France, I saw gypsies all over the place. This small person was clearly a gypsy, and I even told my son this when I got home (he was un-impressed, but he’s only 17).

   The sign said, essentially, “I hungry. Me have baby. No job. Need gas car. Will help me?” I thought for a nano second, gritted my teeth, and said “No. No.” She said nothing then went and asked this other white guy who reached in his pocket and gave her what looked like a couple of dollar bills.

   I am 57, I have seen a lot in my day, but now I’m being accosted by gypsies inside of a Wal-Mart that is approximately 4,700 miles from Paris. Daily I wonder what it will take to make people like me snap and have that “when-the-Saxon-begins-to-hate” moments. I don’t hate the little lady, but I’m beginning to see that there is no rational response that will actually accomplish anything.

   As a thinker, it seems to me that we’ve come to the end of thinking.

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   • Sorry for this, but I was responding to a post written by 3g4me, way down the thread. Read in context my comment makes way more sense; I don’t know how my comment ended up at this point in the conversation. Derp

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   • Strike Three: With all due respect, you SHOULD hate her – and I guarantee she’s not a lady, and if she actually has a baby and it is actually hungry, it is because she has deliberately not fed it to make it cry to gain sympathy from gullible Whites. Gypsies have operated this way for centuries, and have it down to an art. She traveled thousands of miles to deliberately and consciously swindle you, and other White people, who have no shared history or genetics or culture with her. She is the very definition of ‘alien.’

     Next time you see a gypsy, go tell the manager (the police will do nothing these days) that you don’t appreciate being accosted while shopping. And tell anyone else who seems inclined to give money to her what she is. Ask them if they like being scammed and taken for suckers – many of them probably do, these days, but you might find a few who still have some self respect.

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     • I live in Boston for 6 years in my early 20s. I was making a good living, especially for a young, single guy. I felt very blessed and appreciative so I was often charitable with my money. I would often hand money to pan handlers. It all came to a stop when I had my awakening moment.

       I had just gone to dinner with my GF at the time. I took her to a nice Italian place called Panera in Copley. I got myself a chicken parm plate. It was absolutely huge, and it was delicious. My stomach was acting up so I ate just a couple of bites of it. We were walking back to the T and I had the food in a bag, still hot. I saw a homeless man freezing on the sidewalk so I decided to give him the meal. I laid it next to him and he picked it up. I turned and walked away and no more than 10-15 steps later I heard him shouting.

       “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?!”, he screamed. Then he proceeded to throw it in my direction and it spilled all over the asphalt, completely wasting the food. After that, I never gave to another homeless person again. In my experience, the vast majority of homeless people are in the condition they are in because they WANT to be. They want to be free of responsibility and live off the labor of others. They are symbols of the left.

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       • Years ago I volunteered at a shelter. Helped cook and serve meals every Tuesday for 6 months or so. I’d say about 90% of the people who came through, you’d see them for a couple of weeks, they seemed ashamed to be taking help. Whatever their problems, they seemed decent. 10% were regulars. They had entitled attitudes, made scenes, etc. You’d hear X got arrested, Y OD’d— things like that. I realized everybody would be better off if that 10% were allowed to self destruct and die. They’d be out of their misery, the burden would be off of society. Charity is worth it for the 90%, but that 10% left a bad taste in my mouth. FWIW

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   • Jeebus T.F. Xist.

     I’m a worldly man. I travel..A LOT.

     This is new to me.

     Daily reminder: Despair is a sin.

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3. Sorry, Z-crowd, I made an overlong comment re yesterday’s about men & women while falling asleep.

   We’re expecting lifetime contracts for what used to be shorter arrangements.

   We live so long now, when people died much earlier and more often- a spouse, a parent, children; kids started working, marrying, and participating much earlier, and olders worked/participated until they died.

   We arrange expectations on a frame that no longer exists.

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   • Either God, or evolution, or both, or something else, take your pick, obviously intended for us to reproduce in our mid teens. Humans somehow went about building a society that discourages that, today to the point of normalizing putting it off until one’s 30s (if ever), when nature intended us to be grandparents.

     I wonder how much of “teen angst” is just a reaction to not having any offspring to raise.

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     • Teenager-ness is the immortal American invention.

       Before some moment that historians of stuff like this tend to place during or after WWII—at the emergence of Frank Sinatra or Elvis, usually—there were children and adults and nothing really in between. Then a consumer demographic was invented, or the image of the meta-alpha (the distant exemplary celebrity-god desired by all girls and imitated by all boys) was inserted into our minds, or…whatever.

       We describe it many ways, but we all know it’s terrible. It might have emerged from the mass death of draft-age men in the wars, our collective sense/guilt that they were “too young.” It might have been maliciously invented by anti-family commies. It might have been mere greed.

       Whatever it was was an unprecedented crime against humanity and we won’t survive it.

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   • Marriage is an eternal pact and you’re an ignoramus spreading immoral falsehoods.

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4. C.S Lewis wrote a great essay called ‘The Inner Ring’ about the dangers of craving acceptance. Most of the brass are being sexually blackmailed. The price of admission to the Globohomo Inner Ring is a willingness to engage in depravity of one kind or another – the casting couch of the establishment – and these people pay that price because they just want IN. It might not be that dramatic in some cases, obviously, but if they won’t engage in it they’ll have to promote it or keep quiet just to get across the drawbridge. H L Mencken understood these people perfectly, so he is evergreen.

   As for the media, most of them are cookie-cutter university NPCs. They are functionally mindless. These types – and their readers – are the people Yuri Bezmenov was talking about. I cheer myself up sometimes by remembering that their masters will slaughter them eventually.

   The really talented journalists bugged out or were driven out long ago. Greenwald, Taibbi, Weiss – none of them expected to get sh*tcanned for doing what journalists are supposed to do. Expelled by the hive and banished beyond the wall, in spite of their personal politics, they became dissidents of a sort, too. I’m too far gone to enjoy ‘reaching across the aisle’ IDW-style, personally, but if smart, talented and disgruntled gets the truth out, I’ll take it.

   “The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and the other sound craftsmen will know it.”

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   • Cwenhild: “Most of the brass are being sexually blackmailed. The price of admission to the Globohomo Inner Ring is a willingness to engage in depravity of one kind or another – the casting couch of the establishment – and these people pay that price because they just want IN.”

     Some professional Deep State jock-strap-sniffer [whom I had never heard of], editor at both Politico & Foreign Policy magazine, just got Deep-State’d.

     https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/business/media/blake-hounshell-dead.html

     I wonder what he knew that was so precious that it cost him his life?

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     • Things that make you go “Hmmmm”. Maybe I’m/we’re too online (it’s been said) but ‘suicide’ in these circles always carries the whiff of Clintonia with it.

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5. Double dipping today:

   It looks to me like the globohomo regime has an arrangement with Lula, in spite of his prior tenure showing him as more of an ally of Russia. Of course the mediots are dumb enough to call Lula good just because he is the guy on the left, and Bolsonaro bad because he is the guy on the right, so that part didn’t take a lot of work, but the regime itself clearly favors Lula. Like they made a deal with him to get him back into power if he’d play ball on their team now.

   Globohomo intel apparatus assured a Lula victory just as it did for Biden. Followed by Brazil’s very own J6. Which is improving with practice, as they got the rubes to show up on a Sunday when congress wasn’t even there, so they took less risk while still being able to exploit full insurrection value out of it. One wonders how many more times they can use this same playbook.

   Defenders of Democracy protecting the western hemisphere together!

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6. This is why it’s often better to deal with politicians than true believers. The true believer is more than prepared to go down with the ship, but a politician can be bought, or frightened into doing what you wish. True believers are a problem, and if they are, then nothing short of a purge will save the country.

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   • Too many to purge. Just as there are too many of us to purge, or they already would have. The country is not salvageable in its current geographic form, since all these un-purgeable people have to go somewhere. Not to mention the new arrivals.

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     • I agree. The purge will be natural, because they believe things that simply aren’t true, and once the society that allows them to believe those things collapses they will disappear along with it.

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7. This may sound academic, but it is an important question. If these people are simply craven liars, then they are open to reason. If on the other hand, they are true believers, then they are beyond reason.

   Sometime craven liars are *not* open to reason. I think it’s been adequately demonstrated that these people are not open to reason and I don’t care if they’re liars or believers. It doesn’t matter a bit to me.

   I’m almost tired of saying we’re not going to vote or lawyer our way out of this.

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   • You have to offer them something they want, or threaten them with something they fear. We have neither at the moment.

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     • Actually we, rational Joe’s on the street, pretty much have it all, or enough control of it all; production, food and goods, transport, rail and trail, energy production,…

       We simply lack the will to weaponize such.

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   • to me, the big question is: can we wait our way out of it?

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8. It is a survival problem. There was an FT article on the weekend about Musk and Tesla. Quoted was the founder/ceo of Kayak, the travel booking site. The guy said to the effect that “educated and liberal people are Tesla’s customers and they don’t like bullies” re Musk and Twitter and offered the view that Tesla would fail because people like him would no longer buy Teslas. The True Believer lack of self awareness is mindboggling. As is the assertion that people like him are the future for Tesla.

   You also see this in Hollywood. Companies like Disney face big threats. There is reputedly an $8 billion FTX hole in their balance sheet because Iger and Blackrock pushed for that investment. Even if that is not the case, they borrowed heavily to purchase Fox ($50 billion or so) on top of Marvel and Lucasfilm and Pixar and don’t have the revenue stream to service the debt: attendance and profits at their parks are down as they become known for WorldStarHipHip beat-downs; the Star Wars and Marvel franchises are effectively dead because of woke garbage, they are about to kill the Indiana Jones franchise (what is left of it). And their plan is to double down on woke. Hollywood has a defacto ban on employing White guys in any capacity, as lead actors, as writers, directors, and producers. Hollywood is now pushing “diverse” people with no skills at all in storytelling and wondering where the audience went. [The Obi Wan series, heavily promoted, was originally going to feature Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christenson fighting each other a lot, Disney Diversity stepped in and nixed that, demanded the real hero be a black woman, and child Princess Lea be the next hero and Obi Wan look bad]. The net result: Star Wars dead even as a TV streaming franchise.

   It is True Believers all the way down, look at the four front war: A. Against the Dirt People, B. Against Oligarchs not down with Kool-Aide like Musk and now Bezos, C. Against Russia, D. Against China. The Regime wants to fight this war because they BELIEVE. Like Children clapping for Tinkerbell, they think if they believe it happens, nothing else more required.

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   • i think russia and china should be considered a single “front”, and that “reality” be added in there as the fourth front. “human nature” should be considered a synonym for “reality”, in this context.

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   • Another reason that Marvel is dead is that they shot their wad on Thanos and the entire Infinity War story arc.

     That story arc is literally Marvel’s version of Ragnarok. Purely in terms of sheer scale there is no where for them to go but down.

     Marvel also lacks a new version of the coherent, tightly-mapped 10 year plan that kicked off in 2008 with Iron Man.

     Casting is also problematic, as shown by the failure of the new, vibrant Captain America to really catch on.

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9. The cloud position on each new “thing” is made clear, so that clouds know what view to adopt, lest they be mistaken for dirts, their greatest fear.

   The media are true believers, by design. Curated from the same few indoctrination centers, good obedient clouds who will say whatever they are told to say. Each successive generation more true believer than the previous one. The system more refined now than it has ever been. In the recent past a dissenter might have gotten a job at some local media outpost out in the hinterlands but now even that is becoming impossible. In the more distant past some dissenters even made it into the big globohomo propaganda organs but those people have long been weeded out and it is now impossible for any others to follow.

   Putting stars on your collar has always been a very political thing. One does not do so without having the regime’s favor. Occasionally when there’s a war they actually are at risk of losing (been a very long time) they promote real war fighters instead, but in a peacetime military, the politicians rise and the war fighters top out at colonel, if they even get that far anymore. We’ve had about 70 consecutive years of peacetime military mindset now, the wars in that period not involving peril grave enough to demand a real wartime footing. And these political generals are of course clouds, that should go without saying.

   I don’t know how anyone can honestly tell who is winning the war in Ukraine. The propaganda is impenetrable, and the lines on the map haven’t moved very much in a long time.

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   • If the western press claims the Ukes are winning then they’rel losing. Simple formula that seems to work flawlessly.

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     • I made the mistake of thinking Russia wasn’t going to invade just because it was the regime media who were saying that they would.

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       • That was Vlad mistake number one. They performed some military actions, build-ups, etc. on the border as a warning to what appeared to be an impending Uke ethnic cleansing campaign againt the Russians in Eastern Ukraine and the west cried “they’re about to invade”, telegraphing what their own plans were. Russia then felt the message was sent and started putting their toys away at which point the Ukes and their western allies began to fire up their own invasion scheme and the rest is history, almost.

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         • the russians should have nuked keef on day#1. problem solved.

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       • I did the same, but apparently the Ukrainian forces were about to start something and Putin felt he had to go now or never. I think that’s why the media was ramping up all the Russia is preparing to attack propaganda, because Ukraine was preparing to attack.

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         • I read in a couple of sources that the Ukraine was about to invade about a week or so after the 24th.

           Russia made an error by invading with inadequate forces probably about half the estimates coming from Ukrainians. The feints towards Kiev though were brilliant.

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       • Don’t feel bad I made the very same mistake & also because of the timing; when Putin launched the operation it was the start of the annual “rasputitsa” or wet/rainy season which occurs twice a year & makes it very difficult to move heavy armor & vehicles cross country. This time of the year mechanized divisions are pretty much road bound making them easy meat to ambush & cut up.

         For that reason alone I didn’t think Putin would pull the trigger when he did.

         Got that one wrong!

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   • Agree with about all of this other than the media being Clouds. The talent you see and read really are stupid, herd-like animals in awe of the Clouds, Dirts allowed to feel good about themselves. Actual Clouds find their media hos amusing.

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     • I have defined Clouds and wannabe Clouds as both being Clouds. Of course the wannabes are the real true believers. Over time, more of the ones at the top become true believers also, it’s inevitable. Hard to say exactly where we are on that timeline. I would say there are some true believers in cabinet level positions these days.

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       • This, exactly. Once the Clouds become actual believers is the dangerous moment. In this instance, they have the ability to take down with them a substantial chunk of humanity.

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       • You’ve looked at Clouds from both sides now, have you?

         (I know. I can’t help it. I was born this way.)

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10. I believe the best way to describe the “average” American’s belief system is compulsion. They are trained like Pavlov’s dogs via the media (especially social) to respond to events with certain behavioral conditionings. It is belief, in the sense that it is so deeply ingrained, but the action takes precedence over the idea. The person who says some thing is “racist” is not really interested in the idea of race; they are interested in the performative aspect of labeling something racist and garnering attention.
    Consider any libs reaction to anything: the performative takes precedence. This is the novel twist of the current era. Always people sought attention, but the complete obliteration of personal belief for interpersonal performance, in terms of the prevalence of this behavior, is the twist.
    As Salinsky requested, they have people trained to demonstrate belief through demonstration (useful idiots). Everything is performative because everything is entertainment. Generals believe what they say as that is what they hear and what they are expected to say. In the same way a Hollywood actor plays a role too long and becomes that role, so the average American is simply a hollow vessel with a few hard-wired strings, waiting to be activated by the appropriate stimuli. We are the hollow men, stuffed full of whatever straw our overlords want. We are Pavlov’s dogs, salivating to the bell. We are the Eloi!

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    • Performatism is what comes after Postmodernism. We might better say it is Postirony.

      Meaning has been destroyed via irony, deconstructionism, etc. But, people still want meaning, so they find something that they can DO. They might not start out doing it sincerely, but it grows upon them to become more sincere.

      Examples. Someone might start out going to church as an antidote to contemporary madness, even though they don’t believe it at all. Latter they could become more of a believer. Or people might latch onto other system-provided offerings such as Covid or BLM.

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      • Miles Bron says “hello” 😛

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    • There is no downside to being wrong in the “right” way, and nothing but trouble for someone who is right in the “wrong” way. It’s an easy call for any cloud bugmen.

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      • And it seems that a high percentage of Grillers make the exact same call.

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      • That is how Pavlov trained his dogs. The consistency of no push back for liberal performance, with the bonus of attention, is what encourages it.That is my point – the conditioning is consistent and operant. Flipside for anyone who performs conservatively – negative feedback. This is not an accident. It always requires external movement to excite internal states. This is one of the novelties of the modern era. The performance is the conditioning, and it is not accidental or schizoid.

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11. Remarks on Lula/Brazil/Russia by Zman here remind me of this:

    https://www.indianpunchline.com/with-eye-on-iran-netanyahu-wades-into-ukraine-war/

    Is nobody in the GAE power structure concerned that Israel – “Our Greatest Ally” (TM) – is sidling worriedly away from the Brandon regime? Israel has spies everywhere. Do they know something we don’t? Perhaps related to Russia real capabilities and intentions? Israel moving its chips into Russia’s basket should be a huge red flag.

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    • If I remember right the Russians have agreed with Israel that they won’t sell the S400 anti aircraft system to Iran. thats why Israel hasn’t really helped the Ukrainians. They also need to keep Russia on side with regard to Syria

      But the Russians have been sharing tech with Iran in return for drones

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    • Try to explain to the average Normie that their Greatest Ally more or less supports Russia and opposes sanctions. They simply cannot process it. For shits and giggles, some congresscritter should introduce legislation that condemns all nations opposed to sanctions except for Israel. It would pass overwhelmingly.

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12. This relates directly to yesterday’s “Andrew Tate” (whose dad was CIA, by the way.)

    Shopenhauer tells us that dissimulation is natural to women because they are the weaker sex. That, to ask them not to use a looser grasp of factual realities is like asking an animal not to use whatever natural defenses it possesses. They see it as their right.

    The breathless people in the system were raised in the increasingly feminized school systems of the late 80’s and beyond. Their neural pathways and mental habits were molded to be socially sensitive, politically conscious, educated to a different work atmosphere than as summer farm labor or a small shop auto mechanic.

    Likewise, gaslighting- “or are you gonna believe your own lying eyes”- projection, hustling (manipulation), posturing; these are all tools of victimhood, used because one sees oneself as the aggrieved weaker subject.

    As the wife of the system, prey, married to predators. And indeed, the older predators at the top, either raised in harder times or by callous sigmas, are precisely who we’re married to– so you better not try to cuckold them, or else.

    ****

    Yesterday’s dilemna is rooted in biological fact: the blood chemistry of bonding lasts about 4 years, time enough to get a child weaned and able to run and work. Females may, or may not, be able to re-spark that flame with the next child.

    People get bored with one another, and our sundered neighborhoods don’t support the communal activities to engage and bind us. Social Security ended kids as our retirement plan

    We don’t have a common framework that counters the short term demands of the mating urge with the long term demands of getting youngers to a bit past puberty, that is, young adulthood.

    You’re on yer own, kid, no matter what age or sex you are.

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    • “Social Security ended kids as our retirement plan”
      —
      More like it obfuscated it. The boomers didn’t have enough kids so especially the late ones (and any Whites beyond) will be dependent on an army of dusky hordes who hate them for their old age survival.

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13. “He [Hodges] not only should understand the realities of war, but also be informed about what is happening.”

    This genuinely cracked me up in regards to General Hodges. I looked up his service record and it indicates someone who went out of his way to avoid commanding combat units, except when he need to get another rung on promotion. Apparently his aptitudes were strongest in planning and operations, but he ironically saw more combat as a general than most generals in living memory. The guy was even wounded in a terrorist attack. Nah, it’s not logical to assume this dude would be fully cognizant of the realities of war; his career track was most of the REMF variety.

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14. Pingback: The Survival Problem | American Freedom News

15. I am 100% in the camp that these people are true believers. A real world example is a friend of mine’s wife…. She’s a leftist and an Irish immigrant who arrived here in the 80s. She’s close to 60 now, but she looks like the typical leftist. Fat, shaved head, gross all around – and the one kid they had became trans gender at age 20.

    She is a super covidian, and one of those people who always had to let everyone know she got her shots. (I think she has gotten 4 so far). Anyway, one day she was pestering me and another friend of mine to put our masks on. We refused and let her know they do not work and can even be detrimental. A back and forth ensued until finally she admitted, “ok, I know they don’t really stop the virus, but you should wear one anyway!”.

    We were astonished, fully realizing that the world we once knew is truly gone and now filled with insane retards.

    A sad side effect of all of this has created a large amount of hate and anger on our side. When the retribution comes, there will be no remorse, compassion or quarter given. The removal will be swift and heartless. It is the only way.

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    • ” A back and forth ensued until finally she admitted, “ok, I know they don’t really stop the virus, but you should wear one anyway!”.”

      Conservatives believe they can argue with religious fanatics such as this one–“here’s my charts and graphs, Inquisitor!”. They are lost, broken people best avoided and, in a perfect world, marginalized or eliminated.

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    • I saw a short vid by a 20-something gal on Gab that made me stand up and salute!

      She said that what they’ve done, is woken up the very people who will destroy them.

      Arya Vult!

      (She ended with, “I’m here for freedom and to f**k sh*t up…and I’m runnin’ out of freedom”)

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    • You should be working on breaking up your wife’s friendship with her. Mind viruses are real.

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      • You mis-read, it’s the wife of his friend.

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    • Tired Citizen: I decided to pick up a box of Sudafed while out today. In everyone’s imaginary free state of Texas, I had to show my driver’s license to buy a generic-brand box of 24 tablets of decongestant. And then, to pay cash/change, had to navigate the lip of the plexiglass barrier keeping the coof germs away from the oriental pharmacy tech. And as I exited the grocery store, to my left was a hijbed woman loudly jabbering into her phone. Directly in front of me was a tsigani – a gypsy – with a hand-lettered begging sign.

      The daily indignities, piled up over the decades. The pretense, the lies, the surly aliens. Amnesty? Quarter? What sort of imbecile thinks that hatred, smoldering and repressed year after year after year, somehow turns into willful compliance and compassion?

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      • We share the same imaginary free state. You’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. It is one of the many reasons I have become such a recluse. I’m less angry and hateful when I don’t have to see the mutants that I am supposed to share the planet with.

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    • you should have lit her on fire right then and there! tell the police she was a depressed buddhist…

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16. It’s not enough to say that someone can be paid off to say anything. I’m sure this ex-General is being paid by defense contractors, as all the media talking heads get their bank deposits on time. You need a certain personality type for both fields, and for that matter, anyone who actually likes living and working inside the Beltway. They have to be externally motivated. They already need to come with the hooks for the strings that make them dance.

    The media, just as the Pentagon, just as the intel field, self selects for people with these traits. People like this aren’t sleepless at 3am over the untruths they tell. They’re happy as clams as long as they have the acceptance of the click in which they belong. No one could last more than two or three years in that field even attempting to be a chameleon. It just takes too much energy and suffering of fools. The ones who stay, and “make it”, would say, “well, they just didn’t have the chops for it, it’s not for everyone.” At no point would they ever question the lies they tell. Not even in the nursing home years later while being wiped by some Filipina.

    These fields are like community theater. You either get sucked into the whole scene, or look around and say, “this is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life and I would rather work in a Tyson food plant with illegal aliens than ever do this.”

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    • Perfectly stated and well written comment, Mr. Wirth.

      Your observation applies to many fields: business and academia no less than government, it seems to me. The people who actually care about good work and professional craft are either laboring anonymously in the trenches or off doing something entrepreneurial. It’s the mediocre, the insecure and the greedy who are chasing after the brass ring, constantly moving with the political winds and working so hard to climb the ladder in any big organization. This is just the human condition I suppose, but now that Western society is captive to all these new orthodoxies: racial, sexual, scientific ( e.g. covid/climate hysteria) it is all the worse, because a fast route into the managerial/political class is to advocate obvious falsehoods.

      From what I’ve read there was a similar dynamic at work in the Eastern Bloc under communism. And, similar to the odd mix of criminals and (((intellectuals))) who prosecuted the communist revolutions, there exist out-groups in our own society who serve as enforcers in this new revolution: resentful blacks and other affirmative-action hires, barren angry women, homosexual men and now transvestites and worse. These are your true believers. There are plenty of bright and/or stubborn people who see it and hate it, even if they refuse to make the jump into dissident politics. Elon Musk comes to mind, for instance, or the hunted-to-extinction breed of no-filter, politically incorrect business leaders like “Papa John” Schnatter and Donald Trump. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, the apolitical worker on the shop floor, on whom all this nonsense ultimately lands, he knows the score too. Sadly he’s not in a position to change it and often can’t articulate his discontent very well, hence his easy entrapment in box canyons like “Movement Conservatism” or the Trump grift.

      Anyways my point is there are guys at the top of the pyramid who see the lies, and there are guys at the bottom of the pyramid who see the lies, but neither group are in fact part of the managerial hierarchy that enforces the agenda day-to-day within big organizations: government bureaus, NGOs, corporations, universities, etc. The people managing those big complexes day-to-day tend to be the aforementioned climbers, sycophants, mediocrities and true believers. Z-man writes a lot about emergent phenomena and I think that’s correct: there’s no center to strike at to disable this system. It just keeps grinding forward until it breaks under its own weight.

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17. In other words, Taibbi thinks it is reasonable to think such a [mind control] device exists.

    Well, he’s not completely wrong. There may not be a device per se, but a system comprised of many devices and components. It goes by various names – propaganda, advertising, gas lighting, etc. And it may not be 100% successful, but successful enough to have an impact.

    Of course, not suggesting the Russians used it or have it or are particularly good at it. At least not nearly as good at it as our own regime is.

    15

    • For that system to work it requires something close to ‘full spectrum dominance,’ like the globohomo propaganda machine has had. Which is not what they were alleging that the Russians had done. Indeed it was hard to say what exactly they were alleging the Russians had done. Something like tilting the election by buying ads on Facebook. Genius! How come nobody else ever thought of that?

      11

18. “The woman claiming her small child is another sex may be motivated by a desire for attention, but her determination to mutilate her child is driven by belief.”

    Munchausen by proxy. its always the Mother. In many cases the Father does his best to stop it, but the Mother tends to get what she wants

    38

    • The spam filter prevents me linking a story about that Texas dad, but I’m sure you’ve heard about it.

      12

      • I saw a story recently about an immigrant fellow who is going to court to have his sex officially re-assigned as female, in order to have a better chance at winning a child custody battle with his wife.

        https://nypost.com/2023/01/06/desperate-dad-legally-changes-gender-to-female-in-bid-to-gain-custody-of-kids/

        Personally, I can’t talk about the subject of child custody without Fed Poasting, so I’ll leave it at that.

        5

19. “Don’t worry, they’ll come around after I show them this latest round of charts and graphs!”

    -Signed normie conservative

    36

    • …and then in the NEXT election in which we vote harder, we’ll win bigly, and all will be well. Amen.

      7

20. I’d like to know where anyone is getting information that the war is going well for the Russians. Aside from the places where the Russians lines totally collapsed, the lines haven’t moved in many, many months. The Russian army completely retreated from North of Crimea across a river and then there was the great rout North of the Donbas. Ukraine is fielding a million man army with the best weapons NATO can offer.

    Russia’s air force is basically grounded (not that Ukraine’s air force is any better off). It’s turned into a rerun of WW1. Russia has just announced another round of drafts mobilizations to increase the size of the military by another few hundred thousand men.

    Russia may very well win this war in the end, but even the mobilization efforts of Sept 2022 are not yet in the field. The mobilizations ordered the other day won’t be in effect for at least 6 months. We are probably looking at least another year before anyone can win. In the meanwhile, many thousands more young men will be destroyed either physically or mentally.

    My sources have mostly been the Voice of Reason guy (Military and Foreign Affairs Network) and a channel called Military Summary. Neither are Western shills.

    9

    20

    • It is next to impossible to get accurate and reliable information about the war. That’s been one of the secondary revelations about the madness. Overall, though, the United States has attained its primary objective already: the economic destruction of Western Europe, particularly Germany, thus forcing it to be even more reliant on the GAE.

      If the reports are true of mercenaries becoming more and more commonplace, and who knows if that is the case, then the Ukrainian military already has been decimated and this is just to keep the clock running. That’s not a Russian military victory, of course, but it would presage a costly one–which was a lesser objective than the economic devastation of Europe.

      17

      1

    • At the start of the war Scott Ritter said that every time the US/NATO send more money/weapons to the Ukraine the war will last a little longer. It looks like he was right

      All the hardware the Ukraine had this time last year is gone, well over 100K Ukrainians are dead, it could be over 200K by now, we have now way of knowing

      The war will continue as long as more weapons arrive from the West and Ukrainian men are willing to die for Globohomo

      31

      • I wish he was still doing the regular show and not the interview style shows. He was another voice of reason in English.

        All of the English language mainstream press is nothing but GAE propaganda. if they say the sun will rise in the East, I’m gonna have double check it. They are just so reliably unreliable. Nothing they say can ever be taken at face value.

        The 2 YT channels I follow seem to not be either Russian shills or GAE shills. But even just looking at the map, I just cannot work out all the happy talk for Russia. They are certainly not on the verge of collapse, but they’re not on the verge of victory either.

        I’m not saying you’re doing it, but my noticing does not make me a Western shill.

        10

        1

    • Ok Napolian.
      Boy howdy those ukes huh.
      Collaborators; media. are just that doesn’t matter whether they are true believers or payrolled liars they all belong at the bottom of the sea.

      9

    • That Dima guy from the Military Summary channel is an hysterical idiot who is cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame. He blathers on and on with truly terrible analysis and nothing original to add. I listened to him once and that was enough.

      7

      1

    • There are only a few things that we know for sure.

      1. Russia is not running out of tanks, equipment, shells, etc. It’s been a year. If they haven’t run out yet, they’re not going to run out. Western experts have been wrong about this from the beginning.

      2. The West can’t supply Ukraine with enough material to allow Ukraine to operate at full capacity. We know this from our own statistics. We simply don’t have the industrial capacity to provide amount of artillery, shells, vehicles, etc. The Ukrainians even say this.

      It’s why we’ve limited the artillery that we’ve given them. We can’t supply the shells. That’s why we only gave them 20 HIMARs. They shoot in a day or two, the amount of missiles that we produce in a month. So far, we’ve managed to keep them afloat by giving them what we produce and part of our own stockpile, but our stockpiles – by own admission – are running low.

      The question then becomes do we reduce our stockpiles below what the military says that it needs to fight a war. I’d suspect that we will do that b/c the neocons can’t lose this war.

      My point is that about all I know for sure is that the Russians can produce enough material to fight this war indefinitely and that the West can’t. The Ukrainians are living on borrowed time. Once Western stockpiles are depleted, the Ukrainians simply won’t be able to fight back. That could take a year or two, however.

      32

      • I have no reason to believe the Russians are running out of tanks or ammo or any other weapons system or war supplies. MAFAN VOR did a video yesterday and 2 days ago highlighting two absolutely enormous production facilities dedicated to war materials production. I have no reason to believe Vlad is dying, about to be the subject of a coup, retiring or anything else the MSM has claimed.

        All I know is what is plainly visible on a map. To me, none of what I see on a map justifies happy talk of impending victory for the Russians. The only movements I have seen on the map in months is Russians retreating from 2 areas, one just North of the Western end of Northern Crimea (maybe the Dnieper River) and the area North of the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine (the breakthrough in Sept).

        I agree with everyone here that the Russians are probably the good guys and that the GAE are the bad guys. I also agree that counting the Russians out at this stage is silly. But these do not mean therefore, Russian victory is imminent.

        9

        1

        • I saw a blurb, unverified but believable (and in fact referenced by other comments here), that Russia has enough slack in their military production that they are still able to sell arms abroad while the war is ongoing.

          5

        • I agree that it’s very hard to tell from our vantage point which side is winning. I’m simply pointing out what I know. The most important point is that we can’t produce enough war material to keep up.

          That’s a fact that even our side quietly admits. Sooner or later, the Ukrainians won’t have enough artillery, missiles, etc. We simply won’t be able to give it to them.

          The Ukrainians only hope was that either 1) the Russians really couldn’t produce enough of their own war material in which case they’d run out before the West; 2) that the American weapons would be so much more effective than Russian weapons that even their smaller number would allow for victory; or 3) the economic sanctions would bring the Russian economy to its knees.

          None of those appear to be happening.

          But I agree that there’s no way for everyday Joes like ourselves to really know what’s going on. I only know that the few facts that I’m sure of point to Russia gaining the advantage.

          There’s also this piece written by someone who is deep in the American military and intelligence community. He should be talking about imminent Ukrainian victory, but he’s saying, outside of a miracle, the Russians will win. It’s stunning that this piece was allowed to be published.

          https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine

          8

        • You haven’t been paying attention have you? There is plenty of information out there not from shills that show that Russia is winning hands down. Remember, the express Russian strategy from the get go has been demilitarization and deNazification of the Ukraine. They have used the cauldron strategy in Mariupol and now in Soledar and Bakhmut to inflict maximum casualties on the Nazi units like Azov and on foreign mercenaries. The Ukraine has stupidly reinforced these areas beyond reason and Russia has been happy to kill more and more.

          From the start, ghost of Kiev, Snake Island and everything else the Ukraine, the Western media and NATO have all lied nonstop. If they say Russia has suffered so many casualites you can be sure real number is orders of magnitude less and vice versa. There are many sites and podcasts that are fairly even-handed and don’t shill for Russia. You just have to look and just don’t follow the crowd.

          12

          • the one thing that is not being manufactured is more ukrainian soldiers.

            6

        • I see you are indeed serious so I apologize for my snarky response earlier.

          Zelenski and the West have a need to win this war in the media. Without “progress” and “victories” the West will quickly withdraw support as the true cost- steep recession throughout Europe and the de-industrialization of Germany, becomes apparent.
          I think You have lost sight of what the goals of Russia are: Putin’s stated goal of the de-militarization of Ukraine implies the destruction of the Ukrainian armed forces.
          Putin’s approach is not driven by the media and his time frame is different. His is a limited force approach (he has less than a third of the army engaged) and avoidance of casualties is important.
          The Ukrainians have been preparing for this war since 2014, with the help and conivance of the West, as Merkel and Macron have helpfully admitted. They have built extensive fortifications in cities like Mariupol and Bakhmut and the Russian approach has been to take advantage of their fire power to grind them down. It happened in Mariupol and is about over in Bakhmut. The P.R. above all ethos in the West means that the Ukrainians are throwing themselves into a meat-grinder where the Russians are better trained, better armed and better led- there are credible reports than Ukraine is now drafting 16 year olds. Russia, by contrast activated 300k reservists. i.e trained soldiers who had done 2 or 3 years service. The popularity of the war is reflected in an additional 70-80k or so people having enlisted since June (that number btw just happens to be the size of the British Army) .
          Instead of Russia having to chase them across all Ukraine they bring themselves to the slaughter. a senseless mindless blood-drenched tragedy.
          Russia gets the de-militarization of Europe thrown in almost for free.
          I agree that reliable source are hard to find and I hate that the days of the individual website where all content is posted is behind us.- Z-man’s an example.
          I find Brian Berletic of The New Atlas useful .

          12

          • Berletic is a good one, a realist and even-handed.

            3

    • Your comment reflects a very one-dimensional understanding of war. Consider:
      1. Ukrainian army has been effectively destroyed as a fighting force, completing one of the original goals of the war. Numerous reports are emerging that most of the soldiers on the Ukrainian front lines are Polish.

      2. The relatively stationary front lines have basically functioned as a kill box for the Russian army to draw in and slaughter the Ukrainian forces at very little loss of Russian life.

      3. Why would you assume Russia’s Air Force is grounded? Attack helicopters and fighter-based air support are being used regularly, when useful.

      4. European economies are slowly collapsing under the weight of increased energy prices. It’s only a matter of time before social unrest forces European governments to change course. This could easily be the end of NATO, which would be a major strategic victory for Russia.

      5. By conservative estimates, twenty percent of the population of the Ukraine has departed the country, claiming refugee status. Most of these people are never coming back. In another year forty percent of the country might be gone.

      The outcome of this war was never in doubt. Russia is slowly, methodically, and deliberately destroying the ability of Ukraine to wage war, even with NATO assistance. Despite the initial missteps, this was has been a major victory for Russia in every respect.

      22

      1

      • “4. European economies are slowly collapsing under the weight of increased energy prices. It’s only a matter of time before social unrest forces European governments to change course. This could easily be the end of NATO, which would be a major strategic victory for Russia.”

        Collapsing European economies was the primary war goal of the United States, though.

        13

      • “Your comment reflects a very one-dimensional understanding of war.”
        I’ll take that minor victory!

        I figured it was more like .5 dimensions. I don’t know anything about military affairs. I’m going largely by what other people say and what i can see on a map other people have prepared.

        8

        • The problem is that a map doesn’t tell you much in a war of attrition – until the very end. It also doesn’t tell you much with Eastern style of warfare, which is more about destroying an opponent than taking territory.

          But, you’re correct in saying that if a map doesn’t tell us much and we don’t know the truth about other issues, such as how many many are being killed on each side, it’s tough to know what’s going on.

          As I’ve said in my other comments, I only know one thing for certain: The West can’t produce enough war material to keep up with the pace of the war. Ukraine is relying on the West’s stockpiles. If those run out, it’s game over.

          8

          • Admittedly, much has changed in 30 years. But I happened to be working in a steel distributor during the first Gulf war before I went back to school. The massive increase in aluminum armor which we were approved as a distributor we got in was astonishing. We had it piled up everywhere. We even had to buy a new giant 10 ton rock to check for flatness of the plate. (you lay the plate on the rock and then use feeler gauges to measure how out of flat a plate was) This was just one random steel distributor in Philadelphia. The MIC is well spread out across the entire country. But most of the aluminum armor plate was going to local manufacturers and machine shops. We almost never shipped any kind of metals with regular OTR trucks, it was all done with company owned local trucks (tri-state area of SE Pa.) and small pieces could go out via UPS.

            You would think we would get something out of the nearly trillion Dollars a year we blow on the military. There has to be at least something left to keep the local MIC in business. As long as they exist in the first place, they can ramp up production pretty quickly.

            7

        • Try sonar21.com, thesaker.com, and Reminiscence of the Future for better information on war in Ukraine.

          7

          • Also try Col. Doug Macgregor’s site: futuredefensevisions dot blogspot dot com

            Anyone new to the strategic backdrop should hit ‘older posts’ then find the SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022 interviews with Vlahos.

            5

      • He might be right about the Russian Air force, once the Ukraine runs out of missiles for their S300 we might see more from the Russian AF

        7

    • Thanks for the laugh. I do enjoy satire.

      1

      • I don’t know the first thing about military. I’m perfectly willing to be corrected and shown to be wrong. But ‘lol, this is satire’ is far from a correction. Have the lines moved without my knowing it? Is Russia not facing a now well dug in military at least twice its size? Do you believe the support for NATO supporting Ukraine is coming to an end?

        4

        • See my reply about a page up.

          1

        • Have a listen to the Greeks at The Doran.

          Two good pieces today

          https://theduran.locals.com/post/3336824/ukraines-donbass-defense-system-collapsing

          https://theduran.locals.com/post/3337281/russia-presses-ukraine-in-soledar-bakhmut-ukraine-mulls-retreat-patrushev-says-russia-fights-west

          5

    • well, the ukes are calling up teenagers, and their electrical grid is at something like 25% intact. what does that tell you? what is the scenario where Russia loses?

      5

      • If you believe I said I believe Russia is in danger of imminent defeat, I really have to be more careful about how I word things.

        5

21. Ben Hodges works for something called the “Center for European Policy Analysis”. The “supporters” it lists on its website are a rogue’s gallery of defense contractors, multi-national corporations and, of course, the U.S. State Department. This is a common thread for most of the former military brass (e.g., David Petreaus) and members of think tanks (e.g., ISW) who regularly appear on TV to promote the Ukraine narrative. What they never disclose is that they have a vested interest in promoting the Ukraine narrative. In essence, they are being paid by the defense industry and the U.S government to advocate on behalf of the war in Ukraine.

    24

    • Most of the retired generals I see usually obtain some side gig as “consultant” to some major military contractor or set up shop themselves as one-man “consultancy firms.” In both cases they attempt to trade their connections and inside knowledge for hard cash. Corruption is inherently built into the system.

      10

      • Ben Hodges::Cincinnatus as Madonna::The Madonna

        2

22. An important corollary to this is simple stupidity. People in general are dumb. Media people are *really* dumb, and whether or not Russia really has a mind-control ray, I believe cameras and microphones really do project an enstupidation field — stick a camera or mic in someone’s face, and their IQ immediately drops 30 points. (I know a few academics who are routinely called on to give Media soundbites. I met them when they weren’t yet Experts, and lemme tell ya, they’re so much dumber now).

    As for the general level of stupidity, I remember touring NASA on a family vacation in the mid 1980s. The tour guide asked our big group “Who wants to see the anti-gravity room where our astronauts train?” Bless their hearts, NASA was trying to promote scientific literacy back then (having not yet been overrun with #wokesters), but I bet they gave it up not long after that, because pretty much everyone in the room raised their hand….

    15

    • I recall from the 1980s plenty of magazine photos and clips on the tv news about Astronauts training in underwater tanks. In fairness to your fellow visitors, they might’ve thought the tour guide was referring to those. Not everyone should be expected to know the precise “inside baseball” terminology of astrophysics.

      9

      • I see what you’re saying, and appreciate your charity on behalf of our fellow man, but the tour guide really sold the “anti-gravity room” thing. It was clear in context that she meant a room where the Law of Gravity is nullified (I should’ve been clearer myself on that point).

        7

        • i worked for NASA for a short while :). they use airplanes to create zero gravity like conditions. it costs $70k per person per flight.

          4

          • The “Vomit Comet.” Which you have to admit is a great name for a government program.

            5

23. Watched a Q&A with Stalin biographer Steven Kotkin. He said that from the 1920’s to the 90’s US government Kremlinologists always maintained that the Bolsheviks did not believe the collectivist nonsense they preached. However, when the private politburo meeting records were released after the USSR collapse it showed that behind closed doors they did indeed discuss communist principles and how to best implement them.
    Yes our own US apparatchik truly do believe it all – Ukraine, Climate change, 52 genders, white supremacy, J6 insurrection…

    32

    • It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they believe in all this and more. Sixty years ago these were the people who believed with all their hearts that the Negro was a blank slate.

      29

      • To be fair, it was much more believable then. They hadn’t yet faced 60 straight years of failure to see the dream realized. The funny thing is, they probably believe it a lot more strongly today than their predecessors did back then.

        20

        • dude, the nigs have been here 400 years! just ask them 😛

          7

    • Well, “our wokies” are cut from the same cloth; i.e., blank slate fanatics. It is the undergirding of their entire Weltanschauung, so it can never be allowed to come into question.

      4

24. I think they really do believe it, but they don’t perceive the same “it” as objective people do (i.e. we have a fundamentally epistemological problem).

    Take the case of Ukraine, for instance. The believers do not deal with basic physical reality. They do not understand the problems of global industrial production and its dependence on cheap energy from carbon fuels. They do not understand the logistics of supplying an army in Ukraine. They do not understand that Russia has been ahead of the West in weapons development for close to 20 years now. Those of us who do understand these things knew that Ukraine had already lost from Day One.

    The believers, meanwhile, perceive the world through a lens of maps, highly biased intelligence reports, accounting gimmickry, and the boring and predictable opinions of their colleagues. What they think of as “the war in Ukraine” is largely an illusion anyway. Between them and those of us who see the true picture, we are looking at two totally different objects.

    Then you have all the group psychology stuff on top of that…

    19

    1

25. Im sorry the nuns were scary to the boomers when they were young but maybe they shouldn’t have helped piss away Christianity in favor of sports. Now we’re stuck with crazy.

    28

    3

    • The NFL playing on Sundays through the most important Christian holiday period of the year has had an incredibly destructive effect on US society.

      17

      • When’s the last time a goyim had the stones to pull a Sandy Koufax on Christmas or Easter? I can’t recall it in my lifetime. Over in Europe there’s always a big to do around Ramadan because the Muzzie footballers fast during the day and it effects their training and game play. No one thinks this is strange or exotic, but if a Catholic demanded meat-free Fridays at the training canteen or refused to suit up for an Easter Sunday match, there’d be a hue and cry.

        16

    • I hope you are doing your part to recover what we lost. Church goer?

      6

      1

26. My mom once told me a story from when she was in the Air Force back in the early 1980s. She was stationed in Germany and was a part of some high ranking general’s staff. During exercises she would have to listen to this general bicker with other generals over stupid, childish BS. All the while praying that we never had a real war with the Russians because our generals were a bunch of retarded children.

    So it doesn’t surprise me one bit that a supposed smarty-pants former general would have such a bad take on the situation with the Ukraine.

    29

    1

    • I’m beginning to believe that the idea that the senior executives in government, the military, and corporations are serious people is something that passed into the realm of myth and legend years, maybe even decades ago.

      15

27. “Why is there no one in these media organizations asking basic questions? The unanimity in the media strongly suggests they are a hive of true believers.”

    From my experiences in this life, I can address three issues:

    First, the media. To begin with, they just aren’t that bright. In fact, most of the people who work in media are demonstrably stupid beings who have always taken the easy path. Oddly enough, considering their profession, they have an amazing lack of curiosity about the world around them. Their only focus is getting attention for themselves and being on TV.

    Second, the US military. I have fellow Navy Chiefs who are currently deployed around the world who are all reporting back (conversations this morning, actually) that they are so tied down with DIE training and EEO complaints that it is absolutely impossible to discipline problem sailors. Every one of these experienced and dedicated Chief Petty Officers will be retiring or leaving the service when they return home. This is Navy-wide. Just this week the Navy as eliminated all High Year Tenure separations because they can’t recruit enough new Sailors. I have to assume that these problems are occurring throughout the entire US military,

    Third, health care. I work with very smart and highly educated medical people, who understand the immune system and genetics more than most anyone. When covid hysteria came along, the masked up quickly. There were a few true believers, but all the rest just did what they were told with a vengeance. That really opened my eyes to human nature. It just doesn’t matter what most people know in their heart to be true, they will always do what they are told.

    38

    • > There were a few true believers, but all the rest just did what they were told with a vengeance. That really opened my eyes to human nature. It just doesn’t matter what most people know in their heart to be true, they will always do what they are told.

      Used to think that most health care workers were going through the motions in fear of being fired and suck with 200k in medical debt. Now it’s clearer they will believe and follow authorities, no matter how insane, without a word. The expert cult is as bad in Health Care as in Academia.

      The ventilator fiasco during Covid was a prime example. Note the powers that be quietly changed protocol after blowing up who knows how many lungs, but they never admitted a mistake.

      39

    • Good information Outdoorspro.

      Someone sent me a story last night about a UCLA professor who openly advocated for merit based systems. Some students wrote him an email asking him to raise the grades of black students. His response was some obvious Socratic questioning that pointed out their stupidity and then a polite, firm and simple, No.

      The instigators/subversives rallied 20,000 students to demand that he be fired for refusing to bolster exam scores for black students. The UCLA administration suspended him. Let that sink in. 20,000 students advocated having only blacks have their grades inflated rendering their own grades and accomplishments meaningless. The UCLA administration should have suspended all 20,000 students for violating school policy and threatening a teacher to falsify test grades. He/she/zhir did not.

      True believers.

      Meanwhile Trudeau, Mayorkas, Mexico’s Pres and Biden all went down and sat on the Mexican side of the border and declared that the solution to illegal immigration was just to just call it legal. There is a long standing plan, openly advocated by Gen Petraeus (sp?) and others to create a Pan NorAm land block out of Canada, US and Mexico. Canada plans to grow its population from 38 million today to 100 million by 2100. The optics of the 3 stooges and their white genocide coordination counselor Mayorkas was purposeful. By any means Mayorkas, the “American” version of America’s anti-racist Hitler, and his faction is going to destroy the border and replace us.

      Committed psychopaths with a cross generation plan.

      Both need to go. For anybody in the ruling regime out there who reads this site, there is a crown lying in the gutter. If you are white and have children, you may be one of the last of us to wield a sword that can pick it up.

      28

28. 3 questions asked in the essay: “Are the people writing these tall tales liars? Do they really believe what they are writing? Are they just vessels being filled by lairs or true believers in the content creation system?”

    For ‘the people’ / ‘they’, the simple answer still seems to come in the form of a question: Do we think it will harm Trump?
    If yes – tell it, print it, post it.
    If no – suppress it, bury it, ban it.

    13

29. 1. I’d guess it’s either a simple case of one’s generosity towards another being in proportion to how much they have in common, or ignorance, or denial. Some conservatives kind of believe this stuff, others are still in disbelief of or shell-shocked by the depravity of it. I get it, it’s a tough journey to the other side, but after a point there’s no excuse for not making it.

    2. Ukraine talk makes me think of Democracy!, or utopia, or Zion, in that order of insanity. It’s all zealotry and desperation at this point imo, and I think I erred by ever supposing there was a sane calculation behind it lol.

    8

30. RE: Andrew Tate

    Yesterday’s post and comments were the most depressing I’ve seen here.

    I have fucked up bigger, longer & more than most of you, but I believe I have learned a few things. Above all this: the greatest tragedies are wasted time and human potential, the former being just another way of saying the latter. So…

    1) Try to treat all women with respect all of the time, especially the ones who do not respect themselves. If they need killing, kill with kindness, and be seen to do so. Real virtu signals itself, but it doesn’t hurt to have an audience.

    2) As someone around here once remarked, Brimelow has proven that it is NEVER too late. That may turn out to be his greatest contribution to this thing.

    3) Buchanan should have adopted. Whatever his reasons for not doing so, however good they were, they weren’t good enough, and with the dying of the light I bet he rages against them. I tell you this through tears — and from the missing side of that equation.

    4) Shit-scared of 2 & 3? That is a sign of intelligence but a poor guide to action. So consider being Big Brother to a ten year-old from a trailer park. If you do not have kids of your own and still cannot manage three or four hours, one day a week, to try and man up a fatherless boy, what are you really doing here but wasting time aka human potential? It might be just another day at the range or the lake or the gym for you, but that boy will NEVER forget it. If you make him feel like a man, some day he just may become one, which is a boot in the teeth of the Enemy.

    5) But 4 won’t be just another day. If you have ever trained a successful soldier, cop, or firefighter — and I have — all I can say is it can feel like that sometimes, but better. And you can work in a little of 1 with them so they do not go down some manosphere dead-end or wind up ensnared by Bronze Age fagg0try.

    6) When you get home from 4, remember 2 and 3, because it is never too late.

    7) There are no perfect families. The technicolor nuclear family was just another trick on goyim. Like Sex in the City. It seems to me that a generation of women fell for that show while MGTOW, so far as I understand it, only squares their error.
    If this thing is going to work at all, it is going to work as a clan, a large and extended clan, not governed by logic or data, but by bonds too deep to for language.

    V out.

    41

    3

    • V

      Good post that compels introspection.

      Thank you.

      15

    • True story. Nothing wrong with a good row sometimes, though. And by that I mean getting angry without crossing into abuse.

      I know we’re not supposed to get angry, after decades of New Age and Feel Good, but it has its place. It efficiently exhausts energies without tying yourself in knots, you mature by learning to handle it responsibly, you don’t go postal or turn Buddhist.

      Yet another healthy thing we’ve been stripped of.

      6

      • “you don’t go postal or turn Buddhist.”

        You don’t go PUA or MGTOW, to put it in perspective.

        3

        1

    • I’m not sure I get the admonition about there being no “perfect” families. Of course there weren’t, but there’s no doubt that the families of my parents age, both of whom were born in the early 40’s, in their heavily Catholic, working-class town, were far healthier overall than today. When my folks were in high school, divorce was almost unknown, everyone had siblings, parents mostly occupied traditional roles, etc. That was no Jewish trick. The trick was convincing everyone that such a community was to be mocked and scorned, and that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

      30

    • Wonderful post. It is great to hear a man speak up and to know he has been walking the walk in his life. I too was troubled by the anger against women expressed yesterday.

      We are better than that; only if we prove it with our words and actions.

      I will add that taking the approach to foster our young boys and girls is great. It will be even better if it could be coordinated. I am dealing with a school system that has spat on my grand nieces and nephews. It isn’t a burden. The task to help them is huge and it would be helped if we had a coordinated set of resources to help each other. As in all things in this coordinated attack against us, time is always moving against us. Anything we can do to preserve knowledge and resources acquired and share it, is effectively store a reservoir of time that we can use for the many things that we must now do to survive.

      God Bless Vegetius

      10

      4

      • PeriheliusLux: “I will add that taking the approach to foster our young boys and girls is great.”

        Right up until you realize that the folks with the very most urgent & compelling desire to foster our young boys and girls are precisely the s0d0mites & bu11dykes who seek to molest those young boys and girls [if not outright torture and murd3r them].

        Always be deeply suspicious of adults who are too enthusiastic about spending time with pre-teens and teens.

        The family was created for a REASON, that reason being the protection of the children in the family.

        4

    • I’ve seen some families that were pretty close to perfect. Close enough to it that even some skeleton hiding in a dark closet that I didn’t know about wouldn’t be enough to set them back very much.

      8

31. Certainly, if nobody else, the middle-aged childless women believe whatever the priests of the faith say – totally, completely, and fanatically. Deprived of the constraints of patriarchy, our women have become the berserkers of the Woke Legions.

    34

32. Not too long ago a foreign policy analyst went after a Chinese bureaucrat for making fun of a fellow foreign policy analyst for not even knowing Chinese. He stated that due to modern technology, it was no longer necessary to know the language of the nation you are analyzing.

    Anyone with even a passing idea of the nuance of language could tell you how insanely idiotic such a statement is, but these people really think they’re experts reading English translations of Chinese papers from their air conditioned rooms in Washington D.C.

    The modern idea that you can understand the world without ever leaving your office is one of the main reasons for the collapse of understanding of the world outside Marvel brained good-vs-evil dichotomies.

    27

    • Spot on Chet! I make my living, such as it is, analyzing things. The limits of what we can truly know from the office/desktop, let alone the field, have been made painfully clear to me over a long career. I just lose money, but these other guys get people killed.

      Meanwhile, my old professors all spoke the languages of the countries they studied. It’s just farcical what passes for “expertise” these days. We could all get together and do a great blog about the Gell-Mann Amnesia we have witnessed in recent years.

      8

    • Regarding things being lost in translation, several years ago I interviewed for a position at the Carter Center. One of the pre-interview tasks was to translate from Chinese to English a short academic article. One of the interviewers told me that it was a relief reading mine because the other applicants had been mainland Chinese and their English translations were nearly unreadable. But they also hinted that it wouldn’t matter because the goal was ultimately to get a diverse face on the website/brochure. In the end whatever translation this new hire wound up producing was then further translated into competent English. As you say, it likely lost yet another layer of its original meaning and nuance.

      12

    • Great observation. In fact, even people who ostensibly speak the same language often misunderstand each other, have their local/regional colloquiums, etc. Imagine a Harlem jogger and Scottish highlander in the same room with no translator.

      9

33. On so many topics, C-v-d, Ukraine, black crime, whether antifa actually exists or is a lie from the far right, I have been shocked by how many intelligent people that I know just believe what the media tells them. Full stop.

    This is why I have concluded that until the media content delivery system is disrupted, there is not much we can do but prepare and form informal networks. People, smart people, are more programmable than I ever imaged.

    On the bright side, if we ever get control of that system, we may find that almost everyone agrees with us within five years.

    24

    • Covid was the eye-opener. All of us realized propaganda was pervasive and people lapped it up, but Covid showed how fully realized the totalitarian state had become.

      As always, a compliant people is required to attain absolute control, and that’s largely been achieved. Intelligence or lack thereof has proved not to be a factor in how easily people are propagandized. Trotsky suggested it was easier to propagandize the educated classes because they would believe anything if authority, however spurious, was attached to it. I once believed this but no longer think it is a complete explanation. There is something larger and more insidious at play here.

      Our primary strategy has to be to initially survive this as it burns through the population. Unfortunately, this lunacy may lead to nuclear war or mass murder so that may not be possible.

      26

      • Speaking of the coof, I remember early on in the madness expressing some mild skepticism about the claims to my Mom. She responded strongly with what she had heard on CNN or Oprah.

        I asked, “If c-v-d is so deadly, then why do they allow the BLM protests to happen and moreso without masks? We cannot expose such wonderful people to the risks that you described.”

        She was literally speechless. But when she recovered, her beliefs did not change. I still love her, it’s not her fault.

        19

        1

        • “She was literally speechless. But when she recovered, her beliefs did not change. I still love her, it’s not her fault.”

          I have come to realize that ‘cognitive dissonance’ is one of the most powerful things in modern life. Strictly speaking, cd is supposed to cause stress in the person experiencing it, so I’m wondering if all the media entertainment is the remedy for that stress. If the constant media re-enforcement were to end, would cd have to be addressed?

          13

      • Trotsky suggested it was easier to propagandize the educated classes because they would believe anything if authority, however spurious, was attached to it.

        He may not be completely wrong, but only a step removed from the true reason. It is not authority per se, but pride/hubris. If all the great authorities believe X, why, I will be numbered among the great authorities if I also believe X. Lucifer, after all, was reportedly among the brightest, and it was his pride that done him in.

        Incidentally, this is why physicians are usually pretty easy marks for scam artists.

        19

      • Jack: It’s strange how both prescient and yet dated “1984” and “Brave New World” are both when read today. The idea that one would be mandated to have a telescreen on at all times is the one that strikes me as insanely funny. I have literally not turned on a tv set in years and only ‘watched’ what I’ve been unable to avoid out in public (been meaning to buy the TV-B-Gone from Amazon for a while. But 99.9% of the people voluntarily keep their eyes glued to their phone or some screen – ANY screen – almost every moment of their day. It’s not merely whether one is susceptible to propaganda or not, but whether one has sufficient will to choose whether to imbibe propaganda or not.

        My husband’s boss always gives some tech gadget as a Christmas gift. This year it was one of those little self-propelled vacuum cleaners – which, of course, includes a camera. Since our soon-to-be new home is essentially a 1000 foot cottage/cabin, I won’t need the thing – aside from not wanting it. But even the idea that someone might not ‘want’ a tech gift/gadget is beyond the pale. We’ve still yet to unpack and/or use last year’s projector and portable movie screen.

        7

      • Jack Dobson: “Trotsky suggested it was easier to propagandize the educated classes because they would believe anything if authority, however spurious, was attached to it.”

        In general, Bronstein was correct there, although in recent decades [going back to circa the early 1960s], Bronstein’s Tribe’s increasing control of the schools & universities has allowed said Tribe to SELECT for precisely the obedient-to-authority goyische personality type to be promoted through the school & university system, to the complete detriment & disadvantage of the more recalcitrant goyische personality types.

        [The essays required for college admission nowadays are simply a psycho-sociological filtering mechanism to prevent the recalcitrant goyim from poisoning the Chosen waters of the moderin university.]

        And the “Authority” of the authorities in academia is enforced via the intellectually stultifying monopoly of the “Mentoring” system.

        =========================

        Jack Dobson: “There is something larger and more insidious at play here.”

        This idea of “Social Proof” has not yet been adequately defined amongst the armchair psychiatrists of the Dissident Right; I recently came to learn that many of the old PUAs use “Social Proof” to mean something fairly prosaic, akin to a Pavlovian conditioning of expected outcomes, whereas, like you, I think of “Social Proof” as something vastly bigger, deeper & more powerful.

        In my mind, “Social Proof” [or whatever term we agree to deploy as a replacement for “Social Proof”] ought to be used to connote the desire of a herd creature to burrow its way as deeply as possible into the center of the herd, in the middle of the meadow, so as to maximize the protection of that particular herd creature, away from life at the outer edge of the herd, where the hungry wolves lie waiting, in the shadows of the forest.

        Herd Creatures, what we would now call NPCs [Non-Playing Characters], or Normies, are terrified by the thought of the psycho-sociological security blanket of the herd being removed from them; without that security blanket to wrap around their Ids [in the freudian sense], they’re psychologically naked for all the world to see.

        And not every woman has perky psychological D-cup breasts, nor does every man have a psychological package up to the task of being a psychological pornography actor.

        Psycho-sociological nudity terrifies the Normies.

        And if the Pied Piper of Hamlin can play a psychological tune which comforts the Normies, then the Normies will follow the Pied Piper straight to their demise.

        [PRO-TIP: The Pied Piper was no more than about second or third cousin removed from the Bronstein clan.]

        3

        • I think I may have come up with a good analogy for the Normies & Social Proof.

          Do any of y’all remember the recurring nightmare you had, as a kid, where you went to school in either your pajamas, or else completely buck nekkid, and all the other kids in your class were pointing at you, and laughing uproariously at you, for being such a total freak and a loser, and you were mortally horrified at yourself, and you kept wondering why you were so stupid, why your Mom drove you to school in your pajamas, why she didn’t make you wear your clothes?

          And the other kids just kept laughing at you and pointing at you, and the dream wouldn’t stop, and you couldn’t wake yourself out of it, and you were starting to wonder if you should just go ahead and die?

          As adults, I’m guessing that Normies/NPCs live in mortal fear of the grown-up version of the “going to school in your pajamas/buck-nekkid” nightmare.

          Mortal.

          Fear.

          Absolutely terrified of all the other Normie/NPCs gathering around them and going all Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” on them…

          Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1969)
          https://tinyurl.com/mr2sxsxu

          2

      • Co-Vid = Seen Together. The pandemic has been a giant mass media viewing event. That is all.

        The Latin root, “Co-” as in “cooperate,” means together, or in av communal group. The past tense of the Latin verb, “vis,” is “vidi,” as in the famous “vini, vidi, vici,” which means [he] came, he saw, he vanquished.”

        The resultant coagulate is a constituency for vax and fear porn is the industries devoted market. Their media spectacle has allowed them to plumb this captive demographic’s depths and to handle it like a the faberge egg it that it is.

        3

34. The Left shot themselves through the balls when they decided that truth is relative. If truth is relative, the world is relative. If the world is relative, all the rest comes tumbling out like turd from a donkey’s arse.

    Science becomes a matter of consensus. Facts can change daily as narratives demand. You whine because they think the human being is a blank slate – hell’s bells – to those guys, the entire UNIVERSE and reality itself is a blank state. Hence the notion that perception is reality.

    In Globohomo America, the ruling class has slipped its semantic cams. If reality is relative, lunacy becomes a feasible foundation for whatever narrative is contrived to address The Current Thing. It also frees them from any accountability and responsibility.

    They are now like a Porsche with no brakes. The only things that can stop them now are God, Darwin and Murphy. I expect a death toll in the hundreds of thousands when this ends.

    34

    • Moral relativism was corrosive. Factual relativism is deadly.

      “My personal truth” indeed.

      20

    • I think that death toll estimate is both short and already passed.

      9

    • dude, the death toll from the vaxx is – just in AINO – is closing in on 1M, right now.

      14

    • Glen-

      I wish I had your optimism.

      I think we’re on track for a toll in the tens, possibly hundreds of millions.

      10

    • Glenfilthie: “The Left shot themselves through the balls when they decided that truth is relative.”

      I dunno, Bro, you go on to describe situations and eventualities which are not just advantageous but psychologically delectable for the Left.

      From my point of view, in literal terms, the Left “shot themselves through the balls” when they allowed [and encouraged?] their daughters to run off to Planned Parenthood and murder their grandchildren.

      Then, more recently, when the Left all lined up in unison [dutifully? enthusiastically? ecstatically?] for their MRNA v@xxinations, with the lipid nanoparticles immediately heading straight for the ovaries and testes of the leftists, thereby permanently sterilizing them.

      My guess is that there is no trainable/teachable social/cultural/behavorial path out of this mess, and that fertility rates [and only fertility rates] will decide the psychological nature of future hominids.

      Here are some 2021 polling results concerning vaccination rates.

      ===============

      Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor
      Published: Sep 28, 2021
      https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-september-2021/

      71% of White adults
      70% of Black adults
      73% of Hispanic adults

      90% of Democrats
      68% of Independents
      58% of Republicans

      ===============

      Gallup: More in U.S. Vaccinated After Delta Surge, FDA Decision
      September 29, 2021
      https://news.gallup.com/poll/355073/vaccinated-delta-surge-fda-decision.aspx

      “vaccine reluctant”
      15% of white-collar workers
      33% of blue-collar workers

      fully or partially dosed
      92% of Democrats
      68% of Independents
      56% of Republicans

      ===============

      If there is any truth to those numbers, and if there is also any truth to the Depopulationist Agenda [i.e. if the v@xxines really are designed to sterilize and kill us], and if toxicity [versus inertness] of the v@xxines is fairly uniform across all regions, then the population in the United States which survives the v@xxines will be vastly more conservative and more MASCULINE [Blue Collar] than it is now.

      And I don’t know that there are gonna be very many leftist bloodlines remaining for purposes of future fecundity & fertility.

      The big question is whether the v@xxine toxicity is equal across all regions, or whether a concerted effort was made to ship the most toxic batches to GOP areas of the country.

      4

35. “Is the former general lying? Does he believe what he is saying? Has he simply gone insane or taken up drug use?”

    The answer is that he is probably not very smart. I’ve spoken to one or two of these US generals. They;re not very bright. They’re not Heinz Guderian, they’re not Carl von Clausewitz. You don’t get a star, let alone three or four stars, if you’re any kind of dissenter. “Ours not to question why.” You don’t get past colonel if you’re the type who asks questions or points out inconvenient truths. If the US general staff had more independent thinkers, the US would not be in this pile of manure right now. Be a nice little boy, do as you’re told, keep your opinions (if any) in check, and you will be promoted.

    Incidentally, this holds not just for the US military but for the entire US power structure. Is it any wonder that mediocrity and incompetence is endemic?

    37

    • @Arshad Ali. Ignore John’s shortcomings (his ego oozes through his prose), but he does a good job analyzing what you mentioned above.

      https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/66449667-is-there-any-such-thing-as-military-expertise

      5

      • Cheers. Interesting read.

        4

      • It was a good read, thanks.

        3

36. Hodges is an interesting fellow. Military guys usually care a lot about their reputation among their fellow military guys, but the last few years has seen a bunch of these ex-generals, like Hodges, who spout the company line.

    Yes, this will give them celebrity, money and positions at various universities or think tanks, but in the past, that would have mattered very little to them if they lost the respect of their fellow officers. Yet, today, they seem more concerned about how they’re viewed by the media and the intelligence communities.

    This is not a good sign. Our top brass are being choosen for their loyalty to the neocons and their media/money/DC/NYC parties apparatus rather than their troops.

    31

    • This is true across the board. Intelligence officials, for example, have become slightly smarter versions of Kamala Harris, whores who use their skills to achieve the Peter Principle. This madness will end in mass death, possibly as a result of nuclear war.

      28

37. All living things are creatures of habit. And this is because of evolution. Any organism that repeats a success behavior will survive and thrive more so than another that simply expresses random behaviors. And consequently some of these behaviors eventually get encoded in DNA and are called “innate.” This is a Type I habit and it cannot be changed, only suppressed.

    Some behaviors are “learned” postpartum and become “hard-wired” during the early growth phase when the brain doubles in size. Humans, through the use of complex language, take advantage of this biomechanism to instill their young will useful behaviors that long experience has shown to be success in the local environment. This is a Type II habit (aka nurture). and it is very difficult to change, with one important exception. If parents/society fail to “program” their young during the brain growth phase, these individuals are prone to acquiring addictive behaviors later in life. The void must be filled.

    A successful society programs its young with ancient wisdom early in life (usually via religion). A dysfunctional society fails at nurturing and spawns useful idiots that eventually become True Believers in nonsense or destructive habits. And this dysfunction cannot be repaired by persuasion or voting.

    25

38. Matt Taibbi has always hated himself and his own people. He’s the one that believed it was Republicans in Massachusetts that controlled Raytheon and all the tech firms on 128 would be voting for Romney in 2012. He’s mostly been a fool and a partisan true believer when it came to criticizing “the Right” while never acknowledging the uniparty.

    His critique of Goldman Sachs aside, this is the same dickhead who marketed the term “riding while black” (as in black bike riders being the target of police). To hell with him and most children of privilege from Massachusetts. They’re also another example to what you and Gottfried have said before about Magic Jew Theory: there are plenty of willing combatants who are not members of the suicide cult.

    20

    • You might find this link interesting. It shows the political donation history of Raytheon by political parties.

      https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/raytheon-technologies/C00097568/summary/2020

      6

      • Very obliged. I enjoy reading citations.

        1

39. I suspect that Mr. Z is overlooking the $ angle. All of the “Ukraine Good, Russia Bad” and “Ukraine is winning, Russia is losing” talk is coming from people who work, ultimately, for the bankers and defense contractors. They are not objective observers, they are paid shills.

    And they’re being paid by the same thugs who paid for all of the covid vaccine propaganda.

    The creepy barmaid, now congress critter has said one truthful thing in her otherwise rotten life, “It’s all about the Benjamins.”

    35

    1

    • I suggest, in a friendly way, that you hold the belief that this all reduces to “the $ angle” for the same reason that you are a libertarian. Your model of the world, although tidy, does not fit the world in which we live.

      Ponder why libertarian conferences are more white and male than the white nationalist conferences that I attend. Your model can’t explain facts likethis.

      8

      • I’m not sure what you mean by that. FYI: I discovered I was a libertarian after reading Bastiat’s book, “The Law” in 1972. Then I discovered Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises at a bookstore in Belmont, Massachusetts run by the John Birch Society.

        The Birchers I knew didn’t care much for Murray, I’m sad to say.

        What most people think of as libertarians are just a few fools who think the world would be a better place if everyone could just smoke pot in public. They can’t wait for the next issue of Reason Rag to show up in the mail. In short, I think you have me confused with someone else. 😉

        7

    • “The creepy barmaid, now congress critter has said one truthful thing in her otherwise rotten life, “It’s all about the Benjamins.””

      The was the ungrateful Somali.

      That aside, Zelensky probably did initially play his role for the coin. But we now know Boris Johnson approached him with an offer he could not refuse when he floated the idea of peace negotiations. Johnson, who obviously was acting as a GAE agent, most likely told him his life expectancy would be longer if he kept taking the cash and promoting war. The GAE is thuggish and monstrous and still will murder Zelensky at the end, of course.

      12

40. Ok class, all together now, say KEEEEEV! Remember, not KI-EV….. Ben Hodges looks to be another “participation” general, like Milley. Supposedly received a minor flesh wound in an attack on some base in Afghanistan, but otherwise mostly a paper pusher. On one hand, I guess it’s somewhat more comforting to believe all of these clowns are Machiavellian type liars. But it appears more and more likely, as Z has posited, they actually believe their s***. Now that’s some scary s*** to be sure.

    16

    • ?

      “QUE-EE-EEE-EEEEFFFFFFF…..”

      11

    • Pronunciation aside – the senior brass, or in squaddie vernacular – the REMFs – are all on the payroll of the military industrial complex just as the senior politicos are. Their speech is just as regulated and controlled as that of a no-name mass media ‘journalist’. I disagree with our esteemed host – he gives journalists far too much credit. They are not content creators – their content is created by others. All the modern journalist does is shovel it.

      Milley recently got severely spanked for addressing the joint chiefs and saying that the ‘Kraine is at the end of its tether – without massive intervention from the west they are finished and have done all they can do…’ He also leaked that to the NYT, knowing that the conflict in the Kraine will only end one way. It was a cagey move, he wants to be able to say ‘I told you so’ when the debacle ends badly. He got severely reprimanded and the next day he was back to spouting the approved doctrine.

      19

      • “I disagree with our esteemed host – he gives journalists far too much credit. They are not content creators – their content is created by others. All the modern journalist does is shovel it.”

        I do believe that our host has made that point on numerous occasions…

        I spent way too many years in TV newsrooms and can attest to the truth of your point. From the smallest media markets, to the largest, this is a fact. They may go out and interview and report on local matters, but anything national all comes from feeds. All they do is a few simple rewrites, but nothing substantial is altered. Nothing is added, except for maybe a “local angle” interview with someone who has family or friends who knows someone who may be affected,

        Even the local news is (95% of the time) re-writes from press releases. Again, nothing of substance is ever altered, so they are effectively acting as Public Relations mouthpieces. Also, having gone through the training myself, every corporate and government PR person is thoroughly trained on how to manage and manipulate the media to present the desired message. This includes the most desired days to issue press releases, how to talk in soundbites so what you want to be quoted IS quoted, and how to manipulate sweeps cycles.

        When you combine this very effective PR management (most top PR consultants are former media), with generally low-intelligence, low-curiosity media… Well, you get my point, and we’re seeing it all around us.

        12

41. I think these people are so removed from reality that they believe the insanity they’re spouting. The other day, I was watching a flock of grackles flying out of a tree and they suddenly turned as a group for no apparent reason. I think the insanity starts at the top and the rest of the ruling class, like the grackles in the flock, follows along lest they be left behind and eaten by a marauding hawk. As stated here many times, no one in the ruling class wants to be outside the accepted opinion on the issues of the day.

    22

    • The perceived reality of dominant, local group opinion is more pressing than the actual reality in a far-flung place. The problem, of course, is that nuclear warheads can be flung far also.

      11

42. It goes well beyond reporting the current situation, which at least is debatable. Historical facts are also routinely chucked out the window by the media.

    Crimea has been Russian since Catherine the Great took it from the Ottomans; this is beyond dispute. Erich von Manstein, one of the greatest generals in modern history, took over 7 months to capture Sevastopol. The mere notion that Ukraine could do better than the Wehrmacht at the height of its ability is farfetched at best. Whatever……

    I think the partial explanation of Zman’s issue is that the “feedback loop” for the media has been broken. Previously, money flowed to accurate, trusted sources. Obviously propaganda has always been rewarded. But there was some public mass market for trust and at least perceived accuracy.

    Nowadays, the media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State and the corporations. Pharma companies are major advertisers, which in part explains the Corona coof issue. The economics of the internet have destroyed the traditional media business model. (The fact that Taibbi and Greenwald have moved to Substack shows some of the public will still pay for trust/accuracy.) So these reporters now are Regime stenographers. And the retired Generals can either get on board or enjoy a modest retirement golfing at lousy base courses and shopping at the PX instead of Whole Foods.

    22

    • “And the retired Generals can either get on board or enjoy a modest retirement golfing at lousy base courses and shopping at the PX instead of Whole Foods.”

      You really nailed it right there. Being a Flag Officer is about as close to royalty is you can see in the US. Once you put on that first star, your life becomes amazing. You appearance is always announced and prepared for. You have Aides. Everything is clean and polished for your arrival. Everyone does your bidding without hesitation, and no one “beneath” you will ever contradict you publicly. It really is amazing.

      I’ve been noticing the career and retirement of one particular Admiral, only because I knew him once and am curious. He peaked at Supreme Allied Commander Europe, before narowly missing becoming SecDef and retiring. Upon retirement he went from being one of the most important people in the world, to just another retiree.

      For the last half of his Navy career, everybody cared what he thought. They read his books and sought his opinion. It must not be very easy to give up, because he’s been all over the media, seemingly trying to stay relevant.

      12

43. Sometimes I wonder if any of it is real. I rarely talk about Ukraine or Russia in real life and when I do it’s to other people that get all their information off the internet. I see the occasional Ukrainian flag in a yard or a sticker on a car and I just think those people are idiots. But beyond that it hasn’t affected my world at all. Like all the Grand events that have happened in the last few years that all seems so cataclysmic and yet everything just goes on like normal.

    14

    • “beyond that it hasn’t affected my world at all”

      You must not have received your monthly natural gas bill yet or gone grocery shopping recently…

      It’s obviously not JUST Ukraine, but the Covidian tyranny, Biden installation combined with Ukrainian war mongering has substantially lowered my standard of living.

      23

44. Bolsonaro is Sr. Hilter, El Segundo.

    Speaking of he/her pronouns, a comedian recently spoke about the fact that he wholeheartedly supports men competing in women’s sports but only one condition: that he be permitted to place bets. He said he’d wager that the lady with the hairy face and size 10 shoes will take the race every time.

    27

    • Sounds like something Bill Burr would say. He’s a gem.

      4

      2

45. This is just another version of emergent behavior vs. group strategy, so I’ll reup my position: it is both.

    The NPC’s, and there are many among the media, administrative state, and corporate/religious/political figures, really do believe the insanity, or at least force themselves to mouth the nuttiness to show their devotion. The propaganda and indoctrination, though, largely are directed by people who want to seize control and wealth and effectively have. It is the same with every war–the soldiers follow the commands of their officers. In this case, the commands are indirect and delivered through screens for the most part to man-like robots.

    You acknowledge this when you take note of the sudden widespread use of Ukrainian flag lapels, for instance. Those were in place before the demand.

    It is understandable why there is resistance to this obvious reality. They not only are out to get you but have mindless drones who will do anything to do so. Welcome to totalitarianism.

    20

    • *I omitted this, but it needs to be added. There have been many cases like the current one where the cynics who manipulate the masses in time become True Believers. This happened with European Christianity. I don’t think, though, the manipulators are there yet.

      7

      2

46. It seams to me that the true believer percentage of the population has been increasing for decades.

    Probably the result of modern life. Most people are socially atomized, and experience life through various screens. First television, now their phones. The smart phone experiences are individualized to an extent impossible decades ago when broadcast television was the vehicle.

    So people increasingly live a fantasy life, curated specifically for themselves. All they know of reality is that which is received via the device.

    Historically, “true believers” bitterly clung to their delusions even to the point of death. They were a small percent of the population referred to as zealots or martyrs or cultists. But now they are a majority of people. A large majority. And the historical record predicts that most won’t abandon their beliefs when reality hits them in the face. They’ll take those beliefs to their grave.

    28

    • Unfortunately, you are exactly right. The manipulation has been wildly successful and will end horribly.

      15

      • And don’t expect a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission from our side. We want these people gone.

        18

        1

    • The immediate impact of believing nonsense these days is minimal. The negative impact of dissenting from the hive is immediate and large. So people follow the path of least resistance.

      22

47. Well the true believers will get another visit from their messiah, Zelensky is scheduled to speak at the coming Golden Globes.

    Should be a hoot and another furrow in my brow trying to understand how these people went this nuts. Maybe it is as simple as prosperity being a bad thing for a society. As things degenerate and worsen in our culture I suspect a long culling of the populace.

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    • A guy who used to post here suggested the propagandists had perfected what he called “mind worms.” I don’t know if that is exactly right but it is close. I hope it is a long culling because the alternative is sudden mass death. History is littered with such.

      6

      • I can buy that theory if he’s referring to the equivalent of an ear worm, those ditties that, once heard, we can’t get out of our heads. Surely the same thing can be achieved with propaganda.

        5

        • I’m not certain whether the guy (trumpton, I think) was referencing repetition and amplification as the means to the end, but that certainly was the strategy of Twitter. “Ear worms” seems about right. Regardless, it has been damn-near perfected.

          10

      • Based on the absolutely rage-filled hysteria in response to the suggestion the anti-parasitic Ivermectin was effective versus the coof, I have to wonder if there is something to things like the idea that toxoplasmosis gondii could affect human behavior.

        I mean, to me, the character of the response to vitamin I came off as a cornered organism under threat, lashing out with everything it had to defend itself.

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    • If only Diem had the good sense to come to the Oscars…..

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    • I had to look this one up, how hilarious. He is going to be delivering a message of peace. Yes, because there is nothing globohomo is more interested in promoting than peace. I know these awards shows are desperate for attention, but having Zelensky appear in his superhero uniform is a new low. According to this article the Golden Globes weren’t even televised last year. A good gauge for true believers is to see what kind of audience this draws.

      https://nypost.com/2022/01/09/why-the-golden-globes-will-sadly-survive-trainwreck-of-2022/

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    • We should be embarrassed to be associated and in the same polity with these folks, but it’s too easy to laugh at them. FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON years ago was required reading. To summarize, a retarded boy receives medical treatment and for a time realizes how people actually perceive him. It would be hilarious if this could happen to these clowns.

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      • It won’t though because their belief is reinforced in every day life. Media, government and work all promote their insanity and constantly make them out to be superstars.

        5

      • “It would be hilarious if this could happen to these clowns.”

        https://youtu.be/xY1YMxKDKDg

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