Of Two Minds

Everyone in every time has thought that his time was crazier and less predictable than the times that came before him. Much of this is due to recency bias, but another cause is the sense that things were better in the past. This sense that the past was better is a part of the human makeup. There is not only a nostalgia for the our own past, but for the past we never experienced. That is because the past seems more certain than our present age and the near future.

People who lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War looked back at those days with fondness. These were people enjoying 1950’s America reminiscing about one of the worst times in American history. Many even lost family members in the war, but those war years felt like the best of times. Our minds seem to have evolved in such a way that we cannot remember pain. That means what we can recall about our past is only the good feelings we experienced.

It also depends upon who you are at the time as well. If you were a black person in the 1950’s then it was a wild time to be alive. The civil right revolution was getting going and the role blacks were given was to riot in the streets. The typical white guy living in California was just enjoying his time. On the other hand, the war years were a good time to be black in America as the war economy needed labor. Millions of black people found lucrative work in northern cities.

That is something to keep in mind while watching present events. It certainly seems like it is a crazy time to be alive. The whole Trump thing is wild, just from the perspective of American politics. People also seem nuttier. This was evident during the Covid panic when millions of otherwise normal looking people revealed themselves to be bitter paranoid cranks. Now the anti-Trump loons are going into hiding, by which they mean the latest alternative to Twitter.

It is not just the usual suspects losing their minds over the election. The British tabloid The Guardian has announced on Twitter, oddly enough, that it is stomping off in a huff, presumably to set up shop on the alternative to Twitter. They claim it is because of the “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” That means a publication that traffics in conspiracy theories about the imaginary far-right and racism is abandoning the one place they are sure such things exist.

Even putting aside the natural bias described at the start, this is crazy behavior that did not exist just ten years ago. The crazy times ten years ago were both sides meeting in the streets to point fingers and maybe scuffle a bit. More important, the people we call the left had institutional support, so they controlled the battlefield. This fact has been true for as long as anyone has been alive, so seeing them abandon the battlefield and go into hiding qualifies this as a crazy time to be alive.

Of course, the reason this is happening is the big election victory of Donald Trump and the temporary ascendency of his party. It was not just a big win for Trump on Tuesday, but also a big win for the movement that made him possible. The reason that movement exists is the growing insanity of the people we call the left. In other words, we probably do live in a crazy age, even when people have the ability to step back and look at it from a distance. This really is a crazy age.

The thing about this crazy age is that not much is happening. The exciting times a century ago revolved around the Great War. The mobilization of America for war in Europe was unprecedented. The war itself was unprecedented, and its aftermath was also unprecedented. Enormously important things were happening. In this present age, everything happens on the internet and slightly affects events outside the digital space, but only in superficial ways.

Put another way, we live in a crazy time because this new virtual reality we created called the internet has sucked into it many of our least stable people, empowering them to unleash their craziness in this virtual realm. Imagine a version of the past twenty years in which the crazy people were denied access to the internet. Imagine if all the foreign policy debates since the Cold War had been conducted online by people like John Mearsheimer rather than crazies from the Kagan cult.

What makes this a crazy time is we are living in a unique period and what makes it unique is this virtual realm we call the internet. Everyone is forced to one degree or another to live with two minds. There is the mind that exists in the virtual realm and then there is the mind that exists in the physical realm. Note that you rarely discuss with people in the physical realm your life in the virtual realm. These are two distinct worlds that require two distinct minds.

On the other hand, the growth of this new virtual world has had the effect of collapsing the two minds for some people. The crazies online are made crazy, in part, by the invasion of the private space by the public space. Prior to the internet, these people could only do politics by participating in it publicly. Most just avoided politics and remained privately nuts, but free of public politics. Plugged into the internet, the public rushes into the private and the private becomes public.

This may explain the phenomenon of the seemingly stable person heading off into crazy land as they get increasingly online. People like James Lindsay or Keith Olbermann are good examples of people who started out a bit odd, but not so odd that you questioned their sanity. They steadily evolved into crazy people online. When there was separation between their public and private mind, we did not see the madness, because it existed outside of public view.

In the fullness of time, people may look at this time and think it was the calm waters before the terrible rapids. Maybe they look at this is as a gentle adjustment period between the Cold War and whatever comes next. it is also possible that it is the crazy time when people had to adjust to the two-mind problem. The growth of the virtual realm created a need for an entirely novel mode of thought, the mind you activate when inside the internet, along with a way of isolating it from the other mind.

It may be that we arrive at a new way of judging people. At the top of the hierarchy are those who master both minds, deftly balancing them to be high status in both the material world and the virtual world. At the bottom are the people who allow the virtual realm to take over their mind entirely, making it seem that they are as crazy in real life as they seem online. In the middle are the vast majority who struggle to balance their internet mind with their material mind.


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Severian
29 days ago

I’ve seen the Internet drive people insane in real time. I had a friend in academia back at the dawn of Social Media. He was always a Liberal, but it was possible to be friends with Liberals then — they were, or at least could be, fundamentally decent people with a few nutty ideas, like that girl who believes in healing crystals and whatnot. But he got a job at a small college out in the sticks, in a deep Red state. So instead of trying to adjust to his new social reality, wherein he’d have to interact with Bush… Read more »

Epaminondas
Member
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

It went further than merely becoming an intolerable asshole. In my case, my California friend starting behaving in ways that were positively inimical to white civilization. He married a Chinese woman, had children by her, bought off on open borders, and basically ignored all the degeneracy around him…or blamed it on Republicans. I went from being a pretty close friend to being an outright enemy. In a civil war, I would have no issue with eliminating him now.

Trek
Trek
Reply to  Epaminondas
29 days ago

Yeah I also lost track of guys who would get married and have babies with other races. I mean, if someone is willing to do that to their own child then how much can I trust them?

Fakeemail
Fakeemail
Reply to  Trek
29 days ago

You need to understand this an a possibly unconscious reaction to the white women’s feminism. It makes the women crazy (and undateable) and in turn makes the men crazy too.

Oddly, non-white women who marry white man are more “pro white” than your average white liberal slut or hag.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Epaminondas
29 days ago

“In a civil war, I would have no issue with eliminating him now.”

Doubtful, TBO. Statistically most people aren’t psychologically equipped to intentionally kill others, much less so in a purposeful matter, and even much more less so those who are capable of employing lethal force as purely practical course of action (hunting animals doesn’t count). Bright side is your psychotic friend, assuming he is capable, has no other redeeming values and would just as likely be liquidated by his own side when local events slowed down.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Templar
29 days ago

But he said in a civil war. Psychological preemption that obtains in an irenic environment tends to go by the boards during actual warfare. Otherwise, there could be no war.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
29 days ago

Yep, there is a psychology behind it all. You shoot someone, you are not going to think “I should not have done this, I’m a bad person”. No, you’re going to embrace your “cause” all the more firmly. You are in the right, they are in the wrong sort of thing. Those who don’t are ineffective, or dead.

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Templar
29 days ago

Most people aren’t sadistic killers, mass killers or serial killers. But most people are capable of killing given the right circumstances. The idea that most people are psychologically incapable of killing is a comforting lie.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
29 days ago

Damn straight. We are all fallen and civilization is a very thin veneer.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Templar
29 days ago

The first one is the toughest, then you get used to it. ln every conflict there is hesitancy to take life. It is bred into us as most of us come from a civilized society. Hence the training of soldiers to react and obey rather than think. In any stressful situation you revert to your level of training, or reaction/muscle memory, *without* conscious thought. Been there, done that. What *will* happen is a hesitancy to be the first to employ a lethal response, but not necessarily to react to a lethal provocation, e.g., to shoot back once shot at. That… Read more »

george 1
george 1
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

“When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friends face! You’ll know what to do.

From the movie Patton.

Ancient Mason
Ancient Mason
Reply to  Templar
29 days ago

They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.
No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”
And what difference does that make?

Apex Predator
Apex Predator
Reply to  Templar
28 days ago

I think you would absolutely marvel at what humans are capable of when they have been pushed, prodded, and abused for long enough and in an extreme enough fashion. I’m sure millions of Germans just woke up one day and as the meme say “for no reason at all” started throwing Roman salutes. 🙄

You don’t get out much, you go into the deeper and darker places on the web and you will find plenty of people willing and able to do the mass culling. I do not doubt their sincerity.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

Well, it didn’t help that the Bush administration was staffed by the most incompetent, stupidest, sleaziest group of gangsters, war criminals, and con men you could possibly imagine. Which is why it was so bizarre to see Kamala Harris cozying up to them. It woudn’t surprise me if that gave a fair number of these lefties whiplash and kept them from the polls last week.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

Whether or not it turned off Lefties, Liz Cheney is being lined up as the scapegoat, which is glorious.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

Lol, no, they weren’t stupid. All your adjectives apply, but stupid…no.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Templar
29 days ago

I added the adjective when I remembered Doug Feith.

Horace
Horace
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

Now there is a name I remember from the early years of my redpilling, before I had crossed the line into (((awareness))). I just went to check my suspicions and … yes, every damn time. Make Aliyah Great Again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith
https://tikvahfund.org/faculty/douglas-feith/

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Horace
29 days ago

Yea, they all were, except for the guys at top, Cheney and Rumsfeld (yea, believe it or not). Just like the early days of the NAACP, Catholic Charities today, etc. etc. etc.

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

Did you see the funeral for John McCain? It was bigger than George Floyd. Bipartisan too. Kamala knew where the bacon was coming from.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Marko
29 days ago

That was 90% TDS driven. They only did it because McCain had stuck his finger in Trump’s eye. Absent that, they still would have had some public observance, but probably only about 10% of the circus that it was.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

I’ve mentioned before the TDS afflicted shitlib I know, who was also BDS afflicted, who told me during the J6 hearings she thought Liz should be president. If she’s any indication, the lefties didn’t have much of a problem with it.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

I find it so strange that the people with TDS, many of whom also had BDS, managed to rehabilitate Bush and Cheney in their minds. At least having BDS and TDS is consistent, but absolving Bush and Cheney in the process of demonizing Trump. Just totally weird and doesn’t make any sort of sense logically.

Trek
Trek
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

Interesting, because it was after the year 2000 that I started to find liberal friends and even open borders Republicans intolerable. They were suddenly more determined to tell me off for any politically incorrect opinion I had. I can’t say that it was them who left me though, because honestly I dropped them. So, maybe realizing there were lots of people online who agreed with my opinions made me less willing to indulge libs.

Last edited 29 days ago by Trek
ray
ray
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

Lot of what I’ve done online over past decades is simply giving other men the courage, the permission, to acknowledge their own experiences and outlooks, and be active in expressing them.

I had a grade-school buddy who played linebacker and special teams in the NFL for many years. His job on special teams was to sprint downfield on kickoffs and bust-up the offensive wedge confronting his team. They called him ‘Captain Crazy’.

Ended up with concussion aftereffects in his later years. But that was the gig and somebody’s gotta do it.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

Men who aren’t sexually insane reject them, if allowed. Some are crediting Trump’s win with hispanic men wholly to this. “Machismo,” etc. But the internet has been decisive in selling women on (and into) troonshit. In real life, “trans men” are effeminate midgets, visibly traumatized, a piteous horror, and “trans women” are frighteningly costumed, stinking, looming men, broadcasting obsessive perversion. The “spiteful mutant”/sex hazard alarm blares at all of them. On the internet trannies become self-help/-assertion rhetoric and the 1/1000 pictures where they “pass”—but still they don’t. (The most perverse revel in not doing it and making you say the… Read more »

Apex Predator
Apex Predator
Reply to  Hemid
28 days ago

Underrated comment and spot on about the Lovecraftian Horrors that are trans individuals. They are horrific and poor facsimiles of the things they are attempting to be. We literally made an entire movie about this awful malady in the form of Silence of the Lambs where it was obvious to all living beings that these creatures are pitiable and need therapy. Instead they have become emboldened and militant. They need to now be driven back underground where they have always existed as it is obvious that the “give an inch take a mile” idiom applies massively to all gender confused… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

It’s a lot easier to give thumbs up on the Internet to the concept of a tranny and tranny “rights”, than to put up with a male teacher in your child’s classroom wearing a dress. Then it gets real.

TorontoTraveller
TorontoTraveller
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

The internet also gave unscupulous doctors a perfect channel to convert mental illnes into huge bank accounts. It must be like shooting fish in a barrel for these modern day Mengeles.

Xman
Xman
Reply to  thezman
29 days ago

I must disagree with your thesis today, Z. Superficially, it is true that the Internet helps the crazies coalesce. But here we are discussing alt-right ideas on the Internet… and the Left would accuse us of being the “racist, sexist, fascist, misogynist” nutjobs. To us, this is merely a community of like-minded normal folk. I read a number of Internet forums, some of them technical, and they are oases of sanity and thoughtfulness and expertise, not craziness. How do we explain the sheer craziness of the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks and the Spanish Republicans? How do we explain the willingness… Read more »

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Severian
29 days ago

Modern telecommunications have enabled the, “Hicklib/Libhick,” phenomenon by keeping them linked back to the hive mind. This includes rural DSL/fiber, Dish/DirecTV, and now Starlink.

Those small town colleges and libraries serve as perfect beach heads for spreading the Marxist cancer.

Alan Schmidt
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
29 days ago

The small town hicklib is always the most vocal and obnoxious creep to deal with. He knows the State would rain hellfire on the town if someone “takes care” of the situation with a well-deserved beating. He openly advocates The State before his own people, and thinks himself virtuous.

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Alan Schmidt
29 days ago

Amen.
Youze are describing a type I didn’t know existed…until I left Gotham and took up residence in the provinces.
There are more of them here in Central NY than I care to acknowledge.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Alan Schmidt
29 days ago

Jay Nordlinger–I know, I know–noted that there is no Leftist further left than the southern Leftist. What he meant is that the southern Leftist, guilty because of her provenance and insecure because she fears her fellow non-southern Leftists view her with suspicion, performs her Leftism in an especially histrionic and melodramatic fashion. She will always, loudly and vociferously, proclaim positions to the left even of her fellow Leftist radicals. Nordlinger was correct. I’ve seen this phenomenon in the flesh, as it were, and it ain’t pretty.

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
29 days ago

Biggest ‘ho I ever met,
(A real Emma Goldman, I tell ya)
The daughter of a Company Man
Out of North Carolina…

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
29 days ago

Alternatively, social pressure still keeps these types somewhat in line. Trannies really aren’t a thing in the sticks because of the opprobrium they and, importantly, their mothers would receive. It does require some meat space social networking for the more extreme public displays. The HickLib rather enjoys the perceived martyrdom but there are hard limits. That aside, if I get to run our gulags, HickLibs and Southern progressives go to the showers first. They are the absolute worst.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

Angling for a position with the new Chancellor’s regime, are we?

Last edited 29 days ago by Alzaebo
Horace
Horace
Reply to  Alzaebo
29 days ago

I won’t contest that, as long as I get to be Chief Inquisitor, Ordo Shitlibicus.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Alzaebo
29 days ago

Not for nothing do they call him “Heydrich” Dodsen in the sub rosa Traditionalist powwows…

ray
ray
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
29 days ago

The internet greatly facilitates the hive-mindedness of the Left. The Left transformed from individual or small-group political opinions into a herd, a full-blown dogmatic religion. No variance from The Dictum is tolerated, and violators and thrown quickly into the void.

Females — collective by nature — are especially susceptible to this condition, as phenomena like the PussyHat rallies reveal. Males are much more individualistic, which from a political standpoint is a drawback.

theRussians
theRussians
Member
Reply to  ray
29 days ago

My liberal friends have recently assured me that there is no difference between male and female traits… I might as well have been slapped in the face from behind. In hind sight, I know that they (liberal whamen and adult boys) actually believe it and not their own eyes.

ray
ray
Reply to  theRussians
29 days ago

Animals that remain in the center of the herd are rarely attacked and remain relatively safe.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  theRussians
28 days ago

Every time i see the phrase “my liberal friends” I get nauseous & start twitching, WTF!

Marko
Marko
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
29 days ago

During the LA-Based Comedian Podcast Era (2010-2017) the hicklib thing was a big deal. There were all sorts of comedians who claimed they came from small towns in nowheresville and then would come onto Marc Maron’s podcast and basically thank their lucky stars that they got to to bantz with Jews in green rooms instead of being stuck in their non-LA career with non-LA values.

SirLawrence
SirLawrence
Reply to  Severian
29 days ago

Friggin liberals can’t even kill themselves right. They just end up further left.

Hokkoda
Member
29 days ago

“At the top of the hierarchy are those who master both minds, deftly balancing them to be high status in both the material world and the virtual world.” You know, like a real estate mogul who moved into the largely fake TV media market and became a successful celebrity, then parlayed that into a profoundly impactful online media empire which got him elected President. Twice. We live in crazy times because 25% of the country believes in provably crazy things. Men cannot become women, for example. That is insane. Masks no more protect you from a virus than a chain… Read more »

Member
Reply to  Hokkoda
29 days ago

…which got him elected President. Twice…

Three times.

Hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Pickle Rick
29 days ago

Touché

first time since FDR!

Woodpecker
Woodpecker
Reply to  Hokkoda
28 days ago

First time since Nixon

hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Woodpecker
27 days ago

Ooh, good pull.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Hokkoda
29 days ago

The internet also gives the crazies a social network and safety net. Cults at least required recruitment and meat space interaction, which slowed things down.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Hokkoda
29 days ago

The anonymity of the internet gives powerless people a sense of freedumb so they feel unconstrained to reveal their inner weird. But other weirdos suddenly realize that they have had the same thoughts and this thing self-organizes into a “community.” Then it gains traction in the media which is always looking for the latest novelty. It used to be that if you wrote a letter to the local paper and it got published, it boosted your feeling of self-worth a bit but you also worried what others thought. If you wrote two letters to the local paper and they got… Read more »

Hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Tom K
29 days ago

Anonymity is a two edged sword. It protects people. But sometimes people and their ideas don’t deserve that protection.

It is taking time but I think generally the trend is that crazy things subside. It’s hard to maintain the frenzy necessary to sustain a professed or actual belief in impossible things.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Hokkoda
29 days ago

I don’t think many people really believe that men could become women. Maybe 5% of the population. Ten years ago, nobody, and I do mean nobody, thought that men could become women. The entire transgender project is built on a word trick, claiming that our gender and our sex are two different things that only correlate “sometimes.” This is ridiculous, obviously, but that is really all it is built on. The rest is social pressure and a demand for “tolerance.” So, just because people say it, doesn’t mean they believe it. This was the point of 1984. The Party demanded… Read more »

Old geezer
Old geezer
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing… Read more »

mikebravo
mikebravo
Reply to  Old geezer
29 days ago

T.D. is a brilliant thinker and author.
Hi books on his working life are great eye openers into the minds of fools.

WillS
WillS
Reply to  mikebravo
28 days ago

“Life At The Bottom” is a great repudiation on welfare. After reading it I was left with the impression welfare is a crime against the poor. It doesn’t help them; it was very similar to our slums, they were majority white and no difference.

ray
ray
Reply to  Old geezer
29 days ago

‘A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.’

Amen to that. Modern America as proof.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Old geezer
28 days ago

This is 99% of the reason the corporate world forces people to list “their pronouns”. It’s humiliation designed to intimidate and cow everyone into accepting the most odious and disingenuous parts of the Left’s dogmas. For that matter it was the same thing driving the vaccine, mask and social distancing nonsense. I suspect the reason the masks were finally abandoned was that a lot of people almost completely stopped going to local stores or indoor spaces and this did too much damage to the local economies to keep it up. I certainly did so. Of course, predictably, this shifted commerce… Read more »

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

Come the revolution, I volunteer to personally execute all who use the phrase “Gender assigned at birth,” as well as every doctor who prescribed puberty blockers, and every surgeon and assisting nurse who performed sexual mutilation surgeries. And no, I’m being neither ironic nor histrionic.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  3g4me
29 days ago

For a clean sweep, include all who list their preferred pronouns in correspondence. Granted, there are only so many hours in the day.

Hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Mycale
29 days ago

I was plowing 2 feet of heavy snow in Colorado last weekend, when my tractor started leaking transmission fluid. Do you have any idea how hard it is to call the small engine repair guy to report that you blew a tranny? I hate what they’ve done to the language. 😂 Agree with you that few people actually believe this stuff. 99% of mask wearers took them off after the court ruling. If the country is ideologically split in half, then half the country – the ones calling us “grandma killers” should have kept wearing them. But it turns out… Read more »

Last edited 29 days ago by hokkoda
Winter
Winter
29 days ago

Watching liberal meltdowns online is funny as hell — until it’s a friend and family member who’s in genuine anguish because they truly believe that bible-toting fascists are preparing to lynch the joggers and turn women into birthing husks. In my own life, I’ve seen intelligent people who are otherwise kind, giving, generous, and concerned for the welfare of others turn into sobbing messes because they believe evil is on the march. It’s true that many of these unhinged leftists were crazy to begin with. However, many more had their better natures hijacked by the nonstop propaganda coming from our… Read more »

ray
ray
29 days ago

You’re right about Olbermann and the two-mindedness the internet brings, or reveals. I recall when Olbermann was a standard sports-reporter on ESPN, indistinguishable from the others. But we see now he is an unbalanced Prog extremist that I wouldn’t even trust around my dog. If I had a dog. As for innate ability to forget pain, I congratulate you if you have this capacity, but I doubt it is general in nature. I remember my pain quite well as it is never far away. I was around in the Fifties and Sixties and can affirm it is no delusion that… Read more »

mikew
mikew
Reply to  ray
29 days ago

I have to admit that I actually liked Olbermann during the George W Bush years. He called out the Iraq war for the idiocy that it was and routinely attacked it’s cheerleaders on Fox. I kept watching him until early 2008 when I realized that he didn’t give a crap about the war, it was simply a red team vs blue team thing for him and that he was clearly bat crap crazy for Obama.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  mikew
29 days ago

Olbermann is a prime example of something I’ve noted for many years, since back when I was a civnat, which is, the left, while presenting themselves as and often being confused for peaceniks, only oppose wars that are waged by a Republican in the WH; they support all wars waged by Democrats in the WH.

Last edited 29 days ago by Jeffrey Zoar
Pozymandias
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
28 days ago

Either the “peace movement” was largely some kind of communist front organization just like the paleo-conservatives always said it was or the actual number of authentic peaceniks has fallen off a cliff. The only arguments seem to be over which country to start a war with and this at a time when the US military has never been less capable in modern times.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  ray
29 days ago

Olbermann was the original “word salad” commentator. Yes, his thought process was definitely better than Harris, but it was extraordinarily pretentious. One could not help but think his entire oration had nothing to do with informing an audience, but rather assuaging his ego. I could swear he returned to his dressing room and kissed the mirror after every performance.

Last edited 29 days ago by Compsci
ray
ray
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

Your memory of him is better than mine.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  ray
29 days ago

Ah, but is it correct? I admit to surprise there are so many reasonably respectful comments on him in this group. I hated the guy. Yeah, I disagreed with him, but the oratory was over the top.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

Look up “punchable face” in Webster’s and there’s a pic of Olbermann.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
28 days ago

I don’t know, are you sure he could edge out Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? BTW, both of those guys now also look like ugly women. Maybe they’re “transitioning”. Wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t stop me from punching them though.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Pozymandias
28 days ago

So many punchable mushes, so little time…

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

Olbermann has a great gift in front of the camera but if you browse his Wikipedia, it’s easy to see he has burned every single bridge he’s ever walked on. ESPN even gave him multiple chances and he blew them all up. That is why he is a relative nobody doing a podcast instead of doing World News Tonight making millions of dollars. He has to be one of the most unlikeable, arrogant, blowhar assholes in television history… and that is saying something.

Coalclinker
Coalclinker
29 days ago

” In the fullness of time, people may look at this time and think it was the calm waters before the terrible rapids.” Exactly. I see people saying all the time that we’re going back to greatness. Uh, I don’t think so. Mr. Trump is already appointing “Israel First!” folk and war whores to lots of critical offices. I think that train will come off the rails on that one when Russia tells them all to go screw off after they’re told again to obey the “Rules of Order”. Anyone who thinks we’re going to change and things will go… Read more »

Last edited 29 days ago by Coalclinker
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Coalclinker
29 days ago

Thank you. I am sooooo tired of reading all the hosannas explaining that with Trump’s election, the rise of the oceans will slow and our planet will begin to heal. A chicken in every pot, and happy days are here again. All the wonderful, hard-working immigrants will replace Whites legally, and all the blacks and mestizos will now vote Republicon forever and ever, Amen.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  3g4me
29 days ago

Last week at work I had a couple visitors from a sister facility. Given the election, it was easy enough to get into politics while in the safety of my office. One of them was, like me, Gen X. He had some good opinions on some subjects, particularly the clot shot and much of the covid hysteria, but at some point he trotted out the line about wanting immigration, he just wanted it to be legal. I used Z-Man’s line on him, “then why not just make it all legal?” and explained why immigration itself, and not the legality of… Read more »

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  KGB
29 days ago

Good for you. Next ask him why there is need for any immigration at all. If he can actually break from the “nation of immigrants” lie, then you’ve truly got a convert. I just find people go into the weeds of ‘good people’ and ‘they want to work.’ Then you have to get into what is a nation, who says who gets to come and why, the whole idea of self-interest. That brings in the “Who is my neighbor” issue – which is why I usually don’t even start the conversation in the first place.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  3g4me
28 days ago

This is why it would have been better if the cackling whore “won”.

ray
ray
Reply to  3g4me
28 days ago

John Thune was just elected Senate majority leader.

Your case is made.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  ray
28 days ago

New prez, same ol’ Thune…

ray
ray
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
28 days ago

Yeah, this guy Thune the Toon also claims that the j6 prisoners deserve to be there, and the ‘law’ is being served thereby.

The GOP is just pathetic. Soulless. But we’re all supposed to be thrilled be ‘we won’ the Senate. Ptooey.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  ray
28 days ago

The Empire Strikes Back.

Last edited 28 days ago by Alzaebo
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  ray
28 days ago

“But we’ll have crops rotting in the fields! We’ll have no one to feed the pigs! You can’t deport all those honest, hard-working people!”

RVIDXR
RVIDXR
29 days ago

I’ve known hysterical Keith Olbermann types my whole life, seems to me that the internet gave these people an expanded audience & access to like minded loons which fueled their madness. The biggest change I’ve noticed over time is an extreme fixation on Trump specifically & the strangest thing I’ve noticed is these sorts of people seemed more angry towards him when he was out of office than when he was president. Every other republican president was basically forgotten when they left office but not Trump, then again the media never shut up about him. I don’t think that sufficiently… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  RVIDXR
28 days ago

If you really want to watch their eyes bug out, suggest that it was their unceasing fixation on the Orange Man which brought him back for another term. If they could have just let him go he probably would have gone away. It’s all the more effective for being true.

RVIDXR
RVIDXR
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
28 days ago

That’d be good to roll out for the more ‘heady’ shitlibs who aren’t ranting so much as doing the whole “think of muh abortion” talking points. With the unhinged screamers I’m not convinced they’re capable of even the slightest introspection especially when they’re in the middle of a tantrum. With the psychotic rabid animal leftists you can’t even have a surface level discussion with them, you either try to deescalate them when they start amping up or poke the pig which is like lighting a fuse to a bomb.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
29 days ago

With respect to the Internet, this election was settled on Thermodynamics: the quantity of labor units needed by the average slob to purchase wattage, food calories, doctor labor and newton-meters of force to propel his ass to work and of course the quantity of cholos he has to dodge on his way home. The Progs ignored these issues because they are not binding constraints for inside-the-Beltway types.

Neoliberal Feudalism
29 days ago

A Day in the Life of Donald Trump’s Greater Israel 7:00 AM: You wake up groaning under 40% annual inflation. Fox News is extolling what a great honor it is to send Israel $50 billion dollars (the latest monthly extension) and what a great honor it is that the draft is being reinstated to fight in war against Iran which, unfortunately, requires boots on the ground. News claims that giant corporations have scaled back DEI, though, and they recommend doing your patriotic duty and signing up as soon as possible to help our greatest ally! 8:00 AM: You head to… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Neoliberal Feudalism
29 days ago

If they can come around to the Cheneys, then someday they can come around to Trump too. But that took 15 years or so for the former.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Neoliberal Feudalism
29 days ago

IMHO we’re being prepped for war with Iran.

They don’t need a draft. Crashing the economy will serve as a de facto draft. Under 30s will go to the military, 30 to 50s will go into the defense industry.

The catch will be that one will need a digital biometric ID to participate in either institution and receive their CBDC stipend (ration card).

Everyone who doesn’t opt in will just have to self-deport or starve.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
29 days ago

Reminds me of the meme I saw recently of an e-thot mulling “I should film my mental breakdown and post it online”. The lunacy is one thing (which is bad enough) but the bragging about being a lunatic it is in some ways worse.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
29 days ago

Nothing, and I mean literally nothing ever in history, has acted as greater accelerant for female narcissism than social media has. I suppose one upside to recent events is a growing willingness to tell women they suck balls and should shut up.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

Completely correct. The one caveat, however, is that the willingness only reaffirms the female’s view of herself as a victim.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
29 days ago

One consolation is that I simply can’t get enough of these Trump Won meltdowns.
Hoo-ey, do psycho chicks deliver!

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
29 days ago

I saw Mark Dice today post a compilation of videos from Trump supporting women who were essentially rubbing it in. Why? The last thing we should do is support any woman who films her “deep thoughts” on camera and submits it to social media. I don’t care what side of the aisle they’re on. Along those lines, my wife had FOX News on the other night and they did a man-on-the-street segment, asking NYC leftists their thoughts on the election. Shoe-horned into it was a brief interview with a cross dressing man. The only mockery of this thing was for… Read more »

Maniac
Maniac
29 days ago

Slightly related: anyone else notice how most of the women involved in the whole 4B thing are women you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place?

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

The past really was better. For instance, this didn’t happen. This is as rural a part of Georgia as there is.

Georgia Mother Jailed for Letting 10-Year-Old Walk Alone to Town (reason.com)

The journey from the past into the present, at least since the “renaissance,” has always and everywhere been a story of increasing regime control. With any exceptions to be found being only very brief hiccups.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

The farewell benediction of “Be Safe” reflects the grotesque nature of the times perfectly, and this story is Exhibit A in what a shitshow feminized society is.

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

I always reply with “Be Bold.”

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  rasqball
29 days ago

I always reply with, “If I can’t, I’ll name it after you…”

Wolf Barney
Wolf Barney
29 days ago

I believe the increasing lunacy of the left is a major reason Trump received a significantly higher share of the Hispanic vote than past GOP candidates. Hispanics tend to be, overall, simple people, (not a criticism) and therefore aren’t fooled by the left’s obsession with promoting tranny, drag queen and LBGTwhatever culture.

Last edited 29 days ago by Wolf Barney
Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Wolf Barney
29 days ago

Hardly anybody (especially not the “left”) wants to talk about it or think about it, but some percentage of it had to be not wanting to vote for a woman. And especially not for a woman of “color.” Even people “of color,” or some of them, have enough sense not to do that. However, I predict the Ds will be undeterred in nominating another woman shortly. Perhaps this will be their point of failure that those (on both the left and the right) who thought their ascendancy guaranteed never saw coming. Because I don’t believe the Ds are capable of… Read more »

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

Negro Fatigue started to set in a few years ago, mostly on the fringes. The unvoiced disgust with Girl Bosses and feminized society is being vocalized now. Elections really don’t matter as far as the trajectory of things, but they do provide insight into social reality. I think the GOP no longer will be nationally competitive longer than another cycle. Look at the downticket races. Trump is not perceived as Republican. The Left also is atomizing at a rapid pace. Race and gender underpin both of these phenomena albeit in different ways. Dare I mention whites are starting to show… Read more »

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

Trump’s pick for Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth is drawing fire because he said that women shouldn’t be in combat. How crazy is it that this is controversial? Would this statement by Hegseth be castigated if we didn’t have the internet? I don’t know but it seems the internet accelerates everything so what might have taken progressivism 20 years to advance without the internet now takes 5 with it. Thus bad ideas can gain traction and even be institutionalized before they are proven wrong. Enough accumulation of these bad ideas it seems to me can sink a society because societies… Read more »

Last edited 29 days ago by Tom K
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

A high percentage of voters are racist and sexist, and that’s a dam’ good thing!

Mow Noname
Mow Noname
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

Go for the triple play and please, please, please run the Covidian Bitch Whitmer from Michigan.

ray
ray
Reply to  Wolf Barney
29 days ago

Latin America still is much more traditional than the modern anglo nations. Extended families, Christian grounding, individual freedoms, respect for the aged, so forth. A breath of fresh cultural air.

BoomerMCMXLVII
BoomerMCMXLVII
Reply to  ray
29 days ago

Very true, I see it literally every day.

Abelard Lindsey
Abelard Lindsey
Reply to  Wolf Barney
29 days ago

Hispanics represent a traditional working class. They have similarities to the union laborers of the 1950’s. The want decent jobs with decent working conditions, affordable housing, affordable health care, and access to education. With Trump and, in particular Vance, the GOP is slowly starting to accommodate working class issues. This is the reason why Hispanics, and to a lessor extent, blacks are starting to vote for them.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Abelard Lindsey
29 days ago

Generally speaking, if a Messkin’s got an ice-box full of Bud, a plate of carne guisada, a seniora to cook and wash, and a casita, he’s not gonna cause any trouble. As Wolf Barney said, these are uncomplicated people, their needs basic, and their wants few. And that means they have no interest in burning down their barrios because the local padre refused to wed a pair of bearded freaks in sundresses.

Hog Whisperer
Hog Whisperer
Reply to  Abelard Lindsey
28 days ago

Wow, the GOP picks up a few more percentage points of hispanic votes and suddenly dissident rightists go all sentimental. Twenty years rewind. Here we are again: the latino invaders are “natural conservatives,” family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande, browns cleanse once-attractive urban real estate from blacks. (Of course the black tide just rolls onto somewhere else. But beaner cheerleaders don’t care about the unfortunates whose lives are now enriched by los negros.) Press 2 for English.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

Polymarket should allow bets on how long it takes The Guardian to return to X. I give it three weeks. Leftwing narcissists require the platform and them giving it up forever is as likely as a vampire abstaining from blood.

JaG
JaG
29 days ago

Ah well the human brain tends to forget the bad. If you broke a bone as a kid and was able to remember the pain, it would be excruciating. Same with women and childbirth. If a woman remembered how painful childbirth was, they’d be one and done. We also live in the transitory period where there’s a cohort of people that remember the before times (internet). Those that are chronically online never knew what it was like.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  JaG
29 days ago

There are an immense number of people alive today who never knew a world without the Internet, and those who never knew a world without smartphones are coming up fast.

Last edited 29 days ago by Alzaebo
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  JaG
29 days ago

Some hydroflouric acid got under one of my fingernails about 30 years ago. That pain was burned into my memory.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
29 days ago

Not sure where Z gets the idea that yearning for the past is part of human nature. Leftists, contrariwise, absolutely abominate the past and see history as the glorious sojourn from benighted racism, sexism, homophobia and religious superstition to enlightened worship of the Other. No matter how terrible they consider the present–such as the Trumpening–the past was even worse. Tautologous perhaps, but this justifies their raison d’etre. It is they, the Leftists (progressives) who have been the motive force behind the transition from primitivity to sophistication. And if you doubt this, consider rhetorical artifices such as “the arc of history… Read more »

Last edited 29 days ago by Ostei Kozelskii
Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
29 days ago

You are making the category error of equating leftists with humans.

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

Aye: demons,

TomA
TomA
29 days ago

Speaking of conspiracy theories, this one sounds insanely plausible. Biden and Trump cut a deal in which Biden sabotages Kamala by backing down the fraud machine and Trump in turn agrees to not prosecute the Biden Crime Family. Good old fashion American pragmatism. And normie gets to stay on the couch and put on a few more pounds. Yes, our future is bright indeed. When do the bacchanals start?

Last edited 29 days ago by TomA
Winter
Winter
Reply to  TomA
29 days ago

It’s an interesting theory, and it makes some sense. But the sticking point is Biden’s mental state. While he certainly had the capacity to sabotage Kamala, it’s hard to believe he had the ability to back down the steal. That being said, the guy looks happy as hell that Trump won. Jill, too.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Winter
29 days ago

Bingo. Biden will pardon everyone in his crime family that he can and he himself will never see a day in jail or even a prosecution because of his lack of ability to defend himself. That only leaves a few State charges for Hunter, and I expect those—if any—will not be pursued.

Lawfare for the Biden crime family seems not in the cards and to be fair, probably a distraction for Trump.

Last edited 29 days ago by Compsci
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Winter
29 days ago

In riposte, I give you “WTF did you do, Joe?”

https://seed167.bitchute.com/2SwT8qTJLy3L/aMHkxKsk6MVU.mp4

Last edited 29 days ago by Alzaebo
The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  TomA
29 days ago

TomA-

Larry Johnson posted an absolutely hilarious AI-generated video (halfway down the page linked below) featuring Joe, Barry, and a special guest discussing the exact scenario you describe:

https://sonar21.com/we-will-avoid-war-with-russia-and-china-but-iran-is-still-on-the-table/

“I’m just a senile old man Barry…who’s going to believe me?”

Last edited 29 days ago by The Wild Geese Howard
Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  TomA
29 days ago

The problem with that is there’s no such thing as a “gentleman’s agreement” anymore. Not that I believe Trump is going after Biden. So if my belief is correct, that’s a conspiracy theory that actually has legs, i.e., it will never be disproven.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

You address several unrelated issues. A romanticized view of the past has been with us since the dawn of man. Roman philosophers reminisced about a Golden Age that probably was far more brutish than what the empire offered at the time they lived. Fast forward to Rosseau and people long for primitivism. As you point out, people who lived through the Depression displayed a cognitive dissonance of the reality of the time. A few times the happy memories have basis in reality; people who came of age in the Gilded Age through WWI did live in a better time than… Read more »

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

Nice mention of the Gilded Age.

There are a couple commentators and documentaries that persuasive argue the, “Lost Generation,” of the 20s were the originator of the Woke degeneracy we see in the West today.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
29 days ago

Evelyn Waugh’s VILE BODIES, made into the half-decent film BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS, has characters in post-WWI London who would be right at home in the Bluest College Town celebrating the Current Thing.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

Regarding The Great Depression, 30 years or so ago there was an ice storm in my hometown at Christmas, and the power was out for a day or 3. Afterwards it was common to hear that it was the best Christmas ever. I think the fond memories of the GD are kind of like that.

The military has known for a long time that it is shared hardship that builds camaraderie and unit cohesion. That’s why they have the recruits scrubbing the latrine with their toothbrushes.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

The “day or 3” is key. In the Nineties, I experienced an ice storm that resulted in loss of electricity for two full months in the distant city, less so ironically as you got further from the urban area. People started to display madness after a few weeks. Imagine that happening in this time, which at some point it will. People will have withdrawal symptoms on par with heroin addicts going cold turkey and the causalities will mount.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
29 days ago

That probably had something to do with Trump’s flipping Big Macs and driving a garbage truck. He was momentarily living empathy if not quite sharing actual pain.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Jack Dodsen
29 days ago

The great pioneer in the internet making people insane was Something Awful. Every change that separates us from the “old internet” can be traced to “goons” (the site denizen nickname). The story is convoluted and boring and you wouldn’t recognize the names, but just for example, “troon” is a contraction of “transsexual goon,” because SA is where that contagion was unleashed. The “tranny janny”—pervert as censor/judge of the anonymous public, now a universal principle of Our Democracy—started there. Everything we think was ruined by the iPhone, by “normies” (the goon term for normalfags, because they weren’t allowed to say “fag”),… Read more »

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  Hemid
28 days ago

Interesting take about forced madness. I was ignorant of Something Awful, but just because I’m not interested in it…

Moran ya Simba
Moran ya Simba
29 days ago

The “it has always been thus” fallacy is actually similar to leftist thinking because it assumes it is all just in the head. This is false. There are mountains of evidence that things are deteriorating rapidly.

It is the other bias, normalcy bias, that is the more common. These are crazy times, in many, many ways

G Lordon Giddy
G Lordon Giddy
29 days ago

Interesting thoughts.
I have a good friend, an ex marine, good guy, who somehow went totally Trump Derangement Syndrome nuts on line.
I just had to avoid any discussion in the meat space that might trigger him into crazy.
I dont remember this kind of stuff with people in the past and I can remember as far back as the 1960’s. Something has changed and it is this digital world.
I think that your thoughts are spot on.

Jack Dodsen
Jack Dodsen
Reply to  G Lordon Giddy
28 days ago

A Brit who once posted here under the nic “trumpton” argued the Regime had perfected what he called “mind worms” via algorithmic memetic repetition (my term) and so forth. That’s above my pay grade to evaluate, but something dramatically changed people’s reason and ability to be rational and that would seem to be at least a candidate for what happened or in the ballpark. There’s Before Digital (BD) and After Digital (AD) in this secular world now and the repercussions are obvious. Trumpton was a brilliant guy and had more familiarity than a lay person with the intersection of psychology… Read more »

Fred Beans
Fred Beans
29 days ago

So some lefties are going to start “cancelling” themselves, lol. They’re taking the advice they always lectured the right with, about how businesses were unfettered in who they did business with (unless you refused to bake a gay wedding cake!). But one platform (twitter) becomes less censorious, Zuckerberg talks about becoming neutral, alternate platforms are advanced (like Rumble). Even MSM’ers like the WaPo and LAT decline to endorse the “obvious” choice. The left has been losing their s**t for awhile now. Now they’re calling for governments to block/ban entire platforms for “just making business decisions.” They still have some European… Read more »

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
28 days ago

I think the main reason for nostalgia in the middle-aged is the increasing diversity of the country (I live in California, where we have an extreme case of divercitosis). There is nothing like mobs of mestizos and Asians everywhere to make you feel that you are no longer at home. I think it has been established by sociological research that diversity makes me people unhappy and asocial.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
29 days ago

I think the nature of the two-mind problem Z broaches is that the virtual mind is, in the main, the honest one, while the physical mind is the politic one. All of us on this site, for instance, are free to say things, to speak truths, we could never get away with speaking in meatspace. Anonymity and distance allow one to speak his mind in the virtual environment. But anybody–particularly anybody on the Right–attempting such candor in physical interaction would immediately be unpersoned and cast into the void.

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
29 days ago

We are, in the end, social creatures. IRL, we don’t want to sound crazy or too far from the mainstream. The virtual space takes us out of the meat space and removes the social cues like the looks on peoples’ faces. That kind of complex interaction is replaced with abstractions like “likes” or “re-tweets” and replies from people who may be 5k miles away from you.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
29 days ago

The anonymity of the internet also reduces civility. People say things to you online that they’d never say to your face. And eventually, this started bleeding over into reducing civility in meatspace, analogous to the pornification of everything which the internet has also wrought. This reduction in civility is why I’ve never been 100% opposed to online ID. You mind your manners better when your name/face is attached to what you say.

Last edited 29 days ago by Jeffrey Zoar
Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
29 days ago

“…and removes the social cues like the looks on peoples’ faces…”

And in support of that observation, I give you emoji’s. 🙂

Seriously however, Waay back in the early 80’s *before* the Internet and ubiquitous e-mail, our dept head wrote down a entire page on the proper use of the network communications we had at the time and took note that it should *not* be used for such serious communication among faculty and students precisely noting the lack of visual interaction between communicators.

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
29 days ago

Very well stated. The difference for our side in meatspace is that the left controls meatspace, so it can be less concerned about compartmentalizing – as you put it, being politic about your views.

Tars Tarkas
Member
29 days ago

“The reason that movement exists is the growing insanity of the people we call the left”

I would say the movement exists not because of the crazies on the left, but because of the cucks and traitors on the so-called right. If the GOP were doing what GOP voters wanted them to do, Trump could not have won.

ray
ray
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
28 days ago

‘John Thune’

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
29 days ago

The level of insanity that has taken over leftists is unprecedented. I’ve been separating from long time “friends” because they’re crazy and I find them to be irredeemable scum. I wish them the worst this life could ever offer. The other day a friend sent me this: https://x.com/KaeleyT/status/1855962823039565970?s=01. If you think you can co-exist with these monsters, then go join them. All of these people should be catapulted into space. The amount of evil here is beyond comprehension. I do not wish to share the Earth with them, never mind a country. Then there is this one here: https://x.com/UltraDane/status/1856431394144301572?s=01. These… Read more »

terranigma
terranigma
29 days ago

The Two Minds you speak of are Jung’s Persona and Shadow. The Persona is your socialized self, the normie you inhabit at the day job so you do not shortly die poor and alone. This is the mind people remember fondly from before the days of the internet when everyone seemed normal. The issue with the Persona is that it is a facade, not the true self. The mixed blessing of the Persona is that the restraints it places on an individual often prevent them from knowing what they actually believe which can effectively stabilize what may be an inherently… Read more »

Whiskey
Whiskey
29 days ago

Things are going to go badly for the True Believers in the Trump threat. Biden just hosted Trump with the biggest sh!t eating grin in his life. You have all these people, RFK Jr., Elon, Joe Rogan, etc. giving Social Proof that Trump is A-OK. Now its Dank Brandon. When the Rapture does not come, people realize everything they believed was a lie. That they were a rube, a sucker, a mark. That the media and every other authority figure they believed was a con. Their whole life was built upon the movie in their head as the heroic resisters.… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
29 days ago

The Internet is where emissaries of The Regime say things live in some video format and it is captured and thus accessible forever. These things live in a subculture and finally make it out to the broader public if say, Elon Musk, buys Twitter and spends a decent amount of his time noticing such confessions of evil. Of course there are the endless mental illness confessionals too. If we are good, and we are lucky, the evil things that people like, Ignatiev, Krugman, Baker, Nuland, Albright, Maher, Hanania, Shapiro, endless NGOs … UN apparatchiks … … say and that are… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
29 days ago

“…the internet has sucked into it many of our least stable people, empowering them to unleash their craziness in this virtual realm.” Certainly. Heck, I never talked “politics” as much as I do today—via the “net”, so count me as one of the crazies. 😉 But there *is* a difference between today and yesterday that I think is real, not simply a “proximity” or a communication phenomenon. When I was younger there was a something in society which is now gone. I long for “a return” to that time. I can absolutely state I have never said today’s modern society… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

I too rarely talked about politics. But remember, it is they who forced it on us. Modernity, like most things is a mixed bag. Though I get what you are trying to point out in people, but everyone loves to pretend everything is way better and refuses to look at the costs of any of the alleged benefits of the status quo today. We won’t even acknowledge the costs. We just pretend they aren’t real. We live in the era of magical thinking. Outsourcing makes us wealthy, diversity is our greatest strength, men can be women, homos can be married… Read more »

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

On the tech side, I might agree. On other science side, particularly medicine and food/nutrition, I am not so sure. It is obvious a lot of science has been bought and paid for providing the desired conclusions per the piper. Maybe RFK Jr can help.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  c matt
29 days ago

Here’s an example. My mother died of lung cancer in 1994. She was a terrible smoker and highly nervous person. I was there in the doctor’s office with her. She was given 4 months with no treatment intervention, 6 months perhaps with surgery and chemo/radiation. In short, the decision was 6 or so months bedridden and suffering or perhaps 4 reasonable months with no treatment intervention. Lung cancer was a matter of when, not if you died. Fast forward to 2020 when the last person I’ve known to have died from this disease. He had lung cancer for 6+ years,… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
29 days ago

No reasonable man can deny the improved efficacy of healthcare over the last century or so. The increased lifespans are the proof. And let’s not overlook improved palliation, as well. Diseases such as prostatitis, which used to make life a living hell, can now at least be palliated to such a degree that life becomes worthwhile for the afflicted. However, as ever, there are unintended consequences. For instance, increased longevity seems an unmitigated good. A no-brainer, right? However, what sorts of years are we adding to life? Are these extra several years spent scaling the south face of Nanga Parbat,… Read more »

HalfTrolling
HalfTrolling
28 days ago

I’m joe normie offline and far right turbohitler here. It came quite naturally because I like being able to afford food. It took me a long time to figure out this isn’t how it worked at all for the average person but it got easier when people started being stupid on myspace and then Facebook.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
29 days ago

But we could also say that in the Age of Mass Mediia everyone was forced to live in the same virtual world because only the rulers and their mind-numbed robots in the media got to paint the picture of reality.

Whereas now any nobody can paint a picture in the media: The Joy of Painting.

Abelard Lindsey
Abelard Lindsey
29 days ago

I still maintain that these times are still better by some objective metrics than the 1970’s.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Abelard Lindsey
29 days ago

Perhaps. But if I could return to 1974, I’d do it in a New York minute.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
29 days ago

Regarding the age of contradictions, there are a number of us troubled by Trump’s Israel First or MIGA cabinet picks. “Traitor! Closet kosher!” they cry. As an antisemite of the first order, I had a few moments of concern myself. Therefore I agree with “…balance their internet mind with their material mind.” Rather than hooting with the other monkeys, I realized that this guy had found religion. He almost had his head blown off, and was told by millions it was an act of God. (Something I agree with, in my own way.) He likely sees it that way too.… Read more »

Last edited 29 days ago by Alzaebo
c matt
c matt
Reply to  Alzaebo
29 days ago

The concern, amply justified, is that his MIGA > MAGA, and Israel has been nothing but trouble for the US. It will drag us into its ME war in which we have no interest, get Iran involved and then tag out with the US to finish it, which may then cause Iran to tag out with Russia and perhaps China, getting us right back into WW III that we have been trying to avoid with Ukraine. Different paths, same destination.

But I guess that was the deal with devil Trump made to be coronated President.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  c matt
28 days ago

You said it better. Reagan had to make a deal with the devil to end the Cold War; Trump has made such a deal to end the Deep State.
For both, that requires powerful allies.

Remember, this version always goes to war with other branches of itself, because it’s a war religion proffering ultimate victory. Both sides are certain they are are tools wielded by the righteous Hand.

(I do so myself, I think everyone on a mission does. That’s why Belief is a part of society, enabling us to accept tradeoffs.)

Last edited 28 days ago by Alzaebo
Dan Doffs
Dan Doffs
29 days ago

Hey Z – why would you include James Lindsay in the same sentence as Obermann as a “crazy”? Lindsay is not like that.

Dan Doffs
Dan Doffs
Reply to  Dan Doffs
29 days ago

Anyone care to explain to me the anti-Lindsay sentiment? Puzzled as he is staunchly anti-woke. Tell me what I’m missing.

Lakelander
Lakelander
Reply to  Dan Doffs
28 days ago

He’s a typical kosher centrist. His big thing right now is saying anyone who questions jews or zionism is automatically the ‘woke right’. He’s an insufferable gatekeeper. Like Jesse Kelly, his big thing is supposed to be anti-communism, but he never talks about the progenitors of the ideology…I guess that would be too woke.

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Dan Doffs
29 days ago

From a 10,000-foot view, I think it’s that Lindsey started off as a rather thoughful left-of-center guy who could engage the right. But as events transpired and he engaged the right more and more online, he went crazy and has retreated into some kind of liberal straitjacket where he tweets asinine things now. Not unlike Jordan Petersen.