Work is a journey on which you welcome challenge . . .
Work does not instantly respond — work digs to discover and inquires to clarify. Work is difficult and demands discernment. Work wonders, pauses, listens, absorbs, and reflects.
Work does not rest on who’s right and who’s wrong: Work wants to know if there’s something more to see, something to learn, something that sharpens the mind. Work never stops building on the foundation of your own work and what you learn from the work of others.
Work works its way through material that is not easy.
Work recognizes complexity and the demands of in-depth explanation. Work will go on a trip to ideas that take time and effort to understand. Work knows that you can’t see your way to a solution without understanding the different dimensions of a problem.
Work does not defend before you consider
Work does not race to conclusions — work arrives at them through careful consideration. Work is willing is rethink what you think you know. Work takes integrity, courtesy, curiosity, courage, and decency.
Work comes with the willingness to be wrong.
Work is not self-satisfied. Work does not sling snippets of certitude — work crafts argument on the merits. Work is an exchange where each party takes information into account. Work does not issue childish insults — work demands that you act your age.
Work respects your intelligence by using it — and shows respect to others as we work our way to mutual respect. Work won’t be pretty and might even get ugly — but work will do what it takes to work it out.
And if you wanna start solving problems — work is what it’s gonna take.
Speaking of work
I’m looking for fiercely independent thinkers for an idea that could turn the tide. If you’re not interested in hearing me out and having meaningful conversation — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well.
Please contact me through the site or DM on Twitter — as I no longer respond to Tweets or superficial fragments of any kind.
Thank you!
For nearly 20 years
I’ve been practically spit on by people promoting principles I followed to find he didn’t. I’ve written many pieces on Sowell and this is the best his crowd has to offer:
From the get-go
Almost every post points to an identifiable disconnect — enough to know that something’s not right with people you put on a pedestal.
You could skip the post and go straight to the doc — and watch one at a time for 7 days, 7 weeks or 7 months. You could watch clips and ask questions — exploring in a piecemeal pursuit of the truth in whatever way works for you.
You do nothing of the kind.
You skim my site and breeze on by clips at the crux of the story — as you’re not looking to learn, you’re looking to respond.
And entire industries are engineering that need.
We get rewarded by hearts, likes, thumbs-up — and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth.
— The Social Dilemma
I suggest you start here
Believe it or not, my aim is to make Thomas Sowell the catalyst who could turn the tide. But in order to do that, I gotta take him to task for his reprehensible record on Iraq WMD.
If you don’t wanna watch my documentary that’s chock-full of facts on this fiasco for the ages, that’s your prerogative.
But don’t bitch about what you don’t see when you refuse to look.
I’m not here to Tweet my doc away 280 characters at a time for your entertainment. Sowell might dismiss me to protect his reputation, but at least he wouldn’t act like a child.
If you wanna have a conversation, act your age — otherwise, be on your way.
Responsibility and accountability are at the bedrock of this guy’s beliefs — so it’s appalling that you could so casually write this off when you have no idea of the depths of deception involved.
You incessantly complain about the media — and they don’t make policy. But the second I scrutinize Sowell — suddenly you have new standards.
Incredibly, it doesn’t register that even if you take his responsibility off the table, the very basis of this quote is that he would have something to say about these people being wrong.
just a fancy quote to float
You stand by Sowell but take no pride in your commitment to the principles you praise — devoid of decency, humility, and seemingly incapable of shame.
If you were the genuine article — I wouldn’t have to explain any of this to you. As the opening words of my documentary go:
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity
— George Orwell.
If this guy you treat as the Second Coming of Christ — threw 99 items of shit on the wall — while you gleefully ignore the information that matters most . . .
Concrete evidence of mathematical certainty.
The entire story of which puts those 99 in the dustbins of delusion:
You’d forever cry foul for my refusal to wallow in your meaningless crap that’s engineered to make damn sure that’s exactly what you do.
You see something like the imagery below and mock what doesn’t instantly materialize in meaning.
I see it and want to take the journey
You see “disjointed” media & writing, and I see patterns that clearly have a design. That it demands something of my mind is what interests me.
I love having to work things out and connect the dots.
I love the demands of difficulty and discernment.
The rotor speed required to separate uranium isotopes is not an “opinion.” In order to maintain 90,000 RPM, the material properties of centrifuges are as critical as it gets.
In an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter, the difference between a 1mm and 3mm wall thickness — might as well be 10.
Colin Powell presented evidence at the UN that Condi Rice touted as the making of “mushroom cloud.”
There’s no war without that imagery
And since the aluminum tubes were best physical evidence they had to offer, any rational person would recognize the importance of examining the veracity of the claim.
What are the known facts about Saddam Hussein’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons? We know that, at one time or other, he was either developing or producing or using such weapons.
— Thomas Sowell
So you wanna ignore nuclear scientists and go with . . .
“At one time or other”?
They’re talkin’ mathematical certainties and your guy’s muddying the waters.
It astounds me that even with the level of specificity in this 5-minute excerpt below — you’re still glued to patently obvious talking points.
He never even bothered to address the tubes — and you’re ridiculing me for not taking his chain-letter lies more seriously?
Whether or not some aspects are technically true is immaterial — as the lies are in the utterly ridiculous conclusions being drawn . . .
While flagrantly ignoring physical evidence that debunks your beliefs.
You — are a bullshitter by definition
Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.
People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.
— Thomas Sowell
Between my quote below and Sowell’s excerpt that follows — which one strikes you as glib?
DOE’s standard is to spin a tube at 20% above 90,000 RPM before failure — so 48,000 short is a pretty loose definition of “rough indication”
— Richard W. Memmer (Act II)
Any Iraq War cheerleading jackass could issue his regurgitated garbage topped off with smug sloganeering.
And this — from “the great” Thomas Sowell?
Weapons of Crass Obstruction is partisan hackery (which flies in the face of Maverick’s “follow the facts” mantra). On the biggest and most costly lie in modern history, apologists ignored nuclear scientists in favor of professional know-it-alls.
These purveyors of poppycock never went anywhere near the evidence that mattered most — and distorted the hell out of everything else.
THIS does not = THAT
Sample of information available by the date of Sowell’s article:
Anyone with an atom of objectivity would know by now that something’s not right with Sowell’s record.
At the very least, you’d be willing to wonder
And that is where any person in pursuit of the truth begins.
Not instantly defending someone on matters you know nothing about — unleashing your rapid-fire ridicule with pride & extreme prejudice.
FYI: I politely shared the definition of “prejudice” with the last person who assumed I was talking about race.
My 7-part documentary is 2 hours and 40 minutes — illustrating evidence to a level of granularity not remotely approached by all other WMD docs combined.
Any one minute is more substantive than everything Sowell ever said on the subject.
On this story, 10 pages of reading trumps 10,000 hours of TV — cable clans & broadcast to boot.
And that’s a fact — I did the math
As I had access to everything . . .
Let’s say you watched around 3 hours of news every day over the last decade. All the networks combined wouldn’t come close to what The Washington Post wrote in its August 10th, 2003 article called — Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence.
“His name was Joe” are the first four words.
— Richard W. Memmer: Mount Everest of the Obvious: Act IV
Anyone entering this discussion with sincerity — would come away realizing that there is no debate, and there never was.
They just made it up.
Making It Up As You Go
Who cares about 10 pages when “You Can’t Believe Everything You Read”?
Same standard to snub someone who’s read 10,000 — on world-altering affairs you snicker at.
And I noticed “You can’t believe everything you read” only applies to words you don’t like.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve received nothing but contempt for the truth on this topic. Of all those in that crowd that I’ve challenged on WMD — their knowledge combined could fit into a thimble with space to spare.
One glance at this picture and I’d think, “This guy’s not f#@%*!` around!” I’d know he’s up to something I’ve never seen before — and I’d have to find out what that is.
That observation isn’t about me — it’s about how you observe anything of depth that takes time and effort to digest.
Apologists have no such notion
Instead of practicing the principles you preach (or showing a modicum of courtesy, if nothing else) — this is how you react the second you see an opportunity to scorn anyone who challenges you:
You outright reject any truth that doesn’t serve your shortsighted interests — it’s just that simple, and it always has been.
You make it impossible to penetrate your fortress of folly.
Then haughtily condemn my work for not being structured to your liking (as in linear and in easy to swallow).
Structure’s got nothin’ to do with it
It is as though with some people — those who most avidly embrace the “we are right” view — have minds that are closed from the very get-go, and they are entirely incapable of opening them, even just a crack.
There is no curiosity in them. There are no questions in their minds. There are no “what ifs?” or “maybes.”
— Laura Knight-Jadczyk
From decades of dealing with the doubt-free, I’m well aware of how you people operate. I didn’t write Mentality of a Mob and Rolodex of Ridicule from my imagination.
You’ll never know how much more the world had to offer you — and how much more you had to offer it.
What the American public doesn’t know . . . is what makes them the American public
The United States is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance. . . . we’re proud of not knowing things. Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything.
It is a new Declaration of Independence: no longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.
We no longer have those principled and informed arguments. The foundational knowledge of the average American is now so low that it has crashed through the floor of “uninformed,” passed “misinformed” on the way down, and is now plummeting to “aggressively wrong.” People don’t just believe dumb things; they actively resist further learning rather than let go of those beliefs.
I was not alive in the Middle Ages, so I cannot say it is unprecedented, but within my living memory I’ve never seen anything like it.
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa).
Be quite a coincidence if they weren’t . . .
Ya know, connected
Percentage of people peddling “everybody believed Iraq had WMD” — who couldn’t write a sound argument on the subject to save their lives:
If Sowell’s disciples abided by the principles they preach, the image below would be enough to prompt intellectually honest inquiry.
He got off scot-free for his reprehensible record on Iraq WMD — as did everyone else who lied to protect their interests:
Democrats & Republicans alike
That speaks to the objectivity of the person presenting the case — as people pushing a party line don’t spread blame around.
If your strongest criticism of him is that he was wrong on the Iraq war, I’d frankly say “big deal.” Millions of people were wrong about that shit back then. He had no political authority or say on the matter, so I think he could be forgiven for that mistake. (Assuming that you’re right of course, I’m still waiting for you to supply the evidence).
He has no idea what the deal is
But has no qualms about blowing it off as “no big deal.”
America is up in arms over the same shit every goddamn day — congratulating yourselves on repackaging the sale ol’ story (as if a tweak or two will render results from what repeatedly fails).
And yeah, you may win from time to time — but at what cost?
Look around
My generation got off easy, as all we were called to do was weigh information. But even that was too much of a burden.
As we got more, we became less
We can talk about race and responsibility till the end of time — but heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
In Sowell’s immaculate brilliance — somehow it escapes him that Iraq is directly connected to how race relations went totally off the rails (right along with this country).
No Iraq War — no Obama
No Obama — no Black Lives Matter
No BLM, no kneeling, no removal of monuments — no Trump.
That — was not smart!
It’s quite possible that Comey’s cover-his-ass actions in the 11th hour tipped the scales. Given the possibility that a single event like that could alter the atmosphere of an election:
What do you think pouring fuel on the fire for years did?
Given the tight margins — there’s not a doubt in my mind that these ploys put Trump in the White House.
The Yellow Brick Road is the path of America’s pursuits.
When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land? . . .
We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them. This statement may seem idiotically tautological or self-evident, yet it is seemingly beyond the comprehension of much of the human race.
This is because we must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it.
While Sowell’s quote is about people who make the decisions, it inherently applies to people of influence . . .
Since they can shape those decisions.
And while that apologist was absolving him, he miserably failed to consider the fact that Sowell didn’t even try to hold anyone accountable.
Predictably so — since that would require Sowell to scrutinize himself.
If the current charge that President George W. Bush deliberately deceived Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were to be taken seriously, it would be grounds for impeachment, if only as a warning to future presidents.
— Thomas Sowell
You can’t even fathom how empty that is to me . . .
How Sowell plays these word games to create the illusion that he’s the fair-minded follower of facts you worship him for . . .
“What is surprising, however” . . .
Is that your crowd treating me with nothing but disdain for mathematical certainties for nearly 20 years — slinging baseless beliefs with “hostility and even hatred” . . .
Doesn’t constitute a “way of life” to you, Mr. Sowell . . .
It is hard to think of a time when Karl Rove or Dick Cheney has even raised his voice but they are hated like the devil incarnate
— Thomas Sowell
So you can manipulate the nation into war — make up more lies to rationalize those lies, pit half the nation against the other in a post 9/11 world, and so on:
But as long as you don’t raise your voice — there’s no call to be angry about it?
There is no price I would accept to insult my own intelligence as you have repeatedly done to insult yours.
At every turn, the faithful tap dance around reality — oily evading anything that requires them to hold him to the standards he’s so celebrated for in the Facts Over Feelings Parade.
You read his books and embed yourself within an echo chamber of affirmation— quoting Sowell like he’s a saint and lamenting:
If only this National Treasure could live 150 years
And along comes somebody who says, “Wait a minute — there’s something you need to see.”
That’s your moment to put Sowell’s standards to the test.
But you refuse to see
As your mind is hermetically sealed in service of myth over merit. You’ll dig in to defend his books and “breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology.”
Never mind that’s got nothing to do with the horseshit he sold on WMD.
I’m still waiting for you to supply the evidence . . .
I put it all on a silver platter
Countless hours of research and writing . . .
I interviewed a world-renowned nuclear scientist — and corresponded with a key physicist and top intelligence official at the State Department.
You didn’t do jack shit
And now, even now . . .
You want it all boiled down to a few Tweets for fodder to fuel your fix — whatever it takes to entertain yourself with the least amount of effort.
“And now, even now” — you’ll pull the same stunt in your bottomless contempt for correction.
“The cat . . . TOTALLY out of the BAG!”
I agree with Sowell on a lot of things — and I sure as hell wouldn’t be qualified to debate him on economics.
But on WMD, he would get an ass-kicking for the ages:
Believe it or not, my aim isn’t to take down Sowell — quite the contrary: Thomas Sowell to Team of Rivals.
And we asked each other a lot of questions. I asked you questions, you asked me questions
— Johnny Cash
“I asked you questions, you asked me questions”:
Wouldn’t that be something
But there’s no possibility of that — until we address this:
I recently responded to a Tweet with the quote above — and added, “The prejudice in Einstein’s era pales in comparison to today.” To which he replied:
By any objective measurement, that is completely wrong.
On racial prejudice, he’d be right
But Einstein was referring to prejudice in general . . .
Prejudice — by definition
- An attitude that always favors one way of feeling or acting especially without considering any other possibilities
- An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts
- The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions
- An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason
- A partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
Glenn Loury once called my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by what he found here. I was immensely impressed by what I discovered about this man — and he partly inspired this site.
“It was time to take stock”
We stood there in the summer of 1984. . . . Two decades had passed since the heyday of the civil rights achievements of the 1960s. It was time to take stock. Where have we blacks gotten ourselves to? I asked . . .
High up in the speech throwing down the gauntlet came my signature declaration, the Civil Rights Movement is over, I asserted.
I claimed that the problems of the lower classes of African American society plagued by poverty and joblessness were, at the end of the day, not remediable by the means which had been so effective in the 1960s of protest and petitioning for fair treatment.
What we now faced, I suggested, was a new American dilemma. The formulation I ultimately settled on contrasted an enemy without, that would be white racism, with an enemy within — black society.
“The Civil Rights Movement is over” — in 1984!
That — takes guts!
But when I took his hero to task — that courage was nowhere to be found:
When you see a sentence like “Not a trace of Thomas Sowell’s ‘follow the facts’ claim to fame can be found on the most world-altering topic of our time.” . . .
“I have no idea what you’re talking about” is not the mark of an intellectual giant (or an intellectual on any level).
Sowell is a great man because of his books. I stand by that. you want to refute his books — go ahead. I’m listening.
Oh, I see — you wanna confine his record to a box of beliefs that suit you, and ignore anything that doesn’t. So the rules of argument you espouse on a daily basis don’t apply to you.
A lot of that goin’ around
I have no idea what you’re talking about . . .
What part of “WMD,” “biggest and most costly lie in modern history,” and “most world-altering topic of our time” — do you not understand?
Perhaps an inquiry or two for clarification was in order?
What happened to “looking at the deep questions”? . . .
We’re a university. We should be above whatever the fad or the fashion is of any given day. We should be looking at the deep questions. We should be analytical. We should be emphasizing reason. Instead, it was like a kind of emotional rush — in which . . . the president and provost and the top leadership of my university — wanted to jump on a bandwagon. They wanted to wave a banner.
A picture says a thousand words. Without passion or prejudice in the way, you would wonder what the image below is about:
And fill in some of the words for yourself.
You’d have questions
“Who are you to criticize the great Thomas Sowell?” — would not be one of ’em. The second you do that, you’re in gross breach of the standards he espouses.
What should go off in your mind is:
“Said so and so” doesn’t strike me as Sowell’s standards. This guy seems to know something about him that I don’t — maybe I should find out what that is.
Loury had no such notion
And this, is prejudice by definition . . .
You’ll find the full email in What a Fool Believes He Sees — my response to Loury’s utterly ridiculous defense.
Anybody can “follow the facts” when they’re going in the direction you desire.
Only the genuine article takes the trail no matter where it leads — and they damn sure don’t fuss over tone along the way.
- A “great man” would not have his egregious hypocrisy and gross negligence plastered all over my website.
- A “great man” would not bask in baseless beliefs that cripple the country — and have the bottomless nerve to talk about responsibility to boot.
America is infected with the plague of wishful thinking — framing the “debate” in whatever way works in your favor.
Had Loury listened, he could have run with my idea and influenced Sowell to become the catalyst that could turn the tide.
When someone of his caliber calls my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by my site . . . I figured since he signed up, he might have read some of the series below.
I wrote it all before that email
And along the way, I was repeatedly met with blind belief in the religion around Sowell. His flock seemingly lives to copy and paste his principles — then abandon them the second someone challenges his record.
And this over-the-top commentary was all I could take . . .
Jesus, how could you know so much about someone — and miss something so obvious on a matter of world-altering magnitude?
Particularly when his claim to fame is “follow the facts” and he went nowhere near them.
He butchered the debate
As he brazenly ignored the debauchery in his own camp — creating the conditions for Trump to come along and take depravity to new depths.
And why mess with tradition?
And it’s just preposterous to write a biography and blatantly ignore a huge hole in its premise.
I spent $19.47 to prove a predictable point: Not one word on WMD — and fittingly, Iraq shows up only once in a footnote.
Mr. Riley — it’s just precious that you peddle his prescience — while conveniently ignoring his role in creating chaos that feeds the very polarization he predicted.
Quite the self-fulfilling prophecy, don’t ya think?
Sleight of hand
I’m often amazed for someone who writes about so many controversial issues — not just race — how little real criticism I get.
That’s convenient — most people don’t even know who this guy is (I didn’t until over the last year or so). So the notion that nobody challenged him on WMD is absurd — since few would have known about him or even bothered to if they did.
And it’s not like he didn’t know there was massive disagreement on the matter — where he could have “engaged” to welcome a challenge to his claims.
Why bother, when you can chalk it up to “Weapons of Crass Obstruction” — and still be seen as Sherlock Holmes.
There’s no willingness to say, “I’m wrong.” I mean, you have to take a 2×4 to these people, basically — to get ’em to, sorta, knock ’em down and admit they were wrong.
That physicist was talking about the people pushing the aluminum tubes fantasy that took us to war in Iraq . . .
And I’m talking about you
All that aside
Sowell is not a great man — but he could be . . .
Thomas Sowell to Team of Rivals
A young man sittin’ on the witness stand
The man with the book says “Raise your hand”
“Repeat after me, I solemnly swear”
The man looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seemed to hear anymore
And it didn’t really matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair
What Is Truth
One Voice Became Two 