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
One Tweet is all it should take:
Thomas Sowell flagrantly failed to follow the facts on Iraq WMD — opting to peddle party-line talking points that poison political discourse & butcher debate to this day. Here’s my 7-part documentary that exhaustively details the biggest and most costly lie in modern history
The rotor speed required to separate uranium isotopes doesn’t care who’s president.
People in the business of selling lies — don’t.
By the standards Sowell espouses, you would consider that information on the merits — in a calm, cool, and collected manner.
If only staying true to your beliefs were as popular as promoting them.
People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.
— Thomas Sowell
D.O.E’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.”
And since the entire point of testing should be to replicate the conditions of centrifuges, one would think that the full-blown testing would be performed before the N.I.E. was completed.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Between Sowell’s words and mine
Which ones strike you as glib?
It seems we have all the time in the world to promote the false — but not a second to spare for the truth.
A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on
A quote that’s been around in various forms for over 300 years (evidently the original being from 1710):
Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect.
Trillion Dollar Tube
That 5-minute excerpt alone
Is plenty to put this lie in its place. You should see what I did with 2 hours and 40 minutes:
I defy you to find a single instance of anyone on the Right even attempting to make an argument on the dimensions, material, and quantity of the tubes.
You’ll be lucky to find them mentioned at all.
That — all by itself, speaks volumes: To anyone who thinks world-altering wars are more important than websites, anyway.
Sowell’s cogent & sober arguments . . .
regurgitated garbage
I wouldn’t care if this guy cured cancer:
You don’t get a pass for basking in baseless beliefs that cripple the country — and have the bottomless nerve to preach responsibility & accountability to boot.
That is a cancer of its own
The poison he pumped into the atmosphere helped destroy the internal organs of America. So we have very different standards as to what qualifies as a “National Treasure.”
For nearly 20 years, I’ve been practically spit on for telling the truth on this topic — truth that takes both parties to task. But it’s seen as political anyway, because that’s what’s convenient. That’s what easy.
And now information is so funneled in a fashion to your liking — that you don’t even know what to do with anything that isn’t. It astounds me that wading through unfamiliar territory on this site is somehow seen as complicated as quantum physics.
I assure you: What it took to acquire this information was infinitely more demanding than anything you face here — let alone the complexities in exposing systematic deception at the core of our country’s ills.
What Sowell wrote on WMD is a disgrace, and yet it’s seen as solid gold — because his name is on it. Such blind faith — along with fans who don’t even care one way or the other:
Is an egregious breach of the very foundation upon which Sowell’s reputation rests.
There is no measure for how dangerous and destructive it is to worship these people — whether it’s Sowell or anyone else in the brigade of professional know-it-alls. Purveyors of poppycock don’t just systematically lie and manipulate:
They created a market for the buying and selling of absurdity — and the buying of you.
They made it so easy for ya — that you don’t even remember what it was like to work for it, if you ever knew at all.
One picture is worth 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 this great man? . . .
Would not be one of ’em. The second you deflect from the issue in question — you’re in breach of Thomas Sowell’s tenets.
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.
Or you could do nothing
And just not being a jerk would be something.
Not a trace of his “follow the facts” claim to fame can be found on WMD or the aftermath of the invasion.
Lukewarm criticism doesn’t count — nor does following facts that go in the direction you desire:
Anybody can do that
But because the Left provides a piñata for the Facts Over Feelings Parade, people like Sowell can forever pounce — creating an impression about themselves that simply doesn’t square with their record.
That the Left is its own worst enemy is another matter — and we’ll get to all that.
And keep this in mind with everything you see on this site:
This isn’t just about WMD and Thomas Sowell’s deception — it’s about the psychological gymnastics of human nature:
Believing things that have no bearing on reality . . .
I play an aggressive game. I don’t flop. I’ve never been one of those guys
— Lebron James
There was a time when it would be embarrassing for a ball player to feign being fouled on the level of theatrics in King James’ court.
You’d be laughed off the court for pulling stunts like that in my day. This man takes no pride in how he wins — and it’s increasingly rare to find people who do.
It’s all the more absurd when you consider that even with the hardest-hitting fouls back in the 80s — nobody flailed about like that on impact.
Never mind Lebron’s built like a Tiger tank.
Tiger Tanks Could Withstand a Dozen Sherman[s]
The only way that so many levels of sham & stupidity could be so easily accepted — is that it was normalized little by little over time.
Ain’t that America
His words are pure fantasy
But it doesn’t matter, because that’s the country we’ve become — where words are empty and utterly baseless claims can be beaten into your brain as bedrock fact.
You can apply a follow-the-facts standard in one breath and abandon it the next . . .
And get away with it with ease.
The NBA implemented an anti-flopping rule almost a decade ago, but it’s rarely enforced. That such a rule was needed in the first place is bad enough, but then they created one with fines that are a joke — since they miserably fail to follow through.
So the saga continues — much like America’s ever-increasing acceptance of the asinine & flagrantly false.
A buffoon befitting of this circus music — that is the legacy he’ll leave behind. He doesn’t concern himself with the future and the harm he does in shaping it.
And neither do you
Oscillating between issues throughout this series is not random — it’s designed to illustrate patterns of behavior that show how you help create or exacerbate many of the problems that plague your pursuits.
What I advocate is in the best interests of America: Which party it serves at a particular time has nothing to do with it.
As I put it in Part III: There is no amount of gain you could give me to believe something to be true that is false. When warranted, I will defend those I despise and call out those I like.
I call a spade a spade, period
I’m in pretty good company with that thinking:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.
Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.
— Theodore Roosevelt: The Kansas City Star, May 7th, 1918 / Richard W. Memmer: Act V
Uranium Enrichment Primer
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace:
Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on . . .
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
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
In the timeless classic 12 Angry Men — Henry Fonda’s character stood alone in his quest to examine the evidence before prematurely rendering judgment. He doesn’t get any traction early on — but sticking that duplicate knife into the table worked wonders — opening the door for the el-tracks inquiry:
Let’s take two pieces of testimony and try to put them together.
Bill Cosby was saying essentially the same thing on his Picture Pages program back in the day, and everything in my offering is founded on the simplicity of this principle . . .
— Richard W. Memmer: Prologue
“You see” . . .
How fitting he added that at the end. I connected all the dots for you — but human nature has a way of obfuscating the obvious.
I don’t roll that way. When it comes to ascertaining the truth — I don’t care what your cause is, who’s in the White House, who controls Congress or the courts.
I learned early on in life that what you want gets in the way of what you see.
To claim that Iraq WMD wasn’t a lie should be like saying we didn’t land on the moon.
In denying that reality — you helped create a culture where denying reality is now the norm.
Hard to Imagine . . .
That I have to explain that quote to people who seemingly live to flood the internet with his words.
He and his flock incessantly complain about the media — and they don’t make policy. But the second I scrutinize Sowell — suddenly you have new standards. Back to that in a bit.
Speaking of the moon
I’d suggest heading on back to that backwater school, Purdue, for a little more indoctrination, er, I mean education.
“BACKWATER SCHOOL“
To call the Cradle of Astronauts “backwater” is award-worthy for nonsensical statements. Nobody behaves like that without ulterior motives.
In the Crap is King culture we’ve created:
Infantile insults are celebrated. The doubt-free who don’t do their homework are the experts. Those who belittle and/or outright reject correction — are the righteous and wise.
The ones with courage to admit when they’re wrong — are the weak. Tireless dedication is mercilessly mocked — while intellectual laziness is esteemed.
Original thinking and uniqueness are bashed — while conforming to the trite is trumpeted. Depth is discarded with disdain — while shallowness is embraced with love.
The honest & sincere are shunned — while manipulators & liars are welcomed with open arms.
This is my story — and if you read it in full, you’ll find it’s part of your story too. You’ve all dealt with the same behavior I have — the difference is that I get it from every direction.
Or Not . . .
Snowflake, Libtard, Libturd, Cupcake, Bush hater, Bush basher, Bush Derangement Syndrome, TDS, Demon-crat, Democrat Party
Stirring Defense!
Anything Goes for apologists trying to preserve what they perceive. I know their Rolodex of Ridicule rabbit-hole routine — all too well:
And Now for the Weather
This unquenchable thirst to think you’re right about everything is what has become of America.
You see it yourselves — but never in yourselves.
I see it everywhere
I happily belong to an infinitesimal minority that feels we’re not informed enough to have all the answers to every controversial issue in America. We don’t have a monopoly on virtue — and don’t want one.
We’re not only willing to change our minds, we welcome it — and appreciate those who correct us.
Defenders of the indefensible have no such notion.
Everything they think is held with the same calcified conviction. And that’s what this story is really all about: How far people will go to protect their interests and cement how they see themselves.
Never mind the damage they do in the pursuit (even to those interests they so desperately defend).
Not the tiniest trace of reasoning can be found in anything I’ve come across in 20 years on this topic when dealing with the doubt-free. In all that time and to this day — I’ve received nothing but contempt for the truth.
And of all those in that crowd that I’ve challenged on WMD — their knowledge combined could fit into a thimble with space to spare.
The United States is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance. . . . [W]e’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.
I know the feeling!
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 is talking about the people pushing the aluminum tubes fantasy that took us to war . . .
And I’m talkin’ about you
How much can we hope to accomplish in a culture that razes reason for fun?
Whether it was one email, one article, one Facebook post, one YouTube comment, or one Tweet: I’ve almost invariably been met with this madness.
On matters of mathematical certainty, no less . . .
Yellowcake to UF6 Conversion to Uranium Enrichment
With that “backwater” bit above — there was no website with an array of imagery to gripe about. It was just Trillion Dollar Tube — a 5-minute clip that crushes the most obvious of lies.
And that was mocked too . . .
Without watching one second.
So the notion that it’s my fault you can’t find your way to the truth through my maze of a website — is preposterous, particularly because you have a choice:
The documentary is structured to the hilt — so it’s much easier to digest.
Why would I repeat that approach — when I’m dealing with your obstinate refusal to watch it in the first place?
- In a culture that considers a long paragraph to be a burden
- Where battling it out 280 characters at a time is seen as meaningful debate
- Where habitually slinging self-congratulations and high praise for people who’d repeatedly rehash the same topics till the end of time before they’d question the efficacy of their efforts
You’re gonna find fault no matter what I do.
In a country more concerned with criticizing websites than people who lied this nation into war: You think reaching hermetically sealed minds is just a matter of proper arrangement of argument and imagery?
For people who can’t comprehend the complexities in explaining interrelated stories of America’s decline over decades of delight in the Gutter Games of Government:
You would think that!
With just a little inquiry and an ounce of decency — you could gain some insight into why my material is arranged in ways you’ve never seen. And when you’re seeing it for the first time — you’re unaware of the endless efforts to reach your kin who came before you:
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
So spare me your cries that my site is at fault for your failure to find the truth. I’ve heard it all and I’ve seen it all — as your kind always has an excuse laced with self-satisfied scorn.
Ridicule just rolls right off me anymore:
I’m not dealing with individuals — I’m dealing with a collective machine that’s been programmed to put me down.
My job is to jam up the gears — and get these gears going again:
By watching the doc — the rest would fall right into place.
You’d see that I apply my principles equally to both parties.
That’s what makes them principles
With my credibility and command of material firmly established — it would set the stage for what this series is out to do. And you’d have new choices.
That’s what a person willing to put the time in would do. That’s how a serious-minded person would behave. That’s someone who would recognize the complexity of the subject matter — and see that its demands don’t fit into standard-fare format.
On what basis would you believe that someone who writes about race and economics would be magically qualified on WMD?
Never mind that he never addressed the evidence.
That’s your basis?
Hitler had a lot of followers too.
The guy he’s referencing isn’t even Thomas Sowell. If you’re not paying enough attention to get that right — what does it say about all the rest?
Even when an issue is within someone’s wheelhouse — watch out for them too:
“Expert” by Association tells the story of a “WMD expert” who shot his mouth off about his “expertise” — not knowing he’d run into someone with real expertise on the issue.
He may very well be what he says in his profession — but he doesn’t know jack about this particular topic. And just because I have a lot of knowledge on it — doesn’t make me qualified to debate just any issue in his field.
I’ve got a badge too
I worked my ass off to become a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert — but it’s just a classification for a certification program. Many who have this badge below are actual experts — I’m not.
I’m the guy who needed them to get it.
But on Iraq WMD . . .
A lot of top-notch work was done on WMD long before mine — but nobody went anywhere near the degree of detail I did. I’m the only person who put props on display.
That carbon fiber one cost me $200 alone — sounds like it might be pretty important, don’t ya think?
No other doc includes animations that explain how Uranium Enrichment works.
And to take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to 5 minutes: Anyone with an inkling of understanding of what that would take — might show a modicum of respect for the effort, craft, and commitment involved here.
Whether you appreciate it or not — seems like a little respect would be the courteous thing to do.
Respect is not my concern . . .
But if you showed some, it might be just enough to crack open a conduit to this quaint thing called conversation.
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
Another product of “backwater” schooling
Yeah — “Expert” by Association is that guy. The article he so proudly replied with below — doesn’t even imply what he thinks it says. And as someone who’s read 10,000 pages on the topic, it was not news.
Take note of how he sarcastically cites the source as a way to bolster his baseless belief: A go-to tactic of people who unconscionably ignore clear-cut connections to merrily make up their own.
The second I started explaining uranium hexafluoride — somehow he didn’t wanna talk shop anymore:
As you must know, yellowcake is worthless until it’s turned into uranium hexafluoride (the process gas for enriching uranium). As for that 550 metric tons of yellowcake in that article — that had been under IAEA seal since the 90s and was no secret to anyone in the intelligence community with any knowledge on Iraqi nuclear matters.
Moreover, the bogus Niger-yellowcake story (the “16 words” deal) has nothing to do with the yellowcake in that article.
In short, it’s meaningless — particularly because Iraq has never had UF6 conversion facilities, nor a production centrifuge cascade. They had plans for both in 1989, but the Gulf War and inspections throughout the 90s terminated the program.
The only other way to get uranium hexafluoride is in UF6 cylinders which is manufactured by very few places throughout the world — an industry so tightly regulated that it’s next to impossible for a rogue nation to get their hands on it. But that’s barely scratching the surface of the story . . .
To which he replied . . .
- “You use words like honor, courage and commitment as punch lines at liberal cocktail parties” — ripping off A Few Good Men and thinking I wouldn’t notice
- The “therapist” routine
- “Academia”
- “I’ve stood on the wall — have you?” — Jesus, why not toss in “You weep for Santiago” while you’re at it?
What does any of THAT have to do with the price of tea in China — or THIS?
I’m not smart enough to be a nuclear scientist — but I’m smart enough to interview one. When I drove up to the University of Virginia to meet with Dr. Houston Wood — on my iPad I was packin’ pictures and structured inquiry like nothing you’ve ever seen.
I’d never done any journalism, but I was striving for the best of what it’s supposed to be.
My Prime Directive
- No leading questions
- If this man wants to talk — scrap the script and keep my mouth shut
Because of that — I obtained information that nobody else did.
My grades wouldn’t cut it for the intelligence community — but I could ask key questions to Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).
With a little help, I managed to make it through physics in college — but I couldn’t be a physicist. I could correspond with the one who wrote extensively on the subject matter though.
I could believe what liars claimed on intelligence investigations — or I could read the reports and make up my own mind.
I could do all that & much more
And then be belittled by people who didn’t do anything but gleefully get in the way — torturing the truth without mercy.
Not long before this Tweet — this guy was condemning my efforts like all the rest that day.
And then he opened the doc . . .
To honor his integrity and grace in that turnaround (which is as rare as unobtainium on Pandora) — I talk a bit about our exchange later on.
He asked a key question.
Imagine!
If saw these words below, I’d know that the documentary is the most important part of the whole story. And whether I liked this website style or not — I’d already be off to the other site to be fully informed before I returned to this one.
On matters of this magnitude — I don’t want bits and pieces of what happened, I want it all.
And once this manufactured fraud became crystal clear — if I wanted to skip the series and go straight to the point on Sowell, I’d politely contact the source:
Okay, I watched the doc. I got it. But this site’s style doesn’t really work for me — would you please provide a summary of where Sowell fits into your aims?
Ya know — the old-fashioned way
Something along the lines of what this guy did . . .
I like that he didn’t just take my word for it. And it doesn’t bother me one bit that he’s too pressed for time to read my site.
But he left the door open
I’m not used to being treated so humanely.
I was so inspired that I accommodated his request by writing a new post.
You had options — and still do
Why didn’t you just go watch the doc if you don’t want to read and/or you’re not a fan of my style? And if you don’t wanna do anything — what need is this you feel to savagely scorn someone’s sincere efforts?
Your disparagement is on display throughout this site. Does that strike you as someone insecure and concerned about my feelings? And as I wrote on You Got Gold:
I love the challenge of channeling my thoughts to a world that will gleefully swat them away in an instant.
I’ll swim across a river of insults to get to a meeting of the minds on the other side. But we’d get there a helluva lot faster if you’d just show a little grace in the give-and-take of information.
Lemme enlighten you on why you didn’t utilize your options: You’re not looking to listen and 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.
Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make.
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, before recommending people take a “hard break” from social media.
Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth.”
If you breezed right by That clip
There’s no point in proceeding — as you’re clearly not interested in understanding anything (and have abandoned the very basis of how understanding works).
Which ones strike you as glib?
Did you stop scrolling even long enough to consider that question? In a matter of moments, any rational person would see that something’s amiss in Sowell’s assertions.
If you were doing anything in the spirit of sound consideration — I wouldn’t need illustrations to remind you of how it’s done.
5 minutes too much of a burden?
How about 33 seconds?
“You Can’t Believe Everything You Read”
And that — is how the game is played . . .
When you don’t want the truth or won’t put the time in — you find things to complain about. How convenient!
As I would easily recognize the complexity & seriousness of this site’s subject matter — it would be unthinkable for me to gripe about graphics or the length of the story. I’d embrace the challenge to work it out on my own — and ask questions to clarify anything unclear.
I don’t care if you don’t like my style, but you should be able to recognize what something is and what something isn’t.
Even if you don’t — doesn’t Sowell’s standards include maintaining some manners?
And about that world-renowned scientist I interviewed:
My job at Oak Ridge was in developing theory for centrifuges — how the gas in the centrifuge can be manipulated to separate the isotopes with as high efficiency as possible. I had been working on centrifuge theory and development since 1967 — which was my primary role at Oak Ridge for 18 years until 1985 when the Government shut down the program.
— Interview with Dr. Houston Wood: Prologue
The U.S. Department of Energy had most of the experts in uranium enrichment . . . and sought the opinion of America’s most prestigious centrifuge expert, Professor Houston G. Wood III. . . .
If anyone cared to get the final word on tubes, rotors, gas centrifuges and uranium enrichment, this was the man to ask.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory — where Wood created and ran the Centrifuge Physics department . . .
HOUSTON WOOD: I thought, when I read that, there must be some other tubes that people were talking about. I just was flabbergasted that people were still pushing that those might be centrifuges.
SCOTT PELLEY: Flabbergasted?
HOUSTON WOOD: Yeah, yeah — so it just didn’t make any sense to me. . . . Science was not pushing this forward. Scientists had made their evaluation and made their determination. And now we didn’t know what was happening. . . . Most experts are located in Oak Ridge, and that was not the position there.
SCOTT PELLEY: Do you know one in academia, in government, in a foreign country who disagrees with your appraisal, who says “Yes, these are for nuclear weapons.”
HOUSTON WOOD: I don’t know a single one anywhere . . .
— 60 Minutes II
The plausibility of these tubes being used as centrifuges was so far-fetched that one D.O.E. analyst said: “If Iraq was really trying to make them into centrifuge rotors — we should just give them the tubes.”
— Richard W. Memmer: Prologue
To argue in good faith, you must consider the evidence presented by Powell.
This — is arguing on the merits:
Out of 31 tubes in subsequent testing, only one was successfully spun to 90,000 RPM for 65 minutes — which the C.I.A. seized on as evidence in their favor.
One D.O.E. analyst offered a superb analogy of that contorted conclusion: “Running your car up to 6,500 RPM briefly does not prove that you can run your car at 6,500 RPM cross country. It just doesn’t. Your car’s not going to make it.”
In an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter, these guys were playing horseshoes with centrifuge physics . . .
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
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
Why would anyone infer a 2.8mm wall for Zippe rotors that were never more than 1mm?
The rotor wall thickness for the Beams centrifuge has also been specified as 6.35 mm
Notice how WINPAC/Turner tossed that into the NIE (referenced in Senate Intelligence Report).
Never mind THIS
The Zippe unclassified report discusses several centrifuge rotor designs but does not explicitly state the wall thickness of any of the rotors.
Based on the limited documentation, we can infer that Zippe used rotors with wall thicknesses that range from I mm to approximately 2.8 mm.
“Based on the limited documentation”? . . .
Why not just pick up the phone and find out from the father of the modern uranium centrifuge himself?
The report below is from the consulting that Zippe did during the late 50s at the University of Virginia — which science historian Alex Wellerstein addresses in his excellent article on Zippe and the evolution of centrifuge technology.
Dr. Wood and the late Dr. Zippe talking tubes. If you were following the facts — seems like you’d take the trail to the most obvious place it would go:
To see what two of the foremost experts on the planet had to say:
At the Energy Department, those examining the tubes included scientists who had spent decades designing and working on centrifuges, and intelligence officers steeped in the tricky business of tracking the nuclear ambitions of America’s enemies.
On questions about nuclear centrifuges, this was unambiguously the A-Team of the intelligence community. . . .
The A-Team
What hard evidence do you have?
— Thomas Sowell
Hard enough to drop the hammer on you a hundred times over.
Consider yourself lucky that concrete evidence of mathematical certainty doesn’t qualify with your flock when it comes to protecting you and their interests.
Nor does any notion of responsibility and accountability.
Those things only apply to people you don’t like.
The administration had its hands on 60,000 tubes — and yet not one of them was presented by Powell.
There was even talk of Powell holding up one of the tubes for dramatic effect. But a veteran communications strategist in the room balked. “If you do that, it will be on the front page of every paper the next day,” noted Anna Perez, Condoleezza Rice’s chief of communications.
“Do you really want to do that?” Perez had a feel for these things; she had worked for Walt Disney, Chevron, and a top Hollywood talent agency.
This would, she thought, be an awkward visual. Powell would be holding up the one piece of evidence that was most in dispute. Everybody would focus on that. The idea was scrapped.
Think about that
You’ve got 60,000 of ’em — but rather that put a single sample of your hard evidence on display for all the world to see . . .
You put it a PowerPoint?
And it makes me laugh that they tossed that tape measure in there for effect. The sheer sloppiness of it all — it’s just pathetic. I’ll put my presentations in COM 101 against this crap any day.
But strictly speaking . . .
Purely on the principles of persuasive speech: Since their goal was to manipulate the masses — she was spot-on by concealing what they displayed.
You should be insulted by the fact that they’re not trying to convince me — they’re trying to convince you . . .
And lo and behold, the inspectors found 13,000 complete rockets at Iraq’s Nasser 81mm rocket production facility — all made from the same type of tubes that the administration had been pushing as centrifuges.
Undeterred by the patently obvious, they refused to alter their position even in the slightest.
Lo and Behold
And according to David Albright, “Senior I.A.E.A. officials personally briefed Powell about many of their findings in December 2002. Powell told them that the tubes were giving him a headache.” That’s your conscience talking to you, Mr. Secretary — because your intellect and instincts are way too sharp for you to be so oblivious.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Whatever I think of Thomas Sowell — I’ve never seen him act like a child. I’ve seen almost nothing but in defense of him.
In your bottomless contempt for correction, you are utterly devoid of desire to understand anything that isn’t self-evident in 60 seconds.
Your behavior has not an atom of integrity, courtesy, curiosity, courage, decency:
Or any virtue of any kind
And those standards you so love of Sowell’s — are nowhere to be found on the fiasco that created much of what you see today.
Imagine if you knew nothing about any of this and had never even heard of him. If you saw these images side by side — which one strikes you as the person who has the most to say?
And you opened Sowell’s piece (all 752 words of a 2-minute read) — knowing that the other guy did a 7-part series that’s 2 hours and 40 minutes.
On that alone
What goes through your mind? Moreover, Sowell’s article makes no mention of the evidence on display with the props.
So one guy goes into great detail — and the other guy doesn’t go anywhere in detail.
The famous one — naturally
And while you’re at it — butcher the bedrock beliefs that he’s famous for (just as he did).
Such behavior is an embarrassment to the entire history of human achievement — and lo and behold, what he wrote:
Is wrong in every respect
Rather than reflect on where his words go in Graham’s Hierarchy of Argument below, he doubled down with an insult:
Incorrectly classifying it to boot.
These people have no understanding of the subject matter — and make no attempt to learn or show any civility in refusal to do so. They begin and end by contorting anything they can twist to their liking in a sycophantic effort to absolve Sowell.
An Ad hominem attack is a negation of reason and an appeal to emotion and is irrelevant to any debate. It is a non-debate, or an avoidance of debate because the person resorting to this strategy has no substance to what they are saying or does not know how to properly respond to the argument being presented. . . .
“To be more specific, a fallacy is an ‘argument’ in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support.”
We went to war in the Middle East on debate dominated by the bottom three at best.
And that’s a Fact:
truth verifiable from experience or observation
Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim).
Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A’s claim is false.
The reason why an ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
When you have no idea what the argument is:
Wrapping quotes around “argument” is as ridiculous as using air quotes incorrectly.
And without even the most basic insight into anything on this story: His camp has a habit of glossing over global issues of catastrophic consequences with:
“Seems”
If he’d paid any attention at all:
He’d know that the baseline argument is about Sowell’s abysmal failure to address the evidence that Powell presented.
Even at a glance
You should know that Sowell’s piece is not the stuff of substance.
By Sowell’s status and by his own ethics — he had a huge responsibility.
By himself, he could not have shaped the decisions in those dead set on going to war. But he could have been the catalyst for the kind of debate that such decisions should demand.
Even if you take his responsibility off the table, the very basis of “Hard to Imagine” — is that he would have something to say about world-altering lies and ineptitude for the ages.
So on top of having no idea what you’re talking about — you don’t even understand the most basic tenets of the person you put on a pedestal for those principles.
It’s just a fancy quote to float
You stand by Sowell but take no pride in your commitment to the principles you preach.
You defend before you consider. And as you tap dance to talking points in doubt-free delight — you make it nearly impossible to discuss what the issue is actually about.
A lot of that goin’ around
In 1805, John Adams wrote the following in a letter to Benjamin Rush — a friend and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence:
We don’t solve problems in America
We perpetuate them by ceaselessly jockeying for the upper hand. And no matter the destruction you leave behind, onward you march in perennial pursuit of ideologies — warfare waged with:
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
Instead of genuinely listening to each other with our fine collection of communication tools — slinging snippets of certitude has become America’s pastime.
We have created a knee-jerk nation where discernment is derided and negligence is in vogue.
What was beyond the pale in the past is now perfectly acceptable. There was a time when adults acted their age, but those days are long gone.
The internet and the cable clans paved the way for the onslaught of the utterly absurd. Political discourse is now dominated by the obnoxious and unrelenting refusal to consider anything that challenges your calcified convictions.
The road to reality is blocked by detours designed to keep you going in circles. Purveyors of poppycock reroute you with narratives that avoid detail like Black Death.
The way out is to start with an inconsistency or two — and take the trail where it leads.
Since dimensions, material, and quantity are central to ascertaining the truth on the marquee evidence used to sell the war — anyone arguing in good faith would factor for that information.
Seems like that would raise eyebrows on anyone after in the truth — especially someone lauded for following the facts.
Thomas Sowell did nothing of the kind . . .
He’s gonna show you the bricks. He’ll show you they got straight sides. He’ll show you how they got the right shape. He’ll show them to you in a very special way, so that they appear to have everything a brick should have . . .
But there’s one thing he’s not gonna show you.
When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they’re as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick.
Even if there were valid arguments buried in all the incoherent rambling, no one would be able to find them.
Glaringly obvious evidence of mathematical certainty — within 2 minutes into the first page . . .
Is what you call “buried“?
Funny thing about information — it can seem incoherent when you don’t take any of it into account.
The absurdity of it all reminds me of a great scene from Seinfeld:
I spent my money on the Klapco D-29. It’s the most impenetrable lock on the market today. It has only one design flaw: The door must be closed!
At the time of that comment — Trillion Dollar Tube was within 2 minutes. That I would even think to point out that it’s since been shifted down a few — speaks to my awareness.
That someone would skip over the clip at the crux of the story — or watch it and not see the surgical precision of argument within it:
Speaks volumes about theirs
I’ve spent countless hours in pursuit of my IT goals — and I don’t blame instructors when I struggle to understand:
I just work harder — I’m old-fashioned that way.
And when I get struck, I ask questions — and I’ll keep asking for as long as it takes. I love doing whatever it takes . . .
And always have
Workin’ all day in my daddy’s garage
Drivin’ all night chasing some mirage . . .
You have no idea
I learned early on in life that what you want gets in the way of what you see.
A culture consumed with certitude, devoid of imagination, and completely lacking in any desire to connect on a human level in the interest of truth and understanding:
Scrolls right on by — while the keen and the curious wonder.
I made a big mistake above
And not only did I come up with a way around it — it was a blessing in disguise.
How you adjust from mistakes: If you can’t see how that applies to America — I don’t know what to tell ya.
Since I was 16 years old, I’ve never not been pursuit of some big goal. I could spend days talking about what I was chasing and why, but without including all the people who helped shape those pursuits and define their successes, you’d never know the whole story.
Hard to find humility anymore
A little reminder of what it looks like:
At the heart of everything I advocate is the idea of leveraging knowledge. Every element is connected to a conviction that boils down to Saint Jerome’s journey:
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.
And that tape measure — isn’t for show
From Part III
My documentary illustrates 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.
That’s a fact — I did the math:
And I had access — to everything
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.
If I did cartwheels on TikTok to tell this story — you’d take issue with my form. We’ve created a culture where constant complaining has become a virtue — where everything of value is in the gain you get in the moment:
And easy is all the rage
You think I wanted to chop up my doc into clips to accommodate America’s attention span? I put it all on a silver platter, but you wouldn’t spend 160 seconds to consider anything — let alone 160 minutes.
But just quietly moving along in your lack of interest would never enter your mind — you gotta be dutiful and deliver your derision in the Gutter Games of Government.
And in each instance, you further calcify habits that are at the other end of the spectrum from these.
I’ve always thought there’s something wildly out of whack with pursuing values in a manner devoid of virtue. In one form or another, inevitably there are consequences for convictions unguided by conscience.
Look around
You see a culture that looks anything like those habits above? You’ve all been doing it your way for decades — and look at the results. Yet your answer to America’s problems:
More of the same
[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it.
In a nation that endlessly blames and complains (seemingly for sport) — no one’s taking responsibility for anything. If we don’t right this ship, we will not see a return to some semblance of recognizing reality in our lifetime.
Mark my words
Your ways will seal that fate . . .
With my ways (timeless truths and Habits of Thought) — it just might be a brave new world.
Just get up off the ground, that’s all I ask!
But it’s gonna take a heap more than ideals to make that happen. We need an idea that’s radically different than anything that’s ever been done.
I have that idea
And of all people, Thomas Sowell is key to it — he just needs to abide by the very principles he preaches. This man needs to be called to account for his misdeeds.
Shouldn’t he be held to the same standards he’s made a living out of demanding from others?
Not only did Sowell flagrantly fail to follow the facts on all-things Iraq — he brazenly ignored the debauchery in his own party to politely pounce on the other.
Showing Sowell’s piece below has nothing to do with defending the Left. This is about his record being wildly out of sync with reality on the Right.
I didn’t write Mentality of a Mob from my imagination.
And I didn’t write this poem from it either.
I wrote it 3 years before Sowell’s piece — and for decades, this behavior is all I’ve seen from Republicans on Iraq and a helluva lot more.
How do you reconcile that? . . .
And I’m just getting warmed up.
I’m not done with that smugness under the guise of civility he’s so celebrated for as a statesman.
He has a habit of painting the Left in the worst possible light — while acting as though “hostility and even hatred” are uncharacteristic of conservatives. It’s all about framing the issue in a way that allows him to conveniently ignore the same behavior in other forms.
How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans?
— Thomas Sowell: The Anger Of The Left
I’ve been met with almost nothing but belligerence and belittlement for decades on WMD — but because I wasn’t shouted down in the streets, it doesn’t count?
And this gem
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
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 on and on:
But as long as liars don’t raise their voice — there’s no call to be angry about it?
That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions, just as people do in other parts of the ideological spectrum, is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.
Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.
“What is surprising, however” . . .
Is that your crowd treating me with nothing but contempt for the truth for nearly 20 years — slinging baseless beliefs with “hostility and even hatred” . . .
Doesn’t constitute a “way of life” to you, Mr. Sowell.
It’s painfully obvious what this guy’s up to: He’s engineering an illusion — and you bought it.
For the record: My poem’s not anti-war — it’s pro-thinking . . .
It’s astounding how the mind can pull off psychological gymnastics that allow us to believe what we say without any sense of accounting for it.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
On evidence involving artillery rockets and material properties of centrifuge rotors — the apostles of Sowell smugly cite his books on economics, race, and whatnot:
Anything to glorify him as they abandon any notion of accountability.
These people do nothing but question my motives, mock my site, and assault my character — then proudly post quotes of Sowell looking stately as he condemns the very thing they’re doing.
- Repeat slogans: “Everybody believed Iraq had WMD”
- Question people’s motives: Bush hater, Bush basher, Bush Derangement Syndrome, Plamegate & plenty more. Adding to the arsenal of childish crap to continue the tradition: Snowflake, Libtard, Libturd, Cupcake, TDS, Demon-crat, Democrat Party
- Bold assertions: Russians said so, British said so, Bill Clinton said so, Leaders of both parties said so . . .
No coherent argument, Repeat slogans, Vent their emotions, Question people’s motives, Bold assertions . . .
Wisdom of The Deer Hunter
One picture is worth a thousand words
When you don’t want the pictures — and you don’t want the words:
What would you have me do? And once I did it — we both know your next move.
This guy said this — this guy said that
Okay, what is this and what is that?
For nearly 2 decades — apologists have made it impossible to even get that far.
Shouldn’t we start by establishing some baseline understanding of what the issue is about?
Anyone entering a discussion in good faith would consider what the other person has to say. I assume you’d like the same, so shouldn’t you hold up your end of the bargain?
If your “National Treasure” were on Mount Rushmore — it wouldn’t make any difference on this debate. Then again, in how you consider information — it should make all the difference:
After all, isn’t that why you put him there?
If you hail him as a hero, shouldn’t you abide by the principles upon which you put him on a pedestal — even if it knocks him off of it?
Wouldn’t the genuine article want you to hold them accountable to their claims?
On a matter involving war in the Middle East in a post 9/11 world — the stakes don’t get much higher. For a “Maverick” who’s worshipped for “following the facts” — wouldn’t he take the trail to where they matter most?
This guy did — your guy didn’t
Why do you think that is?
For the same reason it always is: He had motive — just as you have motive to deny the obvious now, as he did then.
This ain’t no time for Twitter and whining about my website.
You are wrong — and here’s why . . .
You wanna counter — go right ahead. But do so on the merits: What is germane to the matter.
That’s the deal — that’s the bargain
This guy said this — this guy said that.
You’re in luck — that will take you all of 2 minutes.
But this — takes work
I could not have imagined in my youth that I’d grow up to live in a nation that no longer values work in such ways:
The knowledge of knowing that there’s vast value and virtue to be discovered in the difficult and demanding.
If you’ve ever felt it — how could you ever forget it?
The Last Dance is an exceptional 10-part, 10-hour documentary — but how many would watch it all in one sitting? Some would — and we all have our shows that we binge-watch.
But there’s a lot to be said for the build-up in between — the not knowing how it all plays out is part of the joy in the journey.
Who wants predictable?
When it comes to information — you do.
So you select boxes that reflect what you want to see — and how you see yourselves. But if you lived up to your claims — you’d know that all of these sources tell the truth at times.
And no matter how many times they didn’t before, and regardless of their motives — that doesn’t change the truth.
But in your mind — it does, and you’re wrong.
By refusing to recognize that reality, you enable people to play you over and over again — to the point where truth only matters if it fits inside your pocket of pursuits.
And they package it all nice and neat for ya — ready-made for your riled-up response. You don’t even need to know the end, because it’s the same as it was the day before.
And the day before that . . .
Then someone comes along and says:
How we got here is not so simple as what you’d been told. Here’s my 7-part doc and 5-part series with interrelated stories of America’s decline.
But because it wasn’t boxed in binary beliefs to your liking — you’ll never know how much there is to be found here that is to your liking.
You could watch the doc in one sitting or segments for 7 weeks. You could read the series in increments across 5 weeks or 5 months. You could watch and read bite-sized sections for as long as it takes.
Substance takes time
Understanding that — is not simply about my efforts, but how you consider anything that takes time to digest. You’ve got a daily deluge of material tailored to you — here’s your chance to throw out the script and do something different:
Refraining from responding — until you understand what you’re responding to.
Even at a glance, I don’t know how anyone could look at these images and not know that this guy’s got something of significance to say.
And once again, that’s not just about me — it’s about being interested in learning from your fellow man, including you.
Right out of the gate
Your intelligence is being put to the test. But rather than rise to the occasion, apologists will pooh-pooh anything to sooth themselves — insults about “flashy graphics” and all.
It doesn’t get any glibber that Sowell’s empty assertions, but Anything Goes in the Information Age of America.
While you’re busy Tweeting and cheerleading on YouTube — a world of possibility is passing you by.
These communities act as if they’re part of some revolution in reason. Even the best content is entirely transactional — and that includes efforts I wholeheartedly agree with.
I’m not saying it’s not good work — I’m saying it’s not going to work: Not in its current form in today’s trench warfare between armies of unreachables.
No one seems to be asking that question or anything of the kind. Do you wanna solve problems or endlessly talk about ’em?
Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives by force, unschooled in adjustment.
They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat.
— Barbara Tuchman
“Unschooled in adjustment”
I don’t see a single person of prominence doing any analysis on how the problems that plague America are interrelated.
And guess what — they’ve got motive not to.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything sinister about it (though some of it most certainly is). Most people are unaware of their less-than-upright motives — as it all becomes a glorious grind that everybody buys into on the bandwagon.
Reaping the rewards . . .
As they passionately pursue their cause and think that increasing attention to it reflects impact.
This series explains why that’s an illusion. And not only that — it’s making matters worse. I’m not suggesting they stop what they’re doing — I’m suggesting they reframe how they do it.
And Part V is that framework
Right on cue — some will race to the end as if nothing matters in the journey. Without even understanding the problem, they’ll delight in deriding the solution.
As I wrote on Without Passion or Prejudice in reference to the opening image:
Half the country is with me on this — and I just lost the other half. Had I started with the image below — it would be the opposite half.
By just recognizing that the challenges I face are different than the standard fare in America — you might find some appreciation of what I’m up against.
When taking on the entire nation — you can’t just lay it all out in a linear fashion. As explained later, I faced this problem in structuring my documentary and even in the naming of it.
How do you convey fair-mindedness in a culture that instantly supports or scorns on lickety–split perception alone?
Without a notion of courtesy to consider what’s being said — and that there might be a bigger picture in play.
You can rattle off personalities you perceive as fair-minded, no doubt.
But how many of you have dealt with any of them one-on-one? And of that group, how many have put their principles to the test on matters practically woven into their DNA?
Stick around — and you’ll see how some household names of the fair-minded behaved in the face of irrefutable fact.
So I will ask you once again . . .
How do you expose the whole charade — when bona fide fair-mindedness is not welcome here?
When you figure that out
Lemme know — but in the meantime . . .
Forget the mile — I’ll settle for just putting on the shoes.
From Part II
The smorgasbord of sub-cultures has created another dimension of delusion in America:
Hardening minds not broadening them. . . .
America has become all too cozy with run-of-the-mill information that caters to your cravings. Some suppliers are sincere, some are corrupt to the core, and there’s a faction for everything in between.
In any case, we’ve seen more than enough and it’s not working.
You’ve got plenty of that 24/7/365 — would it kill ya to see somethin’ new and say to yourself:
Hmm, this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before — maybe this guy sees something we don’t. And shouldn’t I apply my own standards to find out?
From Part V
An endless barrage of niche-based argument to beat back bunk — has no chance of success in today’s trench warfare.
I know another way.
This definitely feels like a bug here . . . this is going to take some much deeper investigation — WordPress Support Rep
I’m saying the whole system is failing — to a nation that refuses to recognize that there’s even a bug.
Unless it’s on the other side, of course.
They’re infested with ’em — while your side is a cleanroom for computer chips.
“Mind the Gap”
The gaping gaps are glaringly clear — as I did all the work for you. All you need to do is mind:
This guy said this — this guy said that
Somebody’s not telling the truth. And if you didn’t have something to protect, you’d already know that your “National Treasure” is not the man you think he is.
But he could be — if he comes clean.
“The Tube” — how fitting
In a culture consumed with being right — wouldn’t it be something to see someone of Sowell’s stature admit that they’re wrong?
On a matter of world-altering magnitude, no less.
And mark my words, that admission would accomplish far more than all the times he’s ever been right.
How can you expect anyone to admit when they’re wrong if you won’t?
Just telling people that you’re right and they’re wrong doesn’t get it done — you gotta lead by example (which I do repeatedly throughout this site).
You want others to listen and learn — you listen and learn.
That plank is across the board — there’s no “speck” in this mess.
If you think one party is to blame for this Charlie Foxtrot of a country we’ve become:
You’re not part of the solution — you’re part of the problem.
I’ll listen no matter what
Because I’m after the truth — no matter what.
But if you want your opposition to consider your concerns, you gotta hold up your end of the bargain.
In a culture consumed with being right, it’s high time to return to a willingness to be wrong. How can you learn from your mistakes when you refuse to even consider the possibility that you made them?
Acknowledging error is liberating and leads to enlightenment.
In the tight-knit nature of the echo chamber around him: All I need is Sowell — and the rest will fall. And who knows — maybe we could learn to talk to each other like human beings again.
But first
You gotta understand the story in full — ugliness and all.
Only then will it become clear how it impacts everything you see today. And the beauty in the ugly is that opens the door to understanding how to solve problems by looking at them head-on.
To be sure — some of you do that and do it well. But you’re all operating under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them.
Just by understanding that — you can change the dynamic of the debate.
And that takes time to explain
Along with a willingness to work your way through things that may seem unrelated at first.
It took every page of these books to understand what was in them. I didn’t skip to chapter two in calculus and start crying:
I don’t understand — all these functions are so confusingly formatted!
We went to war on manufactured lies formatted to your liking — nice and linear, easy to swallow, short and simple, and effortless to spread:
Bonding in bumper sticker branding
So when someone comes along and says:
Wait a minute — there’s a ton more to this story
You’re all torqued up to tap a Tweet on what you’ve been told for 20 years.
And all those precious virtues you promote on a daily basis in the Facts Over Feelings Parade — are rolled right over with your feelings.
As you cry . . .
I don’t understand — I don’t understand!
Well try this on for size
Gosh, I just overheard all this. If I didn’t have a life, I might have joined in . . .
In Jolly ol’ Phil, I tell of a time when I asked the author of this book how he would handle the likes of this life of the party, to which Mr. Strong brilliantly replied:
Apparently, your conception of ‘having a life’ does not imply working together to understand each other. I am personally committed to dialogue with those who have a commitment to increasing levels of truth and mutual understanding. Let’s not waste any more time together.
It only took 5 years to truly develop the habit that’s not listed in that book, but that’s precisely to the point of all that I advocate:
That with just a few words, I adopted an idea and continued to work on it:
Self-aware of each instance when I didn’t live up to the standard he set.
This nation has no such notion
Even in the most unsophisticated years of my youth, I would have never bought something so impossibly simplistic as Sowell’s “said so and so” — and the Right’s ubiquitous belief that “everybody believed Iraq had WMD.”
My mind would never allow me to accept something so easily.
I don’t know how people find the path of least resistance so satisfying — as I love the demands of difficulty and discernment.
To not step up my game in the midst of opportunity or challenge — would be tantamount to treason upon my very existence.
His acolytes have no interest in such a demanding way of life — as defending the faith is all that matters in the religious-like following around Sowell.
They spread the gospel by mindlessly countering with boilerplate beliefs that have no bearing on the issues in question.
What works with them would never fly with me. If you oversimplify an issue that clearly calls for careful examination, I know you’re hiding something.
If you constantly complain about the other side and defend your own at every turn — you’re not playing by the rules you rail on others for failing to follow.
Occasional criticism of your own party doesn’t qualify as having a history faithful to objective scrutiny.
Lowbrow lingo like Weapons of Crass Obstruction and Weapons of Political Destruction — filled with Crap is King content:
Flies in the face of Maverick’s “follow the facts” mantra. On Iraq WMD — defenders of the indefensible ignored nuclear scientists in favor of professional know-it-alls.
These people never went anywhere near the evidence that matters most — and distorted the hell out of everything else.
Blind Men Touching an Elephant
That you even think that a story so complex and convoluted could be explained away so easily — is a monumental problem all by itself.
Strip away the politics and it all becomes crystal clear. It’s the psychological gymnastics of human nature that makes it murky.
I want to thank you for giving these two in-depth responses — ones of immense quality and refinement. It must be draining to know that 99% of the time, people won’t read something so long — so well thought out — so in-depth. Thank you for doing it anyways. Just as writing these helps you refine your viewpoints, reading and responding to this helps me refine mine.
Who cares about what some “nobody” on the internet thinks?
How about Glenn Loury? . . .
Glenn and the other guy partly inspired this site — which I talk a bit about on You Got Gold. But the idea isn’t just about the inspiration of a few people — it’s about what everybody has to bring to the table.
And you’ve got gold you don’t even know you’ve got.
Dad took the wheels off of my bike
And he pushed me down the hill
But speed got the best of me and I took my first spill
That was back when alcohol was only used on cuts
Stung like hell so I jerked my leg
And mama said it would give me guts
Years before the Green Book movie came out, when I was working in St. Louis, I went to the Route 66 exhibit at the History Museum.
What sticks out in my mind the most is The Negro Motorist Green Book.
Like most people, I had a romanticized image of Route 66 — it never hit me how dangerous it was for blacks to travel back then — they needed “special” travel guides for safe places to stop.
So while we’ve had periods of greatness, we’ve rested on our laurels and looked the other way all too often. And with the technology of today, we see no evil with lickety–split satisfaction.
At times, the Right is justifiably infuriated by the Left, and vice versa. This site shows these parties as Two Sides of the Same Counterfeit Coin . . .
And their systematic efforts to derail debate.
This Land Is Your Land
This Land Is My Land
Rain drippin’ off the brim of my hat
Sure is cold today
Here I am walkin’ down 66
Wish she hadn’t done me that way
I am an American singing American music, not a black man singing country music
I’m not trying to steer you away from Thomas Sowell — I’m showing you how you can make him better.
And how he can return the favor
The ultimate irony is that your blind loyalty limits him — while my criticism could elevate him to heights your coddling ensures he’ll never go.
I’ve . . . got – a – plan
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.
It astounds me that even sharing something in hopes of a human connection — that maybe having something in common could pierce your force field of fallacy:
Even that is mocked — and conveniently taken as “weakness” in argument.
So in the face of centrifuge physics:
Belittling my “disjointed” & “juvenile” website with “irrelevant music & movies” is the best ya got?
George W. Bush was one of the last to say so. Yet he alone is accused of lying.
— Thomas Sowell: Weapons of Crass Obstruction
I don’t play those games, Mr. Sowell . . .
They all lied
The Russians said so.
The British said so.
Bill Clinton said so.
Leaders of both political parties said so.
Does Sowell’s piece sound compelling to you?
Does it strike you as coming anywhere near the standards you’re used to seeing within his wheelhouse? Just touting technicalities as “facts” doesn’t get it done (especially when they’re as empty as what he’s shoveling).
It’s the conclusions you’re drawing that matters most.
And don’t you find it suspicious that someone of Sowell’s caliber is gonna come right out of the gate with something so weak as:
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.
Immediately followed by:
Back in 1981 . . .
Forget what he said — what’s far more important is what he didn’t say. This mountain of information was publicly available before he wrote that article — and not one word about it.
For a guy who’s made his living on “follow the facts” — and you following him:
How do you reconcile that?
By the way, the Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq was released on July 9, 2004 — one day before Sowell’s Weapons of Crass Obstruction.
That report didn’t appear out of nowhere — it was known to be coming.
Even if the timing was a coincidence: What does it say to you that he never addressed the evidence presented by Powell and ignored every substantive argument on the matter?
Anyone with an atom of objectivity would know 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.
It’s bad enough I gotta deal with unyielding yahoos who blindly defend Sowell. But to see people I respect fall into the same trap (enabling their “National Treasure” and the echo chamber around him):
Good Grief!
The crude, dirty “brutes” of the land of the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift. The Yahoos are irrational people and represent the worst side of humanity. By contrast, the wise and gentle Houyhnhnms, their masters, are rational horses and represent humanity at its best.
The likes of Loury & McWhorter see themselves as Houyhnhnms — as if they are immune to irrational behavior in defense of their interests.
Sowell’s army of experts act like know they everything about him — and yet somehow missed his partisan hackery on subject matter that doesn’t get any more serious.
In the face of obvious lies and colossal incompetence — your guy gutted the truth and betrayed the principles he’s put on a pedestal for. What McWhorter said is demonstrably false . . .
And there’s no two ways about it
To believe he’s a “great man” and “fearless” maverick with what you knew of him — is one thing. To continue to believe it in the face of overwhelming and irrefutable evidence — is pure fantasy.
It’s impossible for you to imagine how absurd McWhorter’s statement is to me.
In the domain of WMD, it’s so preposterous that it would be like someone saying to them that there are no race-related issues in America.
You guys don’t stray from your lane, but Sowell does — and by making commentary on that, you’re lending credence to a belief that’s untethered to reality.
You’re making the same mistake my English Professor friend made about Colin Powell:
Seduced by the Secretary
You see Sowell through the appearance of propriety and as a “fearless” follower of facts — so you assume that translates into areas outside his expertise.
You’re making those judgments on myth — not merit.
And this young man of great promise — is making a huge mistake following in your footsteps on that front:
Loury & McWhorter made sweeping assumptions outside their lane in order to heap praise upon Sowell . . .
Would they step back out to correct him?
We’ll return to that later
Since 2014, I’ve tried to spread the word about my documentary that exhaustively uncovers this manufactured fraud.
I thought it might matter that my scrutiny spares no side — and then some:
So that by going after the Left for being in lockstep on Trayvon — not to mention nailing the Democratic Party to the wall for their role in the WMD delusion:
Seems that would earn some credibility — or at least a modicum of consideration.
You have no such notion
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
On top of having no manners — every Sowell supporter butchers his bedrock beliefs in defense of him:
What was your argument on how a rotor with a 3mm wall could maintain 90,000 RPM to make highly enriched uranium?
— Richard W. Memmer
That Critical question
Opens the door to a bunch more — which is why apologists refuse to open their eyes to even the most glaringly obvious.
Recognizing reality would require them to reconsider how they see Sowell — and how they see themselves.
Your record is who you are — not what you believe.
The psychological gymnastics behind bunk-ridden beliefs is far and away the biggest barrier to a better world.
We need a tectonic shift in critical thinking skills — and to do that we need to start looking at the root of problems instead of spinning our wheels on the symptoms.
From Prologue to Epilogue, my 7-part series shines a light on what we have become. And by intersecting topics that demonstrate the behavior of both sides — I show no favoritism in illustrating how emotion runs roughshod over reason.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman would not have been amused had she lived to see that. As Russ Hoyle explains in the following excerpt — her 1984 book The March of Folly offers a blueprint for Bush’s behavior.
Tuchman could have just as easily been describing America as a whole. As a nation — we don’t solve problems, we perpetuate them. And after all the Democrats’ disdain for Bush’s folly, so many in that same crowd treat Obama with kid gloves.
The roles will be reversed once again when a Republican is at the helm . . . and around and around we go.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
The rolodex of excuses around Sowell is off the charts. There’s a faction for forgiveness — by people who have nothing of the kind for their enemy.
Everyone is human and at least occasionally shows poor judgement.
That doesn’t cut it when you miserably fail to acknowledge that poor judgment:
Particularly when you make a living pouncing on others about theirs.
On top of all that, they have absolutely no idea of the depths of deception involved here — but have no qualms about issuing instant forgiveness for it.
So you found one small crack in Sowell’s character where he defended Iraq having WMD, does that hurt his credibility?
This man muddied the waters of debate to serve himself — on a little matter of war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11.
Factoring for his history of hypocrisy and lying on that — along with ripping the Left while shamelessly ignoring the repugnant behavior on the Right:
That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
This 2:22 scene from Shattered Glass shows how a reporter allows her friendship to severely cloud her judgment. What’s especially educational is the turnaround time to see what would be obvious to anyone without a personal stake in it.
She repeatedly digs in to find a way to absolve her friend, but she can’t escape the envelope of arguments that cut off every avenue of evasion.
It’s indefensible! Don’t you know that?
The “I have a life” and “Hope you find happiness” crowd . . .
Gosh, I just overheard all this. If I didn’t have a life, I might have joined in . . .
I hope you are fortunate to find happiness one day
Good lord
I had a friend and former colleague with such razor-sharp wit that I called him the Atomic Clock of Comedy — for his consistency in making people laugh.
To survey a situation in split-second timing requires an astute level of alertness.
You’d think that some semblance of that awareness would show up when you have all kinds of time on matters of world-altering consequence.
Long story short: Atomic poisoned our exchange the second he asserted that “everything’s just an opinion.” Instead of actually discussing the issue at hand, I had to debunk that utterly ridiculous and increasingly common cop-out.
With our mutual friend the Peacemaker involved, it might have been possible to get the debate back on track.
Then Jolly Ol’ Phil showed up to share what a wonderful life he has — and it was over. The absurdity in that story embodies how social media operates when it comes to preserving your beliefs and protecting your own.
Many students resist having their beliefs questioned by invoking the claim that “Everyone is entitled to his own belief” or “All opinions are equal.” The corollary notion is that therefore no justifications for beliefs are necessary. The difficulty with this perspective is that it implies that all disagreements concerning beliefs are personal disagreements or slights.
If there exist reasons for one’s opinions, then a difference of opinions becomes an opportunity for understanding how someone else’s reasoning leads them to a different opinion. If, on the other hand, if there are no reasons for opinions, students are more likely to take differences of opinion as insults or as injuries to their self-esteem.
Rather than assert than all opinions are equal, students in seminar learn to judge opinions on the basis of the reasons given for those opinions.
Nobody ever had to explain that to me. I’m sure you all feel the same — and yet here we are.
Ah, the good ol’ days of garden-variety Bush apologists — when at least their contempt for the truth was in the theatre of war.
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.
— Blurb to On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
Sowell’s disciples are a whole other breed of bullshitters who butcher reality — while incessantly bitching about others doing the same.
This crowd . . .
Thomas Sowell is considered our country’s leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology.
Faction for the hybrid model
- No big deal
- No authority
- Forgiveness
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 is perfectly satisfied in blowing it off as “no big deal.”
Toss in the “I’ll wait” tactic for good measure — when the only thing they’re waiting for is something to feed their next fix.
And this — is just priceless:
I’ll take Sweeping Assumptions for $1000, Alex . . .
Even if he said that stuff, your entire diatribe smacks of the now classic modern progressive tactic of taking a single mistake by anyone whose views they don’t like and using that one error in judgement to try and discredit ALL their work. Everyone is human and at least occasionally shows poor judgement.
Who said I disagreed with his work?
Outside of butchering the debate on Iraq WMD — and his partisan hackery in flagrantly ignoring his own camp’s abominable behavior, record of recklessness, systematic lying, and hypocrisy that knows no bounds:
I haven’t come across anything I object to.
At every turn, the faithful tap dance around reality — oily evading anything that requires them to hold him to his own standards.
It’s not his area of expertise, so unsurprisingly, I’ve never heard him comment about ; war, Iraq, WMDs, or anything of that sort until I read your post.
I imagine it’s just not a line of questioning an interviewer with limited time would typically think to ask Sowell.
The notion that simply because no interviewer asked him about WMD — that this magically absolves him of owning up to his massive mistakes . . .
Is preposterous
Take note of how he just writes it off as “calling that one wrong” — as if there’s nothing more to see. That’s how these people operate — as any acknowledgment of dishonesty would require them to reconsider who Sowell really is.
Why burden yourself with the truth when perception is so much more comforting?
And he conveniently ignores that someone writing a biography — would have plenty of time to ask him about it.
Riley had motive not to: As the brilliant and prescient maverick who preaches responsibility and such — the Godfather of Follow the Facts . . .
Was a partisan hack on the biggest deception and debacle of our time.
Doesn’t quite fit the premise of the book, does it!
180 — how fitting
Sail on silver [Sowell]
Sail on by . . .
You guys are in the myth-busting business — but by propagating the myth that Sowell is some kind of Sherlock Holmes of sound consideration in anything he touches:
You help perpetuate the most dangerous, destructive, and costly myth in America.
Not to mention the world
While the WMD delusion derails everything you’re trying to do.
It’s complicated — but only because human nature goes out of its way to obfuscate the obvious. I’m gonna do what I set out to do last summer:
Clear the clutter
And I find it interesting that with Sowell — one reason some people today would find it hard to go with him is that he doesn’t write with that tribalist sense.
Weapons of Crass Obstruction?
Weapons of Political Destruction?
He’s trying to be purely objective and there’s nothing in him of — here’s what we down here think. Here’s what we’ve been through. It’s not seasoned with any of that — he’s just trying to have a white lab coat on and look at the facts.
Sowell’s words are egregiously vague — and mine are as specific as it gets.
Had you watched the doc, you would have found that I address his “arguments” that the Facts Over Feelings Parade finds so precious.
Let’s see what happens when I address them in Part II.
My Prediction . . .
The story behind that clock is at the crux of how America’s gone totally off the rails.
And this captures it all . . .
I’ve written various versions of this post about Sowell — all of which point you to the case . . .
So it’s ludicrous that you cry foul with your “where’s your facts?” refrain of an automaton — when you could have it all with one click.
In their collective state, the Borg are utterly without mercy; driven by one will alone: the will to conquer. They are beyond redemption, beyond reason.
— Jean-Luc Picard
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.
Even without the doc — any one of these posts is plenty to prompt any rational person to wonder. Just scrolling through the imagery alone is enough to know that something’s off on Sowell’s claims.
“Disjointed” or not — you’ve been bombarded with detail that could only be known with real research — and a helluva lot of it.
For anyone who wanted the truth on this matter of world-altering magnitude — no way you’d ignore that.
It’s absurd that you tap a Tweet with a talking point or two — and think you can inform me.
I point you to a 7-part, 2 hours and 40 minutes documentary — that distills a story that demanded a massive amount of effort, thought, research, and writing:
And you issue rapid-fire ridicule coupled with tortured talking points that have poisoned this topic for 20 years.
I don’t understand the satisfaction in taking endless delight in embracing slogans and simpleminded narratives — designed to make damn sure you don’t look beyond the surface . . .
While mocking my “juvenile” visuals for illustrating timeless truths and anything that might make a hairline crack in your hermetically sealed minds.
It is hard to fill a cup which is already full
We could have avoided all this years ago — all you had to do was show some interest in the truth or do nothing and merrily move along.
Ya didn’t do either
I’ve spent my life respecting intelligence, embracing criticism, welcoming correction, and being inspired by the abilities of others.
I made the case — and you insulted your intelligence by mocking my work without so much as considering a single second.
I’ve been on the receiving end of ridicule that was way over the top and mean-spirited — but that doesn’t discount the fact that at times their scorn was rooted in some truth.
I love to be corrected — even if it stings a bit at first. I’d rather feel foolish for 5 minutes than be a fool for a lifetime.
I’m far more interested in finding value on the other side of offense. I don’t need a slogan to say who I am: I’ve lived my entire life with facts trumping my feelings.
In the right hands, the power of influence is magical — that you can think one thing, take new information into account, and think another.
It’s fantastic
As I wrote 16 years ago:
There’s nothing more edifying than taking a trip to another point of view
This guy actually took that trip — as he’s the same person who wrote:
Richard — Holy crap. That’s a lot of content to consume & respond to in an expounding manner . . .
First off, Sowell’s articles on the subject are assertions, not argument.
It’s high time we appreciate the difference — perfectly defined on a blog I stumbled across years ago called Duane’s Mind: A Christian’s Perspective:
An assertion is just a point of view, an opinion. An argument goes further. An argument is a point of view supported by reasons that demonstrate the view is a good one.
As I mentioned earlier, in both the documentary and in this series, I do address Sowell’s piece littered with talking points.
And I do so with argument
If they were doing the same, they’d take one look at this imagery and think:
So, you did a documentary on the most definitive intelligence by far — that was the difference between going to war and not going. That sounds pretty important.
Perhaps you should listen to people who addressed the evidence instead of being so quick to defend those who pretend to.
Central to my examination is that I will illustrate the shallowness in Colin Powell’s U.N. speech in February 2003. The media typically rushes over everything and explains NOTHING.
I am taking the opposite approach with my isolated look at the aluminum tubes — and insight into that intelligence scheme is a roadmap to the rest. But the only way to truly understand the story is to juxtapose the relationships of the relevant players involved.
That includes the Intelligence Community, Congress, the Bush Administration, the media, the intelligence investigations — and even our role in fostering it all.
— Richard W. Memmer: Prologue
And about that “mudslinging“
By definition, that’s not what I do — as it’s demonstrably provable that Thomas Sowell is a liar and a hypocrite. Moreover, if he comes clean per my plan, his reputation will soar worldwide.
Doesn’t quite fit, does it . . .
the use of insults and accusations, especially unjust ones
If you have a history of hypocrisy and lying — you are a hypocrite and a liar. If you don’t like being called those things, then don’t do those things.
But so typical of the times — nothing has meaning anymore. “Mudslinging” is just somethin’ to say to escape scrutiny.
And the irony is
I’ve received almost nothing but mudslinging for decades — by people who cry foul with counterfeit claims on what they do for real.
And let’s face it: You need it to be mudslinging, because if it’s not — your beliefs are gonna fall apart.
Seeing people for who they really are is a mighty healthy thing — and by holding their feet to the fire, you’d be doing them a favor.
And everyone else as well
This bit about Coleman Hughes captures the principle upon which my site and documentary were founded:
[Coleman] Hughes says he formerly accepted the premise of Black Lives Matter — that, in his words, “racist cops are killing unarmed black people” — but now believes that this premise does not survive scrutiny once factors other than race are taken into account.
“But now believes” . . .
“To learn to ask: ‘Is that true? Maybe there’s something to what she just said. Let me think about it. That’s interesting. Maybe I should change my mind. I changed my mind.’”
Sowell’s “Said so and so” — and all their ridiculous diversionary tactics to deny the obvious on WMD . . .
Cannot survive scrutiny once other factors are taken into account.
neither can the premise of this book
More on that later.
And His Acolytes Couldn’t Care Less . . .
That’s all I’ve seen out of Sowell’s army of apologists.
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 snake oil he sold on WMD.
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 disdain for any truth that doesn’t serve your shortsighted interests.
“The cat . . . TOTALLY out of the BAG!”
once again — Fact:
truth verifiable from experience or observation
Which means most of America is delusional by definition:
- A delusion is a mistaken belief that is held with strong conviction even when presented with superior evidence to the contrary
- Characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument
- Something a person believes and wants to be true, when it is actually not true
And the only way you can pull off the above is with the prejudice below:
As the mere mention of “prejudice” is almost invariably associated with race, it’s critical to define what we’re talking about.
Prejudice:
- 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
- A partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
FYI: I politely shared this definition with the last person who proudly tried to “correct” me on this matter . . .
But all of the above wouldn’t be enough to beat back the truth without a lot of help from Festinger’s 5 Conditions . . .
Particularly #5:
The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.
These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.
When your camp came up empty on WMD — you just bought more bullshit from the same people who sold you the first batch:
Shrewd!
The second you shun evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative you want — you have contaminated your perception.
“Everybody believed Iraq had WMD” is not a valid argument any more than “armed only with Skittles.”
Preach responsibility and take none
- The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly
- Systematically, gleefully, and endlessly mocked anyone who questioned their beloved Bush — treating him like the Second Coming of Christ
- You defend the indefensible as a badge of honor — and with decades of practice, it gets easier every day
- Any anniversary on Iraq of some sort — you trot your ridiculous rationalizations and trite taglines like “The Lie that Bush Lied”
- It’s repulsive that you think your smug catchphrases are clever — while refusing to even glance at the mountain of evidence that buries your baseless beliefs
- You’re dead certain about matters you couldn’t muster up a molecule of curiosity to question
- As evidence is easily accessible (especially since I did all the work for you) — your hypocrisy on follow the facts in this fiasco for the ages — is staggering beyond belief
- Then there’s the fact that I can crush your convictions inside of 5 minutes
- On the most world-altering topic of our time — you tap dance to talking points in doubt-free delight (butchering every ounce of goodness in that Bible you belt people with)
- You never did your homework and to this day mock anyone who did
- Shit shovelers are never satisfied in perpetuating the lies they live by — so there is no pile too high for glorifying themselves with regurgitated garbage
Rather than writing another article on the next anniversary for rolling out your righteousness — why not find some decades-overdue courage & courtesy to ask questions for a change?
Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind
- It’s bad enough you’ve never met a lie you wouldn’t swallow in service of your agenda — but no amount of incompetence matters to you either. As long as it’s your boy, Anything Goes.
- After your infinite willingness to see no evil, hear no evil — the second the tables are turned, evil is all the rage
- It’s all about feelings to protect your interests — and occasionally about facts to flog theirs
- Either way, you’ll ceaselessly pound that piñata with pride — congratulating yourselves over your meaningless mantra
You’ve put on a masterclass of complaining for 30 years — but because the intelligentsia on the Left perennially pumps candy into the piñata:
You beat the hell out of them — while unconscionably ignoring the debauchery of your own behavior.
And why not . . .
When you’ve got professional know-it-alls who package all you need to know in a box of baseless beliefs.
The piñata and sailing Scot-Free are central to the story.
We’ll get to all that — and my solution for how Sowell could turn the tide.
Now we might have been better off
Or owned a bigger house
If Daddy had done more givin’ in
Or a little more backing down
But we always had plenty
Just living his adviceWhatever you do today
You’ll have to sleep with tonight
He’d say you’ve got to stand for something
Or you’ll fall for anything
One Voice Became Two 