Pursuing aims in ways that predictably damage your cause is bad enough. But once the outcome becomes clear, it’s beyond belief that you refuse to reflect on your methods.
Even if you’re right and have the best of intentions, if you’re not smart in making your moves, you can exponentially worsen the problem you’re addressing — along with seemingly unrelated ones.
And already have — again and again . . .
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 recently watched Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Legacy on Amazon. I’m not qualified to discuss climate change, but I can say with certainty that no number of Legacy docs would put a pinprick in the atmosphere of absurdity that’s suffocating America today.
It’s easy to blame climate deniers — but you’ve done plenty of damage by denying reality of your own. The Right is not always wrong, and the smart move is to agree with them when they’re making sense.
It’s also the right thing to do.
The right thing tends to be the demanding thing — the difficult that can’t be captured in slogans, kneeling, and knocking down monuments.
The Left institutionalizes weakness — and the Democratic Party is notorious for lacking backbone. You weaken the very people you’re trying to strengthen — branding weakness to boot. And right on cue, the Right is ready to pounce.
I don’t blame ’em — except for the part about them being weak while branding strength.
Conservatives have put on a masterclass of complaining for 30 years — but because the intelligentsia on the Left perennially pumps candy into the piñata: They beat the hell out of you — while unconscionably ignoring the debauchery of their own behavior.
Sailing away on Scot-Free . . .
And they’ve got a helluva lot of help — unwittingly in some cases. Back to that in a bit. 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. I faced this same problem in structuring my documentary and even in the naming of it . . .
What’s with the different names of your doc?
What’s with your mindset that necessitates massaging it with harmonious headlines? How do you convey fair-mindedness in a culture that instantly supports or scorns on lickety–split perception alone?
Alas, I have to factor for the “having said that” culture we’ve created — where you’ve gotta pamper your audience to pave the way for what you really wanna say.
Utterly ridiculous
And after you’ve soothed their minds with some degree of shared scrutiny — that goodwill goes right out the window the moment you mention anything that challenges their calcified convictions.
The rotor speed required to separate uranium isotopes doesn’t care who’s president.
In order to maintain such speeds, the material properties of centrifuges are as critical as it gets. You don’t need to interview a world-renowned nuclear scientist to figure that out — but I like to be thorough.
To take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to 5 minutes was no small feat:
Trillion Dollar Tube
You should see what I did with 160
Not long before this Tweet — this guy was condemning my efforts like all the rest that day.
And then he opened the doc . . .
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
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 the “backwater” bit below — there was no website with an array of imagery to gripe about. It was just Trillion Dollar Tube — my 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.
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.
You skim my site and instantly issue your “where’s your facts?” refrain of an automaton. 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.
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 following a formula?
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!
Ah, the pooh-poohers of possibility: Forever on the front lines of lowering the bar while I’m trying to raise it — you’ve been a constant companion almost all my life.
Where would I be without you?
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.
To claim that war wasn’t a lie should be like saying we didn’t land on the moon.
In denying that reality, half the country helped create a culture where denying reality is now the norm.
Ripping on woke is all the rage. And outrage industries of dish it but can’t take it — would talk about race and responsibility till the end of time. But heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
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 asinine statements.
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
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 — as the internet and the cable clans paved the way for the onslaught of the utterly absurd.
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.
One Voice Became Two 