The smorgasbord of sub-cultures has created another dimension of delusion in America: Hardening minds not broadening them.
The commentary in these communities speaks volumes about social media & the state of society: Habitually slinging self-congratulations and high praise for purveyors of virtue:
Virtues that vanish the second they’re called to put them to the test.
Following facts going in the direction you desire — doesn’t count.
Anybody can do that!
The quote below is not targeting Bari — it just perfectly frames my argument about these communities (including those I support):
But we’re all here because we share some important things in common: a commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation. In our upside-down world, holding fast to these ideals can sometimes feel lonely.
More than ever, we crave the company of people who share our core values.
— Bari Weiss: Welcome to Year Two
Here’s what my Welcome would look like — on day one:
In this channel
If you’re not willing to be wrong — you don’t belong here. If I do anything that doesn’t rise to the standards we advocate, you will call me out on it — and I’ll do the same for you.
The only payment in this place — is that you put your pride aside to listen and learn from your fellow man (especially when we don’t like it). They may be wrong on the whole but right in part — and we’re gonna honor that truth.
If someone calls your hero to account — you don’t defend before you consider. How many books they’ve written, how famous they are, and how many followers they have — doesn’t mean jack in here.
We weigh information on the merits — period.
We’re on Saint Jerome’s journey
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.
This is the prism through which we govern ourselves — how we weigh what we see and measure our response.
If you don’t treat someone with respect, courtesy, curiosity, courage, civility, and such — you won’t be bounced, but I’m gonna make an example out of how you failed (just as you’ll do for me).
My aim isn’t to make you look bad — it’s for you to stop looking bad. You’ll thank me later — and I’ll thank you always.
We don’t fuss over tone around here.
As we sharpen one another, better tone will come in time. And we don’t use language like Democrat Party and Rethuglicans. If you wanna act like a child — this is not the channel for you.
Seek solace elsewhere . . .
I’m rarely inspired by anyone anymore, but I was today when I came across someone who seemed to set himself apart. I liked his story. But knowing what I know about how these channels become echo chambers of affirmation:
I laid it on the line right out of the gate — and was “canceled” for it:
I have a unique point of view.
I believe you, but if you wanna make your work matter, you need to recognize how everyone else gets it wrong — even if they start out right.
Glenn Loury once called my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by my site and signed up.
But when I took his hero to task — he instantly abandoned the principles he preaches:
As Tolstoy’s truth kicked in
That’s what I’m up against . . .
That’s what we’re all up against.
Post Note
In your limited outlook — naturally, my aim is to “DESTROY” (and yes — I’m calling out those childish YouTube titles).
It would never occur to you that there’s a larger purpose in play.
One that would elevate the very people I’m taking to task — and could even turn the tide.
Merle’s sorrowful song has an uplifting twist at the end, and without that final 45 seconds — you’d miss the meaning of the message.
Same goes for this story
I’m sure it’s intoxicating to amass a following and feel like you’re making a difference. But I’m gonna weigh your impact partly as a reflection of your community:
How people behave — not what they “believe.”
If you can’t get that right, I don’t care how big your following gets — you’re taking this nation nowhere. Not in the right direction, anyway.
This first quote below from Bari Weiss is right on the money, but her second one wildly misses the mark. I have a unique point of view too — and I’ve been practically spit on for it (in her channel and all others).
And this involves irrefutable evidence of mathematical certainty (of world-altering consequence, no less).
We are living through an epidemic of cowardice. The antidote is courage. . . .
Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.
— Bari Weiss: Some Thoughts About Courage
8 years ago, I wrote and produced a documentary on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history.
I take both parties to task for it — and then some.
Almost invariably, I’m met with nothing but contempt — by people who couldn’t craft a sound argument on the subject to save their lives. I found no courage in her community or any other — nor the “commitment” and “holding fast” she speaks of below:
But we’re all here because we share some important things in common: a commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation. In our upside-down world, holding fast to these ideals can sometimes feel lonely.
More than ever, we crave the company of people who share our core values.
— Bari Weiss: Welcome to Year Two
It’s a nice gesture to bond with her audience.
Unfortunately, it’s not true . . .
In any audience
Post Note
I didn’t write Mentality of a Mob from my imagination — same goes for Rolodex of Ridicule.
You don’t see the world as it is because you’re insulated in yours. You’ve got something to protect — I don’t:
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.
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.
The commentary in these communities speaks volumes about social media & the state of society: Habitually slinging self-congratulations and high praise for purveyors of virtue: Virtues that vanish the second they’re called to put them to the test.
Following facts going in the direction you desire — doesn’t count. Anybody can do that!
The smorgasbord of sub-cultures has created another dimension of delusion in America: Hardening minds not broadening them. In and of itself, the quality of the work might be excellent. But on the whole, it amounts to fodder for a fix (even for the sincere).
Ever-growing exposure to never-ending battles becomes an illusion of impact. I don’t see a single person of prominence doing any analysis on how the problems that plague America are interrelated.
They’re all blunt instruments — including the ones I agree with. They all operate under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them.
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth
Tools that could turn the tide are in this story below — but it takes time and effort to digest. I would expect someone like yourself to respect that. I would expect the same civility from this community — and if I don’t get it, I’m gone.
Losing the subscriber fee is nothing, but I assure you — the standard I set is a helluva lot higher than all these communities across the board.
That’s in your best interests, and based on your background — I suspect you know that:
Negative, Ghost Rider . . .
It’s impossible for you to fathom how pathetic that is to me.
We crave social status, connection, and unity. But alongside the desire for social rewards, we also have evolved the ability to reason, reflect, and consider alternate futures. Using these abilities, we can be more mindful about how we respond to bad behavior.
— Rob Henderson
Compare that to this
I don’t fit the formula
I’m interested in solving problems — not endlessly talking about them.
And what people crave is the company of those who see themselves as they do (never mind their record doesn’t remotely reflect their claims).
But it doesn’t matter — as they’re reinforced by the fantasy that they’re all part of some revolution in reason: Led by “National Treasures” they see as some of the greatest minds to ever live.
Cancel culture refers to ending (or attempting to end) an individual’s career or prominence to hold them to account for immoral behavior. Driven primarily by young progressives, often through social media, cancel culture has attracted controversy since it swept into the national conversation.
— Rob Henderson
Compare that to this
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 . . .
I didn’t write Mariana Trench of Mendacity out of thin air.
I didn’t write this poem from it either:
It’s not anti-war — It’s pro-thinking
Then there’s this
America obsessively concerns itself with symbols — fixating over a missing flag pin on a politician’s lapel, for instance.
So — these people can:
- Incessantly lie
- Manipulate the hell out of you
- Start dumb wars and never finish them
- Drag their feet forever
- Obstruct as if not doing your job were a virtue
- Take off all kinds of time after accomplishing nothing
- Waste mountains of money while touting concerns about spending
- Spend enormous amounts of time & energy assailing the opposition while absolving their own at every turn
- Broadcast beliefs that have no bearing on their record or yours
- Rile you up with red meat to savagely scorn the other side — as you sail Scot-Free on an ocean of bottomless lies and hypocrisy . . .
Never in doubt — while you fret over flair:
And they’ve got a helluva lot of help sailing Scot-Free — 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.
There’s a mutual responsibility in communication — and that “deal” is to hold up your end of the bargain (and it’s in your interests to do so). After all, you want others to consider your concerns — shouldn’t you do the same?
Wouldn’t some good ol’ give-and-take be refreshing for a change?
But now information is so funneled in a fashion to your liking — 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.
The blankness it must take to see something like this and scroll right on by. The complete lack of curiosity as you cry foul for evidence you can’t see as you proudly refuse to look.
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
If you don’t like me spoon-feeding you illustrations — go read the reports for yourselves: And I’ve got plenty more material to add to your reading list.
But that takes work — and why bother when you can just ridicule those who did it for you.
Not long before this Tweet — this guy was condemning my efforts like all the rest that day.
And then he opened the doc . . .
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?
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!
But we’re all here because we share some important things in common: a commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation. In our upside-down world, holding fast to these ideals can sometimes feel lonely.
More than ever, we crave the company of people who share our core values.
Well how come you act like children when challenged? Without commitment to those virtues Bari listed above — it’s just entertainment.
If it were commitment
When some guy comes along to say:
Wait a minute — there’s something more to see
You wouldn’t bark back with what amounts to:
How dare you show up with your non-linear and seemingly unrelated stories — [replete with in-depth arguments backed by exhaustive examination of evidence wrapped in insightful analysis].
I want my material paint-by-numbers — so I can consume it as quickly as possible and issue my beliefs like I did the day before. I’m busy — I gotta weigh in on this outrage today and do it all over again tomorrow.
I don’t have time to consider the possibility that there might be a better way. The other side is destroying America — there’s no time to waste in our immaculate crusade of truth and what’s right.
The solution to this problem is more truth, not less
— Someone on Twitter
Not in today’s trench warfare between armies of unreachables — paralled by this excerpt from Blueprint for Armageddon:
The Belgians are going to teach the first great lesson of the war — about what’s changed since the last time great powers faced off. How much the killing power that machines afforded mankind on the battlefield.
How much that had changed the age-old equation of war.
Machines have been taking over for a long time — becoming more and more important. This is the war where they take over completely. And man’s supremacy on the battlefield — even though they’re the ones who run the machines — will always be now secondary compared to the killing power and mechanization that can be brought to bear by modern societies. . . .
And one of the interesting sort of sub-themes of this whole upcoming conflict is: How long it takes some people to absorb the lessons that are being taught in this conflict.
Lesson number one is how deadly the weapons are and how you have to account for that.
Some of the generals and military thinkers understood this going into the war, because they had paid close attention to the 1905 Russo-Japanese war . . . That taught lessons about what happens when two sides armed with machine guns, and two sides armed with modern artillery and all that face off.
But the lessons were not the kind of lessons some people wanted to learn. . . .
These cavalry commanders don’t want to hear that it’s even worse than it used to be. . . . If your country’s doctrine and your entire military is organized around the culture of the offensive . . . where it’s all about guts . . .
Nobody wants to hear that machine guns just rip guts out — that’s the only thing they care about guts, and it doesn’t work to have bayonet charges and ridiculous offenses. Well, the French would say:
“Yes, well what doesn’t work for the Russians or the Japanese — will work for the French — and that’s why we have a great military.”
There are all kinds of ways to rationalize what you don’t want to learn.
Audio version (with additional commentary)
Tuchman alighted on a root cause of folly that she called “wooden-headedness” — defined in part as “assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting contrary information.”
Many of the militaries of the world are organized like Napoleonic times. They don’t want to hear that that is a completely wrong way to be organized.
The French cavalry heading off to war . . . you have to imagine this:
If you want to see what Napoleon’s soldiers looked like — go look at pictures of the French cavalry in 1914 going off to war — with metal breastplates and horse hair helmets. You’d have to be an expert to look at a picture of them in 1914 and a picture of Napoleon’s cavalry in 1814 — and find the differences.
The officers are gonna go to war in white gloves. They’re gonna have swords.
They’re gonna stand up and troops are gonna march into combat — in like billiard ball formations or bowling pin formations, drill formations from the battlefield.
None of the people who consider this to be an integral part of military culture want to learn:
That the rules have changed. . . .
The military virtues of valor that were so celebrated during this period — where the romance of warfare, which had always been strong in human culture, was probably at its height.
The 19th century — the romance was incredible. This is the era where that romance runs into reality.
Here’s the thing that this war is gonna teach: If you watch the Charge of the Light Brigade and you think it’s magnificent and brave — a doomed sort of attack on the part of incredibly courageous men:
What happens if, after the charge fails — they send another one and the same results occur. And then they send another one and the same results occur.
And then they do it again and again
At what point does this wonderful, doomed, romantic celebration of the courage of the military heart become something obscene?
This war is gonna take us there — and it’s going to pound the point home till you’re sick of it.
Audio version (with additional commentary)
She also saw wooden-headedness as a certain proclivity for “acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by facts.” Wooden-headedness, said Tuchman, was finally — “the refusal to benefit from experience.”
The refusal to benefit from experience
In today’s trench warfare — “white gloves” depict the presentation of tactical arguments that don’t account for larger complexities in play.
“Swords” are posts that puncture with a pinprick at best:
YouTube talks, Tweets, podcasts, debates, speeches, books, blogs, articles, conventional docs . . .
The “billiard ball formations” embody the endless barrage of niche-based argument — repeatedly rehashing the same old problems in the same old ways.
And right on cue — an audience that eats it up like they’re part of some revolution in reason.
McWhorter’s right
Anti-racism has become religion, but fighting that religion has become another religion — and they already belonged to one before that. You’ll see.
Like Black Lives Matter, they’re just pounding away at problems without any examination of the efficacy of their efforts.
This is not problem solving — it’s serving a market.
Their audience doesn’t know the difference, and I’m not sure they do either. However intelligent and well-intentioned some of it may be — this is not the mark of Loury’s “looking at the deep questions”:
We’re a university. We should be above whatever the fad or the fashion is of any given day. We should be looking at the deep questions. We should be analytical. We should be emphasizing reason. Instead, it was like a kind of emotional rush — in which . . . the president and provost and the top leadership of my university — wanted to jump on a bandwagon. They wanted to wave a banner.
And I thought to myself, what have we come to at the university — that the first reaction to grave matters — and the rioting in the street after George Floyd died is a grave matter.
That the reaction is not to think it through, not to question, not to assemble facts, not to make arguments — but instead to wave banners and spout slogans such that you could hardly distinguish what they were doing from a manifesto that would come out of Black Lives Matter
— Glenn Loury
Remove the references around George Floyd — and that behavior rings a bell.
Now I Remember . . .
As the patriots “Never Forget“
The aftermath of this
That the reaction is not to think it through, not to question, not to assemble facts, not to make arguments — but instead to wave banners and spout slogans such that you could hardly distinguish what they were doing from a manifesto that would come out of . . .
If you’re not gonna do your part and accept responsibility for the damage you’ve done, why should the Left?
Why should anyone?
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.
We should be above whatever the fad or the fashion is of any given day. We should be looking at the deep questions. We should be analytical. We should be emphasizing reason.
Only for problems that are popular and easy to perceive? Whatever’s in your wheelhouse? Is that as deep as your questions go?
Rush Limbaugh once said, “I’m an entertainer.” I didn’t believe him at the time, but now I think it’s the most honest thing he ever said.
So when I came across this question below, it really hit home. I had asked a similar question before I found this one.
His was better. Not only was it more direct, but it also shed light on something I hadn’t thought of . . .
And I love that
I wanted to believe — and it’s easy to get lost along the way. But I never get lost for long, and this question kickstarted my turnaround.
Across those communities . . .
I’ve never seen anything with even a hint of the questions we asked. And what they miserably fail to recognize is that their efforts act like a firewall by unwittingly providing an unlimited supply of candy to that piñata.
I’m not suggesting they stop — I’m suggesting they reframe the debate by broadening it. I explain all that later. Somebody really “looking at the deep questions” — would have the courage to consider mine.
By not deviating from your lane, you don’t understand the roadblocks within it that were created outside of it.
It would be extremely difficult to reach the Left no matter what you do. But by feeding that firewall, you’re building in barricades that block you from reaching them in ways you might be able to without the Right sailing Scot-Free.
That the Left brings it on themselves is another matter.
Preach responsibility and take none
Conservatives control the narrative about responsibility and think that magically translates to taking responsibility. Republicans pounce on the Left day in and day out — as if the Right’s record vanished off the face of the earth.
It’s all about framing the narrative — and the Left institutionalizing weakness is a gimme for the Right to rail on them.
And the icing on the cake
Sincere intellectuals justifiably calling out universities, woke ways, racially rigged incidents and such:
Providing endless fodder for the Right to rip people for behavior that pales in comparison to what they did after 9/11 and to this day.
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
That — is faith-based belief at its best . . .
The Left’s anti-racism religion, woke, and whatnot — they’re amateurs.
And after all your posturing
Not a one of ya has the guts to look at the overwhelming & irrefutable evidence that puts this guy in his place for history of partisan hackery. Every day you’re moralizing to the masses — but the second you’re called into question, suddenly you have new standards.
As in none . . .
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?
Hard to Imagine . . .
That I have to explain that quote to people who seemingly live to flood the internet with his words.
This man is a liar and a hypocrite — and that’s a fact:
truth verifiable from experience or observation
But he’s treated like Jesus and his every word seen as solid gold — whether it has any merit or not.
This crowd . . .
They defend him before they even know what the subject matter is — and once they do, they instantly issue their “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.
His army of apologists are gutless in the face of facts they don’t like — disguised by their goose-stepping glory in the Facts Over Feelings Parade.
He’s the Grand Marshal of this lockstep lovefest — and the Admiral of the Scot-Free fleet.
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 . . .
I wouldn’t care if Sowell 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.”
And he has a habit of headlines oozing in partisan pettiness. On two of the biggest events in history — Sowell seems pretty tribal to me.
Desperate and Ugly in Florida
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
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.
Weapons of Political Destruction
It’s not seasoned with any of that — he’s just trying to have a white lab coat on and look at the facts.
If his Crap is King claims on WMD isn’t “seasoned” to you, Mr. McWhorter — what is?
Hard to Imagine
And Damn Disappointing to Boot . . .
It’s bad enough I gotta deal with unyielding yahoos who yearn to praise Sowell as if he’s some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes. But to see people I respected 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’re immune to irrational behavior in defense of their interests.
What a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
When you see a sentence like “Not a trace of Thomas Sowell’s ‘follow the facts’ claim to fame can be found on the most world-altering topic of our time”:
“I have no idea what you’re talking about” . . . is not the mark of an intellectual giant (or an intellectual on any level).
Sowell is a great man because of his books. I stand by that. you want to refute his books — go ahead. I’m listening.
— Glenn Loury
Sowell sold out to sell those books you stand by.
I wrote that post with the likes of Loury in mind. You confine his record to a box of beliefs that suit you — and stand by that. How noble of you.
Same stunt that Riley pulled in writing Maverick . . .
Jason Riley has rendered an enormous service by providing a compelling . . . biography
— Glenn Loury
It’s not compelling at all when you look at the whole story.
It’s just preposterous to write a biography and blatantly ignore a huge hole in its premise. This over-the-top praise from purveyors of virtue was all I could take. It took me of all two minutes to see who Sowell really is.
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.
Maybe you don’t know Sowell as well as you thought you did, and heaven forbid you hold him to same standards pushing your popularity.
You asked them to take stock — just don’t ask you.
Got it!
In your immaculate insight — you can’t see that there’s a design to it all. 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.
All this — but Rob wasn’t sharp enough to see the golden opportunity staring him straight in the face, and likely you won’t either.
You’re too busy racking up subscribers and promoting each other’s brilliance . . .
[Trump] has a rather narcotic joy in dismissal and belittlement
A lot of that goin’ around
Even 20 years ago
It would have been impossible for Trump to be seriously considered, let alone win. If you’re not lookin’ into that — you’re not lookin’.
Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the fields. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life.
She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.
― Doctor Zhivago (referenced in Into the Wild)
One Voice Became Two 