Anyone wanting to know the truth — would not behave in ways that ensure they never will.
Wherever we stand on anything
It’s in everyone’s best interests to discuss issues in an intelligent and intellectually honest manner — welcoming knowledge and insight to light our way to what’s real and what’s not.
As the gentlemen did below when I responded to their thoughtful post that stands in striking contrast to the routine rollout of rage and rationalizations.
When I watched Colin Powell brief the UN about the threat of Iraq’s WMD program, he struck me as a man who wasn’t 100% confident in what he was saying. There was no conviction in his tone. His words were the polished, but nonetheless hollow, statements of a canned brief. It sounded to me like he was relaying information he didn’t necessarily trust.
— MAJ(R) Mike Warnock
Solid instincts
Since I wrote and produced the most exhaustive documentary ever done on WMD, I would know:
Guess who else gets exposed in very specific culpability on the WMD debacle? The guy in the White House right now — Joe Biden. How so? How I’d love to live in a world where you’d ask not out of party-line pursuits:
But because it’s on the trail to the truth.
— David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security
Retired Navy SEAL, Lt. Cmdr. Rorke Denver, wrote the following in 10 years after Iraq War began we are better warriors:
Wherever you stand on Iraq and Afghanistan, this much is undeniable: All that intense and prolonged combat experience has made us far better warriors than we’ve ever been before. A decade after American troops stormed into Baghdad, the U.S. military is a battle-tested, forward-thinking, phenomenally sharp fighting force, truly ready for whatever threats come our way next.
They’re sharper — this nation, is not
As I said in my documentary
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.
— Richard W. Memmer: Prologue
If I came across something called Mount Everest of the Obvious, and I hadn’t done my homework — my first thought would be:
I must be missing something pretty big
What does it say about a country that can’t even establish that much — on a matter of war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11?
And what does it say to you
That on evidence claimed as components to build a nuclear bomb — the “debate” was hijacked by 10-second sound bites?
By design, America remains mired in the murky: On this issue — and most everything else.
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 that’s narrow in scope — and take the trail where it leads.
To ascertain the truth on any topic
If you’ve got something concrete to go on — that’s your point of entry. By all means, keep the door open in every direction. But by nailing down the definitive first, it paves a clearer path to all the rest.
This country does the exact opposite — lumping it all together and never even approaching where you should have started in the first place:
Associated Press, October 3rd, 2004: Rice said she learned of objections by the Energy Department only after making her 2002 comments.
Richard W. Memmer: Are we to believe that the National Security Adviser of the United States was unaware of an intelligence dispute of this magnitude that had been going on for well over a year?
One Congressional investigator went so far as to call it a holy war. And doesn’t it strike you as suspicious that she didn’t bother consulting the D.OE. before serving up images of a nuclear detonation?
— Act II
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
The surgical specificity of Trillion Dollar Tube puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone.
Imagine what I did with 160
“There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on.”
— Major William Pierce (Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton)
Wouldn’t it be absurd to share that quote if my clip contained nothing but talking points? Some circles are not burdened by squaring their walk with their talk. They seem to think that advertising virtue equates to embodying it.
For nearly 20 years
I’ve been practically spit on for following principles those same people promote on a daily basis. I did the doc to address such behavior, but in the last 18 months — I’ve seen savagery beyond anything that inspired it.
And that — is an opportunity.
Which is what this story’s ultimately about — but you have to understand the problem before you can see the solution.
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.
You think it’s just a coincidence that all the “arguments” on the Right just happen to follow the same pattern (conveniently leaving out the marquee claim on a mushroom cloud)?
That — all by itself, speaks volumes
To anyone who thinks world-altering wars are more important than whining about websites that expose painfully obvious lies, anyway.
This chart is misleading in several respects . . . Beams centrifuge never actually worked . . . We can infer . . .
Sounds pretty sloppy to me. Perhaps we should have a conversation to clear up what all this means on matters of such magnitude?
When protecting your interests, America’s into the newfangled ways of “argument” — where you furiously fire off some fashionable form of “You’re wrong!” and dish it all day long:
Insisting on “affirmation independent of all findings” (borrowing from Peck who borrowed from Buber).
I never got on board.
You’re wrong — and here’s why
That’s the discipline — to have a work ethic in the way you think. Without “here’s why,” you’re just whistlin’ Dixie.
by the way
It’s high time we appreciate the difference between assertion and argument — 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.
And this is the prism through which we should weigh what we see and how we respond:
As Insincere As It Gets
In addition to interviewing world-renowned nuclear scientist, Dr. Houston Wood, I also corresponded with David Albright (the physicist quoted earlier) — as well as Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Greg Thielmann said the following in 2013:
It will be up to Iraqis to debate whether their country now has a brighter future than it otherwise would have had without foreign invasion and occupation in the first decade of the new century. But it is uniquely incumbent on Americans to understand who and what were responsible for an enterprise that proved so costly in terms of U.S. lives lost, money spent, international reputation tarnished, and a campaign against al Qaeda diverted.
America just casually moved on
I didn’t — as I knew then what few know now:
The immeasurable value in the willingness to be wrong, understanding why, and looking to learn from it. And that not doing so — increasingly compounds the consequences of no accountability.
As I said in my documentary
Those tortured talking points need to be put out of their misery — and I know of no one better for that than Greg Thielmann. I emailed him to ask how he would respond to Whittle’s common claim, and one of the most telling aspects to his answer was the technicality of literal truth in the manufactured myth.
Thielmann acknowledged that nearly everybody thought that Saddam had hidden away some mustard agent left over from the 1980s, but he added that the Bush administration did not make its case for war on the strength of suspicions that Iraq retained World War One-era munitions.
It’s the second half of that statement that Whittle & Company conveniently ignore.
— Richard W. Memmer: Epilogue
Thielmann elucidates one fine point after another for over a page: Germans on the unreliability of Curveball. I.A.E.A. on the tubes and “uranium from Africa” reports. D.I.A. reversing its position on the drones before the invasion.
And as Thielmann talked about on P.B.S. FRONTLINE, a senior Australian intelligence analyst resigned in protest over the fabricated intelligence. . . .
Thielmann also pointed out that few intelligence agencies had independent means of evaluating U.S. intelligence. He brings up the infamous Downing Street Memos that explicitly state that:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action — justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
The A-Team
How Nuclear Experts Were Trumped by One Stubborn CIA Analyst
How many lay-people have ya ever came across who wrote and produced a documentary? In nearly 20 years of challenging people on these issues and others, I’ve never met a single one. What road have you taken to lose sight of such things deserving of at least a little respect?
A modicum of courtesy perhaps? Doing your homework used to count for something. How about we just start with that?
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.
Button your lip and don’t let the shield slip
Take a fresh grip on your bulletproof mask
And if they try to break down your disguise with their questions
You can hide hide hide behind Paranoid Eyes
I don’t roll with the “Bush Lied, People Died” crowd — or any crowd, for that matter.
And I Don’t Do Slogans on The Yellow Brick Road.
Dealing on the Moment is What America Does Best
Arrival is a movie that makes you think — and that’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Their efforts to develop a conduit of communication is in striking contrast to how we talk to each other today. With the word “HUMAN” written on a whiteboard, they were able to build on that by seeing patterns in indecipherable symbols.
We have the most sophisticated communication tools in history — and we can’t even talk to each other in the same language.
Instead of listening and learning — slinging snippets of certitude has become America’s pastime. We’ve 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. Those days are long gone — as the internet and the cable clans paved the way for the onslaught of the utterly absurd.
We’re in perennial pursuit of ideologies — warfare waged with:
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Life at the Bottom
Even timeless truths are outdated
The.Deal.Is.That.We.Connect.These.Dots . . .
You see
Imagine!
There are powerful forces that make damn sure you don’t.
And it shows
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.
— The Death of Expertise
I know the feeling — all too well
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.
This image is especially fitting for the times — since it’s a myth popularized by Washington Irving and others.
According to The Flat Earth Myth: The real myth is the idea that anyone ever believed in a flat earth:
Essentially no one during the Middle Ages believed the world was flat. Of the many myths about the Middle Ages this one is perhaps the most widespread, and yet at the same time the most roundly and authoritatively debunked.
In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that refuting this myth is like refuting the idea that the moon is made of cheese.
Same on WMD — and then some!
“Bias” gets all the press
When prejudice is paramount to the problem. If it were just bias, convincing you with overwhelming and irrefutable evidence might still be difficult — but you’d be willing to be convinced.
Prejudice doesn’t roll that way. In fact, it doesn’t roll anywhere — as you don’t budge one bit, and take pride in it, no less.
As a friend comically put it:
It’s not “Pride and Bias”
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
Joint Special Operations Command
That’s delightfully fitting for what I have in mind.
Oh, the irony
Stick around — and you’ll see how JSOC is central to the story and how we can turn the tide (harnessing folly from the past for the benefit of the future).
Ya know — learning
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.
“Why, thank you! I had no idea!” Why would people prefer to justify mistaken beliefs, behavior, and practices rather than change them for better ones?
From a lifetime of practice, “Why, thank you! I had no idea!” is protocol for me. 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 find changing my mind to be magical — that you can think one thing, take new information into account, and think another. It’s fantastic. As I wrote 18 years ago:
There’s nothing more edifying than taking a trip to another point of view
America has no such notion
When I was growing up, it was inconceivable that America would become a country that tap dances around reality on a daily basis: Delighting in your contempt for correction.
A go-to tactic of the dead-certain is to make damn sure the debate never reaches the merits of the matter. I’ve seen highly intelligent people derail discussions by claiming that “everything’s just an opinion.”
Nobody really believes that — it’s just a cop-out.
And if you call ‘em on it, they fall back on Old Faithful — “agree to disagree.” How this hijacked-for-hackery ethic caught on over the years can be charted with the times — where things that once meant something, now mean nothing.
If you want to start solving problems instead of endlessly talking about them, we need to take a hard look at how we got here. My doc was designed as a tool for honest debate. Now? It’s intended for a larger framework to clear the clutter that’s crippled this country.
To the uneducated, abstract ideas are unfamiliar; so is the detachment that is necessary to discover a truth out of one’s own knowledge and mental effort. The uneducated person views life in an intensely personal way — he knows only what he sees, hears or touches and what he is told by friends. As the unknown sage puts it, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”
But more than ever, even the most educated minds act in an uneducated manner in service of their interests — and harm them in doing so.
Understanding how seemingly unrelated events impact one another takes time and effort to digest.
It involves thinking ahead & looking back.
As the problems that plague America are interrelated — just picking the “root cause” that works for you doesn’t get it done. You’ve gotta look at interconnected causes across the board.
Anything short of addressing that has no chance of achieving its aims.
There was no point in just doing another documentary on WMD alone — no matter how exhaustively detailed. It had to have something more — something to address the roots of problems:
While America perpetually spins its wheels on symptoms.
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
But it is uniquely incumbent on Americans to understand who and what were responsible . . .
It’s crystal clear to me
My Cousin Vinny is maybe the most hilariously educational movie ever — and this scene is at the core of our culture’s communication divide:
Don’t shake your head. I’m not done yet. Wait till you hear the whole thing so you can . . . understand this now . . .
Thank you for reaching out! Please feel free to write a thoughtful follow up to our article (or even a rebuttal) — we’d be happy to publish it.
“Or even a rebuttal” — how refreshing!
I’ve got a ton more than that — and it’s honorable that they want to hear it (which is worlds away from what I’m used to).
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:
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
Funny thing about information
It can seem incoherent when you don’t take any of it into account.
Would you browse a textbook then blame the teacher for your failure to understand the material? If you’re not gonna watch clips at the crux of the story, what’s the point?
And if you don’t understand something — you could always try this on for size:
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.’” . . .
When is the last time you can honestly remember a public dialogue — or even a private conversation — that followed that useful course?
Every once in a blue moon, someone wonders in such ways. Not long before this Tweet — this guy was condemning my efforts like all the rest that day.
And then he opened the doc . . .
That’s the exception — this is the rule:
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
CIA is not the all knowing God of the Bible. The CIA could do everything 100% correct but still not know everything.
— Tweeter tapping the typical
There’s another reason why they wouldn’t know everything: Nuclear scientists don’t work there — they work at the Department of Energy.
And that — is what this is all about
You’d know that had you watched Trillion Dollar Tube instead of trying to educate me on things you know nothing about.
Note: I modified the Intelligence Community image above by overlaying CIA on top of Director of National Intelligence — to show how the IC effectively operated pre-9/11 and before DCI took center stage.
Powell’s own intel agency backed DOE — the only real experts on this issue. They were outvoted by totally unqualified agencies under pressure from CIA.
Does it strike you as curious that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency got an equal say on the aluminum tubes for the NIE vote?
An agency that does imagery analysis of the Earth . . .
Same for NSA and other agencies that had no expertise in centrifuge physics.
And why wasn’t JAEIC allowed to weigh in? What’s JAEIC?
Allow me
Once again
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?
we can infer that Zippe used rotors with wall thicknesses that range from I mm to approximately 2.8 mm.
Why would anyone infer a 2.8mm wall for Zippe rotors that were never more than 1mm?
Anyone entering this discussion with sincerity — would come away realizing that there is no debate, and there never was.
They just made it up
That you even think that a story so complex and convoluted could be explained away so easily — is a monumental problem all by itself.
And without even the most basic insight into anything on this story: That camp has a habit of glossing over global issues of catastrophic consequences with:
“Seems”
Speaking of sleight of hand
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 just 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.
Hide and Seek
The question comes down to whether or not you’re basing your belief on something in the realm of reason — not some fail-safe fantasy that allows you to believe whatever you want.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act III
People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.
— Professional Know-It-All (PKIA for short)
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 PKIA’s words and mine
Which ones strike you as glib?
And what does it say to you — that I have to withhold PKIA’s identity for now — so you’ll weigh his words in isolation from his immaculate image?
You could google his quotes — but that would be cheating. And his followers’ adamant refusal to abide by their own rules is why I came up with PKIA in the first place.
And I know the type — all too well. Decades ago — I didn’t write this poem from my imagination:
It’s not anti-war — it’s pro-thinking:
Not the tiniest trace of reasoning can be found in anything I’ve come across in decades of dealing with the doubt-free on WMD. And of all those I’ve challenged — their knowledge combined could fit into a thimble with space to spare.
On irrefutable evidence of mathematical certainty — I’ve almost invariably with the Mentality of a Mob.
Like this gem
So, on an issue involving the separation of uranium isotopes — you wanna ignore the evidence to show off your math skills by splitting hairs over the meaning of “mathematical certainty”?
by the way
Decorating your points with special punctuation does not make meaningless crap magically have merit.
But in this crowd — merit means nothing (unless it serves them, of course). If you only care about facts when they work in your favor — you don’t care about facts.
I point you to a 7-part, 2 hours and 40 minutes doc — that distills a story that demanded a massive amount of effort, thought, research, and writing:
And you tap a Tweet with a talking point or two — thinking you can inform me.
On that note
The Russians said so.
The British said so.
Bill Clinton said so.
Leaders of both political parties said so.— PKIA
“The British said so”?
What Bill Clinton said is entirely irrelevant to the tubes:
That PKIA never bothered to address — or anything else of substance in this saga of endless absurdity.
So there’s that — and this:
The Right ripped Bill Clinton to shreds and seemingly lives to assail democrats — and yet PKIA cites their word as solid gold.
That — is a magician’s maneuver . . .
Well, if they “said so” — it must be true.
So when people you despise ostensibly agree with you — it’s gotta be true, because they’d never do such a thing if it weren’t.
That’s it? . . .
Who cares about mathematical certainty in centrifuge physics when you’ve got the word of people who lie for a living?
It couldn’t possibly be that your enemy has ulterior motives themselves?
Nobody nails Democrats better than Glenn Greenwald’s gold-standard from a 2008 article on Salon.com:
Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything — they fear looking weak. To avoid this, they cave, surrender, capitulate — and stand for nothing.
Flagrantly failing to account for motive in PKIA’s “said so and so” in the environment below — is as insulting to your intelligence as it gets.
Never mind it’s all meaningless in the context of the tubes.
George W. Bush was one of the last to say so. Yet he alone is accused of lying.
— PKIA
I don’t play those games, Mr. PKIA:
They all lied
Some circles call that evidence — I call it cowardice
And don’t you find it suspicious that someone of PKIA’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 . . .
So you found one small crack in PKIA’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 debauchery on the Right:
That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
Lo and Behold
The rolodex of excuses around PKIA is off the charts.
There’s a faction for forgiveness smothered in sweeping assumptions:
This — is just priceless
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.
Who said I disagreed with his work?
Outside of butchering the debate on 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.
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 no idea of the depths of deception involved here — but have no qualms about issuing instant forgiveness for it.
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.”
And right on cue:
I’m still waiting for you to supply the evidence
In what parallel universe are you living in to fire off fanatical loyalty to professional know-it-alls who couldn’t counter my work with a sound argument to save their lives?
Defending the faith . . .
Is all that matters to PKIA’s echo chamber of affirmation — as 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.
Some people took one view — some people took another
— Douglas Feith
And “some people” are qualified
And “some people” are not:
One picture is worth a thousand words
Which image below would you choose if you wanted to understand a fairly complex coding concept? For me, it’s whatever it takes to get me where I wanna go.
I wish I were smart enough to read the JavaScript language spec and pick it up all on my own. Then again, I love the demands of difficulty and overcoming obstacles.
But I can’t do it alone
I need the help of amazing minds from my multitude of sources that increasingly grows the more I learn and advance my skills.
When I returned to this topic awhile back, I almost got it in the first video. In the face of such phenomenal work (or any sincere effort, for that matter): It would be unthinkable for me to blame the source because I gotta work a little harder.
I was equally impressed by the 2nd video. He furthered my grasp on my question — and enhanced my overall understanding to boot. And the icing on the cake: He taught with this magical tool I’d never seen before.
This — is pure gold
3rd and 4th tries
Found that amazing graphic and a guy who ranks with the best I’ve ever seen in any discipline.
My gap paved the way to pay dirt — but only because I kept digging. Now I’m tapped into the internals, and I’ve got new tools to advance my knowledge on that front and many more.
The answer was there all along — I just needed to train my mind to see it.
Works the same way here
Einstein borrowed from the one below:
The worth of man lies not in the truth which he possesses, or believes that he possesses, but in the honest endeavor which he puts forth to secure that truth; for not by the possession of, but by the search after, truth, are his powers enlarged, wherein, alone, consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession fosters content, indolence, and pride.
Are you telling me . . .
That I can grasp this — but you can’t grasp that?
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.
This nation has no such notion
America wallows in a fantasyland of circular certitude — where denying the obvious has become a duty to defend your tribe.
Hiding behind your force field of fallacy:
You win from the start and even more at the end — reinforced by the fellowship of friends cemented in the same standards. No amount of irrefutable evidence & expertise can convince you of anything in your race for satisfaction and insatiable appetite for glorifying those who give it to you.
Wish I would have thought of KPIA a long time ago, as it allows me to structure material in ways I wasn’t able to before. But if I came into this cold — I’d know in a matter of minutes what’s going on here.
I wouldn’t need an alias to get me to objectively consider someone’s words — nor would I give a f#*% about format.
I’d just know this guy knows something of significance I don’t, and I’m gonna find out what it is. I don’t need arguments to be aligned with my style-guide preferences for me to work it out on my own.
And for anything requiring clarification — I’d ask politely ask questions.
Imagine!
And just like JavaScript and everything else I’ve ever learned — I’d start at the beginning. I don’t want clips of the story — I want the truth in full.
It’s amazing how everything falls into place from a foundation of effort and understanding.
This is more your style:
If only you’d laid it all out exactly as I like it — then I’d abide by the principles I preach
And to top it all off
Some rapid-fire ridicule from afar
Cozy in the KILL
As you recoil from questions secure in your cover on social media
Where you can promote principles in one breath and abandon them the next. And get away with it with ease — because you’ve got friends:
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.
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.
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” . . . 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.”
My generation got off easy
All we were called to do was weigh information — but even that was too much of a burden. As we got more, we became less.
I offered you overwhelming and irrefutable evidence in my documentary that exhaustively exposes the biggest and most costly lie in modern history — taking both parties to task for it. You refused to even glance at the doc while deriding my efforts with pleasure.
So with this site I tried another approach: Interweaving clips in conjunction with the behavior of those who slavishly defend the indefensible.
The documentary is structured to the hilt in 7 segments averaging 24 minutes apiece — so it’s much easier to digest.
But circular certitude is quite the convenient cop-out:
Allowing you to blow off the doc, dish your derision on issues you’re wildly unqualified on — then complain how you can’t follow the format of a site that wouldn’t be needed if you simply watched the doc in the first place.
To claim that Iraq WMD 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.
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.
The “arguments” of “Expert” By Association — taking cue from his kin on Rolodex of Ridicule:
- “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 “Get help!” 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 put it all on a silver platter
But you won’t consider 160 seconds, let alone 160 minutes. You think I wanted to chop up my doc into clips to accommodate America’s attention span?
But still that wasn’t enough. I do all the work, you do nothing and consider nothing — then blame me for failing to convince you. In slinging your insults, you’re insulting your intelligence far more than you’re insulting me.
How can you expect anyone to admit when they’re wrong if you won’t?
And every time you allow emotion to run roughshod over reason — you further calcify habits at the other end of the spectrum from these:
Rather than assert that 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
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.
We are living through an epidemic of cowardice. The antidote is courage.
— Bari Weiss, Some Thoughts About Courage
I’ve seen no such courage in her community or any other. Following facts going in the direction you desire doesn’t count:
Anybody can do that
In trying to tell this story in her community and all those like it — they’ve shared their values with venom. Behold your courageous band of believers who take comfort in contempt.
Let’s look at their “commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation” — and how they’re “holding fast” in the “company of people who share our core values.”
And these are on the mild end
You couldn’t carry PKIA‘s jockstrap!
Seriously? Get a life. It doesn’t matter what you say, he’s better than you basically in everything.
You deserved to be treated that way! You’re a moron and pathetic character assassin
Your reply shows me you have no such experience and knowledge. You played yourself, and you lost. Sorry, read some PKIA
As disgusted as I am by it all
I feel sorry for the lives of hermetically sealed minds. You’ll never know how much more the world had to offer you — and how much more you had to offer it.
I wonder if anyone wonders why I blur out their names. This is about accepted behavior across the country — not specifically targeting these people.
My aim isn’t to make you look bad — it’s for you to stop looking bad. 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:
I like the cut of your jib, sir
And then there are those memorable moments when someone surprises you with the simplicity and elegance of a line like that.
In a sea of insults, one kind comment is like wind in your sails.
One Voice Became Two 