You make it nearly impossible to put a pinprick through the envelope of intransigence encasing your brain. Blindly defending Sowell is in gross breach of the principles upon which you put him on a pedestal.
Funny how these fancy quotes are flooding the internet — and yet the behavior behind them is nowhere to be found.
First off, let’s get your whataboutism bullshit out of the way.
Unlike almost all of America:
I don’t have situational rules
Applying principles across-the-board is what makes them principles — not broadcasting beliefs for Likes. Beliefs so precious to you that this is how you behave when called to put them to the test:
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
Debunking the WMD delusion & Trayvon tale is a conduit for showing how this nation systematically derails debate.
I beat the hell out of both sides
So if you can’t take a hit — you might as well bail right now. I’m looking for fiercely independent thinkers for an idea that could turn the tide, and if you can’t handle some heat — you don’t qualify so I don’t need ya.
If you’re not interested in hearing me out and having meaningful conversation — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well. If you’re game, please contact me through the site or DM on Twitter — as I no longer respond to Tweets or superficial fragments of any kind.
Sincere and on the merits — anything less and I won’t reply.
If you don’t want to engage in fruitful discussion — just block me and be done with it (or DM to request that I block you if you wanna play it that way).
I don’t want to bombard you with more messages — so let’s just go our separate ways.
This — is what you do:
This is what I do:
While you’re Tweeting your lives away — I’m sending a certain set of messages looking for intelligent life (people who wanna solve problems — not endlessly talk about them).
Think of my signals as a poor man’s SETI:
The second you shun evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative you want — you have contaminated your judgment. How quickly you come to your conclusions — and what you’re willing to ignore to solidify them:
That is the underlying message of my efforts.
His followers would surely say, “Yes” — but their actions say otherwise. If evidence claimed as components to build a nuclear bomb isn’t worthy of consideration, what is?
Apparently, his principles below are only to be applied against the Left. I misunderstood, as I was under the impression that Sowell follows the facts wherever they lead. That’s what he said — and so did you.
But I go by what people do — I’m old-fashioned that way.
America’s more into what’s fashionable:
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Life at the Bottom
Whatever I think of Sowell — it’s never seen him act like a child. That’s about all I’ve seen from his fanatical followers.
Your behavior is an embarrassment to the entire history of human achievement.
One Tweet is all it should take:
He & his followers preach
Follow the facts . . .
Well there they are right at your fingertips. But the Tweet below tells the story of what I almost invariably face in telling the story above:
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:
Without whataboutism — you’ve got nothing
So let’s see how sharp you are now (though it escapes me how you feel deflecting from the issues in question is a clever comeback).
I don’t see what the problem is
— Typical Tweeter tapping earth-shattering insight
You don’t see — a lot!
And need I remind you that your track record is not what I would call astute. It’s like you go out of your way to play right into the hands of the Right:
Over and over 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
So let’s dispense with the whataboutism and address the issue on the meris, shall we? Isn’t that what Sowell’s supposedly all about?
And before you play the “site is a shrine to your hatred of Thomas Sowell” card — may I remind you of another one of your favorites:
- 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 . . .
The surgical specificity of this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone.
Trillion Dollar Tube
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 trite 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.
Case in point
People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.
— Thomas Sowell, Weapons of Crass Obstruction
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?
But nothing strikes you that doesn’t serve you:
The Russians said so.
The British said so.
Bill Clinton said so.
Leaders of both political parties said so.
“The British said so”?
What Bill Clinton said is entirely irrelevant to the tubes:
That Sowell 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 Sowell 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 Sowell’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.
— Thomas Sowell
I don’t play those games, Mr. Sowell:
They all lied
Some circles call that evidence — I call it cowardice
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 . . .
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 debauchery on the Right:
That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
Lo and Behold
Then there’s this
Take note of the trite & trendy language that follows the clip: Strikingly in sync with Sowell’s, don’t ya think?
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.
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
You introduce statements and arguments of people who aren’t Thomas Sowell
As this story is also
About the behavior of the echo chamber around Sowell — it’s kinda necessary to include other people to properly illustrate the problem.
And I wouldn’t mind explaining everything — if you thought about anything.
I’m showing you the legacy he’s leaving behind — and there’s no way this is what he wanted. I don’t know much about him — but I’m betting he’d be embarrassed by what’s happening in his name. He’s a well-manned guy on the whole — and these people are acting like animals to honor him.
What you see in this post is on the “mild” end of that: And we ain’t talkin’ run-of-the-mill politics here — these are matters of mathematical certainty.
And 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.
If only you’d laid it all out exactly as I like it — then I’d abide by the principles I preach
Is that how it works?
That’s about the size of it. I guess I figured that if you didn’t understand something — you’d try this on for size, but I’m old-fashioned that way:
Funny how there’s always an excuse
Back in the day — there was no website with an array of illustrations to gripe about. I was just sharing Trillion Dollar Tube to all these fine folks flaunting their badge of beliefs so FAIR.
Showing a modicum of courtesy for a 5-minute excerpt doesn’t seem like much to ask such bastions of virtue. But without watching one second — self-satisfied scorn was your gold standard for gleefully gutting the truth.
And why mess with tradition?
And then there’s this:
Loury wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task though:
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
You confine his record to a box of beliefs that suit you — and stand by that.
How noble of you
So the rules of argument you espouse on a daily basis don’t apply to you and your ever-growing audience of dittoheads.
You called my writing “brilliant” in I Don’t Do Slogans on The Yellow Brick Road — and you’re “blown away” by my site: As long as I don’t challenge you to live up to the principles you preach when it comes at a price.
Got it!
Funny thing about information
It can seem incoherent when you don’t take any of it into account.
If I did cartwheels on TikTok to tell this story — you’d take issue with my form. We’ve created a culture that gripes over “flashy graphics” while worshipping liars in the images. Constant complaining has become a virtue — where everything of value is gain you get in the moment:
And easy is all the rage!
But this crowd takes the cake. These people think they’re part of some revolution in reason by ceaselessly Tweeting the tenets of Thomas Sowell. Never mind they instantly abandon them the second he’s under scrutiny.
It’s just pathetic
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.”
For nearly 20 years on this matter of mathematical certainty — I’ve been practically spit on for following principles those same people promote on a daily basis. The second they’re questioned, those precious virtues you peddle in the Facts Over Feelings Parade — are rolled right over with your feelings.
If I came into this cold — I’d know on this image alone that Sowell has no chance.
If you don’t know that by now, I don’t know what to tell ya.
You think that poppycock of his gets better from here? Trust me, I’m just warming up. And by the way — I suggest you start putting some faith in people who have integrity instead of buying it from those who sell it.
Blind loyalty would bore the hell out of me — I don’t know how you stand it. Not to mention the fact that you do a cosmic disservice to the very things you’re defending.
On that note
Preach responsibility and take none
When your camp came up empty on WMD — you just bought more bullshit from the same people who sold you the first batch:
Shrewd!
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.
180 — how fitting
By Design
America Remains Mired in the Murky
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?
Shouldn’t any debate establish what the debate is actually about? What does it say about a country that can’t even establish that much on a matter of this magnitude?
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 on everything — lumping it all together and never even approaching where you should have started in the first place:
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 issues that have eroded reason beyond recognition?
Rock Stars of Reasoning:
You couldn’t carry Sowell’s jockstrap!
Thomas Sowell is considered our country’s leading living intellectual, with ground-breaking contributions to economics, psychology, history, political science and sociology.
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 Thomas Sowell
And those are on the mild end of the savagery I’ve seen.
On Trillion Dollar Tube alone
To anyone with a bone of intellectual integrity in your body, it’s over. But if that doesn’t do it for ya — try this on for size:
Better yet
How about the whole story? For people so doubt-free — you should have no trouble addressing the issue on the merits, shouldn’t you?
If you think you can step into the ring with me on this, I invite you to try. I’ve been inviting you for a really long time.
I’m not just taking Thomas Sowell to task because he’s got it comin’ — I need this guy. The ultimate irony is that blind loyalty limits him — while my criticism could elevate him to heights your hero-worship ensures he’ll never go.
So, you’re saying that your plan will elevate Thomas Sowell to worldwide recognition — by holding him accountable? That if he comes clean — he could be the catalyst to turn the tide?
That’s exactly what I’m saying
It won’t matter that Sowell blew it on WMD or why — all that matters is having the guts to say:
I was wrong — and I’m trying to make it right
In a culture consumed with being right — wouldn’t it be refreshing to talk about the immeasurable value in the willingness to be wrong? Don’t just tell people how to behave:
Lead by example — especially when it comes at a cost!
Shouldn’t you abide by the principles upon which you put people on a pedestal — even if it knocks ’em off of it? Wouldn’t the genuine article want you to hold them accountable to their claims?
Admitting where he’s wrong will work wonders for where he’s right — which benefits everybody.
Elevating him is not my aim, but I can live with it to stem the systematic self-delusion that’s taken this nation totally off the rails:
Right & Left
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!
One Voice Became Two 