Believing things that have no bearing on reality has become a plague across America — erosion of reason that took decades of denying the undeniable. I doubt even the most loyal LeBron fans would dispute his glaringly obvious history of flopping — but he does:
I play an aggressive game. I don’t flop. I’ve never been one of those guys
— LeBron James
There was a time when it would be embarrassing for a ball player to feign being fouled on the level of theatrics in King James’ court. You’d be laughed off the court for pulling stunts like that in my day.
It’s all the more absurd when you consider that even with the hardest-hitting fouls back in the 80s — nobody flailed about like that on impact.
Never mind Lebron’s built like a Tiger tank.
Tiger Tanks Could Withstand a Dozen Sherman[s]
The only way that so many levels of sham and stupidity could be so easily accepted — is that it was normalized little by little over time.
Ain’t that America
His words are pure fantasy . . .
But it doesn’t matter, because that’s the country we’ve become — where words are empty and you can feign offense to avoid having to answer for anything. As I said in my doc:
It’s astounding how the mind can pull off psychological gymnastics that allow us to believe what we say without any sense of accounting for it.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth.
My idea is simple:
Cutting through our Crap is King culture to you to see it — is not.
Where infantile insults are celebrated
The doubt-free who don’t do their homework are the experts.
Those who belittle and outright reject correction — are the righteous and wise. The ones with courage to admit when they’re wrong — are the weak. Tireless dedication is mercilessly mocked — while intellectual laziness is esteemed.
Original thinking and uniqueness are bashed — while conforming to the trite is trumpeted. Depth is discarded with disdain — while shallowness is embraced with love.
The honest & sincere are shunned — while manipulators & liars are welcomed with open arms.
This is my story — and if you read it in full, you’ll find it’s part of your story too. You’ve all dealt with the same behavior I have — the difference is that I get it from every direction.
You don’t really need to find out what’s goin’ on
You don’t really wanna know just how far it’s gone
Just leave well enough alone Eat your dirty laundry . . .
We can do “The Innuendo,” we can dance and sing
When it’s said and done, we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Systematic oversimplification has taken over to the point where inconvenient correlations are condemned as convoluted. And any attempt to have a conversation on issues that clearly call for careful consideration — is hijacked by baseless beliefs beaten into your brain as bedrock fact.
From decades of being increasingly accommodating of liars aligned with your interests: You kept lowering the bar — and now there is no bar.
One picture is worth a thousand words . . .
Without the imagery of LeBron repeatedly flopping — how would you put that into text? Not even the best wordsmiths in the world could capture the sheer slop in his flop.
And it’s not just the physical folly — it’s the complete lack of shame in his mentality that takes no pride in how he wins.
A lot of that goin’ around
Speaking of imagery. In reference to its opening image on Without Passion or Prejudice, I wrote the following:
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.
Explaining America’s decline over decades of delight in the Gutter Games of Government — is apples and oranges compared to the transactional nature of news and social-media norms.
Understanding how seemingly unrelated events impact one another takes time and effort to digest. And keep in mind — my mission is not driven by changing your values, but rather the manner in which you pursue them.
By just recognizing that the challenges I face are different from the standard fare in America — you might find some appreciation of what I’m up against.
When taking on the entire country — 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? Alas, I have to account for this “having said that” culture we’ve created — where you’ve gotta establish some degree of shared scrutiny to pave the way for what you really wanna say.
Utterly ridiculous
And after you’ve soothed their minds with some agreement — that goodwill goes right out the window the moment you mention anything that challenges their calcified convictions.
How do you convey fair-mindedness in a culture that instantly supports or scorns on lickety–split perception alone? You can rattle off personalities you perceive as fair-minded, no doubt. But how many of you have dealt with any of ’em one-on-one? And of that group, how many have put their principles to the test on matters practically woven into their DNA?
Stick around — and you’ll see how some household names of the fair-minded behaved in the face of irrefutable fact.
So I will ask you once again . . .
How do you expose the whole charade — when bona fide fair-mindedness is not welcome here?
When you figure that out, lemme know. In the meantime: Forget the mile — I’ll settle for just putting on the shoes.
I wrote and produced a documentary that exhaustively details the biggest and costly lie in modern history (where I take both parties to task — on that issue and more). I needed a way to illustrate irrational behavior without showing any favoritism:
The Left’s ludicrous ways on race and woke — gave it to me.
The Right didn’t write this Tweet below, I did. If all this boils down to is the Right bashing the Left — how do you account for my arguments being largely in sync with theirs in this territory? Taking on the entire country is no path to popularity, I assure you.
What possible motive would I have to agree with people who have a long history of gutting the truth with glee?
For telling undeniable truth for 20 years — I’ve been practically spit on by that camp. You think I’d be on board with anybody who treats inconvenient truth with contempt — unless there was merit to what they were saying? The Right’s gone out of its mind — but they’re right on the money on this impossibly stupid pampering:
I don’t see what the problem is
— Typical Tweeter tapping earth-shattering insight
You don’t see — a lot!
Your track record is not what I would call astute — and the Right doesn’t have anything to write home about either.
We’re well beyond “disagreement” in America — this is madness (countless millions miserably failing to follow even the most fundamental methods of how understanding works):
How many words would it take to capture that comparison:
Showing how you have situational rules — and I don’t. And do you really believe your words could convey the same potency as those pictures?
As I said in my doc:
At the heart of why we fail to live up to our potential as a society is because we excel at polluting even the purest form of fact. How can we possibly solve serious problems when we refuse to adhere to some semblance of the fundamentals of making sense?
— Richard W. Memmer: Epilogue
To conform to fact
We must agree that it was watermelon and consider what it means: Maybe nothing, maybe everything. But you pollute the debate when you won’t even acknowledge the irrefutable.
Worse than that — you poison your purpose: On that front — and this one:
It astounds me that some of the most brilliant minds in the world seem incapable of correlating how “unrelated” issues impact one another. The most harmful pollution on the planet is noise — narrative that drowns out sensible discussion.
You could blame those who amplify that deafening noise with delight — or be smart by not doing dumb things that drive the narrative in the first place.
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
Marching to Black Lives Matter with the first black president sitting in the White House — was that a smart move? The answer should be abundantly clear — and yet the question is not even considered. I’ve been blocked by people on Twitter for just politely suggesting that BLM is a counterproductive cause.
Instead of considering how you could fight for justice more intelligently — you act like I’m saying you shouldn’t fight for it at all.
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on.
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa)
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. There is no amount of gain you could give me to believe something to be true that is false.
When warranted, I will defend those I despise and call out those I like. I call a spade a spade, period.
I love moments of truth and measurement that put my principles to the test. One of my favorites is the Florida election fiasco of 2000. I just wanted the right thing to be done — whether it served my interests or not was irrelevant. That sense of fairness is so foreign I might as well be speaking another language.
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.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Are you telling me
That I can grasp this — but you can’t grasp that? . . .
[A meme is] an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations
It’s just preposterous to suggest that illustrations for crafting argument on complex issues are “memes.” I don’t do memes — but incredibly, some who do — don’t know the difference.
That people insist on insulting their intelligence never ceases to amaze me.
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 F.A.I.R.
The surgical specificity of this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone. Showing some courtesy for a short 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?
Funny thing about information
It can seem incoherent when you don’t take any of it into account.
I do all the work, you do nothing and consider nothing — then blame me for failing to convince you. Anyone wanting to know the truth would not behave in ways that ensure they never will.
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?
That the decline of America over the last 30 years in the Gutter Games of Government — doesn’t unfold for standard scrolling with ease, is not a flaw in my argument and array of illustrations:
It’s a flaw in your willingness to work through it — absorbing each building block of information your brain is well-equipped to handle.
Or at least it used to be before information became 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.
What I do takes work — time and effort to think it through. This — is entertainment:
On that note . . .
It’s a mighty fine day when you wake up to find high praise from a man of Glenn Loury’s caliber . . . twice! He called my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by this site and signed up. He was “honored” by what I had to say, but he wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task.
He wasn’t about to look at undeniable evidence warranting that he change his mind — so he changed the rules:
Right on cue | Never fails
I wonder — how would you put the above into words?
As explained on Glenn Loury is a Hypocrite — And It Pains Me to Say So, that was then — this is now. Alas, we live in a world that would rather split hairs over semantics than consider the spirit of an argument. Whether or not it’s literally “religion” is not the point
It’s faith-based belief that has no bearing on reality: A.K.A. Wishful Thinking.
Such high praise from a man of Loury’s caliber is a helluva lot of incentive for me to think these people are the “geniuses” their ever-growing audience thinks they are. I don’t roll that way. While I maintain a degree of respect for him — and I’m forever grateful for the inspiration he provided:
If you’re part of the problem, I don’t care who you are — I’m calling you out.
And that’s
Speaking of which . . .
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t care that you signed a pledge.
And neither do you . . .
So much for diplomacy . . .
I FedExed them a short snail-mail letter long before I was blocked — and they blew it off (as I predicted).
To Whom It May Concern:
“The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be. All human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.” — Socrates
Just do what you say you do — and you just might turn the tide.
In talking about take a wild guess, one of your board of advisors perfectly captured him by saying, “He has a rather narcotic joy in dismissal and belittlement.” And yet the person who said that fails to see how he’s unwittingly conditioning people to act the same way. A lot of that goin’ around.
Another one of your advisors once called my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by my site and signed up. He wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task though — instantly abandoning the principles he preaches (not to mention being in gross breach of your Pro-Human Pledge).
And this isn’t run-of-the-mill politics — it involves irrefutable evidence of mathematical certainty (of world-altering consequence, no less).
There’s at least a handful of others on your board who would behave as he did to defend the same person. I’m not out to harm these people or your organization, quite the contrary. Raising the bar will make you better — and if you are what you claim to be, you should welcome that challenge with open arms.
F.A.I.R? — Your Record Is Who You Are, Not What You Believe:
It’s not my writing, my graphics, or my documentary: The flaw is within you — and it always has been. Never in my life have I treated people with the dismissiveness and disdain I am almost invariably shown (in some cases — before you even know what the subject matter is).
And aren’t you bold as can be hiding behind your force field of fallacy: Slinging snippets of certitude without ever addressing anything on the merits.
After all — you’re busy
If you didn’t know that the reflection has meaning — wouldn’t you want to? They’re boxes of beliefs that reflect how you see yourselves. On that note:
“Great talk, Joel. Going to share it.” “Feel free to share. Views count.”
I suggest you reconsider . . .
Professor Drew Westen’s The Political Brain was invaluable to me (and figures prominently in this clip that captures the underlying message in my doc). Drew and I had some nice email exchanges long ago — and I immensely appreciate his work and all those who have increased our understanding of the mind.
But his entire field is so preoccupied with analyzing emotion that they never examine the efficacy of their efforts (nor does anyone from where I sit). And if you are — you’re doing a piss-poor job of it.
I got an automated email from Drew notifying people about his colleague’s TEDx Talk The unconscious is not what you think it is. I was unimpressed by Professor Weinberger’s 15 minutes that Drew called “incredibly rich and engaging.” And the meaningless chatter I found in its LinkedIn and YouTube commentary perfectly reflects the times.
By that standard — it probably passes for “incredibly rich and engaging.” 13 comments or 13,000 — it’s all be the same, and we’ll do it all over again tomorrow. Professor Weinberger proudly proclaimed:
So the question is: “How did we get it right and everyone else get it wrong?”
By miserably failing to ask the right questions years before — you unwittingly created the conditions to “get it right.”
So there’s that
A rare response of reasonableness on Twitter (or anywhere, for that matter):
Your documentary was ahead of its time
I may be a nobody — but this nobody was way ahead of everybody.
You’ve probably heard of yellowcake
How about uranium hexafluoride?
Does calling someone a “Bush hater” strike you as a valid counter to that question?
From: Richard W. Memmer
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2023 10:11 AM
To: Professor Weinberger
Subject: The unconscious is not what you think it is
Dear Professor Weinberger:
“So the question is: ‘How did we get it right and everyone else get it wrong?’”
By failing to ask the right questions years before — you unwittingly created the conditions to “get it right.” Had the Left listened to me long ago, they could have avoided the mess they helped make. And now look where they are — outraged over Roe v. Wade and Trump on the rise once again (oblivious to how they brought it all on themselves).
I don’t do politics — I do reality.
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.
I provided an 8-part reply to your post on LinkedIn — and any one sentence is more substantive than all others combined. I may be late to the game, but had I replied 2 months ago — it wouldn’t make any difference (as it’s all the same game).
“Great talk, Joel. Going to share it.” “Feel free to share. Views count.”
As John Wooden would say, “Never mistake activity for achievement.” The Social Dilemma was “viewed in 38,000,000 homes within the first 28 days of release.” Educational and enjoyable — accomplished absolutely nothing.
The problems that plague America are interrelated — and anything short of addressing that is going nowhere.
In a blurb on yet another book on cognitive dissonance, a science-fiction writer wrote, [the author] has seen the future.” If he had, he’d know his book has no chance of achieving its aims. Conventional methods have repeatedly failed and won’t put a pinprick in the atmosphere of absurdity suffocating the country. Why would you believe next time will be any different?
But integrate those same tools into an unconventional framework for honest debate — and it will be different.
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth.
But everybody’s busy, and why bother considering fresh ideas that might work when you can stay busy on what won’t. With what I have in mind, you could be the catalyst to turn the tide, and chances are — you’ll never even know it.
For the life of me, I cannot understand how people so passionate about understanding the mind could be so lacking in curiosity: Inquiry that could open the door to the kind of conversation this nation’s never had.
Now if only people would realize . . .
— Professor Weinberger
But not you — never you . . .
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.
If you don’t like my 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.
One picture is worth a thousand words
When you don’t want the pictures and you don’t want the words — what would you have me do?
And once I did it
We both know your next move . . .
I’ve always hated Twitter and when I’m done doing what I gotta do — I’m never goin’ back. Until then, I’m sending out a certain set of messages looking for intelligent life (fiercely independent thinkers who want to solve problems — not endlessly talk about them).
Think of my signals as a poor man’s SETI:
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth
Going by the galaxies filled with rock stars of reasoning across the social media universe — I should have no shortage of people eager to examine my idea and discuss how we could improve on it and proceed.
You tell me where those people are — and I’ll gladly send out my signals to them. What I have in mind could turn the tide. I’ve already done all the work — I just need a little help in having it land in the right hands. If you’re game, please contact me through the site or Anchor.Press.gg@gmail.com.
But if you’re not interested in hearing me out and having meaningful conversation — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well.
I’d just ask that you block me and politely move along. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently so — as some just have to fire off whatever comes to mind on what you instantly perceive.
One Voice Became Two 