This nation has no such notion
The moment Obama caved on the Democratic Party playbook on race — he put Trump on the path to the presidency. And the Right treating Bush like the Second Coming of Christ — set the stage for the rise of the Rock Star they spent the next 8 years railing against.
Exponentially exacerbating the very problems you’re fighting against — is not smart.
Just what would it take to have that conversation? If you’re unwilling to put the time & effort into understanding how to address your concerns more effectively — just how concerned could you really be?
it’s all window dressing
Where inquiry that holds up a mirror to your magical thinking is met with venom to defend values.
- You thirst for critical thinking — as long it doesn’t threaten your interests (or is even perceived as such)
- You follow the facts — so long as they’re going in the direction you desire
- You demand accountability — as long you & yours aren’t being held accountable
- You preach responsibility — as long as it fits the formula that works for you
- You love the idea of talking about ideas — so long as there’s no work involved that would interrupt your incessant Tweeting of your concerns
- And that idea damn sure better be about exposing the enemy — because you sure as hell have no role in who’s to blame — of course!
This shitshow of America has eroded reason beyond recognition — eating away all that was once right and good. We could do something about that — but you’re busy.
You’re always busy
Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. In reference to its opening image on Without Passion or Prejudice, I wrote:
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.
When you make up your mind on lickety-split perception alone — in what parallel universe does that qualify as critical thinking? But none of that matters behind your force fields of fallacy: Barriers of binary beliefs shielding you from the whole truth while you’re pursuing part of it believing you’re after all of it.
A world where you can win an argument without even knowing what the issue is about.
V for Victory — How Fitting
For instance . . .
There is no measure for how preposterous it is that these people take endless delight in flooding the internet with ceaseless claims about their immaculate critical thinking skills:
But don’t do any of this . . .
Imagine America as an engine and you come along with a cross-section of it to explain why it’s not working. Since your audience shares your concerns, you’d think they’d be interested in understanding the internals of the problem. But they spend all their time talking about parts made by people they don’t like — never considering the defects in their own parts.
And even though you’ve got a rock-solid idea for how to fix the engine (or at least make it run on reason): They’d rather spend the rest of their lives complaining about problems than take responsibility for their part in creating them.
It’s a madhouse. There is an entire movement in the country to classify things from the opposite of what they truly are. Specifically, people mean to swap the good with bad and bad with good.
Just one problem with that statement: All of America is doing the same thing — gutting the truth for your goddamn politics.
And it shows!
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.
People really don’t listen.
People are just either not that interested in what you’re saying, or they are too focused on their own agenda. It’s ridiculous to see two people acting like they can’t really hear each other — by choice.
In “The Significance Principle,” authors Les Carter and Jim Underwood posit that we should listen past where the other person has finished. We should even pause before answering. Let them get their point, their story, their compliment, and even their criticism out. Completely. . . .
The ability to hear is a gift. The willingness to listen is a choice.”
— Mike Greene, Why you should first seek to understand — before trying to be understood
Believe it or not
Thomas Sowell could be the catalyst to turn the tide. If you’d simply seek to understand before you seek to be understood, you’d grasp where I’m going with all this. If evidence claimed as components for building a nuclear bomb isn’t worthy of consideration, what is?
On a matter involving war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11 — the stakes don’t get much higher. For a Maverick who’s worshipped for following the facts — wouldn’t he take the trail to where they matter most?
As in the marquee evidence used to manufacture this fraud?
I did — Sowell didn’t
Which one looks like he’s on point?
8. Old information at the beginning of the sentence, new information at the end.
— Steven Pinker
How do you feel about no new information — anywhere?
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.
His followers would surely say, “Yes” — but their actions say otherwise. 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 where 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
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
“Trending” — how fitting . . .
I’m sure his fans know far more about him than I do, but you don’t know what I know about him. That you assume bad motives in trying to tell this story is in gross breach of the standards he espouses — and of all people, his supporters should know that.
And yet I’ve seen not an atom of the politeness he promotes or any other principle:
His fanatical followers 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.
I’m met with nothing but turbocharged emotion to instantly defend him (before you even know the subject matter is, no less).
What gives? . . .
Not you — not ever:
Umm….are you saying that Thomas Sowell is NOT a genius?
In the face of the imagery above — that is what you’re concerned about? Rather than do anything remotely in the realm of the principles upon which you put him on a pedestal, you wanna flagrantly ignore the holes in his history and act as though his record was wiped off the face of the earth.
All for the glory of spreading the gospel of Sowell and broadcasting his brilliance. For all these geniuses you love to laud — you sure aren’t learning much.
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
A lot of that goin’ around
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. If you abided by the beliefs you claim to care about, you’d know that.
I couldn’t agree more
But there’s another reason why people misunderstand so many issues.
Professional know-it-alls like you pull stunts like this while peddling lines like that as cover: To whitewash your record of patently obvious hypocrisy and lies.
The rotor speed required to separate uranium isotopes doesn’t care who’s president, and when it comes to ascertaining the truth, neither do I.
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 claim that Iraq WMD wasn’t a lie should be like saying we didn’t land on the moon. As I wrote and produced the most exhaustive documentary ever done on WMD, I would know:
“Compared to What?”
That principle is built into the props in that picture staring you straight in the face.
And since this issue involves an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter: My answer to “What hard evidence do you have?” is as concrete as it gets. But without even considering what cannot be denied, you take the word of someone who didn’t even bother to mention the marquee evidence that Powell presented as the UN.
If you only apply the principles you preach when it serves your interests — they’re just empty claims on a cup and a meaningless mantra touted on a T-shirt.
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? Never mind this story goes straight to the top with who’s in the White House right now — on very specific culpability to boot.
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.
As I said in my doc:
You can’t seem to comprehend that I don’t care what damage the truth inflicts upon politicians of any brand. I have this crazy idea that across-the-board accountability is always in the best interests of the nation.
As for my frustration — I have this thing about people who regurgitate nonsense in the face of overwhelming evidence that counters their baseless beliefs.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Preach responsibility and take none
Half the country took the word of professional know-it-alls over nuclear scientists. And when your camp came up empty on WMD — you just bought more bullshit from the same people who sold you the first batch:
Shrewd!
“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” That quote’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.
I know the feeling — all too well
I’m practically spit on by people promoting principles I followed to find he didn’t. Sowell’s a well-mannered guy on the whole and his fanatical followers act like act like animals to honor him.
This is a case built on concrete evidence of mathematical certainty: Supported by exhaustively detailed arguments (of which you have exactly zero chance of refuting).
But to the “logic lovers” — it doesn’t matter:
Oh yeah — I know the type, all too well . . .
Following Facts Where They Lead
“Said so and so”? . . . that’s one helluva trip you took there, Mr. Sowell.
Stirring Defense!
My surgical specificity in this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone. As I said, I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell. But lemme put it in terms you’ll understand: If he stepped into a debate with me on this matter, the beating he’d take would be biblical.
If you think you can challenge me on that, I invite you to try. I’ve been inviting you for a really long time.
Trillion Dollar Tube
To take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to a few minutes was no small feat:
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
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?
And these are on the mild end of the savagery I’ve seen:
You couldn’t carry Sowell’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
Holy shit…. a video of a circle jerks with a nut in the center talking about RPMS. Yet somehow Thomas Sowell is a liar.
How do you reconcile that with this? . . .
At every turn . . .
The faithful tap dance around reality — oily evading anything that requires them to hold Sowell to his own standards.
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
Right on cue | Never fails
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.
I offered you overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that exhaustively exposes the biggest and most costly lie in modern history — taking both parties to task for it (on that issue and then some): 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 doc 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.
You think I wanted to chop up my doc into clips to accommodate America’s attention span of a child?
But still that wasn’t enough — as you won’t consider 160 seconds, let alone 160 minutes. 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 (not to mention being in gross breach of those precious principles you preach). What you do in denying the undeniable daily would be unthinkable for me to do ever.
And you all get away with it with ease, because you’re constantly reinforced by friends in your fellowship of fury. Anything Goes in gutting the truth to get what you want and getting Liked for it:
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.
— When Prophecy Fails
That behavior’s rampant across-the-board in America, but Sowell’s crowd takes the cake. His cult-like following is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. As I’ve been in the trenches battling hermetically sealed minds for decades, that’s saying something.
His disciples see him as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes — never mind his history being wildly out of sync with his sanctimonious claims.
And that — is an opportunity!
I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell — quite the contrary! That his army of acolytes instantly assume bad motives is an egregious breach of this:
I’m not just taking Thomas Sowell to task because he’s got it comin’ — I need this guy for what I have in mind to right this ship. 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 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 he 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 feeling 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! Compelling him to admit where he’s wrong will work wonders for where he’s right. There are far worse culprits on all-things Iraq, but I’ve been down that road for decades. Discovering Sowell and the underworld of absurdity that shields him — makes him ideal to put these lies in their place once and for all:
And change the dynamic of debate to boot.
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:
Left & Right
Shallow thinkers do not think beyond the immediate and the observable. They usually take information at face value and only look at immediate consequences. They are not capable of looking at all sides of an issue or think deeply about the issue before making decisions or drawing conclusions . . .
They also believe that their opinion is based on deep thinking because they genuinely believe that their opinion is based on truth and facts. Whereas, deep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
When we dig deeper, we understand better. We can compare different outcomes, examine, tear apart, and make cognizant judgments that are derived from different mental models.
Left and Right, I’ve yet to find a single person who digs beyond the depth of their immediate domain of interest. In our entirely transactional times, America endlessly rehashes topics of today — never once considering the totality of events that created them (or even having a notion of the need to).
With the issues I address — you might as well be saying the Civil War wasn’t germane to the assassination of Lincoln.
It’s pure fantasy to think that you can ignore key dimensions of a problem and magically solve it. The problems that plague America are interrelated, and anything short of addressing that is going nowhere. But everyone’s wrapped up in their wheelhouse — operating under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them. Conventional methods have repeatedly failed and won’t put a pinprick in the atmosphere of absurdity suffocating the country.
But no one seems to even care about the efficacy of their efforts, as failure is a pretty profitable enterprise these days.
A new edition of The Death of Expertise is coming out. When a book with a big following didn’t make a dent in 7 years: On what basis would you believe that an expanded edition will do any better? Does anyone even ask such questions? Traditional means have no chance of breaching the envelope of intransigence around armies of unreachables in the trench warfare of our times.
The rules have changed, as in — there are none. By failing to understand that you cannot adapt to deal with it.
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
“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.
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.
Speaking of Dr. Aronson
Elliot Aronson was chosen by his peers as one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century
— Amazon’s About the Author
The forward he wrote in When Prophecy Fails was super helpful in framing my message in my documentary that illustrates how emotion runs roughshod over reason. And he was helpful again when he put me onto his friend and fellow renowned psychologist, Dr. Phil Zimbardo — “a very smart guy with incredible energy,” he added.
Since Dr. Zimbardo is 90 years old — that’s saying something. For medical reasons, he’s unable to get involved, but in response to an email on the essence of my idea, he wrote:
Very Interesting and original
Even in his condition — he could see what so many can’t. They’re busy — and why bother considering fresh ideas that might work when you can stay busy on what won’t? Speaking of cognitive dissonance and the refusal to wonder:
The Cognitive Dissonance Camp is another clown factory flooding the internet with clichéd crap like “the cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.” This faction is seemingly competing for who can say, “cognitive dissonance” the most. No doubt many of ’em know much more about it than I do (which isn’t saying much since I’m no scholar on it). But congratulating yourselves for Tweeting about it is not what I call serious-minded conversation (or even qualifying as conversation at all).
Add in professionals promoting what they’ve published that’ll accomplish exactly what all their other efforts did (along with their colleagues across their industry combined):
Absolutely nothing that’ll move America a millimeter in the right direction.
It’s just another charade like all the other factions: Rehashing run-of-the-mill ideas that don’t that have a snowball’s chance in hell of making a dent.
While I’m sitting here with a rock-solid idea that could be the catalyst for a tectonic shift in America (which could be accomplished with a handful of people and hardly any money). But the Cabal of the Credentialed and their followers are so preoccupied with trying to educate others about bias that they’re blinded by their own.
How do we make people realize they’ve been lied to? You have to knock down one small pillar that’s easier to reach.
The people who Tweeted those lines I combined from a conversation I came across — had no idea that they perfectly captured the principle of my Clear the Clutter plan.
I’ve got the perfect pillar
As exposing Sowell is my bridge to expose it all
It’s time to start solving problems instead of endlessly talking about them and getting nowhere. And to do that — first we gotta clear the clutter that’s crippled this country. To do that, you don’t go after everything, you go after one thing that ties to everything — and you do it by holding one man to his own standards.
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 do catastrophic damage by doing so.
Not just to analyze irrational behavior and write about it — but to actually do something about it for a change. Long before brain imaging to understand emotion, we already had all the tools we needed for a hopeful humanity. We didn’t take advantage of the gifts were were given, and what a shocker — we don’t make good use of those fancy new insights either.
What you’re doing may be great work — but it’s not going to work. Look around!
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
There’s a way we can harness folly from the past for the benefit of the future. It’s as out-of-the-box as it gets but rooted in timeless truths America made outdated. I’ve already done all the work: I just need a little help in having it land in the right hands. I have a very specific target audience to get this in gear, so it wouldn’t take much. One email could set off a chain of events that could open the door to the kind of conversation this nation’s never had.
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.
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? But if you’re game for good old-fashioned conversation — please contact me through the site, Anchor.Press.gg@gmail.com, or DM (Direct Message) on Twitter:
As I no longer respond to Tweets or superficial fragments of any kind.
A series of short pieces will follow to look at the wildly irrational behavior I have witnessed and how it can be harnessed for good. Part II to come, and in the meantime — it’s all here for anyone willing to look:
One Voice Became Two 