Surely a discussion on the importance of expertise coupled with a rock-solid idea on how to address this problem in a way that would actually make an impact that matters:
Would be welcomed by a culture craving a return to a time when expertise was respected and considered with seriousness.
Of course not! What was I thinking?
The Death of Expertise Division
Building on his enormously successful first edition. Tom Nichols confirms his thesis and proves that the assault on expertise has only intensified.
So, outside of selling books and building a following, you didn’t succeed — at all. But who cares about the efficacy of efforts when failure is a pretty profitable enterprise these days. When a deservingly popular book didn’t make a dent in 7 years (and everything’s gotten worse to boot): I fail to understand the excitement for an expanded edition doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making a dent either.
Such questions do not compute with this crowd or any other:
Congratulating yourselves for ordering a book and broadcasting it for Likes: It’s all so goddamn pointless (as there’s no purpose beyond pretending you’re part of some glorious pursuit of the truth and what’s right). Never mind you all refuse to listen to any expertise that challenges you — which flies in the face of the whole fu@%ing point!
That cat is so fitting for the folly of our times:
“And now, even now” . . .
The cat . . . TOTALLY out of the BAG!
When I saw Tom Nichols touting his upcoming book in a Tweet, I had to laugh — as the tragedy of it all is so comical anymore.
Looking forward to this, Tom. Like Serling, you were definitely ahead of the curve. I’ve referred to this book repeatedly since it first came out, so the idea of an updated version sounds very appealing.
No, he wasn’t — I was
Six years ahead of Social Dilemma and three ahead of his book that accomplished exactly what that doc did and everything else: Nothing! In fact, it’s far worse — because you never learn anything from your failures, mistakes, and what doesn’t work. But what do I know? I’m just the guy with an impeccable track record for the truth and seeing the lay of the land in ways no one else did and still doesn’t.
Your followers are so passionate about expertise — that they blow off the person who was years ahead of you in explaining this problem (and in far more sophisticated ways):
Not to mention offering real-world ideas on what to do about it.
The same person telling you that new edition has exactly zero chance of doing of any better than the first (in actually accomplishing anything). And when that prediction comes true: All your audience will care about is congratulating you when you come along advertising the 3rd edition:
Waiting in line for the signed copy they crave!
Unbelievable!
Speaking of The Social Dilemma, welcome to:
The Social Dilemma Division
Ah, the “Have you seen The Social Dilemma?” crowd:
Viewed in 38,000,000 homes within the first 28 days of release
So why don’t ya Tweet about it some more — because surely the reason it didn’t work is insufficient exposure for a documentary damn near everyone in America knows about. If you advertise your concerns enough — surely that’ll magically make a dent someday.
And if it doesn’t, at least you got your fix for feeling like you’re participating in addressing a problem you’re perpetuating by the very nature in which you participate.
All day, every day
By all means . . .
Tweet your message — but the idea to act on those concerns when an opportunity comes along to do so. Searching “Social Dilemma” delivers no shortage of concern about the state of society — but ask ’em to do anything to address those concerns that takes time & effort to think it through . . .
But would work precisely because it demands something of your mind:
Perhaps the single most lucid, succinct, and profoundly terrifying analysis of social media ever created for mass consumption.
— IndieWire
It’s not that difficult to be succinct when you deliver no detail that hits home — and hard! Same goes for lucid when the line is linear. My efforts don’t compute in a culture that craves information formatted to your liking:
- Nice and linear
- Easy to swallow
- Short and simple
- Effortless to spread
Bonding in Bumper Sticker Branding
Speaking of crickets . . .
Of all places, surely an in-depth discussion on the most exhaustively detailed doc ever done on WMD (providing a tool for accountability to boot): Would be welcomed with open arms by people Tweeting their concerns on the subject every single day.
What was I thinking?
The WMD Brigade
Speaking of ridiculous & empty Tweets:
Truth be told, those who landed on the right side on Iraq WMD: Most of ‘em don’t know jack either. Just because you were right doesn’t necessarily mean you arrived at it intelligently — and being reinforced by casual conviction makes for increasingly sloppy & stupid thinking.
[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it
— M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
In a nation that incessantly blames and complains (seemingly for sport) — no one’s taking responsibility for anything. The ever-rising ocean of partisan pettiness is gluttony under the guise of concern. What would you call untold millions marching to a Twitter-rage parade on WMD — dishing on the deaths of Rumsfeld and Powell (and whatever anniversary marks the moment):
But too lazy to get off your ass to see what we can do about it. Of course, that would require holding their own accountable as well:
So there’s that.
Happy 20th Anniversary!
Seize the day to be jacked up on fuel to fire off your fury and excuses in a nation that never learns: But loves to light it up in lip service to virtues.
Ever-so bold behind force fields of fallacy that butcher those “beliefs.“
And naturally . . .
A documentary that hinges on critical thinking (illustrating the psychological gymnastics of those who instantly abandon it) — would be watched (and perhaps even utilized):
By people pushing the importance of such skills on a daily basis.
Critical Thinking Crowd
Across all these echo chambers:
Are people taking endless delight in flooding the internet with ceaseless claims about their immaculate critical thinking skills:
But don’t do any of this . . .
Then we have these people . . .
Flooding the internet with clichéd crap like “the cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.” That is not the mark of serious-minded people interested in problem solving.
It’s almost impossible to find anyone who is, but they sure love to Tweet their concerns as if they are.
Cognitive Dissonance Camp
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. Instead of considering a doc that deals with cognitive dissonance in a way that’s never been done — your brilliant idea?
“Let’s do — what we always do!” . . .
Write another book, crank out an article, attend a conference, do a project, study, report, or podcast . . .
And then Tweet about it to congratulate yourselves for accomplishing absolutely nothing and making matters worse while you’re at it.
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.
And lo and behold . . .
The second anyone in the Cognitive Dissonance Camp is challenged, cognitive dissonance kicks in to absolve themselves.
Right on cue | Never fails
And all this jazz:
Until the rise of podcasts, twitter, and the various forms of independent media / journalism, people weren’t really aware how legacy media was influencing their thinking. I think people are finally waking up and may surprise you here, especially if more talk about it.
New formats for funneling information that caters to your cravings is not what I’d call enlightened. And those who couldn’t spot clearly dishonest actors before — think they’re wide awake now? The Twitter bio behind that quote begins with “Groupthink averse.”
It would never occur to him that everything in that Tweet is Groupthink 101.
The Substack Sector
(revised version renamed to title below)
then there’s this crew:
Wishful thinking that’s utterly oblivious to the counterproductive nature of endlessly beating issues into the ground in entirely transactional tactics. I’m sure it’s intoxicating to amass a following and feel like you’re making a difference. But I’m gonna weigh your impact partly as a reflection of your community: How people behave, not what they believe.
If you can’t get that right, I don’t care how big your following gets — you’re taking this nation nowhere.
Repeatedly rehashing issues is not the mark of problem solving: It’s the mark of a market. All these channels are blunt instruments (including those I agree with). My idea takes this problem and turns it into a solution.
If you’ve got a better idea on how to turn the tide . . .
I’m all ears — you’re not!
What’s more, you’re making matters worse and being rewarded for it. If you think you’re making progress because of ever-increasing attention to your concerns:
I suggest you reconsider
I’m going to show you how to fix the problem you don’t even know you have. And I assure you — the gains you get now pale in comparison to what awaits you. As Loury once called my writing “brilliant,” was “honored by it,” and “blown away” by my site and signed up — I suggest you refrain from assumptions. And if you were abiding by the principles they preach, should I really have to remind you of that?
You think I just came up with this imagery out of thin air?
Maybe when you’re done talking race, woke, and CRT for the ten-thousandth time — we can consider approaching problems in a more multi-dimensional manner? Just a thought!
Alas, Loury wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task:
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!
Sowell sold out to sell those books you stand by — and I wrote “Water is Not Wet — And I Stand by That” with the likes of Loury in mind.
You said they had no argument against your [R]ebuttal to Brown University’s letter on racism in the United States. Neither do you on your National Treasure. Instead of listening and learning on things you know nothing about — you let pride consume you. Maybe you don’t know Sowell as well as you thought you did.
And heaven forbid you hold him to the same standards pushing your popularity.
Loury wasn’t about to look at undeniable evidence warranting that he change his mind:
So he changed the rules . . .
Living up to his hero who did the same:
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?
In what parallel universe does this even remotely reflect anything like that:
A couple of 2-minute reads that never even mention the tubes that took us to war (or anything else of substance on this endless saga of absurdity). 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.
Touting technicalities as “facts” doesn’t get it done: Especially when you make a living selling slogans and catchy quotes about careful consideration.
The Thomas Sowell Affair: “You Walked Into the Party Like You Were Walking Onto a Yacht”
The self-importance of people like Sowell just kills me — how they sit there acting like they’re Senators from Krypton. That’s not knocking appearance just for kicks:
As the look and the language is all part of . . .
The Presentation
I couldn’t agree more
But there’s another reason why so many 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.
On evidence involving artillery rockets and material properties of centrifuge rotors — the apostles of Sowell smugly cite his books on economics, race, and whatnot: Anything to glorify him as they abandon any notion of accountability:
Butchering his bedrock beliefs as they dance in delight behind their force field of fallacy.
These people do nothing but question my motives, mock my site, and assault my character — then proudly post quotes of Sowell looking stately as he condemns the very thing they’re doing.
- Repeat slogans: “Everybody believed Iraq had WMD”
- Question people’s motives: Bush hater, Bush basher, Bush Derangement Syndrome, Plamegate & plenty more. Adding to the arsenal of childish crap to continue the tradition: Snowflake, Libtard, Libturd, Cupcake, TDS, Demon-crat, Democrat Party
- Bold assertions: Russians said so, British said so, Bill Clinton said so, Leaders of both parties said so . . .
No coherent argument, Repeat slogans, Vent their emotions, Question people’s motives, Bold assertions . . .
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
Then tell me how he was wrong about one thing that he has no expertise in.
lemme get this straight
A layperson with limited resources and no connections:
- Can do countless hours of research & writing
- Interview a world-renowned nuclear scientist
- Correspond with Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence — along with a key physicist
- Spend $15,000 of his own money to write & produce the most detailed documentary ever done on WMD (taking both parties to task for it)
Qualifying me to exhaustively explain how half the country could not be more wrong on this issue of world-altering consequence.
But it’s all good . . .
That Sowell cranked out this crap that any Iraq War cheerleading jackass could issue in chain-letter lies — topped off with smug sloganeering.
After all — he doesn’t have any expertise in it.
You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte . . .
Well I hear you went up to Saratoga
And your horse naturally won
Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well you’re where you should be all the time . . .
And all the girls dreamed that they’d be your partner
They’d be your partner and . . .
A Conflict of Visions
And then some . . .
That the reaction is not to think it through, not to question, not to assemble facts, not to make arguments — but instead to wave banners and spout slogans such that you could hardly distinguish what they were doing from a manifesto that would come out of [does it matter?]
— Glenn Loury, Tucker Carlson Today
When the context suits you, such words are solid gold. What you do when it doesn’t — determines the worth of your word.
Ripping on woke is all the rage . . .
And outrage industries of dish it but can’t take it — would talk about race and responsibility till the end of time. But heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
Consequences matter or should matter more than some attractive or fashionable theory.
— Thomas Sowell
I couldn’t agree more
Except there were no consequences on the fiasco for the ages driven by this manifesto: The outcome of which fashioned a culture of no consequences.
At what point does it dawn on you and your beloved genius — that blind loyalty to that cause would be colossally counterproductive to your others? I’m not brilliant and I figured that out all by myself. 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.
That doesn’t strike me as sound strategy. Dumb, dishonest, and delusional wars don’t either.
Nice work!
Sowell’s hailed as a folk hero for calling out problems he helped create (and takes no responsibility for any of it) — which flies in the face of the principles upon which he’s put on a pedestal. This man has a patently obvious history of hypocrisy & lies — and yet he’s worshipped as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes.
Sowell’s disciples worship him as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes. I’ve never seen so much ass-kissing in all my life.
It’s just pathetic! It’s also — an opportunity.
Politicians & pundits are not gods . . .
When you treat them as such — you do a cosmic disservice to them, yourselves, the country, and the world as well. Oh my God, somebody’s not who they claim to be — that’s never happened before! With the mountain of childish & spectacularly stupid shit I’ve seen in defense of Sowell — you’d think his disciples really were born yesterday:
Automatons who act as though they have no understanding of how to process anything that doesn’t instantly compute in their favor.
A lot of that goin’ around!
“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 coined Safe-Space Central to capture social media’s cesspools of certitude — and the origin of that idea came from this post of mine on 11/20/2016:
I do hope that Trump does a great job, but this country will never even remotely reach its potential with citizens so petty (that goes for liberals and conservatives alike).
Good luck trying to make an argument for “TDS” in light of that and this:
Not to mention this . . .
These People & Their Parties Lied on the Biggest & Most Costly Lie in Modern History:
First time I ever heard of John McWhorter was in a 2017 interview. In talking about take a wild guess, he said:
He has a rather narcotic joy in dismissal and belittlement
A lot of that goin’ around too
The following quote captures far more than the source of it comprehends. It would never dawn on him that he helped create the ugliness he so beautifully articulated:
The thing that is most disturbing to me, in a sea of disturbing things — is that there is no opportunity in all of humanity, to observe the world we live in, and to see all the scope of life in the world, like being President of the United States. You sit there, and for 4 years, or for 8 years — the crème de la crème of society is presented to you.
“Here’s the bravest man and woman in the military. Here’s the smart scientists. Here’s the most dedicated children in their learning.”
You get to see the ugliest . . . what are terrorists doing in torture camps. You see the world from a vista that only a man, or one day a woman, can have that outlook. And I thought to myself: “Surely, when he won . . . he would change as a result of that.”
Every day, you’re having meetings and talking to serious people. And then you come into the Oval Office to “Here’s the winners of the Spelling Bee of San Diego.” . . . And you meet these people, and life just comes washing over you. Your heart and your mind open up. What a learning experience — how much you learn about the world.
And I thought, “It’s gonna change him.” . . .
He didn’t change one f#%@g gram!
That says a helluva lot more about America than it does about Trump. Who said it? Does it matter? To defenders of the indefensible — oh yeah! Because the source is what you’d seize on to deflect & deny the obvious: Then go right back to bitching about the opposition doing the same.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong:
I’m saying your staggering hypocrisy is sickening and so is the other side’s.
I didn’t ask you what it is — I asked if you know the origin of it. In this culture of lickety-split satisfaction — you seize on anything that serves what you wanna say and breeze on by anything that requires you to think . . .
Even long enough to process the meaning of the word “originate.”
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.
To be sure, there were Bush haters:
But how many of ’em would go to the trouble to write & produce the exhaustively detailed documentary ever done on WMD (taking both parties to task for it)? In light of all that:
“Bush Derangement Syndrome” doesn’t make any sense when deriding me, does it!
But that didn’t bother Bush apologists one bit:
As I’ve been practically spit on for 20 years of telling undeniable truth of mathematical certainty (the manipulation of which shaped everything you see today). When you have absolutely no idea what’s going on here, on what basis are you so doubt-free?
Lemme get this straight
People who can’t even get the self-evident straight:
Think they’re clear-eyed as can be on this? . . .
Say, we can go where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind . . .
We can go when we want to
The night is young and so am I
And we can dress real neat from our hats to our feet
And surprise ’em with the victory cry
Say, we can act if we want to
If we don’t, nobody will
And you can act real rude and totally removed
And I can act like an imbecile . . .
America kept lowering the bar
And now there is no bar . . .
I come a different place. A different time. A different way of life.
As I said in my doc:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.
Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.
— Theodore Roosevelt: The Kansas City Star, May 7th, 1918 / Richard W. Memmer: Act V
I’m of the Dave Doctrine
See, there are certain things you should expect from a President. I ought to care more about you than I do about me. I ought to care more about what’s right than I do about what’s popular. I ought to be willing to give this whole thing up for something I believe in.
This nation has no such notion:
And it shows!
One Voice Became Two 