We all have our heroes — and that’s a healthy thing when looking up to them elevates us. Hero-worship is something else entirely. As I said in my doc that took on the entire country 10 years ago:
America has gone totally off the rails in its worship of the wildly undeserving — and that includes the so-called Rock Star running the show right now.
— Richard W. Memmer: Epilogue
While I had Obama and Bush primarily in mind — my message was about that behavior no matter who it is. We’ve become a country that’s way too easily accepting of those who speak to us. Politicians and 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. Look around! If they were the genuine article — they’d be pushing you to make a habit out of welcoming challenge:
Not just endlessly pointing out the opposition’s flaws while unconscionably ignoring your own.
And lo and behold, guess who’s a master at giving you your marching orders — so you can assail the other side while acting as though you’re a bastion of virtue.
Anything by Thomas Sowell!
Great! Let’s discuss!
But the second he’s questioned:
Those precious virtues you peddle in the Facts Over Feelings Parade — are rolled right over with your feelings.
Behold Your Beloved Sowell
The Grand Marshal of this Lockstep Lovefest — and the Admiral of the Scot-Free Fleet.
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. What would you call someone who shoots their mouth off without addressing the evidence — but banks on their fabricated reputation to create the impression that they did?
In the follow-the-facts fantasyland he manufactured for his followers: Sowell is worshipped as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes. Disciples drape themselves in fancy quotes to float that magically wipe away his misdeeds at a moment’s notice. And incredibly, when you can’t understand everything — you act like you can’t understand anything.
How convenient!
I don’t understand. I don’t know understand. It’s all so incoherent and confusing with all these things I have to stop and think about.
That’s because you wallow in a world of paint by numbers — where people telling you what you wanna hear every goddamn day: Package it all neatly into nursery-rhyme narratives (turning your mind into mush). You won’t even discuss a single screenshot, but have the bottomless nerve to bitch about my website.
Whining about my failure to meet your website style-guide standards and throwing a tantrum like a child is the best ya got?
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
The likes of Loury & McWhorter miserably fail to see how they are conditioning people to behave exactly as McWhorter’s quote. Echo chambers across social media worship channel hosts as “National Treasures” — treating them like they’re some of the greatest minds to ever live. At the helm of these cesspools of certitude — are people who peddle repeatedly rehashed insight their followers praise like they split the atom. To be sure, some of it is insightful. But these “geniuses” are so wise in their ways: They’re oblivious to how they’re feeding the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to solve.
I don’t understand. I don’t know understand.
I’m not surprised!
In this shithole you call home:
It’s a mighty fine day when you wake up to high praise from a man of Glenn Loury’s caliber — twice! He once called my writing “brilliant,” was “honored by it,” and “blown away” by my site and signed up. I’d like to think that’d at least give me a little credibility with his supporters. Or at the very least, not start slinging assumptions about things you don’t understand.
If you were abiding by the principles they preach, should I really have to remind you of that?
Such high praise a helluva lot of incentive for me to think these people are the “geniuses” their audience thinks they are. I don’t roll that way. If you’re part of the problem, I don’t care who you are — I’m calling you out. If the likes of Loury were the genuine article — they’d be doing the same. You wouldn’t love ’em for it, but you’d damn sure be better off for it (and so would so they if you held them accountable with the same commitment).
Alas, Loury wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task — and neither are you.
And besides — you’re busy:
Repeatedly repeatedly rehashing the same issues is not the mark of problem solving — it’s the mark of a market. Then again, do the people you put on a pedestal really wanna solve problems anyway? Do you?
Man is at least as much a problem-creating as a problem-solving animal. Better a crisis than the permanent boredom of meaninglessness.
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
Behold Your Best in This Breeding Ground for Bullshit:
Islands of Idolatry
V for Victory and Venom for Values
A world where you can win an argument without even knowing what the issue is about. What you do in denying the undeniable daily would be unthinkable for me to do ever.
“Wut”
In my youth, I could not have imagined a world in which even people with PhDs would act like imbeciles in the face of information they don’t instantly understand. That an entire country could take satisfaction in insulting your own intelligence on a daily basis just astounds me.
Adulthood is about spending the time to think before talking . . . Adulthood is about controlling our emotions, learning to take a deep breath and modulating our moments of anger or frustration.
“WUT” reflects a society tuning in to people who perpetuate problems under the pretense of seeking to solve them. Some are sincere (or at least started out that way). But they all lose their way in the adulation and rewards from feeding the frenzy. I coined Star Wars Syndrome to capture the plague of allowing nostalgia to create the illusion that a movie is far better than it actually is. In and of itself, wildly exaggerating the quality of movies is harmless.
But when it becomes habit in how you see everything — either gushing with over-the-top praise or seething with over-the-top scorn:
That’s a plague!
You think I just come up this stuff out of thin air?
In these echo chambers of self-congratulations (for accomplishing absolutely nothing and making matters worse to boot): Regurgitating garbage gets people to Like you — celebrating “victory” by clicking “bravo” to bad manners and bunk. A world where the rush is everything:
- The rush to respond
- The rush you get from responding
- The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
- Repeat and never reflect
It’s not my writing, my graphics, or my doc: The flaw is within you and it always has been. You have no original ideas and not a molecule of courtesy or curiosity for those who do. I have to spoon-feed you like a child while you spit it out and cry about being hungry. You have no imagination and are utterly devoid of any virtue that would allow for actual conversation to take place.
Not that lickety-split, self-satisfied crap you flood the internet with daily.
Just where do I go for in-depth discussion on original ideas with people who’d cut off their arm before they’d use “WUT” in response to anything? When you’re all part of the same shitshow of America going out of its mind — is there anyone left who can walk and chew gum at the same time? Because it appears there’s not a person left who can process anything that doesn’t come in the form of fodder in a trough.
Isaac Newton and Einstein were brilliant — partisan hacks and high-minded influencers fueling your fix, are not. 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 . . .
A short piece about the worth of your word:
What happened to all this jazz?
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). Touting technicalities as “facts” doesn’t get it done: Especially when you make a living selling slogans and catchy quotes about careful consideration. 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.
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?
Everything that guy just said is bullshit!
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?
Without [the tubes], they had nothing
And nothing on the tubes (or anything else of substance on this endless saga of absurdity): Is what you’ll find in Thomas Sowell’s articles on Iraq WMD. His fanatical followers are so bothered by how much I have to say: That nowhere in their minds does it dawn on them to wonder why he said so little.
“Compared to What?”
That principle is built into every aspect of that imagery 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.
You can’t have “Compared to What?” without comparing what’s in question.
Loury had no such notion — on that standard or any other:
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
When you see a sentence like “Not a trace of Thomas Sowell’s follow the facts claim to fame can be found on the most world-altering topic of our time.”
I have no idea what you’re talking about . . .
Is not the mark of an intellectual giant — or an intellectual on any level.
What part of “WMD,” “biggest and most costly lie in modern history,” and “most world-altering topic of our time” — do you not understand? Perhaps an inquiry or two for clarification was in order?
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 . . .
Right on cue | Never fails
Living up to his hero who did the same:
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.
Even in the most unsophisticated years of my youth, I would have never bought something so impossibly simplistic as Sowell’s “said so and so” — and the Right’s ubiquitous belief that “everybody believed Iraq had WMD.”
My mind would never allow me to accept something so easily (thank God).
I don’t know how people find the path of least resistance so satisfying — as I love the demands of difficulty and discernment. To not step up my game in the midst of opportunity or challenge — would be tantamount to treason upon my very existence.
Sowell’s disciples have no interest in such a demanding way of life — as defending the faith is all that matters in the religious-like following around Sowell. They spread the gospel by mindlessly countering with boilerplate beliefs that have no bearing on the issues in question.
What works with them would never fly with me.
If you oversimplify an issue that clearly calls for careful examination, I know you’re hiding something. If you constantly complain about the other side and defend your own at every turn — you’re not playing by the rules you rail on others for failing to follow. Occasional criticism of your own party doesn’t qualify as having a history faithful to objective scrutiny.
Following Facts Where They Lead
“Said so and so”? . . . that’s one helluva trip you took there, Mr. Sowell.
Stirring Defense!
Not only did Sowell flagrantly fail to follow the facts on all-things Iraq — he brazenly ignored the debauchery in his own party to politely pounce on the other. And yet somehow his patently obvious history of hypocrisy has gone unnoticed for decades by people heaping praise upon him.
There’s a thing about Sowell that isn’t often mentioned . . . he can step completely outside of the race thing and just express himself about just stuff — which is not the usual.
And I find it interesting that with Sowell — one reason some people today would find it hard to go with him is that he doesn’t write with that tribalist sense.
Weapons of Crass Obstruction
Sowell has a habit of headlines oozing in partisan pettiness. On two of the biggest events in history — Sowell seems pretty tribal to me:
He’s trying to be purely objective and there’s nothing in him of — here’s what we down here think. Here’s what we’ve been through.
Desperate and Ugly in Florida
Weapons of Political Destruction
It’s not seasoned with any of that — he’s just trying to have a white lab coat on and look at the facts.
— John McWhorter
If his Crap is King claims on WMD isn’t “seasoned” to you, Mr. McWhorter — what is?
Hard to Imagine
And Damn Disappointing to Boot
It’s bad enough I gotta deal with unyielding yahoos who yearn to praise Sowell as if it’s a daily duty to broadcast his brilliance — while butchering his principles in practice:
But to see people I respected fall into the same trap — enabling their “National Treasure” and the echo chamber around him:
Good grief!
The crude, dirty “brutes” of the land of the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift. The Yahoos are irrational people and represent the worst side of humanity. By contrast, the wise and gentle Houyhnhnms, their masters, are rational horses and represent humanity at its best.
The likes of Loury & McWhorter see themselves as Houyhnhnms — as if they’re immune to irrational behavior in defense of their interests.
And then handing it all down to those who follow in your footsteps:
Showing Sowell’s piece that follows Hughes has nothing to do with defending the Left. This is about his record being wildly out of sync with reality on the Right. I didn’t write Mentality of a Mob from my imagination.
this — is Conformity 101:
Ice-cold partisan hackery wrapped in the warmth of a “white lab coat” . . .
I didn’t write this poem from my imagination either.
I wrote it 3 years before Sowell’s piece — and for decades, this behavior is all I’ve seen from Republicans on Iraq and a helluva lot more.
It’s not anti-war — it’s pro-thinking
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
Sowell’s celebrated as a statesman for smugness under the guise of civility.
He has a habit of painting the Left in the worst possible light — while acting as though “hostility and even hatred” are completely uncharacteristic of conservatives. It’s all about framing the issue in a way that allows him to conveniently ignore the same behavior in other forms.
How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans?
I’ve been met with almost nothing but belligerence and belittlement for decades on WMD — but because I wasn’t shouted down in the streets, it doesn’t count?
And this gem
It is hard to think of a time when Karl Rove or Dick Cheney has even raised his voice but they are hated like the devil incarnate
So you can manipulate the nation into war — make up more lies to rationalize those lies, pit half the nation against the other in a post 9/11 world, and on and on:
But as long as liars you like don’t raise their voice — there’s no call to be angry about it?
That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions, just as people do in other parts of the ideological spectrum, is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.
Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.
“What is surprising, however” . . .
Is that your crowd treating me with nothing but contempt for the truth for 20 years — slinging baseless beliefs with “hostility and even hatred”: Doesn’t constitute a “way of life” to you, Mr. Sowell.
It’s painfully obvious what this guy’s up to: He’s engineering an illusion — and you bought it. You buy — a lot! 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!
Preach responsibility and take none
The Left institutionalizes weakness — and the Democratic Party is notorious for lacking backbone. You weaken the very people you’re trying to strengthen — branding weakness to boot.
And right on cue, the Right is ready to pounce.
I don’t blame ’em — except for the part about them being weak while branding strength.
Conservatives have put on a masterclass of complaining for 30 years — but because the intelligentsia on the Left perennially pumps candy into that piñata: They beat the hell out of you — while unconscionably ignoring the debauchery of their own behavior.
Sailing away on Scot-Free . . .
Then there’s this
America obsessively concerns itself with symbols — fixating over a missing flag pin on a politician’s lapel, for instance.
So — these people can:
- Incessantly lie
- Manipulate the hell out of you
- Start dumb wars and never finish them
- Drag their feet forever
- Obstruct as if not doing your job were a virtue
- Take off all kinds of time after accomplishing nothing
- Waste mountains of money while touting concerns about spending
- Spend enormous amounts of time & energy assailing the opposition while absolving their own at every turn
- Broadcast beliefs that have no bearing on their record or yours
- Rile you up with red meat to savagely scorn the other side — as you sail Scot-Free on an ocean of bottomless lies and hypocrisy . . .
Never in doubt — while you fret over flair:
Conservatives control the narrative about responsibility and think that magically translates to taking responsibility. Republicans pounce on the Left day in and day out — as if the Right’s record vanished off the face of the earth. It’s all about framing the narrative — and the Left institutionalizing weakness is a gimme for the Right to rail on ’em.
That the Left brings it on themselves is another matter . . .
And the icing on the cake
Sincere intellectuals justifiably calling out universities, woke ways, racially rigged incidents and such: Providing endless fodder for the Right to rip people for behavior that pales in comparison to what they’ve done for decades.
“It was time to take stock”
“The Civil Rights Movement is over” — in 1984!
That — took guts!
And that — is the Loury I was looking for. 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.
You asked them to take stock — just don’t ask you.
One Voice Became Two 