Why do they always go there. History shows it’s never worked yet the same group thinks they can do it better. It’s going on right now with the WEF, UN, COP27 and the rest of the one world wonders. Well, feast on this:
After the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, Communism was dead. Or so we were told at the time. However, it should be clear by now that Communism is the John Barleycorn of political ideologies:
They worked their will on John Barleycorn, but he lived to tell the tale.
That is, Communism was thought to have been destroyed, but not only did it survive, it eventually came to dominate those who believed they had destroyed it. (A full-length exegesis on this conceit may be found in my 2008 essay “John Barleycorn Was Dead”.)
The 21st-century version of the victorious ideology is not called “home-brewed ale”, but rather “Progressivism”, or the “New World Order”, or “Global Governance”, among other terms. The process of imposing the new global utopia is, of course, referred to as “the Great Reset”. Which is currently well underway, and will probably be completed before most people realize what is happening.
One of the features of latter-day Communism is that it has always been able to count on a multitude of fellow travelers among the members of the political class in the liberal democracies. The Soviets recruited agents of influence in Western governments and cultural circles, but they really didn’t have to work all that hard to find them; there was always a pool of idealistic intellectuals who were eager to embrace the utopian vision provided by the Socialist Revolution.
Communism is primarily a disease of the intellectuals. The proletariat — the purported beneficiaries of the socialist revolution — are generally indifferent to the allure of progressive utopias. But those who hold multiple advanced degrees are especially attracted to the idea of a glorious future planned and implemented by technocrats. They can draw up detailed plans for the construction of an ideal political economy, but they lack the political power to realize their dreams. Achieving such power tends to consume all their energy for well over half their lives; hence the pursuit of power becomes an end in itself.
They get them young with the college professors. How many of them do you think are conservatives or middle of the road? About 4 percent. Most of the mush heads don’t have a chance. It’s why they vote liberal when they aren’t educated properly. Usually they keep the single women, as demonstrated by the last election. They are the easiest to persuade.
I see the current administration trying to take us down that road in the (thinly veiled) guise of climate change and woke. I don’t buy it.
The answer is that it is about money and power. The intellectuals think they know more and need to tell others how to live and what to do.
Bear in mind, the rest of us are getting tired of this charade and are well educated in how to live. Let the power go out and see who survives and who gets robbed.
I like people that are informed and right most of the time. Friedman was both. He was an economist. I take it for what it is. I suppose there are political overtones if you want to read into it, but I am trying to stay out of that pool so don’t.
There is a lot of things that can hold us hostage like addiction, debt, lying….you recognize them.
I tend to notice trends early. I quit Twitter 4 years ago as soon as work didn’t (unofficially) require it. Almost every time I used it, the conversation degraded by the 3rd or 4th tweet into something political, followed by unsubstantiated name calling. You have to have a thick skin and a terse personality to want to survive out there.
A few years later I tried helping a friend get on Facebook and we both decided that it was like a high school reunion, or being in high school where you make up stuff to seem like your life is better than others. He finally told me to stop and to not put him on. At that point it dawned on me that most of social media falls under Sturgeon’s Law:
Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.
There might be a corollary that 99% of social media is crap.
The trend I noticed besides people acting false was that I never felt better after being on twitter and I loathe Facebook for the same reason. This was 5-8 years ago and now the studies are coming out proving what I noticed.
A recent article in the USA today talked about another high schoolish trend, mob mentality.
Social media also has polluted our more general life, with the ability to form online mobs increasing, as Prof. Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit recently wrote in USA Today:
People enjoy forming mobs. Mobs allow people to do things they’d be afraid to do on their own, to steal, to hurt and kill, to burn and destroy — and also to feel set free from the bonds of civil society, to experience a kind of atavistic catharsis, a feeling of power and a solidarity with their fellow rioters, in a way that’s otherwise difficult to achieve, especially without suffering serious consequences….
But now there’s a new kind of mob, an online mob. And judging by the events of the past week, this new mob is becoming a more frequent problem. Part of that is because it’s easier (and safer) to be part of an online mob than one in the real world.
Joining a real mob requires you to leave your house, go somewhere else, and experience risks and discomforts. Joining an online mob can be done from an easy chair at home.
There are times that I post something and bizarre comments come it, so much so that I have to moderate them according to the policy on the sidebar. Some just violate the policy too much. It’s like twitter, if it can get political it usually does. Since I’ve posted a lot about the military and patriotism, I caught a lot of crap.
I read a blog post by Legal Insurrection that noted the increase in suicides and the link that may exist between the two.
Why don’t people just put it down? It looks to be like the new next cigarette, just as addictive and equally as bad for you.
As for me, I can go about my day enjoying not getting into useless tweet storms and having my head glued to my phone. Hell, I won’t even put Facebook on because I don’t want them in my life.
I’d like to say the higher IQ people would be immune to this, but it’s not true. They are just as susceptible to this and it goes under things they shouldn’t do.
WHAT FACEBOOK KNOWS AND IT ISN’T TELLING YOU
It preys on Women’s emotions and other mind altering and interfering techniques and the company KNOWS THAT IT IS DOING IT.
Even former Facebook President Sean Parker realizes the pitfalls of Facebook:
The former Facebook President discussed the company’s initial aim, which was mainly centered around drawing in and building their audience:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.
Parker described Facebook’s appeal as a “social-validation feedback loop” which exploits human psychology to keep users coming back to the app:
It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
Comments such as this from Facebook former President, combined with Facebook’s mishandling of user data, has led to a greater level of distrust around the company. What was previously seen as just a website by many users was becoming better known as a data collection company.
THE CESSPOOL OF HATE AND DISCRIMINATION BY TWITTER
Just say something, anything and pretty soon it can turn into a hate storm if you offend someone or anyone. I saw someone post here’s a picture of a rock, let the arguing begin just to prove it and it did.
When I check I often find that a user who has blocked me is someone I have never interacted with. So why the block? Often, it’s due to being on a block list created by a liberal activist group. Twitter supports block lists and makes it easy for users to mass-block entire universes of people they don’t even know.
But Twitter now uses factors such as the number of people who have blocked an account to determine whether to classify it as “low quality” content. The company also uses the number of complaints or reports on the account. If the number of these exceeds certain thresholds, an account can be deemed low quality and access to tweets from that user are severely diminished.
I couldn’t wait to leave that platform of time-wasting and hate and my life is better because of it.
Delusions of Adequacy 