The creepy unanimity of all media during Trump years (2015-present) was the warmup for the current Orwellian state. Everyone in my lefty social network who became a Trump obsessive went on to become a Branch Covidian, and is now a Deeply Concerned Ukrane, um, Fan (tm).
I get that they're propagandized, and that they're victims. But their smugnorance is well nigh insufferable. I still keep a hand in, dropping the occasional truth bomb/food for thought on them. But for the most part, I now avoid my old friends.
At this point it seems as though the American Left, aside from us "Dirtbags," has become a complete tool of the Surveillance State. The establishment now can use the Woke Left as their own personal population control to censor and bully as they see fit. Then when people grow tired of suffering those lisping fools the establishment can strip off their woke mask and call upon their old faves on the Theocratic Right. Using both "sides" to eliminate nuance and persecute free thinking. Anyone outside of these two nutty factions will be ignored or smeared as the lesser favored faction of the moment.
Lucky for me that I have a 3 digit IQ which enabled me to figure out my principles to live by long before Jordan Peterson learned how to walk. He is such a lightweight as a political thinker and should stick to his “self help for honkies” theme. You are correct though when you say we should be guided by principles.
Thank you Geoffrey Pyatt, Victoria Nuland, Obama, Biden, Hunter Biden, Alexandra Chalupa, Eric Ciaramella, Vindmann, Talizhenko, Marcy Kaptur, Olga Bielkova, Pavlo Rizanenko, Hillary Clinton, and well, gosh, anybody who has anything to do with Hillary Clinton, for creating . . . yes, CREATING . . . and contributing to this unholy, purely political house of shit that is on the map known as Ukraine. Enjoy the blood you all have spilled.
Matt, your recent piece got me thinking about your writing in general and revisiting some of your earlier work. I just want to say that the thing I admire most about your writing, and the thing I think a lot of folks here are responding to, is that you never pull your punches, but you also never punch down. That's a pretty rare combination. I read The Great Derangement around the time I graduated from college, and I had a very conservative uncle who I tried to get to read it, and he acted like I was trying to foist propaganda from the enemy on him. What he would have found is a pretty poignant rumination on what is going wrong in this country that included a deeply sympathetic profile of everyday people who you disagreed with. The churchgoers near the end would have been an easy layup of biting, acidic satire, but instead of going for cheap shots, you managed to portray their basic humanity and dignity while also also criticizing the weird obsessions and predatory behavior of the megachurch they were part of. You clearly cared about those people, and it came through in your writing, and I'll never forget it. I think that kind of ethos still animates your writing.
The left-right paradigm is the ultimate Orwellian doublespeak. War is peace, truth is lies, left is right… No wonder Nietzsche had issues with the Socratic dialectic; it uses “reason” to flip knowledge into ignorance. Up is down… Sad times.
If I may a suggestion, please read George Orwell’s Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm. It was written in 1947. It is very appropriate with respect to the issues raised by Taibbi as well as to what is happening around us today.
Wish it was possible to join these calls from a computer or non-smart cell phone! I considered getting a smartphone to be able to access telegram / clubhouse, but the way things are going, don't even want the capacity to enable a QR code. Because ... Orwell was right ...
Chris also has a good Protestant Education. Democracy is why we banned religion in our public spaces.
Bill21 expresses the views of a very healthy democracy where gender, race and religion are no longer identities.
As someone who has always supported the ACLU (CCLU can) it saddened me to see the cclu come down on the side against our democracy. It was the church that closed our libraries, Union Halls and Jehovah Witness meeting Halls. Secular Humanist Quebec has not padlocked its churches or libraries or censored its books.
It is one thing to love thine enemy. It is another to support those in doing yourself harm.
Most of the clergy were happy to be relieved of the responsibility.
What is your point? Surely you don't expect abracadabran's to be responsible for public help. Maybe you want them to lead the armed forces in case of war.
Censorship and the burning of books has deep roots in America. In 1961 my English teacher complained to my class about the wasteland that was our school library. To make his point we were able to get Jane Austin pulled off the shelves with a campaign about her books having sexual content. I also recall a student assembly featuring our John Bircher sheriff. My college couldn't invite Communist speakers to speak on campus. When Dorothy Healy finally did speak on campus, she bombed. Today everyone must know that phenotypic males can triumph in women's sports, yet none dare speak of it. It's become "hate speech" to say so. Employees today are required to attend reeducation sessions about their "unconscious bias." No question about it, Orwell was right! The "other" is everywhere and we're eager to loath and attack them.
O'Brien torturing Winston: “I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” Gender isn't biological, words ARE sticks and stones, insert your "reality" here: _______________________________
How wonderful! Sadly i didnt see this until an hour too late but i have downloaded that callin app now - great piece Matt Taibbi, yes forcing people to live the lie is part of the totalitarian pattern, Solzhenitsyn said it too, so did Vaclav Havel - just refuse to live the lie.
It is the same with the forced state injections that the majority of us do not need for covid protection - especially those who have recovered from covid already, giving them durable natural immunity. In Australia we are forced to live the lie that 3 million such people are in need of 3 and possibly 4 injections and if they choose not to they can lose their job, be unable to find another job, not be allowed in the state library or opera house or to visit a loved one in hospital or aged care, even though they have no more risk of passing on covid than a fully vaxxed person
The US has continued for the most part to ignore the issue of "natural immunity", that acquired from COVID infection. This has never been explained here. I suppose the theory is that the massive exposure through infection to COVID antigen doesn't prompt the robust immune response created by a tiny amount of engineered messenger RNA. The vaccine has magical properties. More recently in the US, those with "natural immunity" have been lumped in with the immunized when estimating the at risk population remaining in the US. To date, those with natural immunity aren't considered immune when it comes to mandates. Those who follow the science in the US can have their cake and eat it too.
If the drug makers have any data comparing their vaccines with "natural immunity", we won't see it but I doubt they alone are setting this agenda. More likely recognizing immunity from prior infection would have complicated the implementation of the mandates they wanted. We've had ample examples of our leaders demonstrating that they can' walk and chew gum. All of this could even be the result of profound ineptness.
Your naive nationalism seems to know no boundaries……just in case you haven’t seen a newspaper or news program for, oh let’s say THE LAST 50 years, the USA has NEVER stopped interfering in Central and South American politics for even a day. Please. Give. Me. A. Break…….
The United States has gone to war very recently over much lesser things, and I have no doubt that the chattering class would talk themselves into and then manufacture consent for a war with a democratically-elected Mexican government if said government was cozying up to the Russians.
It's important to remember that part of the reason both JFK and RFK ended up dead is because they openly defied the CIA and other deep state types who desperately wanted to depose Castro. The professional, thoughtful, and non-aggressive handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis is genuine god-damn miracle, and is unlikely to ever happen again.
Castro came to the US for help after overthrowing Batista and was reject by the sugar barons and gambling interests that held sway in our government. Just like the banana republics in Central America. Money talks and the rest of you can sleep on a park bench.
What do you think the US would do if Trudeau signed Canada over to China …or allowed China to have more and more influence in Canada, bought up all our natural resources, etc.
Are you for real? The United States deposed numerous democratically elected governments during the Cold War simply because they were Communist. If you’re determined to clutch your pearls this hard, you could at least bother to do a ten second Google search.
So how should ordinary people in this country - most of whom weren’t, I think, personally involved in the takeover of Hawaii, or even in those coups in Central and South America - supposed to react to what’s going on in Ukraine? Is any sort of voiced disapproval of what’s going on there supposed to be critiqued as an expression of hypocrisy, thereby effectively paralyzing us all into mute acceptance of Russia’s actions?
I never suggested that any sort of voiced disapproval about the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a form of hypocrisy. What IS hypocrisy is believing the simplistic, childish "American Good, Russia Bad" propaganda that the MSM is pumping. A not small number of commenters here seem to, including Scott M, if his mewling, fussy objection to what Dr. West said didn't make it obvious.
Dr. West isn't just talking about U.S. aggression, he's specifically pointing to the actions that lead up to Russia invading Ukraine: namely NATO plopping down missile defense systems all over Eastern Europe, neutering Russia's nuclear arsenal. Russia warned over and over that Ukraine was a red line, and we now have the gall to be surprised at this outcome?
Listen, Putin is a thug. Anyone with a functional brain can see it. What he is doing to the citizens of Ukraine is horrible. But it is also true that NATO repeatedly pushing the envelope over Russian objections made this war all but inevitable. Shockingly, the world is a complex, gray place, and both can be true!
The kind of opinion that really irks me (and Cornel West, apparently) is the one that screams about Putin's thuggery while refusing to consider how we got here. Worse than that is what Scott M is engaging in - braying, adolescent denials that innocent old America could ever act the way Russia is acting right now.
"it is excruciatingly obvious that our goal has never been to conquer territory and violently oppress the rights of other people"
Uh, Manifest Destiny? Spanish-American War? It is excruciatingly obvious that the United States would not exist in its present geographic form *without* having conquered territory. As to violently oppressing the rights of other people, well... I suspect that Native Americans and citizens of sovereign Latin American republics historically subject to US military and political interference may have their own opinions on this topic.
Why would you ask such a “projection “ question.Jenny Hatch didn’t say a mumbling word about rationalizing anything. Can you chew gum while you walk? Can you imagine the hub of human trafficking and simultaneously believe that Ukraine SHOULD NOT be attacked?
apparently not. Most people here realized about two weeks ago that Ukrainians are the most noble, generous and courageous people in the world whose suffering has no parallel. Zelensky's leadership and charisma relegates to dust Eisenhower, JFK,FDR, Lincoln , Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus etc. Anyone who disagrees clearly is receiving payment from Kremlin
I am so old that I remember one cafe au lait neocon mocking a vanilla neocon at a Presidential debate in 2012 over the latter's skewed sense of priorities when he insisted on a firmer stance on Russia "the 80s called, they want their foreign policy back"
That incumbent Russophile neocon was their Zelensky back then.
So exactly how was her comment supposed to be interpreted? Enlighten us. what was her intent when inserting a comment about Ukraine being a hotbed of human trafficking while the country’s cities are literally being bombed into rubble?
Judge words by their content , not by intent. She could be a Putin shill for all I care. But what she said is factual. If it makes you cry then its no one else's problem.
Nah, we’ll just disagree on that. Way too many examples in history where intent was pretty distinct from content, and ignoring intent would have, or did, lead to disaster.
I think trying to read between the lines is an important aspect of judging how people think. It’s part of the human condition to not always express oneself clearly through words alone.
You have a point about other forms of communication and sub communication. However when you reacted to her it seemed that you are bit agitated as I am guessing you are emotionally invested in this war. Nothing wrong with that(though my acerbic way of highlighting that was wrong). My point is that people can misunderstand things when their emotional states are heightened.
The creepy unanimity of all media during Trump years (2015-present) was the warmup for the current Orwellian state. Everyone in my lefty social network who became a Trump obsessive went on to become a Branch Covidian, and is now a Deeply Concerned Ukrane, um, Fan (tm).
Can attest to this in my sphere as well.
I get that they're propagandized, and that they're victims. But their smugnorance is well nigh insufferable. I still keep a hand in, dropping the occasional truth bomb/food for thought on them. But for the most part, I now avoid my old friends.
Exactly!!
At this point it seems as though the American Left, aside from us "Dirtbags," has become a complete tool of the Surveillance State. The establishment now can use the Woke Left as their own personal population control to censor and bully as they see fit. Then when people grow tired of suffering those lisping fools the establishment can strip off their woke mask and call upon their old faves on the Theocratic Right. Using both "sides" to eliminate nuance and persecute free thinking. Anyone outside of these two nutty factions will be ignored or smeared as the lesser favored faction of the moment.
I hear ya. At this point it, it may be up to Chapo, the Cumtown Boys, and gay actor Michael Douglas to save the Left!
Lucky for me that I have a 3 digit IQ which enabled me to figure out my principles to live by long before Jordan Peterson learned how to walk. He is such a lightweight as a political thinker and should stick to his “self help for honkies” theme. You are correct though when you say we should be guided by principles.
Just perusing Matt's twitter feed. Jesus H. Christ, it's unbelievable what he has to deal with. Mass psychosis aimed relentlessly directly at him.
Great article. Tough to read, because it's all true.
Thank you Geoffrey Pyatt, Victoria Nuland, Obama, Biden, Hunter Biden, Alexandra Chalupa, Eric Ciaramella, Vindmann, Talizhenko, Marcy Kaptur, Olga Bielkova, Pavlo Rizanenko, Hillary Clinton, and well, gosh, anybody who has anything to do with Hillary Clinton, for creating . . . yes, CREATING . . . and contributing to this unholy, purely political house of shit that is on the map known as Ukraine. Enjoy the blood you all have spilled.
Matt, your recent piece got me thinking about your writing in general and revisiting some of your earlier work. I just want to say that the thing I admire most about your writing, and the thing I think a lot of folks here are responding to, is that you never pull your punches, but you also never punch down. That's a pretty rare combination. I read The Great Derangement around the time I graduated from college, and I had a very conservative uncle who I tried to get to read it, and he acted like I was trying to foist propaganda from the enemy on him. What he would have found is a pretty poignant rumination on what is going wrong in this country that included a deeply sympathetic profile of everyday people who you disagreed with. The churchgoers near the end would have been an easy layup of biting, acidic satire, but instead of going for cheap shots, you managed to portray their basic humanity and dignity while also also criticizing the weird obsessions and predatory behavior of the megachurch they were part of. You clearly cared about those people, and it came through in your writing, and I'll never forget it. I think that kind of ethos still animates your writing.
We're gonna party like it's 1984!
The left-right paradigm is the ultimate Orwellian doublespeak. War is peace, truth is lies, left is right… No wonder Nietzsche had issues with the Socratic dialectic; it uses “reason” to flip knowledge into ignorance. Up is down… Sad times.
America is a Duopoly of Dunces.
If I may a suggestion, please read George Orwell’s Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm. It was written in 1947. It is very appropriate with respect to the issues raised by Taibbi as well as to what is happening around us today.
Wish it was possible to join these calls from a computer or non-smart cell phone! I considered getting a smartphone to be able to access telegram / clubhouse, but the way things are going, don't even want the capacity to enable a QR code. Because ... Orwell was right ...
I can not find the link to the recorded discussion, is anyone else having this issue? I tried Spotify and Call In app.
When I went to PROTESTANT SCHOOL IN CATHOLIC QUEBEC we studied Tennyson.
The Charge of the Light Brigade (Crimea 1854) was Lord Tennyson's gift to the ages.. These wars are what makes us what we are.
That's good isn't it?
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=charge+of+the+light+brigade+poem&type=E210US91166G91269#id=1&vid=fd2b3881d99cbe00958c1ad224340128&action=click
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hedges
Chris also has a good Protestant Education. Democracy is why we banned religion in our public spaces.
Bill21 expresses the views of a very healthy democracy where gender, race and religion are no longer identities.
As someone who has always supported the ACLU (CCLU can) it saddened me to see the cclu come down on the side against our democracy. It was the church that closed our libraries, Union Halls and Jehovah Witness meeting Halls. Secular Humanist Quebec has not padlocked its churches or libraries or censored its books.
It is one thing to love thine enemy. It is another to support those in doing yourself harm.
Secular humanist Quebec has absolutely locked its churches during COVID. You had to have a vaccine passport to attend
This is a bad thing?
Most of the clergy were happy to be relieved of the responsibility.
What is your point? Surely you don't expect abracadabran's to be responsible for public help. Maybe you want them to lead the armed forces in case of war.
e.pierce,
At least say why, constructively.
Did the Callin take place? I'm not seeing the recording on Matt's Callin page.
Matt, missed this live. Will it be archived at Callin? Not there right now.
Did this happen? Is there a replay? If so, I can't find it.
It did happen. There should be a replay soon…? Just extremely slow to publish/upload it, I guess.
Censorship and the burning of books has deep roots in America. In 1961 my English teacher complained to my class about the wasteland that was our school library. To make his point we were able to get Jane Austin pulled off the shelves with a campaign about her books having sexual content. I also recall a student assembly featuring our John Bircher sheriff. My college couldn't invite Communist speakers to speak on campus. When Dorothy Healy finally did speak on campus, she bombed. Today everyone must know that phenotypic males can triumph in women's sports, yet none dare speak of it. It's become "hate speech" to say so. Employees today are required to attend reeducation sessions about their "unconscious bias." No question about it, Orwell was right! The "other" is everywhere and we're eager to loath and attack them.
O'Brien torturing Winston: “I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” Gender isn't biological, words ARE sticks and stones, insert your "reality" here: _______________________________
How wonderful! Sadly i didnt see this until an hour too late but i have downloaded that callin app now - great piece Matt Taibbi, yes forcing people to live the lie is part of the totalitarian pattern, Solzhenitsyn said it too, so did Vaclav Havel - just refuse to live the lie.
It is the same with the forced state injections that the majority of us do not need for covid protection - especially those who have recovered from covid already, giving them durable natural immunity. In Australia we are forced to live the lie that 3 million such people are in need of 3 and possibly 4 injections and if they choose not to they can lose their job, be unable to find another job, not be allowed in the state library or opera house or to visit a loved one in hospital or aged care, even though they have no more risk of passing on covid than a fully vaxxed person
The US has continued for the most part to ignore the issue of "natural immunity", that acquired from COVID infection. This has never been explained here. I suppose the theory is that the massive exposure through infection to COVID antigen doesn't prompt the robust immune response created by a tiny amount of engineered messenger RNA. The vaccine has magical properties. More recently in the US, those with "natural immunity" have been lumped in with the immunized when estimating the at risk population remaining in the US. To date, those with natural immunity aren't considered immune when it comes to mandates. Those who follow the science in the US can have their cake and eat it too.
Yes and there is of course no profit to be made from a person having their own free immunity and therefore not needing pfizer’s products
If the drug makers have any data comparing their vaccines with "natural immunity", we won't see it but I doubt they alone are setting this agenda. More likely recognizing immunity from prior infection would have complicated the implementation of the mandates they wanted. We've had ample examples of our leaders demonstrating that they can' walk and chew gum. All of this could even be the result of profound ineptness.
I don't think natural immunity has been ignored, there are studies out there that look at natural immunity. As is often the case, it's complicated. Good article here: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/natural-immunity-protection-and-variants
Orwell knew
Happy st Patrick’s day
Could whining Cancel-Karens and BlueAnoners be writing the missing prelude to "1984"?
Trump still lost. It’s hard for Conservatives to admit it for some reason, but it’s not propaganda to admit this.
Your naive nationalism seems to know no boundaries……just in case you haven’t seen a newspaper or news program for, oh let’s say THE LAST 50 years, the USA has NEVER stopped interfering in Central and South American politics for even a day. Please. Give. Me. A. Break…….
The United States has gone to war very recently over much lesser things, and I have no doubt that the chattering class would talk themselves into and then manufacture consent for a war with a democratically-elected Mexican government if said government was cozying up to the Russians.
It's important to remember that part of the reason both JFK and RFK ended up dead is because they openly defied the CIA and other deep state types who desperately wanted to depose Castro. The professional, thoughtful, and non-aggressive handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis is genuine god-damn miracle, and is unlikely to ever happen again.
Castro came to the US for help after overthrowing Batista and was reject by the sugar barons and gambling interests that held sway in our government. Just like the banana republics in Central America. Money talks and the rest of you can sleep on a park bench.
What do you think the US would do if Trudeau signed Canada over to China …or allowed China to have more and more influence in Canada, bought up all our natural resources, etc.
a genuine question
Exactly!
Are you for real? The United States deposed numerous democratically elected governments during the Cold War simply because they were Communist. If you’re determined to clutch your pearls this hard, you could at least bother to do a ten second Google search.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/20/mapped-the-7-governments-the-u-s-has-overthrown/
Also, have you forgotten that Hawaii exists? We pretty much just took that island and claimed it was ours.
You’re absolutely right.
So how should ordinary people in this country - most of whom weren’t, I think, personally involved in the takeover of Hawaii, or even in those coups in Central and South America - supposed to react to what’s going on in Ukraine? Is any sort of voiced disapproval of what’s going on there supposed to be critiqued as an expression of hypocrisy, thereby effectively paralyzing us all into mute acceptance of Russia’s actions?
I never suggested that any sort of voiced disapproval about the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a form of hypocrisy. What IS hypocrisy is believing the simplistic, childish "American Good, Russia Bad" propaganda that the MSM is pumping. A not small number of commenters here seem to, including Scott M, if his mewling, fussy objection to what Dr. West said didn't make it obvious.
Dr. West isn't just talking about U.S. aggression, he's specifically pointing to the actions that lead up to Russia invading Ukraine: namely NATO plopping down missile defense systems all over Eastern Europe, neutering Russia's nuclear arsenal. Russia warned over and over that Ukraine was a red line, and we now have the gall to be surprised at this outcome?
Listen, Putin is a thug. Anyone with a functional brain can see it. What he is doing to the citizens of Ukraine is horrible. But it is also true that NATO repeatedly pushing the envelope over Russian objections made this war all but inevitable. Shockingly, the world is a complex, gray place, and both can be true!
The kind of opinion that really irks me (and Cornel West, apparently) is the one that screams about Putin's thuggery while refusing to consider how we got here. Worse than that is what Scott M is engaging in - braying, adolescent denials that innocent old America could ever act the way Russia is acting right now.
You really think I’m going to fall for your “capitalism = democracy” bait-and-switch, my dude?
I mean, nice try, I guess? 🤷
"it is excruciatingly obvious that our goal has never been to conquer territory and violently oppress the rights of other people"
Uh, Manifest Destiny? Spanish-American War? It is excruciatingly obvious that the United States would not exist in its present geographic form *without* having conquered territory. As to violently oppressing the rights of other people, well... I suspect that Native Americans and citizens of sovereign Latin American republics historically subject to US military and political interference may have their own opinions on this topic.
Wow, talk about Orwellian double-speak. Get your head out of your ass.
Scott - stop shilling.
And who-do you work for?
Why would you ask such a “projection “ question.Jenny Hatch didn’t say a mumbling word about rationalizing anything. Can you chew gum while you walk? Can you imagine the hub of human trafficking and simultaneously believe that Ukraine SHOULD NOT be attacked?
apparently not. Most people here realized about two weeks ago that Ukrainians are the most noble, generous and courageous people in the world whose suffering has no parallel. Zelensky's leadership and charisma relegates to dust Eisenhower, JFK,FDR, Lincoln , Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus etc. Anyone who disagrees clearly is receiving payment from Kremlin
I am so old that I remember one cafe au lait neocon mocking a vanilla neocon at a Presidential debate in 2012 over the latter's skewed sense of priorities when he insisted on a firmer stance on Russia "the 80s called, they want their foreign policy back"
That incumbent Russophile neocon was their Zelensky back then.
So exactly how was her comment supposed to be interpreted? Enlighten us. what was her intent when inserting a comment about Ukraine being a hotbed of human trafficking while the country’s cities are literally being bombed into rubble?
Judge words by their content , not by intent. She could be a Putin shill for all I care. But what she said is factual. If it makes you cry then its no one else's problem.
Nah, we’ll just disagree on that. Way too many examples in history where intent was pretty distinct from content, and ignoring intent would have, or did, lead to disaster.
I think trying to read between the lines is an important aspect of judging how people think. It’s part of the human condition to not always express oneself clearly through words alone.
You have a point about other forms of communication and sub communication. However when you reacted to her it seemed that you are bit agitated as I am guessing you are emotionally invested in this war. Nothing wrong with that(though my acerbic way of highlighting that was wrong). My point is that people can misunderstand things when their emotional states are heightened.