Maskachusetts has fallen from the birthplace of the Revolution to the capital of Karentocracy. They should get to the point and use the hammer and sickle flag with “mask up, stay safe” as the motto. Time to reimagine The Departed as The Retarded: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/boston-the-departed-the-woke-retarded
Massachusetts, like Minnesota, has established a mindset in which "BOHICA" is a call joyously responded to by the celebratory lowering of undergarments while "assuming the position" in virtuous self-abasement.
No, Yuri. I refuse to be one of the sheep and fall to your regular strategy of racing to the top of the comment forums so as to collect all of your "likes" with a ho-hum comment. Which acts as an advertisement to "go to Yuri's Substack".
That is a subliminal mind-control tactic. Also used by shady politicians and other scammers.
Give the guy a break; I've been seeing this strategy since 2012 when I first got serious about being online. In fact, I'll betcha a fried dough to a baseball that he's got some kinda alert set up that gives him a heads up. The son-of-a-gun's motivated, you gotta give him that, ammirite?
That tactic is subliminal mind-control, whenever it first began online. I find it childish too. Although look at the number of readers who fall for it every time. "Yuri" usually gets about a hundred hits, and the corresponding number of minds impressed beneath the surface with his sales message.
Personally, I do not trust "Yuri Bezmenov". Began with the fact that he took the authentic name and reputation of someone I admired. Now deceased,
And then, after contributing to his Substack widely and often, this son-of-a-gun banned me. For asking questions he found inconvenient. He seems to have no problem with censorship. Which applies to a number of popular Substack hosts I have encountered; they ban easily and frequently.
Free speech is OK only when it works in their favour.
All the while, "Yuri" was selling his "freedom-fighter' product in his Influencer business.
No, my friend. You are completely missing the point.
I note and might choose to call out human behaviour that most readers pass by, especially when hypocrisy appears to be involved in that behaviour. There is a whole lot of gullibility out there. And scammers can hit Substack just as they can and do hit everywhere else.
The issue is not the fact that he posts his comments at the top. I gave that just a minor mention because he does it so blatantly and so often. As if to say, "See ME, ME ME! HERE!!"
My wider analyses are kind of a bonus for Substack readers.
I'm actually not missing your point. I chose to make a comment that ignored it in favor of focusing on the substance of the comments rather than the style in which they are presented, which, after all, is ultimately controlled by Substack itself. The entire commenting thread functionality is limited at best and adds close to nothing in terms of an actual conversation.
FWIW, I got tired of this cheap play back in 2012- it was ubiquitous- as a rule, I NEVER click on their shit.
Now, if someone else posts and says something like 'You'd get a kick out of Sasha Stone's work', I go looking or ask for a link. But carnival barkers like Yuri?
Sasha Stone has always struck me as being authentic. She is one of the latecomers to the truth, and I prefer to give standing to those who were always awakened, but I have not seen Sasha as a Yuri type.
She astutely avoids all conversation about these Substack flaws, however. Which is a bit iffy, for those in the truth business. Makes me think that if it was a toss-up between truth and covering for the shadier aspects of the Substack world, she would choose the latter.
I know you have a soft spot for Sasha though. So I will leave it at that. I have left her Substack. I need a bit more deep-thought talk, and a bit less of the gushing there. I am giving Matt's Substack another trial run.
Well Hello to you too, Bull. It's been a while. You were begging for my favour the last time, as I recall. Writing out reams of your philosophy for my attention and approval.
You must be having another of your extreme mood changes, which happen every so often and reflect in the way you treat other commenters here.
First you gush over them and beg them to engage in discussion with you (as you have done to me).....and then there is a sudden flip where you treat them as the devil incarnate. While you harangue them for a few hours.
Step 3 is that you finally apologize for this behaviour of yours after they call you out, and perhaps block you.
Have you not noticed your own patterns yet?
I am not allowing you to move to steps 2 and 3 today. I'll just block you now.
You know, if we can crush MSM for questionable behaviour over the years, we have to apply the same standards to Substack. Or it will become no different than MSM.
I see the myth repeated often that "Substack has no censorship!" Oh....then what is that banning I see or experience on here? It is not uncommon on Substack sites.
Have to politely disagree here though I have agreed with the vast majority of the posts of yours that I have read.
At least for the un-or-under-discovered, Substack is an avenue of the "gig economy" for (textual or opinion) content creation.
As such, there is a reward for...being a hustler.
There's nothing wrong with hustling: specifically not in the sense of conning others but in a shoe-leather-bootstrap self-initiative sense.
I have many opinions and have thought of writing on Substack -- but I've already got a load of other projects that I'm not properly attending!
If you want the solo gig, you have to hustle, you have to spend the time, you have to do the work. Yuri's prompt reply to posted articles is one of the ways he addresses those necessities.
Having been self-employed on-and-off for years I have a summary about freelancing: even if you're up to your ears in work, you're still looking for the next gig. The hustling never stops. It's actually fun if you have the mind for it, but it's a simple reality.
I would have to remind you that hustlers can also break you. And steal things you value. And implant unsavoury notions in your mind.
You're a bit of a babe in the woods here.
I have seen many people who were once happy to be entertained by nonsense, begin to seriously blow when they realize they have just been taken for large sums or other damage.
Why do you believe that any given hustler stops before they reach the con-artist level? What stops them?
So there should be a disclaimer at the top of every Substack site saying that what you are about to read below is simply a hustling gig? Do not actually take any of it seriously?
Why then does the non-leftwing contingent have their knickers in such a twist over the sins of MSM through the decades? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Where would you draw the line between hustling and propaganda and fraud? Or do you think that anything goes, as long as some Substack host can pull in the subscribers?
The folks love to be entertained. They hate it when they realize they have been had......perhaps through that same entertainment.
What possible kind of alert could you get to help you know when an emailed Substack newsletter goes out? What tech could help us get some kind of "electronic message" to announce the coming of said newsletter into our email inboxes?
Lol. Just saying that substack started as emailed newsletters and many/most people still have that alert set up, of course. No mystery.
Again I feel compelled to at least qualify your comment.
Letting people hustle is not the same as welcoming or condoning con-artistry or bamboozlement.
The issue with the MSM was that not long ago, the MSM essentially had a monopoly which they abused with propagandistic filtering and selection of content.
This is in distinction to a situation in which we are provided variety and are free to exercise our choice in discerning truth and validity.
The point is, most people do not know when that line is crossed. It is the whole game of con-artistry. The malignant pied pipers. Who seem so jolly and attractive at the outset.
If the targets knew, they would not get caught. But millions of them do.
You do not understand here that the same human influence tricks used in MSM for propaganda purposes are free to be used on Substack. Nothing stops that from happening, except reader awareness.
But you know what....many persons are willing to put that risk aside in order to be entertained, and to join a herd.
The con-artists and predators are well aware that this is how many people operate. They're not stupid; it is their business to know where to find the weaknesses they can use to their own advantage. Whether they are cult recruiters or Pedophiles or the fraudulent call-centre types in Nigeria or shysters on the local paper.
So of course they tailor their traps and tricks to correspond to the target weaknesses. Of COURSE!
No I did not, T. I knew is as BS and called it that. I had to see and read it for those reasons.
"Yuri" is fairly entertaining -- bread and circuses -- and so is also fairly popular. People care more about the entertainment than the accuracy. And popularity....well, everyone remembers high school, right?
But Yuri and his tricks never get MY mind. I know them too well. Not from using them myself....but from being an excellent student of Prof. Robert Cialdini.
Tardigrade, I suggest you begin to learn the basics of Evolutionary Science and Influence. Prof. Gad Saad deals well with the introductory material; he has a few books for the general market.
You didn't realize this knowledge is formalized in an academic field? And that I am pretty well-versed in it? Guess I kept myself a mystery commenter.
Allowing others to define reality for us (not suggesting you and Matt are) is an act of cowardice and proof of ignorance and insecurity.
Like it or not, Massachusetts is one of the most important sites in the evolution of social justice - and I'm not talking about the crap version so unpopular today. A great starting place is the "Come Over And Help Us" seal of the original colony, which embodies the "they want us to steal their shit" principle which continues to drive "US charity" around the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony#/media/File:Seal_of_the_Massachusetts_Bay_Colony.svg
Yet, despite this unfortunate pedigree, the moral evolution of Massachusetts colonists was such that by the 1750s Massachusetts was one of the few places in the world where people actually took seriously the principle that all women and men are equal in the eyes of god and under the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Kent Ditto Pennsylvania.
The historically ignorant fail to grasp that bad stuff happened everywhere - but in a few select communities, really good stuff happened, too, - stuff that changed and shaped the world in a good way. Massachusetts, the historical record confirms, is one of these few sites - a place that all should know more about and emulate, imho.
Uh, your moniker uses the same strategy? Perhaps A.A.A. would be more effective. If you're chasing old school sentiment, my favorite is Acme, being a Wile E. Coyote fan ;)
And what strategy do you think that is, Bruce? What does my pseudonym have to do with "Yuri's" tactics? Nothing at all.
I find that the various groupies often attack me. Because they are pie-eyed over their Substack rock star, whoever he or she is. May be someone different next week.
In fact, if you read the fine print, the Substack platform advises that commenters use pseudonyms. For cyber-security. We live in that age. Ahem...
If that was humour, you didn't do a very good job at it, Bruce. Came across as not really knowing what you were talking about, actually. I think your response here is a distraction from it.
The iconoclastic erasure of American history -- the DNC/CCP/Davos installation of the managerial/surveillance totalitarian autocracy-- continues. A conscious reconnection with American history and the part our ancestors lived and played in it is a first step to national sanity. A conscious remembering of who and where we came from will begin the healing. Depart the psyop and live.
"Massachusetts wants to make its emblem an ode to Ivy League circle-jerking that looks suspiciously like a Comintern flag designed by Currier and Ives ..."
And then there’s the Washington Commanders dumbfuckery… the Native American Chief erased AGAIN by virtue signaling (racist) white liberals. Who wants the Redskins name back with the Chief on the helmets besides President Trump? Yes, that’s right, MOST Native Nation’s Chiefs.
In true anti-hilarious fashion, here's the summary from Google's AI:
"The logo historically associated with the Washington "Redskins" was designed in the early 1970s by Walter "Blackie" Wetzel, a Blackfeet tribal chairman and president of the National Congress of American Indians. The design depicted the profile of Chief John Two Guns White Calf and was intended by Wetzel to be a symbol of unity among Native Americans."
Perfect -- ban a logo as racist that was created by a prominent Native American who designed it to reflect the unity among Native Americans by utilizing the image of a famous Native American.
Outis - It's the same mentality that produced the latinx fiasco. Lefty Anglos with no respect, appreciation, nor working knowledge of Spanish tried to bastardize the language for ideological purposes. The vast majority of latinos/latinas ridiculed and ignored the assault on their culture so that latinx currently has the acceptance and credibility it deserves: none at all.
May I suggest that Massachusetts adopt the Redskins old logo and make that their flag with one alteration. Have a composite of Tim Walz holding a tampon dispenser appear next to the logo.
It's a more accurate representation of what Massachusetts has become.
I recently had the opportunity to stay at Appalachian Mountain Club huts up in the White Mountains. Beautiful huts in remote locations full of well off white progressives up from Boston. All run by AMC, a wonderfully woke tax exempt headquartered in the hyper wealthy enclave of Boston's Beacon Hill.
Every single thing in the huts is airlifted in by helicopter (like Al Gore's jet, its the good kind of CO2) or lugged up on the backs of the summer help.
So what does this have to do with Massholes and Tim Walz? Each men's room featured a carefully curated shrine to feminine hygiene products. Tampons, pads, and who knows what else laid out on nice little tray and free for the taking. But oddly untouched.
Nothing says the great outdoors like the sight of tampons in the morning!
I am surprised that the new state flag doesn't have the visage of Senator Warren on it, so long as we are being sensitive to Indigenous people and turkeys...
"The colonialists were brutal. And so were many conquered tribes".
It was all about survival in a very tough environment. Evolution built-in those instincts to both groups. Though the leftwing apologists think that the colonial types should have come all that way just to lie down and die.
I had an ancestor arrive in Massachusetts in 1650, as a young soldier and indentured servant captured by the British Army in a battle in Scotland. He worked his time, then learned a trade and had a family. Was killed soon after in an Indian raid.
Life's tough for many people. Not just the designated "oppressed" class.
Thank you for sharing this illustrative and poignant family story. Your comment is to the point. I am reminded of a famous Richard Dawkins quote:
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
That humans have managed to develop a sense of ethos in which we can even consider alternatives to basic survival is key. That we don't always live by this ethos or even wind up mangling it is unsurprising. What is important is that we have the capacity to recognize that there is some notion of "right" and "wrong"
What is so tragic about this modern...for lack of a better term...moral inversion is that is diminishes that key attribute of having a sense of ethos...with all its twists and turns and putative self-contradictions...and replaces it with a cartoon used as unfocused, unthinking penitence in ritualized, faux-religious self-abasement.
I can tell you about that sense of ethos and how it was developed....or likely so. In the past 5000 years. One of my research interests. Sargon of Akkad of Mesopotamia, and then Judeo-Christianity are likely to have had much to do with it.
You could also read into the Freudian work of Id/Ego/Superego. How we are born with instinctual Id, but the Ego and Superego must be carefully developed.
" 'The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.' "
Amen (to Dawkins).
"What is important is that we have the capacity to recognize that there is some notion of 'right' and 'wrong' "
I'd revise that a bit, to: "... some notions in common ...". Otherwise, it's just as brutal as the rest of life on earth.
" ... replaces it with a cartoon used as unfocused, unthinking penitence in ritualized, faux-religious self-abasement"
I was trying to characterize the inclination to react to particular "types" of stories in a highly "reflexive" fashion: that is, the response is often not one of analysis but of seizing the opportunity to virtue signal with a display lamenting that which is basically the source of their own self-comfort.
That is, people will complain about "the west" or "capitalism" or whatever symbol seems acceptable to the horde while also not giving up on iota of their own self-comfort.
I'll give it one last try and hopefully will be less oblique: think of all the college protests by pampered kids crawling over each other trying to establish who's the biggest revolutionary on campus? None of it means anything, it's all just an ostentatious display by people who have benefitted most from the "system" they protest...and, as noted, they have no honest intent of sacrificing any of their own comforts.
This is all so pathetic. I just bought the whole Britannica series circa 1982, per Walter's mention on Tucker. We must keep our facts straight. Hold on to them. The insecurity running through the veins of this country is merciless. You, Mr. Taibbi, are brilliant. Love your turn of phrase. You're one of the few who make me laugh through tears.
Glad you called out Minnesota's new flag. (Great description, too!) After it was announced that we were getting a new flag and these are our options, the residents complained. After the new flag was announced, only 23% of the state liked it, while half of the state wanted to go back to the old one. (The remaining population wanted anything else.) Apparently, public opinion doesn't matter when virtue signaling is on the line.
Speaking as a historian, the new flags and seals are like a great forgetting. What happened to explaining the context of these symbols and valuing what they tell us about ourselves and our history: the good, the bad, and the ugly?
Oh well. Soon I suppose all historians will be replaced by AI "experts" programmed by our masters.
This redesign of State flags is a nationwide attempt to erradicate our heritage. It is intentional and it is doing a great job of eliminating our heritage. The same happend in Utah. I despise our new flag.
Maskachusetts has fallen from the birthplace of the Revolution to the capital of Karentocracy. They should get to the point and use the hammer and sickle flag with “mask up, stay safe” as the motto. Time to reimagine The Departed as The Retarded: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/boston-the-departed-the-woke-retarded
The Cryptoracist hyper-regulatory neo-oligarchical Karentrocracy? :) :) :)
I like it!
likened to music to my ears …
Massachusetts, like Minnesota, has established a mindset in which "BOHICA" is a call joyously responded to by the celebratory lowering of undergarments while "assuming the position" in virtuous self-abasement.
No, Yuri. I refuse to be one of the sheep and fall to your regular strategy of racing to the top of the comment forums so as to collect all of your "likes" with a ho-hum comment. Which acts as an advertisement to "go to Yuri's Substack".
That is a subliminal mind-control tactic. Also used by shady politicians and other scammers.
Give the guy a break; I've been seeing this strategy since 2012 when I first got serious about being online. In fact, I'll betcha a fried dough to a baseball that he's got some kinda alert set up that gives him a heads up. The son-of-a-gun's motivated, you gotta give him that, ammirite?
That tactic is subliminal mind-control, whenever it first began online. I find it childish too. Although look at the number of readers who fall for it every time. "Yuri" usually gets about a hundred hits, and the corresponding number of minds impressed beneath the surface with his sales message.
Personally, I do not trust "Yuri Bezmenov". Began with the fact that he took the authentic name and reputation of someone I admired. Now deceased,
And then, after contributing to his Substack widely and often, this son-of-a-gun banned me. For asking questions he found inconvenient. He seems to have no problem with censorship. Which applies to a number of popular Substack hosts I have encountered; they ban easily and frequently.
Free speech is OK only when it works in their favour.
All the while, "Yuri" was selling his "freedom-fighter' product in his Influencer business.
Pro tip: sort Comments by Newest First and your, uh, problem is solved!
But it is not about Yuri's positioning tactics on the comment board. That is just one part of the trick.
It is about a whole lot more than that. Why do you choose to minimize it to just this aspect? Are you not able to see the overall issue here?
Shut up. I've already answered your comments in good faith.
No, my friend. You are completely missing the point.
I note and might choose to call out human behaviour that most readers pass by, especially when hypocrisy appears to be involved in that behaviour. There is a whole lot of gullibility out there. And scammers can hit Substack just as they can and do hit everywhere else.
The issue is not the fact that he posts his comments at the top. I gave that just a minor mention because he does it so blatantly and so often. As if to say, "See ME, ME ME! HERE!!"
My wider analyses are kind of a bonus for Substack readers.
I'm actually not missing your point. I chose to make a comment that ignored it in favor of focusing on the substance of the comments rather than the style in which they are presented, which, after all, is ultimately controlled by Substack itself. The entire commenting thread functionality is limited at best and adds close to nothing in terms of an actual conversation.
FWIW, I got tired of this cheap play back in 2012- it was ubiquitous- as a rule, I NEVER click on their shit.
Now, if someone else posts and says something like 'You'd get a kick out of Sasha Stone's work', I go looking or ask for a link. But carnival barkers like Yuri?
Nahhh...
Sasha Stone has always struck me as being authentic. She is one of the latecomers to the truth, and I prefer to give standing to those who were always awakened, but I have not seen Sasha as a Yuri type.
She astutely avoids all conversation about these Substack flaws, however. Which is a bit iffy, for those in the truth business. Makes me think that if it was a toss-up between truth and covering for the shadier aspects of the Substack world, she would choose the latter.
I know you have a soft spot for Sasha though. So I will leave it at that. I have left her Substack. I need a bit more deep-thought talk, and a bit less of the gushing there. I am giving Matt's Substack another trial run.
Getting blocked by someone on Substack is "censorship"? In addition to paranoia you might add delusions of importance.
Your comments imply some sort of competition that exists either in your mind alone or in some space that I don't want to see or think about.
What is that popular online saying? "Go touch some grass."
Well Hello to you too, Bull. It's been a while. You were begging for my favour the last time, as I recall. Writing out reams of your philosophy for my attention and approval.
You must be having another of your extreme mood changes, which happen every so often and reflect in the way you treat other commenters here.
First you gush over them and beg them to engage in discussion with you (as you have done to me).....and then there is a sudden flip where you treat them as the devil incarnate. While you harangue them for a few hours.
Step 3 is that you finally apologize for this behaviour of yours after they call you out, and perhaps block you.
Have you not noticed your own patterns yet?
I am not allowing you to move to steps 2 and 3 today. I'll just block you now.
You know, if we can crush MSM for questionable behaviour over the years, we have to apply the same standards to Substack. Or it will become no different than MSM.
I see the myth repeated often that "Substack has no censorship!" Oh....then what is that banning I see or experience on here? It is not uncommon on Substack sites.
Have to politely disagree here though I have agreed with the vast majority of the posts of yours that I have read.
At least for the un-or-under-discovered, Substack is an avenue of the "gig economy" for (textual or opinion) content creation.
As such, there is a reward for...being a hustler.
There's nothing wrong with hustling: specifically not in the sense of conning others but in a shoe-leather-bootstrap self-initiative sense.
I have many opinions and have thought of writing on Substack -- but I've already got a load of other projects that I'm not properly attending!
If you want the solo gig, you have to hustle, you have to spend the time, you have to do the work. Yuri's prompt reply to posted articles is one of the ways he addresses those necessities.
Having been self-employed on-and-off for years I have a summary about freelancing: even if you're up to your ears in work, you're still looking for the next gig. The hustling never stops. It's actually fun if you have the mind for it, but it's a simple reality.
I would have to remind you that hustlers can also break you. And steal things you value. And implant unsavoury notions in your mind.
You're a bit of a babe in the woods here.
I have seen many people who were once happy to be entertained by nonsense, begin to seriously blow when they realize they have just been taken for large sums or other damage.
Why do you believe that any given hustler stops before they reach the con-artist level? What stops them?
So there should be a disclaimer at the top of every Substack site saying that what you are about to read below is simply a hustling gig? Do not actually take any of it seriously?
Why then does the non-leftwing contingent have their knickers in such a twist over the sins of MSM through the decades? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Where would you draw the line between hustling and propaganda and fraud? Or do you think that anything goes, as long as some Substack host can pull in the subscribers?
The folks love to be entertained. They hate it when they realize they have been had......perhaps through that same entertainment.
What possible kind of alert could you get to help you know when an emailed Substack newsletter goes out? What tech could help us get some kind of "electronic message" to announce the coming of said newsletter into our email inboxes?
Lol. Just saying that substack started as emailed newsletters and many/most people still have that alert set up, of course. No mystery.
OK, I am getting the message here that in general, readers like to bamboozled.
Then why complain about MSM?
Again I feel compelled to at least qualify your comment.
Letting people hustle is not the same as welcoming or condoning con-artistry or bamboozlement.
The issue with the MSM was that not long ago, the MSM essentially had a monopoly which they abused with propagandistic filtering and selection of content.
This is in distinction to a situation in which we are provided variety and are free to exercise our choice in discerning truth and validity.
The point is, most people do not know when that line is crossed. It is the whole game of con-artistry. The malignant pied pipers. Who seem so jolly and attractive at the outset.
If the targets knew, they would not get caught. But millions of them do.
You do not understand here that the same human influence tricks used in MSM for propaganda purposes are free to be used on Substack. Nothing stops that from happening, except reader awareness.
But you know what....many persons are willing to put that risk aside in order to be entertained, and to join a herd.
The con-artists and predators are well aware that this is how many people operate. They're not stupid; it is their business to know where to find the weaknesses they can use to their own advantage. Whether they are cult recruiters or Pedophiles or the fraudulent call-centre types in Nigeria or shysters on the local paper.
So of course they tailor their traps and tricks to correspond to the target weaknesses. Of COURSE!
You just did fall for it, did you not?
T., you are usually more sensible than to say a silly thing like that.
Thanks for the compliment BTW.
Dang, I always forget to include that tongue-in-cheek emoji.
No I did not, T. I knew is as BS and called it that. I had to see and read it for those reasons.
"Yuri" is fairly entertaining -- bread and circuses -- and so is also fairly popular. People care more about the entertainment than the accuracy. And popularity....well, everyone remembers high school, right?
But Yuri and his tricks never get MY mind. I know them too well. Not from using them myself....but from being an excellent student of Prof. Robert Cialdini.
Tardigrade, I suggest you begin to learn the basics of Evolutionary Science and Influence. Prof. Gad Saad deals well with the introductory material; he has a few books for the general market.
You didn't realize this knowledge is formalized in an academic field? And that I am pretty well-versed in it? Guess I kept myself a mystery commenter.
Allowing others to define reality for us (not suggesting you and Matt are) is an act of cowardice and proof of ignorance and insecurity.
Like it or not, Massachusetts is one of the most important sites in the evolution of social justice - and I'm not talking about the crap version so unpopular today. A great starting place is the "Come Over And Help Us" seal of the original colony, which embodies the "they want us to steal their shit" principle which continues to drive "US charity" around the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony#/media/File:Seal_of_the_Massachusetts_Bay_Colony.svg
Yet, despite this unfortunate pedigree, the moral evolution of Massachusetts colonists was such that by the 1750s Massachusetts was one of the few places in the world where people actually took seriously the principle that all women and men are equal in the eyes of god and under the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Kent Ditto Pennsylvania.
If I got to choose a symbol of what Massachusetts means to me (as a former student in Boston), I'd choose a printing press - book production and the dissemination of knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_publishers_and_printers
The historically ignorant fail to grasp that bad stuff happened everywhere - but in a few select communities, really good stuff happened, too, - stuff that changed and shaped the world in a good way. Massachusetts, the historical record confirms, is one of these few sites - a place that all should know more about and emulate, imho.
I think Matt's point in this article is that Massachusetts is extremely WOKE now. Gone off the deep end.
It was not always this way in its long history. But it is today. And the present is what all of us must deal with. Not a lot of choice there
You're right. I'm watching coverage of the Charlie Kirk assassination - that's where we are right now.
Absolutely.
Tragic. In so many ways.
Who gives a shit? It's a clever comment on the article. Have you sought professional help for your paranoia?
Uh, your moniker uses the same strategy? Perhaps A.A.A. would be more effective. If you're chasing old school sentiment, my favorite is Acme, being a Wile E. Coyote fan ;)
And what strategy do you think that is, Bruce? What does my pseudonym have to do with "Yuri's" tactics? Nothing at all.
I find that the various groupies often attack me. Because they are pie-eyed over their Substack rock star, whoever he or she is. May be someone different next week.
In fact, if you read the fine print, the Substack platform advises that commenters use pseudonyms. For cyber-security. We live in that age. Ahem...
You hadn't noticed?
I apologize for using humor. Didn't know it would be so upsetting.
If that was humour, you didn't do a very good job at it, Bruce. Came across as not really knowing what you were talking about, actually. I think your response here is a distraction from it.
But tomorrow's another day 😁.
Don't forget, humor is for flexible minds and knows no arrogance.
The iconoclastic erasure of American history -- the DNC/CCP/Davos installation of the managerial/surveillance totalitarian autocracy-- continues. A conscious reconnection with American history and the part our ancestors lived and played in it is a first step to national sanity. A conscious remembering of who and where we came from will begin the healing. Depart the psyop and live.
O F F S
09/10/25: Charlie Kirk has changed everything. To Massachusetts, no doubt celebrating tonight, I say, GO ICE!
This would be a good place for Karen to inform us (once more) that Matt’s a mysoginist.
True enough, Dave. She charges in at the oddest times, doing 200 mph.
I will take her on, woman to woman. I have been a life-long non-feminist. And I get my thoughts across.
"Massachusetts wants to make its emblem an ode to Ivy League circle-jerking that looks suspiciously like a Comintern flag designed by Currier and Ives ..."
Fecking brilliant, Matt.
I also accused the crimson flag of being reminiscent of China and the USSR.
Reminds of what somebody said about the change to the Land O' Lakes butter logo: They kept the land, but got rid of the Indian.
And then there’s the Washington Commanders dumbfuckery… the Native American Chief erased AGAIN by virtue signaling (racist) white liberals. Who wants the Redskins name back with the Chief on the helmets besides President Trump? Yes, that’s right, MOST Native Nation’s Chiefs.
In true anti-hilarious fashion, here's the summary from Google's AI:
"The logo historically associated with the Washington "Redskins" was designed in the early 1970s by Walter "Blackie" Wetzel, a Blackfeet tribal chairman and president of the National Congress of American Indians. The design depicted the profile of Chief John Two Guns White Calf and was intended by Wetzel to be a symbol of unity among Native Americans."
Perfect -- ban a logo as racist that was created by a prominent Native American who designed it to reflect the unity among Native Americans by utilizing the image of a famous Native American.
Outis - It's the same mentality that produced the latinx fiasco. Lefty Anglos with no respect, appreciation, nor working knowledge of Spanish tried to bastardize the language for ideological purposes. The vast majority of latinos/latinas ridiculed and ignored the assault on their culture so that latinx currently has the acceptance and credibility it deserves: none at all.
May I suggest that Massachusetts adopt the Redskins old logo and make that their flag with one alteration. Have a composite of Tim Walz holding a tampon dispenser appear next to the logo.
It's a more accurate representation of what Massachusetts has become.
I recently had the opportunity to stay at Appalachian Mountain Club huts up in the White Mountains. Beautiful huts in remote locations full of well off white progressives up from Boston. All run by AMC, a wonderfully woke tax exempt headquartered in the hyper wealthy enclave of Boston's Beacon Hill.
Every single thing in the huts is airlifted in by helicopter (like Al Gore's jet, its the good kind of CO2) or lugged up on the backs of the summer help.
So what does this have to do with Massholes and Tim Walz? Each men's room featured a carefully curated shrine to feminine hygiene products. Tampons, pads, and who knows what else laid out on nice little tray and free for the taking. But oddly untouched.
Nothing says the great outdoors like the sight of tampons in the morning!
Are we erasing Indians again? Well done you princes of Massachusetts, You Kings of New England.
Ah, the Cider House Rules...
More NEastern insufferability.
I mean, we are built for it
This is the funniest line I've read this month:
The best of the proposed new flags looks like an AI result for “Seaside nuclear accident”
Perfect example of why I will never cancel my subscription to Matt’s substack
I am surprised that the new state flag doesn't have the visage of Senator Warren on it, so long as we are being sensitive to Indigenous people and turkeys...
Awesome!
"The colonialists were brutal. And so were many conquered tribes".
It was all about survival in a very tough environment. Evolution built-in those instincts to both groups. Though the leftwing apologists think that the colonial types should have come all that way just to lie down and die.
I had an ancestor arrive in Massachusetts in 1650, as a young soldier and indentured servant captured by the British Army in a battle in Scotland. He worked his time, then learned a trade and had a family. Was killed soon after in an Indian raid.
Life's tough for many people. Not just the designated "oppressed" class.
Thank you for sharing this illustrative and poignant family story. Your comment is to the point. I am reminded of a famous Richard Dawkins quote:
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
That humans have managed to develop a sense of ethos in which we can even consider alternatives to basic survival is key. That we don't always live by this ethos or even wind up mangling it is unsurprising. What is important is that we have the capacity to recognize that there is some notion of "right" and "wrong"
What is so tragic about this modern...for lack of a better term...moral inversion is that is diminishes that key attribute of having a sense of ethos...with all its twists and turns and putative self-contradictions...and replaces it with a cartoon used as unfocused, unthinking penitence in ritualized, faux-religious self-abasement.
Or..."Nature is red, in tooth and claw" (Alfred Tennyson).
I read Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" a long time ago. He was correct in many ways, but he had a few sins of omission too, in my mind.
Are you a writer by profession. Because that was excellent.
Thank you for the kind encouragement -- no, I'm not, but harbor secret aspirations.
Once again, thank you!
I can tell you about that sense of ethos and how it was developed....or likely so. In the past 5000 years. One of my research interests. Sargon of Akkad of Mesopotamia, and then Judeo-Christianity are likely to have had much to do with it.
You could also read into the Freudian work of Id/Ego/Superego. How we are born with instinctual Id, but the Ego and Superego must be carefully developed.
" 'The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.' "
Amen (to Dawkins).
"What is important is that we have the capacity to recognize that there is some notion of 'right' and 'wrong' "
I'd revise that a bit, to: "... some notions in common ...". Otherwise, it's just as brutal as the rest of life on earth.
" ... replaces it with a cartoon used as unfocused, unthinking penitence in ritualized, faux-religious self-abasement"
Could you unpack this?
I'll try to -- happily!
I was trying to characterize the inclination to react to particular "types" of stories in a highly "reflexive" fashion: that is, the response is often not one of analysis but of seizing the opportunity to virtue signal with a display lamenting that which is basically the source of their own self-comfort.
That is, people will complain about "the west" or "capitalism" or whatever symbol seems acceptable to the horde while also not giving up on iota of their own self-comfort.
I'll give it one last try and hopefully will be less oblique: think of all the college protests by pampered kids crawling over each other trying to establish who's the biggest revolutionary on campus? None of it means anything, it's all just an ostentatious display by people who have benefitted most from the "system" they protest...and, as noted, they have no honest intent of sacrificing any of their own comforts.
This is all so pathetic. I just bought the whole Britannica series circa 1982, per Walter's mention on Tucker. We must keep our facts straight. Hold on to them. The insecurity running through the veins of this country is merciless. You, Mr. Taibbi, are brilliant. Love your turn of phrase. You're one of the few who make me laugh through tears.
how much does one of them things cost??
Glad you called out Minnesota's new flag. (Great description, too!) After it was announced that we were getting a new flag and these are our options, the residents complained. After the new flag was announced, only 23% of the state liked it, while half of the state wanted to go back to the old one. (The remaining population wanted anything else.) Apparently, public opinion doesn't matter when virtue signaling is on the line.
The line that the new MN state flag "looks like a Somali swim team uniform" was a gem.
This was priceless too: The best of the proposed new flags looks like an AI result for “Seaside nuclear accident”:
The Fukushima Flag
I will be burning the new MA flag in protest LOL. I mean the history in this state is amazing and the Democrats are sure to erase all of it.
My thoughts exactly. Can we a 2025 Flag Burning party?
The correct, soon to be former Mass flag should become synonymous with the Gadsden flag (and I already have an AR mag decorated with it).
Speaking as a historian, the new flags and seals are like a great forgetting. What happened to explaining the context of these symbols and valuing what they tell us about ourselves and our history: the good, the bad, and the ugly?
Oh well. Soon I suppose all historians will be replaced by AI "experts" programmed by our masters.
hahaha....introducing... "the great forget". :)
This is “Year Zero with American Characteristics”
🎯
Those turkey feathers have me wondering how you symbolize "progress" by constantly going around in a circle.
Congrats on making the butthole flag from Community a real thing, Massholes.
This redesign of State flags is a nationwide attempt to erradicate our heritage. It is intentional and it is doing a great job of eliminating our heritage. The same happend in Utah. I despise our new flag.