And here we go, devolving into name calling and narcissistic, elitist garbage. You cannot explain "how to be a good person" because, as you so aptly illustrated, you do not know what it means.
Leftism is definitionally authoritarianism. It is the superseding of individual rights in favor of the particular Leftist’s notion of the “greater good.” That is all Leftism has ever been.
I always recommend Vasily Grossman's two-volume work "Stalingrad" and "Life and Fate". Together they are like the "War and Peace" for WWII.
What you see in exquisite detail is Hitler's fascism versus Stalin's communism and how they both are horrible police states.
The lesson is that the tendency toward authoritarian control arises from factors that have nothing to do with any left-right economic philosophies. It can arise in any modern state.
So if you don't like the "left" you can blame it on their philosophy, and if you don't like the "right" you can blame it on theirs. But both miss the point of how these regimes arise (which is a much more complex problem).
I have read almost everything available on these topics, Sandra. Out of the academic silo, so to speak. I find that you must use a cross-disciplinary approach to discover the accurate patterns and details.
There was Gustave Le Bon writing about bizarre group behaviour back in 1895. Eric Hoffer in the 1950s. Elaine Hatfield took on social contagion, but the conclusions could have been better. F. Conway/Siegelmann wrote in the 70s about the Mind-snap. The work of Ted Patrick at that time was an on-the-ground look.
John D. Goldhammer and Robert Cialdini each took on the subject of Influence and how this is achieved. Then you have a line of Anthropologists dealing in cultural approaches to mind-influence. William Sargant and Joost Meerloo took this apart in detail. There is all the literature on hypnotism, as well.
Also to be covered is Bowlby's Attachment Theory (Evolutionary Science and Human Development), which I consider pivotal. Beyond all of this, many of the seeds of understanding here will be found in the vast array of literature concerning the Cluster-B disorders (as you have mentioned). The classic Lobaczewski book on Political Ponerology is a must.
Cannot forget Carl Jung and what he had to say about Shadow Possession.
After being through all of this for many years, I tend to think the Cluster-B disorders -- using the predator role -- meet in the middle with the prey mentality....or those who have dependency needs (Arthur Deikman).
It is the partnering of both versions of survival needs, at the polar ends of the same spectrum, which produces totalitarianism of all types.
I find that Alexandra Stein briefly hit the nail on the head in her book "Terror, Love and Brainwashing". But only so far as clarifying one aspect of the cause. Then she trails off when trying to deal with what should be done to heal this. There is too much emphasis with everyone about "exit counselling" from cults and not enough about how to get them to exit to begin with. How is the mind restored enough to want to escape?
I am never surprised to learn that someone in one totalitarian group was raised in another. Or that they have been in several such groups as adults. This pattern goes so far as to be intergenerational. I was reading some years ago of a father who tragically took his own life due to having been through the ringer of Parental Alienation and the Family Court system. He has been raised as a Jehovah's Witness who was shunned and discarded by his family as a teenager. You tend to find these same issues (in one form or another) throughout a family and its generations.
I have a neighbor who was raised in a northern California commune. Real far north, literally and in the more disturbing way, figuratively, having never quite been able to acknowledge her disorder. When I learned about her upbringing, it provided some clarity for why she is so bizarre today. For her the abnormal is normal. Which is why she seems to fit in so well in my progressive town, which went for Kamala 82% on November 5. My point is, this neighbor might be disturbed but she simply cannot believe Kamala did not win. I mean she's dug into this idea that 82% percent in Montclair, New Jersey means that there's something deeply wrong with the rest of America and at least we should think about it, that maybe Kamala did win and all the papers are lying and even Gayle King on CBS is lying and NPR is just struggling to get around the censors to tip us off that Kamala won. In fact, maybe it's me who's crazy but I am beginning to think this is how NPR and many of its defenders experience the world. To them it's infuriating because it is a riddle they simply cannot solve. It's two separate realities and one holds the real truth which the rest of us cannot see.
Not just left or right, Dave. The degree matters here. Think of a spectrum, with two polar ends and then all that space in the middle. Totalitarianism resides on each polar end. You will not find it in the balanced middle.
...But the Nazis defended the capitalist class and their political and economic system while the Communists fought to defend the class interests of the working class and to overthrow the capitalist class and their economic system and to build a socialist economic system - two completely counterposed political movements.
The economics of these situations was not really the point, however. It was just an aside. A tool, at most.
CCP China is as Communist totalitarian as the USSR had been. And yet China is heavily into capitalism, while the USSR was not.
The issue within totalitarianism is not economics. The issue is about complete control of the followers or underlings/serfs. The economic/financial policies are simply another means of control, if there is any emphasis in that department at all.
For instance, the situation known as Parental Alienation within a family is a version of totalitarianism. The alienator is a Cluster-B personality and the target parent is a "Goodist". The alienator parent uses the joint children as tools of control against the other parent, in the same manner the alienator parent will use any other tool of control at their disposal. Including finances.
The equating of fascists with communists and socialists is as inaccurate and politically disorienting as any political "analysis" can possibly be. If the Nazis were "left-wing", and the socialists and communists were also "left-wing" then why did they try to kill each other everywhere that they met on a battlefield? The Nazis were pro-capitalist right-wingers funded by German industrialists and aristocrats and led by petit-bourgeois ultra-conservatives; the socialist and communist movements grew organically out of the trade union movement; they were based upon, funded by and their membership and leadership consisted primarily of members of the working class - two entirely different social classes, whose class interests were and are diametrically opposed to each other.
“We are socialists, because we see in socialism, that means, in the fateful dependence of all folk comrades upon each other, the sole possibility for the preservation of our racial genetics and thus the re-conquest of our political freedom and for the rejuvenation of the German state.”
This comment about the superiority of National Socialism over Marxist socialism is also attributed to Goebbels: “The communists are fools. They try to take over industry. We Nazis are smarter. We take over the industrialist.”
Will you please lay off the Puritans! THEY fled Europe and England in order to practice their love for God according to the teachings of the Bible! They did not force anyone to come with them. They did not force anyone to stay with them but did hold fellow Puritans accountable to their own confessed beliefs. (Maybe you've heard of the concept, obey the law.) Any adverse outcomes a la 'The Scarlet Letter' were absolutely self-inflicted. "You people" whoever you are love to grab religion by the neck and shake until dead or at least until your audience hates it sufficiently to suit you. If you bother to read the last three chapters of the Book of the Revelations in the Bible, you will see the perfect Millennial Kingdom of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. BUT after 1000 years (a millennium) the final judgment will come. Now WHY would God need to judge His own perfect Kingdom ruled by His own Son? BECAUSE those perfectly saved original inhabitants gave birth to sinners who gave birth to more sinners and only sinners, and so on. Those sinners sin fairly continuously. They really won't like being told what they should do and how to do it, not even by the perfectly loving Son of God. And unfortunately for them but rightfully so they will be cast into the lake of fire with the devil and his cohorts and with hell itself. Tell me you don't see that as a cult. OR tell me that you do, and I'll know for sure where you stand and so will you.
No...I cannot agree with you here. And I consider myself Christian.
However, the salient point which you (and the ultimately murderous Puritans) missed is this. That degree matters. When you consider yourself so "good" that you kill others for disagreeing with you....you have crossed the line into the opposite sphere of evil. Jesus Christ would have been horrified by the witch-hunts of those Puritans.
Radical Islam is rightwing totalitarianism, just as the Puritans were. Two peas in a pod. So were the movers and shakers of the Spanish Inquisition. You will have to get your head around that.
Healthy Christianity lives in the middle of the spectrum.
AKA, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, . . . I think that is the middle, BUT —- the Left tells us is based on an oppressor/oppressed dynamic that precludes us from embracing our historic documents. So no middle earth on the leftist map.
Today I happened to watch “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the movie, 1973. I am sure I saw it that year, and pretty sure I haven’t seen it since. Also pretty sure I wasn’t that impressed at that time in the film, although I had the album released years before and loved it. Sang along with it all the time.
Today I was moved by the film. A 1973 movie, based on a 1970 album, based on an allegedly 2,000 years old story. It was good, and the lyrics are so fitting for today. Judas admonishing Jesus, (paraphrasing) “Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication . . .” Brilliant.
Of course a billionaires choice is better . Many decisions require correction . Whose interest will be served ? How can the interest of the many be served ? Who has a right to be mistaken ?
A near runner-up is women who insist that feminism has nothing to do with WOKE totalitarianism, even though it "just happens" to be a pillar of their DEI policy.
Feminism, unless as a mere part of (unbiased and unweighted) universal sufferage, dwindles into a cult - and one of many such. Intersectionality, if it were translated as "never send to know for whom . . . " etc., would be great. As it exists, a gawdawful "hierarchy" of victim levels, it's an anti-democratic cancer on the body politic. Is it Stage IV yet? Or could the republic still be salvageable? I don't know the answer.
Every time I make a comment on nextdoor about media bias and how I encourage people to take a step back and look at it more objectively I get laugh 😂 emoji responses and that's it! No actual word rebuttal. It's so telling. I live in SF so there's that ...
We don't even have to travel back in time to your days in Russia - just look at what's happening in Canada right now. The CBC is a reliable mouthpiece for the Liberals, who complain when the Conservatives point this out. "ATTACK ON JOURNALISM!" they scream in unison, while also maneuvering to destroy the independent media by freezing them out of briefings or grants.
"We decide who is and isn't a journalist" is almost as dangerous as "We decide what is and isn't legal speech" -- and for the same exact reason.
IDK if you're aware, but the Canadian Government now FUNDS many MSM outlets. For example, the biggest newspaper, the Toronto Star, gets half a billion a year from the Canadian government. Taibbi & Douglas Murray did a debate on this in Canada a couple of years ago (and won, btw).
I live in Canada and haven't watched ANY MSM news in years. Nevertheless, the stranglehold they have on public opinion up here is... well... frightening.
To the point where TOMORROW I'm heading to the US Embassy to have my US passport renewed (been out of date for some time)
A journalist is someone who has been hired to collect information and to write it for public consumption, by a company that will profit financially from this.
Apart from the state media.....this is a business. And even then, the employees of state media are employees like everyone else.
There are no formal credentials to become a journalist. Nor is there any professional body overseeing this. They are not licensed. Many Journalists in earlier eras had just grade 12. If even that. And in the last generation, the ante may have been upped to an undergrad degree in some cases. Or a Community College diploma in newsroom procedures. In other words, most journalists cannot possibly be omniscient gods. They simply pull material off the wire or the internet.
Those MSM journalists who are like like Matt (and Walter), thinking for themselves, are in the minority.
If you are legally filming the police stop at the corner, you're a journalist. If you're doing the research and publishing your findings, you're a journalist -- even if nobody is paying you. That means the freedom of press protects us all, because we are all capable of being the press.
Indeed. The only activism journalists should engage in is actively seeking out facts and reporting them accurately. Of course, most won't have Matt's style, but that's a summer place on Moot Point.
That's my #1 goal - along with linking the primary documents so my readers can go over them and come to their own conclusions. Trying to find primary documents in a mainstream media article is like overturning pebbles looking for dinosaurs hiding underneath.
Yes, exactly. I am not in favour of licensing. The idea does get thrown around a fair bit though, especially in Canada. So I thought it was worth mentioning.
Ha- sometimes I am late to the party because I am saving it for when I savor it AND the comments! My two cents (again) I think Matt, and maybe people as much as 10 years younger, were the last generation to be taught a) substance b) critical thinking, and c) adversarial journalism. Now we have two decades of a) indoctrination and b) advocacy journalism. So the modern journalist just repeats Maryland man wrongfully deported instead of saying, "that doesn't sound like the whole story, is there more to this?" And then finds out that the Maryland Man is illegal Salvadoran gang member who was supposed to be deported, just not to el Salvador at the time, because a rival gang (that is now defunct) might kill him at his mom's (now defunct) pupusa stand. Did I mention he was stopped with 8 people in his car, speeding, with no insurance and an expired license on his way from TX to MD? Did I also mention apparently, he beats his wife? I learned all that because real journalists still exist. From the legacy media and state media, it is still Maryland Dad, wrongly deported...
I can't emphasize this enough - journalists worth their salt (aka, the ones trying to inform rather than persuade) will link to the source documents so readers can make up their own minds. In this case, nearly all the evidence was immediately available in the court documents. (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69777799/abrego-garcia-v-noem/)
When "journalists" are carefully wording statements to be technically true but wildly misleading, it's time to stop paying attention to them. (This also goes for people who repeat "He sometimes gives buddies a ride to the jobsite" without mentioning the trip was TEXAS TO MARYLAND.)
Yes! When they sound like attorneys for the defense cherry picking the facts to tell a one sided story... As an aside, my father was NYPD and he used to tell this story about how during arraignments defense counsel would ask that defendants be released without bail because they had ties to the community and were not flight risks and evidence of ties to the community was that all their previous arrests were in the same part of the city!
For me, it was the trucker protests. I spent hours and hours watching livestreams and then comparing that to the coverage in the mainstream media. (Overwhelmingly from what I saw, there were ZERO problems until the police showed up and started raising a fuss.)
Trudeau refused to meet with the protestors (had "covid", he said) and then declared them terrorists and froze bank accounts and donations. (Even from Americans.) Here's one of many articles I wrote at the time about what this portends for all of us:
This is 100% what the Biden/Harris faction of the Democrats had in store for "insurrectionist" Republicans. And now we see the banning of candidates/overturning elections in Belgium and Germany.
TL;DR: I pay attention to Canada because that's our future in America if we're not careful.
In any totalitarian situation, you will see patterns across the board.
Remember the way all of the Western nations were in bizarre lockstep during COVID0-mania? It never really stopped.
This lockstep behaviour can be seen in the Cluster-B disorders too. A Cluster-B type in one country will behave in much the same bizarre way as a Cluster-B type stranger in another country.
One of the creepiest aspects of the Covid era was the way that most nations just fell into line over alleged Covid mitigation efforts. Seeing the same reaction from multinational corporations also freaked me out.
I read a Holocaust memoir in grade 5 or 6, and never stopped asking how/why 60+ million Germans went collectively mad/evil in the 1930s. Then I grew up and studied it all.
The phenomenon appeared again in lesser numbers in the cult craziness of the 70s. Further appearances as various renditions of Neo-Marxism.
And then COVID-mania came along and minds were captured en masse.
This is not a one-off. It has been encountered throughout our history on earth. Although mass communication has had the effect of spreading it at lightning speed across vast distances.
They were bought off. Starting with the WHO and trickling down from there. Once the narrative hit the rank-and-file (at say, the CDC), they were going to "follow the science" -- even if what they were saying was a lie.
Example that popped into my mind was the HHS wanting to give kids extra credit in science for getting jabbed. That wasn't handed down from the WHO, it was just a bureaucrat brainstorming the question "how can we get more kids jabbed"?
In Washington state, we a had a "West Coast pact", in which the states would all do the same thing. It's not a coincidence the states (WA/OR/CA) were enthusiastically all-in on the Gates/WEF/CCP agenda.
That's the real struggle right now. The globalists and their depop/replacement agenda, and the rest of us. You see that fight playing out in nearly every country. Most places are failing, Canada included.
I found it a bit more than coincidental that three major Anglosphere nations have had important elections in the last week -- Britain, Canada and Australia.
Britain had already made the exceedingly foolish move in the last general election of voting-in Labour in a vast number of ridings in order to "punish" the Conservatives. I saw this as the mind-blindness phase. They appeared to have to hit rock bottom, like a denying Alcoholic, before they could come to their senses and improve. Labour being in power gave them rock bottom, alright.....
This week, in mid-term local elections, it was a bloodbath for Labour. And for the other major party -- Conservatives. Instead, the party of the middle-ground/third way cleaned up. REFORM Party. Britons just had to learn the very hard way first.
Perhaps Australians and Canadians are in the earlier phase of this awakening, in which they must hit rock bottom in order to wake up and advance (because they will not voluntarily open their eyes). They both re-elected far-leftwing governments. Mind you, in Canada the popular vote came near an even split between Liberals of the far-left and Conservatives of the centre-right. Problem is that everyone will have to suffer the awakening lesson of the mind-blind of the population. Ouch!
"We decide who is and isn't a journalist" is almost as dangerous as "We decide what is and isn't legal speech" -- and for the same exact reason." - Emphatically agree.
But in these times of spiralling double standards, censoring / deporting critics of Israel is considered OK by the same people who saw the dangers of censoring conservatives and covid truth-ers. Some Israel criticism may cross lines into support for terrorism or actual anti-Semitism, but mostly those are pretexts to clamp down on narratives they don't want to be heard ... and the gov't takes orders from super-creepy groups (which glorify violence, but they support Isreal so they're allowed to "demand blood") ... groups that have a cult-like mindset similar to the most virulent trans activists ...
An outfit such as FAIR to come out with such an article is well, kinda scary.
The rot goes THAT deep? JHC.
Thanks for staying in the game, Matt. I hope you realize just how needed people such as you & Walter (a real step up from your last co-contributor who I won't even name) are in the current eco-system.
I say this b/c I'm pretty sure you have FU $ now. And yet, you're still in the trenches w/the rest of us.
"strong public media systems and open democracy go hand in hand" lolol
Someone needs to explain to these people that the rest of us have lived wide-eyed through: the Russia hoax, the Covid lockdowns, the Covid lockdowns being paused for BLM protests (because White Supremacy is the real health emergency!), the "vaccines stop the spread" lie, the Hunter Biden laptop and the MSM's total refusal to investigate any corruption by the Bidens, and then the cherry on top: the total cover-up of a senile President who was supposedly "sharp as a tack" and the personal attacks on anyone who claimed otherwise.
How can we explain to these people that credibility is like virginity and that once you lose it you can never get it back? Is there any force on this planet that could get America's media class to take a long look in the mirror and realize that they became everything they claimed to hate and oppose?
Our journalist class are like the town whore who believes they're entitled to deliver the Sunday sermon. Their greatest skill is an impenetrable, delusional self-regard.
Mayorkas is to the border what Donald Rumsfeld was to Iraq, a shamelessly brazen liar desperate to hide his long trail of disasters, aided by a complicit MSM.
Also,"... border patrol agents were accused of whipping Haitian migrants as they crossed the border into Del Rio, Texas. But as it turns out...no whipping actually occurred..."
My wife is friends w a few NYT writers and it's not just that "they still don't get it", it's that they live so deeply wedged inside reinforcing bubbles—social, political, career, intellectual etc—that they rarely encounter an opposing idea and when they do, they've been conditioned to be immediately hostile and suspicious. All their incentives point to "Support the Good Team, Oppose the Bad One", so it's become second nature for them to repeat the approved narratives and then go to bed at night dreaming sweet dreams about "defending democracy". Cognitive dissonance can be like a zit or a rash—you notice them much less when all your friends have them too.
If he wanted to impose authoritarian media wouldn't it make more sense to keep public radio/tv and change their message to his own? Seems defunding it does the exact opposite.
Nahhh... NPR et al can say whatever the hell they want; I just don't want taxpayers to fund it. I mean, I ignore the psychos out there- Alex Jones, Candy O, and now watching Tucker slip into La-La Land... (I'm not renewing my subscription to Tucker when it expires). They're welcome to say whatever they want. Just don't require people to pay for it.
Any government that feels that it has to tell you how good they are, and how bad the other guys are, even to the point of censoring them, is an illegitimate government.
"If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. "
And the arguments coming from PBS are all about how defunding equals quashing their first amendment rights. Trump is censoring them! What hubris. No media outlet has a right to taxpayer money. PBS betrayed the public's trust and therefore forfeited their privilege to taxpayer dollars.
Some are parading clips of Fred Rogers testifying to the necessity of public broadcasting before Congress in the 1960s. Mr. Rogers never experienced the gaslighting of the PBS we've grown to know and loathe during the Biden administration. Enough. In fact, more than enough. Bye bye!
Yeah - failing to subsidize NPR and PBS is censorship, but demonetizing, deplatforming, cancelling accounts, etc., isn't. What a bassackwards ethos the left has now.
I think they were considering cuts to funding in the 1990's, and everyone was spazzing out, saying that poor children in the ghetto would never learn to read if funding was cut.
I just wondered where all the money from licensing Sesame Street & Electric Company products was going.
I got a seasonal job at Toys R Us one Christmas season & was amazed to see entire aisles devoted to Children's Television Workshop licensed merchandise. Somebody was making money on the deal. Non profit? Pfftt!
I had the opportunity to tour the old Soviet Union several times in the early 70's as part of the US government's "People to People" program. After 6 weeks of nothing but the Moscow Times, Pravda, Izvestia, Trud, and Krokodil I jumped at the chance to read Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report when we hit Stockholm at the end of the tour hoping to catch up on what happened in the world while I was away. That's when it struck me - those publications were just as much state media as what I'd been reading back in the old USSR. They all presented the same stories and they all had the same slant on things. I've never looked at our so-called "free press" the same way since.
In Russian, "Pravda" means "truth" and "Izvestia" means "news". The soviets had a saying back in the day, there's no Pravda in Izvestia and there's no Izvestia in Pravda...and that pretty much sums up our own MSM.
My point? Matt is part of the same system now. Oh, it is charming to think of him as Spider Jerusalem with his “Racket” enterprise, but the guy is nothing but a pundit now. The last bit of shoe leather reporting Matt will probably ever do are the Twitter Files… drip fed to him by the government’s wealthiest contractor. (That’s a real Pentagon Papers legacy! Watch out for ricin-tipped umbrellas, Matt!)
Canadians are "informed" by state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). It is relentlessly pro-socialist and communist, anti-West, anti-Canada, pro-indigenous and anti-"colonial settlers (all non-indigenous Canadians)," pro-Hamas and venomously antisemitic, pro-trans, pro-DEI, pro-feminist and anti-male, and anti-truth. It is thoroughly rotten, which is just fine with the leftist (illiberal) Liberal and Liberal-NDP government. But it doesn't end there. "Respectable" newspapers also get subsidies from the government. The main sources of information in Canada are paid off. Only the unpaid outliers, such as Rebel News, dare to challenge the official government line.
Yeah… like Canadians need an excuse to be anti-American these days. (There’s another topic Matt’s scrotum is a little too empty to tackle: Trump’s “freedom of speech” to threaten military action against every nation in the Northern Hemisphere. You guys seem pretty cool with it, though.)
The thing I most like to do is give someone money then berate them for what they do with it. Matt is not crying all the way to the bank. He's just going there.
One need not "bang on" about it to simply MENTION it. And, of course, it is Matt's prerogative to broach the subject first.
(And really... there AREN'T other things going on in the world. No headline doesn't lead to Trump right now.)
And that is my point: Matt Taibbi will bury you in every arcane grievance he has having to do with censorship at the fringes, but when it comes to the things that are affecting actual people--like the campus protesters thrown into jail-- the guy's tongue is stapled to the roof of his mouth.
So then, what do you think Matt is going to say when CANADIAN green card holders are being picked up by ICE?
The best trolls are funny, though, and you are sadly failing in that regard.
I have a personality quirk, in that I enjoy trolling trolls, so here we are.
The fact is, Matt is writing about whatever strikes his fancy at the moment, and hundreds of us are happy to pay for the privilege of reading his work.
I don't expect Matt, or any other writer I follow, to write to order, & your repeated criticisms are just arrogant & annoying.
You do raise some good issues regarding Trump, but if you expect any of us disgruntled Trump voters to read your work, you need to stop bashing Matt for not writing about the stuff you are interested in, and just start doing your own thing.
"Let a thousand flowers bloom."
There is a market for those who are not afflicted with TDS, but who have valid criticisms of Trump's actions, particularly regarding free speech.
It’s all about the money. We like to think that state subsidized radio is honest, but we all know that big bird doesn’t run it. The people at the top of PBS are arrogant elite, and they think they have a right to the money. I mean after all the American tax payer is stupid and needs someone to tell them that Trump is bad and Biden is sharp as a tack. That Hunters Laptop is no big deal and wearing mask like the government said was certainly right. I thought journalists were suppose to question the government not blindly accept what they say , silly me.
PBS and NPR are just means by which the elite pay themselves enormous salaries at the public's expense. If Trump doubled their salaries on the condition that NPR and PBS become "All MAGA ALL THE TIME", these people would whine but ultimately happily go right along with it.
I thought my 1A rights were specifically set forth to protect me FROM the government. I don’t have to subsidize media of the government, by the government, and for the government. Press, do your job!
The country is broke and quickly going past the point of no return which is maybe 40 trillion in debt. We have to cut at least 600 billion per year over the next 4 years. The 160 billion is not even close. PBS and NPR are dinosaurs. I loved Sesame Street and Bob Ross, it’s all got to go. I repeat that the
country is going broke. Cuts also need to come from across the Potomac.
If you are indeed a GenXer, you and your generation are screwed, thanks to the 40T debt you mentioned. The big money is in defense and, to a MUCH greater extent, entitlements, which make up 2/3’s of all federal spending. Very tough politically to cut, but that’s where the money and waste are..
One of the biggest lies the major media tells is that they want a free media and free speech. That is the last thing they want. Journalists in free countries with free media are and always have been held in very low regard and usually haven't made much money. Journalism was always a lousy, low paying job, that writers did to support themselves while they did serious writing on the side. Many novelists paid the bills as journalists until they became famous as journalists.
In a nation with a state controlled media, journalists are respected and valued members of the regime. State media hacks are the means by which the regime controls the public's access to information. They are held in high regard by the regime and given respected positions with high salaries. Even better, unlike journalists in free countries, state run journalists don't even have be good writers or good at their jobs. They just have to faithfully write whatever they are told to write.
It is the second situation, a secure position of respect and an assured membership in the elite or near elite, that every major media journalist aspires to. They don't want to have to compete on merit. They won't have to scrape by on a low salary. They want to be a part of the elite and have an easy life for the small price of writing whatever they are told to write.
Of course the major media love the idea of state run media.
The White House Press annual gala supports your point. So many intelligent/beautiful elites wearing dress-up. Has “FAIR” started reserving a table at the event? Its piece written about here is stunning. Per FAIR, we rabble really do need that injection of news literacy.
You Taibbots are teaching future historians fresh lessons in how a personality cult operates. I mean, it is blowing out my pre-frontal cortex that only a few years ago every bullet to the brain you guys are lining up for was something that you were terrified that Barrack Obama was going to force on you via FEMA.
Try writing something that makes sense and get back to me. Try using actual words, not made up ones, and sentences that make sense and flow with each other. Sorry, but I don't speak troll.
The funny thing is that I didn't even say anything partisan. What I wrote applies just as well to Fox News or Own as it does PBS or the New York Times. No one wants to be a "journalist". They all want to be an intellectual and part of the winning team.
I actually read it, and you have some legitimate points that should be at least considered, but you lost any hope of being taken seriously with the Penthouse Forum-esque imagery. Try again without the unnecessary bullshit.
I don't know how to trim the fat from my prose as well as Matt does, I'll admit. However, since his sense of humor seems to be bound and gagged in Walter Kirn's basement for the time being, I will try for a more efficient wit.
I tried, man. But I just couldn't read more that just a few paragraphs of your cleverness. Is there such a thing as MTDS? You very well might have it...
I’m the Typhoid Mary of Genocide Derangement Syndrome. “Too clever”… check! By the time you guys are done tuning me you’ll be asking Matt the same questions I am.
The most annoying intellectual tic is the left's conceit that it is never authoritarian.
"We're not authoritarian, our ideas are just so good they're mandatory."
I'm not arguing with you. Just pointing out why you're wrong
"The information is out there. Read a book."
Until you mention that the book you read was "Clinton Cash," and then they spaz out.
"Behind every successful man, stands a woman telling him he's wrong."
-Unknown source. It was on a pot holder on the wall above my mother's stove.
"If the information is not 'good,' burn the books."
Anything counter to their group narrative will be attacked and/or destroyed.
I think their reasoning skills are so atrophied they honestly don’t see the implications of what they spew.
Their critical thinking goes down. They can still do manipulating, but not real logic.
That, is very true
😂 Yes, I can hear them say it.....
"Look, it's called empathy you shitweasel. I can't explain to you how to be a good person. Nazi."
“There’s only one side of an argument when the other side is racism.” (And we’ll decide what’s racist and what isn’t)
And here we go, devolving into name calling and narcissistic, elitist garbage. You cannot explain "how to be a good person" because, as you so aptly illustrated, you do not know what it means.
I love the internet because I'm not sure if Mary didn't get it when writing this comment or if she DID get it and leaned into the joke.
Or, possibly she is on the low end of the IQ ladder.
How can garbage be “elitist” ? Is this leftist secret code?
Have to remember that one!
Leftism is definitionally authoritarianism. It is the superseding of individual rights in favor of the particular Leftist’s notion of the “greater good.” That is all Leftism has ever been.
I always recommend Vasily Grossman's two-volume work "Stalingrad" and "Life and Fate". Together they are like the "War and Peace" for WWII.
What you see in exquisite detail is Hitler's fascism versus Stalin's communism and how they both are horrible police states.
The lesson is that the tendency toward authoritarian control arises from factors that have nothing to do with any left-right economic philosophies. It can arise in any modern state.
So if you don't like the "left" you can blame it on their philosophy, and if you don't like the "right" you can blame it on theirs. But both miss the point of how these regimes arise (which is a much more complex problem).
I just finished explaining all of this with detailed references on the previous Matt Taibbi piece from yesterday.
We are talking about totalitarianism here, whether on the far left or the far right.
Post it again!
This contains a number of casual mentions of the better resources.
____________________________________________________________________________
I have read almost everything available on these topics, Sandra. Out of the academic silo, so to speak. I find that you must use a cross-disciplinary approach to discover the accurate patterns and details.
There was Gustave Le Bon writing about bizarre group behaviour back in 1895. Eric Hoffer in the 1950s. Elaine Hatfield took on social contagion, but the conclusions could have been better. F. Conway/Siegelmann wrote in the 70s about the Mind-snap. The work of Ted Patrick at that time was an on-the-ground look.
John D. Goldhammer and Robert Cialdini each took on the subject of Influence and how this is achieved. Then you have a line of Anthropologists dealing in cultural approaches to mind-influence. William Sargant and Joost Meerloo took this apart in detail. There is all the literature on hypnotism, as well.
Also to be covered is Bowlby's Attachment Theory (Evolutionary Science and Human Development), which I consider pivotal. Beyond all of this, many of the seeds of understanding here will be found in the vast array of literature concerning the Cluster-B disorders (as you have mentioned). The classic Lobaczewski book on Political Ponerology is a must.
Cannot forget Carl Jung and what he had to say about Shadow Possession.
After being through all of this for many years, I tend to think the Cluster-B disorders -- using the predator role -- meet in the middle with the prey mentality....or those who have dependency needs (Arthur Deikman).
It is the partnering of both versions of survival needs, at the polar ends of the same spectrum, which produces totalitarianism of all types.
I find that Alexandra Stein briefly hit the nail on the head in her book "Terror, Love and Brainwashing". But only so far as clarifying one aspect of the cause. Then she trails off when trying to deal with what should be done to heal this. There is too much emphasis with everyone about "exit counselling" from cults and not enough about how to get them to exit to begin with. How is the mind restored enough to want to escape?
I am never surprised to learn that someone in one totalitarian group was raised in another. Or that they have been in several such groups as adults. This pattern goes so far as to be intergenerational. I was reading some years ago of a father who tragically took his own life due to having been through the ringer of Parental Alienation and the Family Court system. He has been raised as a Jehovah's Witness who was shunned and discarded by his family as a teenager. You tend to find these same issues (in one form or another) throughout a family and its generations.
Thanks for the repost.
I have a neighbor who was raised in a northern California commune. Real far north, literally and in the more disturbing way, figuratively, having never quite been able to acknowledge her disorder. When I learned about her upbringing, it provided some clarity for why she is so bizarre today. For her the abnormal is normal. Which is why she seems to fit in so well in my progressive town, which went for Kamala 82% on November 5. My point is, this neighbor might be disturbed but she simply cannot believe Kamala did not win. I mean she's dug into this idea that 82% percent in Montclair, New Jersey means that there's something deeply wrong with the rest of America and at least we should think about it, that maybe Kamala did win and all the papers are lying and even Gayle King on CBS is lying and NPR is just struggling to get around the censors to tip us off that Kamala won. In fact, maybe it's me who's crazy but I am beginning to think this is how NPR and many of its defenders experience the world. To them it's infuriating because it is a riddle they simply cannot solve. It's two separate realities and one holds the real truth which the rest of us cannot see.
Those are great books, suppressed in Russia for many years.
The Nazis were left-wing.
Both Nazis and Communists were totalitarian. Which is the main point.
Bernie Gunther, Philip Kerr's character, would agree with you.
https://berniegunther.com/
I just looked at the website. Could be right up my alley, those books. An entire delicious set of them.
Thank you for the suggestion, Kathleen.
Right, whether left or right, they were totalitarian.
Not just left or right, Dave. The degree matters here. Think of a spectrum, with two polar ends and then all that space in the middle. Totalitarianism resides on each polar end. You will not find it in the balanced middle.
...But the Nazis defended the capitalist class and their political and economic system while the Communists fought to defend the class interests of the working class and to overthrow the capitalist class and their economic system and to build a socialist economic system - two completely counterposed political movements.
The economics of these situations was not really the point, however. It was just an aside. A tool, at most.
CCP China is as Communist totalitarian as the USSR had been. And yet China is heavily into capitalism, while the USSR was not.
The issue within totalitarianism is not economics. The issue is about complete control of the followers or underlings/serfs. The economic/financial policies are simply another means of control, if there is any emphasis in that department at all.
For instance, the situation known as Parental Alienation within a family is a version of totalitarianism. The alienator is a Cluster-B personality and the target parent is a "Goodist". The alienator parent uses the joint children as tools of control against the other parent, in the same manner the alienator parent will use any other tool of control at their disposal. Including finances.
Communism and fascism are just different flavors of collectivism. The differences are minor compared to the similarities.
One wants to nationalize the private sector while the other wants to conscript it.
Exactly.
The equating of fascists with communists and socialists is as inaccurate and politically disorienting as any political "analysis" can possibly be. If the Nazis were "left-wing", and the socialists and communists were also "left-wing" then why did they try to kill each other everywhere that they met on a battlefield? The Nazis were pro-capitalist right-wingers funded by German industrialists and aristocrats and led by petit-bourgeois ultra-conservatives; the socialist and communist movements grew organically out of the trade union movement; they were based upon, funded by and their membership and leadership consisted primarily of members of the working class - two entirely different social classes, whose class interests were and are diametrically opposed to each other.
Why do you say that?
Joseph Goebbels on why Nazis are socialists:
“We are socialists, because we see in socialism, that means, in the fateful dependence of all folk comrades upon each other, the sole possibility for the preservation of our racial genetics and thus the re-conquest of our political freedom and for the rejuvenation of the German state.”
https://fee.org/articles/joseph-goebbels-own-words-show-he-loved-socialism-and-saw-it-as-the-future/
This comment about the superiority of National Socialism over Marxist socialism is also attributed to Goebbels: “The communists are fools. They try to take over industry. We Nazis are smarter. We take over the industrialist.”
YES!
If you want to get technical (which I tend to become, on this topic), WOKE leftwing-ism is a form of totalitarianism.
But then again, so is extreme rightwing-ism, as in the 17th century Puritans or modern religious cults, or radical Islam.
Either extreme end of that spectrum of thought/behaviour becomes totalitarian.
The lesson being....live in the balanced middle.
Will you please lay off the Puritans! THEY fled Europe and England in order to practice their love for God according to the teachings of the Bible! They did not force anyone to come with them. They did not force anyone to stay with them but did hold fellow Puritans accountable to their own confessed beliefs. (Maybe you've heard of the concept, obey the law.) Any adverse outcomes a la 'The Scarlet Letter' were absolutely self-inflicted. "You people" whoever you are love to grab religion by the neck and shake until dead or at least until your audience hates it sufficiently to suit you. If you bother to read the last three chapters of the Book of the Revelations in the Bible, you will see the perfect Millennial Kingdom of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. BUT after 1000 years (a millennium) the final judgment will come. Now WHY would God need to judge His own perfect Kingdom ruled by His own Son? BECAUSE those perfectly saved original inhabitants gave birth to sinners who gave birth to more sinners and only sinners, and so on. Those sinners sin fairly continuously. They really won't like being told what they should do and how to do it, not even by the perfectly loving Son of God. And unfortunately for them but rightfully so they will be cast into the lake of fire with the devil and his cohorts and with hell itself. Tell me you don't see that as a cult. OR tell me that you do, and I'll know for sure where you stand and so will you.
No...I cannot agree with you here. And I consider myself Christian.
However, the salient point which you (and the ultimately murderous Puritans) missed is this. That degree matters. When you consider yourself so "good" that you kill others for disagreeing with you....you have crossed the line into the opposite sphere of evil. Jesus Christ would have been horrified by the witch-hunts of those Puritans.
Radical Islam is rightwing totalitarianism, just as the Puritans were. Two peas in a pod. So were the movers and shakers of the Spanish Inquisition. You will have to get your head around that.
Healthy Christianity lives in the middle of the spectrum.
Agree with the first part of your post, but I have a different interpretation of Revelation.
AKA, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, . . . I think that is the middle, BUT —- the Left tells us is based on an oppressor/oppressed dynamic that precludes us from embracing our historic documents. So no middle earth on the leftist map.
"AKA, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, . . . "
Yes!
Today I happened to watch “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the movie, 1973. I am sure I saw it that year, and pretty sure I haven’t seen it since. Also pretty sure I wasn’t that impressed at that time in the film, although I had the album released years before and loved it. Sang along with it all the time.
Today I was moved by the film. A 1973 movie, based on a 1970 album, based on an allegedly 2,000 years old story. It was good, and the lyrics are so fitting for today. Judas admonishing Jesus, (paraphrasing) “Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication . . .” Brilliant.
So here we are. Same old same old.
Horseshoe Theory is the epitome of midwittery.
Of course a billionaires choice is better . Many decisions require correction . Whose interest will be served ? How can the interest of the many be served ? Who has a right to be mistaken ?
A near runner-up is women who insist that feminism has nothing to do with WOKE totalitarianism, even though it "just happens" to be a pillar of their DEI policy.
Smack your forehead time.
I say this as a woman, btw.
My favorite is “feminists for Palestine”. That’s like saying “worms for Robbins.”
LOL!! At least the robins eat the worms right away.
This post should really have more than 6 likes.
Feminism, unless as a mere part of (unbiased and unweighted) universal sufferage, dwindles into a cult - and one of many such. Intersectionality, if it were translated as "never send to know for whom . . . " etc., would be great. As it exists, a gawdawful "hierarchy" of victim levels, it's an anti-democratic cancer on the body politic. Is it Stage IV yet? Or could the republic still be salvageable? I don't know the answer.
My point of view is that the feminism introduced in the 60s/70s was toxic Neo-Marxist ideology. Engineered to destroy.
The Neo-Marxists entrapped the gullible youth of that generation through their vanities. Be progressive! Follow us! And so they went over the cliff.
And their second most annoying tic is the notion that their approved media sources -- whether financed by taxpayers or not -- is unbiased.
Every time I make a comment on nextdoor about media bias and how I encourage people to take a step back and look at it more objectively I get laugh 😂 emoji responses and that's it! No actual word rebuttal. It's so telling. I live in SF so there's that ...
Yes
We don't even have to travel back in time to your days in Russia - just look at what's happening in Canada right now. The CBC is a reliable mouthpiece for the Liberals, who complain when the Conservatives point this out. "ATTACK ON JOURNALISM!" they scream in unison, while also maneuvering to destroy the independent media by freezing them out of briefings or grants.
"We decide who is and isn't a journalist" is almost as dangerous as "We decide what is and isn't legal speech" -- and for the same exact reason.
IDK if you're aware, but the Canadian Government now FUNDS many MSM outlets. For example, the biggest newspaper, the Toronto Star, gets half a billion a year from the Canadian government. Taibbi & Douglas Murray did a debate on this in Canada a couple of years ago (and won, btw).
I live in Canada and haven't watched ANY MSM news in years. Nevertheless, the stranglehold they have on public opinion up here is... well... frightening.
To the point where TOMORROW I'm heading to the US Embassy to have my US passport renewed (been out of date for some time)
*Cough* USAID.
They also lie (or were lying) about their funding on their own page. I wrote about this a while back:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/covid-was-years-ago-just-move-on
Things are very concerning here, Jim.
That must have been the last time Murray said anything remotely smart or correct.
A journalist is someone who has been hired to collect information and to write it for public consumption, by a company that will profit financially from this.
Apart from the state media.....this is a business. And even then, the employees of state media are employees like everyone else.
There are no formal credentials to become a journalist. Nor is there any professional body overseeing this. They are not licensed. Many Journalists in earlier eras had just grade 12. If even that. And in the last generation, the ante may have been upped to an undergrad degree in some cases. Or a Community College diploma in newsroom procedures. In other words, most journalists cannot possibly be omniscient gods. They simply pull material off the wire or the internet.
Those MSM journalists who are like like Matt (and Walter), thinking for themselves, are in the minority.
I'll go one step further.
Journalism is an ACTION not (just) a profession.
If you are legally filming the police stop at the corner, you're a journalist. If you're doing the research and publishing your findings, you're a journalist -- even if nobody is paying you. That means the freedom of press protects us all, because we are all capable of being the press.
Used to be called "citizen journalism".
Indeed. The only activism journalists should engage in is actively seeking out facts and reporting them accurately. Of course, most won't have Matt's style, but that's a summer place on Moot Point.
That's my #1 goal - along with linking the primary documents so my readers can go over them and come to their own conclusions. Trying to find primary documents in a mainstream media article is like overturning pebbles looking for dinosaurs hiding underneath.
Suggestion - don't link directly, print the documents to PDFs first. You have a better chance they won't get altered after you've posted them.
God speed!
So many of my covid links have disappeared down the memory hole. Now I have screenshots of pages that no longer exist.
Bear in mind that a centralized credentialing organization would make journalism *more* corruptible, not less.
Yes, exactly. I am not in favour of licensing. The idea does get thrown around a fair bit though, especially in Canada. So I thought it was worth mentioning.
Biden was kicking the idea around as well. The idea is to simply starve out the independent voices by showing the mainstream outlets with cash.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/journalists-biden-bill-tax-credit-local-news-outlets
You took the words out of my mouth. I was about to mention this.
When a Taibbi article hits my inbox, I drop everything to read and comment. :)
Ha- sometimes I am late to the party because I am saving it for when I savor it AND the comments! My two cents (again) I think Matt, and maybe people as much as 10 years younger, were the last generation to be taught a) substance b) critical thinking, and c) adversarial journalism. Now we have two decades of a) indoctrination and b) advocacy journalism. So the modern journalist just repeats Maryland man wrongfully deported instead of saying, "that doesn't sound like the whole story, is there more to this?" And then finds out that the Maryland Man is illegal Salvadoran gang member who was supposed to be deported, just not to el Salvador at the time, because a rival gang (that is now defunct) might kill him at his mom's (now defunct) pupusa stand. Did I mention he was stopped with 8 people in his car, speeding, with no insurance and an expired license on his way from TX to MD? Did I also mention apparently, he beats his wife? I learned all that because real journalists still exist. From the legacy media and state media, it is still Maryland Dad, wrongly deported...
I can't emphasize this enough - journalists worth their salt (aka, the ones trying to inform rather than persuade) will link to the source documents so readers can make up their own minds. In this case, nearly all the evidence was immediately available in the court documents. (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69777799/abrego-garcia-v-noem/)
When "journalists" are carefully wording statements to be technically true but wildly misleading, it's time to stop paying attention to them. (This also goes for people who repeat "He sometimes gives buddies a ride to the jobsite" without mentioning the trip was TEXAS TO MARYLAND.)
Yes! When they sound like attorneys for the defense cherry picking the facts to tell a one sided story... As an aside, my father was NYPD and he used to tell this story about how during arraignments defense counsel would ask that defendants be released without bail because they had ties to the community and were not flight risks and evidence of ties to the community was that all their previous arrests were in the same part of the city!
LMAO
I am very choosy about what I will take the time to read, out of many possibilities. Because of that, I subscribe here.
He's so busy!
2 articles over the weekend, and I always enjoy the comment section, too.
As a Canadian, CBC was great up until 20 years ago.
Long gone are the days of Peter Gzowski, Stuart McLean, and Rex Murphy.
Won't listen to anything on CBC anymore, but I pay for it...
I gave away my TV and stopped listening to CBC about the same time.
Ve have vays of making zese decisions for you. You vill agree viz zem!
Hey Commander.....I am noticing that Americans are paying attention to Canadian politics and culture at long last. How did that happen?
Is it that they are beginning to realize the China factor here?
For me, it was the trucker protests. I spent hours and hours watching livestreams and then comparing that to the coverage in the mainstream media. (Overwhelmingly from what I saw, there were ZERO problems until the police showed up and started raising a fuss.)
Trudeau refused to meet with the protestors (had "covid", he said) and then declared them terrorists and froze bank accounts and donations. (Even from Americans.) Here's one of many articles I wrote at the time about what this portends for all of us:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/for-a-glimpse-of-the-future-look
This is 100% what the Biden/Harris faction of the Democrats had in store for "insurrectionist" Republicans. And now we see the banning of candidates/overturning elections in Belgium and Germany.
TL;DR: I pay attention to Canada because that's our future in America if we're not careful.
Same here.
It was the trucker protests, and the subsequent repression by the Canadian government that got me interested. (Debanking???!!! Come on, Canada!)
Agree that Canada foreshadows our own future.
In any totalitarian situation, you will see patterns across the board.
Remember the way all of the Western nations were in bizarre lockstep during COVID0-mania? It never really stopped.
This lockstep behaviour can be seen in the Cluster-B disorders too. A Cluster-B type in one country will behave in much the same bizarre way as a Cluster-B type stranger in another country.
One of the creepiest aspects of the Covid era was the way that most nations just fell into line over alleged Covid mitigation efforts. Seeing the same reaction from multinational corporations also freaked me out.
It was like almost everyone had been hypnotized.
I read a Holocaust memoir in grade 5 or 6, and never stopped asking how/why 60+ million Germans went collectively mad/evil in the 1930s. Then I grew up and studied it all.
The phenomenon appeared again in lesser numbers in the cult craziness of the 70s. Further appearances as various renditions of Neo-Marxism.
And then COVID-mania came along and minds were captured en masse.
This is not a one-off. It has been encountered throughout our history on earth. Although mass communication has had the effect of spreading it at lightning speed across vast distances.
I wondered that about Nazi Germany, East Germany, China under Mao, and the USSR under Stalin (after reading Gulag Archipelago).
Then Covid happened.
They were bought off. Starting with the WHO and trickling down from there. Once the narrative hit the rank-and-file (at say, the CDC), they were going to "follow the science" -- even if what they were saying was a lie.
Example that popped into my mind was the HHS wanting to give kids extra credit in science for getting jabbed. That wasn't handed down from the WHO, it was just a bureaucrat brainstorming the question "how can we get more kids jabbed"?
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/media-claims-rfk-would-destroy-the
In Washington state, we a had a "West Coast pact", in which the states would all do the same thing. It's not a coincidence the states (WA/OR/CA) were enthusiastically all-in on the Gates/WEF/CCP agenda.
That's the real struggle right now. The globalists and their depop/replacement agenda, and the rest of us. You see that fight playing out in nearly every country. Most places are failing, Canada included.
I found it a bit more than coincidental that three major Anglosphere nations have had important elections in the last week -- Britain, Canada and Australia.
Britain had already made the exceedingly foolish move in the last general election of voting-in Labour in a vast number of ridings in order to "punish" the Conservatives. I saw this as the mind-blindness phase. They appeared to have to hit rock bottom, like a denying Alcoholic, before they could come to their senses and improve. Labour being in power gave them rock bottom, alright.....
This week, in mid-term local elections, it was a bloodbath for Labour. And for the other major party -- Conservatives. Instead, the party of the middle-ground/third way cleaned up. REFORM Party. Britons just had to learn the very hard way first.
Perhaps Australians and Canadians are in the earlier phase of this awakening, in which they must hit rock bottom in order to wake up and advance (because they will not voluntarily open their eyes). They both re-elected far-leftwing governments. Mind you, in Canada the popular vote came near an even split between Liberals of the far-left and Conservatives of the centre-right. Problem is that everyone will have to suffer the awakening lesson of the mind-blind of the population. Ouch!
I am Canadian, Commander. I see it all on the ground, and have done so for many years.
We just find you guys and gals interesting.
Or the BBC...
"We decide who is and isn't a journalist" is almost as dangerous as "We decide what is and isn't legal speech" -- and for the same exact reason." - Emphatically agree.
But in these times of spiralling double standards, censoring / deporting critics of Israel is considered OK by the same people who saw the dangers of censoring conservatives and covid truth-ers. Some Israel criticism may cross lines into support for terrorism or actual anti-Semitism, but mostly those are pretexts to clamp down on narratives they don't want to be heard ... and the gov't takes orders from super-creepy groups (which glorify violence, but they support Isreal so they're allowed to "demand blood") ... groups that have a cult-like mindset similar to the most virulent trans activists ...
https://anotherbetrayedliberal.substack.com/p/context-catastrophes-and-selective
An outfit such as FAIR to come out with such an article is well, kinda scary.
The rot goes THAT deep? JHC.
Thanks for staying in the game, Matt. I hope you realize just how needed people such as you & Walter (a real step up from your last co-contributor who I won't even name) are in the current eco-system.
I say this b/c I'm pretty sure you have FU $ now. And yet, you're still in the trenches w/the rest of us.
Fair For All is a better organization than Fair, imo, and has not yet been compromised.
"strong public media systems and open democracy go hand in hand" lolol
Someone needs to explain to these people that the rest of us have lived wide-eyed through: the Russia hoax, the Covid lockdowns, the Covid lockdowns being paused for BLM protests (because White Supremacy is the real health emergency!), the "vaccines stop the spread" lie, the Hunter Biden laptop and the MSM's total refusal to investigate any corruption by the Bidens, and then the cherry on top: the total cover-up of a senile President who was supposedly "sharp as a tack" and the personal attacks on anyone who claimed otherwise.
How can we explain to these people that credibility is like virginity and that once you lose it you can never get it back? Is there any force on this planet that could get America's media class to take a long look in the mirror and realize that they became everything they claimed to hate and oppose?
Our journalist class are like the town whore who believes they're entitled to deliver the Sunday sermon. Their greatest skill is an impenetrable, delusional self-regard.
You forgot “ the border is secure.”
ahhh good one
Mayorkas is to the border what Donald Rumsfeld was to Iraq, a shamelessly brazen liar desperate to hide his long trail of disasters, aided by a complicit MSM.
Mayorkas goes in the worst Cabinet appointees Hall of Fame.
Is that Hall of Fame behind bars?
And armed Jan 6 insurrectionaries
And it's not like they're actually sorry they're lying, they're just sorry we figured it out.
How many articles have you seen saying "TRUMP PLANS MILITARY PARADE FOR HIS BIRTHDAY?"
Also,"... border patrol agents were accused of whipping Haitian migrants as they crossed the border into Del Rio, Texas. But as it turns out...no whipping actually occurred..."
-The Heritage Foundation
They still don't get it.
My wife is friends w a few NYT writers and it's not just that "they still don't get it", it's that they live so deeply wedged inside reinforcing bubbles—social, political, career, intellectual etc—that they rarely encounter an opposing idea and when they do, they've been conditioned to be immediately hostile and suspicious. All their incentives point to "Support the Good Team, Oppose the Bad One", so it's become second nature for them to repeat the approved narratives and then go to bed at night dreaming sweet dreams about "defending democracy". Cognitive dissonance can be like a zit or a rash—you notice them much less when all your friends have them too.
If he wanted to impose authoritarian media wouldn't it make more sense to keep public radio/tv and change their message to his own? Seems defunding it does the exact opposite.
Nahhh... NPR et al can say whatever the hell they want; I just don't want taxpayers to fund it. I mean, I ignore the psychos out there- Alex Jones, Candy O, and now watching Tucker slip into La-La Land... (I'm not renewing my subscription to Tucker when it expires). They're welcome to say whatever they want. Just don't require people to pay for it.
As I wrote yesterday, if that money and jobs suddenly went to contrarian Substackers, Democrats would be protesting to shut down NPR tomorrow.
Yes, purge the current staff, put in your own lackeys, and it is all good, right FAIR?
It is always amazing the lack of self awareness of the smug left.
Any government that feels that it has to tell you how good they are, and how bad the other guys are, even to the point of censoring them, is an illegitimate government.
VP Vance said pretty much the same in his speech to the EU. We know how well that was received. Telling . . .
"If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. "
And the arguments coming from PBS are all about how defunding equals quashing their first amendment rights. Trump is censoring them! What hubris. No media outlet has a right to taxpayer money. PBS betrayed the public's trust and therefore forfeited their privilege to taxpayer dollars.
Some are parading clips of Fred Rogers testifying to the necessity of public broadcasting before Congress in the 1960s. Mr. Rogers never experienced the gaslighting of the PBS we've grown to know and loathe during the Biden administration. Enough. In fact, more than enough. Bye bye!
Yeah - failing to subsidize NPR and PBS is censorship, but demonetizing, deplatforming, cancelling accounts, etc., isn't. What a bassackwards ethos the left has now.
I think they were considering cuts to funding in the 1990's, and everyone was spazzing out, saying that poor children in the ghetto would never learn to read if funding was cut.
I just wondered where all the money from licensing Sesame Street & Electric Company products was going.
I got a seasonal job at Toys R Us one Christmas season & was amazed to see entire aisles devoted to Children's Television Workshop licensed merchandise. Somebody was making money on the deal. Non profit? Pfftt!
Anne Rudig: Here, here! Very well-said!
I had the opportunity to tour the old Soviet Union several times in the early 70's as part of the US government's "People to People" program. After 6 weeks of nothing but the Moscow Times, Pravda, Izvestia, Trud, and Krokodil I jumped at the chance to read Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report when we hit Stockholm at the end of the tour hoping to catch up on what happened in the world while I was away. That's when it struck me - those publications were just as much state media as what I'd been reading back in the old USSR. They all presented the same stories and they all had the same slant on things. I've never looked at our so-called "free press" the same way since.
In Russian, "Pravda" means "truth" and "Izvestia" means "news". The soviets had a saying back in the day, there's no Pravda in Izvestia and there's no Izvestia in Pravda...and that pretty much sums up our own MSM.
And just wait until you learn how the media, left right and center, sold us on the WMD hoax! Just wait until you find out about THAT!
No shit. Your point?
The MSM is still looking for that yellow cake. Then the future media stars got “embedded” with the military to “report” from the front.
My point? Matt is part of the same system now. Oh, it is charming to think of him as Spider Jerusalem with his “Racket” enterprise, but the guy is nothing but a pundit now. The last bit of shoe leather reporting Matt will probably ever do are the Twitter Files… drip fed to him by the government’s wealthiest contractor. (That’s a real Pentagon Papers legacy! Watch out for ricin-tipped umbrellas, Matt!)
OK, I guess you don't like our host. Thanks for sharing!
Mainstream because the trash from the MSM is starting to flock to Substack too when they've been shitcanned?
Canadians are "informed" by state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). It is relentlessly pro-socialist and communist, anti-West, anti-Canada, pro-indigenous and anti-"colonial settlers (all non-indigenous Canadians)," pro-Hamas and venomously antisemitic, pro-trans, pro-DEI, pro-feminist and anti-male, and anti-truth. It is thoroughly rotten, which is just fine with the leftist (illiberal) Liberal and Liberal-NDP government. But it doesn't end there. "Respectable" newspapers also get subsidies from the government. The main sources of information in Canada are paid off. Only the unpaid outliers, such as Rebel News, dare to challenge the official government line.
Yeah… like Canadians need an excuse to be anti-American these days. (There’s another topic Matt’s scrotum is a little too empty to tackle: Trump’s “freedom of speech” to threaten military action against every nation in the Northern Hemisphere. You guys seem pretty cool with it, though.)
Cry harder.
Fucking broken record player.
The thing I most like to do is give someone money then berate them for what they do with it. Matt is not crying all the way to the bank. He's just going there.
As Milo Yiannopoulos used to say to critics, "Keep whining. You're helping me pay to heat my pool."
What makes you think anyone is cool with anything?
The fact that we aren't constantly banging on about it?
There are other things going on in the world.
I don't get why you regularly show up here to do nothing but complain that Matt isn't covering some OTHER issue near and dear to your heart.
Matt is an independent journalist, and he doesn't need you as an editor.
One need not "bang on" about it to simply MENTION it. And, of course, it is Matt's prerogative to broach the subject first.
(And really... there AREN'T other things going on in the world. No headline doesn't lead to Trump right now.)
And that is my point: Matt Taibbi will bury you in every arcane grievance he has having to do with censorship at the fringes, but when it comes to the things that are affecting actual people--like the campus protesters thrown into jail-- the guy's tongue is stapled to the roof of his mouth.
So then, what do you think Matt is going to say when CANADIAN green card holders are being picked up by ICE?
Look, you are a troll, and I can respect that.
The best trolls are funny, though, and you are sadly failing in that regard.
I have a personality quirk, in that I enjoy trolling trolls, so here we are.
The fact is, Matt is writing about whatever strikes his fancy at the moment, and hundreds of us are happy to pay for the privilege of reading his work.
I don't expect Matt, or any other writer I follow, to write to order, & your repeated criticisms are just arrogant & annoying.
You do raise some good issues regarding Trump, but if you expect any of us disgruntled Trump voters to read your work, you need to stop bashing Matt for not writing about the stuff you are interested in, and just start doing your own thing.
"Let a thousand flowers bloom."
There is a market for those who are not afflicted with TDS, but who have valid criticisms of Trump's actions, particularly regarding free speech.
Peace.
If I'm such a troll, how come I am ignoring you, and how come this is the last time I will respond to you?
Dumbass.
What campus protestors were thrown in jail by the federal government?
If state media and democracy were such a natural fit, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union must have been paragons of democracy.
No. The Nazis "weaponized free speech". Margaret Brennon told me so. Words really fail to describe these people.
It’s all about the money. We like to think that state subsidized radio is honest, but we all know that big bird doesn’t run it. The people at the top of PBS are arrogant elite, and they think they have a right to the money. I mean after all the American tax payer is stupid and needs someone to tell them that Trump is bad and Biden is sharp as a tack. That Hunters Laptop is no big deal and wearing mask like the government said was certainly right. I thought journalists were suppose to question the government not blindly accept what they say , silly me.
PBS and NPR are just means by which the elite pay themselves enormous salaries at the public's expense. If Trump doubled their salaries on the condition that NPR and PBS become "All MAGA ALL THE TIME", these people would whine but ultimately happily go right along with it.
Matt’s been at it this week…excellent work sir!
Like virtually every other leftie org, FAIR had some principles at one time but went nuts when Trump won in 2016.
Trump Derangement Syndrome would be in the DSM, if the APA hadn’t also gone nuts.
I thought my 1A rights were specifically set forth to protect me FROM the government. I don’t have to subsidize media of the government, by the government, and for the government. Press, do your job!
The country is broke and quickly going past the point of no return which is maybe 40 trillion in debt. We have to cut at least 600 billion per year over the next 4 years. The 160 billion is not even close. PBS and NPR are dinosaurs. I loved Sesame Street and Bob Ross, it’s all got to go. I repeat that the
country is going broke. Cuts also need to come from across the Potomac.
And as usual Matt is correct.
I agree I don't care if it left or right.
If you are indeed a GenXer, you and your generation are screwed, thanks to the 40T debt you mentioned. The big money is in defense and, to a MUCH greater extent, entitlements, which make up 2/3’s of all federal spending. Very tough politically to cut, but that’s where the money and waste are..
One of the biggest lies the major media tells is that they want a free media and free speech. That is the last thing they want. Journalists in free countries with free media are and always have been held in very low regard and usually haven't made much money. Journalism was always a lousy, low paying job, that writers did to support themselves while they did serious writing on the side. Many novelists paid the bills as journalists until they became famous as journalists.
In a nation with a state controlled media, journalists are respected and valued members of the regime. State media hacks are the means by which the regime controls the public's access to information. They are held in high regard by the regime and given respected positions with high salaries. Even better, unlike journalists in free countries, state run journalists don't even have be good writers or good at their jobs. They just have to faithfully write whatever they are told to write.
It is the second situation, a secure position of respect and an assured membership in the elite or near elite, that every major media journalist aspires to. They don't want to have to compete on merit. They won't have to scrape by on a low salary. They want to be a part of the elite and have an easy life for the small price of writing whatever they are told to write.
Of course the major media love the idea of state run media.
The White House Press annual gala supports your point. So many intelligent/beautiful elites wearing dress-up. Has “FAIR” started reserving a table at the event? Its piece written about here is stunning. Per FAIR, we rabble really do need that injection of news literacy.
You Taibbots are teaching future historians fresh lessons in how a personality cult operates. I mean, it is blowing out my pre-frontal cortex that only a few years ago every bullet to the brain you guys are lining up for was something that you were terrified that Barrack Obama was going to force on you via FEMA.
Try writing something that makes sense and get back to me. Try using actual words, not made up ones, and sentences that make sense and flow with each other. Sorry, but I don't speak troll.
Yeah I really don’t understand that one
The funny thing is that I didn't even say anything partisan. What I wrote applies just as well to Fox News or Own as it does PBS or the New York Times. No one wants to be a "journalist". They all want to be an intellectual and part of the winning team.
Well, you are speaking to the best one right now! Give my own editorial on Matt a try... plenty of small words for ya!
https://salusasecundussnape.substack.com/p/afraid-or-a-fraud
I actually read it, and you have some legitimate points that should be at least considered, but you lost any hope of being taken seriously with the Penthouse Forum-esque imagery. Try again without the unnecessary bullshit.
I don't know how to trim the fat from my prose as well as Matt does, I'll admit. However, since his sense of humor seems to be bound and gagged in Walter Kirn's basement for the time being, I will try for a more efficient wit.
I tried, man. But I just couldn't read more that just a few paragraphs of your cleverness. Is there such a thing as MTDS? You very well might have it...
I’m the Typhoid Mary of Genocide Derangement Syndrome. “Too clever”… check! By the time you guys are done tuning me you’ll be asking Matt the same questions I am.
Whatever are you babbling about?
I am not a "Taibbot" (whatever the fuck that is) and I was never, ever "terrified" of that POS barry hussein. Disgusted by him? Yes. Terrified? No.