Full-Spectrum Dominance

Even without being a historian (you or me), it’s easy to recognize seminal figures in U.S. history who have articulated the basic ideology behind what has grown to be a maniacal notion of what a world power can and should be. For instance, not very long after the American Revolution and the purported end of the Colonial Era, President James Monroe established the Monroe Doctrine, claiming the entire Western Hemisphere as being within America’s sphere of influence and warning others across the Atlantic not to intervene. Later in the 19th century, Abraham Lincoln responded to the Southern Secession by launching the American Civil War, establishing that no state could leave the Union. A period of isolationism followed, broken when the U.S. joined WWI (unclear to me why the U.S. fought that war). Woodrow Wilson laid out the principles of liberal internationalism in 1917:

The American military, the president told a joint session of Congress, was a force that could be used to make the world “safe for democracy” … Wilson’s doctrine was informed by two main ideas: first, the Progressive Era fantasy that modern technologies and techniques — especially those borrowed from the social sciences — could enable the rational management of foreign affairs, and second, the notion that “a partnership of democratic nations” was the surest way to establish a “steadfast concert for peace.”

from “Empire Burlesque” by Daniel Bessner (Harper’s Magazine, July 2022)

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Note that that bit of rhetoric, “safe for democracy,” has been trotted out for over a century now yet shows no sign of losing its mojo. It helps, of course, that no one really knows what democracy is anymore. The public is subjected to relentless narrative spin and propaganda, bread and circuses, and inferior to nonexistent education that muddies the concept beyond recognition. Ten months prior to the U.S. entry into the next world war, influential American magazine publisher (Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated) Henry Luce added further justification for growing U.S. geopolitical ambitions:

… the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States, which had already been aiding the Allies, officially entered the war. Over the next four years, a broad swath of the foreign policy elite arrived at Luce’s conclusion [from just before the war]: the only way to guarantee the world’s safety was for the United States to dominate it. By the war’s end, Americans had accepted this righteous duty, of becoming, in Luce’s words, “the powerhouse … lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower than the angels.”

from “Empire Burlesque” by Daniel Bessner (Harper’s Magazine, July 2022)

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There has since been no going back, only solidification and strengthening of what is called The American Century (thanks again to Luce) but really represents the spread of a global empire. So much for the end of colonialism, now pursued primarily through other means but still reverting to overt militarism whenever and wherever necessary. Just like civilizations, empires have come and gone throughout human history with power centers shifting somewhat reliably if unpredictably. The American Empire will undoubtedly join others in the dustbin of history no matter whether anyone survives the 21st century to survey the wreckage. Moreover, the illusion that The American Century can be extended is handily dispelled by the Macrofutilist, noting that corporations are leading the charge into the abyss:

Humans have no agency in this world dominated, at every institution and at every level of those institutions, by corporations and states that function as corporations. Under the rubric of the corporation, every public good or resource is under relentless exploitation, subject only to the fictional “control” by political or legal structures. Bolstered by near-total capture of every ancillary human social event or condition, corporations are wonderfully positioned to lead humanity off its cliff of resource degradation and impending scarcity … The horror is so monumental, so vast in its iniquity, so above any moderation, so all-consuming in its reach, so supreme in its command, that the subject of corporate ownership of the means of species destruction risks becoming boring. Who has the right to speak of “resistance” or “change” or “giving back” when all forms of social control are under obdurate corporate ownership?

from Corporations Are the Perfect Vehicle to Drive Humanity to Its Self-Extinction

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Although it’s impossible to establish beyond reasonable doubt who’s actually driving the bus — corporations, the military-industrial complex (those two form a tautology by now), elected members of government, the Deep State, or some other nefarious cabal — it’s probably fair to say that members of each group have taken into their hearts the desire for full-spectrum dominance. That term originally meant complete military control of a theater of war. However, as its very name frankly admits, activities of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government signal a new style of Hobbesian war of all against all has begun. Indeed, what I used to call creeping fascism no longer needs the modifier creeping. The end game may have finally arrived, the evidence being everywhere if one has the fortitude to look.

Wrong Things Getting Done Anyway

The difference between right and wrong is obvious to almost everyone by the end of kindergarten. Temptations persist and everyone does things great and small known to be wrong when enticements and advantages outweigh punishments. C’mon, you know you do it. I do, too. Only at the conclusion of a law degree or the start of a political career (funny how those two often coincide) do things get particularly fuzzy. One might add military service to those exceptions except that servicemen are trained not to think, simply do (i.e., follow orders without question). Anyone with functioning ethics and morality also recognizes that in legitimate cases of things getting unavoidably fuzzy in a hypercomplex world, the dividing line often can’t be established clearly. Thus, venturing into the wide, gray, middle area is really a signal that one has probably already gone too far. And yet, demonstrating that human society has not really progressed ethically despite considerable gains in technical prowess, egregiously wrong things are getting done anyway.

The whopper of which nearly everyone is guilty (thus, guilty pleasure) is … the Whopper. C’mon, you know you eat it do it. I know I do. Of course, the irresistible and ubiquitous fast food burger is really only one example of a wide array of foodstuffs known to be unhealthy, cause obesity, and pose long-term health problems. Doesn’t help that, just like Big Tobacco, the food industry knowingly refines their products (processed foods, anyway) to be hyperstimuli impossible to ignore or resist unless one is iron willed or develops an eating disorder. Another hyperstimulus most can’t escape is the smartphone (or a host of other electronic gadgets). C’mon, you know you crave the digital pacifier. I don’t, having managed to avoid that particular trap. For me, electronics are always only tools. However, railing against them with respect to how they distort cognition (as I have) convinces exactly no one, so that argument goes on the deferral pile.

Another giant example not in terms of participation but in terms of effect is the capitalist urge to gather to oneself as much filthy lucre as possible only to sit heartlessly on top of that nasty dragon’s hoard while others suffer in plain sight all around. C’mon, you know you would do it if you could. I know I would — at least up to a point. Periods of gross inequality come and go over the course of history. I won’t make direct comparisons between today and any one of several prior Gilded Ages in the U.S., but it’s no secret that the existence today of several hundy billionaires and an increasing number of mere multibillionaires represents a gross misallocation of financial resources: funneling the productivity of the masses (and fiat dollars whiffed into existence with keystrokes) into the hands of a few. Fake philanthropy to launder reputations fail to convince me that such folks are anything other than miserly Scrooges fixated on maintaining and growing their absurd wealth, influence, and bogus social status at the cost of their very souls. Seriously, who besides sycophants and climbers would want to even be in the same room as one of those people (names withheld)? Maybe better not to answer that question.

Proxy Tyranny

In the sense that all news is local and all learning is individual, meaning that it’s only when something is individualized and particularized that it takes on context and meaning, I may finally understand (some doubt still) Sheldon Wolin’s term “inverted totalitarianism,” part of the subtitle of his 2006 book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Regrettably, this book is among the (many) dozens that await my attention, so I can’t yet claim to have done the work. (I did catch a long YouTube interview of Wolin conducted by Chris Hedges, but that’s a poor substitute for reading the book.) My process is to percolate on a topic and its ancillary ideas over time until they come together satisfactorily, and my provisional understanding of the issues is closer to “proxy tyranny” than “inverted totalitarianism.”

I daresay most of us conceptualize tyranny and totalitarianism in the bootheel versions that manifested in several 20th-century despotic regimes (and survives in several others in the 21st century, names and locations withheld) where population management is characterized by stomping people down, grinding them into dust, and treating them as an undifferentiated mass. Administrators (e.g., secret police) paid close attention to anyone who might pose a problem for the regimes, and neighbors and family members were incentivized to betray inform on anyone who might be on officialdom’s radar. The 21st-century manifestation is different in that computers do most information gathering — a dragnet thrown over everyone — and we inform on ourselves by oversharing online. Close attention is still paid, but human eyes may never see extensive dossiers (forever records?) kept on each of us until something prompts attention. A further distinction is that in bootheel totalitarianism, intense scrutiny and punishment were ubiquitous, whereas at least in 21st-century America, a sizeable portion of the population can be handily ignored, abandoned, and/or forgotten. They’re powerless, harmless, and inconsequential, not drawing attention. Additionally, there is also no bottom to how low they can sink, as the burgeoning homeless population demonstrates.

If tyranny is normally understood as emanating from the top down, it’s inversion is bottom up. Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism is not a grassroots phenomenon but rather corporate capture of government. While Wolin’s formulation may be true (especially at the time his book was published), government has relinquished none of its power so much as realigned its objectives to fit corporate profit motives, and in doing so, shifted administrative burdens to proxies. Silicon Valley corporations (of the big data type especially) are the principal water carriers, practicing surveillance capitalism and as private entities exercising censorious cancellation of dissenting opinion that no formal government could countenance. Similarly, an entire generation of miseducated social justice warriors scours social media for evidence of noncomforming behavior, usually some offense of the meme of the moment a/k/a “I support the current thing” (though racism is the perennial accusation — an original sin that can never be forgiven or assuaged), waiting to pounce in indignation and destroy lives and livelihoods. Cancel culture is a true bottom-up phenomenon, with self-appointed emissaries doing the work that the government is only too happy to hand off to compliant, brainwashed ideologues.

In the Covid era, nonconforming individuals (e.g., those who refuse the jab(s) or call bullshit on continuously shifting narratives announced by various agencies that lack legal standing to compel anything) are disenfranchised in numerous ways even while the wider culture accepts that the pandemic is indeed endemic and simply gets on with life. Yet every brick-and-mortar establishment has been authorized, deputized, and indeed required to enforce unlawful policies of the moment as proxies for government application of force. Under threat of extended closure, every restaurant, retailer, arts organization, and sports venue demanded the literal or figurative equivalent of “papers please” to enter and assemble. Like the airlines, people are increasingly regarded as dehumanized cargo, treated roughly like the famous luggage ape (and not always without good reason). In most places, restrictions have been lifted; in others they persist. But make no mistake, this instantiation of proxy tyranny — compelling others to do the dirty work so that governments can not so plausibly deny direct responsibility — is the blueprint for future mistreatment. Personally, I’m rather ashamed that fewer Americans stood up for what is right and true (according to me, obviously), echoing this famous admission of moral failure. For my own part, I’ve resisted (and paid the price for that resistance) in several instances.

Thomas Sowell the Closer

In sales and marketing (as I understand them), one of the principal techniques to close a sale is to generate momentum by getting the prospective mark buyer to agree to a series of minor statements (small sells) leading to the eventual purchasing decision (the big sell or final sale). It’s narrow to broad, the reverse of the broad-to-narrow paragraph form many of us were taught in school. Both organizational forms proceed through assertions that are easy to swallow before getting to the intended conclusion. That conclusion could be either an automotive purchase or adoption of some argument or ideology. When the product, service, argument, or ideology is sold effectively by a skilled salesman or spin doctor narrative manager, that person may be recognized as a closer, as in sealing the deal.

Many learn to recognize the techniques of the presumptive closer and resist being drawn in too easily. One of those techniques is to reframe the additional price of something as equivalent to, say, one’s daily cup of coffee purchased at some overpriced coffee house. The presumption is that if one has the spare discretionary income to buy coffee every day, then one can put that coffee money instead toward a higher monthly payment. Suckers might fall for it — even if they don’t drink coffee — because the false equivalence is an easily recognized though bogus substitution. The canonical too-slick salesman no one trusts is the dude on the used car lot wearing some awful plaid jacket and sporting a pornstache. That stereotype, borne out of the 1970s, barely exists anymore but is kept alive by repetitive reinforcement in TV and movies set in that decade or at least citing the stereotype for cheap effect (just as I have). But how does one spot a skilled rhetorician, spewing social and political hot takes to drive custom narratives? Let me identify a few markers.

Thomas Sowell penned a brief article entitled “Point of No Return.” I surmise (admitting my lack of familiarity) that creators.com is a conservative website, which all by itself does not raise any flags. Indeed, in heterodox fashion, I want to read well reasoned arguments with which I may not always agree. My previous disappointment that Sowell fails in that regard was only reinforced by the linked article. Take note that the entire article uses paragraphs that are reduced to bite-sized chunks of only one or two sentences. Those are small sells, inviting closure with every paragraph break.

Worse yet, only five (small) paragraphs in, Sowell succumbs to Godwin’s Law and cites Nazis recklessly to put the U.S. on a slippery slope toward tyranny. The obvious learned function of mentioning Nazis is to trigger a reaction, much like baseless accusations of racism, sexual misconduct, or baby eating. It puts everyone on the defensive without having to demonstrate the assertion responsibly, which is why the first mention of Nazis in argument is usually sufficient to disregard anything else written or said by the person in question. I might have agreed with Sowell in his more general statements, just as conservatism (as in conservation) appeals as more and more slips away while history wears on, but after writing “Nazi,” he lost me entirely (again).

Sowell also raises several straw men just to knock them down, assessing (correctly or incorrectly, who can say?) what the public believes as though there were monolithic consensus. I won’t defend the general public’s grasp of history, ideological placeholders, legal maneuvers, or cultural touchstones. Plenty of comedy bits demonstrate the deplorable level of awareness of individual members of society like they were fully representative of the whole. Yet plenty of people pay attention and accordingly don’t make the cut when offering up idiocy for entertainment. (What fun, ridiculing fools!) The full range of opinion on any given topic is not best characterized by however many idiots and ignoramuses can be found by walking down the street and shoving a camera and mic in their astonishingly unembarrassed faces.

So in closing, let me suggest that, in defiance of the title of this blog post, Thomas Sowell is in fact not a closer. Although he drops crumbs and morsels gobbled up credulously by those unable to recognize they’re being sold a line of BS, they do not make a meal. Nor should Sowell’s main point, i.e., the titular point of no return, be accepted when his burden of proof has not been met. That does not necessary mean Sowell is wrong in the sense that even a stopped close tells the time correctly twice a day. The danger is that even if he’s partially correction some of the time, his perspective and program (nonpartisan freedom! whatever that may mean) must be considered with circumspection and disdain. Be highly suspicious before buying what Sowell is selling. Fundamentally, he’s a bullshit artist.

Nothing Beats Stupid

/rant on

One of my personal favorites among my own blog posts is my remapping of the familiar Rock, Paper, Scissors contest to Strong, Stupid, and Smart, respectively. In that post, I concluded (among other things) that, despite a supposedly equal three-way power dynamic, in the long run, nothing beats stupid. I’ve been puzzling recently over this weird dynamic in anticipation of a mass exodus of boomers from the labor force as they age into retirement (or simply die off). (Digression about the ruling gerontocracy withheld.) It’s not by any stretch clear that their younger cohorts divided into not-so-cleverly named demographics are prepared to bring competence or work ethic to bear on labor needs, which includes job descriptions ranging across the spectrum from blue collar to white collar to bona fide expert.

Before being accused of ageism and boomerism, I don’t regard the issue as primarily a function of age but rather as a result of gradual erosion of educational standards that has now reached such a startling level of degradation that many American institutions are frankly unable to accomplish their basic missions for lack of qualified, competent, engaged workers and managers. See, for example, this Gallup poll showing how confidence in U.S. institutions is ebbing. Curious that the U.S. Congress is at the very bottom, followed closely and unsurprisingly by the TV news. Although the poll only shows year-over-year decline, it’s probably fair to say that overall consensus is that institutions simply cannot be relied upon anymore to do their jobs effectively. I’ve believed that for some time about Cabinet-level agencies that, administration after administration, never manage to improve worsening conditions that are the very reason for their existence. Some of those failures are arguably because solutions to issues simply do not exist (such as with the renewed energy crisis or the climate emergency). But when addressing concerns below the level of global civilization, my suspicion is that failure is the result of a combination of corruption (including careerism) and sheer incompetence.

The quintessential example came to my attention in the embedded YouTube video, which spells out in gruesome detail how schools of education are wickedly distorted by ideologues pushing agendas that don’t produce either better educational results or social justice. Typically, it’s quite the reverse.

In short, school administrators and curriculum designers are incompetent boobs (much like many elected government officials) possessed of decision-making authority who have managed to quell dissent among the ranks precisely because many who know better are invested in careers and pension programs that would be sacrificed in order to call bullshit on insane things now being forced on everyone within those institutions. Those of us who attended college often witnessed how, over the course of several decades, faculties have essentially caved repeatedly on issues where administrators acted in contravention of respectable educational goals and policies. Fortitude to resist is not in abundance for reasons quite easy to understand. Here’s one cry from the wilderness by a college professor retiring early to escape the madness. One surmises that whoever is hired as a replacement will check a number of boxes, including compliance with administrative diktats.

Viewpoint diversity may well be the central value being jettisoned, along with the ability to think clearly. If cultism is truly the correct characterization, administrators have adopted an open agenda of social reform and appear to believe that they, uniquely, have arrived at the correct answers (final solutions?) to be brainwashed into both teachers and students as doctrine. Of course, revolutions are launched on the strength of such misguided convictions, often purging resistance violently and revealing that best intentions matter little in the hellscapes that follow. But on the short term, the basic program is to silent dissent, as though banishing disallowed thinking from the public sphere collapses viewpoint diversity. Nope, sorry. That’s not how cognition works except in totalitarian regimes that remove all awareness of options and interpretations we in open societies currently take for granted. It’s barking mad, for instance, to think that all the propaganda flung at the American public about, say, the proxy war in Ukraine is truly capable of buffaloing the entire population into believing we (the U.S. and NATO) are the good guys in the conflict. (There are no goods guys.) Even the Chinese government, with its restricted Internet and social credit system, can’t squelch entirely the yearning to think and breathe freely. Instead, that’s the domain of North Korea, which only despots hold up as a salutary model.

My point, which bears reiteration, is that poorly educated, miseducated, and uneducated ignoramuses (the ignorati, whose numbers have swelled) in positions of power and influence embody precisely the unmovable, unreachable, slow, grinding stupidity that can’t be overcome by knowledge, understanding, expertise, or appeals to reason and good faith. Stupid people don’t know just how stupid they are but sally forth with blind confidence in themselves, and their abject stupidity becomes like kryptonite used to weaken others. One can use smarts (scissors) once in a while to cut through stupidity (paper), but in the end, nothing beats stupid.

/rant off

Stamping Out Fires

From the outset, credit goes to Jonathan Haidt for providing the ideas to launch this blog post. He appears to be making the rounds again flogging his most recent publication (where? I dunno, maybe The Atlantic). In the YouTube interview I caught, Haidt admits openly that as a social and behavioral psychologist, he’s prone to recommending incentives, programs, and regulations to combat destructive developments in contemporary life — especially those in the academy and on social media that have spread into politics and across the general public. Haidt wears impressive professional armor in support of arguments and contentions; I lack such rigor rather conspicuously. Accordingly, I offer no recommendations but instead try to limit myself to describing dynamics as an armchair social critic. Caveat emptor.

Haidt favors viewpoint diversity (see, for example, Heterodox Academy, which he helped to found and now chairs). Simple enough, right? Not so fast there, Señor Gonzalez! Any notion that even passing acquaintance with a given subject requires knowing both pros and cons is anathema to many of today’s thinkers, who would rather plug their ears and pretend opposition voices, principled or otherwise, are simply incoherent, need not be considered, and further, should be silenced and expunged. As a result, extremist branches of any faction tend to be ideological echo chambers. Cardinal weaknesses in such an approach are plain enough for critical thinkers to recognize, but if one happens to fall into one of those chambers, silos, or bubbles (or attend a school that trains students in rigid thinking), invitations to challenge cherished and closely held beliefs, upon which identity is built, mostly fall on deaf ears. The effect is bad enough in individuals, but when spread across organizations that adopt ill-advised solutionism, Haidt’s assessment is that institutional stupidity sets in. The handy example is higher education (now an oxymoron). Many formerly respectable institutions have essentially abandoned reason (ya know, the way reasonable people think) and begun flagellating themselves in abject shame over, for instance, a recovered history of participation in any of the cultural practices now cause for immediate and reflexive cancellation.

By way of analogy, think of one’s perspective as a knife (tool, not weapon) that requires periodic sharpening to retain effectiveness. Refusing to entertain opposing viewpoints is like sharpening only one side of the blade, resulting in a blunt, useless tool. That metaphor suggests a false dualism: two sides to an argument/blade when in fact many facets inform most complex issues, thus viewpoint diversity. By working in good faith with both supporters and detractors, better results (though not perfection) can be obtained than when radicalized entities come to dominate and impose their one-size-fits-all will indiscriminately. In precisely that way, it’s probably better not to become any too successful or powerful lest one be tempted to embrace a shortsighted will to power and accept character distortions that accompany a precipitous rise.

As mentioned a couple blog posts ago, an unwillingness to shut up, listen, and learn (why bother? solutions are just … so … obvious …) has set many people on a path of activism. The hubris of convincing oneself of possession of solutions to intractable issues is bizarre. Is there an example of top-down planning, channeling, and engineering of a society that actually worked without tyrannizing the citizenry in the process? I can’t think of one. Liberal democratic societies determined centuries ago that freedom and self-determination mixed with assumed responsibility and care within one’s community are preferable to governance that treats individuals as masses to be forced into conformity (administrative or otherwise), regulated heavily, and/or disproportionately incarcerated like in the U.S. But the worm has turned. Budding authoritarians now seek reforms and uniformity to manage diverse, messy populations.

Weirdly, ideologues also attempt to purge and purify history, which is chock full of villainy and atrocity. Those most ideologically possessed seek both historical and contemporary targets to denounce and cancel, not even excluding themselves because, after all, the scourges of history are so abject and everyone benefited from them somehow. Search oneself for inherited privilege and all pay up for past iniquities! That’s the self-flagellating aspect: taking upon oneself (and depositing on others) the full weight of and responsibility for the sins of our forebears. Yet stamping out stubborn embers of fires allegedly still burning from many generations ago is an endless task. Absolutely no one measures up to expectations of sainthood when situated with an inherently and irredeemably evil society of men and women. That’s original sin, which can never be erased or forgiven. Just look at what humanity (via industrial civilization) has done to the surface of the planet. Everyone is criminally culpable. So give up all aspirations; no one can ever be worthy. Indeed, who even deserves to live?

The Yahtzee Protocol

Heard a remark (can’t remember where) that most these days would attack as openly ageist. Basically, if you’re young (let’s say below 25 years of age), then it’s your time to shut up, listen, and learn. Some might even say that true wisdom doesn’t typically emerge until much later in life, if indeed it appears at all. Exceptions only prove the rule. On the flip side, energy, creativity, and indignation (e.g., “it’s not fair! “) needed to drive social movements are typically the domain of those who have less to lose and everything to gain, meaning those just starting out in adult life. A full age range is needed, I suppose, since society isn’t generally age stratified except at the extremes (childhood and advanced age). (Turns out that what to call old people and what counts as old is rather clumsy, though probably not especially controversial.)

With this in mind, I can’t help but to wonder what’s going on with recent waves of social unrest and irrational ideology. Competing factions agitate vociferously in favor of one social/political ideology or another as though most of the ideas presented have no history. (Resemblances to Marxism, Bolshevism, and white supremacy are quite common. Liberal democracy, not so much.) Although factions aren’t by any means populated solely by young people, I observe that roughly a decade ago, higher education in particular transformed itself into an incubator for radicals and revolutionaries. Whether dissatisfaction began with the faculty and infected the students is impossible for me to assess. I’m not inside that intellectual bubble. However, urgent calls for radical reform have since moved well beyond the academy. A political program or ideology has yet to be put forward that I can support fully. (My doomer assessment of what the future holds forestalls knowing with any confidence what sort of program or ideology into which to pour my waning emotional and intellectual energy.) It’s still fairly simple to criticize and denounce, of course. Lots of things egregiously wrong in the world.

My frustration with what passes for political debate (if Twitter is any indication) is the marked tendency to immediately resort to comparisons with Yahtzees in general or Phitler in particular. It’s unhinged and unproductive. Yahtzees are cited as an emotional trigger, much like baseless accusations of racism send everyone scrambling for cover lest they be cancelled. Typically, the Yahtzee/Phitler comparison or accusation itself is enough to put someone on their heels, but wizened folks (those lucky few) recognize the cheap rhetorical trick. The Yahtzee Protocol isn’t quite the same as Godwin’s Law, which states that the longer a discussion goes on (at Usenet in the earliest examples) increases the inevitability likelihood of someone bringing up Yahtzees and Phitler and ruining useful participation. The protocol has been deployed effectively in the Russian-Ukraine conflict, though I’m at a loss to determine in which direction. The mere existence of the now-infamous Azov Battalion, purportedly comprised of Yahtzees, means that automatically, reflexively, the fight is on. Who can say what the background rate of Yahtzee sympathizers (whatever that means) might be in any fighting force or indeed the general population? Not me. Similarly, what threshold qualifies a tyrant to stand beside Phitler on a list of worst evers? Those accusations are flung around like cooked spaghetti thrown against the wall just to see what sticks. Even if the accusation does stick, what possible good does it do? Ah, I know: it makes the accuser look like a virtuous fool.

Railroaded to Rome

The phrase “all roads lead to Rome” is a way of saying that, at its height, Rome was the center of the Western world and multiple paths led to that eventual destination. That’s where the action was. Less obviously, the phrase also suggests that different approaches can lead to an identical outcome. Not all approaches to a given result are equal, however, but who’s splitting those hairs? Not too many, and not nearly enough. Instead, the public has been railroaded into false consensus on a variety of issues, the principal attributes being that the destination is predetermined and all rails lead there. Probably oughta be a new saying about being “railroaded to Rome” but I haven’t hit upon a formulation I like.

Ukraine

War drums have been beating for some time now about a hotly desired (by TPTB, who else?) regional war over Ukraine being aligned with Europe or part of Russia. Personal opinions (mine, yours) on whether Ukraine might join NATO or be annexed by Russia don’t really matter. Even a default aversion to war doesn’t matter. Accordingly, every step taken by the Russian government is reported as a provocation, escalation, and/or signal of imminent invasion. And in reverse, no interference, meddling, or manipulation undertaken by Western powers is cause for concern because it’s all good, clean, innocent business. Wasn’t a version of this maneuver executed in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq? (Be honest, it was a preemptive invasion that preempted nothing.) Legacy media have failed entirely (as I understand their reporting, anyway) to ask the right questions or conceive of any outcome that isn’t war with Russia. (Similar moves are being made regarding the China-Taiwan controversy.) After all, that’s where the action is.

Vaccines

Many observers were surprised at how quickly vaccines appeared after the current pandemic circled the world. Vaccines normally take many years to achieve sufficient safety and effectiveness to be approved for general use. However, Covid vaccines were apparently in development well before the pandemic hit because medical labs had been monkeying with the virus for years along with possible treatments. No matter that vaccine safety and effectiveness were never fully realized. The rush to market was a predetermined outcome that required emergency use authorization, redefinition of the term vaccine, and active suppression of other drug protocols. Mandates that everyone (EVERYONE!) be vaccinated and boosted (and now boosted again every few months to keep current) are in clear conflict with a host of rules, codes, and medical ethics, to say nothing of common sense. Creation of two-tier societies based on vaccination status (three-tier if RightThink is added) to force the unvaccinated into compliance is outright tyranny. This coercion lends false legitimacy to an emerging biosecurity state with wide application for the supposedly clean (vaccinated but not necessarily healthy) and unclean (unvaccinated but not necessarily unhealthy). After all, that’s where the action is.

Free Thought and Free Speech

The constant thrum of fearmongering legacy media has turned a large percentage of the public into cowering fools lest something turn out to be even mildly upsetting or give offense. “Save me, mommy! Protect me, daddy! Allow no one to introduce or discuss a fact or idea that conflicts with my cherished innocence. Words are violence!” Well, sorry, snowflake. The big, bad world is not set up to keep you safe, nor is history a series of nice, tidy affairs without disturbing incidents or periodic social madness. Moreover, governments, media, and scientists cannot rightfully claim to be final arbiters of truth. Truth seeking and truth telling are decidedly messy and have been throughout modern history. Despite attempts, no one can command or suppress thought in any but the most banal fashion (e.g., don’t think about polka-dot elephants); that’s not how cognition works except perhaps under extraordinary circumstances. Similarly, the scientific method doesn’t work without free, open scrutiny and reevaluation of scientific claims. Yet the risible notion that people can or should be railroaded into approved thought/speech via censorship and/or cancellation is back with a vengeance. Were lessons of the past (or the present in some regimes) never learned? Indeed, I must admit to being flabbergasted how otherwise normal thinkers (no disability or brain damage) — especially reflexive rule-followers (sheeple?) who shrink from all forms of conflict — have accepted rather easily others quite literally telling them what to think/say/do. To resolve cognitive dissonance lurking beneath consciousness, rationalizations are sought to explain away the inability to think for oneself with integrity. Adoption of routine DoubleThink just floors me. But hey, that’s where the action is.

Addendum

Apologies or citing George Orwell as often as I do. Orwell got so much correct in his depiction of a dystopic future. Regrettably, and as others have pointed out, TPTB have mistaken 1984 (Orwell’s novel) as a playbook rather than a dire warning.

Deformed Under Pressure

To set up this blog post, let me venture recklessly into a less-familiar (for me at least) area of science, namely, physics. Intersections with particle physics and cosmology might be possible, but my concern is within the everyday world of objects that don’t require an electron microscope or telescope to be seen by humans. Most of us know in a routine sense that liquids, solids, and gases come under a variety of influences, e.g., radiation (including light), heat (and its inverse cold), and pressure (and its absence vacuum or its inverse suction). Could be other causes of deformation; it’s not my area of expertise but rather that of materials engineers who determine how much stress various kinds of a particular material can withstand before becoming useless. Pressure in combination with heat governs when an object, tool, or part is likely to fail over its projected useful life, which can be the root of either planned obsolescence or permanence for particularly hardy man-made (?) objects such as Neolithic ruins. For solid objects in particular, the amount of deformation that can be absorbed relates to its function. Rubber bands, springs, and paper clips serve their purpose by tolerating deformation, whereas bridge framing has far less flexion. When objects become truly massive, such as planets and stars (suns), gravitational forces in their interiors where the highest pressure/heat is found produce effects that are understood imperfectly. As I understand it, the (inferred?) molten iron core of Earth is responsible for its magnetic field, which has been determined to reorient repeatedly over planetary history. The sun is massive enough to produce nuclear fusion and energy roughly equivalent to the explosion of 91.92 billion megatons of TNT per second.

/rant on

Importing deformation under pressure into human character and society, opposite ends of the socioeconomic scale arguably produce the most distortion. Although many welcome the prospect of a big lottery win, anecdotal evidence suggests that most winners simply can’t take the sudden release of normal financial responsibility (pressure). Similarly, those who rise from austere beginnings to become hundy billionaires (names withheld) reliably become maniacs, diverting their wealth into undeserved influence, boondoggles, and self-serving bids for immortality. Born into obscene wealth? Arguably never even had a chance at normalcy. And because fame, influence, and indulgence go with extraordinary fortunes, idle whims are given serious consideration because, after all, why the hell not? Nothing holding back someone who can essentially purchase anything.

Living in Perpetual Fear

Although disinclined to take the optimistic perspective inhabited by bright-siders, I’m nonetheless unable to live in a state of perpetual fear that would to façile thinkers be more fitting for a pessimist. Yet unrelenting fear is the dominant approach, with every major media outlet constantly stoking a toxic combination of fear and hatred, as though activation and ongoing conditioning of the lizard brain (i.e., the amygdala — or maybe not) in everyone were worthy of the endeavor rather than it being a limited instinctual response, leaping to the fore only when immediate threat presents. I can’t guess the motivations of purveyors of constant fear to discern an endgame, but a few of the dynamics are clear enough to observe.

First thing that comes to mind is that the U.S. in the 1930s and 40s was pacifist and isolationist. Recent memory of the Great War was still keenly felt, and with the difficulties of the 1929 Crash and ensuing Great Depression still very must present, the prospect of engaging in a new, unlimited war (even over there) was not at all attractive to the citizenry. Of course, political leaders always regard (not) entering into war somewhat differently, maybe in terms of opportunity cost. Hard to say. Whether by hook or by crook (I don’t actually know whether advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was suppressed), the U.S. was handily drawn into the war, and a variety of world-historical developments followed that promoted the U.S. (and its sprawling, unacknowledged empire) into the global hegemon, at least after the Soviet Union collapsed and before China rose from a predominantly peasant culture into world economic power. A not-so-subtle hindsight lesson was learned, namely, that against widespread public sentiment and at great cost, the war effort could (not would) provide substantial benefits (if ill-gotten and of questionable desirability).

None of the intervening wars (never declared) or Wars for Dummies (e.g., the war on poverty, the war on crime, the war on drugs) provided similar benefits except to government agencies and careerist administrators. Nor did the war on terror following the 9/11 attacks or subsequent undeclared wars and bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere provide benefits. All were massive boondoggles with substantial destruction and loss of life. Yet after 9/11, a body of sweeping legislation was enacted without much public debate or scrutiny — “smuggled in under cover of fear” one might say. The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorization Act are among the most notable. The conditioned response by the citizenry to perceived but not actual existential fear was consistent: desperate pleading to keep everyone safe from threat (even if it originates in the U.S. government) and tacit approval to roll back civil liberties (even though the citizenry is not itself the threat). The wisdom of the old Benjamin Franklin quote, borne out of a very different era and now rendered more nearly as a bromide, has long been lost on many Americans.

The newest omnipresent threat, literally made-to-order (at least according to some — who can really know when it comes to conspiracy), is the Covid pandemic. Nearly every talking, squawking head in government and the mainstream media (the latter now practically useless except for obvious propaganda functions) is telling everyone who still watches (video and broadcast being the dominant modes) to cower in fear of each other, reduce or refuse human contact and social function, and most of all, take the vaccine-not-really-a-vaccine followed by what is developing into a ongoing series of boosters to maintain fear and anxiety if not indeed provide medical efficacy (no good way to measure and substantiate that, anyway). The drumbeat is loud and unabated, and a large, unthinking (or spineless) portion of the citizenry, cowed and cowering, has basically joined the drum circle, spreading a social consensus that is very, well, un-American. Opinion as to other nations on similar tracks are not ventured here. Running slightly ahead of the pandemic is the mind virus of wokery and its sufferers who demand, among other things, control over others’ thoughts and speech through threats and intimidation, censorship, and social cancellation — usually in the name of safety but without any evidence how driving independent thought underground or into hiding accomplishes anything worthwhile.

Again, motivations and endgame in all this are unclear, though concentration of power to compel seems to be exhilarating. In effect, regular folks are being told, “stand on one leg; good boy; now bark like a dog; very good boy; now get used to it because this shit is never going to end but will surely escalate to intolerability.” It truly surprises me to see police forces around the world harassing, beating, and terrorizing citizens for failing to do as told, however arbitrary or questionable the order or the underlying justification. Waiting for the moment to dawn on rank-and-file officers that their monopoly on use of force is serving and protecting the wrong constituency. (Not holding my breath.) This is the stuff of dystopic novels, except that it’s not limited to fiction and frankly never was. The hotspot(s) shift in terms of time and place, but totalitarian mind and behavioral control never seems to fade or invalidate itself as one might expect. Covid passports to grant full participation in society (signalling compliance, not health) is the early step already adopted by some countries. My repeated warnings over the years of creeping fascism (more coercive style than form of government) appears to be materializing before our very eyes. I’m afraid of what portends, but with what remains of my intact mind, I can’t live in perpetual fear, come what may.