Civil War: America's Local Gentry

patrick-wyman  |  Commercial agriculture is a lucrative industry, at least for those who own the orchards, cold storage units, processing facilities, and the large businesses that cater to them. They have a trusted and reasonably well-paid cadre of managers and specialists in law, finance, and the like - members of the educated professional-managerial class that my close classmates and I have joined - but the vast majority of their employees are lower-wage laborers. The owners are mostly white; the laborers are mostly Latino, a significant portion of them undocumented immigrants. Ownership of the real, core assets is where the region’s wealth comes from, and it doesn’t extend down the social hierarchy. Yet this bounty is enough to produce hilltop mansions, a few high-end restaurants, and a staggering array of expensive vacation homes in Hawaii, Palm Springs, and the San Juan Islands.

This class of people exists all over the United States, not just in Yakima. So do mid-sized metropolitan areas, the places where huge numbers of Americans live but which don’t figure prominently in the country’s popular imagination or its political narratives: San Luis Obispo, California; Odessa, Texas; Bloomington, Illinois; Medford, Oregon; Hilo, Hawaii; Dothan, Alabama; Green Bay, Wisconsin. (As an aside, part of the reason I loved Parks and Recreation was because it accurately portrayed life in a place like this: a city that wasn’t small, which served as the hub for a dispersed rural area, but which wasn’t tightly connected to a major metropolitan area.)

This kind of elite’s wealth derives not from their salary - this is what separates them from even extremely prosperous members of the professional-managerial class, like doctors and lawyers - but from their ownership of assets. Those assets vary depending on where in the country we’re talking about; they could be a bunch of McDonald’s franchises in Jackson, Mississippi, a beef-processing plant in Lubbock, Texas, a construction company in Billings, Montana, commercial properties in Portland, Maine, or a car dealership in western North Carolina. Even the less prosperous parts of the United States generate enough surplus to produce a class of wealthy people. Depending on the political culture and institutions of a locality or region, this elite class might wield more or less political power. In some places, they have an effective stranglehold over what gets done; in others, they’re important but not all-powerful.

Wherever they live, their wealth and connections make them influential forces within local society. In the aggregate, through their political donations and positions within their localities and regions, they wield a great deal of political influence. They’re the local gentry of the United States.

We’re not talking about international oligarchs; these folks’ wealth extends into the millions and tens of millions rather than the billions. There are, however, a lot more of them than the global elite that tends to get all of the attention. They’re not the face of instantly recognizable global brands or the subjects of award-winning New York Times profiles; they own warehouses and Applebee’s franchises, concrete companies and chains of movie theaters, hop fields and apartment complexes.

Because their wealth is rooted in the ownership of physical assets, they tend to be more rooted in their places of origin than the cosmopolitan professionals and entrepreneurs of the major metro areas. Mobility between major metros, the characteristic jumping from Seattle to Los Angeles to New York to Austin that’s possible for younger lawyers and creatives and tech folks, is foreign to them. They might really like heading to a vacation home in Bermuda or Maui. They might plan a relatively early retirement to a wealthy enclave in Palm Springs, Scottsdale, or central Florida. Ultimately, however, their money and importance comes from the businesses they own, and those belong in their localities.

Gentry classes are a common feature of a great many social-economic-political regimes throughout history. Pretty much anywhere you have a hierarchical form of social organization and property ownership, a gentry class of some kind emerges: the local civic elites of the Roman Empire, the landlords of later Han China, the numerous lower nobility of late medieval France, the thegns of Anglo-Saxon England, the Prussian Junkers, or the planter class of the antebellum South. The gentry are generally distinct from the highest levels of a regime’s political and economic elite: They’re usually not resident in the political center, they don’t hold major positions in the central administration of the state (whatever that might consist of) and aren’t counted among the wealthiest people in their polity. New national or imperial elites might emerge over time from a gentry class, even rulers - the boundaries between these groups can be more or less porous - but that’s not usually the case.

Gentry are, by definition, local elites. The extent to which they wield power in their localities, and how they do so, is dependent on the structure of their regime. In the early Roman Empire, for example, local civic elites were essential to the functioning of the state. They collected taxes in their home cities, administered justice, and competed with each other for local political offices and seats on the city councils. Their competition was a driving force behind the provision of benefits to the common folk in the form of festivals, games, public buildings, and more basic support, a practice called civic euergetism.

MeidasTouch

rollingstone  | Last August, in the midst of a presidential battle that would determine the future of America, an upstart liberal group called MeidasTouch sent its supporters an urgent call to action. “Tonight is a huge night,” MeidasTouch declared on Twitter. “We are giving half of our contributions directly and immediately to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We are proud to have already chipped in 25K to their campaign. RT and chip in here.”

For MeidasTouch, the pro-Biden blitz was part of a rapidly expanding political action committee that turned viral tweets and posts into campaign contributions. Founded by three brothers, the group says it has generated more than a billion views on social media, mocking and humiliating Trump and his enablers. Crowd favorites included “Creepy Trump,” “Bye Ivanka,” and “Bye Don Jr: Love Me, Daddy!” Its podcast has become a popular destination on the anti-Trump circuit, with recent guests including Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Ted Lieu, and Mary Trump, the former president’s estranged niece. All this exposure translated into more than $5 million in contributions from #Resistance donors desperate to oust Trump and his Republican collaborators.

The three brothers who founded MeidasTouch sell themselves as the progressive breakout success of the 2020 election cycle, weaving a narrative of a start-from-scratch operation that — thanks to a gift for creating viral anti-Trump videos and a unique understanding of the digital tides — rapidly blossomed into a behemoth of Democratic politics. “We’ve become the most recognizable and impactful brand name in progressive politics in the 30 days since we launched,” Ben Meiselas, the eldest brother, told Adweek in June. They aren’t, per their own telling, just the top brand, they’re also pioneers of a radical transparency model that the notoriously opaque world of Super PACs could stand to learn from. “I knew that PACs in general, political action committees, have a reputation about them,” Meiselas said on a recent MeidasTouch podcast. “And I wanted this to be so different from every other PAC, starting with the fact that me, who works for this every day, doesn’t get paid. But, two, to have the most ridiculous amount of transparency possible.”

But the full story of MeidasTouch is more complicated. The group spent more than $1 million on an advertising strategy that it calls revolutionary but campaign veterans and independent experts say is nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections. And despite its promised transparency, MeidasTouch’s financial structure makes a dollar-for-dollar accounting of its spending impossible — and, according to a former Federal Election Commission attorney, raises some of the same legal issues that got the Trump campaign into trouble in 2020.

It’s not hard to find examples of how MeidasTouch’s grandiose self-promotion doesn’t match reality. Take, for example, the fundraising plea blasted out last August. The Super PAC, per its own disclosure forms, didn’t donate $25,000 to the Biden campaign — and indeed, a direct donation from MeidasTouch to Biden would have violated campaign-finance laws. Instead, the donations came from people who clicked on an embedded link in Meidas’ tweet and were given the option to split their donation between the Biden campaign and the Super PAC. Donors gave $31,623 to the Biden campaign, and MeidasTouch received nearly $30,000.

 

Who Y'all Think Is Behind The Attack On Rogan?

patriotone  |  Since you asked, and I love your work, I'll tell you. This is a professional political attack. Three waves one right after the other is not a coincidence. Good spacing, good timing, so it's absolutely professional. But who was it you ask? That takes some digging but...

The video compilation of Rogan saying the n-word was dropped by @patriottakes 6 days ago. You see the video in the tweet in pic 1, and patriottakes takes credit for "republishing" the information in pic 2. That they take credit is important and you'll see why shortly...

As you can see in their bio, @patriottakes is partnered with @MeidasTouch. And this is where it gets interesting. Who is Meidastouch? Well, they are a professional political organization. In fact, they are a Democrat "Super PAC" (more on that in a moment) run by 3 brothers.

Ben, Brett, and Jordan Meisales. All of them have worked in media and have expertise in understanding and manipulating Media. The most important thing for us is that Brett was a social media manager for Ellen Degeneres, and is an expert editor. Which matter because...

@patriottakes works with @MeidasTouch and I'd say it's a safe bet that given their expertise in social media management that the n-word video was created by Meidastouch. BUT WE ARE NOT DONE. MeidasTouch is a Super PAC. Well, what's a super PAC you ask?

A Super PAC is political advocacy group with a special twist: "super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates." (http://opensecrets.org).

Patriottakes is bragging about their millions of views and how they made the video the center of the national conversation. They are bragging about their CLOUT Rogan is the one guy the leftists can't cancel. If a group could cancel Rogan it would be a MASSIVE show of power.

Woke people and legacy media groups have been trying to cancel Rogan for ages because he steals their audience and doesn't play by their rules. Rogan also offers his enormous platform to people like Jordan Peterson that woke progressives in media circles really don't like...

The group that takes out Rogan would gain a lot of clout and a **lot** of power. The group that can say "we cancelled Rogan. If we can get him, we can get you too," would be able to swing a very large stick. And that's what this is ultimately about, it's a play for power.

In short, Meidastouch is a political SuperPAC that is very likely behind the @patriottakes account. They're attempting a viral hit on Joe Rogan so they can take him out both because they don't like him and because they want monetizable clout for having done so...

So @andrewschulz that's whose behind this. The question is, what can we do about it? If every person who Joe helped out said "we are with him and we will tell our audiences to cancel Spotify if they cancel Joe" this would be over in a day. The next thing...

If everyone won't stand up, we need brave people to lead organic pushback. @BretWeinstein has been doing this with his "thanks Joe Rogan" hashtag Finally...

 

 

The First DNC Attack On Joe Rogan Came In 2020

CNN  |  Bernie Sanders is facing a backlash from some Democrats after his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from comedian Joe Rogan, a popular podcast and YouTube talk show host with a history of making racist, homophobic and transphobic comments.

The Sanders campaign touted the endorsement in a tweet on Thursday afternoon, featuring a clip of Rogan's supportive remarks. 

 

"I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. Him as a human being, when I was hanging out with him, I believe in him, I like him, I like him a lot," Rogan said on an earlier episode of his show.

 

"What Bernie stands for is a guy -- look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that's ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those worst moments. That said, you can't find very many with Bernie. He's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from."

Rogan, a libertarian-leaning broadcaster with a public persona in the mold of Howard Stern, is a divisive figure who has said the N-word on his show and in 2013 questioned -- using offensive language -- whether a transgender MMA fighter should be able to compete against other women. 

 

"If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and, you know, you want to play house and all of that other sh-t and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman's body trapped inside a man's frame and so you got a operation, that's all good in the hood," Rogan said. "But you can't fight chicks.". 

 

The decision to highlight Rogan's support has divided opinion among Democrats and activists, particularly online, where it has sparked a heated debate over whether Sanders should have aligned himself with Rogan in any form or context. 

 

Sanders' strategic targeting of young, unaffiliated and working class voters often takes him to places, and onto platforms -- like Twitch -- that most Democratic candidates rarely venture. But that practice, when it brings a figure like Rogan into the political spotlight, also carries the risk of alienating parts of a liberal base that, especially in the Trump era, has become increasingly cautious about the company it keeps -- and what that signals to marginalized communities. 

 

On Saturday, the progressive group MoveOn called on Sanders "to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement."

 

"It's one thing for Joe Rogan to endorse a candidate," MoveOn said in a tweet from its official account. "It's another for @BernieSanders' campaign to produce a video bolstering the endorsement of someone known for promoting transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny."

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2020

 

Less than an hour later, former Vice President Joe Biden appeared to enter the fray.

 

"Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time," Biden tweeted. "There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights."

Are Protestors With Semi Tractor Trailers Sufficiently Organized And Funded To Hold Firm And Prevail?

france24  |  An occupation of Canada's capital by truckers opposed to vaccine mandates gained steam as it entered its second week on Saturday, with more demonstrators piling onto the clogged streets of Ottawa, while protests kicked off in several other cities.

In the capital, protesters huddled around campfires in bone-chilling temperatures and erected bouncy castles for kids outside Parliament, while waving Canadian flags and shouting anti-government slogans.

The atmosphere appeared more festive than a week earlier, when several protesters waved Confederate flags and Nazi symbols and clashed with locals.

Police, who were out in force and put up barriers overnight to limit vehicle access to the city center, said they were bracing for up to 2,000 protesters -- as well as 1,000 counterprotesters -- to join hundreds of truckers already jamming Ottawa streets.

But organizers of the so-called Freedom Convoy told AFP they expected their numbers to swell into the tens of thousands.

Similar protests were happening in Toronto, Quebec City and Winnipeg. And in southern Alberta province, truckers blocked a major border crossing to the US state of Montana.

"This remains an increasingly volatile and increasingly dangerous demonstration," Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly told a news conference Friday.

With public anger rising -- thousands of residents have complained of harassment by protesters, and an online petition demanding action has drawn 40,000 signatures -- Sloly vowed to crack down on what he called an "unlawful" occupation of the city.

But he offered no timeline.

Joe Rogan, Call Julie Ponesse And Sign Up For Some Manhood Lessons...,

brownstone |   Dr. Julie Ponesse was a professor of ethics who has taught at Ontario’s Huron University College for 20 years. She was placed on leave and banned from accessing her campus due to the vaccine mandate. This is her speech during the weekend when the Canadian truckers arrived in Ottawa to protest pandemic restrictions and mandates that have been so harmful to so many. Dr. Ponesse has now taken on a role with The Democracy Fund, a registered Canadian charity aimed at advancing civil liberties, where she serves as the pandemic ethics scholar.

But our true moral failure is that we did this to ourselves. We allowed it. And some of us embraced it. We forgot for a while that freedom needs to be lived every day and that, some days, we need to fight for it. We forgot that, as Premier Brian Peckford said, “Even in the best of times we are only a heartbeat away from tyranny.”

We took our freedom for granted and now we are in danger of losing it.

But we are waking up and we won’t so easily be seduced or coerced again.

To our governments, the cracks are showing. The dam is breaking. The facts are not on your side. You can’t keep this up any longer. The pandemic is over. Enough is enough. You are our servants; we are not your subjects.

You have tried to mold us into hateful, terrified, demoralized people. 

But you underestimated the challenge. We aren’t so easily broken. Our strength comes from the bonds of family and friendship, of history, of our home and native land.

You didn’t realize the strength of our doctors and nurses on the front lines in Alberta, our RCMP and provincial police officers, the ferocity of a mother fighting for her child, and my goodness the truckers who rolled courage into Ottawa on 18 wheels.  18 wheels times tens of thousands of trucks.

To the families of those who have lost children, your tears will be a stain on our nation forever. But you can rest now. You have done enough, lost enough. It’s time for us, your fellow citizens, to take up this battle for you. 

To the truckers who drove across Canada, to stand up for all of us, to defend all our rights, I have never felt so much gratitude or pride for perfect strangers. You are electrifying this moment in history, and you are awakening a passion and a love for our country that we thought we had lost. You are the leaders all of Canada has been waiting for.  

Driving from all corners of the country — from Prince Rupert to Charlottetown, on icy roads, past waving flags and under packed overpasses, you are taking all the brokenness, all the hate, all the division, and weaving us back together again. In this one simple, united, powerful action, you are the leaders we so desperately need.

You are giving grandmothers who have been isolated and abandoned a reason to smile again.

You are giving those who have lost their livelihoods reason to hope; the families who have lost loved ones a reason to believe in justice.

Joe Rogan - Just An Entertainer After All....,

businessinsider  |  Vanity Fair, which first reported on the Obamas' dissatisfaction with Spotify, noted that they are most interested in producing shows featuring fresh voices. 

Spotify has spent well over $1 billion to diversify beyond music content and into the broader audio market, scooping up podcast studios like Gimlet Media and The Ringer and signing exclusive deals with talent including Rogan and Dax Shepard. 

A big piece of its strategy has been to ink development deals with bold-faced names like the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who have yet to produce a show for Spotify outside of a 2020 holiday special. 

So far, the strategy appears to have worked. Spotify said in October, citing third-party data from Edison Research, that it now ranks ahead of Apple Podcasts as the most popular podcast app in the US. 

But there have also been challenges, including a cultural reckoning within Gimlet Media linked to its popluar"Reply All" podcast as well as the shuttering of Spotify's in-house podcast studio, known internally as Studio 4. More recently, the Rogan controversy has led some Spotify podcasters to call out the company. 

Brené Brown, for instance, said she would take a pause from producing new episodes as she sought to "better understand the organization's misinformation policy," and Wendy Zukerman, host of Gimlet show "Science Vs." said she would stop making new episodes of the show except to counteract misinformation on the platform. 

The Obamas' podcasting deal with Spotify followed their initial move into entertainment one year earlier, when they announced the formation of Higher Ground and its multi-year film and TV deal with Netflix . They are behind the streamer's Oscar-winning documentary "American Factory" and Kevin Hart drama "Fatherhood," among other projects.

QBism - Is Life But A Dream?

scientificamerican |  A newish interpretation of quantum mechanics called QBism (pronounced “Cubism,” like the art movement) makes subjective experience the bedrock of knowledge and reality itself. David Mermin, a prominent theorist, says QBism can dispel the “confusion at the foundations of quantum mechanics.” You just have to accept that all knowledge begins with “individual personal experience.”

According to QBism, each of us constructs a set of beliefs about the world, based on our interactions with it. We constantly, implicitly, update our beliefs when we interact with relatives who refuse to get vaccinated or sensors tracking the swerve of an electron. The big reality in which we all live emerges from the collisions of all our subjective mini-realities.

QBists hedge their mind-centrism, if only so they don’t come across as loons or mystics. They accept that matter exists as well as mind, and they reject solipsism, which holds that no sentient being can really be sure that any other being is sentient. But QBism’s core message, science writer Amanda Gefter says, is that the idea of “a single objective reality is an illusion.” A dream, you might say.

Proponents bicker over definitions, and physicists and philosophers fond of objectivity reject QBism entirely. All this squabbling, ironically, seems to confirm QBism’s premise that there is no absolute objectivity; there are only subjective, first-person viewpoints.

Physicists have more in common than most would like to admit with artists, who try to turn the chaos of things into a meaningful narrative. Some artists thwart our desire for meaning. T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is an anti-narrative, a grab bag of images that pop in and out of the void. The poem resembles a dream, or nightmare. Its meaning is that there is no meaning, no master narrative. Life is a joke, and the joke is on you if you believe otherwise.

If you are a practical person, like one of the finance majors in my freshman humanities class, you might conclude, along with T. S. Eliot, that efforts to comprehend existence are futile. You might urge friends majoring in philosophy to enjoy life rather than fretting over its meaning. You might summarize this advice with a catchy slogan: “Shut up and procreate!” But even those pragmatists must wonder now and then what our communal dream means.

The Quirky, Contingent, And Self-Referential Nature Of Biological Evolution Is Rare

inference-review |  Previous analyses have also looked at the emergence of life in conjunction with the emergence of human-like intelligence.⁹ Motivated by the assumption that four data points are better than two, Snyder-Beattie et al. have extended this earlier work with a Bayesian analysis of not only the timing of abiogenesis and the evolution of intelligence, but also the timing of two other major transitions: eukaryogenesis and the evolution of sexual reproduction. They conclude that intelligent life is rare in the universe because it took humans such a long time to evolve all four of the assumed prerequisites: abiogenesis, eukaryogenesis, sexual reproduction, and intelligence itself. Their Bayesian exploration of this result includes varying the timing of abiogenesis over a relatively wide range—between 4.3 and 3.5 billion years ago—and computing the effect of discovering that life emerged twice on earth.¹⁰ They found that their conclusion no longer holds if life emerged twice; or if abiogenesis occurred earlier, say, within ~10 million years of habitability; or if the habitable lifetime of the earth is 10 times longer than expected.¹¹

Recent exoplanet studies strongly suggest that every star has some kind of planetary system and that earth-like planets are likely common in such systems.¹² The earth may well be representative of a very large group of wet, rocky planets. But what about atmospheric composition, ocean volume, plate tectonics, spin period, orbital period, obliquity, the presence of a large moon, and the timing of large impacts? If the emergence and evolution of life are dependent on some of these additional details, the number of earth-like planets could be quite small.¹³

Once life has emerged from prebiotic chemistry, the strongest selection pressures on the evolution of a species come from other life forms: conspecifics, parasites, predators, diseases, viruses, and ecosystem variability. This self-referential nature of biology makes evolution a historical science characterized by the quirks of contingency. This characterization of evolution remains controversial.¹⁴ Our ability to extrapolate crow–puzzle experiments to crows on other planets depends on the existence of extraterrestrial crows. Similarly, the Snyder-Beattie et al. result depends on the assumption that “intelligent life elsewhere requires analogous evolutionary transitions.” The validity of the Snyder-Beattie et al. result, among others,¹⁵ is dependent on the assumption that the major transitions that characterize our evolution happen elsewhere.¹⁶

There is little evidence in the history of life on earth to support this assumption. Although abiogenesis is a transition shared by the lineages of all known life on earth, diverging lineages over the next four billion years are punctuated by their own evolutionary transitions. After diverging from other life forms, transitions within our own eukaryotic lineage include eukaryogenesis, sexual reproduction, and intelligence. A general feature of these transitions in the tree of life is that the closer a transition is to the end of a branch, the more recent, specific, and uncommon it is.¹⁷ In our lineage, eukaryogenesis occurred about two billion years ago and the transition to sexual reproduction about a billion years ago. The transition to intelligence is much more recent and its timing depends on how intelligence is defined. The transition to human-like intelligence or technological intelligence occurred only about 100,000 years ago and is species-specific. The latter trait is strong evidence we should not expect to find it elsewhere.¹⁸

Why We Don't See Sentient Extraterrestrials

declineoftheempire |  Generally speaking, there are two answers to the question Is There Intelligent Life In The Universe?, where the term "intelligent life" means technologically advanced sentient beings broadly similar to humans. In the first essay I discussed optimistic answers to this question. Optimists imagine a Universe teeming with more advanced versions of ourselves, an answer which coincides (not coincidentally) with their vision of a bright human future.

This week we look at the views of the pessimists, who constitute a small minority of those concerned with astrobiological questions. Pessimists believe that Homo sapiens is alone and unique in the observable Universe, or believe that species broadly similar to Homo sapiens are very rare.

I am a pessimist, a position which follows from prolonged contemplation of the Fermi Paradox, which Paul Davies called "the eerie silence" (see the first essay).  Let me begin with an illuminating quote from Lee Billings, whose book Five Billion Years of Solitude was recently published by the Penguin Group (October, 2013).

The book’s title, Five Billion Years of Solitude, is actually a subtle nod to some things I’ve changed my mind about in the course of my research.

It’s a reference to the longevity of Earth’s biosphere. Earth’s life emerged shortly after the planet itself formed some 4.5 billion years ago, and current estimates suggest our world has a good half-billion years left until its vibrant biosphere of diverse, complex multicellular life begins sliding back to microbial simplicity.

When I first began planning this book, I believed that we would eventually find clear signs of life beyond our solar system, and suspected that contact with other cosmic civilizations was just a matter of time, for they were probably common throughout our galaxy. I believed that humans had a future, a destiny, beyond the Earth, and that our discoveries of other habitable or inhabited worlds would galvanize society to strive to voyage to the stars. I no longer hold these beliefs as foregone conclusions.

My optimism for humanity’s long-term prospects has dimmed.

I now believe that while life may be widespread in the universe, creatures like us are probably uncommon, and technological societies are vanishingly rare, making the likelihood of contact remote at best.

I am less confident than I once was that we will find unequivocal signs of life in other planetary systems within my lifetime. I believe that, when seen in the fullness of planetary time, our modern era will prove to have been the fulcrum about which the future of life turned for, at minimum, our entire solar system.

I believe that we humans are probably the most fortunate species to have ever arisen on Earth, and that those of us now alive are profoundly privileged to live in what can objectively be considered a very special time.

Finally, I would guess that though we possess the unique capacity to extend life and intelligence beyond Earth into unknown new horizons, there is a better-than-even chance that we will fail to do so.

The human story may end as it began — in nasty, brutish, and short isolation on a lonely, solitary planet. The book in part is my attempt to explain and come to terms with these beliefs, beliefs that I would very much like to be proved wrong.

 

 

GoFundme Was Gonna Just Steal Donations To The Anti-Vax Mandate Protestors

medium |  The update we issued earlier (below) enabled all donors to get a refund and outlined a plan to distribute remaining funds to verified charities selected by the Freedom Convoy organizers. However, due to donor feedback, we are simplifying the process. We will automatically refund all contributions directly — donors do not need to submit a request. You can expect to see your refund within 7–10 business days.

GoFundMe Statement on the Freedom Convoy 2022 Fundraiser (2/4/2022)

• GoFundMe supports peaceful protests and we believe that was the intention of the Freedom Convoy 2022 fundraiser when it was first created.
• We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity.

To ensure GoFundMe remains a trusted platform, we work with local authorities to ensure we have a detailed, factual understanding of events taking place on the ground. Following a review of relevant facts and multiple discussions with local law enforcement and city officials, this fundraiser is now in violation of our Terms of Service (Term 8, which prohibits the promotion of violence and harassment) and has been removed from the platform.

Organizers provided a clear distribution plan for the initial $1M that was released earlier this week and confirmed funds would be used only for participants who traveled to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest. Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.

All donors may submit a request for a full refund until February 19th, 2022 using this dedicated refund form.

I Fully B'lee Brandon And His MSM Proxies Smear Anybody Who Kwestins Them...,

caitlinjohnstone  |  One thing I’ve been meaning to write about these last few days has been the way mass media pundits have been insinuating or outright asserting that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is literally an agent of the Russian government.

Carlson has been accused of promoting Russian propaganda by mainstream narrative managers for frequently criticizing the Biden administration’s hawkish posture toward Russia regarding the entirely unsubstantiated claim that Moscow is preparing to launch an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. We’ve been seeing things like Anderson Cooper innocently musing that “It is striking how neatly Kremlin propaganda seems to dovetail with Carlson’s talking points” and this CNN segment from December with Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter and tinfoil hat Russiagater Julia Ioffe wondering aloud about why Russian state media seem to be so fond of Carlson. By mid-January, Democratic Party operatives were openly demanding that Carlson be investigated for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

“This isn’t journalism, it’s an ongoing FARA violation. Tucker Carlson needs to be prosecuted as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation and treason under Article 3, Sec. 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution for aiding an enemy in hybrid warfare against the United States,” tweeted former DNC official Alexandra Chalupa, best known for colluding with the Ukrainian government in 2016 on opposition research against Donald Trump.

This isn’t journalism, it’s an ongoing FARA violation. Tucker Carlson needs to be prosecuted as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation and treason under Article 3, Sec. 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution for aiding an enemy in hybrid warfare against the United States. https://t.co/5JkLuCKoBn

— Alexandra Chalupa (@AlexandraChalup) January 19, 2022

The accusations and insinuations increased, eventually leading to Carlson outright denying being a Russian agent in a recent interview with The New York Times saying, “I’ve never been to Russia, I don’t speak Russian. Of course I’m not an agent of Russia.”

As you would expect, this denial was then spun by the same demented mainstream pundits who’ve spent the last five years being wrong about Russia as evidence that Carlson is a Russian agent.

“Tucker Carlson told The New York Times he’s not a Russian agent amid controversy over his pro-Kremlin stance,” blares a headline by Business Insider.

 

Cain't B'lee Matt Lee Kwestined Ned Price Like This....,

WaPo  |  Moscow is considering filming a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people by Ukrainian forces as a pretext to invade its neighbor, the Biden administration said Thursday, warning that the resulting propaganda footage could include “graphic scenes of a staged false explosion with corpses.”

Russia has already recruited the people who would be involved in the fabricated attack video, and Russian intelligence is intimately involved in the effort, a senior Biden administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the administration.

“We believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment at the hands of Ukraine or the West, even to the point where some of this equipment would be made to look like it was Western-supplied,” Defense Department press secretary John Kirby said Thursday during a briefing at the Pentagon.

The Russian disinformation effort would be “right out of their playbook,” Kirby said, noting that most activity of that nature is approved at the highest levels of the Russian government. Kirby said the Biden administration felt it was important, upon learning of such plans, “to call it out.”

The allegations by the Biden administration were met with pushback due to the lack of specificity and evidence. At a briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price was asked repeatedly if the United States would provide evidence supporting the alleged Russian plot. He declined to do so, citing the need to protect intelligence sources and methods.

When asked about the level of confidence Washington has in the information, Price said that “this is derived from intelligence in which we have confidence … otherwise we would not be making it public in the way we are.” He said the United States does not know if the Russians will use the alleged video but that the U.S. disclosure was designed to prevent it from happening.

Cain't B'lee Ayesha Rascoe Kwestined Jen Psaki Like This...,

realclearpolitics  |  According to President Biden this morning, the latest leader of the "Islamic State" group detonated a bomb killing his wife and family during a U.S. special forces raid near the Syria-Turkey border last night that resulted in his death. At least 13 other people died according to local sources and members of an apparently unrelated Syrian family on the lower floor of the building were injured.

NPR White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe asked during an Air Force One press gaggle on Thursday if we were going to see any evidence of that claim. 

OTHER QUESTION: With regard to the civilian casualties in Syria, is the administration saying that they were caused entirely by the bomb detonating, or by crossfire from the one lieutenant engaging with U.S. forces? Give us some clarity on that.

JEN PSAKI: Obviously these events just happened overnight. So I'm going to let the Department of Defense do a final assessment, which I'm certain they will provide additional detail on once it is finalized.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR: Jen, will there be any, like evidence or, like, release to support the idea -- I know the U.S. has put out a statement that they [ISIS leader or his associates] detonated the bomb themselves. But will the U.S. provide any evidence? Because there may be people who are skeptical of the events that took place and what happened to the civilians.

JEN PSAKI: Skeptical of the U.S. military's assessment when they went and took out an ISIS terror-- a leader of ISIS, that they are not providing accurate information? And ISIS is providing accurate information?

AYESHA ROSCOE: Well, not ISIS, but I mean. The U.S. has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians, I mean that is a fact.

JEN PSAKI: Well, as you know, there is an extensive process that the Department of Defense undergoes. The president made clear from the beginning at every point in this process that doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties was his priority and his preference.

I just reconfirmed and I think our national security colleague who did a briefing this morning also reiterated that the individual who was the target detonated himself, killing his entire family. Given, these events just happened less than 24 hours ago, we're going to give them time to make a final assessment and they will provide every detail they can. 

Jews Weren't White Until They Were

usatoday |  If race were real – in a biological sense – it would stay the same across history. But it doesn't. It changes.

That's how people like me became white. Yes, you read that right. Jews weren't white … until we were.

 The horror of the Holocaust thoroughly discredited the idea of Jews as a race. But race itself – as a concept – was still going strong. Slowly, and unevenly, white Americans welcomed Jews into theirs.

Tensions between Jewish and Black people

That has been a source of tension between Jews and African Americans ever since. James Baldwin wrote in 1967 that Black people were tired of Jews claiming that their own experience of prejudice was “as great as the American Negro’s suffering.” That was false, Baldwin wrote, and it fueled Black antisemitism.

“The most ironical thing,” Baldwin added, “is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man.”

You could hear echoes of that frustration in Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on Monday, when she denied the racial dimensions of the Nazi genocide against Jews.

“This is white people doing it to white people,” she said, when challenged on the claim, “so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.”

She was wrong about that, and – to her credit – she apologized for it. But she was right that most Jews have changed their race since that time, which has never been an option for African Americans.

Race makes us imagine that our differences are inherent. And from there, it's just a short step to the idea that some people are inherently superior – or inferior – to each other. We need a new language to talk about all of this, openly and honestly. Jews aren’t a separate race, biologically speaking. But neither is anyone else.

Jewishness (And Anti-Semitism) Is WTF WE TELL YOU IT IS!!!

israelnationalnews |  The Anti-Defamation League, which has faced charges in recent years that it has become too politically active, changed its definition of racism for the second time in two years after critics attacked its previous definition as narrowly focused.

According to a report in Breitbart, the ADL’s original definition of racism was: ”Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.”

In late 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, the ADL changed its definition of racism to state: “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

The ADL said that the new definition was created to “reflect that racism in the United States manifests in broader and systemic ways.”

Yet, critics argued it was too narrow and left out other types of racism. The ADL also began to categorize Jews based on skin color – with fellowships aimed at “Jews of Color,” Breitbart reported.

But this week, the ADL again changed its definition of racism to an “interim” definition that was broader and was more reflective of the previous definition.

The interim definition states: “Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt explained the change in a Medium op-ed published on Wednesday, saying that while the updated definition “explicitly acknowledged the targeting of people of color – among many others – by the white supremacist extremism we have tracked for decades,” the “new frame narrowed the meaning in other ways.”

“By being so narrow, the resulting definition was incomplete, rendering it ineffective and therefore unacceptable,” Greenblatt said. “It’s true, it’s just not the whole truth. It alienated many people who did not see their own experience encompassed in this definition, including many in the Jewish community.”

 

ADL Deeply Disturbed By Characterizations Of Jews As A Race

ADL  |  New Orleans, LA, February 26, 2018 … Anti-Defamation League (ADL) South Central Regional Director Aaron Ahlquist issued the following statement regarding Joshua Bonadona’s employment discrimination lawsuit against Louisiana College:

“ADL is deeply offended by the perception of Jews as a race found in both allegations against the College and the plaintiff’s assertions in the lawsuit.  According to a court filing, the administration was motivated in its actions because of Mr. Bonadona’s “Jewish blood” and Mr. Bonadona is attempting to circumvent the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s religious employer exemption by characterizing his “Jewish heritage” as racial.

The notion of the Jewish “race” originated from the 19^th Century concept of “racial science,” which took root in Western Europe.  In response to the decline of the influence of traditional Christianity, as well as the rise of Jewish assimilation and social mobility, anti-Semites adopted racial arguments as a new rationalization for their hatred of Jews.

The idea that Jews are not only a religious group, but also a racial group, was a centerpiece of Nazi policy, and was the justification for killing any Jewish person who came under Nazi occupation –– regardless of whether he or she practiced Judaism. In fact, even the children and the grandchildren of Jews who had converted to Christianity were murdered as members of the Jewish “race” during the Holocaust.

Based on Congress’ 19^th Century conception of race, the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s ruled that the definition of “non-white races” found in post-Civil War anti-discrimination laws, includes Arabs, Chinese, Jews and Italians.  The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which explicitly covers national origin and religion, does not embody these antiquated views.  Although Mr. Bonadona’s attorney certainly could try to bring claims under these 19^th century laws, we believe that attempting to create similar legal precedent under the Civil Rights Act perpetuates harmful stereotypes and views about Jews.

What unites Jews as a people, whether they come from Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Americas, is a common culture, rooted in a common religion. Jews throughout the world are joined by a religious and cultural heritage rather than a racial sameness.  The allegations against Louisiana College, if true, would indicate a very troubling and deeply offensive view by the institution that it perceives and discriminates against Jews as a race.”

Whoopi Didn't Learn From The Example Made Of Nick Cannon (REDUX 7/25/20)

For 100 minutes, not a single truth was discussed outside the truth that Abraham Cooper is supremely arrogant about being in a position of strength and control, and very explicitly says as much to the slobbering, grinning, and thoroughly chastened and humiliated negroe "celebrity".

Nick Cannon's jaws and knees must really, really hurt after a hundred minutes of grinning, bowing and scraping before this nasty little Brooklyn mensch.

Finally, isn’t it in the nature of contemporary culture, with its emphasis on entertainment, consumption, and sex, to be the perfect environment in which to hide many “Invisible Gorillas”? Isn’t it a whirlwind of fixations and distractions, replete with untold numbers of “woke” viewers happy to report that they’ve been enthusiastically counting passes and have the accurate number? Isn’t it rather the axiom of our time that, from the idiotic Left to the idiotic Right, Invisible Gorillas stroll freely and unhindered, laughing and waving as they go, hidden in plain sight?

Tried to tell you where this is headed last week Manifesto of Secure Tolerance

Fascism Has BEEN HERE: I Assume You Understand The Reality Of Your Situation?

off-guardian  |  you are not supposed to talk about how money controls social institutions and how our values, beliefs and norms are determined by the interests of the ruling class, and how the economic caste order effectively enforces capitalist imperatives to perpetuate the reign of money and violence.

Believe it or not, today, this sort of understanding is labeled as “conspiracy.” Right, you are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut case if you happen to call out corporate crimes, their criminal conspiracies and so on and so forth.

How obvious can it get? Rich people dominate corporate politics with the good old righteousness of exceptionalism, and a colonial attitude with the kinder, gentler face of liberal politics, and it is perfectly OK to call a simple Marxist analysis of exploitation a “conspiracy.”

The tendency to obscure the mechanism of capitalism is mirrored exactly among many of those who oppose the overwhelming push for Covid lockdowns, Covid “vaccine” mandates and so on. For many of those who stand on the other side of the virus event, the entire mobilization is described as a “communist takeover.”

That’s right. All those diehard capitalists who have been conspiring to perpetuate their interests through World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank and so on are communists now. How convenient? You can’t have capitalism without opportunism.

But the whole thing makes perfect sense. Both ends of the capitalist spectrum, fascists and social democrats, have always struggled to perpetuate capitalist hegemony together. At the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to perpetuate the capitalist caste hierarchy and their righteous positions within it.

One step with the left leg goes forward as the right leg moves forward to balance the momentum of the imperial hegemony — just as the hopelessly corrupt Hilary Clinton gives birth to a Donald Trump Presidency, which, in turn, gives the Democratic Party a reason to exist.

Left, right, left, right, the empire moves forward as it gently shifts its weight left to right. As they march the imperial-scape together, they sing derogatory smears against any revolutionary momentum.

Both sides are free to argue and fight as long as they adhere to the imperial imperatives of capitalism. The corporate media ensure that the narratives are told to fit this dynamic. Those who do not belong to the dynamics are portrayed as “others”–fringe extremists to be demonized from multiple angles.

How does the empire gain its mythical aura of authority? Easy. They play a good old protection racket scheme against unsuspecting “good people.”

For example, they tell people that terrorists are coming, while “secretly” funding the killers in ways which are not so secret to the people. People get the idea: “Oh I see. we have to pay the protection fee. Otherwise, we get fucked up.”

Or, for example, they tell people that plague is coming, and force people to get injected with special medicines. If the people refuse, their jobs are taken away, their families are split apart, you can’t eat at a restaurant and so on. They can effectively turn everyone into a dangerous element with an infection until proven “healthy” by the designated means of the authority.

There goes the presumption of innocence along with informed consent out of the door.

This is a big deal. There is a huge reason why an authority must prove someone guilty without a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, people can be arbitrarily accused of committing any crime and then punished for it. And without informed consent, people can be forced to drink Cool Aid just because they are told to do so.

Moreover, as soon as the feudal overloads deal with the life and death of the people, they effectively consecrate themself as gods. A politician would claim that Covid “vaccines” are sent by God. Cultural figures would start accusing those who refuse the medication of “defying the law of nature,” defying “science” and so on, effectively turning Bill Gates and the rest of the snake oil salesmen into gods of our times.

So now it seems that even this pretend “democracy” is being taken away by the acceptance of decrees under an “emergency” just like any other fascist take-over.

SitRep: Where You Worrisome Pissant Are - Right About Now...,

off-guardian |   I am afraid I am not all that excited about the current hoopla regarding our apparent victory over the mainstream narrative. I simply don’t believe it entirely.

We’ve made a run, so to speak, maybe have gotten too rowdy, too powerful, and we are being given a bit of slack so we don’t break the line.

This run is not being executed only by the folks on our side of the fence, but by the sheep as well. We are ALL tired, we are all ready to get out of this mess and call it a day.

It seems like a sensible tactic on their part—to let out a little line, but still keeping us hooked and apparently still in their control.

All this euphoria about us finally winning the battle and that the narrative is finally crumbling indicates to me that we may be getting lost in the weeds of apparent success and the hook and line is still, in reality, firmly embedded in our flesh, only to suddenly reel us in again, after a dizzying and disorienting taste of freedom. I don’t like it.

Most everyone is familiar with the 1950’s Harvard experiment conducted by a rather soulless Curt Richter. Rats were placed in a tank where they had to frantically tread water to survive. Typically they lasted only 15 minutes or so before giving up, sinking, and subsequently drowning.

A second set of experiments showed that if the rats were saved right before their demise, dried off and given a little respite, and then again returned to the tank of water, they could tread, and stay alive, for up to 60 hours.

They called this the “hope experiment,” which is relevant to the current happenings.

To maintain the narrative, people must maintain some sort of hope. When we are about to throw in the towel we are given a little slack in the line, and when the pressure hits again—with a new variant, a new virus, or, in a radical right turn, a nuclear war threat — we can sustain our loyalty, and ultimate compliance, believing we will not drown but will be saved at the last minute by our surrogate parents and archetypal “protectors.”

These tactics work in different ways with the masses on opposing sides of the fence. The sheep need the slack when they are about to throw in the towel of compliance. The rest of us are not about to throw in the towel, but are about to gain greater potential of harm to the narrative—they respond to both situations with the same tactic, but with different results depending on where you sit in this whole mess.