The basic Machiavelli trick is well-known. Divide people into Team A and Team B, set them against each other. The teams are so busy fighting each other that they have no energy left for resisting the ruler.
In the last few years I’ve noticed an imbalance between the teams, which isn’t quite as familiar. When Team B is defined as the Activists or Opposition, it rejects heretics FAR MORE STRONGLY than the Establishment team.
I had to move here to WordPress in 2021 after some asshole reported several of my items at Blogspot. The management removed the items, and I figured the reporting would continue. So I switched to WordPress, and haven’t had any trouble here in 3 years.
The canceled items were NOT fighting the Establishment monsters. I was objecting to the direction taken by the opposition under RFK’s influence. I saw that the opposition was falling into unproductive action, exclusively fighting the vax and ignoring the REAL violations of medicine and law. The vax for the common cold rebranded as Black Plague was ineffective and had too many side effects, like all previous common cold vaxes. But vax is an integral and valid part of REAL public health, and is NECESSARY and HUGELY LIFESAVING for some viruses. Eliminating it was helping the monsters to destroy REAL public health.
I had written a lot of ferocious objections to the Establishment, not only in the blog but on Facebook and other places. I didn’t get in trouble for those writings.
Last week I noticed the same imbalance. I’m tired of the “opposition” falling back into the Trump cult, after wasting years opposing what Trump did. I tried to comment on this in one of the re-culted opposition substacks, and got piled on mercilessly. Okay, I know when I’m not wanted!
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Why the imbalance? Perhaps the “opposition” team has a deep investment in their opposition, and stoutly defends the side against all objectors. In comparison, the Establishment side has low investment because it doesn’t take any EFFORT to run with the crowd. So they don’t get nearly as emotional when they encounter opposition. They know the opposition will lose. No need to get excited.
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Irrelevant sidenote since I mentioned Blogspot vs WordPress. One big disadvantage of WP is the difficulty of adjusting the blog theme. In Blogspot the theme code was directly editable. In WP you can alter a few things but can’t see the code. Last week the top title suddenly decided to grow HUGE in all caps. Previously it was a proper size. Some mysterious backstage switch altered the font, and I can’t see how to adjust it back.
10/4, managed to shrink the title to normal size but still all caps. Tolerable now.
Polistra's Mill 