Tag: Machiavelli
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What is a politician?
A politician is a salesman for broadcast media. TV started in 1948 as a way for people to watch live sports events. Radio was inadequate for the purpose. For a few decades TV provided a broader range of entertainment. Now it’s back to nothing but sports. There are four major-league sports on TV. Football, baseball,…
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Kirn quibble
Kirn: We are never at peace anymore. Wartime restrictions are being instituted across every segment of society & culture. Even at the height of the Cold War there were mainstream, popular, & ruthless satires of the great bureaucratic, military, & corporate powers. Yup. This situation isn’t new; the same total control happened during Wilson. There’s…
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Not unprecedented
Greenwald discusses some fool who made the mistake of working for Trump for a few days. Now the fool is in jail, and Greenwald calls it unjust and unprecedented. Of course it’s unjust. Everything in politics is WAY beyond unjust. Words like justice shouldn’t be ruined and blasphemed by applying them to politics. But it’s…
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Rererereprint on experts
Closely tied to previous two items. I’ve reprinted this list many times in various contexts with various additions. Feels like a good time to reprint it again, connecting it to my recent language-based comparison of facts vs commands and the recent UFO frenzy. This version of the list is from 2017, with a good discussion…
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One specific fact
When I read Naomi Wolf’s latest poetic lament on our modern hell, I wrote a quick passionate assent to her main point. She was saying that demons certainly exist. I wrote that demons have always been about 1% of the population, but before 1980 they were kept in asylums and prisons. Now they occupy all…
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Pew comes through again
Pew surveyed people in 30 countries, asking them what’s wrong with democracy in their country and how it can improve. One answer came up almost universally: PEOPLE. The politicians themselves are fucked. If you could replace them with competent sane humans, things would improve. Below this top answer, each country had different secondary answers. Meanwhile,…
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Seems like a command
Random cranky observation. About two weeks ago, it appears that a command was given to the fake “independents” in various social media. The real independents gave up and went silent a year ago. Last month the fake “independents” stopped pretending and slotted neatly into the Trump cult or the Biden cult. Before the charge was…
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More things I learned from others
Recently I gathered up five learnings acquired from others. It’s time to add one more, which isn’t especially recent but was missed in the previous listing. = = = = = START REHASH: Most of my learning comes from painful experience. I couldn’t have figured out these facts on my own, and I’m grateful to…
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Should have written here
Another thought that I should have written here first. On Substack somebody posted a description of the Piven-Cloward strategy for overwhelming a government with demands, lawsuits, and immigrants. I’ve seen this many times, but for some reason the style of this description evoked a new thought. New thought 1: This is simply what happens to…
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You first, asshole.
Listening again to Spencer Cox of the Niceness Initiative. He says the governors all get along fine. We’ve heard recently that the Supreme Black-robed Demons get along fine. That’s the problem, not the solution. The inner party gets along. When they decide to imprison and strangle the peasants, they all move together in perfect unison.…
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How do these myths start?
Compact has a good article on Trudeau’s absolute tyranny, which was aided AS ALWAYS by the media. Compact’s writers grasp HARDASS REALITY better than most, which is why I pay for a subscription. I won’t pay anyone who can’t see beyond the standard myths. In this article one of the standard myths creeps in, perhaps…
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Still scratching
Still trying to scratch the itch of the Niceness Crusade by Cox and Moore. Coming at it from a different angle: If niceness is a product, what’s the use case? Why would people want to buy niceness as a component of politics? Normal people don’t need to buy civility as a component of ordinary life.…
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Should have written it here.
Somebody on substack was noting that Putin is a far better player of international chess than our leaders. I agreed and added this comment, which I really should have written here first. = = = = = Putin has a head start. Russians understand us better than we understand them. Russians also understand us better…
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More passionate truth
More passionate truth from Jeffrey Tucker: = = = = = START QUOTE: The signers of the original Yale letter were hardly the only ones. Academics, think tankers, authors, and major public pundits all over the world changed suddenly. Those who should have opposed lockdowns switched to favor them once every major nation in the…
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Futilation
RFK is a Gaian. That’s all he is. He’s managed to sucker in a large part of the anti-tyrants by focusing on the “poisons” in vax. This intentionally distracts from the far larger purposes of the genocide, and turns the anti-tyrants into Gaian activists. Gaia and “virus” are two closely related projects by the same…
Polistra's Mill 