That’s what modern hysterics are really saying. Be terrified along with me right now at my exact emotional pitch or I’m going to scream and point at you on the street Donald Sutherland Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style. People who are scared want to be reassured.
“ In case you’re wondering, yes. I am characterizing almost 50 percent of the US voting population as Marxist or Marxist-sympathetic. “
THANK YOU , THANK YOU , THANK YOU Josh! I just wrote the same earlier today on a Twitter thread. I want SPECIFIC language. If we cannot name it , we cannot see it.
I’m currently reading The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil by Michael Malice. The beginning of the book highlights Ayn Rand’s damned near relentlessness calling out back in her day of the Marxists and adjacents.
Then there’s Mises who wasn’t even impressed with F.A. Hayek, et.al’s mostly open and free market economic views. One of his most famous moments was storming out of a meeting declaring the others as a “bunch of damned socialists.”
It’s lead me to draw parallels on how I was mislead into dismissing many arguments as falling for the “slippery slope” fallacy. Well it turns out a lot of slopes *are* quite slippery. Falling for this IMO is how a lot of this nonsense got in the door whether it things such as the Federal Reserve, damned near any woke issue, or this infiltration of Marxism.
While I say I was sympathetic to these politics, there was still a libertarian streak in me even when I was a leftie. It's an open question in my mind whether I might be/always-have-been temperamentally libertarian. Illegitimate authority has always infuriated me, as has being told what to do by anyone who is not in a legitimate position over me in a hierarchy.
I'll take orders from a boss or from a colleague who has superior knowledge or skills, gladly. It's much better to rely on superior judgment than it is to reflexively kick back at it. But this is mutually negotiated and recognized authority and voluntary hierarchies.
I knew the antismoking stuff was lies and hysteria 25 years ago. A legitimately unhealthy habit had been so demonized beyond reason; it was impossible not to take a lesson in how good propaganda mixes truth with hyperbole and lies.
I know I'm kind of an oddball, but when did so many "normal" Americans become such noodle spined ninny's that they will do anything to avoid being even a tiny bit offensive, determined to be pathologically nice and complete herd animals? I stay to myself, so human interaction isn't something with which I have to endure very often. Don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly civilized in public, friendly and polite. My state is fairly conservative, except for the city in which I live (and the reason I keep to myself), and for the most part spiteful mutants like I read about and see online are not in the majority.
Throughout the so-called pandemic I refused to wear a mask or do any of the other stupid stuff other people seemed willing and eager to do, but I never received ill-treatment as a result. I rather hoped someone would have the nerve to get in my face, so I'd have an opportunity to wither them with a response aimed so well they'd almost die from shock or embarrassment. Ha ha, most likely my real response would be to give them a cold stare, laugh at them and show them my back or walk by imperiously without a word. I always think of the killer comeback after the fact.
Truth is, I haven't felt one iota of sympathy or empathy for these frightened herd-animals. I resent that their unfounded fears impose on my freedoms, and actively scorn them, just short of wishing them ill.
I tune out the news and the blithering yammering scaremongering that comes from it. Even those I consider on my side (normal, conservative, reasonable, informed) do not ipso facto unduly influence me. I guess many people just defer their thinking to others, instead of taking the time and trouble to do it for themselves. Go-alonger’s-to-get-alongers are not my people.
It appears that much of public life has entered into a state of hysteria. It’s as if the lockdowns cracked the veneer of our public conscience, unintentionally but inevitably revealing a thousand points of fracture and psychic pain. Fear seems to be both catalyst and response within this perpetual do loop. . . . I totally agree that scared people like the ones you describe immediately sense the lack of fear in others as a threat, perhaps because it is, to their psyche.
This piece reminds me of the podcast episode you did in the fall of 2022, where you commented on the victimhood movements ( there were clips of a professor, I can't remember who he is, describing that all victimhood movements eventually get hijacked by narcissists). It seems like so much fear mongering has a goal, the promoters of this WANT the entire population to see themselves as victims of the natural world. We are to fear the natural world, everything natural is the 'agressor', including our natural bodies, and therefore needs to be controlled and subdued. I'm just dimestore philosophizing here but IMO this is how the narcissists in all modern societal institutions want us to think. We're in a campaign of fear based brainwashing.
On the subject of the gas stoves killing people and the planet...
There's a new suggestion in the UK. For people like me who live in remote places and rely on kerosene heating, the government is suggesting replacing kerosene with hydrogenated vegetable oils. I guess this is because vegetable oils are "green" because they come from plants, unlike nasty fossil fuel stuff.
So...you take veg oil and add hydrogen. Where does the hydrogen come from?
2 options; one is obviously from oil. The second is most likely to be electrolysis of water. That takes electricity though, and guess how we make most of that?
So, we could just use the kerosene. Or we could use fossil fuels to make fertilizers and power tractors to grow seed oils, use more fossil fuels harvesting and processing them, use more fossil fuels moving them to a hydrogenation facility, where we would use more fossil fuels to obtain the hydrogen, that we'd have to use fossil fuel energy to add to the seed oil.
I will admit, when the pandemic stuff first started, I was totally hooked into the fear. The lockdowns were exciting. I was a little offended by people who didn't share the fear, who pushed back against masks and lockdowns. Thank God I woke up from all of that. Now everything coming from the media just sounds like faked up narrative pushing the world into the Great Reset.
Individuals are too stupid to make decisions on their own therefore nefarious evil fossil fuel/pro car, etc took advantage of them forcing them to use planet killing and children-asthma causing natural gas.
Jan 14, 2023·edited Jan 14, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
Josh, you are a real gangster. How did conservatives become anti-establishment? Who knew liberals would become the face of authority and coercion?
Public safety seems to be the justification for all manner of intrusions by government these days, and fear-mongering its technique of choice. The sky is falling, officials say. We must prepare, experts warn.
Any number of federal and state agencies are prepared to step in and save us but very time the government acts to "protect" the public, the individual rights and liberty of the citizenry diminish.
I think you might enjoy Thomas Sowell’s book, ‘Intellectuals and Society’. He holds nothing back against the mindset (pride, hubris) of the so-called ‘vision of the anointed’ cadre of intellectuals who seem to act as though they were put on this earth to run people’s lives…
“I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic” - Greta Thrunberg
“ In case you’re wondering, yes. I am characterizing almost 50 percent of the US voting population as Marxist or Marxist-sympathetic. “
THANK YOU , THANK YOU , THANK YOU Josh! I just wrote the same earlier today on a Twitter thread. I want SPECIFIC language. If we cannot name it , we cannot see it.
I’m currently reading The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil by Michael Malice. The beginning of the book highlights Ayn Rand’s damned near relentlessness calling out back in her day of the Marxists and adjacents.
Then there’s Mises who wasn’t even impressed with F.A. Hayek, et.al’s mostly open and free market economic views. One of his most famous moments was storming out of a meeting declaring the others as a “bunch of damned socialists.”
It’s lead me to draw parallels on how I was mislead into dismissing many arguments as falling for the “slippery slope” fallacy. Well it turns out a lot of slopes *are* quite slippery. Falling for this IMO is how a lot of this nonsense got in the door whether it things such as the Federal Reserve, damned near any woke issue, or this infiltration of Marxism.
While I say I was sympathetic to these politics, there was still a libertarian streak in me even when I was a leftie. It's an open question in my mind whether I might be/always-have-been temperamentally libertarian. Illegitimate authority has always infuriated me, as has being told what to do by anyone who is not in a legitimate position over me in a hierarchy.
I'll take orders from a boss or from a colleague who has superior knowledge or skills, gladly. It's much better to rely on superior judgment than it is to reflexively kick back at it. But this is mutually negotiated and recognized authority and voluntary hierarchies.
I knew the antismoking stuff was lies and hysteria 25 years ago. A legitimately unhealthy habit had been so demonized beyond reason; it was impossible not to take a lesson in how good propaganda mixes truth with hyperbole and lies.
I know I'm kind of an oddball, but when did so many "normal" Americans become such noodle spined ninny's that they will do anything to avoid being even a tiny bit offensive, determined to be pathologically nice and complete herd animals? I stay to myself, so human interaction isn't something with which I have to endure very often. Don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly civilized in public, friendly and polite. My state is fairly conservative, except for the city in which I live (and the reason I keep to myself), and for the most part spiteful mutants like I read about and see online are not in the majority.
Throughout the so-called pandemic I refused to wear a mask or do any of the other stupid stuff other people seemed willing and eager to do, but I never received ill-treatment as a result. I rather hoped someone would have the nerve to get in my face, so I'd have an opportunity to wither them with a response aimed so well they'd almost die from shock or embarrassment. Ha ha, most likely my real response would be to give them a cold stare, laugh at them and show them my back or walk by imperiously without a word. I always think of the killer comeback after the fact.
Truth is, I haven't felt one iota of sympathy or empathy for these frightened herd-animals. I resent that their unfounded fears impose on my freedoms, and actively scorn them, just short of wishing them ill.
I tune out the news and the blithering yammering scaremongering that comes from it. Even those I consider on my side (normal, conservative, reasonable, informed) do not ipso facto unduly influence me. I guess many people just defer their thinking to others, instead of taking the time and trouble to do it for themselves. Go-alonger’s-to-get-alongers are not my people.
You nailed it!
One thing I hadn't realized before covid is how many peolple want the state to be in loco parentis.
It appears that much of public life has entered into a state of hysteria. It’s as if the lockdowns cracked the veneer of our public conscience, unintentionally but inevitably revealing a thousand points of fracture and psychic pain. Fear seems to be both catalyst and response within this perpetual do loop. . . . I totally agree that scared people like the ones you describe immediately sense the lack of fear in others as a threat, perhaps because it is, to their psyche.
This piece reminds me of the podcast episode you did in the fall of 2022, where you commented on the victimhood movements ( there were clips of a professor, I can't remember who he is, describing that all victimhood movements eventually get hijacked by narcissists). It seems like so much fear mongering has a goal, the promoters of this WANT the entire population to see themselves as victims of the natural world. We are to fear the natural world, everything natural is the 'agressor', including our natural bodies, and therefore needs to be controlled and subdued. I'm just dimestore philosophizing here but IMO this is how the narcissists in all modern societal institutions want us to think. We're in a campaign of fear based brainwashing.
On the subject of the gas stoves killing people and the planet...
There's a new suggestion in the UK. For people like me who live in remote places and rely on kerosene heating, the government is suggesting replacing kerosene with hydrogenated vegetable oils. I guess this is because vegetable oils are "green" because they come from plants, unlike nasty fossil fuel stuff.
So...you take veg oil and add hydrogen. Where does the hydrogen come from?
2 options; one is obviously from oil. The second is most likely to be electrolysis of water. That takes electricity though, and guess how we make most of that?
So, we could just use the kerosene. Or we could use fossil fuels to make fertilizers and power tractors to grow seed oils, use more fossil fuels harvesting and processing them, use more fossil fuels moving them to a hydrogenation facility, where we would use more fossil fuels to obtain the hydrogen, that we'd have to use fossil fuel energy to add to the seed oil.
Or we could just use the fucking kerosene.
I will admit, when the pandemic stuff first started, I was totally hooked into the fear. The lockdowns were exciting. I was a little offended by people who didn't share the fear, who pushed back against masks and lockdowns. Thank God I woke up from all of that. Now everything coming from the media just sounds like faked up narrative pushing the world into the Great Reset.
Just sat down after cooking an evil steak (medium-rare of course) over my dangerous gas stove only to come across this.
https://heated.world/p/this-is-all-the-gas-industrys-fault?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
“Their whole piece boils down to essentially:
Individuals are too stupid to make decisions on their own therefore nefarious evil fossil fuel/pro car, etc took advantage of them forcing them to use planet killing and children-asthma causing natural gas.
Only Noble Anointed folks can set them straight.”
Josh, you are a real gangster. How did conservatives become anti-establishment? Who knew liberals would become the face of authority and coercion?
Public safety seems to be the justification for all manner of intrusions by government these days, and fear-mongering its technique of choice. The sky is falling, officials say. We must prepare, experts warn.
Any number of federal and state agencies are prepared to step in and save us but very time the government acts to "protect" the public, the individual rights and liberty of the citizenry diminish.
I think you might enjoy Thomas Sowell’s book, ‘Intellectuals and Society’. He holds nothing back against the mindset (pride, hubris) of the so-called ‘vision of the anointed’ cadre of intellectuals who seem to act as though they were put on this earth to run people’s lives…