Sowell’s disciples instantly assume I’m out to “DESTROY” him. That’s your world — not mine. Not to mention that such assumptions are in breach in his own standards:
Following Facts Where They Lead
“Said so and so”? . . . that’s one helluva trip you took there, Mr. Sowell.
Stirring Defense!
My surgical specificity in this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone. I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell, but lemme put it in terms you’ll understand: If he stepped into a debate with me on this matter, the beating he’d take would be biblical.
If you think you can challenge me on that, I invite you to try. I’ve been inviting you for a really long time.
Trillion Dollar Tube
To take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to a few minutes was no small feat:
Imagine what I did with 160
“There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on.”
— Major William Pierce (Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton)
Wouldn’t it be absurd to share that quote if my clip contained nothing but trite talking points? Some circles are not burdened by squaring their walk with their talk. They seem to think that advertising virtue equates to embodying it.
I tend to believe Thomas Sowell. He is brilliant and has worked at a think tank for about 40 years. Sources matter! Yours is from a concerned citizen.
This concerned citizen interviewed a world-renowned nuclear scientist, corresponded with the key physicist who wrote extensively on the tubes, along with correspondence with Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR):
Powell’s very own intelligence agency that he conveniently ignored. INR stuck to its old-fashioned ways by agreeing with DOE (ya know, the actual experts).
What did you do?
Besides gleefully get in the way by derailing the debate every step of the way? But more importantly, what will you do now?
Greg Thielmann said the following in 2013:
It will be up to Iraqis to debate whether their country now has a brighter future than it otherwise would have had without foreign invasion and occupation in the first decade of the new century. But it is uniquely incumbent on Americans to understand who and what were responsible for an enterprise that proved so costly in terms of U.S. lives lost, money spent, international reputation tarnished, and a campaign against al Qaeda diverted.
Note:
I modified the Intelligence Community image above by overlaying CIA on top of Director of National Intelligence — to show how the IC effectively operated pre-9/11 and before DCI took center stage.
America just casually moved on.
I didn’t — as I knew then what few know now:
The immeasurable value in the willingness to be wrong, understanding why, and looking to learn from it. And that not doing so — increasingly compounds the consequences of no accountability.
Look around!
Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. In reference to its opening image on Without Passion or Prejudice, I wrote: “Half the country is with me on this — and I just lost the other half. Had I started with the image below — it would be the opposite half.” America lost its way long ago (and you’re right about how some of that happened).
But all that pales in comparison to the aftermath of 9/11. Every major problem in America was exponentially exacerbated because of that fiasco for the ages — which Sowell helped sell and got off scot-free.
They all did — as they always do (Democrats & Republicans alike):
The story I’m out to tell takes both parties to task on the biggest & most costly lie in modern history — along with some other issues at the core of America’s decline. Sowell is simply a conduit through which to tell that story (and how his role within it could be harnessed for good).
Compelling him to admit where he’s wrong will work wonders for where he’s right.
What I do takes work — time & effort to think it through. If you’re unwilling to work in the interest of truth, understanding, and problem solving — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well. You may take pride in not blocking anyone, but I’m asking you to make an exception (so I’ll never bother you again). Is that really too much of a courtesy to ask?
Thank you!
When you make up your mind on lickety-split perception alone: In what parallel universe does that qualify as critical thinking? Ann Baker’s article beautifully captures what critical thinking is and is not:
Indeed, nowadays, we tend to take in and repeat whatever the values and beliefs of those around us have rather than forming our own independent thought and stopping to organize and evaluate the information we are receiving.
What does it say to you that across communities where claims of critical thinking are everywhere — I haven’t found it anywhere? These people taking endless delight in flooding the internet with ceaseless claims about their immaculate critical thinking skills.
But the second they’re challenged on anything that is even perceived as threatening their interests:
Don’t do any of this . . .
As I have an idea that could turn the tide (which would serve your interests whether I agree with them or not): All conversations on the country fit under the umbrella of mine. If you’re not interested in such discovery, let’s not waste each other’s time. Thx 🙏
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth. There’s a way we can harness folly from the past for the benefit of the future.
A.K.A. Learning!
All ya gotta do — is do what you say you do. And my idea is a framework for debate that boxes you in to do exactly that. You won’t like it — but here’s the deal: Your opposition won’t either. And who knows, you might learn to love embracing challenge, changing your mind, and the fruits from demanding across-the-board accountability.
This — is not that . . .
This is Broadcasting Beliefs About That
My idea is simple:
Cutting through our Crap is King culture to you to see it — is not.
Where infantile insults are celebrated:
The doubt-free who don’t do their homework are the experts.
Those who belittle and outright reject correction — are the righteous and wise. The ones with courage to admit when they’re wrong — are the weak. Tireless dedication is mercilessly mocked — while intellectual laziness is esteemed. Original thinking and uniqueness are bashed — while conforming to the trite is trumpeted. Depth is discarded with disdain — while shallowness is embraced with love.
The honest & sincere are shunned — while manipulators & liars are welcomed with open arms.
This is my story — and if you read it in full, you’ll find it’s part of your story too. You’ve all dealt with the same behavior I have — the difference is that I get it from every direction.
Conventional means have repeatedly failed and won’t put a pinprick in the atmosphere of absurdity suffocating the country. It’s high time to take another approach. If we don’t take a long, hard look at what America has become and how we got here — we will not see a return to some semblance of recognizing reality in our lifetime. As my videographer perfectly put it
We finally figured out what we were doing by the end
If we don’t change course as a country — we won’t!
I’ve written this story a hundred different ways when one Tweet is all it should take:
Thomas Sowell flagrantly failed to follow the facts on Iraq WMD — opting to peddle partisan hackery that poisons political discourse & butchers debate to this day. Here’s my 7-part documentary that exhaustively details the WMD Delusion (taking on both parties to task — on that issue and then some).
Einstein borrowed from the one below:
The worth of man lies not in the truth which he possesses, or believes that he possesses, but in the honest endeavor which he puts forth to secure that truth; for not by the possession of, but by the search after, truth, are his powers enlarged, wherein, alone, consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession fosters content, indolence, and pride.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Are you telling me . . .
That I can grasp this — but you can’t grasp that?
Your pursuit of truth and accountability seems awfully one-sided, Mr. Sowell. And that’s a fact: “truth verifiable from experience or observation.” Just as my lifelong record of unwavering commitment to the truth and objective scrutiny to find it.
As I said in my doc:
You can’t seem to comprehend that I don’t care what damage the truth inflicts upon politicians of any brand. I have this crazy idea that across-the-board accountability is always in the best interests of the nation.
As for my frustration — I have this thing about people who regurgitate nonsense in the face of overwhelming evidence that counters their baseless beliefs.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Anyone wanting to know the truth would not behave in ways that make damn sure you never will. Defenders of the indefensible make it impossible to discuss even a single screenshot — and yet have the temerity to bitch about my website. You blow right by illustrations and clips at the crux of the story — then complain how you can’t understand what you didn’t stop to consider.
Anything Goes for apologists trying to preserve what they perceive. I know their Rolodex of Ridicule rabbit-hole routine — all too well:
And Now for the Weather . . .
But every once in a blue moon, someone has the guts the reconsider. Not long before this Tweet — this Sowell supporter was condemning my efforts like all the rest that day (and every day).
And then he opened the doc . . .
“To learn to ask: ‘Is that true?’” . . .
Maybe there’s something to what she just said. Let me think about it. That’s interesting. Maybe I should change my mind.’” . . . When is the last time you can honestly remember a public dialogue — or even a private conversation — that followed that useful course?
8. Old information at the beginning of the sentence, new information at the end.
— Steven Pinker
How do you feel about no new information — anywhere?
As a distinguished scholar once said: “The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.”
— Thomas Sowell
The man’s a magician:
As I’m practically spit on by people promoting principles I followed to find he didn’t. Simply by virtue of writing those words, he couldn’t possibly do the same in service of his own ideals? And lo and behold — sleight of hand is how they pulled it off.
When you have absolutely no idea what’s going on here — on what basis are you so doubt-free?
I wish a buck was still silver
It was back when the country was strong
Merle’s sorrowful song has an uplifting twist at the end, and without that final 45 seconds — you’d miss the meaning of the message. The underlying meaning in mine:
Your beliefs should be backed by your record. I’m old-fashioned that way.
In John Wayne: The Life and Legend, the author relays a story about The Duke growing up as Marion Robert Morrison — and how every day he rode eight miles to elementary school on a horse named Jenny.
No matter how much he fed his horse, Jenny was still too thin.
Some ladies in town took notice of what they perceived as malnutrition and reported his family to the Humane Society. After a vet examined the horse it was diagnosed to have a disease and eventually they had to put her down. On top of losing his beloved horse, Marion was understandably unhappy with how he was treated:
[A] sense of outrage over being falsely accused never left him. “I learned you can’t always judge a person or a situation by the way it appears on the surface,” he remembered. “You have to look deeply into things before you’re in a position to make a proper decision.”
This nation has no such notion:
“We . . . want it now, and if it makes money now, it’s a good idea. But . . . if the things we’re doing are going to mess up the future, it wasn’t a good idea. Don’t deal on the moment. Take the long-term look at things.”
— The Dust Bowl
That the reaction is not to think it through, not to question, not to assemble facts, not to make arguments — but instead to wave banners and spout slogans such that you could hardly distinguish what they were doing from a manifesto that would come out of [does it matter?]
— Glenn Loury, Tucker Carlson Today
When the context suits you, such words are solid gold. What you do when it doesn’t — determines the worth of your word. Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. Explaining America’s decline from decades of dishonesty and systematic self-delusion in the Gutter Games of Government: Is apples & oranges as it gets when compared to the transactional nature of news and social-media norms.
Understanding how seemingly unrelated events impact one another takes time and effort to digest.
You are being conditioned to do the exact opposite. All’s fair in The March of Folly and fraud on the The Yellow Brick Road — the path of America’s predictably counterproductive pursuits.
Where systematic oversimplification has taken over to the point where inconvenient correlations are condemned as convoluted. And any attempt to have a conversation on issues that clearly call for careful consideration — is hijacked by baseless beliefs beaten into your brain as bedrock fact.
From decades of being increasingly accommodating of liars aligned with your interests: You kept lowering the bar — and now there is no bar.
It’s pure fantasy to think that you can ignore key dimensions of a problem and magically solve it. The problems that plague America are interrelated, and anything short of addressing that is going nowhere. But everyone’s wrapped up in their wheelhouse — operating under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them.
America’s in perennial pursuit of ideologies: Warfare waged with galactic levels of baggage & bullshit bolstered by . . .
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
And thanks to all that (which Sowell is central to while engineering the illusion that he’s aboveboard on every issue he utters a word on) . . .
Even 20 years later . . .
Half the country still can’t get this straight:
By Design
America Remains Mired in the Murky
What does it say to you: That on evidence claimed as components to build a nuclear bomb — the “debate” was hijacked by 10-second sound bites? Shouldn’t any debate establish what the debate is actually about? What does it say about a country that can’t even establish that much on a matter of this magnitude?
As I said in my doc:
All the sarin gas shells in the world would have no bearing on the aluminum tubes and other intel, but loyalists to logical fallacies are not burdened by the inconvenience of FACT.
They will nitpick over pebbles while refusing to even glance at the mountain of evidence that crushes their “convictions.”
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
For the sake of argument: Let’s say Saddam had full-blown active WMD programs on chemical & biological weapons. The tubes would still be a lie — whether the war would have been justified in that scenario or not. I’ll go one further: Let’s say he had a uranium enrichment program in operation as well, but that the rotors were carbon fiber — not aluminum.
Once again, the tubes would still be a lie.
Getting lucky in finding something you didn’t know about — does not absolve you from a case that was woven out of whole cloth.
Loury was rightly talking about the Black Lives Matter manifesto driving the aftermath of George Floyd. But the Left’s ludicrous ways pale in comparison to conservatives going batshit crazy after 9/11. The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause:
Yet the “party of personal responsibility” set the world ablaze while browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly.
True folly, Tuchman found, is generally recognized as counterproductive in its own time, and not merely in hindsight. In Tuchman’s template, true folly only ensues when a clear alternative path of action was available and ruled out.
Ripping on woke is all the rage
And outrage industries of dish it but can’t take it — would talk about race and responsibility till the end of time. But heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
Consequences matter or should matter more than some attractive or fashionable theory.
— Thomas Sowell
I couldn’t agree more . . .
Except there were no consequences on the fiasco for the ages driven by this manifesto:
Tuchman alighted on a root cause of folly that she called “wooden-headedness” — defined in part as “assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting contrary information.”
The outcome of that folly fashioned a culture of no consequences:
And predictably — more folly . . .
She also saw wooden-headedness as a certain proclivity for “acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by facts.”
If you’re not gonna do your part and accept responsibility for the damage you’ve done and dishonesty baked into your beliefs — why should the Left?
Why should anyone?
A Conflict of Visions . . .
And then some!
I’m not just taking Thomas Sowell to task because he’s got it comin’ — I need this guy for what I have in mind to right this ship. The ultimate irony is that blind loyalty limits him — while my criticism could elevate him to heights that hero-worship ensures he’ll never go.
So, you’re saying that your plan will elevate Sowell to worldwide recognition — by holding him accountable? That if he comes clean — he could be the catalyst to turn the tide?
That’s exactly what I’m saying!
It won’t matter that he blew it on WMD or why — all that matters is having the guts to say: “I was wrong and I’m trying to make it right.” In a culture consumed with feeling right, wouldn’t it be refreshing to talk about the immeasurable value in the willingness to be wrong?
Don’t just tell people how to behave: Lead by example — especially when it comes at a cost!
There are far worse culprits on all-things Iraq, but I’ve been down that road for decades. Discovering Sowell and the underworld of absurdity that shields him — makes him ideal to put these lies in their place once and for all: And change the dynamic of debate to boot. Elevating him is not my aim, but I can live with it to stem the systematic self-delusion that’s taken this nation totally off the rails:
Left & Right!
Incredibly, you look at that . . .
Coupled with this:
And act like it’s this . . .
That you have not developed the capacity understand matters of complexity beyond your current comprehension — doesn’t mean they don’t make sense. And there is no measure for how preposterous it is that people who can’t even get the self-evident straight:
Have the bottomless gall to belittle me on making correlations in 3 dimensions while you wallow in one.
“I don’t understand. I don’t know understand. It’s all so incoherent and confusing with all these things I have to stop and think about.” That’s because you wallow in a world of paint by numbers — where people telling you what you wanna hear every goddamn day: Package it all neatly into nursery-rhyme narratives (turning your mind into mush).
And whining about a website and throwing a tantrum like a child is the best ya got?
How do we make people realize they’ve been lied to? You have to knock down one small pillar that’s easier to reach.
The people who Tweeted those lines I combined from a conversation I came across — had no idea that they perfectly captured the principle of my Clear the Clutter plan. I’ve got the perfect pillar: As exposing Sowell is my bridge to expose it all.
Wooden-headedness, said Tuchman, was finally — “the refusal to benefit from experience.”
— Russ Hoyle
The Refusal to Benefit from Experience
[T]here could be no country that makes less use of the accumulated experience of those who have served it – none that is more frivolously neglectful and improvident of these assets – than the United States of America.
— George F. Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill
Look around!
Then one day at the end of my thirty-seventh year, while taking a spring Sunday walk, I happened upon a neighbor in the process of repairing a lawn mower. After greeting him I remarked, “Boy, I sure admire you. I’ve never been able to fix those kind of things or do anything like that.”
My neighbor, without a moment’s hesitation, shot back, “That’s because you don’t take the time.” I resumed my walk, somehow disquieted by the gurulike simplicity, spontaneity and definitiveness of his response.
“You don’t suppose he could be right, do you?” I asked myself.
Peck didn’t just ask himself “Could he be right?” — he acted on it (and the result is proof positive of how the even the smallest consideration can change your thinking). Somehow it registered, and the next time the opportunity presented itself to make a minor repair I was able to remind myself to take my time. The parking brake was stuck on a patient’s car, and she knew that there was something one could do under the dashboard to release it, but she didn’t know what. I lay down on the floor below the front seat of her car.
Then I took the time to make myself comfortable. Once I was comfortable, I then took the time to look at the situation. . . .
At first all I saw was a confusing jumble of wires and tubes and rods, whose meaning I did not know. But gradually, in no hurry, I was able to focus my sight . . . I slowly studied this latch until it became clear to me . . . One single motion, one ounce of pressure from a fingertip, and the problem was solved.
Clearing the clutter can be quite revealing.
That didn’t make Peck mechanically inclined any more than reading his books will make you a psychiatrist. But even a guy who dedicated his life to helping others through his insight into the human condition — allowed another to help him see something that was hidden.
As my videographer perfectly put it: “We finally figured out what we were doing by the end.” If we don’t change course as a country — we won’t!