Slogans, Monuments & Movements, Oh My!
“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.”
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:
And it shows!
But all’s fair in The March of Folly and fraud on the The Yellow Brick Road: 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.
Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives sby force, unschooled in adjustment. They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat.
— Barbara Tuchman
Unschooled in Adjustment
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.” 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.
That is not this . . .
A world where regurgitating garbage gets people to Like you — celebrating “victory” by clicking “bravo” to bad manners and bunk. A world where the rush is everything:
- The rush to respond
- The rush you get from responding
- The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
- Repeat and never reflect
Exhibit A
Until the rise of podcasts, twitter, and the various forms of independent media / journalism, people weren’t really aware how legacy media was influencing their thinking. I think people are finally waking up and may surprise you here, especially if more talk about it.
New formats for funneling information that caters to your cravings is not what I’d call enlightened. And those who couldn’t spot clearly dishonest actors before — think they’re wide awake now? The Twitter bio behind that quote begins with “Groupthink averse.”
It would never occur to him that everything in that Tweet is Groupthink 101.
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.
Just picking the “root cause” that works for you doesn’t cut it. You’ve gotta look at interconnected causes across-the-board.
You cannot forever beat something into the ground and think it’ll magically make a dent someday. Repeatedly rehashing issues is not the mark of problem solving: It’s the mark of a market.
All these channels are blunt instruments (including those I agree with).
Like Black Lives Matter — you’re just pounding away at problems without any examination of the efficacy of your efforts.
The smorgasbord of sub-cultures has created another dimension of delusion in America — hardening minds not broadening them. The commentary in these communities speaks volumes about social media and the state of society: Habitually hailing high praise for purveyors of virtue:
Virtues that vanish the second they’re called to put them to the test.
Across these echo chambers — channel hosts are worshipped as “National Treasures” (treating them like they’re some of the greatest minds to ever live). At the helm of these cesspools of sycophants — are people who peddle repeatedly rehashed insight their followers praise like they split the atom. To be sure, some of it is insightful. But these “geniuses” are so wise in their ways: They’re oblivious to how they’re feeding the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to solve.
Not to mention how they inspire you to flood the internet with ceaseless claims about your critical thinking skills — but don’t inspire you enough to do any of this:
Shallow thinkers do not think beyond the immediate and the observable. They usually take information at face value and only look at immediate consequences. They are not capable of looking at all sides of an issue or think deeply about the issue before making decisions or drawing conclusions . . . They also believe that their opinion is based on deep thinking because they genuinely believe that their opinion is based on truth and facts. Whereas, deep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
When we dig deeper, we understand better. We can compare different outcomes, examine, tear apart, and make cognizant judgments that are derived from different mental models.
Left and Right . . .
I’ve yet to find a single person who digs beyond the depth of their immediate domain of interest. In our entirely transactional times, America endlessly rehashes topics of today — never once considering the totality of events that created them (or even having a notion of the need to). America argues in a vacuum incapable of correlating anything: As if blowback has no bearing on 9/11 & today.
With the issues I address — you might as well be saying the Civil War wasn’t germane to the assassination of Lincoln.
[D]eep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
There was a time when we did!
“WUT”
In my youth, I could not have imagined a world in which even people with PhDs would act like imbeciles in the face of information they don’t instantly understand. That an entire country could take satisfaction in insulting your own intelligence on a daily basis just astounds me.
Adulthood is about spending the time to think before talking . . . Adulthood is about controlling our emotions, learning to take a deep breath and modulating our moments of anger or frustration.
As M. Scott Peck perfectly put it:
[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it.
In a nation that incessantly blames and complains (seemingly for sport) — no one’s taking responsibility for anything. Imagine America as an engine and you come along with a cross-section of it to explain why it’s not working. Since your audience shares your concerns, you’d think they’d be interested in understanding the internals of the problem. But they spend all their time talking about parts made by people they don’t like:
Never considering the defects in their own parts.
Marching to Black Lives Matter with the first black president sitting in the White House — was that a smart move? The answer should be abundantly clear and yet the question is not even considered. I’ve been blocked on Twitter for just politely suggesting that BLM is a counterproductive cause. Instead of considering how you could fight for justice more intelligently — you act like I’m saying you shouldn’t fight for it at all.
For people who pride themselves as the party of intellectualism — you sure don’t think things through.
Leaving aside her dealing on the moment — a Hillary/Obama ticket was still the smart move in 2008. He wasn’t ready (nor do I think he was presidential material anyway — but let’s leave that aside too). She’d most likely get 8 years — and in the meantime, Obama would be groomed for the next 8. That’s a high probability of 16 years of Democratic rule — and who knows from there.
You wanted a plant when you could have had a crop — and all you had to do was sacrifice a little longer.
But ya just had to have your first black president — instead of getting him as a seasoned candidate 8 years later. This ain’t Monday-morning quarterbacking — I said so at the time. But you weren’t done dealing on the moment — and no matter how many times it backfires, you never learn. Nobody nails Democrats better than Glenn Greenwald’s gold-standard from a 2008 article on Salon.com:
Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything — they fear looking weak. To avoid this, they cave, surrender, capitulate — and stand for nothing.
Speaking of Obama and standing for nothing. Geraldine Ferraro and Rush are in opposite camps, and yet she said essentially the same thing as he did:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
Every word of her statement is true, but that didn’t matter to those who bombarded her with “vicious e-mail messages accusing her of racism.”
Utterly ridiculous!
In a follow-up interview, Ferraro said she was “not trying to diminish Obama’s candidacy, and acknowledged up front that she would not have been the vice presidential nominee in 1984 if she had been a man.” All she was trying to say was that Obama lacked experience and that the media was overplaying his qualifications — and I couldn’t agree more.
Because it’s the truth (and no rational person would argue otherwise).
And on that note. Whatever I think of the Right — they’re right on the money about the impossibly stupid pampering of woke:
I don’t see what the problem is!
— Typical Tweeter tapping earth-shattering insight
You don’t see — a lot!
Your track record is not what I would call astute — and the Right doesn’t have anything to write home about either. I fail to understand how you think we can solve anything in a country that can’t even get the self-evident straight:
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
— Attributed to Mark Twain
There is no measure for how preposterous it is that people who can’t even grasp the obvious: Have the bottomless gall to belittle me on making correlations in 3 dimensions while you wallow in one.
Debunking the WMD delusion & Trayvon tale is a conduit for showing how this nation systematically derails debate. We’re well beyond “disagreement” in America — this is madness (countless millions miserably failing to follow even the most fundamental methods of how understanding works). The second you shun evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative you want — you have contaminated your judgment.
Pay no mind to how many times we go backwards by the means in which you move forward.
When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
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!
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.
As for my idea . . .
Was that a smart move?
Instantly firing back with boilerplate beliefs is not an indicator of understanding the premise of that question (or even caring to). Such inquiry requires reflection and the willingness to examine the efficacy of your efforts: And what role you play in harming your own interests by the manner in which you pursue them. a.k.a. Critical thinking!
On that note . . .
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on.
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81 mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa).
Somehow the behavior below doesn’t strike me as:
stopping to organize and evaluate the information we are receiving . . .
At every turn . . .
The faithful tap dance around reality — oily evading anything that requires them to hold Sowell to his own standards.
Hard to Imagine:
That I have to explain that quote to people who seemingly live to flood the internet with his words.
He and his flock incessantly complain about the media — and they don’t make policy. But the second I scrutinize Sowell — suddenly you have new standards.
180 — how fitting!
Welcome to Your World
V for Victory & Venom for Values
In this fantasyland where wishful thinking rules: You can win an argument without even knowing what the issue is about. What you do in denying the undeniable daily would be unthinkable for me to do ever.
Dittohead Nation:
The Next Generation
In their collective state, the Borg are utterly without mercy; driven by one will alone: the will to conquer. They are beyond redemption, beyond reason.
— Jean-Luc Picard
“WUT” the f#ck is wrong with you?
That you believe some of the stupidest shit imaginable?
It’s beyond belief that you look at that . . .
Coupled with this:
And incredibly . . .
Act like it’s this:
“I don’t understand. I don’t 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 single day: Package it all neatly into nursery-rhyme narratives (turning your mind into mush).
Exhibit B
Arrival makes you think
And that’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Their efforts to develop a conduit of communication is in striking contrast to how we talk to each other today. With the word “HUMAN” written on a whiteboard, they were able to build on that by seeing patterns in indecipherable symbols.
We have the most sophisticated communication tools in history — and we can’t even talk to each other in the same language.
Instead of listening and learning — slinging snippets of certitude has become America’s pastime. We’ve created a knee-jerk nation where discernment is derided and negligence is in vogue. What was beyond the pale in the past is now perfectly acceptable. There was a time when adults acted their age, but those days are long gone — as the internet and the cable clans paved the way for the onslaught of the utterly absurd. We’re in perennial pursuit of ideologies — warfare waged with:
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Life at the Bottom
Years before the Green Book movie came out — I was working in St. Louis and went to the Route 66 exhibit at the History Museum. What sticks out in my mind the most is The Negro Motorist Green Book. Like most people, I had a romanticized image of Route 66 — it never hit me how dangerous it was for blacks to travel back then — they needed “special” travel guides for safe places to stop.
So while we’ve had periods of greatness, we’ve rested on our laurels and looked the other way all too often. And with the technology of today, we see no evil with lickety–split satisfaction. At times, the Right is justifiably infuriated by the Left, and vice versa:
And this site illustrates their systematic efforts to derail debate.
Remember this place?
Rain drippin’ off the brim of my hat
Sure is cold today
Here I am walkin’ down 66
Wish she hadn’t done me that way
I am an American singing American music, not a black man singing country music
— Charley Pride
Dealing on the Moment . . .
I ask a different question . . .
I do that — a lot!
What follows is the origin of this site and so much more:
It’s a mighty fine day when you wake up to high praise from a man of Glenn Loury’s caliber — twice! He once called my writing “brilliant,” was “honored by it,” and “blown away” by my site and signed up.
Alas, he wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task.
So, the rules of argument you espouse on a daily basis don’t apply to you and your audience. You called my writing “brilliant” in I Don’t Do Slogans on The Yellow Brick Road — and you’re “blown away” by my site: As long as I don’t challenge you to live up to the principles you preach when it comes at a price.
Got it!
I don’t do slogans, so to me, “Black Lives Matter” is just as empty as its comeback cousin. Blunt instruments for change are just too ham-handed for my taste. Rather than endlessly debate catch phrases, monuments, and movements — I’m far more interested in considering the underlying merit in a point of view.
While everyone else spins their wheels on who’s right, I define what I see by factoring for what’s true (isolating and correlating along the way). When it comes to ascertaining the truth, I don’t care what your cause is, who’s in the White House, who controls Congress or the courts.
I learned early on in life that what you want gets in the way of what you see.
Does the Democratic Party have a history of manipulating racially charged incidents? Undeniably! Has the left-leaning side of the cable clans increasingly accommodated Democrats over the years? Without question!
Can you conclude what happened to Trayvon and Michael Brown with the same certainty as the death of George Floyd? No way — but ya did, and in lickety-split fashion. Zimmerman’s brother perfectly put it: “He had the greater hand in his own demise.” To an apologist, he had no hand at all — a mindset that violates the rules of reality.
If you’re pulled over by the police and you cop an attitude, you’re askin’ for trouble. And right on cue, “He was a wannabe cop and was told not to follow him!” So, you want to skip right over what transpired and go right to “gunned down” — because he was armed and didn’t follow instructions?
Wishful thinking is not an argument — not to mention the fact that preforming calcified conclusions is prejudice by definition.
The Left seeks to eradicate racism while refusing to recognize how they fuel it. The second they painted Trayvon as a child, they contaminated their judgment. The cops made an honest mistake in calling his watermelon drink “iced tea” (simply because of the brand). That the media advocates reported it the same way at first is understandable. That they never corrected it is unforgivable.
To conform to fact, we must agree that it was watermelon and consider what it means: Maybe nothing, maybe everything. But you pollute the debate when you won’t even acknowledge the irrefutable. Worse than that — you poison your purpose. You’d think that a party that prides itself on intellectualism would examine the efficacy of their efforts.
Perhaps even try some predictive analysis:
Hmm, we’ve got the first black president in the White House and we’re marching to Black Lives Matter. That might be overplaying our hand and have unintended consequences. Same goes for the removal of monuments — do we really want to infuriate the opposition for fleeting gain? Maybe the awe-inspiring artistry of historical figures will spark a sense of wonder in the youth. Perhaps they’ll read the plaque and probe for more.
Whatever their findings, isn’t there great value in that process of discovery?
Wouldn’t it be better if we just let people make up their own minds about whether problematic pieces embody hate or heritage? And even if the monuments could magically vanish from the face of the Earth, would that really solve anything? On top of all that, it seems that the more sensitive we try to be, the more hypersensitive our culture has become. That wasn’t our aim. We elected a sophisticated guy — shouldn’t we seek change in a bold and sophisticated manner?
After all, wasn’t that the point of his presidency?
Wouldn’t we be more successful in solving problems if we took an honest look at the different dimensions within them? Instead of putting Kaepernick on a pedestal for telling us what we wanna hear, maybe we should be inspired by Kobe who told us what we don’t:
I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American. That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American, we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, then don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American.
For immovable conservatives who find comfort in that quote — take a good look in the mirror, because defending the indefensible is your M.O.
What we’re seeing today was partly built on a foundation of manufactured outrage (which applies to most controversial issues in America over the last 30 years). Decades of dishonesty in the Gutter Games of Government is not a nation on a path to greatness. I wrote this piece before I came across the accompanying video. I was blown away by these words:
Anti-racism, as currently configured — has gone a long way from what used to be considered intelligent and sincere civil rights activism. Today it’s a religion.
That was then . . .
This is now . . .
And they already belong to one before that:
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!
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!
