As in — not this . . .
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.
On an issue involving artillery rockets and material properties of centrifuge rotors (an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter): That is your argument? On this fiasco for the ages — you think Thomas Sowell could tell you what’s going on here?
For people who flaunt their love for facts — you sure have a helluva lot of hate for irrefutable facts that fly in the face of your calcified convictions.
Anyone entering this discussion with sincerity — would come away realizing that there is no debate and there never was. They just made it up.
Ya know — like they always do (with your help):
On the biggest and most costly lie in modern history (which shaped everything you see today):
Half the country took the word of professional know-it-alls over nuclear scientists. And when your camp came up empty on WMD — you just bought more bullshit from the same people who sold you the first batch:
Shrewd!
Preach Responsibility and Take None!
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
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!
I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell:
Quite the contrary — stick around, you’ll see! And by the way, assuming bad motives is in gross breach of his own standards. I’m wondering why I have to repeatedly remind his fanatical fans of what they’re supposedly fans of.
Like I said, I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell. And childish YouTube titles for clickbait claiming to destroy what will only be stronger tomorrow: Is your world, not mine! 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.
And savagery is all I’ve seen along the way. Sowell’s a well-mannered guy and his army of acolytes act like animals to “honor” him:
Does that:
Look anything like this?
And about those think tanks:
And this one . . .
Associated Press, October 3rd, 2004: Rice said she learned of objections by the Energy Department only after making her 2002 comments.
Richard W. Memmer: Are we to believe that the National Security Advisor of the United States was unaware of an intelligence dispute of this magnitude that had been going on for well over a year?
One Congressional investigator went so far as to call it a holy war. And doesn’t it strike you as suspicious that she didn’t bother consulting the DOE before serving up images of a nuclear detonation?
— Act II
Holy War
Never mind this . . .
But who cares about that:
When you’ve got this . . .
“Watch again”
How fitting for the world you wallow in:
Anyone wanting to know the truth would not behave in ways that ensure they never will. If you abandon your critical thinking skills the moment you even perceive a threat to your interests — doesn’t that bring those skills into question?
Taking on the entire country is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. Explaining America’s decline over decades of delight 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.
Thanks to the internet and the cable clans paving the way for the onslaught of the utterly absurd — everything is poisoned by perception and hypocrisy now. 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
We could do something about that, but you’re busy . . .
You’re always busy
All of America is making that mistake every single day.
But why mess with tradition?
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).
With the issues I address — you might as well be saying the Civil War wasn’t germane to the assassination of Lincoln.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D
People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar — and I’m not and never have been familiar.
— Michael Burry, The Big Short
We’re not talking about your love of talking about your love affair with facts — we’re talking about having a history of objective scrutiny that shows your commitment. And for people who flaunt their love for facts — you sure have a helluva lot of hate for irrefutable facts that fly in the face of your calcified convictions.
As it turns out though — that is an opportunity (to take a problem and turn it into a solution). You’d see it so easily but for the poison of pride:
If that bit about authority figures were not overwhelmingly true, this site would not exist. I would not have been practically spit on for 20 years of telling undeniable truth of mathematical certainty: Painfully obvious deception shaped everything you see today.
No rational person would repeatedly deny the undeniable, and just minutes into anything I’ve written on this issue — you should know something’s not right.
But you find it’s with me:
[As] I’m not and never have been familiar . . .
If I came across this and hadn’t done my homework, on the title alone — my first thought would be “I must be missing something pretty big!”
You have other ideas:
Button your lip and don’t let the shield slip
Take a fresh grip on your bulletproof mask
And if they try to break down your disguise with their questions
You can hide hide hide behind Paranoid Eyes
Exhibit E
I took on the automatons of the time (Left & Right). No one listened, and lo and behold — automatons exponentially multiplied. Those times were tame compared to today. The toxicity of venom has been taken to a whole other level with pride. And your precious politicians and pundits make it all so easy for you hate:
So you can look the other way while woefully failing to live up to virtues you supposedly love.
love to use “logic” to win an argument, and then disappear before they can find out they’re wrong
Oh yeah — I know the type, all too well!
This is a case built on concrete evidence of mathematical certainty: Supported by exhaustively detailed arguments (of which you have exactly zero chance of refuting). But to the “logic lovers” — it doesn’t matter (as defending the faith is all that counts in their “follow the facts” fantasyland):
Where Sowell’s fancy quotes to float amount to fortune cookies for follows. Allowing them to deny the undeniable with ease:
Never mind this . . .
When you’ve got magical thinking on your side — and you’re constantly refinforced by friends cemented in the same bottom-of-the-barrel standards:
All you need is this . . .
I point you to a 7-part, 2 hours and 40 minutes doc — that distills a story that demanded a massive amount of effort, thought, research, and writing: And you tap a Tweet with a talking point or two — thinking you can inform me.
I don’t know how people find the path of least resistance so satisfying — as I love the demands of difficulty and discernment. To not step up my game in the midst of opportunity or challenge: Would be tantamount to treason upon my very existence.
As is — not this . . .
Exhibit F
Sowell’s army of acolytes march in lockstep in the Facts Over Feelings Parade. And yet, the second he’s scrutinized, those precious virtues you peddle — are rolled right over with your feelings. It would be unthinkable for me to refuse to look at someone’s work — and fire back with your “Where’s your facts?” refrain of an automaton because they don’t instantaneously appear.
Let’s get real . . .
That’s a stunt (like smugly slinging “I’ll wait”) — not a genuine inquiry in the interest of truth. And the only thing you’re “waiting” for is fodder to fuel your next fix. If you operated anywhere in the same galaxy of these claims below — the mountain of material I’ve written over decades wouldn’t exist.
It’s all marketing!
If he were the genuine article — those books would not be so one-sided.
The notion that feelings over facts is limited to the Left is ludicrous. If you were trying to solve a problem instead of sell books and boost your popularity — you’d be fair-minded by addressing how this behavior applies across-the-board. If it were truly about following the facts, you wouldn’t need slogans and wouldn’t want ’em. Your record would speak for itself. Then again, do these people really wanna solve problems anyway?
Do you?
Man is at least as much a problem-creating as a problem-solving animal. Better a crisis than the permanent boredom of meaninglessness.
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
Whereas, deep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences . . .
There as 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.
You wanna make the country great again? Act your age! I don’t do politics — I do reality! So don’t even think about pulling that whataboutism bullshit with me. Whoever wins — all it will amount to is Tuesday in my eyes.
And just like last time — I won’t even look to see who won, because in the end: It’s all the same in a nation that never listens and never learns.
There is no market for what I do. But there wasn’t one for PCs at one time either. We could revolutionize the world too — just by using the tools we were given from the get-go:
That’s that lump that’s three feet above your ass!
Of all the great principles that foster fruitful communication — this one is paramount:
You Improvise, You Overcome, You Adapt!
I adapt to you and you adapt to me:
And somewhere in the middle or on the way to it — maybe we come to a meeting of the minds.
There’s no finer example of that than these classic scenes from the all-time “everyman” master. Tom Hanks’ character is coming from a different place — and his attitude from the start was:
I don’t have ballplayers, I’ve got girls!
But little by little, he came around — and once he saw them as ballplayers, he treated them as such. And that’s what that first scene above is all about. In the second scene, as much as he’d like to treat them the same as any player, he adapts to find some way of communicating his concerns without being too harsh.
You’re still missing the cutoff man. Now that’s . . . . that’s something I’d like you to work on . . . before next season.
And whad’ya know — she responds in kind! She recognizes that he’s trying really hard to get something important through to her, and that he’s adjusting his approach from last time — and she appreciates that.
“Now that’s something I’d like you to work on” . . .
Note:
That piece is essentially the same as the one you’re on.
Here we have the “Have you seen The Social Dilemma?” crowd. According to Wikipedia: “Viewed in 38,000,000 homes within the first 28 days of release.” So why don’t ya Tweet about it some more — because surely the reason it didn’t work is insufficient exposure for a documentary everyone in America knows about. If you advertise your concerns enough — surely that’ll magically make a dent someday.
And if it doesn’t, at least you got your fix for feeling like you’re participating in addressing a problem you’re perpetuating by the very nature in which you participate.
All day, every day
By all means, Tweet your message — but the idea to act on those concerns when an opportunity comes along to do so. Searching “Social Dilemma” delivers no shortage of concern about the state of society — but ask ’em to do anything to address those concerns that takes time & effort to think it through . . .
But would work precisely because it demands something of your mind:
We get rewarded by hearts, likes, thumbs-up — and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth.
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” . . . Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. . . .
“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth.”
Now, what’s difference between that and this?
This demands something of your mind — and puts you right in the crosshairs of the chaos you crave while condemning it with your concerns.
Exhibit G
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.
And so’s this . . .
Exhibit H
“Share the Dilemma”?
It confounds me to no end that people far smarter than me think these f#@king platiudes are a path to problem solving. Not to mention the very action their advocating:
Is part of the problem!
This — is not conversation:
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.
And even though you’ve got a rock-solid idea for how to fix the engine (or at least make it run on reason): They’d rather spend the rest of their lives complaining about problems than take responsibility for their part in creating them.
To concisely capture the absurdity that’s canon across these echo chambers: Imagine a club for international travel made up entirely of people without a passport. Day after day, they talk about their love of going somewhere — with no interest in anyone who’s been somewhere. Morever, you’re making matters worse by the manner in which you conduct yourselves in repeatedly rehashing the same subjects in endless activity. All in the glorious belief in going somewhere.
Never even pausing for a moment to notice you’re going nowhere:
Perhaps the single most lucid, succinct, and profoundly terrifying analysis of social media ever created for mass consumption.
— IndieWire
It’s not that difficult to be succinct when you deliver no detail that hits home — and hard! Same goes for lucid when the line is linear. My efforts don’t compute in a culture that craves information formatted to your liking:
- Nice and linear
- Easy to swallow
- Short and simple
- Effortless to spread
Bonding in Bumper Sticker Branding
There was a time when it was generally understood that you needed to define the problem before you laid out the solution. But that doesn’t compute in a country that thinks constantly complaining about problems is the solution.
Exhibit I
I play an aggressive game. I don’t flop. I’ve never been one of those guys
— LeBron James
There was a time when it would be embarrassing for a ball player to feign being fouled on the level of theatrics in King James’ court. You’d be laughed off the court for pulling stunts like that in my day. It’s all the more absurd when you consider that even with the hardest-hitting fouls back in the 80s — nobody flailed about like that on impact.
Never mind Lebron’s built like a Tiger tank.
Tiger Tanks Could Withstand a Dozen Sherman[s]
The only way that so many levels of sham and stupidity could be so easily accepted — is that it was normalized little by little over time.
Ain’t that America
His words are pure fantasy . . .
But it doesn’t matter, because that’s the country we’ve become — where words are empty and you can feign offense to avoid having to answer for anything. Believing things that have no bearing on reality has become a plague across America — erosion of reason that took decades of denying the undeniable.
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. But all’s fair in The March of Folly and fraud on the The Yellow Brick Road: The path of America’s predictably counterproductive pursuits.
As I said in my doc:
It’s astounding how the mind can pull off psychological gymnastics that allow us to believe what we say without any sense of accounting for it.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
Is it “mudslinging” to call this clown what he is? The fact that I even have to explain this is just how clownish our country has become (where expecting people to act their age is even too much to ask anymore). If this were pro wrestling, this jackass crowning himself King would be perfectly fine. But in the NBA — there is measure for how classless and cringeworthy this childish behavior is.
Fact:
truth verifiable from experience or observation
If you have a history of hypocrisy and lying — you are a hypocrite and a liar. If you don’t like being called those things, don’t do those things. But so typical of the times — nothing has meaning anymore. Calling criticism “mudslinging” is just somethin’ to say to escape scrutiny.
And the irony is:
I’ve received almost nothing but mudslinging for decades — by people who cry foul with counterfeit claims on what they do for real. And let’s face it: You need it to be mudslinging, because if it’s not — your binary beliefs are gonna fall apart.
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleepingAnd the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains . . .
Within the sound of silence . . .
In restless dreams, I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
Exhibit J
And in the naked light, I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
Exhibit K
“Fools”, said I, “You do not know”
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
Exhibit L
“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made”
Exhibit M
Speaking of cancer:
So you found one small crack in Sowell’s character where he defended Iraq having WMD, does that hurt his credibility?
This man muddied the waters of debate to serve himself: On a little matter of war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11. On top of unconscionably ignoring irrefutable evidence mathematical certainty (of world-altering consequence, no less) — he has a habit of toeing the party line. Not only did Sowell flagrantly fail to follow the facts on all-things Iraq — he brazenly ignored the debauchery in his own party to politely pounce on the other:
Exhibit N
In light of his history being wildly out of sync with his sanctimonious claims: That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
I wouldn’t care if Sowell cured cancer:
You don’t get a pass for basking in baseless beliefs that cripple the country — and have the bottomless nerve to preach responsibility & accountability to boot. That is a cancer of its own. The poison he pumped into the atmosphere helped destroy the internal organs of America. So we have very different standards as to what qualifies as a National Treasure.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
Exhibit O
“And the sign said”
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls”
“In tenement halls”
And whispered in the sounds of silence
Exhibit P
To think that congratulating yourselves for ordering a book & broadcasting it for Likes is in the interest of problem solving is pure fantasy. Same goes for recycling the same story without moving the needle and never examining the efficacy of your efforts.
A lot of that goin’ around too!
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.
Islands of Idolatry
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the fields. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life.
She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.
― Doctor Zhivago (referenced in Into the Wild)
In the spirit of discovery that clarity, curiosity, and courage can inspire:
And on that note:
Exhibit Q
OR . . .
We can keep doing it your way:
I wonder . . .
How many remember what it was like to be uplifted by the genuine spirit of America? Maybe it wasn’t as real as I imagined it to be, but that authenticity is worlds away from where we are now.
Your move . . .
Thank you for reading!
When you open your eyes to what’s underneath — it intrinsically trains your mind to see with increasing clarity.
