Orwell might have predicated it but he never said it.Adding quotation marks to the comment with no references will confuse some people into believing your quoting Orwell..which you are not...
The state has won a hideous victory anyway. How many people will now be afraid to subscribe to Compact or to discuss any of its articles with friends or acquaintances?
The greatest danger any society experiences comes from the ignorance of intelligent people. My once- but-now-unlikely-future Friend From Fifth Grade has a higher IQ than I, undoubtedly, but from middle school onward has been the most ignorant intelligent person I have known. She watches all the usual broadcast "liberal" news channels, including Deutsche Welle which is received in her area, and yet anything I might report to her learned from, say, this Plague Chronicle she will dismiss with contempt towards me as the foul fruit of the Dark Web which I must be creeping through since clearly nowhere else is it reported. She has shouted at me, and I paraphrase, that I think I'm so smart and think I know stuff that nobody else knows.
She is legion. And I swear to you she is not stupid. And it will not surprise you that she spent all her working life as an employee of the Civil Service.
That is true. But she has for some things quite a lot of common sense. But that her formal intelligence has been recognized since she was in elementary school is integral to her concept of self and therefore to be found out as ignorant of anything is to her intolerable. I mean seriously and profoundly intolerable. Her reaction is frustrated ridicule and contempt towards what she is being informed of.
el gato malo's post today contains a perfect illustration of the type and the world is pestilential with them.
It's not just that. Most people still trust most institutions. What I get all the time is "what--you think you know better than the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association?" The obvious response -- "Yes, I do" -- doesn't cut it with them, because they don't know that all these groups were politicized and taken over from within years ago. They think these are respected organizations that set high professional standards. Most people are the same about all professional organizations. And some are also very invested in them.
An experiment I want to run some day, but probably won't, is to find a person who trusts an institution and ask them why they trust the institution. Do it five-whys style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys)
This is something that has become increasingly frustrating to me over time because it doesn't take all that much effort to realize that not only should you not trust these institutions, but it is not possible to create institutions intrinsically deserving of trust. An example:
"Why do you trust the AMA?"
"Well, because they're the experts"
"How do you know that they're the experts?"
"Because they said they are"
"I said I was an expert, you didn't accept that. Why?"
"Well, they have credentials"
"Ok but who gave them the credentials?"
"Other experts"
"But who gave them _their_ credentials?"
And so on
Creating a reliable chain of trust is very very hard, and it ultimately must come down to one of two sources, either "I have personally verified it to my own satisfaction" or "Because he said so". You either have to ultimately verify the trust yourself, or take someone else on faith. From a structural perspective, _all_ of our institutions' chains of trust ultimately spring from faith in some guy who just said so. And this used to work! Partly because they actually demonstrated enough competence to engender trust, partly because we didn't have easy access to contradictory information to figure out that they were wrong.
But at the end of the day, the AMA is just a bunch of guys who told everyone that they're the experts. They might very well be the experts. But the only way you, personally, could _know_ that, is if you were also an expert in their field. So if you're not, your trust is a house of cards. 🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
As a fun illustration of this, you know that little lock icon in your browser that tells you that a website is secure? Why do we trust that lock?
The very short answer is that there's a handful of computers in the world (I want to say 12 but I can't easily find an exhaustive list) that just said that they were trustworthy, and we use complex math to trace everything back to one of those servers. But why do we trust those servers? It's arbitrary.
I mean, realistically, because they're operated by major technology infrastructure companies who have a very strong financial interest in being trustworthy. But, they could just lie. You'd never even know. Ultimately all trust on the internet is just "because they said so".
Agree completely. They suffer from a form of narcissism in which their knowledge/thoughts/opinions/worldview cannot be separated from who they are as individuals. Any threat to those things is a threat to their entire being. Thus, learning the truth requires the unthinkable: to be corrected. Facts are their enemies, and no amount of reasoning can break through this psychosis.
It is important to understand that very many people have been horribly damaged by their upbringings. To become truly mature is one hell of a struggle. There has to be a compelling force and many people have not experienced one.
Well, you could be describing me. And yet, there was a point where cognitive dissonance became so impossible to maintain that the scales fell from my eyes in what can only described as an almost-physical internal paradigm shift which, once accepted, became wonderfully liberating. Amazing how sometimes admitting that you were wrong can feel so good.
As you say elsewhere, there has to be a compelling force. Maybe someday your friend will experience one. She may not be a lost cause yet.
We are old ladies now. I did not break out into maturity until I had my child at 40. I was born by that, myself, into my true capacities. God knows what I'd be like now if that miracle had not been given to me.
Talk about cosmic propinquity. This very minute my son (who I had at 43) and I had a conversation about a theoretical proposal to only allow people with children to vote, because they are (generally) more invested in the future than childless people.
And high intelligence doesn't predict mortality either. Combine ignorance with immorality and the person can be dangerously evil due to above average intelligence.
Yep, as Matthew Desmet, the Dutch psychologist explained with his mass psychosis or mass formation explanation in the absurd Covid tyranny - 'the ability to be hypnotised has ZERO correlation with intelligence.'
Sure we all know good examples of that in our personal contacts.
She's not intelligent. She has some cognitive abilities that allow her to memorise whatever she's told to memorise and to regurgitate whatever she's supposed to regurgitate.
She might even have strong technical/mathematical/artistic/literary abilities. But she's a dumb soulless NPC. Simple as
I'll give you a few of the most recent highlights so you'll understand why I finally ran out of patience.
- She told me my family could not possibly have had an air conditioner during my childhood because "nobody in the development had them because nobody outside of the South had them in the '60s and if I remembered having one I was wrong because I was only a kid then and kids don't notice those things."
- She told me my parents must've lied to me when I said that my great-grandparents came from middle-class people in Ukraine "because all the Jews who came over here were poor."
- We had been discussing lead poisoning in impoverished urban inner-city kids, and I said that while nothing could repair already-done damage, chelation therapy could remove lead build-up in the body and prevent further damage, and she said chelation therapy must be some sort of alternative medicine nonsense because there is no medical treatment for lead poisoning. She was so determined to prove what a moron I was to think such a treatment existed that she looked it up in the library. She was surprised to discover that I had been correct...(at least she admitted to that one).
- When she carried on about the Jan. 6 crowd I remarked upon the Women's March on Washington after Trump had been elected and how that was a ridiculous hysterical display, and she said that "women were legitimately terrified because Trump was a sexual abuser as revealed by the Access Hollywood tapes" and who knows what horrible things would happen to women because of his election. We didn't get to dissect the fact that she and her sister voted for him, after the release of course of those Access Hollywood tapes.
- When I discussed with her any information/data etc. I'd read on the more trustworthy Substacks, she insisted I was reading crazy stuff on the Dark Web, and when I tried to protest that this was legitimate research etc., she said with extreme contempt that "you think you know stuff that nobody else knows" etc. etc.
I am tired now. I will miss her. But she and her sister have chosen to live now as an endlessly playing loop of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" and I'm really, really sorry to see what they are doing to each other. It was only by accident of fate that my life didn't end up like that, and that all my idiot choices worked out like they were a master plan for attaining true joy and fulfillment. I don't know why I was so lucky. But they ought to be content, if not happy; they have everything they need; they are solid middle-class, and each in their own house. If she misses me she knows how to reach me. But I quit.
I broke off communication in 2004. Then I got back in touch a few years ago, because I missed her. I will continue to miss her but what do they say about people who let other people mistreat them?
I know that feeling, dearie. Perhaps over time she will realize that is why you no longer communicate. She will decide. I know people like this every day, they are impossible or they get very angry VERY angry if I question.
The next two months are going to be hellish.
I want to know who are the puppet masters?
Harris's campaign is all about "joy", is that to go along with her cackle? How sickening. Why don't people expose her for what she is? We are in for a big hurt.
When I point out to my liberal friends how discomfited I am by the authoritarianism of the Biden administration, they fall silent. I don't know if they're politely respecting our friendship, or are actually considering what they know of the matter.
That none of them seem enraged by what was done to the children of this nation tells you everything. What they allowed to be done to their own children. To their college-age kids forced to accept vaccine mandates or leave school.
Every time I think of these people, I think also of the women who hid the baby of one of them in a concentration camp barracks and managed to keep it alive until liberation. Not the same species.
This is what I respond to, about people who say Trump is horrible. We have to take small victories, and the best of two evils is the best we can do in this world. This is, as you point out, a win of sorts. It’s like someone banging your head with a hammer, and now you get them to stop.
Thanks for following this story, which I would not have noticed had you not laid it out, and it is really an important story.
Which reminds me of a joke: A young seminary student asks one of his teachers: "Father, when I die, how do I know if I'm in heaven or in hell?" The teacher responds: "My son, if you are in a place where the Irish do the cooking, the Germans tell the jokes, and the Italians fight the wars, then you are most surely in hell."
It would be nice if these victories were more substantial - while I agree that we take any where/when we can get them, I fear that incrementalism isn’t going to get the job done - at least in a reasonable amount of time. And it doesn’t seem like there’s that much time…
Isn't this what we the people are supposed to do: take "a combative and aggressive stands TOWARDS basic constitutional principles.” I sure don't want to take a combative and aggressive stand AGAINST the constitution....
the first thing I am curious about, is whether the police return all their stuff in time for Compact to resume publishing before the elections in the East, where they're widely read. the ban was clearly intended to hurt the AfD there.
They have to find the stuff and with the budget cutbacks it will probably take a year or more to do that. We have Civil Forfeiture here in the US and if they take you money or propery
y you have to prove you are not guilty of something and it can take years to get it back if ever.
"Marshmallow Minister" indeed. The lack of self awareness and projection these Orwellian pigs demonstrate is shocking. They exist in an self righteous echo chamber and they will never learn anything. Their world is so self referential rather than defend their actions they ascribe their own character flaws to anyone that disagrees with them.
As Orwell predicted, "When fascism comes to Britain, it will call itself antifascism." Fill in the blank with your favorite Western country.
"We're doing this for your own good" was probably the first full sentence in any human language.
Orwell might have predicated it but he never said it.Adding quotation marks to the comment with no references will confuse some people into believing your quoting Orwell..which you are not...
This is not fascism for Europeans. This is Zionism for kikes. Get it right
I think I’ve heard that one before…
"Marshmallow Minister" immediately followed by a photo of Ms. Fraeser stuffed into an all-white outfit. Love it!
All it needs is a matching sailor hat saying STAY PUFT.
Mucho like
It’s like the Pillsbury dough boy… only genderless, and with cankles.
I believe that photo inspired the original appellation. At least it did for me, the first time the photo appeared in the plague chronicle :)
The state has won a hideous victory anyway. How many people will now be afraid to subscribe to Compact or to discuss any of its articles with friends or acquaintances?
The greatest danger any society experiences comes from the ignorance of intelligent people. My once- but-now-unlikely-future Friend From Fifth Grade has a higher IQ than I, undoubtedly, but from middle school onward has been the most ignorant intelligent person I have known. She watches all the usual broadcast "liberal" news channels, including Deutsche Welle which is received in her area, and yet anything I might report to her learned from, say, this Plague Chronicle she will dismiss with contempt towards me as the foul fruit of the Dark Web which I must be creeping through since clearly nowhere else is it reported. She has shouted at me, and I paraphrase, that I think I'm so smart and think I know stuff that nobody else knows.
She is legion. And I swear to you she is not stupid. And it will not surprise you that she spent all her working life as an employee of the Civil Service.
IQ does not equate to common sense.
That is true. But she has for some things quite a lot of common sense. But that her formal intelligence has been recognized since she was in elementary school is integral to her concept of self and therefore to be found out as ignorant of anything is to her intolerable. I mean seriously and profoundly intolerable. Her reaction is frustrated ridicule and contempt towards what she is being informed of.
el gato malo's post today contains a perfect illustration of the type and the world is pestilential with them.
It's not just that. Most people still trust most institutions. What I get all the time is "what--you think you know better than the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association?" The obvious response -- "Yes, I do" -- doesn't cut it with them, because they don't know that all these groups were politicized and taken over from within years ago. They think these are respected organizations that set high professional standards. Most people are the same about all professional organizations. And some are also very invested in them.
An experiment I want to run some day, but probably won't, is to find a person who trusts an institution and ask them why they trust the institution. Do it five-whys style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys)
This is something that has become increasingly frustrating to me over time because it doesn't take all that much effort to realize that not only should you not trust these institutions, but it is not possible to create institutions intrinsically deserving of trust. An example:
"Why do you trust the AMA?"
"Well, because they're the experts"
"How do you know that they're the experts?"
"Because they said they are"
"I said I was an expert, you didn't accept that. Why?"
"Well, they have credentials"
"Ok but who gave them the credentials?"
"Other experts"
"But who gave them _their_ credentials?"
And so on
Creating a reliable chain of trust is very very hard, and it ultimately must come down to one of two sources, either "I have personally verified it to my own satisfaction" or "Because he said so". You either have to ultimately verify the trust yourself, or take someone else on faith. From a structural perspective, _all_ of our institutions' chains of trust ultimately spring from faith in some guy who just said so. And this used to work! Partly because they actually demonstrated enough competence to engender trust, partly because we didn't have easy access to contradictory information to figure out that they were wrong.
But at the end of the day, the AMA is just a bunch of guys who told everyone that they're the experts. They might very well be the experts. But the only way you, personally, could _know_ that, is if you were also an expert in their field. So if you're not, your trust is a house of cards. 🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
As a fun illustration of this, you know that little lock icon in your browser that tells you that a website is secure? Why do we trust that lock?
The very short answer is that there's a handful of computers in the world (I want to say 12 but I can't easily find an exhaustive list) that just said that they were trustworthy, and we use complex math to trace everything back to one of those servers. But why do we trust those servers? It's arbitrary.
I mean, realistically, because they're operated by major technology infrastructure companies who have a very strong financial interest in being trustworthy. But, they could just lie. You'd never even know. Ultimately all trust on the internet is just "because they said so".
The more "successful" you are, the more you trust and cling to the system that allowed you to be so.
She is not a follower and is quite skeptical of doctors and of authority.
Within her "acceptable" frame anyway. Why are you so in awe of her? She sounds like an arrogant mid-wit.
It's a little more complicated than that.
Agree completely. They suffer from a form of narcissism in which their knowledge/thoughts/opinions/worldview cannot be separated from who they are as individuals. Any threat to those things is a threat to their entire being. Thus, learning the truth requires the unthinkable: to be corrected. Facts are their enemies, and no amount of reasoning can break through this psychosis.
It is important to understand that very many people have been horribly damaged by their upbringings. To become truly mature is one hell of a struggle. There has to be a compelling force and many people have not experienced one.
Well, you could be describing me. And yet, there was a point where cognitive dissonance became so impossible to maintain that the scales fell from my eyes in what can only described as an almost-physical internal paradigm shift which, once accepted, became wonderfully liberating. Amazing how sometimes admitting that you were wrong can feel so good.
As you say elsewhere, there has to be a compelling force. Maybe someday your friend will experience one. She may not be a lost cause yet.
We are old ladies now. I did not break out into maturity until I had my child at 40. I was born by that, myself, into my true capacities. God knows what I'd be like now if that miracle had not been given to me.
Talk about cosmic propinquity. This very minute my son (who I had at 43) and I had a conversation about a theoretical proposal to only allow people with children to vote, because they are (generally) more invested in the future than childless people.
Head girl?
No.
almost to the countrary I found out. My 'smartest' friends of yesteryear followed the Science TM to the letter !
And it never has...
You can be brilliant as well as ignorant, at the same time.
And high intelligence doesn't predict mortality either. Combine ignorance with immorality and the person can be dangerously evil due to above average intelligence.
Above average is more likely to make you a midwit.
Yep, as Matthew Desmet, the Dutch psychologist explained with his mass psychosis or mass formation explanation in the absurd Covid tyranny - 'the ability to be hypnotised has ZERO correlation with intelligence.'
Sure we all know good examples of that in our personal contacts.
Between this, and Keir Starmer’s shock troops raiding homes over mean tweets…
You could not pay me enough to live in Europe right now.
She may not be stupid but she's sure as shit pig-ignorant.
I've said all our lives that she's the most ignorant intelligent person I know.
I know some of those. Well, obviously not all of them merit the superlative, but you get my point. ;)
I sure do.
She's not intelligent. She has some cognitive abilities that allow her to memorise whatever she's told to memorise and to regurgitate whatever she's supposed to regurgitate.
She might even have strong technical/mathematical/artistic/literary abilities. But she's a dumb soulless NPC. Simple as
Oh, I hope your friendship is not over. I treasure the reports of your conversations.
I'll give you a few of the most recent highlights so you'll understand why I finally ran out of patience.
- She told me my family could not possibly have had an air conditioner during my childhood because "nobody in the development had them because nobody outside of the South had them in the '60s and if I remembered having one I was wrong because I was only a kid then and kids don't notice those things."
- She told me my parents must've lied to me when I said that my great-grandparents came from middle-class people in Ukraine "because all the Jews who came over here were poor."
- We had been discussing lead poisoning in impoverished urban inner-city kids, and I said that while nothing could repair already-done damage, chelation therapy could remove lead build-up in the body and prevent further damage, and she said chelation therapy must be some sort of alternative medicine nonsense because there is no medical treatment for lead poisoning. She was so determined to prove what a moron I was to think such a treatment existed that she looked it up in the library. She was surprised to discover that I had been correct...(at least she admitted to that one).
- When she carried on about the Jan. 6 crowd I remarked upon the Women's March on Washington after Trump had been elected and how that was a ridiculous hysterical display, and she said that "women were legitimately terrified because Trump was a sexual abuser as revealed by the Access Hollywood tapes" and who knows what horrible things would happen to women because of his election. We didn't get to dissect the fact that she and her sister voted for him, after the release of course of those Access Hollywood tapes.
- When I discussed with her any information/data etc. I'd read on the more trustworthy Substacks, she insisted I was reading crazy stuff on the Dark Web, and when I tried to protest that this was legitimate research etc., she said with extreme contempt that "you think you know stuff that nobody else knows" etc. etc.
I am tired now. I will miss her. But she and her sister have chosen to live now as an endlessly playing loop of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" and I'm really, really sorry to see what they are doing to each other. It was only by accident of fate that my life didn't end up like that, and that all my idiot choices worked out like they were a master plan for attaining true joy and fulfillment. I don't know why I was so lucky. But they ought to be content, if not happy; they have everything they need; they are solid middle-class, and each in their own house. If she misses me she knows how to reach me. But I quit.
She is profoundly arrogant and ignorant. You don't get that being intelligent, and you definitely don't get it being high in openness.
She is extremely intelligent but profoundly damaged as so many people are. It's a tragedy to end up like that.
Nope. She's dumb as rock. Probably retarded. Just because you care for her it doesn't make her less of a spiteful mutant, as Dr Dutton would say.
What's the point, though, in having such "raw power" when your mind is closed?
Indeed.
Amazing she has continued to conversations as long as she has!
I broke off communication in 2004. Then I got back in touch a few years ago, because I missed her. I will continue to miss her but what do they say about people who let other people mistreat them?
I know that feeling, dearie. Perhaps over time she will realize that is why you no longer communicate. She will decide. I know people like this every day, they are impossible or they get very angry VERY angry if I question.
The next two months are going to be hellish.
I want to know who are the puppet masters?
Harris's campaign is all about "joy", is that to go along with her cackle? How sickening. Why don't people expose her for what she is? We are in for a big hurt.
They'll not make it to 2030. They're the useless eaters Bill Gates was telling us about
she and her sis voted for Trump?
In 2016. Now he is the dictator who will end America.
And she was condescending to me when I observed that the Biden Administration is the most anti-Constitutional rights since John Adams.
When I point out to my liberal friends how discomfited I am by the authoritarianism of the Biden administration, they fall silent. I don't know if they're politely respecting our friendship, or are actually considering what they know of the matter.
That none of them seem enraged by what was done to the children of this nation tells you everything. What they allowed to be done to their own children. To their college-age kids forced to accept vaccine mandates or leave school.
Every time I think of these people, I think also of the women who hid the baby of one of them in a concentration camp barracks and managed to keep it alive until liberation. Not the same species.
This is what I respond to, about people who say Trump is horrible. We have to take small victories, and the best of two evils is the best we can do in this world. This is, as you point out, a win of sorts. It’s like someone banging your head with a hammer, and now you get them to stop.
Thanks for following this story, which I would not have noticed had you not laid it out, and it is really an important story.
"Marshmallow Minister", should wear a black suit...
Not because it would be flattering, but more apropos to her rule...
And jack boots apparently.
Maybe she hopes the white might appeal to a niche audience ;)
She looks like the Michelin Man
Now *that's* a niche porn fetish...
we watch a lot of auto and F1 racing on tv
That huge puffy guy is always photo bombing bc that is the job of MM
rotfl.
One is not permitted to “mock the State” in Germany? I know the country is famously, but allegedly, humourless, but this is crazy.
Which reminds me of a joke: A young seminary student asks one of his teachers: "Father, when I die, how do I know if I'm in heaven or in hell?" The teacher responds: "My son, if you are in a place where the Irish do the cooking, the Germans tell the jokes, and the Italians fight the wars, then you are most surely in hell."
Based on the photos of female German politicians of the last quarter century, none of them seem f---able to me. Lord have mercy on German men!
It would be nice if these victories were more substantial - while I agree that we take any where/when we can get them, I fear that incrementalism isn’t going to get the job done - at least in a reasonable amount of time. And it doesn’t seem like there’s that much time…
Isn't this what we the people are supposed to do: take "a combative and aggressive stands TOWARDS basic constitutional principles.” I sure don't want to take a combative and aggressive stand AGAINST the constitution....
No no no! We're just supposed to roll over and take it from our betters!
Pillsbury Dough Girl takes a shot to the gut. Makes me happy.
Just… holy sh*t. Unbelievable. 🙏🏻 for you and all of Deutschland, Eugy. 🖤❤️💛
It will be interesting to see if there is a notable Steisand Effect on Compact’s circulation. Please, E., keep us informed.
the first thing I am curious about, is whether the police return all their stuff in time for Compact to resume publishing before the elections in the East, where they're widely read. the ban was clearly intended to hurt the AfD there.
They have to find the stuff and with the budget cutbacks it will probably take a year or more to do that. We have Civil Forfeiture here in the US and if they take you money or propery
y you have to prove you are not guilty of something and it can take years to get it back if ever.
thanks for the tip ! Digging a hole in the back yard to put all my stuff in just in case!
They'll be returned damaged and spoiled I should imagine.
For what purpose did they take all of the furniture? Except to disrupt and humiliate them. They should sue for that.Outrageous.
And what recourse would they have if any material didn't come back?
Not from East Germany but am guessing the State move hasn't endeared them to Compact readers anyway so support will not drop.
If a magazine can destabilize Germany, the internet will totally destroy Germany.
The end of Germany is a clear and present danger!
Marshmallow Minister. Brilliant.
It's the Stay-Puft marshmallow man.
"Marshmallow Minister" indeed. The lack of self awareness and projection these Orwellian pigs demonstrate is shocking. They exist in an self righteous echo chamber and they will never learn anything. Their world is so self referential rather than defend their actions they ascribe their own character flaws to anyone that disagrees with them.
In the contest for being out of touch with reality I present Alberta's previous 'Health' Minister: NDP Socialist Sarah Hoffman.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sarah+hoffman+NDP&t=vivaldi&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
Well, in her defense, she clearly has a healthy appetite.