Once again you knock it out of the park. It’s the Salem Witch Trials all over again. Hysterias and hoaxes instigate fear to force people into giving government more power.
I honestly think Chat GPT and it's ilk is the bigger reason for the layoffs. I have suspected for quite some time that many workers in the PMC are in the process of losing their relevance in the face of AI and automation in general. I think there's various reasons why powers that be don't want AI to take the blame as it could lead to lefties moving back towards Bernie style populism.
When the West succumbed to radical feminism, all of this insanity became inevitable...Because hysteria, as the name suggests, is almost entirely female in its nature...The inevitable result is that people like Maher rise to the top of the corporate ladder, generally with extremely negative consequences.....
Spot on Yuri. The Maher post is brilliant, I know a few knobs to send that to. The AI crap and more being pushed by CNBC and Bloomberg TV is sickening.
We are now living in a non-stop cycle of global, instantaneous Salem Witch Trials. With social media, the entire world can whipped up into the next hysteria to replace the last hysteria.
Sensation and outrage have been a media style for as long as I can remember--instilling fear and hysteria gets the mob worked up to go after whichever bogeyman at whom the media points its finger.
Ultimately, the issue becomes how much the public tolerates--becomes immune or unmoved by--the volume of the entreaties. Having turned the outrage up to 11 on the 10-scale, they must raise it to 12, 13, 14 ... and higher.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf comes to mind. Of course, that has probably been superseded by "Heather Has Two Mommies."
The witch hunts evidently were a symptom of ergot toxicity due to improperly stored grains that got moldy. Might there be some sort of mass biochemical changes on a large scale that have affected the ability of massive numbers of people to think straight?
Even at that, while I do observe an extraordinary degree of crazy driving, I also observe less and less people buying in, and even crisis fatigue among those who still believe.
I was literally talking about that to someone today. Extraordinary driving either totally zombified and impervious bordering on 'uh oh wake up am I driving?' or else full pelt foot off and on the gas weird. I didn't know about ergot toxicity and now am off down that rabbit hole!
It will last until all our freedoms are taken away. That's the end game. Absolutely none of this is the brainchild of the dim/half/mid wits who ostensibly run our countries. Since destruction is the goal, these room temperature IQ "leaders" will do just fine, as far as TPTB are concerned. Intelligence is necessary to build and maintain; none is required to destroy. And the West is being destroyed.
It looks like a lot of useful idiots are employed by big government, big media, big pharma, big education, etc., that the evil powers-that-be are able to use, and to direct the masses wherever these psychopaths want them to go. 5 years ago, I was comfortably living an oblivious life but the Covid hysteria which my government used to directly threaten me and my family to comply, woke me the h_ _ _ up!!! It was a brutal awakening, but it had to happen some time. Now I’m beginning to learn how the world really works! It’s not a pretty picture. 😢
Even in my so-liberal circle in my so-liberal town, conversation is currently completely calm and no one is alarmed about anything. However, my sister is an agitated liberal and her equally-agitated liberal friends are still very much in a total panic about several things. It will take time for the tune-out to ripple inwards and affect the extreme hysterics.
As Orwell said: "It is always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and losers- out of orthodoxy"
and this:
Does leftism make you looney? New study finds liberal white women struggle with mental health issues"
Women want to be liked, and perhaps the corporate kind want most to be liked for their opinions about serious matters. And typically they want their entourage to think like they do. And if they're on the left of center, they're being programmed to evangelize using any means necessary, and shame is not their least favorite means.
So if they can never let their guard down (and many never relax at all) or speak their mind honestly, in the end they will go looney.
I would think not long. People are awakening to the constant insanity and are unwilling to be fooled again. The Covid Hoax was the GREAT awakener event. A massive groundswell of questioners are wanting answers. The many people involved in creating and implementing the Covid Crime will be identified. And then?
Not everyone is waking up. More people are wearing masks again even if they don't have to. ADs for the "new and improved" covid vaccines are shown daily on TV and on the internet. Puppet journalists and acting doctors appear again telling people how to stay healthy adn get the shots.
Doctors, media people adn insurance companies are totally puzzled why on earth death and sicknesses have increased so drastically since 2021. Mention the shots and you are a conspiracy theorist. And so the beat goes on
But now we have flipped somewhat. All of a sudden we have real genocide in GAZA and the world shrugs it off - not much hysteria - now they call young people protesting hysterical know nothings.
It lasts until "another day, another panic" becomes the default high-status position of smart educated high earning people, unfortunately.
For that, we have to exhaust the groups of people who coordinate via panic and also have some respect inertia. Trust in journalism has been cratering for years, but people shifted their source of truth to academia instead which is actually even worse, but people didn't realise that. Now trust in academia is also in free-fall. Which group will come next, I wonder? I'm not sure there are many left.
In the US, at least through the next presidential election. 'Cause you know, we got Orange Man in the house and he's an 'existential threat to [our] democracy'! A wannabee dictator! Shout it from the rooftops!!!
Yes they're literally Hitlers. Not just figuratively Hitlers, that's not nearly sensational enough. We've actually tested the DNA of all of these folks and sure enough, they are indeed Hitlers!!! And not merely sons of Hitler either, but clones of Hitler!!! Clones for God's sake!!! Oh the humanity!!!
The real 'itler clone is Herr Nose-Schwab himself aka Ming the Merciless owing to his OTT sartorial style. Luckily, at 86, the silly old fool won't be around much longer, but watch out for Nose-Schwab Junior who's been groomed to replace Papa since he passed potty-training. Never stand for corrupt politicians that suck up to Schwab - or any moronic monarch either.
I expect it will last until the parasites tasked with controlling the masses extract the last remaining dollar/euro/sheckel from the populace. It's always about , and has always been about, transferring and accumulating our wealth by
whatever means necessary. The control part is both a means and a bonus for the elites and their cheap-to-buy politicians and bureaucrats.
Unsaid here is that these people are forced to adopt increasingly frantic and apocalyptic tones because what they're pushing is further and further removed from reality. They're trying to drive us ALL insane.
Angela Merkel held moderate, rational views on immigration until she was ambushed in a media staged event with a crying immigrant girl who feared being deported. Merkel explained to the girl that it was simply not possible for Germany to accept every person who wanted to immigrate. Immediately afterward Merkel was shamed widely by the press for her response to the crying migrant girl. That was the instant where Merkel changed her views completely and came up with 'Wir schaffen das.' A stronger leader would have been able to withstand the criticism. But Merkel folded and Europe is still paying for her moment of weakness. Since this set-up worked so well, we can expect all kinds of similar theatre now in the public square. Cue Olaf Scholz marching with the AfD witch hunt mob.
The 'Crying Immigrant Girl' staged media event happened on 16-July-2015.
Merkel made her original comment at a federal press conference held on 31 August 2015 following a visit to a refugee camp in Dresden where opponents of her refugee policy had booed and heckled her. The full sentence used ("wir haben so vieles geschafft — wir schaffen das") can be translated as "we have managed so many things — we will also manage this situation".
On 31-August-2015, Merkel said "I say quite simply: Germany is a strong country. The motive with which we approach these things must be: We have achieved so much – we can do it! We can do it, and where something stands in our way, it has to be overcome, it has to be worked on. The federal government will do everything in its power - together with the states, together with the municipalities - to enforce exactly that". She repeated the phrase on her New Year's address on 31 December 2015, saying "we can do it, because Germany is a strong country".
(Use before Angela Merkel.)
On 22 August 2015 Sigmar Gabriel, the then-Chairman of the Social Democratic Party and Vice-Chancellor of Germany had used "wir schaffen das" to refer to the coalition government's refugee policy. Gabriel's full sentence was "peace, humanity, solidary, justice: these are among our European values. Now we have to prove it. I'm sure we can do it".
BBC News - Angela Merkel attacked over crying refugee girl.
Bloomberg - Angela Merkel Tells Teenager She Can't Stay in Germany.
WaPo - Germany’s Merkel makes a young refugee girl cry, then tries to comfort her.
Vox - Angela Merkel should be ashamed of her response to this sobbing Palestinian girl.
Christian Science Monitor - Angela Merkel to Palestinian immigrant girl: Germany can't help everyone
Independent - Angela Merkel makes Palestinian girl facing deportation from Germany cry on TV
The western media seems to be leading the policies not necessarily the politicians. The politicians seem to fold as soon as the media attacked them. The politicians are owned by whoever owns the media.
Mostly yes but sometimes we can see examples like this where Angela said something the press didn't like and they schooled her.
Same thing happened with Gov. Newsom in CA. He did try to open the state after a few weeks but then all the headlines started in about what a horrible mistake he was making and then he shut the state down fast and didn't open until he was the last.
The media told Newsom what to do and he was afraid of them.
That illustrated the difference between Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher would have never backed down to the press or the mob. Which, by the way is the essence of leadership.
It is very satisfying to see people like Pelosi and Biden on their heels now, being swarmed by the same mob that they incite purposefully with massive lies.
Merkel should have known better than to attend the media event - press ambush. She probably thought she could control the event. But we all have blind spots.
Your Newsome Covid recounting shows the power of fear. Covid lockdowns were an entirely fear-based hysteria. That made it impossible to reason with people in charge of making decisions. I recall that Women (though not all) were particularly adamant about shutting everything down. It was a totalitarian era imposed on the population. If you didn't accept the experimental vaccine, you were made a prisoner in your home, fired from your job, prohibited from travel, publicly shamed. It was worse than the Salem witch trials in the overall number of people who lost their minds.
'Sleepy' Joe? More like CREEPY Joe: hair-sniffer and shoulder-massager of women he approaches from behind so he can't see their disgusted expressions. There is also video of him reaching round an adult woman to tweak the right nipple of an unsuspecting girl not more than 10/11 years old. Can't look at him without shuddering. Of course, dementia might be the cause of his inappropriate behaviour, but he really should be in an a home for the mentally challenged by now - well, for the last four years at least.
That fat old cow is now luxuriating on her massive state pension while the people she was supposed to protect (Yes, Germans!) suffer horribly from the criminal and sexually offensive behaviour of foreigners who have no respect for them or their country. Smirkel belongs in prison for life for what she forced on Germany and Europe. The same goes for UK politicians - traitors all.
Got it. However, all I would say is no one is 💯 innocent and there seems to be a common theme throughout the West of trying to cleanse itself of atrocities ... by committing further atrocities? Maybe it’s just a show or maybe it’s a brutal means to a cold bureaucratic end.
Sounds like she/Germany is trying to publicly cleanse itself of its past by sacrificing itself. However, turning off the power and the food isn’t going to help anybody is it? It’s not what people say publicly but what they do.
Merkel understood Russia better than most people in Western Europe. Having been raised in East Germany. One of the better things Merkel did was to ignore the common Russophobia, developed a relationship with Putin and trade between Russia and Germany. This led to increased trade and trust between the two countries, especially for low-cost energy. But the U.S. fomented conflict between Ukraine and Russia with Germany left holding the bag. Any Germans with common sense should note that they have been played by the U.S. As in Ukraine, the U.S. is the cause of their present miseries. All of the darlings of Globalist Europe, Scholz, Von der Leyen, Baerbock and others have sold out their countries for U.S. vassal-hood. Outrage over this and the people who enabled it is well-earned.
Sigmar Gabriel has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group since May 2018. The International Crisis Group (ICG; also known as the Crisis Group) is a global non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in 1995. It is a think tank, used by policymakers and academics, conducting research and analysis on global crises. Seems to be sharply focused on … crises :) :) Soros funding got it off the ground. For our stackers here today, the Wiki is in part pretty amusing … in a cynical sort of way :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Crisis_Group
International Crisis Group. Never letting a good crisis go to waste since 2018. If you don't have one, we'll foment one, just for you.
No different from most of the 'Think Tanks.' Funded by the Military Industrial Complex to market the added value and commercial viability of never-ending wars.
Canada is beset by an effeminate, virtue signalling Prime Minister. Few people realize that we also have one of the bravest western politicians in Danielle Smith, the (female) provincial premier of Alberta.
Let's hope Danielle Smith runs for the premiership and wins. It feels as though Turdo has been ruining Canada for decades already. Alberta rings a bell for me because one of my uncles (born 1912) was sent to Canada on his own at the age of 15 from the North East of England. He worked on a farm in Alberta until returning to England as an adult. He never moaned about our UK winters because he said you don't know what winter is unless you've gone through one in Canada. He also witnessed barns and cows whirled away in a tornado or hurricane. After WW2, another uncle and aunt emigrated to Canada and lived there the rest of their lives in different places including Toronto and Montreal. I suppose that's why I keep an eye on what's happening in Canada, as well as being a big fan of Mark Steyn.
Trudeau called a snap election in the middle of a Covid lockdown with the shortest time to election day (6 weeks). He stated at over 40% in the polls (majority) and saw it drop every week. Ended at 30%. Now has a coalition.
When one considers the disappointing voter turnout in Canada (about 60% in 2021), fewer than 1 in 5 eligible voters opted for Trudeau's "Liberal" party.
Turdo is a braindead clown pretending to be an intelligent person fit to run a country. Everything he does demonstrates crass cluelessness including blacking up and, more recently, dressing like an Indian Rajah in India. He was one of Nose-Schwab's little political protegees, along with Jacinda Ardern, Macron, Rutte (Netherlands) and Tony Bliar. It's one of the reasons so many countries find themselves in the **** today.
Martin. Absolutely agree with you about Danielle Smith. Love her new policies regarding gender, based on common sense. The woke people in Canada are having a meltdown over this. I wish she was running Canada or at least my province of British Columbia.
I lived in Alberta for 18 months in 2001 and 2002. If it weren't for the weather and my age I would consider moving back.
BC strikes me as in interesting place as well. While Vancouver and Victoria strike me as woke beyond belief, everywhere else seems to be the polar opposite. It seems that the interior is home to many with a strong Christian faith.
This would be an excellent topic for a future Eugyppius piece. The political divide between left and right is to a large extent the same as the divide between male and female political views. Of course, there are left wing men and right wing women. But philosophically to some degree we are battling over whether men will run the world or women. Historically, men have ruled. But equal rights for women has trended toward an evening out of social policies. It is a biological fact that women have a stronger emotional component. In my opinion we need both sides of the ideological divide to achieve our best result. When the pendulum swings too far to one side, there will be a correction. The U.S. and Europe have moved too far left. A move back to the right appears to be underway.
We are hard wired to either sense external threats to our communities or not. A thousand years ago an invading army would kill the conquered males (thus ensuring that their genetic line stopped there), and enslave the females, who’s genetic line would continue. That’s why the male instinct to sense danger from those outside the tribe survives, but has largely decayed in women.
Diverging views on immigration also illustrate the wiring of men versus women. Men are programmed to want to wall off our domain to assert our own gene pool, protecting our lineage. Women's instincts tend more toward 'look at these different ones, they are so attractive.' 'Let's let them in.'
I always think of the Mongols, who would surround a village and demand surrender. I imagine the men wanting to fight and the women arguing for acquiescence to the horde. If the village surrendered, it would be integrated. When they resisted, the men would all be killed and the women integrated into the horde.
Considering the brutality in Gaza, has humanity truly evolved?
Except something odd is happening of late. It's one thing for females to have less ethnocentrism and more openness to outsiders. It's another for females to completely ignore the rape of children by outsiders, or refuse to report their own rapists. This kind of excessive altruism is probably unprecedented in history.
Feminists couldn't care less about children being raped by foreigners in the UK or Sweden, but if a white male burps in their direction they home in for the kill.
<i>Diverging views on immigration also illustrate the wiring of men versus women. Men are programmed to want to wall off our domain to assert our own gene pool, protecting our lineage. Women's instincts tend more toward 'look at these different ones, they are so attractive.' 'Let's let them in.'</i>
I think the womanly instinct is closer to "Oh, those poor babies, let's let them in and give them (the financial, political, and legal equivalent of) a cuddle."
Thatcher was a rare woman. So was Catherine the Great. Sahra Wagenknecht does not seem to suffer from hysteria. Neither does Clare Daly. Merkel was an impressive leader in many respects. She beats Olaf Scholz by a mile. But she gave in to this cynical pressure campaign when she had the opportunity to present a more complete story to Europe about uncontrolled immigration. Which is where we are in the U.S. and Europe today.
Neither did Merkel, up until the moment she did. And I'm sure she saw it as an act requiring a great deal of spine. The issue is not spine, quite the opposite, it's that some types of people will do terrible things requiring terrible resolve in the name of kindness.
I don't think it's that complicated. She is just one more politician with no core conviction who was bullied into leftist immigration policy. Anyone with bare common sense could have predicted it would end in catastrophic and potentially irreversible damage to her country.
Comparing Trump and Biden, Trump's super power is his grasp of common sense. He wields it like a sword, always disrupting leftist excess.
Biden's power comes from speaking gibberish all the time. No one ever truly knows what he is talking about. So people are left to construct their own meaning of what he spews out. He can lie right to your face and the press will just ignore it.
This is playing out in the battle over funding for Ukraine. Biden is attempting to con House Speaker Johnson that he will act to close the border once he gets more money to waste on Ukraine. Johnson is not allowing himself to be hypnotized by Biden's obvious ruse.
Trump gets to the heart of the matter by saying that a bad deal is worse than no deal.
The press reimagines this as a dilemma. A complex issue. When the obvious fact is that Biden could simply do his job today and close the border without any new laws or funding. This theatre of the absurd is what we pay our White House and Senate to do all day long.
Motherliness isn't the same as spinelessness -- mothers can be very determined if they think it's necessary for their offspring. Rather, I'd say the issue is one of myopia. In my experience, mothers are more likely to reflexively take their child's side in a dispute than fathers are, and when this partiality gets transferred onto migrants, or criminals, or whatever victim group, the result is what we see around us.
Camille Paglia spent much of her life studying these ideas of masculine and feminine through archetypes. Very interesting work. She identified as androgynous when virtually nobody did. That was at a time when objectivity wasn’t out of fashion as it is now. The social pressures on women are to conform and behave according to conscensus. It can be quite toxic when taken to the extreme. The same goes for masculinity. Everyone has some of both in them.
Camille Paglia is brilliant. She was the first woman to point out that Feminism has made women miserable. Wealthy Feminist women in particular have achieved terminal unhappiness. Left wing politics in general makes people depressed and anxious.
Actually, according to Konrad Lorenz, all of us respond to "Kindchenschema," the characteristics of cute young, and if you go to your favorite billionaire website and search narrative or story arc, and business or economics or marketing, you'll see that much is known about how to sell a story for whatever purpose. The old Freudian Mesmer projection onto women of all lability and emotional instability is a bit passe. Alarmism, which as E points out is escalating alarmingly lol, saturates everything, but must be replaced periodically as it gets exhausted or played out. I see it everywhere, and it is often a prelude to marketing, a product (politician, policy, someone's lucrative substack or patreon or online "community, a viewership) And once the alarming tidbit or huge geopolitical event is hurled into all the systems, everyone has a take on it. It is as if it is a kind of bait for the left hemispheres of our brains and dopamine surge addiction. Actual motherhood is actively discouraged these days, so perhaps you are right, and this offers a proxy. I think there are news cult faux religions in which one participates either on the streets, substituting for religious ritual, due to our loneliness (as Desmet hypothesizes) or online. But, according to some evolutionary and literary scholars, all music and poetry and ritual and community begin in the hominin move from the forest to the savannah, and bipedalism, which requires the young to be born sooner, unable to cling. The mother hominin, if not infanticiding the infant, which happened a lot, would lay the child down for a bit, to gather, and hum or signal or grunt, in a call and response. Quietly, perhaps, depending on predators. The motherhood hormone is oxytocin, which music also creates. These alarmist narratives, with narrative arcs, are designed to pump adrenaline and dopamine, not oxytocin. Those neurocharms, as Frederick Turner calls them, like music and poetry, born of woman and child, are the "alexin of our cure," the antidote to the hysteria.
Moonbattiness, despite the centuries of projection by men (and, truly, hurray for masculinity, even "toxic")onto women is not gendered lol.
All of us respond to the characteristics of cute young, but women tend to show more interest in and partiality towards their children than men do. The stereotype of the over-indulgent mother who refuses to believe that her darling boy can do any wrong in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary exists for a reason, as does the stereotype of the deadbeat dad who might as well be dead for all the involvement he has in his children's lives.
Another excellent and well-documented piece! The common threads linking these sequenced hysterias are (1) the increasingly effective deployment of fifth generation/cognitive warfare (2) orchestrated from high above, directing global footsoldiers in corporate media and governments. Expect this to intensify from a third factor: widespread populist uprisings in Western jurisdictions during an election year. Oh, yeah...and "Trump."
One nagging feeling I can't shake is that the short-term wild oscillations of this 21st century hysteria of perceived apocalyptical threats mask overarching longer-term trends of decay in western civilisation. To what extent this may be intended or is simply a property of things, I am not quite sure - Roman bread and circuses?
in this specific case, i think we are definitely talking about a process of political decay. i think of it as a transition from a higher-potential-energy political system (power concentrated in the hands of a few) to a lower-potential-energy one (this power now more widely distributed, not so confined). i wonder if this means the system has decayed actually to a more stable state.
What you make of Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" (1988)?
From wiki: "Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their energy subsidies reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society involuntarily sheds a significant portion of its complexity."
This is a very interesting idea about the system "decaying" to a more stable state, and this was also what I was thinking about for some time. In a strong effective no-nonsense state, I would probably be dead or in prison long time ago (for wrong think, for being unvaccinated, for being a foreigner, and so on and on - exactly as happened to many of my ancestors in 20th century), and the same would very likely be the case for you and many others here.
It's much safer and freer to navigate a very complex, decentraiized, and somewhat disfunctional society that still provides very good opportunities for living a good life if you are not lazy. With all its craziness, this could be actually a much better world than it seems on the surface.
Unfortunately, I suspect that "a very complex, decentraiized, and somewhat disfunctional society that still provides very good opportunities for living a good life if you are not lazy" is unlikely to be a stable equilibrium.
Yes, of course, we'll see. Now I start suspecting that the short period of the seeming societal stability (and even progress) I was lucky to observe for a fraction of my life was actually some kind of mirage, and I simply didn't notice the undercurrents of evil that were always there.
If it's more stable, it's because responsibility for anything is diffused so much that nobody in particular can be blamed for anything and so the whole Lovecraftian nightmare just keeps shoggothing along.
Does it perhaps have to do with the amount of entertainment consumed in our culture? Perhaps people trained by entertainment have short attention spans and are prone to drama.
Also, hate to say it as a female...but women involved in politics can bring out more emotional pullstrings. The media knows that women will vote by emotions...(generally speaking as there are also males like this and females who aren't like this).
A great essay Eugy, alarm and frighten so the solutions 'need world government', just what the Marxist Left wants. But few of our politicians have the guts to deal with relatively simple problems; 1) close the freaking borders 2) get national governments to deal with the problems, don't delegate to unelected external bodies. And if elected politicians can't act, people need to throw them out.
The Roger Hallam man is very special. Like most eco warriors he has mountains of hypocrisy, more mountains of hypocrisy than even the most corrupt politician can muster.
Whenever the usual suspects talk of an Russian invasion someone should post an atlas showing how f'ing HUGE Russia is. If it's one thing Russia doesn't need is land nor whiny soft metrosexual Europeans.
'whiny soft metrosexual' Speaking of Justin Trudeau, is he on the ropes yet? I want to hear what Don Cherry has to say about that Ukrainian SS guy that got a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament.
Don Cherry got cancelled and Blackface is holding on to power until an election is required by law, in 2025.🥴. But polls show he’s done. Just not done yet.
> Above all you are called upon to feel a specific way about this Very Bad Thing and to demonstrate your feeling with some specific performative action, whether that is attending a protest or wearing a mask. Sooner or later – and whether or not anything has been accomplished against this Very Bad Thing – the hysteria subsides, making way for the next Very Bad Thing.
I know analogies to Nineteen Eighty-Four are almost a Godwin's Law at this point, but Orwell warned us about this. This is just the Two Minutes' Hate
Also, something that frustrates me to no end, constantly: All of the media we have that depicts despotic, authoritarian dystopias does it in an almost cartoonishly evil way, and this has had the frustrating side-effect of making people unable to recognize evil when it's not cartoonish. The obvious recent example is vaccine passports.
Movement restrictions for everyday activities based on authorities checking your paperwork is a hallmark of both nazi _and_ commie authoritarianism. It is, in a very literal and direct sense, one of the first steps towards atrocities. But when the vaccine requirements hit our country, they didn't involve a menacing guy with an angry accent, obvious racism, and a very visible service pistol demanding your papers, they involved unemployable HR-Americans with blue hair and fake cheery smiles, giving plausible reasons for asking to see your documentation and politely reminding you that "your employer requires you to be vaccinated". And so the overwhelming majority of Americans rolled over and took it
In the same way, I imagine a lot of people (not _here_ per se, just in general) would be unable to recognize the very real and very serious parallel between the hysterical style laid out, and the Two Minutes' Hate, because nobody is being literally performatively _hateful_. It's all so tiresome
I find that 'authoritarian' already does the trick
But my point is not about _our_ understanding. The readers of this blog already know all this. I mean the general public's. The general public has not read Rand and a large majority of the general public who have would call _her_ a Nazi too!
As Democracy inevitably devolves down into Mob Rule & Tyranny (per Aristotle & others' observations) Emotive ploys, innuendo & related stratagems work far better on the people.
It appears that European politics & politicians have long ago succumbed to using said Vile Devices!
the only thing I remember about Greta, is when trump (who I cannot stand) said the truth for once: shouldn't that kid be in school? Greta is a spoiled rich kid, sailing her father's sailboat when she indeed, should have been in school. All these other kids surrounding her, were probably of the kind. Which normal 17 year old has the opportunity to do this? Later on, of course, we learned she is a WEF groomed kid, like all the rest of the spoiled brats.
Laser-like analysis. One of your better posts, for sure.
I think you should extend this analysis a bit further though, to talk about the decline in the media's business fortunes. The fall in newspaper revenue since 2000 has been astronomical. The word "decimation" is far too mild to describe the financial failure in that industry, which has tried to stem the staff bleeding by leaning in to whatever engages the most easily excited readers (especially, billionaire grant givers).
Bad news sells, and the fact that our media is now funded by a tiny number of hyper-engaged hysterics must surely contribute to the phenomenon, beyond the need for coordination.
“That Germany could slide into a dictatorship, as it did at the end of the 1920s, or even worse – that violent deportations like those during the Holocaust could happen again.”
American Media:
“Trump's second-term agenda: revenge, trade wars, mass deportations
Reuters - December 27, 202311:22 AM EST”
Their hysteria is absolutely coordinated, and in my opinion nothing more than the Hegelian Dialectic writ large.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you have again wonderfully summarized my feelings on all manner of "let's be very afraid about [put scary thing here] disease." Some of us have come to a conclusion about this type of hysteria. Whenever it occurs, it is likely to be accompanied by a clarion call to The God of Bigger Government. "Only a coordinated effort by all the smart people we hire can quell this danger!" That, sports fans, is the first sign of a scam! I understand that it is possible for some issues to benefit from cooperation. I understand that "teamwork makes the dream work." (Positive thinking memes from the 80s still haunt me.) That said, it is nigh impossible for every episode of the Next Boogie Man to resemble the dire plot of a disaster movie! And yet, here we are...
I hope that eventually people will rumble the bogus nature not just of current MSM hysteria fits but of 'The News' per se. It is (and has always been) one of the great delusions of modern times. It has always been a fraud on account of the inevitable Editorial Selectivity (whereby for instance, some murders warrant months of agonising and outrage whereas others don't even get a mention). Hence the very CONCEPT is a fraud........the illusion that you can know what the most important thing going on in the world is (without any effort on your part) just by checking 'The News'. And then came the great MSM invention of 24/7 'current affairs' which was really mostly about keeping the great army of MSM news grifters in a job.
Yes, as Mark Twain ( possibly) said “You can read the papers and be misinformed, or you can avoid them and be uninformed. You have to make a choice.” Sadly most of my friends persist in the illusion that they are informed about world events.
Once again you knock it out of the park. It’s the Salem Witch Trials all over again. Hysterias and hoaxes instigate fear to force people into giving government more power.
The new NPR CEO is a classic commissar who will continue to push shrieking narratives on behalf of her shadowy stakeholders: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/commissar-npr-ceo-katherine-maher-she-her
However, the good news is that massive layoffs are taking place at the many purveyors of the Hysterical Style!
Massive layoffs are currently taking place in the newsrooms of, to name a few:
La Times, TIME,NPR, Vice, Vox, Sports Illustrated, NBC, CNBC, the news giant Gannett,
NY Daily News-
we the people are rejecting their hysteria and enforcing "go woke go broke"
Here is an article about in published in- yikes- CNN! They bemoan the phenomenon and blame it on MAGA of course:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/media/news-industry-future
Rejoice!
We have the power!
(pardon my hysterical style of using exclamation marks)
I honestly think Chat GPT and it's ilk is the bigger reason for the layoffs. I have suspected for quite some time that many workers in the PMC are in the process of losing their relevance in the face of AI and automation in general. I think there's various reasons why powers that be don't want AI to take the blame as it could lead to lefties moving back towards Bernie style populism.
They lost their relevance long ago when they ceased being journalists and took on the role of partisan hack.
When the West succumbed to radical feminism, all of this insanity became inevitable...Because hysteria, as the name suggests, is almost entirely female in its nature...The inevitable result is that people like Maher rise to the top of the corporate ladder, generally with extremely negative consequences.....
Spot on Yuri. The Maher post is brilliant, I know a few knobs to send that to. The AI crap and more being pushed by CNBC and Bloomberg TV is sickening.
We are now living in a non-stop cycle of global, instantaneous Salem Witch Trials. With social media, the entire world can whipped up into the next hysteria to replace the last hysteria.
Sensation and outrage have been a media style for as long as I can remember--instilling fear and hysteria gets the mob worked up to go after whichever bogeyman at whom the media points its finger.
Ultimately, the issue becomes how much the public tolerates--becomes immune or unmoved by--the volume of the entreaties. Having turned the outrage up to 11 on the 10-scale, they must raise it to 12, 13, 14 ... and higher.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf comes to mind. Of course, that has probably been superseded by "Heather Has Two Mommies."
The witch hunts evidently were a symptom of ergot toxicity due to improperly stored grains that got moldy. Might there be some sort of mass biochemical changes on a large scale that have affected the ability of massive numbers of people to think straight?
Even at that, while I do observe an extraordinary degree of crazy driving, I also observe less and less people buying in, and even crisis fatigue among those who still believe.
OK am back I see culprits rye, wheat, triticale, barley, millets and oats...OATS! Oat milk oats in everything. It's either that or faulty HRT :)
I was literally talking about that to someone today. Extraordinary driving either totally zombified and impervious bordering on 'uh oh wake up am I driving?' or else full pelt foot off and on the gas weird. I didn't know about ergot toxicity and now am off down that rabbit hole!
Not for the first time am I left wondering how long the current model of governance-by-moral-panic can last
It will last until all our freedoms are taken away. That's the end game. Absolutely none of this is the brainchild of the dim/half/mid wits who ostensibly run our countries. Since destruction is the goal, these room temperature IQ "leaders" will do just fine, as far as TPTB are concerned. Intelligence is necessary to build and maintain; none is required to destroy. And the West is being destroyed.
It looks like a lot of useful idiots are employed by big government, big media, big pharma, big education, etc., that the evil powers-that-be are able to use, and to direct the masses wherever these psychopaths want them to go. 5 years ago, I was comfortably living an oblivious life but the Covid hysteria which my government used to directly threaten me and my family to comply, woke me the h_ _ _ up!!! It was a brutal awakening, but it had to happen some time. Now I’m beginning to learn how the world really works! It’s not a pretty picture. 😢
Me too, Ross. The mask has been ripped off.
It can't go on that much longer, as people get burned out by the constant increase in hysteria. Eventually they just tune out.
Even in my so-liberal circle in my so-liberal town, conversation is currently completely calm and no one is alarmed about anything. However, my sister is an agitated liberal and her equally-agitated liberal friends are still very much in a total panic about several things. It will take time for the tune-out to ripple inwards and affect the extreme hysterics.
Interesting. Extreme hysterics is eventually followed by adrenal fatigue, or psychosis.
I think we are leaning toward psychosis.
As Orwell said: "It is always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and losers- out of orthodoxy"
and this:
Does leftism make you looney? New study finds liberal white women struggle with mental health issues"
https://thenewamerican.com/does-leftism-make-you-looney-new-study-finds-liberal-white-women-struggle-with-mental-health-issues/
Women want to be liked, and perhaps the corporate kind want most to be liked for their opinions about serious matters. And typically they want their entourage to think like they do. And if they're on the left of center, they're being programmed to evangelize using any means necessary, and shame is not their least favorite means.
So if they can never let their guard down (and many never relax at all) or speak their mind honestly, in the end they will go looney.
E Jean Carroll fits the description-
her interview with Rachel Maddow - the 2 of them together-
sociopaths egging each other on
But they also get flattened into obedience.
The fable of “The Boy who Cried Wolf” is prescient.
I would think not long. People are awakening to the constant insanity and are unwilling to be fooled again. The Covid Hoax was the GREAT awakener event. A massive groundswell of questioners are wanting answers. The many people involved in creating and implementing the Covid Crime will be identified. And then?
You realize we are in the minority here, right?
Until Fauci pays the price for his crimes against humanity, this mode of operation will continue.
Not everyone is waking up. More people are wearing masks again even if they don't have to. ADs for the "new and improved" covid vaccines are shown daily on TV and on the internet. Puppet journalists and acting doctors appear again telling people how to stay healthy adn get the shots.
Doctors, media people adn insurance companies are totally puzzled why on earth death and sicknesses have increased so drastically since 2021. Mention the shots and you are a conspiracy theorist. And so the beat goes on
But now we have flipped somewhat. All of a sudden we have real genocide in GAZA and the world shrugs it off - not much hysteria - now they call young people protesting hysterical know nothings.
It lasts until "another day, another panic" becomes the default high-status position of smart educated high earning people, unfortunately.
For that, we have to exhaust the groups of people who coordinate via panic and also have some respect inertia. Trust in journalism has been cratering for years, but people shifted their source of truth to academia instead which is actually even worse, but people didn't realise that. Now trust in academia is also in free-fall. Which group will come next, I wonder? I'm not sure there are many left.
Substack!
God no! Once enough people begin to trust in Substack, the elites will either ban it or take it over.
Doctors!
In the US, at least through the next presidential election. 'Cause you know, we got Orange Man in the house and he's an 'existential threat to [our] democracy'! A wannabee dictator! Shout it from the rooftops!!!
He's Literally Hitler, just like every other Republican candidate for any office anywhere in the country.
Yes they're literally Hitlers. Not just figuratively Hitlers, that's not nearly sensational enough. We've actually tested the DNA of all of these folks and sure enough, they are indeed Hitlers!!! And not merely sons of Hitler either, but clones of Hitler!!! Clones for God's sake!!! Oh the humanity!!!
The real 'itler clone is Herr Nose-Schwab himself aka Ming the Merciless owing to his OTT sartorial style. Luckily, at 86, the silly old fool won't be around much longer, but watch out for Nose-Schwab Junior who's been groomed to replace Papa since he passed potty-training. Never stand for corrupt politicians that suck up to Schwab - or any moronic monarch either.
Honestly, cloning Hitler that many times was probably a mistake...
Yeah, imagine the difficulty the editor will have coordinating all the input to 'Unsere Kämpfe' once they're released from prison.
I don't know, probably when "policy by tantrum" becomes ineffective.
Right, and what if that is never?
Nothing lasts forever, especially giving in to loudest screamers.
Until the adult diapers run out.
I came here to do two things: freak the fuck out, and shit my adult diapers... and pardner, I'm all out of adult diapers
Call Joey.
I expect it will last until the parasites tasked with controlling the masses extract the last remaining dollar/euro/sheckel from the populace. It's always about , and has always been about, transferring and accumulating our wealth by
whatever means necessary. The control part is both a means and a bonus for the elites and their cheap-to-buy politicians and bureaucrats.
I suppose until they run out of credulous idiots.
so, to quote King Lear, "never, never, never, never, never"
Unsaid here is that these people are forced to adopt increasingly frantic and apocalyptic tones because what they're pushing is further and further removed from reality. They're trying to drive us ALL insane.
They will fail, because we have already driven them insane.
Seems obvious, no? :)
I feel like it's working... 😭
The pushback is growing.
Precisely
Angela Merkel held moderate, rational views on immigration until she was ambushed in a media staged event with a crying immigrant girl who feared being deported. Merkel explained to the girl that it was simply not possible for Germany to accept every person who wanted to immigrate. Immediately afterward Merkel was shamed widely by the press for her response to the crying migrant girl. That was the instant where Merkel changed her views completely and came up with 'Wir schaffen das.' A stronger leader would have been able to withstand the criticism. But Merkel folded and Europe is still paying for her moment of weakness. Since this set-up worked so well, we can expect all kinds of similar theatre now in the public square. Cue Olaf Scholz marching with the AfD witch hunt mob.
yes, that press event I think was in June or July 2015. but, Merkel had already been pushing for vaguely for openness before, in response to Pegida.
The 'Crying Immigrant Girl' staged media event happened on 16-July-2015.
Merkel made her original comment at a federal press conference held on 31 August 2015 following a visit to a refugee camp in Dresden where opponents of her refugee policy had booed and heckled her. The full sentence used ("wir haben so vieles geschafft — wir schaffen das") can be translated as "we have managed so many things — we will also manage this situation".
On 31-August-2015, Merkel said "I say quite simply: Germany is a strong country. The motive with which we approach these things must be: We have achieved so much – we can do it! We can do it, and where something stands in our way, it has to be overcome, it has to be worked on. The federal government will do everything in its power - together with the states, together with the municipalities - to enforce exactly that". She repeated the phrase on her New Year's address on 31 December 2015, saying "we can do it, because Germany is a strong country".
(Use before Angela Merkel.)
On 22 August 2015 Sigmar Gabriel, the then-Chairman of the Social Democratic Party and Vice-Chancellor of Germany had used "wir schaffen das" to refer to the coalition government's refugee policy. Gabriel's full sentence was "peace, humanity, solidary, justice: these are among our European values. Now we have to prove it. I'm sure we can do it".
BBC News - Angela Merkel attacked over crying refugee girl.
Bloomberg - Angela Merkel Tells Teenager She Can't Stay in Germany.
WaPo - Germany’s Merkel makes a young refugee girl cry, then tries to comfort her.
Vox - Angela Merkel should be ashamed of her response to this sobbing Palestinian girl.
Christian Science Monitor - Angela Merkel to Palestinian immigrant girl: Germany can't help everyone
Independent - Angela Merkel makes Palestinian girl facing deportation from Germany cry on TV
The western media seems to be leading the policies not necessarily the politicians. The politicians seem to fold as soon as the media attacked them. The politicians are owned by whoever owns the media.
They are in lock step. The press and governments.
Mostly yes but sometimes we can see examples like this where Angela said something the press didn't like and they schooled her.
Same thing happened with Gov. Newsom in CA. He did try to open the state after a few weeks but then all the headlines started in about what a horrible mistake he was making and then he shut the state down fast and didn't open until he was the last.
The media told Newsom what to do and he was afraid of them.
That illustrated the difference between Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher would have never backed down to the press or the mob. Which, by the way is the essence of leadership.
It is very satisfying to see people like Pelosi and Biden on their heels now, being swarmed by the same mob that they incite purposefully with massive lies.
Merkel should have known better than to attend the media event - press ambush. She probably thought she could control the event. But we all have blind spots.
Your Newsome Covid recounting shows the power of fear. Covid lockdowns were an entirely fear-based hysteria. That made it impossible to reason with people in charge of making decisions. I recall that Women (though not all) were particularly adamant about shutting everything down. It was a totalitarian era imposed on the population. If you didn't accept the experimental vaccine, you were made a prisoner in your home, fired from your job, prohibited from travel, publicly shamed. It was worse than the Salem witch trials in the overall number of people who lost their minds.
Interesting so see how the pecking order works, and who really governs those who govern us.
"Wir schaffen das!". Didn't Der Fuher say the same thing about invading the USSR? Another ill-conceived project.
No, Hitler said of the Soviet Union: "We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."
Yes he did, but I was paraphrasing.
At any rate, both Angela and Adolf were wrong.
As a rough estimate based on various polls, something like a billion people have said that they would want to move to the United States of America.
Of course, since that's three times as many people as live here, by the time they got here, it wouldn't *be* the United States of America anymore.
Biden has already imported over 10 million in just a few years. And people show up at his campaign events shouting 'four more years!'
Sleepy Joe has just been giving them what they want ... and certainly what they need.
'Sleepy' Joe? More like CREEPY Joe: hair-sniffer and shoulder-massager of women he approaches from behind so he can't see their disgusted expressions. There is also video of him reaching round an adult woman to tweak the right nipple of an unsuspecting girl not more than 10/11 years old. Can't look at him without shuddering. Of course, dementia might be the cause of his inappropriate behaviour, but he really should be in an a home for the mentally challenged by now - well, for the last four years at least.
That fat old cow is now luxuriating on her massive state pension while the people she was supposed to protect (Yes, Germans!) suffer horribly from the criminal and sexually offensive behaviour of foreigners who have no respect for them or their country. Smirkel belongs in prison for life for what she forced on Germany and Europe. The same goes for UK politicians - traitors all.
Got it. However, all I would say is no one is 💯 innocent and there seems to be a common theme throughout the West of trying to cleanse itself of atrocities ... by committing further atrocities? Maybe it’s just a show or maybe it’s a brutal means to a cold bureaucratic end.
Sounds like she/Germany is trying to publicly cleanse itself of its past by sacrificing itself. However, turning off the power and the food isn’t going to help anybody is it? It’s not what people say publicly but what they do.
Merkel understood Russia better than most people in Western Europe. Having been raised in East Germany. One of the better things Merkel did was to ignore the common Russophobia, developed a relationship with Putin and trade between Russia and Germany. This led to increased trade and trust between the two countries, especially for low-cost energy. But the U.S. fomented conflict between Ukraine and Russia with Germany left holding the bag. Any Germans with common sense should note that they have been played by the U.S. As in Ukraine, the U.S. is the cause of their present miseries. All of the darlings of Globalist Europe, Scholz, Von der Leyen, Baerbock and others have sold out their countries for U.S. vassal-hood. Outrage over this and the people who enabled it is well-earned.
Sigmar Gabriel has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group since May 2018. The International Crisis Group (ICG; also known as the Crisis Group) is a global non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in 1995. It is a think tank, used by policymakers and academics, conducting research and analysis on global crises. Seems to be sharply focused on … crises :) :) Soros funding got it off the ground. For our stackers here today, the Wiki is in part pretty amusing … in a cynical sort of way :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Crisis_Group
"Crises Are Us"
International Crisis Group. Never letting a good crisis go to waste since 2018. If you don't have one, we'll foment one, just for you.
No different from most of the 'Think Tanks.' Funded by the Military Industrial Complex to market the added value and commercial viability of never-ending wars.
So true, right? These people are devils.
Pure evil. And all roads lead to Soros.
I wonder how much of this is related to womanhood and the motherly impulse.
The Greek word for uterus is hystera.
The word gullible is not in the dictionary!
Canada is beset by an effeminate, virtue signalling Prime Minister. Few people realize that we also have one of the bravest western politicians in Danielle Smith, the (female) provincial premier of Alberta.
Let's hope Danielle Smith runs for the premiership and wins. It feels as though Turdo has been ruining Canada for decades already. Alberta rings a bell for me because one of my uncles (born 1912) was sent to Canada on his own at the age of 15 from the North East of England. He worked on a farm in Alberta until returning to England as an adult. He never moaned about our UK winters because he said you don't know what winter is unless you've gone through one in Canada. He also witnessed barns and cows whirled away in a tornado or hurricane. After WW2, another uncle and aunt emigrated to Canada and lived there the rest of their lives in different places including Toronto and Montreal. I suppose that's why I keep an eye on what's happening in Canada, as well as being a big fan of Mark Steyn.
Trudeau called a snap election in the middle of a Covid lockdown with the shortest time to election day (6 weeks). He stated at over 40% in the polls (majority) and saw it drop every week. Ended at 30%. Now has a coalition.
When one considers the disappointing voter turnout in Canada (about 60% in 2021), fewer than 1 in 5 eligible voters opted for Trudeau's "Liberal" party.
Turdo is a braindead clown pretending to be an intelligent person fit to run a country. Everything he does demonstrates crass cluelessness including blacking up and, more recently, dressing like an Indian Rajah in India. He was one of Nose-Schwab's little political protegees, along with Jacinda Ardern, Macron, Rutte (Netherlands) and Tony Bliar. It's one of the reasons so many countries find themselves in the **** today.
Martin. Absolutely agree with you about Danielle Smith. Love her new policies regarding gender, based on common sense. The woke people in Canada are having a meltdown over this. I wish she was running Canada or at least my province of British Columbia.
I lived in Alberta for 18 months in 2001 and 2002. If it weren't for the weather and my age I would consider moving back.
I'm in Ontario and envious of Alberta.
BC strikes me as in interesting place as well. While Vancouver and Victoria strike me as woke beyond belief, everywhere else seems to be the polar opposite. It seems that the interior is home to many with a strong Christian faith.
This would be an excellent topic for a future Eugyppius piece. The political divide between left and right is to a large extent the same as the divide between male and female political views. Of course, there are left wing men and right wing women. But philosophically to some degree we are battling over whether men will run the world or women. Historically, men have ruled. But equal rights for women has trended toward an evening out of social policies. It is a biological fact that women have a stronger emotional component. In my opinion we need both sides of the ideological divide to achieve our best result. When the pendulum swings too far to one side, there will be a correction. The U.S. and Europe have moved too far left. A move back to the right appears to be underway.
We are hard wired to either sense external threats to our communities or not. A thousand years ago an invading army would kill the conquered males (thus ensuring that their genetic line stopped there), and enslave the females, who’s genetic line would continue. That’s why the male instinct to sense danger from those outside the tribe survives, but has largely decayed in women.
Diverging views on immigration also illustrate the wiring of men versus women. Men are programmed to want to wall off our domain to assert our own gene pool, protecting our lineage. Women's instincts tend more toward 'look at these different ones, they are so attractive.' 'Let's let them in.'
I always think of the Mongols, who would surround a village and demand surrender. I imagine the men wanting to fight and the women arguing for acquiescence to the horde. If the village surrendered, it would be integrated. When they resisted, the men would all be killed and the women integrated into the horde.
Considering the brutality in Gaza, has humanity truly evolved?
Except something odd is happening of late. It's one thing for females to have less ethnocentrism and more openness to outsiders. It's another for females to completely ignore the rape of children by outsiders, or refuse to report their own rapists. This kind of excessive altruism is probably unprecedented in history.
Feminists couldn't care less about children being raped by foreigners in the UK or Sweden, but if a white male burps in their direction they home in for the kill.
Hysteria, left untreated leads to mental illness.
<i>Diverging views on immigration also illustrate the wiring of men versus women. Men are programmed to want to wall off our domain to assert our own gene pool, protecting our lineage. Women's instincts tend more toward 'look at these different ones, they are so attractive.' 'Let's let them in.'</i>
I think the womanly instinct is closer to "Oh, those poor babies, let's let them in and give them (the financial, political, and legal equivalent of) a cuddle."
I don't buy it. Margaret Thatcher did not have this problem. Spinelessness afflicts both men and women.
Thatcher was a rare woman. So was Catherine the Great. Sahra Wagenknecht does not seem to suffer from hysteria. Neither does Clare Daly. Merkel was an impressive leader in many respects. She beats Olaf Scholz by a mile. But she gave in to this cynical pressure campaign when she had the opportunity to present a more complete story to Europe about uncontrolled immigration. Which is where we are in the U.S. and Europe today.
Neither did Merkel, up until the moment she did. And I'm sure she saw it as an act requiring a great deal of spine. The issue is not spine, quite the opposite, it's that some types of people will do terrible things requiring terrible resolve in the name of kindness.
I don't think it's that complicated. She is just one more politician with no core conviction who was bullied into leftist immigration policy. Anyone with bare common sense could have predicted it would end in catastrophic and potentially irreversible damage to her country.
Comparing Trump and Biden, Trump's super power is his grasp of common sense. He wields it like a sword, always disrupting leftist excess.
Biden's power comes from speaking gibberish all the time. No one ever truly knows what he is talking about. So people are left to construct their own meaning of what he spews out. He can lie right to your face and the press will just ignore it.
This is playing out in the battle over funding for Ukraine. Biden is attempting to con House Speaker Johnson that he will act to close the border once he gets more money to waste on Ukraine. Johnson is not allowing himself to be hypnotized by Biden's obvious ruse.
Trump gets to the heart of the matter by saying that a bad deal is worse than no deal.
The press reimagines this as a dilemma. A complex issue. When the obvious fact is that Biden could simply do his job today and close the border without any new laws or funding. This theatre of the absurd is what we pay our White House and Senate to do all day long.
So true. Nothing complex about it. What's needed, and what Trump has, are common sense, clear thinking, and a burning need to solve problems.
Motherliness isn't the same as spinelessness -- mothers can be very determined if they think it's necessary for their offspring. Rather, I'd say the issue is one of myopia. In my experience, mothers are more likely to reflexively take their child's side in a dispute than fathers are, and when this partiality gets transferred onto migrants, or criminals, or whatever victim group, the result is what we see around us.
I do too. And also beginning to think the world is becoming much too feminine to function properly.
Only in the decadent West really. In the meantime, the BRICS are steadily gaining ground on the weak and feckless.
Camille Paglia spent much of her life studying these ideas of masculine and feminine through archetypes. Very interesting work. She identified as androgynous when virtually nobody did. That was at a time when objectivity wasn’t out of fashion as it is now. The social pressures on women are to conform and behave according to conscensus. It can be quite toxic when taken to the extreme. The same goes for masculinity. Everyone has some of both in them.
Camille Paglia is brilliant. She was the first woman to point out that Feminism has made women miserable. Wealthy Feminist women in particular have achieved terminal unhappiness. Left wing politics in general makes people depressed and anxious.
Actually, according to Konrad Lorenz, all of us respond to "Kindchenschema," the characteristics of cute young, and if you go to your favorite billionaire website and search narrative or story arc, and business or economics or marketing, you'll see that much is known about how to sell a story for whatever purpose. The old Freudian Mesmer projection onto women of all lability and emotional instability is a bit passe. Alarmism, which as E points out is escalating alarmingly lol, saturates everything, but must be replaced periodically as it gets exhausted or played out. I see it everywhere, and it is often a prelude to marketing, a product (politician, policy, someone's lucrative substack or patreon or online "community, a viewership) And once the alarming tidbit or huge geopolitical event is hurled into all the systems, everyone has a take on it. It is as if it is a kind of bait for the left hemispheres of our brains and dopamine surge addiction. Actual motherhood is actively discouraged these days, so perhaps you are right, and this offers a proxy. I think there are news cult faux religions in which one participates either on the streets, substituting for religious ritual, due to our loneliness (as Desmet hypothesizes) or online. But, according to some evolutionary and literary scholars, all music and poetry and ritual and community begin in the hominin move from the forest to the savannah, and bipedalism, which requires the young to be born sooner, unable to cling. The mother hominin, if not infanticiding the infant, which happened a lot, would lay the child down for a bit, to gather, and hum or signal or grunt, in a call and response. Quietly, perhaps, depending on predators. The motherhood hormone is oxytocin, which music also creates. These alarmist narratives, with narrative arcs, are designed to pump adrenaline and dopamine, not oxytocin. Those neurocharms, as Frederick Turner calls them, like music and poetry, born of woman and child, are the "alexin of our cure," the antidote to the hysteria.
Moonbattiness, despite the centuries of projection by men (and, truly, hurray for masculinity, even "toxic")onto women is not gendered lol.
All of us respond to the characteristics of cute young, but women tend to show more interest in and partiality towards their children than men do. The stereotype of the over-indulgent mother who refuses to believe that her darling boy can do any wrong in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary exists for a reason, as does the stereotype of the deadbeat dad who might as well be dead for all the involvement he has in his children's lives.
Have you ever wondered why all human babies are so cute, with their adorable facial features, high pitched voices and Roly poly bodies?
It's a survival mechanism thanks to nature. If babies looked like miniature adults they wouldn't last long.
Hah! But more likely it's the other way around-- if adults weren't wired to find babies cute, they would leave no descendants.
Good point.
The toxic feminine.
Another excellent and well-documented piece! The common threads linking these sequenced hysterias are (1) the increasingly effective deployment of fifth generation/cognitive warfare (2) orchestrated from high above, directing global footsoldiers in corporate media and governments. Expect this to intensify from a third factor: widespread populist uprisings in Western jurisdictions during an election year. Oh, yeah...and "Trump."
Eugyppius hits many nails on the head, again.
One nagging feeling I can't shake is that the short-term wild oscillations of this 21st century hysteria of perceived apocalyptical threats mask overarching longer-term trends of decay in western civilisation. To what extent this may be intended or is simply a property of things, I am not quite sure - Roman bread and circuses?
in this specific case, i think we are definitely talking about a process of political decay. i think of it as a transition from a higher-potential-energy political system (power concentrated in the hands of a few) to a lower-potential-energy one (this power now more widely distributed, not so confined). i wonder if this means the system has decayed actually to a more stable state.
What you make of Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" (1988)?
From wiki: "Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their energy subsidies reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society involuntarily sheds a significant portion of its complexity."
This is a very interesting idea about the system "decaying" to a more stable state, and this was also what I was thinking about for some time. In a strong effective no-nonsense state, I would probably be dead or in prison long time ago (for wrong think, for being unvaccinated, for being a foreigner, and so on and on - exactly as happened to many of my ancestors in 20th century), and the same would very likely be the case for you and many others here.
It's much safer and freer to navigate a very complex, decentraiized, and somewhat disfunctional society that still provides very good opportunities for living a good life if you are not lazy. With all its craziness, this could be actually a much better world than it seems on the surface.
Unfortunately, I suspect that "a very complex, decentraiized, and somewhat disfunctional society that still provides very good opportunities for living a good life if you are not lazy" is unlikely to be a stable equilibrium.
Yes, of course, we'll see. Now I start suspecting that the short period of the seeming societal stability (and even progress) I was lucky to observe for a fraction of my life was actually some kind of mirage, and I simply didn't notice the undercurrents of evil that were always there.
If it's more stable, it's because responsibility for anything is diffused so much that nobody in particular can be blamed for anything and so the whole Lovecraftian nightmare just keeps shoggothing along.
Does it perhaps have to do with the amount of entertainment consumed in our culture? Perhaps people trained by entertainment have short attention spans and are prone to drama.
Also, hate to say it as a female...but women involved in politics can bring out more emotional pullstrings. The media knows that women will vote by emotions...(generally speaking as there are also males like this and females who aren't like this).
A great essay Eugy, alarm and frighten so the solutions 'need world government', just what the Marxist Left wants. But few of our politicians have the guts to deal with relatively simple problems; 1) close the freaking borders 2) get national governments to deal with the problems, don't delegate to unelected external bodies. And if elected politicians can't act, people need to throw them out.
Fantastic barn-storming article.
The Roger Hallam man is very special. Like most eco warriors he has mountains of hypocrisy, more mountains of hypocrisy than even the most corrupt politician can muster.
The mantra. 'Do as I say, not as I do'.
Whenever the usual suspects talk of an Russian invasion someone should post an atlas showing how f'ing HUGE Russia is. If it's one thing Russia doesn't need is land nor whiny soft metrosexual Europeans.
'whiny soft metrosexual' Speaking of Justin Trudeau, is he on the ropes yet? I want to hear what Don Cherry has to say about that Ukrainian SS guy that got a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament.
Don Cherry got cancelled and Blackface is holding on to power until an election is required by law, in 2025.🥴. But polls show he’s done. Just not done yet.
The election can't come soon enough. And I hope the NDP also gets trounced.
Commenting while reading, usual disclaimers apply
> Above all you are called upon to feel a specific way about this Very Bad Thing and to demonstrate your feeling with some specific performative action, whether that is attending a protest or wearing a mask. Sooner or later – and whether or not anything has been accomplished against this Very Bad Thing – the hysteria subsides, making way for the next Very Bad Thing.
I know analogies to Nineteen Eighty-Four are almost a Godwin's Law at this point, but Orwell warned us about this. This is just the Two Minutes' Hate
Also, something that frustrates me to no end, constantly: All of the media we have that depicts despotic, authoritarian dystopias does it in an almost cartoonishly evil way, and this has had the frustrating side-effect of making people unable to recognize evil when it's not cartoonish. The obvious recent example is vaccine passports.
Movement restrictions for everyday activities based on authorities checking your paperwork is a hallmark of both nazi _and_ commie authoritarianism. It is, in a very literal and direct sense, one of the first steps towards atrocities. But when the vaccine requirements hit our country, they didn't involve a menacing guy with an angry accent, obvious racism, and a very visible service pistol demanding your papers, they involved unemployable HR-Americans with blue hair and fake cheery smiles, giving plausible reasons for asking to see your documentation and politely reminding you that "your employer requires you to be vaccinated". And so the overwhelming majority of Americans rolled over and took it
In the same way, I imagine a lot of people (not _here_ per se, just in general) would be unable to recognize the very real and very serious parallel between the hysterical style laid out, and the Two Minutes' Hate, because nobody is being literally performatively _hateful_. It's all so tiresome
Ayn Rand's construct of "statist" allows us to understand the equivalence of communist and nazi authoritarianism.
I find that 'authoritarian' already does the trick
But my point is not about _our_ understanding. The readers of this blog already know all this. I mean the general public's. The general public has not read Rand and a large majority of the general public who have would call _her_ a Nazi too!
Tiresome is a good word.
I think so too, Ms. Stirling. Find myself using it alot lately. :)
As Democracy inevitably devolves down into Mob Rule & Tyranny (per Aristotle & others' observations) Emotive ploys, innuendo & related stratagems work far better on the people.
It appears that European politics & politicians have long ago succumbed to using said Vile Devices!
(For those interested)
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Thank You Kindly to everyone!
the only thing I remember about Greta, is when trump (who I cannot stand) said the truth for once: shouldn't that kid be in school? Greta is a spoiled rich kid, sailing her father's sailboat when she indeed, should have been in school. All these other kids surrounding her, were probably of the kind. Which normal 17 year old has the opportunity to do this? Later on, of course, we learned she is a WEF groomed kid, like all the rest of the spoiled brats.
Laser-like analysis. One of your better posts, for sure.
I think you should extend this analysis a bit further though, to talk about the decline in the media's business fortunes. The fall in newspaper revenue since 2000 has been astronomical. The word "decimation" is far too mild to describe the financial failure in that industry, which has tried to stem the staff bleeding by leaning in to whatever engages the most easily excited readers (especially, billionaire grant givers).
Bad news sells, and the fact that our media is now funded by a tiny number of hyper-engaged hysterics must surely contribute to the phenomenon, beyond the need for coordination.
German Media:
“That Germany could slide into a dictatorship, as it did at the end of the 1920s, or even worse – that violent deportations like those during the Holocaust could happen again.”
American Media:
“Trump's second-term agenda: revenge, trade wars, mass deportations
Reuters - December 27, 202311:22 AM EST”
Their hysteria is absolutely coordinated, and in my opinion nothing more than the Hegelian Dialectic writ large.
" that violent deportations like those during the Holocaust "
Wait, is that a direct quote? Did the German media admit that Hitler's plan was deportation? Hence the Havaraa agreement, etc? I'd be surprised.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you have again wonderfully summarized my feelings on all manner of "let's be very afraid about [put scary thing here] disease." Some of us have come to a conclusion about this type of hysteria. Whenever it occurs, it is likely to be accompanied by a clarion call to The God of Bigger Government. "Only a coordinated effort by all the smart people we hire can quell this danger!" That, sports fans, is the first sign of a scam! I understand that it is possible for some issues to benefit from cooperation. I understand that "teamwork makes the dream work." (Positive thinking memes from the 80s still haunt me.) That said, it is nigh impossible for every episode of the Next Boogie Man to resemble the dire plot of a disaster movie! And yet, here we are...
I hope that eventually people will rumble the bogus nature not just of current MSM hysteria fits but of 'The News' per se. It is (and has always been) one of the great delusions of modern times. It has always been a fraud on account of the inevitable Editorial Selectivity (whereby for instance, some murders warrant months of agonising and outrage whereas others don't even get a mention). Hence the very CONCEPT is a fraud........the illusion that you can know what the most important thing going on in the world is (without any effort on your part) just by checking 'The News'. And then came the great MSM invention of 24/7 'current affairs' which was really mostly about keeping the great army of MSM news grifters in a job.
Yes, as Mark Twain ( possibly) said “You can read the papers and be misinformed, or you can avoid them and be uninformed. You have to make a choice.” Sadly most of my friends persist in the illusion that they are informed about world events.