Eyes Rolling Hard

 

The only thing more insane than a right-wing conspiracy theory is a left-wing conspiracy theory.

A right-wing conspiracy theory (RWCT) is at least based on people doing research, examining history, seeking evidence and trying to draw conclusions from seemingly random and disparate events. Left-wing conspiracy theories (LWCT), on the other hand, "me too" emotional reaction to things they don't understand and refuse to learn about.

For example, an RWCT might posit that an obscure CIA memo in 1957, led to the Joint Chiefs taking such-and-such an action, which created thus and such agency that fomented the Capitol riots in 2021.  No problem.  I can look up the documents, read the transcripts, check the salient facts and allegations, and come to my own decision.

An LWCT sees no historical connection to anything, other than it is all evil Patriarchy, offers no documentation other than an article in the sacred New York Times, tells the reader how to feel about it all, assigned some random highly-edited facts, then demands that you believe it without any critical thinking, because the person espousing the theory is the only credible source for the information.

I've been quiet here for some time because I honestly can't separate the wheat from the chaff.  Firsst, we have to determine what is pure lie, what is part lie and what is true (not Truth, mind you).  Then we have to assemble the pieces like a giant jig-saw puzzle and see if we can make out a coherent image.  Then we apply the Laws of Thermodynamics to discern cause and effect.  If we begin to see a Big Picture, then we assume that we are on the right path, while at the same time trying to digest the profound implications of that Big Picture.

It's all very complicated and it is so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae.  To visualize the situation, we can think of it as a giant jig-saw puzzle, where ever piece is itself a separate jig-saw puzzle.  In other words, it's a fractal puzzle.  Fractals are usually mind-boggling to look at, but they are often very simple formulae and once you grasp the correct key, the lock bends to your will.

Nature abhors centralized power.  When we look out into her bowels, we see not one planet, but quadrillions; not one star, but trillions; not one galazy, but billions.  Nature has scattered her power over unimaginable time and distance.  Taking over an entire planet or solar system would hardly rate as an footnote in Nature's Handbook of History.

Bringing this grand vision down to a human scale, there has been a millennia-mong effort to centralize the worldly powers under one fist.  The Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, Mongols, Mandarins, Greeks, Romans, Maya, Aztec, and hundreds more all tried to conquer their worlds.  They rose to incredible power and complexity, and then in a flash, they vanished.

I trace the current effort at empire to a single Papal Bull issued by Boniface VIII, called Unam Sanctam, published in 1302.  Essentially, the Roman Church laid claim to the entire Earth and all creature in, on and over it, in trust for the return on the Christ to claim His worldly kingdom.  This one document launched the Age of Exploration.  Expeditions were funded and sent to the ends of the Earth to map the Church's domain, quantify it's flora and fauna, and plant flags in anything that would sit still long enough to get a painting of it.

Oh, and pick up any gold and silver lying around to fund more of it, while you're at it.

This worked pretty well for a couple of centuries, based partly on the element of surprise (wait, where'd these guys come from?), and partly on superior war technology (wait, is that a metal sword?).  But a crucial event happened a little over a century after Bonnie the 8th staked his claim.

In Mainz, Germany, in the early 1400s, a guy named Johann Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg had the bright idea to combine a wine press with his inventions of moveable type and oil-based ink, and overnight torn a gaping hole in his world.

That invention led to something called the Age of Enlightenment, which had the audacity to posit individual humans were their own sovereigns and could only be ruled by central authority by their consent to hand over limited powers to others.

This set off a wave of revolutions and independence movements across the entire globe, which peaked in the decade after World War II, but to a certain extent still simmers today.  With that, the Holy Roman empire finally died, along with the European royal houses whose power was entirely based on fealty to Roman.

Human nature being what it is, though, the collapse of one empire only creates the desire in some folks to create what they think will be a bigger, better empire that won't make the same mistakes as all the others, and put this group of greedy individuals in charge.  And it worked for 80 years or so.

In the wake of World War II, the United States (not the united States) was the only major power left with an intact power structure and currency.  Some folks saw this as an opportunity to recreate the world in the Enlightenment Image (nationalist-populist), but some other folks saw the opportunity to milk the world for their personal benefit (socialist-democracy).  The two have been battling it out in a low-level war behind the scenes ever since, with the latter having the upper hand with better propaganda.

But something changed.

In the 1960s, the US military created the ARPAnet, an electronic matrix of computers across nearly any physical space, with each terminal having a unique identifiers called an IP address, that allowed the military and their weapons developers to trade information quickly and secretly.

Folks thought this was pretty nifty and by the 1990s, the World Wide Web took root.  Suddenly, folks didn't need to access specific libraries with rare books and information, they could point and click and never leave the comfort of their couch/desk/dinner table.  If Gutenberg torn a hole in the world, the internet ripped it wide open.

This seemingly innocuous invention has done more to undermine global power structures than any combnation of events in all of human history.  There can be no elites when everyone has access to the same information.  There can be no centralized power structures when every individual with a terminal is just as powerful as any other.

Prove it? Wikileaks, GameStop, Bitcoin, the hundreds of sites that reproduce high-resolution scans of ancient and obscure documents (such as Unam Sanctam), YouTube, and on and on.

Oh sure, there are major efforts underway to censor various individuals, outlets and information, but information is a slippery thing.  The tighter you squeeze it, the more oozes through your fingers.  Like trying to block a river, eventually the water will find another way out - over, under or around, and in the end evaporation.  The breach in elite control occurred decades ago and there is nothing they can do to stop it.

Except conspiracy theories.

Recent years have seen the weaponizing of conspiracy theories.  We have seen the Qult and now the Insurrection, the Jews, the Jesuits, Black Popes and helicopters, Clubs of Rome and 300, Masons, Templars and Nazis.  All of these are distrctions.  These theories intend to keep folks focued on a single puzzle piece, while attempting to hide all the others.

The problem is, the internet is an insurmountable force.  For every bubble of secrecy inflated, there are thousands of pins salivating for the opportunity to pop it.  As the self-appointed elite try to build ever more exotic locks, the plebes build ever more sophisticated picks.  The demise of the system we have all gown up under is dying, and there is no palliative that can stop it.

The thing about our modern world is that we can pick any random point in time and space, and no matter how far back or forward we go, it is all the same - a fractal.  It seems, though, that we have reached a point where the Big Picture is going non-linear.  Truly, there is nothing new under the Sun, and as people scramble for answers, they find only different scales of the same problems.

It seems we have reached the end of usefulness for the current paradigm.  One of the axioms of critical thinking is that when you come to a dead end in one line of reasoning, you must change your perspective to find solutions.

The centralization of power and the specialization of knowledge in the the current paradigm is the poison pill that has lurked at its heart for centuries, the One Great Secret that no one was supposed to know.  But the Secret is out: we have reached the logical end of this line of reasoning.  There is no way to put a plaster on the current paradigm and keep it hobbling along like a beater car that has reached the end of its structural integrity.

Whether we want it or not, we are faced with the imperative to change or perish.  Like bacteria in a Petri dish, we have mined all the nutrients in our environment and must now change our environment or the colony collapses.  The environment is not just a reference to our physical surroundings, but a mental and spiritual realm, as well.

For myself, I leave the closed minds to fight over the bleached bones of yesterday's meal.  I choose to find a new and better source on which to dine - preferably one whose bounds are limitless and equally accessible by anyone willing to let go of the dry and nutritionless detritus the old world.

Behold, for I make all things new - Revelation 21:5

Pretzel Logic

I came across a video that does a fine job of placing left-wing absurdity on display.  It places the insanity of identity politics in stark relief, especially in the hallowed halls of academia.

For instance, rockets are sexist because the aerodynamic shape resembles a phallus.  Noted, but as far as I can see, the shuttle was vulva shaped, but required three phalli to get it off the ground.  A vulva-shaped craft that could launch and land without a phallus would probably be welcomed by the space industry, as it would likely save quite a bit of money and effort.

Recently, the "University" of Washington-Tacoma declared that grammar itself was "racist" and "sexist".  How they arrived at that conclusion is a complete mystery, though they claim that the grammatical "hierarchies" lead to biased language structure.  I suppose they had to overlook "it" and "one" as gender-neutral pronouns, or that "black and white" and "color" as adjectives for printing and photography obviously place non-white in higher regard, hierarchically speaking.  Perhaps they are referring to the standard order of adjectives in the English language: Quantity or number, Quality or opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material), Purpose or qualifier.

The only thing I can figure is that Size and Shape coming so high up the list makes this grammatical convention sexist, while Color coming so far down the list and in close proximity to Proper adjectives makes it racist.  In any case, I am flummoxed by the claim, since this is a common convention, but does not preclude a little mix and match.

Regardless of all the histrionics on the part of the left, there are only two sexes, represented by the X and Y chromosomes within our genetic structure.  Gender, on the other hand, is nothing more than grammatical constructs representing the natural dichotomy.  How do they plan to attack German, which assigns nouns one of three genders (seemingly at random), which is integral to the language's structure and affects all sorts of other things in the grammar?  Perhaps they intend to eliminate the masculine and feminine, and use only the neuter?  While this would greatly simplify the language, it would also make it incomprehensible to most German speakers.

Even more tortured is the leftist logic that science can be racist, sexist or nationalist.  By this logic, the molecular structure of water must be racist and sexist because it was first proposed (in primitive form) by Empedocles in 450 BC, a white European male.  Disregarding the fact that two hydrogens and one oxygen have been shown to be the structure of water throughout the Universe, our fundamental concept of this molecule must be skewed by racial, sexual and ethnic bias.

Forget that Neil DeGrasse Tyson promotes "white" science, or that male and female skeletons display objectively quantifiable differences, this is all a racist, sexist plot to dominate the world!

Forget that Sickle Cell Anemia statistically affects more blacks, or that Fanconi Anemia C statistically affects more Ashkenasi Jews, or that by definition you must have a uterus to contract uterine cancer, its all a racist, sexist plot!

While the basic impulse is correct - everyone should be treated equally according to their skills and talents - identity politics is conceived and implemented solely for divisive purposes.  As George Carlin so lucidly put it, "they" want to keep us fighting with each other while "they" run to the bank with our money.  It is so perfectly Machiavellian that even a most cursory read of The Prince would highlight the technique.

"Divide and conquer" is one of the oldest and most fundamental of military strategies, right up there with "Fish in a Barrel" strategy, that it is amazing how many people have fallen for it.  One has to tip the hat,though, to the brilliant addition of Orwellian "Double Think," wherein the lefties have convinced themselves that dividing everyone into smaller and smaller groups constantly fighting each other is called "Diversity" and is praised and honored among the loftiest aspirations of humanity.

The left has got itself so twisted into 'pretzel logic that it has literally become a parody of itself.  It seeks truth by declaring there is no truth.  It declares solidarity in diversity.  It employs war to establish peace.  It espouses genderlessness by recognizing dozens of genders.  It decries racism by employing it.  Honestly, don't these people recognize their own glaring inconsistencies?

I had to laugh.  An article yesterday said that independent cinemas in the US would show the brilliant film 1984, on April 4th, as a protest against Donald Trump.  Do they think they are making a comment about Trump's administration, or are they pining for a world that could have been in an alternate reality.  I don't think even they can clearly answer that.

Another article declared that a website allows leftists to live in an alternate reality.  Frankly, I hardly think they need encouragement.

Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of...

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Liberalism went wrong when it started viewing rights as goody packages handed out by government like Halloween candy to favored voting/donor blocks.

Conservative went wrong when they started seeing business as nothing more than handing out advice with eye-popping price tags to up-and-coming Third World manufacturers.

Bernie Sanders is the ultimate expression of Liberalism.  He is a Socialist who believes that government should spend its entire time telling everyone how to live.

Donald Trump is the ultimate expression of Conservatism.  He is a Fascist who thinks that corporations should spend all their time telling government what to do.

Hillary Clinton is...well, Hillary.  All she cares about is getting rich and wielding power.  She spent her career using her husband as a meat puppet.  Once she stepped out into the light, folks were horrified - and rightly so.

Europe has been facing more or less the same choices, with ultra right and left battling it out in Austia and (so-called) Neo-Fascists rising quickly in France and Germany, as people are artificially limited to two choices - right and left - when dealing with profound social and economic problems.

The problem here is that for the better part of a century, we have all been taught that there are only two solutions to every problem - government runs everything and business runs everything.  This results in a myopic view of solutions that have boxed in the social dialogue and prevented real change for the better.  As the old saying goes, when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

One of the most profound and Earth-shaking philosophical changes of the past 500 years has been ignored, for the most part.  We have been so indoctrinated by the Left/Right paradigm and the mercantilist interests that we have forgotten the one major movement that created Western domination of global political and economic discussions.

I'm referring, of course, to the Age of Enlightenment.  This is one of those things most of us (who were awake) learned about in high school and college, but it was glossed over like a minor bump in the road to Hell.  This period of history changed everything to the point that most educated people can't even conceive of a world that is pre-Enlightenment, yet we have forgotten most of its important precepts and have even started moving backwards along the socio-political spectrum.

This radical shift in Western philosophy produced prodigious minds such as Francis Bacon, Adam Smith, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau.  It created constitutional governments, separation of church and state, REAL tolerance, and individual liberty.  It was the philosophical underpinning of the great revolutions of the 18th century and was the beginning of the end of slavery and equality under the Law.  It also was the first domino that led to the demise of Western monarchies (for the most part) and the rise of the democratic republic, where everyone had a say in government except when it came to certain unaLIENable rights that could never be abridged for any member of society.

Radical.  Wide-ranging.  Profound.  Fundamental.

This movement was to sweep the world in the next three centuries.  Where monarchs survived, they gave up significant power to elected bodies.  Slavery as an institution died, though it has remained underground due to religious permissiveness.  Enumerated rights have become core elements of governance.  And the inseparable tie between religion and government has slowly eroded through much of the world.

However, many of these ideas have become deeply corrupted.  The issue of rights, for instance, have been muddled, probably by design.  Entrenched interests don't give up control easily.

As modern Liberalism has shown, many people think that rights are handed out by governments as rewards for political favor.  These are not rights, these are permissions that can be revoked just as easily.  Thus, rights have become optional packages, like power seats and windows in cars, that can be purchased for loyalty and donations.  All sorts of special interests clamor for rights packages, claiming minority or abused status, forgetting that rights are inherent (under the Enlightened view) in every human by virtue of birth.  Hell, there are even useful idiots out there fighting for animal rights when we still haven't settled what they mean for humans, or which are unaLIENable.

Conservatives, on the other hand are more concerned with the rights of corporations than with human rights.  They would have organizations become "persons" and fight to protect corporate interests over the individual.  The result has been a subtle form of neo-slavery where humans are captured by a society set up to feed corporations with wage slaves and where the Boards and Executives enjoy unfettered immunity while the rest of us suffer.

What the world needs is a return to the original ideas and back off the ridiculous and unsustainable interpretations that have taken over the Enlightenment.  The problem is that this reversal requires education, and that has been usurped by both the Left and the Right, with the former pushing social agendas, and the latter pushing mercantilist agendas.

People talk a lot about dropping off the grid and getting out of the matrix without really realizing what it is and how to get out.  The secret is education.  Get yourself and your kids out of the indoctrination mills and return to real mental development.

Efforts, such as homeschooling are one major way to get out of the matrix.  A return to the classic liberal arts education (liberal in its true sense) is vital.  Nothing, though, will work when we ourselves are not educated.  You can't teach what you don't know.  This requires an effort.

Begin by turning off the teevee.  This is critical.  You don't need anything on it - at all.  There is almost nothing of value there.

With the extra time not sucked up by the propaganda machine, you can turn to sites like Gutenberg, where the collected works of Rousseau, Locke, Smith, and Bacon are absolutely free to download.  Then spend a couple of months reading the philosophical foundation of the world we really wanted and thought we were getting with the Western Civilization package deal.  Once you've done this, you will suddenly see what has gone wrong with our world, and exactly what we have to do to fix it.

You might want to spend some time over at the Mises Institute, as well.  A little time here will give you a free education in what is wrong with the global economy and how we can fix it, as well.

Now that you've got a free Master's education in global politics and economics, you can focus your efforts on rebuilding the world and educating the next generation in how to continue fixing Mommy and Daddy's mishandling of things.  It's never too late, at least as long as all the tools are free at your fingertips.

Be warned, though.  These are dangerous ideas.  The vested interests have invested 300 years trying to repair the damage done by the Enlightenment and they won't give up easily.  With a little effort and courage, though, we can complete the work of those great thinkers and doers, and finish the creation of a true New Golden Age for Mankind.

If you think this is an impossibly huge and unatainable goal, just look at the vast changes just a handful of radical thinkers and writers created just 300 years ago,  Things like real sustainability, real tolerance and real freedom are just a few books and a bit of effort away.  All you need to do first is find that little OFF switch on the teevee.