We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day “With journalism’s popularity waning and scandals raging, journalists have never been more interested in the political opinions of `stars.’ While the idea of a reporter caring what they think about matters beyond what it was like to work with some other actor or director, this wading by the make-believe set has begun to impact its bottom lines. `Stars’ are asked to weigh in, to speak out on everything, and fewer and fewer people want to hear it. It’s a business model straight out of a Monty Python skit.”
– Derek Hunter, Outrage Inc: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism and Hollywood. Page 209.
(As per usual I put in my bleat about how sad it is that the word “liberal” nowadays means something rather different than what it once did.)
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
What?
“Stars” have been the “go to” source concerning what cigarettes to smoke, what breakfast cereal to eat, what beer to enjoy, the “proper” car to buy, and what dish soap to use, for YEARS!
Why they aren’t asked about various computer operating systems, public transportation routes, macro-economic international trade interest rates, or molten metals nuclear reactor cooling system theory, I’ll NEVER know!
POINT OF ORDER! “Stars” does not include former entertainers that have been supplanted by younger talent, and haven’t “produced” anything of consequence for several years.
There’s another term for such folk.
You can see how appealing it is from a hack’s point of view. The agent is easily accessible for contact, the ‘stars’ play-act concern for the world during the arranged meeting at a plush location (often with a free meal thrown in) and in return the average ‘journalist’ gets briefly to rub shoulders with the supposedly great and good.
There’s no need for the hack to go out and talk to deplorably-ordinary people in such vile places as cafes and on public transport or, heaven forfend, on the street. The ‘stars’ usually look good (as far as make-up and flashy clothes go), have a store of amusing anecdotes to pad out the expected opinions (global equality good, climate change bad, people desiring to be independent of elite control very, very bad) so our impressionable journo feels good about itself and, more to the point, reinforces its opinions.
Anyway, what’s not to love about someone who routinely pretends to do and be exciting things, all in exchange for money and private glory?
The media have been informing us of Slebs’ political opinions for decades. It’s as much laziness as political.
We are now supposed to be interested in Megan Markle’s opinion on UK social issues when a couple of years ago she was a slightly famous actress in a US TV program who also ran a blog on fashion and beauty tips.
Strange but true.
I think the phenomenon of celebrity worship is somewhat worse in America than over here, Britain does not yet elect ‘reality TV stars’ for high office.
As long as the political opinions of the “stars” are WOKE the media will celebrate them – and hold the “stars” up as sources of great wisdom.
Which is why actress Brie Larson says she does not want “40 year old white guys” giving their opinions on her work – because “it is not for them”. Bash evil white males – very WOKE, obviously Brie Larson is a genius and “Captain Marvel” will be a classic film (according to all the “mainstream” reviewers, the Corporate “Social Justice” “Diversity” Shills, who will write reviews saying it is wonderful without bothering to watch it).
The interesting thing is that business (including the entertainment and “news” business) is actually dominated by “middle aged, white guys” and yet they back these endless attacks upon THEMSELVES.
The message of the “mainstream media”, and the rest of Big Business, is “DESTROY THE WHITE MALES – ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE MIDDLE AGED”.
In short the chant of the Corporate Executives of the major media companies (and most other companies to) is (in effect) “KILL US! KILL US! KILL US!” – the education system, the schools and the universities, has done its brain washing job only too well.
The Capitalists, the “Woke Billionaires” and so on, are demanding (yes demanding) that they be robbed and murdered – and I am sure that the forces now gathering strength (not just the savages coming over the border of the United States and other Western countries – but, even more so, the young university students) will be only too happy to carry out this demand.
Many civilisations have been destroyed in human history – but the modern West is the first civilisation to be led by people who DEMAND-their-own-destruction.
@ Mila s
The British have the royals to worship and since lunatic asylums are shut, have to elect care in the community cases to high Office so they can be sequestered in Parliament. That is why it now has all those barriers, fences, policemen and other security round it… to keep them in.
Dear Mr Pearce
I was on the West Coast in ’72 and was somewhat confused by the natives use of the word ‘liberals’ to mean socialists. It’s a long established misuse which probably pre-dated my arrival on that continent by some time.
We seem to have taken the abuse to a new level with a party called the Liberal Democrats, which is manifestly neither.
DP
@ Paul Marks: “Many civilisations have been destroyed in human history – but the modern West is the first civilisation to be led by people who DEMAND-their-own-destruction.”
True, but watch how fast all this will reverse when evidence of the destruction happening at pace begins to manifest. We will then see (and hear) the populations of the West squawking how they didn’t mean themselves, they meant those less liberally-inclined. Sadly, if living in the West is going to be the bulls-eye, any Westerner will do.
It might even come down to something small, like the closure of toilet-paper manufacturers to really get the squawking going full volume.
Paul Marks, I came across this saying the other day: You know the brainwashing is real when white people protest against white people for being white people.
I do wish that someone would quantify the howling ‘social justice’ mob. The media and politicians abet them and cheer them and aim them at those who refuse to slavishly comply with the Left’s Narrative. They certainly have volume, but how many of them are there in actuality? How many live and breathe outrage and victimhood, searching for release in the destruction of “the Other”? That would give some perspective to the public insanity. At the very least, we’d know how much ammo to buy.
“I do wish that someone would quantify the howling ‘social justice’ mob.”
8%.
https://hiddentribes.us/#americas-hidden-tribes
“I was on the West Coast in ’72 and was somewhat confused by the natives use of the word ‘liberals’ to mean socialists.”
It used to mean ‘socially liberal’. Liberal about lifestyle choices – sex outside marriage, pornography, masturbation, homosexuality, religion, political belief, etc. – where what is done in private among consenting adults and harming nobody else should be nobody else’s business. It was in contrast to those who thought it was society’s right and duty to enforce their own moral standards of private sexual/moral behaviour on all its members.
Back in the 70s a lot of people who believed in freedom of lifestyle also happened to believe in socialism, so the terms have got somewhat conflated. And nowadays they’re inclined to impose their own moral standards of tolerance to alternative lifestyles on others in a decidely non-liberal way, so the term is even more inaccurate. But it’s not completely without historical foundation, either.
Nullius in Verba – has a point, back in the 1970s the position on the Californian left was “do your own thing” how they squared the circle with the collective owning everything was the impossible problem (which is why their communes always broke down – collectivism CAN NOT mean “everyone doing their own thing”). But they were sincere.
These days the Californian “liberals” (indeed the left in general) are openly TOTALITARIAN – everyone must live the way they want them to live, OR ELSE.
And Big Busienss backs then to the hilt – politically and financially.
The leftists chant “Death to Google” in San Francisco – and the Google (which already throws money at them) just gives them MORE support.
In both San Francisco and Los Angeles there are ever more homeless people – yet the rich “liberals” support the very policies that create ever more homelessness.
Just as the rich and Big Business support every higher taxes and ever more regulations generally.
YES it is INSANE – but the main support for ever higher taxes on the rich and Big Business in places such as California is the rich and Big Business, the “WOKE” doctrines they are taught at their elite schools and universities have driven these people stark-staring-bonkers.
And they actively support the people who would rob and murder them “Death to Google!” – Google response give-the-Marxist-activists-more-money.
Think about it – Google, via their Search Engine, discriminate (rig results) against Conservatives like me (people who do NOT want to rob and murder them) in support of the Marxists who DO want to rob and murder them.
“Race”.
Race is a funny thing.
For example, Texas College students late last year were asked a simple question “which of these two men is Hispanic – Ted Cruz or Beto O’Rourke?”
They answered overwhelmingly – Beto O’Rourke.
The students were not being sarcastic – they ASSUMED the Democrat must be the Hispanic and the Republican must be the Anglo.
“Beto” is a fake name – and “Ted” is actually short for “Edward” in “Raphael Edward Cruz” (if he had gone by Raphael, his father’s name, being called “Junior” would be have been inevitable, and no one wants to be called “Junior”) – and Ted Cruz is actually rather tan-skinned, but hardly anyone sees that – they just say he “looks odd”, he can not have a naturally tanned skin because he is a Republican so the brains of most people do not fully register what their eyes are seeing.
I have actually seen BLACK Republicans denounced for their “white privilege” – without any sarcasm.
And I have seen WHITE Democrats pass themselves off as “black”. Indeed one of these white (indeed pale) Democrats was the leader of Black Rights group – fake dreadlocks and all.
I repeat race is a funny thing – it is all very odd.
The Frankfurt School Marxists and the Post Modernists (together these groups DOMINIATE the education system) have an answer to all this….
A “white” person is someone who supports the “exploitation” and “oppression” of “capitalism” – whereas a “non white” person is someone who is against “capitalism” – even if they are billionaire capitalist themselves.
So a “Woke Billionaire” with blond hair and blue eyes and pale skin is a “non white person” – or “person of colour”. And they are not “a man” as long as they oppose the “exploitation” and “patriarchal oppression” of “capitalism”. So genetics does NOT determine who is a man – just as having billions of Dollars and owning lots of factories does not make someone a capitalist.
Whereas a black factory worker who happens to be a Republican is really a “white man” (even if they are female – as “maleness” is defined by supporting evil “capitalism”). And such a person is guilty of “oppression” and “exploitation” – or, at least, supporting “oppression” and “exploitation”.
I hope this is all now clear.
Being “white” or “male” means supporting “capitalism” and being “non white” or “female” means opposing the “exploitation” and “oppression” of “capitalism”.
Quite mad – totally insane. But this is what the elite universities (with their total denial of objective reality) teach.
I trust we are all “educated” now.
I think that’s most of it. It’s free content that fascinates a certain type of consumer.