“Ms. Harris’s handlers should have enough respect for the voters, and for their candidate, to let her stand alone and answer questions by herself. Joe Biden was allowed to hide in his basement and avoid tough questioning during the Covid campaign of 2020. We all know how that turned out.”
One of my theories is that Harris is not allowing herself, or being allowed, to speak on her own in an interview not just because she is stupid, and a Leftist who might blurt out what she really might think. It is also the risk she is going to cackle halfway through answering a question. Imagine, if you will, she is asked about a trade deal with the UK, say, or defence and Ukraine and the Baltics, and she starts to get a fit of the giggles.
The handlers may also have worked out the Keir Starmer/Rachel Reeves (UK prime minister, Chancellor) strategy in the UK before the 4 July general election, which is to avoid talking in detail on policy, keep things as vague as possible, block requests for specifics, and then go in hard and Leftist when in power. Under the UK’s winner-takes-all system, with a split opposition and low turnout, this has been a successful gamble. In the US, where much of the MSM is covering for Harris, her approach may also succeed in November.
These situations make me wish for a more rigorous age. I recall from the 80s there was, in the UK, a Sunday current affairs programme, on ITV, a show called Weekend World, initially hosted by the late Peter Jay (son of a former UK government minister) and later taken over by Brian Walden (a Labour MP who went Thatcherite, as some do) and finally, Matthew Parris. Jay was good, Parris was okay and Walden was brilliant.
The first half of the programme would involve an analysis of a particular issue (striking unions, state of the economy, rise of the SDP, public finances, the nuclear deterrent, drug use, what to make of Gorbachev, etc) followed by a 25-minute interview with a senior minister or senior opposition figure (politicians such as Denis Healey, Margaret Thatcher, Peter Shore, Nigel Lawson, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Cecil Parkinson, Michael Heseltine, etc). These were political figures of gravitas, who were asked difficult questions, probed hard for answers, and not allowed to get off with issuing word salads. The analysis of a story was rigorous; the questioning was forensic, polite and as sharply revealing as that of any clever attorney. And all done on a Sunday lunchtime just after the roast lamb and glass of Cote de Rhone and before the afternoon film or the rugby. The show would be the talk of Westminster for the early part of the week. Walden could get a politician, such as Neil Kinnock, Roy Hattersley or Norman Tebbit to say more than, perhaps, they wished, but it was all done with such cleverness.
I don’t buy into the whole “in the good old days” line on everything, but in my view, some of the calibre of journalism, and the quality of those running for office, or in office, has declined, and on both sides of the Pond.
Back to Mrs Harris. I doubt her handlers (the fact she has such people makes her sound like a child) would let her within a mile of a journalist and recovering political figure such as a Jay or Walden, or, to give a more modern case, Andrew Neil and their American counterparts. Not. Going. To Happen.
And so here we are.
This line from the WSJ threw me:
Why? That’s not their job. Their job is to direct the election into a win, to talk us into buying Kami. They’re marketing people, and Kami is a tube of deodorant, and we all are the people looking to buy deodorant. They need not respect her, or us.
Seems naive of the WSJ. The hired guns aren’t the ones who should be expected to provide the honor and morality of the campaign.
K. Harris is, supposedly, being interviewed by CNN today – but it will scripted and not broadcast live, and Governor Tim Walz (a person with a decades long relationship with the People’s Republic of China regime) will be there for moral support.
Both the Marxist parents of K. Harris are said to be highly intelligent – whether this is true of K. Harris herself I do not know.
I find it fascinating, in a terrible way, to watch the international media, and corporations generally, support K. Harris – they all know perfectly well that the lady is a fanatical Collectivist (as John Stossel has pointed out – her position on, for example, government spending has always been an order-of-magnitude worse than even the terrible standard of most politicians, not a bit worse – an order-of-magnitude worse, where most spendthrift politicians will support spending X amount – K. Harris will push for spending ten times that amount) – yet they support her anyway, Emperor Diocletian style price controls and all.
In the 1980s the Corporations, even the banks, at least pretended to be pro free enterprise – it may not have been capitalism (it was NOT capitalism – it was a fiat money, Credit Bubble system, there was little real Capital) – but it was a real effort at “as if” capitalism – the Corporations (again – even the banks) at least going through the motions of supporting a free society – there were even, in the 1980s, Hollywood films and television shows that were pro liberty (the young will not believe that – but there were).
Now the corruption of the system is complete – a Collectivist does not need to even hide their Collectivism (as Barack Obama, another “Red Diaper baby” – i.e. Marxist origin, did in 2008 and 2012 – even in 2012 it was the LIE of “if you like your health insurance you will be able to keep it”), but now fiat money (Credit Money – money that is not gold, is not silver, is not anything) has done its work – the Corporations feel no need to even pretend to support a free society or traditional cultural principles.
The support (international support) for K. Harris is the final reveal – it shows what the economic system has become.
In the world of the future the ordinary customer is to have no influence – people will spend the “digital money” on what they are told to spend it on, and they will have to do so in a certain amount of time before the “digital money” (which never really existed in the first place – it was not any physical thing) vanishes. No real distinction between government and partner corporations (such as the banks and the entities “managing” shares).
More Henri Saint-Simon than Karl Marx – but K. Harris will still be delighted, as it will still be a society of a boot coming down on the face of humanity, for ever.
Which is what the international establishment elite have want, and have wanted for a long time.
Naive?
Bobby, explain to me this: how come politicians from the period I refer to are able to talk to a serious journalist, on their own, on detailed policy, sometimes before an election? On live TV? Or even recorded TV? What’s changed? Something in the water?
It is worth remembering what the one advantage of a Fiat (fiat – command, order, whim) Money system was supposed to be – no National Debt.
We, in the modern world, do NOT even have that advantage – we have Fiat Money (endless inflation – disguised by rigged price indexes), but we ALSO have a national debt (over 35 Trillion Dollars in the case of the United States – much larger than the entire economy), and servicing that debt eats up more and more of the budget of the United States, United Kingdom and-so-on.
How can this be? How can we BOTH have fiat money AND a National Debt?
It is due to the fact that although the government (via the Central Bank – in the case of the United Kingdom the “Bank of England” – which has no legitimate reason to exist under a fiat money system, it was created in 1694 to borrow physical money, gold and silver, but it has NOT done that for a very long time indeed) produces endless fiat (whim-credit – whatever) money, it does NOT use this money directly to fund its spending – the money is lent out to financial institutions and then borrowed back again (at a higher rate of interest).
In this way we have BOTH fiat money inflation (disguised, especially in the United States, by rigged price indices) – AND a crippling National Debt eating up more and more of the budget.
In a way it is an astonishing achievement – it should be impossible to have fiat money (endless fiat money inflation) and a vast National Debt at-the-same-time – but our rulers, in basically all Western countries, have managed it – by lending out the money (which they and their Central Banks create from NOTHING) and then borrowing it back again – at a higher rate of interest.
Given all the above, the support for K. Harris makes perfect sense.
We are NOT dealing with “capitalists betraying capitalism” by supporting the fanatical Collectivist K. Harris – because the people already in control of the economy are NOT capitalists, it is NOT a capitalist economy.
K. Harris is the natural conclusion (the cackling, insane, but natural conclusion) of what they have all been doing for a very long time indeed.
Johnathan Pearce is correct – many politicians can deal with hostile interviews and hostile press conferences.
For example, Donald J. Trump can do so – but the “mainstream media” selectively edit what he says, so the experience of the people who see the full encounter live is totally different to what the people who just watch the late night news (or the later night “comedy” shows) experience.
Indeed it is the opposite.
See the full hostile interview or hostile press conference and Donald J. Trump does well – see the selectively edited version, and he looks bad (which is the intention of the establishment).
Of course, K. Harris has never, in her life, faced a hostile interview or a hostile press conference – as she supports the same Collectivist world-view that the “mainstream” American media do – a world view they get from the education (indoctrination) system.
Anyone with a pulse should be able to remember or is at least aware that the last occasion of any consequence that Kamala was required to speak without a script or teleprompter was in 2020 when she was effortlessly sliced, diced and subsequently kicked out of the race by Tulsi Gabbard.
Crucially at that time she was one of many candidates and pretty far down the pecking order. Now she is the chosen one, the bringer of Joy, and the media will do everything in their highly effective dirty playbook to prevent her from being seen to make a fool of herself again.
Incidentally I’m not sure what the WSJ means by “We all know how that worked out”. To paraphrase the late and not remotely missed liar Harry Reid “well he won didn’t he?”.
@Paul Marks:
I just don’t think it is enough, when looking at what happened in the 80s, and now, and just blame it on weak or biased journalists, because they have always existed. It is not as if the era of Walther Cronkite or the BBC 6 O’Clock News was all about the qualities I cited in my original post. But there is something that has gone seriously wrong in our public culture. Maybe it is a rise in emotionalism, a drawn out consequence of bad and malign ideas in education, a diminution in respect for logic, and understanding of cause and effect. Maybe – and this is going to get me in hot water – part of our culture has become more feminised. Women are better, much better, at emotional bullying than men. In politics, we have seen the sort of “mean girls” culture that comes off a lot, in my view, from Mrs Harris. (Such as her description of Vance and so on as “weird”.)
Also, I think the journalistic profession is now more credentialed, more middle class and has fewer people who came up the ranks from local reporting where they had to cover a beat, deal with cops, local politicians and businessfolk, get their hands dirty in talking to actual people. (Full disclosure: that was my life for a few years.)
@John:
Incidentally I’m not sure what the WSJ means by “We all know how that worked out”. To paraphrase the late and not remotely missed liar Harry Reid “well he won didn’t he?”.
The Wall Street Journal means that Mr Biden was elected to an office he was unfit to hold, and that his agenda was far more Leftwing, and injurious to the US, than his image as a sort of Washington fixer would have suggested, at least to the average low-information voter. Of course, for those who paid attention, and remembered all those years ago when Mr Biden plagiarised a Neil Kinnock speech, and remembered his unpleasant remarks and record, the fact that he never quite impressed Democrats enough to choose him for the nomination far earlier, none of his shambles of an administration (too many examples to mention, but his vacillation on Ukraine and mishandling of the Afghanistan exit were two very salient cases0 was a shock.
That is what the WSJ means by “how that worked out”.
I don’t see why Kamala Harris should take the risk of revealing she is an idiot. The Democrat way is to steal elections. They need only to steal the vote in five cities in five states. It worked in 2020, there is no reason at all for them not to try it in 2024. They were caught off guard in 2016, because they thought that Trump stood no chance of winning. They will not make that mistake again.
JohnK: I don’t see why Kamala Harris should take the risk of revealing she is an idiot.
Oh I get why she would not want to do that, and why her nannies (sorry, “handlers”) might take the same view, but what I don’t quite get is why so many journalists (a term to be used loosely, admittedly) are just happy to go along with it because “Orange Man Bad.”
What the fuck is the point of toiling away on often not that great pay to be a journalist, news anchor or whatever if this is where you end up? Maybe a book deal, think tank gig, perhaps a bit of consulting for this or that organisation fronting for Soros or whoever. But even so, that leaves a lot of people working in the trade who seem content to just phone it in, as the saying goes.
I think that 95% of journalists are Democrats, so she’s their candidate. Joe Biden’s imbecility had become impossible to hide, and I think that is why the Democrats agreed to a very early debate. It enabled them to get rid of the dotard and install a new idiot who is at least able to walk up a flight of stairs.
Because other politicians had ability and intelligence, but Kami is dumb as a bag of rocks?
I’m not arguing with that point. I just think that blaming her “handlers” is off-base. They’re doing what handlers do, and if they can drag someone like Kami over the line, they’ll have done it well.
My blame goes to the press, who allow her – hell, help her – to hide her idiocy, and her supporting voters, who mostly do know she’s an idiot but also know that she isn’t Trump and is thus (to them) the best choice as Prez of the US.
Bobby:
Agreed; but it seems to me that there is something like a symmetry between attitudes of handlers to the press, and attitudes of the press to their readers. The press relies on their readers being delusional, or pretending to be; and so do the handlers wrt the press.
Bobby,
There’s still not much explanation I’m seeing in the comments about how we got from an age when senior politicians relished debate and journalists liked to ask questions, and now.
Help me out here!
Some more thoughts: Harris has to be careful, however Leftist and stupid she might be. If she is shielded from the media, she won’t be prepared for when a tough moment arrives between now and Nov 5. She could have a nightmare Q&A, or be pressed on something she’s said and done, and the public will get a view of what she’s really like. Disaster ensues.
That’s the risk of coddling her. You create a spoilt brat who can’t handle difficulties. Every parent knows this.
Changing the subject somewhat, America’s a republic, and doesn’t and shouldn’t go in for coronations. To the extent the MSM is complicit in this, it deserves all the contempt it may draw.
My guess? We’re a much less serious, less serious-thinking world than we used to be.
IOW, it used to be a high value to make and respond to reasoned intellectual arguments, to learn the details of a politician’s positions, to think on the merits.
No more. Now, we’re all reduced to tribes and tribal affiliations.
Once Kami says “I’m a Democrat!”, she has locked in almost half of the voters. She need say no more. And so, the Democrat press reports that she’s the D, and acts as if they have no more work to do. They’re not journalists, they’re D marketers, and so they’re correct.
In fact, “saying more” is the only thing that could derail her tribal backing. So, why chance it? She’s not likely to convince any of Trump’s tribe to vote for her. All she can do is PO her own tribe members.
Biden won in 2020 with that exact strategy. Had he spoken, Trump would have won.
Oh, and:
She already IS a spoiled brat who can’t handle difficulties. That’s what they have to hide, so that their tribe can win.
My own guess is that it is due to increased consumption of HFCS and seed oils. On this issue, it seems that RFK Jr shares some of my concerns.
As for bobby’s guess:
That might well be, but it only leads to the next question: why are “we” much less serious-thinking?
Since I’m into wild BS guessing mode, I’d say it’s because we now have a global on-line society that is on its screens many hours per day and so thinking that is out of the popular loop is much more easily policed and ridiculed and quashed, and also so there is no longer a mass need for knowledge. Now we only need to know what’s popular.
why are “we” much less serious-thinking?
There is a tendency, on the left especially, to be remarkably credulous. They can and will go straight from “X is wrong” to “Victims of X are unimpeachable saints”, and will unless someone (that they trust) points out any problems. This isn’t new, but the tendency of the mainstream media not to criticise its favoured groups leaves such people with nothing but adulation for anyone who can claim victim status.
It may go back to educational standards; education has been full of political correctness for decades. When O level ‘science’ is about picking stories from the media and “talking about them” against that background, inculcation of critical thinking has been discarded. Today’s teachers are the second or third generation brought up in this.
Thanks for the feedback, but i’ll stick to my ‘carbs & seed oils’ conjecture for now.
Of course, that itself raises another question: why did we start consuming more refined carbs & seed oils?
I suppose that there are reasonable answers, but i won’t go down that rabbit hole.
(Sigh.) I remember carbs. So good . . .
We got here because Napoleon and the pigs have tightened their control to the point where there is now no need to discuss farm management with the livestock.
Roue le Jour, Farm Manager #1 to Farm Manager #2: “hey, look at that cow. Where’d he get a pistol? And it looks like the pigs have rifles. Oh shit!”
I put a not inconsiderable amount of it down to the Paxtonization of political journalism, where the objective isn’t to probe with questions to reveal the dog that isn’t barking, but to get the politician to trip over their own words and contradict themselves so you can point and shout “Gotcha!”
Johnathan Pearce – to Vice President Harris, and the rest of the international establishment, people who love their nation and its culture are “weird”.
J.D. Vance loves his nation and its culture – he does not wish to destroy it, he wishes to restore it – to reverse the terrible cultural (societal) harm done from the 1960s onwards. Therefore, to the international establishment, he is indeed “weird” – because he is the opposite of them.
They consider him a Reactionary rather than a Progressive (international totalitarian Collectivist) like them – and they are correct, he is.
As for questions – of course Vice President Harris will answer questions, as long as those questions come from people who share her world-view, her hatred of the United States of America and her desire to destroy what is left of American cultural and political traditions.
I agree that Vice President Harris is not much of an intellectual – that she is basically just a “mean girl”, but she does have beliefs. The beliefs of her parents and the education (indoctrination) system, which are shared by the American “mainstream media”.
As for the culture generally – yes it has become horribly “dumbed down” and trivialised.
This was brought home to me by watching the television series “Deadwood” (of all things) – the television show showed the town as being a collection of shacks, in reality impressive buildings were created in Deadwood, and it also showed the population endlessly saying “fuck” (and not much else) – whereas the journals, and “commonplace books” of the real inhabitants of the town show that even the most ordinary people had a wide vocabulary and were familiar with both the Bible and Classical literature (remember these journals and “commonplace” books were just places where people jotted down their thoughts – they were NOT intended for publication, so people were not using special language when they wrote in them, they were using the language they used every day).
What the television show “Deadwood” unintentionally showed was what America is becoming – rather than what America was.
Even President Eisenhower noticed signs of cultural decline – in the style of buildings, in how people spoke, in what the ordinary person knew (and what they did not know) – which he attributed to the influence of John Dewey, and others, on American education.
But now it is not a few signs of cultural decline – it is more like cultural collapse, and not just in the United States.
Snorri: That might well be, but it only leads to the next question: why are “we” much less serious-thinking?
One possible explanation (I am just speculating here) is that Western populations have, overall, had it pretty easy in the past 40 years. The Cold War ended, and even with the jarring experiences of the sub-prime mortgage crash and the Zombie Apocalypse, etc, most people never really suffered badly in terms of their living standards. True, there is much ugliness and forms of inequality – drug use, tent cities, coarseness in much of our culture, woke nonsense, etc. But not the sort of grinding down of living standards across the board that some of our ancestors had to put up with. So I am guessing that this means that Western people have got a bit soft, and soft in the head.
I also read, but have no way of knowing whether it is true, that IQs in the West have actually declined.
It certainly is true that the fact that a silly-sounding person such as Mrs Harris could run for office, and be nominated without debate, shows a level of fecklessness, and frivolity, in the US today.
At some point the disaster that this sort of approach brings is going to require a time for very serious, hard people such as a Thatcher or Reagan. There is no guarantee that such folk will arrive when needed, however.
IQs in the west may well have declined. Then again, there is less of the west in the west these days. In 1961, the white British population of London was 97.7%. By 2021 it was 36.8%. The west is being erased before our eyes.
I’d like to point out — not that anybody said otherwise — that to do some serious thinking about major issues, high IQ is not enough. At a minimum, it is also necessary to be able to stay focused on the issue for much longer (with breaks) than it takes to complete an IQ test (and i speak from experience).
Also, one must be willing to accept falsification, an ability not measured in IQ tests. (It seems that Sir Karl Popper himself was not always so willing.)
At least equally important is not to cherry-pick evidence to confirm one’s ideas; or if you feel a strong urge to cherry-pick, go ahead, but do not delude yourself that you have proved something!
All of this, and more (such as the violent and self-destructive urges apparently induced by seed oils), is why i maintain that the brain damage caused by bad carbs & seed oils cannot be measured by IQ tests alone.
Snorri you remind me of a criticism of Donald J. Trump – that when he did have good ideas (and sometimes he did – and does) he did not have the patience to see them into practice against endless bureaucratic obstruction. An American President, unlike a British Prime Minister, does have some real powers (and can not be casually removed) – but ONLY if that President sticks-to-their-guns – does NOT just come with a good idea, issue an order, and expect it to be carried out. An American President has to keep pushing an idea, every day, to get it done – being someone who does not push the same idea every day till-it-is-carried-out and, rather, being someone who it easy to distract, or whose mind turns to other things – can be fatal to a Presidency.
Someone has to be a bit of an “obsessive” in order to get things done in the teeth of bureaucratic opposition. Push the same thing, every day, till-it-is-done.
Why does the American establishment (the Corporate State) prefer mentally challenged (and morally challenged) people, such as Joseph “Joe the Big Guy” Bid, and K. laugh-insanely word-salad Harris to be “in charge”?
I think there is a simple answer to this Jonathan Pearce.
Someone who was intelligent, of a questioning mind, and independent (i.e. could not be blackmailed over their criminal dealings) might get up one morning and say….
“The Central Bank, in the case of the United States the Federal Reserve, produces money from NOTHING – in then lends out this money to financial institutions, and the government borrows back this money, at a higher rate of interest, to fund much of its spending. This means that we have fiat (fiat – command, order, whim) money inflation (hidden by rigged prices indices – but very real to ordinary people) AND, at-the-same-time, a crippling national debt of over 35 Trillion Dollars which is eating up more and more of the budget. The monetary and financial system is a giant scam”.
The financial centres of the world, such as Wall Street and the City of London, largely live off this giant scam – I suspect they would not like it exposed.
So best to have a moron (and/or a compromised criminal – who they can blackmail) as President of the United States.
Today’s media reminds me of women’s magazines from the 60s, they recycled the same content year over year, the safetyism was a monthly feature along with maudlin empathy. Many articles were actually advertisements. I think the culture is marinated in feminization and infantalization. Maybe it was inevitable in a world, in which post WWII generations, are cocooned from the tooth and talon of reality. Kids today aspire to be gamers and influences; being productive and creating wealth are not even in the mix. Some kids even resist learning to drive.
I do recall the high quality programming of past decades. Sundays were dedicated to it and we had CSpan. Looking back maybe it was just a diversion or entertainment for Nerds. I don’t know if any of the conversations translated into actual policy. Maybe the Leviathan was always in charge, and all that was an illusion. Long story short , I don’t think there is a target audience for serious policy debate. It’s soap opera women, all the way down.
Saw an article on Fox News, regarding the doubling of electric bills in NJ. These reports are commonplace. I can’t wrap my head around the legions of voters who are willing to commit economic suicide. If someone can explain this, that would be great. I can only think they must be innumerate and economic illiterates.
Megyn Kelly’s take down of the Harris Walz interview was epic. She showed no mercy
https://youtu.be/X3p1UnITykA?si=W6uX-Tga4ZqM0wO0
I fear for Megyn Kelly’s safety. I don’t know if calling Walz , Kamala’s emotional support governor originated with Megyn, but she topped it by calling him Kamala’s big white blankie. Then she went on to heap ridicule on the demeanor of the participants and the lack of substance. It was clear Kam was coached, so we were spared the cackle but what was left went flat. The dog that didn’t bark, were the obvious questions. They supposedly sat down for an hour and had a 20 minute end product. Was the rest so bad it had to be edited out.
For her part, Kelly only pointed out the obvious, and that is, that Kamala is utterly lacking in the necessary skill stack.
I got to thinking how can she (Kamala) not know that she is in way, way over her head.
We did get sober policy discussion from RFK Jr.
No name calling was a breath of fresh air. I gotta admit I was caught off guard by his VP candidates, Nicole Shanahan, who is a treasure
An interesting series of comments Exasperated.
But whoever is elected in November – they face a totally corrupted government and a broken society (J.D. Vance’s book “Hillbilly Eulogy” shows how broken the Social Revolution of the 1960s has left American society).
As for the corrupted nature of government…
We are told that the government “borrows money” and pays interest on this debt – currently a debt of more than 35 Trillion Dollars, a much bigger debt than the total size of the American economy (let that sink in).
But what is this “money” that the government borrows? Is it gold? Is it silver? No it is not – it is nothing.
The government and its central bank (in this case the Federal Reserve) creates this “money” from nothing at all – lends it out and then borrows it back again, at a higher rate of interest.
The whole process is a corrupt farce – disguised Corporate Welfare for Wall Street, “The City” (of London) and-so-on. Corporate Welfare for the “financial centre” cities – such as New York, San Francisco, and-so-on.
It is the same with other Western governments – it is all a corrupt farce.
The fiat money inflation (the creation of “money” from nothing – nothing at all) AND, at-the-same-time, an ever increasing government debt, the servicing of which eats up more and more of the budget.
Again whoever is elected in November – this system (the system itself) is an abomination.
Why was American society so easy for the Progressives to break?
I think the answer is the same as why the Roman Catholic Church was so vulnerable to Vatican II in the 1960s. The same is true of Protestant Churches in the face of “Progressive” movements.
Back in the 1950s people were very complacent – they mouthed support for various principles, but they no longer really understood WHY these principles were so important.
The Hume-Hayek position that good societies just “evolve” without anyone really understanding the basic principles is wrong (it is part of their disguised Determinism – their “Compatibilism” which holds that people only think they may make choices, they can not “really” do other than they do) – but it is not just wrong, it is also dangerous.
As Ronald Reagan often said – liberty (and all other basic principles) are never more than one generation away from being lost, unless the reasons WHY basic principles are important are taught, then the principles themselves become vulnerable.
The public in the 1950s “believed” in X, Y, Z – but they did not think very deeply about basic principles, and it suited (yes suited) the government and corporate establishment (even then) for the public NOT to think about basic principles – after all if the people started to think they might do such things as question the financial system, and the corrupt Supreme Court judgements upon which both the financial system and the vast new government was based.
Do not think about basic principles – just be a “good person” and do as you are told, that was the message (of both church and state, and corporations to) even back then. Because if people questioned too much they might work out they were not in the free society (free enterprise economy) they were told they were in.
People no longer knew WHY the basic principles were important.
And that left society wide open to Progressive Radical attack. They, the Progressive Radicals, did think in terms of basic principles – their thoughts were evil (totally evil) – but they were thinking, and that made them strong, much stronger than a population that had been taught NOT to think.
Why are people more tribal and less interested in the facts about politics? I think it is a denouement of several different things. One is the growing importance of the federal government in people’s lives. This started really with the civil war, but spiked on a couple of other occasions: the 1910s with a series of constitutional amendments that massively centralized power, the New Deal that built on those ideas to actually implement the centralization of power, the civil rights act and related legislation which purported to help minorities by enslaving them again. It used to be that you could live your life barely knowing who was president or that DC exists, now they decide what size your toilet paper squares are, and presidential campaigns are about “if you don’t vote for me the world will end.”
Second, is the internet. This wonderful beautiful thing was supposed to liberate us, but it has done a lot of bad with the good. It was supposed to free us of the centralized control of information, however the problem is that there is so much information that we’d drown. And so the solution has been to form little bubbles of self reinforcing echo chambers. Respectfully, like this place here. If you rarely hear dissenting views you tend to think that dissenters are crazy. And when you talk with the loudest most vehement in your echo chamber, you discover that dissenters aren’t crazy, they are evil.
Third is that there has been a secret revolution in the west. This has its roots in the radicalism of the 1960s and has lead to a somewhat deliberate if chaotic attempt to push radical ideas into the universities, and then to push for everyone to go to university. I’m not suggesting a great left wing conspiracy here. It is more subtle than that. (Why the 1960s? That is a huge topic in itself.) These university grads then poured out into society (including into elementary and high schools as teachers) to inculcate the left’s view everywhere.
No doubt there are other trends too. But the important thing is to understand that we are in their denouement. It is like pouring water in a glass. As you pour, not much changes, the glass gets a bit more full, but eventually it reaches the top and starts flooding out and pouring over the table. Which is to say quantitative changes eventually become qualitative changes.
And the inflection point here was in March 2020 when a pandemic was used as an excuse to test how far they could get away with it. Could they lock people in their homes, take away all their civil rights, shut down dissenting businesses, rob people of their freedom of speech and so forth? And the answer was yes. It forced people into two camps in a way that has never been possible before. You were either in favor of the “what about the children” “do what the government tells you” camp, or were willing to take the immense risk of “that is a load of bull, I’m not doing what a bunch of hypocritical politicians tell me”.
Having succeeded with covid, they are running the ball as fast and as far as they can. It is worth pointing out to us Americans that in 2020 the left installed a placeholder president, and it is looking more and more like we are going to get a second placeholder president. That should tell us a great deal about who is actually in charge.
Paul:
As you say, a US dollar bill is not money, it is a debt instrument. A US dollar is 0.7735 troy ounces of silver, and nothing else.
So as you say, it is puzzling why dollars created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, a private entity, need to be “borrowed” from it by the US government, which then pays interest on this “debt”.
You may recall that in 1963 President Kennedy experimented with the issuance of Treasury notes instead of Federal Reserve notes, these being backed by silver, similar to the old silver certificates which used to circulate as cash, and which entitled the bearer to a silver dollar. He was assassinated shortly after, and the idea died with him. I am not suggesting the Fed had him killed, that was other people, but the experiment of having silver backed dollars would not have been helpful when the Vietnam War had to be paid for.
Since Biden announced he was no longer running and Kamala was gifted the nomination I’ve gone to just skim reading bits about US politics, and if I was a better man I’d just completely ignore stories about the US completely. I never had a high opinion of the US media, but this pathetic adulation of Kamala Harris is a new low.
I’ve quoted him numerous times before but Auron MacIntyre’s tweet seems more and more apt with every day:
”You don’t hate journalists enough. You think you do but you don’t.”