Walter Kirn: “Censorship is Just for the Prisoners who’ve Escaped the Info Dome.”

Walter Kirn: "In a way, censorship is just for the prisoners who've escaped the info dome. You know, censorship is just shooting the escapees but keeping people inside the dome and playing that 24 hour news act like music as maybe the main imperative. That is the part that I think will truly blow our minds." Walter has perfectly expressed something that distresses me every hour of the waking day. There are vast numbers of people in the US who ingest only the high-calorie low nutrition version of information. I've referred to this type of "news" hundreds of times as "corporate news" or "legacy news," to distinguish it from the work of journalists who rely primarily upon the contributions of individuals who value the quality of the work. The legacy news includes five major players who I have often featured in my posts about the legacy media walking in lockstep to withhold information or to propagandize us. Once upon a time these outlets practiced something more akin to journalism, but we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears (I have posted hundreds of examples) that these outlets are no even trying to tell us what is going on around us, no longer offering conflicting perspectives, no longer putting their stories into historical perspectives and no longer pointing out the hypocrisy of public figures who make claims that conflict with their prior statements each day. Rather, in coordination with the U.S. government (and its many agencies, such as DHS, DOD, CIA as well as CIA's cutout USAID) our major news outlets work hard to convince consumers of pre-determined narratives--they write these plot first, then they go out to construct the facts. They do it like lawyers representing their clients in court--their is no attempt to be even-handed.  In short, they engage in Censorship and Propaganda: The modern day versions of Scylla and Charybdis.

People who continue trust legacy news outlets have been convinced by these big corporate-monied narrative-purveyors that alternate opinions and dissident voices are radioactive. As they did throughout COVID, they argue that dissidents are far more nefarious than people, way worse than people you merely find disagreeable. Dissidents must be avoided at all costs because the dangers they pose with their facts and opinions are existentially dangerous. This way of promulgating news is a great danger. For example, by pounding a simplistic narrative about Ukraine-Russia, as many as one million people have died and the US Treasury funds have been diverted from helping Americans to going into a big black hole.  As a result of stifling COVID dissidents, they got almost everything wrong (I found this on X recently:

Dozens of people with whom I once experienced mutual warm feelings have cooled. If we bump into  each other, they look at me with suspicion. Some of them have accused me of being a Republican, even though my views are largely consistent with what I've always believed, including this: for the 40 years during which I voted almost entirely for Democrats. That said, I have spent my entire life declaring my independence from tribes, political, religious and otherwise. I'm proud of that and I have a lot of criticism for Republicans too, for instance the elimination of the CFPB. My acquaintances on the new Left tend to show intense unwillingness to consider alternative facts and opinions. They are locked down and in fetal position. This is not happenstance--this behavior is the result of one the tectonic plates underlying their media ecosystem. In earlier times, their information diet might have been more varied, but they are now victims of Stockholm Syndrome:

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Continue ReadingWalter Kirn: “Censorship is Just for the Prisoners who’ve Escaped the Info Dome.”

Mike Benz Offers a Sampling of USAID “Jobs”

As the USAID house of cards continues to collapse, Mike Benz responds to Alexander Vindman's whining:

On a light note, here are more (real) examples of USAID malfeasance:

More recent revelations:

These

- $1.5 million for DEI in Serbia

- $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland

- $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia

- $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru

This: "$15 million to George Soros's open foundation Over Obama's last four in office alone."

"Advertiser outreach" to censor news outlets.

Funding to thousands of journalists to shape the news.

Many people are assembling lists of USAID fraud. I can't vouch for all of this, but this is one of the many recent lists assembled by users on X:

Continue ReadingMike Benz Offers a Sampling of USAID “Jobs”

J.K. Rowling Summarizes the Damage Done by Gender Ideology

Here's one more J.K. Rowling post dedicated to those people who sat on your hands while thousands of confused teenaged girls were being butchered and/or injected with hormones that would lead to their permanent sterilization. Moreover, as Rowling notes, there is the problem with luxury beliefs like this, benefitting only the elites. There's also the problem with the men who take advantage of vulnerable women. Rowling, who has been subjected to non-stop death threats for years, has this to say:

"This 'why do you care about a tiny fraction of the population?' line is, and always was, utterly ridiculous.

Gender ideology has undermined freedom of speech, scientific truth, gay rights, and women's and girls' safety, privacy and dignity. It's also caused irreparable physical damage to vulnerable kids.

Nobody voted for it, the vast majority of people disagree with it, yet it has been imposed, top down, by politicians, healthcare bodies, academia, sections of the media, celebrities and even the police. Its activists have threatened and enacted violence on those who've dared oppose it. People have been defamed and discriminated against for questioning it. Jobs have been lost and lives have been ruined, all for the crime of knowing that sex is real and matters.

When the smoke clears, it will be only too evident that this was never about a so-called vulnerable minority, notwithstanding the fact that some very vulnerable people have been harmed. The power dynamics underpinning our society have been reinforced, not dismantled. The loudest voices throughout this entire fiasco have been people insulated from consequences by their wealth and/or status. They aren't likely to find themselves locked in a prison cell with a 6'4" rapist who's decided his name's now Dolores. They don't need state-funded rape crisis centres, nor do they ever frequent high street changing rooms. They simper from talk show sofas about those nasty far-right bigots who don't want penises swinging around the girls' showers, secure in the knowledge that their private pool remains the safe place it always was.

Those who've benefited most from gender identity ideology are men, both trans-identified and not. Some have been rewarded for having a cross-dressing kink by access to all spaces previously reserved for women. Others have parlayed their delicious new victim status into an excuse to threaten, assault and harass women. Non-trans-identified leftybros have found a magnificent platform from which to display their own impeccably progressive credentials, by jeering and sneering at the needs of women and girls, all while patting themselves on the back for giving away rights that aren't theirs.

The actual victims in this mess have been women and children, especially the most vulnerable, gay people who've resisted the movement and paid a horrible price, and regular people working in environments where one misplaced pronoun could see you vilified or constructively dismissed. Do not tell me this is about a tiny minority. This movement has impacted society in disastrous ways, and if you had any sense, you'd be quietly deleting every trace of activist mantras, ad hominem attacks, false equivalence and circular arguments from your X feeds, because the day is fast approaching when you'll want to pretend you always saw through the craziness and never believed it for a second."

Continue ReadingJ.K. Rowling Summarizes the Damage Done by Gender Ideology

Ships Passing in the Night

I once canvassed for Bernie. Some people who then respected me for those political views now think I'm a right wing zealot. How do I convince them that because they limit their news diet to legacy outlets NYT/CNN/MSNBC/NPR/WP, that their minds have been hacked, for years, by hundred of billions of dollars of CIA propaganda (including through CIA cutout USAID), that they know almost nothing about what has really been going on and that their current state of willful ignorance disqualifies them from participating in meaningful conversation?

Today I posted this on FB: One more from Mike Benz. The fingerprints of the CIA are all over Burisma, where the completely unqualified Hunter Biden sat on the board pulling down $80K/month. If you are still limiting your news diet to NYT/WP/CNN/MSNBC/NPR, you are committing citizenship malpractice. Luckily, the evidence of corruption is pouring out into the public eye at an astounding rate. If you are not actively digesting independent news sources, however, you are almost totally in the dark. That is why I don't respond to most comments here. I can easily see who has been captured by corporate news. You aren't required to kick your addiction to NYT/WP/CNN/MSNBC/NPR, but if you don't, you will remain someone else's sucker. You will be abdicating self-autonymy. That said, it might not be your choice anymore. It might not be your fault in any meaningful way because the tools they have been using on us are extremely sophisticated and they are ubiquitous. Here's one clue: If you have decided that anyone is radioactive (that you should never listen to anything they say or to any questions they are asking), the deep state has you exactly where they want you. Luckily, critical formerly suppressed information is now pouring into the public light. I sincerely hope that many of you start your red-pill journey ASAP.

Continue ReadingShips Passing in the Night

Reframing Anxiety as the Exciting Opportunity to Support the Eternally Radical Idea of Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff offers a history lesson starting with Henry VIII's battle with the effects of the printing press. He then turns his attention toward those who seek censorship as the remedy for feeling anxious at ever-new revelations that many of our institutions (including colleges) are dysfunctional, even corrupted to such an extent that they are betraying their stated missions:

What’s happening now is why the free and open exchange of ideas will always be radical. Yes, what the future is going to look like seems a lot less clear. Yes, we’re living through a crisis of authority. Yes, we’re questioning the legitimacy and necessity of our institutions. But those institutions and authorities don't deserve our blind loyalty. And they showed their cards when they went after the eternally radical idea — when they answered “the problem” of free speech with new speech codes, byzantine taboos, and cancellation campaigns.

The institutions and individuals that stand the test of this era will be those who show integrity and principle, those who tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient or unpopular. That’s what happened in the Enlightenment with figures like Voltaire and Diderot, Smith and Hume, Franklin and Madison. It’s also what we’re seeing now on platforms like Substack, where individuals and institutions with integrity and courage are finding new ways to lead.

I’m proud to say that FIRE is one of those institutions. We've had the courage to be non-partisan in a partisan world. Through all the tumult, we’ve defended free speech, free inquiry, and the free press for all — even at the cost of some uncomfortable Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Democratic principles become even more essential during times of crisis, not less. History shows us that these principles are not luxuries. No, they are the foundations of a successful and dynamic society. The Enlightenment didn’t feel like the Enlightenment when it started. To most people, it probably felt like blasphemy, heresy, and chaos. And to Henry VIII, it probably felt like quite a bit of nasty gossiping.

But freedom always feels a little scary. Free speech is the eternally radical idea, after all.

Here’s a cognitive hack I like to teach my kids: you can reconceptualize fear as excitement. And remember, I have a well-documented history of dealing with anxiety. I know what I’m talking about here. So while I don’t blame anyone for feeling anxious right now, I also hope they feel exhilarated. What’s happening in this moment is thrilling: It is the chance to reexamine everything we thought we knew.

I invite you to read Lukianoff's full essay, "Institutional decay, Henry VIII’s big fat libido, and the eternally radical idea: When you add billions of eyes to the problems of the world, the result is not just noise but incredible breakthroughs."

Continue ReadingReframing Anxiety as the Exciting Opportunity to Support the Eternally Radical Idea of Free Speech