An Inert People is “the Greatest Menace” to our Republic

Voting is obviously important. But as citizens of these United States, one of our most sacred obligations is to work hard between the elections.  We need to talk with each other or else we will not be a united community, but only an ugly place were "factions" fight each other. For the Founders factions were one of their biggest fears.  Here are Madison's words from "The Federalist No. 10":

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments, never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail therefore to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils, have in truth been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have every where perished . . .

By a faction 1 understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. ...

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects....

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them every where brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Madison viewed "pure democracy" as a dangerous thing.

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Pathologizing Dissent

This is the next step in the evolution of censorship: declaring that those with dissenting opinions are not well, that they are mentally ill. And then threatening to yank their professional licenses. That this approach has been embraced by an organization of psychologists is especially noteworthy. The article by Neeraja Deshpande is titled Will Jordan Peterson Lose His License for Wrongthink? The Canadian psychologist is right to resist re-education. Here's an excerpt:

The College of Psychologists of Ontario has told [psychologist Jordan] Peterson that if he doesn’t go to therapy—sorry, a board-mandated “Coaching Program” with a board-issued therapist—it may revoke his license to practice psychology. What warranted this ultimatum? A few tweets and a podcast.

According to Peterson, about “a dozen people” from around the world complained to the college about comments he had made on Twitter and on Joe Rogan’s podcast, claiming that those statements had caused “harm.”

In March, the college began investigating these complaints. Then, in November, the college informed Peterson: “The comments at issue appear to undermine the public trust in the profession as a whole, and raise questions about your ability to carry out your responsibilities as a psychologist.”

. . . .

Institutions whose mission is to facilitate open discourse have become shells of their former selves, living off their rapidly decaying legacies to conform to the whims of the mob.

But there is something about the Peterson story that is more chilling. It was not enough for the College to declare his comments offensive. It had to go one step further and imply that there was something about him that was unwell. By referring Peterson to a therapist for daring to speak his mind, the College of Psychologists of Ontario has pathologized dissent. It has made political disagreement into an illness.

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Coca-Cola’s Tactics to Keep Sugary Coke Freely Flowing to Unhealthy People.

Shocking disclosures by whistle-blower Calley Means, interviewed by Tucker Carlson. The things that soft-drink manufacturers do to make sure that their sugar-water is widely available and that Americans are lead to believe that sugar-consumption is healthy. Here's one of Means' disclosures that stood out: Coke and processed food companies spend 11 times more on nutrition research than the NIH. Coca-Cola pays big money for peer-reviewed studies by elite institutions, studies that conclude that sugar does not cause obesity.

Continue ReadingCoca-Cola’s Tactics to Keep Sugary Coke Freely Flowing to Unhealthy People.

The Twitter File Disclosures, So Far . . .

Matt Taibbi recently published a summary of the Twitter File disclosures so far.

One of the big take-aways with the Twitter Files so far: There has been substantial ongoing Deep State (FBI, CIA, DHS, CENTCOM) interference with how citizen attempts to discuss important important issues on Twitter. Our own government encouraged the shadow-banning and cancellation of thousands the authors of true or controversial postings. The net result was to secretly muzzle many people (including highly-credentialed medical doctors and researchers on COVID issues) in order to make it look like there was a false consensus on many highly disputed issues. The independent journalists further uncovered evidence that the FBI was paying Twitter multi-millions of $ so that Twitter would do the FBI's dirty-work for it. In sum, we appear to have actionable cases of a private third-party acting under color of state law (Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963)).

This is chilling stuff right out of Orwell's 1984. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution suggesting that this government censorship is authorized and, in fact, this government action appears to clash head-on with the First Amendment. According to Matt Taibbi, there are a lot more disclosures yet to come.

The official reaction of the legacy media so far (NYT, MSNBC, NPR, WaPo and MSNBC: almost total silence. No better evidence that they think of their readers as infantile.

I have been following the Twitter Files closely. To express my outrage about what has been going on I redesigned the FBI Official Seal, which I hereby offer to the FBI free of charge.

Continue ReadingThe Twitter File Disclosures, So Far . . .

The Southwest Airlines Crisis Illustrates our Politically Divided News Media

Look who is and who is not covering the Southwest Airlines breakdown and the potential culpability of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. At Lever News, David Sirota describes this daunting problem in his article, "The Partisan Ghost In The Media Machine":

This media dysfunction exemplifies what I’ve previously called The Algorithm: an information ecosystem in which news outlets promote or suppress facts based on whether those facts will flatter or offend their audience’s partisan impulses.

Stories that might shame Democrats are amplified by right-wing media, but effectively shadowbanned by legacy and left-of-center media that do not want to offend a liberal readership that loathes news that might shame the Democratic politicians they worship. This is why previous reporting months ago about Buttigieg’s refusal to do his job was similarly erased from the liberal discourse.

It’s the same thing on the other side: Reporting that might embarrass Republicans is touted by those legacy and left-of-center media, but never mentioned by right-wing media outlets that don’t want to offend the MAGA movement....

When journalism that embarrasses Democratic politicians is promoted by Fox News — and ghosted by MSNBC — liberals either never see the reporting, or they get to eyeroll and smugly laugh at it, insisting the verifiable facts must be false just because they happen to be amplified by Rupert Murdoch rather than by Rachel Maddow. The converse is also true: When facts embarrassing Republicans are reported by MSNBC — and ignored by Fox News — most conservatives never even see them, and those who do get to brush it off as “fake news” from “liberal media.”

This dynamic is a big part of the democracy crisis in America. It has created two throngs of zombie partisans fighting a never-ending war of attrition from behind screens that tell them only what they want to hear, and censor facts that might alter their thinking.

Fixing this nightmare requires the kind of media that Joseph Pulitzer envisioned — a media that will “never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong.”

Clearly, America doesn’t have that media — and many seem to know it, as polls show trust in media plummeting.

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