This is one of the major divides in modern world: Some people think the People should really run their own governments. Then there is an elite handful of people who believe that because they are so super-smart, the public-facing government should be a facade for unwashed masses, a Potemkin village, and the self-appointed rich fucks should call all the shots.
Who are the powerful shy people who tell so many politicians what to do and say? What am I talking about? Dozens of members of Congress (I'm focusing on the political Left these days) walk in lockstep. For example:
Modern Democrats apparently have conjured up a political purity test that they require of each other.
In his American Dream bit, George Carlin spoke of "The Big Club" and you and I are not in "The Big Club."
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
The amazing Data Republican has dug into the politicians who are all mouthing the same words in unison, abdicating their duties to think for themselves in congress. What has she found? Lots of financial ties binding these politicians to their "Big Club." For instance,
Carlin thought that there was no need for formal meetings to coordinate the activity of "The Big Club."
Thanks to DataRepublican, we are now learning, however, that sophisticated logistics and money-flow coordinate the activities of The Big Club.
For years it has been increasingly difficult for me to have a give-and-take conversation with a Democrat. I've voted almost entirely with the Democrats all my life, and I remain committed to what were, more or less, the Democratic values that were known and accepted by the far majority of Democrats 10 to 15 years ago: anti-war, anti-censorship, don't judge people by irrelevant characteristics like the way they look, deference to the family re how to raise children, etc.
Now it is almost impossible to talk. My guiding assumption is that almost all people think and act rationally based upon what they know and believe. We live in two primary informational ecosystems, however, and the one embraced by most self-proclaimed modern day Democrats has ever-fewer connection points with those who are not in that tribe. It is for that reason that I have, indeed, been posting X links to my FB page, to the the dismay of what turns out to be a smallish group of very loud people who respond almost entirely with ad hominem attacks. I also receive many private messages thanking me for sharing these posts, many of these also adding that they can't "like" or res-hare my links because of social and economic repercussions. Such a sad state of affairs. BTW, Elon Musk has encouraged the sharing of X posts to those who are still trapped in the Matrix:
If you eat shitty food, your body will suffer. If you ingest shitty information, you will act "rationally" on the basis of that bad information. If you are extremely smart, you will think and act extremely well on behalf of that shitty information. There are thousands of Iago-equivalents on on the federal payroll. Their job is to insidiously gain control of your brain so that (in the case of modern-day Democrats) you'll become pro-censorship, pro-war and and a big believer in race-essentialism (among many other things). In short, you'll become the opposite of what you were 10 years ago, you won't know why you did the 180 and you won't even be concerned that you have betrayed many of your deepest convictions.
Before you weigh in on any issue of national importance, then, the first question you need to ask yourself is whether your world view has been hijacked by US censorship and propaganda. The "misinformation" and "malinformation" system is extremely sophisticated, developed over the decades by deep state experts. Based on recent disclosures, legacy media have been significantly funded by USAID and other federal sources for many years, going back to Project Mockingbird and beyond. Whether you are "smart" has nothing to do with it. Your only hope is to read widely and read news sources that conflict with each other so you can weigh the evidence for yourself. This will take too much work for many people. They will stick with U.S. approved "news" sources and they are the most over-confident people here on FB. And for those who still think they are well informed by relying on legacy news, did you know this:
For those still skeptical about the CIA’s role in censoring and propagandizing the U.S. public, a good starting point is The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein. Published in 1977 in Rolling Stone, this investigative piece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist details how the CIA cultivated relationships with major news outlets, including The New York Times, CBS, and Time-Life, to shape narratives and suppress stories. For more recent accounts of CIA manipulation of Americans, follow Mike Benz on X, see the Twitter Files on X and follow Matt Taibbi at Racket News.
Nadine Strossen discusses the "Weimar Fallacy." Strong hate speech laws prior to WWII in Germany shoved hate speech underground, out of sight, where it festered and grew. The better alternative would be to let the people say their hateful things out in the open market where their ignorance will be forced to engage with ideas that are better than hate. Strossen explains:
For more on this topic, see Greg Lukianoff's article, "Would censorship have stopped the rise of the Nazis."